Messed!Up
One of the hardest working musicians, if not the hardest ever, just released his tenth studio album Undefeated as well as his 50/50 tour documentary about him touring all 50 American states and playing 50 shows within 50 days. And as if that wasn’t enough, at the beginning of May he set off to break the world record for played gigs within 24 hours and played 15 shows at 15 different venues in 15 different cities and towns across England within 24 hours. The man with such endurance and energy is of course the never-aging punk poet Frank Turner.
Ten solo albums into his career and more than 25 years on the road, Turner sums up his life on Undefeated, a record mirroring some of the finest moments of punk music’s history with that Frank Turner twist on the top of it all. But if you’d think that this workhorse of a punk would settle into veteran status and start writing ‘heritage’ records, think again – he doesn’t have any plan to slow down. Instead, he’s aiming for gig number 3 000.
When Turner popped by Hamburg on the promotion round for Undefeated, we met up with him at an office on the riverbank of the Elbe River and dug into a 25 year long career. And Frank had lots to say about the ‘big business’ of the music industry, being a role model for young punks while handling the role of an aging punk musician, and trying to catch up with social media trends.
A record-breaking punk: 50/50 vs 15/24
I just saw that the 50/50 documentary has been released. How does it feel to look back on that tour today?
“The documentary is out and you can watch the episodes on… What’s the name again? Never mind. The thing about that tour is that it didn’t really sort of dawn on me until we were about ten shows in, and you sort of started to understand how fucked up it is and that you can’t miss one show. You can’t get sick, cancel one show and do it again because no one fucking cares about 49 shows. It’s not just that it’s a lot, it’s that you can’t cancel. Not that I usually cancel but shit happens on the road”.
“I’m proud that I did and I’m really, really glad that I don’t need to do it again. There’s some bands that’s like ‘We can do it as well’ and I say ‘Good luck’ (laughs)
And then you decided to do fifteen shows in fifteen days within 24 hours.
(laughs) “Yeah, I know, I know! And again it was my fucking idea. The world record is currently ten so there is a little bit of error margin, not that I’m going to cancel any show (laughs)”.
I was thinking more about the UK and traffic jams on the highways, and not even two hours between shows.
“The record label was like ‘Let’s do it with record shops and independent venues’, and we bought a paper map of the UK and got a set of different colored pens and sat down. It was a very satisfying day in my life, and my tour manager Dougie and I – we’ve been touring together for twenty years and we both covered a lot of ground – had a really good time. We got so much accumulated knowledge so there were all kinds of error margins and plan Bs built into it, just little things like we’re playing Chesterfield, not Manchester because driving through Manchester on M62 is a pain in the ass. It’s little things like that”.
“It’s still going to suck. At about 4 am I will try to blame someone – and it’s my fault (laughs). The thing is, a show at 2 am is probably cool because maybe you go out to the pub or the club until midnight and come out for a show on the way home; 6 am, it’s a breakfast show, cool. Sure, it’s early but you’re up for breakfast; but 4 am, ‘Fuck off man’ (laughs). So we thought ‘That one has to be in London because it’s the most 24-hour city in the UK’. But yeah, it’s going to be hard”.
“Another friend of mine told me when it was announced, ‘I see what you’re doing. It’s all of the album promo in 24 hours. Clever boy’ (laughs)”. But it’s cool. Obviously, to a degree, it’s an idea to hang some promotion of the album off. If someone would say to me in an accusatory way ‘You’re only doing this to promote the album’ I would be like ‘Yeah’ (laughs)”.
But it’s also for a good cause because you’re doing it to support the Music Venue Trust.
“The Music Venue Trust is involved in every show, and every show is with an independent record store and, also, at most shows we have unsigned local artists playing as well which is a very cool thing. So there’s a bit of community celebration involved in it”.
An aging but not a defeated punk
Frank Turner’s body of work is turning out to be a rollercoaster ride that mirrors his personal journey. On his tenth solo album Undefeated he tells us autobiographical stories about his experiences in the music industry, being an aging punk, and ‘what was and what could have been’, and sonically, in bits and pieces, it sounds like he draws on inspiration from bands like Black Flag, Descendants, and The Ramones.
One of our favorite songs off the album, the brilliant “No Thank You For The Music”, originates from a music award when he was about to snap and ‘do a fucking Kanye’. And he also tells us about his feelings when young punk bands come up and ask for selfies.
Let’s talk Undefeated. It’s out on Friday and it’s your tenth solo album. Is it about you feeling grateful for having survived this long in the music industry, which can be a rather dark place at times? Or to be blunt, is it an album about you?
(laugh) “Well, yes, I’ve been going back to be autobiographical which is sort of my comfortable mode, but the good thing about writing autobiographically is that life changes. One of the good things about getting older is that there’s new shit to say”. (laughs)
If you look at the different themes on the album it sounds like you’re grateful to have survived this long in the industry.
“Definitely, that’s true. The reason I like the word ‘Undefeated’ is that, to me, it doesn’t imply that you’re the champion. It doesn’t mean that you have beat everyone, it means that no one has beaten you – yet (laughs). It’s celebratory to a degree but it’s not like I call the album ‘No.1 World Champion’ if you know what I mean”.
“It refers to lots of things. Taking the long view which the record does; when I was a kid my parents banned me from buying records and listening to music and going to shows. All of my friends thought I was a fucking idiot for wanting to be in a band and my school told me not to be a musician. My piano teacher even told me to give up music because I didn’t know what I was doing and all that shit. So, I got through all of that and joined a bunch of hardcore bands. That’s the background story.”
“A lot of people get to do one album and one tour, or maybe a couple of albums, but not many people get to do ten and, currently, 26 years on the road and counting. The thing is, I know it doesn’t matter to the world, but it matters to me and I’m proud of it. There’s been lots of ups and downs in my career, some of them self-inflicted like drugs, mental health, and all that shit. That’s how you should understand the word ‘Undefeated’ because I’m still here”.
“Also, we live in a world where there’s a lot of big game hunting on the Internet where it can be like ‘Oh, can I take down this successful figure’, and they’ve fucking come for me many times – and fuck them, I’m still here (laughs). I’m not sitting here and saying I’m blameless. Jesus, I’ve said some stupid shit. I’ve been doing interviews for 20 years, of course, I’ve been saying some stupid shit (laughs) and I take responsibility for that. But at the same time, there’s a lot of bad faith argument on social media and a lot of people just try to claim a scalp for the fucking sake of it, but they haven’t got me yet”.
But you’ve also had to adjust to social media and everything that comes with it, it didn’t exist when you started. I recently read about your TikTok adventures.
“Fuck TikTok (laughs). My label wants me to use it and I’m like ‘I’m not gonna do a stupid fucking dance’. I play music for a living so I will be playing music on TikTok. But that’s a very good point, I pre-date social media but have to get used to it, it’s just how it is in this day and age. But I’m relieved to say that in 2024 people tend to take social media with much more of a pinch of salt than they used to. I remember in 2014 when something bad happened on Twitter people were like ‘What the fuck!?’ and now when something bad happens on Twitter people go like ‘Yeah, obviously’, and no one cares. But I will tell you this; if I had a magic wand I would delete the whole fucking thing tomorrow”.
“Collectively, society starts to understand that in 2008 when everyone got themselves a smartphone and Twitter, it was the start of a fucking disaster. It was the wrong turn. I have a fair amount of sympathy for the slightly anarchic techno-utopianism of the early Internet. It turns out that the Internet just demonstrates that a lot of people have the ability to be fucking horrible to each other. And the mobs are terrible. Mobs have always been terrible, fuck mobs. Human beings in large groups are in general awful to each other, and you can do that virtually as we as physically it turns out”.
“These days I like to think that I’ve found a way of living with it and using it for what I do”.
Back to the album; if you listen to the whole album and the variety of songs on it, it feels like a tribute or a homage to classic punk and rock music. It’s like getting snapshots of punk music’s history. Is it you summarizing your life as a punk musician by picking pieces of punk that meant something to you while you evolved as a musician?
“Yes, but not that consciously. Writing is a multi-stage process. I often get ‘How do you write songs?’ and I’m like ‘Which bit?’. It’s just such a long process to arrange a song because arrangement is as important as anything else. This is going to sound pretentious but fuck it (laughs); in my creative moments I try hard to be protected and I don’t want to think too analytically when I write, I want it to be joyous and unforced, and then you can look at it afterward and have this conversation.”
“What is great is that I love my band and we are collectively the best we’ve ever been. We have a new drummer and he’s fucking sensational. To take an example, there’s this solo song on the record called ‘On My Way’. When I wrote that song, we did it as a full band arrangement and we tried it in like nineteen different ways, and it got more and more and more bombastic. But it did get to a point when our keyboarder was like ‘I’ve run out of hands’ (laughs), and at the end of it all I was still not happy and they were like ‘Look, what do you want? We don’t know what you fucking want’. I played them the song again, just solo, and they were like ‘That’s the fucking song, idiot’ (laughs)”
“It’s a very nice thing to be collectively in sync with each other and go through this together.”
You also go back to being fully independent and only working with Xtra Mile, you cut ties with Universal and the licensing deal you had with them. Then I listened to “No Thank You For The Music” which is, like the press text says, ‘a rejection of mainstream culture and taking pride in being underground’. The whole first verse tells an interesting story and I started to put the pieces together in my head. Did you have enough working with labels on that level?
(laughs) “Fuck off! But yeah, a little bit. But first of all, I don’t know how many people care about this shit anymore because this whole argument about independent versus major and sellout feels like the First World War to me sometimes, like old people talk about it in bars while kids today are like ‘Who fucking cares?’ (laughs). Secondly, I finished my deal with Universal and I’m quite proud of that, I completed what I signed up for. Apparently, only five percent of all artists who sign a major label deal finish the number of albums they signed for. We didn’t part on bad terms, they offered me more and I said ‘Don’t worry about it’ and they we’re a bit shocked to be honest, which was quite a satisfying day.”
“To be specific, the genesis of that song was a day, I think in 2022, when I got nominated for an award for the live streams I was doing during lockdown that was very industry. I knew I wasn’t going to win because they always tell you if you’re going to win in advance; all the ‘I’m so shocked’ is bullshit (laughs). The person who won the livestream category was specifically the person who had made the most money for themselves, and then everybody started crying and thanking Jesus and all that. I was sat in the room and was like ‘I’m gonna do a fucking Kanye’ but my wife was like ‘Don’t fucking do that’ (laughs). But I just had a real moment of recognition – there’s more than one music industry, right – and I had this moment of thinking ‘These are not my people’. I don’t necessarily need to burn their fucking houses down or whatever, I just don’t want to hang out with these people, they got nothing to do with me”.
“If people talk about stuff like X Factor or whatever, I don’t want to waste any energy on hating X Factor because it’s a different thing. They do that, I do this and there’s no fucking common ground, and good luck to them. There were moments in my life where I was slightly pushed towards the more mainstream kind of pop world, and although I don’t spend time carrying around regrets I just sat there and was like ‘Fuck this, fuck these people, I don’t want anything to do with these fucking people. Take me back to Molotow’ (laughs). That was kind of the beginning of that song”.
And you should know because you have been doing this since the end of the 90. That’s more than 25 years in the scene. If I’m quoting your lyrics from “No Thank You For The Music” again where you say something like ‘As I enter my 40s’ I must ask you if you’re starting to feel old, especially when you see young bands pop up in the scene and talk about their role model Frank Turner? Before you answer, in another interview you also said ‘Also, I’m 42. Which is not a sexy, rock’n’roll age’. How do you handle the role of an aging punk?
(laughs) “That’s a good question and the answer to that is really at the heart of a lot of this record”.
“To tell another quick story, which also involves an award ceremony, again (laughs). I got asked to present an award to someone else in an award ceremony, which is great – free bar and all that (laugh). Once there, I had this real moment of realizing that there’s a whole generation of young punk bands who I don’t know at all, and they’re fucking brilliant, they’re all 22 and they all do coke in the toilet as they should be – and it’s great”.
“I took an older friend with me and we were just hanging out at the bar just getting drunk, and all these kids in bands I’ve never heard of kept coming over and asking for selfies, and my friend was like ‘Hahaha, you’re worth Instagram likes’. On some levels, it was ‘Fucking ey!’ because I’m proud of that and it’s nice to be recognized from time to time (laughs). I did a radio session the other day with a band called Sports Team, a really great band, really nice people, and they also came up and said ‘We grew up seeing you play when we were teenagers’ and I felt like ‘Thank you very much, that’s really cool’ ”.
“But at the same time, I don’t want to be a fucking heritage artist, I still feel like I have new things to say, and in a slight contrarian way – and I am a contrarian, goddammit – I like the fact that I think that my last two records are the most punkiest things I have ever done, certainly in my solo career. I’m not making Paul Weller’s Wild Wood just yet, I’m not making the kind of old-man country record. It’s like ‘Let’s fucking go, it’s the fastest shit I’ve ever done’”.
Yeah, I get that but on the other hand, the punk scene is filled with bands who have been around since the early 80s and still continue to play. You’re not even middle-aged yet in that sense.
“That’s it, I’ll do the fucking heritage tour in a while (laugh). But it’s a funny position to be in because I’m not a heritage artist yet but I’m also not a brand new punk artist”.
“I should also say that I’m so excited by the state of punk rock right now, there are so many fucking great bands coming up right now like Gen and the Degenerates, Lambrini Girls, and Mannequin Pussy – there’s so many fucking great bands. I don’t need them all to give me props, I’m just happy. Some of them probably fucking hate me (laughs). But I’m happy because there’s a lot to be fucking pissed off about right now. And there’s more than one way of being pissed off, like a 22-year-old type of pissed off which I’m not going to pretend to do anymore”.
“Here’s another way of saying it – I’m not going to mention any names but you’re going to know what or who I’m talking about – there are bands who put out new singles about high school and I’m like ‘You are in your fifties, shut the fuck up’. A, it’s creepy, and B it sounds to me like the marketing department told you ‘They buy records, make it appeal to them’. Fuck off! (laughs) I can’t write those kinds of songs because it’s dishonest. Again, that’s kind of what this whole album is; it’s me saying ‘How do I write songs about punk rock and anger when I’m not in my early twenties anymore’. It’s not a sexy rock ‘n roll age (laughs).”
“But it’s true, many of the bands I grew up with are still here, and that’s interesting. We’re doing some shows with Circle Jerks this summer and I am fucking excited about it, but Keith Morris is a million years old (laughs). I think he’s incredible, and he’s kind of a hero to me and inspiration”.
“I also know what you mean, I’m not the oldest punk musician in the room, but at the same time, in a way… Oh fuck, this is a new thought that I’m trying to formulate right now, so bear with me. Quite a lot of my life I’ve not really fit in, musically. I didn’t really come up with any one particular scene, and there have been times in my life where that’s been awkward and annoying and frustrating and the rest of it, but in the long term I’m kind of grateful for it and also proud of it. I’ve always loved bands that don’t fit like The Jesus Lizard, one of my favorite bands of all time for the reason that they don’t fit at all. There are no other bands like Jesus Lizard from that period of time. Where did they come from? And I love that. So in some ways, what I try to do is to carve a space for myself and find an identity for myself as a – oh my god, I’m gonna say it – middle-aged punk musician (laughs), and there’s not that many blueprints for me to follow on that. Some days that’s frustrating and scary, and some days it gives me shit to write a whole album about (laughs)”.
Last question; Ingo from Donots did a German version of “Little Changes” called “Kleine Schritte” in German, and I know you have tried to learn a bit of German. You do understand that people at Molotow on the 17th of May will request the German version from you? Have you prepared for it?
(laughs) “We recorded that song as a duet and I think it’s cool to do it in another language, and we’re done doing it in Italian, Spanish, and soon also Japanese – it’s fun but it’s a fucking challenge. The problem is that doing it in a studio is easy, doing it at a show is fucking hard because in a studio you press stop and do it again when it’s not working out, and you have it written down on a piece of paper in front of you. Doing it on breakfast TV in Cologne, that’s a lot fucking harder (laughs). I have learned some German, but ‘Kleine Schritte’ also has a lot more words. It is hard so I’m not going to promise to do that at Molotow I’m afraid (laughs).
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Photographer: Julia Schwendner
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Frank Turner pages
