Frank Turner talks Trump, Twitter, leaving his comfort zone and locating his missus when the world ends
The Hampshire-born folk singer-songwriter holds nothing back in this week's Somethings For The Weekend interview
“A BIT of consideration for humanity goes a long way,” says Frank Turner when explaining the title of his new album Be More Kind.
A couple of years ago the British singer and songwriter had been reading a collection of poetry by Australian writer and poet Clive James when one line made him stop and sit up.
The poem was called Leçons Des Ténèbres and the line was, “I should have been more kind. It is my fate. To find this out, but find it out too late.”
Turner says: “It really made me think and start with a new direction for my record.
“Clive James is not the only person who has made that comment. (American writer) Kurt Vonnegut also said something similar. There are a lot of people who have said it. It tends to be people who are near the end of their life. It therefore comes with a lot of weight and wisdom attached to it as far as I am concerned.
“Today it’s so tempting for everybody to get angry as your first response. There are times when we should get angry but I feel like we’ve forgotten how to argue properly or at least in a civil way.
“A lot is because of social media and the problem with social media is you are not physically in the same room as a person you are disagreeing with.”
Turner says he’s the first to hold his hand up for sometimes needing to step away from certain sites and says any advice he gives is aimed at himself as much as anyone else.
“I’m pointing the finger at myself too,” he says.
“I woke up this morning and was reading some political Twitter stuff and sort of wish I hadn’t because it changed my mood.
“But the moment people start dehumanising their opponents is an extremely dangerous one. Nowadays I see people taking pride in the fact that they can’t understand their opponent.
“I think that is a disaster. You can’t persuade somebody if you can’t understand them, and if you are not interested in persuading them then what are you interested in? That’s when you start heading towards political violence. I hope and like to think it’s something that we are all opposed to.”
It’s a sunny afternoon in Venice, California, when we meet just as Turner is preparing to go out on the road. We meet at his AirBnB apartment just as he’s checking out. The tour itinerary is being pored over before Turner has a phone interview to do.
Making Be More Kind, Turner’s seventh studio album, was a completely different process for him in many ways.
As well as being a quick album to make, Turner says the subject matter of his songs entered new territory for him. It’s a really different feeling for me as an individual as well as a writer,” he says.
“On other records I’ve made I’m figuring out my personal life. Now I have a partner (Turner is dating actress Jessica Guise) who I am very happy with.
“When the world starts falling apart I am not going to start reaching for an AK-47, I am going to try and figure out where my missus is. That’s what the track 21st Century Survival Blues is about.”
The song was inspired by a plane journey when Turner got talking to a businessman, who told him how he had spent a lot of his money on a warehouse full of guns.
“He was telling me about how he had this stockpile of weapons and dried food ready for the end of the world,” recalls Turner.
“He said, ‘When the ship goes down you can’t eat gold’. It was a striking conversation. He’s planning on robbing people for food. I don’t think that survivalists have a point and I don’t think we are about to reach a state of society collapsing anytime soon but it got me thinking about what was important to me when the sureties that we depend on start falling apart.”
Turner says he’d originally planned to make a soul record and had been toying with lots of ideas but hit a brick wall. Then touring the States with his band the Sleeping Souls he found new inspiration.
“Until then I’d had a little writer’s blocks,” he says.
“I was trying different techniques. I was trying to write a white soul record, which I will release at some point and am really happy about, but I’d been touring in the States at the peak of the Trump vs Clinton electioneering. It was a mad time to be in the country.
“There’s a song on the new record Make America Great Again (after Trump’s famous campaign slogan), which I am going to be spending a lot of my life explaining.
“It’s clear from the song that I am actually a gigantic fan of the country. I love America, I love American people and I love American culture. What I find really depressing is that this Make America Great Again movement has completely got the wrong end of the stick about what’s great about America.
“I could write out an extremely long list of what is great about America; these people just picked one or two bits that are actually quite s**t.
“Friends asked whether I would just play shows to liberal people on the coasts, but I actually take pride in the fact that we do play the heartlands and that people who voted for Trump have come to my shows. I’ve heard from them. I want to take pride in that, partly because it means I am not narrowing my appeal and partly because there is also an opening and an opportunity to start a civil conversation.
“At the kiss-off point of the lyrics in the song, it says ‘Let’s be a friend to our oldest friends and call them out when they are faltering'.
The song is me trying to have a quiet word with people who I love and say, ‘Maybe don’t elect him again’.”
It’s not just the US that Turner is talking about on Be More Kind, though he’s been hesitant about calling this album a political record.
He says: “The record is about England as well, very much so.
“I have a problem with it being a political record, because it’s not a Rage Against The Machine album. The reason it’s not a Rage Against The Machine record is that to write a political album that is strident in that way, you have to be incredibly sure of yourself. I feel like that is quite a youthful attribute.”
A few years ago Turner revealed he was getting close to “100 death threats and hate mail a day” over a two-week period. This was after he found himself at the centre of a storm over his politics when it was claimed he was right-wing although he responded by stating: “I’m a classical liberal.”
Today he says: “There has been this huge rise in tension and division and not talking to each other and I sit in the middle of it in a way. I am really unclear about what is happening and what should happen. I’ve got no f****** idea, and indeed to quote myself, ‘Stop f****** asking musicians for their opinion on it’.
“But I’m now more careful with how I phrase what I say. I’ve got better as I’ve got older. If you want to be understood clearly you have to speak clearly.”
The first single from the new album is 1933 — a song which Turner calls his “rant” and is inspired by articles he saw, that suggested the alt-right was punk rock.
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He says: “One of the things that it’s about is the idea that any movement that promises national renewal needs to get asked some seriously hard questions very quickly.
“I like to think, as a society, we have inoculated ourselves against that kind of bulls***. Apparently not.
“There is an adolescent thing of wanting to be transgressive. The problem is if you establish a culture where things like racism and homophobia are genuinely off limits, which is great and how it should be, then if kids want to be transgressive they start exploring those ideas.
“I think that is where a lot of the alt-right comes from, but that makes me so angry.”
Be More Kind is a confident record by Turner. It was recorded as a live album and at impressive speed. It also sees Turner experimenting. Blackout includes a pulsating groove — “You could play it in a club” — and is inspired by the New York blackout riots of 1977.
“We cut the record in nine days and we did it solidly,” says Turner. “That was great and it was important to get out of my comfort zone, which, boy, did we. We were working with instruments I’d never used before — new techniques and approaches essentially.
“I feel really confident about this record. Every time I make a record there is only one criteria at the end of it and that is: Is this the best I could have done in this time and place? And the answer is yes.”
There have also been a few changes with Turner’s outlook on life, which he attributes to dealing with his mental health issues, and he’s recently worked closely with the charity CALM, Campaign Against Living Miserably.
He says: “I’ve spent so long walking away from issues and now I can talk about it more openly. My girlfriend and I had some bumpy moments in our relationship and I had some growing up to do to make it work.
“I went and had some cognitive behavioural therapy for various addiction issues and it was life-changing.
“That’s where my song Little Changes on the album comes from — it’s about the small decisions you make in life.
“Now I still drink but I’ve quit smoking and all that sort of business.” Turner says what he’s most proud of in his career is “the simple fact of me having survived this long”.
He laughs: “It actually wins quite a few arguments. It’s like, cool, I remember the people who were flavour of the month when I was on my second record and no one else does.
“I don’t mean to sound bitchy in saying that, but I am still doing this.
“This album has taken me out of my comfort zone — I’ve ploughed a certain furrow, somewhere between indie rock and punk rock and country and folk.
“I’ve never thought that I’m reinventing the wheel but nevertheless after six records in the same sort of vein, I thought it was time to bring in some other ideas.
“And I’m very pleased with the outcome.”
- The album Be More Kind Is out on May 4.