Interview: Frank Turner

“I’ve had people ask me if I’m gonna play ‘Thatcher Fucked the Kids’ and I can’t think of anything more crass.” The singer/songwriter is referring to an old song he penned at the beginning of his solo career in 2005. This interview just so happens to coincide with the former Prime Minister’s funeral, but you won’t catch Turner drunkenly singing ‘Tramp the Dirt Down’ in the streets:  “I’m not a fan of Thatcher or her politics and I’m not saying we should gloss over anything she did… but the only people I can think of that celebrate people’s funerals like that are the Westboro Baptist Church. But at the same, I believe very, very, very strongly in free speech, so if that’s what people wanna do they have the right to do that and I wouldn’t stop them from doing it.”

People seemed to have cooled towards Turner ever since it was “revealed” his politics might not jive with the way people wished. “There are lots of people who hate my guts because I don’t want to be that protest singer person, to which I can only go ‘sorry, it’s just not what I wanna do with my life’.” To this end, the singer has long stopped playing his ode to Thatcher: “a lot of people started coming to my shows who  were just there because I’d essentially  repeated their own opinions back to them in one song and that’s the only thing they gave a fuck about – and I found that very, very frustrating.” Though Turner might’ve toned down his own politics in song, he’s nothing if not populist: “What I’d ideally like is for someone, somewhere to take it and claim it as their own, start playing it yourself, play it at your own gigs, claim you wrote it or whatever, add another verse, whatever.”

Community spirit is certainly a large part of Turner’s music. After shows in America, Europe, China and Vietnam, which he describes succinctly as”‘mad”, Turner and his band, The Sleeping Souls, are back in the UK for the first time since January, and they’ve brought along a little commemoration of sorts: a flag that Turner hopes will be passed from show to show. “I’m just gonna sound like a total hippie throughout this interview” he says, “but I just like the idea that it might just get a whole bunch of people who don’t know each other hanging out and talking and making friends and whatever.” Where does he hope the flag will land? “That I’m not entirely sure,” he says with a grin, “some of the drives are pretty long on the European run, we’ll see how people do.”

The spirit of togetherness conjured up by his music is such that wedding bells are soon to be heard in an unlikely place. “I’ve got a thing in June, basically there’s two people who met at one of my shows, who’re getting married in Pittsburgh and a law in the state of Pennsylvania states you don’t have to get married in a church. They’re coming down to the gig venue and they’re getting married with me as the witness, which I think is pretty hilarious.”

Of his new album, Turner says that although there is no set theme, it’s “kind of a break-up record”. He continues: “I write chronologically and autobiographically, so themes emerge, though not every song’s about it. Some of my favourite records are break up records: Counting Crows, ‘Heartbreaker’ by Ryan Adams, ‘The Midnight Organ Fight’ by Frightened Rabbit – I love a good break-up record, crack out the gin, lock the door and cry at your kitchen table on your own.” After coining many a song about loss, it’s a sentiment surely a lot of his fans share.

Elsewhere, talk turns to the resurgence of bands reuniting. Surely fans are clamouring for a reunion of Turner’s former band Million Dead?  “Yeah, people have asked, I’ll take it as a compliment. I’m proud of everything we ever did with that band – I’m fiercely fucking proud of it actually”. But he’s quick to shoot down the idea of him singing those songs again: “it doesn’t really interest me”. In terms of other bands reuniting, Turner’s all for it. “If anybody started to try and lecture me on what I was allowed to do with my music, I would tell them to get fucked”, he states with fiery insistence. “I don’t think that anyone has the right to tell Black Flag or whoever that they’re not allowed to get back together again – bollocks, they’re allowed to do whatever they want ’cause it’s their band, and their music, and they’re the ones that put the hours in.”

Back to his own political decisions, surely the signing to major label Interscope rankled a few dyed in the wool punk rockers? “A couple of people have been kind of annoyed about it and at the end of the day, it’s their right to have their opinion, so cool.” Though Turner might now keep company with ‘the suits’ he’s quick to dispel rumours of (yawn) selling out: “it doesn’t have any impact on my song writing, my organisation – I’m still involved with ticket prices and merch prices, my email address is on my fucking website. All of that stuff remains the same. I do want more people to hear my music and I want to make something of myself in the world but the character to me remains fundamentally the same.”