Cincinnati's Afghan Whigs are one of America's most consistently brilliant bands. March saw them touring to promote their long-awaited fourth album,'Black Love', and Tim & Sophie spoke to bassist John (far left) before their Birmingham date.

After the success of 'Gentlemen', did you feel a lot of pressure following it up?
I don't think any more pressure than you would usually feel, actually probably less pressure than 'Gentlemen', because that was our first record for Mute. We'd moved from Sub Pop onto a major and I personally felt a lot of pressure then, but this one was pretty easy and pretty fun.

So why did it take so long to bring out, then?
Well, it's funny, because it only took about six weeks to record and mix, but after 'Gentlemen' came out, we toured for about a year, basically. And then we took a couple of months off, and when we got back together, that's when Steve [Earle, ex-drummer] quit, so we had to spend a couple of months finding a new drummer before we could really start writing songs and working songs out. And by that time, it was August '95 already.

So what brought about Steve's departure from the band?
Mostly Steve. It was a personal thing, and a musical thing. We didn't really see eye to eye in a lot of ways any more, and it was getting kinda hard to spend so much time together. So, without slagging the guy, that's pretty much it. I don't feel mean right now, so no colourful quotes. [Greg Dulli (vox/guitar) is not quite as reticent. When a heckler later enquires "Where's Steve?", Dulli replies, "Probably drunk," before dedicating 'Crime Scene Part One', a song about a suicide, to his erstwhile drummer]

'Black Love' is a very dark and revengeful album, both musically and in the artwork. Why is that?
Well, I think the artwork goes along with the songs. There's a book, called 'Hollywood Babylon' by Kenneth Anger, and the artwork, the whole look and feel, was sort of inspired by that. But as far as the lyrics go, I think a lot of them came from the kind of winter we had, where besides losing our drummer, a lot of other stuff happened personally too, for everybody, that was kind of hard to get through.

So how much of the stuff on the album is directly autobiographical, and how much is exaggerated?
I think it's all a little bit of both. Obviously it's not all autobiographical. I think what you do is take things that maybe you're curious about, or thinking about, then in your mind take it to an extreme and write it down.

You've covered songs by Diana Ross and Barry White. How do you think the soul element manifests itself in your music? It isn't a direct link...
No, it's not. I wonder if we hadn't even told anybody that we were into that stuff, if anybody would've guessed. I reckon some people would have, but...I don't know. It just sort of manifests itself in taking the feelings that you feel when you listen to those soul records and produce those same feelings by doing what we do. Because obviously we can't play soul like the Motown house band or any of those guys who recorded for those labels, but to be influenced by it, you take what you like, it might be something obscure or it might be a direct rip-off.

Did you have a reason for doing a TLC cover ('Creep' on the B-side of 'Honky's Ladder')?
Just because we liked the song, and that album. A lot of people seem to think that's kinda strange, like we were making fun of it or something, but that's not the case. We really do like it.

The first line of 'Honky's Ladder', "Got you where I want you motherfucker", pretty much excluded it from getting airplay. Did that not worry you?
No, I think that was why we picked it. We were gonna go ahead and mark our territory by pissing all over it right from the start. We made a radio edit of it, to please the radio people and actually, some of the radio stations played the unedited version. The radio station in our home town, which is known for being really conservative, they played that version. I don't know how they get away with it, but they do.

Do you think you're picking up any new fans on this tour?
I think maybe right now it's probably people who've heard about us before, maybe a few people are here to hear us play the single, but we've been playing it second and nobody's leaving, so I think it's mainly old fans. The album's only been out a couple of weeks.

You're touring with Throneberry, and you and Greg worked with them on their album. What affinity do you feel with them?
Greg lived with Jason [Throneberry vox/guitar] for a while, and I lived with Jason and Paul, the bass player, and had a studio in our house. We've just known them for a long time. Jason and Paul used to play in a band who we used to go see quite a lot. We wanted to tour with them and we figured now was a good time.

You were on Sub Pop when grunge was in its heyday and The Afghan Whigs never seemed to fit in with all the plaid-clad bands signed to the label...
I think maybe the guys at Sub Pop realised that if they wanted to stay around, they needed to do more than just make the same records over and over. Not that they were the same, but they all had that similar sound...When they signed us, the grunge thing was pretty much over with in Seattle and I think they were trying to diversify a little bit. I think we kinda fitted in, but kinda didn't, so it was a good way for them to move and now they've got a lot of different-sounding bands on the label.

What are your plans after this tour?
An American tour, that'll last until the end of June, then we'll come back to Europe to do festivals during the summer, then either back to the States for more touring, or we'll tour Japan and that part of the world. So, it's gonna be a long year.

The Afghan Whigs were talking to Tim and Sophie, in May 1996.

There's an Afghan Whigs home page, kept by Meredith Borakove, at http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~borakove/whigs/.