After releasing a stunning debut album and since being catapulted into the spotlight by the success of ‘Nancy Boy’, Placebo are the band of the moment. During their nation-wide tour with other Baggage favourites dEUS and A.C Acoustics Ben, Nathan and Drew spoke to Brian Molko (vocals, guitar and sex symbol) and Steve Hewitt (drums and aspiring sex symbol).

Placebo are different. Very different. They are undoubtedly a cut above yer average indie band. First there’s Brian Molko. An androgynous sex symbol with a voice as un-gender specific as his image. Then there are the songs. Tales of the disenfranchised, the loners and the outsiders. But this is no Bush whingy grunge by numbers. These are songs with bite. Replacing self pity with aggression and determination. No apologies. Then there is the band. Three resolutely good friends who celebrate their differences but hang on to their to their unity. And now they are stars.

Not surprisingly, it has been Brian who has received most of the attention. The fact that there are numerous teenage girls outside the door when we go in to do the interview at five o’clock a good few hours before the doors are due to open is indicative of how this man has come to the attention of the hormonally active. However, he is at pains to point out how this band’s very much a band and not one individual and a couple of faceless others and the fact that since ‘Nancy Boy’ was released he has become a proper star isn’t going to change that. “People ask me more questions now and I guess the column inches have doubled or something [since ‘Nancy Boy’] but the time I have had to myself has halved. I’d rather think about the profile of the band than dwell on the whole issue of whether I am a rock star or a pop star. It’s not necessary and it can get in the way as well.”

With the six foot Swede Stefan on bass the other two will never be inconspicuous but the current Placebo line up is not the one that recorded the album. Drummer Steve Hewitt has replaced Robert Schultzburg for personal rather than musical differences and now Placebo are very much a gang. “Personally for me when you spend two years in a band with somebody who hates your guts it’s really kind of important to feel that you are in a band with people that you are liked by. You know? Otherwise you just wonder what the fuck you’re doing it for. I mean you might as well just work in a bank and hate your boss and the people that you live with. Take the tube home, fuck your wife for two minutes and fall asleep in front of the telly if it’s going to be that situation, you know?”

Since Nirvana the conception of stardom has been radically altered and the process of making popular music has been given a distinct double edge. With the alternative/ pop distinction being slowly dissolved, the two aesthetics have merged creating a vortex of confused principles and standards. So now you don’t choose between being a star and being a musician, being authentic or plastic, kitsch or progressive. No, now, if you’re unlucky, you can fall in the gap. This leads to stars such as Kurt Cobain, Tricky, the Manics and maybe now Placebo trying to combine the iconic, superficial concept of ‘stardom’ with some aesthetic ideal about doing something new and making music that is, in some ways progressive. It is the narcissistic pleasure of having your image on a thousand teenage bedroom walls combined with the guilt of having ‘sold out’. With Placebo this may just be starting to hit. Brian’s image could soon become a burden as the band try to stretch their wings and make the best music that they can imagine. We criticise the middle-aged ‘George Michael’s’ for their outdated ideas about ‘classic’ albums and we can celebrate the superficiality and the buzz of pop but when you want to make music that, in Brian’s words, ‘gets you off’, makes you excited, makes you want to scream from huge buildings how fucking great it is, then you get into the muddy middle ground where maybe all the best music is made and the most fascinating people are to be found, but where most souls are lost.

"We were tight but it falls apart as silver turns to blue waxing with the candlelight and burning just for you allocate your sentiment and stick it in a box I've never been an extrovert but I'm still breathing."

Maybe, this is why so many rock bands are content to plough their retro, unadventurous furrow. Why bother getting into all this business if you can pretend you’re just a normal bloke copying the Beatles. Well, maybe Placebo want something more. “It comes from us getting bored really quickly”, says Brian, “and from an inherent desire not to write the same song twice. We get bored of music real quick which forces us to be prolific in one sense but then it also forces us to explore different musical vistas, if you will. From day one we promised ourselves that we would never limit ourselves to just a guitar, bass and drums context. As musicians we wouldn’t limit ourselves to one instrument either so it’s just a desire to experiment constantly and a desire to not pin yourself down and ... yeah, not be a boring rock band. Hopefully, the fusion of three different approaches to music and three different musical backgrounds and tastes and personalities brings a real kind of musical freshness. It’s like a fruit, it’s got to be fresh or it starts to rot. You know?”

The thing is, rock seems to be disappearing up its own bottom. The days when rock music was there for the hedonistic rush are over and now dance music sits on top of that particular pile. It is also claimed to be the future of music and it’s use of the most up to date technology that fuels the belief that dance music, especially drum and bass, is the antidote to the retro-bug. Placebo are aware of this and Brian recently spoke about how much he admires and listens to dance music. However, is it a contradiction to be playing rock music whilst saying the best music you listen to is dance?

“Not really”, Brian argues, “we’ve been writing stuff recently and we’ve just turned round and said, ‘fucking hell, just wait for the techno remix of this one ..’”

Steve adds; “You can hear it instantly. It feels like a complete natural progression for songs these days. Rock’s already done it anyway. It’s been doing it for years. Rock’s sort of capitalised on the dance/ techno thing. It’s nothing new.”

“We’re just naturally influenced by it because we listen to it a lot and we get off on it. So, certain structures and certain approaches, like repetition for example, are going to organically manifest themselves in what we do.”

"I'm a fool whose tool is small It's so miniscule it's no tool at all Hang on, hang on to your I.Q. to your I.D."

However, the most convincing thing about Placebo is their new material. In their live set they already have a number of new songs and they seemed to have grasped what is so great about rock music and what keeps it ticking along. It is the dramatic possibilities of music which can move from headbreakingly hard to crying into your pint in the space of one song. Placebo are already changing and it’s sounding good.

“I think that if we can hit them over the head with something that is completely fierce and then break their hearts with something that’s so heartbreakingly tender than you are stretching it a bit. And you are stretching what a rock band is supposed to be and is supposed to do. I think it is wrong to think that your audience is too stupid to deal with it, is too dumb to understand. The argument about giving people what they want is a kind of condescending and patronising one because you’ve decided in your kind of artistic jail cell what people want and what they don’t want. People deserve to be stimulated, basically.”

"Airs and social graces elocution so divine I'll stick to my needle and my favourite waste of time both spineless and sublime."

Whether Brian can keep his ideals whilst being subjected to the conflicts being famous entails will be interesting to see. From the force and aggression of their debut album and his intelligent stance on what he’s doing, I have the sneaking suspicion that he will. With the possibility of acting (remember he is trained as an actor so that shouldn’t be as worrying as it sounds) and his determination to develop his and the band’s music fully, it looks like he’s plumped for the ‘artists’ side of the great divide. However, when it comes down to it, he knows that to look at it and to plan too much is going to kill all the energy and excitement they have. “I just get to the point where I don’t want to analyse it too much and just get on with it. Even to analyse it on this kind of level isn’t that great because you wish you would be able to just continue what you’ve always done which is just to write music that will get you off and then it will get somebody else off because it really does get you off, you know, really make you wet.”

I couldn’t have put it better myself.

Placebo were talking to Ben, in March 1997.