Frank Turner interview
HUCK talks to the folk punk 'practical anarchist' about his starring role in a new documentary by Relentless Energy.
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Next month, political folk punk troubadour Frank Turner will play his thousandth solo show since splitting with his old band Million Dead in 2005.
He recently teamed up with Relentless Energy to star in a short film, The Road, documenting his life as an ever-travelling musician as part of this year's Short Stories competition. Directed by James Henry, the five minute long film is a grainy black and white insight into Frank’s life on the move.
HUCK sat down with the self-proclaimed 'practical anarchist' Frank about the aim of the film, politics and how his punk rock ideals hold up.
HUCK: You were very honest about life as a touring musician. Are you comfortable with putting your life under scrutiny?
Frank Turner: There’s definitely a private sphere in my brain that I don’t talk about and I’m quite clear on what that constitutes. That’s mainly involved to how things relate to other people, so it’s not really fair to talk about parts of my life that involve other people. But beyond that I guess that’s what I do in my music, it’s that rawness that I look for. There are ways in presenting that which don’t actually reflect every single factual information about my life, that’s the knack really. But beyond that, I don’t really have a problem with it.
Did you hesitate when you were first asked to star in short-film competition run by Relentless?
Not really. The first time we met, we watched some of the entries from last year and the standard was a lot higher than what I thought it would be. James seemed very focused: he knew what he wanted to do. The whole thing of it being for an energy drink or anything like that; it seemed to me that it wasn’t like it was going to be cheesy shots of me taking swigs of the drink between lines or anything as brash as that. And beyond that, it doesn’t bother me in the slightest really.
How comfortable are you having your name next to Relentless Energy?
It’s fine. To be honest with you, I’m more comfortable with having that than having something that was state funded. As of my personally ideology, I’m much more comfortable with private companies than I am with something that basically backs up its funding with the threat of imprisonment. So I’d rather do this than something at the BBC.
In the film you say that you’re punk rock and you’ve come from DIY background. Do you think some people might question their enthusiasm for you when they see your face next to the Relentless brand?
They might do. I can measure out in one hand exactly how much I give a shit. It’s their problem, not mine really. Delving into political philosophy here, but I get very frustrated with people who publically have issues with private companies and then have no problem at all with the state funding stuff. The bottom line is the British Film Council [sic] gets its money out of threat of violence towards citizens, which is why it’s infinitely worse than money that comes from some fizzy drink. At the end of the day, I don’t actually give a shit, but if you made me choose between those two methods I think that state funding is much more of a greater evil on society. Those are my politics, I call myself a practical anarchist. And I think that anything that’s backed up by that implicit threat of violence, which is how we define taxation and state-funded activity, I think is a bad thing. I’ve got no problem with using taxes to pay for essential things like defence or the basics of a healthcare system. But whether or not we’re threatened with the removal of our liberty to pay for someone to make a film, I personally struggle with. At the end of the day, if there was any point in this process whereby the fact that it was sponsored by Relentless was going to make me or James do anything different creatively speaking, I think that both of us would have pressed the eject button. I think they’ve been very good in the sense that they’ve basically provided money and opportunity for a creative project. I would say it’s quite admirable.
Because it’s an ‘industry’ situation, your fans might see your face next to the brand and put two and two together...?
This is the wonderful thing about freedom: they could not buy my records or not buy Relentless or whatever. They can do what they want to do, that’s their problem not mine. As opposed to the contrast that if the British Film Council [sic] makes a film that I think is shit, unfortunately I don’t have the option of not paying for it because if I don’t pay my taxes, I go to prison.
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Frank Turner interview (text) by Giles Bidder is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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