The Ghost of a Thousand Interview: SXSW 2010

Appearing on the scene in 2007 with their debut album 'This is Where the Fight Begins,' The Ghost of a Thousand have breathed new life into British hardcore. Over the past few years, the band has garnered rave reviews, was named one of the Top 5 Metal Bands by Q Magazine, received a Kerrang! Award nomination and recently released their sophomore album. Now as the quintet from Brighton, England is about to visit the U.S. and perform at SXSW for the first time, Spinner speaks with frontman Tom Lacey to learn more about the band and what life is like on the road.

Describe your sound in your own words.

An evil rock and roll band. We were a bit more hardcore at the beginning, but now the sound is a little bit more nasty.

How did your band form?

We started in December 2004. I was working in a bar with our drummer Mem, and they had been looking for a singer. I wasn't really interested because I was in another band and he kept giving me demos and eventually I think he kind of ground me down a bit and I was just like, "You know what I think I'm going to come down and try out." Those guys had already met, Mem and Jag are brothers so they've been working on music since they were kids, and Andy they had met at college. We actually had a different bass player originally, but Garth is our bass player that helped us out about 2 years ago and we loved him so much we managed to convince him to come back full-time. Yeah, we had our first practice and then two weeks later we had a show.

How did you come up with your name?

We like to propagate as many rumors about what the name means as possible, the one we're enjoying at the moment is that it comes from a set of mythology from Indonesia. But we've never really given anyone the definitive answer about what it is about. I guess for some people it's kind of like an unstoppable army. We don't mind that too much -- that's a good version of what it means.

Will you ever give the real reason?

Maybe not, it's kind of funny from our perspective. It's weird because it's not a new thing to us, but people who are new to the band want to know what it's about. It's nice to have a little bit of mystery I think.

Who are your musical influences?

AC/DC. The Hives. A lot of Swedish bands, like Randy. A German band called The Beef Steaks. A really amazing band called The Young Widows who we are really keen on at the moment. Lots of stuff. We listen to a lot of stuff that isn't heavy, especially at the moment, because after touring for 5 years it'd be bad for your ears. It's nice to have a little break from it. We're still very excited by making heavy music, it's what we do.

Who would you love to perform or tour with?

It'd be very cool to tour with Night Marches. We've been really lucky actually, we've been out with a lot of bands that have ended up becoming really good friends or have been really inspiring. We enjoy touring with different size bands and in different kind of ways because it's fun to have a bit of variety.

When touring, do you prefer big venues or the smaller, more personal clubs?

When we tour we tend to do much smaller venues, I really like the small ones. It's a challenge doing the big ones, especially if you're a support band, but I like that because it's nice going out there feeling like you have something to prove. The small shows, we're lucky because we have got passionate fans that kind of go crazy and it's fun feeding off their energy. You kind of have to change the way you play slightly. When you're playing in front of a lot of people, the idea is to make them feel like their in a small crowd rather than in a large faceless crowd.

What's the craziest thing you've seen or experienced while on tour?

On the last tour the most ridiculous thing of all, our trailer came off on the highway. We were driving through Spain and the driver just kind of ran back and said, "The trailers gone, I can't see it." We got out of the bus and it wasn't anywhere so me and my tour manager had to run down the highway, in Spain, going the wrong way against the traffic. Every time we turned a corner we expected to see it exploded into a tree. We just felt so unhinged that this would happen to us. Even weirder, we got around a corner and it had just very gently rolled against the curb and there were like 6 police cars and they all looked seriously pissed off. We had to back the bus down the highway.

What's in your festival survival kit?

Apart from the obvious stuff like clean clothes and s--- like that, I need a pad and some pens. I get a bit sketchy after a day or two if I haven't been able to draw anything. I think it's an important thing to have, otherwise you just go mad.

What is your musical guilty pleasure?

Britney. A little bit of Britney at the right time can be a good thing. All of her early songs came from Swedish writers and I'm really into Swedish music.

If you weren't musicians, what would you be?

I probably would have been an architect, because I did architecture in university. Gaz would be working in health care and social care. Jag would definitely be working in a studio somewhere. Mem would probably be working the computer games industry, just because it is all he wants to do when we're on tour. Andy would just be on a yacht somewhere drinking port and smoking a pipe I think, he's kind of cut out for the easy life.

What is a question you'd like to hear in interviews?

We'd really like it if people asked about the studio, but people don't really don't care about the 20 snare drums. It would also be nice to be asked about the music scene in Europe rather then just the music scene in the UK, but we usually get asked really good questions.


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