Interview
Stage Times: Turin Brakes
From Brixton and V Festival to empty boats and a psych ward – Turin Brakes remember the best and worst of their gig history
When Turin Brakes emerged in 2001, they landed at just the right moment for maximum impact. The previous decade had been dominated by artists that occupied a very different space. It had been the era of outsized agitp(r)op and rock stars, larger-than-life, colourful characters that felt like the work of a booze-fuelled session at a Hollywood studio’s Writers’ Room. The music, too, had been all grungy distortion, block rockin’ beats and in-your-face, anthemic indie.
As the new century settled into its rhythm, however, alt-rock’s angst and Britpop’s arch social commentary was being washed away by the homely, everyman personae of Coldplay and Travis et al – artists whose acoustic-centred soul-bearing brought an intimacy into mainstream music culture. This was an arm around the shoulder, not a middle finger waggled in your face. Into this slipstream, acoustic duo Turin Brakes sweetly sailed, perfectly poised and perfectly timed.
Olly Knight and Gale Paridjanian’s paths first crossed when their age counted in single digits: “I think we were about eight and at primary school together,” the band’s lead guitarist and co-songwriter, Gale Paridjanian, tells us.
In 2001 Turin Brakes’ debut album, The Optimist LP, was released to critical and commercial acclaim. The album broke the UK Top 30 and secured a Mercury Prize nomination, while 2003’s follow-up, Ether Song, went even further, reaching No. 4 in the UK Album Charts and boasting the Top Five hit single, ‘Pain Killer (Summer Rain)’.
Chart success may have since gently receded like a landscape in the rearview mirror (although, who cares about the charts in the Spotify era, anyway?), but their following has remained fiercely loyal. Close inspection makes it no mystery as to why. The group’s songwriting has remained remarkably high of calibre; their catalogue littered with gems.
That remains true with the release of the 2025’s Spacehopper. The richly melodic 11-song set saw the band return to the recording studios The Kinks founded in 1973, Konk Studios, for the first time since their debut. Paridjanian calls the experience a “full circle” moment. “It was really nice being back there for our tenth record,” he explains. “Konk feels like our birthplace, our original nest.”
With thoughts harking back, it seems like a good time to delve into Turin Brakes’ gig memories. This has Paridjanian thinking: “It feels like a great victory and a real achievement to have 25-year-old ‘children’,” he says of the band’s oldest songs. “I guess that [longevity] means we’ve got a pretty good connection with our fan base. They understand us, and that’s a compliment. It says we’re doing something right…”
The gig that made us want to make music
When we were eight years old, Olly and I went to see Chuck Berry at Hammersmith Odeon. Chuck was having a bit of a revival at the time. Back To The Future had come out, as had the film Keith Richards made about and with him called Hail! Hail! Rock n’ Roll. Olly’s dad had been playing his music to us in the back of his car explaining why he was so brilliant for ages. We were diehard Chuck Berry fans by the time both our dads took us to see him at Hammersmith! And seeing him blew our minds. He was amazing. He was a bit younger then and had a lot of fire on his belly. Afterwards, we got guitars and little suits with these little pencil ties and everything. We were well into it!
What was it that appealed to you about him?
His songwriting, his lyrics, everything. The 12-bar blues is not known for its lyrics, as it’s pretty repetitive, but his songs told these incredible stories. And then there were those cool guitar licks. Something about his [guitar] playing felt very genuine, original and authentic.
The First
Our very first gig as Turin Brakes happened somewhere between 1998 and 1999 at a place called The Freebutt in Brighton. It was a pub that had a little stage – the kind of venue that you don’t really see anymore. But was very much a part of the circuit for smaller bands. It has since closed down.
Our manager at the time, Phil Becerra, would get us down to Brighton quite a bit back then because that’s where he lived. He was keen for us to get a bit of experience. The pub wasn’t really full, but Phil had got maybe 20 of his friends down, including our future bassist Eddie [Myer]. It was a kind of a gentle introduction to live life for us. Recording at home had been our space. We weren’t about doing gigs, but we’d already made pretty good demos.
Looking back, I imagine Olly was probably pretty good and impressive, and I was probably a little bit shit! But I don’t have any bad memories about that gig. We did our thing, and people seemed to like it. I remember playing songs that ended up on our debut, The Optimist LP. ‘Future Boy’ definitely featured. We probably played ‘Underdog’ and ‘Slack’ too.
The Best
It should have been when we did two nights at Brixton Academy in 2003. That was our homecoming – the venue we went to as teenagers to watch bands. But we felt a bit too much pressure. It’s a fairly big venue and there’s a big space between the end of the stage and the audience. The crowd were probably 20-foot away from us, we were behind a load of monitors, and it was all a bit quiet where we were. It didn’t really feel like we were kind of in amongst them.
During the same period, though, we did a show at V Festival in the Acoustic tent. It was just Olly and I, but the crowd went absolutely mad. They screamed so loudly that our ears were doing that splitting thing where you start to feel dizzy and we could barely play a song because they were screaming their appreciation so much. There was a similar show at the end of our acoustic tour this year in Tenby in Pembrokeshire. Even though it was only an acoustic gig, everyone got out of their seats, started dancing and losing their shit – they all seemed to go a bit feral!
The Worst
I don’t want to sound like I’m being down on the people that welcomed us there, but it was last year in this old southern Italian town called Taranto. It used to be part of the Spartan Empire and it’s about an hour’s drive from Bari. They were hosting a festival and had obviously been given a bit of cultural funding to support it.
Taranto itself is a crazy place; one of extremes. There’s this really ancient bit in the middle with really old buildings and that’s where all the really poor people live. Most of the stuff’s boarded up and it’s full of kids on BMXs. Everywhere we walked, people stared, looking at us funny. Right next to this old part, they’ve built this brand-new town.
Anyway, this gig was at the end of a little run [of shows] that we’d played. It was a bit of a stretch getting there. We’d travelled all day, and we’d not even had half an hour to gather our thoughts. And it was just one of those gigs where nothing worked. There had been a jazz night the night before us, and I think they thought we were going to be an acoustic duo. The sound people did their best, but they didn’t really understand who we were and why we were half-rocking and half doing acoustic stuff. Also, not that many people turned up, and the ones that did attend didn’t know the songs, which is obviously fine, but they seemed to be expecting something else entirely.
Eventually they got into it, but they weren’t exactly gushing [laughs]! Eddie [Turin Brakes’ bassist] went, ‘let’s just go for it!’ For a crescendo, he walked through this deathly silent crowd rocking out. When he tried to get back on the stage, he slipped over the monitor, and even that didn’t seem to really translate. They were just like, ‘Okay, thank you very much’ [mimics polite applause]. That wasn’t a highlight of the year… It wouldn’t be the one I’d want the movie made about, let’s put it that way!
The Biggest
Photo by Tabatha Fireman/Redferns
In 2005 we went back to V Festival. We were outdoors this time and the crowd was huge. They seemed to go on and on, around every corner and everywhere. We weren’t really expecting it because it wasn’t the main stage, and yet the place was absolutely packed. Visually, that was definitely a moment where we felt we could measure our success at that time.
The smallest
The very first tour we did as Turin Brakes was called the No Division tour. It was put together by Damian Lazarus, the manager of an indie band called Lisp, as a vehicle to promote his band.
The tour also included the DJ Max Tundra, some other DJ, and the English hip hop duo, Rodney P & Skitz. We all took it in turns to do 15–30-minute sets.
By the fourth show of the tour, which was at the Thekla in Bristol, it had become really obvious that people just weren’t biting. No one was coming to any of these shows. I remember looking out at the Thekla and there were two people there. Damian said, ‘I think we’re gonna have to give them a refund’. Rodney P & Skitz were like, ‘We played to a sold-out Scala at the weekend. Forget this’. And they left the tour there and then without playing. Olly and I played anyway thinking it was good practise. That was probably the lowest number we’ve ever done, where two people had to be refunded to say sorry.
Incidentally, the next time I saw Damian Lazarus it was about 20 years later. I was at some gig in Hoxton, and he was wearing this big blue puffer jacket. People kept coming up to him to get his autograph, so I Googled him, and I learned that he had ditched being the manager of Lisp and started doing mixes for people. He’d got on the EDM wave in America and it all just kicked off. He had become this world-famous house DJ.
The weirdest
The weirdest was probably also from that No Division tour. We played a psychiatric hospital somewhere near Manchester. If you picture an empty gym hall with those long benches you had in primary school for assembly, there was a collection of different people with different mental issues sitting on those, some of whom were quite dangerous. A couple of security guys hung around just in case it kicked off. And in front of this crowd played this bizarre collection of artists: a slightly shit indie band, a kind of underrated left field DJ doing something without electricity on a xylophone or something, and then Olly and I playing songs on acoustic guitars. While we played, I recall an angry guy at the front, who obviously played a bit of guitar himself, shouting: ‘I play guitar as well. You lot are shit’. That was probably the weirdest gig.
