Spiritual Beggars

Interview done with Mike Amott, guitarist and songwriter.

How are you enjoying the tour so far?: It's been great, really smooth. We've been touring for just over four weeks now and it's worked out really well. I think it's quite a good bill, the two bands are quite different.
Has anything particularly interesting happened on the tour?: No not really, it's been actually one of the most boring tours I've ever done! There's not been and freaky things happen, like I said it's just been totally smooth. It's just been doing the business really: soundchecking, playing, eating, sleeping. Fu Manchu don't really party hard, they're in bed by midnight every night, we just hang out at the back of the bus and listen to music.
Where on the tour has been best?: For us I think I would say Germany because our albums have sold really well over there, and sone of the other teritories we've played have been not that great for us sales wise so it's hard to win crowds over. It's Fu Manchu's crowd and we play away and after about five songs people really get into it, but they didn't really know about is before the show. When we did Germany most people were down the front just getting into it straight away. We played London a couple of times and those two shows were really good as well, but Germany was the best.
I've heard that for your live show you've got two other members.: Well actually there's only one guy now. In Scandanavia we had two extra guys but on the whole tour we've had the keyboard player.
Is he likely to become a permenant member?: I hope so, if he wants to. He's got his own bands that he's involved in and he lives in a different part of Sweden from the rest of us but we hope that he will. I'd really like to get him involved with the next record
What band would you most like to support or be supported by?: We'll play with anybody. We're at that stage in our carreer where we're just starting out, we're not really famous, so we'll play with anybody. I'd never really heard Fu Manchu prior to this tour, but I knew they had a good reputation and a good album so it was good for us to support them. I think Spiritual Beggars is the kind of band that's heavy enough to support some quite heavy bands, but we have another side as well, we could play with the Black Crows or whatever! But you know what I mean, we've got quite a wide appeal
When you write music and lyrics for the band, what mental state are you usually in?: I usually write music when I'm bored. If I'm happy I don't really sit down and write stuff. I have a daughter at home as well, so I usually play guitar when she's in bed so I play during the night. The best stuff always comes out when you're a little bit depressed, like if I'm in a really good mood I'll do something else like call a friend, drink some beers.
[Scott] A lot of people describe your music as stoner rock, how would you describe it?: Kerrang! has been going on about this for ages, and it sounds a bit stupid. I dunno, I don;t really care what people call it, it's just basically heavy rock. We take a lot of interest from early 70s hard rock bands and stuff like that, but I think we down-tune and put on the pedals a little bit more. Both me and our basist / vocalist (Spice) have out backgrounds in thrash and death and stuff like that so we've got some of that attitude when we play I guess. When I actually first got into buying music and playing guitar in about 1983 it was Slayer, Metallica, Anthrax, Exodus then all that thrash stuff, so I guess I've got some of that in me still.
Where do you get the ideas for all your album covers?: The last album we did, released in '96 through Music For Nations, I ordered the cover for that, I got it done by a Swedish artist. He illustrated on children's books in the 70s, really weird stuff like fantasy, so I got him to do it. He's about 70 years old. Music For Nations hated it, they said it was the worst cover they'd ever had on a release so they got someone round this time to do the cover. We had different stuff sent to us. They probably wouldn't let is do our own cover even if we wanted to!
How are your first two albums different from Mantra III?: I think we've just got a bit better with each album, the new one is by far our best, it's got the best production and we had more time in the studio. I think the songwriting has improved quite a bit, trying to get a bit more melodic really, also we brought in the keyboard player. I think we're going to explore that side even more. Still, it's always going to be guitar based hard rock music(!) but I think there's a lot of stuff we could do with keyboards. If you've listened to the early Deep Purple stuff, it's really intense.
If you could choose any band in the world to never have existed, who would it be?: Nasty! (long delay) there's so many! If I wanna be politically correct, there's a part of me that kinda respects anybody that plays the guitar or whatever cos it's a hard instrument to play, in fact it's hard to play any instrument well. But at the same time there's bands that just seem fake, not any one band, [obviously thinking of names but not wanting to mention any!] I don't like bands that continue even though they're past their best. Do you think Maiden are past their best? (laughter) you don't obviously! (I was wearing a Virtual XI tshirt) No, I think that are, but they're still a good band. You just can't replace Bruce Dickinson with his air-raid siren. I don't think Blaze if that kind of vocalist at all. He can't carry melody, he doesn't sound as classy, and he doesn't have that traditional metal voice. I dunno what kind of voice he's got, it fitted Wolfsbane I guess. Buy you know, bands like Uriah Heep just keep on going, and they're just so shit now (at last a name!) but I do love their early stuff. The new Priest album I like though.
Do people still think of you as 'the guy from Carcass'?: Yeah, it doesn't bother me, I don't really care anymore. It did for a while cos when I quit Carcass if guess there was some fights and whatever, so I don't want to talk about Carcass now. It's part of my musical history now, I'm quite prowd of the two albums I recorded with them. They took me all over the world basically and that was a lot of fun. The best decision I made in my entire life was when they asked me to join and I said yes, and I stayed with them for 3.5 years. They took me from just doind demos basically in Sweden, well I made one album but it wasn't really going anywhere, then when I joined them everything changed. It was the next step up for me. I still actually make money from the album sales which is quite fantastic, people are still buying that shit! I'm really proud of those two albums, at the time I thought they were definitely at the top of that type of death metal. Some death metal bands just suck so bad! You have the good ones like Morbid Angel, I really loved them back then, Obituary.
What are the best and worst things about being in Spiritual Beggars?: The best thing is just playing. I formed this band as soon as I quit Carcass in late '93 early '94 so I've been doing this for 4 years. Nobody gave a shit for the first two records we put out, we didn't get any tours, promotion, interviews, anything. So we're doing it basically because we like it ourselves and it's the kind of music we enjoy listening to ourselves. That's one of the good things just playing the music because I enjoy it so much, and it's really different to playing death metal type stuff as well. I'm still a big fan of brutal death metal, but it's a completely different playing style.
Even thought touring is great, it's still the worst part cos I have to be away from my daughter, still I guess this is my job now so it's something I've got to do. It's not really a bad thing because it's only five weeks or so, it's not that much

Kevin