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INTERVIEW: Elbow's Mark Potter on taking Build A Rocket Boys! on the road
Behind the scenes at arena tour rehearsals
Total Guitar magazine, Tue 26 Apr 2011, 2:29 pm BST
We obviously did things right last time because this is TG's second visit to Elbow's space within Blueprint Studios. We previously made the pilgrimage up the M6 in November 2010 as the band were tying up work on their then-untitled fifth album.
It's now early February, Build A Rocket Boys! is in the bag and we're back in Salford, ready to witness how the band prepare for their largest headline tour yet: an 11-date procession through the UK's biggest indoor venues culminating in two nights at London's O2 Arena at the end of March.
The riff emanating from the Victorian warehouse that houses the studio is from the band's latest single, Neat Little Rows. It's a powerful pentatonic lick, barely muffled by the building's red brick walls. Elbow are in 'The Big Room'. They're taking a break, but amiable and quick to introduce themselves.
"We're gonna make the arenas feel as intimate as we can."
"Just try not to make me look fat," frontman Guy Garvey laughs as TG checks it's okay to photograph their rehearsals. This room has changed a lot since our last visit. The grand piano that took pride of place during recording is covered, a whole stage has been erected and guitarist Mark Potter's reduced – but still extensive – touring setup occupies a large corner of it.
The sides of the space are littered with piles of music stands, bottles of water and giant spools of cables. A large selection of hardcases, stencilled with 'ELBOW', are dotted around and four or five green leather Chesterfield-style chairs now live in one corner. A ping pong ball rests on top of one of them. For all TG knows, there's an accompanying table buried somewhere in here, too.
The Big Room is the musician's shed mark II, a cornucopia of vintage gear, music-related oddities and whatever else the band have stored here in the six years they've had the space. And we're ready to see it in action.
Onstage, Elbow work together with the kind of efficiency, humour and co-operation that can only be achieved through a 20-year friendship. "If everyone remembers the gaps in this song, I'll give you a tenner each," says Garvey, before TG is privy to a debate over which chord to end the set on.
The album's finished now, but that doesn't stop them from tweaking the songs for the road. As they work their way through set closer, The Birds, it's Mark's bluesy slide riff (played on a National Resolectric) that resonates across the room, in contrast to the recording.
"I'm proud of that riff," Mark tells TG later in the day. "It's kind of buried [on the recording]. Initially, it was right up in the mix, but because it's so repetitive it had to sit in the backing track a little bit. The temptation would have been to say to my brother [Craig Potter, keyboards/ producer], 'Go on, push the guitar up!' OK, I might've said that a couple of times!"
