The Delgados: More Quotes from Alun Woodward
Original Interview Done by Zach Ralston

Now that you’ve hopefully read our article on Scotland’s The Delgados on page 42 of Under the Radar’s Issue 4, you can read on for more quotes. Below are some random quotes from our interview with The Delgados’ Alun Woodward, collected with subject headings. These quotes didn’t make into our print article on the band.

Alun Woodward …on Hollywood Boulevard
“ I love films. You go to this place where all these films are made. Because of where [The Knitting Factory] was situated, we kinda stepped off the bus and we had a hotel room, we’d go have a shower and there’s this amazing hotel [The Roosevelt] straight across the road and the tour manager was telling us all these kinda stories about the hotel and who had stayed there and when it was built and there’s a sense of that culture I’m brought up in, films and everything, I love old films and you see people’s names everywhere. I’ve found that it’s kind of an amazing thing it is, a real tourist thing as well. But I loved it, I really did. Though I’m not sure of some of the people’s names on the street, they don’t really seem… too many people that direct too many films and written too many records or something.”

… on The Knitting Factory
“ That was a strange one. It’s strange in the sense that so many of the venues that we had played seemed to… there was a sense of some kind of history with a lot of them, and the Knitting Factory in New York is the same, but the Knitting Factory in L.A. seems to have just fallen out of the sky. And it’s strange as well, the nonsmoking rules -- I don’t smoke myself -- but I know when people within the band who do smoke go to places that’s nonsmoking, you see the fear rising in them. How can they stand someplace for 15 minutes and not actually smoke?”


… on Soundtracks
“ With this record, all through it we’ve been very much into films, and a big part of us would love to be able to do a soundtrack and make it as interesting as possible. A lot of soundtracks you hear… I think there are a few categories. There are soundtracks that work really well and sound great and are really creative, and it’s almost like they’re not expecting it. And then there’s others that you kinda get the impression there’s somebody picking up a check at the end of the day. They’re just picking strings off the shelf and sticking them on wherever, and you really don’t need musicians to do it; you can do it by computer.”


… on judgmental lyrics
“ I suppose in Hate, lyrically, there are…’If This Is A Plan’ is a quite judgmental song in many ways but songs like ‘Child Killers’ and ‘The Drowning Years’ are not judgmental. ‘The Drowning Years’ is just telling a story. I don’t feel like I’m judging the person. To a certain extent I’m judging the people who judge them. In places, because of the subject matter, I tried not to judge too much.”


… on coffee in Britain
“ Most of the coffee in Britain is terrible. They have a lot of coffee chains. Mock Italian ones. In general, British people like tea. They don’t like coffee. They have a tiny wee bit of coffee at the bottom and fill it up with cream and chocolate.”

… on the cover art photograph for Hate
“ When I first saw it, the kid in the picture just looked endangered. His eyes are kinda blacked out. The slide is so disintegrated, you can only make out parts of it. Rather being held from the world. Being held against his will. By the same token, it’s probably a family going to church or a party, but it looked like the kid was in danger.”


… on his interest in astronaut photos
“ Someone had said it would be good if you had some kind of astronaut but not the traditional guy floating out in space. [Searching online], I misspelled astronaut. It took me to this site, and the guy at the site had misspelled astronaut as well, so I had a look through it. It was completely fortuitous. I thanked him for his bad spelling.”