Interview with Pure Reason Revolution :: Wessex Scene Online

Interview with Pure Reason Revolution

2nd December 2005
Stephen Thompson

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Jun 06 - Interview with The Feeling
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Pure Reason Revolution are one of the most exiting new bands around. When they played The Joiners, The Edge felt it would be rude not to go chat to lead singer, Jon Courtney, about dreams, philosophy and females…

This is the second last date of quite a long tour. How has it been and are you verging on exhaustion?
I am a bit knackered. We had a headline tour planned out, but then we had to cancel some shows because we did a tour with Mew. When the schedule was put back together it was all higgledy piggledy. It feels like we have travelled half the country just to get down to here.

When you tour do you prefer to support a bigger band or to headline a smaller tour?
Its good to do support tours, because you can steal the headliners fans. But sometimes their fans don’t care about the support act. Doing a headline show is quite rewarding as everyone there has come to see you. You know they have all bought tickets to see your show. Both types of tours have their advantages.

The song, ‘The Bright Ambassadors of Morning’ is twelve minutes long. Do you think modern singles are too short?
We didn’t set up to start a revolution, but we are not worried about boundaries. A song takes as long as it takes. What happens is what happens. We have some short songs and some long, that’s the way it is. Someone tried to do a radio edit. For us as a band it would be weird to edit the song.

I read you are very interested in dreams and their meanings. What was the last dream you had?
The last dream I had I don’t know what was happening. There was loads of dogs. I don’t know where I was, but there were dogs everywhere, I think I might have been guiding them. It was weird. My family have always had dogs and a couple of our dogs that had died (rest in peace) were there also. I was reunited with my dogs. I guess the origin of the dream might be that I had been chatting to our sound engineer about dogs that day

Apparently the roots of the band stretch back to a friendship between you and Chloe. Was it ever more than just friends?
How did you find out about that? No, we were just friends from a long time ago. We have known each other since we were 15, so have been close for over a decade.

There are far more males in the music industry than females. What influence does having a girl in the band bring?
We are really into harmonies. The Beach Boys, Crosby Stills and Nash, as well as Fleetwood Mack hugely influence me. That was not the reason Chloe is in the band, we just wanted to make music together. male and female harmonies sit really nicely. We hope to achieve something like that. There aren’t many girls though. Some bands have girls just as a token bassist. With Chloe and me it is like a double act. I suppose that is what makes us different. There just aren’t that many female rock bands.

I understand you are quite into your philosophy. What was the last theory you came across, which made your jaw drop?
I was reading a bit of Freud’s Interpretation of dreams. He said that what ever you dream is like the beast within the man. It is all the things you don’t get to do in real life. Some of it is quite bitter and some of it is twisted. It really captured my imagination.

Have you got a favourite philosopher?
At the moment I am also reading Gerard de Nerval. He did his work around 1850 in France. He was a poet and a writer. He wrote Aurelia. He could not differentiate between his waking conscious and his dreams. The whole book is about his decent into madness. The day after he finished the book he hung himself. It is really visionary writing. He had an amazing imagination. He inspired a lot of surrealists. That is another thing we are really into.

When was the last time two band members fell out, and how was it resolved?
Today Jim and me had an argument because he broke a string on his violin last night. I asked what he was going to do when he was supposed to be playing it in the gig tonight. He said he would blag it and I said he couldn’t. Then he sorted it out and we made up. That was a mini argument. They happen all the time.