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Fire Fly |
| Interview with: Mark Broomhead (bass) Date: January 11th 2000 Where: An E-mail interview. Date refers to date first E-mail answer. Other Bandmembers: Simon Bibby (vocals & guitar), Adam Gallagher (drums), Scott James (keyboards & programming) Band's Geographical Home: Derbyshire, United Kingdom Discography: Swings And Roundabouts (1999) Official Website: Fire Fly Contact Address: fire.fly@cwcom.net Interview by: mpo
From left to right: Adam, Scott, Mark & Simon
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| Here's an introductional interview with Mark Broomhead about his
new band Fire Fly. Some might know him from the days he played in bands like
Detritus and Seventh Angel. However, Fire Fly is a new band with a new sound. As I like
their first CD I thought it a good idea to do this interview to introduce you to this cool
band from Great Britain. Mark, some might know that you were once part of thrashmetal band Detritus as well as Seventh Angel. Fire Fly is a whole new band with former Seventh Angel member Simon Bibby and two others. Obviously, this band is totally different compared to your old bands. Can you give us an introduction to Fire Fly? I loved being part of Detritus and Seventh Angel briefly, I am proud of those times and think the music has stood the test of time. After Simon left Seventh Angel he began a solo project called Amaranth. This was a doom metal project which I believe pushed doom beyond it's boundaries. At this time I was going out with Simons sister (now my wife) and was spending a lot of time at his house and he asked if I would like to play some bass with him and I jumped at the opportunity. Simons girlfriend at the time (now his wife) had a best friend (Scott) who played keyboards and although he had commitments with another band was happy to help us out. Something clicked between the three of us and we produced a demo containing one 20 minute song using a drum machine and a four track. Anyone familiar with Seventh Angel & Detritus will know we always liked variety and to push things as far as we could, but we always felt as metal bands we were unable to take things too far as metal fans are traditionally conservative in their tastes. The mix of the three of us worked so well we decided to for a band from scratch rather than following Simons project which would have inhibited the rest of us. This offered us a blank canvas to play what ever we wanted, and to be honest we did not know what to do for a while. We asked the worship drummer at our church to play with us and initially called the band Love Lies Bleeding. We made one demo which gave us the opportunity to work as a live band which was something we had not done for a long time. This was a useful period and we began to form our sound. As we became more serious our drummer left as he had too many other commitments. Adam joined and added his own ingredients to what we are and here we are. So, basically it's the girlfriends that brought the three of you together! Indirectly I suppose. Well, at a time you decided to call the band Fire Fly. On the website I read that there's no big idea behind that name but that you took it out of a dictionary. It's maybe a stupid question but is that the same dictionary as you got the Detritus name from, the Ultimate Alphabetical Picture Book? No just a normal dictionary. Simon does strange things like that. Once he read the whole dictionary and wrote down all the words he liked! The other members of Fire Fly are keyboardist Scott James and drummer Adam Gallagher. What is their musical background? Scott is a classically trained pianist. He had mostly done worship music and eighties
style rock before he met us. I think he found it quite difficult to begin with. He would
come up with stuff and we would say "no it sounds too happy!" But musically he
is a genius, you hum it he'll play it! Adam comes from a different planet. He also is a
bit of a genius but we don't like to tell him. He comes from a funky trip hop kind of
background, which is very different to ours. The stuff he comes up with is amazing, but
quite often he has to tone it down so it does not interfere with the songs feel too much. Well we all as individuals have varied tastes. The two bands that had the most influence on me as I was growing up as a musician were early Marillion and early Metallica. I think that is very evident in Detritus and still shows through in Fire Fly. Overall influences through the band are huge, stuff like Massive Attack , The Verve, The God Machine, Faith No More, Radiohead, Smashing Pumpkins, Delirious?, Hawkwind, John Michael Talbot, Rez, Madonna, Soundgarden, Propellerheads, Chemical Brothers, Jethro Tull, Kemper Crabb, Pink Floyd, I could go on....and on..... How then do you write your music as a band? Simon or I will generally turn up with an unfinished skeleton of a song, as soon as it enters the band arena it no longer belongs to one individual and we rip it apart repeatedly until there remains something that is personal to us all. You all have different backgrounds and many influences so how then do they melt together to keep all of you happy? Well, we all like to experiment and challenge ourselves so it just seems to flow
naturally.
It's not really. We got some stuff together for all the cutaway shots but never got round to doing all that lip syncing stuff. Oh? I read that on the Fire Fly website. How often do you update
that site then? There's even more coming up as you guys are working on new material for a full-length album. How is the new material compared to the EP? Some heavier some groovier some darker some lighter some gentler some Last question, as far as I know your old band Detritus splitted because the members where geographically departed as there were different developments in each lives. Are you still in touch with them and are they doing something with music? I haven't heard much from Earl or Andy Bright. Andy Neal is now lecturing in graphic design but I do not think he is doing any music on a commercial scale.
Mark when he played with Detritus |
