Earlier this year, Glasgow-based indie legends Franz Ferdinand celebrated their twentieth birthday as a band by releasing their first ever greatest hits compilation, a double album called Hits to the Head, gathering together some of their most audacious art rock stompers, from student disco dancefloor classic Take Me Out right through to two new songs, Curious and Billy Goodbye, written specially for the collection.
Ahead of their Hits to the Head UK tour dates, Entertainment Now spoke to their chatty and charismatic frontman Alex Kapranos about surviving lockdown, losing and gaining band members and the appeal of the greatest hits album.
How have the band come through the pandemic?
We all had our own ways of dealing with it. For me, I couldn’t do anything creative at first, I just wasn’t in that frame of mind at all for the first section, so I ended rebuilding my studio and that got me working again. It seems like an eternity ago, doesn’t it? We’re extremely adept at forgetting the bad times. It’s been a bit of a blur, like when you wake up from an unusual dream and it hangs around with you for the rest of the day, that’s what it feels like at the moment, it’s still very much in our life as a touring band.
Was Hits to the Head your pandemic project?
We’d actually been talking about it since 2018. In fact, there had been vague talk about it from the very beginning, how funny it would be to have a greatest hits album. Then gradually as the years go by you get a few albums out there and think maybe we should put one out.
Did you have a Greatest Hits benchmark in mind?
When I was a kid my mum and dad had an ABBA greatest hits record that they always had on the record player, maybe that was in my head. Those greatest hits records were my introduction to so much good music. That was the thinking behind the record – it wasn’t for the original fans, it’s a record for folks like my parents who maybe didn’t have money to buy loads and loads of records.
How did you choose which songs to include?
I wasn’t thinking of an audience, I was relying purely on my instinct. You may have to reject the song that is complex, took many hours and is in your mind a masterpiece but doesn’t do it in the same way as the simple one that pops out your head one afternoon. The other thing I was thinking of is if we’re doing a festival set, what songs would I choose for that? At a festival you’re not playing for the superfans but for those that don’t know necessarily every detail of the band’s back catalogue.
Are you happy with the results?
It does feel like a snapshot of the band at this point. It shows the continuity of the personality of the band and how it flows from the beginning to the present day.
What is the key to the longevity of Franz Ferdinand?
A lot of it is to do with the relationship that [bassist] Bob [Hardy] and I have. The whole band started off when Bob and I were working in a kitchen together and hanging out all the time and talking about the idea of being in a band and what music should do to you and how it should move you, and we still have those conversations. Every step of the band comes from sitting around with Bob and talking about it, and that makes it feel very natural.
Another founding member, drummer Paul Thomson, left the band in 2021 – what happened there?
I think lockdown had a lot to do with that. He was re-assessing what he was into musically and he got really into speed metal drumming. I remember him posting these clips of himself on Instagram practising on one of those digital drumkits where you have a double kickdrum pedal.
We had a few rehearsals and the first day he came down with his double kickdrum pedal and it was like ‘what the hell were you thinking about?’ He was frustrated and literally kicked his drums over and walked out the room and that sort of thing is traumatic, especially because Paul’s a really close friend. I totally love Paul, he’s one of the best people in my life and when something like that happens it’s very upsetting, but once I talked to him I understood where his head was at, it’s time for you not to be in the band.
What’s next since new drummer Audrey Tait has joined the band?
We have been working on things – as for when it’s going to come out, I have no idea. It’s hard to give promises you can keep unless you know when it’s coming back from the vinyl pressing plant. Which is quite an absurd situation – we’re living in this age when you can come up with an idea in the morning, record it in the afternoon and release it in the evening but we’re held back by this archaic medium which we all totally love.
Franz Ferdinand play Victoria Warehouse, Manchester, 19 Oct, Alexandra Palace, London, 20 Oct and the Hydro, Glasgow, 10 Nov. ‘Hits to the Head’ is out now on Domino Records.
Feature image credit: David Edwards
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