Listen to The Last Shadow Puppets

LIsten to Scars on Broadway

In May, an unknown garage-rock band, Foxboro Hot Tubs, released an album with barely a shred of press coverage. Still, that record, Stop Drop and Roll!!!, scrambled to No 37 in the charts, aided, no doubt, by its bearing more than a passing sonic resemblance to the platinum-selling American punk band Green Day. It turned out that Foxboro Hot Tubs and Green Day had identical line-ups, the confession coming via MySpace: “The only similarity between Green Day and Foxboro Hot Tubs is that we are the same band.”

Green Day’s reluctance to release music without having to indulge in the publicity and media circus was understandable. But the reason Foxboro Hot Tubs’ coyness raised eyebrows is that, over the past two years, it has become de rigueur for successful musicians to have two or more bands running concurrently. A short time ago, such adventures would have been dismissed as mere “side projects”; today, “second bands” are rightfully treated with as much respect as the bands that the stars in question first became famous for.

Alex Turner, once solely seen as chief Arctic Monkey, has reaped more critical praise as co-writer and front man for the Last Shadow Puppets, yet is strangely reluctant to discuss the relationship between the two bands. Jack White of the White Stripes and the Raconteurs had no such qualms when the latter band, which he co-fronts with his fellow Detroit songwriter Brendan Benson, released their first album, Broken Boy Soldiers.

“I think, halfway through the record, we realised, wow, this is really a band, ” White explained. “We were all really excited to make a go of it — go out there and promote it and be a band and make more records. I don’t think there was any intention halfway through the first record that the Raconteurs was a side project. Some people would assume we were too busy, but when something good is happening, just go with it. Why not?”

For White, a break from the self-imposed limitations of the White Stripes was worth exploring.

“It’s a total change of pace from what I’d been doing for the past few years with the White Stripes,” he insisted. “Dual songwriters and a full range of sounds. There are no rules, like we have in the White Stripes. I wouldn’t want to do something that was the same thing. This was going to be completely different. That’s what I was excited about — but mostly the collaborating on the writing.”

The desire for different chemistries was also the impetus behind Grinderman, the garage band derived from Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.

“It evolved from Nick Cave’s solo band,” says the Bad Seeds and Grinderman drummer Jim Sclavunos. “We had a sound and an approach that was more like a proper band. So we decided to form a band doing stuff written collectively, as opposed to doing Bad Seeds songs. That was a quantum leap for us, psychologically. It wasn’t hard to write material.”

Aware of the stigma that could accompany something perceived as a side project, the newly formed band were reluctant to show their hand until they were certain they could produce music that would stand shoulder to shoulder with the members’ hefty back catalogue.

“We were ridiculously cautious,” confirms Sclavunos. “The Bad Seeds carry such weight with certain types of people. If we went into the studio and did something that was mediocre, we’d have egg on our faces. In retrospect, I don’t think we needed to be. It’s the same people making music together. We just wanted to make it different enough from the Bad Seeds to justify itself. We already had our own sound, but compositionally it had to find its feet. It couldn’t be just a smaller version of the Bad Seeds. We were looking for things up-tempo and raucous. Once we had the components, we hammered them into proper songs. And the last step in the whole process was giving it a name.”

Grinderman released their self-titled debut in 2007, and the band is now running concurrently with the Bad Seeds, whose 14th studio album, Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!, came out earlier this year. “There were rumours flying round on the internet of how Grinderman might be the demise of the Bad Seeds,” Sclavunos says. “Grinderman has nothing to do with the Bad Seeds in that respect. It has everything to do with them in other respects, because once you open the door to certain ideas and ways of playing, you carry that with you. That happens with any musician who’s in more than one musical operation.”

The musicians from the Bad Seeds not invited into Grinderman had to swallow their pride and rejoin the fray. Complaining about being left out wasn’t an option.

“Well, they are left out,” Sclavunos laughs. “Grinderman is about a certain attitude to making music. And a willingness to play loud.”

Our willingness to accept music under different names has provided new options for bands that might previously have been torn apart by creative differences. Scars on Broadway, the new group featuring Daron Malakian and John Dolmayan of the Grammy-winning metal band System of a Down, is a case in point.

“We took a break before we broke up,” admits Dolmayan, the drummer. “After 12 years, it’s not so much that you get tired of the people you’re with, it’s more that you don’t have an identity. I think System will co-exist with Scars. They will probably leapfrog each other.”

“I don’t know Jack White,” adds Malakian, the guitarist and songwriter, “but I like what he does in the White Stripes. I’ve only heard a couple of songs from the Raconteurs, but I liked that, too. As artists, we don’t want our music to be a brand like Coca-Cola. You want to scratch those creative itches: things that you couldn’t do in certain situations. There are things in Scars that aren’t in System. I love metal, but I was taking a new direction. I wanted to express the side of me that likes Roxy Music, the Beatles and the Grateful Dead.”

Now that having a second band is entirely acceptable, musicians are leaping on the opportunity to explore new avenues with new, and old, friends. But it’s an aside from Malakian that perhaps sheds the most light on this relatively new phenomenon. With record companies under more pressure than ever before, if profitable musicians want to release music under different names, labels are in no position to dissuade them.

“Columbia wanted the record, but they let us go out and shop it anyway,” Malakian explains. “And once we shopped it, we said, ‘Man, we don’t want to be on Columbia any more.’ Columbia don’t want to burn that bridge for when System returns, so they let us do what we want.”

Scars on Broadway’s eponymous album is out now on Interscope

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