Interview by Tom Lanham
 
Here’s how surreal things have gotten for Jamie Hince, the guitar-slinging half of the Kills, the UK blues-punk duo he’s in with Alison Mosshart (who also does double duty as frontwoman for Jack White’s the Dead Weather): Recently, a childhood chum was trying to E-mail him heartwarming pictures she’d unearthed of him as a young lad, pictures he was dying to see. But since this anti-social-networking star doesn’t maintain any online presence, his pal was unwittingly forwarding the photographs to an earnest Jamie Hince impostor on Facebook, where there was already a bustling fan page all about Jamie Hince. And just last week, when the Londoner should have been celebrating the upcoming release of the fourth Kills salvo Blood Pressures (due out April 5), he was snapped getting into a knockdown-dragout scuffle with hometown paparazzi, while leaving an X-rated nightclub called The Box.
       Does any of this have anything to do with beefy neo-psychedelic experiments like the new Kills single “Satellite”? Or other bare-knuckled Blood Pressures tracks like the reverb-drenched “Nail In My Coffin,” a tribal stomper called “Future Starts Slow,” and the Beatles-eerie call-and-response companions “Wild Charms” and “D.N.A.”? In a word, no: This how things go when you happen to be engaged to photogenic supermodel Kate Moss. The tabloids don’t want to hear about the Kills; they’d rather run blue-streak bulletins on how Hince just proposed to his high-profile sweetheart with his grandmother’s ring, or surround the couple in such oppressive numbers — as they did at The Box — that the man has no choice but to defend his lady’s honor.
      So how does a serious composer continue to make adventurous new music under such stifling conditions? Or even leave the secluded privacy of their house at all? Or, for that matter, refrain from beating the holy crap out of some obnoxious shutterbug when they leap out at you from behind the bushes?
     “Well, I’m in the Kills, same as I always have been,” Hince calmly maintains. “And I’m working in that way and trying to develop like that, so [the paparazzi] haven’t even affected me.” Mind you, this exclusive ShockHound interview took place a mere few days before that Box dustup….
 
SHOCKHOUND: So what did you think of The Social Network? Or what do you think of the whole Facebook phenomenon, in general?
 
JAMIE HINCE: Well, I don’t, really. Because I just don’t choose to participate. I think it’s a bit of a fun destroyer, really. But it’s weird — things are changing fast, aren’t they? And there’s a real irony about it. There’s this necessity to stay in touch, with everything and everybody. And to always be in touch. And I can remember a time when a mobile phone was a luxury, but now, you don’t answer your cell phone and somebody thinks you’re a wanker. Everyone wants to be in touch, all the time, and keep up-to-date on Facebook, and it’s just such an irony because we’re actually getting less and less in touch. That’s the reality. You’re less in touch with a proper social group and going out and hanging out, or even just falling asleep on someone’s sofa after staying up with them all night.
 
SHOCKHOUND: You used to have to drop by an offending party’s estate and physically slap them with a gauntlet to challenge them. Now, you can just fuck with your enemies on the Internet.
 
HINCE: Yeah, and that’s changing a lot. There’s this new kind of bravery on the Internet. You put something into your art — your music, a film, a video — and you post it for people to see. And then you get this barrage, right across the spectrum, of people saying “I love you!” to “You’re the most overrated fool in the world!” People play out these brave, crazy, angry scenarios on blogs and postings, and it’s really changed everything. You know how everything used to be word-of-mouth, and a legend would build? Well, now it’s all just matter-of-fact, more like kids’ graffiti on blogs more than anything else. Like, “You are a cunt!” and that’s all they have to say, constructively. It’s just bizarre.
 
SHOCKHOUND: Which goes hand-in-hand with the gradual death of both of our crafts — songwriting and journalism.
 
HINCE: And eventually, where it’s headed is, you have to do more just to pay the bills. And then you find that something like playing music or writing to pay the bills is suddenly something that’s become a harsh reality. But it was the opposite for me. That’s why I started a band — because I didn’t want to have to get a job to pay the bills and all that. I wanted to live a different kind of life. And now I find that I’m going more and more into it, with things I never would’ve considered ten years ago. Someone puts it to you like, “There’s this branding opportunity and they’ll pay for you to do a video, if you do this.” And it’s kinda like a big old bribe, isn’t it? But it’s becoming much more of a reality for people. And I don’t know where it’s headed, but I don’t like it.
 
SHOCKHOUND: Passion Pit was quite up front about it — they happily took corporate money, put it to good creative use, then shrugged and said “Hey, call us sellouts, but…”
 
HINCE: Still, it might be something that people scream “sellout” about. But pretty soon, you’re not gonna be able to, because there’s gonna be no such thing. Just look at record labels — it’s happening so quickly. I mean, we were lucky enough to sign a decent deal, with all of our advances tied in, at the right time. But if you’re a young band now, you get next to fucking nothing to record an album, because of all of these bands making records at home on their computers. And it’s really directing the way that music is gonna go. And I always cross my fingers that this is actually gonna be handing music back to the kids, that it could end up being this new grass-roots movement. But I don’t notice that happening. But there’s one thing I know for certain — if it ever happens, it’s not gonna happen in the way that we thought it would. It’s probably gonna happen in a way that’s aesthetically ugly, at least to me.

 
SHOCKHOUND: What mindset were you in for Blood Pressures? It feels tense, claustrophobic, bluesy and psychedelic.
 
HINCE: I was in a mindset where I was kinda carrying on from [2008’s] Midnight Boom. I had this thing in my head when I was doing guitars, where I thought it was funny that whenever someone comes up with what they think is a good guitar tone, it’s always something that sounds like it’s from the ‘60s or the ‘70s. So when I did Midnight Boom, I said, “Fuck it — I wanna do a guitar tone that’s absolutely 2009!” Or whenever it was. So I just built from that, really, and I ended up having three different rooms. Everything was just one guitar, but I fed it through about seven different amps, so I had a bass room with three amps that were all dialed in to just the low end. Then I had a mid-range room and a treble room. I mean, I’m just one guy playing guitar, so I really had to try and get that whole-band spectrum and take it to the extreme with the guitar sound. And for a lot of it, Alison was on tour with the Dead Weather for a couple of sessions, and that’s when I really went to town, messing around with instruments and old tape-echo machines, which sounded so dubby to me. And I just love the sound of those old dub and dancehall records. So I started messing around with that. And it seemed to give it the right sort of spirit I wanted for the record.
 
SHOCKHOUND: So you’re the new King Tubby, then?
 
HINCE: Ha! It’s so funny that you say that, because at one of the studios we worked in, for the whole session we had this huge poster of King Tubby up on the wall.
 
SHOCKHOUND: There’s one thing I noticed — in all of your early paparazzi pix, you were always scowling. Lately, you and Kate are usually smiling.
 
HINCE: I just put it down to this: When I started this band, we were living in squats, just putting on gigs ourselves, playing in bakeries, playing anywhere. Getting in the car and driving around, breaking down, having nowhere to stay, even sleeping in cars. And when you do that, you have so much faith in your band that you’ve gotta build a romance and a fantasy around yourselves, to protect you from the reality. And I’m still doing that now. There’s a focused romance and fantasy that protects me against this boring reality of paparazzi or whatever it might be. And the one thing you learn is, you don’t look good scowling to the fucking camera all the time, ya know? So I just forget about it now. A photograph takes 125th of a second, on average, and it’s just two seconds from the door to the car where these clowns do that. But that’s not my life; those aren’t my memories. There’s a lot of stuff happening in between those ridiculous times, so it doesn’t bother me — I just ignore it now.
 
SHOCKHOUND: But it’s sad that the tabloids have reduced you to “musician boyfriend,” instead of “Kills mastermind.”
 
HINCE: Yeah. And that sort of press doesn’t really cross over. There’s press coverage from people who are interested in my girlfriend, and there’s press coverage from people who are interested in my band. And one doesn’t really cross over into the other too much. I mean, the audience that reads those sorts of articles about my girlfriend, they’re not rushing out to buy my records, they don’t care about my music. And you know what? It’s a relationship I’m happy with. I don’t want them to like my music, and I don’t care if we don’t sell any records. That’s not what I’m doing this for, and anyone who’s followed us from the start knows that. I’m into the romance of rock and roll, and I’m passionate about rock and roll, and rock and roll history, and art and literature. And that’s how I wanna live my life.
 
SHOCKHOUND: Well, congrats on the engagement. And I’ll offer my one perfunctory tabloid question: Did you really propose with an heirloom ring?
 
HINCE: I don’t wanna talk about that. No offense. But thank you for the congratulations. And seriously, people are such pussies — people are so surprised that I can deal with all this [paparazzi, etc.] Have they not lived life? Is this sort of a thing really that much of a stumbling block for people? I mean, maybe I’m having the best life in the world, ‘cause that just doesn’t fucking bother me at all.
 
SHOCKHOUND: Alison has another fun band. Have you thought about forming one of your own?
 
HINCE: Well, I’m in the process of starting up a studio, so who knows where that’s gonna go. But I just don’t have that…that desire to be in another band, ya know? I think it’s something Alison needs, but I’m a bit older than Alison, and I’ve been through all that. And I’m really happy with my one project being the Kills. But I like doing the odd little side project that’s temporary and doesn’t take too long. Like last year, I did a show with Nick Cave and Bobby Gillespie, and I did a short film with David J. Chapman. So I wanna continue doing that sort of thing. But I don’t wanna start another band...unless there’s a really good offer!