Immortal?

It’s Clive’s turn to shed more light on the Immortal?-lyrics in a lengthy interview!

Immortal? sketches a pretty gloomy picture of society and mankind. Are you, like it’s called in Moviedrome, a ‘pessimist’?
I’ve never actually thought of myself as a pessimist, but maybe I am. I don’t think I’m a pessimist, but I do think people tend to bury their heads in the sand a bit too much. I think it’s easy to be an optimist, because basically that implies that you don’t do anything. You can just let it happen. I think to many people are prepared to let things happen.

To avoid taking responsibility…
Yeah, I think so, ‘oh, I think it will be all right’ – I don’t believe that. I don’t think it would be all right, unless we make it all right. I think there’s a lot of things that man is managing to do that’s heading us down completely the wrong pathway, but I can’t do anything about it. But maybe if enough people think about it, maybe someday they will.

So maybe not a pessimist, but a realist?
If I say realist, I’m almost implying I know best and I’m sure I don’t, but as far as I’m concerned, yes.

The influence of the Internet is a recurring theme on the album. Do you see the Internet as a blessing or a curse? Or both perhaps?
I see it as a necessary evil, I think. The Internet is great in it’s own way, but I think it’s a sort of great bad stuff as well. Regarding the Internet, the devil theory is a good one. I think a lot of things that have religious implications, like good and evil, the devil, don’t necessarily have to be entities. We can create them all on our own. 

I think the Internet is something like that. It has allowed people to not only do good, but it’s also a potentially dangerous thing. Again, I think we’re only just realizing the power of it. When someone can send a virus out there that can actually completely close businesses down, think about it, that’s a dodgy thing. 
People can say and be who they like from the safety of a chat room, for example. I personally don’t think that’s such a great idea. There’s a lot of sick and mad people out there and this is a perfect weapon for them.

If you just read some of the messages on the Message Board and, previously, some of the discussions on the Verglas Guestbook…
I try not to. And those are probably the relatively sane people. I’m sure there’s some much more dodgy stuff out there. I don’t like some of the e-mails I get. The kind of things some people want to talk to me about sickens and worries me. 
I think it’s too easy. If someone even had to pick up a pen or go to a computer and write a letter and go post it, he wouldn’t bother. Just because it’s so easy to write anything you like, this happens. Anyone can say anything and I think that’s a bad thing.

The album questions the idea of immortality. The Visitor tells the story of a near-death experience and ends with the idea of resurrection, reincarnation perhaps. The Visitor thus also deals with immortality and mortality, but with a much more positive conclusion than Immortal?. Is this contrast between the two albums intentional?
It’s just something from the sewers of my brain. There’s never been any intended connection between The Visitor and Immortal?. Immortal? is not some kind of sequel. The Visitor stands on its own as a concept album. Immortal? Is conceptual but not a concept album, it doesn’t tell a story. It’s a set of separate songs, but there are certain themes. There are themes, they’re there, all the way through the albums, anything I’ve written from Arena across to anything else. They’re just things that interest me; what people really want from themselves, what they really think.

Have you ever sat down and just thought, just really really try to think: ‘one day, I’ll be dead’. What is going to happen? Where am I dead? One day, am I just going to be thinking, am I going to be somewhere else, rotting in the ground? One day, it is inevitable, maybe tomorrow, maybe in fifty years time, I, me, this person who is thinking and seeing and touching and feeling, is going to be dead.
That’s a thought [laughs]. Not a happy one necessarily, but my brain is full of things like that I’m afraid.

And not always bad things. The concept of infinity has me going round in circles. For example, I think to myself, right, OK, I get in a space ship and go in a straight line and I reach the end of the universe. What’s on the other side of that? I’ve always been curious, I think.

It’s a good thing to be curious.
Sometimes [laughs].

It can be very tiring as well.
Yes it can be [laughs].

Something that keeps recurring are the biblical elements in the Arena lyrics. Immortal? also contains many biblical references. When you write lyrics, do you begin with a biblical episode as a starting point and the rest of the lyric follows, or is it the other way around?
No, I don’t think I do. The reason there’s biblical references, is that I try to find ways of putting things that a lot of people are going to recognize. The Bible, whether you believe it or not, you’re probably going to be familiar with a lot of those kind of things. So it’s a great communication tool. Usually, I know what I’m trying to say, and then it might strike me as a good way of colouring that in. Just to take something biblical. 

And, obviously, a lot of the things that we address in Arena are connected with a lot of biblical themes; the question of good and evil, the question of the antichrist, any of those sort of things. I don’t think they have to be Christian, they’re just spiritual questions really. That’s the stuff I just find myself to be interested in, how people react to that.

You see some pretty strong responses when the word ‘biblical’ comes up. Many people are not really open to it.
They’re very scared people, aren’t they? You don’t have to be Christian to appreciate the historical relevance of something biblical or just the question how people perceive spirituality and what their particular beliefs are. It’s good to open your mind to a few things.

It’s good to think further.
I like to think so. But it’s up to the individual, of course.

Regarding the prologue in the booklet: the final line intrigues me (‘Perhaps you have already found it’). Is this a message for the listener? In what sense may he or she already have found immortality?
It depends on what you’re looking for in that list of things. I can’t remember exactly what the words are now, but I’m implying that you can find immortality depending on what you mean with immortality. Beethoven is dead, but he may have achieved immortality by his work. I’m saying, perhaps as far as he is concerned, he has achieved immortality, it depends how you look at that. Or is immortality as Woody Allen said: ‘I’d like to achieve immortality by simply not dying.’ In that case, that’s a tough one.

Perhaps you have already achieved immortality without realizing it. Perhaps, if that’s what you’re looking for. It depends on what your perception is. My perception of immortality to a great extent is to do some-thing which lives beyond my own lifetime. I think that’s probably the most realistic way.
I’m not so bothered about plugging myself into some biotronic unit and hoping that in a thousand years someone might be able to revive me. Although I suppose that if I were offered a guarantee, then I might be interested.

The song Chosen to me seems to be about religious sects who lure new potential members with beautiful yet false promises (‘You have been chosen’). Is this indeed so?
Sort of. It started off with the idea that everyone tends to feel that you have a reason for being here. Most people have it, they feel that they’re here for some reason. Something that makes them special and individual and sets them apart. I just have this idea we’ve all been chosen to do something. Some people take that to a much bigger extreme, ‘I’ve been chosen to lead the people to…’ wherever, or ‘I’ve been chosen to represent God on earth’, or whatever, that kind of spiritual side. Or ‘I’ve been chosen to utilise my gift for the healing of people’. 

I was really saying, well, OK, maybe that’s true, but maybe that’s just what you think. Not that it matters, ‘cause the result would be the same, but ‘you have been chosen’, well, maybe you have, maybe you feel you have. I’m not really trying to answer the question, I just try to ask them.

That applies to the Arena albums in general.
Absolutely. The albums leave you with more questions than you started with [laughs]. I do actually put answers into the lyrics, when I can, to some things, but I try to make them fairly obscure, because, obviously, it’s a personal thing. Those answers are your opinion, they’re not necessarily one hundred percent definitive answers. I put much things in there I know much people don’t even notice. There’s just ways of doing that, where you’re not saying ‘here’s a question and here’s an answer.’

Otherwise, it would be a bit scary as well, because you put your personal feelings and ideas into the lyrics, so you’re exposing yourself a bit to the outside world.
Actually, over the last few years that’s the thing I’ve discovered to be the weirdest part, because with Arena reaching a few more people then perhaps Shadowland, for example, or Strangers On A Train, I’ve had a lot more people come to me about lyrics and you get some strange reactions.

So it makes you a bit vulnerable as well.
I try to put a layer of disguise onto most of it anyway. It’s not simply ‘I did this and I did that.’ There’s a certain amount of obscurity. I bet most people definitively have no idea what the middle of Moviedrome is about, ‘sitting on the thing with the radiogram’, stuff like that. I know precisely. I know what ‘the plastic hood’ is, I know what ‘the sun’ is, where most people don’t. So it depends really how deep you go. It starts with a meaning for me, then it begins with a meaning for someone else, then on top of that there’s a general meaning, you can just read it and just enjoy the words, hopefully, without having to worry what it’s about.

For you it’s a personal thing.
It has to start there. I find it harder to write lyrics than to write music. Music is there. But with lyrics, I have to really work. I have to sweat a lot more to get the lyrics. And I rely a little bit more on instinct with that. I need to start with a feeling, something that gives me a feeling. It’s the only way I can do it.

Do you sit down with the idea ‘now I’m going to write lyrics’, or do you suddenly get an idea, which you then just have to put down?
[Thinks] I never really analysed it. I like to have a title for a song, before I even start writing the music. Very often there’s a set of titles, which may not make it as titles. We have such working titles and that gives me an atmosphere. We start putting music together and I might just get an idea, a line, a hook line. A bit of a lyric. Or I think ‘this song has got to be about this’ and I might just sit down with the music and just start with an empty piece of paper, start writing, trying things out and see what happens.

That’s hard, isn’t it?
It is hard. But I have a lot of reference books. I love reference books. So if I want to do something about… life and death, with a slightly different twist, life is like a journey or something, then I can actually sit down, take a reference book, say Geography Of The World, and just flip through it and see if I can find some nice, interesting place that has some kind of relevance with that basic idea. I just look through books until I find nice words, nice ideas, and gradually they’ll come in as parts of the jigsaw puzzle that make up the whole thing.

It’s an elaborate process.
Yeah, I suppose it is, but that’s because I have to make it that way for me to get what I want. Even the opening piece of prose, I don’t know if you’ve realized it, that’s actually partially a dedication to the cats. And that gave me a structure I had to work to. That was fun, I do a lot of that.

Like ‘trust no one’ in Moviedrome.
Yes, but there’s more than just that. Some of them are a little bit more obscure. I like doing stuff like that. Keeps it interesting.

Returning to Chosen, why the reference to ‘lightly coded software’ in this lyric?
[Laughs] A lot of people ask me that. What I was trying to say was meanings that have slightly been put one step away, so you’re just not quite sure where it’s coming from, what it’s supposed to be, or whatever. I just took that one step further with this idea that you might have something, a piece of software, and you might think it does one thing, but it’s actually doing something else. It just happened to be that the words felt right at the time, I can’t justify it totally, but it just sounded good to me, ‘lightly coded software’, yeah. That’ll do.

The Butterfly Man is also a very interesting song. Who or what is the Butterfly Man – an evil spirit, the devil, Death? Many possible things, just like the Visitor?
Well, it started off as a vampire song. When I wrote the bell thing, you know [hums the intro], it reminded me of Interview With A Vampire, that kind of gothic-y, slightly harpsichordy sound. So I thought, it’ll be great to take that atmosphere and then turn the vampire into the victim, which is, again, what Interview With A Vampire is about. I thought, we’ve done (Don’t Forget To) Breathe and that was a sort of vampire thing. I thought it would be nice to expand that idea. 

So I got this idea of the Butterfly Man as a collector of souls. So instead of being simply a question heaven and hell, this guy was there almost like a purgatory, he was in charge of purgatory, and he would go round and find these people who were heading down the wrong pathway or who perhaps were going to die before their time, who need time to get it right. He’d be there with his butterfly net catching them up. 

But he himself was a victim and forced into this role as well, ‘I’ve been here for so long’, ‘Don’t even know how long I’ve been here’, that’s what he says. I think it makes quite an interesting thought. In my mind, he didn’t want to be doing what he was doing. Something rather like the original of Dracula, the true story, the version that Coppola did, it’s almost like that idea. He committed some sin, that was perhaps a sin of passion at the time, that forced him into that corner and there he was, a victim of himself, forced to be who he was.

He’s almost looking more for his own salvation. He twists back and forth between being the victim and simply doing his job. Kind of sinister, dark, but… I identify with the Butterfly Man. There’s a bit of me in there somewhere, I don’t know what

So he captures souls to purge them? In the end they’re set free?
I don’t know. Are they? I have to answer that question. I don’t think it has been answered yet. But there might be another song. I like the Butterfly Man. I think he might come back for some more business. We’ll see.

The lines ‘There you are fighting to escape from the womb’ and ‘There you are bathing in the warmth of creation’ in this song puzzle me. What do they mean?
What that is, is that he’s almost being vitriolic. He’s sort of saying ‘there you go, you can’t wait to get out of the womb and get on with life and yet you don’t realize in your ignorance what it is that you may do.’ Bathing in the warmth of creation, ‘yes, I’m alive, I’m breathing, I’m doing what the hell I want, I’m young.’ Then he’s saying ‘oh, you just don’t know’, ‘cause you’re a child in terms of the history of the world and mankind. 

The Butterfly Man is ancient, an ancient person. Perhaps he began in some sort of spiritual existence, before man ever came into existence. So he sees man as a very innocent, but ignorant child. He’s almost pissed off, because he knows that they’re going to be there for him to capture and there’s nothing he can do about it. I think he finds it frustrating.

The Butterfly Man is one of my favourite songs, both musically and lyrically. It’s very dark. The whole album is quite dark.
It is a dark album. I never intended it, it wasn't planned. We do write quite dark albums anyway. There’s a lot of fairly dark questions asked in all of the albums. And in some ways the albums have got darker. Songs From The Lions Cage is all fairly upbeat. I really think, for my money, I think it’s dark perhaps, but I don’t think it’s depressing. There’s nothing there that says ‘everything is hopeless.’ What I’m really saying is: ‘beware.’

You said earlier that Ghost In The Firewall is about an alien who wants to be part of the system on earth. Does he want this in order to sabotage the system, or is he sincere, does he want to be human?
After I said that, it developed a bit more. What I was trying to say was, it’s amazing how quickly an outsider wants to be part of the system. It doesn’t have to be an alien from another world. It can just be a person who wants to be part of a club. It’s the way people constantly argue for their individuality, but they’re so quick to join a herd of people, because it’s easier. 

The song is kind of an ironic song, because what it’s saying is, ‘please I want to lose my personality, I want to be amalgamated into the whole, I don’t want to be in charge of my own self.’ So it’s not really about an alien, but an outsider. Not to sabotage anything, just to be amalgamated. Part of the core collective…

Why the reference to ‘My name is Legion’?
‘My name is Legion, for we are many.’ What it’s saying there is, I want be one person, but there’s loads of us who want be part of that one thing. Again, it’s just a reference.

This theme of the outsider and being part of the group appears in many of the songs. In Climbing The Net there’s also this person who doesn’t believe in the Internet as something good (‘Do I have to embrace this modern veneer’).
That is the problem, that is what the album is about really. The whole of mankind striding happily forward to what I personally see as being a potentially very dangerous direction. There are so many examples of it. Twenty years ago, people were saying aerosol cans and fuel give trouble for the ozone, it’s a dangerous thing. And twenty years later, I heard it on the news two weeks ago, scientists had a meeting and they have now made it official that there’s a hole in the ozone layer. So we’ve had twenty years of ignoring the problem. And now we have a problem that we have to solve, rather than a problem that we could have avoided or lessened. 

That is so typical of mankind. To allow something like the World War II atrocities to happen, for example. People say: ‘that’s incredible, that should never be allowed to happen again.’ And it’s happened again. And what’s worse: it will happen again. 

We are just herded along this road. The power, where it all goes now, is about ten corporations or so. Eventually, this world will be run by one corporation, deciding for us, what we want to listen to, what we want to do, how we want to do it, and we just can’t see it. It’s easier just to accept. I’m as guilty as anyone else. It’s easier to say, ‘well, that’s on the shelf now, I don’t want to make a fuss about it, ‘cause I want my sausage rolls’, or whatever. We laugh about lemmings, but, my goodness, it’s what we are. That’s the danger. And the trouble is, the further down this road we go, the harder it’s going to be for one individual or a small group of individuals to stand up against it.

To turn it around.
Well, they won’t turn it around. What will happen, probably, is that there’ll be some major, major crisis that will actually tear the world back to pieces again. And that’s the end.

I read this a bit in Waiting For The Flood.
Waiting For The Flood is actually seen through the eyes of the devil. There’s no Satanism involved. It’s just through the eyes of the other side, not God. He’s saying: ‘well, this is great, you’re just coming straight for me. This is exactly what I had planned all along, you idiots.’

And it has happened before. He’s always there.
Always. The devil is a patient person. He’s immortal. He’s got time.

Friday’s Dream contains the idea of a new start.
Friday’s Dream is the positive side. I didn’t want to leave this album with the kind of images that the other songs put across. Because there’s a lot of hopelessness. Friday’s Dream implies it’s all a dream that we can wake up from, probably. I think it’s important we have that hope. There should always be hope. There always is. In any situation, anytime, anyhow, anywhere, there’s always hope, you can’t lose that. And out of that usually or very often can come some kind of salvation.

Friday’s Dream started with the idea, a medieval thought, that the thing that you dream on Friday’s night, when you dream the same thing on Saturday, it becomes true. That’s what ‘Friday’s dream’ is. And it developed from there.

The person who is dreaming, again, is the outsider?
Doesn’t matter. All of us. Me [laughs]. The listener. Here are all these images of the future and now we’ve been warned. Again, rather like a spiritual idea. He sees these experiences and he wakes up and he has a chance to change. He has another chance. I always believe that everyone should have another chance. I think the world should have another chance as well. What’s scary is that this might be the other chance.

In Friday’s Dream it says ‘From the truth comes light’. In Climbing The Net it says ‘The truth is the victim - it was dead from the start!’. Is the truth, just like immortality, unattainable, slipping through our fingers?
I does easily, doesn’t it. It’s one of those big moral things. We all like to believe that honesty is the best thing and that the truth is what it’s all about, that the truth is out there. And it is, but rather like immortality, I think it’s a rather flawed concept. How often in the world is something truly true? Even what you believe to be truths, more often than not can turn out to be… When I was six years old, I didn’t have any question about Santa Claus, did you? There you go. That’s a truth, but it wasn’t a truth. There’s a lot of these around I think.

Sometimes it may be best not to know the truth.
That’s also true… or is it [laughs].

In Friday’s Dream it also says ‘To find a shelter from the rain’. Is this the same rain that causes the flood?
I don’t know. I wanted the idea that you’re sheltering from the rain, that you’re trying to protect yourself, find somewhere that’s warm and safe, really, from the outside world. It’s a very satisfying feeling when you’re lying in bed and you hear it pissing with rain outside and you think ‘wow, this is good.’ What you don’t want to be is the person out in the rain.

Of all the Arena albums, are you most satisfied with this one, in terms of lyrics?
Yes, I think I am. In many ways it was the hardest one to write. I threw away more pieces of paper than I’d like to think, and that’s good. Actually, I knew what I wanted to do, but until I did it, I didn’t let it through and I kept changing and changing. I’m very pleased with these lyrics. I think certainly some of the stuff on Immortal? Is the best that I’ve ever done.

There’s an evolution in the lyrics from Songs From The Lions Cage onwards. 
It’s a long time since we’ve ‘thrown away our lives in the fireplace, with the old love letters and the Nottingham laces.’ But still that’s one of my favourite bits. For me it’s such a familiar image. One of the greatest things for me doing this whole thing is when we play and people sing.

Because they’re singing your lines.
Yeah. I remember the first time we did it, right back at the beginning on the first proper tour, when we played Solomon. We started playing and they just started singing the opening. That’s fantastic. That’s one of the best moments of my career, playing the music and have this crowd of people who all knew those words that I sat down for and sweated on all these months ago.

Especially because they’re not easy lyrics to remember.
No, but it’s funny, because I meet people now and it comes into conversations. People start quoting bits of lyrics, like ‘I’ll always find you’ [laughs]. Or ‘you have been chosen’, all these little hook lines. ‘Who gives a damn.’

‘Let your conscience decide.’ There are many of these hook lines.
Absolutely. I write those with the pure intention that those are the things people can latch on to. Because I’m very aware, as you say, that some of the lyrics are quite complicated. I think it’s important to have moments where people can say ‘here comes that line.’ That’s why we do these. Every album has a moment of silence with a kind of statement. It’s almost a trademark. That’s good.
Also choruses, they ought to have something about them, like ‘does it matter to you’, whatever. At the end of the epics, Sirens, Solomon, Moviedrome, I always write with a more colloquial style. ‘Does it matter to you’, it’s not a very lyrical thing. ‘Take it from me’ at the end of The Visitor, that kind of stuff. That’s a moment where we have to communicate with everybody. There’s no point in being arty. I try to always make the end choruses a bit more colloquial, more common language, than perhaps some of the more arty stuff earlier on.

The Hanging Tree has it as well (‘Take me to the hanging tree’).
Yeah. Funny enough, I’ve only just thought of it, as I’m telling you. It hadn’t occurred to me before that I’ve done it intentionally. There you go, exclusive! [Laughs]

Any final remarks?
Prepare for the next album! I’ve got some ideas. Not lyrical ideas as in lyrics, but some flavours. I’m looking forward to making a start on that one.

Do you sometimes come up with ideas which don’t suit Arena, that you then put into one of your other projects?
Lyrically, I don’t have that problem, musically I do. What I intend to do is to write a whole load of music, I have little bursts of music writing. Then I listen to it and say ‘that sounds like Shadowland, that sounds like Strangers On A Train.’
Sometimes I put a hat on, ‘OK, today I’m writing Strangers On A Train.’ Then I tend to think in terms of that. But I find it more fun nowadays just to write and write and write anything and then decide later. That seems to work.
Initially, I thought The Butterfly Man was a bit Shadowland, but I’m glad we did do it, because I think it’s the best song on the album. It was voted best song of the album on our website. Closely followed by Moviedrome. We do it, we play it live. It’s fun to put on.

Thanks for the interview!
Yeah, alright. No problem.

By: Erik Beers