Hah! I spent the whole year working on this album. I started writing in February and I haven’t done anything apart from this album until about two weeks ago. So for me and the people involved in the making of this album, it hasn’t been a quiet year. It’s been very intense. The trouble is it isn’t in front of an audience. But that’s how it works. You have to do the homework. Plus we have been putting together that live package, Live & Life. So it’s been fairly productive, really.

In the past, you, Mick and John did the writing. How was that with this album?
In principle, it’s the same. It always follows the same kind of program. I stick some material together and Mick does. Then we get together and we work on it. Then John comes in and adds some more material. It all gets mixed together. I sit there every day with it and filter the best bits up and then we get together again and review what’s there. 

It’s a process of elimination, really. Some songs are more relevant to some people than others. For example, the Opera Fanatica track was mine from start to finish whereas the others are all mixtures of material.

You said in an old interview that it was the idea that all members should contribute.
Well, it’s not a rule. Generally speaking, it’s always been me, Mick and John. When we did The Visitor, John Jowitt was involved in the writing as well. Now it’s just down to three. I’m fine with that. To me, the less people, the better. Three is pretty good. That mixes it up enough to make it interesting and different. 

Every time we make an album, we try to change equations a bit, the way we do it: the studio, the co-producers, the engineers, techniques, the order of events, sometimes writing in the studio, sometimes not. Every time we made an album, we did it differently. I think that’s important. It keeps it fresh.

You once said about that ‘recording The Visitor really wore you down and that you never enjoyed being in the studio since.’
It’s true, pretty much. Well, I can think of worse jobs. I’m not suffering some agonising pain. I don’t enjoy working in the studio. I prefer to get out. I enjoy working in what I call the keyboard room which is my sort of room. I’m happy spending hours in there, programming and writing. When I get to the studio I feel worn out very quickly, but I have to do it and it wasn’t too bad. I’ve had worse studio sessions. It wasn’t a painful recording process.

How would you describe the new album musically?
I think it has a slightly harder edge than the others. I suppose to some extent, we’ve gotten heavier and harder every time we’ve made an album. It has a lot of energy. It is a faster paced album than any album we’ve ever made. It wasn’t planned, it just happened. I don’t know what’s the reason behind that. 

I think this album is actually quite an English sounding album, but I don’t quite know what that means. We are a very English sounding band in general. Maybe because of the artwork and the concept that goes with it. It’s perhaps not just the music.

With this album you leave the apocalyptic theme of the past three albums behind. Why?
I was sick and tired of the end of the world. A lot of the stuff I write about comes from dreams. I have a very dark mind. I wanted to move away from that. But actually in some ways this album is even darker, because it doesn’t deal with the end of the world. That’s too convenient. It deals with being alive, with different aspects of madness. So in its own way, it is very dark. It’s just differently dark. 

Is it a sign of ‘growing up’ that you don’t focus anymore on the end of the end but on real life in stead?
Could be. I didn’t think of it like that. It just felt time to change the record. The Visitor, Immortal? and Contagion all dealt with death in different ways. I had enough of death. I was looking for something different. But again, this album is in some ways even darker.

When I heard the title Pepper’s Ghost, I immediately had to think of the Beatles’ album Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
That has got nothing to do with it, nor does Doctor Pepper’s drink. A ‘Pepper’s ghost’ is this Victorian illusion used on stage. A bright light shines against an image which is reflected thanks to smoke and mirrors against a big piece a glass on stage. It’s used as a special effect in the theatre. The audience would be watching the glass and it looked like there’s somebody walking around, but that person would be like a ghost because it wasn’t completely solid. It was an illusion.

Pepper’s Ghost is not a concept album like The Visitor and Contagion but a conceptual album like Immortal?. 
Yes. It’s seven separate songs about the seven signs of madness. There’s an artistic concept which joins it all together and there’s the thematic concept of madness. But I still see them as separate songs. I feel that each song can stand very comfortably on its own. That’s the difference with Contagion. 

What are those seven signs of madness that you mention?
It’s not signs of madness, they’re aspects of madness really. I wouldn’t say it’s like the seven deadly sins. It’s not about seven medical terms which I dealt with. I just take a different angle on the idea of madness. It’s not the seven aspects.

The seven aspects of Clive Nolan?
I really hope not. It’s certainly things that I thought a lot about. I decided in my head what I wanted the album to be. As a result of that, I started getting a flavour from the music. If you decide that the subject of a song is going to be a midnight party, then you already know where the music has to go to put that across. It starts with the flavour. 

Maybe we reject a piece of music for this album that wouldn’t have been rejected for another album because it wasn’t what we were looking for. I like to have a title for the song so I know where the song is headed. Then that leads to the lyric. The lyric is made up of different levels. On one level it’s about madness. But on another level, little bits of a song are made up of more personal things which are unimportant to the reader. I don’t think anyone would know me well enough to know the meaning behind everything. It just comes from inside.

You describe Opera Fanatica as ‘containing some fairly extravagant instrumental work.’ What do you mean by that?
It’s not a typical Arena instrumental piece. It has a lot of this unisono work which is kind of fiddly; the recurring part where the guitar and the keyboards are playing the same. The song is not easy to play. It’s complex. It’s extravagant because it’s difficult. It’s big. It’s what we call the ‘kitchen sink track’: everything is in there.

Is the music more extravagant because Arena are more confident?
I guess we have a stronger sense of identity with every album we make. But when we are making an album, we actually try to go past that identity. We try to take another step. The biggest problem when we write an album is getting past the first part of the writing process, when we think ‘we can’t use that, because we’ve done that before. This sounds too old Arena.’ 

There was a time when we were very insecure about the material. Then we usually come to the conclusion that we should stop worrying about it, and then it tends to take its own direction.

What can you tell us about the artwork for the album?
The artwork of the CD is a 20 page comic book. I told David Wyatt, who did the artwork for Contagion as well, that I had this idea of a Batman comic. David Wyatt has worked on comics before and he was very enthusiastic about the idea. What you’ll see is his visualization of what we talked about. 

We [the band – eds.] are all superheroes. Mick is the American. Rob is this lost bloodline of royalty. Then we’ve got the ninja, that’s Ian. John is the classic example of the scientist making the time machine. He created the machine to get his fiancé back but he can only go back seven seconds. That’s all he’s managed. My character is the guy who merged with the demon in an exorcism that went wrong. He can see all things supernatural but he struggles his whole life trying to keep this demon in control. 

The five of them work together as a team. These characters are not part of the lyrics. I wanted to add another layer. I’ve taken each of the songs and we based a character very loosely on each of the songs. Tantalus is about John’s character who’s not able to get his beloved woman back again. That’s the loose connection with the song. Then we’ve written a cartoon story that is just in its own self. Mick’s character is linked with The Shattered Room and mine with The Eyes Of Lara Moon. Rob’s is connected to Smoke And Mirrors and Ian’s to Purgatory Road.

What does the ‘10/6d’ on the album cover mean? [the cover used for the promo, on the official version it has been changed into ‘A Thrupenny Chapbook’- eds.]
That’s about old fashioned, Victorian money, ten shilling and six pence. There’s a book called Alice In Wonderland which features a character called the Mad Hatter. If you see the original drawings of the Mad Hatter, you’ll see that there’s a price tag in the hat which says 10/6d. It’s to give the whole thing a Victorian flavour. 

I heard you were writing a book yourself. What’s it going to be about?
It’s a rock ’n roll mystery with a supernatural twist. It’s probably very me but it’s not about me. It’s not anything autobiographical. It’s pure fiction. It deals with a musician who’s in a band because I figured that I should write what I know about. It takes place in two eras of history. It’s called A Curious Gift. That means two things. It could refer to someone’s ability or it could be a gift. I can’t tell you more without telling you the story and I don’t want to do that. 

I’m now working on the second draft, finding all the mistakes: he’s got red hair in one place and black in another. I also want to put more sub-plot in. There are parts that I haven’t done properly. I will try and send it to publishers, but I don’t expect anything to come out of that. I’d like to have it on sale by the next tour, which will be in September and October. We’ll also be playing the Rosfest festival in the US on April the 29th, but that’s just a one off. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

It doesn’t anymore?
No! No! It does. The difficulty with one offs is that you’ll have to do the same amount of work as you would do for a tour. But we haven’t been to America for a very long time and I think it’s something that’s fun to do and it seems an awful long time before we’re going to do any gigs. So it seemed like a good thing for us to do.

I read that Ian Salmon isn’t going to play.
That’s right. He can’t do that date unfortunately because of his regular job.

What does he do?
You know, I have no idea. He teaches and does some other things. He’s got several jobs which are all connected to music. He would have to give up work for two weeks: rehearsals, going to America, playing, coming back. It was too long for him to give up the jobs. So we found someone to cover for him. He’ll be back for the tour later that year.

Who will replace him?
Mister Jowitt.

How did that happen?
I phoned him and I said: ‘John, would you like to do a gig in America?’ He said: ‘Yep.’ I said: ‘Ok, I’ll give you a ring soon.’ That was easy.

So no hard feelings about the split?
No. The reasons for which John chose to leave, and the thing with Paul, that’s all a long time ago. I see Paul quite often. Of course, he still would like to be in the band. But everyone is getting along fine with everyone else. There’s not any big war going on between them.

Next year, it will be ten years since Songs From The Lions Cage was released.
Yes. The tour is going to be an anniversary tour. We want to play songs from every album, so we won’t play Pepper’s Ghost completely. We’ll do just three. Probably Bedlam Fayre and The Shattered Room. I don’t know if we’ll do Opera Fanatica. I’m not sure we can play it live. But it will be interesting.

By: Niek Hermsen