home back to interviews	All I Want To Say… John Mitchell December 1999
	Well, here it is. My first official interview. An interview with a mumbling, rambling guitarist. Or, as most people call him: John Mitchell! After solving a few technical problems, the interview could begin. I would like to start with the most difficult question: first Paul left Arena, and now John Jowitt. How do you feel about Arena now? I'm pretty intolerant towards people. How do I feel about Arena now. It's different. The atmosphere is different. Probably, people know that there were problems between Paul and the rest of the band and I take the blame for a lot of that as well. Because, well, I'm pretty intolerant towards people.  I know he felt just as uncomfortable being around me as vice versa. But, it's just different now, because I've known Rob a long time, I've known him since I was about nineteen. With Paul the situation became intolerable in the end. There were serious problems between us, and I'm sure it was as bad for him as it was for us. I mean, everybody had their agenda, and you get on or you don't get on. And unfortunately, we didn't get on. And that's been good and bad, because people like Paul, I recognise people like Paul, but if you can't work with somebody, you can't work with them. As for John Jowitt, that was a bit of a shock. The whole issue of Paul leaving Arena affected him, and I think John kind of lost faith somewhere along the line or maybe his heart just wasn't in it anymore. But you were very good friends… Yeah, we still are good friends, that's the weird thing. This is the first time anybody actually left Arena and there are absolutely no bad feelings. John just didn't want to do it anymore. You can't make somebody do something they don't want to do. I was a bit bitter, for sure, at first, because we were such good friends in the past. I always said, ‘You can't leave this band, we are such good friends’. And he went and left. And I was upset for a while, I was a bit angry. No, angry is not even the right word. Disappointed. He knew it in a second, he just didn't want to do it anymore, and you can't hate some-body for that. After all of this, we're still friends. I still e-mail him, it's no problem at all. But with Paul it's a different thing. With Paul, it was an issue of personality. It would be easy for me to sit here and go: ‘Paul Wrightson this and Paul Wrightson that’, but he had his reasons. It's easy to say everything has irritated me over the past couple of years, but people have their reasons for doing things.  Going on a good note: Since all this has happened, Paul has been in contact with Mick and Clive. And the axe, if you like, has been buried. So we're on good terms with him again. And if he ever reads this: ‘No hard feelings!’ The next question is about your own album, Neon. You said, Neon is a very personal album, with personal lyrics. Doesn't it bother you that people you don't even know listen to them? No, not really. Everybody has to find their own way of expressing themselves, I know it sounds very cliché, rubbish, in whatever way that manifests itself. I'm sure a lot of people hate the album, as well as some people like it. A lot of people won't understand it. But I think the most important thing about music is, as long as you're true to whatever it is you're trying to do, as long as you're not trying to write something for the sake of pleasing somebody, it's good. And lots of people are not going to pay any attention to what it's about. That's okay, it's just my way of expressing myself. Can we expect a new album from The Urbane? We're doing a new one. I've written about seven songs. As I said, a lot of songs on Neon were written when I was very young. It's weird, whenever a band writes a first album, it's a bunch of songs that were written over a long period of time. And you have the opportunity to select these songs too: these are good and these aren't. I mean, it's different now, because all these songs are written this year. And it's a lot better, in terms. I'm a little bit older now. Not much older! And perhaps, it's lot more focused. The guys in Verglas said to me: ‘We're a progressive rock label. Now, there's a limited amount to what we can do’. But the next album is going to be with a different company. At the time, I'm glad we did what we did when we did it. I under-stand a lot of people won't like it, because Verglas is a progressive rock label and they could have trouble to under-stand the fact that it isn't progressive rock. And so I want to do something with it. More on the right side of the market. It's just that you have to find the right thing for the right product. And are you going on tour anytime soon? Well, this keeps coming up. We are going to do some concerts and also in Holland.  As soon as I can time down some dates we'll come over. I'm looking forward to doing it. But there is so much going on at the moment. New Arena album and stuff. I just got to find the right time to do it. I just want it to be better than the last Ur-bane album. I've got so much to do. And I'm a very lazy person as well, which doesn't help me! But, yes, we are going to do some gigs. We have recently done some gigs in London and that was fantastic! We had a really good time. It's been a while since I did some gigs. And it's just the three of us, the whole thing is just so easy. I mean, with Arena, you can imagine, the music is much more complex, you need a lot more concentration. With The Urbane it's just like three chords, a guitar and a bass and drum. The only thing I have to do is sing in tune, really. The next question is a complete different one. What is your thing with aliens? My thing with aliens… err… well… I err… I just like the idea of aliens. Well, I'm not the most religious person. To be absolutely honest with you, I do believe in the possibility of certain things. The thing I find is, it is just too easy to say: ‘Well, this is how it is. And here is God and here is this and that and the other.’ I'm not a religious person. I don't believe in God. But I'm more practical perhaps. I'm very much sitting on the fence on the subject of religion. The concept of people being not alone, no matter if it's religion or not. I wouldn’t like to think that you're on a planet and there is an X amount of billion people, but that can't be all there is to it. And I just like the idea of aliens. And there's actually nothing more to it than that. How do you see yourself ten years from now? Oh God, ten years from now I'll be thirty-six [almost whispers]. I don't know. I don't like to think about it. Sadly, I need to live for the moment. That's the worst thing about it. With the way I was brought up, the whole emphasis was on going to a decent school, learning everything you can, getting decent results and then, planning a career. And unfortunately, I perhaps haven't really embraced that. Because I can't think in these terms. I know what I want, I have a goal, but I can't think in terms of: ‘by the time I am thirty I shall be…’. Because I do what I do and unfortunately it's a slow process. I'm sure a lot of people I went to school with now are in very successful jobs and earning lots of money. But I don't know where I'm going to be ten years from now. Two years ago, I had a little boy. And I was very young at the time. I'm not exactly old now, but it made me think about things like that. And it's not something I like to think about. Because the only thing I keep thinking about is: ‘Oh God, I'm going to be thirty in four years. I don't want to be thirty yet!’ Ten years from now, God, I can't even think one year from now. You can't plan anything. That's the only thing I have learnt. Okay, I'll put it this way: What would you like to be? Until recently I kind of thought that I'd like to be successful in music. But, this tour has been really weird for me. We went to Poland, and after the first gig I came off stage and… all these people. I was surrounded by people for half an hour signing things. I never felt like that before. I mean, everybody likes a certain matter of attention. It's really nice to have attention. But that was just weird. I always thought: ‘Wouldn't it be great to be in the Rolling Stones and you have like loads of people who really like you and you would be really cool.’ It sounds really stupid and selfish of me, perhaps I shouldn't say this, but surrounded by people, it was the first time I really felt uncomfortable. And then, after that, the next gig we did in Poland, when the show was finished, we walked into this club. And everybody from the show was there. So, we walked in and every-body started clapping. It just wasn't real anymore. But, ten years from now, I still want to do something with music. I like writing music. And it sounds very stupid and boring, but I don't know how to do anything else. I don't do anything else. I'd like to be happy ten years from now. Final question. How did you experience this day up until now? It's been weird. I had a bad dream last night, a really weird dream. I won't go into it, but I woke up and I felt really bad about myself. It was the first time I felt uncomfortable. And today, well, I can tell you something, when I go back home I will be co-pletely normal again. I have my little boy and that's it. Me and my little boy. It's going to be so normal. And the thing about being on tour is, it's not normal. You get up at stupid times and the whole thing is focused on the evening and the gig. In normal life, you expect to get up in the morning, and you're supposed to do a series of things, and you go to bed, etc. The whole tour thing is so extreme. You get up in the morning, and you hang around in the tour bus and you go and eat something you wouldn't normally eat at home. You go through the day, and it's like twiddling your thumbs, read a book whatever. Then you do the gig in the evening and that's it. The whole thing is focused on the evening. And today, more than ever, you feel the pressure is so great. Because the whole thing today is completely focused around Arena, which is weird. I find it so strange. It's not real. It's very flattering, but I'm discovering Arena is on such a small scale. I can't imagine if I was in U2 or something, I'd probably have gone mad! Today is a very intense day, with lots of people running around. And everybody wants to make sure that everything is happening okay. It feels really special, which is cool. I just hope I play okay. Well, I'm out of questions! So, do you have anything you'd like to say? Yeah, I would like to say something. I never take anything for granted, ever. I'll tell you what it is: we go on a tour and we do gigs and people promote these gigs. But it's a bit different when the people promoting the gigs actually love the music that you do. And you notice the difference. And that's the weird thing. I mean, we just show up and everything is organised. There's a schedule and everything is as it should be. People just have made so much effort. That's another weird thing. That anybody would want to go so far out of their way to make something right so that somebody can have a good time. It sounds really humble and all that, I'm not being funny. That just seems really weird to me. That anyone would want to go so far to make sure everything related to that band runs smoothly. It's very flattering. It certainly means a lot to me. I never take anything for granted, ever. I really do appreciate it. The most important thing is that everybody still remembers that we are just people and everyone who would go out of their way for us is just cool. And that's all I want to say… By: Hanneke Beers