Frank Turner performs songs from 'Undefeated' in The Current studio
by Mac Wilson
June 01, 2024
Frank Turner released his tenth studio album, Undefeated, on May 3 of this year, but just a couple weeks earlier — on Record Store Day, specifically — Turner found himself in the Twin Cities where he worked a shift and played a show at the Electric Fetus in Minneapolis, where he played a number of songs from the then-forthcoming record.
The following day, Turner visited The Current studio where he performed three songs from Undefeated and then stuck around for a chat with The Current’s Mac Wilson. Watch and listen to the performances above, and watch the interview below. Just below that, find a transcript of the interview.
Interview Transcript
Mac Wilson: Hello friends, my name is Mac Wilson. I am here in The Current studio and we have a very special guest, Mr. Frank Turner. Hello, Frank.
Frank Turner: Hi, how you doing?
Mac Wilson: I'm doing well. So my bosses told me beforehand, they said, "This is embargoed. You can't tell anybody that Frank Turner is coming in."
Frank Turner: OK.
Mac Wilson: I'm like, is Frank working for the CIA or something? Why can't I tell anybody? Turns out it's because you were doing a secret deal out at the Electric Fetus for Record Store Day.
Frank Turner: Yes, indeed I was. I mean, it should also be said that if I was working for the CIA, I wouldn't tell you.
Mac Wilson: That's true. You could still be doing it.
Frank Turner: It's possible. I mean, it's an exciting idea. Anyway, no. So yeah, so I'm over in this fine country of yours for a promotional trip I have, as we speak, a new record imminent, and I am running around telling everybody about it. Shaking babies and kissing hands, as they say, or the other way around. But yeah, so I was in New York, and I'm going to be in Los Angeles. And there was a weekend in between that happened feature Record Store Day, and I had to fly over Minneapolis, so I thought I would — I mean, I actually got on a plane that stopped here, I didn't bail — but...
Mac Wilson: Like in The Great Muppet Caper.
Frank Turner: Exactly.
Mac Wilson: That's what they do. They said, "OK, everybody out for London," and then they throw them out the side of the airplane.
Frank Turner: That was pretty much exactly how I got here! But you know, I needed, you know, there was a record store to be at on Record Store Day, Electric Fetus is such a great store. They've always been kind and generous to me in the past. So actually, they they got me in to work a shift yesterday, was kind of the deal, which initially, I think was a joke, and then it sort of got more serious. And then I showed up at 7:45 in the morning, which is the time of day I see occasionally from the other end of the telescope, if you know what I mean. And they gave me a staff shirt, and I was packing boxes in the warehouse. And, you know, I got a small cut on my finger. Like it's the most honest day's work I've done in about 20 years.
Mac Wilson: Do you remember what you cut it on?
Frank Turner: A piece of cardboard.
Mac Wilson: Oh, OK. I was gonna say maybe it was some like, a unique piece of vinyl that you'd remember quite...
Frank Turner: Oh, yeah, sure. They had a, they, yes! I cut it on an $800 Beatles first album.
Mac Wilson: There you go. Yeah. A couple of those—
Frank Turner: Which I was trying unsuccessfully to steal.
Mac Wilson: A couple of those came out like for Record Store Day. They did reissues of some of the singles, I want to say "I Want to Hold Your Hand" or something.
Frank Turner: Right. Yes. But it was it was great. I played a show. It was fun. It was sort of, I mean, [This Is] Spinal Tap has kind of ruined lots of things for musicians — well, given lots of musicians the fear about certain setups — and like, doing an install thing that you're announcing on the day and all this kind of thing. It's like, "Ah, man, I'm gonna be sat here with Artie Fufkin from Polymer Records telling me that he did too much promotion." But actually, like a whole bunch of people showed up. Somebody came from Iowa, which I believe to be far away.
Mac Wilson: Somebody got the memo for the surprise show ahead of time that they were able to make it up from Iowa.
Frank Turner: We sort of stopped pussyfooting around the issue at about, sort of, 9, 10 in the morning, and I put up a picture of me at Electric Fetus and said, "Come hang."
Mac Wilson: So Frank, have you worked in record store at any point in your life?
Frank Turner: I have, very briefly. I'm, well, I was thinking about this yesterday, I worked in a record store at the time when it was more CDs and vinyl, as this would have been in the 90s. And it was a — I don't know if you guys had this over here — they'd have the cases out on the racks, but the actual CDs were in sleeves behind the counter in a kind of library setup to stop shoplifting, I guess. So somebody would come up with a pile of cases, and then your job was to go and find the CDs to go in the cases before you rang them up.
Mac Wilson: Yeah, the ones that I would shop at in like the 2000s, like the the used places would do that. Not like the new ones. But like, the secondhand shops. They would do that.
Frank Turner: Yeah, sure. I mean, so yeah, I worked for a little while in a store doing that in London. Not for very long. I don't think I was very good at it.
Mac Wilson: I worked in a video store. We're talking about obsolete media, whether CDs or like, literal VHS, I was there as part of like the VHS to DVD transition in the year 2000.
Frank Turner: Right, yeah, yeah.
Mac Wilson: So that's another one of those that it only takes place at a certain point in history.
Frank Turner: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I was, YouTube has filled me with rage for the simple reason that when I was a teenager, I used to trade VHS's internationally like, and you know, I knew a guy who had a machine that converted PAL to NTSC and all this kind of thing, different formats of VHS's, and I used to collect obscurantist hardcore band live footage. And now it's all on YouTube, thereby invalidating vast swathes of my adolescence. No, that sounds...
Mac Wilson: So it is all on the cloud somewhere. Have you heard about the people who, like, it's their goal in life to collect as many of the Jerry Maguire VHS's as possible? Like there's only a finite number of them out in the universe, and it's their goal to get as many of them in their possession at one time as possible. I think they have like thousands of them.
Frank Turner: I mean, that raises more questions than it answers for me, I'll say.
Mac Wilson: Well, why wouldn't you do something like that?
Frank Turner: Do you do that?
Mac Wilson: I do not. But there's a brewery that I go to in Wisconsin where they have an entire wall, probably like this, and it's all VHS's and they have multiple Titanics, I know.
Frank Turner: OK.
Mac Wilson: They have a couple Jerry Maguires, too.
Frank Turner: Wow. That seems very strange to me. I have a box of VHS's in the basement. Not the VHS's, but just the multiple copies of the same thing. Like, I mean, each to their own. It's a big universe.
Mac Wilson: But that's what Taylor Swift is doing. She put out four versions of the new record. I mean, each one has a different bonus song, so theoretically, there are going to be people out there who have four different copies of the same Taylor Swift. So maybe it's the same sort of thing. Yeah? Have you listened to the new record yet?
Frank Turner: Maybe. I am something of a Swiftie. I have listened to bits of the new record, yes, not entirely the whole thing.
Mac Wilson: There's a lot of it.
Frank Turner: There is, right. I mean, you know, time, I'm a busy man.
Mac Wilson: Well, that's, that's just exactly it. Like we're all very, very busy. And it's like, OK, here's 16 songs at 11 o'clock at night, then two hours later, surprise, here's another 15. Like, there's only so much that you can come up with.
Frank Turner: Yeah, absolutely. But I mean, I think that she's a, she is the, a remarkable artist and writer of her generation, and all this kind of thing. And I think that, saying this doesn't imply that anyone has to like Taylor Swift, but they're sort of, the kind of the denigration of her bonafides as it were, is at a certain point, self-evidently misogynistic. It's like people say stuff about her that they don't say about male equivalent pop stars, although it should be noted, there aren't any, because she's completely in a league of her own at this point. But I think she's a great writer. I went to see the Eras film with my wife at the cinema, and there's a bit in that where she plays "You're on Your Own, Kid" solo at a piano in front of 80,000 people. And that's just a mic-drop moment. That's a serious artist doing something impressive.
Mac Wilson: Frank, working in music now, I mean, I'm sure you field questions fairly often about Taylor Swift. She's the most famous person in the world, and you probably hear about her music a lot. And at the same time, you've got to sort of see like, the rich get richer, and everybody else is sort of left behind as we've seen more and more musicians talk about the perils of stuff like Spotify, where other artists get left behind like that. Like, I'm not gonna say, "Well, is this happening to you?" But at the same time, what observations do you have in your own career having seen this?
Frank Turner: Well, I mean, it's an interesting question. I would say first of all, I sort of started engaging with the kind of above ground music industry in about 2003, which was after the whole Napster thing. So like, every single day I've been in the music industry, everyone's been running around with their shirts over their heads and their hair on fire screaming that it's all about to end. And that's just been a constant over the last 21 years.
So I'm kind of, you know, the sort of, there's a kind of sort of implied mythical kind of stasis of "Before Time," that I've never really experienced firsthand. So I take it all kind of with a pinch of salt to a degree. And I guess what I would say is that, like, I'm a musician first and foremost; I'm more interested in music than I am in industry. You know what I mean? Obviously, the industry part matters to me and my life and all the rest of it. But my friend Franz, who's a very smart man, Franz Nicolay, he's great writer, he, he had a wonderful point he made, which is that sort of from the beginning of human culture, until about 1946, if you're a musician, you made your living by playing, on the one hand, or by being in some form or another, like a court musician, like a sponsored musician. Those were the two options. From the kind of mid ‘40s through till about 2000, there's this bizarre sidebar where you can make a living by recording 45 minutes of music, and then just staying home. Do you know what I mean? Like, I was, I mean, I'm always fascinated by the fact Led Zeppelin toured at a loss for their entire career because they made so much money out of selling vinyl that they did, it didn't matter. They're playing stadium shows all over the world and they're losing money. It's crazy. So, you know, so there was this weird period of time when, as a musician, there was this prospect that you could record, write songs, record them, and then make a living kind of at home by just hanging out, which has its pluses and its minuses. But essentially, I think the point is, that's now come to an end again, and in many ways, it's just a reversion to type. If you want to make a living as a musician, you're either playing shows or you're sponsored by somebody in some way, shape, or form, both of which are respectable ways of making a living, actually. But I mean, you know, for me, I'm a touring musician. And in some ways, it's easy for me to say all of this, and I should recognize that privilege for the simple reason that my idols have always been Black Flag and Johnny Cash, and you know, the people who tour hard, you know, who play a lot of shows. But I count my shows, I count them both overall and kind of yearly, and every year when I get to the end, I sort of subtract the number from 365 and wonder what I was doing with the rest of my life. You know, I love playing it's a huge privilege, and that's how I pay my bills and always has been and probably always will be.
Mac Wilson: So a show that maybe you tally on your list was the Electric Fetus show.
Frank Turner: Yes!
Mac Wilson: That gig you had yesterday. What was the percentage of new songs from the new record as opposed to stuff from your back catalogue?
Frank Turner: Oh, well, because it was kind of, you know, the in-store performances are there to promote the new record, and it was free, so no one can ask for their money back. I played pretty much all new songs yesterday, actually. I mean, I'm at that point in a cycle where I'm super excited about the new material. You know? I've been working on it for a long time. I think it's good. Otherwise, I'd still be working on it. And I want to share it with people. So I played a lot of new stuff yesterday.
Mac Wilson: So one of the new songs that we've been playing on The Current is "Girl From The Record Shop," which is funny, it all comes together.
Frank Turner: I know!
Mac Wilson: The new record, the record shop, and "Girl From The Record Shop." So is this autobiographical, Frank?
Frank Turner: It is! I sort of had to explain to my wife at length. It's, I started going to record shops when I was about 14 years old. And it was pretty significant for me, pretty life-changing for me, basically because I got into — my parents don't believe in drum kits or electrification, when it comes to music. So like their taste of music sort of peters out in about 1911, I want to say, which is fine, but like, essentially, you know, and then I got into metal, kind of slightly randomly, I got into Iron Maiden, and they had zero frame of reference for this. And like, I mean, I told my parents who the Beatles were, I'm not even kidding.
That's a true story. And like, so... So my journey through music was pretty sort of autodidact, shall we say? You know, I was teaching myself, and it was quite sort of like, theoretical for quite a long time. You know, I'd get a copy of a music magazine and read every word in it. And then maybe mail order another Iron Maiden cassette, or whatever it might be. And I didn't have any friends who liked this kind of music, I didn't have any field of reference for it, I didn't really know anything about it at all. And then, I mean, there were kind of mainstream record stores in the U.K., we had HMV and Our Price, but there was also independent stores as well. And I went to an independent store, and it was full of records by these bands that I'd been reading about, but it was also full of people, other real human, flesh-and-blood people, at least one of whom was a cute girl wearing a Bikini Kill T-shirt behind the counter, who, in point of fact, I never spoke to ever. I may have stammered in her general direction, like a 14-year-old would, but like, we never communicated in any meaningful way.
Mac Wilson: Well, I gotta say, Frank, when I worked in a video store, I did not meet any women doing that. That's a line of work where a lot of beautiful women came through.
Frank Turner: Fair enough.
Mac Wilson: Fair enough. There was a song that you played a few moments ago in The Current studio, where you mentioned John Otway, and you said, "Well, that's one that everybody is going to need to go Google on their own." So can you dive into a little bit of what the reference is behind that one?
Frank Turner: Yeah. So John Otway I encountered because I played some shows with him maybe 15 years ago, and he's a lovely guy. And John Otway, he had a single in, I think 1979, called "Really Free," that was big, big hit in the U.K., and he went on a TV show called The Old Grey Whistle Test, which was the show that everybody watched. And during his performance on The Old Grey Whistle Test, he attempted to stand on his guitar amp to play a solo and fell off it and landed astride the guitar amp, wearing some very tight jeans, and very visibly crushed what you and I might refer to his crown jewels, and this was enormously famous. And because the British are a cruel and sarcastic people, he was very famous as the guy who hit himself in the balls on telly, basically. And essentially, sort of should have just, he should just be a pub quiz question answer, you know, but he kept going. He loves what he does. And he has been touring since 1979. And he has released books, he's done world tours. He has a small but very dedicated fan base. They were the first people to game the charts, by which I mean, they got him a single by him releasing like 20 formats, and then everybody buying 20 copies each kind of thing, and thereby getting in the charts, which is now a thing that people do quite regularly. But his gang was the first to pull that off in the mid 2000s.
But yeah, so he's a, he's just character, I mean, national treasure, I suppose might be the word. And he's written lots of great songs. And he is still on tour, and the song "Show People" is about... It's about identity and it's about community, for me, personally. You know, I felt very alienated from everything growing up. And then over time, it's like, oh, there is this kind of weird shadow community of people who either play music or carry amps around or whatever. And we all wear black jeans, and we have carabiners on our belt. And we know, you know, the best place to sleep in Heathrow Terminal 5, and just, you know, it's a sort of international touring community of people. And that's, that's where I feel that I belong and where I fit in. And John Otway is one of those people, too.
Mac Wilson: So Frank Turner, as you've gotten out on the road over the last few years after everything that we've been through over the last few years, we can expect that your live show is a mix of the new material, and favorites from your back catalogue as well. Are there any of those that have taken on sort of a new resonance where you're like, "All right, I finally get the chance to play this one in a live setting again, and it's everything that I hoped that it would be." Are there any moments like that that happened in your set that really have stood stood out to you?
Frank Turner: Kind of. I mean, the first thing, the simple act of playing live again has been really something. In the U.K., we had a day that they called Freedom Day, which is a name that I really resent. But anyway, it was the first day when you were allowed to have full-capacity rather than socially distanced live music events, and I played a show that day in London and the atmosphere at that show, I will never forget that show. It was unbelievable. Like, at one point, I kind of just sat down on the stage and everybody just kind of primal scr — it wasn't even like they were cheering me, it was like a primal scream from the audience. You know, everybody was just letting it out. And it was a very intense thing to be in the middle of. So, I mean, obviously, it's not like that every day in 2024, but I do still feel like there is a sense of kind of appreciation in the live arena.
In terms of specific songs, I went through this slightly odd thing of having a bunch of songs that I've written about other things that became sort of like, slightly alarmingly relevant during the kind of lockdown period of the pandemic. So I have a song called "21st Century Survival Blues," which was a sort of flight of fancy about kind of, you know, living in a, living in a survivalist bunker with the person that you care about. But there's a lot of stuff about not going outdoors and stocking up on supplies and all this kind of thing. And in the U.K., when the lockdowns were coming in, it was like, it felt sort of bizarrely prescient, shall we say. So that one's kind of found a new life of its own. But then there's a song called "The Next Storm," which features a line about like, you know, "I don't want to spend the whole of my life indoors," which again, after, because I'm not entirely sure how much lockdown various people had in various parts of the United States.
I did a tour over here in October 2021, which was pretty early doors for getting back on the road over here. And I had a bit that I would say, because there were different kinds of, you know, vaccine requirements or masking requirements or whatever for each state and each show. And I sort of go, you know, "Hey, what about those lockdowns here and those requirements? What do you think about that?" And I go, "Oh, wait a minute, I don't care at all, because it's nothing to do with me," like, "Stop shouting at me because of your local government regulations, please." Anyway, and the bit about talking about lockdowns, the further south through the United States we got, landed less, was less resonant with the audience, because I was like, "Remember the lockdowns?" and you get down to Georgia, and they're like, "No." Which was pretty weird for us. So I don't know what the state, the fine state of Minnesota was doing in terms of looking down.
Mac Wilson: We had a stay-at-home order, but it was not a formal lockdown. I don't know of many places in the U.S. that actually had an official lockdown thing, where we had the stay-at-home order unless you had an essential job, to the point where if we were working here in the studio, we would get like, I don't think it was like, emailed, but like our HR department would make like these certificates that we could have in our car, like in the event that we got pulled over or something, like "What are you doing out of your house?" and you could show it.
Frank Turner: It is all very strange in retrospect now, do you know what I mean? It feels very, very...
Mac Wilson: And of course, you never had to show them, but still, you didn't know. There was, like you say, that uncertainty. You didn't know what the next day would bring.
Frank Turner: Yeah, well, and I mean, there's so much to be said on this. I mean, first of all, there's a, I'm, this is not an original thought to me, but in the U.K., we had a lot of lockdowns, but a lot of people pointed out, it's like "middle class people hid, and working class people brought them food." And it's kind of like, yeah, that's kind of true. But also, like, I think if you look at the overall kind of picture in the world, I think the the lesson of it all for me is that there's not a huge amount that human governance can do to affect a pandemic. Like, it's gonna get you; you might slow it down for a minute, but then it'll catch up. So like, which I think for me, is usefully humbling, that I think that there's not a, you know, our capabilities to affect the natural world are not perhaps as streamlined as some people would like us to believe. Yeah, you've got me thinking about a lot, Frank.
Mac Wilson: Yes, I know. I know! It's literally, like, thinking back over the last four years, like, wow! There's a lot of memories from everything.
Frank Turner: Yeah, totally. And think like, broadly speaking, I'm quite keen to move ahead from that. There is a song on the new record called "Pandemic PTSD," which obviously addresses a lot of the things that we're talking about here. Again, speaking more about the U.K., there's been a lot of damage done to the, to my industry, to live music venues and crew people and all that kind of thing. And there is a small sense, it was a bit kind of like, "Next item on the news agenda now!" And everyone was like, "Oh, really? Like, I'm still thousands of pounds in debt; like, what's going on?" So there is a song addressing that. I mean, broadly speaking, I am keen to move forward with my life and not spend all day, every day, stuck in that pandemic mindset.
Mac Wilson: Well, here we are. We're here in The Current studio with Frank Turner. I'm Mac Wilson. I'm thousands of dollars in debt as well. And we're just, it's a privilege, though, to welcome Frank Turner in. Every day is a Freedom Day when Frank Turner takes the stage, and it's a pleasure to have you in The Current studio.
Frank Turner: Thank you for having me.
Mac Wilson: A longtime friend of the station. Thank you for coming by town, not only to play your show — it's not embargoed anymore, hence why we're talking about it.
Frank Turner: Hooray!
Mac Wilson: And we're looking forward to seeing you many days in the future.
Frank Turner: Yes, indeed. I'm excited to say that I'm coming back through the fine Twin Cities — god, I'm well trained — on the first of June at the Uptown Theater. It is very nearly sold out. Well done, Minnesota. Gonna be the second people to sell out a show after Portland, Oregon. But after that, we'll be back again. I love this place. It's great. It always looks after me.
Mac Wilson: Frank, thank you again for stopping by.
Frank Turner: My pleasure.
Songs Performed
00:00:00 Girl From The Record Shop
00:01:40 Show People
00:05:25 Letters
All songs from Frank Turner’s 2024 album, Undefeated, available on Xtra Mile Recordings / Polydor.
Musician
Frank Turner – guitar, vocals
Credits
Guest – Frank Turner
Host – Mac Wilson
Producer – Derrick Stevens
Video – Peter Ecklund
Audio – Josh Sauvageau
Graphics – Natalia Toledo
Digital Producer – Luke Taylor
External Link
Frank Turner – official site