Kasabian’s Serge Pizzorno on an Oasis reunion: ‘It’s deep. It’s family. It would be great to have reconciliation’
“It’s a very Kasabian thing,” he says, explaining that the one-time Glastonbury headliners are at their best combining ludicrous ambition with a belief in the communal power of music.The bar is so low for violent men they are ‘to be given credit’ when they admit their guilt “It’s about having those moments, man, where you’re on someone’s shoulders,” he says. “You turn and you see kids you’ve grown up with. You’re there together, the time is now, the sun’s coming down and the music’s great. You’re in that level.”
Meighan had always stood slightly apart from the rest of Kasabian – which is why attempts by the UK press to paint “Tom and Serge” as the East Midlands’ answer to“It was written off of doing these huge shows and a tough time to be in this band and coming through that stronger and bigger than ever,” he says. “And then being in a studio being excited by music and the idea of live shows.”
The band didn’t try to hide their influences. But they were never paint-by-numbers Britrockers, and they achieved deserved – if belated – critical acclaim with West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum, a meditation on the connection between art and madness that brimmed with slamming riffs and huge, lurching grooves. It was one of the best LPs of 2009. Even the begrudgers came around: a five-star Uncut review heralded Pizzorno’s “whomping monster-rock” and his mix of “bounding riffs and rock-electro”.
The fun, he says, came in subverting the expectations of the press as Kasabian expanded ever outwards from dance-infused indie into prog, electro and Krautrock. “We call it the Trojan Horse, where you’re always trying to get through as much of the weirdness of possible – but it can still be sung on the terrace,” says Pizzorno.