Rockezine.com interview with Green Lizard on Dec 04, 2002

with Brian Tjon Ajong, on Dec 04, 2002


		The new record shows a matured Green Lizard. Brian explains. We’ve certainly developed ourselves. We’re more self-assured in the studio these days, so we allow ourselves to be more daring. The songwriting has changed as well. On our earlier records we tended to look for more complicated solutions, whereas now we try to keep it a bit simpler; we look at what the song needs.
		The biggest part of the album was written by Remy (singer/guitarist – Walter). He wrote the basics and together the band completed it. We’ve got our own little studio with Pro-Tools where we can experiment and all. The cool thing about the way we work is that you can record a basic idea, burn it on a CD, and take it home to work on.
		Brian is not the sort of person to proclaim the usual ‘everybody loves the new album’ chitchat. The reactions to the record are mixed actually. Some people think it’s a step forward, others think it’s a step back.
		Rumor has it that an American record company has shown serious interest in Green Lizard. Brian: That’s true. We were featured on a compilation album released by the Dutch Rock & Pop Institute (a Dutch organization that supports bands from Holland) and that triggered some interest. We were going to play in the US but due to certain circumstances we haven’t been able to go yet. To be continued, though!
		At the moment Green Lizard are signed to Sony Holland. Brian: It’s working out very well. For now, we’re focused on Holland, but the record is out in Belgium as well, and we’re talking about other countries. As you know the music business is slow when it comes to international cooperation. We think there’s a lot of ground to be covered with the new record and we want to push it as far as we can. It’s been out for three months.
		Not every new song the band wrote made it onto the album. A year ago we started writing for the new album and it went very smoothly. When we got to pre-production we had about 25 songs, but not every one of them was selected. Some songs are just better than others, some just didn’t have that nice feel to it that others did have, you know.
		We’re not sure whether we’re going to use the rest of the material in any way. Who knows, maybe, in a few months we’ll have another go at the songs.
		Henry Rollins contributed to the album with some powerful guest vocals. The producer (Cliff Norrel) had worked with Rollins before. The last time they worked together he played our previous record and apparently Rollins liked it. When we were recording the new album we got stuck on two of the songs. Someone said “What if we asked Henry Rollins to do them?”. Cliff asked him and he did it.
		Cliff Norrel is a pretty ‘big’ producer and the band enjoyed working with him. Sony introduced us and we really connected. He’s very professional and because he’s worked with so many great artists you can more easily accept comments and ideas coming from him rather than from a less professional producer.
		He wasn’t like, “I’m the hot shot producer and here’s what you’re going to do”. It was a very spontaneous collaboration. We set the whole thing up in such a way that it was easy for us to work out each band member’s individual parts. Although Remy writes most of the basic song structures, we all work out our own parts and then finish the arrangements together.
		With album titles such as Identity and New Born, Green Lizard seems to be a pretty serious band. Identity was our first full length album, so it was a statement: “This is us, this is what we do”, and New Born stands for the change in our songwriting process. Look at it this way: the material on Identity was what we had already written in the past, whereas with New Born we decided to start from scratch and work on totally new ideas.
		People change as they grow older and I find myself listening to different styles of music nowadays. That is reflected in the music I play. It’s not something that consciously happens, it just happens.
		Three brothers in one band, does that work? We started out as three brothers and two friends, but now everyone has an equal vote in things. Within the band we’re five individuals and outside the band three of us are brothers.
		The set list for this tour mainly consists of new material. We play a lot of new songs and just a couple of old ones. The record has been out for three months and gradually more and more people know the new stuff. At almost every gig there are more people singing along or cheering when we start a song. Not only the fans had to get used to the new material, so did we. There are some weird songs on the new album, I’ll admit, and people aren’t used to hearing stuff like that from us.
		We toured for two years with our previous record, so we were really in for something new. We play a couple of personal favorites from the previous album and a couple of songs that are considered favorites among the fans.
		With a new record out the band members are confident about the future. We’re focusing on the record now. We’re trying to get it out in more countries and I’m convinced that it will happen. I think it’s a great album; it can compete with any other record.
(Walter de Korver)