musicOMH: What do you think of The Divine Comedy's success? How's it changed you?
Bryan: No surprise, I suppose. It was bound to happen eventually, you know? If you throw enough shit some of it's gonna stick! (laughs) I've always known Neil was gonna be successful. Actually I've known that for about ten years or so. I've known him since I was about 16.

musicOMH: The two of you were at the same school?
Bryan: Yeah, we were from about the age of 13 but I didn't really know him that well for a few years, but I've known him for a long time and I always knew he'd do okay.

musicOMH: How would you sum up Neil Hannon?
Bryan: (pause) Obsessed! Richer than me! He gets most of the money, but that's fair enough, isn't it?

musicOMH: Because he's the writer?
Bryan: Yeah.

musicOMH: Do you write your own music?
Bryan: Yeah, I sorta write on my own, on piano, maybe guitar - I don't usually talk about it that much. I'm hoping to get that together maybe, a bit more, but The Divine Comedy is all-consuming. I haven't had a day off in weeks; I always have to do something, you know? I find it hard to do anything else which is kinda frustrating. I'm not really a bass player. I don't sit at home and play the bass; I sit at home and play the piano, you know, not very well, but that's what I do and it is quite frustrating not being able to do that as much as I'd like to.

"One day you might just want to stay in bed but you can't - you've got to get up and do it all again."
- Bryan Mills on touring

musicOMH: Was the piano your first instrument?
Bryan: No! I played guitar from when I was about 14 or 15 and I only took the bass up when I joined this band, you know, I never really played it much before at all and I've only started learning the piano in the last couple of years which is why I'm really into it at the moment. It's something else to learn and new. I've always tried to learn something new; you've got to move on a bit. I feel I've cracked the bass, I can play it well enough and I don't like people who play too well anyway!

musicOMH: Does Neil play too well?
Bryan: No, he plays just right. (laughs - brief interruption while "a big jar of lager" is ordered)

musicOMH: Where do you see yourself in five years' time?
Bryan: Er - I've never actually thought about it!

musicOMH: It is a question I have trouble answering...
Bryan: I know! I don't know why I'd know any better than you! Erm, what'll I be doing... quite possibly not doing this. I mean, I've been doing it for four years now and I'm not gonna do it forever, but I still might be, you know. I mean, unfortunately it has got to the point where it is taking over what I do and what I'm all about so much that I have to do it, you know? It is also how I earn my money, and that's pretty important.

musicOMH: Damned good way of earning your crust though, isn't it? I mean, people dream of earning a living doing what you guys do.
Bryan: Oh yeah, it is great of course, but they don't know what it is really like - it is hectic. But everyone's life is, you know? I mean I complain when I have to work five days in a week but that's what most people do! I sulk if I have to get up early, but that's what everybody has to do, so we're all a bit spoilt really. (laughs)

musicOMH: Neil was quoted as saying that his reason for always wearing a suit when he's performing is that it is his job and he wears a suit to work. But it's surely not all work and no enjoyment?
Bryan: Oh no, I don't think so, but sometimes when you do so many gigs in a row then it is hard to get excited about it every time and if I we're doing gigs that we like, ie. big gigs, or sometimes little ones where we're playing really well and stuff then it is really good fun, but other times you're tired and you still have to give it as much as you can, you know, full welly, although you might not really want to, but it is the nature of the game on the road. One day you might just want to stay in bed but you can't - you've got to get up and do it all again. So sometimes it is work, but it is absolutely the only thing I've ever wanted to do and to a certain extent I've realised my ambitions; but not entirely, not by far, you know. In many ways I've done a lot more than I ever thought I would but I still haven't done everything I'd hoped I would. I'm sort of in between. I'm relatively happy about it, you know, but I don't wake up every day and go; "Yes! I'm doing exactly what I want to do!" - I'm not doing everything I'd like to. There's lots of things I'd like to do. Playing it right in music is so important and it is something that I've always wanted to learn and I suppose I have to an extent been humbled by Neil. He's just naturally very good at it. I've never naturally been a very good musician at all. I still feel like I'm the worst musician in the band and I think I probably am, you know, as far as playing is concerned and my knowledge of musical theory and stuff. I'm still a bit of a lemon! Most bass players are - you get away with it if you're a bass player coz you just play one note at a time, so you don't have to understand what a diminished seventh is, and I don't!

musicOMH: (laughs) Me neither!
Bryan: (laughs) But Neil does!!!

musicOMH: Was The Divine Comedy the first band you were in?
Bryan: No, I was in lots of bands but they were all awful! Ivor (Talbot, The Divine Comedy's guitarist) and I used to be in a heavy metal band. We were the rival band to The Divine Comedy which was already in existence at that stage, but we thought eventually that if we couldn't beat them we'd join them, so we did!

musicOMH: How did you come to join The Divine Comedy?
Bryan: (pause) I asked Neil. I was living in Edinburgh at the time and I just decided that it'd be a good idea. I used to still see Neil when I went home and occassionally up in Edinburgh, if he was in town, he'd give me a ring and we used to hang about a bit; we were sorta mates. And then one day I just thought - there must be more to life than this; what am I gonna do? It just came to me that I'd join The Divine Comedy and I 'phoned Neil up immediately and said, "I've had this great idea! I'm gonna join The Divine Comedy!" and he said, "What're you gonna do?" and I said, "I'm gonna play bass. What do you think?" and he said, "can you play the bass?!", and I said, "yeah!" - even though I couldn't! (laughs) and I got away with it! He said okay! (lav break)

musicOMH: We've had a vote for the best Divine Comedy track ever on this site. What's yours - and since you're in the band, what's your favourite album as well?
Bryan: (laughs) My favourite album is Liberation.

"I was in lots of bands but they were all awful!"
- Bryan Mills

musicOMH: You're not on that, are you?
Bryan: No! (laughs) It's still my favourite though. Favourite song? That's tricky! Tonight We Fly is still most people's favourite but it isn't mine coz I have to sing on it. I love the song but I don't like it when I sing it. I love the record. At the moment I suppose 'Europop' is one of my favourites.

musicOMH: Is that going to be rereleased from the forthcoming album, A Secret History?
Bryan: Its gonna be the B side of The Popsinger's Fear of the Pollen Count...

musicOMH: What about Gin Soaked Boy?
Bryan: That's apparently coming out as well. Two singles from the Best Of... Setanta's getting their money's worth! (laughs) And Europop is the first B side.

musicOMH: Is it the original version?
Bryan: We sorta redid it. Blur sort of pinched Europop for Girls and Boys; or they were certainly influened by it. So I pinched the bassline from Girls and Boys and put it back into 'Europop' - approximately! So we got our own back!

musicOMH: A question from a reader of this site - what's your favourite bass guitar?
Bryan: At the moment I play a Fender Jazz but I did play Music Miles which are supposed to be the best - but I didn't like it very much. If anybody wants to buy mine off me they can! But be warned - they cost a fortune!

musicOMH: Do they get it signed by you?
Bryan: That's extra! (laughs)

"I suppose the golden rule is to try to be good, you know? Spend time to make yourself good and do something that people want to hear..."
Bryan Mills on how to make a success of your music

musicOMH: This question comes from four females and one male; are you single?
Bryan: How do I answer that? (laughs) Yeah, I am.

musicOMH: What do you think of The Divine Comedy's fans?
Bryan: I have a bone to pick with some Irish fans. I'd better not name names, but when we played the Ulster Hall, somebody pinched my shirt!

musicOMH: Stardom's annoying side then?
Bryan: Yeah. That did fucking annoy me actually! And they pinched my belt as well!

musicOMH: To clarify; while they were on?!
Bryan: No, they were off... (laughs) I might've noticed if they'd been on! Whoever it was, they're welcome to them but its not fair! That's my last word on the matter! (laughs)

musicOMH: Irish fans aside, looking at the general, are fans a necessary evil of showbusiness or do you generally not mind the attention?
Bryan: They're just people who are into the music and we're all fans of something, aren't we? I can totally understand where they're coming from, to get really excited about a band. If we happen to be the band that they really love then that's cool; good luck to them.

musicOMH: Can you judge a band's popularity by the number of internet fan sites rather than record sales?
Bryan: Have we got a lot?

musicOMH: 21 at my last count.
Bryan: The amount of records you sell has no bearing on whether you're artistically any good. I suppose the amount of sites has to do with how obsessive your fans are and a lot of our fans are quite obsessive, sort of train-spotter-type people,(laughs), present company excepted! (laughs) You get bands like Suede who sell millions of records and have a hard core following with loads of fanzines, loads of sites, someone told me once. I know they sell a lot more records than we do. They've got the best of both worlds!

musicOMH: Have you ever been an obsessive fan of a band?
Bryan: Oh yeah! I go through phases of loving bands. Right now I'm excited about going to see Built to Spill. Have you heard of them? They're from somewhere in the mid-west. They've been my favourite band for about two years now and I just got completelly obsessed with them. Their album - not the last two but the one before that - is probably my favourite record ever, called There's Nothing Wrong With Love, and it doesn't sound anything like The Divine Comedy's music so people out there probably shouldn't listen to it because they might not like it!

musicOMH: What does The Divine Comedy sound like?
Bryan: (pause) I suppose we don't sound like anyone else. (pause) Although some of it is like Scott Walker, but we're not really involved in any scene or anything and we're not remotely fashionable either. People that listen to us are maybe people who listen to all sorts of things as opposed to liking us because we'd be part of a scene. We're from all over the place. Miggy's Trinidadian. He was born in London but his dad's from Trinidad - of Venezuelan descent - but his mum's English.

musicOMH: And there are now seven members of The Divine Comedy?
Bryan: Yeah, Rob Farrer's our newest member. Anybody who's not seen us in the last year might not know who he is but he's in the back there, playing sonmewhere.

musicOMH: There were lots of special guests on Fin de Siecle too - Dexter Fletcher, Katie Puckrick...
Bryan: They were there because they were all friends of either one of us. Dexter's an old friend of Miggy's - they went to the same school in Muswell Hill. And everybody loves Dexter - he's one of those actors with a babyface! And he's been in loads of really cool films - he was in The Elephant Man, which not a lot of people know (OMH has the video), and now he's really cool again because of the Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels thing. I think probably everybody knows who he is, probably because of Press Gang. But that was a real treat for me. I've known who he was for years and years and got to meet him through the band, which was cool.

musicOMH: Since we're discussing an actor, what's your favourite movie?
Bryan: I've got a few, but I suppose at the moment 2001: A Space Odyssey. Have you seen it?

musicOMH: Yup. Once or twice.
Bryan: I only saw it about a year ago but I'd read the book and another book about the stories that it came from, all the Arthur C Clarke stories that became '001.... Then I read 3001 and the others and finally got to see the movie. I'd just managed to miss it - but its the most beautiful movie ever, you know. It is everything I love about the movies. The story's cool - it is the best science fiction film ever made, much better than Star Wars. It's just mesmerising, beautiful and slow. (mobile phones ringing break)

musicOMH: What was the last movie you went to see?
Bryan: That horror movie... erm, what was that movie that was banned?

musicOMH: The Exorcist?
Bryan: That's it! But that was months ago. I don't go to see movies much because I don't have time but I love movies. I suppose I watch movies at home more.

musicOMH: What's your most essential gadget?
Bryan: (laughs) At the moment I think a phone that worked would be handy (we can testify that Bryan's phone is very bad indeed). I wouldn't mind having a computer either. I wouldn't mind if my camera worked! I wouldn't mind if my movie camera worked - I've broken all my toys! (laughs) I got really excited about films about a year ago and I bought myself a couple of cameras and they all broke on me! My video player doesn't work either.

musicOMH: (laughs) What happened to them all?!
Bryan: I dunno - I just break things! (laughs)

musicOMH: What advice would you give to someone who wanted to earn their crust as a famous musician?
Bryan: I don't know about that because I'm not famous. One could start by finding a friend with a record deal! (laughs) I know lots of people personally who are trying to do music as a life and it is very hard if you're not making any money because then you have to go to work and then you don't really have enough time to do it and of all the people I know who have managed to make a good stab at it are people who have just signed on for ages or gone to college and skived as much as possible. I suppose the golden rule is to try to be good, you know? Spend time to make yourself good and do something that people want to hear. Our first band was just me and all my mates; Ivor, our mate Tizzy... and we just started playing heavy metal songs, so anyone who wants to be a famous musician should go through a bit of heavy metal first - its good training! (laughs)

musicOMH: Have you ever auditioned for a band?
Bryan: Technically I had to audition for The Divine Comedy but I knew I had the job because no-one else wanted it! So I never really had to audition...

musicOMH: How did the Parlophone deal happen?
Bryan: The Setanta deal ran out; well it will do when they get their Best Of... album. It was either re-sign to Setanta or sign to somebody big and so we went and signed to somebody big because that's what you do. These days all the labels are owned by somebody else anyway except for Setanta.

musicOMH: How did Neil get his deal with Setanta?
Bryan: He made some quite good demos when we were at school and Keith (Cullen) from Setanta happened to be one of the people who heard them. Apparently he didn't like them but his girlfriend liked them and she persuaded him to sign a deal! (laughs)

musicOMH: A bit of luck and a bit of setting yourself up to be lucky, then?
Bryan: Yeah - record companies get dozens of demos every week, don't they? And most of them are shit and most don't even get listened to, but Neil was fortunate.

musicOMH: When the band are on TV, you all play but only Neil gets interviewed. Are you happy leaving the fame and glory to him?
Bryan: Yeah, pretty much. They always want to talk to Neil and never want to talk to me, so I'm happy doing something less boring instead. (laughs)

musicOMH: If there was one other musician you'd love to work with, who would it be?
Bryan: Well, we just played with Tom Jones a couple of weeks ago - a Portishead song called All Mine...

musicOMH: That's for Tom's new album, isn't it?
Bryan: Yeah, not ours. Working with Tom was pretty cool. Playing with Ronnie Spector was probably one of the highlights of my life. She's my favourite girl singer ever probably and that was the ultimate, really. The only thing that could top that, maybe, would be to play with Brian Wilson or Joey Ramone.

musicOMH: And after that you get a pipe and slippers and sit in front of a fire?
Bryan: (laughs) Maybe I go and do something else entirely. Playing music and being successful isn't the be-all and end-all.

musicOMH: What would you do to earn your crust if not music?
Bryan: Last thing I did to earn a crust was work in a bar but what I would do now is probably go and get a really easy job off one of my friends; employ a bit of nepotism! (laughs) I'd try and carry on doing music, but to make money I'd try and get something that makes a lot of money for very little effort! (laughs)

musicOMH: Hey, that's my ambition!
Bryan: Exactly - it is everyone's!

musicOMH: What's your best ever gig memory?
Bryan: Ronnie Spector. That was very cool. I sort of shat myself when we started playing with her and when she opened her mouth I just couldn't believe that I was playing with this voice that I love so much. We've done some pretty good gigs - the orchestra gigs ('A Short Album About Love' UK tour); I never thought I'd play with an orchestra. The Robbie Williams gigs were cool as well and some of the ones abroad... playing The Kings Hall and the Ulster Hall - they were cool. Some of the best gigs we've done were in France and Switzerland. When we play in England everybody's nervous because too many people know us. When we're abroad we just go for it; and that's great.

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