Spoon

By Jeff Royer

Photos: press

“Oh, man. You’re dead!”

To see him on stage, you might not expect Spoon bassist Rob Pope to be the aggressive, threatening type. But question the veteran indie rocker’s foosball abilities, and you’re in for a world of hurtin’.

“I talk a good game,” he says with a goofy growl, “and I can back it up.”

Fortunately, outside the context of table soccer, Pope is as amicable and non-confrontational as you might expect from a member of the world’s most invisible band.

Seventeen years into their career, Spoon are the biggest band nobody knows. The Austin, Texas, indie rockers have twice cracked the Billboard Top 10 (most recently with Transference, which debuted at #4 in January). They’ve served as musical guests on Saturday Night Live. They regularly sell out venues around the world as the champions of literate, live-wire college rock.

Yet the fact remains that the band members frequently need badges to get into their own after-parties. They are faceless, a ghost ship silently sailing the seas of pop culture. And that’s just fine with Pope, who, after spending his formative years in legendary “emo” band The Get Up Kids, is most comfortable flying just under the radar.

In anticipation of Spoon’s September 11 show at The Forum in Harrisburg, Fly Magazine tracked down the fierce foosballer (the band includes a table on its rider) to talk about musical infallibility, the act of selling out and what it’s like to be anonymously famous.

Fly Magazine: You joined Spoon just before the making of the “breakthrough” album [2007’s Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga]. Can you talk about what the overall experience was like of stepping into a band just before the explosion?
Rob Pope: I joined the band and immediately started working with them in the studio, before I was playing shows. I’d seen Spoon play a handful of times before I joined the band and I was very aware of them, but I didn’t really have a gauge for what success was to come. I wasn’t concerned with Soundscan numbers and didn’t really know how big the band was. It became very apparent to me once the record was done that this could be a very big thing. It did really well. It was a really cool experience. I did stuff that I never thought I would ever do in my life, playing on Saturday Night Live and playing some really massive shows.

FM: Do you think the success impacted the band in any way?
RP: It’s hard to say. We really don’t sit around and talk about our own success. I would say it probably hasn’t affected us that much. The way the band has grown over the last decade or longer, it’s been a very slow build. That kind of trajectory does not bother us whatsoever. We’re not looking to suddenly become a massive arena rock band. I’m not saying that wouldn’t be nice [laughs], but we don’t sit around and plot how we’re going to accomplish that.

FM: When talking about what you wanted to inject into the follow-up album, Transference, you’ve used the phrase “human quality.” Can you tell me what that means to you and why it was important?
RP: A lot of it was based on the fact that we were starting with [singer/guitarist Britt Daniel’s] demos. The more we got attached to those, the more we thought it was a smarter idea to use them, as opposed to going back into a studio with a producer who would try to change it. There’s something magical about hearing the rough ideas, or hearing the first take of it. Far too often in contemporary music, you don’t hear that anymore. Everything is so labored over and so processed and recorded in Pro Tools and edited. You kind of lose the feeling that it was created by humans. Ultimately, we wanted it to sound kind of rough and to sound kind of ugly and be a little more right in your face and tougher than our previous record.

FM: It must be crazy for you after the years of house shows and club tours with The Get Up Kids to sidestep into a situation like this.
RP: I wouldn’t have it any other way. Some of the best memories I have playing music are to 15 people in a basement. I think the other guys came up the same way when they first started touring as Spoon. So we all have an understanding of the punk rock DIY scene.

FM: On the flipside of all of this, I read that you have trouble getting into your own after-parties since nobody knows what the band looks like.
RP: People are always shocked when I tell them what band I play in. They wouldn’t know the name of a member of the band. But I’m completely comfortable with that. Britt gets recognized here and there – or as we like to say, rock-ognized. I’m fine with some kind of anonymity.

FM: People get so out of breath praising Spoon records, almost to an embarrassing degree. What’s it like to be infallible?
RP: [laughs] I don’t think we’re infallible. The press reaction for the band for the past 10 years has been insane. But again, we really try not to let it affect the way we operate or the way we think about creating songs or what shows we’re going to play or just the way our band operates. But it is very nice. Every now and then we do pat ourselves on the back.

FM: It really is such a rare thing to have both commercial and critical success. That just doesn’t happen unless you’re, like, Radiohead or Wilco.
RP: We’ve definitely tried to make really smart decisions and not try to “sell out,” as people would say, but at the same time, try to make sure that people are able to hear our music. That’s important. “Selling out” is such a ridiculous concept. I think that anybody that slaps a price tag on anything could be considered a sellout. But it is art-as-commerce.

FM: What do you think selling out would look like for you?
RP: If suddenly Spoon was in a McDonald’s commercial or something, doing something that compromises our own morals.

FM: You’re an official rock and roll lifer. What is it about this type of existence that you find attractive?
RP: I’ve thought about this a lot in the last couple of years, mainly because I have been so active in touring and basically just living from a tour bus or airplane to a recording studio. I was pretty much homeless for a year and a half. Everything I own is in storage. It just seems like the right thing right now. It would be silly to pass up an opportunity like this to settle into some kind of domestic life.

When I started playing music, the ultimate goal was to go to Europe, and I think I’ve been to Europe five times this year, and probably over 20 times in my lifetime playing music at this point. It’s kind of exceeded all expectations.  It’s the best job in the world.