THE WILDHEARTS Guitarist Talks About New Album, Upcoming DVD

OneMetal.com recently conducted an interview with THE WILDHEARTS guitarist Chris "CJ" Jagdhar. A few excerpts from the chat follow:

OneMetal.com: We've heard that there is some filming of THE WILDHEARTS going on for a DVD, what else is going to be on the DVD and when can we expect it to be out?

CJ: What we've basically been doing is having a camera crew with us in the studio, and then we've been recording in this old house for the past three/three and a half weeks, with the crew with us all of the time, and we all went straight for three weeks which is really odd for us, and erm … it's the first time we've ever recorded straight. What I mean by straight is, none of us are drinking, none of us are smoking cigarettes, none of us are missing, none of us are wrecked, and we did this whole album just kind of pure. We've had a camera crew with us and its all been a bit strange. Basically, I mean, we've got shows coming up in Japan, in Europe, the U.S., and we're going to have camera crews with us through next year. We're going to dig up footage from ever since the band started in 1988, so we've got footage going back over the past eighteen years, and we're basically going to have this huge DVD spanning our career. A lot of it is pretty much car-crash television, yeah, and we thought it was about time. We had that thing come out at Scarborough Castle, which has nothing much at all to do with us, signed a contract and it all went wrong on the day, and since then whenever it's come out, it's just been sh*t basically. We thought it was about time we put a proper DVD out there, and not a concert, it's a kind of documentary and history of the band. It's a big project.

OneMetal.com: Do you think that THE WILDHEARTS will ever be laid to rest?

CJ: The really strange thing is when we got back together five weeks ago, we went to the rehearsal studios, Ginger recorded a bunch of demos which we all thought were ok, and then we basically agreed to go into a rehearsal studio for eight days, and re-write all of the songs. We all turned up, and we had just got our new bass player, from Boston, I was in London, Ginger came down from Newcastle and Ritchie lives in York, and we all kind of met in London, but didn't know what was going to happen. We spent eight days re-writing the whole album, and well, it sounds great, we've done all the music, we've done about seventeen songs, there are two nine minute songs on the album, and I can safely say that it's the most musical, most technical album that we've ever done … and as I've said before, we were all straight. The guitars have to be heard to be believed, some of the stuff is so heavy that it makes you feel sick, and then some of it is so pop that it makes you wanna go out and dance. Our last album, a lot of people said that it was too commercial, too poppy and they really wanted to hear the riffs, if they wanted riffs, once they hear this they'll be sick of it, absolutely sick of it.

OneMetal.com: What are the plans for the next Wildhearts album? And when can we expect to see it?

CJ: It's kind of penciled in to be released in April, and then we are going to tour the U.K. I get back from Japan in a couple of days; we re-group on the 7th of January, in a place called Tutbury Castle, which is where we'll do our vocals. It's reputed to be the most haunted castle in Europe, and myself, Ginger and Scott — our bass player — we all have major paranoia. I've seen ghosts since I was a child and although I've seen them I don't believe in them, but no one has been next to me before. No band has recorded in this castle and it's owned by the Queen, and I believe that Mary Queen of Scotts was executed there, along with about another two-and-a-half thousand people. There are so many ghosts that you can't number them all, and they're all angry ghosts, and we've done a deal with the caretaker, and especially the Queen's people, and they're allowing us to go in there, for two weeks to record our vocals, and not only that but we've got the keys to the whole place, and we can open up the bedrooms which the general public haven't been allowed in, because of the weird stuff going on in there. The first night the caretaker is basically going to show us all of the places which are the most haunted, and then they're going to leave us for about ten days, and we've all had to sign disclaimers saying that if anything happens to us, if any of us are killed, or we come out of there with mental problems, we can't sue the estate, and we're taking down extra recording equipment and cameras, to see if we can pick up anything interesting. It's almost like an experiment at the same time, the ghosts don't know what they're letting themselves in for, our album, in places, it really, really does take off, and I think we could probably rid the castle of ghosts. We're all really looking forward to it, and the deal is that no one can leave. It doesn't matter what happens, none of us can leave, so erm… yeah. It's amazing; a lot of people are saying that they don't know how we can do it. The thing is that it's quite personal for me because I do want to see once and for all if there actually are ghosts, cause I just have so much trouble, with seeing things which, even as a young adult I still used to see things, and I've had it with a couple of houses that I've lived in, which had to be blessed and stuff, and it hasn't really happened for a while now, and I'm kind of intrigued. But I do know that the caretaker is on that show "Most Haunted", the girl on the show, well she is the caretaker of the castle, and she's the one showing us around. She is also bringing in a sword which has been used for execution, and she is going to lay it in the middle of the great banqueting hall, where we're meant to sleep…

Read the entire interview at OneMetal.com.