- What inspired the name of the band and what are your influences?
The name of the band came from the place in London. Chelsea was a happening place in the 70’s, punks would hang out on the Kings Road, go to Malcolm’s shop SEX and buy records from Kensington market. The name of the band summed up the scene and the attitude of the time.
- Has your approach to recording and performing changed over the years?
The recording process is still the same as it was 30 or 40 years ago, the machines have changed from tape to digital but the formula is still the same. It’s like making a cake, we start with the drums laying the foundations then layer bass & guitars on to the tracks which is the icing on the cake. The vocals are usually last to be recorded and are the cherry on the top. For our live show, we’ve always been an active band on stage. All 4 of us across the front of the stage play hard, we’re not ones for just standing there and strumming away, Gene has his iconic stance.
- What sort of things inspire your musical content?
The great thing about Chelsea is we all listen to different stuff so there’s lots of different flavors in there. Collectively as a band we all read from the same page and being a part of Chelsea is a natural thing to us. A lot of people wouldn’t be able to hack what we do but it’s what we do best and we live for that hour on stage. We don’t try and sound or look like anyone else because we areChelsea. We write about things that are going off in the world, how we feel about shit going down and personal things that happen to us. The latest albums SATURDAY NIGHT SUNDAY MORNING and the new one MISSION IMPOSSIBLE were written with lots of collaborations. Nic & James wrote a track together, James & I wrote with Gene, Gene & I wrote tracks, Nic & I wrote a few together, we adopt each others songs and put our own stamp on the tracks.
- What plans do you have for the future?
The new album Mission Impossible was released in October which has been getting some awesome reviews. We just finished a tour promoting the album release in France & Spain and plan to play UK shows in April and tour Europe in June 2018. We have a promo video shoot planned for one of the tracks off the new album and are discussing a possible new live album for next year.