Life for Paul Garred is a little less ‘Kook’-ier

Paul Garred opens up about his departure from The Kooks, the difficulties of being in a big band and his work on songwriting with a new, up-and-coming artist.

“Have you ever had issues with groupies?”

“I have a stalker in Japan!” Paul Garred, former drummer of The Kooks, replies. “She’s a nightmare. She follows me everywhere. She’ll get there before I do...no matter where I am!”

Garred appears to be very relaxed and at home as he’s sat cross-legged on my sofa. He admits that his crazy Japanese stalker is “polite, but still a bit terrifying” as he recalls one encounter when she wanted to meet his mum, sister and girlfriend.

Being in a big band, like The Kooks, may seem like the dream job but for many musicians it can be hard to balance out their personal life and their work life. However, for Garred he “found that part quite easy...but...there were moments when it was difficult. It’s quite wholesome to come home and just be normal...” Garred has been in a long term relationship with his girlfriend, Orsolya, and plans on moving from Brighton to central London in the forthcoming months.

Now that his Kooks days are over he feels he can spend more time enjoying himself. Garred claims that compared to his busy lifestyle in the band “it’s almost a complete antithesis” now, “I feel more free and working with Leah [Mason] has just emphasised that”.

There has been much speculation as to what the real reason is behind Garred leaving The Kooks. Some fans say it’s because of an ‘incurable disease’, however it can now be confirmed that this is just a rumour. Garred says that he “really just hurt himself over quite a while”. In the end he had nerve damage to his shoulder which was caused due to a combination of too much drumming and his posture. He claims that “there was pain but it was never an issue of the actual movement...it would be the equivalent of a footballer coming back from a really bad injury and it not being quite right. You know, I don’t think it would be like that I think I could get back to that level at some point, just not yet”.

When the band went back into writing their third record Garred had deteriorated so badly it got to the point where he was going to rehearsal and he “hadn’t slept the night before” because he was so worried “that something was going to flare up again”. Garred confesses that “it wasn’t a good time for me”. There is a sense of sadness in his tone when he says that “it was a group decision”. Garred wishes that it hadn’t happened, but acknowledges that “at the end of the day we’re all mates and it was just not working”.

When asked whether he and the rest of the band are still friends Garred happily replies “very much so”. He recalls back in the early days of The Kooks how they all “lived in and out of each other’s pockets. It’s a real kind of brother thing...you know that’ll always be there”. It’s clear that his departure from the band has had an effect on him but he reassures himself that he’ll keep in contact with all of them and they’re still all good mates.

Garred is a multi-talented musician; when he was in The Kooks he was there “mainly as a drummer and a songwriter second”. Yet now songwriting seems to be his main occupation. During his time in the band he was the brains behind “Seaside”. Composing has always been something Garred has wanted to pursue, but Luke Pritchard – the lead singer of The Kooks – wrote so many good songs that they tended to use his. Some people may find songwriting difficult but Garred finds it “very satisfying”. He begins with a melody or just hums something to begin with and then everything else seems to fall into place. Other music writers begin with the lyrics and then add the tune afterwards; to Garred this concept is out of his world. He loves the way that one song can become the “catalyst for loads of other things...there’s no real rule in music”.

Garred has been playing the drums since he was nine years old. He got a snare drum for Christmas one year and did not have a complete kit until he was 13 and they moved house so there was space to fit a drum kit. He would wait patiently every year for Christmas or his birthday when he would ask for another part. Garred humourously admits that “it’s an expensive hobby”. He starts to reminisce about one festive time in particular when he got a keyboard instead. He describes this choice of present as “awful”. Garred admits that it was left in its box to accumulate dust. However, over the years “it’s worked out pretty well” as he now uses this once neglected instrument as his primary songwriting tool.

Being a musician was not always in the cards for Garred. He confesses that he “was actually going to go into acting...it became a serious idea when I was at school, then at A Level that’s where the point changed”. He didn’t want a real job as he knew he wasn’t really capable of that. Garred likes to “sleep a lot...and can’t really get up early in the morning”. This is something I’m sure many of us can relate to!

When you’re in a successful band you get many perks, like encounters with other great musicians or loads of free stuff. For Garred this meant playing at his dream festival Glastonbury. When he was a kid he used to watch the world famous event “every year on TV”. He once said to his mum that “one year [he] was going to do that one day”. He believed that he “would only ever really make it if [he] played at Glastonbury on the main stage”. This came true back in 2007 when The Kooks played on the Pyramid stage right before the headline act on Saturday.

Garred may have been a quarter of one of this age’s great indie-rock bands but he still feels the same feelings as us mortals. He exclaims he felt most nervous whilst playing at Glastonbury. However, in 2009 The Kooks headlined Pinkpop festival in Holland where they performed their hit song “Do You Wanna”. The album version has a much simpler drum beat but during the summer of ’09 Garred overcomplicated it. He explains now how he was “bricking” it and tried to “break it up like Charlie Watts”.

When it comes to new music Garred declares that he struggles with it. He believes that there “never seems to be someone out there who you can 100% rely on...they’ll be brilliant for a fleeting moment and then they come back and they’re maybe not as good”. Garred likes the “singles that La Roux put out a while ago...and MGMT’s first record, but the second...” he trails off and explains that “this is what I mean about relying on bands”. Despite being a fan of great, classic bands, like The Police and The Beatles, he also enjoys the occasional contemporary pop song such as Rihanna’s “Rude Boy”.

Since leaving The Kooks Garred has spent a lot of time song writing with Leah Mason and helping her start an archive of songs to put on her debut album. Mason is a new artist on the music scene who signed to Geffen Records in late 2009. Mason has commented saying: “I was initially reluctant to start writing with other people as I always saw it as a cop-out. However, writing with Paul continues to be a great challenge and a fun experience as he makes you approach it in a different way and it’s so much fun bouncing ideas off him”.­­­

Garred says in a serious tone that “it goes to show to anyone that it’s just determination”. When he met Luke Pritchard and Hugh Harris (members of The Kooks) they were so determined that they’d “cancel anything that got in the way of getting a record deal”. Being in a band can be difficult, Garred says “you know you’ll have happy times and bad times but it’s just you and your mates playing”.

The future is slightly uncertain for Garred but he says “had such a crazy time with The Kooks I just fancy taking it a bit easier and doing things my way. I don’t really know what that entails yet but eventually it will all become clear”.