For much of the year, Ghost’s Nameless Ghouls provide loyal support to frontman Papa Emeritus III. Find out what happens when there’s a break in their monastical duties…
“I am a creature of the night, not just in the band, so I stay out all night because it’s the only time of day that I feel calm. No one else is awake, so I can do my shit, and no one else is calling for my time. The Internet can be a bit of a problem, or a solution – I don’t know which is which, actually. It’s a bit of a Catch-22 scenario.
“On a typical day, I usually arise around 2pm. I have a coffee and cigarette on the balcony, and then I usually take my bike from the small town that I live in to the city. Almost every day I go to the same second hand store, because in my opinion that’s the only time I’m going to find surprises. With all other stores, I can pretty much guarantee what’s going to be inside, and what’s not. It’s boring. But with that shop there’s always something new and unexpected. I’m very much into lamps – table lamps – and I construct that shit on my own, so I’m always on the lookout for parts to my models.
“After that, I usually go to the supermarket and buy way too much food because by that time in the day I’m hungry, as I never eat breakfast. So I tend to buy enough stuff to make about five meals. And then I come home and start making one of them, before sitting down to play guitar for a few hours. Mostly I’ll play old 70s or 80s songs, like Dire Straits or what not – just for the fuck of it – and try to learn songs that I don’t already know.
“Then I browse the Internet for hours, and hours, and hours. Usually I’ll get stuck on Wikipedia, where I’ll read an article about something, and then I’ll find a word or a sentence or a meaning, or something I don’t already know about, and I’ll go and read about that. After a few hours it’s this big web of knowledge, and that gets my appetite ready for dinner.”
“I enjoy learning to cook Indian food, so often I’ll have that for dinner. I can cook some Indian dishes well, but I’m certainly not a master chef – that wouldn’t be fair to say. I try to eat as much vegetarian food as possible too, not because I am a vegetarian but because it’s healthy.
“Since playing and recording music is my job now, I try and practice music as much as possible, but I’ll occasionally hang out with friends too. I very rarely, if ever, go out and have drinks during the week though, because when I got home I can’t concentrate on the stuff that I really want to do. I can’t play guitar or read for shit if I’m drunk, so I don’t enjoy getting intoxicated on a weekday.
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“I try and get to bed usually around 1am, but pretty soon I wake up again, and then I can’t get back to sleep. So I usually make something else to eat around 2am, and then I stay up all night watching movies. That’s when I’m not on tour.
“When I am on tour, it’s pretty much the same thing. I wake up on a tour bus somewhere, and I’m usually in a good mood because every day feels a bit adventurous. I’ll step off the bus in my pants and go check out the venue, where I’ll try to grab a coffee and use the toilet, as you can’t take Number Twos – or Threes – on the bus.”
“Then I’ll get dressed, and if I have time I’ll try to walk around the city and see if they have a church or a museum or something, because I like to experience new places. If I need anything badly, I might go and do a bit of minor shopping too, but that’s hardly the number one way of killing time in my book. I do collect vinyl soundtracks though – I don’t give a shit about buying records other than soundtracks – so if I can find a music store that’s always a bonus.
“After sound check, I usually try to take a nap as close to the show as I can, because I find it relaxing to lie down and breathe and save my energy for the show. After the show is when we tend to drink and party. Mostly though, we sit around as a band and create sketches. Our creativity always needs an outlet. We love to hang out and speak about our dreams, which we then try and make come true.
“The last thing that happens before we all go home, is we stand there and look at each other and think, ‘What just happened?’ It’s not until you’re home later that you realise you’re not going to wake up next to your keyboard player in the morning, and you start to think, ‘Where the hell is my tour manager? Who’s going to wipe my ass? What am I going to eat today? When’s the show on?’ It takes a while to adapt back to what one might call normal life after a tour. There’s a closeness that you form with your band mates on the road, that’s like when you’re ten years old in the Scouts or something. And then it’s all over, until the next tour…”
A Nameless Ghoul was talking to Matt Stocks. The band’s album ‘Meliora’ is out now via Spinefarm.
