Toploader at Cotton Clouds

Interview with Dan Hipgrave

Following their great set at Cotton Clouds this weekend, we interviewed guitarist Dan Hipgrave from Toploader to see what he thought of it all.

Interview : Amelia Shaw
All images : Jeni Harney

So Cotton Clouds is still a fairly new festival, it was your first time playing there, how did you find it?

It was great. What a nice little festival. As we were driving in, because we had a long, long, long, drive up from Brighton, sort of 6 hours or so, when we were getting close to the festival we were thinking ‘where is this festival going to be??’ we’re driving through fields and things. It felt like it was in the middle of nowhere! It was so pretty around there, it was a shame it was a bit cloudy, but it was such a nice little festival. We do a lot of these festivals, we do like 40 over the summer, so we know when it’s a good one or not so good and this one is clearly well run and well loved by the community, so it was really nice to be there.

You’ve played some pretty big festivals – for example Glastonbury – how does somewhere like Cotton Clouds compare?

It’s different isn’t it, you know really, with bigger festivals they’re quite manic and it’s difficult to negotiate your way around. When you’re on the stage you’re just a number – you’ve got to get on and off and they’re incredibly busy, but with the smaller sort of festivals around the size of Cotton Clouds, they’re a little bit more friendly and the atmosphere can be quite warm. People are really appreciative to have you there and I think at bigger festivals, there’s so much on the schedule sometimes that people have so many different options and can be a bit blasé, but with the smaller ones they’re just chuffed to be sat in a field where they can watch live music in the area where they live. You can’t really compare them, they’re completely different things obviously. Playing on the main stage at Glastonbury is one of the best things in the world ever, so it’s not really comparable, but we enjoy all the different size gigs really. 

You all seemed to really enjoy being on stage – what’s your favourite thing about performing live?

Well it’d always going to be people’s reactions really, we played a really warm crowd the other day, and the warmer the crowd are, the more we’ll put into it. If the crowd are really miserable and stand there looking like they can’t be arsed, then we tend to feel like it can be a bit reciprocal. The other day the crowd were really friendly and nice and seemed really happy to watch. We’ve been playing music festivals for many years, and for us playing music is what we really enjoy and we’re all friends so put us on stage with each other and we’re always going to be quite happy really.

There was a really broad range of people in the audience, Joe pointed out a little boy in the crowd, how was that?

Yes exactly. I think that’s what I really like at the smaller festivals as well, there’s more range and different types of people and that was definitely reflected in the audience the other day. Right in front of me were a couple of older people so it was really nice and really family friendly.

You did an amazing cover of Elton John’s Rocket Man – any reason that you chose this to perform?

Funnily enough, over the years, when we were younger – many moons ago! – Joe used to sing us all Elton John songs on the piano, and we always used to say his voice really suits the songs. We’d never really do covers, and then as the festivals get more broad with their age group, we thought let’s try and put in a few songs that some of the older people might appreciate, and someone suggested that we do and Elton song. It’s a great song – I think they used it in an advert a few months ago and people tend to tune into adverts a little bit, so we thought maybe younger people would appreciate it as well. I mean, to be honest with you, it was really based around the fact that Joe sits around the piano and sings in the same range as Elton John really.

Did you get to see anyone else perform?

We’ve actually known Starsailor for years. When we first started, they were sent out to Germany – it’s quite an interesting story really, but it’s a true story. We were doing a double headliner show with Coldplay in 2000; It was in 500/600 capacity venues so quite small, and it was obviously before Coldplay soared off into strata-strophic levels, and I think about 4 or 5 shows in, Chris had some personal issues he had to deal with and the band left the tour. Starsailor were a new band on, I think Parlophone but I can’t be 100% sure, but a new band on the same label as Coldplay, and they hadn’t even really finished making their album or anything yet, but the label said why don’t Starsailor come out. So Starsailor supported us on that tour for about 2 weeks around Germany so we got to know them quite well and they were really young and really green, they hadn’t done anything like that, they were a bit like it’s all quite manic, but we took them out and got them really dunk like the older bands do to the younger bands and since then we’ve always had a bit of a bond with them really. It’d been quite a few years since we’ve seen them so we were really pleased to see each other and it was really nice. Unfortunately because we had such a long drive, we couldn’t really hang around. We wanted to stay and watch their set, but we had to do one really and leave. We didn’t really see anyone else, but I heard a couple of bands on the stages on either side whilst we were getting ready and they sounded really good.

You ended with Dancing in the Moonlight, and I actually hadn’t realised that it was a cover until very recently! At this point, does it just feel like your song?

Oh yeah. After all these years we’ve been playing it, and we did it so differently from the original anyway, it feels like it’s ours. I think most people think it’s ours, and if you knew it was a cover and listened to the original you’d go ‘nah’, Toploader’s is a bit more viable and the song that I know anyway. To be honest with you, the guy who wrote it didn’t really make any money from it, because it wasn’t a hit for him. He’s made all the money really from our version so I think he’s pretty happy as well! With that song it’s just a thing now, it’s a song that we always though that one day it might go away or whatever but it doesn’t – it seems to just get bigger and bigger as kids grow older they like it to, everyone likes it really. Or, everyone hates it. Either you hate it or love it it’s a bit like Marmite isn’t it! I think that majority of people do really like it and we know when we’re playing, we see the smiles on people’s faces, we know people like it. We have to do it last now, because there isn’t really anywhere to go from there. When we’re headlining a festival or a gig, we do it last then go off and come back on to do an encore, but we ended on it this time. 

Definitely, and it was a fairly short set wasn’t it?

Yeah and we drove all that way! I think Starsailor only did 45 minutes, so it was all quite short sets. Sometimes that can be quite good – if you do an hour usually people are a bit like ‘come on get on with it’, but it wasn’t our decision! I think we actually went over by bout 4 minutes and we were really apologetic to Starsailor, because we obviously shouldn’t really do that – so we got in 34 minutes!

If you could take any other song that is written by somebody else and claim it as your own, what would it be?

Imagine by John Lennon probably! I think it’s one of, or the, greatest song ever written. As far as I’m concerned, it’s beautiful and so perfect. I know there’s no such thing as a perfect song, but if there was I think Imagine if the perfect song.

Do you have any plans for the rest of the year? Any new music on the horizon?

We’re busy with shows all the way until the middle of October so until they’re all finished we probably won’t sit and think about what we’re going to do. We’re thinking about possibly making a new EP or something, but again we’re not going to make any decisions until we’ve finished all of the shows that we have booked up. And I’m going on a big holiday straight after that which should be good!

Author: Jude Gidney - Editor

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