Second half of Tim’s responses to your questions

Hello again. As promised, here are the second half of Tim’s answers to the questions which you folks emailed in via the Ezine.

“Please let me know what you think of Blair & his 10 years as PM at 10 Downing St.  Thanks so much!!! “
Anne
Tim replies: I feel incredibly sad about it. Blair should have been the greatest Prime Minister Britain’s ever had. People were overjoyed when he came to power, as if it was a new dawn for the country. He did achieve some very important things, but his career will always be overshadowed by his having dragged Britain into the fiasco of Iraq. Sometimes I just imagine that all the money we’ve spent in Iraq had been pumped into the NHS – what was once Labour’s proudest achievement could have been revived, and instead we’ve got car bombs in London and people dying in hospital corridors for want of a bed. Thanks for that.

“Do you make it a point to watch the films or TV shows that feature your music?”
Mikaela
Tim replies: If we’re considering allowing a film or TV show to use one of our songs, then we either watch it or read the script. We’re generally pretty fussy about where our music gets used, although a lot of the time we don’t have any choice in the matter because a TV station like the BBC will simply pay our record company or publishing company a huge amount of money to use anything by any of their artists. Which can be quite annoying!

“Did you ever play ‘Untitled 1’ live? It’s my favourite.”
Sjoerd Postma
Tim replies: We’ve never played it, I’m not sure why. Certain songs just work better on record. ‘Fly To Me’ is a favourite of mine, and we could just never get it to flow when we rehearsed it. Still, we’ve managed to sneak a bit of it in lately…

“How long does it take to write the lyrics/music of a song?”
Katie
Tim replies: Sometimes it takes about 5 minutes, sometimes it takes months and months! You just have to wait for things to fall into place. It drives me absolutely mad, but the thrill of completing a song and knowing it’s good makes the whole grizzly process worthwhile!

“Tim, is there a chance that Keane could play Early Winter [the song Tim wrote for Gwen Stefani]?”
Emily
Tim replies: We’d really like to, especially if it gets any radio play later in the year. (That will be up to Gwen, of course.) When I started writing the song I intended it to be a Keane song, and then Gwen and I changed it around to suit her. I think it turned out really beautifully with her singing it, but I think it is a very Keane-esque song deep down, and I’d love to hear a Keane version as I think it would sound very different. There were also some different lyrics that Gwen and I changed for her version, and I’d quite like to do a version with the alternative lyrics. We’ll see…!

“Hi Tim. will you be going any festivals this year apart from the ones you’re playing?”
Sarah J
Tim replies: I’d really like to, so maybe in August I will. Until then it’s going to be very busy. I wanted to go to Latitude, but we were away doing festivals of our own. Mind you, we can’t complain – we’re headlined at Werchter in Belgium and before we played we got to watch Razorlight, Amy Winehouse, The Killers, Klaxons and Snow Patrol. So even when you’re playing it’s an amazing opportunity to catch up on live shows.

“Mr. Rice-Oxley – is it true you are singing the main vocals for ‘Sunshine’ on ‘Hopes And Fears’, whilst Mr. Chaplin takes over for the chorus?”
Ashley
Tim replies: That is true, yes. It’s very nice being addressed as Mr Rice-Oxley and Mr Chaplin. I think we should make it a rule in the future.