CRISPIAN MILLS AND KULA SHAKER’S DESCENT INTO THE UNDERWORLD (AND BACK AGAIN)
A CONVERSATION WITH KULA SHAKER
At a certain point, the world turned against Crispian Mills and Kula Shaker. Or was it that Crispian Mills turned against the world? In the end it might be a matter of semantics, a chicken-or-the-egg argument, but the band’s long road back, from the juggernaut 1996 debut record to the release of the band’s 2024 album Natural Magick, makes an unlikely 21st century success story.
If you cull the Internet to get a sense of Crispian Mills, you’ll likely forge a fanciful tale of rock star hubris and juvenile irascibility. You’ll see YouTube clips of the Kula Shaker frontman oozing disaffected malaise on Jools Holland or tabloid rags milking his interviews for every ounce of out-of-context ire. As a result, I opened my interview with Mills by spinning a personal tale of an 18-year-old high school kid who went to a concert on Kula Shaker’s first North American tour in 1997 and was awestruck by the band’s energy and showmanship. About how the raucous “Govinda” jam session that closed the set changed how he’d forever judge rock ‘n’ roll performances.
“You have a good memory,” he said, probably skeptical—but I remember stuff like that, specific concerts, where and when I saw a movie. They’re moments in time captured by flickering images, sensory details, and emotions that come together to form a kind of historical record. The legend of those performances persists because I wasn’t the only one with this imprint.
He leaned back a bit in his chair and looked off to nowhere. “We have good memories of that first tour. We thought about our performance and how we were presenting ourselves.” As the conversation pushed further into Kula Shaker’s global arrival, Mills admitted that he saw the stage as a competition. “When we were trying to get our record deal and going for that final push to get ourselves signed in London, we were whittling out songs that weren’t strong, trying to focus on our fire and how to make [our show] the most exciting.”
He paused here, perhaps gathering specific thoughts, perhaps considering how this piece of moldy behind-the-music information might play to an innocent audience who likes to think that our favorite musicians all play nicely together in the sandbox. If you’d seen any of those shows on the original tour, you already had the sense that Mills, guitarist Alonza Bevan, drummer Paul Winterhart, and keyboardist Jay Darlington considered performance a full-contact sport.
“You know that saying about blowing the other guys off the stage? There’s a lot of rivalry and so you knew you had to be the best. I guess that’s always been the case, but once we found our frequency — once we got our mood — we just did that for the next 18 months. Open with ‘Hey Dude’ and close with ‘Govinda.’ We knew how we wanted to grab everybody at the beginning and where we wanted to leave them at the end. There’s a certain amount of theatre that goes into that approach, and we’ve always had the same approach with our records as well. We love the idea that you take your seats, the lights go down, and somebody walks onto the stage. That’s the magic in the moment.”
Talking to him in 2024 highlighted a cautionary tale of youthful naivete fueling a rock-star image and the unforgiving cultural churn governed by an overzealous UK press. Like I said, the story boasts an unlikely happy ending, but that’ll take some time. To understand the “why” of Kula Shaker’s rapid rise and immediate fall from favor, it helps to go back to that moment in pop culture. Cue the Wayne’s World flashback fingers, which still would have been a popular trope back in the mid-1990s whence the crux of our story’s set.
At 1995’s Unsigned In The City, the UK’s biggest industry recruitment showcase, Kula Shaker became the must-sign trophy of the convention. The platform previously helped launch the careers of Radiohead, Björk, Smashing Pumpkins, among many others. The deafening buzz around Mills and co. obscured the result that they shared the convention’s “Best Band” title with Placebo. Columbia, no doubt frothing over the idea of replicating Oasis’ North American crossover appeal, won the bidding war and began churning out singles to capitalize on the band’s momentum.
Jerry Garcia-inspired psychedelic power-pop single “Grateful When You’re Dead/Jerry Was There” shared an eclectic sound that felt fresh in that post-Britpop purgatory even as it wore its Deadhead, George Harrison, and Jimi Hendrix influences on its sleeve. The UK music press championed the band, the public began to take notice, and then Kula Shaker released the more traditional arena rock anthem “Hey Dude.” Only a Spice Girls blockade kept “Hey Dude” out of the number one spot on the charts in August of 1996. Kula Shaker’s debut album, K, became the fastest selling album in Britain (moving more than 105,000 units in its first week), an extraordinary ascent for a new artist.
Following four nominations at the BRIT Awards (winning Breakthrough Act) and a one-off single, a cover of Deep Purple’s “Hush,” featured on the soundtrack to I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997), Kula Shaker stumbled into the UK press’ firing lines. In an April 1997 interview, Mills made a comment about wanting “flaming swastikas” on his stage. Although he would issue a public apology and clarify that he meant it as a gesture about taking back the meaning of the word in the context of the original Hindu scripture, the tabloids and the mainstream press ran wild with the story.
In his apology, he wrote:
“. . . there is no better example of my naivete and insensitivity than the swastika comments. . . my comments derive from my long interest in Indian culture, from which the swastika has its origins. . . I loathe totalitarianism, far right thinking, oppression of all forms, denial of human rights and all things that would limit the free spirit of humankind. I stand for peace, love, generosity, and learning.”
NATURAL MAGICK ALBUM REVIEW
When some creative difficulties temporarily waylaid their follow-up album, Peasants, Pigs and Astronauts, the press seized the opportunity to put Crispian Mills and Kula Shaker on notice. They were labeled a novelty band, blasted for singing in Sanskrit and celebrating the Indian instrumentals that had made them a buzz band in the first place. The press had largely curated Kula Shaker’s success through well-timed buzz around their singles and advance word about their live performances, but now they’d decided petulant upstarts were to be put in their place.
It’s reminiscent of the one-act tragedy of the UK shoegaze band Adorable, which NME anointed as the next big thing before the release of their first single in 1992. Later that year after some unseemly comments by the band’s lead singer, the same publication called them “cocksure, throat-grabbing, individualist, sun-shines-out-of-my-ass limelight muggers.” The press gives life—but if you run afoul of their unwritten rules of rock ‘n’ roll conduct, it will then do its best to snuff you out.
Going back to listen to Peasants, Pigs and Astronauts, it’s in many ways superior to the debut. The Kula Shaker sound had really come into focus, and although I stopped short of calling it a concept album in our conversation, Mills acknowledged that they had loftier goals. He didn’t shy away from that dreaded “C” word—he embraced it.
“We didn’t want to make K again,” he said. “There was this side to us that was big and epic and we wanted to tell stories and explore more theatrical compositions while having a bit of fun with the fact that it was 1999. . . and no one had really done a concept album. So, we said we’ll have to do it. That was our attitude, and we already had a ‘Sound of Drums’ demo, which is calling you on this spiritual quest. . . Rick Rubin liked the demo, and George Drakoulias had heard it.” He paused here, setting up a joke about the folly of a young band that thought they could conquer anything. “And someone said we should go with both producers.” He laughed and continued. “So, it ended up being Rick Rubin and George Drakoulias producing the same record in the same room. It was insane and obviously it was never going to work.”
The completion of Peasants, Pigs and Astronauts took a little longer than expected. “Sound of Drums” became the only song on the album credited to the mismatched team of super producers. To complete the rest of the album, Kula Shaker brought in the old school Canadian producer Bob Ezrin who’d worked with Peter Gabriel, Rush, Alice Cooper, Deep Purple, and Phish among many others. “Rather than being a restraining hand,” Mills said, “he wanted us to get a bit grandiose and silly with the concept. He goaded us and off we went. We went the whole way.”
He admits that like many concept albums the gimmick gets lost along the way but doesn’t think that really diminishes the listening experience. “We got into the details and spent a lot of time crafting that record and making it was as good as we could get it. It just wasn’t fashionable, and the press, especially in the UK, were so stuck in pushing us into the Britrock paradigm. We had to be drinking beer and come off as slightly delinquent.” He pauses. “And we were delinquent, but we were also expressing big ideas.”
At this point in our conversation, I mentioned that the press’ insistence on shoehorning the band into the Britrock movement resulted erroneous expectations and lackluster reviews for their sophomore album. I finally got the sense that Mills did indeed harbor some resentment. He recognized that they got signed because of Oasis’ success, but when they didn’t become the next Oasis, when they deviated from the script, that’s when attitudes about the band shifted.
“People got freaked out by us. . . couldn’t make sense of it. And it’s ironic that we were just trying to express our spiritual yearning and love of George Harrison. It was freaking everybody out because it was ruining their Britpop party. Like people didn’t want to think about [spirituality], but they’re obviously wrong. People do want to think about it.”
And then, according to Mills, he “just jumped out of the airplane.”
If you’re keeping track of the narrative arc of this story, this is when the protagonist reaches the nadir. It’s the all-hope-is-lost moment. Kula Shaker’s dream of creating a popular rock band based on a spiritual quest had died. Mills cites “all of the clichés” in detailing his reason for abandoning Kula Shaker. The pressure to be a public figure. The industry that thrives by building you up only to break you down – to produce exactly the music they want and be exactly what they want you to be.
“What was unique about us is that we had this goal to do something mystical and unexpected and get that onto the charts and on the radio. It was a dream, and we thought it would take ten years, but we did it on our first record. . . They say a good story should always surprise you in the end, but it happened quickly, and no one was ready for it.” He paused. “Where do you go from there?”
After a short hiatus, Crispian Mills got the band back together in 2006 to make more music, but they were determined to do it on their terms and not worry about the press, expectations, or the industry gatekeepers. They announced on their official website, which launched the day of the reunion announcement: “Kula Shaker has arisen from the bottomless pit.” Perhaps inadvertently, Kula Shaker has paralleled their own resurrection with the Greek myth of Orpheus who descended into the underworld to rescue his wife Eurydice. So charmed was Hades by Orpheus’ music that he allowed them to return, with one condition. He could not look back after leaving.
Orpheus looked back; Eurydice disappeared forever. Kula Shaker has not.
Free to refashion the band in any way they wanted, Kula Shaker created their own tiny record label. “We weren’t with the big record company, and we just said we’re going to make music for ourselves and for whatever fans follow us. We didn’t give a shit. We weren’t trying to have hits.”
I commented that the Kula Shaker song “Whatever It Is (I’m Against It)” on 1st Congressional Church of Eternal Love (and Free Hugs) – based on a Marx Brothers song from Horse Feathers (1932) had to come from an entirely different creative space. He wrote the song for and with his kids as he taught them to play drums and guitar. Three chords, Groucho, and a little bit of Jimi Hendrix. “Their fresh approach to music was really inspiring to me, to play in that way again.”
That leads us directly into Natural Magick. Released early in 2024, the band’s seventh album is the first to feature the return of the original Kula Shaker lineup since Peasants, Pigs and Astronauts. “It took us more than 15 years to get back to a place where we thought, ‘Yeah, let’s make a hit record.’ That’s the challenge. It gives you a focus.”
Even this he admits it’s unrealistic in the current music business, he’s fond of the notion of making hit records for a small, devoted core fan base. As a result, I asked him what success looks like for Kula Shaker in 2024. They’ve experienced the euphoria of a platinum-selling album and the lows of critical backlash and commercial disappointment. “Success for Kula Shaker,” he said, “is the same as success for anybody playing music right now because it’s very, very difficult to make a living. Everything has gotten harder.” Mills has clearly grown weary of the long grind of touring, months on the road away from his family. Outside the UK, we might not get to see the bombastic jam sessions filled with tablas, sarods, and raging guitar solos in support of Natural Magick – but with Kula Shaker, it might not be wise to say never again.
As I wrapped up the interview, we discussed Kula Shaker’s place in popular music. “That’s a tough one. We just want to stay on this course. It’s a trajectory from 2006—which is to be independent. To make music for the right reasons and keep growing. It’s another incarnation. It’s the same soul, but it’s definitely a different body.”
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Photo Credit: Nicole Frobusch
