Yeah, it’s just bulls***. It’s the worse thing to ever happen to music. I can’t even have it on with the sound turned down, that’s how much I hate it.

I think the quality control has gone out. Anyone can slap an autotune on and anyone can f****** idiot can sound good without being able to sing. You get these kids who are so…they wanna be famous so badly, that’s taken over the fact that they can sing.

Those kids are going on that and they’re selling their name. Cowell owns X-Factor, if you win that he owns you. Kids end up owning about 10% of their name. What’s your name?

Alistair.

Right Alistair, you go on X-Factor and they’ll go, right you won. Sign here, here, here and here. We’re going to be your record company, your manager, we own you. This is what we get, and here’s your f****** 10%.

That’s what the kids are getting, they’re getting shafted. They’re going to get a career that’s one album, they’ll maybe make a bit of money out of it, but very few of them will have a 25, 30 year career because the public isn’t going to be interested in them

There’s no longevity in record companies anymore. The Almighty signed a record deal on the day. We didn’t start selling records until our third album, but our record company stuck with us. That’s what happened back then, it’s development, a band gets bigger. You don’t get that anymore, they want it now. You’ve got to be f****** big now.

X-Factor destroys garage bands, people rehearsing in their garages for years trying to get tight, trying to get good, trying to develop their band. It’s a gimmick, a gimmick that everybody’s bought into and…it’s Satan. It’s Satan at work in the music industry.

Along those lines, The Guardian put an article up recently saying that rock n’ roll is dead.

There’s going to be 2,700 people here tonight proving them wrong. It’ll never die, people will always want to go and see great live bands, good live music. Rock and roll has been dead for years, every three years they say that!

When radio stations in the early ‘50s started playing records, the industry freaked out. They thought that because radio stations were playing records, that no-one would buy them anymore. So, there you go. There was a big panic about it back then.

People thought, because of the internet, that people would download stuff and not records or come to shows anymore. They still are. They’re not buying CDs and albums the way they used to, because there’

s so much more diversity. People are still coming to live shows, and people still want to listen to live music. That will never go away.

As a singer-songwriter, is free downloading and online music an issue then?

Free downloads suck. If I wanted to give away a track for free, and say here’s a free track, that’s fine. For Radiohead to give away that album a few years ago, when they’re multimillionaires sitting in their fucking ivory towers.

Well, that’s an insult to every hard working musician out there that is trying to pay their bills and do this as a career. It’s a career…it’s an art form, but it’s a career.

You deserve to be paid for your art. You don’t get a plumber in your house to fix your pipes, and say you did a very nice job, it looks fantastic, but I’m not paying you. Why should music be free? It just shouldn’t be free. Music is a love for me, but it also feeds my kids, pays my bills.

I have my own stepson, my own kids saying “We just downloaded the new Apocolyptica track for free”. I’m like, it’s stealing! Look at what I do, son!

They’ve got that mentality, and we need to get it out of kids that they can’t go on the internet and steal music…it’s stealing. You’re robbing the artist. The same kids complain when a band splits up, or isn’t doing well. I’m like, it’s because you’re robbing them.

It seems people who download online are the same to complain about tickets and merch prices.

You have people who ask you to sign stuff for charities, and I always do it as much as I can, to help. Anyway, I put out a limited edition single, 1,000 copies online only. This guy came online and said “I’ll buy your single, as long as you give the money to charity”. I thought, why do I want to do that?

I’m selling this single which cost me XX money to record in the studio, so that I can continue to tour, pay my bills and do what I do. If I give that money to charity, who’s going to pay my bills? Yeah, I’ll do stuff for that, but at the end of the day, everybody needs to be fed. Everybody has a right to work. As you can tell, I’m pretty passionate about it.

Female First - Alistair McGeorge, picture by Ian Taylor

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