‘It absolutely tore us to pieces, all of us’
Kasabian have been reborn after the painful sacking of frontman Tom Meighan, guitarist Serge Pizzorno tells Shaun Curran
Kasabian’s Serge Pizzorno has had advice on being a frontman from Liam Gallagher. “He mainly took the piss,” Pizzorno laughs. “He said (adopts Manc accent), ‘You’re in the club now, man! You’ll be shitting it about your throat forever.’ He’s right. It’s a big change. I’ve got to think, ‘I’m singing tomorrow – I have to look after myself ’.”
True to his word, on a blazing hot Friday, Pizzorno, a wiry, gentle presence, is casually sat in the upstairs back room of a west London pub drinking a fresh mint tea. “It’s a love-hate thing, though,” he smiles. “I like the focus. It’s like I’m learning martial arts. But that’s not to say 10 [pints] won’t go down well right now.”
Pizzorno is growing into the role he never wanted. The 41-year-old guitarist and songwriter reluctantly stepped into the breach to become Kasabian’s frontman after the sacking of singer Tom Meighan, who pleaded guilty in July 2020 to assaulting his then-fiancée Vikki Ager at their home three months earlier.
Meighan’s conviction left Kasabian – one of the UK’S biggest bands, with five number one albums and a Glastonbury headline performance since forming in Leicester in 1997 – without the swaggering, rabble-rousing focal point of their incendiary live shows. But more than that, it ripped Kasabian’s world apart.
“It’s painful even thinking about it,” Pizzorno says, who likened the initial shock of the episode to having an out-ofbody experience. After some soul searching, he felt he had no option but to pick up the mantle.
“I never wanted to be a singer,” he says. “I’m the writer, the introvert. But I had to do it. The band needed me to do it. We had no choice – there’s no way we could have left it like that.”
It should be noted how unusual a situation Kasabian find themselves in. You have to go back to Black Sabbath sacking Ozzy Osbourne in 1979 for the last time such a high-profile British band dispensed with their singer due to behavioural issues. It inevitably casts a shadow as they prepare to release their first post-meighan album, The Alchemist’s Euphoria.
It’s a bold record that hardwires itself into Kasabian’s extremes. On the one hand it serves up reliably dynamic dance-rock anthems like Alygatyr and furious, Prodigyesque banger Rocket Fuel; on the other, Pizzorno’s love of prog, rap, R’N’B, ambient electronica and Italian film scores pushes Kasabian further leftfield, belying their ladrock reputation.
There is even a curveball in The Wall, a brooding, reflective ballad that was, somewhat surprisingly, chosen to soundtrack a BBC montage after England’s Lionesses won Euro 2022.
Its overall mood, though, is one of defiance. “That’s what Kasabian is, back from day one,” Pizzorno says. “Defiance, being underdogs, getting up when you get kicked down, friendship, community. This album encapsulates all those important things.”
Pizzorno has needed all those qualities to weather the storm. He admits they considered calling it a day. “Of course, absolutely. It was painful. It absolutely tore us to pieces, all of us. So after you’ve been through that you do think, ‘What’s the point?’”
Pizzorno, along with bassist and founding member Chris Edwards, broke the news to Meighan personally. “You can imagine what that conversation was like. It was horrendous, heartbreaking. But he understood.”
Some fans didn’t. Meighan pleaded guilty to what the judge called a “drunken, sustained attack”, in which he repeatedly struck Ager, dragged her by her ankles and left her bruised all over. He was given an 18-month community order and 200 hours of unpaid work, a sentence widely criticised for its leniency. Yet a vocal section of the fanbase were unhappy at the prospect of a Meighanless Kasabian.
New song Rocket Fuel addresses that criticism. “We made a decision that what goes on in the band stays in the band,” Pizzorno says. “But seeing all this getting written and these opinions being made…” he says, getting animated. “If [sacking Meighan] didn’t have to happen, who in their right mind would want to do that?”
Meighan has since married Ager, entered rehab and been diagnosed with ADHD. He’s also launched a solo career. “When we found out, we were like, ‘OK, that’s where Tom is’,” he says, surprise in his voice. When I suggest it seems far too soon, Pizzorno looks at me and nods his head, before quizzically shrugging his shoulders. “But it’s up to him how he moves forward.”
Pizzorno doesn’t know what Meighan thinks of the band continuing; since their pre-trial meeting they haven’t spoken “other than me and Chris telling him afterwards if he ever needed us we’d be here for him”.
Does he miss him? “I miss the old days, back on the farm,” he says, referencing the Rutland farmhouse where the band recorded
their 2004 self-titled debut album. He stares into the distance. “But that was a long time ago.”
Kasabian’s new era began last October with a UK tour of academy-sized venues. Before the first show in Glasgow, Pizzorno felt a “combination of pure excitement and pure terror in equal measure”.
He’d studied videos of great frontmen (Iggy Pop, Jim Morrison, Kendrick Lamar, Tyler, the Creator), “because I had to become something else – be reborn in a way. I couldn’t just play guitar, sing and say thank you.” Within 30 seconds, he says, any fears were allayed. “We looked at each other and said, ‘This is going to be all right’.”
Kasabian’s summer festival shows, including a headline gig at Isle of Wight, have proved as much. At Knebworth supporting Liam Gallagher in June, Pizzorno’s hit-laden set whipped 80,000 people into a frenzy.
Pizzorno has been the sole architect of Kasabian’s music since co-writer Chris Karloff left the band in 2007, laying down tracks at The Sergery, his home studio in Leicester. In that sense, he says, nothing has changed. He used the sanctuary of the studio as his “therapy and escape”, and “put together the album the same way as since day one”.
He wrote the album title on a whiteboard as a guiding principle, seeing himself as a studio alchemist creating a sense of elation. “I wanted to take a bad situation and turn it into a good one, like in (1973 film) The Holy Mountain when the alchemist turns shit into gold.”
Loosely conceptual, the album details The Alchemist (Pizzorno) on a journey of self-discovery and affirmation. The opening title track starts with the crashing of waves, and the protagonist wondering whether to go on. It’s a true story. “My sister lives by the sea and I went to visit after everything kicked off and sat on the edge of the ocean, just looking out, thinking, ‘I don’t know where I’m gonna end up’. It was important to start the album like that.”
Throughout, there are tracks about redefining yourself (Scriptvre), survival (Alygatyr), overcoming obstacles (The Wall) and acceptance (Letting Go). It’s easy to read it as a document of the past two years. “It’s not about the band specifically,” he says. “It’s not ‘this happened then that happened’. It’s more universal. Those sorts of situations are felt by everybody. It’s a story.”
Still, Pizzorno sings on Chemicals, “What don’t kill you make you stronger”. Does he really believe that? “Yes,” he says. “Yes, I do. I know [why you ask], but we do believe it. We can look at each other onstage as a band and know what that means.”
Pizzorno has dealt with Kasabian’s crisis admirably. He even recognises that, for a band that always talked the talk, there has been a realignment of ambition.
“We had those dreams of ‘we’re going to be the biggest band in the world’. We played that game. But I don’t see any of that now. I just want to be able to make tunes and then go and play. And whatever comes, great”.
But does he worry Kasabian’s legacy, all that hard-won success, is now tarnished? He mulls over the question for several seconds. “I like to think not,” he eventually says.
“But in the future, you don’t know what’s going to happen. Ultimately, none of this is the band’s fault. We’ve done nothing wrong.
“We just want to carry on, and deserve to, because we’ve been in this for 25 years. It’s our band,” he says. “Kasabian is my life”.
● The Alchemist’s Euphoria is out now