This article was originally published in issue number 15 of a Swedish magazine called Magazine Groove [dead link]. Matt Green organized for Per Persson to translate it into English but it was apparently *really* poor Swedish to start with.
- No, no, no, absolutely not, says a wildly waving Marty Willson-Piper when I meet him a cloudy day in April. I didn't realize that it's so hard to understand the fact that me, Mark and Andy is working on a project together while I'm writing tracks and work together with Julianne, that we're all working together on a few tracks on Julianne's record without any relation to All About Eve - Julianne doesn't want that. But we still like working together.
- It was when Julianne jumped off All About Eve in the middle of a project, the other of us sat there and had nothing to do for a couple of weeks. We thought that, OK, we sit down together and do a few tracks instead of being depressed over Juliannes departure, and that was how the Seeing Stars project started.
- The recording of the record was also a bit special, because no one of us felt any pressure in any way, we only did recording and stuff spontaneously, and I mainly just improvised the text during the recordings. It is a very spontaneous record, says Marty who points out that Seeing Stars isn't a project that's supposed to be the most important one from their side.
- Both me and the others has a lot of different projects going on, and it isn't really sure that this is something we're going to put a 100% effort into. But that's the advantage with doing a lot of things at the same time, that you can put effort into what's feeling best for the moment, says Marty while smiling cunningly.
- Furthermore I'm priviledged enough to have had the possibility to build up my own studio, where I can work freely with different things, without having different producers and record companies breathing in my neck. I feel free when I don't need to try to argue and make technicians see things from a different perspective than what their own experiences tells them. That why I don't, and why I don't want to have a big company at my back, it mostly feels burdening. I have the possibility to do my own things and then contact the company and say - I have a new record here, and I think that it's good, you might want to release it, and they said yes. I need no complicated Sony Music-contract. It's much better for me to work in this way.
Besides Seeing Stars, Marty has recently worked with both his own solo projects and, as previously written, Julianne Regan. But, as with the most people who knows Marty wonders, what happens with The Church? Do they still exist and will the exist in the future?
- Yes, The Church most certainly exists. I don't know why there's popping up a lot of information saying that we've broken up, because we haven't. It's just that all the members of The Church has been working on other projects, Richard (Ploog, drums -ed) didn't help with the last two records [If this actually about Peter then that's wrong, because he did work on much of Magician Among The Spirits], but he's coming back to play with us again. A company in England has contacted us and wants to make a record with us, and they has also bought the rights to the last, "Magician among the Spirits", which we're going to re-release. We're going to meet in a few weeks, and then we'll see if there's going to be celebrations or depressions. It's actually fantastic that we've survived for over 17 years, and that we're still active and make tracks and release records. But we believe that we're still a good band. We can't break up, because we don't have a reason to do so. We can become big again, and the only thing we need is a bit of a promotion. Is sounds stupid, but that's a fact!
Comforting words for all Church-fans. Until the coming of new Church-records, there's always things with Marty worth looking up. A 38-year old who has contributed to over 35 records and who's still making fantastic music is always worth support.