Drum Magazine Issue 4 | Seite 24

the man

HUNT
Van Hunt on art, indie rock,
and the cost of shopping in
London. Drum’s Lee Hodkinson
meets ‘Van The Man’.
t’s Van Hunt’s birthday today. Dressed in
a white short sleeved shirt, glossy black
pants, butterscotch gator shoes and
mandatory headwear (a cream flat cap pulled
down mischievously to one side) he’s in a
jovial mood, offering me sandwiches in his
West London hotel room hours before a
gig at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire. His
buoyancy is apt; besides his birthday, the
burgeoning superstar from Ohio has been
described as ‘the new Prince’. With so
much love being thrown his way, I’m
eager to find out which UK cats he likes:
“Franz Ferdinand – everyone’s naming
them now, so it’s not cool to say!
[Laughter], Keane; they get slated
in the press, which is unfortunate.
Graham Coxon, too.”

I

Van, disarmingly laid back, stares at me
registering the surprise, which is now graffiti
across my face. “You’re a fan of the UK indie
scene?’ I feel like I write for NME. “Yeah, I guess
so!” his warm Southern drawl soon breaks out into
‘life is good’ laughter again. One thing, which does
annoy him, however, is the rigid boundaries of
American radio. As an artist not peddling contemporary
‘urban’ music (that universal euphemism doled out
when people are afraid to say black) he complains:
“American radio? Pppft... You’re not gonna get much
love there, apart from on the smaller stations. It’s
Photo © 2005 Nathaniel Goldberg