Serge Pizzorno: Kasabian playing Knebworth was a "transcendent" moment
12 August 2022, 20:08 | Updated: 13 August 2022, 11:15
Kasabian: Knewborth was a "transcendent" moment
The musician's side project The SLP was "like theatre" in comparison with Kasabian's comeback shows, he reveals.
Serge Pizzorno has told Radio X that Kasabian's appearance supporting Liam Gallagher at his Knebworth shows in June of this year was a "transcendent" moment for him.
The guitarist and songwriter had previous experience of being a frontman with his 2019 solo project The SLP, but claims that it didn't prepare him for the enormity of the landmark shows over the Platinum Jubilee weekend.
He says: "Nothing can prepare you for standing in front of 90,000 people at Knebworth. That is a different game.
"It sounds pretentious, but it's transcendent. When I'm creating, my brain's all over the place. But when you're on that stage, there's no room for that, it gives you deadly focus. For that hour and a half, I'm somewhere else.
"You're in that moment and I try to imagine I'm in that centre with all the people in the middle, losing their minds. That's the only way I know how to do it."
Listen to the Kasabian album playback on Global Player here
"What I was doing with The SLP was theatre essentially," Serge tells Radio X's John Kennedy in a brand new X-Posure playback of the new Kasabian album The Alchemist's Euphoria, which you can listen back to on Global Player here. "Those shows were like an hour. There's been a seismic shift in everything."
Pizzorno took over the frontman duties for the Leicester band in 2021 after singer Tom Meighan was asked to leave the band following his conviction for assaulting his partner (now wife), Vikki Ager.
Listen to the Kasabian album playback on Global Player here
Kasabian - CHEMICALS (Official Video - 3:21am in Les-tah)
However, while the live work has changed dramatically for Pizzorno, the recording process has remained the same.
"I suppose the SLP record was made exactly the same way as the new Kasabian album," he explains. "I didn't learn anything. I mean, making records, you pick up little things, but that process was exactly the same to how [The Alchemist's Euphoria] was made."
The new Kasabian album marks the seventh full length studio outing from the band and is their first since 2017's For Crying Out Loud. It was made at Serge's home studio - The Sergery - in Leicester with producer Fraser T. Smith, who has worked with Adele, Tom Grennan and Stormzy. Smith is also - much to Serge's delight - a Leicester City fan.
"I kind of heard but I didn't think it was true," says Pizzorno of working with a fellow Foxes fan. "We met to talk about making an album, then it just turned into naming the Martin O'Neill team from 96 or something.
"The start of each session would be like, So what do you want to do with that? Then pretty quickly we'd be like 'Vardy's going to stay, right?' So it was wonderful."
Kasabian - The Alchemist's Euphoria is out now. John Kennedy's X-Posure album playback of the album can be heard on Radio X on Friday 12th August from 11pm, or by catch up on Global Player.
