When you guys toured last in America last year it was the same basic setlist night after night. What caused you to extend the show and break out so many rare songs when the tour his Australia?
It's funny you say the setlist is the same almost every night. When I came home from the tour, my girl picked me up and she had a new car. I said, "Let's listen to your sound system." She had Psychedelic Pill and we put on "Walk Like a Giant." I listened to it and said to her, "We don't play that song anything like that anymore."
So, they were still brand new songs. They were evolving and changing, and it was pretty interesting. Then all of a sudden, one day at rehearsal Neil said we should change up some of the older songs. We played one or two of them one night, and then all of a sudden he just played five of them in a row without stopping. He just ended one, started the other…We all looked at him like, "What the fuck are you playing man?"
We had no idea he was going to do that. We did rehearse "Prisoners of Rock & Roll," but we didn't really rehearse "Love To Burn" at all. He played it in the dressing room on a piano, and then called for it that night as the second song. That was, like, insane, especially since Neil made more mistakes on it than anybody else.
I loved seeing "Barstool Blues" in the setlist.
Oh, that was cool. We rehearsed that once at sound check. We didn't rehearse "Sedan Delivery" at all. We played it at rehearsals before the U.S. tour last summer and it was always kinda suckin'. When we played it live it was like we always played it. It was so much fun. We had a great time. "Danger Bird" was really cool. The only time we did that was sound check and Lake Tahoe.
Do you know what causes Neil to decide something like, "OK, tonight is the night for 'Barstool Blues?'"
I have no idea, but what I really felt is that on this tour we're not able to ride buses because the distances between places was too far apart. We had to fly, and that meant a lot of days off, and pretty easy going days. I think everybody was feeling too relaxed, so I thought Neil just pulled those songs out and said, "Let's shake it up. Let's see what we can do."
He also extended some of the shows by a full hour.
Tell me about it! [Laughs] What happened to "we're only going to play two hours?" [Laughs]