through various strands, the most enlightening is an interview between Murphy and Chuck Klosterman, a journalist for the New York Times. During that segment, James admits that he feels he aged more during tours. That when he stayed at home in New York he would barely change physically, but take the same amount of time on the road, he’d find those grey follicles multiplying with wild abandon. With a year having passed since the shooting of the documentary, for a less considered character the reasoning might have changed with the benefit of hindsight. Murphy, however, is resolute. “In the past, the requirements of the bands that I loved, in the long run, were not as big as the requirements of modern bands. It was relatively common not to go on world tours for every record. It was common to put out more albums, to travel less, do fewer interviews; that was normal. Now you’ve got to keep up the website, make videos for everything, make extra content to go around certain songs. It just means that to do it professionally, to professionally be LCD Soundsystem, meant you couldn’t do anything else. Or it meant you have to relegate all these activities, to delegate them to people in the management team, which I felt was cheating. So I couldn’t have a life and do everything the way I wanted to do it. If I couldn’t do it, and do it the way that I felt was right, then I just shouldn’t do it.”
picked the songs that went in, I didn’t.” Which is not to say that he didn’t have very definite ideas as to how the band should be presented. “I approached this as LCD Soundsystem. I really wanted it to represent who was playing what, to help people understand what’s happening on stage. It’s always been about what the band is, controlling what the band sounds like, and when you have visuals, that changes what it sounds like in a strange way, because it’s like another voice. When the cowbell starts, I want you to see the cowbell, so you know that’s Gavin. You tend to think of music as a block, and when you see it you see how it’s created. I really think that’s interesting.”
Re-watching a pivotal 48 hours in your own existence must dredge up some strange sensations. It’s an unfathomable process for most of us; committing to celluloid the run up and demise of the most important event in your own life thus far. There’s a particularly moving scene where it becomes clear exactly how much it all meant to James; he is stood in a large storage unit the day after the final gig, surrounded by equipment and flight cases bearing the LCD logo, trying to decide what to keep and what to sell, and dissolves into unstoppable tears. What Murphy took from that - from watching his own reactions - he confesses, is a sense of embarrassment rather than emotion. However he does concede that “IF I COULDN’T what Shut Up And Play The Hits really gave him was It’s not too much of a DO IT RIGHT, I a different perspective on stretch to suggest that JUST SHOULDN’T his own band; “I realised that James Murphy is a workaholic; DO IT.” I’d probably been too hard on a theory that he does little to everybody. That, without the adrenaline disprove during our conversation. In the of the show, and the anxiety, I realised how film, he tells Klosterman that part of the well everybody played together. Much better reason for quitting was a desire to slow down, to than I would hear on stage. Everybody was just so have children, to achieve more of a work life balance, good at what they do. That was just a real revelation to but since stopping the band he seems, from the outside me, because I always experienced the band from at least, as busy as ever. “For me, work is not separate standing and singing, filled with anxiety, worried that from my life. Work is a really big part of my life,” he there was going to be a mistake.” counters. “Whether that’s work that’s worthy or not, a huge portion of my life is about making things. It’s Finding success with LCD Soundsystem came far what I like to do. In a way it’s about having space, later in life than it does for most musicians. Murphy having the time to write something, or read a book, or was already into his thirties when ‘Losing My Edge’, take photos. To make stuff. It’s more about this work vs the poignant and witty debut single, broke him that work. It’s not turning out to be much of a through into public consciousness. As an ode to retirement, it’s turning out to be a lot of work.” finding the kids snapping at your heels and becoming your new, younger, cooler, competition, it achieved the Having been introduced to Dylan Southern and Will accolades that had eluded him during his twenties Lovelace by the BBC to produce an altogether when he was busy setting up DFA Records and DJing different film, when Murphy talks about the Shut Up around New York. With age a definite factor in his And Play The Hits it’s the first time during our decision to quit, it’s tempting to think that the ending conversation that you feel he didn’t strive for complete of the LCD story might have been different had he control. “We were all thinking it was the other guys’ been a decade younger. idea for a while. They’re the filmmakers, and they approach things in a more normal way. I mean, they
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