A Sense of Silliness
The Guess Who
(From my interview with The Guess Who )
Cris Cohen: So far, you've released two videos, one for “The King” and one for “Plein D’Amour”. There is an element to silliness to both of those. How important is silliness to this band and for the mental health of this band?
Derek Sharp: Michael, why don't you explain.
Michael Staertow: <Laugh> I think it's an extension of our personality and how we keep ourselves sane just by having a great sense of humor.
Cris Cohen: Is it all naturally that way? Or is it like, “Okay, we've got to scramble things up.”?
Derek Sharp: Personally, I don't take anything seriously. I'm just here to enjoy my life. And I think most of the other guys, Michael, for sure, <laugh> is along the same line. Gary's like that.
One of the reasons we did it… we were watching these old Beatles shorts that they made. And there was that one where they're playing through the song and Ringo's on an exercise bike. <Laugh>. And someone else is playing a punching bag.
There are a billion videos of bands miming songs. What's the purpose of (having) a video on YouTube? It’s to get people to watch it past five seconds. So there has to be some kind of interesting component to it, right?
And so we figured, let's just be us. We are kind of silly anyways. And to me, I'd rather watch that than Satan coming down and throwing flames at us and being all serious. <laugh>