Nick Zinner’s Australian To Do List Starts At SITG And Ends With A Koala

Photos by Elena Saviano

We interviewed Nick Zinner for the Splendour Weekender when they almost played last year, so this interview feels more like a chat and a check in than a hard hitting piece of journalism. 

Not that we’ve ever claimed to be hard hitting journalists. This just definitely felt much more like a hello than a bit of work. If you don’t know, Nick is the guitarist/songwriter/multitalented star in legendary rock and roll band, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, a group that you are lucky enough to be able to see at this year’s Splendour in the Grass.

Some things you might not know about Nick. He is an animal lover. He spent a considerable amount of his childhood in Belgium playing with Smurf figurines. He is a sucker for a baby kangaroo. He is an excellent photographer. If you’re lucky, he’ll take your photo from the stage at some point in the show and you will live on through eternity in the annals of rock and roll history, forever a witness to their greatness, their finesse, and giant inflatable eyeballs. That you get to see them at all is a blessing, so enjoy it as much as we enjoyed this quick and precise conversation. 

This is the second year in a row I am interviewing you for Splendour. How have you been?

Since then? It’s been a mixed bag, but mostly better. 

Yeah, how is bouncing back from the illness?

It’s been a real ordeal. I guess to quickly summarize, I got pneumonia last November and ended up being hospitalized for it. Then being on antibiotics for several months, just recovering from that. And in the process of that, I basically had to wear this thing called midline which is essentially an IV implant to get daily antibiotics and towards the end of that kind of two week thing, something happened, the IV had to come out, and I got a blood clot. Basically I still have it, over six months later. It’s like 90% better, but it was really fucked. For a few months, I couldn’t use my arm, it was just so swollen, constantly in pain. I couldn’t make a fist, I couldn’t play guitar, I couldn’t really do anything with my left hand, and it was really terrifying. I had this goal of being able to play for the shows that were coming up in May, and I just had to spend three months just working at it, physical therapy, everything else. 

How did you psychologically cope with not being able to play? Because last time we spoke, you explained that you're constantly writing. How did you deal with not being able to do that? What else did you do? 

I could really only use my right hand, so I got into modular synths. 

Oh, that’s cool!

It was a really really dark time. That was kind of the only thing I could do to just stay somewhat sane and feel like I was not just, I don’t know, withering away or something. 

Do you think that you yielded some pretty dark, gothy modular synthesizer music? 

Yeah, definitely.

How are you feeling about going on tour in Australia, having accomplished the goal that you set out to do? I saw you guys last month in Salt Lake City, it was great. 

It was so crazy, I’m glad you saw that. You never know what to expect at all, which is kind of the beauty of it, but that was something, that was really special. 

I won’t spoil it, but the eyeballs. Oh man. Those are some fun eyeballs. Last time we talked, you were talking about your interest in animals and wildlife. I’m curious if you set aside time to indulge in those things while you’re in Australia? That’s sort of the wildlife spot, right? 

It is, for me, totally. All my favorite animals are there in Australia. I’m going early, going to travel around with my dad for a week, he’s going to come to Australia. We planned this for last year, then we had to cancel the shows, but we still went and had an amazing time. My dad had never been to Australia before, loved it so much that he wanted to come back again at 84 years old. So there’s a week before where we’re going to see some animals. 

Like hold some bears?

I hope so, I want to hold a wombat. So we’ll see. See if we can make that happen.

Do you get gifted things very often when you’re on tour? I ask because during the last interview, someone read that you were into Smurf figurines as a kid, and then they sent us an email saying, ‘Can you get these Smurfs to Nick?’ And we were like, ‘No man.’

Really? Wow. I’ll be honest, it’s been a while since I’ve been gifted anything. I feel like that happened much more like early years. It may be just the type of venues that we’re playing, they’re bigger venues recently, it’s kind of harder to have interactions with people. That may be the reason. Or, I don’t know, maybe I’m too old to get presents. 

If someone is going to come to Splendour, would you be bummed if they threw a Smurf t-shirt onstage? 

Not at all. I would love that. I’m sure Karen and I would fight over who gets to wear it. But that’s funny, I’m psyched that someone picked up on that. I used to be obsessed with the Smurfs! I was living in Belgium at the time, seven years old, they were called Les Schtroumpfs there. I used to collect all the figurines and play with them.

The last time I interviewed you was before your album came out. I’m curious how that reception has been and how it has been to play those song live and on such a large scale? 

Man, it has just been unbelievable. It has been so overwhelmingly positive. I think in the back of my head, just with the way culture has gone, I was like, alright, it’s the internet in 2022 and it’s going to be vicious, because that’s just how it is now. I’m not Googling myself every day, but what I saw and heard about it was just amazing. People just really responded to this record, in such a beautiful way. And then playing new songs. It sounds like a cliché when you hear a musician talking about the joy they get from the audience members, the songs or whatever, but it’s fucking true. It had been so long since we had done that, I don’t know, maybe the last record was kind of weird. I think just having gone through so much collective misery, especially here in America, kind of coming through and having insanely beautiful connections with new songs. It is so rad. It’s been really, really great. You saw in Salt Lake City, the shows have been bigger than anything we could have imagined. Not even just the amount of people or whatever, but the experience. 

It is very experiential. I’ll end it there, I don’t want to spoil things. I’m sorry that you have to do a press junket.

No it’s okay, it’s been a while, I’m into it. 

Catch the Yeah Yeah Yeahs at this year’s Splendour In The Grass on Saturday July 22nd and two exclusive shows in Melbourne on July 20th and Sydney on July 24th.

This interview is a part of the Splendour Weekender 2023 which will be available to read and download at the festival and around the Byron area across the Splendour weekend.