Doctor’s Orders: Simon Rix of Kaiser Chiefs prescribes his nine favourite albums
Cast your mind back to 2005, a time of a royal wedding, the Nintendo Wii, and an increasingly tumultuous geo-political landscape. However, the sound of that time was dominated by guitar-led indie groups from the regional towns and cities of the United Kingdom. Among them, Kaiser Chiefs were flying the flag for West Yorkshire, finding early success with singles like ‘I Predict A Riot’, and typifying that era of indie with their debut album, Employment.
I was two years old when Employment first hit the airwaves, but I remember the sounds of the Leeds indie heroes throughout my childhood. “You’ll like this,” my dad said as he put the Yours Truly Angry Mob CD on in his Mini Cooper some years later. Being exposed to such energetic, infectious music at such a young age was a very formative experience for me, made all the more so by the fact that the Kaiser Chiefs hail from Leeds, a mere half an hour away from my home in Bradford.
So, when bassist Simon Rix popped up on my laptop screen, keen to share the details of nine of his all-time favourite albums, it was a strange feeling for me. Luckily, my fashion choices broke the ice for me. I had opted to wear a Bradford City shirt, mostly because it’s among my favourite shirts but partly in response to the time I went to see Kaiser Chiefs in Leeds back in 2013 and was subjected to hours of fans belting out Leeds United chants.
“I think there’s been occasions where we’ve managed to coordinate Leeds playing at home and doing a gig that night,” Rix told me after instantly spotting the Bradford shirt. “I think it’s good in general for the atmosphere, but maybe a bit Leeds-y.” Indeed, their beloved hometown has been a constant fixture of the band’s existence since their earliest incarnation as Runston Parva in 1996.
Rix and the band are celebrating the 20th anniversary of Employment with a series of festivals and open-air live shows this summer, including notable appearances at Bristol Sounds, Glastonbury Festival, and a triumphant homecoming at Temple Newsham in Leeds. “We’ve sold out a lot of tickets already, and because it’s a big park, it’s kind of unlimited capacity. So, hopefully, that will be huge. I guess it shows just how big that album was,” the bassist told me.
Reflecting on this anniversary celebration, he shared, “It’s like being married to four other guys for 25 years. It’s a very intense environment, and that’s why people you know can break up and not be friends anymore and all of that stuff. But we have somehow managed to remain friends, and even the guy who did leave [Nick Hodgson], I am still friends with.”
After reminiscing about the glory days of 2005, performing alongside the likes of Bloc Party, Futureheads, and The Killers, Rix launched into his nine favourite albums of all time, giving a whistle-stop tour through his musical education, history, and greatest loves. So, strap yourself in, and bask in the various records that influenced the sounds of Kaiser Chiefs, Employment, and the height of British indie rock.
Simon Rix prescribes his nine favourite albums:
The Beatles – The White Album (1968)
Where better to start than with Liverpool’s favourite sons? The first album selected by Rix is The Beatles’ self-titled record from 1968, arguably one of their most expansive and experimental efforts. Rix told me that his adoration of the album goes all the way back to his childhood and earliest musical roots.
“When I was young – I guess eight-ish or something – I’d learn to play a few things, like keyboards, and I wanted to play drums, and I want to play this, that, and the other, and then I decided one day they wanted to play guitar,” he recalled. “I think my dad was a bit sick of me not sticking to anything. He played guitar, so he gave me a tape of Beatles, which was the White Album, and a Beatles chord book.”
Armed with his cassette and chord book, Rix resigned himself to his bedroom, to emerge weeks later as a guitarist. “I just sat and learned all the songs from White Album. Then he gave me another tape, which was Sgt. Pepper, and then we owned Abbey Road. I just learned all I just went through the Beatles chord book.”
“It’s just a really special album and I know it back-to-front because I learned all the songs,” the bassist told me, discussing the album’s enduring influence over him as a performer. He did note, however, “When you listen back to it now, like that is a strange album for a 10-year-old to be listening to. There’s some weird lyrics in there.”
Happy Mondays – Live (1991)
From 1960s Liverpool to 1990s Salford, Rix’s next album came from Factory Records’ finest, Happy Mondays. As a youthful devotee of the Madchester scene, Rix grew up loving the sounds of the city. “Me and Nick [Hodgson] were listening to The Stone Roses and the Inspiral Carpets and Happy Mondays, all that stuff,” he remembered. “And then Happy Mondays were coming to Leeds to play at Elland Road.”
A dream come true for a Madchester-obsessed Leeds United fan, but, as the bassist shared, “We were like 11, and we were not allowed to go.” However, from that gig came a live album. “They released an album from the gig. So we just listened to it endlessly. It was like our go-to record. It was like just an album we listened to on repeat. I had that on tape and broke the tape because I listened to it so much.”
Years later, Kaiser Chiefs came full circle when they performed at Elland Road in 2008. “I think I’d have to fact-check it, but I think between Happy Mondays and us, there was no one, no one played [Elland Road] in between.”
Blur – Modern Life Is Rubbish (1993)
Sticking with the 1990s, Rix fondly remembered the rise of the Britpop age. “Definitely Maybe was obviously a big album at that time, and we were going out and hearing bands for the first time. Supergrass were a big band because they were our age. It felt like these guys are like, 17, and they’re on Top of the Pops suddenly. It made it feel like being in a band was attainable,” he shared.
One particular record seemed to stand out for Rix during this time. “I remember hearing ‘Sunday Sunday’ in this club Brighton Beach, which we used to go to in Leeds. It opened in like ‘94; there were two rooms: an indie room, which turned into the Britpop room as that scene developed, and then had like a psych ‘60s, weird room where they’d play loads of songs that you’ve never heard.”
“‘Sunday Sunday’ got played in that place,” he continued. “That was the first time I ever heard it. In the covers of the Blur albums, they used to put the chords. All the other bands in the inlay were pictures of the band or the lyrics, but in the Blur albums, they generally had the chords, which meant I could sit at home and play those songs.”
Super Furry Animals – Radiator (1997)
Before delving into the next album on his list of favourites, Rix explained that the next two would be a kind of package deal. “When I was 17, I got an old Mini. I got my first car, and it had a tape player. So in order to listen to music in a car, I had to tape things from CD onto a tape,” he explained. “Albums that were almost 45 minutes were like the best ones, right? Because if an album was really short, then you’d have a big gap at the end, which is a waste. But, if albums were over 45 minutes and you had to go over the other side, that was a definite no-no.”
After this explanation, the Kaiser Chiefs bassist revealed what his next two albums would be. “So, two albums: there’s Super Furry Animals – Radiator on side one, then side two was Ziggy Stardust, Bowie. I listened to those two albums back to back so many times, so many hundreds of times. I think they compliment each other in some way, or maybe they were just different enough that you could listen to one and then the other, and then you were ready for the first one again.”
Starting with Supper Furry Animals and their 1997 record, Rix shared, “I didn’t really love the first album, it was a bit too poppy for me at that time. But Radiator was this album where I just thought it was really, very, very cool. It was exactly the album I wanted to make if I was in a band, because it had some poppy moments, but it’s quite experimental at times as well.” He also heaped praise onto Gruff Rhys, “He’s Welsh, and somehow that sounded much cooler than being from Leeds.”
David Bowie – The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1972)
Onto side B of this unconventional package deal, Rix backed Radiator with one of the greatest albums of all time. “Ziggy Stardust, I think, is just a complete piece of work isn’t it?” Rix said. “It’s a little bit theatrical at times, but it’s a very impressive, very ambitious album, a piece of music.” What else can you say about an album that has already been discussed intently for upwards of 50 years?
The eagle-eyed readers among you might recognise that the runtime of 38 minutes and 29 seconds, potentially leaving a gap of over six minutes on Rix’s car cassette tape. However, the bassist clarified, “Because it was 45 minutes, it had bonus tracks. So there’s a song called ‘Bombers’, which is one of my favourite-ever Bowie songs, but it was just a bonus track which a lot of people will never have heard, I guess.”
The Prodigy – The Dirtchamber Sessions Volume One (1998)
If the selected albums thus far haven’t been eclectic enough for you, strap in. The next record selected by Rix is a solo mix by Liam Howlett of The Prodigy, collating a wide range of different sounds, samples, and obscure tracks from across the ages. “It’s got some Prodigy on it, but it’s mainly just samples and stuff,” he told me. “It was loads of music I never heard.”
Highlighting some particular favourites, Rix shared, “It’s songs that I still like to this day, like ‘Bug Powder Dust’ by Bomb the Bass was on there, and The Mexican – ‘Babe Ruth,’ which I’d never heard, was on there, ‘Apache’ – Incredible Bongo Band was on there. There was like, a load of songs that you just never heard.”
“I used to play it endlessly in our flat at that time,” the musician remembered. “It just reminds me of that time, and also just of a time when searching for new music was hard. So for a band like The Prodigy to present you with this thing of, ‘Here’s loads of stuff you’ve never heard before’ was a kind of gift.”
The Velvet Underground – The Velvet Underground and Nico (1967)
Skipping back some 30 years from the days of The Prodigy, the Kaiser Chiefs bassist picked out the bonafide masterpiece, The Velvet Underground and Nico. Any self-respecting music obsessive can tell you where they were the first time they heard ‘Venus In Furs’, and Rix is no different. “I was at university, and I went to stay at my friend’s flat in Brighton,” he smiled. “One of the guys there was a real like ‘muso’, and he got me into Belle and Sebastian, The Velvet Underground, Big Star, and a few other things during this weekend.”
“I would stay with him; he was just playing me records that I’d never heard before when I thought I knew everything about music,” the bassist said. Explaining his particular love for The Velvet Underground, he mused, “I really love Nico, I think she’s an acquired taste. It was very different to the music I would have listened to before that. I just thought it was interesting.”
Continuing, “Obviously, it’s New York, and it’s art, and there’s loads of drugs going on and all of this stuff that seems really romantically cool for me at the time when I was 19 or 20. Just another album that I played to death.”
Talking Heads – Stop Making Sense (1984)
Sticking with the iconic sounds of New York City, Rix moved from the sounds of Reed and Cale to the diverse offerings of David Byrne. “Talking Heads are probably my favourite band,” he declared. “Just because I feel like, if you put on basically any Talking Heads, I’m like, ‘Yeah, cool. Like it.’ It’s got good bass lines, it’s interesting, there’s good lyrics on it. I just think it pushes all the buttons in my brain. It just switches a lot of the good buttons.”
For the purposes of this list, the bassist highlighted Talking Heads’ 1984 live masterpiece. “I went for Stop Making Sense because I think it’s interesting as an album and a concept,” he shared. “Similar to Ziggy Stardust, where it’s like something that builds, and it’s got a bigger idea behind it, rather than just just a record.”
MJ Lenderman – Manning Fireworks (2024)
As our chat drew to a close, Rix was quick to highlight groups like The Stone Roses, The Cribs, Nirvana, and LCD Soundsystem as deserving honourable mentions in this list. However, in the words of the bassist, “I thought I should do an album that was relatively recent, just so I’m not a complete dinosaur.” As far as modern releases go, he went with an absolute doozy.
“I really like MJ Lenderman,” he announced. “I’m as bad as anyone like not listening to albums anymore. I think that’s why a lot of my albums are old because I think it’s harder and harder to discover a new album that you’re really into. But with that album, it was an album that I did what I used to do; I listened to it loads and loads and loads and kept going back to it. I haven’t done that with an album for ages.”
Theorising on the appeal of the record, Rix laughed, “It’s whiny, a whiny man. So it probably appeals to me, being a whiny man.” He concluded, “It’s the only album in recent years where I’ve really gone back and listened to it more than 10 times.” High praise indeed.
