We just got off the phone with Cut Copy frontman Dan Whitford and amidst a far-reaching discussion about the making of their new album, Free Your Mind, the best night club they’ve ever been to, and what you say when Tiesto tries to collaborate with you, the Melbourne based singer-songwriter-musician told us about the serendipitous sequence of events which led to Eric Northman Alexander Skarsgard starring as a cult leader in their new “Free Your Mind” clip.
Here’s how Dan explains it: “Basically we did a show in Rio and Alex Skarsgard actually came down to the show and demanded to come backstage after. He wanted to see us because he wanted to tell us what a massive fan he was. He was telling us this story about how he was shooting a series called Generation Kill in the Kalahari Desert without a break for like four or five months and while he was there his one link back to home was listening to our second record “In Ghost Colours” on repeat. It just took him back to being in Stockholm and partying. The life he was missing out on was represented by that record. So he had this emotional attachment to that album and was a massive fan and he basically came backstage to tell us all this. We ended up hanging out and having this crazy night. The next day he introduced us to his family. He comes from a big family of actors, obviously his Dad’s a massive actor, who were all there with him at the same time. We somehow became best buddies just from hanging out in this 24 hour period and said “if we’re ever in the same place again let’s hang out”. We had such an awesome time.
So when we were thinking about making a video for this new record we thought we’d ask him and see if he would be interested in doing it. Like, no pressure, but if you were up for it that would be awesome. We sent him the song, he loved it and he said “I’m in, let’s make this happen”. It was a very organic thing. I guess like a lot of the stuff we’ve done it’s via people we know or through friends. It was just amazing in this case because that friend happened to be this big shot Hollywood actor who people are quite fanatical about. He’s got quite the set of abs on him. It’s funny, towards the end of the day when all the staff were packing up, the ones that were left was this group of like six or seven different make up girls and hair stylists who found a reason to stick around. Everywhere he went he had this entourage of girls following him around just being like, “Skkkkaaaarrrrsssgggaarrrdd””.
Thanks for sharing, Dan.
‘Free Your Mind’ is out November 1st through Modular. Look out for the full interview next week.
This one goes out to Alex (Can we call you Alex? We’re just gonna call you Alex).
