"Inspiring Ill Will"

Bleat and bitch all you want but the cold, hard fact is Placebo's perfectly featured Brian Molko might be England's last chance at a real rock star this century. He's the only suitable applicant they've had in the past few years and he's probably way overqualified for the job.

Placebo's second album Without You I'm Nothing demonstrates a union symbolized the night a Ziggy Stardust Bowie leaned across the table at Max's Kansas city in New York and kissed Lou Reed. Molko's own touchstones aren't quite as continentally polarized.

"The first time I heard Sonic Youth was a very, very important thing for me. It was my 16th birthday and I was very stoned and I'd never really heard anything like it before in my life. That was the year that I started playing guitar so that had a very, very big effect on me. After I moved to London, I heard PJ Harvey for the first time and the emotional intensity and depth of the album Dry also had a very, very big effect on me. I guess when I went into the idea of a band I kind of wanted to marry the kind of dissonant, atonal beauty of Sonic Youth's experimentalism with a kind of pained confessional and highly emotional quality that PJ Harvey's music has."

Unfortunately incidents such as death threats also came with the turf of the newly famous. The band were disturbed but Molko wasn't exactly surprised. "I think we've always been a band that inspires extreme emotions in people. There doesn't really seem to be a lot of indifferences when it comes to Placebo. People either really love us or really hate us."