The 1975 - Big Day Out Interview

Whatever your opinions on Manchester outfit “The 1975” might be, they’re undoubtably successful. Mathematical in their composition, sure of what they are doing. There is definite formula in their chaotic minds and their masterpiece is certainly starting to come together.

Jessica Syed spoke to Matt and George about seeing black and white, sex and drugs, a revival of shoegaze and breaking America.

AACS: The band name was found in the back of a Jack Kerouac novel. Does that inspire your songwriting at all?

MATTHEW HEALY: Erm, I don’t know. Kind of, a bit. Most people love the idea of me being 19 and reading the book and even I liked the idea that maybe I could be that decadent. I just liked the whole lazing around and shagging and smoking, at that age. The book really has no relevance, it was the fact that somebody had written all over it. But beat poetry obviously gave birth to the sixties, the sixties gave birth to my mum... and my mum gave birth to me...

AACS: in relation to that - do the lyrics lead the way for the music or does the music write the lyrics?

MH: Music writes the lyrics. Simple as. The idea comes first, then the melody and then the lyrics.

AACS: Would the melody change the subject matter of the music?

MH: What’ll happen is, there’ll be a piece of music, we’ll write it almost to its fullest (musically), then I’ll start... I dunno, scatting over it, singing a melody, then I will pick the rhythm of the vocal and the melody and then I’ll write lyrics to fit in that, which provides a certain minimalism and it means that you have to be frank to put an opinion across.

AACS: Which is more important?

MH: They’re not mutually exclusive, music and lyrics. Without good music, lyrics fall on their feet; without good lyrics music does the same.

AACS: What prompts the black and white visual aesthetic the band displays?

MH: Everything from the fact that we were kind of a bit hurt when we started out and we didn’t want to kind of expose ourselves anymore, even though we’d been exposing ourselves behind closed doors, to labels and stuff. I think putting everything in black and white was quite safe for us, quite comfortable. And then it became this juxtaposition of really really poppy music, and this aesthetic that was really really dour and we just ran with it, it became a real theme. And like everything, all the slashes and the spaces and the black and white and the this and the that. It’s all about consistency.

AACS: So you can’t see yourself discarding it in the future?

MH: Black and white? Maybe. It’s just the stylistic— it’s a theme. It’s a thematic gesture.

GEORGE DANIEL: We’ve already dipped out with the ‘Girls’ video and that was just because we always kind of decided to do stuff based on its own merit. For that video it had to be in colour to portray what we wanted.

AACS: Will each album follow a specific set of themes, like the debut? Like sex and drugs, et cetera.

MH: The next album will be about sex and taking drugs. It’s the nuance of situation that I’m obsessed with - I’m obsessed with grand ideas that people can relate to, and the nuance in-between it. Moments, maybe parts of conversation that will be left out, and it means that you pick something so specific and small, that it makes people read into it and think “what’s that from?”, “what’s this from?”.

AACS: Perhaps taken out of context?

MH: Yeah! It’s like a scrapbook of conversations which you fill up. We’re not painting pictures, we’re showing you moments. I think the next record will be a carry-on from the first one. I think it’s gonna be a fun record as well, you know? There’s a lot of seriousness about our band, but I think this next record’s gonna be fun. We’re having a lot of fun.

AACS: So you’ve cited Talking Heads, Brian Eno and My Bloody Valentine as some of your influences.

MH: Most definitely.

AACS: There are a lot of bands at the moment, especially in the U.K. – Yuck for instance – who are trying to revive that sound. Do you see it as a bad thing that they’re recreating it, maybe replicating it?

MH: I think the reason that that didn’t work so much, the whole revival of the shoegaze scene, is because shoegaze in the UK, in the late nineties kind of became the scene that celebrated itself, kind of became quite indulgent and a bit ‘wanky’. Now all of the kids who are now growing up and they don’t really know about that, they’re just hearing this music that’s cool. They’re going and starting a shoegaze band but all the people who are in control of all the music magazines and all the labels and stuff, they saw it the first time ’round. It’s not that impressive to a lot of people. Whereas us - we’re lost in it.

GD: It wasn’t really coming from a popular place of popular culture.

MH: But as soon as it did, that’s when it became lame. As soon as it wasn’t My Bloody Valentine and The Jesus and Mary Chain and it became about Slowdive–

AACS: Lush.

MH: Lush, and all that shit, that’s when it all became bullshit.

AACS: You’re into a lot of eighties music. If you could choose a decade to emerge as an artist, would it be then?

MH: Ooh yeah, eighties! We would’ve smashed the eighties.

AACS: What would be different about releasing your music then as opposed to now?

MH: That’s a difficult thing to say, because our music... well I suppose we perceive it as post-modern (but there’re probably people at the NME who would hang themselves if they heard me say that), but we have a very post modern outlook on music and it’s difficult to say... but let’s say... fantasy, fantasy! We all got in a time machine, we knew what was going on, we took all of our songs back into the 80s, and we knew where it’d come from. I think it’d be surprisingly similar.

AACS: But that would be a good thing?

GD: Exactly

AACS: You’ve got some great achievements under your belt like Glastonbury, and you’ve got an upcoming US tour, how does it feel to be playing these incredible shows?

MH: It’s something that we’re really really excited and proud of. Breaking America’s like “the thing” that we wanna do.

AACS: Do you embrace that? The whole “becoming a pop star”...

MH: Do you want to get into that? AACS: How do you want to define it?

MH: I don’t mind being a pop star. Because I’m so safe being a pop star. If I’m just a pop star, the thing that everybody gets from me is a predetermined, prepackaged idea of what I wanna project. And that’s safe, being a pop star is very safe. All of the things that come if you don’t put your personality out there can be battered off because you’re not that exposed. I don’t want to be a celebrity... I don’t wanna be idolised as a person – I don’t mind being idolised as an idea, that’s fine. I don’t want to be objectified as a person. I’m not good enough for that. I’m not strong enough for that, I’m not strong-minded enough for that. I’ll fucking say stupid shit and, I can’t be arsed with it. I don’t like being a celebrity. I’ve seen what it does to people.

AACS: So what will “breaking America” mean to you?

MH: We’re playing shows in fucking Santa Ana in Southern California that are bigger than the shows we’ve just played in Manchester. Our profile’s really starting to grow in America, really starting to take off. We love it out there. Of course it works for us there, all of our music is just so–

AACS: Catered to their tastes. MH: Catered to their tastes! And it’s “anglo-fied”, too.

GD: We just always saw ourselves as sounding more like a faded polaroid in America than one in the UK.

AACS: What has your success taught you about yourselves?

MH: That we’re always going to be exactly the fucking same. You think that it’s going to change you, and then you realise you’re going to be exactly the fucking same. I’m still as blown away by everything from the second that it happened, but I think we’re not going to change as people, we can’t. We didn’t get big when we were sixteen, we didn’t get big when we were eighteen, we started to get big when we were twenty-four.

AACS: When you were ready?

MH: Yeah. When the world was ready.

GD: [Laughs]

AACS: If you had released music earlier, do you think you would have been as successful?

GD: No. We just knew. It was half a product of being lazy initially– MH: Just being stoned and lazy and teenage.

GD: Just being silly and we didn’t need to press on. There was no pressure to do anything. The only thing we knew is that we weren’t ready, we never had a deadline, we were going to decide when we were going to put ourselves out.

AACS: And will you have that same readiness when you release your next record?

MH: Post “The 1975”, yeah, we’re really ready.

AACS: You’ve had a lot of band name changes in the past.

MH: Yes, that was when no one really knew who we were - we weren’t really that relevant. Everyone sort of thinks that, oh, our band name changes changed a lot of other things as well.

AACS: A lot of so-called facts about you seem to be blown out of proportion, and romanticised.

MH: But that’s what people like though, isn’t it?

AACS: What else would you like to achieve?

MH: What else can we achieve? No, I don’t mean that, but statistically...

AACS: Number one album in the UK, supporting The Rolling Stones, touring the world currently...

MH: Five records in a year, yeah. It would be fucking selfish if we were wanting more shit we’ll just see what happens. A couple of Grammys would be cool though, a couple of Grammys...

GD: I’m feeling content right about now. AACS: Could you offer any advice for young musicians?

MH: Take your time. Take your time. I’ll tell you what: if kids are reading this, and they think I’m cool, I’m not. And if I tried to pretend I was, at eighteen, I wouldn’t be sat here. Take your time. Take your time. And let yourself grow up until you’re really ready.

Interviewed by Jessica Syed

Photo by Geneva Valek - See more photos from our interview here.

#jessicasyed #genevavalek #the1975 #bigdayout