Bombay Bicycle Club may take their name from an Indian takeaway, but there’s nothing disposable about the band. Fresh faced and enthusiastic, they began life working in each others’ bedrooms before a chance entry into the Road To V competition saw them catapulted to wider attention.
Juggling school work with songcraft, Bombay Bicycle Club have persevered to charge past barriers of age and experience with their debut album ‘I Had The Blues But I Shook Them Loose’: a thrilling and intoxicating document to misspent youth. Despite their relative lack of life experience, they’re evidently one of the most exciting new bands in the country. ClashMusic.com caught up with bass player Ed Nash for a quick Q&A…
So you all met at school, then?
Yeah we did. Well, the other three guys, not including me, went to the same school. They started as like a school band, playing assemblies when they were younger. So it started from that.
Where did the name come from? Is it really from the Indian restaurants?
Well, it is the Indian restaurant chain. We were playing a gig, and we needed to have a name to play the gig – for posters and stuff. No one thought it through – it was simply for that night. We just chose like a random name and then never bothered to change it. So it’s stuck!
Early on, when you were so young, did you find that you were forced to promote your own shows to perform at?
Kind of, yeah. I’d just turned 15 when we started to do gigs. We could play gigs but all of our friends couldn’t get in. We found that really annoying, so that’s why we started playing all-ages shows. Plus the Underage scene had started up in London, promoting gigs for underage people. I guess the whole Underage scene came out of bands like us.
Have you noticed a change in London venues’ attitudes towards younger fans?
Yeah. It’s completely changed now, pretty much, after that whole thing. At the all-agers or the Underage club nights, only young people went there. I think more venues realised that this could be a good thing, that young people wanted somewhere to go and see some bands. I think most venues are 14-plus now, probably due to that. It’s definitely more accessible for young people.
You first gained wider attention after winning the Road To V competition – what was your experience of the contest like, looking back?
Jamie (MacColl, guitar) entered us into Road To V kind of as a joke – he didn’t think anything would happen with it, and he just did it for the sake of it. Then we forgot that we had entered and they came back and said: “Oh, can you do it?” It wasn’t something we had planned, we just did it for the sake of it, just for fun. But we happened to win it, which was really, really good.
The Holloways were in that contest as well, right?
Yeah, we beat The Holloways! We didn’t even speak to them, though – I think they thought they were going to beat us. I think they were very much expecting to win it, but it didn’t happen. Sadly for them!
Did you worry about losing street cred after being involved in the competition?
I worry about it more now, because people sometimes look at us and go: “There’s that band who did Road To V”. But we literally did it as a bit of fun, it was a fun thing for us to do. That was the only reason we did it and we were all like 15 and 16 when we did it. I only think about the street cred thing now, when people say that’s why we’re big and stuff. It’s more something I think about now. We only did it to have fun.
You then self-released a single – why did you choose to go down that route?
We were at school, and we still had about two years left so we didn’t want to sign to a record deal. Because that would mean we were committed to doing stuff and that would take time away from growing up with our friends, and doing stuff at school. So we released it on our own record label so we could do it ourselves and take our time, before signing a proper record deal.
Were you able to go on proper tours like this before, given your schoolwork?
No, we had to do it in school holidays, so we’d have a week when we’d be touring. Then, finally, we had a month on tour. It’s a bit different now. I’m not sure if we’ve adjusted yet, and it’s still very hard to get your head around. It’s definitely very different. We like travelling around, but you don’t eat or sleep very well so it completely tires you out.
Did your success turn you into heroes at your school?
I don’t know. I guess so, but I don’t think anyone treated me any differently. I knew everyone before I was even in the band anyway. Plus, there were loads of other bands in the area anyway – like, Cajun Dance Party were in the same school. I think they took a lot of the attention away from us, because they signed a record deal early – when they were still at school.
After releasing a single on Young And Lost you signed to Island – what differences have you noticed?
There are now so many people working with us, working for us. It’s a bigger operation, I guess. I don’t know… even talking to A&R men is different. Before we did everything ourselves, and now we’ve got other people doing things for us. It’s just a bigger version of what it was before.
Does this allow you to focus on the music, rather than all the business around it?
We very much try to do everything we possibly can ourselves. We get involved in choosing the singles, doing the artwork and the videos. We try to do a bit of everything. I think we might actually end up doing more work now, as we’re trying to get involved in everything that we do!
When recording the album did you take material into the studio with you, or did songs find their shape during the recording process?
There was, like, four years’ worth of songs. Some of the songs on the album were written when we were 14, before the band had even properly formed. Two of the songs are that old, a few of them are from the Road To V era and then a few are brand new. There was a big range of songs to choose from.
What did the involvement of producer Jim Abbiss bring to the band in the studio?
I think he gave us a whole new look on things. Up until then we were just some school band – we’d been through the funk thing, but then suddenly we learned that there was a lot more to writing and recording music than we knew before. He also encouraged us to take risks and do other things in the studio that we just didn’t know about. It was a learning curve – we didn’t know that much when we first arrived, and it was our first real introduction into modern music.
The album’s title came from a hip-hop track, apparently.
It came from A Tribe Called Quest song called ‘Afterhours’. To be honest none of us listen to contemporary British indie music. We would listen to pretty much anything else, and we’re all into dub and reggae. I listen to lots of older indie music like Pavement and Dinosaur Jr. – American influences, that’s what I prefer, more so than modern indie music.
You mentioned working on videos – what was your experience of making the promo for ‘Dust On The Ground’ like?
It was great fun to do. The director came to us and told us the concept was just the band hanging out with loads of girls, so we were like: “Cool! Let’s go that!”
Has your youth ever worked against you?
Yeah, for sure. People use the word ‘potential’ a lot because we’re still young. They’re like, “Yeah they’ll do something good in the future,” but we all think that what we’re doing now is really good. What we’re doing now is the best we can do.
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Bombay Bicycle Club’s debut album ‘I Had The Blues But I Shook Them Loose’ is out now on Island; find the band on MySpace and see them live as follows:
August
1 Matlock Y Not Festival
15 Leicester Summer Sundae Festival
28 Reading Festival
30 Leeds Festival
Photo: Gus Waller
