Jealousy is a terrible thing ain’t it? One minute you’re flying. The next, some bitter bastard comes along and snatches it all away from you like a high school thug who’s made off with your dinner money. And so it goes for The Futureheads. Since their six year formation at the Sunderland City Detached Youth Project, the north-east four-piece have scored three top 20 hits, shifted a quarter of a million album sales worldwide, hitched a ride on Dave Grohl’s private jet and caught the eye of every celeb from Noel Gallagher to Hollywood bad guy Dennis Hopper.
After fleeing to a farmhouse near Scarborough, Barry (lead singer) and his brother David Hyde (drummer), guitarist Ross Millard and bassist David ‘Jaff’ Craig recorded their second album ‘News And Tributes’, in less than six weeks before taking the record on the road for a low key tour of the UK. Then, just when everything was running smoothly and The Futureheads were preparing for a secret headlining April return to London, some bastard went and ruined it all by pulling the plug during ‘Decent Days And Nights’.
“I just thought sabotage,” rants Barry. “I thought one of those fucking pricky London bands had turned our gig off. I thought ‘you fucking bell ends!’” Well, er, hang on a minute that wasn’t actually the case. It later turns out that the blame didn’t actually lie with some back-stabbing southern wannabe rock stars. Instead it was all down to a dodgy fire alarm that just happened to go off at the wrong time. So all is forgiven then, eh? It was only a 10-minute delay after all Barry. Er, not quite. “That gig was the most inebriated audience I’ve ever played to in me life. They were all hammered,” Barry snaps. “You go and try and smash people over their heads with your music and it’s a sledgehammer when they’re that rat-arsed. I just thought I might as well not have bothered.”
Fair play to Barry; you can’t help but admire his passion, his honesty and his no-nonsense attitude. He’s as outspoken as Johnny Borrell and Liam Gallagher. The only difference is he ain’t doing it to massage his ego or sell shitloads of records. He just tells it like it is.
So power cuts and conspiracy theories aside, how are you finding life back on the road?
We’ve had a great time touring. People are getting into the new material but it’s still a little early for the new album yet. It hasn’t been out for very long and it’s the type of album you need to listen to a few times and get your head round a bit. Some fans that have seen us play live recently must have thought, ‘eh?’ Because it doesn’t sound like us playing. The sound of the new album is quite different.
Have you had any hiccups since Camden?
Nah we’ve been fine to be honest. Saying that though, one of our fans had a bit of a hiccup last night. She was right at the front and as soon we kicked off the set this fucking idiot elbowed her in the eye accidentally and she ended up in first aid for the whole gig. We went round afterwards to say hello to her cos we felt so sorry for her.
I believe the title track ‘News And Tributes’, is based on the 1958 Munich Air Disaster in which 23 Man United players were killed in a plane crash. Why did you choose that particular tragedy?
Ross is a massive Man United fan and he’s supported them since he was a baby. Basically he put that idea forward not really knowing that it was gonna turn out on the album in the way that it did. That is one of the songs that shows a real difference between the first and second album. That one and maybe ‘Face’ are songs that are very different. Basically if you like those songs, you’ll like our second album.
Did you find the band were under more pressure to record the second album?
Not at all. If anything, it was much easier. The first album was a total nightmare to be honest because we had to record the bloody thing twice. We recorded with (Gang Of Four’s) Andy Gill at first but we didn’t like it so we had a bit of a nervous breakdown and ended up working with Paul Epworth (Bloc Party, White Rose Movement) and he kind of salvaged the album with his work. So it was this really kind of drawn out anti-climatic experience. The second album though we got done in five weeks. We didn’t rush ourselves and we worked at this nice pace but we got so much done. It was really invigorating to go up on the farm with (Blur and Doves producer) Ben (Hillier) and record it. It was so easy. It just came together like a dream.
Was it a real challenge working with Ben?
He was great. He was very relaxed and very well prepared with equipment and stuff like that. He had me walking through a courtyard at 3 o’clock in the morning in the fog so he could record the sound of me walking. That’s what happens with ‘Yes/No’ at the beginning, you hear some footsteps walking through this gravel and that’s me walking along and I’m going through all this amp with a bass drum beat coming through. He blends that in with the actual sound of the drums. Stuff like that he’s well up for experimenting with and I love that because you wanna feel like you’re a bit of an adventurer when you’re making an album. He had this really great balance of getting a really pristine sound and a really messy sound.
Just going back to your earlier days, do you find it strange that it took your cover of Kate Bush’s ‘Hounds Of Love’ to break into the mainstream?
I don’t find it weird that we released a cover version that made it into the Top Ten, I just find it annoying. People who like us because of that song probably wouldn’t like our other music. They’re not really fans of our band. They’re just fans of that song. We’d done that song for years so it wasn’t a marketing ploy or anything. I wasn’t surprised when it did well cos people love that sort of shit. Ah well fuck it, that’s just how it goes.
There’s more to the world than some fairly fortunate individuals. It’s kind of living in a dream world to me. It’s a morbid waste of time.
You picked up quite a celebrity following after that. How did you feel about that at the time?
It’s always an awkward engagement when you meet someone who’s famous. You kind of don’t know what to say. We met Dennis Hopper at a show in America and he knocked on our dressing room door. I opened the door and he said (adopts American accent): “I think you’re fabulous!’ I was like, ‘Oh my God!’ We stood there with him for people to take photographs and then we were just like, ‘OK bye’, and he kind of just sloped out. It’s sad but it’s also weird that we live in this celebrity fixated world. It’s so annoying that the development of mankind has ended up with like living in popular mainstream culture. But there’s more to the world than some fairly fortunate individuals. It’s kind of living in a dream world to me. It’s a morbid waste of time.
You must have been loving it though when Foo Fighters invited you on their private jet up to T in the Park last year?
(Laughs) Yeah it was pretty mad as you can imagine. Sitting next to Taylor Hawkins on a private jet during take off while this fucking Scandanavian supervixen is giving yer beer relentlessly. I was like ‘Christ what is going on here?’. It was amazing. It was just one of those rare experiences when you’ve met someone who is a bona fide international superstar like Dave Grohl and he’s one of the loveliest people you could ever meet. You don’t have to kiss his arse. His nature is so kind of graceful and respectful. If he wanted to be, he could be the biggest prick of all time. But he is one of the best musicians of the past 20 years and he’s still a nice fella. He hasn’t been corrupted by anything.
It must have seemed like a million miles away from the early days when you and Jaff were working in Kwik Save?
That was the last job I had about three or four years ago. Because me and Jaff both worked at Kwik Save, it was really difficult for us to get work off at the same time. That just became a nightmare so we both left cos we got offered this two week European tour in Germany. That was a really important tour for us cos that was the tour when we decided to cover ‘Hounds Of Love’ and Dave joined the band. Peter Brewers from Field Music was the original drummer but he was in another band called the Electronic Eye Machine at the time. He really wanted to concentrate on that so we brought Dave up to do a gig and he nailed it.
Was the lowest point for you as a band at the time when B-Unique pulled a record deal half an hour before you were due to sign?
That was difficult like but we got signed within the space of six weeks after that anyway. Still there was a point when we thought this is never gonna happen and I was absolutely gutted but then we just had a big chat about it with our manager and ourselves and we just thought, ‘fuck it, this is nothing. It’s just a record deal that’s gone wrong. These things happen’. Looking back I’m glad that it happened now because after that, that label went bust anyway.
When did you find people started picking up on the Futureheads?
I think when we did the NME Tour in 2005 we were flying by that point. We did play the shit out of all those bands (Bloc Party, Kaiser Chiefs, The Killers) we were on tour with. The Killers changed their set list depending on how well we went down. If we went down really well they would come out with all their hits. So we were fucking fighting for it. We were really proving ourselves and we did blow seven tanks of shit out of those bands I think. That gave us a lot confidence and we realised our contemporaries particularly in a live sense, were slightly behind us.
Your new album went straight into the Top Ten when it was released. You must have been pleased about that?
To be honest I don’t really care that much about stuff like that. It’s only truly remarkable to anybody if you’re right at the top in a phenomenal way. People want record breakers. At this point we’re not really that type of band. We make quite aggressive music and in the climate we’re in there is a very conservative machine at work, especially radio. It is really fucking conservative. I think we exist kind of in the face of all that really. We try to do something unique and that isn’t really encouraged that often these days.
And there you have it. The Futureheads in a nutshell. No nonsense, no bull shit, no compromise. They’re doing it all on their own terms.
