On a cold, wet and dark Tuesday night Gavin Miller talks with Ross Futureheads from the highly showbiz and rock and roll location of a Leeds Travel Lodge...

Date Written: 01 October 2003

On a cold, wet & dark Tuesday night, I talked via phone with Ross, the guitarist in new Sunderland based band The Futureheads from the highly showbiz and rock and roll location of a Leeds travel lodge. After some phone reception- related banter, I finally was able to have a natter about all things Futureheads- related...

GAVIN: So how long have you guys been on tour for?
ROSS: Well we've only got 2 shows left- we've got tonight in Leeds, and a show tomorrow in Scarborough. We've been on tour for about 3 weeks I think, and it's been pretty hard work. It's been our first major tour we've ever done, we've done little support tours with The Kills and we've done a small headline tour ourselves, but this is like 23 shows or something, so it's been kinda full on!

G: You're on the same label as the Webb Brothers, the Stills and the Streets (679 Recordings)- that must be pretty good! How did that all happen?
R: The deal with 679?
G: Yeah
R: Well we were signed to a label called Fantastic Plastic, and we were due to do an album with them, but it turned out that recording costs were being pushed up and up, and the label couldn't afford those sort of recording costs, so we had to find someone who could finance things a bit further, and 679 were really interested in doing it, and because they're a subsidiary of Warner Bros. they had a large pot of cash, so they bought us out of the contract with Fantastic Plastic, and that enabled us to make our first record as good as we could possibly make it. Everyone seemed very happy, but it's just a shame we had to go through that awkward process of swapping labels and all that.

G: How did you guys get started?
R: We formed out of a youth project in Sunderland. Barry and Dave Hyde who are brothers in the band, they used to go to a youth project that was getting kids off the streets and introducing them to playing, and could learn how to play guitar, or drums, or writing songs and stuff, just using music as something to do really, and me and Jack used to go to the same sixth form college and we went along as we had a band ourselves, and we heard about this place where you could rehearse for free, just go down set your kit up and practice, so we all went down, and after a few months when all of our bands we had at the time fell apart and we decided that, because we were good friends thanks to this project, that we would all form a band between the four of us.

G: On Monday you allowed your new single, 'A To B' to be downloaded at will from your website free of charge- what prompted this shift towards the net?
R: None of us in the band are particularly that at ease with the internet, or that sort of technically minded, and we have a few friends of ours, Scott and Tom, who logged onto the site, and they both suggested that we could try and put something that was available for download on the website, because it's quite a nice thing for fans, people who love the band, and check the website quite often, and it's a nice treat for someone to download a track that's not available anywhere else and for free. It was also convenient because we were in between changing labels, and we had the song kicking around for a while and we thought it would be a nice way, without having to fork out a lot of major costs for pressing of the single and a lot of press for it, to make it available just for people who really want it, it's a good way of spreading the word, and I'm all for making music available for as cheap amount of money as possible!

G: My mate told me that when he heard your single 'First Day' he thought of Devo- are they favourites of yours? Who else would you class as influences? Who else do you like?
R: Devo are an amazing band, I have a lot of respect for them because they make really intelligent pop music, and I think that's the main ambition of our band, to make songs that are quite catchy and quite poppy, but with an intelligent twist. We don't want to be too predictable, and stick to a structure of having verse-chorus-verse, so we try and make things interesting. We have four people who sing and there isn't really a lead singer in the band, we all take the lead on different songs, and it's just a lot like mixing elements of other music. We're all interested in quite mathematical guitar music, like the whole New York 'new wave' music scene and we are interested in punk music, but I think we take a lot from minimalist composers like Philip Glass. It's all just in the arrangement, I think that's what makes music interesting- the way certain parts come in and how the piece is arranged rather than how it's written.

G: The Independent recently said that you were "one of the country's most exciting prospects"- how do you deal with great press like that?!
R: It's always really nice to hear people say things like that about the band, especially when it comes from a national paper, because like it or not, people are gonna read about it. You don't go out of your way to buy the Independent, you either buy it or you don't. But generally, the bands that are the most hotly tipped, or most hyped are the bands that are bands that don't last very long. They aren't bands that people will love forever, they're just bands that are very much at the minute, and then they're gone, and I don't think we have any ambition to be like that! You come from a music scene like Sunderland, and there hasn't been any national attention on it for years, and we're not used to seeing bands get that sort of attention where we're from, so you just get your head down and get on with what you're doing. If people suddenly start saying that "oh they've blown it" or "these were once hot prospects but this album is awful" or something, you've just gotta get on with it! At the end of the day, people who like the band, are always gonna like the band, whether the NME says so, or whether the Independent says so, you've just gotta be weary of the hype and not go too far up your own arse.

G: A lot of bands recently are starting to get very political, mainly because of Bush & Blair, Iraq, etc. What do you make of all that, and could you see yourselves going down a similar route?
R: I don't really see ourselves as an overtly political band, I think the messages we have in our songs are more personally based, just about where we're from and growing up in a town that's been overlooked in terms of things like bands and industry, etc. I don't think that large issues like the conflict in Iraq are particularly pressing to the band, I think that a lot of people in the music industry are doing very good things in regards to campaigning towards the anti- war protests and everything and I think the backing that they give to that is really wonderful. They have a message and they have a really articulate way about speaking out against the war, but it's just not really part of our agenda at the minute- we write songs that are very much non- political in a grand sense.

G: Where are you guys off to next?
R: We've got a show in Leeds tonight, and then we've got a show at the Scarborough Kasbah tomorrow (starts to giggle) that's a hugely glamorous end-of-tour bash! And then we've got a couple of days off before an MTV2 special in York on Saturday night. That should be pretty good, because we're playing with the Blueskins and the Beatings, with the Beatings being on Fantastic Plastic, they're old label mates of ours, so it'll be nice to meet up with those guys again, and the Blueskins are a lovely new band that have been pretty cool, so should be a good night.

G: Just one more question- when can we expect an album from you?
R: Well we've already recorded it and it's being mixed whilst we're on tour, so I think the idea is that we'll put a proper single out in January time, and then the album comes out in early February. That'll be good, because it means we get to do another tour again in the new year, and this tour's been really good for us, because a lot of the places we've been to we've never visited before, and we've never played in a lot of these venues before, and it's really encouraging to see quite good crowds in these places. There's a lot of young kids getting into it, which is really good, because I remember being 15/ 16, and there not being very much in Newcastle, but I think there's even less now because a lot of the venues have closed since then, so I just think it's really nice to see young boys & girls at shows like that already, it's really encouraging. And in February when the record comes out, if we get to do a bigger tour, and bring along a support band, I think it'll be a really good occasion.

G: Cheers, and enjoy the show tonight!
R: Awww, thanks very much mate!

And on that, we call it a day. The single 'A To B' is available now to download, free of charge, from their website www.thefutureheads.com.

Interview written by: Gavin Miller.