News The Shape Of Rock To Come

“These days, my friends aren’t who they used to be. We were all sinners and drunks, but now they’re too mature for me. Mike’s on daytime radio and John played at Reading and Leeds, and I’m still playing the Purple Turtle on New Year’s Eve.”

Don’t get us wrong, it seems cliché to start quoting lyrics, but somehow Deaf Havana’s James Veck-Gilodi hit the nail on the head with the opening to his band’s latest album. In fact, it feels like he’s managed to single-handedly voice what any fan of UK rock music is thinking right now, and all in one simple verse. The characters to which he is referring are Lower Than Atlantis frontman Mike Duce, and John Taylor, guitarist of Young Guns, and they’re not the only ones leaving behind dingy venues and cramped vans. Somehow, somewhere along the line, the UK rock underground has started to take on the mainstream.

As with any music scene or era, there will always be the lingering myths of days gone by; stories from those few who “were lucky enough to be there at the start.” The ones who were stood in a crowd of eight people, watching a less than eager band who had just loaded their own gear into a venue that probably underpaid them. There’s a certain romantic mystique around any band’s ‘early days’; we’ve all wanted to be that kid, discovering that band before anyone else. It is however with a jaded sigh that we must admit, sometimes it doesn’t feel all that special. Sometimes, you really are just stood in a pub with grimy walls listening to a fairly average guitarist unable to control the feedback through his amp. But then there’s that rare occasion where you’re nowhere near prepared for what’s about to happen to those guys on stage, the ones who spent last night sleeping on a friend’s floor.

Right now the UK rock scene is the strongest it’s been in years, with a whole new generation of bands finding themselves touring worldwide, playing major festivals and gaining radio airplay like it’s no one’s business. There’s an entire breed of talent emerging in the bright lights of the mainstream that have been slaving away, playing those grimy pubs and sleeping in vans for years. And, whilst there’s many a great band flying the British rock flag for us right now, there are evidently some forerunners. Thus, enter our big players: You Me At Six, We Are The Ocean, Canterbury, Deaf Havana, Young Guns and Lower Than Atlantis. Six bands that have all, coincidentally, been sharing stages together for the past half a decade.

Back in February 2008, on a distinctly average Friday evening in York, a fairly small crowd were gathered within the confines of Fibbers; a bar that could easily be mistaken for a bus stop. Taking to the stage that night were three otherwise insignificant bands, whose most remarkable quality was how young they were in correlation to how damn far away from home they had somehow got. That was the evening we were introduced to both We Are The Ocean and You Me At Six.

At the time, You Me At Six were embarking upon only their second ever headline tour, and decided to take out some of their friends. The tour openers, All Forgotten, were a five-piece based in Woking whose members mostly attended the same school and college as the YMAS boys, while Essex-based We Are The Ocean were invited along to undergo some of the band’s first ever shows outside of London. The average age of the touring party was barely legal, and none of the bands even had a full EP release to their name. If we remember rightly, You Me At Six had about three different merch designs total, and All Forgotten sold demos burned onto discs for £1.

“That was our first ever proper tour!” The words fall quickly from WATO frontman Dan Brown’s mouth as we recollect memories of that show. “Obviously, we’d done kind of… weekend stuff, before that; going up North, playing a couple of shows and coming back because we had college during the week. But that tour with You Me At Six was the first proper thing that we did; it’s still one of our favourite tours. We remember so much about it because we were experiencing everything for the first time.”

The same sentiment is mirrored by You Me At Six guitarist Max Helyer, who happily reminisces about his band’s earliest memories: “I think you always remember the first time you ever do a van tour. We had Jack from Not Advised driving us because he had a van. That was the first tour Dan [Flint, drummer] was on as well, so it really felt like the start of a brand new You Me At Six. We were all just in this van every day, having chats, listening to music. We slept in the van, we slept in people’s houses. We didn’t really spend much money, people just looked after us. It’s those first times that you do things in your band’s career; every first time you do something, you’ll remember it.”

And with his mention of fellow friends Not Advised, Max seamlessly proves one of our points about UK rock music: the absolute sense of community felt between bands. As aforementioned, both of the support acts for their 2008 bill were great friends of the headliners and it’s that kind of friendship that is built to last.
“We’ve stayed really close friends with all of the guys on that tour,” explains Dan, “So it’s always good to reminisce, because it was where we started. You meet people on tours and end up making friends for life. We’re still really good friends with both You Me At Six and All Forgotten, who might have split up now, but we still speak to all of those guys regularly. ”
“Touring with friends is the most important,” adds Max. “It makes touring so much nicer. You could have a band on your tour that you’ve never met before and it could go one of two ways: they could either be amazing people and you could get along so well, or you could not get along with them at all. It was all about helping everybody out; giving somebody a foot up because it’s not the easiest industry to be in.”

Offering up a new memory of those early days is Mike Sparks, one of the two vocalists of Canterbury, who tells us a little about one of the band’s first shows, all the way back in 2007: “I remember playing with You Me At Six at Farnham Maltings Social Club; it’s on one of our web videos from ages ago and it was one of the biggest shows we had ever played. It was an all day festival, but it was just all of the bands that we knew getting together, like Tonight is Goodbye who are now Futures, they were playing. Kill The Arcade who are now Viva Brother, they played. It was this whole big family.”

It seems evident then, that geographical elements also played a major part in the early careers of these bands. With You Me At Six hailing from Surrey, We Are The Ocean from Essex, Canterbury from Farnham, and many others from the surrounding regions, it would only make sense for bands to form their own musical community.
“The south definitely has some kind of weird… thing,” says Mike, unsure of how to really word what it was that the south got so right. “I remember when I was young and all of my friends were in bands. You just had to be in a band. A lot of them now aren’t, but there was such a massive music scene down here.”
“Everyone knows each other,” he adds, before beginning to voice the clear respect that a certain one of these band’s holds. “You Me At Six are such a prime example of people that help out their bands, their friends. All of the people that are on tour with them are their friends. Their tour manager is their tour manager from ages ago, their lighting guy is their mate who knows how to do lights. One of their cousins is a guitar tech. Things like that. Everyone knows each other and it is a huge, huge family.”

It’s no secret then that You Me At Six are leading the pack, with their third album crashing into the charts at Number 3 last October, but their ethos was something only ever encouraged by the artists who helped them gain their success in the first place. Max explains: “It’s all about helping your friends out at the end of the day. We had our first chance when we went on tour with Fightstar. We didn’t expect to get such a big tour. That was like, ‘Wow, we’re going on our first proper tour.’ We had the opportunity to play in front of people that had never heard of our band before. For us, that was a massive opportunity for us to really impress and show new people our music and what our band’s about.”

It’s that sentiment that has been carried through even to present day, with the idea of inviting smaller UK bands to support on their headlining runs; an opportunity most recently awarded to both Deaf Havana and Lower Than Atlantis. “For us, Deaf Havana and Lower Than Atlantis have been working their arses off,” Max states, in a completely matter-of-fact tone. “They’ve both got albums out, they’ve both been touring for a long, long time and we got along with them really well. There’s a lot of music in the UK that is amazing, it just needs to be shown to a lot of people and that’s one of the reasons that we took both those bands out. They both deserve it. They both deserve the recognition they should be getting.”

And opportunities as such aren’t something lost on the bands given them, as James Veck-Gilodi of Deaf Havana explains earnestly: “That was a smaller tour for them [You Me At Six], but for us, those were the biggest shows we’ve ever played. That was incredible and, whilst there were people there who already knew who we were, there were a lot of people who were watching us for the first time. That was great. I think to keep that British community together is really important.”
“That was my favourite tour of all time,” pipes up Lower Than Atlantis frontman Mike Duce. “I wish I was still on it!”
“I think [being surrounded by friends] makes it easier, certainly when you’re on tour,” reiterates James. “You can be away from home and I get pretty homesick and it’s horrible. When you’re surrounded by your friends though, it makes it that much easier.”
“We were friends with Lower Than Atlantis and Young Guns, and we all sort of worked up together. I feel really proud of those two bands in particular because we all came from exactly the same place. We did our first two tours with those two bands, so that helped us out a lot because we had other people to relate to. We were all in the same boat. It’s definitely important to be in that community.”

It was on one of those early tours that Deaf Havana played alongside Young Guns in the dark depths of Rio’s, a bar situated at the end of a shopping arcade in Leeds. It was September 2009 and the crowd must have only been about twenty people deep, with little to no one even fully knowing who the bands were. The show was opened by then-Newcastle heavyweights The Casino Brawl – another band to have since parted ways – but it was evident from the word go that the three bands had bonded perfectly.
“That was one of my fondest tours I think,” begins James, when we recount our own memories. “We’d always been friends with Young Guns, so we knew that was going to be fun: we didn’t know The Casino Brawl but we just got on with them immediately. It was just a laugh. It was so much fun. I miss that tour a lot!”

But, surely, it must be difficult in the beginning when your band is forced to play shows to a handful of people, before having to struggle to find somewhere to stay? “It’s what you have to do if you want it to work,” simply states Gustav Wood, vocalist and focal point for Young Guns. “A lot of the time what separates bands that do well and bands that don’t is that drive and commitment. Being in music is a very difficult thing; you’ve got to do it because you have that passion. I think that’s why the current bands are the ones that are doing well; they’re the ones who really give a s**t and were willing to throw everything away in order to pursue that. There’ve been times when we’ve played to maybe five or ten people and it was hard and sometimes heartbreaking. You think, ‘I’ve devoted my entire life and all my energy and emotion into this thing and it doesn’t feel like it’s working.’ But, if you can have a good show with ten people, then chances are you can go back and play to more.”
“It is tough touring,” adds Max. “Many people turn around and say, ‘Yeah, cool, touring must be the best life in the world,’ but it can be a bit of a strain. It can put you in positions where you think, ‘Why are we doing this?!’ Especially when you’re starting off. Some people might not even care about your band, and you’re trying so hard. There’s a point where you’re thinking, ‘We’re only just starting up, we’re spending all of our money travelling, we’re not really getting paid much for a show, we’re not selling much merch…’ It can be difficult, but it’s about persevering and working really hard because it is something that you really want to do. If you put all of the hard work that you can into it, then it’s going to pay off.”

However, there is undoubtedly, a sense of accomplishment that comes along with those early experiences, as Gus explains. “Getting out there and starting off, playing shows to two people, then going back and playing shows to ten people because hopefully those two people enjoyed the show and they brought their friends back. You end up being in a situation where you have a real intimacy and a connection because they’ve been with you since the beginning.”
“We were lucky if we got a floor in someone’s house to be honest,” Mike offers on the difficulties of touring. “It was more like fighting over floor space in the van, but I guess, looking back on it now, I enjoyed it because it was unpredictable and fun, having a laugh and enjoying my youth. Having so much s**t stuff happen early on makes you appreciate stuff now. A lot of bands have immediate success and - I’m not naming names - but I know a few bands personally that take everything for granted and don’t appreciate anything at all. We’re not like that and we’ll never be like that. Nor will most of the bands that we’re talking about.”

And it seems as though the hard work is paying off. At present, You Me At Six have scored a top three UK album, Young Guns’ sophomore record entered the charts in the top twenty and Lower Than Atlantis recently signed to major label Island Records. Deaf Havana have sold out their biggest London headline show to date, months in advance, We Are The Ocean recently played the main stages at Reading and Leeds Festivals and Canterbury have received some major radio love.

And granted, yes, you can quote facts and sales figures all you want, but it’s the mentality of these artists that really proves their worth. The clear sense of friendship and support that’s been developed throughout the insanely early years of their lives already exudes through everyone we’ve spoken to, and it’s that that really pushes these young men to be at the best of their games.

In fact, chances are, it’s easy enough to pass these bands off as temporary adornments of the music industry. It might be quite easy to ignore them on the radio, or palm them off as ‘just another band for teenage girls’. But, hey, with an arena tour – for one of these bands, at least - closer than you can imagine, you’re going to have to pay attention sooner or later. Whether you like it or not.

So, surely then, this is all an extraordinarily special time to be apart of the British rock scene?

“There are certain times when we’ll be hanging out with friends and playing shows with them and it’ll be really great, having drinks, having fun and partying…” starts Gus. “Then, you’ll have these moments when you realise, ‘I’m in the middle of something really special here.’ Everybody that I know is a creative and talented young person and that is really inspiring. I can’t say it enough, but it’s just a really exciting time to be in a band.”

‘And thus, we return to James’ opening lines, because these days, those friends aren’t who they used to be. They may or may not be sinners, drunks or immature, but they’re definitely on daytime radio and they’re playing at Reading and Leeds. And as for The Purple Turtle? We’ll leave that in the past where it belongs.’

Taken from the April 2012 issue of DIY, available now. For more details click here.