Interview Upbringing: Everything Everything

Michael Jackson at Wembley Stadium in about 1993. It was an atypical start. I was 7 or 8, and too young to stay for the whole thing.I still regret that.

Yes, in that there was one! The Tunbridge Wells Forum. Still one of the best small, independent venues in the world, and run by people with nothing but their community and their love of music at heart. I went there every day between the ages of 15 and 19, just wanting to be there in any circumstances and learn what I could. I played there countless times, put gigs on, swept the floors, worked on the bar, did tech jobs - always voluntarily, as did everyone. I had a set of keys at one point. In terms of my career, this is where I went to school.

I got that “I never want this to end” feeling from the Ghostbusters’ theme when I was too young to know what it even was.

‘Boom Boom Boom’ by the Outhere Brothers, because it’s a (stupid) banger and I loved it.

I tend to say that my first instrument was the cello, as I learned that from the age of 7 or so, but I started that because I’d been learning the violin and my teacher had said my hands would be too big to play violin, even at that age (she was right, I have huge hands). I started the violin because I’d been holding my dad’s ukulele under my chin and hitting it with chopsticks when I was 4. There was a guitar in the house, too, and I remember obsessively plucking the low strings and watch them vibrate, in a kind of trance. And I smashed all the lips off the keys of my parents’ upright piano with a screwdriver… So it’s hard say what my first instrument was! I didn’t start playing guitar until I was 12, and then bass when I was 14.

Laziness or complacency of any kind, in writing, playing or listening. I’m as guilty of that as anyone.

Personally I seem to respond to ideologies with clearly defined boundaries, and artistic expressions of them; socialism, de Stijl, Kraftwerk, Brutalism etc. (So you can imagine I occasionally find it hard to be part of the mighty melange in Everything Everything!)

Mike Joyce of The Smiths told us, around the time of [our debut] ‘Man Alive’, that this was the best bit, and we should enjoy every second of it. Even if you later become a huge band, those first few steps into the unknown are the most thrilling. He was partly right, but I am still enjoying myself, for the most part.

I would love to have been in Radiohead, obviously. They are my favourite band of the last two decades and kind of our generation’s Beatles in terms of their extraordinary reach of influence.

Everything Everything’s album ‘Get To Heaven’ is out now. They will play Standon Calling (29th-30th July), where DIY is an official media partner. Tickets are on sale now. Visit diymag.com/presents for more information.

Tags: Everything Everything, Upbringing, Features