Subterranean Blues

In the heaving bar of a provincial English hotel, The Subways’ Billy Lunn is sharing an amusing anecdote about David Grohl.
“Before we supported Foo Fighters at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, a guy came around to all our dressing-rooms, warning that no one was to go on Dave’s ‘ego ramp’, which extended out into the audience,” the singer smiles. “Of course, I decided to be the little git and, three songs in, I ran to the end of the ramp and dived off. Afterwards all I could think was ‘Oh Christ, Grohly’s going to kill me!”

Fortunately, the Foos leader lived up to his reputation as Nicest Bloke In Rock and laughed the whole thing off.
“He came up and gave me a big bear hug and joked about never letting me near his ramp again. He’s alright, is Grohly.”
He’s chipper this evening but Lunn has lived through a world of heartache these past 18 months. Overseen by grunge maven Butch Vig, The Subways’ second album, All Or Nothing chronicles, in often excruciating detail, Billy and bassist Charlotte Cooper’s romantic parting of the ways (Lunn’s younger brother Josh completes the line-up, though, thankfully, not the love triangle). The result is a punk-pop heat-seeker with a maudlin heart and slow-burning air of regret.
“In a way, it was like therapy,” asserts Lunn, who put the band together as an Essex schoolboy in 2002, scoring a surprise hit with 2005’s Britrock barnstormer Young For Eternity. “Songs like ‘Obsession’ are about us not wanting to be near each other, even though we had to be. You’ve got to be honest because, if not, in 10 years time you’ll look back and think, ‘I could have said it better. I could have been more honest.’”
As if things couldn’t get any worse, Lunn was next diagnosed with vocal chord polyps, the same condition which ended Julie Andrews’ singing career.
“They’re hereditary – my Nan had an operation to have hers removed about eight years ago,” he explains. “Of course, it doesn’t help when you’re screaming down a really crappy PA every night. When I had the operation they told me that if I sang within two weeks I’d never be able to sing again. I had to re-learn to sing, which was kind of a rebirth.”
In way, he feels, his illness was a blessing.
“If Charlotte and I had split under normal circumstances we’d have to have gone to our manager and told him we needed to take a break from the band, because it would’ve been too painful to be in one another’s company all the time. But this gave us space to get our head around things."
Besides, he adds, a broken heart makes for fantastic songwriting grist.
“We said to each other, ‘We’re going through this really difficult time, but look at the amazing music we’re making!’ People ask, ‘Don’t you find it hard singing the songs you wrote about Charlotte?’ Not at all. We celebrate what happened. We looked back and learned from it, from all the mistakes and regrets. You’ve got to learn or you’d turn into a cynical old man.”
The Subways cut All Our Nothing in Los Angeles, in a studio not far from Sunset Boulevard. Vig wasn’t their first choice as producer. Not because they didn’t think he was up to the task but because they didn’t think he’d be willing to work with them.
“So we’d interviewed all these other producers and they were saying things like, ‘When I get you into the studio, I’m going to push you, I’m going to pussy whip you, I’m going to make you cry.’ And we just weren’t into that at all. We don’t need to be pushed – we’re a band who if we don’t think were doing our best, we’ll push ourselves. What we needed was a mentor, someone who was calm and collected. And Butch is just the most disarming guy – I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so much in a studio.”
Their relationship with Vig goes back to an early Subways show in LA, at which Cooper and Josh had to be escorted to the stage by security because they were too young to legally set foot in the venue. Says Lunn: “We were on the bus waiting for them to come and get us and then we heard this knocking on the door – it was Butch. He’d heard our record and wanted to come say hello. So I played him a few songs I’d been working on and he dug them. We’ve been friends ever since.”
Living in a cramped apartment off Sunset, The Subways weren’t exactly kicking back with Hollywood’s elite during their LA sojourn. Though Lunn does recall a rather strange poolside encounter with Paul Rudd, the US comedian known for his turns in frat-with-heart comedies Knocked Up and Superbad.
“I had these sexy blue Speedos that Charlotte and Josh were just appalled by,” he smiles. “They really tried to prevent me from going out in public in them. But our apartment had a pool, so one morning I went down there. And Paul Rudd was sitting there, chilling out. He gave me a wry smile. I like to think it was because he knew me from The Subways. But it was probably the Speedos.”