Ahead Of Their Time

I think being aware of the fact that there’s a show going on is a good idea,” Bruce Springsteen told Nick Hornby in a recent interview. It wasn’t, as Hornby noted, as throwaway a comment as it might seem.
“How many shows have you been to where the band pretend to be unaware what’s going on through tuning up and talking to each other?”, Hornby asked the reader, adding that “Springsteen’s simple recognition of the fact that people pay for every onstage second separates him from almost every other act I’ve seen.”

Hornby certainly has a point. Looking at the young pretenders, there are few that seem to give that sort of 100% effort.
Of the new crop, only The Futureheads come to mind as a band that seem fully aware there’s a paying audience in the house.
“Well I think that we’ve always tried hard to involve our audience and make them feel part of the gig,” says Futureheads guitarist and co-singer Ross Millard. “We wouldn’t be ones to take ourselves too seriously, like. It’s important that the audience are having fun.”
On stage, the Sunderland four-piece are all fun and panto. The inter-band chat is all done over the microphone (Ross: “I think I might sing a song now Barry.” Barry: “Ok, folks do you want to hear Barry sing a song?”) and it makes for an engaging and enduring performance.
“A lot of bands seem ungrateful for where the public have put them when you go and see them play live,” Millard adds. “They get big and I think they seem to think they deserve it. We’re over the moon at where we are now to be honest, so I suppose that’s how we come across on stage.”
In person, Ross is very much in tune with his quirky stage persona. Quite shy, when he speaks, he gazes down at his runners and fumbles a bit in his responses. Regularly, he justifies his answers in a manner which is quite warm, innocent and child-like.
“We haven’t been one of those bands who have one single and then just go massive,” he asserts, as we talk some more about the importance of satisfying an audience live.
“It’s been quite slow, really really slow actually. We’ve gradually built an audience by playing lots of gigs, but I suppose in the long run that could work better because it means that the people who come and see you play now are going to come in two or three years time when the sort of music we make may not be as fashionable as it is now. So I guess really, when you look at it that way, it’s very good for us.”
Success, though, has come mainly through one song – a cover of Kate Bush’s ‘Hounds Of Love’.
“We deliberated big time about releasing that,” he reveals. “We didn’t want to be popularised by a cover version at first. But when you sit down and think about it, it’s one of the more popular songs in our live set, and has been for years, so releasing it hasn’t changed much but maybe added some more fans.
“Also, in biting the bullet, I think there’s a challenge there to write better songs for the second record, as well, isn’t there? You know, having to have as big a hit with stuff off the second album, which hopefully we’ll have finished before the end of the year.”
So, what are the highlights of 2005 so far?
“Glastonbury. Just for when we came off stage. The three of us were buzzing and there was Barry (lead singer/guitarist) pissed off going ‘bastards’ to us. It was his birthday and we forget to mention it! (laughs). He could have had 30,000 people screaming happy birthday at him but he didn’t. Unlucky!”