Kasa Del Tom - Hot Press meets Kasabian

I’ve found myself in the middle of a minor domestic. In a quayside hotel room, Tom Meighan isn’t enjoying Dublin – a city he’s seen “evolve and change a lot” – in the manner to which he has become accustomed. A day that starts with an emergency trip to the dentist before you even get to the chock-a-block promo doesn’t promise much. Add a cellular barney with a partner who is expecting you home and the prospect of dashing for planes and trains and it is living up to those early expectations.

“I’m fucking gutted,” the immediately-matey Kasabian frontman begins. “We should be staying in Ireland. I’ve gotta get a flight. I was trying to tell the other half that we don’t land in Heathrow until I don’t know what time. It’s a fucking nightmare! If I miss the last train, the next one’s at 12.30 – fuck that man, that’s horrendous!”
Loud negotiations with a girlfriend who seemingly won’t let him off the hook for the evening will continue post-interview, as we both wait for an elevator and I pray for a “DING!” and the opening of metal doors.
“Sorry about that mate,” he smiles with a wince as we finally descend to the lobby. “It’s not on though, is it? Giving out to me like that when I’m working!”
It’s a credit to Tom Meighan that it doesn’t seem like work at all. You suspect his default mode is puppy dog enthusiasm and his natural habitat is about two feet from whoever is in the room, making extreme eye contact and waxing lyrical. He’s buoyant enough to shake off his travel drama with ease for the duration of our hotel room conversation. There is, of course, plenty to lighten his mood. Meighan’s next trip to Dublin will find him on a 3Arena stage as part of the winter run of their current tour. There is little doubt that headlining the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury was, on a personal level for the Leicester band, the outstanding moment of this campaign.
When last Hot Press talked to Tom, the trip to Worthy Farm was imminent and the 33-year-old was having nightmares in which thousands of people abandoned them as they played. That did not transpire. The BBC deemed their Saturday slot “bombastic” – in the right kind of way – while the Metro gave a “smashed it” stamp of approval that was right up their street.
“To close it on Friday or Saturday is the biggest,” Meighan says. “For us, anyway, it was looming [large]. It was in the air, like a boxing match. You fuckin’ know the countdown’s on. Whether people agreed with us playing it or not prior to the fuckin’ gig – ‘How can they DARE headline?!’ and all that – we went there, we had 100,000 people, we took it. It was ours, we claimed it, destroyed it, and everyone went home with new faces. I’m just saying it from my own opinion, but I’ve never seen Glastonbury go like that. That went fucking insane. We’d come on to ‘bumblebeee’ and the whole place erupted. Glastonbury doesn’t erupt like that, does it? I mean, Arcade Fire and Metallica?! I spoke to Lars [Ulrich, Metallica drummer] and he said, ‘You killed us in two songs. It was over, it was done.’ He was like, ‘Fuck you motherfucker!’ Emily Eavis, bless her, was like ‘fuck it, this is insane. This is the craziest I’ve seen it in years’. I knew we’d do that, I knew it’d happen.”
His subconscious might say otherwise, but Meighan shakes his head decisively when asked if he was feeling prior pressure. He was determined not to get hung up on the enormity of the event.
“Everyone shits themselves. But I was like ‘fuck that man, we’ll get in the ring and knock ‘em out in fuckin’ round one’. And that’s what we did.”

We’re a full decade on from the release of their eponymous debut but they remain at their fighting weight. While Kasabian still feel they’re firing on all cylinders creatively and are capable of getting global audiences fired up, many of their initial contemporaries are either dangerously close to being heritage acts or have disbanded completely.
“Sad, isn’t it? We’d come up with bands like Franz Ferdinand and stuff. The Razorlights. The Libertines were coming to an end... The Libertines rekindled it all and they were fucking amazing. They broke, crushed and then they fell apart. I love The Libertines more than ever. They kickstarted it again.”
A young Tom Meighan and his soul brother Serge Pizzorno were more than ready to jump on for the ride.
“Some of the best times of my life... It sounds like I’m fucking going to leave the band or something! But no, I’ve got great memories of it all. You’ve got to remember that before all of that, we were trying to get a record deal. So I’d say it’s more like 15 years. We started this band when I was 17. Or tried to. My brother John James had come in with a guitar. We’d be in Serge’s bedroom having a cigarette out his window. His mother would come along and knock in: ‘Serge?’ With Kit Kats and tea and I’d be flicking the cigarette away. A decade just goes. Time is valuable. I can’t really explain it to you, it seems like yesterday I was living on a farm and recording the first album. It’s just so quick.”
Some things never change. Meighan feels like their fifth record, this year’s 48:13, is imbued with the same spirit as their debut. A buzzed-up, playful trip through electro-rock, it certainly couldn’t be called the work of a band on their last legs.
“[Second single] ‘bumblebeee’ is off the scale. It blows everyone out of the fucking water. It’s not frightened. It’s like we’re reborn again. It sounds to me like our first record. D’ya know what I mean? We’ve got no fear.”
Pizzorno, the zen master of the group, has ascribed that fearlessness to the foundations they have these days, positing that starting families and relatively settling down has put everything in perspective. Sure, Meighan might be mid-squabble with his girlfriend, but at least it’s because she’s eager to see him. And his guitarist reckons that the family unit makes him a better frontman. Musically unshackled.
“As long as my daughter’s alright, and my missus, I’m not bothered. I pray to God I’ll be here in ten years speaking to you. Saying the same shit! No, but I agree with what he says.”
Fatherhood and rock stardom can occasionally find themselves at loggerheads.
“It’s difficult,” he nods. “She’s two years old, my daughter. It is hard but it’s what daddy does, isn’t it? He’s in a rock band. That’s all I’ve known.”
If you clambered aboard their tour bus, would we now find Tom and Serge chilling out in front of an Inspector Morse box set?
“Indulgence is the same shit. The same fucking people, in the same room, the same smoke... Get out of my room. Nothing changes with that. We’ve had amazing party nights, but the shit’s still the same. You can’t prove anything by it. When you’re young, it’s fantastic, seeing the world, having parties in your room. Don’t get me wrong, I fucking love it... Of course it’s a fucking cliche, I get it. Sometimes you’ve got to cut that shit out.”
Kasabian “get it” more than a lot of people would allow. The lad rock label continues to float around them, despite the fact they’re a far more experimental proposition than most arena acts out there. This year alone, they’ve taken stick for the “we’re being watched by Google” line in ‘eez-eh’, a song which wears its buffoonery with a wink and nudge, and has been likened to Spinal Tap by Billy Bragg.
“The thing is, we’re characters. We’re characters! That’s why people love us. People want to be our friends, they believe in us. And that, for me, is the key point. But who’s going to believe you if you don’t believe in yourself?”
After plenty of fighting talk, the final question is clear: who or what are Kasabian kicking against in 2014?
“Everyone. Still. Haha! We won the fucking war. Glastonbury was the war, we battered it. But... I want to be as big as Bono.”
Maybe, Tom. There’s a miffed woman in Leicester, however, whose mission in life is to never let you get big enough for those particular (sexy) boots.

Kasabian play 3Arena, Dublin (December 8) and The Waterfront, Belfast (9)