#I have seen no normal headlines about this tour

[iwatcheditbegin]

The most unserious tour

[joshfuckingkiszka]

𝔈𝔫𝔡 𝔊𝔞𝔪𝔢 - 𝔍𝔐𝔎

jmk x f!reader

first of many, enjoy ;)

THIS BLOG IS 18+ MINORS DNI

warnings: mentions of alcohol, fake dating trope (it's a fave and I not be sorry), bit of angst, josh is a cutie

taylor's version masterpost

reputation masterpost

☮

Young Starlet Caught in Compromising Position!

Your publicist was less than pleased about the headline. Even though you had insisted nothing had happened, and that picture was simply a case of a bad angle. It wasn’t looking great, though. To be fair, the picture was pretty bad. A bruise painted your neck, lipstick smudged around your mouth as some guy grabbed your hips from behind.

It would be hard to explain yourself out of that one, to be honest. Regardless of whether the picture was accurately depicting your actions of the night, the fans had seen it. Your image had already been tainted in their eyes, and it would be nearly impossible to recover. 

Big reputation, big reputation Ooh, you and me, we got big reputations, ah

Rather than attempting to, it was decided that you required a rebrand. It started with the incorporation of darker clothes into your “wardrobe” - quoted only because it was what was chosen for you. Interviews began to shift to questioning the possibility of heavier music, to which you would coyly suggest it was possible. 

Then you released a new single. It caught the attention of rock fans everywhere. There was a sudden call for a genre change, which you hoped so desperately for. The last few years of your life had made you feel like a sell out. You traded the humanity and meaning in your music for tracks that would generate streams and ranks on charts. 

Within a couple years, no one remembered the popstar you had been. It was all about the rockstar you had become. And you were a big one. 

It wasn’t overwhelming anymore. The work you put in was hard and abundant, but it was genuine. It showed in the love that poured from the fans over social media and in the crowds of your sold out shows. 

A world tour was in the talks and an opening act was in question. Someone suggested a band you had heard a handful of times before: Greta Van Fleet, not that you ever really had time to immerse yourself in a new band. From the videos you’d seen and the songs you’d heard, you would be lucky to have them on tour with you. They were getting relatively popular and you knew you had to strike fast to get them on the setlist. 

“I have a surprise for you!” Gene, your publicist, exclaimed in a sing-song tune. 

“Ugh, last time you said that, I had a snake draped over my body. Still mad at you for that, actually.” You only looked up from your phone for the last sentence, otherwise preoccupied with a daunting game of 8 Ball with your best friend. 

“Well, this one I’m not sure is much better, if we’re being honest,” he trailed off, “the label loves you, you know that.” 

“Uh oh.” You weren’t worried. 

“But in a recent poll, they found that fans think you’re …how do I put this …boring?” He strung his words together carefully, as to not offend you. It wasn’t his tone of voice that concerned you. 

“Boring?! I’m practically fucking a mic stand every night!” 

“Not enough anymore, babe.” He was being rather nonchalant, and you realized that being called “boring” wasn’t even the main issue that was being presented. 

You narrowed your eyes at him, “So what are they going to do about it, Gene.” His name came out like the sparking embers of a fire on the forest floor. 

And I heard about you, ooh (yeah) You like the bad ones too

That was how you ended up at an intimate restaurant in Nashville, across from Josh Kiszka. He was nervous and it was actually kind of cute. It reminded you of a real date, something you hadn’t had in ages. 

“I like your dress. Green. That’s my favorite color,” his eyes raked over the silk of your dress. It extended to your ankles, a slit daring to expose your leg. The straps were a little tight, and prevented you from wearing a normal bra, and the tape holding up your breasts was peeling from sweat. 

“I know,” you chuckled, “everything about this is set up to be as persuasive as possible.”

“Oh. Either way. It looks great on you.” He was genuine, and as the night went on, you found that it wasn’t even his most endearing trait. 

Just as the clock was about to hit 11, he was standing on your front porch, wishing he didn’t have to leave. This was an arrangement, a plan to draw attention to the both of you, driving up streams and ticket sales. 

As you stood on your porch, hand lingering on the door as if it was a riddle, so close to him that you could practically taste the wine on his lips, you realized something. You realized that you were going to inevitably fall in love with Josh Kiszka, undeniable force meets immovable object. It was almost expected that dread would fill your stomach as you recognized this fate, but it never came. Instead, butterflies flew in its place. 

I've passed days without fun, this endgame is the one With four words on the tip of my tongue I'll never say

A month and half later, and several dates to show, you had proven yourself correct. But, who could blame you? What about Josh wasn’t lovable? 

“I don’t want to do this anymore,” you announced to the meeting. There were a few label executives, Gene, and Josh with his team. 

“What?” Josh was the first to say anything, and his face portrayed betrayal. 

“Yeah, what he said,” Gene added. 

You sighed, “I don’t want to pretend to be in a relationship anymore. That’s not what my job is, and I don’t see how it adds any value to my music.” 

“B-But, this is what’s going to sell the tickets. A love story, performing together in the throes of romance.” You glared at the executive. 

“No, our raw talent and meaningful music will sell tickets. I will not be told who I can date, when I can see them, and especially when I can break up with them. If that’s a problem, I’m sure another record label would have no problem meeting my demands.” 

This is what drew Josh to you: your fiery passion. In spite of that, he was upset, especially since you hadn’t even discussed it with him. He was under the impression that you liked him, maybe even liked him. God, he felt like a middle schooler again, paired with the pretty girl for a project only for her to ask for a different partner halfway through. 

I don't wanna touch you (I don't wanna be) Just another ex-love (you don't wanna see)

As it turns out, the label no longer had a problem meeting your demands. You waited outside the board room for Josh, pulling him aside when he came out, head hung low. 

“It’s not you, trust me.” 

“Oh, then it’s you?” 

“No. Listen, I don’t want to be told to date you, or what happens over the course of our ‘relationship.’ I don’t want the pressure of having to pretend to love you.” 

“I get it, believe me. You don’t have to explain.” 

“I want to do it by myself, on my terms. Love you, I mean. And believe me, I do.” 

He looked up for the first time, his eyes were beautiful. But you already knew that. 

“I don’t want to have to forget you, and never see you again because the tour is over. I want our love to be ours, and no one else’s.” 

Josh smiled, he agreed.

I wanna be your endgame, endgame

〚taglist〛

gvf: @doodle417, @brokenbellz, @gretavanfleas, @pyrojoshy, @greta-van-chaos, @xserenax-13, @hayley1623, @kdarling1, @autumns30, @keighoe, @chalametpwk, @sammysvanfeet, @shawnsthighs, @gretavanbitches, @sammiejane22, @gretavanbestie, @jordierama, @alexxavicry, @spark-my-nature, @rainy-darling

joshy: @prophetofthedune, @loofypoofy, @gretavangracee

[ezwezz]

GIRLY PLEASE MAKE A YUNJIN X FEMREADER FIC w angst n cheating 🙏🙏🙏

why do you want me to hurt you bby!? gonna be sobbing while writing this

also! i'm sort of winging it with the format and scenario so hopefully it's adequate enough

'i love you'

parings: huh yunjin x fem!reader warnings: cheating, ANGST words: 1k

"i love you more than anything, y/n, no matter what."

yunjin's words from last summer were replaying over and over inside your head. you didn't know what warranted the sentimental flashback, it was just a normal tuesday night spent laying alone, staring into the darkness looming above you. perhaps you just needed the comfort.

you hadn't seen yunjin for 1 month now. the throbbing inside your heart had dulled down and you were left with a familiar emptiness spattered with the occasional 'i miss you baby' or 'sorry for not replying, i've been so busy :('.

you knew yunjin's career came with extortionate sacrifice on both ends, but loving her was all you needed. you'd loved her for two years now, despite the constant hurt of her absence.

"i love you more than anything....no matter what." you whispered the sentence. she'd looked so beautiful while saying it- her earnest brown eyes and furrowed brows as she gently cupped your face, the warmth of her body against yours. it was a fleetingly perfect moment, nothing could compare. you wondered if yunjin thought about it as much as you these days.

---

incoming call: yunijn

"y/n?"

"hey jen, everything okay?"

"baby listen, no matter what you see or what you hear, you have to trust me, i love you. never forget that."

"i love you too...but why are you saying this? has something happened?"

there was silence on the other end of the line. you knew something was wrong and it made your heart pound at an unsteady pace.

"yunjin...what did you do?" your voice sounded small.

"i'm sorry..." there was a quiet sob on the other end of the line, and you immediately knew. in that moment, your entire world came crashing down. everything you'd sacrificed for the woman you loved submerged you, drowned you, it tore you apart.

"i'm not going to ask for your forgiveness..." yunjin's voice drifted into the background as your mind swirled into a messy flurry of emotion. you struggled to comprehend what this meant, grappling with your own feelings, trying to figure out exactly how you felt.

"i'll talk to you later jen." you whispered before ending the call and allowing the tears to cascade down your cheeks. she couldn't even be there to face you herself, you resented her for being able to throw away your relationship like it was nothing.

---

sure enough, you awoke from an almost sleepless night to see every news feed headlining a picture of yunjin kissing an unknown girl outside a club. you switched your phone off, unable to answer any messages reaching out to you with condolences.

reality was a hard truth to face, and the reality of the situation was gouging into you. you never wanted to see her again, to hear her name or her songs.

"i love you more than anything, y/n, no matter what."

you scoffed as the words stung in your head like a venomous bite.

incoming call: yunjin

you immediately switched your phone to airplane mode.

---

the remainder of le sserafim's tour was shrouded with controversy and despite putting on a brave face, the guilt and heartbreak was eating away at yunjin.

you knew their tour was nearing its end, so of course you'd already packed up all your stuff from your shared apartment with yunjin and moved in with a nearby relative. you didn't know whether it made you a coward, avoiding yunjin like this, but you knew you wouldn't be able to face her before taking time to heal. there was the occasional mention of her that crossed your newsfeed, but you made sure to ignore each one, never taking the time to indulge in reopening fresh wounds.

you were home alone when you heard a knock at the front door. it was unusual considering deliveries were never scheduled for this time and you weren't expecting anyone, so you answered the door with caution, opening it just a crack.

"y/n?"

fuck.

you immediately closed the door, scolding your previous fears of creepy men as anything would've been better than this.

"y/n please, just hear me out." a muffled voice begged.

"whatever you're going to say is pointless. i don't want to hear it."

"i understand that but...i think we both need the clarity."

"i really don't need anything from you right now."

"please just open the door, then i promise i'll leave you alone."

"jen- yunjin...this hurts so fucking much. i've spent the past few weeks trying to erase you from my memory and now you're here, expecting me to just...let you near me again. you ruined everything." you could hear yunjin begin to cry softly, as were you.

"i know." she choked through tears. "i know nothing will change what happened and it's killing me y/n. i don't know what to do...i love you so much, you mean the world to me. i don't go a day without missing you and wanting to be near you. i know it's over between us, but please just let me say goodbye properly."

you had nothing to say to her, but you opened the door anyway. it was an impulsive decision fuelled by a fleeting sense of longing for your love, but you immediately regretted it when you laid your eyes on the fresh face that would eternally haunt you. you didn't have time to process the overwhelming surge of emotion before tender arms enveloped your body and held you in an excruciating embrace.

"let me go." you sobbed, not wanting this bittersweet familiarity. but she only held you tighter, her body trembling.

"i love you."

"don't you dare say that, not after..."

"i love you so much. i'll never stop loving you y/n."

"shut up jen, please just leave me alone." you finally succeeded in pushing the woman away, it was like tearing off a bandaid.

her face was streaked with tears and it looked as if she had lost weight. you can't have looked much better.

"i don't want you to forgive me, because you deserve better, you deserve so much more than me. but never forget that i'll always love you, even if our worlds never collide again. i'll always be waiting for you."

and as she began to retreat with her eyes locked onto yours, she uttered one last sentence: "i love you more than anything, y/n, no matter what."

then yunjin turned away from you, not once looking back.

no other sentence could ever torment you as much as that one. but little did you know, it would replay over and over in yunjin's head as she lay alone, staring into the darkness looming above.

[marimayscarlett]

Obviously, I'm just speculating, but taking from what Schneider said last year - I don't think the rest of the guys were ever jealous of Till's solo work. Why would they be? Especially after Emigrate. Richard and Till clearly need a bigger let out than Rammstein can provide, and if it doesn't interfere with Rammstein, then why not? But unlike Emigrate, Lindemann went on tour. Garnered negativity that reflected onto the band. And most importantly, unlike Richard, Till got further away from them. He didn't want to and couldn't spend more time with them as individuals and as a band member. He got a new friend group, new entourage, which integrated into Rammstein and put an even bigger wedge between them. Till even stopped flying with them! And that what might've caused resentment caused by fear. Is Till quitting Rammstein? Is he even still our friend?

And Richard had a fight with Zoran before the backstage bj video which btw was tasteless and lowkey offensive to the band and the crew. Mein Teil is a great video but they've made some masterpieces since then. None of which had to involve sado masochism veiling itself as "being misunderstood".

I've nothing against Till doing what he's doing, he has every right to it but I also believe that last years incident should've been a massive eye opener (not the fucking young women part. He made it very clear with his poem that he doesn't care what we think about that) but that if he wants Rammstein to continue, he cannot lead a double life. Richard managed to separate Rammstein-self and Emigrate-self whilst still maintaining both full time. Till completely failed that, clearly deeply hurting 5 other individuals in the process. It was easier for him to do what he wants and ice everyone out. It's better if they took a long, long break than ruin 30+ year relationship with silence.

As for Zoran. He's just bitter. If post Zoran Rammstein videos are Ali Express, then wtf does that make him? Because no one even knew of him before the band and certainly he's not making any headlines post band. His only saving grace was Till but even then, his Lindemann videos aren't even the best ones..

Hi and thank you for the time and effort you put into writing this out 👋

I will work my way through this message and will add some of my own thoughts to it - this will be subjectiv and not everyone has to agree with everything.

It is true that Till and Richard both needed an additional outlet for their creative processes - the difference is that Till treats his solo project like a normal band and likes to go on tour (Richard mentioned this in one interview once that touring is a vital part for Till's creative life), while Richard treats his more like a studio project. Going out, touring with a stage show like his, putting out videos in this very style which is seen as 'typical Till' by now I might say - all this can serve as a target for misunderstanding, resentment, problems in general.

I do sometimes wonder why he takes these risks (after last summer more than ever). I know he as an artist has his own visions and wants them to come to life, which is his right - but I sometimes ask myself if it's worth it. If it's worth it that others have to deal with the problems his work/behavious has caused. But then again: it's none of my business and he has the freedom to do as he pleases.

I used this ask as an impetus to read Schneider's statement again (something which still triggers me a bit and which i haven't done in over half a year), and Schneider writes this: "Till has distanced himself from us in recent years and created his own bubble. With his own people, his own parties, his own projects. That made me sad, definitely." While I never understood this as being criticism towards Till having his musical side project, I do see it as criticism on how he treats it and how he handles things around it - between the lines there is (at least from my point of view) definitely discontent and concern. So I do believe the band doesn't see anything wrong with having side projects (in Richard's case they were even happy and relieved about it), but maybe in the trend of side projects demanding too much attention or developping possible unpleasant characteristics/outgrowths.

One can only hope that the last year really served Till as a wake up call to overthink some structures which gained influence around him.

"It's better if they took a long, long break than ruin 30+ year relationship with silence." I'm honestly not sure about this and I don't know what good a break would do in this case - since seemingly nothing incriminating had happend, there's no reason for a break in this regard, and maybe, just maybe, it's good for the band to work together this year, in their anniversary year, to actually feel close to each other, to reminisce together, something in this regard.

Regarding Zoran: Like I said in the post I reblogged, I find it highly conceited of him to quite literally say that every thing that came after him music video-wise, every art work from another director is inferior to his work in its quality (hence the 'AliExpress' metaphor). If he really means it that way, it's quite laughable to be honest. In my opinion, he is resting too much on his laurels he garnered from 'Mein Teil' - which admittedly had an immense effect and gave us Frau Schneider, and from "saving" 'Mein Herz brennt', but to say that the music videos of 'Deutschland', 'Adieu' or 'Zeit' are below his standards is mind-boggling to me (if I understand his allusion correctly).

Zoran's Lindemann videos are not my taste, and saying he wanted to express lonliness and insatiableness with a porn-video seems hypocritical and sends out 'oh I'm an artist, of course nobody understands me correctly'-pick me vibes. I'm not surprised that a lot of people who respects their own work didn't want to work with someone anymore who made a project like 'Till the end'.

[someloserjay]

Concerts and Tequila

!TW! Mention of alcohol and slight nsfw themes

Completely from Sebastian’s POV

Sebastian and his friends need to get to a concert a Zuzu city when same thinks of the only person he knows that can drive.

I’m terrible at descriptions bare with me please this is fully inspired by me and my friend going to a ‘set it off’ concert.

Sebastian’s POV

“Guys, did we think of how we’re getting there? Zuzu is massive. The hotel isn’t close to the place.” I pipe up. Planning to go see a concert with these two is terrible.

“Can we get a taxi or something?” Abigail asks

“It just sounds sketchy honestly.” I say everyone nods in an sort of agreement

“What about the [Y/N]? She used to live in Zuzu. She's gotta know how to drive? We could get her a ticket.” Sam proposes his eyes light up so much when he thought of the idea you’d think a light bulb appeared over him.

“Even if she did, no way she’d like the band.” I say trying to knock the idea down. She is a farmer, as much as i have a raging crush for her i know she wouldn’t be into this type of music.

“She actually does! I had to run by to pick up some gems I asked her to get. She has a poster of them and one of her pajama shirts is an old tour shirt. I think the poster is signed too.” Abigail says, trying to remember. “Have you two nerds not been inside her house?” She asks a massive laugh coming out.

“I’ve never been to the farm.” Sam admits

“Yeah, I haven't been over there since she moved in. I usually catch her outside the mines on her way back.”

“Wait a minute you said signed? She's been to a concert before, so she’d definitely be down to drive us! We gotta go ask.” Sam says getting excited and grabbing his coat. It’s towards the end of summer so the nights are getting chilly. So I stand and get my jacket. Abigail texts the farmer to find out she’s at her farm. Grabbing her jacket, we start on our way. The pathway is a lot neater, [Y/N] travels it so much she took a day to clean it up pushing the grass back and pulling some thorn bushes out of the way. I grab the small box out of my hoodie pocket and the walk being enough time to smoke. Plus going to [Y/N]’s this late is nerve racking. To say the least.

“You know that’s bad for you right?” Abigail says in a half joking half serious tone

“And you eat rocks.” I say as I light the cigarette. Sam laughs and she gives an annoyed yet defeated look and shrugs.

“Gems.” She says to correct me. Rock is rock. As we near the farm we hear faint music coming from the farm. It's not the band we all have tickets for but it is one of the headliners. We turned the corner to see the farmhouse, I haven't seen it since before mom added it to the farmer. It looks amazing. We turn to see the scene of [Y/N] pulling some weeds around her crops. When she hears us she perks up and waves, tossing the fibrous weeds into a box she has beside her porch. She set herself on the porch letting her legs dangle off.

“[Y/N] are you free next wednesday?” Abigail says in an overly enthusiastic tone. Jumping up beside her sitting beside her but with her legs crisscrossed while facing [Y/N].

“No sorry guys I’m going to the city next week for a thing i won’t be here.” Abigail's smile doesn’t fade too much.

“What are you gonna be doing? We just need someone to drive we’re going to Zuzu too.” Sam says. I finish my cigarette and go to toss it before [Y/N] stops me.

“I already had to clean a ton of old butts when I moved. I have a trash can inside in the kitchen.” She says as sweetly as humanly possible. I start inside and everyone follows me. [Y/N] goes in and grabs a glass of water.

“I’m actually going to see a concert.” She says turning her music off. The three start to put the piece of a puzzle in.

“[F/B/N]?!” Sam says, putting a hand on her shoulder. He’s normally touchy with people but this sent a small jolt into my heart.

“Yeah vip tickets. How’d you all know? Abby, did you rat out me liking them?” Abigail just nods like a dofus, she sighs.

“You got vip too?” I speak up.

“Yeah I have every time I’ve seen them.” She says gleaming. Yoba, her smile makes me melt.

“So can you drive us? We have two hotel rooms which means a free bed, come on please.” Sam asks

“Sure, I haven't booked my hotel yet. I have a rental car booked already. Do none of you know how to drive?” She asks, our excitement dies with that last question.

“We’ve never bothered to learn you can pretty much walk everywhere here in pelican town. Hey, even you sold your car when you moved here.” Abigail notes. She sold her car when she came down here? Is that how she bought her first sets of seeds, and why she’s so interested in my bike?

“I wasn’t trying to be mean, sorry guys of course I’ll drive just meet me at the bus station, the rental car spot is like right beside the bus stop in Zuzu.” She says it’s getting really late so we decide to head out for the night and let her go to bed.

— Wednesday—

This is the earliest I’ve been up in forever I think. I groan as i get up grabbing my phone to shut off the alarm. I grab my bag and start at the bus stop. I cut through [Y/N]’s farm. There’s a paper taped to her front door. I can’t help myself, I walk up to her door and read it. It’s a simple note thanking Perrie for coming by to check on her animals on his day off and some basic care instructions for them. I hurry off the bus stop where as usual I’m the last there. Abigail and [Y/N] are excitedly chatting back and forth beaming ear to ear. That damn smile. Sam’s hugging two cups of coffee from home. Without speaking he just hands me one and gives the most tired smile I’ve seen in a bit. A little bit later Pam shows up and we all board the bus.

A ride later we get there. We walk across the street to the rental car place and [Y/N] checks out the car. Abigail and Sam, who know about my crush on the farmer, let me have a front seat with her. Basterds. She puts the address for the hotel in and tells everyone to buckle up. I watch her every move. Before pulling out her hands and cord back to Abigail, annoyed I didn't say anything just watch. She picks “Like That” By ‘Sleep Token’ which isn’t a bad song. I enjoy it. But I really didn’t expect her to like it, I really need to change my expectations. She loved it, and knew it. Her singing along almost broke me and Abigail knew it.

“Oh shit the hotel is beside my old apartment building. I know where I’m going.” She laughs as she turns the car and starts to back out. It’s a smooth ride. Except for her and Abigail singing along to different songs she plays. When we get there she parks and we all rush in. Abigail and [Y/N] run into the bathroom to rush getting ready in the hotel room book for her and Abigail. Me and Sam set our stuff down and come back into their room sitting on the bed as we all chat. When she comes out of the bathroom to grab her phone I’m shocked I’m used to her in her overalls or jeans with her hair up to keep it out of her way. Her [Y/H/C] is down framing her face beautifully. Makeup, I’ve seen her with very light makeup on Fridays at the saloon, and light colored makeup at town events. But it’s dark, the lipstick, the eyes, it's something I would normally see from Abigail. She has a pair of shorts I’m pretty sure I’ve seen her wear before they aren’t covered in dirt though. The fish nets she’s wearing underneath are definitely borrowed from Abigail. It’s paired with a shirt from their last tour. Choker and earrings to add flair.

“You look great.” I say praying my voice didn’t crack as bad I think it did. Everyone laughs, I go along to feel less embarrassed. I always wondered what she’d look like dressed up like this, but seeing it. Yoba himself couldn’t stop the thoughts running through my head. We check the time, the vip stuff is about to start so we all pile back in the car and rush over Sam and Abigail get in the normal line and we pass through. [Y/N] and I are waiting in line and she is talking nonstop. She's excited I am too, I’m just shit at showing it. We get up front and go to them together. They sign her poster and vip tag mine too and she goes to take her photo with them and grabs my hand pulling me in.

“Memories!” She says as they flash the camera. We walk to the merch table and we each buy what we want and head to the stage. She goes right to the middle front to stand and wait for stuff to begin. She ties her shirt around her bag’s cross body strap.

“Can you hold this for one second?” She asks me while holding her bag out. She has her poster slightly hanging out of the top of it. I agree, taking it for a moment as she slips the new hoodie she had bought over her head.

“Look good?” She asks spinning. She looks amazing.

“You look great, sure you won’t get too hot in that?”

“If I do I’ll just take it off.” She says, grabbing her bag from me, slipping it back over her head. We make conversation as we wait the same and Abigail gets it a bit before everything starts and meets up with us. Me and Sam stand behind Abigail and [Y/N] since we’re taller and don’t want to block their views. Sam wiggles his eyebrows at me and I smack his shoulder mouthing ‘grow up’ at him.

The first band comes out and the girls are excited they know most of the songs. Me and Sam are a bit clueless but the performance was top tier.

‘Now I'm going to ask a favor, you've been a great crowd tonight! When I say get down I want everyone to get down like this and when I say to start jumping!’ the singer squats as the song begins signaling the crowd to do the same. I see Abigail pull [Y/N] down with her, there's a shine of excitement in [Y/N]’s eyes. The beat starts to swell. I play along as well, letting myself bend at the knees. The singer jumped up and the crowd went wild jumping. I smile while watching Im recording most of their set since I don't know the lyrics as well. [Y/N] is in front of me. I can barely make it out but I heard it even Sam gives me a look to confirm her. She's screaming the lyrics along with the crowd, the quiet farmer they've all come to love, they've forgotten she lived here this was probably her favorite scene when she was here. She's screaming and jumping, very close to me should I mention. Even Abigail points it out. [Y/N] brushes up against me by accident. She apologized, before turning back and enjoying the rest of the song.

[Y/N] comes back with Abigail with some bottles of water for the four of us needing water before the main band comes out. I take a large sip of mine, before slipping it in my hoodie pocket we all chit chat. Making plans for after the concert that include a bottle of tequila and what I would usually call a stupid game. Never have I ever. Were grown, why Abigail and Sam would suggest it seems suspicious. [Y/N] seemed excited so I went along with everything. The concert went great. Our group's voices hoarse from screaming lyrics all night. We all piled back into the small SUV [Y/N] had rented. As we pull off I begin to wonder about her life here in Zuzu, she doesn't chat about it much. I'm pulled out of thought as we stop there's a small plaza in front of me. The faint glow of ‘ABC’ glows and lights the car up. Abigail and [Y/N] hop out to grab the liquor we had agreed to. Sam slaps my arm apparently I was staring.

“Ya’know Abby said [Y/N] gets pretty touchy when she drinks. And we all know how cocky you get.” Sam says, I turn towards him.

“You're not trying to suggest?” I fuss, blood rushing to my cheeks and the tips of my ears. Sam laughs.

“I mean when was the last time dude. The girl from the fall festival that came in from Zuzu. The long distance didn't work or something like that.” He's referring to a small hookup I had about a year ago.

“I'm just saying Seb, she's definitely into you, take the shot.” Sam says as he punches my arm repeatedly. The girls come back outside and get inside, [Y/N] handing the heavy black bag back to him. Pulling out the music still going just quieter so we can all chat. The elevator ride up to the room was uneventful. The girls go into the bathroom and take off their makeup and their hair down. Me and Sam get the red solo cups set for the game, pouring an equal amount of tequila in each. Yoba, why did they pick tequila? It tastes like hell. Me and Sam use the bathroom one at a time to get our pajamas practically the same. A plain T-shirt and sweatpants. The girls come in. Abigail in leggings and her T-shirt she just bought. [Y/N] in shorts and the hoodie she had bought earlier in the night. The shorts barely poke out under the hem of the hoodie. Abigail sits on the bed beside Sam, leaving [Y/N] to sit beside me.

“I’ll start.” Abigail exclaims

“Never have I ever fallen asleep in public.” She says looking at Sam who takes a drink. So does [Y/N].

“I fell asleep on the bus to work one morning. And an few times on the way home from the mines to late.” [Y/N] says laughing

“I passed out on the couch in the saloon a couple times.” Sam admits. The game goes on until it's just me and [Y/N].

“Never have I ever worked hungover?” I ask in a joking manner, to my surprise [Y/N] took the last sip of her drink laughing. Sam’s eyes go wide.

“Dude Jojo’s is so strict about that, how'd you get away with it?” He asks

“It was the stupid call center that expected us to look half dead anyway.” She says giggling. Her hand rested on my knee to support her own laughter. My hand works hard to resist the urge to hold it. I wish we had broken up the rooms differently.

“So then I win?” I say an smirk growing on my lips.

“Guess so, last one with anything left in their cup.” Sam says “Gotta finish it off.” Which then starts the rest of the group chanting ‘finish it.’ Until I tip the cup finishing what was left in my cup. I take [Y/N]’s empty cup stacking ours together. I set the cups aside on the nightstand when a weight hits my shoulder looking down I see [Y/N]’s head resting against my shoulder, her arms wrapped around mine. My smirk turns into an gentle smile. Abigail and Sam are giggling and smacking each other excitedly while whispering to each other.

“I’m going to go lay down in the other room y’all have fun.” Sam says over exaggerating a yawn before scurrying out of the room.

“I think I’ll go crash in there too you to have fun though.” Abigail says in sing song voice as she grabs the spare key from me for that room and hurries behind Sam. Now with me and [Y/N] alone I look down at her, I cup her chin with my hand. She hums as she looks up an goofy smile plastered on her face.

[slavghoul]

Full article from Metal Hammer 12/2022 that I posted an excerpt from in the previous post. BTW, Impera landed #1 on Metal Hammer’s list of best albums of 2022!

--

It was January 2022, and we found ourselves sitting in the empty lobby of a snug Seattle hotel, overlooking the sunset over Puget Sound while soft rock wafted through the PA system. Across from us was Ghost frontman and mastermind Tobias Forge, and we spent nearly two hours talking about music, family, dogs and the steady ascension of Ghost from spooky Swedish underground band to arena filling titans. But mostly we were there to talk about Impera – their fifth album, then still two months away from release.

In the run-up to an album coming out – particularly one with a highly acclaimed predecessor, like 2018’s Prequelle – artists tend to convey palpable anxiety as they prepare to relinquish control of their work to the world. Not so with Tobias, who radiated ease and comfort. Impera had not yet seen the light of day, but he had already moved on. Looking back at that period today, he explains, “As soon as I am done making a record, I’m pretty much fed up with it. I don’t want to hear it, I don’t want to know about it, I just want to forget about it. Once it hits the ears of people, depending on how it’s being received, that’s where you start from scratch again.”

Following Ghost’s North American tour with Volbeat and Twin Temple, Impera was released on March 11. It seamlessly blended pop-savvy songwriting with elaborate arrangements and steady torrents of anthemic pop metal riffage that created a wormhole back to the lighter-raising, arena-rock majesty of the 80s. From the glass-shattering scream that opened Kaisarion to the synth-rock squall of Watcher In The Sky, it delivered one guitar-powered banger after another.

It was enough to land Ghost their first No.1 position on Billboard’s Top Album Sales chart – their fourth Top 10 overall. Even bigger, in terms of vinyl and CD sales, Impera scored 2022’s biggest first-week sales for any album, of any genre. With more than 62,000 copies sold in the US alone, it easily bested The Weeknd’s February CD release of Dawn FM. In fact, Impera claimed the biggest first sales week for hard rock vinyl since Pearl Jam’s Vitalogy in 1994.

Critics united in swift and lusty praise. It might have felt heretical at the time, but many early reviews rated Impera as besting Prequelle on all fronts. Our very own Dave Everley wrote: ‘Impera wins on bolshiness, bravado and skyscraping songs alone. Ghost have turned in a modern metal classic with an arena rock heart. It turns out the Devil doesn’t have all the best tunes. Tobias Forge does.’ It’s safe to say any plans of “starting from scratch” were shoved to the back burner.

Ghost’s official Imperatour headlining run took them back across North America and then to Europe. Despite the lingering ravages of Covid across the live music industry, they thrived. “I am very happy that we managed to orchestrate a somewhat functioning but very successful album launch”, says Tobias. “We managed to nail 70 shows with just one cancellation. I think in this day and age in this year, that’s fucking great!”

Across the globe, stages were filling up with shows that had been booked many years prior. “We had to cut and paste a little with our touring schedule, because this past summer was basically filled with 2020’s line-ups,” says Tobias. “That made our scheduling a little… I wouldn’t say sparse, but we had breaks that were longer than normal. There are so many bands that are doing these weird dances. The last year of releasing an album into the void, with no touring and cancelling here and there and everywhere, and people having to rethink their lives, basically… We’ve been blessed not to have done too much of that.”

Logistics aside, somewhere along the line, that cultish little band from Sweden – the one with the creepy frontman singing about Satan and plagues and empires – went mainstream. Propelled by Impera’s momentum, the band tapped into new levels of cultural saturation thanks to appearances on mainstays such as Jimmy Kimmel Live.

“TV always brings you in front of new people”, says Tobias. “We did [The Late Show With Stephen] Colbert a few years ago, and every time you do something like that, you obviously expose yourself to a new scene of viewers. And that’s always great, unless you completely shit the bed on the air. Ha ha ha! I think we did do a few things this year that brought in a whole slew of new people into our fanbase.”

But ever the realist, he adds, “You might have a spike of people checking you out… but you don’t really notice if things like that had any effect. It’s not like the day after, all of your shows are now sold out and there’s a double night booked into every show you’re doing. It’s such a slow process that you don’t notice until a half year later when new fans come in and say, ‘I saw you on Kimmel’ or ‘I saw you with my dad.’ I wouldn’t say that being on Kimmel changed everything. It’s been slow, step-by-step, but it builds new branches onto the same tree and you keep growing higher.”

And higher they grew. In July, Mary On A Cross – originally released on the 2019 EP, Seven Inches Of Satanic Panic – was used in a Tiktok tribute to the show Stranger Things. The ripple effect was staggering. The song landed in the Top 10 of Spotify’s Viral 50 Global chart. As of this issue, the hashtag #Maryonacross has notched up well over one billion views. Ghost eventually released an official, slowed-down version of the song and the two versions combined now claim more than 180 million Spotify streams and counting. “For us, the Tiktok thing was or is just a giant bonus”, he explains. “That was never something that we planned.”

Surely the unplanned waves of publicity will ferry over legions of new fans, for whom an embarrassment of riches awaits. “One thing that I felt proud over, was the fact that we’ve been around for 12 years,” says Tobias. “We’ve made five records, a bunch of EPS, and I am glad that there seems to be a song that has a way to suck people in. And if they go into our world and like it, there is plenty to find. If you like Mary On A Cross, you can just jump on the train and go where we already are heading.”

It’s been an uncommonly good year for heavy music, but for Ghost it’s been more than a success – it’s been a coronation. Despite their demoniacal appearance and transgressive lyrical themes, they have negotiated the near-impossible task of attracting mainstream audiences while holding fast to the diehards in metal who have been there from the start. It creates the enviable problem of facing a new year with new pressures and heightened expectations. But Tobias has a plan.

“We’re doing a lot of touring again”, he explains. “On previous album cycles we’ve done four legs in America and two or three in Europe and repeated. We’re going to go into every territory next year, but there’s going to be one European tour, one American tour. We are going to do a little bit of everywhere. There’ll be a little bit of something up in upper Asia, on the far end there – a very well-established country with a lot of pop cultural fascination, and the home of videogames. And there’s going to be something in the Oceania world, and there might be something south of Panama, and there might be something slightly north of Panama. It feels pretty solid.”

He cryptically adds, “We’re going to come out with a little bit of change before that – good change. We’re not going to go silent. Some things are public, other things not in public view, but there are a lot of things brewing.”

We are journalistically bound to inquire about the next album and, unsurprisingly, Tobias remains mum. In January, he told us, “Everything I’m doing now is for the next record. I have a vague idea what that will be like and a vague idea of the title and the colour scheme.”

For now, that will have to do, but rest assured that as we all continue to enjoy the masterpiece that is Impera, Tobias is already hard at work, figuring out dramatic new ways to blow our minds. But he still allows himself the odd moment to stop and take it all in.

“To be able to make all of the shows that we’ve done, and to have a record that did fairly well, I think the sum of it is pretty fucking awesome,” he smiles. “I’m very thankful. It was a lot of hard work and a little bit of luck.”

[alittledizzy]

I absolutely agree with you on all points regarding the ask about Dan and Phil building an audience back, what's holding them back, etc. When they both started posting a little more regularly again after their coming out videos, and seemed to be hinting at trying to post content again, I was excited. However, I can't say I wasn't disappointed in Dystopia Daily. It's like Dan mentally cannot break free of 2016 internet humor, right down to even his snarking, depreciating humor about his audience being outdated. Phil has gotten much better about being himself on-camera, but you can tell he's still keeping it at arms-lengths. Which is fine, he's certainly entitled to create a healthy barrier, but watching the two of them in 2023 is like trying to straighten a slightly crooked picture but just not quite being able to get it right. Just...off. I think the tours were supposed to be their "grand finale" and now they just want to settle back into how things were before, but don't know how to do that without drawing from what they're comfortable with. Which they haven't done regularly since 2016, so that's their comfort zone. They want things to work within their comfort zone, but that might not happen.

"watching the two of them in 2023 is like trying to straighten a slightly crooked picture but just not quite being able to get it right"

this is the best description of them i've seen in recent history.

it's also something you can compare to other content creators that are still going; most have shifted content away from sit down stare at the camera videos into something softer and more blurred into their life. zoe and alfie vlog, louise vlogs, tyler streams on twitch. they're all still content creation but they've understood that the time for persona heavy youtube creating has come and gone.

i don't think dan and phil could, would, or should vlog. they wouldn't enjoy that. i don't even want phil to stop making sit down videos if he's that attached to the format! but they need to find what is their own middle ground between the rigid division of their pre-coming out selves and finding comfort with an audience. i think youtube for phil feels safe right now but i do not think it is on any level creative or challenging for him. i said something similar before, but watch even his 'questions i wouldn't normally answer' video and tell me he's pushing even a single boundary in it.

and if he is honestly happy with them having made their bank and likely being able to live on the interest from investments and residuals for the rest of their lives, more power to them. i'm here because i love them as people. i will never stop following them with passion and interest.

"I think the tours were supposed to be their "grand finale" and now they just want to settle back into how things were before"

i think this is correct and also where it gets even stickier because they are out of touch. with younger audiences and the content they want. with no video platforms and what does well there. i think they understand the audience they cultivated years ago very well, for better or worse, but that's not going to get them forward momentum.

i think a podcast would be a great way for them to safely do that. but i think their perception of how the audience would react to joint content is skewed too. phil gets numbers on meme tweets but nothing short of dan dropping an hour and a half 'here's a timeline of my relationship with phil' is going to pull ten million views so they've surpassed the era where they need to fear about making major headlines anywhere. they whethered that storm and i'm happy for them, i'm just not convinced they realize that. since obviously to a singular person any amount of direct attention is going to feel like a Lot.

[freddieraimbow74]

31 March 1974 - Queen’s first headlining gig at London’s historic Rainbow Theatre. This concert will forever remain an epic moment in the band’s incredible, five-decade-long rich history!

The show was properly recorded and was later proposed to be the band's first live album, but ultimately shelved. It was eventually released officially in 2014.

Queen quickly sold-out the 3000-seat Rainbow (which cost just £1.20 per ticket) marked a turning point in the young band’s career – and secured Queen as one of the era’s most exciting new acts.

Freddie is seen in an elegant new white outfit at the beginning of the show, created by designer Zandra Rhodes. Rhodes explained in 2013, "I hadn't designed any menswear before then, but I realised he'd need a flamboyant look. It was a very exotic time for me, I remember Queen gave me tickets to their show in London shortly after I’d made the first pieces for them. You could imagine that white top onstage and it was just absolutely amazing. It’s always wonderful when someone puts on your clothes and just feels lovely.”

Rhodes also said, “Freddie was a hidden revolutionary in the fact that he dressed exotically and wore make-up. I think he was probably one of the founders of the androgynous movement in fashion.... The thing that’s so fabulous, is that Freddie in my white pleated top went on to become one of the iconic images of him. It’s incredible to be part of that history!”

“We’d done our support tour and then promoter Mel Bush came to us – he was a pretty top promoter at the time – and he said ‘I think you guys can headline the next tour’, and we were surprised,” recalls Brian May in the mini-doc.

“I remember thinking ‘Wow, that’s very quick,’ because normally you would support a few acts and build a following, and then you would go on your headline tour. But he said ‘No, I feel you can do it, you can sell out all these places’ and he gave us a big list – Newcastle City Hall, Manchester’s Free Trade Hall or whatever, you know all the sort of classic gigs that rock bands do, and he said ‘you can fill all these and at the end, we’re going to do the Rainbow.’”

The adoring fans who turned up for this iconic performance could have predicted that Queen would go on to become arguably the world's best and most successful rock group, although many more may have suspected it after this stunning show.

Here is a review by Rosemary Horide, a major force behind Queen's early popularity:

"What a night! It was a finale of the big Queen tour throughout the whole country. It was the conclusive evening for their reputation. Their lift was meteorical. So many people had challenged if Queen had the authority to play in such a prestigious place as the Rainbow. Freddie appeared in his new specially eccentric white "eagle's" costume, bouncing and miming with even bigger ecstasy than ever and sang even better than any time before. One couldn't believe it's the first time of Queen appearing themselves in such an important place. After a while they got used to taking advantage of the big stage. After two encores they left the stage during a big applause of the audience."

This phenomenal performance showcases Queen at their loudest, Rawest and heaviest. Roger Taylor is downright frenetic at times, his fills rolling like boulders. John Deacon is predominately a fingerstyle player With his solid and inspirational playing that helped them all to shine. And of course Brian May’s musicianship is precise and masterly, and the harmonious, melodic chemistry between himself and Freddie is undeniable. There’s no one quite like Freddie as his voice was electrifying and soothing like fine silk. A must watch concert for everyone.

In a 1975 interview Roger Taylor explained their choice of attire: "It provides a good contrast, I think, on stage. We like most of the actual colour, apart from the extremes of black and white, to come from the lights on stage" (in a mid-80s interview John Deacon reminisced about how Freddie and Brian dominated the songwriting in the early days but that Roger was very involved "on behalf of the overall image of the band and how to actually be a successful rock band").

After the show, a teenaged Simon Townshend, younger brother of The Who's Pete Townshend, told Freddie Mercury backstage that Queen were "much better than my brother's band." Freddie was thrilled with the compliment, even coming from a 13 year old. Interestingly enough, in a 2005 Uncut interview, Brian May declared his belief that The Who were the better of the two bands.

Many years later, Brian May reflected on playing the Rainbow: "We had a dim, distant vision of what Madison Square Garden might be like in America, but really no idea of what it was." He added, "After that, everything was a bonus. Everything was something which I had never even dreamed about."

The next time Queen would perform at The Rainbow was in November during their ‘Sheer Heart Attack’ tour and due to popular demand, a second sold-out night was added.

[ingek73]

PRINCE HARRY EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

‘This is not about trying to collapse the monarchy, this is about trying to save them from themselves’

By BRYONY GORDON

Montecito is on mudslide alert, its residents nervously awaiting an evacuation order. I wake up on the morning of my meeting with Prince Harry to a media storm – his book, Spare, has found its way into Spanish shops almost a week before publication – and a meteorological storm, this normally bone dry part of southern California being battered by rain. Both squalls are doing a good job of reminding me that, while you might be able to run 5,000 miles from the source of your pain, you can rarely escape from it.

When I finally reach Montecito’s most famous resident – and possibly, right now, the world’s – he is nonplussed about the weather, which some have described as biblical, but I might describe as… well, British. Prince Harry tells me that the day before I arrived, he put on his waterproofs and headed down to the beach in the pouring rain with his dog, Pula, ignoring all offers of an umbrella from those around him. (I don’t tell him that I already know this, having seen pictures of said outing on a website that morning.)

And yet, even with the threat of mudslides, the Duke of Sussex clearly feels safer here in his Montecito home than he ever did in the royal palaces where he grew up. You could hardly blame him. The house is a sanctuary, surrounded by acres of greenery, complete with chickens, a play area and a teepee so lovely that I find myself jokingly asking if I can move into it. I am taken to a finca-style guest house where I find a generous spread of crudités alongside umpteen types of tea, served, of course, in the finest china. Soft music tinkles in the background. Candles flicker. It would all feel very relaxing, were it not for the fact it is only a matter of hours since the book somehow leaked to The Guardian newspaper and went on sale early at a chain of Spanish book shops.

There is some amusement from Harry about how the passages on his “frost-nipped penis” might have come out in translation, but mostly he is sad and disappointed that the general public’s first encounter with the contents of Spare will come not through reading the book itself, but via newspaper headlines.

In the book, he describes those who work on Fleet Street as a “dreadful mob of dweebs and crones and cut-rate criminals and clinically diagnosable sadists”, and that’s the more polite stuff. Am I mad to be speaking to him on the day that many of my colleagues are ripping him to shreds, especially knowing, as I do, that he has killed 25 members of the Taliban while on a tour of duty in Afghanistan? But the moment he walks through the door, a trail of dogs in his wake, I am reminded of his warmth and down-to-earth humour.

Today he is dressed in the TK Maxx uniform of T-shirt and jeans that he writes about in Spare. He welcomes me with a hug and rushes to make the tea. He is bright-eyed, looking far happier and healthier than when I last saw him at Buckingham Palace in early 2020, on his final day as a working member of the Royal family. He seems relaxed, more free – the nerves he had during our first interview, back in 2017, are gone, replaced with the quiet confidence of someone far more at ease with himself.

We sit on enormous cream sofas in front of a roaring fire, overlooked by a watercolour painting of a beach. I apologise for bringing my jet lag with me. He looks at his watch. “Think of it this way – it’s 11.10pm in the UK. You’re in the pub.” He quickly remembers that I don’t drink. “Or you’re not in the pub, but you’re OK. You can do this!” And so I switch on my tape recorder, and we begin.

He tells me that he is “someone who likes to fix things”. “If I see wrongdoing and a pattern of behaviour that is harming people, I will do everything I can to try and change it.” He worries about the other “spares” in the family. “As I know full well, within my family, if it’s not us,” and at this he points at his chest, “it’s going to be someone else. And though William and I have talked about it once or twice, and he has made it very clear to me that his kids are not my responsibility, I still feel a responsibility knowing that out of those three children, at least one will end up like me, the spare. And that hurts, that worries me.”

I first met Harry in 2016, when I began working with him and his brother and sister-in-law on their mental-health campaign, Heads Together. Right from the get-go, he seemed to grasp the issue of mental illness in a way that seemed quite unexpected from a member of the traditionally buttoned-up British Royal family.

I have only wonderful, warm memories of that period, which culminated in Harry coming on my podcast, Mad World, and speaking for the first time about the anguish he experienced trying to process the death of his mother. We developed what I would call a working friendship, which saw me get involved with various Heads Together and Royal Foundation events, and we have stayed in touch over the years.

The Harry I have come to know is perhaps best summed up via an anecdote in Spare, where he develops trench foot while out on an army exercise in Wales. He has been yomping through the countryside for several days, with equipment equivalent to the weight of a young teenager strapped to his back, during a heatwave. Halfway through, the heatwave breaks with a storm of torrential rain. They continue marching. Eventually, he realises that his foot is burning. At a checkpoint, Harry takes off his boots and socks, and the bottom of his right foot peels away. Medics inform him that the exercise is over for him, but when a staff sergeant tells him that there are “only” eight miles left, he resolves to tape his feet in zinc oxide and get the hell on with it.

“The last four miles were among the most difficult steps I’ve ever taken on this planet,” he explains. “As we crossed the finish line I began to hyperventilate with relief.” He hobbled about like an old man for the next few days, proud as punch that he pushed on through.

Here we have Harry – or Harold or Haz or H, depending on who you are – to a tee. You can say what you like about him (you probably have), and throw what you like at him (you may wish you could), but when he feels he is on the right path, he keeps going, through thick and thin and trench foot. What you see with Harry is what you get – a quality that made us love him until relatively recently, when it suddenly became the reason he has come in for so much hate.

He has been called a “cycle-breaker”, which is a term that refers to a person who changes decades – nay, centuries-old family patterns. There are some who cringe at all this “therapy speak”, dismissing it as “woke” Californian psycho-babble. That might have been the case way back in the 80s, but it isn’t now. The truth is that when Harry speaks about his feelings, about his escape from dysfunction, he doesn’t sound that different from any other person in their 30s who has been forced to confront issues with their mental health.The only real difference is a claim to the throne dating back to William the Conqueror. He speaks the language of recovery. And like most languages, being forced to learn it is painful. It is often messy, and mistakes are made. But boy is there a tremendous sense of reward when you start to be proficient in it.

Harry is matter-of-fact about this process. He accepts that any chance of reconciliation is unlikely at the moment. “What I’ve realised is that you don’t make any friends, especially within your family, because everyone has learned to accept that trauma [as] part of life. How dare you, as an individual, talk about it, because that makes us all feel really uncomfortable? So right, you may not like me in the moment, but maybe you’ll thank me in five or 10 years time.”

As someone who writes about mental health, I am far more interested in the detrimental effects of what Harry describes as living in “fancy captivity” than I am in the minutiae of who said what and to whom. To me, the most shocking thing about Spare is that he kept all of this inside him for so long, with only the one altercation with paparazzi. For all the side swipes about his privilege, trauma is trauma is trauma – whether it takes place in a damp bedsit or in front of a worldwide audience of billions as you walk behind your mother’s coffin. In Spare, Harry reveals that for 10 years after Diana’s death in 1997, his brain went into a state of complete shock, refusing to believe that she was actually dead, instead engaging in the kind of magical thinking that is most often seen in people with severe obsessive compulsive disorder or psychosis.

For an entire decade, Harry’s grief was buried so deep that he believed his mother had gone into hiding, that she would return to him and his brother at any moment. He refers to it throughout as “the disappearance”, a detail so heartbreaking that you would have to be cold-blooded not to be moved by it. At Eton, his brother shuns him – an occurrence relatable to most younger siblings, but one that nevertheless blows apart the narrative that Willy and Harold had been attached at the hip until Meghan came along. At 15 he has his head shoved in a deer carcass, an act that is seen as an aristocratic rite of passage at Balmoral, but that would be seen as child abuse anywhere else in the world. At 16, he is splashed across the front pages of the papers and frogmarched by his father to spend a day at a rehab in Peckham, because he has indulged in a spot of adolescent experimentation with cannabis (it’s hard to see how this story would be justified today). All credit to him, really: I think, had all of this happened to me, that I would have been on even harder drugs by the time I turned 13.

“Lots of people go through lots of s--t,” he shrugs, when I express sympathy for the litany of misfortune he has gone through. His critics have accused him of playing the victim, and yet I find a man who is anything but. “It’s interesting because so many of those moments have made me the man I am today. Would I encourage Archie to stick his head inside a carcass? Probably not. But people who’ve experienced trauma deal with it in different ways. I think when it comes to me and William, the fascinating part is that we both experienced a similar traumatic experience.

“He wanted to talk about it when [we were] younger, which built up a little bit of resentment. It wasn’t anything against him, I just didn’t want to talk about it. And then as we got older, I started to go slightly off the rails, and deal with it through drinking and drugs, and he went completely silent and completely shut down. And then my life started to alter and completely change, because I wanted, or had no other choice, than to confront the very thing that I had been running from, or scared of, for all those years.”

He tells me that he wasn’t walking around thinking of his mother the whole time. “I was doing everything humanly possible not to think about her.” Therapy, at first suggested by his brother, but properly engaged with once he got together with Meghan, changed everything. “It was like clearing the windscreen, clearing away all the Instagram filters, all of life’s filters.”

It allowed him to deal with the guilt he felt about his inability to cry (in the years after his mother’s death, before therapy, he shed tears only twice – once at the burial at Althorp, and then years later on a skiing holiday with his girlfriend at the time, Cressida Bonas). “I started to confront the idea that mummy wanted me to cry,” he tells me. “I convinced myself that she must have wanted me to cry, that that was the only way I could prove to her that I still miss her.”

He took ayahuasca, a psychedelic, with a professional – there is some research that the plant has positive effects on mental wellbeing. “After taking ayahuasca with the proper people,” he says, sipping his entirely non-mind altering chamomile tea, “I suddenly realised – wow! – it’s not about the crying. She [Diana] wants me to be happy. So this weight off my chest was not the need to cry, it was the acceptance and realisation that she has gone, but that she wants me to be happy and that she’s very much present in my life. And now, as two brothers, if one of you goes through that experience and the other one doesn’t, it naturally creates a further divide between you. Which is really sad. But as much as William was the first person to even suggest therapy, I just wish that he would be able to feel the same benefits of that as opposed to believing what he doesn’t need to.” (Harry claims that William thinks therapy has made him delusional.)

Maybe if the brothers had taken an ayahuasca trip together, none of this would have happened. As it is, Harry concedes that “it couldn’t be worse”. But he sees Spare as a last resort – not as a reconciliation, but an attempt to get his side of the story out (he doesn’t know the exact number of unofficial books that have been written about him, but believes it to be in “three figures”). He has been accused of airing his family’s dirty laundry. “But I always say: ‘What’s the difference between airing lies about your family through the British press, or airing truth through a book?’ In my case, this is all contained in one place where I hold myself entirely accountable and responsible for what I am saying.

‘William was the first person to suggest therapy – I just wish he could feel the same benefits’

“I don’t see why it’s so ingrained [in society] that whatever happens in your family, you should never talk about it. That no matter what’s happened, I can’t do this. But they [the Royal family] can? Because of who they are and what they represent? The way I was brought up is that, as a member of the Royal family, you lead by example. So you shouldn’t be able to use that privilege to get away with more things. No institution is immune to criticism and scrutiny, and if only 10 per cent of the scrutiny that was put on me and M was put on this institution, we wouldn’t be in this mess right now.”

“It’s so…” he shudders, and makes a guttural “urggh” sound. “It’s so dirty. It’s so dark. And it will continue and it will carry on and I look forward to the day when we are no longer part of it, but I worry about who’s next.”

He says he knows that the press “have got a s--t-tonne of dirt about my family. I know they have, and they sweep it under the carpet for juicy stories about someone else.” He tells me about some of the darkest moments in 2019. “I was coming back to Frogmore after Archie was born, and I would walk into the nursery and there she [Meghan] was in floods of tears, tears dripping on Archie while she was breast-feeding him. That was a breaking point for me. And she is someone who doesn’t read the stories. She would be dead if she was reading the stories.”

We talk about his reasons for doing this. “This is not about trying to collapse the monarchy, this is about trying to save them from themselves. And I know that I will get crucified by numerous people for saying that.”

The question so many have put to him is: is it worth it? His response is simple. “I feel like this is my life’s mission, to right the wrongs of the very thing that drove us out. Because it took my mum, it took Caroline Flack, who was my girlfriend, and it nearly took my wife. And if that isn’t a good enough reason to use the pain and turn it into purpose, I don’t know what it is.”

I tell him that from reading Spare, it seems clear that it nearly took him, too. “Yeah.” I get the impression that he didn’t want to exist, and then he met Meghan, and he had an experience of… “I want to live. I was never aware of how unhappy I was. I didn’t allow myself to think about it.”

I put it to him that even if Meghan is difficult – and I don’t think she is – it is unlikely that the monarchy have never encountered a difficult member of the family before. “But that’s the thing,” he nods, “that’s the unconscious bias. But they always tell on themselves. The press will tell on themselves and the family will tell on themselves as well. You look back on the history of how many members of my family have shouted at staff, [and] that is apparently all forgotten about and Meghan’s the bully.” He shakes his head. “It’s like, what? No, no, no. The members of this family that are literally brought up within this construct, have some issues to deal with.”

I talk to him a bit about the process of writing the book with the ghost-writer J R Moehringer. “It was definitely cathartic. It was painful at times. It was eye-opening.” In the book, he talks about “The Wall”, a mental block in his brain that divides his life before and after his mother died. “There were memories that I managed to pull up and over The Wall that I had forgotten about, that I didn’t even know existed. And there were times when I scared the s--t out of myself as well.”

In what way? “For example, Afghanistan. There were moments there that took me back. I would close my eyes and put myself back in the cockpit and fly those missions again. And JR was amazed by the level of detail that I could remember.” He tells me that the first draft was 800 pages, whereas the finished manuscript is just over 400. “It could have been two books, put it that way.” Some stuff, such as his life-changing trip to Nepal in 2016, had to be removed because of space issues. “And there were other bits that I shared with JR, that I said: ‘Look, I’m telling you this for context but there’s absolutely no way I’m putting it in there.’”

And why wouldn’t he put those bits in? “Because…” he pauses. “Because on the scale of things I could include for family members, there were certain things that – look, anything I’m going to include about any of my family members, I’m going to get trashed for. I knew that walking into it. But it’s impossible to tell my story without them in it, because they play such a crucial part in it. And also because you need to understand the characters and personalities of everyone within the book. But there are some things that have happened, especially between me and my brother, and to some extent between me and my father, that I just don’t want the world to know. Because I don’t think they would ever forgive me. Now you could argue that some of the stuff I’ve put in there, well, they will never forgive me anyway. But the way I see it is, I’m willing to forgive you for everything you’ve done, and I wish you’d actually sat down with me, properly, and instead of saying I’m delusional and paranoid, actually sit down and have a proper conversation about this, because what I’d really like is some accountability. And an apology to my wife.”

His wife is up in the main house, with the kids. We go there after the interview, with a smiling Meghan greeting me at the door. We spend some time together, drink turmeric lattes, and I get to see Harry in his element – Husband Harry, Dad Harry, the normal bloke in thoroughly abnormal circumstances. The children run around, the dogs jump on the cream sofas with muddy paws, and all is much as you would find it in any other home, during the witching hour just before the kids tea.

Before I go, Harry is keen to show me another wall, one he feels a little bit more positive about than the screen that sprung up in his head after his mother died. It’s a picture wall on a staircase, the kind found in homes all over the world. It features scores of framed photographs of his wife and children, alongside lovely hand-written cards from his grandparents. He has just finished putting it together, and as we admire it, I recognise that familiar look of pride I have seen on the face of my own husband – the look of a dad who has just completed a DIY task without destroying the plaster.

It’s tea time for the kids, and the early hours of the morning for my jet-lagged brain, so I say my goodbyes to Harry and Meghan, who pack me off with hugs and homemade jam. But I think about that wall for the whole of the drive back to Los Angeles, and then, on the plane, all of the way back to London. I think about the glee Harry found in it, the smile on his face as he showed me it. But mostly I think about how nice it would be for Harry’s brother and father to see the wall, and one day maybe even have some of their own carefree photographs included on it.

Lead picture credit: Bryony Gordon

[killjoyhistory]

Official Danger Days Press Release from Warner Bros. Records

Sometimes, in order to grow, you need to tear down everything that came before. And, if you’re My Chemical Romance, sometimes you have to do it twice.

The Jersey band had conquered the globe with their platinum-selling third album, the bombastic and bleak The Black Parade, but two years of touring took their toll.

Every night the band strapped on their monochromatic uniforms, show after show frontman Gerard Way inhabited the skin of the album’s protagonist, the sickly, spiteful “Patient.” In every country visited, thousands of fans flocked to stadiums but with them came disturbing stories of violent confrontations on the city streets, of persecution based solely on their choice of clothes and professed passion for My Chemical Romance.

By the time the band reached its professional peak – headlining Madison Square Garden in the spring of 2008 – they were personally exhausted. “We saw the world and the world saw us,” says guitarist Frank Iero. “It was fun but it was grueling. That was a dark record to relive every night.”

At the end, “it was acrimonious, it was empty,” explains Gerard. “The album had become so misconstrued I felt like all I was doing was defending or apologizing for things. Speaking for kids who were victims of hate crimes. None of it had to do with music.”

And outside of the arenas, the band was changing too. The four core members – Gerard, his brother, bassist Mikey Way, and guitarists Iero and Ray Toro – were approaching 30 and all had either gotten married or were about to. The Black Parade – its darkness, its pomp and circumstance – was a triumphant struggle but the internally the group was ready for a different sort of battle.

“I wasn’t that person anymore,” Gerard says. “I don’t think anyone in the band was that person anymore. We looked like a bunch of guys in black. A bunch of really tired guys in black.”

And so The Black Parade was laid to rest. But not with a Busby Berkeley-esque funeral, like the one seen in MCR’s breakthrough video for “Helena” a few years back. No, it died suddenly and without ceremony.

Gerard decamped to Los Angeles with his wife, Lindsey, and their baby daughter Bandit. There he threw himself into Hollywood, working on translating his successful comic-book The Umbrella Academy for the screen. “Everybody needed to normalize and be a human being,” says Mikey, who spent time addressing the well-publicized anxiety issues that had plagued him during the Black Parade tour. “We all learned that it’s ok to enjoy things. You can smile. You can have fun and not be such a defeatist.”

But in 2009, when it became apparent that it was time to make music again, the old stresses quickly returned. Gerard set down a reactionary mandate: no concepts, no costumes. “It was going to be quick, stripped down, and raw,” Mikey explains. “A punch in the face without allegories or stories. Just a comet, a real fast hit.” Gerard and Ray traded inspirational mixtapes featuring the raw power rock of Iggy and the Stooges, lyrics were written about cars and kung-fu. “The sound was in opposition to what we had done on Black Parade,” Ray says. “But we had put all these walls up: what we could do, what it should sound like. It really limited what the band is capable of doing. We were going through the motions.” And yet, slowly, an album was made and mixed with producer Brendan O’Brien at the helm.

It was only then, at the 11th hour, that the frustrations and doubt that had lived beneath the recording process like an unwelcome squatter, began to squawk. “We kept saying ‘we’re going to have fun,’” Mikey says. “But we didn’t realize that it hadn’t been any fun.”

Gerard is more blunt: “If you’re guarded when writing music then the music’s not very good. That first attempt at an album was the sound of someone who didn’t want to open their mouth.” Disillusioned and depressed, he and his wife took their first vacation in years, decamping to the desert that surrounded their new hometown. And it was there, amidst the red rocks and cacti, the strange and primal nature that lurks and threatens just outside the man-made metropolis of Los Angeles, that Lindsey let her husband have it.

“She said, ‘look, you’re an artist and you’re trying not to be an artist,’” Gerard remembers. “I had started the band after 9/11 when I hated art. Black Parade had been about hiding and punishment. I couldn’t tell the truth so I’d talk about cancer instead. I had to put on a mask to show people who I really was. But now it was time to own it. To be who I was before this band started. And I had something in my back pocket: this song, ‘Na Na Na.’”

Back in Los Angeles in January of this year, the band regrouped at the home studio of Black Parade producer Rob Cavallo. “’Na Na Na’ really opened our eyes,” remembers Ray. “We’re all creative guys and Gerard is about ten times more creative than everyone else in the band. His brain is always firing. To limit that had been the worst thing we could do. It’s like clipping the bird’s wings.” The song is, in Gerard’s words, a “nail bomb”: an utterly outrageous explosion of every quirk, kick and punch the band had been holding in for years. Gone was the dark poetry, the gloom and doom.

In its place was unadulterated exuberance: Batman is namechecked, jazz hands are celebrated. Those who have spent time with Gerard know he has a wicked sense of humor and an innate love of showmanship. “Na Na Na” blasted through the frustration of the past year like a circus stuntman out of a cannon.

From there, it was off to the races. “We worked for two or three weeks undefined,” Gerard says. “We didn’t know if we were making a new album. Rob was working for free. He just knew there was magic happening and he kept capturing it.”

Among the rules that fell by the wayside was the band’s self-imposed strategy to work with a new producer everytime out. Though they had enjoyed their time with O’Brien, returning to Cavallo was, in Mikey’s words, “that clichéd thing where the beam shoots from the sky and the clouds open up. It was like going to war and coming home. It became this huge art project and we were all involved.”

“The one thing we kept saying is: we’ve got to bring the color back,” Frank says. “It’s hard to wear black all the fucking time. You want moments on your record where the brightness can shine through.” And if “Na Na Na” opened the door then it was the creation of “Planetary (GO!)” (“you keep eternity / give us the radio”) that knocked down the walls completely, letting all the wonderful Technicolor weirdness in for good. A four-on-the-floor glam-disco stomper, the song was a victory for recovering Britpopper Mikey.

“Being able to write a song like that for MCR was so liberating,” he says. “We realized we really can do anything. The rules were gone and anything could be on this album.” By the time they’d cracked the slow-burning, inspirational “Sing,” – another left-field improvision cultivated at Chez Cavallo – the band knew they were starting over. Gerard turned to Mikey with a smile and, almost by accident, named the new album: “Danger Days, here we come again!”

“The thing about the first try is that it was a perfectly normal rock record,” Gerard explains. “We looked normal. Short black hair. No more makeup. Perfectly tailored suits and leather jackets, perfectly made for the red states. And then we destroyed it. The question we faced was: would you destroy something perfect to make it beautiful? And that’s exactly what we did.” A straightforward song from the early sessions called “Trans Am” was ripped apart then tied to a rocket, re-emerging from the sci-fi ether as the worldbeating “Bulletproof Heart.” Motor City rave-ups like “Party Poison” were re-recorded and re-energized by the new direction while late-night experiments took on lives of their own.

The epic “S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W” (Frank: “that’s a weird one, man”) started as a chorus and then a song was built around it out of original loops, a haunting fortress constructed, brick-by-brick from sonic scraps. “A friend of mine told me that when Scorsese finishes a film the first thing he does is locate his best scene in the raw footage and cut it,” Gerard says. “We couldn’t fuck around with the past. We had to keep going.”

Out of the album’s chaotic creation, a concept came together, one loosely inspired by a comic-book project that dated back to the band’s earliest days criss-crossing the country in a beat-up van. “Sonically, we were trying to make stuff from the future,” Mikey says. “We imagined California in this post-apocolyptic 2019. These were all songs that would fit into that world.”

Bit by bit, pieces were added to the puzzle: the new songs were being broadcast by a pirate radio DJ, Dr. Death Defying, whose transmissions were a lifeline for the Fabulous Killjoys, a gang of dystopian rebel-kids attempting to survive a bleak maybe-future where art and color were illegal. But that’s as specific as the guys want to get. “A Killjoy is everybody,” Gerard explains. “It’s the band, the kids, the artists. Where I went wrong on Black Parade was trying to dicate the outcome. I can’t do that. The world is big, metal and chaotic and we’re just fragile little insects – one wrong move and you could get crushed. This is just a big pop art project.”

“If you want to know what a Killjoy looks like then go into a costume shop and put it together yourself,” Ray says. “On The Black Parade things got misconstrued. There is no enemy this time. Be creative. Use your voice, your community. Art is the only weapon.” With a familiar swagger returning to his voice, Gerard adds: “Rock and roll is old as hell and I’m not saying we’re gonna save it. We’re not trying to. We just want to make it beautiful.”

No song sums up the gleefully creative explosion that is Danger Days as well as “The Kids From Yesterday.” Recorded in May at the very end of the process, after Frank had already flown back to New Jersey to be with his expecting wife (they welcomed twin girls in July), the track is fresh yet immediately familiar, a bracing blast of invented nostalgia and misremembered memories.

It’s already the band’s favorite song on the album and, perhaps, in the entire My Chemical Romance catalogue. “Lyrically, I felt I had to write that song to be complete with the album,” Gerard says. “What it means to me is: I’m a grown-up now – we all are – and that’s cool. We’re a generation of wild artists, free thinkers, crazy people. We’re not going to lay down and have a boring life because we’re supposed to. ‘The Kids From Yesterday’ are the the adults, the ones who never forgot the feeling of holding onto a chain link fence yelling at the top of their lungs.”

The song completes the circuit from the last album’s fearful, freaky “Teenagers.” Gone is that song’s paranoia and fear of the future. In its place is hope. “Part of accepting being a grown-up is trusting the kids, our fans,” Gerard says. “My band is not leading you. Anything can be art. Anything can be self-expression. Now you take the weapon and run with it. Don’t be an easy target. You don’t always have to wear black. I feel like by adding color we’re handing off the keys to the fucking rocket!”

Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys is the album My Chemical Romance have been building towards their entire, nearly decade long career.

From soaring sentiment (“The Only Hope for Me is You”) to bare-knuckled brawling in the streets (“DESTROYA”) it defies lazy labels and demolishes expectations. Beholden to no scene, credo or code it’s a rock’n’roll album from the future aimed directly at the dead-hearted present.

“Next year it’ll be ten years since we’ve been together,” Frank says, “that’s a long time to stay in one shade. And I think if you’ve been a fan of our band for a long time then you need these different feelings in your life, these different emotions to come through. And I know that because it’s what we need right now.”

“Black Parade was asking for a lot of misery and punishment. Danger Days is asking for a big hyperspace adventure,” Gerard explains, finally, with a wink. “We’re not saying we deserve it. We’re just asking.”

(Source: 1)

[steveinscarlet]

I don't think I've ever seen this interview before? It's from a free paper called Soundcheck! in Nov 1983. Transcribed below because the layout is hard to read and the spelling is bad! Like misspelling both parts of Steve's name bad 🙄

Talk about keen. After a gruelling ten-month trek of the States, followed by a short tour of Europe which precedes a pre- Christmas mini-tour of Britain (sheesh, it's tiring enough just typing about it!), Def Leppard guitarists Phil Collen and Steve 'Steamin' Clark have filled their precious few days of rest in between by doing a whole pile of interviews.

This includes yours truly, SOUNDCHECK! staff reporter Pete Makowski. This year saw the massive US success of the group's third and greatest album Pyromania, which has established them as Superstars in America, where audiences scream and general hysteria is the norm at one of the group's stadium-size performances.

Phil Collen is the band's newest member and fits in comfortably with the Leppard sound. He also works very well with Clark. In fact, their musical tie has developed into a solid bond of friendship and they seem to spend all their working hours together.

Both firmly believe in maintaining the axe image and hopefully after the release of their next album will show audiences all over the world that solos do not have to be long, boring and monotonous. They have an idea they feel will revolutionise the concept of guitar playing.

As expected, they were tight-lipped about this new baby but otherwise proved very open and entertaining as a team in the interview that follows......

PM: The tour has been promoted partly by Why Bother Ltd, which is your company (one of them, that is). Has that moniker got anything to do with your feelings about touring this country? 

PC: Yes. 'Cause when we tour over here, we always lose money. 

SC: Yeah, the title of the company speaks for itself.

PC: If you're touring somewhere, and you're losing money, why bother doing it?

PM: Will you ever concentrate your energies on crackin' it over here?

SC: We obviously are! We wouldn't be doing a tour here after 10 months of playing America, would we? It's still a bit steep though, because now it's not Phonogram anymore who are backing us for these ventures; we're actually forking out our own money, as we've cleared our debt with Phonogram.

PM: What could you credit for the mammoth success of the last US tour?

SC: Lots of different things, you know we don't look like we're one of the Metallica bands. In fact, we made a conscious effort of not trying to look like that. We just tried to look normal and it seemed to work. Mums ain't scared to send their kids to our shows, where they'd probably have second thoughts about an Iron Maiden tour or Judas Priest, something like that, thinking their daughters would get raped or something. 

PM: Why do you think groups like Quiet Riot have recently enjoyed mega mammoth success?

SC: Because we opened it up a bit; I don’t think it's just because of that. We've definitely opened the gate for other rock bands and they all seem to be doing quite well again. You know how it goes.

PM: Do you still enjoy touring the States? 

SC: Yeah, when we come back and toured Europe, mainly because of the weather. Everyone immediately got 'flu. America was good and we had a good summer on our side. The tour got bigger and bigger, we started off thinking 'are we big enough to headline?' We have a top ten album and we were supporting Billy Squier. Then we got bigger and bigger and half-way through the tour we had to play two nights in some places; the further we went on the bigger the band became. 

PM: Did you make a conscious effort to pace yourself on this, because I recall the last two times you played there everyone got worn out halfway through? 

PC: We done alright. Actually, I was surprised.

SC: The big difference was that we headlined everywhere. This was the first time we'd headlined everywhere.

PM: Has it made that much difference? On your previous marathon treks it seems it really took its toll, physically speaking?

SC: It's probably because you weren't there (laughs). Keep Makowski out the way and you'll be alright!

PC: I remember our manager, Peter Mensch, saying: 'I realise Phil that this is your first American tour but Makowski won't be here so you'll be alright'. 

PM: Was Pete Willis (Leppard's former guitarist) missed? I mean, what difference has his absence made to the group? 

PC: Well it's the difference between half a million and six million.

SC: Pete had more of a cult following. 

PC: I got some iffy fan mail, didn't I. Things like, 'you should be dead'. I got some fierce ones.

SC: When people saw the videos it helped to advertise the fact that Pete had gone and now Phil is with us. So kids, when they think of Def Leppard now, they think of Phil Collen as being an established part of the band.

PM: Your last album Pyromania was a mega mammoth success; have you started thinking about having to follow this up?

PC: We haven't really thought about it. We've got some ideas. A lot of bands do that, they think right: 'the last album was successful, this is what we should do to follow’. We haven't done that.

I mean, we may even do a keyboard album, as an example. I very much doubt that that's gonna happen. It's all down to how we feel at the time, really.

PM: How have things worked out between you two, because after America you should know each other pretty well by now and ironed out any problems that needed to be dealt with. 

SC:I think we were worried about things at first, but I think that Phil's better and all the numbers sound much better than they ever could have with Pete. We're best mates now. 

PM: That was quite a crucial change in personnel for the band.

SC: Yeah, and we were worried regarding how it would work out, because you don't really know what you need until you experience the change. When you've worked with someone for three years, initially things will be a bit strange; but as it's happened, things have worked out better than we'd ever expected. 

PM: Is it still necessary to keep touring the States?

PC: I just think it's important to play where people appreciate you; you know for a fact that you lose money in England and you have to draw the line somewhere. As it happens, we made a bit of money in the States and it becomes very apparent that in other places we lose money when we go on the road. Hand over fist you have to fork out cash from your own wages.

PM: You've been getting a lot of teenybop- type fan hysteria in the States. How do you feel about that?

PC: It's great fun. Just take it with a pinch of salt. When it first started happening we just looked at each other and burst into hysterics thinking 'are you sure?'. It is a bit weird and we didn't accept it as the norm. We just thought this is a fluke, take it with a pinch of salt; it just kept on getting worse or better, whichever way you look at it. 

What helps though is the attitude of the band. There's no ego problems here, which is what always screws other groups up. People start getting really weird. We're in a good position in as much as we're a younger and newer band and you can see all that crap going on while bands like AC/DC are getting on.

SC: When we're their age we'll have seen all the bad sides and have experienced all the problems when we were a lot younger. So it's taught us a lesson. So when we're their age we'll know what to do and what not to do.

PM: You do have a very strong band image.

PC: Yeah, it's not run by one person. The only way that you're gonna make good is if you all stick together and you all pull together.

PM: Have any of you got individual aspirations?

PC: Only within the band really me and him. Personally, there's some guitar things that we wanna do, but we can do them within the band. It works out great.

PM: Will the next album take as long to put together as Pyromania, which was 14 months in the making? 

PC: It may do.

SC: We're not jumping on the Pyromania bandwagon: ‘oh, we want a hit album, let's bung out another one quick'. We're not going for a formula and trying to make forthcoming products sound like Pyromania because after a couple of albums we'd be finished. We're gonna take our time, do another album, which will retain our quality, and if it doesn't sell as well then tough shit! At least we'd know that what we did we wanted. But we're confident that it will do well anyway.

PC: Pyromania will be a hard one to follow up, but we ain't even thinking about that at the moment. We've got our own ideas and we're just going to do them. If no one likes them then bollocks!

PM: How about recording a live album? 

SC: We have no plans for a live album.

PC: That usually comes at the end of a band's career or record contract; when they peak. Live albums are basically bullshit time. We haven't really got enough material to do one.

PM: You seem to separate yourself from the whole Heavy Metal bandwagon. Is that a conscious move?

PC: Well, it doesn't really bother us if we're associated with it. I don't really think that we're like the rest of them. We don't wear all that stupid regalia; we don't get all the studs and leather on, 'cause that's really false isn't it? I mean, could you seriously look me in the face if we was to like stick all the gear on?

SC: We've never tried to dress like that and it used to worry us. But we don't care anymore.

PC: The way we look at things is that we fill a great big gaping gap between bands like Journey and Foreigner and bands like AC/DC and Iron Maiden; we're right in the middle. 

SC: We're almost like a Zeppelin or Queen -right in the middle! Well, that's what the press in America compare us to. We never said anything. We'd like people to take us for what we are... 

And the beat goes on.

[phanfictioncatalogue]

Fics Including Anthony Padilla (2) Masterlist

part one

A Day In LA (ao3) - sydneywhowrites

Summary: Dan stares directly out the window, hoping he won’t be included in the conversation. Phil runs a hand up Dan’s thigh and takes out the tiny remote from his pocket, making Dan’s stomach drop. He increases the vibration level up to a 5 out of 10 and Dan struggles to hold back moans. Phil, on the other hand, is as casual as ever.

All I Can Do Is Give You This And Let My Heart Play (ao3) - enbyprinceroman

Summary: Phil proposes at Six Flags.

A Stolen Ring (ao3) - orphan_account

Summary: Dan’s not normal. Why?

He's not human, he has a mysterious ring, and he hates Phil Lester. They have a strange past, one filled with bullying and avoidance, but when Dan turns into an incubus, everything changes. He struggles with his identity and cries himself to sleep most nights, yearning to be normal. And somehow the universe makes it worse by bringing him and Phil together - in the most literal sense.

Beneficial (ao3) - Allthephils

Summary: When Phil visits LA, he stays with Anthony. In fact, he crawls right into bed with Anthony and it turns out, he’s not the only one.

This is basically a meet cute in an unusual setting:) Thanks PFF Bingo for motivating me to write something silly and fun.

This ticks off my boxes for mistaken identity and sharing a bed.

Danthony 2013 (ao3) - dodo3000

Summary: Anthony is very drunk after partying with Dan and Phil at VidCon 2013 and they take him to their hotel room.

Distance Grows Between Us (ao3) - Jay (lNoControll)

Summary: Dan couldn’t help but fall in love with the boy who he met for a night and made him want to give him the moon gift wrapped in the stars with a milky way bow. Too bad he only sees him once a year on the same day and never seems to learn his name.

or literal star-crossed lovers who aren’t destined to fail.

its new, the shape (ao3) - queerofcups

Summary: The most important thing to remember is that Dan doesn't have a piss kink

one to love you sweetly (ao3) - queerofcups

Summary: Phil knows that he and Dan are just an interlude in whatever crisis Anthony is having.

Our Flaws Are Aligned (ao3) - phantasizeit

Summary: Dan and Phil are YouTubers, but they hate each other. Phil is reminded of this when he’s forced to interact with him at the Spain Creator’s Summit. Their situation isn’t helped by their complicated past when their firecracker relationship crashed and burned. When Stop, Speak, Support contacts Phil to be a headlining speaker in their tour across schools in the UK, he is more than excited, until he finds out he’ll working next to his YouTube enemy. Phil doesn’t expect their time planning the tour together to rekindle old feelings he thought he’d long since buried.

start a reaction that can’t be contained (ao3) - calvinahobbes

Summary: He wonders what it would be like to be able to be so casually affectionate. To call Phil 'honey' in public and not care what anyone thinks about it.

(Dan and Phil and AsapSCIENCE, YouTube Creator Summit, Spain 2017.)

Sun-Kissed Confessions (ao3) - jestbee

Summary: Mostly Phil is just jealous of the way Dan seems to be perfectly at ease with the idea of kissing Anthony, but wouldn't consider it with Phil.

That Sneaky “What If” (ao3) - ExclusiveGorgeousGeek

Summary: Dan has had a huge crush on his roommate Phil for as long as he can remember, though he’s never told him.

Little does Danny boy know, the feelings are more then reciprocated.

They Just Need A Little Push (ao3) - AmazinGhoul

Summary: Ian and Anthony haven't seen each other for a long time but they both go to Dan and Phil's show in LA. While their friends want to help them get together they decide to play with them for a little while.

They See Me Rollin (ao3) - Sacirin

Summary: Dan and Phil's adventures at YouTube Creator Summit in Madrid.

Dan was reluctant at first, Phil didn't like it at all, but maybe they actually had a good time dancing tightly close at the roller disco after all. Or did they?

Untitled - danfanciesphil

Summary: Anon Request: A Phanthony prompt? Not like threesomes and such if you dont want it can be just their friendship and like maybe talking about how Anthony used to also be part of a duo but is now solo and enjoys their dinamic and such? I make no sense I just enjoy their friendship

Untitled - queerofcups

Summary: hey did you know anthony’s name is also daniel? here, have 725 words of barely nsfw, barely coherent, barely phanthony, barely fic. i give the people a near approximation of what they want.

You Fit Me Tailor-Made, Love How You Put It On (ao3) - Midgetphan

Summary: Dan maybe has fantasies with Anthony. And maybe Phil encourages it.

[bisluthq]

Look...I agree that Taylor pulled back for her own sanity after the whole Kimye/Hiddleston/Cancelation, but I do think in many ways she stays so low key now for him. And yes, I do think SM activity in this case is a valid argument because she used to like ALL his posts (minus like 1), but now that his star is rising and the spotlight is on him....she stopped. Come on, you fucking know it's so SHE doesn't take over his headlines. And holding court at an after party in Ireland with no formal media is a hell of alot different than her attending and remaining very discreet and as invisible as possible at premieres and their after parties. Does she want as normal a life as possible? Absolutely, I agree with you. Does she have a desire to live her life like 1989 era? ABSOLUTELY NOT! Would she like to attend places like Cannes, the BAFTAs, etc. and support her partner? Absolutely, but it doesn't seem like Joe wants that or wants her there, so she steps back and lets him do his own thing so SHE isn't a distraction from HIM. So..yes, that's making herself smaller for him. And I understand the whole "press bullshit", but it's not like Taylor is the first or last partner in the history of HW, to cause a small distraction on the Red Carpet. Give me a break.....the more they make it a HUGE thing, the more it will be treated that way. The first time it happens it will be front page news, but after that it would become normal.

Ehhhh I hear you (as you hear me) but let’s agree to disagree. I don’t get the sense that she would have liked to be at Cannes but he asked her not to go dude. He’s had her at all the premieres she was available for. She posted about CWF. He talked about her in CWF press whenever he was asked, as did his costars. He has NEVER blacklisted her as a topic.

Her not being at Cannes doesn’t feel like him requesting she stay away - it seems like she didn’t really want to go, in part I think because it would’ve been very fucking difficult for her to (he was going London -> Cannes -> Ireland within one week, and he had a ton of shoots and shit scheduled in Cannes like he wasn’t chilling - he’d barely have seen her). That schedule would be difficult for anyone, let alone for someone who needs to travel with security. Jack was also not attending because he’s on tour so that would’ve been another factor to say “hey why don’t you just have fun with your costars.”

I’m just not at all convinced he tells her not to attend even though she wants that, same as I’m not sure she’s inviting him left and right to shit and he’s refusing.

They have separate PROFESSIONAL lives, and both do support one another dude idk.

Your final thing is also unrealistic lmao. Taylor attending anything will be front page news until she stops being relevant. Right now, anything about her is newsworthy - especially a Red Carpet appearance.

[elderemorune]

PLUR BAYBEEE

So it should come as no surprise that I love ridiculous things. Star Trek, dogs, my cat, people in general, EDM.

Speaking of EDM, for those unfamiliar, PLUR stands for Peace, Unity, Love, and Respect. The defining traits of the Rave scene, or at least it was explained to me this way. Until Friday, I'd never seen an EDM show live, much less been to a rave (and no I'm not counting those dances back in middle school where the DJ would play the censored version of American Idiot for a bunch of small, Ritalin loaded assholes). For my first, whew, I picked a hell of a show.

Let's start at the beginning. A few weeks ago, I found this artist, Hyper Potions. I'd never heard of him before, and I'll admit, my first look into him was... Less than appealing. There was some controversy with one of the two founders, but my initial doubts were quickly disabused, as one of the duo very firmly told the controversial member to fuck off, no ifs, ands or butts.

This in mind, I looked to see if he was on tour, and to my shock, heck to my awe, it just so happened that he was doing a show at The Crocodile in Seattle on the 5th.

Just in time for my birthday! (It's around the time I posted this, I'll leave you guessing the exact date, because that's funnier to me.)

The tickets were reasonable, so I grabbed my wife and @thisbirdhasceasedtobe, we got dressed, and away we went! There was a dinner plan, but the place I wanted to go to was too full so we bounced and hit the venue.

The opening act was this guy I'd never heard of before, Knob Ross. If I'm totally honest, I liked his vibe, but this man was not really good at playing the crowd. I imagine it's hard to be the opening act at a show like this, since you're who's playing while people filter in. The way the stage was set up also had me misreading his name as Knob Boss all evening too, which isn't a knock against him, but more of a statement. Hell, because of that I didn't get the joke with his name.

Normally this is where I'd share one of his songs, but he's proving difficult to track down. If someone has any of his work, I'd be happy to put an example here!

Anticipation started mounting when Hyper took the stage though. Between his crowd work and his cool visuals, the house was jumping within minutes of his appearance. The energy he brought was so bright and so happy I couldn't help but smile myself.

Hey look at that, he actually did music for a Sonic game! That explains why his visuals were all really cool voxel animations of various Sonic characters!

Funny enough though, despite having gone to the show for Hyper Potions, I'd like to introduce you to the headliner.

Have you ever wanted to see a man in a Sasquatch costume play the saxophone over the Jellyfish House Party from Spongebob?

Now you have!

Allow me to introduce Saxsquatch!

I wasn't looking for this man. Hell, I didn't even look at the other people playing this show, I was satisfied going to see Hyper Potions. I kept my expectations low for the others, but gods alive, was I blown away.

First off, three saxophones. One alto (which I personally play), and two tenors. One of them is peculiar though. A clear plastic affair with LEDs inside, it's easily the coolest form I've seen the instrument take, and real talk? This glowing beacon of cool made his cover of Never Gonna Give You Up even better after he joined the crowd.

Please forgive the shakiness, I was absolutely blitzed on Fernet and beer at this point, and I was swaying with the crowd as well.

Shitty cinematography aside, just look at this guy! He's having fun, we're having fun, I've never seen anything quite like it!

Obviously his crowd work is good, but what about his music? Personally I love it, even his cover of September, though my buddy vehemently disagrees with me. They said that his cover lacks soul, but I dunno, I felt a lot of soul in that crowd as we jumped to it!

I couldn't tell you a damn thing about his visuals though. Were they good? No clue! I was busy staring at him! I didn't even notice when the lasers came on because I was too busy watching a man fulfill a childhood dream of mine: being an EDM artist who plays saxophone. Yeah it was all covers, but he was there, and again, LOOK AT HIM!

Lastly, I think we should talk about the venue. It's attached to Madame Lou's, where I went to see Bear Ghost and Damn the Weather. Unlike ML's, The Crocodile is a much larger performance space, with some of the trappings of that. I wish there had been more ADL seating, as my wife is disabled and short, so finding a comfortable place for her to enjoy the show was a bit troublesome. Still, like a champion, she sat in the uncomfortable, tall stool just so that I could jump around like a fool.

The drinks? Well, they did what all venues do. Smaller drinks at about $15 each. We had five drinks between us this evening, though it's six if you count the signature drink, The Bite Back, as two. It's a beer and a shot of Fernet, which I really like. You down the shot, then chug the beer, and wait for it to bite. We also had a G&T, a Fuzzy Navel, and a Whiskey Sour, and their signature lager. I had the sour and the beer, in addition to the Bite Back. Sure, we spent a bit much on alcohol, but it was my birthday party dammit, and I was going to get drunk.

After the show, we stumbled back to the car, and had our friend (who was sober) drive us home. We stopped for some good old fashioned 1:00 AM Jack in the Box, where the poor asshole behind the window was being harassed over the phone by some fucking jerk. Would it really be a Jack in the Box if shit wasn't fucked?

Okay, I've gotten off track. The show was incredible, and I'd 100000000% go see Saxsquatch and Hyper Potions again. Knob Ross, all the love to you my man, no shade, but uh, I don't think I'll be going out of my way to find you again.

Show was a 10/10, I can't even begin to tell you how satisfying that sourdough jack was though.

[lagroupie]

Interview: Bad Nerves

Bad Nerves at the small football field in Etagnières, shot with my Nikon. This was about a month after our interview at Tropical Riot.

Back in September, I went to the great Tropical Riot festival in Ullastrell, near Barcelona, to watch awesome local and foreign bands play. The main reason for my presence was Bad Nerves - who are still one of my favorite bands ever since I saw them play live at the Old Blue Last back in 2017. This time, the band had some time for an interview before the show, so we took a stroll around the catalan village of Ullastrell while catching up. They were headlining that night and the crowd went wild (see my photo below).

Join us as Bobby and Jon tell me about their lives in Essex, their live record Alive in London, getting by as a band, meeting Green Day and more.

Many thanks to Bad Nerves and the team at Tropical Riot Festival for their kindness!

Are you guys still living in London ? I remember you told me so back in 2017.

Bobby: I actually lived in London for a year, in 2017.

Jon: Now we live in Essex. It’s east London-ish.

Bobby: Just slightly outside of it ! We all come from Essex.

Jon: London is just not cool anymore. During the pandemic, so many venues shut down. What little scene we had really suffered. Now I never go there really.

Bobby: It’s very expensive.

What’s your life like when you’re not touring ?

Jon: It’s so boring ! We have quite normal lives I guess.

Bobby: I spend a lot of time writing and recording. We do go in the studio and rehearse.

That sounds amazing. Do you guys manage to make music full time now ?

Bobby: Not really. Financially, definitely not.

Jon: We all have other jobs, apart from some who lost them recently because of doing the band.

Bobby: I haven’t had a job for about 10 months now.

Jon: This is like, the crunch time where we have to make it work, because all our jobs are getting fed up with us going away all the time. There’s still bills to pay.

Bobby: It’s a different thing when you’re a bit older trying to do a band, because you don’t live with your parents. If you’re fortunate enough to live with your parents when you’re younger, like we were – we don’t have that privilege anymore. A band is not the easiest way to make money !

Jon: There’s a bit of a myth about our band at the moment. I read online that people are saying ‘they have loads of money !’ It’s so far from the truth !

Bobby: Yeah, and some deal with an american label. What the fuck are they talking about ?

Jon: That’s not how it works. We haven’t seen a penny.

Bobby : They are helping us with tour support, to go to America.

Jon: Or else, we wouldn’t be able to afford to go there.

Bobby: We don’t make any money personnally from this band. Not yet. We hope it’s going to change. We’ve been at this our whole lives and we have yet to make any money. It would be nice to make enough money to pay our rent. That would be a dream.

Jon: Money has never been the motive though. We’ve been doing that band for six years and never really bothered about money up to the point when we needed it to play shows.

Bobby: We break it even for the most part, but the whole band/business side of it is just waiting for money to come in from shows, because there’s a huge delay. You don’t get paid straight away, months pass and you need that money to buy the plane tickets to the next show, and sometimes you haven’t been paid for these shows. And then you’ve got no money, and you have to pay for those plane tickets with whatever you have.

I expected it to be bad, but not that bad.

Jon: We sound really depressing ! (laughs)

Bobby: We’re not depressed. It’s fucking great ! It’s not easy, but it’s fucking fun and worthwile.

Bad Nerves' set at Tropical Riot festival. As you can see, it was a happy chaos.

Can we also talk about your latest releases, like Alive in London ?

Jon: That was recorded at the end of our first headline tour, in a funny bar in London called The Basement. It blew us away, because up until that point – we played England a bit, but no one ever really seemed to care that much. And then we did a run of our own shows and a bunch of them sold out. We decided to record the last one because it was in London.

Bobby: We didn’t even really know it was being recorded. Our manager said ‘I’ll record it !’ and we replied ‘yeah, whatever.’ I didn’t even remember !

Jon: It was the most insane show, in a tiny pub in London. The recording cuts out because all the recording equipment overheated. That’s why the record is so short. You can hear it break halfway through. I’m surprised no one died at that show to be honest ! (laughs)

Bobby: It’s the hottest show we have ever played ! I remember seeing Sam coming off stage – he had so much steam coming off of him, and he was just sitting hunched over. I didn’t know if he was alright !

I also wanted to talk about how you said in an interview that you wanted to bring rock and roll back to the masses.

Bobby: There’s loads of bands that we love who have scrappy recordings. We’re trying to do more modern-ish and powerful recordings, but with that scrappy character in it. In that sense, that is what we’re trying to do. Because mainstream radios don’t really play this scrappy punk. So we’re trying to get some of that scrappy stuff and give it a more modern recording.

Jon: We’re trying to influence younger bands to play a style that’s a bit forgotten. You don’t see a lot of kids doing it. Now, we’ve seen a few bands pop up who play this style. That’s the reason we do it, passing the torch !

I think we’re from the same generation – growing up, rock and roll was still on the TV and on the radio. We had bands like Green Day, Oasis, The Strokes, etc. Those bands introduced us to rock and roll. I share your vision, we have to bring it back, even if it’s-

Jon: -Just guitar music ! Going to festivals as a kid, it would be all guitar bands. And then that just died out and it started being, I don’t know, Beyoncé or something.

Bobby: It’s nice having a mix of genres in music, but it seems that rock and punk are shut out of a lot of mainstream. Is that because rock and roll is more prone to being protest music and half of the corporations that control this industry don’t want that shit playing ? I don’t know.

Jon playing during Tropical Riot Festival in Ullastrell.

Could you guys also tell me more about Green Day ? Have you met them in person ?

Jon: It’s funny, because they say you shouldn’t meet your heroes. I started playing bass because of Mike Dirnt from Green Day, and they are the nicest people ! They’re lovely. I’ve met a lot of bands, and they are some of the nicest people I’ve ever met.

Bobby: We played a festival in Czech Republic, Rock For People, and they were headlining. We watched them play this crazy healine set. Afterwards they invited us to come and meet them backstage. It was just us, them and maybe one or two roadies just sitting there and talking about music. Billie said he really loved the record !

Jon: It was surreal. Billie has been super supportive. He messaged us all the time. He truly cares about the band, posts our stuff. A true legend.

Bobby: You’d expect these rockstars to be ego maniacs, and a lot of them are. But not those cunts ! It’s funny because they’re one of the last bands around from our generation still going, that we genuinely like. We met Green Day’s manager and he said that Billie sent our record to him. The thought of him sending our record is surreal.

What can we expect from Bad Nerves in the future ?

Bobby: We’re just going to keep writing songs, playing gigs until… we die ? (laughs) We’re going to keep putting out records that we like, which is hard to do. It takes time.

Jon: We want to make our stand on this kind of genre in years to come.

Bobby: It would be nice to be able to look back and think ‘we had a good go at it.’

https://badnerves.co.uk/

https://www.tropicalriot.cat/home/

[everythingadelaidemusic]

I started this website to promote the Adelaide scene and the bands that make it great. But every now and then I hear a song that I can’t stop listening to, and even if the band isn’t from Adelaide I interview them. That current song is “Dive In” by this weeks guest, Gone Fishin’. They hail from Wagga Wagga. Here is their interview.

Tell us a little bit about Gone Fishin’? Members, how did you get together etc?

Gone fishin’ came about I think mostly through mutual friends. We didn’t all know each other super well but Joey Skewes our guitarist knew that we were all into the same sort of stuff. We started jamming on some originals straight away and got really close pretty quickly.

Bass and trumpet - Mitch Davoren

Electric guitar - Austin Bellany

Guitar - Joey Skewes

Drums and backing vocals - Lachlan Coe

Lead vocals and synth - Anna Skewes

What are you short and long terms goals?

In terms of this year we would love to have a show in a city, maybe Canberra or Melbourne would be amazing. We’d also love to have an EP out before the end of the year

Some long term goals we’re aiming for include some bigger headlining shows and mostly just growing our following as much as possible. A tour is something we all dream of, it’d be incredible to play overseas and grow our monthly listeners to the thousands.

How was it dealing with the Covid Pandemic? Is everything back to normal?

We managed to form just after things started to settle down in terms of COVID (start of 2022). We haven’t really struggled in that area of things which we are very grateful for.

What is your career highlight so far?

Definitely the release of our single ‘Dive In’. It was possibly a year in the making, just with things going wrong with recording and sending it off. Thankfully Austin did amazing engineering and managed to get it across to Caleb Skewes who did an incredible job for us on the production. We’ve been so happy that so many people have been enjoying it.

Your song “ Dive in” is beautiful. I listen to it a lot. What is it about and how did you come up with?

The song sort of speaks to a girl who has rushed into a bunch of different relationships and has been constantly hurt over very small and short romances. And something that we’ve seen through school in particular is that potential friendships are often ruined by this unnecessary pain, and people feel like they have to avoid each other. Hence the line ‘no need to try and hide from your boyfriend’. I think overall we are trying to encourage younger people to slow down and think about who they chose to become romantic with to avoid pain and heartbreak.

Have you got any new music coming out? Or are you still recording?

We’re currently in the decision phase where we love all our songs and can’t choose which ones to release. We’re hoping to get in contact with some professional producers and studios to get at least a couple more songs going. Our good friend Josh Barr has been a huge help in linking us up with some big names.

Who are the greatest influences on you? Individually and as a band?

Joey Skewes - Alvvays

Mitch Davoren - Coldplay

Lachlan Coe - Spacey Jane

Austin Bellany - Snarky Puppy

Anna Skewes - The 1975

As a band I think someone we all take influence from would be The Strokes. Especially there debut album ‘Is This it’. We’ve written a few tunes that take from the choppy and tight movement particularly in the guitar and bass lines.

If you could invite 4 musicians to dinner dead or alive) who would you invite?

It’d have to be Paul McCartney, Lauren Hill, Phil Collins, and Chris Martin

Any gigs coming up you want to promote?

We’ll be playing at the Jungle Duke in Wagga Wagga along side The Radicals and Social Afterparty on the 17th of June! Starting at 8pm

And again in Wagga at the Festival of W on the 1st of July which will be awesome:)

If you were given the chance to support one artist in the world, who would you pick?

We’d all agree on Gang of Youths for sure. A few of us saw them live with Greta Ray opening who did such a great job, it’d be a dream to be up there with them

If you were stuck on a deserted island with only one record, what would it be?

We think something pretty influential, like

In Rainbows by Radiohead, incredible album

Where can people find out more about you?

Check out our Insta and Facebook for more info

https://instagram.com/gone_fishinofficial?igshid=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==