Mancunian band of brothers The 1975 gift us this exclusive remix by Andrea and reveal where they’d take us on a night out back in their hometown. But first, the real story behind their name (and no, nobody in the band was born in 1975)…
Why the name The 1975?
When I was 19 I went on holiday to the northern part of Majorca. I went on loads of long walks and came across a beautiful spanish villa. On a deckchair in the porch sat this artist. We sparked up a conversation and I ended up staying there all day. It was like some kind of 60s vintage haberdashery: original Beatles records, signed Elvis shit, a photo of him with Hendrix. He showed me his library and gave me all of that Beat generation literature i’ve mentioned before in interviews. I didn’t start reading any of it until about 6 months later but when I eventually did, I found this mental page of scribblings. The only thing that stuck with me was that the page was dated ‘1st June. The 1975’. When it came to naming the band, it was perfect.
How did the band come together? We read somewhere that you’ve been playing together for ten years.
We met at school. Hann come up to me, probably about 15, and said ‘Do you wanna like… play drums in my band?’ There was no real scene in our town and we were all looking for some way of expressing ourselves, I suppose. Some woman called Sheila started gigs for underage kids (she was like a hippy council worker) and they soon turned into a riot. We would go and play there, doing covers of punk songs and Ghostbusters. After doing that for a while we wrote a song and thought, “Let’s just do this! This is well better than going to school or work.” So we went under loads of names, made loads of different music and now we’re here – as The 1975.
How would you describe your sound?
It’s difficult to say really. Our records span a lot of different moods and influences. There seems to be a lot of deliberation about our sound at the moment, mainly the question ‘Do they actually know what they are doing? do they know who they want to be?’ and I’ve really embraced that and I find the whole thing quite fascinating.
What’s a typical day in the life of The 1975?
Wake up, cig and a brew. Recently we’ve been rehearsing a lot for our first headline tour. But a lot of our time is spent hanging out recording and just making tunes. We’re very lucky that we can now focus on purely making music, but now we can call it a job which is a great excuse.
If we went to Manchester, what would you take us to see on a day out?
Probably where we all used to knock about. It’s a pretty vibey place. We spent a lot of time there as teenagers, kinda just street dwelling. We all live out side of the city so we’d just bus it to gigs day in day out, getting pissed on ‘Urbis’ and going to ‘Afflecks’ etc (you’ll know them if you’re from town). But if you came now, we’d probably just take you to Sankeys.
You released your EP earlier this year – were you pleased with the reaction it got?
6 months ago we were planning on putting out these records with absolutely no intention of them being accepted in the way they have. We kind of got used to being in really underground bands, where the world of mainstream radio and media just seems so genuinely far away. The fact that our EPs are getting attention is a really humbling thing for us. We’re just happy that people seem to be connecting with what we do.
The 1975 are currently on their first headline tour. They play the Barfly, London tonight. the1975.com
Words: Zing Tsjeng