Interviews : Biffy Clyro : We Care Too Much To Be Cool
The night before the three members of Biffy Clyro were due to start recording their sixth album in Los Angeles – "the most important record of our lives" – drummer Ben Johnston went out for a pizza with one of the band's crew. He remembers having one beer, then going to the bar for another, and then nothing until the morning: no memory of anything. In fact, he'd returned to the house that the band were sharing in the wee hours, incoherent and with his face covered in blood.
Neither his twin brother James nor singer and guitarist Simon Neil slept, and in the morning the three of them sat down amid "lots of tears" to decide whether to end the group there and then. "It was black and white," Simon recalls, back in LA where the band are filming a video, several months down the line. "Either the drink stops or we stop. If we'd made a record in that situation we would have been acting, and that's not what being in a band is – and it's not what being friends is. It so happened that the timing of it [on the eve of recording] was so, so bad … but it turned out to be the best thing that's ever happened to us."
"There was no shouting match, I didn't try and pretend I had the situation under control," Ben recalls. "But for the first time, the extent to which my behavior was affecting everyone – and the future of everything – sank in." He decided to call time on his drinking, and the group disappeared into the Village studio (where, they note, the Rolling Stones, Fleetwood Mac and Slipknot have recorded) to emerge five months later with a double album, Opposites.
It's that rare thing: visceral heavy rock that wears its heart on the sleeve – the sound of a band that's matured without losing touch with the strength of old emotions. Glowing reviews would seem to signal Biffy's ascent into the big time: an appearance on the Jonathan Ross programme and a sold-out show at the O2 in London, and the surefire bet that they'll headline a major festival this summer.
The band have never been an easy sell – starting with their name, which is still a mystery, although its etymology was once attributed to a piece of Cliff Richard memorabilia, a pen or "Cliffy Biro". The world has come slowly to them, and as Simon says, "we've been able to show that we're sincere as a band, and we're not here to become rich or famous, we're here to play music. It helps that we took it seriously from start. We're not chancers, we're lifers."
Biffy are a band who spurn cliches – and, talking to them, it seems the travails they encountered making the new album feel almost irksome. "We never thought we'd ever be the kind of group to have to face that kind of challenge," Simon says, sitting in a beachside hotel in Santa Monica. "We used to laugh at other bands who did."
With a wolfish grin, he adds: "Drinking too much … it's a funny thing for a Scotsman to worry about."
Growing up in Ayrshire, Simon and the red-haired Johnston brothers became friends in the mid-80s, aged seven, and the three always pointedly talk about each other as family. Ben and bassist James's mum ran a nursing home in Kilmarnock while their dad was responsible for building local playgrounds and skate parks – employing his sons to help out in their summer holidays. Simon's dad is a builder, while his late mother, Eleanor, was a police officer.
"There weren't any bands [where we lived]," says James of the band's upbringing. "We never saw success happen to anyone, so we never had any kind of sense of entitlement. There was no one we could compare ourselves to."
Inspired by Nirvana and Guns N' Roses (the glib working title for Opposites was Use Your Illusion III and IV), the band would practise in the Johnstons' garage "and after a couple of years, the boys' mum could hum one of our tunes," Simon recalls. In January 1996, their first gig came at a youth centre in East Kilbride, supporting Pink Kross who had in turn once supported Hole (the band led by Kurt Cobain's widow Courtney Love). "We thought 'Yes! We've fucking made it."
Nothing changed immediately. The industry and media were still feasting on the carcass of Britpop, and for three teenagers in Scotland there was no way of fitting in. "It was the swagger of it all … we were quite shy boys, we didn't have that same arrogance," says Simon.
"[Britpop] lacked emotion. We liked music that came from the bottom of people's hearts," James continues, citing US acts they were now listening to like Bonnie "Prince" Billy and Red House Painters. And as for the next wave to be championed by the music press? "Groups like the Libertines just repulsed us, because they seemed to care more about the perception of who they were as people than the music."
According to Simon: "We probably tried to be cool when we were teenagers, but we called our band Biffy Clyro and that's not cool, we make earnest music and that's not cool. We're not nonchalant, we care too much to be cool."
In 2002, the band released their debut album, Blackened Sky, on the independent Beggars Banquet, which struggled to No 78. "No one was interested in a bunch of Scottish kids with tattoos playing rock music like that," a former member of staff at the label says, adding: "There was a review in the NME that was particularly brutal, which led to some fans ringing the switchboard to threaten the writer – which then made it even harder for them to get in the paper."
Nonetheless, the same source adds, the band never wavered in confidence, growing harder and quirkier on their next two albums, The Vertigo of Bliss and Infinity Land. With the benefit of hindsight, Simon says now that "in some ways it was a defence mechanism – making things hard to like gave us an excuse if people didn't like them".
For their fourth album, the first on a major label, there was a recognition that to move forward, they had to simplify everything. That decision coincided with the death of Simon's mother (from complications following previous heart surgery) while he was away on tour. The result, Puzzle, was their most emotionally direct record yet – especially Folding Stars, which lamented "Eleanor, Eleanor, I would do anything for another minute with you".
It was a dark time for the singer, who has said that he spent "weeks – weeks – in my bed" not wanting to get up. But the album went to No 2 and was voted best of 2007 by Kerrang!. Support slots for Muse, the Who, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Bon Jovi ensued, and a fifth album, Only Revolutions, was released in late 2009. Six singles came from the record – including the exhilarating Mountains and Bubbles (which perfectly represent Biffy's command of rock dynamics) and Many of Horror, a record that showcased Neil's grasp of balladry so well that it went on to enjoy an ignominious afterlife. Retitled When Worlds Collide in a cover version by 2010 X Factor winner Matt Cardle, it topped the charts that Christmas.
"We were on tour in Australia, when it happened, and thought it was weird enough to be funny," Simon recalls. "It was only when we got home that we worried if it was a terrible thing. But it felt nice to infiltrate things our way. We haven't gone begging to any fucker ever. People have always come round to our way of thinking. And I have to say my mum would have been over the moon about a Christmas No 1!" (Read More)
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