ROYAL BLOOD
PRIMAL DUO
N
o artist can accurately predict just how successful its upcoming album will be. Especially if you’ ve thrown out the aesthetic rulebook, like Royal Blood anchors Mike Kerr and Ben Thatcher who – three years ago – had grown so disgusted with the conventional quartet format they stripped everything down to a primal duo, with Thatcher on Brontosaurus drums and Kerr on squealing bass and feral vocals. In a post-Britpop era when rock and roll wasn’ t selling, their sonic barrage of an eponymous bow for Warner Brothers not only caught on in their native Britain, its debut became the fastestselling one in three years and eventually won the Brighton duo a 2015 Brit Award for Best British Group, presented to them by Jimmy Page. Royal Blood also raked in two 2014 NME Awards, and scored trophies from Q Magazine and Kerrang, as well.
Thatcher says that he still has this sneaking suspicion that he’ s gotten away with something. He was pulling pints at a local pub when his childhood chum Kerr-- a trained chef – returned from an Australian sabbatical in 2013 and suggested that they make music just to please themselves, not record companies. He tries not to examine Royal Blood’ s unexpected stardom too closely.“ But if you really stop and think about it, we can’ t believe how surreal our lives have gotten,” he admits.“ But now it’ s just our everyday kind of thing, and we’ ve gotten used to it. And gotten used to the madness of being on the road. So I think in the end, we just laugh at how far we’ ve gotten with this.”
The band’ s list of accomplishments keeps growing longer. And stranger. The members have palled around with heroes like Tom Morello, and – on their first visit to San Francisco, opening for The Pixies – been picked up in their dressing room, post-gig, by Metallica’ s Lars Ulrich for a personal midnight tour of town.“ Now we’ ve met Lars quite a few times,” Thatcher is proud to relate,“ And one time were at( SF venue) Slim’ s, Lars was in the crowd and we got him to come up onstage and play with us – we had a bit of a jam with him.” Ditto for Led Zeppelin legend Page, who – a year ago last February – broke bread with Thatcher on his birthday at a London restaurant.“ It was a quiet little restaurant on a Wednesday afternoon, so nobody was really bothering us,” he recalls.“ And at first, yes, you do think,‘ Whoa! Jimmy Page!’ But we’ ve seen Jimmy quite a few times, and after a bit you realize that he’ s just a regular dude who’ s quite chilled out, and he likes listening to music so much he’ s a music nerd, really. And he’ s a fan of Royal Blood and we’ re huge fans of his, so it’ s nice to have a guy around to talk to that knows so much about rock music.”
Royal Blood got so caught up in its own whirlwind, it’ s a wonder that its new sophomore set, How Did We Get So Dark?, got made. The team toured so doggedly behind Royal Blood, logging over 236,380 miles over two and a half years, both Kerr and Thatcher wound up in the hospital. Twice. Thatcher still uncomfortably remembers his scheduled appearance on a daytime talk show for Italian TV. Kerr couldn’ t make it – he was hospitalized at the time – and the percussionist himself was experiencing severe food poisoning.“ I was seated in between two lovely Italian ladies, trying not to let any fluids come out of any of my orifices,” he shudders.“ We were just working our asses off, really. And doing that, you can get exhausted and get ill. And when you’ re still working, you don’ t actually have time to recover. We’ re only human – we got ill, and ended up in places where we didn’ t want to be for very long.”
One of Royal Blood’ s last shows on that particular juggernaut was at Austin City Limits, in October of 2015, where Kerr grew so frustrated he smashed his bass into ten shards. It felt like an ending, a finale. It was time to close the door on Album No. 1 and return to Brighton to consider Album No.
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By Tom Lanham
20 illinoisentertainer. com august 2017