Good Judge of Character
By Tom Lanham
I
t was quite an unusual sight for a winter afternoon in Oakland, California –
an entire line of black-garbed, quasiGoth girls, all teen or pre-teen – snaking
from the front door of the sprawling Fox
Theater practically all the way around the
entire building. It was quitting time, 5:00
p.m., and business folk getting off work
and heading to the nearby underground
BART train station cast a few quizzical
glances at the unusual assembly – it wasn’t
some teen-pop phenomenon or the latest
boy-band craze that brought these kids
here for this sold-out show. 2,800-capacity
concert. And to passersby, the marquee
proclaiming The 1975 offered no real clues.
But the devil was in the details, so to
speak. As more and more cars continued to
pull up – mostly mom-driven vans and
family-size SUVs – more and more youngsters piled out to take their place in the
lengthy line. But the handful of teen males
joining the throng offered an unusual preview of the show to come – many had the
same eyebrow-obscuring, lopsided wavy
haircuts, and were spitting pre-pubescent
images of the typically ebony-clad Matty
Healy, the charismatic, almost foppish
frontman for The 1975, a British band that
quietly came to theatre-headlining prominence over the past three years courtesy of
its eponymous 2013 debut (with quirkchorded hit singles like “Sex,” “Girls,” and
“Chocolate”) and a grueling tour schedule
that could include 300-plus gigs a year. The
singer had clambered to fame in some sort
of stealth mode after several failed musical
projects. And like a king, or perhaps a popchart prince, he now inspired that kind of
dogged devotion in his subjects. Err, fans.
Before the doors open, the venue’s
giant back gate swings wide to allow journalistic entry into a lengthy passageway of
dressing rooms. The girls watch wistfully
from the other side as security quickly
creaks said gate shut again. Inside, in a
spacious mineral-water-stocked chamber,
sits Healy on his leather-couch throne,
dressed in black jeans, thick-soled retro
creepers, a baggy turtleneck sweater, with
his oft-imitated curly tresses even longer,
tumbling past his collar. He looked like a
San Francisco beatnik, freshly beamed in
from the skoodle-ee-doo-wah 1960s past.
But there was nothing even remotely regal
in his demeanor. In fact, had spent roughly
the last year questioning his own fame,
even deleting The 1975 from all social
media last June for 24 experimental hours,
just to gauge any and all public reaction.
With his bandmates – guitarist Adam
Hann, drummer George Daniel, and
bassist/keyboardist Ross McDonald – he’s
also composed an entire sophomore album
on the subject of stardom and its attendant
pitfalls, with the unwieldy title “I Like It
When You Sleep, for You Are So Beautiful
Yet So Unaware of It.” It begs the existential question: So you’ve accidentally
opened the Pandora’s Box – Now what?
For a reflective, 26-year-old deep
thinker like Healy – the son of renowned
British actors Denise Welch (Coronation
Street) and Tim Healy (Auf Wiedersehen,
Pet) – what began as painful catharsis
quickly morphed into an intriguing intellectual exercise. A year earlier, on
December 6, 2014 in Boston, he had effectively melted down onstage, angrily
responding to a female acolyte who shouted out her adoration that she had no right
to love him, none at all, and then growing
still more diffident. “That’s when it was
like a forensic analysis,” says Healy, struggling to find the proper words to describe
what he was going through that particular
evening. “I was tired, and I felt very…I just
thought….Well,
it
all
got
very
Shakespearean, and I just thought, ‘Fuck it
– if this is what you want, then this is the
kind of character I’ve become.’
“I talk a lot about that duality of art and
reality on this record,” the composer continues. “Like, Where do I draw the line
between who I am and who I’m being?
And am I making excuses for my behavior
because of that, or am I rationalizing something thinking at least I could get a song
out of it? All of those things came into play,
and at the end of the last touring cycle and
the beginning of making this record, I was
just exhausted. I’d been on the road for
three years, and we even won some award
for the most amount of shows, ever. And at
that Boston show, there was loads of girl
stuff, all kinds of stuff. And especially
being British, as well, you don’t really
spend a lot of time feeling sorry for yourself. That’s not really a part of our character, so I found it very, very difficult to be
upset or angry. So I just took it out onstage,
and it was kind of cathartic, to be honest
with you.”
Healy had witnessed his faithful followers, gathering outside. And he still
wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. On
one hand, such fandom was amazing, truly
humbling, he notes. He remembered what
it was like being a kid, going to see some of
his favorite bands, and being in awe when
a member pointed at or nodded to him
from the stage. It made him feel special,
recognized, like he belonged to something
elite. But on the other hand? “They kind of
freaked me out at times when I first went
on the road,” he admits. “Because I went
from nothing to everything, and it was
something that I was struggling to come to
terms with. I was 24, and I’d never experienced anything like that. So it gives you
this identity crisis, then it feeds back in to
who you are, then that consequent H