By Geoffery Rowlands
Anyone familiar with bands such as The Slowdown, Bigsleep and Drive Like I Do will have already heard The 1975. These were names used by the Manchester-based alternative rock quartet before adopting their current moniker just 15 months ago.
“We’ve been making music for 11 years,” said guitarist Adam Hann. “We got together while we were at school. One day, I just asked (singer, guitarist and frontman) Matthew (Healy) if he wanted to start a band with me.”
“We weren’t much good at first,” laughed Matthew. “I started out playing drums. A friend of ours named Elliot was the singer. During one of our rehearsals, he said we were rubbish and quit the band. That’s when I started singing and we asked George (Daniel) to become our drummer.”
“It was only after we finally wrote a song we thought was half decent that we considered actually making our living as musicians,” remarked bassist Ross MacDonald. “We thought being in a band was better than school or getting a proper job. We figured if we could write one pretty good song then we should be able to write more.”
Their initial forays into the music world saw them follow the traditional path of performing in small local venues with these becoming larger and more widespread as their fan base grew. But their following has only increased significantly since they became The 1975.
“I suppose all the name changes didn’t help,” George reflected. “We’d start to build a fan base under one name and then have to try to keep these fans when we changed our name. It probably wasn’t the most sensible course to take.”
Their switch to The 1975 came about after Matthew had a chance encounter while on holiday.
“I went for a walk and came across this beautiful Spanish villa with a load of furniture outside. I got talking to the owner who was basically giving away the contents of the house. The place was full of things like original Beatles records, signed stuff from Elvis Presley and even a photo of the owner with Jimi Hendrix.
“He gave me loads of books about the Beat Generation. A while later, I was looking through one and found a page of scribbles which was dated ‘1st June. The 1975.’ I thought the word ‘The’ preceding 1975 was a strong use of language. It stayed in my mind and, when we decided to rename ourselves again, The 1975 just seemed perfect.”
Their Facedown EP became the band’s breakthrough release last summer.
“Everything seemed to come together,” Adam stated. “The EP got a lot of attention. We deliberately used black and white imagery in videos and on our website. This got noticed. Influential people in the music world started talking about us.”
A second EP, Sex, drew even more attention paving the way for their eagerly anticipated third EP, Music For Cars. One of the five tracks, Chocolate, has become The 1975’s first major hit single.
“It’s hard to explain how strange it feels to be selling a significant number of records,” Matthew remarked. “It isn’t something we ever really expected. We’re so happy that people seem to be connecting with our music.”
Another EP is tentatively scheduled for release next month followed by the band’s debut album.
“We haven’t fixed a release date for the album,” Ross explained. “It might depend on how popular our next EP proves to be. At the moment, we’re just enjoying being a chart band rather than an underground group.”