Homegrown Heroes: Could The Struts Conquer The World?
Monday, 11 July 2016
Written by Simon Ramsay
It’s been a long time since a young British rock ‘n’ roll group possessed the style, swagger and, most importantly, songs needed to set the world alight. With a precocious sonic identity that channels everyone from Queen and the Rolling Stones to Oasis and T. Rex, The Struts have already proven themselves one hell of a flammable proposition, making waves in America with their destined-for-cult-classic-status debut album ‘Everybody Wants’.
With the band having recently wrapped a few UK dates, plus an appearance at T In The Park, we spoke to guitarist Adam Slack about their stateside success, radio roadblocks and plans for global domination.
Let’s start by talking about America. Can you explain how you managed to take off over there?
We toured extensively in the UK for four years and managed to land a new record deal in America and management team. Our manager started taking the songs to radio because he knew everyone in the alternative stations over there. They started getting played, then iHeartmedia, who own a lot of the radio stations, made us as an ‘on the verge artist’.
So every alternative station had to play the song [Could Have Been Me] a certain amount of times across the whole of the States. By the time we got there last August our first show in San Diego at The House Of Blues was sold out, 1500 people. It’s just kept growing from there and the song kept climbing up the alternative radio chart. We’re playing everywhere from Little Rock in Arkansas to Corpus Christi in Texas and selling all these venues out. It’s just surreal really.
And you’ve been a hit with TV stations too.
We’ve managed to do Jimmy Kimmel Live, which is one of the late night shows, Seth Myers and we just did Stephen Colbert, who took over from David Letterman. I would download videos of my favourite bands on these shows, so to actually play it was a really cool feeling. The Ed Sullivan Theatre for Stephen Colbert is where the Beatles played.
How does that success translate to sales?
We look at the alternative chart because that’s the biggest one for anything that’s not mainstream pop. That’s the chart we’ve been doing well in. I know the album got into the Billboard Hot 100 when it came out. It didn’t go extremely high, but it’s a slow burner. Our label are completely behind it and our next single is hopefully going to cross over to pop radio, so that’s when I think we’re really going to see things explode.
Which song is that?
Put Your Money On Me. It’s got that poppy kind of vibe and everyone’s excited about it. I think it’s already started to get plays from the mainstream pop stations, which is exciting.
What would it take for a rock band to start selling millions of albums like Adele or Taylor Swift?
The people that run the radio stations are the issue, because they’re the ones that dictate what gets into people’s ears. That’s what we’ve struggled with in the UK. Radio 1 focuses mainly on electronic music and when it comes to rock bands it’s either heavy rock or some indie band outfit trying to be too-cool-for-school.
Back in the ‘70s or ‘60s the radio stations thought ‘I don’t know if people are going to like this but I’m going to put it out there anyway.’ Nowadays, because music’s not selling, people are more scared to take the risk. It needs a mainstream station to take a chance on a rock band and a radio DJ to have the balls to do it.
People who hear your songs seem to respond with enthusiasm.
When we first signed with Interscope, they were like ‘do you wanna do a whole new record?’ and we were like ‘no’ because these songs are really good, they just haven’t been put in anyone’s ears yet. We stuck to our guns and it seems to be connecting with people, young and old, every kind of demographic. For older people it’s like ‘fuck, you’re like Mott The Hoople and Queen’, and for young people it’s like ‘what the fuck’s this? It doesn’t sound like anything I’ve heard before.’ That’s why, hopefully, they’ll like it.
You can hear your influences but you’ve got a distinct sound of your own. Did you and [vocalist] Luke Spiller have to work at developing that when you began writing material?
When we started writing it was just me and him on an acoustic guitar, and when we first got in a studio with our producer, Ray Hedges, who usually does pop stuff, we just talked about music for three days before we did anything. He knew our influences better than we did and could translate what we wanted in our heads into a sound format. As soon as we started recording songs we instantly had our sound, from him really, and we’ve since taken that to different producers we’ve worked with.
How does a young band make music that sounds unique without being too derivative, because that’s the challenge isn’t it?
It is a challenge. I think some people have said ‘it’s bit pastiche’ what we’re doing, but I don’t think it is. It’s taking what we love and what a lot of people love about the ‘70s and ‘60s and trying to give it a modern twist. Luke’s voice is distinctive. I come from really loving punk rock music when I was younger so that translates to the guitar sounds. We try to put modern influences that would appeal to people today so it’s not just a regurgitation of the past, trying to push it in a contemporary way. If anything sounds a bit bluesy or too ‘70s we’re like ‘no, no, we need to make this sound new, we need to make this sound fresh and exciting.’ That’s our main goal.
Songs like It Could Have Been Me and These Times Are Changing highlight an almost desperate realisation throughout the album that you have to make every second count. Why is that?
Could Have Been Me was written when we had two other members of the band and our label made us kick them out because they weren’t right for the group. We were really down and didn’t know what to do and thought ‘fuck it, let’s harness it and put it into a song'. That’s what it’s about: if we give up now we don’t want to look back, regret it and think what could have happened.
Could Have Been Me was where we were five years ago, These Time Are Changing is where we are now. The lyrics ‘I’ve met the Rolling Stones and been to New York City’ are all things that have happened in the last two and a half years. Now these times are changing. Instead of sitting in that house in Derby doing fuck all, playing Legend of Zelda on N64 not knowing what we’re going to do with our lives, we’re actually touring America.
How conscious are you of avoiding the ‘difficult second album’ that has tripped up so many bands?
We’re in the studio next month and we’ve got a load of songs already. We got the chance to remaster the first album and put five new songs on it. We were writing a lot of music but it felt like another progression and the ones we were writing didn’t quite fit, so we’ve got a lot in the pipeline. I’m really buzzing about it and me and Luke are hungry to start writing with a fresh canvas instead of trying to rebastardise the same album we’ve been doing for four years.
How do you see your sound developing?
From what we’ve written already some of it is like a natural progression, a bit more theatrical. We’re definitely experimenting with a lot of stuff we haven’t done before. A band like Queen or the Rolling Stones, they could do blues, big anthems, something theatrical, disco, and it all ties together because it’s Freddie or Mick Jagger singing it. And the beauty of Luke’s voice is it’s always gonna sound like the Struts because it’s got his voice on it. So we’re not afraid to experiment with anything and I think that’s only gonna happen more when it comes to the next album because we’ve got the basics down and we’re excited to try new things.
You’re the kind of band that tries to get a party started. Why is it important to create that vibe? A lot of bands almost consider it a crime to have fun.
I find when you listen to music you’re escaping something and when you go to a concert you want to forget about what you’re doing and have a really good time. So if people buy a ticket, they want to see us sweat our bollocks off on stage. We want to see them sweat their bollocks off in the crowd and go away thinking ‘fuck, that was a good night’.
What’s the secret to sending them home as fans?
Luke, as a frontman, is powerful. He’s got the X factor and star quality. You can’t take your eyes off him on stage and he works the crowd, makes them sing throughout, gets them up, gets them jumping. It’s not just playing songs by the numbers, we try and incorporate theatrics into it so one song rolls into another and we add certain stuff and jam some stuff. It might look like we’re just making it up as we go along, but it’s all very cool and calculated behind the scenes. I’ve ruined the magic!
That’s how Queen used to do it.
That’s what I mean – no one does it any more and I think that’s what’s great. We’re bringing back a quintessential frontman. Not with a guitar in his hands, just a real frontman who’s got a microphone in his hand and his job is to entertain you. The band just try and play the best that they can.
In the ‘70s and ‘80s rock groups like yourselves would be playing stadiums and arenas. Is that still possible in 2016?
We’ve always said we want to be the biggest band in the world. It’s still achievable, I just think it takes a bit longer. And we’re doing it in an unconventional way going to America first. It’s a really big country, so to play all these different states and towns takes a long time. A lot of bands have failed in the past because you’ve got to spend a lot of time there like we’ve been doing. We go back Sunday and we’re there ‘til the end of the year touring again.
The thing is to get in as many ears and in front of as many faces as possible. We’re so busy we just don’t have any time off, which is a beautiful thing because I think if we did I’d be like ‘shit, it’s not going very well is it’. The busier we are the more confident I am that it’s only going to go upwards from here. We’ve got the green light to do a second album from the label so that’s going to be happening soon. Our ambitions are to get to that level and I think we will eventually, so the sky’s the limit for us.
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