British-born, American-raised rock cat Barns Courtney has lived at least nine lives, but it’s on his new concert album Live and Wired, recorded in Paris, that he truly comes into his own. The man has survived a disastrous (by his own account) appearance on a U.K. talent show judged by Blur’s Alex James; getting dropped by several record labels; having his master tapes held hostage and his teen years “stolen” by pop producer RedOne; witnessing a bizarre love triangle involving a member of the Struts; being fired from a lucrative bread TV commercial; recording a surprise sleeper hit with Furbies, filing cabinets, and a future Eurovision contestant; nearly being coerced into joining a crooner boy band; and releasing an epic but little-heard dystopian rock opera that will hopefully one day be recognized a cult classic. And he has lived to tell the tales.

And oh, what tales! In the highly entertaining video interview above, and the Q&A edited for brevity and just a bit of much-needed clarity below, the rock ‘n’ roll storyteller and showman dishes about all of this and more. He also previews his next studio LP, out in 2027 — a major artistic departure, even for a guy who’s done everything from sci-fi concept records to one-man acoustic tours — which he describes as “very expansive” and “quite a sad album” about “estrangement and loss.” But it also features strings and “the most ’50s, white-sounding” Elvis choir, of course.

This was a fun one. Let the Barns door fling open!

LYNDSANITY: Live and Wired reminds me of a classic era when a lot of rock stars launched their careers with iconic live albums — Cheap Trick at Budokan, Frampton Comes Alive, KISS Alive — because those albums showcased them at their best. And I feel Live and Wired captures that for you. Epic concert albums like this aren’t all that common anymore.

BARNS COURTNEY: Yeah, it’s so uncommon because you get punished on Spotify for releasing a live album! They won’t playlist any of it, and they won’t let it be in any playlists. I think they just decided they had too much music and they had to draw the line, and the live albums are not allowed. So, it’s on there, but it’s very difficult even to let your own fans know on Spotify that you have it.

But you’re known for your amazing live shows, and it does feel like I’m at your concert when I listen to this album. I was surprised to learn it was recorded in France, because there’s this stereotype that French audiences would be snooty, particularly to an American or British artist, and wouldn’t be going apeshit like this.

I really did [assume that] too, but God bless ‘em, for whatever reason, my Parisian fans are probably some of the most enthusiastic fans that I have anywhere. I have no idea what I did to deserve them. … I played an acoustic show in Paris on this last run and they were going fucking tits before I even came out on the stage. It was like a full-on rock show. For the first time in my career, the entire audience was putting their crossed fingers up in the air to mimic the logo on my T-shirts and waving them around. I crowd-surfed — acoustic crowd-surfed! There were three encores. I’d ever played three encores in my fucking life! I ran out of songs! I am so overwhelmingly grateful for those people and lucky to have them.

Didn’t you meet the musicians who play on this record at the French bistro La Poubelle in L.A.?

I love that bar, but I met the guitar player in Home Depot. He was the only other man in Home Depot also wearing a velvet suit. I saw him walking about the plant section, like a glam-rock velociraptor, and I was like, “Who’s that?” He wandering about the ferns. And then I pulled up to the checkout with this enormous, towering fern on my cart, and I looked to my left and there was that velveteen man with the exact same fern in his cart.

You were between two ferns!

Literally between two ferns. Zach Galifianakis and Obama.

So, you went up to him and bro’d out over plants?

“I must know your name!” Yeah, we just got on like a house on fire. And then we put this band together and there was lightning in a bottle from the word go. They were just amazing. I finished the U.S. tour and I said to my label, “Please, please let me do a live record. These guys sound so fantastic. I need to capture this, because I may never have this band again.” People in between tours, they have to keep eating and get different jobs with different bands, you know. But this is how my records are supposed to sound.

It’s actually dawned on me that one reason why artists don’t make concert records like they used to is because touring is so expensive. But you’ve built your reputation the old-fashioned way, by touring and playing live, which is increasingly rare. You sort of bucked the odds.

I mean, I don’t know how much touring has helped me. I do it because I love it so much — everything about it, from being on the road with people that I love to exploring new cities to hanging out with strange people in strange lands. And the shows, of course. But I was thinking about this yeste rday: I reckon if I had never played a show and spent the same amount of time that I’ve spent touring just making social media content, I would probably be way, way more successful than I am. Because that is the way that people discover music now. I’m not saying people don’t like shows and people don’t find bands they like at festivals, but I would say it’s shifted majorly into online discovery.

Well, you’ve taken many risks in your career. Live and Wired is a risk, for all the reasons we’ve discussed. But we must talk about your previous album, Supernatural! It was a lavish concept record. When are we going to get the Supernatural rock opera tour, Supernatural on Broadway, or Supernatural on film like Tommy or The Wall?

I really did have big ambitions for that album. There was a huge story. I wrote a massive backstory and tons of lore, and it was meant to be explored through music videos, comic books, stage sets. But halfway through making that album, my record label was sold in its entirety to Warner. And I found myself on Elektra, their imprint, with a team that just didn’t care about any of my music. It was heartbreaking. The eponymous single was the best-reacting song I’d ever had at social media, more so than anything I’d ever released, and it kept cycling back to the top of all of these charts — and they wouldn’t take it seriously to radio! “Oh, we don’t know if this is going to work.” And then they all got fired. And then I had a new team that gave even less of a shit. And then Warner Bros. dissolved Elektra. … So, the whole album campaign just fell apart. My new label, Avenue A, very valiantly put the record out despite not getting a great deal on the money side of things, but you know, a label wants to promote an album that they made.

Well, in case any movie execs or Broadway big-wigs are watching or reading this interview, what’s the lore? What’s the Supernatural elevator pitch? I want the whole plot. I’ve got all day. I don’t know if you do, but I’m here for it.

I literally do have all day. I’m just sitting here at my mom’s house, enormously hungover. I’m not going anywhere.

You sound pretty lucid for someone who’s hungover.

I do feel quite lucid. I had a lot of espresso martinis last night. I think I still got the caffeine in me. OK, here we go [reads aloud]: The year is 2070. As imagined and influenced from 1969, Rocky Horror, a Kira-esque cult leader, set to the backdrop of a Mad Max dystopian future. Governments, as we know them, are a distant memory amidst a world destroyed by climate change. Nomadic tribes fight for survival amidst the remaining habitable areas of the Earth. The weakest being pushed to the edges of the dead zones. The ancient oil mascots of the past have become deified. A vague memory of the power they held has turned their symbols into sigils, wielded by opposing factions in battle. As the story progresses, the world is widened to reveal huge floating cities, warships, and other retrofuturism in the style of Miyazaki’s Castle in the Sky, Cowboy Bebop, and Barbarella, underpinned with the stylized gore of Kill Bill‘s animated scenes. The entire aesthetic should look something like it was dreamt up in the late ’60s, crossed with classic anime feel.”

Wow, you had a whole deck! You had a PowerPoint ready to show me.

Yeah, that’s just the elevator pitch, but there’s a huge amount of stuff. I sent it to the label and they were just like, “Oh.” It really freaked them out.

In a good way or a bad way?

I just think they were like, “How the fuck are we supposed to market this?” People get scared by a dumptruck of information. I think the way to do it is to just give them the songs. And then when they ask, “What’s the music video?,” then I can just give them that specific video, and I’ll hold onto the whole backstory myself as I use it to inform.

Well, Garth Brooks tried to do that with Chris Gaines and it didn’t work out. But what was the inspiration for this very ambitious Supernatural project?

It was the realization that there are so many parallels between cults and fan culture. And I thought, wouldn’t it be fun to just create my own cult? Which I attempted to do, failed at, and then Sleep Token did it much better.

Was this inspired by any bad experiences you had, like with parasocial or crazy fans?

No, I think I was just very bored of myself. I’d done six years on the road nonstop, talking about myself a lot. I was just bored and I made up a character to make writing interesting again. … It’s been so long since I talked about this! It’s cool that anyone cares. He’s this cult leader, basically. He was born in this little shanty town on the outskirts of this dystopian world. And his father was a preacher who preserved enormous amounts of books to help preserve the written word, but only so that he could preserve the word of God because he was extremely militantly religious. And so, this young kid who’s quite naturally expressive isn’t allowed to go outside. Everything’s a sin, he has to stay inside, and he amuses himself by reading his father’s massive book collection — which he’s not supposed to, but he sneaks down at night. And anyway, one day he’s kidnapped by a band of nomadic raiders and taken off to be a slave for these people. And he’s so charming and amusing that over the years he becomes one of them and starts going on his own raids and stealing people and supplies and eventually comes back to his original place of birth. And the people who are so green, they’re shocked by this foul-mouthed individual who’s got this bizarre way of dressing. And he’s rebelling against and mirroring his father simultaneously, and becomes a cult leader because he doesn’t want to be like his dad, but he’s also got that subconscious desire to be the same dude. And so, that’s the origin of the whole story. And he’s selling snake oil. He professes to have communed with the devil and have the devil’s own luck, which is why there’s the cross-finger-logo pentagram. But he’s full of shit. He’s selling snake oil. And he uses these ideals of hedonism and proto-feminism to inspire people to follow him.

Well, damn. Supernatural was your last proper studio album, in 2023. Even though that wasn’t that long ago, given where we’re at in 2026, I feel the material is more relevant than ever. Did you ever perform the album live in its entirety in any way, even as a one-off?

No, I never did. I played some songs from it. And I was working on a comic book for it as well, because every song is a story from the record. [Get outs his phone and shows screen] So, this is the [comic book] cover. There’s the cult leader, and this is the episode where he dresses up as Mother Teresa and robs a bank. And this is Ophelia, his femme fatale. They meet fighting for resources. She leads her own gang and they fall in love.

How did this record connect at the time with your diehard fans? And do your fans have a name, by the way,? Are they called Barnsheads?

I really need to come up with a name for my fanbase. They call themselves the Barnacles, which I hate.

Why? Because they’re glomming onto you?

It’s just not sexy. Barnacles aren’t sexy. We need a sultry little name for ourselves.

photo: Savanah K. Christian

Well, regardless of what they’re called, how did they react to Supernatural?

I think the ones that knew about it liked it. It was just very difficult to promote that record, and it just came out in such a staggered way. It was hard to get any press around it.

Well, here I am, doing the Lord’s work three years later.

Thank God you’re here! But yeah, it was very difficult. It was probably the hardest album that I’ve ever made, just because of the circumstances. I mean, I had to make and release it across three record labels.

Well, hopefully because of the way the internet works, it’ll have another life. But I’m sure now that I’ve spent all this time speaking with you about Supernatural, it will not surprise you to know that I’m also very into the Eurovision Song Contest. So, to find out that you used to work with this year’s U.K. Eurovision contestant, Look Mum No Computer, aka Sam Battle, excited me to no end.

Isn’t that crazy? … I think his [Eurovision] performance wasn’t a good representation of him, because if you see his live show, he’s got this incredible homemade modular synthesizer that he manipulates live, with a keyboard attached that he plays live. And then there’s this studio SM7 microphone attached to the synthesizer that he’s singing in live, in a boiler suit, thrashing around, and it’s very authentic. To see him miming the keys, doing a dance routine with his synthesizer nowhere in sight, it was a very watered-down version of what he actually does. Also, I just don’t think it was his best song. I really felt for him because I’m a huge fan of his work. But if you go on Spotify and you listen to his song “Desperado” or a couple of the other ones, “Groundhog Day,” they’re so good and the lyrics are genuinely interesting and innovative. And I just thought that one was a bit naff. Sorry, Sam! I love you!

You and Sam worked together a lot, on some of your biggest songs. I don’t know if you ever did anything with his Furbies. If you did, I’m all interested to hear about that, because I know Sam would play music on toys and various objects.

We were going to have 50 Furbies all wired together.

I want a Supernatural rock opera with Furbies!

I think we used the Furby organ, but we found that it didn’t really sound that different to any other organ. It wasn’t immediately obvious that it was Furbies. But it was all in the mix. … I miss working with that guy. We made “Glitter & Gold” together. He was living in a crumbling old folks’ home that the government had abandoned, basically. He was doing this thing called a guardianship, where you pay the government a small sum of money in exchange for the privilege of being their live-in security guard. We made “Glitter & Gold” with filing cabinets for drums, with one microphone. And they knocked the place down, so we’ll never get those sounds again.

“Glitter & Gold” is one example of how your success has come in unexpected or unorthodox ways. That was one of your biggest hits, at least in America.

It’s my only platinum record, and I made it for $0.

How did it break through? It was not on the radio, from what I recall.

It was never a single. It was never promoted, and it didn’t really explode in popularity either. It just trickled in the plays, and they just kept coming. To this day, it’s still my most-streamed song. Just over the course of 10 years, it never stopped growing, and it went platinum.

That’s surprising. I would assume “Fire” would be your biggest song, because Bradley Cooper handpicked it for a movie.

Yes, and that one was on radio. It was promoted as a single. Yeah, it’s so bizarre. But it gives me hope in a way, because I feel like if I make music that genuinely connects with people, it’ll find its way eventually.

That seems to have happened a lot with you. You were talking about the issues that happened with Supernatural and Elektra dropping the ball, but you just kept going. You’re a survivor. That wasn’t your first experience like that. That happened to you when you were 19 with your old band, Dive Bella Dive, right?

It’s happened to me so many times. I think I’ve been signed to every major label, apart from Sony.

Did Dive Bella Dive’s album even come out? I’m under the impression that you made a whole record. It’s sadly an all-too-common thing in the business, where an artist makes a whole album but then it gets shelved.

To this day, I have no idea what happened. We made it with Lady Gaga’s producer, RedOne. … He was trying to get into rock music. He made a record with U2 that was panned by the critics — or universally hated, I should say. … I don’t know if he got into an argument with the record label, but we finished the album, flew back to England, and then for three years we waited for him to send the album to the label. It didn’t go anywhere else, because he was in the contract. Three years. And then the label were like, “Look guys, we’re sorry, but with no music for three years, we’re just hemorrhaging money on this project. You’re dropped.” And then I had no qualifications, nothing, no credit in the industry, because I hadn’t put anything out. And then I just ate shit for another three years, selling cigarettes at nightclubs, handing out free samples of Lipton’s iced tea in a muscle suit and Crocs, selling laptops. I was in random-ass commercials and did extra work.

What commercials? I’ll look for them on YouTube.

When I was young and sexy, I did one for this hair product called VO5. It’s really funny. Basically, everyone’s hair in the commercial gets messed up apart from mine, because I use VO5.

You’re still young and sexy. And you still have fabulous hair. Don’t sell yourself short.

That’s right! Tell ‘em! I was in a bread commercial too. Oh my God. I was joking around with the sound guy behind the set. I came onto the set with the main girl, knowing he could hear me, and I was like, “Hey, you know that sound guy? Did he strike you as weird at all? Every time I go past him, he keeps touching me and saying I’m ‘Disneyland for his hands.’” I’m thinking to myself, “Barns, you’re so hilarious. We’re going to have such a laugh about this when I get back.” I come off the set after the take, and this stern woman appears that I hadn’t seen before. And she goes, “The entirety of the bread company team was watching you on a monitor and heard everything you said.” And I was like, “Oh no, no, no, you don’t understand. Me and the sound guy, we were joking. It wasn’t real.” And she goes, “Well, what about all those comments you made about making your own mayonnaise for the sandwiches?” I got fired. It was going to be an ongoing yearly commercial where I meet this girl at college and then we get married and then we have kids. It was a guaranteed 10 grand a year. They just stopped the entire thing.

Oh man, that sucks. But going back to music, after the shelved RedOne album, what was next?

I signed another deal, and then lost that deal a month after I signed. And that was five years. … I was trying to get out of this deal with this label that doesn’t care. And then finally I’m out, and that’s when I signed to the 300 — who got sold to Warner, who dissolved. And now I’m on Avenue A. Woo.

There had to have been a time when you thought, “Maybe music’s not for me. Maybe it’s time to get a real job.” Did you ever consider giving up music?

I think the double-edged sword about how I’m wired is that I am so deeply depressed when I’m doing anything else. I think in the early days when I signed my first deal as a solo artist, everyone would say, “Wow, what tremendous willpower you must have to have gotten dropped and suffer and then come back and do it again!” And I really have the worst willpower of anyone that I know and I’m terribly undisciplined, but I was just so unprecedentedly, deeply, viciously depressed when not making music and playing shows. I think some people are wired in such a way where they do their job and it’s not their favorite thing, but they love their family and they go on vacations and they have fun on the weekends. And for whatever reason, I just can’t. Even when it’s brutally difficult and it just looks like I’ve got absolutely no prospects, I just can’t. Even then I refused to get even a normal 9-to-5, and I made way less money than I could have, doing odd jobs — because I wanted to be free at a moment’s notice to go into the studio at any time.

Was your family saying, “Now Barns, it’s time to grow up”?

Oh, yeah. My dad and stepmom, just constantly. I remember I got on my first televised battle of the bands [with SleeperCell] on national television, and the first thing my stepmom said to me was, “How do you think it will feel to not win a battle of the bands?” The first thing she said! They were always like, “What are you going to do when this music thing doesn’t work out? ” And to be honest, I did kind of suck, but people don’t know what you’ve got inside and how serious you are about it.

What TV show was it?

It was called Orange unsignedAct. Alex James from Blur was on the judging panel. It was very English. It was on English TV. If you watch that show, you will see how not modest I’m being when I say I sucked so hard. I was so bad.

Did you ever try take the talent-show thing more seriously? The X Factor was a huge show in England back then.

They were really gunning for me, those guys. What I found out was those shows all scout talent and make it seem like people audition, but they’re out hunting for people. And they went after me hard. I was trying to see if I could parlay their interest into just getting a record deal because I had songs, so I’d go into the label and be like, “Oh, I’ve written this, do you like this? ” And they were like, “No. Be on the show.”

Why didn’t you do it?

I just feel with that audience, people are fans of the show. So, even if you do very well, it’s very difficult to get them to then continue to be a fan of you. … If you’re not the exception to the rule, if you’re not One Direction, then you just become “this guy that was on The X Factor five years ago,” very quickly. And that has a stigma attached to it — that you don’t write your own songs, that you’re not authentic, that you’re an industry product. I just didn’t want that.

So, what was your real career breakthrough? Was it when “Fire” was in Bradley Cooper’s Burnt?

It’s just been a lot of stops and starts and just grinding. I would get a break with this Bradley Cooper movie and the label that wanted to drop me would be like, “OK, I guess we’ll keep him on, because he’s getting songs that are making us money in films.” But then I would have to fight this label to promote anything that was coming out. Or like, when my song “99” was top three at alt radio, we couldn’t get them to put any effort in or any money to take it to the next stage. Thank God my beautiful radio reps from Capitol worked their asses off; I’d never even met my A&R at that record label. Yeah, it’s been tough. It’s been a lot of little micro-victories that have stacked up over the years.

I think you have a great story, especially because some naysayers claim rock is dead, but you’ve forged your own path while staying in that genre. During all of your label struggles, did anyone ever advise you, “Maybe you should collab with this rapper,” or “Maybe you should make a pop record,” or “Don’t be so rock?”

I had a manager once who wanted me to be in the first ever brass-big-band boy band. He was like, “What about Frank Sinatra-type songs, but it’s a boy band?” A crooner boy band. I don’t know. For the most part in my career, I’ve just been naively convincing myself that rock’s coming back any minute now: “It’s coming back, it’s coming back!” But I think it actually is now.

Do you see yourself being part of that trend, or maybe even having helped kick that revival into gear?

Oh, I wish that I could say that! I think that I have been on my own little cloud with an extremely enthusiastic, loyal cult following, but I think I’ve been completely separate to what’s going on in popular culture. Ironically, when I play festivals, tons of people come up to me and they’re like, “Oh, I’ve got three of your songs in my playlist, but I had no idea who you are!” For whatever reason, it hasn’t really broken through. But it’s cool. I mean, with the live album, I just put out three videos of all the live shows, and you can look at these videos and see what we made — me and my little scrappy fanbase.

There are many artists in your position, who’ve had deals fall through or industry people who didn’t quite understand them, that might be feeling discouraged. And they would love to have your career now. What advice would you give them about persevering?

You just have to decide, “This is what I want to do with my life, and I’m not going to quit until I fucking die.” Because you don’t really fail until you stop. I think there’s three of us from the music college that I got kicked out of in my second year who have careers in music. And everybody else who doesn’t, they quit. They quit. And I’ve failed so many times. Failure is the only steppingstone to success, and the master has failed more times than the apprentice has even tried. You have to fail again and again and again and suck. You have to go out there and suck. And then eventually things slowly start to improve and things take on momentum. You put yourself out there, and fate has a way of meeting you halfway. And you just keep going and grinding and grinding and visualize every day, not because the world is magic — it might be, I don’t know — but because your mind is this fantastic computer and your subconscious has an incredible ability to cherry-pick useful information to take you to where you want to go. So, if you’re priming it every day, bludgeoning it into submission, as Arnold Schwarzenegger says, you could be the best pilot in the world, but if you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll just fly around in circles. Optimism is a hugely successful strategy because it gives you energy and gumption to attack your goals head-on every day without feeling tired or deflated. So, for the love of God, just pour everything into it. Casanova was imprisoned for all of his misdeeds with various people’s wives, in the only prison in Europe that was inescapable — and he was the only guy ever to get out. And they said, “Casanova, how did you do that? How did you escape this prison? You’re just a slut. How did you do it? ” And he said, “I just applied the same strategy that I apply to courting women, which is don’t focus on anything else but that specific goal.” So, it is possible, but you have to put all your eggs in one basket. It’s so funny to me how our vocational guidance counselors, teachers, parents always say specifically for creativity, “Yo, you better have a backup plan.” Why is this the only job that you have to have a backup plan for? If you’re studying to be a doctor, that’s really hard, and yet no one says to you, “Well, that’s very difficult. You have to be very clever and go to a lot of school. You better study law simultaneously, in case the doctorate doesn’t work out.”

Very true. So, what is next for you? Obviously you’re a man of many big ideas and lofty ambitions.

The studio album’s almost done. It’s really close. I did two-thirds of it with Jonathan Wilson, who did Father John Misty’s first two records that I love. It’s very expansive: strings, Elvis choir, horns, very ’70s, very folksy, Beatles-y rock kind of vibes. But very introspective. It’s a lot of subject matter about estrangement and loss. It’s quite a sad album, but I’m really excited about it. … I got this sick choir on one of the songs. It was like I asked for the most ’50s, white-sounding choir, which is hilarious — the best guy in the choir to get that voice was actually a Black guy. A really Elvis-y “White Christmas” kind of vibe.

That’s such a departure for you! What inspired this vibe?

I think just finally finding the courage to release songs that I’ve had for a long time that were important to me. My first deal was with a boy band manager, so he really drilled into my head, like, “Oh, you’re useless after your teens.” He always used to say, “RedOne stole your teens. He stole your teens!”

I feel like that needs to be a song title. “RedOne Stole My Teens.”

Yes, just a spoken-word over intense jazz music.

Is this the same manager that wanted you to be a crooner with a bunch of other Frank Sinatras in a boy band?

No, a different guy. But me and the Struts were both signed to this guy. And he used to put us up in the same hotel, the Royal Garden in Kensington.

Wow. When we’re talking about rock artists that have played the long game, the Struts have also gone against the grain. I didn’t know you guys went so far back.

Yeah, me and the Struts were in this hotel together and I was in the band with Look Mum No Computer. We stayed in our room and they stayed in their room, and yet we used to get together, put a sock over the fire alarm, put all of the hand sanitizer from the minibar into a wine bucket, and then light it on fire and make this huge Olympic flame and sing around it kumbaya-style. And I was at the Struts’ first ever gig in Devon. I was so impressed with how good it was that I couldn’t even talk afterwards. And we went to a party at their house and Look Mum No Computer found out that my bass player had slept with [Struts guitarist] Adam [Slack’s] girlfriend [at the time], in Adam’s bed at the party. He was so angry at him that he punched the drywall and accidentally made a huge hole!

Oh my God. That’s so rock ‘n’ roll.

Yeah, they hated us. They hated us so much. That was our first introduction to these guys.

But Adam is engaged to Kelsy Karter now, so it all worked out for him. And obviously you were an innocent bystander to all that.

Yeah, I think they’ve forgiven us, more or less.

I think it’s interesting that you and the Struts started off around the same time, you’ve toured together, you’ve remained friends, and there have been a lot of career parallels — they’ve also had multiple record labels and multiple opportunities and some setbacks, but they’ve kept going. The fact that you both were repped by this boy band manager and you both ended up forging unique careers in rock, I think that’s awesome.

It’s funny, because they stayed a band after that. Mine split up after we lost our deal and I had no money. And I remember my manager being like, “Hey, the Struts are shooting a video today and they don’t have enough extras. Would you mind coming?” And I didn’t have a job, so I was like, “Yeah, sure, I’ll come down.”

Wait, was it the “Put Your Money on Me” video? Are you running behind them in the park?

Yes, I’m like this extra running obsessively after the Struts, just like, “God fucking damn it, these fucking guys got a career and I’m fucking selling cigarettes.”

That probably felt weirdly symbolic at the time.

Oh, it did. It was just a brutal three years of just absolutely getting my ass kicked by the universe.

But it all worked out.

Oh, if it hadn’t been for that time, I never would’ve written my first album. It completely changed my sound and gave me everything I have — probably my most authentic record, as a result of that intense shit-eating that I had to do.

Well, some people say the best art comes from dark times. So, what are you going to do now that you’re successful? How are you going to stay inspired?

I’m just going to get really into heroin, I think. That’ll do it.

No, don’t do that.

You don’t want me to be successful?

Well, I guess some artists have made their best music on drugs.

All my career’s missing is heroin. All the greats did it.

It’s not too late, I suppose. I still don’t think it’s a good idea. You don’t need to do drugs to keep doing what you’re doing.

Yeah, I just need to look like I’m on drugs, which I do.

Devo — aptly described by cofounder Gerald Casale in their recent Grammy-nominated Netflix documentary as “most misunderstood band in the world” — were always political, with their own unique form of protest music. In fact, Casale and Mark Mothersbaugh were inspired to form Devo after witnessing the murders of their two friends at 1970’s tragic Kent State shootings. But their serious messages often went over the head of fans, who mistook Akron eccentrics for just some new wave novelty act. Maybe those messages were just too subtle, even if they were delivered in yellow boiler suits and plastic JFK wigs via bonkers music videos (many directed by Casale).

However, there is nothing subtle about Casale’s positively vicious new solo single, “Just Do It!,” a protest song released not so much to commemorate/celebrated as commiserate
“America 250” and the nation’s de-evolution that Devo sadly predicted long ago. A surrealist screed about “250 years of our defeat of tyranny in an age of tyranny reborn,” the accompanying animated video stars Donald Trump as the leader of a MAGA zombie army, while Jeffrey Epstein, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and Bill Clinton are depicted as demented Teletubbies.

It’s been 16 years since Devo released a studio album, and while new Devo music is needed now more than ever, as the band continues to steal the show at every festival they play and recruit young fans — Casale jokes to Lyndsanity that Devo, with their multi-generational audiences, have become “the new wave Grateful Dead” — a new Devo record is apparently not a possibility right now. (“You’re preaching to the converted here. Tell Mr. Mothersbaugh. …. If you find out, let me know,” Casale says bluntly, when asked about Devo’s long recording hiatus.) So, Casale is releasing his own solo album in October. Wetiko, titled after a “300-year-old Native American belief about the absolute psychological sickness of Western culture,” will feature touring Devo members Jeff Friedl and Josh Hager as well as Oingo Boingo veteran Steve Bartek and guitar god Steve Stevens, and it will feature tracks that “attack the problem with the duality of human nature.”

“I’ll just be honest. I had to put out something on my own. Devo’s not writing new music, but I still feel the same and I still want to be creative,” Casale says flatly. And while he doubts that “Just Do It!” has “penetrated enough or gotten enough exposure to even raise the ire of the intolerant right wing” as much as a Devo single could, he explains: “I do what I have to do. Any organism that finds themselves alive, once you’re alive, you want to try to stay alive. And staying alive means continuing to strive in the face of failure and in the face of tyranny. You can’t give up. If you give up, that’s suicide. … I have the wrong personality to give in to a bully. As maybe self-destructive as it is, I raise the middle finger.”

In the unfiltered video interview above and the only slightly edited text Q&A below, Casale opens up about his fears for America, the planet, and Generation Z; Devo’s most subversive and misunderstood hits; how many Boomers that came up in the 1960s’ flower-power era turned out to be “very selfish and very irresponsible” hypocrites, because “free love” was never really free; if he still believes that rock music can still create a revolution; how he feels about Devo being snubbed by the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame three times; and much, much more.

LYNDSANITY: A frequent topic I’ve brought up with you and Mark Mothersbaugh in past interviews is the fact that, as much as it might feel good to know Devo were right all along, it’s not really all that vindicating — because it would’ve been nice to either have been wrong, or for Devo’s message to be quaint or obsolete now. But here we are in 2026, and not much has changed. And you’ve just released a solo song that’s been gestating since Trump’s first term. Tell me the origin story of “Just Do It!”

GERALD CASALE: Yeah, well, it’s just a finger-snapping ditty for fascist America! I knew this was where it was going 10 years ago. When [Trump] came back, my heart sunk into my tender gut. And as much as we wanted to be wrong about everything that we were warning about, as canaries in the coalmine, it goes beyond our worst fears. It’s a horror show. And all the political scientists and pundits and prognosticators keep pointing out the parallels between what Hitler and the fascists did to the Weimar Republic previous to the rise of full-on fascist Germany — everything in Trump’s playbook is the same thing. So, we’re not talking about Democrats and Republicans anymore. We’re not talking about a two-party system in democracy. It’s gone. They did it. This was nothing short of a coup. We are living in a Black Mirror episode now. This is through the looking glass and people that go, “I think there’s a threat to democracy here.” It’s like, um… We’re like cattle to the slaughter. You’re in the shoot on the way to the slaughterhouse asking, “Hey, is the barn door still open back there?” It’s done. It’s done. And I’m an old man, so I’m like, “This is not what I wanted my final clubhouse turn to be.” I didn’t want the last chapter to erase 80 years of democratic rule of law progress since World War II.

You and Devo have lived through a lot of political turmoil, going back to Kent State — that’s where Devo originated, after you sadly witnessed and lost friends in the tragic shootings. During Devo’s run, we’ve had Republicans in office, we’ve had Democrats, the Reagan era, the Nixon era, both Bushes. You’ve seen it all. And yet it seems to me that what is happening now in America is unprecedented. I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but do you feel that this is just on a whole other level?

It is a whole other level. That’s the point. It’s not a fair fight anymore. It’s like, imagine if, I don’t know, there’s the Super Bowl, but each team brings its own set of referees. And not only do they bring their own set of referees, but they bring a gang of people with AR-15s! So, they decide what the rules are — and there are no rules. It’s thug rules. It’s like John Gotti runs America.

Tell me about the “Just Do It!” music video, which makes quite a statement. You’ve directed a lot of music videos, for Devo and others. Did you direct this one?

No, I actually didn’t, because my forte is live action, compositing, visual effects. And I didn’t have that kind of budget. I’ll just be honest. I had to put out something on my own. Devo’s not writing new music, but I still feel the same and I still want to be creative. And so, Devo’s drummer, Jeff Friedl, and Devo’s guitar player, Josh Hager, they’re into it. And then I worked with my good friend, Max Papaeschi, who is an Italian satirical artist who got himself in deep trouble with the Biennale with a huge mural called “Nazi Sexy Mouse.” He’ll take imagery in the public realm and appropriate it and twist it. In other words, he will redo it, which is called misappropriation, but there is artistic license there; he’s a satirist, and he creates a lot of imagery. And so, what I did is I worked with his bank of images and characters he’s created, and I wrote a treatment out. I wrote what I wanted to see. I did as much as I could do for the pittance of $10,000.

But it’s priceless because, well, this video is not subtle. It’s pretty scathing. I could even imagine it getting banned in some places.

That’s interesting. I don’t think it’s penetrated enough or gotten enough exposure to even raise the ire of the intolerant right wing. I mean, America was based on individual freedom and tolerance: “I get to do what I get to do in my front yard, and you can do what you do in your front yard, but don’t come over into my front yard and tell me what to do!” It’s that simple, the beginning of America. And these guys don’t understand that. They’re tyrants. They’re intolerant. They are against individual liberty, actually. They hypocritically cite that, and then like 1984, they use the terms like “freedom” to push totalitarian policies. So, the song is about is that Trump is Mussolini, period. Because Mussolini was a clown. Mussolini was a performer and Mussolini was a right-wing fascist who wanted to gain the favor of Hitler. And even Hitler didn’t respect him.

If Hitler doesn’t respect you, that’s pretty bad.

Then you’re not even a good right-winger! So, it’s a video where you see him play out what he’s doing to America, which is he’s collapsed the three rails of divisions of government, of legislative executive and judicial, and ruined that. He’s loaded the Supreme Court with lackeys who are rogue, who are basically pooping on the Constitution. He has now been given more even power by them, which is the point where he’s dismissing all the heads of independent agencies so they’re not independent anymore. He’s attacking the press. He’s destroying a free speech in the culture and TV — and he’s successfully doing it. It’s happening. What you’re watching now is the final call in this fascist playbook, which is he’s destroying the midterms, destroying free and fair elections by saying that they are rigged ,when he’s the one rigging them.

He only claim elections are rigged when he loses, of course.

Well, the top, go-top weapon of a malignant narcissist tis o project his motives onto other people and accuse them of doing what he is in fact doing. And it works with his base.

Maybe I’m naive, maybe I’m optimistic, but do you feel like bit the tides are turning a bit? feel like some Trumpers are beginning to see the writing on the wall and questioning it.

Well, the press keeps meekly putting that message out there, like, “”Ooh, there’s a crack in the armor!” This is false hope. Trump doesn’t care about being unpopular, in case you didn’t notice, because he’s not even playing that game. He doesn’t care.

I think he does care, though, at least a little bit. He wants to be worshiped. He wants to have this cult worship. You really don’t think he cares about being popular?

Hitler took over Germany with 20 percent of the vote. Remember that. The [Nazi Party] never had a majority or even near it, not even a quorum,. Jst like in Animal Farm, Snowball was the idealist, but Napoleon trained the dogs — and that’s all you need to do.

I mentioned that you came up with the idea for “Just Do It!” years ago. Did you have the full song or some version of it ready during the 2016?

I just wrote down the lyrics. I wrote them in 2016.

Did you update them at all for 2026?

Well, I should have ,because by the time that the song came out, [Hungary’s prime minister Viktor] Orban had been defeated, and I list him as one of the fascists in the fight circle! But other than that, I didn’t change anything, because these despots that rule the world are pretty much the same guys. They’re the same players. We have Putin, number one. We have Kim Jong-un, we have Trump, and we still have Erdogan.

I mentioned that Devo came out of Kent State and witnessed a lot of…

I’ve often been amused when music fans totally miss what an artist is about, and they get mad a get mad at Bruce Springsteen for speaking out against Trump or even tell someone like Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello not to mention politics! I can imagine that’s happened so much with Devo — people thinking you’re just a fun new wave band with cool visuals and outfits and red hats, and they’re like, “Shut up, Devo! Just sing ‘Whip It’!” Does that bother you?

No, it’s predictable. We experienced that long ago. You’re right. It’s like, “Shut up and play!” I remember once in the ’60s, I actually saw an interview that was filmed by Bob Dylan… “Like a Rolling Stone: became a hit on top 40 Radio. And some pimpy, superior reporter with the Brylcreemed hair and fat suit, he’s looking at Bob with his scruffy ‘fro and rumpled work shirt, and he says, “Doesn’t it bother you that nobody even understands this song –and if they do, they don’t like it?” And Bob goes, “No, no, because actually if they could understand it, it couldn’t be a hit. The only reason it’s hit is nobody understands it.” He understood that: They like it for the wrong reasons, but it doesn’t matter. It’s working — that subversion. “Like a Rolling Stone” being in the top five on national top 40 radio was subversion.

What were Devo’s biggest songs of subversion? Obviously “Whip It” was your major hit, but it was not your most subversive song. Freedom of Choice” was a pretty big hit, though.

“Freedom of Choice,” absolutely. We’re saying, “Freedom of choice is what you’ve got. Freedom from choice is what you want,” — and everybody’s just bopping to it! And then with “Beautiful World,” it’s saying, “It’s a beautiful world for you, but not for me,” and everyone is like, “Yay, it’s a beautiful world!”

But don’t you think it eventually sets in via osmosis? Maybe fans who were young when those songs came out, they grew up and were like, “Oh, I never caught that before.”

That’s the heartwarming part, because now I joke that we’re like the new wave Grateful Dead. We look out in the audience at festivals like Coachella and we’re seeing three generations. We’re seeing our original fans who are still lucky enough to be alive, and we’re seeing their kids, and we’re seeing their kids. And those kids are bopping out and using their cell phones and singing the lyrics. And they weren’t alive when we wrote these songs. And it’s amazing.

The young generation tends be pretty savvy. They kind of get it right away, right? They don’t just think these songs are fun bops. They get it.

They get it. They’re very savvy. They’ve grown up in a dysfunctional, dystopian world and they totally understand dark satire. They totally understand hypocrisy and the movie Idiocracy. They get it all. And the problem is that for them, the economy is worse than for any generation in the world and they have no power. People think that they’re just dumb ,going off doing weird things and playing video games. They’re actually high-IQ people who realize, “Well, what the hell am I going to do about this? I’m like a cog here. I can’t do anything.” It doesn’t mean they’re not pissed off. They are. They’re depressed because they never got that day in the sun that they see in vintage videos and in vintage culture and documentaries where there was a middle class, there was freedom. There were people having fun prior to the internet and digital technology. And your phone bill was like $15 a month.

Embed from Getty Images

Maybe you need to bring Devo 2.0 back — the kiddie version of Devo.

We need a new Devo 2.0. Yeah, we do.

Or Devo 3.0! But on the subject of generational divides, I look at the Boomers who came up in the ‘60s and were all about the sexual revolution, peace and love, flower power, protesting against Vietnam, going to Woodstock, whatever. And the way that some people thinks Gen Z are a bunch of dumb kids,” the ’60s kids’ parents felt that way about these hippies back then. There was this youthquake in the 1960s and huge change happened, huge shifts in culture. But now those ex-hippies are retired and have a comfortable life because they had the good fortune of being born in a time when the cost of living was so much cheaper and it was easy to be middle-class. And I feel like they kind of pulled up the ladder behind them. I wonder why, if they were preaching about peace and love and taking care of your brother back then, why they aren’t doing that now.

Unfortunately, you’re right. That’s exactly what happened. And it’s because despite all the lofty philosophizing and sprinkling of wonderful words, the people were actually very selfish and very irresponsible. And frankly, it was also at that same time of the peace-and-love culture was this idea that by the time you were 30, it was over. Nobody cared how long they lived. … So, underneath it all, there was immense irresponsibility and selfishness. Nobody cared about the consequences of free love, because love wasn’t free. A lot of people got really hurt and really fucked up.

I’m not saying all Boomers became this way. But I look at some of the hippie Woodstock types and feel it was just a fashion thing for them. They were young and in college and they were I’m going to have a bunch of sex and take a bunch of drugs and grow their hair long and tell their square parents fuck off. And they didn’t want to go to war, because who does?

That’s exactly what it was, on one level. Nobody wants to talk about classism in late capitalist culture, but classism was always at the basis of this — because the kids that went out there and did what you’re saying ,when the going got tough, they ran home to Daddy and joined his company as a vice president. They avoided the consequences, and then they became right-wing. They wanted to protect their money. And that’s what happened. The Boomers who ended up controlling things weren’t the hip ones. The hip ones may have thought they’d won the cultural war and made the right-wingers looked stupid, but those people stayed at the table and took over the reins of power.

I’ve also been surprised over the years when a lot of aging rock stars become conservative. Rock ‘n’ roll was supposed to be about rebellion, or so I thought,

Yeah, it was supposed to be about rebellion, but it wasn’t at all. It was actually perfectly mainstream consumerism and anti-intellectual. These people weren’t analyzing the culture or caring about if there is fairness in the judicial system. The music and even the iconography and the clothing and everything, it’s all about totalitarian presence and conformity. Those crowds are conformist crowds.

Well, there was a belief in the ’60s, and also in the ’70s with the first wave of punk, that music can change the world, or change the culture, move the needle in some way. As someone who’s been doing your own very unique version of protest music for decades now, do you believe music can still have a political sway?

I don’t know. If you look at the forces of intolerance and of hate and of stupidity and anti-democratic values, how they proliferate society, and then you see how few people it takes to fight that to bring it back to parity… in other words, if there aren’t people doing something against that, even a few, then these people will run rampant and it will be over, over, over. But all we can do is scratch our way back to square one — in other words, make it sure it doesn’t get worse. Hold up a resistance to full-on tyranny and bring it back to where people are scraping by. And so, I think the complex answer to your simple question is, I think that that music does make a difference. Does it create a revolution? Absolutely not.

But what can we actually do?

This is as much as I can do. And then even though it has become kind of a joke, you can vote. Voting has been compromised to where your vote doesn’t count. You saw in Trump’s first term, what was it, 500,000 pink pussy hats? Did it do anything? No. Did they outlaw abortion? Yeah. Because it has nothing to do with democracy and it had to do with some right-wing ideologue fuckheads in black robes, that’s just like The Handmaid’s Tale. It’s like watching some medieval tribunal. It might as well be the Inquisition, these hideous people who are so out of touch with humanity, with freedom, with liberty. It’s disgusting. And what they believe is so sick and so stupidly centuries behind the times, and they are allowed to do that. They hold the power. It’s a horror show.

You have a new solo album coming out in October. Is the whole album going to be politically themed like “Just Do It!” is?

There’s no other on-the-nose song like that. There are plenty philosophically that attack the problem with the duality of human nature. And the album is called Wetiko. If you look that up, you’re going to love it. It’s about a 300-year-old Native American belief about the absolute psychological sickness of Western culture. At the basis of Western culture, they think, is a cannibalistic virus where the brain’s infected with insatiable greed and selfishness. They believed this then, and they described it then in terms of their more mystical terminology, but it’s been there forever. And they even drew a personification of this monstrous sick force that’s in humans, a beast called the Wendingo that is basically a hideous large bird, like a crow, but featherless with a big cowl and as big as a dinosaur, just grabbing babies and eating them.

Is that going to be what your next video looks like? I can envision it now.

Some monster that would be friends with Jeffrey Epstein.

I’m sorry I laughed at that! Sometimes I want to laugh, sometimes I want to cry, but I guess all you can do is laugh sometimes, right? I think Devo have always done — seen the black humor in it all.

If you don’t, what are you going to do? You become a homicidal maniac, because there’s so many people that should die.

Are you ever going to do anything as Jihad Jerry again?

He didn’t get the love.

I mean, given what’s going on in the world internationally right now, perhaps there’s something Jihad Jerry would have to say about it…

Jihad could come back.

Jihad could come back. Devo 2.0 come back. But what about new Devo music? It’s been 16 years since the last Devo album, Something for Everybody, and it was really critically well received at the time. Devo are still a very active touring band, and gaining new young fans all the time, so I think we need some Devo music right now. Any possibility of that?

You’re preaching to the converted here. Tell Mr. Mothersbaugh.

Mark is not currently into the idea of a recording new Devo album?

No, it doesn’t seem so.

Do you mind me asking why? Is it because he’s just focused on other things?

If you find out, let me know.

Well, I’m glad that you’re doing your own music. Can you tell me a little more about Wetiko? Who is on it?

Again, two members of Devo, Jeff Friedl and Josh Hager, played on everything. And then Steve Bartek, formerly of Oingo Boingo, played on three tracks. And believe it or not, I got to work with Steve Stevens. He’s on four tracks. He’s all over them.

How did that collaboration come about?

Well, I was talking to Josh Hager about Steve, and I go, “Man, it’d be great to work with Steve!” And he goes, “I’ll call him.” Ut was that simple. He’s the nicest guy. He’s very cool and so professional. Being in the studio with Steve was fun.

Steve Stevens is getting into the Rock & Roll Hallof Fame with Billy Idol this year. Devo have been nominated three times, but you guys still aren’t in. Does the Hall matter to you?

I think anybody that says they don’t care is lying. It’s a posture. But on the other hand, once you’ve been snubbed three times and you watch who gets in, you kind of reevaluate why you ever valued being in the Rock Hall of Fame, which is a misnomer at this point.

Who’s in that you don’t think should be?

You’d have to show me a list, but the list is long. … The Rock Hall of Fame is all about insider trading, money. It’s money. That’s it. And And most of the people who get in now, they don’t rock.

But when people complain about R&B or hip-hop artists getting in the Rock Hall, that doesn’t bother me personally, because all that music goes back to the same source” the blues.

Oh, I don’t think I meant literally rock, but I see what you’re saying. Look at all the white artists that made millions of dollars ripped off Black music, period. There’s no doubt about it. We wouldn’t be anywhere without those people being ripped off. All the blues and R&B, Chuck Berry too, all of it. But what I’m talking about is [the Hall] should be about good music. The Bee Gees never “rocked,” but you listen to “Stayin’ Alive,” and that is a fucking unbelievable song. And he’s singing, “Somebody help me. I’m going nowhere!”

And it’s just like with the Devo misunderstandings: Everybody’s dancing and thinking it’s just a happy disco song! It goes back to the point you made about Dylan, that maybe a message has to be packaged in a subtle way so it can infiltrate the mainstream. But there’s a lot of not-subtle messaging in “Just Do It!” So, what is your No. 1 concern about what’s facing us today?

To me, I just think the prevailing culture is so depressing, and I feel so bad for people 20 and under who are inheriting a world that’s going to hell in a handbasket, environmentally, at the hands of psychotic morons who are attacking the environment. They’re not trying to help; they’re attacking the environment and bringing about the demise of the natural bounty of the Earth. Then there’s the exacerbation of inequality where the billionaire class is partnering with right-wing despots to hoard all the resources, all the wealth, dole it out and keep people enslaved. That’s what’s going on.

I don’t want to end this interview on such a bummer note, so are there any final thoughts you have that have a glimmer of hope for our society? Anything else you can tell me about your new music and its message?

I do what I have to do. Any organism that finds themselves alive, once you’re alive, you want to try to stay alive.

Much like the Bee Gees advised.

That’s right. And staying alive means continuing to strive in the face of failure and in the face of tyranny. You can’t give up. If you give up, that’s suicide.

I agree with that, and I thank you for speaking out. There are some other artists that are speaking out, but I think many are still feeling muzzled — maybe even reeling from the Dixie Chicks backlash from more than 20 years ago. I would’ve expected so much more protest music to come out during the past decade, but that has not been the case.

People are running scared. People lost their nerve. The bullies won.

Well, I’m glad that you never lost your nerve.

Yeah, I can’t help it. I have the wrong personality to give in to a bully. As maybe self-destructive as it is, I raise the middle finger.

If there’s ever a sure sign that a band has “made it” in show business, it’s getting parodied by the Mighty Boosh.

That’s exactly what happened to Ladytron during the height of electroclash mania, on the cult British comedy duo’s famous “Spirit of Jazz” episode. It was a semi-dubious honor at the time — multi-instrumentalist Daniel Hunt recalls “laughing [his] head off” when he first saw the sketch, but says Noel Fielding’s Hunt-like “asymmetric mustache” felt like a “direct attack!” — because the pioneering Liverpool electronic group had always “very much felt like [they] were observers of someone else’s party,” according to keyboardist/co-vocalist Mira Aroyo.

“It became like our catchphrase: ‘We’re not electroclash!’” Hunt chuckles. “I remember someone saying to me, ‘God, the way that you’re constantly denying you’re electroclash is just soooo electroclash!’ We couldn’t escape it.”

But Ladytron did, in fact, escape it. Unlike many of their electroclash/electroclash-adjacent (or “indie sleaze”) peers, who bore the brunt of the movement’s brutal backlash, Ladytron, who always marched to the beat of their own drum machine, continue to survive, thrive, and reach a diverse audience of fans, 22 years after the Boosh spoof.

For instance, Brian Eno, whose Roxy Music inspired the Ladytron band name, became a major supporter, inviting them to join him at the Sydney Opera House and, on historic day that keyboardist/vocalist Helen Marnie describes as “odd” and “kind of funny,” at the House of Commons for a political conference. Christina Aguilera, who cited Ladytron as one of her favorite artists, recruited them (along with Goldfrapp, Peaches, Santigold, M.I.A., and Le Tigre) for Bionic, her once-misunderstood futurepop album that has since become a cult classic. More recently, the surprise TikTok explosion of Ladytron’s 2002 club hit “Seventeen” has introduced them to a new generation of fans (what Marnie jokingly calls “fresh blood”) — including Addison Rae, who has expressed a desire to work with them.

“It was interesting today that quite a few people who came here for the signing were here because their parents listened to us,” Aroyo tells LPTV, sitting with Hunt and Marnie at Studio City’s Licorice Pizza Records after an in-store event for Ladytron’s critically acclaimed eighth album, Paradises. “It’s a sound that’s maybe come back around in the ether as well. It’s a sound that was alien maybe 20 years ago and was just us, and now it’s kind of almost everywhere, in some shape or form.”

“We’ve never followed any particular trend, or we’ve probably done the opposite of what people expected a few times… and yet, we survived,” declares Hunt, when asked about Ladytron’s longevity. “We’ve survived labels going bankrupt, being shut down, all of this other stuff, and here we are.”

“It’s nice that the music is still relevant to a completely different generation, who’ve grown up in such a different way to the way people were when the songs were written,” adds Aroyo with a smile. “It’s like a Jurassic Era.”

In the deeply entertaining and wide-ranging extended video interview above, and in the edited Q&A below, Ladytron discuss their Liverpool, Eno, Aguilera, and electroclash memories with LPTV, and explain why Paradises is their most creatively inspired album in years.

LPTV: Paradises is your eighth album, your second album as a trio, and your longest album, at 16 songs and 73 minutes. And it’s kind of a full-circle record: Some of it was recorded in your old home city of Liverpool, and it’s your danciest record in a long time, the result of one of your most productive phases since those early Liverpool days. Where did this burst of creativity come from?

HUNT: I think personally, because the last record was made in such difficult circumstances, the previous record — we basically started it just one week before lockdown in 2020, which did complicate things slightly. And so, we went through all that and we still made a good record, but now we to want to have fun mainly. And that was a catalyst. … It was this really intense period where every time we went in the studio, after an hour there was a new tune or a new song. And there were various reasons for that — but fun, principally.

MARNIE: As Danny said, there was maybe a lot of pressure on us before, like 2020 on those kind of years. And so, this time around, it was just freer and no stress. And so, I think that probably the best comes out of you at those periods.

LPTV: Your mixer, Jim Abiss, thinks Paradises is your best album since Witching Hour. Do agree?

MARNIE: I mean, he would say that — because he worked on it!

HUNT: And he produced Witching Hour.

MARNIE: But I think he’s right. The best thing you’ve done is, you would hope, the last thing you’ve done. We always feel that way — that we’ve put out the best thing that we possibly could.

HUNT: The objective of making a new record is you should be aiming to make your best record or it’s pointless. We double down on that because we felt freer and we didn’t have these external circumstances like obstacles. But Jim might be right in some ways. It feels like if not the best, one of the best ones, to me.

AROYO: It’s the longest record.

LPTV: Do you consider Witching Hour and Paradises to be companion pieces? Is there any throughline between the two?

HUNT: I think the connection to Witching Hour for me would be that it feels like a jump — it’s a jump in terms of ambition, and I think it has that in common rather than the aesthetic.

AROYO: If anything, it kind of reminds me actually of the earlier two records, sort of in a state of mind. I don’t know why, but it just kind of takes me back to that era of writing or working on 604 and Light & Magic. There’s an innocence to it, somehow.

LPTV: I mentioned that some of Paradises was recorded in Liverpool, which is where you’re from. A lot of people associate Liverpool with the Beatles, obviously, but there’s a rich electronic and post-punk history there: OMD, Dead or Alive, the KLF, the Farm, the Teardrop Explodes, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Big in Japan, A Flock of Seagulls, famous ‘90s clubs like Cream and Voodoo. Was any of that history informing Paradises? I know you’re not especially nostalgic people, but there is some nostalgia to this record.

HUNT: Yeah, it’s subconscious. It’s something that basically forced its way out. … Cream every Saturday, so many people came [to Liverpool] from outside, and me and my friends had this little party on a parallel street, like one block over. Those people would end up coming to our party and dancing to Northern Soul and weird underground records or whatever, but they would be reacting to them as if they were house music.

LPTV: Scouse house? I’ve heard that term.

HUNT: Yes, that’s really a thing. … I had a studio and well; it became a studio because the guy next door was a Scouse house producer. I got talking to him one day and this was just different worlds of music. I felt like we had nothing in common at all, but I saw how easy it was, basically. I went in the studio and I was like, “Wait, you just make records here and just release them and you don’t sit in a rehearsal room with a band four nights a week and doing all these things that really take a lot of time and effort, and you just release records?” That was like an epiphany. He basically taught me how to sequence and program. So, I think Scouse house is actually responsible for Ladytron in some way.

You also recorded Paradises in London at the studio where my favorite David Bowie album, Scary Monsters, was made. I’d love to hear about that experience.

HUNT: I mean, that’s like hallowed ground, Dean Street Studios. .. It was Tony Visconti’s old studio. It was Jim Abiss’s idea to do a week in there of basically just chaos, taking a more or less a finished record and just doing this chaos phase where we experimented and turned things upside down and added textural stuff. And it was really worthwhile. It felt like it felt like we needed that phase before we mix to just see how far we could push it.

AROYO: We do always basically all produce stuff at home to a certain level, and then in various studios, and then we gather around and throw in the unknown elements.

LPTV: I mentioned Bowie, which then takes me to Brian Eno. Obviously, I assume your band is named after the Roxy Music song…

Yeah, it’d be weird if we weren’t!

LPTV: True, true. Well, Eno once said Ladytron were “the best of English pop music.” What an honor. What did that mean to you guys?

AROYO: I think the first time [we met Eno], it was [through] his daughter, actually.

HUNT: His daughter introduced him to us. His daughter played us to him. And that was like, “Oh my God, her dad’s heard of us!”

LPTV: Did Eno ever give you any advice?

HUNT: He did, actually. He put us on at this festival at Sydney Opera House that he curated, and I remember he did give me some advice personally. He said after the gig, “You should sing more.” And I said, “What do you mean? Like Ringo Starr or something, one song per album? And he said, “No, no, you should use your voice as a kind of layer underneath Helen and Mira’s voices.” And I did actually start doing that. That’s really been the way we do things, since he suggested it. So, he’s basically executive producer of our last four albums. Arguably.

AROYO: Now he’s going to want the credit!

HUNT: I’ve really opened a can of worms here, haven’t I? Yeah, I shouldn’t have said that.

LPTV: Do you guys have any other Eno memories?

MARNIE: There was one time when he invited us to the House of Commons for a Lib Dem conference, like a political thing.

AROYO: That was pretty weird.

MARNIE: It was odd. It was kind of funny.

LPTV: What exactly did that entail?

AROYO: Going into room full of men. Like Brian May. Brian May, next to Chris Martin.

MARNIE: And listening to [former Liberal Democrats party leader] Nick Clegg giving a speech…

AROYO: About the power of creativity.

MARNIE: Yes, it was about creativity, so it was all good intentions. But it was very strange that we were there. .. I don’t think any of us were Lib Dem supporters, but it was fine.

AROYO: It was more like a tourist trip, like, “Let’s go inside the House of Commons!”

LPTV: You’ve had many famous supporters. Besides Brian Eno, there’s the Pet Shop Boys, Trent Reznor… but I want to talk about your contributions to Bionic, the very misunderstood 2010 album by Christina Aguilera. No one got it at the time; there was a really bad backlash to it.

HUNT: I think there was a backlash followed by a fore-lash, I think.

LPTV: Yes, kind of like Art Pop by Lady Gaga. Some pop albums don’t get understood at the time, especially by a female pop star who’s expected to do only one thing. You contributed two classic fan-favorite tracks to Bionic, “Birds of Prey” and “Little Dreamer.” And I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but “Birds of Prey” was named by Billboard as one of the “Best Deep Cuts by 21st Century Pop Stars.”

HUNT: Really? When did they say that? Nobody never told us. Good, good. There you go. I think with that record, we always say that the vision Christina had for it at the beginning, when we started working with her, was quite different to how it ended up. A lot of what she planned ended up being like disc two of the deluxe; that was kind of what she had in mind. And I think it was too weird for her audience, and the label were a bit freaked-out.

LPTV: Oh, so it was going to be even weirder?

HUNT: It was way weirder than what you got! The singles, I think, were added later to be more familiar to her audience. But [the original album] was way weirder. “Birds of Prey” was going to be track 1 on it. She was talking about starting their live sets with it and everything.

LPTV: Wow. It’s a shame it only ended up being a bonus track. If you look at the comments on YouTube for both of your Bionic songs, for “Birds of Prey” people say stuff like, “This should have been the single. History would’ve been different.” And for “Little Dreamer,” there was a comment: “This is how the album should have sounded!” But Christina reached out to you directly, right? It wasn’t like some bandwagon-jumping label person saying, “Let’s try to make her sound indie,” or whatever.

HUNT: It was all from her.

MARNIE: If you think about it, it’s such a shame that an artist of that size and talent can’t do what she wants. It’s pretty shitty, really. … Would that happen now? I mean, Gaga can do a jazz album or an operatic album and that’s cool, but…

HUNT: Yeah, I think [Aguilera] would get away with it now. … It just stuck me as very genuine, because she contacted us through management. You’d assume that this is something set up, but it wasn’t. It was from her. She’d basically got a list of artists that she listened to that she liked and said, “I want to work with them,” rather than asking the producer, “Can you approximate this? Make something that sounds like this? — which is how most people work, if we’re honest.

LPTV: Is it true that you considered giving Christina “Destroy Everything You Touch”?

HUNT: No, that’s not true. She was given an instrumental of “Ace of Hz”! Nobody knows that. But it didn’t get used.

LPTV: I’ve heard that Addison Rae is a Ladytron fan and wants to work with you now.

HUNT: Yeah, she approached us, but nothing happened.

LPTV: Were you surprised that a Gen Z, mainstream pop star like Addison was interested in collaborating?

MARNIE: Not really. [laughs]

HUNT: I mean, of course! But load of younger people got into us because in 2021, “Seventeen” viralized on TikTok. We didn’t lift a finger. It just happened. It was completely organic. We just observed it from afar, and I think that’s how she discovered us.

MARNIE: Basically, nieces and nephews and friends’ nieces or daughters would get in touch and say, “Oh my God, have you seen this??

HUNT: And then Steve, our manager, sent us an email going, “Do you have any idea what this is about? ” And it was just a screengrab of the spins of “Seventeen,” the Spotify streams. It was just tootling along at the bottom, and then it was just this vertical line off the graph. I said, “I think it might be the internet.”

LPTV: Yes, that was an interesting trend where it seemed like a lot of young women and girls were interpreting the “Seventeen” lyrics in a profound way.

HUNT: Yeah, a lot of personal interpretations. It was a medium for them to talk about their own lives. It was really quite serious, quite harrowing, some of it, to be honest.

LPTV: Since we were talking about artists you have worked with or have been approached by, do you guys have any dream collaborations?

HUNT: I feel like if we say it, it will not happen!

LPTV: I feel like if you say it and put it into the universe, it might!

MARNIE: I don’t know, because we’ve had things that were going to happen and I have told one person and it’s always fallen through!

LPTV: You don’t have confirm that’s happening, just if you could work with anyone. Like Cher or whoever.

HUNT: Let’s name someone impossible. Cher. Let’s just go with Cher.

AROYO: Barbra Streisand.

MARNIE: No, I don’t want Barbra Streisand! I don’t think her voice is any good anymore.

HUNT: Debbie Harry. … Actually, Andy Bell from Erasure said he wanted to work with us.

MARNIE: Pet Shop Boys would be cool. Or Chappell Roan.

HUNT: Let’s get a kind of “We Are the World “situation. We’ll just have everyone. Get Springsteen in there, Bob Dylan.

LPTV: You could call it Ladytron Aid.

HUNT: Yeah, it’s just our charity. It just comes to us.

LPTV: This wasn’t really a collaboration per se, but I was a fan of “Kylietron” — the mashup on John Peele’s show that was “Playgirl” with “Can’t Get You Out of My Head.”

HUNT: I’d forgotten all about that, because it got a little bit overshadowed by Soulwax’s remix of “Seventeen” when they did a remix of “Can’t Get You Out of My Head,” like a rock version. We were in the studio in Los Feliz [in L.A.] recording [Light & Magic], and I sent the demo rough mix of “Seventeen” to David from Soulwax/2 Many DJs. And he was like, “Oh, this is an instant classic.” And I was like, “Could you reckon you could do a remix like a kind of rock version like you did with Kylie?” And about 24 hours later he sent it back. He just recorded it all, recorded the drums, everything ,and had this version. It basically sounded like Sonic Youth or something. So, I think all of that kind of erased the Kylietron thing from my memory, in the confusion.

LPTV: That was such a great clubbing era. I don’t know how you feel about this term… you’ve talked in the past about your feelings about Ladytron being lumped in with electroclash, but how do you feel about “indie sleaze”? Now people are calling everything from that era indie sleaze, but that term didn’t exist in the aughts.

HUNT: That’s the key thing. I think it’s good, because it’s reappraised that time. There’s a lot of incongruity, things that were not really related to each other that have actually been put into that. With electroclash, at the time we just hated being told we were something, after we’d been independent and doing things ourselves. … As soon as they said it was electroclash, we’d go, “Hold on, we didn’t agree to this!” It felt like we were being press-ganged onto a sinking ship.

AROYO: At the same time, [then Ladytron member] Reuben [Wu] and I DJed at that festival. [Electroclash] started out as a festival, basically; it was right after 9/11 and there was this kind of crazy, hedonistic atmosphere, and it was quite special, actually. But for us, it just very much felt like we were observers of someone else’s party. We didn’t feel like it was our scene. We were allowed in, but it wasn’t our thing.

HUNT: But we didn’t want [to be part of] someone else’s thing as well. We were pushed to the front of it, like we are the definitive electroclash band. One press trip just after we recorded Light & Magic, we were in the U.S. and every interview we did, we would be asked about this and we would deny that we were part of it. It became like our catchphrase: “We’re not electroclash!” I remember someone saying to me, “God, the way that you’re constantly denying you’re electroclash is just soooo electroclash!” We couldn’t escape it. It was like the Streisand Effect.

LPTV: There you go with another Barbra Streisand mention!

HUNT: But something changed. … What electroclash represented to the kids we met [on tour] was this portal to this imagined New York, this magical Berlin, magical Paris, magical London that they didn’t have access to. Once we started seeing it like that, it was actually a really positive moment. Our opinion of it changed. We never hated it. We just didn’t want to be called it. That was the problem.

AROYO: You look at it now, and I feel like it really did influence a lot of pop culture. It was probably like 10, 15 years ahead of its time. So now it kind of feels nice to be associated with it.

LPTV: I think kids now look at that period and think “Wow, that must have been so fun.” The only phones people had were Razrs, people weren’t filming everything, and everyone was going out of the house…

AROYO: Everyone looked wrecked the whole time!

HUNT: Yeah, it’s nostalgia for this kind of spontaneous, offline existence. There’s also definitely a nostalgia for the ’90s going on, for people who don’t remember it or weren’t born in the same way, just like when we were kids and it was like, “Oh, I wish we grew up in the ‘60s.” I guess it’s no different, but it’s very generationally difficult to perceive how this looks and feels to a younger person, having experienced it.

LPTV: I do think electroclash was an important movement. It was very queer-positive, sex-positive, a lot of women. But the backlash was so brutal. It was almost like what happened with “Disco Sucks” in 1979.

AROYO: I think that there was a little bit of that. I mean, the British press does have quite a sharp edge as well. There was a malice to it. I think that the queer sort of thing, when you look back on it, that was definitely an element. But there were comedy shows that satirized it. … It was an easy thing to satirize. It was perceived to be a flash-in-the-pan kind of thing.

HUNT: The Mighty Boosh’s Ladytron satire was a direct one. That was quite fun. When I saw it, I was laughing my head off.

LPTV: I feel like you’ve really made it if The Mighty Boosh parodies you! Where can I see this?

HUNT: I think the episode is called “Jazz.” They form an electro band and their song is” I’m Electro Boy, You’re Electro Girl.” Vince has an asymmetric mustache, and as I’d only just grown a mustache at that point, and said, “This is a direct attack on me!”

LPTV: Were you guys happy about this spoof, or were you insulted?

HUNT: I was just worried that no one would know it was about us. It was a kind of milieu stuff.

LPTV: Well, obviously, despite the electroclash backlash or anyone thinking you were a flash in the pan, that didn’t happen. To what do you attribute Ladytron’s longevity?

MARNIE: I think songwriting.

AROYO: Persistence.

HUNT: Kind of involuntary creativity. What else are you supposed to do? Making albums that are designed to be listened to, because a lot of records are not designed to be listened to anymore.

LPTV: What do you mean by that?

HUNT: Well, just there are records made to monetize social media presence. There’s a lot of that, and we don’t really do any of that. The records are made to be listened to, and I think that counts as something people appreciate. We’ve never followed any particular trend, or we’ve probably done the opposite of what people expected a few times — like Witching Hour, especially — and yet, we survived. We’ve survived labels going bankrupt, being shut down, all of this other stuff, and here we are.

AROYO: Also, it was interesting today that quite a few people who came here for the signing were here because their parents listened to us. It’s a sound that’s maybe come back around in the ether as well. It’s a sound that was alien maybe 20 years ago and was just us, and now it’s kind of almost everywhere, in some shape or form.

HUNT: It’s funny when you describe the sound and just in its raw components in a kind of unscientific way. I was at this bar in Sao Paulo, where I live, and the waiter was asking me what my band sounded like. I started to explain it: “It’s kind of like electronic, female vocals, drum machine,” whatever. And he says, “Oh, like Madonna.” I just kind of went, “Yeah, actually, that’s enough for me. I’m just going to say we sound like Madonna now.” Why not?

LPTV: It’s not a bad description. I’d take it as a compliment.

HUNT: I used to say “New Order with female vocals” to taxi drivers back in the day.

LPTV: Does it trip you out that you guys have been a band for this long?

MARNIE: Yes. But it’s a good thing, because obviously that means you’ve got fresh blood listening to you. On the other hand, it does make you realize how long you’ve been going and you’re no longer [young].

AROYO: To me, it’s nice that the music is still relevant to a completely different generation, who’ve grown up in such a different way to the way people were when the songs were written. It’s like a Jurassic Era.

Ringo Starr has lived in America for more than 50 of his 86 years, and he has held his annual Peace & Love Birthday Celebration in various U.S. locales, including his current home city of Beverly Hills, since 2008. During a recent press conference for his reflective new Americana album, the T Bone Burnett-produced Long Long Road, he revealed that before getting the fateful invitation from Brian Epstein to join the Beatles, he’d seriously considered moving to Texas at age 18.

So, when Starr spoke with Lyndsanity at this year’s Beverly Hills birthday bash, just three days after America’s own big birthday, we had to ask how his life and career might have panned out if he’d gone down what he has called “another path I could have taken,” and had actually emigrated to the U.S. of A. back in 1958.

Embed from Getty Images

“You never know, do you? I’d probably be queuing up to see Ringo playing!” quipped Starr, who just wrapped the spring leg of his All-Starr Band tour at Los Angeles’s Greek Theatre. He speculated, “I’d be doing rock/pop,” even though his original inspiration for wanting to relocate to Houston had been Texan blues great Lightnin’ Hopkins, but the scrappy, plucky, lucky musician always knew that no matter where he ended up, he’d be playing the drums — or at least a cymbal or snare.

“I came in with skiffle, which was with brushes and you learn how to play, and then went to just a snare drum,” Starr said of his humble beginnings. “In fact, with the Beatles even, at the Cavern [in Liverpool] one time, everything turned up, all the instruments and the amps — but no drums, just the cymbals! And we went on anyway! We were a lot looser in those days.”

Among the illustrious performers at this year’s Peace & Love Birthday Celebration were several of Starr’s Long Long Road studio players, including Molly Tuttle, Sarah Jarosz, Daniel Tashian, Colin Linden, David Mansfield, Ketch Secor, Jeff Picker, and Gregg Bissonette. “Before Ringo was in Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, Rory Storm called his band the Texans. So, we’ve been calling this band the Texans, because I just thought it was the greatest name for a band ever,” producer Burnett declared in his introduction, in a full-circle way connecting the celebration to the 18-year-old Starr’s American dream.

“The Texans” then took the stage to perform Ringo and Beatles classics like “Drive My Car,” “Act Naturally,” “Octopus’s Garden,” and, of course, “Birthday.” Starr joined in for that finale, along with his wife Barbara Bach and famous friends like Toto’s Steve Lukather, actor Ed Begley Jr., the Cult/Guns N’ Roses drummer Matt Sorum, and Starr’s favorite drummer of all time, Jim Keltner, while guests like superstar songwriter Diane Warren, rock photographer Henry Diltz, current Rolling Stones drummer Steve Jordan, and even Purple Rain star Apollonia Kotero looked on.

See highlights from the event below!

Adam’s sixth solo album is his most personal yet, so it is simply titled ADAM — because this man has paid his dues, time after time, so he needs no further introduction. The singer, actor, style-setter, and greatest American Idol alumnus of all time opened up about the album, including the major life changes and the ’90s electronica of his angst-ridden youth that inspired it; obsolete industry gatekeepers; double-standards about sexiness for male (especially queer male) and female pop stars; how he finally learned to “un-neuter” himself and “give less of a fuck” about what people think; performing solo vs. performing with Queen; and what to expect from his upcoming solo tour.

Click here to read the Q&A, and watch video of the full conversation below!

In the Audio Journalism category, my outrageous and unfiltered Lyndsanity conversation with the Church’s Steve Kilbey took home first prize for best Personality Profile/Interview, Entertainment Personalities (Over 10 Minutes) — which the L.A. Press Club judges described as “a smart, multi-faceted look at a singer and songwriter who gracefully and uniquely describes close to 50 years of survival as an artist” — and in the Online category, my adorable Lyndsanity interview with Vicki Peterson and John Cowsill snagged third prize for best Music Feature, Groups.

My fun Gold Derby opinion piece breaking down my personal 2025 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame ballot, which the judges called “excellent” and “from the heart,” scored me my other first-place trophy of the night, for best Entertainment Commentary, Arts. And rounding out my tally was third place for best Music Feature in the Magazines category, for one of my favorite articles of my career: a 25th-anniversary Gorillaz cover story for FLOOD.

I was also delighted and excited to co-present at the ceremony with actor/Travel Channel host Jack Maxwell, in front of a Millennium Biltmore Hotel ballroom audience that included many of my talented peers plus honorees like country superstar Kenny Chesney, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Maria Ressa (who Jack and I had to immediately follow!), ABC sports journalist Rob Fukuzaki, civil rights attorney Carol Sobel, and NBC’s Craig Melvin.

Congratulations to all of the winners, nominees, and presenters, and many thanks, as always, to the Los Angeles Press Club for having me. Click here for the full rundown of categories, results, and judge commentary, and scroll below for direct links to my five winning entries.

FIRST PLACE – AUDIO JOURNALISM: PERSONALITY PROFILE/INTERVIEW, ENTERTAINMENT PERSONALITIES (OVER 10 MINUTES)
Lyndsanity, “The unguarded moments: The Church’s Steve Kilbey opens up about 45-year career, loveless fascinations with Duran Duran and record label ‘f***ing idiots and philistines,’ and more”

FIRST PLACE – ONLINE: ENTERTAINMENT COMMENTARY, ARTS
Gold Derby, “Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Class of 2025: Our voter’s unfiltered official ballot”

SECOND PLACE – ENTERTAINMENT JOURNALIST OF THE YEAR
Lyndsanity, Licorice Pizza Records, FLOOD, Gold Derby, Music Connection

THIRD PLACE – MAGAZINES: MUSIC FEATURE
FLOOD Magazine, “The House Gorillaz Built”

THIRD PLACE – ONLINE: MUSIC FEATURE, GROUPS
Lyndsanity, “How powerpop power couple Vicki Peterson & John Cowsill’s real-life romance was predicted by teenage fan-fiction: ‘You’re either going to find this adorable, or you’re going to run screaming into the night’”

Six years ago, smack in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, teen siblings Matt and Issey Cartlidge began busking in London — doing Kinks and Libertines covers “out of necessity,” because there was nowhere else to play due to lockdown restrictions.

“We’d go out to Brixton, Soho, around Oxford Street, and there was a load of protests at the time, either anti-lockdown ones or anti-ID,” Issey, now age 20, tells Licorice Pizza’s LPTV. “We’d go out on the street and play all the rallies, like play ‘I Predict a Riot’ by the Kaiser Chiefs or [the Sex Pistols’] ‘Anarchy in the U.K.,’ things were fitting. And then as soon as everything opened up again, we just said yes to every opportunity. And everything led to something else.”

That journey has ultimately led the Cartlidges, now better known as punk revivalists the Molotovs, from the streets of London Town to Hollywood’s Sunset Strip — where they’ve immediately acclimated to the rock ‘n’ roll city by visiting the Chateau Marmont, Viper Room, and Rainbow Bar & Grill before their big show at the Roxy — and over the hill to Studio City’s famous Licorice Pizza record store, for their big LPTV interview.

And along the way, they’ve won the respect and praise of many of their heroes — including the actual Sex Pistols, with whom they played Royal Albert Hall at a Teen Cancer Trust benefit (the day before Matt’s 17th birthday), and Teen Cancer Trust co-founder Roger Daltrey, who wrote the Molotovs a personal thank-you letter. Later, Pete Townsnend even gave Matt the best birthday present ever: a Rickenbacker guitar.

The massive buzz about the Molotovs being punk’s great blonde hope and Britpop’s new saviors has — as is often the case with the U.K.’s mercurial music press — generated an inevitable backlash. (“Get a Life,” the opening track on the band’s spunky, punky debut album Wasted on Youth, is seemingly an open letter to their haters.) Matt, bristling with all the confidence of a now-18-year-old rock star, claims, “I don’t feel the weight of past heroes on my shoulders” when asked about the pressure that comes with endorsements from rock icons like not only the Pistols and the Who, but also Debbie Harry, Paul Weller, Iggy Pop, Yungblud, and the Damned. However, he admits that a well-meaning Channel 4 feature hyping up the Molotovs as “bringing back gigging in real life” for Generation Z “did loads of bad, actually. People spun it like we’d said that, and they were like, ‘What the fuck do they think they are?’”

photo: Nick Benoy

While Channel 4’s headline was obviously an exaggeration, the Molotovs do deserve some of that credit. In an age of algorithms, they have built their fanbase the good old-fashioned way, through relentless touring, with more than 600 gigs already under their studded belts. And their early busking days helped them hone their live skills. “It was a really good test, because you’ve got to grab people’s attention really quickly; you’ve got maybe about five seconds when they’re walking past,” explains Matt.

“We got rid of a lot of fear as well,” says Issey. “You’re not on a stage, you’re not on a pedestal — you’re at the same physical level with people. To make fools of yourself out on the street, you had to be completely delusional and so into it at the time. And I think that’s kind of translated to how we perform now. There really are no inhibitions when we play.”

“We’re not delusional anymore,” Matt grins.

As London’s stay-at-home orders eased a few years ago, the Molotovs began to build a buzz on the club circuit — Issey smilingly recalls impressionable young fans turning up to their gigs dressed in the band’s signature Mod style, which was a promising sign. Eventually, the siblings used their platform and launched an initiative called Youth Explosion to support struggling post-pandemic venues.

“We wanted to set up these all-ages gigs, really accessible with £3 tickets, just to get a kind of new generation into music, because they weren’t exposed to it. They’d never been to a gig before,” Issey explains. “We’d curate the lineup with other bands on the scene, which there were a lot of and still are; there’s some great guitar bands in London at the moment.”

“We got a lot of younger fans because they were at the right age when lockdown was [happening], where they weren’t doing much anyway. They didn’t go out, and they weren’t of pub-going age,” says Matt. “So, now that they’re out of [lockdown] and they’ve seen us coming up, they’re of that age where they can go see gigs. And I’m really proud of that, because I’ve been in their shoes at that age. … It’s a nice feeling, because I’ve always been the baby of all the bands that I’ve seen or been around or been on a bill with; I’ve always been the youngest one. And for the first time in history, I’m not the youngest one anymore! And I feel like such nonce even being around them.” (Matt, still clearly too young, too stubborn, or too punk-rock to be media-trained, then adds quickly: “I’m not, by the way. I feel a bit weird having to clear that up.”)

“I think part of our success has been because people have really taken to us as individuals, through the gigs and feeling a kind of loyalty, and from the people that they meet in those [rock venues’] rooms. You can’t get that kind of sense of community through online and social media,” says Issey. “And that can’t die, those sort of third spaces.”

It was at one all-ages benefit gig at a historic West London third space, Bush Hall — with all proceeds going to the struggling grassroots music venue, which was in danger of having to close — that the Molotovs made their first connection with the Sex Pistols, when Pistols drummer Paul Cook hopped onstage for an impromptu jam.

“I saw him in the crowd while the support band were playing, and I just said to him, ‘Oh right, Paul, are you getting up for a tune?’” Matt chucklingly recalls. “And he was like, ‘Nah, I’ll leave this to the kids.’ I was like, ‘Yeah, all right, everyone’s got to be a punter sometimes.’ But towards the end of the set… I just saw that he missed it, that he missed this feeling of all these young people jumping and going mad, that excitement and unity in a room of youth and arrogance. And he just went, ‘Yeah, we’ll do “God said the Queen.’” I mean, he knew it!”

The Molotovs’ rise comes at a troubled time in British history, a post-Brexit age, that has obvious parallels to the bleak period of unemployment and unrest that fired up the Pistols in the late 1970s — so the connection between the two bands, despite their generation gap, makes sense. The Molotovs have “a “bit more hope” than the Pistols, who once famously declared that England had no future — “I mean, we think there is a future, and we think we can contribute to that,” Matt stresses — but Matt also acknowledges that “we’re in a sort of weird time in the U.K. at the moment, and I think in the world. … We’re definitely in a decline at the moment, but always in history, I think great art and great music comes out of that.”

When the Cartlidges — who, perhaps unsurprisingly considering their impeccably peroxided style, are the children of hairdressers, and resent how blue-collar jobs are still “frowned upon” and seen as “stupid” and “lesser-than” in Britain’s “entrenched” class system — are asked about the greatest concern about their young fanbase, Issey answers: “Everyone wants the same thing, which is stability. Young people want job stability. They want to be financially independent. They want to have friends and a community identity. This is all the sort of stuff that no matter where you are politically, it rings true. We want to champion that through our songs and through our gigs as well, and give people that kind of space and find something to energize them.”

“I think just money. Money more than anything,” Matt answers more bluntly.

“And isolation as well,” Issey adds, as she and her brother reflect on the challenges that Gen Z, who came of age during COVID, face today. “I think a lot of people are isolated and feel hopeless and helpless. … There is definitely a pessimism at the moment and that kind of same [’70 punk-era] nihilism, and you see that in voter turnout, especially for young people. But I think there’s some great movements at the moment in the U.K., and I think music is driving it forward and providing hope to people that they do have a power. And it’s [up to] them to start enacting it, having agency to go and do things.”

photo: Derek Bremner

“But there is a whole lot of [apathetic young people who think] ‘what’s the point?’ as well. “What’s the point in registering to vote?’ or whatever,” Matt interjects. “My best mate doesn’t vote… and I think that’s such a lazy view to have. It’s like, you might not have much faith in the system, but you’ve gotta have fucking some, because otherwise, what else have you got? What else are you doing to make it better? … At least believe in bad and worse.”

“Totally,” Issey agrees. “That laziness will be the killer of us all.”

Matt and Issey are obviously the polar opposite of lazy. And while not all of Wasted on Youth (which draws from the old-school influences gleaned from their stylish father’s record collection, like the Jam, Boomtown Rats, Buzzcocks, Squeeze, Elvis Costello, Undertones, Stiff Little Fingers, Specials, and Small Faces, but also brings to mind NME-championed “the” bands of the indie aughts, like the Fratellis, Subways, Futureheads, Wombats, Kooks, and Cribs) is overtly political, they do audaciously describe the album as a “youth manifesto.”

For instance, one Wasted on Youth track, “Daydreaming,” blasts Britain’s education system and the myth being sold to Gen Z that getting a “flashy degree” will guarantee a bright future. (Matt found Career Day “fucking useless” when he was in school, because counselors always advised him to attend university in case his Plan A, music, didn’t work out. “What about all these people that go to university? Do you tell them, ‘Maybe you should learn an instrument, just in fucking case’?”) However, “Newsflash,” a protest song that dates back to the Molotov’s circa-2020 roots, is the album’s boldest statement.

“It’s actually not a song that really gets talked about a lot on the album, so I’m glad you brought it up — a lot of people just talk about the singles and ‘Geraldine’ really, because they go, ‘Who’s Geraldine?’” says Matt, the band’s primary songwriter. “‘Newsflash,’ that’s a sort of anti-lockdown song. … When I was writing it, it was so scary to realize how compliant people were, and how they’ll go forth with anything that the government says.”

“[That song is about] how disproportionate [Britain’s pandemic stay-at-home policies were] on young people,” Issey elaborates. “They were left out of the conversation, and now they’ve been left behind.”

“I mean, in your formative social years, that’s when you learn to actually interact with people,” says Matt. “So many young people are starved of that experience and those teachings, and they won’t recover from that, never will, because they’re too far gone and they’re socially inept now.”

Going back to the Molotovs’ origin story, obviously the COVID-19 pandemic was a creative and productive time for the siblings. But when they took to the streets to perform, Matt recalls, “We had trouble with the police. … We had neighbors calling the police on us for playing music and things like that. Once we got asked [to pay] a 10,000 pound fine by these police officers — they said we were ‘inciting a social gathering.’”

“We showed up and played, but we were going to pack up and go and then we did one last song, and [the cops] got really arsey because we said to the crowd, ‘This is our police! This is what they’re focusing on!’” Issey explains. “And they did the fucking Colombo, came back and were like, “Oh, we’re going to give you a fine.’” (Matt jokes that he instead offered to give the officers the 50 quid’s worth of tips in his guitar case; in true punk-rock style, the Molotovs never actually ponied up the £10,000.)

The Molotovs have maintained that rebellious sprit throughout their burgeoning career. Another track on Wasted on Youth, an album released not on a major label but through Marshall Amplifications’ independently distributed imprint, is “Rhythm of Yourself” — which is about how industry big-wigs once advised the band to tweak their image and sound to better fit in with the pop marketplace.

“It was a medium-wig, I think. …. ‘Cunt’ is a good word for him,” Matt quips of the song’s shady “small man” who tried to sign the Molotovs. “He presented us with a contract which was so fucking insulting and scary; it was like, ‘You’re mad if you ever thought we’d agree to anything like that!’ It was a really eye-opening experience, that this is what the music industry can be like when you’re so young. I must have been 14 or 13 when I wrote that song, and it was like, ‘Is that really what you can do to a pair of kids?’

“The fact that they’d happily tie you off in a contract for 15 years, but they don’t like anything about what you do. They just think you’re good models for it, which I think is so insulting,” Matt continues, getting more riled up. “It was like, ‘Change your clothes, change your face and hair, change the guitars you play and what you sound like.’ They were trying to get us to get all grungy, getting baggy jeans and saying, ‘Oh, we’ll get you a sponsorship with Vans.’ I don’t want a fucking sponsorship with Vans!”

“It’s a song about a personal experience, or inspired by Matthew’s personal experience in the music industry, but it’s also just a wider claim — for people to march the beat of their own drum, dance to the rhythm of yourself,” adds Issey.

And so, the Molotovs have continued to defy expectations and the odds. They’re especially proud that they went to No. 3 in the U.K. charts with a physical, vinyl release. “It just shows that there’s still the consumer base there for this sort of stuff, and people are still very much interested in vinyl; it’s not dead yet, and we should acknowledge that,” Issey declares. “We love to champion physical media. This is what cultivates a scene. This is what brings people together.”

photo: Derek Bremner

The Molotovs have already begun work on their sophomore album, but as they continue to draw accolades from both their peers and predecessors, they have a few dream collaborations in mind. Matt says he’d love to work with fellow bottle-blonde Sabrina Carpenter (with his wry and dry British sense of humor, it’s unclear if he’s joking, but that would probably be awesome), and Issey wants to work with The The’s Matt Johnson, one of her favorite songwriters that she think would be “a very interesting person to just even just talk with.” But the collab that seems most likely to happen one day is with Matt’s early hero, Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong, who is reportedly already a big Molotovs fan.

Matt almost got his chance years ago, when security guards at a Green Day concert almost picked him to come onstage to jam on guitar, but instead invited another audience member with (hard as this may be to believe) a “better haircut.” Matt was “gutted at the time” and found it “hard to enjoy the rest of the gig,” but is now relieved to not be known as the viral kid who “got picked by Billy Joe to come onstage and play one cover song. … I’d never get fucking away from it!” And now, as a rock star in his own right, with a fantastic coiffure, he seems ready for the opportunity.

“The closest we got is [Armstrong] played a pub in Covent Garden called the Marquee, which we’re at all the time. You can see in all the videos, Matt’s bleached-blond head just outside the window, bobbing up and down, just wishing to get in, pressed right up against the glass,” laughs Issey. “And while [Green Day] were coming in, [Armstrong] gave [Matt] a little nod of acknowledgement. He definitely saw him.”

“Yeah, that’s about it. He sort of pointed, like he knew who he were,” Matt chuckles. “If he sees this [interview], hopefully he can make it happen.”

Regardless, the future is obviously bright for the Molotovs, who are going to keep calm and carry on with their vision. “I’m not going to tailor [my music] to an American audience; I can only write about what I see and my environment,” Matt asserts.

“As long as we make something we’re extremely proud of… if we can make something that we think is extremely poignant or touching on our feelings about the times we’re in now, and people relate to that and connect with it, then I think we’ve done our job,” Issey states proudly. “It doesn’t matter what then the press says about it, because we know that we’ve done what we’re here to do.”

Watch Matt and Issey Cartlidge’s full LPTV interview in the video at the top of this page.

Two years ago, Daniel Valoff recorded his deeply personal survivor’s anthem, “There’s Still a Light in the Sky,” for the first time in his home studio. Today, he’s revisiting that emotional track under very different and much happier circumstances, enjoying the “best day of his life” at Los Angeles’s legendary Village Studios.

“I was spitting up blood, and you could hear that on my demo recording,” the Orange County-based musician, who is currently battling Stage 4 thyroid cancer, forthrightly recalls of his initial attempt to record his poignant ballad. “My vocals are kind of breaking up a bit, because there was blood on my vocal cords. I was singing the song and it just kind of came really, really quick, because it was really from the heart about how I felt.”

But today, Valoff is working with Cancer Can Rock, a nonprofit that gives musicians facing aggressive cancer the chance to preserve their musical legacies, on an updated recording of “There’s Still a Light in the Sky” with a stellar cast of music luminaries — among them, notably, Rufus Wainwright. And Wainwright isn’t just lending his iconic background vocals to the Village Studios production. FOLK CANCER: The Kate McGarrigle Project — an organization founded by Rufus and his sister Martha in honor of their folk-singer mother, who died of sarcoma in 2010 — is also funding the recording, which premieres June 23 via the countdown YouTube player below:

Rufus witnessed up-close the healing power of music during his mother’s cancer journey. As he sits with Valoff at the Village right before the afternoon’s first-ever Cancer Can Rock/FOLK CANCER recording session, he fondly recalls how McGarrigle gave her final public performance at an all-star Royal Albert Hall holiday concert just six weeks before her death.

“There was a definite kind of magical moment, some magical moments for her, with her last Christmas show,” Wainwright marvels. “She wasn’t doing particularly well health-wise, but every time she came out onstage to perform, she just put it out there. It was like 20 years had just been [rolled back], and she was just right back to where she started. The life force that music imbues is profound.

“When she was going through her treatments and stuff, it was such an incredible outlet and release for her, to just forget about the world for a second and focus on art. So, we just wanted to help continue that process for people who were going through treatment,” Wainwright continues. “And luckily, we found Cancer Can Rock and decided to join forces. And this is my first kind of venture into this new world, today.”

left to right: producer Jim Ebert, engineer Gabe Burch, Rufus Wainwright, Daniel Valoff (photo by Erik Nielsen)

Valoff can relate to McGarrigle’s experience. “I noticed when I was doing these home recordings, it was kind of the only time all the noise in my head stopped and I was just focused on singing and recording and getting lost in it — just having a moment of shutting everything off and kind of finding the sanctuary and music,” he reflects.

By the time Valoff was finally diagnosed with thyroid cancer, after he started coughing up blood while out for run and “it took a few months [for various specialists] to figure out what was going on,” a tumor had already grown around his laryngeal nerve and into his trachea. Doctors advised him to have surgery that would “pretty much remove my voice” and a render him unable to sing, but that, understandably, was not an option. “I said, ‘No, there’s got to be a different way,’” says Valoff, who’s been undergoing alternative treatments to shrink the tumor instead.

“When I got this diagnosis, a lot of thoughts that come into your head, and it kind of gets overwhelming. And one of my thoughts was, ‘I have all these songs I’ve written and I’ll never be able to sing them, possibly.’ And the other thought was, ‘If the worst happens and I’m not here much longer, I feel like songs live a lot longer than we do and could touch a lot of people.’ And I kind of wanted to leave behind a legacy.” Valoff explains. “So, I started recording all these songs urgently, at home —  home recordings of all these songs I’d written in the past that I never got around to recording, while I still had a voice. And on top of that, I kept on writing new songs. And the song we’re doing today is one of the songs about this journey I’ve been on.”

photo by Erik Nielsen

Valoff recalls writing “There’s Still a Light in the Sky” in a sudden flash of inspiration, as he envisioned a murky, moonlit seascape and thought, “It doesn’t matter how dark it gets — as long as there’s one star or a moon, you can always chart your course and be guided. There’s always something, as long as there’s one light in the sky. And for me, that light is my faith in Jesus.” (The song’s bridge references the Bible verse 1 Corinthians 15:55, as Valoff croons, “O death, where is thy sting?”)

Valoff says he wouldn’t be able to get through his cancer ordeal without his two “anchors”: his music and his faith, which are closely intertwined. And Wainwright, while “not a particularly religious person,” understands.

“I do believe in spirit, and I love Jesus too — what’s not to love, in a lot of ways? I believe in spirituality, and we need it now,” says Wainwright, who last year released Dream Requiem, an orchestral work featuring text from the Latin Mass for the Dead. “And one thing I actually say about music is: It chooses you. You need to a certain degree to be receptive to it, and you have to work at it, but it is this calling. It’s a sacred event.”

Daniel Valoff & Rufus Wainwright (photo by Marguerite Chan)

“I keep my faith. I know that I’m not alone in this,” Valoff asserts. “If I was going through this and I felt like God wasn’t aware of what was going on, I would feel really alone. But He is aware. … I’ve never questioned my faith. I just know we live in a fallen world, and I know that God didn’t do this to me. We weren’t designed to die. I have a spirit that will live eternally, forever. … I’m believing I’m going to get through this and be healed, but even if I don’t, Jesus promises if you believe in Him, it’ll give you eternal life. So, I have hope beyond this world that I’ll have an eternal life — which starts now.”

Fate and faith have figured greatly in Valoff’s Cancer Can Rock story. After applying to be a Cancer Can Rock featured artist — “I just couldn’t believe there were other [musicians with cancer] who had the same situation; I thought I was having a unique experience,” he says, recalling how excited he was to learn of the organization — he’d just received his invitation from Cancer Can Rock when, serendipitously, he had chance encounter with the always charity-minded Wainwright at a wildfire relief benefit in Pasadena.

“A couple hours later, I happened to run into Rufus Wainwright, and I showed him my email: ‘You won’t believe this!’” Valoff laughs. “And he was gracious enough to say, ‘Well, let me know. I want to be there when you do it.’”

In another seemingly fateful moment, as Valoff joins Wainwright today at the Village, his gifts Wainwright and the session musicians with candles. And as Wainwright points out, “There’s a song that I wrote, actually around my mother’s death, called ‘Candles.’ … I lit a lot of candles during my mother’s illness and it did help me, just that ritual.”

And now Valoff is at the candlelit Village with not only Wainwright, but with producer/mixer Jim Ebert (CCR’s founder, who has worked with Ice Cube, Madonna, Butch Walker, Jason Falkner, and Meredith Brooks); engineer JC LeResche (Kendrick Lamar, the Strokes, Weezer, Tyler, the Creator); bassist Jon Button (the Who, Michelle Branch, Shakira, Sheryl Crow); guitarist Dory Lobel (Backstreet Boys, Hilary Duff, Enrique Iglesias, The Voice); keyboardist Bill Appleberry (Stone Temple Pilots, Walsh, Fugees, Macy Gray, 311, Hole); and seasoned tribute-band drummer Rolly DeVore.

photo by Marguerite Chan

“I’m excited to be working with Jim Ebert today and Rufus and all the great musicians downstairs, revisiting the song,” Valoff enthuses. “I recently wrote a string arrangement for my demo, so I’ve spent a lot of time listening to it. It was very meticulous. So, I’m ready to record today, and then move on to a different song. Because when you work on a song so much… I’m not revisiting past thoughts that I had a long time ago. They’re thoughts I’m currently battling right now.”

Wainwright has faced his own battles and demons, and he quips, “Sometimes I wish I didn’t have to write so much music, because it can be painful! … I wouldn’t mind a little less heartache and falling in love with the wrong person and all of that stuff. I wish I didn’t have to write those songs sometimes.” Then he adds more seriously, “But in the case with my mother, when you’re really up against the biggest challenges in life, that is when music really matches it. … When push comes to shove and everything’s really going down, music is there. It’s always there.”

Daniel Valoff and Rufus Wainwright’s Cancer Can Rock recording of “There’s Still a Light in the Sky” will be available via YouTube as well as streaming services on June 23. An audio preview of the track is below, along with its full lyrics.

LISTEN HERE:

There’s still a light in the sky
There’s still a light in the sky
The night is coming on, my love,
but there’s, still a way to get by

My feet are still on the ground
My feet are still on the ground
The waves are crashing over my head
but, I will not be knocked down

It’s not the kind of thing
you get to rehearse
You only do it once
for better or worse
I still don’t know
which way I’ll land
But, I’m doing my best
with the cards in my hand
And there’s still a light in the sky

They tried to bury me
They tried to bury me
They tried to put me in the ground
But I grew up like a tree

They swung their sickle in vain
They swung their sickle in vain
The more they tried to cut me down
new branches grew from the pain

It’s not the kind of thing
you get to rehearse
You only do it once
for better or worse
I’m just trying to do
the best that I can
with the cards that were dealt
into my own hand
And there’s still a light in the sky

O death where is thy sting?
A new life began in me
No grave holds victory
For I have been redeemed
And I’m ready
But, I don’t want to say goodbye
But, there’s always
a light in the sky 

There’s still a light in the sky
There’s still a light in the sky
The night is coming on,
but there’s, still a way to get by

Steve Stevens is a loyal man. He’s been working with Godin Guitars for a quarter-century — a collaboration being commemorated with the launch of his new Godin 25th-anniversary signature guitar — and he’s been with his wife, Josie, for more than 25years. But the guitar legend’s longest relationship has actually been with his musical soulmate, Billy Idol. It’s a four-decade partnership so enduring and fruitful, in fact, that when Idol enters the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame this year, he won’t be alone: Stevens will be inducted into the Class of 2026 right alongside him. Stevens and Idol will also be jointly inducted into Hollywood’s Guitar Center Rockwalk on June 23.

It’s a match that, on paper, shouldn’t have worked: Stevens, a Brooklynite raised on prog rock, flamenco, glam, and ‘60s folk, and William Broad, a Londoner from the ‘70s British punk movement, brought together by KISS’s manager and Donna Summer’s producer. But because of their “chemistry, collaborative efforts, and mutual respect,” as well as an egalitarian publishing deal that Stevens calls “punk-rock,” it most definitely worked. Stevens ended up co-writing all of Idol’s 1983 breakthrough album, Rebel Yell, which featured the pop-crossover hits “Eyes Without a Face,” “Flesh for Fantasy,” “Catch My Fall,” and the fist-pumping title track. And the rest was rock ‘n’ roll history.

Stevens stresses, “When [Idol and I] work together is when we’re both at our best,” but he is Hall-induction-worthy on his own. His career has also spanned collaborations with Michael Jackson, Robert Palmer, Joni Mitchell, Ozzy Osbourne, and, perhaps most notably, Harold Faltermeyer on “Top Gun Anthem,” which beat Stanley Clarke, David Foster, Genesis, and even The Tonight Show band’s “Johnny’s Theme” to win Best Pop Instrumental Performance at the 1987 Grammy Awards.

In a Q&A that is as wide-ranging as Stevens’s discography, he reflects on his history with Idol and feeling like an “idiot” for parting with Idol for several years; getting sober right around the time he reunited with Idol in the early 2000s; the 40th anniversary of the Top Gun soundtrack; designer suit-shopping and martini-sipping in Milan with Palmer; impressing the famously steely Mitchell with his deep Laurel Canyon knowledge; who he’d like to see enter the Rock Hall next; the surprising song he hopes to perform at November’s Rock Hall ceremony; signing up for the bizarre, Housewives-style E! reality show Married to Rock that also starred Jane’s Addiction’s Perry Farrell, Guns N’ Roses’ Duff McKagan, and the Cult’s Billy Duffy; and even meeting Bubbles the chimp and witnessing Jackson’s spot-on David Lee Roth impersonation on the set of the “Dirty Diana” music video.

Sadly, according to Stevens, a remake of the “Dirty Diana” video shoot didn’t make it in Michael Jackson’s recent biopic. But with stories like this, Stevens clearly needs a biopic of his own.

Embed from Getty Images

LYNDSANITY: Congratulations on everything, especially getting into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame! I don’t think a lot of people realize that it’s not just Billy Idol being inducted, but you as well. That’s somewhat unusual. How did it come to be that you and Billy are a package deal?

STEVE STEVENS: Well, I think it’s the fact that I have been there from the beginning, have contributed musically to some of the biggest hits, and we continue to work together. It’s not up to me to say how it works with some bands, but I think it’s pretty obvious when it’s a key musician that’s been part of the key musical contributions. That’s the only way I can think of it. … It’s great that they’re including me, and I’m really happy for Billy. I think that he’s an important figure, certainly for our generation, and the music is held up over time. And to me, that’s all the rewards that I need.

I know that Billy came to New York after his punk band Generation X split up. His solo career started being handled by KISS’s manager, Bill Aucoin, and Aucoin kind of set you two up on a blind date. And it became a marriage made in rock ‘n’ roll heaven. Tell me about that first meeting, because your backgrounds are different. You’re from Queens, he’s from London; he was punk, you were more hard rock. How did it all start?

Well, actually I’m proud to say I’m born in Brooklyn! I grew up in Queens, but I grew up in Rockaway, which is very different from Queens. Rockaway was… I mean, my dad had a boat and we went fishing. When you say you’re from “New York City,” they don’t think of my brother having a surfboard and things like that. But yeah, as a guitarist, I was really influenced by the early-’70s English rock stuff. I was a real Anglophile, and a lot of that stuff included progressive rock and glam-rock and Sweet and Bowie and all that stuff. And my band came to the attention of Bill Aucoin. This is before Billy came to New York. I needed other musicians; I needed people to work with that were songwriters. I had the facility on the guitar, but hadn’t really gotten the songwriting thing together. So, I left the band, continued to be managed by Aucoin, and we were going to put a band together around me.

Embed from Getty Images

What was the name of your old band?

It was a horrible name, the Fine Malibus. And actually, consequentially, our ill-fated record, which was never released, was produced by Jimmy Miller, who is being inducted this year into the Hall of Fame as well! So, serendipity there. So, I continued to have a kind of development deal with Aucoin, and three months later, Bill calls me and says, “Do you know who Billy Idol is?” By then, “Dancing With Myself” was being played in every club in New York, and also I was aware of him through Rock Scene magazine. I’d seen Generation X, and [music journalist] Lisa Robinson would go over [to England] and profile those bands. And Bill said, “Well, he’s moved to New York. We’re managing him. You guys should meet. See if there’s anything there.” And we did.

I think that what really clicked for us is Billy loved the New York stuff: Velvet Underground, Lou Reed, the Dolls. I went to the High School Performing Arts, but I dropped out at the time when CBGB was happening — because I felt that was my education. What I was learning in school really didn’t resonate with me. So, I knew all those [New York] bands, and one of my favorite musicians, Robert Fripp, had moved to New York and was hanging out with Debbie Harry and all of what was called “new wave.” And I thought, “Wow, my prog hero is now in New York and part of this!” And then Billy and I started to talk and he said, “Do you like Lou Reed?” And I said, “I know the whole solo from ‘Coney Island Baby’!” I think that got me the gig. … And then when his producer Keith Forsey came to New York, he heard us rehearse and told Billy, “It’s better to have a guitar player who’s got the capabilities, because what you want to do is not what you did in Generation X. … Steve could play anything that we needed, rather than having to push someone to the height of their capabilities. And hey, he might play too many notes, but we could always ask him to play less!”

Were you already fan of, or familiar with, the first-wave U.K. punk scene that Generation X came from?

I was in a cover band. I played the same circuit as Twisted Sister, played all those clubs, four nights a week, and there was a cover band that had short hair, which was unheard of! And they played “God Save the Queen,” and I went, “What the f*** is that?” The guitar player goes, “This is a new band out of England, the Sex Pistols.” I went out and bought the Sex Pistols’ album, and then I discovered the Jam, who I loved, and then things that soon followed that I became a big fan of, like XTC. And then Billy turned me on to things like Siouxsie and the Banshees and John McGeogh, the brilliant guitar player in that band, who’d also played on the Gen X album. And then I remember reading that Keith Levene from Public Image said his favorite guitar player was Steve Howe from Yes. And I said to Billy, “Hey, the guy in Public Image likes prog too!”

Billy is the most successful artist to come from that early wave of U.K. punk, in terms of record sales, charts, radio, and MTV play. I don’t know if you consider yourself the throughline here, but unlike most of his peers, he took his career to this whole stadium, mainstream rock level. Do you feel like he got on that path because you connected the punk and hard rock worlds for him?

Well, also, our producer came from doing Donna Summer’s records with Giorgio Moroder, so we had the dance side of things as well — Keith Forsey knew how to do remixes and groove. That’s the thing about the Billy Idol records. They have groove to them and a certain warmth to the bass and drums, which are locked in — which the rock records really didn’t have. I think that amongst the rock bands, maybe Def Leppard had that emphasis on locked-in-ness and sonic capabilities that could sit against dance records, and even some Depeche Mode and the Cure had this kind of warmth to their music. Whereas a lot of the heavy rock records, they didn’t sound that great; the musicianship was fantastic, but they didn’t have that thing that dance records had. And I think Keith was really instrumental in that. So, you had three guys, different specialties, that respected each other and knew that the end gumbo or whatever was going to be something unique.

The musicianship angle is interesting too, because in early punk it was not “cool” to know more than three chords. But you know a lot more than three chords, and I think it’s safe to call you a guitar hero. It’s very interesting that you were working with Billy, who was coming from this world where being a virtuoso was actually considered uncool.

Yeah, we used to call it the” punk police”! … But you have to believe in the song first and foremost, and you have to believe in the artist you’re working with. And I had no problem taking direction. As an example, Billy always felt that the first guitar solo that I played was going to be the best one, because it’s instinctive. You can hear me discovering. There might be bad notes in there, might be some mistakes, but anytime I’d always say, “Oh, I can do it better” and I’d go back and maybe “perfect” it, we’d go back and listen to the first one and all go, “Yeah, there’s something about that one.” … It’s good to have an objective person who can recognize what the best element of that is, and that’s really served me well. And also, here’s the thing: Billy has always been fair with me as a songwriter. We co-wrote the songs, and we split everything evenly as far as the publishing. So, he’s honest — and that’s punk-rock, because I know a lot of musicians in the metal world who got screwed out of their publishing. Billy always thought, if you’re in the room — and we’re still like this, if we cowrite with people — we split everything. Because that’s punk-rock. And how can you not want to be part of that team?

Given the nature of how your unique partnership turned out, was there ever any discussion about you having a band name, like Loggins & Messina, but like “Idol & Stevens” or “Stevens & Idol”?

No. I mean, from the moment I met him, it was his record deal. But in some ways, being the sideman made me approachable to other people, so I was able to work on other projects. Like, I remember reading that David Lee Roth really had a problem with Eddie Van Halen doing [Michael Jackson’s] “Beat It.” But when I won a Grammy for Top Gun, Billy was proud of that! There was never any animosity.

What was the first song that you and Billy wrote together?

I think it was “Dead on Arrival” on the first [self-titled] record.

Did you know in that moment that you guys were on to something?

Maybe not in that moment, but I think by the time we got to “Hall in the Wall” and “Shooting Stars,” we really had something with that first record. It was really when he played me the demo of “White Wedding” that it just took everything to the next level. Because we didn’t have a single — everything else was written, and Keith locked Billy away in the studio in L.A. and said, “You gotta come up with a single!” And he came up with “White Wedding” and knocked on my hotel room door at whatever time it was, 6 in the morning, with a boombox. He put the cassette in and said, “I think I got it!”  And it was all there. I went, “That’s the starting point. That may be the single from this record. But the next record has to be at that level for the whole record.”

You and Billy parted ways for a while, and reunited about 25 years ago. It’s been going strong ever since; in fact, your second time together has been much longer than the first run. Why did you take that break from each other?

Well, first of all, Whiplash Smile was a difficult record to make. We wanted to embrace the technology at the time, so it was a lot of time for me spent programming synths and drum machines, and it was very hard to marry my guitars with those machines. Now you can do it with ProTools, you can press one keystroke and everything lines up, but back then it was really difficult. And there was a fair amount of drugs and alcohol thrown into it. The pressure of following up a big record was certainly there.

Drugs and alcohol on both your parts?

Yeah. I was no angel, certainly not. But one saving grace is that I’m useless if I’m stoned; I can’t play guitar. So, I’d have to wait till after the session most times. So, at the end of the Whiplash Smile tour, he decided to move to Los Angeles. I still had family in New York, I had just bought my first apartment, and I didn’t want to move to L.A. I was approached by Warner Bros. by Ted Templeman, who was the head of A&R, who was also Van Halen’s producer as well as for the Doobie Brothers. I was signed to a solo deal and just thought I should give this a shot. And there was some outside influence. … I’m sure people were saying to Billy, “If Steve stays in New York, you don’t need him!” And people saying to me that I don’t need Billy, that I can do my own thing. And you start to believe the hype. But at the end of the day, you go, “What an idiot!”

 I mean, Billy did have hits after you left, but not at the same level. I must ask what you thought of Billy’s ahead-of-its-time, rather misunderstood, and not-well-received Cyberpunk album from 1993. That was a huge departure for him.

I liked it. It’s funny because I’m always the first one to say, “Hey, we should pull out some of these kind of more obscure tracks to play for people,” and I really enjoy playing the [Cyberpunk] stuff. We did “Shock to the System” off that record. Look, I’m a Billy Idol fan, whether it’s got my guitar-playing or not. I think the guy’s fantastic, and he’s made great records with me and without me. I love what I bring. I bring a sense of drama to the music — I almost approach it like a film score. I really try and delve into, first of all, the words. I probably drive him crazy with, “What are you trying to say here? This line, what is it?” Because that’s my roadmap. That tells me everything that I need to know about how I should approach guitar, whether it’s going to be really over-the-top rockin’, or if it should be sensitive. So, I think when we work together is when we’re both at our best.

How did you come back together?

He called me. He had the motorcycle accident and I had heard about that, and even after I was no longer in the band, I came to his son’s baby shower. So, we kept our friendship up. He had his motorcycle accident [in 1990] and I said, “Hey, do you need me to come out? What the f*** are you doing? What’s going on?” So, the door was open. We never slagged each other off. We didn’t have to make amends when we got back together. And I think he felt that he missed my musical contributions. I came out to L.A., and I had gotten sober when I came back to work with him. Actually, [Sex Pistols guitarist] Steve Jones drove me to my first AA meeting! And I said, “You know what? I could live here. I think this is kind of cool.” So, I think that was a great influence. All the people that I knew in New York were dying. They were continuing to live that crazy lifestyle after the ‘80s and they no longer had careers. They were just drug addicts at that point. They weren’t being creative. And I thought, “Well, if I come out to L.A., I get to work with Billy again.”

How did you get sober? What inspired you to do so?

Probably a combination of things. Reigniting the love of the music and feeling that I’m very fortunate to do this. I’m very fortunate to still have relationships with people. And I’ve been with my wife now for over 25 years, and I don’t want to f*** that up. Drugs and alcohol would just get in the way of my relationships with everybody. I really value my friends and my work, and you just reach a point where you go, “Yeah, it’s no longer fun.” It was no longer fun.

Since you mentioned your wife, Josie, I was a big fan of Married to Rock, your E! reality show from 2010. The musicians in it were you, Duff McKagan, Billy Duffy, and Perry Ferrell, and it was like my fever dream of reality TV. I especially loved the Hello Kitty episode, when Josie redecorated your tour bus with girly, pink Hello Kitty merchandise and your bandmates got mad.

[Hello Kitty company Sanrio] came down on her about that! They thought that she was besmirching the image of Hello Kitty! The way that show happened was someone from the production company came to [a gig by] Camp Freddy, an all-star band, and they saw us four knuckleheads onstage with our girlfriends and wives hanging out and went, “Hmm, there’s a reality show here somewhere.” So, they approached us and we were already together as friends, so it was just a matter of documenting, putting cameras in our houses.

I’m kind of surprised that you all agreed to do it. There might have been some people in the rock world who would’ve sneered at such a thing. What made you sign up?

I always felt my wife was larger-than-life. She should be on TV! She’s a character. I just thought it was a great opportunity for all the women. And also, it didn’t require a lot of work on my part because I was on the road. She did all the work, really.

I think you should have kept the Hello Kitty bus.

I know! A mistake! And the poor Jeremy [Coulson], our drummer, E! told him: “You’ve got to be the guy to say, ‘What the hell is all this stuff?’” And in real life, he’s the sweetest guy. He loved the Hello Kitty stuff.

OK, let’s jump from the small screen to the big screen. You mentioned your Grammy-winning work on “Top Gun Anthem,” and we just celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Top Gun soundtrack a few weeks ago. “Top Gun Anthem” is so over-the-top-‘80s in the best way. It really sets the tone for this high-octane movie. How did you come to do that track?

Harold and Keith Forsey has worked together in Germany with Giorgio Moroder on the Donna Summers records, so Harold came in as the keyboard player for Whiplash Smile. And he mentioned to me, “I’m working on this movie about a fighter-pilot school with Tom Cruise.” I think I’d seen Risky Business; that’s all I knew about [Cruise]. And then Harold showed me some footage, and at that time, even though there was no CGI back then, it was kind of state-of-the-art. He said, “I’ve got this theme and we need this historic guitar thing.” I think we finished the Idol session on a Saturday at about 7 o’clock, and Harold put the multi-track on for Top Gun and it took about three hours, all told. I played the solo and the whole thing. And then lo and behold, I kind of forgot about it afterwards because we were back out on the road with Billy Idol, and then Harold called and said, “Hey, we’re nominated for a Grammy!” I was like, “Cool, but we’ll never win.” And Harold goes, “We’re going to win.” As it turned out, I was already going to be at the Grammys in Los Angeles because we were performing with Billy doing “To Be a Lover,” so our category for Top Gun was announced in the afternoon. And I went over, and we won. I came back to the hotel and said, “I just won a Grammy!”

You say when you recorded with Billy, even if you did multiple takes, your first solo was usually always the best. Do you know which one made “Top Gun Anthem?”

Well, the melody was the first take. … My hands were warmed up from playing the session with Billy that day, so it was just like shifting into another gear. I was already revved up and ready to go. I believe most of the solo for that is the first take. Maybe the tapping part at the end was something I had to kind of perfect. That’s not my area of proficiency, but this is the ‘80s, so I gotta to have some tapping guitar in it!

You’ve played with so many other people. It’s funny that you say David Lee Roth didn’t like it when Eddie Van Halen played with Michael Jackson, but you were on Michael’s “Dirty Diana.” And I have heard that you got to meet [Jackson’s pet chimpanzee] Bubbles at that time. Is that true?

I did! We did the video, which was an all-day shoot, and I drove up and I’m at the soundstage parking lot, and I see this tricked-out minivan with swings and all this stuff and toys. And I’m thinking, “Wow, that’s really cool that they have some place for their kids to play.” But no — it was the Bubblesmobile. It was for Bubbles. So, then I get in and we’re hanging out and Michael says, “Oh, do you want to meet Bubbles?” I go, “That’s what I’m here for, Michael. I’ve gotta meet Bubbles!”

I would be a little scared, because you hear stories about chimps snapping and tearing someone’s face off or going on the attack. But I assume Bubbles was pretty domesticated.

Yeah. The wildest thing was they had sprayed Bubbles with Elizabeth Taylor’s Passion perfume. Make of that what you will.

What other memories do you have of that session? I haven’t seen the new Michael biopic yet, but I feel like there should be a bonus scene with you meeting Bubbles in the movie.

So, evidently there was shot for the movie a remake of the video that we did for “Dirty Diana”! But it’s not included in the film. I haven’t seen anything, but that’s where the film ends, evidently. What Michael and I talked about mostly was he was getting ready to do his first big [solo] tour, and he wanted it to be a rock-style tour. He mentioned that he had seen Queen, he had seen Mötley Crüe, and was asking me about sound and lights. So, I said, “I’ll put you in touch with our lighting company, our sound company. This is who we use. They’re really state-of-the-art.” And what was really funny though, is he goes, “Oh, I like Van Halen,” and then he proceeded to imitate David Lee Roth. Now, imagine Michael Jackson doing David Lee Roth: “Look at all the people here tonight!”

Was it a good impression? Did he get it right?

Yeah, he got it right.

That is absolutely hilarious. What other work have you done, outside of your work with Billy and the other projects we’ve already discussed?

My nylon string record, Flamenco a Go-Go, was really important for me, because it was a way of reigniting the spark of why I picked up the instrument to begin with. I had finished the Vince Neil tour and it was the height of excess and that’s when I decided to get sober. … And then working with Robert Palmer. I met Robert probably two years before Billy; the band I was in [ the Fine Malibus] went down to the Bahamas to record, and Robert lived across the street from the studio and we became friends. And when he’d come through New York, we’d go to the guitar shops together and hang out. … I spent a lot of time just hanging with Robert, and when I went to Italy and was in Milan with him to record [“You’re Amazing,” off Palmer’s 1990 album Don’t Explain], he took me suit-shopping at Versace or something.

Please tell me you still have those suits!

I don’t think I do. But he did take me to a hotel where he claimed it was the best martini in the world. Now, Robert was a world-traveler, and he liked to drink a bit, so I trusted him that this was going to be the best martini in the world. I didn’t like martinis, but I will tell you, it was a damn good martini.

You also played with Joni Mitchell. What was that like?

She had contacted Billy to duet on a song [1988’s “Dancin’ Clown”]. .. Billy was in the studio with her and must have suggested, “You’ve got to get Steve on this song. He’d be perfect.” So, my phone rang at about 1 in the morning: “Hey, I’m in the studio with Joni Mitchell. She wants you to come down and play.” I said, “Yeah, absolutely. I’ll be there in a heartbeat.”

Were you intimidated by her?

Well, I started playing guitar at about 7 and a half years old, and it was all acoustic stuff. I went to three years of summer camp playing James Taylor and Joni Mitchell and Simon & Garfunkel. Those records were such a big part of my development as a guitar player. And also, if I could learn those songs, it was a way to meet girls! A lot of female acoustic guitar players [at summer camp] were influenced by Judy Collins, Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, all the folk stuff. So, when I met Joni, I said, “You don’t understand. You are such a big part of the development of my guitar-playing — Ladies of the Canyon, ‘Big Yellow Taxi,’ ‘For Free,’ and all this. I know I’m a rock guitar player, but I have this foundation of folk stuff.” … She was really surprised that I had that background, even though I was in Billy Idol’s band. I think I won her over by having that foundation.

Do you have any other pinch-me moments in your career where you got to work with a hero of yours?

I collaborated on the last two recordings of Ozzy Osbourne’s career. Actually, we recorded those in my living room when I was living in Los Angeles. Billy Morrison, the second guitarist in Billy Idol’s band, was Ozzy’s best friend and called me up and said, “Ozzy wants to record some tunes, can we come over to your studio?” I said, “Sure, come over. I’ll make coffee for you guys.” I didn’t expect anything and I had no expectations; it was like hanging with some friends. And lo and behold, we came up with some really good tunes. Obviously the minute that you put a microphone in front of [Ozzy] and you put the headphones on and you hear that voice, there’s nothing like that. It’s like with Billy — you hear that voice and you go, “There’s only one in this world.” I found them to be very similar in respects. They love history and that English sense of humor. I have to say, the Brits make the best rock stars. It’s that kind of androgynous thing they have, and maybe it’s to do with the English education system. They seem to have a lot of stuff to write about, references throughout history, that I find is lacking in some of the American artists — not the intelligent American artists, but the knuckleheads. And there was a lot of knucklehead music in the ‘80s.

And then you and Billy helped induct Ozzy into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s Class of 2024. Who are some other artists you’d like to see inducted?

I think Keith Emerson should be in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. … He was the first to bring out a synthesizer on tour. He was the first to have a synth solo in a song. You can’t just look at Emerson, Lake & Palmer — I don’t really care if Emerson, Lake & Palmer are in the Hall of Fame, but I do care about Keith Emerson, because I think he’s an important figure and he was just a brilliant musician and an incredible showman. And Grand Funk Railroad… man, they sold out Shea Stadium faster than the Beatles! For me as a kid, they were such a huge band. I know the critics didn’t like them because they were really meat-and-potatoes, but they were a big band and they influenced a lot of people. They are one of the great American rock ‘n’ roll bands like Creedence, and I believe that Grand Funk should be in the Rock & Rall Hall of Fame.

Who would you like to have induct you and Billy at November’s Class of 2026 ceremony?

It’s really out of my hands, but Billy has the final say on that. I trust it’ll be somebody cool. But I will tell you one thing: We were very adamant that our band, members who have been with us for some 15 to 20 years, will be playing with us. It was very important that we have our band with us.

Have you given any thought to what songs you want to play at the ceremony?

I want to have a Generation X song in there. I’d throw in “Kiss Me Deadly.” To me, that’s an important song. Punk-rock bands weren’t doing songs like “Kiss Me Deadly” then. Wouldn’t it be great to play something like “Kiss Me Deadly” at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame?

From your lips to the Hall of Fame’s ears! I would be thrilled about that. And I’m so thrilled that you’re getting in, because you’ve had such a storied career yourself and clearly have many stories to tell. Have you considered writing an autobiography?

It’s been talked about. What would be interesting is that before I met Billy, I lived in Manhattan in a Music Building, 10 floors of musicians. I mean, [New York Dolls guitarist] Sylvain Sylvain gave me my stage name, and we used to see Johnny Thunders hanging out. Cyndi Lauper lived in the building. … Alan Vega from Suicide lived upstairs from us. I will tell you that on the weekends, it was a party — each floor specialized in a different substance! This is New York in 1977, ’78. You had Basquiat and the art world happening. And it was amazing. Nobody had any money, and it didn’t matter.

I feel like this interview could keep going, but maybe you should save some stories for that book. In the meantime, thanks for his conversation and congrats on your new Godin 25th anniversary guitar, and you can let the brass at Sanrio know that as a big Hello Kitty fan and collector, I in no way thought Hello Kitty was being dishonored on Married to Rock. I actually own a Hello Kitty guitar.

So do I! [laughs]

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Steve Stevens (@stevestevens)

Wow! I’ve love to see you play that at the Rock Hall’s Class of 2026 ceremony! But before I let you go, tell me about your 25th-anniversary model for Godin.

When I decided to do my Flamenco or Go-Go record, I went to the NAMM Show and introduced myself to Robert Godin and said, “I’m Steve Stevens. I’m going to do this kind of flamenco/modern mishmash, and I heard you have a guitar that does that.” And they sent me one, and that started it all. … They approached me [this year] and said, “Hey, our partnership has been going 25 years. What would you like to see in a guitar that we don’t currently have?” And I said, “Well, let’s make it purple and high-gloss! Let’s make the case all jet-black with a purple interior!” I asked for silly things, like purple tuning pegs. And I don’t know any other guitar that comes with purple tuning pegs.

This Q&A, which has been edited for brevity and clarity, originally ran on Gold Derby. Watch Steve Stevens’s thoroughly entertaining interview in full via the video at the top of this page.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Guitar HAUS (@guitarhaus.ca)

Haircut 100 may have been early-MTV darlings in America — frontman Nick Heyward chucklingly brags that “quite a few guys” have even told him that his iconic loincloth scene in the David Mallet-directed “Love Plus One” video marked “the moment they knew they were gay.” But that was nothing compared to Haircut 100’s impact in their native Britain, where the sophisti-pop pioneers’ funky and frothy debut, Pelican West, was the biggest-selling album of 1982.

However, that first whirlwind of success for the group — who, bafflingly, didn’t even have a manager at the time — was over as quickly as it had begun, as their career “went from one extreme to another.” Heyward, then barely 20 years old and serving as both the primary songwriter and pinup-ready face of the band, soon experienced burnout, and by late ‘82, when Haircut 100 were working on the rushed follow-up Paint and Paint (“I don’t see that as really a Haircut album, personally,” Heyward notes), he was barely participating.

Haircut 100 in 2026 (photo: Andrew Cotterill)

“My relationship with them, and their relationship with me, had completely disintegrated. … I think the final straw was in a rehearsal when they’d been rehearsing up and writing new songs without me, and [percussionist] Marc [Fox] was singing them, and it was a different band. It wasn’t our band. It wasn’t a team anymore, ” Heyward recalls. “And I felt like, ‘Um, what am I going to do? Merch?’ And so, that was it. That was the Spinal Tap moment.”

But, as it turns out… that wasn’t it. There was plenty of “unfinished business” after Heyward officially parted ways with Haircut 100 in January 1983. While he went on to a successful solo career, even scoring an alt-rock radio hit in America in 1993 with “Kite,” he always missed what he affectionately calls that “Haircut power” — that rare, special dynamic he shared with his teenhood bandmates Les Nemes and Graham Jones. “There’s just something about actually being in a band with the people you dreamt with in a rehearsal room in a garage in 1977,” he muses fondly.

Haircut 100 staged several brief reunions after they imploded — most notably on a memorable episode of VH1’s Bands Reunited in 2004 — and each time, that vibrant “Haircut energy” always remained. “Every time we get together, we just knock it out the park. Something magic happens and takes over, and the ingredients are right,” Heyward raves. “We can get together easily. It is staying together — that’s what hasn’t worked out! And that’s why this time is so different. Everything has been falling into place easily, unlike any other time.”

Heyward, still radiating that Haircut energy and looking like a boyishly handsome pop idol at age 65, is excitedly discussing his seminal band’s latest and seemingly much more serious reunion, which this time around includes “the missing ingredient”: a legitimate manager, Martin Hall, who also oversees the careers of Wet Leg and the Manic Street Preachers. The band made their all-important Glastonbury Festival debut in 2024, and toured the U.S. for the first time that same summer. (That was their first U.S. trek in almost 42 years; they’ll be back in America, doing both headlining shows and dates with Squeeze and Adam Ant, this fall.)

But most excitingly, Haircut 100 are finally releasing an excellent, return-to-form new album, Boxing The Compass — the proper follow-up to Pelican West, which 1984’s poorly received, Heyward-free Paint and Paint sadly wasn’t — with Coldplay producer/mixer Danton Supple. “We went in to do three songs… and we did 10!” reveals Heyward, an admitted perfectionist who laughingly says if it were up to him and his reconvened bandmates, the new Haircut 100 album probably wouldn’t have come out “until 2044.” Thankfully, it will be released on June 19, 2026.

And so, what could have been an especially bummer Haircut 100 episode of another VH1 series, Behind the Music, is instead getting a happy ending — and a new beginning. Heyward is initially reluctant to broach the subject of what exactly went wrong for the band more than four decades ago, stressing, “Whatever’s happening now, there’s nothing we can do about the past. We’re here. Now every time we play, it’s like total present. Every time I do ‘Fantastic Day,’ it’s like it’s the first time I’ve ever sung it, fresh as a daisy.” However, he eventually he opens up, almost as if discussing the past makes him appreciate this second (or third, or fourth…) act all the more.

“I know I worked the hardest. I did every interview, and I had a lot of pressure,” Heyward recalls of Haircut’s meteoric success after Pelican West dropped in February 1982. “I was just fumbling my way through it.” Heyward didn’t quite understand why all of the band’s “wildest dreams” had come true and he still wasn’t happy (“the reality of when it happens, it’s totally different”), and he was “really not dealing with it very well” because, once again, “the key thing was didn’t have was any kind of manager. We were dealing with this all ourselves, and it was a chaotic environment. Very chaotic, nothing stable.”

Heyward ultimately consulted a physician at Haircut 100’s label, Arista Records, “And I remember he said, ‘Have a cigarette!’ So, I did, and that started me smoking,” he recalls. “I thought, ‘OK, maybe this is my crutch.’ But it wasn’t. And then he gave me some pills that I found out had been struck off the [prescription] list — they weren’t supposed to be given to people — and my jaw locked. I have no idea what they were. I was just young, and I would take anything to not feel the way I was feeling. … I was at home going out of my mind, and I didn’t know why I felt like that. But it felt like the end of something.”

Life at home in the London suburb of Beckenham, where Heyward was still living with his mum and dad, was also chaotic, because his sudden fame had completely altered their once-healthy family dynamic. “My parents really changed out of it — and they [had been] my stability. They were my stable rock, and then they just became sycophantic,” he explains. “That was not the relationship we’d had before.” Eventually “the Arista doctor turned up at the doorstep” and Heyward was “carted off to this place that I think they sent Ozzy Osborne off to. But [other troubled celebrity patients were] in there normally alcohol or drugs or something, and I was just in there just due to pressure.”

But now, Heyward’s issues, any lingering resentment between him and his on/off Haircut 100 bandmates, and really “anything from the past has evaporated,” Heyward assures with a massive grin. “It just doesn’t mean anything.” And now his long-ago Beckenham garage-crafted hopes and dreams for the band are finally being realized, in a way that simply wasn’t possible in ‘82.

“It’s a dream come true, that the success in our wildest dreams is coming now, because we didn’t think it was going to happen at all. We’d all written it off, really,” a grateful Heyward confesses. “There were so many attempts. I suppose it’s that thing of when you do actually let go completely, maybe that’s when you get what you were looking for. … And here we are, the same three people, and we’ve still got the same dream.”

Watch Nick Heyward’s full interview (which took place in 2024) in the split-screen video above, in which he discusses how Haircut 100’s ska-adjacent, brass-tastic sound was “like Chicago on amphetamines,” how they came up with their preppy “jumpers band” look, what went on during the “Love Plus One” music video shoot, and more.