Singer/songwriter Dan Smith may not have thought much about his band’s name but his choice seems an apt metaphor for its dramatic impact
THE word Bastille brings to mind revolution, change and the storming of the old by the spirit of the new.
When London-based singer/songwriter Dan Smith called his band Bastille, he was merely thinking of his birthday, July 14, France’s Bastille Day. But for the biggest selling new British act of last year, Smith’s choice seems an ominously apt metaphor for their dramatic impact.
The omens that Bastille would make an indelible mark were there long before their March 2013 debut album Bad Blood entered the UK charts at No. 1.
The band was formed by Smith after recruiting keyboard player Kyle Simmons, bassist Will Farquarson and drummer Chris “Woody” Wood. While they only pressed 300 copies of their 2011 independent debut single Flaws, the band’s accompanying video, edited by Smith using clips from Terrence Malick’s 1973 cult classic Badlands, scored half a million hits on YouTube.
Signed by Virgin Records and tipped by a vociferous network of discerning bloggers, after three singles they were selling-out their first headline UK tour before their album was even released.
How did it feel when your album went platinum, and how do you feel you have grown as a band from 2011 till now?
Will: Wow, it felt good. It is always nice to know that someone else likes your music.
Dan: Yeah, it’s insane. We still can’t really believe it. It is funny, you know, with things like that. It is quite hard to get your head around it even though it is a blatant fact. We are blown away by the fact that so many people have taken to the album. It is mind blowing, but I guess you sort of appreciate it and then have to just forget it and get on with life, otherwise you are probably going to lose the ability to see clearly.
From 2011 until now, we were all working a lot of jobs, and rehearsing overnight to try and get the band together. We did everything ourselves, from making the logo on Microsoft Paint to doing the artwork, touring and driving ourselves around in our friend’s mum’s car. It was a lot of hard work, a lot of fun and now here we are. So, it has been interesting.
What inspires you to create music? Is it something that just comes naturally?
D: Often when writing, stuff just pops into our heads and sometimes it will be like a lyric and a little bit of melody together. Occasionally, there will be something that I want to write a song about, but that is always quite hard because then you have to sort of really think it through and articulate it. I think story-wise, particularly in the first album, I was not that interested in writing about a lot of biographical stuff. I guess you cannot avoid writing it in a way like you have felt it through your own experiences, so I just used a lot of other characters and other stories to kind of weigh in to talk about things. It is like telling stories. There is a song on our next album about a friend of mine who writes a comedy sex blog, which I am quite excited about releasing.
You started out by recording and writing songs in your bedroom. Do you think of them as the best memories that you have?
D: I don’t know. I cannot really imagine doing it any other way, to be honest.
W: We all seem to rehearse in Dan’s bedroom.
D: We did! It was quite the hub! I am not a particularly good musician, but Will grew up spending hours and hours in the evenings just playing guitar and playing bass.
D: Yeah, I wish I had done that, just play guitar. But I guess the equivalent of it is because I am obsessed with song writing and I love it and failing to have the ability to actually play an instrument, my version of that was just writing songs on my laptop and trying to be a producer, which I am very bad at. But you know, that I guess, was it.
When or where do you feel like you perform your best?
D: Never on TV. Because playing on TV is always a really weird experience.
W: I am the opposite. Whenever there is any pressure I play. I like to perform and if that involves hitting a bum note here and there, I will take that hit for the greater good of my visual prowess on stage. But when there is any pressure, I concentrate on it. So basically, I should probably just concentrate all the time and do my job properly.
D: Some gigs are fun, some are not, some are terrifying and sometimes we have a great time. It is the ones where you are really relaxed and the crowd is great, I think that is when you play the best.
What about when you play for big crowds like 15,000 people? What does it feel like to do something that most bands can only dream about?
D: Yeah, it is bizarre. I think it is funny with gigs because I always go to a lot of shows. I love going to gigs, festivals and things like that, and then when you are in the band, I guess it is from a very different perspective because gone are the days when we played in pubs and we would hang around in the pub, and then we go back on stage to play and then get back off stage and keep drinking.
And now, you see what it is like around here. You are so removed from somebody who has bought a ticket, queued up outside, got in, got a drink, and whatever. I like it sometimes when we are on tour, like when we were in the US, we had the same tour dates as Haim. They had a couple of dates before ours and there was one evening where we had a day off and they were playing in the same venue a night before us, so we went to their show. It is quite nice just going to a gig and seeing it from the perspective of the crowd and be like “oh, we can play that tomorrow”. It is quite cool. It was really fun. I quite like going out and watching shows to support the bands because sometimes when you are on tour, if you are playing every night, you can kind of be removed and always forget about the fact that there are 15,000 people who have chosen to spend their money and spend an entire evening of their life just listening to your music because they like it. That’s insane and it is so easy to take that for granted and to forget it. Well, it is not exactly easy to forget, but sometimes when it is your daily life, you may forget about it a little. It blows my mind completely that people care that much.
Amid all this madness, what keeps all of you grounded and focused on your music?
D: I think we have a good time, but also we just want to be making good music as well. We want our next album to be good. I think we keep each other grounded as well. We all get along really well and we get along with our crew too.
Where do you see yourselves in five years’ time? Are you happy with the direction that you are taking right now?
W: We cannot possibly think that far. Ask me about six months.
D: In six months’ time,I would like to be about to put out our next album or getting ready to put it out. It would just be really nice to keep making music and to keep touring. Who knows? I mean like, you know, one of us might be dead.
Where is the ultimate venue you would like to perform?
D: Ooh, good question. We have not really played many gigs in Asia. We have played in Japan, but other than that, we have not really played in Asia at all. So it would be really nice to tour there and South America as well. They are both places that we have not really been to.