The 1975: How did the band get their name, "The 1975" ?

Saturday, March 12, 2016

How did the band get their name, "The 1975" ?

It all started when Matty, the lead singer of the band found out at the back of a beat-era book given to him by a "gregarious artist" the date 1st June The 1975. He met him at a yard sale in northern Majorca at the age of 19. Matty said, "He showed me a round his house, it was like a sixties bizarre haberdashery. He had photos of him with Hendrix, I thought thus guy was fucking crazy! He gave me loads of beat generation literature, Kerouac and stuff. When I went home I read them and in the back of one of them there was all these mental scribbling, it was almost suicidal, and it was dated at the bottom '1st June, The 1975'. I was quite freaked out when I read it, the use of the word 'The' really stuck with me. It was the perfect band name."

- SA

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One of the solid raw interviews :

This all came as the group were approaching the end of two years of solid touring in front of crowds that were growing ever bigger and ever more voracious. It was like, Healy says, being in a “really glamorous version ofDawn of the Dead. Instead of being followed by zombies, it was iPhone-clutching kids. There’d be 100 kids between the tour bus and the stage door, when I’m in my boxers with a hangover. So my first reaction with human beings is in a resentful, semi-clothed situation – ‘Matty! Matty! Matty!’ – and I’d be, ‘They don’t even care about the music! They’ve just got their phones out!’”

Healy found himself tumbling towards a crisis, which arrived on 6 December, onstage in Boston. “There was girl stuff,” he says. “There was family stuff. There was financial stuff. There was drug stuff. I remember hearing the crowd and having an identity crisis. I thought: ‘If you want to see a show, I’ll give you a fucking show. If you’ve come to see the jester drink himself into a slumber, I’ll give it to you.’ I felt like I’d become an idea as opposed to being a person.”

At one point, a fan shouted, “I love you, Matty!” He’s ashamed of his response. “What did I say to the poor fucking girl? ‘You don’t have the right to love me. You don’t know me. I love you but you don’t get to love me.’ Jesus. Can you imagine your favourite band shouting that at you? What a dickhead. What a horrible thing to say to a kid who fucking does love me.”

At the show’s end, Healy fell to the stage and refused to leave. “George carried me off, cos I would have stayed there, apparently. I just wanted to sit there and do something you don’t. It was so blurry and of such a particular colour: I remember everything as orangey yellow.”

The easy reaction to take – and one we see again and again when members of groups with startlingly passionate teenage followings hit a wall, as opposed to troubled stars with middle-aged male followings, like Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy – is to say: suck it up, pal. You’re in a band. People love you. You’re making money. Grow a pair.