Fightstar's Alex Westaway tells us about his upcoming horror film, the recent changes in the music industry and why this summer's Reading festival was the highlight of his career...
If we could talk a bit about your new album, ‘Be human’ is your highest charting album to date, do you think your music has changed since you started?
"Urm yeh I think we’ve just evolved a bit really, obviously we’re a few years on since we started out and we’ve had more experience and I think we’re all at a slightly higher level in terms of playing ... we’re always trying to stretch ourselves and trying to not make anything sound the same, trying to create new sounds and go in a new direction with each album.”
Well this one is quite different; you used an orchestra, what was the concept behind the album?
“There was no real concept it’s more to do with the space that we were all in at the time, when we were writing it, I think we were all feeling fairly settled in, like in life and that kind of reflected on it having a few more positive songs I suppose, and we’ve still got a few dark ones on there.”
Well you have a quite unique sound in general, delicate and dark at the same time, how would you describe it?
“I think we have a lot of different influences, we pretty much write whatever we want to write, it encompasses a lot of different sounds. We’ve always described our music as being hopeful... yeh we always liked that kind of epic feeling of hope you know?”
So are you quite heavily influenced by the music that you listen to?
“yes ... yeh, we all have like pretty similar tastes, although we favour different stuff, like individually, I bring more of the kind of softer side to the band, I’m less of a metal guy, i’m more of a post-rocky, like singer-songwriter type really, Dan on the other hand is more metal.”
You released your latest album yourselves in partnership with your management company, that’s quite an unusual move for a band, what prompted you to do it?
“It’s a sign of the changing times really, I think you’ll see a lot more bands doing it, purely because of the state of the industry.. I mean, at the moment, major labels are signing bands on 360 deals which means they get a big chunk of their lives, income, merch ......even if you’re a band and you’re on a major label, how you survive, how you pay the bills is by playing live, touring, selling merch, if that’s being taken away again by the label it makes it even tougher! We’ve always kind of liked the idea of going independent anyway and the opportunity arose for us to set up this label with the distribution through PS who are a great company - they’ve helped us out a lot, they’ve just done Oasis’ album.. That’s a good example really if you look at their roster, there’s a lot of bands doing it the same way we are, they’ve got Enter Shikari, they’ve got this thing set up which is a new kind of mould which is at the forefront of how the music industry is going to survive.. they’re growing and becoming stronger whilst the major labels are becoming weaker.”
So that’s definitely an issue in the music industry at the moment...
"yeh, well I think so, yes”
You guys have done a lot of festivals and toured with a lot of other bands, what was your favourite festival?
“Urm....Reading, this year”
And why was it your favourite?
“we were just lucky, the weather was great, we had quite an early slot so we were a bit sceptical about how many people were going to be up on a Saturday morning, we thought everyone would be really hungover from the night before, but we had a great response, like the best response we’ve ever had and apparently the circle pits and stuff we got going were the biggest of the weekend which is great you know... and it’s really epic to see that when you’re on stage and you look out and theres like a huge mass of kids going absolutely nuts, the ground was really dry so it was kicking up loads of dust and it was just really, really huge... there’s nothing else like that, it was probably the best experience I’ve ever had on stage, if I never did it again I’d be happy that I had that moment.”
You’ve got a huge fan base, you’re first big hit, ‘Palahniuk’s Laughter’ went straight into heavy rotation on music channels, how have you dealt with that kind of over-night celebrity?
“Well I don’t know if I’d ever call myself a celebrity, maybe if I was out in a small town and there was a rock night or something, maybe a few people would recognise me but we’re pretty under the radar to be honest. None of us are the kind of people who go out to these posh dos, we kind of avoid that really... we’re more into writing and being creative than poncing around.”
Well you’ve dabbled in a few things – producing, writing, cover art and I hear you’re directing a horror film at the moment?
“Yeh well Dan and I have a small production company, that’s been our kind of side- project, we’ve done a couple of music videos and various things, we’ve got two other guys, one of them works for ILM In the states, just two old friends from school really. We’ve always been majorly into film and the last couple of years we’ve been shooting what started off as a short film and it evolved into .. well it’s about an hour long now, but it’s completely done in our spare time, there’s no budget, we’ve written it, directed it, produced it, we’re writing the score for it so it’s all very much home-grown and there’s no budget at all .. so don’t expect too much from it but it’s what keeps us busy and in the future we’d love to be more involved with film.”
So is that something you’ll definitely do more with, acting and directing?
“Yeh, I hope so, I mean it’s our other passion really, film and music go hand in hand, and obviously we probably won’t be playing the same music that we are forever so it’s good to have another plan.”
Ok that’s fair enough, you’re starting your U.K. tour soon, in October, what can fans expect from your shows?
“we’re going to be playing quite a few songs that people haven’t heard live, a few new tracks off the album that we haven’t played before, the new single we’re playing, we just shot a video for, so it should be on the music channels in a few weeks time .. so yeh just as much fun as we can put into it really, as much energy, we just hope that the audience can enjoy it as much as we do.”
Well I’m sure they will. You spend a lot of time travelling and touring, how do you spend your spare time?
“ Urm making this damn film that we’ve been making for the last few years! That pretty much takes all of our spare time, so we’re never not doing anything, there’s always something creative on the cards or we go a bit mental.”
What do you think you’d be doing if you weren’t in the band? Would you be a director?
“I don’t know, it’s bloody hard to get into directing, the same way it is getting into a band where you can do it full time, I mean yeh... I’d love to become a director, my background is kind of art as well, so maybe a painter or... a struggling painter I’d be... probably.”
Are you working on any new material at the moment? In between all your directing and touring?
“yeh we’ve just recorded like four new tracks that are going to come out on a special edition, like a ‘Be Human’ special edition with some sort of live DVD on it, that’s going to come out in early February I think... so that was fun to get back into the studio, even though it’s quite soon after we’ve been recording, the songs are sounding really goods I’m looking forward to getting that out.”
Are the songs different to the rest on the album?
“Not really, it is a bit different but it’s of the same kind of ilk, I think it would fit nicely within the other songs.”
Any advice for people that want to get into the music business?
“yeh just write as many songs as you possibly can and play as many live shows as you can, that’s how you improve, you can never have enough songs!”
By Beth Cook
Fightstar's latest album 'Be Human', released 19th April 2009, on Search and Destroy, is available from online stores : http://hmv.com/hmvweb/displayProductDetails.do?ctx=280;0;-1;-1;-1&sku=952365
Dates and ticket information for their upcoming U.K tour : http://www.fightstarmusic.com/tour/index.php
