McFly headline Sandown Park Racecourse on Thursday 8th August
You’re playing a huge show at Sandown Park Racecourse next week - what are you most looking forward to about this show?
I always enjoy these shows because during the summer we do one or two every week, so it’s quite chilled. I love touring, but that can be two or three months of solid gig, after gig, after gig, and it's amazing, but sometimes it's quite nice being in the summer run! For example, this week we have one show, last week we had one show, and now we've got the Sandown Park show coming up, which is just one gig that week. So, you go in really fresh and see the bandmates, and with these shows I'll take one or two of my children along, and it's just like dipping in and out of being in a band for a night again.
I’ll go home for a week and I'm dad for the week during summer holidays, and then I pop back and do another one of these summer festivals and racecourse gigs. With these racecourse gigs its family vibes so it's a different kind of show, it's not like a hardcore McFly gig. It’s quite nice to play to different audiences, possibly people that wouldn't come and see you on tour but are going to the races with a little bonus of seeing McFly in the evening. It’s great for us, because we get to perform in front of new people and hopefully reaffirm or prove to people like “oh, wow, they're actually pretty great”. So it's always a kind of fun challenge for us as well.
You’re celebrating 21 years of being a band this year - at the start did you ever think you'd still be going 21 years later?
I think the beauty of when you're still young and you start is you don't think about 20 years time. That's just a crazy concept, you know. But I did always feel that I was in a band with really talented people that could write great songs, and just had this naive confidence and we always had this sort of togetherness. It doesn't massively surprise me, but I think now it would be very different. I'm just grateful we didn't have to have this reliance on social media when we were 17. You know, in a way now when a band breaks, it's really useful tool because it's global. So anyone from around the world can get access to bands, which wasn't the case for us. We wouldn't have been seen in other territories. We had to go out physically, go there for promo, play shows, get on TV shows, get in magazines. Maybe I sound old, but there's something a bit purer about that for me. I think it's very difficult for young artists - particularly really gifted artists can often be quite introverted and just really creative people, and the whole social media stuff doesn't really come naturally to them. So when they're coming into this industry and being told, you've got to do TikTok, you've got to do all these things, it's really overwhelming and stressful. So I'm so glad that wasn't the case for us.
Now you’re no stranger to The Jockey Club Live shows, having played Newmarket a few times, but what is it about the racecourse shows that you particularly enjoy?
I think at the races everyone has had a fun day of racing, been having some drinks, and then they're ready for some live music. So it’s often been a really fun carefree atmosphere you know? It's often people in their suits, and they've taken their ties off, and their shirts are open and there’s people on shoulders. It's just a really fun party atmosphere. They’re always fun gigs to play. I'm not a betting man though, I like going down and soaking up the atmosphere and seeing some of the horses, but Danny's the one that will be shuffling around placing some bets.
So, talking about your show, in your setlist sometimes you throw a few covers in there. If you personally had control of the setlist, and the other guys didn't get a word in, what cover would you love to add in?
That's a good one. I always want to do covers. I always wanted to cover Celine Dion's song. Funny enough, Danny when he was doing The Masked Singer was like,” oh, what song should I sing?” and I said, “do the Celine Dion song!” He did that. So I kind of finally got one of my requests in. But yeah, we've covered ‘Born to Run’ and ‘Dancing in the Dark’, the Springsteen songs. I love those songs. We've done a couple of Beatles covers. We generally do songs that we all enjoy. So anything I want to do, I always try and pick something that I know the crowd is going to enjoy. It's not really that much fun playing a cover song that no one knows. So we always try to pick one that we know is going to go down well.
Which track of yours is the one that you most look forward to reaching in the set list?
It's only on certain occasions, but if you're playing a set and maybe it's a bit dead of an atmosphere, ‘Star Girl’ always gets them going. So I'd say that's a good trump card to be like, “we'll get to that song, and then they'll get going”, you know? But to be honest, I feel like that's a rarity. Sometimes if we're playing a festival, and it's a really eclectic mix, and we go out and play a couple of new songs, and the crowd are like, “yeah, don't know this one” then it’s like okay, let's get to a hit quickly. ‘Star Girl’ is kind of one of those.
Finally, what can fans expect from your show?
It's basic, but I can as good as guarantee a good time. I can guarantee it to be good fun, loads of energy, at least a few songs that people are gonna know. We like to go away leaving people feeling good.
FOR MORE INFORMATION AND ALL MEDIA ENQUIRIES FOR
THE JOCKEY CLUB LIVE PLEASE CONTACT
Jenny Entwistle at Chuff Media
jenny@chuffmedia.com
