It's Not About You
|
After infecting the stv studio with their simplistic pop melodies, we caught up with Scouting
For Girls' frontman Roy Stride as the band left Scotland for a few gigs down south.
How did you find Scotland and the Scottish crowds?
I've got a bit of a love affair with Scotland at the moment. They're always crazy; they're
always brilliant. We were just at Belladrum festival a couple of weeks ago and that was one of the
best gigs we've ever done. And before I went there I spent four or five days driving round the
Highlands just to take in the place, I'd never been there before, and it was just incredible. Both
the gigs –King Tut's in Glasgow and the Edinburgh one – were just brilliant.
Going back to the beginning, how did you all meet?
Me and Greg [the guitarist] met at school when we were in the third year when we were about
11. And me and Pete [the drummer] met when we were in cubs when we were about six.
Whose idea was it to set up the band?
Me and Greg started playing the drums when we were 13, the drum teacher came to school and he
was like the coolest man we'd ever met in the world. So we decided to learn drums. Then I found an
old guitar in my mum's wardrobe and just started writing rubbish songs. I made Greg get a guitar
when we were 15, 16 and that's really where the band started.
What's the story behind the name?
The name gets us into a bit of trouble sometimes. It's a cheeky pun on the book
Scouting For Boys which is the original Boy's Own manual which was written a hundred years
ago. In one way it's quite cheeky and fun and in the other way it can sort of be a metaphor for the
music we make which can be really playful and childish in one sense but there's always a sense of
losing that childhood innocence. The name really does encompass everything that we are; it's a
metaphor that we're better when we were kids and also that the idea that Scouting For Girls also
suggests it's the maturation towards adulthood.
People who like Scouting For Girls can join their fan club called the Wolf Cub
Club. With a bit of prompting, Paul describes the perks of being a member.
It just started off on our website. You get a free badge, a membership card and some of the
other stuff we were giving out at the time. It's just really a fancy name for our mailing list.
But there are secret codes and things, aren't there?
Yeah, the idea was a bit like the Dennis the Menace club originally and it was just our way
of creating a really good relationship with our fans and the people who liked our music and came
down to see us. It's a really nice way of keeping in touch with the people who are letting us do
what we do now.
Your album, also called Scouting For Girls, is out on the 17 September what's it
like?
I think the two singles we've had give a good idea of what the album really is; really big,
happy pop songs like
She's So Lovely and the slightly more indie, big poppy songs like
It's Not About You. I think those two songs are a really good representation of what the
album really is. We wanted to make sure there wasn't any rubbish songs on there, there's nothing
worse than recording an album that's full of crap.
Would you say those two are your best songs or have you got some surprises for us?
No, I'm really looking forward to some of the other singles that we've got coming out. I love
She's So Lovely.
It's Not About You was actually dropped from the set then we went to record it and
everyone was like ‘It's a really great song'. I really love all the songs on the album - even the
secret track's brilliant, it's one of my favourite ones.
What genre would you say you fit into? Are you pop? Are you indie? Are you indie-pop?
I think we're just pop. I suppose we're a bit indie-pop. Indie to me is just people who
actually write their own songs. We're just pop music.
Who do you get your inspiration from?
I've just always loved great pop songs, like from the 60s. When I was a nipper my dad used to
play compilations of 60s and 70s great pop hits; I just grew up in the back of his car listening,
and I didn't realise it at the time, to some of the best pop music ever made. I think my influence
just comes from anything; it doesn't matter if it's a heavy metal band or a manufactured pop band –
a great song is a great song.
Your first single,
It's Not About You, charted at #31. How did you feel about that?
I was over the moon! It wasn't really a single, the label just wanted to release something to
give a sample of what we were. It had three album tracks on there, the idea was just to get a bit
of press. They didn't think it would get any radio play, nobody thought it would chart at all.
Apparently it was the highest charting EP by a debut artist. Corinne Bailey Rae got 34 or
something like that, so to get 31 was superb. I actually just looked on the iTunes chart and it's
still number 65, it's just mad.
Where are you hoping
She's So Lovely is going to chart?
I have no idea. I don't really understand how the charts work, I know it's obviously based on
sales but I have no idea how many you have to sell. I have no expectations. I'm just enjoying every
single moment we're doing this, we're having such a blast being on tour but it would be good if it
did really well.
Who did you write it about about?
That's a secret! It's had a few re-writes so it's been written about four or five different
people from school teachers that I fancied when I was young to other people. Even the other people
in the band have a had a say about who they think
She's So Lovely is about and I just agree with them, whoever they want it to be.
If it did do really well, would you re-release
It's Not About You? It seems to be the current trend…
I don't know, I'd rather not. I'm not just saying this but in all honesty when we were
recording the album there were eight songs that we thought could be really good singles. There are
about four or five songs that I would really like to release before having to re-release It's Not
About You. We've been together for so long we're got such a back catalogue that this album's like a
greatest hits! If they re-release it, they re-release it. If not, there's plenty of other songs I'd
love to get out there and it's just amazing, when a song gets on the radio, the energy it gives a
room when you're playing live, it's just absolutely nuts. When we did the Belladrum festival, we
had to do an encore because one artist had pulled out. We hadn't planned it and we just went up
there and did
It's Not About You but we didn't sing it, the crowd did.
The video for
It's Not About You has an actress who is a dead ringer for
Hollyoaks' Amy Barnes (we've been reliably informed that it's not her) but the band go one
better in the video for
She's So Lovely. Louise Glover plays the lead role and her life sounds amazing – a
Miss World finalist who went into ‘glamour' modelling and was named as Playboy's 2006 Model of the
Year. She recently started a career in wrestling, she accused Big Brother's Sezer Yurtseven
of raping her and she had a lesbian affair with Rebecca Loos. At slightly less of a tangent,
Louise is 24 years old, which makes the line ‘A stunner, I wonder, was she this fit when she was
ten years younger' seem a little suspect…
I'd no idea who Louise Glover was, or how old she was, she's supposed to be a 30-year-old. I
didn't know anything about that. When we did the video, we didn't have any scenes together and I
spoke to her very briefly and I said, ‘Have you done any acting before?' and she was going, ‘No,
this is this first time I've done any' so I asked, ‘What do you do?' and she said modelling. It was
only when one of the guys who was one of the extras in it sent us a link the next day saying who
she was - she was a Playmate model of the year or something. But she's supposed to be playing a
30-year-old.
What can we expect from you in the future?
I think it's going to be more touring, this is only really our second tour, we really enjoy
being on the road visiting all these new places. It was the first time I'd ever been to Edinburgh
yesterday and it was just such an incredible city I just can't wait to come back. I think it's just
more playing live and getting to do that as long as we can.
Have you started work on the second album?
Well we've got loads of songs hanging around that we keep trying to use in the set. I want to
make sure the second album's even better than the first. You see that with a lot of bands, they
release a first album's and that's it. I'm writing all the time so I'll make sure I keep some big
singles for it.
She's So Lovely is out on 3 September.
Interview by Oliver Gaywood
More videos:She's So Lovely
