#razorlight

It’s not tumblr-core and it’s not Lana Del Ray or 2013 AM, it’s not #girl interrupted, it’s not Ethel Cain (she literally is an artist of our time, what are you on about.)

It was 2001 with the Strokes on the cover of the NME every 2 weeks, it was cabaret night and English poetry with the Libertines in 2002, it’s those red and blue military jackets, it was the fucking grease in Julian Casablancas’ hair, it’s ’cocaine was the banker’s drug’ quoth Alex Kapranos, it was Don't Go Back To Dalston and the heroin, it was red and black horizontal striped tops and tight black shirts as evening wear, it was Russell Lissak’s mop top and a full page interview with London hairdressers in the NME in 2005, it was Jack and Meg’s saturated red and white dresses, it was glued glitter on the cover of Santigold’s first album, it was the sleaze and the sex of CSS’s music, it was ‘cold light, hot night’, it was the anti-Bush and anti-war stances of the bands at the time, it was America by Razorlight, it was Popworld on telly and Simon Amstel being a little shit to musicians, it was Karen O defying death on stage nightly, it was throwing up in shitty nightclubs on god knows what drugs, it was the fucking danger knowing this could all collapse any second—and rightly, it should. It was the godawful egos at DFA, it was knowing that while you were lucky to be seeing these bands live, you’d fucking hate them if you had to spend even a minute in their individual company. It was Amy Winehouse telling the world to get the fuck out of her business, it was Leslie Feist and Peaches sharing a dilapidated flat above a sex shop in Toronto.

It was horrible camera flash and red-eye editing softwares and putting your feet by the warm, spinning fans of your computer while it whirred away and downloaded your albums in *checks* 46 more minutes. It was horrible, it was dirty, it was gritty, we all hated it and thought the 90s were the last time music was good and that nothing good had happened since 1997. It was garishly bright clothes we were all embarrassed of by 2011, it was multiple layers and leggings and asking your mum to cut the itchy tag on the back of your low rise jeans only for her to snip your back. It was bell bottoms at the start of the decade. It being thankful that by 2017, no one would dream of wearing low rises anymore, please please, please let them never come back.

It was faux nostalgic of the past itself. It was ‘please make sure baby you’ve got some colours in there’ in your clothes. It was moral panic over emos. It was wanting to escape into a better past that you could see was visibly impoverished in the present. It was watching your favourite programmes become less and less relevant on air. It was watching MTV decisively die a horrible death. It was watching important venues and nightclubs get bulldozed. It was watching the last regular broadcast of Top Of The Pops in 2006. It was seeing how the 2009 financial crisis most definitely put a stop to independent music in the western world for a decade, it was watching the rise of bedroom DIY and electronic music. It was seeing the phrase ‘SoundCloud rapper’ being coined. It was the rise of Disney pop. It was counter-culture Justin Bieber hatred. It was the MS paint meme of those tumblr girls thoroughly unimpressed by the guy.

It was not using the words ‘indie sleaze’ at all, in fact. That’s a retconned word. It was garage rock revival. It was ‘post-grunge’. We didn’t care what it was called, we hated it all the same. It was a lead into a decade of despair and nihilism, it was the last hurrah for the music industry before it splintered into a thousand little online ecosystems, it was the last time we had physical community and any shared pop cultural moments. It was Live8 2005. It was the same as it is now, and it was a time that’ll never happen again, for better and for worse.

Had some thoughts on the change in the attitude of the press around the time Oasis started coming up... and thoughts on lad culture, lad mags and the tabloids. It got too long for the main post I was writing, so for those of you that like to think, “holy shit, two cakes!” here's the second cake. I am still baking the first but you'll see it soon.

The twin blow of the British tabloid press and the rise of lad magazines was potent and career-ending, sometimes life-threatening, and the Gallaghers were the first time their harsh glare was turned to the world of music. In particular, indie music, because initially, Oasis were no Madonna; none of these bands were. Rock music hadn't been important since the 1970s. Why would anyone care about these underground figures that only the music press and their dedicated followers would know?

No, it changed with Britpop, with lad culture, with Oasis. Sure, Oasis didn't invent lad culture (a point an extremely frustrated Noel Gallagher has argued many, many times, and sometimes, so has Liam. In fact, their latest hitbacks at the Simon Price article are just another in a long line of pushing back on the narrative that Oasis were somehow responsible singlehandedly for all the yobbish, misogynistic, homophobic and leery behaviour up and down the country from the 90s onwards). But slowly, there did begin to emerge undeniable evidence of the Britpop obsessed, slightly nationalistic, women-demeaning, drunk-bantering lad who believes that British culture begins and ends with the pub and public misbehaviour and hooliganism; all that is just banter and makes you a legend, and if you object to it, you're ruining the lads' fun.

It just so happens they're also an Oasis fan, because Liam went out and loudly proclaimed that he's a real lad (to Noel's protests). That violence and destructive behaviour was rock n roll, yeah? And notably, Oasis were one of the first bands in UK pop culture to wear their football allegiances on their sleeves out loud and proud; before them, football—sport in general—was not as closely associated with music, the team you supported as a musician or music fan was more like an an afterthought or an aside fun fact. By 1996, you could count on a musical celebrity charity football match to reliably raise a lot of funds.

To go back to the beginning, one of Oasis' first big headlines (for non musical reasons, before Definitely Maybe ever came out) was because they got arrested off the ferry to Amsterdam. Why? Because the band members got into a fight with rival West Ham football fans. Another was when hooligans in Newcastle had heard the stories of Oasis being hooligans and had assumed they were up for a fight and pummelled Noel onstage. There's also the (slightly exaggerated) story of Noel smashing Johnny Marr's guitar on another troublemaker's head when they were making to attack Liam. And all this was just 1994, the very beginning of their career. Football hooliganism and violence had become inextricably linked with Oasis gigs. The damage was done. Oasis were the de-facto face of lad culture, and all the mayhem that followed made for sensational stories that scandalised those who weren't involved and thrilled those who worshipped it. But either way, fucking hell, did it shift millions of papers.

The Gallagher effect on the press would keep the tabloids' eyes on the UK music scene for the next 20 years and consequently go on to ruin not only the lives of other Britpop stars and their partners, including Lisa Moorish, who was victim to a phone hacking incident that outed the fact that Liam was her kid's dad, and became a big scandal about the invasions of privacy on the private lives of celebrities, and I'm pretty sure the added scrutiny from the tabloids and lad mags added so much of its own strain to Damon Albarn and Justine Frischmann's very public, frontperson-to-frontperson relationship that Justine quit music altogether soon after Elastica broke up. I'm also pretty sure it was the exact same emboldenment of the tabloid press, the anything-for-a-snap recklessness that led to Princess Diana's death in 1997, hounded by the very same British tabloids, but even in mourning her death there came no reflection.

In the decade after Britpop, the tabloids would continue to prowl about and stick their nose into musicians' private lives. I just came across a harrowing video this week of the press standing in wait as Pete Doherty of the Libertines was released from prison for a drugs possession charge, give the man a second to breathe! It really hit me when after talking to a few journalists who were asking questions that he was probably not in any shape to be answering immediately about his two weeks in prison, he was handed a phone to talk to his mum— the press couldn't even wait until he'd privately talked to his own mother before beginning their inquisitions. They tried to tape his conversation with his mum too, of course. I couldn't find the exact video again, but here's another from the same day. It made me squirm.

They hounded and worsened the lives of Pete Doherty, Lily Allen, Johnny Borrell and most notably, Amy Winehouse. Yup. No one ever learns to step back until its too late and someone is dead. We're only lucky Pete is still with us. The only reason we haven't seen anything as bad within indie music today is because no one is yet big enough for the press to chase for clicks, and social media has changed the power balance between musicians/celebrities and journalists a bit. And believe you me, they are trying with Kneecap. They haven't succeeded yet beyond once ‘revealing’ that they lived with Móglaí Bap's granny ‘because Belfast landlords won't rent to them anymore’, to which they said, “yeah, she's cool, we love living with granny :)”.

Barn stormers!

NME catches up with some of last year's bands who are returning to Glastonbury as conquering heroes

Brandon Flowers The Killers

DAY: Friday TIME: 9:30pm STAGE: Pyramid

Last year, NME labelled you “the biggest draw of Glasto 2004”. Was it as good for you? “It was a really exciting time, a turning point for us. We didn't know how much England liked us!”

You were offered the job of replacing Kylie but turned it down. For the love of god, why? “Next year would be better. We want to feel that we grew and accomplished more later. There's nowhere to go from headlining the world's biggest festival!”

Will you be playing any Kylie songs in your set? “I'd like to. It'd be good to sing a few' nah nah nah's!”

Who are you looking forward to seeing? “The White Stripes. I'm a big fan, but I've never seen them live. I'm excited about the new album. I'm intrigued to see them play – just the two of them onstage.”

What's your best Glasto memory? “Watching Paul McCartney. Last year was my first Glastonbury and it was great.”

Are you planning any surprises or new songs? “We'll probably play a new song called ‘All The Pretty Faces’. It's great. We just need to write ten more now!”

Which bits of your set would you most like us to sing along to? “‘Glamorous Indie Rock & Roll’ or ‘All These Things That I've Done’. People singing along is what we focus on. I was one of those people who sang along and I still am.”

Where's the best place to have sex at Glasto? “On Ronnie's drumkit! If any NME readers are interested, just talk to our tour manager…”

Finally, do you have a festival survival secret? “Carrots. A lot of greens. Eat well!”

Carl Dalemo Razorlight

SATURDAY, OTHER STAGE, 11.05PM

Last year, NME labelled you “Third Summer Of Love heroes”! Was it as good for you? “We were added to the Other Stage bill so late that we weren't in the programme. But it was an amazing gig.”

Who do you want to see? “Brian Wilson, The Undertones and Elvis Costello.”

What's your worst Glasto memory? “Me and my girlfriend made the mistake of not going home in the band van. The next day, we walked around for hours until we got a taxi to the station, but then had to queue for two hours for the train.”

Planning any surprises or new songs? “Since we're headlining, we can do more or less what we like with the lights and stuff. It's gonna be big.”

Should we ban hoodies from this year's festival? “No, no, no, no, no! I like to wear my hood up. Hooded tops aren't to blame for any type of youth crime wave.”

Do you have a survival secret? “If it's muddy, don't worry! It's just a bit of mud.”

Tom Meighan Kasabian

SATURDAY, OTHER STAGE, 9.20PM

Last year, NME labelled you, um, “the new Darkness”! But we meant it in a nice way-you played dead early and went on to become massive, just like them, right? “Totally! Walking onstage at 11am and seeing 20,000 people there! That was fucking empire!”

Who do you want to see? “Bloc Party and Coldplay. They're the only bands I know who are playing the same day as us.”

Who do you not want to see? “Old men who are in their 70s with big, long, grey beards that are hanging to their knees. Gotta let go.”

Who should have replaced Kylie? “Shirley Bassey!”

Will you be obeying the anti-'shroom laws? “No! No! No! Fuck that! 'Shrooms are free. They grow in the fucking soil. They're real. God gave you 'em!”

Are you planning any surprises or new songs? “We've got a new song called ‘The Stunt Man’ Basically it's about Evel Knievel. That guy's a legend.”

There's no Glasto next year, where will you be? “Making babies!”

Worst Glasto memory? “Leaving on the Sunday at 5pm on the greatest comedown of my life. I was on a comedown 'cos I was leaving. Glastonbury was just wonderful.”

What's the best festival drug? “The air you breathe in.”

What's your favourite field? “It's all around you, innit? I like Stonehenge, where everyone lies around and stares at the stars.”

Translator's Note: I originally thought about not extracting Kasabian's short interview, given what had happened years ago. But then my brain reminded me that I still gotta do it because it's part of history.