Birmingham rockers Peace are known for their infectious indie music and outlandish outfits. It’s a combination which has seen the band go up and up, with dedicated fans all over the world including England footballer Peter Crouch, and headline slots at festivals like Liverpool Sound City. They’ll be returning to Liverpool this autumn during a tour of their second album, Happy People. We caught up with lead singer Harry to talk fashion, Kurt Cobain and growing up.
You’re going to be back in Liverpool in September after headlining Sound City in May. How was that?
It was good, I enjoyed Sound City. We played in a big metal barn thing, which was quite nice. I wish I hadn’t worn what I was wearing though; I wore a tracksuit and a denim jacket and I looked a mess – that was the feedback I got from people.
Can fans mainly expect to hear your second album during your autumn tour?
It is mainly promotion of the second record but I’d hope we can do some new material by then. It’s about getting the time to rehearse it and turn it from a demo form into something we can play together. We really want to but it depends how much rehearsal time we have and we don’t want to play something that’s really bad.
Fashion seems to come up a lot in your interviews. Is it a persona of the band, or is that just the way you dress naturally?
I think it’s probably because we dress so awfully, that it’s a talking point. Usually when we do a face-to-face interview we look like such a mess, people usually find it hard to not comment on it and say: ‘Why have you chosen to wear that’? ‘Do you not know how to dress yourself ’?, and that type of thing. The truth behind it is that I have no idea. I
have a really horrible mixture of clothes and just throw them all together.
I loved the matching leather jackets, with toads painted on the back, which Peace wore in the ‘Gen Strange’ video though.
I wanted it to be like a proper, rubbish gang! We used to have leather jackets with paintings on the back that our friend used to paint in Birmingham. Mine had Marilyn Monroe on the
back, my friend had a really nice rabbit and everyone else had cool murals.
When it came to the toads thing, I was like ‘let’s just do our own thing, here’s some white paint’.
When I was younger, I always basically dressed like a complete freak and I guess the video was just a bit of fun because you never stood up for yourself when you were young. It’s what you’ve always wanted to do in your head, you want to throw the guy in the swamp who has called you a name or knock off his wing mirror but you never do. I was regressing into childhood a little. It was quite therapeutic!
Peter Crouch also starred in the video. How did that come about?
I’m so glad he was in it. My friend is an actor and was set to do the part but the day before the shoot he was like ‘I’ve been offered some work, I’ve got to do it’. We were thinking about people and I said ‘I could ask Peter Crouch but I really doubt he’d do it’, so we just laughed it off. I sent him a message and at first he was like ‘no I’ve got a football game, I’m in a hotel and the game is tomorrow.’ And then he said ‘you know what, I’ll get the train down. I’ll be a few hours.’ I couldn’t believe it, it was really cool.
There are more footballers who are more open about their music taste now, like Leighton Baines has his own music blog.
Yeah it’s cool. It’s a good cross-over, music and the football world. When I was younger those two things were very separate. At my school, there were a lot of kids who were into football and sport who would actively dislike me and my friends who were into music, and vice versa. That was the big divide, and it was quite nice to pull it all together and end up getting Peter Crouch involved. I grew up watching him play for England and then he was in our video.
You played the infamous Rabbit Hole at Glastonbury this year, what was that show like?
The Rabbit Hole was quite strange, it was like a small sort of pit. We just played covers for that set. We played ‘The Power of Love’ by Huey Lewis and the News and ‘Smells like Teen Spirit’ by Nirvana. We played a medley of our own songs, mixed in different bits for about five minutes and then mostly covers. We covered ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ seriously,
we didn’t make it ambient and cool, and we tried to make it sound as much like Nirvana as possible. It was quite fun taking on someone else, and channelling something so powerfully.
If you’re a fan of Nirvana, did you watch the recent Kurt Cobain documentary, ‘Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck’?
I did. I wasn’t going to because every time you watch a documentary or read a book about Kurt Cobain there’s about a month and a half where you try and write Nirvana songs. I’m writing an album at the moment so I really shouldn’t watch it, but I did and I’m trying to hold back from trying to write ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ over and over again!
By the time I got into Nirvana, when I was 14, he was already dead and it was already a thing that they could’ve been this big band but it was extinguished. The legacy just keeps rolling on, generation after generation of people that become obsessed. He did everything perfectly to be an ever-lasting rock and roll icon.
Have you enjoyed playing the festival circuit so far this summer?
We’ve only got Reading and Leeds left in the UK and then more in Europe towards the end of the summer and early autumn. We did a festival tour earlier year this in Australia. It was weird, you don’t get it really anywhere else in the world. The entire festival just packs up and everybody moves, and then two days after you do the whole thing again in another city – you keep doing that for four weeks.
It’s really strange, as it was exactly the same festival every time, like Groundhog Day. This might be the first year that I might have done enough festivals to be happy, whereas usually I can’t do enough.
So earlier this year Peace did a small intimate tour, then the whole festival circuit, and now you’re doing an autumn tour. You must be ready for a break soon?
I always think I will be but then there’s always this unexpected energy. Every year for the past three years we’ve done a lot of shows and festivals, and then at the end of it all I want to do
is make another album. I still can’t find the time to rest. When you’re doing something so enjoyable, it doesn’t feel like you need time off.
PEACE WILL PLAY AT O ACADEMY LIVERPOOL ON 24 SEPTEMBER TICKETS ARE AVAILABLE AT WWW.O2ACADEMYLIVERPOOL.CO.UK
