Gallows, Kerrang!, May 2, 2009

THERE WAS a time, not so long ago, where Gallows had the horrible fear that they were turning into cartoon characters. They were, in the eyes of many, the Watford hard nuts who hated everything. The one-dimensional punks, spitting and kicking their way through live shows, baring their teeth and tattoos for pictures.
Recorded on a shoestring, their debut album pushed them into the spotlight, prompting magazines, musicians, gig-goers and tastemakers to rush to an opinion. There were those like My Chemical Romance’s Frank Iero and Bad Religion’s Brett Gurewitz who hailed them as heroes. There were yet more who looked to them as a band, finally, with something to say.
There were others, though, who branded them violent chavs. Black and white beliefs based on live shows in which singer Frank Carter would swing punches in the front row, his bandmates not always far behind.
They were a band about whose members people jumped to quick conclusions. Odd this, given that those five men had never really revealed very much about themselves. Because somehow, amid the sniping and hyping, nobody thought much to ask them what they reckoned about it all. Nobody thought to find out how they lived their lives, who they were behind the caricatures, quotes and criticisms. Until now.
Over a period of months spent intermittently in their company – from interviews during the writing of their imminent new album, to strolls around London; from phone calls during the recording process to long chats in the nerve-jangling weeks before Grey Britain’s release – a picture of a band very much at odds with their billing emerges.
Because this is a band of individuals who all, despite their differences, believe in the same thing. This is a band of five complex characters, all with something to say. This is not the band you thought it was.
IT WAS after the four musicians in Gallows had spent two months working intensively on new material last summer, that singer Frank Carter stopped by to tell them their efforts were “shit”.
Guitarist Lags Barnard, the man who the rest of Gallows credit as the musical mastermind behind the band, had been writing at his parents’ house, where he still lives. He’d record his ideas onto his phone – bassist Stu Gili-Ross jokes that any band short on ideas should nick it – where he’d created a vast memory bank of riffs. Next, he’d bring them to the band and they’d craft them further.
In the back of their minds were two things nagging away. The first was the weight of expectation upon them. Their record deal with Warner Brothers was signed for a cool million pounds – a quantity of money rare in these cash-strapped record industry times, especially for a punk band. There were also external hopes to either live up to or quash: those of the band’s champions and those of their doubters, too.
More than that, though, were their own expectations. Never a band to slip on the autopilot, their overriding drive was to always be better. And so it was that, locked away in their rehearsal space, they developed cabin fever.
Lined up on the horizon was producer Garth Richardson, responsible for records by Rage Against The Machine, Red Hot Chili Peppers and, more recently, Biffy Clyro. “This was our chance to make a big fucking record, in a massive studio, with a massive producer, and we didn’t want to blow it,” says Barnard.
Frank Carter, meanwhile, was steering clear at the home he shares with his brother, guitarist Steph, his two other brothers and mum. There he was writing lyrics, plotting and feeling the pressure as well.
“He came in with a fresh pair of ears and said, ‘It’s shit’,” says Gili-Ross. “We said ‘Fuck you’.”
“It was pretty vicious,” adds Frank.
But then the singer explained why the songs were shit. He brought out detailed notes and precise reasons for his thoughts. He wrote an essay for the band describing what he envisaged. “They had all the pieces to make an incendiary bomb,” he says. “But they didn't have the instructions.”
“And he was right,” says Gili-Ross. “There was no point stressing out about it.”
The problem had been one of focus, according to Barnard. “Basically, we were trying to do too much. We were lurching from happy tunes to dark ones. We were all over the place.”
“We’re not best friends, we’re brothers – in mine and Steph’s case, blood brothers – and that’s how our relationship works,” says Frank Carter, explaining his brutal honesty. “We take pride in what we do, so there has to that level of honesty or it will all fall apart.”
Immediately after the confrontation, Frank was being sent new songs daily. “And they were all amazing,” he adds.
STEPH CARTER describes himself as “the sensible one” in Gallows. In person, he’s disarmingly friendly, frequently smiling and always with a nice word about those around him. In interviews he can be quiet though, overshadowed by his brother.
A straight-edger, like Frank, Barnard says “Steph’s the <i>most</i> dependable person. He’s the calm influence on the chaotic sea that is Gallows.” This is perhaps why, when in the studio last autumn and winter, it was left to him to oversee his brother’s aborted first vocal takes.
Struggling with a desperately painful acid-reflux condition that made singing impossible, Frank was having it tough. Richardson had spotted Steph’s interest in studio techniques. The guitarist studied music at university and his dissertation was made up of an album he had written and recorded himself.
“I got on really well with Garth and Ben [Kaplin, engineer] because, more than anything, I treated it as a learning curve. What I learned from them in the first weeks was more than I learned in three years at university.
“When he was doing Frank’s vocals, Garth didn’t want a lot of people there. He looked at me and said, ‘You’re his brother – I want you to help out’. Obviously what Frank was going through was fucking difficult. He was stressing out. He tried singing half of a track and it didn't work, so he ended up screaming and throwing his microphone against the wall. Garth came in and said, ‘So, how did it go? Did you get what we needed?’ I was like, ‘Erm... no. Not really.’
So the recording session continued without Frank’s vocals, to be added at the beginning of this year after his recovery.
Frank, though, was far from the only one who got angry in the studio. Drummer Lee Barratt – another of the band quiet in interviews, but chatty elsewhere – found himself getting slowly furious. His initial drum parts had been rejected, meanwhile, Richardson had taken a dislike to his playing.
“Garth would come in and catch cymbals while I was recording. I was like, ‘What the fuck are you doing?’” he says.
Outwardly the drummer appears calm and level-headed. Inside, according to Gili-Ross, he can be prone to anger. “He gets mental road rage,” says the bassist. “He is quite calm but, if you cut him up on the M25, then beware.”
“There was a bit of tension [in the studio],” he says. “But I played the best after there was a row. I did The Riverbank in one take, probably because I was so pissed off with everything when I did it.”
“That’s the genius of producers,” adds Gili-Ross. “They don’t say, hit it harder, give me some anger, they wind you up to the point where you think ‘I’m gonna swing for this fella’. But I played harder on this album than I've ever played before. And it sounds amazing.”
WITH THE sessions so intense, Gallows needed to find a release. Living in three flats that were part of the London studio, they became the go-to party destination for their friends.
“Garth Richardson has worked with a lot of hellraisers and he said we are the most riotous party band he's ever seen,” says Gili-Ross proudly, before fretting he shouldn’t reveal this sort of thing.
“Fuck it,” he adds, on consideration, “it all happened. There were boys dressed as girls, girls in bath tubs, naked photo shoots happening in the sauna, naked chicks, boys dancing with their trousers round their ankles…”
“…£100 buy-in poker games, everyone having a hella good time…” adds Steph.
“…More empty hard liquor bottles on the floor than is healthy. It looked like something out of Sodom and Gomorrah. We managed not only to have a fucking good time, we also made a record we’re really proud of.” says Gili-Ross.
It’s the bass player, alongside Barnard, who is most likely to be seen out and about having a good time. Thoroughly grounded in every other respect, he does profess a shame-faced love of Dom Perignon champagne (or “DP”, as he calls it), something for which his bandmates tease him about constantly. It’s his one rock star trapping because, for the rest of the time, Gili-Ross is someone who can’t stand flashness.
“The way we were brought up is that you should keep quiet if you’ve got any money in your pocket because, otherwise, the minute you leave the pub, someone will have it off you in an alleyway,” he says. “There are so many bands out there who really want to be rock stars, swanning around, getting sucked off on the bus and doing drugs. We’ve never ever said we’re anything but five lads from Hertfordshire playing the music we want to play. We love our mums and dads and you can meet us in the pub and we could be anyone.”
“Stu keeps us together and makes sure none of us get too big for our boots,” says Steph Carter of his bassist. “I'm also glad he’s in our band because if shit ever kicks off, then I'd rather he was on my side than against me. He’s good at keeping everything together when the mood is shitty – which it often is when we're on tour.”
At least some of the reason for such unstarry ideals is, according to Gili-Ross, where they all currently live. “If there’s one fatal blow to anyone’s opinion of us as rock stars, it’s the fact we all live with our mums and dads,” he laughs. “I'm nearly 30. I earn more than my mum and dad put together and I still get told to tidy my fucking room.”
WHEN HE’S not tidying his room, Gili-Ross can often be alongside Barnard as he DJs in clubs. It was a niche the guitarist carved out when Grey Britain’s recording and, then, release was delayed by Frank Carter’s acid-reflux problems.
“It’s totally different from being in Gallows, which is quite nice,” he says. “Gallows is fun but it’s pretty intense. This gives me a break. It makes life interesting. I don’t see the point of being in a band and moaning about everything. There’s nothing to moan about. You get presented with so many chances to do different things. You’d be an idiot not to take them.”
A self-taught guitarist, Barnard says he’s an optimist – “life’s too short to be a pessimist” – and knew he was musical from a young age. Watching TV, he’d hear jingles and be able to pick them out on a piano. He progressed from the keyboard to the bass (an instrument he didn’t like because he thought no-one could hear him) before picking up his father’s acoustic guitar. He’s never looked back and it’s his relentless creativity that drives the band’s music.
Ask him about it, though, and he’s modest, preferring to talk of how much his bandmates contribute. In fact, he’d almost rather no-one knew how much he writes at all.
“Everyone around me knows what I do, that’s enough for me,” he says. “The band doesn’t rely on me, everyone has their input.”
Tall, likeable and self-effacing, he’s uncomfortable with much inquisition into his life. If he had it his way, the band would write songs, record and tour them and that would be it.
“If it could just be as easy as playing and writing, I’d be fine with that,” he says. “I’m into t-shirt designs and artwork but – I don’t know – it starts making you feel as though the band is a product. I don’t want people to see Gallows as a vehicle to make money. I don’t ever want to see Frank Carter dolls or anything like that. It’s so embarrassing.”
It perhaps explains why he’s more relaxed talking about music than anything else. Certainly being in the limelight is something he finds awkward.
“I’ve seen bands where everyone’s fighting to be in the photos – I hate that,” he says. “My mum always has a go at me, saying ‘You’re always in the back of every picture’. I say it’s because I’m the tallest but, really, I just have no need to be at the front.”
IT WAS Barnard and Frank Carter who started Gallows. The guitarist first saw his future singer around eight years ago when both were regular faces on the Hertfordshire hardcore scene.
“I remember his first band,” says Barnard. “He’d literally get in the crowd and start the pit himself. He was a 16, 17-year old kid and I thought he was fucking mental. I’d watch him, thinking ‘He’s a fucking nutter, what’s he doing?’ But I just had a feeling that, if I did a band with Frank, it would definitely be interesting.”
The image of a “fucking nutter” is the one that follows the singer: a wiry fucker with tattooed torso, neck and skull who’ll take on anyone. Even those in his family recognise there’s some truth to that.
“He’s really, really, really passionate about anything he does,” says his brother Steph. “Maybe a little too passionate. His heart’s always in the right place... his fists might not always be.”
It’s a picture, of course, that fails to tell anything like the full story.
The first thing that’s obvious is his presence. He may only be 5ft 7in, he may only weigh 120 pounds, but he has a way of filling space. Then there’s his voice, calm, reasoned and intelligent. It’s just the first in a series of things that would surprise those who’d paint him as a North London Begby.
He’s spent much of the previous month in New York. There are three reasons for this: the first is that his girlfriend lives there. The second is that he likes it there. The third is that it has kept him out of Britain, away from the press and away from constant reminders that the album he hoped would be out at the beginning of the year spent time under wraps waiting for the record company-deemed right time of release. “I had to take my mind of it. I was like, ‘Fuck this, I'm getting out of here’,” he says. The time he spent in New York was mellow.
“I’m as far from being a rock star as you can get,” he says. “I spent my time there picking up my girlfriend from work, going out for the odd pizza, hanging out in tattoo parlours, then sitting in bed watching Shark Week documentaries. We drank tea, made dinner for each other, went to the laundrette and played Pacman on the arcade machine while we waited for our washing. That, for me, is my ideal life.
“I think I'm a far cry from the person people see onstage. They expect me to walk around with an angry face on, kicking the shit out of everyone. That's not the case at all. I'm in the band for a reason and it's because I need an outlet for the fucking frustration that affects me every single day. The outlet is Gallows and, if I didn't have it, I don't know what I'd do.”
However, the anger he feels – and in the case of Grey Britain, it’s anger at the state of the country – is something he channels only through the band.
“When I'm onstage I'm Frank Gallows, when I'm off it, I'm Christopher Carter. Frank's not my real name,” he explains. “There is a massive difference between the person I am onstage and the person people might see walking around.”
He accepts, though, that his brother is right in his assessment of him: that he can be too passionate. It plays out as a need to be in control at all times.
“The problem with being in a band is that you have to rely so heavily on other people to make it work,” he says. “I genuinely can't take on anymore – otherwise I would.”
FRANK CARTER’S dedication, alongside that of his bandmates, means Gallows have a level of quality control unrivalled by other bands. He says he’s “literally poured [himself] out to make Gallows the best thing it can be”.
However, with so much of himself woven into the band’s DNA, it means any external criticism of their music feels like a criticism of himself. “I'd probably say I was over-sensitive. I think that comes from having a real care to have my art interpreted properly – i.e. as art,” he says.
He’s been the same way for much of his life. At school Maths and Science went over his head but English and especially Art were where his talents lay. In fact, drawing is something in which he excelled from a young age and, if he’s honest, he’d probably prefer to paint or tattoo rather than sing.
“I'd rather be an artist than a musician,” he agrees. “I'd love to exhibit my work and I will try. I've painted watercolours my whole life but I’ve just started painting with oils – still life stuff – and it’s changed my whole way of thinking. When I sit at home and paint, I feel nothing but bliss. I sit there for 13 hours at a time, painting in my bedroom. My family’s around. My mum will sit and watch, chatting to me.”
He painted all the artwork for Grey Britain too. When it proved too complicated to get their first choice of artist involved, Frank Carter just took the project on himself.
“I did the whole thing once, hated it, and immediately threw it away. It took me two months,” he says. “Then I started again. It’s four feet long; it’s a big fucking painting. I laid the paper out and, for seven days, sat at my kitchen table painting. I was really careful over it. I still look at it now and think, ‘Fuck yeah’. I’m so proud of it.”
IT’S THAT word – proud – that, more than anything, defines Gallows. This is a band who take pride in everything they do. There are others who, as they twitchily wait for their album release date to dawn, nervously pick holes in their work, wishing they’d done things differently.
You know that Gallows aren’t doing this; you know this because they wouldn’t have left the studio with it imperfect. That’s what taking pride means.
And they’re right to be proud of it. Timely, pointed and relevant, it’s an album that takes everything that’s wrong with this country and aims a punch at it. Just as the most important punk bands of the late ‘70s held the depression-caused wastelands of Britain up to the light, so Gallows are doing the same now. Ironically, those heroes of 1977 – the Pistols, The Clash – went on to become rock stars, one of them even sells butter these days. Despite their best efforts not to go down that path, it’s something that might well happen to Gallows too, given Radio 1 and MTV’s rotation of the distinctly un-radio friendly single The Vulture.
Barnard tells a funny story, but it’s one that serves to illustrate both their reluctance to pander to stardom and also points out the disparity between their public façade and their private demeanour.
When Gallows attended the premiere of the Watchmen film, they strolled along the red carpet – or actually, in this case, the yellow one – expecting no-one to know who they were. Suddenly a gaggle of Gallows fans yelled at them for autographs.
“We all started mumbling, ‘What do we do?’ to each other,” says the guitarist, mortified. “We thought it might be best to pretend we didn’t hear it. You can’t spend your whole time onstage telling people that you’re just like them and then wander around signing autographs on a red carpet.”
Inside the band, there was hideous embarrassment at appearing to be the clichés they despise. Those fans, though, may well have mistaken their reluctance for rock star cool. And maybe it’s this error in perception that has led to so many false assumptions about Gallows. And it’s maybe this that they’ll need to address.
Because Grey Britain’s an album so brilliant, so pertinent and significant, that everyone will soon want a piece of them.
© Tom Bryant 2010
Recorded on a shoestring, their debut album pushed them into the spotlight, prompting magazines, musicians, gig-goers and tastemakers to rush to an opinion. There were those like My Chemical Romance’s Frank Iero and Bad Religion’s Brett Gurewitz who hailed them as heroes. There were yet more who looked to them as a band, finally, with something to say.
There were others, though, who branded them violent chavs. Black and white beliefs based on live shows in which singer Frank Carter would swing punches in the front row, his bandmates not always far behind.
They were a band about whose members people jumped to quick conclusions. Odd this, given that those five men had never really revealed very much about themselves. Because somehow, amid the sniping and hyping, nobody thought much to ask them what they reckoned about it all. Nobody thought to find out how they lived their lives, who they were behind the caricatures, quotes and criticisms. Until now.
Over a period of months spent intermittently in their company – from interviews during the writing of their imminent new album, to strolls around London; from phone calls during the recording process to long chats in the nerve-jangling weeks before Grey Britain’s release – a picture of a band very much at odds with their billing emerges.
Because this is a band of individuals who all, despite their differences, believe in the same thing. This is a band of five complex characters, all with something to say. This is not the band you thought it was.
IT WAS after the four musicians in Gallows had spent two months working intensively on new material last summer, that singer Frank Carter stopped by to tell them their efforts were “shit”.
Guitarist Lags Barnard, the man who the rest of Gallows credit as the musical mastermind behind the band, had been writing at his parents’ house, where he still lives. He’d record his ideas onto his phone – bassist Stu Gili-Ross jokes that any band short on ideas should nick it – where he’d created a vast memory bank of riffs. Next, he’d bring them to the band and they’d craft them further.
In the back of their minds were two things nagging away. The first was the weight of expectation upon them. Their record deal with Warner Brothers was signed for a cool million pounds – a quantity of money rare in these cash-strapped record industry times, especially for a punk band. There were also external hopes to either live up to or quash: those of the band’s champions and those of their doubters, too.
More than that, though, were their own expectations. Never a band to slip on the autopilot, their overriding drive was to always be better. And so it was that, locked away in their rehearsal space, they developed cabin fever.
Lined up on the horizon was producer Garth Richardson, responsible for records by Rage Against The Machine, Red Hot Chili Peppers and, more recently, Biffy Clyro. “This was our chance to make a big fucking record, in a massive studio, with a massive producer, and we didn’t want to blow it,” says Barnard.
Frank Carter, meanwhile, was steering clear at the home he shares with his brother, guitarist Steph, his two other brothers and mum. There he was writing lyrics, plotting and feeling the pressure as well.
“He came in with a fresh pair of ears and said, ‘It’s shit’,” says Gili-Ross. “We said ‘Fuck you’.”
“It was pretty vicious,” adds Frank.
But then the singer explained why the songs were shit. He brought out detailed notes and precise reasons for his thoughts. He wrote an essay for the band describing what he envisaged. “They had all the pieces to make an incendiary bomb,” he says. “But they didn't have the instructions.”
“And he was right,” says Gili-Ross. “There was no point stressing out about it.”
The problem had been one of focus, according to Barnard. “Basically, we were trying to do too much. We were lurching from happy tunes to dark ones. We were all over the place.”
“We’re not best friends, we’re brothers – in mine and Steph’s case, blood brothers – and that’s how our relationship works,” says Frank Carter, explaining his brutal honesty. “We take pride in what we do, so there has to that level of honesty or it will all fall apart.”
Immediately after the confrontation, Frank was being sent new songs daily. “And they were all amazing,” he adds.
STEPH CARTER describes himself as “the sensible one” in Gallows. In person, he’s disarmingly friendly, frequently smiling and always with a nice word about those around him. In interviews he can be quiet though, overshadowed by his brother.
A straight-edger, like Frank, Barnard says “Steph’s the <i>most</i> dependable person. He’s the calm influence on the chaotic sea that is Gallows.” This is perhaps why, when in the studio last autumn and winter, it was left to him to oversee his brother’s aborted first vocal takes.
Struggling with a desperately painful acid-reflux condition that made singing impossible, Frank was having it tough. Richardson had spotted Steph’s interest in studio techniques. The guitarist studied music at university and his dissertation was made up of an album he had written and recorded himself.
“I got on really well with Garth and Ben [Kaplin, engineer] because, more than anything, I treated it as a learning curve. What I learned from them in the first weeks was more than I learned in three years at university.
“When he was doing Frank’s vocals, Garth didn’t want a lot of people there. He looked at me and said, ‘You’re his brother – I want you to help out’. Obviously what Frank was going through was fucking difficult. He was stressing out. He tried singing half of a track and it didn't work, so he ended up screaming and throwing his microphone against the wall. Garth came in and said, ‘So, how did it go? Did you get what we needed?’ I was like, ‘Erm... no. Not really.’
So the recording session continued without Frank’s vocals, to be added at the beginning of this year after his recovery.
Frank, though, was far from the only one who got angry in the studio. Drummer Lee Barratt – another of the band quiet in interviews, but chatty elsewhere – found himself getting slowly furious. His initial drum parts had been rejected, meanwhile, Richardson had taken a dislike to his playing.
“Garth would come in and catch cymbals while I was recording. I was like, ‘What the fuck are you doing?’” he says.
Outwardly the drummer appears calm and level-headed. Inside, according to Gili-Ross, he can be prone to anger. “He gets mental road rage,” says the bassist. “He is quite calm but, if you cut him up on the M25, then beware.”
“There was a bit of tension [in the studio],” he says. “But I played the best after there was a row. I did The Riverbank in one take, probably because I was so pissed off with everything when I did it.”
“That’s the genius of producers,” adds Gili-Ross. “They don’t say, hit it harder, give me some anger, they wind you up to the point where you think ‘I’m gonna swing for this fella’. But I played harder on this album than I've ever played before. And it sounds amazing.”
WITH THE sessions so intense, Gallows needed to find a release. Living in three flats that were part of the London studio, they became the go-to party destination for their friends.
“Garth Richardson has worked with a lot of hellraisers and he said we are the most riotous party band he's ever seen,” says Gili-Ross proudly, before fretting he shouldn’t reveal this sort of thing.
“Fuck it,” he adds, on consideration, “it all happened. There were boys dressed as girls, girls in bath tubs, naked photo shoots happening in the sauna, naked chicks, boys dancing with their trousers round their ankles…”
“…£100 buy-in poker games, everyone having a hella good time…” adds Steph.
“…More empty hard liquor bottles on the floor than is healthy. It looked like something out of Sodom and Gomorrah. We managed not only to have a fucking good time, we also made a record we’re really proud of.” says Gili-Ross.
It’s the bass player, alongside Barnard, who is most likely to be seen out and about having a good time. Thoroughly grounded in every other respect, he does profess a shame-faced love of Dom Perignon champagne (or “DP”, as he calls it), something for which his bandmates tease him about constantly. It’s his one rock star trapping because, for the rest of the time, Gili-Ross is someone who can’t stand flashness.
“The way we were brought up is that you should keep quiet if you’ve got any money in your pocket because, otherwise, the minute you leave the pub, someone will have it off you in an alleyway,” he says. “There are so many bands out there who really want to be rock stars, swanning around, getting sucked off on the bus and doing drugs. We’ve never ever said we’re anything but five lads from Hertfordshire playing the music we want to play. We love our mums and dads and you can meet us in the pub and we could be anyone.”
“Stu keeps us together and makes sure none of us get too big for our boots,” says Steph Carter of his bassist. “I'm also glad he’s in our band because if shit ever kicks off, then I'd rather he was on my side than against me. He’s good at keeping everything together when the mood is shitty – which it often is when we're on tour.”
At least some of the reason for such unstarry ideals is, according to Gili-Ross, where they all currently live. “If there’s one fatal blow to anyone’s opinion of us as rock stars, it’s the fact we all live with our mums and dads,” he laughs. “I'm nearly 30. I earn more than my mum and dad put together and I still get told to tidy my fucking room.”
WHEN HE’S not tidying his room, Gili-Ross can often be alongside Barnard as he DJs in clubs. It was a niche the guitarist carved out when Grey Britain’s recording and, then, release was delayed by Frank Carter’s acid-reflux problems.
“It’s totally different from being in Gallows, which is quite nice,” he says. “Gallows is fun but it’s pretty intense. This gives me a break. It makes life interesting. I don’t see the point of being in a band and moaning about everything. There’s nothing to moan about. You get presented with so many chances to do different things. You’d be an idiot not to take them.”
A self-taught guitarist, Barnard says he’s an optimist – “life’s too short to be a pessimist” – and knew he was musical from a young age. Watching TV, he’d hear jingles and be able to pick them out on a piano. He progressed from the keyboard to the bass (an instrument he didn’t like because he thought no-one could hear him) before picking up his father’s acoustic guitar. He’s never looked back and it’s his relentless creativity that drives the band’s music.
Ask him about it, though, and he’s modest, preferring to talk of how much his bandmates contribute. In fact, he’d almost rather no-one knew how much he writes at all.
“Everyone around me knows what I do, that’s enough for me,” he says. “The band doesn’t rely on me, everyone has their input.”
Tall, likeable and self-effacing, he’s uncomfortable with much inquisition into his life. If he had it his way, the band would write songs, record and tour them and that would be it.
“If it could just be as easy as playing and writing, I’d be fine with that,” he says. “I’m into t-shirt designs and artwork but – I don’t know – it starts making you feel as though the band is a product. I don’t want people to see Gallows as a vehicle to make money. I don’t ever want to see Frank Carter dolls or anything like that. It’s so embarrassing.”
It perhaps explains why he’s more relaxed talking about music than anything else. Certainly being in the limelight is something he finds awkward.
“I’ve seen bands where everyone’s fighting to be in the photos – I hate that,” he says. “My mum always has a go at me, saying ‘You’re always in the back of every picture’. I say it’s because I’m the tallest but, really, I just have no need to be at the front.”
IT WAS Barnard and Frank Carter who started Gallows. The guitarist first saw his future singer around eight years ago when both were regular faces on the Hertfordshire hardcore scene.
“I remember his first band,” says Barnard. “He’d literally get in the crowd and start the pit himself. He was a 16, 17-year old kid and I thought he was fucking mental. I’d watch him, thinking ‘He’s a fucking nutter, what’s he doing?’ But I just had a feeling that, if I did a band with Frank, it would definitely be interesting.”
The image of a “fucking nutter” is the one that follows the singer: a wiry fucker with tattooed torso, neck and skull who’ll take on anyone. Even those in his family recognise there’s some truth to that.
“He’s really, really, really passionate about anything he does,” says his brother Steph. “Maybe a little too passionate. His heart’s always in the right place... his fists might not always be.”
It’s a picture, of course, that fails to tell anything like the full story.
The first thing that’s obvious is his presence. He may only be 5ft 7in, he may only weigh 120 pounds, but he has a way of filling space. Then there’s his voice, calm, reasoned and intelligent. It’s just the first in a series of things that would surprise those who’d paint him as a North London Begby.
He’s spent much of the previous month in New York. There are three reasons for this: the first is that his girlfriend lives there. The second is that he likes it there. The third is that it has kept him out of Britain, away from the press and away from constant reminders that the album he hoped would be out at the beginning of the year spent time under wraps waiting for the record company-deemed right time of release. “I had to take my mind of it. I was like, ‘Fuck this, I'm getting out of here’,” he says. The time he spent in New York was mellow.
“I’m as far from being a rock star as you can get,” he says. “I spent my time there picking up my girlfriend from work, going out for the odd pizza, hanging out in tattoo parlours, then sitting in bed watching Shark Week documentaries. We drank tea, made dinner for each other, went to the laundrette and played Pacman on the arcade machine while we waited for our washing. That, for me, is my ideal life.
“I think I'm a far cry from the person people see onstage. They expect me to walk around with an angry face on, kicking the shit out of everyone. That's not the case at all. I'm in the band for a reason and it's because I need an outlet for the fucking frustration that affects me every single day. The outlet is Gallows and, if I didn't have it, I don't know what I'd do.”
However, the anger he feels – and in the case of Grey Britain, it’s anger at the state of the country – is something he channels only through the band.
“When I'm onstage I'm Frank Gallows, when I'm off it, I'm Christopher Carter. Frank's not my real name,” he explains. “There is a massive difference between the person I am onstage and the person people might see walking around.”
He accepts, though, that his brother is right in his assessment of him: that he can be too passionate. It plays out as a need to be in control at all times.
“The problem with being in a band is that you have to rely so heavily on other people to make it work,” he says. “I genuinely can't take on anymore – otherwise I would.”
FRANK CARTER’S dedication, alongside that of his bandmates, means Gallows have a level of quality control unrivalled by other bands. He says he’s “literally poured [himself] out to make Gallows the best thing it can be”.
However, with so much of himself woven into the band’s DNA, it means any external criticism of their music feels like a criticism of himself. “I'd probably say I was over-sensitive. I think that comes from having a real care to have my art interpreted properly – i.e. as art,” he says.
He’s been the same way for much of his life. At school Maths and Science went over his head but English and especially Art were where his talents lay. In fact, drawing is something in which he excelled from a young age and, if he’s honest, he’d probably prefer to paint or tattoo rather than sing.
“I'd rather be an artist than a musician,” he agrees. “I'd love to exhibit my work and I will try. I've painted watercolours my whole life but I’ve just started painting with oils – still life stuff – and it’s changed my whole way of thinking. When I sit at home and paint, I feel nothing but bliss. I sit there for 13 hours at a time, painting in my bedroom. My family’s around. My mum will sit and watch, chatting to me.”
He painted all the artwork for Grey Britain too. When it proved too complicated to get their first choice of artist involved, Frank Carter just took the project on himself.
“I did the whole thing once, hated it, and immediately threw it away. It took me two months,” he says. “Then I started again. It’s four feet long; it’s a big fucking painting. I laid the paper out and, for seven days, sat at my kitchen table painting. I was really careful over it. I still look at it now and think, ‘Fuck yeah’. I’m so proud of it.”
IT’S THAT word – proud – that, more than anything, defines Gallows. This is a band who take pride in everything they do. There are others who, as they twitchily wait for their album release date to dawn, nervously pick holes in their work, wishing they’d done things differently.
You know that Gallows aren’t doing this; you know this because they wouldn’t have left the studio with it imperfect. That’s what taking pride means.
And they’re right to be proud of it. Timely, pointed and relevant, it’s an album that takes everything that’s wrong with this country and aims a punch at it. Just as the most important punk bands of the late ‘70s held the depression-caused wastelands of Britain up to the light, so Gallows are doing the same now. Ironically, those heroes of 1977 – the Pistols, The Clash – went on to become rock stars, one of them even sells butter these days. Despite their best efforts not to go down that path, it’s something that might well happen to Gallows too, given Radio 1 and MTV’s rotation of the distinctly un-radio friendly single The Vulture.
Barnard tells a funny story, but it’s one that serves to illustrate both their reluctance to pander to stardom and also points out the disparity between their public façade and their private demeanour.
When Gallows attended the premiere of the Watchmen film, they strolled along the red carpet – or actually, in this case, the yellow one – expecting no-one to know who they were. Suddenly a gaggle of Gallows fans yelled at them for autographs.
“We all started mumbling, ‘What do we do?’ to each other,” says the guitarist, mortified. “We thought it might be best to pretend we didn’t hear it. You can’t spend your whole time onstage telling people that you’re just like them and then wander around signing autographs on a red carpet.”
Inside the band, there was hideous embarrassment at appearing to be the clichés they despise. Those fans, though, may well have mistaken their reluctance for rock star cool. And maybe it’s this error in perception that has led to so many false assumptions about Gallows. And it’s maybe this that they’ll need to address.
Because Grey Britain’s an album so brilliant, so pertinent and significant, that everyone will soon want a piece of them.
© Tom Bryant 2010