Young Guns interview, Kerrang! February 8, 2012
IF YOU want to fire guns in Pattaya, Thailand, the best way to do it is after a breakneck speedboat ride. We’re talking serious guns too: pump action shotguns, machine guns, a sniper rifle and any handgun you could care to mention – Glocks, Lugers, Magnums, Colt.45s and more.
You speed out to an island bumping, fizzing and screeching across sun-kissed waves, a Thai driver and his wife at the wheel, one of the UK’s most exciting rock bands in the bow of the boat, everyone whooping, cheering and grinning.
The boat glides up to the island shore, a beach bar blaring techno to one side, the steady dry crack of a firing range audible in the distance. The five members of Young Guns – singer Gus Wood, guitarists and brothers John and Fraser Taylor, bassist Simon Mitchell and drummer Ben Joliffe – hop through the shallows, then head for the village and tumbledown range beyond.
There, nonchalantly scattered over a few tables, is an arsenal of high powered weaponry. The Thais running the place wave us through, vaguely offering guns, then go back to chatting. There’s no thought for safety nor much for the two amped up Russians already here and blasting great holes wherever they happen to point their guns.
BOOM! goes the pump action.
BOOM! BOOM! Two more shots as Young Guns clutch their ears, edging from the action.
“I might just go over there and have an ice-cream,” says Fraser nervously.
BOOM! BOOM! The Russians fire again.
But then Simon shrugs, grabs a handgun and approaches the range, blasting away at a target, delightedly pulling gangster poses as he goes. John and Ben shrug too, grab handguns, then start pumping bullets down the range. In minutes everyone has a gun, some ammo and is firing away. At no point do any of the Thais flicker an eyebrow as five Englishmen, who have never fired guns before in their lives, spray bullets in all directions, laughing as they go.
Fraser forgets his ice cream. Seconds later, there’s the sound of the dry chug, chug, chug of a massive assault rifle as he mows down targets in the distance. Gus grabs the pump action, detonating melons the Thais throw in the air for him to hit. He’s so exhilarated, he barely notices when the gun’s mechanism snaps back and cuts his cheek. Even Kerrang!’s photographer, Paul Harries, gets involved, hitting target after target with a sniper rifle until people view him with genuine fear. It’s as if all hell has been unleashed.
Then eventually, as the smell of gunpowder clears and the tinkle of spent shell casings dies down, Gus surveys the scene.
“That was obscenely unsafe,” he whoops, blood rolling down one cheek, a grin spreading from ear-to-ear. “I thought I was going to kill myself or someone else. That’s what made it fun…”
Then they head back down to the beach, everyone walking that little bit taller, everyone fuelled with adrenaline. Tonight Young Guns will be playing at a Thai festival which will be headlined by one of their favourite bands, Incubus. But first there’s just time to jump in the boat and buzz round to the next island for a few beers on the beach.
Thinking about this, Ben catches himself for a moment. He gazes at the piercing blue sky, the hot, high sun and the wide, warm sea below. Then he smiles a disbelieving smile.
“Just shot some guns, about to jump on a speedboat, then later we’re playing a rock festival with our favourite bands,” he says, marvelling. “And people in England are waking up to snow. This might just be the best day of my life.”
THIS IS the second time in six months Young Guns have been in Thailand. The first was to record their album. It was five weeks of hard, focussed work in the same paradise recording studio, Karma Sound, in which Enter Shikari laid down A Flash Flood Of Colour. They worked with same producer too, former Sikth guitarist Dan Weller – slowly becoming one of the most influential producers in UK rock – and they kept their noses to the grindstone. In the month or so they were here, they had only three nights out and took just one day off a week. Living, eating and breathing the record, they threw themselves at it. It paid off.
Where their debut All Our Kings Are Dead suggested promise, Bones delivers it: a big, bold, strident rock record packed with skyscraping hooks and killer riffs. “We wanted it to be ruthless,” says Gus. And it is.
However, now they’re back in the country for four days, they’re determined to have the party they denied themselves last time. Ostensibly, they’re here to play the brand new Silverlake music festival, a gathering of Thai and Western bands including Incubus, Seether and Anti-Flag. Before that, there’s fun to be had.
After a groggy, 15 hour flight, a bewildering stopover in Mumbai, and a paparazzi crew who greet them at Bangkok airport, Young Guns hit the pool on arrival in Pattaya, the nearest town to the festival. It’s the beginning of a long and wild day.
As dusk falls, we – Kerrang!, the band, tour manager and band manager – pile into a pick-up truck that takes us to the infamous Walking Street, scene of topless bars, strip joints, ladyboys, sex shows and god only knows what else. Under the street’s dizzying neon, Thais prowl with menus offering girl-on-girl, boy-on-boy, donkey-on-girl and much else besides. It’s eye-opening stuff.
Simon, newly single, yells jokingly, “I’m gonna get me some ladyboy action!” But it’s not the ladyboys he needs to look out for. In a restaurant, then a succession of bars, he’s singled out by Thai girls wherever we go. He moves from irritation, to lust, to love at first sight as booze takes hold.
Red Bulls, a more potent brew in Thailand than England, are downed. And then the night really takes off. Vodka, beers and Thai whisky flow as we stagger from bar to bar. We pass girls covered in scorpions, immaculate ladyboys looking for trade, sleazy middle-aged Europeans chasing teenaged Thais, mad cover bands, foam parties and more besides. Ben swings round a poledancer’s pole before he’s chased offstage. John and Simon camp it up in front of a place called Guy Club, Fraser’s eyes bulge at the streetside sights, Gus shakes his head at the madness of it all.
“There are a lot of things here that just aren’t normal,” says Simon, baffled, drunk and merry.
And on and on it goes, until 4am when, as club lights come up, we’re ushered gently back towards the hotel.
Someone grabs more whisky for the ride home; we mix it with coke, swigging it back at the hotel, before someone else decides we’ll finish a feral first night in Thailand with a drunken 5am swim in the sea. So it is that, shortly before dawn, Young Guns, Kerrang! et al can be found flailing out of their depth, cutting themselves on coral a goodish way from shore, and laughing till their arses fall off.
THE REASON Young Guns are here is, essentially, that the opportunity arose. There’s not much money in it for them – instead, they’re here for an experience.
They’re aware, too, that to the casual onlooker, any band living it up or recording in Thailand must look as though they’re making a few quid. The reality is markedly different. Because Young Guns are skint. The studio was a bargain and they’ll barely break even from the festival.
“When I get home, I don’t know if I have the money to pay the tube fare home,” says Gus. “People can say what they like about us sunning it up in Thailand, but the reality is that we live with parents and borrow money from girlfriends.”
It means they do this for the fun of it. They do it for memories. All in their late 20s, their friends are beginning to think about houses, cars and settling down. Young Guns, though, are looking through their pockets for change. And they wouldn’t have it any other way.
“The music industry’s screwed,” says Gus. “There is no money. So if you go into a band for any other reason than to have some amazing experiences and to satisfy your creativity, you’re doing the wrong thing. There is no security in this. I’ve got hardly any possessions and I don’t have a home. But I do have a collection of weird and very cool memories, which is much more important.”
“It’s tough,” adds John. “But this is all I’ve ever wanted. This is all there is for me.”
It’s a feeling they all share. Because, though Young Guns are a cluster of differing personalities, they’re united in one thing: that this band means everything to them.
There’s Ben, ebullient and optimistic, keen to joke and chat. Simon, unashamedly friendly, is his partner in crime. The pair of them cackle away together – even at one point sitting precariously on the back of our speedboat to listen to Bones and whoop at what life has given them.
Fraser is the band’s quietest member. Though calm and reserved externally, the band say he’s like a cobra: play a practical joke on him (and jokes, teasing and piss-taking is rife in Young Guns) and he’ll strike back when you least expect, with double the force.
John is harder to pin down. Tall, moody and calm, he’s tough to impress. The band’s producer Dan – here coincidentally to record another band – mentions, kindly but incisively, that “he looks like he’s contemplating suicide 95% of the time.” “He’d probably admit that, too,” adds Simon. Nearing 30, he’s the oldest in the band and, with help from his brother and the others, the driving force behind their music. Frequently, he acts as their quality controller. “If I don’t like something first time,” he says, “there’s probably something wrong with it.”
“John and I are the two opposite ends of the spectrum,” says Ben. “I think everything is great, whereas John invariably thinks it isn’t. Somewhere in between us is the balance.”
Gus, tall, urbane and eloquent, has the knack common to most singers of appearing slightly separate to his band. Though entirely one of the gang, his upbringing was not in the Bucks and Berks towns where his bandmates were raised, but in a council estate off London’s Finchley Road, with a single mum struggling for ends to meet. His experiences litter his lyrics: the band’s first album concerned his absent father; the new record is similarly personal.
“Someone told me that everything I write about seems to be about loss. I think he was right,” he says. “I’m in my late 20s now and loss is something I’ve felt for a while. Every day we’re alive we’re losing time, memories, friendships and relationships. Perhaps it’s because of my age, but loss is important to me. I don’t seem to be able to write about much else.”
It’s a theme that runs throughout Bones. The album’s last track, Broadfields – written spontaneously during a tropical thunderstorm when they were recording – is about the move from childhood to adulthood and the inherent loss of innocence, memories and time. Bones’s title track is about fighting doubt and loss of confidence and with self-empowerment. Recording it involved a breakdown in the vocal booth.
“Bones is me telling myself I’m good enough to do this,” says Gus. “I had a bit of performance anxiety [when recording it] and I wasn’t confident with the lyrics. Recording out here was so beautiful but, in some ways, that amplified how important it was to get this right. So it might have been beautiful but it was fucking stressful.”
He was conscious, as well, that their debut revealed his feelings about his absent father too baldly.
“The first record is very diary-like. It’s quite brutal in some ways,” he says. “Having put all that out there and then watching it get dissected by people was a bizarre experience. I didn’t regret it but I did want to be less honest on this record. I didn’t want to give all of myself away. I wanted to convey strength and positivity with this album because the last record was quite dark. This is too, but less so”
Musically, Young Guns were determined to expand on their debut. They spent longer writing, forcing themselves to deliver better and better hooks.
“I like big catchy songs that transcend genres,” says John. “Those were the songs I listened to when I was writing. I think this record is a lot more concise. When we were writing the first album, we were still finding our feet. We’ve made our points more effectively this time.”
But when they first got out here, they were worried.
“When we got here, it was a mixture of absolute joy and complete stress,” says John. “You always stress about the album – even in such a relaxing place. You always worry how things are going to turn out. You go through waves of doubt wondering whether what you’ve done is amazing or shit.”
By the time they’d finished it, in the summer of 2011, they were immensely proud with what they’d done – and rightly so: Bones is a big step forward. However, with the release date around the corner, the nerves have crept back in.
“It’s odd but you do need other people’s validation,” says Gus. “I’m proud of this, so I want other people to like it too. But it’s a nervous wait. We listen to it over and over again. Some days you’re just thinking, ‘Jesus, is this any good?’ It’s torture.”
IF VALIDATION is what they need, they get it when they hit the stage at the Silverlake Festival. The festival is a short drive from Pattaya and, despite being new, it already has a warm and friendly atmosphere. Set in a beautiful vineyard in the Thai countryside, it’s slick without being unfriendly and professional without losing character. It’s here that Young Guns will see how their new material fits alongside their older songs.
Before they go on, Gus worries no-one will be here to see them. As nervous tension builds side of stage, all five twitch with anticipation (and the runs in Fraser and Simon’s case). As they burst from the wings, they’re greeted by a crowd of 2,000, including the entire staff – from owner to cleaners – of the Karma Sound studio in which they recorded Bones, something they’re visibly touched by. And they nail their set, the new songs shining amid the old, bursting with soaring melody and tighter, brighter riffs.
“That was such a buzz,” says Simon bounding from the stage. “They don’t know us, we don’t speak Thai, but we still played a great show. That was a real thrill.”
Next, they’re whisked away for an interview with Thailand’s biggest TV station. But it’s only as they get in front of the camera that they realise their interviewer’s prominent breasts are not all they appear to be.
“That was a bloke wasn’t it?” asks Gus afterwards.
“That was definitely a bloke,” laughs Ben as it’s confirmed the interviewer was, indeed, a ladyboy.
“Nothing in this country surprises me anymore,” adds Simon, laughing too.
And with that, begins another wild night in Thailand. They watch Incubus at the side of the main stage, John pointing out, “if I had to fuck one man, it would be Brandon Boyd”. They get lost in reverie at seeing their heroes at such close quarters, then they party through the night, swimming naked at Karma Sound and drinking whisky until the sun begins to rise.
And as ever, they give every impression that – broke and nervous as to Bones’s reception though they are – they’re having the absolute time of their lives.
It’s why they smile their way through the long flight home and why, if you ask them back at Heathrow about their experience, they all grin again.
“There’s always anxiety but, recently, there have been a lot of times I’ve felt really happy,” says Gus, before he heads for the tube. “To be able to do this with people we love is an amazing thing. We’re having a lot of fun.”
© Tom Bryant 2012
You speed out to an island bumping, fizzing and screeching across sun-kissed waves, a Thai driver and his wife at the wheel, one of the UK’s most exciting rock bands in the bow of the boat, everyone whooping, cheering and grinning.
The boat glides up to the island shore, a beach bar blaring techno to one side, the steady dry crack of a firing range audible in the distance. The five members of Young Guns – singer Gus Wood, guitarists and brothers John and Fraser Taylor, bassist Simon Mitchell and drummer Ben Joliffe – hop through the shallows, then head for the village and tumbledown range beyond.
There, nonchalantly scattered over a few tables, is an arsenal of high powered weaponry. The Thais running the place wave us through, vaguely offering guns, then go back to chatting. There’s no thought for safety nor much for the two amped up Russians already here and blasting great holes wherever they happen to point their guns.
BOOM! goes the pump action.
BOOM! BOOM! Two more shots as Young Guns clutch their ears, edging from the action.
“I might just go over there and have an ice-cream,” says Fraser nervously.
BOOM! BOOM! The Russians fire again.
But then Simon shrugs, grabs a handgun and approaches the range, blasting away at a target, delightedly pulling gangster poses as he goes. John and Ben shrug too, grab handguns, then start pumping bullets down the range. In minutes everyone has a gun, some ammo and is firing away. At no point do any of the Thais flicker an eyebrow as five Englishmen, who have never fired guns before in their lives, spray bullets in all directions, laughing as they go.
Fraser forgets his ice cream. Seconds later, there’s the sound of the dry chug, chug, chug of a massive assault rifle as he mows down targets in the distance. Gus grabs the pump action, detonating melons the Thais throw in the air for him to hit. He’s so exhilarated, he barely notices when the gun’s mechanism snaps back and cuts his cheek. Even Kerrang!’s photographer, Paul Harries, gets involved, hitting target after target with a sniper rifle until people view him with genuine fear. It’s as if all hell has been unleashed.
Then eventually, as the smell of gunpowder clears and the tinkle of spent shell casings dies down, Gus surveys the scene.
“That was obscenely unsafe,” he whoops, blood rolling down one cheek, a grin spreading from ear-to-ear. “I thought I was going to kill myself or someone else. That’s what made it fun…”
Then they head back down to the beach, everyone walking that little bit taller, everyone fuelled with adrenaline. Tonight Young Guns will be playing at a Thai festival which will be headlined by one of their favourite bands, Incubus. But first there’s just time to jump in the boat and buzz round to the next island for a few beers on the beach.
Thinking about this, Ben catches himself for a moment. He gazes at the piercing blue sky, the hot, high sun and the wide, warm sea below. Then he smiles a disbelieving smile.
“Just shot some guns, about to jump on a speedboat, then later we’re playing a rock festival with our favourite bands,” he says, marvelling. “And people in England are waking up to snow. This might just be the best day of my life.”
THIS IS the second time in six months Young Guns have been in Thailand. The first was to record their album. It was five weeks of hard, focussed work in the same paradise recording studio, Karma Sound, in which Enter Shikari laid down A Flash Flood Of Colour. They worked with same producer too, former Sikth guitarist Dan Weller – slowly becoming one of the most influential producers in UK rock – and they kept their noses to the grindstone. In the month or so they were here, they had only three nights out and took just one day off a week. Living, eating and breathing the record, they threw themselves at it. It paid off.
Where their debut All Our Kings Are Dead suggested promise, Bones delivers it: a big, bold, strident rock record packed with skyscraping hooks and killer riffs. “We wanted it to be ruthless,” says Gus. And it is.
However, now they’re back in the country for four days, they’re determined to have the party they denied themselves last time. Ostensibly, they’re here to play the brand new Silverlake music festival, a gathering of Thai and Western bands including Incubus, Seether and Anti-Flag. Before that, there’s fun to be had.
After a groggy, 15 hour flight, a bewildering stopover in Mumbai, and a paparazzi crew who greet them at Bangkok airport, Young Guns hit the pool on arrival in Pattaya, the nearest town to the festival. It’s the beginning of a long and wild day.
As dusk falls, we – Kerrang!, the band, tour manager and band manager – pile into a pick-up truck that takes us to the infamous Walking Street, scene of topless bars, strip joints, ladyboys, sex shows and god only knows what else. Under the street’s dizzying neon, Thais prowl with menus offering girl-on-girl, boy-on-boy, donkey-on-girl and much else besides. It’s eye-opening stuff.
Simon, newly single, yells jokingly, “I’m gonna get me some ladyboy action!” But it’s not the ladyboys he needs to look out for. In a restaurant, then a succession of bars, he’s singled out by Thai girls wherever we go. He moves from irritation, to lust, to love at first sight as booze takes hold.
Red Bulls, a more potent brew in Thailand than England, are downed. And then the night really takes off. Vodka, beers and Thai whisky flow as we stagger from bar to bar. We pass girls covered in scorpions, immaculate ladyboys looking for trade, sleazy middle-aged Europeans chasing teenaged Thais, mad cover bands, foam parties and more besides. Ben swings round a poledancer’s pole before he’s chased offstage. John and Simon camp it up in front of a place called Guy Club, Fraser’s eyes bulge at the streetside sights, Gus shakes his head at the madness of it all.
“There are a lot of things here that just aren’t normal,” says Simon, baffled, drunk and merry.
And on and on it goes, until 4am when, as club lights come up, we’re ushered gently back towards the hotel.
Someone grabs more whisky for the ride home; we mix it with coke, swigging it back at the hotel, before someone else decides we’ll finish a feral first night in Thailand with a drunken 5am swim in the sea. So it is that, shortly before dawn, Young Guns, Kerrang! et al can be found flailing out of their depth, cutting themselves on coral a goodish way from shore, and laughing till their arses fall off.
THE REASON Young Guns are here is, essentially, that the opportunity arose. There’s not much money in it for them – instead, they’re here for an experience.
They’re aware, too, that to the casual onlooker, any band living it up or recording in Thailand must look as though they’re making a few quid. The reality is markedly different. Because Young Guns are skint. The studio was a bargain and they’ll barely break even from the festival.
“When I get home, I don’t know if I have the money to pay the tube fare home,” says Gus. “People can say what they like about us sunning it up in Thailand, but the reality is that we live with parents and borrow money from girlfriends.”
It means they do this for the fun of it. They do it for memories. All in their late 20s, their friends are beginning to think about houses, cars and settling down. Young Guns, though, are looking through their pockets for change. And they wouldn’t have it any other way.
“The music industry’s screwed,” says Gus. “There is no money. So if you go into a band for any other reason than to have some amazing experiences and to satisfy your creativity, you’re doing the wrong thing. There is no security in this. I’ve got hardly any possessions and I don’t have a home. But I do have a collection of weird and very cool memories, which is much more important.”
“It’s tough,” adds John. “But this is all I’ve ever wanted. This is all there is for me.”
It’s a feeling they all share. Because, though Young Guns are a cluster of differing personalities, they’re united in one thing: that this band means everything to them.
There’s Ben, ebullient and optimistic, keen to joke and chat. Simon, unashamedly friendly, is his partner in crime. The pair of them cackle away together – even at one point sitting precariously on the back of our speedboat to listen to Bones and whoop at what life has given them.
Fraser is the band’s quietest member. Though calm and reserved externally, the band say he’s like a cobra: play a practical joke on him (and jokes, teasing and piss-taking is rife in Young Guns) and he’ll strike back when you least expect, with double the force.
John is harder to pin down. Tall, moody and calm, he’s tough to impress. The band’s producer Dan – here coincidentally to record another band – mentions, kindly but incisively, that “he looks like he’s contemplating suicide 95% of the time.” “He’d probably admit that, too,” adds Simon. Nearing 30, he’s the oldest in the band and, with help from his brother and the others, the driving force behind their music. Frequently, he acts as their quality controller. “If I don’t like something first time,” he says, “there’s probably something wrong with it.”
“John and I are the two opposite ends of the spectrum,” says Ben. “I think everything is great, whereas John invariably thinks it isn’t. Somewhere in between us is the balance.”
Gus, tall, urbane and eloquent, has the knack common to most singers of appearing slightly separate to his band. Though entirely one of the gang, his upbringing was not in the Bucks and Berks towns where his bandmates were raised, but in a council estate off London’s Finchley Road, with a single mum struggling for ends to meet. His experiences litter his lyrics: the band’s first album concerned his absent father; the new record is similarly personal.
“Someone told me that everything I write about seems to be about loss. I think he was right,” he says. “I’m in my late 20s now and loss is something I’ve felt for a while. Every day we’re alive we’re losing time, memories, friendships and relationships. Perhaps it’s because of my age, but loss is important to me. I don’t seem to be able to write about much else.”
It’s a theme that runs throughout Bones. The album’s last track, Broadfields – written spontaneously during a tropical thunderstorm when they were recording – is about the move from childhood to adulthood and the inherent loss of innocence, memories and time. Bones’s title track is about fighting doubt and loss of confidence and with self-empowerment. Recording it involved a breakdown in the vocal booth.
“Bones is me telling myself I’m good enough to do this,” says Gus. “I had a bit of performance anxiety [when recording it] and I wasn’t confident with the lyrics. Recording out here was so beautiful but, in some ways, that amplified how important it was to get this right. So it might have been beautiful but it was fucking stressful.”
He was conscious, as well, that their debut revealed his feelings about his absent father too baldly.
“The first record is very diary-like. It’s quite brutal in some ways,” he says. “Having put all that out there and then watching it get dissected by people was a bizarre experience. I didn’t regret it but I did want to be less honest on this record. I didn’t want to give all of myself away. I wanted to convey strength and positivity with this album because the last record was quite dark. This is too, but less so”
Musically, Young Guns were determined to expand on their debut. They spent longer writing, forcing themselves to deliver better and better hooks.
“I like big catchy songs that transcend genres,” says John. “Those were the songs I listened to when I was writing. I think this record is a lot more concise. When we were writing the first album, we were still finding our feet. We’ve made our points more effectively this time.”
But when they first got out here, they were worried.
“When we got here, it was a mixture of absolute joy and complete stress,” says John. “You always stress about the album – even in such a relaxing place. You always worry how things are going to turn out. You go through waves of doubt wondering whether what you’ve done is amazing or shit.”
By the time they’d finished it, in the summer of 2011, they were immensely proud with what they’d done – and rightly so: Bones is a big step forward. However, with the release date around the corner, the nerves have crept back in.
“It’s odd but you do need other people’s validation,” says Gus. “I’m proud of this, so I want other people to like it too. But it’s a nervous wait. We listen to it over and over again. Some days you’re just thinking, ‘Jesus, is this any good?’ It’s torture.”
IF VALIDATION is what they need, they get it when they hit the stage at the Silverlake Festival. The festival is a short drive from Pattaya and, despite being new, it already has a warm and friendly atmosphere. Set in a beautiful vineyard in the Thai countryside, it’s slick without being unfriendly and professional without losing character. It’s here that Young Guns will see how their new material fits alongside their older songs.
Before they go on, Gus worries no-one will be here to see them. As nervous tension builds side of stage, all five twitch with anticipation (and the runs in Fraser and Simon’s case). As they burst from the wings, they’re greeted by a crowd of 2,000, including the entire staff – from owner to cleaners – of the Karma Sound studio in which they recorded Bones, something they’re visibly touched by. And they nail their set, the new songs shining amid the old, bursting with soaring melody and tighter, brighter riffs.
“That was such a buzz,” says Simon bounding from the stage. “They don’t know us, we don’t speak Thai, but we still played a great show. That was a real thrill.”
Next, they’re whisked away for an interview with Thailand’s biggest TV station. But it’s only as they get in front of the camera that they realise their interviewer’s prominent breasts are not all they appear to be.
“That was a bloke wasn’t it?” asks Gus afterwards.
“That was definitely a bloke,” laughs Ben as it’s confirmed the interviewer was, indeed, a ladyboy.
“Nothing in this country surprises me anymore,” adds Simon, laughing too.
And with that, begins another wild night in Thailand. They watch Incubus at the side of the main stage, John pointing out, “if I had to fuck one man, it would be Brandon Boyd”. They get lost in reverie at seeing their heroes at such close quarters, then they party through the night, swimming naked at Karma Sound and drinking whisky until the sun begins to rise.
And as ever, they give every impression that – broke and nervous as to Bones’s reception though they are – they’re having the absolute time of their lives.
It’s why they smile their way through the long flight home and why, if you ask them back at Heathrow about their experience, they all grin again.
“There’s always anxiety but, recently, there have been a lot of times I’ve felt really happy,” says Gus, before he heads for the tube. “To be able to do this with people we love is an amazing thing. We’re having a lot of fun.”
© Tom Bryant 2012
