I have
seen the future of rock and roll and it is too young to drink. Four teenagers
sit side by side in a local bar in the Irish midlands town of Cavan, each with
a pint glass of water in front of them. They are lined up in descending order
of age: guitarist Josh McLorey (17), bassist Pete O’Hanlon (17), drummer Evan
Walsh (16) and singer Ross Farrelly (just 15). They are all dressed in a smart
modern-casual style: jeans, T-shirts, bomber jackets and mop top fringes
hanging low over their eyes. They call themselves The Strypes, with a Y – “as a
reference to the Byrds and bands spelling their names wrong,” explains the
curly-haired Walsh, the most forward and articulate of the group.
“Like
Led Zeppelin,” adds the deadpan O’Hanlon, helpfully.
The
Strypes are younger than One Direction. But they rock like Simon Cowell had
never existed. “The pop rubbish coming out now, it makes me angry,” says Walsh.
Their own favourite bands hail from an era before reality TV, before Britpop,
grunge, stadium rock, indie or punk, before any of them were even a twinkle in
their parents’ eyes. “The whole thing grew out of us hanging around at Evan’s
house, his dad’s record collection was full of The Stones, Yardbirds, Rockpile
and Dr Feelgood, so we were exposed to it really young,” explains McLorey, a
dreamy eyed, softly-spoken boy who is emerging as a gifted songwriter and
outstanding musician, his exuberant guitar lines bossing the band on stage.
“Through
those white blues bands we got into the early black bluesmen and
rock’n’rollers: Howlin’ Wolf, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, Eddie Cochran, Gene
Vincent,” adds Walsh, reciting the very same lineage you might have heard bands
reel off five decades ago. “It’s where popular music as we know it started, the
spark that ignites everything. It appealed to us, the rawness, here’s three
chords, let’s start a band.”
“It’s so
simple, after you hear it you can’t help but want to play it,” agrees McLorey.
The
Strypes are causing a sensation in the music business, with a growing notion
that, at long last, here might be a guitar group to revive rock for a new
generation. They look like pint-size versions of the early Rolling Stones, and
they play old-school rhythm and blues with the tightness, aggression and
swagger of a younger, prettier Dr Feelgood. Their debut album, Snapshot (out on
Virgin next week), is an absolute blast, ripping through a set of amped-up, guitar-chopping
retro rock in which their sharply phrased original songs are impossible to
separate from judiciously chosen covers by the likes of Willie Dixon (You Can’t
Judge a Book by the Cover) and Nick Lowe (Heart of the City). “When you think
about it, everything is retro,” insists Evans. “Everything is inspired by
something that happened beforehand. But at the same time everything’s modern,
cause if it’s played by people who live today, then surely it’s modern?”
The
instrumental trio played their first gig at Farnham National School in Cavan in
2008, though they had been messing about musically for years. Their parents are
friends, and all have backgrounds in long forgotten local Irish bands of the
Eighties. They spotted the younger Farrelly, from a neighbouring village, when
he supported them with a solo set in a pub, bellowing Oasis’s Wonderwall. “My
dad promised me fifty quid if I played,” reports Farrelly. The dark horse of
the quartet, his apparent shyness belies a huge voice and fierce stage presence.
He plays a mean blues harmonica too. When I tell him he reminds me of Eric
Burdon, he glows. “Thank you. The Animals was one of the first bands that I got
into, with The Who and The Kinks. There’s four years in the Sixties when them
bands really had it all.”
Their
band base is Walsh’s bedroom. “We were practising in there today,” he reports,
preparing for a major British tour. “”It’s not a great sound but it’s big
enough to get a drum kit and a few amps in. We’ve been playing in there since
we were about nine, so why not keep it up?” From the start, they followed a
simple formula divined from fandom: “We read a lot of books and wanted to be
like all the bands we loved, practise as much as you can, gig as much as you
can and dress really cool,” says McLorey. Walsh’s father, Noel, drove them
around Ireland in a converted wheelchair-access van to play at any ballroom,
pub or village fete that would have them. The youngsters were unimpressed with
the bands they shared stages with. “A lot of dirgey indie,” says McLorey. “Very
bottomless, endless chords, lyrics too deep to understand.” They claim to like
some contemporary rock, but then cite such retro-styled bands as Arctic
Monkeys, The Black Keys, The White Stripes and The Jim Jones Review. Their real
fascination is with Seventies British pub rock. “I personally would kill for
that to be the scene now, people playing Johnny B Goode all the time,” enthuses
Walsh.
In April
2012 they put out an EP of covers recorded “in a mate’s granny flat”. A former
babysitter of Walsh’s, Finn Keenan, newly graduated from film school, made a
cheap, effective black-and-white video of the band performing Slim Harpo’s Got
Love If You Want It and posted it on YouTube. The effect was electrifying. The
EP went to number one on the iTunes blues charts. By the end of the year, they
were being managed by Elton John’s Rocket organisation, had dropped out of
school without completing their exams and signed to Universal. “You want to
pinch yourself looking at these kids playing this music,” Elton John enthuses.
“It’s kind of other-worldly. Their musical knowledge of R’n’B and blues is at
least equal to mine and probably Mick (Jagger)’s or Rod (Stewart)’s, and we’ve
been around for centuries.”
Unveiling
them to a media audience at Abbey Road Studios earlier this year, Mike Smith, a
senior executive at Universal, confidently predicted that The Strypes would one
day be the biggest band in the world. There is something gimmicky about this,
of course, the novelty of youngsters creating a small, perfectly formed version
of something so archaic yet familiar. But The Strypes do it so well, and with
such freshness that if they can make a connection with their own age group then
the sky is the limit. They are already getting used to seeing young faces
crammed into sold-out gigs. “Kids are actually coming to their first gig, their
first band, looking for something different, and they don’t know Chuck Berry or
Bo Diddley or any of that, so it’s really nice to be able to introduce this
music to young people,” says Evans. “They don’t know or care if it’s a new or
old song. It’s just the spirit it’s played in.”
The
oldies are proving quite enthusiastic too. Noel Gallagher has been attending
gigs. Paul Weller asked McLorey and O’Hanlon to back him for an intimate show
at Rough Trade in April (“The first Jam album was a benchmark for us,” says
O’Hanlon. “It was an amazing thrill for someone of that legacy to say, ‘I think
you’re good enough to play with me.’”) Chris Difford of Squeeze has become
involved as a mentor. “It’s not a Confucius type of relationship,” says Evans.
“He’s just a lovely man who’s been through the mill with a great band, and
there’s a lot of things he would regret, wrong turns they made, so he knows
what to look out for.”
The band
themselves seem clear-eyed if, inevitably, innocently optimistic about the
dangers of the life they have chosen. “We’re not really interested in any of
that side of it, the excesses. We’re all really good friends, and we intend to
stay that way. So we should be fine,” says McLorey.
They are
all agreed that the highlight of their meteoric rise, so far, was a gig at the
Oysterfleet Hotel in Canvey Island in August, where two members of Dr Feelgood
joined them on stage – guitarist Wilko Johnson and bassist John B Sparks. “It
was the closest thing you could imagine to playing with John Lee Hooker or one
of those original blues people,” declares Walsh. The sense of a torch being
handed on was poignantly underlined by knowledge of Johnson’s terminal illness.
“His attitude towards it is brilliant, it’s given him this whole new lease of
life and he’s just enjoying every minute,” says McLorey. “He’s as manic as
ever. He really leads you on stage. You know who’s in charge.”
This
reverence and enthusiasm for music from before they were born is touching and
heartening. Of course, they don’t see it as unusual at all. “Music just feels
like music, from wherever it’s from, whether the person making it is alive or
dead, whether you can go see them now or they’re in a nursing home, music just
seems eternal,” says Evans. “I don’t know why people are so surprised by it. I
think a year before you were born, and a hundred years before you were born,
it’s the same thing really. Cause either way you weren’t there.”
Snapshot
by the Strypes is released by Virgin EMI on September 9. They play at Bestival
this weekend and then tour the UK in October.
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