Описание
* * *Stiff Dylans Biography* * *
Sometimes truth isn’t just stranger than fiction – it sounds better too. Bursting out of cinema screens this summer and taking root in their rightful home of a live venue near you, Stiff Dylans are bursting at the seams with the energy and chemistry of all your favourite pop punk groups, with teenage anthems of heartbreak and betrayal, and the sort of hooks your average pirate would mortgage his galleon for.
20-year-old James Flannigan (vocals, guitar) and 21-year-olds Charlie Wride (lead guitar), Matt Harris (bass) and Tom Slaytor (drums) specialise in bright, fresh tuneage, pushing guitar pop in an exciting new direction with a collective set of influences ranging from Biffy Clyro to McFly. You can hear the lot – and a whole bunch more – in the band’s debut single ‘Ultraviolet’, which sets out the band’s stall with nonchalant ease: it’s fizzing with vim and vigour, topped off with one of the biggest choruses you’ll hear all year. “The song’s about the aura of a girl – the sort of energy that’s all around but you can’t quite see or touch,” James says. “It’s in classic ‘I can’t explain how you make me feel so I’ll use the spectrum of light territory….”
It would be helpful at this point to be able to state that the band’s name combines the iconic punk pedigree of Stiff Records with the depth and integrity of Bob Dylan’s lyrical back catalogue: the truth is that the band nicked it out of a book. Or, to be more precise, the entire band comes from a book: Tom and James met Matt and Charlie when the two pairs of friends were recruited to play the part of Stiff Dylans, a fictional band in the film adaptation of Louise Rennison’s cult novel Angus, Thongs & Full Frontal Snogging. Halfway through filming, the band realised they had something and got on so well that they formed the band in real life.
Their journey, to this point might be unorthadox, but in 2008, with the music industry turning itself inside out and the rulebook sailing out of the window, Stiff Dylans are setting their own agenda and there’s no denying the chemistry these four lads have when they’re in the room together. As a frontman James has charisma in buckets. He was born in Hampstead (“in a KFC – I think my parents just wanted their first family bucket”) then moved to Bradford, where he first picked up the guitar a few years ago, having experimented with that ultimate rock ‘n’ roll instrument – the violin – in his teenage years. James will say things like this: “if I lie on my side, in my ear I can hear my heart beating. By the time I fall asleep it sounds like soldiers marching up the road towards my house and to come inside my bedroom, and then I turn into Peter Pan and I start flying in front of them. Then, I speed past them, fly down the stairs and there are some dogs round the table playing cards and then I wake up”. Bandmate Tom “kind of bribed” his way into the auditions, his role in Stiff Dylans predicted and set in motion seven years ago when his mum, more foolhardy than many parents, decided to buy him a drum kit for his 14th birthday. Then there’s Matt, born in Norfolk and introduced to Michael Jackson’s ‘Off The Wall’ at a young age. He didn’t look back, forming his first band when a so-called ‘friend’ put Matt forward to play bass in a band, having never laid his hands on one in his life. However, always one to rise to a challenge, within a matter of hours Matt had bought himself a bass, learned a few notes and was playing out to a crowded venue. A risky and somewhat arse-about-tit approach, but if it worked for Sid Vicious (and, er, Matt from Busted) then it’s good enough for this fella. Finally there’s Charlie who, after a “fanastically average” school career started playing gigs with his brother and a few mates, which progressed to parties, weddings and functions. He’d find that audiences would go mental for Kinks and Undertones covers.
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