Interview
Stage Times
Embrace remember the time they broke into the Big Brother House
As Britrock anthem kings Embrace prep for this year’s 30th anniversary tour, Richard McNamara looks back at his gig history
Rewind to February 1997. With Blur’s new self-titled album channelling scuzzy Stateside alt-rock and Oasis set for the mother of all bellyflops with third album Be Here Now, the Britpop party was running on fumes. But then we heard it: an anticipatory rattle of kettle drums, a chiming guitar riff, a pumped-up brass hook and a chorus engineered to chant in sunny beer gardens and on football terraces when you’ve just stuffed your rivals 5-0.
Embrace’s debut single, All You Good Good People, was love at first listen – and we fell even harder when we met the band behind it. Hailing from West Yorkshire, brothers Danny (vocals) and Richard McNamara (guitar) were the kind of rock stars that Britain does so well: smart, lippy, handsome and just the right side of cocksure. “Journalists kept asking us what we thought of the band,” Danny reflected, “and we were like, ‘We think we’re the best band in the world’. And we did!”
The McNamaras earned instant comparison to the Gallaghers, but Embrace were a very different animal to Oasis. Sure, they could write an anthem to lift you out of your shoes, and have dropped plenty of those over the years, from ‘Ashes’ to ‘Nature’s Law’. But the band’s not-so-secret weapon is their knack for balladry, with stunners like ‘Gravity’, ‘Looking As You Are’ and ‘Come Back To What You Know’ even making their crowds shiver at a 40-degree summer festival.
But don’t just take our word for it. To celebrate their 30th anniversary, Embrace head out across the UK this November, and Richard tells us they’ll be looking to add to a colourful live history that spans from Glastonbury to a guerilla gig at the Big Brother house. “It’s going to be a banging set. We just want to see a lot of smiling faces. Or tears. Or just some kind of emotional response!”
The gig that made me want to play music
My first-ever gig was Adam And The Ants at Queens Hall in Leeds. It was 1982 and I was about nine. I was already a massive fan: I had posters of him all over my walls, I’d bought all his singles and albums. But actually seeing him on the stage – it really blew me away.
That show was just the loudest thing I’d ever seen. There was a bit halfway through where two cannons were brought out, because Adam Ant was all about pirates and Jolly Rogers and stuff. When he fired them, it nearly took my eyeballs out of my head.
After that, I remember listening to a live album by Iron Maiden called Live After Death [1985]. My friend played me ‘Aces High’ through his Walkman headphones and that’s when I had to get a guitar. So I’ve been making myself deaf since I was about nine…!
The first
The first gig we ever played as Embrace was at a pub called The Allan Fold in Halifax. It’s since been taken over and is now an Italian restaurant, but at the time we were playing the upstairs room. We did two spots, and the landlord was flogging beef burgers at half-time. We might have been paid 30 quid… or it might have been a beef burger each!
At the time, that pub was a bit rough around the edges. You know: “Bloody hell, who’s this lot, with the long hair?” We didn’t have any of the big Embrace songs back then. It was all old things like ‘Sooner Than You Think’ and ‘Blood Ties’, or shoegaze and goth stuff that sounded like The Cure or Joy Division. But we had about 30 people there, which is a decent crowd when you’re a teenager.
It was a win. But I’m sure there were bum notes. I mean, my thing used to be throwing myself all over the stage. I was a bundle of energy, like a Tasmanian devil, spinning and jumping, yelling and playing the guitar on my back or behind my head. I’ve mellowed a lot over the past 30 years.
The biggest
Our biggest gig was Glastonbury 2000, when we went on just before David Bowie. That was the year everyone climbed over the fence and got in free. I think the crowd was estimated at 85,000, which is probably 20,000 more than any other gig I’ve ever done.
You can’t get your head around a gig like that. I mean, you feel really cool and empowered and everything when you’re playing. But we were cacking it backstage, Danny in particular. When you play a gig that big, it’s like a low-level anxiety that’s with you from the moment you wake up to the minute you play. And it’s like, if you meet up with friends or family before the gig, you’re never truly present. You’re just not there. You’re just kind of like, “Oh shit, here it comes”.
I think we did all right. When you see people singing along, you know they’re on your side. You just don’t want a Daphne and Celeste moment where they all start booing you off. Bowie said hello, too, when he was on his way to the toilet, which was just past our dressing room. I probably could have probably gone in afterwards and got a souvenir…
The smallest
We once played a secret gig under a gazebo at a fan’s house. That was just after we’d had the run of ‘Gravity’ and ‘Ashes’, and we were about to record ‘Nature’s Law’ and the World Cup song [2006’s ‘World At Your Feet’] – and suddenly we’re playing in someone’s garden to a few of their mates.
How do you get Embrace to play your back garden? You’ve just got to catch us at the right moment, when we’re feeling a bit mischievous, or we want something to spice things up. Then we might go, “Yeah, alright”. I really enjoy small gigs because you get to see the whites of people’s eyes, then chat to them afterwards. But it’s more nerve-wracking to play in front of four people stood three inches from your nose than to play for a crowd of 85,000.
The best
According to Embrace lore, it was T In The Park in 2000. It was always a total party there. I remember, my Marshall valve amp started smoking, caught fire and stopped working. But you couldn’t tell, because the audience were singing along so loudly. It was like being The Beatles at Shea Stadium. When you’re surrounded by people all singing the songs, it just blows you away. You can feel it in your chest. It’s primal, I think.
The worst
That was V97, when we were just getting going. I’d been up all night reading Brian Wilson’s autobiography. We were on at about two o’clock. And of course, by that time, I was absolutely knackered. I think Symposium went on just before us, and they’d asked the crowd, in a snarky sort of way: “Are you ready for the mighty Embrace?” So when we went on, I thought, “I’ll f*cking show you. We are the mighty Embrace. Come on…!”
But when we started the first song, my guitar pedals didn’t make any sound. So I was panicking, and because I was so tired and off my game, it didn’t occur to me that my lead had just got unplugged. So I started twiddling all the knobs and shaking the pedals, getting increasingly frustrated. Then, after the gig, I went back to the dressing room and booted all the catering tables over. Very immature. I didn’t do a lot of damage. Everyone just went, “Ooh, get her!”. But you just feel like you’ve let yourself down. So that’s probably the worst one. That’s the gig that ate me up the most.
The weirdest
We were always looking for weird secret gigs. One time, we met up with a bunch of fans in the pub and said, “Right, we’re breaking into the Big Brother house”. So we bundled them all into the back of a van and we had, like, bolt cutters to break the chain on the door. They were absolutely shitting themselves! Then we got in and told them, “Full disclosure, we’re got permission to be here”. Because we had a friend who was filming in the house. So they all breathed a sigh of relief, and then we bashed out a set of acoustic songs, dressed as bus conductors.
Another idea we had was to play in the pitch-black in this factory basement. Everyone went, “That’s a f*cking great idea. We’ll get some night-vision goggles and turn all the lights off”. But it’s not that simple, because night-vision goggles are about four inches long, cost a lot of money and don’t really work for looking at your guitar. So then we had to come up with this whole convoluted way of making it work by putting glow-in-the-dark paint on the frets of the guitar. But then it was, like, “Well, I can’t see my fingers”. So then we had to paint our fingernails with this stuff…!
New album Avalanche is released 12 June. Pre-order here
