Interview
Stage Times
Stage Times: Bradley Simpson
The Vamps frontman talks through some of his favourite live memories ahead of the release of his debut solo record
Bradley Simpson is no stranger to an album release period, but this time around things are a little different.
“I don’t think I anticipated it to feel so different,” he admits, “because I’ve done five album releases with the band, but I feel like it’s a lot of myself I’m giving over through the album, and a lot of stories that are very personal for me. That’s made it feel very different, and also been the driving force. There’s a huge team of people who have been amazing and have really helped. But I think when you’re standing behind your own project and it’s your name… I just feel so invested in it all. I think it feels slightly different there, but in in a cool way.”
Simpson became the frontman of hugely successful pop rock band The Vamps when he was still in his teens, releasing his first single with the band all the way back in 2013. Having made the Top 10 of the UK Album Charts five times, he’s ready to try something new.
“Throughout all of this process, the change and the challenge of something different was a huge part of the reason I wanted to do it, because I quite like to put myself in challenging positions or uncomfortable positions,” he says. “I think you grow off the back of it.”
Simpson has taken debut album The Panic Years, which releases 28 February, as an opportunity to be more vulnerable with his audience – and to speak to some of the anxiety and overwhelm that comes with a career like his.
“I knew I had to approach it differently to anything I’d done before,” says Simpson. “I’ve grown up listening to a lot of solo artists, and I think there’s a duty to your listener to be as honest and as vulnerable as you can be, because that’s the best part of music, is that it makes people feel less alone. If you’re talking about things that feel super personal to you and then it lands with someone who feels like they’re going through something similar, in my eyes, that’s me doing my job. I think I was quite scared to do that for a long time, and I was probably putting a cap on what I wanted to say and how I wanted to say it.”
Ahead of the release of The Panic Years, we sat down with Simpson to discuss some of his favourite live memories – both with The Vamps and in this new chapter of his career.
The First
I was in a band in school. I was about 13, and I didn’t sing. I played guitar. I think our first gig would have been a school talent show, but the one that I vividly remember is there was one school talent show where we did ‘Sweet Child Of Mine’, which was a lot of fun. I’d spent hours in my bedroom learning that riff. I just remember being really nervous that I was gonna f*ck the guitar up. But from memory, it went quite well. I also remember having a thumb pick. I don’t know why I had that looking back, because I think you only really need it for certain styles of guitar, like flamenco guitar and that kind of finger picking stuff. But for some reason I had a thumb pick. That sticks in my mind because I think that’s the first and last time that I’ve ever used one.
We also used to do gigs at a community center not too far from where we all grew up. A load of our mates came down and we did a couple of our own songs and load of covers. That really made me fall in love with playing live.
That must have been really valuable, to have a space like that to find your feet with playing live.
Definitely, yeah. I was speaking to someone the other day about it. I grew up in Birmingham, and there was a lot of opportunity at those grassroots and local venues, but there’s a big pressure that you’ve got to move to certain cities to make something happen. I think unfortunately that is the case in a lot of ways, in terms of building your network or having gigs to play or just being in amongst it. I think there’s a real gap for nurturing more regional, local talent in a way where you have that support network, before it gets to the place of, “Right. Let’s go. Let’s move to London. Let’s move to Manchester.” Just having those hubs in regional areas I think is really important.
The Biggest
The biggest show that I’ve done with the solo stuff so far is Wembley Stadium as part of Capital Summertime Ball. We’d done it as a band before and I remember being terrified then, and equally as terrified now, if not more, standing out there by myself. But it was amazing. You just never get used to the scale of it. It brings something out that’s really cool. You feel like you’ve got to rise to the occasion.
Do you tend to prefer playing those bigger venues?
I mean, there were a lot of amazing moments in the band’s career at those venues. I remember the first time that we headlined the O2. That was a really special moment and I think all of us were blown away. It happened quite quickly for us – I think we were just trying to keep up, almost, because it was moving so fast. That one in particular, the first time, it was really emotional and special. There’s such amazing parts of playing in arenas that big – you can up the production, you’ve got more room to run around and play with things like that, and it caters to a different style of set. That’s really fun. But you lose a little bit of the intimacy, and that’s what’s really nice about the shows I’ve been doing with solo stuff. I did a residency at the 100 Club for like, four nights last year. I’d never played that venue before, but I saw Paulo Nutini there maybe two years ago. It’s such a historic, legendary venue, and you really feel it in the walls when you step into it. Some of my favourite gigs have been those smaller, sweatier, intimate ones, because there’s an energy in the room that’s quite hard to capture in bigger venues.
The Smallest
When I was like 14, in the school band, we went and played this pub on the other side of Birmingham. You hear of the ‘one man and his dog’ stories. But it genuinely was one man and his dog and then a couple of our parents. Looking back now, you take any gig that you can get, just a chance to play live in any setting, even if it is to one man and his dog. I think there was maybe six people in the audience, including our parents and bar staff, so that was, I think, the smallest gig that I’ve ever played.
The Worst
There have been bills that the band were put on where I think we were quite nervous going into it, because it was a different audience than we’d played to before, like maybe it was a slightly rockier crowd, or a multi-genre festival. I think a lot of bands have that. When Download started to introduce slightly pop-ier leaning acts, I’ve spoken to a couple of artists who did it for the first time and they were just bricking it. I think we had a couple of those gigs, but they can be really fun. I think a lot of audiences, 99% of the time, they’ll give you back as much as you put in. If you go out there and they can see that you’re giving your all and you’re trying to make sure they have a good time, they’re going to respond to that. Hopefully, anyway. We’ve had gigs where we thought they were going to go badly, and then they’ve actually ended up going really well.
I think the worst gigs for me are the ones where my voice is just blown, when we’re coming towards the end of a really long tour. There was one we did in Japan – it was the first gig that we’d done in Japan, and I’d always wanted to go over there. I was so excited, but I got really, really ill, and I didn’t want to cancel the show, so I just dosed up on painkillers and just played through it. I felt so bad. The next day I went into a doctor, and they were like, “Oh yeah, you’ve got tonsillitis, and you’ve probably had tonsillitis for about a week.”
I was about 17 when we started touring, and I just wasn’t there. My body wasn’t ready to be doing all I was asking of it. Every six months, it was just slowly checking out. I used to get tonsillitis all the time, and just get quite run down. Then I think I got into a bit of a routine and realised I maybe can’t go out all the time when I’m on tour and I need to look after myself, so I kind of fell into a rhythm with it a bit. I think a similar thing happened recently because it took a minute to get used to performing the solo stuff, because they are a different style of songs. I did a European tour last year, and that was the first time in a while that I’ve been like, oh, I need to go back to properly looking after myself.
The Weirdest
We did a magazine launch party thing in LA about 10 years ago, which was the last gig in America we were doing after a US tour. We thought it would be quite fun. It was in a bar, basically, and they had a stage, but I’d maybe say there was 100 people in the bar, and maybe five or ten of them were fans that they’d let in. The rest were influencers and media people, a bit of a who’s who. We didn’t really know the vibe – we didn’t particularly go and suss it out before we went on. In our heads, we were just like, “This is another gig, go out, get in their face. We had, like, a big, long intro before we came out, and while all of this is going on, everyone is just like, stood at the bar with a cocktail, just chatting. Then we come bursting out. There’s five fans up front, and the rest is just the whole LA scene at that time. Everyone’s like, “Jesus, who is this sweaty boy shouting in our face? Go away.” I’ll always try and get them involved, but it got to about halfway through the set, and I was like, right, this actually isn’t the vibe of this gig. We’re very much a band in the background whilst everyone’s having a chat. That was a weird gig.
The Best
The band played Royal Albert Hall a couple of years ago and it was really special. We did the bulk of the fifth album, and it was also a bit of a greatest hits show. It was the first time we’d ever played Royal Albert Hall, and we had an orchestra for half of the set. It was just a really special night. I think you have that sometimes where it’s not tangible, you can’t put your finger on why it is, but it’s just a really special night. The families were there, loved ones were there, the fans just seemed to be really up for it. I think because it was a one off, it ended up feeling really, really special. So that always sticks in my mind.
As of late, the first night at the 100 Club was really special, because, I’d been working on the album for two years and living with the songs with no one hearing anything. Going out and playing felt a bit full circle. Everything that I’d worked on for two years was coming to fruition, getting to play in front of people and seeing them be receptive to me, showing a different side of me as well. I was nervous to see if people would like come and get involved with the solo stuff, and they did, and it was really, really nice.
Bradley Simpson heads on a UK tour this May – find tickets here
