The View, A Sight For Sore Ears

“The View, The View, The View are on fire!� is the chant that has been echoing around venues up and down the country as The View tear through the leaving a path of youthful adoration behind them, and it’s hard to disagree with the sentiment. Describing The View’s effortless appeal is like describing a colour or a feeling, impossible as it’s so natural; perhaps it’s the anthemic songs, manic live act or simply the fact that they infuse the classic spirit of rock ‘n’ roll - young, rebellious but ultimately fantastic. The View occupy a world devoid of stylists, stage school and pretension, they are a band for ordinary people, people who want to have fun and sing along at the top of their voice. Gigwise spoke to Kieran from the band to get to the bottom of just how important his band are.

Speaking from perhaps the loudest tour bus known to man, Kieran is in an upbeat mood following a gig in York the previous night which he describes as “Mad, I had to hold onto the side of the stage to make sure I didn’t fall off. A really good night�. Which leads us neatly into our first question, what is a typical View gig like? Kieran replies “People just go mad down the front, we play with a lot of energy, and we feed off the fans so if they are up for it we play better�

Time for a quick history lesson in all things View related, forming roughly eighteen months ago in Dryburgh, a small town outside of Dundee the boys began their musical careers as a covers band, Kieran will now carry on the lesson “We started rehearsing in a pub and getting our songs together, after that we began gigging around Dundee. There isn’t a lot to do in Dundee so forming a band gives you something to focus on, the more gigs we played the more fans we got and then record labels began to become interested, it’s all moved very quickly� Scotland and in particular Dundee are a massive part of The View, from their thick dialect and colloquialisms (See the chorus of ‘Wasted Little DJ’s’) to the tales of heroin addicts (‘Skag Trendy’) and unemployment (next single ‘Superstar Tradesman’) Kieran goes as far as to say “I don’t think there is a song on the album that doesn’t relate to Dundee somewhere.

Speaking of ‘Skag Trendy’ the infamous tabloid fodder Mr Pete Doherty holds a pivotal role in the story of The View, Gigwise asked Kieran to tell us how they met and how he has helped, “I gave him our demo at a gig in Dundee and he took us onto the tour bus to listen to it, he really liked it and let us support him at Babyshambles gig that night. He passed our demo onto James Endeacott (Rough Trade A&R man) and then a few months later he asked us to do a whole tour with them, we owe him a lot we are really grateful�. As if touring with Babyshambles wasn’t enough, The View have moved a rung up on the hedonism ladder and are about to embark upon a nationwide tour with Primal Scream (Both Mani and Bobby Gillespie have declared The View as their new favourite band). Gigwise wonders if there is a Bobby Gillespie equivalent to the infamous ‘Bono Chat’ bands get before supporting U2, sadly Kieran informs us that no advice is given just “lots of encouragement� and we all know how much Primal Scream like their encouragement.

It’s fair to say that The View are up for a laugh and causing a bit of mayhem along the way, for example they were ceremonially thrown out of  the pub in which they used to rehearse because Kieran rode a scooter off the bar onto the dance floor- his defence? “It was just a little push scooter, nobody got hurtâ€�. Also in the first reported instance of ‘Guerrilla giggingâ€� since the heady days of The Others, Dundee’s finest played a gig in the toilet of a venue after iForward Russia! pissed them off. Gigwise is intrigued as to what one of our favourite bands could have done wrong? “Basically they threw us out of the dressing room we were sharing, we just wanted to have a drink with them but they were having none of it, so we went into the toilet of the venue and started playing acoustically, everyone came to see us and iForward Russia! had nobody to play toâ€� Like we said, mayhem seems to follow them around.