Crying Out Loud - Feeder

“Being criticised when you’ve spent so long on something - it hurts. It’s ****ing tough.” Grant Nicholas has taken his fair share of stick from the critics over the years. However, after turning 40 last year, the Feeder frontman admits he’s learnt to deal with the disparaging comments. “You put a lot of passion and hard work in music. It’s not just rock ‘n’ roll debauchery lifestyle all the time. It can be, but you’ve still got to write the tunes as well. You can’t please everybody,” he adds. Sat alongside him in a studio in London is drummer Mark Richardson. Gigwise went along to meet the guys from Feeder as they prepare to release their sixth studio album ‘Silent Cry’ later this month. With over a decade in the music business under their belts it seems an ideal time to learn more about one of Britain’s best underdog bands.

Flashback to around a third of his age for instance and Nicholas reveals that the self-assured rockstar that he has become was once an unlikely existence. “When I was at school I was quite a shy person I mean I wasn’t this sort of outrageous extrovert. I’d have been too scared to go onstage and sing at one point in my life but then I suddenly realised that’s what I wanted to do.” Interesting to discover when you consider his band picked up the Kerrang! gong for Best Live Act in 2001. Overcoming his fear he may have done, however his new-found confidence did not make it any easier to find success.

Wales did not hold the type of opportunities required for the Newport born Nicholas at the time, so he decided to head for the capital. He admits he knew very little of the area he was entering: “I suppose I was a bit of a redneck really. I didn’t know much and who was a cool band or whatever, I’d be listening to AC/DC or something I didn’t care.” He found his feet and went ahead playing anywhere and everywhere he could. “We did the sort of Camden scene, played every toilet you could think and then we use to go back to Wales to rehearse because it was too expensive in London. We use to rehearse in this cow barn (laughs) and it was the ****ing coldest place in the world.” Eventually the line-up at the time found part-time jobs, recruited Taka Hirose, did some busking on the side, changed their name to Feeder and got signed. “I mean it took a long time because we were this alternative rock band and the nearest thing to us was probably the whole grunge scene and we didn’t really fit in at all here”, adds Nicholas.

Being set apart from the crowd and difficult to pigeonhole is something Nicholas acknowledges and favours. He says: “I think it’s cooler and I think it’s timeless.” Richardson explains: “The trouble with being part of a scene is you kind of live and die with it.” Nicholas nods in agreement before adding: “You can get up the ladder a lot quicker if you’re part of it, especially if you’re the leader of that pack but how many bands are going from the Britpop scene now?”