28 August 2005

We caught up with Charlie and the boys backstage on the latest leg of their unrelenting slog to replace the singer's disgraceful boy band roots with angular punk rock credibility, before their gig at the Leeds Festival.

Are you looking forward to your set later on today?
Charlie Simpson: Yeah, definitely. We've found in the past that The further north you go the better people appreciate music, so we're really looking forward to playing Leeds. We're going to try some new tracks and just go all out on the attack, it's going to be great.

Did you ever come to The Carling Weekend before you were famous?
Yes, all the time though, I'm a veteran.

Who have you checked out this weekend at the festival?
We're big fans of My Chemical Romance so we checked them out earlier. We planning to go back to Leeds to...

Mate, you're already here!
Oh shit yeah... I mean Reading, to go and check out Maiden. We met them in the bar of our hotel last night and were just in awe.

Do you think Fightstar are being taken seriously now as a rock outfit in spite of your chequered past?
It's getting better all the time. Our first tour was hard because of the crowds, but it's getting easier. We get given shit, but 99% of the people want to listen. We're not there to play for the other 1%.

Dead or Alive, who would be in your all time festival line-up?
Oh man....well, Nirvana, Jeff Buckley, Hendrix, Deftones, Sigur Ross. These are all the people that influnce Fightstar, it's a broad range but we're all on the same page musically, we all bring different influnces into it.

Righty ho. As a former boy band star, we assume you're the biggest Lothario in the band, right?
[Laughter] No, it will have to be Omar (drums). On the way to Japan he had a couple of pages of japanese that he was learing, and they all turned out to be chat up lines, he remembered about 5.

Did they work?
One of them did to some extent yeah. I'm not giving anymore away than that though! [laughter]

Who's the vainest member of Fightstar?
That's definitely Dan, he takes his hair straighteners everywhere with him, he's got a certain bouffant that he needs to keep alive!