Fightstar Interview

Fightstar Interview

08 May, 2009
by: Simon827

Fightstar may be famous for one reason. When a certain member of your band was in one of the biggest pop acts in England of the new Millennium, you can't help but attract some attention. Five years later however and Fightstar have well and truly shown that they are a force in their own right. With three successful albums, a host of sold-out tours and having left their label and going it alone, the band seem to be unstoppable.

For me, interviewing Fightstar is an exciting thing. Mainly because I have three pages of Busted related questions to ask Charlie. So it's probably a good thing that Charlie's excused from interview duty for the day to save his throat for the evenings gig. Instead we have the pleasure of drummer Omar Abidi who turns out to be a very nice man. So let's have a nice chat about the new album, who's the biggest idiot in rock and Charlie's eyebrows...

Hey Omar, how's the tour going?

Really great. It's been an awesome tour, was just a shame we had to postpone yesterday because Charlie's throat got really coarse after the Exeter show. But he's all good for tonight.
 

You broke your hand at the end of last year, is it better now? How did it affect the album?

It's all back to normal now. It was a tough time for me, but Charlie really pulled through and we finished the album. He recorded about six of the drum tracks, so pretty much half of the album, but some of the tracks we had to do together, some of the pedal work for example which he was wasn't so accustomed to.
 

Some would say the new album is a little more commercial than your last efforts. Was that deliberate or did it just come about?

I think it just came about really. The really intention was to make something a bit more dramatical, a bit off the wall for us, not necessarily your stable Fightstar song. We had so much more freedom after being separated from our last label and doing it off of our own backs. This album for us is the most satisfying album we've ever written. We very proud of it.
 

Did you write this album in the same way as the last ones?

Pretty much, it's just with this one we had a lot longer. It was much more spread out. We had some studio time, then toured, then some more studio time, then Christmas and then went back into the studio to polish everything off. We also got in Audrey Riley the string composer, she's worked with Muse and Coldplay, bands like that, so we started writing around the strings so the songs became an entity that united with the strings rather than rock, with strings slapped on. It became more theatrical.
 

At the end of Grand Unification, on the track Grand Unification Part 2, there's some guy talking about black holes. What's that all about?

Well, the whole idea of that album was that it was a dream sequence, so it starts with ‘To Sleep' and ends with ‘Wake Up' and the whole album is a dream about the devastation of the world. I always find the closer you are to waking up the wilder your dreams are, so that's why you always get those shocking moments where you're like ‘fuck, what was that about?' So we wanted an extreme concept like black holes to appear at the end of the album.
 

You're playing Download again. How did your first year playing there feel?

We didn't go down so great for the first two or three songs and by the end of it, to finish on rapturous applause, it was one of the most triumphant moments of my life. We're feeling really good about this year.
 

Where did the name Fightstar come from?

Well we were trying to think of names, and someone came up with Time To Fight, and someone came up with Evenstar, so we just spliced the two together.
 

Last time I saw you you had fire dancers. Any of that happening tonight?

Yeah, that was awesome. We wanted fire-breathing midgets, but they were out. We just thought, fuck it, let's do something extravagant. We always like to do something special for London shows when the budget permits and the stage is big enough. So none of that tonight.
 

What made you release your B-side compilation, Alternate Endings?

Some shmuck at Gut Records. It wasn't our decision to release it and Gut Records wanted to get every last drop of money out of us before they went into receivership and so they made us release it. We could have publically gone against it, but it just didn't make sense. It's not a bad album, there are some great b-sides on there, but it's something that's not really us. Maybe after five, six albums at the time you can start doing that. But not after two. There were a lot of discussions and a lot of meetings that I refused to turn up to at the time
 

Best band you've played with?

Probably Oceansize. They supported us two years ago. They're good guys. I think they're poker hustlers though, they acted as if they didn't play poker, but there was some game running there I tell you...
 

And who's left that you want to play with?

Deftones. If I got to play with Deftones, that'd be it, you could stick a fork in me.
 

Have you met anyone who was a complete dick?

Heh, yeah, didn't really meet them. Just saw them strutting down the hallway in the studio with this bleached blond Barbie about four paces behind him and then four paces behind her the rest of his band. What's his name? The guy from Disturbed. He, to me, looks like a knob-jokey.
 

Most Spinal Tap moment?

We got lost once on the way to the stage, no lie! It was HMV Birmingham. We could hear the fans and we were just going round in circles!
 

Do you ever get tempted to shave off Charlie's eyebrows?

No no, not at all. That's always been a bit of an outside joke rather than an inside one. I'm thinking of shaving all my hair off though. I've been talking to places that you can donate hair and stuff...


So you heard it here first. Dave Draiman ‘looks like a knob-jokey' and Omar Abidi's hair will be auctioned off for charity. You've got to be a certain type of person to bid for that...


Fightstar's new album 'Be Human' is out now.

Simon827