Exclusive McFly interview! Plus Party Girl video!

It seems like McFly have been away for ages, but they’re finally back with a great new single. Thankfully, two years of touring the world hasn’t changed them, and they’re still the same cheeky boys that we know and love. We talked about the new album, as well as Danny’s love of dance and a good cheese board…

It’s been a while since your last album. What have you been up to?

Tom: We went to South America and did two tours there. Toured Europe, then went back to Australia to record the next album. We did about five weeks there, recorded ten songs, then got to the end of it and decided to scrap them and start again. Then we started working with a guy called Dallas Austin and just basically started again with a new vision for McFly.

 

Dallas Austin is noted for being an R 'n' B producer. Why did you want to work with him?

Tom: When we did the songs out in Australia, there were two that kind of were a bit different and touched on some new influences, like Michael Jackson, Madonna, Prince and people like that, and Dallas had worked with people like that and had done a lot of those songs.

 

Is he a bit of a slave-driver?

Harry: No, the complete opposite.

Danny: We were a bit like: "Are we gonna get any work done?"

Harry: Yeah, he works through the night, so there’s a lot of going out, working, then going out again…

Dougie: He’s quite easily distracted.

Harry: He’s got the energy of a 16-year-old, he’s incredible.

Tom: Has your voice broken again? That was really deep!

 

So you’ve been busy and haven’t been lounging around in guitar-shaped swimming pools?

Tom: No, but we have been recording in a place that has a guitar mosaic in the bottom of the pool.

Harry: And Dallas has the most amazing pool, absolutely stunning. Underneath he’s got a cinema room, and behind the bar there’s a big window which looks through to the pool.

Dougie: So we got our bums out and jumped in!

 

So how much time have you spent actually writing songs in the last two years?

Tom: We’re always writing, it’s just that it gets more intense when you know you’ve got a day to go before you’re in the studio! Normally, we’ve written everything before we go into a studio, whereas this time, most of it was written while we were in the studio.

 

Can you demand more of a lie-in, or do you still get dragged out of bed at silly o’clock?

Harry: When we’re promoting a new album, we wanna be out and about as much as we can, so it’s good to be busy.

Danny: It’s a different mentality from when we were 16, when it was like: ‘[yawns] Oh my god!’ But now we’re like: "Right, we’ve got to get up!"

Dougie: You get kind of sick of lying in, and you wanna get up early and do something.

 

What’s the new album going to be like?

Tom: It’s definitely the most different album we’ve ever recorded, but I still think it has everything that McFly fans love about McFly. It’s still pop, but we just experimented with the kind of sounds and the kind of things that we were letting influence us. We really wanted to show them our ideas and let them have their influence on it, and meet somewhere in the middle so that it kind of comes up with this new sound.

 

There’s a Danny Jones remix on the Party Girl single. Do you fancy yourself as a superstar DJ now?

Danny: It’s my first ever dance remix. It was a bit last-minute, but it was really good fun to do, and I’ll only get better at doing it. Gotta start somewhere. But yeah, I’m really getting into my dance music.

 

So do you want to bring some of that into McFly?

Harry: We like his dance stuff, but we’ll keep it away from McFly! I like it, he’s got some really good tunes, but I don’t think we’ll ever be a dance band. Having said that, Party Girl leans more towards it and it’s got some dance beats in it. It’s probably the track on the album that’s most different to anything we’ve ever done.

 

You gave your last album away with the Mail On Sunday newspaper. How successful do you think that was?

Tom: I think it was amazing for us. It was just about doing something that was different, and it was kind of a big statement from us as well. It was our first album that we’d done independently after leaving Universal, and we just wanted it to get out to as many people as possible.

 

Do you think it gained you any extra fans?

Harry: It’s hard to tell, but I think it did. You can’t tell how many people listen or whatever, but I think it definitely generated a lot of interest.

 

What percentage of stories that you read about yourselves are true?

Harry: With us, most of the time they’re pretty true.

Dougie: It’s those little ones that aren’t true, isn’t it?

Tom: Yeah, or they just pick up on things that aren’t a big deal and make them a big deal.

Harry: Or you would have said something sarcastically and they’ll put it seriously. In one of the first interviews we ever did, Dougie said something about how we were getting rid of our instruments and going to be a dancing boy band, as a complete joke. But then the next thing we knew, loads of interviewers are going: “So, you’re getting rid of your instruments and you’re going to be doing dance routines. Do you think this is going to be a good thing?” We were just like: “What?!”

Dougie: And I was just like [whistles innocently]!

Harry: I said: “Guys, I keep hearing this. Where’s it come from?”

Dougie: I can’t believe that after seven years, people would…

Tom: …pay attention to what you say?

 

Have you put in any silly requests for backstage on your autumn tour?

Tom: It’s just pretty standard, really. But Danny used to ask for a cheese board, which is the most ridiculous thing to have on tour. 

Harry: It was good with those Hovis biscuits, though.

Danny: Oh! So good!

Tom: Do you remember when Dougie asked for a different filling in his sandwich?

Dougie: Yeah, that was bad. I got bored of having a chicken sandwich, so I asked for corned beef and the lady cried.

Danny: She was having a bad day.

 

Do you ask for healthy food?

Harry: We’re more healthy than we used to be. I find it hard, though. I remember on the last tour, I had to say: “Do you mind if we don’t have sweets and chocolate on the tour bus?” I can’t resist it if it’s there.

Tom: Yeah, ’cause when you’re on the road for three hours, you just eat what’s there, like a packet of crisps. But you just end up eating for the sake of eating. So no, we’re a bit more healthy now than we used to be.

Harry: There is potential for a band to just get really fat when you’re on tour.

Tom: Yeah, REALLY fat. If it wasn’t for the exercise you do on stage.

 

What’s this Super City that you’ve been working on?

Tom: We’ve been building a ‘supersite’. It’s basically a subscription site for all of our fans, which is where we’re gonna be releasing everything exclusively. Albums, singles, photoshoots, videos, DVDs, live stuff, everything we do. And it’s kind of this online community where fans can interact with each other and us, they can give their opinions and we can ask them things like what setlists they wanna hear on tour, what singles they think we should release, really getting them involved in the decisions. The main site isn’t like a normal website, it takes place in this 3D Super City. So it’s almost like video game meets a website. There’ll be webchats and stuff, where fans can come and talk to us. There’s a main hub, which is the free part of the site, where you get all the news, forums, gallery, things like that. Then subscribers can come to our own rooms, which is where you get all of our personal content, like videos and photos that we upload, things like that. I’ve got a piano in my room, where they can click on it and hear demos of songs that we’re writing, Danny’s got things like his dance music and videos where he teaches you how to play McFly songs.

Danny: You see loads of YouTube clips, but they’ve not quite got it right, so I thought I’d show people the right way.

 

Be honest, did you just want to dress up as superheroes to look cool?

Harry: Pretty much!

Tom: Yeah, basically!

 

Have you heard about any good ideas for the McFly party day that your fans are organising?

Tom: Our fans are very creative, they’ll think of some awesome things to do!

 

This year is the 25th anniversary of Back to the Future, where you got the name McFly from. Does that make you feel a bit old?

Harry: Well, it’s Tom’s 25th anniversary as a human being.

Tom: Yeah, so I’m celebrating with Back to the Future.

Harry: I’m not feeling old yet. I think when I’m 28 is when I’m going to start feeling a bit older.

Dougie: I don’t think I’m ever gonna feel older, because I’m so short. All the teenagers are way taller than me.

 

You still seem very friendly. When are you scheduled to start fighting and having musical differences?

Harry: It’s scheduled for October 2011, I think.

Tom: Yep!

 

 

Check out the amazing video for McFly's great new single, Party Girl, below.

 

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