Simplicity and complexity. Cacophony and harmony. Chaos and peace. Demonstration and reflection. Youth and experience. These are the attributes that define the palpable duality permeating the Subways’ debut, Young for Eternity. The album is populated with big rock songs played on a small scale, like basement demos recorded by a major domo production guru. Duality informs the foundation and decoration of the UK trio with equal measure, from the basic line-up to the sonic seesaw between the frenetic wall of garage pop noise and the more gentle acoustic lullabies.
The Subways’ duality falls into even sharper relief in a one-on-one setting. Guitarist Billy Lunn is soft-spoken and genuinely surprised when confronted with positive comments about his band and their initial offering, accepting all compliments with a self-deprecating laugh and a certain hesitance. He constantly seems to wonder, “Was he really listening to our album?� At one point, he actually apologizes for his reaction as he notes, “It’s still really hard getting used to people saying they like the album.� In the studio and on stage, Lunn’s reticent demeanor evaporates as he attacks any of the 200 or so songs the band has written with the dervish-like intensity of Kurt Cobain or Jack White, complimented by rock solid bassist Charlotte Cooper and loose-limbed drummer Josh Morgan.
And there within its elementary membership lies the Subways’ fate-tempting dual cliché. Heedless of the number of bands that have been fractured by either association on its own, Lunn counts both his girlfriend and his brother as bandmates (Fleetwood Kinks, anyone?). This fact is further evidence of the supreme confidence Lunn places in the Subways, a confidence that began when Lunn enlisted Cooper and Morgan to help him play for a local band competition five years ago. The trio’s narrow defeat to a reggae outfit, rather than crushing their teenage rock and roll dreams, inspired Lunn to devote himself full time to the band’s musical pursuits.
It was an easy decision for Lunn who, at the tender age of 20, has been playing music for nearly half of his life. Inspired by an Oasis appearance on the iconic British television program Top of the Pops, Lunn picked up the guitar at age 12. Although he’d exhibited no previous musical inclination, Lunn had always been keenly interested in his parents’ music collection. “I had this great enthusiasm for listening to music,� says Lunn on a rare break toward the end of the Subways’ arduous (and sold out) European touring schedule. “I would constantly sit down by my mum and dad’s hi-fi player and just pull CDs out of their collection and play them all the way through and just sit there enthralled by the melodies. Other than that, I was fairly disinterested in learning an instrument or being taught something.�
Having contented himself with his parents’ music, which ran the gamut from Smokey Robinson and the Carpenters to the Ramones and T. Rex, his exposure to Oasis on TOTP was earth shattering for the 12-year-old Lunn. “I’d finally found something that was mine and had given me identity,� says Lunn. “I finally found something that had guts. It just felt like it was talking about everything that was going on around me. The drums, the guitars, the bass, the vocals especially. The first line of ‘Supersonic’ goes ‘I need to be myself/I can’t be no one else’ and that spoke to me on this level that I knew my parents wouldn’t understand at the time. I saw Noel Gallagher on the TV playing a guitar and I immediately wanted one of those guitars. I wanted to have my own voice.�
Remembering that his father had once played guitar, Lunn cajoled him into retrieving the instrument from the attic. His musical die was cast at that moment.
“It was this old horrible acoustic and he taught me my first chord,� says Lunn. “That was it. I taught myself guitar and made my own songs up from that day forth.�
Although Lunn claims a lack of enthusiasm for being taught, he clearly possesses a natural propensity for learning. He was an inveterate doodler and an early student of the alphabet (“As soon as I learned what letters were, I was concocting them together and creating words and sentences and spelling out terribly long words I could never even understand...�), but Lunn just as easily directed his nervous energy into more constructive areas, like his older sisters’ college psychology and law texts, which he understood and enjoyed. “I often found myself knowing a little bit more than what everyone around me was learning, because I was always reading,� says Lunn. “But as soon as I saw a guitar, I wanted to play it and master it and make music and have a voice. And talk about myself, I suppose.�
With his guitar self-education underway, Lunn’s listening habits shifted away from his parents’ tastes and veered toward the more adventurous and obscure sounds his sisters were experiencing in local dance clubs.
“Quite often, my sisters would come home at 3 AM, completely drunk, from these clubs and dance raves,� says Lunn. “I’d always wanted to go but I was way too young so there was this sense of mystery about them. I would sneak into their rooms and steal all their dance compilation CDs, and these sounds were so strange and primal and energetic and passionate. And I would try to recreate those on guitar; you know, find the melodies underneath all these drums and mess around with them. I found myself wading into more obscure guitar music, and some long lost acoustic sessions by Muddy Waters and Neil Young and Donovan and Bob Dylan. I just had this urge to seek out new sounds.�
Over the next couple of years, Lunn became a musical sponge. As his guitar skills expanded and improved, he also taught himself how to play bass, drums, and piano, becoming quite proficient at all of them in the process. Somewhere along the way, it occurred to Lunn to turn the drumsticks over to Morgan, his younger-by-a-year brother, who he charitably describes as “an energetic child� at the time.
“Me being the elder brother, I’d have to try and tame him or at least deal with his responsibilities,� says Lunn. “I suggested the drums to him because it seemed like a great idea. My parents got him the kit because they completely agreed with me that he needed to calm down and channel his energy in another direction and maybe music should be the path to take. As soon as we got the drums set up, I showed him what to do and from there he just developed his own style and naturally we started jamming together.� Morgan’s approach to drumming was more intuitive than Lunn’s approach to his instruments, but it was every bit as successful. “Josh never really cared about the technical aspects of drumming, but more about the emotional needs of the songs I was writing at the time,� says Lunn. “He was really into Smashing Pumpkins and Nirvana and was really into this raw, punk sound. A very drummy sound; beating, rhythmic, thrashy.�
Around the same time, as he hovered in the vicinity of his 15th birthday, Lunn experienced one of the rarest occurrences in life: love at first sight. Smitten after his first glance at Charlotte Cooper, it took the normally hyper-confident Lunn nearly five months (and ultimately a couple of glasses of wine) to screw up the courage to confess his love. They’ve barely spent a day apart since then. “My friend was standing right next to me at the time, and I asked him, ‘Who’s that girl over there?’� Lunn recalls. “My friend told me her name. And I was like, ‘Charlotte Cooper. Right. That’s the one. That’s it.’ I finally went up to her and said, ‘You’re the one. You’re the one I want to be with. All this time I’ve been wanting to talk to you. You’re the person for me.’�
As inseparable as Lunn and Cooper became, it seemed almost inevitable that she would be involved in some capacity with the band that was evolving out of Lunn and Morgan’s home jam sessions. The only snag was that Cooper didn’t know any instruments, a problem Lunn made quick work of one lazy afternoon. “It felt natural for Charlotte to be a part of the band because Josh, Charlotte, and I would always hang out anyway,� says Lunn. “You know, drink beer, listen to music, watch films, play football, something. We were hanging out one day, really bored. Charlotte was sitting there with nothing to do while Josh and I were jamming and I handed her the spare bass in the cupboard. I taught her ‘About a Girl’ by Nirvana and that was it. We were the Subways.�
At 16, Lunn was convinced that the Subways had a bright future, based on their progress in a brief amount of time and the songs they were coming up with together. As strange as it may seem, the band might actually have clicked even earlier had fate not taken a hand and necessitated the end of Lunn’s school career. “My dad lost his job because the firm went under and my mum was looking after my granddad, so neither of them were able or fit to work at the time,� says Lunn. “As soon as I left school, I took on the responsibility of being the solo earner in the household.�
Lunn’s first job after dropping out of school was collecting the dirty sheets from vacated rooms at a hotel. It was a good gig because his seven or eight hour day began early, allowing him plenty of time to play guitar and track demos on the recording gear he’d accumulated. At the same time, Lunn also began using his free weekends to produce local bands in his home studio.
“I’d say, ‘Come around my house, I’ve got a 16-track recorder. I’ll do you guys for free and you can send your CD out. No need to pay me, just buy me a few beers,’� says Lunn. “I did that for three or four years and in the meantime consistently wrote songs; talking about my emotions, what was happening at the time with friends or enemies, work, my love life, just what was going on socially. Any free time I had, I’d get the band in the kitchen and we’d record on this 16-track recorder. It got to the point where we had about 20 songs recorded.�
With nearly two dozen tracks in the can, Lunn began saturating London with copies of the Subways demo CD, targeting promoters to establish the band’s name and to attract attention for gigs. They supported this effort with a relentless schedule of shows, accepting any slot that was offered to them. They also made the tracks available on the internet, assuring themselves of a growing and vocal fan base. “Whenever we’d make a demo CD, we’d put it on the site, and within three months, we’d play London and everyone knew the words to the songs,� says Lunn.
“We toured as hard as we possibly could in London, playing every single venue to two or three people,� says Lunn. “But you know, after awhile, those two or three people would turn into ten people and those ten turned into 25. It took a very, very long time. A lot of the bands that we were playing with were giving up after three or four shows, because they’d say, ‘What’s the point of playing in front of four people? They didn’t care.’ But to us, those four people multiplied. If one of those four people likes the music, they’re gonna go tell their friends. Even if just one person likes you, that’s something.�
The Subways’ first proper gig (“I’d hardly say it was professional,� says Lunn with a laugh) was at London’s Buffalo Bar. It turned out to be a momentous debut because it secured them a management deal almost on the spot. “He was doing sound at the time on this tiny 16-track PA system; you could only fit 30 people in the room,� says Lunn. “As soon as we finished our first song, he ran from behind the desk straight up to the stage and said, ‘I want to be your manager.’ That’s where everything kicked off. I think five people saw us at that show, and the next time we played down there, they all turned up with three or four friends and they all stayed and they all enjoyed the show. For us, that was a massive development. It really felt like all those demos we recorded in our kitchen and all the troubled times and all the celebratory times were finally coming to fruition.�
At the same time, Lunn and Morgan went through a desultory succession of pay-the-bills day jobs (Cooper remained in school), although one position in particular sparks somewhat positive memories for Lunn.
“I took a job as a cleaner in a block of offices,� he recalls. “It was a nighttime job, so as soon as anyone finished their office hours, they’d pack up and leave and that was about the time I went into the building, about 7 pm, and started cleaning until 1 or 2 am. For me, it was the best job I ever had. It was quite tiring and a little emotionally destroying, but it was really quiet and I had the entire block of offices to myself. I’d put CDs on the hi-fi and talk and sing songs to myself and have a lot of time to reflect on what was happening at that time, and I suppose I wrote a lot of songs in that period.�
In 2004, after a couple of years slogging their way through London’s 100-capacity pub scene, the Subways caught their next big break. Lunn had shifted his home recording activities from a run-me-a-bar-tab side gig to an actual pay-for-play money-making enterprise. One of Lunn’s local clients, a fully employed band with budget enough for seven tracks, told him they were bypassing the London scene and sending their CD to Michael Eavis, organizer of England’s largest and longest running outdoor music festival, Glastonbury. Eavis was running a local band competition with the winner earning a slot in the Glastonbury line-up.
Figuring they had nothing to lose but the postage, Lunn and Cooper put their heads together and assembled a CD of their best demos to send off to the Glastonbury competition. “Two weeks later, I got a call from Michael Eavis himself, telling me he wanted us to play at his favorite local pub,� says Lunn. “We were like, ‘Yeah, sure, we love a good gig.’ After our set, he came up to us and just said, ‘Guys, I want you to play Glastonbury.’ The first unsigned band ever to play the other stage, which is in front of about 10,000 people, about 1,000 times what we were used to. We weren’t quite ready for it, to be honest. We‘d been playing for about three or four years, but we were building our community gradually and organically. All of a sudden, all these people are there to watch us. Luckily, we pulled it off.�
In the wake of the Subways’ electrifying Glastonbury appearance, the trio quit their day jobs and self-booked a proper UK tour to capitalize on the enormous exposure they’d generated at the festival. In the meantime, the obligatory label feeding frenzy was proceeding apace; the Subways signed with Warner Brothers on the last day of the tour, while Sire will release the band’s record in the U.S.
When it came time to enter a proper studio to record Young For Eternity early last year, the band had large decisions to make; namely, which songs among the nearly 200 the band had written would comprise their first album, and who would produce? “It was a collaboration of factors,� says Lunn about the song choice. “We’d been playing for a really long time and a lot of the songs that were in the set really reflected where we were in the band, personally and artistically. ‘City Pavement’ I actually wrote about two weeks before we went into the studio, a track about the idea of people getting to know who we are. We wanted a set of songs that fit in the idea of Young For Eternity, the idea of young people going about their daily lives, dealing with the responsibilities that have been summarily thrust upon them, which is obviously where we were at the time. Leaving school or college, going into work or the particular pressures we were dealing with, being in a band, having no money, living on pot noodles every day, not having many bright prospects for the future but trying to make the best of it.�
For the producer’s chair, the band chose Ian Broudie, a veteran sonic helmsman (and formerly of the Original Mirrors and the Lightning Seeds), but certainly not the trendy, go-to guy of the moment. For Lunn, Broudie brought a great deal of experience and insight, but at the same time had no interest in forcing his agenda on the proceedings. “Ian was a great mentor to us,� says Lunn. “We’re very young and we were very DIY before we met Ian. He instilled this thought process with us, with me especially. Before we recorded the album, we sat down and he talked to me about the lyrics of the songs and the character of the songs. He especially wanted to recreate the energy of the moment and what was happening at that particular time that made me want to write that song.�
Broudie’s other invaluable contribution came in arranging and appointing each song, encouraging the band to see the various facets and possibilities of each track on its own. “The songs are varied; ‘Holiday’ is infinitely different from ‘Lines of Light,’ and that was because of Ian,� says Lunn. “Ian sat us down and said, ‘Why did you write this song? Why is this bit here? What’s this lyric about?’ and essentially tried to make the song a person, a character, something with essence. For me, these rock songs were just white noise. The lyrics obviously meant something to me, but these rhythms, these beats, these chord changes were exorcisms to me. Living in a very small town, I felt the need to scream and play guitar very loudly. I needed to speak to the world and the best way at the time was to scream - as if this was the last sentence you’ll ever sing, as though you’re speaking to the devil himself. Ian allowed me to discover a different side of my personality, a more reflective, calmer side. Not that the songs were calmed down, but it’s always more interesting to look at things outside the box. And it’s definitely weird playing a song and then stepping back from the speakers and pressing play and hearing what you’ve just created. Ian taught me how to deal with it, because he’s obviously an artist and a producer at the same time.�
Young For Eternity has ignited a firestorm of press in England, primarily for the album’s Oasis-has-a-go-at-the-Strokes energy, which has the music magazines buzzing. It’s also at least partially due to Cooper’s propensity for short skirts, which has attracted the attention of young girl’s fashion publications. At this point, the Subways don’t really concern themselves with how their fans are delivered, as long as they leave happy and return anticipating more the next time.
While the Subways have yet to launch a major tour in America, they are already well known to the audience most likely to appreciate them; the young and hip viewers of Fox’s smash teen soap opera, The OC. In a coup that Lunn confesses he doesn’t completely understand, the Subways appeared on The OC back in November to perform “Rock and Roll Queen,� the first single from Young For Eternity (which also appears on the recently released Music from the OC: Mix 5). It’s definitely a high profile debut for a band that seems poised and prepared to duplicate their British success with American audiences.
Lunn apologizes once again, this time for the deteriorating condition of his voice over the course of the interview, which has gone from raspy to hoarse. “We’re on a 43-day tour and we’ve done 38 dates, and I blew my voice out last night completely,� he says with an audible grin. “Charlotte had a day off yesterday, but I was on the trains all day to London to do a magazine photo shoot. But it’s all in a day’s work. It’s all worth it. It’s strange when all you want to do is sing properly and nothing comes out, so you scream all the more. And you know, when you’re losing your voice and you scream that little bit harder, it just makes things a little more special.�
Spoken like the next big primal thing.
