WILD YOUTH INTERVIEW

Interview with

Wild Youth.

In the last five years, the Irish Music Scene has been very lucky to see an uprise of local talent becoming very successful. Ireland is no stranger to euphoria when it comes to music and I am proud to look back upon all the great Irish acts over the years. I am even more excited to look into the future of Irish music that is going to take us all by storm. It is no surprise then that getting an interview with Wild Youth was something that I couldn’t help get hyped for. Wild Youth are already well established not only in Ireland but in the summer of 2017 they flew to the top of the Spotify charts with, All Or Nothing.

I was very lucky to land an interview on the day with the two frontmen, David and Conor when they were playing their biggest headlining gigs to date, at The Olympia in Dublin.

Q:Where did it all begin for you guys?

A: David was sat on a worktop beside me in the changing room as he answered the first question. “We were mates since we were like 12 and were always hanging out together, then we ended up always being in each other’s houses and playing music or writing music. We then started to get into other bands, for the first couple of years we were never in the same band together. We just started forming our own circles, meeting different people and getting our own music tastes.” Conor was sitting across from me and added that they were always the two people that were really into music from a young age.

David then went on to tell me how it started to come together. “We were only started to talk about this yesterday. We played in our separate bands at a gig one night and then randomly at the end decided, right! Me and Conor are going to do a song now and we ditched our other bands. Which left everyone very confused.” Conor started to laugh and as David went to get a bottle of water he reached up and said “It was always destined in the stars” I kindly declined his offer of a bottle of water as Conor started to add more to the story.

“Obviously myself and David are best mates, I had an accident when I was in 5^th year, so I was out of action for a few months like I had a bad stomach operation. When I started to get a bit better Dave would come up to the house and instead of going out with his mates he would come up to me and we would just chill out and play music. It made it almost like therapy to me, we just always had a very special connection. We then finished school and moved on, these kind of things happen we just drifted apart, went to college, made new friends. But one night we ended up just bumping into each other and we couldn’t stop talking about music.” David pointed out that they were both desperate to be in a band, “I remember just thinking, awh come on lads what are we fucking doing!”. Conor laughed and finished with  “We always knew whatever we wanted to do it was just going to be about music.”

It is incredible to think that such an ordinary pair of guys have such amazing energy, I could tell that it was always about the love of music for them. I wanted to ask how they decided what type of sound they were going to be creating and what the creative process was like for Wild Youth.

Where did your sound originate from?

A: David was very honest in his response which I really admired, a lot of bands can lie and just say that they knew how they wanted to sound instantly, David knew there was a lot more to be said.

“We were writing for a while before we found out what we wanted our sound to be. We had gone wrong before in a band and stopped because we didn’t like the sound that we were producing at the time. It took us a while before we found ourselves and could then be happy with the sound we were creating. Even when we released our first single All Or Nothing it wasn’t necessarily the type of music that we wanted Wild Youth to be.” Conor used a very interesting analogy to describe the process.

“It’s like when you move into a house for the first time and you let the tap run for a while to get rid of all the shit that’s pilled up. Eventually the water will run clear.” David laughed and added that this is normally when you would buy a filter. “Yeah we just kept writing and writing until eventually we honed our craft and knew where our influences were coming from. It was when we released Lose Control we knew what we wanted to be and then we were even more certain when we released Can’t Move On.

          When Wild Youth started their career it wasn’t long until they were being played on the radio and selling out venues, their rise to fame did not take very long, this lead to the next question.

         

Q:Was there a particular gig that made you realise how big Wild Youth were going to be?

A: Conor mentioned that it might be a bit naïve to think the following but looking back it made a lot of sense.

 “We had just released All Or Nothing and hadn’t really played any headlining shows or anything, we were on our way down to a festival in Cork called Indiependence. I remember being told we would be playing a gig in the beer hall, we didn’t think much of it. The beer tent looked pretty big but it was just a bar. The hall itself was massive but the stage was in the far left corner. We stood in their at around 3 o’clock and there was about 4 people standing there, we all were saying that is was going to be a shitshow. But we went on later and I’m not joking, the place was wall to wall, the energy was absolutely incredible.”

Looking back on this side of the interview I can’t help but see the similarity between Wild Youth and Aslan, they both released one single and then went to Cork for their first gig and played packed out venues. There was another moment Conor felt like he had to point out.

“When we played Electric Picnic last year, everyone around us was saying how big this gig was going to be. It wasn’t until myself and Dave walked out into the tent and seen what we would be playing to, we grabbed each other and had to walk back out, we nearly got sick.”

Dave completely agreed at how much playing EP meant to them.

“I had to avoid the tent for the day and by the time we all walked out it packed about 10,000 people into it. A mate of mine was at the gig and sent me a video of the last song we played which was Can’t Move On, he was at the front of the crowd and the opening guitar line starts and he does a 360 on the video and you can just hear screaming everywhere, then the kick came in and everybody started singing. Looking back on the video, I went holy shit, like my hairs are standing up now thinking about it.”

 Conor added that they wouldn’t allow anyone in the dressing room after the gig. “I remember barricading ourselves in and just sitting on our own for an hour just talking and having beers, we really needed to calm down.

          When I got to the Olympia there was people queuing to get in, I went over to ask how long they were there, I could not believe that it was since 9 o’clock that morning. When I asked about that relationship it became very apparent that they consider themselves no different to the fans that go to their shows every week, for them, Wild Youth is everyone not just the band. I really admired that because again, other bands can find themselves looking down upon their fans but for Wild Youth the love of the crowd is evident.

We then moved onto other Irish bands that are doing extremely well and then started a list which just seemed to have no end. I then proceeded to my last question.

        

  Q: How does it feel to be part of the Irish music scene at the moment?

A:      Dave answered quickly, “It’s completely surreal, we try not to think about it sometimes.” Conor agreed and said “We tend to fan girl those other bands we just mentioned.” I laughed and David explained why they felt like that. “We grew up going to see The Script and The Coronas and looking up to them, so it really hasn’t hit me yet that we’re doing a headline here in the Olympia. Some people laugh and tell us we’re lying but we really don’t see ourselves anything other than just best mates in a band.” It was clear they felt like that when Conor added “ We don’t surround ourselves with people telling us we are brilliant, we’re always surrounded with people telling us we can be better.”

It was clear that they were slowly starting to realise how big the night would be for them so I decided I wouldn’t outstay my welcome and ended the interview. I was walking away stunned at how nice a group of people who are doing extremely well could be. I stayed to watch my first Wild Youth gig and it is not something that can be easily described so guess what, you’re going to have to go see them for yourself.

I would like to thank Conor Friel and Niall Morris who allowed me the opportunity to interview such a great band and I would also like to thank Harry Forkan who done a fantastic job as the photographer.

Close is now up on Youtube with the official video check them out here!