![]() By May, they were sharing a stage with Arctic Monkeys at London’s Finsbury Park. After a bunch of buzzy support slots, a spot on the NME Awards Tour in March 2014 followed. Their early shows got the music industry excited – the two-pronged dynamic of The White Stripes meeting the venomous riffs of Queens Of The Stone Age soon had them tagged as mainstream rock’s great new saviours (they still insist they’re not). “I got a text from two of my mates saying, ‘I heard that tune – yeah, nice one.’ Basically, no one gave a s**t, and I was like, ‘What the f**k? Ben, times are tough – no one likes rock anymore.’”īut just a couple of months later, their ascension went into hyperspeed. “I remember putting ‘Figure It Out’ on SoundCloud after we recorded it and being like, ‘This is going to blow people’s minds,’” says Mike. Ironically, Royal Blood was supposed to be less serious – a chance to just have some fun. Having both played in bands before, though, they decided this one was different. They formed a duo, rehearsed the next day and played their first gig in a Worthing pub the same week. In the car, he played him some demos he’d recorded. When he flew home early in 2013, Ben picked him up from the airport. Mike went travelling in Australia for nine months. The pair, friends since their mid-teens, were making do. Just four years ago, they were pulling pints back home in Brighton. It’s worth remembering where it all started. Summed up: life in Royal Blood 2013-2015 was a blurry succession of pinch-themselves highlights, each one that little bit more ludicrous than the last. “I was on the other side of the table looking at Ben and Jimmy Page eat crumble, thinking, ‘This is f**king mental, what’s going on?’” recalls Mike, shaking his head. ![]() Yep, where most people get a helium balloon, Royal Blood get a rock legend. If not, it’s probably the time Jimmy Page from Led Zeppelin turned up to Ben’s birthday party. He bundled them into a car, stuck a cold beer in their hands and gave them a private midnight tour of his hometown – they’ve got a photo outside the Mrs Doubtfire house to prove it. Royal Blood’s Mike Kerr and Ben Thatcher are spoilt for choice when it comes to pinpointing the most surreal things to happen to them during their first three years as a band, but it might be the evening when a childhood hero, Lars Ulrich of Metallica, knocked on their dressing room door at a show in San Francisco. ![]()
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