Forming The Band by Billy Lunn (The Subways)

Beginnings

Songs, to me, are what it’s all about. My first ever experience of really loving a song, or music for that matter, was aged six or seven when my mum first played me Smokey Robinson & The Miracles’ “Tracks Of My Tears”. It was, from that moment (and still is now), my all time number one favourite song. I heard it on the stereo at a friend’s house recently and it still sends shivers through me and strikes me as musical genius - if there is such a thing - in so many ways. The way the phrases transition and flow from one to the next, always keeping in mind its impact and its subtlety. Every time I write a song I guess I’ve always got “Tracks Of My Tears” in the back of my mind. Then one day, having professed this love of song to my dad, he decided to share with me some of the magic of his CD’s. I listened through them all with a consuming enthusiasm and said offhand one day, probably before I was about to go out and play a bit of footy, that my favourite of the bunch was AC/DC. My dad smiled at the idea of me liking rock ‘n roll and soon I found myself at my first ever gig – AC/DC at Wembley stadium. He took my brother and I, who, at only eighteen months younger, was my partner in crime in anything that I did, and we experienced something that was to totally alter the way we saw the world.

Forming the band

A couple of weeks after the AC/DC gig the tinnitus eventually wore off and I found myself suddenly able to concentrate properly again and I decided, with this new found cognitive ability and love for rock, to form a band. It felt only right to include my brother in this adventure. We had no idea how we were going to form this band until I heard “Supersonic” by Oasis. That was the moment I turned to my mum and said “Mum, I have to learn to play the guitar…” Being the ever-supportive parents that they always were (and have been) they indulged our interests and soon I found myself playing a ratty old acoustic guitar that one of my nan’s lodgers had left behind after fleeing without paying the rent. It had only four rusted strings when it was handed to me, but soon it was fully stringed and tightly tuned and I could begin to play the songs I loved. I bought a chord book and began learning all the chords to my favourite songs and eventually felt confident enough to start singing along too. Shortly afterwards, Josh came across Nirvana and then Smashing Pumpkins and decided that drumming was what he wanted to do and before long we were making a racket together, as things were always done with us, on our newly acquired instruments. At the time I’d started seeing a girl I’d met at Harlow swimming pool called Charlotte Cooper. Now and then, when she’d come round the house to see me, she’d have to sit through at least half an hour of Josh and I jamming out a cover of a Foo Fighters song and so in order to quash her boredom we decided to let her join in. We had a four sting bass lying around and soon she’d taught herself Nirvana’s “About A Girl”. Not long after that we began writing songs for ourselves.

Glastonbury 2004

Our first ever gig was at The Square in Harlow and to this day it remains a very important place to us. Our gig consisted of six covers and six original songs (that were utter rip-offs of the covers we were playing that same night) and it was probably one of the worst performances The Square’s legendary walls (and the audience within those walls) had ever seen. Though The Square became a continual source of support and encouragement and soon we found ourselves recording demos there. Eventually we bought a cheap recording unit and some microphones and, using the experience we had gained from the wonderful people who helped record our demos at The Square, began making demo CD’s of our own at home. After some time, maybe a year or so, we’d made six EP’s, each with three songs on, and had sent them out to London promotors. Our first London gig was at The Buffalo Bar in Highbury/Islington. It was also the venue where we met our manager who, after three songs, ran up to the stage from behind the sound desk and begged to manage us. From that point onwards we played at least three or four shows in London a week – and all of this whilst Charlotte was taking her A-levels at school and Josh and I were working at a hotel as linen collectors during the day. We began developing a regular crowd that eventually formed into a fan-base. I’d spent a little of my very small stash of cash from work to set up a website (www.thesubways.net) and a forum where all our fans could talk and meet, and where we could also meet the people who were enjoying the demos and the live shows. Then it got more serious. Record labels began appearing at gigs, John Peel was playing our demo on his show and soon we found that we were being mentioned in some of the London based music press reviews sections. Also around that time, in order to gain more experience and just to have a bit of fun, I took up recording other local bands on the recording unit we'd bought. I asked one of the bands I was recording at the time what they were going to do with the CD once I’d mixed it and they said they were going to be sending it off to Michael Eavis for a competition he was holding that year. Apparently, if he really enjoyed your demo then he’d put you onstage at Glastonbury festival! As soon as I heard this I put our three best songs out of all the demos we had onto one CD and sent it off amongst a batch of thirty other CDs that were already going out to London promotors for more shows. And then we got a phonecall…

All Or Nothing

We were picked to play on The Other Stage at Glastonbury in 2004 and immediately afterwards began booking our very own self-funded tour to follow that up starting in October 2004. The Glastonbury show was a success (we played at 1pm to 10,000 people) and we were determined to throw ourselves into the music. Josh and I quit our jobs and Charlotte decided to defer university for a year to see how things would go. As it turned out, she wouldn’t be going to university after all. In December 2004 we signed our record deal with Warner Music and in the February we began making our debut album, Young For Eternity, in Liverpool with famed Lightning Seed, Ian Broudie. The album was released on 4th July 2005 and got to number 32 in the UK charts and we scored five top 30 singles and eventually sold half a million records worldwide. After two years of constant touring around the globe and learning new things from all the new countries and cultures we were afforded the opportunity to see, we began working on our second album, All Or Nothing, in Los Angeles with legendary producer Butch Vig. This album was released in June 2008 and we reached number 17 in the UK charts. Since making our debut album we’ve toured the world countless times and played in the UK (obviously!), America, Canada, Germany, France, Belgium, Holland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Italy, Greece, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. We’ve been lucky enough to have played with our heroes Oasis, Foo Fighters and AC/DC on several occasions, each with audiences up to and over 50,000 people. We’ve performed at Reading and Leeds festivals five years in a row and will continue to play there for as long as we can! And, for us at least, the adventure is only beginning!