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The story so far: The 1975 became one of the world\u2019s biggest bands by stealth, while messianic frontman Matty Healy sank secretly into drug addiction. In 2018 Sylvia Patterson met the quartet in England and Los Angeles to hear how he pulled back from the abyss so as to push his group into a new galaxy.<\/p>\n
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Words by Sylvia Patterson<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/flatplan-plus-content.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2024\/07\/UK_Q_00112018_Page_001_Image_0001.jpg” title_text=”UK_Q_00112018_Page_001_Image_0001″ _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text module_class=”text-with-dropcap” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n Angelic Studios, Northamptonshire. In the tranquil surroundings of the sun-parched English countryside, Matty Healy is fidgeting on a sofa in a fog of cigarette smoke, bleached-out hair on end, wearing what appear to be rags: a shredded artwork T-shirt, floral trousers and manky no-longer-white hotel slippers. He\u2019s talking at three times the speed of average humans.<\/p>\n \u201cYou have to go to rehab because when you\u2019re not on drugs, the only thing you can think about is getting the drugs,\u201d he\u2019s racing on, spelling out the thought process which took him to Barbados on Halloween 2017 to rid himself of the daily heroin smoking habit he\u2019d acquired over the course of the previous four years (the majority of The 1975\u2019s visible life). He chose Barbados \u201cbecause it\u2019s a long swim back to London.\u201d He carries on, rapidly.<\/p>\n \u201cSoon as you take the drugs you go, \u2018Oh, I don\u2019t need these fucking drugs\u2019, so you go [breezily], \u2018OK, I\u2019ll go to rehab\u2019, you get to rehab, week one, \u2018I need the drugs, everyone\u2019s a c**t, what you talking about, of course I need the drugs, are you mental?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n He\u2019s intense, gallows-funny, chaotic, chocolate-drop eyes staring straight into your own: you\u2019re listening three times faster just to keep up.<\/p>\n As a literary adolescent and beyond, Healy fell hard for the romance of the heroin-strung-out creative, a Burroughs\/Beat poet obsessive, just like Pete Doherty, \u201cbut I hated Pete Doherty, so I did it in secret\u201d. Unlike with Doherty, rehab succeeded, now convinced he\u2019ll be clean forever at 29 (he\u2019s even given up booze, though the constant weed remains).<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019d rather have the person\u2019s life back than any kind of \u2018cool\u2019 legacy,\u201d he notes, witheringly. \u201cI\u2019d rather have seen Kurt Cobain grow old and cringey and end up on I\u2019m A Celebrity. Who gives a fuck about being cool? And with suicide, right, we tend to think they woke up one day and made a decision to do that. Instead of thinking they probably woke up every day finding ways to not do that. Listen, I\u2019ve been there. I don\u2019t have a lot of self-esteem. But if you\u2019re into music authentically because it saved your life, that\u2019s your job for other people. The purpose.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2018 Matty Healy is less the comedy-megalomaniac of his mid-20s, more bracingly honest, sensitive and confessional, an almost alarmingly smart scatter of relentless kinetic energy. He drives the agenda of The 1975, the studio walls papered with the marketing artwork for third album, A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships, including the quote: \u201cIf I don\u2019t get to see the beauty of the end of culture: Then at least I\u2019ve seen the culture of the end of beauty.\u201d He powers through a dissection of our raging, \u201cradioactive\u201d contemporary digital discourse, quotes Carl Jung and Nietzsche, loathes dehumanising post-modern irony and believes in mission statements: this year, to culturally reinstate \u201csincerity and authenticity\u201d.<\/p>\n In bands from the age of 10, he spent his adolescence indoors creating what would become The 1975 with his school-friends in Cheshire from the age of 13: co-songwriter\/producer\/drummer George Daniel, bassist Ross MacDonald and guitarist Adam Hann. With his sometime Byron-esque curls and pretty-boy features, Healy was a swoon-pop frontman archetype, but no labels would touch this band\u2019s musical idiosyncrasy. In defiance they launched themselves, through their own label Dirty Hit in 2009 (initially set up by close friend and manager Jamie Oborne), their first two albums reaching Number 1 (The 1975, 2013) and the ludicrously-titled I Like It When You Sleep, For You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware Of It (2016, also Number 1 in America). Colossal with teenage girls and bewildering to everyone else, they were cartoony \u201980s retro-pop \u2013 Duran Duran, INXS, with echoes of One Direction \u2013 belying lyrical forensics on addiction, depression and madness. Two songs in 2016 hinted at greatness: the sublime, dreamscape single Somebody Else and the delicate acoustic She Lays Down, Healy\u2019s eulogy to his mum\u2019s postnatal depression and cocaine addiction (sometime Corrie actor and Loose Woman Denise Welch, who found the song \u201cheartfelt, beautiful\u201d). No typical pop fare here. Fans duly reciprocated. They etched tattoos of his lyrics, worshipped him as the Harry Styles of emo-pop. Lorde and Halsey covered their songs, they supported The Rolling Stones, sold out Madison Square Garden. The job description\/purpose he\u2019s just spelled out came so true, so fast, \u201cit messed me up: letters from kids saying we\u2019d saved their lives.\u201d<\/p>\n The mainstream beyond youth culture, though, took notice only as recently as the Brit Awards 2017, winning Best British Group, their performance of chirpy synth-pop single The Sound intercut with outtakes from mocking debut album reviews (viewers thought they\u2019d been cyber-hacked through the TV): \u201cIs this a joke?\u201d \u201cDo people really still make music like this?\u201d \u201cPretentious.\u201d \u201cPunch-your-TV obnoxious.\u201d It was smart, funny, subversive and audacious but even today, oddly, they\u2019re a peripheral presence. \u201cThe biggest band in the world nobody\u2019s ever heard of?\u201d baulks Healy, taken aback (in his world, understandably, he\u2019s massive). \u201cWell, everything we\u2019ve done has been irregular.\u201d<\/p>\n He\u2019s irregular company. He talks so compulsively fast that he has what he calls \u201ctics\u201d, rapidly pressing the tips of all his fingers, one by one, onto the thumbs of both hands like the pincer movements of an insect. \u201cAnd I\u2019ve got this left, right, here, here, here thing,\u201d he explains, pinching his shoulders, arms, knees, the kind of bizarre OCD routine you see from tennis titan Rafael Nadal. His speedy mind is specifically why he chose heroin: to cut the noise dead.<\/p>\n \u201cI envy other people,\u201d he laments, pointing to his bubbling brain. \u201cIt\u2019s just going going going, you wake up, \u2018Fucking hell, again.\u2019 And the first time I did it [heroin] I was like, \u2018Uuuuuuuh. There it is. There\u2019s the silence. There\u2019s the stillness.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n This is Healy\u2019s My Drug Hell story. He deliberately decided back in June to \u201cstop lying\u201d and embrace \u201cthe truth\u201d, move past the \u201cshame\u201d of the rock\u2019n\u2019roll clich\u00e9 which had made him \u201ca worse writer, person, friend, partner, son, hurting people, and I care way more\u2026 about other people than I care about myself, I know that\u2019s sad, but I really do.\u201d In rehab, he received physical, heartfelt, difficult letters from his bandmates spelling out exactly how they felt, has taken voluntary weekly drug tests ever since as part of the band\u2019s routine, \u201cprison-style\u201d, and been in therapy \u201call the time\u201d. He tells a lengthy story about the horse called Favor which saved him back in Barbados, through equine therapy (which he initially rolled his eyes at). It took hours with a trainer to develop a relationship with the beautiful, black, elegant Favor who, at first, \u201cdidn\u2019t give a fuck\u201d, ignoring the dishevelled young human in the throes of withdrawal. Eventually, Favor wouldn\u2019t leave his side, giving Healy \u201cmassively profound revelations\u201d, seeing in his new hoofed pal \u201cstrength, power, independence, gracious with its time, without ego; human qualities I lacked. I learned to be a better person. It changed my life, y\u2019know?\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n How did that change the way you feel about yourself?<\/p>\n \u201cWell\u2026 it\u2019s like\u2026 to be a horse, isn\u2019t it?\u201d he muses. \u201cYou don\u2019t have to tell a horse to love itself, d\u2019youknowhatImean? Or to eat the right things, sleep at the right time. They do what\u2019s best for themselves. And they don\u2019t judge themselves for it. They just do it. Because it\u2019s what you\u2019re supposed to do.\u201d<\/p>\n He then plays work-in-progress edits from A Brief Inquiry\u2026, its lyrical themes \u201cthe negotiation of love, fear, sex and loss in the digital age.\u201d It\u2019s about how humans today are doing anything but what\u2019s best for themselves, and judging themselves and everyone else because of it. There\u2019s a subtext, adds Healy, of \u201ca deep inquiry into\u2026 my fears.\u201d By the time it\u2019s finished in three months\u2019 time it could be the album of their generation.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/flatplan-plus-content.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2024\/07\/Unknown.jpeg” title_text=”Unknown” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text module_class=”image-gallery-caption” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” text_font=”|300|||||||” text_font_size=”16px” text_line_height=”1.2em” custom_margin=”-10px||||false|false” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n Close to the edge: The 1975 (from left) George Daniel, Ross MacDonald, Healy and Adam Hann, LA, 2018<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_divider color=”#111111″ module_class=”custom-divider” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” custom_padding=”||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][\/et_pb_divider][et_pb_text module_class=”text-with-dropcap” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n Los Angeles, September 2018. Through a huge, ranch-style wooden gate high in the Hollywood Hills, Matty Healy ambles across the glass-fronted open-plan kitchen\/living room of a residential studio wearing a new haircut, a short-sided, raven-black mop, and what appears to be a hessian potato sack. It\u2019s a calf-length, oatmeal frockcoat which makes him look like Kirk Douglas in the 1956 Vincent Van Gogh biopic Lust For Life. He, though, sees \u201cPhil Collins\u201d, on Top Of The Pops in 1981, when Collins perched a paint pot atop his piano after his missus left him for a painter and decorator, and Healy was eight years from being born.<\/p>\n The 1975 are living here, finishing A Brief Inquiry\u2026 and beginning their fourth, Notes On A Conditional Form, due next May. Healy loves LA, \u201cit\u2019s relentlessly bright, positive, active, healthy, beautiful\u201d, perfect for the millennial lifestyle defined by so-called self-care and wellness (apart from US-strength marijuana), including daily early morning workouts with a personal trainer. Healy\u2019s recovery is going well, though he\u2019s aware he\u2019s cut himself off from triggers, and you wonder, three months on from My Drug Hell, how he feels about his public statements today.<\/p>\n \u201cI just wanted to apologise to my mum,\u201d he cringes, head down. \u201cYou can\u2019t be a parent and have that kind of thing out there and not think, \u2018Well, why didn\u2019t I\u2026,\u2019\u201d he falters. \u201cYou think it\u2019s your fault, d\u2019youknowhatImean? When it\u2019s completely not.\u201d<\/p>\n The kitchen-living room is busy: band members lounge with girlfriends, alongside blue-haired Filipino artist No Rome, signed to Dirty Hit, soon puffing on a gigantic, Wu-Tang-style brown blunt (which brings two words to mind: The Fear).<\/p>\n We repair to the wood-panelled studio where Healy plays the finished A Brief Inquiry\u2026, fingers air-playing the tiniest touches, in perfect time. Of the four singles already released this year, mostly perky synth-pop (lead single Give Yourself A Try was a chiming amalgam of goth and pop), only one is astonishing, Love It If We Made It, a frenetic collage of contemporary references (\u201cConsultation\/Degradation\/Fossil fuelling\/Masturbation\/Immigration\/Liberal kitsch\/Kneeling on a pitch\/I moved on her like a bitch\u201d), which is, notes a now-beaming Healy, \u201cproper epic!\u201d The rest is a revelation: dramatic whooshes of compressed, multi-vocal effects, scurrying beatbox stoner-freak psychedelia, as if Aphex Twin joined Kid A-era Radiohead, and a cultural first, a parable narrated by Apple\u2019s Siri, where the character\u2019s \u201cbest friend\u201d, the internet, cheers him up by showing him \u201cthe people having sex\u201d and agreeing with everything he says. There\u2019s a portentous, Joy Division-esque murder ballad (Healy knows little about Joy Division, \u201cEr, I\u2019ve been to Macclesfield?\u201d), another lyrically wrestles with Healy\u2019s heroin-shaped \u201c20 stone monkey on my back\u201d, over echoes of Fleetwood Mac and, unfeasibly, \u201970s easy-listening crooner Peter Skellern. Two songs comprise the finale: I Couldn\u2019t Be More In Love, a glorious swoon of impassioned grief with an unapologetic, stand-up-for-the-key-change moment. It might yet be the greatest X Factor winner\u2019s song ever written and if that doesn\u2019t sound much of a stretch, it could be a Michael Jackson ballad in the style of Harry Nilsson\u2019s immortal Without You in 1971. In the soaring closer, I Always Wanna Die (Sometimes), Healy laments, \u201csing the blues, there\u2019s no point in buying concrete shoes\u201d, around a celestial falsetto, a thrum of ecstatic finality sliding into a Beethoven flourish, a cliff-hanging reverie-in-cello. \u201cYou want the Hollywood ending and then the ending,\u201d thrills Healy, of the bewitching false ending. \u201cLike The Graduate.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s dramatic, sincere, ridiculous, often brilliant (definitely not a joke), impressively self-produced and creatively enhanced by what Healy calls \u201cGeorge\u2019s OCD\u201d. Healy, evidently, free from his narcotic flat-line, has become not only a better person but a significantly more imaginative musical force. If there are hints of Radiohead here, they\u2019re more Coldplay in reverse: a promising young band who\u2019ve spectacularly evolved, instead of creatively devolved, a band unafraid of the dark, and the real.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”pull-quote” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_2_text_align=”center” header_2_text_color=”#111111″ header_2_font_size=”46px” header_2_line_height=”1.2em” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”pullquote-name” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_2_text_align=”center” header_2_font_size=”46px” header_2_line_height=”1.2em” header_3_text_align=”center” header_3_text_color=”#111111″ header_3_font_size=”38px” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”text-with-dropcap” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n The 1975 are incredibly representative of the millennial generation,\u201d Matty Healy now declares, under azure skies, panoramic views of LA stretching out below. \u201cAnd what is the millennial generation? It\u2019s musically all over the place and it\u2019s particularly mentally unwell.\u201d<\/p>\n We\u2019re on the studio boardwalk patio, on white leather sofas, Healy puffing on a spliff. Cannabis, since adolescence, has been a brain-stabilising force, \u201cvery much so\u201d, even the \u201cvery strong\u201d newly legal American kind. How come he doesn\u2019t feel as if he\u2019s on acid? \u201cYears and years of tolerance.\u201d<\/p>\n He\u2019s simultaneously eating healthy, salad-based fare from a brown paper bag delivery, \u201cSorry, I\u2019m starving!\u201d He\u2019s less manic today, no sign of those pincer-movement tics, but his mind speeds on, dissecting the manipulative forces behind online life, like listening to a triple-speed TED Talk tutorial on YouTube. He\u2019s knowledgeable, scientific, knows how Google works (our searches are individualised, which reinforces information, limits our reach), how the digital \u201cattention economy\u201d works, using \u201cthe slot machine effect\u201d to keep us hooked across Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Netflix, \u201cmind-controlling the whole of society\u201d. How we\u2019re chemically addicted to the dopamine hits of validation (and emotionally skewered where there\u2019s none), declares online addiction denial \u201cidentical\u201d to drug addiction denial, \u201cand the whole world is enabling you.\u201d<\/p>\n He\u2019s seen his generation\u2019s self-esteem plummet, the rise of anxiety, depression, suicide, self-harm \u2013 \u201cit\u2019s astronomical, I\u2019m sure that correlation is real.\u201d Then there\u2019s everything else. He was 12 years old when 9\/11 happened, a member of Generation Spooked which understands the world is corrupt, run by crooks and charlatans (glaringly so today), who knows, as The Wire once told us, the game is rigged, y\u2019all.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s like the hypernormalisation idea of, \u2018I know that you know that I know this is all fucked up,\u2019\u201d he scoffs. \u201cSo there\u2019s a massive distrust.\u201d After all these years in 21st-century pop, then \u2013 of the media-trained, of the pleasantly privileged and the thud of the average mind \u2013 we have among us a Mad Professor Of Pop. If there are echoes here of the young Richey Edwards, the long-missing guitarist\/theorist of the Manic Street Preachers \u2013 his polemics, sloganeering and cynicism, at least \u2013 mercifully for him he\u2019s also sensitive to existential wonder. He grew up boggling at cosmologist Carl Sagan\u2019s immortal Pale Blue Dot speech, \u201cas a kid, I got the insignificance\u201d, an enormous toke seeing him flying down a wormhole to 1968.<\/p>\n \u201cQuantum ideas, sub-realities are interesting but our interaction with other human beings, that\u2019s the realest of the real real real,\u201d he exhales. \u201cWhat is real is this now, it\u2019s us talking about what is real, is what is real. So to not make that as beautiful, exciting, unlimited and purposeful is pointless. The magic of reality I\u2019m a massive fan of. I envy the faithful but I don\u2019t need to be put here for any other reason than a mushroom.\u201d<\/p>\n He enthuses over the rise of pop science, over author Yuval Noah Harari\u2019s Sapiens: A Brief History Of Humankind (which induced \u201ca bit of a nervous breakdown\u201d) and socialism. \u201cKarl Marx is sexy again,\u201d he marvels. \u201cNow, young people into the Kardashians are talking about socialism. It\u2019s weird, man! Being progressive is popular.\u201d<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”pull-quote” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_2_text_align=”center” header_2_text_color=”#111111″ header_2_font_size=”46px” header_2_line_height=”1.2em” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”pullquote-name” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_2_text_align=”center” header_2_font_size=”46px” header_2_line_height=”1.2em” header_3_text_align=”center” header_3_text_color=”#111111″ header_3_font_size=”38px” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_divider color=”#111111″ module_class=”custom-divider” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” custom_padding=”||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][\/et_pb_divider][et_pb_text module_class=”text-with-dropcap” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n Matty Healy\u2019s infinite theorising could be, in some ways, an inner-life avoidance device. He mentions his girlfriend, the 22-year-old Australian fashion model Gabby Brooks, whom he partly credits with his current stability.<\/p>\n \u201cI love Gabby a lot, and she\u2019s been really good for me,\u201d he decides. \u201cAnd it\u2019s hard being with me because I\u2019m so insular, y\u2019know?\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s an odd thing to say: he seems so open.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not insular when you get in. But the gate\u2019s kind of locked.\u201d<\/p>\n His lifelong depression he describes as \u201cbrutal\u201d, something he\u2019s loathe to talk about (other than in his lyrics) because today everyone else does: artists, society, the young Royals. \u201cIt\u2019s quite en vogue to do so. I don\u2019t wanna be part of that.\u201d With the gate locked, we talk about the culture of mental health anyway, about ubiquitous \u201ctoxic masculinity\u201d and he succumbs to The Fear.<\/p>\n \u201cI fear saying I don\u2019t think it\u2019s a great thing,\u201d he frowns, perhaps mindful of a looming Twitterstorm. \u201cI\u2019d like to retract my statement. It\u2019s too important. And it\u2019s been a cornerstone in my life, in my music.\u201d<\/p>\n Healy\u2019s depression he calls \u201ccompression\u201d: he\u2019d react emotionally identically to news of \u201cmy dog dying, or winning the lottery. But I\u2019ve seen worse, even in my family.\u201d He wants to help, it\u2019s what I Always Wanna Die (Sometimes) is about, now taking his role as potentially life-saving pop star not only seriously, but literally.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople should talk about suicidal thoughts,\u201d he now urges.<\/p>\n Because you\u2019ve had those thoughts?<\/p>\n \u201cAll the time.\u201d<\/p>\n All the time?<\/p>\n He sighs. \u201cWhenever I get depressed, and that\u2019s been regularly in my life, that\u2019s a thing, right?\u201d he explains. \u201cIt\u2019s like pain relief. So I think it\u2019s alright for people to understand that thinking about killing yourself\u2026 it\u2019s not mental to think that. Thinking about it is very different to planning it. And if you\u2019re a fan of The 1975, and if you\u2019ve remotely planned it, then I\u2019d love it if you saw somebody and told them exactly what happens with those thoughts. I\u2019m not a suicidal person, I don\u2019t wanna confuse people, but to think, \u2018This is too hard, killing myself would be easier\u2019 is something a lot of people think. And maybe wouldn\u2019t wanna admit. And I\u2019ll admit it freely.\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s a quote: \u201cDon\u2019t make a permanent decision for your temporary emotion.\u201d Is that what you mean?<\/p>\n \u201cYeah,\u201d he nods. \u201cYour body is a set of chemicals and sometimes they don\u2019t work very well. Time becomes agonising, like being on acid. You see people have their day and you feel like you\u2019ve lived two weeks. Cos you haven\u2019t moved, like you haven\u2019t gotten out of bed. Learn to sit in it. Ride it out. Patience is a fucking virtue.\u201d<\/p>\n In the last two years, music culture alone has known many suicides and drug-related overdose fatalities, accidental or otherwise, young or otherwise, all men: Chester Bennington from Linkin Park, Chris Cornell from Soundgarden, Scott Hutchison from Frightened Rabbit, Avicii, Lil Peep, Mac Miller. Healy knew Miller \u201ca little bit\u201d, they played Australia\u2019s Big Day Out together in 2014, had lunch, smoked weed together. His face crumples. \u201cI don\u2019t wanna ride on his death.\u201d His eyes brim with tears, turns his head away.<\/p>\n \u201cIt really upsets me. It\u2019s just sad, man. He was a good person. Incredibly talented.\u201d<\/p>\n Ever since he\u2019s been struggling, he admits, \u201cwith guilt\u201d, for talking openly about opioids which may have been involved in Miller\u2019s fatal overdose, feeling he might have helped \u201clegitimise\u201d Xanax specifically. \u201cI feel like a wanker,\u201d he says, for being truthful about drugs full stop. \u201cBut it was either that or keep lying and feel like a wanker anyway.\u201d Now, he\u2019s incensed.<\/p>\n \u201cI hope each one [of the recent deaths] scares the shit out of everybody,\u201d he exclaims. \u201cIt\u2019s not a fucking game! The one in 5000 ecstasy pills within a batch at fucking Creamfields in the \u201990s, that\u2019s one thing. A fucking supply-and-demand industry that\u2019s the same as fucking McDonald\u2019s? Where anybody in a fucking Prius can sell you some dodgy Xannies? That is not a game. I had to be on a fucking island, with the sea stopping me from swimming back. It\u2019s a culture that is not a fucking game.\u201d<\/p>\n He looks shaken, forlorn. We talk about music instead.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_divider color=”#111111″ module_class=”custom-divider” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” custom_padding=”||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][\/et_pb_divider][et_pb_text module_class=”pull-quote” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_2_text_align=”center” header_2_text_color=”#111111″ header_2_font_size=”46px” header_2_line_height=”1.2em” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”pullquote-name” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_2_text_align=”center” header_2_font_size=”46px” header_2_line_height=”1.2em” header_3_text_align=”center” header_3_text_color=”#111111″ header_3_font_size=”38px” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/flatplan-plus-content.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2024\/07\/UK_Q_00112018_Page_056_Image_0002.jpg” title_text=”UK_Q_00112018_Page_056_Image_0002″ _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text module_class=”image-gallery-caption” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” text_font=”|300|||||||” text_font_size=”16px” text_line_height=”1.2em” custom_margin=”-10px||||false|false” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n Sink or swim time: Matty Healy gets deep, LA, September, 2018.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_divider color=”#111111″ module_class=”custom-divider” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” custom_padding=”||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][\/et_pb_divider][et_pb_text module_class=”text-with-dropcap” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n M<\/span>atty Healy\u2019s random, decades-spanning musical taste began before the digital democracy even began, back in the 1990s. Aged 10, through his dad\u2019s classic rock\/soul\/blues record collection (the actor Tim Healy, famed for playing Les\/Lesley in Benidorm), \u201cI knew more about The Moody Blues than fucking Joy Division, d\u2019youknowhatImean?\u201d His favourite \u201990s song isn\u2019t from Britpop or dance culture but the New Radicals\u2019 You Get What You Give, from 1998. His first eureka moment was Michael Jackson at Wembley, aged eight, in 1997.<\/p>\n \u201cMy mum surprised me and I cried from the second she gave me the ticket till after the gig,\u201d he beams, his spirit elevating at the meticulously-detailed memory. \u201cFucking, the show starts, right, silk screen up, his 20-foot shadow comes up, boof! In the hat, boom, shoom, gah! The screen drops, it\u2019s him, everyone went [freezes, mouth agape] and then went mental\u2026 that\u2019s Michael Jackson. I hadn\u2019t seen him on Google Images, y\u2019know? I remember dancing and dancing and dancing and dancing and dancing for fucking hours and hours. It was fucking sick.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s the first time today he sounds truly young. He fell in love with music predominantly through \u201980s movie soundtracks, \u201cand that\u2019s how I see my life, as a series of scenes, and what would the music be like for that scene? Not in a wanky way!\u201d He loved both musicals and alternative rock singles, \u201cRise, Public Image, Just Like Honey, The Jesus And Mary Chain\u201d and by 16 had \u201ca hard-on for\u201d obscure American emo, \u201cMineral, Sunny Day Real Estate, American Football\u201d. Simultaneously, he loved Mariah Carey, Bj\u00f6rk, Kate Bush, Carole King, Joni Mitchell, \u201cso many influential women in my life\u201d and especially Whitney Houston. \u201cI was in love, oh young Whitney was my fucking dream!\u201d he serenades, describing his original blueprint for The 1975 sound as \u201cmusic which sounded like I Wanna Dance With Somebody but lyrics like Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen.\u201d His suburban middle-class home life was \u201cmental\u201d, a \u201990s musical party house revelling in booze and jokes (his dad had been a stand-up comic), liberal attitudes to sex and sexuality (his maternal grandad was a drag queen), hung out with his dad\u2019s old welder mates and the odd showbiz pal (the first guitar he ever played was Mark Knopfler\u2019s from Dire Straits). With zero interest in school or a proper job (post-school he worked in Chinese restaurants and call centres), his pop star dream was never in question. Asked simply where his unwavering drive comes from and he barely understands the question. Spells of silence whoosh around many faltering starts.<\/p>\n \u201cYou know what it is? I just fucking love music,\u201d he announces. \u201cThe combination of music, culture and dialogue and how powerful they are. Because art and culture is the only thing that transcends\u2026 everything. It\u2019s non-exclusive. Music is anathema to all the fucking bullshit. It\u2019s the opposite of everything that\u2019s wrong with the world.\u201d<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”text-with-dropcap” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n T<\/span>his Halloween, exactly one year on from his flight to Barbados, Matty Healy leaves LA to move out of his East London home, heading instead to West London, away from the drug enablers and triggers. He\u2019s become enthralled by natural things, \u201cI\u2019m all about raw materials\u201d (hence the hessian sack), his architect-built new home made entirely of concrete, \u201clike a little concrete church, hyper-modern, beautiful, full of light.\u201d Next April, he turns 30.<\/p>\n \u201cI like maturing,\u201d he decides. \u201cIt forces you to stand up, be a man, take control of yourself. Fucking do some exercise.\u201d<\/p>\n Be like the horse?<\/p>\n \u201cBe like the horse. I feel at my most authentic. I\u2019ve made a record I\u2019m happy to put out at 30. It doesn\u2019t feel younger than that. I don\u2019t think I look 30…\u201d<\/p>\n Has it ever been a burden being good-looking?<\/p>\n \u201cOh!\u201d he splutters. \u201cI can\u2019t answer that, can I? I don\u2019t curate a world where it has much importance. That\u2019s why I dress like a fucking painter and decorator.\u201d<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”text-with-dropcap” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n B<\/span>ack in the kitchen, Healy joins his bandmates and extended family, his best friend George Daniel toking from No Rome\u2019s cartoon-sized blunt. It\u2019s now dusk, a crescent moon hangs over the glittering metropolis below where humanity negotiates love, fear, sex and loss in the digital age. Right now there\u2019s no 20-stone monkey on Healy\u2019s back, only his giggling girlfriend literally on his back, her legs wrapped around his waist. For the young man in the Vincent Van Gogh frockcoat, who doesn\u2019t believe in Hollywood endings, the sadness may never go. But tonight, in the real-time biopic of his life, Matthew Healy is Favor the horse.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Doing what he\u2019s supposed to do.<\/p>\n This article originally appeared in issue 392 of Q.<\/em><\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”credit-names” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” text_font_size=”14px” text_orientation=”center” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n Images: <\/strong>Rachael Wright<\/span><\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Matthew Healy come up for airThe story so far: The 1975 became one of the world\u2019s biggest bands by stealth, while messianic frontman Matty Healy sank secretly into drug addiction. In 2018 Sylvia Patterson met the quartet in England and Los Angeles to hear how he pulled back from the abyss so as to push […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":1656,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"modified_by":"akindell","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1672"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1672\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1689,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1672\/revisions\/1689"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\u201cSoon as you take the drugs you go, \u2018Oh, I don\u2019t need these drugs: OK, I\u2019ll go to rehab.\u2019 You get to rehab, week one, \u2018I need the drugs, everyone\u2019s a c**t, what you talking about, of course I need the drugs, are you mental? \u2019\u201d<\/h2>\n
Matt Healy<\/h3>\n
\u201cPeople should talk about suicidal thoughts. Thinking about it is very different to planning it. And if you\u2019re a fan of The 1975, and if you\u2019ve remotely planned it, then I\u2019d love it if you saw somebody and told them exactly what happens with those thoughts.\u201d<\/h2>\n
Matt Healy<\/h3>\n
\u201cI see my life as a series of scenes, and what would the music be like for that scene? Not in a wanky way!\u201d<\/h2>\n
Matt Healy<\/h3>\n