Matty Healy (The 1975) opens up about Imagine Dragons confrontation and drug addiction | The Lounge

Give a very warm welcome to Maddy Healy from

1975

. Hi, I know you're used to that, but to me she's adorable. How nice. Hello, Maddy. Hello, thank you for coming today. It's been a long time since you were right. A lot has happened here in this room, it was two years ago, November, two years ago, look at that service, new album, new album in the works and I hate to start with hard-hitting questions, but we don't have any city or United either. those either, no, I'm from Newcastle originally and you can't really, and that's the team you support.

Oh, way, or who dad supports, right, yeah, and my dad would never let me support Mun United in a city. Tim lowered the hammer. Yes, exactly, okay, it's good to know that it's been an exciting season, yes, so be honest, I try and when I'm on tour I try not to follow football because it's one thing I don't have time for anymore. There's a lot to do if I spend all my time worrying about football. I would spend all my time worrying about you. You would never sleep. Ross does that for us, yes, he watches football, but he lives with poor people and for now, that's mental, it's like he can't.

I think you're an American equivalent, but he's crazy, yeah, I love drama. Well, you spend a lot of your free time, I'd say, working on music constantly, right, you and George are mm-hmm. I don't have free time anymore, but still. it's good, but it's harder than most, that's how we're now my seventh show in a row, now seventh full headliner, tonight is our seventh walk because we're canceled in Austin, but then we're back two days late. I said it's hard at the moment, but it's good, yeah, there was a crazy snow storm in Chicago and hurricanes and all that stuff so good, the woman is happening, she's chasing us.

I saw some of you really dedicated. Their fans are the best in the business, they are so passionate. Yeah, and I saw a lot of them getting Interstate 80 tattoos because we were stuck in the study state. Yeah, I thought it was really cool, it's pretty amazing, it was really nice, so tell us a little bit about the evolution of the music. For cars, I mean, it's weird, isn't it? It's like I just need to make another record because, um, that's how I express myself, you know, I mean, I think there's all those omitted, there's a lot of amazing artists right now that their way is to hold people's attention for three minutes. and they're really good at it, you know, Drake does it countless times and they're like single artists who create a catalog of material from people they're emotionally invested in based on their singles. auras I don't do that like there's not really a single, but maybe from someone else who's really penetrated, it's been more their albums with people, people are more intellect throughout the album as a thing, so I don't really have a The choice of whether I wanted to tour for two years I had to do what I do, which is make records, so it's a good record, like it's a long record right now and I think there's things on there that aren't on the other discs.

You know, I think it's quite, there's quite a bit of anger in it, there's that anger in it that hasn't been channeled much into the new and the old and there's happiness in it. I think there's a lot that sounds happy. stuff from

1975

, but there's not really any happy songs, there's a couple of happy songs and well, there's at least one happy song on the record, sir, okay, so where do you think the anger comes from? It was frustrating. But it's a frustrating time to be alive, you know, I think being on the left of anything, especially art, on the youth side, I think you know, um, empowerment is designed. for them and for you we live in a world where we see, you know, progressive young voices drowned out by regressive ideals, you know, I mean, I constantly have like a dichotomy or just a paradox of like the same day they met.

The Met Gala happened like it was yesterday or the day before yesterday and there is the same day that the time came out and that time we did a study where they realized that in the next 11 years if we continue down the path we are going to lose 40 percent of the biodiversity we are going to lose like 30 percent of amphibians 30 percent of plant life matters like we are in this really dramatic moment but we are because mmm the idea of ​​sharing An information portal has disappeared when we are even more individual than which we used to be because we have these individual screens, so we can choose to ignore things on an individual level more than we used to be able to and then obviously we like it. the media is no more interested in talking about the robot than the possible loss of life, so it's a strange time, it's frustrating, I think everyone needs to sacrifice, you know, that's what it takes, it won't be like that . easy, it is not like that, no one will not be able to sacrifice themselves.

I think I have to sacrifice things as an artist. I'm talking about you, talk to Jeremy about it. I think we're going to sacrifice car music, like chart position, and you know. I've had three number one albums in the UK and yes, and that's an important thing for you as a legacy, but, for example, if I wanted another number one record I'd have to make a lot of CDs. or violence, I'm not going to do that, you know, we can't keep making plastic and saying it's my plastic, okay, you know, so I'm going to try to create a product that's like it;

Ultimately, it's like a USB that you can take. turn off the music and then once you remove it, it's biodegradable so you can plant it. Wow, hopefully you'll get seeds with USB and then once you have the music, you can plant the USB and turn it into something beneficial instead. maybe it's null or bad, so I love that idea. Do you feel a responsibility to use your platform now to talk about these issues? writing songs to encourage your fan base to do something about it. Does it feel like a burden? I think so. should be the burden of any decent artist, you know, it's pointless now and taking up so much space, you know what I mean?

I think I've been accused of maybe having to talk to people about it, you know? look at that guy from Imagine Dragons, he liked it, he logged on recently and it's like everyone was making fun of me, it was like saying I wasn't good enough or whatever and he was like Billy Corgan said it , nyeeehhh from 1975, he said. I was messed up like I didn't say that, no it's not that and even if I said that, why do you care if you're a millionaire in a huge band like you're not? Oh, I'm going to do this. and I can also be free from criticism it's like no, but that's not the point my point wasn't that

imagine

dragons

arguing I don't care if you're that big if you like America's biggest alternative band As for the radio play, you don't say anything in your music if you just say radioactive words, wait, wait, wait, wait, you know, I mean, it's like me, no, no, no, no, no, I'm done.

I'm sure they are like that but what's the point if you can tell me what's the point other than escapism like back then and we'd like us to be trash with protest music nowadays as a society see my after. 9/11 was so difficult for the country to deal with everyone, there's a Jack Johnson intertwined, Norah Jones, you know, I mean, because people didn't want to deal with reality, we have to deal with me, I'll let you know. So I saw that guy from Imagine Dragons come on stage the other week at the Bilbo Music Awards and start talking about conversion therapy and saying what it was like and that we had to stop it and I thought, there you go, good use of your platform .

I'm not. I'm going to criticize you for that, you know? I mean, he probably did it because of you, yeah, I mean, well, good for him, good for everyone, okay, so let's talk about the core, a quick investigation into online relationships, where some of these songs were written . recorded on your iPhone, yeah, there's a lot of them, I think there's a lot of drums on the iPhone and the iPhone is amazing, hey, it's a supercomputer, you know, it's like EM. I think it was just a record about hugging and something like that. limitations and it was just some conditional shape notes that have been the strangest with respect to their recording because a lot of this was done on this studio bus and stuff like that and then yeah, so I'm being nice.

Most of it is being done on the road and in Los Angeles and we haven't really been anywhere special to do it, so it's pretty interesting, but, yeah, it's a record that you really have to like and have the right mindset going into. regard. You know what I mean because you could go crazy trying to make an album that we're trying to make the way we're trying to make it, but I like being able to hear them all with the glue and you know. I mean, everything that makes it work, there are a lot of similar things, it's just little moments and ideas deconstructed in notes and I don't know, it's still not finished so well during a brief consultation that you were like fighting some demons of yours mm-hmm the writing process is correct, yes, yes.

I guess I think the brief consultation was like I've been through a lot of things I haven't really talked about and the well isn't that deep. When you talk about your real personal experiences, you know what I mean? So I thought, well, I have to talk about this, otherwise, anything else to talk about, it's not like I think they'd even give up the word. heroin is like joining me, it's been so far Wow, and I think with our and with trauma and stuff like that, me doing what I do, there's always a saying around it, you know what I mean, it's and I think I see how people talk about our fans, they talk about different eras and things like that and then a finale that well, I love the title of the same name that was like my mistake and then another death, but no, no, because Matt was like above at that moment and you can't like it. which Aaron, that's not really the case, I mean,

drug

s have always been a big part of my life, as they have been, as I have always been fascinated with them, honestly, intellectually, socially, culturally and in writing, always I have found here.

I always found the idea of ​​wanting to change the way you feel really interesting and why it's so necessary and why it's been so necessary for me and then you know I wasn't high the entire time I was doing the last two. records like it wasn't really like I'd never used them in America for example, so I liked that it was hard, but you said "hit him on the head, go to America, clean up a bit and then it was fine." I was like 25 too, honestly, I liked that, that's what people won't say, people will just say I'm so bad and you never know, never how I want it to be, I don't know.

I don't do things I don't want to do well, so I think one of the things people need to know about

drug

addiction

is that there's like an intellectual illness to it. I thought it was because I needed to. I felt like maybe it was more legitimate because it wasn't performative. Nobody knew he was using those drugs. It wasn't part of my identity that really scared me. Being like a performance junkie because that's really responsible, but maybe the element. That was the only thing that was mine, the only thing that was secret, the only thing that was actually quite dark about me and you know it was mine.

I think I liked it. Did you keep it a secret from the other kids? Yeah for a long time, well I think George found me a couple of times, he was a little dark because George and I are very close, we don't have those kind of values, yeah, um, but yeah, drugs, like heavy drugs, they just make you a liar anyway so it gets really like that and it's time you know, check your bag four times to make sure someone doesn't go looking for a lighter and find something you don't find . It's just stressful. I just can not.

Being asked that again is one of the main reasons I don't do it anymore because it hurts people too much and takes too much effort. How are you coping now? Very good. I mean, I'm over it. I dream about it a lot but I dream more about worrying about getting sick so in my dream I have been using and now I have nothing and I have to deal with being sick and I will wake up. It'll be like you know, so there's that kind of thing that I think, yeah, and to be honest with you, I think about doing this now like seven shows in a row and then trying to score in Chicago just like a few. homeless guy, I can't be, I was doing that.

Now I'm also too famous and I get so caught up. I'll be honest with you when I first came out of rehab. I was in London and spent a night out. I don't care and I walked out to go to school and then this guy walked past me and said oh ma I went I thought so like Walmart was doing well but it's not like it's just you realize how What we do in mine. You know, people think you're cool, you know, um, you are if you're not late, you know, yeah, just doing heroin, what's the most important thing to you regarding your mental health right now?

I haven't figured it out. , yeah, I know what it is and I'm still an addict, you know, you know, I smoke marijuana like you wouldn't believe and I always have, but I think since I got out of rehab everything got better and then. I got worse and I'm just trying, you know, I'm just trying to do it, I don't know, I think making records makes me very happy, you know, and I do a lot of things likeI really felt like I don't really have a purpose unless I'm doing things because you know I have a very big ego, but it's a very low sense of self-worth, you know what I mean?

So, I'm fine. Get it, I get the whole stage life thing and stuff, okay, this one I'm nobody, but when it comes to, I really like this stuff, when I'm really me, I really like it, but and all right, You are doing it. cool, thanks man, thanks, I'm still making records, you know, I think there's so many that our label is really becoming this cultural phenomenon, you know, and there are artists that really look up to me and really ask me things and I. I have to give them good advice, you know, so I can't be.

I just feel like I need to set a better example and be a little more professional because I'm really professional, when it comes to things I can never be late for. in my life it just showed up like crazy, sometimes we have a release date for the new album, yeah, mm-hmm, no, I keep adding stuff and, like, um, no, okay, I want it to come out in August, um and I don't know if something will come out first because it's fake, I can't really decide and I'm making like three videos right now so they either come out first or together I think.

It would be great for us to release an album. I would really like the idea of ​​our fans getting a record they've never had and always saying oh this is cool, okay love me. I heard you heard that. and then you know you don't actually sit down and experience it Trudy for the first time so that would be cool you know everyone has their notifications on so they'll be the first and yeah it's cool. Well, we can't wait. Thanks, tell us about the first song you'll be playing. I never really depend on who my capo is.

The first one I touch. I like this one-man democracy. It's like whatever the guitar says, yes, that's how it will be. It's just like he's in tune and he's in the room, so I'll leave him there when I get him. I bought this guitar in Chicago, oh yeah, yeah, from Chicago Music Exchange, the best guitar store, it's the best, yeah, I think it's the best guitar store in the world. You had that as a norm: the best guitar stores in the world.