Letter to a boy band from their former manager

Three teenage hooligans sitting on a wall watch me with sullen eyes. Their current manager thinks they need strippers in their video. We meet for the first time at our flat on Iona Street. My wife thinks they’ve come to rob us, especially the white one. We talk. I’ll swap you M.I.A. for Jay Z. Young Fathers is a better name than 3Style. No, it really is.

We start recording. Leith is dead, but the basement is alive. Ironic electro-pop. Burroughs and Dada, cut up! Say what you want to say with someone else’s words. Then I go to see them perform for the first time. Argument over volume with the sound guy at Whistlebinkies. The first of many at many venues. Wow! But wow, Young Fathers’ first show. At Whistle-fucking-binkies.

Tape One. More recording, time to get serious. The studio, a classroom, a lab. I’ll swap you Suicide and Joy Division for Metronomy and Kendrick. An album in a week. Aaaand, release it. Fifty hand-recorded cassette tapes. Edinburgh is dead but Leith is alive. No, I don’t want to fucking manage you.

More recording. Tape Two, The SAY Award: if we win we buy our sound tech a suit. He gets a suit. Then America calls. It’s a bit nerdy but it’s definitely Los Angeles. The live shows come together real quick. Shouting, again and again, ‘louder, no colours on stage, just bright white.’ Two drums were good enough for The Jesus and Mary Chain. Echo. Feedback. Are they, like, a rock band or, like, what are they? 

Unexpectedly at The Mercurys alt-pop talent show [nominated for Dead]. If we win, don’t smile. Don’t talk to The Sun. "Why don’t you smile? Aren’t you happy you won?"

More recording, wherever and whenever. Drum machines in Australia, Shame is one verse, three interpretations. White Men Are Black Men Too – what does it mean? Exactly! A tsunami of small cock hatred online ensues.

First USA tour. Will we fit all the gear in the roof rack on a Chrysler MPV? Will we fit all those legs behind the seats? For five thousand miles? Don’t look at the customs guards. Don’t smile. Don’t look nervous. Chicago, porn stains on the porn sheets on the round porn bed. Arizona, motel, pool of blood dried by the morning.

Endless Europe. Spanish frat brats don’t get it. Singer’s girlfriend got the sound guy slaughtered. German journalists are amused and confused. Some UK journalists: "oh, right, I get it now!" And Scotland, o' Scotland. You’ve got to leave to get a welcome. Scotland: are you yae or naw? That’s right.

Oh, right, now you want to speak to a Black person.

What is all this business, money, awards, endless travel, endless faces, hands to shake, pressure and creation, this ex-boy band, these arguments, these confusions, this desperation, darkness, love and light? Success, apparently. No, I don’t want to fucking manage you. Are we still here? Are we OK? Yes, apparently.

From 2010 to 2015 I managed you lot and co-produced your records. It was intense fun, sometimes mental agony and often desperately poverty-stricken. During that time Young Fathers morphed from a would-be boy band into something darker and less easy to define. Natural heirs to smart, working-class inventions like The Specials or Joy Division. Also during that time, Edinburgh changed from Glasgow’s sleepy, middle-class elder brother into something smarter and less obvious. The music, the bands, the atmosphere in the city. It found its pop heart again (in Leith); it became Fast again.

Scotland’s always had a weird attitude to its pop stars. Most have to leave the country to gain success in order to be acknowledged on their return. Getting on stage is asking for trouble – who d’ya think you are? But once you’re in, you’re in. That a band as patently weird as Young Fathers can now sit, uncomfortably, next to Alex Harvey and The Cocteau Twins, Simple Minds and Emeli Sandé fills me with pride, but I wish there was a less traumatic route to success.

We took a DIY approach because we didn’t have cash or connections and because, coming up myself in post-punk times, I wasn’t snobby about the concept. We screen-printed, Letrasetted, mastered to cassette, used equipment that looked like scrap. We ran our own nights, built our own scene. Slept in hostels. Pulled favours.

And, some of those times were the most fun. It was a house we built together but, it has to be acknowledged, the process for people from the poorest ends to create something worthwhile in the ‘arts’ is hard on the soul. There can be a price to pay, emotionally and physically. I’m old, I recognise the signs. I’ve seen and felt them before. And I say, if it’s possible, remember what made it good in the first place. Those golden moments. And they will refuel your spirit.

Love,

Tim

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Our February issue is a Young Fathers takeover – alongside an extended chat with the band, Alloysious, Kayus and G share some of their inspirations; Young Fathers collaborator Callum Easter fills out this month’s Q+A; plus YF-approved features on theatre maker and director Adura Onashile and the Tanzanian underground sound of Singeli.

Scroll on for more from the Young Fathers takeover, or pick up a print copy from locations across Scotland