McFly felt like they “lost” something from their sound when they set out to be a “commercial band”.
The group – which launched to the top of the UK charts in 2004 with 5 Colours in her Hair and went on to land a total of 10 No. 1 hits – have returned to the guitar-driven sound of their early LPs on their latest album, ‘Power To Play’, which is out this Friday.
Speaking during an album playback and Q&A session at their west London studio, the boys opened up about the evolution of their sound and finally gave an answer to the question posed in the lead single: Where Did All The Guitars Go?.
“I think a lot of it has to do with the way that production technologies evolved,” explained Harry Judd. “It allows people who haven’t learned instruments to be able to sit down and create music, which is exciting and results in totally new sounds – stuff that probably we can’t do. But for us, this was all about just stripping right back to the basics and just having drums, bass and two guitars.”
Danny Jones added: “I think we lost ourselves in that a bit, trying to be a commercial band, whereas this was like, ‘Let’s just get back to what we are’. The best thing about this band is when we play live – we have so much fun – and we tried to recreate that on this album.”
Between 2004 and 2008, all of McFly’s singles hit the Top 10, but when it came to their fifth album, ‘Above the Noise’, they were in search of hits and started to lean into a more pop-oriented sound on tracks like Party Girl and the Taio Cruz collaboration, Shine a Light.
“For us, it was like, ‘We need to get on radio’ – but when they weren’t playing guitar music, what could we do?” he continued. “We’ve had moments where we kept being commercial but this album was made for us more than anybody else.”
That’s not to say the album isn’t already proving a hit, with Tom Fletcher admitting his son, Buzz, is a massive fan. “I took the album back to him and went upstairs and he had his headphones on listening to this album trying to play the riff,” he smiled.
Harry went on: “There’s nothing more satisfying than that. We’re at the stage where people who were kids when we started are now in their 20s and they say to us, ‘I play guitar because of you guys and I’m in a band’. That’s one of the most satisfying things – it’s amazing to be in that position.”
‘Power To Play’ is out June 9 on BMG. McFly’s ‘Power To Play Tour’ launches October 23 in Bristol and plays through November 22 in Nottingham.
