More about: CounterfeitJamie Campbell BowerASL?

Yeah, I know he’s really famous. And no, I didn’t know who he was when we met. But I could tell, when I saw him on the other side of the café, that Jamie Campbell Bower was the person I was supposed to be meeting. The guy’s a star. 

In the first of our new series, ASL?, I met the Counterfeit frontman for a surprise interview. A blind date, of sorts. I had no idea who he was or what his music was like. No prep. No preamble. Just a half-an-hour drink with someone completely, totally new…

Delving into addiction, therapy and social justice songs, things got deep really fast. 

Gigwise: Hey!
Jamie Campbell Bower: Hello! Lovely to meet you, how are you?

GW: Good thanks…want to try my smoothie?
JCB: Yeah why not…*takes a sip* ooh yeah I am jealous. Might have one of each, have a coffee and a smoothie.

GW: Hello laxative.
JCB: [Laughs] sorry, do excuse me, I have to nip off for five minutes.

GW: If you have a cigarette as well.
JCB: Oh, god, yeah. I smoke like a chimney too.

GW: I like your finger tattoos.
JCB: Doctor Woo did them in L.A. about six years ago. My friend was going to get an elephant done on her wrist and I rocked up with her and asked if I could jump in after.

GW: They look sick! So anyway, you’re called Jamie, right?
JCB: I am called Jamie, Jessie, yes. I don’t know whether to be reclusive or…

GW: You could pretend to be anyone.
JCB: Yeah exactly. My name’s actually Brad Pitt…

GW: Are you a solo artist or are you in a band?
JCB: I am in a band. The band is called Counterfeit and we’ve been together now since 2015. Played our first show in December 2015. [Whispers] I’m 31.

GW: …and?
JCB: It’s kind of old.

GW: It is not old!
JCB: it was my birthday last week.

GW: Oh my God me too!
Together: Happy birthdaaaay!

GW: So are you the vocalist?
JCB: Yes I am.

GW: Do you play guitar too?
JCB: I do. 

GW: What kind of guitar do you have?
JCB: I play a Les Paul. I’ve been playing the same guitar I got given by my dad for my seventeenth birthday. It’s completely fucked up. 

GW: They look better like that though.
JCB: Oh, completely. She’s had her neck broken twice: once at a house party a friend of mine stepped on her and then the other time we were playing a show in L.A. and I just dropped it. 

GW: Does she have a name?
JCB: Lesley. Lesley the Les Paul. It’s kind of boring.

GW: No, it works! So the first gig that you ever played, was that in L.A.?
JCB: No that was here in London at O2 Academy Islington. It was sick; we sold it out.

GW: What was the lead up to that?
JCB: I was playing in this other band under a different name and I’d been doing that on the side because I’m an actor as well. I’d always loved it but never done it as a career. And then we went into the studio and started writing. I met a producer and we started working. I was on stage in the West End at the time and I would do eight shows a week, then Saturday night I’d drive down to his studio, write and record on Sunday and Monday then drive back to continue to work. We just got this really nice body of work together so we were like, let’s do a show!

GW: Wow.
JCB: At that point, my brother Sam wasn’t involved in the project at all and I knew that I needed another guitarist because I’d written stuff I couldn’t play and sing at the same time - I’m a bit lazy like that

GW: Like Mariah Carey dancing.
JCB: [Laughs] yeah exactly, I’m there just doing this [mimes lazy choreography] so I called my brother and asked him if he wanted to play guitar, and he said he’d love to, so he came over, we did the show…it went super quickly and then we went out on our first headline Europe tour in the January.

GW: And now you’re still in the band.
JCB: Now we’re still in the band! Its still happening nearly five years later.

GW: How many albums have you got out? It’s so bizarre that I don’t know anything.
JCB: It’s weird, it’s weird…we’ve got one album out called Together We Are Stronger, and it was recorded by Tom Mitchener who did a bunch of stuff with Frank Carter. We just went and recorded our next record in Los Angeles with Rob Cavallo and our producer over here as well Matt Terry. Rob did like Black Parade and Dookie and all this kind of shit.

GW: How would you describe your sound to me?
JCB: Fuck knows. The first album that we made was really angry and aggressive…I’m now four years and eight months clean and sober.

GW: Congratulations.
JCB: Thank you. That first album that we made was a vessel for a lot of anger and trauma that I hadn’t necessarily processed and that I wasn’t aware of and for me in my alcoholism. So that first record was an opportunity for me to put everything down. It was very fast and rocky and punky and very angry. We toured that first record for like three years and there’s only so much of that you can live in.

GW: Yeah to deliver that every night.
JCB: It eats away at you; so I wanted to embrace a bit more love and sensitivity [on record two]. Because I am a sensitive person. We all are. I wanted to inject a bit of that into it. The first album was ten years life experience in one  and this one was three year of life experience. There’s still heartbreak on there, but there’s also love and rekindling the fire inside of us, which is so important. Because that’s living to me.

GW: Is it lighter?
JCB: Here and there. There’s some moments of darkness too. On the first record there was this one song about the attacks that happened at the Bataclan because we were at the studio when it happened. That was our social justice song. And I’ve always liked artists that focus on that as a theme.

GW: What was the social justice song?
JCB: It was called ‘Enough’. And this one we’ve got a song called '11:44’. Being in a band and touring the world I get to see lots of amazing, beautiful young people, and touring America particularly, you see all these kids that are really fucking lost and angry and confused and they don’t know what’s going on or how to process the environment that they’re in. I want to talk about that because I feel exactly the same. So the first verse is about that and then I touch on Donald Trump and the death of Jamal Khashoggi in the second. 

GW: So when’s the album out?
JCB: We’ll have an EP that comes out around the end of January. We’ll have a couple of singles that drop between now and then. 

GW: And the album?
JCB: We’re looking at summer. We’ll probably do four or five tracks of an EP and then I’m not entirely sure. I think nowadays, the idea of a record is kind of dead. People want immediacy: if they want something they’ll ask for it. I want to create, give, create, give, create give.

GW: Do you think you prefer singles then?
JCB: Yeah, kind of. To just be able to drop things and say, “here you go”. 

GW: Is that the same opinion you have as a consumer of music?
JCB: I never really enjoyed the idea of a public persona. What I do in my job is who I am and who I am is the person when I shut the door. So if I’m doing a movie or a record, that’s me and then I shut the door and that’s me still. A lot of my friends and the people that are closest to me don’t work in the entrainment industry. And that’s something that I really enjoy. I’ve been in Los Angeles a year now and it ain’t me. I’m coming back home because this is where I’m from and this is where I feel happiest.

GW: L.A. doesn’t suit you?
JCB: Not really, no. It’s very different. The young people that I meet at our shows, they’re all regular, normal , emotionally-connected and aware, but as they get older there’s so much pressure that’s put on them within society.

GW: Do you feel like you can help, being on stage?
JCB: I go out there and I try to spread the same message that’s been blessed to me. Being in recovery and going through that: I’ve been given a strength by those people around me and that’s what I want to push out. Look, it’s okay to talk about your feelings. It’s not a weakness. If you have something in your life that’s pulling you down, you can get rid of it. Because a lot of people in life are very very stuck. And I know how that feels.

GW: People don’t connect that they can do whatever they want.
JCB: It’s a choice. Everything’s a choice.

GW: How do you look after your mental health on tour?
JCB: It’s a hard one. Food is something that is very hard to control on the road. And food is a thing that is an issue for me anyway. In my deepest and darkest depths of addiction I was down to like eight and a half stone so I was skinny as fuck. I have to relinquish control of that when I’m on the road. What I get given is what I get given. Meditation really helps: breathing and going through it and finding that inner strength. Being open, communicative and having that open dialogue. Making sure that I take the time for myself when I need it and not giving too much all the time.

GW: Meditation is harder than any sport.
JCB: Yeah because you’re not active. And our brains go at a thousand miles an hour. But we don’t need to beat ourselves up about it. It’s a process.

GW: Have you had therapy then?
JCB: I have yeah.

GW: It’s the best thing ever.
JCB: Absolutely. It’s amazing There’s no harm in it. There’s no shame in it. And I think that as a society we should push those things we learn in therapy out into the outside world. 

GW: What would you say to your fans?
JCB: First of all, if anybody’s ever come to a show I’m incredibly grateful. And the main thing is that you’re not alone in whatever it is that you’re going through. There is always somebody else who has experienced the same feeling: not necessarily had the same experience, but can identify with how it’s made you feel. There’s no shame in talking about that, at all. And that will provide you with the strength to go through it. I’m only trying to go out there and share my own experience as a human being in the hope that it may inspire somebody else to be the same.

GW: That was a weird way of conducting an interview.
JCB: I feel like we learned a lot about each other.

GW: Great to meet you Jamie!

More about: CounterfeitJamie Campbell BowerASL?