More about: Starcrawler

We caught up with L.A. rock'n'roll revivalists Starcrawler ahead of their exhilarating gig at Jimmy’s in Liverpool. Vocalist Arrow de Wilde and guitarist Henri Cash welcomed us backstage to discuss their new album, the pandemic, their famous fans and working with, er, Jackass’ Steve-O?

Gigwise: Hello Starcrawler. How are you? You guys have been busy touring this year. It’s been non-stop!How’ve you found it?

Arrow de Wilde: Touring has been great! It doesn't even feel that busy because I wanna be on the road all the time. Like, it is really busy, but it doesn’t feel the same as before the pandemic. Then, when we were touring all the time, it felt like work. I didn’t appreciate it as much as I should have.

GW: This year you’ve toured with the likes of Jack White and My Chemical Romance. How was your experience of these giant support slots?

AdW: My favourite tours are those support tours. I love seeing our fans, but you learn so much from those tours. It’s cool to play big stages and win people over.

Henri Cash: When you have people like Gerard Way or Jack White — and I’ve seen them [play live], and I think they’re really good — saying they like it and that we’re good, then we must be doing something right!

GW: At Milton Keynes, Gerard Way said that you were his favourite band.

AdW: I know! We were watching from one of the boxes and I was filming and he said that as soon as I stopped!

HC: Yeah and then Jack White said it at the very last show we played with him! 

AdW: He was like, ‘Give it up for my favourite band Starcrawler!’ and we were like, ‘does he say that about every band?!’

GW: How did you end up doing the song 'If You're Gonna Be Dumb, You Gotta Be Tough' for the new Jackass movie?

HC: We got an email - it always starts with an email! It said, “We’d like you to try a song for this.” Then we were like…'fuck! We have to make it the best Jackass song ever!' We watched all these movies, me and my brother used to push each other down the stairs! And just listening to the soundtracks from these movies…I learnt about a lot of music from watching them as a kid.

GW: And then getting Steve-O in your 'Roadkill' video…

AdW: We’d already shot the whole video for 'Roadkill' but we thought it would be cool to have somebody stepping out the car at the end. We wanted someone random, but someone cool, then we were like: “what if we just emailed Steve-O’s manager? The worst that could happen is they don’t respond or say ‘sorry, he’s busy’.” And then we did, and showed him the video for the song, and his manager responded and was like “Steve-O’s down, are you guys free this Sunday?” And yeah we shot the scene in, like, an hour, tops, and he was super nice, and he just came and he was like super, super chill and we were stoked.

GW: Your new album, She Said, is out September 16th. It’s your major label debut - how’s that been different?

HC: The cool thing is that we recorded the album before we were on the label. We were technically on no label, so we didn’t do it for anybody but ourselves. When it came to it, we were just like…we just wanna make a really good record.

AdW: And see what happens with it.

HC: Because no one was telling us what kinda record to make, there was no pressure, so we wanted to make something we’d be proud of. A lot of the time in the past we’ve been rushed…with our last record, we were on tour, so we had to fit [recording the album] into a couple of days because we had to have it out by a specific date. This time there was none of that. 

GW: That sounds quite freeing, which is ironic considering it was written in the pandemic - how was writing an album under those conditions?

HC:  It started off with us writing songs through Arrow’s window, then it was on the porch and then we got an AirBNB together and isolated.

AdW: We had a lot more time to do it. The writing process was more collaborative than our previous records which has been really cool. We quarantined together and stuff, so it was kind of a different experience. 

HC: [The pandemic] was a super hard process. At the beginning it felt like you had so much time but you couldn’t do anything with it. It was so hard to be creative. I missed the adrenaline of playing shows or driving places: we’re the types of people who like to go out and do things and we were just all stuck at home. And we didn’t really have a space that felt like home. The last time we were home for more than two weeks, we were like 15 years old. 

GW: What’s interesting about the singles so far is the total difference in attitude: 'Roadkill' is very ‘Fuck you!’ whereas there’s a bit more insecurity in 'She Said'. 

AdW: 'Roadkill' was written a lot later than 'She Said'. 'She Said' was one of the first ones we wrote for this record and even though it's not about the pandemic it has that feeling, that uncertainty, that 'I don’t know what I’m doing!'. We were still trying to figure stuff out. Then, when we were picking the album order, me and Tim (Franko, bassist) just decided that was the best. I know no one really listens to albums anymore, but -

HC: Do you listen to records?

GW: Yes. You get so much more with a physical record than you do with streaming.

AdW: Records are like a piece of art too.

HC: And you get to read all the information about the songs and stuff! We did a limited edition last year that was a scratch and sniff and you scratched it and it smelt like a rose. That’s the problem with streaming: you don’t get to smell anything!

GW: That’s just another example of how you put a lot of thought into everything you do, especially aesthetically. Where do you draw inspiration from?

AdW: It’s a collaborative effort. We’re all different but both me and Henri are very visual people, and the references are so vast. There’s one stage costume that I designed that was for the My Chem/Europe tour that I kinda ripped from a Cher costume and then changed up to make a jumpsuit because it was really hot…

HC: So mainly Cher.

AdW: It’s kind of all over the place.

HC: Like, [with She Said] even before we had any songs. we just knew we wanted the record to be pink. We wanna make it seem like at the shows too that you’re like… coming into our world. We don’t wanna just be walking out in T-shirts. Tonight we wrapped the drum set in pink vinyl, we’re trying to make it feel like we’re all in this one place together, you know?

She Said arrives 16 September via Starcrawler Music/Big Machine.

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More about: Starcrawler