The 1975

The 1975 Artistfacts

  • 2012-
    Matt HealyVocals, Guitar2012-
    Adam HannGuitar2012-
    George DanielDrums2012-
    Ross MacDonaldBass2012-
  • Matt Healy met Ross MacDonald and Adam Hann at Wilmslow High School near Manchester as teenagers. They formed a band when a local council worker organized a number of gigs for youngsters. The 1975 recalled to Blahblahblahscience: "There was no real scene in our town at that time and we were all looking for some way of expressing ourselves I suppose. Some woman called Sheila started this run of gigs for underage kids (I think she was like a hippy council worker) and they soon turned into a riot. We would go and play there, doing covers of punk songs and Ghostbusters etc. It was so drunken and personal. After doing that for a while we wrote a song and thought 'Let's just do this! This is well better than going to school or work."
  • Matt Healy was originally the drummer, but took over vocals after the previous singer, a guy named Elliot, left to start another group. They found George Daniel in the school corridor near the music department and recruited him as the new drummer to complete the final lineup.
  • The band originally operated under names like Drive Like I Do, TALKHOUSE!, and The Big Sleep. Their The 1975 moniker came from a secondhand book of beat poetry that Matt Healy found in Ibiza, which had previously been used as a diary. One of the dates written in the book was '1 June The 1975,' a phrasing that stuck with him.
  • Healy's parents are former Coronation Street and Waterloo Road actress Denise Welch and actor Tim Healy, once of Auf Wiedersehen, Pet.
  • When Matt Healy was growing up, his father was pals with various rock stars. The singer recalled to The Evening Standard: "Because of the North-East connection, we were knocking about with Sting and Dire Straits. One of the first guitars I played was the one used on [Dire Straits' hit] 'Romeo And Juliet.' Being a rock star was part of my reality."
  • Matt Healy is an ardent humanist and feminist. He said: "The one responsibility I believe that I have, to rationalize this insane influx of attention I have acquired from teenage girls, is to stand up against ideas that promote inequality and to make a point of promoting ideas that galvanize a dialogue amongst young women about how important they are."

    "[...] If I can help plant the seeds of women's rights, secularism, free conscience now, I can hopefully help to empower them mentally and make them know how to deal with things. I'm in a good position because they're so enamoured with my band that they actually listen. You can see the conversations happening, and it's positive."

    "The empowerment of women maps directly onto the growth of secularism and the reduction of power of religion. And that's what I'm about." (Source of quote Crushable.com)
  • The 1975 toured extensively to support their debut album, Music For Cars They played a total of 195 shows in 29 countries in 2014 and were named as the hardest-working band of the year by the live music site Songkick.com.
  • Their song "Chocolate" won BBC Radio 1's A List Vote, which was a 2013 poll of the station's listeners regarding the best song of the preceding five years.
  • Asked by Billboard magazine how the band compose their tunes, Matt Healy replied: "Me and George [Daniel] write the songs. It will start with George making a soundscape that inspires me and then I'll start writing on it, or we'll work the other way around, and then when it gets to recording, the guys -- who have been in the band forever - get to their parts and their identities come into it. There's collaboration in that sense but the songs themselves are written by me and George."
  • Green Day used to do this thing when they were touring where they would get a kid up on stage to play each instrument. A 13-year-old Matthew Healy got picked at Newcastle Arena to play the bass for a track off of their 2002 Shenanigans compilation. "Mike Dirnt was f--king there," he recalled to Spin. "I jumped up, and he put his bass on me… 10,000 people in f--king Newcastle Arena."

    "It was a defining moment for me. Looking out and thinking, 'OK, this is awesome,'" he added. "I still have the pick."
  • Matt Healy's mum, Denise Welch, recalled the 1975's early days during the Tracks Of My Years segment of Ken Bruce's BBC Radio 2 show. "When they were 14, they were all at Wilmslow High School and they all got together in the garage at our old house," she said. "This is where they started. So from me shouting, 'If you play that bleeping song one more time' to 'That's my pension, sing out Louise', that's how it spanned the time."

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