Catfish & The Bottlemen's Van McCann Gets His Best Mate To Do His Laundry

While English folk melted during their recent heat wave, Catfish & The Bottlemen's frontman Van McCann escaped Stateside. "I had the first week to myself that I've ever had since I started this band, which was eight years ago," he shares in trademark rapid-fire Northerner style (he's from Widnes, just outside of Liverpool). The band are yet to release their second album, but McCann gushes of his recent trip, "I ran off to New York and wrote the third album! It was bliss: listened to loads of music, smoked loads of big fat ones on the porch and wrote some tunes — like, it was amazin'."

Obviously McCann doesn't suffer from writer's block. "Oh, no, we call that ciggie break," he offers. So it only lasts about eight minutes then? "Well you can do it in five where we're from. Our ciggies aren't as good as yours: you've got Camels, we've got Lambert & Butlers! You've gotta love a ciggie over the hedge with your neighbours, innit? A bit o' gossip, 'What's Maureen been up to?' You know wha' I mean?"

"It was bliss: listened to loads of music, smoked loads of big fat ones on the porch and wrote some tunes."

When asked to identify a couple of UK bands who he thinks are enjoying much the same level of success as Catfish & The Bottlemen at the moment, McCann ponders, "Ours is a strange one, our band, 'cause we didn't necessarily sell a lot of records when we first came out, compared to all the artists that have done the magazines and television, because we didn't get that kind of press, you know wha' I mean? Our fanbase is built up on our live show and word of mouth. So it's a strange one 'cause there's so many bands that have sold LOADS more records than us, but they play in venues that aren't big as our ones." He then commandeers the conch. "How did Oasis do in Australia? I loved Oasis, but on the DVD — they've got a DVD called Lord Don't Slow Me Down and a lot of the documentary is filmed in Australia, and the venues they play on that DVD are the venues we've just done when we supported The Kooks. And I was like, 'No way could they be playing it off their fourth/fifth album!' — I think it was their fifth album they were doing, and I think they were only playing, like, 4,000-capacity [venues]. I thought they'd be in stadiums in Australia."

Relentless touring has definitely paid off for the band, and McCann marvels, "This year I think we're spending 11 months outta the country — it's crazy!" It can hardly be worth paying rent for empty digs and McCann offers, "I've just got a suitcase now, a backpack, and live absolutely anywhere. Like, just running all over the place now; it's quality." But how does one do their laundry living such a nomadic existence? "Well my guitar tech, Larry, who's been me best mate since I was younger — so sometimes we play a show and, you know, the band'll have to fly somewhere and the crew'll have to drive on the bus with all the gear to meet us there — 'cause we'll have to get back early for promo or television or something and we'll have to beat the crew home kinda thing, just sometimes when things are urgent. And so, like, he does my laundry in exchange that I fly 'im home with us. So all the crew have to drive without him and he feels like he's superior, and gets special treatment, and he waves out the window like the queen. So I pay for his flights if he does my laundry, 'cause he's really good at it. I love me mum and that and, you know, like, your mums can do things a certain way, but because we're best friends he's changed the way he does things to suit me, I reckon."

He plays down their image ("we're not one of them bands"), but it has to be said that Catfish & The Bottlemen fix up and look sharp. "We're not really fussed about our haircuts — we just let 'em grow, innit, and then just cut it in. Like, my cousin cuts my hair. Oh, YES!" McCann suddenly froths with excitement. "She keeps asking for a shout-out, doesn't she? And I'm like, 'How am I gonna bring haircuts up in an interview?' Here we go, right, my cousin Jenna [or it could be spelled Genna?] Conroy from Widnes cuts my hair with my kitchen scissors in my, like, when I used to have a kitchen in the cottage. I've not seen 'er in months, so my hair's gettin' long, but if you could, post her name!"

"I pay for his flights if he does my laundry, 'cause he's really good at it."

McCann is very forthcoming when it comes to discussing family-related matters and shines a light on his unique start in life. "I was a test-tube baby, did you know that? It took my mum and dad three times to 'ave me." He goes on to explain that his parents were married in Australia, where they moved "to start with the test tube stuff". "My mum got run over when she was younger so she couldn't have kids and they had to do it that way," McCann elaborates. "They just wouldn't give up for some reason and third time, after doctors sayin' it wouldn't happen, lo and behold I came out! And I'd already written Kathleen by then as well," he jokes.

Ok, so it's a bit of a stretch that McCann wrote a song in the womb, but even he is baffled by the ease with which he writes the songs. "I don't know how they come in, honestly," he marvels. "I went away to New York and, like I said, 'I've just finished the third album,' and I played it to our manager and he's like, 'Are you serious?' And I was like, 'Mate, I love this job! If you love something this much — you know wha' I mean? It's not hard to, you know, make a girl 'appy if you love her, and she loves you — it's easy!"

The animated frontman constantly teeters on a good-natured chuckle and enthuses, "I buzz off speakin' to you lot! Australia's mega, isn't it?" McCann later admits, "They always try to get us, the English press". "You listen to me on the phone, you can tell I'm a high on life kinda guy," he stresses, before launching into some examples of when his responses were twisted into a misleading headlines. When McCann was asked what he misses about home while on tour, he replied, "I guess I miss my mum and dad and my dog and that". He continues: "And, you know, I love those so I miss seein' them every day. But you're on tour, you don't worry about that — it's the best thing in the world. They cut the end bit off, just put, 'Poor Van McCann Hates Being On The Road, Misses His Dog And His Mum And Dad' [laughs]. I was like, 'What a knob-'ead! Supposed to be, like, a rockstar and missin' his dog!' I was like, 'Come on!'"

McCann's response to the question, "Do you have any brothers and sisters?" resulted in a similar beat-up in the band's homeland. "I basically said I was an only child," he explains. "But my mum and dad used to run a bed and breakfast, so I spent all my days watching, like, Muhammad Ali DVDs, Oasis DVDs! They raised me to want to entertain, and, you know, go on and take on the world. We can be somebody even if we're nothin'. Like, Muhammad Ali and Oasis, they came from nowhere — they just worked their way up — and I love that! And [the publication] took that off and just said, 'Van McCann Says Gallagher Brothers Were His Brothers' or something like that. And I was like, 'Oh my god!' Honestly."

"I well want a record deal — that's class! Have you seen Kanye West? He's got a helicopter!"

It was basically McCann's cousins who turned him onto Oasis. "You'd have cousins who'd dress like they were goin' out listening to dance music and then cousins who'd go out dressing like Liam and Noel, with big sideburns or whatever," he remembers, "and they were the ones I just thought looked cool. Before I even heard the music I was like, 'I'm interested in what these people are about.'" Having devoured all the artists interviews in those aforementioned Oasis and Muhammad Ali DVDs, McCann praises, "They know why they're there: it's show business! You're there to entertain. [They] do their interviews, make them funny and make their fans adore them."

In their formative years, Catfish & The Bottlemen would set up and play in "universities, just literally in the streets, car parks, everything". "But the Kasabian one was the famous one 'cause we tried to give them a demo and sneak on the bill as the support band," McCann recalls. "And then we couldn't get on the bill so we went and got a generator, put ninja masks on and when their gig finished the fire escapes opened. You know, two and a half thousand people came out of the venue and we were in the car park, started playing, had this whole car park singing and dancing whilst our mates are givin' our CDs out. Everyone's like, 'Who are these ninjas?' D'ya know wha' I mean? 'Just seen Kasabian, these ninjas are pretty good!' Yeah, and then it started nailin' it down with rain. So we were playing in the rain and then all our gear got broken, noise police came — sound pollution — and then the venue security and that came and shut us down. It was good."

Sadly, there was nobody in Catfish & The Bottlemen's entourage recording the action. "Back in the day it was just us four in a van," McCann laments. "So we had no one. But I've met fans since — who still come to our shows now, who I meet after nights that we play a 5,000-capacity gig — and I'll meet them in a bar and they'll be like, 'I am a fan because I saw you in that car park in ninja masks,' you know wha' I mean?"

They've always been "very persistent young lads" and McCann opines: "I think a lot of bands these days, they like being serious and, like, 'Oh, we don't need to get a record deal, we were just writing songs and somebody had to have us.' But with us we were like, 'No, I well want a record deal — that's class! Have you seen Kanye West? He's got a helicopter!'"