Two Door Cinema ClubWhen I first started playing guitar I wanted to be Kurt Cobain,” Two Door Cinema Club frontman Alex Trimble confesses. Did he wear his hair long? “Yeah. I grew my hair long like Kurt, because the reason I got my first guitar was: when I was I think 10 or 11 years old, I bought Nevermind and I just fell in love with it and I had it on repeat. And so my dad decided to buy me a guitar so that I could play along and kind of live out the rockstar dream in my bedroom. Then I learnt every song on guitar and that was my beginning of being a musician in a band, was pretending to be Kurt Cobain.”
Trimble admits he “didn't get into Nirvana until after [Cobain] was dead”, but can be forgiven since he was only four years old when the singer was found dead in his Seattle home. “But it's been a really interesting experience to learn about the traps that he fell into and the reasons why he did what he did,” Trimble shares. “I've met so many people on the road who knew him, or who were kinda there at the time and were part of that kind of scene, and hearing those stories and finding out what was going on was totally amazing. I think there's so many stories and people can make their own minds up about whether he was just living the rockstar lifestyle and doing his drugs for whatever reason, but he was a really tormented guy and it is such a sad story. It has been a real sort of eye opener to live this life that he was a part of and to discover what can really happen and what can go on.”
Two Door Cinema Club are certainly seasoned tourers and there was a spell when none of the band members had fixed addresses. “We didn't live anywhere for about a year,” Trimble confirms. “We were off tour for a couple of days every few weeks maybe and so we'd just get a hotel somewhere and stay there, and it became a little bit unhealthy because we were spending so much of our time together. Not being able to escape these people for so long, it just became too familiar and there was so much tension and arguments would break out and things like that. So it was the best possible thing – we all got our own places so when we have a few days off tour we can come back and be apart for a while [laughs], which has definitely made the whole thing very much healthier.” Although the trio formed in Northern Ireland, Trimble explains they've all changed postcodes: “I'm in London and Kev [Baird, bass]'s in London and Sam [Halliday, guitar] is still in Glasgow.”
On how long his band toured their debut longplayer, Trimble offers, “We toured Tourist History for two-and-a-half years and Tourist History was about two years in the making. So that's four-and-a-half year's worth of Tourist History. You know, that was four-and-a-half years of our lives and it just feels so good to have a new body of work, to have something there that kinda speaks for who we are right here and right now and not four years ago.” Trimble is speaking of the band's latest album Beacon, which he says he's “super-proud” of: “It's a labour of love and it's a record that's very close to my heart.”
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It's been a massive year for Trimble, who also got to sing an original song, penned just for him by Underworld, at the Opening Ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games. “Rick [Smith] had chosen me specifically to sing [Caliban's Dream] 'cause he decided that my voice was the voice that would suit that song,” the frontman marvels. Two Door Cinema Club were touring Stateside when Trimble got the first call from the band's manager. “I was half asleep when he called me and it all just seemed like it wasn't true,” he recalls. “It was such a stupid idea that any of this could be real. He calls me and tells me that Danny Boyle was asking for me and I'm thinking, 'Why the hell would a movie director be asking for me?' And then Underworld, you know, they're kinda like legends of dance music.”
The lead singer/guitarist admits to being a fan of Underworld. “I mean, that's kinda like the reason that I said yes, because the first thing I thought of was Trainspotting, which was obviously the first time that Danny and Underworld had worked together and that's such a fantastic film, with an amazing soundtrack, and so iconic. And I just kinda thought, 'Yeah, this is gonna be good. No matter what happens this is gonna be good.' So, yeah, the whole thing was just very surreal to be a part of. It was incredible. It was kinda like being a part of history.”
Other acts chosen to perform at the ceremony included Arctic Monkeys, Paul McCartney and Dizzee Rascal and, amazingly, Trimble says that he “wasn't nervous at all” waiting for his cue to take the Olympic Park stadium stage. “This will sound weird, but I wasn't nervous in the slightest bit,” the singer remembers. “But, you know, this is the biggest thing I've ever done and it's so big that I couldn't even comprehend how big it was. I couldn't process all that information – there was one billion viewers worldwide, there were 800,000 people in the stadium and all the other information as well: working with Danny Boyle, working with Underworld, working with Dame Evelyn Glennie. It was just ridiculous! For that reason, none of it felt real so to me there was no reason to be nervous… I enjoyed it and I remember everything, but at the same time none of it really felt real.”
When asked to identify some other Two Door Cinema Club career highlights, Trimble deduces there's been “so many”. “There's not one day goes by without something totally memorable [happening] and for that reason it's so hard to pick out certain moments. There are those huge moments – things that I dreamt of when I dreamt of being in a band, you know, like playing at Glastonbury. And even just simply releasing music, that was something that I always dreamed of: having an album of songs that were mine or were ours – part of our band – and original material. Just releasing a record, releasing singles and touring the world was my dream as a child from when I started playing guitar and dreamt of being in bands. That was what I always wanted to do. So every single moment, every now and again, I just have to pinch myself and remind myself that this is literally my childhood dream: I'm living the dream I hoped would come true.”
Two Door Cinema Club will be playing the following dates:
Saturday 29 December - Festival Hall, Melbourne VIC
Thursday 3 January - Hordern Pavillion, Sydney NSW
Friday 4 to Saturday 5 January - Southbound, Busselton WA
Monday 7 January - The Tivoli, Brisbane QLD
Tuesday 8 January - The Tivoli, Brisbane QLD
