Jack Lawrence-Brown, the drummer of White Lies, is a welcome guest at many festivals this summer. In his Festival CV we talk about the highlights of his Festival-life, both personally and with White Lies. Which festivals were the best to play at? Which ones are still on his bucketlist? And what’s his craziest back-stage experience?
Who is Jack Lawrence-Brown?
- Born in London on december 16th 1988
- Drummer of White Lies, which he founded in 2007 together with Harry McVeigh and Charles
- Their biggest hits include ‘Farewell To The Fairground’, ‘Death’ and ‘To Lose My Life’
- In the summer of 2019 White Lies is playing at several European Festivals such as; Paaspop, Pinkpop, Zwarte Cross and Pukkelpop
”When we were kids, we used to go to Reading festival, like every kid growing up in London. Reading is a legendary festival anyway, but it looks way different now than it looked back then. When we used to go, it was a full-on rock festival and it was always the most fun. Me, Charles and Harry did it together a few times. All the shit you’re not supposed to do at home, you’re allowed to do it at that festival.
Some of the best moments I had were definitely at Reading. When we played Reading a few years ago, on the main stage at about 3 or 4 in the afternoon, that was one of the weirdest experiences of my life. I remember standing there, standing on the other side and watching the bands. It was a real trippy moment for us. I will always have a lot of love for Reading; it’s the one where we grew up!”
”The first festival we played at with White Lies was when we were still called ‘Fear of Flying’, when we were all 17 years old. We played a festival in Victory Park for underaged people, all the people there were under 18, even the bands playing. There were teenagers everywhere and it was really good fun. Also it was our final gig before we changed our name to White Lies. That was one of the most important shows we played in a lot of ways. The show was great, we loved it, but when we came off stage, we were like: ‘This is the end of this, this is the end of Fear of Flying and we need to change now’. So that’s what we did! ”
”From the last ten years, the ones that always kick off are some of the bigger songs from the first album. They always get a massive reaction now. I have no problem with that, I quite like that the songs have reached the status where they are guaranteed festival hits. I think it’s amazing that we have managed to achieve that with anything that we have ever done.
There has actually been a song from the new album, ‘Tokyo’, that has gone down so, so well. When we play it, it feels like people have known it for ten years already, it gets an immediate reaction. On the festivals, that song is going to be a big one for us. It will be the first White Lies song in a really long time that will have that huge moment when we play it at festivals. ”
”The White Lies shows are going to be pretty full on! Typically we’re going to be playing for an hour or hour and a half at the absolute most, a lot shorter than the headline shows. But that means you can play your favourite songs, and the ones that you know are going to go down well. We can basically just play the hits, which I’m a big fan of. We don’t have to sit in the dressing room for two hours deciding what songs to play. We only got an hour to play, so we get to play the songs that everyone loves. ”
”The wildest thing I ever saw at a festival was the first time we ever went to Reading. On Sunday night, they started huge bonfires, enormous mountains of tents and they basically just burned everything! It was mad. People were just carrying trolleys, crates with whatever they could get their hands on, resulting in those huge bonfires in the middle of the campsite. It was like a scene out of the movie Apocalypse Now, I will never forget what that looked like.”
”Glastonbury! We haven’t done Glastonbury in a couple of years and I would still love to play there again, we always have a good show there. It is still one of the most prestigious things you can do in the UK.
There is also a great festival in Denmark called Roskilde, which we played ten years ago and we just loved everything about it. We haven’t played it again since, so would love to go back there.”
”It wasn’t the best show I have ever seen, but the most fun I had at a show was when The Darkness played Reading at ’05 or ‘06. It’s a really sort of stupid UK band, very Cock-rock. It was the stupidest, over the top, rock show you have ever seen, but it was so much fun. Despite the fact that it is culturally not really that interesting and musically it was quite crap, the actual event was so much fun, and they were the most entertaining thing. Sometimes at a festival that is more important; you’ve got to play songs people love and deliver it in such a way that people enjoy it. A lot of people aren’t going to know you, so you have to make sure you get everyone on your side. And The Darkness did that!”
”We had this tourmanager, he used to be a punk drummer and he was a bit of a legend I think; everyone knew him. I remember one time this guy came up behind him and jumped on his back. And we were like: “Fucking hell, what’s going on?”. And then I turned around and it turned out to be Dave Grohl. Dave Grohl and him had apparently been touring together for years when they were younger, and we didn’t know any of that. So we met Dave Grohl! He’s honestly the nicest guy in the world.”
“We just had loads and loads of experiences with the tour manager like that. One time Jack White would just shout at him, “Hey, come over here!” And we were like: “How the Fuck do you know Jack White!?” Those sort of experiences when you’re young and when you’ve never been in the same 100 yards of famous musicians, we had a lot of those in the early days. When you’re backstage and you see someone incredibly famous that you really love, and you find out they’re really no different from us.”
”In terms of a White Lies song it would probably be ‘Death’, I have the fondest memories of playing that song at festivals, closing off at a festival with that. Having some unforgettable moments at Glastonbury, where we had a slot around the sunset hour, while we played ‘Death’; that was really emotional, and a very cool experience.
As far as festival anthems in general, I don’t think there has been a better festival song than the Arcade Fire song, ‘Wake Up’. That’s the all-time festival sing-along, and I absolutely fucking love them. They are one of the bands I met a lot over the years, and they have always been the nicest guys. We actually went on stage with them in Norway when they were doing their Reflektor tour. They had everyone in giant Paper-Mache heads of themselves. We as White Lies wore a couple of those masks and were on stage with them for a couple of songs. That was definitely one of the most weird, surreal experiences of my life, because I grew up loving Arcade Fire. ”
