Knives’ book plans

Oxford band get literate and dish the dirt on the rock ‘n’ roll ‘circus’

29 August 2008 - The Young Knives have been talking exclusively to 6 Music about a book they're working on.

And they’ve given us the basic outline: “We’re doing an almost word of mouth history of touring bands with a bit of us in there, but just tying it together with our own experiences if we think any of them are interesting enough.”

Even though it's about touring bands, the subject matter won't be restricted to those that are only centre stage.

They want to paint the picture of the whole touring scene, as frontman Henry Dartnall explained: “We’re hopefully going to meet up with people who have good stories, not just people in bands, roadies and stuff.”

The book will shed light on the life of touring which the singer described as a “circus”.

“People kinda slip into it and they run away for two years of their life and they’re on the road with a band and it strikes me as being pretty weird,” he said.

“We’re hopefully going to meet up with people who have good stories, not just people in bands, roadies and stuff.”
Henry Dartnall

Henry went on to say how the touring lifestyle was a world away from their upbringing, so was a surprising change at first.

“From where we come from, it’s that ‘brought up through the education system and expected to go get a normal job kind of lifestyle’,” he explained. “We had that a few years ago, so suddenly hitting the road with all these people that have been doing it for years was quite a shock to the system and pretty interesting.”

As to when it might be released, the band say making time for everything they're working on could be tricky.

So don’t hold your breath for a quick turnaround, as Henry’s brother and bassist Thomas “House Of Lords” Dartnall added: “Somebody said; ‘Did we wanna do a book?’ and we thought only if we can think of a good idea. We’ve sort of come up with an idea and sort of begun but we’ll see if we ever actually finish it.”

As for their hectic schedule and plans for their follow-up to Superabundance, Henry said: “We’re writing our third album at the moment and the way we do it seems to be pretty much nine to five on Monday to Friday, and then at the weekend we go and do festivals - so it’s like we’re working seven days a week.”

Thomas joked: “We’re quite slow as well, we’re not the speediest of songwriters,” and paused before adding laughingly, “that’s because we’re really good.”

Georgie Rogers