The View Interview

If ever anyone thought rock ‘n’ roll was dead, they need only spend an evening with The View. Banned from every Travelodge in the country for flooding their hotel room, chucked out of their local for riding a motorbike along the bar and barred from America after being busted for drugs, the Scottish four-piece are a band that like to party. As they wrap up the UK tour for their brilliant second album Which Bitch?, Maxim braved the thick Dundee accents, headed to the pub and tried to match them pint for pint. The band – Kyle (singer), Pete (guitar), Kieren (bass) and Mo (drums) – may only have an average age of 22, but boy can they booze…

Your first album tour was pretty mental. How did the recent one compare?

Pete: We were even more mental than before because we’ve been away for ages.

Kyle: We know what we’re doing now. We know what beer does, what vodka does…

Pete: We’ve got to do another gig though because somebody fucked up…

Kyle: I tried my best! We’d be drinking beer and tequila and shit all day. I tried to play a couple of tunes in Nottingham and I just fell and ended up sitting on the stage.

Pete: It was pretty funny like, and Kyle was alright until we needed to go on and then he just went ‘Bam’. Still, we played 40 gigs, so one fuck-up out of 40 isn’t too bad.

What’s been your favourite gig?

Pete: Manchester, because Mani introduced us. He came on and said, ‘These are my prodigal sons, The View, the dirty bastards.’ That was pretty cool. We went back to his hotel suite and he played his Rickenbacker bass that he used to play in the Roses.

Kyle: We supported Noel Gallagher at the Royal Albert Hall. We all got Christian Dior suits, and were sitting on stools at the front of the Albert Hall with harmonicas and shit. We looked like Boyzone. We’d asked for ages to support Oasis but never got to do it. So this must have been some sort of consolation prize.

Mo: Paul Weller was there as well, and he came up to us and went ‘Good drumming…’

Kyle: We’d had a big night the night before and me and Kieren went up to the balcony to smoke – and we fell asleep. We woke up to Weller and Noel Gallagher soundchecking.

Kieren: They were doing their whole gig as a soundcheck and it was only us there in the Albert Hall.

Kyle: Then I tried to throw a peanut in Paul Weller’s arse crack.

Are your Scottish gigs the most raucous?

Mo: T in the Park was fucking mental. There were these old women at the back of the tent trying to stop people getting through, but the Scottish cunts were just going, ‘Fuck off’ and ramming in there. There were more people than the tent could carry.

Pete: We were playing an acoustic version of ‘Face For The Radio’ and you couldn’t even hear us because of the 15,000 people all singing back to us. Because we’re local, the Scottish fans worship us. They go mental.  

Mo: My mum was in the crowd and she got punched in the face.

What’s life on the tour bus like?

Pete: There’s always something going on. The crew’s pretty fucking mental too.

Kieren: There’s never one night when everybody’s like ‘no’. There’s always one person being really irritating when you’re trying to have a joint. Or you’re the person that takes the joint and then you start being really irritating.

Kyle: The guitar tech is scared of bananas, so one night I got loads of bananas and rubbed them all over the kitchen floor, trying to wave him over thinking it would be funny. But he never fell for it and I remember trying to walk to my bed and I ended up slipping on them.

Mo: We stuck mousetraps on the sound guy’s bed, all these wee tiny mousetraps underneath the pillows and that…

Kieren: At 1am he shouts at us, ‘If anyone fucks with me in my bunk tonight, there’ll be fucking hell to pay…’

Mo: The next second it was, ‘Snap, snap, snap’ and he was like, ‘Ow, ow… You little fuckers!’

Where are you craziest fans?

Pete: Japan’s the most mental place. You’ve got people waiting outside your hotel room every night. Kieren kept pulling his trousers up at one gig, and at the next one, this fan said, ‘I saw you pulling up your trousers. I’ve bought you a belt.’

Kieren: I’ve got it on! I wear it every day, man.

Mo: I asked one fan for a light, and she said, ‘Oh no,’ then ran off and came back with a bagful of lighters and fags. She said, ‘I don’t know what kind you smoke so I’ve got you loads…’

Pete: They’re fucking crazy…

Mo: Kyle got a letter saying, ‘I think you’re absolutely great. I’d like to bite your dick off and feed it to you.’  

You’re mates with Pete Doherty. What’s he actually like?

Mo: Sound as a pound. An absolutely amazing guy – what a character…

Kyle: He’s sound, he’s just a bit temperamental.

Kieren: We always have a good night with him. When we were in Cambridge on the first tour, we went back to his hotel and he drew a big love heart with The View on it on the wall of the hotel, and we were up playing View songs. That was a good night.

Mo: I got arrested with him once. I was hanging round with him and he said to me, ‘Do you want to go and see Dirty Pretty Things to piss Carl Barât off?’ ‘Aye, fucking right man, yeah, let’s do that.’ So he went out and bought a Jaguar! We were flying round the streets and we couldn’t find the place. We were literally about 100 yards from the venue and we were surrounded by all these blue flashing lights and we got arrested. We spent about 12 hours in the police station.  

Pete: It was in Manchester on my 21st birthday and I woke up in a hotel and I put on the TV and it said, ‘Two Dundee boys arrested with Pete Doherty.’ I was like [slaps head] ‘Oh fuck.’

What do you think of Glasvegas?

Pete: I reckon they’re alright guys but they're not the best band.

Mo: They’ve got four completely different clothes styles!

Pete: And they’ve put their mum in the band! Their music’s kind of cool, but the lead singer does take himself a bit too serious.

Kyle: They think they’re the best band in Scotland – but they’re not. We are.

Pete: I think Kings of Leon are an amazing band. I love them, and think they’re great.

Mo: Have you heard their new album? I think it’s shite. I heard it on the radio and I was like, ‘Is that fucking Nickelback or something?’

Kyle: Nickelback? Now they are shite.  

Mo: Kings of Leon are on a fucking par.

Kyle: Nah, no fucking way, I disagree. And you only like Queen and Thin Lizzy!

What’s your alcoholic drink of choice?

Kyle: Vodka, white wine, beer, cider…

Mo: Get a Smirnoff Ice and blue WKD in a pint glass, that’s pretty good. I call it a ‘Crazy Mo’.

Pete: If it gets you pissed and it’s wet, I’ll drink it. I like a good tequila. Me and Kyle were in Mexico and it was all-inclusive, so I was like, ‘Let’s drink tequilas ’til one of us is sick.’ So we hit the bar and we lasted a good 15 tequilas. Then I was sick in the bushes.

Kyle: You can sit in the bar in the pool and drink tequila and you end up spewing in the pool and shit… It’s brilliant.  

Pete: All-inclusive holidays are dangerous. I was just on holiday in the Dominican and they’ve got this thing called ‘Mamma Jamma’ – it’s this special bark of a tree and they put in a bottle, fill it with honey, red wine and lots of rum, and it’s a natural fucking Viagra. You’re drinking them every night and it’s like, ‘Schwwiiiinnng!’ Brilliant.

What’s the best lock-in you’ve been involved in?  

All: The Doghouse!

Mo: There was that night Pete was doing backflips off the bar…

Pete: Our best lock-ins were in The Doghouse. It’s the pub we used to rehearse in and when it shuts at 12, we used to go downstairs and sit there til six o’clock in the morning near enough every night. One night Kyle drove a scooter along the bar.

Kyle: It wasn’t a scooter, it was a motorbike! We were obsessed with scooters for a wee while, and we all got fucked up so I drove it along the bar.

Kieren: Kyle got chucked out for smoking hash too.

Mo: It’s just beer, potato wedges and peanuts for us now…

The View's fantastic new album Which Bitch? is out now