The Music

“It’s just a name, isn’t it?” – Robert Harvey, singer/guitarist, the Music.

Well, yes, the Music — simultaneously modest and cocky, point-blank but wide open to interpretation, and thus much like the band which bears it.

Not that the Music doesn’t appreciate the volumes of praise heaped upon them, or the sweaty up-for-it crowds that pack every show to the rafters, but their moments of purest bliss have come in a weathered village hall in the tiny northern English town of Kippax, Leeds. It’s there where three teenaged schoolmates (singer/guitarist Robert Harvey, lead guitarist Adam Nutter and bassist Stuart Coleman) and friend from a neighboring village (drummer Phil Jordan) would escape the profound boredom of their surroundings and submerge themselves in long, sprawling jam sessions, exploring and expanding musical ideas without any starry-eyed thoughts of conquering anyone’s world but their own.

“We just played,” says lead guitarist Nutter. “We didn’t really talk about it. We just went on for hours because we knew there was something there straight away. There was no plan, no discussion, we just loved it.”

“If we hadn’t have been heard, we’d probably still be in that hall jamming away,” says drummer Jordan. “That’s just us. I’ve never sat down and thought about what I wanted to do with my life.”

With significantly diverse influences among them, from classic rock to reggae to funk and beyond, the band began to create what is already an instantly recognizable and massive sound. For starters, there’s that incredible tsunami of guitar. You’ll know it the moment you hear it. Adam Nutter (age 19) is a one-man musical hall of mirrors, sounding like dozens of guitarists at once — Jimmy Page, Tom Morello and Robert Johnson among them — producing immense waves of psychedelic sound that propel the band like a phantom steam engine.

The rhythm section of bassist Stuart Coleman (19) and drummer Phil Jordan (20) are a perfectly versatile accompaniment – sometimes forging levee-breaking bombast, sometimes hairpin funk turns, sometimes block rockin’ Chemical beats, tight as hell but unafraid to just groove. And the simply enormous sound that comes from the mouth of Robert Harvey (19) is stunning, a supremely confident wail as big as anything else the band brings forth.

With the absence of any sort of local music scene in their removed part of Leeds, the band of then-16 and 17 year-olds managed to score a couple of gigs in the city’s center and that’s when things started happening — quickly. Word-of-mouth about their jaw-dropper of a live show spread lightning-fast, drawing the music press who would soon rave about the four lads from Leeds. A demo of their debut single, swirling anthem “Take the Long Road and Walk It,” caught the ear of influential DJ Steve Lamacq, who playing it enthusiastically on his Radio One program, declaring them the “best unsigned band in Britain.” The subsequent “Take the Long Road and Walk It” EP sold out in one day. And crowds at the live shows continued to grow.

“Those gigs were strange because we were still at school finishing our exams,” remembers Harvey, “and every so often we’d play and there would be all of this madness.”

But the minute that school was over, the Music started to take England bit by bit, touring the country from north to south and winning droves of new fans. A second EP, the provocatively-titled “You Might as Well Try to Fuck Me,” was released on Hut recordings and also sold out immediately, as did its follow-up, “The People.” The overwhelming reception to their live shows and EP’s soon landed them coveted support slots with the Charlatans, New Order, Coldplay and Oasis, exposing them to thousands of new fans-in-waiting.

The band then went into the studio to record their debut album with producer Jim Abbiss, who the band had admired from his work with Bjork and DJ Shadow. “There were tough moments,” says Nutter. “We felt like the studio was really restrictive compared to how we’d come up with music in terms of spirit, but Jim helped us become ourselves in that environment and we learned quite a bit from the experience.”

Their self-titled debut album, released in the fall of 2002, entered the British album charts at #4. Said NME, “The Music are going to change everything…[there’s] the desperate need for a group to come through and tear away the apathy and complacency. The Music are that group.”