McFly >> Biography |
[LEFT-RIGHT: HARRY, TOM, DOUGIE, DANNY.]
| Dougie-Poynter.com Biography |
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There is quite a long biography which includes a lot of information about McFly and its
other members in the "Dougie" section, so head over there now, by clicking
here.
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| McFlyOfficial.com Biography (Feb 2005) |
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Strange but true fact no 6,326: less than 12 months ago the only McFly anyone had
heard of was Marty in the film “Back To The Future”. Fast forward to 2005 and McFly
the band have become the only contenders for the title in pop’s premier league. 2005 has seen McFly off to a flying start after winning the Best Pop award at the Brits. The foursome have new material just waiting to burst into the charts, a full-scale headline arena tour this autumn and even their first Hollywood movie due by the end of the year. Having established themselves as one of Britain’s most exciting new bands, Danny Jones (guitar/vocals), Tom Fletcher (guitar/vocals), Dougie Poynter (bass, vocals) and Harry Judd (drums) are about to prove that the last twelve months’ Number Ones, multiple awards, double platinum record sales and thousands of gig tickets were only the beginning. First up is the band’s brand new single (and 2005’s official Comic Relief release), a double a-side single with all proceeds going to the charity’s efforts around the world. On side one, we find ‘All About You’. “I remember when Tom first wrote ‘All About You’,” Danny continues. “The rest of us were all downstairs watching TV, but all we could hear was this sound coming from Tom’s room. These backing vocals going ‘Bo, bo bo, bo bo, bo bo…’ That is all we heard, and we were just sat there going, ‘What the hell is that?’.” The rest of the lads found out pretty quickly: ‘All About You’ builds on the sophisticated style of early McFly songs like ‘Obviously’, further refining what are already emerging as hallmark McFly songwriting qualities. The version you’ll hear was recorded not in Tom’s bedroom but the more prestigious environs of Abbey Road studios, and comes with backing from a full 60-piece orchestra. The ‘All About You’ video finds the band on top comedy form. “We’ve got Graham Norton, Kate Thornton, Harry Hill, Davina, Johnny Vegas, Ruby Wax, some guy from some… Er, an actor…” said Danny. Once you see the video, with its countless cameos, you’ll understand why Danny’s having trouble keeping track of them all. On the flipside of the new single, ‘You’ve Got A Friend’ is an inspired Carole King cover. The song was never a hit single for King, but shot to fame after featuring on her 1971 album ‘Tapestry’ and has since become a classic. It’s even been covered by a handful of acts in the past. “I’m actually more familiar with the James Taylor version,” Danny explains. “His recording was just with an acoustic guitar with some bongos thrown in – it was quite chilled out once again and that’s the vibe we’ve gone for on our own version.” The video for ‘You’ve Got A Friend’, meanwhile, features footage of the boys’ recent trip to Africa. At the beginning of January the band travelled to Uganda to experience first hand the situation they’ll be doing their best to help remedy. On the sometimes harrowing but ultimately inspiring trip they visited a project funded by Comic Relief – the Kamwokya Christian Caring Community. The project supports the community by caring for people affected by HIV/AIDS, running a health clinic providing vocational training as well as operating a primary school for children orphaned by HIV. Many of those young kids won’t even live to be Dougie’s age, let alone get into their twenties. “It was an amazingly humbling experience,” Danny explains. “Very emotional but also very rewarding. We cooked with them, laid bricks with them, did everything we could to try to understand one small part of what their life is like. We spent time with five-year-old kids who are HIV positive. Coming home and seeing people arguing over petty things… Well, you realise it’s just not worth it.” “Going out there gave each of us a new perspective on life It made us all aware of how lucky we are, and realising that I’m in a position where I might be able to make more people aware of the situation is something that makes me feel really honoured. Everyone should go out there at least once in their lives.” 2005 will also see McFly taking a starring role in the major new Lindsay Lohan movie for 20th Century Fox (untitled at present), in which they play a band called McFly whose members Danny (Danny), Tom (Tom), Dougie (Dougie) and Harry (Harry) play a large part in, as they say, ‘the plot development’. “We met the director last year,” Danny recalls, “and he said that he loved us. And then when we got the scripts back it turned out we’d been given massive parts! Hahah! I really can’t believe it. I’ll probably be in the record books with the first Bolton accent in Hollywood.” The lads are hoping to contribute five songs – including some new ones - to the soundtack of the movie, which is due in cinemas by Christmas. By that point, of course, the band will be on the road with their first headline arena tour, some of whose dates sold out so quickly that additional gigs have already been added. They’re promising a bigger, better live experience than autumn 2004’s sold out theatre tour, and you can expect to hear a whole raft of new material when they do hit the road, because the boys have already been writing for the successor to last year’s Number One album ‘Room On The Third Floor’. “We have,” Danny declares, “got some tunes.” He’s remaining tight-lipped on any further details, but from the early demos it sounds as if the band will breezily sidestep any ‘difficult second album’ issues. In fact, with all this happening in 2005, the band’s first single seems a long time ago now - but ‘Five Colours In her Hair’ was actually released less than a year ago. After spending two weeks at Number One, ‘Five Colours…’ was followed by the band’s second Number One smash, ‘Obviously’, which itself was followed two weeks later by an album teeming with love, loss, frustration and a humorous songwriting spark that set McFly head and shoulders above the vast majority of the pop pack. ‘Room On The Third Floor’ shot straight to Number One – putting McFly in the Guinness Book Of Records as the youngest ever band to achieve such a feat. Two further Top 5 hits followed – with ‘That Girl’ in September and the album’s title track, with its astonishing ‘Airfix’ video, in November. Under their belts – which are riding as low as ever – the lads already have hundreds of thousands of record sales, a Brit Award, thousands of gig tickets sold, and so many Smash Hits awards that they needed a shopping trolley to get them home, and right now they’re sounding more fresh and creative than ever. Amazingly, their momentum is still building. If you thought McFly made a big impact in 2004, that’s was just the beginning… |
| McFlyOfficial.com Biography (Jun 2004) |
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“If you don’t play there’s no music. If there’s no music they don’t dance. If
they don’t dance they don’t kiss. And if they don’t kiss, they don’t fall in
love…” - Marty McFly, 1955 Building on the phenomenal success of debut single ‘Five Colours In Her Hair’, which spent two weeks at Number One this spring, McFly are gearing up to unleash their second smash, ‘Obviously’, followed two weeks later by an album which teems with love, loss, frustration and a humorous songwriting spark that has already set McFly head and shoulders above the majority of the pop pack. As at home on the stage as they already are on thousands of bedroom walls, McFly are here to stay. Danny Jones (guitar/vocals), Tom Fletcher (guitar/vocals), Dougie Poynter (bass, vocals) and Harry Judd (drums) make a sound utterly unlike anyone else in the current pop landscape with a brilliant array of influences, from the fire and fury of Bill Haley’s comets to the more recent homely twang of The Coral, mixed up with a little bit of everything in between and served up in perfectly formed, brilliantly-observed McFly-shaped packages. With a name inspired by the hotel room Tom and Danny first shared together when they started the band, ‘Room On The Third Floor’ is bursting with tunes. You’ll already know tracks one and two – ‘Five Colours…’ and ‘Obviously’ – but get ready for hits-to-be like ‘That Girl’ (with the memorable line "We spoke for hours, she took off my trousers”), “Room On The 3rd Floor” and “Hypnotised”. The album even contains a song called ‘Broccoli’ – and let’s face it, not many bands can make a similar boast. Some of the album’s tracks, like the anthemic ‘Saturday Night’ and the rousing, singalong-a-Liam Gallagher title song, were debuted by the band earlier this spring when they played to a quarter of a million fans as the main support on Busted’s sold out A Ticket For Everyone tour. "We enjoy being on stage so much," Tom gushes. "One thing that separates us from a lot of pop bands is that we can just walk into a room, pick up some instruments and bang out one of our songs." Being in McFly, each member will tell you, is less about the haircuts and more about getting up on stage, and with their own tour pencilled in for the end of the year, McFly will be taking their live experience to plenty more fans before the year’s out. It’ll also give everyone another chance to become acquainted with the four distinct personalities that make McFly what they are… Harrow boy Tom Fletcher grew up listening to bands like the The Beatles and The Beach Boys, and finds a fascinating charm in 60s music. "I've always loved the fact that there's a really unique quality to sixties music," he grins. "Everything from the chord progressions to the melodies themselves - and they still sound amazing today.” These days the 18-year-old slots CDs by acts like The Thrills in among those older discs and if you’ve heard Busted’s second album you’ll already be familiar with Tom’s work – many of the tracks were co-written by Tom with the rest of Busted, just as James from Busted has lent his own hand to many of McFly’s own tunes. Tom loves Katie Holmes and hates bananas. 17-year-old Danny Jones is the band joker. He was born in Bolton's Royal Infirmary and went to a school whose brown uniform earned its pupils a rather unpleasant, and unprintable, nickname! He loves The Who, The Beatles and Bruce Springsteen as well as blues legend John Lee Hooker, and is an obsessive fan of live music. In today's pop scene Danny is perhaps unique in his support of Bolton Wanders (though he's pretty nifty with his own feet) and he admits that life back home often has a bit of a Phoenix Nights vibe going on. The rest of the band are constantly amused by Danny's insistence that anyone with any sort of accent is automatically from Bolton. He recently claimed this was true of an Italian tourist. Dougie Poynter is McFly’s youngest member. He grew up in the historic Essex town of Corringham, some parts of which date back to Saxon times. Dougie’s own history doesn’t go back quite so far – he was only 15 when he joined McFly. Now 16, he loves clothes (“at least, I prefer them to being naked”), and lists bands like New Found Glory and Blink-182 among his favourites. Tom describes Dougie as “one of the most quirky people I've ever met. He comes across as being quiet and shy when you first meet him – but you soon find out what he’s really like!” One of Dougie’s particular habits, the rest of the band will tell you, is to pepper everyday occurrences with his own sound effects. Adds Danny: “He never complains and he never gets angry. Mind you, he does have the smelliest feet in the world.” Cricket-mad Harry Judd is 17. He has lived in Essex (which is, he claims, "pure quality") all his life, and was educated at posh school Uppingham. “He's so determined,” says Danny. “But he’s a really good friend. He’s the one we can all turn to for advice, and he’s got lots of common sense.” Adds Tom: "Harry can be brutally honest at times - but you know he'll always give it to you straight. We wouldn't want him any other way." Harry's first record was Oasis' '(What's The Story) Morning Glory' - and his favourite bands include Dashboard Confessional and Led Zeppelin. Put all four boys together and you get an overnight success, right? Well, not quite. McFly’s final member only joined the band last August, and the McFly story dates right back to 2001 when Tom saw an advertisement in NME. A band were almost complete, but needed one final member. Tom fancied his chances. He got down to the final two but when the final place in that band - Busted - went to some guy called Charlie, Tom began his own deal with Busted’s managers’ own production label, and McFly was born. Tom stayed in touch with James and the pair started writing together – the name McFly came from Tom and James’ shared love of 80s teenflick Back To The Future. The arrival of Danny as Tom’s own writing partner cemented McFly and before long things began to pick up pace , with the boys playing their songs for label bosses all around London. The final step for McFly was to find the band’s remaining members, again through adverts in the NME. The auditions threw up Harry and Dougie - who was so nervous that he literally threw up minutes before his audition – and finally McFly were complete. (The band still have that NME ad framed on the wall of their shared north London home: for Tom and Danny it was the first time their band had been in print, for Dougie and Harry it was their doorway to McFlydom.) Within weeks the boys were holed up in north London rehearsal studios, polishing their songs and refining their live show, before finally being unveiled on CD:UK with their first TV performance of ‘Five Colours In Her Hair’. A massive Number One, a brilliant debut album and thousands of new fans later, McFly are flying. |
| McFlyOfficial.com Biography (Nov 2003) |
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"Marty, you might not want to hook up to the amplifier. There's a slight
possibility of overload." - Dr Emmett Brown, 1985 Pop is about to turn an exciting new corner. McFly are finally here - amped up, fired up, scuzzed up and as at home on the stage as they will be on bedroom walls. Danny Jones (guitar/vocals), Tom Fletcher (guitar/vocals), Dougie Poynter (bass, vocals) and Harry Judd (drums) arrive on the UK pop scene with massive tunes and bags of energy. They're already the band on thousands of lips, even though their first single isn't due for release until next spring. Somewhat strangely, McFly have already had their first taste of the Number One spot - in November, when they joined labelmates Busted on the flipside of 'Crashed The Wedding', for a fiery romp through 'Build Me Up Buttercup'. But we all know Busted wouldn't put their stamp of approval on a band who couldn't triumph with their own material, and the sound McFly make is really unlike anything else you've heard all year, a thrilling melting pot of musical reference s which recall the finer points of rock and roll history and throw in a unique 2003 spin. Let's meet the boys... Harrow boy Tom Fletcher grew up listening to bands like the The Beatles and The Beach Boys, and finds a fascinating charm in 60s music. "I've always loved the fact that there's a really unique quality to sixties music," he grins. "Everything from the chord progressions to the melodies themselves - and they still sound amazing today.” These days the 18-year-old slots CDs by acts like The Thrills in among those older discs and if you’ve heard Busted’s second album you’ll already be familiar with Tom’s work – many of the tracks were co-written by Tom with the rest of Busted, just as James from Busted has lent his own hand to many of McFly’s own tunes. Tom loves Katie Holmes and hates bananas. 17-year-old Danny Jones is the band joker. He was born in Bolton's Royal Infirmary and went to a school whose brown uniform earned its pupils a rather unpleasant, and unprintable, nickname! He loves The Who, The Beatles and Bruce Springsteen as well as blues legend John Lee Hooker, and is an obsessive fan of live music. In today's pop scene Danny is perhaps unique in his support of Bolton Wanders (though he's pretty nifty with his own feet) and he admits that life back home often has a bit of a Phoenix Nights vibe going on. The rest of the band are constantly amused by Danny's insistence that anyone with any sort of accent is automatically from Bolton. He recently claimed this was true of an Italian tourist. Dougie Poynter is McFly’s youngest member. He grew up in the historic Essex town of Corringham, some parts of which date back to Saxon times. Dougie’s own history doesn’t go back quite so far – he was only 15 when he joined McFly. Now 16, he loves clothes (“at least, I prefer them to being naked”), and lists bands like New Found Glory and Blink-182 among his favourites. Tom describes Dougie as “one of the most quirky people I've ever met. He comes across as being quiet and shy when you first meet him – but you soon find out what he’s really like!” One of Dougie’s particular habits, the rest of the band will tell you, is to pepper everyday occurrences with his own sound effects. Adds Dougie: “He never complains and he never gets angry. Mind you, he does have the smelliest feet in the world.” Cricket-mad Harry Judd is 17. He has lived in Essex (which is, he claims, "pure quality") all his life, and was educated at posh school Uppingham. “He's so determined,” says Danny. “But he’s a really good friend. He’s the one we can all turn to for advice, and he’s got lots of common sense.” Adds Tom: "Harry can be brutally honest at times - but you know he'll always give it to you straight. We wouldn't want him any other way." Harry's first record was Oasis' '(What's The Story) Morning Glory' - and his favourite bands include Dashboard Confessional and Led Zeppelin. While the final member only joined the band in August, the McFly story dates back to 2001 when Tom saw an advertisement in NME - a band were after one final member, and he fancied his chances. He got down to the final two but when the final place in that band - Busted - went to some guy called Charlie, Tom began his own deal with Busted’s managers own production label and McFly was born. Tom stayed in touch with James and the pair started writing together – in fact, the name McFly was inspired by one of James’ early songs, Year 3000. Before long a lot was happening and the arrival of Danny Jones as Tom’s partner really cemented things. The band was taking shape and it wasn’t long before the McFly pair were performing for people all over London. They continuted to write with James of Busted and recorded a number of their songs – eventually playing them acoustically for key major labels and signing with Universal. The final step was to advertise for more members with the help of adverts in the NME. The auditions found Harry and Dougie - who was so nervous that he literally threw up minutes before his audition. Finally the lineup was complete. The band now have that final NME ad framed on their wall at home: for Tom and Danny it was the first time their band had been in print, for Dougie and Harry it was their doorway to McFlydom. Before long, the boys moved in together, into the house they still share. The steep social learning curve was a bit like the first few days of Big Brother, they explain. But beyond the scents of boydom, and the lads’ habit of living almost entirely on takeaway pizza, the bond they’ve made seems unbreakable. “We soon found out that when you’re living with each other there’s no room for secrets,” Tom laughs, “but then we found out that we didn’t want to keep secrets anyway.” Since the summer the band have been ferried around in Tom’s dilapidated Fiat Punto between home and rehearsal studios. Which brings us to the songs - and you'll be hard-pushed to find anything more catchy this side of the England cricket team's 'How To Field In Five Easy Steps' DVD. (Which doesn't actually exist.) These songs are sparky, bouncy and packed with kooky observational hooks which set McFly apart from your average songwriting pop loons. ‘Five Colours In Her Hair’, for example, was inspired by a scene in Channel 4 teen soap As If. “I quite fancied the character," Danny explains, "and then a few days later I saw the actress being interviewed out of costume. I realised that she looked better with five colours in her hair. And a lip ring.” So he and Tom wrote a song about her. ‘Surfer Babe’, meanwhile, was written by Tom and James Bourne after a lengthy Beach Boys listening session while another stunner, ‘That Girl’, the first song written for McFly by Tom and James, was brought to life at a later date by a stunning solo from Danny, and includes the memorable line "We spoke for hours, she took off my trousers". Think the songs sound great on record? Wait until you hear them live. "We enjoy being on stage so much," Tom gushes. "One thing that separates us from a lot of pop bands is that we can just walk into a room, pick up some instruments and bang out one of our songs." Being in McFly, each member will tell you, is less about the haircuts and more about getting up on stage. Want some proof? It's coming to an arena near you soon when McFly take to the road as the main support on Busted’s forthcoming arena tour. The prospect of hitting the road is a thrilling one for the lads - even though, as any Back To The Future fan will tell you, where McFly are going, they don't need roads. |
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