Story: Jack Foley
"OUR music’s not trendy. It’s honest.
There’s no guard up, no bullshit. It’s a big sound
with someone in the middle of it screaming their heart out. I’m
not scared of being who I am, on the contrary. I think if we had
a bit more of that it would be good. And I know people out there
are gonna get our music. Because it’s brilliant…"
The Open are not as other bands. Where others dip their toe in
the pool of self-belief, they plunge straight in.
In conversation Steven Bayley (mop of brown hair; raffish demeanour;
usually described as ‘intense’) cites esoteric influences
from The Blue Nile to David Sylvian to Bauhaus design to Celebrity
Squares (Lennie Bennett period), all with an unyielding intensity
reflected in the groups epic music.
For the bands origins however, we must travel back to the early
‘90s.
1993: Walsall, West Midlands. Steven Bayley is 14 and discovering,
just as the young Richard Ashcroft did, in Wigan, that school
isn’t necessarily the place to nurture wide-eyed dreamers
intent on re-writing rock history.
“Walsall is the same as any other town," he explains.
"You’ve got to make something happen. I started listening
to The Beatles, Nirvana and Dylan and my education started with
them.
"School was of no interest to me, it felt pointless. I felt
out of place, I think they thought I was a nuisance. I was shit
at art but I still knew I was the most artistic person there…”
Desperate to escape the monochrome locality for the technicolour
of Liverpool Art College, Steven found his inattention at school
brought inevitable results. Rejected by Liverpool, he settled
on an art course at Stafford.
“Looking back, it was a twist of fate, because while I
was on my foundation year I met Al, our keyboardist, and he’s
as insane as me," he explains.
"I got an eight-track and we’d think up ideas for
the band all the time. We worked really hard. I’m obsessional.
I’d spend 14 hours a day sitting in my room, writing songs
and working on songwriting.”
Such dedication paid off. Two years later, his application to
Liverpool was accepted and Steven set about recruiting a band
to reflect the harmonies in his head.
Before long Steven and Al had assembled the band - most notably
mercurial guitarist, Jon Winter, and were living in a shared terraced
house.
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With abstract paintings and pictures
of everyone from Pink Floyd to Kurt Cobain on the walls amid the
wafts of tobacco smoke and deferred washing up, it was a bohemian
enclave with the feel of Withnail And I, directed by Salvador
Dali.
It also provided the atmosphere necessary for the Open’s
atmospheric vision to flourish.
“That house was great. We would rehearse there every day.
The neighbours didn’t like it, but we just had to do it,"
he continued.
"Subconsciously, the influences just seeped in. After a
year of playing together we just knew we were ready…”
Following a debut gig at the Hibernian Club, in Birmingham, in
October 2002, and a smattering of local shows around The Midlands,
the band were signed up on the spot by the Loog label, in the
Summer of 2003.
Debut EP, Never Enough, duly followed in November last
year.
A rough sketch of their ability to combine epic-sounding pop
with a withering lyricism, it also provided, in Music
and Drown a calling card for spacier canvasses to come.
“Never Enough is like this sugar-coated tune with
this horrible message in it about people not taking risks in their
lives,” grins Steven.
“But the other tracks are more to do with creating a mood.
I think you can say more by not singing anything. I wanted that
feel of creating this atmosphere you can step inside. That sense
of feeling the shadows flickering across the walls….”
With the next single, Close My Eyes, and debut album,
Silent Hours, The Open’s baroque vision is fully
realised.
Recorded at Bryn Derwen Studios, in Bangor, by Simon Raymonde
(bassist in The Cocteau Twins) and mixed by Dave Bascombe (Tears
For Fears), the album is being hailed by many as a widescreen
masterpiece.
The songs tackle themes of love and redemption head-on, wrapped
in a sweeping sound, full of rampaging orchestras and ghostly
atmospherics, which bring both Verve and vintage Teardrop Explodes
to mind.
But, as Bayley concludes: "Lyrically it’s a dark record.
For me so many important times have been when I’ve been
at rock bottom, and those feelings are reflected on the album.
"It’s head music. . If there’s any message it’s:
quit the job, leave the town, search for whatever you’re
looking for. You never know, you might just find it…”
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