Friendly Fires Frontman Discusses His Bandmate's Death + His Own 'Breakdown'

There are bad days, bad weeks and even bad months. But Brit electro-pop band Friendly Fires had one hell of the latter this past August. Not even three months into their tour to support their sophomore record, 'Pala,' the three-man core of the group got the news that their live backing trumpet player, Richard Turner, 27, had passed away suddenly as the result of a freak heart attack that struck while he was swimming. A week later the band was getting ready to perform at Belgium's Pukkelpop festival when stormy winds knocked over the stage they were about to set up on and ended up killing five concertgoers. Calling it a bad month puts it lightly.

"We were all really deeply shocked," lead singer Ed Macfarlane tells Spinner as they begin a one-month North American tour.

We'd just been playing with Richard in Istanbul. And ironically enough, the last time I saw him was when he was swimming in the hotel pool. He was a really athletic guy. We were all just deeply shocked because we'd travelled around the world with him for years. And then Pukkelpop was another totally surreal moment. It wasn't a very pleasant place to be."

Despite the devastating setbacks, the shows must go on, and the Mercury Prize-nominated band continued to play around Europe through August and September, motivated not only by the allure of keeping busy but also by the inspiration from their latest record, 'Pala,' named after the island in Aldous Huxley's novel 'Island.'

"We don't really have time to sit and think about what happened," Macfarlane reflects. "We're just constantly on the go and that's the way we want to do it. The whole theme of this new record is about making the most of what you have while it lasts, so it just makes sense for us to do everything that we can while we still have the opportunity."

While they've already toured almost non-stop since 'Pala' dropped in May, they're continuing straight through 'til Christmas. This month they're in North America, then they head back to the Europe, on to Japan and back to Europe again before the year is out. The live show is meant to complement the record, which is intended to be a more samba-inspired affair -- something the band felt lent itself to a wilder live show (and if Macfarlane's famed dance moves are any indication, the live show is pretty damn wild).


Rolling out this complex new material didn't happen seamlessly, however, and the band was forced to cancel their Toronto show early on in the tour in May, due to exhaustion. It was reported that drummer Jack Savidge was hospitalized as a result, but Macfarlane says he was affected, too.

"I just had a semi-nervous breakdown on the road after Montreal on the way to Toronto," he explains. "I suppose it was the pressure of having a whole new set. It's way longer and a lot of the songs are really challenging for my voice and we were touring in a bus -- it was the s----iest bus ever -- and I was just not sleeping at all. I was in that frame of mind, like, 'I have to sleep. If I don't sleep then I'm not going to be able to sing the songs tomorrow.' When you start thinking like that, you never get to sleep. It all came to a head in Toronto."

They're making that show up on October 23, and while the original cancellation upset the guys in the band as much as their fans, perhaps the do-over is a blessing in disguise now that the kinks and the challenges of the live show have since been worked out.

"Now it feels like we don't even need to think about playing the songs. We just go on stage and lose ourselves. To me, my best shows are when I can't actually remember them, because I've been in some sort of trance. It feels like every show we do now, we're at that level."

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