Exclusive: Florence & The Machine

Florence Welch from Florence & The Machine

Florence and the machine have managed to avoid the dreaded second album syndrome with ‘Ceremonials’, which went straight in at number one on the UK Albums Chart. Lead singer Florence Welch’s debut album ‘Lungs’ also reached number one in the UK charts, won the Brit Award for Mastercard British Album, and peaked at number fourteen in America’s Billboard chart.

She has wowed audiences worldwide with performances at the Oscars, the Grammys, and even the Nobel Peace Prize. Florence And The Machine have been nominated for countless awards, and won more than a few.

Here Florence sat down to talk to Charlotte Winters about her meteoric rise to fame, how she is coping with worldwide success and her journey to stardom…

Is it true you used to hang out in cemeteries?

Yes, when I was a teenager, I used to hang out at Brockley Cemetery just before rehearsals would start. Just by myself, in a cemetery, on sunny days doing handstands and stuff [laughs].

Are there two sides to you – the private self and the public persona, especially when you’re performing?

In performances I think you can be completely free. It feels like all the conflicting sides of myself, instead of fighting against each other, they suddenly join forces and that’s why it works. There are a lot of internal battles that are going on, which kind of makes me an introverted person off stage. I think they can kind of be resolved though performance but you don’t really get that from conversation, or just day-to-day life. I think the internal war still rages [laughs].

So is that more the real you when you’re on stage? A lot of other performers say it is.

I kind of understand that because of the sense of complete freedom and that sense of  child-likeness, of being totally immersed in something, like a game, and anything you conjure up in your head you can become on stage. You can create this landscape, which is internal – but you can make it real around you and everyone can go there with you. It’s a fantastic thing, so I do understand that. I would quite like to be floating around town, spinning off railings, singing at the top of my lungs and for everything to be a musical, but because everyday life is constrained you can’t.

Were you like that as a kid, dancing around your bedroom?

Yes, I still do it now! I did it last night! Me and my sister basically did a full performance of Guys and Dolls to each other. But, definitely as a kid I was constantly dressing up, dancing and singing in my bedroom. I think that was the first preparation for the stage, was alone in a weird outfit, singing along to something. because music can transport you completely. You can be in your bedroom but if you’re listening to your favourite song you’re somewhere completely different.

For want of a better word, how Bohemian was your childhood?

It was kind of weird. My parents are pretty liberal and I ended up living in a house with three other teenagers as well. When my mum remarried, it was this big house full of six teenagers and it was like gang law, really. Because there were so many of us, it was like we were either fighting each other or it was us against the parents. You could basically slip under the radar because there was so much going on.

There was a big art scene going on where I lived, so I spent a lot of time in Camberwell Art College and at parties. I think my mum pretty much let me find my own path and she never dictated what I should wear. I was dressed as a witch pretty much all the time and buying books on the occult, when I was eleven, and just kind of experimenting with things. She was always pretty. She was totally there if I needed her but she kind of let me get on with my own thing, which I appreciate. You can kind of slip under the radar in a bigger family. By that time my mum was just so exhausted, she let us do whatever.

What sort of artistic influence did your parents exert?

Mum was interested in the renaissance. I spent a lot of time in churches, as a child, with my mother – she took us to see a lot of friezes in Florence, like the Medici families’ palaces. She was really fascinated by Saint Agatha – there’s this really big relief of her, like with her breasts on a plate. My mother would kind of describe in great detail all these stories and love affairs and it was all quite intoxicating and romantic. And my dad was much more bohemian and playing me the Velvet Underground and The Smiths on tapes. Listening to music on car journeys with my dad, I think, is probably why I love music.

Did you feel destined to always be a singer?

I always wanted to, I just wasn’t quite sure how to go about it. I didn’t know what the right way was. I always wanted to be a singer of some sorts, but when I was a kid I just wanted to be in musicals and I wanted to be on Broadway, but I was quite a chubby child. I never had dance training, or anything like that – I was always the card in Alice and Wonderland! I love musical theatre but I think my voice is a bit too strange for it. So I was always in the chorus, one of the Salvation Army not the lead – that kind of thing. But I loved musicals, I loved singing, was in a choir and I really wanted to do something but never really had any idea how it would happen.

Did you think it might never happen?

Yes, I do remember worrying about it though – you know, that fear – when I was 18 and I thought I haven’t made an album and become a pop star and I’m 18, it means it’s never going to happen, like those ridiculous teenage fears: ‘it’s too late, I’m over the hill,’ which of course wasn’t the case.

Were you ever interested in acting, or painting?

I think I was really interested in acting and other stuff, but I just drifted for a bit. I went on my gap year and I worked in this bar, just around the corner from where I lived and you just get entrenched in that life. Behind a bar is almost like a stage itself, with all the characters there. It’s like a play. It’s suprisingly Shakespearean working in a bar in South London; it’s like some endless, unfolding Shakespearean tragic-comedy with all the characters, like the drunks and the mad people. They’re all coming in and interacting and you get to know them and it’s a really interesting thing to do. It got to a year and I thought; ‘I’ve got to do something else’ and I went to Art College right down the road.

I started writing these songs – these bluesy, melancholy things like ‘Kiss With A Fist’ and ‘My Boy Builds Coffins’ and met Mairead Nash while drunk. My boyfriend was in a band and I asked if his band member would come and play guitar for me because I’d been offered this gig. I pretended to have a band but I didn’t have one, so I had to get one quickly! We had one hour rehearsal and then did this bluesy set and literally from that point on it all happened.

Was that your band Ashok?

No, I’d left Ashok and this band was at Art College. I ws in Ashok when I was hanging out in Brockley Cemetery! And I left that because, musically, I knew it was a direction I didn’t want to go in. I kind of had these bluesy songs and I met Mairead and I think from there on it developed. I’d never had the confidence to sing alone. I always thought that I needed to be a singer in someone’s band.

Is that why it’s Florence and The Machine, rather than Florence Welch?

Yes, I think I wanted to disguise that. I didn’t want it to be so exposed. I think a lot of the songs I write are a sense of wanting to exorcise something but at the same time wanting to be empowered by it rather than too exposed, and therefore you have to dress it in some other kind of costume to elaborate, to illustrate the problem with something fantastical so that you can feel free to express it.

Is it ironic because your songs, especially on your first album are so personal and about your then break-up with your boyfriend…

Yeah [laughs] I don’t know, it’s more just a way to say to one person, indirectly, and sing it a couple of thousand people instead because I’m quite bad at saying how I feel face-to-face. Especially to the people you care most about. It’s so tough, so in order for me to express something I have to write it in a song and sing it to a couple of strangers.

How mind-boggling was the way things took off, especially after you thought you’d missed your chance?

I just feel very grateful, actually. I feel much more of a sense of calm and peace because at the start you’re grabbing on to everything – you don’t hold anything back, in interviews or performances – you just question whether it’s really happening – and I think now I’ve come to terms [with it] and I feel more a sense of accomplishing something, it brings you more of a sense of peace. That was then, I can put a marker on that and say I did an album and it happened – and it’s a really nice place to be in, to look back on it and I’ve got some really, really fond memories of touring and gigs – some amazing moments.

Was it a difficult adjustment though, suddenly dealing with the success, acclaim and fame?

Yes, they were really hard times – I don’t think they’ll be anything harder than that first record. I nearly went mad with the pressure, just crying all the time, unable to get out of bed on family holidays because I knew I had to come back and it would be my first NME cover. I was terrified!

It was literally like Pandora’s box. I was literally like ‘get it back in, I’m not ready for this – I’m not ready for this…’ it was horrible…so much was happening. I’d won a Brit before I’d even released an album! I was on my first tour too and on top of that I was probably drinking more than I ever had done in my entire life, before or since, just because it’s your first experience of touring and then someone gives you two bottles of vodka and you’re on tour with three pretty hard-drinking guys in my band.

So, if you’re doing your first shows and someone’s going to give you two bottles of vodka you’re going to go for it. And you’re on stage first, so you’re playing at seven, so it doesn’t even matter. It was so much fun – we definitely enjoyed ourselves – but I don’t think I could do that again, not with this work schedule.

I’m so glad that it happened then, because it was all part of it and we totally lived it. We all agreed that we were just going to go for it completely. I can’t believe I survived and I got really sick when I came back, actually, because your immune system manages to keep you going throughout, with adrenaline but as soon as I came home I was ill.

Now, it’s really nice because I’ve come to a really good place with the music, where I feel like we’ve developed it to a stage where you still have that visceral side to it, but it’s less about the chaos of the performance.

It becomes more about what you can do with the show sonically than how much you can drink before it. We’ve all developed…because we were a band of people who never thought they’d end up in bands and now we feel a bit more like musicians, behaving like misfits!

Any pinch yourself moments?

Yeah, totally, and just enjoying every minute of it but now we feel more like – dare I say it – seasoned musicians. So we feel like the music has become so important and that’s what’s really nice, actually. I did a completely sober tour for the last one – not even any diet coke or coffee, for my voice – and it was a really amazing experience.

But I was so annoyed with the band when they would go out and have a good time – I couldn’t help that – but just as a musician, learning to develop my voice, and control it has just become a really good part of the whole process of growing up and understanding yourself and your body.

How has it changed this time around, because it’s still patently you but the music is slightly different…

Well, the first album sounds like somebody chasing you around a dark wood and we kind of wanted this next album to be a more ethereal, more elemental place. We did experiment with maybe more chemical imagery and I did ‘Strangers and Charm’ and ‘Spectrum’ which was kind of about the colour spectrum and how as human existence we all started as amorphous blobs [cackles with laughter] – that casual metaphor – and how letting in the spectrum would become like a message for hope and positivity.

But then you can’t help but be drawn back to the theme that you have at the core of you – to a more organic place. It was good to experiment with that, but I just couldn’t help it. Someone said it sounded a bit more introverted, thematically, and I guess maybe it is. The first album was almost like waging war on someone else and this is one is kind of waging war against myself and also a battle between the body and the spirit and whether you want to be.

There is the perception that you’re observing from a different perspective…

Yes, it’s about just wanting to be outside my own world and thoughts, because I do get so bogged down by my history, regrets and thoughts and just have that need to be outside of myself for a second. I think that’s why performing is so appealing for me. what all performers aspire to is to live purely in the moment, and not to worry about the future or the past. I’m a terrible worrier so, for me, it’s such a release, and all the wittering is calmed.

You mentioned you got very ill from touring. How bad was it, were you depressed, did you suffer panic attacks?

No, I just had too much of a good time, so it was my own fault. But, yeah, just before the first album came out I was in a pretty bad place. I wasn’t ready for it and I did get kind of really down and depressed and just scared, really, I think. I was unprepared, emotionally, and it was in the middle of that tour. Once I got over that and we got into the rhythm of it and I learned how to be less afraid and paranoid – it all got so much easier.

It was a bad time, but I think it was just I couldn’t really deal with it at the time. I’m much better at dealing with everything now – at least I hope I am because I wouldn’t want to go through that all again! I think it was because I was worried about people judging me and I was worried what people would think.

I was terribly worried about rejection and all those things – that sense of it being out of my hands,  of opening the box and things just getting out of hand. For example things I’d said in interview, you learn that they just keep coming back to haunt you. And you don’t know that at the beginning. In my first interviews I was completely open about everything, because you don’t know…’my family this, my childhood that…’ and then I realised, ‘oh, my God, it’s all out there.

I can never have that [secret] because my life is now completely open to interpretation and judgement. It’s the most terrifying thing and I think anyone, from realising that, would go into a hole and not want to come out. And now I’ve just learned not to think about that and I just don’t worry about it that much because you realise that people…I don’t think I’ve changed that much; I’ve become more settled, in myself, if anything and I think you learn to worry less and let go of control over that sort of thing because you can’t control it.

Florence & The Machine singing

I think the last couple of years have probably been some of the best – if not the best – times of my life and with that comes the incredible highs and incredible lows that come with performing.

But you can’t really rest on your laurels, can you? I think, for me it was wonderful, but I’m always judging myself on my last performance, and you can only judge yourself on the very last thing that you’ve done.

You have to keep making the next thing better and improving yourself. So as soon as the last album came out and I started getting those responses I was like; ‘ok, I’m going to have to make this next one really good!’.

And Florence-lovers all over the world are certainly looking forward to that treat.