Thursday frontman Geoff Rickly has spoken with Rock Sound about the band’s plans to return this year, for at least one live performance. The group were recently confirmed for this year’s ‘Wrecking Ball ATL‘ festival. When asked about how it feels to be back together, he replied:
“Well, we haven’t even been in a practice room together yet! We haven’t made music again yet but we have been spending time together. The dynamic of all of us in a room together again feels so good. A few terrible things happened between ourselves at the end that we kept between ourselves so as not to sully the memory of the band, and that stuff we’ve all kind of made peace with and are OK about now.
- Advertisement -We never stopped clicking when we played music. We have to start practicing again now because it’s been five years but I’m not really worried about that! It was never, ‘I can’t play music with this guy,’ it was more, ‘I don’t even know if I can be around this guy!’ I think anybody who tours together for any extended period of time will find that, though.”
Given that the band broke up and that members went considerable amounts of time without talking to each other, he was asked if he thinks they will enjoy playing together again more:
“I think we’ll be a bit truer to the spirit of playing for the hell of playing. We turned Wrecking Ball Festival down four times because I thought when we came back we should play in New Jersey, that seemed obvious to me. I also kinda wanted it to be an intimate show, but by the end of it they counter offered it with lots of things which allowed us to do things in our own way, including involving a charity and some other things which haven’t been announced yet which will be incredible. Oh, and then we heard the line-up, which blew my mind! I’m getting to play with all my heroes. But I mean, we decided this on Sunday and they announced it on the Tuesday, it’s been really quick.”
When asked as to why Thursday originally decided to hang it up, he shared a theory:
“I’ve heard this theory that the hype train was so insane around ‘Full Collapse’ that when we came to play the big shows like Reading and Leeds main stage, we actually turned in some pretty below average performances! There was a backlash from that and we didn’t take that very well. But in a way I’m sort of proud of that, Thursday was never a well-oiled machine and I like the idea of that capturing the human nature of this band.
But the other thing I keep coming back to is that we were a band of the people – I put on shows before I was in a band and we’re all very invested in the idea of DIY community. But I remember playing the Fireside Bowl in Chicago which is a famous DIY venue and we sold it out and they turned 800 people away. That night the promoter said to me, ‘You’re going to get us shut down, will you do me a favor and never play here again?’ After that it felt like for the good of the DIY scene we needed to move away from it.
The problem was we then moved so far from that scene and doing tours like Taste Of Chaos with bands like Bring Me The Horizon and Four Year Strong. One year Taste Of Chaos were selling tickets to meet us. How can you be a band of the people if you charge people to shake your hand? That was a demoralizing thing, and instead of seizing the moment we just gave in. I think that’s a huge part of what went wrong the first time around. Coming back is about rewinding to what we had that was great in the first place. It’s about putting it back in our hands and making it feel special. I can’t wait, I’m so excited and happy and proud of us.”
For more on that, the status of Rickly‘s other group No Devotion and more, head over to Rock Sound.
Comments