747s
The quartet busked their way off the streets of Europe to a record contract

L to r: Massimo Signorelli, Oisin Leech, Ned Crowther, Freddie Stitz

Courtesy of Hostess Entertainment

It’s the morning after a gig supporting UK rock’s
young redeemers of the moment, and by the time the bleary-eyed 747s roll in to do battle with the Japanese music press corps they’re almost an hour late. Despite the fact that they’re virtual unknowns here, the warm-up slot for the Arctic Monkeys has enabled them to perform before thousands, and they’re pretty amped by the response.

“We didn’t know how the audience was going to react to our music,” begins guitarist Freddie Stitz, easing wearily into a couch at Tower Records Café in Ebisu. “But afterwards we got a lot of supportive messages on Myspace saying that they’re looking forward to seeing us again.”

The 747s may not share the worldwide adulation that last year’s Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not brought the Arctic Monkeys, but they do share with them an old-fashioned knack for songwriting that’s apparent on their debut album Zampano. It’s this kinship that made friends of the bands after they met at an Asian tsunami charity event at the beginning of 2006, just before the Arctic Monkeys became household names, and that resulted in their working together on a cover of the ’60s song, “Baby I’m Yours,” which made its way onto an Arctic Monkeys B-side.

“Jamming is not part of the British rock tradition,” says vocalist and guitarist Oisin Leech, noting the commonality of both bands’ songwriting process. “British and European bands tend to be more song-based. There is not as much improvisation as in American music, so our songs tend to follow a basic Beatles pattern: verse-chorus-verse-chorus.
We’re not The Allman Brothers, that’s for sure.”

Forming first as a duo called the Fluid Druids that played on the streets in Dublin, where Leech and bassist Ned Crowther were university students, the band had plenty of time to work on its songs. Over time the group gathered into their fold drummer Massimo Signorelli (in Naples, Italy) and guitarist Stitz (back in Dublin again).

Naples isn’t known as a rock ‘n’ roll kind of town, but it was there that the band began to gel. “I was supposed to enroll in university, but ended up just playing music,” recalls Crowther about their year in the southern Italian metropolis. “It’s not touristy at all, which makes it quite a lot more interesting than Venice or Florence. It’s got high unemployment, a lot of squats and a lot of motivated left-wing people putting on concerts and arranging demonstrations. It’s a real heady, revolutionary atmosphere, as well as being very sunny and having great food.”

Back in Dublin the addition of fellow street musician Stitz completed the lineup, but, explains Crowther, it was in Liverpool that the 747s got their break. After busking for so long, they found a cheap rehearsal space. “From that we got gigs at some venues in Liverpool, and from that we got interest from labels.”   

For a young band, their resulting album, Zampano, has the tight feel of an act that’s honed its material before hard-to-please passersby rather than that of an offering to fans of the latest hunky lads, which the 747s decidedly aren’t.

It was the ’50s-style, three-part harmonies of “Rain Kiss” that apparently seduced the Arctic Monkeys to play the song in a guest DJ slot on Radio 1, while many of the other tracks recall influences like The Band, The Clash and Bob Dylan. There’s also a distinctly leftist tilt to certain songs, like the rabble-rouser “Leave Your Job Today.”

Do the 747s, who named themselves after being accused of bringing a bomb onto a flight—they’d brought their generator, which still had gas in it—miss performing on the street? “It is romantic,” insists Stitz. “It’s the last frontier of music, because you have people who can’t get into gigs, old people and little kids.” Even, adds Crowther, when things aren’t going right. “The lowest you can get is if you’re in Dublin and it’s raining and the amps aren’t working. And it’s certainly not romantic when you’re playing in the rain, and then the local junkies come over and kick your CDs all over the square. That’s as bad as it gets. But in the end it’s still romantic. A cup of coffee might solve it all.”

Zampano is available on Hostess Entertainment.

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