The Observer

04.08.19 19

‘I don’t want to cling on

Amid pop’s wave of bland, relatable boys with

guitars, North Shields’s Sam Fender offers spikier

songs about faceless politicians and the pressures

on young men. On the eve of a headlining gig in

his home town, he discusses life in the north east,

poverty, and fi ghting to be taken seriously

Interview by

Kate Hutchinson

Portrait by

Suki Dhanda

bothered this decade’s charts. You’ve

heard them. They are the doughy,

well-spoken everymen with guitars,

singing emotionally incontinent

songs. And they are everywhere,

a post-Ed Sheeran contagion of

careerist charisma vacuums, ready

to croon a bluesy yarn about how

they want you just the way you are,

girl, before dashing off to play a

royal family function.

Fender has the guitar, but also

the cheekbones of a supermodel

and songs about male suicide,

the spice epidemic and fear of

nuclear disaster. The only songs in

his repertoire that are in any way

romantic are about drunken casual

sex. His foamier lager anthems

recall Liam Gallagher, if Liam was

in any way woke. But Fender really

can write songs. His singles, such

as Hypersonic Missiles (also the

name of his forthcoming debut

album), are lethally catchy – like

a more brooding Killers coupled

with a boyish, brass-loving Bruce

Springsteen, albeit more Newcastle

than New Jersey. And his voice is

nothing like the pigeon-warble of

his peers, often high-vaulting to

Jeff Buckley levels of vulnerability.

Elton John is a fan. So is Stormzy,

who recently left him a nine-

minute voice message about how

much he loved his song Dead

Boys, a title that leaves little to the

imagination.

Fender says he feels

uncomfortable being lumped

in with the Toms, Jameses and

Georges of guitar pop. “I don’t see

myself as part of that, because

I’m from Shields, and up here is

a very different world,” he says.

It exasperates him a little that

most people “can’t see that – they

probably assume that I’m privately

educated ”. Or, worse, manufactured.

We meet the evening before

Fender’s homecoming show, at the

studio he built in a former garage

with his fi rst music paycheck. It’s

late, and someone is still hand-

rolling T-shirts in kebab wrappers

to sell on his merch stand. A stone’s

throw away is the pub where he

Continued on page 21

here isn’t a taxi driver in Newcastle

who doesn’t have something to say

about Sam Fender , local lad done

good. There’s the one who confi des,

as if revealing an insider secret,

that he’s “a nice kid, and a star for

the future.” Another, who says :

“ We’ve got him, Ant and Dec and

Cheryl Cole who feel proud to be

geordie – not like Alan Shearer, he’s

arrogant.” Everyone seems to have

seen him play in the Low Lights

Tavern , where the singer-songwriter

fairytale goes that he was spotted

by Ben Howard’s manager, scored

a deal with Polydor Records, and

then a lot more people were hearing

about “boy racers tearing down the

Beehive Road” (a line from his song

Leave Town). They like that Fender

hasn’t forgotten his roots.

I’m hoofi ng it across town

because tomorrow Fender is playing

his biggest show yet, for 4,000

people at Tynemouth Castle, fi ve

minutes from where he lives with

his mum in North Shields, half an

hour outside the city centre on a

cliff edge overlooking the sea. As

Fender tells it, these majestic ruins

are supposedly where Sting lost

his virginity, but they will now also

be known as the venue that the

25-year-old singer-songwriter sold

out in just 40 minutes. Come the gig,

hundreds more people who don’t

have tickets snake around the bay

with picnics and pints, watching

from afar. He makes jokes about

egging the local shop and calls out

schools (Kings, the private one, gets

the biggest boo).

His appeal, however, is

resonating far beyond his home

town – a spikier version of the

pallid, relatable, boy-next-door

troubadours who have continually

T

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