RISING
ROCK&ROLL
32 | Rolling Stone | RollingStoneAus.com Photograph by Danny Clinch
“I was obsessed
with everything
Sixties and
Seventies,” says
Spiller, who has
a “Sir Rock &
Roll” tattoo.B
efore the struts went on
tour last year with Mötley Crüe,
Luke Spiller got a bit of fatherly
advice from Nikki Sixx. “He said,
‘Look, you guys are shit-hot’,” says Spill-
er, the U.K. glam-rock group’s 27-year-
old frontman. “ ‘Go easy on the drugs.
Go easy on the pussy. Stay focused, and
just keep it about the music.’ Those words
coming from a man of his stature really
mean something. You’d have to be stupid
not to listen.”
On this par ticular shit-hot af ternoon in
Los Angeles, the Struts are about to per-
form at Shaun White’s Air + Style Festi-
val – a bleak parking-lot gathering whose
lineup is a mish-mash of rock, hip-hop
and EDM, and whose main event is the
16-storey snowboard jump that towers on
the horizon. The Struts’ set is 30 minutes
of bombastic, boldly of -trend rock & roll
that wears its classic glam infl uences on
its glittery sleeve. Even with the midday
sun melting makeup and glitter and hair
spray into his eyes, Spiller gave the man-
made mountain some serious competition
for the eyeballs. The frontman, who has
said he wears “about 80 per cent women’s
clothes”, is dressed in patent-leather pants
with gold fringe and a fl ouncy electric-
blue top. He stalks the stage with Fred-
die Mercury fl air and Phil Lynott swagger,
constantly imploring the crowd to fucking
enjoy themselves already.
“There are bands in the U.K. who are
not willing to work their audience,” says
Spiller. “That’s what an audience wants –
to be told, ‘C’mon!’ Because as soon as the
person next to you starts losing their in-
hibitions, that’s your ecstasy! That’s what
helps you to let go.”
The Struts – Spiller, guitarist Adam
Slack, bassist Jed Elliott and
drummer Gethin Davies –
have been working for their
audience for fi ve years, and it’s
starting to pay of. The band’s
2014 debut full-length, Every-
body Wants, has just been re-
leased in America, and its are-
na-size single “Could Have
Been Me” has reached the Top
Five on alternative-rock radio and scored
close to 9 million plays on Spotify. Two
years ago, the Rolling Stones tapped the
Struts to open for them in Paris – whereSpiller’s penchant for telling the crowd
what to do reared its head. “Luke’s telling
75,000 people to sit down on the fl oor!”
says Elliott. Adds Spiller, “The people we
could connect to – the first
10,000 in the crowd – they
were loving it!”
The hit single and Stones
gig are proof of what Spill-
er and his bandmates always
knew: that there’s a sizable au-
dience for a young rock band
that couldn’t sound less like
the Top 40. “There were kids
like me when I was growing up, and we
would talk for hours about AC/DC and
Led Zeppelin,” Spiller says. “There’s no
smoke without fire. We’re not the onlyones. I know that. But it doesn’t matter if
kids end up dressing like us. We’ve just al-
ways kept the faith that we need to write
the best songs we can. That’s the number-
one priority.”
Spiller – raised in Bristol in a religious
Christian household – fi rst felt the thrill
of commanding an audience at age nine,
when he played the rock & roll pharaoh
in his school’s production of Joseph & the
Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. At 15,
hearing the music of British glam revival-
ists the Darkness changed his life. Soon,
he was wearing eyeliner to school, and
found himself “obsessed with everything
Sixties and Seventies. I was very nostal-
gic, and something about that era fasci-
nated me.”England’s Newest Glam-Rock Heroes
The Struts are a proudly retro
crew with a frontman who
won’t be denied arena-size
glory By Jenny EliscuSIR ROCK &
ROLL Spiller
(front) and
the Struts in
New York