Then they set up their
own label, Dirty Hit,
with manager Jamie
Oborne and started
releasing EPs in
- The same vora-
cious eclecticism that
confused major labels
resonated with the
everything-at-once
music habits of younger
listeners. Even when
they were playing small
venues, a quarter of
the audience would be
diehard fans, lining up
at the stage door to show
Healy their 1975 tattoos.
Their intensity
inspired Healy to pay
it back. In 2013, he
talked about captur-
ing the mood of a John
Hughes movie — “the
apocalyptic sense of
being a teenager” — on
The 1975’s self-titled
debut album. But the
band’s young, largely
female fan base
prompted condescend-
ing reviews, a stigma
compounded by the
suspicion that, as the
son of British TV stars
Tim Healy and Denise
Welch, Healy was a
celebrity brat. (In the
United States, where his
parents are unknown,
he carries less baggage.)
So much for critics:
Soon The 1975 was
supporting The Rolling
Stones, and Healy was
suiciently gossip-
worthy for an extremely
brief public encounter
with Taylor Swift to set
tongues wagging.
With its 17 tracks and
improbable title, i like
it when you sleep was
designed to prove that
both the band and its
fans had been under-
rated. “Every time I
play a show, there’s
a young girl who’s
smarter and more well-
informed than I am,”
says Healy. This time,
critics swooned. In the
recent single “GiveYourself a Try,” Healy
jokingly calls himself
“a millennial that baby
boomers like.”
Candid though
Healy’s lyrics were,
they occluded the
fact that he had been
smoking heroin since
late 2014. From child-
hood, he had felt “a
deep, carnal desire to
be sedated,” which is
why he started smok-
ing weed so early. He
wanted to turn of the
noise in his brain and,
on tour, to cushion the
adrenaline comedown.
He also wanted to
sleep better. He never
has good dreams, only
nightmares, and they
all occur in the same
location: a dystopian
housing estate sur-
rounded by a white
void. “I’ve grown up
there,” he says bleakly.
What it wasn’t about,
he stresses, was the
clichéd myth of the
countercultural rebel
junkie. That doesn’t
work when you’re
“middle-class and
confused and a bit sad.”
His habit was never
performative, it was
private, which is why he
inds it hard to publicize
it now. “I don’t want to
fetishize it, because it’s
really dull and it’s really
dangerous,” he says,
reclining on the sofa.
“The thought of being
to a young person what
people like [William S.]
Burroughs were to me
when I was a teenager
makes me feel ill.”
Healy was a func-
tioning addict. In the
studio, he managed
with weed. In the States,
he switched to prescrip-
tion opioids. He could
go weeks without heroin
but relapsed when he
was alone. Though he