Rock and Pop: Interview - Morning Parade Frontman Steve Sparrow
Published: 25 August, 2011
by ROISIN GADELRAB
STEVE Sparrow is relieved. He’s been cooped up in a van travelling through Europe with his band Morning Parade and speaking to Grooves is a welcome distraction. He’s taking advantage of the silence while the others run into McDonald’s.
Morning Parade, who play Scala on September 26, have been rapidly gathering a following.
Even when supporting the massively popular 30 Seconds to Mars they can pick out Morning Parade fans.
As an enticement to those heading to Scala, the band shrewdly struck a deal with Gigwise website to stream a song a week from their as yet unnamed debut album (out next year) in the lead up to the gig.
The band, from Harlow, are a little fed-up with a general fixation with their Essex origins: “One thing that frustrates me is people banging on about it too much,” says frontman Sparrow. “That’s where I was born, but am I a typical Essex person? Not really. I don’t go to the clubs or have a fake tan.
Essex is not like The Only Way Is Essex because not everyone’s rich and has a dad that will buy them a Range Rover. It’s actually a lot grittier than that.
“My background’s working class. I grew up in a council house, my next-door neighbour was a heroin addict, my parents were factory workers.”
While Morning Parade were snapped up by Parlophone in a very short time, Sparrow confesses that being signed was far from their minds when they began.
He says: “We’d all been in bands before and had our fingers burned a little. On a Saturday afternoon we’d get together with a crate of beer and jam. We wrote loads of really rubbish songs, all about 15 minutes long. No one in their right minds would listen, let alone buy them.”
But, after a few well-received local shows, they decided to take it more seriously, and in less than 25 gigs, were spotted by Parlophone, leading to an unexpected encounter with Kylie Minogue at the label’s away day in a Somerset pub where they shared the bill with the diminutive diva.
“The label have a summer day out where they all get pissed and pat each other on the back,” says Sparrow. “[Kylie’s] a superstar – we’d been on the label for about five minutes, we were all really starstruck. She came over said, ‘Hello, you’re the new signing, how are you finding it?’.”
The boys have now abandoned their trusty van Winston, “named after Churchill”, for a plusher version with leather seats and a PlayStation, and are mid-way through watching Deliverance, for this long road trip.
“Maybe the manager thought we’d end up killing each other if we ended up on a 12-hour drive without any entertainment, so maybe they forked out for this special occasion,” says Sparrow.
“I’ve probably got the most personality flaws a human being could ever have, but we love each other for each other’s faults. Chad, our guitarist, is definitely the joker. He and bass player Phil are thick as thieves. They’re the ones always out till 5/6am. When I’m getting up they’re arriving home. Our drummer’s kind of quiet, the sensible one that keeps us all together.”
And he believes they’ve sussed their support spots: “You can’t really go wrong with saying, ‘Hi, we’re Morning Parade, are you looking forward to seeing 30 Seconds to Mars tonight?’, because they’re going to scream and shout.”