![]() ![]() ![]() “It went from zero to playing with Springsteen.” Fallon almost laughs as he says that, still in disbelief that it ever happened. In fact, he says it was so defining that from then on he “started looking at life as the time before that happened, and the time after it.” But the album’s success was becoming daunting. It’s no secret that Fallon is a huge fan of Springsteen – to the point where it’s even been immortalised in parody – so it’s also no surprise that he views that weekend as one of the crowning moments of the album’s cycle. Shortly after release, the album drew more buzz from the online punk forum circuit that had propped up the success of Sink Or Swim, but this time bigger publications such as Rolling Stone, Kerrang!, and Pitchfork got on board, heaping praise on the album.Ī year later, with their profile greatly increased and venue capacities on a steady upward trajectory, the band were joined by Bruce Springsteen on stage at Glastonbury Festival for a performance of ‘The ’59 Sound’, with Fallon being invited to return the favour for ‘No Surrender’ during The Boss’ set at London’s Hyde Park the same weekend. “Pretty cool” is a slight underestimation of what The ’59 Sound became. Then I heard how it sounded on studio speakers – something we’d never been around before – and it dawned on me that, ‘Okay, maybe this could be something pretty cool.” “I got better a few days before I had to record my parts and it made me think, ‘Oh, maybe this is meant to be’. But looking back today, the singer cites that as a blessing, and possibly the moment the potential of the record first became apparent to him. For a moment, the record looked more uncertain than ever when Fallon got sick and lost his voice in the week leading up to vocal recording the inevitable result of a New Jersey immune system exposed to Californian climates for the first time. My attitude was that the songs were good, but we had to record them in a way that made them great.” This was the first record on a real label, at a real studio, with a real producer… it was much different to what we had done the first time. “I knew I loved the songs,” he says, “but once we got to the studio I started to wonder if it was really good enough now that we were making a ‘real record’. But once the album was written, Fallon had his doubts. ![]() You don’t get the sort of sincerity or the audible in-the-moment energy that define tracks like ‘High Lonesome’ or ‘The Patient Ferris Wheel’ from a band cursed with the freedom to overthink things. That immediacy lent itself to the album perfectly. “I just sat at this little table with my acoustic guitar literally writing there and then what we were going to rehearse the next day.” So each day after the band were done rehearsing the material they did have, Fallon retreated to where the band were staying and raced to complete the record. “And two of those got ditched real quick for not being good enough.” ![]() But by the time it came to begin rehearsals for the studio time they had booked in Los Angeles, they weren’t anywhere near ready. With the eventual title track to a second album in the chamber, Fallon was inspired to write more songs while the band toured in early 2008. We were still trying to figure out if we were worth anything or if, after Sink Or Swim, everything was going to just fizzle out. “When you’re building everything,” he says, “you don’t actually know if you’re going to get anywhere. Having seen a modest wave of mostly underground buzz for their debut album Sink Or Swim released ten months prior, Fallon was then spending a lot of time wondering what the future held for his band. “I remember in soundcheck that night in Boston we ran through ‘The 59’ Sound’, the song, for the first time ever.” He continues: “I remember playing it and instantly knowing that it was better than the rest of the songs we had.” Now an established solo artist in his own right, we’re talking today about the early days of the band because, in addition to releasing his own record Sleepwalkers next month, this year marks the tenth anniversary of The ‘59 Sound, the record that made those Jersey upstarts one of the most beloved punk bands of the modern era.įallon credits an impressive memory to the fact that he never got lost in “the fog” of everything, meaning he avoided the sort of over-indulgent rock star lifestyle that might have made this interview a hell of a lot more difficult. “I have a very clear recollection of it all,” Gaslight frontman Brian Fallon reassures me. ![]()
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