Andy had a word with Biffy Clyro’s drummer, Ben Johnston at Reading Festival last weekend.
PT: Welcome back to Reading Guys, how’s the atmosphere in camp Biffy today?
Ben: It’s pretty good, aye. We’re all a bit rough around the edges, we’re all a bit tired and we could do with a few more hours of sleep, but apart from that, we’re ready to go! I think this is our sixth Reading or something. We’re playing on the Main Stage with some great bands and we’re really looking forward to it.
PT: First of all, how’s the Kerrang! Awards hangover?
Ben: Pretty serious man, pretty brutal. We’re getting through it slowly but surely! It was an honour to get nominated, to go and hang out with friends, we had a really good time.
PT: What does the average day at Reading entail for you three?
Ben: Usually a good bit of press, we try and go see some bands if we can, but it’s not always possible. There’s always loads of bands here we’re really good mates with too.
PT: Who are you most looking forward to seeing this weekend?
Ben: Obviously, Rage! We’re good friends with Queens of the Stone Age as well and we haven’t seen them for a good couple of months. I’ve seen Serj [Tankian] before; he’s pretty awesome too. I’m going to try and go see MGMT as well.
PT: You guys are old hands at playing festivals of this size. Do you have any survival tips for a first time festival-goer?
Ben: Well we’re old hands at playing festivals, but we’re not old hands at coming to festivals as punters. I think because we were a young band when we started, our first experiences of festivals was playing at them. Even though, I’d say DEFINITELY bring your own toilet paper and try and drink lots of water!
PT: What can we expect from your set this afternoon? Anything special lined up?
Ben: Ooh we’ll see. We’re going to play Mountains definitely, other than that we don’t know. We haven’t written the set list yet; we do that just before we go on! No covers or anything like that though, it’s not about doing covers at festivals.
(Ben Chuckles to himself. Later on in the day, Biffy Clyro recorded a live cover of Rage Against The Machine’s ‘Know Your Enemy’ for Radio 1).
PT: Finally, you mentioned Mountains, which you’ release as a single on Monday. There’s rumours of a new end-of-year release floating about, is this a taster of that?
Ben: I can tell you that there definitely won’t be a new album out before the end of the year; we haven’t been to the studio yet. We will be recording at the end of the year however, so we should have something out early next year. We’ve got a bunch of songs together already, we just need to get a few things finished then we should be good to go!