![]() I dragged them all into the pub and I tried to explain, and they were like – oh fuck he’s lost the plot. You can imagine what my fellow Futureheads band mates were thinking. As I’m saying this now it sounds completely insane. One of them was a vampire and one of them was benevolent and kind. “I wanted the fifth Futureheads album to be a concept based around the story of these two sisters. Whilst his family were understandably concerned and his marriage was falling apart, his band mates looked on bemused as he came back and told them of his exciting plans for a new record: I definitely left something of myself there that I’d like back, but I dunno where it has gone. You’re not communicating with words, so part of you kind of shuts off. You go into a different realm because you’re not speaking. This retreat is silent – there’s no speaking, so automatically when you swear an oath of silence you really change. His whole thing was about knowing yourself and being conscious of becoming real.” I’m still very interested in it all actually. I became a student of the mystery school. “I’d become very obsessed with something called esoteric knowledge. Other musicians including Robert Fripp, Peter Gabriel and Laura Marling have dabbled with his ideas before, but Hyde jumped in head first and found himself on a spiritual retreat in Tuscon with a group of lost souls that his teacher described as a ‘flock of black sheep.’ His search for happiness led him to the teachings of Russian mystic George Gurdjieff and his Fourth Way philosophy. My expression became much deeper and I was able to truly be creative, but then the shadows were there as well.” It felt almost like a spiritual experience. But it’s like the brighter the flame, the darker the shadow. I feel like I tapped in to higher potential. It’s all these creative images being generated by something greater than we are. You could call it inspiration really, but it was wild inspiration going on. I had this significant moment when I was lying in bed and I had this first experience of mania. “It’s a strange experience because things started to change when I was 19. Initially it helped fuel his creativity and kickstart the band as they scored a top ten hit with their infectious cover of Kate Bush’s ‘Hounds of Love’ and became established favourites of the mid-2000s indie rock scene: And on the second Futureheads album which was released in 2006 there’s a song called ‘Thursday’ and it’s touching on this feeling of depression, and I can go further and further back.” That kind of moment where you go – what is going on? That album was in 2010, so I must have written it in 2009. I wrote a song called ‘The Beginning of the Twist’ about it. “You keep thinking further and further back to find that moment, that kind of turning point. His problems starting building in 2011 in the wake of the Futureheads album The Chaos, but Hyde can recall points throughout his life when he felt things weren’t quite right: I can keep myself away from the risks of it becoming a chronic problem by having these small good habits in life.” Hearing that opinion can really crush you, but I’ve learned to be flexible with it. “After I was diagnosed, I really started to struggle with the idea that I had an illness that was going to be a huge problem for me for the rest of my life. I’ve got a good balance to my life now after the saga,” he says un-fussily. Thankfully, he has got things in order these days and is back with new album Malody. The Futureheads frontman was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, got divorced, became obsessed with an iffy spiritual philosophy, has been in and out of a psychiatric hospital, changed careers and found himself in the Arizona desert doing blindfolded yoga and meditating in silence for hours upon end. How are ya? Not the most probing, Paxman-like of questions, but after a helter skelter few years, it seems like the only appropriate way to start when talking to Barry Hyde.
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