Eyes bloodshot like a road map to hell, flowing locks blowing wildly in the breeze, our hero staggers across the site of Oxford’s Truck festival in the United Kingdom in a shocking state of rock’n’roll disrepair.
His retro-themed clothing is caked in mud, booze and spittle. His glazed expression tells you that, following months of touring, this formally mild-mannered frontman has been transformed into a raging mass of rock’n’roll hormones. With his sibling and band mate nowhere in sight, he rewards the eager attentions of one blonde fan with a lusty, full-on snog.
“Well, he seems to be enjoying himself,” grins Romeo Stodart as Donny Tourette from Towers of London lurches past. “Fancy a drink?”
The Magic Numbers may not yet reek of rock’n’roll excess but their journey along pop’s perfumed highway grows more intoxicating daily. Having notched up a UK top-20 hit with first “proper” single Forever Lost and cruised into the top 10 with debut album The Magic Numbers, they have since sold 100 000 albums in six weeks thanks to a Glasto performance so life-affirming it made everyone present forget they’d just seen their worldly possessions disappear down the River Eavis.
If the winter months were warmed by the Kaisers’ pogo-pop and spring was swallowed whole by Coldplay Industries, the summer is quite clearly the property of this hirsute foursome from Hanwell. All of which begs the question: while British pop thrives on huge egos (Razorlight), destruction (Pete) and fancy trousers (Franz), how on earth did four asylum seekers from Middle Earth, obsessed with good vibes and Crosby Stills and Nash, get here?
Romeo and Michelle Stodart saunter the short distance from their tour bus toward a TV interview overlooking the festival site. Butter-coloured crops sway in the breeze. Drowsy revellers thread their way past hay barns to a bar selling home-made cider. The only sound is the gentle swish of the Stodarts’ matching black cords flapping in the long grass. The vibe couldn’t be mellower if the organisers announced the bands can, like, play all night, duuuude. This is what the summer’s all about, right, Romeo?
“Yeah, for us it is,” he beams, rubbing a fuzzy chin. “We’ve played Glastonbury, the Isle of Wight and T in the Park already and we’re still not even halfway through our festival season.”
He gazes out at the tranquil scenes around him.
“I’d be happy if it went on forever —”
Last weekend alone, the Numbers dazzled the Diesel Music Awards and supported the Happy Mondays in Cornwall, winning over everyone from hard-nosed industry types to synapse-shredded clubbers in the process.
Spreading the love
After 20 minutes in the Stodarts’ perma-giggling company, even the camera crew is beaming. Like Midas on an MDMA binge, it seems everyone these four touch turns to a loved-up convert. But rock’n’roll has always thrived on anger as much as good vibes — doesn’t Romeo ever feel the need to turn up the feedback and get nasty?
“That’s a hard one. I can understand someone feeling you’re in the best band in the world, because that’s exactly the way I feel about my band. And I like people like Oasis and Kasabian who walk it like they talk it. But the way I was brought up means that I can’t swagger. My family are very romantic. It was always the old idea of ‘being in the gutter but looking up at the stars’.”
Romeo was brought up in Belmont, a district of Port of Spain, capital of Trinidad. As one of only “15 or 20” white kids in the local school, his isolation from his peers became complete when he realised that his mother — Juliet (!) — was once the most famous woman in Trinidad.
“She was an opera singer who used to host a show on TV before I was born, called, I think, Talent Quest. It’s hard to think of a similar person in the UK — maybe someone like Lulu! She gave it all up to raise the family. She was always singing Burt Bacharach and Jimmy Webb songs around the house.”
At 13, however, the Stodarts decided to move again; only this time to a different environment entirely: New York.
“At first, I hated it. We were living in Queens and the school was like something out of those Eighties Brat Pack movies. All the girls with hairspray and bubblegum and the boys in cliques. I didn’t fit in at all. I started bunking off and staying out late. I was pretty off the rails.
“Because I looked older than I was, I could get into clubs and I realised I wanted to write songs. I went to see loads of bands at CBGB’s: Blur, Teenage Fanclub, loads of stuff. I’d come home at 3am on the N-train, just throwing up, feeling terrible.
“I loved it in the end. The other amazing thing about New York was meeting my uncle. He’s a real larger-than-life character who used to organise huge parties: Eddie Murphy’s wedding, the one for Madonna’s Sex book, the Grammys. I remember being in the lift with him and he introduced me to Quincy Jones. I was only 13. He gave me the idea that anything is possible.
“I couldn’t believe it when my mum and dad told me that we were moving to London. I had a girlfriend, I’d finally made some friends, I’d got this idea that I was going to join a band. Suddenly we arrived in Hanwell and there was nothing. I used to sit in the park in the rain on my own, crying my eyes out. It was only when I met the Gannons [that] I realised I could form a band here.”
Brothers and sisters
It’s a couple of hours later and Sean Gannon, the Magic Numbers’ raggedly good-looking drummer, fixes us with a gimlet stare.
“We’re going to release seven singles off the album — like Thriller!” he says, while we try to work out if he’s joking or not. Looking like a cross between a young Willie Nelson and Axl Rose, 29-year-old Sean is the steely counterpoint to Romeo’s hopeless romanticism.
If Romeo has used sadness to create the Numbers’ sun-blissed pop, it’s Sean who’s been the conduit. Having worked in bars and waited tables “for years”, he’s not about to let the Numbers’ unique chemistry go unnoticed.
“Two sets of brothers and sisters in one band,” he announces, swigging a medicinal whiskey. “That’s never been done before, has it?”
Angela, the other half of the Numbers’ Gannon equation, is equally forthright. Barely 21, possessed of disarming, marble-coloured eyes and a filthy laugh, she is today in her favourite outfit of Sunset Strip T-shirt, faded Levi’s and battered Converse. If Romeo’s songs are wowing the thirtysomething Guardian readers, it’s Angela’s artfully scruffy chic that is ensuring the Numbers’ status as indie pin-ups.
It transpires that while the Stodarts spend quiet evenings on the bus watching rom-coms like Trading Places, the Gannons retreat to the downstairs lounge to watch gore-fests like The Passion of the Christ with the crew. Rumours of the Gannons’ party-centric lifestyle are rife. NME witnessed a spectacularly dishevelled Sean stumbling around the Isle of Wight festival, while there is talk of them sometimes getting very happy, if you see what I mean.
“We’re just normal people,” says Romeo nonchalantly. “Sean loves getting smashed on drink after gigs, but I have to be a bit more careful to save my voice. We like having fun as much as anyone else.”
“People are only just discovering our dark side,” enthuses Angela. “It’s in the music. They may have brought the album because they could sing along to Forever Lost, but when you get to the rest of the songs, you realise we’re about so much more than just being happy on a sunny day. There’s lots of sadness and pain in there too.”
Mixing the sublime with the seedy is no doubt the reason why the Numbers’ fan base now looks like it was acquired after a trip to the bathroom at the Brits. Elijah “Frodo” Wood was spotted frugging contentedly at their SXSW show. Elton has announced he’s a fan. Lucy Liu, Bright Eyes and Doves all expressed their admiration at Glastonbury. And Noel was famously so impressed after an early Borderline show that he bought the whole band a pint and announced Love’s a Game (the seventh single?) to be “a fookin’ Stax classic!”.
Mention of a recent awards show provides a flurry of proffered cellphones showing pictures of the band with everyone from Jimmy Page to Brian Wilson and Slash (the band members are all, weirdly, massive Guns n’ Roses fans). What’s it like to have a new army of famous admirers?
“It is kind of strange,” beams Romeo. “I’m so used to going up to people and telling them how much I love their work that it feels awkward to have the tables turned. I’m still such a fan. But y’know, I could get used to it.”
Family affair
Talking to the Magic Numbers isn’t exactly rock’n’roll death-sex mania. They don’t swear much, apologise when they make catty remarks about other bands and undoubtedly play a mean game of backgammon.
Backstage before the gig, the Magic Numbers prove themselves to be undeniably a family affair. Michelle offers Sean a vigorous back massage. Angela swigs from a bottle containing a lighter-fuel-like concoction of whiskey and Coke. Romeo, meanwhile, chats amiably with old friends Absentee in the manner of the host at a thoroughly civilised Sunday barbeque.
The Magic Numbers’ performance at Truck is a classic. An eight-legged tangle of retro-threads and woozy bonhomie, they woo a 4 000-strong crowd with a set that veers from the already-classic Forever Lost and a stunning Morning’s Eleven to the Noel-approved Love’s a Game while the crowd hug each other, sway gently or, in the case of one loved-up couple to NME‘s left, attempt mid-field coitus.
They’re by far the quietest band of the weekend, but no one shouts for them to turn the bass up once. If Romeo’s bashful stage pronouncements (“OK, it’s time to jump around a bit!” before Love Me Like You) won’t cause Bono to wake up in a cold sweat, it’s disarmingly heartfelt.
Following a rapturously received set-closing cover of Wheel’s on Fire the promoter waltzes on stage and announces that, seeing as it’s his festival, the band can, like, play all night, duuude. The Numbers duly respond with a version of The Smiths’ There Is a Light Which Never Goes Out so heart-breakingly tender, you’d imagine it would have even Moz grinning from sideburn to sideburn.
The gig is over. In the warm glow of an Oxfordshire evening, organisers and friends of Truck move into the acoustic tent for a late-night sing-song. News comes through that the album has zinged back up the charts to number 16.
“Back in the 20!” whoops Angela, glugging on her container of Gannon-fluid. Time for Romeo to muse on the future. With two sets of siblings in the band, he’s already gone on record as saying the Numbers “can never split up”. How many records does he see them making, exactly?
“Oh, until the box set at least!” he smiles. “I just want to keep doing this forever, it’s all I’ve dreamed of. I’ve got half of the next album written already. There will be less slower songs. It’s going to be a bit crazier, a bit harder edged.”
He pauses. The enormity of the past few months’ success, and a glorious summer still to come, is slowly sinking in.
“We’re in a strange situation, because although loads of great things are happening for us, we’ve lost contact with a lot of old friends too. There’s a sadness which comes with being in the band that’s hard to explain.”
But isn’t it sadness that forces him to write such life-affirming songs?
“Yeah, I guess it is. I was in a long-term relationship which broke up a while ago and if I’m honest about it, I’m still getting over it. I thought that was the one. It’s difficult to let go of something like that 100%.”
But let’s look on the bright side: from his misery, Romeo has brought happiness to fields and fields full of people. Their mark on British pop as the sound of summer 2005 is already established. It’s proof, once more, that out of darkness can come the most dazzling light, not to mention making the Polyphonic Spree utterly redundant (hallelujah!). And hey, if you’re going to be a new romantic, you may as well be called Romeo.
Time to leave. There are fans eager to — if not swap body fluids — at least shake his hand. There is cider to drink and Crossby, Stills, Nash and Young albums to discuss. One last thing. Have the band, as rumoured, been offended by press coverage noting they’re, y’know on the “cuddly” side?
“A little. I think it gets to the girls a bit, but, y’know, I suppose that comes with the territory.”
He lightens.
“I just remember what Brian Wilson said to us. We went into catering at a festival and he looked over and shouted, ‘Eat all you want!’. If anyone says anything about it again, I’ll just tell them we’re obeying Brian’s orders!”
Gotta keep lovin’ those good vibrations. —