They’re one of the greatest bands in the world with an array of fantastic musicians and incredible vocals. They recently wowed South Africa with an electrifying performance and once again proved why they have sold so many albums around the world. I caught up with Isaac Slade and the rest of the group while they were in South Africa and managed to get to know the men behind The Fray.
You guys are always on tour. Do you ever get time to unwind and enjoy a country you are visiting?
We don’t get much time to relax to be honest, but one thing we have learned is how to relax quickly. Sometimes a few hours here and there feel like we’ve had a break of a few days.
Modern rock is heavily guitar driven whereby you guys are more piano driven. How did that come about?
I think we all grew up listening to guitar driven bands and in the late 90’s, piano came back into fashion a little bit with bands like Keane, Snow Patrol and Coldplay and piano is all that I know how to play so I didn’t really have another option.
Do you ever get tired of playing your hit tracks such as ‘How To Save A Life’?
When it first came out we played it about four times a day and I remember after performing it six or seven hundred times I would kick into autopilot but I heard someone who said that “you have no idea how amazing it is to play an old song that people still care about” and it totally changed my perspective.
The new album is rather up-tempo. Was this planned this time around?
Helios is more up-tempo and intentionally so. When we first started working on it we took an intentional direction which is different from the previous records. We had a specific place we wanted to go and a result we wanted to accomplish.
How does it feel knowing that people in South Africa and all corners of the world love your music?
It’s a total trip to come this far away from home and see this many people enjoying our music. That doesn’t get old. The fact that we are able to do this for a living and connect with the world is incredible.
There have been a lot of scandals recently with photos being leaked onto the internet. If that were to happen to any of you guys, who would be in the most trouble?
I think it would have to be our guitarist Joe King. He gets up to a lot of mischief from time to time but that’s why we love him.
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