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Royal Blood comment on that Radio 1 Big Weekend performance

By Andy Malt | Published on Tuesday 6 June 2023

Royal Blood have spoken about their meme-tastic performance at last month’s Radio 1 Big Weekend in Dundee, during which frontman Mike Kerr repeatedly berated the audience for not enjoying their set enough.

“It was somewhat of a blip on my part because, it would’ve taken me three minutes to think ‘maybe these people don’t know who you are’, but I wasn’t going through that thought process”, Kerr tells Radio 1’s Greg James. “I was very pumped backstage. And I actually really enjoyed playing. I had a great time”.

Now, he is misremembering things somewhat there, because he actually noted on stage early on during his set that the duo might be unfamiliar to a Big Weekend audience that was mainly expecting to see pop acts – with Lewis Capaldi, Niall Horan and Anne-Marie all due to play later in the day.

That said, Royal Blood were sandwiched between Wet Leg and Nothing But Thieves, which you could call the rock music section of the Radio 1 event.

“Well, I guess I should introduce ourselves since no one actually knows who we are”, he told the audience at Dundee’s Camperdown Park. “We’re called Royal Blood and this is rock music. Who likes rock music?”

On mic it doesn’t sound like he got a terrible response to that question, but it clearly didn’t feel like a particularly energised acknowledgement from the stage, because Kerr’s retort to the cheer for rock music was to say, “Nine people. Brilliant”.

Later in the set, he claimed that the band were having to clap themselves because the crowd’s response was “so pathetic”, after which he stared into a camera and pleaded with people watching at home to applaud for them instead.

At the end of their set, Kerr threw down his bass guitar and walked off with his middle fingers in the air. Meanwhile, drummer Ben Thatcher stayed behind for a few moments to signal to people in the front rows that they should try smiling.

Watching the videos back, Kerr’s on-stage comments do seem like very dry humour rather than genuine anger. But the problem with very dry humour is that it’s quite easily mistaken for genuine anger.

But dry humour was definitely the tone he was going for, Kerr confirms in this new Radio 1 interview. Noting the subsequent response to his on-stage remarks and dramatic walk-off, he says: “I’m amazed, honestly, how that escalated”.

“Walking off from that show”, he explains, “I felt I was being entertaining – in a way of trying to make light of the situation, perhaps. I was doing a performance where I felt a little bit out of place. I expected to be a little bit bemused and maybe confuse a few people, but not to that kind of scale”.

“The ending, to me, I felt like a sort of pro-wrestler”, he goes on. “I felt like a kind of pantomime villain. I didn’t feel like I’d done anything, sort of, morally wrong. It felt like a bit of a wind-up, honestly. That’s kind of how I felt”.

Thatcher then adds: “Mike walks out of the pub like that, it’s not unusual. It was just stupid”.

“When I’m in that zone, there’s a part of my personality which only exists on stage”, Kerr continues. “I can’t find any other context in which I’m that energised. I feel like I look different when I’m on stage. Off-stage I’m very quiet and quite awkward, whereas on-stage, I don’t know – that’s why I love it, cos there’s an energy to it”.

“It’s very easy to get swept up in that energy”, he concludes. “Honestly, it’s quite fun, and I don’t mean any offence. My intention isn’t to kind of alienate anyone or push anyone away”.

It is sort of weird how Royal Blood skirt the pop world and this isn’t the first time they’ve been slightly perplexed about finding themselves there.

Way back at the start of their career the duo won the BRIT Award for Best Group in 2015. Then, Kerr used their acceptance speech to note that, as well as being a surprise to them, their win was “probably more of a surprise to everyone here, as you may not even know who we are”.

So maybe the big question here is how, the best part of a decade later, Royal Blood are still being put in front of audiences who they at least feel have no clue who they are.