Fake Fame: ‘There is beauty and catchiness in simplicity and repetition’

Leeds-based genre-bending rock band Fake Fame has released its incredibly polished self-titled debut album, a big-hearted, guitar-driven throwback to the golden age of rock, and a testament to their huge melting pot of influences.

The band comprises Aaron Collins (lead vocals, and keys/guitar), Will Shirley (guitar) and Harry Hickman (bass) without a permanent drummer since Sam Alberga left the band last year. They met at Leeds Conservatoire and have been housemates for the three years since graduation, with Shirley studying pop, Hickman production and Collins songwriting. ‘Our band name comes from our original song,’ Shirley explained. ‘Me and Aaron conceptualized the band. Aaron had so many awesome songs, and we were trying to come up with a band name, we had a huge list (laughs). It was my dad who said: “Why don’t you just call it Fake Fame from the draft?” as it was the first song we wrote. Collins jumps in: ‘We noticed that loads of older bands have self-titled tracks and albums. We thought: “Yeah, we want to do that!” It was a no-brainer to call the album Fake Fame as well.’

Fake Fame isn’t simply an exercise in showing what three highly-trained young musicians can do: it’s a remarkably ambitious record from a young band: technically accomplished but deliberately imperfect, with the band discovering together how much — and how little — a song actually needs. It feels shaped as much by the chemistry of playing together as by the individual songs themselves. Recorded in their home studio, it’s full of sonic surprises, kicking off with ramped up rock tracks before switching gears around halfway through as the album moves into piano ballad territory. ‘Our main aim for the album was having a journey of a listen, if you will,’ Collins said. ‘I think the main takeaways from the album are the transition points. It begins heavier and more prog rock, then it moves into more palatable pop rock, before slowing down towards the back end of the album. That’s what we wanted to do; it came together quite nicely.’

‘I think if I came up with the riff of ‘Same Mistakes’ again, I wouldn’t take it the direction it went in’

The opener ‘Same Mistakes’ is about knowing better but still making the same mistakes, balancing an infectious chorus with a darker emotional undercurrent. It kicks off with a brilliantly heavy riff played by Collins that reels you right in and which turns out to have been the starting point for the song. ‘Actually, I mentioned this to Will and Harry the other day,’ Collins said. ‘I said: “I think if I came up with the riff of ‘Same Mistakes’ again, I wouldn’t take it the direction it went in. The song is so complex in structure, it feels like a song that could only have been written in that moment. It’s really three different tracks in one. One of my favourite things about that song particularly is a lot of the time when we’re writing the more complex guitar solos, Will’s playing is driving it, and my melody writing guides it. Whereas when I was playing the organ solo here, the roles flipped, and it was actually Will guiding where it went, and me doing the technical aspect. It was a really interesting writing process for the whole song.’

Collins describes the song as being about ‘a personal battle of reinvention’: ‘It’s about trying to be a better person – myself or yourself – and acknowledging your mistakes. Not owning your mistakes, but not moving in regret, just moving to a more positive place and growing as a person.’ Shirley agrees: ‘It’s not too on the nose but people can definitely appreciate that emotion.’

Fascinatingly, they are not releasing songs in the order in which they were written: ‘There’s so much material written, to be honest,’ Hickman said enthusiastically. ‘Some songs on this album were written after songs that aren’t on the album. They might be on the second or third album. We ended up putting these songs on the album because they were the ones we were happy with (laughs). We’ve already got another album listed!’ Many of the songs on the album were part of their coursework on their university course. Collins has since sent the album to his former tutor Chris Milnes, who loved it.

‘It’s actually the best possible band we could imagine’

Typically, Collins puts song ideas onto his Mac, which they then discuss together. ‘Will helps with lyrics. I’ll have a random evening where I write a riff and I’ll say: “Lads, what do you think?'” Hickman jumps in: ‘It’s always fun, we’ll all sit down here in the little home studio we’ve got. He’ll play us a chorus or a verse he’s written. Sometimes it’s a full song he writes in a night, it’s nice. Sometimes we’ll say: “Maybe not that one” (laughs), but that’s pretty rare.’ Collins is laughing: ‘It’s actually the best possible band we could imagine, although now we’ve got the tricky task of finding a drummer who can fit in with us when we’ve been mates for more than five years.’

Between them, they have heartwarming – and inspirational – stories about their musical journeys: ‘My dad always wanted to be a rock star but he could never get lessons,’ Shirley said. ‘He played a lot of AC/DC. In year 7, they got me a guitar and some lessons and I really loved it.’ Collins looks at him: ‘Will and Harry, they’ll be watching TV and playing guitar at the same time!’ Hickman says that music didn’t really run in his family, although his grandad played guitar. He was working in a warehouse after not finishing his first year of college before deciding to study music instead, which meant passing an audition first: ‘I was 17 and spent all my time when I wasn’t working playing guitar over and over and over again just to get good enough to pass the audition,’ he said. Collins comes from a musical family – both his parents play guitar and bass and his mum also plays the piano. ‘I was five, in year one, when I started having guitar lessons,’ he said. ‘They asked me to move to the year five and sixes guitars and I started crying because I didn’t want to be with the older kids, so my parents got me private lessons with John Rasmussen, who to this day is the greatest musician I’ve ever met. He’s my biggest in-person inspiration, he can play every instrument to the highest standard. My mum got a new keyboard and one summer when I was 12, I just played it all day every day. That’s the most natural to me because by the end of that summer, it was my main instrument, I was already better than after six years of guitar – keys is where I feel most comfortable.’

They deliberate what marks the turning point on the album, coming to the conclusion that it’s roughly half-way through: ‘What’s the midpoint, where it flips?,’ Collins asks his bandmates. ‘Because that’s when it goes from the more rocky side to the softer side. Would you say ‘Peepin’ Toms’?’ For Hickman, that point comes one track later, on ‘The Outcast’, Shirley agrees.

‘This Love’ offers up something else entirely and feels like one of the more expansive, emotionally direct songs on the album. It’s a nostalgic pop-rock banger peppered with classic-rock riffs and huge vocals from Collins. Rather than the slightly self-reproachful vibe evident on ‘Same Mistakes’, ‘This Love’ comes across as more open-hearted, the kind of song that wants its emotion to grow into something heavier and collective: ‘The first few times we did it, we’d start playing the keys, but then everyone starts clapping, thinking it’s over. Then as it keeps going, everyone stops clapping,’ Collins said laughing. ‘It was one of the eight tracks on the album that I used for my portfolios in uni. Only two of them – ‘Same Mistakes’ and ‘Call You Mine’ – were written post-uni in the last couple of years. I’ve always listened to Queen, Bad Company, Toto, Boston, all of these classic 70’s and 80’s bands, but actually at the time, I was listening a lot to a modern rock band called Rival Sons. They’re fantastic! They’re very bluesy rock, very old style, and they record on a classic ribbon mic from the 50s’ and 60’s. With my limited student budget (laughs), I bought a £40 fake ribbon mic, that was the whole anchor to that song. It’s actually quite a bad microphone, so it took me months to make the vocals sound nice, because there were so many scratchy frequencies! I wanted to record on something that made my vocals purposely sound worse because it’s an older sound.’ ‘Yeah, your vocals do sound worse,’ Shirley deadpanned.

‘It gives a more high-end kind of sheen, like a crackly, older style of recording – a lot of classic recordings will use that’

There’s something particularly endearing about three young but already highly-trained musicians raised on classic rock seeking out imperfections to inject extra colour into the album and it’s a gamble that’s really paid off. I ask what makes a ribbon mic so distinctive: ‘It gives a more high-end kind of sheen, like a crackly, older style of recording – a lot of classic recordings will use that,’ Hickman explained.

Halfway through, ‘This Love’ slows right down, and an Elton-like piano line comes in, which you don’t see coming: ‘That was me playing around and bringing it to the lads and asking: “Is it crazy to go in this direction?”, Collins said. ‘We decided it wasn’t, so we just went in that direction and it flowed into what it is now. It’s about a love greater than we can imagine. We’re going back to the 70’s when they were comparing love of all girls to cars, but I didn’t want it to be quite that on the nose, or slightly sexist. It’s personifying love as something or someone that can do or feel or say things as its own being. One of the lines in it is: “This love, this love, it knows what to do”. The concept of love can’t know what to do, but it’s personified here, so you can have that artistic reason to give it character.’

Last month, they spent a week playing in Lanzarote. ‘I thought we’d only do a night!,’ Shirley said. Hickman grins: ‘We played every night! There was the unfortunate situation of the first day where we’d had a fair few beers to celebrate being there and then they were like: “Oh, lads, you’re coming up” (laughs). ‘We knew Aaron was going to sing. I didn’t have a bass, so I wasn’t too worried but as soon as he’s finished singing, I see Marc, the keyboardist from Concrete Jungle – with whom we’ve been sharing the stage – whispering in Aaron’s ear. I’ve had 10 pints at this point (laughs) but just as they wave us off the stage, Marc pulls a bass off the back wall and says: “Here you go, baby!”‘. I ask them if they remember anything after that point? ‘Yeah, we remember it – it sobered us up a bit, getting up there!,’ Collins said.

‘The whole composition is based on how we do it live’

‘Colours In The Dark’ is one of the standout tracks on the album for me, erupting with seriously addictive string muting, which forms the backbone to the song, with emotive vocals from Collins and a tinkly piano line that gives it a really cinematic feel, especially with the way the song builds around two minutes in. Collins’ vocals are layered up on it but he says he’d ‘love to get some female vocals in there’: ‘It’s one of the oldest songs, we wrote it around 2022. If I was to show you the demo, it does not sound like it does now,’ Collins said laughing. ‘It was a weak production – as in not strong, not as in a week ago,’ he grinned. What changed? ‘The structure was the same’, Shirley offered. Collins agrees: ‘It was slower and thinner, I wasn’t as good a producer back then.’ Hickman also weighs in: ‘It really came together when we started doing it live because obviously we were doing that song live before it was released.’ Collins agrees: ‘The whole composition is based on how we do it live and that’s the case for quite a few tracks. You know, they were rough ideas until we got into a space with all of us and then on a stage eventually, where we started to go: “Ok, that’s what it’s meant to sound like”. The whole album is driven from the live sound, isn’t it?’ Hickman interjects: ‘I think a few of the original mixes are a lot more poppy but with the rock band line-up, we all tend to then make it a bit heavier.’ Collins is thinking: ‘I can imagine, if we were to release a song and then play it live, we might regret the release, because there’s things in the live performance that we should have put in (laughs). We don’t want to be in that place!’

Imagery from the 80’s features heavily in ‘Colours In The Dark’, according to Collins. ‘My mum actually helped me write the chorus, so she’s got a writing credit on that song, actually. She was very chuffed. It was another uni project, probably inspired by a girlfriend at the time, four or five years ago (laughs). For me, ‘Colours in the Dark’ is probably the most poppy mainstream one. The whole bridge is just the title repeated. I think too many artists nowadays are trying to say too much in their songs. I think there is beauty and catchiness in simplicity and repetition. And in restraint.’

On the album, they begin by demonstrating what they can play but as the album progresses, they increasingly demonstrate what they can leave out – a lesson their classic-rock heroes understood too, including Queen, who came up with hugely elaborate arrangements which were often built around very simple yet memorable melodic ideas. ‘Boston’s a big influence,’ Hickman said. ‘And Whitesnake for the riffs! Who would you add, Will?’ ‘For me personally, I love Nuno Bettencourt from Extreme,’ Shirley said enthusiastically. ‘And Buckethead (an American guitarist), I love his solo work, and Joe Satriani. Van Halen, for sure.’ ‘Hickman chimes in: ‘I can’t play nearly as good as him! I’m primarily a guitar player, actually. I grew up listening to Angus Young, Slash, all that classic rock and guitar. We love ELO as well.’ It wasn’t until their original bassist left the band after a year, that Hickman took on bass duties: ‘Basically throughout the whole of uni, Harry would say, “You know, I play a bit of guitar”, Collins said. ‘One day, we were all in my room and we were passing the guitar around. Harry had never played in front of us and started playing and was really good! We had the crazy idea a couple of months later, I wonder if he’d learn bass for the band? We asked him one night. We waited for you to come home from your 12-hour shift (laughs). He learned the bass (in just two months), and we’ve not looked back!’

If they could hear one of their songs on a TV show or in a film, Hickman is quick to say in a movie like ‘There’s No Smoke Without Fire’ (a 1973 French-Italian political thriller): ‘In a really slow-mo shot, walking out of a burning building.’ Shirley is thinking: ‘I feel like some of the songs could be suited to so many different media. ‘The Outcast’ is a personal favourite, I’d love to hear that in a movie somewhere.’ Hickman jokes that they could put that song in a rom-com. Collins also goes with an action film: ‘Some kind of crazy action scene, like a car chase to the organ solo of ‘Same Mistakes’ would be pretty cool!’

‘A lot of the chordal movement and the modulations and the way the chords move is very much based on Queen’s ‘Love of My Life”

‘Call You Mine’ is one of the most beautiful songs on the album, a Queen-like ballad that feels like a love letter to Freddie Mercury. It sees them trading some of their heavier guitar work for a more unabashedly romantic, piano-led sound and gorgeous vocals from Collins. It also showcases their knack for taking the melodrama and scale of classic rock and turning it into something intimate. Its relative restraint feels almost like a release at the end of the album, allowing the melody and vocal to take centre stage.

The piano line has a beautiful hymnal quality and Collins sings the track with real sincerity and wistfulness: ‘It’s the only song on the album I did myself, I sat down over a few weeks and built it,’ he said. ‘Like you said, it’s very on the nose Queen. Even the first line: “Open up your heart, open up your mind” is directly taken from their song ‘Play the Game’. A lot of the chordal movement and the modulations and the way the chords move is very much based on Queen’s ‘Love of My Life’. There’s one chord change that is really Queen. If you’re in a major key, instead of moving to your relative minor, you make the relative minor major. (Where you change a minor chord into a major chord, and then use it to lead into another key, called tonicisation.) Instead of going from C to A minor, you’d go from C to A7, which will then move you to D minor. The moment I did that chord change and thought “That’s very Queen”, the top line moulded itself to that. When I got to the solo, I knew I had to do something quite Brian May – there’s not much else I can do!’

Interestingly, many of their songs – including ‘Same Mistakes’, ‘This Love’ and ‘Colours In The Dark’ are written in minor keys but when they return to chord one of the key, it’s major: ‘It’s an extension of Mixolydian (a musical mode, a major scale with one note lowered),’ Collins explained. ‘If you were to ask: “What makes Fake Fame sound like Fake Fame, it’s that’s Mixolydian minor scale with a major one.’

I tell them that I love the song’s final lyric “All I really want is gone but I still feel alright” and Collins seems genuinely pleased: ‘That directly came from me knowing that what I want is the next song,’ he said. ‘Everything is gone but you’re content with it, that’s the motif at the end.’

Shirley jumps in: ‘Aaron comes to me all the time and says, “Do you want to re-record this guitar part?” Sometimes I do but for ‘Call You Mine’ and ‘All I Want’, it’s Aaron’s guitar because I think he nailed it, the inflection in his playing.’ Collins interjects: ‘This ties into Will just being such a humble guy,’ he said. ‘He’s not got the ego of a guitarist of his quality. He’s insane, honestly. You can imagine what a compliment that is to me when Will says: “No, I want to leave it as it is”. I’m like: “Are you sure (laughs)?!”‘

‘I tied a sock around every string except the G string and the whole solo is recorded only on the G string’

Collins’ guitar solo in it has a hilarious provenance: ‘One of my biggest strengths is melody, so I think I treated it as if I was singing a melody,’ he said. I ask if it’s hard to play? ‘If I played the solo on the album, it’s easy to learn,’ he quipped. ‘The really interesting thing about ‘Call You Mine’ is that I tied a sock around every string except the G string and the whole solo is recorded only on the G string, so it was a really clean sound. I was trying to play the solo and too many strings were ringing (laughs) and it needed to be a really raw but direct sound. Will was like: “That’s crazy!”‘ Shirley laughs and joins in: “I was trying to play it by ear using other strings and you said: “No, it’s all on the G string!”‘

Their next album is ‘very much steeped’ in the 2000’s rock sound, according to Collins: ‘It starts really 80’s but then in the mid-part of the album, it’s more like Foo Fighters and The Darkness, with that classic soundscape. It moves through the decades.’

If they could go out drinking with any musician dead or alive, Collins briefly considers Freddie Mercury but settles for John Farnham: ‘He’s Aussie, so he could probably drink quite well! He’s probably the greatest singer I’ve ever heard and I would hound him with questions about how he uses his voice.’ Shirley picks Buckethead: ‘He is probably the biggest inspiration to me for the longest time that I’ve been playing guitar. It’s how I started getting into the really complex, shreddy guitar. I love his quirkiness. I can’t picture him being a big drinker but I’m not a big drinker, so we may just nerd out and talk about guitar stuff!’ Hickman interjects: ‘I’ve thought about this long and hard (laughs), I reckon I’d probably pick Stevie Ray Vaughan. He uses 13 gauge strings, very thick strings, as he strikes the guitar when he plays. He’s a really cool guy and I know he liked to party!’

They’ve had some funny, albeit humbling moments along the way, as Hickman recounts: ‘We played The Underground in Bradford, it’s an amazing venue, we’ve been before. I’d seen it as a packed house and told the others that it’s gonna be sick, it’s gonna be really cool! Collins is laughing: ‘No-one showed up, we played to the sound engineer for an hour and a half. We performed like it was a room full. Hickman jumps back in: ‘There was a music festival in Bradford I think it was the City of Culture thing down the road, so everyone was at that. We played to the barman and him, and he booked us in to support his band.’ Shirley is laughing: ‘ We all broke strings, we were playing that hard – playing to no-one!’