Combating celebrity

The Vaccines’ Justin Hayward-young chats about the band’s new album Combat Sports

Despite The Vaccines being one of the most popular guitar bands of their generation, their eight-year chart-smashing million-selling success has left scars.

Back to basics fourth album Combat Sports comes after R&B accented third album English Graffiti sparked drummer Pete Robertson’s departure.

“Making this record there was an element of survival and primal instinct,” admits frontman Justin Hayward-young, 30. “But the title went beyond that, I thought.”

Not just the band, but love and friendship and work and all those things.

“It felt like a good kind of analogy for modern life and the eternal conversation that goes on in all of our heads on a daily basis.

“The more I thought about it, the more it suited the sound – a weighty, simple but urgent and visceral sound.

“I think it’s the mood of the record – it just makes sense.”

Formerly a solo act known as

Jay Jay Pistolet, Justin’s background – privately educated, great-grandson of a celebrated painter, friendly with Mumford & Sons – has been described as posh. Not quite so, he insists.

“I went to a fee-paying school, but my parents made lots of other sacrifices to make that happen, the band really are across the spectrum actually…”

Justin has moved back to London from New York, describing the two years he lived there as an extended holiday.

“It made me more ambitious as comparatively no one there really gave a sh** about our achievements.”

Although proud of “what we have done and what we are going to do”, Hayward admits the touring lifestyle can take its toll. “It’s easy when you first get swept up, to get a bit prima donna-ish – maybe it’s a lack of sleep, or too many people saying yes too often, but definitely diva-ish tendencies can crop up,” he reflects.

“That cocktail of windowless rooms and cheap air conditioning and egos and lack of sleep all kind of mix into one big recipe for… I don’t know, it doesn’t get boring but it gets tense, it takes it out of you. It’s not the healthiest thing for the body, soul or mind.”

’There was an element of survival and primal instinct when making this record’