MATTY HEALY
The 1975’ s Matty Healy sealed his place as a true ally when he snogged a male fan during a concert in homophobic Dubai. He tells Thomas Stichbury about growing up surrounded by gay men, his drag granddad and standing against bigotry and hate
The 1975 front- man earns his ally stripes — till you talk about tucking!
Visibly squirming before my eyes, Matty
Healy springs to the back of the armchair he’s sitting on, yanks his feet up and pulls his knees close to his chest, curling into a foetal- like position. “Nah,” he mutters, face scrunched. “Is that how they do it?”
I’ve just explained to The 1975 front- man what “tucking” is, detailing the ins and outs ( literally) of doing drag, and Matty isn’t sweet on the idea of having to poke your balls back inside yourself.
“I’ve done it by accident and it makes me fucking ill,” he grimaces.
The conversation has turned to testicles and the art of scrotum- smushing ( top tip: use warm water) after Matty mentions that he is a die- hard fan of RuPaul’s Drag Race.
“My favourite queen is probably [ season 10 winner] Aquaria, maybe because I fancy her a bit,” he says. “I [ also] like a lot of the queens who come from the back, the ones you don’t really think are going to do well.”
Who doesn’t like a queen who comes from the back…
Mama Ru, if you’re reading this ( and why wouldn’t you be?), Matty would love to sashay on to the UK version of the show as a guest judge. “Ru, please, I’ll be there in a heartbeat,” he vows.
“I’d have to fight off my mum [ Loose Women and former Coronation Street star Denise Welch]. She’d be so furious if I was a judge before her.”
The singer is certainly qualified for the job. First and foremost, Matty, 30, is a huge get- your- hands- dirty LGBTQ ally – the reason he is one of the cover stars of our Activists and Allies issue – and, second, his beloved maternal granddad, Vin, does drag.
I refrain from asking if he tucks.
“We used to go on holiday to Cyprus or somewhere, and he would disappear before we went for a meal and he’d come out as Raquel Welch, his drag character.
“It’s very British drag: camp, fishnets, big wig and a bad frock.
“My granddad doesn’t identify as gay,” he adds. “[ But] he wasn’t a take- the- piss- on- aFriday- night- Les- Dawson- straight- guy- in- adress. He would identify himself as a crossdresser, maybe, in his time. He’s in his eighties now and still does it.”
Even Matty’s actor dad Tim Healy, 67, best known for his roles in Corrie and ITV comedy Benidorm, can beat his face for the gods if required. “He did this play at Edinburgh Festival Fringe, called Twinkle Little Star, that was a meditation on gay rights.
“He basically did this hour- and- a- half monologue, starting out as himself, then he’d apply the make- up, looking at the audience, and by the end he would be this drag queen.”
Contemplative, laidback and oozing cool in the way that only, well, cool people do, Matty can put a bejewelled finger on why he has such an affinity for the queer community.
After all, this is a man who delivered a big “fuck you” to anti- LGBTQ laws in the United Arab Emirates when he kissed a gay man during a gig in Dubai last summer ( more on that controversial episode in a minute).
A year earlier, Matty and his band mates — guitarist Adam Hann, bassist Ross MacDonald and drummer George Daniel — also helped raise funds for the planned launch of an LGBTQ community centre in London’s Hackney.
Whizzed around showbiz circles as a wee mite — “There was no particular silver spoon in my mouth [ though]” – Matty grew up surrounded by his parents’ gay pals.
Indeed, the first full- on snog he witnessed was shared by two men.
“My mum’s crew was kind of the gay ‘ Illuminati’ of The Groucho [ Club]. I’d slept in the bar there more times than I can remember by the time I was 15,” he explains.
“The first time I ever noticed a sexy kiss in real life was between two guys. They were my mum’s mates, who were dancers in a show. When I look back, these are really formative experiences for people because it’s what you identify as ‘ normal’.”
In fact, that was so much the norm for Matty that he started to question why he wasn’t gay. “I grew up in the gay community. That’s why I think there is my, whatever it is, activism.
“A lot of my stuff comes from visceral reactions as a kid. I [ also] always associated art, left- leaning politics and creativity with those people.
“I definitely had a time in my life where I’d be at parties that were so bohemian, gay and stuff that I’d think, ‘ why am I not gay?’ It was almost like guilt. I want to be like those people, but I’m sexually attracted to [ women].”
The term “ally” is often wafted about by those who do little more than pay lip service to supporting the cause, and, in those instances, it carries as much weight as a media air kiss.
However, Matty really mucks in — or, rather, puckers up — in his fight for LGBTQ rights. Back in August, he took a stand against bigotry and prejudice while The 1975, whose hits include A Change of Heart and The Sound, were performing at the Coca- Cola Arena in Dubai, where homosexuality is illegal and punishable by up to 10 years in prison. Leaning forward in his seat, pushing back a few loose black curls, the pop- rocker relives the moments that led to the headline- grabbing kiss. “It was spontaneous,” he insists. “In the build- up to the show, I was given a check- list of stuff that I was ‘ allowed’ to do, and I’m sitting in the dressing room, thinking: ‘ Don’t fucking book me if you’re just gonna give me this list of demands. I’m in this situation and I’m thinking,
‘ Oh God, I’m taking money from a government I don’t agree with. What am I doing?’
“I have a 30ft Pride flag and, in every set, I do a song called Loving Someone, which has become a bit of an anthem for all our LGBTQ fans,” he continues. “I’m told that I can’t do that, so I said to my lighting guy, Darren: ‘ We’re doing it. It’s happening. What are they going to do, arrest us?’ One of the promoters said: ‘ They will arrest you’. By this point, I was jetlagged, I didn’t have any weed, I was in the UAE and I was like, fuck this.”
All hell broke loose pre- kiss when Matty and the boys unveiled the flag. “The security, police, whatever, have a feed of every camera and apparently what happened was, boom, the Pride flag comes up, every officer runs backstage and says they need to take me off stage and arrest me. The promoter said: ‘ No, we’ve booked them to do the show’, and he gets arrested.”
During the kerfuffle, the arena’s security didn’t actually see Matty plant a smacker on the gay fan, only hearing about it afterwards.
“[ The boy] had a sign that said: ‘ Can you marry me?’ Matty recalls.
“I said to him, ‘ I can’t marry you… but I can give you a hug’. I jump off stage – the crowd goes mad – I go over and give him a hug.
“He’s a lovely boy and he won’t let go, and says: ‘ Thank you’, and all these things. I pull away and he adds: ‘ Can I have a kiss?’
“I went, ‘ Yeah, of course you can have a kiss’. I give him a kiss and he turns and kisses his boyfriend and they embrace.”
“The first time I ever noticed a sexy kiss in real life was between two guys”
“I give him a kiss. He turns and kisses his boyfriend and they embrace”
What should have been a heart- warming highlight turned into something more sinister as Matty and his team tried to avoid arrest. “My security managed to divert them while I came off stage. They didn’t know what hotel we were [ staying] at, and we changed our flights to go to Japan earlier [ than planned].”
However, on hearing someone at the concert had been arrested, the singer was tempted to hand himself in. “They said a kid had been taken to the local jail. Security had to physically stop me from going to the police so I could fucking deal with the situation,” Matty reveals.
News of the kiss quickly spread online, of course.
Most of the responses were positive, but Matty was also pelted with criticism, claiming that he had put the young man in danger, and you can tell that this accusation still stings.
“My shows are gay and it was the gayest gig I’ve ever done. It was like a release, that they had a place to go to in fucking Dubai. So, it was a massive celebration. Then a couple of people say, ‘ Oh, what you’ve actually done is endangered a kid’s life’. I was reading this in my hotel room on my own and I’m fucking freaking out, like I don’t know if it’s true or whatever.
“I find who this kid is on Twitter and I start texting his mate, ‘ Oh my God, are you all right?’ He replied: ‘ What do you mean? We’re in a bar, it was the best night of my life’, and they start sending me selfies. I was like, ‘ I read some shit’, and sent them links to what people were saying. They went on Twitter, saying: ‘ Don’t fucking do that’. People just imagine things and present them as fact and it pisses me off.”
In the past, Matty has candidly navigated the nuances of sexuality, especially in an ever- evolving era of fluidity where the spectrum is as gloriously slippery as trying to keep hold of a wet fish.
Previously, he’s spoken about his attraction to men in a purely aesthetic sense, as opposed to wanting to receive a blowjob from a dude. And his stance hasn’t changed.
“I tend not to talk about my sexuality that explicitly because I don’t really have to and all things are subject to change,” begins Matty, who reportedly split with girlfriend Gabriella Brooks in the summer.
“I’m an aesthete, so I have this objective view of beauty. There is this amazing book you should read called On Beauty and Being Just, by Elaine Scarry,” he says. “It’s an essay on beauty and how, when presented with beauty, we have this reaction of reciprocation. We want to follow it, revise our position to stay in view of it. You want to fuck it, make another one. You want to draw it – so many kids who are into my band draw me all the time because they see this idea of something beautiful and they want to replicate it.
“I see things as objectively beautiful, so men can be objectively beautiful. Sometimes, I see men and I’m like, ‘ Fuck me, he’s peng’,” he exclaims. “Then sexuality gets changed for me because I would, and have, kissed beautiful men, but I don’t want to fuck them. It stops for me when it comes to [ sex].”
I flag up that people are a lot more versatile in the bedroom these days.
“I can be versatile and we’ll see what happens. But I don’t want to…” he pauses. “I like having sex with women. I don’t really want to have sex with men.”
That same appreciation of the flexibility of sexuality extends to Matty’s sense of style, which toys with the notion that gender is a social construct, especially when it comes to what we should and shouldn’t wear.
Today, he’s wearing high- waisted trousers, a red hoodie and a black- and- yellow puffa jacket ( that I want to steal), but he is equally as comfortable wandering around in a skirt – and, to be fair, he has the legs for it.
“You work with what you’ve got,” he smiles. “It’s not a thought- out thing… the outside world doesn’t have an effect on me, only the people who are interested in me [ do].
“So I don’t think putting a dress on, they’re going to notice. Everything is just a reflection of who I naturally am.
“I’ve seen that Yungblud kid. What he’s doing is a more gender- fuck- norms thing, and whether that’s conscious or not, it doesn’t matter, it’s showing young people that that’s a good thing to do,” he maintains.
“It makes the projection of ‘ being interesting’ on to other pop stars that I won’t [ name]… that happens all the time, it makes it seem silly.”
I ask if he is referring to anyone in particular.
“I can’t…” he teases.
Guesses on a postcard to Attitude Towers, please…
One of the most striking things about interviewing Matty is just how open he is.
“Men c a n b e o b j e c t i ve l y b e a ut i f ul . I ha ve k i s s e d b e a ut i f ul men ”
He isn’t the kind of pop star to, you imagine, flash a frozen smile, or raise a shutthis- down- now eyebrow at a publicist if the discussion takes a detour down a path that he isn’t necessarily keen to travel.
Sitting opposite each other in a warehouse space in London, his reps having taken themselves off to another room, there doesn’t appear to be a subject Matty isn’t happy to cover. I wonder if he regrets being so transparent about his demons, specifically his past battle with heroin addiction, and why he is seemingly so content to let the skeletons spill from his closet so publicly.
“If you don’t lie, you don’t have to worry about what you’ve said because you can’t really get caught out,” he explains, simply.
“I’ve had to accept that I have to live my truth. If someone asks me a question, I tend to give them an answer,” he shrugs.
“It’s a weird situation to be in, but I’d rather be who I am, say how I feel, be truthful and have an opinion, at the risk of upsetting someone or being cancelled.
“I’d rather be somebody who you know has done bad things that you can talk about than be somebody who has done bad things they pretend not to have done.
“I never want to be preachy because there are people in my life who are like, ‘ What, you’re saying you don’t lie?’
“I’m not saying that,” he laughs. “I’m sure there are certain things that I would hold back, that are inappropriate but I don’t think: ‘ I can’t talk about that because it’s not the done thing’.”
Matty’s mother Denise, 61 — the pair are very close — shares that sense of openness and recently posted videos on social media about her struggle with depression.
“My mum’s like an OG depressive, so when she talks about it, she talks about it with years of experience.
“It makes me laugh when people like Piers Morgan try to devalue it.
“I used to get really defensive about people using the word ‘ depression’ because until you’ve seen it for real...” he stops.
“Mum doesn’t mind me telling people stories about the reality of it. I’ve got a song called She Lays Down [ on 2016’ s I Like It When You Sleep, For You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware of It] about the fact that, for the first month or two of my life, she would wait till I was asleep, go into my bedroom, lie on the floor next to me and try to love me, try to feel anything for me. Imagine what that was like for her, lying down every night trying to love your kid.
“She said she had to get away from me at one point. She went out one night and gave me to a babysitter.
“My mum got back around 11pm and I was c rying inconsolably. The babysitter was lik e: ‘ He’s been lik e this since six’, and she said there was this jolt. We’re sets of chemicals – y ou don’t think about depression, it f ucking hits you.
“I can tell when it’s coming on with my mum. Or I can tell when it’s coming on with me,” Matty says. “It’s something that’s alwa ys been in my life, but y ou’ve just got to sit there with them, be with them, let them kno w that they’re safe.”
With the year winding down, Matty is looking ahead t o touring and The 1975’ s new album, Notes on a Conditional Form, the follow up t o 2018’ s A Brief Enquiry Into Online Relationships. The band certainly kno ws how to come up with a natt y title.
Given how outspoken Matty is, fans might be surprised to learn that the record isn’t a political polemic, following the release of self- named single The 1975, featuring eco- warrior Greta Thunberg, and the riotous People, sparked by the passing, earlier this year, of the Alabama Abortion Bill, which has since been blocked.
“The Greta thing, as soon as I recorded that, [ my manager] Jami e and I looked at ourselves and were lik e, ‘ that’s not a statement for six months’ time, that’s a statement for no w, we can’t sit on that, that is our first single, there is no wa y around it’,” Matty recalls.
“The Alabama Abortion Bill had happened the day we were in Alabama. We left f ucking furious with reality, and sat at a truck stop seething with anger.
“Then we wrote People and that came out immediately.
“I’m not on the whole ‘ all music needs t o be political ’ thing. I’m on the whole ‘ all music needs t o be about the human experience ’ , ” Matty adds.
“It’s a record about me. It’s about everything, and the environment does come up in that because that’s one of the things I’m scared of.”
In that case, don’t be surprised if a bonus track about the terror of tucking pops up…
Notes on a Conditional Form is released next year. The 1975 kick off a UK tour in February. the1975. com “We were furious and sat at a truck stop, see thing with anger”