The Virginmarys
Acclaimed, award-winning and adored – then burnt and buried by the industry. It’s been a bumpy ride for Macclesfield rockers The Virginmarys. Frontman Ally Dickaty tells us about coming off the ropes swinging, and why they could still be the band of their
Acclaimed and award-winning – then burnt and buried by the industry. It’s been a bumpy ride for the Macclesfield rockers.
Ask Ally Dickaty for the moment he’ll take to the grave and it’s there on the tip of his tongue. It’s November 14, 2013, and the Virginmarys frontman is floating towards the stage at Classic Rock’s Roll Of Honour Awards, borne aloft by the applause of musicians he’d spent his whole life worshipping. Not a man prone to mugging for the camera, Dickaty couldn’t stop a sunrise of a grin as he brandished his statuette for Breakthrough Band at the Camden Roundhouse. And just for that moment, the world seemed to be in love with the Virginmarys. “Picking up that award in front of Jimmy Page and Tony Iommi,” reflects Dickaty. “Supporting Queens Of The Stone Age and Slash. Sharing stages with Soundgarden and Pearl Jam. It all became a bit surreal.”
But moments pass. If the Virginmarys had kept up their charmed early trajectory, the Macclesfield trio would now be filling stadiums, topping festival bills, teaching the world to sing their angular, bleakly anthemic, socially charged brand of alt.rock. Evidently, they are not. Instead, our interview with Dickaty is trailed by an email from the Virginmarys’ press officer, admitting that recent years have been a “frustrating story” of a band “losing momentum day-by-day” as labels, agents and management sat on their hands. As for bassist Matt Rose, he left two years back because “all the fun had been sucked out and they had no movement or money”. Hearteningly, this hard-luck story doesn’t square with the upbeat singer we meet today. Both in his lyrics and at interview, Dickaty has been open about his past struggles with mental health and alcohol (he’s now been sober for seven years), and when he says morale in the Virginmarys camp has never been higher, it rings true. That figures: now running their own affairs, the frontman and drummer Danny Dolan are set to reissue last year’s Northern Sun Sessions, have big dates in the tour diary and have been joined by former tech Ross Massey on bass. “There’s been a lot of taking the power back,” nods Dickaty.
When did The Virginmarys lose that power? Perhaps it was shortly after our last major interview with the band. Back then, in spring 2016, the trio were armed with urgent, angry second album Divides. They couldn’t believe their luck at snagging Foo Fighters producer Gil Norton, and after the healthy US sales of 2013’s debut album, King Of Conflict, a breakthrough seemed imminent. “But by that point, our US label was struggling,” recalls Dickaty of the machinations that saw Wind Up Records absorbed by Concord. “The album didn’t really get pushed. And the band was struggling. You’d be living off cold cans of food, scraping to get by. But it sets the men from the boys, doesn’t it?”
Dickaty won’t point fingers, but there’s a sense the band were equally deflated by the UK album campaign, which saw Divides deflect off the chart. Soon after, a major New York-based management company promised to take them by the scruff of the neck, but the big push never came. “It’s never anybody’s fault,” he says. “The blame gets passed on. You can be promised all this stuff, then nothing happens. It can be heartbreaking being a young artist and watching that happen. It can destroy you. Bands go through more shit than people realise. It’s great to see more people coming out to support musicians, because there’s blatantly a lot of mental illness amongst artists.” Did you ever feel like you might reach for a drink? “Yeah, there are moments when you feel like you could easily slip back into it. But I don’t know if we’d have been able to continue if I had kept up that lifestyle.”
Did you ever think the Virginmarys might be over? “Yeah. A couple of years ago, we were out of contract and we’d come to the conclusion: ‘Let’s just write these songs for Northern Sun Sessions, get it out there, then spend some time apart’. That mentality helped, because the pressure was off and we were just doing it for the love. But the reaction was incredible and that spurred us on to keep going. Bit by bit, it’s been like, ‘Fuck, this is happening again’. Northern Sun Sessions is probably the most important album we’ve released, but the next album is gonna be the best one we’ve ever done.”
If there’s a band born to chronicle these polarising days of Brexit and Boris, then it is surely The Virginmarys, whose frontman seethes with the righteous anger of an erudite Northerner born into a family of NHS workers. “There’ll still be darkness in our music,” he stresses. “I don’t think anyone is under any illusions that life in 2019 is perfect. History seems to be repeating itself. We made Divides and it’s just gone further and further, the rise of the right. We never learn. We seem more concerned with making money and how we look on the superficial level of social media than we do about true happiness. And it starts with the people at the top. So much hypocrisy. Everyone’s walking around with smiles on their faces, being polite. I think it’s the best time for rock music to tell it how it is. Would we ever write a song called Fuck You Boris? No, that’s not my style. I don’t want to write about the politics of left and right. I want to fight for love and scream about injustice. We’ve got so much to say.”
Six years after that night at the Roundhouse, you sense The Virginmarys are still capable of that breakthrough. “Can we still be the band of our generation?” echoes Dickaty. “Yeah, completely. We’re flying the flag for real rock‘n’roll. And I still don’t think there’s anyone else who sounds like us.”
“You can be promised all this stuff and then nothing happens. It can be heartbreaking.”
Ally Dickaty
Northern Sun Sessions: Deluxe Edition is out now. The Virginmarys play Manchester Academy 2 on December 14.