Simon Rushworth
Dear Superstar are Manchester’s answer to every sleazy hair metal band you ever saw coming out of the West Coast of America 20 years ago. And they rock.
We caught up with lead singer Micky Satiar to get the inside story on the rising stars of Tyneside’-based Global Music’s ever-growing roster. Read part two of our exclusive interview right here tomorrow.
rushonrock: You’re from Manchester so you must sound like Oasis? Right?
Micky Satiar: Because the band’s from the Manchester area we do get pigeon-holed into a certain category of band before anyone’s even heard our music! People just assume we’re another Oasis wannabe band and don’t get me wrong, I like those guys. But the heart and soul of our band lies in the roots of 80s rock and roll and it always will do. What we do is our take on that era. It’s the 80s revisited with a Dear Superstar twist. But a lot of people believe that if you’re a Manchester band then you have to play the music Manchester is famous for. We believe there is another way and we’re trying to break away from that image people have of our city as a one-dimensional music hub.
rushonrock: So you are from Manchester and not Scandinavia then? There seems to be some doubt about your origin…
MS: Scandinavia rocks and we’ve played a lot of gigs there. So much so that people actually think we’re a Scandinavian band. We’ve toured there three times in the last 15 months and people just seem to dig what we’re doing over there. But we’re English, believe me.
rushonrock: As a new band few people know your history. How did Dear Superstar happen?
MS: Dear Superstar came together as a band in 2004 and before that we were all in other bands. But none of them felt like this and we wanted to create a real band that would last. Before Dear Superstar we were all living our lives around music. Now our life is music.
rushonrock: But what kind of a life is it? All luxury tour buses, sex, drugs and rock and roll?
MS: Not quite. As soon as we had enough songs under our belts we just hit the road and lived our lives in the back of an old transit van. We played anywhere and everywhere. After a while we made a name for ourselves and went into the studio to record our first album. Most of the songs were written in the back of the van between gigs because that’s all the spare time we had. Then we went looking for a deal.
rushonrock: You released your debut independently but with Heartless did you want to find the right home for a cool rock record?
MS: We toured that first album extensively and then went back to Manchester and locked ourselves away for six months writing Heartless. We suddenly had the time to put that record together the way we wanted to do the first one. We sat down and did our homework on this one and it was worthwhile. We wanted to do the best we could possibly do with the time and resources available. In the end we laid it down in a couple of days because the groundwork had been done in advance.