It’s difficult because everything’s so postmodern and self-referential and hyperaware of everything being bullshit. I’m so aware of the vocabulary of rock’n’roll, and what’s tired. “I do the Jim Morrison thing a bit,” he says, “but I know that you know that I know that this isn’t real. Onstage, he deconstructs his own performance as he goes along, like a Father John Misty for teenagers. Matty Healy is a rock star for a generation that’s too clued-in to believe in rock stars. Because I knew that one more time and that’s it.” “The fact that I knew I was building on something that wasn’t destroying made me feel really strong. “People had started to lose respect for me, but not an irredeemable amount,” he says, running his hands through his scruffy, half-peroxided hair. The singer spent seven weeks at a rehab clinic in Barbados in November and December and has been clean since then. Healy says his habit was the first time a secret ever came between them.
So I went downstairs and told George I should go to rehab.” Daniel is the band’s production whiz and Healy’s closest friend they live virtually next door to each other in east London. “I realized that was absolute fucking bullshit. If you want songs, we’re just going to have to get on with it.” The next morning, he woke up mortified. Healy winces and inhales a Marlboro Light as he paraphrases what he said: “Listen, everyone has to get onboard because I’m the fucking main deal.
