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 Gillespie-Sells (left) and The Feeling
British pop-rockers The Feeling recently wrapped up an American tour with a performance at this year’s Coachella Music & Arts festiva. Luckily for us, swoon-worthy (and openly-gay!) frontman Dan Gillespie-Sells was feeling gabby about their trek across the States.
INSTINCT: You guys just happened to play a show in Norfolk, Virginia the same day as the Virginia Tech shootings happened in April.
DAN GILLESPIE-SELLS: Yeah. We went into the venue and it was on the TV. It was weird. It set a very strange mood for the whole day, actually, ’cause the last thing you wanna go do, then, is go and play a show.
How’d the rest of that night go?
That town is full of sailors. It’s a proper port with a massive naval base. There were a bunch of British navy guys, who obviously know who we are because we’re big in the U.K. So, we had this whole contingent of Royal Navy people who’d been over for a couple weeks and were staying for another further couple weeks who turned up to the show. They got so drunk that they were not behaving terribly well. So, I had to deal with that. We’re kind of five singles into the album in the U.K. Everyone knows all the songs and we’ve had a huge amount of radio play. This tour’s been a bit little bit strange for me, going back to playing clubs again. But these sailors were really pissed up and really going for it, and I had to try to keep them under control. And I was also really aware that, actually, my job was to be playing to new people. I wanted to be playing to the American crowd there, because that’s the reason we’re here! So, you know, I’m trying to kind of introduce us to a new audience.
Has it been tough to keep the relationship with your boyfriend going while The Feeling has been relentlessly touring and gaining success?
Yeah. I think maybe that’s my excuse for never having been able to hold one down properly before any more than a few weeks. I was always traveling, and before we had the success as a band we were working musicians. That meant doing whatever you can to make a living, and sometimes it means being away. We worked in the Alps and were away for months at a time. But, it’s possible. You just have to find the right person, because normally it’s not you. You’re busy when you’re working. It’s just that they get left behind. So unless you’re dating someone who’s got very much their own life and very much their own things going on for themselves, and they’re not relying on you being around all the time, then you can make it work, I think. It’s just a matter of making the most of people when they’re around.
Tell me what some of your favorite cities were that The Feeling hit in America.
I quite enjoyed Philly, actually. I know it seems weird, but we went shopping in Philadelphia and we went to this place where you can buy that really kind of “pimp” shoes. You know, you go to the proper pimp part of town and you can get a multi-colored suit and those crazy multi-colored fake Italian shoes. I bought loads of pairs of shoes! They’re all made by Georgio Brutini [Laughs] Just genius kinds of shoes you’d never get in the U.K. They’re really cool!
I have a British friend who likes to buy denim jeans when he’s over here.
You’ve got much more of a choice here. But also, no guys would buy pimp shoes in London. These are proper, huggie-bear shoes! They’re kind of multi-colored brogues. They’re all heavy, crocodile-skinned, but bright blue and pink. That’s more up our street. We can get away with it, being geeky white boys from England. We’ll put a whole new twist on it! [Laughs] I also really liked Seattle, because we’re big fans of seafood and we eat a lot of crab. We always have good food in Seattle. We’ve gotten to know the cities because we toured before once, and so we’re getting to know the whole place. I do kind of like the northwest coast.
I saw the photo of you guys standing next to the Space Needle in Seattle.
I don’t know if it’s a phallic thing—and it probably is—but every city we go to, we tend to have a picture of us next to some kind of structure. If you go on our website, we’re always standing at the bottom and they’re always taken down below, like this skyscraper in New York. I’ve got the Leaning Tower of Pisa and I’ve got one of us at the needle at the Washington Monument. There’s become this kind of theme in our photographs, me and [guitarist] Rich [Jones], just taking a picture next to some enormous phallic object. [Laughs] It’s become part of our history. We went up the CN Tower in Canada, and there’s one in Berlin which is very similar. We’ve been up nearly all of them now!
Wonder what Freud would make of that, Dan?
I know! I think Freud’ll have something to say about it. It wouldn’t even take Freud to say anything about it, would it?
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The Feeling’s album, Twelve Stops And Home, is out now. Check out their official site at thefeeling.com
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Instinct Online 
written by kayleigh on August 13, 2008
hi i think the feeling are well i dont know what to say because there are so many posertive words to say so keep the great music up and you are so cool and fit