As they celebrate their 20th anniversary ahead of their sixth album release, Kasabian speak exclusively to Q magazine.
During the interview frontman Tom Meighan speaks candidly about his ‘life-changing’ year, during which he moved out of the home he shared with his long-term girlfriend and daughter.
Tom, 36, now renting until he finds a new home, revealed: “I’m by myself, yeah. Because I lost myself. In every way. 2016 was great for Serge, great for Leicester City, shit for me. I had to sort my head out. My attitude. Stuff I was doing. People I was associating with. Not bad people! I was the one that was bad, I was in the haze.” He added: “I was very unhappy, just down and you block it out by just carrying on.”
Heading towards self-destruction, Tom revealed: “Sometimes life throws shit at you and I didn’t deal with it very well. I was making myself ill, I aint gonna lie, my mind was jolted. It might have been a build up from years and years.” He added: “I wasn’t taking responsibility and it affected everyone around me, horrendous.”
“You know how in Superman III when he strangles the badness out of himself? Clark Kent’s strangling Superman to kill off the bad one, that’s how I felt. I had to strangle this guy, kill off the bad Superman. And now I’ve got the real Superman back.”
Much of his unhappiness, Tom reveals, came from having too much time on his hands. “A lot of it was boredom. Now I’ve got to fill it with projects, music projects, or acting, something I can relate to, focus on.”
He didn’t seek the help of professionals, but instead got the support and help he needed from his inner circle of band, friends and family, “the only people I can rely on”. He says: “Life’s about learning. I have to take care of myself now and stop f**king around and get my head out of the clouds and f**king grow up. And that’s what I did. It’s about not being out of control.”
Tom’s lifelong buddy and bandmate, Serge told Q: “Tom had to grow up. You can go one of two ways. You either go insane, or you sort yourself out. The thing is, with this mad…job, you can do whatever you want. Because people let you. As long as the machine keeps going.”
He adds: “Tom’s heart is on his sleeve and he can get hurt, because he’s so open. That’s why people relate to him. He can stand in front of a hundred thousand people and they come away feeling not so alone, they’ve connected with this man who can show them their pain and their euphoria. It’s powerful doyouknowhatImean? We’re real. Especially Tom. He’s the realist f**king man there is. You can slag that off if you want but he’s more real than I’ll ever be.”
Kasabian’s world exclusive interview appears in this month’s Q magazine, on sale on Tuesday, 14 March.
Kasabian’s new album is released on later this year