Extract from Matty Healy's most recent interview with the NME, a week ago.
Don’t get arrested.
Those are the last words I say to Matty Healy on August 14, 2019, the day The 1975 play their first ever show in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, a city Healy describes, on the phone to NME from the ludicrously named Armani Hotel, as “a trip, man, like being at Waterside Shopping Centre for three days. Trafford Centre vibes. I mean, incredibly beautiful people but it’s like a fucking massive airport terminal. Anodyne is the word. Removed from the human experience.”
Dubai isn’t necessarily the kind of place you’d expect to find Matty Healy: committed hedonist and full-time stoner; wearer of an ever-changing array of threadbare vintage band T-shirts; reigning Greatest Frontman In Pop, and an outspoken champion of women, youth, the environment, minorities and the LGBTQ+ community. In Dubai, a place where women are discriminated against, adultery, premarital sex and alcohol consumption are punishable by flogging and it’s illegal to be gay, he is, essentially, in the belly of the beast.
Does Matty not have any reservations about playing places that are so opposed to his own ideologies?
“No, because there are definitely people here that are victims of those oppressive ideas, and I’m not a diplomat or a politician,” he says. “It’s like the Palestine/Israel thing – I would go and play both places. Not because I’m taking a side but because there are young people there who are not representative of the government, and I believe that in countries that may be war-torn or separated due to political ideologies, the only thing that unifies people is culture and art. It’s more my job than anybody’s to go places like this, you know.”
In Dubai, sadly, Healy is finding that religious ideology means some of his most ardent local fans – many of them teenage girls – won’t make it to the show tonight. “I’ve been meeting so many kids walking around and I’m like, Are you coming to the show? And they’re like, Oh, I can’t, my dad would not allow me, or my religion doesn’t allow it, and all that kind of thing. So that’s sad because I think that art is for everybody. But I understand that I’m quite a – I don’t know what I am – an outspoken… bisexual… I don’t know, whatever I am. So they’re probably not really into my vibe over here, the dads.”
“I would go to jail for what I stand for, you know – I feel like I’m in one of the only punk bands in the world,” says Matty. “I’m profoundly anti-religion and I always have been. I don’t agree with a dogmatic, pious adherence to scripture, because I believe that creates more pain for more people on a global level than it does solace for people on the individual level. I think it’s a selfish act. But I also understand that religion and culture are two very, very, very different things. So I understand the idea of if you say to somebody, I don’t know, ‘your religion is stupid’, it can for some people be the equivalent of somebody saying, ‘your face is ugly’, because it’s so deeply ingrained in who they are. I would never come over here and be disrespectful to people to make a point. But I’m never going to not stand up for women. I’m not going to not stand up for gay people. I’m not going to not stand up for minorities.'
Masses more at NME. He is just a lot more open, intelligent, articulate and engaging, and has the same background as Harry - left school at 16, middle class parents, Cheshire childhood. Harry often speaks in platitudes and seems wooly. I actually liked the shrooms confession because it made him more human.
