Royal Blood say Big Weekend incident blown ‘so out of proportion’

Mike Kerr also reflects on band’s mega shows with Muse

Author: Paul TraversPublished 28th Jul 2023

Royal Blood frontman Mike Kerr has spoken about the fallout from the duo’s appearance at BBC Radio One’s Big Weekend in Dundee in May.

Clips of their performance went viral after Kerr berated the audience for their perceived lack of response to their show.

Kerr said: "Well, I guess I should introduce ourselves seeing as no one actually knows who we are. We're called Royal Blood and this is rock music. Who likes rock music? Nine people, brilliant."

He later added: "We're having to clap ourselves because that was so pathetic. Well done, Ben."

When they left the stage he delivered a middle-finger salute to the crowd.

Watch: Royal Blood at Radio One’s Big Weekend

The footage generated memes and column inches as Royal Blood came in for heavy criticism.

Now Kerr has addressed the incident in a new interview with the NME, calling the response “out of proportion”.

He said: “The size that the story got to is in no way in proportion to the severity of it. The two just seem so out of joint with each other. It seems so tame to me, still. It’s not something I look back and think it was necessary. It was an unnecessary roasting, but I’m amazed that out of all the s--- we’ve done as a band, that this is the thing that took off.

“I think it says more about the attitude of social media and the witch hunt that’s out there. I think we were just the cocktail of the day. It wasn’t a pleasant experience.”

He continued: “Some of the criticism I can sympathise with, especially if you only saw that one clip and not the whole gig – but the majority of it just seemed so out of proportion with the level of anger. I refuse to be the origin of that anger. I don’t accept responsibility for that anger.”

Watch: Royal Blood – ‘Pull Me Through’

Asked if it had made him re-evaluate the way he interacts onstage, Kerr said: “Every time you open your mouth these days, you’re rolling the dice. We all do it. You say something and then think, ‘Well that was unnecessary’ or ‘I didn’t mean that’. But when I say it, I’m doing it down a microphone and sometimes on national television! I don’t want to roll the dice with my band in that way. At the Muse shows, [Matt Bellamy] didn’t say anything. I didn’t realise until I actively thought about it.”

Reflecting on the recent shows with Muse, he added: “It was amazing. They were kind of a baptism of fire with the first thing we did for this album being playing stadiums. The last time we did something like that was with Foo Fighters, so we have a bit of experience with what we were going into. It put us in front of really large crowds in a lot of places we’ve never been to and places we’d never be able to afford to get to.

“By the last three songs of the set, you had a new understanding of and connection to the crowd. There was also a sense that you’re preaching to choir in that Muse’s first three records are part of our band’s DNA. They’re one of a few bands whose influence you can hear in us, and Muse fans can sense that.”

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