Dan Smith looks back: ‘Bastille’s success was unexpected, and I was a nervous wreck’

Born in London in 1986, Dan Smith is the frontman of Bastille. After touring pub gigs and open mic nights, Smith formed the band with Chris Wood, Kyle Simmons and Will Farquarson in 2010. Armed with global hit single Pompeii, debut album All This Bad Blood reached No 1 and became one of the biggest selling records of 2013. With over 1bn Spotify streams, the band have since put out four LPs, and Smith has co-written with the likes of Olly Murs and Rag’n’Bone Man. The band are touring their debut for their 10th anniversary this summer.

This image frames me as some kind of sporty kid, when I was actually the opposite. In a horribly gendered way, my school decided that every boy had to get their official photo taken while kicking a ball, and every girl had to get theirs taken while shooting a ball into a netball hoop. Immediately after this shot was taken, I kicked the floor hard and fell over, which was embarrassing. I was so bad at sports and super self-conscious about it.

My parents are from South Africa. Mum was a folk singer who paid her way through law school with music, while my dad was the captain of every sports team. Growing up, I took after my mum in terms of creativity. I did a bit of concert singing and while I wasn’t the type to be dancing in front of my parents in the living room, I loved GCSE art and I was obsessively into all different types of culture, especially video games and comics. I had a little group of mates and we were weirdos – not quite nerds as we weren’t particularly academic, but we liked left-field music. Because I wanted to be a film journalist, I’d spend a lot of time trying to make my friends care about arthouse films.

I thought I could probably avoid sports for ever, but football kept following me around. A bunch of Bastille songs have been used in Fifa games, probably because the music sounds euphoric in spite of the fact the lyrics are often not so uplifting. Because of that affiliation we got booked to do Soccer AM when our debut was released. Part of being a guest on the show involved having to shoot a penalty. I wasn’t even sure if I could kick a ball straight, so having to do it live on TV was the ultimate waking nightmare. I completely shunted it and it went 2ft to the left. Every football lover and lad in the country saw it. I’ve not yet been able to live it down.

A lot of being in a band is out of my comfort zone. There was a huge amount of deflection in the beginning from me: I loved making songs from my bedroom and naively wrote an album without thinking about where it might end up. But part of the architecture of the music industry is performing your songs on a stage, so it’s something I’ve had to adjust to.

I loved going to festivals and watching indie bands when I was a teenager, but when it was time to take Bastille’s music on the road, it was an odd sensation. For a long time I felt as if I belonged in the audience, that I was supposed to be on the other side of the barrier. While I was studying English at university, a friend heard my music and entered me into a competition, which is how I got my first live gig. When I did it, I had to get shit-faced just to force myself to get on stage. I would tap a loop pedal and coordinate four different instruments. That, plus a bottle of wine, didn’t really lead to the best show. But people were encouraging, so I kept on going.

Once the band got bigger, I would often walk on stage and my hearing would stop. I could detect noise but I couldn’t place any pitch within it which, as a singer, is a nightmare. The last time we played Alexandra Palace in London I went completely deaf in one ear. It’s probably a form of a panic attack and a strange irony that everyone else in the room is having a good time, but I’m the guy in the middle with the drama going on in his head.

A lot of my on-stage anxiety comes from that same self-consciousness I had as a little boy. I get worried about my voice, which doesn’t always do what I want it to do and can be temperamental. I’m also incredibly clumsy and everything that could have gone wrong at a show has happened: I’ve fallen over, I’ve got stuck on top of speakers, I’ve electrocuted myself and have accidentally jumped on broken glass and cut my foot open. I’m lucky to have a band who’ve always loved playing live, though, so they’ve been my motivation.

At the start of Bastille, I really wanted to retain some anonymity. I didn’t want to be in the videos or the artwork and would have preferred to have had the songs shape their own independent world. But you can’t hide for ever. Our music took off organically – we were getting traction on blogs while we were playing toilet venues around the country and sleeping on people’s floors. I had thought that playing Shepherd’s Bush Empire was the apex, but before our album had even come out we’d sold it out twice.

I’m a naturally pessimistic person so throughout this entire period I thought Bastille was going to fail. I was convinced it was going to fall apart, which I’m sure was hard-going for the rest of the band to hear. There was also a lot of confusion from the press about what we were: we had tracks featuring weird piano, and others that sounded like the Lion King; it was hard to categorise us. As a result it took me a while to accept that we’d achieved something or that we belonged. Bastille now have a song that is known pretty much in every country around the world. Thankfully nobody would know it to look at me.

Ten years on, I realise there are so many things I should have enjoyed more at the time. I feel so lucky that we get to take our first album on tour again, and the first night on this new run of dates turned into one of the most surreal and happiest moments I’ve had. I was watching the crowd, 8,000 people in Dublin, singing every single word back. It was the first time I’ve ever felt present and I walked off stage with a huge smile.

A decade ago, I was such an anxious wreck. Because Bastille’s success was so unexpected, I wasn’t ready and I wasn’t enjoying it. To relive these songs now leaves me in the best mood. I’m still not that comfortable on stage. I look confident because I move around a lot – I think it’s my body’s way of trying to distract myself from what I’m doing. But there’s something about being a bit older and calmer, and having a bit less pressure that’s made me feel more grateful this time around.

That shift in perspective made me think of this photo of me as a boy, too – the awkwardness and embarrassment, and how, one day, it might all fade away.