Interview: McFly’s Danny Jones on ‘Power To Play’, ‘God Of Rock And Roll’ and UK tour – Entertainment Focus

It may be hard to believe, but McFly have now been on the UK music scene for 19 years – and in that time, they’ve become one of the country’s most successful bands.

With seven number one singles, six albums (including two chart-toppers), 10 million record sales and thousands of sold-out shows around the world under their belts, Tom, Danny, Dougie and Harry have made names for themselves with their guitar-led sound, high-energy stage performances and infectious personalities. Now they’re back with their latest album, ‘Power To Play’ – the follow-up to 2020’s ‘Young Dumb Thrills’ – which is due for release in June and inspired by 80s rock.

Ahead of the album’s release, I caught up with Danny to chat about the process of making the record, the band’s new single ‘God Of Rock And Roll’ – one of the songs he produced on the LP alongside Jason Perry – touring plans and more.

So tell us about the new album, ‘Power To Play’…

Oh! Where do I start? [laughs] It’s always a good question, this, because it’s almost like two years in the making. And it’s like we hope that it’s translated the way we had the excitement in the studio. I think one of the main things on this album is that we had a board of identity, where we put on this whiteboard, ‘What is McFly to us?’ all individually, what is that? And because we played our producer some music, and he was like, “Guys, what’s this? It’s boring! This isn’t McFly! Come on!” And we found ourselves constantly, I think it’s a beautiful position to be in, where we’re very in the commercial world, but we function like any rock band out there. And sometimes we can be called a boy band but then other times we get metalheads turning up to our signings and what have you.

So we were constantly trying to play that commercial game, where we teamed up with Taio Cruz to do ‘Shine A Light’ and get on radio and all this. There came a point where we were just like, “It still doesn’t really get us on radio when we try and play the radio game”. Radio 2 have always been a massive supporter of ours and we’ve always been thankful for that. But I think Radio 2 will support [us], like they’ve supported this album anyway. So we were just like, “let’s make an album about the band that we are”.

And on that board of identity, it was all about when we’re jumping up and down live, the energy, the honesty, the cheekiness. But then we don’t take ourselves too seriously but we do in that same sense when it comes down to making the music. And all this kind of, like, this personality for the band came about on this whiteboard. And obviously individually we’re so kind of different, but this board just locked us together.

And our producer’s like, “well 80s rock is that. Bon Jovi, all that. That was like pop music back then. That’s what it is now.” And it was like… it gave us the freedom to do pop music but in a guitar way, in a rock way, and we were like, “Wow, I can’t believe we’ve never thought of that.” Like I was into Bon Jovi as a kid, I used to go round the pubs doing a bit of [sings] “I wanna lay you down on a bed of roses”, all this kind of stuff, you know? And Van Halen – like this was pop at one point. So that gave us the belief to go, “right, lightbulb moment, we shouldn’t be so embarrassed”. it’s not even embarrassed but, like, the world you’re in, guitars weren’t around. We were doing CD:UK and there was a dancing boy band and then we’d come on. We felt cool as. Like, we were like the guitar band. It was just a different world that we were in. And this kind of gave us the belief that all of our influences have always been right. We’ve just never expressed them in the strength that we have on this album.

And then put together having this studio of ours, we created an album where I feel like when you listen to it you’re in the room with us. And that is so hard to create when you’re on location and you’re working through a laptop or you’re in a studio that’s under time constraints. It just gave us this freedom to jam as a band and play and record it and go, “oh, I wouldn’t have thought about it that way but ’cause I’m playing it…”. Like, Harry never gets on the kit. Normally we go in a studio and we’ve got the songs demoed and half-produced and we’re telling him, “mate, do this beat, ’cause this is what works on the computer”. This time it was humans, making music, and putting it into a computer and the computer was there just as a tape machine. And that for me is like what is amazing, because no-one will play our music like we play it, and I feel like that’s what we’ve done with this record. So, in a nutshell, that’s ‘Power To Play’, and we’re super proud of it [laughs].

You’ve touched on McFly HQ and having that dedicated space – how do you feel that’s impacted on the record and your approach to it compared to previous albums?

I think it’s one of the biggest parts, because in any friendship group, especially one that you work with – and being in a band is a friendship group, it’s a profession and you’ve gotta work professionally – you don’t get that time. And obviously with life happening on the outside, you don’t get time to sit and talk, what I call the quality time where you’ve got nothing else in the diary. I used to call it hotel time because we used to get it a lot more in hotels where we’d go touring and we’d just go out for dinner together as a band, like what friends would do. And this place has allowed us to do that. It’s like having an apartment together, again, where we can just sit and chill, Tom’ll be hanging over there, Doug’s hanging there and it’ll be, “mate, what do you think of this?”. You just start chatting differently. Whereas before, there’s no space and you’re just meeting up. This is a massive, massive part of the whole soul in this album.

Is it almost like a flashback to the early days and the ‘Room On The 3rd Floor’ era in a way – sort of coming full circle?

It is. Yeah, massively. Because, like, me and Tom wrote that in a hotel where we had all the time in the world and no families and no kids or any of that [laughs]. So it’s brought a bit of that back I suppose, yeah.

This record has been two years in the making as you’ve said. How do you feel you’ve progressed in terms of writing and musically from the previous album?

Yeah, I mean, we’re always trying to push ourselves and we’re always trying to be like, “what’s next? What’s gonna be exciting?” You know, nostalgia’s great but there’s only so much you can do of it, and we’re always up for doing great work and evolving. This album, basically, we looked at it as a tour set list, because that was on the board of identity. The best moments in this band are when we’re on stage and we do something cool on stage, and you’re looking at each other, and you put in so much work in rehearsals and you just get in and you’re just showing off. You’re like, “we’re at the O2 arena showing off what we can do!”, jumping up and down. That’s the best moments in this band.

So I think this album, we’ve had albums in the past, a couple of albums we tried too hard to be commercial and pop. That’s OK, and we’ve learned by that, and the beautiful thing with being in this band is it’s not just about the next album. It’s about the next ten albums and the journey that we go on. We’re fortunate enough to have a fan base that’ll stick with us through all of that, and people that believe in us around us. This is the first album that has completely translated. For example, ‘Shine A Light’, on the record, did its job, massive radio hit, but we weren’t gonna play it like that live. It was R’n’B-produced in a way, and we were like, “What?!” So live, that song is almost better because it’s this rock version that we’ve made McFly. And that was the problem. We were like, “Why don’t we ever do that on records?”. And that was on the board of identity, how do we translate that on a record, what we do live? And do it for the sweaty fans at the front? [laughs] Well, hopefully the sweaty fans are everywhere, but you know what I mean!

I mean having been one of those fans and jumping up and down and singing along, it is definitely that…

Well that’s what we tried to make on this album. Yeah, an album that you can actually play at home and get that gig feeling. I always remember the Oasis documentary when they first came out and they went in a studio and they were like, “man, this is s***! This isn’t Oasis!” It was too edited, too posh. I remember them getting their front of house guy to come down in this room and say, “just record them live, like how I remember them, just record them”. And that was the sound of Oasis, wasn’t it? And sometimes I think we overthink these things when you go into studios. We’ve all been playing our instruments for so long and playing with each other for so long, and I feel like that is enough. That’s enough to put on an album. I feel like that’s what we’ve done this album.

You’ve got some festival dates coming up this summer and have just announced your own tour as well – are there any songs you’re really looking forward to playing live?

Yeah, like all of them. There’s a couple of them that I’m actually fearful of as well [laughs]. I’ll start with the ones I’m excited about and then I’ll give my reasons. So ‘Where Did All The Guitars Go?’, we’re all gonna have rock neck after that [laughs]. I can’t wait to do something fun with the crowd with that, just everyone headbanging and having fun. It’ll sound amazing live. ‘God Of Rock And Roll’, I’m excited by that but I’m fearful, because I pushed myself in guitar solo world. It took me three and a half hours to get this guitar solo correct. I mean, I’ve kind of got it down [laughs] but it is some of the fastest guitar playing because it was kind of inspired by Van Halen. And then there’s songs like ‘Land Of The Bees’ which is like our first ever song that was inspired by Rush – it’s got a 7/4 time signature in part of it, and if you don’t concentrate through that one you’re gonna be lost. So I just hope that we practice it enough that it becomes second nature. We all do. So it’s just doing that justice, I feel like. But I’m excited by the whole album, because the whole album is just what we did here is what we’re gonna do on stage. So it’s just bringing it all together as a show.

I did want to ask about ‘God Of Rock And Roll’ which is the new single and which I also know you were involved in producing – tell us more about that…

Yeah, well, I’ve always kind of loved my production. That’s what I did at college and then when I met Tom I was doing it and then I left it behind for a few years ’cause I was in a band, and then I picked it up again later on when I couldn’t quite articulate how I wanted something to sound. So I had to just do it. And then I started producing all of our B-sides and our deluxe songs and I was like, “I’m learning here, I’m sitting next to some cool people learning about it all”. Then I went on to produce a few singles with McFly, like ‘Love Is Easy’ and all that, and then I got offered to do some One Direction stuff and some Vamps stuff and then writing and producing that.

So then I just learnt a lot. And now me and Dougie have this side thing where we write and produce for other people now, ’cause it’s fun and we love to do it. And Steve who’s involved in this last album as well. And helping Tom with his book, the Space Band stuff and all of that. And Jason [Perry] who’s just been a big supporter of mine as a producer, this album we just went 50/50 on basically. There were some songs I took, some songs he took. This is my first… I don’t know whether ‘Love Is Easy’ was the first single, I can’t remember. But this is my first big single I’ve had as a producer, I think, in this world. So I’m very proud of it. And all of the years of picking up stuff, this is what it’s come to. I feel really privileged to be able to have that power in a way, of creating something that the band want. “You wanna sound like this? OK, I’ll help us do that.” I feel really privileged to help that.

I also wanted to ask a bit more how you guys have evolved as a band over the years – has that felt like something that’s been quite important to you?

Yeah, I don’t think we even think that far ahead. I think what we always think is we go into an album, of what’s gonna align us all. Because we all appreciate music, we’re all writers in our own way and we all approach music in our own way. And we all need something as a band to latch onto that excites us. So for example, on this album it was 80s music, it was 80s rock. And you could take anything – AC/DC, Bon Jovi, KISS, whatever, Bryan Adams, whatever it is. Like Bryan Adams is one of Tom’s idols, you know? So, and even Springsteen to an extent, his ‘Tunnel Of Love’ album and ‘Human Touch’ and all that, they’re all 80s. And ‘Born In The USA’, it’s 80s. You could pull so much from that genre of music.

So as you can see, through our albums, like ‘Room On The 3rd Floor’ was me and Tom latched on to Beatles and Beach Boys. The second album we leant more into Oasis a little bit more, third album was like Jellyfish, The Who, so we have all these bands and almost likes rules in a way, just to keep us in the right place. So it is important, and I feel like that helps us to keep it fresh as well and evolve that way, rather than getting too far away from ourselves. For example I feel like the album ‘Above The Noise’, even though the songwriting was still there, we were trying too hard to be commercial. We got to the point where we were like, “we really love these songs but how do we do this live?” We didn’t understand it. So we lost a little bit of track there but you always put it back somewhere along the line, because you learn for it.

Going back to performing live – how was getting to play at Glastonbury last year?

Yeah, well obviously, it was one off the bucket list, wasn’t it? I do think about that day quite often, and like, if only we had a bigger stage. But then I think it’s probably good that we didn’t because we caused a lot of hype [laughs]. And a lot of people were p***ed off at Glasto for not putting us on a bigger stage, and we were like, “yeah, you go, you tell ’em!” But you often get this, and I’ll speak truthfully, you often get people that just don’t know your band, don’t believe in it and think, “ooh, they’re pop, they’re this”. It just so happened to be that maybe, you know, the guys at Glastonbury were like, “well we can’t put them on a big stage, they’re not rock enough, they’re not big enough, they’re not getting played on radio”. And we did what we do and we smashed and everyone loved it and people couldn’t see it because they shut the field down. So you know, we’re just going round and not that we need to prove it any more, but we’re still kind of proving it in a way even though we’re coming up to our 20th anniversary. It’s quite sad. But I feel like that keeps the fire in our bellies, in a way. Like this dude doesn’t believe, he doesn’t understand our band, well let’s tell him, let’s show him. So Glastonbury was our chance to show what we can do.

Speaking of the bucket list – what’s still on there for you? Because I feel like you’ve done so much already…

There’s always people you wanna work with. I think on this album working with James Bay was amazing. I got friendly with him through playing football and he’s just a really nice guy. You know what, not a lot of people take you up on these offers, but James was super cool. He was like, “course I’ll write with you”. He understands our band. We’ve asked many other people but maybe they’ve not got time or it’s not right for them, I don’t know. So obviously there’s loads of people out there we’d like to collaborate with or do things with, and maybe there is time for that. But you can’t dwell on that too much.

I think playing Hyde Park would be another bucket list for me. Again that would be amazing. Wembley Stadium – dream big Danny! And I think cracking somewhere like.. ’cause going to Brazil is incredible and smashing it out there, but I think it would be great to have another country close to us. I think there’s talk of doing Spain maybe, because we’ve already got a fan base, so I think doing some festivals and smashing it in another country, even at this stage in our career, would be amazing.

You’ve mentioned the 20th anniversary coming up next year – have you got any plans for that yet?

No, we’re probably just gonna totally ignore it and concentrate on this album! [laughs] We’ll do a 25th anniversary. We kind of like, we don’t know about that yet, whether we need to just think about the timing of it. It might get in the way. ‘Cause you’ve gotta go with momentum, with writing as well. We’ve done a bit of nostalgia when we came back after our break, so is it time to do nostalgia again? I don’t know. We’re really focused on new music at the minute. Maybe it will end up being a 25 rather than a 20, I don’t know. So we’re just trying to work out where our heads are at, because you only get that momentum. If we were to do another album now and we’ve got this excitement of ‘Power To Play’ still smashing it, we’d wanna do that again. We don’t wanna go back to nostalgia. So it might have to wait, but we’ll see.

McFly’s latest single, ‘God Of Rock And Roll’, is out now on BMG. Their new album, ‘Power To Play’, is due for release on 9th June and available to pre-order now.

See McFly live in the UK later this year – for more information visit mcfly.com:

16th June – The Civic at The Halls, Wolverhampton
17th June – Pub In The Park 2023, Bath
1st July – Alderfest 2023, Whitchurch
6th July – Millennium Square, Leeds
7th July – Dreamland, Margate
8th July – Pub In The Park 2023, Tunbridge Wells
10th August – Lakefast 2023, Eastnor
11th August – Newmarket Racecourses, Suffolk
16th August – Trentham Live 2023, Staffordshire
24th August – Camper Calling 2023, Alcester
28th August – Vivary Park, Taunton
2nd September – Pub In The Park 2023, Chiswick
23rd October – Academy, Bristol
24th October – Academy, Bristol
25th October – Norwich UEA, Norwich
27th October – Alexandra Palace, London
28th October – BIC, Bournemouth
29th October – Guildhall, Southampton
31st October – Academy, Birmingham
1st November – Academy, Birmingham
4th November – Usher Hall, Edinburgh
5th November – City Hall, Newcastle
6th November – City Hall, Newcastle
8th November – Barrowlands, Glasgow
13th November – Academy, Leeds
16th November – Victoria Warehouse, Manchester
19th November – Victoria Warehouse, Manchester
20th November – Rock City, Nottingham
22nd November – Rock City, Nottingham