"Every show is different." "When the lights go down that's 30,000 people's lives colliding... for that one moment." "Everyone that's there working or watching is there for that moment" "It's when you're all kind of in agreement about what you're all doing at that time... so it's a wonderful feeling of togetherness and possibility" "Then I start getting real adrenaline... and start doing 'Rocky' shadow boxing and all that kind of stuff." "So I get as excited as anyone else" "And I still get that excitement when I go and see anyone else's concert." "I love that moment" "And then it's about trying to hold that energy for an hour and a half.." "because it can go if you're not careful" "Whilst it might not be perceived as cool to be really enthused by the fact that people show up to hear your music... we don't really give a f***, we really love that and it's exciting, you know ?" "It's exciting when you're 15 and you throw a party and people come... so imagine what it's like on a daily basis to have 20,000 people coming." "It's crazy!" "Ever since I was about 12, the sight of microphones... and dark venues and people plugging things in, it gets me really thrilled" "When I was at school, when we had a concert three months away... that would be the thing you'd just aim for and look forward to" "in the build-up to a concert I just get really excited" "I'm aware of everyone running around" "There's always a panic about something" "You know,the rain's coming down or..." "the wristbands aren't working... or Will's bench-pressed too much and his abs have burst" "I don't know what the problems might be" "Guy's just become too handsome to be lit properly... or Jonny's fingers have started moving too fast and he's gone play too many notes" "Whatever the problem is, I always enjoy watching it get solved before 9 pm" "Every show takes me a while to get ready" "It starts as soon as I wake up and... thinking about it" "Getting ready to go on stage and going on stage is like a complete release" "I think Bruce Springsteen says to the E Street Band... you know, tonight could be someone's first concert or someone's last concert... so we nicked that!" "Every night, before we go on stage..." "I think of the person in the top right-hand seat in the back of the room" "Like, what would they want to see ?" "So I forget about my own issues" "It's like you can flick a switch and just letting yourself go" "When people show up now it's just like you can just get out of your head and go into your heart... and it's an amazing feeling, it's like primal scream therapy, in a way" "It's just total abandon..." "and no one can stop you" "We're having the best time" "We're managed with this album to replace our natural English anxiety with gratitude meaning that we can really enjoy ourselves without feeling guilty about it" "which is kind of how some of us were raised to feel as our culture" "On this Mylo tour is been the first tour where we've really looked at people in the eye while we playing" "You look at each other and it's a great feeling" "You might never look at that person in the eyes again either in your life, so you have a real connection" "I probably get to look at maybe a thousand people a night" "Not many people get to do that I've never tried to explain it before" "It's like every time you look someone in the eyes you put a little thread between you so you can really connect with a lot of the audience" "You have to approach everything from the freshness that they bring into it" "So by the time you finish, you feel like you've got a sort of spider web of connection rather than a detached feeling which is what I used to sometimes feel" "Our favourite city in the world is Glastonbury Festival... which is a city made up of tents and cows and that doesn't exist for more than about three or four days a year.." "so when we wanted to launch the album we had to pick somewhere else that we loved... to do the album launch concert... so we chose somewhere we thought the audience would be realy vocal and fantastic... and that was Madrid- and it was a good choice." "I think the initial image we started with... for the Mylo Xyloto album... was a rose bursting through concrete" "That was the kind of starting point of the whole thing... was the splash of life and colour and passion... in a bleak, grey place" "Everything else kind of grew out that one image" "It feels like we're in the middle of the tour, right... smack bang in the middle" "We've done quite a lot of this..." "but there's still a lot more to go" "It just feels like something we've never really done this well before" "You know, it feels like we're ready to play stadiums now... which I don't think we've ever felt like before" "Stage-wise, we've got an artist called Paris... and a designer called Misty to help us paint absolutely everything" "We've got all the guitars, all the amps... these enormous hundred metre drapes that we've put over the back" "You know, the whole of the stage floor is painted" "Everything's just covered in luminous paint" "We wanted to take over the whole stadium and make it feel like it was ours" "A show like this is a big undertaking" "I think there's about 60 trucks on this tour, something like that" "Every gig is different, every crowd is different, every stadium's different" "We're playing the biggest gigs we've ever played" "We feel like we're doing it as well as we've ever done" "There's a really nice atmosphere on tour" "We're lucky that we've worked with loads of great people" "A lot of our background crew, which are the people who look after our amps... and guitars and drums and all of that stuff.." "have been with us pretty much since we started touring" "Some of them, you know, some of them twelve, thirteen years" "They're almost as much a part of the band as we are" "We always tour with a football and a cricket bat and a cricket ball" "We try and play football quite a lot usually against the crew and we occasionally knock a cricket ball around" "Will's got a ridiculous underarm spin bowl that he can do" "He's just unreadable" "One of his many talents!" "It really feels like a gang travelling the world it feels like a family... like kind of a circus family, I suppose" "and the ringmaster of that circus is Dave Holmes, our manager" "We can just play the music, really they make it look good and sound good" "I think there's about 70 or 80 people travelling" "You know, we get onto planes, we get into cars, we get on trains... we get on helicoptes, everything we've done it all" "Not rockets, actually, we've never done rockets" "We've played a few memorable venues on this tour" "We've played the Hollywood Bowl... and that was the first time we played there in eleven years or something like that" "We've done some small gigs on this tour as well" "We played in Dingwall's in Camden... and the last time we were in Paris we played the Cigale." "I think the Mylo tour has been the best tour we've done" "From a production point of view, from an organisational point of view... it's been brilliant" "We worked really hard from day one and Phil Harvey has been instrumental in it" "He's really steered the ship" "Phil Harvey is our fifth member" "He was our first and original manager" "He paid for us to record our first EP, he put on our first proper show in London" "He's one of us, he's the buffer between us and everything else... and he's a student of music -kind of- performance and production you know, he knows everything about the history of touring ... and the productions that people used" "he studies bands and where they go wrong, when was their hey-day,why was that... what was happening at that time that made them so great... what can you learn from... you know, knowing about the history of rock music" "He's had the casting vote in our prickliest decisions... and he's really the reason we've been getting better since 2005" "So on this tour we'll visit something like 24 or 25 different countries... playing 120, 125 shows" "We will have got a lot of air miles by the end of it" "For me, I guess there are moments... where I still get the hairs on the back of my neck thing... walking out up to the X stage, when you get to walk past people and see faces... because normally I'm sat right at the back and you can just see a sea in front of you" "When you're right up close it definitely sinks in a bit more... and that's a pretty amazing moment" "We come off stage while the fireworks are still going... we're in the car, driving to the airport" "So in a way it's a very rapid decompression" "And you're sat..." "Within 20 minutes you're sat on an aeroplane... and within two hours we're home" "And the difference between that and what we've just come from... this kind of noisy, loud, masses of energy situation... it's pretty strange, I often think about that" "sometimes if you go straight back after a show to a hotel... that is the weirdest, occasionally, if you're not feeling so good we just do a runner from the show and go straight into a hotel... and that is such a surreal feeling" "Literally half an hour between that mass exhilaration... to just being totally on your own in a hotel room - it's very strange" "A minute ago I was there and now I'm just sat in a hotel room all by myself... and tomorrow we'll do it all again" "The toughest bits are when you're away from home, from family" "Occasionally you get things like..." "I remember we were playing in Las Vegas... which is a very silly place at the best of times..." "I got a call saying that one of my kids was in hospital... and there I was in Las Vegas, you know And I just thought this is..." "There couldn't be a worse place to be when you know your kid is not very well" "So it's hard and anyone that travels has that kind of thing to deal with often" "We're not the first band to come across these problems by any means" "But, yeah,those moments and pretty tricky." "Glastobury is definitely one where we always feel very welcome" "There's no other festival like it in the world" "I think it'll be very difficult for any other festival to develop such a history... and such a strong feeling of loyalty... that the Glastonbury audience has" "It's got a very different, very special atmosphere there... that you can really feel as a performer on the stage" "I think it's a place that we'll always want to go back to" "People really sing along very loudly" "People singing along to our songs is one of the most important parts of the show" "Any kind of interaction is the most important part of the show rather than be this of dividing line between the band and the audience" "And what we've learned over the years is that... if there's this sense of community, if everyone can sing along and it doesn't feel like there's a big divide between the audience and the band... then everyone's going to have a better time" "I think everyone's part of the show" "You know, the way we've designed it... and all of these little tricks we've picked up and invented along the way" "It just makes for a..." "I think people walk away from the shows really happy that there's been these big sing-alongs and... you know, as cheesy as it sounds it's all about the communal spirit, really" "It's just an amazing feeling" "We always wanted to make the auidence feel part of the show" "Obviously the biggest new thing that we've done... is the wristband that everyone gets when they come in" "We saw the wristbands tested on a small group of people at a production rehearsal... and then we tried it an arena show" "We didn't have enough wristbands for everyone and they didn't all work properly... so it just took a little bit of honing and a little bit of adjustment... but then it was one of those situations where one night it just all worked... and the whole place just lit up with all of these multi-colloured flashing neon lights... and I think we were on stage just looking at each other" "We just couldn't believe that we'd managed to make this thing work" "We were building this idea of, like, it's about everyone... it's not just about us and the really fanatical people at the front... it's about getting everyone involved" "And so I think the wristband idea is just a progression of that thought" "You know, everyone can be a part of the show" "We can make every single person part of the lighting production... by having a little light on their wrist" "I suppose where it all stems from is people holding lighters up in the air" "I think it's a natural progression for the history of rock" "But, you know, to be able to incorporate things like that into the show... and to show people things which hadn't been done before is an incredible privilege" "I think my anticipation of 'Charlie Brown' in the show is definitely heightened because I know the wristbands are going to go off" "My anticipation of that song is very exciting... because I know that all those lights are going to start flashing... and for that reason... it's probably one of my favourite songs to perform at the moment" "We have an unbelievable job, we have an unbelievable crew... we have unbelievable families, we have really unbelievable fans" "And so our job as a band is to try and become unbelievably good... and we're trying our best" "I would love it if in 20 years..." "I'd look back on this and think that's where I feel we started to become really good... or it's the beginning of a good patch for us where we started to really be free... and not worried about the people that don't like us... but really grateful for the people that do... and trying to make colourful music that they like and we like... where it's just freedom of expression" "I see this tour is the last, kind of, shackles being thrown off... of being worried about what anyone thinks" "Through the course of Mylo Xyloto I'd say that as a band... we're functioning better than we ever have" "We've been through the break-ups and addictions... and arguments and financial disagreements... and Phil not being here for a bit... or bot working properly together in the studio... or falling out about which hours someone likes to work" "We're a very private band, we don't tell anyone very much" "We definitely don't tell anyone about all the darker side of things because we don't really believe in that rock 'n' roll cliche, myth thing" "We feel that everyone in the world... whether you work in a biscuit factory or the White House... there's thing's going on and struggles and issues... and just because you're in a band doesn't make that any more glamorous" "Do you see what I'm saying?" "So we don't tend to focus on the negatives... but of course, like everyone else, negatives come up... but we're really lucky that we've worked out how to deal with them... and help each other through them and come out the other side a bit stronger" "It's wonderful" "It's that chemistry that people are coming to see as much as anything else" "Because at the end of the day that's what makes a band special" "You're not prodigiously talented musicians, you're not virtuosos... but you have a chemistry that no one else in the world has" "So You don't f*** with it" "It's by learning to sort of pick each other up..." "I think it feeds back into the music and into the concert... in a really positive way" "Sometimes it's overwhelming... the fact that we're having the best time as a band this far in" "We've a lot of ideas about how to make the concert even better and get better songs... and at the moment there's kind of an understanding between the five of us... of how we each function and it's really amazing" "It's like when people who've been married for 70 years tell you..." "'Oh, you've just got to work really hard and it'll get better'" "You know, what does that mean?" "Now we're starting to kind of understand" "And every time we have a crisis we sort of tighten up again and move on... so in that sense we're so blessed to have a band... because it's always fixing itself" "Everything feels possible and it's really so exciting to go to work every day"