queen

Our Favourite Moments Of 2012

That’s right, people… it’s 2013. Not quite sure how that happened – we appear to be edging ever closer to the date in Back To The Future II, which doesn’t seem at all right, but there you go.

The Lightyears are looking forward to an exciting couple of months. We’re returning to the London stage on Saturday 9 February to headline at Westminster Reference Library, and before then we’ll be hitting the recording studio to lay down preview versions of some of the tracks we’ve been working on for the new album.

We’ll keep you posted on all that but, until then, feel free to avail yourself heartily of The Lightyears Favourite Moments Of 2012…

Chilling backstage with multiple Rogers
In October we larked off to Sweden to perform with Roger Daltrey from The Who and Queen drummer Roger Taylor. We spent most of the time buggering about on bikes and learned that people named Roger are always spiffing. Click here to read my Gothenburg Tour Diary.

Surprising some Cumbrian ramblers
As part of a new band initiative to get back to nature, 2012 saw us popping up in a number of al fresco gig destinations and shooting funny little acoustic videos. Here’s one of us on the banks of Lake Grasmere, shortly after we confused the absolute heck out of some local hiking types:

Nearly starting a fight with The Buzzcocks
In September, while we were on tour in France, one of my legendarily BRILLIANT jokes predictably backfired and I narrowly escaped fisticuffs with a punk legend. Read the story here.

Making acoustic music really quite sexy
Our first move in 2012 was to film and release a series of acoustic videos shot at the awesome Powder Keg Diplomacy in Clapham. These proved almost suspiciously popular in Turkey. Have a gander…

Releasing The Ultimate Lightyears Photo Album
Tired of having to recreate our precious band memories by scribing them into slates like Victorian schoolchildren, this year we decided to compile an archive of our craaaaaaziest international tour photos. Click here to take a look.

Coming perilously close to outshining Bolt at the Games
Back in the heady sporting summer of 2012, we wrote and performed an Olympic Anthem for the city of Peterborough. Here we are performing it with quite literally lots of humans.

Creating lasting world peace with our new app
A couple of months ago we made ourselves tiny enough to fit inside your phone. Apparently professional people call these apps; I call them Mini-Moving-Picture-Boxes. Click here to download your copy.

Queening it up at The Goring Jubilee
Roger Taylor’s all very well, but the shocking truth is that his band nicked their entire identity from this old rocker ALSO CALLED QUEEN. On 3 June we celebrated how many hats she has by playing a big, wet gig in Goring. It was epic.

Eclipsing the internet with Project LYs
In the summer we launched our multimedia micro-site Project Lightyears. The site proved so popular that it immediately broke Google. Don’t worry, there’s a bloke coming round to fix it.

Finishing the book that is fast becoming known as The New New Testament
I’ve been writing a book inspired by the international shenanigans of The Lightyears for some years now, and in 2012 I finished it. The spelling in it is excellent. And if you come to our gig on Saturday 9 February, you can hear me read from it. Here’s an excerpt:

Mercilessly rocking Cape Town
Cape Town welcomed us yet again with open arms at the beginning of the year, and we responded by first eating loads and loads of their delicious meat (not Tony) and then rocking their cocking socks off. Here’s a teeny tiny clip.

Happy New Year folks! And thanks to everyone who supported us in 2012 – it means a lot.

Chris, George, Tony & John
THE LIGHTYEARS

Sweden tour photos now online

Last week we jetted off to Gothenburg, Sweden, to perform with Roger Daltrey from The Who and Queen drummer Roger Taylor.

Aside from the catastrophic impact on our wallets of Gothenburg’s ‘nine quid for a pint of beer’ culture, the trip was a grand success. I’m in the process of documenting our adventures in a tour diary, but in the meantime, head to The Lightyears’ Facebook page where our Sweden tour photo album is now online.

“Nothing really matters…”

Today we awake to the news that Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody has been voted the nation’s favourite Number 1 single as part of an ITV series called, um… well, called The Nation’s Favourite Number 1 Single.

First off, let’s spare a thought for all those fans of The Ketchup Song, Shaddap You Face and most importantly Blazin’ Squad’s early Noughties smash-hit Crossroads who were let down by the decision. I’m sorry Flava, Frenzie, Tommy-B, Freek & the gang – you may rap like Reebok-clad angels but I’m afraid your falsetto skills fall woefully short of Freddie’s.

Secondly, this constant opinion polling is pretty bizarre. We all know how it’ll pan out – Del Boy falling through the bar is the funniest thing that’s ever happened, Star Wars is the greatest film of all time etc. So quite what the point is of yet another vote to decide that Clearly The Greatest Song Of All Time is indeed officially still The Greatest Song Of All Time does seem to have been lost somewhere in the haze. Still… people love countdowns, don’t they?

Anyhow, all that nonsense aside, Queen – we salute you. There will never be another band like Freddie, Brian, Roger and John.

Also, here in The Lightyears, we’re proud to be able to say that (along with Queen, obviously) we’re one of the few acts ever to have performed Bohemian Rhapsody at Wembley Stadium.

Mind you, we also once performed La Bamba at a jumble sale, so it’s swing and roundabouts.

Blitz spirit

This was the view from the crowd during our headline set at the Goring & Streatley Jubilee celebrations yesterday. What a night!

During set-up and soundcheck, fears were afoot that the incessant drizzle would keep people away but, as it turns out, the age-old stiff-upper-lip Blitz spirit kicked in and a huge crowd braved the weather for an awesome night of singing and dancing.

You can’t really close a queentessentially British Jubilee celebration without playing “Hey Jude”, so we did – and here’s a video shot from the crowd.

Oh, and the street party that preceded the concert – spanning the length of the villages’ twin bridges – has been getting press as the longest in the UK. Possible Guinness world record apparently…! Read more on the ITV website.

People of Goring & Streatley, thanks for being part of one of our highlights of 2012 so far. As homecoming gigs go, I can’t imagine one much better.

*image originally posted on Twitter by Debbie Walpole, @DWTBC

“Hello Wembley!!”

SATURDAY 12 SEPTEMBER, 9.30am (Wembley Stadium, London):
This is it.

The big one.

The motherload.

Wembley. Flipping. Stadium.

Today we are performing on the pitch at Wembley in front of an estimated crowd of around 45,000 people. Once we’re done, Britain’s Got Talent winners Diversity will take to the stage and, shortly afterwards, Saracens and Northampton Saints will kick off what is likely to be one of this season’s best-attended rugby union matches.

So no pressure then.

On entering the mighty bowels of the UK’s most iconic venue, we are led through what turns out to be the least impressive part of the new Wembley. The catacombs underneath the stands have the unmistakable aura of an NCP car-park and are an unassuming epilogue to the moment at which you emerge from the tunnel onto the famous pitch and cannot help but gawp at the spectacular, looming grandeur of this 90,000-capacity stadium. The sun is shining intensely, the pitch is immaculate and there is an unmistakable feeling of nervous anticipation in the air. We all stand pitch-side, humbled by the experience, exchanging silent eye contact. This is the biggest thing we’ve ever done.

11.15am:
After sound-checking to an entirely empty stadium (which, take it from me, is a bizarre experience), we head inside to get changed into our carefully-chosen performance threads.

Tony heads straight for the van. “We can get changed in the van guys – I’ve put up curtains and everything”.

Now, in this band, we’ve always felt it’s very important to keep our feet on the ground, even when success of stadium-sized proportions beckons. I can’t help but feel that this, however, is taking that philosophy a little far. Plus there’s no way that Dave Grohl would express pride in curtains. Ever.

“Tony, mate… we’re playing Wembley Stadium. We’ve got a dressing room. You don’t have to get changed in a Transit.”

Tony looks almost crestfallen. His home-made curtains have been spurned. He’s a man of simple pleasures (quiche, cricket on the telly, Radio 4, vegetarian scotch eggs) and I think that being given a dressing room that a couple of days ago may well have been occupied by the England football team is perhaps just a bit too fancy for him.

Indeed, when we’re shown to our dressing room, the contrast is enormous. You could fit thirty enormous rugby players in here and still have room for twenty crates of London Pride. Which I suppose is the point. We scatter our belongings around the room in an attempt to claim it as our own, take a few pictures of ourselves sitting beneath clothes hooks pretending to be sportsmen and generally do our best to keep our minds occupied in the nail-biting hours leading up to the band’s most high profile performance yet.

1.25pm:
We’re standing pitch-side waiting to go onstage. Wembley is filling up and we have a healthy contingent of Lightyears fans filling up Block 105 in the north-east corner of the stadium. There is something undeniably surreal about this whole experience. Are we really about to play Wembley?!

We’ve planned a set of upbeat, crowd-pleasing covers designed to kick the event off with a bang. The organisers want a party atmosphere and it’s our job to make sure the party starts as it means to go on. As the MC announces our performance and a huge picture of us appears on the stadium’s two big screens, I nod at George. This is definitely happening. We step up onstage, there’s a roar from the crowd, and we launch into our opening number, The Fratellis’ “Chelsea Dagger”.

In a move to keep the set fresh and interesting, we’ve choreographed a few instrument changes and I’m starting the gig on guitar, leaving George free to perform the lead vocals. We’ve never done this before so it’s a bit of an experiment, but I have to admit I’m loving it. I look across at Tony, who has the world’s biggest grin on his face, and mouth the phrase “We’re playing Wembley!”. He beams back at me. It’s pay-day.

Saracens have billed today’s match as a “Family Day Out” and so there’s an incredibly wide age-range in attendance. The crowd respond very warmly to our set and we’ve been careful to include a wide variety of tunes so that there’s something for everyone – Jackson Five, Abba, Kings Of Leon, Queen and so on. During “Mamma Mia” I whip out my vintage 1980s Roland AX-1 (or “keytar”, for those who aren’t fluent in keyboard-speak – which is basically anybody who can claim to possess even a shred of self-respect). This is essentially a keyboard shaped like a guitar that enables frustrated prima donnas such as myself to get out from behind the piano and strut about at the front of the stage with all the other posers. In theory the keytar is just about the most kitsch instrument in music, and as a result I really shouldn’t have been allowed to use it in combination with an Abba song. Too late now, however. In truth I just wanted to count myself amongst the presumably very select group of musicians who can say they’ve played a keytar at Wembley. Keep your eyes peeled for the Facebook group. 😉

After a short break, we return to the stage armed with around 80 pom-pom waving cheerleaders. I’ve been looking forward to this part. This is where we perform our version of The Beatles’ “Twist & Shout” whilst The Sensations and The Mini-Sensations (Saracens’ very own cheerleading groups) shake their thang pitch-side. It’s quite a spectacle, believe me. We follow this with our closing number, “500 Miles”, accompanied by world-renowned Crowd Conductor Steve Barnett, bedecked in bright red coattails and a top hat.

As the song is drawing to a close and it falls to me to address the crowd one last time, a cheeky impulse overcomes me. Normally this is the point in the set where you say “Thanks for having us, have a great day, enjoy the camel racing etc” but I can’t help but feel that that’s a little bit predictable. Plus this is after all a sporting occasion and I know how much sports fans love a little bit of gentle mickey-taking. So, instead, I say this: “Ladies & Gentlemen, would the owner of a green and yellow Northampton Saints team coach please make their way to the front desk. Your vehicle is double-parked.”

I was rather pleased with that.

2.30pm
As we stand pitch-side and watch Diversity wow the crowd with their second dance-number, I look around at the guys and find myself experiencing a heartwarming “Happy Days” moment. We’ve worked really hard to get here. Here’s hoping it won’t be too long before we back…

Chris Lightyear