John Bradley-West (AKA Sam Tarly from Game of Thrones) is currently hanging out at Reading Festival. As you can imagine, he’s very popular. Rather than bother him with questions about, thrones, dragons and the flying speed of unladen crows, we figure we’d talk to him about music. It is The Best afterall.
Hey John, when did you get here and who have you seen?
“I got here yesterday afternoon. I didn’t manage to see anybody except Eminem yesterday, which is pretty exciting all the same. If you were going to see one person yesterday, you’d see Eminem. I’m not familiar enough with his entire back catalogue to be familiar with every single song he played but I thought the energy was amazing. The fact that he put most of his more familiar songs to a casual listener to one ten minute medley was kinda frustrating but his energy and his performance, power and charisma are pretty much unparalleled with anything I’ve seen for a long time. I was very impressed.”
And what about today?
“Liam Gallagher today. I managed to see Oasis once before they broke up and now I try and see Noel and Liam separately wherever they play. I’m still hankering for a reunion though.
“Because Liam’s album isn’t out yet, it’s going to be interesting to hear some of that new material live and I hope that he does a few Oasis numbers as well. I’ve seen Noel do some Oasis songs and there’s a difference between hearing songs performed by the man who wrote them, and hearing them sung by the man who performed them. It’s going to be nice hearing Liam do Oasis songs again.”
Are you a festival veteran?
“I’ve only been to Reading twice, this year and two years ago. They’re the only festivals I’ve been to and they’ve been amazing. I love a gig but festivals aren’t really something I’ve broken the back of yet, but every time I come I love it.”
Is it annoying being constantly stopped by fans while you’re here?
“People are really lovely. People don’t want a lot. People just want a thirty-second chat and a photograph, that’s it. If you’ve got a problem with that, that it’s kinda the wrong game to be in. Especially with the show being on at the moment, people are thinking about it more and have it at the forefront of their minds. They just want to tell you how much they like it, and that’s really flattering.”
What music are you listening to at the moment?
“The new The War On Drugs album came out on Friday and I’ve had that on a loop. I love them. I’ve only just got into them in the last couple of years and if you go through their back catalogue, there are so many songs that leap out. There are no duff tracks on their albums, all the melodies are so intricate, the orchestration of all those songs have always got so much crafts and thought into them. He’s a genius and we’re going to see them live, me and my girlfriend. We’re going to do back to back gigs. Blondie on the Saturday, War On Drugs on the Sunday. What a weekend that’s going to be.
“I’m also discovering a lot of older, original fifties rock ‘n’ roll at the moment. I’m really into Little Richard. You get people over the past fifty years, who’ve tried to shock and try to introduce that punk energy and danger into music. I think Little Richard did it better than anybody. His vocals are outrageous and he still, after fifty years, comes blasting out of speakers like nothing else. There’s something about preserving energy in songs. Certain songs do it. Some of those fifties rock ‘n’ roll tunes do it, the early The Beatles stuff did it and the first wave of punk did it. They’re songs that still don’t sound boring and that still sound exciting, and yet a song that came out 18 months ago can already sound really boring. It’s about preserving that energy of youth, and I love that.”
Ed Sheeran, Of Monsters & Men and Sigur Ros have all popped up in Game of Thrones. If you could have anyone swing by and film a cameo, who’d it be?
I’d love to get AC/DC’s Angus Young in. I’d love to get him in as some sort of archmaester. The archmaester of high voltage rock ‘n’ roll.