Interviews

Josh Franceschi - You Me At Six 'Married To The Music For Better Or For Worse'

Walladmin

Heavy Metal Wordsmith

Oct 17, 2024

7 min read

In February of this year, we were met with the devastating news that British rockers You Me At Six would be calling it quits.

The announcement came with a worldwide farewell tour, The Final Nights Of Six, which kicked off in Dallas, Texas on October 9^th, and will be finishing up at London’s famous Wembley Arena in April of 2025. Thankfully, included on the tour is Australia, with the five piece hitting our shores in January.

I’ve been lucky enough to chat to frontman Josh Franceschi three times now, and this final talk with him will forever be a highlight of my journalism career.

I can’t believe that this is the third time we’ve talked, and also the last. I’m not going to lie, I definitely cried when I saw the announcement, as I’m sure a lot of other people did too.

Oh no, I’m sorry! Hopefully not, I don’t like the thought of making people sad. For me it’s more of a celebration of what we’ve done over the last 20 years, but I can understand people being upset. The notion of not having something you care about around anymore can be unsettling, but I guess the ultimate kind of goal of this run of touring, and why we’re doing what we’re doing now is that we don’t find ourselves in a position where we’re no longer committed or at our best.

What we think is really important is making sure people who spend their hard earned money on our records, or our live shows, I never want them to get us just phoning it in, and I think 20 years is kind of a good place for us to leave it in a sense of we’ve achieved everything we wanted to achieve and we’ve been afforded a beautiful life and been able to travel and meet loads of incredible people and have loads of wonderful moments together.

But it gets to a crossroads at some point of ‘is this what we all really really really want?’ and if it’s not, then we have a duty of care to make sure, as I said, that we’re not just turning up because we can, it should be because we really want to.

When you and I last spoke it was just after the release of Truth Decay, and you actually said to me then that you were adamant that SUCKAPUNCH was going to be your last album, and then you told me that you kept going because Max (Helyer, rhythm guitar) asked you to.

On SUCKAPUNCH yeah very much so, and I think the band has acted as a crutch, I think, for all of us at different times, and you know with everything, there’s periods of time where you go through something and you are really really focused and in love with what you do, and other times you feel a little bit jaded and a bit like everything’s Groundhog Day.

I think at the time of SUCKAPUNCH we were all going through a lot of things personally and there was a lot of change, and then I think we all maybe, I don’t want to say begrudged, I think that’s ultimately why we went to Thailand (to record the record) to try and really shake it up and make it a life experience vs let's go and make a record. [Going] to Thailand was to try and reinvigorate, and I’ve said that public-facing before, I still stand by them in terms of there’s been times where I’ve not been really sure what the point is, or if I’ve got anything left that’s interesting to say.

I think sometimes a part of you has to die for you to reach a new level, you have to kind of shed your skin or whatever. I think SUCKAPUNCH is kind of that record, and I call it a bit of a car crash record in terms of it sounds like 10, 12 different bands on the same album and I don’t think it gives it any sort of continuity and [questions] is it us or not. Truth Decay was kind of us all realising that we love what we’ve done over the last few decades, but there’s a certain version of us that we all affiliate to and so it was about reclaiming that. I think that’s why some people pick up on the fact that Truth Decay sounds like an old school You Me At Six record kind of brought into 2024 or whatever it is. It is 2024, right?

[We shared a laugh here while we discussed what year it was, with Josh continuing.]

I feel like ultimately Truth Decay is a really nice book ending to the band, because it feels like a band that went round a lot of different routes but they kind of almost ended it exactly where they started it in a way. If you want to romanticise it, I guess that’s a way of putting it together.

So, aside from catching up on a LOT of sleep after touring for 6 months straight, what’s your plan when that final show is finished?

I think we’re doing two Wembley’s now which is just kind of obscene, and ultimately totally encapsulates You Me At Six perfectly, like the biggest thing we’ve ever done is the last thing we ever do. It’s our sign off and easily the pinnacle of what we’ve done in our career.

Actually, I think that everything all over the world has gone up a level, which I think that’s the thing is that we just accept, we’ve never been in the biggest band in the world, but for some people we’ve been their favourite band and I think that group of people have kind of defined and carved our career out for us, so that’s really special. As for after, there’s a lot of real life stuff happening, a bunch of us are getting married, a bunch of us are moving countries, and that’s gonna be really interesting to see all of that play out and have the time to do it. There’s like 3 Stag Do’s (Bachelor Parties) in the space of 6 weeks so RIP our livers!

We have a line in one of our songs (‘Bite My Tongue’) ‘Married to the music for better or for worse’, this band has been a marriage and it’s been all encompassing, all energy, all focus, and almost every Christmas I’ve looked at my diary and had a whole year planned out, and so another year goes by like that, and that’s really wonderful to have that structure and those milestones or those goals to be there and be achieved, but it’s kind of interesting and it can be daunting not having that on the horizon.

I’ve been working on a bunch of things that I’m hoping to come to fruition at the end of the year or next year at some point. I think the main thing for us is to really really enjoy and immerse ourselves in this for the duration of what’s available because it will go very very quickly. Before we know it, we’ll be in Australia, and before we know it we’ll be on a plane and leaving Australia. I don’t want to worry too much about what’s happening in months, years to come, I want to worry about what’s directly in front of me and just enjoy it because it’s a really cool time. The rest will come, I think.

You touched on it a little bit before, but I wanted to ask, when you were growing up and playing music did you ever think that you’d be not just playing, but selling out Wembley Arena?

I think what’s been really interesting is, the only thing I knew for sure (or that I challenged myself when I was younger) was I put on my MySpace account when I was 15 ‘by the time I’m twenty, this band is gonna headline Brixton;’ that’s all my bio was. Then we did that in 2010 when I was 19 and I was like ‘We fuckin’ smashed that, that’s class, I’m 19 and I’ve done the only thing I dreamt of doing'.

As we’ve grown, we’ve moved the goalpost simultaneously and in conjunction with that. It’s really hard to be sure of yourself when you’ve gone through bad moments with something. I think there was some trepidation between our ranks and within the band and our camp generally, and I don’t think our promoter was particularly sure we were going to do the numbers we ended up doing. I predicted that some people might have gone away over the years, or moved on, and they’ve come back or they’ve always been there, and I think there will be a huge turnout when people see this.

I think we sold 50,000 tickets in the first day, and lo and behold everything was sold out, and our team had to scramble to put a whole new tour in front of the tour which is fucking class, but also a bit of a pain in the ass routing wise. They came to us and said 'You can do another Brixton and do two Brixton’s and a Wembley or you can do another Wembley' and we were like 'Well, we’ll never get a chance at this again so we might as well be brave and have that experience of being in Wembley back to back nights'. It’s way more exciting because we’ve never done that, we never thought we’d ever do that, now’s the time to enjoy it.

Honestly it will be very special, I feel like even when the whole tour got announced it felt a bit like an out of body experience, like I was watching this band do this thing and forgetting I was in it, if that make sense? I keep trying to visualise it all while I go for my runs to start battling the emotional side, because I want to really perform at a high level and I know if I’m just thinking ‘this is the end’ the whole time I’m not going to enjoy it. So I’m trying to prepare myself mentally to just revel in it and it’s gonna be mad for sure, it’s gonna be really really mad.

Speaking of the Australian leg of the tour, you’ve basically picked the best time to come. The weather at the end of January should be nice.

Yes! The last couple of times in Australia the weather has never been awful for us comparatively. I think it’s the first time in a long time we’ve come in your summer. Last time was July or something, and the time before that was September or May, so I don’t think we’ve done an Australian Summer tour since Paramore and Twenty One Pilots like, ten years ago. So I’m looking forward to getting a tan!

I think Australia will be tough, it was the first time in my life that I wasn’t performing or travelling and it being in England when I felt like I was at home coming to Australia and it’s always felt like that.

I feel like fans of music can feel it from an artist when they say they love going there, or when they buy into the culture or the jokes and they become an honorary resident while they’re there. I feel our fans have always known that Australia means an immense amount to us. I can’t wait until we come back.

We’ll we’re really excited to have you back, and I’m glad that you guys are making it out to Perth as well because everyone seems to forget Western Australia when they tour.

It was really important to us, especially after the last time that we came out. We made a real point of saying 'no, we want to play Perth and go there'. Originally these last shows were going to just be Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne I was like ‘I’m not going all the way to Australia to play 3 gigs, when I know there’s tonnes of people that it will mean a lot to them if we go there and play their city'. It was important to us and if it was up to me, we’d be in Australia for 3 weeks travelling everywhere, but unfortunately not, but it’s still going to be mint.

We can’t wait to have you back in Australia and I really look forward to seeing you!

Thank you so much for your time today!

Interview by Kelsey Trevan

Catch You Me At Six on their final Australian tour in January.
Tickets here.