While rehearsing in the studio, His Girls Friday looked quite relaxed and co-ordinated, there weren’t any quarrels, interruptions or discussions of any sorts, “When we started we wouldn’t have been able to jam before we played a song like we do now,” Nicky adds, “it takes a good year to really feel as a part of a group, you need to spend time together, play together, be around each other and gather enough experience, then you will start writing like a collective and you will sound like a band, rather than like a singer and a backing band.” “Nowadays, we just let all the chemistry that’s between us work for us,” Guru (who’s also a journalist and before coming to Great Britain from India worked with many Indian bands among the others Zebediah Plush and Thermal And A Quarter, not only as a drummer, but also as stage, sound and light designer) adds, “my approach as a drummer is to play very naturally, if I were given notes to read or tabs, I’d just bin them or probably use them to roll a joint! The confidence in my drumming technique comes with my experiences with other bands. We are lucky all of us in His Girl Friday have the same sort of ambition for the band. A lot of people think that the image you portray is the important thing, but I think music has to speak for itself.”

While food arrives we talk about the music industry and the music press, according to Nicky there are three levels in the business, “First, the mainstream entertainment industry, which isn’t music, but it’s entertainment and it’s manufactured,” he says, “the second level is the stuff that appears on the NME, it’s bands making music with an image which is still crafted, though it’s almost trying to fool people that it’s individual; then below that there is a much less lucrative business with bands making honest music they’re proud of. I think up until now, a lot of the music press has been dominated by the NME and by these big magazines, but with the Internet becoming so accessible, the independent fanzines are going to be more and more accessible and the music press won’t be dominated by a restricted bunch of people,” he concludes while Guru nods and adds, “Once there was this busker playing some brilliant tunes on a saxophone, I had my last quid for the bus, I gave it to the busker and walked home. I loved what he was playing, it just moved me so much. There are people out in the streets doing brilliant and honest music, who don’t really care if people are listening, they just play. That is what music is about. Music is not about wearing flashy clothes and jumping on stage. Music is about being yourself. Music magazines are very subjective. Certain mags move with people trends: The Darkness were on every single magazine last year, but now you don’t hear much about them. I remember I used to buy Rolling Stone magazine not to read it, but to cut out the pictures and stick them on my bedroom wall, since the photographs were really good quality. Perhaps many magazines will disappear in future and there will be an industry for toilet papers made with the music press!”

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