Royal Blood dream of headlining Brighton stadium

Royal Blood want to play a dream gig at Brighton & Hove Albion’s stadium.

The ‘Trouble’s Coming’ hitmakers – who formed in the southern English city – love to play hometown shows and drummer Ben Thatcher thinks taking to the stage at the American Express Community Stadium would be truly special as a fan of the football club.

He told The Argus: “The obvious one for me is The Amex. For the obvious reasons, it’s a big, big place.

“The beach would be like a fabulous thing that would be fun. With those places, there’s a lot of organisation that needs to go into those things and it can be very costly as well.

“Whereas you have the Brighton Centre which is set up already and is the biggest place around really.

“We love playing The Dome as well, which is one of my favourite venues to watch other bands. But want to get those extra fans in.”

Although Ben and his bandmate Mike Kerr will play at the Brighton Centre this month on their UK tour, it hasn’t always been smooth sailing for them.

The drummer recalled: “We really struggled to find places to play and ended up playing by just crashing open mic nights.

“One of our mates, Chris Simmons, puts on open mic nights all around the South Coast in Worthing and Brighton in particular.

“We just used to rock up with the drum kit and play a couple of songs. We played at the Black Lion Pub and got told to stop after two songs. It just wasn’t the place to play.”

The upcoming shows will be a triumphant moment for the duo – who released their third album ‘Typhoons’ earlier this year after working on it through much of lockdown – have been getting used to life out of lockdown and “preparing” for being back on stage.

Ben explained: “I’ve been going to the football, which has been great.

“Mike, because he’s got sober, he’s found a love for the water. So, loves going swimming or wakeboarding, that’s this thing.

“We’ve just been really preparing ourselves for the next season. Obviously, we haven’t played shows in two years, so a lot of rehearsing has gone into putting on the shows.”