Sam Fender: ‘I don’t want to cling on to the “class hero” thing’

Amid pop’s wave of bland, relatable boys with guitars, the North Shields musician offers spikier songs about faceless politicians and the pressures on young men. He discusses life in the north east, poverty, and fighting to be taken seriouslyThere isn’t a taxi driver in Newcastle who doesn’t have something to say about Sam Fender, local lad done good. There’s the one who confides, as if revealing an insider secret, that he’s “a nice kid, and a star for the future.” Another, who says: “We’ve got him, Ant and Dec and Cheryl Cole who feel proud to be geordie – not like Alan Shearer, he’s arrogant.” Everyone seems to have seen him play in the Low Lights Tavern, where the singer-songwriter fairytale goes that he was spotted by Ben Howard’s manager, scored a deal with Polydor Records, and then a lot more people were hearing about “boy racers tearing down the Beehive Road” (a line from his song Leave Town). They like that Fender hasn’t forgotten his roots.I’m hoofing it across town because tomorrow Fender is playing his biggest show yet, for 4,000 people at Tynemouth Castle, five minutes from where he lives with his mum in North Shields, half an hour outside the city centre on a cliff edge overlooking the sea. As Fender tells it, these majestic ruins are supposedly where Sting lost his virginity, but they will now also be known as the venue that the 25-year-old singer-songwriter sold out in just 40 minutes. Come the gig, hundreds more people who don’t have tickets snake around the bay with picnics and pints, watching from afar. He makes jokes about egging the local shop and calls out schools (Kings, the private one, gets the biggest boo). Continue reading…
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