Neil Halstead - March 2009 Tour Dates

For staunch fans of his music in the early 1990s, Halstead's transformation might seem like treason. Slowdive, after all, were a fiercely alternative group of teenagers from Reading, and the only people in their school, to Halstead's knowledge, to know who the Smiths were. Thrown out of home at 16 by his father, he lived in a small flat behind a snooker hall and worked in a burger bar, finding escape in bands like My Bloody Valentine and Sonic Youth. After signing with Alan McGee, Slowdive's three EPs and three albums became underground classics, although the band were mocked mercilessly for being middle-class mopers, staring at their distortion pedals rather than engaging with the audience. Nicky Wire from the Manic Street Preachers famously said he hated Slowdive "more than Hitler", but only in recent years has shoegazing undergone a revival, and has Halstead's reputation been salvaged.

Halstead blames timing. "The criticism of bands like us was class-led, weirdly, perhaps because of what else was happening in music at the time. Grunge came about a few years after we started, which was blue-collar, and then the Mancunian thing with the Stone Roses, Happy Mondays was obviously working class." He shakes his head, tiny dots of Guinness sparkling in his moustache. "We went to a comprehensive! Middle-class bands in America were never knocked - it didn't happen to the Lemonheads or Dinosaur Jnr, bands I also loved. [The Guardian]