“@Marmozets I didn’t realise I was in the presence of greatness… Just listened to your stuff. Fuck me, you’re ace. Until next time. x”
And with those 140 characters or less, tweeted at 12:53 PM on 30 June this year by one of the 21st century’s biggest music stars, Robbie Williams (yes, that Robbie Williams) launched one of the most unlikely alliances between pop and rock in many years. Almost immediately Marmozets were trending on Twitter and those in the know could only look on in bewilderment. Marmozets and the man Oasis’ Noel Gallagher famously described as “the fat dancer from Take That”? How did that happen?
“It was mental!” laughs frontwoman Becca Macintyre today when asked about one of 2015’s most WTF moments. “We were doing this gig and it was loads of different acts from all over the place, Ellie Goulding was there too. But we kept hearing ‘Robbie Williams is gonna be here! Robbie’s on his way down!’ and we were like ‘Oh okay’. We played and didn’t really think anything of it, then backstage we just saw him hanging around, lots of people were obviously doing that whole ‘There’s Robbie… DON’T LOOK!’ sort of thing. But Sam (Macintyre, Marmozets guitarist) just went up to him, he’s mental my brother! He doesn’t care, he just went up and said ‘Alright Robbie!’ and away they went. They got on like a house on fire!”
And it’s obvious that The Robster took a shine to the Yorkshire punks, because the next thing they knew he turned up in their dressing room.
He just walked in,” Becca laughs. “We were like ‘Er… hello again’. I think he liked us because we were a bit cheeky with him. We had been drinking quite a bit and we started doing what we called ‘Robbie Roulette’, we said we were going to put his greatest hits on and whatever song came up on shuffle we had to get those lyrics tattooed on us. He loved that… I don’t think he realised we were taking the piss a bit! Ha ha!”
At this point Becca is convinced that Williams didn’t even know they were in a band.
“He didn’t know who we were,” she says. “No definitely not! I just think he thought that we were a nice bunch of kids and then after he left he found out we were in a band and decided to listen to us and… well, he obviously liked what he heard.”
That simple? Is this really no cynical record label sales tactic?
“No!” shouts Becca. “I know that certain celebrities do tweet at certain times about certain things as part of a push or whatever. But I don’t think he was doing that. I just think he heard us and liked it. We were really surprised by the whole thing, and really grateful too. Obviously. When it all happened people were looking around at us and wondering what we had done, but it took us by surprise just as much as anyone.”
No kidding! Who’d have thought it? Maybe he does just want to rock (DJ) after all!
