Kasabian want the keys to the city. They'll start with a star each in the pavement, they tell Gemma Peplow, and work their way up. Right now, they're concentrating on June's momentous homecoming gig.
On Saturday, June 21, something big is going to happen in the city. Victoria Park, usually reserved for Sunday morning football, joggers and those making the drunken cut-through from Dos Hermanos to the Lansdowne on a Saturday night, will fill with tens of thousands of people – from Leicester and all over the country, possibly further afield – for a gig that will undoubtedly go down in our history books.
Kasabian are coming home and they're putting on one hell of a party to celebrate. The gig really will be momentous, not only because it's the huge Leicester show the band have wanted to do for ages, but also because, well, this sort of thing, a show of this scale; it just doesn't ever happen here, does it?
Apart from the summers of 2001 to 2003 – you remember, when the bosses at Radio 1 rather bizarrely but brilliantly chose Leicester for their annual One Big Sunday events, bringing the likes of Kylie, Posh Spice, Coldplay and 100,000 fans to the city (seems strange, now, doesn't it?) – we just don't see big shows here.
To make the announcement, the three Leicester-born and bred members of Kasabian, founders Tom Meighan, Serge Pizzorno and Chris Edwards, have arranged to meet More at a recording studio nestled away among flats and shops in Richmond, south-west London.
Here, they're putting some finishing touches to tracks for their fifth album; tracks that were started by songwriter and guitarist Serge in his studio back home. But that's all top secret at the minute, so it's off limits for now.
We're here to talk about the gig. And crisps.
Before we start things officially – Serge is finishing off an interview with Q magazine before ours – Tom makes cups of tea and switches on the TV, flicking through the channels in the hope of finding Jeremy Kyle on catch-up. Bingo.
"I love it, it's the reason I get up in the mornings," he announces to the room before settling back, pleased. Talk turns to the Kyle special he saw on Shane from Boyzone – "mental, it was" – and then to Leicester losing out on the City of Culture title to Hull.
Tom and Chris aren't too happy about that. After 10 minutes or so of Jezza, Serge is ready and the four of us head into the studio to discuss the Vicky Park show and all things Leicester.
"We've always wanted to do something really big in Leicester but the biggest venue is De Montfort Hall so we can only really play small gigs," says Serge. "I mean small, you know, in terms of the other places we play across the world.
"We've looked everywhere, we've been trying to do this for so long. We've been ringing farmers up and down Leicestershire asking whether they fancy putting a gig on.
"We tried for so long to do something at Leicester City and it'll happen one day, it has to. But the park, there's something special, it's kind of more about Leicester, the city. It's an amazing thing and we can't wait.
"The whole city will hear it – like when City score and you can hear it from all around."
Plus, with Tom living fairly nearby, it's pretty convenient.
"We can knock on Tom's door and it's a five-minute walk," says Chris. "Much better than all those plane journeys."
Serge says he wants to inspire young Leicester bands. "I used to live off London Road and I went to the One Big Sunday thing because it was only down the road for me at the time and I remember it was incredible the city could pull that many people together," he says.
"I remember Chris Martin was climbing all over the rigging, it was mental. We'd have just been figuring out how to do it then.
"It's so important to encourage young bands. For the next generation to come through and be like, 'that's the band that I got into music for'. If that's us then that's brilliant.
"There's not that many rock bands left any more. We've done our job if there's kids in the audience going, 'I want to do that – I want to be in a band for the rest of my life'."
At this point, Tom excuses himself to make another cup of tea, making sure he has asked everyone else if they want one. Ten minutes later, he's back out of his seat to take his coat off. He's always like this, say the others. He can't sit still. "He's like a whirlwind, isn't he?" says Chris.
The conversation continues but Tom's third attempt at staying put doesn't last long, either, and it turns out he's not feeling too well.
There's talk of food poisoning (no mention of a hangover, and he does genuinely look terrible, it should probably be noted – no offence, Tom), and eventually he makes a flurry of apologies before heading back to his hotel.
Before his departure, though, his thoughts on the Leicester show: "The last few gigs we played were vicious, so I can't imagine what it's going to be like doing this in Leicester, and with these new songs, as well. They're going to need an ambulance at the side of the stage."
Kasabian could have given the exclusive on the announcement to Radio 1 or NME or the like – it's that kind of gig – but Leicester Mercury readers heard it first, on the front page on Tuesday, November 26.
They wanted to give it to the Mercury, they say, they wanted it to be about people in Leicester. And, well, it's exciting to be on the front page of your local paper, isn't it, they say.
Really? When you've achieved what they have – platinum sales, number one albums, Brit, Q and NME awards, huge festival headline slots and sold-out gigs across the world and so on – it's hard to believe they find being on the front page of the Mercury exciting.
But, hey, we're happy to go with it.
Keeping it Leicester is important to them. The gig next year won't be the first time they've gone all out to do something special for fans here.
With the lack of an arena, they're always having to come up with innovative ways to ensure we don't miss out.
In 2009, around the release of their third album, the Mercury-nominated West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum, they organised for two bus-loads of Leicester fans to attend an exclusive gig in London. The following week, they played three back-to-back shows at De Montfort Hall.
In 2011, for fourth album Velociraptor!, it was a show in a hollowed-out Boeing 747 at Bruntingthorpe Proving Ground, near Lutterworth – you know, as you do – followed a few weeks later by a Radio 1 gig at the Leicester O2 Academy.
"That gig on the plane was really cool and I'm so glad that was in Leicestershire," says Chris. "We were so happy we could do that. It was a totally one-off thing, we'll probably never do anything like it again."
There is a real love and sense of pride for their hometown that they all share.
"The thing is, we never went straight down the M1," says Serge. "There's probably a handful of bands that stay where they're from. Everyone decamps to London and that's fair enough, I'm not knocking it, but we've all got families and Leicester will always be home.
"All we do all our lives is travel, every day when we're on tour. Do you know, when I was a kid I never thought I'd ever be like, 'God, I can't wait to get back to Leicester'. F*** that. But now, that's exactly what I'm like.
"We've all got kids now and their grandparents live in Leicester. There's no sight or monument in the world that we'd take our kids away from their families for. I can't imagine bringing up my boys without grandma and grandad down the road.
"Family is a huge factor." He pauses. "But also, you know; it's just f***ing real, isn't it? I mean, I love London, but it's not got Braggy Park, has it?"
Seeing the conditions in countries across the world makes them realise how good they've got it here, says Chris. "You realise England, and Leicester – they ain't that bad. And our mates are the kids we grew up with. They're like family. And like Serge says, I love London – to visit. I wouldn't want to live there."
It's the way we talk, me duck, as well, says Serge. "I love the accent, and the sense of humour. It keeps you real. I read a piece in the Mercury about how the Leicester accent is dying, and it really resonated with me because I just think that it can't die out, we can't let that happen.
"Seriously, it's a really important thing, retaining your identity. Especially as everywhere all looks the same now. The accent is kind of the last thing you keep that's yours, so it's important you keep it, whether it's good or bad.
"And, I can tell you, the Leicester accent is really exotic in Japan."
Seeing as we're talking accents and Leicesterisms, we should probably clear a few important things up. Riding on a bike as a passenger: croggy or backy?
Serge: "What? It's croggy, definitely, not a backy. No way."
Chris: "Yeah, definitely croggy. They say backy in Liverpool, but it's croggy all the way."
Next, an issue that has stirred up many a heated debate in the Mercury office – how do you shorten Sainsbury's: Sainos, Sainsos or Sainsbos?
Serge: "Sainos all the way, it's like, 'I'm going down Sainos'. Actually, to be honest, I'd not heard that one, but out of those three I'd say Sainos all the way."
Chris: "And it's a sausage cob, not a roll or a bap."
Serge: "Yeah, that really confuses people. But it's cob, isn't it? No question. And an okey... An ice cream is an okey."
That one's not on our radar, I confess. Chris hasn't heard of it either.
"Well, I think that's a proper old one. Oh, and it's chewy, not chuddy."
With that all nicely cleared up, the conversation moves on to their friendship, which began during their schooldays in Countesthorpe.
You only have to be in the same room as the three of them for five minutes to see they're very different people – Serge and Chris calm and measured, Tom easily distracted but excitable when you get him on a topic he's interested in – but that's why it works.
"Tom's an incredible human being," says Serge. "God, if we were all like him we wouldn't be doing this," says Chris. "Even if he wasn't ill, he'd still have been up and down as much. We need to all be different. I couldn't be a frontman."
Serge says their relationship is like a marriage. "I think about it a lot because we've known each other for years. Everyone brings a different element. What's bizarre, though, and what I've noticed from hanging around other bands a lot, is that we really do get on incredibly well. It's weird. The root of it being that we just always take the piss out of each other. It's the glue that keeps us together.
"I think, doing this, you either become as tight as you're going to get or you split. People say that when things go well you get hangers-on, but, if anything, our group has got smaller and smaller as we've gone on.
"It's just the inner sanctum now and it's very tight, it takes a lot for someone to get in. It's a bit of a cliche, and people say it a lot, but we really are a family. A weird family, a very dysfunctional family, but it seems to work."
Chris says it would be hard to play together in a band, spend all that time living in each other's pockets for weeks on end, if they didn't get on.
"I would say you're not really a band if you don't like each other," he says. "You can play music together but a band is like a band of brothers. We've known each other our whole lives. When we're at home, our family and mates are at work so who do I call? Tom or Serge. I think you need to be mates first and a band second and that's what keeps you going."
"And good," adds Serge. "You need to be good. Do you know what? We're not the best there is but we're better than most and we work hard, we give it everything we've got and that's it. That's why we're still here."
There's no greater feeling, they say, than walking out on stage to "thousands of people going insane in front of you, singing every word back", no matter how many times they've done it before. "It's why the Stones are still going," says Serge. "They've achieved everything they could possibly achieve but they still want to play gigs. They don't need to do it and that says it all to me. The addiction to that adrenaline buzz is as strong as anything there is, you can't beat it."
Their rider, unsurprisingly, is usually stocked with booze. Well, they're known for enjoying the odd late night or too, aren't they? So there's booze – Serge and Chris are self-proclaimed rum connoisseurs – and plenty of crisps. Walkers crisps, obviously.
"Come on, it's the only brand there is," says Serge.
Favourite flavour? Cue sharp intakes of breath.
"That's a big one," says Chris. "We actually talk about it quite a lot. I don't think there is just one best flavour. There are different flavours for different situations. If it's with a sandwich, I like cheese and onion."
"Gun to the head? Salt and vinegar," says Serge. "But I like them all. I'm even starting to get into prawn cocktail, which were down the list for me. We always get asked about crisps. Walkers should be sending us lorries full of 'em. We always get asked about pork pies and Red Leicester cheese, as well."
Well, I should probably throw the question in, then – where do Kasabian stand on pork pies and Red Leicester cheese?
Serge: "Love it."
Chris: "We've got a mate who moved to Spain and his mum sent him out four kilos of Red Leicester because he missed it so much."
Serge: "It's what Leicester's known for, isn't it? Pork pies, Walkers, Red Leicester cheese... Kasabian. Oh, and Daniel Lambert and the Elephant Man, don't forget them."
And Sam Bailey, now, I throw in tentatively; the band have been fairly vocal about not being fans of X Factor in the past. "I have to admit, I have caught it and she is the best singer out of them all, without a doubt," says Chris. "It's a weird one because I... actually... to put it politely, I'm not a huge fan of the programme or what it represents but for a Leicester girl to be doing it, well, I hope she wins it," says Serge. "People say she's sound, so go on, girl."
And as we'recovering all things Leicester then we should really discuss Richard III as well.
"Oh, God, leave him where he was found," says Serge. "I watched the programme on it, when he was found. That lady on it was amazing. It was a real moment in history for Leicester, and it went all over the world. I loved that programme.
"We've lost the City of Culture and if we lose the bones as well it'll be devastating. We'll have to do this gig to cheer everyone up.
"Do you know, I'm gutted about the City of Culture, because Leicester is brilliant – the Cultural Quarter is amazing now. And our kids are at an age where they would have been the ones to benefit. But unemployment is pretty bad in Hull so you've got to say it's great for them."
Chris says Hull needs it more. "And anyway, we're already the City of
Culture. We don't need the title to know that."
"Seriously, we are though, you know," says Serge. "It's such a diverse city; all cultures and walks of life. Jesus, man, listen to me. I could be running for mayor. Nah, I don't want that, but how do you get the keys to the city? We want those. We'll start with a star in the pavement each and work our way up."
Info: Kasabian play Victoria Park on Saturday, June 21, 2014. Tickets are on sale at De Montfort Hall – call 0116 233 3111 – or online at: www.ticketmaster.co.uk
![Kasabian on croggies, cobs and crisps - and their biggest gig yet in Victoria Park, Leicester]( "Kasabian on croggies, cobs and crisps - and their biggest gig yet in Victoria Park, Leicester")
