Matty Healy has said he would perform in both Israel and Palestine despite ongoing political unrest between the two states.
The 1975 frontman said in an interview with NME that “it’s more my job than anybody’s to go places like this” where he could play to fans who didn’t feel represented by their own governments.
When asked if he had reservations about putting on gigs in places that are so opposed to his own ideologies, he answered: “No, because there are definitely people here that the victim of those oppressive ideas, and I’m not a diplomat or a politician.
“It’s like the Palestine/Israel thing – I would go and play both places. Not because I’m taking a side but because there are young people there who are not representative of the government, and I believe that in countries that may be war-torn or separated due to political ideologies, the only thing that unifies people is culture and art,” he said.
Healy went on to say that he finds it “sad” that fans in Dubai – many of which are teenage girls – couldn’t make a show that his band were playing recently. “I’ve been meeting so many kids walking around and I’m like, ‘Are you coming to the show?’ And they’re like, ‘Oh, I can’t, my dad would not allow me, or my religion doesn’t allow it,’ and all that kind of thing,” he said.
“So that’s sad because I think that art is for everybody. But I understand that I’m quite a – I don’t know what I am – an outspoken… bisexual… I don’t know, whatever I am. So they’re probably not really into my vibe over here, the dads.”
The 1975 played a triumphant headline set at Reading festival on Friday (August 23), wrote NME’s Thomas Smith, which he lauded as a “zeitgeist-seizing moment” from “Britain’s biggest band”.
The Manchester band played new unreleased music from their upcoming fourth album ‘Notes On A Conditional Form’. Additionally, they performed ‘People’, the first single from the album.