“Na na na na naa.” That was all I needed to hear... I was hooked. The Kaiser
Chiefs are the first band in a long time to capture my ear and attention right
from the first listen. Though I hate using the term “pop” due to it’s obvious
implications, “pop” is what they are and what they do well, proudly wearing
that badge, like the football team from where their name came.
The bottom line to me is – good music is good music, whatever the genre, and Nick Hodgson is a great
example of that. As a bandleader, composer, vocalist, multi-instrumentalist and drummer, he, along with
his best friends, is living the dream.

Drumhead: The days of just being a drummer are over and you are obviously much more than a drummer in this outfit. So, what do you have to say for yourself, how did all this come about? Nick Hodgson: Well the history of the band probably starts with the three of us going to school together. Me, Simon and Peanut [keyboards] all had drum lessons at the same time, for about three months. We all played different stuff, all played the guitar, all played the piano, I played flute, Simon played bass a little bit. So we all played stuff. Simon’s dad said he’d get him a drum kit, ‘cause his dad was in a band as well, which was really cool. His dad’s a guitarist, and was actually quite influential to us. I couldn’t even tune

a guitar and used to take mine over to his house to get tuned. So he had a drum kit in his loft, we all played the drums, that was about 1990, and then we kind of played “boys in bands” together in school, covers and all that. Then they [Simon and Peanut] went off to university, and I was in Leeds and had to find new people. Ricky and Whitey were those new people. So there were five of us, two came along, then they left, and then Simon and Peanut came back from university and joined the band again. We were called Ruston Parva. They came from a little village in North Yorkshire called Ruston Parva, I thought it was a good name for a band, but it’s not, not really.

DH: Well, often the band makes the name. NH: Yeah but sometimes it can really help it, a good name. And I found that out. Then we dropped Ruston and we were just called Parva, and we got a record deal with a little indie label. Then they split, and we were left unsigned. Then we tried to get a deal again for about a year and we couldn’t, we totally reached a dead end. We were playing old songs, we were playing songs that were six or seven years old, and it was getting us down, really. We’d had a little taste of the success, not success, but we’d had a taste of going on the road and putting out singles. We wanted to do that. We’d heard ourselves on the radio and we wanted to keep doing that, we didn’t want to get normal jobs. So we thought, we