McFly Biography

"If you don’t play there’s no music. If there’s no music they don’t dance. If they don’t dance they don’t kiss. And if they don’t kiss, they don’t fall in love"; Marty McFly, 1955 .

Building on the phenomenal success of debut single ‘Five Colours In Her Hair’, which spent two weeks at Number One this spring, McFly are gearing up to unleash their second smash, ‘Obviously’, followed two weeks later by an album which teems with love, loss, frustration and a humorous songwriting spark that has already set McFly head and shoulders above the majority of the pop pack.

As at home on the stage as they already are on thousands of bedroom walls, McFly are here to stay. Danny Jones (guitar/vocals), Tom Fletcher (guitar/vocals), Dougie Poynter (bass, vocals) and Harry Judd (drums) make a sound utterly unlike anyone else in the current pop landscape with a brilliant array of influences, from the fire and fury of Bill Haley’s comets to the more recent homely twang of The Coral, mixed up with a little bit of everything in between and served up in perfectly formed, brilliantly-observed McFly-shaped packages.

With a name inspired by the hotel room Tom and Danny first shared together when they started the band, ‘Room On The Third Floor’ is bursting with tunes. You’ll already know tracks one and two - ‘Five Colours…’ and ‘Obviously’ - but get ready for hits-to-be like ‘That Girl’ (with the memorable line "We spoke for hours, she took off my trousers"), ’Room On The 3rd Floor’ and ’Hypnotised’. The album even contains a song called ‘Broccoli’ - and let’s face it, not many bands can make a similar boast.

Some of the album’s tracks, like the anthemic ‘Saturday Night’ and the rousing, singalong-a-Liam Gallagher title song, were debuted by the band earlier this spring when they played to a quarter of a million fans as the main support on Busted’s sold out A Ticket For Everyone tour. "We enjoy being on stage so much," Tom gushes. "One thing that separates us from a lot of pop bands is that we can just walk into a room, pick up some instruments and bang out one of our songs."

Being in McFly, each member will tell you, is less about the haircuts and more about getting up on stage, and with their own tour pencilled in for the end of the year, McFly will be taking their live experience to plenty more fans before the year’s out. It’ll also give everyone another chance to become acquainted with the four distinct personalities that make McFly what they are.

Harrow boy Tom Fletcher grew up listening to bands like the The Beatles and The Beach Boys, and finds a fascinating charm in 60s music. "I've always loved the fact that there's a really unique quality to sixties music," he grins. "Everything from the chord progressions to the melodies themselves - and they still sound amazing today." These days the 18-year-old slots CDs by acts like The Thrills in among those older discs and if you’ve heard Busted’s second album you’ll already be familiar with Tom’s work - many of the tracks were co-written by Tom with the rest of Busted, just as James from Busted has lent his own hand to many of McFly’s own tunes. Tom loves Katie Holmes and hates bananas.

17-year-old Danny Jones is the band joker. He was born in Bolton's Royal Infirmary and went to a school whose brown uniform earned its pupils a rather unpleasant, and unprintable, nickname! He loves The Who, The Beatles and Bruce Springsteen as well as blues legend John Lee Hooker, and is an obsessive fan of live music. In today's pop scene Danny is perhaps unique in his support of Bolton Wanders (though he's pretty nifty with his own feet) and he admits that life back home often has a bit of a Phoenix Nights vibe going on. The rest of the band are constantly amused by Danny's insistence that anyone with any sort of accent is automatically from Bolton. He recently claimed this was true of an Italian tourist.

Dougie Poynter is McFly’s youngest member. He grew up in the historic Essex town of Corringham, some parts of which date back to Saxon times. Dougie’s own history doesn’t go back quite so far - he was only 15 when he joined McFly. Now 16, he loves clothes ("at least, I prefer them to being naked2), and lists bands like New Found Glory and Blink-182 among his favourites. Tom describes Dougie as "one of the most quirky people I've ever met. He comes across as being quiet and shy when you first meet him - but you soon find out what he’s really like!" One of Dougie’s particular habits, the rest of the band will tell you, is to pepper everyday occurrences with his own sound effects. Adds Danny: "He never complains and he never gets angry. Mind you, he does have the smelliest feet in the world."

Cricket-mad Harry Judd is 17. He has lived in Essex (which is, he claims, "pure quality") all his life, and was educated at posh school Uppingham. "He's so determined," says Danny. "But he’s a really good friend. He’s the one we can all turn to for advice, and he’s got lots of common sense." Adds Tom: "Harry can be brutally honest at times - but you know he'll always give it to you straight. We wouldn't want him any other way." Harry's first record was Oasis' '(What's The Story) Morning Glory' - and his favourite bands include Dashboard Confessional and Led Zeppelin.

Put all four boys together and you get an overnight success, right? Well, not quite. McFly’s final member only joined the band last August, and the McFly story dates right back to 2001 when Tom saw an advertisement in NME. A band were almost complete, but needed one final member. Tom fancied his chances. He got down to the final two but when the final place in that band - Busted - went to some guy called Charlie, Tom began his own deal with Busted’s managers’ own production label, and McFly was born. Tom stayed in touch with James and the pair started writing together - the name McFly came from Tom and James’ shared love of 80s teenflick Back To The Future. The arrival of Danny as Tom’s own writing partner cemented McFly and before long things began to pick up pace , with the boys playing their songs for label bosses all around London.

The final step for McFly was to find the band’s remaining members, again through adverts in the NME. The auditions threw up Harry and Dougie - who was so nervous that he literally threw up minutes before his audition - and finally McFly were complete. (The band still have that NME ad framed on the wall of their shared north London home: for Tom and Danny it was the first time their band had been in print, for Dougie and Harry it was their doorway to McFlydom.)

Within weeks the boys were holed up in north London rehearsal studios, polishing their songs and refining their live show, before finally being unveiled on CD:UK with their first TV performance of ‘Five Colours In Her Hair’.

A massive Number One, a brilliant debut album and thousands of new fans later, McFly are flying. (edit)

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