in the court of the king

Emma Marx-Hall: We went into intensive recording sessions for the second album. This time it wasn't just Alan who was missing sleep. Marque wanted us to have the second album out by early March, and so we spent all of January writing and recording songs.

Alan Léonin: We were all corresponding with fans throughout the entire recording process. We realized that the only way to combat people trying to leak our new music was to let them in on the process as much as possible, so there wasn't any jealousy. We sent rough drafts of lyrics to the fanzines. We premiered our songs in small, practically spontaneous performances, and even though they were hardly publicized at all, people showed up.

Lane Kennedy: Alan and Emma went on television to promote the album quite often. Our album was expanding on the concept of the video for "Infamy", in which we made ourselves appear as if we were in a royal court. I did not direct it, (laugh) but I was perfectly happy with the way it turned out. So the TV spots would just be one of them dressed up like royalty and holding a poster while "Infamy" played in the background. The posters would say something on one side, sometimes a quote—they had John Lennon's "living is easy with eyes closed" on one—sometimes one of their own statements, like "new world disorder" or "we are built of love and loss". And then on the other side it would say "KNAVE OF HEARTS — IN THE COURT OF THE KING" which was the title of the album of course.

Tom Thorogood: When the album finally went out, things went really mad. We had promotional posters all round the city, and record shops had loads of people at the door in the morning on the day the album went out.

The most surreal thing happened to me—the most surreal thing to happen thus far, I should say, about a week after it was released. I was at the supermarket when a girl came up to me and said, "Pardon, but did I see your face printed out ten feet tall in a bus shelter?"

Emily Alexander: We all held our breath as the weekly chart went out.

Straight to number two.

And a week later, we were second to none.

Alan Léonin: I went, holy shit, and I phoned up my mum and dad.

Emma Marx-Hall: In a way, I knew it would happen, as soon as we signed to Marque. They've made so many acts big. I think we weren't even completely surprised. In a way we weren't. We would have been really disappointed if we hadn't made a number one to be quite honest. Although the fact that it was the albums chart—that was big, you know? We thought we might be doomed to be a singles band forever, even though we were so into the lyrics, and having a message, which is something that you really need an album for.

Tom Thorogood: The first thing I did was bought Stephanie an engagement ring. True story.

Emily Alexander: I was the busiest I had ever been in my life. I was getting phone calls from venues all around the world. We had to hire a booking agent to deal with it all. She went right to work, and the next thing you knew, we had a tour planned where we'd hit venues twice the size of the ones on the first tour, anywhere from England to France to Germany, Russia, Poland, Japan. I had no idea what was happening. I was hardly even prepared. Just thinking about it was giving me vicarious stage fright. I would lie on my bed with Bach playing and a cold compress over my eyes.

Emma Marx-Hall: So in April we all stood round a candle and held hands and kept saying it until we believed it: we're going on tour for two months. We're. Going. On. Tour. For. Two. Months. How was I going to keep up with coursework? I was going to be living in a Knave bubble for two entire months. Frankly I was a bit scared.

Alan Léonin: I said, this is the most terrifying thing ever to happen in my life, and if I start to go mad and run through the streets naked shouting Bible verses, would the rest of the band please tie me down and get me committed?

Tom Thorogood: I was spending my entire days practicing drumming. At that point I wasn't doing any other work than being in Knave—I didn't need to. It was one of the happiest times in my relationship with Steph. We were having nice dinners and getting to know each other's families well.

Lane Kennedy: I think I was the only one not scared of the tour.

There was some nasty business going on in my group of friends yet again, and I took it as my excuse to back away.

George Thompson (executive, Marque Records): Knave of Hearts were a very different sort of group than my usual bands, to be sure. They were young, they were students, they had an insane work ethic, they were turning out songs all by themselves. I actually feel like Emily Alexander really took care of much of what is usually my job. She has quite a large amount of marketing skill. My main duty was making sure albums continued to be printed, and sending promotional materials out around the world. We were releasing singles in Japan with extra tracks, as you do. That period of time, around the In the Court of the King release, was perhaps the best period of my career.

Naomi Fried: The first stop on the tour was in central London, in a converted theatre, and Rivka and I attended, with my boyfriend at the time. She was all decked out in Knave of Hearts garb, in her homemade T-shirt and her animal prints and glitter. It was maybe one of the most insane experiences of my life. The place was packed. Rivka begged me to take her over early, and I thought she was being a bit ridiculous, but people were lined up three, four hours before the show, exchanging their magazines and talking. My boyfriend and I went to a café and when we got back Rivka was speaking to a group of girls and boys like they were all old friends, and I guess it was people she'd communicated with over the Internet.

Theresa Hawk: The London show on the Court tour was brilliant. All the really hardcore fans got there early.

Interviewer: Did you speak to any of the really well known fanzine writers?

Theresa Hawk: Oh, sure! Loads of them had submitted photos and writings to my website. Like, Davina and Evelyn from ANTI EVERYTHING, Alice from Damaged Goods, Rivka Starlett from Scars & Stripes, Patrick from Death to the Franchise, I don't even remember. Some of them came quite a long way to be there.

It was...an innocent age, you could say. Or, like, that tour was the end of our innocence. We leant against the wall all day listening to the sound check, and at one point Lane stepped out for a fag break and we all went mad, she had these two bouncers from the club come out because I think she was nervous that people were going to hurt her. After a few minutes she did talk to us a bit, and signed our things and shook hands. Her hands were so soft. It was...oh, it was so cool. Oh my God, just remembering it is making me so happy.

The sun went down and we all got in and went down the front. The opening band was weirdly an American band called Kiss Me Deadly, who were all very androgynous, pretty boys and one girl on drums who it turns out had been huge fans of Knave and the band had contacted them out of the blue or something. For the last song this blonde girl came out and played guitar and the lead singer of Kiss Me Deadly snogged her so I thought she was his girlfriend but then someone grabbed my arm and went, "That's Emily Alexander!" So it was Emily, Knave's manager, and it turns out she plays guitar really well. It was great.

Emma Marx-Hall: Through a weird chain of mutual friendships, we had got a band in from the US called Kiss Me Deadly to open for us for most of the tour. They were incredible. They were just as affectionate as we were. Emily was trying to warn them that we were free with hugs and the lead singer—boy called Angel—said "works for me" and plopped himself in my lap. I was in heaven, a bit. I think I bollocksed up the soundcheck a little bit because I spent so much of it snogging with Angel and Danny, the bassist. (giggle) Sometimes one at a time, sometimes both at once.

Alan Léonin: I felt like the physical, literal barrier between band and audience was in some ways a figurative barrier as well, and I was doing my best to lessen that effect. So we would let the fans sing along with the choruses of our songs, and at one part I saw this girl who clearly knew all the words to all the songs, and I told the bouncers to let her up on the stage for a minute.

Lane Kennedy: I had shaken her hand outside when I went out to smoke during soundcheck. She was smallish, with light hair and dark eyes. She had done her makeup brilliantly, but it was running by the time she got up to the stage. It made her look a little otherworldly, I suppose.

Alan Léonin: I had her introduce herself. She said her name was Rivka, and she was from St. Albans.

She was shaking and I put my arm around her. We let her sing "Maximum Opium" with us and then carefully let her back down into the crowd.

Tom Thorogood: I was a bit nervous that people would be rude to her or jealous or something, but instead they all just swarmed around her and were asking her questions. Just in case, I counted us in to "Madam Molly" and everyone got distracted and started bouncing around and singing along. Afterward, people came to get their albums or their shirts or magazines signed, or get photos. Some of them stayed around even after they'd spoken to us, just to socialize with one another, and Emma said, well all right, let's all go back to the Marque offices, and let about fifteen kids onto the bus.

Naomi Fried: Rivka and I had to leave even though she'd been invited back to the label office with the band. I talked to her gently and she came back with me, still giddy that she'd been called onto the stage and had that Alan Léonin's arm around her. All the way back in the car with me and Benjamin, that's all she would talk about. It was really sweet.

Theresa Hawk: The Marque Records office was this huge building with all marble and stone inside and fancy tables with hors d'oeuvres set up for the band and the management team. It was so exciting. We all sat around and talked, the fans and the band, and had food and drinks, and I think Emma kissed every single person in the room—I remember that, her hopping into people's laps at random and kissing them on the lips, she smelled so strongly of red wine and by the end of it Emily Alexander basically had to drag her away, but even so she ended up with those two blokes from Kiss Me Deadly. Lucky girl, I know! (laugh) Or lucky guys, I'm not quite sure. Anyway, it was really fun, just like everyone was friends, talking and joking around. Davina's boyfriend showed up, and he was actually an old friend of the band because he ran Fury Records! One guy was...really lucky, because he went away with Alan.

Lane Kennedy: That's when things started to get a bit tense.

Emily Alexander: I was worried about Alan, and I really didn't want it to be a repeat of the show at Wire. Lane was assuring me that it was okay, but I was still pacing and nervous. I didn't have enough words to get us through another sleepless night.

Davina Thewsley: It was...a bit bad. I hadn't seen Spencer for a while, and I'd thought it was mutual that we didn't want to see each other, really, anymore. And I had brought my friend Collin from Scotland who I was starting to have a bit of a thing with, and Spencer asked about Collin and I told him, and he got really upset and walked off, and then Evelyn got a bit upset as well. She said she hadn't known about me and Collin, and that she felt I'd betrayed her, and she refused to get back on the bus with me and Collin to go back to our hotel, and she said she'd find somewhere else to stay that evening and I said fine.

Spencer Harris: It hurt. I felt like my friends, the kids who used to sit on my lap in the back of cabs and who each had a special ring on their phones for me, were rejecting me, and the girl I loved was on their side. Davina was amazing, so intelligent, so attractive and mature—and I was what, chopped liver apparently, after that. I'd always thought she was too good for me, now apparently she thought so too. And she was dating some Scottish pretty-boy. I guess maybe I'd only been wanted because I was, ooh, the label exec, and now I was nothing. Now I was just an old friend.

Theresa Hawk: I was getting nervous, and I left with two other fans who were there, James and Laurie. The three of us had spoken before and since my mum didn't mind, James and Laurie just crashed at my house. We were a little stressed at first, but ultimately we decided the party was mostly safe, and there were no illegal drugs, so we hadn't really lost any respect for the band.

Laurie Martin (student): What I got out of that night was a kiss on the cheek from Alan and the band's signatures in my notebook, and some new friends. It wasn't such a big deal really.

Emily Alexander: This time, it was just me waiting up in the Marque headquarters to see if Alan came back. It was almost frightening, just me in this huge marble hall, pacing and trying to distract myself. Eventually Alan comes back, looks at me like, what the hell am I doing?

Alan Léonin: She was just standing there in the hall like I'd misbehaved or something.

Emily Alexander: I asked him if he was okay and he laughed at me and said I was being ridiculous, and asked me to call a cab. I did, and I thought he was going to be really emotional after that, but he didn't, he just said he thought they'd put on a great show, and he was expecting great things for the tour. I was more than a little upset that he'd made me wait in the empty hall for forty-five fucking minutes without knowing if he was going to come out a complete wreck or what, but I kept it to myself, swallowed my pride, decided I'd let the band be rock stars for tonight and give them a talking to later. Which...never happened.

Emma Marx-Hall: Oooh, best night of my life. Maybe. I do remember that when we left for Cambridge the next morning we were all exhausted and sleeping on top of each other in the bus, like a big pile of kittens.

George Thompson: I was extremely pleased, personally. I didn't mind having the kids party at the Marque offices. In fact, as I said to Emily Alexander at the time, I thought it was great for marketing. Knave of Hearts: the band that talks to their fans! If people knew about this, they'd be more likely to come to shows, hoping to meet the band in person.

Antonia Sharpe: It created a new breed of Knave of Hearts fan—savvy with tour schedules and knowing just what sorts of letters to write and which fanzines to send in poems to, knowing obsessive details about the band, what they liked to eat and drink and wear, so they could shower the band members with gifts and try to make their way into that elusive backstage arena. And for what? I don't believe it was a sexual thing, though groupiedom definitely had its part. It was largely just bragging rights, I think; you know, you can go home and tell your friends you had a drink with Knave of Hearts! Or perhaps it was something more, perhaps it was a desire to connect with Emma, Alan, Lane, and Tom on a personal level, perhaps it was that thought that since the lyrics meant so much to you and seemed to describe the way you were feeling, that the band would feel the same connection to you and want to be your friend.

Davina Thewsley: After that night in London, Evelyn and I made up. But it wasn't to be the same for us after that. We talked a long time the next morning and came to the conclusion that the band had moved on in a sense. They had new friends, we had new friends, they weren't our friends, they were just a band we really liked. I said to her, it's important to me that we keep meeting people from the fanzine community, since we basically promised we would. And we already had this whole network established of people whose houses we could stay at and that sort of thing.

Interviewer: Do you feel like she blamed you at all for your friendship with the band dissolving?

Davina Thewsley: Oof! Talk about a loaded question! I feel like—no, I'm not even going to say anything to that. (laugh)

Naomi Fried: Rivka was following the tour very closely from at home. I remember in particular she was always on the phone with these two girls who were literally attending every show on the tour.

Davina Thewsley: Rivka Starlett? Sorry, Fried, I guess? Yeah, we exchanged phone numbers; she volunteered to get the tour reports from us so she could put them on her website. We didn't have internet access a lot of the time so she was basically just posting our blog entries for us. I didn't really know her personally, or know much about her, she was just someone who was posting our blog entries, yeah. I do understand that it gave her quite a big name in the fan community, because here her website was the place to go to get set lists and learn about all the different amusing things that took place at the shows.

Emily Alexander (reading aloud from a Scars and Stripes blog entry): The crowd at Cambridge, amazingly, is at least the size of the London crowd. University students make up the majority, but rather than simply being curious, they know exactly what band they're seeing — if one couldn't tell otherwise, from the 'glam casual' party dresses, tight jeans, and glitter makeup, the homemade 'Madame Molly' and 'Dead Rock Star' T-shirts should clear up any doubts.

Highlights include Angel Hawkins of Kiss Me Deadly asking "who here has the biggest cock? Raise your hand", Emma's rather impressive scissor kicks, Alan dedicating "Reinventing" to an old friend of Lane's present in the audience "Hello Dan Smythe, Lane wants you to know she always thought you were too smart for your own good, now you're at Cambridge Uni and you'll probably never get laid again", Tom bringing up an audience member to play his crash cymbal in "Don't Please Me"...

Tom Thorogood: No one expected I'd be the one to call someone up on stage, but Emma had said to me in the morning that when I left early in London to spend some time with Stephanie before I fucked off to tour the world, some fans had passed on messages and gifts for me. I realized I should probably pay a bit more attention to the fans.

Emily Alexander: Cambridge was actually really sweet, at the end, because after staying around and talking to the fans for a while we all went to a restaurant and sat in a booth and had pizza. I feel like we sort of descended upon Cambridge like weird insects. We were in this greasy spoon in our glitter eyeshadow and Emma in her huge dress that she had to keep adjusting, and a little tiara. We stayed there all night, and it reminded me quite a bit of the times when we were touring just to promote the band, and it was just us.

Natalie Leonard: Alice had to head back to London after Cambridge, but I decided to stay on for a few shows. I felt like a sort of liaison between the fans and the band. I was spending a lot of time with the fans, but I was actually staying in the band's hotel room.

Alan Léonin: The entourage was much bigger now, now that the roadies were there with us. Kevin, sound engineer. Helena, lighting designer. Will, electrical engineer and 'bloke who helps us lug around all our amps and heavy shit'. Rhiannon, tour manager. George Thompson from Marque was there for a lot of the stops in Britain. My cousin Natalie was the traveling street team this time around, since the Scottish girls weren't going to be part of the entourage. That was good for me, since even though I really did feel like I owed Evelyn the favor after having a really bad experience with her after the show at Wire, it had been a rather tense situation. And I felt like Spencer had been spending more money and time on Davina than on us, which left a bad taste in my mouth. Natalie was completely different.

Emily Alexander: Natalie took me aside one day, while we were in Birmingham, and said she wanted to speak to me in private. Since in some ways I was sort of the voice of reason in the group, and I think people were coming to me to mediate conflicts where they had once gone to Spencer, I figured something had gone wrong and there was an argument. Especially because Natalie hardly ever talked to me and I thought maybe she didn't like me for some reason. Nope. The deal was, Natalie wanted to tell me, and she was quite emotional, that my band had saved her life.

Natalie Leonard: You should know that I'd been trembling in fear about telling Emily for ages. Every day I would consider saying something to her, and lose my nerve. But I knew I had to eventually.

I told her that Nevermore was the first thing in my life that really had meaning, and that they made me understand I wasn't really alone in the world. I told her that after I tried to kill myself, listening to their music in hospital made me want to pick up and keep going.

Emily Alexander: When she said she'd tried to kill herself, I felt a little sick. I mean, it's not like there was really a 'Cult of Tristain Wilder', not to the degree that people tried to imitate what he did, but there were people who just...who took it a little too seriously, I think.