things started to change

Lane Kennedy: I wasn't meant to be in the band—be in any band. I was doing design at uni. I was living with mates and shit went down, as they say. So I moved in with someone in my degree program—his name is Paul, we still keep in touch actually.

I met a very shy boy in my second year. He was in his first year and he had come to the art studio to do sketching. At first I thought he was doing an arts degree as well but he said Anthropology and Sociology, so I thought, oh, that's different. I don't know why I kept talking to him because it seemed like he was trying to tell me to piss off. He always had his hair over his eyes—you can see it in the early photos, how his one eye is always covered! (laugh) And he didn't talk much. You know I didn't either. We just chatted a bit, and we'd go and draw things or he'd write.

Emma Marx-Hall: I met Alan at a film showing. Loads of kids on the grass and an Alfred Hitchcock film. My friends didn't want to see it with me so I just started talking to the kid next to me. I suppose I thought he was attractive at first. (laugh) I mean, you can see he's cute. He's got that brilliant short bob haircut, and he wore all black and white, and his hair was dyed black back then—he didn't stop dyeing it until he got lazy on one of our first tours. So I started talking to him, and realized almost immediately that I could never want to be his girlfriend in my life—he's way too shy—but we seemed to have a lot in common. I kept asking him to go to shows with me and he did, so we were seeing a lot of each other.

Alan Léonin: One day I finally confronted her and said, look, Emma, this thing isn't happening. What thing, she said. Us, I said. And she looked like she was going to cry and I told her that I thought we made good friends but I wasn't interested in a relationship, and then she started laughing and said she never wanted a romantic relationship in the first place. So that's how we've always been.

Emma Marx-Hall: I used to introduce him as my brother from time to time, just to fuck with people.

Alan Léonin: We used to say we were siblings, and then kiss each other on the lips to watch people's reactions. I think it's easier to be comfortable with someone like that when there are no expectations.

Emma Marx-Hall: It was from talking to Lane that I found out Alan was a poet. Alan wouldn't let me read his poetry, until one night when we were sitting on my floor and sharing some wine.

Alan Léonin: It just happened that I'd written something I was really proud of that day, and I was kind of amazed by Emma's persistence in asking me to show her my poetry so I thought I might as well do it. It was a bit of social commentary, about institutionalized sexism and things along that line.

Emma Marx-Hall: I was floored. He was so talented, and clearly so nervous about it. I didn't say anything, and of course he came out with the sardonic smile and "you hated it, didn't you".

"No, Alan," I said quite deliberately. "This is amazing. I don't know how you'd feel about using this piece in that way, but I was wondering if when I did get around to starting that band, if you'd like to do some of the lyrics."

Alan Léonin: She'd wanted to be in a band for a while, something that I was beginning to grasp was more than idle fantasy and actually the beginnings of a plan. I mean, I'm not intending to be insulting, but just as often as she said "when I get a band together" she would say "when I'm queen of the world". But that's Emma for you. The more I got to know her, the more I started to see past her tendency to weave dreams and fiction, and realize underneath it all there was actually a pragmatist, a compromiser, someone who was building a solid foundation upon which to live.

When she asked me if I wanted to be her band's lyricist, I nearly laughed her off. But perhaps the wine was speaking to me louder than my insecurity, and instead I said I might like that.

Emma Marx-Hall: We became a pair. I felt a bit bad for Lane, but she was beginning to find her feet in her world again, where people were her age and all that. Either way, Alan and I had connected. We spent days and nights in each other's rooms, collaborating on lyrics. Alan wasn't much of a musician, but I always told him that was okay because Richey Edwards couldn't play guitar to save his life and look what an iconic figure he's become! That would actually be the first of many times for people to make that comparison, and I do see the parallels. Anyhow, I would sing and play my guitar—Betty, my old Fender, the one with 'hate me' written on in lipstick—and we were just so arrogant about the whole thing, that we decided to start a band at once.

Alan bought a cheap bass from someone else at the university and we—oh Lord, this is so embarrassing to talk about now, but we taped drum beats from other records and from the most obvious places, YouTube videos, samples from computer programs, and we'd play them on a stereo underneath our guitar and bass. Actually it turned out that Alan does have musical talent, in that he's quite good at singing harmony, so we were really feeling very cocky when we came out of those practice sessions. So we started handing out CD's and promoting ourselves, and my mates had us play at a few parties, with various drummers who never seemed to stay on for more than one show.

Alan Léonin: It wasn't until after the disaster that was our fourth live performance that Lane started talking about joining the band. Before that, the band had always been mine and Emma's thing, and Lane had wanted to stay out of it to a degree, probably to some extent because she didn't have much musical background, and I was already playing the 'easy' instrument.

Lane Kennedy: I had never wanted to be a rebel. I was a good girl. Something stirred inside me the night of the Another Dead-End Street show. Part of it was concern for Alan, because I didn't like seeing him get the way he got that night. But part of it was actually this sort of excitement. Because to a certain extent, what they did was always something I had wanted bands to do. They had made everyone in a room feel at the same time. Even if that feeling was the strange mix of anger, pity, and fear that even I was feeling, despite the fact that Alan is someone I dearly love.

Alan Léonin: I actually had no issues with relinquishing the bass up to her. I mean, Emma'd already made the Manic Street Preachers comparison, so now I was going all proper Richey Edwards with the rhythm guitar parts composed entirely of fail. Lane actually became dedicated to the bass, and that was when I felt that things were really coming together.

Tom Thorogood: I started playing for the band when they were recording their demo CDs in the studio, and I did shows with them thinking, why the hell not? They'd already gained quite a reputation for cursing out their audience and shorting the equipment when they were just the opening act, and now people wanted us to play at punk clubs. I was having fun getting dressed up; I would usually buy a suit from a charity shop and Emma would wear a party dress, whilst Alan and Lane would just come onstage in whatever they were wearing during the day. We didn't look punk at all, I don't think, nor did we sound punk—I mean, what punk band has guitar solos, prolonged drum intros, and for God's sake, vocal harmonies?

Interviewer: Green Day? (laugh)

Tom Thorogood: No, Green Day don't count, fuck off.

Anyway, er, we didn't mind playing punk clubs because they basically just wanted to see us get drunk and be a bit wild. Which Emma has always been good at. Alan tempered himself a bit, because apparently the whole 'incident' had just been stage fright gone wrong, but Emma was really excited about getting paid to misbehave. She brought in a can of paint one day and was throwing handfuls into the audience, and got into a sort of play-fight, rolling around on the stage in bright green paint with a punk girl and boy while the other three of us just played on and Alan took over vocal duties. I had showed him a bit of guitar so he wasn't having such a bad time of it.

Emma Marx-Hall: We also used to do shows in my room. We'd just play to whoever showed up, and leave when someone said we were being too noisy, which only happened when people were crammed into the door because we soundproofed the room. I think Tom learnt to do it when he was a child. So eventually it got to a point where we were quite well-known at our uni and in the general area, and we had finished up the demos and decided to start sending them to people from bands we liked.

Emily Alexander: It's not the usual way to go about it. When I was in Nevermore, we did something even stupider, which was that we just went around playing concerts in hopes that someone would notice us. Eventually I found out that the best way to promote your band is by sending demos to independent labels. But you know Knave always had to dream big. They apparently sent a tape to David Bowie, and one to Elton John.

Alan Léonin (reading from Knave of Hearts' letter to Elton John): We're told that you were never considered a true glam rock musician. Rather than thinking that's a damn shame, we've decided to send you our demo tape because we're bored with the truth. Contained herein are forty-two minutes and twenty-three seconds of pretty, pretty lies. But be warned, some of them might actually turn out to be true in the end.

Tom Thorogood: I helped write that one. What the hell were we thinking?

Lane Kennedy: As we were waiting for the letter we were sure was to come from a major record label, we continued to take matters into our own hands. We played in public garages and in the street until the police showed up. Actually sometimes we didn't even play, we demonstrated.

ºEmma Marx-Hall (recorded 1 May 2007, at Marble Arch): You only buy because it makes you feel better! You read the Daily Mail because it makes you forget! The more we sensationalize the lives of others, the more we sanitize our own lives! You're repainting a wall that's rotting out! Your choice is to be a part or to live apart—choose pain, choose anxiety, choose ideas! Speak up! Play guitar!

Lane Kennedy: I think to a certain extent we were just trying to make people dislike us as much as possible. Emma was also handing out photocopies of pages from the Communist Manifesto at that time, as well as bits of de Sade, Ginsberg....Salinger with all the rude words highlighted...censorship is her specialty so she was always interested in art that was shocking. She did a lot of coursework on it, and I think to a certain extent it had consumed her at that time. Consumed all of us.