Existential Boozer: A Proustian pint with Felix White
There’s something about The Maccabees, Far Out Magazine, and a good British pub. For this is the second consecutive summer we’ve met with the band’s guitarist, Felix White, in one of our great institutions.
Whereas last time we spoke about their triumphant return that culminated in the summer of 2024 with their Park Stage Glastonbury set and their self-curated day at All Points East, this time around was a little bit more existential. Felix White had returned to his chameleon-like career that has flirted between writer and broadcaster, and is now armed with a new book, all about football.
So, of course, the Existential Boozer was the perfect place to deliberate on ‘the beautiful game’, along with musings of blues guitarists and what their occupation truly meant for the world. It was a diverse conversation that only Marcel Proust’s questionnaire could have truly conjured up, while White delivered answers that only his brain could respond with. Heartfelt one minute, hilarious the next, he proved that once again he’s not one of our modern-day cultural treasures, but a man worth sharing any pint with.
In the back corner of The Ivy House in Peckham, we got into it and launched from a rather unique standpoint: the jealousy of a teenage superstar. Oh, Mr Proust, I apologise for what we have let society become.
What is your idea of perfect happiness?
“I’m 41 now, and I think I would have answered that question for decades. I would have said perfect happiness was on stage. But I think you do get to an age where you start to understand yourself a little bit better and, I do think there’s a part of me that sort of mistook, intensity for intimacy or happiness a lot of the time because, being on stage, I did have moments when I was young, feeling like time slows down and everything was where it was supposed to be.
“I would always have this thing in my head because one of my anxieties in life is always feeling there’s a better place, there’s somewhere else I should be, where I would be doing better, or I’m not quite achieving the thing. And there’s like, some other alternative life where I’m achieving more.
“I would feel a bit frantic, but on stage, that would always be the place when that slows down, and it just felt like that’s where I was supposed to be. But I’ve come to understand in time that that’s almost like a drug, like adrenaline, you know, that’s just like the relief of a hit of something, and then you have to deal with the comedown of it as well. So I do feel really happy on stage. But part of that is to do with ego and being in the middle of something and all of that kind of thing, as well. So I don’t know if it’s as pure as I sort of remembered it, really.”
What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
“I don’t know if I deplore myself, but people who know me well would say that I could be like a martyr. Like, ‘Don’t worry about me!’ that kind of thing”.
Any specific scenarios that come to mind?
“I think for a long time, like, I feel it’d be very, very, very unnatural for me to get angry about anything, or I’d find it hard to even know what I was angry about. And so sometimes that turns into a bit of a monitoring of like, ‘Who’s got the issue and how do we police it so they’re not angry?’ So that obviously sort of served me when I was young, for whatever reason. But now it kind of turns into a bit of a control. It can be a bit controlling.
“I will say one at the moment that I’m really noticing his jealousy. Social media, man. It’s so bad, and I’m so addicted to Instagram, like we all are. So I’m constantly receiving that I’m not doing well enough on social media, but it’s got so bad, have you heard of Max Dowman?”
Yeah, 16 years old.
“Yeah, so he scored that goal against Everton. So he’s 16 for people who don’t know, and the ball breaks free, at like the last minute, and the goalkeeper has come up for the corner, so he’s just got a run in on goal. Well, it’s obvious he’s going to be the youngest ever goalscorer in the Premier League or something. And as he’s running through on goal and I just acknowledge to myself that I don’t want him to score.”
What is your greatest extravagance?
“Greatest extravagance is Deliverooing coffee and sleeping in the afternoon. I can sometimes Deliveroo coffee”.
That’s crossing the line a little bit. That’s bad, especially if you live in London. You’re probably what, a two-minute walk from a coffee?
“That’s bad”.
Yeah, I think Max Darwin probably walks for his coffee.
“No, he’s Deliverooing coffee, he’s got the world at his feet”.
What is your current state of mind?
“I feel good at the moment. I feel jealous of Max Dowman. Happy to be alive, working out what’s next”.
Which talent would you most like to have?
“I really wish I had, but I just don’t, is songwriters that are them and a guitar, like Bob Dylan, just the classic songwriter that has been able to. Orlando from The Maccabees has it. A skill where they’re just able to play a song, just you and a song, and it just be like, unbelievable. I think because I knew so much about music, I found it really hard to make music like that, and let it flow and not critique myself, not criticise myself, and be like that’s not as good as Blood On The Tracks or whatever.
“But since in my life of writing, broadcasting, whatever it is on TV, presenting, those voices aren’t in my head as much, so I’ve been freer just to like, commit to it. And so I feel like I’ve found a way to communicate or to do that thing in the way I wished I could have done. So I think I can play guitar and always learn new things, but that singer/songwriter ability, yeah, I wish I had that, but I don’t really, sadly.”
If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
“Probably my jealousy of Max Dowman, that I feel would be the most embarrassing moment in my 41 years and admitting that, on camera”.
What do you consider your greatest achievement?
“I think being able to do a number of things, and be able to communicate in a number of ways. I would have always said The Maccabees and the music we made. But I feel like surviving and doing more and realising that I can do so many different things, and putting bits of my personality into all of them. It all feeds into each other.
“I think if The Maccabees hadn’t broken up when The Maccabees did, I would never have known that about myself. I’ve always just felt like being a guitar player in a band, and that sort of feels, without disrespect to anyone, like a bit of a two-dimensional existence now when I look back on it. So yeah, surviving and excelling in other things.”
If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be?
“I’m really getting into the history of guitar music, because of a radio show I’m doing in May, where we’re trying to go into the whole history of global guitar. So I really got into sort of 1920s blues guitar riffs and all kinds of things. So someone like Big Bill Broonzy, these guys, back in those days.
“There was no sort of transportation of information, so they were going from one place to the next, and they didn’t want to record because they felt that if they recorded, everyone would know their stuff, and their currency would be gone. So there’s this whole back story of old jazz players, old blues players, old flamenco players where it’s just completely gone because they felt like they wanted to almost keep it in the family.”
So the opposite of the life we live now, where like, everything’s a commodity?
“Everything needs to be objective. Everything needs to be shared with the world. But the currency was [in] keeping, so only they know, because they need to get paid at bars. And the only place you could see it was in the bar. So that’s how it all works.”
What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
“Being incredibly sensitive to other people’s opinions, it can be rejection of any form. I can run away with some, like very small rejection and turn that into a huge thing about my appearance, my output, where I’m going in my life. And it’s so hard to defend yourself these days. I’ve had so many comments from people, and the better you do, the more out there you are to people, the more people are able to tell you that they think you’re shit.
“More often [than] not the people that are out there, putting stuff there, are very sensitive to that. So you leave yourself so exposed. So any sort of rejection, really.”
What’s your most notable characteristic?
“Can you answer that by yourselves? Do people answer that by themselves?”
No, I don’t think they ordinarily do, that’s why it’s in this questionnaire.
“I think people would say that I’m very friendly, and I think I have a disposition to understand, and this can be a really negative thing, what I have an obsession with, is what does this person want from me now, and try and deliver it to them without thinking, what do I want to communicate to them?
“So without being so scared of critique, occasionally I would be like, I’m trying to give them a version of myself so that they leave thinking, ‘Oh yeah, he’s so nice’, or ‘he was funny’, or whatever it is. And without just thinking about straight up honest communication, and that is my opinion on that.”
What do you most value in your friends?
“Friendship is so weird these days, I find, because I have all these people that I’ve shared and lived life with, all feel like they’re digital people. A lot of them just feel like they’re just text. So I’m in touch with loads of my close friends, but they’re just like, it’s just writing on the screen.
“I actually rewatched Her the other day. Because it was reminding me of my past relationships and, even like new people I’m getting to know, just knowing them through a screen. So people that I still see, and when I see them, having known them for a long time, it doesn’t feel like a chore, or why am I here? It’s just that we’re straight in.”
Who are your favourite writers?
“I’ve got loads. Douglas Stuart, Rachel Cusk…Katie Folk has just written an amazing book of short stories. Nathan Hill, amazing, modern American novelist, and do you know what I read the other day? I found it in my mum’s old books: Of Mice and Men. Steinbeck, man. It’s only 90 pages long. But you think of it as a great American novel, and I was like, ‘Wow’. The way I remembered it, because I read it at school, with all these events that are in the book, I felt like it was like some huge epic story, but it’s all really close together.
“It’s actually an amazing example of when people don’t have a lot of attention span. Getting a character in and putting something across in a very short space and being so layered. Incredible. Really incredible.”
Which historical figure do you most identify with?
“When Brian Clough was relegated in his last season with Nottingham Forest, and he was quite an old man by then, and he was going to retire, so he’d been this great, but he was going out in sort of sadness, really, and failure. He leaves at The City Ground, and I remember it so clearly because it’s when I was just getting to football, and he’s leaving The City Ground, applauded, but Forest have been relegated, and he doesn’t look well, and it just gives him a little [thumbs up].
“And sometimes, like when I’m getting older, I feel like everything is fucked, but just that little thumbs up to the crowd, I really associate with that.”
What is your greatest regret?
“I think when I look back on, definitely, like some relationships or communications in working situations. I would often, especially more when I was younger, I wouldn’t say a thing that would have helped the relationship because I was too nervous about hurting the person’s feelings.
“So I really regret that I just couldn’t be bold enough to say, this is where I’m at. To just be able to bear that person being angry or sad about it for a day, a week, a month, whatever it was that would open something up and let the relationship move. I think I would quite often be so obsessed with not wanting them to feel bad or that sort of thing. Then it locks you into a type of communication that doesn’t let the relationship move.”
Is it at your expense constantly?
“It’s at both people’s expense, and honestly, I think so often people really appreciate when you can just be straight with them and say something straight. Even letting people down, just being able to say that directly, that, ‘I’m so sorry, this is what’s happening for me’. It’s an amazing thing to be able to say a sort of kind way and have that communication.”
How would you like to die?
“I would like to die… I still feel like I’ve got my best book in me and my best music, so I just don’t want to die until I have done that”.
What is your motto?
“In my flat, I wrote on an A4 piece of paper by the door, and I don’t normally do this, but it was just helpful. I think I was in a bit of a bad spot, so I just helped me: ’Imagine all the things that haven’t happened yet’.”
One for the road, a well-known Oasis super fan: the greatest Oasis song?
“Oh my god! It’s so interesting because talking about Big Bill Broonzy and all those blues people who were like… It’s so weird because it sort of made me think when I was studying them that they are characters a bit like the Gallagher brothers. These swashbuckling, charismatic characters, nicking stuff from people. It’s quite similar to those blues people 100 years ago.
“But I would say, ‘Talk Tonight’, I like ‘Rockin’ Chair, I like ‘Listen Up’, but I tell you what, the live version from this recent tour of ‘Bring It On Down’.”
A proper punk track…
“The way they deliver it. To hear them deliver it, as they did this year… I will probably never go back now to listen to the Definitely Maybe version; that is the highest praise I can give it.
“Anytime I want to listen to ‘Slide Away’ and ‘Bring It On Down’, I would listen to them doing it last year. Because you can hear all the history on it, and they’re still standing, and they’re better than ever. I mean it’s like full goosebumps.”
