Ricky Wilson: ‘Kaiser Chiefs were an easy target – Boris Johnson slagged us off’

Sat in the attic of his north London home (“the kids can’t get up here”) Ricky Wilson moves his camera to show me his collection of Ghostbusters figures. “A guy in his late 40s buying all the stuff that he couldn’t have when he was a kid,” he says. “It’s a bit sad, but I don’t mind it.” He’s just one figure short of a complete set, which he can’t find anywhere. “It does bother me a bit, but it’s quite indicative of everything in my life. If it was perfect, I think I’d be disappointed.”

He then gives a recent example about his band, Kaiser Chiefs. “We played Glastonbury [on the Pyramid Stage] last week, and it was amazing. I think it was possibly my favourite ever gig. But it wasn’t filmed. They didn’t put it on the iPlayer. I don’t know why.” He sounds genuinely put out. “My mum was livid! But it’s good, because we still get to be the underdog. That’s when Kaiser Chiefs are happiest.”

Kaiser Chefs were pretty successful underdogs. Kickstarting a career of eight top-10 albums and five top-10 singles, the Leeds band sold more than two million copies of their 2005 debut album Employment, which is currently getting the full 20th-anniversary reissue and tour treatment. It stands up as one of those great, exuberant, could-only-be-a-debut records: infectious, very-British indie-pop anthems (“I Predict a Riot,” “Oh My God,” “Everyday I Love You Less and Less”) that were both sharp and silly, carried by frontman Wilson’s irrepressible spirit.

Wilson says the anniversary doesn’t make him feel old – “I feel exactly the same as I did then; you get stunted at the point you become a celebrity” – but he’s having new onstage realisations about the songs. “Singing the words, you go, ‘OK, they’re pretty good for a younger man’. But then you think, ‘How did I think that writing that would be the right thing to do?’ On ‘I Predict a Riot; there’s a whole verse about a lighthouse designer called Smeaton. What’s that about? Why’s that there?”

The Leeds band have eight top-10 albums and five top-10 singles (Photo: Cal McIntyre)

Kaiser Chiefs looked like they arrived fully formed with a cheeky gang mentality and jumble-sale chic, but they’d been around the block. “I told the NME I was 21 when I was 27.” They had formed as Runston Parva in 1996, changing to Parva in 2000 to no avail. “We were trying to be American, but we’re not very good at being American.” They started over in 2003, with Wilson teaching graphic design in the interim.

Encouraged by Franz Ferdinand’s “Take Me Out,” they set about writing communal songs “based on the trick that we’re just trying to get people to want to come and see us again” during support slots with the likes of The Ordinary Boys (Wilson says the band’s singer Preston told his label, B-unique, that The Ordinary Boys wouldn’t make a second album for them unless they signed Kaiser Chiefs.) Hence many songs have that unmistakably Kaisers terrace chant, “Ooooooh!”, which makes singing along in the audience so enjoyable. “It’s funny because we get criticised for that. It’s what made us massive!”

It worked a treat. Employment was released in March – and by the time they came back from touring Europe to play a storming mid-afternoon set at that year’s Glastonbury, everyone knew their songs. “Some of them even dressed like us too.” It was a very pre-indie sleaze indie-disco aesthetic: pin-striped blazer, suit and tie and winklepickers. “And we dressed badly!”

The following week they were, bizarrely, opening the Live 8 concert, not in London, but Philadelphia. “Nobody knew us,” he says. “It was the oddest experience.” Six months later they were winning three Brit Awards. “I’m not sure that was entirely due to our musical brilliance. It had an element of zeitgeist in that. When the zeitgeist is working in your favour, you never question it.” They had a wild night: Wilson got so drunk he forgot he’d met Madonna until the next day when he saw the two of them together on the red carpet on TV.

Drummer Nick Hodgson is no longer in the band after leaving bitterly in 2012 (Photo: Roberto Ricciuti/Redferns)

But it was a moment of mainstream crossover success that came with inevitable criticism. “We were cool for about one month. But we’re better suited to backlash.” It was an era when bands would slag each other off and Kaiser Chiefs got more than their fair share; Liam Gallagher called them a “bad Blur”; even Boris Johnson had a go, calling them “the weeds from Leeds” in a newspaper column. “He had some kind of umbrage with us, because we predicted riots and didn’t cause them [adopts Boris impression], ‘Which I did in my day!’ But I think it was pretty lazy to slag off Kaiser Chiefs. We became such an easy target.”

The tabloids could be cruel, too. “It was the good old days, where they could say what they wanted without any repercussions. And they could also be quite mean about you and the way you looked.” Wilson was often taunted over his weight. “That can be the death of some bands. But it was fuel for us. Back to the underdog thing.” He says it taught him a lesson that he didn’t have it in him to be as big as Coldplay or U2.

“To be really a massive band, you have to have a lot of people not like you, right? And to put yourself in a position where you’re actually openly hated is something I wouldn’t feel comfortable with. Of course, there’s people who hate me, but if they met me, they’d be all right, they generally are. People have told me to my face they hate my band, but left with a selfie.” He smiles at the absurdity. “No, I don’t really get it either!”

Success rolled on: second album Yours Truly, Angry Mob (2007) reached number one, while lead single “Ruby” also topped the charts in February (fun fact: Ruby was the most popular name for baby girls born in England and Wales that year). But by Wilson’s own admission, it’s been a career of ups and downs since then. “I think that’s a positive thing in the long term,” he says, explaining that he feels it staves off complacency – though “not in the short term. It’s dreadful”.

The band performing at the shortlist announcment for the 2006 Brit awards (Photo: Dave M. Benett/Getty Images)

Wilson loves 2014 fifth album Education, Education, Education & War, but says 2008’s third, Off With Their Heads, didn’t make the most of working with Mark Ronson (“I think we might have squandered it”). As for 2011’s The Future is Medieval: “Nick (Hodgson, drummer) wanted to leave. It was pretty obvious. And although there’s some good moments on it, it sounds like a load of demos.”

Hodgson did leave bitterly in 2012, leading to some backbiting in the press and on social media about who actually wrote the band’s songs. All tracks are credited to Kaiser Chiefs, though Hodgson was viewed as the principal songwriter and certainly took all the credit: Hodgson apparently laughed when the band said they’d carry on without him. “We had an old-fashioned classic rock’n’roll break-up. And it was tough. It was tough seeing him do interviews saying that he basically was the Kaiser Chiefs, and doing TikToks about how he wrote the songs. His truth would be different to mine. But then you’ve got to go, well, we might disagree and it’s fine.”

There was an emotional reconciliation recently, when Hodgson joined the band onstage for the first time since leaving to play guitar for “Oh My God” at their massive Leeds homecoming show in May. “It was really nice to see him. And it was really nice to see him appreciate that we didn’t f**k up the legacy of the Kaiser Chiefs. For him, it must have been like seeing someone driving around in a classic car that you used to own and going, ‘Oh, at least they’re polishing it.’”

Wilson says he knows for a fact that they’ll work together again. “I just know what he’s like, and I don’t think I’m ready. I think it’d be exactly the same as it was when he left.” He says the dynamic was a case of “that’s a good idea, but should we do my idea?”. He smiles. “He’ll probably read this, and I don’t mind that, because I think he might agree.”

It was around the time Hodgson left that Wilson became a judge on The Voice between 2013 and 2015. He was forthright about his reasons: he did it to raise the profile of the band and sell more records (Education, Education, Education & War reached number one, so it was mission accomplished). He says he got on with the other judges “famously,” with a hint of mischief. “I even loved will.i.am but I guarantee it, if I saw him tomorrow, he wouldn’t know who I was.” But he struggled with being “TV famous” with paparazzi looking through his bins. “I was just in a massive panic for about three years.”

Wilson’s also had radio DJ gigs, including the drivetime slot on Virgin Radio. “If I had to audition, I wouldn’t have got those jobs. It all starts from the fact that I was a good frontman. I’m just living off all the goodwill that I’ve created. I’m not really ashamed of that.”

However, his focus is definitely Kaiser Chiefs: this weekend, their Employment summer tour continues with a huge show at London’s Alexandra Palace Park. “It works pretty well. Plus, when we come back on [after playing the album] it’s not like no one knows what we did since. We play a shitload of bangers. So it’s like, all right, it wasn’t all about the first record. Which is a relief.”