Madeleine on the origin of the band's name
This might be old news to some but it was new to me and a fun interview so I thought I would share. This comes from a longer interview with Madeleine you can find here
Ted Fox 26:57
So the last question before we eat, and it came up a little bit earlier, you mentioned your band, The Amazing Devil.
Madeleine Hyland 27:04
Yeah. (laughs)
Ted Fox 27:05
I'm wondering, you're the front woman for that band, and you said you play the character Scarlet Scarlet performing in the band. Can you tell us a little bit about your music as well as the name? Because I think people always love band names and where band names come from. (Madeleine laughs) So both of those pieces, what kind of music you guys do, and where your name came from.
Madeleine Hyland 27:24
Oh, yeah, I love the story. (laughs) So the band was formed by my friend Joey and I when we were doing Wolf Hall for the RSC; it was like a two year job, right? So it started in Stratford-upon-Avon and then went into the West End, then went to Broadway. And by the end of Stratford, you know, because I was understudying seven parts or something, and he had a small--well, no, he had a significant small role, but it was the kind of show where it was a little like a one-man show about Cromwell with everyone else overseeing and having a couple of things. Fantastic. We had a wonderful time. But we also had a lot of downtime. So we started, Joey's a wonderful guitar player and a very talented songwriter. And we both kind of had a box of songs under the bed that we'd been wanting to do things with for a while. So we got those out. And he started tinkering with my things, and I started, you know, making suggestions. And so we started writing this album. By the time we finished Broadway, we had a sort of whole album ready to go.
So as soon as we got back to London, we were like, Okay, we have some pennies for almost the first time in our lives, saved up from being on Broadway, so let's go and put them all into into recording an album. And so we went into a tiny little studio in Stoke Newington, which was an ex-button factory. And it was a very intense experience to go in and make this album, which was kind of, it has a sort of narrative to it. But yes, I suppose Scarlet Scarlet and The Blue Furious Boy--which are, so Joey is the other co- front person, so--and the whole album is full of duets. And yeah, I suppose when we're doing it, I suppose initially, as well--because I'd done a lot of singing before, I'd done jazz singing and had this whole thing with Dexys--but I felt like there was a sort of persona that was coming out in me when I was singing these songs live. And so we started to give her a name, which was Scarlet Scarlet, and it kind of just, it enabled me to then go a lot further. As we've gone on, I feel like those boundaries getting a little more blurry now. So we're not necessarily playing the characters to such an extent, but we may do again, you know, we may. It's also just really fun. I mean, there's no denying that we're both actors, and it's very much a sort of an actor's raging against the world kind of album, you know? (laughs)
Ted Fox 29:59
How would you describe, how would you describe the music itself?
Madeleine Hyland 30:01
So it's kind of epic-piratey folk rock, baroque, theater? (laughs)
Ted Fox 30:13
I've listened to some of it, so I would say, I like that description. Yeah.
Madeleine Hyland 30:19
It's ginormous fun to sing, and we really have learned a huge amount, while singing, about acting. And, you know, people often say, You know, what's more important to you, singing or acting? And I go, Well, no, like, the more I've done the singing, the more it's informed the acting, and the more I've acted, the more it's informed the singing, so they just make each other better, the more I do both of them. But yeah, then we came to the point where we had to find a name. We started writing this big, big list of names. And then, so I was living at the time with a five-year-old and an eight-year-old who are both in the first music video that we made, as well, which you can find online, it's called King.
Ted Fox 31:01
(server brings food to table) Thank you very much.
Madeleine Hyland 31:03
And they're the two little girls running on the beach. And Martha was sitting there drawing, and I'd already come up with about 50 names. And we were like, Martha, Martha, what should we call the band? And she just looked at us and stopped drawing, and she was like, The Amazing Devil. (Ted laughs) Like it was the most obvious thing.
Ted Fox 31:17
How did you miss this?
Madeleine Hyland 31:18
How did you miss it? And we were like, Oh, oh, that's really good. (both laugh) And then I sort of went away and came up with like another 50 names, and Joey was still like, No, it's The Amazing Devil, it just is. It has to be.