The rise of You Me At Six, as told through their most important gigs

You Me At Six are in the midst of their final lap of the UK before calling it a day at Wembley. It’s been a hell of a journey from Weybridge to Warped Tour and beyond over the past 20 years. Josh Franceschi looks back at their time on the road, and tells the stories of the gigs that signposted the way…

“It was no bigger than my front room – it couldn’t have held more than 50 people. There was no stage, no PA, the kind of gig where your mate’s older brother knew somebody who had some speakers. I know we did two covers – Taking Back Sunday’s Cute Without The ‘E’, and What It Is To Burn by Finch. I think we had four songs that were originals, but they were so bad. In fact, I think they were so bad that we probably only played them at that one gig, and then never again…”

“In the April of that year we contacted [Slam Dunk booker] Ben Ray through Myspace and he booked us to play a gig with Saosin. Slam Dunk at the time was at the Refectory in the University in Leeds, and I remember thinking, ‘There’s a lot of ska bands on this bill, and I don’t think ska fans would like us!’ About 20 minutes before we were supposed to go on, Chris’ [Miller, guitar] amp blew. This wasn’t a time where we could get a spare amp from the van, or go to the other bands on the bill and be like, ‘We’re fucked. Can you help us?’ No-one had any reason to do us a solid, so no-one did, and we played with just one guitar. We were absolutely awful, but the buzz was really, really good. We definitely felt like we’d done something pretty cool. We went back and headlined two years later!”

“This tour was only a few shows, but it meant a lot to us, growing up with blink-182 and having that band soundtracking the formative years of our lives. It was an out-of-body experience, being like, ‘Oh, there’s Tom DeLonge.’ I think we’d met him at the Kerrang! Awards, and I remember thinking that he didn’t look real. Fast-forward eight months or so and we were doing a tour with them. It just felt very special. It actually felt like the first time that we were part of the same pack. We no longer felt like a local band that was just doing okay. Touring with international bands that were coming to England weirdly didn’t add ego, but it did kind of make us feel like we were a proper band.”

“Growing up, I was like, ‘How do they get all those bands that I listen to every single day, and get them all on one show that travels around America for the whole summer?’ This was before social media, so when we turned up to Warped Tour, we actually didn’t have any idea what we were doing. I think the first day we did was in Chicago, but nobody warned us that that’s usually the best day of Warped Tour. We played to thousands of people and thought, ‘Fucking hell, we’re big in America!’ I think the next day was St. Louis, Missouri, and we played to four people. We very quickly realised that if we wanted that summer to not be a waste of time, we had to graft. Max [Helyer, guitar] went down the queue with an iPod, playing people our songs in case they liked it and came to see us. There was something about that tour which was really rewarding, because in real time you saw the graft paying off. That’s the only tour I’ve ever done where you can really feel that.”

“We were going over to do Soundwave Festival in Australia and we had some really awesome side shows booked with A Day To Remember. We were buzzing about going to Australia, and then management said that we had some offers to go to some really interesting parts of the world, like the Philippines, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, and four dates in Indonesia. We never went back to Indonesia because of how badly it went – they booked us a 3,000-capacity venue and there was only 100 people. Jakarta was okay, but then we got to Bali and were like, ‘Let’s fucking make the most of this, spend the day at the beach, get pissed and have a laugh.’ We’d ripped it pretty hard but then our tour manager called us to come back to the venue and start getting ready for the show. He said, ‘The venue’s sold out, there’s 800 people in there!’ Nobody explained to us that that’s where Australians go on their holidays. It was one of the most wild You Me At Six shows ever. There was no barrier, people were climbing the bar, downing their cocktails, and then stage-diving. It was just one of those reminders that you should never go into a gig thinking it’s going to be one thing, because every gig has the potential to be truly special. It’s up to you to have the right mindset and to act accordingly. It was a good lesson for us to learn relatively early on in our career.”

“I think we’ve always surpassed expectation, but sometimes it’s not that we’ve been the ‘best band in class’, but we’ve always been the most willing to dream big and work really hard towards it. When it came to booking Wembley, our promoter at the time was very, very, very sure that we were absolutely wasting our time by even thinking about it. Our management wasn’t so deterred and said, ‘Book it if you want to play it.’ We ended up having to challenge ITV and The X Factor, because they always had their finals at Wembley Arena. It was the first time in that show’s history where they’d moved from London to Manchester, and it was because of us! Bands always dream of saying, ‘Hello, Wembley!’ and we just felt that we made a real jump from being a band that is known and appreciated to being part of a really special club. It was a proper victory.”

“That tour came at an interesting time for the band. Leaning into nostalgia and records that have a bit of that for your fanbase can almost act as a renaissance for your band and the way people feel about you. I really, really pushed hard for those shows because, first of all, if you’re lucky to be in a band for 10 years, those anniversaries are few and far between. I was really keen to acknowledge the record, and once the rest of the lads bought into that as a concept, we got our agent and our promoter fired up for it. They were like, ‘Okay, we’ll do, like, five or six Take Off Your Colours shows.’ I think they sold out within 10 minutes. They were like, ‘We undercooked this.’ We ended up doing a 20-date UK tour, and 15 of those were Take Off Your Colours shows. We were seeing people celebrating their youth, being in their late 20s or 30s, but feeling like teenagers. I think we’re all guilty of almost outgrowing ourselves and our records when, actually, our audience haven’t and don’t want you to. You become obsessed with relevancy and thinking, ‘What’s our currency if our new music isn’t appreciated as much as our old music?’ We’re lucky to have been in this band long enough that we’ve been able to get through to the other side of that, and realise that actually being onstage involves us being subservient to the audience. We’re a vehicle during those performances to them having a good night.”

“I don’t think we understood the magnitude of how difficult that was going to be until we did it. It was such a long setlist. At that point we’d always done an hour-and-a-quarter sets, but I think with that set-up being two-and-a-bit hours, it was a deep-end introduction to the longer set vibe. It definitely felt like a gig where if you were there, you got a pretty unique insight to the journey of the band from inception right through to the present day. Jimmy Eat World opening the show was huge, as well. Chris went onstage and joined them for a song which has a huge personal relevance to it, for all of us. I could have got a taxi home after he played with them and that would be enough to justify why that day was so wonderful. Shout-out to [Jimmy Eat World frontman] Jim Adkins, actually, because I got his email address off somebody and just emailed him out of the blue going, ‘Could you make this happen?’”

“Slam Dunk 2024 will go down in our eyes as one of the most seminal You Me At Six gigs ever. It was one of the most emotionally charged performances we will ever do, and have ever done. So many memories were brought to the surface when we did that. That festival has always been synonymous with You Me At Six, and it’s strange because I don’t think the audience sees us as a Slam Dunk band because we’re not straight up pop-punk. But our 2024 appearance there was different. It was the first time, really, since we headlined it for the first time in 2009 that I was like, ‘These are our people!’”

You Me At Six are on tour in the UK right now. This interview originally appeared in the spring 2025 issue of Kerrang!.

Read this next:

• You Me At Six: “Showing pain doesn’t make you weak. You’re just human”
• Tracksuit bottoms, Nando’s and falling off the stage: Life on the road with Josh Franceschi
• Come Out Swinging: How You Me At Six found their fight again