Glass Animals’ Dave Bayley on ‘Heat Waves’: ‘I Never Thought Something So Personal Would Be Heard By So Many People’
Charlie Amter For a band from England, Glass Animals, Variety’s Group of the Year, has spent so much time touring the United States, it may as well be American.“I feel comfortable here, and I get to eat all the food I grew up with, like Hot Pockets,” says Dave Bayley, the quartet’s ringleader and songwriter-producer, on a Zoom call during a break between two sold-out shows in Santa Barbara in late October.Bayley did grow up in America, partly in Texas, where he says he was “very much exposed to U.S. culture,” including a hip-hop radio station that he loved as a preteen.But it’s not Bayley’s upbringing in the Lone Star State that has endeared American fans to Glass Animals.