In the first flourishes of spring 2011, Barry Hyde of Sunderland art-pop group the Futureheads found himself living in the depths of the Arizonan desert, in the middle of tarantula season. Waking at 5am, he would fill his days with blindfolded yoga and transcendental meditation. This wasn’t the only unusual thing going on in Hyde’s life at the time. In the period leading up to this week-long retreat, Hyde had become increasingly fixated with the “fourth way”, a form of philosophical thinking, not to mention conspiracy theories about the cure for cancer.
It was the beginning of three emotionally anarchic years, during which Hyde experienced a journey of extremes; believing that he was reborn and, at one point, convinced that he was dead. Long gone were the days of NME tours and backstage riders filled with crisps and breadsticks. He was now dedicated to the teachings of mystic leader and philosopher George Gurdjieff – a man so feared during the Russian revolution, because of his alleged ability to hypnotise people from the other side of a room, that even Rasputin wouldn’t look him in the eye. “Talk about charisma,” Hyde laughs.
Today, Hyde has found balance and stability, helped, in part by the creation of his debut solo album, which documents his life with bipolar disorder. From 2010 to 2013 the multi instrumentalist experienced a severe breakdown, which manifested in many different forms. He was in and out of hospitals, his marriage ended, and his work with the Futureheads was put on hold. The process of writing Malody - a candid collection of stately, theatrical songs - was a hugely cathartic experience for the performer, who now reflects on this period as if he were describing a stranger. “I had seemingly managed to survive and come out with an album which I am very much in love with,” says Hyde. Hyde was first diagnosed with bipolar shortly after his trip to the desert. He arrived back home strong and lean from the hours of endless yoga, but had been filled with a sense of self-righteousness. “I had a false awakening. I was convinced that I had managed, in the space of seven days, to go on holiday and come back an enlightened being. Now my goal was to enlighten everyone in Sunderland. Starting with my parents. I’d either be the most fun person you would ever meet, or the most unbearable, bigoted, arrogant man ever.”
His bandmates – brother David, Ross Millard and David “Jaff” Craig – were bewildered by the transformation, and often found themselves unable to communicate with him. If the group had a gig, Hyde would travel separately, play the show and then disappear, arriving at the next venue in time for the next gig, merely orbiting the group rather than operating within them.
During the summer of 2011 he became so manic that he was unable to exercise, too frantic to sit still and meditate, or to write down his ritual self-analysis. These traits – erratic behaviour, excessive restlessness, racing thoughts – lead to this eventual diagnosis of bipolar, which he had by that point been living with for a decade. He had assumed the traits were simply indicators of a creative mind.
On many of the tracks on Malody, Hyde is found grappling with an alternate being - violently wrestling with or quietly questioning his actions. The title of the album combines the names of two characters in a “kind of musical” Hyde had been working on for the Futureheads – a story of two sisters, Melody and Malady, one an evil vampire and the other superhuman. The rest of the band – not entirely keen on making their sixth album a vampire musical – rejected the idea. The names stuck in Hyde’s head, however, and found a new meaning when he was given his diagnosis. A combination of music (melody) and illness (malady), the portmanteau word could describe the “uncontrollable, almost exquisite, creative rushes” and “manic highs” that occurred during his illness.
Hyde had his first manic episode aged 19, lying in bed at home. There were no previous signs of mental illness throughout his childhood, he says, “nothing that was remarkable”.
“In the early years of your life you’ve got no idea really what’s ‘normal behaviour’ or a ‘normal sensation’. But I think as we get older, if there’s anything there, it becomes a little more acute.”
Around the same time as Hyde’s first episode, the Futureheads’ career was beginning to take off, an exciting period which skewed his ability to detect the signs of his illness. “What I was experiencing in my life was extraordinary; this kind of rise of being in a band and claiming some success and international travel. It becomes difficult to judge if it’s the situation you are in or if it’s actually the world itself. I was just kind of being pushed along by this thing, and it wasn’t until I’d reached a point where we were having longer breaks in between albums and not doing as much touring that I started to see it and realise that I was completely messed up. This ecstasy of creating something followed by disillusionment is something that any creative person will experience. But because I had gone unchecked for some time, the illness had developed into something quite dangerous.”
Attitudes towards mental health within the music industry are changing: the past couple of years have see Kendrick Lamar’s candid discussion of suicide, dubstep producer Benga’s revelation that he was sectioned, and Pete Doherty’s descriptions of being forced to cancel Libertines shows as a result of anxiety attacks. The pressures of touring, constant criticism and hedonism can take their toll on artists who are still developing emotionally. Bipolar disorder in particular is an illness that has been connected, at times dangerously, to creativity, but while Hyde says he would not have been able to write much of the Futureheads’ first album without those explosive moments of inspiration, there was always a crippling low that followed them. This was at odds with the Futureheads’ public persona, as buoyant, angular and engaging representatives of a new wave of guitar music. It didn’t help that the band, described by the Guardian in 2004 as “the long-overdue antithesis of that maudlin swirl of post-post-Coldplay bands,” were also known for being “very friendly,” a reputation hard to maintain in the throes of insecurity and mental instability.
“Suddenly I found it incredibly stressful, when you start getting reviews and you’re being courted by record labels and you find yourself in a race. I was so protective of the music and it was like getting torn apart and put back together every night,” he says. “We kept going and we had amazing fun, but there was always pressure on me to have ideas and sometimes I wasn’t a very good leader. But we always managed to get the albums together. It always felt like we were running for our lives. We were running to hold on to something.”
After the success of their self-titled debut, beloved by critics and fans, their second album News and Tributes failed to sell as successfully. They were dropped by their label 679 Records, a subsidiary of Warners, in November 2006. According to Hyde, this ordeal triggered some of the sparks of his new hobby – his fascination with esoteric theories and Gurdjieff, and a belief that there was a “huge conspiracy to suppress special knowledge”. His thought processes became increasingly paranoid.
“I’d be on my bicycle behind a bus – say it would be a number 7, and I might have been obsessed with the number 7 – so I would follow the bus. I was really starting to go into this dangerous state of confusion essentially.”
Signed to independent label Nul, the band went on to release two more albums, and while they were respected staples of the mid-noughties indie scene, they never quite reached the heights of their first wave of fame. It was after the release of 2010’s the Chaos that Hyde was invited on the retreat, and the journey towards his diagnosis began. His marriage had ended, and Hyde had to move back in with his parents in Sunderland. After years of being on the road, with a tour manager tending to his every need, he realised that he was unable to do many tasks required of the average adult. “I felt incapable of dealing with that pressure. It’s simple things like learning how to drive. You know, being independent, having some form of qualification, like a degree. I felt like I got my life backwards.”
He was sick of being a musician and convinced that he would never write a song again; he was admitted into hospital three times. “I wasn’t really safe and I was terrified. It was such an awful time,” he says. Life became incredibly strange, particularly for a few months in 2012. “For a period of time I was convinced I was actually dead – that I had died one night when I fell off my bicycle. There were days I would walk around and feel invisible. I was so lost – catatonic some days, just sitting staring into nothingness, full of these rushes of crippling anxiety, you look in the mirror and you don’t see who you are looking at. It’s very traumatic.”
Soon he would seek salvation in new forms of artistic expression. As the band took a sabbatical, Hyde trained as a chef at Juniper’s Pantry in Barnes, and perhaps most fundamental to his rehabilitation was his work as a music tutor – something that helped encourage him back to creativity, teaching songwriting, theory, singing and performance skills. In light of his experiences, he is now able to be a positive role model to his students, but continues to feels concerned for those unable to ask for help.
“Here I am in Sunderland: it’s a completely working-class town, the blokes here are not chatty blokes. They’re not the type of blokes who are expressive. I feel sorry for someone who is in that position, where their male role models have not been expressive, so I feel like they repress themselves all week then get absolutely smashed at the weekend and put someone in hospital. That’s a product of stigma really. When was a kid, if you were talking to yourself it was always – “Be careful, they’ll send you to Cherry Knowles [a mental health hospital in Sunderland in which Hyde was admitted in both 2012 and 2013]. And it was that whole thing of ‘oh, you don’t want to be seen as crazy or they’ll send you away!’”
However, he is wary of being seen as a crusader for mental health. “I don’t want to be self-righteous. I’ve written this album, so for me it’s a way of keeping my mental health problems at bay, because I can listen to that or perform it live and it allows me to dip my toe back into those extreme states of mind. I find that there’s a finality to it now. I think: OK, I’ve distilled it, that must mean I have some understanding of it,” he says.
“I have mental health problems that can be chronic but I am trying to find that balance: having a job I enjoy. I’m teaching about 28 or 30 hours a week. I get really good holidays. I’m trying to swim every day. I’ve got an amazing girlfriend. I can drive now. It’s not about going to the desert and coming back with no problems and not a care in the world. It’s about dealing with life,” he says. “In a sensible way.”
Malody is available to pre-order on CD, vinyl and download via Pledge Music. It is released on 3 June on Sirenspire Records.
For mental health problems in the UK, the Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123, or visit Mind’s website.
In the US, if you are in crisis or need someone to talk to, call the Samaritans branch in your area or 1 (800) 273-TALK.
In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14.
Hotlines in other countries can be found here