Alex Gaskarth On Simple Creatures' Live Cover Of Personal Jesus

Having wrapped up their first-ever shows this week – both in America, and their overseas debut at London's Hangar – Alex Gaskarth has explained how Simple Creatures' live cover of Personal Jesus came about.

Given that the band – completed by blink-182's Mark Hoppus – only have six released songs to their name, Simple Creatures bolstered their live setlists with two as-yet-unreleased tracks, as well as the Depeche Mode classic. But why did they chose that song in particular to play live?

“We deliberated for a while on what to cover – especially this early in a project," Alex tells Kerrang!. "You don’t want to do a cover and then have people think that that’s the defining song. So we kind of just threw different ideas around, and that one landed because Depeche Mode lives in the vein of this music that we’re trying to make. It’s this dark, synth, electro-pop, and it just felt like it would translate really well to this new version of trash-pop that we’ve affectionately dubbed it! It’s been fun.”

Check out some fan-shot videos of Simple Creatures' cover of Personal Jesus below:

Previously, Alex told us that Simple Creatures' gigs would feel like "somewhere between a rock show and an EDM hip-hop show".

“It’s pretty crazy," he says. "There’s a lot of moving parts, and we’ve been figuring out how to do it live. It’s just the two of us and we don’t have a live band – we don’t have a drummer. It’s sort of landing somewhere between a rock show and an EDM hip-hop show! And I think that’s what’s really interesting about this project: we knew that, to do this right, it was going to have to be some sort of strange hybrid of genres. And, even down to the live element of it, it is truly that. We’re running a lot of stuff off these insane sample pads, and I’m playing more instruments than I know what to do with so far! That’s a very interesting element of the show. At any given moment, we’re both on keys, I’m on bass, Mark’s on guitar and then we’re swapping guitars, and then I’ll be playing the sample pads, and we’re looping a beat and playing on top of that… it’s pretty crazy. There’s a lot of interactivity in the show for us, but, at the same time, it still really feels like this energetic rock show.”

Simple Creatures are headlining the Avalanche Stage at Download Festival this June. Get your tickets now.

Read this next:

• 20 things you didn't know about Billie Joe Armstrong
• Watch this mash-up of Steamed Hams and Green Day's Basket Case
• 12 rock stars who have written their own comic books