Parkway Drive’s Winston McCall: The 10 songs that changed my life

Mosh-pits and masturbation? Hey, it’s Parkway Drive man Winston McCall’s journey and life in music…

“My parents used to sing this to me as a lullaby when I was an infant, so it’s my first musical memory. I didn’t know it was a Beatles song until years later. The weirdest thing is that my dad actually looked a lot like Paul McCartney when he was younger, so that got confusing when I grew up and realised everything.”

“My parents were massive music fans, and when we first moved to Byron [Tracy’s self-titled debut album] had just come out. It must have been their summer jam, because I remember hearing it a lot when me and my two brothers and sisters would have to jump out of our crappy old family van to help push it to kick-start it. I think this was the only record we had on cassette in there. I can’t not hear it and think about push-starting our car.”

“I failed music class in school: I couldn’t play drums, I couldn’t play guitar, I couldn’t play bass and I couldn’t sing. But at the time I was first getting into hardcore, I felt that I could at least scream. Back then, Luke [Kilpatrick, Parkway Drive], our guitarist, was in his first band and they used to cover this. So, I used to grab the mic when we’d go see them at shows.”

“They were the band that made punk rock click for me. That was a huge turning point in my thinking. The punk scene seemed way too bubblegum to me before that, with bands like blink-182 singing about jacking off in trees, or whatever. Then I heard Bad Religion, singing intelligently about real shit that mattered, and all of a sudden punk made sense so much more to me. I knew then that it could be mature and have an impact on my life.”

“We basically only have one radio station in Australia, called triple j. It plays metal a couple of hours once a week, and I remember listening to that particular show while I was driving in my car on the way to a gig when that song came on. I heard the riff and thought, ‘Hang on, I know this song.’ And then when it kicked into the vocal I was like, ‘Wait a second, that’s me!’”

“We wrote that song with the intention of decimating venues and to make people go completely mental. We’re ending our sets with it now. It’s total carnage. After the last time we played Brixton [Academy], I have no idea how that place is still standing – everywhere I looked it was 100 per cent pure mosh-pit.”

“My first love is basically my only love: my wife! A sappy thing to say, I know. I had girlfriends before, but not love like this. We’ve always loved The Cure – I have the lyrics to this tattooed on me, and this has always been our song. It still makes me really happy when I hear it.”

“It was the first Warped Tour in Australia, The Living End were going fucking mental onstage and I remember thinking, ‘This Australian band are smoking everyone else here,’ when all of a sudden a huge surfer dude grabbed me and threw me on top of people. All I remember thinking is, ‘This is fucking awesome!’”

“(Laughs) I like to listen to dark, sad music, but there’s something about Nick Cave – aside from the fact that he’s such a badass motherfucker – that gives me hope. It’s not uplifting, but it’s invigorating and full of adrenaline.”

“For the exact opposite reasons as I said before, this one is fucking sad. I know plenty of people want their funeral to be a celebration, but this is the music I listen to and I want my funeral song to reflect the person that I am. So if it’s going to make people sad, who cares. I fucking love Nick Cave.”

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