Mumford & Sons: 'no one plans for world domination with a banjo'

Early morning, at Heathrow, a crowded bus shuttles passengers across the tarmac from terminal to aeroplane. Among them, tired and unshaven, stands a stocky young man in a fedora and crumpled black jacket. He is one of music’s biggest stars, yet no one asks for an autograph or even glances in his direction. There’s something too unassuming about Marcus Mumford to draw attention.

Queuing patiently at the foot of the boarding stairs, hefting his own bag, the lead singer of Mumford & Sons talks with quiet enthusiasm about the previous day’s Test cricket, having spent the afternoon watching England play Australia at Lord’s. In their spare time, between recording sessions and after gigs, the members of Mumford & Sons strike up impromptu games of football, basketball and cricket. “Being in a band’s a bit like a team sport,” says Mumford. “Everyone raises everyone else’s game but you’re all in it together.”

Twelve hours later, the inconspicuous Englishman and his three bandmates would be onstage in Berlin, inspiring 22,000 fans to heights of singalong abandon. “It’s such a weird thing that this is our job,” Mumford confides. “There are moments when I look at the crowd and think, ‘All these people bought tickets to come and see us play! Don’t they know that we are not professionals?’ ”

Mumford & Sons are one of the most popular bands in the world. They are also one of the most unlikely. In 2007, as indie rock was floundering and hip hop, electro pop and X Factor winners were dominating the charts, these four former public school boys in granddad shirts and waistcoats arrived on the scene playing folk rock and bluegrass-style music on banjo, double bass and kick drum. Who could have guessed they would become the biggest-selling band in the world? “No one plans for world domination with a banjo,” as keyboard player and multi-instrumentalist Ben Lovett says.

The critics were initially unimpressed, but audiences responded enthusiastically to their rowdy, organic style and emotional, melodic, roof-raising anthems. Their 2009 debut album Sigh No More and 2012 follow-up Babel sold millions of copies worldwide, and took the band on an accelerated trajectory from the west London nu-folk scene to global fame. Between 2011 and 2013, they won multiple Brit and Grammy awards, performed as a backing band to heroes including Bob Dylan and John Fogerty, played an impromptu set for David Cameron and Barack Obama at the White House and created their own travelling Stopover festival, choosing bands including Vampire Weekend and old friends the Vaccines to play with them under the banner Gentlemen of the Road. 

As if to emphasise their gilded status, Mumford married movie star Carey Mulligan in 2012, but in what felt like a typically homely twist, it transpired that the couple had been childhood pen pals. At the end of an exhausting 2013, in which bassist Ted Dwane recovered from a life-threatening brain clot in time to headline Glastonbury Festival, the band announced a sabbatical. In fact, within weeks they were back in the studio, returning this year with a third album, Wilder Mind, that ditches their rustic image for leather jackets and electric guitars.

It was a risky move, apparently forsaking their unique identity to enter an already crowded musical field, but the gamble paid off: the album went straight to number one on both sides of the Atlantic. And so the Mumford & Sons bandwagon rolls on, taking their travelling festival to Aviemore in Scotland on Friday for their first full UK gigs of 2015. “When you strip away all the recognisable elements, you have to ask what is it that really makes us who we are?” says Mumford. “For us, it has always been songs, first and foremost. We serve the song, and the song serves the audience.”

Onstage at the Waldbühne amphitheatre in Berlin stands an instrument cabinet containing banjos, Dobro resonator guitars and a rack of electric guitars, with a huge double bass propped up in front. Acoustic instruments have not been dispensed with, after all, but rather incorporated into a set with a broader, more dynamic palette. “We have more weapons in our arsenal,” says Mumford, who switches between guitar and drums, his first instrument, throughout the soundcheck. Afterwards, the Telegraph’s photographer gathers the four bandmates in front of a wall like a teacher herding awkward pupils.

Considering how long they have been doing this, it is surprising how uncomfortable the four still appear in front of the camera. The 28-year-old Mumford (who has ignored advice to get a haircut) has his hat pulled down tight and only reluctantly removes his shades at the photographer’s request. “Sex sells,” comments guitarist Winston Marshall drily as Mumford’s tired eyes are exposed to daylight. “You look like a Chinese Boris Johnson.”

“Oh that’s great, coming from Conchita Wurst,” Mumford shoots back. The band giggle, disarming the insults.

The most important thing to understand about Mumford & Sons is that they are a band of friends and equals, not a lead singer-songwriter with his backing musicians. Of their distinctive name, Mumford says, bluntly, “It was a mistake. We came up with it at the very first rehearsal, and by the time we gave it any real thought, it was already too late.”

“Marcus and I were working in my mum’s antique shop at the time,” explains Marshall. “Ted was working in an auction house. So that was our little world.”

“The idea was a family business but it’s not necessarily the grandfather who is actually running the show,” explains Lovett. “It’s a band of brothers.”

“From a personal point of view, I wish my name wasn’t on the door,” says Mumford.

The band’s image, they suggest, was equally ill considered. “I started wearing waistcoats because I was insecure about my weight,” admits Mumford. “I was playing drums sat behind a kit wearing a T-shirt with my belly flopping over my belt, so I used waistcoats to keep it all buttoned in. It was actually very practical.”

“Marcus always said when his dad found an outfit he would stick to it, because if it works it works,” notes Lovett. “I think finally after eight years Marcus decided it’s not working anymore. So he changed to black jeans, black jacket…”

“And now he wears those every day,” says Dwane, laughing.

All four were friends before forming the band. Although Mumford was originally the driving force and principal songwriter, they each now share credits equally and, increasingly, bring in material for the band to work on. Marshall is the most rock-and-roll of the ensemble, the youngest at 27 and something of a joker and provocateur. Mumford credits him with pushing the band away from safe musical choices. The last time they played in Berlin, Marshall went out to a techno club and wound up being pictured in the next day’s tabloids snogging American pop superstar Katy Perry.

Lovett, 28, is another childhood friend from Wimbledon; he and Mumford made their preteen musical debut playing weddings and parties. “He sang The Girl from Ipanema in made-up Spanish,” recalls Mumford. “We got paid 40 quid and drank our first champagne.” As well as being credited with the strongest commercial pop sensibility, he founded successful independent label Communion records, signing many of the group’s friends, with a critically lauded roster and staff of 19. “Ben’s the grown-up in the band,” is how Mumford explains it. “He gets up at nine in the morning to do four hours of emails, which is unheard of on the road.”

Dwane, 30, came into their orbit in a tight teenage musical scene based in west London, where they all, at one time or another, played backing for precocious singer-songwriter Laura Marling. A man of few words, he once walked through a packed arena to join the band onstage without anyone recognising him. “Ted is very agreeable,” says Mumford. “Which is probably a good thing because the rest of us argue about everything.” Of 2013’s emergency brain surgery, Dwane says, simply, “It’s actually unremarkable. Most people overcome something terrible at some point in their lives.”

“He was the least bothered man with tubes coming out of his head I have ever known,” says Lovett.

One thing all four bandmates have in common is a public school background – Mumford and Lovett were educated at King’s College School, Wimbledon; Dwane at Millfield, Somerset; Marshall at St Paul’s, London – and a wider sense of privilege (Marshall’s father runs a multimillion-pound hedge fund) that has led to suspicion towards the band. “To us it feels arbitrary,” insists Dwane. “You leave school, work terrible jobs to pay rent, and that’s when you start finding your way in music and forming bands.”

“I don’t think anyone’s background offers advantages on the lowest rungs of the London gig scene,” suggests Lovett.

The group formed around a drinking den called Bosun’s Locker, run by Marshall beneath a shop on the King’s Road, Fulham. It is remarkable how many of those who played there went on to sign record deals. Jay Jay Pistolet (aka Justin Young) formed the Vaccines, Charlie Fink achieved success with Noah and the Whale and Marling has been acclaimed as one of the finest singer-songwriters of her generation.

Love affairs among the west London bands lent the scene a soap operatic element with Marling at the centre, dating first Fink, then Mumford. “You’d sit there and weep watching Laura get up and sing New Romantic to a silent room of really boozed-up 17-year-olds,” recalls Mumford. “It wasn’t very high society, it wasn’t druggy, it was just booze and guitars and shut-up-and-listen. It felt like a community.” 

The most recent Mumford album feels emotionally war-torn, digging into failing relationships, communication problems, jealousy, guilt, remorse and examining the very notion of fidelity. Yet, since the material was written by various members of the band, it would be plainly wrong to read too much into the parallels between the lyrics and Mumford’s break-up with Marling (in 2010) and reunion with childhood sweetheart Mulligan (in 2011). “I’ve always enjoyed that blurred line between reality and fantasy, where you can take mythic stories and use poetic devices and substitute yourself, flip ‘I’ and ‘you’ around as many times as you want,” says Mumford. “Because then you can just be as personal and self-exposing as you like and say it wasn’t actually you.” He smiles. “Hide in plain sight.”

Some critics have suggested that what Mumford & Sons are really hiding is a Christian mission. Mumford’s parents are both pastors who brought the Association of Vineyard Churches – an evangelical movement founded in California in the Seventies – to Britain. Various band members were affiliated with the church during their youth. “There are bands who want to change the world but we just want to play music,” insists Mumford. “I’ve never written a song to try and convince anyone of anything, except maybe myself.” Matters of faith, redemption and an almost spiritual fervour certainly inhabit the Mumford world view, however. “Everyone grows up with some sort of faith, even if it’s faith in nothing. So I don’t think it’s unusual for that to inform my writing. But I don’t think I’m more obsessive about it than anyone else. You put these thoughts down, but they are not Trip Advisor reports on the destination you’ve reached. It’s more like a travel journal.”

All such notions seem academic in the face of the kind of performance that can lift an audience out of their skins. However unlikely Mumford & Sons might seem on paper, their irresistible rise makes complete sense in performance. They have the big songs and sense of commitment that unite audiences in the kind of singalong transcendence that has always underpinned the secular church of rock and roll.

At the end of a triumphant Berlin concert, a happy crowd are left roaring for more as the band troop offstage, dazed and sweaty. Stripped to the waist, a towel draped around his neck and hat still perched on his head, Mumford slumps down on a chair beneath the starry sky and sips a beer. “That might just be the greatest gig we ever played,” he says, grinning. “When it’s good, that’s what it always feels like. And that’s all we ever wanted.”

When Marshall arrives by his side, carrying a set of orange plastic cricket stumps, Mumford whoops like an excited child, jumps up and shouts, “Let’s do this!” before disappearing into the night to play a post-gig game of cricket with his mates.