Kyle Falconer has admitted he “completely lost the plot” when he landed several punches on bandmate Kieren Webster during The View’s comeback tour in May.
The chart-topping Dundee band’s show at the Deaf Institute in Manchester on May 10 descended into chaos halfway through when frontman Falconer swung for bass player Webster.
Footage uploaded to social media showed Falconer throwing his guitar to the ground before hurling six punches at Webster.
Kyle ‘doesn’t remember’ swinging punches
He also tried to kick him in the head, with guitarist Pete Reilly and crew members trying to intervene.
The View later apologised to fans.
However, Kyle has now revealed he has no recollection of the “brotherly bust-up”, which made national headlines and caused upset to his partner Laura Wilde back home in Dundee.
‘Shame’ recorded in Love and Chaos BBC documentary
In an emotive new BBC Scotland documentary ‘Kyle Falconer: Love and Chaos’ which charts Kyle and Laura’s dramatic love story, the chart-topping 36-year-old father of three says: “I don’t even remember doing it. I completely lost the plot.”
He goes on to say: “I feel out of control sometimes.
“I think sometimes everyone feels they’ve got issues and that.
“But don’t know if anyone’s got the same issues that I do.
“I don’t know what it is, but I feel like my brain never switches off.”
Laura was back stage at Dundee Rep putting finishing touches to their collaborative semi-autobiographical musical No Love Songs, as featured in The Courier, when news of the Manchester bust up broke.
The documentary records the moment when she receives text messages about the incident and, fighting back tears, remains stoically determined to concentrate on the Rep show preparations.
Reflecting on the upset, and revealing that Dundee Rep asked him not to attend the first preview night amid the national headlines being generated at the time, a remorseful Kyle says: “I’m ashamed and I’m pi**ed off that I’ve done it to Laura.
“But at the same time people have already got their opinion of me.
“It’s like everyone always thinks I’m an a**ehole anyway.”
The Courier chats with Kyle Falconer and Laura Wilde
The Courier caught up with Kyle and Laura for a chat ahead of the Love and Chaos documentary being aired by BBC Scotland on Monday August 14.
A special screening also took place at DCA on Friday.
The documentary follows the couple as they open up about their lives, and how their story became the inspiration for No Love Songs.
The musical, which includes songs written by Kyle, had its world premiere at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh last week, presented by Dundee Rep as part of the Edinburgh Festival.
It returns to Dundee Rep from August 31 to September 9.
It’s through the lens of No Love Songs that the BBC documentary Love and Chaos charts the eight dramatic years the couple have spent together.
From touring the world and the arrival of three children to postnatal depression and Kyle’s turbulent battles with substance abuse, it shares Kyle and Laura’s raw, personal journey, exploring how the challenges and sacrifices of parenthood continue to shape them.
Shining spotlight on the ‘real’ Kyle Falconer
Speaking to The Courier, Kyle and Laura are pleased with the way the documentary has turned out and hope it gets across the “real Kyle”.
Kyle says he’s had to “take the good with the bad” over the years in terms of headlines.
He says that if he had one piece of his advice for his 17-year-old self it would be “don’t do drugs!”
His “wild” reputation often precedes him, and he suspects “it’s probably not going to go away for as long as I’m alive”.
However, if he hadn’t followed the path he did, he knows he’d never have met Laura and they wouldn’t have had their three beautiful children, Wylde, Winnie and baby Jet.
He explains that while their lives can be a “bit erratic” at times, they live a “normal” life and he enjoys the “decency” most folk show when he’s out with his kids.
One of their daughters has already said she’s “going to be on stage like daddy”.
‘Santa’ got them guitars for Christmas, and Kyle enjoys writing songs with eldest daughter Wylde.
Do things happen for a reason?
Laura is a firm believer that “everything is meant to happen for a reason”.
Having first met Kyle one night in a gay club in Dundee – one of the only places Kyle wasn’t banned from in the city at the time – the pair connected immediately over music, Stanley Kubrick and a shared love of musicals.
Laura, an aspiring writer from Dumfries, showed Kyle her work on the night they met, cementing their connection even further.
While he had a wild, rock star reputation, she saw his “vulnerability and who he really was” early on.
“When I first met Kyle, I think a lot of people at that time were just like ‘oh there’s Kyle – let’s go for a drink. Let’s go and do that’,” she said.
“I kind of saw past that. We connected in a different way.
“That’s how we were able to go through the journey that we’ve went through and have our kids and everything.
“I wasn’t so attracted to the wildness of it. We got carried away with it a little bit!” she laughed.
“But it wasn’t what I was attracted to initially.”
Impact of post-natal depression
The documentary charts how, two years after they first met, Laura found herself far from the glamour of a rock-star lifestyle with her career dreams on hold.
Instead, she became a stay-at-home mum without a support network, friends or family nearby. Kyle, meanwhile, continued to tour with The View.
This difficult transition, however, wasn’t the first time the pair had faced huge challenges in their relationship together.
In 2016, the year before their first child arrived, Kyle faced legal charges and public humiliation following a drunken incident on a plane home from Spain.
Kyle tells the documentary he is not homophobic.
However, it was after being checked into a Thailand rehab clinic for help with substance abuse, that their lives took an even more dramatic turn: Laura unexpectedly fell pregnant with their first daughter.
Healing journey through writing
Charting Kyle’s journey as he went back on the road as a solo artist and chronicling Laura’s battle with crippling anxiety – which she later understood to be postnatal depression – it explores how opening up to Kyle for the first time was like a “pressure cooker” being released which allowed Laura to begin her healing journey.
Kyle started writing about Laura’s struggles in his second solo album No Love Songs for Laura.
Laura also began her own therapeutic, creative journey, putting pen to paper again.
It was down this road that they teamed up with Dundee Rep Theatre and a talented team to create their musical No Love Songs.
Meanwhile, Laura opens up about her own mental health battles and dissects some of the hardest parts of her writing journey which involved hearing about her own mother’s traumatic experience of postnatal depression, which resulted in attempted suicide.
The end of the documentary sees the couple travel up to Montrose in their camper van.
Why is Montrose beach special for Kyle?
Speaking to The Courier about this, Kyle reveals that he enjoys going there at least three times a week.
There he enjoys the sea air and he gets nostalgic, thinking back to family caravan holidays as a boy.
He was just 16 when his father died and 21 when his mother died at the height of The View’s fame.
He also reveals that as he’s got older, he’s really come to appreciate the Dundee area as “home”
“I feel like it’s the only bit I’ve got left with my parents,” he said.
“I’ve moved away so many times. I’ve lived in London, America, Liverpool, Glasgow.
“But I come back here and it feels like home.
“Even the fact we go to Montrose at least three times a week. I just drive through there.
“I love the smell of the sea. It’s not the same as the Broughty Ferry sea.
“It smells different. I love it.
“Even the noise of the Glaxo drugs factory. I loved that noise when I was sleeping in the caravan as a child.
“It’s nostalgic. I love it. It’s great to be able to show the kids.
“The kids are like ‘why do we always come to Montrose?’.
“I’m like ‘because daddy’s feeling nostalgic today’,” he laughed.
“I think they are beginning to understand.”
Where and when to watch Kyle Falconer: Love and Chaos documentary
Kyle Falconer: Love and Chaos airs on the BBC Scotland channel at 10pm on Monday August 14. It’ll be available on iPlayer thereafter.
Meanwhile, the musical No Love Songs returns to Dundee Rep from August 31 to September 9.
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