Matt Willis felt “inadequate” when Busted started because he was “pushed” into playing bass. The 40-year-old bassist – who found fame as one third of the pop punk band alongside Charlie Simpson, 38, and James Bourne, 39, in the noughties – admits he suffered from imposter syndrome as he never felt good enough to be in the band.
He told the Daily Star newspaper’s Wired column: “I’m not a very talented musician. I’ve never been very good. After years of hating myself about it, I realised I just have to work my a*** off at it.”
“So we start the tour in September and rehearse in August. But I start in June and play through everything so when I get in the room I’m already prepared,” Matt Willis added.
As the band prepares to mark their 20th anniversary with an album and tour, Matt Willis has admitted he wasn’t able to enjoy their early success because he felt like a fraud.
He said: “I was never a bass player. When we got signed, they said, ‘Charlie and James are much better guitarists than you so you’re playing bass.’
“It was pushed on me and it took ages to learn and I felt really inadequate. Playing bass and singing is really hard because it’s alternate rhythms. So I felt constantly like a big of a fraud.”
The trio – who recently teamed up with All Time Low on a new version of their classic hit ‘Crashed The Wedding’ and reworked their old hits with other groups in the genre including Simple Plan – felt like “outsiders” because they weren’t pop, but they were “cool enough” to be rock.
Matt Willis added: “Busted were in a really weird place because it wasn’t a rock band, we weren’t cool enough to be accepted by that world but we weren’t a stereotypical pop band, so we were skate kids who couldn’t skate in their own lane – the outsiders.”
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