The Long Insiders frontman talks to Stuart Macbeth in advance of their Bestival show

Rock ‘n’ roll was never the same after the Beatles” Nick Kenny informs me politely. “A whole world of amazing, exotic American music was forgotten about.” But The Long Insiders’ frontman is determined to jog the public memory.

Since he formed The Long Insiders in 2007, their live shows have packed out venues in Oxford and beyond.

Inspired by 1950s music, fashion and film, they’ve set gig-goers of all ages dancing as though in the advance stages of juvenile delinquency.

“There’s nothing as heart-wrenching as the primal, throbbing urge you get from rock ‘n’ roll” he says ecstatically. Nick discovered the music at an early age through the records of Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis.

“Since then I’ve become seriously infected,” he jests, “and I’ve never been able to get away from it. Despite my best efforts, rock ‘n’ roll just keeps coming back and beating me over the head!”

I meet Nick in the South Oxford garage where the band prepare to perform at next week’s Bestival. Nick will be joined at the 80,000-capacity Isle of Wight festival by his brother Simon on bass guitar, and drummer Dan Goddard. They rehearse in the garage every Wednesday without fail. Nick sports a dazzling Hawaiian shirt and shows off a Gretsch electric guitar, the model favoured by Eddie Cochran and Dwayne Eddy: “It looks so iconic,” Nick stutters, “that it would feel adulterous to play anything else.”

The garage wall is crammed with crumbling VHS tapes, labelled with 1950s B-Movie titles including I Was a Teenage Werewolf and It Came From Outer Space. There’s not a grain of dust on them. It’s movies like these that has inspired the band’s lyrics, along with Simon’s encyclopaedic knowledge of 1950s horror comics.

“Simon had already started playing bass by the time I first picked up a guitar,” Nick recollects. “I was 10 years-old and I had a little Fender Squire. I could only play tunes by Chuck Berry but practised hard. I auditioned for the band, who were called No Exit, and got the gig.”

The brothers played Oxford venues including the Corn Dolly and the Penny Farthing before winning slots at London clubs such as the Marquee on Wardour Street. Nick recalls: “Dad used to drive us to gigs and carry our amps around. He’d have to explain to the bouncers that I was in the band. They kept throwing me out for being under age!”

The brothers scored success with a number of bands but with The Long Insiders Nick feels they have come full circle: “There nothing as heartwarming,” he tells me earnestly “as the throbbing, caveman urge you get from playing this music!”

Until last year the band gigged with vocalist Sarah Gregson, who formed a sort of haute couture June Carter to Nick’s exuberant Johnny Cash. But when Sarah quit music to raise a family The Long Insiders needed to revamp their act.

“Sarah is busy looking after the future of humanity,” Nick says cheerfully, “so we’ve rebuilt the band as a trio with a great new set of songs. We’re seized with a raging hunger to expose people to our new sound!”

“The band have a fully serviced V8 engine,” his brother Simon adds from across the garage.

That engine emerged at Truck Festival this July, like a Creature from the Black Lagoon: “Our comeback was jumping!” Nick says, shaking. “People were stacked to the rafters trying to get in. It was a perfect setting for our re awakening – dark, boozed and busting!”

And now the ‘post-Sarah’ Long Insiders have received the ultimate seal of approval from legendary DJ Greg Butler, who has invited the band to play his stage at Bestival. “So long as we don’t run out of hair grease, we’ll be looking sharp until the end!”

The rock ‘n’ roll history books are filled with famous brothers. From the Everlys to the Gallaghers, it seems a fight is never far away. On the contrary, Nick admits he loves being in a band with his brother.

“I can’t imagine why more brothers and sisters aren’t doing it,” he says. “We are constantly finding music for each other. We’ve been on a journey together from the very start.

“If we can survive putting our tent up in the Bestival campsite, we can survive anything!”

GO ALONG

  • The Long Insiders play Bestival, which runs from September 10-13 at Robin Hill Country Park on the Isle of Wight. Tickets from bestival.net
  • Other acts include Oxford DJs David Rodigan and ‘Count’ Aidan Larkin along with Missy Elliott, Duran Duran, The Chemical Brothers, Underworld, Tame Impala, The Jacksons, Jungle, Jurassic 5 and FKA Twigs