Glass Animals frontman Dave Bayley reveals he broke his spine when jumping off stage

Dave Bayley spoke about the moment he sustained a horrific injury at a past concert, while Coldplay’s Chris Martin and pop star Olivia Rodrigo revealed their near-misses.

Lead singer Dave Bayley (left) of British band Glass Animals performs at the AFAS Live concert hall in Amsterdam on October 26. Picture: Paul Bergen/ANP/AFP)

Coldplay’s Chris Martin and pop superstar Olivia Rodrigo narrowly avoided serious injury when they suffered stage falls at recent shows.

Glass Animals frontman Dave Bayley wasn’t so lucky.

The British-American singer, who has a habit of jumping off stage to perform on bars and stairs, broke his spine a few years ago just as the band kicked off a run of concerts in America.

It’s the first time he has spoken about the horrifying injury and how he kept the show on the road as the band chased the wild success of their breakthrough hit Heat Waves around the globe.

“I’ve broken ankles on stage, I broke my spine – I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone this before – but I fractured five vertebra on the last American tour, it was quite near the beginning of the tour and I fell off the stage,” he says in Los Angeles ahead of their Australian tour.

“I had to wear quite a serious brace and I think some keen eyes on Reddit said they saw me wearing a brace underneath really loose fitting American football tops; I was trying to hide it.

“It was f---ing painful. And now I’m very careful. I wear skate shoes to get as much traction as possible.”

English indie rockers Glass Animals are returning to Australia. Picture: Supplied

The indie rockers first commanded attention in Australia a decade ago with their hit single Gooey, which went triple platinum with more than 210,000 “sales”, back before it was “streams”, and reached No.12 on the 2014 Triple J Hottest 100.

They performed the first sold-out shows of their career here after “playing a gig in Manchester to five people”.

Fast forward to 2020 and the band released their third album Dreamland. Heat Waves had been released as a single in June and quickly took hold in Australia during the pandemic lockdowns.

When it topped the Hottest 100 in January 2020, and then became rusted on to the No.1 spot on the ARIA charts for several weeks, it then went from being a sleeper hit down under to a global phenomenon with more than three billion streams on Spotify alone.

Bayley made good on his promise that if the song topped the Hottest 100, he would have the map of Australia tattooed on his derrière, complete with Tasmania.

He joked he mostly forgets it’s even there until “it startles me when I get out of my bubble bath”.

“I keep forgetting about it because it’s behind me!” he says. “When I do see it, it makes me giggle.

“And it’s such a good memory, it’s one of the highlights of my life so far, topping the Hottest 100, getting to No.1 in Australia, and the beginning of that insane, amazing time.

“That was when the ball started rolling. Australia and its openness, and wearing its heart on its sleeve, got it started.”

Artwork for I Love You So F***ing Much.

Glass Animals ventured back here in May to launch their new record I Love You So F***ing Much for a pop-up show in Sydney which sold out in a couple of heartbeats.

Bayley wrote the songs while struggling with a feeling of detachment from all that had happened to the band as Heat Waves became one of the biggest hits of the decade and they travelled the world playing to thousands, who quickly became tens of thousands of new fans.

“The songs are kind of like babies to you, and they all went off and did their thing, and there was this real feeling of detachment because we couldn’t see it happening in real life. We were just suck inside, watching it (during lockdowns) on a little computer screen,” he says.

“That detachment had me wondering about what my relationship was to these songs that meant everything to me and then that made me feel like that about the whole world ... it was just an extreme existential crisis.”

Bayley is in a better place now being able to connect with the people who have come to love his songs and given them greater meaning in their own lives.

And perhaps there was a little of subconscious sabotage at play when he and the band insisted the album be called I Love You So F***ing Much. He knew Australians would get it, simply because we have no hesitation in telling our mates we love them so f---ing much.

But elsewhere in the world, let’s just say spelling out the F bomb was not going to get the new record advertised on any giant billboards.

Glass Animals in concert. Picture: Supplied

“There were large concerns about being able to print anywhere. To be honest, it hasn’t been easy to print it as is (censored). Australia, probably fine but England has been difficult, even with the dots, won’t have it on their billboards,” he said.

“A lot of record stores also just would not have it so we had to put stickers over it … I thought it would be fine.”

Glass Animals are back in the country this month for a national tour with shows at Melbourne’s Sidney Myer Music Bowl, the Sydney Opera House forecourt and Brisbane’s Riverstage.

They will also play in Perth, the Gold Coast and Newcastle as part of the Spilt Milk House Party mini-festivals co-starring Troye Sivan, G Flip, Artemas and Sycco.

Bayley said he is a “big Troye fan.”

“I feel a lot like we’re not worthy, it’s a killer line-up,” he said. “And we’ve played with Sycco before just after the pandemic.

“It’s a bonkers line-up but all good because everyone scratches a slightly different itch.”

For all ticket and show details, livenation.com.au

Originally published as Glass Animals frontman Dave Bayley reveals he broke his spine when jumping off stage