Last night, Keane played the first show of the “Under The Iron Sea” campaign to a packed crowd at London’s 800-capacity ULU. This afternoon, we spoke to drummer (and singer!) Richard to find out what he made of it. Q. Hello Richard. Were you guys pleased with the gig? A. Yeah, I think so. The first show is never going to be perfect, but I think we made a good go of it and people seemed to enjoy it. That’s the nice thing about small gigs, you can actually see people getting into each new song as it progresses. And it definitely seemed like quite a few people were getting into quite a few songs. Q. “Crystal Ball” went down particularly well. A. Yeah, it seemed to. And “The Frog Prince” as well. It’s funny, the lyrics to that one are ridiculously dark, but it’s quite upbeat musically. It sounds almost chirpy. But I hope the songs rocked adequately, because we definitely want to get the power of the music across. Q. Does that mean you’re hitting your drums harder? A. Actually, I’m not. I had a very stern word from Larry Mullen about how I was ruining my neck and my back and my shoulders and my wrists and my fingers and my elbows and how if I carried on doing that I’d be on a surgeon’s bench before too long! So I’m actually trying to be a bit more restrained. But that means I’m playing better than I was at the end of the last tour. The only mistake I made was in “This Is The Last Time”. Q. But that’s an old song! A. Yeah. I must’ve played it about 10,000 times, but I wasn’t concentrating and I hit the kickdrum at a really strange time. I looked up and saw Tim smirking about it. Q. You made up for it by making your debut as a backing vocalist. A. Indeed! I’ve always sung alone in the car, but this is actually the first time since I was about 12 that anybody has heard me sing. I thought I did okay for a first attempt. In fact, you could say that about the whole show. That was the first of about 1,381 gigs we’ve got pencilled in. Now we’re all just really itching to get going with the rest of them! – Keep checking back to the official site for more updates from the band as they head out to Europe for the club shows.