Former Bloc Party drummer Matt Tong has opened up about leaving the band, calling Kele Okereke “an insurmountable obstacle”.
Tong recently appeared on the 22 Grand Pod and addressed his 2013 exit from the band when he “quit mid-tour”. “It’s come to my attention very recently that, you know, a lot of people actually have inferred that maybe I had a drug problem. Which I didn’t, at all,” he clarified.
It comes in light of a 2015 NME interview, in which frontman Okereke referred to “deep-seated issues” that led to Tong and bass player Gordon Moakes leaving the band.
“I can tell you it was about someone doing cocaine and someone not being into it. That’s all I’m gonna say,” he said at the time. When read the quote whilst on the podcast, Tong said it was “frustrating”, and added that “it had nothing to do with me and Gordon.”
Tong alluded to being ready to exit the band before the album cycle ended: “I’m good, this is it,” he recalled thinking. “I’m fine. I don’t think there’s anything else I can gain, really, from being in this band. I certainly felt in terms of being a musician, I wasn’t really able to offer much else.”
While touching on creative differences within the band, he also added that “Kele wasn’t really creating a very happy – he [wasn’t] cultivating a happy working environment.”
While saying he wasn’t going to go into too much detail for the sake of the privacy of someone not in the band, he referenced a birthday celebration on the bus that he had “absolutely nothing” to do with.
“Were drugs involved?” he said. “Apparently. And I think Kele took umbridge to that.”
After hearing that Okereke had tried to have the person involved removed from the touring party, Tong said: “When I heard about this, I was like kind of like, ‘fuck it, like, I can’t work with this person anymore. I’m just gonna quit.”
He then sent an email saying: “I’m done, I don’t want to do this anymore,” and “in no uncertain terms, told Kele to go fuck himself.”
He went on to play on No Devotion’s 2015 album ‘Permanence’, and also played with L’Amour Bleu and Red Love. In 2015, Tong joined Algiers, initially as a touring member but then as their permanent drummer.
“As a band, did we never do drugs? Of course not,” he continued. “I think anyone whose ever been in a rock band and toured consistently has definitely had that come into their world. But did any of us have a problem? Not at all. You know, I didn’t even drink before going on stage.”
Later on in the interview, Tong said said “Kele was an insurmountable obstacle,” and explained he reached a point where he didn’t want to go out on stage and “play this persons music”.
He noted that “the bridge is still totally burned” with Okereke, who he hasn’t spoken to since leaving the band. He said he still cares “deeply” for guitarist Russell Lissack, who he saw last summer – and is in more regular contact with Gordon Moakes, because their “philosophy on life” is similar.
As for Bloc Party, more recently the band have played a huge one-off show in London to celebrate the 20th anniversary of their debut album ‘Silent Alarm’.
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