The stereotypical frontman is charismatic and swaggeringly confident. But some bands have a reluctant star. From the Gaslight Anthem’s Brian Fallon to Lauren Mayberry of Chvrches, rockers talk about their fears and insecurities – and why they dread all eyes on them

“The psychology of being a frontman?” muses Gaslight Anthem’s Brian Fallon, when asked to sum up the mental requirements for the job. “You know, I think this piece should really be called Why Frontmen Need Psychologists!’ ’Cos if you want to put yourself out in front of people like this, there must be something wrong with you! I don’t know what’s wrong with me …”

You probably think he’s joking. But after speaking to a range of men and women about the pros and cons of the job, an unexpected pattern emerges: hardly any of them wanted to front a band, most of them find the job stressful and almost all of them would be happy to lurk in the shadows instead – playing a bit of bass guitar, perhaps, or messing about on a keyboard somewhere just to the right of the drummer. If your stereotype of a frontperson is that of a raging extrovert who has dreamed since childhood of being thrust into the centre of the stage, then think again. A lot of them are riddled with insecurities.

“I always joke that if I did this again I’d make sure I was stood at the back of the stage and not the front,” says Bloc Party frontman Kele Okereke, who is about to release his second solo album, The Trick. “There is a lot of pressure on your shoulders when you’re the focal point for all that energy. And there are a lot of things you simply can’t control to be able to put on a good show: the conditions have to be right, you have to be in a good headspace, the crowd have to be in a good headspace. You might not be feeling like it but you still have to go out there.”

It’s not just introspective indie names who end up as reluctant frontpeople. You might assume former Distiller Brody Dalle never had a doubt about her chosen career, but as a child she says she was so scarred by being told she had a terrible voice during a school singalong of Waltzing Matilda that it put her off singing for years. “It fucked me up,” she says, adding that she’s shy when not onstage, “so I’m probably not the typical frontperson.”

The thing is, Dalle does seem to be the typical frontperson. Whether it’s Jack Steadman from Bombay Bicycle Club fretting about public speaking or Gerard Way, former singer of My Chemical Romance, being too inhibited to do karaoke with friends when he’s not on stage (“I get too nervous”) an uneasy, hesitant disposition seems to be extremely common in today’s singers. So how, you might ask, do they do it?

Brody Dalle taking centre stage. Photograph: Steve Jennings/WireImage

Way believes he knows the answer. “I think there’s a psychological make-up to it that is very specific,” he says. “You need to have this thing that is kinda like a switch. A lot of singers I meet are basically really introverted, but that’s a whole different thing. In normal life I am not the most confident person. I get self-conscious. I over-think stuff. But you have to have something inside your brain that turns over, so you can give yourself over to something else.”

Way says this “switch” happens the moment someone tells him it’s time to get on stage – “it doesn’t matter what time of day” – and all his nervousness dissipates so that he can transform into his alter ego of Rock Frontman. It can be a physical thing, too. “I was completely out of shape during my time in My Chemical Romance,” he admits. “But the switch happens to your body too – thanks to the adrenaline you’re able to do things you wouldn’t normally do.”

Dalle agrees with the switch theory, claiming it enables her to do things she wouldn’t dream of in every day life. “Maybe my balls grow a little bit bigger,” she says. “I have a friend who is super-super shy, but the minute she gets onstage she’s climbing over security guards, completely manic.”

The switch can be a dangerous thing. Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist from the Hives describes it in almost religious terms, as “a form of transition that happens where I lose myself”. But this change of mindset can lead to reckless behaviour. “I once jumped from the lighting rig at a show in Switzerland and I landed with my head onto concrete – a 10ft drop. I think there was more chance of me dying than surviving, so I climb slightly less these days, which feels like a bummer,” he says.

Beyond an ability to transform your personality almost entirely, what other traits are essential for the successful frontperson? Almqvist says a complete lack of embarrassment is necessary, whereas Lauren Mayberry from Chvrches believes having a thick skin is important, because “a lot of the criticism gets directed at whoever is viewed as the focal point or mouthpiece of the band”.

Lauren Mayberry of Chvrches says a talent for bad standup helps her through shows. Photograph: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images for Coachella

As a female singer she’s had to deal with sexist abuse both online and at shows, and is used to hearing comments such as: “Oh, she’s just the singer because she can’t play.” A sense of humour is

important in order to deal with hecklers. “My ability to do shit standup comedy has probably helped me,” she says.

Fallon agrees that a quick wit is essential. “When you tell stories off the cuff and it works, it’s really great,” he says. “But when it tanks it’s horrible. And I’ve been there. “Some nights a heckler can really cut. It can tear you apart.””

Of course, the job of being a frontperson doesn’t stop when you leave the stage. As the person seen holding the microphone you’re often declared de facto band leader and spokesperson, and this can bring its own problems. Way says people often fail to realise how much mundane business gets pushed towards the frontperson: “More often than not, they’re the ones taking heat from the label, dealing with the bullshit and feeling the pressures that come with being on a major. A lot of the bad stuff goes directly to that person!”

Yet rather than elicit sympathy for the increased workload, often the frontperson’s status breeds jealousy: they are the person doing all the interviews, getting most of the adoration and being splashed over countless magazine covers, after all. Dalle says it could make life in the Distillers uncomfortable.

“It caused a lot of jealousy, especially in the beginning. I remember the NME took a photo of all of us, then took the guys out and put just me on the cover. The guys were kinda pissed about that! But at the same time I was like: ‘I write all the songs, I sing, I play, and I’m the only girl in the band – so you’re gonna have to suck on it.’”

Her reserves of sympathy for whinging bandmates were not exactly overflowing. “Most of the time I was like: ‘Oh shut the fuck up, you fucking babies!’ We’re touring in a really nice bus, going all over the world – there’s nothing to complain about! If you wanna go out there and get yourself on Bass Player magazine, then you go for it. If that’s what it’s all about for you, I won’t stop you!”

It’s for this kind of reason that singers such as Dalle, Okereke and Way often decide to go solo – not just to pursue musical ideas, but to enjoy the freedom away from carrying a band, or having to keep things harmonious. Okereke describes his own solo pursuit – time out from Bloc Party rather than a clean break – as initially daunting “because one of the great things about Bloc Party is that we split the load in terms of art direction, press etc … I wasn’t really prepared for how much it would fall on my shoulders. But I eventually came to really relish the fact that every artistic decision came from me.”

Leaving, if only temporarily, is one way of dealing with the difficulties that arise from fronting a band. Yet it doesn’t make the job suddenly easy, and some singers I spoke to were still finding ways to deal with parts of the job they found especially stressful.

Dalle, for instance, only feels comfortable on stage when she’s with her guitar, which she temporarily ditched after leaving the Distillers and forming Spinerette. “I’m actually a really good dancer, if I go to a club, I can dance my ass off,” she says. “But put me on a stage with a microphone in front of people and I just develop two left feet. I don’t know what happens. It just doesn’t work.”

Jack Steadman of Bombay Bicycle Club confesses to still suffering nerves while performing. Photograph: Afp/AFP/Getty Images

Steadman has found fronting a band more – not less – difficult as time goes by, especially in front of ever-expanding crowds.

“At the start I was young and naïve,” he says. “But this summer we’ve been playing these big festival slots and I’ve started to realise that there is more to being a frontman than just playing your songs and saying thank you after every single one. And that’s what I’m really struggling with, to be honest. The great frontmen can revive a dead crowd simply by being charming and charismatic, qualities that I’ve still yet to find for myself.”

If this sounds like a soul-baring crisis of confidence, Steadman’s keen to point out that, while his band are playing, he loves every moment of it. It’s just when the songs draw to an end he starts to panic.

“When I realise that I have to start speaking my heart starts beating really fast,” he admits. “I’m really bad at saying stuff off the cuff, so I’ve been trying to get into some kind of structured thing – which I know doesn’t sound very exciting – where I have a set list of things to say. So, before a song that starts with a drumbeat that’s easy to clap to, I’ll say: ‘Oh let me see everyone’s hands’ and encourage them to clap along.”

Steadman knows this isn’t how people expect a rock frontman to be, but thinks one of the most important traits a singer can have is honesty. “If people aren’t moving then you’re expected to say: “Let’s fuckin’ have it Glastonbury!” – but that doesn’t work when you’re singing songs about teenage angst and being misunderstood! And it doesn’t suit my personality either – people would see through it.”

Fallon believes honesty is essential. His early experiences on lead vocals were dealt a crushing blow when his bandmates told him he sounded awful and should never sing again. “But then I listened to Kurt Cobain and Bob Dylan and I thought, neither of those guys are gonna win any opera awards, but there’s an honesty in both of their voices that you can hear.”

As a heart-on-sleeve everyman, Fallon isn’t expected to climb lighting rigs or incite mass twerking, but the seemingly simple task of appearing sincere on stage – no matter how exhausted or jaded you are feeling – cannot be easy night in, night out.

So even for a man-of-the-people band like Gaslight Anthem there can be an element of artifice?

“Oh yeah, sure! It’s not all blood on the dancefloor every night!”

Kele Okereke says that if he could do it all again, he would ‘stand at the back of the stage, not the front’. Photograph: J. Shearer/WireImage

One PR says the key qualities of frontmen and women are that they are “slightly more aloof and self-obsessed … they’re usually the biggest wankers in the band. They have big egos, which of course you need when you’re on stage, but often problems arise when they carry that over into their everyday life.” She recalls working with a band rapidly rising to success: “One minute they were taking taxis to places, the next they insisted in traveling only by motorcade, with each member assigned their own blacked-out car. Sure enough, the frontman insisted that he had to be travelling in the car at the very front.”

A road manager with almost 20 years of experience backs up this view. “The singer can often be the friendliest member of the band when you meet them, the first one to shake your hand,” he says. “But when you’re five weeks into a tour, it’s normally the frontman who’s throwing the shit fits because someone’s stolen his Maltesers.”

So why the disconnect between how singers are viewed and how they reveal themselves to be? Could it be that no mere mortal can understand the stresses and strains placed on these band leaders, so when they do blow their tops it seems like they are behaving like spoilt brats? Or could it be simply that the era of egotistical, opinionated frontpeople has come to an end?

Cornershop’s Tjinder Singh favours the latter suggestion – and doesn’t think that it is necessarily a good thing. “There ain’t no lead singers hardly, not ones with any ounce of lead singerism,” he says. “Nowadays, you see people come onstage and start talking about their day shopping and what they had to do in soundcheck … really mundane shit. They talk about any old crap.”

Singh thinks Liam Gallagher was the last of a dying breed, a singer who genuinely didn’t care what other people thought of him. “That’s how we started – not caring what people thought. There should be an opinion there, and that opinion seems to be gone. Who’s to blame for that? I would say partly it’s all these lead singers talking about their shopping.”

Brian Fallon the Gaslight Anthem at Coachella in 2013. Photograph: Kevin Winter/Getty Images for Coachella

Fallon says that he is amazed to hear that so many of his peers had similarly confused feelings about the job. He believes, however, that some singers, such as Almqvist, stand out as people who are clearly born for the job. Is he right?

Almqvist seems to think so. “You could say it was destiny,” he says. “I formed my first band with my brother when I was six and even then I was starting songs with what I call a werewolf scream – the same scream that is at the start of a lot of Hives songs.”

He thinks there are a lot of reluctant frontmen because, often, the job falls to whoever writes the songs. “Whereas I do it because I love playing the shows,” he says. “I recently saw the Rolling Stones and I think it’s spectacular to be able to pull that off at 71. People always ask why the Stones keep doing it when they have enough money, but it’s not about money for them, it’s about the way it makes you feel young and invincible.”

Would he still want to be in the job at 71? “To get up onstage and get applause from 20,000 people? As opposed to just sitting in a sun chair and waiting to die?” he asks, as if it was the stupidest question in the world. “Who wouldn’t want to still be doing it?”

If he asked his peers, he might be surprised to find out.

• Brody Dalle, Gerard Way, Chvrches, Bombay Bicycle Club and The Hives all play Reading and Leeds festival.