Forming a rock band is the dream of many and only the talented few manage to achieve the desperately sought rock star status. But if you could realise the dream of playing in the ultimate group, which member would you be?

The lead singer, swinging the mic stand round their head might give a group their identity but others would argue that the guitarist's inimitable solo is the secret ingredient. Drummers and bassists are also not the obvious choice but Keith Moon, Dave Grohl, Paul McCartney and Flea might suggest otherwise...

From humble beginnings in Ayrshire to dominating the festival circuit, Scottish alt-rockers Clyro understand what it takes to make a good band and why it's not the individuals that matter but how all the members of a band fuse together to create something truly unique.

To hear what it's really like living the life of a rock star and how they got to where they are today, join us with Clyro live in the studio while rocking out on the new video game Guitar Hero World Tour.

You will experience the highs of being in a band without having to tune up or sit in the back of a battered old van.

Biffy Clyro joins us live online on October 31st at 11.45am to discuss their music and career thus far.

For more information visit www.worldtour.guitarhero.com/uk

H: Yemi, host
S: Simon, Biffy Clyro
J: James, Biffy Clyro

H: Hello and welcome to the Entertainment Show brought to you today by Guitar Hero World Tour. My name's Yemi and today I'm joined by Scottish rockers – drum rolls please – Biffy Clyro. Simon and James welcome to the show

S: Thank you

J: Thank you

H: And before we chat to the fellows why don't you take a look at this?

Video footage

"Yes the one and only Zak Wild."

"Yes Zak Wild the man – that guy's a maniac. If you see what Zak Wild's like on stage, he's totally like that all the time."

"Just 'cos I'm beautiful don't hold that against me."

"He's a genius musician but you've got to be ready to handle a guy like Zak Wild."

"Dude.  This is how you pick up chicks man."

"You put a guitar in his hands and he's just going to play the solo that's going to tear your face off, and that's why we wanted him in the game."

"The game's great. He inspires kids that want to play the guitar."

"He's like this total character you know, like when he comes out on the game it's like King Kong being unleashed."

"We had a good time man."

H: And that looked awesome. Simon, James, Biffy Clyro, three piece band – where's the third piece?

J: He had to unfortunately go back to Glasgow

H: Yes

J: He had some family stuff to take care of unfortunately but he's well, he's happy.

H: Sure. That's Ben we're talking about, your brother?

J: That's Ben, yes indeed yes. But he sends apologies for not making it.

H: Not good enough! Now listen I understand that last night you had quite a good night, award winning no less! Tell us about that

J: We were at the UK Festival awards last night which kind of obviously just a celebration of the summer and you know lots of the smaller faces get acknowledgment and recognition and it's really great to see so everything – basically the organisers of the whole summer's in a room together, and we were lucky enough to win the best rock band which was voted for by people that went to the festivals, so we're very –

S: Not bad

J: Chuffed, I know we were really chuffed

H: You're getting a good collection of awards at the moment then, gathering those up?

S: We're doing alright. I think we've got one of two each

J: Two each. We go – well whenever we've been lucky enough to get one we kind of, like Simon took the first one and I got the second one –

H: Oh I see, with the speeches?

S: No no no, with the actual award, so

H: I see.

J: It depends, it depends how the cycle goes as to how good the award is

S: James always takes the speech on the chin

J: I took the speech last night yes, kept it short

H: Good work, good work

S: It's very nerve-wracking

H: so you've been actually quite busy haven't you this summer and generally most summers with festivals and touring and stuff. What have you been up to?

J: We've pretty much had a full compliment of festivals this year, all the major ones in the UK and we went to Japan for a great festival out there, and we went to the States quite a lot, so we started to kind of go to different places. We went to Australia for the first time last year which was really, really incredible, so it's nice to get to these different places and see some places we haven't been to and – in Australia there were people that kind of bought our first couple of albums and have been waiting to see us for a few years, so it's nice to finally get out there and –

H: Brilliant

J: Rock it up

H: And you're going to the States soon, is that right? Or you've been to the States? What's happening there?

S: Yes we've toured the States about 4 times I think, we've done – we'll probably be recording a new record in the States and then we may kick off our kind of tour and the next kind of record over there, and kind of get started over there before we necessarily start in the UK and Europe, so it's some – we really love America because most of our favourite bands really are American and so every time you go to a city you kind of know it's a venue you've heard of, some legendary gig happened there or something, you know so as much as like a lot of America is the same, if you really kind of know it musically, there's a trail all over the place that you could follow for the rest of your life probably

H: So you're favourite bands are American, is that going back to your earlier influences as well is it?

S: Yes absolutely, I think just because we're from small towns in Scotland, you know the more exotic and you know alien the music and the people in bands were, the more it appealed to us, so it was always bands like – well Guns and Roses, and – well Nirvana when they came out and –

J: Saint Gordon

S: Saint Gordon and Weaser, you know we just love, there was just something about it that spoke to us because it was so, so foreign I guess

H: Yes

S: From what we were used to

H: Everyone loved Nirvana though growing up didn't they?

S: Yes absolutely. If you don't there's something wrong I think

H: Yes exactly, it's like a right of passage. Now listen I want to tell you about some research we've got here and it says that the creators of Guitar Hero say that today most people have discovered that they'd like to rock out to either Freddie mercury, followed closely by Jon Bon Jovi, and then followed by John Lennon. Now you've played with Bon Jovi haven't you – did you play with Bon Jovi?

S: Yes we did, we played at Twickenham with Bon Jovi which was good fun. It wasn't particularly our crowd, you know there's a lot of kind of pink cowboy hats

H: Nice

S: Working it. There's a lot of women there to see Jon again, you know but we had a good time, we just kind of plugged in and played and you know kind of abused everyone's ears and then left, you know but it was great

J: We did get one massive cheer, that was when we announced the last song! The place erupted!

S: It was Bon Jovi again, Slippery When Wet, such a classic record that if you get asked – the opportunity to play with a band like Bon Jovi

H: you're going to take it

S: You've got to do that and tick that box

H: So if you could rock out with anyone, like alive or dead, who would you go with?

S: I'd love to support Guns and Roses on their new tour when they release Chinese democracy but – Nirvana, we would have loved to have played them

J: We had tickets to see Nirvana just before Kirk killed himself sadly, so that was something that we would – I guess we really missed out on getting to go see them, we'd love to go and play with them just to get the chance to see them I think really, but yes –

S: We've been lucky to play with a lot of bands we really respect and stuff so –

H: Yes. I've always been keen on the idea of perhaps rocking out with Biffy Clyro myself

S: Good. You're more than welcome

H: I've been practicing

S: Ok

H: I have. Not on a real guitar admittedly, I'm rubbish. But we have got loads of questions for you as well which we're going through as well, because everyone's been sending through their messages which is quite cool, so are you ready for some of them?

J: Absolutely

H: First one's from Jake B and he says "I'm travelling 9 hours in the car to come and see you at the SECC. Will we be seeing a broad selection of Biffy's back catalogue?"

S: Yes you will. We're going to play hopefully for two hours Jake, and we're going to scan all the records, you know it's not necessarily just going to be puzzle heavy and we're going to play a couple of brand new songs as well so hopefully, you know hopefully there's something in there for everyone but we're going to try and enjoy ourselves first you know

H: Yes and Puzzle's your fourth studio album isn't it?

S: Yes that's right, yes

H: Ok. We've got another question here from Zara, "if you weren't in Biff what would you be doing instead?" James?

J: That's really tough, that's really hard, I'd like to come up with a really interesting answer but I'm not sure –

H: No?

S: We'd probably still be slaving away doing Biffy you know

J: We'd be on the umpteenth name change

S: Yes we'd finally get rid of our ridiculous name probably but

J: We were really quite young when we started, you know 14, 15 we started jamming so at that age you kind of

S: Jamming

J: Jamming yeah.

S: It was the 70's after all

J: Blues rock.

H: That was an Ayr show.

J: Yeah Simon was in Ayr and Kilmarnock lovely little towns, but not a great deal to do. So we would just get in the garage and play. I think it is hard to imagine doing anything else now.

H: The original line up had someone else didn't it, and then your brother came in?

J: It was me actually

H: It was you

S: We were about 12 at that point and the other guy that played with us was because he had a guitar. It was one of those where we were just playing cords. The band didn't really start until we left school and started university. That was when we really started working on the band and taking our gigs seriously. I think our first gig we had to skip double maths or something, we had to go and play a gig, we just kind of snuck out of school. It's great, I mean we've been doing it a long time, Ben and James are twins as well so they've known each other particularly long!

H: Yes. Ok so I just want to ask you what's the best parts about being on tour?

S: The best bits are definitely playing shows every night and meeting people, you know, and you know seeing old friends and everything and getting to travel, you know it's amazing. The bad stuff is pretty much the amount of time you have to spend travelling, you know there's a lot – for every gig – for every hour you spend on stage there's probably about 10 hours travelling you know, but we wouldn't change it for the world, you know it's – you know any band that gets the chance to tour and be on a tour bus or something is incredibly lucky, it's the way to do it, because we've done it sleeping on the back of a van you know and it can get really, really hard core sometimes and hats off to everyone that does it. We've kind of wimped out these days. Sleep as I'm going

H: So on those long journeys James, what do you do to pass the time?

J: Well funny you should ask actually because usually we just work out the guitar here. After we've spent 3 hours playing guitar at night time there's no better way to relax than sit and play guitar, so –

S: It is, it's addictive isn't it?

J: Yes so we – we watch movies and play games on the bus and just hang. We're quite lucky that we're all good friends and you know maybe it can be hard on a band like Polyphonic Spree even, there's like 23 members of something, must be tough to hang out. The three of us, we're quite close

H: Yes or Blazing Squad!

J: Yes

S: But we had to wear you down to get you to start loving computer games

J: Yes I was a slow starter to computer games. Ben and Simon are like veterans but I was always like – no

H: Making up for it now though?

J: I'm making up for it

S: It's probably because there's three of us so there's always someone not playing

J: That's it, yes yes

S: You're not playing tonight James? 

J: I get worse blisters on my thumb from playing computer games than from playing bass!

S: You're not playing it hard enough!

J: No I know

H: Sign of the times eh? Got another question for you, this is from Lewis from Inthenews.co.uk – not sure where that is. Lewis says "why did you call yourselves Biffy Clyro?"

S: We ask ourselves that every day – it came from a conversation at school around about the same time as we started playing and we just came up with the concept of a Cliff Richard pen which became a Cliffy biro and then a Biffy Clyro, but we've got better stories than that

H: Yes

S: Next time, next time – yes I still get a different story –

H: Do you know I've heard 3 different stories, one of them was that story, the other was that it was a Scottish footballer, and the third was that it's an acronym

S: Yes, for big imagination for feeling young cos life - optimism

H: Yes, I like that one

S: Optimism –

H: I like that one best

S: That's kind of a default setting

H: Because – do you get asked that quite a lot?

J: We do, it's a crazy name so people are kind of bound to question it

S: Yes it's funny 'cos it still gets asked, and every time you go somewhere new you know for the first time it's the first question out of everyone's mouths – what's your name about? And it's something that was a bit of a mistake but hopefully the music's good enough to kind of overpower the name and people forget the name's a bit silly when they dig the music, hopefully

H: I just want to ask you a little bit about what you're doing, what's coming up for you now in the future, in the very near future. Now you're doing a tour, a UK tour, is that right?

J: We are yes

S: In December

H: In December. When are you going to be in London – what December 16th is it, Brixton academy?

S: Yes well done, 16th London, 17th Birmingham, 18th – Manchester

J: Somewhere round there!

H: Somewhere round there!

S: We're in Glasgow –

J: You'll see on the website, or myspace, all the dates there, I think we start in Ireland I think a couple of days before that

H: What's your MySpace address?

J: Biffy Clyro

S: Yes

H: Biffy Clyro, excellent stuff.  Looking forward to that tour?

J: Can't wait yes. It's – we always try and get out and traditionally we do a few dates in Ireland at Christmas time just a bit of a jolly, but we've come and played in the rest of the country as well so it's going to be a lot of fun

H: Yes good stuff, good stuff. On that very subject I've got a question from Zara and she says "what's the best gig you've ever done and why?" Now to you this is a pretty major question because you've played some major, major gigs haven't you?

J: We have, we've been lucky enough to – yes

S: I think our best ever gig that we ever played was probably Reading last year

J: Incredible, yes

S: We'd had a really ferociously busy year and we hadn't been at home for like 2 ½ months and we flew into the country and did Reading, you know and jus the starts just aligned, it was just one of those nights that we played really great you know and the people that were there watching or whatever, joining in, you know just the energy just kind of synced up and it's – you can't really put your finger on why you know a certain night, because another night can feel almost exactly the same way in that you'll have a great time and everyone else is – but you know there was just something about that, I think you know because we were pretty much so beat because we'd spent a really long time touring America

H: Yes

S: And it was just great to kind of come back and just you know just get that gig, those gigs out our system and then we went home and had a bit of a rest

H: Because there's a – obviously people have their own opinions about what they think your best gigs are, and my producer said he saw you guys perform when you were supporting Mews

J: Oh yes

H: And he said it was just off the scale fantastic. Was that a good one for you as well?

That was great, that was at Wembley – the new Wembley stadium so in itself it was quite a – you know an occasion, but yes a real kind of – you have to pinch yourself when you're in that situation, it's just really happening and you maybe don't enjoy it as much until after the show when you get a chance to reflect on it, but that was a really, really great night to be part of

S: And you feel like you're kind of in a fish bowl at Wembley, because obviously it's so high

H: Yes

S: It's really unusual stadium feel for a band, it's quite unusual so you feel as though everything's just kind of leering in on you, it's great, mega exciting

H: Did you ever watch your shows back, like on DVD?

S: We used to when we were more narcissistic back in the day, sometimes if we had it, after the gig we'd go let's watch it again, you know re-live our life half an hour after it actually happened!  But we learnt that's not a good way to pass your time, you end up just analysing everything and thinking that you're rotten! But we'd just watch it and go that's awful, I can't sing, we can't play!

H: Ok so here's another question, "if you could be in any band in history, aside from Biffy Clyro, who would it be?"  And that's from Johnny. I'll ask you James, what do you reckon? 

J: I would say Sin Gordon actually, a band I grew up with and really loved. Quite a complex band although they managed to make their songs sound relatively simple, with really great melodies, like Kevin Tyle the guitarist is just the coolest looking guy in the world and Chris Cornell – so yes I'd love to, I'd love to play in Sin Gordon, that'd be great

H: What about you Simon?

S: There's a couple of bands, I'd love to play in a band called the Redhouse Painters who are one of my favourites.  They play really long kind of slow songs and it's very repetitive but really beautiful lyrics are amazing and I would just love - yes there's hardly any guitars on, it's just single notes and things but I think it would just be a really great band to kind of just be in and play, you would just get overcome by the kind of repetition of the music –

J: The melody

S: Made a bit of a kind of transcendental experience – you know -

J: That's a big word for this time of the morning

S: If not that I'd like to play with Pearl Jam because they look as though they have a great time

H: They know how to party

S: Just – they just do it for the love of the music, they just make records and I think that's the way to do it

H: Now I've also got a question here from someone called Jamie, he wants to know when the King Tuts DVD is going to be released

S: No plans at the moment because we did, like it was a couple of years ago we played four shows at King Tuts and did each of a record every night and we filmed it kind of for posterity or whatever.  Posterity?

H: Yes, posterity, yes

S: Thank you –

H: I'm here for you, I'm here for you, you know that

S: Appreciate that. And you – but we'll definitely do something with it because it's too good to not use but we need to pick the right moment and just make sure it's a nice package you know, and we want to compile it hopefully with a documentary kind of thing, so we haven't quite had the time to edit it all together but it should hopefully be at a cinema near you soon. We'll release it in cinemas like You Tube

H: I just want ask you something as well, you know with regards to the single Machines, can you tell us a little bit about how that came about because it's a beautiful song, beautiful sounding song

S: Thank you. It was a song we were kind of messing around with, been playing around with for a while and we were doing, recording Puzzle and it was basically the last day of recording in Canada, in Vancouver and just decided to put it down really and the version that we did that night in two hours was the one that was on the record, we added a wee bit of cello and stuff but it just – again just the stars aligned for some reason, because we were unsure about the song up until that night and then as soon as we heard it back we just thought well that's got to be in the record kind of thing, and - so it was just meant to be. There's no big kind of massive master plan for it

H: Yes

S: It just –

H: It just happened?

S: Yes

H: Do you have your own personal favourite Biffy songs? Is that not something –

S: Yes I think we all do, you can have your ones that you're really enjoy playing, you know the songs that are great live but you maybe wouldn't enjoy listening to as much as maybe something else, it's good – they're all our babies. 86 babies!  We're like the modern day sailors!

H: Now we had an email earlier on about the guy whose travelling 9 miles – 9 hours sorry, 9 miles – 9 hours he should make an effort! Driving 9 hours to come and see you, so you've got some of your dedicated fans, and I was reading about something called where the fans chant morning Biffy? Tell us about that, what's that about?

J: It started off right at the start, when we started the band and somebody shouted I think it was just a throwback to football chant type thing, and it just kind of stuck. People started shouting it out. We went to – we were touring in Japan and Australia and people were there shouting it –

S: Different accents, from like an Ayrshire accent which is like you know morning Biffy, and you know you get this – well I'm not even going to try accents but it's funny –

H: Go on

S: No, no it's too early for that

H: Excellent stuff. Ok next question from Steve and Steve asked "if you could have written any song what would you have written?" For example Steven Tyler would have written Honky Tonk – so if you could have written any song what would it be?

J: We're talking about royalties here or -

S: Daniel Powter, had a bad day apparently –

J: That's a hard one

S: That's a great question. 

J: You'd probably pick a Redhouse Painters song

S: Or maybe we'd just go with something that I loved this year, like there's a band called Frightened Rabbit actually who were playing with – going to play with us in December, and the first song on their record is called the Modern Leper, it's – it's just without doubt my favourite song – well probably last year because I had favourite songs last year, but there's always like one or two songs every year that just blow me away and last year it was against me, a song called Born in the FM Moves of the heart and this year TV and the Radio have got an incredible song, which I don't know what it's called but it's like track 3 in the new record and – yes Frightened Rabbit, the Modern Leper, everyone should check out Frightened Rabbit, they're amazing, but this song in particular, very simple but I would love to have written it. But they're Scottish, so maybe

H: What about yourself, what would you have chosen?

J: Maybe in honour of Ben I would say Brothers in Arms by Dire Straits – so back to '85 when we were kids, watching it – we used to – Ben especially used to watch the video every day when he came home from school –

H: Yes 

J: He'll love me telling everyone that, you know. He's really proud of that

H: Good work, why not? You know I really do think I should be in your band

J: You'll have to grow a bit of a beard

H: I can't get facial hair. Seriously James I'm not even joking, it's been years

J: The job isn't yours

H: I'll get a beard wig

S: Come back when you've got a beard, yes!

H: I'm good at singing! Not really – but I do play guitar and I hear that works... Right we're running out of time actually – anything else you want to get out, anything you want to say to the fans? Anyone who's coming to your tour over Christmas –

J: Yes hopefully, Jake was it who's travelling 9 hours?

H: Yes

J: Hopefully he makes it and everyone else makes it

H: SECC up in Glasgow

J: We're really looking forward to it, we hope that everyone else is as well

S: Yes we want to make great shows, so hopefully it will be the best time that everyone's seen Biffy

H: Yes

S: And there – we're working on a new record at the moment

H: Oh you are?

S: It probably won't be out until later on next year but the songs are sounding good, so thank you to everyone –

H: That's an exclusive we had just there – is that an exclusive?

J: Kind of

H: Kind of

S: Well we're not keeping it secret, but yes it's the first recorded –

H: Brilliant. So do you fancy having a quick razzle on the old guitar here after this?

S: I'd love to, I've got my eye on a few songs that I'd love to kind of –

H: Sweet Child of Mine

S: Yes. Do some dive bombing

H: Exc stuff, thank you very much guys

S: Thank you

H: Thank you very much. Ok if you guys fancy rocking out with Biffy Clyro – unfortunately you can't, unless of course you queue outside Brixton in December for a few days and hope that a tout takes pity on you, which is unlikely.  Anyway thanks very much to Biffy Clyro, if you want to find out more about Guitar Hero you can go to www.worldtour.guitarhero.com/uk. Lots of dots in that addresses. My name's Yemi, until next time – bye bye