Glass Animals were inspired by drummer Joe Seaward’s near-fatal crash.
Seaward’s cycling accident was a “wake-up call” for the band after Joe fractured his skull and broke his leg almost four years ago in a lorry collision which left him fighting for his life.
Speaking to the Metro newspaper’s Guilty Pleasures column, frontman Dave Bayley said: “We really didn’t know if he was going to survive. We had to cancel everything we had coming up.
“When he started recovering, we were like, ‘We are so lucky to be able to do what we love for a living’ – you can never take that for granted.
“We’d been on the road, touring for five years solid at that point and we were all knackered. When that happened, it was a wake-up call. It was a horrible thing, but it ended up uniting everybody.”
Meanwhile, being by his side in hospital provided the inspiration behind the band’s album ‘Dreamland’ as they reflected on “life”.
Dave added: “You end up thinking about the past and your life. That’s where the roots of this record came from.”
After the accident in 2018, the singer gave fans an update on the group’s Facebook page and revealed the extent of his friend’s injuries.
At the time, he wrote: “The neurosurgery consisted of reshaping part of his skull that had collapsed and been compressed into the brain by the weight of the truck’s trailer. “The operation was successful, but the collapsed skull had bruised and damaged the area of the brain responsible for speech.
“Initially Joe was only able to get out one word … ‘I’ … but each day he is finding more. As far as we know, no other areas of his brain are severely damaged like this.
“He can still wiggle his fingers and twinkle his toes, and he still laughs at all my shit jokes.”
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