The Beef: Lee Downer

LOWLIVES frontman on West Ham United and following English football from America

As a music fan with a penchant for listening far, wide and deep to anything I can find or think of, I remain in the unfortunate vice grip of what can only be described as a Spotify dependency.

I don’t like it and I’m not proud of it. Every December I perform a pathetic one-man protest by refusing to engage with Spotify Wrapped in any public way and giving the virtual side-eye to everyone who does. But I look at it. Of course I do.

Every year, Spotify tells me that I really like Nine Inch Nails – thanks for that – and that some album or other has sunk its claws into my flesh and refused to let go irrespective of its place in my albums of the year list. Last year, that album was by LOWLIVES.

Formed on the West Coast of the USA, the band unites two Brits abroad and two Americans at home under an irresistibly grungy alt-rock groove.

Lee Downer is the band’s singer and guitarist. He’s also a lifelong supporter of West Ham United.

---

---

“I’m from the Isle of Wight,” Downer tells me. “All my family are slightly different. My dad’s a West Ham supporter. My dad's brother's side of the family are all Arsenal. My granddad is Nottingham Forest, which makes no sense at all.”

Almost as soon as we start talking, I realise how much I have in common with this man I’ve watched performing on stages in London, Coventry, Nottingham and Birmingham over the course of the last decade and more.

For all the differences between our lives since, there was a time when we were two boys from opposite shorelines of the Solent putting on claret and blue scarves on Saturday mornings and going to the football in the big city.

“It's just always been West Ham since I was a little kid, man. We used to go to Upton Park as many times as possible. And then whenever they were playing in what was Division Two then, it would be watching them at Portsmouth or Southampton as well. But we used to go to Upton Park at least maybe ten times a year,” continues Downer.

“This is where I show my age a little bit now. It's a long, long time ago. Like, Ian Bishop and Ludo [goalkeeper Luděk Mikloško]. I was born in 1982 so I was going to games from, fuck, 1987 onwards, I guess.

“1987 to probably the late 1990s was when I was obsessed with them. And then it was all — you know what it's like in England. Every kid just wants to play football. It's embedded in us as a country.”

All West Ham, all the time

The different types of football supporters fascinate me.

It’s not unusual for someone to follow the game simply because of the game itself. There are knowledgeable fans of football who’ve never really aligned themselves to a particular team.

Others tend towards a sort of social infatuation that seems, often, to have its origins in childhood experiences of matchday. I can relate.

“I used to love going to Upton Park. We used to go to Highbury a lot as well because my dad's brother's side of the family were Arsenal supporters,” says Downer.

“I went to watch the FA Cup a few times, went with my granddad to watch Nottingham Forest in the Cup, I dread to think what year that was. He took me and my cousin when we were little kids. But, for me, it was all West Ham all the time, to be honest.

“Remember the Makita Tournament? I used to go to that, which was weird. It was like West Ham, Arsenal, Sampdoria, and I can't remember, might have been Panathinaikos or something like that. I remember going to those a lot as a kid as well.”

I checked. In the summer of 1991, the Makita Tournament was played between West Ham, Arsenal, Sampdoria and, yes, Panathinaikos.

“We used to go to Upton Park in the late eighties, early nineties. It was rough as fuck. I remember running from the tube station, my dad literally having me under his arm and in his coat sprinting to the ground to try and get into the ground. I just thought that's what football is like. I didn't think anything of it.”

Did you play?

“Yeah, I used to play. I used to play for the Isle of Wight. I played for Ryde, the team there. I used to do this thing called the School of Excellence, which is ridiculous.

“It was like a Portsmouth youth team thing. So I'd have to train for that as well. I think I played five nights a week for a long time until I stopped when I was about 15. Nirvana and weed came along and it ruined everything.”

Downer sees football and music as overlapping influences in his adolescence. Football was first. Music came later and, eventually, became his world.

“I started playing in bands when I was 12 or 13,” he recalls.

“As soon as I could, when I was 17, I moved off the Isle of Wight. I went to London because you had to at that time. You know, you London is where you had to go and do it. So I moved to London and started a band called The Defiled.”

At this point in our conversation, I consciously hold my tongue. We are there to talk about football and I’m aware that the fan’s experience of music is different to that of the people who make it.

We might connect with a band or an album but we can never truly know the fullness of it, and Downer is thriving creatively in a different band altogether now. And I love LOWLIVES.

But I’ll be damned if I don’t love The Defiled too.

“That was my band for a long time,” Downer tells me as I nod along, knowing full well what he’s about to say because, while he doesn’t dwell on it, The Defiled did some amazing things.

“We just toured relentlessly for years. It was good. We did some cool stuff. We got in the Guinness Book of Records, which is ridiculous. We played on an iceberg, which is very stupid, in Greenland.

“And then I just grew tired of doing it, man. Like, I just started going back to what I've always loved, you know, grungy nineties punk bands. So I was just trying to shoehorn that into The Defiled and it just wasn't working.”

Slowly but surely, that was the end of The Defiled. Downer took a year and a half away from the business of being in a band and met Luke Johnson, a drummer whose career started in Beat Union, not far from here in the West Midlands, and took him to a bunch of other bands and session jobs before he helped form – then left – No Devotion.

“We started just writing music together because it was fun,” says Downer.

“He's a Liverpool supporter which is terrible. But we were two Brits just over here so it was nice to just write together and just see what happened and that became LOWLIVES.”

“Have you seen that weird pub thing that's out here that looks like you're in the stadium? I wanna go down and go to that in the next couple of weeks. They only seem to show Manchester United games though, and I'm not I'm not going there for that.”

How did you end up in California in the first place? I ask.

“We moved out here in maybe 2014. It got to the point where The Defiled were touring a lot, and we were trying to tour in America a lot, and I was never home in London but trying to keep a flat there.

“You know what it's like being in a band. You don't make any fucking money anymore. So it was just like, I just said to my wife, ‘Where do you wanna where do you wanna live? Where do you wanna move to?’

“It's nice. We moved out of LA five or six years ago. We moved about 100 miles east and up a mountain. We live in Lake Arrowhead now, which is really pretty and it's in the middle of the forest. But now that it's fire season, it's fucking terrifying.”

Downer admits to having little interest in Major League Soccer and indeed the more traditional American sports, the kind of limited interest that means he’d watch a basketball game if it were in front of him but not much more, so it’s a good thing there are people around to join him in indulging in Premier League football from a distance.

Expat power in numbers

“You end up latching on to other Brits out here,” he says, “and as soon as you meet another English person you ask them if they like football. Luckily, one of my neighbours I'm close to is an Arsenal fan, so our wives hang out and we just go and sit outside and smoke cigarettes and talk about football.

“I used to tour a lot in my old band and I just never was able to keep up with watching games because we were just away all the time. Now that touring's calmed down a little bit, it's nice to finally watch some games.

“I work from home as well. I price vintage guitars for Guitar Center. So, like, I assess old stuff and price it. So it's a great job and it means I can do it from home. It's great now because out here Peacock shows ninety percent of the games so I can wake up on Saturday morning and just watch everything.

“Obviously, when you're touring and stuff, you just don't get to watch football ever anymore, although the last few tours we've done have somehow matched with the World Cup or the Euros which has been good.

“We went to England in 2021 to do a record in the middle of COVID, and we had a residential studio in the north of England.

“We were waking up and just recording all day. And I remember just having breaks to watch the football games, and the two Americans in our band were just like, ‘What the fuck are we doing? We paid all this money to go and do a record. Are we really stopping for two hours now so we can watch football?’

“And we’re like, ‘Yeah. That's what we have to do.’ So that was great, man. Being there for that was a lot of fun.”

The conversation inevitably meanders back towards the Hammers and their fortunes in the Premier League.

Julen Lopetegui has left the club and been replaced as manager by Graham Potter, and we’re right in the middle of the January transfer window. West Ham, says Downer, have work to do. Potter certainly has his work cut out. I ask what the ceiling for Potter’s West Ham could be, looking past this season.

“We need to aim for at least sixth or seventh in the league, that’s kinda where we need to go. But right now I think we're only six points clear of the relegation zone. It's mental at the moment seeing us, Man United and Spurs all down there.

“I think Everton are just one below now as well. Now they've got [David] Moyes, which is hilarious. I kinda miss Moyes. Poor guy. We won a cup, and then they booted him out. I feel terrible for him.

“What's weird is at the beginning of the season, it was like, man, like, what are we planning? We got some great players in, and we're like, this is gonna be an absolutely mental season.

“Niclas Füllkrug came in. He looked good for, like, the one game that he started. Now he's injured again. Crysencio Somerville's injured. Jarrod Bowen is injured. Michail Antonio obviously had that mental crash. It speaks volumes that last week they put Lucas Paquetá up the middle who is not a centre forward over Danny Ings who is.

“If we don't get a centre forward in January, we're fucked. I saw this morning they're trying to get Jhon Durán from Aston Villa. That'd be great if we got him but I don't know if he would leave Villa at this point. Although, he's barely getting a start at the moment.”

Durán isn’t for sale, I say, more hopefully than convincingly.

“I kinda do feel a bit sorry for J-Lo. I liked him but it was almost like Moyesball again. It was still kind of boring and defensive; playing defensive football, but with a shit defence. It makes no sense.”

What’s next for LOWLIVES?

“We'll come back over [to England] at festival season,” says Downer.

“We’re just working out what to do at the moment because we need to get to Germany pretty soon because we have a song called ‘Loser’ which is still on the radio out there and since it came out we've not been there, which is ridiculous.

“We've already started on the next record. We've got probably twenty songs done so we need to go and get that recorded as soon as possible. This time, we won't spunk all of our money coming to England to do it. We’ll do that in America.”

As our interview comes to an end, I ask Downer which of those different types of football supporters he considers himself to be.

His answer is the football experience in a nutshell: scathing, helpless, hopeless, yet delivered with a giveaway twinkle in the eye that betrays the love, the purity, that keeps us all hooked.

“I think I'm just a standard miserable West Ham fan. We are the most miserable fucking supporters known to man. If one player has one bad game, they're out. And that's what it's like with managers.

“We don't give anyone a chance. I feel like I'm kind of in that as well, and after each game I talk to my dad and he's like that too.”

---

Please share this interview using the button below.

I am available for writing commissions and freelance opportunities. Contact me directly and we’ll talk.

That’s your lot. Thanks for reading. Please subscribe if you enjoyed it and haven’t done so yet.