Almost eight years after Feeder headlined Hevy Festival on Folkestone's seafront the band is returning to the town to promote their ninth studio album All Bright Electric.

In our first of two interviews, frontman Grant Nicholas talks about fans, drummers and the pop song that was never meant for the band.

Mention Feeder to most non-fans and the response is likely to be ‘oh the band that did Buck Rogers’. But during the 17 years since the catchy, poppy track’s release, Grant has often seemed less enthusiastic when playing it live than any of their other songs.

That could be because the song, which reached number 5 in the UK charts, was never intended for Feeder.

Grant actually wrote the song for an American band as a “way of getting to work with” English record producer Gil Norton, who has produced albums for bands such as Foo Fighters, Pixies, Terrorvision and Twin Atlantic.

“At the time he was really hard to get to,” Grant said. “He was one of the hottest British indie rock producers, and his wife liked Feeder, apparently.

“Anyway we hooked up one day and I played him that and he absolutely loved it. The label said ‘you shouldn’t give that one away, you got to work with Gil’. So I rewrote the song and he didn’t like it. So I had to put it back to the silly ‘player player’ lyrics that everybody remembers nowadays.

“It is what it is, I’ve stopped beating myself up about it. At the end of the day it just shows the power of radio doesn't it? The funny thing is, Just the Way I'm Feeling actually had more radio play than Buck Rogers and was actually on a much bigger record but people seem to remember the other one more and I don't get that personally. I bet if you ask anyone about a Blur song they'll say Song 2, or Girls and Boys, and it’s probably their least favourite song.

“I remember touring with REM (in 2005) and they never played Shiny Happy People, they can’t stand it apparently, and it was one of their biggest hits.

“It’s funny because when you play Buck Rogers it still gets a great reaction. I think people maybe didn’t really get it at the time but have grown to like it because it’s one of those tracks where if you’re in a festival field and it’s pouring with rain, people just kind of know it and they jump around.

“It’s only one tiny little brick in a big wall that we’ve been building. I’d be quite happy not to play it again

“I think it’s nice to maybe not always play it but I think if you come and see one of your favourite bands, it’s nice to leave the audience feeling they’ve got something back, you know?”

He conceded that “maybe it came along at the right time” to provide the bands with the funds to keep making music.

Norton went on to work with Feeder on three albums, Echo Park, Comfort in Sound and Pushing the Senses, between 2001 and 2005.

Buck Rogers featured on the set list for the first leg of the All Bright Electric tour so fans in Folkestone could get to see it live next month.

After four years out of the spotlight, Grant is pleased with the reception All Bright Electric is getting and not just from the old fans.

"A lot of younger people seem to have found out about us, whether it's from older brothers or sisters or parents or whether it's just one of those things where we've been around so long people have seen the name or we've become sort of a cult band, I'm not sure but it's kinda nice really to see a really broad section of ages at our shows because you don't get that very often.

"We actually had some venues on the last leg of the tour where the younger fans couldn't get in because they had to be 18 or had to be accompanied by an adult and I thought, god I started going to gigs when I was 10 or 11, why can't you just let them in?”

Following original drummer Jon Lee’s suicide in 2002, and the departure of his replacement Mark Richardson when he returned to Skunk Anansie in 2009, Grant and bassist Taka Hirose have been the only full time members of Feeder and have employed session drummers, including Karl Brazil, who also works with Robbie Williams, for gigs and recordings.

“We had a great time with Mark but in the end it was just time to move on. Skunk Anansie reformed and it just wouldn’t have worked doing both. I don’t have any bad feelings towards him.

“We didn’t really want to rush into finding anybody else. Karl’s fantastic and I work really well with him. I know he absolutely adores the band but it’s just we can’t really offer him full time, all the time touring, but if he’s doing Feeder and Robbie and James Blunt and whatever else he does, that can fill up a whole year of work for him.

“We still record a lot with Karl and he does do some shows but we’re also working a lot with a guy called Geoff Holroyde at the moment, he’s really good and we found him through Karl actually. He’s playing for us pretty much all the time at the moment.

“We didn’t want to feel like we were chopping and changing the drummer every few shows, you don’t really get the chemistry going if you’re changing all the time.

“Feeder’s stuff is hard, it’s quite a drum workout, playing the stuff that Jon did, that Mark did, that Karl played, they’re all amazing drummers, it’s not an easy gig for a drummer.”

Feeder bring their All Bright Electric tour to Leas Cliff Hall, The Leas, Folkestone, on Sunday, April 2. Doors open at 7pm and support is from Darlia. Tickets, priced £26, are available here. See the What's On page next Wednesday for the second part of our Feeder interview.