It might not have been a ‘hold the front page’ announcement, but when The Gaslight Anthem frontman Brian Fallon revealed that the band were “returning to full-time status” in late March, not to mention beginning the process of writing songs for what will be their sixth studio album, it felt like a good-news day.
The New Jersey quartet – Fallon, guitarist Alex Rosamilia, bassist Alex Levine and drummer Benny Horowitz – had announced in July 2015 that they’d be taking an “indefinite hiatus” upon completion of touring commitments for their fifth album, 2014’s Get Hurt. And although the four musicians had regrouped in the summer of 2018 and played a series of triumphant, victory-lap shows celebrating the tenth anniversary of The ’59 Sound, their breakthrough album, there were no hints that this reunion might be a precursor to something more permanent.
“To be honest, we thought that was it,” Fallon admits to Classic Rock today, in his dressing room at Manchester Apollo, during his latest solo UK tour. “When we played the last show of that run, in Asbury Park, we played The ’59 Sound itself as the last song of the set, and I truly thought: ‘Okay, this is the last time I’ll ever play this song in this band again.’ I never thought in a million years that we would play again, ever. And I think everybody thought the same. And we felt okay about that.
“When we went on hiatus abruptly, that was kind of an emergency ‘pull the ejector seat’ thing. We did itThat’s where we thought the Gaslight Anthem story ended.”
