Gabi King: "Glastonbury was unreal - I'd love to headline again, especially as the drummer"

Still At Her Very Best - Worthing's global multi-instrumentalist talks unintentionally getting into drums, what could have been with Louis Tomlinson, and being part of the band.

By Tom Adams September 2025

Photo Credit: Marcus Prouse Jr.

"Sorry to keep you waiting! I had to frantically hang the washing up and get dinner on - all that normal life shit you know..."

It never fails to make me smile when someone who has achieved almost everything there is to accomplish in their trade still has to attend to the everyday chores of modern life. Above all, it's even nicer to learn that same person is also genuinely lovely in conversation. After immediately offering to call me back on her Zoom premium account so we could have more of a natural chat, I immediately felt at ease knowing I no longer had to compact a record long list of questions into the forty minute time cap of my basic plan. All because, well, what do you possibly ask someone who has seemingly done it all?

Headlining Glastonbury Festival earlier this year with The 1975, seven and a half years drumming for Declan McKenna, and playing percussion with Elton John and Ed Sheeran just to name a few... I didn't really know where to begin. But as Gabi appeared on my laptop screen sitting in front of a number of impressive looking kits and tour memorabilia, I figured that might be the best place to start.

"The set-up behind me? Oh yeah so this is my home studio, although it is a bit of a shithole at the moment. This is where I do my remote recordings. I have percussion there, my student kit for my teaching here, and my desk which I spend most of my time at."

It's unsurprisingly quite the set-up. Gabi King's eleven year career so far as a session drummer/percussionist (and "tambourine shaker" as stated on her socials) has seen her tour countries a long way away from her home in the seaside town of Worthing. But before we got to world tours and Glastonbury headline slots, I was surprised to learn where her interest in music originated.

"The earliest influence was actually the church because my parents were Christian", she laughed. "Surprisingly, I was a devoted Christian until the age of sixteen - which is fucking mental - and then I joined a band and then became a rebel child. It wasn't necessarily the church music that had influence on me in particular, it was more just whatever my parents were listening to. They'd play a lot of Fleetwood Mac, Bruce Springsteen, Roxy Music, The Beatles, and Madonna. I really clung onto Fleetwood Mac, and they're still my favourite band today. My parents had the VCR of The Dance and when they played 'Tusk', there's this massive drum solo and a marching band comes out and I was just blown away by it. I must have only been about five years old so that probably sparked my love for drums but watching the church bands helped. Sadly it wasn't a gospel church though, it was more of a white people church and a bit more, well, shit really. I wish I grew up with a gospel church because I'd be a much better drummer now."

Photo Credit: Nicholas O'Donnell

"My mum always played the guitar and sang, she actually played in the church band too so I started learning guitar through her and then from the university of YouTube. I loved making up songs and learning them from CDs I was listening to. I was obsessed with Avril Lavigne and I'm actually wearing my Avril t-shirt right now which I got when I was eleven in 2005. I used to skate and wear baggy jeans so I basically just wanted to be her. I can still play guitar actually but I'm not great, or at least it just doesn't come as naturally to me as drums do."

"As cringey as it sounds, I feel like the drums found me in a way. The catalyst moment was actually through a really good friend of mine I went to school with. We must have both been in year nine or ten and we had a music assignment to make a song and she's a singer and there was a drum kit so I just decided in that moment I'd play the drums. I sat down and was messing around on it and it sort of came out of thin air. My parents picked me up from school and I was telling them I wanted to play drums, I wanted a drum kit etcetera, and to be fair they did get me one for my birthday. It's funny because I originally joined this band as the guitar player, and then in between me joining and as the guitar player and then me sitting down at the drum kit for the first time, the actual drummer left the band so I just nominated myself and it went from there really."

Back in 2013, Gabi made the decision to move to London to study music performance in drumming at the Institute for Contemporary Music Performance, or the ICMP for short.

"I found it a really great opportunity to work at my craft and live in London whilst not having to pay for it but also a chance to meet like minded people. I'd been with the band I was in for a few years leading up to this and there came a point where I realised no one was more serious about this than I was and so that's when I made the decision to go to London. I did a scholarship thing first, and thinking back I think god knows why but anyway I turn up - obviously I'm the only girl because that's the world that I live in - and it was just me and seven guys and I just thought I'd get there and wing it and I came second so I got half the scholarship to the ICMP and that first year was amazing! I think that was the year I started to become confident and began fine tuning things I'd never fine tuned before - I loved it."

Coincidentally, not too far from Gabi in the capital was an upcoming teenage artist called Declan McKenna, who had just won Glastonbury Festival's Emerging Talent Competition in 2015 following the release of his now two-time platinum song 'Brazil'. During the same year whilst at the ICMP, Gabi was encouraged to audition to become Declan's drummer, at this point having no idea where that decision would lead.

"Essentially Declan had just been signed and he was pretty desperate for a band because at the time he was doing all his shows on his own. So because he was literally a baby, they wanted a band that were also basically children, so where's the best place to find babies that are good at music… music school of course! They literally went round all the London music schools and held auditions at all of them. I remember getting an email from the careers team at my music school saying there was this audition opportunity and they wanted to put me forward for it. I agreed but honestly didn't remember thinking much of it as the career departments at music schools aren't necessarily known for their breaking of success, but either way I was really happy to do it."

"I'd gone through an audition process before. There was this thing in 2015 where Louis Tomlinson was trying to put together the next big girl band with Sony - essentially trying to create an industry plant. I don't even know how I found myself in it to be honest but I'd gone through a number of auditions and had to learn these songs, I had cameras pointed in my face everywhere as they where trying to get a personality. It had real X Factor vibes to be honest. I feel like it did teach me a lot, and I actually did end up getting the gig, but they couldn't find a bassist or a singer so the whole thing got dropped. So yeah, suppose I could've been the next fucking One Direction or something, but I'm glad it didn't work out for what would transpire next."

What did transpire next was seven plus years drumming alongside the now indie prodigy Declan McKenna. Gabi went on to drum on the recording of his sophomore album Zeros, they performed together at Glastonbury on multiple occasions, and toured the world. But Gabi has since left the band to take on new opportunities, so I wanted to ask her how she reflects on those seven and a bit years working alongside Declan.

"I think back to it a lot and I'm so unbelievably grateful for being given that opportunity. I'm thirty-one now so it's actually ten years since I auditioned. I remember having to learn 'Brazil' and 'Paracetamol' for the audition, and when I originally looked up Declan on Instagram, he had about six thousand followers, and so I didn't really know what to expect so for things to turn out how they did was truly amazing. I do count my lucky stars that I was a part of that and being on that journey with all of these brilliant musicians that I still think so fondly of - I'm so grateful for it. Declan is such an amazing artist and it was an incredibly difficult decision to part ways, but I just thought seven and a half years is a fucking great amount of time to work with one artist so it felt like a good time to go. But still to this day Dec is like my little brother... even if he is like twenty-six now."

Before moving on, I had to ask about Gabi's feature in the 2020 live video of 'Be An Astronaut'. It features the band in a circular formation playing the track in this beautiful looking manor house.

"Mate, it was so weird! It was somewhere on the outskirts of London and it was this massive house. I don't know if the story we were told was legit or not but apparently, the family that used to live in this house were of some kind of royal descent, and the story was that they had to flee in the night so god knows who the house belongs to now. This could also just be me being really gullible but every room in the house is still perfectly set-up as if it's still in the eighties, and in the hallway there's huge paintings of these royals, there was an abandoned swimming pool, oh and the bathroom… There were about fifty bars of imperial leather. I honestly thought the whole thing was one big skit because if it was, they'd done an exceptional job! So the dining room - which is where we shot the video - is now something people can rent out. We started hearing rumours there were people buried underneath the house as well, which I'd probably believe to be honest because it was all that strange."

Photo Credit: Jordan Hughes

Shortly after this time Gabi began to gain some serious notoriety. In 2017, she officially signed to the British Drum Co - making her the first woman the BDC had signed - and they've been supplying her set-up ever since.

"The British Drum Co are an amazing company! They actually only started in 2015, but yeah all their drums are handmade in Stockport - home of Blossoms! It was actually the Blossoms' drummer Joe (Donovan) who introduced me to them because he let me try his drum kit and he put me in touch. I play the lounge series, which is more of the vintage approach to the build and a lot warmer in tone, and then I was using the Merlin snare which is like 20ply for literally everything including all the Declan tours. Now I use a brass snare called the bluebird which I absolutely love so I use that on everything."

At this point, we took a small interlude as Gabi went off screen to find the exact snare she used for Declan's What Do You Think About The Car campaign - a tour I attended back in 2018. Since then, Gabi has drummed/percussioned for the likes of: Two Door Cinema Club, CMAT, Years & Years, Perrie Edwards, and even industry royalty Elton John and Ed Sheeran.

"The Elton John and Ed Sheeran one was crazy to be honest. I was doing percussion for the Christmas single they did back in 2021, and my friend - who's the musical director for Ed - called me and asked if I could do this one-off thing and I pretty much literally was just in and out the door. I was probably there for about two hours. It was only on my drive home I thought to myself, that is actually really mental I've just done that and been in the same room as both Elton John and Ed Sheeran."

Having already built such an spectacular CV of artist collaborations, things seemed to quickly get even more surreal. In 2023, Gabi officially joined The 1975 on tour as their percussionist, and funnily enough the route of it stemmed all the way back to her uni years.

"Polly (Money) [guitarist and backing vocalist in the band] went to the same uni as me so she knew me from there, so when it came to them needing a new percussionist, she put my name forward. I had no idea this was going on but when they were searching through people they obviously landed on me, and I remember just getting a random follow and then an email from Jamie Oborne (the founder of the Dirty Hit label) and that was it. He asked if I'd be interested in a session gig with The 1975. There wasn't a lot of context in the first email so I wasn't sure if they meant like for a one-off or what, but then I had a phone call with him not long after and he explained the whole situation".

"It's so amazing to work with them! They're such lovely boys, and so humble! The very first time I met them was when they were doing the The Jonathon Ross Show - which was kind of my audition in a weird way. We played 'About You' and thank god because it's a really easy song for me and I was still trying to learn percussion at that point. I didn't really know what to expect when it came to meeting them but they're lush. As soon as I walked into the dressing room I felt so welcomed and appreciated, and that feeling has never left. It feels very much like a unit, we all share a dressing room so there's no separation. Of course ultimately the four boys are the stars but you're never made to feel like you're not a part of that. You're never made to feel disposable, you'd be surprised to find out how many people don't make you feel like that. It also just makes people feel better when they're valued and therefore play better as you naturally just want to be a better version of yourself as a result."

I wanted to know how Gabi and the rest of the band coped with the relentless touring schedule of being part of The 1975. The At Their Very Best and Still At Their Very Best touring campaigns involved one hundred and sixteen shows across twenty five countries, all in the time frame of around fifteen months.

"I thrive off it! I mean I've done it for so long now but I love it! Don't get me wrong, there's parts of it that are really hard, and everyone has their bad days at work but that feeling quickly goes once you get out and do the show, you're reminded just how fucking sick it is. I love how long the shows are and how big of a production it is. I love their approach to live music because it's so much more than just let's walk on and play some songs then leave again. There's thought gone into every single little aspect of it, it's so great to be a part of."

"You definitely have to look after yourself on tour. It's so easy to not, especially when you're on a lower budget tour in vans with late night drives and early starts from hotels to venues to eat like shit and not check in with yourself or look after your mental health. Drinking too much is a common one, but I've been there and done it. The first few years of touring I drank way more than I should have but the novelty of being on tour itself takes over, that and the fact I was a lot younger. Drinking loads of water is another big one. I drink electrolytes on stage, even though they're in a wine glass. But yeah now it's more like if I feel I need to have a rest then I'll have a rest, I make sure I eat as well as I can, I go to the gym and I talk to my girlfriend everyday if I can depending on time zones and whatnot. You know going on tour isn't a holiday, I'm here working and making money because this is my job, even if it is the best job in the world so you do still have to view it like that whilst trying to keep your mind, body and soul in check."

In the two years she's been with The 1975, she's undoubtedly ticked off some huge bucket list moments. But most notorious of all, Gabi is a Glastonbury headliner. Friday 27th June 2025, The 1975 topped the bill by playing the iconic Pyramid Stage in a performance reportedly worth multiples of their festival fee due to the specially designed set.

"Headlining Glastonbury was unreal! It's difficult to put the moment into words because it felt like I was in this parallel life for those ninety minutes we were on stage. I felt surprisingly calm and was actually more nervous the day before, but because we'd built up to it for such a long time, I was so mentally prepared for it. We found out October last year so it was in the works for a while and I just knew I didn't wanna mess it up and I wanted to make sure I was as present as I could've been in that moment, even though it didn't feel very real. It's funny because the stage isn't actually that big, and obviously being a pyramid it feels a bit more intimate but yeah it was unreal and I loved every minute of it. I'd love to headline again someday, especially as the drummer."

As we neared the end of our call, I wanted to ask Gabi whether she plans on writing and releasing some of her own music in the future - or at least when her non-stop touring commitments allow it.

"It's something I haven't had the time to get into but I used to do a lot of songwriting when I was younger before everything took off so it's ended up on the backburner. Back then I didn't have a studio space that was appropriate for feeling as creative as I do now in them. Now I have this space, I feel a lot more like I wanna get back into it. I did a writing session a couple of months ago with Woody (Chris Wood) of Bastille which was really fun and my first time writing with other people so it's definitely something that is on the horizon, as well as studio work in general like remote recording too once my diary clears up a bit. Sadly you can't put a timer on inspiration."

For the last five years or so, Gabi has ventured into tutoring by offering drumming lessons to people of all ages. I was intrigued to know whether she gets more satisfaction from teaching someone who already has rhythm, or someone with zero prior experience.

"As long as they have a passion for percussion or drums then I'm happy to teach anyone, like my youngest student is eight and my oldest is early sixties I think. I find teaching inexperienced drummers and experienced drummers both equally fun for different reasons. I like to teach those with more experience because I don't have to overexplain because they'll get it straight away and we can then delve into more complex ideas. I quite like the challenge of teaching those with more experience as it requires a bit more thought in advance. On the flip side, teaching someone who is a total beginner is great too because when they finally get the thing that they've been working on for a while that they've also been struggling with, it's so exciting and I'm so excited for them to see through repetition they can get better at something. But yeah I create the lessons bespoke to the student because no one learns the same way so it's just about which hat I need to put on when teaching really but I do really enjoy it."

Finally, some parting advice from a seasoned professional.

"I'd say if you're interested in picking up drums or any instrument, go grab the bull by the horns. Music is medicine, it makes the world go round, it brings people together, there is absolutely no reason to not if you're curious about it - what have you got to lose?"

("But also if you do want to learn the drums then just drop me an email.")