For the past couple of years or so, Luke Spiller has been envisaging certain things for himself. A Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud. Chart success. Heaps of money. Real love. None of them are vague, empty wishes – a few minutes in Spiller’s company will tell you that he is dead serious about all these, even as he’s able to laugh at himself. More recently, he’s added a Grammy to that list. “I literally look in the mirror and I say: ‘And the Grammy goes to… Luke Spiller’s Love Will Probably Kill Me Before Cigarettes And Wine,’” he says of his current morning ritual. “It’s a great thing to wake up and say to yourself. It gives you that motivation. I’ll keep doing it and working towards those things.”
It would be easy to dismiss this as the unchecked hubris of yet another puffed up frontman. But Spiller’s tone points to other things: sincere ambition, a healthy degree of self-awareness, an unwavering work ethic.
Today we’re talking at 9am West Coast time. Spiller sits in a baggy Harry Potter/‘Slytherin’ jumper, cigarette in hand, ready to work on a future solo EP and some Struts tunes after our Zoom call finishes. If anyone’s going to ‘manifest’ a Grammy (i.e. in the very 2025 sense of the word – making something a reality through imagination), then it’s probably him.
For now, though, his focus is on his first solo album, Love Will Probably Kill Me Before Cigarettes And Wine, five years in the making and as grand, emotive, overblown, painstakingly detailed and full of tenderness as that long-winded but incisive title suggests. It speaks of his influences: old Hollywood glamour; Paris in the 1950s; Scott Walker and Jacques Brel. Heartbreak in your early 30s as a newcomer to Los Angeles, in love with someone you can’t not write about.
“Not only is it for me a lovely stretch of words, but it sort of describes the album perfectly,” he enthuses. “It’s tragic, it’s self-aware, and it’s also a little bit… well, it’s clearly theatrical, but it’s slightly pretentious as well. And there’s definitely moments of me being very self-indulgent on this record, which I love.”
Luke Spiller – Love Will Probably Kill Me Before Cigarettes And Wine – YouTube 
Spiller keeps that indulgence in check, though. He has ‘hype people’ but also tough critics in his corner (bandmates, co-writers, family members). Presences that instil high standards in the Struts frontman, whether he’s writing at his parents’ home in Devon or his own place in the San Fernando Valley. One of the biggest was Taylor Hawkins. A longtime friend and champion of Spiller, the late Foo Fighters drummer was a huge supporter of this debut solo venture. That’s him playing on the closing track, Angel Like You. But more on that later.
Chiefly, though, Love Will Probably Kill Me… is the sound of hitherto hidden places in Spiller’s creative and personal life. A Tinseltown love story with a smoky European flair, on a James Bond theme scale. The deeper reaches of a bombastic personality, and a tireless pop fan who had an ABBA-themed thirtieth birthday (he’s now 36).
“I was given this window of time to really explore my natural way of writing, and, dare I say, maybe a more from-the-soul, authentic voice,” he says. “And I just started running with it. I think it’s some of my greatest lyrics, and that’s a result of just being able to sit and really chip away for weeks, sometimes months, on certain sections and songs.”
Early seeds for Love Will Probably Kill Me… were planted in 2019, but the project took off over the pandemic. Holed up in Dawlish, Devon, Spiller spent days at the piano, coffee and a spliff to hand, with only the local bowls club and Happy Hour as distractions. As the world began to open up and The Struts went out on tour, he continued to chip away at it in his own time.
Unlike the glam-booted rock’n’roll of his band, these new songs have more in common with the vignettes of Leonard Cohen and Bruce Springsteen, the velvety pop of Lana Del Rey, the theatricality of Jim Steinman.
“I had been so heavily influenced after discovering Scott Walker, and then going back to the original versions of a lot of the songs that he sang by Jacques Brel,” Spiller says, “and then moving into a lot of the old French chanson – that sort of Serge Gainsborough, Edith Piaf, fifties/ early-sixties French European pop music.”
Back in Los Angeles the work continued. He wrote songs with former Jellyfish guitarist Jason Falkner (he now plays with Beck and St Vincent), a short drive away in Silverlake. On one particularly libertine day, he summoned a chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce to his home in Burbank and onward to pick up singer/local buddy Kendall Rucks. They drove through LA blasting the swooping, Bond-esque instrumental track for Angel Like You, and went out to dinner on Sunset Boulevard. Over roasts and Kate Mosses – “a glass of champagne with a mezcal chaser” – they wrote the song’s lyrics, which Rucks co-sings on the final version.
This is very much Luke Spiller’s style: that maximalist, champagne-inhand approach to life that calls for cocktails, beautiful cars and beautiful company. It’s fuelled the decadent party-starting swagger of The Struts. On their last album, Pretty Vicious, Spiller tapped into the darker sides of excess, as well as the bright, giddy ones. He began to move away from the characters of Kiss This and Primadonna Like Me. Now, on Love Will Probably Kill Me…, he takes that several steps further.
“I wanted to do something that was, front to back, from the heart and nothing else,” he says. “I didn’t want anything to be character-driven. Every single line has been a personal experience, and that was a conscious decision.”
Luke Spiller – Angel Like You ft. Kendall Rucks – YouTube 
Sonically those experiences come out through rousing piano swells, string sections and bursts of saxophone. Songs unabashedly about love, sex and heartbreak. Self-destructive hedonism (‘Am I addicted to pleasure or pain?’, he sings on The Ending Is Always The Same) tempered by the Biblical undertones of Spiller’s roots in his father’s church (‘Who knows where we’re going, heaven or hell’, he croons on the sultry, violin-charged pallor of Devil In Me).
With that in mind we were kind of expecting Love Will Probably Kill Me… to be bursting with old girlfriends, subject matter-wise. But it’s not. Most of the album, Spiller says, is about one person. He’s keeping their identity under wraps – for that person’s privacy, but really to allow space for listeners to insert themselves into these stories. Suffice to say, though, it was an eventful relationship that left a mark on him, and on what he wanted to write.
“There was a lot of amazing, beautiful stuff,” he explains. “And there were some really sad things that happened. It’s like that old saying that no matter what happens, whether it’s good or it’s bad, you really can’t choose your muse. “I think when you’re a songwriter and you sit down to write something, it’s very easy to not give them the energetic satisfaction of pursuing ideas that are about one specific person. But I learned very quickly that it was a source of inspiration that just kept on coming. And it was so multifaceted as well, in terms of the different emotions.”
Even so, when it came to writing there were other influences in the mix. When he retrieved the gauzy, sun-kissed ballad She’s Just Like California from an old demo, it was his mother and sister who convinced him to keep it pretty much as it was (rather than dramatically rework, as planned). Producer Jon Levine was a key confidante throughout, as was the aforementioned Falkner. Aside from them, the other writers he worked with were all women – his songwriter ex-girlfriend Kate Morgan among them.
“I feel like so many male artists really fall short on their lyrical content,” he reasons. “And when I listen to these women, the lyrical content for the most part, compared to their male peers, is just levels above them in terms of sincerity, storytelling, imagery.”
Luke Spiller – She’s Just Like California – YouTube 
Perhaps he has a point, certainly where his present-day counterparts are concerned. He mentions Harry Styles and Måneskin frontman Damiano David, but outside the country sphere (where the likes of Jason Isbell, Sturgill Simpson and Chris Stapleton routinely turn out devastating lyrics) it’s harder to think of singular, narrative-driven men with feet in classic rock and zeitgeist-y pop sensibilities.
“When I’m completely myself, I feel like there’s this gap in the public where I can tell those stories,” he muses. “I can sing those songs, but I can bring more edge to a project like this, and I can allow myself to be a bit sexier and say what’s on my mind, or musically [be] even more bombastic than everyone I’ve mentioned.”
Ultimately it’s all about a moment in time – someone coming from England, seeing LA for the first time, falling in love. Accordingly, there are intimate, personal highs and lows wrapped in Springsteen-style vignettes of America. You can picture the couple depicted in the Elton John-esque theatre of Mel’s Diner, inspired by a longstanding all-night joint on Sunset Boulevard. Ditto the Hollywood restaurant and taxi in I’m With Her, Spiller mournfully singing ‘I’m with her, but I’m in love with you’ to a nameless girl, wherever she is.
“And for what it’s worth,” he adds, “she doesn’t know. She doesn’t know [that] most of the album’s about her. And that’s fine. She doesn’t have to know.”
Do you think she’ll guess if she hears it?
“I don’t think so,” he says, laughing. “Well… [thinks about this] there are a couple of points where I’m sure she would pick up things that were said in conversation, and places that we went, etcetera. But to the extent of, like, the full record? No, I don’t think she would know. And even if she did, it’s… it’s fine by me. But it’s not a record which is an ode to someone, you know? They were simply this brilliant source of inspiration.”
While Spiller’s mystery woman was his muse, Taylor Hawkins might have been his cheerleader – the motivational kick when he needed it most. Since they first toured together in 2017, the Foo Fighters and The Struts have enjoyed a relationship that rarely lasts between headliners and support acts. Hawkins and Spiller became friends, bonding over a mutual love of Queen, among others. When it came to recording the Bond-esque Angel Like You, originally pitched to be the next actual 007 theme, alongside Devil In Me (they were beaten by Billie Eilish’s No Time To Die), it was Hawkins who Spiller called to play drums.
A while later, Spiller and a few others were at Hawkins’s house planning a few Queen tribute gigs in clubs (“It was going to be us doing the first couple of Queen records”). Everyone had left except Spiller. Hawkins asked how his solo record was coming along. Spiller played a recording of If This Isn’t Love on his phone. After the first chorus, Taylor took the phone from him.
“I was like: ‘Oh god, he fucking hates it’, but he was looking at me in the eyes, and he said: ‘Man, you know, I love you guys, band and everything… This is the best fucking thing I’ve ever heard you do.’”
It would be the last time Spiller saw him. In March 2022 Hawkins headed out for Foo Fighters shows in South America. He died in his hotel room in Santiago that month.
“Honestly, it kind of chokes me up, because he was on amazing form,” Spiller says simply, remembering that last meeting. “He was like: ‘Man, come on, stay for dinner!’ And I had something planned that evening. I was like: “I’d love to, [but] let’s catch up when you get back’, and…” He trails off for a second. “And I kind of really regret that, having that moment that, I guess, we could have shared together. But yeah, it is sad, because he was really on form, and just so filled with passion and life.”
Luke Spiller – The Ending Is Always The Same (Lyric Video) – YouTube 
In a poignant touch, the song’s music video (in the works when we speak to Spiller) features Hawkins’s son, Shane, on drums. By the time you read this, Spiller will also have released a lyric video for the ABBA-charged The Ending Is Always The Same starring British comedy maverick-turned-Bake Off host Noel Fielding (the pair met at a Soho party, where Fielding led Spiller around introducing him to revellers as “his new character”). A new Struts record is on the cards, though what style it’ll lean into remains to be seen. He also has more solo music on the go.
“Now that a lot of that’s off my chest musically, I can address different areas of my life now.”
He stops and thinks about this.
“Or maybe not, I’m not sure. I’m already getting stuck into more music! And with more music comes more responsibility and less, quote, ‘free time’. So relationships are difficult. They’re difficult at the best of times, let alone when you’re juggling a solo career and a rock band. It’s, it’s…”
He searches for the words, a tiredness coming over his face. For a second it’s as if all the loves in his life had flashed past him.
“Yeah, it’s hard to find meaningful relationships in that.” Even so, with Love Will Probably Kill Me… now out in the world, there’s a sense of a page being turned. Something letting go, even as visions of Rolls-Royces and Grammys dance at the back of his mind.
“I walked away [from the album], and I was like, ‘You know what? I’m fucking proud of myself,’” he concludes. “And I can’t wait for the world to hear this. It’s been such a labour of love, and whatever happens to it, I’m left with a real air of confidence moving forward into more of my own music in the future.”
Love Will Probably Kill Me Before Cigarettes And Wine is out now via Big Machine.