“I was so f***ing nervous”: Ed Westwick and his band ‘For You’ on their first gig in Oslo and recording in a remote Norwegian Airbnb

Ed Westwick knows a thing or two about being in the spotlight, but taking the stage at Parkteatret in Oslo as the frontman of his brand new band, For You, was a different beast entirely. “I was so f***ing nervous,” he says. “We did a full practice the day before the show and I was chilled and I was good and I had liquid in my mouth. And I got on stage and I was dry.” Luckily, with the support of the crowd and a bit of water, he made it through the gig. Better yet, he was “loving it.”

Dressed in crystal-embellished tailoring by Norwegian designer Pearl Octopussy (it was stylist Mina Roda and assistant Jonathan Ind who masterminded the looks), Westwick and the band both looked and sounded the part. “The relationship with the audience was incredible – they were so warm and supportive and we felt that energy. It’s nothing like acting. It was more like flying by the seat of your pants,” he says. “And I’m going to say it: we sounded f***ing incredible.”

Best known (perhaps even ubiquitously known) for playing Chuck Bass in Gossip Girl, Westwick has long since held musical aspirations. Still, the band – which, in addition to Westwick as frontman, consists of guitarist Michael Mathern, drummer Frankie Giampietro and guitarist-producer Hans Kristian Nordin (yes, a Norwegian) – came together quite spontaneously, whilst Westwick was living in Los Angeles, pre-pandemic.

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“It’s such a random Hollywood story,” says Mathern. “I went to this house for a party and it ended up Ed was living there and he had this really cool music room in the basement.” What makes a music room cool? According to these guys, drums. “It was just kind of serendipitous and amazing because I had this room with all these instruments and I had no one to play them properly,” says Westwick, noting that he neither owned the home nor the instruments. “And this incredibly talented guitar player showed up one day.”

Westwick, whom Mathern did not recognise (not a Gossip Girl fan, evidently), hopped on the mic as Mathern and some other guys were jamming. The vibes were high immediately. A few days later, Westwick gave Mathern a call, saying he was trying to start a band. Mathern brought in Giampiuetro and Nordin – buddies of his from music school at Berklee – and thus the band was formed.

All that was missing was a name. In fact, the band shot their first music video in London, for the track 'Tailspin', before they even knew what to call themselves. “We were sitting on a couch, like, ‘We still don’t have a band name, what are we going to do about this?” Says Mathern. “And Ed was like, ‘Well, what are we doing this for? We’re doing this for us and we’re doing this for everybody. Why don’t we just call it ‘For You’?” Though it makes the band a bit tricky to search for on Spotify (the curated “for you” page comes up first) it stuck. “We hadn’t considered that,” admits Westwick. “It’s probably terrible in terms of marketing.”

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It was a year and change between settling on the name and that first gig in Oslo. In the interim, the band decamped to a cabin in Espa, Norway to write most of the songs that will make up the band’s debut album (releasing in the not-so-distant future). The guys set up a drum kit in the living room of an Airbnb and got to work, completing 15 songs in just four days. “It was literally a cabin on top of a mountain and we got snowed in,” says Mathern. “A few hours after we arrived we looked out and the snow was up to the window. So we said, ‘Well, I guess we’re not going anywhere. Let’s do this.” Westwick smiles and adds, “We definitely violated the Airbnb policy.”

The resulting tracks are steeped in a certain early aughts indie band nostalgia. They run the gamut from raucous upbeat tunes with deliciously sleazy guitar riffs to more sultry ballads one might put on a mixtape to send to their hip girlfriend (or Spotify playlist, as it may be). It’s the sort of music that’s best experienced live, which one can do at any of the band’s upcoming shows in Norway (they have future plans to hit up the rest of Europe, as well).

Though For You doesn’t lean on Westwick’s celebrity (he isn’t, as he says “ramming the band down people’s throats” on his own social media), it doesn’t shy way from it either (Westwick’s Gossip Girl credentials are mentioned right there on the band website). “I’m so aware of the cliche that I am part of and it sometimes makes me feel uncomfortable, but at the same time, why would I not do something that I wanted to do?” He says. “Look, at the gig there were quite a lot of Gossip Girl fans and I always like connecting with people who support me and support my work. It’s the only way I’ve been able to sustain a career.”

Still, Westwick hopes the music can find an audience of its own. To that end, it was clever to kick things off in Oslo rather than a city where Westwick is more overtly Gossip Girl-famous (his native London, perhaps, or New York, where the show is set). “At the end of the day, I can’t give people Gossip Girl over and over. The show is there – it exists on Netflix. People can watch it,” he says. “If I can offer something else, which is maybe what you’re supposed to do in this life, maybe I can offer some music.”

For tickets to For You’s upcoming gigs in Norway, click here.