The duo’s Tom Findlay and Andy Cato reveal they now wear ear protection during gigs, and that hearing aids have been ‘transformative’ for one of them
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While achieving success in the music industry brings considerable fortune and fame, the physical price paid by many performers is often their hearing.
That is precisely the cost facing Groove Armada’s Tom Findlay and Andy Cato, the electronic music duo behind major dance anthems including “Superstylin’” and “I See You Baby”.
Although three decades of exposure to extremely high volume has damaged both men’s hearing, they remain active, playing live DJ sets at gigs and festivals across the UK and internationally before thousands of music fans old and new.
The key difference nowadays is that their ears are protected during performances, and while Findlay, 53, currently relies on hearing aids to assist his damaged hearing, Cato, also 53, must cope with the unrelenting ringing in his ears stemming from tinnitus.
Findlay says: "I knew I had chronic hearing loss – I was often having to ask people to repeat stuff, and almost tuning out of conversations, particularly in environments where there was a lot of background noise or reverberation. I was really struggling to pick things up.
"I’ve probably been struggling with problematic hearing loss since my late 30s to early 40s. So I knew it was there, and I was slightly in denial."
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However, he finally undertook a hearing test around 18 months ago, wearing hearing aids whenever necessary since that time.
"Wearing hearing aids seems like something people feel a bit of stigma about, and it’d be good to take that out of it because it’s been transformative for me," he admits.
But why does he think there’s so much stigma around wearing hearing aids?
"It’s associated with ageing, and we’re all a bit uncomfortable about that," he observes. "It’s about a sense of frailty – there’s some discomfort about that in a way that’s quite different from the way we feel about glasses.
"Glasses can be a sexy accessory, can’t they? But hearing aids definitely aren’t. We’re all wearing earpods now most of the time, so they just look like that. And while I used to put off social situations where I knew I’d struggle, I don’t do that any more, and that’s great – it gives you a lot more confidence."
Cato’s experience with tinnitus takes a slightly different turn, as he remarks: "I think you have to live with it, so the ideal thing would be to stop it in the first place."
