Interviews : Johnny Borrell Interview: 'I Was Obnoxious'
Interviews : Johnny Borrell Interview: 'I Was Obnoxious'
Johnny Borrell – one-time frontman with Razorlight, famous for his cocksure swagger and his big mouth, infamous for the same things – is not happy.
Five years after his two-million-record-selling, Wembley-filling band’s third and last album, Borrell is releasing his first solo record. It’s called Borrell 1. Of course it is. With that title, I suggest, isn’t he asking for trouble?
“Why?” he replies.
Because it’s quite egomaniacal. “So when you put your name on a record...” the 33 year-old begins, frowning, exasperated. “I don’t get it. The title for this record is Borrell 1, right? Why is it Borrell 1? Because that’s an unpretentious title to me, right?”
It is, at this point, unclear whether the singer-songwriter has seen the online derision that followed the announcement last month of the track listing for Borrell 1. Song titles include Pan-European Supermodel Song, Dahlia Rondo, Cyrano Masochiste and Dahlia Allegro. “This is just number one,” he continues. “There may be a number two, there may be number three, a number four. I honestly don’t get it,” he huffs. “I couldn’t imagine a less pretentious title. I would only get asked that question from the UK.”
So he’s already had to defend it? “Yeah. The press guys were like, oh, you might be asking for trouble, which is exactly what you said.”
Exasperation blooms into indignation. “Scott Walker – Scott 1, Scott 2, Scott 3, Scott 4. McCartney 1, McCartney 2.” That is: if those musical legends can numerate their solo albums, why can’t he? “I don’t get it. And you’re saying to me you enjoyed the record, blah blah blah. But I don’t get why you come in with that attitude straight away.”
It’s a soggy Wednesday in Aldershot, Hampshire. This evening, for one night only, Johnny Borrell is playing at the town's West End Centre. It’s the second of a short run of low-key English dates to kick-start his comeback.
Having formed Razorlight in 2002 with musicians recruited via an ad in music weekly NME, Borrell was front and centre as his band exploded into the mainstream. The charismatic musician dated the actress Kirsten Dunst and became a cover star on NME and Vogue. Unfortunately, the band’s third album, 2008’s Slipway Fires, was critically savaged, while intra-band tension and stories of Borrell’s snotty behaviour grew louder. The band fizzled out around 2009, and Borrell has been quiet ever since.
But now he’s here again, in Aldershot, backed by his new three-piece band, Zazou. A few years ago, Borrell had huge hit singles with In the Morning and Golden Touch, filled not only Wembley Arena but London’s 10,400-capacity Alexandra Palace (twice), headlined the Reading Festival, and almost stole the show at Live 8.
How many people are in tonight? “Sixty-eight,” says the lady on the front desk. “It’s very quiet.” When Borrell and friends hit the stage dead on 9.30pm, one thing is soon apparent: the big riffs and punchy anthems and (literal and figurative) electric power of Razorlight may be gone, but the singer’s way with a melody hasn’t deserted him.
For the next 90 minutes they play through the songs from Borrell 1. There is reggae, French chanson and an a cappella Buddy Holly cover. It’s very un-rock’n’roll, absurdly entertaining, and, only occasionally, simply absurd.
One sunny evening two weeks later, Borrell sits in a café in Paris near his shoebox flat in the 14th arrondissement (he has another flat in Hampstead, near where he spent his teenage years with his mother and brother, and close to the private school he attended). He lived here around the age of 10, when his father – a foreign correspondent with Time – was posted to the city, and has been coming to this particular café, on and off, for 20 years. This establishment was a particular favourite because they had a pinball machine, a passion that Borrell retains to this day. Alongside cricket, it’s one of his key non-musical pursuits.
“But motorbikes more than both those things,” he grins. Ah, yes, motorbikes. Two of Borrell’s most, shall we say, “rock star” episodes featured both bikes and Dunst. In 2007 he tooled around the Texas music festival SXSW, resplendent astride a Harley-Davidson, giving it his best James Dean/Marlon Brando, his new Hollywood girlfriend clamped on the back.
It would be a rather try-hard moment for anyone, far less a snaggle-toothed indie upstart from Camden, a one-time friend and musical partner of Pete Doherty and a self-confessed teenage “smackhead”.
Later, Dunst reportedly split with the “bad boy rocker” after he rode a bike through her house. True?
“Aw,” he groans, happily. “The worst thing about you saying that is there was no Harley involved – it was a 1969 Triumph T100 Competition. And there’s a big difference,” he smiles. “It’s a Sixties British bike I was running around town as transport at the time, in London – we had a house in Islington. But, yeah, I did ride it around the house – it was a party.
“Why would you care about something like that? There was a huge window, a crowded party, lots of people, and it was very inviting for a bit of brum through a sea of people.
“It’s quite a good story – apart from the Harley aspect! There’s nothing more offensive.” Borrell is perky and he’s dressed like a Parisian boho (loafers, no socks, high-belted trousers, soft blue shirt billowing over tattered white T-shirt) and he’s clutching a worn leather Filofax-style case bearing the logo of Coutts, the bank for the wealthy. He’s perky, that is, until we start talking about his ever-tempestuous relationship with the world’s music press.
The tuneful, entertaining and genuinely unusual Borrell 1 is an “honest, autobiographical” album, a bold and bonkers set of songs “that are postcards to everybody I know”. It was recorded in a makeshift studio in the other place he owns in France, down south in the Basque country, then given a polish back in London by producer Trevor Horn. But Borrell says he has no idea how the album will be received.
“The press always went two ways – a stack of cuttings saying ‘this is amazing’, and a stack of ‘Johnny Borrell is a w-----, he won’t even talk to me’. I can still sing Golden Touch anywhere and people say, ‘that’s great’. That is so special for me. What an achievement for me,” he beams. “And then I was the second-coolest person in the world on the NME list and stuff like that and I thought: this is bull----.” But he couldn’t help himself, he says. He couldn’t stop writing great songs. His second album was even more successful, even more mainstream.
“It just went boom. And suddenly we’re on a world tour for two-and-a-half years. And you come back and you’re the high street,” he shrugs. “Everything you’ve spent your whole life working against, you are it.
“I gave everything to touring that second record,” he continues, frowning, “running round with my shirt off, clapping my hands in the air and going oh-oh-oh – that was the nature of what it was. And you know, it wasn’t a happy camp that was going around the world.” Borrell’s on-the-road behaviour raised eyebrows. One journalist who joined Razorlight on tour in America described the singer as “a rather depressing caricature of an obnoxious rock star”. And this journalist was a fan.
What, I ask this clearly bright and generally affable man, was going on with him? Drugs, drink, the madness of success? Borrell doesn’t answer for a while, then chooses his words carefully.
“I guess I was constantly attempting to be what I thought I should be doing in that scenario. To be fair, I’m sure there were times when I was obnoxious. But that’s rock’n’roll, you know?”
He’s repentant, then, a bit. “The thing that was difficult that I really didn’t work out was, OK, I’ve been working all my life in music, trying to make something happen. And [now] something’s moving, it’s all great and, yeah, for six months I’m gonna have a good time – I’m gonna just go for it. I’m gonna see where that gets me, if I do whatever I wanna do – I’ll do the drugs and I’ll do the girls… But I think you can’t really do that for longer than about six months. Otherwise you’re Mötley Crüe. But people really liked that character.” True. They liked the character, but they disliked the person playing the character. That is music’s eternal Faustian pact. Fans soak up the rock-star antics but they think the rock star himself is a bit of an idiot.
“Yeah, absolutely. And I’ve spent the last six years going around England with people going to me, ‘you’re a really good bloke.’ And I’m like, yeah, guess what?” he says with an almost beatific smile.
I’ll go along with some of that. Borrell undoubtedly has decent qualities, and he’s clearly musically talented. But the evidence of his darker, dafter side seems compelling. On one occasion, he reportedly took off from the Isle of Wight festival in a helicopter, while his bandmates took the bus.
Stories of the tension between Borrell, drummer Andy Burrows and “the Swedes” – bass player Carl Dalemo and Björn Ågren – are legion. Most notably there was a much-publicised fist-fight between Burrows and Borrell, reportedly over songwriting credits, in a Camden pub.
Burrows was the first to jump ship from Razorlight, in 2009. He later told me he was “all out of coping mechanisms”, having sought solace in drinking and counselling.
I’ve interviewed the drummer – who now has his own successful solo career (he wrote the theme for last Christmas’s Snowman and Snowdog animation) – several times. He’s widely known as one of the gentlest, nicest men in rock. I once asked what he’d learnt from his former colleague. “Johnny’s determination was pretty inspiring – he was very, very, very good at being Johnny,” Burrows said. And what did he learn not to do? “The idea of to-hell-with-everyone-else – he was very good at that too.” In Paris, I relay both these quotes to Borrell. Are they fair comment? He gives a thin smile and takes a while to answer.
“I’d rather not comment on that. Since Andy left the group I’ve never said a word about him in the press, and I would rather keep it that way. I’ve noticed he’s said a lot about me, which I don’t quite get. I don’t think that’s dignified.”
Does he regret the way he treated the other members of Razorlight? “You’ve got to be kidding!” he practically spits. “You’ve got to be kidding. You have got to be kidding,” he says for a third time. “That is the most absurd thing I have ever heard in my life.” He laughs, mirthlessly. “Oh my God,” he says, seemingly genuinely nonplussed. “Go and ask my tour manager. Go and ask all the tour managers who used to work for Razorlight, please! I’ll call them now,” he blusters, grabbing for his phone.
So why do they all say that?
“’Cause it’s a juicy story, man!” Borrell sighs and ruffles his Little Bo Peep curls.
“Look, it’s not complicated. I’m a musician, right? I’m not a rock star. I’m not a dude out there trying to make anything happen. I couldn’t care less. All of those things – I just couldn’t care less,” he repeats.
He’s currently single, pinballing between his three homes, and pretty much estranged from the British music scene. But is he happy, even when playing to a meagre 68 people in Aldershot? The reborn, de-cluttered Johnny Borrell is happy as Larry with that. “If I’d gone on with Razorlight and there had been two rows of people in the crowd, I’d have been upset, ’cause the point of Razorlight ended up being to be successful. That was the worst thing I ever did in my life, to let it get to that point. But I don’t care with this group. Nobody’s making a sound like we’re making.” Does he want to be big again?
“I don’t even sit around thinking about it for a second,” says Borrell, and I’m inclined to believe him.
‘Borrell 1’ is released on July 22, through Mercury Records
Contact Johnny Borrell
Website | Facebook | Twitter
Contact The Telegraph
Website | Twitter | Facebook
Sources : Johnny Borrell Interview: 'I Was Obnoxious' Photo | Johnny Borrell Interview: 'I Was Obnoxious' Article
Johnny Borrell – one-time frontman with Razorlight, famous for his cocksure swagger and his big mouth, infamous for the same things – is not happy.
Five years after his two-million-record-selling, Wembley-filling band’s third and last album, Borrell is releasing his first solo record. It’s called Borrell 1. Of course it is. With that title, I suggest, isn’t he asking for trouble?
“Why?” he replies.
Because it’s quite egomaniacal. “So when you put your name on a record...” the 33 year-old begins, frowning, exasperated. “I don’t get it. The title for this record is Borrell 1, right? Why is it Borrell 1? Because that’s an unpretentious title to me, right?”
It is, at this point, unclear whether the singer-songwriter has seen the online derision that followed the announcement last month of the track listing for Borrell 1. Song titles include Pan-European Supermodel Song, Dahlia Rondo, Cyrano Masochiste and Dahlia Allegro. “This is just number one,” he continues. “There may be a number two, there may be number three, a number four. I honestly don’t get it,” he huffs. “I couldn’t imagine a less pretentious title. I would only get asked that question from the UK.”
So he’s already had to defend it? “Yeah. The press guys were like, oh, you might be asking for trouble, which is exactly what you said.”
Exasperation blooms into indignation. “Scott Walker – Scott 1, Scott 2, Scott 3, Scott 4. McCartney 1, McCartney 2.” That is: if those musical legends can numerate their solo albums, why can’t he? “I don’t get it. And you’re saying to me you enjoyed the record, blah blah blah. But I don’t get why you come in with that attitude straight away.”
It’s a soggy Wednesday in Aldershot, Hampshire. This evening, for one night only, Johnny Borrell is playing at the town's West End Centre. It’s the second of a short run of low-key English dates to kick-start his comeback.
Having formed Razorlight in 2002 with musicians recruited via an ad in music weekly NME, Borrell was front and centre as his band exploded into the mainstream. The charismatic musician dated the actress Kirsten Dunst and became a cover star on NME and Vogue. Unfortunately, the band’s third album, 2008’s Slipway Fires, was critically savaged, while intra-band tension and stories of Borrell’s snotty behaviour grew louder. The band fizzled out around 2009, and Borrell has been quiet ever since.
But now he’s here again, in Aldershot, backed by his new three-piece band, Zazou. A few years ago, Borrell had huge hit singles with In the Morning and Golden Touch, filled not only Wembley Arena but London’s 10,400-capacity Alexandra Palace (twice), headlined the Reading Festival, and almost stole the show at Live 8.
How many people are in tonight? “Sixty-eight,” says the lady on the front desk. “It’s very quiet.” When Borrell and friends hit the stage dead on 9.30pm, one thing is soon apparent: the big riffs and punchy anthems and (literal and figurative) electric power of Razorlight may be gone, but the singer’s way with a melody hasn’t deserted him.
For the next 90 minutes they play through the songs from Borrell 1. There is reggae, French chanson and an a cappella Buddy Holly cover. It’s very un-rock’n’roll, absurdly entertaining, and, only occasionally, simply absurd.
One sunny evening two weeks later, Borrell sits in a café in Paris near his shoebox flat in the 14th arrondissement (he has another flat in Hampstead, near where he spent his teenage years with his mother and brother, and close to the private school he attended). He lived here around the age of 10, when his father – a foreign correspondent with Time – was posted to the city, and has been coming to this particular café, on and off, for 20 years. This establishment was a particular favourite because they had a pinball machine, a passion that Borrell retains to this day. Alongside cricket, it’s one of his key non-musical pursuits.
“But motorbikes more than both those things,” he grins. Ah, yes, motorbikes. Two of Borrell’s most, shall we say, “rock star” episodes featured both bikes and Dunst. In 2007 he tooled around the Texas music festival SXSW, resplendent astride a Harley-Davidson, giving it his best James Dean/Marlon Brando, his new Hollywood girlfriend clamped on the back.
It would be a rather try-hard moment for anyone, far less a snaggle-toothed indie upstart from Camden, a one-time friend and musical partner of Pete Doherty and a self-confessed teenage “smackhead”.
Later, Dunst reportedly split with the “bad boy rocker” after he rode a bike through her house. True?
“Aw,” he groans, happily. “The worst thing about you saying that is there was no Harley involved – it was a 1969 Triumph T100 Competition. And there’s a big difference,” he smiles. “It’s a Sixties British bike I was running around town as transport at the time, in London – we had a house in Islington. But, yeah, I did ride it around the house – it was a party.
“Why would you care about something like that? There was a huge window, a crowded party, lots of people, and it was very inviting for a bit of brum through a sea of people.
“It’s quite a good story – apart from the Harley aspect! There’s nothing more offensive.” Borrell is perky and he’s dressed like a Parisian boho (loafers, no socks, high-belted trousers, soft blue shirt billowing over tattered white T-shirt) and he’s clutching a worn leather Filofax-style case bearing the logo of Coutts, the bank for the wealthy. He’s perky, that is, until we start talking about his ever-tempestuous relationship with the world’s music press.
The tuneful, entertaining and genuinely unusual Borrell 1 is an “honest, autobiographical” album, a bold and bonkers set of songs “that are postcards to everybody I know”. It was recorded in a makeshift studio in the other place he owns in France, down south in the Basque country, then given a polish back in London by producer Trevor Horn. But Borrell says he has no idea how the album will be received.
“The press always went two ways – a stack of cuttings saying ‘this is amazing’, and a stack of ‘Johnny Borrell is a w-----, he won’t even talk to me’. I can still sing Golden Touch anywhere and people say, ‘that’s great’. That is so special for me. What an achievement for me,” he beams. “And then I was the second-coolest person in the world on the NME list and stuff like that and I thought: this is bull----.” But he couldn’t help himself, he says. He couldn’t stop writing great songs. His second album was even more successful, even more mainstream.
“It just went boom. And suddenly we’re on a world tour for two-and-a-half years. And you come back and you’re the high street,” he shrugs. “Everything you’ve spent your whole life working against, you are it.
“I gave everything to touring that second record,” he continues, frowning, “running round with my shirt off, clapping my hands in the air and going oh-oh-oh – that was the nature of what it was. And you know, it wasn’t a happy camp that was going around the world.” Borrell’s on-the-road behaviour raised eyebrows. One journalist who joined Razorlight on tour in America described the singer as “a rather depressing caricature of an obnoxious rock star”. And this journalist was a fan.
What, I ask this clearly bright and generally affable man, was going on with him? Drugs, drink, the madness of success? Borrell doesn’t answer for a while, then chooses his words carefully.
“I guess I was constantly attempting to be what I thought I should be doing in that scenario. To be fair, I’m sure there were times when I was obnoxious. But that’s rock’n’roll, you know?”
He’s repentant, then, a bit. “The thing that was difficult that I really didn’t work out was, OK, I’ve been working all my life in music, trying to make something happen. And [now] something’s moving, it’s all great and, yeah, for six months I’m gonna have a good time – I’m gonna just go for it. I’m gonna see where that gets me, if I do whatever I wanna do – I’ll do the drugs and I’ll do the girls… But I think you can’t really do that for longer than about six months. Otherwise you’re Mötley Crüe. But people really liked that character.” True. They liked the character, but they disliked the person playing the character. That is music’s eternal Faustian pact. Fans soak up the rock-star antics but they think the rock star himself is a bit of an idiot.
“Yeah, absolutely. And I’ve spent the last six years going around England with people going to me, ‘you’re a really good bloke.’ And I’m like, yeah, guess what?” he says with an almost beatific smile.
I’ll go along with some of that. Borrell undoubtedly has decent qualities, and he’s clearly musically talented. But the evidence of his darker, dafter side seems compelling. On one occasion, he reportedly took off from the Isle of Wight festival in a helicopter, while his bandmates took the bus.
Stories of the tension between Borrell, drummer Andy Burrows and “the Swedes” – bass player Carl Dalemo and Björn Ågren – are legion. Most notably there was a much-publicised fist-fight between Burrows and Borrell, reportedly over songwriting credits, in a Camden pub.
Burrows was the first to jump ship from Razorlight, in 2009. He later told me he was “all out of coping mechanisms”, having sought solace in drinking and counselling.
I’ve interviewed the drummer – who now has his own successful solo career (he wrote the theme for last Christmas’s Snowman and Snowdog animation) – several times. He’s widely known as one of the gentlest, nicest men in rock. I once asked what he’d learnt from his former colleague. “Johnny’s determination was pretty inspiring – he was very, very, very good at being Johnny,” Burrows said. And what did he learn not to do? “The idea of to-hell-with-everyone-else – he was very good at that too.” In Paris, I relay both these quotes to Borrell. Are they fair comment? He gives a thin smile and takes a while to answer.
“I’d rather not comment on that. Since Andy left the group I’ve never said a word about him in the press, and I would rather keep it that way. I’ve noticed he’s said a lot about me, which I don’t quite get. I don’t think that’s dignified.”
Does he regret the way he treated the other members of Razorlight? “You’ve got to be kidding!” he practically spits. “You’ve got to be kidding. You have got to be kidding,” he says for a third time. “That is the most absurd thing I have ever heard in my life.” He laughs, mirthlessly. “Oh my God,” he says, seemingly genuinely nonplussed. “Go and ask my tour manager. Go and ask all the tour managers who used to work for Razorlight, please! I’ll call them now,” he blusters, grabbing for his phone.
So why do they all say that?
“’Cause it’s a juicy story, man!” Borrell sighs and ruffles his Little Bo Peep curls.
“Look, it’s not complicated. I’m a musician, right? I’m not a rock star. I’m not a dude out there trying to make anything happen. I couldn’t care less. All of those things – I just couldn’t care less,” he repeats.
He’s currently single, pinballing between his three homes, and pretty much estranged from the British music scene. But is he happy, even when playing to a meagre 68 people in Aldershot? The reborn, de-cluttered Johnny Borrell is happy as Larry with that. “If I’d gone on with Razorlight and there had been two rows of people in the crowd, I’d have been upset, ’cause the point of Razorlight ended up being to be successful. That was the worst thing I ever did in my life, to let it get to that point. But I don’t care with this group. Nobody’s making a sound like we’re making.” Does he want to be big again?
“I don’t even sit around thinking about it for a second,” says Borrell, and I’m inclined to believe him.
‘Borrell 1’ is released on July 22, through Mercury Records
Contact Johnny Borrell
Website | Facebook | Twitter
Contact The Telegraph
Website | Twitter | Facebook
Sources : Johnny Borrell Interview: 'I Was Obnoxious' Photo | Johnny Borrell Interview: 'I Was Obnoxious' Article
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