Fire still burns for Razorlight's Johnny
IF ever there was a chap who inspires devotion and derision in equal measure, it’s Johnny Borrell, frontman of Razorlight.
To his legion of disciples, his looks, undeniable lightning-rod stage presence, and ability to craft a winning pop song mark him out as the boy with the Golden Touch.
For others, however, he’s the Man With The Tin Ear: all mouth and no (white) trousers; a preening, swaggering, ambulatory archive of hollow rock clichés, with an ego the size of a small country.
A peacock, as Oscar Wilde might have it, in everything but the ‘pea’.
It’s an image the 28-year-old is acutely aware of, and one he tackles on North London Trash – a self-deprecating track from Razorlight’s third album, Slipway Fires – which sees him singing: ‘I’ve got a broken smile, and an arrogant line/I’m really no one special but I’m in my prime /I’ve got a hardbody girlfriend/She helps me spend my cash...’
“It’s like an ode to the sort of grotesque, repulsive posturing bumptious caricature of a Johnny Borrell that doesn’t exist but is made up somewhere,” he explains today while rehearsing in Dublin.
“Also, I felt it’s a song for where I grew up because there’s a lot of people like that around there. North London deserved to be immortalised in a song.”
Much has changed in the life of Johnny since Razorlight rose up in 2003, hanging onto the red-and-black coattails of The Libertines: since then, he’s scored a UK number one single and US hit with the lighters-aloft America, conquered Live 8, and added Hollywood stars to the notches on his bedpost.
Oaken torso
Along the way, his oaken torso has graced the cover of Vogue magazine (with supermodel Natalia Vodianova draped over him) and in a moment of impressive excess, he had his motorbike flown out to Austin, Texas, so he could ride around 2007’s South By Southwest showcase with then-girlfriend, actress Kirsten Dunst, on the back.
Suffice to say, he’s not in Dalston anymore, Toto, and his red top ubiquity is played upon in the track Tabloid Lover – which Borrell insists, despite what you may readily assume, isn’t autobiographical.
“It’s actually one of only two songs on the record that isn’t personal,” he points out.
“It’s about bull**** professional celebrities. I remember I saw a friend of mine who’d been out on a bender and it was in all the tabloids.
"And they were sitting there at a table looking at the photos, like it’s a reflection. Like it was a ****** mirror! Sort of tearing the page out and discreetly tucking it in their pocket. And I thought: that’s ****** insane.
"I mean, listen, I love being in a band, I love being a rock and roll star, I love all that stuff, it’s ******* great. I’m like anybody else.
"I love to go out and get p****d. I don’t give a **** if people take my photo or whatever. And I just don’t look at it. It’s got nothing to do with my life.”
While the 2.5m sales of Razorlight’s self-titled second album pushed Borrell’s star into ascent, a subsequent gruelling 18-month world tour began to take its toll, culminating in onstage bust-ups.
“I needed to get away,” remembers Borrell. “Your band gets successful and there’s a lot of music industry bull**** to get caught up in.
Distancing
"And then you try and get yourself away from that and what you can end up doing is sort of distancing yourself from the music as well.
"And that’s a dangerous place to be. I needed to push the reset button and see where I ended up.”
To that end, armed only with a notepad and pen, Borrell sequestered himself on the Hebridean island of Tiree, and set about penning the audibly ambitious Slipway Fires, in the hope of recreating the experience of writing their first album, 2004’s Up All Night, on the dole.
“That felt like perfect conditions to write an album in a way because you’ve got just enough money to get by, and not enough to go out every day by any stretch of the imagination.
"So you end up with three or four days in the flat with nothing to do, listening to records, writing songs. And that’s hard to replicate. So I wanted to get away so I could just be on my own. And write. And suddenly, the music grabbed me again.”
Although he asserts not to read his own press these days, it wasn’t always like that. When Razorlight clattered out of the traps in 2003, Borrell made a name for himself with bombastic, messianic pronouncements of his own genius.
Journalist
Being the son of a journalist, he knew how to press the media’s G-spot. “I was living in a squat in Kings Cross and my band were being completely ignored by pretty much everybody so I felt like making some noise,” he recalls.
“I didn’t think it was fair that people were championing bands like The 22-20s, Hal and Hope of the States more than they were championing Razorlight.”
Yet it’s these early interviews that perhaps have endured the most in the public mind, rather than his more recent, unfailingly polite encounters with journalists.
Having written North London Trash, does he secretly enjoy the media caricature of Johnny Borrell?
“S***,” he exclaims, “if you’re going to get somewhere, then people are going to make up things. My reality and the projected, invented reality are two completely different things. It’s de rigeur now for s*** indie bands as they come up now to have a pop at Razorlight in the NME.
"It’s fine. I’ve been in this band for five years and I’ve never had anybody in a band come up to me and slag off my band. And I’m not hidden away. We play festivals. We play everywhere. I just think people are trying to score cheap points.”
Has any musician ever apologised to you or said they were misquoted?
“Only Liam Gallagher,” he replies. “He came up to me and said (Borrell adopts a Manchester accent) ‘F****’ love America! It was f*****’ amazing.
"That was a next level song. Don’t ever worry about anything I say in the press. I f*****’ love that song.’ That’s his direct quote.”
Sure-fire
Do you feel that slagging off Razorlight is now a sure-fire way for rising indie bands to get their credibility dance-card ticked?
“Oh, I don’t know,” he considers. “I’ve said some horrific things about other people’s bands but you do that and who does it benefit at the end of the day? It’s like a charade. What I felt was that when my band first came out, I had a right to criticise the s*** bands that people were ramming down your throat.
"When you’re 24 and as much a member of the public as anyone else and you’ve never sold a record, you’re entitled to say what you think about what’s around. But I think when bands are on their sixth album still slagging off other bands, it’s just shock tactics.”
Are we now going to witness a more mellow Borrell?
“There was a quote from Chris Martin saying ‘I just really respect anybody who ever tries to do anything creative,’” he laughs in response.
“And I thought, ‘You’ve managed to come out with the blandest thing I’ve ever read in my life’.
"It doesn’t need to be said that 99 percent of music that’s made and recorded and released today is ****** unlistenable. It’s terrible.
One percent
"It’s always going to be that way. But that just makes the one percent like us that much better.”
Completed by bassist Carl Dalemo and guitarist Bjorn Agren (recruited via a ‘musican’s wanted’ advert), Razorlight came equipped with a frontman with a tantalising rock-mythology past: a former public schoolboy (Borrell was educated at Highgate) who was mired in a heroin addiction, and weaned off of it with the help of his friend and colleague Pete Doherty.
He says one of the defining moments for kicking the habit and pursing his dreams came when he witnessed four friends die in a car crash.
“I felt as if I owed it to them to actually do something with my life,” he says. When original drummer Christian Smith Pancorvo departed in 2004, he was replaced via a two-day open audition by Andy Burrows who now forms the central writing axis – alongside Borrell – of the group.
“I’m always so proud of the songs we write together,” beams Borrell.
It’s often been a volatile relationship, and considering their much-publicised dust-ups, has either come close to quitting?
“There’s a great spirit in this band at the moment,” he muses enthusiastically. “If you are going to go round the world and tour for a year and a half, you’re going to ******* have some arguments.
"It’s going to happen. And if you’re in Razorlight, they’re going to be blown out of proportion whereas another group, they’re not going to be.”
Contrary to reports, it’s surprisingly easy to like Borrell: he’s affable, charming, and oozes a sincere passion for what he does.
Stages were meant for people like him, for the benefit of pop and sanity of their friends and family.
“Twice in my life, I felt like I might actually be vaguely good at something,” he concludes triumphantly.
“That was the first time I ever thought I wrote a song and the first time I ever stood on a stage. I thought: ‘S***! I might be vaguely decent at this.
"I might as well keep trying’. And that’s what I’m doing.”
Razorlight play the Manchester Apollo on Thursday, November 20. £25. Slipway Fires (Mercury) is out now.
Published: Mon, 20 October, 2008
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