Читать книгу Blue: All Rise: Our Story - Duncan James, Caroline Frost, James Matthews Duncan - Страница 7
ОглавлениеThe Arrival of Huge and Sudden Success
2000
DUNCAN
I was incredibly excited. For years I’d been trying to crack this nut. I’d thought it was completely all over for me at 21, when I was spraying perfume over those lucky ladies in a department store, and instead here I was with a recording contract in my hands.
I was swiftly brought down to earth with a bump when I came home with it, to my house in East Finchley. I was sharing with six other blokes, in a big three-storey house. I ran in to share the news, but at first I thought the house was empty. Then I heard a noise from the top floor, so headed up there. The door was locked, but one of my mates let me in. They were all sitting in a circle, smoking weed, pretty uninterested in my arrival. ‘I’ve just signed my record deal,’ I announced to the room at large, hoping someone would twig the enormity of the occasion. My friend Ming eventually did the honours. Popped a champagne cork? Danced around a maypole in the garden? Not quite. ‘Cool, man,’ he offered before lighting up again. I decided to settle for that.
It seemed they were equally unperturbed by my new daily routine. While they all headed off in the morning to their respective workplaces, I jumped into the ridiculous Mercedes that drew up at the door to carry me off in splendour to the studio. I sat in the back, grinning, hoping the neighbours would be twitching their curtains. Of course, I could have gone on the Tube – it would have probably been quicker in the rush hour. And, of course, I only realised much later that it was actually just the bosses’ way of making sure I turned up on time, rather than a sign of their appreciation for me.
Despite getting used to such luxury very quickly, I must admit I remained in a state of heightened paranoia for the entire first year of Blue. After witnessing the brisk disposal of two of our founding members, I realised any one of us could just as easily get the chop. I used to phone our manager, Daniel, at least once a week, asking, ‘Are they happy with us? Have they said anything?’ I’d seen how quickly five had become three, it could easily happen again.
SIMON
Daniel managed us really well from that perspective. We were his very first group, so we were all riding this wave together, but he managed to hide his own enthusiasm and anxiety behind a very unflappable exterior. I’m sure he was getting all sorts of beef from the record company – they’d invested a lot of money in us, and their demands in return landed on his shoulders. But he only told us what we needed to know, and didn’t hang either carrots or sticks in front of us, until he’d dealt with it. He left us to get on with the job, if that’s what you can call it.
ANTONY
It’s an unusual job, but it is work. And we worked. Every day passed like a whirlwind – we weren’t thrown in the deep end like today’s talent-show winners, we had to graft. At night, we had to get in the van and turn up to pubs and clubs, where you were lucky if there were more people in the crowd than behind the bar. By day, it was off to secondary schools, where we had to act like superstars in front of a bunch of unimpressed kids that had never heard of us. Throw in gym time and photo shoots in between times … and somehow slotted into all of that, we had to sit down in the studio to work out exactly what this great new sound was going to be that we were going to offer these unsuspecting young minds.
LEE
If there’s one person to credit for finding that sound, it’s the producer Ray Ruffin, who sorted us out on our very first day in a music studio. Hit-makers Stargate later arranged our first single and created Blue’s chorus-y sound, that anthem-y thing, but it was Ray who did the groundwork. Unlike us complete newbies, he brought with him a huge Motown legacy that had run through his family. His father, Jimmy, had sung the timeless hit ‘What Becomes Of The Broken-hearted’ while his Uncle David had been lead vocalist for The Temptations during the magical era of ‘My Guy’. Ray found his own talent lay in producing, where he achieved huge success. Sadly, like his famous uncle, Ray was to die too young, passing away in his forties in 2013. To this day, when I sing ‘If You Come Back’ and ‘Too Close’ I feel his presence next to me, shouting ‘Platinum, baby.’ I owe him a huge musical debt. He taught me how to record in the studio and take my voice to places I wouldn’t have dared before. Soul was in his family’s bones, and he brought it out of ours.
As well as all the pop music around me growing up, I was always singing along to Motown songs, the masters like Marvin Gaye, as well as The Eagles and Elton John. Later, I admired groups like Backstreet Boys and Boyz II Men. They’re completely different from each other, but what these two bands shared was harmony. For that to work, you can’t have four voices all doing the same thing, you have to find your own spot, and that’s what we did: Duncan was low, Antony was husky, I was up high and Simon just sounded rich.
SIMON
Err … Duncan was actually breathy and husky, kind of rocky but with a soulful twist to it. Antony had been impersonating George Michael for so long, he had a soft, silky thing going on – back then, anyway. And I still remember the first time I heard Lee sing; I thought, ‘I’m going to make a lot of money with that boy.’
DUNCAN
I was stunned. My first thought when I heard Lee sing was, ‘How can a voice like that come out of a person like this?’ (Sorry, Lee, but I do mean that as a compliment.) He had this most incredible, rich sound that was really high, but also strong and powerful. At the time he was 16 and spoke like someone from the market, and it didn’t add up for me.
My second thought was, ‘How can I possibly compete with it?’ I was confident in what I had, and I’d been in a boy band before where I was the lead vocalist and basically sang everything, but now I realised it was game on.
LEE
Nobody has ever pushed me the way Ray pushed me. When we recorded ‘If You Come Back’, it felt like 1,000 takes. I was there for days, and I hurt. But, through Ray, I felt connected to Motown, and that was all I’d ever wanted. So I kept going.
SIMON
I was the weak link vocally, but I brought the writing, and the benefit of knowing your place in the industry. I’d been a tea boy in my cousin’s band once upon a time. I’d seen conflicts, arguing over songwriting, and I knew what harm it had caused, so I came into the band with that knowledge.
DUNCAN
Simon was just cool. He brought an urban element to the group. He gave us an R&B feel, that edge we needed, otherwise we’d have just been three white boys trying to sing soul. Instead, we ended up with this blend where we all got opportunities to shine. The format became me singing the first verse, Antony singing the second verse, Lee doing the choruses, and Simon providing the bridge, with a rap or whatever he had up his sleeve.
SIMON
I felt fortunate I could bring that to the table. I’d been rapping for years, listening to other musicians, making up stories, finding rhythms. Never expected it to find a home in a boy band.
ANTONY
I was shocked when we started working in the studio. I thought you’d go in, record a song and go home. I had no idea you’d be there for 11 or 12 hours, going over just a tiny part of it, again and again. Often I felt completely out of my depth, and I never felt good enough compared with the other three. It was funny because this was what I’d always wanted to do, but once I got there, I couldn’t relax and enjoy it. Instead, I was in a state of continual anxiety all the time, thinking: ‘Are they going to throw me out of the band? When are they going to say I’m not good enough?’ On the outside, I stayed being the cheekie chappie I’ve always been, doing silly voices, having a giggle, but deep down I was worried, and that lasted for years. Every time my phone rang and I saw it was someone from the record company calling, I was convinced this was the day they’d decided I was the weakest link, goodbye.
SIMON
Antony was the most confident of us all, easily – always the first one in the club, the first one to get a girlfriend. When he was single, he bossed it like a lads’ lad. When he had a romance on the go, he’d behave like the world’s first boyfriend. He was very black and white, and he knew himself from a very early age, while the rest of us were still experimenting.
DUNCAN
The record company adored Ant. Our manager, Daniel, told me early on that they loved his face, the fact that he looked like a bit of a boxer, somewhere between Al Pacino and Robert De Niro. He’s Greek but he brought an Italian vibe, the tougher look the group needed.
ANTONY
I definitely wasn’t your typical pop star. Duncan was a mini-Brad Pitt, Lee was cheeky but sweet, Simon was so cool … I was … evolving. Marmite!
DUNCAN
‘You do the talking,’ were my instructions from the record company, and so I did. Growing up, my conversations at the dinner table hadn’t been your typical arguments with your brothers and sisters as I’d spent all that time instead with my grandparents. They’d been through two World Wars, and were proper old school. My upbringing with them had made me old beyond my years, and aware of what I could and couldn’t say. It was like I’d been media-trained in my childhood.
And don’t forget I’d been a holiday-resort entertainer in a previous life, which was all about keeping people happy. My night-time duties then had been talking to people at tables, never leaving anyone out, keeping everyone happy. So, now I was in a band, I just carried on doing that. The label was blatant in bending us to their different ideas for each of us – Lee, the cheeky boy with the voice of an angel, Simon, a very pretty black man, street boy Antony, and me, all floppy and friendly, with my long hair, talking to everybody all the time, channelling my inner Redcoat.
SIMON
We were all tokens, there to fit an image. Remember how nobody looked at Justin Timberlake properly until he began singing and moving? Well, the same thing happened to Lee, and it made me laugh. He wasn’t considered a pretty boy until people heard his voice, and then they started looking at him differently because of how he sounded. And pretty soon, they started looking at him differently because of the stuff he was coming out with in interviews. Whether singing, speaking or sharing his ideas about life, love and the universe, he was always pretty unusual.
LEE
I’m dyslexic and I have ADHD … oh, and I’m left-handed. So there’s a lot of unusual stuff going on inside my head, which sometimes pops out. I’ve always had a lot of nervous energy – I have to be doing stuff, I can’t sit still for very long, and my attention span is shorter than a gnat’s. And I’m just not conventional. But who’s to say what’s normal – shall we go with eccentric? I’m happy with eccentric.
A couple of years ago we were all travelling together in a minibus in Berlin, and everyone started discussing whether I was medically diagnosable or just everyday bonkers. It seemed everybody had a different opinion, until I ended up having to chip in, ‘I am actually here.’
SIMON
There’s no doubt we were objectified by our bosses, and later by fans. But that’s what you sign up for. ‘Once you sign this piece of paper, your lives are not your own,’ I was told. I was prepared for it, and I knew how lucky I was. We all did. And we thought, ‘If we really want this to be our dream, we need to stick at it, and we need to stick together.’
It may have looked manufactured because of our different looks, but we had a rare understanding between each other. None of it was fake and I think it was that genuine kinship that people responded to.
Duncan was always the clip-board man, our self-designated liaison officer with the management – like a holiday rep, almost. He did enough worrying for all of us. Lee was away in his own little world, but was also inspiring us with his ideas, as well as his talent. Antony was the joker. If anything ever got too tense, he knew how to time a line so that we all cracked up. Me? I was just happy to be there.
ANTONY
Si was incredibly chilled about the whole thing, which was exactly what we needed to calm the rest of us down. We gave out an unusual energy as a group of four people, which was sometimes brilliant, and sometimes caused us no end of aggro. After we were signed in September 2000, we booked our first lads’ holiday for the following January. We picked up our first pay packet and headed for the Mediterranean. When we got there, the lads wanted to rehearse but I thought that was a bit precious, singing into hairbrushes in a holiday apartment in Tenerife. So instead we headed down the road. No one knew us, but people started staring at us walking down the street. All of a sudden, we had random blokes wanting to fight us, I kid you not, because apparently we looked like a boy band.
SIMON
I was more streetwise than the other three, so I told them to keep their heads down. That didn’t last long. Soon, we were surrounded by 14 blokes, compared to our meagre four (and one of them was Duncan). I should explain. We’d all grown up as fans of the TV series The A-Team and, since our earliest days together, had given each other different characters from the show. Lee was clearly ‘Mad Dog Murdock’ while I became, inevitably, ‘B. A. Baracus’. Antony, always organised, was happy being dubbed ‘Hannibal Smith’, which left … ‘The Face’, a character famous for using his charm, but never his fists, to get out of a bind. So that was Duncan – who else?
Fortunately, this bunch of upstarts had no weapons on them, but they were mouthy, and it soon turned to physical violence. They tried to separate us, but somehow we kept together, and it turned out to be a defining moment for us as a group.
ANTONY
Some geezer started chasing me with a belt … fun times.
SIMON
I remember Antony laughing while he was running, and Duncan getting hit, saying, ‘Hey, man, there’s no need for this.’ You could see him thinking, ‘Not the face, man.’ In these situations, some people freeze and they’re only out for themselves, but none of us did that, and by the time we went home that night, there was a bond.
DUNCAN
When it was time to create that harmonious pop sound that would become our trademark, we ended up flying off to meet some obscure but well-respected producers in Norway. It was bitterly cold, and we had to trudge through the snow to get to the studio. When we got inside, the producers were waiting for us – Tor Erik Hermansen, Mikkel Storleer Eriksen, Hallgeir Rustan, or, to give them their professional name, Stargate.
LEE
They were by no means massive back then, they were mainly known as re-mixers, but they’d worked with a few bands and were fast gaining a reputation for creating sounds. Their biggest hit in the UK up to that point had been S Club 7’s ‘S Club Party’ a couple of years before. Later, Hallgeir stayed put in Norway with his family when Tor and Mikkel went off to make their fortunes in America. In their studio in Trondheim, though, in those days, it was still three of them working together – that’s how old we are. Their incredible era of hit-making with the likes of Rihanna, Beyoncé, Coldplay and everyone else was still years ahead of them, but even during that freezing-cold week in Norway, their skill for putting together sounds in new and exciting ways became really obvious.
They were great at producing our vocals; making us do lots of different things to get hold of our sound. I know lots of tonal tricks now, and that’s because of those early lessons with Stargate. I was nervous, but I was really into their magic making – I wouldn’t come out of the booth until it was perfect.
DUNCAN
Once, while Lee was in the booth, I noticed some lyrics written out for Hear’Say’s single [‘Pure and Simple’], which had been recorded for Pop Idol back in the UK. It hadn’t been publicly announced yet who’d got through to the final group, and the press had really hyped up the mystery, but when I was reading the lyrics in Stargate’s studio, I suddenly noticed the names were written down by each part. We were instantly told, ‘You can’t repeat it, or let anybody know you’ve seen it,’ so I had to keep quiet. But I remember thinking, ‘Oh my God, it’s Suzanne,’ and being really chuffed for her.
SIMON
They were long days in the studio in Norway, and people invariably started messing about, heading off to find coffee, but I was really interested in how they made their sounds, so I kept walking back into the studio.
The Stargate guys were listening to Pink’s debut album [Can’t Take Me Home], with big tones on it, and they were making similar drum sounds, when I walked in and started singing, ‘One for the money and the free rides …’ I carried on, ‘It’s two for the lies that you denied.’ Out of nowhere, I piped up, ‘All Rise. All Rise.’ They turned round. ‘What did you say?’ Tor suddenly shouted, ‘Slamming, man.’ Next minute I was being eased out of the room, my work apparently done. Later, they called me back for a rap for it, and that was it, the birth of my strange song about a romance gone wrong built around the framework of a courtroom trial.
DUNCAN
We recorded lots of songs with them and ‘All Rise’ was my least favourite. They made us do some very bizarre things to create that song. They had us marching while we were recording our parts, like we were troops in some totalitarian regime. They kept shouting, ‘Sharper, crisper!’ So of course, being us, we started taking the mickey. We were cracking up, but we went with it, even though I hated the beat they added.
LEE
They made us all sound punchy and staccato, which wasn’t what we thought we wanted. But they were the organ grinders, we were merely the monkeys, and their trained ears could hear it. It’s like cooking: we were watching all the individual spices going in, but we had no idea what was going to come out of the oven.
DUNCAN
A couple of weeks later, we were back in England and our record label bosses phoned us up, saying, ‘We’ve got your first single.’ We thought it would be just about any of the others, until they announced, ‘It’s “All Rise”.’ I said to the others, ‘This is a disaster.’
I like to think I have a good ear for music, and I couldn’t understand how they could like it. But we went into the office to listen and sat down. A completely unrecognisable tune started playing, and it sounded amazing. Where had that accordion on the intro come from? Where were all the thuds I’d hated? It turned out they’d only put the beat on the track to regulate our vocals then they’d removed it later to make it sound all soft again. HOW had they worked all that out in the studio with us messing about, pretending to be soldiers? It turned out Stargate knew what they were doing after all – who knew?
DUNCAN
My first glimmer of what life was going to be like came in the middle of 2001, several months after we’d signed. ‘All Rise’ had just come out, and the record company asked us to attend the Smash Hits Tour Show at the Hammersmith Apollo. We hadn’t promoted anything at that point, so we were pretty much the only ones who knew we were in a band. Atomic Kitten, Westlife and Co were all performing, we were just wandering around. Well, we turned up, went in, got mobbed. Yes, that really happened. It was a very weird feeling, with girls running up to us, asking for autographs, even though they didn’t know our names! We managed to splutter, ‘We’re Blue, we’re releasing something soon, keep listening.’ While we were speechless, our bosses just looked chuffed, like they’d known all along.
ANTONY
There was definitely chemistry between the four of us, the sum being much bigger than the parts, and it translated into the music. ‘All Rise’ ended up selling 200,000 copies, not bad at all for a first single, and even the critics, usually snobby about pop music, had plenty of good things to say about the way our different voices worked together, our so-called ‘silky harmonies’, and, of course, that surprise accordion on the intro – all our own idea by now, obviously.
DUNCAN
We didn’t coast, though, we weren’t allowed to. We went on a charm campaign, meeting music journalists and tabloid press, performing at these so-called intimate showcases, where reporters can be persuaded to come for a free glass of bubbly if they’ll lend one ear to the new hopefuls crooning at the other end of the room.
ANTONY
The record company had taken a chance and released a CD with only the song’s title on the cover, no pictures. So no one knew who we were. In the car one day with my mum, I heard the DJ asking, ‘Who are Blue? Are they Swedish? Are they American? Are they German? If you know these guys, we need to hear from you.’ Once they realised we were from just down the road and they could just phone us up, it was chaos.
DUNCAN
It was at a Virgin Records showcase party that Nick Lazarus, then running The Big Breakfast show on Channel 4, took a massive chance on us. By then, the bed had become an integral part of Big Breakfast, where the presenters of the show would invite their guests to jump on it, or sometimes in it, for a cosy chat. Nick became our champion, saying, ‘I love the boys, I love the music, I want to break them. Get them on the bed.’ He didn’t just book us for a promo slot, he gave us a whole week. And that’s what we did. That’s when it all changed, when girls came up to us, asking, ‘Were you on the telly this morning?’
ANTONY
Two other blokes who gave us a massive leg-up are TV producers Phil Mount and Michael Kelpie. They booked our very first live gig – singing ‘All Rise’ for SM:TV Live. Around that time, I happened to get off the Northern Line near my home in Edgware, just around school finishing time, and somehow I ended up getting chased down the street, on my own, by people I’d never seen in my life.
How do you know you’ve arrived? For me, it came later, watching telly at home. Only Fools And Horses has always been my favourite programme; I’ve watched it all my life. It was one of the last ever episodes, and Del Boy was reversing into a parking space in the market. As he was driving, Trigger was saying, ‘This way, Del’ and I could hear a song playing in the market background. And I realised it was us. In Only Fools And Horses! That was it.
SIMON
For me, it was appearing on Top of the Pops [‘All Rise’, spring 2001], but I couldn’t enjoy it. I could sing all day behind closed doors with the boys, but when it came to performing live, I had no confidence in my voice. My tone would change; I’d sing some words wrong. The boys always said it sounded fine, but I didn’t believe them. And Top of the Pops was the worst time of all. When I brought myself to watch it back, I realised all the other boys were singing live, but my vocals were from the record. The good news was I was so quiet, the editors had been able to add my voice. The bad news was this was Top of the Pops, the show I watched growing up, filmed at Television Centre, which I always passed on my way to football practice. Why did it go wrong? I had too much riding on it – my mum watching, everyone in Moss Side going to see me. I was convinced they were going to start taking the mickey when I next saw them. Perhaps I was over-thinking it, as I am prone to do.
LEE
The first time I heard us on the radio, we were at a festival, and we all started screaming. It was everything I’d imagined as a kid, all those years I’d sung along to Boyz II Men songs. Now here I was, on the same radio, with people singing along to us. My mum had been visiting a medium all my life, and this lady had told her years before that I was going to be a singer and be in a famous boy band. For myself, I’d dreamed about this moment, and I do believe, if you pray for it, and believe in something enough, it will come.
ANTONY
We couldn’t be brought down to earth at that point. We were on our way to a festival in Brighton with our tour manager, Johnny B, when all four of us heard ‘All Rise’ on the radio at the same time. We’d pulled up to the lights and there was a builder’s van next to us. We could hear our song on his radio, so we all popped our heads out of the sun roof and said to him, ‘Do you like that song?’ What a bunch of berks! He answered, like it was a completely normal conversation to have at the traffic lights, ‘It’s all right.’ We shouted in unison, ‘It’s us!’ He said, ‘Bollocks,’ and drove off. That was when I thought we might have a shot at this.
LEE
A couple of months later, we released ‘Too Close’. We were busy in the studio recording the vocals for ‘Fly By’ when I was invited to go on the radio and talk to the DJ Dr Fox, who was hosting the Chart Show. He said to me, live on air, ‘How do you feel about getting to number one?’ Stunned was the answer.
SIMON
From that point on, it really was a case of, ‘Right, now we’re off to the races.’ That was a heady day. That same time, we’d been invited into our management’s office and given an ENORMOUS cheque for our next album. We were all flying as we walked back into the studio that afternoon, work still to be done. Lee was flying even higher than the rest of us, following his chat with Dr Fox, and he went straight into the booth to record his vocal for ‘Fly By’. That amazing note you can hear at the end of the song was recorded in his first take. It was an outpouring of euphoria that we all share to this day, and it’s so good to know it was captured forever on tape. I looked through the glass at this talented young man singing his little heart out and I thought, ‘I’m so proud of you.’
