Читать книгу JLS: Our Story so Far - JLS, Little Mix - Страница 7

I’m a very interesting, quirky, fun-loving person—apparently. Well, that’s what my friends say, anyway. I wrote my first song when I was ten, so I’ve been writing songs for a very long time!

My name means ‘you are universally blessed’ and it comes from a tribe in Nigeria; however my family are originally from the Caribbean. I like my name but people never get it right—it’s always been a problem. No one spells it right: the papers are the worst.

I spent two years in Nigeria between the ages of sixteen and eighteen; a family member was working in Lagos and I decided to take the opportunity to go over there and experience life in a different country.

The idea of taking the conventional route from school to college bored me and I was looking for new experiences. I wanted something more vibrant and exciting in my life. I had issues at my school in England, just because I was very outspoken and the teachers tended not to like it. I went to a very good school; it was one of the best state schools in London.

Everyone was planning to go to sixth form college, but I felt that my best interests lay elsewhere. Everything changed for me when I walked into the careers advice office and said, ‘I want to be a singer, a musician.’

OPPOSITE: ME AS THE GRIZZLY BEAR IN MY PRE-SCHOOL ASSEMBLY, BAMBOOZLED AS THE MICROPHONE WAS TOO HIGH FOR ME TO SING, HAHA!

‘Forget it,’ I was told. ‘Think about something else, like catering.’ That was what really turned me to drastic action.

I got reasonable GCSEs; I could have worked harder, but I was always distracted by music. In my exams I’d be writing songs. Nobody could understand it. I kept on saying to my mum and my teachers, ‘I don’t understand why I’m so distracted by music. I don’t know what it is; it’s almost like a drug, I can’t help it.’

The school got really fed up with me. It was very traditional and there was also no way that I could hone my talent and my musicality. The best way I could work on my creativity was through English Literature and English Language. English was the subject that got me through the whole of my school career. My favourite works are by the metaphysical poets, like John Donne.

I fell in love when I was fifteen. I don’t know if it was puppy love, but the moment I saw her, I started feeling something I’d never felt before. It was weird. My insides collapsed! I chased her, asking her out all the time. Looking back, I don’t know if she was interested or not; perhaps she was just leading me on. If so, she led me on for a very long time. I was so infatuated with her that when I went to Nigeria I didn’t even look for a girlfriend.

When I came back, I still wanted to be with her. I sent her flowers, I did big things for her birthday and I always sent her stuff, even though I had no money. Everybody said I was a fool. ‘Just let go,’ they said. ‘Don’t go there any more.’

Then I met a girl who helped me get over her, but I still thought about her and I ended up by myself again. I think the attraction was that she was different from every other girl in my social circle. She was intelligent, she was beautiful, she was confident, she had a great attitude and there was always a sparkle in her eyes. I loved the fact that she could really hold her own; I could see myself being with her for a long time.

I made friends in Nigeria, but I was often alone, literally by myself. It was the loneliest time of my life. I used to sit alone in my hostel room for hours, until the boredom became so extreme that I began to feel I was losing myself. So I picked up my guitar and, although I couldn’t really play guitar, I plucked away and wrote songs from chords. I wrote, wrote, wrote and sang, sang, sang: that’s all I did.

Lagos is a very crazy place and I had a few life-threatening experiences there, so I learned to survive during that time. It wasn’t easy being a foreigner, but I made it through. My mum was concerned about me being there and my grandma was even more concerned. Everybody around me was concerned; everybody was scared for me.

But I was looking for adventure; I wanted to go and see where the real singers were and I ended up mixing with some of the greatest singers and musicians that I’ve ever heard in my life. I went through the shantytowns with my guitar and jammed with some really fantastic people.

I recorded my first song in a friend’s little home studio, managed to blag my way into a radio station called Cool FM and persuaded them to play it on the radio. After that it got quite a bit of radio play and all my friends from school heard it, which was amazing.

I didn’t like the way they were treating the kids at the first school I went to, so I spoke out and voiced my opinions to the head. It was like a breath of fresh air for the other students. I was totally confident about speaking out and they were behind me all of the way. But the headmaster expelled me within days of being there. As I walked out of the school, all the students applauded me. Some of them were in tears because I was leaving.

I had to find a new school quickly. I looked through a newspaper and saw an advert for a school with great music facilities, so I thought I’d go and try to get in. Fortunately, I was accepted. I immediately connected with my teachers and, within two weeks of being there, I became head boy. I did my A Levels there.

A lot of the kids in the school communicated with each other through music, especially through drumming. It soon struck me that people in Nigeria sing because they love singing, not because they’re trying to achieve a record deal.

I set up my own business in Lagos—a digital photography business—to make a little change on the side. In my spare time, I volunteered for a motherless babies’ home. I also did other charitable things at weekends, like painting the walls of a home that took in orphans, and taking kids out to little theme parks with slides and merry-go-rounds.

When you’re looking after children, you become very emotionally attached to them. Some of these kids have lost their parents to street gangs, warfare, an accident or AIDS and they really could do with a good home, so it’s heartbreaking. What kept me going was feeling that I was providing some consistency to their lives, if only for a while. They were always so happy to see me; I was a bit like an older brother. I tried to help them and guide them; I played a lot of games with them. Of course, it gave me a sense of soulful, emotional satisfaction as well.

Originally, my dream was to have a huge solo career and then to become an entrepreneur, with a massive empire and my own record label. Then I was going to put together a boy band. I even started writing for the band while I was in Nigeria. But when I came back to England, I thought, you know what? My life isn’t going to go that way any more. I thought no more about the boy band and went to university to study Events Management, in the meantime focusing on my solo career.

My mum has been a fantastic encouragement to me. She has always believed in what I do, every step of the way. Most parents would have said, ‘Finish university first!’ But my mum said, ‘Study hard, but focus on your dreams as well. Keep at your music, because you don’t have any time to waste. Don’t wait until after university to follow your dreams, because then you will have waited four years.’

She has always been an incredible support to me. She was a qualified lawyer and when I was born she decided not to pursue her career in order to look after me full time. To me, that sacrifice seems amazing, because if I were to give up my music for a child, that would be a big deal. It’s a big deal to give up everything you’ve worked hard for, after getting a degree. You’re ready to go out into the world, but then you decide not to. My mum has never expressed any regret, though. She’s so much about her kids—my little brother, little sister and me. She is the most selfless person I know.

My mum has multiple sclerosis, a condition that attacks the nervous system. She was diagnosed about seven years ago. Her mobility is very restricted and her eyesight is not as good as it used to be, but when I saw her the other day, there seemed to be a little bit of an improvement. We’re always hoping.

It was a very confusing time for me when she started getting ill. I was in my first year of secondary school and suddenly my mum couldn’t walk to the bus stop with me. She couldn’t go to the supermarket by herself: she’d literally pass out. There was a time when I had to pull her out of the bath, because she had passed out.

I remember going to school one day and breaking down and crying and crying. My English teacher sat me down and asked me what was wrong. I told her what was going on and she was very helpful, but it was a very hard time. I’m a lot stronger now because Mum is much stronger in terms of her attitude to her health. She refuses to disable herself by going in a wheelchair; she prefers to struggle with walking. I see her as much as I can; I’m hopeful one day that we’ll find a cure.

I revisited the idea for a boy band partly because of my mum. She was becoming more and more unwell and every night I used to sit at home, thinking to myself that music could be a way out of our predicament. A big part of my dream is to give her a better environment. I had to work something out.

In the beginning, I worked for a record label in Carnaby Street for free just so that I could find a way into the industry. I was performing on the live circuit all round the country. Anywhere there was a stage and a microphone…

To my surprise, I was scouted for a couple of boy bands. I didn’t think I was fit for a boy band, though. I just didn’t think I was conventionally pretty enough, and my voice was quite soulful. But since I was being scouted for all these Sony BMG boy bands, I decided that this must be the route for me. But after a while, I wasn’t happy with the boy band situation that I found myself in. My instinct told me that it wasn’t right. So I made a decision. I thought, I’m going to go out, find my own boys and put together my own band that fits my vision.

What with Lemar and Craig David, I felt that there wasn’t really any space for another black solo singer. But I just saw a gap in the market for boy bands. There are no boy bands out there right now, I thought, so I can really do something very interesting here. I can form a unique, exciting band that I would like to be involved in.

I put the band together in about two or three weeks. So many people told me that it would never work and that there was no way I could do it, but I was adamant that I could. I literally did not sleep during that time. I was constantly on the internet looking for members; I was everywhere looking for members. It was all that I thought about, all of the time.

Slowly but surely, I found people. I went all around central London and advertised in all the music shops. The ad said, ‘I’m looking for members for a SuperGroup.’

I auditioned a lot of guys, not just for vocal ability, but for looks and personality, ambition and attitude. I realised from my previous experience that it takes more than great vocalists to make a great band. I also realised that a team is very different from a soloist. There’s no ‘I’ in team, after all. I was looking for that passion and the group mentality that I finally found in Marvin, Aston and JB.

I found Marvin through a mutual friend. Marvin said that he knew a guy called Aston from the audition circuit who was worth looking at. I called Aston while he was on the football pitch. He didn’t even know what he’d said yes to!

I was a bit of a naughty boy when it came to auditioning people: I was sneaking into the rehearsal rooms at the Dance Attic Studios and holding them there. Sometimes I asked them for a favour, but I kind of pushed the favour: I said, ‘I just need it for fifteen minutes,’ when I really needed it for half an hour. But I had no money and I wanted to audition the boys somewhere that looked professional. Then I’d go back home and put their pictures up next to mine to see who complemented whom.

Once I’d accepted Marvin and Aston for the band, I realised that I needed somebody who specifically complemented my look. I also needed someone who had more of a musical ear and could master harmonies. That was JB. So everything I looked for, I found.

I found JB indirectly through The X Factor 2007. They were holding auditions next door to my university. When I came out for a break one day, I saw the queues and thought, maybe I can scout for my last member down the line!

There was an artists’ development company there called Major Music and they were also scouting. We got talking and they said that they had somebody under development called Jonathan Benjamin Gill. He was working with a voice coach called Karla. They gave me his MySpace

The boredom became so extreme that I began to feel I was losing myself. So I picked up my guitar and, although I couldn’t really play guitar, I plucked away and wrote songs from chords. I wrote, wrote, wrote and sang, sang, sang: that’s all I did.

details and his phone number and I checked him out. My first thought was, Wow, he really complements me physically. I just need to check out his vocals.

Straight away it was obvious that JB had the right attitude. I could see he was very determined, just like me. He had this great falsetto and his harmony ability was just amazing. He is the king of harmonies.

I said to the boys, ‘Jump in this car with me and I promise I’ll take you to the moon. I promise that I won’t let you down.’ I also assured all their families that we were going to be successful, no matter what.

There was a real vibe the first time we all sang together. Marvin turned to me and said, ‘Well done, the band is definitely complete.’ We started rehearsing straight away. What was fantastic was that we didn’t just get along from a musical perspective; we also got along outside of music, because we liked the same things, we liked the same music, we liked the same movies and we liked the same sports.

JB and I share a rugby background; Aston and Marvin share a football background; Aston and I have an athletics background; we all like R&B, pop and soul. I think my music tastes are a bit more out there, because I love rock too. I love Lenny Kravitz—he’s an idol of mine—but I also love Stevie Wonder and Tina Turner.

We began to dedicate ourselves to the band and make sacrifices for it. Marvin started to slow down with his work. Aston was struggling with jobs. I still needed to bring money in, because there were many times when my mum needed money. So I gave out the London Paper during the day and worked long nights in the West End, hustling for clubs till three o’clock in the morning. I’d get paid at four and then I’d go off to sing with the buskers at Piccadilly Circus until the sun rose. I often walked part of the way home, because the night buses didn’t go all the way to where I lived. Sometimes it was pouring with rain, it was dark and cold, there were thugs in the street and I had cash in my pocket, so I’d walk along very cautiously. I’ve seen the vultures come out at night.

I was determined to make it in music, no matter what happened. My passion and desire lies in music and in singing and in songwriting, in creativity and creative thinking and creative writing. When I do those things, that’s when I feel alive.

I have goals and I’m obsessed by the objectives I want to achieve, but I also have my silly moments. When I’m most silly is when I’m around my friends and we do stupid things like dancing in the middle of the road in the middle of the night, or when we end up singing and dancing with the buskers in central London until the early hours of the morning. It’s usually when I’m with my friends that I get really stupid.

As for girls, a dream date would be to fly to the Caribbean on separate planes and meet each other on a beach in the evening. On this beach there would be a table laden with beautiful fruit cocktails and lovely seafood. A more practical date would be going to a live Latin music night to have a little wiggle. I try to salsa but I’m terrible at it. I’m still working on it!

Girls and guys are definitely equal, but different. I believe in equality in every relationship. I don’t believe that guys should dominate women or that women should overrule guys. There should be a mutual connection, give and take. We’re all human beings.

OVERLEAF: MY MUM PUT ME IN THIS, SHE LOVED THIS OUTFIT FOR ME, LITTLE SANTA CLAUS, SO EMBARRASSING, ‘LOVE YOU MUMMY!’

If I took a girl out on a first date and she offered to pay, or pay half, I wouldn’t want to accept because I’m a gentleman. But if she were insistent, I would give in. I’d say, ‘If you do become my lady, then I’ll pay next time.’

If I had no money and she wanted to pay for me? That’s happened to me, in fact—I’m not going to lie—and I had no shame in accepting. On one of my first dates, the girl paid for everything. At first, I said, ‘I can’t accept this!’ But she said, ‘Don’t worry about it.’ It didn’t make me feel bad, because she was older, had more money and was in a different place in her life. I was a student and she was in music.

When I advertised for a supergroup, I was thinking about how it would be if I took a member of each of the greatest boy bands that have ever been and put them in one band. So, rather than modelling the band on one group, I modelled the band on many groups. And in a way you could say that we’ve got the ’N Sync in Aston, the Backstreet Boys in Marvin, New Edition in JB, Boyz II Men and Jodeci in me, and The Temptations and Jackson Five in all of us.

I keep things very innovative and I don’t settle for the easy option. I’m always looking for the best for us, always looking for better, and I believe that we can be great, not just good. I constantly encourage everybody to do their best and to sing their best.

I believe in the ethos of treating people the way you want to be treated. I believe in a higher power, whether it’s the universe or God or whatever you want to call it. Red is my colour because it’s passionate, powerful and it’s strong. Red is a little bit dangerous. My mantra is, ‘From victory to victory.’

The night before our first X Factor audition with the judges, I couldn’t sing because I was really ill. I was so scared. I had some kind of flu that blocked my throat and I literally could not sing a note. I was actually thinking about giving my part to somebody else, but then I thought, ‘You know what, Oritsé? Just be determined and don’t think about being sick. Just pretend you’re 100 per cent fine, give it your best and you’ll get through it.’

It was nerve-racking waiting to go in. There’s no turning back now, I thought. It was make or break. Yes or no.

Marvin never usually gets nervous but he was really nervous then. It’s the most nervous I’ve ever seen Marvin. We walked in and I looked at the judges and thought, I am not going back: I am only going forward from here; my whole life will change in this moment. We’re only going forward and we’re going to get through this, because we’ve worked too hard and we’ve sacrificed too much not to.

After the audition, Simon Cowell said, ‘You, particularly, have a great voice.’ Wow, I thought. It was so amazing to be acknowledged, especially as I’d been so sick the night before.

When we watched the audition on TV, there was a clip of Simon saying, ‘These guys are potential winners.’ That’s when I realised that we were in with a good chance. Wow, I thought. We might just make it.

The first live show was very tense. I remember we were singing Boyz II Men’s ‘I’ll Make Love To You’ and Boyz II Men are a huge inspiration to me. I couldn’t help but think, ‘Oh my God, we’re going to get on the stage and we’re really going to have to deliver.’

When I saw JLS up in lights, the audience and all the cameras, I told myself to enjoy it—and I did. I was smiling all the way through the first show, while really trying to give it the best I could. I was determined that we were going to see it right through to the end.

My favourite performance was ‘The Way You Make Me Feel’, definitely. I just think the song really suited us. When we jumped on the set, it was like we were on a music video. Everybody had their little part to play in it.

Having the collective Number One with ‘Hero’ was amazing, but not because it was Number One. For me it was fantastic that we could give back something to the soldiers who are representing our country so bravely. Our soldiers get forgotten a lot and they are heroes, no doubt about it. They go out there and they’re fighting for world peace. Even though I don’t agree with the war, our soldiers should have total respect from us. But we don’t honour them or their families; we just get on with our daily lives.

There were lots of good times during The X Factor finals. Living in the house was crazy fun. I didn’t find it difficult sharing, because we get along and work as a team all the time. We had the time of our lives. We were on a rollercoaster.

It was hard work, a real learning curve. It made us a lot stronger as a group, as a team, as a unit. It gave us confidence to know that we could live with each other and get along in any given scenario, or situation. It’s really important, because sometimes if you live with people, it doesn’t work out; it can all break down.

We learned each other’s likes and dislikes, each other’s limits. For instance, don’t wake JB up in the morning, because he’ll be really grumpy! And Aston talks on his phone all night, but you get used to it in the end. Marvin is the most sensible one. You can’t really say anything about Marvin, except he’s funny when he goes to bed because he puts on one of those head scarves (a durag) and wears spectacles to read.

I’m very messy. I also spend ages in the bathroom; we all do, but the others won’t admit it. The boys in the house were worse than the girls for taking up bathroom time. Well, some people do their thinking in the shower!

I start to get impatient when I’m hungry. I don’t get grumpy, but I become really quiet. We all eat a huge amount. Some eat better food than others, but we all eat a lot. I don’t eat bad food, because I didn’t grow up eating bad food.

I like all the stuff that a lot of people don’t like, like mussels, squid rings and crabmeat. When I was younger, I lived in the Caribbean, in Tobago, and my brother and I used to catch crabs, tie them up and race them, then take off the shells and gut them, boil them and make a crabmeat soup!

After The X Factor finished, we didn’t know what was going to happen next, if anything—apart from The X Factor tour. Nobody was telling us anything; nobody said anything about a record deal; nobody said anything about any gigs. Alexandra had all the people around her and we had no one. It was a pretty lonely situation.

‘How am I going to make money after this?’ I wondered. ‘We’ve come second in the biggest talent competition in the country and nobody’s saying anything.’ So I started considering applying to be a postman. I had already thought about being a postman before the show, because you walk a lot, so you get exercise, and it’s early morning shifts. But our management said, ‘Don’t worry. Wait, wait.’

Soon we regrouped and called the management for a meeting. We were ready to have a go at them and say, ‘What’s happening with our careers? Tell us something! What’s going on? We need a deal.’

They came in very smoothly and very subtly dropped the news that we had a record deal. ‘We think we’ve found the right people for you—Epic Records.’ For us it couldn’t have been any better. It was amazing.

Being on the road with Lemar was fantastic, apart from having to eat at service stations all the time! I’ve put on about a stone, I think. I eat a lot of good food, but my metabolism is terrible and I put on weight very easily.

A few weeks after putting the band together, I was training diligently, every single day. That routine has been broken now, because our schedule has become so hectic. But while we’re putting the album together, I want to get straight back into training. It will make me feel good. I used to train with my friends and I miss them massively. They’re very supportive and they love the fact that I’m doing exactly what I said I would do. But I didn’t think about the consequences of doing it; I didn’t think that I wouldn’t have so much time to be with my friends. They understand, though. They’re very good friends.

Recording the single was brilliant. With music there are so many possibilities and so much that you can do, but when you only have a short space of time and you have to get something out quickly, you just have to get it done to the best of your ability.

In Nigeria I wrote a song, and a few months ago, I went back to it. Hold on a second, Oritsé, I thought to myself, you wrote this song for a boy band—and now you’re in a boy band! So I rewrote it to suit JLS.

Knowing that I had something quite powerful, I called up my label boss and my management company and said, ‘Please get me into the studio as soon as possible. I need to record and demo this. This could be great for us. It’s potentially a single, in my eyes, maybe a second single. Who knows?’ So I can’t wait to get in the studio.

I’m also going to team up with songwriters Wayne Hector, Ali Tennant and Steve Mac—on separate occasions. Hopefully we’ll be able to write some hits together, something classic, powerful, infectious and reflective of the band. So let’s see…You have to create your own destiny.

OVERLEAF: BACK IN MY NERDY DAYS SHOWING OFF IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD WITH A TRUMPET MY MUM GAVE ME.