#i went through a period where i stopped listening to the beatles as a teenager

[apostate-in-an-alcove]

Listen, if you ever find a little voice in your head debating whether or not to rid yourself of any Beatles memorabilia, ignore it, that's the devil talking.

[hlupdate]

Variety’s Grammy-nominated Hitmaker of the Year goes deep on the music industry, the great pause and finding his own muses.

“We’ll dance again,” Harry Styles coos, the Los Angeles sunshine peeking through his pandemic-shaggy hair just so. The singer, songwriter and actor — beloved and critically acclaimed thanks to his life-affirming year-old album, “Fine Line” — is lamenting that his Variety Hitmaker of the Year cover conversation has to be conducted over Zoom rather than in person. Even via videoconference, the Brit is effortlessly charming, as anyone who’s come within earshot of him would attest, but it quickly becomes clear that beneath that genial smile is a well-honed media strategy.

To wit: In an interview that appears a few days later announcing his investment in a new arena in his native Manchester (more on that in a bit), he repeats the refrain — “There will be a time we dance again”— referencing a much-needed return to live music and the promise of some 4,000 jobs for residents.

None of which is to suggest that Styles, 26, phones it in for interviews. Quite the opposite: He does very few, conceivably to give more of himself and not cheapen what is out there and also to use the publicity opportunity to indulge his other interests, like fashion. (Last month Styles became the first male to grace the cover of Vogue solo.) Still, it stings a little that a waltz with the former One Direction member may not come to pass on this album cycle — curse you, coronavirus.

Styles’ isolation has coincided with his maturation as an artist, a thespian and a person. With “Fine Line,” he’s proved himself a skilled lyricist with a tremendous ear for harmony and melody. In preparing for his role in Olivia Wilde’s period thriller “Don’t Worry Darling,” which is shooting outside Palm Springs, he found an outlet for expression in interpreting words on a page. And for the first time, he’s using his megaphone to speak out about social justice — inspired by the outpouring of support for Black people around the world following the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police in May.

Styles has spent much of the past nine months at home in London, where life has slowed considerably. The time has allowed him to ponder such heady issues as his purpose on the earth. “It’s been a pause that I don’t know if I would have otherwise taken,” says Styles. “I think it’s been pretty good for me to have a kind of stop, to look and think about what it actually means to be an artist, what it means to do what we do and why we do it. I lean into moments like this — moments of uncertainty.”

In truth, while Styles has largely been keeping a low profile — his Love On Tour, due to kick off on April 15, was postponed in late March and is now scheduled to launch in February 2021 (whether it actually will remains to be seen) — his music has not. This is especially true in the U.S., where he’s notched two hit singles, “Adore You,” the second-most-played song at radio in 2020, and “Watermelon Sugar” (No. 22 on Variety’s year-end Hitmakers chart), with a third, “Golden,” already cresting the top 20 on the pop format. The massive cross-platform success of these songs means Styles has finally and decisively broken into the American market, maneuvering its web of gatekeepers to accumulate 6.2 million consumption units and rising.

Why do these particular songs resonate in 2020? Styles doesn’t have the faintest idea. While he acknowledges a “nursery rhyme” feel to “Watermelon Sugar” with its earwormy loop of a chorus, that’s about as much insight as he can offer. His longtime collaborator and friend Tom Hull, also known as the producer Kid Harpoon, offers this take: “There’s a lot of amazing things about that song, but what really stands out is the lyric. It’s not trying to hide or be clever. The simplicity of watermelon … there’s such a joy in it, [which] is a massive part of that song’s success.” Also, his kids love it. “I’ve never had a song connect with children in this way,” says Hull, whose credits include tunes by Shawn Mendes, Florence and the Machine and Calvin Harris. “I get sent videos all the time from friends of their kids singing. I have a 3-year-old and an 8-year-old, and they listen to it.”

Styles is quick to note that he doesn’t chase pop appeal when crafting songs. In fact, the times when he pondered or approved a purposeful tweak, like on his self-titled 2017 debut, still gnaw at him. “I love that album so much because it represents such a time in my life, but when I listen to it — sonically and lyrically, especially — I can hear places where I was playing it safe,” he says. “I was scared to get it wrong.”

Contemporary effects and on-trend beats hardly factor into Styles’ decision-making. He likes to focus on feelings — his own and his followers’ — and see himself on the other side of the velvet rope, an important distinction in his view. “People within [the industry] feel like they operate on a higher level of listening, and I like to make music from the point of being a fan of music,” Styles says. “Fans are the best A&R.”

This from someone who’s had free rein to pursue every musical whim, and hand in the album of his dreams in the form of “Fine Line.” Chart success makes it all the sweeter, but Styles insists that writing “for the right reasons” supersedes any commercial considerations. “There’s no part that feels, eh, icky — like it was made in the lab,” he says.

Styles has experience in this realm. As a graduate of the U.K. competition series “The X Factor,” where he and four other auditionees — Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne and Louis Tomlinson — were singled out by show creator and star judge Simon Cowell to conjoin as One Direction, he’s seen how the prefab pop machine works up close. The One Direction oeuvre, which counts some 42 million albums sold worldwide, includes songs written with such established hitmakers as Ryan Tedder, Savan Kotecha and Teddy Geiger. Being a studious, insatiable observer, Styles took it all in.

“I learned so much,” he says of the experience. “When we were in the band, I used to try and write with as many different people as I could. I wanted to practice — and I wrote a lot of bad shit.”

His bandmates also benefited from the pop star boot camp. The proof is in the relatively seamless solo transitions of at least three of its members — Payne, Malik and Horan in addition to Styles — each of whom has landed hit singles on charts in the U.K., the U.S. and beyond.

This departs from the typical trajectories of boy bands including New Kids on the Block and ’N Sync, which have all pro ered a star frontman. The thinking for decades was that a record company would be lucky to have one breakout solo career among the bunch.

Styles has plainly thought about this.

“When you look at the history of people coming out of bands and starting solo careers, they feel this need to apologize for being in the band. ‘Don’t worry, everyone, that wasn’t me! Now I get to do what I really want to do.’ But we loved being in the band,” he says. “I think there’s a wont to pit people against each other. And I think it’s never been about that for us. It’s about a next step in evolution. The fact that we’ve all achieved different things outside of the band says a lot about how hard we worked in it.”

Indeed, during the five-ish years that One Direction existed, Styles’ schedule involved the sort of nonstop international jet-setting that few get to see in a lifetime, never mind their teenage years. Between 2011 and 2015, One Direction’s tours pulled in north of $631 million in gross ticket sales, according to concert trade Pollstar, and the band was selling out stadiums worldwide by the time it entered its extended hiatus. Styles, too, had built up to playing arenas as a solo artist, engaging audiences with his colorful stage wear and banter and left-of-center choices for opening acts (a pre-Grammy-haul Kacey Musgraves in 2018; indie darlings King Princess and Jenny Lewis for his rescheduled 2021 run).

Stages of all sizes feel like home to Styles. He grew up in a suburb of Manchester, ground zero for some of the biggest British acts of the 1980s and ’90s, including Joy Division, New Order, the Smiths and Oasis, the latter of which broke the same year Styles was born. His parents were also music lovers. Styles’ father fed him a balanced diet of the Beatles, Fleetwood Mac, the Rolling Stones and Queen, while Mum was a fan of Shania Twain, Norah Jones and Savage Garden. “They’re all great melody writers,” says Styles of the acts’ musical throughline.

Stevie Nicks, who in the past has described “Fine Line” as Styles’ “Rumours,” referencing the Fleetwood Mac 1977 classic, sees him as a kindred spirit. “Harry writes and sings his songs about real experiences that seemingly happened yesterday,” she tells Variety. “He taps into real life. He doesn’t make up stories. He tells the truth, and that is what I do. ‘Fine Line’ has been my favorite record since it came out. It is his ‘Rumours.’ I told him that in a note on December 13, 2019 before he went on stage to play the ‘Fine Line’ album at the Forum. We cried. He sang those songs like he had sung them a thousand times. That’s a great songwriter and a great performer.”

“Harry’s playing and writing is instinctual,” adds Jonathan Wilson, a friend and peer who’s advised Styles on backing and session musicians. “He understands history and where to take the torch. You can see the thread of great British performers — from Bolan to Bowie — in his music.”

Also shaping his musical DNA was Manchester itself, the site of a 23,500-seat arena, dubbed Co-op Live, for which Styles is an investor and adviser. Oak View Group, a company specializing in live entertainment and global sports that was founded by Tim Leiweke and Irving Azoff in 2015 (Jeffrey Azoff, Irving’s son, represents Styles at Full Stop Management), is leading the effort to construct the venue. The project gained planning approval in September and is set to open in 2023, with its arrival representing a £350 million ($455 million) investment in the city. (Worth noting: Manchester is already home to an arena — the site of a 2017 bombing outside an Ariana Grande concert — and a football stadium, where One Love Manchester, an all-star benefit show to raise money for victims of the terrorist attack, took place.)

“I went to my first shows in Manchester,” Styles says of concerts paid for with money earned delivering newspapers for a supermarket called the Co-op. “My friends and I would go in on weekends. There’s so many amazing small venues, and music is such a massive part of the city. I think Manchester deserves it. It feels like a full-circle, coming-home thing to be doing this and to be able to give any kind of input. I’m incredibly proud. Hopefully they’ll let me play there at some point.”

Though Styles has owned properties in Los Angeles, his base for the foreseeable future is London. “I feel like my relationship with L.A. has changed a lot,” he explains. “I’ve kind of accepted that I don’t have to live here anymore; for a while I felt like I was supposed to. Like it meant things were going well. This happened, then you move to L.A.! But I don’t really want to.”

Is it any wonder? Between COVID and the turmoil in the U.S. spurred by the presidential election, Styles, like some 79 million American voters, is recovering from sticker shock over the bill of goods sold to them by the concept of democracy. “In general, as people, there’s a lack of empathy,” he observes. “We found this place that’s so divisive. We just don’t listen to each other anymore. And that’s quite scary.”

That belief prompted Styles to speak out publicly in the wake of George Floyd’s death. As protests in support of Black Lives Matter took to streets all over the world, for Styles, it triggered a period of introspection, as marked by an Instagram message (liked by 2.7 million users and counting) in which he declared: “I do things every day without fear, because I am privileged, and I am privileged every day because I am white. … Being not racist is not enough, we must be anti racist. Social change is enacted when a society mobilizes. I stand in solidarity with all of those protesting. I’m donating to help post bail for arrested organizers. Look inwards, educate yourself and others. LISTEN, READ, SHARE, DONATE and VOTE. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. BLACK LIVES MATTER.”

“Talking about race can be really uncomfortable for everyone,” Styles elaborates. “I had a realization that my own comfort in the conversation has nothing to do with the problem — like that’s not enough of a reason to not have a conversation. Looking back, I don’t think I’ve been outspoken enough in the past. Using that feeling has pushed me forward to being open and ready to learn. … How can I ensure from my side that in 20 years, the right things are still being done and the right people are getting the right opportunities? That it’s not a passing thing?”

His own record company — and corporate parent Sony Music Group, whose chairman, Rob Stringer, signed Styles in 2016 — has been grappling with these same questions as the industry has faced its own reckoning with race. At issue: inequality among the upper ranks (an oft-cited statistic: popular music is 80% Black, but the music business is 80% white); contracts rooted in a decades-old system that many say is set up to take advantage of artists, Black artists more unfairly than white; and the call for a return of master rights, an ownership model that is at the core of the business.

Styles acknowledges the fundamental imbalance in how a major label deal is structured — the record company takes on the financial risk while the artist is made to recoup money spent on the project before the act is considered profitable and earning royalties (typically at a 15% to 18% rate for the artist, while the label keeps and disburses the rest). “Historically, I can’t think of any industry that’s benefited more off of Black culture than music,” he says. “There are discussions that need to happen about this long history of not being paid fairly. It’s a time for listening, and hopefully, people will come out humbled, educated and willing to learn and change.”

By all accounts, Styles is a voracious reader, a movie lover and an aesthete. He stays in shape by adhering to a strict daily exercise routine. “I tried to keep up but didn’t last more than two weeks,” says Hull, Styles’ producer, with a laugh. “The discipline is terrifying.”

Of course, with the fashion world beckoning — Styles recently appeared in a film series for Gucci’s new collection that was co-directed by the fashion house’s creative director, Alessandro Michele, and Oscar winner Gus Van Sant — and a movie that’s set in the 1950s, maintaining that physique is part of the job. And he’s no stranger to visual continuity after appearing in Christopher Nolan’s epic “Dunkirk” and having to return to set for reshoots; his hair, which needed to be cut back to its circa 1940 form, is a constant topic of conversation among fans. This time, it’s the ink that poses a challenge. By Styles’ tally, he’s up to 60 tattoos, which require an hour in the makeup chair to cover up. “It’s the only time I really regret getting tattooed,” he says.

He shows no regret, however, when it comes to stylistic choices overall, and takes pride in his gender-agnostic portfolio, which includes wearing a Gucci dress on that Vogue cover— an image that incited conservative pundit Candace Owens to plead publicly to “bring back manly men.” In Styles’ view: “To not wear [something] because it’s females’ clothing, you shut out a whole world of great clothes. And I think what’s exciting about right now is you can wear what you like. It doesn’t have to be X or Y. Those lines are becoming more and more blurred.”

But acclaim, if you can believe it, is not top of mind for Styles. As far as the Grammys are concerned, Styles shrugs, “It’s never why I do anything.” His team and longtime label, however, had their hearts set on a showing at the Jan. 31 ceremony. Their investment in Styles has been substantial — not just monetarily but in carefully crafting his career in the wake of such icons as David Bowie, who released his final albums with the label. Hope at the company and in many fans’ hearts that Styles would receive an album of the year nomination did not come to pass. However, he was recognized in three categories, including best pop vocal album.

“It’s always nice to know that people like what you’re doing, but ultimately — and especially working in a subjective field — I don’t put too much weight on that stuff,” Styles says. “I think it’s important when making any kind of art to remove the ego from it.” Citing the painter Matisse, he adds: “It’s about the work that you do when you’re not expecting any applause.”

[hldailyupdate]

This Charming Man: Why We’re Wild About Harry Styles

Variety’s Grammy-nominated Hitmaker of the Year goes deep on the music industry, the great pause and finding his own muses.

“We’ll dance again,” Harry Styles coos, the Los Angeles sunshine peeking through his pandemic-shaggy hair just so. The singer, songwriter and actor — beloved and critically acclaimed thanks to his life-affirming year-old album, “Fine Line” — is lamenting that his Variety Hitmaker of the Year cover conversation has to be conducted over Zoom rather than in person. Even via videoconference, the Brit is effortlessly charming, as anyone who’s come within earshot of him would attest, but it quickly becomes clear that beneath that genial smile is a well-honed media strategy.

To wit: In an interview that appears a few days later announcing his investment in a new arena in his native Manchester (more on that in a bit), he repeats the refrain — “There will be a time we dance again”— referencing a much-needed return to live music and the promise of some 4,000 jobs for residents.

None of which is to suggest that Styles, 26, phones it in for interviews. Quite the opposite: He does very few, conceivably to give more of himself and not cheapen what is out there and also to use the publicity opportunity to indulge his other interests, like fashion. (Last month Styles became the first male to grace the cover of Vogue solo.) Still, it stings a little that a waltz with the former One Direction member may not come to pass on this album cycle — curse you, coronavirus.

Styles’ isolation has coincided with his maturation as an artist, a thespian and a person. With “Fine Line,” he’s proved himself a skilled lyricist with a tremendous ear for harmony and melody. In preparing for his role in Olivia Wilde’s period thriller “Don’t Worry Darling,” which is shooting outside Palm Springs, he found an outlet for expression in interpreting words on a page. And for the first time, he’s using his megaphone to speak out about social justice — inspired by the outpouring of support for Black people around the world following the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police in May.

Styles has spent much of the past nine months at home in London, where life has slowed considerably. The time has allowed him to ponder such heady issues as his purpose on the earth. “It’s been a pause that I don’t know if I would have otherwise taken,” says Styles. “I think it’s been pretty good for me to have a kind of stop, to look and think about what it actually means to be an artist, what it means to do what we do and why we do it. I lean into moments like this — moments of uncertainty.”

In truth, while Styles has largely been keeping a low profile — his Love On Tour, due to kick off on April 15, was postponed in late March and is now scheduled to launch in February 2021 (whether it actually will remains to be seen) — his music has not. This is especially true in the U.S., where he’s notched two hit singles, “Adore You,” the second-most-played song at radio in 2020, and “Watermelon Sugar” (No. 22 on Variety’s year-end Hitmakers chart), with a third, “Golden,” already cresting the top 20 on the pop format. The massive cross-platform success of these songs means Styles has finally and decisively broken into the American market, maneuvering its web of gatekeepers to accumulate 6.2 million consumption units and rising.

Why do these particular songs resonate in 2020? Styles doesn’t have the faintest idea. While he acknowledges a “nursery rhyme” feel to “Watermelon Sugar” with its earwormy loop of a chorus, that’s about as much insight as he can offer. His longtime collaborator and friend Tom Hull, also known as the producer Kid Harpoon, offers this take: “There’s a lot of amazing things about that song, but what really stands out is the lyric. It’s not trying to hide or be clever. The simplicity of watermelon … there’s such a joy in it, [which] is a massive part of that song’s success.” Also, his kids love it. “I’ve never had a song connect with children in this way,” says Hull, whose credits include tunes by Shawn Mendes, Florence and the Machine and Calvin Harris. “I get sent videos all the time from friends of their kids singing. I have a 3-year-old and an 8-year-old, and they listen to it.”

Styles is quick to note that he doesn’t chase pop appeal when crafting songs. In fact, the times when he pondered or approved a purposeful tweak, like on his self-titled 2017 debut, still gnaw at him. “I love that album so much because it represents such a time in my life, but when I listen to it — sonically and lyrically, especially — I can hear places where I was playing it safe,” he says. “I was scared to get it wrong.”

Contemporary effects and on-trend beats hardly factor into Styles’ decision-making. He likes to focus on feelings — his own and his followers’ — and see himself on the other side of the velvet rope, an important distinction in his view. “People within [the industry] feel like they operate on a higher level of listening, and I like to make music from the point of being a fan of music,” Styles says. “Fans are the best A&R.”

This from someone who’s had free rein to pursue every musical whim, and hand in the album of his dreams in the form of “Fine Line.” Chart success makes it all the sweeter, but Styles insists that writing “for the right reasons” supersedes any commercial considerations. “There’s no part that feels, eh, icky — like it was made in the lab,” he says.

Styles has experience in this realm. As a graduate of the U.K. competition series “The X Factor,” where he and four other auditionees — Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne and Louis Tomlinson — were singled out by show creator and star judge Simon Cowell to conjoin as One Direction, he’s seen how the prefab pop machine works up close. The One Direction oeuvre, which counts some 42 million albums sold worldwide, includes songs written with such established hitmakers as Ryan Tedder, Savan Kotecha and Teddy Geiger. Being a studious, insatiable observer, Styles took it all in.

“I learned so much,” he says of the experience. “When we were in the band, I used to try and write with as many different people as I could. I wanted to practice — and I wrote a lot of bad shit.”

His bandmates also benefited from the pop star boot camp. The proof is in the relatively seamless solo transitions of at least three of its members — Payne, Malik and Horan in addition to Styles — each of whom has landed hit singles on charts in the U.K., the U.S. and beyond.

This departs from the typical trajectories of boy bands including New Kids on the Block and ’N Sync, which have all pro ered a star frontman. The thinking for decades was that a record company would be lucky to have one breakout solo career among the bunch.

Styles has plainly thought about this.

“When you look at the history of people coming out of bands and starting solo careers, they feel this need to apologize for being in the band. ‘Don’t worry, everyone, that wasn’t me! Now I get to do what I really want to do.’ But we loved being in the band,” he says. “I think there’s a wont to pit people against each other. And I think it’s never been about that for us. It’s about a next step in evolution. The fact that we’ve all achieved different things outside of the band says a lot about how hard we worked in it.”

Indeed, during the five-ish years that One Direction existed, Styles’ schedule involved the sort of nonstop international jet-setting that few get to see in a lifetime, never mind their teenage years. Between 2011 and 2015, One Direction’s tours pulled in north of $631 million in gross ticket sales, according to concert trade Pollstar, and the band was selling out stadiums worldwide by the time it entered its extended hiatus. Styles, too, had built up to playing arenas as a solo artist, engaging audiences with his colorful stage wear and banter and left-of-center choices for opening acts (a pre-Grammy-haul Kacey Musgraves in 2018; indie darlings King Princess and Jenny Lewis for his rescheduled 2021 run).

Stages of all sizes feel like home to Styles. He grew up in a suburb of Manchester, ground zero for some of the biggest British acts of the 1980s and ’90s, including Joy Division, New Order, the Smiths and Oasis, the latter of which broke the same year Styles was born. His parents were also music lovers. Styles’ father fed him a balanced diet of the Beatles, Fleetwood Mac, the Rolling Stones and Queen, while Mum was a fan of Shania Twain, Norah Jones and Savage Garden. “They’re all great melody writers,” says Styles of the acts’ musical throughline.

Stevie Nicks, who in the past has described “Fine Line” as Styles’ “Rumours,” referencing the Fleetwood Mac 1977 classic, sees him as a kindred spirit. “Harry writes and sings his songs about real experiences that seemingly happened yesterday,” she tells Variety. “He taps into real life. He doesn’t make up stories. He tells the truth, and that is what I do. ‘Fine Line’ has been my favorite record since it came out. It is his ‘Rumours.’ I told him that in a note on December 13, 2019 before he went on stage to play the ‘Fine Line’ album at the Forum. We cried. He sang those songs like he had sung them a thousand times. That’s a great songwriter and a great performer.”

“Harry’s playing and writing is instinctual,” adds Jonathan Wilson, a friend and peer who’s advised Styles on backing and session musicians. “He understands history and where to take the torch. You can see the thread of great British performers — from Bolan to Bowie — in his music.”

Also shaping his musical DNA was Manchester itself, the site of a 23,500-seat arena, dubbed Co-op Live, for which Styles is an investor and adviser. Oak View Group, a company specializing in live entertainment and global sports that was founded by Tim Leiweke and Irving Azoff in 2015 (Jeffrey Azoff, Irving’s son, represents Styles at Full Stop Management), is leading the effort to construct the venue. The project gained planning approval in September and is set to open in 2023, with its arrival representing a £350 million ($455 million) investment in the city. (Worth noting: Manchester is already home to an arena — the site of a 2017 bombing outside an Ariana Grande concert — and a football stadium, where One Love Manchester, an all-star benefit show to raise money for victims of the terrorist attack, took place.)

“I went to my first shows in Manchester,” Styles says of concerts paid for with money earned delivering newspapers for a supermarket called the Co-op. “My friends and I would go in on weekends. There’s so many amazing small venues, and music is such a massive part of the city. I think Manchester deserves it. It feels like a full-circle, coming-home thing to be doing this and to be able to give any kind of input. I’m incredibly proud. Hopefully they’ll let me play there at some point.”

Though Styles has owned properties in Los Angeles, his base for the foreseeable future is London. “I feel like my relationship with L.A. has changed a lot,” he explains. “I’ve kind of accepted that I don’t have to live here anymore; for a while I felt like I was supposed to. Like it meant things were going well. This happened, then you move to L.A.! But I don’t really want to.”

Is it any wonder? Between COVID and the turmoil in the U.S. spurred by the presidential election, Styles, like some 79 million American voters, is recovering from sticker shock over the bill of goods sold to them by the concept of democracy. “In general, as people, there’s a lack of empathy,” he observes. “We found this place that’s so divisive. We just don’t listen to each other anymore. And that’s quite scary.”

That belief prompted Styles to speak out publicly in the wake of George Floyd’s death. As protests in support of Black Lives Matter took to streets all over the world, for Styles, it triggered a period of introspection, as marked by an Instagram message (liked by 2.7 million users and counting) in which he declared: “I do things every day without fear, because I am privileged, and I am privileged every day because I am white. … Being not racist is not enough, we must be anti racist. Social change is enacted when a society mobilizes. I stand in solidarity with all of those protesting. I’m donating to help post bail for arrested organizers. Look inwards, educate yourself and others. LISTEN, READ, SHARE, DONATE and VOTE. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. BLACK LIVES MATTER.”

“Talking about race can be really uncomfortable for everyone,” Styles elaborates. “I had a realization that my own comfort in the conversation has nothing to do with the problem — like that’s not enough of a reason to not have a conversation. Looking back, I don’t think I’ve been outspoken enough in the past. Using that feeling has pushed me forward to being open and ready to learn. … How can I ensure from my side that in 20 years, the right things are still being done and the right people are getting the right opportunities? That it’s not a passing thing?”

His own record company — and corporate parent Sony Music Group, whose chairman, Rob Stringer, signed Styles in 2016 — has been grappling with these same questions as the industry has faced its own reckoning with race. At issue: inequality among the upper ranks (an oft-cited statistic: popular music is 80% Black, but the music business is 80% white); contracts rooted in a decades-old system that many say is set up to take advantage of artists, Black artists more unfairly than white; and the call for a return of master rights, an ownership model that is at the core of the business.

Styles acknowledges the fundamental imbalance in how a major label deal is structured — the record company takes on the financial risk while the artist is made to recoup money spent on the project before the act is considered profitable and earning royalties (typically at a 15% to 18% rate for the artist, while the label keeps and disburses the rest). “Historically, I can’t think of any industry that’s benefited more off of Black culture than music,” he says. “There are discussions that need to happen about this long history of not being paid fairly. It’s a time for listening, and hopefully, people will come out humbled, educated and willing to learn and change.”

By all accounts, Styles is a voracious reader, a movie lover and an aesthete. He stays in shape by adhering to a strict daily exercise routine. “I tried to keep up but didn’t last more than two weeks,” says Hull, Styles’ producer, with a laugh. “The discipline is terrifying.”

Of course, with the fashion world beckoning — Styles recently appeared in a film series for Gucci’s new collection that was co-directed by the fashion house’s creative director, Alessandro Michele, and Oscar winner Gus Van Sant — and a movie that’s set in the 1950s, maintaining that physique is part of the job. And he’s no stranger to visual continuity after appearing in Christopher Nolan’s epic “Dunkirk” and having to return to set for reshoots; his hair, which needed to be cut back to its circa 1940 form, is a constant topic of conversation among fans. This time, it’s the ink that poses a challenge. By Styles’ tally, he’s up to 60 tattoos, which require an hour in the makeup chair to cover up. “It’s the only time I really regret getting tattooed,” he says.

He shows no regret, however, when it comes to stylistic choices overall, and takes pride in his gender-agnostic portfolio, which includes wearing a Gucci dress on that Vogue cover— an image that incited conservative pundit Candace Owens to plead publicly to “bring back manly men.” In Styles’ view: “To not wear [something] because it’s females’ clothing, you shut out a whole world of great clothes. And I think what’s exciting about right now is you can wear what you like. It doesn’t have to be X or Y. Those lines are becoming more and more blurred.”

But acclaim, if you can believe it, is not top of mind for Styles. As far as the Grammys are concerned, Styles shrugs, “It’s never why I do anything.” His team and longtime label, however, had their hearts set on a showing at the Jan. 31 ceremony. Their investment in Styles has been substantial — not just monetarily but in carefully crafting his career in the wake of such icons as David Bowie, who released his final albums with the label. Hope at the company and in many fans’ hearts that Styles would receive an album of the year nomination did not come to pass. However, he was recognized in three categories, including best pop vocal album.

“It’s always nice to know that people like what you’re doing, but ultimately — and especially working in a subjective field — I don’t put too much weight on that stuff,” Styles says. “I think it’s important when making any kind of art to remove the ego from it.” Citing the painter Matisse, he adds: “It’s about the work that you do when you’re not expecting any applause.”

Harry for Variety. (2 December 2020)

[liam-93-productions]

I remember meeting Liam Payne once before. I was writing the cover story on One Direction for this very magazine four years ago and, finally, after endless tail chasing and schedule clashes, I managed to pin all five members down backstage at the O2 shortly before they played to what seemed like a bazillion screaming teenagers. The air was heavy with the fug of Haribo Starmix and raging hormones; even at that point the band were already more popular than The Beatles in some circles. Or, as John Lennon would have put it, Jesus.

The band members were courteous and convivial. One certainly got the impression that their time wasn’t their own, although any cracks that would end up splintering the band some years later were kept well hidden. I remember Payne for being perhaps the most grounded out of all five of them. He seemed to have an ease with his status and fortune that kept his ego in check. He seemed genuinely bamboozled at the hysteria going on around them. He was a young, ambitious pop star caught in fame’s full beams.

Last week, in some respects, a very different man sat down for an exclusive chat with GQ Hype. He’s certainly more hench, as this exclusive shoot with fashion photographers Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott prove. Whoa. We talked about his sizzling new underwear campaign with Hugo Boss, his first nude shoot (which may well be his last if his dear mother has anything to do with it) and we reminisced about his One Direction days, a period which he came out of shaken, sure, but not completely upside down or inside out.

He’s been through a great deal since the end of being one fifth of the biggest boy bands in history – drink problems, therapy, (...), anxiety – but at his core he’s still that same multi-talented, hard-working boy from Wolverhampton, honest about his faults and still excited to see where all this is taking him. Undoubtedly, he’s a man who wears his heart on his sleeve. Well, when he’s wearing any sleeves at all...

GQ: So how’s the build-up to the debut album, LP1?

Liam Payne: Good, can’t complain. Just rewriting a lot of things in my world at the moment. That’s why I was in with my top, top manager for a while just reconfiguring things towards the end of the year.

What are you reconfiguring?

Well, we just kind of ticked off album one. The writing process was interesting to say the least. I mean, it was almost like blind dating in LA with different writers, and when that happens it’s hard to get traction, or get to know anyone properly, or let your guard down in a way. You feel like you’re going into different rooms all the time, with different styles. There are so many things that can affect the writing unless you find that one person who can carry you all the way through a record. Post Malone has a producer called Louis Bell, whom he works with, and there's a common stitch throughout the whole thing that kind of puts it all together properly, whereas we never really found that.

How come that never materialised?

I was going through a bunch of stuff when we started writing the album – growing up and all sorts of different shit coming out of the band. So for me it wasn't the best entry into the writing side of it and making personal music rather than writing for a band. So it was difficult, but I mean the album is done and coming out and I absolutely love it and it's just interesting to see that my favourite is from when I was younger. The first albums I listened to actually helped create my first album, so super cool.

It sounds like it’s been a long process getting the debut album finished?

It’s been, since “Strip That Down” really, the best part of two maybe three years to get everything finished. And it was difficult. I mean, it's opening up at first and trying to figure out who you are and what people want to know from you. And what the sound is. Trying to find that medium point for all those things. It's just the most difficult thing, especially at a young age when you're constantly changing and you don't really know yourself yet. We spent the best part of five years in a band closed off from the world and I had to go through this really weird transition inside that band as the world, and then myself, came out of it. I mean, even in my therapy sessions, my therapist asked me, “What do you actually like to do?” And I'm like, “I don’t know what I like doing!”

Most people presumed you came out of One Direction fully formed. That wasn’t the case?

Everything changed. New teams, new managers, new labels. Building those working relationships can be tricky. You also become the boss of your own shit, and I was 21, 22 when I first started doing my own thing, so it’s all a bit scary and can be a bit lonely. That’s not a complaint; it's also a lot of fun as well. We have a great time. Now the band members have all worked our way through this first couple of years, you can kind of see everyone's finding their own feet. Take Harry [Styles] at the moment. You know, he's just found what I think is his sound and exactly where he wants to be, which took him a little minute to get into since he had his last album out. So, yeah, it just takes time.

Towards the end of One Direction, were you aware of everyone’s own tastes developing?

I think so. I mean, for me, someone like Louis [Tomlinson] always had a very specific taste – things like Green Day, that was the era he was from... also Oasis and old Robbie Williams. Harry always played an eclectic mix of stuff too. I can always remember the one time Harry put Rick Springfield’s “Jessie's Girl’ on and I had never really heard it before but it was an interesting choice. I liked it nevertheless. And then for me, I mean, when I wrote “Better Than Words” for the last 1D album, it had a different rhythm for us, something we hadn’t done before. So you could definitely see those unique tastes early on. I think funnily enough it was through fashion and style that our own perspectives could be seen most of all, all hints of what was to come for us. We would always wear black on stage, black skinny jeans and a black T-shirt, but maybe we’d add something else as individuals. I remember Harry having these cool rings, for example, and then he’d go crazy with his shirts as time went on. Saying that, I think Louis still dresses pretty much the same as he used to.

Was it competitive with the other band members?

I mean, for me personally, I don't think I ever really looked at it that way. I think the biggest question for all of us at the start was figuring out who the hell we were without each other around, which is a really weird thing because you’d found your dynamic and role within the band. But then when you started a solo thing it was almost like leaving like school or university and trying to find your place within the real world. So I think it was more the pressure of that than anything else, rather than us competing with each other on, like, dress sense or vibe or even the music.

You mentioned therapy. Was that while you were still in the band?

I went into therapy a couple years after leaving. I kind of went off the rails a little bit and just couldn't really figure out what was making me sad. So, you know, my team got somebody around to help me through a couple of different, difficult things that I was going through. I was just trying to figure myself out. It was just such a strange course through life, and then when the switch turns off you're left to your own devices...

Did it throw you off when the band’s scheduled just stopped? Going from having a two-year plan to not even having a two-day plan?

I mean, yeah, we went through a really weird retirement phase. It’s quite funny, when my dad retired, I was telling him what to expect: first off, you're not going to get out of bed for ages, and then all of a sudden you get an urge to get out of bed all the time and start trying to do stuff just to seem like you are doing things. But I think everyone in the band went through this really weird retirement phase and trying to switch off. For me, I remember standing in my garden at my house and just looking around thinking, “It's been a lot of fun, but what do I do now that’s done? What actually happens at this point? Who do I call? Who is the ‘point of’ person?” I just didn't really know what was going to happen; a very strange thing to be involved in. All of it is weird, but that was a real strange moment. But things pick up and slowly you start getting back into the groove again.

Were you worried about not being famous any more? Or making music? About it all just stopping?

Actually, no. I kind of always knew that something would happen. I just didn't know what the hell it was going to be. And that was the scariest part of it. You just didn't really want to make a fool of yourself at that point. I think after such a long legacy of your band being absolutely amazing, the most important thing was make sure you don’t step off that pedestal; don't embarrass yourself. The biggest worry was don't ruin the legacy.

Let's talk about the underwear campaign with Hugo Boss. These are some incredible photographs taken by Mert and Marcus…

It got very raunchy very quickly. I hadn’t been properly warned about the amount of nudity Mert and Marcus do in their work, let's say. Mert’s actually become a really good friend now. We were in his house to three in the morning the other day singing karaoke, which is so funny. Yeah, I mean, really great to work with. I think everyone was quite surprised early on that they wanted to work with me and it kind of gave us a little nod and an entry into working in fashion proper.

Had you always wanted to land an underwear campaign?

Before we landed the deal with Hugo Boss I’d gone into my gym and said, “I'm going to get an underwear commercial.” I just wanted to do it; I knew I could do it. And then it actually happened! And I worked my ass off and I'm still hitting the gym: I didn't realise once you get on that thing you can't really turn it off. You've got to keep it going. Like I said, it’s been a lot of training and being an athlete and working out – it became 90 per cent of my job for the best part of a year leading up to that shoot, which was crazy. Come 2019 everyone's a lot more open about body image and I wanted to get in shape. Not to show off my body to anyone else, I just knew that’s what would give the confidence on set. I didn’t want to arrive not ready and not looking like I’d worked hard to get there. But what a thing to do and then to go on to designing clothes for Hugo Boss too – an amazing experience. We actually had the first design meeting [for the clothing line] here and I remember in the car on the way to the meeting thinking, “What have you got yourself into?” That always seems to happen to me. I was lucky enough to spend some time with a friend of mine, Kim Jones [artistic director at Dior menswear], and he gave me some great advice: “It’s the same as music: once you’ve had a hit you know what people want from you.” And I took that with me into the design meeting and used that to help the whole process. Find the hit and make it work.

Have you done a nude shoot before?

No! Well, not a planned one, at least. There was a lot of tequila involved for this shoot. I mean, the first day we did most of the shots for the capsule collection and then the last shots were the box shots for the front of the underwear packaging – which was just like, “Wow, I get to be the guy on the box,” which was a real moment. I’d never take that for granted. And then like the next day, we set up again and the model, Stella Maxwell, she's in the shoot with me. And it just ended up being a lot more naked than I thought it was – and for her as well. She was also naked. And I was just, you know, “Don’t look!” She was naked behind me and I was thinking, “Liam, don’t look whatever you do.”

Talk to me about the curtain shot...

Wow. Yes, I mean it was just a room full of five or six people and a hell of a lot of tequila to get me to this level. I was standing there and all of a sudden it was, “Right, OK, take them off.” I'm like, “Really? Take them off? Off, off? Like on-the-floor off? Oh, my God.” And there was a real hollow moment afterwards where I was sitting outside smoking a cigarette thinking, “I have basically just shot soft-core porn.” For one, my mum is going to kill me. For another thing, I don’t know how far this is going to go... That was just the first shot! It was a lot of fun to shoot but my mum wasn’t best pleased. There’s this really raunchy shot of me and Stella, and I showed my mum. She took one look at it and gave me a clip round the ear. All I was thinking was, “I better not tell her about the London buses!”

Still, your parents must be very proud?

The One Direction thing was enough. Just to get to that level. I would have happily walked away at that point. But now with all the other things I have managed to achieve, not least this underwear campaign with Hugo Boss, it’s meant a lot to me personally. I think it’s got me closer to those men whom I respect so much, people like David Beckham and Brad Pitt, such icons in their own lifestyles. It’s a real pinch-me moment. I can’t believe it hasn’t all burnt down to the ground yet, to be honest.

You mentioned a bad patch, a depression of sorts?

There was a lot of stuff. I was drinking too much and getting into really bad, bad situations for quite some time actually. And I hit a peak moment where I knew the drinking was going to get me; I needed to do something about it. I spent a lot of time drinking to escape the crazy world that I had created for myself. I didn't know what I was doing. That first therapy session and being like, “I don't even know what I like or anything about myself” – it was pretty scary stuff. I was afraid of how far my career was going and that it might go even further. You can say, “Who is afraid of success?” But that’s what it entails sometimes. Success has got the better of me on more than one occasion. When I am losing I tend to concentrate more.

Did you stop drinking for a bit?

Yes, I got sober for about a year, cutting down so the only vice was cigarettes. I hadn't planned to go sober forever, it was more important for me to say I didn't actually didn't need to drink. I wanted to prove it. I did the whole year, no booze completely, and at that point I didn’t actually know being sober was making my life any better. Things went up, but things like my social life plummeted. I was the biggest recluse on the planet. I would get up at 5am and go running in the park, but at night I would be in bed by 7pm. Is that a way to live your life? And in a strange way I am trying to still figure all that out and get the balance right between being a party animal and being an animal in the gym – the latter not being fun at all. We are all at fault; we all need balance.

So, 12 December: Boris or Jeremy?

I think I will vote but I am always out of the country. We need a mobile app where we can vote with our thumbprint or something. I mean, in regards to Boris or Jeremy, I don't think we give people enough time. Same with West Brom football club. They always change their manager every week it seems and we never get time to gel with anybody. So it's like, if I was changing my manager every week, I'd probably be really shit too. We need to give someone a chance to at least have a proper go of it or it will never be fixed. Also, I don't think it's always the one person that's to blame. Take Winston Churchill, people hated him at first, thought he was a drunk, that he had no clue, [wondered] what’s he doing going to war. Maybe we should all just be more like Winston Churchill.

Zayn has been through his own difficulties with fame and anxiety...

I think for anybody entering into these talent shows we do them for specific reasons. And I've often asked myself this question a bunch of times because we all went through it. You know, for me, as I was younger, from my own experience, I entered the show because I wanted to make my dad proud. Fast forward ten years and here we are in his office, talking about an album and an underwear campaign – incredible. But here’s the thing: you just don't know until you get there whether you're built for this or not. For Zayn, he loves music and he's an amazing talent. He genuinely was the best singer in One Direction, hand on heart, out of all of us. But for him to get to a point where, you know, he can't step on a stage? It's a lot. I mean, he's doing great. His streaming numbers are ridiculous but I do think he misses out on the performance side a bit, you know. He can't seem to get past that part. We all have it. I mean, I have this, like, brain fart syndrome: I was on medication for a while, and it was something to do with epilepsy, but I was using it for something else. And it was to do with anxiety for me too, fully prescribed, but I didn't realise that [on the medication] certain lights made me forget, well, everything. I totally forgot who I was. And lyrics. It still happens. I have a fear of it now. It happens all the time. So we all have our little beasties in that sort of scenario. But this era of talent shows, it is dangerous and some people just don’t know what they are getting into.

Did you want to reach out to him?

I did, yeah. I didn’t want him to feel like he was going through this all alone in some ways, or that we were all out to get him. We're the only people who know what you're going through. The only five people who know what you are going through were all in a room together once, and you left – fair enough – but you don’t want anyone going through such evils for no reason. But it got to a point with me where I wouldn’t know where to begin with Zayn. I hope he has good people around him, but I don’t at this stage think it’s anything the rest of us can solve.

Are there still grudges between the five of you?

Definitely in some part, yeah. We had our differences throughout the whole experience with some things. I still think about some stuff that was said and done that now I would do differently, but then that's all part of growing up. Being in One Direction was such a schoolyard mentality somehow – the One Direction University, I call it. Everyone has stuff they’ve said at parties they wished they hadn’t but, for us, the difference was that it was all happening in front of the world. Now we are older, for me certainly there are things that I am just not as bothered about. I think with Zayn’s particular exit and the way he chose to go, we haven’t really heard from him since he left. He didn’t even say goodbye, if I am being honest. It was a really sordid scenario, from our side certainly. A bit strange. It’s difficult.

The Hugo x Liam Payne bodywear collection is available now. Payne’s debut album, LP1, is out 6 December and available to pre-order now.

[1dreality]

I remember meeting Liam Payne once before. I was writing the cover story on One Direction for this very magazine four years ago and, finally, after endless tail chasing and schedule clashes, I managed to pin all five members down backstage at the O2 shortly before they played to what seemed like a bazillion screaming teenagers. The air was heavy with the fug of Haribo Starmix and raging hormones; even at that point the band were already more popular than The Beatles in some circles. Or, as John Lennon would have put it, Jesus.

The band members were courteous and convivial. One certainly got the impression that their time wasn’t their own, although any cracks that would end up splintering the band some years later were kept well hidden. I remember Payne for being perhaps the most grounded out of all five of them. He seemed to have an ease with his status and fortune that kept his ego in check. He seemed genuinely bamboozled at the hysteria going on around them. He was a young, ambitious pop star caught in fame’s full beams.

Last week, in some respects, a very different man sat down for an exclusive chat with GQ Hype. He’s certainly more hench, as this exclusive shoot with fashion photographers Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott prove. Whoa. We talked about his sizzling new underwear campaign with Hugo, his first nude shoot (which may well be his last if his dear mother has anything to do with it) and we reminisced about his One Direction days, a period which he came out of shaken, sure, but not completely upside down or inside out.

He’s been through a great deal since the end of being one fifth of the biggest boybands in history – drink problems, therapy, marriage, fatherhood, anxiety – but at his core he’s still that same multi-talented, hard-working boy from Wolverhampton, honest about his faults and still excited to see where all this is taking him. Undoubtedly, he’s a man who wears his heart on his sleeve. Well, when he’s wearing any sleeves at all...

GQ: So how’s the build-up to the debut album, LP1?

Liam Payne: Good, can’t complain. Just rewriting a lot of things in my world at the moment. That’s why I was in with my top, top manager for a while just reconfiguring things towards the end of the year.

What are you reconfiguring?

Well, we just kind of ticked off album one. The writing process was interesting to say the least. I mean, it was almost like blind dating in LA with different writers, and when that happens it’s hard to get traction, or get to know anyone properly, or let your guard down in a way. You feel like you’re going into different rooms all the time, with different styles. There are so many things that can affect the writing unless you find that one person who can carry you all the way through a record. Post Malone has a producer called Louis Bell, whom he works with, and there's a common stitch throughout the whole thing that kind of puts it all together properly, whereas we never really found that.

How come that never materialised?

I was going through a bunch of stuff when we started writing the album – growing up and all sorts of different shit coming out of the band. So for me it wasn't the best entry into the writing side of it and making personal music rather than writing for a band. So it was difficult, but I mean the album is done and coming out and I absolutely love it and it's just interesting to see that my favourite is from when I was younger. The first albums I listened to actually helped create my first album, so super cool.

It sounds like it’s been a long process getting the debut album finished?

It’s been, since “Strip That Down” really, the best part of two maybe three years to get everything finished. And it was difficult. I mean, it's opening up at first and trying to figure out who you are and what people want to know from you. And what the sound is. Trying to find that medium point for all those things. It's just the most difficult thing, especially at a young age when you're constantly changing and you don't really know yourself yet. We spent the best part of five years in a band closed off from the world and I had to go through this really weird transition inside that band as the world, and then myself, came out of it. I mean, even in my therapy sessions, my therapist asked me, “What do you actually like to do?” And I'm like, “I don’t know what I like doing!”

Most people presumed you came out of One Direction fully formed. That wasn’t the case?

Everything changed. New teams, new managers, new labels. Building those working relationships can be tricky. You also become the boss of your own shit, and I was 21, 22 when I first started doing my own thing, so it’s all a bit scary and can be a bit lonely. That’s not a complaint; it's also a lot of fun as well. We have a great time. Now the band members have all worked our way through this first couple of years, you can kind of see everyone's finding their own feet. Take Harry [Styles] at the moment. You know, he's just found what I think is his sound and exactly where he wants to be, which took him a little minute to get into since he had his last album out. So, yeah, it just takes time.

Towards the end of One Direction, were you aware of everyone’s own tastes developing?

I think so. I mean, for me, someone like Louis [Tomlinson] always had a very specific taste – things like Green Day, that was the era he was from... also Oasis and old Robbie Williams. Harry always played an eclectic mix of stuff too. I can always remember the one time Harry put Rick Springfield’s “Jessie's Girl’ on and I had never really heard it before but it was an interesting choice. I liked it nevertheless. And then for me, I mean, when I wrote “Better Than Words” for the last 1D album, it had a different rhythm for us, something we hadn’t done before. So you could definitely see those unique tastes early on. I think funnily enough it was through fashion and style that our own perspectives could be seen most of all, all hints of what was to come for us. We would always wear black on stage, black skinny jeans and a black T-shirt, but maybe we’d add something else as individuals. I remember Harry having these cool rings, for example, and then he’d go crazy with his shirts as time went on. Saying that, I think Louis still dresses pretty much the same as he used to.

Was it competitive with the other band members?

I mean, for me personally, I don't think I ever really looked at it that way. I think the biggest question for all of us at the start was figuring out who the hell we were without each other around, which is a really weird thing because you’d found your dynamic and role within the band. But then when you started a solo thing it was almost like leaving like school or university and trying to find your place within the real world. So I think it was more the pressure of that than anything else, rather than us competing with each other on, like, dress sense or vibe or even the music.

You mentioned therapy. Was that while you were still in the band?

I went into therapy a couple years after leaving. I kind of went off the rails a little bit and just couldn't really figure out what was making me sad. So, you know, my team got somebody around to help me through a couple of different, difficult things that I was going through. I was just trying to figure myself out. It was just such a strange course through life, and then when the switch turns off you're left to your own devices...

Did it throw you off when the band’s scheduled just stopped? Going from having a two-year plan to not even having a two-day plan?

I mean, yeah, we went through a really weird retirement phase. It’s quite funny, when my dad retired, I was telling him what to expect: first off, you're not going to get out of bed for ages, and then all of a sudden you get an urge to get out of bed all the time and start trying to do stuff just to seem like you are doing things. But I think everyone in the band went through this really weird retirement phase and trying to switch off. For me, I remember standing in my garden at my house and just looking around thinking, “It's been a lot of fun, but what do I do now that’s done? What actually happens at this point? Who do I call? Who is the ‘point of’ person?” I just didn't really know what was going to happen; a very strange thing to be involved in. All of it is weird, but that was a real strange moment. But things pick up and slowly you start getting back into the groove again.

Were you worried about not being famous any more? Or making music? About it all just stopping?

Actually, no. I kind of always knew that something would happen. I just didn't know what the hell it was going to be. And that was the scariest part of it. You just didn't really want to make a fool of yourself at that point. I think after such a long legacy of your band being absolutely amazing, the most important thing was make sure you don’t step off that pedestal; don't embarrass yourself. The biggest worry was don't ruin the legacy.

Let's talk about the underwear campaign with Hugo. These are some incredible photographs taken by Mert and Marcus…

It got very raunchy very quickly. I hadn’t been properly warned about the amount of nudity Mert and Marcus do in their work, let's say. Mert’s actually become a really good friend now. We were in his house to three in the morning the other day singing karaoke, which is so funny. Yeah, I mean, really great to work with. I think everyone was quite surprised early on that they wanted to work with me and it kind of gave us a little nod and an entry into working in fashion proper.

Had you always wanted to land an underwear campaign?

Before we landed the deal with Hugo I’d gone into my gym and said, “I'm going to get an underwear commercial.” I just wanted to do it; I knew I could do it. And then it actually happened! And I worked my ass off and I'm still hitting the gym: I didn't realise once you get on that thing you can't really turn it off. You've got to keep it going. Like I said, it’s been a lot of training and being an athlete and working out – it became 90 per cent of my job for the best part of a year leading up to that shoot, which was crazy. Come 2019 everyone's a lot more open about body image and I wanted to get in shape. Not to show off my body to anyone else, I just knew that’s what would give the confidence on set. I didn’t want to arrive not ready and not looking like I’d worked hard to get there. But what a thing to do and then to go on to designing clothes for Hugo too – an amazing experience. We actually had the first design meeting [for the clothing line] here and I remember in the car on the way to the meeting thinking, “What have you got yourself into?” That always seems to happen to me. I was lucky enough to spend some time with a friend of mine, Kim Jones [artistic director at Dior menswear], and he gave me some great advice: “It’s the same as music: once you’ve had a hit you know what people want from you.” And I took that with me into the design meeting and used that to help the whole process. Find the hit and make it work.

Have you done a nude shoot before?

No! Well, not a planned one, at least. There was a lot of tequila involved for this shoot. I mean, the first day we did most of the shots for the capsule collection and then the last shots were the box shots for the front of the underwear packaging – which was just like, “Wow, I get to be the guy on the box,” which was a real moment. I’d never take that for granted. And then like the next day, we set up again and the model, Stella Maxwell, she's in the shoot with me. And it just ended up being a lot more naked than I thought it was – and for her as well. She was also naked. And I was just, you know, “Don’t look!” She was naked behind me and I was thinking, “Liam, don’t look whatever you do.”

Talk to me about the curtain shot...

Wow. Yes, I mean it was just a room full of five or six people and a hell of a lot of tequila to get me to this level. I was standing there and all of a sudden it was, “Right, OK, take them off.” I'm like, “Really? Take them off? Off, off? Like on-the-floor off? Oh, my God.” And there was a real hollow moment afterwards where I was sitting outside smoking a cigarette thinking, “I have basically just shot soft-core porn.” For one, my mum is going to kill me. For another thing, I don’t know how far this is going to go... That was just the first shot! It was a lot of fun to shoot but my mum wasn’t best pleased. There’s this really raunchy shot of me and Stella, and I showed my mum. She took one look at it and gave me a clip round the ear. All I was thinking was, “I better not tell her about the London buses!”

Still, your parents must be very proud?

The One Direction thing was enough. Just to get to that level. I would have happily walked away at that point. But now with all the other things I have managed to achieve, not least this underwear campaign with Hugo, it’s meant a lot to me personally. I think it’s got me closer to those men whom I respect so much, people like David Beckham and Brad Pitt, such icons in their own lifestyles. It’s a real pinch-me moment. I can’t believe it hasn’t all burnt down to the ground yet, to be honest.

You mentioned a bad patch, a depression of sorts?

There was a lot of stuff. I was drinking too much and getting into really bad, bad situations for quite some time actually. And I hit a peak moment where I knew the drinking was going to get me; I needed to do something about it. I spent a lot of time drinking to escape the crazy world that I had created for myself. I didn't know what I was doing. That first therapy session and being like, “I don't even know what I like or anything about myself” – it was pretty scary stuff. I was afraid of how far my career was going and that it might go even further. You can say, “Who is afraid of success?” But that’s what it entails sometimes. Success has got the better of me on more than one occasion. When I am losing I tend to concentrate more.

Did you stop drinking for a bit?

Yes, I got sober for about a year, cutting down so the only vice was cigarettes. I hadn't planned to go sober forever, it was more important for me to say I didn't actually didn't need to drink. I wanted to prove it. I did the whole year, no booze completely, and at that point I didn’t actually know being sober was making my life any better. Things went up, but things like my social life plummeted. I was the biggest recluse on the planet. I would get up at 5am and go running in the park, but at night I would be in bed by 7pm. Is that a way to live your life? And in a strange way I am trying to still figure all that out and get the balance right between being a party animal and being an animal in the gym – the latter not being fun at all. We are all at fault; we all need balance.

So, 12 December: Boris or Jeremy?

I think I will vote but I am always out of the country. We need a mobile app where we can vote with our thumbprint or something. I mean, in regards to Boris or Jeremy, I don't think we give people enough time. Same with West Brom football club. They always change their manager every week it seems and we never get time to gel with anybody. So it's like, if I was changing my manager every week, I'd probably be really shit too. We need to give someone a chance to at least have a proper go of it or it will never be fixed. Also, I don't think it's always the one person that's to blame. Take Winston Churchill, people hated him at first, thought he was a drunk, that he had no clue, [wondered] what’s he doing going to war. Maybe we should all just be more like Winston Churchill.

Zayn has been through his own difficulties with fame and anxiety...

I think for anybody entering into these talent shows we do them for specific reasons. And I've often asked myself this question a bunch of times because we all went through it. You know, for me, as I was younger, from my own experience, I entered the show because I wanted to make my dad proud. Fast forward ten years and here we are in his office, talking about an album and an underwear campaign – incredible. But here’s the thing: you just don't know until you get there whether you're built for this or not. For Zayn, he loves music and he's an amazing talent. He genuinely was the best singer in One Direction, hand on heart, out of all of us. But for him to get to a point where, you know, he can't step on a stage? It's a lot. I mean, he's doing great. His streaming numbers are ridiculous but I do think he misses out on the performance side a bit, you know. He can't seem to get past that part. We all have it. I mean, I have this, like, brain fart syndrome: I was on medication for a while, and it was something to do with epilepsy, but I was using it for something else. And it was to do with anxiety for me too, fully prescribed, but I didn't realise that [on the medication] certain lights made me forget, well, everything. I totally forgot who I was. And lyrics. It still happens. I have a fear of it now. It happens all the time. So we all have our little beasties in that sort of scenario. But this era of talent shows, it is dangerous and some people just don’t know what they are getting into.

Did you want to reach out to him?

I did, yeah. I didn’t want him to feel like he was going through this all alone in some ways, or that we were all out to get him. We're the only people who know what you're going through. The only five people who know what you are going through were all in a room together once, and you left – fair enough – but you don’t want anyone going through such evils for no reason. But it got to a point with me where I wouldn’t know where to begin with Zayn. I hope he has good people around him, but I don’t at this stage think it’s anything the rest of us can solve.

Are there still grudges between the five of you?

Definitely in some part, yeah. We had our differences throughout the whole experience with some things. I still think about some stuff that was said and done that now I would do differently, but then that's all part of growing up. Being in One Direction was such a schoolyard mentality somehow – the One Direction University, I call it. Everyone has stuff they’ve said at parties they wished they hadn’t but, for us, the difference was that it was all happening in front of the world. Now we are older, for me certainly there are things that I am just not as bothered about. I think with Zayn’s particular exit and the way he chose to go, we haven’t really heard from him since he left. He didn’t even say goodbye, if I am being honest. It was a really sordid scenario, from our side certainly. A bit strange. It’s difficult.

[kamandzak]

Excerpt - Letters From Ernest

I started a new book, y’ll

Here’s chapter 5

Synopsis: Aoife Walsh's parents have raised her and her brother through means that are not the best; convinced that everything can be chalked up to teenage laziness, the two parents run their successful business and hound their children to an unhealthy degree. But when Aoife's brother commits suicide, everything changes and it's up to her to unpack the demons her brother kept inside.

“Aoife what do you mean? We’ve been over this before; it wasn’t your fault. It was nobody’s fault.”

“Stop saying that!” I shouted at Phil and he closed his mouth, sliding his chair away from me. Never before had he seemed so taken aback.

Mr. and Mrs. Cameron had met in college, when they were friends with my parents. After school, they got married just a few months apart and when Phil’s mom got pregnant with his older sister, Penelope, they bought a house and moved a few cities away to Hamish. A house down the street went up for sale a year later and mom and dad bought it. Two years later, Ernest was born, and then within months of each other, Phil and I were brought into the world. We were as close to one another as siblings.

This was the first time in all seventeen years of our lives that I had dared to yell at him.

“I didn’t mean to-.”

“Remember my actual birthday two weeks ago? We couldn’t go out because I had a tournament the next day.”

“Right.”

“Before I left that Saturday, Ernest said he had a birthday present for me that he hadn’t wanted to give me in front of our parents. It was a big box, and he told me to take in on the bus and open it then and I did. Remember what was in it?”

“Of course. It was all of his Clansmen stuff.”

“Right. His signed set list from the one time mom and dad actually let him go and do something, his shirts, his CD’s and their EP record that was the reason for him to buy a record player. He gave me this ring too, remember?” I took the circle of metal off my finger and slammed it on the table. “He gave me something that meant something to him; something that he wanted to go to a good home. He knew then, Phil! He knew that he was going to do something and he wanted to make sure things he cared about ended up in the right hands!”

“What makes you say this?”

“Because he did the same thing with Coach! He gave him back the CD from freshman year with all the music on it. And you know what he told Coach? Ernest said that he realized he ‘shouldn’t need music to feel motivated’. It sounds so much like mom it makes me want to throw up. Coach told me today… he said that he thinks Ernest knew what he was going to do and that he wanted to make sure the CD ended back with its owner. Ernest told him that maybe he could give the CD to another athlete who was worth helping. Why didn’t I see it?” I cried out, attracting the attention of other students. “Why did I open that box and think that my brother - the biggest Clansmen fan I know - giving away all his Clansmen gear was a perfectly natural thing?”

All the while, Phil was throwing our half-eaten lunches into their boxes. As I panted against the panic, he grabbed my arm and my backpack and pulled me out of the lunchroom and into an abandoned classroom.

“What other stuff has he given away to people? What if he left things for mom and dad and they never realized either? Why didn’t I say something to him?” The same explosion of emotion I had seen in Eva in the early hours of the morning finally escaped from my chest days after losing Ernest. “What if I could have saved him?”

Phil said nothing. Instead he stood next to me, hand on my hunched shoulders, backpacks and lunchboxes hanging from his hand, slumped against the floor.

Eventually he dropped them and held his left hand towards me, sticking his pinky in front of my face, the Clansmen ring wrapped around it snuggly. I tugged it off and placed it in my pocket.

“We shouldn’t be here,” he said quietly.

“But there’s no one in the room s-.”

“I meant here. At school. We shouldn’t be here. We need time. Or at least, you need time.”

“Mom’ll never buy it. Can you imagine what she’d say?” A little worry and panic was beginning to fill me up. “And I definitely can’t miss practice. There’s another tournament and-.”

“Aoife, Ernest is dead,” Phil said bluntly. “Not even Superman himself would be able to deal with it without taking some time.”

“Should I call home?”

“I think so, yes.”

Dad answered the phone, which surprised me. I figured after hitting the voicemail, I’d be forced to all one of them at work.

“Hello?”

“Dad?”

“Aoife? Is everything okay?”

“I think I need to come home?”

“Okay. I’ll come pick you up.”

The line went dead and I stared at Phil with surprise.

“Dad’s coming to pick me up. He didn’t make a big deal out of it.”

“I’ll go tell your teachers,” Phil said, turning without a comment on dad’s weird behavior. I wandered down the hallway near the nurses office and the guidance department, reading the postings on the wall to distract myself.

I glanced in one of the rooms and saw Nurse Ellie sitting in front of her computer, filling out a form. My first period had been in sixth grade, when Nurse Ellie was at the middle school. She had helped me.

“Hello?” I knocked on the doorframe. She looked up and immediately her face read of sadness. She rose and pulled me into the office and into her arms.

“I’m so sorry, Aoife,” she said into my hair. “Coach came and told me.”

“He did?”

“He did. We were both a little worried about your brother at one point and talked about it a little.”

“What did he do? Why were you worried?”

“I’m not sure I should tell you,” she hesitated.

“Is there anything you can tell me? I’m trying to figure out what happened.”

Nurse Ellie looked nervously around her room before her eyes seemed to land on something behind me. I turned and came face-to-face with a closet.

“I supposed there’s really no reason for me to have this anymore, is there?” she asked, though it seemed she was talking to the air around us. She reached in the closet and pulled out a piece of clothing. My heart stopped.

Ernest’s jacket.

“Why do you have that?” I choked out as she handed it to me. It still smelled like him.

“He came to give it to me last week. He said he was feeling better and didn’t need it anymore.”

“When was he not feeling good? What did he mean?”

Nurse Ellie smiled at me sadly and pulled a tissue from the box, poking at the corners of her eyes under her glasses.

“I can’t talk about it. Why are you here, Aoife?”

“I’m waiting for dad. He’s coming to take me home.”

“It’s all a little overwhelming, isn’t it?”

From down the hallway I could hear dad’s voice asking for me. Times like these made me thankful that we only lived a few blocks from the high school.

“Yeah.”

The short drive home was silent. I wanted to know why dad was at home. I wanted to know why he hadn’t objected to my request to come home. I wanted to know so many things but as I held Ernest’s jacket in my lap, all I could do was breathe.

We pulled into the garage and I saw the empty space where dad’s ladder lived. As far as I knew, it was still in Ernest’s room. The frayed end of the rope spool hung against the shelf, blown around by the air vent directly to the right. As we walked up the stairs and into the living room, I saw the gray mark across the wall where the ladder had scraped the paint.

The house was silent. Dad’s laptop and work cell phone were on the dining room table. On the large television was a paused image of a tall man in glasses. He was reading from a book.

“What’s that?” I asked at last.

“Just listening to a sermon.”

We hadn’t gone to church in years. Mom and dad wanted one day a week, they had told Ernest and I, of no obligations. They overworked, spending weekdays visiting clients and weekends reviewing floor plans and contracts and colors for their construction and interior design business.

“Why?”

“It’s nice to remember that something is bigger than you. Where did you find that jacket?” dad asked, voice cracking as he sat down.

“School,” I said, avoiding the real location. Until I knew exactly why Nurse Ellie had Ernest’s jacket in her closet, I couldn’t subject dad to the knowledge that Ernest was much more screwed up than any of us thought.

“Do your teachers know that you left?”

“Phil told them.”

“Mom’s at a site and she’ll be out late.”

“Is that why you’re home?”

Dad looked at me with flat, dead eyes.

“I couldn’t work in the office. Have Phil come over here and we’ll have chicken.”

“We have chicken?”

“Pastor Nolan brought some over. He brought three meals and some DVD’s,” he gestured to the television.

“That was nice of him.”

“I know. Make sure Phil comes over. I don’t like the idea of you having to be by yourself. Go listen to some of that band you love so much.” I burst into tears and dad looked up, alarmed. “What?”

“Ernest loved them?” I quasi-asked before leaving the room. I wasn’t sure if I wanted dad to follow me down the hallway or not but when he didn’t, I wasn’t disappointed.

Aoife:

dad says come over after school

moms working late and pastor nolan

brought us dinner

dad says he doesn’t want me to be alone 

Phil:

will do

but i legit have homework that i don’t

know how to do

so will you help me?

Aoife:

of course, nerd

I had hours before Phil would be at our doorstep with our customary once-a-week slurpees and a backpack full of homework so I opened my computer, pulled up the playlist Ernest and I had aptly named clansmen, but slow and sad. It was just that. I wasn’t sure what to listen to while combing through Ernest’s birthday present to me, but it certainly couldn’t be anything happy.

The bands unique cover of Yesterday by The Beatles was sad enough. I stared at the signed set list, all five of the band members names scrawled in various handwriting. There was Sam, the trumpeter who Phil adored, and Martin the saxophonist, Travis and Dillon and Fred, the older of the five, who played guitar and drums and bass. All the big hits and a few new releases. Mom and dad had let him go for his sixteenth birthday, despite knowing the language at their shows. His birthday was February 24th. He had died a week before he was supposed to turn nineteen.

I didn’t want to stain the list with my sadness so I put it away, pulling out the shirts Ernest had bought over the years, or that had been bought for him. Then there were the CD’s and the records. All of it was here. If there was anything else it was in his room and I didn’t dare to enter. Maybe when I was ready, it would be a sign that I was starting to feel better.

A light knock interrupted my dig and it opened a second later. Phil’s face appeared in the crack.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

He entered and sat down next to me,

“I’m sorry about earlier.”

“What do you mean?”

“I didn’t mean to make you upset. It’s just a lot and I don't know how to handle it? Is this the stuff Ernest gave you?”

“It’s okay,” I leaned into him. “What did my teachers say?”

“They all got it. They said that it’s good for you to take some time to be with your family.”

“Dad worked from home today.”

“I know. I saw he took over the dinner table. Is he watching a church service?”

“Pastor Nolan brought some DVD’s over when he brought over the dinners. I think it makes him feel better.”

Dad appeared in the doorway where Phil was moments before and knocked quietly.

“Want some dinner, you two?”

“Sure.”

The dinner was good; chicken with potatoes and green beans. I barely had the energy to chew.

“Aoife?”

“Yes, dad?”

“Do you want to stay home from school for a few days?”

I choked on my food.

“Do I want to do what?”

“Stay home. Your mom and I talked this morning. She wants you to continue your practices and assignments but I can’t help but think it might be best if you stay home for a little while. I went to work today and couldn’t sit still. I needed to be here. I thought maybe we could hang out. You could do your homework while I do my work and then we could just spend some time together.”

“I… yeah,” I breathed out, at least over the shock of my fathers suggestion. “Yeah, that sounds great.”

“You can come over whenever, as long as it’s not during school,” dad said to Phil. “To be honest you’re as much of a child to me as my children are and were. It’s nice to have you around.”

“That’s very nice of you to offer. I know nothing about the math I’m supposed to be learning so I’ll probably come over and beg Aoife to teach me.”

We dissolved into a little forced laughter and continued to eat, the food tasting more like food than bland mush. My phone beeped and I jumped a bit before continuing to eat.

“Aren’t you going to get that?” dad asked.

“But it’s the dinner table.”

“You can read it if you want.”

Phil:

i have THOUGHTS about what is happening rn

“Anything interesting?” dad asked as I looked up.

“Just a spam email,” I mumbled as Phil put his phone back in his pocket and patted my leg.

“Do you all have homework tonight?”

“Yeah. We’ll go do that in a little bit.”

“What were you doing in your room beforehand?”

It was such a weird thing, watching and listening to this new dad in front of me. He had the same curiosity as he and mom always had about what Ernest and I would do, but he was letting me check my phone at the table and encouraging me to take a break and telling me that he loved me. I wasn’t going to complain but still… it was like I had an imposter dad.

“Just listening to Clansmen.”

He nodded and ate, our faces still illuminated by the tall, bespeckled man.

I heard the door open and mom come in right as Phil and I were settling into the basement. Before we got to today’s assignments, we had to talk about dad. Phil was practically bouncing up and down in his seat as I cracked the door so we could snoop on them when the time was right.

“So what are your thoughts?”

“I think he’s realizing that something him and your mom did messed with Ernest.”

“What makes you say that?”

“He’s changing, isn’t he? He’s easing up on you, he’s telling you he loves you… he’s becoming a new dad because he’s afraid if he doesn’t, you might end up like your brother. He’s terrified.”

“You really think so?”

“I do,” Phil flopped around in the old gray bean bag on the floor so he was staring at me upside down. “I don’t think he has any idea of what he’s doing, but I think he’s trying and that’s admirable.”

“What should I do? Is there anything I can do to help him?”

“The next few days, when it’s just the two of you, try and talk to him about life. Talk about things you wouldn’t normally and see what happens. And then report everything back to me.”

“Obviously. The only thing I’m a little worried about is not going around and finding out more from everyone at school.”

“It’s only a few days. You can come back to school next week and resume your detective work. The way you cried after lunch isn’t something that you should keep in. If your mom is going to make it hard for you to grieve, do it when you’re with your dad. Something tells me he won’t make you feel bad for feeling bad.”

“You did what??” we heard from the upstairs and Phil and I immediately clammed up, inching towards the door.

“I told her she could stay home with me for the rest of the week. I’ll make sure all of her work gets done, trust me. She can work while I’m working.”

“I thought we agreed that it’s best if she keeps a normal routine; if we keep a normal routine. I didn’t even know you were home today! What were you doing? Did you cook?”

“Pastor Nolan brought some food by.”

“And tried to make you go back to services, right?”

“No. He brought some DVD’s that I put on as I was finishing my work. Aoife called halfway through the day and asked to be picked up.”

“And you actually did it? What were you thinking?”

“I was thinking that she hasn’t been given the time to feel sad yet, Mandy! None of us have. It’s just a few days before the weekend and then she’ll go back and see her teachers again. She needs time. This isn’t something that we just put behind us. This is huge.”

“So why is it that I can go back to work but she can’t go back to school?”

“Because she’s seventeen. She’s still learning how to handle things! Hell, I’m fifty and I’m not even sure how to handle this.”

“Well-.”

“Please don’t make this all about you. Please. People process grief in different ways and I don’t think we should force our daughter to go to school when there’s still so much going on and so much to figure out. Are we going to cremate him? Are we having a funeral? Does your family even know? Or are you so ashamed that your son killed himself that you are keeping it all inside. That’s not healthy, Mandy.”

“How dare you assume I’m ashamed of him.”

“How dare I? Really? You’re asking me this after you talked about his future like he was some sort of idiot? You sat around, talking about how you were expecting him to not do well; you sat around talking about how he was a poor representation of your parenting abilities. It’s like I said when we got back from the hospital… this kind of thing doesn’t just happen. There are reasons Ernest felt like he couldn’t go on living. Maybe we need to accept the fact that we didn’t do the best we could. Maybe we need to consider that we didn’t parent him right.”

“And what about Aoife? She’s doing just fine!”

“When has she ever said anything other than she’s fine? Maybe we conditioned her to say that even when she’s not! I’m not going to lose her too!”

The sounds of my mothers heels on the hardwood floor echoed in the basement as I listened to her cross the kitchen and open the fridge.

“I’m not going to deal with this anymore,” she said in that tone that sent chills down my spine every time. “I’m going to shower and go to bed. What you do this week is your own business, I guess. But don’t go thinking that we did a bad job.”

“But we did.”

“We did not. Remember when we first met and we realized that we agreed on parenting style down to a tee? I loved that about us. What’s happened to change you?”

“I no longer have a son. That’s what happened. I just thought maybe you’d change a little too. I thought his life meant more to you than proof you could raise acceptable children. Ernest wasn’t a project; he wasn’t an experiment. He was a human being and we don’t have him anymore.”

I screwed my eyes shut at the sound of my dad’s voice fracturing and my mom’s work shoes ascending the stairs to their room, tears leaking from my eyelids.

“What’s happening?” I whispered.

“Grief,” Phil whispered back.

[michaelarmstrongmusic-blog]

Jeff Lynne & ELO

I can’t remember the first time I heard ELO. My dad had a greatest hits album on vinyl, so I suspect it was one Sunday afternoon when he would treat my brother & I to some selected tracks from his vast collection. My dad isn’t the slightest bit musical, but he loves his music. Moreover, in those days, he loved his stereo and it held pride of place in the living room. He lived his teenage years through the 1960s and I think a lot of that generation valued their hi-fi equipment and record collection. A far cry from these days where kids listening to music they haven’t paid for on mp3s on tiny headphones or computer speakers. But that’s a different subject.

In 1981 my brother came home with a copy of the new album, TIME’. We’d been hearing ‘Hold On Tight’ on the radio and loved it. He played that album over and over. Although I didn’t realise it at the time, this album was the first step in Jeff slimming down the line-up, laying off the strings, and eventually becoming a one man band. Although it’s not perhaps recognised as one of the classic ELO albums, I still love it to this day.

By the time ‘Balance Of Power’ came out in 1986 I was music-obsessed. I had learnt to play the guitar, was teaching myself to play the piano, and had begun writing & recording my own music. I had a Tascam 4-track tape machine and was bouncing down tracks endlessly so I could add more harmonies and get that sound. Jeff was the ultimate role model for me. He played everything bar the drums on the new album, wrote all the songs and produced it. I considered myself a 12 year old Jeff.

To add to this was the mystery surrounding the man himself. By the time I was on board, Jeff didn’t appear in newspapers & magazines. ELO didn’t perform on Top Of The Pops - the songs were played and danced to by Legs & Co, there was no sign of any band. All there seemed to be was an image of a beard, big curly hair and the dark glasses. This guy was cool and it was about to get even better...

I’m a musician and a songwriter and therefore I’m a Beatles fan. Who couldn’t be? By the age of eleven I had every album and had read most of the books on them (and there are a lot). I was and remain to this day an expert on the subject. When I heard that Jeff was working with George Harrison on a new album I was overcome with excitement & anticipation. When I heard ‘Got My Mind Set On You’ I probably cried. It was the perfect pop song and dripped in Jeff’s production topped of with George’s unique voice and a great video to accompany it. The album ‘Cloud 9′ didn’t leave the turntable for several months.

So, by this stage I’m really developing as a songwriter and searching out different music to soak up and explore to help me make the next stage of the journey and improve my skills. Inevitably I’m introduced to Bob Dylan and, like the many other discoveries I’d made up to that point, I immerse myself in his music and culture. To then find out that a supergroup was to be born including Jeff Lynne, George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty (I didn’t know who he was at the time) and Roy Orbison was Biblical in it’s proportions. I thought I had died and gone to heaven. ‘Traveling Wilbury's Vol.1′ did not disappoint. It is a thing of beauty.

And there started the ‘Production Years’. Jeff was a much in-demand producer and sometimes co-writer and delivered some of the greatest music there has been. Many of the artists he worked with and albums he worked on will be the subject of future blogs so I will not expand on this for now. What did remain however, and for many years, was the mystery of Jeff. In the intervening period I has seen all the surviving Beatles perform live. I’d seen Dylan on countless occasions, I’d seen The Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, Supertramp, James Taylor, Pink Floyd and almost all my other heroes and influences. I honestly believed that I would never see Jeff...

I was in the Radio 2 VIP enclosure (perks of the job my friends) on 14th September 2014 at Hyde Park when Jeff Lynne’s ELO took to the stage. It was a moment. It was the moment. It had finally come. It was a celebration and it was a joy. Earlier in the day I had been introduced to Jeff’s PR guy by my manager who told him what a huge fan I was. “Have you spoken to him yet?” he asked. Spoken to him! What? I tried to keep my cool as he led us to the back stage area where we were stopped by security who said I didn’t have the correct pass. “Sorry” said the PR “I thought you had backstage passes too. Never mind, maybe next time.” So close yet so far...

The concert at Hyde Park sparked off a whole new chapter of Jeff’s incredible career. A new album ‘Alone In The Universe’ was to be followed by a World Tour. I was fortunate enough to be invited to the two small warm up gigs in London where I watched Jeff and the band perform so many hits to an audience of just a few hundred. They remain amongst the greatest gigs I have ever seen.

You can hear Jeff’s influence in my music and my production. On the new album #LookingForTheWorld there are one or two tracks in particular which pay homage to the enormous legacy he has given us. Although I haven’t met him yet, a close friend of mine did work with him on a track in the 1990′s. He said he was great and very down to earth. After the session they all went out for a curry and upon finishing his Madras and taking a swig from his bottle of ale, Jeff muttered the immortal words...”There’s only 3 things you need in life. Beer, birds and Beatles”. A man after my own heart.

[marcoshassanlevy]

Marcos Hassan

“It’s about giving voice to things I wanted to say when I was 16,” says Ed Maverick. “I wanted to express something. Most artists like talking about the moon and the stars and other metaphors, and I wanted to get away from that. I wanted to sing like the way I talk, that’s why I cuss sometimes. I think it’s more sincere that way, like I’m talking to you face to face. I don’t get too caught up in how I want it to sound, I like how it comes out. And it’s gone great.”

To say that it has gone great for Eduardo Hernández Saucedo might be a bit of an understatement. Every note that has come out of his throat and guitar has thousands of people listening and relating to all of the emotions he expresses with them. Since sharing his music in 2018, his videos have accumulated millions of views while his live shows are regularly sold out within minutes. He’s signed to Universal Music and making inroads to the mainstream, as well as embarking on his first tour outside of Mexico, a U.S. trek that includes a set at this year’s Tropicalia festival. Have we mentioned he’s currently 18 years old?

Naturally, many have tried to explain the sudden rise of a teenage singer from Delicias, Chihuahua into the hearts of so many young people. Speaking to Remezcla, Maverick might have given us the answer of his appeal to many a fan. There’s no bullshit to his music, it’s unapologetically romantic without succumbing to lyrical clichés. It has warts and nights spent looking at the ceiling, either drunk with love or unable to sleep thinking about what went wrong. Usually, Maverick is backed with little more than an acoustic guitar, playing a style that spans indie folk and corridos, something familiar to Mexican fans that can correlate their playlist with the music from their family’s functions.

Photo courtesy of the artist

Every artist has a beginning and Ed’s was inspired by another singer from Northern Mexico. “It all started when I heard Juan Cirerol. I didn’t know about Mexican music other than the mainstream stuff until I heard Caloncho and from there I started to dig more on YouTube. From Juan, I learned about Dromedarios Mágicos and that took me to Little Jesus and that to Camilo VII. That blew my mind when I was 16. This was something completely different and I loved it. I loved Juan’s behavior, El Drome’s… like Drome once said in an interview that a venue cut his set short, so he got on top of a table and started playing without mics or amps, not caring about anything. That’s awesome. That’s the seed of my project.” (Diego Puerta, a.k.a. Dromedarios Mágicos is currently part of Maverick’s live band)

Ed’s music is simple, yet holds a lot of yearning feelings within it. Some of it stems from the lyrics about love, but the music itself seems to be painted in sepia tones. Perhaps there’s a fundamental essence that gets stuck from the creative process of the songwriter. “It has a lot to do with my environment. In my mom’s house back in Delicias, there’s a park and some unkempt fields right around the corner. When the sun sets, it looks gorgeous. I would sometimes go outside to have a smoke and looking at the sunset would make me think about a lot. Then I would go inside and write something.”

Having played drums in church and in a corrido group, his new adventure consisted of writing songs every time his school work would let him, starting with “Quiero.” Under the production of Eidan Velázquez, he put out a collection of those recordings under the name Mix Pa Llorar En Tu Cuarto in March 2018. Soon after, everything would change. “There was a contest to open for Caloncho in Chihuahua right around the time we put out the album, so I tried it. That was the first time I played live as Ed Maverick. I came dead last,” he laughs. “But two people — these two complete strangers from another town — showed up and already knew every word of the songs, and the album had just been out for like two weeks. That was trippy.”

Thanks to word spreading via YouTube and Social Media, “Acurrucar” became a hit in no time. Once there was enough hype, Maverick and Velázquez booked 14 tour dates, financed with merchandise the pair would make themselves. “I was still in high school, getting told off by teachers because I was booking shows during classes. They thought I was on social media.” Soon the tours got longer and the operation bigger, culminating with signing a deal with Universal Music in Mexico. Still, there was so much work to be done for Maverick.

To fans and outsiders, things seem to be going just gravy for Maverick, a success story through and through. However, things have been more complicated for him. “There are no musicians in my family and I don’t have industry contacts or anything; I knew nothing about this and I couldn’t turn to anybody for advice. I didn’t know how to deal with people or to talk to the media, and everything went by so fast. There was a time I obsessed over every little detail because I didn’t know how to do it. Then there was another period where I was missing meetings. That’s something I didn’t dig but it was cool as well. A learning experience.”

“For a moment, I felt that my project was getting away from my hands,” Maverick continues about adjusting to a new level of fame and working conditions. “Now I make a point of getting involved in everything that has to do with my career. Until a month ago, I hadn’t written anything for so long. It’s the first time I’m writing and recording by myself so that’s a new challenge. I’m being more responsible.”

Photo courtesy of the artist

Another setback for Ed’s inspiration came from his change in environments. Having moved from the relative peace and quiet of Delicias to the bustle of Mexico City. “The city was bringing me down,” says the singer. “I stopped doing a lot of stuff because of how I was feeling around here. The weather here is very mild, and that doesn’t inspire me; also to live far away from my family is hard. I have adapted a bit now and have been working out these feelings. Nobody tells you how to live by yourself when you’re 18.”

As mentioned, Maverick has started working on some music for what he hopes to be his debut full-length to be released sometime in 2020. Having already established a sound, Ed is now ready to try new things, inspired by recent discoveries like Spinetta, the Beatles, and Bob Dylan. He expresses interest in going “beyond the acoustic guitar stuff, do whatever inspires me. Use whatever I have within my reach —I just got a mandolin, an electric guitar, and a tambourine— to make music. It’s not the same sound, but it has the same vibe.“

As for what the future holds for Maverick he tells us. “I don’t make plans. If everything runs its course in 10 years, I’ll be 28 and still have a ton of time to do something else in my life. I can do so much more. Or not, but at least I have done something already. There’s so much I have already lived that I’ll never forget.”

Still, Eduardo Hernández Saucedo is not ready to leave behind the Ed Maverick mantle. Brighter things might be just over the horizon. ”Things are going to be crazier [in 2020]. I think this U.S. tour is going to change a lot of things for me. It’s very exciting.”

Folk

,

Indie

Tuesday, November 12, 2019 at 12:33 PM EST

[epacer]

Rolando, San Diego

This is from a three-part series that ran in Rolando's community newsletter last year. I'd interviewed people who grew up in the area between the late '50s and early '80s, but the self-indulgent second part was the one best received and now featured permanently on the RCC website. Kevin B. Staff, February 15, 2019

Growing Up in Rolando, 1960s - early 1970s

On a hot summer day in 1960, a young musical group piled into a car for a drive to North County. They called themselves Rosie and the Originals. Their destination was an airplane hangar in San Marcos that doubled as a recording studio. Their saxophonist was missing because he had committed to mowing a lawn, and his mom wouldn’t let him out of it. Another group member knew the rudiments of blowing a simple instrumental break, and the unpolished nature of the recording that resulted is probably part of what makes it so hauntingly appealing, as if emanating from no particular place or time.  

By fall, Rosie’s “Angel Baby” had become popular locally. By Christmas, it was an international hit.

In mid-September 1960, as the song was first getting airplay, our next-door neighbor on College Avenue walked me to Henry Clay School for my first day of afternoon kindergarten. My mom had broken a toe while chasing my little brother and me around the coffee table in our living room. The plan was to show me a definite route to follow—from College to Acorn Street to Seminole Drive to Solita—and, after a week of escort, to let me walk it on my own. There were no sidewalks along College Avenue in those days, but I was able to make the walk.

During that first week, a kid kept crying in class, and on one occasion tried to escape. Old Ms. Leber seemed to leap across the room in a single bound as she grabbed him by the collar and dragged him back. Resistance was futile. My best childhood friend, a year younger than I, spent several days with me trying to build an airplane out of bamboo strips and pinwheels that we thought we could use to fly away in, so that I wouldn’t have to go to school.

I came to like kindergarten after a while. I began to walk with a girl who lived in the back unit of a duplex near the corner of College and Acorn. I tried to impress her by breaking glass bottles on the wall of the Campus Drive-In until an old lady came out and made me sweep it up and that was the end of that. One day, I came to the girl’s door just as her father was rushing off to work. The screen door hit me and knocked me into a cactus garden by the side of the house. He actually seemed relieved to be able to call in late. While her mom telephoned my mom to explain what had happened, he took me into the bathroom, had me pull down my pants, removed a number of cactus needles from my bum and rubbed the area with Bactine. It was quite embarrassing.

The rest of my elementary school flew by, in retrospect, although a year seems to take forever when you’re a kid. Kennedy was inaugurated in January 1961, To me, he was President for a long time. It was hard to think of him as young, since all adults seemed old and he was even older than my dad! He was assassinated while I was in third grade. We heard about it just before recess and did talk about it on the playground, but it wasn’t as if the world had stopped. We played ball and ate our lunches; I even bought a bag of Planter’s peanuts for a nickel that day.

We moved to our new house on Seminole Drive on Veterans’ Day 1965. Although it was less than a mile away, I didn’t see as much of old friends and started hanging out with a different set of kids. The area west of Henry Clay had been developing steadily since the early ‘60s. The apartments on the south side of Acorn Street went up around 1963; we used to climb around on the building materials until the workers chased us off. An old-style ranch house with a big front porch was torn down, and four houses, including the one we moved into, went up on the west side of Seminole. The shopping center where the BLVD63 apartments now stand started out as a large dirt lot with just a De Falco’s Food Giant on the east end.

As the rest of the shopping center developed, Thrifty Drug Store and College Theater opened, with a few small retail businesses between them. There was a vacancy between Thrifty and Von’s for several years, until Straw Hat Pizza Palace opened. It showed old Laurel and Hardy films and such, and instantly became a favorite hangout for older kids. The back of Thrifty had a tall flat wall and a good-sized parking lot that quickly became a place for playing handball and racquetball. We got to know most of Thrifty’s employees, who let us go up to the roof to retrieve our ball if we somehow hit it up there. We bought candy bars that over the years went from five cents to ten cents to fifteen cents while becoming smaller and smaller, and could get a scoop of ice cream on a cone for a nickel, with two scoops for a dime.

Sixth grade at Henry Clay ended in June 1967, just before the weekend of the much-remembered Monterey Pop Festival and several weeks after the release of the Beatles’ much- overrated Sergeant Pepper album. In the fall, I moved on to Horace Mann. Because I went to Sunday school in the College Area and had joined the church-sponsored Scout troop, I already had a collection of acquaintances from other elementary schools that I now saw every day. It was quite a change, having to go to different classrooms and listen to bells ringing every hour. Miniskirts were much in fashion, and we guys were beginning to notice.

For those who went through adolescence in the late ‘60s, the era has always been something of an enigma. That time in a kid’s life is chaotic and confusing enough, but we also had to deal with living in one of the most tumultuous eras in modern history. There was a lot of anti-establishment posturing by kids my age—mainly aping older siblings, I suspect. At heart, I think, teenagers are the most reactionary of conformists. If you were going to rebel against society, there was a very definite way to dress and behave. But political posturing aside, kids will be kids. We enjoyed going through what we called the A&W and Uni-mart storm drains, identified by the businesses nearest the tunnel entrances. We had raucous impromptu after-school football, basketball, and soccer games. We took off on long bike rides without bothering to tell our parents where we were going or when we’d be back. We threw water balloons at each other in hot weather.

In fall 1970 I started high school in 10th grade at Crawford. It seemed a much more easygoing place than Horace Mann, with basically no dress code and fewer ringing bells and public announcements. I didn’t take part in many extracurricular activities, having embraced the current drop-out-of-society ethos. That fall I took drivers training, then offered by public schools. Dad occasionally let me borrow the car, but I really wanted a motorcycle. In July, after working a few months at Campus Chuck Wagon, I was able to buy a little Honda CB160. By the middle of my high school years, several of us had small bikes and would take them on weekend camping trips in the backcountry. Although my Honda wasn’t built for off-roading, we did a bit of that too, often in the area that is now Mission Trails Park. There weren’t a lot of restrictions on where you could ride then. Soon enough, the noise and dust got on people’s nerves and laws changed.

I participated irregularly in wrestling and track, but for the most part was uninterested in school-related activities. I did stay active in the Boy Scout troop throughout high school because of its outdoor program. A half-dozen other boys my age felt the same way and we’d all become friends. It was through the troop’s outdoor program that I got to know most of San Diego County, particularly Anza Borrego State Park. We climbed Mount San Jacinto in the San Bernardino mountains each year, in preparation for an annual week-long trek through the Sierras. I’d climbed Mount Whitney twice by the time I was 16!

Watergate was just getting underway when I graduated from high school and American participation in the Vietnam War had ended earlier that year. For us, the feeling was that the ‘60s were definitely over but nothing particularly cool had come along to take its place. There was a lot of soft rock music, and it was considered fashionable to be a “sensitive male.” On the other hand, it was the era of the Guitar Hero–all about making a lot of noise while playing fast. To me, most of the hard rock seemed much less tuneful than ‘60s music.

I left San Diego that fall of 1973 to become an auto mechanic in Arizona. It seemed like a practical thing to do until I realized I intensely disliked the work. After a year, I joined the army. Although I came back to San Diego for short periods, I didn’t live here permanently again until 1997. The Rolando area was basically recognizable as the place where I grew up, until about ten years ago when the shopping center was demolished to be replaced by BLVD63, the Thrifty became Rite Aid and moved to its present location by the Post Office, and Henry Clay got some upgrades.

When I taught at Palomar College in San Marcos, I had the chance to ask Rosie Hamlin, the lead singer of Rosie and the Originals, if she remembered the location of the hangar where they recorded “Angel Baby,” but it was all too long ago and far away from her current life. In March of last year, Ms. Hamlin died. *The author of this article is Kevin Bradshaw Staff, Class of 1973 and is on the Rolando News Staff.

[juliehamill]

15 minutes with Richard Boon, inventor of indie, manager of Buzzcocks and production manager at Rough Trade

I wear a tie to meet Richard Boon.  Firstly, he always wore ties in the punk/indie era, and, secondly, because, I’m not worthy.  This person, who is so enormously significant in the history of punk, indie and Rough Trade, never shouts about his contribution.  You might see him every now and then in a documentary, or rarely on a panel, but these days he prefers to work happily and quietly in Stoke Newington, as a librarian.  

Mr Boon is a sharp-dresser from his Crombie coat right down to his quirky white socks, and he talks in a very considered, knowledgeable and professor-like fashion, with lots… of… important… pauses.  He reminds me of a lecturer, someone who is used to being listened to; one who is steeped in literature. In fact, it’s only his one black earring that nods to a clue from his past: that a younger radical, riotous pioneer lives inside him, one that speeded through punk with the Buzzcocks, exploded the world of indie music, shaped a career at Rough Trade, and, most goldenly, made Smiths records.

For him, a real involvement in music all started after the second Sex Pistols gig in Manchester, 1976, where groups of artistic individuals hung around town wondering what to do next.  Some of them were at university, some on the dole, some still at school; but all were drawn to doing something in music because of what they had just witnessed.  In amongst the different ‘factions’ were Howard Trafford, Linder Sterling, Steven Morrissey and Richard Boon.

Impelled by the rush of the Sex Pistols, Mr Boon’s immediate next step was to book them for his own student union bar at Reading, where they played to a small student crowd.  His equally impassioned pal, Howard, formed Buzzcocks and changed his name to Devoto. They made an EP Spiral Scratch.  Frustrated that the music industry was dominated by large corporates, DIY-Richard came up with his own independent label, New Hormones, fell into the role of band manager, found a way to custom press the EP through the back door of Polydor, and took orders from record shops on his home phone.   Spiral Scratch was born, as the first, self released record in history, and thus, Richard Boon invented indie.

A few years later, in the early eighties, Steven Morrissey approached him to ask what he could do with his songs.  Richard explained that as his label was on its last legs, Morrissey should approach Rough Trade distribution.  Shortly afterwards, Richard joined the Rough Trade label team as production manager, and worked with The Smiths throughout their entire career.

He is an accomplished chef and would prepare a red pepper soup starter if Morrissey came for dinner (plus ‘pud’). He is most animated and smiley when he talks about his family, especially his wife, Deborah, of thirty years, to whom, I’d say, he owes everything.

J:  Please say your full name.

R:  I don’t use the first name.  Hello I’m Richard Boon!  Richard is the middle name.  My first name is James.

J:  Why don’t you use ‘James’?

R:  Because I never have.  Ever since I was a very small child.  My father was called James and after christening me my mum thought, ‘there’s going to be some confusion ahead’, so I’ve always been Richard.  Sometimes shortened, but not by me to Rich.  Rick!

J:  Do people call you ‘Boon’ or ‘Boonie’?

R:  When I was little I used to get called, ‘Boonie’.  

J:  Can you describe yourself in a sentence?

R:  Hmm.  I didn’t come to counseling… this has just thrown me.

J:  Morrissey described you in Autobiography as a ‘whirlpool of words’.

R:  I did read that, yes.  Lovely.  Some people describe me as the person that started independent music, some people describe me as the world’s coolest librarian.  Do you want to know how much I weigh and how tall I am?

J: Yes of course!  Who gave you the name ‘the world’s coolest librarian’?

R:  The Stoke Newington Literary Festival. With whom I’m deeply involved and have an annual event called Juke Box Fury for music writers to talk about the tune that they allege inspired them to write and then the panel decide if it’s hit or miss.  It’s just a joke, and I badly channel David Jacobs, as if you didn’t know, you were there, on my panel!    

J:  Yes, it was brilliant.  Except for that one scary woman in the audience who got a bit angry.

R:  Ah.  She has an argumentative history over decades with one of your co-panellists, but we won’t go there.

J: Growing up, what music were you interested in?

R: My brother and I used to pool our pocket money for Beatles EP’s.  It was better value than the single. He was seven or eight years older than I was and he started buying albums.  The first album he bought was Reach Out by The Four Tops, which is a peerless record.  It’s just got everything you want and it’s beautifully sequenced.  Apart from the title track!  Brilliant record.  My father played piano and then he bought a stereo and we just used to listen to the reel-to-reel tape recorder and tape Pick of the Pops.  With Fluff - Alan Freeman.  Music has always been around me. My brother used to buy Melody Maker and I was buying The NME.  There were only two record stores:  Boots and downstairs at Valances white goods shop.  

J:  Where did you grow up?

R:  I grew up in Leeds.  I went to Leeds Grammar School and it was a direct grant so that I could get in.  Like a scholarship bursary kind of thing so even poor kids can get in.  When I was a teenager I used to hang out with Howard Trafford, my friend, who became Devoto, and we we’d go to the gigs in Leeds Town Hall together.  There wasn’t much happening so we just started talking to a bass player called Dave and a clarinet player called Charlie.  We used to meet up and try to write songs together and tape them. After this I went to Reading University.

J:  When did you move to Manchester?

R:  After graduation at Reading in 1976, a lot of my art school cohort went to London, but I went to Manchester to help Howard and Peter, who were determined to make a band.

J:  Do you remember much about the music scene Manchester before The Smiths got started?

R: In Manchester at that time there was a really small and rebellious group of people, like a village within a village or a city within a city… Hamlet!  Everybody knew one another but there were factions.  People got involved from the consequences of the Pistols playing the Lesser Free Trade Hall.  People were doing fanzines too.  There was a loose connected identity.  When it came to Morrissey everybody knew he was going to be something.  He was waiting in the wings for his moment.

J:  How did you first meet Morrissey?

R:  I knew him from that crowd.  We were all kind of a gang in the town but we wanted more bands to start up and get a sense of community going.  We used to hang out in the Virgin store and read Melody Maker and read adverts like ‘I’m Rick and I’m looking for a drummer’. This was in 1976.  John Maher spotted that Rick ad and I, and possibly Pete Shelley, went to the Portland Hotel with Rick, is it ‘Elby’? who brought his friend, Steven.  That’s when we first met.  He was very shy and retiring.

J:  What was he wearing, what did he look like?

R: He hadn’t got… let’s just say you could call him ‘Steven’ then.  He hadn’t got his look together.

J:  You mentioned there that, ‘Everybody knew that he was going to be something.’  How could you tell?

R:  Generally, he was just so engaging and witty.  As things began to develop in Manchester he was always kind of around and paying attention to what was going on and wanting to get involved. He sent me a cassette which is just ‘Steven singing’.  It was ‘Reel Around The Fountain’ and a version of a Bessie Smith song called ‘Wake Up Johnny’. On the tape he said, ‘It’s a very quiet recording because my mum is in the next room!’  He had even written two books when he was on the dole. He was a quiet figure waiting to become a big figure.

J:  Do you still have the tape?

R:  Well I may have but I don’t know where it is!  The house is full of stuff!  Another one lost in history!  I’ve got boxes in the cellar.  It might be in there. As if I could ever find it!

J:  How old were you then?

R:  I was twenty-three and Morrissey was eighteen.  For a long period we were friends.  We began as a casual connection and then we became acquaintances and then friends.  Through all that after-effect of The Sex Pistols playing Manchester and Buzzcocks playing there was this whole group of people who would meet.  It was through that group that Morrissey met Linder.  We were all at the second Sex Pistols gig.  It was after that people started to talk to one another about what to do next.

J:  How did you become Buzzcocks manager?

R:  I lived in a shared house with Howard Devoto.  We had a landline! I just fell into booking a rehearsal space, hustling for gigs, hiring the van to get to the gig and it just turned into Buzzcocks management, although these days I prefer ‘mis-management.’  

J:  Tell me about Spiral Scratch.

After the Pistols’ Anarchy tour - where as far as we were concerned punk kind of stopped and became a cliché/cartoon - Howard was thinking about going back to college.  We wanted to document a moment, and this moment became Buzzcocks Spiral Scratch and it was just a thing to do.  We borrowed money from friends and family just to make it happen.  An early form of Kickstarter without the advantages.  Anyway that became a completely separate thing somehow. Howard wanted to leave, Pete wanted to continue.  We hustled for more gigs and bits of music business.  A&R interest started to come along, especially after The Clash’s White Riot tour.  John Maher was only sixteen - just left school - and I had to check it all with his dad, who’d ask me, ‘Is there going to be any money in this for him?’

J:  Is that how your record label, New Hormones happened?

R:  Yes, in a way.  There was no real infrastructure for independent labels then. Rough Trade began some distribution which became The Cartel, but the independent label support just wasn’t there, we had to develop it. We wanted to support people around us too, hence Linder’s design of the ‘Orgasm Addict’ cover.  Then she started dabbling with music.  She’s another person who was doing something but didn’t know what it was going to work out as, a bit of music, a bit of performance art, collages.  Young people were trying to explore a direction by 1977.  

J: Why the name, ‘New Hormones’?

R:  I think it was Howard that chose it.  There was a discovery around that time in 1976 of a ‘new hormone’ – I can’t remember it’s name, something scientific.  It just sounded, like, yeah!  Pretty cool.

J: How did you just decide, right, let’s press records on this label?  How did you go about it?

R:  We wanted a souvenir of what we had done during 1976.  It was just research.  I found that pressing plants had spare capacity and would take small amounts to keep the presses running. Polydor had a little department that did custom pressing, so having found that out, they recommended a sleeve printer and it all just worked.  Records always seem to be magical things.  They appeared in an occult fashion in the racks.  It is actually interesting to think about, ‘How did they get there?’

With Spiral Scratch it was mail order with an address and a phone number.  Jon Webster at Virgin Records in Lever Street took some.  Record store managers had autonomy then.  It wasn’t just central buying.  Then he told his mates in the other stores, ‘Try a box of twenty five and see what happens!’ And then it happened.  The phone started ringing.  And generously, all the press reviews gave the address.  And the phone number leaked out.  It was the phone number of mine and Howard’s house!  

Geoff Travis had just recently started the Rough Trade shop and he was like, ‘I’ll take fifty.’  Two days later it was, ‘Can I have two hundred more?’  It just ‘spiraled’ out control!  It stimulated and inspired other people to make their own records. Desperate Bicycles formed just to make a record.  ‘Spiral Scratch’ had recording information on it.  Desperate Bicycles moved that on a bit further. New Hormones was demystifying something that seemed mysterious.

J:  Did you ever want to be in the band?

R:  No I just wanted to help.  I was signing on.  They formed the band.  

J:  Where does the name come from?

R:  The name comes from our mythical lost weekend with The Sex Pistols.  We picked up a copy of Time Out then which had a review about a girl group and the headline for the feature was, ‘IT’S THE BUZZ, COCKS!’ about a TV series, ‘Rock Follies, about a girl band featuring Julie Covington. It all goes back to that.

J:  What happened on the lost weekend?

R: We’d read Neil Spencer’s NME review of the Pistols at The Marquee and were equally enthused and intrigued. Pete hired a car from Bolton student’s union.  Howard and Peter McNeish (later Shelley) and I went off in February 1976, to ‘Sex’ to find Malcolm McLaren, who told us the Pistols were playing that weekend at High Wycombe and Welwyn Garden City.  Howard, Peter and I got in the car and we drove straight to the venue.  The Sex Pistols were really intrigued that we had come so far. They were opening for Screaming Lord Sutch on one of the nights.  

Pete Shelley is great on this memory – he has a Rolodex in his head.  It was a student audience. All we did that weekend was gig on the Friday, back to Reading to stay, then back for the Pistols Saturday night, then back home, buzzing with ideas.  The weekend wasn’t lost, it was found.  

J:  Do you remember much about the gigs?

R:  The Sex Pistols were ramshackle.  It was Johnny, he was extraordinary.  He didn’t give a toss about anything.  He was obviously speeding.  It was hot clothes, fast drugs.  Johnny seemed to hate the audience.  He was provocative and he dismissed us.  But that didn��t matter.  The first night a bunch of lads sat just under the stage making ‘Rubbish!’ gestures to their pals at the back.  Johnny ran along and tousled their hair!  They ran forward, picked him up and threw him on the floor.  Neil Stephenson who was their loosely termed road manager joined in… and the band kept playing in the background.  It was like a cartoon scrum in Tom and Jerry.  Eventually Johnny crawled out from underneath and scrambled back on stage.  He went:

‘WELL!  THAT WAS NO FUN!’

…which was the tune they were playing.  I’ve never seen anything like it.  It was shocking, extraordinary, exciting.

J:  Have you seen anything like it since?

R:  Anything with that power? Patti Smith at Manchester Apollo doing James Brown’s ‘It’s a Man’s Man’s World.’  She nailed it!  She came right to the front of the stage and that closeness and immediacy, that strength. She had a knock out moment. Whatever year it was.  She actually did fall off the stage somewhere and hurt her neck.  In my experience it’s rare to see that magic moment.  Gifted performers.

J:  Did you book the Sex Pistols for Reading Uni?

R: Yes, it was part of me being an ‘art student’!  Did mainly black and white ‘things’.  I had a very sympathetic tutor and once I’d seen the Sex Pistols I was determined to get them to play.  The art department had a little club subsidised by the student union and I persuaded them, ‘We have to get this band!’  There was an annual event called Art Exchange.  I wanted this band – they were really cheap!

[I find this ticket online and ask Richard about it: ‘I think this is fake - we just took money on the door - and it wasn’t in the Students Union; rather in a painting studio in the Art Department; there was no ‘ROCK DISCO’ – as if! Support was a performance artist, one of The Kipper Kids’].

I did all the flyering and stuff and of course as happened then, only about twenty people came.  My tutor was very sympathetic when it came to my finals and included the gig booking and promotion as work I’d done.  I graduated with a 2:1.  Tutor Tom said, ‘The external examiners will want more evidence of drawing ability.’ I got an A1 piece of paper and pencil and just drew vertical lines as close together as I could, for about eight hours.  He said, ‘I think that’s enough drawing ability!’  I was just doing black and white things, I wasn’t really doing drawings, as such.

J:  Did you hang out with the band?

R:  I remember having to get them out of the bar just to go on stage.  Johnny liked Red Stripe.  He was my favourite Sex Pistol.  It went:  Johnny, Glen, Paul, Steve. Malcolm was always difficult.  But we didn’t really talk to them.  Malcolm McLaren dominated the conversation.  He’d be giving out his manifesto, like he had this tape loop, over and over again.  The band didn’t really socialise much.  

On the Anarchy Tour in Manchester we went to Tommy Ducks which was a legendary pub.  It had ladies underwear across the ceiling and Johnny tried to pull it down.  That week Johnny, Joe Strummer and Pete Shelley had all gone blonde.  They were stood at the bar talking about hair products. ‘What colour did you use?’  

J:  Did you ever see the Pistols with Sid?

R:  I saw them twice with Sid.  They had become the caricature of themselves that the media set them up to become.  Really. It wasn’t fun and it didn’t have the magic.

J:  How did you come to work at Rough Trade?

R:  Two things happened within weeks of each other.  My label, New Hormones was rapidly failing. It never had any money.  I had got some records out by a group called Dislocation Dance. I couldn’t do any more.  They had some new tracks that I sent to Geoff Travis.  I used to send promo cassettes and biogs to Pete Walmsley who did licencing.  I had put out a single called ‘Rosemary’ which got picked up in Europe.  

Geoff didn’t get back to me for a month and a half and then he said, ‘oh I like this can you arrange a meeting?  Then, possibly just a bit later, Morrissey, Johnny and Joe Moss pitched up in my office with a tape of ‘Hand In Glove’ and ‘Handsome Devil’, which I loved!  They were like, ‘Can you do anything?’ and I said, ‘Well I can’t do anything.  What do you want to do?’ and they said, ‘Well we just want to put it out.  Maybe we’ll do it ourselves.’  I said, ‘If you want to do it yourselves, I’ll put you in touch with Simon Edwards, who is in Rough Trade Distribution if that’s what you want to do.’  Versions of this story vary, but I phoned Simon and put him onto Joe Moss.  I set up the meeting.  Johnny went. They stayed at Matt Johnson’s.  Anyway that’s the famous story:  Simon took the tape and said, ‘No, this is worth more than a DIY release.  Geoff needs to hear it.’  

Geoff was always in meetings.  Rough Trade was famous for meetings. Everybody was in a meeting.  Later there was a meeting room but in Bleinheim Crescent you just couldn’t get hold of people.  ‘Just say I’m in a meeting!’ There were an awful lot of meetings. Johnny just came around and waited until Geoff came out of his meetings and said, ‘Simon says you’ve got to hear this NOW!’ and he made an impact.  Rough Trade said it would do a one-off single on the label and Scott Piering would do the promotion.  Peel and Kid Jensen sessions were happening almost every other week, as a result.  Mike Hinc was the booking agent and started getting them gigs and then bigger gigs.  

I went down with Dislocation Dance and had a meeting with Geoff, and I said, ‘Why did it take you a month and a half to hear about this?’ and he was like, ‘I’m just so busy!  I can’t keep up with stuff! Actually I think I’m going to America for two months and I might need someone here.  Would you cover?’ So I thought, yes, because everything I’m doing in Manchester has run out of steam and my wife and I were getting tired of a commuting relationship because she was in London already at the BBC.  The stars were in the right place.  Geoff ended up not going to America.

Rough Trade had a wonderful, endless, financial crisis. I moved into the Production Manager job. It was a very hectic summer in 1983, given the amount of interest in The Smiths which just bounced:  more gigs, more records, more media.  Everybody at the label side was like, ‘Let’s do more! Build a relationship long term!’  

This was the principle of all the early indies:  4AD, Rough Trade, Mute, Factory, they all used to have principles.  To have a hit act to subsidise what they wanted to do.  Daniel Miller of Mute had Depeche Mode, Factory had Joy Division and Ivo had the Cocteau Twins.  Rough Trade had tried to do that with Scritti Politti, but it cost an awful lot and there were a lot of resources put into trying make Green a popstar.  The money was all sloshing around A Joy Division album would have paid the debts for a Depeche Mode album.

It kind of worked, but for Rough Trade Scritti didn’t deliver in the same way as the other label-groups had, and Rough Trade was looking for someone to build on.  As soon as ‘This Charming Man’ came out it was a given, it was going to be The Smiths.

J:  What was the production manager’s job, day to day, at Rough Trade?

R:  Get the tapes to the mastering room.  Get the white labels.  Make sure everybody’s happy.  Commission designers.  Get the sleeve proofs.  Make sure everybody’s happy.  Start phoning people up.  See how many thousands are needed.  A lot of Rough Trade’s business was only a couple of thousand.  Then get the sleeves printed.  Try to manage all the ingredients.  Juggle.  If you get a sleeve proof and that colour isn’t working… artists had a lot of control over the look and design.

Morrissey was always great.  He would send photocopies of images he wanted and eventually we gave him a Pantone colour book and he could say ‘I want background pantone 132…’ Morrissey always knew what he wanted. He had a great sense of palette. Usually his things were fairly manageable. Things got complicated after Hatful of Hollow!  As the Smiths built, it got ridiculous.  ‘I want a hundred and fifty thousand gatefold sleeves, by last week!’

Actually, There was one problem with the inner sleeve to Hatful of Hollow.  It had been mastered, the artwork was done, the lyrics were in order, it had all been done. I had already started printing the inner bags and Morrissey phoned and said, ‘Change the running order.’  Ha ha!  I was like, ‘Stop printing those!’  But 30,000 had been printed already.  He was like, ‘No.  I want them in the right order.’  We had 30,000 inner bags to deal with.  Rough Trade Germany’s production was behind ours so they got 30,000 inner sleeves with the lyrics in the wrong order!  Collectors items! I don’t know which way round it had been before the current listing. But that was an awkward moment and generally, personally, Morrissey and I didn’t have awkward moments.  

J:  You seemed to do a lot of jobs.  Were you working for the label side or the distribution side?

R:  I worked for the label, initially.  I started at Rough Trade in 1983 when it was in one of its regularly-occurring financial crisis.  Everyone was like, ‘We can’t go on like this!  We need an admin!’  So we found, probably through the Cricket Team, ‘The White Swans’ – not a Rough Trade cricket team, just people who worked at Rough Trade who were members of a cricket team - this guy Richard Powell who had turned around a Watchmakers in Clerkenwell.  There was a series of meetings with him and he tidied up the mess.  I’m sure the accounts department did their best but there were no clear lines of demarcation.  It became this incredible structure where the wholesale department had a board that would meet about their issues.  Then someone on the distribution board, then someone on the record company board, then the main board, they had meetings and the money just became a trough.

If the phone rang at Rough Trade we had two answers, ‘I’ll just find them’, or, ‘They’re in a meeting.’  Take a message!  There was finally a switchboard but the receptionist would eternally say, ‘So and so is on the phone’ and we’d shout ‘I’m in a meeting!’

Then I moved to Rough Trade Distribution.  Distribution had been publishing a magazine called ‘The Catalogue’ which was a funny mix of trade and consumer content.  It was losing money.  Editor Brenda Kelly and Pete O’Fowler were setting up a production company Snub TV.  Brenda was getting ready to leave and I was asked to take over the Catalogue and ‘turn it around’.  So I switched from working for the label to working for distribution.  Then I turned it round by offering consumer incentives like flexidiscs!  I must find a copy of the magazine!  We had longer features – a lead feature every month and if you were on the cover there was the interview.  It made us put in more consumer focused content other than trade news or new releases. Nick Kent reviewed ‘Rank’.  I’ll see if I have that.  He loved The Smiths.  There was a track from Rank, it was a flexi disc, with Morrissey writing on the back.  I can get you one of those if you haven’t got it.  If I can find them I’ve got a box, perhaps, somewhere.  

J:  That would be amazing, thank you.  What was Geoff’s involvement?

R: He’d probably listen to a test pressing.  He wasn’t interested in the artwork - I was - I enjoyed that aspect.  When we found Caryn Gough - through Malcolm Garrett - who had a studio and did graphics, we had someone who could look at Morrissey’s doodles and photocopies and turn them into what he wanted. Caryn was slightly rockabilly.  She had the jeans and the chain.  Caryn and Morrissey just hit it off.  It was a joy to witness.  Talking on the same wavelength. Caryn and Morrissey were good because he thought well, if I send this picture and the pantone number to her then she does it, and he’d say, ‘That’s just what I want!’  

J:  So at the label, The Smiths became the priority?

R:  Yes, around the label The Smiths became the priority.  Loads of attention was focused on it. The Raincoats had an album to deliver, but they kind of got slightly overlooked.  They were a great band.  It was a great year for music, 1983. Until The Smiths stabilised the whole operation, money was leaking everywhere in Rough Trade.  There was no fiscal control.  It was slack.   

This was also just before we were moving out of Blenheim Crescent to Collier Street in Kings Cross.  There was a huge amount to do and there was only a couple of narrow corridors. All the corridors were just filling with boxes and boxes and boxes of records of the debut album.  Just before the move, all those corridors were empty! Now there was a warehouse storage space that was full of boxes and boxes.

J:  Tell me about the band at that time.

R:  Johnny and Morrissey were really driven and had a clear sense of purpose.  They knew exactly what they wanted.  They shared a vision.  It was those two that pushed it forward.  The other two were the rhythm section, nice as they were.  For Johnny and Morrissey it really wasn’t about work. It was their passion.  For the rhythm section it was work.  They referred to it as work.  I felt that Andy and Mike were slightly overwhelmed when The Smiths took off. It was very fast.  They weren’t ready for it in the way that Johnny and Morrissey were.  This was like their dream come true.  No-one was really ready for it but Morrissey and Johnny had dreamt of it for a really long time.  

We didn’t get any arguments from the band.  Morrissey and Johnny could be awkward, deliberately so, sometimes.  Johnny was overloaded and Morrissey was beautifully whimsical and could change his mind. But everybody was younger.  Some of it is really about age.

I wish they had made more videos.  I don’t know why they didn’t. The Derek Jarman work fitted a sort of camp sensibility with a slight radical edge, that worked well.

J:  It was an exciting time to be a Smiths fan when those Jarman films came out.

R:  A pretty boy on London Bridge!

J:  I liked the hand in ‘Panic’.

R:  It was all Super 8.  It was shown all over the place.  In arthouses, on TV.  I don’t know why it took that long for them to make videos.  Those were brilliant!

J:  Did you go to a lot of gigs?

 R:  Yes.  I went to a lot of Smiths gigs.  When they did ‘This Charming Man’ on Top Of The Pops the crew that Morrissey liked were all there. Me, Geoff, Scott Piering, Martha Defoe. We were all there saying ‘Yes! Yes!’ That was a magic moment.  It was incredible.  We were in the wings, off camera where we could watch.  It was really exciting.  We just watched them soar!  

 I always enjoyed the band in smaller venues.  I do remember London Palladium.  It was one of Morrissey’s greatest desires to do the London Palladium.  They brought on Pete Burns for the encore.  It was exciting to see bands that you’re involved in move forward from an audience of twenty people to having an audience of two hundred to having an audience of two thousand.  I’m going to use that word I hate – it’s the ‘journey’.  Ha ha!

J:  Tell me your recollection of the ‘I Don’t Owe You Anything’ moment at the Hacienda.  

R:  We all went up to the Hacienda because it was on my birthday – July the sixth.  Don’t forget to send me a card!  It was very nice that Morrissey acknowledged my birthday. The Rough Trade workforce was there – and some old Manchester people.  It felt like a homecoming gig.  It was a very different night from when The Hacienda had only twenty people in it. It was my thirtieth birthday. Then he went into ‘I Don’t Owe You Anything’, which, was kind of cheeky, I thought.  It was playful. I liked it.  I was like everybody’s favourite neighbour, that’s what Morrissey said.

J: I get the impression that you and Morrissey had a good rapport.

R:  Yes, we had a good rapport.  I could banter with him and James Maker.  It was just banter, and a bit of polari!  James wore beads and high heels.  Johnny wore beads too.  I think it was the influence of sixties girl groups. It was subversive.  It was never any surprise to me that Morrissey became the front man of probably the most subversive group of the time.

J:  Have you read Autobiography?

R:  I’ve read Morrissey’s book, yes. I really enjoyed the stories of his upbringing - very evocative.  I came out of it very well!  Me and Morrissey both did, ha ha!

The only bit I read of Johnny’s was in my local bookshop and he had written something inaccurate about somebody else – and it was me! It was the bit about The Smiths tape with Matt Johnson.  But it was me!

J:  Do you follow Morrissey’s solo work?

R:  Yes.  The last time I saw him was at the Albert Hall for You Are The Quarry with my daughter.  We were in a box with Boz Boorer’s family.  Linder was there in the next box.  We went backstage.  Morrissey went up to Rachel, my daughter and said, ‘You’re supposed to be a baby!’  It was Rachel’s first big concert.  We got smuggled in.  Listed by Mike Hinc. I haven’t seen Johnny for a really long time.

J:  What is it about The Smiths that makes them so enduring?

R:  It’s the songs, really.  They stand the test of time.  I saw Buzzcocks at the Roundhouse two weeks ago and that was kids of all ages - including their grandparents.  It all goes back to the songs.  What I always find funny about Morrissey is that football terrace mob; how he excited Millwall fans.  Holding banners that they love him.  It goes back to the songs.  

J:  If Morrissey walked in here right now and said, ‘All right, Richard?’ what would you say?

R:  Oh. That’s wicked.  I’d say, ‘All right, Morrissey?’  Or maybe I would call him ‘Steven’.  I called him that before he was Morrissey.  Steven. I might say,

‘This isn’t the Morrissey that I used to know.’  Ha ha! I’d also possibly give him a man hug and say ‘It’s about time you made another record.’  Hang on, I’m not sure about the hugging thing.

J:  You weren’t big huggers in the eighties?

R:  No. I’ve never hugged Morrissey.  I need a badge that says that.  Wait - maybe it should be, ‘Morrissey never hugged me.’  

J:  There’s still time.

R:  Oh, stop it!

J:  If Morrissey was coming to your house, what snacks would you put out for him?  

R:  In the name of God!  Right. Avocado dip.  Or hummus.  

J:  Do you make that avocado dip yourself?

R:  Yes. Quite often.  Everybody gets this question?

J:  Yes.

R:  Okay. Dips.  Starters. That’s just nibbles you see.  Dips.  Followed by… Now you’re really asking what I like cooking.  Roasted red pepper soup.  Main: I’ve recently been doing a lot of stuff with celeriac, so something around celeriac, but I’m not sure what.  And then… I suppose you want pud, don’t you?

J:  If you’re giving it.

R:  Honestly! Oh I think, an ice cream.  You want flavour? Ridiculous! For Christmas every year I make Christmas pudding ice cream.  Basically vanilla ice cream with pudding in it.  Why are you looking like that?  I don’t let the pudding sit for a year I make it the year before.  It’s frozen!  Ice cream is frozen, Julie.  There’s always Christmas pudding left isn’t there?  Everybody likes Christmas pudding.  I like Christmas pudding.  Do you?

J:  Oh no, I really don’t.  Too stodgy.  Tell me about your one earring.

R:  My earring? Ha ha!  I have other studs.  I like this black one.  I got my ear pierced in 1978.  It was probably at Lewis’s in Manchester because they did ear piercing.  I think it was my wife’s suggestion.  Why only one?  Because of William Shakespeare!  

J:  So it has nothing to do with punk?  You never put a safety pin in it or anything like that?

R:  No.

J:  What did you dress like back in the Rough Trade days?

R:  I had jackets.  Ties. I liked ties.  I always made a point when I worked at Rough Trade amidst all the punks, hippies and goths to wear a tie.  It was my gag.  But my earring - nobody ever asks me about that.

J: I noticed as it’s the only one.  Like, ‘I’m a librarian by day but I’m secretly very punk, you know.’

R:  Yes, maybe! I think I just wore a sleeper for a long time.  I get most of my stuff from Metal Crumble.

J: What’s your favourite crisp flavour?

R:  Salt and Vinegar.  If I were to eat crisps I’d probably eat them straight from the bag.

J:  What’s your favourite pizza topping?

R:  Wow. Right.  Topping.  Let’s see. You’ve got your tomato base. Olives.  Rocket.  Maybe some mozzarella.

J:  Favourite Buzzcocks song?

R:  Ah. ‘What Do You know?’  The one with the horn section.  Tail end of Buzzcocks career.   

J:  Favourite Sex Pistols song?

R:  ‘Bodies’. Johnny’s Catholicism comes out. It’s an anti-abortion song.  As Simon Reynolds’ says, it’s his favourite because Johnny says ‘F*ck’ a lot.  I think because we were so familiar with the Pistols’ repertoire the only thing that was new and distinctly different was ‘Bodies’ so it stood out.  Although I disagree with its sentiment.

J:  What’s your favourite Smiths song?

R:  Wow. Ah.  That’s hard.  There’s so many.  Oh blimey. It’s really hard.  ‘Handsome Devil.’  I love it.  And I love ‘I Know It’s Over.’  But I still love ‘Handsome Devil’  it’s them as they’re really starting out.  It’s got an edge, they got more polished.  I like a rough diamond.

J: What’s your favourite Smiths album?

R:  Strangeways.

J:  The most polished.

R: The most overlooked!  The Queen Is Dead is seen as their peak.  Otherwise, Hatful Of Hollow.  At the Peel sessions they were live and more immediate.   Which is yours?

J:  The Smiths. The first album. I love all the records but this is what first turned my head so it’s special to me.

R:  That reminds me.  Geoff and I went to a Peel session and they did ‘This Charming Man’.  We ran out into the corridor and said, ‘That song!  That has to be the single.’  The first time we heard it.  Live. We were in the control room and had to nip out of the studio to talk about it. For Rough Trade, ‘Hand In Glove’ was a one-off deal.  We never went in for standard contracts, but we decided to with The Smiths. During that summer we got into contracted discussions.  We said, ‘If they’re going to sign, this has to be the single.’

J:  Favourite Morrissey song?

R:  ‘Every Day Is Like Sunday.’  It’ encapsulates boredom in a more serious way than Buzzcocks did.  And Vini’s playing is great.  

J:  Favourite Morrissey album?

R: ‘Your Arsenal’.  I like that one.  I like the cover.

J:  Do you have a lyric that you love?

R:  ‘There’s more to life that books you know, but not much more.’  That’s a great line!

J:  How did you end up as a librarian?

R:  After the big Rough Trade collapse in 1991 a couple of people and I tried to revive The Catalogue.  And failed. We tried and we failed.  Then my son was born and I was ‘house husband’. In a parent-run cooperative crèche. Then my son went to primary school and my wife said, ‘Right.  Get a job. Here’s an advert you should reply to!’

J:  So you got your ear pierced because of your wife, and a job, because of your wife.

R: I moved to London because of my wife.  She is my everything.

J:  I see that! What’s your favourite thing that she says?

R:  ‘Do some f*cking tidying up!  Clear some of these books!  Get rid of that!  Why is this in the living room?’  

J:  Of course. She’s still with you.

R:  Yes. We are blessed.  We got married when she was pregnant with our daughter, Rachel, who was twenty-eight yesterday.  

J:  Who is your favourite actor?

R:  Marlon Brando.  On The Waterfront.  

J:  What’s your favourite book?

R:  Book? That’s a big ask.  

J:  Favourite song to dance to?

R:  Anything ska or northern soul.  I like that one, oh, what’s it called, ‘Give Me Just A Little More Time’ by Chairmen of the Board.  Kylie covered it.  I love that. See it’s easy to dance.  It’s just like this, [stands up, begins walking through the steps]. ‘One-two-three-four.  One-two-three-four.  Just repeat.’

J:  What’s your favourite childhood toy?

R:  Toy?  Tough call. Mainly, I recall happy hours playing and building on my own as a small boy with Lego bricks, decades before they became so themed.

J:  Where is your favourite place to eat?

R:  Place to eat? I can do place to eat.  Home!  I’ve done note to mum – tick.

J:  Thank you. Do people phone you to check facts from years ago?

R:  Yes. And some of the time I can remember them.  

Follow Richard Boon on Twitter @booniepops.  Don’t phone, he’s in a meeting.

15 Minutes With You by Julie Hamill is available now from all good book shops.

©All content is copyright Julie Hamill 2017.  Unauthorised use and/or duplication of this material without consent from Juie Hamill is strictly prohibited.

Punk loose on Oxford Street

[pgitlin]

Cuba continued - final post

Saturday morning 18 March

From the port, we drove west along the Malecón, the long seafront road between Old Havana and Vadero where our hotel was.

 Our guide for the day was Katia, a beautiful young woman, who had come in place of Roly who was in hospital suffering from kidney stones. She was a deight, a fount of knowledge on Cuba’s colonial and recent history, who freely shared her experience of life both during Fidel Castro’s era and now under Raoul Castro.  She had been well briefed by Roly as to what our interest were and did her utmost to accommodate these.

 Our driver was a young man whose pride in his Chevy Bel Air was obvious.  The car belonged to his uncle, but he took car of it and used it as a taxi.  At each stop he leapt out of his seat to open, but more importantly, to close the door so that no one banged it!  He was also a musician; like most Cubans he has several jobs in order to earn sufficient money to live adequately.

 Katia confirmed what Roly had told us at the beginning of our trip; the average salary of a teacher in Cuba is 25 CUC (Cuban convertible currency equivalent to 1 euro), and senior doctors earn an average of 50 CUC a month.  Granted that every Cuban citizen receives ration coupons for basic foodstuffs (see here http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/Dividing-the-Pie-Cubas-Ration-System-after-50-years-20150302-0029.htmlsic), and prices of whatever fresh fruit and vegetables are available in the market are controlled by the government, that is still a very low income on which to live. Consquently almost all Cubans supplement their income in a variety of ways.  One finds teachers, university professors and others working as cleaners, waiters or doormen in the international hotels as not only the wages, but more especially the tips, provide valuable additional income. Families also often live communially so as to ensure that everyone has better access to the things which make life a little more comfortable.  We also learned that many Cubans have family or friends living abroad.  They are permitted to send gifts to their Cuban relatives.  This accounted for the fact that almost all the young people we saw were wearing smart sneakers (trainers), jeans and other clothes which would not disgrace a teenager or young person living in the States or Europe.

 We began our tour with Katia by visiting one of the 4 synagogues in Havana.  It was undergoing renovation so we were unable to see the main sanctuary. However the community hall was being used for the Saturday morning service and was well attended, with people arriving all the time while we were there.  The Jewish population of around 15,000 before the Revolution has diminished to around 1,600 nowadays, but it appears to be an active rainbow-coloured community.

 From there we went to the Parque John Lennon, aka Beatles’ Square in Vedaro where apparently during the 70’s and 80’s young people would flock at night under cover of darkness to listen to Western Pop music. There is now a statue of John Lennon on a bench in the square which is a popular place for families with their children on the weekends.

 We drove from there around the city to the Presidential Palace, currently undergoing renovation.  It is an enormous edifice which was used by Cuba’s presidents until the Revolution.  Fidel Castro did not live there, but apparently in many different places around Cuba, which were kept secret as he feared assassination by the CIA.  Then we went on to the Plaza de Armas, the oldest square in historic Havana founded in the 1520’s by the Spanish.  It was here in the Castle, remains of which can still be visited, that the Spanish kept the treasures plundered from the New World before being shipped to Spain.  It is a lovely square, filled with flowering trees and Royal Palms.  

 Just an aside, the Royal Palm is Cuba’s national tree. Roly told us that there is an anecdote that this is because the Royal Palm is like the Cuban people – it blows almost horizontal during hurricanes, but when the storm is over, it springs back upright, and the Cubans weather adversity in the same way!

 We walked from the square through Old Havana, once again admiring the wealth of architectural styles, colonial mansions, neo-classical buildings, and many Art Deco buidlings.   The streets were filled with people, and being Saturday, many seemed to be locals.  There were street musicians, a troupe of dancers on stilts, dressed in flamboyant costumes, and vendors of fried pastries.

 We visited a beautiful Art Nouveau house with rich stained glass windows and doors, and a cool plant filled interior courtyard.  It is now a perfumery, beautifully restored and owned by the government.  The Hotel Raquel was also a delight, this was a kosher hotel and the Art Nouveau interior reception rooms are an exquisite example of the period, again with beautiful stained glass windows and screens, many featuring the Minorah and other symbols of Jewish culture.

 Our driver met us here and we drove to Neuva Vedado, a suburb of Havana, to La Casa, a restaurant owned and run by a family in their house. The food was delicious, lamb stewed in red wine and served (of course!) with rice and black beans.  There was also steamed cassava and fried banana as well as a side salad.  The restaurant is certainly worth visiting if you are ever in Havana.

 After lunch we enjoyed a drive around Nuevo Vedado which was built by the affluent middle classes during the 40’s and 50’s.  Here many of the large mansions are now ambassadorial residences, and the more modest houses have been restored.  There were good examples of domestic architecture of the 1950’s, reminiscent of the suburbs of Miami.

 Then it was on to a large forested park on the edge of Nuevo Vedado.   Katia told us that this had been a very popular place for families to gather a day out together while she was growing up.  It is very lush and green, with a river running through the middle.  Sadly nowadays it is full of the detritus of animal sacrifices made by adherents of the African-Cuban religions Santeria and Palo Monte., and we passed several sites full of feathers, skeletons of birds covered in flies and maggots, and shredded paper and plastic.

 (Thirty-four percent of Cubans are followers of these religons, as opposed to thirty percent who are Roman Catholics.) There was in fact a sacrificial ritual taking place in the river when we arrived, and I watched fascinated as 3 men and their Babalu (priest) performed their rituals. Fortunately I did not see them actually kill the chickens, but there was much chanting, dipping the dead chickens into the water, and sprinkling their blood into the water and onto the ground. More groups of families arrived while we were there, all going off to various places alongside the river to offer their own sacrifices.

 From here we drove back through Miramar, another favoured and affluent pre-revolutionary residential area.  There are many grand mansions here, mostly embassies, including the enormous Russian compound with its brutal constructivist building, rising up above the flat landscape and lower rise buildings surrounding it.

 I always enjoyed the drive along El Malecón, the broad 8 km esplanade along the sea from Miramar to the mouth of the Havana Harbour.  The side opposite the sea wall is filled with what in their day were beautiful apartment houses and individual mansions. There are many Art Deco gems and several neo-classical buildings, most now crumbling echoes of their former splendor. However there a signs of regeneration with some being restored.  I fear though that if unrestricted development is allowed as Cuba becomes more capitalist, that the glory of this esplanade with be ruined by high rise hotels and apartment buildings, much as has happened in Monaco.

 At the end of the day, as we were saying our farewells to Katia, we heard once again how hitch-hiking is the main way that most people iin Cuba get around because the public transport system is so inadequate. She told us that our taxi drive lived en route to where she lives, about 2 hours from Havana.  From his town she would hitch-hike the remaining distance which was about 15 kilometres.  She also told us that this was a completely safe way to travel, and that she in fact often hitch-hiked with her 4 year old daughter if she needed to get somewhere. We had also learned during the day that Katia had been a primary school teacher and then a regional television reporter and presenter.  She had met her husband at the television station where he had been a script writer and programme developer.  They had both decided to give up those jobs because they had become increasingly unhappy at having to present only approved news.  Katia said they had been very frustrated when they found bad practice or incompetence in local services but were not allowed to report this.  Now she and her husband both worked as independent tourist guides, a role which she fulfills competently and expertly in our opinion.

 Our final day, Sunday 19th March, was spent rather lazily.  We walked across the road from our hotel, the Melia Cohiba, to the Riviera Hotel, the hotel developed by the notorious Meyer Lansky, the money man for the Mob in the 50’s. It is slowly being restored by Caribe Hotels after having been neglected for many years and is an example of late 1950’s interior design.  The lobby/lounge area, dining room and swimming pool are beautifully restored to their original state, and one can imagine the gangsters and their friends partying here and in the Casino (which is not open) during its heyday.

 It was here in the lobby that we met some Canadians who were about to go off with a guide to see the Synagogue which we hadn’t been able to see the day before.  Yasmin took advantage of their offer to join them, but Brian and I went back to our hotel and spent the morning lazing at the pool.  

 All too soon it was time to leave for the airport and our flight home to Nice via Madrid.  It was sad to say goodbye as we had fallen in love with Cuba and its friendly people, its falling down buildings, and its indomitable spirit.  I have no doubt that if at all possible, we will visit again.