#she really wrote a whole song about/for Simon including the date they first met & all and oh my god

[moralchampion]

TALIA AND SIMON ARE HAVING A BABY

[john-taylor-daily]

Full text of the article:

Want to feel really old? Oh, go on then. Duran Duran turn 40 this year: the band, that is, not the members. For them it’s worse: Simon Le Bon is 61, John and Roger Taylor, each 59, and Nick Rhodes, the baby, 57.

As you would expect of a pop group who always appeared happiest hanging off a yacht in ruffled Antony Price suits, accessorised with a supermodel and a cocktail, they intend to celebrate in style, coronavirus permitting. So the plan, announced this week, is that on July 12, exactly 40 years since their first gig at the Rum Runner in Birmingham, they will perform in Hyde Park, headlining a bill that includes Nile Rodgers & Chic and their pal Gwen Stefani. Four of the original five will be there: the guitarist Andy Taylor, 59, left the band in 1985 and, after rejoining in 2001, walked out again five years later. In the past, the guitarist Warren Cuccurullo has filled in; this time Graham Coxon from Blur will take his place.

Then in autumn Duran Duran are releasing a new album, their 15th, which they are halfway through making.

Growing up in the West Midlands, I was a Duranie; my first gig was theirs at the NEC in Birmingham. To give an idea of the level of devotion, I had house plants named after each of them. John, his initials “JT” written on the pot in nail varnish, was a begonia; Rhodes, a busy lizzie; Le Bon, a rubber plant; Roger and Andy Taylor were cacti. My memory, foggy on so much, still holds the name of Nick Rhodes’s cat at the time (Sebastian). The household appliance “JT” would choose to be? “A refrigerator, so I would stay cool.”

But despite previous opportunities, I’ve avoided them bar an awkward backstage handshake with Le Bon. In the meantime, they have notched up record sales of 100 million, had 21 Top 20 hits in the UK and, unlike many bands who came to fame in the 1980s, they produce different, exciting, if not always lauded albums, working with new producers and musicians. They’ve had top five albums in each of the four decades they’ve worked. Their last album, Paper Gods (2015), produced by Mark Ronson and Rodgers, was their most successful for 25 years.

Now 46 and with no desire to anthropomorphise greenery, I meet Rhodes, the keyboardist, and John Taylor, the bass player, once described as having the squarest jaw in rock. Rhodes suggests his “local”, Blakes hotel in Chelsea, near the home he shares with his Sicilian girlfriend, Nefer Suvio (he and Julie Anne Friedman divorced in 1992; they have one child together, Tatjana). Taylor, just in from Los Angeles, home to his second wife, Gela Nash, who runs the fashion label Juicy Couture, invites me to his flat in Pimlico. Le Bon, still happily married to the supermodel Yasmin Le Bon with three grown-up daughters, is busy in the studio and Roger Taylor, four children and with second wife Gisella Bernales, is otherwise occupied.

Rhodes, who joins me in the bar at Blakes, has the same peroxide mop and alabaster skin that were always his trademark. He wears black trousers by the English designer Neil Barrett and a Savile Row jacket dressed down with a rock T-shirt from the Los Angeles company Punk Masters.

Four days later, I arrive at Taylor’s flat in a garden square where he greets me at the door dressed in black jeans and T-shirt, with sculpted bed-hair. I’m reminded of the time my brother splashed Sun-In on his to emulate Taylor’s bleached New Romantic fringe.

It’s good to have them back. They started on the new album in September at Flood Studios in Willesden, northwest London, and, as well as Coxon, have been working with three producers: Giorgio Moroder, Ronson and the DJ Erol Alkan. “The whole place is filled with analogue synthesizers, so it’s just joy for me,” says Rhodes, who began life as Nicholas Bates but renamed himself after a make of electronic keyboard.

Rhodes met Moroder — the “godfather of electronica” and the man behind Donna Summer’s I Feel Love — through a mutual friend of his girlfriend. “We talked about music and what had happened to us,” Rhodes says. “He is as sharp as a razor, 79 going on 45.” They worked with Ronson, who has produced Amy Winehouse and Adele, in LA. “The first thing Mark always says is, ‘Let me hear the rest of it,’” Rhodes says with a laugh. “He is quite competitive.”

Taylor, who leads me into a room that’s more gentlemen’s club than rock-star pad with an open fire, armchairs, brown furniture and bad Victorian paintings, says the break of five years has refuelled them. “We have to starve ourselves of creativity long enough that when we do show up we have something to say,” he says. “[The studio sessions] are quite exhausting because we have been down this road. We can finish each other’s sentences and I guess, to some extent, we can do that musically as well. We are working with the same cast; it’s like a soap opera. That’s why collaborators become so important as you need to keep the spirit lively.”

Rhodes, who says the new album is more “handmade” and “guitary”, explains the working dynamics: “John and Roger’s rhythm section often drives a track. Simon, the lyricist, gives all the songs our identity; it’s his voice that tells you it’s Duran Duran. My part has more to do with sonic architecture.” That may be the most Nick Rhodes phrase yet.

We move on to Andy Taylor. “Forty years ago we had Andy in the band and he was a strong flavour and a northerner and brought a rigour,” says John Taylor. “Filling that vacuum has always been one of the major challenges of version two of the band; we did it with Warren Cuccurullo and with Graham on this record. But it’s not the same. Andy didn’t mind telling people what they were doing wrong.”

He pauses. “We had a reunion with Andy [in 2001] and that was enormously difficult, actually.” How so? “That’s a book really,” says Taylor, who has written about the saga, along with his struggle with drink and drugs, in his excellent 2012 memoir In the Pleasure Groove. “Or it’s a mini-series.”

“It was very uncomfortable for us,” Rhodes says of Andy leaving in 1985. “For sure, it had become stressful over the previous year — we were all burnt out from not having stopped for five years — but we didn’t see it coming at all.”

What are relations with Andy like now? “I don’t really have any,” says Rhodes. “I haven’t seen him for many years since he left the last time. I was not even slightly surprised when it did fall apart. I was relieved. As much as Andy is a great musician he is not an easy person to play with.”

I mention to Taylor that Andy has just announced his own UK dates in May, playing Duran songs. “Uh-ha,” he says. He didn’t know. Does he mind? “I don’t mind at all. All power to him,” says Taylor. “I would rather he be out playing.”

Taylor has the sanguine air of someone who has spent decades nuking his demons (he’s currently working on guilt; he had a Catholic mother). He has been sober for 26 years after an addiction which in part led to the break-up of his marriage to the TV presenter Amanda de Cadenet in 1997. Was it hard at first? “It was like turning round an ocean liner,” he says, his voice posh Brum with a California chaser. “I work a daily programme and that’s what keeps me sober. It’s not something that just happens; it takes a lot of attention.”

We move on to the themes of the new, as yet untitled, album. Le Bon lost his mother recently, so we can expect songs inspired by loss. Taylor says he took inspiration from “the challenges of long-term relationships . . . Take a song like Save a Prayer, which personally I think is one of the greatest ever songs in praise of the one-night stand,” he says. “It comes to the point where you can’t write something like that. It’s not age-appropriate; yet it is sexy. So how do you write from the perspective of someone who is trying to keep a long-term relationship together? That is the challenge of any late-age pop star. How do you make it chic, to use one of Nick’s favourite words.”

It is hard to forget how impossibly chic Duran were in the 1980s: from their beginnings in Birmingham (Nick and John, anyway), where they met when Rhodes was 10 and Taylor 12, to a world of famous friends, beautiful partners and exotic travel. Le Bon married Yasmin after seeing her in Vogue, Rhodes was with the shipping heiress Friedman and Taylor the teenage de Cadenet. Andy Warhol was a close friend of Rhodes.

While others were singing about the dark side of Thatcher’s Britain, they were . . . more opaque. “In the 1980s a lot of what we did was somewhat misunderstood because we were living in the same gloomy years with high unemployment and miners’ strikes and civil unrest as everybody else,” Rhodes says. “But our answer to it was we have to get away from this and make it a little brighter because it didn’t seem like a particularly promising future.” Don’t expect that coronavirus torch song any time soon.

Their association with Bond — they wrote the 1985 theme A View to a Kill — only added to the glamour. What do they make of the new one by Billie Eilish? Rhodes admits that he mostly listens to classical music these days but “was thrilled to hear Billie Eilish. I think it’s by far the best Bond song since ours.”

But not better than yours?

“I am very happy that she reached No 1.” Duran’s got to No 2.

Taylor is more critical. “I thought it was lacking in a bit of Billie Eilish to be honest. It could have been madder. It was a little bit too grown up,” he says.

Is it as good as A View to a Kill?

“No!” says Taylor, theatrically. “Although,” he admits, “it was the most difficult three mins that we have ever produced.”

It had a great video, in which the boys slunk around the Eiffel Tower. Taylor frowns. “I hate that video. So stupid. I can’t watch it.” One for the fans, then.

A secret of their longevity, Rhodes says, is not bowing to nostalgia. “I like to keep my blinkers on and look forward.” Having said that, he sounds ready to write his own memoir. “I would do a book yes,” he says. “I haven’t read John’s on purpose. I even wrote a foreword for it for the US version without reading it, but I did own up to it. I think mine would be very different from a lot of the rock biographies. The one that sticks with me is David Niven’s.”

Rhodes featured in Warhol’s diaries and Warhol, the subject of a show at Tate Modern in London that opened this week, would surely feature in his. He “invented the 20th century”, Rhodes says. “Andy was making reality TV in the Sixties. Can you imagine what he would have thought about the internet? It was all his dreams come true, but he would never have got any work done.” Rhodes says he stays off social media for that reason. “It’s not that I don’t like it; I fear it. I am going down a rabbit hole I may never get out of.

They’ve spent twice the time being famous as being unknown. Are they the same people they were in Birmingham 40 years ago?

Rhodes nods. “Yes, yes,” he says. “There have been big changes — marriages, divorces, kids, moving countries in John’s case — but when we are all together we have known each other for so long there is no room for anyone to behave in a way that would be unacceptable. There is no room for divas. We have lasted longer than most marriages; it is like being married to three people but we each get to go home on our own every night.”

Taylor tells me: “Without getting into recovery talk, a lot of that is about scrubbing away the masks that you tend to accrue to cope, so I think I am as close to that person as I was 40 years ago.”

Rhodes says tolerance is the key. “Sometimes when I arrive at the studio it is really bright, maybe someone is writing, and so everyone accepts I can’t cope, and so the lighting comes down.” I tell him I once read he always wears dark glasses before noon. He laughs. “Pretty much. That’s funny. I am hyper-sensitive to light. It’s not just pretentiousness. “

They appreciate they will have to prepare physically for the dates. For Rhodes, a terrible insomniac, that means “fruit and vegetables and grains” and lots of walking. But no workouts (“I am not a big fan of gymnasiums”). Taylor says he needs to start practising bass and the need to get back in shape is “keeping him awake at night”. “I like to run, I do Pilates, I do yoga and I think about everything that enters my mouth, everything. I am 90 per cent vegan. I don’t drink, take mind-altering chemicals. I am on and off sugar.”

Perhaps the greatest sign that they still have it is that their children want to see them play. Taylor just heard from his daughter, Atlanta, who lives in New York and is soon to be married to David Macklovitch from the Canadian band Chromeo.

“It’s a surprise when you get a text from a child and they say, ‘You’re playing Hyde Park — my boyfriend and I want to come.’”

[captain-aralias]

Creators: give a “behind the scenes” look at one of your works. This could be things that got removed or changed, the origins of ideas/details, whatever you like!

oh hey - it’s trivia tuesday already (i guess it’s been a long two days back at work this week). i know everyone is still working their way through the remixes that are finished and posted - and i say, do this! some cracking stuff. i’m over half way through now, and i want to write up some thoughts about how these 26 stories approached remix - because it’s super inventive. i think people benefited from not being familiar with the format.

but i also wanted to share my thinking around why i picked the fic to remix that i did - and what else i was considering from @bazzybelle‘s ficlist, because i think the thought process around remix is interesting. AND i wanted to show you the 500 words i wrote almost immediately of a completely different remix that i definitely won’t finish. it would have been... a publishing AU, fake relationship with too-early-in-the-relationship sex. all good things in a fic, right?

so - read on for deleted scenes, and discussion of thought process. and don’t read on, if that’s not your jam. 

(in general remember - i’m keen to leave stuff in the original that’s good, rather than just thieve everything. so that’s my thought process here.) 

first idea: 

I Just Want Your Extra Time And Your .....

(texting, sex chat). i already really liked this fic, and i have IRL experience of working in publishing (which you’ll see to some extent in the fic - i worked very near people who worked on celebrity cookbooks, which is what baz works on in the fic) (the launch party is not revealed to be at the groucho club in the bit i wrote, but would have been - and i’ve been there/i know soho, so ... that was all appealing)

my idea was: the original is a text fic, mine isn’t, although they still only know each other through the sex chat set-up. so instead of simon and baz having text-sex (as in the fic), baz asks simon [who he's never met] to come and be his fake date at a publishing launch party where he sees lamb, his former boyfriend. 

the trigger for simon and baz progressing with their relationship/having sex (Because they were going to have sex but IRL) would be the same - baz seeing lamb and freaking out. and some of the texts would be literally copied and pasted in my fic as backstory. 

here were my original notes:

in the original fic there's a bit where baz sees lamb, his ex boyfriend, and then is like - hey, simon distract me and they have phone sex

my fic will essentially start there - baz is at a launch party for one of his books, lamb is there - dating the author. it is awful. baz wants to leave, but can't. also, it's time for the text slot with simon - he goes and hides in a cloakroom

and is texting simon, it's terrible - i am so drunk and it's still terrible. and i think simon offers (rather than baz asks) to come and pretend to be his boyfriend

for some sort of plausible denial reason like baz will text him a lot over hte next few days so he'll get a lot of extra money or some shit, but also because simon thinks lamb is a dick even through teh messages

simon shows up - they both drink a lot. they like each other, simon punches lamb (probably). baz asks if he can take simon to a restaurant, they talk more - they kiss. they go back to a hotel together. they discuss whether or not this means that simon is a prostitute (no). they have sex IRL

baz wakes up - and leaves immediately, obviously.

they text again the next day - it's awkward. simon thinks about how he could track baz down if he wanted to - but he feels like baz doesn't want him to, so he doesn't

simon gets out of his horrible job - baz probably tries to get in touch with him, but can't because he's gone. simon gets a message from baz ....... this is still to be determined

anyway - i will probably steal the meet cute in the elevator, it's nice.

why i stopped writing it: 

i knew it was going to take ages to write - i didn’t have the time or brainspace to write 20k of fic. i’d assumed going in that i could lean on the original fic to provide the meetcute, but realised that since it was an AU, i still needed to sell the relationship - particularly given that they were meeting in real life for the first time in my fic. 

also, it would have been my first mundane AU for the fandom, and my first thing where they weren’t enemies first. (so i was trying to think about how i could get them not to like each other a bit WHILE STILL doing fake dating - and it was throwing me off). it was all just too much.

everything i’ve written is pasted for you at the bottom.

other ideas: 

a month passed. i didn’t write any more on my original remix, but went back to greener grass instead. i sent out the month warning email to remixees and thought - i am not going to finish this fic. 

so, i went back to the list of bazzybelle’s fic and thought what can i write that i can definitely write in a month? 

1. You're F***in' Perfect to Me - daphne POV

i thought, i could write this from malcolm's POV.  in the fic daphne talks a lot about how she and malcolm are just friends, rather than true love, and it's baz she has real (motherly) feelings for, not malcolm. so i thought i could write 'the courtship of mrs grimm' where malcolm gets a wake-up call from this argument, and thinks, i actually do love daphne but she likes my son more than me. he's been hiding behind not wanting to sully natasha's memory, etc, etc. fiona would probably be in it. 

2. bat baz

i also had a bit of a naff idea where instead of baz turning into a bat, in bat baz, he would turn into bat man... 

(interestingly one of the remixes was about baz turning into a cat) 

3. If I Fell In Love With You - which i eventually chose

i took the dancing and the music, the set up, and the theme of communication - also some dialogue. pushed some of the focus onto baz’s relationship with niall, pushed the action back in time towards wayward son, added a truth spell (based on a spell in the original) to force communication.

i think this is one of the most interesting remixes i’ve ever done, btw. i’m really pleased with my take on it. 

i chose this to remix because i thought - it’s only a few scenes, rather than a whole get-together arc, and it felt achievable in the timespan. i also had a strong idea about what i could do that was different - the relationship with niall and the spell, and what i would leave for people to discover in the original (simon’s POV - including the warmth he feels when baz cooks for him, the two of the resolving the initial fight when simon comes home in a bad mood). 

the title is a combination of - another line from ‘if i fell’ but one that is about not talking to each other/not putting yourself out there... and ‘where words fail’ - which is the spell i used, and also picks up on what baz says to niall - that telling simon wasn’t enough. even if he’d had the right words, they wouldn’t have been believable. but - through the music/magic, they were able to communicate. 

i also considered using a line from ‘into my arms’ instead (I believe in some kind of path), since that was the song that the magic is cast on - but it didn’t work as well thematically. 

here’s the fic i wrote: Don’t Run and Hide (The ‘Where Words Fail’ Remix’)

and here’s the remix i didn’t write. i think i almost wanted to finish it just for the elvis gag. alas, alas.

I Just Want your Extra Time: remix, not written

BAZ

I don’t smoke as much as my father thinks I do. And I don’t drink – not usually. This evening, though, I’ve already had several glasses of champagne and I’m on my fourth cigarette, the second this smoke break. Because it’s that or go back inside. And I definitely don’t want to go back inside.

I should have known he’d be here.

Not that he was invited. Not that he’s on the guest list. Not that there’s any reason at all, in fact, for him to be here, except that my life is an absolute disaster. Today definitely not an exception.

If anything, it’s worse than usual. I thought I’d already hit bottom when Dev told me I had to ring our printers – in China – and get them to promise to ship one of our new titles three weeks early, as some idiot had sent the press release out with the wrong date. That was excruciating, but things seemed to be improving.

It’s a launch party night. I’m not sure why, but I always look forward to them, even though I hate crowds. (Niall would probably say, other people in general. And he wouldn’t be far wrong.)

But I get to wear a suit. (Tonight’s is Spencer Hart. Dark grey. Green tie.) And I know Snow is going to text after the first hour. And even though no one ever remembers to thank the editor – not unprompted, anyway – I do enjoy the satisfaction of knowing that I’m responsible for turning whatever dross we’ve been told to sell into something that could loosely be called a book.

This one is a cookbook by an actor (not a chef, in other words. I had to hire someone else to write the recipes and then we just photographed him next to the result.) It should be a triumph. It is – we’ve already sold several thousand copies. I should be enjoying myself. But then I heard a voice next to my ear.

“Baz.” And someone put a hand on my waist. “Don’t you look rosy?”

Not someone. Lambert. (I never called him Francois, even when we were intimate.) As irritatingly handsome as ever. And just as confident I’ll do whatever he wants.

I haven’t seen him for months. Not since he left me Las Vegas to go off with one of the better-looking Elvis impersonators. (And if that isn’t the most humiliating break-up story you’ve ever heard, then I really don’t want to know what is. Dumped. And for Elvis.) (Not even the real Elvis - not that it makes a difference.)

“I hoped I’d see you here,” he – Lambert – told me. “It’s been far too long.”

“Since you left me.”

He gave me a hurt look. “Baz. We said Auf Wiedersehen, not goodbye.”

“Who are you really here with?”

The author, of course. I watched their eyes meet across the room and Lambert smiling, before he told me it wasn’t serious. And that he’d be interested in taking me to dinner.

“Unless you’re seeing someone?”

I raised an eyebrow – even though I know Lambert knows I only do that when I can’t think of anything to say. Which means he probably knows the truth, which is that there isn’t anyone else. Not anyone else real, anyway.  

Which reminds me …

I check my watch – it’s later than I thought.

[inkedangelhaz]

Harry Styles Vanity Fair

The Vanity Fair interview is only available to read in Italian right now, so I decided to translate it so others (and myself) can read it too! I did change some of the wording to make it more understandable, because Google Translate isn’t always the best, but I didn’t change the meaning of anything that was said. You can read the original (in Italian) here !

Harry Styles: Vanity Fair Interview 2017

Harry Styles has grown, does not drink, and wants to become pescatarian. The only mystery: For whom did he write the songs? “For a woman in particular”, and he hopes she understands the dedication. All clear, Kendall?

The last thing that Harry Styles does before going to sleep every night is send an email with a list of what he needs to do the next day. “Even if it’s boring stuff, like 9 o'clock: coffee. If you don’t have a schedule sometimes you feel lost. I do find it a little hard to laze.” Perhaps it’s one of the side effects of the past six years with one of the most famous boybands of all time, One Direction, where every minute of their lives on tour was planned in detail. The world tours could last almost a year, and did not include only concerts in the stadiums: there was endless promo to be done during the day and recording in their “free time”.

One Direction: This Is Us – the documentary behind the scenes by Super Size Me director, Morgan Spurlock – had shown another member of the band, Zayn Malik, who was ripped mercilessly from his bed in the tour bus after only ten minutes of naptime to record a new song.

Instead it seems that Styles wallows in the discipline. “I adore routine,” he explains. “When you’re small it’s all programmed: waking up at a certain time, breakfast, school. And when it ends it’s hard to figure out what to do with yourself.” Maybe for him it was a way of keeping that part of youth tight. He was 16 years old when he had moved from Cheshire to London as one of many who hoped to succeed with X Factor. In 2010, Simon Cowell had chosen five teenagers who had failed to pass the solo audition to create a super group. Harry was soon to become the sexiest and most famous component of a group that in a short time had turned into the sexiest and most famous boyband in the world. According to the ranking of the richest people in the world this year, Styles has a heritage of 40 million pounds.

Today, at the age of 23, he is trying to become master of his universe. One Direction took an “indefinite break” last year and he spent the following months writing and recording his first solo album, and to play in his first film, Dunkirk, the epic war film of Christopher Nolan that will be released this summer. The album is titled ‘Harry Styles’ and was perhaps the most anticipated solo album since Robbie left Take That. The first single, Sign of the Times, a ballad of five and a half minutes, arrived at the top of the charts in 84 countries on the day of launch. And Harry Styles is number one in the United States, England, Ireland, Canada, Australia, Holland and Belgium, and second in Italy. It is the debut album of an English artist who sold more in America since Fimi/Nielsen began recording sales in 1991.

But I really figured out what made this guy when he called me out of nowhere, on a Friday afternoon, to arrange our interview.

“Hi, I’m Harry,” chirping a young voice. “Harry Chi?”, I say, thinking he’s a kid trying to sell me something from a call center. “Harry Styles. Do you have time to have lunch together next week?“ The “personal touch” is the brand of every true global superstar. Bono, Chris Martin and Taylor Swift know well what it means to bypass the bureaucracy of manager and PR to send a personal invitation. It is a gesture that sends many messages, from the most obvious – I am normal and approachable, and obviously I know how to use the phone – to the deepest: I am giving my time. After understanding that my agenda is quite empty, Harry proposes a date and one of his favorite downtown restaurants. Book him.

Three days later, I arrive at the restaurant and find that there are no reservations on behalf of Harry Styles (of course not, which megastar would book in his own name?). There is a table for someone with a similar name, but since I do not know, the waiter is reluctant to sit just me. Five minutes later, “Harry Spring” enters, and not only looks much like Harry Styles, but guarantees it for me. Harry proves adorable. Affectionate hugs and handshakes, thank you and please after every word. We sit down and after a second he stands up to help the waiter to bring water bottles.

He wears jeans, brown ankle boots, and a Hawaiian shirt, unbuttoned enough to take a look at his well-groomed chest and the endless tattoos he has on his breast and left arm. A pair of sunglasses on top of his head keeps his hair back. He has a crucifix on his neck and big silver rings on his fingers. Yes, he’s just beautiful: boyish face, expressive, gentle attitude, impeccable manners. But, without absolutely wanting to affect his reputation as a heartthrob, I am not sure that the desire to take him home is a wish. Rather, I wish he was my son. He has two phones: one is for private use (with the newborn goddaughter on the screensaver), the other is pink and he uses it to let me listen to his new album, which still had not come out when I met him. Although he is only 23 years old, he is already godfather of three children. Almost all his best friends, he explains, are older than him. “When I moved to London, I wanted to learn from people who could give me good advice.” At first his friendship with Radio 1 DJ, Nick Grimshaw, had unleashed gossip, although Styles denied being bisexual. Today, however, the assumptions about his private life revolve mainly around famous women.

He orders a Chicken Paillard and contemplates aloud the idea of becoming Pescatarian. “I did it for two weeks, as an experiment, but I think at some point I’ll try for more time.” Because? He thinks maybe “some discipline does well”. He is never critical of life with One Direction. “It is very difficult to complain, it was an incredible thing.” While he and the other members of the band are “on hiatus”, Malik is the only one who has officially left the group. Since then he has released to the press comments denigrating the band’s music and has also recorded a piece with Taylor Swift, the former girlfriend of Styles, for the soundtrack of the film Fifty Shades of Gray. Have you seen him lately? Silence. “Mmm, not much.” Have the reports cooled down? “No, I’m OK. I think we are happy for each other, the fact that we are doing things that we like and we get it.”

The smile emerges again as soon as I ask about others of the band. “We all work a lot, but we go out together.” When did you last talk to Simon Cowell? “Oh, recently.” He called after hearing the anticipated Sign of the Times. “He said he loved it and he was proud of me.” He stops. “Not that the last calls were not pleasant, but this time they did not have that nuance of, ‘this is the boss calling’, and it was beautiful.” He can’t wait to make me feel the album, but first I ask him why he wanted to try to work solo. “Sometimes you write songs where you want to tell the whole story,” he says. “In short, if you write a very personal song, it is difficult to give it in the hands of a band.”

What stories did he want to tell? He makes a grimace. He spent the last seven years revealing as little as possible of himself. The press interviews with One Direction rarely lasted more than ten minutes, with other members of the band behind which to hide. The current level of personal analysis is a novelty for him. “I really wanted it to be sincere, without changing words. Recording this album gave me one of the most beautiful times of my life. But when it came out I felt vulnerable, and that had never happened.”

Let’s go to the album: blatantly inspired by the rock years ’ 60-70, psychedelic, glam and alternative country, it is light years away from the dance pieces and acute voices of One Direction. He wrote it and recorded it last summer in two months, in Jamaica. Styles says he was inspired by the singer and songwriter of the 1970s, Harry Nilsson, and the bands he listened to when he was small: his father adored Fleetwood Mac, the Beatles and The Rolling Stones, while his mother liked to hear Norah Jones and Shania Twain. Of course, they were not so fashionable influences, but maybe the point is just that. Despite the huge commercial success of One Direction, I honestly struggle to hum their songs, they do not remain in my head. Styles has replaced the ephemeral light pop with something more lasting, and it works. The lyrics are saturated with sex, nostalgia and broken hearts, a rare glimpse of his personal life. The last song is titled From the Dining Table and begins with: “Woke up alone in this hotel room, played with myself, where were you? Fell back to sleep, I got drunk by noon, I’ve never felt less cool.” You play with yourself? “I play with my thoughts!”, he immediately corrects.

In April he gave an interview to the magazine Rolling Stone in which he claimed that a woman in particular had a key role in the album. “Sometimes you just want to make a nod to someone, sometimes a real bow, and hope she understands it’s for her.“ The commentary was seen as evidence that the album was about Kendall Jenner, the model, television reality star, and Kim Kardashian’s half-sister with which Styles had been in a turbulent relationship with for two years. Are you interested in clarifying things? Obviously not. "It doesn’t seem to me that the record is a romantic tribute to a person. It’s more about me than anyone else. I think it’s all too easy to say, oh look, it’s about this person, that’s the most interesting thing. I never felt the need to talk about things like that.” And who can blame him? His sentimental life has always been in the spotlight. In 2012, he and Taylor Swift had been on the front page of the tabloids when they had been caught on their second date walking around Central Park. They had left a short time later, but the interest in their relationship had reignited when it was known that Swift had written at least two songs for him in her next album (Out of the Woods and Style).

Does always being in the spotlight make the natural development of relationships more difficult? “Relationships are difficult anyway. You don’t always understand just how a relationship goes, it’s not like you can say: in a week I will know. You are often told what it is before you really understand it. However, all that stuff happened when I was even younger, and you’re very confused when you’ve only had a few relationships.” Did you have to give up that sphere of private life or manage to have a little more confidentiality? “Not lately, because I made the album and a lot of things… I don’t know. No, I feel like I’ve worked a lot with the band. Too many things happened.” How many times has he been in love? “I don’t know. I don’t know how you could tell, so it’s hard to answer, right?” "One realizes, when it happens”, I fight. "Well, so they say.” He makes an embarrassed giggle and then takes the pink phone. “Um, you want to hear another song?”

He’s always been a seducer. His elder sister, Gemma (writes about technology and trends of the Millennium), recently wrote an article for the journal Another Man in which she remembered a family vacation in Cyprus. Harry was seven years old. “He was sitting on a bench near the pool, with people who were triple his age. When we returned to the airport, there was a crowd of girls of all ages who came to greet him.”

He and Gemma grew up in Cheshire. Their father was a financial advisor, now working in insurance. Styles was seven years old when his parents divorced. He is grateful that his parents have maintained a friendly relationship, even after his mother has remarried. "I’m lucky I didn’t have to take sides when they separated. I have always felt loved and encouraged by both.” He calls his mother most days. “A lot of friends say to me, ‘Your mom is really great.’ She never made me feel obliged to prove what I’m worth. Many grow up without ever showing what they feel, instead at our house there has always been much love.”

At the age of 14 he had started working in the local bakery, and he got up at 5 every Saturday. He had always thought of becoming a physiotherapist, but then “we did a workshop at school, to talk about what we wanted to do, and someone told me that there were no job opportunities in that field, so I had to choose something else. I was hurt.” Shortly thereafter he formed a group with some school mates, White Eskimo, and participated in a local band contest. “I was nervous before I got on stage, but that feeling of having all eyes on you doing something you like was exciting.”

Now we are waiting for hectic times, with a world tour of three months, alone, starting in September. The Dunkirk film will be released on August 31st. He hasn’t seen it yet, so he doesn’t know what weight he will play as an English soldier. Rumor has it that he also impersonates Mick Jagger in a biopic, but he denies it, although the look he chose for his solo album resembles the elaborate, androgynous, 70s look of Jagger. Despite having 30 million followers on Twitter and 20 million on Instagram, he is oddly cautious about social media. “Once I heard someone say: If Twitter was a party where you know that 30 percent of people are great, but you also know that the rest will hate you, you are just not going to go,” he explains.

I must admit that he is much more serious and sensitive than what I thought by watching him in the videos of the One Direction era. After three hours in his company, I can’t find any defect, he doesn’t even drink. “In the last two years of touring I discovered that I liked to go run in the morning. When I work I don’t like to drink. I do it when I go out with friends, but then maybe I don’t touch even a drop for more than a month.”

It’s time to say goodbye. I ask him what he wrote in the email that he sent last night, what he must remember to do. "I have to go and cut my hair.” Just a good guy.

(cover from Vanity Fair No. 24. Text by Kristi Murison. Translation of Gioia Guerzoni)