Johnny Borrell

cymrococh · December 8, 2006

http://music.guardian.co.uk/rock/story/0,,1966974,00.html

'Would you like the tour?" asks Johnny Borrell eagerly. Razorlight's singer turns and leads the way through his new home, which sits expensively close to Hampstead Heath in north London. The spacious flat doesn't yet have any furniture, but Borrell proudly shows off the spot where his piano will go, and the kitchen he's going to refit. "It's an amazing place, isn't it?"

The tour ends in the living room, where Borrell sits cross-legged on a blanket and opens the flask of mulled wine his press officer has brought. He pours two cups, passes one over and begins to tell me about his "brilliant year" - his first No 1 album, his first No 1 single, his first sell-out arena tour. "Life has never been better," he says softly. "I'm very happy."

This isn't the Johnny Borrell we've come to expect since Razorlight appeared towards the end of 2003, clinging firmly to the tails of the Libertines' red military tunics. Borrell has established himself as Britrock's chief motormouth: a self-aggrandiser who speaks of his own genius; an intensely ambitious upstart who spins self-mythologising tales of his junkie days; a graceless curmudgeon who has slated many of his contemporaries. The band's striking June 2004 debut album was a critical and commercial success, but Borrell didn't come across as the type to be a warm, likable host.

In truth, he isn't always as genial as today. The first time I met Borrell was in a hotel bar in Denver early in 2005. His greeting then was a belligerent rant about me not giving him any "Oxbridge journalist bulls***". That, as I pointed out, seemed a little rum considering a) I went to a comprehensive and a redbrick and b) his parents spent a fortune sending him to Highgate School, a posh north London day school. Moments later Borrell had a hissy fit at a waitress who asked him to cover his bare feet because there could be glass on the floor. Having proffered the unlikely defence that he didn't own any shoes, Borrell eventually stomped out onto the street, still barefoot, with a parting shot to the bemused waitress: "If you're so bothered, buy me some!"

"Oh I was so f***ing out of order that day," he says now. "I was lashing out at whatever was put in front of me. But I was in a bad state. I was feeling completely alienated by everything." Borrell had arrived in Denver following a 20-hour ride in the band's tour bus, during which he'd sat alone, reading a book about skinheads and drinking too much. Things didn't improve the following night, when he stormed offstage midway through Razorlight's Denver show, telling the crowd he felt like killing himself. "I wasn't having any fun whatsoever," he sighs. "I was in such a hole."

Borrell had wanted to be a successful musician since he was a teenager. Initially, he styled himself as a Greenwich Village folk singer, before falling into the Dalston-based band scene that spawned the Libertines, and forming Razorlight. But when the breakthrough came, it didn't make him as happy as he'd expected.

"Before you get a record deal," he says, "you think that when you get signed, your problems will disappear. But then you realise that, far from curing everything, success is a big challenge in itself. Right now, that challenge is something I relish, but then I was unprepared for it. I don't think it's uncommon for the attention you get on your first album to mess with your head a bit. You think you'll make a record and that's it, job done. What you don't realise is that when you make that record and then tell everyone it's brilliant, you have to go out every night and prove it's brilliant."

Borrell's c***sure proclamations certainly raised his band's profile. The son of a journalist, he was keenly aware how to push the music media's buttons. "I was seeing bands like Hal and the Datsuns being championed by the NME as geniuses. So to make a statement, you have to speak in their language." That meant saying that he was the genius.

Having announced that he was as talented as Bob Dylan, Borrell gave himself a great deal to live up to. He also seemed to discover that when you start off as an arrogant rent-a-quote, you're expected to stay that way. Add to that the fact success wasn't the happy pill he'd hoped, and you begin to understand why, by Denver, he was acting like a cliched rock star brat and overdoing it on both drink and drugs.

Borrell says he has learned from those "dark days". For example, if he has excess energy to burn off now, he won't sit alone drinking, he'll jump on his Vespa and whizz up and down London's Westway, or play five-a-side with his mates. He's also realised that what he calls "all that mouthy stuff in the press" focused too much attention on him and not Razorlight, "which did kind of overshadow the fact that there's a damn fine band going on there". And he believes that his criticism of other bands was ill-judged and often based on jealousy.

"Actually," he says, "I do think that if I'm in a funny position with people perceiving me in a certain way, then some of that is because I'm paying some karma for slagging off other bands like I did. The thing is, I must be able to slag off bands in a pretty memorable way, because when I do it, people don't forget about it. And that's not what I really want to be remembered for having a talent for. So with this record, I've tried to let the music do the talking." Give or take a stab at the Kooks, that's exactly what he's done. With the focus now on the music, Razorlight's self-titled second record has become that rarest of albums since its July release: a follow-up to a successful debut that has outsold its predecessor. It's also given the band a UK No 1 single, something that has eluded the likes of Franz Ferdinand, Keane and Coldplay.

"The week the single came out, the US essentially legalised torture with the detainee bill and there were three in-school shootings," says Borrell. "To have my entire country singing, 'There's trouble in America, there's panic in America,' is something that makes me quite proud. And yet people still come up to me and say, 'You've got a bit of a reputation, people think you're an a******.' I don't see how that adds up. That song was the most played song on the radio for weeks. It's a fact that people like listening to Razorlight."

Perhaps so, but Borrell's reputation has lingered. A couple of days later, I speak to Razorlight's drummer Andy Burrows, who says that when he meets people, "they'll ask, 'Is Johnny a d****ead? Is he a w*****?' I tell them he's a frontman of a band. It's not a normal thing to do and he does a bloody good job of it. It takes a special type of person to captivate an audience the way he can. But I'll also tell them that as a human being he really is a lovely guy."

Burrows joined Razorlight when the band's original drummer left shortly before the first album was released. Since then, he's become well-versed in Borrell's volatile side, to the point where the pair had a much-reported scuffle in October. "Oh that was nothing," says Burrows, "but yeah, he can definitely annoy the crap out of me, and I certainly don't agree with a lot of what he says and does. But he's like a modern-day Iggy or Jagger, somebody who works a crowd and winds people up. That's what I look for in a frontman and he's amazing at it. Obviously, that can be hard work when you're in the middle of a long tour. But, to be honest, for the last few months he's been a total pleasure to be around."

Burrows came into Razorlight through an open audition and has become a crucial part of the band. As well as improving the atmosphere within it - he's the middle ground between Borrell and Swedes Björn Agren and Carl Dalemo - he has contributed much to the songwriting process; both America and new single Before I Fall to Pieces were written half by Burrows and half by Borrell.

"The way this band works at the moment, me and Andy are the lungs," says Borrell. "It's so important that we're both breathing. See, when I'm going, we have drive and we believe we can make the greatest music ever. And when Andy's breathing it's f***ing great fun to do it. So if I stop, well, it's a laugh, but we're not going anywhere. And if Andy stops, we still know we can be the greatest band in the world, but it's gonna be f***ing miserable achieving it."

Right now, it seems both those lungs are pumping happily away. "I'm a bit cautious, because this band is definitely a rollercoaster and I don't doubt we'll have difficult times again in the future," says Burrows, "but, yeah, at the moment things are awesome."

That leaves Razorlight in a better position to realise Borrell's lofty ambitions. And while he might be a calmer and happier man than he was, as Burrows puts it, "he's still got his eyes set on the stars".

Borrell wouldn't deny it. "I'm going in exactly the same direction as I was when I sat down with the NME and said I was a genius," he says firmly. "I still know exactly where I'm heading. The only difference is that, right now, it's an absolute joy getting there.

Superjay · December 8, 2006

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