Man And Boy

I m confident about what I do and I m sure that my music will prevail through anything else. And if me first album doesn t, me second will, and if me second doesn t, me third will, and if me third doesn t, me fourth will, and I ll just keep goin . I ll continue on irrespective of what anybody thinks or says. I m not trying to impress the critics cos they ll never be impressed. And if people happen to like it, great, and if they don t like it, it s no big deal either. I mean, failure and success to me, I measure them in different ways. It s not about golden glorious number one albums - if that happens, brilliant, fantastic, but what it s about for me is writing songs.

It s the oldest quote in the book. It s the music that matters, man. We do it for ourselves. If anyone else likes it, it s a bonus. The kind of sincere but dog-eared cliches you usually dismiss out of hand unless they come from an old salt like Neil Young or Patti Smith, and even then you take em with a pinch of showbiz sherbet.

However, when such trad-rock manifestos are voiced by someone like Mikey Graham, a member of that quintessential manufactured group Boyzone, the ironies would seem to abound.
But then, whereas most reasonably well-off college-educated, late teen/20-somethings might nurture interests in art, literature, film or media studies, working class acts like Boyzone are often single-minded about music to the point of fundamentalism. It s the one quality they might share with, I dunno, Fugazi or Nirvana a pitbull doggedness, total tunnel vision. Music, like that other dirty business, boxing, has traditionally been the main escape route of daredevil proles living a hybrid of Catholic rebel sensibilities and staunch Protestant codes of No Surrender. In Irish pop lives, to corrupt Fitzgerald, there are no second acts, no contingency plans (cue the theme from Rocky). And unlikely as it may seem, spacecakes like Shane Lynch and Keith Duffy are more in sync with the spirits of Presley and the Rat Pack than any amount of Junipers, Junksters or even JJ72s.
So, I ll applaud the spirit but pass on the music. Mikey Graham s first solo single You re My Angel is a neat but nondescript MOR radio-rock plodder with a keyboard break that could ve been filched from Crowded House and a chorus undermined by a somewhat mediocre melody.
It s probably one of the better songs to emerge from the Boyzone camp in recent years, although that s something of a backhanded compliment given that, Westside aside, we re talking about one of the most banal pop acts ever to emerge from these shores.
But now Graham is planning to jump ship. And in chart terms, the leap he wants to make is notoriously tricky. Tough as it is for a boy band member to carve out a successful solo career it s even harder to establish credibility as a mainstream rock artist. Only Robbie Williams has managed that one in recent times, aided by his formidable skills as a showman, not to mention the financial backing of a hulking great marketing machine.
Furthermore, Mikey has just had a black sheep moment of Robbie proportions, an event which Shane Lynch s bouts of Tourette s, Puffy punch-ups and strip club escapades notwithstanding is rare enough on Planet Boyzone, given that they usually behave like groomed graduates from the Pat Boone school of decorum and deportment.
In the week before our interview, Mikey admitted to The Sun that he advocated the use of cannabis for medical purposes, but also that he liked to smoke, drink and get high after a concert. The backlash was immediate, with cut-price supermarket chain ASDA cancelling a string of appearances. The singer attempted damage limitation by ringing up the Marian Finucane show to clarify his comments, and to divert attention in the direction of You re My Angel .
A few days later, Sunday Independent journalist, TV personality and creator of crap novelty records Brendan O Connor accused Graham of generating cheap publicity in order to promote the single. Mikey, he wrote, is what used to be known as one of the grunts. Nobody knows exactly who he is or what he does or why he s in Boyzone. Most of us believe that he is secretly a mechanic. Launching a solo career was never going to be easy, but it could be easier with the creation of a media feeding frenzy.
Against this backdrop, Mr. Graham was definitely a cagey interview. You can argue that the cannabis controversy was a clear cut case of boomerang karma Louis Walsh s lust for publicity coming back to bite Mikey on the ass but you also sensed a genuine discomfort at all the extra-curricular hoo-ha. To add fuel to the fire, on the day of our interview it was reported that Stephen Gately s New Beginning single doubtlessly boosted by a Sky-high marketing campaign and big budget video was outselling Mikey s by 20,000 copies.

So, you can take the man out of Boyzone, but you can t take Boyzone out of the man. In person, Mikey Graham is largely without airs and graces, but it s the little things that remind you you re dealing with a pop star. Like his reluctance to pose for photographs on the street lest he be plagued by passers-by. Or the way he carefully but automatically signs an autograph for a girl of about seven. Or how he changes from one top into an almost identical but less rumpled model for the shots. Or the way he hardly blinks at his own image playing on MTV s Select. Upstairs, in the Bill Graham room in HQ, he orders a bottled beer and settles down to talk.
First off, I mention Brendan O Connor s allegations that the cannabis comments were a calculated attempt by Mikey to dirty up his image.
What was he saying? Mikey inquires, raising an eyebrow.
He didn t read it?
I don t bother.
It was pretty rough.
Was it? Y see, that s what annoys me. I was asked a question, I answered the question honestly, right? To quote the bible or whatever: Let he who is without sin cast the first stone . These people can write their stuff and blah-blah-blah, but the bottom line is why can t they all be truthful and stop making themselves out to be angelic?
Yet for all Mikey s protestations, there remains the unpleasant residue of Gary Barlow failing miserably to do a Robbie Williams with his drug confessions last summer.
That s not the kind of publicity I want, Mikey asserts. Music is all I really want to talk about. That was completely misconstrued. I was asked for my opinion on what I thought about the decriminalisation of cannabis purely and solely on medical grounds. I know some people with MS, my reply was, If it relieves them from their pain, so be it . Off the record, I was asked, Have you ever had one before yourself? and I stupidly said, Yeah, well, y know, whatever.
But still, it s only been three years since Brian Harvey of East 17 was made an example of what happens to teen-idols who come clean about their drug use. A seasoned pro like Mikey must ve known that there is no off the record .
Well no, I know that now, he replies. Believe it or not there s actually still more to learn about the business even after seven years in Boyzone. You see, the thing you gotta remember here is that I class myself as quite a responsible person. And a lot of the Boyzone fans are all in their 20s now themselves anyway, but there s still a majority out there who are quite influenced by maybe what we do or say. It would be very stupid and irresponsible of me to promote that kind of thing, I don t promote any kind of drugs, it s not something I m interested in. What I do with my life I do with my life, but I don t promote it and I don t want press around that, I want it around me music.

From the days of the infamous Late Late Show debacle, Ireland has always maintained a wickedly ambivalent relationship with Boyzone. The Fair-Play contingent which can claim showbiz insiders like Gerry Ryan amongst its number stand up for the band and say that the sometimes vicious criticism they sustain is unwarranted, that Ronan and the boys are light entertainers and shouldn t be beaten with the same yardstick used to judge, say, Radiohead.
On the other hand, there s a highly vocal element who instinctively, some might say irrationally, hate them with a passion. Not just the music, but the perceived aura of insipid plawmawsing that hangs over the group, a quality perceived as being endemic to the new breed of careerist, conformist young Irelander. The kind of corporate clones, it must be said, from whom Mikey Graham is furiously working to distance himself. Still, it can t be easy being disliked so intensely.
Yeah, but that exists for every artist, he reasons.
Hardly. Van Morrison or Bob Dylan don t experience that degree of loathing.
Well, okay, I m going to find that hard to do, because I m a fan of them. I think the bottom line is, if you truly love music, you realise that music means different things to different people, and though something may not be your cup of tea, you shouldn t slag it off or get personal about it.
Let s be honest here: Brendan O Connor s mechanic jibes were harsh but rooted in truth. In fact, Mikey was a qualified motor mechanic before he joined the group. He never looked at ease in Boyzone, always carried himself like a man ten years older than the others, a fact which may go some small way towards easing his transition into the realm of Serious Music (as if pop ain t as serious as hell, or Embrace don t sound utterly frivolous).
And, with respect, it s hard to imagine Keith or Shane or even Stephen claiming, I m inspired by feelings and emotions that are caused by things that I see in everyday life: it could be seeing your child born, it could be seeing a dead person lying in a coffin, seeing a bum on the street, seeing a rich man passing by, all kinds of stuff. The more one thinks on it, the less likely the prospect of Mikey returning to Boyzone on a full-term basis. Unless he gets stuck for money.
I ve not even thought about that, he claims. I ll cross that bridge when I come to it. I d imagine it ll be a bit strange, depending upon the success of the solo careers as well. I mean, I d like to think that by the end of my first album I ll start scratching the surface, but as far as I m concerned I m just gonna constantly put solo albums out. When Boyzone get back together we ll get back together for tours and stuff like that, maybe an album, but at the moment that s just on ice. All I can see at the moment is what I m doing now, and the Boyzone tour is just something in the distant future.
Boyzone at 30. The mind boggles. Yet in recent times there s been something a bit off about the fact that Mikey and Keith and Ronan, grown men with kids of their own, were singing to an audience largely composed of pre-adolescent girls whose sexuality was just beginning to assert itself.
Yeah, there was that alright, he concedes. But I dunno, that s just the way my path in life went.
I ask him if he ever looks out at the hormonal hordes and feels like a bit of a pervert. His eyes narrow, and the temperature plummets a few degrees.
No, no, not a pervert, no.
Okay, maybe a bad choice of word. But at least a little uncomfortable.
Well, maybe a bit musically disorientated probably is the right phrase, he says diplomatically, before returning to the party line about his solo career. When I push the line of questioning about underage audiences, he cuts me off with this:
I d have to disagree with you because the Boyzone audience now is not young girls, the audience is an average of 20-35. It s easier to deal with because you ve got adults there so at least you know that they re there and listening to what you re doing.
This contradicts what Mikey was saying a few minutes earlier in regards to the drugs question, but by now I m badgering the witness, so I let it go. After all, you gotta see it from their side: there can be no greater PR nightmare than to try and maintain a clean cut image around a bunch of young men in their early 20s, all suffering from tour bus cabin fever and hotly pursued by wailing jailbait. One would imagine the regime was pretty strict.
There was no regime whatsoever, Mikey declares. Boyzone would not have lasted two years if there had been a regime involved.
Well, if there was, Stephen would ve been up the creek as soon as his sexuality was made known.
That s true, but in regard to Stephen s sexuality, he didn t stay in , so to speak, for all those years because of a regime, he just wasn t ready himself. It was nothing to do with that, that he didn t announce that he was gay. And I think it took its natural course there, it was the right time when he did come out. But in regard to the five of us in general, we like to be ourselves, we like to work hard and we like to play hard and have a bit of a laugh too. And if anybody had tried to contain us in any way, it just wouldn t have lasted, cos we re too strong characters. We thankfully were bright enough kids, we knew what we had to do to be successful, so we didn t need anybody else telling us that.
Has the personal relationship between the members changed now the Boyzone machine has been temporarily dismantled?
No, I wouldn t say so at all, Mikey responds. It s always been the same. You gotta remember, I don t know if you ve ever been in a band or anything like that yourself, but if you have and you ve toured intensely with other people, even your best friends, there comes a time when you need your space. And after six or seven years doing that, we just decided that we needed to refresh things, y know? But with regard to relationships between each other, the friendships, nothing s changed there at all. I mean I wouldn t be on the phone every day of the week to the other guys, I d see them every couple of months or whatever, keep in contact that way. Sure you see them on the television anyway! I know what everybody does!

One Boyzone member Mikey will see a lot of on the television over the next few weeks is Stephen Gately. Graham undoubtedly sees the inevitable rivalry angle as unfair, given that his bandmate has the advantage of an established solo identity and the might of a major label. Mikey on the other hand, claims to have traded the big bucks for autonomy.
It s a David and Goliath situation, he reasons. The big machine is there behind Stephen and behind Ronan and what have you, but I just wanna make good songs, y know; it s not that I have to go out there full of glitz and glamour.
The papers suggested that he snubbed Stephen s launch.
More rubbish, he scoffs. I was here in Ireland doing promo and me own video and the whole lot. I wasn t even aware there was a party goin on. Whoever organised it never gave me a phone call. Just the usual, blown out of proportion, you know the way it goes, occupational hazard.
If, as Mikey claims, the band are still tight, in recent times it s become apparent that the relationship between Louis Walsh and several of the Boyz has begun to look somewhat strained. Certainly Louis pulled some stunts that ve rubbed the band up the wrong way in the past, including the Boyzone To Split ruse to boost the Christmas gigs at The Point. Worse again, he s even referred to Mikey as the passenger in Boyzone.
I m glad you mentioned that, Mikey says.
So what s his response?
Well, my music will prove itself.
I put it to the singer that comments such as the passenger one hardly constitute good managerial strategy. He doesn t say anything, but instead gives me a thumbs- up gesture. I note this for the benefit of the tape recorder, then move on to the subject of the escalating boy and girl band epidemic, now reaching critical chart mass.
It s all a bit swamped isn t it? Mikey agrees. Put them in boxes and export them.
Does he feel any pang of responsibility for these musical abominations?
It wasn t my fault, I didn t start it off! he laughs. I was only asked if I wanted to be in a band! Who would you blame for that, who was the first boy band do you think? The Beatles! Blame them. I had nothing to do with it!
Yet, all joking aside, the future of the teen tycoon industry has been discussed in pretty grave tones over the past few months, not least in Niall Stokes intro to the most recent Hot Press yearbook, which drew parallels between the boy/girl groups and the showband dinosaurs, who died out because they traded in largely imitative forms of music. In effect, a covers industry, just like Boyzone.
Whose fault was that? Mikey grins. Was Louis involved there, was he?!
No, but it s about the only pop pie he s kept his fingers out of. Mind you, there are rumours afoot that Walsh is planning to develop a catalogue of material written by Irish songwriters, just one of the measures required to keep the whole hit house from tumbling down. It s rumblings like these, plus occasional nuggets like the Samantha Mumba single, that suggest hope on the horizon. Then again, it may be a case of too little, too late.
I would thoroughly agree with you there, Mikey says. I think that unfortunately this country I better be careful how I word this not that it s lacking talented people, but for some reason the industry here doesn t seem to be promoting the talent of writers and producers and stuff like that. The talent is there, but it doesn t seem to be coming to the forefront so everybody seems to look across the water when they want a big time producer or writer. I mean, we have some of the world s best here, y know?
So did Boyzone ever consider covering a Jimmy MacCarthy or Mick Hanly or Christy Moore song?
No, it wouldn t have been right really for the whole image, would it? In all honesty. I d do it, but that s just my personal music taste.
I m not convinced. There s little real difference between McCarthy s MOR standards and Cat Stevens Father & Son . Indeed, there s a much thinner line between Ronan Keating and Paddy Casey than the latter might care to admit. I sense Mikey agrees with me here, but there s more to it than matters of musical taste. After all, any Boyzone members bright ideas regarding material must make it through a trade blockade patrolled not just by Louis Walsh, but by a team of producers, A&R men and backroom boys with their own publishing interests to protect.
Boyzone you have to remember, was a band and it was a business as well, Mikey maintains. It is a business. And at the end of the day, you have to be smart in business. You don t shoot yourself in the foot. You don t cut off the hand that feeds you. We knew we were in a position whereby we had the world at our feet in regard to the young girls and this, that and the other. You play to that, y know what I mean? That s what Boyzone was about. That s just the way that my path, musically, in life went.
And I think all of us interested in music who want to make it, we re all offered different things along the line, he continues, and you have to go where your career leads you. That may not always be in a direction where I ve done the Boyzone thing, had a great time. We ll be doing some more in the future, but now, I just wanna sit down and go, Right, all jokin aside, here s a bit of music for you, see what you think .
You re My Angel is out now on Public Records.