The Life of Brian

Brian McFadden is getting tattooed. I can’t see it but, from several hundred miles away, I can hear the incessant buzzing of the needle. It’s a Monday evening and I’m sitting in my house in Galway, all prepped-up for a phone interview with the former Westlifer about his debut solo album Irish Son, but unfortunately it’s not happening.

“Sorry man, but he’s actually getting a tattoo done at the moment,” his tour manager Paul Higgins explains down the line. “It’s kind of unscheduled. Would you mind doing this tomorrow instead?”
The following day I ring again at the agreed hour. “He’s got a TV show that’s just come up,” Higgins apologises. “Would you mind doing this tomorrow?” Wednesday, there’s something else: “Would you mind doing this tomorrow?”
I was beginning to think McFadden was avoiding me. In many ways, I wouldn’t blame him. As I chased the interview, the background scenery grew increasingly ugly. Barely a day passed without some kind of muckraking Brian or Kerry story in the tabloids. She was back seeing her ex-boyfriend Dan Corsi. He was seeing singer Delta Goodrem (with whom he duets on the album). They were going to get back together. They were never going to get back together. She was hitting the clubs. He was going mad on booze and coke. And so on. All in all, it must have been a busy week for Max Clifford, the publicist the estranged couple still share.
It wasn’t just his broken marriage making the headlines. His record company were forced to withdraw the promotional video for his new single ‘Irish Son’ because of complaints from St. Fintan’s CBS, who claimed that although their school was identified in the video, McFadden had never actually gone there. Some of his former classmates at the school he had actually attended – St. David’s in Artane – denounced the singer’s lyrical claims of having been beaten by the Christian Brothers.
Eventually, after much discussion, it was agreed that we’d meet face-to-face in Belfast on Saturday. Then that was changed to London on Monday. Finally, Belfast on Sunday – but they wanted me to go to his gig in the Empire on Saturday night. This was fine until I learned from the Galway Advertiser that McFadden was actually going to be in Galway on Saturday morning to open a new HMV. “I live in Galway,” I explained to the record company. “Why can’t I just meet him there?”
“Sorry, but he doesn’t have a spare minute,” they explained. “He’s getting a helicopter to Belfast immediately after the HMV opening.” “Well, can I at least hitch a ride in the chopper?” “Sorry – there’s no room!” (I swear I could see the fucking helicopter from the train window as I set off on the gruelling six hour journey to Belfast!).
That night, making a mockery of all the planning, I accidentally bump into him in the lift of the Belfast Hilton. He hadn’t expected to see me, and looks a little guarded and uncomfortable, but still kindly offers hotpress a lift to the venue (sadly, it’s a bus rather than the chopper). As we ride there, we chit-chat about Franklin, the band he’s managing, and The Vocal Lab, a new studio he’s set up in Dublin. We also talk a little about Belfast as it passes by the window.
“I’ve had some mad times in Belfast,” he tells me. “The last time I was here with Westlife about twenty of us went to this fucking mad gay bar. It was fucking nuts!”
Then he suddenly looks me square in the eye and asks, “So what do you think of me album?” All heads on the bus turn towards your hotpress correspondent, who replies honestly: “It’s not really my kind of music but I think it’s alright – better than Ronan Keating’s.” This seems to satisfy him.
The Empire is stuffed with a largely female audience, mostly in their mid-twenties. The gig – which is being filmed for a DVD documentary – is a pretty much note-perfect straight run-through of the album. “This is what I’ve always dreamed about,” he announces at one point, “just me and me songs!” He plays for about forty minutes and then disappears – no encore. It’s more professional than remarkable, but the crowd have no complaints.
The next day the time and venue change a couple of times but we eventually get together in a darkened corner of the Precious Bar. McFadden looks tired, but not beleaguered, and chainsmokes throughout.

OLAF TYARANSEN: You were getting a tattoo done when I rang you on Monday. Can I have a look at it?
BRIAN McFADDEN: Sure, no problem [pulls up sleeve to reveal the words ‘Sometimes Life Breaks In Mysterious Ways’ tattooed in gothic script on his left arm]. It’s a lyric taken from ‘Sorry Love Daddy’. It makes sense. To me it does anyway. With my fucking life!
I see that some mad Englishwoman has had the faces of the four remaining members of Westlife tattooed onto her back. Were you upset that you weren’t included?
I was fucking delighted for her that I wasn’t. Ha, ha! She’d have had my old, ugly, fat head on her back.
It’s been almost eighteen months since we last met and, I’ve got to say, you do look like a totally different person.
Well, I’m 24 now. I think everyone, when they get to that 21 – 24-year-old stage, you go through massive changes. In every sense – physical and mental. That’s probably why. But it’s mad what a haircut and a beard can do for you, isn’t it?
You’re living in a bit of a cartoon world at the moment, aren’t you?
Yeah, it’s fucking wild. Really wild!
How are you handling it all?
Write songs. Work harder. Try and toss all of my... [pauses]. Em, I’ve had two lives for six years. I’ve had my work life, or my media life, which was obviously Westlife. And then I’ve had my private life. Now my private life is just gone, so I’m just kinda throwing anything that’s left into the work life, just push that on as hard as I can. Just take no time off.
You actually went back to Dublin last night after the show, didn’t you?
The only reason I went to Dublin last night was to play football this morning. And that was a clear my head thing, just get back and see my mates and stuff. I was supposed to stay here and do all this all day, but I said, ‘No, fuck it, I’ll go back and see the lads, play a bit of football and get a bit of fresh air’.
Do you keep healthy generally?
Em ... no [ignites a cigarette]. Ha, ha! Said with a cigarette! No, I used to. Up until about six weeks ago, I did. I was very conscious of my diet. I was doing the Atkins Diet, so I was really conscious of that. I was training every other day, playing football, doing all that kind of thing. But then I just got so busy, I just don’t have time anymore. I don’t have time to watch what I eat. Just whatever I can fucking eat, I get it into me.
You’re in a bit of an unusual position career-wise at the moment – coming out of the boyband world and trying to get credibility as a serious artist ...
It’s weird because I’m actually not trying to get any credibility. I think a lot of people are expecting that. Because I wrote my own album, and because I’ve talked about serious issues on the album rather than just generic love songs, people automatically go, ‘Oh, he must be looking to be a credible artist’ and all this and that. I’m actually not.
So what are you doing?
It’s just that that’s what I like doing. That’s the music I’ve always liked singing – that style. And lyrically I’ve always wanted to write about interesting things. I never found it interesting writing about love, because every fucker does it every day. I think when you write a love song now, it just means nothing because everybody’s written every possible line that can be written to describe love.
Did you ever try writing any non-generic songs for Westlife?
Yeah. I remember one of the first songs I ever wrote for Westlife was called ‘The Crying Girl’ – and it was about a girl committing suicide. It was going on the Westlife album until I explained to Simon Cowell what it was about. He said, ‘There’s no way that’s going on the album – 13-year-old girls don’t wanna hear about that! They wanna hear you singing to them that you’re in love with them!’
So I’ve always liked to be ... not dark, but just to do different emotions in songs.
You’ve really laid your soul bare on this album, and a lot of the songs are obviously autobiographical. For example, there’s a song about screwing up in your relationship – which I took to be directly about that much publicised blow-job on your stag night.
Yeah, ‘Be True To Your Woman’ – that’s the one about fucking up. I’m being personal but I’m not trying to use it, or fake the emotion, to make the song more passionate or more controversial or anything. It’s more about me just ...[pauses and stubs out cigarette].
I’m only 24, you know, and over the last six years the things I’ve gone through in my personal life is more than most people go through until they’re 40. But I’ve learnt so much from everything that’s happened to me that I just thought, rather than just bitch about it like ... I actually hate using this guy’s name because I’m sick of it, but when Robbie Williams writes a song about something bitter, he’s always complaining and going, ‘Isn’t it terrible what’s happened to me?’ or, ‘Isn’t it terrible that I did this, did that and got messed up on drugs’ and all that. And that was something I never wanted to be associated with – being bitter about things.
So I tried to take everything that I’ve ever fucked up and done wrong and make a positive thing out of it. So that song was about that, just saying, ‘Look, I fucked up! I got a blow-job off a lap-dancer on me stag night and it ended up eventually leading to the collapse of my marriage’. So I’m saying look what happened to me. If you’ve found someone you want to spend the rest of your life with, and you’re happy with them and you know they’re the one for you, don’t go fucking it up by having a one-night stand or letting lust take over.
Do you now regret getting married at 21?
No. If I hadn’t got married I never would have had Lily. My two kids are the most important thing in my life. But at the end of the day, I mean, what’s getting married? When you fucking think what it is, it’s a bit of paper. I went to a church and signed a bit of paper that says I’m married. Nothing changed in my life after the day I got married. We were living together and we had a child already. We lived like a married couple anyway, so the only difference getting married meant was actually signing a bit of paper that made it official. And then when we break up, you have to separate financially and all that kind of stuff. But it’s all irrelevant. To me, getting married was the right thing because, as far as I was concerned, I was already married anyway.
Is it going to cost you a lot of money to extricate yourself from the marriage?
Not really. The way I see it is I made a lot of money from Westlife, but I made a hell of a lot more money – and it’s kinda been the downfall of my marriage – as part of a married couple. With the Hello magazines and all that. The amount of money me and Kerry made as a couple, as a fucking product. So I could never say that ... I mean, we’ve separated and we do have to separate our money financially and split it in half, but she is a massive part of a lot of the money I made – because we made it as a couple. So I don’t want that money anyway because, being honest with you, it’s a huge part of why we’re not together now. Using your marriage for something different than just love and elation can be your downfall.
The tabloids seem to be almost trying to goad you into something at the moment...
It’s horrible, it’s fucking mingin’, because at the end of the day it is my private life. But I can’t sit here and say anything about it, because we fucking modelled our life around the media – around the two of us being in the papers and making money off it. So how can I turn around now and go ‘Oh, it’s wrong’? If I pushed myself on the media for long enough to make money off it, when it falls apart you have to be able to accept that you’re the one that pushed it there in the first place. It’s not their fault.
I could’ve avoided it. Look at Mark Feehily from Westlife. You never see a story about Mark. Any girlfriends he’s ever had, you’d never see a picture of them anywhere. He just keeps his whole private life to himself. You never read a story about Mark Feehily – and that was his decision. And the media leave him alone. But I didn’t. Anything I ever had, I always pushed it out to better myself.
Do you regret all that now?
Again, I don’t regret anything. You can’t regret things in life. If you regret things, you’d just end up sitting there fucking... you know, you could spend your whole life regretting. So at the time it felt right. And I didn’t have that much money when I got offered, for example, my wedding. I sold my wedding pictures. My wedding cost me £400,000. And I didn’t have £400,000, to be honest. So the money from Hello magazine paid for me wedding. So I got to have the most amazing wedding ever, and they paid for it. So at the time, it just makes sense. But now, maybe if I could go back and change it, maybe I wouldn’t have, but, as I say, everything happens for a reason.
When’s the last time you cried?
I got upset just after I broke up with Kerry – over the kids. You know, it was really weird because it was more that my family were getting upset. My mam and dad were very, very upset about it – especially my dad – because it was more about the kids moving to England than being away from them. Because me mam and dad, whenever me and Kerry were working, they had them, so they were like their children as well. So it really did hit them hard. And when I seen how upset they were, that really upset me.
When I interviewed Westlife in London last year, you were the only band member who stayed up drinking late in the hotel bar after the gig. Was there a separation growing between you and the guys at that stage?
Not at all. Jesus! I probably just wanted a drink and they didn’t. You know, if the Westlife boys saw me now they wouldn’t fucking believe it. This week, I stopped drinking on Monday. I go through periods where I stop drinking, but I stopped on Monday so me voice will be alright for the gigs. I’ve cut down on cigarettes just so me voice will be alright. And I never used to give two flying fucks! Like, I’m doing fucking gigs in nightclubs. The night before Lansdowne Road, I went out on the piss until six o’clock in the morning and I could barely sing. I could barely talk the next day.
Did that ever cause rows?
No. We were all the same. It was like there was five people, you know. If I can’t sing tomorrow, it’s not that much of a deal. There’s four other people and we’d all cover for each other. But now, being on me own, I don’t think they’d believe how dedicated I am to this. The things I do for my voice is fucking mad. Like I smoke 40 to 60 cigarettes a day. And the day of a gig, I’ll only smoke less than 20. If they saw me now, they’d just be shocked. Ha, ha!
I was unhappy a lot of the time, and they knew that, but they never thought I’d go to the extreme of leaving. It was probably because of when I left. They were just about to start a massive tour. Even though they only ended up doing England and Ireland, but we had put tickets on sale for a world tour. We were going to Europe, South America, Asia. It was a big, big money deal and I walked out two weeks before it went out. So they were definitely surprised that I left that early.
Do you still talk to Louis?
Oh yeah – more than ever. Louis always keeps in touch with me just to see how I’m doing. He rings me more about my personal life. He used to only ring me about work and we’d have a laugh about work and stuff, but now he rings me about my personal life, to see if I’m alright. He’s a good guy, Louis.
You’ve had a pretty full-on life for the last six years.
Well, I don’t know life any other way. That’s why it’s confusing for me now. I’m kind of really lonely now because I don’t have that contact with Kerry that I used to have. I don’t have someone to share everything with. Like, just before we broke up, kind of in the closing period of our marriage, I remember the day I got Number One in England – which was like one of the momentous moments of my life – and there was nobody there. I was sitting in the house on my own and Paul came around, my tour manager. And I remember him saying to me the next day that he’d never seen me so sad in my whole life.
I was just sitting there and he told me I got Number One, we got the phone call from England, and I was like, ‘Great – that’s brilliant’ [shrugs], and then I went ‘See you later’. It was twelve o’clock in the afternoon and I just went to bed and slept all day. So that’s kind of where I’m at at the moment. I’m working to achieve everything I can but then, when I’m achieving it, I don’t care because I’m just ...
Like, for me, last night was a defining thing for me because it was the first time it was just meself on stage, singing me own songs. I really, really enjoyed that last night. Then when I came off and I got in the car and I was just like, ‘I’ve nobody to tell’. I’d nobody to ring and say, ‘I did it and it was this or that’. And that was weird. But at the same time, I’ve never had a personal life. Even though I was married with kids, it was all happening on the road.
Did you ever have a long-term personal relationship before Kerry?
Never. Three months. And that wasn’t a relationship. And that was pretty much what me and Kerry had. Which is, I might’ve seen that person seven or eight times in that three months. So she was definitely the first person that was long-term in my life in any way. And we got engaged after three weeks! Ha, ha!
Are you a romantic?
I was, but I’m not anymore. Not at all. I lost all my passion for romance after I got married probably. I dunno why. I probably just got drained. I dunno what it is. When I met Kerry first, my God, I was the most romantic person. The things I used to do. And then I just got to a stage where I lost all the passion to want to be romantic to somebody.
Are you sexually driven?
Not since I broke-up with Kerry. I’ve no interest anymore. And I can’t believe it. I don’t mean this in a disrespectful way to anyone but, when you’re married, and I’m sure every man goes through it ...Em, I made me one mistake on me stag night, but I’ve never been unfaithful to Kerry since we were married. I made that one mistake before I got married. But when you’re married, you see your mates going out and stuff, you see single lads around you pulling birds and all. And you’re just like, ‘Jeez, I’d love to be single for a month, just to go out and pull birds and stuff’. And I’ve been officially single now for nearly three months and I haven’t even kissed another girl. When I go out, there’s loads of girls coming over because they all know I’m single now and they all want a piece of the fucking celebrity action. They all wanna be the girl in the paper.
That’s the problem really, though, isn’t it? If you shag anybody, it’s gonna be all over the press the next day.
That doesn’t bother me. That doesn’t matter now. If I shag a girl – so what? It’s like, I’m a single guy. But I’m really not interested. There’s girls coming over and I’ve just no interest in them, like. I thought to myself, ‘Oh, when I’m single, I’ll fucking go out and I’ll be shagging everything and I’ll be pulling all over the place’. But I’m literally just... [shrugs]. I think I’m bored. I’d rather go and have a bit of crack with the lads. I’m not really interested in pulling the birds.
What kind of people are ‘the lads’? I’m sure you’ve got plenty of yes-men around you, but do you have any no-men?
I’ve no yes-men. That’s the thing. I got rid of all them when I left Westlife. That’s why I kept my team as literally just Paul and Ben. Paul will punch me and call me a ‘fucking eejit’ if he thinks I’m fucking up. And Ben’s the same. Ben’s my hair-stylist but he’s a lot more than that. He’s so focused on my career as well, and he’s not afraid to say to me, ‘You know you’re being a wanker now’. I’ve no yes-men around me. I didn’t want that. Had it in Westlife, we’d so many fuckers around us saying, ‘Whatever you want, I’ll sort it out’. These guys will say to me, ‘No, you’re a cunt. It’s twelve o’clock and you’ve a gig in the morning so you’re going to bed now! Full stop!’ And I listen to them.
And then I’ve got Mark as well. Mark worked with me for the whole time I was recording my album. Mark’s me best mate and he’s in the industry as well. He manages Franklin with me. He used to manage Fifth Avenue, remember that band? So he knows me well, he’s my best friend. He worked with me for a few months of recording the album and then he went back to Franklin, and Paul came on board. So he now comes, especially since I broke with up Kerry, on the road now and again, for about a week.
You co-wrote some of the songs with Guy Chambers. How was he to work with?
It was amazing. With everyone else I’ve ever written with before I started me solo album... cos I used to collaborate with other writers to write songs for other artists. Like, I’ve had loads of songs out in Europe and stuff. Cos I always meet these Swedish people or German people and, if I’m doing a gig or something, the next day we’ll go to their studio and just write a song in a couple of hours – and they always fucking get dished out to Pop Idol or something like that. So I’ve collaborated with loads of writers but it was always generic and on-the-spot kinda stuff.
Whereas with Guy, I remember the first day I went in with him and we wrote ‘Real To Me’, it was really therapeutic. We had a chat for about an hour-and-a-half first about what we were gonna talk about. He said to me, ‘We’re in the same boat. I worked with Robbie, and I toured with Robbie, and that was my whole life. I’ve got kids at home. We’d be in Germany doing concerts and my kids at home and I’d be missing them. So we’re in exactly the same boat’. So we had so much in common and we had a great discussion about it.
The thing with Guy was he didn’t want to be writing lyrics for me, he wanted me to write the lyrics but instead of the two of us sitting there and doing it word for word like you do with some writers – try this line, try that line – he would just let me keep writing, writing. And he would kinda then say, ‘You’re going a bit too far there’ or ‘Not enough there’. So he kind of guided me with the lyrics. Which was great. Cos you get a lot of pushy writers who are saying ‘Do this line’ or ‘Do that line’. He was more just carrying me and then pushing me to the side if I went overboard. And that’s what I needed.
‘Sorry Love Daddy’ is a really heavy song.
That is probably the one song on the album that is ...[pauses]. How me and Guy work, we’re like a couple. There’s no who did this or who did that, we just go in and whatever comes out comes out. And it’s quite weird because I wrote that song on guitar and ... Em, the album was completely finished, it was done. This was on the Monday and it was going to be mastered on the Wednesday. And I was completely happy with it. And I think it was two weeks after I broke up with Kerry. And I needed to just say something.
And my manager is looking after these people called The Location, who’re these big Swedish producers, and they asked me to go over and do a day’s writing with them. I didn’t wanna do any more writing because as far as I was concerned me album was done. But I agreed to fucking go to Sweden anyway – more to go out nightclubbing in Stockholm, you know, it’d be fucking great. So I went over and we started writing and I said, ‘You know, I need to write a song about my break-up and about my kids’. So we started writing a song and, to be honest, it was shit. The idea was nice originally but then it turned into this fucking pop song, proper Swedish fucking key changes and all that. And I just thought, ‘I really don’t wanna do this’.
So they went for a dinner break and I went through into one of the studios, and there was an old guitar there. And it had the weirdest tuning I’d ever heard before – there were three D notes in the tuning, really fucking weird. And I picked it up and started strumming it. And I just sat there for about three hours playing it. I had no melodies, no ideas and no lyrics. But I put down something and it was stuck in me head.
The next day I was back in London. I had to repair a lyric on ‘Be True To Your Woman’ – I sang a wrong word or something stupid so they wanted me to repair it. So I went in and I said to Guy, ‘Do you mind if we don’t? We’ll just take that out and write a song instead’. He said OK, so I played him the idea I’d been doing. So Guy took the guitar and he started doing it and I started singing this melody.
Guy started adding some ideas and he said, ‘What do you wanna sing about?’ I said, ‘I have the idea and I want it to be really simple’. And I put the lyrics down really quickly. Then I went in and put down the guitar part and he put another one over it. So we had two acoustic guitars. Then I went in and did the lyrics. I sang it once – I wasn’t even sure if they’d fit the melody – done it and walked out of the studio. And literally that afternoon, we got a cello in and put down a cello part. And that was the song mastered. It was the rawest production of a song I’ve ever done in me whole life.
There’s been a lot of controversy over your new single ‘Irish Son’, with your record company having to withdraw the video because St. Fintan’s school – which you’ve never attended – was identified in it.
You know what, I wouldn’t even bother talking about that. That’s the most stupid thing ever. Literally, I shot it outside a fucking community centre in Sheriff Street, it’s got nothing to do with the song, and the art department just fictionalised the name ‘St. Fintan’s’.
But there is a St. Fintan’s!
I know that now. Ronan Keating went there! Ronan rang me about it. But I didn’t even know there was a St. Fintan’s until fucking Ronan told me about it! And then I found out about the fucking principal. It’s stupid. And they’re getting great publicity out of it. But St. Fintan’s had nothing to do with me – I never went there, Ronan Keating went there. But I just hope for their sake that this massive fucking ‘We’re all innocent’ publicity that nothing ever happened in that school, doesn’t backlash on them, and people don’t start coming out.
Did anything physical ever happen to you in a CBS?
It did but, you know, I’m not actually gonna talk about it now because I went to St. David’s Christian Brothers for one year and I definitely got a slap off ... I can think of one occasion where I did get a slap from a Christian Brother. There was a couple of occasions. And some of my friends as well – several occasions. But I’m never gonna mention names. I know people came out and said there wasn’t even Christian Brothers in David’s at the time, but there definitely was. I could name them but I wouldn’t because it’s just gonna be ... .
I’m not lowering down to their level. They know what happened. If they want to take any action against me, I’ve no bother then saying who it is. I just think they’re being very, very foolish. Because at the end of the day, it’s one lyric out of my song and they’re the ones making the issue out of it. I didn’t make an issue out of it. I just used one lyric in my song saying it was a bit wrong, and they’re making a big fucking rigmarole about it. And I just think that they’re opening a can of worms. Especially St. Fintan’s. No-one even noticed that St. Fintan’s was the name on that fucking school [in the video]. So I just hope that people that did go to St. Fintan’s years ago, that maybe something happened to them and they’ll now come forward. So it could be opening a can of worms for them.
I know you’re a big Kurt Cobain fan. Do you feel that you have to torture yourself in order to produce great songs?
No, I don’t think so. I think the reason my album sounds the way it does, and lyrically it is the way it is, is because of my situation – because of how my life was when I started writing it. And as well, most of the album was written while I was going through a three-month period of alcoholism. That’s pretty much the main bulk of the album.
What’s alcoholism to you?
I was drinking every day. Because all I was doing was making an album. It wasn’t like I had to do TV shows or anything like that. So all I was doing was I was getting up in the morning in my house – Kerry was away working, the kids were off – and I was starting off with a glass of straight vodka just to wake me up. Then I’d have a bit of breakfast and start writing. Go for lunch down to the pub – have a pub lunch, a few pints. Then finish off in the evening, finish off whatever we were doing, and then it was out that night. We’d end up drinking back in the bar in me house until six in the morning.
One of the papers ran a story last week saying you were a coke-head.
No. I’m not a coke-head. Fuck that!
Have you ever tried it?
No, Jesus. No. That’s the one thing I’ve always been totally against. Because so many people around me do it, and I’ve just seen how it’s fucked them up.
Come on Brian – you obviously like to party, you’ve got millions in the bank and the music industry is awash with coke ...
Yeah, but the thing is there’s a reason though. I’ve seen so many people close to me do it and I see what happens when they do it. For me, looking at them, it’s the level they go from of energy and excitement. And that’s what I’m like. When they’re off their heads and I’m with them, I’m on the same buzz as them because I’m like that. When I have a few beers, I’m hyper. But I don’t know how to explain it. When I see them they do things that they normally wouldn’t do, but they’re things I would do anyway. So I say to myself, ‘Shit, if I was doing that shit, I’d probably be in a completely different world’.
And I’m a very addictive person anyway. I got addicted to coffee after I stopped drinking. Proper addicted. Like I was drinking nine or ten cups of coffee a day. Ridiculous!
Have you ever tried cannabis?
Yeah, I’ve smoked. Like, I spent a lot of time in Amsterdam and stuff like that. Which again is probably gonna cause shite – people saying I’m this, that or the other – but, you know, when you go to Amsterdam it’s legal and you’re not really breaking any laws [shrugs].
Do you believe in God?
You know, I do believe in God but ... Actually, I was being interviewed for this documentary earlier and they asked me the same question and I said, ‘I do believe in God’. And then after they stopped filming, I was asking myself, ‘Actually do I believe in God? Is there somebody up there?’ And like, I don’t know whether I believe in God because of fear, in case there is a God and I become his enemy if I don’t believe in him. You know that kind of thing? It’s like the same as you say you believe in ghosts just in case you say you don’t – and they fucking come and sort you out!
What gets you through your darkest nights?
Music. That sounds really shallow but it is music at the moment that keeps me going through.
Who are you listening to at the moment?
It’s really weird but through the whole period that I was breaking up with Kerry I listened to Keane’s album. And I literally listened to the album every day in the car. I actually wrote a song called ‘Cigarettes, Coffee And Keane’ because that’s what was getting me through every single day – smoking cigarettes, drinking lattes and listening to Keane’s album. No matter where it was – a dressing room, a car, my bed at night, first thing in the morning, it was just constantly on. I’ve been listening to a lot of Jeff Buckley as well.
Do you want to get back with Kerry?
No. No, I don’t. I’m in the right place now and I know what I want. And she will be happy soon, but it’s like ... [pauses and lights cigarette]. It’s a horrible way of comparing it, but I compared what happened over the last few months to a toothache. You know, sometimes you’ve got a toothache and it’s really hurting but you just keep going with the pain.
I’m not saying she was a toothache, I’m just saying my situation was a toothache. Where you know that this is just going to get worse and you’re going to be really unhappy with this pain. And you know that breaking-up is going to the dentist to get it pulled out. That’s gonna be the most fucking painful thing you’re ever gonna do, but in the long run you’ll end up not having that pain anymore. That’s kind of what this is like. I knew when we broke-up it was gonna be so fucking hard and it’s going to be a long time before it becomes easy and happy again. And it is only two-and-a-half months.
Do you have a motto in life?
Live life for today, because you never know what’s gonna come tomorrow.