So the meek will inherit the Earth? On the eve of their Second Coming, Razorlight have set their sights even higher. Welcome back the kings of confidence.
It’s a warm sunny Friday afternoon and Clash is in a working men’s club in a leafy corner of Bethnal Green in London’s East End. We’re certainly not here for the décor, as quaint and faded as it is. No, today we are here to witness the making of the video for Razorlight’s welcome return to the spotlight, ‘In The Morning’, the first single and teaser for their new and long-awaited second album.
As we arrive, those already present are divided up into three rooms: the main room, where all the cameras and crew are working and filming; the extras room, where all the assembled dancers, extras and friends can mingle and find escape from the heat of the day; and the band room, where the stars of the show relax in the intimate surroundings of friends and colleagues. Carl Dalermo chugs on a lunchtime beer while challenging all around him for a game of pool. Björn Agren casually tries on various shirts from the rail of clothes for their selection in the corner. Andy Burrows is running excitedly from room to room with his little brother in tow, eagerly darting from friend to friend and wrapping his arm warmly around each one’s shoulders. Johnny Borrell is sitting in the corner, his hair being styled and make up applied as he stares into the mirror. He is resplendent in white, a dazzling presence that beams with confidence all day.
A banquet of pizzas, sandwiches and salads is laid on for the band room, and most of it is devoured or picked at throughout the day. At times, everyone vacates the room to go and watch proceedings in the main room – like when the baby-faced Graham Coxon-a-like with his shoes nailed to the floor contorts his body in the most flexible dance moves known to man, much to the delight of the attending females. This limited movement dance owes its origins, as Björn tells Clash later, to their slightly sozzled drummer. “It was at the Shepherds Bush gig,” begins the genial Swede, “everyone got really drunk backstage before the gig and everyone started dancing around really stupidly. Then Andy goes, “Hang on, why don’t we just dance where you don’t move your feet – it will look really silly”. Then we kind of had the Razorlight silly dance for a couple of weeks, then someone said, “Why can’t that be the video?””
After the dancing, it’s time for the band’s performance. Miming proficiently to the track, Andy’s drums come crashing in first until joined by the funk workout of Björn and Carl. Johnny leaps up from stage left, plugs in his guitar and steps to the microphone in time for his entry. This repeats again and again, but the energy of the four’s conduct never dwindles. The song is relentlessly contagious and always manages to light a spark with every take, while director Scott Lyon is worryingly unstressed by affairs. Finally, with a gap in their schedule, Björn and Carl take the opportunity to venture outside into natural sunlight and break some bread with Clash.
You kept yourselves busy after the first album, going everywhere and doing everything. Do you like that constant work?
Carl: Yeah. Being in this business, if you’re not busy things are probably not going too well. It’s good and bad. Of course I just wanna sit in my flat and watch DVDs with my girlfriend and stuff, but also of course I wanna do something with my life and what we’re doing now is perfect. So really the busier the better.
Björn: Yeah. What else is there to do? But that’s the thing, if you want to have some sort of platform to release music from for the next ten to fifteen years you’ve got to do the work when you’re still in your twenties, while you still physically can do it. That’s the idea at least. If we put five years of work into two years then hopefully we can chill out a bit more after that.
Surely though you relish the days off?
You’ve always got to make a brave record, and I always will.
Björn: Of course you always relish the days off, but I’m really good at not getting too stressed about things. For a while there, at the beginning, I tried to get some sort of gauge on what it is we were actually doing, like ‘what are we actually doing here?’ And after a while I realised it was completely pointless and I just gave up, just like ‘Fuck it. This is all a bit of fun. I’m just gonna enjoy it, have a good time and try to put some good music out and then not worry about what it means or what I’m doing’. You start thinking, ‘Oh my God, this is like living the dream, but then should I stop wanting for more? Or maybe this isn’t what I want…’ All that philosophical life stuff. So my attitude to life for the last couple of years is to roll with the punches. You have to be able to laugh at life, especially if you’re doing what we’re doing. It’s not real life. Real life is getting up in the morning, going to work, coming home from work, going to the pub and getting drunk – that’s real life; that’s normal life. What we’re doing here, I don’t know what it is.
How is the band working together as a unit?
Carl: I think we work together pretty well, it’s just a fucked up relationship you get when you have to be together all the time. When we’re rehearsing it’s fine, but when it’s not then it’s like work needs to get done so there’s always this pressure and it fucks up so you get tired of each other and you fight or whatever but, you know, it’s fine. I’m not scared of facing the next year and a half on the road with the other three.
Is Razorlight democratic?
Björn: Is it democratic? I dunno. I don’t know if anything is truly democratic. We all put our opinions in and then who comes out winning in the end is different. It depends on who shouts the highest and who makes the most fuss… which is always Johnny! (Laughs) But I think it’s more of a band album this one than the last one. We play a lot better together, but that’s what a year and a half of solid touring does to you. And of course Andy is a huge part of that as well.
You can hear that in the dynamics of the new songs; there are more intricacies. The first album had its loud bits and quiet bits, but this one seems to have more ups and downs.
Björn: I know. It’s quite funny, but that’s the kind of thing you learn as a band. It just kind of happened that way when we started playing the new songs. It’s really telepathic between the four of us; there’s nothing thought out or anything. With all the songs we just kind of went in and Johnny said ‘Here are the chords and this is the arrangement’, and then we just played it around for one day and all of a sudden you get all these little parts and crescendos and waves. Everyone in the band has got a really good feel for music, so there’s not one unnecessary note on the entire album. It all does something. If it’s a tiny little guitar chord in one bit, it adds to it. We just have really good taste, all four of us, and it really works. That’s the thing, there’s never been any instance where we’ve been like, ‘Look man, that fuckin’ bass line, it’s just cack. What are you doing? Fix it.’ Everything that everyone played fits. I’m actually surprised with what I’ve written for the album. I look back at it like, ‘Did I actually write that?’ There’s quite a few things where I’m thinking if someone else in a fuckin’ band wrote that and I heard it, I’d be kicking myself for not coming up with it first.
‘In The Morning’ has been going down a treat today, nobody is bored of it yet! That’s representative of the reception the new songs have had at recent live gigs – people seem to like them already!
Björn: Yeah, it’s great. I love it when my hunches are right! (Laughs) But I just had this gut feeling ever since we wrote them, like ‘This feels really good. I really like this’. And then of course you’re hoping that everyone will like it as well, then that’s the jackpot. The band like it, people like it, the record company like it, the manager likes it… And it’s great. It seems like every gig we’ve done where we’ve played the new songs it just seems really seamless. I really don’t notice which ones are the new ones and which ones are the old ones, apart from the fact that I don’t have to look at what I’m playing as much as on the old ones! I’m just really happy.
Back inside and work hasn’t stopped. Noel Fielding from The Mighty Boosh has turned up, looking majestic in black with the most impressive white platform boots ever seen this side of the 1970s. He’s not appearing in the video, he’s just here for moral support and to play table tennis with Johnny’s brother – he will later lose. Johnny, meanwhile, hasn’t had a spare moment since he got here – late, as usual. (“I delayed by an hour and a half today and I arrived twenty minutes before him,” laughs Björn. “The last time, I stalled for two hours and I arrived at exactly the same time as he did!”) It’s difficult to pin him down for a second, let alone enough time to catch up on the last two years of success and excess. With hope fading of a brief encounter and with angry locals demanding entry into their club in only a couple of hours, Clash leaves them all to get on with it and marches off into the evening with ‘In The Morning’ resounding endlessly through our merry minds.
A week later and it’s a splendid Sunday afternoon. Basking in the heat in a North London beer garden, Clash is nursing a godawful hangover in the company of Andy Burrows and his ice-cold pint. We idly chat in anticipation of Johnny showing up; inspired by a Sunday paper’s supplement, we discuss the individual coolness of The Beatles, concluding that George Harrison was always the coolest.
Andy’s not quite the new boy anymore (he replaced original drummer Christian Smith Pancorvo upon the release of debut ‘Up All Night’). He sits here today an integral part of the band – on the new album he has played right-hand man to Borrell, providing creative input on half the tracks including first three singles ‘In The Morning’ (and its B-Side, ‘What’s It All About’, written with friends aged 13), ‘America’ and the bracing ‘Fall To Pieces’.
Eventually Johnny strides over to our table, a little flustered. He’s parked his scooter outside and some kids are apparently trying to nick his helmet. Putting his keys on the table he returns outside to sort the situation out. “He’ll scare them off,” assures Andy. Upon his return he is noticeably more relaxed, his precious vehicle unharmed. On his way to the interview, it transpires, he got caught up in a mod rally where one rider nodded to him in a bid of alliance. Taking one look at his ‘England’ tattoos and the poncey hair drier he was riding, Johnny thought better than responding and sped off into the distance, leaving the baying pack in his dust.
In person, Johnny defies the arrogant tag he’s been lumbered with by lazy journalists; he’s at once charming and open, self-deprecating and bold. Above all else, he believes in Razorlight.
Are you ready for everything to kick off again in Razorlight world?
Andy: I can’t wait to get to the stage where I’m ready! (Laughs)
Johnny: Actually we’re in a very good space right now because the record is like just about totally finished. In three days it will be finished and we will be mastering it, which is…
Andy: Really exciting.
Johnny: …and somewhat terrifying. (Laughs) But that’s a good feeling! But the thing is, then obviously we’ve got touring coming up and TV and all that kind of stuff. What is it? When you’re not making a record it’s touring, TV and interviews. That’s all you do.
Andy: I love TV when we’re playing.
Johnny: I love the fact that we’ve been on TV. I like going to the pub after you’ve been on TV.
Andy: What’s not good about TV is idents and confession boxes and stuff like that when the band run off and leave me to do it. That was funny.
Johnny: That was a test. That was a test of your worth.
Did you pass?
Andy: Did I pass? No one saw it. No one gave a shit! (Laughs)
Johnny: It was like everyone else just said no. Sometimes you just have to say no to things.
Because you can’t be bothered?
Johnny: The thing that is weird at the moment is there’s so much information around with millions of TV channels and the Internet, there’s just loads and loads of stuff. The thing that I just get worried about is that there’s too much information, you know? I’m sure the Rolling Stones did loads of interviews but you sort of only remember like the big ones. You just get wary of too much stuff. It’s like this single’s coming out, so it’s like ‘We want four B-sides’. Fine, that’s what we’ve done in the past and I like that because it’s like a whole EP if you’re that interested. Then it’s like there’s an exclusive for iTunes and you’re like ‘Okay fine, that makes sense, I understand’, so it’s like 5 B-sides. Then you’ve got some exclusive video content for iTunes and then ‘Oh yeah, and if you’ve got any video stuff that you can stick on the album to make it a deluxe album so there’s an extra DVD on it…’ And you’re like…
“I thought we finished it a month ago?”
Johnny: Well yeah. What you want is you want ten tracks. This is our record: ten tracks. Listen to it. Or don’t. So I do get worried about that. You don’t want to go on every fucking TV show because that’s just like…
Andy: Overkill.
Are you worried about overkill?
Andy: No, we’ve got a good song. I’m not worried about it at all.
Johnny: I just think sometimes it’s a shame that bands can’t just be like one black and white shot, ten songs and who the fuck are they? I think, more than most, we do try and retain that sense of mystery, because I just think it’s better that way. You can go down the whole tabloid route and do all that kind of stuff and sell your soul if you want, but what’s the point?
Have you guys faced any criticism over decisions you’ve made or things you’ve done?
Johnny: I like criticism if it’s constructive in any way. You’re gonna get it right sometimes and sometimes you’re gonna get it really right and sometimes not so right, you know what I mean? It’s hard to take something in – I mean like on the last record, whatever criticism there was I seriously doubt if I noticed any of it. It’s kind of hard to when you’re selling shit loads of albums, you’re going round touring the world having a great time and you’re 25 years old and you’re on top of the world. It’s like, ‘Oh that guy doesn’t like my band? Well fuck him!’ And I still feel like that you know, because it’s like… fuck him! (Laughs)
When you were writing this album, was the writing spread out over the last couple of years or did you take time off specifically to sit down and do it recently?
Johnny: The thing is, the whole time we were touring that record I was writing all the time and I always do, that’s just how I am really. In fact the only time I don’t write is probably the month immediately following finishing a record, and I’m feeling in that sort of space right now; I feel exactly like I did after the first one. But almost immediately after that, once you start touring there’s just so many ideas around you can’t really help yourself, you know? So this record, I would say the ten songs on this record I reckon four of them were probably written on the road, and then the next four were written when we got into the warehouse and then maybe the last two were written in the studio.
Andy, you must have relished the opportunity to finally get your own signature sound on record?
Andy: Yeah. The last two years have been so exciting but I can’t deny that getting to this point has always been a massive, massive, huge goal for me personally, and I guess for the band as well. It was quite weird, because I came in as soon as they’d finished the first one, which was a really weird time to come in. It was almost like a session drummer. So it feels quite amazing to be here now, to be finally almost at the end of this album.
Johnny: It was a pretty amazing thing when that happened really. The point was we could never ever have toured with a session drummer, ever. We were sitting in a beer garden in Angel and Christian said he was leaving and I was like ‘Fine’. It was not unexpected and it was not the end of the world, but it was in the sense that we had a tour coming up, like the first tour for ‘Up All Night’ a week later. We wouldn’t have done the tour without a drummer; we wouldn’t have done the tour with a session drummer, because I just can’t do that. So it was very much a case of whoever we got in would have to be a full-time member of the band immediately. Which is quite a thing in a week, you’re gonna have to get very fucking lucky for that to happen. But the thing is, you get a feeling about people. I reckon this is right with people in bands; you kinda get a feeling about them when you first meet them and you can just see whether that person is gonna be in your band or not in a way. So that was an amazing thing because the band just would have split up, absolutely.
Andy: We both got very lucky that week.
You’ve also had an active part in song writing on this album, haven’t you? That’s a bit of a step up…
You have to be able to laugh at life, especially if you’re doing what we’re doing. It’s not real life.
Andy: Me and Johnny on tour and stuff are always either hanging out or playing guitar. I think that’s what we have most in common. I mean, obviously he’s always on it and I like buggering off to go drink beer and stuff, but we do have that in common in that we’re both music all the time. Music, music, music all the time, and I think it’s quite a similar taste in music we’ve got, but we’ve also got a totally different musicality.
Johnny: Well, you’re a musician for a start! (Laughs)
Andy: But it’s nice, it’s where we meet, it’s why we get along and it’s great. There’s been a couple of songs that we’ve written together and the rest of it I’ve just been involved.
Johnny: The thing is, I’m a very driven and determined songwriter, but I do like collaborating and I do collaborate. I think people probably get the wrong impression about that. Like, if I was just a songwriter and was a solo artist or something and I just wrote a song and came and sat at the piano then that would just be being a solo artist. But obviously it’s a band, which is why it says ‘Razorlight’ on the front, and to turn the songs into Razorlight music is a collaborative process. I mean, I don’t sit there and write Björn’s guitar parts for him; that’s why he’s in the band and that’s why everybody’s in the band, because what they bring instinctively is the right thing. That’s the point of Razorlight with the music, was to have four people taking it in different directions, and that crossed over from Christian to Andy just in different ways. Christian took it in a different direction and Andy takes it in a different direction and you can see it in the sound of the two different albums.
When you’re writing together, Andy, do you sit there like, ‘We’ll put a drum solo in there…’?
Andy: No, HE’S more into me doing drum solos that I am!
Johnny: (Laughs) I’m DETERMINED to get a drum solo in the live set… in the next week!
Is that an excuse so you can wander off, maybe get a drink or something?
Johnny: (Nods and laughs) Well, drum solos are fantastic, right, because if you’re a musician and you’re in the audience and you see a drum solo, you kind of like switch off and you go, ‘Here’s the drum solo’, or you can appreciate the drumming; one or the other. If you’re not a musician but you wanna pretend you are, you sort of pretend to be really into it and like cheer at certain bits and stuff like that, and if you wanna get a drink you go and get a drink. The best thing is when you get to the end of a drum solo everyone fucking goes mental. I love your playing so much. I think it will be really great. But the other thing is, I never ever get a chance to actually stop and look around, and I would love it during a gig to just have a moment… Because we don’t have any guitar solos… That’s the thing; in this band it’s like I’m singing or I’m running around and jumping off something or I’m singing.
You could take a moment to sneak into the crowd and see what the band look like on stage.
Johnny: I really like going out front, but it would be great to just, like… You know how Bowie had costume changes? So Mick Ronson would do those long guitar solos, which is where the solo from ‘Moonage Daydream’ came from because he had to write a long solo and it’s fucking brilliant. He did this guitar solo so Bowie could go off, do a line, get a little something off Angie and put some new clothes on. And I’d love to have that.
Do you feel comfortable in the frontman image that you portray or people portray you as?
Johnny: What would that be?
Well, for instance, being misquoted in interviews because people want to set you up to say something controversial.
Johnny: That’s just part of the gig, you know? I don’t like being misquoted in arguments let alone in print, you know what I mean? I just don’t like being misquoted. It’s not anything that keeps you awake at night. And who am I to say? People are perfectly entitled to make their opinions of me when they sit down and do interviews with me. Whatever, you know?
And on stage, as the person at the front?
Johnny: But on stage, for me being a frontman is what happens when you’re on stage, yeah totally. I fucking adore that. I think that’s the only thing I can actually do. I’ve never had a problem with that. I like that; I really like that; I like being on stage. As a frontman you get moments, really, that I suppose nobody can understand. You really do get moments where it’s just so beyond good, you know? Just really moving moments.
Humbling?
Johnny: Yeah, fuck, as well, totally. Yeah absolutely, but the thing that you really do as a frontman with big crowds is you’re a conductor and you’re just conducting people when to go and when not to go. If you look at the greats like Freddie or someone like that, that’s where it’s at, you know? But everybody has their own way of doing it. That’s the great thing; there’s different kinds of frontmen. I always liked the Iggy/Mick thing more than the Liam stand still sort of thing. Those gigs when we first started touring ‘Up All Night’, the only thing I had going through my head when I was onstage was… I remember watching Iggy a long time ago and just being like, ‘I don’t know what the fuck he’s gonna do next’, the whole way through it, and that was all that was going through my mind during those gigs all the time. So if I ever get to watch one of them back I’ll probably look like a fucking idiot, but that was the point.
Were you involved in the production side of recording of this one too?
Johnny: We are. This one, I really wanted to work with a ‘producer’ producer, so this is why we’re working with Chris Thomas. And it’s been interesting, because he’s an ego maniac and a control freak and so am I. (Laughs)
Andy: So it’s never really calm for us three! (Laughs)
Johnny: No but, you know, you have to be. But the thing is, on the first one it was like John [Cornfield] was a fantastic person for sonics and sounds and he left me to all the arrangements and stuff. And on this one I just worried that if I did that again, especially with the success the band had had, it would be too easy to make mistakes that I shouldn’t. You know, like Yes Men mistakes, you know what I mean? You could start going off on it and really think it’s a great idea to write a song about your cocaine habit or something like that, which I really didn’t want to do. So I’ve tried to just keep myself honest; that was my main thing with getting Chris in, but he’s just brilliant. He really does have The Touch and I can’t really explain it, but he makes records sound like records. Some of the mixes he’s done are just phenomenal.
He makes Razorlight sound like Razorlight?
Andy: Yeah. I occasionally catch ‘In The Morning’ on the radio or walk past something where it’s coming from, and it doesn’t sound like anything else. I don’t mean it’s like, ‘What the hell is making that sound?’
Johnny: It’s not like ‘I Am The Walrus’ in 1968.
Andy: No, yeah, but it sounds like, I think, a band set apart. I like what we’ve done with this record. I don’t feel we’ve gone where a lot of people would maybe feel safe going, where we would feel safe going; it feels like we’ve made a bit of a, you know, ‘Let’s sound like Razorlight’. When you get asked that question, ‘Describe your music’, it’s like, it sounds like Razorlight. I want people to go, ‘We sound like Razorlight’ as opposed to us trying to describe our sound.
Johnny: I just always want to make a brave record. A journalist said something to us in Germany the other say, he said, “It’s very strange. For us, we would have expected you to come over here wearing leather jackets, be really arrogant, give us an album that was more of the same of ‘Up All Night’ and then fuck off’. And it was like, ‘What have you got?’ And we’re like, ‘It’s an album of songs’. I don’t know. You’ve always got to make a brave record, and I always will. The next one will be a brave record and the one after that will be a brave record. It’s always good to shit yourself before you put something out.
When your first album was released in 2004 there were a number of strong debut albums also put out. With all the attention on you all to follow that, it would seem that the second albums will be the making of you. Do you feel any of that pressure to meet those expectations?
Johnny: That kind of pressure is something I don’t often think about though I know that it’s there, right? And one of the great things I feel about when we came out is that I do genuinely feel like we have some kind of extended family around us. Because you can meet people from other bands who were all coming out at the same time and you’ve got a common experience. Because there were about ten bands that released good debut albums then and, you know, for the first year you kind of all stare at each other and go, ‘You’re a cunt’. ‘No, YOU’RE a cunt.’ ‘No, YOU’RE a cunt’. And you sort of size each other up, because that’s what you do; it’s like kids on the first day in the playground. And then after that you kinda get a bit more like, ‘Oh okay, right. I can see what’s going on’. But that kind of pressure, I don’t feel that second album pressure because whatever pressure I feel, I feel because when I look back at my career I wanna be able to love and respect all the music I’ve made. So that’s just the pressure, you know? You just wanna make great albums every time, because that’s what separates great bands from good bands or whatever. If you can make a great album every time, and if you can keep doing it, sooner or later the fuckers have got to give in and accept that you’re a great band.
Having seen and heard the new songs live, they already to me sound familiar – in the best way. There’s the epic beauty and landscape of ‘America’, the passion of ‘Can’t Stop This Feeling I’ve Got’; they sound like you’ve been playing them for ages and that people will love them immediately.
Johnny: Yeah, but give them a year! Give them a couple of months, because I KNOW that they’re gonna get so good. Not in a way that we should have done on the record, because it’s stuff that we can’t do on record. But I KNOW that they’re gonna get so good.
Andy: But the thing is, ‘Up All Night’ is an amazing record, but when we play live it becomes something completely fucking different. It’s not that the record is not as good or that the live show is better, it’s just that they’re two different things, and I’m looking forward to that on this record.
Johnny: Fundamentally, the point of playing live is to make something happen. Last year when we were touring so much, there was only two things I could listen to. One was Van Morrison live in 1976 when he was doing the Caledonian Soul Orchestra thing, and the other thing was Fela Kuti, some live stuff, because every time they went on stage something different happened. They were making something happen. For me, that’s just gotta be the point of playing live, because otherwise what are you doing? You’re just turning up and playing the record. You see bands and they play to the click track and it bores me shitless. I think there’s room for it and I think on this next record we probably will do more stuff where it’s just a bit more solid, but you’ve gotta have all the stuff in the set where you don’t know what’s gonna happen next.
The new songs all went down very well with the crowds.
Andy: Yeah, they’re quite instant…
They’ve got big choruses.
Andy: Yeah… not an intentional sit down, ‘Let’s write an album with big choruses’, it’s just the way that we felt.
It’s anthemic.
Andy: Yeah, it is.
Johnny: Is it?
I think so.
Johnny: Well I’m glad, I take that as a compliment.
It’s true. I saw the Shepherds Bush gig and after the new songs I thought, ‘That’s a really good song’, then a couple of weeks later after you played Dundee it became, ‘That’s a fucking GREAT song!’
Johnny: I think Razorlight songs always take like three listens and after that they’re there. On first listen you’re probably like, ‘That’s really good’, second listen you’re like, ‘Shit, actually that IS really good’, and third you’re like, ‘Wankers!’ (Laughs) Records turn into what they have to turn into, you know? And this record’s been turning into what it’s had to turn into.
There’s a significant destiny for Razorlight; the scale of this album – in sound, production and vision – should rightfully raise the stakes for a band hungry for greatness. The songs are as big as their appetite, their impact as sharp as their bite.
Excusing himself from the table at the end of the interview, Johnny gets up to go to the bathroom, not before planting his black sunglasses over his eager eyes. Confirmation, if it’s even needed, that this band’s future is bright as hell. Wankers!
