Today, Razorlight will hit the charts with a new album for the first time since 2008.
Fronted by Johnny Borrell, who takes on The Aftershow in the new edition of Music Week, the band released Olympus Sleeping on the singer’s own Atlantic Culture label in partnership with Believe.
Needless to say, much has changed in the industry since the group’s noughties heyday, when unrelenting coverage in the music press and Borrell’s charismatic nature helped fuel million-sellers including 2004’s debut Up All Night (1,018,355 sales, OCC) and 2006’s Razorlight (1,553,684). In the interim, Borrell has pursued a solo career and made music with Zazou.
Borrell told us he feels as confident with Olympus Sleeping as he did with any previous Razorlight release, and traced the band’s history in a far-reaching interview. Here, we’ve rounded up the best bits. Read on for the singer’s thoughts on everything from major labels, studio time and recording, to social media, Rudyard Kipling and Frank Zappa…
On the NME…
“For any band the question used to be, ‘Oh, what are the NME gonna say?’ In the noughties, NME was very much about bigging up people or knocking them and you never knew which way it would go.”
On studio mistakes…
“America was a demo, we tried to record it with Chris Thomas and we got to take 43, everyone was losing their shit so I went off and sung on the demo and we did that. It’s got mistakes in it, you know?”
On culture…
“I’m not an expert in what the culture is at the moment, maybe we’re in a time where there’s less of a zeitgeist?”
On Zazou…
“I did read one live review that said the show was unbelievably entertaining, but it was still turned into a negative. Thanks! That’s the point of a show, that it should be entertaining isnt it? It was a good band. We’ll do our next show in about 20 years [laughs].”
I’m not an expert in what the culture is at the moment
Johnny Borrell
On technology…
“I haven’t got a smartphone, I’ve still got my Nokia, so I can’t get New Music Friday playlists or anything. I hate listening to music through a computer, in fact, I hate being in front of a computer, so although it’s getting easier to get music, if you don’t want to go into that world it’s actually getting harder. I’m too old school. Give me a CD.”
On advice for new bands…
“Keep focused on the music, man. Any time you’re worried about something that isn’t musical, put your focus back on the music. Never look at the screen when you’re making music.”
On the power of good music…
“If you were to record a vibey band playing in a room and play it to 10 people on the street 10, 20, 30 or 40 years ago, now or in 40 years’ time – if we still have a planet – people would respond to it the same. It’s not like we’ve stopped listening to Nina Simone records or things like that, we still think they’re good.”
On modern studio techniques…
“Don’t nudge! I’ve said that on every record I’ve ever made, ‘Don’t fucking touch the fucking kick drum! Don’t even think about putting those snares on!’ On the grid is not where it’s at.”
On major label life…
“With our first album, I went to the A&R and said, ‘We’ve got to can this.’ The only snag was that he was also the MD of the label. I kind of fired the MID of our own label off our first record before we’d even released a single. After that they were just like, ‘Just let this guy do whatever he wants.'"
With our first album, I went to the A&R and said, ‘We’ve got to can this’
Johnny Borrell
On the evolution of labels…
“Frank Zappa said the reason the ‘60s were brilliant is because no one in the labels had a clue. They were blokes in suits, they didn’t know the difference between a Zappa record and a Beatles record or a Nick Drake record. They just said, ‘Let’s sign all of it and see which ones work’. It was in the ‘70s when the label guys started having long hair themselves that things started getting complicated.”
On the ups and downs of rock’n’roll…
“I’m not sure what extremes it can go to. It’s like the Rudyard Kipling poem [If], just treat those imposters the same, you know? Just stay true to what you’re doing and make the best music you can.”
On social media…
“When Facebook happened, Razorlight were one of the biggest bands in England, we were so well placed to become a social media giant and I just had no interest. On a personal level, I just thought, ‘I don’t get this thing.’”
On unreleased solo records…
“I made a solo album before Borrell 1 where every song was one minute long, but the last one was 30 minutes. It was great. No one wanted to put it out. It sounded like Lou Reed on ketamine trying to play John Lee Hooker. I enjoyed it. I really thought, ‘This is the thing, one-minute songs, this is where it’s at.’”
On youth…
“When I was a kid I used to run away from school, there was a squat that’s now a church. I used to run away to there and listen to Public Enemy from sitting outside.”
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