AllMusic.com reviewed Spilt Milk in glowing neon terms that showcased just how on-the-money Matt was with his suggestion:
Dreamy vocal harmonies . . . and crunchy guitars are layered in a manner that evokes the best of the Beatles and the Beach Boys. ‘Hush’, the lead track, particularly recalls the Beach Boys with its luscious vocal harmonies . . . Spilt Milk is a flawless pop gem from start right through the unbridled optimism of the closing ‘Brighter Day’.
And it was a brighter day indeed for McFly. Inspired by Matt’s tip, they set up a home recording studio at Princess Park Manor, and over the course of a week and a half created the magic that was to become their third album. Has a single block of apartments ever been the scene of such extraordinary music history before? In the same building where James and Tom had started their writing partnership, where McFly’s debut album and Busted’s second had come together, McFly now proved that lightning definitely strikes in the same place twice.
Meanwhile, James and Tom were still cherishing their unique writing partnership. Together, they wrote ‘Lonely’, which would appear on Motion in the Ocean. A typically upbeat and deceptively simple guitar track, despite the downbeat topic, it was rippled with McFly’s usual harmonies and backing vocals. James also wrote ‘We Are the Young’ with Tom and Danny. As Tom put it in his thank-yous in the album’s sleeve notes, ‘James Bourne, thanks for another couple of big fish on this album.’ And the duo also wrote a new song for James’s band, ‘We’re Not Alone’, which was due to be released as the lead single of the deluxe edition of Son of Dork’s album Welcome to Loserville in April.
But all was not well in the land of Dork. James confided to The Vault, ‘We released the first song [“Ticket Outta Loserville”]. I think it was a hit. It came out against Madonna. It was the second highest new entry; it was number three. But everyone was like, “Well, it wasn’t number one so, er, so . . .”’ And here James made a slicing gesture across his throat. He continued, ‘I was very happy with the number-three result. I felt we were onto something. I wanted to celebrate when it got to number three. But everyone around me was saying, “But we don’t really celebrate that much when you get to number one any more, so why would we celebrate when you get number three?”’
When Busted’s debut single had been released, back in September 2002, it had charted at number three – just like ‘Ticket Outta Loserville’. Yet people seemed to think that a top-three hit now was James failing; that he was on a one-way ticket straight back to Loserville himself. Later, James would say pragmatically, ‘You don’t get that many chances. If they feel that you’re not going to get number ones any more after you’ve had a long string of number ones . . .’ He petered out, but the meaning was clear.
‘Eddie’s Song’, the second single, charted at number ten in January 2006. Two top-ten hits! It was more than most bands achieved. But it wasn’t enough. With the album peaking at only number thirty-five and the faith lost, Son of Dork were quietly dropped from their record label. James and Tom’s ‘We’re Not Alone’ was never released, though it did appear in the Ant and Dec movie Alien Autopsy later that spring.
James’s band tried to pick up the pieces, deciding to go it alone on James’s own record label, which he called Sic Puppy, after the first band he’d formed back in Southend-on-Sea. It was a name that resonated with him; during the peak of Busted’s fame, he’d set up a skater-style clothing line with the same name. And while Son of Dork plugged away, doing gigs and setting up a tour with Wheatus for the following spring, Matt was plugging his guitar into the amps in the recording studio, overseen by a new producer by the name of Jason Perry.
Perry was a singer himself, with the band A, and he had a unique approach to producing. As he said to the magazine Sound on Sound, ‘I used to be a singer in a band and I’ve worked with all these great producers throughout the years, and the main thing I’ve learned is I hate vocal booths . . . So my main thing is, let’s all just get in a room and do it . . . My main thing as a producer is to get a performance that’s believable and energetic and confident.’
Confidence was certainly something that James Bourne had in his former bandmate’s solo career. Speaking to the Birmingham Mail, James said, ‘He’s gonna do well because he has good songs. I’m a lot more into Matt’s stuff than I am into Charlie’s stuff. Matt has such an amazing personality as well. He’s a top bloke, very kind-hearted.’
And Matt had poured that kind heart of his into every song on his debut solo album. Unashamedly autobiographical, the tracks on Don’t Let It Go to Waste shine a light into his thoughts on the Busted split, his struggles in rehab – and his overwhelming love for Emma. Halfway through the album, in contrast to the howling electric guitars and booming rock tracks elsewhere on the record, simple, unfussy chords are played on an acoustic guitar. The song is ‘From Myself Baby’ and it is an open love letter to Emma Griffiths, a tribute to the support she gave him before and during rehab. She is his saviour. With the backing instruments low in the mix – a violin, some understated percussion – it is an unassuming yet beautiful track, with a humble Matt simply seeking salvation from the woman he loves. A few years before, he’d written in Busted that what he wanted in a woman was someone ‘who can tell me when I’m letting myself down but do so without nagging me’. In Emma, who’d supported him through rehab, and with whom he had a close, honest relationship, he’d found his perfect match.
Despite the beauty of ‘From Myself Baby’, the first song to be released from the album would be the rocky ‘Up All Night’, co-written with Jason Perry and Julian Emery (who also co-produced the album), and released on 22 May 2006. Described as ‘furiously danceable’ by the BBC and ‘pyrotechnic pop to pogo to’ by Sing365.com, it was a stadium-rock-style song that shot straight into the top ten, charting at number seven.
As the summer of 2006 really kicked in, Matt found himself back on the promotional merry-go-round, appearing at the T4 on the Beach pop concert in Weston-super-Mare on 18 June. And who should be sharing the bill with him? Only his old friends McFly. As Tom confessed to T4 after the event, when they appeared to promote their new single ‘Please, Please’ (which just happened to name-check a young woman called Lindsay), it was one to remember.
‘Dougie nearly got taken away in an ambulance after that,’ he said to presenter Miquita Oliver.
‘I threw up,’ admitted Dougie.
‘Because you were having so much fun?’ Miquita asked, a little tongue-in-cheek.
Dougie looked sheepish and yet amused at the same time. ‘Er . . . yeah,’ he said, with all the shy awkwardness that he’d used to display in the corridors of Gable Hall.
But it was Matt who very publicly ended up having too much fun that summer. Come July, he was back in rehab; this time, to tackle his addiction to cannabis. He later told the Sun, ‘I began [smoking dope] when I was thirteen and by the time Busted made it big I was accustomed to it. I smoked it every single day. It was a way of life.
‘You become immune to its effects, or at least you think you do, when suddenly you find yourself turning a bit weird. If I smoked, I’d become paranoid and forget everything. My memory was shot to pieces. I had no confidence. I always felt I was bad with people, but it was because I was always stoned.’
And it was Emma, once again, who persuaded him to get help. Matt revealed, ‘She told me if I had another joint she would leave me. I realised I needed to do something and when she threatened to never speak to me again I took action. Emma was the one who helped me kick my addiction and I will be forever grateful.’
‘From Myself Baby’ was even more poignant after that. And, fresh out of rehab, Matt released his second single, ‘Hey Kid’, which charted at number eleven. It was all about the days after Busted split, with a more mature Matt talking to his younger self and counselling him that the band being over didn’t mean the end of him. Matt revealed to Sing365.com, ‘“Hey Kid” is about the week Busted split up . . . That night in the hotel [on 14 January 2005], I tu
rned on Sky News and there was the press conference. And we weren’t actually shit, we were one of the good ones, I thought. I was always very proud of what we did.’
It seemed he could be proud of his latest hit, too. Sing365.com described ‘Hey Kid’ with vibrant enthusiasm as ‘the biggest anthem Def Leppard never wrote’. Out of rehab and releasing new music, Matt reassured fans all was well, saying to the Mirror, ‘I’m doing fine. I feel great.’ Then he added, almost as an afterthought, ‘For now.’
McFly were certainly doing great. Having been inspired by the Jellyfish album Matt had suggested they check out, they now took another tip from him, by booking Jason Perry and Julian Emery to produce Motion in the Ocean. No wonder their thank-you to their old friend was so generous in the sleeve notes of the album: ‘Matt Willis, we wouldn’t be here today without all your help in the beginning. We hope you like this album as much as we all love yours!’ And to record the album McFly decamped to the isolated Grouse Lodge in County Westmeath in Ireland – a studio Matt had also used for his solo work – for a recording session that completely revamped how the band worked.
Producer Jason Perry told Sound on Sound, ‘When I first met the boys . . . they always seemed a bit insecure and almost apologetic about themselves. I was like, “You’re one of the best bands in the country.” I don’t think people realise they write the songs and actually play them. You go and see them live and it’s like, “Wow, they’re amazing.”’
And, with Tom in particular, he brought the insecure singer much more confidence. Perry said, ‘I remember when I first started working with them, their management pulled me aside and said that Tom loses his voice easily and he’s not allowed to eat chocolate. And I was like, “He can do what he wants, he can go and start smoking if he wants. The reason he’s losing his voice is he’s worried about it.” He’ll never lose his voice again when I’m around.’
It’s a time Tom remembered all too well. ‘I got into this habit,’ he said to Sound on Sound, ‘I think under pressure and stress, any morning I knew we were going in to do vocals, I’d wake up with a psychological cold . . . I think it was just worrying about it too much. Jason wanted to get away from that . . . and it’s just really relaxed . . . That’s the way we ended up getting the best vocally out of me and Danny.’
And Motion in the Ocean was an album that showed the guys really were back at their best – so much so that Tom, in his sleeve notes, would say to Fletch and Rashman, ‘Thank you so much for not putting me in Busted!’ Speaking to Digital Spy, the band said, ‘[Motion in the Ocean] was a bit of a reaction to Wonderland. We made the record in our new flat and produced our own demos. We didn’t leave the house for a week and a half and wrote the whole thing. We intentionally wanted to do stuff that was more fun and poppy. There was also quite a strong Queen influence throughout it.’
And Dougie revealed the story behind the name of the album, saying cheekily, ‘The title came from someone telling us about their small dick. He said, “It’s not the size of your boat, it’s the motion in the ocean.”’
The album was an unashamedly, gloriously buoyant record, packed with poppy hits – and there were clear chart-toppers among them. Even the ‘serious’ music press gave the album good reviews, with credible muso website MusicOMH.com celebrating it as ‘delightfully undemanding bubblegum pop’. The rave review continued, ‘The morose faces of Wonderland’s cover are replaced with images of some kerrazy shenanigans involving swimming underwater – wait for it – fully clothed! . . . They’ve rediscovered their sense of fun . . . Like candy floss for the ears, there’s little substance but it sounds great – brilliantly executed and something you should not feel guilty about liking.’
Guilt seemed to be a theme for reviewers, with the Guardian writing, ‘This third album shows why [McFly still have an audience]: they produce guitar pop of a standard that would have been a credit to the young Supergrass, and refuse to patronise their audience with pallid love songs . . . Enjoy without guilt.’
It seemed guilt-free pop was in vogue. As the year drew to a close, McFly were still riding high, with their singles still going straight to number one, including the intergalactical star maker that was ‘Star Girl’. Written by the band with Jason Perry, Julian Emery and Daniel P. Carter, the song started out as one they were calling ‘Jelly Belly’, which had a ridiculous lyric. Then, one night during their Irish recording sessions, Tom had a dream. He dreamed that they’d written a song about falling head over heels in love with an alien. Dougie suggested they try to write that song to the tune of ‘Jelly Belly’ – and the rest is pop history. The song sold almost 60,000 copies in its first week on sale, proving that McFly really were out of this world.
The boys filmed one of the most fun promo videos ever to accompany the song’s release: one of the most fun – and the most hilarious. It starts with Danny looking into a home camcorder, with a fuzzy, almost out-of-focus lens picking out his shaggy dark hair, and a 2006 date time-stamped in the corner.
‘Hello, and welcome to Bolton, 2006. It’s in my back yard. We’ve been building a rocket. We’re going to send Dougie up into space. Dougie, how d’you feel about going up today?’
‘I feel really scared and I think I need more training.’
Cue song. And cue Dougie’s ‘training’: a series of home videos of the boys ‘training’ him for space travel, which necessitate the slogan ‘No Dougies were hurt making this video’. Danny holds up handwritten signs introducing each trial. The ‘Re-Entry Test’. The ‘Endurance Test’. And the ‘G-Force Test’, in which Dougie sits in a shopping trolley in a blue jumpsuit and a crash helmet, with a rope attached to his ride, and is flung in steadily faster circles by the boys until he is actually flying through the air at high speed. Interspersed with all these high jinks is footage of the guys playing a live gig – and they look as though they’re having just as much fun onstage as they are messing about in Danny’s back garden. When your best friends are your bandmates, that does tend to happen. And they were now neighbours as well: when Tom showed the others the house he’d found to buy with Giovanna, all three of his bandmates bought nearby properties.
In November, their new album charted in the top ten, at number six. Sixty places behind them that month was Matt’s debut, Don’t Let It Go to Waste. His solo effort had received incredible reviews: Sing365.com wrote that it was ‘a full-on, balls-out monster of a record, with a sound that Matt accurately describes as “stadium pop” – think Robbie, Green Day and Van Halen jamming underneath a firework display . . . The album is simply an awesomely confident record that will make Matt Willis one of the defining stars of 2006 and beyond.’ But it seemed that music-buyers hadn’t got the memo.
Yet Matt had a master plan – one he would later describe to The Vault as ‘one of the most bizarre choices I’ve made in my life’. He was heading into the jungle as a contestant on ITV’s reality show I’m a Celebrity . . . Get Me Out of Here!
The papers were full of gossip that James, forever all about the music, didn’t support his ex-bandmate’s decision to join a lame reality TV show. The Mirror quoted an anonymous source as saying, ‘James genuinely cares for his mate. He thinks that Matt hanging out with a bunch of nobodies eating bugs will do nothing for his career and destroy all the hard work that he has put into his music since leaving Busted.’ The Metro said James thought it was ‘career suicide’. Meanwhile the ‘source’ continued to the Mirror, ‘The pair are at loggerheads over this and are barely speaking. Matt thinks James is being a bit of a snob with his high-and-mighty attitude and can’t see what the problem is.
‘Matt has told him he’s not in it for the money as he’s giving his £60,000 fee to charity, but sees it as a chance to boost his profile.’
And James couldn’t really argue with that. I’m a Celebrity was one of the most-watched programmes in the country, regularly pulling in 9 million viewers. Matt would be flown to the Australian jungle to spend nineteen days – if he lasted that long – in the heat an
d humidity of the rainforest, camping out among the creepy-crawlies with eleven other people of varying levels of celebrity. And it was something even he, with his carefree, devil-may-care attitude, was apprehensive about. ‘I was scared about it,’ he admitted to EDP24.com. ‘I was thinking, “I’m pretty sure I’m not a dick, but how do I know? Maybe people will think I am.”’
And it hadn’t been an easy decision. He said, ‘Well, you know, they asked me and I said no – I said no four times. Then I thought, “I’ve got an album coming out, what can I do to raise the game?” I didn’t really want to do a reality show, but then I thought, “You only live once.” I want to get people buying my records.’
And, with that in mind, Matt found himself bungee-jumping out of a helicopter into the empty abyss of a bright-blue sky.
NINE
Sound of America
The table was lined with wooden platters, topped with smart wooden cloches that concealed the delicacies within. If Matt Willis tried very, very hard, he could maybe kid himself that the long dining table was the centrepiece of a high-class restaurant, and that the two figures standing beside him, attending to his every need, were the smartest maîtres d’hôtel London had to offer.
‘Something a bit new for you to try,’ said I’m a Celebrity presenter Declan Donnelly, bending over to lift the cloche from the latest platter. ‘Kangaroo anus.’
No, thought Matt, he definitely wasn’t in London.
It was the eighteenth day in the jungle. Matt was – against all the odds – down to the last three contestants, along with Australian singer Jason Donovan and former Hear’Say member Myleene Klass. The Molesey boy, who by his own admission had ‘never been in a forest, let alone a jungle’, had survived the bungee jump, three Bushtucker Trials – and separation from Emma. She had watched his progress from afar and told GMTV, ‘He was very, very quiet in the beginning. I think it was a bit of a culture shock for him. I think he’s just gone, “You know what, I’m here and I’m going to enjoy it.”’
Mcbusted : The Story of the World's Biggest Super Band (9781471140679) Page 10
