My Side of Life/by WESTLIFE.CN

by Shane Filan

  Brian came to the third Belfast show and came backstage to see us afterwards. By then, the anger had mostly passed; I just felt he had made a really daft decision, and he would regret it in years to come. We hugged, said goodbye, and went our separate ways.

  We had come through the darkest period in the band’s life by far – and we had survived. The Turnaround tour showed that Westlife could not just carry on as a four-piece; we could go from strength to strength. The world could see that we weren’t about to call it a day.

  Even so, Brian quitting had shaken a lot of the certainty and security I had always felt in the band. It made me think that at some point in the future, things would come to an end. Most boy bands don’t last as long as we had; even Westlife couldn’t go on forever.

  What would I do then? How would I provide for my family, and pay the mortgage on the the house we were building, and all my other bills? I decided that I needed to have a back-up plan for when it was all over.

  Maybe I should get more heavily into this property thing.

  9

  IT’S A RAT PACK – AND WE’VE BEEN CAUGHT!

  Early in 2004, my brother Finbarr got offered an engineering job as an operations director of a medical device company in Belgium. It was a good career opportunity but he wasn’t sure about moving his family away from Ireland, and we didn’t want him to go. I had a better idea.

  My low-level property-investment sideline, buying houses in Sligo to rent out, was going well, but being busy or away all the time with Westlife, I didn’t really have time to focus on it. I asked Finbarr if he would like to stay in Ireland and help to look after my investments full-time.

  They were looking pretty good so far. The Celtic Tiger Irish economy was booming and the five houses that I had bought to rent out eighteen months earlier were already worth €500,000 more than I had paid for them.

  Everybody was being advised to put their money into bricks and mortar and it made sense to me. Brian leaving had suddenly made Westlife seem precarious, and even now we were back on track, I knew we were only ever one bad album from being over. A safety net seemed a great idea.

  Finbarr liked my idea and came onboard and we quickly took our plans a stage further. Instead of just buying houses, why not build a few to sell on? We started up a company and put our names together to name it: Shafin Developments.

  Fired by enthusiasm, our first plan was to build four houses in a little village near Sligo, but that didn’t work out. Then we spotted something that appeared to have a whole lot more potential.

  There was a site up for auction in Dromahair, near to Sligo in County Leitrim, with planning permission to build forty-five houses. It was a five-acre site that would cost around €1m – a lot of money, but it looked like a fantastic investment.

  My bank manager at Ulster Bank was very impressed with our plan and the fact that I had already made money on my property dealings, so we went for it. When the site next door also became available, for more than €1m, he was happy for Shafin to go for that too.

  It was all pretty exciting but a lot of people were going mad for buying property in Ireland at the time – I was just lucky enough to be able to try to do it on a bigger scale.

  Yet I also got some less welcome news on the property front that put a chill into my heart.

  Sligo had always been a quiet, underdeveloped sort of place but suddenly, now the Celtic Tiger was rampant, everybody was looking to cash in on the property explosion – and a developer got permission to build a 15-storey hotel next to our bespoke house in Carraroe. This was despite 100 objections from locals.

  Shit. I couldn’t believe it. The hotel was to be built on a big traffic roundabout three fields from Castledale, the name we had decided to give our dream home. Because the hotel was so tall, anybody in it would not just be able to see our home – they would be able to see right into the windows.

  Gillian and I were devastated. One reason we had chosen that site to build Castledale was that it was secluded, a lovely quiet location where we could relax away from the celebrity and the pressure of the goldfish bowl I lived in with Westlife. At a stroke, this was getting torn away.

  I was outraged. We had spent four years and a fortune getting the Carraroe house built, and now we were about to lose our privacy even before we’d moved in! It felt wrong, just so unfair – and I was determined to fight it at any cost.

  One of the two fields between us and the hotel site came up for sale. Jesus Christ! I feared the worst – if the council had already given permission for a 15-storey hotel, what was to stop them allowing the same, or worse, right by the house? I felt panicky, and powerless.

  I made a decision. There was only one thing for it. We would have to buy the Carraroe site and develop it ourselves in order to protect my home, my family and our privacy.

  Finbarr and I had not intended to expand Shafin so much or so quickly. The Dromahair site was quite enough for us to be getting on with. But suddenly buying this four-acre field in Carraroe became a priority.

  I spoke to Ulster Bank again. Once more, they facilitated us in going for it and could not have fallen over themselves any more to help. They happily gave us another loan, and Finbarr and I started bidding on the site.

  Our initial offer was €1m. Our final offer was €2.5m.

  Even for a pop star, this was serious money, and for the first time I began to feel a bit of pressure from the property thing, rather than seeing it as a low-risk, enjoyable sideline. Even so, I knew that I had to buy that site. I couldn’t have just stood back and seen our perfect home ruined before we had even moved into it.

  The property dealings were interesting, but the band was still by far my main priority – and we were about to take a very interesting and unexpected left turn.

  We had just finished the first, arena leg of the Turnaround tour and had a short break before playing outdoor shows later that summer. We knew now we were definitely going on without Brian, so Simon called us in for a meeting.

  Westlife always released an album in November, so it was time for us to start planning the next one – and Mr Cowell had had one of his ideas.

  Simon had been spending a lot of time in America of late, getting even more famous as American Idol went crazy over there, and maybe that had given him his latest brainwave.

  ‘I know exactly what you’re going to do next, kiddos,’ he told us, dressed all in black, smoking a cigarette behind his desk, and looking more like James Bond (in his dreams) than ever.

  ‘You’ve lost a member, lost a voice, so we need to change things around a bit. You need to do something big. You’re going to be the Rat Pack.’

  Wow. We certainly hadn’t seen that one coming. As we all looked at each other, the general reaction was that it was a totally bonkers idea… so bonkers that it might just work.

  Simon talked us through the idea. We would make a one-off album of covers of songs made famous by Rat Pack stars like Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin; we would record them with orchestral backing; and we would make the videos in Las Vegas. The tour would be suitably lavish and spectacular.

  We weren’t totally opposed to any of this – I had grown up hearing and loving Frank Sinatra songs at home, and Nicky’s dad was a showband singer who did all that stuff – but we were quite wary. It sounded a bit of a stretch, and would certainly take us out of our comfort zone. Was Simon quite sure about this?

  ‘Trust me, kiddos! It will be magic.’

  Louis was into the idea too, so the Rat Pack it was. Before we did the outdoor Turnaround dates, Nicky and I went on holiday that July to Miami, with Gillian and Georgina, and we had a good laugh sitting around the pool imagining how we were going to look in 1950s-style suits and slicked-back hair singing ‘Fly Me to the Moon’.

  While we were out in Miami, I got a phone call from Finbarr. Our bank had come through with the money, and we had got the €2.5m site at Carraroe next to my house. I got the news on my twenty-fifth birthday. It felt like a fantastic present.r />
  Back home, Finbarr and I set to thinking about what we should do with the Carraroe site. We also hired an architect and drew up plans to build ninety-one houses and a crèche at Dromahair. We got in touch with McInerney’s, one of Ireland’s biggest builders, and they were keen to be involved. Everything was moving very fast. It was thrilling.

  Meanwhile Westlife were set to make the entire Rat Pack album, which was to be called … Allow Us to Be Frank, with Steve Mac, so we decamped to London for a few weeks. The vibe in the band was great. It was as if losing Brian had made us pull tighter and become more of a proper gang again.

  Simon had already picked the songs for the album. He was a huge Sinatra buff, and I think to a degree he was living out a fantasy in getting his boys, his kiddos, to make his dream album for him.

  The recording sessions were quite a weird experience. We started off unintentionally singing in American accents, although we weren’t trying to impersonate the Rat Pack (even though Mark did look the absolute spit of Dean Martin, with his hair back and his tanned skin). We were just trying to pay homage to the spirit of the originals.

  Mostly, it was a blast. We were playing a part, and in a funny way it reminded me of performing Grease at the Hawks Well – putting on the costumes and getting lost for a while in being somebody else. I loved crooning Ol’ Blue Eyes classics like ‘Fly Me to the Moon’ and ‘Let There Be Love’.

  Yet we had some fallings-out during the recording of the album. The idea was that with Brian gone, Kian and Nicky would step up to the plate and take on more vocals, and some leads – but Nicky was very unhappy with how few parts Steve Mac was giving him.

  There were two factors here. One is that Steve Mac is a perfectionist who is concerned only with getting the best results, even if it needs twenty takes, and is no respecter of egos. It can make recording sessions gruelling – ‘C’mon, do it again with a bit of fairy dust!’ he’ll keep saying – but the results he gets make it all worthwhile.

  The other element was that unlike Kian, Mark and me, with our experience of being Danny Zuko and Kenickie, Nicky had never done any acting or played a different character before, which to an extent was what we were doing now. It was all totally new to him, and maybe it showed.

  Steve would try us all out on a song but then give hardly any parts to Nicky. Mark and I were expected to sing most of the leads, but Kian was doing way more than Nicky, which hurt him because they were supposed to be on the same level.

  We were staying at a nearby hotel, and Nicky would give out to me every night: ‘Why won’t he give me a f**king chance?’ The next day at the studio I would take Steve to one side on Nicky’s behalf, but he was adamant: ‘He just doesn’t suit the song!’ Steve was very black and white like that.

  It came to a head when Nicky flew into a rage at hardly being on the album and threatened to fly back to Dublin. He even talked of quitting the band. I don’t think he would have – but after Brian, we were very vulnerable to that kind of talk.

  I explained to Steve how serious things were getting. ‘Look, Steve, Nicky is in the band and we’ve got to use him!’

  Steve gave Nicky another chance on a few tracks, and he went in and absolutely nailed it. Ultimately, it was probably another example of Steve Mac’s hardline methods getting results.

  Simon was true to his word and flew us out to Las Vegas to make the videos. It was my first time in the city, and what a place! As soon as I set eyes on America’s capital of tack, I could see why people called it Disneyland for adults.

  Our first night in Vegas was mental. Record-label boss Clive Davis had invited us to a huge party he was throwing on the top floor of the Bellagio hotel. As we got out of the lift, with jet lag kicking in, Whitney Houston swept out of the party, nodding hello to us as she left.

  The party was a super-glamorous affair, and Alicia Keys and Usher were there. We were all wearing our Rat Pack suits and we crowded around Usher for a photo. An Irish paper was to run the picture a day or two later, with the caption: ‘US star Usher with his accountants.’

  The jet lag ensured we got steaming drunk. We had a video shoot the next day, and our stylist had only let us wear our suits to the party on the condition that we left them outside her hotel room door when we got back.

  Gillian reminded me as we got back to our hotel with Mark. At first I said I couldn’t be bothered but Gillian insisted, so Mark and I stripped down to our boxer shorts in the lift on the way up to our floor. Half naked, I pulled my socks up to my knees and ran up and down the corridor singing Sinatra songs. The night ended with a giggling Mark and I wrestling on the carpet.

  What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, right? Well, until I told you about it, now…

  We made three videos along the Strip and loved putting on our super-sophisticated Savile Row suits. Then we’d stay up in the casinos all night playing blackjack. I never strayed from the $20 table, although the staff ply you with drink all night to try to coax you onto the $100 big-boys table.

  While we were in Vegas, we took the chance to go and see a Rat Pack stage show. It was cool to see such great renditions of Frankie and Dean, and it gave us a few ideas for when we came to tour the album.

  … Allow Us to Be Frank had been mostly fun to make, but we were apprehensive when it came to putting it out. We just didn’t know how people would react. We figured a lot of our older fans might like it, but we knew the Rat Pack wouldn’t mean a thing to our teenage followers.

  We also found we had an unexpected rival in the charts. Just six months after he had quit Westlife, Brian reappeared with a debut single, ‘Real to Me’, in September 2004, along with an album, Irish Son.

  This surprised us because we thought Brian left because he wanted to spend more time with Kerry and his girls. Was he planning a solo career even then? Who knows? The truth is, I still don’t know for sure even today.

  His first single was good and for a short while we wondered if he would do a Robbie Williams. I never really thought he would, though – there is only one Robbie Williams. And then, of course, Brian and Kerry split up. I never saw that one coming, either.

  As it turned out, Westlife had been right to be nervous about the Rat Pack. The album was no disaster sales-wise, but it only went into the chart at number three – our first album not to go straight to the top since our debut had been pipped by Steps five years earlier. It was a bad blow and we were disappointed.

  Maybe it also had an adverse effect on how we viewed the record, because we had a bit of a downer on it when we came to get on the promotional treadmill. It had been good craic when we were making the album and the videos, but now that we were dressing up like Sammy Davis Jr to do TV shows, we began wondering if it was all a bit… silly.

  Nicky and I weren’t too hard on the whole thing but Mark and Kian were definitely starting to think it might have been a mistake. There were already enough people who thought Westlife made dreary music for older people – dressing up as forty-year-olds wasn’t exactly helping!

  Luckily, I had a very welcome distraction in my life, as on 17 November 2004, four years after we had started building it, Gillian and I finally moved into Castledale.

  It was such a beautiful place. The architects and builders had done an extraordinary job, and as you pulled up the drive to the imposing façade, the subtle lighting made it look like a fairy-tale castle. It was truly magical.

  We had seen it going up for years, but even so, when the key was finally in my hand, I did a double take. Wow. Is this really where we live? It felt like home from the second that Gillian and I walked through the door. The top floor, with its bar, cinema and pool table, immediately became my favourite place on Earth.

  Castledale had been a long time in the building and a lot had changed. We had shifted from our original plan of moving in with our extended families and were now more inclined to make it our own family home.

  There was one very good reason for that – because, before too long, Gillian was pregnant.

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nbsp; It was fantastic news. We had both been broody to start a family for a while, but Gillian had been keen to wait until we had finally moved into the house, so we didn’t have to go through the whole moving process with a baby. Now we had our dream home – and a baby on the way to go with it.

  When we moved into Castledale, my mum and dad finally quit the café and moved into our old house over the road, renaming it Carlton Lodge. It was the perfect place for them and they loved it – as they still do.

  It was an exciting time all round, as just before Christmas 2004, Finbarr and I officially put in a planning-permission request for the housing estate at Dromahair. We had calculated that the development would cost in the order of €10m, and had gone back to Ulster Bank. They had indicated that that level of loan shouldn’t be any problem.

  Looking back now, ten years on, it’s utterly bizarre that a bank was willing to lend so much money to a twenty-five-year-old pop star with virtually no knowledge of the property market. But at the time, booming Ireland was turning into the Wild West, and I certainly wasn’t about to question it.

  And I suppose, at that point, money really was no object for me. I was always flying back and forth between Sligo and Dublin and sick of the journey, so when a local guy asked me to go halves on buying a helicopter, I jumped at the chance. It was cool, it came with a pilot – and it halved my travelling time.

  The papers made a bit of a big deal about Gillian and me moving in to Castledale, and Westlife fans began beating a path to our gate. The doorbell would ring two or three times a day, followed by a nervous voice on the intercom: ‘Could Shane come down, please?’

  They were never too intrusive and I didn’t mind. The fans were always happy to wait for half an hour if I was busy, and they were so grateful and excited for an autograph or a photo that I never begrudged them a gawp at my house through the front gate.

  I would never begin to compare myself with John Lennon, but I did like one thing he had said on a similar topic. I had read that fans scratched messages into the paint of his white Rolls-Royce. When he was asked if it bugged him, Lennon said, ‘They paid for it – they’re entitled to do it!’ I was with him on that one.