by Shane Filan
It was like they were trying to fob us off. Something didn’t feel right.
The Westlife machine was ready to roll with Gravity. There was talk of the lead-off single being ‘I Will Reach You’, which Mark had co-written, but Simon went with ‘Safe’, a big ballad written by John Shanks. We weren’t 100 per cent sure that it was a single but we trusted Simon’s instincts.
The week of its release, in November 2010, we launched it on The X Factor. Simon was doing a boy-band special, and we were on the show alongside JLS and Take That.
It was a programme that was to confirm to us that Westlife was very much a band, and a brand, in decline. Whichever way you sliced it, we were in third place that weekend.
JLS had had an amazing year with their debut album selling like mad and they were just about to release the follow-up. They were the hot new boy band that the teenagers and kids were going crazy for. They were so young and had so much energy – they reminded me of Westlife as we went from our first album into Coast to Coast.
Take That were at the other end of the age scale but they were so massive that you couldn’t imagine a pop band being any bigger. Robbie Williams had just rejoined, their albums were all going multi-platinum and they had announced a thirty-date stadium tour that included five at Wembley Stadium. It had sold out immediately.
Were we envious? Of course we were! I have to admit we looked at Take That on that TV show and we thought, Now that’s the way you do a comeback.
So we sang ‘Safe’ on The X Factor and we did a good version and it went down well, but we looked at Take That and JLS and there was hysteria surrounding them both. Westlife had always had that – but we couldn’t feel it that night.
Our song just wasn’t strong enough. It was safe in more ways than one.
There was a telling moment after the show. We were in a Winnebago outside the studio with Simon and Sonny and a laptop, looking at iTunes, where it tracks singles sales as they happen. The music-industry execs were expecting a spike in all of the bands’ sales as soon as the broadcast finished. Simon said JLS were a cert for number one, and they were streets ahead at the top, but ‘Safe’ was hardly moving at all.
Simon and Sonny could see we were down about it and were telling us not to worry and that a top-three single wasn’t the be-all and end-all, but it felt like a significant and worrying moment for us. And it felt even worse when the chart was announced and ‘Safe’ was number ten.
Number ten. For the first single off an album. Now we knew for sure: this just was not good enough. We felt like it might as well have been number fifty.
The following week, Gravity came out and was number three – behind Take That and JLS. It confirmed everything that we had feared on The X Factor.
What was worse, we thought that was where we should be.
The Gravity tour for the next year was still selling out so we could still shift gig tickets, but we no longer had the kind of devoted fans who would run out and buy a single the day it came out; the kind that JLS had now, and the kind that Take That had managed to hold on to.
We had been incredibly lucky and spoilt for years, there was no question about that. We had started taking it for granted that album after album would go straight to number one. Now that it wasn’t happening any more, it was hurting us.
If we were all still loving being in the band, we could have probably dealt with it. But by now we weren’t. It posed the question: if we weren’t having number-one records, and we weren’t enjoying it, what was the point of it?
As we went into Christmas 2010, even I was wondering if Westlife should call it a day. I knew that it would leave my future looking even more dire than it already did, but this band that had been great to be in for more than a decade suddenly felt negative, frustrated and angry.
What did we have to look forward to next year? Westlife was feeling like shite now. The Gravity tour would be brilliant, because we always loved our tours, but as soon as the tour was over and we had to think about making another record, we would start feeling shite again.
Really, apart from keeping me from financial catastrophe, what was the point?
For selfish reasons, I was still praying that Westlife would not split – but it was looking more and more inevitable.
For the first time, I started trying to imagine a future without Westlife. Shafin had still got planning in place for all of its sites – maybe when we got the go-ahead on funding from the Bank of Ireland directors, we could turn things around, pay off our debts and even make some profits on our five years of blood, sweat and (many) tears.
The Bank of Ireland in Sligo had finally sent our proposal to their head office just before Christmas. They didn’t take long to consider it. Early in January 2011, they rejected all of our plans outright and told us there would be no future funding. Straight away, Finbarr’s bank card stopped working.
Now the really bad shit was about to start.
13
LOSING THE MEANING OF ’LIFE
Although Shafin Developments was the most frustrating and frightening experience I had ever been through, Finbarr and I had always had a plan to turn it around. We would be OK once we got the planning permissions; we would be OK once we were building and selling properties; we would be OK once the Bank of Ireland mega-loan came through.
Now Bank of Ireland had slammed the door on us, for the first time we couldn’t see a way out of the mess. We were millions in debt and we had no way even to begin to repay any of it.
But Bank of Ireland hadn’t just stopped trying to help Shafin. They wanted their money back – yesterday. Their head office sidelined the Sligo branch and appointed a senior guy from their Athlone office to deal with us.
He came out to Sligo and talked to Finbarr and me as if we were halfway between idiots and criminals. He told us all of our plans were rubbish, everything was wrong and we had to sell all of the sites immediately.
One of the Sligo bank managers who had given us the loans – and urged us to have more – sat meekly in the same meeting and hardly said a word. I kept looking at him, and thinking, Isn’t this where you explain what has happened?
Instead, he just kept his head down as the guy from Athlone with the bad attitude tore into Finbar and me. This charmer left, threatening us with legal action if we didn’t get repaying – and fast.
Financially, my life became even more of a nightmare. Every day brought more enormous bills; more repayment demands; more threats to take us to court. Back in the heady early days, I had made myself personally liable for the majority of Shafin’s loans. I couldn’t believe I had been so stupid.
Shafin had lost €2.4m in 2009. In 2010 it was €2.6m. By now I was paying out €70,000 per month just in interest on our loans. Some months, I would not have enough in my account to do it.
Fridays were the worst. Every Friday I would get emails from one or more of the banks.
‘You have missed a further mortgage payment. Can you please pay €356,000 by end of business on Monday.’
‘You are in arrears with your repayment of our loan. Can you please transfer €3.4m by the end of the month.’
Crazy, crazy shit like that. If I could have paid them, I would. But it was getting to the stage that I hardly had a penny.
I would go in for meetings with the banks. At one point, I was virtually pleading with one guy, asking how I could be expected to repay the vast sums he wanted. He raised a cold, cynical eyebrow: ‘You can sing can’t you?’
Finbarr and I hadn’t totally given up. We started to try to raise private funding to finance the projects, both in Ireland and abroad. Yet the global crash, the financial basket case that Ireland had become and plummeting property prices meant ‘development in Sligo’ had become dirty words.
It was a bleak, depressing time – I was truly desperate. For the first time, the awful truth hit me between the eyes: that I could lose my beloved Castledale, all of the development sites, everything. There might be no way back from this.
I didn’t hold anything back from Gillian, and we talked long and hard into the night about what might happen. I loved that woman more than ever. She was a complete rock and would just remind me: ‘Look, whatever happens, we have got each other and the kids. Nobody can take that away.’
It was true – but they were the only things that they couldn’t take.
It was a blessed relief to get away on the road on the Gravity tour. Even though, by now, being in Westlife was little more than an endurance test: how much longer could we bear it?
The shows were still fantastic, though. At this stage the gigs were the only enjoyable part of being in the band, and the glue that was still – just about – holding us together. Every night without fail, we would be buzzing, and grin at each other as the fans went wild, and I would think: Isn’t this still the best job in the world?
Yet as soon as we walked offstage we were back to reality. We just were not enjoying being in Westlife any more. We seemed to be taking it in turns to choose petty things to row and fall out about. There were tensions between all of us. Some days, it even felt like we were no longer friends.
When we did go out for dinner or a drink, it felt wrong, like we were faking our closeness. Inevitably, we’d end up talking about the band, how depressing it had become, and how the fallings-out and petty shite were dragging us down.
I was closest to Nicky now, and Mark and Kian would hang out together, but it wasn’t as if the band had divided in two. We were all divided from each other. Where once Louis had made us into a proper gang, now we were four very distant individuals. How had this happened?
We were resentful, discontented, and not nice to be around. We had always been a pretty easy-going, low-maintenance group on the road. Suddenly, we were going through tour managers at a rate of knots. We were not a happy bunch.
We were even falling out with our label. After ‘Safe’ had been a flop, by our standards, we wanted to put things right with a second single from the Gravity album. We were pushing for Mark’s song, ‘I Will Reach You’.
The message coming back to us from Simon’s office via Sonny and Louis was that there was no point in doing this because it would not affect the sales of the album. The label refused even to release a second single.
We were seriously pissed off with this, and with the idea that we were reduced to the kind of band who only gets to put out one single from an album. What was happening here? It angered us so much that we asked to be moved from Simon’s label, Syco, onto another Sony imprint, RCA.
Although there were specific frustrations between us, mostly we were angry at the band and our situation. We were angry that we weren’t the force we had been; that we were now just another band, and no longer dominating the pop world. Shit, we were just angry all round.
It’s amazing in the circumstances that the gigs were as good as they were, but the first half of the Gravity tour, playing twenty-five British and Irish arena dates in the spring of 2011, was a riot. The stage was the only place we were happy. The Point Depot had by now been reborn as the newly refurbished O2 and we ended with five nights there, which were incredible.
If only we could just perform, and never do anything else! But, sadly, this wasn’t possible.
We were still having amazing adventures. At the end of the tour’s first leg, we did a couple of Middle East gigs, in Oman and Dubai, and then featured in two major historic events in Dublin in quick succession.
In May 2011, the Queen made a state visit to Ireland. Because of Britain and Ireland’s fiery history, and the Troubles, it was the first time she had ever been to our country – in fact, it was the first visit to Ireland by a British monarch since King George V, her granddad, exactly 100 years earlier.
It was obviously a massive happening and crowds turned out to see her. Westlife were invited to entertain her at a big gala performance at the National Convention Centre, along with The Chieftains and the cast and orchestra from Riverdance.
We sang ‘You Raise Me Up’ and I was pretty nervous, as the Queen was right in front of me in my eye-line. We nailed it, and then at the end we lined up with the other performers as the Queen came up onstage to greet us. It was being shown live on TV.
The Queen passed along the line shaking hands and saying, ‘Hello,’ and then stopped when she came to me. Ah, we were going to have another of our heart-to-hearts! She leaned forward and said something to me… and I didn’t hear it.
My heart was beating fast and my blood ran cold. I was live on TV talking to the Queen and I hadn’t got a clue what she had just said. I couldn’t exactly say, ‘You wot?’ What came out, I think, was ‘Excuse me, ma’am?’ I heard Mark giggle next to me.
‘Are you on tour at the moment?’ the Queen asked me.
‘Ah, your Majesty, we’ve just finished a tour, and we’re about to go on tour again,’ I told her.
‘Splendid,’ she said, and moved on.
The Duke of Edinburgh was accompanying her and followed her down the line. As he shook Kian’s hand, Kian asked him, ‘Are you enjoying your visit to Ireland, sir?’
Prince Philip stopped dead and glared at him. ‘Well, of course I am. What do you expect me to say?’ he said, and walked on without waiting for a reply. Poor Kian went white. He had messed with the wrong duke.
Four days later, Westlife were renewing our acquaintance with President Barack Obama.
Obama was also in Ireland on a state visit and was to give an open-air speech from a stage erected next to Trinity College in Dublin. A few Irish actors and artists were to warm up the crowd beforehand, and Westlife were asked to perform three songs.
The shades-wearing, walkie-talkie-carrying CIA and security men were out in force again. We sang ‘What About Now?’, ‘Flying Without Wings’ and ‘You Raise Me Up’ and Liam Neeson and Brendan Gleeson made speeches, then a loud roar rent the sky as Obama flew in from a function in Cork in his huge Marine One helicopter. It literally landed in the street behind the college and a blacked-out car took him 50 yards to the stage.
Obama gave a fantastic speech, and then hung out for a while with the artists and performers in a room at the college. It was far less formal than the Nobel Peace Prize, and he was mingling and chatting to people like Daniel Day-Lewis and the golfer Padraig Harrington.
We were reintroduced to him and a flicker of recognition ran across his face: ‘Hey, haven’t I seen you guys before?’ But we were quickly eclipsed by one of the most momentous events in Barack Obama’s life – as he met Jedward.
We already knew singing identical twins John and Edward Grimes pretty well, as Louis had become their manager after mentoring them on The X Factor. However, I think it is accurate to say that their fame had not stretched across the ocean to Washington, DC.
President Obama was thus somewhat nonplussed suddenly to find himself flanked by two grinning, gabbling forces of nature in glittery red Michael Jackson-style jackets and starched two-feet-high skyscrapers of hair.
Jedward were excited and hyper and yelling at him in fake American accents: ‘Hey, Mr President! Hey, Mr President!’
Obama responded by burying his fingers in their towering quiffs: ‘My God, you guys have got some hair on you!’
It was hard to imagine a more unlikely encounter. We were all pissing ourselves laughing, but I don’t think that Obama minded – because he was doing the same thing.
Westlife also did one more thing of note during the break from the Gravity tour.
We decided to split up.
We took the decision in a hotel suite in Switzerland, overlooking Lake Geneva. We were about to play a private corporate gig, and we were having a band meeting before the show.
It was probably the thirtieth time that year we had sat down for a heart-to-heart about our future, and normally they ended inconclusively with us muttering, ‘Let’s give it a bit longer.’ This time was different. This time we saw it through.
We all spoke in turn and we found it in ourselves to tell the truth – that w
e just weren’t enjoying the band any more, and what had once been a mission and a passion had become a chore and heartache. We admitted that we had been drifting apart and, if we were honest, the thrill had gone.
It was an incredibly emotional moment as we talked and stared out over the profound, picturesque lake. We reminisced about the adventures we’d had; the incredible experiences that we had been so lucky to enjoy. And we agreed that we should bow out before we spoiled the band’s legacy.
It was also a turning point for me. I was still petrified by the prospect of the band splitting, and I knew it would leave me even further up shit creek without a paddle. Yet for the first time I thought it was the right decision for everybody – even for me.
Whatever happened to me next with my money woes, I still needed to be happy in my life – and Westlife was no longer a happy place to be.
By the end of the meeting, we were all agreed, and laughing and hugging each other. We were quite teary-eyed at what had just happened and what we had resolved to do, but the main feeling was one of mass relief, as if we had finally taken a deep breath and faced up to the inevitable.
We decided not to announce the news right away. We didn’t even tell Louis at this point. We had the outdoor British and Irish dates to play and then an Asian tour into October, and we decided to put out a statement at the end of that.
Even the timing seemed right. We had a second Greatest Hits album, imaginatively titled Greatest Hits, due out that Christmas. It seemed a fitting bookend to our career. We could release Greatest Hits, play one last big farewell tour, then go our separate ways.
That night we played a great gig. It was a funny one – it was the AGM of some big multinational corporation, and a lot of the people in the audience clearly hadn’t got a clue who we were. But we played a blinder, and it was a very emotional one for us; we were doing a lot of hugging onstage.
