Seeing the light in North Down - Belfast Telegraph - 3rd September 04
Razorlight may be winning over the critics, but for lead singer Johnny Borrell, the story could have been very much different. Ahead of an intimate gig in Belfast, he tells Paul McNamee how Northern Ireland played a crucial role in his recovery from heroin abuse

Come the end of the year, Razorlight's Up All Night will be in the Top 10 of every Best Album poll. It's a bristling, caustic, exhilarating debut, full of songs that sound as though they demanded to be written.

It puts the four-piece, driven by Johnny Borrell - a charismatic front-man who was born to be a star - in the vanguard of great new British rock and roll, up there with Franz Ferdinand, Hope of The States and The Libertines. But if it weren't for Donaghadee, all this would be grist to the mill because Razorlight would not even exist.

In the summer of 1999, Borrell, then just 19, was addicted to heroin.

Though from the affluent suburb of Alexandra Palace in north London, he had experimented with drugs from his early teens and fell into heroin when he was 17.

"You're a kid and you're just getting kicks doing what you can," he explains. "I remember when Noel Gallagher said for some people, taking drugs was as normal as taking a cup of tea, and he's right - but for some people that's a very scandalous thing to say.

"But I really enjoyed doing heroin when I was 17, until there came a point when I realised that it was a crushingly boring and pointless thing to do.

"There's a seedy glamour and squalor to it that a lot of people get drawn to, but that's pretty empty and boring too.

"So I reached a point where I decided to jack it in. I was 19, I was playing bass in my friend's band and I got kicked out for taking too many drugs. I was going out with this girl whose family was from Donaghadee and we went out there and stayed with her dad until I kicked the drugs.

"It was so far away, out of harm's way, well away from temptation. I spent a lot of time at the end of that summer just walking around the little town, trying to get straight."

Borrell managed to get off heroin - a step further than his close pal Pete Doherty of The Libertines, whose battle with addiction has seen him become grade A tabloid fodder of late.

"It's hard getting off drugs, but the hardest thing in the world is staying off them," he says. With heroin gone, Borrell searched for a new focus.

"That was the start of me writing songs and starting to do it seriously," he says. "Before that I had been in bands but bands that were too rock and roll to ever stay the course.

"We'd go down to the rehearsal studio and play a couple of Velvet Underground songs, steal the equipment, and then sell it.

"I remember when I was in Donaghadee I was listening to every 60s UK R&B band I could - especially the Kinks - and I remember thinking it would a great thing if I could be in a great band with great songs and help people have a good time.

"I'm glad I made that swap from what I was doing before - basically getting money and scoring - to making music."

Later this month, Razorlight follow the success of their first big single Golden Touch with Vice, a thunderous, spirited volley that manages to fuse The Buzzcocks and Springsteen's Born To Run into something fresh and essential. It could be the song that moves Razorlight from critical acclaim to the major league.

For now, Borrell is just happy to keep on keeping on. "The best feeling in the world is when you write a song and take it to the band and it makes sense," he says. "It doesn't matter if your bus is three hours late or if your girlfriend dumps you - nothing matters. You can just sit down and play those songs.

"And that's just the best feeling in this world."