Despite what major label accountants would have you believe, rock'n'roll is in a state of rude health at the moment. All over Britain, bands founded in the last couple of years are releasing early singles, or getting signed by labels desperate for their own slice of skinny attitude. Guitar makers Fender and amplifier firm Marshall hit record UK sales in 2002 for their 'entry level' products - the sorts of cheap guitars and amps that young bands can afford to buy. An impressive number of young dreamers are strapping on guitars, plugging in, and getting heard.
Razorlight's Johnny Borrell is one such dreamer, riding the thermal updraft of sound. His band released their second taut, edgy single, 'Rip It Up', this week. When they launched their debut, 'Rock 'N' Roll Lies', thieves broke into their promoter's car and stole the invites, which later turned up on eBay for silly money. Their as-yet-untitled debut album is already one of the most acutely anticipated of 2004.
Razorlight only came together in the autumn of 2002, when baby-faced London scenester Borrell - one of a gang of urban rock urchins who became The Libertines and DJ sensations Queens Of Noize - got together with Swedish guitar virtuoso Björn Ågren, Ågren's fellow expat, 'girl-magnet' Carl Dalemo (bass) and Borrell's old friend Christian Smith Pancorvo (drums). Almost immediately, they started causing arguments in London music circles. A collision of dreamy looks, hooks and self-belief, the fledgling Razorlight sounded like Television and Patti Smith crossed with The Kinks and a host of other hair-trigger, neurotic rockers. The whisper was, they could be the British Strokes. Their detractors, however, thought they owed rather too much to Television. And The Strokes. The NME, for one, took against them ('an ex-Libertine and some Swedish session musicians' it sniffed), despite Borrell being managed by one of their former writers. Mercury Records, however, signed them for a quarter of a million.
'I had a vision, y'know?' coughs Borrell, the morning after about 20 raucous gigs in a row, trying to explain his band's rise. 'I went looking for the right people to play the songs. "Buzz" is such a cheap word, but when I wrote 'Rip It Up', everyone came up with the right parts straight away, which is really, really rare. It was...' A buzz? 'Yeah.'
They spent the winter rehearsing. 'I wanted us to be good. Really good. Not just good, historically good,' explains Borrell. 'We made that commitment, all of us.' Often, Borrell was too broke to afford the bus from London's Stamford Hill to Hackney's increasingly famous Toerag Studios, where they recorded their early demos. Once, walking along the canal, he was beset by wild dogs. It's the kind of story that swirls eerily around Razorlight - a band invited to play Japan as conquering heroes before they'd released a note of music. Their fan-site has an area devoted to fans' sexual dreams of the band.
The name came when Borrell started 'speaking in tongues' at the end of 'In The City' and 'razorlight' is what came out. It made me think of the Naked Lunch moment, when everyone sees what is on the end of the fork, and you can see everything for what it really is.'
Although Ågren's piercing guitar-playing - honed as a teenager in small-town Sweden - lifts Razorlight above the noisy ranks of post-Strokes bands, it's Borrell, the rock'n'roll lifer, who is the undisputed focus of Razorlight. He's been in love with guitars since he heard Led Zeppelin on the radio and became transfixed. He's read the Beats, he's studied The Smiths, he quotes New York scuzz-rockers The Dead Boys. His songs are about classic things - like girls, and rock'n'roll itself. They're always a little jaded, a little the worse for wear, but endlessly open to fresh possibilities: another gig, another girl, a new song.
'It's like being in love,' explains Borrell, when pressed to get to the bare bones of why rock'n'roll matters. 'It transcends everything rational. You can lie in bed with someone you're in love with and stare at their face and you try and stop and focus and it's just someone's face. But you don't just see someone's face, you see this feeling. It's this thing that takes you over, that's somehow beyond... normal.'
Kitty Empire