“I’m 22 and I’m interested in my generation taking some responsibility for itself,” he adds. “What are we after, what do we want?”
Beneath a messy tangle of curls, minutes after laying waste to an unsuspecting Leeds public, Johnny Borrell grins. “The girls are starting to become a problem. They’re following us around the country and it’s beginning to make things a little, shall we say, complicated...”
It’s the fourth date of Razorlight’s current sell out UK tour and the effects of their hormonally-charged pop are plain to see. It’s not every night a waif-like rock’n’roll poet like Johnny shows up in the beerlight of the Cockpit, and, if the clamour by the stage door is anything to go by, every indie siren in the West Riding has come in the hope of a personal recital of his favourite stanzas.
Who can blame them? If the band’s mercilessly melodic onslaught wasn’t enough, a quick scan of the dressing room tells you that, as pied pipers go, Razorlight are unnervingly easy on the eye. If bassist Carl Dalemo has the looks of a youthful Kurt Cobain and Bjorn Ågren schmoozes with a natural, blue-eyed Scando-charm, then part-Peruvian drummer Christian Smith-Pancorvo – stylishly daubed in Inca face paint – is cut from an even more exotic cloth.
And then there’s Johnny. One minute talking animatedly between swigs of mineral water, the next strumming furiously on a battered acoustic guitar, he isn’t so much a young man in a hurry as on fast-forward. Modelling his customary magpie-in-a-charity-shop fashion sense (tonight: knee-length football socks, pipecleaner jeans, Lacoste trainers and a tweed coat), he cuts quite a dash. And that’s before you get to that impeccable indie CV: schoolfriend of Libs bassist John Hassall, long-term compadre of Pete’n’Carl (they wrote ‘The Boy Looked At Johnny’ about him) and current on/off squeeze of Mairead Queen Of Noize, Johnny is the very stuff of rock star DNA.
No wonder people can’t warm to him. Because despite a brace of killer pop singles in ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Lies’ and ‘Rip It Up’ and with new stop-start epic ‘Stumble & Fall’ due to breach the top 20 as we speak, industry consensus currently dictates that Johnny and his pan-continental pals are somehow a little too perfect for mass critical adulation.
Hmmm. Could it be that Razorlight’s cheekbone heavy tunefulness and ruthless efficiency isn’t quite parochial enough for the indie snobs? Yes, quite simply, and yes.
Still, the good new is that Johnny’s one-man assault on indie mores has only just begun. Relocated to the sanctuary of the hotel, he launches into a two-hour splurge of self-promoting propaganda which is as mind-boggling as it is compelling. Especially when you realise he’s stone cold sober. “Firstly, I’m a genius,” He states, the second the tape recorder is switched on. “Musically, culturally, everything. I’ve written two more albums, I’m writing a film which I’m going to star in and I’m writing the soundtrack. I can’t stop. I’ve got stacks of songs, it’s just a case of getting them out there. It’s like (Bob Dylan & The Band’s) ‘The Basement Tapes’: it took years for people to hear them.
Are you comparing your debut album with Dylan?
“Well, put it this way, compared to the Razorlight album Dylan is making the chips. I’m drinking champagne.”
It doesn’t even begin there. Johnny’s ambitions, it transpires, stretch far beyond Razorlight, but then “we’ll get to that”. As for the new rock revolution, don’t even ask. This is a man, remember, who wore a handmade ‘I Hate The New Rock Revolution’ T-Shirt to his first NME photoshoot.
“The new rock revolution is a load of bollocks,” he spits. “Everyone knows that. The Strokes were important because they added something but now it’s just bands revelling in being derivative. The Datsuns are AC/DC; Hot Hot Heat The Cure. What’s the point? Some of them are just horrible. Why people can’t think beyond comparisons...”
Johnny pauses. He has remembered the last ten Razorlight reviews.
“It pisses me off when people compare us to Television. I mean, I think I know what (Tom) Verlaine was talking about and it’s not what I’m talking about. Our record is gonna sound like nothing that’s been heard before. It’s a London album. It’s about living passionately in the dirty old city. Living with passion, spirit, spark and desire.”
The scary thing is, having heard sneak previews of some of the songs to be included on Razorlight’s debut, including a sublime ‘Don’t Go Back To Dalston’ (about Pete Libertine) and gorgeous future hit ‘Golden Touch’ (about Mairead), Johnny appears to have done just that. It’s marvellous, heart-rending stuff, a plea for his old friends not to get sucked into the vortex of fame, glued to classic pop tunes. Sort of like a more accessible, radio-friendly Libertines. Johnny winces.
“It’s frustrating when people mention them. Razorlight should be a new thing but their name always crops up. It’s difficult, because I don’t want to criticise them. We’re kindred spirits, and personally I’m really close with Carlos, but what I’m doing and what they’re doing are different things. For me it’s not about stumbling around town being seen…”
Who would be a better comparison then?
“Tom Waits, Orson Wells, Dylan.”
If the scope of Johnny’s musical ambition is vast, then it’s only because he cares so passionately about it. Having legendarily started out as a 16-year-old on the streets of London, soaking up the spirit of the city armed only with an acoustic guitar, a tape recorder and a laundry bag, he feels that the true spirit of rock’n’roll is currently being debased.
“Rock’n’roll isn’t about playing an electric guitar and talking about the right records. Someone like Charles Bukowski is far more rock’n’roll than any of those bands you’ve just mentioned. I’m interested in the power rock’n’roll has got to change things, not replicate them.
He sighs. When Franz Ferdinand played a recent instore gig in the West End, Johnny went down there not so much to pay his respects as to tell them he’d got their number – the second side of David Bowie’s ‘Low’ to be precise. Does he feel as though he’s in competition with other bands?
“Listen…ask me in 20 years about the Libertines. I’m the best songwriter of my generation. I’ve got more songs and spirit than anyone else. It’s not an ego thing either, I’m just trying to invent what’s going on in the culture because it’s shit.”
Are Razorlight a vehicle to do that?
“Who knows? The band is an intense, fragile, fucked up alliance. I can’t pretend otherwise. There are some days when I can’t even look at them, and others when they do three or four good things is a row and it’s great. I love and hate them all equally.”
Talk moves to rock’s habit of bringing on self-destruction.
“The glamourisation of all drugs is wrong,” he explains. “I was a smackhead when I was 16. Who cares? I had this French teacher at school and she’s say to me, “Come to pub and we can talk about Camus.” The next thing we were scoring gear together and sitting in a park in Kentish Town off our heads. There was no glamour in it. For everyone who thinks they’re Keith Richards, there are loads of people just getting their lives messed up.”
As for the future, it’s anyone’s guess.
“I could do anything. It’s a blank canvas. I can equally see myself as Tom Waits or like Rimbaud,” he muses.
“He gave it up at 24 and headed for the Gold Coast. I could be in a little town in the Mediterranean writing songs and coming up to play The Purcell rooms every so often, or I could be as big as U2.
Seriously?
“Yeah. Everything has got to begin somewhere. Sometimes I wonder what would’ve happened if I hadn’t got taken over by rock’n’roll. I’d have still had the same drive. If I’d decided to be a doctor at 13 instead I’d still be 22 now and would have all these mad theories. Some people would doubt me and others would be saying, ‘The kid’s got something,’ I’d still be in the same position. I just put everything into what I do.”
With his messy tangle of ringlets and his encyclopaedic knowledge of rock’s extended bloodline, Johnny Borrell is the epitome of contemporary rock star cool. By rights, he should be massive and, to his credit, he knows it. As the clock strikes 2am, Johnny recounts a recent trip to the studios of Sky Sports’ Soccer AM to illustrate his point.
“It was one of these talk shows where you have to play a game. I had to shoot a football through a target 20 yards away to win. It wasn’t easy but I just knew I had to do it.”
Did he score?
“What do you think? Of course I did.”
Johnny Borrell: the kid’s got something.