The tour might be over, but he knew he had plenty more to give.
Six days later, it was Christmas Eve. And Charlie Simpson had a very important meeting with his management. He had only one thing to say.
He was leaving Busted.
James was snowboarding with his family. He didn’t know a thing. Later, on The Jonathan Ross Show, he said, ‘People didn’t tell me because I would have been the most sad.’ He recalled on Fearne and McBusted, ‘At one point my dad pulled me aside and he just said . . . “The whole thing’s over.” I think everyone knew except for me. I was shocked.’
‘Shocked’ doesn’t really cover it. This was a bombshell. Matt Willis had had an ink ling something was up, later telling The Vault, ‘I saw it coming if I’m honest. I thought it was going to happen before it did.’ He said to FleckingRecords.co.uk, ‘To be honest, Charlie made the last year of Busted pretty miserable for me.’ He later went even further, in a drunken interview with VJ Scorpio TV. Clutching a bottle of beer, he revealed, ‘Charlie was into [Fightstar] . . . He didn’t give a f**k . . . James hated him for being in Fightstar. And Charlie hated him for hating him for being in Fightstar. But it was never said. So therefore I was the bitch in the middle . . . In the end I just got pissed.’ More and more often, that was becoming Matt’s answer to everything.
James elaborated on the tension between him and Charlie on Fearne and McBusted: ‘I never went to his Fightstar shows because I never really felt welcome . . . He never invited me personally to a gig.’ And Matt added to Fearne, ‘Charlie wanted to lead the direction of the band, but James was the backbone of the direction of the band. That’s probably where things went a bit wrong. I think Charlie started to hate Busted, and what Busted stood for. He didn’t have much control on where the band was going and I think in the end that ate him up. He was just not into it.’
James continued, ‘I definitely understood his desire to make music that he believed in and wanted to do – because that’s what I want to do.’
But he wasn’t going to be able to do it any more. On Thursday, 13 January, the band called a crisis meeting. James and Matt were still shell-shocked by Charlie’s decision. They had always, always said that if one of them left the others wouldn’t continue as a duo. Busted was over.
Friday, 14 January 2005. It wasn’t a particularly chilly day – it was a mild 8 degrees Celsius on the bustling London streets outside – but the atmosphere inside the stunned press-conference room at the Soho Hotel was as cold as ice. Amid a cacophony of calls from the waiting journalists and a blizzard of camera flashes, the three men slowly made their way into the room, about to deliver the worst news of two of their young lives. Charlie sat in the middle, with James to his right and Matt to his left. James wore a black baseball cap that shadowed his eyes, but his open mouth showcased just how jaw-dropping the news had been to him. He looked as if he was still in shock.
Charlie, whose decision had prompted the conference, spoke first. ‘As a lot of you know, there’s been a lot of speculation in the past month about the future of this band. We want to set the record straight now. So, with that in mind, I am here to tell you that I’ve quit Busted.’ His voice, that plummy yet gravelly drawl that fans the world over adored, sounded taut with tension. ‘I’ve been slightly concerned that I’ve been reading things in the press. It’s been saying that the band hasn’t got on and that I’ve been embarrassed to be in Busted. I want to completely quash those rumours because I’ve had the most amazing three years. These two’ – and he gestured at Matt and James sitting either side of him – ‘have been absolutely amazing. Two of my best friends and amazing bandmates. And I wish them all the best in the future.’
James, who looked as if he was struggling to keep the tears inside, spoke next. ‘We want Busted to be remembered as the three of us. And, that way [not continuing], it will always be the three of us. No one’s going to try and carry anything on.’ His last word was for all those who had embraced his songs, his lyrics – his world. ‘I want to thank the fans. They’re awesome.’
And then there was only Matt left to speak: ‘James has been my best friend for [four] years . . . this is a really hard time for us.’ Magnanimously, he wished Charlie well with the new band.
And then the three former Busted boys rose from their chairs, and left the press conference room behind them.
James and Matt wouldn’t speak to Charlie again for seven years.
Almost four years to the day since Matt had first knocked on James’s door in Southend-on-Sea, it was just the two of them again. From those humble beginnings, they had conquered the world. But now it was all just ashes. And there was no time-travelling car coming to save them. No ‘To be continued . . .’
Only: The End.
In a studio across town, the McFly boys heard the news as they filmed the video to ‘All About You’. Now, it really was. Busted were out of the game – and McFly were on their own.
Tom recalled in Unsaid Things, ‘Seeing [Busted] split was a reminder of how lucky we were that the four of us were so close. I wish that had stuck with me over the months that were to come.’
That was because, as Tom’s star was in the ascendant as part of McFly, his spirits were plummeting to rock bottom. He was moody, depressed, low. The world seemed bleak. He and Giovanna had a rocky time around then, but they got through it. He should have been on top of the world. Instead, inside, in his very core, everything was black and cold.
To the outside world, McFly were bigger than ever. In February 2005 they completed the baton handover initiated by the Busted split by taking home the BRIT Award for Best Pop act – the award Busted had so excitedly claimed just a year before. They announced that they would be in a Hollywood movie with Lindsay Lohan, to be filmed that same year. They even starred in British favourite Casualty. And they jetted to New Orleans to work on songs for the film.
It was while they were in New Orleans, just before the BRITs, that Danny got a call from his sister Vicky. She told him their dad was having an affair. Danny flew home to support his mum and try to reason with his dad. But his parents’ relationship was over. He later said to the Daily Mail, ‘I hate thinking about it. My dad went off with another woman. It was a weak mid-life-crisis thing – he just left us. I think he’s a prat and I’d never do what he did. In the end I had to pay him off. I don’t want to see him again.’
With Danny reeling from his dad’s betrayal – a reaction with which Dougie could wholly sympathise, after his father’s actions just eighteen months before – and Tom feeling low, the band’s second album was going to be much, much darker than their debut. How could it not be? Songwriters feed off the world around them. And, while Danny may have hated thinking about his dad, he was able to channel the experience into music. ‘The Ballad of Paul K’ was written by the band about his and Dougie’s dads leaving, and ‘Don’t Know Why’, which Danny wrote with his sister Vicky, explored the dark theme of their father’s treachery. Later, when he’d perform ‘Don’t Know Why’ onstage, his face supersized on the big screens, he’d have a faraway look in his eyes. Maybe remembering.
The Bourne–Fletcher duo had a track on the album, the yearning ‘Memory Lane’. The record also featured an entirely orchestral track, an incredible achievement for a so-called ‘boy band’, which formed part one of ‘She Falls Asleep’, a song about teenage suicide. It was a bleak album for what had seemed pop’s brightest shining lights.
And for Matt Willis, too, times were very, very dark. In Busted, he drank to celebrate. Now, he drank to forget that his dreams lay shattered; to forget that the band was over. According to a ‘close pal’ of his who was quoted in the Mirror, ‘Matt probably took the break-up of the band the hardest. He was left with too much time on his hands and lots of mates who wanted to drag him to the nearest bar.’ Matt himself said to EDP24.com, the web presence of the Eastern Daily Press, ‘I was pretty upset about it all. I was down about it and it drove me crazy. I’m not very good left to my own devices.
I get into trouble.’
Trouble before the band had split had meant too many wild nights out and raucous carryings-on. Now, the daily drinking that had previously buoyed him up through the non-stop schedule of being in a band, powering him through the photoshoots and live performances, became a life raft in his darkest hour. Too late, he realised that the life raft was pulling him under. He had a problem. He knew he did. He later said to the Mirror, ‘It was awful. I was very unhappy and probably in the lowest point of my life. I hit self-destruct mode. When you’re told to f**king look at the rest of your life at twenty-one, it’s a bit worrying when you don’t see anything.’
Emma Griffiths, who was now his girlfriend, dropped him off at the Priory rehab clinic just months after Busted split, so he could seek help for his alcohol addiction. She was reportedly the only person allowed to stay in contact with him during his time there. The ‘close pal’ in the Mirror continued, ‘Matt’s phone is turned off and no one can get hold of him. Obviously, James is really worried about him, but Matt’s therapists think isolation is for the best. The only person he has allowed to visit him is Emma.’
It was an experience that brought the young couple closer together. As Matt later revealed in an interview with Sing365.com, ‘In rehab you’ve got nothing except coffee . . . Everyone wants a luxury, and mine was the thought of my girlfriend driving me home.’ Yet she came to pick him up a bit earlier than expected.
Matt, having sorted out his head, quit the rehab course after just two weeks of a month-long treatment programme. He was fine, he thought. It had all been a bit of an overreaction. To Sing365.com, he said, ‘In rehab, they talk about you hitting rock bottom, but I saw it more as prevention against becoming a total arsehole. I did the whole going-to-meetings thing, I stopped drinking for a while . . . but I listened to everyone talk about how dark it was and I was like, “Wait a second, I had a wicked time!”’
And someone who was happy to join him for a drink was Dougie Poynter, who’d now upgraded from the red wine and was enjoying the cool charms of Russian vodka.
James, who’d never made a habit of drowning his sorrows in the first place, had to find another outlet for his pain at Busted’s break-up.
He knew only one thing that would make him feel better.
He was going to start another band.
EIGHT
Walk in the Sun
‘So . . . who’s most looking forward to meeting Lindsay Lohan?’ Cat Deeley asked McFly one Saturday morning on the set of CD:UK.
In a heartbeat, Harry Judd’s arm shot straight into the air, a good two seconds before his bandmates reacted. When Cat asked if any of the McFly boys fancied Lindsay, Harry replied with typical cockiness, ‘No, apparently she fancies us, though.’
His jokey reply wasn’t far from his mind as Hollywood actress Lindsay Lohan opened the door to her hotel room late one night during the filming of Just My Luck – and invited him inside. Never, in a million years, did he ever think he’d be making out with a movie star – even if she would later deny that anything had taken place.
Speaking to the Mirror, he revealed the vital statistics of their night of passion together by saying, ‘At the time I thought, “This is awesome,” but I was really nervous. Lindsay invited me back to her hotel . . . I didn’t shag her, but we spent the night and had a fumble . . . We did things teenagers do. We went far enough but not the full home run.’
Dalliances with A-list stars were just all in a day’s work for McFly now. In July they flew to Japan to headline Live 8, and their number ones were still coming thick and fast – ‘All About You’ in March and ‘I’ll Be OK’ in August. And, even despite the darker tones of Wonderland, their second album, it still reached the top spot – just in time to launch its accompanying arena tour – McFly’s first – which began on 15 September 2005.
They would be joined on tour by a full orchestra. And Harry had noticed that some of the violinists looked as beautiful as they played. Some – or, rather, one in particular. Izzy Johnston was a stunning brunette who had studied at the Royal College of Music in London. Before the tour started, when the crew were all in Bristol one day, he came over and introduced himself, as Izzy recalled to Hello! magazine: ‘He gave me a kiss on the cheek and it was absolutely love at first sight. I walked away and said to [my friend], “Something just happened to me.” It was powerful, like I’d known him forever.’
It still took them a little while to get together, though. It wasn’t until McFly played Cardiff on 11 October, almost a month after the tour began, that they kissed for the first time. Harry said simply to Hello!, ‘We fell in love. We just had this deep understanding, like no one in this world knows you better.’
James, meanwhile, was getting to know his new bandmates. It was less than a year since Busted had gone their separate ways, but already he had management, a record label and a brand-new album of songs, this time all written by him with various collaborators.
Son of Dork formed in super-quick time with super-talented musicians, who were found, as per Busted, from adverts placed in the NME and the Stage. It was a five-piece pop-punk band, perhaps a little rockier than Busted, with Steve Rushton sharing lead vocals with James and playing bass; David Williams sharing rhythm guitar with James and doing backing vocals; Danny Hall on drums; and Chris Leonard as the lead guitarist. The band’s name came from – what else? – a film, ‘son of dork’ being a phrase that’s chanted in the 1990 movie Problem Child.
James held auditions to find his new bandmates. Literally thousands of people turned up – something he found overwhelming. But he was, after all, one-third of what had just been Britain’s biggest group. Prolific as ever, he had four songs written even before the band’s line-up was finalised. And he’d also got a great producer on board: Gil Norton, a Grammy-award-winning legend in the industry, who had worked with Foo Fighters, Feeder and many others. James revealed to Virgin Media, ‘I played him four songs acoustically and he agreed to do it straightaway.’
And the result was pretty special – another stomping pop-punk album about adolescent life: teenage parties, gorgeous girls and nerdy loser kids. Every song told a story. Every tune had a tale to tell. There was a whole new cast of characters, with ‘Eddie’s Song’ and ‘Holly . . . I’m the One’ putting names to the heroes and heroines of James’s new music. ‘Boyband’, a pumping anthemic uptempo track, was a clear retort to all those critics who’d dismissed Busted as nothing more than that, co-written by James with Brendan Brown of Wheatus and ‘Teenage Dirtbag’ fame, with tongues placed firmly in cheeks. It even name-checked McFly.
Yet it was the debut single, released on 7 November 2005, that was the stand-out track of the album. ‘Ticket Outta Loserville’ was classic James Bourne, and followed neatly on, from a stylistic point of view, from the final official Busted single, the fast-paced and toe-tapping ‘Thunderbirds Are Go’. That was hardly surprising when you factored in that James wrote it just two weeks after Busted split. And he was certainly hoping that the new band were going to be his ticket out of Loserville.
It got off to a great start. DeLorean car in the video? Check. Smash Hits award for Hot New Talent? Check. Top-three hit? Check. James’s thank-you note to his friends Pete and Charlie in the album sleeve notes looked prophetic: ‘Thanks for being there at the beginning of this year when my life was crap – we sure turned it around!’ McFly were, as ever, supportive of James; the new band thanked them twice over in the sleeve notes, just as James was thanked in Wonderland’s acknowledgements, too.
And it wasn’t just James who was starting to think about new music: Matt, too, was putting his mind to his next venture. He’d been offered a solo deal with Mercury Records and was casting about for inspiration for his new album, which he would write himself. The experiences that had put him into rehab, and his devastation following Busted’s split, were a source – at long last – of something positive. Getting back into the studio, he thought, would be like coming home.
Home fo
r McFly, meanwhile, was changing. Following the Wonderland tour, they all moved into Princess Park Manor, the complex they knew so well from staying with James and Matt when the band were starting out. Yet Tom was still feeling out of sorts. Having now lived two full years in the public eye, he’d seen the good and bad side of fame. And, much to his horror, he’d been labelled ‘the fat one’ in the band, something the other boys, completely good-naturedly, ribbed him about, joking that he was pregnant in their CD:UK appearances, while Danny would tease him in interviews that only five girls fancied him.
Blue already, Tom found himself spiralling into a darker and darker place. He recalled in Unsaid Things, ‘I was obsessing about being the fat one in the band. I wanted to lose weight, but rather than going about it the sensible way, I pretty much stopped eating.’
Dougie, however, having now turned eighteen, was consuming more and more – of the wrong things. As he put it in McFly’s autobiography, ‘I [now] had sufficient cojones to ask people about other substances that might be available . . .’ And he didn’t hold back.
In this climate, Tom decided that he wanted to move in with Giovanna and started hunting for a new home for the couple to share. He then went on holiday to Florida with his family, and found that the sunshine warmed not only his skin but his spirit, too. He turned the corner from his depressive period and came back fighting fit and ready to begin writing McFly’s third album, which would be called Motion in the Ocean.
And he got some inspiration for the new album’s musical direction from an unexpected source: Matt Willis. Matt, who was getting in the zone for writing his own album, had discovered a power-pop band called Jellyfish. Way back in 1993, they had released an album called Spilt Milk. It was zany, summery and kooky, imaginative and full of flights of fancy. It seemed to link back to McFly’s debut – those light, bright hits and happy days. It seemed like the next step forward for McFly to Matt’s musical ear – a more direct, linear link to Room on the 3rd Floor than to Wonderland. Matt suggested to Fletch – who was by now managing Matt as a solo artist, as well as Son of Dork and McFly – that the McFly boys check it out.
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