In presenting his case, Ki took his guitar into the witness box and outlined the songwriting process to the judge, singing Wheatus’s ‘Teenage Dirtbag’ and a version of the Spice Girls’ ‘Mama’ to illustrate his points – something that didn’t go down too well with Wheatus’s lead singer, Brendan Brown. He told FleckingRecords.co.uk in no uncertain terms, ‘On the one hand, it’s pure Monty Python genius. You couldn’t pay millions to the best video director to paint that picture. Only in this surreal world of ours is that possible [to have my song played in the High Court].
‘On the other hand I am a bit angry. I am good friends with James Bourne, I know he was in the right and I thought, “You c**t! How dare you use my song to try and steal from my friend? I’ll reach down your throat and pull your f**king skeleton out!”’
While the judge, Mr Justice Morgan, didn’t use quite those terms, he did have some pretty damning words regarding Ki’s and Owen’s reliability as witnesses when he gave his judgement on 6 June 2008. ‘Ki was not a reliable and convincing witness,’ Morgan began. ‘He quite plainly exaggerated and distorted the real events . . . Owen was not a reliable witness, either. He manifested a high degree of confusion and a failure to grasp the detail in relation to many of the significant events.’
The court documents show that Ki and Owen consistently changed their stories. In October 2001, they’d told Rashman that they hadn’t contributed to some of the songs. Now, they were claiming co-writer credits.
The judge said of James: ‘Conversely, I regard James as an essentially credible and reliable witness. He had a very good and clear recollection of points of detail and the content of his evidence appeared to be credible and was given in a credible way. The only qualification on my assessment of him is that it is possible he was a little ungenerous towards Ki and Owen in describing the contribution that Ki and Owen may have made to the composition of some of the songs. I do not, however, think that he was seriously wrong even in that respect. It is not altogether surprising that his evidence lacked generosity towards Ki and Owen. I think that, towards the end of their relationship in October 2001, it was already the case that James did not altogether like Ki and the way in which the claimants, and in particular Ki, have conducted this litigation ever since would not have done anything to encourage James to look kindly on Ki.’
Matt and James won the case. They issued an uncompromising statement following the verdict:
This was an opportunistic attempt by Doyle and McPhail [Ki’s legal surname] to cash in on our success. Their claims were a complete fabrication and we are delighted that the judge has seen through this and totally dismissed them. Our position has been completely vindicated and our achievements with Busted remain untarnished.
The judge chose not to make a pronouncement as to who had written what in relation to the disputed songs. He simply said that the March 2002 agreement that the claimants had signed, in which the fruits of the band were shared out between the four boys, was legally binding – which is, of course, what Rashman had intended it to be when it was first drawn up. Ki and Owen had no claim on the songs they had signed away. After the judgement, they said they would appeal, but no further coverage reports that any such thing took place.
For James and Matt, it had been an extremely tough time, though all James would say on the matter, to FleckingRecords.co.uk, was ‘It’s not fun, is it?’
Matt expressed himself in his tried-and-tested way. On 6 June 2008, the same day the verdict was returned, it was announced that he had crashed straight back into rehab.
And this time, the papers were full of the story that Emma had given him an ultimatum.
Give up booze – or lose me.
TEN
Only the Strong Survive
Bournemouth on the south coast of England boasts seven miles of golden sandy beaches and a quiet pace of life. Ever since the Queen Mother’s ancestor, Mary Eleanor Bowes, escaped there to get away from her violent second husband, it has offered sanctuary and peace to those in need. In the summer of 2008, Matt Willis was just such a person in need.
He attended the Providence Projects rehabilitation centre, a quiet retreat just a short walk from the sandy beaches, to help him battle his drink-and-drug demons once and for all. And help came not a moment too soon. In May, he’d had a wild night out with his old school friend from Sylvia Young, Amy Winehouse – who was herself struggling with her own drug and alcohol addictions – and it was this night, it was reported, that tipped him over the edge. The Mirror gave this account: ‘Long-suffering Emma was furious when Matt went back to Wino’s pad after a night out . . . and even angrier when she saw the state he turned up in at their north London home.’
It was a far cry from the happy time the couple had shared together on holiday in Venice the year before. In March, Matt had whisked Emma away for a romantic weekend – to ask a very special question. Emma told Bella magazine, ‘Matt went all weird one evening and I thought he was going to finish with me. He wasn’t talking and it was really odd.
‘We ended up on the Rialto Bridge, which is full of tourists. He kept saying, “Let’s go for a walk,” but Matt doesn’t like sightseeing and I suddenly twigged what was going on.’
Before her disbelieving eyes, Matt took a ring box out of his pocket and opened it up. There was a glittering square-cut diamond ring inside, sprawled somewhat inelegantly on the cushion – a bit like Emma and Matt themselves when one of their red-carpet piggybacks went awry – as it had come unmoored from its fastenings as Matt had nervously walked Venice’s streets with Emma, looking for the perfect spot to pop the question. He started to go down on one knee – but his girlfriend stopped him. He rushed out the all-important question and she accepted, immediately. Emma confessed to Bella, ‘Then I cried and loads of people were looking, which was just embarrassing.
‘It was lovely, and I loved that the ring fell out of the cushion and that I wouldn’t let him get down on one knee and that he stumbled and that I panicked – that’s very us!’ She said to the Mirror, ‘We laughed at each other! You feel very grown-up [being engaged]. And a bit daft.’
Matt checked into rehab just weeks before their big day. But, contrary to rumours, he had Emma’s support all the way. She told OK! magazine, ‘It was never a case of, “We’re not going to get married [if you don’t go to rehab].” It was Matt saying, “I really need to sort my shit out,” so he did.’
And, a mere four days before the wedding, he checked himself out of rehab – having completed the full five-week treatment programme. He later said of the experience to OK!, ‘I knew I had to sort my life out. I didn’t want to marry Emma being a liar and hiding things from her. I had been like this for a long while, but as the wedding got closer I remembered I was marrying the girl of my dreams and I didn’t want to marry her as a f**k-up. I didn’t feel right in my head; I wanted a fresh start. I didn’t go in there for a rest. I went to sort my head out.’
Emma later spoke of that time on Fearne and McBusted, in an interview that famously reduced her to tears as she recalled Matt’s stints in rehab. ‘He went to rehab when I’d known him for three months . . . I was in this whirlwind with him,’ she remembered. ‘Then he went again; we’d been together a couple of years. [You realise] this isn’t just a kid that needs a couple of weeks’ break: it’s someone that does genuinely have a problem . . . But I’m not going to leave him because he has a problem. We have to stick together and do it.’
And Matt added, ‘It was really tough. It’s never easy for anybody. I tried to quit drinking quite a few times. It’s a different thing saying, “I think I need to clear myself up a little bit” to actually saying, “I can never do this again. This is a massive problem in my life.”’
But with his problems behind him, thanks to the Providence Projects, he now just had the small matter of the biggest day of his life to contend with.
The morning of Saturday, 5 July 2008, saw the sun shining. Blue skies formed a glorious backdrop to the spectacular Rushto
n Hall in Northamptonshire, where Matt and Emma had chosen to wed. Matt, dressed in a smart black suit with a white tie and buttonhole, waited patiently in the Great Hall for his bride’s arrival; she was running late. His hair – as it had been since the demise of Busted – was a very sober, natural brown colour.
Helping the guests to their seats was James, in a grey suit and a white buttonhole to match Matt’s, who was acting as an usher. He greeted his ex-girlfriend Kara Tointon, looking stunning in a turquoise-and-black sundress, who was close friends with Matt and Emma too, and doing brilliantly in her career as a leading actress on EastEnders. And of course the McFly boys were there as well, back from Australia and the Radio:ACTIVE recording. They greeted James warmly; he’d collaborated on more songs with them of late, including ‘Everybody Knows’ and ‘Do Ya’, which had made the final cut of the new album.
McFly were suited and booted, too. They all wore dark suits with colourful ties: red for Tom, blue for Danny, purple for Dougie and pink for Harry. But what everyone was really interested in was what the blushing bride was going to wear.
She didn’t disappoint. In a full-length gown, Emma walked down the aisle clutching a bouquet of the creamiest blooms, her square diamond engagement ring catching the light as she headed straight for Matt, her eyes fixed only on him. Her dress had a traditional bodice and full skirt, with wide organza straps brushing her shoulders. Her dark hair was swept up and her eyes sparkled.
They exchanged vows before the stone fireplace in the Great Hall. Matt, clean at last and with no secrets from his new wife, simply couldn’t stop smiling. When the guests toasted the couple with champagne, he didn’t touch a drop.
He didn’t need to. The thought of having Emma as his wife was intoxicating enough.
While 22 September of that year didn’t mark another marriage, it was a memorable day nonetheless. It was the official release date of McFly’s new album, Radio:ACTIVE – the first on their own record label. As Tom said in the sleeve notes, ‘We’ve finally made the album we’ve always wanted.’
Even the artwork looked different. The lyrics – a must-have for fans who wanted to sing along – were handwritten and came complete with doodles and scribblings-out, just as they did in the notebooks Tom used when he was composing. It was the kind of look more usually associated with an artist like Damien Rice. And credible artists were lining up to recommend the band. The Daily Mail quoted rock goddess Courtney Love as saying, ‘Who says McFly are a boy band? That’s insane. Those guys slam.’ And Matt Helders of Arctic Monkeys offered, simply, ‘You can tell it comes from the heart with McFly.’
And Radio:ACTIVE was an album where they were wearing their hearts on their sleeves. Tom enthused in the sleeve notes, ‘Making this album has been one of the best experiences of my life. It was truly awesome. I am actually in my favourite band!’ And Harry offered expansively, ‘I want to kiss you all!’ The band’s happiness leaped off the page – and out of the speakers, too. You could almost hear the fact that Harry was drumming topless and that the songs, at the time of recording, were punctuated with regular ping-pong games between the boys – and Dougie streaking naked through the Australian tropical downpours. Tom said in the band’s The Making of Radio:ACTIVE documentary that ‘we love the way we play live on tour . . . We thought: that’s the type of record we should make.’ And it did have all the energy and fun of a live McFly gig.
Tom added, ‘We don’t have to put up with a middleman watering down our ideas’ – and there was nothing watered down about this album. Danny remembered, ‘I’d go to bed [after recording] and my fingers would burn because I’d played so much guitar.’ But it was all worth it.
The BBC loved it, saying, ‘These boys have broken free and produced a record that is true to themselves and what they’ve always been about, but with a meatier, punchier sound . . . A grown-up move from a newly mature band whose music and lyrics have definitely stepped up a gear, but [whose music] is still just as infectious and smile-inducing as it ever was.’ The Guardian proclaimed: ‘As a declaration of independence, Radio:ACTIVE does them proud.’
The band chose to release a special edition of the record free with the Mail on Sunday – a move that boosted the paper’s circulation by 300,000 copies that week. Tom explained the decision to the BBC: ‘We get to put [the album] into almost 3 million homes, which is an incredible opportunity for us. Hopefully, the 3 million people will all enjoy the music and they’ll decide to see us when we go on tour.’ The album went top ten, as did its first single, ‘One for the Radio’, which was written by Tom back in Princess Park Manor.
The song’s video started with a little scene played out by Danny, which was inspired by a movie. Which movie? Which other movie is there? It was Back to the Future, of course. Danny was seen turning up the dials on his amps, plugging in his guitar and preparing to rock out on a white guitar. As he strums the first note, he’s blasted backwards by the wave of sound, before the song kicks in.
The single hit number two in November 2010. McFly’s bid for freedom was paying off.
And the boys were relishing the freedom to wear whatever they wanted, too. For it seemed the record company had tried to control even their outfits; as Dougie told the Guardian: ‘Once, around the time we did the Sport Relief single, they decided that, from that point on, only one of us could wear shorts at any one point.’ Dougie, who was still rocking a skater-boy look, with printed T-shirts and shorts and bandanas tied around his long blond hair, won out as the shorts wearer of the group, but now the others could join him. Around that time, in fact, they were all rocking a longer-haired look, apart from Harry, who had settled into his natural brown hair colour and looked as hot as ever. The guitarists would flick long waves of sweaty hair out of their eyes as they raced around the stages of their latest tour with irrepressible energy.
And it seemed Dougie’s skater-boy look had caught the eye of a special someone. In the autumn, Dougie started dating a young singer called Frankie Sandford, a slim brunette who was part of a new girl group called the Saturdays, who were just starting to rack up top-ten hits of their own. The following year, they announced that they would be releasing a new single, ‘Forever Is Over’ – written by none other than James Bourne. (He also recorded the guitar riff for the track, which went to number two in the charts.) Frankie’s bandmate Mollie King told the Daily Star, ‘We heard the song playing while at our record company and went into the office, where James was talking to the head of the label. We said: “We have to have that song.” Then we found out that Kelly Clarkson was fighting for it, but he gave it to us. James is lovely.’
Not only lovely – prolific. James hadn’t been idle while he and Gabriela had been living in America. As he put it to FleckingRecords.co.uk, ‘What do you think I do with myself every day? Stay in bed? Music is my thing; I’m non-stop in the studio.’ He’d found the time to write music, in collaboration with Take That’s Gary Barlow, for an ITV teen series called Britannia High, which was the brainchild of Strictly Come Dancing’s Arlene Phillips and West End producer David Ian, all about a Fame-style school. (Perhaps he asked Matt and Tom for advice on what it was like to attend Sylvia Young.) He’d launched a new band, Call Me When I’m 18, with the social-networking site Bebo tagline ‘Another day, another band’. Yet, perhaps still burned by his Busted and Son of Dork experiences, he was also going solo. The new band’s Bebo page said, ‘James is still going forward with his solo career, but is in this band to pass the boredom.’
In June, James made an announcement about said solo plans. In Fearne and McBusted, he commented, ‘What was so cool about being [in America] was that people . . . saw me as someone who had a future.’ He now revealed that all of his solo endeavours would be released under the name Future Boy. You know, that just happens to be the Doc’s nickname for Marty McFly in Back to the Future too . . . James said pointedly to FleckingRecords.co.uk about the enterprise, ‘It can’t split up, ’cause it’s just me.’
He’d also received a
new commission: to turn the songs of Son of Dork’s album – those teen-life tracks starring Eddie and Holly and the rest – into a full-blown musical, Loserville. The songs were so full of storytelling and character that the idea of applying a bigger narrative to them made perfect sense. James was thrilled, saying to FleckingRecords, ‘The songs didn’t realise their full potential with Son of Dork. I always believed those songs were bigger than what the band became.’ At last, he was able to dust off ‘We’re Not Alone’, the song he and Tom had written together for Son of Dork, which had never been released, and include it in the show.
His collaborator for the epic adaptation would be Elliot Davis, a creative with heaps of experience in the West End, who had previously worked on shows such as Miss Saigon, Cats and Les Misérables. It was an obvious fit for James: he and Elliot had known each other for years and years – they used to live in the same building, and had met on the tennis courts of Princess Park Manor way back in the days of Busted – and it was Elliot who had suggested the whole enterprise. They were commissioned by Youth Music Theatre, the UK’s leading musical-theatre company for young people; the premiere would be in August that year.
And James was busy writing for other artists, too. Tom said in Unsaid Things that, right from the start of Busted, ‘James was aware of the amazing opportunity he’d been given to make a career out of his music. He was far more passionate about song-writing than about partying. Maybe that was the reason why he and I had such a great relationship, because I was just the same.’ And as a songwriter with an impressive array of top-ten smash hits, James was in demand. As well as the hits with McFly, he penned tracks for Spice Girl Melanie C and Boyzone, and allowed X Factor finalist Eoghan Quigg to record ‘28,000 Friends’ – the new song James had debuted at The Living Room – after enjoying his cover of ‘Year 3000’ on the ITV talent show.
And then came an opportunity that blew his mind. He wrote ‘Don’t Try This At Home’ for the Backstreet Boys. James had always loved the group. Their songs – some written by Max Martin, whom James idolised – were the kind of stand-out pop hits he really admired; ones that Tom Fletcher had studied back when he was learning how to structure songs. And now James had the chance to write for the band. The Backstreet Boys recorded the tune for their 2009 album This Is Us; it didn’t make the final track listing, but they toured live versions of it. And it was a hit with the fans, with one admirer writing on YouTube, ‘When I found that James Bourne had written this song for [BSB] I was so happy. Backstreet Boys and Busted are two of my favourite musical groups of all time. Both bands have been such an inspiration to me. I have no words to explain how great it is that James wrote a song for BSB!!!’
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