And he gave me ‘Flying Without Wings’.
‘You have to be joking,’ I said. ‘This is Westlife.’ And off I went again. ‘I don’t like Westlife, blah blah …’ Sometimes I just can’t help myself. But this time he decided to overlook it.
Antony was the last person I had to meet and he had the final say. Of course, Duncan and Lee had been building me up and Antony, being typical of the man I now know, was resisting it purely for that reason. ‘Well, I’ll see when I meet him. I’ll decide for myself, won’t I?’
Lee had given me the heads-up that Antony doesn’t like people who look away and have a lettuce handshake, so the first thing I did was eyeball him and pump his hand like a salesman. He must have thought I was a bit strange. We were still young men, finding out things about ourselves. Meanwhile, the lady in the Virgin offices was giving me fresh problems – she’d decided my long hair made me too pretty; she wanted it cut.
DUNCAN
Justine, Hugh’s right-hand woman, actually took me to one side and said, ‘Get him to shave all that hair off, it looks terrible.’
SIMON
I’d just paid £700 for a portfolio of model shots, and they all had hair! I was thinking, ‘They want me to cut my hair off for the band, and then if I don’t get in, that’s my modelling gone as well.’ Now you may say hair grows, but … Most black guys have shaven hair, I was getting work because of my hair, it was my unique selling point. So what should I do?
I took a risk, the hair went, and I went back to the record label’s office. The same lady was there, and she did a double take, and said, ‘Yes, that’ll do.’
DUNCAN
He’s being modest. She couldn’t take her eyes off him: he had it all going on, the shades, the hair. He looked like a superstar.
SIMON
A week later, I was signed. Three had become four.
LEE
I’m taking all the credit for this, but nobody ever listens to me.
DUNCAN
We didn’t have a name for ages. Lee wanted to call us Chenise, but fortunately nobody ever listens to him. Turned out it was the same name as his mum’s hairdressing salon. For God’s sake … I liked the name Four Souls because it had depth, but Antony made the valid point that we were clearly asking to be called Four Arse Holes, or Fore Skins. Either way, it could be problematic.
ANTONY
Then, one day, we were on the Underground, on the way to record our very first song. The record company had told us, ‘We need a name, you need to come up with something.’ No pressure, people … We were struggling, and it was turning into a bit of a boring old process.
SIMON
They wanted a name that didn’t scream ‘boy band’, and I was thinking about all these top artists like Red Hot Chili Peppers, Pink, Black Sabbath, and realising they all had colours attached to them.
ANTONY
So we were on the Tube, chewing on it, and Simon suddenly said, ‘What do you think of the name Blue?’ Why? ‘Because we’ve got to get on that blue line next,’ he said. We were all a bit stumped, turning it over in our minds. ‘Blue … okay.’ Lee threw in a ‘What about Yellow?’ but we pretended we hadn’t heard.
As soon as we got off the Tube, we phoned up the record company to tell them, but they interrupted us. They said, ‘We think we’ve found the name for you, boys.’ Our hearts sank. What was it?
‘It’s Blue.’
‘But that’s our name, we’ve just thought of it, that’s why we phoned …’
But they had thought of it as well. Very bizarre …
SIMON
We all just looked at each other. Lee started shouting, ‘It’s a sign, it’s our destiny.’ Usually, we don’t pay him any attention when he starts going all Mystic Meg on us, but even I have to admit, something strange was going on that day. So from then on, we were Blue.
The Arrival of Huge and Sudden Success
2000
DUNCAN
I was incredibly excited. For years I’d been trying to crack this nut. I’d thought it was completely all over for me at 21, when I was spraying perfume over those lucky ladies in a department store, and instead here I was with a recording contract in my hands.
I was swiftly brought down to earth with a bump when I came home with it, to my house in East Finchley. I was sharing with six other blokes, in a big three-storey house. I ran in to share the news, but at first I thought the house was empty. Then I heard a noise from the top floor, so headed up there. The door was locked, but one of my mates let me in. They were all sitting in a circle, smoking weed, pretty uninterested in my arrival. ‘I’ve just signed my record deal,’ I announced to the room at large, hoping someone would twig the enormity of the occasion. My friend Ming eventually did the honours. Popped a champagne cork? Danced around a maypole in the garden? Not quite. ‘Cool, man,’ he offered before lighting up again. I decided to settle for that.
It seemed they were equally unperturbed by my new daily routine. While they all headed off in the morning to their respective workplaces, I jumped into the ridiculous Mercedes that drew up at the door to carry me off in splendour to the studio. I sat in the back, grinning, hoping the neighbours would be twitching their curtains. Of course, I could have gone on the Tube – it would have probably been quicker in the rush hour. And, of course, I only realised much later that it was actually just the bosses’ way of making sure I turned up on time, rather than a sign of their appreciation for me.
Despite getting used to such luxury very quickly, I must admit I remained in a state of heightened paranoia for the entire first year of Blue. After witnessing the brisk disposal of two of our founding members, I realised any one of us could just as easily get the chop. I used to phone our manager, Daniel, at least once a week, asking, ‘Are they happy with us? Have they said anything?’ I’d seen how quickly five had become three, it could easily happen again.
SIMON
Daniel managed us really well from that perspective. We were his very first group, so we were all riding this wave together, but he managed to hide his own enthusiasm and anxiety behind a very unflappable exterior. I’m sure he was getting all sorts of beef from the record company – they’d invested a lot of money in us, and their demands in return landed on his shoulders. But he only told us what we needed to know, and didn’t hang either carrots or sticks in front of us, until he’d dealt with it. He left us to get on with the job, if that’s what you can call it.
ANTONY
It’s an unusual job, but it is work. And we worked. Every day passed like a whirlwind – we weren’t thrown in the deep end like today’s talent-show winners, we had to graft. At night, we had to get in the van and turn up to pubs and clubs, where you were lucky if there were more people in the crowd than behind the bar. By day, it was off to secondary schools, where we had to act like superstars in front of a bunch of unimpressed kids that had never heard of us. Throw in gym time and photo shoots in between times … and somehow slotted into all of that, we had to sit down in the studio to work out exactly what this great new sound was going to be that we were going to offer these unsuspecting young minds.
LEE
If there’s one person to credit for finding that sound, it’s the producer Ray Ruffin, who sorted us out on our very first day in a music studio.