The primal attraction I felt to singing during the performance of Cabaret wasn’t the first time I had ever thought of being in a band. In fact, Lukie and I had been in bands already. It was just that moment was when it became very clear that music was at my core, rather than acting.
By then, I’d been in and out of several bands, none of them particularly any more sophisticated than a thousand schoolboy groups. Luke had been playing drums for a while. He had an MPC kit, which was like a briefcase full of pads that you plugged in, it was a brilliant piece of gear. All credit to Tony, despite money not being exactly plentiful, he somehow managed to save £400 to buy Luke this first drum kit outright. I’d briefly dabbled with a saxophone but was never really very interested.
My very first band was when Dukus and I were twelve, with our mate Peter Kirtley. At that age you can be a bit of a wanker, and I’ll be honest, we only asked Peter to be in the band because his dad had some equipment. It was a decision of convenience, we needed instruments, he had them. I played monophonic keyboards – one finger – and sang. Luke played drums and we asked our new friend Craig Logan to join, because he had a bass guitar. We called ourselves Caviar. What a dodgy soul name! We didn’t have a clue what caviar was but we knew it was expensive, so we thought ‘job’s done!’ Then we found out it was fish eggs.
Caviar mutated through various combinations, and we joined other bands including one with two other brothers on guitars who were brilliant for their age. Luke was becoming well-known locally for his drumming so he was already in the band and had done a couple of gigs with them, but they didn’t have a singer. With my enjoyment of singing on stage in mind, I was keen to get involved, so I asked Luke if he could get me an audition. I turned up and started singing Paul Young’s big cover hit, ‘Wherever I Lay My Hat’ and after about three lines they said, ‘Fucking hell! You’re in!’ They were called Hypnosis. They gave me my first experience of singing live on stage in a band, and Luke was the one who arranged the audition, it was down to him. Hypnosis was destined not to last either. I really hope those brothers ended up in the music business because they were such good guitarists.
Then Luke and I left and started our own band called Epitoma. We’d picked up a Latin dictionary and found the word for abstract which was ‘epitoma’, but that sounded like some terrible disease. You can just picture a doctor saying, ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but you’ve got epitoma.’ Eventually, we ended up settling on the name Ice. That was supposed to be an improvement.
God only knows how but we got a gig at some old working-class club where we were basically asked to play in front of a load of old grannies. We were on the same bill as a number of cabaret acts, but we were ‘the band’ and were really excited regardless. We rehearsed and talked about it for weeks. Ice’s live debut! We’d even got George Michael’s ‘Careless Whisper’ rehearsed perfectly. At the time, a local guy was ‘managing’ us, but when he went on stage to introduce us he said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, please let me introduce you to . . . Pulse 2!’
He’d changed our bloody name without telling us, right before we went on stage!
We were fuming! I defiantly walked out on stage to a ripple of apathetic applause that would have barely registered on the massed hearing aids in the smoke-filled room. Resplendent in my long soul-boy hair, Duran Duran-esque suit and over-sized earrings, I could barely contain my anger when I said, ‘We’re not Pulse 2, we’re Ice!’
Like anybody gave a fuck.
Shortly after the debacle of Ice/Pulse 2, Craig, Lukie and I broke away and formed our own band as a trio. We heard about a band called Breathe who were really popular locally around Camberley. I loved the guy’s voice and they were doing quite well, then they actually had a hit, called ‘Hands To Heaven’. When that happened, we thought Shit! How many successful bands come out of the same small area like Camberley? They had changed managers and we found out about the one they had started off with, a chap called Tony. He lived on the Old Dean Estate so we bunked off school one day and went down there to see him. He was totally up for it. One of the first things he said was, ‘I am going to rent Concorde for you lads, fill it with record company executives, while you guys play in the aisle. It’s going to be massive!’ We were so excited.
For about two days.
Then we did our research and found out that the aisle on Concorde was barely wide enough to fit a snare drum in, let alone a complete band. The sheer joy of walking around school thinking, Yeah! We’re going to play Concorde! Yeah! only lasted forty-eight hours. That statement and idea was his crowning glory and his downfall all in one. That was one of our first experiences of managers.
One day we were practising and I’d just got my copy of Michael Jackson’s Thriller. When my mate Neil arrived to watch the rehearsal, I said, ‘Hey, listen Neil, I’ve written this new track, what do you think . . . ?’ and I started singing, ‘Looking out . . .’ reciting the words to what I knew was the classic Jackson track ‘Human Nature’. Neil’s eyebrows shot up and he was enthusing, ‘Fucking hell, Matt, that’s fucking wicked mate!’ We were actually writing material as early as then, but I must admit it wasn’t up to that standard!
One thing about being in a successful band is that it makes you pretty much unemployable. In my opinion, once you’ve topped the charts or, indeed, even been in the charts at all, you see things through such a specific, extreme lens. Afterwards, it’s like your retinae have been distorted and there’s no way of reverting to a more orthodox way of looking at life.
Before Bros, however, I did have aspirations for ‘normal’ jobs as well as being in a band. I thought about being a hairdresser as my mum had been. I’d read Vidal Sassoon’s life story about how he’d been discovered and made his mark, and I thought it was an amazing tale.
So I found myself a Saturday job in a local hairdresser’s. As a kid, you are always looking to get some money in – by now I was obsessed with fashion, and clothes were expensive. But, boy, did I have to earn my money at that salon. I will never forget the feeling of washing really thin, spindly, hairspray-drenched, granny’s hair. It was like trying to undo a knot in a really fine chain covered in sticky oil, it just felt wrong!
It was quite comical really what those old women used to do to their hair. I used to think about how they were going out with their formal blue rinses, feeling all spruced up and smart, but actually looking like ancient punk rockers.
I fancied my boss, she was really cute, but unfortunately there were other women with designs on my green gills. My nemesis at the salon was a German lady with a very strong Bavarian accent. She really took a shine to me and would storm into the salon saying, ‘Vere iz Matt? I like Matt. I vant Matt to vash my hair!’ As soon as I heard the door open and that commandeering voice say, ‘Matt! I vant Matt!’, I would cringe inside and no amount of pretending to clear up out the back would keep me out of her clutches. She insisted that I wash her hair every time and she would lie back in the chair and mumble, ‘Oooo, yah, yah, yah, ooo!’ It used to totally give me the creeps.
One Christmas the salon held a raffle to win – of course – a state-of-the-art hairdryer. As the young buck, I was chosen to pick the winning ticket and guess whose name I pulled out of that hat? Yes, the bloody German. I was horrified.
She came in for a haircut and was told that she had won the star prize. My boss said to her, ‘We have to tell you, Matt picked the winning ticket . . .’
‘OOOhhhhhh!!! Matt, I like Matt, I vant Matt, Maaatttt! I luv Matt!’
So that pretty much killed any remaining desire I had to be a hairdresser.
I also did a paper round, which might just be the worst job in the world. As any schoolboy or girl with the scars to show for it would know, you had to get up at the crack of dawn, trudge down to the newsagent’s and sling a bag of papers on your shoulder which felt like twice your own bodyweight. Before you left the shop the strap would be cutting into your shoulder so painfully it hurt even to move. Then you’d start the round and find that no matter which route you’d been given, there was always one house that was two miles out in the sticks which wanted just one bloody