All You Need Is Love – December 2006

 

With their latest album Westlife have notched up yet another number one. Donal O’Donoghue meets the boys who have become men.

 

“We always like to say that we are not individually very famous but we are in a very famous band,” says Shane Filan, one quarter of Westlife, is spelling out his (and the band’s) bottom line.

 

For some time they have been defying the trades description act. They are no longer a boy band but a “man band”: average age 27. The have also confounded the life expectance of their genre. Is it because they are, as Filan puts it, bigger than the sum of their parts (the rest of the line up is Nicky Byrne, Kian Egan and Mark Feehily)? Or is it, like the mafia, no one’s bigger than the family? This is show business. Westlife are as much a boy brand as a boy band.

 

Today, I’m meeting three-quarters of Westlife (Mark is lost to make-up). It is early November. Their new single (The Rose) is selling by the bucket-load, the new album (The Love Album) is imminent and The Love Tour kicks off a million dates in 2007. Immediately after this interview Westlife will record Ryan Confidential and later that evening they will be guests on The Late Late Show. The band’s usual heat has been intensified by the news that Nicky is going to be a dad as his wife (and daughter of you-know-who) Georgina, is expecting their first child in June. Love was in the air and for someone struggling for a theme – or even questions – it offered something to grasp into. This was going to be the “love interview”.  Two hours later it was dangerously lurching towards the “hate interview”.

 

We had arranged to meet in a hotel in Limerick. One hour before the appointed time the venue is switched to a castle in Co Clare. Then that name is pushed back and back and back. Inside my skull the words of another journalist hammer through: “The media need Westlife more than Westlife needs the media.” In business term this is probably true. They are the world’s biggest boy band with a record 14 UK number ones, albums sales in excess of 34million and are huge in Europe, Asia and Down Under (that’s Australia). Recently, they trumped Oasis, U2 and The Beatles to claim the top spot in the UK albums chart. “The boys still have it,” gushed their fans; “The Day the Music Died,” screamed The Sun.

 

The boys arrive in installments wearing their war paint. The waiter fusses about the table. Two cokes too many are brought. “We didn’t order those,” says Kian who is quite bossy (later that evening when quizzed by Pat Kenny about his marital plans, he dismisses it as “The same old questions as last year.”). Nicky bounces in with his hair gelled to spiky punctuation. He’s talking brightly and loudly so that the quiet Americans at the next table have gone even quieter. I like him. At the other end of the table Shane is all business savvy. His recent involvement in real estate has gone swimmingly and he is currently working on another property development close to his hometown in Sligo. I ask him about a Westlife duet with Mike Tyson that had been touted last year. “That was a load of bollix,” he says. I like him too.

 

In a nearby room a TV crew have set up for Ryan Confidential. It seems like strange bedfellows: Mr G Ryan’s decadent interrogator and the shiny superstars of Westlife. “Gerry has always been a good supporter of us,” says Shane as Kian weighs in with a damn good impersonation of Ryan’s bluster and blunderbuss technique. “Tell us, really guys, what ye are REALLY like… you know… DRINK!”

 

Drink and drags and rock ‘n’ roll. Not quite Westlife: or at least The Public Image Limited version. In their official website (“the unofficial ones are much better,” suggests Kian) the band are described as ‘quiet superstars’. “That comes from the fact that we live normal lives,” says Kian. “Three of us are boys from Sligo (Nicky is from Dublin) and we go back to Sligo, play golf and go to the local just like anybody else. We are not pushing ourselves in the media or in the limelight as individuals. We never really wanted fame for ourselves as individuals but we always wanted fame for the group.”

 

Westlife were formed in 1998 and managed by pop guru Louis Walsh, who had also chaperoned the other Irish boy band, Boyzone, to mega fame. With mentors Walsh and Simon Cowell (who signed them) on their case, Westlife swiftly made a mark. In 1998, they opened for Backstreet Boys in Dublin and won Best New Act at the Smash Hits Poll Winners Party. Their first single (Swear It Again) went to Number One, as did the second (If I Let You Go) as did the third (Flying Without Wings) and so on. Sell-out tours of the UK and Ireland were followed by Europe and Asia. The only blip was an unsuccessful bid to conquer the US. “America is a funny one,” says Egan. “As much as we want it to happen we have to be realistic as well. When pop becomes big in America again, it could possibly open up for Westlife.”

 

By late 2002, on the eve of the release of their Greatest Hits album, rumors of a split were pervasive. In a way it seemed like history was repeating itself. Their predecessors, Boyzone, imploded after they released their “Best Of” album. But this time it was different. As Walsh put it, Westlife had supported Boyzone one tour and had seen first-hand what could go wrong. So they stuck together. When Brian McFadden dramatically left the line-up in 2004 the wheels didn’t come off and Mark Feehily’s announcement that he was gay was welcomed by the industry and the fans.

 

Now they are riding higher than ever: settled into the groove of success. So I ask for their definition of love: after all it’s the name of their album, tour, song and everything else they are selling at the moment. For Shane (married to Gill with one child, Nicole)  it’s “when you feel totally complete with somebody.” Kian? “”when you wake up in the morning and look across at the person you are with and know that she is the one you want to spend your life with.” Well I did ask for it!

 

But this love-in gives Shane an opportunity to slag Kian, who has been dating actress Jodi Albert, about marriage. He is not for turning. He points out the window. “I’m looking out at that lake and thinking ‘wouldn’t it be great to come down here for a week and go fishing?’ The thing is you can’t do that if you have a baby. I have all these mad plans in my head to go traveling and backpack the world. Take a year out, live it up a bit.”

 

Meanwhile, Nicky is contemplating a future of late nights and nappies. “I can only imagine what it will be like when the baby is born,” he says. “I haven’t stopped smiling since I knew. When Brian had Molly and then Lilly, I personally felt that it was too young for me at that time. At the moment there is no end in sight for Westlife, so Georgina and I thought that we’re not going to sit around and wait for it to end to start a family. So this is the icing on the cake.”

 

On the train to this interview, I told a fellow passenger that I was going to meet Westlife. “Ask them if they ever get tired of it all?” she suggested. I don’t even get that far. The good (or bad) news is that Westlife are planning for the long haul. They cite the working ideal of U2. “They have other lives apart from their career,” says Nicky. “They have children in school and have a family life and still manage to be very successful.” Shane nods his head “You can’t burn out,” he says. “If you burn out the band is over and you can take the rest of your life off. We don’t want to look back and say ‘we should have done it this way’.”.

 

No fear of that. Westlife are determined to do it their way.

 

Westlife, play The Point, Dublin, on April 19, 20, 21, 23, 24, 26, 27, 28.

The Love Album is out now.

 

Credit/Source: RTE Guide / Thanx Luce for sending the scan