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Date: 2015-10-07; view: 436.

Chapter Thirteen

Supercar, Super

Careful

Me and Shane are car mad, admits Nicky. We buy Top Marques magazine every week and look at all the supercars in there. When the money from Westlife started to come through, it was almost impossible not to start thinking about buying new cars. At first we had nice BMWs, that sort of thing, but inevitably we eventually turned our attention to Ferraris. In 2002, after our second tour, I decided to take the plunge and bought a beautiful Ferrari 355 F1. Shane had a gleaming black 550 and Brian - typical Brian! - came back with a bright canary yellow one! We'd spent over Ј300,000 between the three of us, cash. I'd been looking at getting a black Ferrari 360 at the same time as the lads too, says Kian. I phoned my mum to see if it fitted in the garage, but it didn't! It seemed like a good excuse, though - if you remember my dad's reaction when I bought the BMW, imagine if I'd driven home in a Ferrari! We all knew it made no financial sense whatsoever to buy a Ferrari, continues Nicky. We knew it was flash, but we just wanted to have that ultimate lad's self-indulgence. We'd worked hard and earned the money, so it was great fun to just do it and not worry. It is a fond memory driving the 355 back to my mam's house and parking it next to my jeep and BMW - you can say materialistic things aren't important and my God, in the grand scheme, they aren't (and I speak as a father), but as an ambitious and driven man in his early twenties, I was very proud. A few months later, we were playing in Belfast and all three of us drove our Ferraris up to the gig. We were doing about ten gigs in a row there and each night we'd park these three supercars next to each other. It looked the business. Then, one night, we all climbed in our cars and raced off together. I'm sure it must have looked like flash pop stars being flash - and it was! - but it was thrilling and satisfying and something to be proud of at the same time. As a band, it might surprise some people to know we don't miss a trick; we are in on business meetings in minute detail. We enjoy that and see it as part of our job to stay involved at that level. Obviously, the size of Westlife's success means we can't count every bean or do tour budgets, things like that, but we know what is happening within what is effectively a small corporation. Nothing goes by without the four of us seeing it, and it's very much of a democracy, even if that can sometimes lead to conflict. Louis has always involved us and the way we've been rewarded is fantastic; we're very lucky. We work incredibly hard for those rewards, but we're very lucky too. There is an important point to make here. It is a private matter, essentially, but this cliche of boy band members earning no money isn't the case with Westlife, let me tell you that. Without going into detail, we've all made a very handsome living from Westlife. We've been able to buy Ferraris, BMWs, houses for our families, build our own houses, enjoy all the trappings of success. One proud moment for me was being able to surprise my mam and dad with a brand new Mercedes for Christmas in 2003 - their faces were priceless - and my brother Adam with a brand new Seat Ibiza for his seventeenth birthday in 2007. Being able to do those things makes all the hard work completely worthwhile. I just wanted a fast car, maybe two cars, that's all I wanted, says Shane. Cars have probably been my main downfall. Fast, flashy cars lose money. I didn't care, still don't really. I always wanted a Ferrari. The Ferrari 550 I had for a couple of years. I bought it with cash, but it cost me 13,000 euros to insure. I didn't give a fuck. I literally didn't care! I'll never forget how proud I felt when I sat in it. Suede dash - ah, it was just beautiful, black with cream leather, a beautiful car. Something people should know about Louis Walsh, explains Kian, is that he really knows how to keep us grounded and together. Over the years, he's put in the odd little reality check when all around us is apparently anything but 'normal'. One time, recalls Nicky, he was absolutely raging at us about an incident at a hotel. From Day One, Louis has always said, 'If there are fans outside a hotel, stop and chat with them. Give them autographs, let them take some pictures, always.' He has always been really adamant that it is the right thing to do. We agreed - but when you're just off a very long flight or you haven't slept properly for weeks, it can be hard to roll up to a hotel in desperate need of kip and have to spend an hour chatting with fans, however nice they are. However, it was the right thing to do and we always did it, no matter how tired we were. Then one day we didn't. We were staying at a hotel in Kilburn and there were about 40 fans outside. It was about 9 o'clock at night and we drove up in a people carrier. There was a ramp to an underground car park but this particular time we just waved at the fans, we didn't stop and get out to chat. We weren't rude or anything like that, we just didn't stop to talk. The next day, one of these fans bumped into Ronan Keating at the airport and told him what had happened. Ronan told Louis and Louis went nuts. He can take your hair off when he's angry. There are certain things that he classes as absolute essentials and behaving correctly towards fans is one of them. It's gone much further than that, reveals Kian. He's quit as our manager on more than one occasion. Let me give you an example. We were doing some recordings in Sweden after we'd had loads of number is, played to thousands of people, been all over the TV, got some money behind us, all that stuff. We were all supposed to meet in the hotel lobby at a certain time, but we didn't all get there at once. When the last band member had finally turned up, about half an hour late, Louis turned round to us and said, 'I don't want to manage you anymore.' We were shell-shocked. It seemed like it had come out of nowhere. Everything was going brilliantly. We didn't have a clue what he was on about. 'Why, Louis?' I asked. 'What's brought this on?' 'Well, you were like a bunch of spoilt kids on the plane over this morning, you've all arrived down here in dribs and drabs, you don't realize what you have. Your attitude stinks.' We managed to speak to him and apologize and, although he obviously carried on as our manager, it was a real scare. Fast-forward a few years and we'd just come off an international promo jaunt when Louis called us to a meeting. He hadn't sounded best pleased on the phone and we didn't know why, because the promo trip had gone well - there'd only really been one incident when we'd had a 'discussion' with one of the international record company fellas. We'd been on a coach in some far-flung country and had been coming out of a hotel surrounded by loads of fans. We'd had a drill for this where we took it in turns: first you'd take off anything that could be grabbed, so that might be ear-rings (they'd be ripped out), hats (gone in seconds), hair not tied up (it would be pulled out) or bags (taken or emptied). The security man would grab one of us, run the gauntlet through this sea of grabbing hands, and you'd get to the bus, sit on your chair, half-laughing, half-out of breath. It was mad. We always enjoyed it. You do hear some singers complain about it and it can be frightening if it gets too much, but it's normally a bit of craic. Anyway, I went first, then Mark, and it was nuts, there were hundreds of pairs of grabbing hands. Shane made it through, then Nicky, but when Brian came to do it, he hadn't held his bag tightly enough and someone had managed to grab the half-open zip and rip a brand new pair of trainers out of it. Brian was fed up, understandably. They were brand new trainers, he'd just bought them and now they were long gone. He said, 'Perhaps if I lean out of the window and explain they might give them back? Anyone fancy having a go ...?' I chose not to suggest scissors, paper, rock... says Nicky. He knew they were probably lost, continues Kian, but he was just fed up and thinking about what to do. Suddenly your record company fella erupted. 'Forget about your fucking trainers! Forget about them! They've fucking gone! We're late for a fucking TV show, so I'm not hanging about for a pair of fucking trainers!' Shane was sitting nearby and he said, 'Alright, mate, there's no need for that,' but before he could continue, your record company fella turned on him and shouted, 'What the fuck do you care? You're going to be a fucking millionaire and what am I going to be? Fucking nothing!' Then he stormed past us to the back and punched the side of the bus. So, to be fair, we didn't have the best relationship with this chap. Then, at the end of the trip, when we'd worked really hard for six weeks, we fancied a few beers on our last night before we flew home. This fella wasn't having it. He got us into his office and talked for around an hour about his father studying for a degree while holding a job down, all this kind of stuff. We were sitting there thinking, Christ, we only wanted to go for a few beers... In the end, he basically said that if we went out that night, he wouldn't work for us 'in the same way' - in other words, he wouldn't really bother. We were pretty pissed off, but didn't want another episode like the one on the bus, so we just went along with it, thought nothing more of it, then flew home. Anyway, it turned out this fella had sent an email to Louis complaining about us, saying how out of control we were. I don't think we were 'out of control' - there was probably a bit of truth to it, you know, but we weren't that bad. Louis quit as our manager again. This was around the time of Coast to Coast. We were in the process of selling eight million albums and on the way to being one of the biggest pop bands on the planet. But he quit right there. Again, we spoke with him and explained our side and it was all sorted. But it was another shock, another reality check. He keeps you on your toes, does that Louis Walsh. Fantastic. Did I personally lose the plot? Yeah, probably. Well, maybe not 'the plot', but I look back at some of the TV interviews and stuff like that and I sound like a cocky little shit! I was the point of contact with Louis and that developed into the point of contact with the record label, the marketing manager, the TV person, the press person ... So Louis would often say, 'Speak to Kian, you'll get your answer from Kian.' I loved it; I thought it was great. It was such a big role and such a big part for the band and - trying to be brutally honest with you here - as the years went on, I thought, I'm great. In some interviews, I look at myself and read what I said and you can tell that I was getting cocky. In a way, it was quite hard to avoid. I'm speaking for myself here, but I was young, I'd wanted to be in a boy band, and now we were the biggest boy band of the lot. When I was only 18 we released our first record and had seven number is in a row. Around this time, we sold 1.2 million copies of the Comic Relief cover 'Uptown Girl' with a video featuring the supermodel Claudia Schiffer. The world seemed to have fallen at our feet. I think it was impossible to not have an ego. It was human nature. We don't take it for granted, says Shane, OK, perhaps in the early days we might have done a bit, to be fair. Every now and then, one of us would get to thinking they were great, but normally straight away the others would be like, 'Listen, you're a bit of a fucking bollocks, the way you're going on, you need to cop on like, we're not happy.' It happened to every one of us and we were all snapped straight out of it. You can't be in a band with four people who think you're a prick. But you live and learn, continues Kian. You grow a little older and see that what you were saying was cocky. Thankfully, a few people around me said, 'Do you not think that sounded cocky?' Louis was even more direct - he just quit. Nowadays, I don't think there's any need to give us a reality check because we are all a lot more seasoned and that bit older. We know the ropes and things run pretty smoothly most of the time. Louis Walsh will cut you like a knife with his honesty. He'll turn around to you and say, 'That's stupid, what are you talking about?' but it's not personal, he just thinks what you said was stupid. In the early days, I know he was pretty blunt about our appearance, and sometimes perhaps Mark found that quite harsh, but he knows how he works now and understands Louis just wants everything to be done properly and professionally... It's just not in my nature to speak to anyone in a derogatory way, says Mark. 'If it's constructive it's fine, but if it's a throwaway comment, that's not so good... We know he is the man who gets the record business excited about Westlife, continues Kian, Take him out of the equation and you'd have a very different ball game. When the Spice Girls took Simon Fuller out of the picture, in my opinion, they weren't the same again. We were never going to make that mistake.

Chapter Fourteen

The Wider World

On our third album, World of our Own, recalls Shane, we started getting involved in the writing process. There were three songs co-written by me and Brian, two co-written by Nicky and Kian, and one co-written by Nicky, Kian and Mark. There were almost two camps for a while, but Simon kept everyone happy and made sure there was a good balance of everyone's work on the final album, including the band and all these famous songwriters. The singles from that period were mostly massive. 'Queen of my Heart' sold half a million copies worldwide and 'World of our Own' shifted a further 450,000. We actually recorded the album in Dublin, recalls Shane. The night before we were going to record the song 'World of our Own', we were out on the town with the producers at Lillie's Bordello. We were drinking vodka and Red Bull and got sideways. One of our producers got lost in Dublin, we were all bladdered and didn't finish until about 5 a.m. We went to the studio the next day around 2 p.m., and I was absolutely dying with a hangover. 'Let's have a go at "World of our Own", Shane, 'said Steve Mac. 'Ah, I can hardly talk, Steve. I'm dying here ...' Ever the professional, Steve insisted, so I went into the vocal booth still half-steaming. The song needed a lot of grit and because I was in a state, I managed to do a great vocal on it. One of the verses was done in one take. Steve loved it so much because it had so much energy on it, but the reality for me was I was half-steamed singing it. 'World of our Own' was a key song, a key moment for the band. That song is our party piece. People love it. It's one of those songs you can play five years down the line, ten years down the line, and people will still love it. It's a great song to perform, too. The album was cool, too. It was a very good original record and without a doubt it definitely took us up a gear. At that stage, we just needed a bit of edge and I think 'World of our Own' gave us that. That album was interesting, suggests Kian, because of all the behind-the-scenes writing ideas. It's not widely known that members of Westlife wrote some of the material. Part of the problem there is that in the credits, if it says 'co-write' with a songwriter, people assume that the singers didn't really write anything, they maybe just happened to be standing in the studio when something was composed. That's untrue, and in the case of Brian and Shane, I think they are very talented songwriters. During that early period, we developed two distinct 'Westlife sounds', which to a lesser degree are still quite appropriate to this day. We had the Steve Mac/Wayne Hector sound from the Rock-stone studio - songs like 'Swear It Again', 'Flying without Wings', 'What Makes a Man', 'World of our Own' - and then we had the Swedish sound from the team in Stockholm - very poppy, simple lyrics, strong melodies, songs like 'If I Let You Go' and 'My Love'. Single number four was 'Bop Bop Baby', written by me and Brian. It's a great melody and had a funny video with Vinnie Jones in it, but it only went in at number 5. It sold a lot of copies, but we were all disappointed, and it didn't help that we had written it ourselves. We'd done well with the band by that stage, explains Shane, and we thought maybe we could write songs. If I'm being honest, we started to think we could have a go at anything. Maybe we even thought we were better than we were, truthfully. We wrote some alright songs, but looking back at it now, were they good enough? They were OK, but they weren't number 1 songs. It was an experience to see what that process was like. Was it wrong to do it? No. Would we do it again? No. I don't think I'm a talented songwriter. I think Mark is, he has a gift for it, maybe not in Westlife's style, but he is definitely a songwriter ... I've learned how to separate my love for songwriting from being in Westlife, explains Mark. I write songs for myself, for my personal enjoyment, and I just don't seem to write Westlife songs ... I know in my heart and my soul, continues Shane, that I could write a song with a good songwriter, but I'm not really interested, to be perfectly honest. I just want to sing great songs. I'd rather sing a brilliant Steve Mac song than sing a quite good song of my own any day.

* * *

Christmas 2001 will always be remembered by the band for something other than how well our album was doing, however, says Shane. Without a doubt, one of the top five highlights of me life was meeting the Pope, which we did in December that year. I was used to getting these phone calls in Westlife - me mum phoning up about Louis, Louis phoning up about supporting Backstreet Boys, all that - but when the phone rang and we were told the band had been invited to sing in front of the Pope, it was a huge deal for me. For all of us. Each Christmas the Vatican holds a festive performance for the Pope and they invite various musicians and singers. It's a very prestigious invite to receive and we were all very proud when we got the call. Now it was my turn to surprise my mum - she is very religious and goes to Mass every few days. The Pope had come to Ireland on a pilgrimage when I was just three months old. He had gone to Knock, which is a famous place near Sligo, and a million people went to see him. Imagine that - 500,000 one side, 500,000 the other side, just to see one man. My mum had been one of them. Mark's mum had gone too. So had Kian's mum, who was pregnant with him at the time. Then, 22 years later, here I was going to meet him in person and able to take my mum with me. 'Mum, er, would you like to meet the Pope? 'What?!' You can imagine her reaction... The day came to go to the Vatican and we flew over to Rome in a really classy private jet. We landed in the late afternoon and checked into our hotels, but it wasn't until about 8 p.m. that someone noticed our suits weren't there. For some reason, they just hadn't arrived with us. Our tour manager made a phone call to the Vatican and explained that we did have some smart-casual stuff we could wear, but it was an absolute no-no, it was the Pope, you had to wear a suit. Faced with meeting the Pope the next day and not having suits, we did the only thing that seemed 'sensible' at the time: we flew our suits over from the UK by private jet. No one and nothing else on board, just the pilot and five suits. They were expensive suits as it was, but by the time they had been flown by private charter to Rome, they must have been the most expensive suits in the world! We laugh about it now, and none of us can actually remember why on Earth we didn't have the suits with us, but in the last-minute panic, it seemed like the right thing to do. Of course, when they got there, the suits were a little creased. Kian wanted to hang them up over the bath and run a hot shower for hours to steam the creases out, but I had visions of us standing in front of the Pope in these soaking wet, crumpled suits, so we just crossed our fingers and, luckily, the next day they looked great. At the rehearsal, things didn't get any easier, though. There was a 1OO-piece orchestra in this 5,000-seat grand hall and they'd been given scores for everyone's music. We were set to play 'Queen of my Heart7, which was our big single at the time, and Little Drummer Boy', as requested by the Vatican. We rehearsed the single and it was great, no problems. Then the orchestra started playing 'Little Drummer Boy' and immediately I knew we were in trouble. It was about three keys higher than anything we could sing. Now Mark has got a set of lungs on him and can reach some very high notes, but even he was struggling. 'Can you do this, Mark?' I asked him. 'Not a hope, Shane. I'm going to sound like Pee Wee fucking Herman.' We mentioned this to the conductor, but he said there was absolutely no way we could change what the orchestra played, it was a 1OO-piece set up, they all had their music and it was simply too late to rescore the piece. We were stuffed. We could hardly say no to performing - it was for the Pope. 'Er, excuse me, God's Envoy on Earth, we've decided not to perform "Little Drummer Boy" because Mark says he will sound like Pee Wee fucking Herman.' We were just standing there, trying to sing these ridiculously high notes, in despair really. Then Nicky noticed Dolores O'Riordan, the lead singer of the Cranberries, to the side of the stage, waiting to come on and rehearse her songs. Chancing his arm, he walked over to her and said, 'Listen, Dolores, you don't fancy a duet with us by any chance, do you?' 'Yeah, sure! It'll be a laugh. What you singing?' '"Little Drummer Boy." Please tell me you know it...' said Nick. 'For sure, no problem. I know the song well.' The sigh of relief from us must have been as loud as the bloody orchestra. We rehearsed with her there and then and she was fantastic. We chatted after, too, and she was an absolute sweetheart. On the day of the performance, it all went brilliantly and you'd never have guessed we'd had problems. We were saved by the skin of our teeth. Dolores saved our arses big time. At the show, you couldn't get too close to the Pope really, he was up in his box, but afterwards, about 60 people or so were invited to meet him face to face. We were all chaperoned into this quite small room full of pews and with beautiful artwork by Da Vinci all over the ceilings and walls. It was in the Pope's house. We took our seats in total silence. We'd been given 12 invites, so the band all asked our mums and then we'd had two invites left, so we'd given one to our security's mother and one to our tour manager's mother and flown them in from Dublin. The dads had had to be left out, but they were just really pleased for their wives. I'll never forget standing there in that room, waiting for the Pope to come in. I have never been so nervous. Not when we were auditioning for record labels, playing at Wembley, going on TV in front of millions - nothing touched it. You could put me in any Westlife moment and put it in the back pocket, for me, by comparison. I was absolutely shitting myself. I'd started sweating almost as soon as I got in there, standing upright with my hands clasped together in front of me, like at home in church, the sweat was pouring down my sides, underneath my shirt, down my back, over my forehead, my hands were soaking, it was even going down the crack of me arse. It was like a tap dripping, and all I could think was, Please stop sweating, you're going to meet the Pope any second... It was just so surreal. The Pope, like. You get to meet all sorts of famous people when you're in Westlife, but there's nobody more famous than the Pope, in my opinion. Pope John Paul II was a very famous Pope, too, if you get my drift. Everyone in the world knew what he looked like. The door clicked open and all our eyes darted across to see the Pope was entering. He was escorted in by quite a few cardinals and we could see immediately that he was very bent over. He looked really old, his arthritic fingers were clutching a walking stick and he seemed to be in some pain. He walked very, very slowly, shuffling really. That's the Pope, like. The Pope! I just kept saying it to myself, over and over. My eyes literally could not believe what they were seeing. He sat down on a very ornate chair and started waving. That's the Pope, like. The Pope! My mum was in the row behind the band and I could see her touching her rosary beads, she was so excited. Meanwhile, I'm there, shitting myself. The sweat was going right down the crack of me arse, it was going down me legs... I was all over the place, shaking like a leaf - completely, massively star-struck. Then I started to think, What do you actually say to the Pope? Hello, Pope. Nice to meet you, Pope. Hello, the Pope, nice to meet you, nice ceiling. When it came to my turn, he put his hand out and I took it and said, 'It's an honour to meet you.' There's a picture of me at the moment he touched my hand and I actually look unhappy. I wasn't, I was ecstatic, but I was so nervous and anxious about saying the right thing that I ended up pulling this real grimace. I look like I've seen a ghost. He spoke in Latin, something I later found out was 'Bless you, my child.' I kissed the ring on his hand and he moved on. Even as he moved slowly away, I still couldn't believe it had happened. That's the Pope, the Pope! When he came to meet my mum, I felt like the proudest son alive. You get in a big band like Westlife and you start to make a lot of money. You can buy your mum nice clothes, then nice meals, then a beautiful car and even a lovely big house. But watching her meet the Pope and seeing her face, her excitement, I realized that there was nothing I could ever do for her that would compare to that moment. She was a picture of pure happiness, disbelief, excitement, joy. She was so taken aback, one of the best days of her life, she couldn't believe she was kissing the Pope's hand. It was the best thing ever I've done for my mother, without a doubt, and a very rewarding experience as a son. To her, she's met the most famous person on Earth. Mark: Meeting the Pope was a huge thing for me. I'm not ultra religious, but that whole experience was just so spiritual. It was like meeting Jesus' right-hand man. I know all the boys felt the same. Coming from a Catholic family, says Kian, it was a big deal meeting the Pope - huge. It was an absolutely overwhelming experience. My mum put a black veil over her head, a sign of respect within the Church, and I remember seeing her like that. It was amazing. I felt so, so proud to be able to do that for my mum. Incredible. For me, says Nicky, meeting the Pope was one of the biggest moments ever. Coming from a Catholic family and a very Catholic country, when I was growing up everyone went to Mass. So to meet the Pope was incredible. It came at a time when everything in Westlife was happening very fast. We'd had the hits, the videos, we'd sung with Mariah Carey, all that had been so quick. But then this came along and it was incredible. Standing in that room waiting for the Pope was the only moment in my life when I was completely and utterly shell-shocked, nervous, call it what you will. It was surreal, incredible, amazing. And I know that for me and for all the lads, the very best part was making it possible for all our mums to meet him. It was a very special day. Shane: I suppose when you meet anybody that is fairly famous, you get a nice feeling, but if you are fortunate enough to meet more and more stars, you do get more used to it. It's still a cool part of the job, but nothing compared to meeting the Pope. The Pope! People often ask me which star has made me most nervous, apart from the Pope. Was it Whitney, Mariah, Stevie Wonder? And the honest answer is ... Tiger Woods. About 2003 I started getting into golf Brian started me off on it and after about half an hour of my first round, I was hooked. My good friend Anthony Gray - aka Chicken - is the professional at Strandhill Golf Club (www.anthonygray.com!) and he's been coaching me. It's great. I love it and even take my clubs with me on tour, so I can grab a round should there be a golf course near to whichever venue we are playing. In 2006, I went to the K Club to watch the Ryder Cup and that was where I saw Tiger Woods. I didn't meet him, he just walked past. I was frozen to the spot, completely star-struck. That's yer man, Tiger Woods. I'd seen him on the telly and I'd thought he'd made golf look so cool. I'd started playing after that and, to me personally, he is one of my undoubted idols, and one of my role models in life too. The way he's dealt with fame, the way he treats his family, the attitude he has to the ludicrous amounts of money he earns, his fighting spirit - everything about him is inspirational. Perhaps it's because he means so much to me, he represents so much to me, that when I saw him walk past in the flesh, it was almost too much to comprehend. Tiger Woods - kind of the Pope of golf, like.

Chapter Fifteen

Strange World

By this stage, explains Shane, our band had established a pretty rigid set of working routines. The performance in front of the Pope came at the end of 2001 and another album was already scheduled for the following winter, this time a Greatest Hits record. We have always been very prolific. Because we were releasing an album a year, there were certain times of the year when you knew you would be away from home, in a studio or out promoting. Let me explain what is a typical Westlife year. Essentially, there are three types of 'Westlife days'. The first is the promotion day, which runs typically from September through to Christmas. This is the time we are actually promoting our most recent album. On those days a car will pick you up at half-seven or eight, you'll be driven to work at the studios, radio or TV shows and other places you are scheduled in for, and you will do interview after interview... Thanks, Nicky ... with some performances as well, until about six or seven at night. It can feel like Groundhog Day at times, and it's gruelling, but that's the nature of promotion. Back in the day, we'd all then be dropped off at a hotel, but with our changing personal circumstances we try to get back to our families as often as possible. That isn't very often sometimes - in the last ten years, we've typically spent nine months of every year away from Ireland. So, put it another way, in the last decade, we've only spent at best two and a half years at home. The second type of Westlife day is the tour day. This is much more fun. You get up at whatever time you like, literally! You haven't got a gig until the evening, so you can shop, see family, hang out or just relax, whatever, until about six. Then you head to catering, eat, chill out, get ready for the show and then hit the stage. Then it's back on the tour bus, over to your hotel or on to the next destination on the tour, lie in bed and usually look at the ceiling for about two hours because you can't go to sleep! That sort of day is a lot of fun, we love it. The third type of day is a recording day. We don't usually like recording or singing before two o'clock, because your voice isn't awake before then. You can talk at ten o'clock in the morning but you can't really sing till two or three in the afternoon - that's what I find, anyway. Mark likes singing at five or six o'clock, he doesn't start till evening time. So I usually go in first and then Mark goes in and then the other two lads. You might be in the studio till very late at night and there's often no one else about, so somehow it feels really secretive. It's always so exciting because you are actually making a record, you are hearing yourself sing, trying different things, putting a song together. Typically, that will take about eight weeks of the early summer. Then the first single tends to get released in the autumn, and maybe another one a month or so later, then it's the album release and before you know it, you're back to promotion again. By 2002, this routine was fairly well established, adds Kian. How those days played out over the course of a year was pretty set too: in January, it's fairly quiet but you might go off and do a bit of European promo; you start touring in February, March and play those shows up till the summer; then you have a few weeks off, although there's always a few summer shows; then in the second half of summer, you start recording a new album, begin the promo, shoot the videos, the photo shoots, all that stuff through August and September; then the album comes out and it's full blast through to Christmas. The market falls off on 18 December, roughly, then you have Christmas at home, then back to January and it all starts again! For me personally, when it was announced that that year's album was going to be a greatest hits package, I felt it was a little premature. However, this was the way it went with boy bands ... Nonetheless, we wanted to make it much more than just a reissue of old tracks, so we added six new songs and it felt like we were promoting a normal new album. And it did very well. It's our second bestselling album now, with over 1.5 million copies sold. That was purely formula, suggests Mark. Three albums, Greatest Hits, bam, thanks a million, there you go. I think the Greatest Hits was probably premature, yes. The thing is, there is a technical formula that says when a boy band gets signed, the contract is for five albums; they do three and then the Greatest Hits comes out, leaving an album for any solo career. Some labels even discount any Greatest Hits, leaving two albums on the contract for two solo careers. In interviews at the time of Unbreakable: The Greatest Hits, people were constantly asking us to 'squash the rumours' about splitting up. At the time I was like, 'Well, maybe Westlife will be over, who knows?' To be fair, most pop history confirms the formula I just explained. The very same history books will also tell you that most pop bands don't last very long after a Greatest Hits album. Then the media reported that Shane had been offered a multi-million pound contract to go solo, says Nicky. The first I heard of it was when I read about it in the papers, so I immediately phoned Brian. Typically unexpected, his reaction was, 'Fair play to him in a way. You can't knock him if he wants to do that.' I was shocked and thought, Fuck that, we're supposed to be a team. I'm not gonna be messed around like that! I hate secrecy and if Shane had been offered a solo deal and, more importantly, if he wanted to have a go at one while Westlife was still going strong, then I wanted to know. And I wanted to know now. Then I spoke to Shane who told me straight away it was complete bullshit. Even if I had been approached about a solo album, confirms Shane, it would have only ever been a one-word conversation: 'No.' Not interested in any way. Why would I be? I'm in a great band with me mates. We travel the world, our gang, playing to thousands of people and selling millions of records. I'd be off me nut to leave that for a record that might not work. Maybe if we eventually called it a day all of us might look at our options, although even then I'm not sure it appeals. But as long as Westlife is together, it isn't gonna happen. Think about it: no matter how big anyone's solo record was, it would have to be huge to beat what Westlife has achieved. Plus, I love singing on stage with my mates, the four of us up there having a great time. The tours are hilarious, we share so much. I can't imagine standing up on stage solo, or being on my own in the tour bus, all that. I'd be lonely, for Christ's sake!'