And Finally

Johnny Borrell admits to being both “obnoxious” (at times) and “a really good bloke” (always)

By | Published on Wednesday 10 July 2013

Johnny Borrell

Former Razorlight frontman Johnny Borrell will release his debut solo album, ‘Borrell 1’, on 22 Jul. You’ve probably already cast a wry eye over its tracklist and made a joke about its title. Well you shouldn’t, says Borrell in an interview with The Telegraph. And he perhaps has a point.

“I don’t get it. The title for this record is ‘Borrell 1’, right? Why is it ‘Borrell 1’? Because that’s an unpretentious title to me, right? Scott Walker – ‘Scott 1’, ‘Scott 2’, ‘Scott 3’, ‘Scott 4’. ‘McCartney 1’, ‘McCartney 2’. I don’t get it”.

It could possibly be said that comparing yourself to Scott Walker and Paul McCartney is quite pretentious, but let’s just assume he was making a point about the merits of simplicity in album-naming, rather that drawing any other sort of comparison. After all, later in the interview he does give some thought as to why people think of him as, well, a bit of a cunt at times.

The problem, he says, was his trying to be what success had made him, even if that’s not what he wanted to be at all. “It just went boom”, he said of Razorlight’s ascension to fame. “And suddenly we’re on a world tour for two and a half years. And you come back and you’re the high street. Everything you’ve spent your whole life working against, you are it”.

He continued: “I gave everything to touring that second record, running round with my shirt off, clapping my hands in the air and going ‘oh-oh-oh’ – that was the nature of what it was. And you know, it wasn’t a happy camp that was going around the world. I guess I was constantly attempting to be what I thought I should be doing in that scenario. To be fair, I’m sure there were times when I was obnoxious. But that’s rock n roll, you know?”

Of course, what makes it slightly more difficult to take in this newly sympathetic Johnny Borrell is this David Brent-esque quote he proceeded to give: “I’ve spent the last six years going around England with people going to me, ‘You’re a really good bloke’. And I’m like, ‘Yeah, guess what?'”



READ MORE ABOUT: |