His manager called it career suicide, it got 6 million views | Billy Lockett

0:00I mean, still to this day, there's not many things that have given me as much of a rush as that. And I was a drug addict.

0:16It wasn't so much that I was like a loser or anything. I was just kind of a loner. Awful, honestly. I literally can't explain to you how bad it sounded. Just like muffled in. You have to really listen just to hear the piano. thousands and thousands a night from CDs that me and Ricky would just burn on our laptops. Just got really, really into drugs and drink. I had bin bags full of cash in the little fiat. It was mental. And I said to Warner, look, can we just pretend this never happened, basically? And they were like, yeah.

0:56Olly Fawcett:Billy, welcome to What It Takes. How are you? good thank you it's a very warm day today um and you've had quite a busy morning getting down from northampton yes but the air con is literally right in front of me right behind me so i'm i'm cooling down excellent well thanks coming on the show i mean i'm really excited to speak about your career over the last sort of 13 plus years um which has kind of taken a bit of evolution in the last couple of months if not year um a month which is yeah i mean i'm very excited to talk about that for sure but before we do i mean you must have been musically interested as a kid right were you a classic playing the piano early getting into instrumental like tell me about about your your upbringing yeah so my mum well my dad bought a piano for my mum and she spent a couple of weeks trying gave up all right and i was that was when i was about eight and i would just cut and i just sort of it's a really weird thing actually because i could kind of just play i I could just play piano.

1:54Olly Fawcett:Really? Yeah, no, I've never had any lessons. I'd like to think that I'm better now. But I wasn't a million miles away from how I play now, to be honest. And I remember my mum and dad were quite sort of scared and confused about how well I could play for such a young age with no lessons. Literally the first time I ever sort of touched one, I could sort of play it. um and then it kind of became a bit of a party trick where you know their friends would come over and they'd be like bill do that thing you can do you know and then i'd play the piano so but i never really loved music until probably about 18 19 i started to really kind of i would always play piano um and then when i was 16 i was sort of playing in bands playing keyboards but if I'm honest the only reason I really did it was because I was just I really wanted to get laid and I know that sounds terrible to say but I did and I had no friends and I was just like very unpopular guy and being in a band was a kind of way of me almost feeling like I was a part of something um unpopular in the sense of at school yeah just couldn't get any just couldn't get any mates really and i was just and it wasn't even like i was like a nerd because i wasn't intelligent enough to be a nerd right so i wasn't really good at any subjects and i think at school if you i guess there's so many there's all these school is basically here are all of these things find one that you're good at yeah and then essentially all the people that are good at that kind of end up naturally you know congregating together and because i wasn't good at anything apart from music but I couldn't read music and I hadn't got any lessons so I couldn't do the music subject um so it was like you could hear music and then replay it yeah yeah or just sort of make it up really a lot of the time yeah just be jamming around um but it meant that I didn't really fit in anywhere um and so I wasn't it wasn't so much like I was like a loser or anything I was just kind of a loner right which was boring because at lunchtime you've got nothing to do yeah so you just wander about um and i have any interest in other things not really not really music was the only thing i really liked doing so i would just go to i got to a point where the teacher let me go into the piano rooms at school even though i didn't do music so it was quite a he was kind of like breaking the rules even letting me do it um but he could see that i was bored and a bit lonely and so he let me go in the piano room every lunch so i'll just go there and just play piano for an hour um and and it was yeah it was kind of shit to be honest but um so then you know a band needed a keyboard player at the back and I was thinking oh my god this is a chance to have some mates so then I got into that and then and then the singer left and we needed a singer so I sort of I'd always thought well I guess how hard can it be um and I sort of filled in for a bit and And then all of a sudden that was it really.

5:05And everyone was like, oh shit, okay, you can sing. And that sort of started everything.

5:13Olly Fawcett:Did you ever sing lessons? No, nothing. I've not had lessons for anything. Your parents musically gifted or is it? Just comes from somewhere. Well, my dad would make it. My dad played like clarinet, recorder, sax, that kind of thing. Anything you could blow, he could play. That was like his, that was his thing. But not really. I mean like it was a real loose jamming thing my dad was a painter he was a fine artist so art is in the family oh wow and he's incredible to be honest I mean one of the one of the best in the world I mean he was a professional yeah yeah yeah professional that was his that was his job and his whole life really he's called John Luce Lockett and he was you know critically acclaimed I mean I studied him at school that kind of level of big um he's he didn't make a lot of money towards the end because sadly artists never do um but so i had that i had art in in the blood as such and i think he sort of proved to me that you don't have to have a normal nine to five you can have a job you know that isn't conventional um and you can make it work so that really proved to me it was possible and he was very supportive like crazy like he was like this is what you you're meant to do my mum was a bit like you should probably do your homework like get an actual job that's realistic what was it like being in a band when you'd come from kind of being a bit more separated and you know as you said being a bit more lonely yeah then to being in a band where you actually had some different relationships but bands can be quite kind of challenging right sometimes musical differences you know demands and leaderships and all that kind of thing how did you experience that well do you know what i just didn't really get involved right really i mean it got to a point where i was um i sort of ended up build the band kind of became mine and it was um and i was i ended up slowly i guess when you start singing you do naturally just become the leader of it and i kind of knew what i wanted things to sound like so i guess by the end everybody kind of just listened um and to be honest even now with my band i'm still very much kind of directing everything you know i mean i'm i know in my head what i need it to sound like and don't get me wrong it's not like uh my way or the highway every time i have an idea i will kind of like say to everybody you know are we all good with that or you know what does everyone think i'm very open to it i think it's kind of like uh it's a discussion isn't it so i i think I was just glad to actually at the time back in the day I think I was just glad to have friends you know and just have like things to look forward to because you know we'd have gigs and in pubs and no one would go but for my parents and of maybe the odd friend of a friend um but it just felt like I was a part of something which was good was it quite I guess exciting is the main word yeah it must have been like you know even if you're playing to small rooms and small gigs and stuff just being knowing that it was a reality i guess seems quite interesting well i never really thought it was going to be a job at that point i was just kind of just using it as i think there was when i was at school there was a turning point i did a talent competition right uh every christmas there'd be this charity um talent competition at school and our school was quite a good one you know it was quite prestigious had a lot of money so the theater was big there's a proper like theater um i mean they they hold proper shows there i went to one the other day actually um and the whole school goes and watches this talent competition it's you know this big deal thing and it's every year it's the most popular kid who can sing okay does a cover oh, probably Oasis.

9:11Everyone loves it. I was going to say, you know, everyone loves it and then they win. Yeah. You know. And some repeat. Yes. And I would sit there every time and just think, I'm sure I can do a better job of this. But then I'd think, well, I haven't got any mates and it is a bit of a popularity contest. And then I was thinking, God, if I do it and I don't do well, it's just going to be embarrassing. And I'd never really sang in front of anybody at this point. This was kind of the first time. Wow. first time I'd ever sang and and I got a song that me and my dad had written together at home you know called hope in your eyes it was shockingly terrible but um but it had a chorus you know I mean it was actually it was all right to be honest I was doing a documentary the other day and I started playing it in the documentary I was like oh there's actually something in this um and anyway so I thought why not do it on the last year of school so if it goes wrong I'm out anyway sensible Yes.

10:05And I was so nervous, so nervous, like shaking with nerves. And I went on and I did it. And I got a standing ovation. Everyone went fucking apeshit. I mean, it was like the craziest moment of my life. I mean, still to this day, there's not many things that have given me as much of a rush as that. And I was a drug addict. So like that really does like the endorphins I got from that moment were like, it was, you know, I've never done heroin, but I'm sure it's close to that. It was this huge surge of going from complete nobody, no friends, nothing. And then every single person that you've seen every day for five years, you've just been invisible to all of a sudden is just screaming.

10:53i won the talent competition and i was pretty much the golden boy of the of the whole school but we fucking finished school so it was like we became the most popular kid in school on the last

11:05Olly Fawcett:day fuck did you feel when you were doing the performance could you feel it landing yeah i could feel it yeah i could just feel it yeah and i just knew and i was instantly like oh shit this is gonna this is gonna change my life i just knew not this specific thing but this feeling that i'm getting right now i need this forever you know and if i'm honest i've never fully been able to get that feeling back i've done huge shows and yeah i've done amazing amazingly massive things in my career which i'm really proud of but weirdly there's nothing there's no gig that's given me that hit do you think it's because it was such a change in your life at that point Yeah, and maybe it was the first time, you know, and it was new.

11:57And yeah, I mean, the endorphins of it just surged in my brain and it kind of made me almost like an addict to adrenaline maybe, yeah, and endorphins. I mean, it was just the best moment. And maybe that's also because I have a kind of a desperate need to be loved, do you know what I mean, by strangers, which is weird. But that is kind of the job.

12:28Olly Fawcett:I don't think it's weird. Well, yeah, maybe everyone does to a degree, but I almost feel like I metabolize serotonin and just general endorphins. a little bit quicker than most because of my job and maybe also because of the drug abuse and just generally and maybe my upbringing as well i think in general i just sort of i think i need uh dopamine hits more often than most and i guess that's probably a blessing as well as a curse because because in one way it it sort of drives you and it pushes you to constantly keep looking for more which can make you successful um and on the downside it makes you impulsive and selfish and narcissistic traits yeah um so you have to kind of keep checking in with yourself almost uh unnaturally whereas most people we would kind of just they just wouldn't need to think about it as much you know for you it's a bit more of a daily balance yes like an intentional balance like i have to keep kind of going oh um don't lose yourself and uh and so you obviously that you have to do therapy and you have to have, you know, real amazing people around you always, you know, you can always trust and that they'll check in with you and things like that.

14:06I think that the whole job of you being the brand and everything being about how amazing everyone needs to think you are is uh not the healthiest most natural thing you know um yeah i feel like a lot

14:24Olly Fawcett:of people struggle with it right like it's not like a easy thing just to get used to very quickly like any form of public success yeah in many different industries politicians chefs musicians artists whatever yeah no one quite realizes the intensity of it right yeah you don't and no matter how long it takes because i've been doing this for 14 years now and it's only in the last maybe couple of maybe half a year yeah that things have i guess you kind of like constantly notching up you know there's always like the steps and i feel like i've been in on the same step for about two or three years and it's only in the last half a year it really sort of went crazy and we've kind of doubled in numbers in everything and i've been waiting for it for so long and it just it's weird that it no matter how long you wait you you're still nowhere near as prepared as you think you'll ever be speaking of the steps so the first step would have been coming off that show is in the talent show you then decide to go full-time with music right yeah then i did then i then well i did the bands thing and then i went solo in the end because i it gets to a point where all your friends go to uni yeah you know that's kind of the natural thing so everyone kind of left and i did you feel like you're by yourself again yes completely um to be honest like i think i'll always feel a bit like that um but yeah basically i i tried to make it make it work because I just, uni just wasn't for me.

16:02I never really liked school. And I just thought, what's the point in, what's the point in going back? Well, I hate it. So, and I didn't, I looked at artists that I wanted to be like, you know, my heroes at the time. I think it was like Pal and the T and he was the main one. And I kind of really loved everything about him. He is insane. Yeah, he's amazing. Is he alive? I still haven't actually, but I have, I've met him and I've hung out with him for a good hour or so with him and his mum once at Tea in the Park. and and it was an amazing time you know we had some really amazing conversations and i learned a lot from him um but he's a bit of a record isn't he i mean especially on stage he's a bit of a mess but openly you know i mean that's not a secret yeah he kind of gets away with it though yeah um yeah so i sort of looked at him and i was like well he probably didn't go to uni you know i guess and i talked to my dad and he was like i think we just got a gig just go out and gig and so I did and then what does that really look like when you first start

17:01Olly Fawcett:I feel like a lot of people think that gigging is like kind of the Ed Sheeran story right I feel that's the most famous story at the moment of couch surfing yeah the couch surfing the you know going to pubs and doing 20 gigs a week and that kind of thing what was it like for you that early stage gigging um well I was obviously in Northampton so there wasn't a lot of opportunity and the internet wasn't the biggest thing back then because i'm like 400 years old now i'm i'm 34 so when i started i was about 19 right properly when i properly started so facebook is like just coming just i mean it was sort of my space really it was like my space at the time msn and all that stuff yes and msn and yeah and it wasn't really like i mean you had a couple of artists blowing up on on online youtube i think when's bieber bieber must have been a few years after that yes yeah and it's shearing was about about a couple of years after that too so you're you're in the kind of weird period where it's like pre-ed yeah x factor and pop idol or pop idol is the real itunes i think itunes was a big deal yeah cds as well i mean me and my dad would literally burn cds and stick labels on that he'd designed and you know we'd we'd record everything in in the house and it sounded fucking awful honestly i literally can't explain to you how bad it sounded like just like muffled in like you have to really listen just to hear the piano um just bad quality yeah and i mean i don't know what i was thinking i can't believe him and we sold it to like you know his friends basically and my mates but um so the gigging thing so I would I would do casinos and I would I'd just call up pubs and just ask if I could play really and and I was doing just bits and bobs anything I could find you know there was there was there was all sorts of all dayers and yeah any any one of my dad's mates who was a musician oh i've got a gig on this day and it was kind of word of mouth really and then how often would you be gigging i was trying to do it like at least as much as i possibly could but really you could only get a couple of there was only really a couple of gigs a month a lot of the time really in northampton there wasn't loads on um and i guess the more you did the more you the more you did you know i mean the more you got momentum kind of builds quite a lot right yeah especially i feel like i was good enough that people were kind of like oh okay this is interesting and then i sent a couple of demos to the bbc bbc introducing and that was going quite strong at the time yeah i mean bbc introducing has been going for ages um yeah i i only realized that the other day i thought they'd be around for like five or six years yeah no donkeys yeah yeah so long so long since i was a kid um and they they got in touch with me instantly i'm like we really like this um we want to play it i was like okay cool then from that i got a manager my first manager and he wasn't really a manager he was kind of just a guy that liked music and he we became mates he was like a couple years older than me he didn't know much i think he'd done merch for a band that was quite big who supported paolo um and so i was like oh paolo yeah i'll sign to you and he made up this uh contract fuck knows where he got that from it definitely wasn't written by him or the lawyer what's the what's the goal at this point for you like are you just trying to earn money are you trying oh well no no no there's no money there was more money yeah there still isn't any money there's no money what is the is it is the goal is to get assigned is the goal the goal is to get signed that's that's always the goal yeah that was the goal right because back then you know if you didn't have a label you were fucked i mean now i don't have a label i've got a distributor who are amazing can you explain the difference of the two between the distributes there's not a lot actually i i think with a label sorry doing a bit of a side quest here but with a label um they give one of the big differences is they give you a big advance right um a lot of the time so they'll give you you know 100 grand or something and that's to live and that's your money you don't have to pay that back right they take it from your from the earnings that you make on your record i think with a label as well they they just put a lot more money in basically so they're putting money into distribution distribution marketing uh they'll give you a team of people funding they do yeah i mean it depends on the label a lot of the time you know it all depends on the deal i guess yeah and what you've yeah what you're on um but majors just focusing on getting your what you've done out yeah so distributed so with mine they don't give me an advance okay which i like because it means that i don't have to pay anything back so this and it it means the split is normally a lot better as well with a label.

21:59I mean, when I signed, uh, my, cause I've signed two major record deals in my life and the first one with Warner was, I mean, fucking hell. I think they took like, it was like a 95 % to them, 5 % to me, you know, it was like a really bad deal and it wasn't even a bad deal. That's like kind of a normal deal. Yeah. They take 95, I take five.

22:21Olly Fawcett:And you'd had given an advance. And I was given a big hefty advance. i think it was like over 100 grand um and plus on top there was all sorts of other bits and bobs like they bought one of my old eps for 40 grand and oh there was a lot there was a lot of money yeah it was more money than i'd ever had in my life yeah i'd never had any anything yeah um but the problem is you never pay it back you can because the thing is you have to pay it back with your percentage of the deal so it's so say they give you 100 grand yeah you're not on 10 90 percent yeah then you have to make a million a million to pay off yeah yeah so the record that record or is that for one record is that for every pit of music you're making uh that is just well it depends on the deal fine it totally depends but let's say you get 100k advance yeah to make an album yes let's just say and that's the only thing that they're gonna distribute and use that album's got to make a million quid yes exactly yeah that album's got to make a million quid and like for context like this is this you had this deal in the cd days still right yeah well i think it was i think streaming was coming fine i think it was it was like the big early days of streaming but yeah it was um you still got a shift like what a hundred thousand cds yeah yeah yeah yeah and you never would you never would you never would and i didn't um i think as well the difference with a distributor is that i have to pay for all the recording and making the whole thing whereas with a label i think you know they also paid for recording costs and paid producers tens of thousands they also have a music video budget and they pay pr and radio pluggers and i mean it's expensive but it's almost hard and i don't know this world very well but i would imagine that it is expensive but for them if they're doing a deal with a i don't know let's say a producer for three different artists it's probably cheaper for them than it would be if you were going to that producer to get one and i wouldn't even be able to go to that producer because he wouldn't speak to me you know i remember being in the office in warner uh with my anr guy who was quite a big deal i think he's sort of you know he had a lot of massive names under his roster and he said who do you want to who do you want to sound like and i said i said london grammar and so he just picked up the phone there and then called London Grammar's producer and went hey I've got a great artist can you book him in for next week um we want to do some tracks with you and it was there's like yep no problem and like in you know a couple of minutes I was all of a sudden in the room and that kind of made me think oh fuck there is some serious power to to being with this so how did you get signed to Warner let's so yeah so um so basically so I got I went through a couple of managers didn't really no actually no so it was just Ricky he he got me a booking agent this is the first manager yeah the merch guy the manager and do you know what he was a good guy I'm not gonna shit on him because we had a good time we had a good time but come on let's be honest if he's watching this you didn't know what you were doing you didn't you didn't but neither of us did we were working it out yeah we always talk about naivety on this show because it is the best time yes you're excited yeah you think you're about to make a million quid but actually you've got a world of pain yes around the corner oh god if i'd known i would never would have fucking done this i never would have done it i really was i had no idea how hard it was gonna be um so he booked you for something well he i tweeted uh katie tunstall who um she was like she had this tour tour poster it was massive dates i had no business fucking being on it but i was like i'd love to support you sent a youtube video of me playing a song because my my old manager he was kind of ahead of his time actually to be fair because he was so into youtube and he was like yeah ricky he was like youtube is the future it's going to be massive all we need to do is film you playing your songs and it work and and he was he's ended up being a cameraman in tv so he was a good you videographer so it looked slick sounded all right um and we kind of made all these videos called seller sessions early days of it and so i seller sessions yeah i don't even know if they're on there anymore but i sent one to katie tunster and said i'd love to support you she looked liked it enough to kind of go yeah so all of a sudden i've gone from nothing really doing pubs and casinos to all i'm about to now go on like a i think it was like a 30 date theater tour all over the uk wow and it was like two or three thousand people every night um and it was a big deal you know and to the point where i could see how scared ricky was because he was like i'm really out of my depth you know i mean but but he put a great face but apart from that we're in trouble boy yeah he was thinking i remember seeing him and see myself i've just been up all night just thinking about how much shit this we're gonna have to do for this we're not ready for it just for some context which i always think is useful if you're doing two three thousand people a night on a show like that for you like in the normal gigging a normal gigging month before that would you be doing like two thousand people a month oh no i wouldn't even be i'd be doing like freaking five people a month you know i mean literally five oh yeah i'd be no one was at these gigs do you know i mean i'm i'm in a pub or it's not even a busy pub this is like the complete like way above the station it's just completely yes just so different it's like a different job you know i mean when i did the casinos they put me in a room that was a separate from the one i'd be in the bar and everyone was at the tables so there was no one i was literally playing to nobody so um which was kind of nice actually because i could play the same song like six or seven times and think fuck i'm making 100 quid here from doing the same thing it's fine um so i was okay with it but obviously it wasn't really like progressing me in my career so then we do this tour and and it was just like mind-blowing you know and the crowd really took to me um and it was the first time that I was like, oh shit, this is really working.

28:39And I was selling crazy amount of merch. I mean, we made so much. Off of merch? Off of merch. I mean, we were making thousands and thousands a night from CDs that me and Ricky would just burn on our laptops.

28:53Olly Fawcett:Where you just put them in. Yeah. So we do this thing where you put, so you get a rider backstage. This was a really clever idea, which I carried on doing for a while. um so a rider allocates snacks and things like that but instead of putting snacks on it we put blank cds um and and little wallets and then we'd bring our laptops and then we'd just burn so the production the production was us in the backstage for free you know what i mean there was no overheads basically because back then a cd would have been like what a quid like to buy it yeah to buy it and it was a tenner and we'd sell it for a tenner and there was no card either back then there was no like card machines really you didn't have zettel or anything like that so it's all cash fucking hell we had so much cash it was like we're drug dealers seriously i had bin bags full of cash in the little fiat it was mental uh and there would just be a cute there'd just be this because the best thing about it was there was an interval and then katie went on right and so in that interval i would say i'll be at the merch desk so i had half an hour to shift as many cds as i could and because everybody is a theater everyone's got their seat so the whole place can leave go get a cd and come back and there's no stress it's not like an o2 academy where if you're at front you're keeping your spot so it just fucking changed it changed my whole life really and it just it blew up my my followers went from kind of you know 50 to about 20 000 you know we're pretty much in the in like no time at all really um and it then ended up getting me a booking agent um which then got me european tours with you know birdie nina nesbitt um and that was like okay now we're actually and then all of a sudden radio one was getting involved and really fucking loved it fern cotton made uh the single record of the week all this came from one tweet all this came from one tweet yeah ever like blow your mind a little for you um like if you did yes yes it does i guess but then you you kind of always think like well maybe there would have just been something else then that happened um and by sorry i got pins and needles in my foot um and by no means it's like i thought that was it you know i was kind of like oh there's you know i'm gonna be massive now it's only a matter of time and i was so sure you know because it just felt so easy it was like oh wow okay all the doors are opening um and i was i was young as well and so it was kind of like this sort of new exciting thing i was on on all the lists of you know guardian and bbc and yeah you know they have those ones to watch bollocks that means absolutely fuck all but at the time you give a shit don't you um but but yeah i was i was on it all and everyone was telling me this is it um and my and we were making money as well for the first time ever so i think that helped not crazy money but enough money to kind of keep touring comfortably um and i was away i was just away all the time um which i loved but i knew that my my dad was ill and and i kept getting sort of phone calls from models and friends and and him sort of saying you know i'm not well and because obviously he'd had cancer for three years or something right um and he'd never he he chose not to have treatment okay which is wild yeah but we sort of talked about no treatment at all nothing which is really interesting actually watching it's not often you get to watch what cancer actually does with no with no like treatment and naturally how it gets you because people that have treatment i've got some relatives that have treatment often you're the way they look or that how they're how they're changing from the mindset to physicalities is not the cancer it's the treatment it's the treatment yeah because essentially chemo nearly kills you that's the kind of the whole point yeah whereas my dad he had long curly hair big afro curly hair he was a proper hippie um And he also had prostate cancer.

33:13And one of the treatments then, I don't know if it's different now, but one of the treatments was based around estrogen, which kills your sex drive. And my dad painted beautiful women not wearing any clothes as a living. And his whole life was driven by sex and that sex drive. And his hair was part of his image and everything. He was so cemented in his identity and the way of life that he said he'd rather die being him than try and stay alive as someone else, you know. So he kind of, so we knew it was going to get him, you know. So it was very, it wasn't like a surprise when he started getting more and more ill.

34:07how are you dealing with like the career taking off and not being there yeah uh it was it was obviously difficult but I guess I kind of tried to ignore it and I don't mean that in like an insensitive way but like when I was away you know I'm in Paris and I'm doing a massive show and so it was it I was I was trying to distract to myself from the inevitable and the calls kind of got more and more often and they got more and more intense saying you know he is really ill now and you should probably you know he wanted me to keep going he was just like fuck me talk you said at the start he was like this is what we should yeah yeah yeah he was super happy about me touring and he always wanted me to put that first and that was great you know and i do i do really respect that but at the same time you know i want and we didn't have the best relationship outside of the arts.

35:06Like, you know, he was a bit of a nutter. He was a massive alcoholic, you know, did not treat women well. He wasn't a very good parent in general. We weren't really a father in some relationship. We were mates. But we were mates that spend way too much time together. So we just fight. we bicker and i think as i started to become a man and a successful artist he was declining as a man and as a successful artist so he was becoming a bit of a failing artist so we were kind of like passing each other it's hard that isn't it really hard because you

35:49Olly Fawcett:know we would talk about your success yes and also he doesn't want to bring you down yeah that's a really hard balance that yeah it was really difficult because i could sense there was jealousy naturally he could see that his time was ending and mine was starting and i think he was uh envious of it because i think it reminded of him in the 70s when he was this big you know coming at this new name you know um but i came back luckily we had i had a show in milton keen's um with birdie uh and so i i came back and i spent the whole day with him at home and he was paralyzed by that point he was literally in bed and he could he still got his mind and he could speak but his body was sort of just he couldn't really move yeah i think it just spread everywhere i think this is the thing with cancer you know it starts and then it just spreads.

36:49If you don't do anything, it just naturally grows. And so it kind of just got him everywhere. But we could still hang out and chat. So I got my guitar and we just sort of like fiddled around with ideas and kind of did a songwriting session. And it was a really nice day actually. It was one of the best days I think I've ever had with him. Weirdly, even though he was barely there, it was an important moment. um and we had a mcmillan nurse there she was kind of she'd been living at the house for like two weeks amazing amazing yeah so amazing had been literally living with us well with him kind of naturally letting him sort of pass away um but he still was holding on he was literally holding on and and then we hung out all day and then when i left to go to the show and i did say to him do you want me to do this gig and he was adamant he was like go and do the gig go and do i had one that night yeah and so the bus was outside and as i left he lent up and shook my hand which was interesting because he hadn't been able to move in weeks um and and sort of smiled at me and and then i let i went into the bus i thought it was strange at the time but i was like thanks and then I went into the bus and then I and the Macmillan nurse messaged me well run outside and went your dad's just gone so I think he was waiting for me to go you know and I did say to him I'll be back after the gig I'll be back after the gig and he was like yeah yeah and then and then that was it really that was the last time uh and then I so I came back into the house uh and looked at him and it's really weird like he he he wasn't there even though he was there it was like looking at a piece of furniture there was like it's so interesting like it really made me like realize how important like a soul is and it really did feel like he'd gone there was just something that just i mean obviously he had but it was just something so much more presence yeah the presence Yeah, there was no, yeah, it was just, and you know what?

39:01It was really nice seeing him so peaceful, like, cause he'd been in so much pain for so long and he'd been so stressed out all the time. And he got a stressful life anyway. He was in a massive amount of debt. You know, my mum left when I was eight and he never really recovered from it. He'd always been bouncing around women from then on. And he was just, he drank like crazy, smoked like crazy. He couldn't seem to sell any of the art that he was painting. He couldn't understand why he was so good and he was still not making any money and not successful, you know? So he had a lot of anger, and he was a really troubled person.

39:36And so it was sort of nice to just think, you know, it's all over now. You don't have to worry anymore about anything. You're just always worried. So that was, yeah. And so I went and did the gig. I actually did the gig that night. And the whole crowd, the news was starting to spread.

39:57Olly Fawcett:that he was um did you tell anyone that uh i didn't actually say it on stage but my dad was quite famous so i think when he did pass away it was sort of uh it was kind of a thing it was quite a big deal yeah right and then and i think some of the fans were crying my manager ricky he was he was crying as well and everyone was crying i wasn't i can't cry i haven't been able to cry since I was a kid, which is weird. Definitely, I'm talking to my therapist about that a lot, but I just can't seem to do it. I'm just like... Are you wanting to, though? I'd love to. I'd love to. I just, it's like I just don't know how to do it.

40:37Olly Fawcett:Did you want to do it that evening on stage? Yes, of course. Oh, yeah, there's been so many times where, especially recently, where I've really wanted to. But I just struggle with that. I really I just can't seem to do it um but yeah so I did the show and and then and then I think I carried on touring for a little bit and it just sort of got to me I think it hit me a couple of months after properly and I just sacked it all off and I just stopped and I just signed at this point I wasn't no I wasn't signed this is still before Warner yeah got it so I basically just sacked everything off um and I just I ended up stopping the relationship with my manager um I stopped touring I'd left a booking agent I just stopped everything I just went home uh and I've made up I made a bit of money and obviously my dad I inherited his house so so I was sort of okay financially and I just I just went back home and just got really really into drugs and drink uh for the next year i'd say i was solidly alcohol and cocaine for pretty much a year and writing to be fair i was still writing music and and recording but um i was just kind of like partying my problems away really um do you think your dad passing was the catalyst there i think so i i also want i wanted to be a drug addict like it was definitely a choice i think i just my dad was it was a handy reason for me to talk myself into doing what i wanted to do anyway which was drinking drugs yeah and sex and partying and just generally uh short-term dopamine hits basically did you feel that you could control the drug and alcohol abuse at that time no and i didn't want to really there was no there was no uh need yeah for me to i'd got money i didn't have a job I've got a house I'm in a much better situation than all of my mates that went to uni you know I've got no debt I've got a tiny bit of fame it was almost like I was a sort of a has-been before I ever was anything you know it felt like that because we'd done so much touring and there'd been so much buzz around it but really in the grand scheme of things I was nowhere near what we're doing now but at the time Why did you want it to stop do you think in terms of Stop the music I guess the drive not yeah sorry the music like the drive of what you were growing at that time before you just decided today's and I know obviously what happened your father was a big impact on that yeah but you'd worked so hard to that point did you not feel that you could do it in parallel you know what you wanted to do yeah I didn't like the music I was making right I thought it was naff got it and that must be really hard yeah and my dad didn't really like the music I was like he liked the music he liked some of the music I made but all the big songs the ones that getting a radio play and the ones i was chasing for i was chasing for success so i kept writing these kind of naff songs and my dad never was never really into them and he was a bit like it's not as cool as the this one that no one likes and it's not getting any radio play um and so i kind of thought what am i doing yeah i'm just fucking making music for other people and not myself and that's bullshit and it was and it wasn't working either because we we had a bit of success and then the next song didn't really do as well and the next song didn't do as well and it was like oh shit I'm on the way down um so I was like I'm just gonna go home and do what I want and just make music I want and it was dark and sad and piano based and it was exactly what my dad would have loved and so I just did that and as a result it didn't sell well and so I kind of had to accept I'm gonna do music my dad wants me to do and sacrifice the success of radio play isn't it yeah because as an artist as a creative you're always balancing those two things right kind of although i do think it sways a lot more on what i like now right um i don't really care uh if it's going to sell don't get me wrong i think sometimes i like it more if it's a if it sounds like a hit and it sounds like a radio song um but nowadays pretty much it's like 90 percent do i love this and then everything else is it going to get radio is it about the right thing who gives a fuck do i like what i'm making yes and that's the that's the main thing um so how did you get away from the drug and alcohol abuse so then so then i'm partying for fucking ages i mean it was about a bit of a blur yeah it did it did get pretty bad um yes it did get really bad and it kind of is i've been sort of in and out of it for for the next you know decade really um but i then got a new manager right who sort of came out of nowhere really and had heard some of the sad shit i was doing in the cellar do a great job of selling selling well yeah she really liked it um and she was a radio one producer and so i was thinking okay there's an in here and I moved I met a girl um who I fell madly in love with probably you know one of the yeah it was definitely the first time I fully felt love and um and and I ended up being with her for 10 years um and she wanted to move to London she was adamant she was like I want to get out in the fancy I want to go to London and I think she gave me like the confidence to sort of do it with her I was like let's fucking go and make it work and so we moved to camden in uh of course you did in a front room yeah in someone's front room and it was definitely not legal we weren't on the contract or anything we were sort of like subletting is that what it's called yeah yeah and we've got two cats as well which we brought and so it was me and her and these two cats in this front room in camden are busy like literally the high street fucking hell right litter trays everywhere it was a fucking nightmare it was absolute nightmare and every time the estate agent came around uh to view the place we had to take our mattress and hide it on top of the bed that was upstairs so that it looked and the bed looked like it was so tall i mean it was so ridiculous and i keep like rearranging the duvet to be like that's all right and then i'd hide my cats in the boot oh my god just just for like that window of 20 minutes while the estate agent comes to view it and just check and then i have to go out and walk around the block or something and then you know my mate would be like yep it's all good here and we had to turn our bedroom into a living room looking like you know what i mean it's a fucking nightmare and it cost a fortune as well we could not afford it but but we made it work um we were sort of living on love really um that's a good song that's high already yeah you go um and she got a job uh at reception at warner just uh by some fluke there's temp some tent works and they liked her and they gave her this gave her this job and i did it i'd been doing open mic nights in london constantly and so i did uh i did a show in king's cross and pancras you know the church tiny place on your 80 cap and kirsten told the all of the guy all the a &r guys she'd been chatting to on reception told them about it and um i was playing the show and it was sold out it was only 80 people but it was kind of just random mates and things um and they all i saw them all walk in uh at the back sort of two or three songs in and you could just tell you just knew it was them it was warner they just had like a vibe about them they all all came in it was a quite a lot of them you know i mean i think it was like six or seven guys um wow flipping on yeah yeah there was a lot of them yeah and they were the heads as well it was you know dan charmers rick salmon and josh mateo i mean you know big names in the industry um and pretty much came backstage and pretty much offered me a deal there and then and within within a month or so And my dream was always to sign a record deal.

49:33That was always like, you know, you're not a real artist until you've signed. And Warner had Paolo on and Ed Sheeran. And, you know, at the time they were like, you know, really, that was everything I wanted to be. And so it just made sense. And my manager was like, this isn't a great deal, to be fair, because they're going to own you. And they're going to take everything you ever make. And I was just like, I don't care. I just want to sign. I want to sign to Warner right that's my dream so she was like okay fine and fair enough and it was a horrible experience actually to be honest or worse things I ever did um but at the same time I learned a lot you know and they took me into the offices and showed me this amazing studio and nothing fucking worked in it when I actually used it looked great but nothing worked like it was a mess sorry if anyone watching this from Warner but like it was a shambles there um and no one really knew what to do you know and i think that's the problem i was sort of i felt like i was getting passed around like a joint with all these different writers and producers and trying to find my sound and what i'm going to stand for and how and how i'm going to look and i had all these different stylists and fucking hairdressers oh all these just constantly trying to turn me into something and i was just like can't it just be me it's not me it can't i know it's like no you couldn't

50:58Olly Fawcett:possibly do that fucking hell was it quite painful to realize that it wasn't what you thought it was yeah i guess nothing ever is really is it um i and there were times when i was like oh this is what i've you know there were times when i was at parties with you know famous people and and you you kind of you feel like you're supported you know and and we you know we'd get these huge tours that cost hundreds of thousands to do and the label would pay yeah you know and i think that was interesting having almost like a a sugar daddy that's what it felt like you know i mean because they would try and obviously they would they they essentially own me so they have the right to tell me whether a song is going to be released or not when because a lot of people say this in the music industry the whole they owned me thing when you say that do you mean musically and like if you if you were still signed with them coming on this show would you have had to check that with them yes oh yes you'd have to check everything oh my god anything you do yes whether it be a friend's birthday party where you're going to play a couple of songs oh my god yeah even that is that the level yeah yeah yeah that's the level when people say they own me i'm like oh yeah just anytime you made money they made money but you're talking about like oh psychologically yeah yeah psychologically it would be everything that i did had to sort of be checked by them and i think it was a real shock when i made something like because i'd be in writing sessions every day that was my day job i'd just write and write and write with all these people for me for me trying to get songs and they would send the label the songs before they sent me them you know which was kind of weird and if i loved a song i wouldn't and they didn't love it I wouldn't be able to release it that was the crazy thing and it was also crazy for me to think oh my god my opinion isn't the same as yours because when you sign you assume that you're both gonna love the same things and hate the same things and then you suddenly realize like fuck we're different people and you're stopping me and the worst thing is when they love a song and you hate it even though you wrote it sometimes you write a song you just didn't really like it you didn't vibe with the guy it just didn't work and they were always the fucking songs the label loved and wanted to release and i beg them i'd be like please don't release this one because i'm embarrassed by it i play it to all my mates and i'll be like mate that's shit and i'm like i know but the label loves it and then we're like fuck and then you put it out it does nothing everyone thinks you're a fucking idiot and you're just like great and then and then the label blames you and they're like oh sorry you know well you just wasn't good enough and i'm thinking you told me you persuaded me to fucking release this um yeah you just don't have control i think that's the hard thing so when did you leave warner so then uh two two years of hell really uh with them and then um and they were nice people generally they did want it to work you know and i'm not like i hope this doesn't come across like i'm slagging them off it's just we could not together work out what the fuck to do yeah and and the music wasn't connecting and i think it was at a time when capaldi was starting to really blow all right and so this is like 2017 2018 yes yes yes um and i was kind of like warner's answer to virgin's capaldi and we just hadn't got the numbers i just could not seem to get the numbers that he was getting getting and we were touring together quite a lot um and we were in the same sort of world but i think you know capaldi was just unstoppable at that point yeah and um so yeah in the end i just basically had to had to stop and and i said to warner look can we just can we just i'm just pretend this never happened basically and they were like yeah and they were really cool about it you know and they gave me a lot of is it not a hard you sound like it sounds like it was pretty simple conversation in theory i would have thought it would be a bit more like no you're we own you so you're in jail type situation yes normally it is right actually um and don't go wrong all the songs that i released with them they still kind of own yeah so i don't make a lot of money from them or any money really from them um but everything i'd written that hadn't been released they gave me back which is really unusual normally they wouldn't do that but they did and i think they kind of they didn't want to ruin me yeah so it was an amicable thing it sounds like they know you had also been trying yeah exactly yeah sat no you're doing a writing session a month and then you're you know exactly i wasn't fucking around i was working hard you know and it just didn't it didn't work um and so there was quite a lot of songs that i really loved that they hated and they wouldn't let me release and one of them was a song called hard act to follow and i so i left them they gave me that song back i then released it myself as an independent artist totally independent i don't even think we used like a distributor i think i literally just put it on like with uh distro kid or something like that um and and then james corden heard it and and like literally a week after i got dropped james corden heard it and called me and said do you want to come to la and play on the late late show play it live on the late late show and i was like fucking hell i'm so lucky i'm such a lucky fuck but how did he hear it so the guy i wrote it with um is a guy called andy burrows who is the drummer of razor light and he's his family are very him and his wife and kids they're all family friends with james cordon and so he just played it to him one one day when they were over at the house and james loved it and and just got in touch and and then that started that whole world of fucking craziness in america and um because that led you to sign the second deal yeah so that was the lead up to that that was the lead up to that and then I did the James Corden thing.

56:55I got a new manager because my old manager just, she got so stressed out by the whole Warner thing that she just couldn't do it anymore and she wanted to have a baby and she wanted to -

57:03Olly Fawcett:It must be quite a lot for the boyfriend, right? And I was a heart, I was a drug addict at the time through all of this so I was a fucking nightmare. I was like hard at work, like I worked hard but I was always so late. I'd be like three, four hours late for things and I was just like not with it. I was a mess. I was mood swings. I'd never answer my phone. I was just fucking, nightmare and I'm deeply sorry for the shit that I put her through and Kirsten, the girlfriend that I was with for 10 years, I've put her through fucking hell from the drug addiction and I think about it all the time and I regret it so much.

57:41But it's in the past now. Anyway, I did the James Corden thing and got a new manager and we managed to sign a deal with an American label.

57:54Olly Fawcett:Okay. Got big movies in it? Yeah, in New York. And it was part of Virgin. They were under the umbrella of Virgin. So it was still kind of a major label thing. It had a lot of money. It was quite a good advance. And I'd also made the album myself. I was starting to sort of get into production and I'd built a studio in my cellar and I was kind of, I mean, I'd had, had a producer doing that album, but I was watching him, you know, and it was the first time I was taking interest in going, okay, well, what the fuck is he doing? What is compression? You know, what is an EQ? Is the drug abuse stopped by now?

58:33No, no, no, no, no. I was still, this is the thing I was managing to fucking hold it together, you know? Yeah.

58:39Olly Fawcett:If you're feeling like, oh, life's sweet and I can keep it on the side. Yeah. It's really true. Exactly. And I think that's the problem with alcohol and cocaine. It's like, you can hide it. There is a way. For me personally, I managed to kind of, I mean, you can't hide it to the people close to you. But you can just about manage to do everything. But everything's hard work. I think that's the thing. It's like you can do everything, but it's a struggle. And it's nothing's fun. It's okay, I managed to get through that. Okay, now I've got to do this, I'll get through that, you know, and it's like, fucking, that's no way to live.

59:14but so i'd sort of made this album and we sold it to the label and and that ended up going fucking tits up as well but but there was big hopes you know they were like this is the moment i'm breaking america went over there got the visa went over there met them all like you're going to be massive nothing um why don't you think it worked i think it's just you just need so much money to make things work in america you need tens of millions and they had some money but not enough um and they because they were an american label they didn't really know anything about the english market and that was kind of where i was and where i was kind of trying to push yeah um and they were also very very into the whole idea of you've got to go viral try and go viral try and come up with some trend and they were like paying influencers to sort of pretend they loved the song and all this weird shit do you know i mean i was like oh this is gross because that's how i mean there's

1:00:09Olly Fawcett:so many successes i mean we'll talk about your tiktok journey soon but like there are a lot of successes from going viral on tiktok yeah that's when that starts to happen right almost all of the success now is from going but this is the early stages of that being a thing yeah listened on tiktok that kind of like trend element but they were in america i guess a bit ahead of the uk yeah but were they like you need to do this or it's not going to work pretty much yeah i mean and to be honest they did have a point i mean it wasn't working we weren't we weren't getting any traction i mean there was not nothing was connecting and i liked the songs i thought i thought the album was good i was proud of it i mean we paid this like rapper like a so much money to put this verse on one of the songs Who was the rapper?

1:00:58You didn't always ask that question. No, Goldlink. Is it Goldlink? I'm not sure. I think it might be Goldlink. Okay. He's a massive American rapper. I mean, huge, to be fair. And I met up with him in London somewhere. We had a nice time, I guess. We had a chat. But the whole time I was like, what the fuck are we doing? And then he asked for some obscene amount of money putting a verse on. and we got it back and we were like okay we're not blown away by it do you know what i mean it definitely sounded like he'd he i'm not gonna be mean to the guy but it didn't sound like he put that much effort into it it didn't sound like it was worth 40 grand or some shit like they literally spent a lot on this um and we were like but it's fine it's fine because it's gonna it's gonna break us into the american markets you you know now your names with this guy but it didn't do anything it literally if anything the fans my fans were just like what the fuck why did you put that on the song right we liked the song how it was um yeah it just didn't do any of the things that they thought it was going to do and i think the label was spending a lot of money on the wrong