Post by Helen on Feb 23, 2005 20:30:57 GMT
does he never give up?!
Ireland: Interview - Louis Walsh
Louis Walsh has his heart set on retirement in Miami but first he’s going to find the new Julio Iglesias, he tells Michael Ross
The wealthy have a glow all of their own. It comes from high-end grooming, and from the sense of assurance and entitlement that money brings. In Louis Walsh’s case it also comes from a month spent in the art-deco hot spot of South Beach, Miami, from which he recently returned, having spent January pondering not only his future but also the panoramic ocean view from his upper-storey condominium in a swish new beachfront tower where his neighbours include Beyoncé.
The Westlife manager fell in love with South Beach when he first visited it two Christmases ago. The condo was not only a useful addition to an already considerable property portfolio that includes desirable residences in Dublin and London: it was also preparation for a life a bit more removed from Ireland and — in due course — from the music business. The only downside, he says, is returning to Ireland.
“I like living here but I spend a lot of time in London now and I can see myself spending more time in the States,” he says. “When I come back I realise how parochial it is.
It’s the Sunday Independent syndrome: the same old nutse about the same people every week. It’s so full of nuts here. It doesn’t really matter in the bigger scheme of things but people here think it matters, and to some extent that shapes the experience of living here.”
If Walsh has outgrown Ireland in some ways, he has done so largely in the past year and because of two particular developments: Brian McFadden’s abrupt departure from Westlife last March and Walsh’s subsequent break into British television as a judge on the ITV series The X Factor.
McFadden’s exit on the eve of a tour left the moneymaking juggernaut that is Westlife wobbling briefly, focusing the minds of those left behind on life beyond the boyband. After that the success of The X Factor prompted Walsh to revise his personal ambitions, though not his waspishness towards those who have taken swipes at him. “What’s the difference between Ryan Tubridy and me?” he asks. “I’m on a hit television show.”
The McFadden episode was a rare spanner in the well-oiled works Walsh has assembled in the 12 years since he put together Boyzone, his first successful act. Previously, his charges left the operation only when they had exhausted their usefulness.
Even when Ronan Keating fired Walsh as his manager, it was when his career had run aground. If nothing else, says Walsh, McFadden’s departure showed that he has less control over his artists than people think. McFadden was amenable to working out a period of notice but a quick, clean break was mutually agreed upon.
“When he told me at the Meteor awards that he was leaving, I didn’t believe him,” says Walsh. “I thought he was just having a bad day. It was a shock initially. We thought business would dip, and it did at first but it’s back now to what it was before.”
He adds: “I like Brian, and am probably better friends with him now than when he was in the band. He wasn’t difficult: he just did his own thing. He’s a bit of a loose cannon. He’ll always be smoking and drinking and out late at night in the wrong clubs with the wrong people. He was probably thinking of when Robbie (Williams) left Take That. He’s influenced a lot by Robbie.”
Walsh was always closer to the three Sligo members of Westlife than the two Dubliners — and remains so. In particular, he works closely with Kian Egan, who controls much of the day-to-day business of the group. “It helps a lot that I get on well with them,” he says. “They’re not hard work. I don’t think I’ve had a row with anybody in Westlife. Whereas with Boyzone there were rows every day. There was always something wrong with somebody in Boyzone.”
Though things ended messily with Boyzone, Walsh is now on speaking terms with four of the band. Having been closest to Keating — platonic love would not be too strong a term for the protective, adoring way in which the manager viewed the singer in the early years of Boyzone, seeing in his prodigy a younger version of himself — the two no longer speak.
“I don’t see Ronan and I don’t miss him,” says Walsh. “And yes it was painful at the time, being fired by him where we’re sitting now (the Four Seasons hotel in Ballsbridge), but I’m well over it.
“I had taken him as far as I could. He was never going to be a Robbie or a Justin Timberlake or a George Michael. He’s a really good worker and he’s a nice chap; he had everything except the talent, really. He could have been a Cliff (Richard) or a Barry Manilow but he didn’t want that. He’s a Daniel O’Donnell but he doesn’t recognise it — though if he looked into his audience he’d recognise it soon enough.”
Walsh plans to launch a new boyband with Egan and to manage Shane Filan and Mark Feehily, but not Westlife’s remaining Dubliner, Nicky Byrne. “Nicky will probably go into movies or television,” says Walsh. “It’ll be a proper partnership with Kian,” he adds. “He’s very serious. He’s the brightest person I’ve seen in the Irish music business. He picks things up extremely quickly and is interested in every aspect of the operation. And he’s great with money.”
Westlife have two or three more years in them, according to Walsh. Two more albums and two more tours. “As soon as they’re not selling out a week in the Point it’ll be time to do something else. As soon as it dips they’ll stop it and give it a decent burial. They won’t be playing Vicar Street like Ronan did.”
Neither Walsh nor Westlife need work again, the group having shifted 29m albums and eclipsed Boyzone, who sold a respectable 11m. “Boyzone was a learning curve for me,” says Walsh. “Had I not done them I wouldn’t have had the know-how or the confidence to do Westlife. I wouldn’t have known where you make the big money. The touring and merchandise are the big earners, not the albums.”
Apart from Westlife, Walsh is currently managing only two other acts, Girls Aloud and the X Factor performers G4. He continues to look after Samantha Mumba in Europe, though she has separate management in America, where she is now based. Six, the group Walsh formed through the Popstars television series, fizzled out, while Bellefire’s career ran into the sand after Atlantic Records failed to promote their album in Britain.
The overall picture, in other words, suggests someone no more immune to the machinations of the music business than anybody else. “The music business is 90% politics and 10% talent,” he says. “If the record company boss prioritises you, you’ll have hits. If not, forget it. Getting the right songwriters and producers is crucial — and that’s all about record company politics.
“I’ve tried several times to get Max Martin (Britney Spears’s producer) but he’s always tied up with other artists. Having said that, I think if you’re really passionate about something you can make it work.”
Can Walsh really say — hand on heart — that he is passionate about Allow Us to Be Frank, the recent, misjudged Westlife album that sought to emulate the louche cool of Frank Sinatra’s Las Vegas lounging? “Yes,” he says. “Honestly. I really like it. Hand on heart, I’d buy the albums if I wasn’t in business with them. I think they’re really good singers.” He pauses. “That Rat Pack album was Simon Cowell’s idea, to be honest. He likes Frank Sinatra. It was an experiment. It worked and sold a million copies but we didn’t get any radio from it. We were on Radio 2 in the UK but not on any pop stations. And Westlife need to be on pop radio. But it was their seventh album. Most pop acts do two or three and then they’re gone.”
Cowell has been the key figure in Walsh’s career, picking songs for Boyzone and Westlife to record and latterly signing him up for The X Factor. The two want to find a young Hispanic singer able to capitalise upon the Spanish-speaking market as well as the Anglophone one. “A young Julio Iglesias,” he says. “There’s huge money to be made from that market. Julio sold over 250m albums — the kind of numbers U2 have done.”
More immediately, there is the second season of The X Factor, the first series of which not only earned him £250,000 (€360,000) — “It was great money. I was being paid to sit there and have a laugh” — but also a measure of notoriety, gained when he observed that one of Cowell’s acts (Steve Brookstein, the eventual winner) looked like the late serial killer Fred West.
“They really don’t have a sense of humour over there,” he says. “I got a lot or flak over that, and in any case it backfired on me because Steve got a huge sympathy vote. And that got him across the finishing line. I’ve got the last laugh, though, because now Simon Cowell has the job of turning him into a star.”
Now in his late forties, Walsh plans on hanging his hammock up in South Beach in his mid-fifties. Despite his wealth and healthy property portfolio he lives relatively modestly, his principal indulgences being a Bentley and a burgeoning art collection that includes several Tony O’Malleys and Louis le Brocquys.
“I like the Bentley a lot,” he says. “It’s the thing I miss most when I’m away. But the money hasn’t made a lot of difference to my life, to be honest. And I haven’t had much of that Irish thing of being resented for being successful. Maybe some people speak to me now who wouldn’t take my calls when I was booking small bands into Bad Bob’s in the 1980s, even though I’m still the same person. I haven’t changed.”
www.timesonline.co.uk
Ireland: Interview - Louis Walsh
Louis Walsh has his heart set on retirement in Miami but first he’s going to find the new Julio Iglesias, he tells Michael Ross
The wealthy have a glow all of their own. It comes from high-end grooming, and from the sense of assurance and entitlement that money brings. In Louis Walsh’s case it also comes from a month spent in the art-deco hot spot of South Beach, Miami, from which he recently returned, having spent January pondering not only his future but also the panoramic ocean view from his upper-storey condominium in a swish new beachfront tower where his neighbours include Beyoncé.
The Westlife manager fell in love with South Beach when he first visited it two Christmases ago. The condo was not only a useful addition to an already considerable property portfolio that includes desirable residences in Dublin and London: it was also preparation for a life a bit more removed from Ireland and — in due course — from the music business. The only downside, he says, is returning to Ireland.
“I like living here but I spend a lot of time in London now and I can see myself spending more time in the States,” he says. “When I come back I realise how parochial it is.
It’s the Sunday Independent syndrome: the same old nutse about the same people every week. It’s so full of nuts here. It doesn’t really matter in the bigger scheme of things but people here think it matters, and to some extent that shapes the experience of living here.”
If Walsh has outgrown Ireland in some ways, he has done so largely in the past year and because of two particular developments: Brian McFadden’s abrupt departure from Westlife last March and Walsh’s subsequent break into British television as a judge on the ITV series The X Factor.
McFadden’s exit on the eve of a tour left the moneymaking juggernaut that is Westlife wobbling briefly, focusing the minds of those left behind on life beyond the boyband. After that the success of The X Factor prompted Walsh to revise his personal ambitions, though not his waspishness towards those who have taken swipes at him. “What’s the difference between Ryan Tubridy and me?” he asks. “I’m on a hit television show.”
The McFadden episode was a rare spanner in the well-oiled works Walsh has assembled in the 12 years since he put together Boyzone, his first successful act. Previously, his charges left the operation only when they had exhausted their usefulness.
Even when Ronan Keating fired Walsh as his manager, it was when his career had run aground. If nothing else, says Walsh, McFadden’s departure showed that he has less control over his artists than people think. McFadden was amenable to working out a period of notice but a quick, clean break was mutually agreed upon.
“When he told me at the Meteor awards that he was leaving, I didn’t believe him,” says Walsh. “I thought he was just having a bad day. It was a shock initially. We thought business would dip, and it did at first but it’s back now to what it was before.”
He adds: “I like Brian, and am probably better friends with him now than when he was in the band. He wasn’t difficult: he just did his own thing. He’s a bit of a loose cannon. He’ll always be smoking and drinking and out late at night in the wrong clubs with the wrong people. He was probably thinking of when Robbie (Williams) left Take That. He’s influenced a lot by Robbie.”
Walsh was always closer to the three Sligo members of Westlife than the two Dubliners — and remains so. In particular, he works closely with Kian Egan, who controls much of the day-to-day business of the group. “It helps a lot that I get on well with them,” he says. “They’re not hard work. I don’t think I’ve had a row with anybody in Westlife. Whereas with Boyzone there were rows every day. There was always something wrong with somebody in Boyzone.”
Though things ended messily with Boyzone, Walsh is now on speaking terms with four of the band. Having been closest to Keating — platonic love would not be too strong a term for the protective, adoring way in which the manager viewed the singer in the early years of Boyzone, seeing in his prodigy a younger version of himself — the two no longer speak.
“I don’t see Ronan and I don’t miss him,” says Walsh. “And yes it was painful at the time, being fired by him where we’re sitting now (the Four Seasons hotel in Ballsbridge), but I’m well over it.
“I had taken him as far as I could. He was never going to be a Robbie or a Justin Timberlake or a George Michael. He’s a really good worker and he’s a nice chap; he had everything except the talent, really. He could have been a Cliff (Richard) or a Barry Manilow but he didn’t want that. He’s a Daniel O’Donnell but he doesn’t recognise it — though if he looked into his audience he’d recognise it soon enough.”
Walsh plans to launch a new boyband with Egan and to manage Shane Filan and Mark Feehily, but not Westlife’s remaining Dubliner, Nicky Byrne. “Nicky will probably go into movies or television,” says Walsh. “It’ll be a proper partnership with Kian,” he adds. “He’s very serious. He’s the brightest person I’ve seen in the Irish music business. He picks things up extremely quickly and is interested in every aspect of the operation. And he’s great with money.”
Westlife have two or three more years in them, according to Walsh. Two more albums and two more tours. “As soon as they’re not selling out a week in the Point it’ll be time to do something else. As soon as it dips they’ll stop it and give it a decent burial. They won’t be playing Vicar Street like Ronan did.”
Neither Walsh nor Westlife need work again, the group having shifted 29m albums and eclipsed Boyzone, who sold a respectable 11m. “Boyzone was a learning curve for me,” says Walsh. “Had I not done them I wouldn’t have had the know-how or the confidence to do Westlife. I wouldn’t have known where you make the big money. The touring and merchandise are the big earners, not the albums.”
Apart from Westlife, Walsh is currently managing only two other acts, Girls Aloud and the X Factor performers G4. He continues to look after Samantha Mumba in Europe, though she has separate management in America, where she is now based. Six, the group Walsh formed through the Popstars television series, fizzled out, while Bellefire’s career ran into the sand after Atlantic Records failed to promote their album in Britain.
The overall picture, in other words, suggests someone no more immune to the machinations of the music business than anybody else. “The music business is 90% politics and 10% talent,” he says. “If the record company boss prioritises you, you’ll have hits. If not, forget it. Getting the right songwriters and producers is crucial — and that’s all about record company politics.
“I’ve tried several times to get Max Martin (Britney Spears’s producer) but he’s always tied up with other artists. Having said that, I think if you’re really passionate about something you can make it work.”
Can Walsh really say — hand on heart — that he is passionate about Allow Us to Be Frank, the recent, misjudged Westlife album that sought to emulate the louche cool of Frank Sinatra’s Las Vegas lounging? “Yes,” he says. “Honestly. I really like it. Hand on heart, I’d buy the albums if I wasn’t in business with them. I think they’re really good singers.” He pauses. “That Rat Pack album was Simon Cowell’s idea, to be honest. He likes Frank Sinatra. It was an experiment. It worked and sold a million copies but we didn’t get any radio from it. We were on Radio 2 in the UK but not on any pop stations. And Westlife need to be on pop radio. But it was their seventh album. Most pop acts do two or three and then they’re gone.”
Cowell has been the key figure in Walsh’s career, picking songs for Boyzone and Westlife to record and latterly signing him up for The X Factor. The two want to find a young Hispanic singer able to capitalise upon the Spanish-speaking market as well as the Anglophone one. “A young Julio Iglesias,” he says. “There’s huge money to be made from that market. Julio sold over 250m albums — the kind of numbers U2 have done.”
More immediately, there is the second season of The X Factor, the first series of which not only earned him £250,000 (€360,000) — “It was great money. I was being paid to sit there and have a laugh” — but also a measure of notoriety, gained when he observed that one of Cowell’s acts (Steve Brookstein, the eventual winner) looked like the late serial killer Fred West.
“They really don’t have a sense of humour over there,” he says. “I got a lot or flak over that, and in any case it backfired on me because Steve got a huge sympathy vote. And that got him across the finishing line. I’ve got the last laugh, though, because now Simon Cowell has the job of turning him into a star.”
Now in his late forties, Walsh plans on hanging his hammock up in South Beach in his mid-fifties. Despite his wealth and healthy property portfolio he lives relatively modestly, his principal indulgences being a Bentley and a burgeoning art collection that includes several Tony O’Malleys and Louis le Brocquys.
“I like the Bentley a lot,” he says. “It’s the thing I miss most when I’m away. But the money hasn’t made a lot of difference to my life, to be honest. And I haven’t had much of that Irish thing of being resented for being successful. Maybe some people speak to me now who wouldn’t take my calls when I was booking small bands into Bad Bob’s in the 1980s, even though I’m still the same person. I haven’t changed.”
www.timesonline.co.uk