For some, Louis Walsh and his boy bands have dragged modern culture along a ruinous path to near-oblivion which we would never have trodden of our own accord. For others, having to listen to a loop of Westlife songs would have them begging for mercy ...
Personally, I find Louis Walsh the most entertaining and crushingly honest man in the music industry, period. He has a tongue on him like a fishwife with a bad hangover — and he hasn't been afraid over the years to give out his often-cruel opinions on Robbie Williams, Sinead O'Connor and Ronan Keating — but as Lyndon B Johnson once said: “Better to have him inside the tent p*ssing out, than outside p*ssing in.”
Sitting demurely in the window of a bar in Dublin, on a Wednesday evening, Louis is every inch the Mayo lad done good. Make that very good: the pop mogul just stepped out of a top-of-the-range Maserati two minutes earlier. He is wearing white Prada runners and a white shirt by the same designer. “Prada is the only label I know,” he laughs. He swears he hasn't had any work done and his hair is all his own.
He says Simon Cowell, his fellow judge on X Factor, rang him in the early hours from Los Angeles. Typically, Louis was still up — the downside is that Louis doesn't function until at least noon.
“I don't,” he smiles through Daz-white teeth, “do mornings, darling”.
His mind flits from mortality to pop immortality to his favourite film, Sunset Boulevard. “Norma is deluded that she is still a star,” he says of ageing actress Norma Desmond, played by Gloria Swanson. “The pop world is full of such deluded stars who don't realise their moment is gone.”
He is dismissive of his former star Samantha Mumba; saying she should never have moved to Los Angeles. “She lost her Irishness,” he believes. “And she is going to struggle to come back, and it is a pity, if you want to know the truth, because girls are 10 a penny in LA.”
As for his other one-time charges Girls Aloud, he admits they were “high maintenance. Five girls are high maintenance. They were very needy. Cheryl kind of understands me now,” he says of Cheryl Cole, a fellow judge on X Factor. “But there wasn't the honesty that I had with Boyzone or Westlife, because I didn't really know them.”
Louis holidays in Miami, where he has a home, three times a year. He has a home on Dublin's south side and another in London, to where he spends a large chunk of time commuting. He had lunch yesterday in Mayfair with Elton John's former manager, John Reid. Louis is also friends with U2 manager Paul McGuinness. He has a huge understanding of the nature of the industry he is in. Asked what upsets him about life, and Louis laughs: “I hate people who are disloyal. I absolutely hate disloyalty and fakeness.
“I know I am in the wrong industry for loyalty. Most people in the business are totally fake. The record companies use and abuse everybody. We think they are friends, but once things go downhill suddenly they will be in a meeting.”
His life has been changed dramatically by X Factor, more so than by his hugely successful management of his bands. People do double-takes as they walk pass the window of the restaurant and see who is sitting there. He sometimes waves, out of camp boldness. He seems to cope with it well, though. He does this with a level of genuine self-deprecation. When I ask him what is it like to be a Mayo boy who is suddenly well-known across the UK, he immediately jumps in. “I am really well known in Britain. I can't go anywhere in Britain without being recognised. And I am much more respected in London than I am in the Village of the Damned,” he laughs in reference to Dublin. “And it is the Village of the Damned. I am only back 24 hours and everybody is talking about a recession. Recession! Recession! Recession!” he roars.
“When I came to Dublin first, I had no money, and we were happier people. Everyone is obsessed with this recession now. It's not the end of the world,” the multimillionaire in the Maserati says. “They've got their health. My mother always told me when I was growing up that your health is your wealth. And she was right.”
Nobody talks about the economic downturn
in London, he says. All the cab drivers talk to him about one thing, and that's X Factor. “They always want to know is Cheryl Cole as beautiful in real life and what's Simon Cowell like.”
What's Louis Walsh like? He is extremely shy sometimes, other times he can be arrogant and slightly rude, but most times, is witty and polite and interested in hearing the truth, however unvarnished. That's why he has survived in his business while others have come and gone. Louis Walsh is certainly not the egomaniac that, for instance, Bono is often painted as. Ask him how big his ego is and Louis will roll his eyes. “Everybody has ego,” he says eventually. “But I am easy to manage. I am the easiest to manage of the four judges on X Factor. I am. I'm always there on time. I don't need hair and make-up like the rest of them.”
He believes he has kept his life real and not turned into a horrible reality TV show whore by coming back to Ireland regularly. “Yes, that's true — by living in the Village of the Damned,” he laughs as he orders another frothy cappuccino. “I have been coming here for 25 years. I used to come here with Johnny Logan in the Eighties. He used to pay me my commission here. I just wanted to work in music then and I still do. It wasn't about the money. I am lucky. I know I'm lucky. I'm lucky I'm still getting away with it. I'm doing a job I love. I'm getting out of Dublin whenever I like. I'm getting overpaid and life is good. When I came to Dublin first, I didn't have an arse in my trousers.”
Louis remembers fondly the years when he worked for agent Tommy Hayden when he came to Dublin from Mayo in the late Seventies. He used to send and pick up Red Hurley's suits from the dry cleaners. He used to bring out the records to RTE for the DJs to play. He did the fan mail. Anything. Everything. “I was the gofer. I was a general dogsbody.”
Do you almost miss the innocence of those times?
“Oh yeah,” he smiles, “because it was a much better time in Ireland. Everybody is a wannabe now ...” He stops in mid-sentence. “Look! Look at that woman! Look at her, she thinks she is in LA. A blonde woman in dark glasses driving an open-top car Merc! She thinks she is in Beverly Hills. Every second person who walks by this f***ing window is a wannabe.”
But you are a man from Mayo in his 50s in white Prada runners and a Prada top!
“That's because I am on a big TV show in the UK!” he retorts. “I'm a small part of a big show and I know it.”
His father, Frank, died 12 years ago, he says, “before I became famous. He so loved Boyzone”. He recalls when his father died. It was, he says, too real for him. “It definitely affected me a lot more than I thought for a long time. I knew he was in bad health.”
Death is, he says, something he blocks out of his mind. “I don't like the idea of death. I don't want to die. I want to live as long as I can. It is too real for me.” He adds that he has never felt the presence of God. He doesn't consider the existence of a higher power — unless it is at the top of the pop charts. “I'm just cynical about the whole Church and Pope wearing that big dress. A German in a dress? I don't think all those heavy clothes suit him. I don't believe in God. I was an altar boy. It was the done thing. I just don't get it, but it is obviously big business, religion.”
It is not, however, Louis Walsh's business. “I'm in showbusiness.” He talks excitedly about the new Boyzone album out next year on Mother's Day and his new girlband. “I don't know any other life,” he says. He says the lowest point in his life was probably three years ago when he got the sack — albeit briefly — from X Factor. “I know that sounds awful.”
You probably had five million in the bank at that stage.
“Oh, five million is nothing any more,” he laughs. “But it wasn't the money. I have enough money. I am low-maintenance so I don't need it. I only have myself to look after. I am happy with my life and as long as you have known me I have been that way.” That is true.
Louis says his parents taught him to appreciate things in life, because if you can't do that, you are lost. “I was brought up pretty well by them and I think that kind of stood to me. But I never wanted to be normal. I don't like normality if you want to know the truth. I am always attracted to people who are slightly, slightly mad.”
Is that how you would describe yourself — slightly mad?
“Slightly eccentric. I wouldn't want to be normal. I couldn't do a nine-to-five job and live in an house in the suburbs. I just couldn't do that. And music was always my escape from that. It was my escape from everyday life. I don't like everyday life.”
What Louis Walsh likes is real conversation. You stand a good chance of getting on with him if you slag him off a bit at the beginning. He doesn't like sycophants. He “prefers real people”. He says it is very hard to meet real people in his business — the music business. This makes him distrusting of certain people. “But I think I'm healthily cynical and that helps.”
If you were an outsider with that level of cynicism looking at Louis Walsh, what would you say about him?
“Nobody knows the real me,” he grins. “Very few people. A handful maybe. Most people think; ‘Who is that little f***er? Why doesn't he go away?'“
But he is not going away any time soon. His personality (he has bouts of embarrassed shyness) doesn't seem suited to television. Yet he was offered his first show, Pop Stars: The Rivals, seven years ago by ITV. “I didn't want to do that show but they offered me a lot of money. It was never in my plan. I didn't want to be on TV.”
As his hero Van Morrison sang, it's too late to stop now.
Belfast Post 2009
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