The Wanted

January 2013

AWARE that he was going to be spending months away from home, not just across the UK but over in the States, Jay McGuiness had a way of taking his closest friends with him wherever he went.

Loading photos on to his phone just wouldn’t do.

“I got it because I’ve not seen any of my buds that I went to college with in Nottingham,” he says, outstretching his arm to reveal a tattoo. It’s a compass design with an initial at each point: PD, TW, JM and CG.

“It’s Paul McDowell, Trey Wright, me, and Chris Geffers,” says the 22-year-old, who grew in Farndon near Newark and attended a Catholic school in Mansfield.

“I moved out of home when I was 16,” says Jay. “When I was at school I was so shy.

“They were all a little bit older than me and I feel like I grew up with them.”

All four lived together in Carlton where they were attending MADD, the Midlands Academy of Drama and Dance.

“We only get to see each other like once a year now. They’re all over the place travelling as well, on cruise ships and the like.”

He adds: “Everyone was kind of after the same thing, but I got there first.”

At 18, while in his second year at MADD, Jay was travelling to London attending auditions for various dance and singing jobs in music and theatre.

“The one for The Wanted I actually found by searching on Google,” he says.

He moved in with the rest of the group – Max George, Nathan Sykes, Tom Parker and Siva Kaneswaran – in a house in North London in 2009 and set about writing and recording their debut album, The Wanted, for Island Records.

It went into the Top 5 two years ago and announced the arrival of one of the biggest boy bands in Britain.

Since then there have been two No. 1 singles – All Time Low and Glad You Came – plus the top 20 hits Heart Vacancy, Lose My Mind, Gold Forever (for Comic Relief) and Lightning with another Top 5 album, Battleground, following in 2011.

Last year, aside from a sold-out UK arena tour that came to the Capital FM Arena in February, the band focused on the US, where Glad You Came reached No. 3 and sold three million copies.

The trip was gruelling – but Jay said he had a really good time: “It was hard work. It was very scheduled. We were getting up early and sticking to a tight schedule. And we went all over. There is no national radio in the US so you have to visit all the key stations in each state.

“And it paid off. We thought it would take six months to get into the top 100 but we got to No. 3 pretty quickly.”

The Wanted became part of a new wave of UK artists cracking the US last year, including Adele and One Direction.

But the quintet have yet to tour the country playing live. Last year’s repeated visits were more promotional.

“The first TV we did was The Ellen DeGeneres Show and that really set us up over there. She wanted to be the first chat show to have us on. We had no idea why. We were thinking ‘she’s out of her brain!’.

“ But the crowd reaction was amazing and we got a load of confidence from that. Everyone realised that ‘OK, these guys are the real deal’.

“Then we were invited on Chelsea Lately and American Idol with Jennifer Lopez.

“She asked us to go to her album launch. We expected it to be a massive party but there were only 100 or so people there, all LA types.

“But she came and sat with us on our table for about 30 minutes. It wasn’t just a two-minute ‘hello’.

“And Tommy Hilfiger was there. We’d had a bit to drink and every time he passed us we’d start chanting ‘Tommy, Tommy...’. He probably thought we were idiots but since then he’s let us pick up whatever clothes we want from his stores.”

They managed to enjoy the little time off they had while in the US as well.

‘We went to a lot of bars,” admits Jay.

“We went to this one where they had a cow that you could ride. I’m not very good at riding a cow.”

You had to ride a cow?

“Not a real cow, like a machine cow. When you’ve had five pints, you just think, I am getting on that cow. Although there is video footage of me really failing badly.”

There were a few live performances during their visits to the US but they were more club PAs than actual concerts.

“Every state we went to we did a couple of clubs. The biggest crowd we got was like 1,500, but the average was about 500. That’s how we started over here in the UK. We used to do schools during the day and clubs at night.

“To be honest, those club appearances didn’t go down too well here. I mean, imagine you’re in a club and a boy band comes on that you’ve never heard of. People just wanted us to go away. But in America because of word spreading about us on the internet, people already knew about us, so all of those club dates were just rammed.

“Before we went out there for the first time, I genuinely thought it was going to be a slog and that nothing would happen.”

Another highlight of the year was back in the UK when they got the chance to perform before the First Lady, Michelle Obama, in London, soon after they’d taken part in the Olympic celebrations, running with the Olympic Torch and performing at the Torch Relay finale in Hyde Park.

“She was disarmingly nice,” says Jay. “She wasn’t putting it on. Just dead normal, wearing trackies and trainers.”

It was at an inner city school and The Wanted were the surprise guests.

“Security was really tight, obviously but they had no idea what was going to happen when we appeared. We went on stage and all hell broke loose with kids running up and down.”

Jay was back home in Farndon for Christmas with his mum, sister Eleanor and brothers Sean, Thomas (Jay’s twin) and Luke, who works with their dad, an electrician.

Mum played football for Newark Town Ladies but gave up after a knee injury. She’s a Manchester United fan because of George Best. Jay is both a Celtic (“because of my dad”) and a Forest fan.

It was because of his mum that he first caught the bug for performance, first trying Irish dancing, then joining her at a tap dancing class. Originally he wanted to be a West End star before the opportunity to become a pop star came up while at MADD.

“When I was at college I had a job in Nottingham city centre selling key rings in bars,” he says.

“You’d take a photo of a group of people then put it in a key ring. It was £3 per key ring and I used to get £1 from that.”

Visits home are rare and often brief as the group are still based in London. As well as the US, last year The Wanted travelled to Europe, Australia and Asia.

This year they have to finish their third album, provisionally entitled Third Strike - it’s due out next month - after which there’ll be more trips abroad and, he says, very likely another UK arena tour.

“Don’t get me wrong I love every day of it, but sometimes you just want to be able to wake up and say ‘actually, I don’t want to do anything today’”.

So it was a treat when his mum (who calls him James) flew over to see him in Chicago as a surprise.

“I’d not seen any family for about seven months at that point. Me and Max were just going into the hotel gym and my tour manager said ‘come downstairs, your aunties are here’.

“I have a couple of aunties who live in Chicago but I was just getting into the gym so I said ‘ask them to wait or come back in an hour or so.’ But he kept insisting so I was in a right strop.

“Anyway, I walked into the hotel lobby and there was my mum. She never flies anywhere. She doesn’t do stuff like that. So it absolutely floored me and I broke down like a baby.”

He adds: “My mum is my inspiration. She’s pretty bad ass.”


For more about the band go to www.thewantedmusic.com. You can follow Jay on Twitter: @JayTheWanted.

Alvin Lee

August 2012


Nottingham’s guitar great, now 67 and living in Spain, explains why he walked away from playing 20,000 seater venues in the US with Ten Years After

I MAY be rocking in a rocking chair these days but I’m still rocking. OK, I’m not really in a rocking chair but I don’t tour anymore.

I only do festival dates these days. I like to enjoy playing and if you are on a tour, playing the same thing every night, you can become a little blase.

I played a festival a few weeks ago and it was the first time I’d played in eight months but it was one of the best gigs we’ve ever done. Everyone played brilliantly.

I’m still living in Spain with my lady, Evie. She takes care of the business side of things and organises me. I need organising.

I have a studio in my basement and it’s where I spend most of my time, until four or five in the morning. I like those hours. It’s a good creative time and there are no distractions.

Joe Brown came out to visit about a month ago. We’ve been friends for a long time. And I had my band over here recording the new album.

It’s called Still On The Road To Freedom, which follows my 1972 solo album, On The Road To Freedom.

I was still in Ten Years After. At the time but I was already looking for other roads to take.

After the Woodstock film came out in 1971 we began playing to 20,000 people in the US and I didn’t like that at all.

Before that we were playing to 3,000 or 4,000 people and I enjoyed that more. The audience were really into their music, the music sounded better and there was a better connection with the crowd.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved it at first. I thought it was cool playing to 20,000 people. It was a real measure of our success. But it’s not enough when the music isn’t working for you. In those big auditoriums the sound wasn’t very good.

And it was like you were just a cardboard cut-out. You’d go around doing the same thing night after night.

The worst ones were ice hockey stadiums. They’d put wood down on the ice but people would still get cold and the sound would echo.

Some of them were OK. Madison Square Garden was 20,000 people but it sounded and felt like a club. The audience is stacked up in front of you and you can see them all.

We did that for a good four years until our final tour in 1975 but I wanted to be more creative.

I wanted my music to evolve.

By then I was living at Hook End Manor in Berkshire. That was a big old place but I don’t miss it. Let’s say it was a folly buying that but it was the done thing back then. It was pretty much an open house; I’d wake up and find 20 people around my pool and I had no idea who they were.

After a couple of years it would just be me and my girlfriend living there. You’d be watching TV, fancy a cup of tea and it would take your five minutes to reach the kitchen.

I suppose you have to do it just to realise that you don’t really need it.

It was in my studio at Hook End Manor that I recorded On The Road To Freedom with George Harrison, Steve Winwood, Jim Capaldi, Ronnie Wood, and Mick Fleetwood.

They were mates but I wouldn’t have dared asked them to play on the album. I was too shy. That was gospel singer Mylon LeFevre, who I made the album with. He was pretty good at talking people into doing things.

So that album signified the beginning of my escape from the rock star life on to the road to freedom. I was getting away from what was tying me down and holding me back. And I’m still on that road.

I grew up in Wollaton Park. When I left school I worked at Weller Gauge, for six months. It was a light engineering factory down Clifton Boulevard. My dad got me in there as an apprentice but one day I cut my finger on a lathe. When I went home both my mum and dad said: ‘Well that’s no good if you to be a musician. If that’s what you want to do, then do it.’ They were supportive all the way.

I was already gigging by then. My very first gig was aged 13 at a cinema in Sandiacre.

My sisters are still living in Nottingham although I haven’t been back in ages. The last time was in 2004 on the last English tour I did.

How is Nottingham? Do the lions still roar when the virgins walk past?

Alvin Lee’s album, Still On The Road To Freedom, is out on August 27 through Repertoire Records. For more about Alvin go to www.alvinlee.com.

Travel: Florida

July 2003

Jesus unblocked my toilet. No, really. Third day in and after a couple of near misses I finally managed to plug the sub-standard porcelain bowl. Don’t wish to labour the point but Yank toilets lack the depth of a good British model. So, there we are, bathroom awash with...
Anyway, we report it to reception and leg it in to the Florida heat. On our return all is clean, including the $10 tip I left. On the cistern is a bright orange compliment card. “We believe we have corrected the problem but if not please call the front desk, dial 0. Thank You. Jesus Erng...” The surname was indecipherable.
As it turned out it wasn’t the only small miracle the missus and I were to experience during seven days at Lake Buena Vista, near Orlando. The Sunshine State is now one of the most popular destinations for sun and fun-seeking Britons. One of the reasons they come to Orlando — sorry, the main reason — is Disney. And yet we never saw Mickey Mouse once. Apart from a fridge magnet in the airport on the way home, that is.

Being first-timers we had a vague idea that Orlando probably was Disney World with a few surplus attractions. Not so. Over the space of one week we had the best of times without setting foot in one of the Disney theme parks. We did make it to Downtown Disney — the free bit with its cinemas, nightly fireworks display, Virgin Megastores, the House of Blues, fridge magnet shops and Planet Hollywood, the movie-themed restaurant co-owned by Arnie, Sly and Bruce Willis. Great if you like plain food and queuing. We simply didn’t have time to try the county-sized empire that contains four separate Disney parks: Epcot, MGM Studios, Animal Kingdom and that one with the iconic castle, Magic Kingdom.
So what did we spend so much time doing apart from sweating and saying “blimey, it’s too hot”? Well, shopping for starters. Ahh, the shopping. Call me a big girl but faced with cheap designer clothes I’m like a big girl faced with cheap designer clothes. We must have gone every day and filled an extra suitcase with stuff. That’s a Samsonite suitcase (£40), filled with Timbaland shoes (£12), Ralph Lauren jean shorts (£10), RL T-shirts (£6), a gents brown leather case (£50)... like the food it is all so chirping well cheap.

Anyway, we did do some sightseeing. There was Seaworld, a huge park full of sea lion shows, a few rides, a few whales and dolphins, which didn’t come and say hello because those pesky kids were in the way. The Kennedy Space Centre was disappointing but only because after spending an hour getting there by car, it was a two-hour trip on a coach to get to the interesting bits at Cape Canaveral. We settled for a look in the Space Shuttle (claustrophobic) and a few dormant rockets. Universal Studios is an astonishing, mad place and you could easily spend a week just going round that. So turning up at 9pm when it shut at 10pm wasn’t getting our money’s worth. Still, we saw the nightly fireworks display (which made our bonfire night spectacle on The Forest look like a damp sparkler) and a meal in the Hard Rock Cafe.

Most Orlando visitors stay on International Drive, three miles from where we were somewhat isolated at Lake Buena Vista (we had to hire a car). It’s the better location because you can walk to attractions like Wet n Wild, some upside down house (Ripley’s Believe It Or Not), The Hard Rock Vault and the one place well worth avoiding... an English pub called The Cricketers Arms. Vile place. Dirty. Poor beer. Stay clear.

Talking of filth, when we arrived the Orlando Sentinel carried the headline “Beachgoers swim in sewage: Stomach-churning but surprisingly non-stinky sewage plagued beachgoers and lifeguards in south Brevard County”. Not that we were disturbed by that. The beach doesn’t really figure in Orlando. The hotel pools are mighty fine if you want a dip and there are better things to do in-land than swimming. Too much in fact. A week really isn’t long. You’d struggle to get it all in in a month. So we’ll be back. We’re just praying now for a financial miracle.