Reformed Ronan
“None of us are saints”
For a man who has sold 45 million records and performed to stadiums full of fans since the age of 17, Ronan Keating is surprisingly anxious about his latest venture.
Aged 43, he is releasing an album, TwentyTwenty, which will mark two decades in the music business as a solo artist, following the break-up of his massively successful band Boyzone. It’s a compilation of reworked classics like “Life is a Rollercoaster” and “Loving Each Day”, and some roaring new tracks. Friends from way back, such as fellow boy band survivor Robbie Williams, and those from more recent times, Ed Sheeran and Emeli Sandé, have collaborated.
He should be sitting back in his seat with the smug grin of a man who knows he’s giving his audience exactly what they want. It is his 11th solo record, less of an album and more of a statement of his achievements to date.
“God no,” he exclaims. “I don’t feel like that at all. I feel incredibly anxious. It’s taken a year to finish; I’ve agonised over every track and then you have something you are really proud of and you worry it’s going to flop. It’s massive insecurity. It goes with the job. Am I relevant? Does anyone want me any more?”
Ronan leans back and laughs because he is fully aware he might be sounding, as he would say, “like a total eejit”. There’s a thin line between artistic vulnerability and taking yourself too seriously, as he knows to his cost.
Sitting in a London hotel, Ronan is wearing a waistcoat over a T-shirt that shows off his bulkedup arms, the result of hours in the gym.
He looks good: his dirty blond hair is expensively tousled, Beckham-style, and he has the pale golden n skin of an extensively travelled man. Underneath h it all, however, he’s still the e working-class son of a Dublin lorry driver and a hairdresser.
A LOST BOY
Ronan has been famous for almost two-thirds of his life. He has had to deal with massive issues under the spotlight: the death of his mother from breast cancer in 1998; splitting up his band in 2000 to go solo; and the shocking loss of bandmate Stephen Gately, who died in 2009 from a pulmonary oedema.
Then there was the scandalous implosion of his choir-boy image when he had an affair with a backing dancer; and his subsequent split from Yvonne, his first wife and the mother of his three eldest children, in 2010.
He cannot – and does not – complain of having had a rough ride. As with insecurity, having to deal publicly with grief, loss, shame and scandal
goes with the territory.
As a teenager in a worldfamous boy band, his introduction to celebrity was a baptism of fire.
“Initially I would just drink,” he recalls. “I’m Irish. That’s the culture. There were no cafés when I grew up, just pubs.
“On Sundays, after mass, my folks would go to the pub for a couple of drinks, and me and my sister and brothers would be left in the car park with a ton of other kids who’d also been left there by their parents. We’d have a riot. A lot of life was focused around pubs, so I drank.”
After his mother Marie died, he started drinking a bottle of Jack Daniel’s a night until his then wife, Yvonne, pulled him out of it. “And then you get older,” he shrugs. “You learn to deal with your stresses and keep going.”
‘I feel incredibly anxious ... Does anyone want me any more?’
Album insecurity aside, Ronan is a happy man. He’s worth around $40 million and has been married since 2015 to Australian-born TV producer Storm, who is due to give birth to a baby girl imminently.
The couple already have a two-year-old son, Cooper, and he is also dad to Jack, 21, Missy, 19, and Ali, 14, from his first marriage. “Five kids,” he declares. “Just like my mam and dad. When I was Jack’s age I was married and had him!”
Storm recently said she’d be booking Ronan in for a vasectomy as their family was now complete. “I’m not having the snip,” he laughs. “I don’t have the time – I’ve too much to do.”
Ronan works constantly. Every morning he’s up at 5am for his Magic radio show. The album comes after a 16-month Thank You & Goodnight World Tour with Boyzone, which ended last October.
A few hours after we meet, he heads to Indonesia for three days of promotion. Last month he flew to Australia, where he was a judge on the local XFactor, to take part in the mammoth Fire Fight charity concert to raise money for those affected by the bushfires.
Every night – when he’s home – he insists on cooking for his children. “It keeps me calm,” he tells. “I have a glass of wine and I like the methodical process of cooking.’”
While Ronan’s album will sell, it won’t, as he knows, compete with the likes of his mate Ed Sheeran, 29, who performed at his wedding and who plays guitar on his new version of “When You
Say Nothing at All” with country singer Alison Krauss.
“It’s their time for the big gigs and the madness,” he says graciously. “I’ve had my time and now it’s different, but it’s an achievement just to still be here.”
His collaboration with Robbie Williams, “The Big Goodbye”, came about in particularly poignant circumstances. Robbie, 46, wrote it after hearing of the death of Stephen, but did not tell Ronan about it until a decade later.
“When I listened to it I was in tears,” shares Ronan. “It’s obviously very emotional. We changed it so it worked as a duet.”
Boyzone were the Irish Take That. Five Catholic working-class schoolboys – Ronan, Shane Lynch, Stephen, Mikey Graham and Keith Duffy – brought together by talent scout Louis Walsh, who masterminded their career.
“We were unprepared, unbelievably naive and totally clueless in the early years,” he recalls.
When Louis told Keith he could be in the band but he wasn’t allowed to have a girlfriend, the confused teenager responded by saying, “I’ll have to say ‘no’ then, Louis, because I can’t be gay.” Ronan bursts out laughing at the memory.
Boyzone’s image was of five angelic choirboys. In reality, they drank like navvies, fought like dogs and camped it up with Stephen, whose homosexuality was initially a secret.
After seven years, the band split amid rows, recriminations and Ronan’s decision to go solo. They didn’t speak for years but Stephen’s death brought them back together.
Ronan ploughed on, bagging awards, number ones and pumping out best-selling albums. He also co-managed Westlife, with Louis, an even bigger Irish boy band than Boyzone. Nevertheless, as a musician he felt unworthy.
“I’d spent a lifetime in a band being told I was just this performer,” he explains. “You don’t feel like an artist, certainly not a musician. In the ’90s it was Britpop and pop bands. You knew your place. I don’t r remember Oasis being rude b because we had that Irish connection, but [lead singer] Damon Albarn and Blur were rude. And you feel it really badly.”
However, in recent years he has started to believe in himself. “You start to realise you have proved yourself when you’ve been in the business 26 years.”
He tells me about the GQ Awards in 2017: “Stormzy was there and he came running over and asked to take a selfie. Then I bumped into Liam Gallagher in the gents, we had a chat and he shook my hand.
“When Stormzy got his award, after he’d thanked everyone, he said, ‘This has been an amazing night – I even got a selfie with Ronan Keating!’ Then Liam went up to get an award and said, ‘You might think you’re special Stormzy, but I didn’t just get a selfie with Ronan Keating, I shook his hand.’
“Everyone in the industry was clapping and I felt accepted. It was a real moment for me.”
Ronan has found his place, even though it is no longer on a celebrity pedestal. Being stripped of his good-boy status after a six-month affair with backing dancer Francine Cornell was, in many ways, a relief. He was never a saint.
“None of us were,” he declares. “We are all human. Humans make mistakes.”
He and his ex-wife have a good relationship now and he is close to their three children.
“We got married very young,” he says quietly.
When Boyzone reformed for a final tour in 2018, he admits it was not without its issues.
“Of course there were rows,” he says. “We spent three years without speaking after Boyzone split, and then, when Stephen died, everything changed. We’re not mates, we are brothers. We are very close but we fight.
“Back in the day I remember seeing a dustbin flying through the air backstage, but one of the biggest rows we ever had was on a tour in Japan. I was doing my vocal warm-ups 40 minutes before we were due on stage and suddenly everything kicked off. There was a moment where we nearly didn’t go on stage and that would have been it.”
He has ordered a vegetable omelette from the waiter. “No cheese, no mushrooms,” he says. When the omelette arrives, he cuts into it and a stream of mushrooms slide out. Ronan grins. “Life,” he says. “You’ve got to laugh.”