Writing a record with Matt is better than counselling
Former Razorlight drummer Andy Burrows tells LUCY MAPSTONE about a musical collaboration with journalist and novelist Matt Haig based on his autobiographical book Reasons To Stay Alive
ANDY BURROWS is musing over how much he really loves a drink. We’re sitting in a slightly musty, dark, woodpanelled boozer in central London.
“I love a pint in a pub,” he sighs, cradling a glass.
The former Razorlight drummer is reminiscing about his days in the band in the mid-noughties, and how he’s glad to have had that time because it was wonderfully “textbook rock and roll”, fuelled with plenty of drink and experiences that he now can’t quite remember.
“I don’t get paralytic, I just like the fuzzy feeling,” he says. “On the whole my relationship with it is quite good.
“My only thing that I get annoyed about with drinking is that if I’m really anxious, I’ll go to it.”
Andy is open about both his fondness for drink and his experiences with mental health issues, both of which conspired to kick start his latest project – a collaborative album with author Matt Haig.
The pair have channelled their complementary talents into an album loosely based on Haig’s best-selling 2015 memoir about his battle with depression, Reasons To Stay Alive.
“I’d started reading Reasons To Stay Alive and I found Matt quite fascinating on Twitter,” Burrows explains of their thoroughly modern meeting.
“He’s quite annoying but also really brilliant and quite feisty, not scared about getting into a bit of a spat.
“So one night when I was touring with Tom Odell, after a show, I was a bit tiddly and I plucked up the courage to send Matt a message – I noticed that he followed me.
“I sent a message saying, ‘would you be up for meeting me and, I don’t know if you know my music or like it, but I wondered if you wanted to work together?”’
The duo bonded over their love of music and other things, and initially discussed doing something for children, as Matt has written children’s books and Andy composed the music for The Snowman And The Snowdog in 2012.
But it wasn’t quite the right fit, and they swiftly settled on creating some “straight up pop songs” together, with lyrics by Matt and music by Andy. Matt had never written songs before, which he reveals via email as he’s unable to make the lunchtime rendezvous. “I’d written some poems but songs and poems aren’t the same thing. But I find myself getting more inspired when I do new things,” he says. “That’s why I have written so many different types of books – kids’ books, adult books, fiction, non-fiction. It’s all writing. It’s all expression.
“It’s easy to overthink the differences between art forms but it’s all just articulating an emotion. The emotion is the important thing.” The novelist and journalist adds that “working with Andy was a breeze” as they are on the “same page”, a sentiment matched by his collaborator.
“We’ve got quite similar neurotic, anxious, slightly depressive tendencies, and a real love for pop music,” Andy notes.
Matt would write lyrics and send them to Andy, who brought them to life with new compositions.
Andy jokes he’s the Elton John to Matt’s Bernie Taupin.
On title track Reasons To Stay Alive, Andy knew immediately that he “wanted it to be quite widescreen, quite epic”, but on others, he had to work on them a little bit to get the sound he wanted.
Other tracks on the melodic, pop rock-esque album include the Radio 2 A-listed song Barcelona – penned by Matt from the point of view of someone having a panic attack but that Andy made sound “up and happy” – and How To Stop Time, named after another of Matt’s books.
There were no disagreements (“I know that’s the boring answer,” Andy jokes), and the working process was rather fluid.
The collaboration is the latest in a long line of projects for busy Andy, who has been the drummer for Razorlight and We Are Scientists, and has also worked with Editors’ frontman Tom Smith and singer/ songwriter Odell.
He’s also written the music for a new Ricky Gervais Netflix series and, perhaps most famously, the Bafta-nominated soundtrack to Channel 4’s sequel to beloved festive cartoon The Snowman.
“What I’ve learned about myself over the years is that I feel calmer if there’s lots going on. I’m quite erratic – I don’t do anything for very long,” Andy says.
“After I left Razorlight, I made sure I did as much stuff as possible.
“If you’re going to leave a band that’s doing really well, everyone’s going to call you silly, which they did.”
Andy left the indie rock band, known for hits including America and Wire To Wire, in 2009 after five years.
“It was necessary to leave, because it was a very unhealthy band to be in,” he discloses, adding that, while he gained a lot of confidence at first, it became “detrimental” and “very toxic”.
Andy’s relationship with Razorlight frontman Johnny Borrell was known to be fraught in their hey-day, and still is now.
“I saw Johnny in London about three or four years ago, and it really affected me because I hadn’t seen him for like, five years,” Andy recalls. “He acted like I was a stranger, it was the weirdest thing. I think I went off and got extremely drunk, but felt very weird for a couple of days... it was almost like seeing a ghost.
“And when you’ve been that close to someone, because me and him were really close – like close enemies but close friends, it was all a bit complicated – it was so weird running into him and him acting like he didn’t care.”
For now, at least, he’s nailed a working partnership that is genuinely a bit of a dream, and as easy and satisfying as they come.
“It’s a very open album, and it’s about not letting depression debilitate you completely, and knowing that you can get through,” Andy says, by way of summing up the record.
He adds: “I found it immensely elating and I’d do it again in a heartbeat.
“It’s better than going to any counselling. I can recommend it to anybody to write a record with Matt Haig... it might be a tough gig to land, but I recommend it.
“Try tweeting him! Learn the guitar or the drums and tweet him. Hit him up!”