Matt Goss - More Than You Know

For about two days.

Then we did our research and found out that the aisle on Concorde was barely wide enough to fit a snare drum in, let alone a complete band. The sheer joy of walking around school thinking, Yeah! We’re going to play Concorde! Yeah! only lasted forty-eight hours. That statement and idea was his crowning glory and his downfall all in one. That was one of our first experiences of managers.

One day we were practising and I’d just got my copy of Michael Jackson’s Thriller . When my mate Neil arrived to watch the rehearsal, I said, ‘Hey, listen Neil, I’ve written this new track, what do you think . . . ?’ and I started singing, ‘Looking out . . .’ reciting the words to what I knew was the classic Jackson track ‘Human Nature’. Neil’s eyebrows shot up and he was enthusing, ‘Fucking hell, Matt, that’s fucking wicked mate!’ We were actually writing material as early as then, but I must admit it wasn’t up to that standard!

One thing about being in a successful band is that it makes you pretty much unemployable. In my opinion, once you’ve topped the charts or, indeed, even been in the charts at all, you see things through such a specific, extreme lens. Afterwards, it’s like your retinae have been distorted and there’s no way of reverting to a more orthodox way of looking at life.

Before Bros, however, I did have aspirations for ‘normal’ jobs as well as being in a band. I thought about being a hairdresser as my mum had been. I’d read Vidal Sassoon’s life story about how he’d been discovered and made his mark, and I thought it was an amazing tale.

So I found myself a Saturday job in a local hairdresser’s. As a kid, you are always looking to get some money in – by now I was obsessed with fashion, and clothes were expensive. But, boy, did I have to earn my money at that salon. I will never forget the feeling of washing really thin, spindly, hairspray-drenched, granny’s hair. It was like trying to undo a knot in a really fine chain covered in sticky oil, it just felt wrong!

It was quite comical really what those old women used to do to their hair. I used to think about how they were going out with their formal blue rinses, feeling all spruced up and smart, but actually looking like ancient punk rockers.

I fancied my boss, she was really cute, but unfortunately there were other women with designs on my green gills. My nemesis at the salon was a German lady with a very strong Bavarian accent. She really took a shine to me and would storm into the salon saying, ‘Vere iz Matt? I like Matt. I vant Matt to vash my hair!’ As soon as I heard the door open and that commandeering voice say, ‘Matt! I vant Matt!’, I would cringe inside and no amount of pretending to clear up out the back would keep me out of her clutches. She insisted that I wash her hair every time and she would lie back in the chair and mumble, ‘Oooo, yah, yah, yah, ooo!’ It used to totally give me the creeps.

One Christmas the salon held a raffle to win – of course – a state-of-the-art hairdryer. As the young buck, I was chosen to pick the winning ticket and guess whose name I pulled out of that hat? Yes, the bloody German. I was horrified.

She came in for a haircut and was told that she had won the star prize. My boss said to her, ‘We have to tell you, Matt picked the winning ticket . . .’

‘OOOhhhhhh!!! Matt, I like Matt, I vant Matt, Maaatttt! I luv Matt!’

So that pretty much killed any remaining desire I had to be a hairdresser.

I also did a paper round, which might just be the worst job in the world. As any schoolboy or girl with the scars to show for it would know, you had to get up at the crack of dawn, trudge down to the newsagent’s and sling a bag of papers on your shoulder which felt like twice your own bodyweight. Before you left the shop the strap would be cutting into your shoulder so painfully it hurt even to move. Then you’d start the round and find that no matter which route you’d been given, there was always one house that was two miles out in the sticks which wanted just one bloody paper! By the time I got to school, I would desperately need to fall asleep. It was awful, I hated it.

I had a brief ambition to be a vet because, like many people, I love animals. I love being around them – my two dogs mean the world to me, but more of them later – and find cruelty towards animals deeply harrowing. I sometimes see those adverts on TV when they show abused ‘circus’ animals and it makes me want to be sick. For a while when I was a kid, I thought I wanted to be a vet, but then I found out you needed to study for many years which was not something I was prepared to do. People who do that and become vets are astounding.

Next up for me was some really hard graft at a car-valeting business run by my brother’s girlfriend’s brother. Luke worked there as well for a while. Who says nepotism doesn’t benefit people? Well, it didn’t do me any favours . . . I was paid fuck all, just over ten pounds a day I think it was, to clean five cars. The business would make well over eighty pounds for those same vehicles. It wasn’t easy work either; one day I fainted in the back of a car from the fumes of the cleaning products. Valeting firms use a spray paint to make the wiry carpets in car boots crisply black again, but it is so unhealthy. I remember working away with this veil of fumes around my head, then waking up and it being half an hour later.

The sole highlight was when a beautiful Ferrari came in one day. I jumped in and drove it past my old school, thinking, ‘I gotta get one of these!’ But that was scant relief from what was a pretty horrid job. Shortly after the drive in the prancing horse, I said I thought I deserved a pay rise, suggesting maybe if I did six cars a day my boss could pay me what he made on the last car. I did get a pay rise . . . by two pounds a day. I left soon after.

In a way, that was probably the best thing he could have done, because after that I realized the band was the only way forward for me and we really cracked on.

We all agreed to leave school so that we could pursue the band with more focus and energy. The day came and Luke and I left school, excited at the prospect of effectively being in the band ‘full time’ with no distractions (I’d passed a few ‘O’ levels). That was quite a risk in a way but we had the courage of our convictions. However – eventually – Craig admitted to us that he hadn’t left school after all, that his parents insisted he had to stay on for another year before he could work on the band (he was a year younger than us). I think in a way they thought that would probably be the end of the band.

Instead of replacing him immediately, as most kids with grand aspirations would have done, we chose to wait for him – for a year. During those fifty-two weeks, Lukie and I rehearsed and played, organized band practices around Craig’s school schedule and essentially put our life on hold so that we could stay loyal to him and keep him in the band. We never batted an eyelid, he was our best mate, he was in the band and we were going to wait for him.

He was virtually living around our house anyway. Mum looked after him as if he was one of her own. We would often go into London clubbing and Mum would always help all of us dress, Craig included.

At the time and certainly in the light of later events, people have often asked me, ‘Why wait for him?’ The best analogy I can offer is this. If you imagine two people walking down a country lane and it’s frightening and dark and there isn’t a light for miles. If you are with your brother, it’s a bit creepy, you’re a bit scared. You put your best mate in the middle of it, and it becomes an adventure, a laugh. That’s what Craig was, he was that implant that we needed as brothers. So we waited for him.