At times life in One Direction can be exhausting. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed, to make mistakes or do something daft that you later regret. The schedules are pretty demanding too. But you know what? It’s all worth it – every day, every hour, every minute, every second. How can we not enjoy it, how can I not be grateful for the opportunity and the privilege of all the amazing experiences that I’ve had?
Before I got into One Direction my general perception of celebrities and bands was that their lives were a piece of cake, easy work. That’s the way a lot of people think. ‘Money for nothing’ and so on. Well, now I’m on the other side of that misconception I can tell you it’s a lot of hard work. There are obvious downsides, such as the loss of privacy and all that, but that’s a small price to pay for the privilege of being in One Direction. You have to keep that perspective. It’s a tough world out there for a lot of people who work incredibly hard and maybe don’t get paid much or don’t have the opportunity to travel or experience much of life. So whatever tough times we’re having professionally need to be judged in that context.
I still think the best way forward isn’t to analyse too much what has happened, but just keep enjoying each moment. So I personally try to stay away from thinking too deeply about things, because how can you fully comprehend what this band has achieved? If I did switch my phone off and sit down to reflect on everything that has happened to us, it would just be completely mind-blowing.
It’s great to be so busy and doing something creative. At my age that’s cool. If I hadn’t gone to that audition, I would probably not have made it to uni, in which case I’d have more than likely just bummed around a bit. Now, I think, I can say I’ve achieved something.
You do hear of bands running out of steam, burning out with the schedules and demands of being a high-profile group. For me, personally, I have as much fire in my belly for this band now as I’ve ever had – certainly as much as when I stood in that queue for The X Factor all those years ago. The minute we stop trying to get better is when we’ll go into decline, but that can’t be allowed to happen. We’re always trying to improve, make better music and keep the progression rolling. As soon as we start to rely on what we’ve already achieved, we’ll get bored and the fans will get bored. We can’t let that happen.
If I could speak to that kid from Doncaster standing there back in 2010 waiting to impress Simon Cowell, knowing everything that I do now and having experienced this crazy life in One Direction, I’d tell him to sing his heart out ... and to get ready for the ride of his life.
Liam: People are always curious about what happens in One Direction when we’re not at work. There are many amazing elements of being in this band, and songwriting is right up there as one of the most important and enjoyable. Along with actually performing to our fans, songwriting has become something we really enjoy. It’s also another way that we get to be creative and feel like we can communicate directly with the fans.
Niall: For me it’s the guitar side of music that first got me into writing songs. I started playing the guitar as a young kid, although I didn’t have an immediate knack for songwriting – that wasn’t my thing. It was more playing around with chords and trying to learn to play songs that I liked listening to. I did tend to enjoy playing singer-songwriters’ tunes more, though. I listened to a lot of country music back then and still do. The melodies are just so strong. I love The Eagles, they’re still my favourite band. Their songs have undeniably some of the best melodies ever written, and that’s definitely influenced how I write.
Zayn: I was mad into the performing arts at an early age. Obviously, having roles in musicals and later discovering R&B and rap, I started to think about how these songs that I liked were created. The creative spark involved in songwriting has always fascinated me.
Liam: Do any of you lot remember the first song you wrote?
Harry: I actually have it! I was about 15 when I wrote it. Recently an old school mate sent it to me on email. It’s funny to hear my voice ’cos I sound so different. There are a couple of songs I did at school that are quite funny. One I did with the band I was in, White Eskimo, was called something like ‘Luggage’. The chorus was pretty much something about going away for a week or two: ‘I don’t need any jackets or shoes, the only luggage I need is you!’ If you hear that on a One Direction album in a few years, that was my idea ...
Liam: Ha ha, brilliant. In terms of writing for One Direction, when I first started songwriting with other people I was nervous about suggesting ideas. We were just kids starting out.
Louis: I didn’t feel as involved at first because there were a lot of people in the room each time – there was a lot going on. Songwriting can be so personal, which is why I prefer the smaller sessions.
Zayn: I think ’cos I’m a bit quieter, my natural shyness meant I was initially holding back on the song ideas that were coming into my head. We couldn’t shout up on the first album because we didn’t feel we had the experience to do it. We didn’t know how to go about writing a song.
Liam: Gradually I noticed that even some of the really successful songwriters will sometimes just mumble a few lines of a lyric, or hum a really rough melody – just to get the idea out into the open and start the process. Sometimes you’ll all laugh if what they or you suggested sounds daft, but after that you play around with the idea and usually something will crop up as a result. I used to be too scared to speak up, but now I’ve gained confidence and really enjoy putting ideas out there.
Harry: It definitely feels more appropriate that we put our ideas forward these days. There’s a bit more justification behind them, partly due to the work we’ve put in so far with the band and also because some of our own songs have made it onto the albums and been enjoyed at gigs too.
I now have nine little books full of lyrics and poems! It’s a cool thing to be able to go into a writing session with these poems written down and put them out there to be looked at. I just say, ‘Here’s a few ideas. Do you think there’s something here?’ I love the freedom that comes with the whole process. Even if you’re writing something that you really like and want on your iPod, hopefully other people will want it on theirs too.
Louis: I never really saw my current obsession with songwriting developing. I always liked the idea of writing but it kinda just happened. Generally I tend to write a lot with Liam.
Liam: Everyone is different – you have to just go with what works for you individually. Song ideas can hit you at any time – I’ll be in the car driving home and think of an idea for a song and I’ll hit Tommo up. I’ll phone him and tell him about it, then send it over. We work like that quite a bit.
Louis: We put in a lot of extra hours to write the third album. Same with the fourth. I like the sense of achievement you feel after you’ve finished a song – that’s amazing. Then it fuels your next writing session.
Harry: Looking back, I’m glad that we did it in the way we did, you know. We took our time and only gradually involved ourselves in the writing process. When you listen to amazing writers, hear a great album or listen to a fantastic song on the radio, you’re always learning.
Louis: Songwriting gives us five a chance to have our own creative input into the band and also to influence the musical lives of the people who support One Direction. When I listen to music and I get in the same headspace as the writer, it’s really powerful – we love the idea of our fans feeling the same way. That’s why it’s so good to be writing on our albums. It feels like such a great sense of achievement to have a proper musical influence on the band and have that direct contact with the fans through our music.
Liam: We just don’t want to stop – we want to keep working at it. We’re slowly putting the pieces together as our fans grow up, so that the music grows with us all. Songwriting is something that we all absolutely love doing. On my rare days off I can’t wait to get writing. Someone once said to me that songwriters wanna get up early in the morning just so they can write a song. That’s bang on.
You catch the bug for it! Now I’m proper addicted.
Niall: Speaking of being addicted, along with songwriting, the biggest buzz you’ll ever get from this band is performing live. Way back at those first PA gigs just after The X Factor we were getting a massive buzz from performing. Now, as we write this book in spring 2014, we’re just starting the stadium tour ... and the buzz just seems to get bigger and bigger.
Liam: Shall we mention that backstage ‘incident’ on the Big Time Rush tour?
ALL: Absolutely!
Liam: Something happened on the first night of the Big Time Rush tour that for me is indicative of our fans and what a phenomenon the One Direction live experience was then and still is – even more so actually. As we’ve mentioned elsewhere in the book, we were all quite apprehensive about our first performances in the US. We didn’t expect anyone to know us or our songs, and certainly not any of the lyrics.
Niall: We weren’t even allowed a soundcheck on that tour ’cos it wasn’t our show, so that’s the context. We had proper low expectations.
Harry: That first night we saw a load of people wearing One Direction T-shirts and started to think something was going on. Then we were all backstage after the show when the American promoter came bursting into the dressing room.
Niall: We could hear him coming down the corridor, he was so excited and loud ... He was this big, larger-than-life, very flamboyant American, really loud and full of energy ... but at the time we’d never met him before!
Louis: Exactly. He just came rushing in and we were all quite shocked ...
Zayn: I was like, wide-eyed ... who is this fella?
Liam: And then he said ...
ALL: ‘YOU GUYS BLOW MY FREAKIN’ MIND!’
Harry: He was going, ‘This is gonna be great. You guys are gonna be great!’ and that shocked us a bit. I thought we were just going over to the US to have a bit of fun, and yet this guy was convinced it was gonna work.
Niall: He said, ‘You’re gonna be massive stars!’ It turns out he’d worked with some of the biggest bands in the world. He still says he’s never seen anything like it before.
Liam: It was so funny and such a shock. Remember, we’d never met him before. We didn’t even know what job he did at the time! It was a huge deal because it was such an exciting reaction.
Zayn: It was hilarious, exciting and serious all at the same time. Looking back, though, what that incident highlights is the incredible power and energy of our fans. Yes, we had performed pretty well that night, we were on good form, but his reaction was really because of how our fans had reacted to us. They caused that reaction.
Louis: Don’t you think it’s a shame, though, that we don’t get to spend more time with the fans directly? Without them we wouldn’t be where we are today. The whole thing baffles me, though, and I still find it incredible how people can be so crazy about us!
Niall: Hopefully our fans still see us as the same five lads who first made it into the band back in the day. I really hope so. We always try to get out as much as we can, ’cos apart from all the amazing experiences in the band, these fans completely changed my life, and my family’s life – that’s how I look at it. They gave us this opportunity.
Harry: It’s just very humbling. That feeling never fades, no matter how much you do this.
Liam: We all know that we wouldn’t be here without the fans, like Niall says. They massively paved the way for us with all the hard work they did on Twitter. I honestly think the big marketing companies need to be looking at some of these people who have Twitter accounts and are so driven and expert. They could employ some of them. This is something they love to do every day. They sit there and make it happen, so someone should tap into that passion and that expertise and get them into an office. They’d be amazing, plus they’d get a buzz off it.
From the very first moment the fans have been there for us. I know we always say that we appreciate everything they’ve done for us, but we really do. We never lose sight of that. Our fans are still the best fans in the world, there’s just no doubt about that.
Louis: Exactly. It’s a major reason why I love the tour. That’s our chance to get in the same place as the fans and have an amazing time. It strips everything away and it’s just the most pure and energised experience, night after night.
Harry: We rehearse really hard for every tour because we want the shows to do them proud. When it came to tour rehearsals for our 2014 stadium shows, we headed north of London to a massive former aircraft hangar. Inside this huge building, the crew had set up the entire stage ready for rehearsals – all the screens, the pyrotechnics, everything.
Louis: It did take a while for me to actually comprehend the size of the stage and set. Wow! When you think deeply about it and remember when we started out with that small tour of Scottish clubs, then the theatre tour stage ... well, we never ever expected, or even considered, that we’d ever get to this point.
Liam: It was completely breathtaking when we first walked in and saw the set. We stood on that huge stage and I just had this overwhelming feeling. This is ours, lads. That’s actually all our kit, it’s so amazing and so huge! It’s also quite mad to see how many people we work with now. I actually felt a bit of pressure about that, I’m not gonna pretend otherwise, but it’s an absolute privilege.
Niall: When I walked in there and saw the stage, I was like, ‘Woah! This is just ridiculous!’ Hard to put into words, to be fair. For the 2014 tour rehearsals, we pretty much had the full tour set-up backstage. If you’d been a fly on the wall during those weeks, this is what you’d have seen. So there are a couple of trailers that we can hang out in, then the mobile office where all the management and crew organisation takes place. You might wander past and see fans’ cuddly toy presents on a few speaker cabinets!
Zayn: Yup, then there’s a massive marquee, the best bit – catering. They do three meals a day for EVERYONE and, with a crew of about 100, that’s a lot of dinners! Next to that’s a smaller marquee for our clothes and where we get changed.
Louis: Outside we have a couple of motorhomes, our tour buses where we can sleep on site if we want to. They’ve got all the usual home comforts in there and, most importantly, the PlayStation! We sometimes have little barbecues next to the buses just to chill out.
Zayn: We have a couple of go-karts too, so when the work is over we love to blast those up and down outside, let off a bit of steam! We’ve also got some quad bikes, a couple of electric scooters, a table tennis table, air hockey and an arcade game – boys’ toys, basically!
Louis: Most importantly of all, we have two full-size football goalposts. Yep. Essential tour equipment! Tour rehearsals can be a real laugh. We work hard in the day, but at night we have the tour bus on site to hang out in. One of the nights Liam stayed over with me and we had a bit of a wander around the hangar’s site. We’d heard that in the hangar next door they do various big-budget blockbuster films, so we said, ‘Let’s go and have a look!’ At about two in the morning we hopped over the fence and wandered around the perimeter trying all these locked doors. We didn’t think to read the signs on any of these big metal doors until Liam twigged and said, ‘Have you seen the notice?’ It just said in big letters, ‘Guard Dogs On Patrol’.
We started scurrying our way back to the fence but as we did a car drove up towards us, so we legged it and slid under this Winnebago that was parked up nearby. We lay there waiting for the car to go away, and when it eventually did we jumped over the fence and ran back to the bus. On the way I’d stubbed my toe on a grate. That really hurt! Just as we got inside we heard this massive barking from right outside. It sounded like the Hound of the Baskervilles! We didn’t jump over the fence again – we stuck to playing Fifa!
Harry: We should probably point out that we don’t just mess about! Far from it, tour rehearsals can be really hard work. Rewarding, though. We tend to arrive at rehearsals about 12-ish, having sometimes been in a writing session the night before. We grab something to eat from cate
ring, then head over to the back of the stage to start rehearsals. Right at the start, we’re taken through each song by our musical director, so we know where and when all our respective parts kick in. In this case, the sheer size of the stage took some getting used to – it takes a while just to walk to the far end!
Niall: Typically we’ll rehearse till about 3.30 or 4, then have a little break before starting again and working till early evening. Then we either head off home, hang out in the tour buses or sometimes dive into a London studio for writing sessions.
Liam: It’s during rehearsals and then on tour that the relationships within the band are at their best. Our friendships have inevitably changed since we first got together. Being around each other so much can be quite intense, but we seem to have developed a really good working relationship. We’re all good mates, of course, but there are sometimes arguments or differences of opinion that can make things a bit awkward. That’s only natural, and it never actually worries any of us, I don’t think. You can’t spend that much time with a person and not have the odd fall-out. But we always seem to just get on with whatever needs doing. When we’re on stage that bond shows the most, because no matter what’s happened during the day, once we get on to the stage we’re just like, ‘YEAH!’ There’s a love for each other that we have on stage that’s paramount to the band. It’s where One Direction is at its most exciting. We do spend more time away from each other now, but we’re still like brothers. The best brothers ever!
Louis: We started the Where We Are world tour just as we were finalising this book, so we have to mention those first few stadium shows in South America. Saying that, it’s actually really hard to put into words what it felt like walking out to nearly 40,000 people in Bogotá, Colombia, on our first night! I was so emotional, and it was just the most incredible buzz. We’d worked hard in rehearsals, so to finally get the chance to show our fans what the tour was all about was brilliant.