We went to Australia on tour too, which was completely nuts. Those dates were insane to me ’cos it was just crazy to think there were people from the other side of the world who even knew who we were. To be such a long way from home and have that support always feels very special to me.
We were doing quite a bit of promo, but we were having such a great time, so to us we didn’t really see what was happening with the band’s profile. We were still just taking each day, one at a time. There was so much work and travelling – I guess it’s hard to necessarily see the big picture when you are involved as you have no peripheral vision. I was like, ‘Let’s just keep our heads down working hard and try to put on our very best show every night.’ You don’t realise everything that’s happening. I try to take a step back as often as I’m able, ’cos I think it’s important to do that so you can appreciate exactly what’s going on. Ultimately, though, I think there’s no way any of us five can really get a proper grasp of what it’s like to see One Direction from the outside.
As much as the US was incredibly exciting, it’s always brilliant to get home and perform for the UK fans. The best example of that during this period was playing at the closing ceremony of the London Olympics. I think the rest of the lads will probably be the same as me – I actually don’t remember much about that day because it was a bit of a blur, to be honest! We were in and out of the stadium so fast. I do remember the huge number of people in there, it was insane. It was crazy to think of something that was so big for London and the UK, and that we were involved in it. People kept asking me what it felt like and all I could say was, ‘I feel really proud. That’s the biggest emotion, just an overwhelming sense of pride.’ It was a huge moment for the country and the opportunity to be a part of that in any way was amazing. It didn’t make us any less nervous that we only had to sing half of one song, but it was cool. We were completely shocked by the sort of names that we were surrounded by, the level of artists that we were among was ridiculous. Plus, we were singing on a truck, so I remember being pretty focused, I said to the lads at one point, ‘Just make sure none of us fall off!’
I couldn’t possibly reflect on this period without mentioning Madison Square Garden. I know we’ve talked about this before but it really was just the most incredible day. The actual show felt like a step up for us. MSG was really a night when we all pushed ourselves to the limit – we found another gear. I think that extra energy came naturally from the history of the venue as well. You walk down the hallway and see all these photos, and somehow it gets into your head and makes your performance better. I was walking along a corridor with Liam at one point and we were both looking at all these famous faces, and I said, ‘Jeez, this place is amazing. You can literally feel the history.’ His dad’s the same as mine, really into his music, so he was like, ‘Dad would love to see all of this!’
What was also particularly special, apart from the gig itself and the crazy history of the place, was the party afterwards, because we were able to invite pretty much everyone who’d ever worked with the band – people from the record label, management, crew, marketing. We all just hung out and had a party afterwards. The whole lot of us had worked so hard, this was the end of an amazing campaign and that party was a brilliant way to celebrate everyone’s success.
A couple of months before the Olympics, in the spring of 2012, we’d started writing for the second album and, to be honest, that feeling of being on a cloud, that sense of unreality, was still there. We started writing for the second record on the road and, despite the first album doing well in so many countries, I didn’t feel like there was a great deal of pressure. Or should I say, the band didn’t seem to show they were under any pressure. I was personally just so looking forward to getting into the studio and, hopefully, contributing more to the songwriting of the record this time. So there was very little apprehension – it was more a feeling of excitement. We were having fun and hoping that people continued to like us. It seemed to work, so we just kept going that way.
I can see that our approach was pretty naïve but I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. We were just really focused on making a great record. You don’t consciously go into the studio and say, ‘We’re going to write a Number 1 album!’ That’s just not possible or desirable. Plus, you write each song on its own, so you’re collating this collection of individual songs, just trying to make each one as good as it can be. Once again, we weren’t over-thinking it. We didn’t deliberately take a more relaxed approach. Thankfully people seemed to like that.
I felt the expectation around the second album more during the actual week of release. By then you just want people to hear the record and say they think it’s wicked. You want to hear their opinions. Then in the few days before you get the chart position, it’s only natural to want to see where it will land. How can you not be keen to know? Maybe then you start thinking about the Number 1.
One Direction have a habit of delivering the most amazing news at the most ordinary moment. I knew our second album was doing really well in the States on its week of release and there was a very good chance we might even go in at Number 1 again. That week I’d a few days off after we’d just finished a New York trip and had stayed on for a few extra days, just exploring the city. I’d been on a bike ride and was returning the bike I’d rented to the shop, when I got a call saying, ‘Harry, the album’s Number 1.’ I was completely on my own in this bike shop, I had my hands full, my phone was perched on my shoulder up to my ear, I was talking to this guy trying to give him the bike back and at the same time having a conversation about being Number 1 in the States. I was like, ‘Really? That’s wicked!’ I got off the phone, sorted the bike thing out and went outside, and I was like, Hang on a minute. We’re Number 1 again! I had pizza to celebrate. Up All Night had done so well, and we knew it had set a tough target to beat. To know that Take Me Home had exceeded that success was a lot to comprehend.
I don’t think we’ll ever ‘get used’ to chart success and everything that goes on around us. We just all look at each other and go, ‘This is brilliant, lads!’ Let’s be completely honest here – we still kinda felt like we were blagging it a bit. Yes, we’d put in the graft but there’s always a sense of, ‘We don’t know why this is happening, but let’s work more and more and more, and maybe it will keep happening.’ It felt amazing. Honestly, that was our reaction. We didn’t really know what to do with it, in a way, so we just kept working.
We did some great gigs around this point, one of which was the Royal Variety Show in front of the Queen. It’s an institution in the UK and, of course, anything involving the Queen makes you feel you need to have your best suit on. She’s one of those people who you think you’re never going to get anywhere near. So the fact that we were going to perform in front of her and then meet her felt a bit outrageous. I remember not wanting to mess it up, but that’s the kind of feeling that has got me through most things – just don’t mess up.
I think this is a good point in the book to talk to you about the pretty serious confidence issues I suffered as a result of an early problem I had on stage. As many of you know, we appeared on a big Saturday night TV show in the UK and I wasn’t happy at all with my vocal. After the performance I saw some comments online that I struggled with. In the documentary we made during this time there’s a well-known piece to camera where I explained why that incident upset me so much, and I think what I said is pretty self-explanatory.
However, what I didn’t know then was that ultimately that experience would turn into a positive – it became a great learning curve for me. Yes, at the time I was gutted and those comments online really upset me, genuinely. I’ll be totally honest here and say that it all played on my mind for a long time. Part of the issue was that we had done loads of TV shows so much better. This was easily the worst I had done, so that was frustrating, but it was the only performance people talked about for a while. I’m naturally a fairly confident person – in most situations, but not all
. That whole episode was a big knock to my confidence for quite some time.
I now know why it happened. At that point any natural confidence I had in myself was just being taken over by nerves, because I’d no idea back then how to channel and control my anxiety. Sometimes just standing on a stage used to make me nervous. However, One Direction have always been a band that gigs heavily and promotes the music with TV and radio appearances where we perform live. So, over time I’ve been able to learn about nerves, to understand why and when they might hit, and best of all how to control them. Now it’s a totally different ball game. That early bad TV experience taught me that I had to control my nerves if I was to sing well. In fact, I know now that if your nerves are controlled correctly they can actually give you a bit of an edge, an extra sense of focus. If you let them completely take over they can really put you off. It’s easy for me to look back now and take the positives, perhaps, and I certainly remember how upset I felt at the time, but I do have this view on life that you need to be positive. When something difficult happens to you, take a step back and look at what possible positives might come out of it. I was lucky to have had that experience and I feel I’m a better performer for having learned the lessons I did from it.
I think the tight-knit nature of the band kept our feet on the ground through these early phases. There were also a few specific experiences that you’d have to be inhuman not to be affected by. One in particular was when we went to Ghana in aid of Comic Relief.
You see so many of those fund-raising shows on telly, with footage of sadly very poverty-stricken places, and it always affects you, of course. Sometimes you kinda think things like, How bad can it really be? You can’t fully comprehend the severity and the sheer physicality until you actually see, hear, smell, touch and taste it yourself. When you go to places where people are living in abject poverty, your senses are just completely bombarded, overwhelmed. The smell is so intense, the smoke hurts your eyes, you can really see how dirty these places are, with so many strange sounds, and everything you touch seems dirty. You go and visit these lovely, amazing people who are living in extreme hardship with such dignity, and you literally cannot believe what you’re seeing. I remember saying to Liam at one point, ‘Can you imagine living here all the time? We’re going back to our hotels tonight, warm shower, food, all that, but these people are always here …’
That trip really hit me hard. It did with all of us. There are no words to express the mixture of emotions. It was the ultimate sense of perspective, such a massive contrast to what was going on with One Direction at the time. How can you go to somewhere like that and not come away thinking, Any problem I have is relative, nothing I have to put up with is anywhere near that? Of course, people who are not in poverty can have serious problems too – everything is relative – but when people living in the West have difficulties it can really mask their judgement and they can get a really smoky mind about what real problems are. I’ll never, ever forget what I saw and what it represents.
I think in life it’s important that you have experiences like that. With the position that we’re in with the band, we’re lucky enough to see things like that and learn from them. I think it’s important that you try to make a difference, even if it’s only a small difference. You simply cannot live and think that problems like these don’t exist. It’s naïve, and you’re deluded if you try to block it out and think it’s not your problem. It is your problem. At the end of the day we all have to do what we can to help.
Once we’d got back from Ghana we hit the road again with a new sense of perspective. The number of shows was huge and the actual arenas themselves were massive. We were going to places that we’d played before, but back then we’d just be doing say three songs with maybe five other acts on a big multiple band line-up. This time around it was our headline gig and the shows were sell-outs. For most of that tour we were just surprised to have a band opening for us, rather than us opening for someone else. It was just crazy and it seemed a bit unreal.
One aspect of being on the road that I absolutely love is the chance to travel and see so many places. When I step back from and reflect on what my job allows me to do (if I can call it a job), I realise I’m amazingly lucky. I get to meet so many interesting people and see so many parts of the world. Travelling is something that I always wanted to do, and although I might be doing it a little bit differently to walking around with a backpack on my shoulders, it’s still travelling. You still get to see amazing places. I get to do all this cool stuff that when I was 16 I never thought would happen.
It’s always fun going exploring. Usually when I get to places I haven’t been to before, I try to meet someone or a family who lives there and just let them show me round. That’s usually how I feel I can get the best experience. One time I was in Chicago and someone put me in touch with a local guy who was happy to show me round. We played golf, and then I went back to his house for a barbecue with his family and kids.
Of course, you wouldn’t be human if you didn’t miss home sometimes on the road. We do so much travelling that I’ve learned to not become too attached to any one particular place. I don’t see the point of becoming settled in one area just yet, because it’s a fact that at the moment I’ll not be there very often or for very long. That impacts on your private life because you find yourself making arrangements for six months time that you have every intention of keeping, but then something happens with the band and you end up in a completely different part of the world and can’t make it.
When you haven’t really been back home properly for four years, that’s quite tough. Missing my family is probably the worst part of being in One Direction, but I’m also very lucky because they’re so supportive. I couldn’t ask for a better family. Mum and Dad will have so many questions – ‘How have you been? Where are you at the moment? What’s happening tomorrow?’ The usual stuff parents ask when they haven’t seen you for a while. They just want to know that I’m OK. It’s really lovely. They know that sometimes I’m really busy and can’t talk straight away, but when I can they’re always there to chat.
Sometimes you just have to see things in a different way, though. It would be easy to moan about being away from family, or penned up in a hotel and not being able to go out to sightsee as much as you’d like. But that’s too negative. OK, you can’t necessarily just go out into a city and do tourist stuff whenever you like, but at the same time you might not even be in that country in the first place if it wasn’t for the band. Most of the time I do get to see these places and I feel very fortunate.
My love of travel has led me to buy a place in Los Angeles. That city is somewhere I feel good being in. There’s something about the sunshine – I know that’s probably a bit of a cliché, but I like it. There’s something about waking up to sun, that feeling of just wanting to be outside; the great weather makes me want to do stuff. If I wake up and it’s grey I wanna stay in bed! In LA you get to be outside when you have breakfast, lunch and dinner. Even if my car breaks down, I’ll just stand in the sun for an hour and wait for the tow truck!
I also have good friends there. You do hear a lot of horror stories in the music business from that city but, in my opinion, LA completely depends on who you you hang out with. If you surround yourself with people who are into all that superficial stuff, then you become superficial yourself. However, if you instead surround yourself with good, normal people, you’ll be fine. You need friends there. I’m lucky to have that so I really enjoy my time over there.
We did learn quite quickly that not everything you read about ‘relationships’ in the newspapers is necessarily true. However, following on from that, because this band is in the public eye, I’m also aware and accepting of the fact that if one of us has a new relationship then it may be of interest to people who follow the band. I get all that. Gossip is natural.
I can totally see why our relationships might attract attention and interest, given that we’re in a well-known band. I don’t necessar
ily believe it’s of particular interest myself, but I can see why some people might be interested. Obviously if I’m with someone who’s in the public eye, of course, that increases public and media interest. To a degree, all that comes with the job. I get that. What I would say is that some of the relationships that got reported were when I was in my late teens, so I was learning along the way just like every kid of that age. I love meeting interesting people and I enjoy having a relationship with a girl if I think she’s really special. I don’t think I’m unusual in that. I know that I won’t necessarily always be allowed the luxury of total privacy, because of being in the band, and I’m not about to complain about that, not least because doing my job gives me so many amazing benefits. Hopefully people will just see that I’m trying to find my way like every one else of my age and I’m no different in that respect.
Having said that, it’s quite funny sometimes when you get ‘linked’ with people you might’ve only met once, or sometimes not at all! More so when the band first started, I’d go out with a mate and his girlfriend and if we were seen out I’d suddenly be ‘linked’ to this person I’d probably only met that night! I take it with a pinch of salt, to be fair. It doesn’t really worry me and I genuinely do understand why it provokes interest. I might not agree all the time, but I do get where it comes from.