What he did after he was sent home the first time on X-Factor:“I did pubs and clubs,” he says. “When I was a kid, I literally played old people’s homes.” His one taste of what was to come arrived when Wolverhampton Wanderers FC invited Liam to sing before kick-off at a Manchester United fixture to 34,000 fans. “It’s funny that that’s where we ended up, playing stadiums,” he says with a pleasing air of pride and bemusement.
“It was funny being stood in the middle again and thinking back on that 16 year old boy stood in the middle of a football pitch. My dad said to me, this is going to be the toughest gig you’re ever going to play. Football fans do not want to hear little boys singing. They’re not interested. You heard jeering from the crowd. But I got applause at the end. And my dad said, that is the best thing you could’ve got out of today.”X-Factor and getting signed:Liam says he can’t remember much of his time in the X Factor house second time around bar the tears.
“The famous line my dad said was, don’t come home until Christmas, meaning don’t get thrown off it before the final. And after I said goodbye to him that day, I never really went home again.”(His dad sounds like such a stage-dad tbh.)When 1D lost, Liam turned to his dad with a “we made it this far” face. His fellow band-mates, he says, were in pieces. He remembers first Harry, then Louis, Niall and Zayn bursting into tears.
“A cameraman came over and said ‘can I get you boys for an interview?’ and I looked at all the boys crying, in their mum’s arms and I was like, ‘look, I’ll do the interview’ because I was the only one who was alright and so I went off to the side and did the after-camera interview for us. I just left them because I wanted them to have their moment and the cameras didn’t need to see them like that. There was a real atmosphere. This followed throughout our career a lot of the time.”“Simon took us up to his dressing room to tell us he was going to sign us and Harry literally burst into tears he was so happy.” “The first thing he said to us after signing us from X Factor was ‘look, there are no angels here’. Which is so true.”
“Everyone strives to be the person that they want to be,” he says. “I try too much sometimes, I think. I overstep the mark a little bit sometimes. That’s why I’m such a perfectionist. But sometimes I think you have to believe that there are no angels.”
About how he grew up:“It was a total tip,” he says of the last bedroom he lived in before fame. “That bed was so old. The last time I went back and sat on it I couldn’t believe it was the bed I used to sleep on. I often think about how I used to sit on the windowsill and just look at the stars and wonder what this was all for. And I often used to think, there must be more to life than this.” I ask if his parents kept the room the same as when he left. “Well,” he says interrupting the nostalgia with a little sharp reality, “I bought my parents a house so I haven’t actually been back to that room in a long time. I’d like to.”
On his favourite One Direction song ‘Once In A Lifetime’ and the band:“That’s my favourite song. Very Coldplay-esque. I wanted it to be a single but they wouldn’t have it. It was very relaxed the way we chose our records and made things. It was really simple.” Someone else did it.
Whenever Liam talks about the 1D boys he has the exact same dad-ish air of concern, care, amazement and slight separation from the operation that Daddy Barlow has with Take That.
(lol @ Daddy Direction making a return)The experiences of 1D made five men very rich, very young. Liam knows exactly his financial worth. “I do,” he says, letting out a nervous laugh. I ask if I would blush if I saw his bank account. “Honestly, it is a very scary thought,” he says.
“It is not something that we were given. It’s something we worked our asses off for. The way we went to work every day and the way we travelled the world and the way we conducted our business, with great management at the time and greater minds, it turned out great for everybody. But it was a long five years.”On the last night of the last 1D tour, management presented the remaining members with a plaque festooned with little badges for every single gig they’d played since their first.
“It was a sombre night,” says Payne who has started becoming more emotionally transparent in front of people this last year. “To see every show we’ve ever done on a plaque?” he says raising eyes to the sky, “Again, everybody was in tears. And I’m quite good at holding it together but I have got a lot worse of late. Adverts and things make me cry, I think I’m getting more emotional as time goes by, especially with everything that’s happening in my life at this moment, it’s a very emotional time and time to reflect on a lot of things and the person that I am to be.
Cheryl:“This is the thing. In a non-cliché way, it’s weird waking up every day and literally living out your dream. You wake up in the most beautiful places. Obviously I have the most beautiful girlfriend in the whole world and she’s absolutely amazing.”
“She is a wonderful, wonderful person and it’s amazing to have someone who can relate to so much of things, someone who’s taken greater steps than me. Her solo career was amazing. She’s been in the industry for fourteen years now. She fully supports me. We’re super happy. I appreciate you didn’t ask about it. It’s a very personal, precious time for us. I’m still learning. I’m only 23.”On his record:“I’ll tell you the truth. The dream was to be able to get signed and release an album. That is every musician who’s on Youtube’s dream today. I’ve got the opportunity to work with a really great label, Capitol. The people I work with are absolutely amazing and to get a record deal and be able to release the album that I want to release is the most amazing thing ever.” He has no idea how it will fare. “Even if this went tits up, sideways, it’d still be step one that I got here.”And not voting:“I’ve never been able to vote,” he explains, “because we’ve always been in different countries and I’ve never really understood it. I still feel like a 16 year old boy when it comes down to things like that and I wouldn’t know which way to go.” He steered clear of the EU referendum and doesn’t know how his parents voted in it.
(How embaressing tbh.)The Trump story:“Oh, here’s a story,” he says, rubbing his hands. “Trump actually kicked us out of his hotel once.” It gets better. “You wouldn’t believe it. It was about his daughter. He phoned up our manager and we were asleep. He said ‘well, wake them up’ and I was like ‘no’ and then he wouldn’t let us use the underground garage. Obviously in New York we can’t really go outside. New York is ruthless for us. So he was like, ‘OK, then I don’t want you in my hotel’. So we had to leave.”
SOURCE 1: twitter + SOURCE 2: my copy of the magazinHave you ever been unable to vote, because you just didn't understand it?![shhhh!]( "shhhh!")
