Attitude - (May 2005)
"Big Ben"
Words: Peter Robinson
Picture: Josh Olins
From A1 frontman BEN ADAMS is back with a fabulous new sounds and equally as good new hairdo - we like
In the dim and distant days when new boybands still had record deals after their third single, A1 rules the charts. There was Mark - he had a serious face. And Paul - a proto-Matt Busted and basically a dwarf. And Christian - he talked about music a lot. And then there was Ben Adams, proud owner of pop's most precise haircut. In 2002, A1 released their best single Caught In The Middle, but within months: KABOOM! A1 had exploded and was no more. Since then, Ben's been writing and recording songs in his home studio. First to hit the airwaves is Sorry, the kind of sophisticated pop R&B escapage you'd expect from Justin Timberlake if he spent his time clubbing instead of hanging out with Ronald McDonald.
Where have the famous Ben Adams Curtains of Doom gone?
In the bin. That look was kind of good when I was 17, but it stayed for a couple of years longer than it should. It was quite high maintenance because my hair is actually curly. It was a bit of a fucker, really.
So you were one of the pioneers of male popstar hair straightening, it would seem.
I guess, yes. Are they everywhere now? I haven't been on the hair straightening scene for a while, I've lost touch. Since I was in A1 I've almost lost three stone - I don't even get recognised any more, and the most I ever get is, "You look a bit like that guys from A1".
Sorry, your new single's great, and not just in a "we're interviewing you so we're pretending it is" sort of way. What's it about?
Ah, well it wasn't really the greatest of experiences. I was with my girlfriend, and I thought she was cheating behind my back. Instead of doing the sensible thing and asking her about it, I thought "Fuck you", and went and fucked somebody else. And then it turned out...
Oh no!
...that she hadn't actually been seeing anybody else at all. It sort of screwed everything up. In a big way. Obviously. So the song's about that - trying to apologise, knowing that you can't take back what you've done but that you didn't mean to mess things up.
There's another song you wrote with Har Mar Superstar...
He's a good friend now! I didn't want to collaborate too much on the album, but there were key people I wanted to work with. With Har Mar it was perfect. He's so out there, so happy pushing the boundaries.
Of course, one of the defining moments of A1's career was the first Attitude naked shoot...
Naked shoot?
Don't pretend you can't remember, Ben. It featured four young boys looking uneasy in a Jacuzzi.
Ah, yes (laughs). I remember that, it was a club called Sailors. There was a bar upstairs and, er, various other things downstairs. It was quite an eye-opening experience for a 16-year-old, but there I was, naked in a jacuzzi with three other guys. I'm sure it made all the difference to our record sales, too, ha ha!
