Will.i.am (15 page)

While Will and his client were individually shaken, their relationship seemed not to be. One of the first times that Cole was seen in public following the saga, was alongside
Will in Cannes, France. Cole was even said to have cooked meals for Will during his stint on
The Voice
. The Geordie also taught him British slang terms, to help settle him
into the country better. They found that, emotionally, they were each other’s greatest source of solace. ‘At first it would bring my emotions down,’ said Will, ‘but now when
things come up we giggle and laugh about them together’.

If Will continues to mentor and manage Cole and other artists there will be more tough times in the future as they navigate the rollercoaster path of show business. Being able to laugh, or at
least smile, through the downturns will make the upturns all the sweeter.

More recently, Will has been less charitable and philosophical in discussing Simon Cowell’s role, taking a very thinly veiled swipe at him during an interview with the
Sun
newspaper. ‘There are English guys that go to America and it’s hard for them. Let’s take Cheryl Cole, for example. She went and did a TV show and it was hard for her. And it
wasn’t hard for her because of an American. It was hard for her because of a Brit. Now that’s kind of weird, isn’t it?’

In an interview with the
Sunday Mirror
, he was even more mischievous towards Cowell, saying he hoped that Cole would join him on
The Voice
one day. ‘I mean, why not? That
would really p*ss the big man off, wouldn’t it?’ Earlier, in response to Cowell’s statement that Cole ‘missed’ being
on
The X Factor
, and
would ‘100 per cent’ be welcomed back to the fold, Will was once again rather dismissive of the music mogul and his empire. ‘Cheryl won’t do
X Factor
,’ he
told the
Mirror
. ‘Why does she need it? Why are you going to make someone else rich? Cheryl needs her own show.’

Significantly, during his defence of Cole’s
Voice
appearance, Will seemed to be managing the public’s expectations of his client’s ability to crack the American
market. His previously bold assertion that she would make it big in America, despite the
X Factor
setback, seemed to have been knocked. ‘America’s a weird place right now, in
terms of breaking,’ he said. ‘I don’t know who is breaking America right now.’

Will could not resist a cheeky dig at Cowell when he spoke with the
Evening Standard
’s Craig McLean. The journalist persistently pressed Will to make an outrageous statement about
Cowell, to no avail. He suggested to Will that Cowell had been less than honest in his handling of Cole’s
X Factor
fall. Will stared into McLean’s eyes, clenched his fist and
moved it up and down, in a fairly clear simulation of masturbation. ‘Wish you could print hand gestures’, Will said, as his fist moved up and down. When McLean told Will how he was
interpreting his hand gesture, Will remained teasing. ‘Nah, like, whatever dude’, he said.
Pressed one more time to reveal what really happened between him, Cowell
and Cole, Will said: ‘I wish I could show you. But I’m not that kind of guy.’

Some of the above anti-Cowell bravado had as much to do with promoting a rivalry between his new home,
The Voice
, and Cowell’s empire, as it did any genuine remaining bitterness.
Will has, more recently, seemed keen to put the entire US
X Factor
saga in the past. He did his best to consign it to the history books by speaking about his client’s future.
‘The Cheryl that we know now is different from the one we’re going to know ten years from now,’ he said. ‘It was ten years ago that me and the Black Eyed Peas wrote
“Where is the Love?”’ he continued, in a clear reference to how far the band had come since then. ‘I’m planning a future for Cheryl in that way. Madonna is Madonna.
You don’t want Cheryl to be Madonna, you want Cheryl to be Cheryl.’

Final word on the
X Factor
saga goes to Cheryl, who showed there were no hard feelings between her and her manager when she described Will as a ‘genius’, and promised to
take him for a special night out in the North East of England. ‘No matter where I am in the world, someone always comes up and says Newcastle is one of the best nights out,’ she said.
‘I’m taking Will to Bigg Market for a kebab. I’m planning to take him out up there. He took me to downtown LA. That’s where he’s from, Boyle Heights. I’ll
have to show him what the North East has to offer.’

It would be fascinating to know what he made of the ‘Toon’ experience. She also took him for good old-fashioned fish and chips in London. She has, more recently, described him as
‘an honorary Brit’. Across the Atlantic, when Cole celebrated her twenty-ninth birthday in Las Vegas, Will played a DJ set during the knees-up at the XS nightclub.

Naturally, their intense relationship has prompted continued speculation that they are a romantic item. As we have seen, Will’s bandmates have even humorously encouraged this theory. With
a wider fascination over Will’s private life, there has been much interest in just how close he and his client are.

As for Cole, she speaks fondly of Will. When asked by an interviewer for the
Guardian
newspaper what quality she most admires in a person, her instantaneous reply was: ‘Loyalty.
Someone who is always there, not judging you, regardless of what situation you’re in.’ She volunteered Will as an example of such a person. ‘We call each other family,’ she
says. It is that, familial, description that comes closest to summing up the bond. They are more like brother and sister than anything else. Will was asked by
Q
magazine if he was, in
fact, Cole’s fella. ‘Fella? Fella? I like that,’ he said, ‘that’s a good word for a new squeeze.’ However, he quickly scotched the perception. Saying that while
‘on the Internet
we are married with children’, in reality ‘people know we are occasional work colleagues’.

In denying the rumours of romance, he was careful not to downplay his admiration for Cole. ‘Cheryl’s awesome’, he said, adding: ‘That accent I would die for’. He
recounted how he sometimes shows her something unpleasant on the Internet, merely to get the chance to hear her say, in her Geordie accent, ‘That’s disgusting!’.

Elsewhere, during an interview with the Sun, he was more direct in his denial. ‘Yes, Cheryl and I are both in love – with music’, he said. ‘That’s why we get on so
well. Those rumours were hilarious. I’ve been lucky to work with her. I think I’ve helped to bring out the best in her.’

Cole, too, denies the suggestion. In her case, the denials are more annoyed than witty. ‘Of course that’s the natural thing people go to,’ she told
ES
magazine.
‘Heaven forbid you should have any other kind of relationship with someone from the opposite sex.’

Meanwhile, he found himself having to jump to his client’s defence once again when she appeared on
The Voice
. In May 2012, Cheryl sang her new single, ‘Call My Name’,
on the show’s semi-final. She had promised that, in keeping with the overall ethos of the show, she would not mime her vocals during her performance. Onlookers said that Cole had looked to
Will for ‘reassurance’ at several points in the song.

For the appearance she wore a colourful outfit and her dance moves were dramatic, including a ‘swan dive’. Many viewers complained on Twitter that Cole appeared
to be miming. However, her publicist insisted otherwise. ‘She sang live with a backing track’, said the spokesperson. A ‘source’ quoted in the
Sun
said: ‘It
would have been hard for Cheryl to have sung through the whole performance – it was such an energetic dance routine’.

Will, though, was having none of it. He said: ‘I was there. She wasn’t miming. People say a lot of things.’ Elsewhere, he had berated the media for giving Cole
‘shit’. He said that they should recognize her true worth: ‘She’s your royalty, man’. He has even gone as far as comparing her to his all-time inspiration, Michael
Jackson. ‘Like Michael Jackson, she is a complete perfectionist’, he said, in an eyebrow-raising comparison. ‘Unless she is 100 per cent happy with something she just won’t
put it out there.’

As for Cole, she remains enamoured by Will’s magical talent. ‘I would work with Will for the rest of my career if I could,’ she said. ‘He is absolutely inspiring,
futuristic, creative.’

Perhaps the truth of their bond is that, despite their fame and success, both stars feel emotionally lonely and unsatisfied in some sense. Their professional success has come at the expense of
personal happiness. The comfort
that their professional journeys and personal bonding has brought to each of them has been significant.

Will had been delighted to see his client on
The Voice
. The way their paths crossed on the show provided a sense of closure after a tough year for both of them due to the
X
Factor
USA saga.
The Voice
is an important chapter in Will’s life, so let us turn to his successful involvement on the BBC show, how it all started and how it led to Will
becoming a much-admired part of the British mainstream, so much so that he got to rub shoulders with the nation’s real royalty – and secure a place in the hearts of the public. The
Anglophile’s love was about to become more requited than ever.

I
nitially, Will was just a viewer of
The Voice
like everyone else. In the Spring of 2011, he had watched the debut American series of the
franchise on NBC and absolutely ‘loved it’. So he was thrilled when the approach first came for him to appear as a star on the British series, to run in the Spring of 2012. Setting
aside any suspicions that he was going to be a harsh, tough-talking judge in the mould of Simon Cowell, in keeping with the producers of the show’s wishes, he preferred to refer to himself as
‘a coach’.

‘Throughout my career when I have coached people, it has always been all about being someone’s friend,’ he said on the Unreality TV website. ‘I want to go about
The
Voice
with the same perspective in the sense that a friend is better than being a mentor or coach. I really want to be able to give my team my perspective on the music business.’

From the start, Will wanted to separate himself from
the stereotypical judges of talent shows of recent times. So, in a thinly veiled critique of
The X Factor
, he
explained on Digital Spy why he saw
The Voice
as different. ‘When singers go on the other shows, you’re probably never going to hear from those people again,’ he said.
‘Why? Because their souls and their whole world has been crushed and they’ve been embarrassed in front of everybody. This one’s different. I want to see every single person that
walked off that stage proud and not battered and bruised, because this is their passion.’

Why, in reality, was Will at such great pains to differentiate
The Voice
from its rivals? It was not so much the public he wanted to convince that his show would be better than anything
before: he seemed to also want to convince himself of it. Perhaps the only way he could truly relax into his role was to believe that the show he was joining was more sincere than its rivals. So
keen was he to make this case that he was even willing to talk down its broadcasting appeal in order to talk up its musical credibility. ‘Maybe it doesn’t make great TV, but it’s
gonna make great artists,’ he said, in a statement that might have made the production team shuffle uncomfortably when they heard it. ‘Do you want TV or do you want artists that are
gonna go and perform for people and make people forget about their problems for five minutes in a song? TV’s great, but there’s lots of it.’

He went even further, with a surprisingly comprehensive swipe at all the judges on the
X Factor
and
Idol
shows. ‘
The Voice
is
different,’ he said. ‘On one, you have people in the music industry, current and legends, coaching the next generation. The other format you have judges critiquing, giving their
opinions on things when they don’t really know, other than Randy Jackson on
Idol
. But on
The Voice
, we’ve all got experience.’

Given that past and present judges on reality talent shows included artists of the not inconsiderable calibre of Paula Abdul, Steven Tyler, Dannii Minogue and Cheryl Cole, Will’s statement
was quite a blow. Perhaps he had excluded Cole in his mind, given that she had, at this stage, left the reality-television sphere, for the time being at least. Indeed, he admitted that he had
sought her counsel for his new job.

Even in explaining this, he could not resist yet another attack on
The Voice
’s rivals. ‘I reached out to Cheryl for advice on keeping your cool, having a poker face, the
importance of sticking with the singers – it’s their dream,’ he told Capital FM radio. ‘A lot of the times when you have other performers as part of the show, celebrities
tend to want the shine so they hog up time. So my whole thing was that I want to do
The Voice
, but I don’t want to hog up time to where the singers up there are looking like,
“Is this about you guys?”’

Her advice, he felt, had been more than useful, ‘Her
information that she gave me was inspirational. Her perspective and experience inspired me.’ However,
although he sought advice, for Will, the talent search was not to be a new experience – just one transferred into a new context. ‘No, this is what I’ve always done when I’m
not performing,’ he told the
Radio Times
. ‘I’m looking for new acts, I’m mentoring people signed to my label, wherever I am, after a show, when I go to a club.
It’s just now I’m doing it on a different platform.’

The gimmick for
The Voice
is that the opening auditions are ‘blind’. That is to say the coaches sit with their backs to the singer and, if they like what they hear, they can
press a button on their chair, which then spins them around so they can see the singer for the first time. The idea being that it is all about the voice of the person, not their look or stage
persona. At the end of the song, all the coaches face the singer, but only those who spun round during the performance are allowed to bid to mentor the singer in the next round. As we shall see,
the sincerity of this dimension of the show was to be questioned by many viewers and several critics.