Think dandy highwayman, Adam Ant and 19th-century swashbucklers and you get King Charles – who also happens to be an inordinately nice geezer, writes TONY CLAYTON-LEA
DON’T LOOK NOW, but it’s the dandy highwayman! The timeline is early December 2011, and as he makes his way into the lounge bar of a Dingle hotel, the regally named King Charles looks for all the world like a fash-mash-up of Adam Ant, Russell Brand, Prince and a 19th-century swashbuckler.
Flash by name, flash by nature? Well, knock me down with a heavy swoon, but this ultra slim King Charles is an inordinately nice geezer. A bit posh? Well, his mum is a classical pianist and violinist, but Charles (and, yes, his surname is as securely protected as the crown jewels) dresses more ornately than he speaks. And so we have a new(ish) pop star in our midst of which little is known but this: you’ll be hearing a lot more from him this year.
The way Charles tells it, music and he started their first serious relationship when he was 17, all of 10 years ago, when he discovered Bob Dylan's album, Blonde on Blonde. At this point, his classical music background (from the age of seven, he'd been persuaded by his mother to play the cello) faded into the distance. Dylan was the thing, the man.
"Listening to the likes of Blonde on Blondewas such an extraordinary experience and influence," he says. "That album just blew my mind. It increased the size of my world so much. I didn't understand the classical music I'd been trained in, possibly because I'd gone into it at the deep end, playing a cello repertoire. I was certainly a grumpy teenager about learning cello, but I'm obviously very glad that she pushed me through it.
"Yet it was Dylan and the folk world that was so different to me – I dived in and stuck to him. I then started to explore country music – the likes of early Dolly Parton – and that blew my mind as well. I started learning guitar at 17, too, and when my guitar teacher taught me the opening chords to some early Johnny Cash songs – well, that was it for me. At the same time, the movie O Brother Where Art Thou? had come out and, frankly, I was hooked."
So far, so folky. When he went to university the folksiness continued somewhat when he fell into cahoots with Winston Marshall (soon to be a member of Mumford & Sons), Charlie Fink (soon to be a member of Noah the Whale) and Laura Marling (who according to Charles, “is Blonde on Blonde . . .”). Drifting from one rustic/folk tune to another, troubadouring his way from the north of England to the south, Charles recalls his late teen/early 20s as memorable only for causing as much confrontation as he could.
“I was kicking and screaming against something,” he explains, not quite able to specify exactly what. “I’d go out dressed as Doc Holiday everywhere I went, with big Windsor knot ties and cowboy boots. I’d stand in full view of traffic on roads I was on, showing myself to the world. I’m unsure as to why I did that, because I have often felt that the world didn’t particularly think it was a good idea. And, of course, the world shouted out loads of abuse back at me. But, then, I did look pretty weird, so I can’t say I blame it.
“I suppose I was trying to get something out. I didn’t want to stay in my head, either – I wanted to present what was in my head to the world, and the music was all about the performance. That was when I was around 21 – I’d play shows on my own, with just a guitar.”
He recalls this period with little regard for himself as a performer. “I was so scrappy, messy and loose it was just awful – very disorganised and all over the place. I was, to be honest, a complete nightmare. I thought it was all about simply entertaining, but it’s more than entertainment for me, now, as I firmly believe that music should be about the people, for the people. I also believe that music can be not just life affirming but life saving.”
Charles’ sense of annoyance with the world at large was accompanied by a growing feeling of (and I’m guessing here) reluctant begrudgery towards his mates Laura, Charlie and Winston, who were, he says, “gaining huge profiles. I’d often ask myself, what about me?”
The questions stopped on New Year’s Eve, 2009. With a finished album scheduled for release in February 2010, all was set for Charles (now King Charles, what with all the requisite major label backing and star-making machinery) to make a splash. Instead, he crashed – on a ski slope in Austria. As the clock struck midnight on 2010, he was in a nearby hospital’s intensive care unit. What happened is still something of a blur for Charles; what transpired was that his album was pulled from the schedules, fame derailed, postponed. Cancelled, even. “It took a long time to get myself back together,” says Charles of his genuine life-or-death mishap, “although I could still function half-mastedly. My brain was a mess – I didn’t really know where I was in my head. I was a bit lost, couldn’t really place things.
“In some areas I could be completely fearless – on stage, say, I’d have no nerves, nothing, because I bruised the inhibitions area of my brain. But then I could be terrified of even the smallest thing. I mean, straight after the accident I was under the sofa at home scared stiff.”
Life was, Charles surely understates, “a bit of a muddle for 18 months”, but in the middle of this contusion-confusion he won the Nashville Song Contest (where judges included, no less, Tom Waits, Loretta Lynn and Jerry Lee Lewis). The award placed Charles slap-bang in the centre of the radar screen of Universal America. And that, he says, kick-started the next wave of revisiting his debut album.
“It was more indie prior to that, but then it became geared, rightly so in my opinion, towards a much bigger market.”
What we’ve heard of King Charles so far has been a blast; think dollops of smart, urbane pop sensibilities, a visual style that takes some beating, and no obvious tips of the creative hat to Dylan. “I’m still at the beginning of where I want to go,” says Charles with a cut and a thrust and a dash. “But I want to stay in tune and in touch with people who think and care. I’ve never been able to write with anyone, so what I do, creatively, is quite a solitary process, but with the band being very much my friends.”
What about the song lyrics, though? There’s a danger that your dress sense and debonair style might offset the often serious words you write. And while we’re on the topic, is it true that you started writing songs in order to tell women that you fancied them? We detect a hint of a blush under the whiskers.
“That’s how it started,” he admits, “and that’s how it’s continuing. Very much all the songs on the albums are about love, largely unrequited love. It’s the worst, isn’t it? But that’s what I’m trying to describe, the whole love and desire aspects of what makes us more than animals. It’s only ever been love and people that make life exciting.”
King Charles performs as part of Other Voices, which is broadcast on RTÉ 2 from March. His debut album is released in April
