Nobody may say that Anthony Kavanagh doesn’t know how one can giggle at himself. The day he was fired from his report label, he trudged throughout London within the rain, strolling and strolling, because the realisation sank in that he was not a pop star. Soaked, he went right into a pub and the lady behind the bar provided him a grubby tea towel to dry off. Washed-up certainly, he thought.
His memoir, Pop Scars, is sprinkled with darkly comedian takes on what his life had develop into after 90s pop stardom. Often called Kavana, he had a High 10 hit in 1997 along with his cowl of Shalamar’s I Can Make You Really feel Good. “I’ve at all times by some means been capable of finding the humour, even at a few of the darker occasions,” he says.
And there have been darkish occasions. Making a joke a few Neil Sedaka tune (“Oh, Carol. Oh fuck, extra like”) to explain the truth of waking up in a stranger’s condominium; fragments of a reminiscence of driving down Sundown Strip with Sedaka on the automotive stereo; the realisation he had been paid for the intercourse he couldn’t keep in mind. Smoking crack in a skip in Hackney with a homeless lady he had simply met, and whom he trusts along with his financial institution card to go and rating extra medication (“Observe to self,” he writes, “by no means give a stranger your pin code when excessive”). There are funnier, much less critical incidents – he earned a lifetime ban, he says, from the daytime TV present Free Ladies after slurring his manner via it and being “unhinged” backstage – however usually, it’s a reasonably bleak account of dependancy, ache and what occurs when the pop machine spits you out.
He’s very exhausting on himself, I say, once we meet within the places of work of his writer (at 47, he retains the boyish appears to be like that made him a teen favorite). “Effectively, I had that narrative for a very long time. I believe when you’ve got a whole lot of rejection …” He pauses. As an alcoholic in restoration, and three years sober, he’s kinder to himself now. “However trying again, that’s undoubtedly how I felt.”
Writing the e-book has helped. “It’s given me some shallowness which is, I believe, what I’ve been missing for a very long time.” He nervous he wasn’t a sufficiently big identify to be attention-grabbing to anybody now, till he began to view the e-book as a memoir of dependancy, “and that features the celebrity half, as a result of actually I used to be solely chasing a sense. Approval, mainly.” And what occurs after fame disappears. “I’ve a little bit of empathy for the younger me, as a result of though I used to be pushed and bold and sensible, I used to be additionally very naive.”
Rising up in Manchester within the Eighties, born to folks who already had a 20-year-old daughter, Kavanagh needed nothing greater than to be a pop star. Smash Hits journal was his bible – each fortnight, he’d deliver it residence from the store, “take it in my bed room and undergo the pages. It was simply an escape into this fantasy world.”
Bullied, and with the dawning realisation he was homosexual, he discovered faculty an ordeal, however he additionally had an iron perception that he can be a well-known pop star sooner or later. The place did that come from? “Delusion?” he says with amusing. “Possibly wanting to flee. I simply had a sense, and I’d go round telling everybody that it was a given – I used to be going to be on High of the Pops.”
When he grew to become profitable – High 10 singles within the UK, adored in Asia – the image he provides is of an excited and confused teenager in a bewildering world. It could have been simpler, he thinks, if he’d been in a boyband, as a result of at the least there can be backup. He had physique picture points: he had been obese as a younger teenager, and other people round him nonetheless commented that he was “chubby”. “I used to get a bit fearful typically within the photoshoots.” Principally he was afraid of being outed, when his success along with his teenage lady followers trusted him being a “straight” pop star. “There was concern usually, no matter being a pop star. I hadn’t informed my mother and father. I didn’t inform my sister until I used to be 18. It was a special age then.”
Generally, on tour with different artists, he would share a passing look with one other man and surprise in the event that they have been . “You’d have a little bit feeling, however I dared not say to you, in case you then inform any person else.” On one tour, he and Stephen Gateley, from the boyband Boyzone, spent the night time collectively.
Preserving his sexuality hidden will need to have been extremely troublesome. “It was, and that’s the place alcohol got here in as a consolation. It’s loopy after I look again now, the time that we have been in. It was a relentless act, and it was exhausting – however you simply obtained on with it, as a result of I used to be so fortunate for this to occur to me, and I have to be grateful. I put every little thing into the ambition.”
It’s unusual, Kavanagh says, to be doing interviews once more at a time the place he doesn’t have to cover his sexuality, and there’s extra understanding of the pressures on younger pop stars and energy dynamics in relationships. “We didn’t speak about psychological well being. At this time you hear they offer artists aftercare or remedy, however there wasn’t any of that then. I suppose I didn’t have the information to ask, both. What would I’ve requested for? We didn’t use these phrases again then. And when it’s so quick, quick, quick, and there’s a whole lot of ‘sure’ folks, and also you’re informed how improbable you’re, that’s sufficient typically to make you’re feeling OK.” It made it tougher, he says, when only some months later, the celebrity bubble popped. “Particularly if it turns into your identification,” he provides.
Even when he was profitable, he says, “I used to be by no means happy. I gained a Smash Hits award – like, that was the holy grail to me. It doesn’t get significantly better than that. However then, I believe perhaps the dependancy facet, you need one thing else. I saved wanting increasingly. At 21, I resolve I’m going to go and dwell in America, I’m going to make it there.” He laughs at himself – the younger man who had simply been dropped by his report label, and who genuinely believed he may transfer to Hollywood and decide up an Oscar. “It’s like, OK, that’s a traditional factor to do.”
It really began properly: he obtained an agent, and a small half in a cleaning soap inside the first week, however just for a few episodes. He was attempting to launch his personal music, develop into a songwriter, go to auditions, however largely he was lonely, burning via his cash and ingesting increasingly. Generally medication, too, together with crystal meth. However, he says, “Alcohol was the beginning and the tip. I’d by no means have taken medication with out alcohol. However yeah, I used to be like a free cannon for a few of these occasions, obtained myself into some conditions.” Similar to waking up in a stranger’s flat, realising he had been paid for intercourse.
Kavanagh ended up residing in a motel, then ultimately returned residence after seven years – in 2006 – penniless. It meant shedding his mother and father’ residence, which he had been paying the mortgage on. “That comes with a complete load of guilt, as a result of I’m shifting two aged mother and father, they’ve misplaced this home. In order that’s extra motive to drink.”
His years out of the UK meant everybody had forgotten about him. He seemed round on the individuals who had grown up with him – former pop stars and actors corresponding to Ant and Dec, and Billie Piper – who had efficiently reinvented themselves, and felt as if he’d made a mistake. “So then there’s disgrace and remorse with that.” He smiles. “There was no jungle [the I’m a Celebrity … reality show] in them days to go on when your pop profession is washed up. Once I disappeared … ‘I’ll make it in Hollywood!’” He tried to stage a comeback, releasing a “better of” album and showing on actuality reveals together with Movie star Massive Brother and Grease Is the Phrase, however he sabotaged many alternatives by being drunk. He began hanging round with the singer Amy Winehouse, who had her personal alcohol dependancy, and crashing on the flats of his few remaining loyal followers, ingesting extra.
Signing on on the jobcentre again in Manchester, he was frightened of being recognised – folks had began, dishearteningly, to ask him: “Didn’t you was Kavana?” “I used to be so wrapped up in my very own disgrace,” he says. “I used to be having to drink.” And alcohol labored for him, he says, “for a very long time. I’m not sitting right here saying: ‘Oh, it was tragic, it was terrible.’ Alcohol obtained me via my father’s loss of life. It form of obtained me via my sister’s loss of life [from cancer in 2019]. It obtained me via feeling nervous, it obtained me via happening stage, homesickness. However I didn’t realise what it was doing to me.”
By the point he was primarily homeless, residing secretly along with his mom in her sheltered housing flat, Kavanagh was deep in dependancy. He utilized for a spot at rehab primarily, he says, to have someplace to dwell, and was sober for six months earlier than spectacularly relapsing on a songwriting retreat, and ingesting neat vodka in a telephone field. In London, he would undergo a cycle of attending AA conferences, then ingesting once more. By the point he was shopping for three-litre bottles of low cost cider to drink within the mornings (together with tins of cat meals, to create, he thought, an air of respectability), he knew he was in hassle.
“Alcohol grew to become as necessary to me as oxygen to outlive,” he says. “That sounds fairly melodramatic to any person that has by no means skilled that, however I knew the sport was up. I needed to cease, however I bodily couldn’t.” He would typically spend the remainder of the day at a Costa espresso store, pretending to work on his telephone and sipping wine from a paper cup.
At some point, an e mail from a lawyer got here via. A newspaper had agreed to settle a defamation case he’d lengthy forgotten about from the 90s, and the sum was greater than he had seen in a decade. “I’m ingesting wine out of the espresso cup, and simply that divine timing,” he says.
He known as his AA sponsor, and requested for assist to discover a personal rehab clinic. “At that time I wanted to be locked up,” he says. A good friend drove him there, and Kavanagh remembers the good friend telling workers he thought alcohol had triggered him mind harm. “To suppose that I’d obtained myself in that state.” Kavanagh thought alcohol would kill him. “I’ve seen it occur to others, and I believe it scared me that final time in rehab.”
For no matter motive, rehab labored, and Kavanagh has been sober for 3 and a half years. He wakes up, “and I pray to a god that I don’t perceive, and simply say, ‘You drive at present.’ I am going to conferences, I attempt to be of service. Something that takes me out of considering and negotiating issues in my head, I’ve discovered, is what helps. Connecting with others.”
Kavanagh wrote his e-book throughout the first 12 months of sobriety. “I’ve obtained entry to this new life now, however I simply should keep in mind that that’s the place it took me final time.” He’s proud to name himself an writer, and would possibly make some music once more in some unspecified time in the future. He’d fairly love to do a one-man present.
Does he nonetheless crave approval and recognition? “I’d be mendacity if I mentioned I didn’t crave approval. I’m unsure about being massively well-known, as a result of I understand how fleeting it may be, however there’s undoubtedly one thing to be mentioned about placing one thing you’ve performed out and getting constructive suggestions. Or folks connecting to me.”
Pop Scars by Anthony Kavanagh is revealed on 17 July by Bonnier (£22).