The perils of going solo: Former Kaiser Chiefs drummer Nick Hodgson is the latest to break away
As the former Kaiser Chiefs drummer Nick Hodgson releases his solo album, we look at the successes and failures of other former band members going solo
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Your support makes all the difference.Pity, if only for a moment, the poor pop star. Theirs is often not an easy existence. When you consider the sheer chutzpah an individual needs to put themselves out there as worthy recipients of fame and adulation, it’s little wonder they then grumble when they have to share that adulation alongside their low-pecking bandmates, each convinced that it is they alone, like cream in milk, that should rise to the top.
This month, Nick Hodgson – or, to give him the name he is now trading under, Nick JD Hodgson – former drummer with Kaiser Chiefs, will launch his own solo career with his debut album, Tell Your Friends.
Never merely the bloke behind Ricky Wilson, Hodgson was rather that band’s co-engine, and had a hand in writing all their songs. “I was quite unpopular in the end because I was so dominating,” he admits.
His own album is a lovely, Seventies-hued creation that, wisely, sounds nothing like Kaiser Chiefs. But Hodgson readily concedes that matching his former band’s success might prove a hard task.
“It is a curious thing, what happens to solo artists,” he says. “You’d think Mick Jagger albums would be really big, but they’re not. It’s an interesting phenomenon, and one I’m definitely aware of. Of course, whenever I start a new project, my first instinct is that it’s going to be massive and that I’m going to make millions. But I suppose, realistically speaking, I’ll just do my best and see where this goes.”
And if he does have to exchange mainstream success for cult appreciation, then he at least won’t be the only one.
Zayn Malik
Like Robbie Williams before him, Zayn took the seemingly egregious decision to jump ship from globe-straddling boy-band membership to lone wolf, only to see it come unaccountably good. Freed from the shackles of pop chimp drudgery, he spread some impressively R&B-flecked wings, and single “Pillowtalk” made him the first British male artist to debut at number one on both sides of the Atlantic. He has since duetted with Taylor Swift. As a consequence, anxiety about having quit One Direction is unlikely to surface.
Bryan McFadden, later Brian McFadden
Oh, Bryan. Like Robbie Williams before him but unlike Zayn Malik after, McFadden had become thoroughly sick being in Westlife, and was determined to flex his own muscles, convinced that his bad boy image – he liked swear words, and to sleep in late – would stand him in good solo stead. Initially, the signs were good: a number one solo single – “Real to Me” and another in the Top 5 – ”Almost Here” – from his debut album, Irish Son. But he proved inconsistent, and later releases occasionally contained virtual facsimiles of the Westlife gloopy ballads he had always claimed to hate. His singing career duly stalled. In September 2014, he could be found hosting the daytime ITV series, Who’s Doing the Dishes.
Cheryl Cole
Far too radiant – and too married – to ever remain a Girl Aloud for long, Cheryl stepped out of the malevolent shadow cast by Nadine Coyle, Girls Aloud de facto Gary Barlow figure, for a solo bid in 2009, and has since racked up a raft of hit singles – 2009’s “Fight for Your Love”, 2010’s “The Flood”, 2012’s “Screw You” – though arguably none as memorable as those from the band from which she trampolined. Nadine Coyle’s own similar attempts, meanwhile, perhaps rather ironically mirror those of Gary Barlow’s: less than the sum of its parts.
George Michael
After pretty much single-handedly steering Wham! into the biggest boy band of the 1980s, George Michael had a brow to furrow after the band split in 1986: more grown-up songs to sing; fewer shuttlecocks-down-the-shorts to flaunt. The subsequent results proved profoundly accomplished, his over-archingly serious material – 1987’s “One More Try” and “Father Figure”; every single track from his 1990 album Listen Without Prejudice – serving him very well indeed. In the Great British Songbook, he deserves several chapters, while his sad death in 2016 will all but confirm his canonisation.
Gwen Stefani
While in her skateboard punk band No Doubt, Gwen Stefani was one of the boys. When she stepped out of their shadow for her 2004 debut album Love. Angel. Music. Baby, however, she promptly out-Madonna’d Madonna: lo, a glittering, mischievous art-pop queen was born. Such tunes! Her reign didn’t endure, sadly, and successive albums – including last year’s You Make It Feel Like Christmas – captured significantly less of the zeitgeist.
Michael Jackson
After helming the best all-singing family clan America ever produced, Michael Jackson broke free from his brothers in 1972, aged 13, to spectacular success. His debut solo album was Got to Be There, whose title track might still be one of music’s most blissful three minutes. In the 1980s, he redefined music as we knew it, the pop video also. The 1982 album Thriller was a global event, and sold more than 100 million copies. The hits kept coming – his 1987 album Bad proved every bit as inescapable as Thriller had – but the process of remaining so mind-bogglingly famous eventually separated him distinctly from reality. There were llamas, chimpanzees, cryogenic chambers. He turned from black to white, from sane to not, from legend to predator. His untimely demise in 2009 was all but inevitable.
Pete Doherty
Once simply Pete Doherty of The Libertines, Doherty tested the parameters of intra-band tolerance by testing the parameters of his own drug tolerance. That band was always going to crash and burn, which they did spectacularly. The singer went on to attempt more of the same via Babyshambles. He first tested solo waters in 2009 with the Grace/Wastelands album, and returned with another in 2016, the charmingly rickety Hamburg Demonstrations, sounding more Withnail than ever. But still alive, which is good.
Brandon Flowers
Surely rock’s most famous Mormon, Brandon Flowers never did want to be a solo artist. He wanted to be the singer in the world’s biggest band. Trouble was, his fellow Killers possessed notably less ambition than he, and so what else was this prolific songwriter to do than seek another outlet – namely, a solo outing? While his 2010 effort Flamingo was anything but a failure, it nevertheless failed to fill the Killers-shaped hole for hardcore fans. But the next Killers album did so nicely.
Mark Stoermer
The Killers’ other three members may have possessed less vaulting ambition than Flowers, but it didn’t mean they didn’t have creative itches to scratch. Bassist Mark Stoermer has also released solo albums – Another Life in 2011, and Dark Arts in 2016 – both distinctly experimental records that would never get Glastonbury singing, but were never supposed to. “I wanted to take a little more risk,” he said in 2016. Sometimes, solo side projects really are intimate personal indulgences. And nothing wrong with that, is there?
Liam Gallagher
Sibling rivalry did for Oasis what it always threatened to do – namely, combust – and the band was dust by 2009. Inevitably unbowed, Liam Gallagher went on to form Beady Eye, and a legion of Knebworth fans shrugged their shoulders. When he released his solo album last year, As You Were, even he admitted it the last roll of the dice. But it has proved an unexpected smash hit, and landed him a Brit nomination. Brother Noel’s own latest solo effort received none. “So the creepy 1 gets blanked at the Brits oh well,” Liam tweeted with typical tact, the last laugh a frog in his throat.
‘Tell Your Friends’ by Nick JD Hodgson is out on 26 January
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