John Barrowman Talks Music Music Music - page 2

17 November 2008

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You worked with veteran producer Simon Franglen what was it like working with him?

Yeah Simon was absolutely a hoot, for people who don’t know him he has produced people like Celine Dion and some Streisand stuff and Whitney, he is absolutely amazing and what I love about him he let me sing and perform the songs. A lot of them time when you are working with producers you will do it bit by bit, which I also like doing, but Simon was like ’ No John you go in and sing’ and I probably sang each song eight to ten times and then he took all the best bits and put it all together and he’s created some really wonderful stuff on there.

What did you decide to release another album so close to Another Side, which was only released about twelve months ago?

Yeah well because the public wanted it! The first one was such a success we didn’t expect it to go gold so quickly and we didn’t expect it to be heading towards going platinum and all my fans said that they wanted him to sing bigger and sing more so that’s why we decided to do this album, if things go well we are already planning what the next one’s gonna be. Totally fantastic

You also toured with the last album how did you find that?

I loved it and I love that when I’m on tour I can get out there and amongst everyone who appreciates what I am doing because I appreciate what they are doing for me and that’s why I do these tours, yeah I known that they pay to come and see me, but you ask anybody who came to see the tour they get a really special performance I don’t hold back at all in the performances I give myself over completely because I’m totally appreciative of their spending their hard earned money to come and see me or buy my album and I want them to know that.

You do come from a background of musical theatre and when you do those show you are supported by the rest of the cast so what was it like on tour standing up their all by yourself?

Awesome (laughs) I’m not going to lie to you. It’s great to be part of a company and I love being a company man in a show but to be centre stage all by myself, I still saw myself as being supported by my band, but it’s a very different feeling when you are out there by yourself and it’s all about you, in fact I was listening to a song the other day that I was thinking about putting in the new tour called Talk About Me (laughs).

What made you decide to move into music as most of us know you as an actor?

I didn’t really decide I was asked Sony, last year’s album was with Sony BMG I am now with Sony Epic, and Sony approached me to ask if I wanted a recording deal and who is going to say no to that? One of the biggest recording companies in the world asked me if I wanted a recording contract and all of the things that have happened to me over the last five or six years I haven’t planned they have just happened and as any human being who wants to work and loves to work if I think I’m going to have a good time I’ll do it.

You are obviously best known as Captain Jack Harkness what can we expect from the new series of Torchwood?

Here’s my official answer Torchwood will come back bigger and better and it will be a five part mini series over one week, so every night you will get a cliffhanger, hopefully airing in the spring and summer. There will be new faces, you will learn a lot more about Captain Jack’s past, his dark past, you will also learn a lot more about Gwen, there will also be some deaths but a lot of action and excitement.

And why has the series been cut down from its usual thirteen week run?

It’s been cut down specifically because we have been moved to BBC1 and we can’t take a full fledged series from BBC2 to BBC1 because a lot of BBC1 viewers have never seen it, which is yeas and no a lot have seen it and a lot haven’t. You have to make an impact on 1 because if we too the series over the rating that we got on 2 wouldn’t hold us steady to last on BBC1 so we have to make an impact and to make that impact we have to condense it down into five. But series four, if we come back, we will come back with more.

And how surprised were you that Torchwood has done so well as a stand alone series?

Overwhelmed I can’t believe it! We knew that we were doing a production that we had to, when we did it first on BBC3, we knew that we had to be loyal to the original brand of Doctor Who and when we got out ratings and we got the best ratings in the history, and we till hold that title on digital television, and they moved us to two and we got good ratings there, even in our repeats we beat some programmes on other channels, so the success I’m overwhelmed and I think that’s why I continue to do my variety of things because it’s my way of saying thank you to everybody. I figure that if I work harder and try to do other things that please people then they will see that I really appreciate what they have done for me.

when you singed on for the role back in 2004 did you imagine that Jack would become such a popular character?

Oh god no! If you had asked me back then I thought that Jack was only going to be in the show for five episodes and that was it and then lo and behold I get my own show it’s gone worldwide and Jack has become an iconic figure, not just in the UK but worldwide, and honest to God I’m speechless I’m absolutely, and excuse my French, f***ing thrilled (laughs) I’m speechless and when I’m in other countries, and I can’t do accents very well, people come up to me going (Chinese accent) ‘Captain Jack’ I’, like he’s everywhere.