Photograph: Jo Hale/Getty
The revelations were as colourful as they were inevitable. After months of whispers and denials, yesterday's rumour mill whirred into overdrive with the news that Razorlight's Johnny Borrell is planning on going solo. "Johnny knows he's got a solo career ahead," murmured an "insider" (surely not the same "insider" who has been hovering around everyone from John F Kennedy to Ming Campbell - how does he find the time?). "He's already in talks with other musicians," he went on. But at least this time the story had a ring of truth to it - one of the reasons the Razorlight man plans to go it alone is apparently because his long-suffering bandmates can't stand working with him anymore.
This is hardly surprising when you consider that most recent interviews have seen the Blokes in Razorlight Whose Names No One Can Remember bitching about their frontman's arrogant behaviour and domineering demands - and they don't even get onto his fondness for genital-revealing outfits. Even A-list girlfriend Kirsten Dunst left him recently, apparently tiring of the giant ego's fondness for riding a motorcycle through the living room. But wait, young Mr Borrell, if there is any sense left beneath that (possibly ever so slightly receding) bonce, DO NOT EVEN THINK OF GOING SOLO.
The annals of rock are full of what were very successful singers in rock bands whose career went down faster than Borrell's plunging necklines once they left the confines of their group. Hugh Cornwell has never had a whiff of a hit since exiting the Stranglers and Fish from Marillion was doing very well until he swapped the Scots rockers for a career answering the question, "Didn't you used to be in Marillion?" To compound the ignominy, singers may flounce off planning albums of solo material, but more often than not end up singing the hits of the band they left behind, as Cornwell currently does in pubs. Or they end up back with the band anyway - the case with Richard Ashcroft, the pre-Borrell Borrell if you will, who is again fronting the Verve after an unsatisfactory decade solo and swapping Bittersweet Symphony for songs called things like Sweet Brother Malcolm.
People like the songs these people sing with their bandmates; they like the "brand"; but there's also something magical about the chemistry of a group. It would be a particular surprise if Borrell parted from drummer Andy Burrows, whose late entrance into Razorlight not only helped their songwriting (he co-wrote the likes of America) but has always seemed to have a conspiratorial swagger when with Borrell - a bit Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood. If they are parting, things really must be bad. But not as bad as the consequences of a famous singer leaving a drummer with aspirations. Look what happened when Peter Gabriel walked out on Genesis. Up from the drum stool stepped a monster. Do we really want Borrell to leave Burrows with even the slender chance of becoming a ballad-singing, lurve-eulogising, love-not-hurrying Razorlight version of Phil Collins?
Some singers have done alright without their former bands. Robbie Williams was huge for a while - bigger than Gary Barlow in every sense - but he wasn't lead vocalist with Take That, so wasn't as indelibly identified with fronting a group. John Lennon was obviously much better without the Beatles to stop him releasing his avant garde shrieking with Yoko Ono, but the Fab Four had split. Rod was great - if perhaps not quite as great - after he finally left the Faces; Robert Plant's solo career has been very respectable without ever truly reaching the bacchanal heights (or depths) of his rampage through hotels and fish counters with Led Zeppelin. Peter Gabriel made at least four very good albums. But mostly, solo stints have dwindled into nothingness, from Bunnyman Ian McCulloch to Dodgy's Nigel Clark, who took a decade to release an ignored solo album.
But the greatest motive for Borrell to stay where he is lurks in another explanation for him wanting out. "People say he's got the stage presence of someone like Mick Jagger and it's gone to his head," says our insider.
Think about the Mick Jagger solo career for a second. Yes, Memo from Turner from the Performance movie is awesome, but that was almost 30 years ago. The new compilation of Rubberlips' solo years trawls three decades but can barely muster another decent song, and he has given us records with titles as embarrassing as Goddess in the Doorway and She's the Boss, to almost universal apathy (and the sound of a faraway but laughing Keef.).
So if solo stardom can elude arguably the greatest rock frontman of all time - unless that's fellow solo flop Roger Daltrey from the Who - what price the man in the testicle-crunching trousers singing "Uh-uh-oh... America"? But the main reason Borrell shouldn't quit Razorlight is that people like you and me would have to listen to the man. His records with Razorlight are triumphantly egotistical, shamelessly magpie-like retreads, which occasionally have a lovely tune beneath the oodles of pompous self-regard that is presumably tempered by his less spotlight-hugging bandmates and moderating influences of the RZ inner circle. But can you imagine what a Johnny Borrell song would sound like if he'd written and recorded it on his own?
