‘A five-year-old could play this!’ How Razorlight made Golden Touch

Johnny Borrell, singer, guitarist

I was working at Stamford Bridge, doing match-day security in the players’ tunnel, and walking the players to their cars after the game. I’d stand between the dressing room and the press area, so I got to hear the half-time talks and watch most of the Chelsea games. It was once every 10 days and still the greatest job I ever had. So when Mercury offered me half a million quid, I was kind of like: “Well, I mean, I dunno …”

I was living above a Nigerian clothes shop called La Chi Chi. I had a bed, a record-player, a desk and a fridge for beers. I was of the opinion that if you want be a songwriter, you have to spend every waking hour writing. I was totally focused. I would sit and think: “Most of my favourite songs are just three chords. If I just play three chords for eight hours, hopefully a good song will come out.”

I played A, G#m and C#m and sang: “I know a man with the golden hand / You better get him / If you can.” If I can find the first line – so I know who I’m talking to and what I’m trying to say – the rest tends to follow. Queens of Noize DJ Mairead Nash was a good friend of mine and part of our gang. It was us, the Libertines and Mairead. I thought of her story. Once I had written “I know a girl with a golden touch / She’s got enough / She’s got too much” I thought, “Boom! There’s the song.”

I’ve still got all the recordings. Sometimes I listen back and it’s nerve-racking, like watching Gazza in Italia 90 sliding in at the far post and thinking “Just make contact” even though you know he’s not going to. You can hear me coming up with the first verse, which crystallises the song. Then you hear my old flip-phone ringing. I put my guitar down with a clunk and say: “Hello.” If the phone had rung two minutes earlier, I might never have written the song.

Björn Ågren, guitarist

We had a little space for rehearsals in Leyton, east London, near the ice rink. It would have been in the evening because I was the only one with a normal job. I was selling jeans at Diesel so they’d have to wait for me to finish. The start of rehearsal was treat time because often Johnny would go: “I’ve got a new song.” He’d sit on the couch and play it on his electric guitar. I remember being really floored. I told him: “The verse is absolutely brilliant, but the chorus doesn’t lift.” The next rehearsal he had the chorus. I thought: “That’s killer now.”

I’d just learned about chord inversions, commonly used by organ-players so they can sit in one frequency range, which allows for better blending with the other instruments. An upshot is that the hand doesn’t have to move as much. The pre-chorus to Golden Touch is a great illustration of chord inversions on the guitar – two chords repeat twice and I play further and further up the neck. I remember when I saw the sheet music of the first Razorlight album, and looked at my guitar parts I thought I must have looked like a simpleton. “A five-year-old could play this!” I thought.

We were recording some demos and decided that Golden Touch was one of our best songs, so we needed to hone it. We soon had an album’s worth of material but, after changing producers a few times, we ended up scrapping most of what we’d recorded – except for Stumble and Fall, which became our first single, as well as Rip It Up, and the part of Golden Touch from when it starts until when the drums came in. In the last verse of Golden Touch you can hear some thigh slaps and a breathy backing vocal, recorded a few days before we finished the final mix.

I don’t think we’ve done a gig without playing Golden Touch. It’s had a few live iterations over the years. It’s got a good groove so you can really get into it when you play. We do a little section where we go completely dead and people sing along, which is kind of nuts as it’s 20 years old. Even at a festival, when we’re on at 3pm, I’ll think: “Surely there’s not going to be any super Razorlight fans here?” But sure enough, people sing along. It’s amazing that you can create something with that kind of resonance.