In One Direction, Louis Tomlinson was ‘the kid at the back’. Now, with his first solo album and his own record label, he’s taking the spotlight and learning to trust himself

Coming out of a dissolving boy band must be a bit like being an entrant in one of those dystopian jungle fights – a Hunger Games-style event in which bandmates are scattered across an unknown terrain and challenged to slog their lonely route back to fame. Justin Timberlake, after NSync, enjoyed the unsporting edge of natural talent and crushed his former colleagues. Robbie Williams looked supreme in the Take That scrimmage, at least until Gary Barlow circled back, gathered up the other three, and made the fight a more compelling four-on-one. By the time One Direction announced they were to go on indefinite hiatus in 2015, many of us were familiar enough with the conventions of boy-band bloodsport to start picking favourites for the coming melee.

Harry Styles – charming, a grinner – was best placed to succeed on his own. Big-lunged Zayn Malik was already out of the band by that time and had used his head start to good effect, preparing a solo album that went to No 1. Liam Payne and Niall Horan – always second-tier members – were given middling chances. And ranked last in any serious analysis, the most fitfully appreciated member of One Direction, was Louis Tomlinson. Here was a combatant you might expect to find curled up in a fox hole on the battlefield, pale and chain-smoking and wondering how much he really wanted in on such an unequal fight.

Louis Tomlinson in this season's sportswear Read more

It is in roughly this position I find the 25-year-old, one afternoon earlier this summer. Slender, tracksuited, a little wan under his manicured facial hair, Tomlinson sits on a garden bench outside the photographer’s studio and works methodically through an entire pack of cigarettes. “I know, I know,” he says of the smoking. “It’s not great. But there’s so much hurry-up-and-wait in this job. It helps me get ready to go again.”

I’ve often wondered why the fringe members of boy bands do this to themselves. Why they gather themselves to “go again”. As Tomlinson acknowledges, in One Direction he was seen by some as “forgettable, to a certain degree”. “The others have always been… Like Niall, for example. He’s the most lovely guy in the world. Happy-go-lucky Irish, no sense of arrogance. And he’s fearless. There are times I’ve thought: ‘I’d have a bit of that.’ Zayn, back in the day. He could relate to me on a nerves level. In the first year we were both the least confident. But Zayn has a fantastic voice and for him it was always about owning that. Liam always had a good stage presence, same as Harry, they’ve both got that ownership. Harry comes across very cool. Liam’s all about getting the crowd going, doing a bit of dancing…”

And then there’s you.

“And then there’s me.”

Tracks from Tomlinson’s solo record have been playing inside the studio. They’re modest, rather lovely pop songs that in their quiet way seem to acknowledge his underdog status. Tomlinson lights another cig. “You know I didn’t sing a single solo on the X Factor,” he says, recalling the time back in 2010, when One Direction were first put together as a band on the ITV reality show. “A lot of people can take the piss out of that. But when you actually think about how that feels, standing on stage every single week, thinking: ‘What have I really done to contribute here? Sing a lower harmony that you can’t really hear in the mix?” He guesses, smiling wryly, that in those months he was best known as “The kid wearing espadrilles, stood in’t back.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Famous five: from left, One Direction’s Louis Tomlinson, Liam Payne, Harry Styles, Zayn Malik and Niall Horan. Photograph: Kevin Kane/Getty Images

Not the best singer, not the high-energy guy, not the dude, Tomlinson discovered he was the one in the band who was most tuned into backstage logistics – the one who paid attention when “the 20th approval form” was passed around for a signature. “And if there was any bad news that needed giving to the label I’d always be designated to have the argument.” Later this would lead to Tomlinson founding a small record label of his own, Triple String, and to starting a side project managing a girl band. In his day job with One Direction, meanwhile, he toured the world, released five albums and amassed a large, equal-parts fortune like the rest of the boys. Somewhere en route, Tomlinson says, he found his feet as a performer. “In the last year of One Direction I was probably the most confident I ever was. And then it was: ‘OK, hiatus!’”

I think they’ll write books about One Direction fans, because they are so fanatical. The intensity. It’s remarkable

Tomlinson argued against it, he says, when the band first sat down to discuss separation. “It wasn’t necessarily a nice conversation. I could see where it was going.” Tomlinson remembers his instinctive assumption being simple. He would step away – try writing for other people, keep his label going, wait the “two years, five years, whatever it be” until One Direction reformed. “If you’d asked me a year or 18 months ago: ‘Are you going to do anything as a solo artist?’ I’d have said absolutely not.”

What changed? If the management stuff made you happy, I say, why not sit back and focus on that?

“But then I’d be conceding,” he says.

Conceding to who? To what? He waves his hand in the air. He could mean anything: history, bandmates, doubters, the press. Tomlinson is quiet for a while and eventually says: “I’m trying to work out why it is that I’m [doing this], now that you’ve asked that question.” He fidgets and trials a few answers that run out of steam. “It’s frustrating, because I know what I want to say and I can’t articulate it.” He pats for his lighter. The odds are against this tilt, Tomlinson seems to understand. But as we start to talk through his reasons for at least trying, I find myself hoping that this Last Directioner makes an unlikely go of it after all.

Reason one. The pop industry has an ineluctable momentum, and the star who begins something (like a skier inching off a hilltop) can quickly find themselves bound to ride out whatever thrills and trials comes next. Tomlinson gives the example of how he first became famous. Born in Doncaster in 1991 he was raised by his mother, Johannah Deakin, and later also by her new partner Mark Tomlinson. He was 16 when he went to his first X Factor audition. Prompt rebuff. A year later he made it into the audition process, but still nowhere near the part where ambitious young singers are briskly embraced or condemned by that great gatekeeper of celebrity, Simon Cowell. In 2010 Tomlinson, twice unlucky, gave the auditions a final try.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘It’s hard for a lot of people who are fanatical to believe you are a real entity’: Louis Tomlinson. Photograph: Alex Bramall/The Observer

“I told myself I’ve just got to get to Simon, get his opinion, that’s all my ambition was. Then all of a sudden everything changed. To my friends in Doncaster I would always say [getting into the band] was the most incredible thing that happened to me. And it was. But it happened when I was already having the best year of my life. I was 17, 18, just started driving, didn’t need fake ID any more, going to house parties. That’s the time. That’s the age. And to a certain degree… ‘Having it taken away’ is the wrong phrase. But there was a price to pay.”

He says his current efforts as a soloist came about in similar fashion. In 2016, Tomlinson had become a father. (His son, Freddie, “who I love so much”, was born after a brief relationship with a Californian stylist called Briana Jungwirth.) He had some other personal matters to work through and in the summer he went on holiday to Las Vegas to blow off steam. At a club the American DJ Steve Aoiki was playing. Tomlinson, giddy with delight from Aoiki’s set, suggested to the DJ they try writing something together. In career terms, he had inched off the hill again, without necessarily considering the gradient of the slope.

A few months later, Tomlinson says, a single he’d written with Aoiki was being rolled out for release through One Direction’s old record label, Syco. Tomlinson was booked in to perform it on live TV. “And I was, like: ‘Did I really think this through?’”

Which leads Tomlinson to reason two. He’s well aware he was fast-tracked into his music career. That, as a part of One Direction, he was only a piece of a “heavy machine”. And as a self-aware northerner, from a proudly working class family, this has left Tomlinson with residual guilt to answer about wealth and status that do not feel to him fully earned. “This is the sort of shit I think about. And I know, I know it sounds ungrateful. But I think about a man, on a nine-to-five, working his arse off for six months so he can go to his family and say: ‘Guys, I’m taking you to Disneyland.’ That moment… I’ll never have that in my family life. And I’ve worked hard. But I’ve never worked hard, not like that.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Story of his life: Louis Tomlinson with partner Eleanor Calder in 2013. Photograph: Danny Martindale/WireImage

Tomlinson says he has already sweated more for this record than any before. When you’re putting together material as a soloist, he says, you quickly learn that those hot-shot collaborators who once dribbled to work with One Direction no longer pick up the phone so readily. “I couldn’t say to you now that I could definitely get a superstar writer in a session with me. And I understand that.” Tomlinson adds, with no real vinegar, that not all of his former bandmates will be operating in these same straitened circumstances: “Harry won’t struggle with any of that.”

In their One Direction days, no question, Styles got the most attention. But all the boys had their devotees and Tomlinson retains a body of fans who’ve been loyal to him even when he might have looked a wobbly investment. He wants to prove to them – reason three – that he’s been worth the backing all these years. “I honestly think they’ll write books about One Direction fans,” Tomlinson says. “Because they are so fanatical. The intensity. It’s remarkable.”

Draining, I ask?

“Oh definitely draining. Definitely.”

Tomlinson cannot talk about it with me, not without getting into muddy legal waters, but there was recently a difficult episode involving a small crowd of fans at an airport in LA. He was travelling with his partner, Eleanor Calder, who is viewed with some distrust by the fiercest corps of Louis fans. Video footage seems to show Calder being surrounded and attacked by a group of girls. Tomlinson, unable to discuss the matter, says to me more generally that he hopes his new music will reveal to fans a more complete version of himself than before.

“Although my problems might look a hell of a lot different they’re actually, fundamentally, the same. Loss feels the same. Heartbreak feels the same. The fundamental hurtful things for a human are all the same. And I feel like I have to push that constantly, that humanised… The humanised feeling that…”

That you’re not a toy?

“Yeah. Honestly, it’s crazy. It’s hard for a lot of people who are fanatical to believe that you are a real entity and a person.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Louis Tomlinson photographed for the Observer Magazine. Opening picture: jumper, £35, rokit.co.uk. Top: T-shirt, £145, Martine Rose (brownsfashion.com). Above: polo shirt, £100, Ami (mrporter.com); tracksuit bottoms, £45, fila.co.uk. Photographer’s assistants Michael Furlonger and John Munro; stylist’s assistant Bemi Shaw; grooming Lou Teasdale at the Book Agency using Bleach London; Location jjmedia.com (020 7749 0500). Photograph: Alex Bramall/The Observer

Which brings us to reason four. Reason four Tomlinson discusses with caution. Reason four he enshrouds with disclaimers: that it is not his intention to tell “a sob story”, that “I don’t like people feeling sorry for me”. Reason four concerns his mum.

Johannah Deakin was diagnosed with leukaemia in early 2016. Tomlinson had been worried his luck would run out; that having been “dealt that amazing hand” to squeak into the last berth in One Direction, he was due some sort of equalising blow. And he gives a bleak little laugh when he recalls where he was when the terrible phone call came. “At Jamie Vardy’s wedding of all places. Talk about your places, for something super-traumatic. My mum told me, uh, yeah, that she was definitely terminal.”

They were unusually close. He recalls how she was often one step ahead “because she had the password to my email”. It was an intimacy he attributes to them being close in age. “I remember the day I lost my virginity. I hadn’t even told any of my mates and I was, like: ‘Mum? I know this is really weird. But I’ve got to tell you…’ I remember thinking this is a bizarre conversation to be having with your mother. But it’s testament to how comfortable she made me.”

When Deakin died, in December 2016, Tomlinson was only days away from the live gig he’d agreed to do on the X Factor. “I remember saying to her: ‘Mum, how the fuck do you expect me to do this now?’ And she didn’t swear much, my mum. She’d always tell me off for swearing. And this time she was like: ‘You’ve got to fucking do it, it’s as simple as that.’ It was football manager, team talk stuff.’” The footage of Tomlinson’s performance that weekend is hard to watch. When he first appears on the X Factor stage he looks rigid, almost plastic, with grief. He’s clearly able to lose himself in the three-minute drama of a pop song. And after that the colour drains right back out of his face.

Tomlinson smokes for a bit. He says: “I’m not gonna claim this is all for me mum. But it was definitely… It was…”

He thinks. Throughout his life, he says, his mum always had greater belief in him than he did. “Sometimes my reservation, or my confidence, might have prevented me from doing something. And I’ve needed a mum in the past to kick me up the arse and go: ‘You’re doing it.’”

The boy bander has his reasons, then. “I’ve enjoyed this,” he says. “An opportunity to talk super openly. Not, y’know, answer questions about who my favourite superhero is. I don’t feel I get that many chances.”

The pile of cigarette butts in front of him has mounted to quite a height. Tomlinson, seeming to notice it for the first time, mutters: “Sorry. I’ve been chaining.” His mum hated smoking, he says. Then he smiles. “Though I remember she had the occasional cigarette herself.”

He taps his lighter on the table and asks what I make of everything he’s said. “Do you think your readers are still gonna wonder: ‘Why doesn’t he just not do it?’”

I’m not sure, I tell him, trying to be honest. But let’s see.

Louis’s new single ‘Back To You’ featuring Bebe Rexha and Digital Farm Animals is coming soon