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I’m interviewing Miles Kane in the velvet gloom of Quo Vadis’s members-only Blue Room, but he’d much rather be in a bar.

Not because the Glastonbury-playing, model-dating guitarist wants to be slamming tequila, you understand, but because this peaceful and cosy room is just too damn quiet.

A table of chattering espresso-sippers has just left and Kane is not happy. His voice drops as he half buries himself in the corner of the velvet banquette. ‘Sometimes I prefer speaking in a bar, you know where it’s noisy,’ he whispers. He looks a little forlorn. ‘It’s kind of better that way. A bit of background beats silence.’ There’s an uncomfortable pause. ‘I’ve just made it really awkward now, haven’t I?’

This desire to be surrounded by the voices of others makes sense in a lot of ways because Kane has, for much of his time in the public eye, been mainly known for the people he hangs out with. His best friend is Alex Turner, globally renowned indie frontman of Arctic Monkeys. His first two solo albums featured the likes of Paul Weller, Noel Gallagher and tunes written by Turner. Romantically, he’s been linked to models and It girls galore — Suki Waterhouse, Laura Whitmore and Rosie Fortescue (more of which later). With Turner, again, he formed ‘supergroup’ The Last Shadow Puppets while Arctic Monkeys was on a break. Most recently he’s been in Beatles covers band Dr Pepper’s Jaded Hearts Club, alongside Muse’s Matt Bellamy and Blur’s Graham Coxon.

Kane plays down his reputation as a schmoozer. ‘I just hang out with my mates, go to the pub, do a bit of boxing, chill and sing, you know what I mean?’ Besides, after five year’s hanging out in LA with Turner (‘Al’) and his other famous friends, Kane’s striking out on his own again, with a new solo album tentatively called Coup de Grace, due out at the end of the summer. The elegant French poetry of the title is actually a reference to his favourite WWE wrestler (Kane himself has never tried it, but ‘I’d be amazing at it!’), the demonically body painted Finn Bálor, whose closing move — a diving double foot stomp from the ropes — is known as his coup de grace.

More death metal than poetry, then, but the songs themselves are a lyric-heavy change from his old stuff. Again, he’s collaborating with big names, this time Lana Del Rey (‘we’ve written a lot of songs together. One of them is on this album, and it’s f***ing great’) and Noughties hero Jamie T (‘it was amazing, in the first week we did about three tunes just in my apartment’) on songs which are ‘just so upbeat and sort of punky’, with ‘a lot of words, which I don’t usually do — that was what Jamie T was sort of encouraging me on’.

He’s also about to launch another collaboration, a 10-piece capsule collection with menswear brand Fred Perry. ‘I’ve always loved my clothes,’ he says earnestly. The collection, his second with Fred Perry (a third is already on the cards), features ‘super plain’ Cuban bowling shirts and ‘classic’ tracksuits. Is music or fashion more important to him? ‘It’s hard that. I’ve got to go music, but it’s close.’

After all, he couldn’t just abandon his 15-year career in indie rock, which kicked off at the age of 18 — at exactly the same time as Turner. Kane grew up in the Wirral, the son of a butcher (his mum) and a café owner (his dad) and was performing in band The Little Flames when Turner was just starting out in Monkeys. They ended up gigging at the same pubs and as the Monkeys’ fame exponentially grew, Kane found himself, with new band The Rascals, supporting Turner on tour (Kane has been quoted as claiming that the reason he himself never joined Monkeys was because ‘I really wanted to be a frontman at that time. I hadn’t been a frontman. I had a hard-on for that’).

When Kane left The Rascals in 2009 to reinvent himself as a solo artist, Turner was there to co-write half the tracks on Kane’s album Colour of the Trap, released in 2011. His second solo album in 2013, Don’t Forget Who You Are, was written during the break-up of his relationship with model Suki Waterhouse. He’s since been linked with Laura Whitmore and Rosie Fortescue and today he refers obliquely to ‘a dramatic break-up that sort of drained me a bit’, in late 2016. So, how’s his love life now? He winces. ‘I’m single at the moment, yeah. I mean we could go there but I don’t know if I want to.’

It’s been Kane’s time in The Last Shadow Puppets with Turner that has propelled him into the spotlight. Their first album in 2008, The Age of the Understatement, went straight to No1 and had them playing Glastonbury with Jack White; indeed, both times Arctic Monkeys have headlined the Pyramid Stage, Turner has invited Kane onstage for an impromptu jam. The second Shadow Puppets album, Everything You’ve Come To Expect released in 2016, however, cast Kane in a slightly less favourable light — not only was the music less well received but an interview Turner and Kane gave to Spin webzine journalist Rachel Brodsky went viral after Kane asked her, mid-interview, to join him in his hotel room and gave her a ‘not entirely consensual kiss on the cheek’.

Brodsky wrote about how uncomfortable she felt and Kane was forced to publicly apologise. Such an incident might have proved career-ending had it happened in this post-#MeToo era; even the limited outcry at the time has left Kane wary. It was ‘a sense of humour miscommunication, you know what I mean?’ he squirms. Will the music industry be the next to expose sexual predation? ‘It’s horrendous, know what I mean? That’s all I can say.’

With Turner fully reimmersed in Arctic Monkeys — their hugely anticipated sixth album is out in May (Kane has heard it but ‘can’t talk about it’) — Kane has had ample time to move out of his best friend’s shadow with Coup de Grace. Sure, he’s annoyed about the timing of NME’s recent print demise — ‘I wanted to be on the cover for this album so I’m gutted, yeah’ — but when it comes to individual recognition, Kane is philosophical.

‘We’re lucky to still be able to be doing it. I guess I’m grateful for that.’ He pauses. ‘When you think about it, I’m not on the level they are by any stretch of the imagination. I’ve still got a very long way to go in my career. Hopefully, you get to where you want to go.’

Miles Kane x Fred Perry launches 10 May