Just over a year ago Michael Auger worked in a petrol station, Jamie Lambert worked in the finance department at Barts Hospital in London, Thomas Redgrave (a stage name inspired by a theatre poster) was a waiter in a Japanese restaurant, Matthew Pagan sold kitchens and, Portslade born, Richard Hadfield was a labourer.
Just a month prior to their audition for Britain’s Got Talent they came together, over their shared love of musical theatre, and formed Collabro. In February their lives changed forever when they performed Stars from Les Misérables and received a unanimous standing ovation from the judges and audience at their first audition in London.
Collabro progressed to the final of Britain’s Got Talent and were voted the winners in front of 11 million TV viewers. Collabro have since appeared at the Royal Variety Performance (part of their prize) and signed a record deal with SYCO Music with their hotly anticipated debut album, Stars, soaring straight to number one in the charts last summer.
During a short break in his hectic schedule, I spoke to local lad, Richard Hadfield about their journey…
Lets start by talking about your phenomenal success.
It’s been a bit of a ride, hasn’t it? It’s absolutely crazy. We can’t believe that we have done so well, so quickly. It’s unbelievable.
You only got together a month before the Britain’s Got Talent audition. To be as good as you are, so quickly, you must have gelled together as a band almost immediately.
The thing is, we didn’t initially think about putting ourselves forward for Britain’s Got Talent. We just thought that we could put a group together, maybe do some corporate events or work on the cruise ships and just jump into the “events” business and, when we sung together for the first time, we did Bring Him Home from Les Miserables in a pub in London Bridge.
The reaction we got was so good that, almost immediately, we started thinking that maybe we had something that we could take to a bigger stage. Our voices seemed to blend really well, and we were all getting on together, so we decided to go for BGT and now look at us, we’re on tour playing at amazing venues like the London Palladium, St David’s Hall in Cardiff and the one I really can’t wait for, because it’s back home for me, The Brighton Centre.
What was it like seeing the judges reaction to your first, absolutely stunning, BGT audition?
It was a bit of a blur really because the adrenaline was absolutely pumping through us. We got a bit of a grilling before we started with them saying stuff like, “Oh, you’ve only been together a month” and so we were already on the back foot when we started but then we could hear the audience cheering and I remember looking at Simon and Amanda’s faces and they were really taken aback with our performance.
For us it was just amazing. There were three and a half thousand people in the Eventim Apollo in Hammersmith and the audience went so crazy that the noise that came from them meant that, at times, we couldn’t actually hear what we were singing.
And Jamie found it all a bit overwhelming!
Oh yes, good old Jamie. He’s always the emotional one, bless him. We all have times when we get a bit emotional but Jamie’s streets ahead. He gets quite emotional on the tour when we do songs like With You from Ghost the Musical. It’s a very emotional song anyway and, as we can usually see the first couple of rows, and quite a lot of the audience get really emotional in that song, it sets Jamie off too.
What audience are you getting on your tour, middle-aged theatre lovers, or is it a younger crowd?
It’s everyone. I think that’s one of the great things about what we’re doing. I guess that the expected crowd would be theatregoers, parents and even grandparents but, because we are younger, and because we are a “boyband” who do a mixture of fantastic theatre songs as well as some of our pop crossover stuff, everyone is getting something from our shows. A lot of people tell us that it’s the first time that they have actually listened to the words in pop songs like Say Something.
I’m a particular fan of one of the songs on your chart topping album, Stars, and that’s Let It Go from Frozen – and I really like that you didn’t change the words.
That’s a fantastic song and I think it’s the first time that it’s been done by male vocalists, let alone 5 part harmony. The song itself doesn’t need to be changed to be about a guy instead of a girl because that’s not what it’s about. It has a message that wouldn’t be affected by changing the words. People love the song because, as well as being a cracking tune, it has that message of do what you want to do, be who you want to be and don’t ever change that.
In your video clip that they showed before your performance in the final, Jamie said that this was a chance for you to change your lives forever and, as they rarely do a “what happened next” programme, I have to ask, how much has your life changed?
Oh, unbelievably so. Just over a year ago I was busking in Brighton, doing the odd pub gig and also working as a labourer with my older brother and, really, just trying to get by. I was also scrapping the money together to go to the occasional audition in London, when I could, but now we have gigs every week, and not just small gigs, I mean we play at huge conventions and we even did a gig at Windsor Castle.
We also get to do TV which is something I never ever thought I would hear myself say. I dreamed of going into the West End and performing on stage and, actually, what we are doing now has surpassed anything I could imagine. What I get to do, every day, is what I dreamed I might do ever since I started singing at the age of four.
It’s really changed all our lives so much, and we can’t begin to thank everyone who has been involved, the public who voted for us, everyone who comes to see us on tour and who give us the chance to make more music. We have a second album coming out in June and we’re going international as well. We’re going to Japan in April, we’ve already been to Hong Kong and we’re hoping that America is on the horizon too – and that has to be the definition of having your dream come true.
Collabro, joined by second placed BGT finalist Lucy Kay and supported by Philippa Hanna, are appearing at The Brighton Centre, as part of their full national tour, on Friday February 13th at 7.30pm. The performance is already very full, but more east and west balcony tickets have been released and are available from the box office on 0844 847 1515 and at www.brightoncentre.co.uk