He loves a pint, cars, his family and Louis Walsh ('Well, not love him. I miss him'). On the golf course in Portmarnock, Ronan Keating tells Róisín Ingle about learning to sing, his hopes for his new album and his deep fear of being misunderstood.
Portmarnock Hotel & Golf Links, in north Co Dublin, doesn't scream rock'n'roll. But then, neither does Ronan Keating. He's in a room where a group of mature golfers are tucking into a soup 'n' sandwich buffet. Wearing white trousers and a smart golf top, he's all "Pleased to meet you" and "God bless" and "Would you like a cup of coffee?" and "Don't get up". Not being used to such extreme chivalry, I find it slightly disconcerting. Keating seems almost fanatical about opening doors for women. Confused, you find yourself doing a little jig around the door with him, and eventually you just let him open it, because you realise that's his style. After the third or fourth door it becomes quite enjoyable.
Later, riding in a golf buggy - he drives a mean golf buggy - it's a relief to discover he can laugh at himself, because in the past Keating has given the impression of taking himself more seriously than any pop star should. I comment approvingly that he has grown his hair longer, saying that it's different to the style on the cover of his third solo album, Turn It On, from 2003, where he was pictured with defined biceps and a shaved head, wearing a manly white vest. That was a more, um, edgy look, I say, diplomatically, as he manoeuvres the buggy over a hill. "Ah, yeah, well, as edgy as Ronan Keating gets," he says, laughing. For now, anyway. Later, when we sit down to talk, the nice boy of pop seems sometimes to hover refreshingly close to the edge. But more of that later.
Keating has just turned 29. He was 16 when he sang Father and Son, the Cat Stevens song, at a Boyzone audition for Louis Walsh. He was playing golf even then, and the other members of Boyzone would slag him for it. "The funny thing is most of them play golf themselves now," says Keating, getting ready to show off his swing for our photographer. So was he a bit of a young fogey? "Young fogey. Yeah, I like that. I suppose I was."
The slightly longer hairstyle, a boyish barnet the colour of straw, seems to signal a move back to the days of Life Is a Rollercoaster and When You Say Nothing at All, two worldwide hits that silenced those who said Keating would sink without trace after quitting Boyzone. His new single, All Over Again, from his fourth solo album, Bring You Home, shows a new maturity to his voice, which long ago lost the when-you-shay-noshing-at-all twang the nation loved to hate. It was an affectation bred by insecurity. "I couldn't sing that well when I joined Boyzone," he says, laughing when I suggest gobs will be smacked across the country at his revelation.
All Over Again is a quiet gem of a song, featuring a secret credibility weapon in Kate Rusby, the darling of English folk music, and it will probably sell by the truckload. He'll be singing it live at a Prince's Trust concert in London next Saturday, when the promotion for the album officially kicks off.
There are faint bags under Keating's big blue eyes, and a weariness about the singer, as we sit in the bar of the hotel. He politely (of course) requests biscuits with his coffee, because it's too early for lunch. He has changed out of his golfing gear and is looking more rock 'n' roll in jeans and a maroon leather jacket. The father of three has been in househusband mode for much of the past year, bringing seven-year-old Jack and five-year-old Missy to school and looking after eight-month-old Ali. "I was taking out the bins the other night, and I thought to myself, Yeah, it's definitely time you went back on the road," he says, smiling.
He is nervous about how the album will be received, even though he feels it's his best work. "I'm a worrier. My mother was a worrier," he says, in a reference to the late Marie Keating, in whose name he and his family have done laudable work to raise awareness of breast cancer in Ireland and, more recently, Britain. "I feel pressure coming up to every album. I can't sleep; I am a mess. I think you can get sick from worrying," he says.
He might have more reason to worry this time. His last album, a best-of collection called 10 Years of Hits, sold more than three million copies in the UK, but, before that, Turn It On sold only 500,000. A canny observer of the industry, Keating knows his new album needs to do well if he has any hope of continuing his solo career. He realises the fickle world of pop probably won't give him another chance.
"I'd never gotten it wrong before," he says, getting started on a plate of sugary biscuits. He admits that the poor performance of Turn It On was a wake-up call. "It frightened me," he says. "I was cocky. I thought I could release anything and people would buy it . . . Not that I released a bad album, but I just thought I could be more adventurous and still hold on to my audience. Listen, every young fella wants to be Jon Bon Jovi or Bono, so I thought I could make an album that was rockier."
He says the wrong single was released, that Lost for Words wasn't the style of music his fans were expecting. "The market has changed. If you are in a boy band it's easy to sell records. But the people who buy my records aren't young kids any more. It's people who are into music. Housewives are a massive percentage of that, and they want to buy albums that they will listen to every day - and they are not just going to buy a record because it's me."
So like his musical heroes U2 - he quotes Bono twice during the interview - Keating went away to dream it all up again. The success of the greatest-hits album after the disappointment of Turn It On propelled him, he says, back "into people's hearts and heads". He took a year and a half off to write this album, with the usual host of established songwriters to help, such as Gregg Alexander of New Radicals (who wrote Rollercoaster, as well as Sophie Ellis-Bextor's Murder on the Dancefloor), Calum MacColl (Kirsty's brother) and the soft rocker Richard Marx. It's the kind of ballad-heavy, buffed-and-polished pop-rock you'd expect from Keating, and it's sure to please his infant-and-granny audience.
He has plenty of songwriting credits on Bring You Home, which also includes Golden Horde and Neil Diamond covers, but I'm curious to know how his own songs come together. Is he concerned that people might think he does little more than throw in a few lyrics? Does he ever sit down with a guitar and come up with a song himself?
"That wouldn't happen very often," he says. "I am not that good a songwriter, but when I collaborate I really enjoy it. The creative side is the most enjoyable part of the process for me. If people want to believe I am not writing them that's fine . . . I don't think those guys would write with me if that was the case. They would just pitch songs to me and put their name on them, and I would use them. The first single is a Don Mescall song. I'm not stupid. If the song is good enough I will use it. I don't need to write them all."
He has a studio in his Malahide home where he plays guitar and "a bit of piano", although he'd like to know more about the technical aspects of recording. He is currently putting together a songwriting company, to provide tunes for other artists. "It's very lucrative," he says. "There are lots of songs left over from this album, and we need to find a home for them. A lot of my songs would have a country feel, and you could very easily put them with movies, so that's another angle." Something to fall back on, he seems to be implying, if the solo career peters out.
Three years have passed since Keating sacked Louis Walsh as his manager, and he knows the imminent round of promotional interviews will mean having to answer questions about his current relationship with the creator of Boyzone. After the split, a spurned Walsh told the tabloids that Keating was "talentless", even though for years he had insisted that Keating was the only truly talented member of Boyzone. Keating was furious, and he still hasn't spoken to Walsh, although he insists he is over it. He is reluctant to talk about the rift but can't seem to help himself. It's a shadow over his career, and he still seems in two minds about his feelings towards his former mentor.
"I have always said to myself there is no point getting into a row with Louis Walsh. There is no point. Whatever you do he will always go to a lower point than that," he says. "I am not going to slag him. It's very hard, because we were very close. He knew he wasn't managing me properly. He knew because I had given him a warning a year previously. So as much as he says" [ doing an amusing impression of Walsh] 'I didn't know it was going to happen,' he did know. I remember sitting in the Merrion Hotel and going, 'Lou, come on, I'm a mess, I can't figure out where we are going here.' And he's going around telling people I'm like Cliff Richard. Louis didn't have a plan. He never has a plan. And you know, I love Louis. He's a great manager."
Hang on. You love him? "Well, not love him. I miss him. I do miss him. We were very good friends. He was a good friend to me and Yvonne," he says, referring to his wife of eight years. "But I could never really forgive him for what he did to me."
Keating was annoyed when he heard recently that Walsh had told journalists the pair had made up and were considering a Boyzone reunion. "I haven't heard from the guy. It's just waffle. It's hype. That is just Louis's style."
If Walsh did call to offer an olive branch, would he take it? "I have to say honestly that I think he'd only be doing it for other reasons and not because he actually cared whether we'd be friends again," he says. "It shocked me, what he said and what he did, and if that is the true person he is, he could never honestly turn around and say, Let's be friends. We were very close. He understood me, and I understood him. He helped me get where I am today. And that all changed from one day to the next." Has he any advice for Shayne Ward, Walsh's latest protege? "I'm not getting into that," he says, as close to stony-faced as this good-natured bloke from north Dublin can be.
It turns out that being understood by Walsh, or by anyone, is desperately important to Keating. When I ask what kinds of things upset him he says it got on his nerves when someone accused him recently of being calculating. This is surprising, given that he was part of a manufactured pop band whose success owed much to the calculated nature of the enterprise.
"They said to me, 'Ronan, you have a big plan. You are so calculated.' That really annoyed me. Sure, I have a plot for my family, and that's to rear my children as best I can, to be a good husband, a good dad . . . This person thought I had always had this big plan to get rid of Louis, as if I was always going to move on. Calculating is a cold f***ing word; I just don't like it."
Perhaps because he has been in the bubble of home and studio, with no interviews for more than a year, Keating becomes suddenly reflective, talking aloud, almost to himself, about why the public perception of him is not how he would like it to be. "I don't like it if people think I am someone different to who I am," he says, staring out of a window, barely making eye contact now. "Maybe it's my fault. I am not the best person at PR in the world. Maybe I get it wrong. Maybe I have. Maybe the person I am publicly is not the person I actually am in real life. So maybe I should have a rethink. I don't know. I seem to have got it wrong . . . I am not saying poor me . . . But it's just that 'calculated' thing, that I have a big plot and a big plan and that there is some hidden secret."
I interrupt his thoughts by suggesting that the untrue rumour of an affair with his fellow singer Brian Kennedy a few years ago was an example of how people jumped at the chance to uncover something "hidden" about him. "I don't think people think that about me, do they?" he asks quietly. "It all stops with my children. I will stand on a box and say it. I do not want my kids to think their dad is gay. Why would any parent who isn't gay want that? That disturbs me greatly. I am their dad, and I have no problem in any way with people who are gay, but that hurt me that someone would think that."
Why would someone who has been in the public eye for 12 years still care so deeply about what people think? Shouldn't he let it go, I ask. He doesn't seem to hear. "People think that because I am not Robbie Williams, and there isn't all these kiss-and-tell stories . . . Look, I had a lot of fun in Boyzone. There was a lot of girls around. There was a lot going on, a lot of women, and every night was a f***ing party. And then I met Yvonne, and I wanted to settle down . . . F*** it. I landed on my feet. So what? I can't win. I can't have it all, so I should accept what I have and keep going. God bless us. My kids' friends thinking that. I don't have any issues with gay people, but I don't want anyone to look at me like that. It's not who I am, so it's not fair."
The thing about Keating is that there probably are no hidden compartments, that it's probably true when he says he's just another lad who lives in Malahide, loves fast cars, likes a pint in his local and is committed to his wife and children. Oh, and he's "passionate about music", which is something of a mantra. There is the Walsh business and his mother's death, which he will probably never get over, but all in all he is happy with his life, and he resents the Groanin' Keating tag that has dogged him since he had the temerity, a few years ago, to speak out against begrudgery.
There was a time when accusing Keating of being boring would have him falling over himself to tell you about the bottles of Jack Daniel's he liked to drink, the fun he had with Boyzone groupies and the mad parties he went to, in the vain hope of dispelling his squeaky-clean image. "You mean I was like, 'Please believe that I am cool?' Maybe I was young and naive and thought that if I said it people would believe it," he says. "Anyway, I know I am cool. My kids know I am cool," he adds, laughing. "Sometimes I do want to say, look, I am not boring. I am just normal. We are not the Osbournes. We just aren't.
"I happen to have the most amazing job. I get to do what I want, play songs and guitar and have a laugh. I think maybe people are just sick of it. Maybe they think, Ah, that Ronan Keating has just got f***ing everything and is too f***ing perfect." Maybe. And maybe it's time he stopped caring what people think.
Something tells me he's almost there.
Bring You Home, Ronan Keating's new album, will be released on Polydor on June 5th. The single, All Over Again, is out on May 29th
KEATING ON...
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
'I'm a believer in God but not in the Catholic Church. It has disappointed me with people using their position to take advantage of children. I have three kids. I want them to be believers, and they pray every night, but I won't drag them down to church to listen to a hypocrite. I won't do it'
MODERN IRELAND
'It's all MTV culture now, and there is nothing wrong with it. Everyone wants to have fancy cars and big gaffs and bling bling and go on fancy holidays to Dubai and South Africa. Forget about Tenerife, where we all went as kids. We should embrace the country we are now'
HIS CHARITY WORK
'I am a UN ambassador for food and agriculture. I also work with Christian Aid for trade justice, and it's made me much more socially aware. Some people think people like me only do it for the publicity, but, as Bono says, if it saves lives, let them think that'
HIS SSIA
'My financial guy rang and told me there was a scheme where you put in so much money and the Government gives you so much. I thought there must be a catch, but myself and Yvonne did it, and it's amazing the money you get. I am probably going to put it in a college fund for the kids'
INVESTMENTS
'I don't like investing in figures on a screen. I like to look at a building and say, I own that. I have investments in Dubai and Longford and Cork and otherplaces. It was hard work to make the money. I don't just want to give it away'
A BOYZONE REUNION
'I speak to all the other boys, and things are fine between us now, but I have told them, sadly, that I am not ready. I would never say never, but it's not going to happen now. I'd be afraid to reunite, in case we failed. There would be serious egg-on-face'