Hair and makeup: Claire Woods. Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian
It’s not hard to spot the pop star in the restaurant – fabulous highlights, diamond rings on his fingers and a sheepskin coat that could double as a tent. At 56, Matt Goss’s face is as smooth as parchment paper. But if he’s had work done, it’s good work. He could pass as a thirtysomething footballer.
Goss, the former frontman of Bros, is back. The three-piece group – Goss on vocals, his twin brother, Luke, on drums and Craig Logan on bass – were a teen sensation in the late 80s. For three brief years, the Camberley boys were the biggest band in Britain. The twins were peroxide bombshells in leather jackets, ripped jeans and Dr Martens, and their signature tune, appropriately enough, was When Will I Be Famous? They had eight Top 10 singles, including I Owe You Nothing and Cat Among the Pigeons, before splitting suddenly and acrimoniously. Apparently, Luke was jealous that Matt got more attention, so he quit. That was it.
Then Bros reformed in 2016 to play the O2. The venue sold out in a record seven seconds and a documentary was made called After the Screaming Stops. It couldn’t have been less airbrushed. The film starts with Matt screaming: “You talk to me like a fucking cunt” at Luke, and continues over 98 uncensored minutes. It was compared with the great rock satire This Is Spinal Tap, only this was for real. Goss became famous all over again for his unusual take on life and unique aphorisms, with reviewers comparing him to David Brent. Perhaps most memorably, he pronounced: “I made a conscious decision because of Stevie Wonder not to be superstitious.”
After a long stint in Las Vegas, Goss returned to Britain last year. He’s about to go on tour, release a new album, star in his first movie, promote a brand of rum he’s got equity in and finish writing his first musical. Phew.
It’s 37 years since When Will I Be Famous? stormed the charts and Goss says it feels like yesterday. He takes me through the early years: playing electric keyboards at 12; almost getting signed by Arista at 16; Sony coming knocking at 18; becoming a household name at 19.
The twins didn’t have an easy start. Their parents split up when they were five, there was little money and they moved house 11 times as children. In the documentary, Matt says their favourite toy was a dart. “Not a dartboard, just a dart,” he clarifies. He smiles when I remind him. “I know it seems almost like satire, but it’s true.” On one occasion, he got hit by the dart. “My grandad pulled it out of my ribs and said: ‘Be more careful.’ This period was probably the best time of my life in terms of family. Spending time with my aunt Sally in Camberwell. Aunt Sally is the reason I sing. We loved singers like Stevie Wonder and Donny Hathaway.” I ask how long this period lasted. “It was between five and 15.” In other words, it ended just as Bros was about to form.
But, he says, he also has wonderful memories of Bros: selling out Wembley Arena night after night; being No 1 in 36 countries simultaneously; being the youngest band to play Wembley Stadium. “I’m still the youngest man to headline that venue.” Not that he’s competitive with his brother. Goss is 11 minutes younger than Luke, who is now a successful actor in the US. Those years of mega fame are represented most powerfully by a specific image, he says. “At every single station you don’t see anything but faces against the window of a bullet train.”
The brothers’ relationship resembles the Gallaghers in extremis. While Luke was said to be envious of Matt, Matt has never truly got over Luke leaving the band. Does he ever think about where they’d be today if they had continued? “All the time. To this day, I think we shouldn’t have broken up. We should have just ridden out the storm.” What was the storm? “We started to get negative press when the tide was turning, and it was brutal. Mean. Foul. Just foul.” It really was. One music journalist wrote he hoped they died in a crash so he didn’t have to listen to their music again. It wasn’t just painful for the boys, it was awful for their family. “You’ve got to understand that everyone’s got a mother they love, a father they love, a brother they love. And they have to read that. You’re an easy target.”
What made it much worse was that their sister Carolyn was killed in a car crash when she was 18 and the boys, then aged 20, were at their peak. The brothers were driven back to their family home knowing something terrible had happened but weren’t told what it was until they got there. “When my sister was killed I was so angry. The driver was drunk. He also died and so did her best friend. Three people died that day.”
Alongside his profound eccentricity, a sadness has often seemed to shadow Goss. Family has meant everything to him, for good and bad. Despite the tensions with Luke, he has called him the love of his life. Today he says his mother, Carol, who died in 2014, is the love of his life. She died a horribly violent death after a stomach rupture when staying with him in Los Angeles, and he witnessed it. He says it left him with PTSD, as well as an overwhelming sense of loss. I tell him my mother died a year ago tomorrow, and he clasps my hands. “I’m so sorry mate, that’s like yesterday. So sorry. Bro. I really am. When my mum died that’s the day I really became a man because I felt orphaned. I don’t have that relationship with my dad. Even though we are great friends he’s not as interested in me as my mum was. My mum was interested in every detail, the minutiae of everything. The food, the flavour, everything.”
By their early 20s, it was all over for Bros. And at 23, he headed for the US. He needed the space, he says. “I couldn’t move in Britain. Couldn’t breathe. Waking up every morning and there’d be a story about you that wasn’t fair or even true.” Did that bother you? “Of course it did!” His voice rises. “I’m a strong man. There was no social media back then so you couldn’t correct it, so you were constantly chasing your tail, constantly living in a defensive position.”
I ask Goss if he enjoyed success. He politely but firmly corrects me. “Enjoys success.” He’s got a point. He recently completed an 11-year residency at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, singing the American songbook as well as his old hits. “It’s one of the longest residencies by a British artist in Vegas history.”
He gigged four times a week. Although he wasn’t playing the main venue, he tells me he transformed Caesars Palace. “Within two years Robert De Niro moved Nobu next door because of the energy I created.” Did you talk to him? “Yeah, course! There are great pictures of me with famous stars. Sharon Stone came to see me. We wrote a song together called Rain. I still want to find the right singer for it. Jerry Lewis came. I sang at his memorial. Jason Statham came.”
He tells me of the time he flew out to Muhammad Ali’s house. “I sat with him in his kitchen. He was compos mentis enough to communicate. He squeezed my hands. I sang Otis Redding’s These Arms of Mine to him in his living room.” Joe Biden came to watch him sing. “I’ve got a picture with the secret service under the stage. They were wonderful to me. I met him a couple of times, actually.”
Who would he rather came to see him, Biden or Donald Trump? Goss doesn’t like the question. “That’s a very politically loaded question. I don’t know, man. I don’t want to answer that question. I have played at Mar-a-Lago and helped raise a lot of money there.”
Did his residency make him extremely wealthy? “Yes. I’m doing all right. I don’t like talking about money. It’s difficult, because there are people who can barely afford to feed their family so it would be a bit distasteful to say.” He shows me a photo of his Vegas home. The back garden looks like a golf course. In fact, I think it is one. As for the car in the drive, it’s a stunner. Wow! What is that, I ask. “Aston Martin!” He beams.
Is it true they compared him to Sinatra in Vegas? Another beam. “They called me Britain’s Sinatra and the king of Las Vegas.” He stops to correct himself. “The new king of Las Vegas.”
Last year, he finally decided to come home. He and his partner of three years, the jewellery designer Chantal Brown, moved to London. But he worries that Britain may diminish him. In Vegas, he grew so much, and he’s not sure we are ready for the new, expansive Matt Goss. “I am a cerebral person. I’m multidimensional. Here I don’t want to feel dumbed down.” In what way? “Just because there’s a soundbite saying Stevie Wonder taught me not to be superstitious. That’s moronic. That’s got no context. So I don’t want to be marginalised. I don’t want my brain to be marginalised. See me. My mum said before she died: ‘Find people that see you.’”
He’s referring to the documentary. “It did really well. I’m really proud of it, and it won a Bafta. What GQ said about it was phenomenal.” What did it say? “GQ said: ‘It was the best music documentary of all time.’” But he doesn’t want to be defined by it … “I understand the comedic side of it,” he says gently, seriously. Goss rarely laughs.
I ask how he’s getting on with Luke these days. “I don’t want to go into detail, but I also don’t want to lie any more. We are completely estranged.” That’s sad, I say. “When you do your best, that is enough. And I’ve done my best. I really have. Listen, I want to be on the stage with him, I want to be touring with the band, I want to be having a pint, I want him to meet my girl, I want to meet his. I want to live with him. But I’m not going to make myself unwell. I’m not.” What is behind the tensions? “It’s a tough one. I don’t want to say too much, out of respect for him. But I’m not going to say it’s kumbaya, because it certainly isn’t.”
Is it jealousy? In the documentary, it appears Luke felt a little sidelined in Bros. “I love Luke, I do. But I can’t comment on that on the record. I don’t want to put myself in harm’s way. This is not a rehearsal. We have a finite amount of time on this Earth, and I want to be around people who really love me, and I want to be around people I really love. And it should be a reciprocal experience.”
Life is a challenge for all of us, he says. “I’ve got a tattoo saying: ‘Never waste good agony’. I had two choices. You either let it control you or you control it.” What is it? “Pain. Agony. You literally have two choices.”
We move away from Luke because it’s such a tender subject. And he returns to a favoured topic – the changing world and political correctness. “Listen, I love old-school values. I love common courtesy; I’m a royalist. I’m not necessarily PC all the time. Sometimes I think we’ve lost our way. We’re terrified of each other. We can hug each other! If you’re coming from a respectful place, even humour – we should be able to laugh at anything. And I mean anything. We shouldn’t edit ourselves.” He thinks we’ve become too delicate. “Now the parks aren’t open because the wind’s blowing. We’re grownups, guys,” he says, disappointedly. “If we get hit by a stick it’s our fault. Let us make that decision. Driving 20 miles an hour down Park Lane, you would have been passed by a horse and carriage in Victorian times. It’s OK to progress, but I think we’re regressing in certain areas. Anyway, don’t get me started.”
I tell Goss he looks great. Thank you, he says, but he’s never felt confident in his looks. It goes back to his Poland syndrome, a condition in which you’re born with a pectoral missing. “I’ve never felt like a beautiful man. I feel very confident as a man. I feel confident in your company. I do very well with fellas. I definitely feel I’m a man’s man, but I really don’t like having my picture taken.” Having said that, he takes out his phone again to show me how pleased he is with the pictures from the Guardian shoot.
He returns to another of his favourite subjects – whether Britain is ready for the full Matt Goss. “I don’t want to compartmentalise my career any more. It’s very important to me. The Bros years, the Matt Goss years and the Vegas years, they are all my career. To have a 38-year-old career, still be on tour, have new records, be in a film and learning new skills and having a gentleman like yourself saying I’m still looking all right, it’s all part of my career. I don’t think you can do more than stay in the game, still have some relevance and the desire to create, and better yourself, have new experiences, even hopefully fix things with my brother and Bros in the next year or two. That’s an incredible thing.”
You have often seemed a little lonely, I say. He nods. “I have been lonely, but I live in a place of wonderment, of gratitude.” He tells me a story to make his point. “I was at Buckingham Palace recently for the troops and this man in a wheelchair looked up at me and said: ‘Hello Matt, are you 6ft 2?’ He said: ‘I used to be six two.’ And I’m looking at him and he’s a double amputee. ‘I used to be six two.’” Goss is almost in tears. “I got on my knees, I gave him a hug and kissed him on the neck, and he cried into my nape for five minutes straight and I didn’t feel weird. I felt blessed. He felt safe. And I said: ‘You’re a giant to me. You are a giant to me. And I’m just who I am.’”
And now he’s on a roll. “My real life is kind, my real life is hopeful. I love history. I love what the royals stand for. Let’s enjoy our beautiful country. It’s miraculous that we live in a country the same size as California. What a country. I just want to be that guy. I may be gone one day, but while I’m here I’m going to encourage parks. I’m going to encourage kindness, I’m going to encourage common courtesy, good morning, please, thank you, good night. I’m going to encourage all these things. That’s where my loneliness used to be because I felt misunderstood. Now I don’t give a shit because I know the right people get me.” And Matt Goss is glowing beatifically, as if he’s about to ascend to the heavens.
• The UK tour of Matt Goss: The Hits and More starts on 7 March 2025; tickets are available from mattgossofficial.co.uk
