Matt Goss
(Picture: Paul Harris)“It’s not a reinvention, it’s a f***ing progression.” Matt Goss doesn’t have Grolsch bottle tops on his Doc Martens anymore but then how could he? The younger Goss twin (by 11 minutes) turned 53 last September and is a long way from the euphoric boyband superstardom of Bros. Since those heady days, which climaxed with a sell out concert at Wembley Stadium, Matt has taken on the form of a Vegas crooner and been through several lifetimes of grief and pain. But for the first time in 13 years, he’s back in the realm of pop with The Beautiful Unknown.
It’s an album that comes from a dark place. In 2014, Goss’ mother passed away from cancer and during her final days, he was her hands-on carer, a process that involved him draining her lungs daily. His gentle, ice blue eyes, are flooded with pain as he revisits the still raw experience of seeing his mother pass. “It will be something I deal with for the rest of my days,” he says, mourning his inability to phone her up and talk about the ebbs and flows of life. “When you have tough times, there’s two or three people in the world you want to call and for me, none of these people are on this earth anymore.”
The lead single for the album, Somewhere to Fall, is directly inspired by grieving the death of his mother and, by his own admission, of “seeing if he wanted to be alive without her”. Despite the unapologetic pop bombast of the track, it’s a very literal, introspective plea from Goss to find some comfort in a world without his mum. Speaking from his Vegas home, he says earnestly of the song that he “needed somewhere that was safe. I needed to find my strength and recover, I guess with some kind of grace and dignity. It was difficult.”
Being honest about the places his mind has been to was important for Goss, who is nothing if not assiduous (at one point he lists all of his achievements, including a UN Humanitarian Award). Admitting he saw returning to pop as “a way to be mindful of what I was going through”, he says the album was an adventure in soul-searching, in reconciling with his emotions and holding himself accountable as a man. Saved, underneath its bouncing funk grooves, has its roots in what Goss calls a “traumatic relationship” that involved infidelity. “[The album] made me realise I wanted to see the world again.”
Goss is adamant he has found himself in a more hopeful, forward-thinking place but there is an air of loneliness around him. “Luke is my only friend,” he admits, referring to his twin brother and other half of Bros, who is now a successful movie star, having appeared in films such as Blade II, Hellboy II and The Man alongside Samuel L Jackson and Eugene Levy. The death of their mother didn’t bring the family any closer either. Estranged from the twins’ policeman father, there is a vulnerability in Goss’s voice when he admits to not having spoken to him in two years. “He doesn’t talk to me anymore,” he says with a melancholy straightforwardness. It’s not much better with his mother’s side of the family either – “don’t hear from them”. He reiterates: “My family is my brother now.”
The story of the Goss brothers, pop’s most famous twins, is a dysfunctional one. Viewers of the record breaking, meme-generating, BAFTA-winning documentary about them After the Screaming Stops saw that dysfunction in all its relatability. Between soundbites such as “The letters ‘H O M E’ are so important, because they personify the word ‘home’” and “One of my songs is called We’re All Kings, which is about a man sweeping the road. He’s one of my kings, because I’m thankful I don’t have to sweep the road,” are hideous rows that make Sting and Stewart Copeland look like a peace corps.
While admitting that he found watching the film “disturbing”, Goss says the ultimate result of making the documentary is that he and Luke are making inroads into better communication. They are “working on [their] language” between each other and are in a much better place as a result of the Bros reunion, which saw the band, most famous for their 1988 smash hit When Will I Be Famous?, sell out the O2 Arena in record time.
“I’d like to make a record with my brother,” Goss confesses. Despite the live reunion, no new music from the duo appeared. “We both want to do it but we don’t know how it’s going to work.” They come from very different places musically, he says. “To me, pop is not a dirty word. Having a big pop hit is like a cowboy having a gun in their holster. He’s more into the rock stuff.”
It’s also being a one-time pop God that has allowed Goss to experience things that “transcend having a hit”. There’s a starstruck sincerity to him when he reminisces about getting on a private jet to visit Muhammad Ali at his home shortly before the legendary boxer’s death. Pride of place in his living room is a photo of the two of them embracing – “his arms were like marble”. Goss glows as he holds the picture to the camera to show me and it’s a reminder of Ali’s unmatched ability to make men give in to emotion. “I told him I loved him.”
Goss’ travels, and acclaim in America for his Vegas show have also led him into the hallowed company of Presidents past and present. A performance at the Democratic National Convention in 2016 saw him take a selfie with Bill Clinton and share a deeply personal moment with Joe Biden, who has had his own encounters with grief, having lost his first wife and two of his children to accident and illness. “I told him about my mother and he talked about the loss of his son. He was very, very kind and he makes you feel like he cares,” he says of the sitting President.
It’s those moments he remembers most dearly, the ripples on the waves of time that mark a man’s life. He takes delight in speaking about all of them: The bloke in a London pub silently raising a pint to him. Being a prison pen pal of Reggie Kray. Ronnie Wood borrowing his jacket to perform on stage. It’s testament to surviving 30 years in the brutal, shallow and quickly forgetful music business. How has he done it? His answer is another Goss-ism: “A good pit crew, because you’re going to need tires for the wet and tires for the dry.”
