The Great Hip Hop Hoax Storyville

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

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MUSIC PLAYS

Silibil n' Brains, yo! Going out to all the rejects!

Grab your helmets!

RAPS: Before you bump it Nod your ahead to this

Our illness is your medicine

Pump it up till the speaker blows.

Silibil, Brains - we both met in the same skate scenes,

punk rock scenes and hip-hop scenes just back in the day.

We basically started to join forces together and take over the planet.

'They were really so far ahead of the game.

'I've never seen anything like it. I thought they were going to be huge.'

'Our travels have taken us to the UK, California, Asia -

'all the places, really.

'Ended up back in London,

'did one show and there was record company people there,

'they offered us a record deal and we needed money for booze'

so we thought, "Take the deal, let the good times roll."

RAPS: Always beamed out of this world Like space bees

Make machine guns out of mics And blast you like the A-Team...

It was like having two early Eminems

and they're from America, that means they're amazing!

RAPS: Typical low lives

Crash in your pad And jack you with your own knife...

'They were very young, they were dynamic.'

My plan was to use the Sony system to take them to the world.

RAPS: But I don't care I'm a master

I'm like a plastic surgeon I'm always staring at breasts...

I mean, I thought of the Beastie Boys.

RAPS: ..I pulled my pubes through my nipples

Put some hair on my chest...

RAPS: Before you bump it Nod your ahead to this

Inject these lethal flows...

Ladies and gentlemen,

please put your hands together for Silibil n' Brains.

It seems that your music is going to be huge here in the UK

-and in the US.

-Let's hope.

-Yes.

'They had nothing but total and utter confidence

'in everything that they were doing.

'They were now with one of the biggest record labels in the world.

'What would possibly stand in their way

'and stop them from becoming huge?'

So, where are you guys from?

-Planet Zordon.

-Really? I could tell.

We were abducted by aliens when we were kids

and been travelling around the solar system ever since then.

But what about really?

'I'm Gavin Bain, I'm not Brains McLoud,'

I'm not American, I'm Scottish.

I've never been in America.

'You know, everyone lies, everyone is lying,

'it's just what you're lying for.'

'They had an idea to cheat the system.

'The moment they woke up in the morning they had to be American -

'and to girls they met, and to friends they made.

'Greatest actors I've ever come across.

'You know, and they're full-on Scots.'

'We just created a monster.'

There's so much lies about the lies, about the lies.

Why can't you just tell the truth now? And that's what I want to do.

I was 18 when I met Gav and within months we were making music.

'We, kind of, brushed past each other at the front gate of Dundee College'

'and he was just standing outside with headphones on.

'I just thought, "That guy's, like, the epitome of cool."'

He just made the most bizarre entrance.

It was something like out of a film,

when someone would fall into a classroom,

like, "Oh, my God, sorry, I'm late." And everyone would be like, "Who the hell is this guy?"

That's how...that was my first impression of Gav.

The only seat that was available was next to Bill.

I remember him, like, you know,

looking at me and being like, "Oh, fuck," you know?

I think he had a Tupac T-shirt on.

Straightaway I knew, "Oh, this guy must be into hip-hop."

'We liked all the same rap groups, metal bands

'and we liked all the same comedians, same comedy shows.'

'From day one we were a comedy duo.

'We were always together and we were always getting into trouble,

'we were always having a laugh.'

'It sounds like it was love at first sight.'

Ha-ha-ha. I mean...

..I don't know about "love" at first sight!

'I felt like I'd known him all my life.

'We were best friends, we were brothers.'

It was a bromance!

Yeah, he was a good-looking cat as well.

'He just walked past girls and just, like, a look

'and they would stop, and then he'd start talking to them.

'I'd never seen that in my life.

'It felt like he was always trying to press people's buttons.'

You know, I'm, kind of, naturally a shy guy

and he just exuded confidence.

Full of confidence, full of bullshit!

'Alcoholic!'

'What's up, girls?'

'We met in the local nightclub in Arbroath.

'I was still at school.'

'How do you explain what charisma is?'

He's like a light, I suppose, and people just come to him

because he's fun, he's good to be around.

I'm a realist, through and through

and I think that's what Billy needs because otherwise he would be...

He's like a balloon, you'd have to hold on to him to keep him steady!

HE TALKS GIBBERISH

'We were both really good at rapping.'

Then we started thinking we should try and write our own songs.

RAPS:

We worked so well together.

You know, that was enough to cement it in my head

that this is a path, for sure.

RAPS:

I mean, from the first show, this hunger just came.

Every chance we get we'd record songs,

we'd write songs, we'd record them.

We brought in Oskar. He's just a great friend of ours.

We had great lyrics so we brought him into make up three of us.

-RAPS:

-Feel the strain and tension My brain's a weapon

A mention of my name could inflame the tamest session

A reclaimed possession The world's in my clutches

I bring heat to the mic and burn any fuck who touches.

So, that's, like, just one little verse.

RAPS:

Billy was the, sort of, entertainer and, kind of,

hyping the crowd up, and Gav was, like, this evil genius

behind the whole thing, and I just wanted to get my lyrics across.

RAPS:

Gavin was almost quite militant.

He was the driving force behind everything that we did.

Effectively forcing us to record and write music.

He was completely and utterly in charge.

'I got addicted to production.

'I fell in love with beat machines

'and just the technical side of it was really addictive to me.'

We'd sit and read thesauruses, we'd read dictionaries,

we built our word banks up.

We were confident in our music, we were confident in our lyrics.

At that time, we were naive enough to believe that

that's what mattered in music,

was the talent of the actual music itself,

and the lyrics, and the writing. And, obviously, that wasn't the case.

# Come gather in my long Scottish wind

# Belt out your blackest poems as the sea around you sings

# When that drone takes to the air

# A single note to raise my hair

# Carry songs beyond my lungs

# Cold Scottish wind. #

I grew up in Arbroath with dreams of leaving.

It's the same as any small town anywhere in the world.

It's the kind of town that you grow up to move away from.

Especially if you're creative. There's no creative scene.

The idea was always to get in a band and move away.

You know the story about us auditioning for the record label,

down in London?

This banner popped up on a website

and it said, "Are you the next Eminem?"

"Are you the next Eminem? Are you the next Usher?"

At the time, in our heads, we were it.

We took the 13-hour bus journey down and we were quite confident.

We were like, "Yeah, we've got something really original."

RAPS: In comes the one with the tongue sharp as thorns

An art of scorn, my style's immaculately bastard born.

'When we arrived at the audition

'I realised we were drowning Eminems in a sea of Ushers

'as everyone else was pimped out in this hip-hop gear.

'So we stood out.'

I was used to rapping in little pubs and clubs,

nothing with that much importance or attention.

And it was three A&Rs, but you would probably say judges now.

You know, this was before X Factor.

They looked up and they were, kind of, "Hmm."

And as soon as we started saying, "Oh, we're B Production,"

talking in a Scottish accent the vibe just changed horribly.

They were, like, squinting their eyes, like, "Hmm."

Looking at each other like...

RAPS: Rappers having no fun are no-one

They're probably coming out more overdone

Posh spice and David Beckham's son...

We could tell that they weren't taking us seriously.

There was a couple of people we could see, kind of, laughing.

We could see people smiling, but it wasn't a smile as in, "Wow, this is fantastic,"

it was a smile as in, "What the hell is this?"

We were like, "What's with the fucking laughter?!"

One of them referred to us as the Rapping Proclaimers.

It sounds like you're the Rapping Proclaimers.

It was just horrifying to hear someone

just destroy it in a second, all because of where we were from.

This was completely alien to them.

They're like, "Right, so, Scottish rap?" And we were like, "Yeah."

And it was, they were just like, "No, no, that's not going to work."

Didn't enjoy that 13-hour bus journey back.

They were really cocky and I was just heartbroken.

I couldn't even talk.

It was just like an absolute journey from hell.

We were really, really hurt.

Confidence was smashed. It was all doom and gloom.

What are we going to do? We need to change our lives.

We need to change everything we're doing.

All we wanted to do was be the next big thing.

As a group it was just, it felt like it was the end.

For me and Gav, I think it made us stronger.

It made us determined to prove the people wrong.

A big part of me wanted revenge.

I wanted to show these people,

"How dare they tell me, after the hours I put in, how dare they say

"that this isn't good?"

He was so absolute hell bent on making it.

And that's what we set out to do, so we wrote new tunes

and we stepped up a gear. Everything was better.

The lyrics were better, the music was better, our performance was better.

We wanted to get some shows in London to prove these guys wrong.

So we started phoning and we ended up saying,

"Hi, we're rappers from Scotland, can you..." And it was like...hang up.

So we tried again, "Hiya, we're a hip-hop group from Dundee..."

Dooo! No-one was interested.

"Oh, sorry, guys, it's not what we're looking for."

We felt like we were back in the audition in London again.

It was my turn to phone, and for a complete joke

and to, sort of, pick our spirits up I spoke in an American accent.

PHONE RINGING

I just said, "Hey, we're from California,

"we're coming to London to try and get a show," and people were like,

"Oh, wow, can you send us any of your music?" And we were like...

"What? Like, really?"

So, we did it again, we tried and we were like, "Hi, we're from California

"and we'd love to send you guys our demo." And, "Oh, yeah, send us it.

"This is great, we're really interested."

It, kind of, felt like...but...

It's the same music, it's the same thing so why would you be interested?

That was shocking. That was just like, OK, this has got nothing

to do with how good we are, this has got nothing to do with talent.

If you want to get on a label, then you just have to be marketable.

With the whole rapping Proclaimers thing and people laughing at us

still ringing in our ears, we knew we had to make a big change.

Gav turned to me and said,

"I think I'm going to become American." So I sort of laughed

and went, "Oh, yeah, OK." And he went...he went,

"No, seriously, I think I'm going to move to London.

I'm going to tell them that I'm an American rapper from California.

We'll put these fake accents on, we'll go down,

con the music world and then,

"Pow!" Come clean on Jonathan Ross and, woo-hoo, we're heroes, you know?

You can say that out loud, but it doesn't sound, you know, real.

And I was like, "Listen, man, this is only going to work if you're American."

You know, you can't turn up and say, "I'm Scottish.

"Oh, by the way listen to me rap in this incredible thick Californian accent."

He was like, "Yeah, you're right.

"I'm just going to completely redesign myself."

From that point forward, just started talking with an American accent

and installing the idea deep into, like,

his subconscious that he was American.

You got the light I'm a pyrotechnic

Damn it, I can't get from A to B Because I'm dyslexic.

We were just the little guys that had a point to prove.

We had, like, a nation to stand up for.

The plan was to genuinely become superstars.

It wasn't really something that I wanted to do, though.

I felt like I wouldn't feel right about where I've come from

and my family. There wouldn't be any integrity there for me.

It would feel shallow and false.

They say your works do no songs That are straight from the heart

But I'd rather create a pack That didn't know where to start...

Out of spite, we decided to develop these characters

and that's when Silibil n' Brains were really born.

We re-recorded our songs in American accents,

we spoke to each other every minute of every day in American.

We decided we had to be these characters now.

Silibil, Brains, we both met in the same skate scenes,

punk rock scenes and hip-hop scenes just back in the day.

-Two LMCs.

-Yeah.

'The back story had to be perfected.'

We were from San Jacinto, in California.

We got these layouts from off the net,

downloads of the street names and stuff,

so be started memorising areas that we could have went.

And then our story just kind of grew from there.

The accent had to be unquestionably American.

We have to do our own stunts, which is

probably why he won't see any skateboarding in our videos.

Oh!

Silibil stuck with me.

I think about syllables when I'm writing

and, obviously, my name is Billy, so silly Bill, Silibil.

It was just a play on words.

Brains McLoud just felt like a comic book character

and then you put Silibil and Brains together. It was like,

you know, Pinky and the Brain. So it was like a comic book or cartoon.

You know, villains and heroes, you know? Great double act.

Like Itchy and Scratchy come to life.

Tom and Jerry, Beavis & Butthead. It was... It was easy.

We looked like two extras from Jackass.

American skating kids, that's what we looked like.

We had baggy jeans, skate T-shirts.

My character was like Jim Carrey mixed with the rapper Redman.

Bit of Michael J Fox, David Schwimmer, but then I liked them

as, like, my speaking voice and how I would speak to people.

Bill was like Chris Tucker and Chris Rock mixed with, like, ODB.

So we were able to become characters that you'd see on TV.

Dave!

The problem was that we spent so much time on the accents

and getting the look, and how we would act perfect,

we didn't do any research into, like, American culture.

What grade...what grade did we finish school in?

What is a grade?

All we knew was these kind of stereotypes

that we'd seen on music videos

and we were just perpetuating black rapper stereotypes.

It was just constant,

"perfect the character, perfect the character, perfect the character."

We were talking in American, but to girlfriends and stuff,

we were having sex with an American accent.

Definitely, my girlfriend at the time thought that was weird.

Masturbating in an American accent.

The only way we were not going to get caught

was if we could really believe in these characters.

Like any actor taking on a role, that's what we did.

This was going to be the biggest role we'd ever play.

On the bus to London, it kind of started to slowly sink in.

Like, "Holy shit, we're doing this!"

OK, so what's it going to really take?

OK, so we need to get in the door. We need to cause a buzz.

How can we get into this group of people that run the music industry?

How can we convince them that we're other people?

We are demons that are here to take over this industry.

I just couldn't understand how they could think

that they could carry it off.

You can't live a lie.

I'd just moved to a little studio flat,

which was pretty much just a living room. It was tiny.

Having, you know, just one person in that place was just crowded

and then having the two boys...

..it didn't really work, but I put up with it

because I had to for my brother.

We had £360 between us, £250 between us.

Bill's last wage, my dole cheque.

I had absolutely nothing at that point. I was in £6,000 debt as well.

They had a focus and they had a mission. That was it.

They went and did it.

PHONE RINGS

One person actually offered us a show and said,

"If you guys want to play, we've got a slot."

Guys, girls, everyone just getting naked, changing.

No-one cares, they're so focused on, "I've got to be this pop act,

"got to get this record deal tonight, you know?"

And we were just, like, laughing and like, staring at tits!

We were just there to kind of blow everyone away.

Just before we went on, there was four guys, R&B group,

you know, singing harmonies.

We walked out on stage and the crowd were looking at us.

We said, "Hey, we're Silibil n' Brains, we're from California, let's go!"

Oh, oh, oh, look who's coming through

Best get out the way This is Tongue Kung Fu

We just grew We punched through

All we hit is bricks and beer And touch fools.

From the moment we said, "We're from California," that was it.

We had the crowd. And we really had the crowd.

Already a force in the burglary

Cos I take it too far Like Michael Jackson in surgery...

We came to the bit where we paused in between a song and I went,

"It's a shame your mum isn't here tonight cos she's so...blah, blah."

It was like we were battling each other

and the crowd were going crazy, everybody was loving it

because, to them, we were just making this up on the spot.

When we came off stage, we were just completely high, buzzing,

"Oh, my God, you know, oh, wow, that was great!" You know?

We'd taken three steps off the side of the stage...

And someone stopped us.

You know, and he was like,

"Yo!" He was like dressed all gangsta, like, you know, A&R.

Huge guy, London accent and he said,

"Oh, my God, you guys are amazing.

"Where are you from?" And without thinking we just went,

"Oh, we're from California."

It felt like the room froze.

It felt like the world stopped and we were able to think... "What did...?

"Did we just say that?"

That was the defining moment. There was no turning back.

And he gave us his business card

and it was Chris Rock from Island Records.

If you meet someone who's into hip-hop, you know straightaway.

I have a massive collection of trainers, I buy vinyl records,

I listen to music all the time, I wear these crazy glasses

and every one thinks, "My, God, what are they?"

And that's the hip-hop culture.

Authenticity within hip-hop is pretty much that.

You've got to live and breathe it. Silibil n' Brains were hip-hop.

It was hilarious.

They had clever enough lyrics and flow

to actually impress people like me.

It was, "I love you guys, I absolutely love it.

"I want to make it happen." He wrote down a list of names

and said, "I want you to check these guys out.

"Tell them Chris Rock from Island Records has seen you guys

and wants to sign you guys." He goes, "I just need someone

"to represent you guys as management."

I'd made an industry contact.

First show in London, first trip as Silibil n' Brains.

Same songs as what we had in Scottish.

We were just like, "This is going to work," you know?

Our confidence just ballooned at that point.

I guess it's luck. I mean, it's luck but we made that luck happen,

you know? We made our own luck.

We worked out, like, a method.

We would say, "OK, so, don't ever talk over each other.

"One of us is to cover, one leads."

If I'm leading, Bill will sit there listening to every single thing

this guy's saying back and figuring where he's going with it.

So, I'm not thinking about what... I'm just trying to get his head

away from asking us about our story, our past.

Because we weren't ready for that yet.

Just worked on staying in character all the time.

My sister must've thought we were crazy because we always spoke

in an American accent with her as well.

-Oh, my God...

-Fucking A, man! Fucking A! That guy rocks, man.

I'll tell you that. That guy rocks.

They didn't want to get out of their personas

out of their acting, in case it would slip back into,

kind of, a bit of a Scottish

and they couldn't let the twang get in there.

They had honed it so well...

They sounded like they were born in America, raised in America.

It was like a little bit of a dream...

but I was always worried that he would just get

so deep into it that he wouldn't know who he was really

because they do have that in them, both of them.

They get so involved and so deep into what they're doing that they...

they don't know the line between reality and, you know, the acting.

We felt Americans were slightly cockier and slightly louder

so our characters became that.

Jonathan Shalit was, and still is,

one of the most powerful managers in the music business.

With managers, it's to do with

not what you know most of the time, it's who you know.

Ultimately I'm looking for that X factor

and you can't quantify what that hidden gem of that person is.

It's just something that jumps out at you. It could be...

It could be anything.

You can't quantify what is going to make someone succeed.

They've got a degree of magic about them.

What I remember is two dynamic young people with a massive amount

of energy bounding into the office like young puppies.

RAPS: Yo, me and Sili been having this drinking contest

Six months later and my head is full of cobwebs...

He didn't get it. He knew he didn't need to get it.

He knew that if JD gave him the nod, then that was cool.

The moment we walked into Jonathan Shalit's office, they were on us.

They couldn't believe their luck in stumbling across these two

crazy Americans who were just wild.

I think he's seen us as a package,

which was perfect cos that's what we wanted to be.

We didn't just want to be two rappers making music,

we wanted to venture off into film.

We wanted to have our own TV shows, we wanted to be everywhere.

My plan was to first of all get the record deal.

No-one else was doing what they were doing at that time.

It seemed, to us, people who could electrify British clubs,

nightclubs and radio stations up and down the country.

I said, like, "Jonathan, we're not getting out of bed

"for anything less than 65,000."

He was like, "All right, cool. OK, 70."

I'm, like, looking at Bill like, "Fuck." You know, 70 grand!

It was all happening faster than our emotions could catch up.

They'd just come back from America and they had no money

so we gave them financial advances.

They put us up in a house in London,

we got money every month in our bank account,

all studio costs were paid for.

We paid for them to have a place to rehearse,

we paid people to be in a band for them, we paid for instruments.

Basically, financially supported them completely

so they could concentrate without worrying on developing their music.

'Did you have any qualms about taking his money?'

No.

-No.

-LAUGHS

First goal achieved, we're making music, were getting paid

to do fuck all but make music. You know, that's the life.

And now all we needed Jonathan to do was to go back to Island Records,

sign the deal and we had a record deal.

But Jonathan had other ideas.

He knew that if there was interest from Island, there would be

interest elsewhere, so he began to pimp us to the other labels.

Just creating this insane buzz.

I think Chris Rock was probably a little bit pissed off

because they thought it was just going to happen.

Essentially, your manager is looking for the best deal.

Everyone is trying to get in because you know,

as a management company, you're going to get your little 20%

which, if they sell millions of records is a large amount of money.

So, all the time, there is a lot of back-stabbing, cut-throating.

A lot of talking, people whispering in people's ears,

that's the music business.

What you do is you book a rehearsal room with a light and sound system

and you create a mini stage,

and then invite the record label down for a private performance.

It's a very cold environment because there's no cheering

and clapping, and whooping, like in a concert,

so it's very hard for the act to be dynamic

because they've got to perform to nothing.

They perform to no reaction apart from a...

THEY RAP

Sony were really the front runners, Sony US.

Senior members of Sony flew in specially for the them

when they heard the music.

We did a little showcase for them.

THEY RAP

APPLAUSE

He was just full of questions, like, "Why are you over here?"

You know, like, "When are your visas going to run out?"

And stuff like that, you know, "Why aren't you doing this back home?"

"Let's go." You know, he was really into it

and it seems like he really wanted to make it happen.

We were just really worried that, you know,

how do we go back to America? How do we get into America now?

We'd be found out as soon as we got to Customs

and we don't have American passports.

So we thought that was too tricky,

so I think Bill made up something on the phone to Shalit about,

"No, we can't work with that guy," like, "He came on to me."

Yeah, we just sabotaged that one.

So now we're turning down record deals.

That just kind of kick-started the Sony UK deal happening,

so if the US weren't going to have this, Sony still wanted it.

They loved the music we had, they were going to pay for us

to go back into the studio, work with different producers

and get our first single, get it ready,

get it printed up and get it out.

We believed, if we got found out,

that we'd have to pay all the money back.

Well, obviously, we couldn't take it to a lawyer and say,

"This is what we're doing."

We didn't know if it was, you know, if we'd go to jail for fraud.

Friday 13 April, 2004, we signed to Sony.

Two singles and an album, essentially.

So that's, like, I think, 50 grand and then,

when the album's ready, 100,000.

You don't think, like, it's going to work.

You know deep down you've got the talent

and you've got the drive to do it, but you can't imagine that

things are just going to, bam, bam, bam, then go, and go.

It got real at that point. It got really real.

People over the world...

Every minute of every day,

are dreaming of signing a major record deal with their music and...

We'd just done that.

We never really got into the music for the glitz and the glam,

and all that fame and celebrity stuff.

For us, it's always been about keeping it real

and just having a good time,

travelling around with friends, rocking out venues,

-skating around the world and...

-Groupies.

No, I mean, seriously, we're down-to-earth guys,

we like to stay grounded, keeping it real

and all that kind of stuff...

-What is this?

-It's champagne!

It's not Cristal? Get it out of here!

-Sorry.

-Stop breathing on me, you're giving me a chill in my neck. Jesus!

The next stage was just pure fun for us.

It was incredible, every morning,

waking up, hitting the studio, making tracks.

That, for me, is incredible.

After the studio, we'd go to an event, get drunk, get wasted,

go back to the studio, in the morning, start again.

It was a marketeer's wet dream.

I just couldn't see how it would fail.

The key aim was, it sounds silly,

but really, was to take over the world.

It was infectious and you did kind of get wrapped up in it yourself.

And it's very easy after spending time with them

to think "we could do this, we could take over the world."

We will be the biggest band.

We gave people too much to think about.

We needed them not to ask certain questions, so...

If the conversation ever got into anything serious,

we'd throw the head on tangents.

So, yes, it was always manic.

Going to celebrity parties, going to gigs, VIP at shows,

we were almost living as these superstar celebrities,

but without having that success behind us.

We started just enjoying stuff far too much, you know,

a couple of 21/22-year-olds just having the time of our lives, you know?

Silibil n' Brains like to drink and like to party,

so I think most of the money I gave them went down their throats.

Young single guys living in London, a bit of money in their pockets,

they had a lot of fun.

'I was thinking to myself, fuck, this Brains character is really working.'

Fell in love with being Brains.

Got me a shit-load of money, that clearly

I wasn't able to get. He got me the attraction from all sorts of women.

Now it was just women all over us

and some of my girlfriends have been some of the hottest people

I have ever seen in my life.

Gav could never have done any of that.

But they weren't even there for Brains.

They were there for the hope of being around someone who was famous

and maybe they'd get famous.

Difficult being apart.

Difficult wondering what he was up to.

Difficult knowing that he wanted this fame and I didn't.

It wasn't till I went down to London and he said to me,

"You do know I'm going to have to speak American to everybody?"

I was like, "Oh, OK."

That's when I think it dawned, when I was actually there,

cos till then it was kind of a bit of a...fantasy world

that I was going to be part of.

He would obviously not speak American to me

when we were on our own.

What was that like, going out with him?

Mortifying.

Embarrassing.

I am, like, the most honest, straight,

up and down the line person.

At that point, we had been together quite a long time anyway,

so he knew that, and I often asked myself, "Where is this going?"

I never thought Billy didn't love me.

I just always wondered if...

The music was more important.

They lived round the corner.

After my band split up

I didn't really go out much actually,

I was sort of just locked up in my, you know, house.

And people would come round. And they came round.

They played me a DVD of their band.

Tired of waking up in the morning, next to some old lady thinking

"where did these handcuffs come from? Why am I in leather hot pants, huh?"

-Watch your ankle.

-Yeah, it's a sore one.

-It's weaker.

When Busted was quite influential, we had millions of fans.

People were losing their minds.

Like a chemical reaction, that once it happens, you can't reverse it.

Seeing my own band go from, you know, nothing,

to the success that we achieved,

I really believed that they had a chance to be really big.

It was just very obvious to me.

I sort of became a fan, actually.

Here I am.

Part of the appeal and the fun. They had a video camera.

They were always making little movies of themselves.

This was in the early days of kind of all the modern technology.

Their ideas were so, like, foreign.

And these guys were out...

shooting their own stuff, like, running around London.

making skits, editing them, putting on their website.

No-one else was doing stuff like that.

-First day of the tour.

-We got here.

-We arrived.

'Now all bands have a YouTube channel, they have content,

'an on-the-road diary.

'Everyone has to do it, it's part of your marketing campaign.

'You know, what became bread and butter for the industry,

'they were, kind of, out there doing themselves.'

I didn't get the high score. That sucks!

A lot of what is de rigueur and a lot of what I do every day

I did for the first time with Silibil n' Brains.

We just had this huge team of people

that were dealing with everything that we wanted to do.

Talking ourselves up and spreading rumours about ourselves,

and just trying to build the brand of Silibil n' Brains.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Put your hands up! Put your hands up! Put your hands up! Put your hands up!

Put your hands up! Put your hands UP!

'You could see that Gavin was the brains behind everything,

'not to take anything away from Billy

but Gavin ate, slept, drank, breathed everything about the band.

He didn't stop for one minute.

I would lose myself in finding out about production

and all that beautiful stuff whereas Bill just worked on it,

like, his rhymes and the entertainment side of it.

'He was probably more interested in it for the fact that it would get us fame.

'It's a road for us to just have just great times all the time.

'You know, have the fun of famous people.'

I was on a table at the front of the Brits.

I was there with Jonathan Shalit Jamelia, and a few other people,

and I'd joked about Billy in the day

because he's asked me if I could get him in and I said,

"Look, I'm really sorry, I don't have a ticket.

"They're £1,000 each."

"See if you can get in yourself." And that was it.

We blagged our way into a lot of things

but Gavin didn't feel confident we could blag our way into the BRIT Awards so he refused to go with me.

And I see that almost as a challenge.

I said I was the Jamelia stylist.

-PHONE BEEPING

-At some point during the night I got a text from Billy.

I went out to the bar and there he was backstage,

just hanging out with all the bands.

For Billy to have bluffed his way past all the security guards,

right to the centre, was genius.

I mean, I was drinking shots after shots at the bar with Green Day

talking about punk music, talking about skating,

talking about California - as a Scottish guy -

and no-one questioned it.

Daniel Bedingfield was someone I spent a lot of time with backstage

because, like, we were just drinking and we just got on really well,

and had a laugh.

Someone had said, "Have you met Silibil, he's from California, he's a rapper?"

He was sitting there and he went, "Are you from California?", and I was like, "Yeah."

And he said, "I thought you were Scottish."

And when he said that, like, there was a split second

when my heart stopped and everything just disappeared, and I just thought,

"Have I just been speaking Scottish? Have I not...? Did I tell him...?"

Cos I'd been drinking quite a lot and I was thinking,

"Maybe for the last half an hour I've just been speaking Scottish."

And there was just this panic where, "How do I get out of this?"

In an instant I just congratulated him and I said,

"Oh, thanks so much." I said,

"I've been living in California for years and been travelling around,

"and that's why I've got a strange accent. A lot of people think I'm Canadian."

'I never seen Gav again until the next morning.'

ROCK MUSIC PLAYING

'I think Gav was quite angry at the fact that I'd done it

'and I don't know if he was angry because I'd gone to the BRIT Awards and he hadn't done

or because I'd, in front of our friends almost,

I'd, sort of, shown him, "Yeah, we can do it."

I had an incredible night.

Absolutely one of the most memorable nights I think I had in London.

To see him standing there chatting away with Kelly Osbourne.

You know, in his suit with his, kind of, blonde hair

going this way and that way.

It was like, yeah, it was like...

You are one of them and that's why you do deserve to succeed.

I suppose part of me was jealous.

What you don't see you're worried about, aren't you?

When he's not answering his phone cos he's at the BRIT Awards you're thinking,

"Where the hell are you? Why are you not picking up?"

He phones later and he's like, "Sorry, I was at the BRIT Awards and..."

"What do you mean, you at the BRIT awards?!"

Our lives are like polar opposites

and can something like that actually work?

I'd been out of touch with Gav for over a year, actually.

I hadn't spoken to him.

Rang him out of the blue

and he'd been speaking with an American accent so much

that it was almost impossible for him to talk to me in a Scottish accent.

That's when he started to tell me that they'd been signed

and that they had this massive, like, publishing deal.

There was a studio in Brixton that they were recording at free of charge, whenever they wanted,

and I was just, like, "Fuck, this is insane!"

So I ended up going down to visit them and it was just a completely surreal situation.

Hey, no interview.

The thing that was most shocking

was that they'd completely fooled all these people.

They were convinced that they were American.

A massive part of the hip-hop industry is how credible you are.

You know, they talk about people being real

and people being fake, and they were genuinely fake.

Everybody was giving them tons and tons of respect.

Just being really sycophantic

and they were running off to the shops for them.

Gav and Billy are making all these demands.

I did not fucking ask for blue ones!

CLATTERING

One of the things which was kind of odd, that I remember

so vividly about the studio, like, they had this really,

really pristine laminate flooring

and I just remember thinking back to all the scenarios that we'd

been in when we tried to record and we have these, sort of,

really shitty, kind of, carpets.

Although it sounds really silly, even just not standing

on a shitty carpet, for me, was quite a big step up for them.

They'd changed completely, personality wise.

They'd amplified it so much

and so over-exaggerated everything that they were doing to the point

where it was actually quite hard work sometimes to hang out with them.

HE SINGS IN A HIGH-PITCHED VOICE

PEOPLE LAUGHING

We're just drinking! We're just drinking!

What's wrong with gays? That's what I say.

'We didn't care who was watching us, we didn't care who'd seen us.'

We were the most loudest, obnoxious people you could probably ever meet in London

and, literally, we felt invincible.

We had to be very careful who we brought into our circle of lies.

Maybe four or five people really knew.

Everyone who came in had to lie our lie.

At this point, London wasn't here.

It was just our little bubble of friendship.

GLASS SMASHING

THEY ALL LAUGH

'The characters, they had a licence to do whatever they wanted to do.'

Inside, we kind of knew that it was fine,

we could get away with it because we were just these wild guys.

That's what everyone expects.

And it became that. It became people expected it.

Come here. Come here.

I need a piss.

There was always a notion in the back of my head

that I, kind of, felt like it would all just unravel.

That was the kind of routine, really.

Every night would end with, like, a massive fight. We were just stupid.

When you're playing characters 24/7, you start to become them.

You know, my mum would call me on the phone.

I'd, like, miss the call and not be able to speak to her.

We didn't want to break character.

After a while it really...really grates at you.

-Did you get the beer?

-Yeah, I got one, dude.

Stella?!

Dude, you know what happens when we drink Stella.

Before long you've went, like, 18 days again, on the trot

drinking and you're completely hung over every day,

and you're putting on weight, and you feel like crap.

'It's just so easy, you know?'

And the time is 5.54.

I don't know what the fuck is going on. Am I fucking time travelling?

Am I fucking living the dream? Am I fucking already dead?

Am I frozen? What the fuck?

I guess I'm just here... Me and, just me and my drink.

The tour manager's still sleeping. Everybody's sleeping. (Not me!)

I'm a fucking mess. Maybe I should sleep? That's the fucking problem.

I should sleep more instead of drinking and staying up.

We're lying 24/7. You go home at 12 o'clock at night, you're not going to sleep, are you?

The whole day is going to run through, "What did I say today?"

But I'm just worried, worried, worried, worried.

Gav started to have a lot of psychological problems.

He has quite powerful hallucinations when he goes to sleep

where he experiences terrifying, vivid nightmares.

I see a demon in my sleep. The "night crusher".

It's like an incubus, a demon that you see in the corner of the room.

You freeze, you can't move, you try screaming, you can't,

and you feel the incubus, the demon, is squeezing your neck.

We completely had forgot, at one point, that we were Scottish.

To the point that I created such a good lie

where I could actually see where I'd been.

You know, see where I'd lived in my head.

So I was definitely going a little cuckoo.

It's just really hard to remember what your plan is.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Please, put your hands together for Silibil n' Brains!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE What's up? What's up? What's up?

-Shut up!

-Thanks for coming on, guys.

-You guys are great.

-Shut up!

-OK, OK.

-Boys, you are spanking new music.

-Spanking.

-New.

How would you describe your sound?

-Spanking!

-Spankingly new!

Spankingly new.

Comedy, humour, excellent.

Well, you did a performance for us,

to try and drag this back from the edge of despair,

Your Mums, is what it was called.

-Well, it wasn't called My Mums.

-Just Your Mums.

-Your Mums.

-Mums in general.

-Don't bring my mum into! Not on my own show!

-Oh, OK.

Let's take a look at it. It's very entertaining.

RAPS: That's your mums

I was in luck when she didn't know that she is my fantasy

That's your mums

I gots to have her She's all I wanted, she's all I need

That's your mums...

'We got invited to be part of 2004's, like, the next big thing.

MTV's brand-new music.

-RAPS:

-She takes pills but you can't cure ugly...

'Other acts that were with us were Kasabian, Bloc Party,

'Natasha Bedingfield.'

There was bands that just absolutely blew up

and, obviously, we thought we were all going to be in the same boat.

We all thought we were all going together.

So, is that's what we going to hear most of the album?

Mostly material that is taken from...

No, the rest of the stuff's all love songs and boring music.

'Dave is trying to ask us stuff and we're just throwing him curveballs.

'We're swerving his questions, you know?

'We're getting out what we want out of the interview.'

-Right, you drop it.

-Check it.

-RAPS:

-They say violence sells Well, how about this?

I'll smack myself in the face with a porcupine wrapped around my fist

-I throw a grenade in the toilet As he sat down on it.

-What?

It's not over till the fat lady sings

-but let's leave Dave's mum out of this.

-Oh!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

-I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Dave.

-That's good, man.

-We're friends!

-That's OK.

'Also, while we were doing that, we were also listening.

'That is the art of telling great lies - listening.'

So, now, reading about you - UK, US, where are you guys from?

Planet Zordon.

-Really, I can tell.

-We were abducted by aliens when we were kids

and been travelling around the solar system ever since then.

But what about really because, you know, it seems

that your music is going to be huge here in the UK and in the US?

-Let's hope.

-Yes.

-Do you think that's because you've been brought up...

Mothers everywhere will be buying it.

Er, ladies and gentlemen, please, put your hands together,

Silibil n' Brains.

-Boys, good luck, it's been a pleasure meeting you.

-And you too.

'There was an awful lot of people up here

'had seen them being interviewed on TV.'

Why are they American now?

You know, they weren't American. You know, word travels fast.

Music scene chatrooms were all lighting up, like,

"I know those guys. I went to school with Billy in Arbroath,"

and, "I got in a fight with Gav in a chip shop in Dundee.

Those guys are fake." So, we were like, "Shit, like, how do we...?"

We sat there trying to, you know, contact administrators

and trying to get posts taken off, and deleted,

and we were just thinking, "OK, there's someone at SONY

"sitting there going through all the negative press," and, "Oh, what's this?"

You know, Google search Silibil n' Brains, and it comes up, you know, they're fake.

'So, did it come up?'

-No, it didn't. No-one was doing those searches.

-HE LAUGHS

'Then we were really worried about it.

'Everything just, like, wow, this is, this is a really bad plan.

'A part of the plan was that we were just going to get in,

'make a record and then release the record,'

and then come clean but release schedules don't work like that.

That's the side of the game we didn't really know that much about.

Like, you can't just release music like that.

You know, you have to do six weeks of press, radio, TV.

'The constant worry and the constant stressing

'that someone's going to catch us out here...'

..someone's going to tell the world who we really are.

ORGAN MUSIC PLAYING

Say cheese.

'We always said we weren't going to get engaged just to be engaged.

'We were going to get engaged because you wanted to get married.'

-'How long did you plan your wedding for?

-Only a year.'

'It was kind of the next step, you know?

'If you're not moving forward your stagnated and, I suppose,

'we felt ready, in a lot of ways.'

'Everyone in the industry knew I was getting married.

'No-one questioned why I was marrying someone in Scotland.

'No-one expected invites to the wedding, so it was fine,

'we got away with it.'

'We went to Verona for a week for our honeymoon,'

and that's when it started being a bit more real, and thinking,

"We can't really do this, living apart much longer."

'It was always hard for Mary.

'It was hard enough having our long-distance relationship

'between Arbroath in London.'

What happens if we do become these huge superstars

and we're jet-setting all over the world?

Once the kind of honeymoon period was over, if you like,

sort of, cracks were starting to show in the friendship.

Because they were living together and spending so much time together

in the studio as well, on top of this whole charade,

there was definitely an underlying feeling of frustration.

We were best friends.

I mean, we were like brothers and I guess that's what made it more

upsetting, the fact that we allowed the divide to happen.

It was like we were business partners, rather than friends.

We just didn't talk about the things that mattered, I guess.

We were too busy, well, when we were in London

we were too busy worrying about a lot of other things.

Got a phone call this morning saying, "Come and support D12,"

which kind of wasn't... kind of wasn't scheduled.

But...

..nothing to worry about. We won't shit ourselves.

Are you well?

It was just lovely, just being able to ring the guys and say,

"We're going to go and support D12 at the Brixton Academy."

Explain what's happening.

(Fucking... Come on.)

'We were excited. We thought, "This is it. It doesn't get bigger than this."

'They were huge at the time, we were going to be playing to thousands of people.'

That's the stage.

That's where the people will be.

'As usual, something so exciting'

was met by the fear of...the past.

Wait a minute. We've been lying the whole time

that we're friends with D12 and Eminem.

That's the way we've came up from the States, and holy fuck.

We were now in a situation where Del and whoever we were with

were expecting us to meet up with our old friends D12 before the show.

Who we'd never met in our life.

I was led to believe at that point that they knew them.

OK, so the first night of the show.

We're performing at Brixton Academy, London. Stop it, stop it!

We're performing at Brixton Academy, London, with D12. Whatever.

So it's time to start warming up.

RETCHING

We were just going to sound check.

D12 were on stage, we were standing at the side watching them.

I just remember the look on Del's face,

as if to say, "There's your guy!"

Gavin and Billy both shout, "Yo, Proof, how you doing?"

I just remember shaking hands with Proof and just being like, "Hey! How's it going?"

-Like you would do in hip-hop. "Hey, man, how you doing?"

-"High five, wassup, wassup?"

Cuddled him and held on.

One of those stories that we didn't need to tell,

we didn't need to go that far. But we did.

We'd always add arms and legs to this huge body of a story.

I think he was addicted to lying.

'I think he IS addicted to lying.'

As a child, he had a full-on South African accent.

Like, really really strong South African accent.

When we left South Africa it was like a total shock to the system.

Beautiful hot country, all our friends and everything,

and we came to Scotland.

It was cold, it was dull, it was dreary. It was pretty hard on him.

We had to adjust our accents, and Gavin had to, he had to change it.

My parents were speaking to each other in a Scottish accent,

but then they would speak to any of their friends

in South African accents. And that's what I learned to do.

Taking what someone is doing and copying it to the absolute...

If I lived with you for like a week,

I'd probably start morphing into your voice. Mimicking.

I'm phenomenal at mimicking.

You think it's probably not that great, but I think it's quite cool.

MUSIC PLAYS

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

We decided that Losers was going to be the single.

We were always the underdogs,

and that was the song about the underdog sort of taking over.

The record label and the management

said, "Release it, this song is good. Let's make it a single."

But Gavin is like a full-on perfectionist,

so even if he doesn't like a slight beat or how he sounds on a song

or how Billy sounds on a song,

Gavin is willing to scrap the whole song and start from scratch.

It was Gav's way or no way.

Can you use the best one of them, and then I'll do another one?

He is difficult to work with.

Whenever I've recorded with him, he's been a nightmare to work with.

-RAPS:

-My mama knows, my papa knows

Everybody knows we're just losers...

They could have been famous ten times over

if he'd just said yes to a few things.

We missed our window to release the record, for sure.

I suppose they couldn't really just release.

Gavin was always kind of self-sabotaging himself really,

because he was thinking, "If this releases, what's going to happen?

"As soon as that does come out, it might end everything."

-Do you think he stopped anything ever coming out?

-Yeah.

At that point, we weren't on the same tracks.

Bill would have been happy if the first release went out.

Whenever the release windows were, whatever the shape of the band,

whatever with music sounded like, as long as he was able to rap

and get famous he would be happy with that going out in any way.

Sony merged with BMG and a lot of people got made redundant.

The executive responsible for signing them

was a victim of the merger process.

If you're signed to a major record label and you haven't got

allies who support you, it's very hard to progress.

The label was sitting there looking at who makes money,

who doesn't make money, and unfortunately at that point

we hadn't been given the opportunity to make them money.

This A&R came in, and he showed us complete disregard.

He was just kind of, "Look, we're not going to get rid of you,

"but we're not really sure about this."

"Don't think you are believable," I think is what he said.

I really just wanted to jump over the table and strangle him

and scream in my Scottish accent in his ear, you know.

We were then told that it was going to take about six months

for all the paperwork to go through with this merger,

which meant that we'd be on hold for another six months.

Had we just went ahead and put the original version of Loser out

it could already been out, and within that six months

been on tour, or been releasing elsewhere in the world.

But we were on hold now.

It happens all the time, because these artists, they come along,

and they're young and they've got a dream.

And they're focused on the dream.

And they always get fucked over on the business

because they're not looking at the business,

they're looking at the dream. While looking at the dream,

this other guy is looking at the business.

They're not looking at the business,

so how can they know if they're getting fucked on the business?

There is always a moment when you're developing creative people,

if they don't have success before that moment passes,

they often don't have success.

Once someone at the top has told all the foot soldiers

that that band is probably on its way out, the phone stops ringing.

You can't get hold of people. And I remember thinking at the time,

because I've gone through it before, "This feels like that time again."

No-one will really say, "This isn't working. It's over."

We'd write songs, write songs, write songs,

but we couldn't get in to record the songs.

So that period was very, very frustrating.

There's only so long, especially when you're hungry to get out there

with what you've got, that you can do that for.

Bill had this relationship up in Scotland,

and that was going well, whatever.

We'd already been married half a year.

Mary was pregnant with Brandon at the time,

and we needed the security.

This was going to be security, once this song comes out,

and once everything is out, it's all going to blow up

and we would be sorted. That was my attitude.

So he was starting to ransom himself, like,

"I don't know how much longer I can be around this any more.

"I can't keep doing this forever."

"You keep putting releases back, I can't be here."

So it was like, "Well, you should be here as long as it takes

"for this to happen, for this plan to work," you know?

I realised how close we'd come to getting our music out,

which is what we always wanted, was our music being out there.

They were living a door apart from each other in the house,

but they didn't speak for days at a time.

I gave him a date, and said, "If nothing happens by this date,

"then I'm leaving."

The date came and gone and another date was put and another date,

and I kept putting new dates on it.

"OK, May. If nothing happens by May, that's it, I'm out of here."

"June. If nothing happens by June, I'm out of here."

It just went on and on for months

until the point where I just thought, "Enough is enough."

The lie drove me and Gav from best friends to hating each other.

The war had become between us.

The war with the industry was gone, it was a personal war.

We fucking hated each other's characters.

We had a really horrible fight,

and I was like, "How the fuck can you leave?"

He was like, "I'm going to be a dad."

"How can you be a dad? You're an addict!"

He was like, "You're an addict, you're on pills every five minutes

"to stop you from sweating, to stop you going to sleep,

"to help you go to sleep. You're a fucking addict.

And I'm like, "But you're a fucking addict..."

No-one has those fights if you're friends, you know?

I think at that point you realise the friendship is over, kind of thing.

We got up in the morning, me and Mary.

We packed up the car, and we drove it back up to Scotland.

I didn't want to walk away, I didn't want to leave.

This was my dream since I was a small child.

But I knew I had to.

Just the way, at that point, he was talking about it,

like he had no attachment to it.

This wasn't a thing that we had gone through together,

we hadn't just done all that. It was just, "I'm gone.

"I can just get rid of this from my life in a second."

That's the thing that drove me absolutely crazy.

I felt like he'd came along on this plan

which was good for as long as it suited him,

and then once he had lost faith in it,

screw everyone else that was a part of it, I'm offski.

But I was the captain of the ship, so I had to go down swimming.

He phoned me a couple of days after, because we had a big show to do.

They were playing some festival, and if Billy didn't come back then

he was going to destroy everything that was important to Billy.

I think he was at breaking point, you know.

He was angry and he wanted to hurt Billy

the way Billy had obviously hurt him.

By leaving.

I think he realised that without Billy,

there was no more Silibil 'n Brains.

And I just told him straight I wasn't coming,

I had no interest in coming and he was on his own now.

I wasn't prepared to come back down, I wasn't putting up with it any more.

"We'll speak soon." We never spoke soon.

I didn't want to see him again,

I didn't want to hear about his family, I didn't want to hear anything.

I honestly didn't care if he was alive or dead.

It felt like he'd left me for dead, so why should I care about him?

Everything you've ever dreamed of,

and then all of a sudden one of your best friends,

who you've known forever and did all this with vanished and won't even talk to you.

The rest of the boys have kind of disappeared that way,

Charlotte and Jonathan stopped taking your phone calls,

the label doesn't put you as a priority. I mean, he lost everything.

Even Del, Del was struggling to take my phone calls, you know?

Even Shalit was like, "You're a group", you know?

"You're a group. You're a double act.

"I don't deal with just one of you."

I would have no interest in seeing Mick Jagger in concert on his own.

I wouldn't be interested in seeing Keith Richards on his own.

But together, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards are amazing

in the Rolling Stones. Same with Billy and Gavin.

Together, they were brilliant. Separate, they were worthless.

I was just left with bottles of Co-codamol,

taking little snoots for a while.

There is a period of those months that I literally have no memory of,

because I was just in a kind of coma.

Suspended animation.

Two years of playing a role,

acting like somebody else, can do that to anybody.

Some points it was like, "Where does Gavin Bain begin

"and where does Brains...?"

It was just so strange.

I don't think they realised

how far they'd got themselves into these personas.

And how hard it would be to get back out.

I was sitting alone one night in a completely empty house.

All the money had gone, spent.

I was watching Muse on TV headline Reading.

They were at the studio and we were brushing shoulders with them

and there was a vibe around that time

that we were going to be the next big thing.

And it just hit me, like, we were on that same road, you know?

I was just drinking, drinking and drinking.

The ghosts of all these naked chicks running around, no more.

Our poster still up on the wall. Fuck, you know?

Now I'm that guy from that group that's no longer.

I could always say it's us telling this lie, and now it was just me.

I heard this really loud thump, and I thought, "What's that?"

I went upstairs and I just heard

the strangest sound that I've ever heard.

And Gavin was, like, slumped in the bathroom,

and I was like, "What are you doing? Are you drunk again?"

It was horrible. It was...

Everything just flashed before my eyes.

I like to think that he didn't mean to take too many,

that it was just, you know, he forgot how many he was taking.

That's what I told the doctors, anyway.

But, yeah, he just got so deep,

so dark that he didn't want to stay around.

It was just very hard.

When we came back from London, I hated Gav.

I didn't want to hear from him, I didn't want to talk to him.

It was just the best feeling, to be away, to be free,

and not have this pressure of having to keep the pretence going.

It didn't take me a week, it didn't take me a month, it didn't take me

a year to think, "I wish I was still doing that, this is so hard."

It was literally door closed, move on, that was it.

Scotland is a very proud nation.

We're sort of a nation of almosts and maybes.

I've always been proud of being Scottish,

I am proud of being Scottish.

That's essentially why we did it in the first place.

I don't think you really appreciate growing up somewhere

until you've actually left it, and then you want to come back to it.

-What would you like? Cereal or egg or what? Or omelette?

-Omelette.

Brandon, yours is nearly ready. I hope you're sitting down nice.

'Brandon is six and Travis is two.'

Both going on 18, I think.

I've just had it done, so it's still healing.

That's actually Brandon's hand that I've got there.

And then I got a link to go through it,

like the "family first" thing goes all the way across.

I don't want to go to school.

-You don't want to school?

-Why?

'I'm a million miles away from what we did as Silibil n' Brains,

'these kids running riot in London. I've grown up, you know,

'and sometimes you have to let go of that and grow up.

'Become yourself.'

-How's it going?

-Where you going?

-The Bruce?

-Got your pass?

-I do, yeah.

'I'm an equipment operator offshore, on a rig, in the oil industry.'

He works in the North Sea. Gosh.

It wasn't a dream, it was wanting to financially provide for a family.

I don't think I could be any further away

from the sort of music lifestyle that we had before.

It's something completely different,

something I'd never imagined me doing.

Whatever happened in London

I'm not actually that bothered about any more.

It was so long ago.

It's not going to change the way I feel about Billy. It's in the past.

I don't need it any more in my life. I believe that Gavin does.

He still chasing it, he still wants that.

Silibil n' Brains had a crazy ride. I haven't left yet because

I don't think I've achieved what my endgame was.

I'm here until the endgame.

HE RAPS

'I don't need to have another MC next to me.

'I can do this on my own.'

Me being Brains McCloud only ended about six, seven months ago.

If I was looking at Gavin Bain from Brains' eyes,

I was a complete failure,

why would I want to go and be a complete failure again?

The industry is kind of closing down to me,

but the social aspects were still there for that character.

If anything, that's the only thing I kind of had at that point.

One minute I'm hanging with big famous people, doing shows with D12,

the next minute I'm on the dole in fucking Primrose Green in London.

'I was just hanging out with girls, trying to get laid,

'going out and getting wasted and fucked up.'

Little bit tipsy! Sure!

Everything I was doing was trying to validate who this character was.

'My sister was always kind of like, "Why are you still Brains?" '

Like, "Come back to being you."

First gig back, I couldn't go on stage.

I'd used the fact it was the kind of comeback

of this "Brains", American rapper, to fill the venue.

I felt like I couldn't move my legs.

-I was like, "Who am I? Who do I go on stage as?"

-APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

I just said, "I'm Gavin Bain. I'm not Brains McCloud. I'm Scottish.

"I've never been in America."

It was the strangest reaction to a first song I've ever had

from any crowd. It was just kind of like, "What did you say before?"

I got hugged, I got slapped.

I spoke to Dan Miller from Sony, and he was like, "you motherfucker".

It was shocking at first.

And then it kind of hit me, and I thought, that is fucking genius.

Because they never dropped it once.

And you know, you've no reason not to believe.

There's still loads of people who don't know.

Where are you from?

You're lying.

What would I do?

If every time you met somebody you assumed they were lying,

you'd go around in circles.

I sat down on this big couch and Gavin was there,

and he said, "I'm Scottish," in a Scottish accent.

And it's weird, because right up until that point, I had no idea.

And then I remember looking at him, hearing his words,

it looks like Gavin, but it doesn't sound like Gavin.

I kind of almost expect them still to talk in an American way,

because they still look the same.

It's not like they were wearing a mask or had prosthetics on.

Want to sort of come on the biggest tour

with the best band in the world?

'I got a call on my mobile from a number I didn't recognise,'

and it was Billy. And then to hear him

talking in a Scottish accent as well was really quite weird.

I had so much contact with them over that time and the accent never

broke once, at any point, did they let on that they weren't American.

At all. You know. Greatest actors I've ever come across.

Two all intents and purposes, they destroyed themselves.

They misguidedly thought that pretending to be American,

not Scottish, would get them a record deal.

But I think they got a record deal because they had great songs

and were captivating personalities.

I thought it was funny.

I also thought, good luck to them.