Article Drafts:

Article Draft for Rock Magazine:

Charlie chalk: High-School Drop Out, Rising Star, Cheeky Chappy, and an all round bad egg, we talk to the young guitarist who has gripped a Nation.

Rocked and Rolled.

He leaves on a harrlydavidson

Interview:

Its six o’clock in the morning and I’m sitting in a star bucks in London, the heavy whistling of tube wheels howling in the distance, a bus passing by. Then appears a young rock god... erm...with a coffee. Leather jacket, Combat boots, he slumps in a chair, handing me one of the two drinks, pulling out the earphones from his IPod as he does so, The voice of Keith Richards slowly sinking in the pocket of a pair of torn battered jeans.

He yawns, making me yawn too, and we both laugh, he having had explained that this is the only free time he gets, thanks to other creative projects he is relentlessly working on including a tour, and a secret album.

After a few slurps I ask him about his success in the music industry and at such a young age. He shrugs with a slight smile; ‘I don’t know how it really happened to be honest… it just… kind of happened- and I’m very grateful that it did’.

I then asked him on how he had got into music and how he has now become the young rock warrior that he is today. ‘I was a little shit, that’s why. Always running around, kicking scratching… biting, I was a bloody nightmare. But I think it all started on when I got given a drum kit’ he thinks for a second or two ‘for my six or seventh birthday.’ I remember banging and banning on that drum for days- mum having trouble to tear me off the thing’ he smiles at the thought ‘but of course, my music now, I don’t paly the drums- which is kinda odd, don’t you think? But I suppose the drums where a gateway into my love of music.’

He slurps part of his coffee, before I ask him on his school life and his musical influences. ‘It was tough time at school. I weren’t very popular, scrawny and spotty, so there was no chance I was gonna pull any time soon. But I do remember going up for music club’ at this, a full joker like smile appears on his face. ‘ I went singed up into a little music club at my school, not  a massive popular thing I can tell you, so you didn’t even really need any real; musical talent to get! But I did, there was only a few lot, and I wasn’t keen to make friends. They’d never bothered to try with me, so why should I bother to try with them? Bu any, because I had a drum kit, I played that for a bit. And it was alright- until I got the guitar.’

Its here that I see giddy teen, taken back to the day of his true love, ‘It was true love. The teacher who was running the place. Daft as anything. He said that the school had raised enough money for new guitars, I think there were about three of them altogether.  I played it for a bit at the beginning. You know, just fiddling with the strings and all that. But this was all before I discovered music itself.’ He sits, now fully engaged ‘it was a new word I had stepped into on when I heard Hendrix, or the kiss, or any of the other grates. And I fell in love. I mean these guys where my idols; they got the chicks, the money and the talent to make others happy with their skill. And that’s exactly what I wanted to do.’ I spent most of my teenage years locked in my room (as should any healthy teenager) listening to Presley or any other rock god and just listening. The word, lyrics tone. Every single detail I thought about.’

We take a few more slurps of our coffee before I raise the question on his past drug addiction; he slumps back in his chair. ‘Well you see, I suppose that music, although it is a passion and a sincere love- it was my downfall. Because I always focused my music, and that I wasn’t even a particularly good at school in the first places, I think I knew deep inside that I was gonna flunk all GCSE’s. So I suppose I needed some air, some relief from the stress and panic that there was high chance that I was too fail at life, as doing so taking drugs, ticking off that typical rock n’ roll box as I did so. Now all I needed was to smoke and drink and I’d have done the bloody set! And shortly followed.’ I came from North London, growing up in a school on where the teachers cared as much about education as the pupils. At the time it wasn’t a big deal to being snorting the white stuff- everybody was doing. Pretty sure some of the teachers were too.’

A second or two passes before we both laugh at the thought, then the laughter dies and we go back to the seriousness of the conversation. ‘No, but it was a serious, serious dark time for me, my addiction was getting out of the control so much that I was asking money of friends and family. And then… Well I guess it was inevitable that I was caught by the fuzz. But cause I was young at the time, I didn’t have stay the amount of years that I should have.

I asked him on what it was like to be inside, he shrugs his shoulders; ‘Tough. Don’t do it’.

‘When I got out, I knew I didn’t want to waste another second of my life. I wanted to go for my goals and grab them by the ruddy neck. So I did. It wasn’t easy at first either. My first job was manual labour, moving bags of cement on building sites. Meanwhile why I was doing that I was creating YouTube videos in the hope of being noticed.’

Of course, this is how chalk came to fame, through the simple act of putting up a couple of videos on the page YouTube. ‘I think I was very lucky to get noticed by that record company. At the time, between the building and the videos, I was busking in Baker Street station. The money crap, but at least after a few months of saving I managed to wangle a decent second-hand guitar.’

To this day he still holds ownership of the guitar, he having played it on his new album ‘TubeLine’. ‘Well a guitars a guitars, yet that guitar taught me a lot, as fucked up as it sounds. T taught me that life can be hard, it can kick you down, but you’ve just get to plough on with life with your passion, or the things you love. For me that was music.’

But now we lead to Tubeline, the new hit album that has caused a stir of success for the artist. ‘Well it’s my debut album as I’m sure you know. Erm.. I can’t really give too much away, but I can say that if you like the rebellious goddess that is rock, than it is she who helped me in my album’

Wet talk, more before he has to get going to attend meetings with the matter of a certain Glastonbury Festival.  We head out of costa, that familiar London traffic welcoming us into a cold winter breeze.  Then from out of nowhere Charlie chalk appears with a Harley Davidson (would it be any other bike?). He asks if I need a lift to the nearest tube station, but I humbly deny. I dare not intervene with a god of rock. With this the screeching of the Harley bids farewell.

Tubeline releases next Friday