You're Still Perfect

Chapter 9 - Working it Out With the Devil Himself

Working with Simon was hard. He would hold us back so much. We were doing an interview and we got to choose where we sat. Harry had asked me where I wanted to sit and I said next to you. We had to ask management because it would be too "obvious" and they told us we couldn't sit together even though we were already standing next to each other. Turns out a fan who was at the barricade was recording us and you can hear almost everything. It was all over the place twitter, instagram, youtube, and tumblr. The best part was Simon couldn't yell at us because we can't choose when the fans record. Simon was ticked off to no end about the video so he sent in damage control. You know what it was? Damage control was a pap walk with me and eleanor. It was nothing serious. It was us holding hands and getting coffee in the morning. What Simon didn't know was that I was going to be papped before that, getting coffee for Harry. Take for granted I only got one coffee and nobody knew who it was for. But, how weird would it look for people if I was papped two different times with two different coffees. Well Simon found the photos and got them taken down because the hired paparazzi, who was hired by Simon, called to tell him I was out before I was supposed to be. Those photos never happened to be released.

I always knew that us coming out would make the world shake. I also knew that could destroy so many things that we worked for. Slowly, but surely Simon started to relax and stopped focusing on us so much. The bigger we got and the more media trained we were the more we would just expect and hope we would do and say the right things. We did, we did everything to his expectations. Harry and I would still do things that Simon couldn't see, yet somehow the fans could. By now we had a whole fandom of 'Larries'. Whenever me and Harry would interact or hug after the show was done, the fans would go absolutely insane. Being in the band was one of the best things to ever happen to me and my now 4 new brothers. Working with Simon though, it took a toll on your mental and physical health. He never really did care about us, all he wanted was the money he made off of us. In interviews he had us make him and Modest sound like angels. They weren't, but nobody would know that. Slowly the fans would start to pick up on things like that. Like "oh harry doesn't look so good". Harry had pretty bad asthma and he didn't have his inhaler on him. They would tell him to keep it backstage. Well he didn't have time to run off to get when he needed it. So he would start having trouble breathing and when he did, he would just work through it. He knew that Simon would yell at him if we had to stop the show for him to take his inhaler.

The fans made up the best nickname for him, 'Simon Cowbell'. I saw that while I was scrolling through twitter. I let out a laugh so loud I startled Haz in the other room. I had to show him too, when I did he about peed himself from laughing. After producing our second album we never saw Simon unless he wanted us to perform on the X-Factor. He let Modest have full control over what we did.