Jamie Burke: on modelling, music and Kate Moss

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Hermione Eyre|Es Magazine. Photographs|Hamish Brown. Styled|Orsolya Szabo

10 April 2012

Jamie Burke is all about the hair. In 2005, when he was 20, he had a brief, precocious fling with Kate Moss, then 31, and they were pictured in Aspen together, with their hair flowing in the snow. Next, signing a modelling contract with Calvin Klein, he perfected the art of the soulful hair toss.

His macho-mermaid look makes him easily identifiable when he is photographed in a clinch with a troubled starlet (Sienna Miller, Lindsay Lohan). And when he rocks out on stage with his band Burke, he throws his hair around a lot. Never mind that builders sometimes wolf-whistle at him, mistaking him for a girl. Never mind that he can only wash his hair once a month because of flyaway issues - 'When it's clean it goes fluffy and that's so not rock'n'roll, man.' The chicks, he assures me, love it.

'You know, most of the girls I know don't like clean guys. They like me when I've just come off stage, not just out of the shower.' He later tells me that when he comes off stage he sometimes lies on the ground hyperventilating, so I am not sure he is in a position to be much use to said ladies.

But Burke's self-confidence is boundless. 'I'm a big lover. I'm a very sexual being. I'm just off relationships right now because it gets too intense and you can't be without them - or more likely, they can't be without you...'

Burke has spent the afternoon sitting in the bath fully clothed (no water), working it for the camera: jaw clenched, nose down, eyes narrowed in a perfect imitation of thoughtfulness. He can also pull this look while standing up. He can even do it stark naked, clasping Agyness Deyn (it was a Vanity Fair spread by Patrick Demarchelier, announcing them as 'This Year's Models'). 'It was a great shoot - only took us half an hour,' he says, studiously blasé.

But in the words of Derek Zoolander, there is more to life than being really, really good-looking. Burke only does modelling to subsidise his true love, music. 'I don't want to be photographed in underwear or some crop top, it's not how I roll.' But he likes working for Calvin Klein because they treat him not as a model but as 'a personality'.

His latest job for them was composing and performing a soft-rock perfume anthem called 'We Are One'. 'All around the world six billion "me"s,' he sings, gambolling in the desert with lots of other leggy models. 'But just one "we",' they chorus, and embrace one another in a spirit of tall, thin togetherness. It's pure kitsch but the tune sticks in your head.

'Thanks, man!' he says in his loud, resonant mockney, all posh-boy-done-bad. He went to Charterhouse where he was a choir boy 'with ruffles, the works'. He had 'some issues' with authority, getting a bad-boy mission-statement tattoo, saying 'iacta alea est' (the die is cast), at 17, but managing to leave with three A levels (A, B, C in art, English and history of art).

His best friend was Sam Branson, and it was on Necker Island where, in between games of chess with Richard Branson ('He always wins'), he met Kate Moss. 'Yeah, cheers buddy!'

Who made the first move? 'Oh, you know, we got on well and... nature took its course. I won't lie, I was f***ing chuffed. I had a ball for a few months. It was really weird, man, my life did change a lot. Hanging with her, I saw first-hand what her life is like, and you wouldn't wish that on anyone. I suddenly had photographers on my doorstep and the News of the World sending me fake f***ing FedEx so they could get into my building, because they think if they come face to face with you and offer you a huge sum of money you'll talk...' He never did, although his father was quoted in a tabloid saying, 'Well done, my son.'

'Most blokes do say that. It's the girls who are like, she's blah, or she's blah.'

After the fling with Moss, Jamie was emboldened to move to New York. 'I think it really contributed to the way I feel about life, like: you really do make your own destiny. You can go to another country and follow your dream.' And get loads of tattoos. And wear sunglasses indoors - yeah!

(Above) With Lindsay Lohan in Beverly Hills, 2006

His father, a self-made property magnate, and his mother, a 'super-bright' lawyer, were understanding but not supportive financially. He says he paid his way by working in coffee bars, schlepping over the border to Mexico or Canada every three months before his music and modelling took off and he got a green card.

And so he left England behind where 'people are quite quick to put a label on you: "Oh, you came from public school"' and was free to 'make his own rules', living in the East Village with a flatmate, photographer Dean Dodos, and jamming in all-night underground sessions at Milk Studios. ('There are just loads of instruments around and girls lying on the sofas with maracas and people like Michael Stipe and Lenny Kravitz drop in.') Oh, and dating Sienna Miller. They were together the night she went to the Factory Girl premiere in just her pants. 'I dig her, I dig Edie Sedgwick, I dig that look,' he explains.

They had 'a beautiful time' but they were both 'too young, too into our careers' for it to last. He's over her, but still slightly hung up on a Rolling Stones T-shirt of his she pinched. 'It was my favourite piece of thread, torn in parts, full of holes, no sleeves and definitely containing mystical and aphrodisiacal powers...'

Clearly, Perez Hilton's offhand description of him as a 'British starf***er' has struck home, because out of the blue he says, 'I'm not a starf***er, by the way, because you know what, mate? I never shagged a girl I didn't want to shag because she was hot. I'm very simple. I'm not trying to mix with famous people. If a girl's gorgeous and she wants to have some fun, I'm there.'

Smoking another of my cigarettes very quickly, Burke tells me he is discovering karma. He used to be 'selfish, a wanker', but he's found that since he started thinking about other people more, good stuff is coming back to him, especially jobs.

Enlightenment is some way off, we feel. At a recent gig - Burke the band is in demand, playing Glastonbury and the Cuckoo Club as well as touring Texas - he threw a tambourine off stage and it cut an audience member's eye. That's terrible, I say. 'Shit happens,' he shrugs. 'That's a rock'n'roll show for you. Sorry, tambourine guy, it wasn't meant for you.'

He smiles and fingers his Gothic skull ring that also functions as a bottle opener. But when his dad came to a gig, he toned down his on-stage antics. 'He was the most important person in the crowd that night.'

Is it true he dated Courtney Love? 'No. But I've nothing against Courts, she's awesome.' He's got a girlfriend, an artist. 'I'm with someone younger than me, for the first time ever, but I wouldn't say it was a serious relationship. I'm trying to concentrate on myself right now.'

(Right) With Sienna Miller in New York, 2007

That shouldn't be too hard. I ask if he finds he often annoys people. 'There's always haters, for sure. The better you do, the more haters there are. It's jealousy. I don't want to blow my own horn but there it is.'

Finally, one last puppyish boast: 'You know, the worst are the girls you're not interested in. They can get really mean and nasty. They'll come up to you after a show and try it on and if you don't show them the right attention they're like, "Do you think you're some kind of superstar?" No, I just don't want to shag you!'

Oh, Jamie. I'd pat him on the head, if it had only seen a little more shampoo. He slides on his shades and heads off with a friendly wave. The Burke has left the building.

Shot in the COMO Suite at the Metropolitan London (metropolitan.london.como.bz)

Grooming by Angela Davis-Deacon at Naked Artists using Dermalogica. Fashion assistant: Matilda Goad

Jamie Burke: on modelling, music and Kate Moss

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