Long before he was a somebody, Adam Lambert was a fixture of the Los Angeles club scene at its most feral. It was the mid-Noughties, and Lambert – a struggling theatre actor in his twenties – spent his nights at Hyde, where the era’s spangliest stars were frequently photographed spilling onto the pavement. He ran with Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan back when running with Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan meant a dizzying carousel of excess. Dancing into his orbit, too, were Katy Perry and Kesha before either had blown up. It really was a different time.
“That stuff in the 2000s was wild,” says the American singer-songwriter who has fronted Queen for the past decade and more. “We didn’t have phones, no one was taking pictures or video – it was a safe space inside.” What happened in Hyde stayed in Hyde. Outside, though, a baying mob of paparazzi would gather. “They were f**king evil,” he says. “They were like hyenas.”
Although they were “good times”, by his own admission, it all felt a little hollow. He was bitter and lost, unsure of what he was chasing. In the Nevada desert, at Burning Man, a psychedelic epiphany convinced him that, whatever he wanted, he had to make happen. He auditioned for American Idol and finished runner-up in 2009, that voice of his – multi-octave and ozone-puncturing – propelling him onto a global stage. A star was born.
