While he wonders if things would have been different had Payne never been signed into One Direction, Cowell says it isn’t right to pin the singers death on him.
LOS ANGELES — Simon Cowell, the British record executive and a longtime judge on “America’s Got Talent,” spoke out about his last conversation with Liam Payne a year after the singer died.
“When I heard the news, it really hit me. I saw him a year before this happened,” he said in a “Rolling Stone Music Now” podcast posted Nov. 24.
Cowell, credited for helping create the boy band One Direction — which also included Harry Styles, Zayn Malik, Louis Tomlinson and Niall Horan — recalled the last time he met with Payne.
“I saw him a year before this happened. He came over to my house. We talked about his son and being a dad. I remember saying, ‘Music is not everything. Don’t let it run your life anymore. Find something else that you are passionate about,'” he told Rolling Stone. “When I spoke to him that day, I felt really good about him. I thought, ‘Wow, you seem in a really good place.'”
He wonders if things would have been different had Payne never been signed into the boy band.
“You ask yourself that question ‘Could I have done anything more? What would’ve happened to Liam if he hadn’t been in the band?'” he recalled. “Having spoken to his mom and dad recently, all they kept telling me was he was so proud of what he had achieved. I wish I could turn back the clock, of course.”
He said he avoids reading online discourse and suggestions that he’s to blame, calling it “torture.”
“The idea that you are essentially responsible for somebody’s life, 10 years after you’ve signed someone? You can’t do that,” he said.
Cowell posted to social media remembering Payne shortly after his death. He described Payne as “kind, funny, sweet, thoughtful, talented, humble, focused.”
He was also among former bandmates, friends and family at Payne’s memorial.
Payne fell from a third-floor hotel balcony in Buenos Aires last October. A toxicology report from tests taken after an autopsy revealed he had alcohol, cocaine and a prescription antidepressant in his system.
In February, a court in Argentina dropped charges of criminal negligence against three of the five people indicted in connection with his death, according to The Associated Press.
The remaining two people face prosecution on charges that they supplied the famed British boyband star with narcotics.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.