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| Photo: Ehud Lazin, Courtesy Shore Fire |
James - the
enduring Manchester, England band known for its passionate, frequently danceable
rock music and iconic daisy logo merch – is currently on its first North
American headlining tour in 15 years. Each show finds the nine-piece group performing
two sets – everything off 1993’s Laid, plus hits, deep cuts, and fan favorites.
That album
went gold Stateside and spawned the top 5 alternative radio title track prominently
featured within the “American Pie” film series (“Sit Down,” “Born of
Frustration” and “Say Something” also received major college/modern rock radio
and MTV “120 Minutes” airplay here).
Formed in
the early 1980s, James initially put out a pair of EPs on influential
Manchester label Factory Records. Morrissey was an early James supporter. The
Smiths invited James to open the Meat is Murder tour and even covered
its song “What’s the World” during the shows.
During the
height of the Madchester movement, James brought Inspiral Carpets on tour. The latter
band’s young roadie Noel Gallagher reportedly got the idea for Oasis amid that
jaunt. James gained more prominence in America after appearing at Woodstock ‘94
and Lollapalooza three years later.
James
split during the early 2000s, but has been on a creative tear since reuniting
in 2006. All told, the band has made 18 studio albums and amassed multiple UK
gold records and top 20 singles. Coldplay’s Chris Martin has even praised James
(Coldplay covered “Sit Down” in Manchester with Booth as special guest).
Outside
James, Booth has acted in British theater, portrayed a villain in Christopher
Nolan’s 2005 film “Batman Begins” starring Christian Bale, and recorded a
memorable solo album with “Twin Peaks” composer Angelo Badalamenti as Booth and
The Bad Angel.
We caught
up with Booth at a tour stop in Boston. The interview has been lightly edited
for clarity.
Q: What has it been like to play all the Laid songs live for the
first time?
Tim
Booth: It’s been
beautiful. Nerve wracking at the beginning because we didn’t know them. We came
straight off gigs in England, so we hadn’t had time to really rehearse. But
that’s how James roll, anyway. [Trumpeter] Andy Diagram goes, ‘We’re the most
unrehearsed band on the planet.’ That’s purposeful, because then you watch the
thing grow and it becomes quite exciting. I think the audiences are excited by
watching something imperfect struggle for its own existence. After the third
gig, we started mixing the songs up. We played the whole album, but not in
sequence. That really took the leash off.
Q: Whose idea was the Laid-themed tour? You’d never done anything
like this before, right?
Tim
Booth: No, we’ve
never done that before. It was our manager’s idea. He sold it to us. It goes
against our ethos to some degree, because we do like spontaneity and people not
knowing what’s going to happen: changing the set list every night and changing
it during the set. We still do that. [For the tour], we thought, ‘Let’s have a
go at this and see what happens.’
Q: Have you rediscovered things about the Laid songs as a result?
Tim
Booth: We leave a
few of them quite open-ended, but the one that’s really shining for me is “Knuckle
Too Far.” We found a way to make “Low Low Low” a lot more fun. That was always
the weakest song on the album to me. In the studio, I voted for [eventual single
B-side] “The Lake” to be on the album. So did Brian Eno. We got outvoted on
that one.
Q: James thrives on unpredictability in concert. You don’t stick to a
static set list all the time.
Tim
Booth: Yeah. When
we were younger, all we wanted to do was play live. We didn’t even want to
record. We felt “live” was the litmus test of a band. We came from 1981-82, with
all those great post-punk bands from The Gun Club to Wire to the Stranglers to The
Pop Group, Pere Ubu, the Cramps, Jonathan Richman - everybody was taking risks.
No one was
making music to make money. That was seen as beneath us. We were artists [like]
Patti Smith, Talking Heads. If you had success, it was almost by accident. We
came from that crew of people who believed that the live event was the thing
that was the real connection and the really exciting thing to do.
Q: The musicians in James often change instruments at the shows, which must
keep everything fresh for you.
Tim
Booth: Yeah. Especially
with some of the old songs. We really don’t know what’s going to happen. A song
like “Sound” could be seven or 13 minutes long on any given night.
Q: What have the two newest James members, Chloe Alper and Debbie
Knox-Hewson on percussion, guitar and backing vocals, brought to James’ live
aesthetic?
Tim
Booth: They’ve
been with us for six, coming on seven years, which for most bands would be the entire
length of a band. For us, they’re newbies. They’ve brought joy and balance to
us. I think they’ve made us more joyful. Debbie’s a fantastic drummer. Chloe is
just creating these backing vocals that are a real art.
My
favorite backing vocalists are people like Eno, Bowie and Bob Marley and the Wailers.
Chloe really takes off…she's really changing our sound. It’s fantastic. We’re the
happiest we've ever been as a band. We get on better. We are appreciating what
we do more.
In Britain,
we’re bigger than we've ever been, selling out 20,000 seat venues, and it’s a
really mixed age range [at the gigs]. A lot of the young people are coming for
the new songs, and a lot of the old people come for the older songs. So,
everybody’s disappointed [Booth laughs]. We look to give people not what they
think they want, but what they need every night.
Q: Considering the period of making the Laid album, what was the experience
like collaborating for the first time with a legendary producer and musician
like Brian Eno, who you’d sought for previous albums?
Tim
Booth: I think
every man and his dog wanted Brian to work with them. I had conversations with
Flea [of Red Hot Chili Peppers] and [R.E.M.’s] Michael Stipe asking about how we
got to do five albums with Brian Eno…they tried for years. Brian was clearly, head
and shoulders, the best producer in the ‘80s and ‘90s. For that record, I sent
him the demos, and he rang me up one morning about a week and a half later. We
had a conversation about perfume, pornography, climate change, and quantum
physics.
Q: As you do.
Tim
Booth: This is at nine
in the morning. I’m quite a late sleeper because I suffer from insomnia. At the
end of the conversation, he said, ‘I’d like to make your record.’ He’d
particularly fallen in love with our song “Sometimes (Lester Piggott).”
Q: In retrospect, what do you think it was about Laid that made it
your most successful album in America?
Tim
Booth: I think [the
opening “Laid” lyric], “She only comes when she’s on top” caught people’s
imagination. That was a 2 minute, 20 second, little flibbertigibbet [Old
English meaning: devilish or silly] of a song. We thought it was a B-side and
Brian went, ‘No, that should be on the album.’ But for us, it was quite a
throwaway. It’s quite different to nearly everything else on the record except “Low
Low Low.”
We’d been
playing acoustically with Neil Young, and we loved it so much. We carried on
acoustically and Brian came to one of the [UK] gigs. He saw that we were
playing a lot of those songs acoustically. We just continued in that vein for
the record.
Q: Was that a really intense recording process, having several studios
going at the same time, which eventually led to the Laid and the double
album follow up of more experimental songs, Wah Wah?
Tim
Booth: It was. We
did it at Peter Gabriel’s Real World studios. Peter notoriously takes a while
writing lyrics. He’d say to me, “I’ve been away for the last year writing
lyrics for the album. How’s your lyric writing going?” And I’d go, “I wrote two
songs today.” Because I had to. We were doing two albums in six weeks and there
were a lot of songs that didn’t have lyrics. It became a running joke between
me and Peter that I had to improvise lyrics quite a lot of the time from my
unconscious. I’d take the piss out of him for taking so long writing lyrics.
Q: What was your reaction to James having its first No. 1 studio album in
the UK with 2024’s Yummy?
Tim
Booth: It was
quite strange knocking Beyonce off the top of the chart.
Q: Now that the Yummy album has been out for more than a year, are
you satisfied with how it turned out and the reception from fans?
Tim
Booth: Yeah. We can
play five or six of those songs live alongside any of our greatest hits, and
they stand up. That is all we want really.
You want
to keep making music of the same quality or if not better, feeling that you’re
stretching yourself. So we are, after 44 years, one of the rare bands that
still feel like they’re stretching themselves and looking for the new language;
the new way to communicate.
Q: On some Yummy songs, you sing about serious topics such as politics,
society, and the environment. But they’re not downers; in fact, many are
buoyant. How did you balance them out?
Tim
Booth: It varies.
I don’t feel I have too much choice over my lyrics. When I improvise a lyric - we
improvise 120 pieces of music a year, generally – and then choose to work on
some of them to become songs. Often, I’ll get an initial lyric in that first jam,
and it gives me a clue about what the song’s going to be about. I don’t
generally like political songs. It’s not something I set out to write, but
every so often it’s impossible to avoid. Either because I’m so angry or upset
or see a catastrophe coming. So, I’ll write about it. Trump was that
catastrophe.
Q: The Yummy song “Rogue” made me laugh when I first heard you sing
about a person fighting old age. Was that one fun to write and record?
Tim
Booth: Yeah. That’s
clearly not a political song. That’s about someone who just refuses to grow old
gracefully and is going to burn out having fun. That’s great fun to write. To a
degree, you know, we’re all in a band and it could apply to quite a few of us.
Q: Another standout is opening track, “Is This Love.” In an interview last
year, you said that you don’t normally write love songs unless there’s a particular
angle involved. What was that angle?
Tim
Booth: [pauses] It’s
watching with caution, especially as people get old, how they’re more
frightened of falling in love because they know what the fallout can be. It’s ‘Are
you afraid to love in your life? Or is that how you’re going to be for the rest
of your life?’ Just a lover, basically. Somebody who just falls in love with
every aspect of life and is ready to fall in love even with the parts that will
necessarily die.
Q: You used an orchestra and choir to mark the band’s 40th
Anniversary for 2023’s double studio album Be Opened by the Wonderful
and did a short tour for it. Did the preparations result in surprising new
aspects of the songs as you rearranged them?
Tim
Booth: Hugely. Our
orchestra gigs were incredible. We got an orchestra that would stand up, sing and
would really become part of the whole performance. I could send the choir out into
the auditorium to sing in the audience. There was a lot of interdimensional
stuff going on and you could hear a pin drop too.
We’d ask
people to keep their phones hidden away. It meant that everybody got very
present. Those gigs were magical. I think The Acropolis is the oldest music
venue in the world. You could feel that in the bones of the marble. We played during
one of the hottest weeks on record in Athens. They closed it three days later.
It was a
phenomenal concert of beauty and delicacy. We caught it on camera and in the footage.
We’re very proud of it. Every 10 years or so, we film a gig, but you really
want it to be special when you capture that. We flew an orchestra and choir to
Athens. It’s something that you’re going to lose a fortune doing. It’s an
artistic choice rather than a financial one.
But we
wanted to capture that event and those amazing people in the orchestra became
James. At some points, the conductor would leave the stage, and they would
improvise with us. And I would dance amongst them, and they would get up and
start playing to me dancing. It was phenomenal.
Q: Then James released Live at the Acropolis album a few months ago.
The concert was recorded and filmed in July 2023 at that ancient Greek
amphitheater. How else did the surroundings affect that show?
Tim
Booth: We first
played with an orchestra and choir in 2008. We wanted to film it at the time,
but we never got round to it. It’s very different. We wouldn’t play many hits,
and we would go for the slower, more atmospheric songs, which is very unlike
James live because we’re quite a celebratory, jubilant live band. It was
fantastic to have that contrast. Then we reformed the orchestra, but with a
gospel choir the second time.
Q: Your debut novel, When I Died for the First Time - about musician Seth
Brakes coming out of rehab and reuniting his band The Lucky Fuckers - arrived
last year. Was it always one of your goals to write fiction? Are the characters
composites of people you’ve encountered?
Tim
Booth: I lived in LA,
in Topanga Canyon, for 14 years. A friend of mine introduced me to an amazing
writing class there. Each week, you bring in a piece of writing and read it out
to the group and sit and listen to other people doing the same. After a while,
I started thinking, ‘I could write a novel’ - this idiot idea, very foolish.
I’d take
in bits and read it to the group and see their reaction and get more encouraged
and enthused. Finally, over a 10-year period whilst making James albums, I wrote
a novel about a fucked-up singer in a band. It’s a kind of a dark comedy, a love
story, and a ghost story.
It has
obviously crossovers with James. I’m a singer who had to be sober because I had
an inherited liver disease…When I was 21, I had a near death experience and was
revived in Leeds Hospital. That was a really life-changing event. It meant that
I was a singer in a band for years when everyone else was partying and getting
wrecked and I couldn’t. Some of it, I think is the PTSD and the FOMO of
witnessing wild events going on around me that I couldn’t participate in.
The book
has got lots of that in it, but it doesn’t really follow my life. I’m writing
about a world that I knew and had witnessed and lived for years.
Q: Turning to some James history: The band is among a long line of
influential alt-rock acts to hail from Manchester, England over the past 40+
years. What do you think it is about the city that birthed such amazing music?
Tim
Booth: The city is
built on a swamp, and it rains a lot. It’s pretty miserable in some ways, and I
think you don't have much else to do. You’re indoors, and you get together with
your friends and off you go.
If you
live in California and it’s sunny every day and you can go surfing, I don't
think that’s necessarily a very creative environment for artists. Whereas I
think a gloomy, external world means that you go in, and you go deep.
Q: When you were young, the music of Patti Smith made a big impression on you.
It must have been a thrill for you to have Patti Smith Group guitarist Lenny
Kaye produce the first James album Stutter in 1986.
Tim
Booth: Yeah, of
course. He’s just amazing. It was stressful for him. He came in with beautiful,
long black, glossy hair and he left with gray hair. But we got on great. He
became the godfather of my son. Since then, Patti invited me to perform at a
festival she curated in London, and I’ve had some great connections with her.
Her song ‘Birdland’
is probably the most influential song for me to become a writer. I heard that
song the night I was told my father was going to die, and the song is an
improvised song about a boy losing his father. I think that hit me at the age
of 16, made me go somewhere, and say, ‘Oh, I want to do this. I want to reach
out to people across the world when they need me most, and articulate things
that they maybe can’t articulate.’ That’s not meant to be patronizing, but [I
wanted to] articulate something that someone could relate to in that deep way.
Q: I find it admirable for a band like James that has been around as long
as you all have, to see you still recording at such a prolific rate.
Tim
Booth: We’re artists.
If you were a painter, you’d be making paintings most days of the week, because
it’s what you enjoy and love to do and are here on this planet to do. We are
artists who make music, as I say, we write maybe 120 pieces of music a year. We
don't understand the bands that just write when the record company says it’s
time for an album. That’s forgetting who you are. That’s thinking you are part
of some industry rather than remembering that we are musicians, we are artists,
and this is what we love.
Love does not
just come natural; it’s what we’re here to do. This is our passion. When we
write songs, it’s like we hire a cottage in the Yorkshire Dales in a beautiful
landscape, we lock ourselves away and we turn our phones off and for six hours
a day, we improvise music. Then we come back, and no one brings anything into
the room. It’s all made up. We come back and listen to it and sort through it.
Then we
make songs out of those improvisations. I don’t think you'll find many bands
that do that, but it’s a joy. It’s like meditating, but with four people all
having to listen to each other. So still, so quietly natural.
James tour
dates:
Oct. 2 –
Crystal Ballroom – Portland, OR
Oct. 4 –
The Showbox – Seattle, WA
Oct. 5 –
Commodore Ballroom – Vancouver, BC
https://wearejames.com/
My interview originally appeared at rockcellarmagazine.com.
