Interviewer: Tim and Jim from James, welcome to Videotech, now I would ask you both to sit down but it’s a bit too much of a corny line. But if you remember back in the day, there was a time when you were selling more T-shirts than records, what did that feel like?
Tim: No, this was just a rumour put about by our manager because she designed them. No, it didn’t bother us, people bought the T-shirts because they loved the music, and when people get passionate about a band they buy the shirt. It was amazing, you’d be walking down any street and there’d be a number of James shirts on that street. It was very entertaining.
Interviewer: Now is it true you’re going to be doing the Lollapalooza this year?
Jim: We are indeed. We fly out to Miami on Sunday, the first show’s on Wednesday; we’re there for eight or nine weeks.
Interviewer: And what’s going to be happening out there?
Jim: Well, Lollapalooza’s a festival that travel’s around from place with loads and loads of bands playing and different stages. So yeah, I’ve never actually been to Lollapalooza before but there’s some great bands playing.
Interviewer: Now, what’s this about your neck injury?
Tim: I’ve ruptured some discs in my neck, dancing on stage, didn’t feel it for a couple of days, then found out I’d actually smashed some discs in my back.
Interviewer: So does this mean you’ll be touring England or you’re not going to be touring England for a while?
Tim: We won’t be playing England for a bit, but we are committed to an American tour, the Lollapalooza tour, and I’ll just have to stand, I can’t move, it’s gonna be really weird. So the band have been taking up dancing lessons, they’re gonna be doing the moving.
Interviewer: The James sound seems to have changed over the years, and you seem to have done a few collaborations along the way. Any plans for any more of those?
Tim: Basically, each record reacts to the last one, there’s no plan, and it’s who you get to work with. We’ve worked with some amazing people, you feel very lucky when you get to work with Brian Eno, and you work with them when they’re available and see where the music goes. Laid was very low-key because the one before was quite rocky, and this one’s more uptempo because Laid was low-key, the next one will be God knows, whatever we write. We improvise all our songs, we don’t control them that well, although we’re trying to learn that. Certain members of the band are fed up with this technique, they’re saying “We must be able to write the song we want to write,” but personally I like it being whatever comes out comes out.
Interviewer: Now this one seems quite mainstream, the latest single. You worried about that?
Tim: It’s very happy. It’s hard to write a good happy song. When we wrote it, Saul and I were moved to tears, and it feels to me like this is a brother song to Sit Down, and we’ve never tried to write one but it just came out that way. I’m really proud of it.
Interviewer: The new video looks like it was shot in America, was it?
Jim: No, it wasn’t actually, it was shot in the desert in Spain, one near Malaga, but yeah, it was fun. Well, it was hot, but it was fun.
Interviewer: It seems like there were some great characters in there.
Jim: Yeah, there were some great people there. This mad, local irate Spaniard that we dragged in, and a couple of huge brothers, twins, really funny characters. So yeah, it was really good fun doing it, everybody got on incredibly well, usually video shoots are really tense, time pressure, you know, but everybody was so relaxed and chilled out, it was really good fun.
Interviewer: Tim and Jim, it’s been great having you on Videotech, I think we’ll check out the new single now.
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