Category Archives: Interview

“WHAT ARE JAMES CELEBRATING? OH, OUR RECOGNITION OF WHAT THE WORLD’S ABOUT. THAT’S WHAT IT IS, really. Seeing the dark side of life, knowing things can really be shit, but trying to say that there’s still hope. Trying to say just look how beatuiful THIS is! That’s James. That optimism. Not a blind, foolish optimism that merely says the world’s a wonderful place, la-di-da. That’s too easy. No, you have to recognise there’s beauty and there’s crap in here. You have to recognise the complexity.” –Tim Booth

FEW groups know how to celebrate like James. Few truly recognise the art. It’s not a question of mere cheerfulness. Any fool can grin. True celebration involves a joy, a depth, a resonance, an intelligence. True celebration needs complexity and conviction. The very best fun is a genuinely serious business.

James never used to be skilled celebrators. Not even two years back. There was a greyness to shake off. They tended towards the sombre. James have always been many things; perverse, giddy, singular, contrary, clever, tilted, troubled. But they weren’t always fun. Pop success eluded them. James looked doomed to perenial comfy, vaguely sullen cult status.

But then James became a cause to celebrate. They blossomed spectacularly. Where once they scripted edgy, twitchy angst-dramas there came loping anthems. Two wicked, intoxicating singles, “Come Home” and “Sit Down”, exploded their morose milieu. Live shows grew into addictive, joyous theatre. From being the ultimate student band, James were reborn as uneven, insanely joyous entertainers. It was a miracle.

Five months ago, they converted 50,000 souls to their busy mayhem at Glastonbury when Tim Booth rode their twisted rhythms from the stage and into the crowd. James were delirious that day, fervent, inspired demons. They came of age. And now, to complete the process, comes a potent new single, “Lose Control”, to strafe the charts. At long last, James’ exile is over. The secret’s out. Tim Booth’s unstable, maverick glee can go public.

It’s surely time to celebrate.

“LOSE Control” is a classic single, one of the year’s greats. Set to the ubiquitous Soul II Soul drum shuffle by Flood, producer of The Soup Dragons’ “I’m Free”, its curios, querulous outlook is unmistakeably James. “Where is the love/That everyone is talking of?” wonders Booth dolefully over the hypno-beat, before deciding, “We have found the love/To carry on”. It’s baggy, yeah, yet superbly aloof. James have always kept their distance.

“It was a long, dark night when I wrote it,” grins Tim. “I tend to write through the night. The idea is pretty dark: ‘Don’t be deceived, no land in sight/We’re all adrift in this dark night’. It’s an insomniac, awake all night, plagued by doubt and fear. ‘The terror’s all within my head’. But it ends on a positve note, I stuck in a real corny American-type ending.”

Why do that, Tim? Why contradict the song’s delicate, delicious meloncholy?

“Recently, I’ve seen that if I write a load of depressing songs, I get depressed soon after,” he confesses. “I feel a responsibility to make things positive. But I don’t know why. It’s not a conscious effort. Life’s hard enough without bloody unhappy endings!”

How about that line, “My body’s young, but my spirit’s old”? Do you feel that way? Were you badly down that night?

“Yeah, but my spirit being old is okay. It’s a continuation. And when I sing, ‘Shake my body, release my soul”, that’s to do with dancing and trying to BREAK OUT of your limits! Your skin is your physical prison. So, punish your senses! Break out of your physical prison. . .”

THE cleverly camp Tim Booth is charismatic in tiny ways. He knows all about eye contact, how to glance just_ so, how to be quietly flamboyant yet immaculately polite. He’s a real charmer. The band’s Jim and Larry plus myself, sitting round the table in a Manchester greasy spoon, all seem lumpenly oafish in comparison. We’re too laddish.

On stage, Tim is yet more puckish, a dextrous Pierrot orchestrating James’ heady chaos and the audience’s love. It’s no surprise he used to be a drama student. Does he ever feel like an actor up there?

“No, I was a terrible actor,” he grimaces. “I had no confidence at all. I’d spend my whole time on stage trying to remember my words. I always had a complete panic expression on my face. Even in James, we were pretty bad at first! It took us two years to overcome our stage fright. Two years to want to be up there.”

It’s hard to believe now. Two weeks ago saw James take apart a theatre in Paris. Tim Booth played to cockeyed messiah to perfection. The French adored him. Their love for him was palpable. Does he feel powerful?

“Yeah, I’m aware of a power. The power of music, of the whole event. I get so much adrenalin going. I might as well be taking drugs. We’ve walked on stage before and the audience bayed at us so much we’ve tilted backwards, like in a fierce headwind! So we try to use it. We have to. It’s fight or flight. . .”

WHEN did James cast off their shackles? What made them embrace this dizzy, frenzied new lease on life?

“We toured earlier this year,” recalls Tim, “and it got ever more celebratory. We learnt how to celebrate. Look at my lyrics very closely, and a lot of them are very hard, extremely depressed. But every gig we played, people were singing them as great big celebratory anthems. When I remember how I felt when I wrote them, what I was going through, it was totally weird!

“But it’s alchemy really. We can transform depression into joy, and that’s beautiful. I love it. We’re playing two shows at G-mex in December, 10,000 people each, and they’ll be such a celebration! Completely over the top! I’m nervous, but I can’t wait.”

So what is it that James celebrate?

“I think it’s life,” decides Tim. “Vitality. Some kind of joy. It’s so hard to say it. The world’s a f***ing hard place, sure, but it can be a wonderful place, so enjoy it! Enjoy that painting! Enjoy that animal! James should be life-affirming.”

Is it accurate that James are called “eccentric”?

“I don’t like it,” Tim says, “it’s too light. I just think we’re open to chance, and realise chance means the subconscious. It arranges things so much easier than the conscious, which can only work according to what it’s heard before. The unconscious brain throws in random factors. It’s much fresher.”

How do you trigger the unconscious?

“Take loads of drugs!” A shake of the head. “No. Oops! I mean just be receptive to it. Mistakes can be great. They’re original. You can’t make mistakes on purpose. We wrote ‘Come Home’ by mistake! We were trying to play ‘Sit Down’. ‘Sit Down’ is the big bastard brother of ‘Come Home’, the big bastard brother who’s been to Strangeways!”

James have always been contrary. They sabotage themselves. It’s part of their left-handed charm. Jim and Larry tell me eagerly how thet deliberately make sets hard, set themselves improvisatonal tasks, “for a challenge”. And Tim, not to be outdone, says “Lose Control” may be their sole dance single.

What?! Are you serious?

“Yeah! It’s a good single, but don’t forget there are seven people in James. There’s loads going on! We can’t mix everything with the bass and drums up front. . .”

THE charming Tim Booth enthuses about his recent wargames debut, shooting paint bullets at bored executives. “I killed loads of people,” he grins, wide eyed, divulging plans to set up a band contest against Happy Mondays. Our minds boggle en masse at the prospect Of Bez wielding a paint gun.

How personal to Tim Booth are James’ songs?

“Songs I though were very external to me turn out at a very later date to be personal,” he says. “I wrote a song about Jimmy Swaggert, or thought I had, and it turned out to be about me. He was interesting to me. He had all these commands for how others should live, then he couldn’t live up to them himself.

“That works in my life as well. I had very set ideas how I wanted to be. I haven’t lived up to them. So, maybe, the ideas weren’t right! Maybe I should just live my life, and not have too many concepts about it. I haven’t meditated for two years or so now. I get angry a lot more. More impatient. I’m turning into a right bad-tempered git!”

Yet see James live, in 1990, and Tim Booth isn’t a bad-tempered git. He’s a cunning jester. He even seems to love it when the kids cheerfully bellow that line in “Come Home” where he glumly tells the world he’s become “the kind of man I always hated”.

“I was in a pretty deep pit when I wrote that,” he recalls. “It was so personal. When I first heard it on Radio 1, I was shocked. I’d never heard such self-hate on the radio. But nobody ever figures it out! They all just sing along!”

Do you resent that?

Tim’s eyes twinkle. He’s a clever sod. “No, it’s fine! It’s the transmutation of something dark into something very light! Good! The song has a depth written into it. Maybe people will go back to it, in the future, and see the nastiness. I dunno. But I appreciate people getting joy from the songs! It’s better than feeling depressed.”

JAMES’ fragile days are over now. They know their worth. They’re no longer spindly. This curious, lopsided, singular band have learned to dance without blushing, rock without apologising. They’ve followed their erratic, engaging vision for eight years, gathered disciples, never compromised. The hard work’s over now. Here comes the pay-off.

“How do I summarise James?” asks Tim. ‘Where do I start? All I can do is talk in very general terms. About vitality, and energy, and an attempt to discover things about ourselves and our relationship with the audience. We’re here to discover.”

Larry: “People always called us Manchester’s best kept secret. Then the secret got let out of the bag. When this Manchester thing happened, every band in every attic and garage was dragged out and thrown out on a stage for the press to look at!”

Was it fun being a secret, all those years?

“Well, secrets lead to gossip,” says Tim. “People gossip. When we can sell out a 10,000 people concert in two weeks, we know someone’s let the cat out of the bag! Someone’s told their friends! Now it’s time for James to be Manchester’s best-kept gossip”

So what motivates you to keep inventing new twists for James?

“We’re probably addicts,” grins Tim Booth. “If we tried to give up, we’d get withdrawal. It’s very compulsive. We don’t have a lot of choice in it. But this doesn’t feel like the time to stop. I think we’ll know when that time comes.

“We have a psychotic need to express ourselves in this manner,” Tim concludes. “Someone asked me yesterday, what’s our drive? And I said personality disorders. I just need to hit myself on the head a few more times! Then I’ll be alright!”

James have found the love. Their time is definitely NOW. I suggest you celebrate frantically.

“Lose Control” is out next week on Fontana. James play December dates in Glasgow, London, And Manchester.

 

WILL JAMES LAST?

GASPO! IT LOOKED LINE ONE OF THE FIRST—AND SOME WOULD SAY THE BEST—OF THE NEW NEW MANCHESTER BANDS WOULD MISS THEIR PLACE ON THIS YEAR’S MIGHTY MANC BANDWAGON, BUT IN THE NICK OF TIME JAMES GOT THE SUCCESS THEY LUSTED FOR, JUST LIKE THEY ALWAYS KNEW THEY WOULD. DONTCHA JUST LURVE HAPPY ENDINGS? ASKS ANDREW COLLINS

“It’s that time again, when I lose my friends/go walkabout/I’ve got the bends from pressure/this is a testing time when the choice is mine” (“Come Home”)

You and I, we’re on first names terms with James. We’ve been that way for some time now. Six years, in actual fact. And we’ve been through a helluva lot together, you, me, and James. Premature adulation, the pain of being misunderstood, peer pressure, the frustration of being leap-frogged, the crushing demoralization of one man clapping, and now, it’s that testing time when we’ve got more friends-you, me, and James-than we know what to do with.

For 1990 has been James’ Renaissance year. Look at the national chart successes of this summer’s “Come Home” single and “Gold Mother” album if you want statistics. Or ask anyone at Glastonbury which was the most ubiquitous T-shirt amongst the huddled masses, if you prefer less clinical proof that James have arrived.

“I’ve always found normal life pretty damn weird anyway, so I don’t find this any weirder,” says James frontperson Tim Booth, whose ‘normal” life now involves being mobbed in the street by young people wearing his T-shirts and the occasional “weird sexual advance.”

Tim has been at the helm of James from the beginning. He is not James, he is Tim; he is one seventh of The Band With No Surname. But occupying, as a singer inevitably does, the foreground, it is Time who has the clearest view of this lasting six-year friendship.

To get to the very beginning of James, “ the first stirrings”, as Tim poetically puts it, we have to travel back to 1984, to a Manchester University disco, when an angst-ridden Tim is ‘expressing himself’ on the bitter-soaked dancefloor.

“I was pissed off because my girlfriend had gone away and left me, and I’d had a few drinks and I was dancing wildly on a crowded floor, and people were having to make room for me. I came back to my table and this bearded fellow was stealing my drink. I confronted him, and two other fellows stood up to support him – so I immediately became charming! They were 16-year-old Manchester lads who’d seen me dancing and wanted me to dance in their band.”

The next morning, Tim woke up with a phone number on his hand. He rang it, and that very night, found himself sitting in a scout hut round the back of then-guitarist Paul’s house “listening to this really naïve band play songs with two chord changes that went on forever.”

This young band were also short a lyricist, so, assuming that Tim was dead clever, what with him being at university and all, they asked him if he’d write some words for them. (“I’d never done such a thing in my life, but I wanted to be in a band – so I allowed them to carry their ignorance with them.”)

A couple of practices, a spot of backing vocals (the band had a female lead singer at this point) and some angst-ridden tambourine banging later, it was announced that they had a support slot with Orange Juice in Sheffield. “Come along,” they said, to their new-found Human League-style dancing boy. And he did.

“I danced like a very frightened man, and that was it.”

James weren’t called James at this tender stage, they were The Model Team International, named after the model agency that Paul’s sister worked for – hence, ready-made T-shirts were available for stage wear. The importance of good T-shirts would crop up again in James’ career…

A year later, ‘that girl singer’ was ‘asked to leave’, and Tim was promoted. The name changed, too. Paul didn’t want them named ‘Paul’ for fear of looking big-headed; they shied away from being called ‘Tim” to avoid singer-as-bandleader connotations; ‘Gavan’ (the drummer) sounded too much like Heavy Metal band; so the honour of immortalization befell bassist Jim Glennie. James was born. The inevitable demos ensued, leading to a single with local Factory Records.

“They wanted us to make an EP but we refused to do that as well and did a single. We deliberately chose our three weakest songs and recorded those – we thought we were bound to cock up the first time and we were not going to waste our best songs.”

If “What’s The World’, Fire So Close’ and ‘Folklore’ were James’s worst songs, it was little wonder they got themselves noticed on the release of this first single. Slightly ragged, a tad ‘folk-tinged’, perhaps less overtly tuneful that the currently ‘happening’ Smiths, but tightly-sprung, highly-strung Pop oddities nonetheless.

February ’85 saw the “good songs” follow-up, headed by the now-familiar ‘Hymn From A Village’. Next stop – ‘that NME cover story’. On March 16, the four members of James- Tim, Larry Gott, Jim and Gavan – found themselves peering from the cover of said well-known weekly, automatically hailed within as Great White Hopes, saviors of Brit Pop, new pioneers of rubbish-trousered ‘ordinary ‘ blokedom. This was fine – except that far from being the fruition of an unknown band’s hopes and dreams, this cover-stars honour was soured by the fact that it was actually timed in spite of itself; James were staring up from the shelf of WH Smiths by (their own) default. The idea was, originally, that James would herald the new year, by being the NME’s first cover of 1985 – but they turned it down, “because we felt it was damaging to the soul”.

It wasn’t arrogance, then?

“No, it was naiveté. Things were going so well for us, we thought they’d carry on forever. We felt that the music was It – and it isn’t. That isn’t the reality of the music business.”

Things were indeed going well. Recently-elected guru for a new generation, Morissey, had name-checked James in print, and the boys were duly invited on the Smiths ‘Meat is Murder’ tour. James ‘awkward, self-consciousness, bedroom poetry style and Manc geography earned them many an early Smiths comparison.

“We liked the Smiths. They were a great band, but they were working in a different area to us. We were well-protected by them, too – they looked after us,” Tim admits. However, true to form, they turned down the subsequent American leg of the Smiths’ tour. While your average young band might measure their own brilliance by totting up press offers and support dates, James viewed their own worth completely outside of the great media circus. Simply, they knew their music was brilliant.

Courtship by major labels followed and James welcomed it-because Factory simply weren’t getting their singles into the shops of the towns they were playing in. (“We felt we were putting our backs into it and they weren’t. We get on really well with Factory now – it turns out that they weren’t the people to be frightened of. Sire were.”)

Ah yes – Sire. Entirely down to the naïve belief that any company that signed up the Ramones and Talking Heads must respect their artistes, James exchanged ink with the legendary New York label.

“We felt that the fat American who signed us was a real music fan and we went with him. It was a mistake.”

A mistake that would eat a full three years out of James’ divine masterplan. The vote of confidence inherent in the actual signing was the last evidence that Sire were behind them that James would see.

“They didn’t see us as a commercial band; they saw us as avant garde. Which in a way, we were.”

“We were very difficult,” Tim admits. “very naïve. We fought with the producers. We’d demand a lot of them and we didn’t know what we were doing.”

After much friction and studio-ache, a first album ‘Stutter’ sort of dribbled out of Sire’s Summer ’86 schedules. It was very much a first album, hung with haunted, jerky James ditties, often without the aid of a chorus, always injected with Moriss(ey) dancing maypole catchiness.

But the huge void between James’ idiosyncratic vision and Sire’s chorus-hungry transatlantic obsolescence soon became apparent. This doomed mixed marriage is most lucidly illustrated by the chapter in the James story where they record their second album; ‘Strip Mine’ and Sire take a full two bloody years to release it.

“’Strip Mine’ nearly killed us, because we had such debts. We couldn’t tour, there was no money coming in, and we were a complete mess.”

The second new manager James called in to try and salvage their career actually gave in, saying that they couldn’t physically get in touch with Sire at all. (Sire’s UK office comprises “a glorified secretary,” Tim spits.)

But there is a God. And this very failure to communicate became James’ escape.

“There was a small print in our contract that said if Sire didn’t send a telex to say that they were going to renew, six months after the LP was released, they lose us automatically. They told us verbally on the phone that they were, but they forgot to send a telex! They were so inefficient.”

And with one bound, James were free. Poor, demoralized, and instilled with a blanket dislike of Americans (“They’re up their own arses, they don’t understand new music!”), they somehow managed to stay together. How?

“The music was still brilliant, and we knew it. We never lost confidence in the music. If you know that you’re one of the best in the world at what you do, are you going to give it up and do something that you’re not very good at?”

“When we couldn’t tour, we’d play Manchester. We were playing Manchester four years ago to 1,500-2,000 people, and they would understand what we were doing! They would be going berserk!”

James “walked the tightrope with bankruptcy” for 18 months after the break with Sire, and, as if to add injury to insult, Tim had a funny knee. After two cartilage operations they told him he’d never dance again, and minor depression set in.

“So I got the whole of The Singing Detective out on video and watched it the day after I came out of the hospital. And I didn’t believe in painkillers so I was in f***ing agony and couldn’t sleep. There I was, on my back, watching a film about this man in hospital who’s in agony, shouting and swearing at people, and it really did me in. And really cheered me up because if something that odd can get recognition that I felt that there had to be some justice!”

Which leaves us with a splendid allegory to play about with: James as bed-bound genius, racked with creative fervor, disturbing the other patients, refusing the painkillers etc etc.

And – just like Philip Marlowe in The Singing Detective – James recorded a live LP in Bath to remedy all that time spent rotting in a confined space.

It was called, ironically, ‘One Man Clapping’, and it captured the still-intact spirit of James-bristling, frustrated, chewing at the muzzle, and independent. Yes, they were independent again, the album being financed by comfortable old carthouse Rough Trade. This might have been the start of a beautiful friendship, but “ they didn’t see us as a commercial band, they saw us a bit like Pere Ubu, a band they felt obliged to help – original, but not going to sell large amounts of records. Sol we felt obliged to leave-because we saw ourselves selling lots of records!”

The singles ‘Sit Down’ and ‘Come Home’ came out on the back of Rough Trade’s honourable sense of obligation, but, despite ‘89’s obsession with all things Manc, failed to be more than just indie hits. (‘Sit Down ‘ was dashed by a Musicians Union ban on the video, because Larry played a log with two sticks in a suspiciously drummer-like manner in it, and obviously put scores of real percussionists out of a job by doing so.)

Despite being “jinxed” in matter of business, James songs were still coming thick, fast and brilliant. Gavan had left in December ’88, and this paved the way for a recruiting drive – one that resulted in the new, seven-man line-up that exists today. Saul, the fiddle player, “blew Larry away” with some sparkling improv at a local jazz club, keyboardist Mark “blew the whole band away” with some improvised accompaniment to ‘Sit Down’ in a studio in Bath; trumpeter Andy (literally) “blew them away” by busking through a track called ‘Crescendo’ – are you spotting a pattern here?

So, newly complemented by top improvisation merchants, James set about rebuilding themselves on vinyl, in order to blow us all away too.

The Rough Trade-financed ‘Gold Mother’ LP (comprising many a track actually written during improv sessions at the previous auditions) was so fine, so convincing, that Phonogram bought it up lock, stock and barrel. Its eventual release in July this year signaled James’ official Renaissance (the one that had been happening for about six years!) and even though it’s ‘taster’ single ‘How Was It For You?’ flopped due to Top of The Pops changing their format to include album charts and hence nixing James’ long-overdue debut by one chart placing, a UK tour that featured serious Jamesmania in the area confirmed what they already knew.

“The people that follow us now are quite devotional,” understates Tim, who has witnessed an entire audience in Paris sitting down to ‘Sit Down’ and had a gig at the Liverpool Royal Court halted while the crowd sang this song for five full minutes. “The trouble with something like this is that you then try and recreate it. The next few nights I was holding the mic out to the crowd and they didn’t sing – and that’s where the cliché’s born!”

When you spend that long realizing your own greatness, you do tend to avoid clichés. James’ rise from Moz-tipped tank tops to fully-fledged national institution has been anything but a fairy tale.

“I find this inevitable,” smiles Tim, and you’re tempted to believe him.

SINGLES

Nov 84 What’s The World/Fire So Close/Folklore (Factory)

Feb 85 Hymn From a Village/If Things Were Perfect (Factory)

Jan 86 Chain Mail/Uprising/Hup-Springs (Sire)

Jul 86 So Many Ways/Withdrawn/Just Hipper (Sire)

Mar 88 What For/Island Swing/Not There (Sire)

Sep 88 Ya Ho/Mosquito/Left Out Of Her Will/New Nature (Sire)

Jun 89 Sit Down/Goin’ Away /Sound Investment/Sky Is Falling (Rough Trade)

Nov 89 Come Home/Promised Land/Slow Right Down (Rough Trade)

May 90 How Was It For You/Whoops/Hymn From A Village/Lazy (Fontana)

Jun 90 Come Again/Dreaming Up Tomorrow/Far Away/ Gold Mother (Fontana)

ALBUMS

Jul 86 Stutter Sire

Sep 88 Strip Mine Sire

Feb 89 One Man Clapping (Live) One Man

Jun 90 Gold Mother Phonogram

The JAMES gang

Tim Booth (28) Vocals

Jim Glennie (26) Bass

Larry Gott (30) Guitar

Saul Davies (30) Violin, percussion, guitar

Mark Hunter (22) Keyboards

Andy Diagram (28) Trumpet, percussion

Dave Baynton-Power (27) Drums

 

First Blackpool, then the world

You couldn’t move in Blackpool for those T-shirts. Advertising the LP “Gold Mother” or the single “Come Home”, James logos added a little style to the Golden Mile with its tourists in gaping tops and small shorts queuing up to see Elvis as approved by Graceland, screaming on Pleasure Beach rides and eating soggy chips and curry sauce in the hottest weekend on record.

Singer Tim Booth is buzzing. He is becoming something of a guru with his audience, who are devoted scallies and indie fans. He is not an obvious pin-up; as he wanders around, the Pleasure Beach girls gasp, point, and whisper: “It isn’t, is it?”. The T-shirt Posse approach hesitantly and casually remark “Brilliant gig, mate”, to which Booth smiles, mutters “Thanks,” and shoves his hands deeper into his pockets.

In a café along the seafront, Booth is talking about how proud James are of their fans. “They’ve been fanatical for about four years in Manchester. We haven’t played there this year. So loads of people came up to see us – we really wanted to book a campsite and include the price on the tickets, but they wouldn’t let us. We were nervous because these are the first gigs since Glastonbury. I just couldn’t believe it when everyone in the Ballroom got down on the floor for ‘Sit Down’. It blew me away. It was wild!”

James are at their best live-their songs have a mesmeric, anthemic quality which touches on early Teardrop Explodes and the House Of Love. Strobe lights flicker from all angles, colourful images dance on the backdrop behind the seven-piece band. Fans at Blackpool – 10,000 of them over two nights – danced on stage with Booth, doused themselves with water and wore James T-shirts with Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, and “Cool as Fuck” visible beneath.

The association with Manchester, their hometown, is inevitable, especially when the Inspiral Carpets do backing vocals on the title track of their LP “Gold Mother”, but Booth insists James aren’t linked with the ‘scene’, and is skeptical of pale imitators who think wearing hoods and flares is enough. “I don’t think imitation is a sign of respect at all. Most people miss the whole point, trying to copy the spirit of the band without being able to emulate the notes. It seems so superficial. But if there is a Manchester backlash, it won’t get us because we’re too big.”

Booth’s voice, intense eye contact and easy smile make his boasting sound more like honestly then egotism. But his pride is understandable. From the days of “Stutter” (1986) to this summer’s magnificent “Gold Mother”. James have always shown that their music – catchy and poppy but full of twists – has guts. Guitarist Larry Gott sips his tea and sweeps his hair back. “The guts have just been in a different area to other bands, who rely on loud drums and guitars and distortion.”

Their staying power is central to their success. After eight years of financial difficulties when they were saved by the sales f those T-shirts, James are considering world domination. Levi’s believe they are going to be as big as U2 (“Their words, not ours”) and are sponsoring them. Subtly, of course.

“They can take photos before the gig, and they may do a brochure-a tasteful one-to be distributed to 2,000 shops,” Booth explains. “And we get wardrobes full of free jackets and shirts,” adds Gott, laughing and covering the conspicuous red tag on his shirt.

The music press now seems to have forgotten the awkward, playful James who used to wear bright clothes and smile in press pictures because everyone else “was wearing black and looking dour and cool”. And the time when Booth’s slightly feminine looks added to the band’s ‘wimpish’ label. Now the praise comes more readily, although they are wary of hype: “If you believe the press when they say you’re fantastic, you’ve got to believe it when they say you’re terribe.”

Booth shakes his curls and says they are learning lessons all the time. “I was tripped up the other week on Radio 1’s Newsbeat. The first question was ‘NME says you’re the best band in the world or a load of jessies. What do you think of that?’ I said if it was a choice, I’d say, ‘We are the best band in the world!’ And of course they just used that. I felt really embarrassed.”

The waitress brings some sickly ice cream and confides in us. “You know, something really strange is going on today. Everyone’s wearing funny T-shirts. I think it’s all about this band called James. Do you know anything about them?” World domination is yet to come. (Amy Raphael)

The story of James is a tale of triumphs and disasters, of desperation and belief. If a band can make mistakes, James have made them all. But they have survived against the odds, and where many a lesser outfit would have given in; and at the end of it all, they are set to emerge triumphant. Newly signed to Phonogram Records, James have recently released ‘Gold Mother’, their first studio album for two years and a testament to their unswerving belief they’ve held in themselves&ldots;.

Dave Simpson traces the history of the band and talks to singer Tim Booth about broken dreams, shattered illusions and a new faith for the nineties.

The story of James is a lesson to every aspiring young person that ever picked up a guitar, ever dreamt of pop success and the glory that goes with it, ever believed in the old adage that talent will win through in the end, that good will always triumph over evil. Which, after all, is most of us.

The story of James is a love story, a tale of young men at odds with the world and in love with their art. It’s a tale that has fought off betrayals, disappointments and crippling disabilities, that’s seen hearts break, tears fall and spirits shatter. But James are still here. And this is their story.

The band formed in the early eighties as a collection of schoolboy friends. Tim Booth, Larry Gott, Gavan Whelan and Jim Glennie became James, named after their guitarist and because “Gavan didn’t have the same ring to it!” Based in Manchester, it wasn’t long before they had progressed to playing the occassional gig at The Hacienda’s local bands night and it was there that the group came to the attention of New Order manager Rob Gretton, who saw something in the foursome’s idiosyncratic yet emotive music and the frenzied dancing of Tim Booth and asked if they might like to record a single for Factory.

The “Jimone” EP duly followed at the back end of 1983 – containing the live standard “What’s The World”, the anti-nuclear “Fire So Close” and the sublime “Folklore”, the band’s attempt at questioning the basics of male/female stereotyping, which, looking back, could have been the touchstone for the “wimps” tag which was to haunt them in years to come. The band’s image was far removed from the overt masculinity of much of the rock music of its time – the blustery chest-thump of Simple Minds and the increasing stridency of U2 – and their fondness for casual clothing (principally cardigans) and vegetarian politics provided the press with an easy label. The term of “hippy folkie vegans” became synonymous with articles on the group.

1985 saw the classic “Hymn From A Village / If Things Were Perfect” coupling that was “James II”, a biting attack on worthless big-league pop and the single that rightly had the critics falling over themselves and A&R men dashing for their chequebooks.

Things moved fast. Morrissey proclaimed them as his favourite band, a tour with The Smiths beckoned and the band were catapulted into playing to thousands on one of the wildest tours of the decade. “The Smiths tour – we were very very grateful to The Smiths for giving us that level of exposure. But it was a case of a double-edged sword, on the one hand we were playing to these huge audiences and all that, but on the other hand it meant we were to become associated with The Smiths, compared to them. Which we never really thought was appropriate at all, we were two different bands really. It almost became a stigma, y’know. ‘Oh James, Smiths type band.'”

Following the success of the tour and their notable appearance at the 1985 WOMAD festival, James signed to Seymour Stein’s Sire Records, home of Madonna and Talking Heads. Things looked good. Whilst lacking the raw power of the Factory records, the first Sire single “Chain Mail” dented the national Top 50 and gained a snatch of daytime radio play.

Things started to go astray however with the release of the band’s debut album, the ironically titled “Stutter”. The record contained some fine songs, particularly the dreamy “Really Hard” and “Johnny Yen”, which was to become a cornerstone of the band’s set for many years, but it was marred by a flat production job, courtesy of Lenny Kaye, former drummer with the Patti Smith Group. “We were inexperienced as a studio band, Lenny was inexperienced as a producer. We were lost, basically.” Tim Booth’s charming, charismatic vocals were rendered all but colourless. The album crept out to mixed reviews and without a substantial back-up. In chart terms, it flopped.

The band soon realised the difference between being independent hopefuls and major label artists. “You can be number one in the indie charts and mean nothing in the mainstream charts. When you go to a major you lose the profile an independent hit gives, even though you may actually be selling more records. Looking back, I think we should have done an independent album.”

Sire began to lose interest. They viewed James as still essentially being an “indie” group. They’d been signed as a “hip” band with a flurry of press activity and once they’d got them on the dotted line, the company had no idea what to do with them. A further problem was the fact that, as a huge American company, Sire didn’t have a UK office, which made it difficult for the group to deal with them. There was never any real working relationship between the two parties. Tim Booth recalls “With Sire, we didn’t accept any money, so they could really do with us what they wanted because they hadn’t put any investment into us. They could just leave us on a shelf for two years, they weren’t going to lose anything.”

Which is precisely what happened. Between 1986 and 1988 there were no James records – no singles, no albums, no more than a handful of gigs. Many of the group’s fans assumed they’d split up, there were the usual trickle of rumours surrounding the band’s activities (some almost as far-fetched as those surrounding The Only Ones), and for all intents and purposes James were close to being all but a cherished memory. The band were shattered, broken. Their dreams languished on the rocks, their morale was all but crushed. It was never meant to be this way.

1988 at last saw a release in the form of a fine single “What For”. It was to become an anthem for the band, an inspiring and uplifting tale of a yearning hope, flying in the face of adversity. Its success was seen as vital to the continued progress of the group. Sire thought the record still “a little too indie for Radio 1”, failed to give it any kind of push, and, despite the band’s faithful following rushing out to buy a copy, it failed to make the Top 40. James were devastated. The drummer, Gavan, left. Tim Booth recalls “That year had been really hard, we’d nearly finished, just given up, we were on the brink of bankruptcy. With Gavan, we had to ask him to leave after a series of arguments. He seemed to have a different idea of what he wanted from the music, so we just felt it wasn’t worth continuing, because it was like every rehearsal was a fight.”

James long awaited second LP appeared at the tailend of the year, two years after it was recorded and after remixing had attempted to give it a more radio-friendly sound. The company did nothing to promote it. “Strip Mine” was a great record that never got made, the resulting release a very good but rapidly dating and frustrating shadow of the group’s increasingly electrifying live form. Worse, their former champions in the press maintained the notion that the band and their music were somehow “wimpy and fragile”. Which was patently ludicrous.

“We were in this awful press rut where we were a, you know, ‘File under Smiths, vegetarian, Buddhist, arran sweaters’ kind of group. That was a hell of a shit rut to get into, we didn’t feel it reflected any of the music that we were making. We don’t feel out music’s ‘indie’, there’s never been a Buddhist in the band, vegetarianism isn’t a policy, it just happens that most of the members of the band are that way by choice. The music’s not wimpy, it’s more &ldots; provocative and aggressive. I’d actually quite like to meet the journalists who write that we’re wimps, then we could show them just how wimpy we are. We still get dismissed like that, only recently one paper wanted to run an article on us and the projected headline was ‘Return of the Hippies!’ It’s just ridiculous.”

Down to a three-piece, the band were at rock-bottom. But they didn’t give in. They still burned with a basic faith in the power of what they were doing, they found a new will, a new resolve. They found a legal loophole in their record contract and finally broke free. The phoenix began to rise.

In 1989, having spent time recruiting a new drummer, James expanded to a seven-piece line up and began work on a more powerful, more danceable sound. “We’d wanted other musicians before, but we’d not been able to find any with the same attitudes as us regarding improvising and taking risks, but gradually they just seemed to appear, we sort of stumbled on them. So we became a seven-piece, almost by accident.”

Finding a helping hand at Rough Trade, the band released a live album “One Man Clapping” to very favourable reviews. Their live shows had always far eclipsed their recorded work, so it was appropriate that the record featuring the original four-piece line up recorded over two hot nights in Bath should become their best long player to date. Featuring many previously unrecorded songs, including the bitter vitriolic ballad “Burned”, the album was a firm fixture at the top of the independent charts for weeks. Another classic single, “Sit Down”, possibly their best yet, was unleashed upon the public. But on the verge of a chart hit, the band’s jinx struck again. A technicality concerning the accompanying video resulted in a Musician’s Union ban on television showings for a crucial two weeks. The single entered at 77 and got no higher.

But by now, the group’s ever-growing following was beginning to show itself in huge numbers. Especially in the North, there was barely a gig crowd to be seen without someone wearing the band’s characteristic t-shirts. At Bradford’s Futurama Festival in October, a quite remarkable performance by James literally stunned the crowd into a massive standing ovation. There were people with tears streaming down their faces. The devoted fans that had stuck with the group through everything were sharing in the joy of the moment, the realisation that at last James time was about to come.

The next step was another single, “Come Home”. Wary of the band’s “wimp rock” reputation, Rough Trade dished out a few white labels of the record to club DJs, refusing to name the artists. Showcasing a forceful new dance sound, it was greeted ecstatically on dancefloors across the country. It was an excellent record. A hit single looked a safe bet.

“Come Home” entered the Gallup chart at 85 following a “Hitlist” powerplay on Simon Mayo’s Radio 1 show and coinciding with Manchester’s Stone Roses and Happy Mondays assault on the nation’s consciousness. Incredibly, disaster struck again. A cock-up at record business mag Music Week meant that the bottom end of the Top 100 was printed exactly the same as the week before. This meant that James single was not listed as a new entry and hence at the crucial time lost the profile it would have otherwise received. The band were livid. It came as a further blow to a marketing campaign which had already seen pluggers without copies of the record, cancelled video shoots and delays in availability. It seemed like par for the course when, touring to promote the release, the band were struck down by flu.

But the “Come Home” tour was, despite everything, a major success. Dates were almost all sold out as James were doing the same level of business as the Mondays and the Carpets, and whilst the tour opened in Sheffield with Tim Booth barely able to sing, by the final date in Leeds the band were in spectacular form. The tour ended with the stage packed with members of supporting act Band of Holy Joy and Holy Joy wordsmith Johnny Brown proclaiming that Tim Booth was “God”

That tour saw James unveiling the clutch of songs that form the basis of the “Gold Mother” era. As well as boasting the best tunes they’ve ever come up with, they show that as a lyricist Tim Booth now ranks with the best. His lyrics have developed from an early charming ambiguity to a searing directness, by turns intimately personal and vibrantly political. None moreso than the epic “Promised Land” which shows the group unafraid to speak out and take the lead as pop rises to the challenges of the new decade.

Tim : “I don’t like the word political, but yes, that’s the direction my lyrics have taken. In the early days though, we had songs like ‘Fire So Close’ which was about Cruise missiles, so it’s always been there. In those days, though, I was afraid to be as direct as I am now. I liked to keep it ambiguous, whereas now I just f**king write it, y’know. I was very angry when I wrote ‘Promised Land’, I was sitting on a train and it came out in half an hour. When a song comes out very smoothly you just have to use it, I couldn’t turn it down. A lot of them are like that, you just write it down, don’t censor yourself and then you find it usually makes more sense later. The ‘Promised Land’ thing was also about Hillsborough. We were recording ‘Sit Down’ in Sheffield at the time and she was in the hospital the next day. There’s these poor buggers trying to get better and Thatcher’s hanging over them trying to get a photo session done.”

The last tour saw audiences increasingly reacting to the content of the songs. A crowd in Birmingham let out a rapturous cheer when Tim altered the lyrics of ‘What For’ to take in ‘I will swim through Sellafield seas’ in comment on recent spills.

“When we played in Edinburgh which is very politicised at the moment due to the Poll Tax thing &ldots; when we played it, they were just cheering and cheering. I’ve never known anything like it, Larry was in tears. It was incredible.”

“We’ve always known though that people were listening. We’ve always had that belief, sometimes that was all we had to keep us going, y’know. We’ve just gone on at our own pace. The last tour was sold out virtually everywhere, we’re just letting it grow naturally, building. I suppose we’re hoping for a similar growth to U2 or Springsteen. Because we can do it live, I think we can sustain it. I think Springsteen is a role model for us, some of his music’s very cliched but he can really cut it live. So can U2, I would imagine. I’ve not seen U2 but some of the sequences in that film, the live thing, they’re incredibly powerful.”

Tim Booth radiates an aura these days. It’s not something you can easily put your finger on, but maybe things like faith, determination, hope, love and anger have something to do with it. He’s more authoritative, maybe happier.

“I’ve been looking back at certain memories, and they’re just really awful memories, y’know, about not being happy and everything. I hope I won’t look back on my present as being like that. The funny thing was, it was all in me, it was my mentality that was making me unhappy.”

Whatever the future holds, the lessons of the past have not been spared on James. “We were wary of signing again after what happened with Sire, but we’re far more aware now than we were then. We won’t make the mistakes we made then and we won’t get f**ked around like we were then. Record companies all come down to money in the end, even your smallest back bedroom indie label. They’re bankers, it’s just with a major label the sums they invest are far greater. The thing what made us look at signing again, was &ldots; we’ve been on the verge of bankruptcy for about a year. We have a huge amount of faith in our music, and we were thinking, y’know, we can’t go on writing songs this brilliant and not get anything from it. We’ve got to the point also where we’re a seven-piece band and to tour costs us thousands. It’s the only option open, really. But I think this time it will prove to be the right one.”

1990 has been (so far, at least) kind to James. They’ve broken the charts, (firstly with “How Was It For You?”, a trite, weak single as it happens) and the “Gold Mother” album has helped restore their reputation as the great white hopes for British pop. The band have moved towards the kind of corporate games that typify the approach of many major label artistes (multi-format releases, in-store p.a.’s etc) but it is hoped that, with the chart barriers broken, the group will once again rely of their music, and their music alone, to maintain their success.

After all, it’s that what’s carried them this far. It would be a shame now, after all they’ve been through, James threw it all away and became just like all the rest. Bankers.

On a park bench blistered and worn by exposure to decades of Mancunian rainfall, Jim Glennie and I sit, talk and delve deep into the inner world of James. Before us sweeps the smokey, industrial labyrinth of North Manchester, a dismal maze of rooftops and chimney stacks providing an atmospheric backdrop to an interview which drifts naturally into moody nostalgia.

“Maine Road holds a lot of memories for me,” Jim says (James are supporting Bowie at Maine Road on the 7th). “I used to go to the Claremont Road School so a big chunk of my childhood years were spent around those terraced streets of Rusholme. I used to see City a lot at Maine Road too. It will be really weird playing there, especially knowing that a large part of the audience won’t even know who we are.

As we talk I suddenly notice the concrete slabs beneath use are cracked and broken and through the gaps, as though responsible for their very existence, peeps the occasional flower — individual, defiant and graceful but sadly overlooked by the passer-by. An image which seems curiously symbolic of James’s struggle to blossom in the stoney-faced and unaccommodating world of pop. A band who’ve been with us for a long time now and who have treated us to some of Manchester’s most innovative and ethereal music, it is surprising that James have only been rewarded with modest commercial success.

“The last two singles did okay I suppose,” Jim says referring to the recent chart success of ‘How Was It For You’ and ‘Come Home’, “But it does seem that Radio One and Top of the Pops have an unusual attitude about us. A week before its release, ‘Come Home’ was D listed on the radio. It went straight into the charts at number 32 but for some reason, they took it off the list altogether. We’ve been really unlucky. Sometimes the whole mechanics of the pop and rock industry can be a real pain in the arse.

But hoardes of acid scallies donning the James T-shirts on a Saturday afternoon in Manchester is sufficient proof (if any were needed) that James are the defiant flower of the current Manchester scene, not growing from it but through it, like the flower in the park peering through the shattered slabs of worn-down concrete.

“Naturally the Manchester scene affect us,” Jim says, “But at the same time we are quite detached from it all. We are still waiting to see how people react to it. What I’ve liked so far about Manchester is that bands have always been very individualistic. But once the bubble bursts people are going to be much more critical.”

‘Gold Mother’, still hovering in the album charts, was James’s offering for the summer and perhaps their most haunting album to date. The pounding rhythmical surges of ‘Come Home’ is still guaranteed to pack the dance floor with scores of arm-flailing idolaters and the LP, the first fruits of the Phonogram deal, has already become part of the current teenage bedroom culture. Politics, loneliness, alienation, anger — ‘Gold Mother’ sweeps majestically through a twilight world of emotional turmoil and self-awareness. Who can resist singing along to such hard-hitting lines as,

‘I am in love insane with a sense of shame

That I threw stones at the condemned and now I’m slated.”

“Yes, I agree, it’s a moody album,” Jim says, “For the last year or so we were pissed off with the situation we were in and a lot of the songs on the album emerged from that period. But the album is more compact than the others. We picked up the songs that seemed to fit in with each other. It’s hopefully the sort of album you can listen to from start to finish.

“It’s interesting,” Jim continues, “Because a lot the songs emerge subconsciously. Tim, Larry, Mark and I all get together in a big room and jam incessantly for twenty minutes or so. We record the session then listen to the bits we like. At this stage, however, the song is very much in its pupal stage. It then grows and changes until it reaches its final metamorphosis in the studio.”

As we drift slowly back to the manager’s office in New Mount Street, the delicate image of the flower remains permanently imprinted in my head. The flower is the colourful and attractive part of the plant from which the fruit or seed is later developed. The seeds of James have already been sown and I am convinced that it is only a matter of time before the band finally bloom in a pop world soiled by apathy and blandness.