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The last thing you’d expect to influence a Manchester band is the starlings in Piccadilly Square. Usually it’s the rain, or the industry or even the lager louts – but then James are no ordinary Manchester band. Into their melodic songs on their new album ‘Strip-mining’, they weave poetry and lyrics that linger rather than escaping into the nearest guitar twang ‘In the sky above the square starlings spiral dancing on all’. (What for?).

Explains vocalist and word fashioner Tim Booth… “It was the idea of this guy being really down, looking up and seeing the starlings swirling round and going ‘wow, that’s amazing’. It’s the best sight in Manchester – they can’t build anything to rival that in beauty.”

James have been around the Manchester scene for a number of years, and three years ago signed to Madonna’s label Sire. Their future looked rosy and still does, but to coincide with the release of the album, the band have parted company with the label, after waiting two years for its release, while Sire withheld backing as they thought the music was too ‘English’ and wouldn’t sell.

Guitarist Jim says: “We’re happy now. We wanted to get off the label two years ago because they wouldn’t let us do what we’re good at – playing live and recording. We’re not going a step backwards by any stretch of the imagination. This album will take us to the next step.” Trouble is, that James have got a reputation as a frantic live band – one of the best to see in the country, yet their album is very song based and tuneful – not what sells records in the age of pop pirates. Yet they wouldn’t budge… “No-one seems to realise that you just make the best album you can.”

Quite. It’s like asking Picasso to paint a bunch (???) of flowers… Tim “and then turning round to him and saying ‘well, those flowers would have been better painted blue instead of yellow. If you want them painted blue, then go paint your own! Recording an LP is a completely different medium and you’ve got to treat it differently. The music’s a bit more calm.”

Jim: “I like to think that we’re still doing the extremes, we’re just doing them better.”

Tim: “The aim is to have bigger extremes of franticness, but contrasted with the complete opposite with some really calm and beautiful things. When we start off with songs, they’re usually quite simple and then we play them a lot live and they just grow. All these songs are like little fledglings and then on tour, they’ll have to lean to fly…”

Jim: “We’ll put them out of the nest and see if they like it…”

And no doubt they’ll soar like the starlings in Piccadilly Square…

James play The Ritz on October 11.

Their album Strip-mining is now on release (Blanco Y Negro).

City Life Interview October 1998

Martyr And The Vendettas!

James’ last performance at the Ritz has been mythologised as Manchester’s best gig of 1988. With a new album under their belt and another Ritz gig in the pipeline (October 11), James should be ecstatic, yet Mike West found Tim Booth poor, pensive but in the pink.

The interview is postponed. The singer has slashed himself with a shard of broken glass. Was this a suicide attempt or an accident in the kitchen? “I was washing up the stem glasses and… I guess I lost control,” says Tim Booth, arriving two hours later with five out of ten fingers bandaged. James, the pop group, Manchester’s most visionary project since G-mex, suffer for their art. They suffered for a well publicised abuse of drugs. They suffered for an over-public use of meditation. They suffered for vegetarianism and two successful independent singles. Finally, they suffered at the hands of big business, WEA Records. If you worship martyrs, Van Gogh, Jesus Christ and Jim Morrison, you will probably worship James.

“In 1984, my liver packed in. The band were ill, disorientated, using drugs, happy to burn out. I was a materialist, left-wing. I knew nothing about health and magic.” Tim, James’ esoteric lyricist and unlikely idol to legions of beer-boys from Leeds, has perfect bone structure and a carrot juice complexion. He is explaining how he came to write the nursery rhyme narratives that Yorkshire delinquents have taken to their hearts. “I read Arthurian legends, Beowolf and Rudyard Kipling’s Just So stories at too young an age.” The delicately featured boy grew up frightened, perverted, and obsessed by these fantasies of monsters rising from the sea. “Then I read this book on interpreting dreams.” Uniformed nurses administer him poisons. Alien parasites attack his jaw. Tim’s dreams have more adventure and less sex than Sigourney Weaver’s films. Aided by Jungian analysis, his dreams became metaphors. And reality became symbolic. And meditation became an obsession. And sex became infrequent.

Four years ago, Tim’s heath and James’ habits were turned around. Narcotic depressives became suspected Buddhists. “That’s when we began to see beyond the surface of things.” Stripmine, the current and long-delayed follow up to Stutter, documents this catharsis with depth, honesty and wonderful songs. “They are simple stories with an underlying resonance of meaning that not even I understand. I used to believe that my lyrics wrote themselves.” The stories have a happy end: the suffering artist’s liver complaint is cured with acupuncture and a regulated diet.

But does the suffering end? Of course not. While Tim discovered alternative medicine, other states of being, escapes from the material world, James found no escape from the materialists. Shortly after the success of ‘Hymn From A Village’, their second single on Factory Records, James were snatched from Tony Wilson’s collection of precious curiosities by a connoisseur with greater pretentions and more capital, Seymour Stein of Sire Records.

They say Seymour hoards artifacts and artists like a squirrel hoards nuts. He buries them in expensive holes – his New York apartment or his record company – leaves them there to own and forget. Stripmine was recorded two years ago, kept from the public by accountants and A&R departments, quibbling over production, presentation or budget. James were shelved, an ornament adding to Stein’s prestige but taking from the livelihoods of Tim, Larry, Gavan and Jim. “We had no record, so we had no gigs, so we had no money. We could not subsist.” Sire, WEA, choose to ignore that bands are made of people not porcelain. James made their compromises.

Once, they were obstinately human, their dress sense uncoordinated, their image as incoherent as four strangers waiting for a bus. Then, under the persuasion of Simply Red’s manager, megalomaniac Eliot Rashman, the four men began to experiment with clothes, make-up and method acting. They learned the basic skills taught to fourteen year old school girls and rock stars. “That was only for photographs… off camera, we fall apart.” Tim is defensive. The clutter of conflicting styles that is James’ music has also been cleared out, like their wardrobe, reorganised. The result is Rock music, a professional compromise between performer, producer and promoter.

But now the group are preparing legal letters severing their relations with Sire. They will emerge from the conflict as four friends, whose worst injuries have been self inflicted. “Although we’re very close, the pressure has caused fights…” admits Tim. And later that afternoon, in the small park opposite the Buddhists’ Eighth Day vegetarian café, a strong man with a weak chin is seen shouting at the man with a carrot juice complexion. A Christian rally sings psalms nearby, but Gavan Whelan’s expletives cut through. “Fuck Hugh Jones,” says the drummer and ardent meat eater, “John Paul Jones (Led Zepellin’s bassist) should be our producer.” Tim Booth turns from carrot to beetroot. “I hate Rock,” he says. “So why do you fucking play it?” asks Gavan. First year Polytechnic students bow their heads with embarrassment as they walk by.

Tim Booth believes all things are fated, preordained by magical powers, numerology and good cooking. “But in this culture, it doesn’t necessarily follow that talent gets rewarded.” James have their talent. They have yet to get their reward.

Take four slightly weird individuals, get them to write some ‘extraordinary’, ‘climatic’ songs, and you have James. Phew, says Johnny Dee.

There is no way you can tie a label around James. Maybe because of this, past interviews have centred around myth-making. The last time they appeared in rm they wore ‘ultra-bright’ knitwear in the photos, said they were inspired by the ‘Trumpton’ theme tune and there was talk of Buddhism and veganism. All of this was, of course, tongue in cheek – it just went a bit far.
When you look at a lot of bands you see a team – an identity. When you look at James you see four completely opposite looking people – four individuals, with different tastes and lives. Somehow they formed a group together – combining their four different ideas into one struggling whole. Most groups, finding themselves in this situation, would split up. For James, it is their key. They argue continuously, particularly Gavan (the drummer) who is quite ‘laddy’ and into ‘fast cars’, and lead singer Tim, who is quite a philosopher. It only stops when bassist Jim or guitarist Larry step in to mediate. Example:

Tim (tongue placed firmly in cheek): “Jesus lads, I can’t go on like this, it has to end!”

Gavan: “I think you’re hypersensitive.”

Tim: “I’m hypersensitive? God, what about you?”

Gavan: “If things were easy we wouldn’t be where we are.”

Jim: “There’d be a lot less pain and friction.”

Gavan: “Yeah, but that’s art isn’t it?”

Tim: “In the West maybe, but in the East it doesn’t have to be pain and strife.”

Gavan: “You’re joking, you’re joking!”

The argument continues. Rock ‘n’ roll mythology comes in for cross examination next:

Tim: “Rick Astley has got a mythology.”

Gavan: “But he’s a f***ing twat.”

Tim: “He uses jet set Campari mythology.”

Gavan: “He doesn’t.”

Tim: “He does.”

Gavan: “He doesn’t, he doesn’t!”

Tim: “His videos are like adverts for Tunisian holidays!”

James are about to release an album called ‘Strip Mine’, 10, extraordinary songs that travel lyrically from Tim’s head, past his nipples, naughty bits and down to his toes.

Tim: “I’m a human being – I’ve got all these parts on me, I carry them around and inspect them every now again and write about them.”

Live, James are the nearest you can get to spontaneous combustion. Often one member of the band will start a completely new, unheard song and the rest will join in. Other times, things just click, unbelievably, into place.

Larry: “Sometimes it becomes so easy. Everything sounds fantastic when it meshes together.”

Tim: “Live, sometimes it’s just ‘ah’, it’s just ‘there’.”

It all sounds very sexual.

Tim: “It is, it is!”

Jim: “Our songs are very climactic.”

Gavan: “It’s synthesised sex.”

Tim: “It’s really hard after three songs to keep it going.”

Jim: “You keep thinking, ‘we’re gonna lose it, we’re gonna lose it’… And then you’ve lost it.”

Tim: “It’s really awful if you come off stage and you’ve ‘come’ and everybody else goes ‘bloody awful gig’.”

James are totally enthusiastic about their music. They get excited even talking about it. What do they think other people get from James?

Gavan: “A buzz they can’t get elsewhere.”

Tim: “In the past we’ve been a bit shy selling ourselves. Now, we can say ‘it’s brilliant’.”

But is there a place for James in the giddy pop world?

Gavan: “Yeah. Number one – that’s our place.”

Ladies, gentlemen, and disillusioned vegans – I give you James – a weird recipe of fun and naughty bits. Take some home with you.