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Baggy, shoegaze, Britpop, the new garage rock revival… countless scenes have come and gone over the 30 years since Tim Booth founded survivors James.

If you’re looking to catch up or fill in the gaps in your collection, today sees the launch of the career-spanning box set The Gathering Sound, featuring every single, album, B-side and much more besides.

To celebrate the landmark release, Digital Spy sat down with Tim to quiz him on all things James, Brian Eno, Coldplay and more.

This isn’t the end of James, is it?

“No, it’s definitely not the end. I’ve just come back from Gairloch in Scotland. We locked ourselves in a hotel in the middle of nowhere – five of us – and wrote a lot of songs. We worked on a lot of songs and demos and there’ll be an album next year. We’re still kicking.”

So why now for the big retrospective?

“Ask Universal! We tried to release this a year and a half ago. They had a lot of technical issues. Our fans were very patient with us. We had to keep sending it back… it wouldn’t work with Macs, or the USB sticks broke – we’re not giving that to our fans! But we knew we were approaching 30 and we felt like let’s get it all together. It feels like an honour. And there’s so much material – we’re not The Stone Roses.”

The USB has top-quality FLAC versions of the songs…

“We fought for that – hard. Our first fight with Universal – they wanted a cheap USB stick that would take the MP3s, and we said, ‘They’ve got to be able to choose’. I don’t listen to MP3s. I can tell the difference – f**k the scientific research, I can tell the difference! You can feel it. I wish iTunes did other options. I love iTunes, but I’d rather download on a higher quality.”

What rarities should the fans listen out for in the collection?

“We put a lot into our B-sides, we always did – we never really differentiated. Sometimes our B-sides were failed A-sides that for some reason or another we didn’t release them. Like ‘I Defeat’, which was a duet with Sinead O’Connor, which we were just stupid not to have released as an A-side! On some of those too the pressure would come off to present a polished piece of A-side, and we’d experiment, or take a few extra risks, and the risks often paid off. I think our B-sides album is killer.”

Is it a shame that the B-side has died in the iTunes age?

“Yes, but I don’t know how many bands approached it like we did. Some bands obviously did, but I don’t know what percentage. You see too many albums where there’s only two good songs on the bloody thing, it’s ridiculous. It’s a short-term mentality too. Someone gets a good album away, they know you’ve looked at all those songs, they’re going to come back… and now they’re just going to cherry-pick the two pieces of music, no-one’s foolish enough to buy the whole album on-spec.”

Why have James managed to survive so long, through so many scenes?

“I left in 2001 and we’ve come back stronger and cleaner and healthier. That’s been really great. That was the only reason I agreed to let us reform was that everyone was in a much better state, had kids and was settled. We’ve had the most fun since we’ve been back than in any period of James. We’re at our most potent at the moment and have been for a few years.

“Even when we haven’t liked each other as people, I don’t think there’s a moment where we thought we’d find better musicians. The album Millionaires we were the most dysfunctional we’ve ever been, but we still made a half-decent album. We were improving our relationships by Pleased To Meet You, and that reflects that. And we had Brian Eno.

“When you’ve got Brian Eno you’re not going to give up. Everywhere I went, Michael Stipe would say ‘How did you get to work with Brian Eno, I’ve been trying to work with him for years’. Flea would say ‘How did you get to work with Brian Eno for five albums?’ We had that. Brian God bless him says we were his favourite band. We had an amazing time with him. He’s definitely the fifth Beatle. And we miss him!”

Is there any chance of him working with James again?

“I doubt we have the money to work with Brian Eno. He seems to only work with the millionaires! But you never know! I almost don’t want to ask him because he’s a friend of mine.”

I don’t think Brian would have worked with a guitar band like Coldplay had he not worked with you before…

“Excuse me for blowing our own trumpet, but Chris Martin wanted to work with him because of James. He’s an unabashed, uncool – it’s uncool to love James – James fan. He says he became a singer because of us. So they approached him from that phase, which was really lovely. So I know we’re in the mix somewhere, which is really sweet.”

There are quotes from Bernard Butler to Peter Kay in the box set – is there such a thing as an archetypal James fan?

“No. And I hope there isn’t. It’s really funny. I love strange friendships that happen. If you saw a list of James celebrity fans you’d find it very weird. It’s a really fantastically diverse and odd mixture of people.”

Is there any chance of working with Bernard Butler again? Could he work with James?

“I don’t know about James, but I would work with Bernard. I love Bernard. Bernard wanted me to leave James and asked me to leave James. He drew up discussions with Geoff Travis and it was going to be two albums minimum. And I couldn’t leave James at the time. I couldn’t leave them in it – we were in a rough place at the time. I had to say no.

“I didn’t say no because of his ability! I thought he was astonishing, and I still do. One of the greatest guitar players I’ve ever worked with. I would love to work with him, so I’d never say not to that. But he was a bit upset by that. So I’ve no idea where I’m at in his affections!”

You’re touring with Echo & The Bunnymen – did you always like them or were you Mersey rivals?

“I’ve always been a fan. I saw the first tour they did. I saw them play at the Leeds Science Fiction Festival. McCulloch always had a great voice. Will is a great guitar player. Totally a fan.”

James founder Jim Glennie met frontman Tim Booth in a club in 1982. Tim and Jim soon settled on naming their band the most Google-unfriendly boy’s name in history (probably). But it was the Eighties so that didn’t stop them from becoming one of the most successful bands of their generation, going on to sell 12 million albums worldwide with hits including “Come Home”, “Sit Down and “She’s A Star”. The rockers experienced the ups and downs of a changing line-up, the influence of addictions, a gruelling schedule and all the predictable pitfalls of continuous touring.

The departure of Yorkshire-born Booth from the band in 2001 (while he embarked on a solo career) gave way to a six-year hiatus followed by an inevitable James reunion in 2007.They played a few gigs, were pictured arm in arm, got booked for festivals again and released new album Hey Ma, followed by two mini albums The Night Before and The Morning After The Night Before. But then things went a bit quiet. You might expect that after 30 years James might be getting tired of the music business. But in an interview with The Independent online Booth, 52, confirmed he and the rest of James have been holed up in Scotland writing and recording ahead of UK tour next spring – and that the creative juices are flowing like never before.

“We just came back from Gairloch in Scotland. We locked ourselves into a small hotel and made a studio and recorded new songs and demo-d new songs and worked on lyrics in the middle of nowhere,” Booth says. “Scotland’s amazing, it’s another planet. The colours feed you. I think that’s what’s important about landscape. Some part of our soul responds to them. It’s almost like you meet part of yourself reflected back at you and if you don’t see it and don’t be in that landscape, then that part of you can’t be energised.”

Now living just outside of LA, Booth is a keen advocate of nature. But with a bobcat living under his house, which is in the middle of “the most amazing national park” where red-tailed hawks fly, mountain lions roam and rattle snakes reside, he’s fully award of the dangers.

“The rattlesnakes are a little problematic,” he says wryly. “But, they warn you, which is always a good thing. I was at a kids’ party about two months ago by a swimming pool. I lifted up my towel and there was a rattlesnake and it was quite like ‘Oh! Hello, how did you get under my towel?!’”

This wasn’t Booth’s first brush with death, or snakes even. “I’m quite drawn to snakes. I like them, and they like me. But I was nearly killed by one in Morocco,” he says, explaining how a snake-charmer put a cobra around his neck to try and intimidate money out of him- but then dropped it leaving him in the grip of a deadly animal.

“When the snake dropped the cafe I was in cleared around me and I was left there with this cobra round my neck. And I remember thinking ‘it smells like chicken’ and kept very still. The snake charmer ran back in and put a hood on it and took it away, and ran. And then about three minutes afterwards, I jumped out of my seat. I think if I had jumped out of my seat during then I may not be here.”

Booth may have met Glennie in the friendly setting of a nightclub, but the two other near death experiences he describes took place in rather less forgiving surroundings. “I dance strangely,” he admits. “It was in the days before house music so nobody danced like I danced. So the twice that I was threatened in clubs it was because they didn’t like the way I danced.”

“The first guy was trying to trip me up and I would elegantly stamp on his feet when I was dancing and he didn’t like it. And the second ones just saw me dancing and didn’t like it so ran beer glasses under my feet to provoke me. I didn’t respond. But then some other people they targeted after me responded and they got stabbed right in front of me. I saw it.”

Booth is still a keen dancer and has recently been teaching a system called the Five Rhythms about taking people into “altered states through dancing”. He says: “I’ve always been fascinated with trance and altered states through dancing. Like literally trance states through dancing for days. I dance for days and days.”

He says he can achieve euphoria through making music. “I really don’t drink,” he says. “I was born with an inherited liver disorder so I have to be very careful about any kind of intoxicant. So I have to find my highs in other ways.”

It is difficult making music with a band while he resides across the pond and they are based over here. He says they are “itching” to finish their new album, but he’s going back to LA for three months before heading back for the tour in April, which means it must be postponed for while.

The new album will be reflective of the grief Booth has experienced this year. “There’s been a lot of death in my life this year and it’s been very heartfelt and very touching and powerful and uplifting and sad and all of those things. This seems to be coming out in the songs, not that they’re… they’re actually very uplifting songs, but the vocals have sadness to them, en masse, that I’m quite surprised at. It seems to have seeped into my writing.”

For much of their 30 year existence, alternative Manchester Britpop rockers James have been severely underrated. Having toured across the globe and played some of the biggest festivals in the world, frontman Tim Booth knows much about what makes a show great, which is why he loves Coachella. “Some places you play, you just aren’t in the zone,” Booth explains. “But not here. It’s a great place to get going and play a terrific show.”

The band loved playing yesterday afternoon’s show in 100-degree heat; on the other hand, they hated performing on final touring version of Lollapalooza. Below, Booth offers five reasons why Coachella kicks ass and Lollapalooza sucked.

5. Getting respect from the organizers:

“[At Coachella] we didn’t feel like were the opening act for Korn or Snoop Dogg. [At Lollapalooza] there was no place for James, which is the opposite of this festival.”

4. It’s painless:

“[Coachella’s] over in two days and [when] we did the six week Lollapalooza (in 1997) it was the tour from hell. I had ruptured discs in my back and it was terrible. Coachella is one of the few festivals where you hit the stage and are already in the zone.”

3. Location:

“Somewhere out here, you feel like there’s the spirit of Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin playing golf. I love the desert, even the extremes. Last week, I was wearing thermals and this week, I’m topless for the first time in 30 years.”

2. The audiences are sexier and more open:

“Lollapalooza was more tribal. [Fans there only] came who they came to see, and they said, ‘You can fuck off you English faggots.’ After we heard that, we were like that’s interesting, so we went out and bought sparkly dresses for the whole band.”

1. Sobriety (for the band):

“My fellow band members didn’t need drugs to get themselves through the Coachella experience. As a band, we were pretty strung out for a few years after Lollapalooza. It took us a few years to recover from it and everyone was pretty damaged. It was the tour from hell whereas this is a true, beautiful experience.”

Last year when I interviewed Larry Gott and Jim Glennie of James before the band’s set, I could say I never thought I would have the opportunity to see the band play live. A year later, I suppose I can say that I never thought that I would see James in concert more than once.

During a mini-tour wrapped around two Coachella appearances, James hit a few intimate venues along the West Coast, including Portland’s Roseland Theater. A few hours before the band took the stage, I had the opportunity to speak with singer Tim Booth. Although most Americans know James mainly for their song “Laid,” the band is up there with the Smiths and the Stone Roses in terms of stature in the UK, making this encounter a rare opportunity.

While Gott and Glennie seemed like a couple of fun guys who played in a band, Booth exuded a more seductive star power. As we sat for more than 30 minutes in the Roseland’s green room, we discussed walking out during an R.E.M. concert, cinephilila, dreams, politics and some of my favorite James songs. I have been a fan of the band since my teenage years in the ‘90s and meeting Booth did not disappoint as I found him both candid and open to my questions. I am pleased to present the Spectrum Culture interview with Tim Booth of James.

The thing that struck me the most the last time I saw James in concert was your dancing. It reminded me of Morrissey and Michael Stipe. It doesn’t seem recent frontmen dance like that anymore. What’s wrong with those guys?

God, I’ve never seen Morrissey dance. Not really. I don’t know. I always dance like that. Iggy was my man, really. Then Ian Curtis saw Iggy, I think, and Iggy was his man. I might not have ever seen Michael dance. Does Michael dance?

Oh yeah, for sure.

Does he? I got into R.E.M. around the Green tour. I went to see them at Manchester Apollo. Walked out after 20 minutes. Didn’t like it.

Why not?

I didn’t like it at all.

What was wrong with it?

I’ll tell you what, they did one thing that really bugged me. It was the middle of a really intense song and Peter Buck went over to the bass player and they started talking and sharing a little joke. I thought, “God, I hate that.” Watching that as an audience, a little in-joke. That really threw me.

So that’s all it takes?

For me; I was very judgmental. Then Michael became a really good friend and I saw them loads and really loved them after that. It changed completely by the end. I told him that. He knew that (laughs). That I walked out on them at the Manchester Apollo and then ended up really liking them. I find that with the bands that I love the best, I often don’t like them the first time around. Patti Smith Horses, the first time I heard it I thought it was rubbish. Now I think it’s probably the best record I’ve ever heard. I don’t take my first opinions very seriously anymore or my judgments.

That’s a lesson we learn in life as we progress.

I think so. And in terms of moving singers, I don’t know. I haven’t really seen many new singers. I guess a lot of singers are talented enough to play instruments and I’m not. But I’ve never wanted to. I’ve always wanted to dance rather than hold an instrument that would prevent me from moving.

I remember seeing Lucinda Williams once in concert and she took the guitar off for a few songs. Then she stood there unsure of what to do with her arms.

I think if you play an instrument it becomes a very useful crutch to hide behind. But God, then you’ve got your Beyoncés and those kind of dancers which is another realm, isn’t it?

But do they actually sing and dance at the same time?

I think Beyoncé does to a large degree and then some of it is mimed where they’re dancing and then comes back in when they’re not. It’s that kind of control.

Do you ever find yourself winded?

Sometimes, not often. I’ve got canny and I’ve got amazing breath control. I can hold my breath for over four minutes. I’ve built it over the years. Skinny frame, but somewhere I’ve got big lungs.

You would be good in South America in the mountains.

Or diving for pearls. Those are my other star occupations if I wasn’t a singer.

Mountain climbing and pearl diving.

That’s it. From the ends of the earth. The troughs to the peaks.

Well, we’re glad you’re a singer.

Thank you. I think I am too.

I noticed in your lyrics in some songs a preoccupation with old Hollywood types. You reference Yul Brynner, Ava Gardner, Fred Astaire, Richard Burton and many others. Are you a cinephile?

Wow! God, you know that is the first time I’ve ever been asked that question. You should give yourself a star for that one. Yeah, I am and I trained as an actor. Oh, and John Travolta but you wouldn’t really call him old.

That is why I didn’t include him in the question.

Very good. In England, when I was growing up, there were two television channels. Black and white TV to color TV but all you ever saw on the weekends were old movies. Like crappy old Westerns.

Was this the mid-‘60s?

Yeah, mid to late ‘60s.

Which movies come to mind, without thinking about it too much, as favorites?

Casablanca is still number one for me. I just think that’s an amazing piece of work. I love Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps with Robert Donat. That’s a beauty. Metropolis. Another couple of the German Expressionist movies like Nosferatu are amazing. I saw Gance’s Napoleon when they first restored it in a four or five hour showing in Leeds once with an orchestra which I really enjoyed. I love old movies. Although, when I try to watch them with my kid they look slow. They have to be really quick to hold him.

How old is your kid?

Seven.

Have you tried Buster Keaton?

Buster Keaton not too much. Laurel and Hardy. He loves the Stooges. Some of the Marx Brothers. He loved Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy. There’s a couple of those comedy-horror ones he loved when he was about five. Harold Lloyd, but not much Buster Keaton. So much pathos.

What is it about the old films that get you writing about them over and over again?

Well, I guess I’ve only just referenced them. It’s the iconic imagery. Looks and smokes like Ava Gardner and dancing like Fred Astaire. Because they are so far back in time they’ve become iconic. You don’t think of them as human beings anymore. You think of them as the image you’ve seen. Of Fred Astaire dancing or Ava Gardner smoking or Richard Burton drinking. That’s just the effect of time rather than my own cinephile enjoyment.

There are people who believe that when you’re watching a film, you’re no longer watching a person but a ghost. A piece of that person trapped on the celluloid.

As a kid, I just thought that we were in a movie and everything was just an illusion. I used to fantasize about it all the time. When we were driving in a car, I would imagine all the landscapes were being moved around me and that the car was staying stationary. I was always convinced there was some truth in that. And when you discover certain spiritual truths you may believe life is just an illusion. Everyone lives in their own illusion, usually based around their own belief system. Then the cinema metaphor becomes very easy to accept. I think that a holographic metaphor of existence is even now being scientifically validated. I think they are even doing some experiments in the next few years to test out whether life is a hologram. It’s one of the latest theories of quantum physics. Have you heard that one?

I’ve thought about it.

They are literally doing some tests next year to see whether it’s true. They also think it’s coming from somewhere on the other side of the universe.

That this is just a projection?

Yes, some kind of projection.

Well, there’s all kinds of theories about time not being linear.

Absolutely. I very much subscribe to those experiences of reality. I mean “Born of Frustration,” “I’m living in the weirdest dream/ Where nothing is the way it seems/ Nothing seems that real to me/ Nothing means that much to me.” I’ve had many periods in my life where life feels like you could put your fist through it easily.

I know songs like “One of the Three” really deals with duality whether it be the Holy Trinity or a hostage situation. I never quite know because I write as much as I can from my own unconscious. My unconscious creates the best lyrics. I don’t. In the last number of years, a lot of my lyrics come in half-asleep, half-awake states. I try to keep myself in that state when I finish a lyric. Literally, I will wake up at four or five o’clock in the morning getting some words and lie there, have a pen and paper handy and try to write them without waking myself up too much.

So it’s like channeling?

Channeling is the way I feel most artists experience. That can sound a bit pompous but I’ve heard some who write some pretty crap stuff say they are channeling. And I believe them. I think there may be some pretty crap muses out there for certain people. So maybe that makes it less pompous when you say you’re channeling. You acknowledge that’s possible. You can still write crap and it will be channeling.

Have you put anything out that you consider crap?

A few disjointed songs where I’ve gone, “I’ve not quite landed that one.” “Crash,” for example.

That one has the lyric, “Cut the Herman free from the Hesse.”

Yes, you get nice lines but you don’t get much more. And you go, “There was more to that one, I’m sure.” Hmmm… “72.” You’re good at the lines. I wouldn’t have known to quote you a single line from “Crash.”

You don’t play that one live anymore?

No. We know how good we are, so I don’t want to give you false modesty. I don’t think there are many bands out there doing what we do. Like last night, we did a mad setlist. Basically what we do is look at the setlist from two years ago and go, “Let’s try not to play hardly any of the songs we played two years ago.” So we didn’t play “Laid” and we didn’t play “Sit Down” and we didn’t play lots of songs we played two years ago. The first 11 songs were pretty obscure, some 1980s paranoid-delusional songs and we played a great set. But I do pity the poor bugger who comes along thinking he’s going to hear “Laid” and hear that nice Brit-pop band.

Last year when I interviewed Larry (Gott), he said that he loves playing that song. I had the impression that as a band it would be like, “Fuck, we have to play that song again.”

Yeah, I think most of us really enjoy it. What happens is every so often with those songs, they need a rest. You know it when it has become auto-pilot. “Sit Down” has needed a rest at times. “Sometimes,” “Laid.” “Out to Get You” is getting a rest at the moment. Also what happens is that a set leans on it too heavily. “Sometimes” and “Out to Get You” more than “Laid” are such the heart of our music.

“Out to Get You” has so many crescendos and valleys. It’s not as much as a confection as “Laid.”

“Out to Get You” is so seductive and it really allows Saul (Davies) to shine. Saul is very modest about his violin playing. It’s hard to get him to play a lot of violin. So when he does play something, he blows people away. “Out to Get You” is the opportunity where Saul gets to stretch his legs.

Larry also said last year that you guys rotate and sometimes fight over who gets to make the setlist.

I write the setlist.

You always do it?

I write them and Larry has a bit of chagrin around this because he doesn’t. Some nights Jim (Glennie) and Saul write them. Larry hasn’t written a setlist since we reformed and I think he gets a bit annoyed about that. He actually veers towards more greatest hits sets. The rest of the band wants the challenge. When we came on tour last time, he got quite upset about the setlists because we were taking real liberties. We had 60 songs and we were starting with songs that we would normally encore with and seeing whether we had the balls to carry the gig off. For the first few gigs he was like, “You can’t do this! We can’t!” Then after about 10 gigs he saw that we were going down better than we had ever gone done and he went, “Well, fuck this, this is brilliant!” Then the last two gigs we’ve done weird sets again and he has been storming. He has been brilliant. He’s been improvising on half the songs. Major improvisations and discursions. It’s been fantastic.

So it’s nice to have him back?

Oh yes, Larry’s amazing in the band. I wasn’t criticizing him. It’s just a difference of opinion in sets. Larry, I think, felt that we should give more greatest hits to people and the rest of us think we’re good enough to bring to people something they might not have seen before. That’s what we want to be remembered for rather than a band who just played their greatest hits over and over again.

Which songs do you feel like you have to sing, right now?

There’s one we haven’t gotten together yet, because someone in the band hates it. It’s called “The Lake” and it didn’t make it on Laid. Me and Brian Eno wanted it on the album and it got outvoted by everyone else. We played it on the orchestra tour and we did it the other day and it sounded really good. We might bring that one into the set in a few days’ time. It’s probably one of my favorite ever James songs. It never ended up on an album. It was a B-side. That was amazing.

I am really enjoying a song called “Riders” from the ‘80s. It was an amazing dream I had. I was 21 or 22 and I was very sick with a liver disease. I was close to quitting. Not as a musician, but life. I was always jaundiced and very sick for 10 years with an inherited liver disease. I had this book on alternative interpretations of dreams. I read the book and I was very interested. The last chapter was on Gestalt and I said, “Okay, if I get a great dream tonight I’m going to take it to a Gestalt therapist.” I had never done anything like that in my life. I had an amazing dream that night where I was sitting in a lecture theatre. Nick Cave was there and Jim Morrison was there and Iggy Pop was there, sitting alongside of me.

Lots of baritones.

Lots of baritones. Nurse Ratched from Cuckoo’s Nest was giving a lecture and her assistant was Jed Clampett from “The Beverly Hillbilles.” She said, “Is everyone understood?” I had just got there and I was so in awe of the people I was sitting with, like Hendrix was there, that I didn’t say anything. She said, “Okay,” and then passed around this steaming liquid and everyone took a sip and passed it on. Then I took a sip. She then explained that this is the juice, the juice that causes pain that all great singers need. It’s kind of metaphorical heroin.

Is it like duende? Nick Cave talked about that in a lecture.

Yeah, I guess. Then I said, “Hang on, I don’t want this.” She said, “It’s too late.” I said, “No, no. I don’t want it.” She said, “Come with me,” and took me to a back room. Jed Clampett brought this huge pair of clamps and put them in my mouth and ripped out this little alien creature that scuttled across the floor like a little baby octopus. I said, “Is that it?” She said, “Yes,” in a very unconvincing way. I woke up and felt as if my jaw had been punched. It was agony. That became the song “Riders” and I took that dream to a Gestalt therapist. That led me into meditation, alternative therapy and things that meant I could live with having a liver disease. That led me down that whole path. That night was quite a turning point.

You actually predicted one of my questions: to what extent does illness play into your lyrics?

I think a lot. I sometimes wonder if I didn’t have a liver disease whether I would be writing lyrics.

Weren’t you injured badly too?

Yeah. I’ve had a lot of bad health.

Well, you look wonderful now.

(Laughs) Thanks! Well, I do a lot of alternative things. I meditate and do yoga and whatever I can do to keep myself in shape. And I dance for hours, which is the best thing of all. So yes, illness has played a big role actually. I think a lot of the first 10 years of lyrics I wrote were often written from a jaundiced point of view. I used to hallucinate naturally and I thought I could hear people’s thoughts. I only later discovered that it was a physical illness. I always thought I was mentally ill. That took a while. When I got to 30 and hadn’t been locked up, I was most surprised.

Do you still reside in Los Angeles?

Topanga Canyon, which is very different. I live in the forest and it’s beautiful. I hate Los Angeles. Don’t tell anyone.

As a British person living in the United States, what little things have you noticed here that are so different than where you come from?

Well, in Topanga what is amazing is the community. It is a very beautiful community. People really look after each other. Fires come through there a lot, so I think people have to have everyone’s phone numbers. It leads to a bonded community. When we arrived, they had a pie party on our street and everyone bought a pie so we could meet everybody. A very, very beautiful thing that really wouldn’t happen in England anymore. The reason we came to America was for the land. You still got the most amazing wilderness and untamed land whereas Europe has been civilized out of existence.

A few things are really upsetting. Bureaucracy is incredible here. It’s like you’re such a country of litigation that the minute someone takes someone to court they have to add a new document into whatever you’re doing. So these documents build up and build up and build up so when you’re buying a house for instance, you have to write a book. Nobody prunes these things down. The bureaucracy in America is mind-blowingly awful. Your banks are much more crooked than in England. They find many devious ways to make money out of us, which is really a bit shocking. Banks you can generally trust in England except for their stupid investments. Your corpocracy. America doesn’t have a democracy, it has a corpocracy run by lobbyists as their frontmen. It’s shocking, really, really shocking. Very upsetting. I didn’t really know it was as bad as that. I thought it was exaggerated until I got here.

America is such an icon in a lot of ways to the rest of the world and people want to look up to it. And yet, your democracy sucks. George Bush lost the election and he managed to stay in power. Your Supreme Court is clearly another branch of the Republican Party. It’s not a court. How could anyone have respect for the law? How can anyone agree to pay their taxes when you know Romney is paying 15%? Your politicians are just so corrupt, it’s unbelievable. In England they got busted recently, the politicians, for putting through expenses, these tiny expenses. The country went into uproar. We’re talking about £100, a £100 there. They busted all these politicians and some of them got kicked out, some of them went to prison for tiny things. Then you see that even Hilary Clinton is getting hundreds of thousands a year from lobbyists and you’re like, “They’ve all been bought!” How can you call this a democracy? It’s a fix. It’s shocking.

It certainly is. You guys have sex scandals and you guys…

You have a few of those. Everyone has sex scandals. Everyone likes a good sex scandal. If you do put the negative stuff around America, put in the positive as well.

Everything is going in there as is.

Cool. I intend to become a dual-citizen. I love it here enough to want to do that. But some changes need to come.

We do supposedly have freedom of speech here.

Yeah, it should be okay.

You should be okay. Let’s get back to the music. I’m going to mention some James songs. Please share whatever ideas or reminiscences come to mind. The first one is my favorite James song. I actually requested you play it last time when I interviewed Larry and Jim and you didn’t. It’s “Alaskan Pipeline.”

We didn’t play it. We played it last year with the orchestra. We tried it a few times on our own. It’s so still. Most audiences don’t have the patience. If you were in a theatre where people were sitting down you can play it. A gig with a bar? You can’t play it. An outdoor venue? You can’t play it. The material has to suit the city, the venue, the band and “Alaskan Pipeline”…

So don’t expect it tonight.

Don’t expect it tonight.

Anything else you want to share about that song?

What do you want to know?

Whatever feeling it conjures when I mention it.

It was a particular relationship, most of it. Two, really. I think the best line is, “You mother me/ I son you.” I really like that one. It’s just communication between a mother and a son but also another relationship I was thinking of as well is in there. It’s about strong-willed people who just cling onto grudges and attitudes and won’t let go.

We all thought it was your final salvo with James. What a great way to go out as your last track on Pleased to Meet You. One more song: “Five-O.”

(Pauses)

Is it too open-ended?

Yes, open-ended questions are harder to answer sometimes. I love that song. We’re playing that tonight. We played it the last couple of nights. It’s one of my favorites. We had a period where it was the real center of our set. Then we hadn’t been able to play it since we re-formed. We tried and it would fall apart. Until this tour we haven’t played it to a point where we felt it’s working now. God knows what it was. Some of it is about long-term relationship. It’s almost a manifesto. “You can trace my concerns/ Here’s a body of work for your inspection.” It’s like, “Come and take a look what we’re doing.” Then, “I can feel your faith/ Gonna make it mine.” That’s where you have a projected belief in somebody and somebody can take that projected belief and run with it. Then about marriage. I remember the first time I really fell in love with somebody and wanted to marry them and be with them. Then you have the insecurity that they’re going to die and you’re like, “God, I hope I die before they do.”

“If it lasts forever/ Hope I’m the first to die.”

Yeah, “hope I’m the first to die.”

Last year I suggested this idea to Larry and he told me to fuck off. I want to see what your reaction is. What if someone asked you to recreate the Laid cover now in a photograph?

I wouldn’t have a problem with it. That was a real interesting accident, I remember. I’d been doing some dancing with this great shamanic practitioner in New York called Gabrielle Roth and I had worn a dress for a few days and danced in it because it was easy to move in. We’d been dancing for eight hours a day or whatever. I came back and I remember suggesting to my manager that I might wear a dress in the photo shoot and she was like, “Don’t you dare!” So when we had a band meeting, I said, “How about the whole band wear a dress?” Everyone went, “Great! Let’s do it!” It just came from that accident. Then we were on the steps of Marseilles Cathedral having a photo shoot and everyone was starving. Someone went and got us a load of bananas. We were eating the bananas in between the photo shoot when someone just took that shot.

It’s a pretty iconic album cover.

It’s the only one we’ve got an iconic shot for. Until that album, we were very anti-image. We were really against how things looked. So we wore shit clothes, all of us. Me especially. Baggy clothes. We wanted everyone to get us totally for our music. I think it has cost us hugely. I look at Oasis and how they had such a strong image and the Stone Roses and the Smiths. I think, “Huh, we missed a trick.” At the time, it was a sign of our musical authenticity.

None of those bands are around anymore.

No, they aren’t (pointedly). Whatever they did, I don’t think they’ve got the same depth because they didn’t carry on as long. I think we’ve mined a different period. Even when we’ve been very fucked up as a band, we’ve still managed to pull off very decent records, which is always surprising.

Are there more coming?

Hopefully. We haven’t started yet.

This tour is built around Coachella, right?

Yes.

Have you played it before?

No.

I guess it’s kind of like Reading, but hotter.

I hope not. Reading is a bit of a corporate do. I suspect you are probably right, unfortunately. Have you been before?

No, I’ve been to other big festivals, but not this one. I’ve had friends who went and they said it’s hot.

Four o’clock in the afternoon. It could be quite hot.

Is that when your set is?

Yeah. We have this fairly blasting set planned too.

Well, you live near there. Just don’t wear polyester.

Yeah, Palm Springs, but the desert is hotter than where we are. Shit. Thank you.

NB: After the interview, Booth invited me to watch the band’s soundcheck. For the third song, he convinced the band to play “Alaskan Pipeline.” I got to hear it after all.

eFestivals spoke to James’ longest serving member, bass player Jim Glennie who is in the Highlands of the North West coast, enjoying some home time and a pretty mild winter whilst preparing for a busy summer including the band’s forthcoming headlining show at this summer’s Wychwood Festival.

What are you up to?

Work wise we’re building up a head of steam now, but we’ve been quietish, but it all kicks off the start of April, and it gets mental after that. But, it’s all good stuff.

You’re headlining Wychwood this year are you looking forward to that?

Very much so, I’ve never been there before, but I’ve done a little bit of research and it sounds great. We’ve consciously over the last three years shied away from the big festivals, and done loads of little festivals and they’re just wonderful. It’s the same this year we’ve got a lovely bunch of little ones to do, and they’re much more relaxed and friendly basically.

Because lots of people in the band have got kids now, it’s more of the kind of atmosphere we are used to these days, rather than a bunch of people in a muddy field getting drunk. We love them, we’ve come across some fantastic ones that we’ve had a wonderful time at, and which don’t feel like we are working. We can go there with just a very different attitude, and enjoy the day as well as the gig.

You mentioned kids, do you take your kids with you?

Well, my kids are big, and I do take my son sometimes, but he’s 22 now. All the guys in the band have little kids now. Tim (Booth) has a little son, Saul (Davies) has two young kids, and Mark (Hunter) has got two young kids, so we are a fairly family orientated band now, very different to how it used to be. It’s a nice atmosphere, it’s nice having the kids with you, having them running around on the tour bus, and it’s a lot healthier, I think, to be honest with you.

When you play a festival then, you get a chance to look around rather than just in, play, and out.

It depends where you are and what you’re doing, but we try not to do that. We try to get there as early as we can so we can enjoy it, relax, and have a mooch about and see what the festival is like, and with the smaller ones, it feels much more relaxed and you can do that. With the big ones it all gets a little bit difficult, the security is really heavy, and you can’t just wander out into a field because you don’t know what kind of nutter you’re going to bump into. It’s just a very different feel at the smaller ones, it’s just more pleasurable, and often a lot more thing going on that just the rock and roll which is always nice. You can always catch something, something weird and wonderful, a workshop or something, and Wychwood feels very much in that category. Not just based around bands playing and that’s an end to it.

Is there anyone on the bill that’s already been announced that you would like to see?

I’d like to see Bellowhead on the Friday but I don’t know whether we’re going to be there on the Friday or not. On Saturday there’s quite an eclectic mixture of people, which sounds great. The band who are on before us, I’ve never heard of them, the Mahala Rai Banda from Moldovia, they sound interesting.

The people who have put the line-up together, this is not a bunch of whoevers shoved on the bill, someone has taken the time and put some thought into finding acts who are a little bit different, and that’s great. It gives you a chance to stumble upon something you’ve never heard of before that’s going to really impress you. Yes, there’s some people I know there on the line-up, but what really excites me is the stuff I don’t know.

You mentioned you’d played a few smaller festivals this year, have you got a tour of gigs on the horizon too?

Yes, we’ve got lots of festivals throughout the summer and we’re going all over the place which will be nice. We’ve got a busy April where we play the States. We start off in Canada and go down the west coast, then we play the Coachella festival which is supposed to be brilliant, and then we’re heading down to South America doing Mexico, Chile, Brazil, and Argentina. It’s about to get very busy, and in amongst all that we’ve got to write the next record.

What we tend to do when we’re doing festivals we tend to play them at the weekends, with the gaps in between we write and lock ourselves in little rehearsal rooms somewhere and make new music. It’s going to be busy from April through to the end of the summer.

Do you think you’ll play any of that material live over the summer?

I don’t know, I wouldn’t have thought we’d have anything ready that quick, but it depends sometimes songs can be formed pretty quickly, and it’s always nice to put the fear of god in yourselves by playing something where you don’t know what you’re doing. That’s always fun, well i don’t know fun is the right word but we do like to throw ourselves in the deep end by doing things that we’re not sure of, or that the audience don’t know. It’s a challenge to make something stand up against the songs they do know requires a huge amount of effort and concentration, and that’s scary and at the same time very rewarding if you pull it off. So, I don’t know, there may be some scritchy scratchy versions of new stuff thrown in the mix at some of these shows throughout the year. It’ll be quite exciting, and a nice idea.

Can you remember what the first festival you went to was?

I think it was Glastonbury, in the the early Eighties, I’m not sure exactly what year, probably around ’81. In those days it was a fair chunk smaller, and it was just, really, really, really, really muddy. I’ve been to some Glastonburys that were absolutely amazing, and then I’ve been to some that have just been like the Battle of the Somme, where it’s been quite an ordeal really. If you get the weather then fantastic, but if you don’t get the weather then it’s going to be… difficult.

I remember vague bits of that first festival, I can’t remember anyone who was on to be honest with you. I loved it though. I think festivals are fantastic places to be, and that chance to wander around the ‘village’ of Glastonbury, of the tents, seeing what you can stumble upon, I think is wonderful. There’s still something very special about Glastonbury even though it’s got so huge nowadays. It’s a special festival though, even though it’s a big one it somehow manages to make it work.

So if you weren’t playing there next year, would you try and get a ticket?

I don’t know. It depends how busy we are depends on how much music I go to see. If we’re really busy I tend to want to just run away and just recover. When we’re quiet though I do need more music. When we’re quiet I do love to see live music, I get great pleasure from it, and get very stimulated by it.

You must have seen festivals change and evolve a fair bit over the years, what’s the main thing you’ve noticed change?

There’s just so much more than there used to be. The festival bug took off a good few years ago now, but it just seemed that every year there were more and more festivals. There’s a lot more diversity I think now, at one time it was just the Reading Festival and Glastonbury pretty much and that was it. Now you’ve got all these little offshoots, presenting something very, very different. I like the fact that they’ve taken it away slightly from the rock and roll bands playing in a muddy field and whole lot of people getting drunk.

I like the fact that there is alternatives to that now. There’s nothing wrong with that, don’t get me wrong, but there’s alternatives to that now, and Wychwood seems to be a perfect example. People of a slightly more mature age, can go, and take their kids and feel it’s safe, and not feel that anything horrible or nasty is going to happen. I think the diversification is good.

I don’t know how much the recession is going to hit any of this. I don’t know if people are going to hold onto their pennies this year, there still seems to be many people around. I hope that a lot of them don’t fall by the wayside, and I suppose through hard times people still want the release they can find in music, and to escape and enjoy themselves.

I think there were a fair few successful opportunities to do that for those people in the recession of the Seventies.

Yes, there was wasn’t there, and again a lot of it was less corporate but more throwing things together and slightly anarchic. They all got very ordered I think, and big. Now, it seems to have evolved or devolved slightly and you can play every weekend through the summer. We have done that the last two years, just little festivals up and down the country, and play to different people, all age groups, and come across some great music that you’ve not discovered before.

What other festivals are you lined up to play this summer?

We’re doing the Big Stooshie festival in Scotland, then a bunch of foreign stuff in Romania, Portugal, then good old Wychwood, then Greece, Cyprus, then we’re doing Sound Island festival in Kent. We’re doing Kendal Calling in Cumbria, and Stockton Weekender so far, but I’m sure we’ll get others in between as well.

The trouble with doing that is you’re never in one place for very long, and you spend a lot of time travelling.

Are festivals similar abroad?

No, they tend to be a different kind of set ups really, but it varies from place to place. They tend to be more just about the music, there’s just bands playing, they’ve not gone very far into the realms of family entertainment. But you do get more families going to them anyway.

There’s less division, at least there seems to be in the rest of the world, when it come to aligning yourself to certain kinds of music. You can get a whole family, generations coming to see a band, as opposed to just the kids, or just mum and dad. And guaranteed sunshine helps. They do very, we’ve plated Greece a lot, and the festivals tend to be just a bunch of bands over a few days. You arrive in the evening, you don’t stay there all day, you don’t camp, and they tend to be on the edge of Athens probably, and that tends to be what they call a festival.

There’s an odd, strange mixture of things around the world that people call festivals.

Do you still do the camping thing?

No, I like going camping but not at festivals. We tend to have the luxury of a tour bus which is kind of nice. We’re a bit spoilt in that respect, and it means we can keep out of the rain, which is a real luxury. Not that it rains all the time. Over the last few years we’ve had some fantastic festivals, we’ve had more festivals with nice weather than we’ve had bad ones.

I think in the UK though people expect bad weather, so you go prepared, you take your wellies and you take your raincoat and you’re ready for the worst of it, and then it’s a present surprise when there’s three gorgeous days of sunshine then that’s a bonus.

What’s your favourite festival memory?

Good question, we headlined Reading once. Well, I don’t know if it’s my favourite memory but it’s something that’s stuck with me forever more. We had just written a new album, which had not been released yet, and we went on, headlining the night and played virtually all of the new album which nobody had heard yet. We were then faced by this bewilderment, and audience of 50,000 people looking at us and just thinking, “What the hell are you doing?”

We managed to turn it around, and realised the error of our ways, and managed to kick in and play things that people knew. I remember thinking, “Oh god, they will never have us back here again!” To this day I don’t know what we were thinking. I think you have to have a very different approach when you play a festival. It’s different when you’re playing to a bunch of James fans, you can pretty much get away with anything. In a festival setting there’s certain guidelines and rules you have to abide by, like playing songs that for the most part, at least, people know. I’ll never forget that.

Was that quite early on in your career?

It was around ’96, and nearly the end of our career.

What about the favourite act you’ve seen at a festival?

Seeing Neil Young was fantastic, I’m a huge Neil Young fan and we had the joy of touring with him in the States. I saw him at Reading as well, as a punter, and camped. That was a bit of a nightmare as well, talking about the weather, it was absolutely roasting. I couldn’t get the tent pegs in the ground it was so hard. Eventually, after about an hours frustration I got the tent up, then went to see a couple of bands, Paul Weller was playing. Had a really big night, got back to the tent about 4 o’clock in the morning, thinking, “they’re going to be playing more music soon, just get your head down for a few hours.” Got in the tent, the sun cam up, and it was absolutely unbearably hot, and I just couldn’t stay in the tent. I had to just get up and get on with the day again. If it’s not raining it’s too hot.

Lastly, what advice would you offer a band about to play their first festival this summer?

Just enjoy it, get there early, go out for a wander around. I think that’s important, I always like to do that myself, so, you don’t feel like it’s a shock to the system when you play on stage. Just try and make a weekend of it if you’ve got the time to do it. See lots of bands, and enjoy it, and just go with it.

People tend to be at a festival for a god time, and they probably don’t know who you are. They just want to have a good time, and that’s the spirit you’ve got to treat it as a musician too. Just do your best to tag along with the party and enjoy yourselves.

Thanks very much I hope you enjoy your headlining show at Wychwood.

We’ll do our best. Thanks a lot, bye.

Wychwood music Festival returns for the seventh year to Cheltenham Racecourse, Gloucestershire from Friday 8th to Sunday 10th June 2012.

The festival is headlined by Bellowhead who top the bill on Friday, and James are Saturday night headliners, and Sunday’s headliner has not yet been announced. Also confirmed are The Damned, Duke Special, Mahala Rai Banda, Fay Hield & The Hurricane Party, Gary J Armstrong, Urusen, The Cuban Brothers, Thrill Collins, Doctor and the Medics, JuJu, The Magic Tombolinos, Howard Marks, Dizraeli and The Small Gods, The Fisherman’s Friends, Dhol Foundation, Kathryn Roberts And Sean Lakeman, and The Roving Crows. Over the coming months there will be lots more acts announced for Wychwood’s four stages including the headliners for Sunday.