One Of The Three - The James Band Archive

Category Archives: Article

Seven Album USA Release – Press Release

Posted on

Press release for James’ album Seven in the USA.

MTV San Francisco Interview

Posted on

Tim : This is the first time we’ve ever played in America and we had a really strange day yesterday. We thought San Francisco would be kind of loads of sunny beautiful place.

Reporter : It is, most of the time

Tim : Our flight got to San Francisco and it couldn’t land because of the storms so we were taken to Sacramento and it ended up being a sixteen hour flight so we were all kind of jetlagged and then we also had trouble getting visas for half our people, our crew couldn’t come and it’s been like complete chaos but wonderful chaos. And the performance today, it was good chaos. It wasn’t like a real James performance but it was good fun. And that’s kind of our first performance in America, it bodes well, I think.

Born of Frustration, the single, I don’t really know what it’s about. I wrote the lyrics very unconsciously. It’s something to do with being born of frustration. Something to do with seeing all these possibilities but not being able to reach out to them, not being able to meet all your desires, being stuck inside a human body and I think that’s about it really. It’s about as much as I can say about it. That sounds pretentious enough as it is.

Jim : We started about nine or ten years ago. First single came out in 83 on Factory Records. Myself, Tim and Larry have been together for pretty much all of that, eight years. Met Tim at a disco in Manchester. He was dancing and we were pretty impressed with his dancing so we kind of called him over and had a chat with him and asked him to come down to the rehearsal room and try and write some lyrics for us because we weren’t very good at that sort of thing in those days. And that was it really, we were off really. It was very much done for fun in the early days. We did take it very seriously in the early days, we didn’t concentrate on pushing it out into the world and selling ourselves, it was very much more, you know, concentrating on the music and writing the songs and we had problems getting concerts. The greatest buzz for James in those days and probably now was playing live. We had real problems getting any live work. We thought we needed a single out so we released a single and it got loads of attention in England, it got Single Of The Week and suddenly we were thrown into the spotlight. And we decided to retreat a little because it seemed a bit quick for us. It took a while playing live in England, I mean for us it was basically there was a knock at the door and the guy from the record company and he said “Hey, I think you guys are brilliant”

Key 103 Special

Posted on

Pete Mitchell : With me, Tim and Jim, welcome to the show

Tim : He’s put on his proper radio voice now

Jim : He was swearing before.

Tim : I tell you, if you talk to this guy, he’s got a high-pitched voice. The moment he gets in front of a radio mic.

PM : (In high voice) Hi there, it’s Pete Mitchell. No you’ve done nothing but complain about the table and the room you’re recording in

Tim : We’re used to better nowadays you know

PM : Well, I know. Exactly, you’re preempting my first question. Things have gone very well since we last spoke. I remember asking you about success last time and I think you both said it doesn’t feel like success. It must do now with the success you’ve had since we last spoke – Sit Down.

Tim : Every so often, you catch yourself and you think “Cor, blooming heck, how did we get here?” and it’s kind of like when you’re doing a video shoot in the Los Angeles desert and you look around and you see a huge crew and all the trucks and you think they’re all here to make a four-minute video for one of our songs and you think “Oh my God, what’s happened to us?”

PM : So obviously the past twelve months have been amazing, the best year of your career. Do you think you’ve coped with it well?

Jim : I think we’re doing alright. We’re still together as a band and still relatively sane.

Tim : That time you cracked up, took all your clothes off and ran down Manchester streets naked. I thought you’d lost it then.

PM : Do you think a lot hangs on this new album, Seven?

Tim : Yes

PM : In a nutshell

Tim : Well obviously, we haven’t released an LP for like two years.

PM : Well you have and you haven’t. Gold Mother came back out.

Tim : It kind of returned

PM : Gold Mother 2. The sequel

Tim : She had another baby. So yes, I think people are waiting to see what we’ve done next. And the press have already decided what we’ve done next. I don’t think, it doesn’t feel like it hinges as in it’s going to be bad. It feels like it is good to get something out for people to hear. We know what we’ve done. But it hasn’t necessarily been the best year of our careers. What it’s been is the busiest.

PM : And the most successful

Tim : Externally successful, yeah sure. But we never judged it in that way. We aren’t able to rehearse as much as we used to and we love rehearsing. And we don’t like being shipped around the world talking about records when we haven’t even been and played in the country we’re talking about, so we’re starting to refuse quite a few things nowadays.

Jim : We always thought our strength was in our songwriting. Getting in and having a good batch of songs behind us. And now we’re finding it harder to find time to actually get in and rehearse and write songs. At the moment, we’re feeling a little bit naked.

PM : So when do you find the time to write new material then? In between tours?

Jim : We’re just grabbing days. We insist on having a few days. Because as far as the record company is concerned, it’s like “you want to write some songs now, but you won’t be recording the album for absolutely ages yet. What do you want to go and write now for?”. They allot you a certain gap, a three week period or something, where you go and write the album.

PM : Just like that

Jim : Yeah. For us it’s not like packing biscuits. You can’t just put the hours in and you end up with the songs at the end of it. Well, you can, but they might be a bit dodgy. We write over a long period of time, we’re constantly writing songs when we’re on tour, in the soundchecks, we’re jamming them in the studio. That feeds us. That keeps us going. It keeps us sane because at the end of the day, there’s business and there’s creativity and I think, for us, we need more creativity than business normally wants you to put in

PM : I think it’s a lot of fun packing biscuits.

Jim : Well it has its points

PM : Custard creams, hob nobs

Jim : Jaffa cakes

PM : Let’s talk about the album then. Seven. Ring The Bells, which is a song I heard about three years ago live, am I right? Of course, I am

Tim : Of course you are. Probably about two and a bit

PM : I remember hearing it for the first time at Blackpool. Am I right on that one? Yes, I’m right again

Jim : We’ve got terrible memories

Tim : Yes, it’s an old song. First released at Blackpool. It’s the only one we have a great video idea for. And we aren’t going to get to make it as we wanted it. We had this idea of going to Mexico and during….

Jim : Another holiday

Tim : Another holiday. During one of their religious festivals, one of their kind of Christian religious festivals where Christ is covered in blood.

PM : Oh dear

Tim : And it’s really paga and heavy and filming it there and the bells, ring the bells would be one of these old Mexican churches, whitewashed churches and it’d be some nutter coming in off the desert.

PM : Clint Eastwood perhaps?

Tim : We’re into deserts. No, no, you’ve got it all wrong. Harry Dean Stanton. Like he’s had too much sun in the desert and he’s raging and he’s either got some kind of divine inspiration. He’s seen God in his forty days in the desert or he’s completely off his head and you can’t tell which. Like “Ring The Bells, wake the town. I’ve got something to tell you.” This kind of and you can’t tell whether he’s a complete nutter or divinely inspired.

Jim : But, fortunately, we’re not going, are we?

Tim : Fortunately, we’re doing it in Scunthorpe instead. On a beach.

(plays Ring The Bells)

PM : Ring The Bells from the album Seven. My guests today James.

Tim : Collectively, you should know us better by now, Pete

Jim : I think our names are James 1, James 2

PM : Shall we do that again?

Tim : I think that’s good. You can use these interruptions can’t you? You just don’t want to be interrupted.

PM : I just can’t be bothered editing the thing. That’s what it is. You’ve been described in most of the music papers as the next stadium band. Stadium rock. Is it going that way? Do you want it to go that way?

Tim : The next stadium band

PM : In the same breath as U2 and Simple Minds

Tim : In the same breath

PM : I think so

Tim : You mean kind of U2SimpleMindsJames

Jim : U2SimpleMindsJames

Tim : It’s a mouthful

PM : Do you see things going that way now? To big stadiums?

TB : More in the same breath as The Cure, New Order, REM, James

Jim : Pixies

Tim : James

PM : That was in the same breath

Tim : Or Metallica

PM ; When we say stadiums we mean America, cracking America and making it big there. Is that on the cards now?

Tim : Depends on whose cards. If you go to Avril, the tarot reader in the Corn Exchange.

PM : What’s she said about your future then?

Tim : She said America, yes, by the end of the year, but it’s not, you know, really on the cards. It depends on whose cards you’re reading. We aren’t going out there like some sort of Christopher Columbus divine mission you know. We’ve been out there a few times and we enjoy it.

PM : It’s the right time to go at the moment though as there’s a British invasion at the moment. Jesus Jones and EMF.

Tim : I think that was last year. I think it’s the right time simply because the charts have loosened up a lot rather like in this country. And so Metallica can get to number one and Nirvana can get to number one . And REM are no longer left of field. And in a world where REM are mainstream, we have chance definitely.

PM : Let’s talk about the the single’s success now. Sound. What can you tell us about that song. Another song from, of course, your album Seven. Says Tim looking at Jim. Jim? Tim?

Jim : Don’t know

Tim : It was jammed in the studio. It was, we were kind of, we had this weird studio set up with candles and strobes and we worked in candlelight for about two months and became moles with like no vision at all. We kept tripping up over leads and unplugging things. You’d do a whole take and find someone had unplugged something because they couldn’t see, but

Jim : Someone had fallen asleep

Tim : Yeah, someone had fallen asleep

Jim : The sound engineer

Tim : The trumpet break would come

Jim : Great sound on trumpet, Andy. (Makes snoring noise)

Tim : And Sound, we kind of had half of it set and the rest of it was left open to improvise on and so all the bits where I’m shouting down the megaphone “Do something out of character” or “Somebody break away for God’s sake”, that’s me shouting at everyone to improvise, to shoot off in another direction. I thought it was getting boring so I started yelling at people and you know we left it all in and we really enjoyed it. We love that songs and we felt when we did it it was quite a far out song, a kind of LP song and the record company suggested it as a single and we were like “Oh, yeah, great, fine”

Jim : Off their heads

Tim : We thought it would be a really good antidote to Sit Down.

(plays Sound)

Tim : The song Don’t Wait That Long was written about 2 1/2 years ago. Again it was a jam and we thought we’d written this wonderful song and we kept playing it to people and nobody was interested in it at all. Everyone thought it was crap and we tried messing around with different rhythms and messing around with it and we kind of realised that there was something wrong with it and it took about 2 1/2 years to work out what it was. We’re slow workers on some songs. We just kept it in our back pocket and we kept bringing it our every six months and tried it again.

PM : You played it here at that session you did here, don’t you remember?

Tim : Did we?

PM : Yeah, we’ll have to unearth that and pirate it

Jim : A different version

PM : Definitely

Tim : We just kept trying because we knew the seed of it was wonderful and we couldn’t find some piece of the jigsaw was missing and we found it in the summer and it was just basically slowing down the beat and making it more moody.

(plays Don’t Wait That Long)

PM : You’re listening to IQ on Piccadilly Key 103. My guests today are Tim and Jim from James reviewing the new album Seven. Live A Love Of Life – another interesting song from the album. Can you remember writing it? Was it recent or was it an old one again?

Tim : We’re not the Happy Mondays, you know. We do remember these things. Live A Love Of Life. Again, it was, it’s always, through improvisation. The lyrics are just about incomprehensible to anybody really.

PM : It’s obviously very difficult picking out the songs and talking about them. What about the album as a whole then?

Tim : It doesn’t work like that. I mean you produce the music what’s right at the time, that reflects where you’re at at the time. And I think it’s better to see LPs almost as states of mind rather than meaning.

PM : So how do you view songs like Sit Down and Come Home now? Your anthems.

Jim : We’re very proud of them, but

PM : Obviously sick of playing them

Tim : I think more, it wasn’t sick of playing them. Not Come Home. You get sick of the feeling that you have to play Sit Down. Like there’s nights when we don’t play Come Home so we don’t feel trapped but we did feel last year now and again that we shouldn’t have to play Sit Down. It’s more like, when the new LP comes out, I don’t think we’ll have to play Sit Down. We’ll play it when we want to and then we’ll get back to enjoying it again. But you do feel resentful when you’re put in a position where you actually feel forced to. We nearly didn’t play it once in London and people started booing and shouting.

PM : So that was the encore then

Tim : It was like we had a big row about it actually and that was bad at the time. It was a mess.

PM : Let’s play a track from the album now – Live A Love Of Life

Tim : With Live A Love Of Life, it’s partly a continuation of the song God Only Knows. It’s another piece of rejection of my Christian conditioning. I had to go to church every day of the week for about four years of my life and I kind of resented that. It seems to be coming out now for some reason or other that I can’t understand. It’s also when I sing “I don’t believe Jesus was a human being”, it’s more to do with like when you read those bible stories, he’s not presented as a human being with human desires, human passions, human problems and I don’t believe those gospels are reflective of that person as they lived. There’s also references to the, we wrote it at the time of the Gulf War, and it’s the idea that in the Christian cosmology God sent his son to earth to die. It seems a really weird thing for a father to do to his child and rather similar to the way countries send their children off to war to die for their country which I’ve never been able to understand. And that’s what the song is about. The other thing I’ve decided too to sing in different countries or on different days “I don’t believe Buddha was a human being” or “I don’t believe Mohammed was a human being” so when we go to India, it’ll be Buddha and when we go to Japan, it’ll be Confuscious.

PM : Remember what country you’re in though. Watch the jetlag.

Tim : Yeah, see if we can stir up things.

(plays Live A Love Of Life)

PM : You’re listening to an IQ special. James, my guests today. Do you mind coughing Jim?

Jim : No

Tim : You belched earlier mate. And you’ll edit that out

PM : Leave Jim’s cough in and get my belch out. The final song from the album Seven. A song called Heavens.

Tim : Heavens, yeah, a song about . The verses are about somebody sitting with their hands, with their head in their hands thinking, full of self-pity, thinking of despondency

PM : Like myself

Tim : Like yourself

PM : On a Monday

Tim : And then the chorus is like “Get up off your arse, are you waiting for the heavens to descend”. You know. Move it. It’s meant to be a kind of self-jolting song.

PM : Before you go, just briefly tell us what you’ve got lined up for this year. Are you spending a lot of time in America, trying to crack America?

Tim : No, no. We’re going there a few times, not there much. We’re more in Europe and that side of things this year and Britain. The good thing in Britain, after the two G-Mex concerts we did in Manchester a year ago, we didn’t know how to play in Manchester again and it was like how do you top that. We were quite scared of playing Manchester again. We tried to organise lots of strange things, sort of six nights at the Ritz., but we couldn’t book it because of bingo night

PM : That’s a shame. Fifty fifty

Jim : Grab a granny

Tim : Goth night. And then we tried getting a tent in Salford but the council, we couldn’t get permission. We tried Barton Aerodrome so Manchester, we haven’t neglected playing here. It’s just that we couldn’t find the right venue to go one further than G-Mex.

PM : What about up on the roof again?

Jim : Oh lovely

Tim : What we’ve done now, I think it’s July 4th

Jim : Yes

PM : Alton Towers

Tim : We’ve booked Alton Towers and we’re going to have a big day out there.

PM : A festival? Is it a one-day festival?

Tim : It’ll only be three bands. But if you pay a little extra, you can get a free day out in Alton Towers. And it’s really well organised. It’s not going to be like an outdoor festival with awful toilets. It’s going to be quite well organised and quite smart.

PM : That’s July 4th then?

Jim : All the shops are going to be open so there’s going to be food

PM : James merchandise in every shop

Tim : Hey up, you’re ruining this. And we’ve got, oh we don’t know who the support bands are yet

PM : Any ideas, any little hints? They’ve not signed on the dotted line yet?

Tim : MFI, it’s like MFI. You know?

PM : Alright, yeah

Tim : But we’re not sure yet so that’ll be nice. We want it to be a good occasion and we felt it was the only way we could go a bit beyond G-Mex.

PM : What about further singles from the album? Possibles?

Tim : Probably Ring The Bells.

PM : Will that be it then – finished for singles after that?

Tim : There might be one more but we’d make it an EP. Well, we’re trying to make it an EP.

PM : With a couple of new songs on as well

Tim : Yep, I mean we’re fighting off the record company. They want quite a lot more

Jim : Six, seven

PM : The old Michael Jackson syndrome. Ten singles off the album.

Tim : The only thing I can say is if we don’t, if the single after Ring The Bells or even Ring The Bells, you’ve got the LP, don’t buy it. You know. And the one after that, if it’s not an EP with new songs on then don’t buy it because we won’t be into it.

PM : Let’s hope Phonogram aren’t listening to this interview then.

Tim : I mean we never understand the singles thing. I guess we knew Born of Frustration, Born of Frustration comes out a few weeks before the LP. The fans, some of them are going to buy it but a lot of them they won’t buy it and that’s as it is really and we’re quite happy with that.

PM : It’s been a pleasure talking to you once again and it’s nice to see the success that you’re having. And don’t forget the gold disc. OK Tim and Jim from James, thanks again for joining us

Tim : You’ll have to pay for it

PM : How much

Rock Over London Interview

Posted on

Int : After the session I had chance to chat with Tim and Jim and Larry and first of all congratulate them on the success of the new album Seven

Tim : Yeah, it’ll be number one next week I think

Int : Yeah

Tim : Depending on who we sleep with next week

Int : Tell me about the producer you roped into this particular project

Jim : We’d gone through a list of trying to find a producer. Checking out people whose work we respected and who’d worked with bands we liked, done albums we liked.

Tim : Then we chose the one whose albums we didn’t like

Jim : For some strange reason, we chose to go with someone who’d done nothing we liked. All the people we wanted to work with were either busy or when we met them, it didn’t quite happen. And then somebody at the record company suggested Youth and we looked at the things he’d done and thought “No way, forget it, he’s like a bloody dance producer, not right for James” And this A+R man was like “Nah, nah, I tell ya, lads. Meet him, meet him”

Tim : Weak Cockney impression that is, by the way

Jim : Yeah, sorry about that.

Tim : Youth by the way isn’t a generic term for an age group. It’s an individual.

Int : Yes

Tim : We must explain this otherwise people at home will think “They wanted youth to produce their album, that’s a kind of weird concept. How they gonna manage that? Invite everybody in?”

Int : One at a time

Jim : So we met this chap basically, an ageing hippy called Youth and he came in with his open neck cheese-cloth shirt and sandals and his long straddly hair and beads. And a few other things as well that I won’t mention.

Tim : You can only be this rude to someone you love

Jim : And we hit it off for some strange reason. Probably because we’re a bunch of old hippies and all. And the things he was criticising on the stuff we’d done was right, same as ours and the things he was pointing out that were good were the same as ours and you can’t ignore that, regardless of the fact he’d done a few dodgy records

Tim : And had no taste in clothes. It was the size of his crystals that did it for me.

Jim : Enormous crystals. So we decided to go for it basically and moved into this studio in London called Olympic in a really good wooden room and Youth had already been there. I don’t know how long he’d been there, weeks probably, he’s got an encampment on the go there. And he’d filled the whole room and the production room with three-foot altar candles and there was no electric light used on the session. Rugs and drapes on the walls. Enormous flower displays, incense, oil wheels, lamps, you remember those dodgy oil lamps from the seventies, where the blob used to go up and down, he got one of them in and all. And a strobe for the fast songs. We all burst out laughing. He’s off his head, he’s off his head.

Tim : And he convinced us we’d fallen into a time grip and were back in the 1960s and it worked. You can hear it on the LP.

Int : It must be a cliche now. But the last year, the last eighteen months, have been pretty amazing for the band really. I mean it seems like it’s all gone right.

Tim : After having gone wrong for eight years. Yeah, in terms of success, it’s been busy. That’s probably the best way to put it. It’s been really good. We’ve enjoyed it and the bank manager enjoys it too. We kind of had seven lean years where we were very happy with our music and nobody else seemed to be. Except live, we always had a good live audience for about four to five years and that’s how we built up our reputation in England. And then yeah, the last couple of years we’ve suddenly had a major breakthrough. Suddenly, it’s like overkill. And from not playing our songs on the radio at all for the first seven or eight years, now you can’t walk down the street without hearing the damn things.

Int : Doesn’t that make you a bit cynical when it’s like “Oh you like us now then” this sort…

Tim : No, no, everything has its time and we never had the business side together like we have now. We had the musical side together, we feel, for quite a long time, but we didn’t find a record company that shared our vision. And so it just needed all those components to fall into place. So I don’t really feel cynical. It’s just like we like to remind people of our pedigree.

Jim : The extreme of the changearound, the turnaround, we’ve found quite funny. From being nothing to suddenly every time you put on the radio or every time you’ve got on the TV.

Tim : Not that James again

Jim : Oh no

Music View Interviews

Posted on

Originally a three-piece, Manchester’s James revealed their first EP seven years ago. And they’re now a seven-piece with a new album called Seven, strangely enough. Over the years their music has changed mainly due to varied instrumentation and styles but they have always been a pop band. Musicview asked vocalist Tim Booth and bassist Jim Glennie how their music has progressed since their previous album Gold Mother.

Tim : “Each one has been odd. We’ve experimented in this area and enjoyed it. This is what we found here and then we move on and records tend to react against the last one. So there’s a constant movement forward away from, and that seems to dictate our direction, but it doesn’t feel at all like now we’ve found our station.”

Jim : “That’s the last thing we want really. We want to move on and keep changing”

Tim : “Gold Mother, we felt had too much variety of sound and style. It was almost too disparate and it was like lots of real variety but it was almost too much. There’s wasn’t such a sense of whole as there is on this record where you feel it comes from the same tribe.”

Once a three-piece Manchester’s James have released five albums since their inception in 1985. With a new album Seven, the band is now a fully-fledged seven-piece and singer Tim Booth and bassist Jim Glennie related how the band dynamic has changed when talking to Musicview.

Tim : “It’s good because we’re much more flexible. We have trumpet and fiddle and the fiddle player plays guitar and drums. So, and the keyboard player plays about six instruments, so we can choose what sound we want. We aren’t stuck and that’s really nice.”

Jim : “There’s more colour in the sound now. When you want to hit people hard, you know, seven people whacking away, you’ve got seven people there, you’ve got the options.”

James On A Rock And Roller Ride – Manchester Evening News

Posted on

The Manchester hit band James will give 30,000 fans a rocking rollercoaster ride when they play at Alton Towers.

The concert – on July 4 – will be the band’s only major appearance in Britain this year.

Seven-piece James, fronted by Tim Booth, played a low-key warm-up gig at Manchester Poly on Saturday night.

They have a new single, Born of Frustration, in the Top 20.

And they expect to see their new LP Seven go straight to Number One when it is released next Monday.

Record company Phonogram say it has already gone gold – sold 100,000 copies in advance.

Promoter Simon Moran said: “The band chose Alton Towers site very carefully. They missed out on their hometown on their last tour and they wanted somewhere with easy access from Greater Manchester. They wanted to give their fans the thrill of a lifetime. So the combination of the concert and Alton Towers’ white knuckle rides was perfect.”

Tickets go on sale tomorrow at £17.50. A £25 ticket will cover the concert and theme park rides.

Alton Towers – Press Release

Posted on

James, currently in the Top Twenty with their single ‘Born of Frustration’ have announced details of their summer show.

The band will headline a huge outdoor concert at Alton Towers, Alton, Staffordshire, on July 4th, supported by two major acts to be announced shortly. The gig will be the only one around the release of their fifth LP ‘Seven’, out through Phonogram on February 17th. The album is already being hotly tipped as a number one seller.

Alton Towers is a theme park set in five hundred acres of open parkland, woods and gardens and contains over 125 rides and attractions, in fact, a fun day out for all the family.

Tickets for the concert only are £17.50 (subject to a booking fee) and are available from the box office on xxxx xxxxxx, selected outlets across the country and by credit card from xxxx xxxxxx.

Tickets for the concert and admission to Alton Towers all day including free access to rides and attractions are available at £25 (no booking fee), available only from Alton Towers. Booking office xxxx xxxxxx.

By post, tickets are £17.50 plus 75p per ticket booking fee. Send to James Tickets, PO Box xx, Warrington, WAx xxx. Cheques payable to ‘James Alton Towers’. Enclose a SAE and allow 21 days for delivery.

Dated 6/2/92

Seven UK – Press Release

Posted on

6 February 1992

James have their fifth album ‘Seven’ released by Fontana on February 17th.

This is the follow up to their ‘Gold Mother’ album, which since its release in June 1990 has gone on to sell over 300,000 copies in the UK.

‘Seven’ contains different versions of the group’s recent hits ‘Sound’ and ‘Born of Frustration’ – plus nine new songs.

The cassette and CD contain and extra track – ‘Next Lover’

James return to the States next month to play their first ever American gig when they do a one-off open air show in Union Square, San Francisco.

The group are still set to headline a major outdoor show in the UK this summer.

The full tracklisting for the album is as follows

SIDE ONE

Born of Frustration

Ring The Bells

Sound

Bring A Gun

Mother

SIDE TWO

Don’t Wait That Long

Live A Love Of Life

Heavens

Protect Me

Seven

LP 510932-1

CASSETTE 510932-4

CD 510932-2

For more information please contact : Philip Hall, Hall or Nothing

Seven UK Press Release And Biography

Posted on

“‘Seven’ is a substantial document that marks James out as one of the few bands around who are capable of framing the anxiety and apprehension of eternal adolescence. It is the sound of a band moving into a new phase – one with longetivity stamped all over it.”

Vox – February 1992

“James are ambitious, proud, moving, and unconvincingly self-important. ‘Seven’ is big, brash, unafraid, unashamed, but also miserable, paranoid and eccentric. Musically, ‘Seven’ is James at their most ambitious and diverse.’

Melody Maker – February 1992

“James were part of something, but now they’ve become one-offs. Intrigiung, difficult, unhinged at the fringes.”

Q – February 1992

James fifth album ‘Seven’ is released by Fontana on 17 February. The follow-up to the platinum ‘Gold Mother’ LP, ‘Seven’ sees the band continue to span a wide range of moods and messages. There’s the stark anti-war ‘Mother’, the electric waltz of ‘Protect Me’, the sensuous hothouse ‘Next Lover’ and the caustic commentary on Manc nightclubbing ‘Bring A Gun’ and of course, both top twenty hits, ‘Born of Frustration’ and ‘Sound’.

‘Seven’ was produced by Youth, who as Tim Booth explains had his own way of working – “Youth decorated the studio before we got there. There were Moroccan and Indian hangings on the walls, exotic carpets, enormous flower displays. There were no electric lights, just altar candles, though he got a strobe going for the fast songs. We cracked up with laughter when we first went in. But the crazy thing was it worked. It broke that studio sterility. There was Youth in the candlelit control room, barefoot with beads like a hippie guru&ldots;. it was the working vibe.”

James only UK show to promote the LP will be a huge open air gig at Alton Towers Leisure Park in Staffordshire on 4 July. Two major support acts will be announced shortly.

Since Tim Booth (vocals), Jim Glennie (bass), Larry Gott (guitar) and Gavin Whelan (drums) formed James in Manchester in 1983, their career has followed a chequered course.

Signed as awkward press darlings to Factory, they released two cult singles – ‘What’s The World’ (later to be covered by The Smiths) and ‘Hymn From A Village’. A major deal with Sire followed, resulting in two critically acclaimed albums ‘Stutter’ and ‘Strip Mine’. However, relations with the label were notoriously difficult and the group left in 1989 to reassess their future.

Whelan left the band to be replaced by drummer Dave Baynton-Power, injecting a harder edge to their sound and the group pursued an independent path once more, releasing a live album ‘One Man Clapping’ on Rough Trade.

Enjoying two of the biggest indie hits of 89 with ‘Sit Down’ and ‘Come Home’, James new found confidence saw them agree with Fontana.

Now expanded to a seven piece with multi-instrumentalist Saul Davies, keyboard player Mark Hunter and trumpeter Andy Diagram, the new look James finally achieved major chart success with their ‘Gold Mother’ album.

A string of top forty singles – ‘How Was It For You?’, ‘Come Home’ and ‘Lose Control’ – during 1990 set the way for their biggest hit to date when ‘Sit Down’ reached Number 2 in March 1991.

A full-length live video, filmed at one of the band’s two sell-out Manchester G-Mex shows, came out in April, entering the video charts at number one.

Now established as consistent hit makers, James had built up their following through a string of spectacular live shows, from two sellouts at Blackpool’s Empress Ballroom to shows at Glastonbury, Maine Road (with Bowie) and Crystal Palace (with The Cure).

James t-shirts had become an essential fashion item and this was never plainer to see than when the group played their biggest show to date headlining the 1991 Reading Festival to a 40,000 capacity crowd.

The group’s commitment to live work continued when James embarked on a gruelling 28-date sellout tour of the UK at the end of 1991.

1992 will see James take their highly charged live show around the world, the first date being an open air gig in Union Square, San Francisco in February.

CATCH JAMES IN THE UK AT ALTON TOWERS IN JULY.