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The following page includes an assortment of James bios from festival programmes.

Browse the gallery of James mugs that have been sold at shows over the years.

Browse the gallery of James shirts that have been sold at shows over the years.

Before James became known as James in 1982, they had a number of what can only be described as “interesting” names.

Venereal and The Diseases

Quite what the obsession with the sexually transmitted ailment was is not clear, but this was the name under which Paul and Jim played their first gig together at Eccles British Legion. The name lasted one gig.

Volume Distortion

Keeping the initials VD and with Gavan now on board, this name change was probably more to do with the quest for gigs and the problems the old name might cause.  Or maybe it was Paul’s insistence on regular changes to the name.

Model Team International

Paul’s girlfriend worked for a model agency in Manchester called Model Team International and they had t-shirts which the band took and named the band after.  A swift change ensued when the manager of the agency threatened legal action.  At this point, Tim had joined the band as dancer / backing vocalist.

Model Team

A shortening of the name to appease the model agency boss. Didn’t last long as the band felt the name didn’t have the same ring to it .. and they couldn’t get free t-shirts anymore.

Tribal Outlook

Only in use for a short period of time as Paul decided the band needed a single simple name and quite frankly, it’s not a very good name is it?.

James

There are various stories about the James name:

1. Paul decided the band needed a simple name and decided it should be named after one of the band.  Out of modesty and not wanting to make it sound like it has his band, Tim declined to use his name.  Paul didn’t want to use his name.  Gavan sounded like a heavy metal band. So James it was, after Jim
2. Tim had a passion for the writings of James Joyce and insisted on James as a tribute to the writer.
3. Jim : “It was named after me because I was the most talented and good-looking” (Come Home video 1990)
4. Paul was obsessed with Orange Juice, who had taken the fledgling Model Team International out on tour with them, and in particular guitarist James Kirk and the band was named after him. The band reasserted this was the reason for the name during TV promotion for the Girl At The End Of The World tour.

The official biography suggests that the reason was somewhere between explanations 1 and 4.

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James’ first time at the legendary Hacienda club in Manchester supporting Big Country. Larry was in attendance at the show and recorded it for the band with Announcement and Folklore from the gig appearing on The Gathering Sound boxset. Stutter from the show was also filmed and released on A Factory Outing video.

The show was immortalised on the wall of the new Hacienda apartments built on the site of the club with a PRS plaque in 2011 commemorating James’ contribution to the Manchester music scene.

Video

Hot new Manchester combo called James, possibly very likely on the verge of signing to home town favourites, the godly Factory.

James seem simple, four men, single Jimone on Factory Records. They make nothing of it – James have no phoney philosophical policies, no heroic hyperbole, no dull boasts or grand exaggeration.

Their attitude is more one of the days of ATV and Swell Maps than the flashy NY remixes and glossy art design of Quando Quango or New Order. Fittingly, their record is low-key, harsh, humble, naturally bitter and almost wilfully rushed and messy with little or no production. With the homely folk-feel of fellow Mancunians, those sensitive Smiths, James could easily make their fortunes as the obvious meeting between The Fall and very early Bunnymen. But then, they’re not that simple.

In fact, James are a highly peculiar thing; despite the splendid incongruity, they regard the relationship with Factory as one of mere convenience. “We just want to play gigs, and you can’t get gigs without a single. It’s a means to that end. Factory liked our tape, gave us gigs at the Hacienda and supporting New Order and then asked us to do an album. Then they wanted a mini-album, then an EP, then a 12″ – anything but a plain 45. They offered us help with production, artwork, all of which we declined. They’ve been remarkably patient. They didn’t even know whaat the single was until the day we recorded it! If anything it’s us that’s been difficult, and they never asked us to sign anything, which is all we wanted from anyone.”

Jimone then, is just three songs from James – “No A-side, it’s insulting to tell people which song is better.” All have different productions and all were recorded live in the studio rather than “piece by piece on headphones” (they sneer well). The result from the snappy, slap-dash funk of ‘Fire So Close’ to the terse rumbling of ‘What’s The World’ and ‘Folklore’s unusual charm, is tentative; taut, almost disastrous, ultimately admirable, erratic and brilliant, with a concentrated anger and strange, rambling beauty that begins to prepare you for the fierce challenge of ‘Stutter’, a live highlight and their first moment of Greatness.

Although they’re clearly prepared to be bold and determined to be different, the James boys are softly-spoken, shyly nervous, modest and wisely-aware of their own possibilities. Too bashful to talk to my tape, reluctant to have their pictures taken or to lend me demos or offer up influences, they even resist my attempt to discover devious intentions behind their choice of sleeve (a scrappy green and red felt-pen design of an elongated ‘Jimone’). The idea was to do one drawing each, and then choose. (Laughter breaks loose) Jimmy was the only one who finished! But it’s only a sleeve, even if it is Factory (who, perhaps justifiably, hate it). We want to be judged by our music. As long as it keeps the record clean, it’s fine.”

With their past, their plans and motives, James remain strangely straightforward. “We just want to play live. We may stay with Factory, we may learn about production and change. We may learn to worry about sleeves. So far though we’ve done one single on Factory. We’re happy with that.”

So, for now, Fac 78 is by James. The name was “simple, unassuming, didn’t give any clues…” And James are Jimmy Glennie (bass), Tim Booth (vocals), Paul Gilbertson (guitar), Gavan Whelan (drums).

But you can believe it’s a great deal stranger than that. James. That’s it.

Setlist

Details

• Venue: BBC Maida Vale Studios, London, UK
• Date: 17th October 1983

Songs

• Discipline
• Hymn From A Village
• If Things Were Perfect
• Vulture

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Summary

An early version of Just Hip recorded with Nick Garside in 1983 that appeared on a Record Mirror cassette and is previously otherwise unreleased

Track List

Just Hip

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Interviewer : Before the break you heard, well it was going to be the A-side of the new James single until the boys asked me to flip it over. I did in fact play If Things Were Perfect which is the b-side from Hymn From A Village and I’m delighted that James have popped in on this unearthly hour and well, as I’m sure they’ll explain they’ve got a busy time ahead of them. So welcome Gavan Whelan, Tim Booth, Larry Gott and Jimmy Glennie.

Jimmy, this is a boring question but you didn’t contribute to the name, did you?

Jim : Erm, not really. It was the old guitarist who thought it up. We’ve also got another James over here actually because Larry’s first name is James as well

Interviewer : Ah, one of those complicated set ups where one has to change their names. If you were all Scotsmen, you could all call yourself Jimmy anyway

Tuesday in fact, your tour supporting The Smiths starts. Is that correct?

Jim : Yes

Interviewer : So how many dates is that. Twenty odd dates?

Tim : Twenty-six dates

Interviewer : Oh, you must be looking forward to it, you’re going to be playing to a lot of people.

Tim : Yeah

Interviewer : More than one word answers fellas or we’re going to throw you straight into the studio.

Now this track, we played before, If Things Were Perfect, you did in fact record it live at Strawberry, is that right? No overdubs, nothing?

Tim : All the songs are recorded live but I was singing in a separate room. We did do overdubs for backing vocals because the studio couldn’t handle it.

Interviewer : So is that the way you record all your stuff?

Tim : We like to record like that but it’s very hard to find studios that will cater for it because they’re so into doing like great drum sounds and individual instruments. They don’t like the idea of someone coming in and doing it live.

Interviewer : How did the gig go? I mean I saw you last week with A Certain General at the Hacienda? Did you enjoy that gig?

Gavan : Not really. No

Interviewer : Why?

Gavan : Just the atmosphere. It was very cold.

Interviewer : Very cold. You’ve played the Hacienda before, didn’t you? I think I saw you

Gavan : I think we’ve played about six times

Jim : A few times

Interviewer : I mean that’s something we could talk about in the future. I know you’re busy for a few months with The Smiths. It’d be nice to put a Last Radio Programme James gig on and possibly record it. If you know the way you guys go about things live, it might be a good thing for the radio. That’s something we can discuss later.

This is in fact the second time you’ve supported The Smiths. You did some Irish dates with them.

Gavan : Yes. That was good.

Interviewer : Did that go well?

Gavan : Very well

Interviewer : How do you find The Smiths audience? I suppose it can’t be a bad time to support The Smiths with the album at number one. I presume the whole tour has sold out now. Has it?

Gavan : Yeah

Tim : Yeah

Jim : In Ireland it was great, but the audiences are really different over there. People go along to enjoy themselves so they do

Interviewer : Are you prepared for this tour in as much as audiences are going to vary from town to town? And sometimes you’ll go down well when you’ll appear not to go down well.

Jim : We’re used to that.

Interviewer : There again, I suppose Manchester is notorious for that. You think you’ve had a bad night and in fact people love you.

Tim : Yeah, we never seem to play well in Manchester actually.

Interviewer : You don’t?

Tim : No

Interviewer : How far, I mean I presume you’ve played London and places?

Tim : Yeah, we’ve played all round the country.

Interviewer : So at the moment you appear to be quite a fashionable band in as much as you’re The Smiths favourite band and everything. So you’ll have quite a lot to live up to. I mean when we had The Smiths in here, we had Johnny and Mike Joyce in September, October, November time, I can’t remember when, when Hatful of Hollow was coming out, and all they did, instead of promoting themselves, was promote James. So it’s quite nice to know that Manchester’s favourite boys are big fans of yours.

Tim : Yeah, we pay them a lot of money for that actually.

Interviewer : You don’t manage them, do you?

Tim : No, but Morrissey’s our PR man

Interviewer : Is he? I’ve not really studied the NME poll but weren’t you mentioned in Morrissey’s favourite bands in that?

Tim : Yeah

Interviewer : Excellent

Tim : I mean they keep doing this, it’s really nice of them, we can’t understand it either.

Interviewer : Are you embarrassed by it?

Tim : No, it’s alright. If we were just like The Smiths friends, then we’d be put a little bit in the deep end but we reckon people will see something and it will be OK. We’ve got the music.

Interviewer : So what happens after The Smiths tour? Is that too far forward planning?

Gavan : We’ve got three gigs coming up in Paris, they’re maybes.

Interviewer : Have you played Europe at all yet?

Gavan : No, we should have gone over last year sometime to Brussels but that never came off.

Interviewer : Well, I’m sure you’re well prepared for the tour.

Factory-farmed, JAMES tuck into a bean fest with carrot-crunchin’ DON WATSON.

“We take a lot from TV, particularly children’s. We used the Rainbow theme tune too. Beatrix Potter is a big influence.”

EVERY DAY they deliver themselves to the door of the pop abattoir. Fresh-faced, pink-cheeked and plump, they line up at one end, patient and compliant.

And they conveyer belt grinds away. . .

From the other end emerge neat little packages– pork pie singles, neatly cut and nicely glossed.

What’s so disturbing about our current breed is not only the unnatural strength of their herd instinct, but also their apparent zest for their own carve-up. If they don’t yet come ready-sliced, they’re sure marked “cut on the dotted line”–and in their own eye-liner, too. Retarded pigs, woolly-brained sheep and prize turkeys the lot of them.

Under such circumstances, it’s scarcely suprising that some of us have more sympathy for the wolves– they may be hard at the core but their company is more fun. But every now and then, from the ranks of the herbivores, there falls an unlikely offspring.

Such are James, strange and ungainly, awkward and charming– a black sheep at last.

HERE THEY come in their cardboard box van. Here they come, trundling around the country in a truck designed for the get ahead greengrocer of the 1950’s. Here they come, the reputed Taoist vegans, another Manchester quartet supporting The Smiths on their nationwide tour. Here come the old pop perpetrators. Playing music! Eating beansprouts!

Ladies and gentlemen, may I introduce James– saviours of nothing at all, suppliers of intriguing music.

Vocalist Tim wears what appears to be a white football jersey onstage and possesses possibly the most appalling pair of shoes I’ve ever seen (the kind that look like large brown omelettes). He talks softly and convincingly but warns the listener that by tomorrow he’ll have changed his mind. He has a sense of humour (which, with those shoes, is just as well).

Drummer Gavan has a beard, wears shorts onstage, and maintains he once liked Led Zeppelin (he also has a sense of humour). As recently reported, he has been known to indulge in jam sessions with house bands in Greek restaurants. “But they threw me off after two numbers,” he moans, “and charged me full price for the meal.”

Bassist Jim is thin with short straight hair and is, for inexplicable reasons, a generic Mancunian. He started James when his friend at school bought a nicked guitar.

Guitarist Larry has a beard and wears glasses. He appears onstage in yellow trousers.

James are, as everyone associated with Factory has told me, strange.

Our first encounter takes place after this first support slot on The Smiths tour. In their van, they’re tucking in to a celebratory post-gig mixture of baked beans, bean- sprouts, and brown rice. They have to be back early to their bed and breakfast abode– this ain’t rock and roll.

“Vegans yes, Buddhists no,” they maintain concerning certain rumours currently circulating. “God knows where they got that one from.” They continue to conduct a eminently knowledgeable conversation about the yin and yang of food.

Passing their home photos to the bemused photographer, they discuss how it nice it would be to stick a snap-shot of a friend on the front cover of NME as representative of a James piece. They seem to be serious, although with James it’s often hard to tell.

LIKE I say, James are strange and indeed it’s their strangeness that’s their strength. As evidence, may I refer you back to their two excellent Factory singles– ‘Jim One’ and ‘James Two’.

Released in October ’83, at a time when the country was rank with Postcard plagiarists, ‘Jim One’ didn’t sound too much like_ anything, but it was touched by a almost frantic energy that charged with the thrill of a “Falling and Laughing”, a “Radio Drill Time”, or a “Get Up an Use Me”.

‘Folklore’, the most individual of the three songs on ‘JIm One’, took the same folk tinges that were being touched by the then nascent Smiths, and expanded them to full nasal extremes. Lyrically they played with self- examination, humour and contridiction, spinning a delightful web of nonsense. There was something special about ‘Jim One”.

From here to silence. The Smiths rose, James ducked. Illness, and their insistence on individual methods kept James schtum. Their low profile was broken only for the odd New Order support slot– their ruptures were met with raptures but still no more was forthcoming. The conveyer belt was not for James.

As undoubtedly the brightest prospect for ’85, James were to be the cover of the New Year NME. They refused– “We want to introduce the band by music, not words,” was their argument. James are not interesting in shouting, Look at Me!

Now at last, there’s the second single, the classic ‘James II’, pairing the offbeat anthemic ‘Hymn From a Viilage’ with the spindly romanticism of ‘If Things Were Perfect’. And with a support slot of The Smiths grand-scale British tour, it seems that James are, however reluctantly, set to attract attention.

THE SMITHS have sown their seed, but not yet spawned their imitators. Some cloth-eared observers, seeing Morrisey as a man who might not be averse to flattery, have misread James’ sincerity.

“It doesn’t really annoy us,” says Tim, “it doesn’t really touch us, because we’ve been going so long, and anyone who really took the trouble to find out about us would know that we’ve been playing those songs and that music before, it’s just through force of circumstances, and through the popularity of The Smiths that we find ourselves in fashion.

“We’d worry about it if we didn’t have strong songs, but we do.”

There are features in common of course, a certain folk influence a vulnerability in the singing. Not that it’s a race, but in many ways James are ahead of The Smiths; live they reach far further into areas of form experimentation only touched on by The Smiths in ‘Barbarism Begin At Home’. Morrisey is certainly not taking the easy option by inviting his favourite band on tour with him.

“They were offered money to take people on this tour,” Tim points out, “but instead they’re paying us and losing money.”

“WHATS THIS then, a school party?” asks the hunched caretaker in West Country drawl as photographer Ridgers leads us through the graveyard gate towards the mausoleum for the photo-session.

Um no, we just wanted to have a look around.

“Weeeell, you be supposed to get permission, there’s some strange_ things been happening around here.”

“Strange unnatural_ things,” we chorus once out of ear-shot.

Strange James may be, but unnatural never. Their vegan lifestyle, their attitude toward music is all directed to the concept of natural music– that may sound like a soundtrack to meusli munching, but there’s a touch more to it than that.

“If you drink a lot or whatever,” says Tim, “you’re always swinging from one extreme to another. A lot of our approach is concentrated around the idea of maintaining a balance.”

“Then you have the strength to pursue your own interests, rather than being pulled by other influences,” says Jim.

“You have a strong centre which you can then work from,” Tim continues. “People have this idea that balance has something to do with conservatism. They seem to think that it’s the core of this society, which is rubbish, this society is a very unbalanced one. To be balanced in this society is to be radical and extreme, whereas to be ill in this society is to be normal.”

Of course I have my copy of _Under The Volcano_ peering from my pocket and can’t quite agree with this as a rule. Try as I might I can’t picture Jane Fonda as more extreme than Charles Bukowski, Malcolm Lowry or Antonin Artaud. My mind also runs to favourite sick men like Nick Cave and Blixa Bargeld, sometimes victims of their own excesses to be sure, but far from normal.

Black sheep James have it seems, been tempted themselves to run with the wolves.

“Something like the early Birthday Party was really appealing to me,” says Tim, “and it was appealing because it was self-destructive, it appealed to the adolescent in me. You look at the world, see how awful it is, realise you can’t change anything and you just turn your anger inwards, you just want to burn up. It seems like a romantic, mythical way to go, but inside it it’s really shit.”

Tim recently had a dream.

“I met Nick Cave, and he was showing me a video of The Birthday Party doing a fantastic version of ‘Dead Joe’ and I was going God! How did you do_ it? Then I looked at him and his face was just covered in huge craters, turning green and falling away in lumps, and I said, Ah, I see how you did it! It seems that if you really want to create that type of poison then you’re going to get poisoned by it in the process.”

Instead James have swung to the opposite extreme– and their resultant individuality is testament that it is, as they claim, an extreme. Particularly live, James are a certain sound pushed towards its limit.

“It is a matter of the balance between order and chaos,” says Tim, “always seeing how far you can go without the results sounding actually unpleasant. Always teetering on the brink of pure chaos, but always keeping that thread.”

IN THE age of gloss-finished, soul-less single, ‘Jim One’ and ‘James Two’ are appealingly messy. They sound urgent, direct, and rough around the edges.

“That’s because they’re recorded live,” explains Gavan, “also because quite frequently, we don’t know where the songs are going to start and stop.

“Particularly live the songs are rarely in a finished form, they’re just collections of threads of ideas that that can always vary. The idea, theoretically, is that when a song stops being changed by the new inputs and new ideas then it’s recorded and then ideally we never play it again.”

“Unfortunately it doesn’t always work like that,” counters Tim, “With ‘If Things Were Perfect’, for example, we’d been playing that for three years, then on the day we came to record it, it just changed.”

So what if you had the money to afford a big expensive studio and expensive production?

“I think we’d record rehearsals instead,” replies Jim, “or maybe work in a classical studio with the methods we use now. The trouble with working with rock studios is that they’re just not used to doing live recordings.”

“We have got tamer,” says Tim, “we’ve had to. At one time the majority of our material was made up onstage, and either we’d be great or we’d make absolute arseholes of ourselves.”

“Once on a New Order support slot, Jim and the other guitarists we had at the time just went on with acoustic guitars and jammed. We used to swap instruments a lot more too; one time Gavan just walked offstage and left us to get on with it, leaving me to play drums. We used to do that a lot, just disrupt each other deliberately, just to make it more exciting, now we just leave songs open ended.”

It occured to me that ‘If Things Were Perfect’ showed the noble influence of the _Camberwick Green_ theme tune.

“Yes,” replies Tim straightfaced,”that’s where we lifted it from, consciously– we take a lot from TV, particularly children’s. We used the _Rainbow_ theme tune too. Beatrix Potter is a big influence.”

Sounds inconsolably twee.

“Not at all, have you read the _Tale Of Samuel Whiskers_? That’s about a cat that crawls up a chimney and gets captured by a big rat in a waistcoat who puts it in a roly-poly pudding. All the mother cat can hear downstairs is this roly-poly-roly-poly sound. She doesn’t know they’ve got her kitten and they’re turning it into a pie.

“I used to have nightmares about being put in a sandwich after that one.”

JAMES ARE happier in the turnip field opposite than in the mausoleum. Once the photo-session’s over they can even dig up dinner.

Are you a bunch of hippies?

“Hmmm, radical Neils, that’s the current stereotype for vegetarians, isn’t it?”

As with The Smiths, there’s a strong undertow of folk in James’ themes.

“My dad’s a folk singer,” says Gavan, “so that might have something to do with it– 24-verse Scottish ballads and all that which takes some doing.

“I think there is a bit more to it than that, though, it’s a lot to do with modal tunes, which seem to be in all of us. What we used to do at the beginning was to try and strip our influences down– if we jammed a song and it sounded a bit too much like Joy Division, New Order, Birthday Party, Pop Group or whoever, we’d just stop playing it. When we stripped them all down we were left with folkish, modal tunes. There’s something about them which seems to be characteristic of British people.”

HERE THEY come, trundling around the country in their top-speed-20 van.

Why, you sometimes wonder, do they do it?

Jim: “When you play a song at the point when you write it, and it’s just so good. In a way you know that you’ll never play it that well again, there’s a tremendous buzz from that.”

Tim: “When everyone changes together at the same time and you’ve never played the song before, so you shouldn’t know, but just because you’ve been playing together for so long you anticipate it.”

Larry: “It goes on to another level and everyone realises and starts grinning at one another.”

Tim: ” You’re trying not to stop because all you really want to do is burst out laughing. So we play for about 20 minutes and then fall about in hysterics.”

“Then you’ve got to condense 20 minutes of ideas into one song,” says Gavan.

“Most of our best songs actually are based on mistakes,” says Tim. “When you make mistakes that’s when you’re acting from yourself, rather than what you’ve learned or heard before– chord changes that go wrong, drum beats that fall apart.”

“When it collapses,” Gavan adds, “somehow something comes out of the other end.”

Meanwhile the conveyer belt grinds on. . .

Tim: ” ‘If Things Were Perfect’– it’s partly about the way people will say, Hey! We’re having a great time! Come and join us! But you really know they’re not, they just need people to reinforce the idea that they’re having a great time, you can see that they’ve got frozen smiles.”

Somehow I get the impression that James will keep going their own sweet way.

Muriel Gray : Now Tim, can I ask you first of all – is this going to be a real bug bear, the fact that Morrissey from The Smiths has been describing you as a brilliant band. How are you going to live that one down?

Tim : We hope that people will take the trouble of coming to listen to us and they’ll hear and see for themselves.

Muriel : Because obviously you’re just about to go on tour with The Smiths. A nationwide tour that’s just about to start.

Tim : We’re in the middle of it now

Muriel : In the middle of it now? So where are the next dates you’re going to be playing then?

Tim : Margate and Ipswich and then we’re moving up north a bit, more to Manchester and Nottingham and places like that.

Muriel : Now is it hard doing a tour like that with someone who’s obviously so popular. You are from Manchester, you’re perhaps living in the shadow of all these other famous Factory bands. How do you see yourself going on from here?

Tim : What other Factory bands?

Muriel : Well, one or two little names. New Order and so on

Tim : We see it building. We just want people to see us and hear us and not believe what they read about us and make up their own opinions from live concerts and live performances.

Muriel : Because there’s been some quite amazing things written about you hasn’t there? Like you’re Buddhist vegans. Is this true?

Tim : No, it’s not true, not true at all.  Not for one of us.

Muriel : Why do you think people write these things about you? Just trying to make a little more publicity?

Tim : I don’t know. We don’t say too much so I think people tend to fill in the gaps for us and make up things and let their minds run away with themselves.

Muriel : This is quite a new eighties thing isn’t it? The quiet sensitive young men with guitars. Is this an image you’re falling into a bit?

Tim : Don’t know how to answer that question

Muriel : Because you are in fact a quiet sensitive young man.

Tim : I don’t think so, not necessarily. And it’s not an image we’re falling into. I mean, if we are quiet sensitive young men, we probably wouldn’t know it anyway

Muriel : Well, we’re very pleased to have some quiet sensitive young men on this programme, I can tell you. So what’s the next number you’re going to play.

Tim : It’s called Johnny Yen and it’s about very unquiet insensitive young men who used to frequent rock n roll a lot.

Audio

Setlist

Details

• Venue: BBC Maida Vale Studios, London, UK
• Date: 9th March 1985

Songs

• Hup-Springs (a.k.a. Sandman)
• If Things Were Perfect
• Johnny Yen

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The encore of this gig was recorded for the Old Grey Whistle Test.

Sounds review by Bill Black

The last Big Noise to burst forth from an ICA Rock Week was The Jesus And Mary Chain and this they did literally when scowls from the stage gave way to scuffles in the foyer. This might explained the “police presence” outside the prim bunker-like venue on the first night of “I Want Independents” week. But really, they needn’t have bothered.

See, James are nice boys, raised on Mama Morrissey’s milk of tragicomic humanism (I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when singer Tim wailed “An earwig crawled into my ear / Made a meal of the wax and hair) and gloriously devoid of trappings.

So the amps stayed miraculously upright, drummer Gavan stayed (for the most part) behind his Ringo-style kit – leaving the music to dwell amongst us with good deal of swank and even more swell.

To explain : James have completely redefined the traditional rock dynamic by replacing the ingenious devices of tension and release with … well, one long crescendo. So a song like “Prison” goes from bulky bass chords and hamstrung high-life guitar propped up by Tim’s nursery rhyme vocal melodies to a polyrhythmic explosion charged by octopus-armed Gavan and animated by Tim’s preacher man paroxysms.

The tease and dare is reinstated by James unique, not to say camp, delivery. And here lay my reservations for the evening. Music suffers from being bathed in contentment: what’s needed now is a more restless approach from this over-rehearsed quartet. But such nagging pales beside the simple fact that these grinning Mancunians have revamped the tones of guitar rock without replacing them with a worthless rattle of meaningless murk.

The next Big Noise.

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Audio

Setlist

Details

• Venue: BBC Maida Vale Studios, London, UK
• Date: 25th April 1985

Songs

• Chain Mail
• Discipline
• Folklore
• Summer Song

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James offer “an evening of tunes and other entertainment with help from some of their friends” on the 12th.

But to dispel rumours that they’ll be selling out over there and settling in Laurel Canyon to write their albm, they’ve set a couple of gigs for their return. They’ll be drawling at London’s Bloomsbury Theatre on July 17 and hitting the mega-festival circuit at the WOMAD Festival on Mersea Island on July 21.

James have dates at South Devon Hood Festival (7 July), Newcastle Riverside Centre (18) and Bristol Ashton Court Festival (3 August). These are in addition to their reported festival appearances at London Bloomsbury (17 July), WOMAD (21) and Manchester Platts Fields (2 August)

To coincide with this activity, the first two James singles have been remixed by Factory Records and are released this week as a 12 inch single

Summary

A live version of What’s The World included on a compilation cassette

Track List

What’s The World (live)

Details

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James play another IVY event at Basildon Gloucester Park on Sunday 4 August. And other new bookings for the band are Sheffield Leadmill (July 30), Bristol Ashton Court Festival (August 3) and Brighton Zap Club (8).

For a start, most bands who’d been feted by the music press and courted so assiduously by record companies would have jumped at the opportunity of selling their soul (music) by signing on the dotted line for a massive advance, and having their faces plastered across the nation’s news stands. Not James. Having dipped their toes into the murky waters and have decided to wait until they come up with a scheme to sterilise the cesspool before they plunge in.

After the release of their first single Jimone (pronounced Jim 1) during the back end of 1983, James laid low for a year, partly by design and partly enforced by singer and lyricist Tim Booth’s bout of hepatitis. In the last six months, the release of the musically more sophisticated James II (no prizes for the pronounciation) and the coveted slot as support on the recent Smiths tour has seen James move up from likely contenders to dead certs for the title of the “next big thing”

James pop is proving to be a breath of fresh air in what has become a stale self-congratulatory idiom. Gavan Whelan’s drumming provides a precise backbone for bassist Jim Glennie and guitarist Larry Gott’s whirling musical dervlish. When did we last have a potential chart act whose intelligent lyrics force you to put down what you’re doing and actually listen to the radio?

Comparisons with The Smiths abound, not least because Morrissey has taken it as a personal crusade to champion the James cause to all who would listen, and everyone else, too. The Smiths have based a career on perming Johnny Marr’s two tunes with Morrissey’s two theme – misery and sexual abstinence. Although most Smiths songs stand out individually, collectively they’re at risk of sinking into a whining sludge.

By contrast, James, with only five songs released so far, have traversed a breadth of emotion within a remarkably varied musical format. They have recently been re-released as a twelve inch under the title Village Fire. This combines the strangely hypnotic anti-sexist themes of Folklore, the drivingly anthemic rush of What’s The World (a genuine pop classic), the staccato-like angst of Fire So Close, the reflective romanticism of If Things Were Perfect and the powerful musical synthesis of the celebratory Hymn From A Village.

James have cultivated a reputation for being a bunch of eccentrics. False rumours abound that they’re a collection of crazy Buddhists, no doubt fuelled by the fact that they used to go around with their heads shaved calling each other “Buddha” or “Gandhi”. They’re also the proud owners of a van which looks like a relic from a time long past. They trundle up and down the country at a snail’s pace cooking their vegetarian food in this home-from-home. Every James interview seems to take place over a wholesome meal – we were meant to meet at The Hare Krishna Restaurant. What I still haven’t discovered is how a band who eat so much manage to stay so thin.

How did the name of James come about?

“Our ex-guitarist came up with it,” replies Jim. “He may have named us after James from Orange Juice, he fell in love with him.”

“Also, there was a surfeit of Jameses in the band then,” adds Gavan. “Anyway, my name would be too Heavy-Metal sounding”

Tim : “I don’t like the name much”

What would you prefer “Timothy”? Shane MacGowan of The Pogues observed that he would have preferred Jim to James. Do James get portrayed as being too serious?

“No, we’re not,” responds Tim, “we’re seen as wacky vegans, garden gnomes, Buddhist gurus or even Tiny Tims”

Jim : “People ask us banal questions like ‘Is Morrissey celibate?'”

Larry : “Or ‘Was Ian Curtis buried or cremated?'”

Tim, when you used to have your head shaved in the past, you said it was because you were disgusted. With what?

Larry : “Dandruff”

“That was my standard reaction in those days,” says Tim. “It was disgust with everything, myself included. It wasn’t a very positive outlook and it had to change.”

It was about this time that the Buddhist rumours were bandied.

Gavan : “We weren’t surprised, though they were false.”

“None of us adhere to any religions,” adds Tim. “They’re based on faith and belief, not personal experience.”

“Some Buddhist ideas are quite good. For example, the idea that this is all an illusion and that you label things, and then stop actually seeing them because you’ve given them a name. So you don’t actually see what a tree is, you just call it ‘tree’ and that takes care of that.”

What have been the major influences on you?

Tim : “Everyone is a hotch-potch of influences, it would be difficult to pull out any specific ones. Our childhood and parents are bound to have the greatest effect upon us. I used to go to church a lot and that’s coming out in our songs now – those God-awful Christian hymns! If we see something that’s too overtly like something else, we don’t use it.”

Gavan : “Individually we all have our influences but collectively they don’t come through.”

Gavan cites various jazz musicians while Tim talks of Doris Lessing. Interestingly, no mention is made of contemporary pop music. Do you ally yourself with any other bands?

“We hardly listen to pop music anymore,” replies Larry. “I think we share attitudes more than music with other groups.”

“We had a group outing to see Dollar Brand” adds Jim.

You’ve quoted him saying “I’m not a musician, I’m being played” before. What exactly did you mean?

Tim : “In our day-to-day life, thought results in a time delay before it’s translated into action. But when we’re playing and it’s going really well, we don’t really think about it, it just happens spontaneously. The music almost becomes out of our control.”

Gavan : “Usually when we rehearse a song for the first time, you get that feeling where the hair stands up on the back of your neck. We hit the highest peaks during our practices.”

You came out of Manchester at the time Joy Division were in their prime. They must have had an effect on you.

Jim : “A lot of their music was very minimalistic, simple and depressing and that did influence us. Although we’ve got away from the depression, we’ve always been pretty basic.”

An Indian restaurant in Whalley Range can throw up some strange characters. Eastern sounds float lazily around in the atmosphere, an old guitar sage sits in one corner while a bearded drummer taps constantly on the table whilst searching vainly for his vegetable dahl.

James are in the heart of their home city. And yes, it is raining.

The desperate race has already begun to discover that most lucrative of objects – The Band of 86.

In short, the collection of musical souls who will breathe fresh life back into a snoozy music industry, liven up the deadliest of dull charts – and make someone, somewhere very rich indeed.

While some noses turn sheep-like towards the preposterous preening of Sweet-On-Sennapods soundalikes Sigue Sigue Sputnik, and others to any number of pretenders to the U2 throne, there’s one band that have none of the trendiness of the former, nor the guitar swirling pomposity of the latter.

James are a Mancunian foursome. They’ve been around, in some form or other for six years, but play with the enthusiasm and joy of a bunch of novices.

James have a rather stupid name, but two timelessly charming singles on Factory Records to their credit.

They once supported The Smiths around the concert halls of Britain and – after much deliberation – have just been signed by the man who discovered Madonna.

James, erstwhile indie favourites and no doubt with neatly spruced belly buttons to the fore are making their play for big label success.

Tim Booth, Gavan Whelan, Jimmy Glennie and Larry Gott are the four individuals who make up James.

They laugh a lot, write rather good tunes and perform them with a sparse but energetic sound and much twitching and twirling from Timothy.

Their forthcoming single “Chain Mail” is the first since signing to Sire / blanco y negro for a rather nice, if undisclosed sum. Out at the turn of the month, it’s the first chance for most people to hear them.

“We want to be as big as Coca Cola,” says Tim. “But we won’t rot your teeth.”

It all began six years ago. The cultural centre of the music scene had switched from London to the North. The safety pin was no longer the holy relic it was purported to be.

Instead the cult of the dirty mac was in full fringe-flopping flow.

In Liverpool, Ian MacCulloch, Julian Cope and Pete Wylie were the monickers to bandy round, while Manchester’s greatest musical export since Freddie Garrity went by the name of Joy Division. Coming up the rear was one Mark E Smith and his cheery Fall crew.

And in the Whelan household’s front room, Gavan and Jimmy Glennie, just recently introduced by a mutual schoolfriend, were practising songs by these two most influential of local bands.

Some two years later, Gavan and Jim were joined by Tim, first as a dancer (and if you’ve seen them live, the wonders of his epiletic skank will already have been revealed to you), then as singer of the still unnamed band.

At this time, the vocalist was one Danny Ram, whose departure was followed by even greater things in the world of entertainment.

Jim : “On the Val Doonican show”

Tim : “He did the rocking chair. He pulled the string”

With a sense of humour like that in tow, Tim, Jim and Gavan set about thinking up a name that would sum up their musical aspirations. Or not, as it turned out.

Tim : “James really didn’t mean anything but it was quite an original name back them. There were no Smiths… No other bands with just a name for their title”

Gavan : “There were lots of bands with long names at the time”

Jim : “It was things like Echo and the Bunnymen, the Teardrop Explodes, that sort of alternative thing. Only it wasn’t alternative anymore”

Tim : “And with the name James, people didn’t know what to expect, a hairdresser, a poet or whatever”

Gavan : “So they got both”

Larry : “That’s right, we’re hairdressing poets”

Eighteen months ago, the line-up was completed when “old guitar sage” Larry left a life of teaching other people around Manchester how to find fame through six strings and some nimble fret work and took to a life of performing himself.

James first appearance on vinyl was three years ago with ‘Jimone’, a collection of three songs that long ago sold out of the initial few thousand pressings.

Together with James II (‘Hymn From A Village’ and ‘If Things Were Perfect’) they appeared on a 12 inch EP late last year, again on Factory.

Jim : “All we’ve done is made two singles with Factory. We’ve never signed anything and have never considered ourselves on Factory. I don’t know if they did. They were really good. They let us do whatever we wanted and it worked really well at the time”

Tim : “I think we always had our eye on moving, taking things on a step and just moving onto bigger things. Our experience with Factory in this country with the singles has been that they were quite …. inefficient in a way. And we didn’t want to trust an album worldwide to them.”

Gavan : “They haven’t got the capital behind them. They’ve got £5,000 or something for a single, but as soon as it’s released, then that’s the money gone. There’s no money to back it up until it starts selling.”

Jim : “We got to a stage where we thought we’d got good enough music to reach a lot of people, so we decided to sign up with a major label. There just doesn’t seem to be any alternative to us anymore.”

Ten years after the punk explosion was supposed to end the dominance of the major labels, it’s rather sad that bands still feel the need of the heavy backing of a major corporation to gain the success they yearn for, but such is the situation.

After months of rumours about large cheques exchanging hands in return for James’ collective signature, they finally signed for Sire together with blanco y negro in November last year.

So why was it necessary?

Larry : “To get an LP out basically”

Tim : “And to do it professionally. We’ve spent a long time on songs and you want them to sound the best you can”

Jim : “We signed with Seymour Stein. He’s the guy who signed Madonna and Talking Heads. So we want to be the next Madonna. They have this huge promotion scheme for us. They’re going to make us shave our beards and Larry’s going to have to wear compact lenses . We’re really into it, because we’re in to being puppets”

If James were at all hesitant about relinquishing their indie status and “selling their souls to the devils”, they hide it very well.

With their diminutive minders Martine and Jenny keeping a sharp eye on their business interests, just how much control are they going to have over the way they are to be sold to the wider record buying public?

Tim, Jim, Gavan, Larry : “None!”

Tim: “We said, do what you want with us. we want fame.”

Jim: “Give us your money. We will only sign for lots of money.”

Tim: “Thirty quid. We come cheap. Jim was a bit hesitant. We had to beat him every night to persuade him.”

Jim; “I was convinced we were worth 35, but. ..”

Behind the frivolity, though, is a group of people who appear to know exactly what they’re doing and are under no illusions as to the situation they are getting into.

Tim: “The thing is, we looked at different companies and the thing about Seymour Stein is that he seems to be quite a music fan whereas with everyone else we saw, there were nice individuals but they were ‘business men’.

“There are businessmen behind Seymour Stein, but it was nice to see the person in control of it all was a music fan.”

“We’ve got a fair amount of control. We haven’t got total control, which is what we thought we’d get, but we’ve got quite a lot. We thought we’d hang out for total control – for eight months – but we never got it.

“We all thought our music was so. ..”

Jim: “Brilliant. ”

Tim; “That they’d eventually say, do what you want, boys.”

Jim: “Geniuses, geniuses!”

Tim: “And unfortunately they weren’t like that. Some of them were incredible. They’d say, ‘Oh, this is great’, then suggest a single for release and say, ‘But you have to chop the last minute off the end’ or ‘You have to stick this or that in’.” Gavan: uOr ‘You’ve not got enough choruses’ or ‘Can anyone play a synthesiser?’.”

Tim: “One guy thought we had a few wild songs. but some good commercial songs too, so he thought we could make an album of commercial songs, then press a few of the wild ones and give them away to our fans.”

With the contract they have signed, though, James are confident that they’ll be consulted on everyttling to do with them.

“They can’t do anything without asking the band first, ” points out manager Martine.

Jim: “Then we say no and they just go ahead and do it anyway!”

So far, James’s media image has come across as anything from “Buddhist vegans” to surly musos to wacky chaps who appear to be wearing custard pies on their feet”.

Being neither Buddhists nor vegans, and there certainly don’t appear to be any custard pies hiding under the table today, there’s just the surliness and furrowed brows to find out about.

Unfortunately, James positively beam with good humour. (Well, Tim and Jim do, Larry kind of smirks enigmatically, while Gavan’s style leans more towards the wry curl of the lip than cheery grins, but it amounts to the same thing.)

Gavan: “Smiling. That’s something a lot of people have picked up on as well. We smile a lot on stage apparently. Dead wacky that”

Jim: “Smile ‘smugly’ at each other.”

Larry : “The fact that we’re from Manchester and Manchester bands don’t smile seems to confuse some people. The new Manchester misery guts school – James don’t just fit in.”

Tim : “That’s another thing. Not many “serious” bands smile. Bands which seem to have serious music they’ve worked hard on , you make a joke and it somehow seems to undermine it. There aren’t many bands that are passionate who also make jokes – even in records. There are some that sneak them in and hide them, and some like the Fall, you can’t tell whether it’s humour or grotesqueness. Instead, you’re meant to walk around being angst ridden and full of fury and depresssion”

Jim: “We are, aren’t we?”

James are under no illusion that as the new Duran Duran, they would stand as much chance as Michael Heseltine keeping his hair in place. The new Wham! even. And as for the new Aha – well my dear, they wouldn’t stand an earthly!

No, their aspirations lie more in the area of Tom Waits or, more to the pop Talking Heads- artists who have achieved a fair amount of commercial success; but at no expense to their ‘credibility’ (ahem) or musical brilliance.

Larry: “What’s ‘big’ or successful anyway, Is it sales of records or is it how much in the public eye you are! There are some people who are not in the public eye and they sell a consistent number of records. That’s a good situation to be in.”

James’s music is never likely to be a favourite on the Steve Wright show nor are they perhaps the stuff the musical breaks on Pebble Mill are made of.

Their songs range from the quirky to the downright tuneful and pleasant. If the commercial success they deserve does come, it’s likely to be through building a following live and subsequent album sales rather than snappy three minute songs -although don’t discount that possibility too quickly.

Tim: “I think we might sneak in like the Police did. Their stuff was very good at the beginning. Maybe more commercially accessible than ours, but they went through and established themselves very quickly after hard work. ”

Jim: “We have got more commerciaily accessible songs. ”

Tim: “All we do is put them out the best we can in the way that we like them. I hope we’d never put out anything just sell large numbers.”

Jim: “Though if we’ve got mortgages going -!”

And so, with contracts signed, the first single waiting in the wings and maybe the odd new woolly jumper to add that touch of showbiz glamour, just how successful wouid James like to be?

Gavan: “I’ve thought about this one, and unless we change – change our music I couldn’t see our music going down well at Madison Square Garden.”

Tim: “We think our songs can be very popular though. Big as Madonna! Larry, when he’s got less clothes or looks amazingly like Madonna, so we could handle that one. Or big as Jesus”

.Jim: “Big as cheeses!”

Tim: “Yeah. Just like John Lennon said. ‘We’re now as big as cheesy wotsits’.”

That, indeed, would be fame.

Setlist

Details

• Venue: BBC Maida Vale Studios, London, UK
• Date: 20th January 1986

Songs

• Are You Ready?
• Really Hard
• Scarecrow
• Skullduggery

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“I’d like to put a disclaimer in at this point: Mat Snow is using very long word and drawing us into an academic discussion of our music when we consider it to be fun and quite simple.”

I wasn’t going to pretend otherwise.

“But I wanted that disclaimer. And that was no insult to you.”

None taken I’m sure.

“You’re using a lot of words, varied words, quite well-chosen words, but a lot of which you associate with theories and academics. ‘Hermetic’ things like that. When you talk to someone like that, you tend to start talking like that too; so if you quote us, it might make us sound … This isn’t the way we normally talk about things. So your piece will reflect, to a large degree, you – even down to the words we are using.”

Should you imagine that what you are about to read is a minefield of misinformation, plonking authorial projection and sheer misrepresentation of James, a pop group from Manchester, then think again.

A plethora of polysyllables and a thimbleful of theory does not mean no fun, it means James are scuttling around in the margins of pop, in an area so left-field as to present no easy comparisons or ready made definitions. So until someone can coin accessibly short and simple words to describe what James are up to, then volumes of verbiage will just have to do.

It is quite possible however that there are no stories about James that are not true.

Here I am tucking into a plateful of vegetarian chilli as the lecithin is passed round the table to be sprinkled on one’s food as an aid to the absorption of cholesterol and harmful saturated fats.

Also breaking bread in the parlour of Liverpool’s Amazon studios are Larry Gott, whose guitar is as mercurial as his demeanour is of guru quietude; bearded drummer Gavan Whelan, the band’s token drinker (“I’m the bad one, really, I haven’t come to terms with anything.”); bassist Jim Glennie, the soul of amiability; managers Martine and Jennifer, the diametric opposites of every cigar-chomping, turkey-talking shark of your nightmares; producer Lenny Kaye, six-foot-four of hair, New York bonhommie and jovial recollection of his illustrious track record with ‘Nuggets’, Patti Smith and Suzanne Vega; engineer Gil Norton, who wants to see his name in print; and an empty place for Monty.

Monty comes in. He is James singer Tim Booth, pale, quiet, seemingly lost in thought. Soft, unlined and somewhat angelic, his face is half-concealed behind a pair of spectacles so owlish and bulletproof as to scream for attention; likewise those Cornish-pastie shoes, the fashion sensation of the indie scene last Spring and still just as mindboggling.

Tim is an odd fish. From his careful deliberation when asked to talk about what he does for a living, you might expect a stoolbound stummer of the early 70s school, another Nick Drake perhaps. But when he’s singing, he shimmers in the grip of an electric spirit, as if he’s a medium or conduit for some kind of unearthly ectoplasm, a third whimsy, a third ecstasy and a third warning.

And yet it’s the mystique which might grow around such apparent schizophrenia that Tim is so keen to avoid – hence his disclaimer. Much though it might profit James to come across as some sort of professional enigma, they always steer my flights of fancy firmly back down to earth, down to the basics of simplicity, health and fun.

The boss of their former record label Factory (James have now signed to WEA subsidiary Sire), Tony Wilson, drew a telling comparison; the Dutch national football team. In the early 70s, Neeskens, Cruyff, Rep and the other eight purveyors of ‘total football’ believed that they were merely doing a job and never talked about it in any other way – but it was beautiful to behold. The next generation of Dutch footballers felt thus inspired to go out and self-consciously recreate that beauty on the park. Result : their football was a shambles.

But what we saw in the 1974 World Cup is of the same order as what we hear when James hit their stride. Harmony, Empathy, Alchemy …..

So let’s lob a few high balls into the box, Brian, and see if we can get a result….

“We’re just as mystified as the audience….”

What I’d wondered, is the meaning of those sidelong glances, inward smiles and sotto voce chat that makes a James gig so clubbable, so intimate and yet so ultimately exclusive of their audience?

“Each night of a performance one of us will choose a set list,” explains Tim. “And often one of us will choose a setlist that they know we really can’t play, an absolute minefield. The joke is, we don’t know where the changes are, so we have to look at each other to sat, Are you ready now for a change?

“Like in a performance, you’re just projecting out to the audience, and sometimes you find we haven’t got together, so I think, look at the others to try and bring it back in. Cos if we haven’t got it right amongst ourselves, we can’t push it out to anybody. If I feel the energy’s getting too dispersed outwards, we’ll try and retreat as a group to get this bit right so we can take it out again. It’s like juggling from one person to another. We have to be very alert to each other, very aware of what each other is playing.”

Gavan : “Because we’ve been in relationship with each other for quite a while, there’s more than just a connection between us when we’re playing. There’s a stronger link; through the songs we keep confirming that. A look is much more than that, much more expressive than that.”

Tim : “Sometimes says we must argue a lot, and you can see that in a lot of songs, and then you see more harmony coming in. It’s going towards harmony all the time.

“It’s like a personality, isn’t it? You can have a person who doesn’t express a lot of what they’ve got or doesn’t know a lot of what really lies inside them. The more you let out, then you’ve got to integrate it and make some sense of it otherwise you’re going to get into a bit of a mess. It’s the same thing with us. It’s like, getting bigger and bigger, but trying to integrate things within a song.

“Does that make sense?”

The flipside to the excellent new 45 ‘Chain Mail’, titled ‘Hup-Springs’, epitomises the beauty born of cock-up and the dashing trail of the untameable in hot pursuit of the unplannable.

“‘Hup-Springs’ was a three-year old song and we all got really bored and pissed off with it. So we said, Come on, let’s really push this one and see what happens. In the middle of the take Gavan dropped a drumstick, but everyone went with it! You can’t plan things like that. And when we listened to it, it was wild. You can’t better that – it had it’s own life.

“And that’s how a lot of the songs are formed.”

“Ha ha ha ha ha ha”. All I’d suggested was that James songs suggest a hermetic personality, imprisoned and armoured and in two minds – half wishing to get involved in the world of worlds and other people, half wishing to remain secure behind closed doors: perhaps, indeed, like a baby at the threshold of birth, torn between the womb and the harsh bright light of the world. Ahem.

I earn a round of applause as well as a laugh. But they agree the word tentative is not too wide of the mark.

“Originally there were four of us, and we knew there was something missing, something we were looking for, It could have been another person in the band, so we tried lots of people, but we haven’t found anybody who had a really likewise attitude. Then, to a degree, Lenny Kaye was that piece for the making of the single (James Lenny Kaye-produced debut LP ‘Lost Innocence’ is out in May). We didn’t know what producers did….”

Tim changes tack.

“We wanted a record company we could trust our records with – we’d made all these records we cared about like, to go back to your image, a mother whose got all these kids but she doesn’t want to let them out on to the streets, cos she sees what the world does to kids. But now we’ve decided everyone’s going to get tainted anyway, so you’ve got to give up and accept the fact that there’s no perfection. What happens is what happens. If we become bland and boring because of the process, then that happens.”

“I used to go to church every week and my Dad had a particular way of singing that people would think was out of tune and everyone used to turn around and listen to him, and the family would be really embarrassed. But when you know he listen to what he was doing, he was always in harmony but in a really strange way. Quite bizarre.”

I’ve heard tell of Tim’s closeness to his family and a possibly secluded childhood. Indeed, he seems far older than his 25 years, a serene young man seemingly untouched by his days as a post-punk raver when studying drama at Manchester University, during which period he was to some of his friends “the little woolly lamb”.

Gavan and Jim grew up in the same terraced street in Manchester’s Moss Side. Only one side of it remains now, the rest of the terraces torn down during their childhood to make way for tower blocks. Singing nursery rhymes whilst playing amongst the building sites is a memory; seeing The Beatles on TV is another. Inscrutable as ever, Larry’s roots lie in the anonymous Manchester suburb of Denton.

“If you think of a kid seeing the power of television, seeing the effect the Beatles caused. I bet that sticks in there,” speculates Tim. “But later on you might think of all these brilliant reasons why you want to be on stage – you were going to be a great actor or change the world – but the reason is it got attention. Everybody’s so insecure they think there’s some value in being special in a public way. The reality is you see how people get corrupted by it, really ill from it, with a vain and empty lifestyle.

“I’d acted twice in school plays and it sounded like a soft option at University and quite good fun. And I wanted to investigate acting because I thought people acted with each other all the time, and I thought this would penetrate to the heart of it. But I found it really boring, didn’t like it all. I could never remember lines!

“Purging demons? Hmmm, yes, in those days it was true. Acting used to put me through a lot that I hated, It used to put me on the edge, scare the hell out of me.

“Now I find I do better performances when I think it’s all a big joke, and I think we all share that. People say we’re playful and I think that’s when we’ve got it in perspective – it’s fun and that’s the way it should be. You’ve got all this stimulus coming at you and you’ve got to integrate it or else it’ll just drive you mad.”

Ever investigated Exegesis, EST, encounter therapy or the like?

“I’ve looked into a lot of those things. I find that a lot of them are very superficial and might work for a couple of weeks and then the holes start to fill back in again. And all of them are based on ego in the first place. Really, if you want something that’s going to last, it’s got to penetrate deeper than that.”

God?

“Those words are loaded – God! But there has to be some intelligence otherwise everything falls apart. Nature is such an integrated system that there has to be an intelligence behind it; it just couldn’t happen otherwise.

“When you go into the country on your own, you can become very harmonious, very peaceful. And yet when you come back to the city and the pollution and traffic noise and the speediness and the electric bombardment and the drink and the canned food and the cigarettes, you are different and then it’s easy to believe in disorder with chaos and no meaning.

“When I lived in Hulme, I got sick, I reflected the environment I live in. It all will end up being the case that you’re thinking of. The mind is a very dodgy implement to understand the world with and personally I wouldn’t trust it on any level. Intuition is much more penetrating than intellect because intuition seizes the whole all over. Whereas intellect will look at a cup as its outline and tell you its colour, but not see what’s in the cup..”

Which neatly runs up against the buffers of a zen-like truth about not just James but all writing about music, something almost by definition beyond words. Like that cup, I can see James in outline and tell you what colour James are. But as to what’s inside?

That’s for you to sup it and see.

The quartet return to live action with a hometown gig at Manchester PSV Club July 15 before a WOMAD Festival slot on the 19th.

Next month they’ve lined up a short tour at Barrow-In-Furness August 14, Edinburgh Hoochie Coochie Club 15, Aberdeen Venue 16, Dundee Dance Factory 17. More dates will coincide with the album’s release.

James are a new thing. Maybe one of the last new things that’ll emerge from pop’s depleted range of possibilities, maybe the herald for a whole new order. It’s difficult to say.

This is an interesting stage we’re suffering right now. In James’ words, we’re all “dying to begin again”- but the accent, as of yet, is on death, decline, drift, disintegration. James could be a penultimate, teasing glory, or the promise of renewal. It’s difficult.

James are at an interesting stage too, making tentative, hopeful steps into a larger arena. Everything that makes them different and special is precisely what will create difficulties for them. But it’s going to be an adventure.

James are very relaxed about it all. If they have a fault it’s perhaps that their affability and modesty can make you forget that they are “important” – if that word has any meaning left in the diminishing realm of rock 1986.

They like to represent what they do as simple and natural and uncomplicated, a reticence that makes it hard to talk when you’re convinced, as I am, that their music is a sophisticated response to complex times. Sometimes I get the impression they’d like to promote the new LP, “Stutter”, without elaborating at all on contexts and intentions.

“Stutter” was produced by Lenny Kaye, he of “Nuggers” and Patti Smith fame. You’d think a group as English and indie as James would be shy of linking up with someone with such heavy associations with a certain tradition of American underground rock ‘n’ roll. Or was this a conscious alignment, a coming clean about being a rock band?

With James, nothing is ever deliberate, it just happens. Guitarist Larry Gott: “His name just kept cropping up. When we eventually signed to Sire, the label’s boss, Seymour Stein, knew him, you see.”

Singer Tim Booth continues: “Lenny was a mixture of chance and choice. We talked to him and saw that he was really sussed. With him we were prepared to compromise, whereas with someone else, we might have closed ranks.”

Compromise? I can’t see much evidence of commercial bland-out/gross-out.

“Perhaps compromise is the wrong word,” suggests Jim Glennie, bassist. “It was more a question of letting Lenny’s input come into the music”.

What is clear is that Kaye has given James a scope and force and brightness of sound appropriate to a major label group. James now have as much in common with early Echo or U2 as with the more flimsy, brittle sounding shambling bands.

I think it’s important to stress that James are a rock group. Important precisely because they have so little truck with what we’ve come to associate with rock – the stale sleaze, the megalomania, the rowdyism, the swaggering sexuality. James are opening up possibilities for a new kind of rock, one that retains the accelerating and urgency, but relinquishes the aura of violence and overbearing masculinity.

James aren’t alone – throughout the indie scene, both British and American, people are coming to the same conclusions, drawing from similar sources, developing elements like The Velvets, Byrds, Television, folk, into a rock that’s not just post-rockism, but post-r&b.

It’s funny how all these hip white kids in Britain have appropriated the music and imagery of an earlier American bohemianism, only to use it as a kind of dissidence against present day Americanisation. The jangly/fuzz sound is combined with a defiant Englishness, a dissent from all that’s taken as Americanised in this country – video, wine bars, yuppiedom, soul boy culture, consumerism. A dissent from pop itself, in fact.

Strange and exciting, isn’t it, that purity has become hipper than wildness, that innocence has come to seem a more desirable, cooler, state of being than worldliness? Are James aware they’re part of a wider change?

They say they don’t listen to other music much, too much like a busman’s holiday. Have they got any ideas why this change is occurring?

Tim muses: “It’s a different period… we’ve had that wildness stuff, and it doesn’t last long because the nature of it is such that you’re pretty ill, you can’t maintain the intensity and you burn out very quickly. So you move on to something else, hopefully something a bit more positive, and long term.”

Larry continues: “It sounds like you’re putting this purity thing into a category almost like the punk explosion, or the rock explosion before that. I don’t think it will explode because of its very nature. Only things like outrage explode.”

“And dissipate just as quick,” adds Gavan Whelan (drums). “We’re more like something that seeps into your bloodstream.”

I’m interested that Tim speaks of moving on to something positive because, in most of the songs, you seem appalled by things, disgusted.

“I hope there’s more than that. I hope there’s something positive at the end. Like ‘Black Hole’ speeds up at the end and that’s the way you get out. Plus there’s humour too – y’know, ‘Beam me up Scotty’! There is a lot to be appalled at, but not all life’s like that.”

Perhaps what’s positive is just the transfiguration of sorrow in music, the sheer exultation in sound and energy. James are perhaps the best, most innovative and dynamic of jangly – nowpop groups, rivalled only by those Arizona mystics, The Meat Puppets. And it’s positive just to be able to write about bad things incisely, yet with wit and compassion.

Tim’s lyrics traverse a number of interlocking themes – how machismo brutalises (both victim and self), the restlessness of desire that will never find peace in materialism or promiscuity, non-communication – and return again and again to the yearning for a home, for tranquillity, for “nature”, and “truth”.

There are two really central concerns – pollution (of the environment, the body, of language) and illusion (social masks, self-deception). Tim will joke about “getting high on negativity”, but it seems to me that he does work himself up into a kind of ecstasy of denunciation on songs like “Just Hip” and “Your Loving Son”. And, because they’re exhilarating, charged pieces of music, we too get swept up in it. Both songs climax by spiralling up to the heavens and James’ music seems to strive to rise above it all, leave behind worldly concerns and base things.

But I almost feel sorry for all those people whose lives are being dismissed as “disguises” and “built on lies”. The new single, “Really Hard”, implores “wake up from this dreaming state”, and it’s almost as though Tim sees all of everyday culture as a mirage, as ersatz-satisfaction. So, what are we left with, once all the veils are stripped away? Clear vision? What, I ask, are the real things?

A long, embarrassed, smirky, silence ensues before Tim speaks: “Well, there’s love… and there’s waking up. Like, things are often not very real – lots of patterns in the way people behave, are dependent on the way they were treated as a child, on the environment they were brought up in, the school they went to, the psychological games their mothers and fathers played with each other, certain key events. All that can make people into a kind of machine, repeating. And when you find yourself repeating these patterns you try to wake up from that. When you start to wake up, it’s very exciting.”

What do people wake up to?
“An awareness of the part of you that isn’t asleep, that is aware, and that’s common to everyone. There’s no real language for it, you could get bogged down in mystical language, although that’s not how I see it.”

One thing that marks James out is the explicit way they address the way pop is a form of conditioning, how rock’s dead history of gesture can constrict our vocabulary of desire and self. “What’s The World” and “Hymn From a Village” were brilliant essays on pop’s redundancy and the search “for some words I can call my own”. The new LP contains “Johnny Yen”, an hilarious rejection of the self-immolation of the rock outsider/tortured young artist.

“When you start to make songs, all the songs you’ve ever heard come in, and you have to be very alert to the clichés. It’s another facet to waking yourself up.

“Clichés are dead songs, there’s no energy, no lift to them, cos you can predict what’s coming, from the first note in. Like “Hymn From a Village” stems from when we started to make a song and it seemed very robotic, like a cliché, and that led to the lyrics ‘this song’s made-up, made second-rate’. It was a sleepwalking song. So it’s the same with life – if you wake up, you become more alive, instead of just going through the same tired habits and responses to what confronts you.”

It seems to me that what James are attempting is a noble project. They’re trying to inject into pop ideas and practices that are foreign or actively hostile to what pop has always been about. Pop and rock have hitherto been very much take take take, me me me, want, want, want – whereas James are trying to introduce reflection, selflessness, a quiet life, concentration, into its scheme.

It makes me wonder that Sire think they can sell them. There’s too much that’s jarring and alive about James for the radio – the disruptive intelligence of their song constructions, the fact that you can tell people are there from their playing, will all make it difficult for people to use James as background listening. Are James too up-pop to ever be successful?

“Lots of people come up, like you, and say, I like it, but it’ll never be popular. But lots of people come up and say that! The truth is we just don’t know. We want to find out.”

Jim: “You’ve just got to show people that possibilities exist.”

Tim: “We used to think the music would sell on its own merits, but now we see we have to sell it, sell it on Jim’s face, Gav’s beard, my shoes and Larry’s glasses.”

I hope it works.

James play Manchester PSV Club on 15 July, a warm-up for their appearance in the WOMAD Festival the following Saturday (19).

They’re also set up for a string of four shows in August – at Barrow Bluebird Club (14), Edinburgh Hoochie Coochie (15), Aberdeen Venue (16) and Dundee Dance Factory (17).

The Mancunian four-piece have their new single So Many Ways / Withdrawn issued by Sire next Monday, with the bonus track Just Hipper on the 12″, but it seems likely that their August gigs will coincide with the release of their debut album Stutter.

Int : That was Really Hard, your choice to play as a track from the new album. Why Really Hard, Tim?

Tim : I sung the vocals on my birthday. Because it was my favourite song at the time

Int : Yes

Tim : I think that’s one of the most complete songs on the LP

Int : Many things have been said to typify James. One – vegetarianism.

Tim : Gavan’s drumskins are all made out of the finest leeks. We’ve really taken a stand on this

Gavan : Very expensive

Tim : And we come on dressed in vegetables as well, because we don’t believe in wearing animals against our skin.

Int : Yes, I thought that artichoke was rather fetching actually. Buddhism. Does that still come into it

(Band do lots of Buddhist chanting and meditating sounds)

Int : Ok, I think we’ve answered that one. Message then

Jim : Hello Mum

Int : Yes. From Jim of James. I saw you playing at the Anti-Reagan Rally

Tim : It just happened we were busking in Albert Square and then this march came round the corner

Jim : Oh, fucking hell

Tim : And we were standing there playing and thought well what are we going to do now. Maybe we can get some money out of it so we carried on playing for a few songs

Jim : Passing the hat around

Tim : But they soon told us to shut up

Int : Playing something like Albert Square. I mean that’s quite something in itself. Slightly different to your average venue.

Tim : It’s a weird game. Playing Albert Square. I prefer Monopoly.

Int : Is there a big difference with an audience without alcohol

Tim : A soberier audience? Usually the sober audiences just stand there and gawp and look really embarrassed and don’t know what to do with their hands.

Jim : Oh God, I’m really paranoid. Everyone’s looking at me, but I’m not drunk. Oh God.

Tim : And they don’t know how to handle it. Whereas a drunk audience.

Jim : Just fall over

Tim : Just forget it and take no notice of us and jump on each other and things like that. It’s easier to fool a drunken audience.

Int : Pop interviewer question number 227 – what are your influences?

Tim : What are our influences?

Int : Mancunian Doors? How do you take to that label?

Jim : There’s one

Tim : That’s really corny. The Doors were always out of their heads. And we’re never.

Gavan : Jim was. I don’t know about the rest of them

Jim : Speak for yourself

Gavan : Not as bad as he was

Tim : None of us need alcohol or drugs to fuel them. One of the ideas is that we don’t need it live.

Int : This energy, where do you get it from? Why do people resort to alcohol? Just to replace or imitate that sort of energy that you manage to get live?

Jim : Lightweights.

Gavan : I don’t think the drugs replace energy unless you’re using specific drugs such as speed or something. It gets rid of the inhibitions so you can do what you want. But I think drink, it saps your energy.

Tim : At the beginning when you go on stage, everyone’s really frightened and so if you have a few drinks, you can hide from that fear and a lot of bands do that. They never get past the stage where you actually stand up there and tell if you’re brave or strong enough and are as good as you can be.

Gavan : So that’s what you did with the artichoke was it?

Int : Finally, the deal with WEA.

Jim : Sire

Int : Sorry, what is it and why are you doing it as opposed to staying with Factory?

Tim : We never signed with Factory. We just did 2 singles with them. That’s all the agreement, that was done on a day-to-day basis. But we liked them a lot, we got on well with them, but we just got to the point where we felt our records were just not being distributed. We were doing a tour with The Smiths and in each city we would go into the record shops and none of them would have a copy of our records even though the record had just come out and we were doing a tour to support it. And we just felt we needed better support really.

Int : And you’re going to get it?

Tim : I don’t know. No, we hope so.

Int : So a very serious band then

Tim : Very serious.

“We were a bunch of yobbos when we first met,” says Tim Booth, the singer. Gavan Whelan (the drummer) and Jim Glennie (on bass) were in this nightclub where I was dancing, and I caught them trying to steal my drink! There were too many of them so I backed down quickly. But they asked me to dance in the group (Tim is a bit of a “whirling dervish” when it comes to moving the old feet about). And pretty soon I started singing. Larry Gott, the guitarist, joined about three years ago and we’ve been together ever since.”

James have a new single out called “So Many Ways”, and will soon be releasing an album called “Stutter”. They hope that both will do well because at the moment they all get paid the grand sum of £33 a week each i.e. not exactly a fortunette. They didn’t bother publicising their last single “just as an experiment” says Tim. Sounds like a bit of a silly idea to Bitz. So what happened? “It failed.” Hmm, thought it might.

Amongst other things, James are friends of Morrissey and The Smiths, who they supported on tour last year. Like The Smiths, they are also vegetarians, and can be v. serious.
“Some of our songs have political implications,” explains Tim. “We look at how world leaders are invariably the most screwed-up people in each country, and how countries are in a mess because of the systems that let people like that get to the top. But we also look at what makes people in general so insecure and so ambitious, and how to break that down. Some of the songs are about how to become alive and spontaneous and awake, not just a bundle of habits that we call a “personality”. We try to uplift with our music, not to depress!”

Pheeyeeew!!! So what is Tim’s greatest ambition?
“To become an enlightened person. To know what life is all about and to become fulfilled.”

Cripey o’stripey! James aren’t just a bunch of yobbos after all – they’re a bunch of seriously-thinking yobbos!

James are making quiet additions to their Book Of Brilliant Things. The current chapters have been probed ad nauseam – normality, music, Manchester, brown rice, garish jumpers and hipness.

But hark, what is this? Edging closer to inclusion are two unlikely contenders -London and a major record label.

Jim: “People in London are really scared and poranoid. They won’t even look at you. Everyone seems so busy and blinkered, living in their own little world.”

Larry: “But there are little pockets you can start walking through and feel quite nice about. Bayswater’s getting a bit like that because we’ve stayed there so often.”

James are also coping admirably with being small fish in the very big pond that is WEA Records. Jim: “We went to a major because we thought the music could sell to a lot of people. We’ve never felt swamped, in fact we’re quite enjoying it.

“We always knew there’d be hassles and we have had hassles but nothing radical. Irs never been, ‘Oh God, the end of the world!'”

Larry: ‘We had very naive ideas.”

Jim: “Very idealistic. We thought we could take the world by storm.”

Larry: “All we knew was that the record industry didn’t work on the principle that if you release a record and if the public buy it, you have a hit.

“If we’d tried to suss out the industry and built a plan of action, we’d have fallen flat on our faces. Our ideas of it 18 months ago have been completely blown to pieces. On the other hand, someone like Tony James can do it because he saw it all 10 years ago. He could go away, devise a masterplan and sell it to the people.”

Isn’t he the one who’s fallen flat on his face? Larry: “I think it’s the industry that has.”

Jim: ‘What happened was probably all he intended anyway. They must have known deep down that they’ve got a cheap, cruddy image that everyone was going to be pissed off with in a few months.” Either that or they’re more stupid than they look.

Larry: “As for the advertising on their LP, I’m sure people are just going to tape it and press the pause button during the adverts. That’s if anyone actually wants to listen to a Sigue Sigue Sputnik album.”

And are James going to be hitless hipsters for the forseeable future?

Larry: HI always thought we’d have a hit some time.”

Jim: .And we haven’t given up or this one yet.. (This one being the very splendid ‘So Many Ways’.) “These days, though, you have to get on the playlist and we’re not. I always used to think DJs played records they liked:’

As for the dreaded image business any record company pressure to enhance the oddity factor? Boxes of kaftans appearing surreptitiously on doorsteps, perhaps?

Larry: “Is our image that dreaded? No, no, I didn’t mean it like that. “No it was basically a case of, ‘Here’s James, let’s see what they can come up with’.”

Jim: “And our image is dead easy We just have to be ourselves.”

‘So Many Ways’ is just one of many delights unveiled on James’ first LP ‘Stutter’. The essential Jamesian elements are here in force -wild, uncontrollable melodies; rabid, unru voice; unbelievably tongue-in-cheek lyrics and, occasionally, a modicum of order.

Timothy Booth’s voice has a perplexing charm. It’s so, um …Larry”‘Weird is the word that springs to mind. Although, on Chain Mail’, he was really taking the mickey out of himself a bit with the highvoice.”

As for James’ poetic licence. ..’I love my black hole’, ‘I need a wash’ and other similar gems sung with such sombre conviction, they must be joking. None of this pilfering from Roget’s Thesaurus like other bands, though.

Larry: ‘We used to have really ba speakers for rehearsing. You could jt about pick up the melody, punctuating and that was about it. The words were totally blurred. ‘Really Hard’ started , as ‘Riddly Ya’. Tim was just improvising with syllables and vowel sounds until one of us mentioned ‘That song, ‘Really Hard'”

Enter Gavan and talk,of antiquated pop stars – Larry’s birthday being imminent. Larry: “Yes, nearly 21.. Ho ho. Too old to be sprightly young pop things, eh? Though such chart doyen as Morten Harket and Neil Tennant are surely giving hope to the elderly.

Larry: “Pet Shop Pensioners, more like..”

Jim: ‘We’re not old, are we, Gav? Gavan: .No, we’re fresh-faced young men.”

Jim: “Seventeen, in fact, so we car be pop stars.”

Larry: ‘Well, you’re going to be a right heart throb anyway, Jim”. (An acquaintance took a copy of James’ last appearance in these hallowed pages to Styal, a women’s prison.) the women were going, ‘Ooh, who’s he?’.

Jenny’ (James minder): “All these women who’ve been denied their conjugal rights for 15 years. If we ever play there, we’ll have to build a barbed wire fence around you.”

Is there something we don’t know? Why did a certain hotel refuse to hand over the undies Gavan left behind?

What is going on?

Sounds: August 1986 – In fear of earwigs crawling through their heads, these strange James boys tell Jonh Wilde about the bizarre phobias creeping through their pop music. Photo debris by Ian T. Tilton

Eighteen months ago, James were just born and didn’t give interviews because “people hadn’t heard the music and we wanted them to decide what it was like before they took another person’s opinion”.

These days, four singles and one LP forward, they’ll talk until their tongues start rattling about in their heads and their faces turn purple.

These days, they concentrate madly and try to make the chat as consuming as their extremely strange records. Today they tell me they’re being pensive because I’m being pensive, but it’s not always like this.

“We thought about suicide all the time, we didn’t see any other point in living, we at least wanted to go out with a bang. It seemed very romantic, and we came pretty close.”

Then came Factory, plucking them from the dusty corners, and their ambitions swerved away from hara-kiri and toward “making an album as good as ‘Horses’ or ‘Prayers On Fire’”. They settled, temporarily, for a brace of enticingly scruffy singles, little fussed over but beautifully insecure.

James were likely to remain a snug but slovenly concern.

The bee crept into the bonnet and started to hum with some true spite earlier this year. ‘Chain Mail’, part of their Sire ‘Sit Down’ EP, tipped the wink to crystalline melodies and purged words. James were scraping all the crusty bits from their Y-fronts and starting anew.

And last month came ‘So Many Ways’, some of the holiest pop of this year, James truly gasping at us, at last.

Now their debut LP ‘Stutter’ gets word-drunk and the fetching, bespectacled Tim Booth is telling me that his song about earwigs crawling through your head, ‘Skullduggery’, comes from his kindergarten memory of “being told that earwigs crawl through your ear if you lie down on grass. I only realised it was a fib the middle of last week”.

There are many such rum moments to be found on ‘Stutter’, at its best a copulation between Syd Barrett’s ‘Baby Lemonade’, the Velvets’ ‘The Murder Mystery’ and some of The Laughing Clowns. Oh, bugger it, James don’t sound much like anyone anymore, snubbing a nose at foolhardy Smiths analogies, saving up their spittle for the mirth and madness that spills from their vinyl pores.

“What are we like now?” muses the bearded Gavan, after just admitting he’s the most likely member of James to plot a murder. “Frightening, uplifting, scared at the world and its surroundings, not so much complaining as reflecting”.

“People have picked up on that madness, but then go on to treat it like Half Man Half Biscuit or something; otherwise, some really neurotic noise. It might be schizoid but we see it as something joyous… accepting all the mad energies.”

With Tim looking on dubiously, Gavan tells me, “It’s like there’s a fifth thing going on, like a fifth member directing everything.”

Whatever goes, they’ve hurdled far since those old death wishes, now emerging as Manchester’s best sandblasted racket. With ‘Stutter’ beside them and their future no longer behind them, they shape up as a prime slice of high fiction.

“You can almost imagine this character, James, wandering around outside there,” Tim suggests. “He’s probably dark and light and funny as hell…”

Probably one of those tourists of the emotions, pecking here and there, a contrary sod, miles and miles of celibate lust. James are dragging some welcome jive-ass jabber back into view, their scribbles packed with doubletalk.

Their potential, so to speak, is far behind them. Four plain James, losing the gravel pit for the sweat pit, singing “trying to impress is the nature of our work”.

These four grinning skulls write about lads called Johnny Yen who run down the street with their clothes on fire. They sensitively note that “to be loving when the lights are out takes much courage” in the sobbing ‘Really Hard’.

All in all, they tell me that “without getting too involved, the meanings come out all displaced, but the characters in the songs somehow emerge as real, maybe slightly surreal”.

So ‘Stutter’ reels with much erratic brilliance, a grainy soundtrack to fickle moods and shifting perspectives. Their hurried jangle is inhabited by characters halfway between a lovelorn swoon and a nervous fit. The greatest plus is that their music no longer has any centre, it merely flurries from some strange, unknown corner.

James are looking at me, almost scolding.

“People get so psychological about us,” Tim tells me. “People don’t really know where to put us. Those that call us ‘hippy’ get contradicted and confused when they see all these other sides.”

“What we do,” Gavan intercepts, “is push and shove and look at things with a different perspective. Like being a kid, when you go out to the park and look at nature differently, it fascinates you. As you grow older, you look at a tree and it’s just a tree.”

You must be barmy.

“James don’t take those things for granted, that’s all.”

Local indie pop band James return to the fray on record and live – they appear at The Green Room on August 9 and 10, CRAIG FERGUSON (words) and IAN TILTON (photo) meet the foursome.

One moment you’re there, ‘flavour of the month’ taking the slaps on the back, and the next moment you’ve disappeared; a vanishing act, voluntary or otherwise. This, of course, is the very nature of the crazy world of popular music, God bless it. Ups and Downs, Booms and Slumps – it’s very much a cut-price cut-throat market. Suffice to say, nothing’s guaranteed, certainly not success, nor it seems mere activity.

Take James, one of the better bands to emerge from Manchester over the past five years. Having built up a reputation as a superb live band, and with two fine singles on Factory to their credit, James were bound for a major label. They signed to Sire (American-based and part of the WEA empire) providing them with the debut LP Stutter back in the summer of ’86.

For my money, it was a disappointing record While it featured familiar songs of considerable quality, it neither committed the live James sound to vinyl, nor established a parallel studio sound worthy of those songs. But this all seems by the by – the group have been firmly stuck in a frustrating lull since the L.P.

As Gavan puts it. “Last summer? You’re going back a bit there mate!”

A year is a long time – they must have been doing something.

“We played in Europe, worked on lots of new songs and went into the studio, eventually” The tone of Tim’s voice says it all; they could have done so much more. It becomes immediately obvious where the blame lies. James are not happy with the treatment they’ve received from their record company and they make no bones about it.

“It was a mistake not going on tour after the LP came out,” says Tim.

It certainly doesn’t make good business sense to publicise the product before it’s available rather than after. Add to that the lack of funds for advertising in the press, and their more recent awkward stance with regard to the new LP and you can see that this particular band-label relationship isn’t all that it should be. It almost reached the divorce court before Sire relented and gave the band the money they needed for recording.

Tim goes as far to say: “In the last year we’ve had a hell of a lot of business problems – it’s an area none of us want to be bothered with, but we’ve had it forced on us.”

At the risk of labouring the point, the past year has not been a very happy one for James – “the only thing that has kept up going is the music.”

At the mention of music, the room becomes charged with extreme enthusiasm. They’ve just had a month’s break and their thirst for a return to playing is overwhelming:

“You start rehearsing again and sooner or later this thing starts, circling in the middle of the room, and the song starts playing you.”

When Gavan says this, it sounds weird but you know what he means. They all nod in agreement and the passionate feeling is unanimous. Live, James rarely fail to excite, but as everyone knows, getting that excitement onto vinyl is another matter. The first L.P. didn’t work in that respect -“it wasn’t put together very well,” says Jim – and we agree that live sound and recorded sound have to be regarded as two separate ‘mediums’.

Larry: “Hugh Jones who produced the new L.P really slagged us off about Stutter: He said we’d lost so much between the last Factory single and the L.P.”

Gavin: “The sound quality mainly. And I think we were a little more professional about it, working to the principle that ‘less is more’ – there’s more space and thought.”

I take that to mean that they’ve held back at times where usually they’d give it the full James treatment. Gavan doesn’t hold back “It’s a classic! I wouldn’t have bought the first L.P. -I’d have taped it off a mate -I’d definitely buy this one though.” Given that so much was expected of the first L.P., are they not a little apprehensive about this one?

“We’ve had quite a cynical approach towards it, but it’s a much better record,” say! Tim positively.

Sire predictably don’t think James are commercial enough – do they feel any pressure to sound more commercial? “It’s inward pressure as much as anything because we want a bigger audience. We want success -you can only be an impoverished artist for two or three years and no longer; earning a reascnable living is as important as gaining acceptance in the sphere that you’re working in.”

There’s no doubt that the new L.P – untitled as yet but out hopefully in September (Sire permitting) -represents a crossroads on the James road of progress. If it sells they’re laughing, if not, it’s bye bye to Sire. ‘Ya Ho’, the single out in September, may be a good indicator. Whatever happens, the band describe their new work as “wild in variation” with some “truly brilliant moments”. After years on the scene, James are still looked upon as an oddity – something they are positively pleased about. It’s not the personuel who are odd but possibly their approach -they shy away from convention, be it the song or the method. The identity they were given a couple of years ago – folk-singing vegans -is less true than it ever was, just the usual case of picking out extremes. Unfortunately, people have a habit of reading, believing and remembering. “The Bodines thought we all lived together in a big house in the country!” Jim laughs. Happily, James are set to re-emerge from the darkness of a long, quiet year. They’re dying to do what they do best -what’s so odd about that?

James break a silence of almost a year with a new single and live dates at Fury Murry’s Glasgow (August 16), The Venue (17) and two nights at the Green Room, Manchester (9 and 10)

Singer Timothy Booth is describing what life should be like.

“When you think of a dog or a young child, the way they look around when they come into a room. Or a dog going on a walk, smelling something completely new to it. The next day, it’s a whole different thing and the dog has a look of pure joy as it looks around, experiencing all the sensations as they are. Or a child looking at a plant, wanting to touch it or eat it. It’s also living in the present. I’m not making an argument that this is how we should behave all the time because we’d never get out of one room. You’d look over at one corner, turn your back, look over again and it would be a new corner.

“One reason I think people are ill and unhappy in society is because most people are well out of touch with the childlike quality and we all need some of that. Some people look to drugs to get it. You can get it after a lot of sex, when you get that rush of vitality. You get it from concentration. We get it from performing our music. It happens whenever your concentration becomes heightened.

“I’ve had months when life has been really mundane and then something happens and you get that special buzz and want to hold on to it. You wonder why the rest of life isn’t like that, at that level of intensity, at that level of living.”

Are James particularly special?

“Oh yeah!”

Showing up all these contradictory components, incompatible things, a kind of intimate association of opposites. Are James like litmus paper?

“Litmus paper?”

No, not litmus paper, the other thing.

“Oh, the acid test. Yeah, we’re like the acid test.”

It is almost 18 months since James took a tumble with us on the nuptial couch, since “Stutter” found 11 new ways of taunting itself with its own doodles and fear of heights. Now this starving man is back. Drummer Gavan Whelan has been working in a hotel and bassist James Glennie has been flogging second-hand cars. Very James. Very commonplace, very matter-of-fact, very left-handed. The splurge of lopsided obsessions that made up the brilliantly shoddy “Stutter” ultimately failed to persuade a sunken nation like ours to throw its ballet skirts to the wind and bare its thighs and backsides. Indeed, “Stutter”, even considering the way it rushed over the style, failed to provoke so much as a neatly-dressed ankle. Me and James are mystified by this. In fact, if it happens this time around, we’re going to whip some asses sharpish.

“When we finished that first LP,” Larry recalls, “it was the culmination of so many years worth of work focussed in a six-week period, incredibly intense. At the end of it, we thought we’d created a monster and a masterpiece. It came out and we just didn’t touch people with it. You just lose your perspective when things like that happen.”

If slivers of “Stutter” might have proved too far gone for British pop-pickers used to having their meanings written in scarlet tartan, there could be no excuse for overlooking “So Many Ways”, the group’s “Eight Miles High”, three rippling minutes that defied you to keep your knees or your head together. As a single, it was beautifully dressed and powdered and all you killjoys out there in the real world turned your backs.

Together with the rest of “Stutter”, it seemed that this group had abandoned their uncertain, prudent beginnings for something daft and dark, something that was just three gulps short of a minor masterpiece.

James were showing that they needed to be lived with to be understood, that they were too complex and enraptured to settle for a quick roll on the grass-verge behind the youth club. They were obsessional and terribly droll in a way that most pop music is too pious to be. They made you itch in ways that had little to do with your winter woollies or your last hernia, bringing you to a point where you never knew whether to scream or cackle. To most people, though, they were still like oddball deviants caught in the revolving-doors and none of this mattered a hoot.

“Pop is deviant itself”, Tim Booth reminds me. “If David Lynch can have a hit film with ‘Blue Velvet’…well, we’re much less deviant than he is. I think Lynch is too dark. James is full of dark but also full of light.”

Too many wicked curves?

“We like to offset music and lyrics to some degree,” says Larry. “Loads of contradictions because there’s loads of contradictions between four people. A song like ‘Fairground’ is built completely on a contradiction. We were in this terrible black hole of a rehearsal-studio having a huge argument, me and Gavan on one side, Tim and Jim on the other, both sides playing something entirely different, stuck in these separate camps, no unity whatsoever. These two disjointed things were playing along at the same time and we accidentally recorded it. When we listened back, it was brilliant, like galloping horses at a fairground. Where you’ve got this circular motion contradicted by this up and down motion. They go in opposite ways but somehow blend.”

Are you consciously trying to please? Is this why you are making such a din?

“We try to do that, we think, jut by concentrating on exactly what we are doing. Not that we all know our individual parts blindfold. It’s that anticipation of what’s coming next. If that gets picked up by an audience, then there’s a certain thrill of going into unchartered territory that heightens their concentration and their awareness of what’s going on.”

You’ve got to lose yourself. You have to expect your ration of convulsions, palpitations, fainting fits, anxiety attacks and brain fever.

“You’ve got to be right there, right then,” Jim nods, “The kind of losing yourself in a way that you’re not really there to some degree. It’s the build up to things. The best thing about having a present is the moment before you open it. That’s the thrill, knowing you are going to open it.”

There was a hungry look in your eyes when you said that.

“He didn’t get any presents for his birthday and he won’t forget it,” says Larry. “Some group we’re in! I didn’t get one bleeding present either.”

“Ya Ho”, a new James single, presents them to the nation, visibly stimulated in new ways, a song about rescuing people on beaches, about whirlpools, fear of failure and rubbing movements. Dry James, pea-shooting James. This is far from the glazed gusts of “So Many Ways” or the campfire dragnet of “Why So Close”; calm James. Persist with it though. After the bits that go plink and fizz, there’s a marvy (marvellous) bit three-quarters of the way through that manifests itself in ways that are almost indecently flirtatious. Like other new James peaks, particularly the possible follow-up single “What For”, it brings us scarlet mouths, dagger-like peaks, waving arms and a golden clitoris that, believe me, is a pleasure to tango with.

Already “Ya Ho” is meeting some rum reactions, adopted as a terrace anthem in parts of Leeds after a recent James show there, replacing the cry of “Come back Duncan, come back” that has wafted through those cobbled streets for the last 10 years, an obscure reference to Duncan “Golf Ball” Mackenzie, Leeds United’s former post-Revie golden boy. I suspect that this is coy James sticking their tongues out at us as only they know how.

“Actually, it’s a cry of despair”, James Glennie informs me. “It’s ungainly James, experienced and dying to tell a story. It reminds us of the time we left Factory, when Tony Wilson compared us to the Dutch football team of 1974, the Cruyff era, when it didn’t seem like it was trying, because it was all

so natural. Of course, when they started thinking about it, when the next World Cup came around, they were complete crap.”

People still think of you as fey, frightened outsiders. Cissies. Apologetic rather than apoplectic. When are we going to convince people that you have real, six-foot ulcers hidden under those coats.

“A lot of it came about from us being on Factory to start with,” Jim explains, “which affected how people viewed us. There was also the rare, secluded image of James because we didn’t do interviews and didn’t do a lot of live work. We were seen to be withdrawing from the public eye and people thought it was our decision. It built up a kind of mystique but it made us special in a way.”

These days, James seem more lucid, looking none the worse for wear after their prolonged hallucinatory, delirious phase. The phantoms of the troubled “Stutter” appear to be fully exorcised. All those earwigs crawling through lug-‘oles, small twisted figures disappearing into black smelly tunnels, people spontaneously combusting… the obsessions of that first torrid collection of waking nightmares seems purged now, replaced with another copulative beat and another set of clinging compulsions, more inclined to fondle you this time round. Endearing?

“Well, we feel are obsessions are what obsess other people,” reasons Gavan. “This time, we seem to be telling people more about our obsessions instead of just hiding within them. Maybe there’s more sense of distance in that way now. In previous songs, our lyrics have been clear but our meanings haven’t. Our meanings have tended to be perverse. Musically too, we’ve tended to shy away from stating the obvious, not going to the root of things. Now, the lyrics have gone to the root the same way as we’ve kept to the root of the song as musicians. It’s taking it one step further.”

Making for a better James?

“Locating our perversities and making them work for us. Before, we’d get to be so obsessive trying to predict what was going to happen that we’d make what we didn’t want to happen…”

Brain tissue everywhere. Lovely stuff.

You ask the four James rouges what all this nervous shifting really amounts to and you get some words back to poison your brain with.

“Insular? Personal? Tricky? Argumentative. Asking for trouble. Obsessional, of course. Brittle. Awkward. Out of context. Different. Playful. Tony Currie. Socks that don’t match the shoes, very James. A call to arms. Clear. Dense. Overturning one thing and finding another thing beneath it. Not meticulous. Perfectionists. Making things better. Intrigued. Broke. The desirability of men and women foxtrotting together while naked. Acrobatic. No longer so nightmarish. Embezzlement.”

from the Sire Records “Just Say Yes” sampler

You’ll want to call them Jim after getting familiar with their engaging brand of music, but resist the temptation. The name of the group is James; four Manchester-sired men with a lot of music between them.

Five years to be exact, which is how long they’ve been nurturing a mutually creative relationship, playing the local circuit and recording their highly-praised, high-stakes brand of modern pop. James, in fact, has been the good word on the British music scene ever since they released their first singles on the powerhouse Factory Records label not so very long ago.

Snapped up by Sire’s tireless talent scouts, James took to the road, opening for the likes of New Order and The Smiths and all the while honing their already razor-edged songwriting skills. Aural adventurers stateside got their first taste of James on the staggering Stutter, a fresh slice of unadultered innovation, featuring the captivating single “Chain Mail”. Both are produced by Lenny (Suzanne Vega) Kaye.

You can call them Jim or you can call them James. Just remember, music this good deserves respect.

“Ya Ho” from the Sire album IF THINGS WERE PERFECT … Available on LP and Cassette (1/4-25657)

Setlist

Details

• Venue: BBC Maida Vale Studios, London, UK
• Date: 9th September 1987

Songs

• Stowaway (aka Reggae Cowboy)
• What For
• Whoops
• Ya Ho

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Audio

Setlist

Details

• Venue: BBC Oxford Road Studios, Manchester, UK
• Date: 28th September 1987

Songs

• Doubts
• Medieval
• Meltdown Jingle

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Phil Korbel : It’s James and Phil

Jim : Phil and James

PK : The band have now crawled out of the studio. Torn themselves away from the John Peel session, their own John Peel session that they were listening to in the gramophone library and come to talk to me. And now they’re complaining they’re not being paid. OK, now recently you’ve been described as being a band in the wilderness. We’ve heard nothing from you on vinyl for ages. What’s wrong?

Jim : Ermmm

PK : The corporate voice of James

Tim : We’re still in the wilderness. We’ve got an LP and other stuff coming out in about February. It was meant to come out now, it’s not going to. It’s being remixed. Maybe. Just in case someone’s listening. It’s coming out in February and we’ve just had a year of business problems.

PK : Business problems?

Tim : They’re over now

PK : And a change of management I gather

Tim : Yeah, we didn’t have a manager for a long time.

Jim : So that was quite a change really because we’ve got one

Tim : Well, we got one and then we sacked him so now we’ve got another one

PK : A real one

Tim : A real one

Jim : We didn’t sack him

Tim : We took him back to the shop as he was still under guarantee.

PK : Are we at liberty to divulge your new manager’s identity?

Jim : Mr X, come on down

Tim : Eliot Rashman who also manages what they called

All : Simply blue, red head

PK : Are we now going to have the same Simply Red treatment on James

Tim : Oh yes

Jim : You haven’t heard the new album

Tim : You haven’t heard the backing female singers and the orchestra

PK : You’re not joking are you?

Jim : No, not at all

Tim : We had a Tibetan, a Tibetan orchestra for the backing tapes and stuff like that. We’re going to tour with them as well in February.

PK : The Tibetan backing orchestra?

Tim : Yeah, gongs and horns and all sorts of things

PK : Ah yeah, a real small scale tour

Tim : And skulls of dead llamas

PK : You spent ages in a Welsh cottage recording this album and you’re still not happy with it. One, why did you go away to record the album?

Gavan : I don’t think Wales is really going away. It’s only like half a day away isn’t it really?

PK : Come on, come on. Be serious now

Gavan : Where do you want us to record it? There’s nowhere in Manchester really.

Jim : Well, now we’re megastars we thought we’d move up and hire somewhere like the Bahamas or Wales. Guess which we picked.

PK : Yeah, well, quite.

Tim : Whatever

PK : Now you’ve got this reputation of being good, clean-living young men. You know, Buddhist, teetotal, the strongest drug you’ll take is a cup of tea. Is this still true or have you fallen away?

Tim : No, we don’t drink tea.

Jim : Very high in tannin, very high in tannin. Makes your teeth go brown

PK : I see, right, OK. So you’re still good clean-living boys

All : We never were. No, no.

Tim : It’s all a myth

Jim : We’re sponsored by Guinness now

PK : I see, so it’s going to be the Guinness tour now? I like the idea of that. Now, we’ve heard the rendition, the only kind of recorded output of James that we’ve had recently are the jingles that three of the band did that Tim hasn’t heard. Tim, the singist, for reasons best known to himself didn’t want to come in

Tim : You’ll find out why when you hear the bloody jingle.

PK : Well he hasn’t actually heard this one

Jim : He’s a lightweight

PK : Just listen to this

Jim : You’re sacked

(plays piano-heavy Meltdown jingle with Jim’s deep “scary” voice)

Gavan : That’s it lads, I’m leaving

Jim : Nothing to do with me

PK : As you can see, now the denials come out

Tim : They only agreed to do it because you said it would remain anonymous.

PK : Oh rubbish

Tim : Sounds like a mad vicar

Jim : Meltdown. That’ll do

PK : That’ll do

Jim : Nearest to a compliment we’re going to get this evening

Tim : We’re going into adverts because we reckon there’s some money in it and we haven’t seen any anywhere else so we’re going into adverts

PK : Adverts for Jameson Whiskey first?

Tim : Yes, Jameson Whiskey

Jim : You talked us into that one

PK : Right, let’s talk about the new album. You’re dissatisfied with it, but the little of it I’ve heard so far appears to indicate a new direction, a beefier sound maybe.

Tim : Beefier? Come on, we’re healthy

PK : Sorry sorry

Tim : More Marmite.

PK : More soya like

Jim : No, no, we want a new image

Tim : Yeah, beefier, that’s fine

Gavan : It’s not beefier enough, that’s the problem

Tim : More beefy

Gavan : I’ve been ordered to come closer to the mic. It is not beefier enough.

PK : Thank you. That’s very kind of you Gavan. Gavan the drummer acting like a drummer.

Jim : Ooh cutting

PK : Tim, the rest of you, Tim, Jim, Gavan. The new album, if people were going to take the last album as a starting point, in which ways is this album different?

Tim : It’s the second one. It’s the one after the last album. I think that’s the first thing that’s really important to get across.

Jim : The second one’s a lot better

Tim : It’s much different from the first one as well

PK : In what ways?

Tim : It’s got different songs on it

PK : Yeah, right, I see, fine

Jim : It is much better though

Tim : My Mum says she thought that second track was really good.

PK : The second track, now is your Mum.

Jim : There’s only you on it

Tim : That’s why she likes it

(Jim and Tim have pretend argument)

PK : Now you’ve got this image of being very very serious people. Excuse me

Jim : You won’t laugh when he hits you

Tim : Perv

PK : Now this lot did actually say that they were going to behave when they came in, but it seems as if the occasion has overcome them and we might not get anything more sensible out of them. Are we going to?

Tim : Yes, you will

PK : Are you sure?

Gavan : The album is a bit more thought out. That’s why it’s different

Jim : Well said, round of applause

PK : Now the other thing, we’ve got some sense out of them, thank you. Next

Tim : It’s going to be much wilder. The songs are more complete. It’s like on the first LP some of the songs sound like they weren’t quite sketched out fully and the new one, we’ve taken them more to extremes, so a potential rock song becomes a rock song and a potential classical song becomes totally classical with the London Philharmonic joining in. And we’ve just taken things more to the extremes

PK : More extreme, so does that account for the fact that last time you played Manchester you had two sets, you had an acoustic set and then, for want of a better word, a rock set? A full band set anyhow

Gavan : No. We just felt because it had been quite a long time since we last did a gig in Manchester that we just wanted to make it a bit special.

Tim : And Gavan our drummer is a frustrated pianist so it gave him the opportunity to let his fingers out for a walk.

PK : So it was just a bit of fun

Tim : Yeah

PK : Also, it has been suggested that you are now ruing the day you left Factory. You are regretting the day you left Factory.

Gavan : I think we left Factory a bit early

PK : Before you were ready.

Jim : Yeah, we should have gone after dinner

PK : There I was thinking we were having a serious conversation

Jim : It’s true, it’s true

PK : Too early, are you ready now?

Tim : Are we ready?

Gavan : There’s no choice

Jim : We’ve got to be. There’s no point in going backwards. But I think we did leave a bit early

Tim : What do you mean by ready? I mean, what happened was we went on a major record company and they couldn’t see any of our music being potentially commercial so they didn’t put anything behind it. It’s really when they decide that we’re commercially potential, whatever that means. And so God knows whether in their eyes we are or not yet. I doubt it.

PK : Shall we cross fingers. Well anyhow, now a track from that album, the pre-remix version of a track called Charlie Dance and after that we go back to James live. Thank you very much gentlemen.

(plays Charlie Dance)

PK : A track from their forthcoming album, Charlie Dance. And before we go back to Tim and Gavan who will be doing a live song for us in a second, Jim is going to give a little competition for a pair of tickets to their concert at the International 2 on Thursday. Question please, Jim

Jim : Thanks very much Philip. And the question is : Is Ed Bonicki innocent? Answer, yes or no

Tim : Who?

PK : Daley Thompson

Jim : Oh no

PK : Thompson Daley.

Jim : If Thompson’s Daley, is Ed Bonicki innocent?

PK : Answers not on postcard, ring us now on 061-xxx-xxxx to go and see James at the International 2. Now we go over with a flick of switch to Tim and Gavan.

FOLKLORE

1983 : alors que la vague gothique donnait une nouvel uniforme éphémère au rock anglais, James osaient sortir un premier titre « Folklore », quitte à passer pour les idiots du village.

Toujours aussi emmerdeurs et déroutants, ils se font rares et précieux depuis : une discographie intrigante et des concerts déroutants les ont hissés sur un piédestal solide et définitif, voisin de celui des Smiths.

La liqueur du rock.

Vous semblez tous les quatre particulièrement liés les uns aux autres;

Après un bon concert, oui( rires );Nous avons joué un très mauvais concert il y a quelques jours, c’était la misère qui nous liait toute la soirée. Nous sommes très différents les uns des autres, nous discutons beaucoup, nous avons connu beaucoup de choses ensemble en cinq ans. Chacun d’entre nous est passé par des périodes étranges, c’était très délicat à négocier.

Vous ne souhaitez pas parler de ces périodes ?

Pendant quelques années, trois d’entre nous avions pour habitude de méditer énormément, et quand je dis énormément, c’est vraiment énormément. Nous le faisions hors du groupe, parfois pendant des périodes de plusieurs jours, des heures d’affilée. D’autres se sont intéressés aux arts martiaux, ce genre de choses.

J’allais justement dire que lorsque je vous ai vus la première fois sur scène, vous m’avez fait penser à une espèce de secte;

Non, ce n’est pas ça. Nous avons pratiqué la méditation pendant quelques années mais nous avons arrêté il y a un peu plus d’un an maintenant, parce que le groupe avec lequel nous le faisions s’est dissous. C’était intense, beaucoup trop, un travail trop dur, trop éprouvant. C’était trop organisé et rigide, maintenant nous ne faisons que ce que nous voulons faire, nous choisissons. Nous restions assis à méditer, deux heures par jours, parfois dix heures le week-end ou même des journées entières de dix-huit heures. C’était très exigeant. J’en suis assez fier, mais cela peut aussi vous rendre très arrogant;ou même vous détruire, car vous restez là, assis pendant des heures, alors qu’on a qu’une envie, c’est de sortir courir;

Maintenant que vous avez arrêté, cela ne vous manque pas trop ?

J’ai recommencé récemment, mais je le fais lorsque je le veux alors qu’avant, la discipline de ce groupe était trop dure. C’était trop extrême. En tournée, cela pouvait donner des situations étranges, les uns méditaient pendant que les autres buvaient leur café, deux camps séparés. Mais lorsqu’on est un groupe, il faut faire des sacrifices, on ne peut pas vivre que pour soi-même, il faut trouver un langage commun.

Venez-vous de familles très religieuses ?

Le groupe vient du milieu prolétaire de Manchester sauf moi ( Tim, le chanteur), je suis le snobinard de la bande ( rires);Je viens de la  classe moyenne du Yorkshire. Mon père était assez religieux, c’était une espèce de chrétien distrait, un chevalier-gentleman;Mais rien de positif, alors qu’avec la méditation on agissait, c’était du concret.

Comment vivez-vous à Manchester ? Etes-vous impliqués dans la scène musicale ?

Nous sommes à part. Mais je ne crois pas qu’ils existe véritablement une scène musicale à Manchester, la plupart des groupes sont à part. On fait son propre truc, on ne fait rien en commun, on ne partage pas. Il n’y a aucun sentiment de communauté à Manchester, ce n’est pas comme si tous les musiciens créatifs jouaient dans leur secteur avec un but commun. Ce sont juste beaucoup de gens qui habitent là, qui forment des groupes parce qu’ils s’ennuient. Certains d’entre eux deviennent plus connus et peuvent en vivre, c’est tout. Les groupes sont très différent les uns des autres, il existe de très bons groupes de jazz, et les Smiths, New Order, The Fall et Black;Simply Red;les deux extrêmes;Ten CC ( rires );

Morrissey, des Smiths, nous a dit qu’il a été très déçu par les groupes qu’il avait aidé, que James était le seul avec lequel il avait gardé de bonnes relations, malgré quelques problèmes;

(rires);L’un des problèmes a été que j’ai essayé de l’entraîner à méditer (rires);Je ne crois pas que ça pourrait bien marcher avec lui;L’autre problème a été qu’ils voulaient nous emmener sur une tournée américaine et nous avons annulé une semaine avant le départ, ce qui l’a déçu énormément car il nous avait beaucoup aidés, ils ont eu l’impression qu’on les laissait tomber. Mais à part ça, on s’entend toujours bien, il est venu nous voir lors de notre dernier concert à Londres.

Quel effet vous a fait la dissolution du groupe ?

Pas grand chose. Nous ne leur avons jamais ressemblé, musicalement, même si les gens nous mettaient dans le même sac. Il y a quelques points communs, ils sont végétariens, nous aussi;Mais c’est étrange car nous existions deux-trois ans avant eux et les gens ont dit qu’on leur ressemblait, ce qui était agaçant. Mais le contraire n’aurait pas été plus juste, ils n’ont rien pris chez nous, ils étaient vraiment indépendants. Il y avait aussi des similitudes quant à nos styles de vie, car nous ne menions pas la vie de la scène rock habituelle. A cause de ça, nous devions, dans nos interviews, ne pas trop dévoiler notre façon de vivre, pour qu’on ne nous rapproche pas trop d’eux. Je crois que je n’ai parlé de la méditation qu’une fois auparavant. Les gens ne nous auraient pas compris.

Vous aussi êtes végétariens;

Trois d’entre nous le sont. Nous le sommes devenus car cela faisait partie de la discipline méditative. Mais c’était plus que ça : pas d’alcools, pas de drogues.

Vous avez d ‘ailleurs joué pour des concerts anti-alcool;

Ce n’était pas vraiment ça, ce n’était pas vraiment anti-alcool. C’était une espèce de programme d’éducation qui insistait sur les dangers de l’alcoolisme sur des choses pratiques, ce n’était pas pour condamnes l’alcool. C’était juste pour renseigner à propos d’une drogue, car c’est une drogue à part entière. Mais bien sûr , ça a été perçu comme une campagne puritaine (rires);On a été étiqueté. C’était une amie qui organisait tout ça, on devait l’aider. Nous ne sommes pas contre la viande ou contre l’alcool, nous sommes pro-végétariens et pour la prévention de l ‘alcoolisme. Il ne s ‘agit pas d’être contre quelque chose, nous sommes positifs. Maintenant tout le monde boit de l’alcool dans le groupe, mais pas de manière extrême;Cela va sonner très péjoratif sur l’Ecosse : en tournée, nous sommes passés par certaines villes, comme Aberdeen, où le problème de l’alcoolisme est absolument terrible, aussi épouvantable que l’héroïne, sauf que c’est légal. Il est important de simplement souligner ces choses-là. En ce qui concerne le végétarisme, ce n’est pas un problème pour nous : chacun d’entre nous pourrait très bien re goûter à la viande un jour ou l’autre. C’est la presse qui en a fait une grosse affaire. Notre musique semble attirer la frange mode, avant-gardiste de la presse, qui aime Nick Cave et ce genre de choses, une musique plus radicale. Ce qu’ils ne peuvent pas supporter, c ‘est que nous n’ayons pas l’apparence « rock ». Ils n’aiment pas ça, mais alors pas du tout !!! Ca ne correspond pas à leur image. Nous avons eu des critiques où ils admettaient aimer, mais presque à contre-cœur, ils disaient « ils ont l’air de cons, ils ne se bourrent pas, ils ne mangent pas de viande, mais ils jouent de la bonne musique ». Voilà les réactions que nous avions, celles de gens à l’esprit étroit, bloqués dans leur propre image. Au début, on les faisait marcher, on était des emmerdeurs;Nous avons joué avec New Order, tout était sérieux et lugubre, nous ressentions le besoin de jouer des chansons folles et stupides, il fallait le faire, tellement l’environnement était misérable et gris. Il fallait se comporter de manière stupide. Nous le faisons moins maintenant, mais nous avons toujours tendance à réagir, nous avons beaucoup de chansons agaçantes, méchantes, agressives. D’autres soirs, lorsque le public semble sage et calme, le public des Smiths, on lui jouera des morceaux durs et rapides. On a tendance à choisir le contraire de ce qu’ils aimeraient entendre. Mais finalement, il aime toujours ça.

Connaissez-vous votre public ?

Il y a de tout. Il y a encore cette frange liée à Factory, le reste est un croisement de tout ce qui peut exister. Les gens qui ont le plus de difficultés pour venir à nos concerts sont ceux habillés de cuir noir, car ils n’aiment pas notre image. Certaines de nos chansons parlent de ça, du besoin des gens de porter un uniforme. Car c’est un problème, ils pourraient aussi bien être soldats;manque de sécurité, de confiance sans doute.

Vous avez sorti vos deux premiers 45t sur Factory. Comment êtes-vous arrivés sur le label ?

Ils sont venus nous voir à un concert et ont trouvé ça bien. « Voulez-vous faire un album avec nous ? » nous ont-ils demandés. « Non !!! » Et un peu plus tard »Voulez-vous faire un maxi avec nous ? » « Non !!! »(rires);et nous avons dit que nous voulions faire un single. Ils nous ont spécifié sur feuille tous les titres qu’ils voulaient que nous enregistrions, mais nous ne voulions pas enregistrer d’entrée nos meilleurs morceaux, nous avons donc choisi librement nos chansons les plus faibles. Ils ont d’abord été très embêtés, mais les morceaux sonnaient très bien en studio finalement;Ensuite, ils sont revenus à la charge avec leur album et leur maxi;et on a enregistré notre deuxième 45t !(rires);Nous ne voulions pas que nos chansons soient gâchées. Nous les chérissons, car nous y mettons beaucoup de nous-mêmes, trop, nous sommes trop sérieux quand il s’agit des chansons. Nous étions comme des mères possessives, nous ne voulions pas les laisser partir de chez nous, comme des mères qui veulent toujours prendre toutes les décision pour leurs enfants, ne pas les laisser grandir eux-mêmes.

Etes-vous toujours aussi sérieux avec vos rejetons maintenant ?

Ca va mieux, il le fallait. Les concerts, c’était la même chose. Ca ne pouvait pas être un simple concert, il fallait que ce soit à chaque fois une expérience unique. Nous pouvions rester des semaines à nous préparer mentalement pour un concert, c’était infernal. Je perdais toute notion de proportion des choses;Nous pensions être tellement spéciaux qu’il fallait faire de chaque concert un événement historique unique, nous improvisions beaucoup, maintenant encore.

Beaucoup estiment que vous êtes le groupe le plus « out of time », hors des courants, des modes, intemporels;On est incapable de discerner la moindre influence;

Au début, si nous pouvions, dans nos morceaux, sentir une quelconque influence, ou si quelqu’un du groupe sonnait comme quelqu’un d’autre, nous jetions immédiatement le morceau, même s’il était bon. Encore une fois, nous sommes maintenant devenus moins rigides, parce que tout le monde finalement est influencé. Et nous avons dû dans le passé jeter trop de bons morceaux sur lesquels personne, à part nous, n’aurait trouvé la moindre influence directe;Mais nous, nous pensions «  oh oui, ça sonne trop comme la quatrième mesure de tel morceau, sur un album live obscure de 1969 » (rires);En plus, depuis que je suis dans le groupe, nous n’avons pas fait une seule reprise, même pas en répétition. On n’y a même jamais pensé. De toute façon, nous avons tous les quatre des goûts musicaux totalement différents. Comme nous écrivons les chansons ensemble, personne n’a de contrôle sur le son final. C’est pour ça que nos chansons sont bizarres ; à cause des ingrédients que chacun de nous apporte au résultat final;

Est-ce que l’on serait étonné si vous nous disiez le genre de musique que vous écoutiez dans le passé;

Non, pas vraiment; Gavan, le batteur, adore Led Zeppelin, est-ce que vous êtes étonnés ?(rires);et il adore le jazz;Je ne sais pas trop pour Jimmy, il écoutait The Jam et The Fall quand nous avons commencé le groupe, il y a des années;J’aime Jimi Hendrix, Captain Beefheart, Television;

C’est étonnant de vous voir réunir des influences aussi diverses, vous qui avez tant d’unité, une personnalité si forte;

Merci. Comment voulez-vous répondre à ça (rires);nous nous respectons beaucoup entre nous, et nous puisons une grande partie de notre influence chez les autres membres du groupe. Il n’y a aucun groupe de nos jours chez qui nous pouvons trouver l’inspiration;juste quelques trucs;Nick Cave & The Birthday Party;nous étions tous très fan, à part Jimmy, c’était un sacré groupe (souffle admiratif);De façon individuelle, nous avons aimé quelques morceaux, des choses de Stump, par exemple, mais rien ne nous a tous marqués depuis Birthday Party. Nous écoutons surtout des choses de l’époque où les musiciens aimaient la musique et n’étaient pas là pour vendre. Tous ces groupes que nous avons cité ont commencé parce qu’ils adoraient la musique, par pour gagner des millions de dollars;Cet appât du gain domine toute l’industrie du disque;Je me souviens quand j’étais plus jeune, j’étais très amoureux de Patti Smith;c’est ma grande influence. Ses concerts étaient tellement; uniques;elle poussait les choses le plus loin possible, improvisait;J’ai peur pour son nouvel album. Pour moi, ce qu’elle a fait de mieux est le pirate sorti juste avant « Horses »;Tellement choquant;les musiciens jammaient pendant qu’elle hurlait sa poésie. Quand Lenny ( Kaye, ex-guitariste du Patti Smith Group, ndlr) est venu produire notre premier album, il nous a donné d’excellents pirates;Par exemple la première répétition de Lenny Kaye et Patti Smith, juste deux, en train de reprendre des trucs de Brecht, « Mack the Knife »;

Comment s’est passé l’enregistrement avec Lenny Kaye ? Votre premier album avait, à l’époque, beaucoup surpris;

C’est vrai que ce n’était pas du tout un album commercial; Nous étions très naïfs à propos de notre force de vente; Nous pensions « c’est de la pop, les gens aimeront ça » (rires); Nous avons été surpris; Nous n’avons eu aucun problèmes avec Lenny, mais nous lui en avons donné beaucoup. Nous étions très possessifs avec nos enfants, nos chansons, et nous ne voulions pas lui laisser faire quoi que ce soit;le pauvre; Nous avons bloqué ses initiatives. Mais nous l’adorons, nous nous téléphonons souvent, nous sommes restés très proches, nous nous revoyons à chaque fois qu’il vient en Grande-Bretagne ; Il est super, un homme adorable, très drôle, une des personnes le plus attachantes que nous ayons rencontré dans ce business;

Pourquoi ne pas l’avoir choisi pour le second album, alors ?

Non; Nous ne pouvions pas (silence); Il était temps de passer à autre chose de différent. Mais la fabrication du deuxième album ne s’est pas très bien passé. Nous avons dû tout remixer, ou presque;

Hugh Jones, que vous avez choisi pour cet album, n’est pas, à priori, un producteur très subtile, surtout pour un groupe comme vous;

Le problème était de savoir avec qui aller ! Nous ne savions pas qui choisir quand Hugh est venu nous voir à la fin du concert, et il a su nous impressionner. Il nous a vraiment beaucoup critiqué, nous a insulté; personne ne l’avait fait avant; nous avons alors décidé qu’il était notre homme (rires); « Ok, montre nous ce que tu sais faire, grosse tête » (rires); Il nous a montré, et ça n’a pas marché; il a vraiment bien enregistré les chansons, mais ne nous a pas du tout convaincu au mixage. Il avait entendu nos premiers singles sur Factory, et ça l’excitait beaucoup; il pensait que nous n’avions pas réussi, sur le premier album, à recapturer le feeling de nos premiers singles, et il a beaucoup travaillé pour essayer de retrouver ce son;c’est dommage qu’il ait échoué au mixage;

Ce nouvel album sera-t-il une suite naturelle à « Stutter » ?

Oui, une progression très naturelle;mais il y aura pas mal de surprises. Je pense qu’il sera plus accessible, avec quelques singles dessus. .. Il ne faut cependant pas croire que nous ayons dû faire des concessions; nous avons compris pourquoi « Stutter » prenait tant de temps à séduire; L’ordre des chansons par exemple, peut faire une différence énorme. Les deux premiers morceaux sur « Stutter » étaient les plus mal produits de l’album. Il en résultait que la mauvaise impression durait ensuite pendant tout le disque; Tu ne peux pas te rendre compte à quel point ce genre de chose peut affecter les ventes; Nous n’avons pour l’instant qu’un titre provisoire pour le nouveau; il devrait s’appeler « If things were perfect »;de vieux souvenirs ! Quant à savoir s’il sera une suite vraiment logique à « Stutter », je crois que ce serait vraiment difficile de donner un prolongement naturel à quelque chose d’aussi bizarre, non ?

C.WHATSHISNAME & JD BEAUVALLET (Les Inrockuptibles- n°10-February/March 88

Jim : I’m Jimmy. I play bass guitar

Gavan : Hello, I’m Gavan. I’m the drummer

Larry : Hello, I’m Larry and I play the guitar

Tim : Tim, I sing and write the lyrics

Gavan : The recording went fantastic, really well and I think we’ve probably made the best LP for four years that I’ve ever heard. It’s called Strip Mine. We recorded it about a year ago with Hugh Jones down in Wales.

Tim : We usually jam together as a band and try and work out basic tunes and a kind of general structure for the song. I’ll take a cassette home and then late at night into early morning, I’ll write the lyrics starting with whatever comes into my head. A lot of them I don’t have a clue what I’m going to write about, I just let the song be written the way it wants to be.

Everyone in the band has completely different influences, often contrasting.

Larry : I used to when I was 13 or 14 or something like that, I used to listen to Jimi Hendrix a lot. Before that I listened to a lot of Motown when I was younger around about 12. Then I really got into heavy rock music like that English group called The Groundhogs and other blues rock guitar players. And like everybody, I think as I grew older, my tastes widened and my spectrum of musical influence just got bigger and bigger and bigger.

Tim : We don’t like each other’s taste in music some of the time.

Gavan : Quite often

Tim : Quite often. What do you call an influence because we never try and emulate anyone. Full stop. And if we hear certain influences which we feel are too overt we just drop the song or we change it.

Gavan : There’s a lot of music in America that I like, especially ethnic’s the wrong word but each different area has it’s own music, it has it’s own idiom and we’re quite open to that, travelling round, we get inspired by that.

Jim : I suppose it’s just the music we listen to, isn’t it?

Tim : There aren’t any fillers on the LP. We made sure everything that went on we really worked on. We really got the most out of.

What For is about somebody trying to uplift themselves. In Manchester, there’s this big town centre and every evening before the sun goes down these birds, these starlings, start circling overhead, flying in almost hieroglyphic formations, a really spectacular site, really beautiful, especially in the middle of a dirty smelly city to see these beautiful formations and it’s really uplifting. And the song is kind of about this guy who’s really down, he’s trying not to think about his worries and newspapers and everything he reads, he looks up and sees this beautiful sight and thinks “What For, tell me, tell me what for”

Details

James performing What For on The Other Side Of Midnight in March 1988

The questions rattle around my head as the car lurches into second gear.

But James personal manager Martine and personable singer Tim Booth are oblivious to my thoughts and Tim favours an indepth discussion on UFOs and the CIA cover-up conspiracy.

As the 21:15 flight Manchester to Ibiza economy flight retracts its undercarriage, Tim glances out of the window.

“Look, there’s one now!”

The car journey ends at the International II, where free admission is acquired through a combination of bribery – a 12-inch copy of the new James single “What For” – and sympathy (a knee injury necessitates Tim’s use of a Dickens and Jones walking stick.)

Inside the garish grotto, Pere Ubu are yet to appear. Tim and Martine, now joined by James fresh-faced bassist Jim Glennie, are soon immersed in conversation with The Man From Del Monte’s maniacal singer Mike, and Edward Barton – both whom have recently supported James.

Edward, who prefers tweed to Mike’s Biggles chic, is a little upset that a recent Sounds interview questioned his sanity&ldots;.

“He called me mad. I’m not mad.”

The suggestion that mad might refer to eccentric is given short shrift.

“No, mad doesn’t mean eccentric,” he insists vehemently. “Eccentric is an upturned tea cup; mad is a tea cup teetering on the edge of a table.”

Edward is equally concerned that James might be misrepresented.

“Be careful,” he warns Tim, “they’ll label you and forget you.”

“They won’t call me mad,” says Tim gently to the agitated tweed wearer.

“No, they’ll call you a veggie loony, put you in a box&ldots; then forget you!”

In keeping with the veggie loony image, my arrival next morning at Tim and Martine’s flat – opposite an undistinguished door which leads into Factory Records – is greeted with a choice: decaffinated coffee and soya milk or medicinal Japanese tea. No sugar.

The pious celibate Buddhist stereotype is given further credence by Tim’s meticulous, almost obsessive shaving ritual. However, his addiction to Cheers (the soapy social documentary of life in a New York bar) shatters the illusion.

The choice of background music hardly enhances an aura of piety. Still, the Pogues “If I Should Fall From Grace With God” meets Jim’s approval, and that of Larry Gott, lead guitarist.

Drummer Gavan Whelan will be late. Of all the band members, his attitude most closely approximates the devil-may-care rock-n-roll rebel.

Despite associations with orange juice, James are not without their drinking songs.

“We’ve got some songs like that,” says Tim before slipping into song. “Wish I’d invested gold / Down go share prices / New York to Tokyo”

Larry: “We’ve done the drunken song live at Leeds Astoria”

“Christ!” Tim comes down to earth religiously.

“Went well,” says Jim

“Did it?” asks Tim incredulously

“There were a load of football fans in that night,” continues Larry. “We were on a stage that was about two foot high and they were spilling beer, throwing pots on stage and throwing tables in the air. And we played the drunken song and we all started falling about the stage with the drunken audience.”

Tim: “There were people on the stage from the first song and they wouldn’t go. The management thought : James, vegetarian band, lay off some bouncers. And it was a riot &ldots;.”

“People would come up and say, Autograph, give us an autograph, halfway through songs. And one guy came up and said, Sing a song for the working class then &ldots; sing a song for the working class! And he’s getting really irritated and his mate’s going, Yeah sing a song for the working class.”

“So at the end of the song I said, That song’s for you, it’s the best we can do. And he went kinda, Woarrr that was for us!”

Despite the carnage at Leeds, last October’s gig at London’s Astoria was spiritual and ten times better for you than a dose of Nicky Cruz or a series of Songs of Praise.

In white robes and adorned with a skull cap, Tim pervaded the auditorium with an aura of understanding and courted those that leapt onstage. This threaded with James sound – a crisp, traditional folk merged with various international styles and warped into a lush chart-compatible brew – had James leading the audience as the pied Piper led Hamelin’s sewer population.

“It varies, you see,” explains Tim. “Sometimes we stir it up because we’ve got a lot of aggressive songs which we’ll only play if we’re in that mood, where we go on from the beginning thinking f**k you.”

“We did that at WOMAD once.”

Jim: “It was a really sunny day, everybody was really laid back with the African music, the cheap falafels&ldots;..”

Tim: “So we started with all our unpleasant epics. They were the opening songs and people just couldn’t get a toehold.”

My misconceptions are now in splinters, an appropriate point from which to survey the past, present and future of James.

The upward spiral was swift: “What’s The World” and “If Things Were Perfect / Hymn From A Village” being released first as singles then together on a five-track EP by Factory, between october 1984 and July 1985.

A transfer to Sire (WEA’s American sister label) followed, bringing the ‘Chainmail EP’ and ‘So Many Ways’ 45s before the debut album, ‘Stutter’, in the Summer of ’86.

‘Stutter’ was a transition period for James, caught between the commercial demands of the record company and their own desire for complete control.

The result was a mish mash, a record with charm and erraticism, coated in a cheap lustre – a record to tape rather than buy. Then, nothing. Record companies operate on credit not acclaim and the band, as the record, were left on the shelf to gather dust.

Tim: -The record company didn’t want us to record so they didn’t give us any money. We tried to release something after the LP but they wouldn’t have it so we could do nothing. Then you try and tour and they say, Well, you haven’t had anything out for a while, wait.

“Then Martine resigned as our manager and you can’t get anything out of a record company without a manager. With a new manager (whose career spanned just four months) James got to work on a new album. ‘Strip Mine’ was finished in March 1987. Release was delayed until October and then halted altogether with the arrival of new manager, Eliot Rashman (of Simply Red fame).

Rashman felt that the album needed remixing and, after five months, got James (who also had misgivings about the production) and Sire to comply.

Sire’s decision to finance the remix coincided with the resignation of The Housemartins and The Smiths from the intelligent end of the pop market. An ideal opportunity for James to scoop the awards in ’88?

Tim: “I think that’s what they {the record company) think. Everyone wanted us to get a record out when The Smiths had broken up. We went the opposite way on that kind of idea.”

Their new single, ‘What For’, supports this claim, not that James have ever had to fear the Smiths copyists claims so wrongly attributed to them in the past (The Smiths actually covered them, recording the first James single on the cassette release of ‘I Started Something I Couldn’t Finish’).

With the subterfuge of The Housemartins’ ‘Happy Hour’, the tempo of The Cult’s ‘She Sells Sanctuary’, a lushness you’d expect of a band sharing the same label as Madonna and an advertising budget big enough to ensure blanket press coverage (surely a sign of Sire’s newfound confidence), it might seem surprising that the record has failed to gain the Radio 1 A-list grading so essential for chart success. It was practically constructed for Top Of The Pops.

Larry: “It was originally a Eurovision Song Contest Entry actually, a song for Europe.”

Tim: “I used to take the piss out of it and sing a real Eurovision chorus to it”

Larry: It went ‘Bonjour. .:”

“‘Bouncy bouncy bonjour!'” the band return unanimously.

Larry: “It changed a lot cos it was quite poppy and breezy and didn’t have a serious side to it, and then musically it got more serious.”

By its live airing in October, it had grown teeth, Tim singing “I will dive into Sellafield seas. Sick fish, myself and some strange debris”, but on vinyl the nuclear power plant reference disappeared.

Tim assures me that the absence of the leaky location was not due to record company censorship. I took it out because I didn’t want it to be that specific, so I sing ‘Foaming seas’, which refers to sea pollution more generally, not just nuclear . If you’re going to censor it you’d have to take out “will not think of torture or the rape of nature” which like ‘Misty Blue last year, is not A-list compatible.

THE LUSH quality and satirical lyricism of ‘What For’ is maintained throughout ‘Strip Mine’.

‘Vulture’ is the musical equivalent of the imagery of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil mixed with the blatant vulgarity of The Hitcher’s severed fingers in the pomme frittes.

“Yeah, I enjoyed that,” says Tim with relish. .’When you spy a fresh face / Remember the rich taste / You want a part in the cost of it all/ So you open your flicknife /And cut off a thick slice / Envy makes the flier fall'”

Then, before you can breathe in, Tim summons up Monty python’s exploding man.

“It was written before that,” says Tim defensively. “It must be about five years old, it was on the first Peel Session, but a different version. It’s all about greed and gluttony.”

If “Vulture’ provides enough colour for a good schlock movie, ‘Riders’ is the hospital horror incarnate -a nightmare at St Elsewhere.

“It was a dream,” says Tim quietly, a fairly exact description of a dream I had four years ago that turned my life around.

“Until then I’d been on a very self-destructive route and this dream showed me what I was doing and made me decide that I really didn’t ‘want that poison in’.

“I’d been in hospital very shortly before (with a chronic liver complaint) and I probably took from the experience. The woman in the song, the nurse, was Nurse Rachett from One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest and her assistant was Jed Clampett from The Beverley Hillbillies.

If ‘Riders’ took Tim off the motorway to self-destruction, it hardly diffused the potency of his songwriting

Each song has a purpose and prod. at the subconscious as it teases the eardrums. The most overt message is in ‘Charlie Dance’, which epitomises a country where a budget aimed to cripple the poor, is taken up by the media as a perfect package for the working class -.the mentality of Harry Enfield’s .Loadsamoney on the front page of a national newspaper.

“‘Charlie Dance’ is about a believer in official lines who accepts what the government says. It was written after Chernobyl so it was like ‘The cows don’t moo anymore/But “m sure they’re not dead/They don’t chew anymore but ‘.m sure they’re not dead'”.

“The one person in this country who drives me up the wall is Lord Marshall, head of the Nuclear Electro Generating Board. After Chernobyl he was saying there’s no danger from our machines. Anybody who’s ever owned a machine knows they break down. And he denies it and denies it. He should live on the site or swim on the sea if he thinks it’s that safe”.

This is the serious side of James, the side that finds the term Ministry Of Defence hypocritical.

Tim relates it to a Ben Elton sketch (the two were at college together): .A near mid air disaster. What do they mean near miss? More like near bloody hit.

“The Ministry Of Defence should be called the Ministry Of War.” It’s a high horse that all but Gavan are prepared to mount. What does Gavan want?

“Loads of money”

SO WHAT have we got?

Take the talking bit from Dr Dolittle (“I feel that it is very important in principle that one should avoid eating one’s friends”), yesterday’s tabloid headlines, Luxembourg’s Eurovision entries (circa 1985-1988), rhythms from Didsbury to the Congo Basin, the humour of Palin and Gilliam (and a dash of Cleese), add a pinch of Cheers and cook for 45 minutes on Sellafield radiation, mark four.

James James I, James T Kirk or James Anderton?

Not every band would have the nerve to open up their album with a cheery little ditty about someone being attacked by an earwig. Imagine how that goes over back in the corporate offices – “Psss – did you hear that new group we signed? Man, they’re weird”. No, not weird, James. Not as in Dean (though Morrissey is a big fan). As in four men with some very unusual, sometimes caustic, sometimes surreal and totally individual songs to parlay to a world that needs a little something different to shake things up a bit. Which the band did on their first album, STUTTER, a dollop of post-punk, post-modern strangeness thrown on top of an often uncomprehending music world. However, one doesn’t have to be an Einstein to recognise that this bunch from Manchester, where some of England’s most creative bands (The Fall, Joy Division, New Order, The Smiths) have taken root, is ready to join its predecessors ranks.

On the other side of the Atlantic, James’ unique folk-punk-pop intellectual cut-up-cabaret synthesis (whew!) caught the ear of rock critic, Patti Smith guitarist and Suzanne Vega producer Lenny Kaye. Kaye, who produced the group’s debut album STUTTER, knows a special sound when he hears one. As will you, after hearing “What For”, the special inclusion here from the singular James.

The recipient of this thoughtful self-imposed dictate is a cloudy-haired type with the charisma of Irene Handl (yes, that much) and, despite himself, the discreet charm of the bourgeoisie. Tim is certainly a Venusian. He has that flavour, and blinking yellow skin (caused by liver trouble) too. But we shall skip past this tastelessness.

“According to quantum physics, it’s more than possible, in fact it’s probable, we have other lives, probably hundreds of them.” He pauses for me and Jim to stop blushing. “In parallel universes, we’re all on the boarder off insanity. We could discover other existences if only we went over.”

He gives me a pen because I ask for one, and tells me to read a lot of Robert Anton Wilson (“the weirdest books I ever…”) and about equal amounts of Milan Kundera. And you can see, I took the medicine. Yum.

James used to be like a goat (? – eh, Ed) with a broken femur, an awkward oddity, but happy as Mary Popping, or Larry. They made this one record, “Hymn From A Village”, and this brought them the fame of a minute. They toured with The Smiths, who loved them. They had rousing reviews for their first LP, “Stutter”. But oh dear me, so funny, all vegetarians, weren’t they, or didn’t drink, or don’t take drugs, is it? The gents of the press could get no handle on it, and nor could the record company. James have taken two years to resurface with the brilliant tightrope album “Strip Mine”. They’re taking more care of business now. James are like a fully-formed, million-dollar robo-goat, nearly free of scape. I’m very afraid they want me to think them normal. Me, who could hardly go in the house because there was a magpie near it.

Tim: “So how many have you seen today?”

Two, then one, but that makes it really three.

“No, it has to be all at the same time. You cheated. Still, all you have to do is blow them a kiss or take your hat off to them, and that way.

“Martine and I were sitting in a park. A magpie landed about a hundred yards away, and we both went, ‘Uh oh’. Well, it turned and looked at us as if it heard what we said. Then it took off, staring at us, and flew towards us, about two feet off the ground. It landed and hopped around us, pecking at my shoelaces, then round the back of me and pecked at my bum. It stayed for ten minutes. An utterly beautiful-looking bird. Its eyes closed like camera shutters, kind of chunk chunk.”

Jim, Alias James, Alias The one that got the band undemocratically named after him, has a weeny baby girl – hence potential genius – called Gemma. He says, “I’ve been told 13’s a bad year.”

What happens then? Jim bites his lip. “Don’t know.”

Then there’s the nature of rarefied genius, which brushes scapulae with James too much. When Jim was 11, he had this best friend, and at 18 they started the band. “Paul had a real fire. He was our motivation”. Paul’s not in James now, for one or two reasons that cause heartache.

“I’ve never seen anyone change like he did. Oh God! He was the most outward-going, full of life person… But he died. Not really, and I don’t know if it was drugs. I really don’t know. But the Paul I knew was no longer. And I miss him, I really do. I miss him. And I still see the guy in the street, but it’s not him.”

Because Jim’s choked and the wall could get damaged, Tim ice-skates across the frozen pool.

“At one time Paul was quite catatonic. He didn’t talk, he used to stand in the room at rehearsals and not play his instrument. At one gig he turned his guitar upside-down and played it left-handed, or tried to. It was our big break, our first gig with The Smiths, 1,500 people. We’d played to maybe two or three hundred before. Our first big gig, and he decided he wanted to play the whole concert with his guitar upside-down. He shaved his head the same day, and went on stage but didn’t play. He just stood there, the whole gig, trying. Making these noises.”

Paul was a pie-in-the-sky, sweet dream baby. They repeat his words now, like dazed pupils. “He said our set list must change every night. That we must take a lot of risks. Originality – if you hear any other’s influence in your song, dump it. No advertising. Everything shared. Everything.”

Jim laughs like it might be hurting him too. “And we were gonna be huge. With no advertising, no interviews, no publicity.”

Other people make it hard for those dilly dreamers.

“Uh-huh. Sometimes, I could say things to people which would kill ‘em, would core ‘em.”

“Glamour. Hooh. Glamour, eh?”

“Glamour, Tim.”

Silence. “It’s not a particularly pleasant word.”

It’s just that you used to say, “seduction has to be wrong”, but this new LP, with its talk of skin and bone, glows differently.

Tim: “Glamour in music today is a money thing. It’s revolting – there’s bugger-all in it. To me, Patti Smith is glamorous, but it didn’t cost her a lot of money, it wasn’t linked with wealth. She was a romantic poet, the artist, trying to push life to an extreme, to extract some drop of meaning out of it.”

Tim was at boarding-school (this was then) when his mum rang and said, “Your dad’s in hospital. He may not make it through the night. I’ll ring you tomorrow. You mustn’t come home, by the way.” What a Ma. So he crept about in the dark dorm, found some headphones and listened to anything that happened to be there. Into his hot, sad shell, Patti Smith sang, “His father died and left him alone on a New England farm.”

Tim is a Rupert Brooke himself, a house on fire, a misplaced Joan of Art.

Tim says obstinately, “Everyone has their own meaning for every damn word you use. So how on earth do you have any communication?” Levitate us, Tim. “Martine keeps telling me that words are only seven per cent of the human being’s communication. The rest is through gestures, smell, tone of voice, smile, eyes. Statistics show this.”

Statistics, inter-ballistics.

“I talk it out, I should it out, I put myself in a position where I’m gonna have a fight. Violence is something that – oh God – I do not morally condemn. Sometimes it is very necessary. Having been a pacifist, I’m now getting into boxing. I enjoy seeing Tyson knock people out, the blood, the mats on the canvas to cover where it’s splattered. I’m surprised at my own reactions. I know you cannot grab an idea of how the world should be and impose it. I just let myself feel my animal side, sexually as well as in violence. I blocked what I couldn’t control before”.

And love will save the world?

No reply. What, love won’t save it?

“Save the world. That’s a slogan.” Tim suddenly finds a lot about his shoe interesting. “Save it from who, save it from what, save it for what? You know, maybe this is how it’s bloody well meant to be.”

Eh? The man with a thousand possibilities and twice as many probable lives has gone me in a trick bag.

“Maybe we’ll never attain the knowledge everybody’s lookin’ for. We just ain’t got the capacity up here (Jim taps noddle). Not even just for an understanding of what the bleedin’ hell’s goin’ on.”

Jim, Gavan, Larry, Tim. Going round in frivolous, important circles. Assault and battery. Mad hattery. Celebration.

Can you tell me what Mancunian popsters JAMES are currently up to? Also can you supply me with the address of their fan club?

Hupsprung Nick, Sutton Coldfleld, W. Midlands

The news is that James are about to fling themselves into non-stop activity in the hope of reaching the front pages of TheSun. A single, ‘Ya Ho’ is promised for mid-September, while an album, ‘Strip Mine’ will be released by Sire just a couple of weeks later.

Tourwise, I haven’t got full details yet but the Jimmies should be in Dublin and Belfast on October 8 and 9 respectively, while confirmed dates include Manchester Ritzy (11), Newcastle Riverside (12), Aberdeen Venue (14), Glasgow QMU (15), Dundee Fat Sam’s (16), Liverpool Poly (20), Sheffield University (21), Nottingham Trent Poly (22), Birmingham Irish Centre (25), Bristol Bier Keller (26) and London Astoria (27). But there are plenty of dates to be added. James don’t appear to own a fan club but messages to the band can be relayed via Karl Badger, Sire Records, WEA The Electric Lighting Station, 46 Kensington Court, London W8 5DP

JAMES

A band of four square men. Manchester-based.

Their music reflects their relationship with each other over a seven year period.

Two singles released on Factory Records, which, when combined, reached No. 1 on the Independent chart.

The last six years spent sharpening their songs, with the occasional tour as support to New Order and The Smiths.

Signed worldwide by Seymour Stein’s Sire label, with Blanco Y Negro in collaboration in the UK, for a modest advance on 11.11.84, in return for their independence in the material world.

The single “Chain Mail” was released in February 1986. The LP Stutter is released in August 1986. Both produced by Lenny (Suzanne Vega) Kaye.

A second album, Strip Mine, released 8.9.88. Produced by Hugh Jones. Features the cuts “What For”, “Medieval”, “Not There” and “Return”.

Looking forward to meeting your aquaintance.

JAMES, the Mancunian quartet whose debut album is in danger of going rusty in the can, play Warrington Legends October 9, Manchester Ritz 11, Newcastle Riverside 1 2, Aberdeen Venue 14, Glasgow Queen Margaret Union 1 5, Stirling University 16, Liverpool Polytechnic 20, Sheffield University 21, Nottingham Trent Polytechnic 22, Birmingham Irish Centre 25, Bristol Bierkeller 26, London Astoria 27.

JAMES, the Mancunian foursome return with a new single and a tour.

The 45 ‘Ya Ho’ is released by Blanco Y Negro/Sire on Monday and the band then head out on tour taking in Warrington Legends (October 5), Manchester Ritz (11), Newcastle Riverside (12), Aberdeen Venue (14), Glasgow OMU (15), Stirling University (16), Liverpool Poly (20), Sheffield University (21), Nottingham Trent Poly (22), Birmingham Irish Centre (25), Bristol Bierkeller (26) and London Astoria (27).

Details

James performing Ya Ho on The Other Side Of Midnight in September 1988

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.

Le voir pour le croire. L’allure de garçons mystiques enrôlés par la foi, qui s’apprêtent à revêtir leur robe de bure pour tourner en rond avec leur méditation dans les couloirs rassurés d’un monastère. L’allure seulement, car sous leur apparence désuète, les quatre de James sont peut-être les doux illuminés les plus en marge de toute la scène anglaise, insensibles aux courants, ignorants des poses et aveugles des modes, je doute même qu’ils connaissent l ‘existence du terme. Ce n’est pas que le temps se soit arrêté pour eux, il  n’existe pas.

Il y a 50 ans, ils auraient porté les mêmes pompes, dans 50 ans ils se rachèteront les mêmes, si elles sont usées.

Rien d’étonnant : ils sont de Manchester, la ville où rien n’est surprenant. Bientôt, il n’y aura pas que chez eux qu’on admirera leur importance, leur pop intemporelle taillée au burin et leur sensibilité exacerbée, habitée par l’épilepsie et la loufoquerie : « Yaho », une ronde sautillante aux accents tyroliens pour attendre un deuxième album en début d’année, déjà un must.

Translation by Google Translate(!)

Seeing is believing. The pace of mystical boys enrolled in faith, who are preparing to take their frock to go round in circles with their meditation in the corridors of a monastery reassured. The only speed, because under their antiquated appearance, the four of James may be mild in most illuminated margin of all the English stage, insensitive to currents poses ignorant and blind modes, I doubt they even aware of the existence of the word. This is not that time has stopped for them it does not exist.

It was 50 years ago they would have worn the same pumps, in 50 years they will buy the same, if worn.

No wonder they are in Manchester, the city where nothing is surprising. Soon, there will not be home that we admire their importance, timeless pop cut and chisel their heightened sensitivity, inhabited by epilepsy and craziness “Yaho” a chugging round the Tyrolean accents to wait a second album earlier this year, already a must.

Details

Interview with Tim and Gavan from the Rockin’ In The UK programme in October 1988

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.

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).

This is the band itinerary from the October 1988 tour.

Audio

Setlist

Medieval / Sit Down / Stripmining


recorded 6th October 1988 for broadcast on 20th October 1988 show

Details

• Venue: BBC Maida Vale Studios, London, UK
• Date: 20th October 1988

Songs

• Medieval
• Sit Down
• Stripmining

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The album, recorded over a year ago, was repeatedly delayed for remixing and various other reasons.

The Manchester band, who expect to name a new sticksman within the next couple of weeks, are also in the process of launching their own label after leaving Sire Records. The band have a live LP, recorded at Bath Moles Club last November, ready for release but are currently negotiating the rights to some of the songs with Sire.

James Live Album

For you, the doldrums are over. On March 20th, One Man Clapping Records, through Rough Trade, release One Man Clapping, JAMES first vinyl output since September 88 and an ill-fated liaison with Sire Records

The new album shows the band at their very best – totally live – recorded at a series of 3 special concerts at Bath Moles Club in October 1988. One Man Clapping features the “classic” James line-up of Tim Booth (vocals), Gavan Whelan (drums), Jim Glennie (bass) and Larry Gott (guitar).

Following Gavan’s departure, JAMES take to the road with new members David Baignton Power, known for his session work with It’s Immaterial and other leading North West bands, on drums and Saul Davies on violin, guitar and percussion.

The tour dates are :

March 14th : Newcastle University

March 15th : Sheffield University

March 16th : Hull University

March 18th : Manchester Free Trade Hall

March 21st : Birmingham Powerhouse

March 22nd : London Dominion

He’s Dave Baignton-Power, and the band have taken the opportunity to add a new member, guitarist, violinist and percussionist Saul Davies.

After the dates, the new line-up will record a single called ‘Sit Down’, due for release in May, probably on their own label. And they’ll start work on a new album soon after. Their live album, ‘One Hand Clapping’ is out this week on Rough Trade and reviewed on Page 40.

James, le groupe de Manchester invité du festival Inrockuptibles de l’automne dernier et qui s’est fait jeter de chez Sire, sort son nouvel album « One Man Clapping » enregistré live en octobre dernier à Bath en Angleterre.

Depuis, le groupe a changé de batteur avec l’arrivée de David Baynton Power et le recrutement d’un violoniste en la personne de Saul Davies. Le disque sort sur leur propre label One Man Record distribué par Rough Trade outre-Manche.

Best – March 1989

Details

Patti Caldwell : Welcome to Out of Order the programme that bites. Tonight we see the flipside of the glamorous pop industry. How one promising British band disappeared when they signed on the same British label as Madonna.

Looking for fame and fortune and climbing the charts, tonight Out of Order looks at what it’s like to be young, talented and signed up to a huge American music corporation and then left on the shelf with little chance of escape.

Reporter : Madonna is number one in the album charts. This is the story of the British band hoping to copy her success with the WEA/Sire record corporation. They too joined the stable of Seymour Stein, the man who signed Madonna.

In 1985, rock critics had tipped James as the next big British rock act and Seymour Stein snapped them up into an exclusive contract. But unlike Madonna, they were never to earn more than £30 a week. A number one band in the independent charts, front page of the NME and described by Sounds Magazine as “pop gods and saviours of rock n roll., they now belonged exclusively to the world of Sire and WEA, part of the massive Warner Communications. Only when they were signed did they realise that it wasn’t a passport to fame and fortune.

Jim : Things were going really well for us. We were being courted by the record companies. We signed to Sire on a high. We were going and then things stopped basically.

Tim : We would ring people in WEA a year after we’d signed and we’d say “This is so and so from James” and they’d say James Who? and it was like they didn’t even know you were part of WEA and Sire

Reporter : From rock n roll to medical guinea pigs, testing drugs at the local hospital for £10 a day so that they could continue to work full-time. James shared their manager with top WEA act Simply Red. They’ve sold millions. Now Elliot Rashman has put at risk his vital relationship with WEA and Sire by talking to Out of Order. He believes that by now James should be a top international act, but he says they were left in a dark corner of the musical industry, what’s known as the mummification process.

Elliot Rashman : Most of the major record labels in the US use the independent music scene in the UK as a Sainsburys and they come over here with their metaphorical shopping trolley and fill it full of independent acts and the cost for a major American conglomerate is minimal so they come over here and every year they sign bands and bands and bands and they tell them it’s all going to be wonderful and they’re the next big thing and that’s as much as they do. All they have to do is sign them, they don’t have to work them.  Now their view is business is business.

Reporter : Into the shopping trolley and locked into a sixty page contract, James were owned by Sire “throughout the universe” and in the hands of that company. In this letter to WEA, manager Elliot Rashman accuses the company of failing to give proper promotion. The problem he says stems from Sire’s policy of “sign them and see what happens but don’t spend any money in the meantime”  All this from a man whose only other band, Simply Red, were making millions for WEA. Sire were committed to releasing two albums. Today hype and promotion are the lifeblood of pop hits. Elliot Rashman is scathing over the release of the second James LP.

ER : It ended up on the shelf. It ended up being released because again from a contractual point of view, all they have to do is release it and they’ve obliged, they’ve fulfilled their side of the contract.

Reporter : Is it possible to have hits by just releasing….

ER : No, it’d be dead within a week.

PC : Well, the only advice Elliot Rashman could give James was to break up and to escape the contact. James, the high hopes of 85 watched the obituraries roll in.

Reporter : Across the Atlantic, Rolling Stone magazine wrote a glowing feature on flamboyant Stein, boasting that he’s a collector, he likes to collect furniture. James felt like they were in the attic and Sire wouldn’t let them out of the contract.

Larry : If they turned round and let a band  go and they then go on and have success elsewhere, then they’re left with egg on their face and probably no job. They’ll be branded as “He’s the guy who let James go. He’s the guy who let the Beatles go.” It’s not a very good reference for the next job. So they keep you.

Reporter : So the band waited. Their last album recorded in February 1987 wasn’t released by Sire until Autumn 88. With no new material, there seemed little point in playing live.

We tracked down Seymour Stein to London to see if he would talk to us and he refused. He said he was too busy at the moment with the promotion, the parties and the razzmatazz of the new Madonna album.

Three years on from signing, James are at last free, risking everything, they’ve borrowed £12,000 to put out a live album.

Tim : Seymour heard that we were making this programme and threatened to stop us releasing our LP even though we’re not on the label. So obviously there’s a threat there.

Reporter : Stein eventually relented but there’s a final twist.

ER : It means their new album, which is a live album, coming out on their own independent label, they have to pay the record company because they’re using songs, albeit performed live, from the previous two albums. They don’t even let you go. It’s a bit like hacking your arm off and still feeling the sensation for a couple of years.

Reporter : Saturday night and the touts are out. Freed from their contract, James are back.

PC : We called WEA Records no less than seventeen times to ask for an interview with Seymour Stein because we wanted to hear what he had to say. We traced him through his New York office to Madrid where we delivered a list of questions. Why did his company not let James go when, as it appeared, they were not promoting them? Well, we’re still waiting for an answer on that one. But one question it appears has been answered. This week, four years on, James new album went to number one in the independent charts.

This is the band itinerary from 1989 James Spring Tour.

JAMES (above), whose ‘One Man Clapping’ live album (on Rough Trade) has put their vinyl nightmare with Sire behind them, have set up a tour, starting in mid-June.

With new keyboard player Mark Hunter now in the line-up, they play Liverpool Royal Court June 16, Nottingham Trent Polytechnic 17, Bristol Bierkeller 19, Leicester University 20,
Manchester Ritz 27 and London Marquee July 3-4.

James, le groupe de Manchester invite au festival lnrockuptibles de l’automne dernier et qui s’est fait jeter de chez Sire, sort son nouvel album « One Man Clapping , enregistre live en
octobre dernier a Bath en Angleterre.

Depuis, le groupe a change de batteur avec l’ar­rivee de Dave Blaignton Power et le recrutement d’un violiniste en la personne de Saul Davis. Le disque sort sur leur propre label One Man Clapping Records distribue par Rough Trade outre-Man­che

WHATEVER YOU think of their first single since the big split with Sire Records, ‘Sit Down’ (and the Sounds office is pretty split here), there can be no doubting the uplifting inspiration of a James gig.

Though departed drummer Gavan Whelan’s devil-may-care attitude will be sorely missed (not to mention his excellent rhythmic capabilities), the new expanded six-piece- with violin and keyboards – has only served to highlight James’ potential as a giant rock band, whose attention to issues Green and adherence to the Byrne/Gabriel ethic of multi-cultural absorption has given them a magical, almost angelic edge over some of rock’s more morose competitors.

Expect songs from all points on the Factory-Sire-Rough Trade career, and don’t be surprised if singer Tim Booth suddenly comes swimming over your right shoulder. Don’t ‘Sit Down’, get up!

Details

James are back again with a new single called Sit Down with a new album towards the end of the year. They recently signed to Rough Trade after encountering various problems with their last record company.

Tim : I mean they weren’t very interested in us. We didn’t feel. We felt they had us and they didn’t do anything with our songs. They were a bit confused by the music we made. I think they found it a bit too individualistic. They told us it was too English for them. It was obviously not working and we were surprised when they said they wanted to carry on working with us after the second LP but they did want to carry on so we had to sneak off because we were really fed up.

Question : I was going to ask you if it had shaken your confidence, but obviously not.

Tim : I mean it was awful. We made this LP two years before it got released and we didn’t release anything in a two-year period and we had a big momentum going before that. So we lost it all just being not able to do anything. Remixes, the whole lot happened.

Jim: It was a really difficult period

Tim: We lost confidence a little bit in that sense.

Jim: You know we always believed the music would win through in the end. We would come out the other side and it would be OK, but the main thing was getting off Sire.

Tim: When we came off Sire and the drummer left, the nucleus of three of us, me, Larry and Jim, we write the songs. we thought about changing the name and starting again just for ourselves. But we kind of decided against it.

(part of Sit Down video)

Jim: It’s nice. Occassionally, you’re kind of walking down the street, been to Tesco, in shopping mode and they encroach on that a little bit. Encroach is the wrong word as it sounds not particularly pleasant but they’ll say “hello” and you’ll go “woah” because the two worlds are very different. You can go into one and come out again, and noone recognises you and everything’s fine and it’s funny where they overlap. It’s obviously not a big problem – yet – as it’s not happening all the time and people aren’t hassling you when you go into the shop all the time.

Tim: Only really in Manchester

Question: What about when one of your records gets played in a club? Do you get embarrassed by that?

Tim: No, it’s dead exciting. You see a dancefloor being filled in Manchester when they play one of your records. You feel you don’t want people to see you there but you kind of want to watch. Like that’s what you want. It’s how you feel it’s should be

Jim: You get a bit self-conscious

Tim: Yes, Jim went to see a band last week and they did a cover version of one of our songs and everyone was looking round at him.

Jim: It’s really nice. It’s dead flattering. I was really glad I was there but you feel that, even if they’re not, you feel that the whole place is looking at you.

(another section of Sit Down video)

Tim : I mean we’ve all changed over a long period of time. We’ve been through a lot of different phases. When we first started, our lifestyles were chaotic as in the rock and roll terms. We kind of lost a guitarist to that lifestyle, he ended up very ill and in prison. And so we’ve been through that kind of phase. We had a puritanical clean up where we saw we could have gone the same way and we didn’t want to do that. And then now, we’re just more relaxed, just enjoying what we do, we love our music.

I mean the thing about James is that is so special to me is that it’s not just about one person or centred around two or three. Even now, we’re a six-piece with three new members, they’re all great musicians in their own right. Each one of them could front a band and have it based around them, but we’ve got six people working together of that level of combustibility. And it’s really exciting. And you don’t normally get that. That will sound arrogant, but that’s how I see it, because, obviously, I’m the singer and I wouldn’t be working if I didn’t really respect and love the music we’re creating. We wouldn’t keep going that long if we didn’t love it.

Question : Have there been any regrets?

Tim: Regrets? We’ve had a few. Oh yes, we shouldn’t have gone on Sire. We shouldn’t have signed on the dotted line. The little signature. That was a mistake

Jim : You don’t know. We could have ended up with someone else ten times worse and all split up and committed suicide or something.

Tim : You can’t really regret. If we’d have stayed with Factory and recorded with them, something else might have gone wrong. We might have been hit by a bus because we weren’t down in London signing for Sire.

Jim : You don’t know do you?

Tim : You never know

James Single News

June 1989: James kick off a long-term recording relationship with Rough Trade Records with the single Sit Down released on June 19th.  Sit Down looks set to build on the success of the indie chart-topping One Man Clapping live album; the b-side Sky Is Falling shows the band have lost none of their out-spoken concern for environmental issues.

The full track listing for the twelve inch version is as follows :

• Side A : Sit Down (Extended Version)
• Side B : Goin Away, Sound Investment and Sky Is Falling

Keyboardist Mark Hunter is welcomed aboard the line-up for a national tour – dates as follows :

June

• 16th Liverpool Royal Court
• 17th Nottingham Trent Polytechnic
• 19th Bristol Bierkeller
• 20th Leicester University
• 27th Manchester Ritz
• 28th Manchester Ritz

July

• 3rd London Marquee
• 4th London Marquee

It’s called Sit Down which should be familiar to most James gig goers and is out on Rough Trade.

The single is their first studio recording since their Strip-Mine album.

Les yeux dévorants, les textes sur le bout des lèvres, les gamins du premier rang fixaient Tim Booth d’une manière dont peu de chanteurs peuvent se vanter de l’être. C’était au Marquee, le single était à peine sorti que, déjà, ce parterre de gosses sidérés le connaissaient par cœur, dévoués au charisme trouble du chanteur.

« Sit Down », le single idéal, celui qui aurait dû monter dans le chart anglais comme le « Song For Whoever » de Beautiful South, s’il n’y avait pas une inexplicable poisse sur les merveilles de James.

Un single qui donne un efois de plus l’envie de se battre pour ce groupe si normal mais tellement différent.

Google Translation(!)

Devouring eyes, the texts on the lip of the front row kids staring Tim Booth in a way that few singers can boast of being. It was at the Marquee , the single just came out that already this audience of stunned kids knew by heart , devoted to the disorder charisma of the singer .

” Sit Down”, the ideal single one who should ride in the chart English as the ” Song For Whoever ” Beautiful South , if there was not some inexplicable bad luck on the wonders of James .

A single that gives efois more desire to fight for what so normal but so different group.

Interviewer : I’m joined now by Tim and Larry from the band James. I’m absolutely delighted to meet these two because I thought coming from a Mancunian band who I expected to wear really long overcoats and be really serious that this was going to be murder, but these guys are quite jolly. Tim.

Tim : Jolly. Must be something we ate I think.

Interviewer : I think so.You’re not very used to doing this kind of thing are you because you’re not very, even though you’ve had a lot of records, you’ve had a reputation for being indie and here you are poised, or I thought you were until you were talking to me a minute ago, poised to have a hit single. Was Sit Down a conscious effort to do something different that would get you in the charts?

Tim : No, all our songs are created through improvisation and about one song a year we make that’s kind of like Sit Down which has the potential for being a commercial success and all we do is earmark those as singles, because obviously there are certain things that are more likely to be played on the radio than others and a lot of our music is much harder than Sit Down, so we don’t release them as singles as they wouldn’t stand a chance.

Interviewer : With the thoughtful image that you’ve got and your fans like about you, do you think that they would resent your success if you did get in the charts?

Tim : There might be some people who would like to hold on if they think it’s very precious to them, but, you know, all we can do is concentrate on the music. As long as you keep the music pure then that’s all that matters, they’ll be OK with it, they’ll get by.

Interviewer : People always write about you and The Smiths and Simply Red as being part of some sort of Manchester scene. Do you think that really existed, Larry?

Larry : No, I don’t think it did. I don’t think it was like the Merseybeat scene and all those scenes like the New York scene of 1976-77 and things like that where everybody rehearsed in the same place, knew each other and went to everybody’s gigs. You know, it just so happened that all those bands came out of Manchester round about the same time. I think there’s more of a scene now with bands like The Stone Roses, Happy Mondays and Inspiral Carpets, they appear to be more closer-knit.

Tim : We see quite a lot of them as well.

Larry : Places that they rehearse and record

Interviewer : How important is it now if you’re a Manchester band or a Liverpool band to come to London. Will the record companies come up North to find you?

Tim : I think there’s quite a lot of people coming up to Manchester at the moment because it’s meant to be a hot city at the moment.

Interviewer : Hey. I’m hot and I’m cool.

Tim : So at the moment, this year Manchester’s in. Next year, it probably won’t be again. But you are a bit cut off. It’s very hard, the business centre is in London and you do feel quite cut off a lot of the time. Also apparently if a band in a city sells a lot of records, when it comes to get charted, it gets what’s called regionalised which they don’t take consideration of the fact if you sell a lot in your own city. Whereas if you’re a London band and you sell a lot of records in London, you aren’t regionalised. So the charts are slightly stacked there. So you know, you do feel quite separate a lot of the time.

Interviewer : I’ve got a clipping from Sounds, it must be the current issue of Sounds, that says about you, Tim, it says “He’s nothing but an effite Buddhist vegan in a Morroccan skullcap who neither drinks Nescafe nor says the word Bottom in polite conversation”

Tim : No, it doesn’t say that, it says that’s my image. The image I’ve been landed with.

Interviewer : But it is your image, isn’t it?

Tim : I don’t know, I think that’s slightly journalistic licence. That one. Basically I shaved my head about two or three months ago.

Interviewer : But most of it’s grown back.

Tim : Yeah, it’s all grown back now and so I wore a Morroccan hat, a, to keep my head warm and b because I wasn’t sure I was happy with having a bald head. And people make a lot of assumptions when you have a bald head.

Interviewer : You’re right

Tim : You’re either a skinhead or a Hare Krishna you know

Interviewer : Or very very old. I wonder if you had any special feelings at 12.34 and 5 seconds today, during Doris Collins psychic moment.Were you aware of all that?

Tim : Yes I could feel something, I could feel some spirits trying to contact us, willing us on. I think it was my Great Grandfather. I could see him standing there. Talking about the war.

Interviewer : Was this a wind up or?

Tim : Yes

Interviewer : That’s what you never know of course. Is he a bit of a wind-up merchant, Larry?

Larry : That’s where the image comes from. All those images we’ve been landed with are all wind-ups of journalists who’ve taken it seriously. Or they’ve just printed it verbatim. It just comes out. As you read it, it reads flat and you don’t see the tongue in cheekness.

Interviewer : I love the way

Tim : Bottom

Interviewer : There you are.

Larry : In public. On radio

Interviewer : I love the way Smash Hits occasionally shove in a complete fib in the hope that other journalists pick it up. One example was that Bruce Springsteen’s real name is Roger. They sat back and waited for other newspapers and it works. It always works for them.

So I gather you’re going to do us an extemporised tune here.

Tim : Yeah, we’ve got two if you want them.

Interviewer : Let’s try the one and see

Tim : We’ve not rehearsed this.

Interviewer : Larry’s going to play the guitar and Tim’s going to sing. What’s it called?

Tim : Promised Land, but it has a reference to our glorious leader.

Interviewer : Really, there’s been a couple of songs called Promised Land.

Tim : It’s terrible, isn’t it? I’m really embarrassed. And it’s also kind of a political song. We hardly ever write political songs and this is the only one we can do acoustic.

Interviewer : Larry and Tim from James acoustic in the studios of GLR.

(play Promised Land)

Interviewer : Are you going to be doing any real live James gigs in London in the future?

Tim : We’ve just done two nights in the Marquee last week. In November, we’re going to come back and probably play the Town and Country. We’re recording a new LP in the summer with our new six-piece band. Got a violinist, a guitarist.

Interviewer : So Sit Down is a track from that, is it?

Tim : Sit Down, yeah. I think we’re going to redo it and make it a big harder because we play it harder and faster live now. But it’ll be something like that.

Interviewer : Well  thanks very much for joining us this afternoon. I gather you’ve got another live song for us.

Tim : Live we are a rock band, but this is acoustic. It was written about six years ago when they brought nuclear weapons into the country. I’m afraid it’s another topical one.

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James headlined the festival, with Cud / Man From Delmonte / Bradford / Farm / Hollowmen / And All Because The Lady Loves / Zoot & The Roots / Bridewell Taxis / New Fast Automatic Dafodils / Pale Saints / Treebound Story / Frank Sidebottom

Dave Simpson, Melody Maker

Thankfully James are incredible, pointing the way for modern, tuned-in pop. Rock music of the highest order – and make no mistake, this is rock music of the highest – order can capture the moods and the aspirations of its generation, and James do all of that tonight. As they end “Sit Down” (the entire audience doing precisely the opposite and dancing wildly) to absolutely deafening roars, it’s all I can do to stop the tears rolling down my face.

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Are you sitting comfortably? Then the new look freshly beefed James will begin – at The Apollo on December 4th. The Apollo? James? Beefed? Joff Lillywhite checks the changes to the city’s most spontaneous combo.

From the Mancunian fourpiece, so familiar to gig goers around the city centre comes the all-new James, a seven-piece line-up with extra percussion, brass and strings. The usual trademarks of the band, particularly Tim Booth’s distinctive vocals, remain constant. To top off the innovative guitar work of Larry Gott, James have incorporated a rather unusual, but pleasant combination of violin and trumpet, the result being “general orchestral madness” as Tim describes it.

James spent two months this summer in the studio recording for their next Nick Garside produced album Gold Mother which is out in February. Their new single Come Home, which comes from their LP and took only one hour to write and record, has just been released and like the last Sit Down is on the indie label Rough Trade. James ended up on this label after a spell on Factory, followed by a horrific deal at Sire, part of the giant Warner Bros empire. But the difference between Rough Trade and Sire is basically one of feedback. Tim thinks Rough Trade are more into and are interested in James music, whereas Sire were really only concerned with a concept of James that they had thought up. With so much trouble with record companies, it would not be surprising to find James sick of studio work. But, as Saul explains, “We are creative and very spontaneous in the studio, take Come Home, for example : just one hour from the first note written to the completion of the song.”

They are however, currently on tour around Britain and they play the Apollo on December 4th, much to Tim’s regret. He did say that he would never play there, but now there is no venue in Manchester that is the right size. Next year, according to Tim, there will be a shared gig at G-Mex with Happy Mondays. Does playing all-seated venues have any effect on the band’s performance though? Tim believes that non-seated venues are better for atmosphere but that playing seated venues like the Apollo means that the audience are more prepared to listen and notice what the band are playing.

Listening and understanding is all very well, but what about listening and misinterpreting? Does Tim ever worry that his lyrics might be misunderstood? Take the song Riders for example – what exactly does that mean? He explains…..

“Well, Riders is very specific, a very personal song. You see early James was very Happy Mondays-ish, very chemically induced and the situation was really getting out of hand, like one member of the band got really sick. Anyway, one day I was reading this book about dream analysis and thought I’d try and analyse the dream I had that night and the dream was Riders. The ‘sister in uniform’ was Nurse Ratchett from One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest and the listeners were people like Jim Morrison and Nick Cave, people from the ‘rock n roll hall of fame’. Anyway, that was the dream I had and it marked the beginning of our reformation, it took about a year for us to get our act together.”

Heavy stuff maybe, but when mixed with the band’s music, Tim’s lyrics blend in resulting in a sound so unique that it can only be called James.

This is the band itinerary from 1989 James Winter Tour.

Details

Snub asked frontman Tim Booth if he’d resolved his misgivings about impending adulation.

Tim : Well, it’s such a joke isn’t it? The whole thing is such a joke, it’s a surrealist’s nightmare. You know, people going hysterical. I take some of it seriously, I take some of it not so seriously. I have an ego, I’m flattered by a lot of it, I’m turned on by a lot of it., but also a part of my brain goes “This is ridiculous”. They don’t know you. I’m trying to go with it more because I believe, I think we blocked it last time when our wave came and as a result the wave and we watched it. And that wasn’t very clever because we ended up wondering what would have happened if. And we don’t want to wonder that anymore.

I think we should have changed our name this year and made it a complete new start because it feels very different, seven people and lots of new songs.

Government Walls is about the way they’re tightening up the secret service act, about the Peter Wright case. The way in this country they’re just trying, you know if anyone leaks anything, they say “That’s a secret service” and they can put you in prison for it. And they can stop the papers from telling you what the information actually is. But the information that they’re suppressing really tells you who runs this country and how this country is run.

So Bring Down The Government Walls is just about trying to prevent this secrecy that’s going on, which you have to suspect, all this stuff about, well I can’t even say it, can I?

(plays Government Walls)

I think bands tend to insult an audience’s intelligence and ability to concentrate. Like they say in America, isn’t it that each record has an average play of 1 1/2 plays because the concentration span is so low. But that isn’t with our records and I don’t believe that it necessarily has to be so. If the record is dull, people aren’t going to listen to it. But if there’s a lot in there, people have to listen to it. People should be stretched and we should be stretched. It shouldn’t be just going through the motions.

L’important pour nous, c’est d’ apporter un peu de ce qu’on peut pour que ce groupe avance !

Révélés par les Smiths qui reprirent une de leur chanson, les James eurent quelques difficultés pour concrétiser cette hype établie autour d’eux :

« En fait, nous n’étions ni punk ni quoi que ce soit ; on ne savait pas très bien jouer et contrairement à d’autres ça nous a beaucoup nuit. »

Ainsi, après deux albums qui ne connurent qu’un très moyen écho, la bande à Booth vit enfin le jour grâce à deux singles météorites satellisés en plein pendant la furie Manchester et qui leur permirent de laisser venir.

« On ne s’est pas posé trop de questions, on a enregistré notre album comme on l’entendait, et ce n’est qu’après le mixage qu’on est allé voir les maisons de disques avec un produit fini. D’ailleurs, Phonogram (heureuse élue) a du renoncer à ressortir « Sit Down » parce que nous voulions sortir un autre single et on leur a dit que ça faisait partie des conditions du contrat. Mais ça n’empêche pas la maison de disque de nous faire des propositions. Souvent, lorsqu’on les écoute, on se dit non, c’est pas possible de faire ceci ou cela, et puis finalement, parfois, c’est pas si idiot que ça. En tout cas, pour l’instant, ils font du bon boulot. »

Ce fut donc « Come Home » qui suivit son prédécesseur sur les plus hautes marches des charts anglais assurant à ses auteurs une reconnaissance nationale et méritée.

Depuis, le groupe a joué un peu partout dont plusieurs fois à Paris, notamment au désormais fameuses soirées Hacienda de la Locomotive. Il était donc hors de question, au lendemain du concert Inrockuptible, que je n’interroge point Tim Booth sur ses camarades de promotion ainsi que sur cette aura qui semble entourer Manchester ces temps-ci, tout en prenant bien soin de ne pas oublier que lui et son groupe sont là depuis bien plus longtemps.

« On n’est pas vraiment concerné parce qu’on est plus grand que tout ça. En Angleterre, on joue dans des salles de 10.000 personnes, donc c’est tranquille à ce niveau ; par contre, ce qui est ennuyeux, c’était quand nous n’avions pas encore ce succès, car on s’intéressait à nous parce que nous étions de Manchester et nous craignions qu’une fois la mode passée, les portes se referment sur nous. Quant aux groupes de Manchester, les Happy Mondays ont été notre partie il y a deux ans, et ça s’est bien passé ; les Stones Roses ont quelques bonnes chansons dont « Fool’s Gold » qui est excellente, mais il y a quand même une tendance à copier à Manchester ; tant que ça reste dans un esprit ouvert comme les Happy Mondays ou certains morceaux des Stones Roses, là ça commence à ne plus vouloir dire grand-chose, c’est comme un écho d’un écho.

Quand on prépare des morceaux, la démarche est très simple : on se réunit à trois (la base du groupe est constituée du chanteur, du bassiste et du guitariste) et on travaille les morceaux en appelant les autres musiciens au fur et à mesure. C’est vrai que notre façon d’écrire des morceaux est très démodée et traditionnelle, mais la mode ne m’a jamais vraiment intéressé. Cela étant, je crois que la vague de Dance Music qui a envahi l’Angleterre nous a quand même influencé. Une chanson comme « Come Home » est bien une chanson de son époque tout en étant personnelle ; quoi qu’il en soit, je ne la renie en rien. Tu sais, c’est très dur de savoir vraiment d’où viennent tes influences. Notre trompettiste, par exemple, lui, vient du jazz, ce qui ne l’empêche pas de laisser ses influences de côté lorsqu’il joue dans James. Du moins consciemment il ne va pas nous refaire tel ou tel solo à la manière d’un autre. L’important, pour nous, c’et d’apporter chacun un peu de ce qu’on peut à ce groupe pour q’il avance.

Bientôt, nous allons retourner en studio pour faire un nouvel album qui sera exclusivement composé de nouvelles chansons. Car même si certains souhaitent nous voir enregistrer certaines de nos vieilles chansons qui ne l’ont pas été et que nous jouons sur scène, nous voulons garder une marge de surprise pour les fans qui viennent à nos concerts et qui croient connaître tous nos morceaux. Pour la production, on est actuellement en discussion avec Gil Norton (Pixies), mais rien n’est fait, si ce n’est que ça se passera probablement dans les semaines qui vont venir. »

François Gerald ( Best – December 1989)

« Si Smiths est un joli nom de famille, alors James est le prénom idéal » écrivait Michka Assayas en novembre 1986 dans Libération. Il essayait sans doute d’expliquer par là que James représentait la deuxième génération mancunienne de pop mélancolique sur fond de guitares cristallines. Quatre ans plus tard, le quatuor a grandi et évolué. Tim Booth, chanteur et leader de James s’explique.

(Tim Booth) Cela fait six-sept ans que l’on existe sous le nom de James. On est basé à Manchester. On a sorti quelques disques sur Factory. On s’est fait bloquer par Sire, la compagnie de disques américaine pendant quelques temps. On est maintenant sur notre propre label. On est sept dans le groupe : un violoniste qui joue également de la batterie et de la guitare, un trompettiste multi-instrumentiste, un clavier, une guitare, une basse, une batterie.

On est un grand orchestre maintenant. 1989 aura été une année de grands changements pour nous. On est complètement différent.

Chaque fois que je vous vois en concert, vous êtes deux de plus dans le groupe.

Oui, on s’agrandit, on se multiplie. Ca tombe bien, avant on était un peu limité.

N’est-ce pas plutôt pour essayer de combler un vide quelque part ?

Non, dans le groupe, tous sont excellents musiciens. On a cherché pendant longtemps des gens qui avaient la bonne attitude musicale. On les a trouvé cette année, on ne pouvait pas les refuser.

Avec The Band Of Holy Joy, vous avez fait en octobre 89 un concert pour le CND (Campagne pour le Désarmement Nucléaire).

C’était juste un concert de soutien pour lancer une vidéo de groupes indépendants anglais. Tout l’argent va servir à financer un e campagne pour le CND. Il y a tout le temps des benefits dans ce pays. Les groupes y participent pour différentes causes et l’importance du groupe ne devrait pas jouer&ldots; même si le but est de gagner le plus d’argent possible.

Bradford a été sauvé de l’anonymat par une déclaration de Morrissey qui disait qu’il était le groupe le plus intéressant d’Angleterre. Ceci posé, peut-on dire que les Smiths vous ont « découverts »(James ayant fait la première partie de la tournée Meat Is Murder en 1985) ?

(Ton sec et télégraphique, histoire de faire bien comprendre que l’on pourrait parler d’autre chose) Non pas du tout ! Ils aimaient notre musique. Ils nous ont emmené en tournée avec eux. Ils reprenaient nos chansons sur scène. On s’entendait bien avec eux&ldots;J’ai aimé pas mal de trucs qu’ils ont fait. J’ai pas aimé d’autres trucs. Je suis pote avec Morrissey, je l’aime bien&ldots;Je n’ai jamais été fan des Smiths.

Toute la musique intéressante vient de Manchester en ce moment. Vrai ou faux ?

Vrai ou faux ? C’est un jeu ? Je gagne quelque chose si je réponds bien ? Non, tous les groupes auxquels tu penses jouent à Manchester depuis des années. Ils ne recevaient aucune attention de la part de la presse. Et puis, depuis un an, la presse et les médias se sont dits « eh, regarde ce qui se passe à Manchester ». Ils pensent donc que tous ces groupes sont nouveaux.

La presse musicale en Angleterre est-elle si importante ?

Je suis très cynique à propos de l’argent, des maisons de disques qui achètent les charts, du pouvoir de l’image sur les journalistes&ldots;Ils semblent être tous obsédés par l’imagerie, la mythologie rock’n’roll. Je trouve cela enfantin&ldots;Quand on a commencé avec James, on ne prenait pas les interviews au sérieux. On mettait des fringues ridicules pour les photos parce que l’on pensait que ça n’avait rien à voir avec la musique. On a refusé longtemps de donner des interviews ou alors, on racontait des conneries qui étaient prises au sérieux. Tout cela nous a valu une image très négative. Il nous a fallu beaucoup de temps pour redresser la barre. Maintenant, on sait que les choses sont importantes pour des gens, maos pas toujours pour nous. On joue plus le jeu qu’avant, c’est tout.

Avez-vous eu des choix difficiles à faire avec le groupe ?

Oui. Avec Sire, on a eu un combat. Un combat d’affaire. Ils voulaient qu’on devienne un grand groupe de rock alors que nous, on voulait juste continuer à faire notre musique. Ca a été un combat qu’on n’a pas gagné d’ailleurs vu qu’aucun disque n’est sorti pendant deux ans. Ca nous a tué créativement&ldots; On a perdu beaucoup à l’époque.

Votre album live s’intitule « One Man Clapping », est-ce une blague ?

Oui, c’est juste une blague. Dans tous les albums live, les groupes rock veulent toujours qu’on entende bien qu’il y a un public énorme. C’est une partie importante de leur disque. Dans notre live, le public applaudit d’un bout à l’autre et, à la fin du dernier titre, ça monte en intensité et il n’y a plus qu’un seul mec qui applaudit. C’est le sens de l’humour de James&ldots; ce n’est pas très drôle.

James, vous prenez au sérieux ?

Oui, nous prenons notre musique au sérieux mais nous ne nous prenons pas au sérieux . Tu sais, tu fais un concert et après, il y a des gens qui veulent t’embrasser et qui ne partiront pas avant de t’avoir embrassé. Il y a des gens qui font 300 kms pour nous voir, qui nous suivent dans toute l’Angleterre. Alors, tu ne peux pas prendre cela au sérieux ou alors tu devient maboul. Il y a des gens que je connais personnellement et qui sont devenus des mythes du fait de la presse musicale&ldots; je sais que c’est très dur à assumer. Au début, c’est drôle, on joue avec ça, je préfèrerais que les choses soient plus honnêtes , qu’il n’y ait pas de mensonges, qu’on ne doive pas être des personnages exotiques ou glamoureux pour vendre des disques&ldots; Je pense que nous faisons une musique formidable et que nous produisons sur scène l’un des bruits les plus excitants qui soit. Je voudrais que les gens viennent nous voir, s’amusent bien, passent du bon temps et que les rapports en restent là.

Mais je crois que je ne suis pas réaliste.

Richard Bellia (Ritual [belgian fanzine])

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James and The Charlatans look set to sign new record deals in the latest round of A+R activity surrounding Manchester.

James are reportedly in negotiations with Phonogram although they’ve yet to put pen to paper. Rumours of a Phonogram deal have been in the air for some time, and although official sources are tight-lipped, it’s believed that they are close to signing.

James were previously with a major, having moved to Sire from their early days with Factory. But after an apparently unhappy time with the US-based label moved to Rough Trade, having a couple of minor hits last year with Sit Down and Come Home.

James release their first Fontana single – ‘How Was It For You?’ – on April 30th. The b-side of the 45 features ‘Whoops’ recorded live at Manchester Apollo at the end of last year, while the twelve inch contains two more live tracks – the legendary ‘Hymn From A Village’ and ‘How’ – plus ‘Lazy’. The CD line-up reads ‘How Was It For You?’, ‘Undertaker’ and ‘Hymn From A Village’. None of these extra tracks will be available on the group’s new LP, which is set for release at the beginning of June.

James began their recording career in 1983 with Factory Records, producing two acclaimed singles ‘What’s The World’ (later to be covered by The Smiths) and ‘Hymn From A Village’ plus the ‘Village Fire EP’.

Signing to Sire Records in 1985, the group put out two albums ‘Stutter’ and ‘Strip Mine’. during an awkward three year relationship with the label. Leaving Sire, James pursued an independent path, releasing a live album – ‘One Man Clapping’ – through Rough Trade in February 1989.

Following the departure of original drummer Gavan Whelan the nucleus of James – vocalist Tim Booth, bass player Jim Glennie and guitarist Larry Gott – toughened up their sound with the addition of Dave Baynton-Power on drums.

Enjoying two indie hits with ‘Sit Down’ and ‘Come Home’ and a sell-out tour, the group expanded their line-up to a seven piece with multi-instrumentalist Saul Davies, keyboard player Mark Hunter and Andy Diagram on trumpet, joining James ranks.

The group started 1990 taking several coaches from Manchester over to Paris to play the Hacienda’s Temperance Club night out.

James set off on their World Cup tour in June, which includes festival dates at Womad and Glastonbury. The group are still waiting to firm up details for a major Manchester summer show.

Dated 9th April 1990

James are one of the original wave of new Manchester bands, they appeared at the same time as The Smiths, and were accorded the ‘Morrissey’s favourite band’ label. Previously the band have released three albums, and built up a sizeable live following, enabling them to sell out large venues across the country.

Their first single for Fontana will be ‘How Was It For You?’ produced by the band and Nick Garside and mixed by Tim Palmer.

Each format of the single will feature a previously unavailable James track, and will be very much in demand from their very loyal fan base.

James play an extensive UK tour right through June and three shows in May, Cambridge, Brighton and the WOMAD Festival.

The band are guaranteed extensive music press coverage around the release of the single and are recording a John Peel session to transmit in May.

The band’s last single on Rough Trade was a Mark Goodier hit-lister on Radio One and they are no strangers to daytime radio.

PREVIOUSLY UNAVAILABLE TRACKS

7″ ‘WHOOPS’ (live) Recorded in Manchester

12″ ‘HYMN FROM A VILLAGE (live)’ Recorded in Manchester, ‘LAZY’ – New Track not on forthcoming LP

CD ‘HYMN FROM A VILLAGE’ (live), ‘UNDERTAKER – New Track not on forthcoming LP

RELEASE DATE : 30th APRIL, 1990

JIM 5 How Was It For You? / Whoops (Live)

JIM 512 How Was It For You? / Hymn From A Village (Live) / Lazy

JIMCD 5 How Was It For You? / Hymn From A Village (Live) / Undertaker

JAMES have been forced to put their forthcoming tour back six weeks because of delays in recording their first single and LP since signing to Phonogram.

But their agents have carefully booked the rescheduled shows with days off so everyone can watch England’s World Cup games.

The new dates are Cambridge Corn Exchange (May 13), Brighton Top Rank (14), Morecambe WOMAD Festival (19), Glasgow Barrowlands (June 5),Lancaster University (6), Hull City Hall (8), Exeter University (9), Bristol Studio (10), Middlesbrough Town Hall (12), Leeds University (13), Sheffield University (14), Liverpool Royal Court (15), Norwich UEA (17), Nottingham Rock City (18), London Kilburn National Ballroom (19),Birmingham Hummingbird (20) and Glastonbury Festival (23).

All tickets are still valid for the rearranged shows. The dates in Belfast and Dublin are likely to be slotted in at the end of May. Vinylwise, James should have a single out later this month with an LP to follow in June.

JAMES release their first Fontana single “How Was It For You”, on April 30. It’s backed with “Whoops”, recorded live at Manchester Apollo at the end of last year, while the 12-inch contains two more live tracks, “Hymn From A Village”and “How”, plus “Lazy”.

The CD single contains “How Was It For You”, “Undertaker” and “Hymn From A Village”. None of the extra tracks will be available on the group’s new LP which is set for release at the beginning of June. At that time James will be about to start their World Cup Tour which includes festival dates at Womad and Glastonbury. They are still waiting to finalise details of a major Manchester show in the summer. Meanwhile, they have added a tour date at Aberdeen Metro Hotel on June 4.

JAMES release their first Fontana single ‘How Was It For You’ on Monday-a taster for the band’s next album due to hit the shops in June.

The revived Manchester band’s latest effort will also feature a batch of live tracks on the flip­ the 12″ version containing a live version of their classic ‘Hymn From A Village’ plus ‘Whoops’ and’How’.

The live tracks were recorded at Manchester Apollo at the end of last year.

Press release for James’ single How Was It For You.

Official Press Band Biography – Dated 9th April 1990

James release their first Fontana single – ‘How Was It For You?’ – on April 30th. The b-side of the 45 features ‘Whoops’ recorded live at Manchester Apollo at the end of last year, while the twelve inch contains two more live tracks – the legendary ‘Hymn From A Village’ and ‘How’ – plus ‘Lazy’. The CD line-up reads ‘How Was It For You?’, ‘Undertaker’ and ‘Hymn From A Village’. None of these extra tracks will be available on the group’s new LP, which is set for release at the beginning of June.

James began their recording career in 1983 with Factory Records, producing two acclaimed singles ‘What’s The World’ (later to be covered by The Smiths) and ‘Hymn From A Village’ plus the ‘Village Fire EP’.

Signing to Sire Records in 1985, the group put out two albums ‘Stutter’ and ‘Strip-mine’ during an awkward three year relationship with the label. Leaving Sire, James pursued an independent path, releasing a live album – ‘One Man Clapping’ – through Rough Trade in February 1989.

Following the departure of original drummer Gavan Whelan the nucleus of James – vocalist Tim Booth, bass player Jim Glennie and guitarist Larry Gott – toughened up their sound with the addition of Dave Baynton-Power on drums.

Enjoying two indie hits with ‘Sit Down’ and ‘Come Home’ and a sell-out tour, the group expanded their line-up to a seven piece with multi-instrumentalist Saul Davies, keyboard player Mark Hunter and Andy Diagram on trumpet, joining James ranks.

The group started 1990 taking several coaches from Manchester over to Paris to play the Hacienda’s Temperance Club night out.

James set off on their World Cup tour in June, which includes festival dates at WOMAD and Glastonbury. The group are still waiting to firm up details for a major Manchester summer show.

Setlist

Details

• Venue: BBC Maida Vale Studios, London, UK
• Date: 10th April 1990

Songs

• Come Home
• How Was It For You?
• Sunday Morning (cover)

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JAMES release their new LP, “Gold Mother”, through Fontana on June 4. The 10-track LP features the group’s Top 40 single “How Was It For You?” plus their indie hit, “Come Home”.

The album, produced by the group and Nick Garside, includes a guest appearance from Inspiral Carpets who contribute backing vocals to the title track.

Track listing is: “Come Home”, “Government Walls”, “God Only knows”, “How Much Suffering”, “Crescendo”, “How It Was For You?”, “Hang On”, “Walking The Ghost”, “Gold Mother” and “Top of the World”.

The group have added an extra date to their June World Cup tour at St Andrews Fife University on June 4.

Loud, dumb, obnoxious, red-neck Americans. Dontcha just love ’em? There are seven of the Big Mac dickheads in a Soho restaurant, terrorising the lettuce-reared, trendy wimp clientele. The yanks are shoving mountains of pasta into each others’ Grand Canyon gobs, splattering the table cloth with Sandinista blood sauce and chanting “Nicaragua! Grenada! Vietnam!” at the tops of their nuclear deterrent voices.

At a nearby table, one reputedly ideologically sound, sweet young English vegetarian and his two Manchester mates sit laughing at the Stars ‘n’ Stripes gorillas, winding them up, “What movie are you from? Animal House?” says the curly haired one. But the Americans prefer to pick on the girl opposite who’s getting ‘confrontational’ “Come on darling, frighten me with more than your face” they tell her. “Plastic surgery would be worth it, sweetheart” So her boyfriend picks up a bottle and starts to wade in.

At this point, Tim Booth, Larry Gott and Jim Glennie, who were thinking of leaving, decide it’s their moral duty to order a pudding and stick around for the fun.

None of this is quite the sort of behaviour that people would normally associate with James. But then people do have some funny ideas about them. In their seven year history as Manchester’s precious enigma boys, assumptions have grown around James like fungus on a dead fish. Despite the dashing pop energy of last year’s brilliant two singles, ‘Come Home’ and ‘Sit . Down’,they are still broadly conceived of as follows : the Smiths inheritors who slipped through the net; rustic English oddballs, too arrogant to write a decent pop song; village poet laureate mystics with a boring Green-leftie moral certitude streak; bookish wimps, not at all the types to join in with a bunch of meathead US shitizens singing “America The Beautiful”

The latter however is exactly what James were doing the night before I met them. In the intervening 22 hours Tim Booth took in a movie, danced like a nutcase at the Wag Club, slept for four hours and then got woken up by workmen singing “Ooooh Black Betty, bam-a-lam” outside his hotel window. Then in the hotel lobby he met a survivor of the Nazi concentration camps who pinned him down to recount his life story , and when I met him that afternoon he was standing by a large fish tank in a photo studio, herding fish into frame for photographer Cummins.

Tirn Booth is nobody’s caricature. He is intense, open and funny, and after a weird , sleep-deprived day and night, has the manic stare of an amazed child.

“James are going to be a big fish in a big pond,” he tells me with reference to the band’s recent return to major label Fontana / Phonogram, so I take Tim, Jim and Larry down the pun for a bit of a grilling.

Funny ideas about James One : James are a bunch of bleeding-heart, knee-jerk liberals.

Tim : “Well, for a start, you’d have to be referring to the lyrics to make a statement like that because how do knee-jerk liberals play? I’ve never seen David Steel play a guitar and I wouldn’t really know how he’d handle it. As for the lyrics, anyone who actually bothers to look at them will see that they’re a lot darker than that. Do you think that, or is it a provocative statement?”

It could be.

Tim : “Well it’s a good thing I’m not a bottle-on-the-head jerk left wing angry young man isn’t it?”

Booth’s mad eyes are staring rather intensely at me, so I agree. OK. Funny idea number two : James are a folk rock band.

Tim : “Anyone who has seen us live would have that idea changed. There might be certain songs in the set which have that element in them especially the acoustic ones, but that’s at most ten percent. And no one says we’re a heavy rock band, but there’s an equal measure of heavy rock songs in the set.”

Three : You, Tim Booth, would rather read a good book than shag Madonna.

Tim : “I think we’d better leave you with your popular misconceptions. I think you should get some help. I don’t think Madonna is actually… I think she’s quite sexy, I guess. I think I’d rather have safe sex than read a good book. I’d rather have safe sex with Madonna than read a good book. Now, if you’d said Jodie Foster…..”

Four : You, Tim Booth, are a surrealist poet who nicked all his ideas from Arthur Rimbaud.

Tim : “No, Anton Artaud please. I can’t read French anyway… I find poetry boring.”

Five : None of you have sufficiently similar musical tastes to want to play the same song at the same time.

Larry : “Probably not too far off the truth there.”

Tim : “That’s a nice one. They’re getting a bit soft now.”

Six : James moment has come and gone

Tim : “Well we can’t say anything about that, can we? We’re just going to have to show you. We’ll show whoever decides that. We’re going to make them all eat fish.”

Aside from the fact that they’re suckers for a dumb fish joke, what becomes quickly apparent from locking antlers with Tim, Larry and Jim is that they’re in confident combative mood. There are good reasons for this. A year back when the new breed of Manchester bands were getting geared up for Top of the Pops, James were still recovering from an unproductive period with Sire.

Three awkward years on the major label had left them without even the money to sue the name crowding Halo James (“He deserves a good kicking”). As they expanded to a seven-piece they were for a while planning to change their name, feeling that they were by no means the same band who put out Hymn From A Village in Factory in 83.

Tim Booth was, however, outvoted. They kept the name and by the end of the year, they’d had two glorious singles out on Rough Trade, kept their dedicated fans happy with a live LP, One Man Clapping, and had their summer. recorded, imminently released album ‘Gold Mother’ picked up by a major label.

The new James songs, of which the single ‘How Was It For You’ is the first unleashed, are fiercer, poppier and funkier than before, without losing any of the humpbacked dementia. They would seem to be going through the same sort of renaissance that The Fall went through with ‘Extricate’

Tim “We’ve all been stripping things down and trying to make the songs more simple and more direct in what we’re trying to say”

Do you think you’ve been musically arrogant in the past? Expected too much?

Tim: “Not from…. There were definitely people who were reading us on our level, and a lot in Manchester. We always got that feedback there…. If you ever see us play in Manchester, they’ll tear you apart if they ever found out who you were. You’ll see. It’s a really different kettle of fish there. Oh dear, nearly said ball game.”

“But some people have been able to respond to us on the level that we take ourselves, which is very seriously. I mean, we don’t take ourselves… I mean yeah, we were difficult, we were arrogant, we were very protective of our babies, our songs. We thought they were masterpieces and we wouldn’t let anyone else touch them. That ended up with us hiring producers who we didn’t let do their jobs. Now we’re more relaxed about it.”

Lying somewhere in Bristol is an entire student thesis written entirely about James. This would make for curious reading because as a songwriter, it has to be said that Booth is a bit of a schizo. On the one hand, there’s the fraught wordplay of the likes of Stutter or Whoops. In the other cranial hemisphere there’s the liberal protest songs, ecologically concerned, like Sky Is Falling, anti-Thatcher, like Promised Land, or bleeding heart for the disadvantaged like Sit Down.

So far from the new album, it emerges that How Was It For You? is about using drink and drugs to evade sexual guilt, How Much Suffering is about English emotional restraint and Gold Mother is about mother courage in child birth. Just occassionally it seems that Halo James would be an appropriate name for Booth’s own band. Is he angling for a sainthood or what? Fortunately, God Only Knows from the new album suggests otherwise.

Tim : “It’s about people speaking in the name of God, or thinking you can speak in the name of God, which is a highly dubious claim. Because a long time ago, I used to speak in the name of God.”

What do you mean?

Tim : “I had that kind of self-righteos zeal that only people who think they’re favoured by God can have. It was a long time ago, but I’m still very attracted to people who try and live their life by a thought-out code, and then find their life has another idea about it and it goes its own way. The more you say Thou Shall Not to anything in your life, the harder it becomes to resist. It’s like you build it up. So someone like Jimmy Swaggart I find very interesting. You know, the public posture contrasted with the private personality.”

“It’s like all the heavy left wing people, when they get to about 60, they all become fascists. It’s like they can’t hold back any longer. And all the atheists you know suddenly become born again pillocks.”

Does that mean the more you try and be a reasonable bloke who just happens to sing in a band, the bigger wanker you become? Hypothetically speaking, of course.

Tim : “No, it means that if I started telling people I was a regular guy in a band, which I don’t, but if I pretended I was, then I’d be a very irregular guy…. It doesn’t mean I’d be a wanker. An irregular wanker, perhaps, which I am. Not a man of habit.”

Back in 83, with Tim Booth fresh out of Manchester University drama studies, James put out Hymn From A Village, the song which was to line them up as the next big post punk jangle. A sprightly piece of off-kilter guitar pop, it’s mostly remarkable for a lyric which snaps at the inadequacy of pop-song language. So maybe the moralising streak in Booth, the bit that keeps coming up with – songs about wicked governments, evil preachers and irresponsible sex, is fired by plain old guilt. Do you feel guilty about doing something as frivolous as singing in a pop group?

Tim : “In terms of how you define pop, I don’t consider myselfto be in a pop group. You know, we make music and I don’t feel at all guilty about that because we make brilliant music and give a lot to people and get a lot for ourselves.  I mean, unless I become Mother Theresa or a lawyer or something, there’s no moral high ground in most people’s jobs, to absolve you of guilt. You know, unless you’re Bob Geldof. So I really don’t feel like that at all, and I don’t think any of us do.”

“I hardly ever express just one viewpoint in a song. Usually, there’s lots of different attitudes in them. I don’t understand how people can have clear cut attitudes to basically anything, except this government. I don’t understand how people can have clear cut attitudes about morality, about sex, about drugs. You know ‘DRUGS ARE GOOD’, ‘DRUGS ARE BAD’. Who can say? I don’t take liberal viewpoints.”

“I don’t believe there’s any morality. I don’t believe in morality. If I have to take a decision on something the decision will be practical, not moral. Liberalism is a lot to do with guilt and morality. If you’re going to make me fight out of that corner, you bastard.”

Neither wet liberal apologist, nor in-tuned poet nutcase, Booth is maybe too much of a slippery character to fit in with the conspicious pop personalities. Last time around, while the Morrisseys and Mark Smiths ran off with the miserable bugger prizes and the Housemartins stole the right-on plaudits, James were left muddling along in the margins. Too leftfield, too flighty as musicians, too cool for their own good. This time round though, there’s a focused, hard-headed determination in the James camp that comes across both in Booth’s righteous indignation at my James jibes and in the kick-ass edge (honest) to the new songs. The fired-up Tim Booth who sits at the back of a North London pub spouting lyrics in defence of his songs and telling me I’m as rude as the Americans in the restaurant, hardly matches up with the serene, angelic portraits painted of Tim in the past. Has “the little woolly lamb” who skipped out of Manchester University changed much over the years?

Tim : “Yeah, I’m born again now. I mean how do you answer a question like that? Y’know, I’m much more handsome than I ever was and more modest. No, but we’ve been through a lot of crap. A lot of strange experiences. We’ve got a lot out of James. It’s been our focal point, and the more people who wrote us off, the more it’s been, well, they’re going to have to eat humble pie.”

“There was one day when we talked about packing the whole thing in, for about an hour, but after that it was ‘We will fight them on the beaches!’ Because the music turns us on so much. It’s like we’d be having all these business problems, but the rehearsals would be brilliant. You get a song, and you lose yourself in a song and you feel fantastic. There’s no way we were going to give that up. And we knew that when we play live, we could take people to the same place.”

Last October, when the James tour came to the London T&C Club 2, they took the young dedicated and hot as f–k crowd way out to rapture and back. Frantic, climatic and ebuillent, wiht Booth losing himself totally in spasms of electric eel dancing, it was far from any creaky-jointed nearly-men display. On that kind of form, when they play at Glastonbury at the end of their June World Cup tour, then James have every chance of stealing the Happy Monday’s thunder.

James are, of course, thoroughly affronted by any suggestion that the rise of Mancunian dance society has left them a bit out in the cold.

Tim : “You don’t know how we relate to that and what we do in our private lives. Yeah, that’s how it’s perceived, but the reality, that’s a different matter. If it’s seen like that then OK, but we don’t want to part of the scene, because that isn’t going to last and there’s going to be a backlash. It’ll be fine for the Mondays and The Roses and the bands that get through, the good bands. But that’s it. And that was 1989.”

There is however, nothing blinkered about James current course. There were remix discussions going on last year with A Guy Called Gerald. Graham 808 State Massey danced-up their Come Home single although it was never given an official release. James are just smart enough to scowl at the bandwagon jumping implications of a rumoured Andy Weatherall remix of Sit Down (“It’ll make us the most un-hip band in Manchester”) and wily enough to promise that the dance mix of the already eight minute long rambling groove jam Gold Mother complete with backing vocals by Inspiral Carpets will only come out as a b-side.

It is time for the funny ideas about Booth and his band to binned for good. Whatever weight of history they have in tow, James in the 90s are not going to sink beneath the raves. They’re sleaker and groovier than ever before and Tim Booth is a match for anyone who wants to try and box him in. Well, for a lettuce-reared, caring, sensitive, sweet young Englishman he is anyway.

Do you think, Tim, you might one day write a song about, say knobbing Jodie Foster on the back of a motorbike?

Tim : “Actually, that’s the next single Knobbing! Isn’t that a crude word? I’m a bit more romantic than that. So ‘no’ is the answer to that, I mean, who would be driving for a start? And you know, crash helmets and so on, I’d never be able to keep an erection going while driving a motorbike. My technique would suffer….”

Cool as Hadd–k for sure!

Interviewer : Now on a major label, Phonogram’s Fontana, James having a hit single with How Was It For You? and the band are downstairs in our basement studio. Tim Booth on vocals, sometimes known as Maharishi Booth. Bit of a guru on the quiet

Tim : Not round my parts mate. You come down here and tell me that to my face.

Interviewer : I love reading about your dream though. Which featured,

Tim : (groans)

Interview : Well, you told the story once, it comes back to you

Tim : Yeah, the guy can’t write. He got it completely wrong as we did the interview on a train so he couldn’t hear his tape back afterwards. It’s embarrassing

Interview : But was Jed Clampett and Jim Morrisson in it? Nurse Crachett

Tim : I’m afraid so, but it had a punchline to it. It had a point to it and it didn’t read like that. It’s an old dream too as well, you know. My dreams are much more clinical nowadays since I’ve been having the treatment.

Interviewer : Did you have one last night?

Tim : That’s a very personal question isn’t it?

Interviewer : I suppose it is

Tim : How Was It For You?

Interviewer : Dreams are very personal things.

Tim : I can’t remember. I can’t remember. I’d better censor it. I think you’d get cut off on air.

Interviewer : Listen, have you had to change at all, going to a major record label? Has there been any compromise along the way?

Tim : No, because we actually recorded the LP beforehand so part of the deal with Phonogram was that they had to sign for completed masters of the LP. So we’ve just handed them the tape and they said “Yep” and so we actually haven’t had any problem like that. They’ve given us some input, some ideas that they’ve suggested, and we either say “yay” or “nay”. But they kind of seem to respect us at the moment.

Interviewer : How long that will last is anyone’s guess. Alright, a song Tim please….

James are a crazy seven-piece from Manchester who everyone used to think were vegan buddhists but weren’t really cos they’re all like really normal guys and they want to talk about the music, right, and not meditation and chunky cardigans etc. With their single How Was It For You? gliding into the Top Forty, Smash Hits slipped into its sandals and spoke to Tim Booth, singer 28, about like the James concept, man.

1. Tim Booth was born in picturesque Bradford but has lived in not so picturesque Manchester for ten years

2. He once worked in a Yorkshire brewery. “That was quite weird, quite aggressive. I don’t have a Yorkshire accent and I had to put one on. Friends of mine who’d worked there before had been beaten up because they didn’t have the right accent.”

3. James came together in 1983 and they thought their name was “very original” then. “But now it’s ten a penny, it’s disgusting.” spits Tim.

4. Touring was once a problem. “Tour promoters thought ‘James’ might be a poet, so I used to go on at concerts and pretend I was a poet, and that the audience had been conned into thinking they were seeing a band. I had to write a poem in the day and narrate it to the audience,” mutters Tim.

5. They’re always being accused of being intellectual. “I think that’s a dead end,” argues Tim. “Intellectuals tend to be people who’ve got overdeveloped brains and underdeveloped hearts.”

6. Seeing James t-shirts has saved them from bankruptcy. Lester in Beats International wore one on Top of the Pops. “We’re going to give us music and open up a retail outlet,” jests Tim. Ho, ho!

7. In the past they’ve meditated a great deal. “When you’re leading the kind of lifestyle that we lead in the band, you just need something to balance you out and you just gonna be off your head all the time.”

8. Tim thinks happiness is not a permanent state of mind. “If it is them there’s something wrong with your hormones.”

Their forthcoming album for Fontana, Gold Mother, is not merely James best studio recording so far, but the most accomplished example of what used to be called indie-rock that 1990 has seen. And as Jim Glennie says Beats International have already taken a James T-shirt to number one. All they need now is to match it with a record.

The omens are unmistakeable. The smart money says that, at long last, James are about to happen.

“This time we’re prepared to take the breaks,” Jim Glennie says. “And we weren’t in the past. That’s the difference.”

“We’ve created a situation where we could have been successful, we could have gone for it and done everything, but we didn’t, we held back. And we lost our chance.”

Today, you could get a donkey Bloggsed up in flares and Kickers and it would probably be hailed as the next wonder from the land of the Orange Buses.

Despite selling upwards of 2,000 concert tickets in most cities – more in Manchester – and despite shifting two grand’s worth of their distinctive t-shirts this week, James were virtually blacklisted by last year’s Madchester media circus.

With their back catalogue of sophisticated oblique pop, James clearly didn’t fit into the popular conception of a cartoon world filled with bowl-headed, so-called scallies berserk on horse tranquilisers and bent on mischief.

James were a Manchester band, not a Madchester band. And Madchester was about the Mondays, The Stone Roses, 808 State, Oldham’s Inspiral Carpets and a slew of promotion play-off candidates like The New Fast Automatic Daffodils.

Maybe James (est 1983) had been around a bit too long and outstayed their welcome, failing to match previous glowing references from the press with attendant hits. Or perhaps it was the Morrissey seal of approval, priceless when he bestowed it upon James in 1985 but now the equivalent of the black spot, that dropped them into the perceived no man’s land between the bright young things and the old Manchester of New Order, The Fall and The Smiths.

Either way, James fell victim to a conspiracy of silence. This rankles with guitar talent and conviction man Larry Gott.

“James is not the band Manchester forgot,” he says testily. “Once we were the media’s darlings but because we didn’t do what was expected of us (touring America with The Smiths for example) we were forgotten about. It didn’t mean anything to us. Our audiences and record sales kept growing.”

Tim Booth is also at pains to put Manchester matters into perspective.

“You have to divide what’s really going on in Manchester – the bands who know and respect each other – and what’s written in the press. The journalist conception of the Manchester scene is totally different to the reality of how the bands relate to one another which is, on the whole, very good.”

“And we are part of that. That’s why we’ve taken the Mondays and the Carpets and the Daffodils on tour; that’s why we were taken on tour by The Smiths, The Fall and New Order. It’s nothing like what’s written about by journalists from the South.”

James conspicious failure to do the business was partly due to their ill-starred three year deal with Sire Records, signed in 1985, which was so grim it nearly finished the band off. Even today, they groan at the mention of the company that promised so much – not least the chance to share a label with band favourites Talking Heads and The Ramones – and delivered nothing but misery.

Stutter and Strip Mine, their two albums for Sire, were both fine spiky offerings but each received a negligible push from a label which was more concerned with its American operations. The records duly evaporated. The band’s attitude did not help.

“We were idealistic,” says a rueful Jim. “We thought the music would win through, regardless of whether or not we did any interviews or didn’t release anything for years or whatever. It was just naivety.”

These were dispiriting times for the then four-piece James, even when the contract expired, as Larry explains with the black humour of hindsight.

“We nearly called it a day there and then, when Gavan (Whelan, James original drummer) said, Well that’s it. And we knew that whatever the next person said would decide whether it went one way or another.”

Glennie, Booth and Gott opted to soldier on, eventually recruiting new drummer Dave Baynton-Power. They returned to indie-land and Rough Trade for the singles Sit Down and Come Home and an acclaimed live album One Man Clapping. The album’s lengthy stint in the indie charts proved that there were still plenty of James fans out there, after all.

For most of 88 and 89 James paid the rent not as musicians, but, bizarrely, from the proceeds of the range of James t-shirts designed by a fan in London. The shirts have ‘Ja’ on the front, ‘m’ on one arm and ‘e’ on the back and ‘s’ on the other arm. ‘Poor as Fuck’ might have been more appropriate.

“It was ridiculous” recalls Booth. “While we were producing Gold Mother last year, none of us even had cassette machines that worked properly to listen to the masters. Our record players were useless too. We’d been on £30 a week for about seven years and we had no money for the necessary technology.”

This is unlikely to be the state of affairs from now on. It’s early days, but the new seven-piece James are enjoying a productive relationship with Fontana.

The fiery How Was It For You?, first fruit of the new deal, shifted 15,000 copies in the North West alone in its first week of release and the label is doing all it can to ensure the record’s chart success.

Tim Palmer, who worked on the re-release of the House Of Love’s Shine On, had remixed How Was It For You? for single consumption, with James blessing, and Fontana are releasing the track in a variety of formats, with bewildering permutations of exclusive extra tracks.

James, though not entirely happy with this chart chicanery, have spent enough time of the metaphorical arses to realise that some compromises are worth making.

“It’s a fix really,” Glennie concedes. “But at the moment, we need that push. Hopefully, when we’re in a situation when we don’t need it anymore we can stop bloody doing it.”

Of course, there are remixes and there are remixes. And it’s something of a surprise that James, stalwarts of the pre-Acid house, no disco-dancing, indie-kid brigade are taking the plung with a dancefloor remix of their next release.

Paul Oakenfold and Andy Weatherall (the men who made Happy Mondays dance) are possibles to rework Come Home as is Inspirals and Erasure remixer Flood. And somewhere in the James tape cupboard is a remix by Graham Massey of 808 State, which, reckons Jim. is, “more bassy but too muffled to release.”

The band had it done last summer – “When it wasn’t sofashionable,” quips Booth.

“Yeah, dance mixes are a departure from what we were doing two years ago, But since then the Mondays and Fools Gold and countless others have proved that there are no longer two camps of dance and rock, that it doesn’t matter which area you work in as long as the song itself is good.”

Inspired by the distant sight of Strangeways Prison’s wrecked rotunda, Jim and Larry toy with the idea of a “Strangeways Rooftops Dance Mix” of Come Home with the former indie hit’s spiralling hook replaced by incesssant police sirens and an opening sample of a rioter shouting “Good morning, Manchester!” All agree it would be mega-classic. They want to call it Come Down, but realise that then the song wouldn’t make sense.

This month’s Gold Mother is a measured, tempting collection with confidence to spare. The fractured wit and melodic inventiveness of Stutter and Strip Mine are still there but the context is new, with recruits Mark Hunter (keyboards), Andy Diagram (trumpet) and Saul Davies (everything but specifically violin) bringing extra colour to what are some of James finest songs.

How Was It For You? and Come Home are already well known as wild things with hearts of ice and Top Of The World finds a pitch of poignancy that James have never reached before.

The textures are many and varied, the sentiments intriguing and more readily intelligible if not exactly commercialised. Weak links are few: this is how James always should have sounded.

Booth’s lyric-writing, noted for its tendency to sharp contrasts of specifics and abstracts, has also moved into focus. God Only Knows is hilarious, skewering religious head-the-balls of the Swaggart and Bakker school with some cruelly apposite sampling from Satellite God-slot programmes and the priceless lines ‘If God is in his image, Almighty must be small”. Booth does not bother to disguise his contempt for today’s cheap goons who pass for religious authority.

“If God made man in his image then it doesn’t reflect too well on God, does it?” he grins. “Man is a total screw-up and if there is a spirit or meaning of life then man clearly has no idea what it is. He is much better keeping his mouth shut rather than saying, Follow me as your intermediary.”

Maybe the title track gives the most telling clue to James present concerns. Gold Mother deals with the birth of Tim’s son Ben in graphic technicolour, but it’s no lame bout of new-man drivel. The song is positively peculiar, an angular bass-driven chant with backing vocals by everyone’s favourite obstetricians the Inspiral Carpets.

“Have you ever seen a woman giving birth?” asks Tim.

Only on the telly.

“It’s not the same on the telly”

Back at the James offices, the aforementioned Ben is having a messy late lunch and the band are poring over a limited edition of How Was It For You? in a particularly desirable metallic sleeve. It comes with a free James logo stencil, which Jim reckons will kill off their T-shirt sales in one fell blow.

Talk turns to which of Larry’s guitars will look best on the inevitable Top of the Pops slot, and to the Gold Mother tour, which begins this week, coinciding with the World Cup. Instead of a support band, James will be screening the match of the evening with a DJ on at the same time, so you can dance or watch the game. Or both.

“It’s not as if we’re a great football band or anything but people will want to see the game, which seems fair enough,” says the obliging Tim.

JAMES, currently enjoying their first Top 40 hit with ‘How Was It For You?’,have announced changes to their forthcoming tour, including the addition of two nights at Blackpool’s Empress Ballroom (August 3 & 4), scene of The Stone Roses shows last summer.

Special guests are to be confirmed and tickets are priced £7 from the usual agents. They now start their tour at Aberdeen Ritzy (June 3), and not the previous date, with their re-arranged Irish shows taking place at Dublin McGonagles (27) and Belfast Queens University (28). Their new LP ‘Gold Mother’ is set for release at the beginning of June and they appear at WOMAD this weekend (May 18-20)

Besides James, other acts appearing at this years WOMAD Festival in Morecambe Bay (May 18-20) include Gil Scott-Heron,Thomas Mapfumo And The Blacks Unlimited, Dick Gaughan, Arrow and Jah Wobble And The Invaders Of The Heart.

JAMES, currently enjoying their first Top 40 hit with “How Was It For You”, are to headline the Blackpool Empress Ballroom, the same venue The Stone Roses sold out last summer. James are playing two shows at the venue, on August 3 and 4. Tickets, priced £7, are available from the usual agents. Special guests and DJs will be confirmed nearer the time.

James have also rearranged their Irish shows which now take place at Dublin McGonagles on June 27 and Belfast Queen’s University (28). The tour also now starts at Aberdeen Ritzy on June 3, not 4 as previously announced. The band’s new LP, “Gold Mother”, is set for release by Fontana at the beginning of June.

JAMES release their new album,’Gold Mother’, on Fontana on June 4.

The eagerly awaited artefact contains ten tracks, including the band’s recent hit How Was It For You, plus Come Home, which they previously released as a single for their last label Rough Trade.

The other songs on the album are: ‘Government Walls’, ‘God Only Knows’, ‘How Much Suffering’, ‘Crescendo’, ‘Hang On’,’Walking The Ghost’, ‘Gold Mother’ and ‘Top Of The World.

And adding to the band’s reputation, which has been helped along by the craze for all things Madchester, there’s a guest appearance from men of the moment lnspiral Carpets, who popped on to record some backing vocals on the title track. The album was produced by the group along with Nick Garside.

James have added a date to their June tour,at St Andrews Fife University on June 4.

This is the band itinerary from 1990 James June World Cup Tour.

The 28-page programme from the 1990 Gold Mother tour featured band bios, interviews and pictures. This copy is signed by the band. Click on an image to browse the tour programme.

Out on Fontana on June 25, the single is taken from their “Gold Mother” LP which entered the national chart at 16. It’s backed by the previously unreleased “Fire Away” and a live version of “Stutter” recorded at Manchester Apollo last year.

Weekend tickets for the band’s shows at Blackpool Empress Ballroom on August 3 and 4 are on sale for £12 from usual agents. The band have had to cancel shows in Dublin on June 27 and Belfast (28) due to recording commitments.

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Front Man with James, Tim Booth was THE sensation of this year’s Glastonbury Festival. James have a new single, ‘Come Home’ and a new album, ‘Gold Mother’, out now on Fontana

WHERE DID YOU GO LAST NIGHT?

To bed

WHAT WAS THE LAST THING YOU THOUGHT OF BEFORE YOU WENT TO SLEEP?

I’m too tired to sleep.

WHAT DID YOU DREAM?

That I was asleep dreaming I was awake.

WHAT WILL YOU DO TODAY?

Move home.

WHAT IS YOUR GREATEST FEAR?

Lingering pain.

WHO ARE YOUR FAVOURITE SINGERS/MUSICIANS?

Nick Cave, James.

IF YOU COULD BE SOMEONE ELSE, ALIVE OR DEAD, WHO WOULD YOU BE?

Who wants to be dead? God.

WHAT ANNOYS YOU THE MOST?

Guilt trips.

WHAT DO YOU CONSIDER YOUR GREATEST STRENGTH?

Optimistic determination.

WHAT DO YOU CONSIDER YOUR GREATEST WEAKNESS?

Guilt trips me up.

WHAT ARE YOUR FAVORITE RECORDS?

“Horses”; “Mercy Seat”

WHAT WAS THE LAST ACT YOU SAW LIVE?

World Party.

WHAT DO YOU ALWAYS CARRY WITH YOU?

A hanky.

WHO WOULD YOU MOST LIKE TO KILL IF YOU COULD?

Thatcher; Waddington; Terra Blanche; Alistair Burnett; Paul Daniels (getting petty here).

WHAT WOULD YOU FIND DOWN THE BACK OF YOUR SOFA?

Keys, coins, my wallet (I hope)

WHO WOULD YOU MOST LIKE TO MEET?

Doris Lessing; Patti Smith; Sam Sheppard; Robert Anton Wilcox.

WHAT BOOK ARE YOU READING AT THE MOMENT?

“A Confederacy Of Dunces”.

WHAT WAS THE LAST FILM YOU SAW?

“Jesus of Montreal”.

WHAT DO YOU NEVER MISS ON TV?

“Cheers”.

WHAT DID YOU LAST RECEIVE IN THE POST?

Bills.

WHAT’S YOUR FAVOURITE WORD?

Fingers.

WHAT WOULD YOU SAY TO AN ALIEN?

“Take me with you”.

WHAT MAKES YOU LAUGH?

Paid professionals: Connelly; Martin; Williams; Wright; Hegley; Redmond; Elton; Atkinson; “Cheers”; “Roseanne”.

WHAT MAKES YOU CRY?

Being human

HOW WOULD YOU LIKE TO DIE?

Gently.

WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE YOUR EPITAPH TO BE?

“Nice try”

Their T-shirt went to number one in Britain and now JAMES aim to follow it up with their debut LP for a major. So how far are they the band that Manchester forgot, or just a Madchester crazed media overlooked?

May Day in Manchester. Thermometers are nudging the 80 degrees mark and everyone’s stupid with the heat. It’s too sweaty too wear flares, so the city’s youth have left their flapping dungarees at home in favour of surf jams and questionable Bermuda shorts. So much for the Rainy City – this is more like Torremolinos.

On a postage-stamp of parkland near their city centre offices, the founder members of Manchester’s best kept secret lounge on dry grass. Today’s Today says that record smog levels make sunbathing a high-risk activity, akin to changing a lightbulb while standing in a bucket of water, but James couldn’t give a bugger.

The charming and amiable trio of Jim Glennie, Larry Gott and singer/wordsmith Tim booth are keen to relax – a wise move considering that their workload is about to increase considerably. After nearly eight years of diligent gigging, an unhappy marriage with a major label followed by 18 months in limbo, a succession of managers and enough false starts to wear down the most patient of artists… all these trials are about to pay off.

Their forthcoming debut album for Fontana, ‘Gold Mother’, is not merely James’ best studio recording so far, but the most accomplished example of what used to be called Indie-rock that 1990 has seen. And as bassist Glennie says, Beats International have already taken a James T-shirt to number one in Britain. All they need to do now is to match it with a record.

The omens are unmistakable. The smart money says that, at long last, James are about to happen. ’’This time we’re prepared to take the breaks,” Jim Glennie says. “And we weren’t in the past. That’s the difference. We’ve created a situation where we could have been successful, we could have gone for it and done everything, but we didn’t, we held back. And we lost our chance.” Today you could get a donkey ‘Blogged up’ in flares and Kickers and it would probably be hailed as the next wonder from the land of the Orange Buses.

Despite selling upwards of 2,000 concert tickets in most cities – more in Manchester – and despite shifting two grand’s worth of their distinctive T-shirts this week, James were virtually blacklisted by last year’s Madchester media circus.

With their back catalogue of sophisticated oblique pop, James clearly didn’t fit into the conception of a cartoon world filled with bowl-headed, so called scallies berserk on horse tranquillisers and bent on mischief. James were a Manchester band, not a Madchester band. And Madchester was about the Monday’s, The Stone Roses, 808 State, Oldham’s Inspiral Carpets and a slew of promotion play-off candidates like The New Fast Automatic Daffodils.

Maybe James (est 1983) had been around a bit too long and outstayed their welcome, failing to match previous glowing references from the press with attendant hits. Or perhaps it was the Morrissey seal of approval, priceless when he bestowed it on James in 11985 but now the equivalent of the Black Spot, that dropped them into the perceived no man’s land between the bright young things and the old Manchester of New Order, The Fall and The Smiths.

Either way, James fell victim to a conspiracy of silence. This rankles with guitar talent and conviction man Larry Gott. “James is not the band that Manchester forgot,” he says testily. “Once we were the medias darlings, but because we didn’t do what they expected of us (touring America with The Smiths for instance) we were forgotten about. It didn’t mean anything to us. Our audiences and record sales kept growing.”

Tim Booth is also at pains to put Manchester matters in perspective. “You have to divide what’s really going on in Manchester – the bands who know and respect each other – and what’s written in the press. The journalistic conception of the Manchester scene is totally different to the reality of how the bands relate to one another which is, on the whole, very good. And we are part of that. That’s why we’ve taken the Mondays and the Carpets and the Daffodils on tour; that’s why we were taken on tour by The Smiths, The Fall and New Order. It’s nothing like what’s written about by journalists from the South.”

James’ conspicuous failure to do the business was partly due to their ill-starred three year deal with Sire Records, signed in 1985, which was so grim it nearly finished the band off. Even today they groan at the mention of the company that promised so much – not least to share a label with band favourites Talking Heads and The Ramones – and delivered nothing but misery. ‘Stutter’ and ‘Strip-mine’, their two albums for Sire, were both fine, spiky offerings, but each received a negligible push from the label which was more concerned with its American operations. The records duly evaporated. The bands’ attitude did not help. ‘We were idealistic”, says a rueful Jim. ”We thought the music would win through, regardless of whether or not we we did interviews, or didn’t release anything for years or whatever. It was just naivety.”

These were dispiriting times for the then four-piece James, even when the contract expired, as Larry explains with the black humour of hindsight. ”We nearly called it a day there and then, when Gavin (Whelan, James’ original drummer) said, well that’s it. And we knew that whatever the next person said would decide whether it went one way or another.” Glennie, Booth and Gott opted to soldier on, eventually recruiting new drummer Dave Baynton-Power. They returned to indie-land and Rough Trade for the singles ‘Sit Down’ and ‘Come Home’ and an acclaimed live album, ‘One Man Clapping’. The album’s lengthy stint in the indie charts proved that there were still plenty of James fans out there after all.

For most of ’88 and ’89 James paid the rent not as musicians but bizarrely with the proceeds of the range of James T-shirts designed by a fan in London. The T-shirts have a ‘Ja’ on the front, ‘m’ on one arm and ‘e’ on the back and ‘s’ on the other arm. ‘Poor As Fuck’ might have been more appropriate. ‘It was ridiculous,” recalls Booth. “While we were producing ‘Gold Mother’ last year none of us even had cassette machines that worked properly to listen to the masters. Our record players were useless too. We’d been on £30 a week for about seven years and we had no money for the necessary technology.

This is unlikely to be the state of affairs from now on. It’s early days, but the new seven-piece James are enjoying a productive relationship with Fontana. The fiery ‘How Was It For You’, first fruit of the new deal shifted 15,000 copies in the North West alone during its first week of release and the label is doing it all it can to ensure the record’s chart success. Tim Palmer, who worked on the release of The House Of Love’s ‘Shine On’ has remixed ‘How Was It’ for single consumption with James’ blessings and Fontana are releasing the track in a variety of formats with bewildering permutations of exclusive extra tracks.

James, though not entirely happy with this chart chicanery have spent enough time on their metaphorical arses to realise that some compromises are worth making. “It is a fix really,” Glennie concedes. “But at this moment we do need that push. Hopefully when we’re in a situation where we don’t need it anymore we can stop bloody doing it.” Of course there are remixes and there are remixes. And it’s something of a surprise that James, stalwarts of the pre-Acid House, no disco-dancing, indie-kid brigade, are taking the plunge with a dancefloor remix for their next release.
Paul Oakenfold and Andy Weatherall (the men who made Happy Mondays dance) are possibles to re-work ‘Come Dance’ as is Inspirals and Erasure remixer Flood. And somewhere in the James tape cupboard is a remix by Graham Massey of 808 State which, reckons Jim, is more “bassy but too muffled to release.” The band had it done last summer – “When it wasn’t so fashionable, “quips Booth. “Yeah, dance mixes are a departure from what we were doing two years ago. But since then the Mondays and ‘Fools Gold’ and countless others have proved that there are no longer two camps of dance and rock, that it doesn’t matter which are you work in as long as the song itself is good.”

Inspired by the distant sight of Strangeways Prison’s wrecked Rotunda, Jim and larry toy with the idea of a ‘Strangeways Rooftop Dance Mix’ of ‘Come Home’ with the former indie hit’s spiralling hook replaced by incessant police sirens and an opening sample of a rioter shouting, “Good Morning Manchester!” All agree it would be mega-classic. They want to call it ‘Come Down’ but realise that then the song wouldn’t make sense.

This month’s Gold Mother is a measured, tempting collection with confidence to spare. The fractured wit and melodic inventiveness of ‘Stutter’ and ‘Strip-mine’ are still there but the context is new with recruits Mark Hunter (keyboards), Andy Diagram (trumpet) and Saul Davies (everything but specifically violin) bringing extra colour to what are some of James’ finest songs. ‘How Was It For You?’ and ‘Come Home’ are already well-known as wild things with heart and ice and ‘Top Of The World’ finds a pitch of poignancy that James have never reached before. The textures are many and varied, the sentiments intriguing and more readily intelligible if not exactly commercialised. Weak links are few: this is how James always should have sounded.

Booth’s lyric writing, noted for its tendency to sharp contrasts of specifics and abstracts has also moved into focus. ‘God Only Knows’ is hilarious, skewering religious head-the-balls of the Swaggart and Bakker school with some cruelly apposite sampling from Satellite God-slot programmes and the priceless lines, “If God is in his image/Almighty must be small”. Booth does not bother to disguise his contempt for today’s cheap goons who pass for religious authority. “If God made man in his image then it doesn’t reflect too well on God does it?” he grins. “Man is a total screw-up and if there is a spirit or meaning of life then man clearly has no idea what it is. He is much better off keeping his mouth shut rather than saying, Follow me as your intermediary.”
Maybe the title track gives the most telling clue to James’ present concerns. ‘Gold Mother’ deals with the birth of Tim’s son Ben in graphic Technicolor but it’s no lame bout of new-man drivel. The song is positively peculiar, an angular bass-driven chant with backing vocals by everyone’s favourite obstetricians the Inspiral Carpets. “Have you ever seen a woman giving birth?” asks Tim…. Only on the telly….” It’s not the same on the telly……”

Back at the James offices, the aforementioned Ben is having a messy late lunch and the band are poring over a limited edition of ‘How Was It For You?’ in a particularly desirable metallic sleeve. It comes with a free James logo stencil which Jim reckons will kill off their T-shirt sales in one fell blow. Talk turns to which of Larry’s guitars will look best on the inevitable Top Of The Pops slot and to the Gold Mother tour which begins this week coinciding with the World Cup. Instead of a support band, James will be screening the match of the evening with a DJ on at the same time so you can dance or watch the game. Or both.

“It’s not as if we’re a great football band or anything but people will want to see the game which seems fair enough,” says the obliging Tim.

JAMES (above) have reportedly been offered the support slot to DAVID BOWIE at his Maine Road gig in Manchester on August 7.

The band, currently in the Top 40 with a remix of ‘Come Home’, are set to play the major show, although there was no official comment from the group as NME went to press.

The James story follows rumours that the INSPIRAL CARPETS had been offered one of the Bowie support slots for his two dates at Milton Keynes Bowl. They turned the gig down because of their headlining appearance at the Reading Festival later in August.

They used to dress up in muesli and eat sandals whilst meditating on their heads, but now they’re a gleaming multi-membered pop combo. Are James jessies or the finest live band in Britain? Stuart Maconie jumps on their tour bus and finds himself in teen pop heaven (!!!)

“Two weeks ago they said ‘We’ve got the Railway Children coming down here today’ and ‘I thought ‘Bloody Hell! Jenny Agutter and all that lot from that film’. Then they said to me ‘James will be here afternoon’ so I thought ‘James who?’ Was that two sugars, did you say?

PC68 is clearly the odd good apple that gets the whole force a bad name; a fine man whose notion of community policing extends to making coffee for journalists and keeping you up to date with the World Cup scores. His beat, happily, takes in that part of downtown Sheffield which includes the HMV shop and thus, it is he who is called upon to cast a firm but paternal eye over the drooling drug nympho teenies whenever rock phenomena such as Springsteen or Edsel Auctioneer are in town for a ‘signing’.

Downstairs in the shop, a disparate crowd of young folk are gathering excitedly to have their CDs, shoes, faces and tea towels signed by their favourite group whose current glorious ascent is testimony to the powers of human spirit and the importance of good t-shirts. Eighteen months ago, James were matchwood on the cruel and rocky shores of pop success; indie art-rockers (so the theory went) who had been left behind in the headless chicken rush for new good times.

When such things mattered, they had the King’s Ear, the Papal blessing – Morrissey liked them. But as the 80s ground to a halt and the spectre of disco entered many a polytechnic common room, so James became the sensitive Zen vegans who couldn’t dance properly and were not prepared to learn.

Now, in the summer of 1990, there are few more exciting or original groups on the planet. On record, they have become brazen, bold and eclectic; live, they are a revelation, of which much, much later. For now, I have seen the future of multi-cultural, chart-friendly, stadium pop/folk metal and its first name is James.

“The embarrassing thing about signing teenage girls t-shirts is that they always want you to sign them halfway up the back and you always end up in trouble with the bra strap. I wonder if that’s the idea….”

Saul Davies, if my calculations are correct, will have to get used to this for there is much of it ahead. Saul is one of the four new personnel whose introduction into the James camp has coincided (though it’s no real coincidence) with the spectacular renaissance in the group’s fortunes. When he and Dave, Mark and Andy joined the band, James were firmly in neutral and beleagured by a welter of preconceptions that had James backed into a corner. James the academic, aloof dilettantes, the bloodless folkies, the mantra chanting recluses.

Most of these were wrong but you could see how they had gained currency. From the outset, James had nurtured a peculiar style that invited comparisons with both folk, indiepop, The Birthday Party and other radicals, and even high life and tribal rhythms. They were touted as new and unusual white, Northern hopes; heirs apparent to the vacant Smiths throne.

There was a flurry of front covers, and a series of interviews in which the odd reference to Buddhism, meditation and alternative healing was to provide pundits with a dream of an angle; James as brilliant rock weirdos. And what was to make them intriguing and individual in 85 would have turned into a mocking albatross by the end of the decade. Those silly buggers with the carrot juice and cardies who never made it.

But such depressing thoughts seem inappropriate as we cruise through the Yorkshire streets sipping our Aqua Libres, idly pondering which CD to play or which video to peruse. Thanks to a logarithmically expanding fan base, a hit single and a burgeoning reputation as a live act of extraordinary power, the days of draughty Transits littered wiht old banana milk cartons are over.

Availing myself of the sumptuous tour bus comforts, I introduce myself to James. The central core of Tim Booth, Jim Glennie and Larry Gott has been augmented by Saul, a personable multi-instrumentalist who is probably sick of being called impish; Mark, the tactiturn genius of the keyboards; Dave, the AWOL drummer; and trumpeter Andy, once a member of the The Diagram Brothers, a curious group who I practically venerated in the early 80s. For the entire two days I think of bringing the subject up only to think better of it. I hope this explains my odd behaviour.

We’re on route to the venue having completed the successful in-store PA. These are invariably strange affairs, made stranger in this instance by James insistence on playing an acoustic set. So we are treated to Tim singing of global annihilation whilst wedged on the counter between tape cleaning kits and Kylie posters. The place is packed, though, and it does afford an interesting glimpse at the James fan of the 90s. And they’re young. Horribly young. Except for the old ones.

Many wear hooded tops, flared trousers and have faces curtained with floppy fringes obviously in the throes of geographical adolescent crush. Others are more conventionally alternative and have albums by Echo and the Bunnymen back at the flat. Their enthusiasm is as infectious as it is justified as they queue patiently to have their merchandise autographed and pass the time of day with their heroes. Two hulking, neanderthal bodybuilders who’ve popped in for Tina Turner albums stand bemused in the midst of it.

Many of the kids clutch copies of Gold Mother, latest and undoubtedly best James album. Fleshed out by the additional members, the sound is now free of the slightly edgy diffidence. The Jamesian quest for originality is still evident but so is the desire to make a full-blooded rock racket. It even garnered a bona fide hit in How Was It For You?, a straightforward, unreconstructed knees up of a rock tune that successfully completed a string of excellent ‘nearly’ singles: What For, Sit Down and Come Home, the latter now set for re-release.

At the soundcheck, James go through the complicated daily routine of choosing tonight’s set. They try Crescendo and declare it to be a ‘bloody mess’. They perform an excellent God Only Knows and still seem unconvinced. They run through a lovely version of The Velvet Underground’s Sunday Morning (admittedly a song that could withstand an Erasure version) which I love and they dismiss as ‘shite’. Being an unconventional pop group, ie not having your nightly performance worked out down to the last witty ad lib, clearly has its trials and I leave them to it.

Over the catering crew’s delightful strawberry meringues, word goes round that tonight’s gig is sold out. Saul throws up his hands in mock horror. “Oh no, we’ve sold out! I knew we shouldn’t have released How Was It For You?” There probably are poor benighted souls who think this way (indeed, some of them work on music papers) but fortunately there are thousands of others to whom James are a new band and come unfettered by associations. Unsurprisingly, all of James turn out to be extremely nice folk indeed. Tim and I realise we have a shared love of the Lake District fells and I am quietly impressed and dead jealous when he tells me of travelling Helvelyn’s Striding Edge in a blizzard.

The bar is filling up with many of the same faces that were at the record shop earlier. They wear their freshly signed t-shirts as trophies, as proof that they are privy to the inner sanctum. James have always had a considerable live support but something indefinable and inexplicable has happened. The Manchester connection, though powerful, is not enough to account for this broadening of appeal, this new devotion.

And within two hours, I know why. I have a confession to make. I’ve been a little lukewarm about James in the past. Hymn From A Village, Johnny Yen, Scarecrow, interesting stuff I agree, but…. Maybe it was just me being suspicious but I could never really get past the wilful awkwardness of some of their songs and their seeming substitution of bug-eyed dementia for genuine passion.

In case you have harboured these thoughts yourself and have not had the pleasure of the new James, then let me, as Peter Purves would say, enlighten you. James have metamorphosed into an extraordinary rock group, a live event of breathtaking force. The individuality remains but with it comes grit, pluck, fire and brimstone.

As the siren riff of Come Home plays over the slide show of James banners, the expectation is palpable. They begin and immediately you’re struck by the imposing weight of the sound and the sense of self-assurance. Hang On and Government Walls are the work of a band not afraid to make a big beautiful sound, an intoxicating tumult.

Bring A Gun and Suffering are raucous and intense rock songs, with a physical presence most speed metal bands would envy. They take chances with impunity, dropping into the spectral atmospherics of Walking The Ghost or chancing their arm with an untitled new song building on relentless repetition and the interplay between an agitated violin and a bruised, blue-black trumpet.

There then follows a kind of mini greatest hits segment that sends the assembled bonkers with glee. How Was It For You? leads into the frenetic, primitivist Johnny Yen complete with ad lib along the lines of “Aren’t you just sick of all those translucent Manchester bands” If concessions to modernity (Mondays drumbeat, splash of house piano) have been made in Come Home they’ve been made with an elan that you can’t fault.

Sit Down; the new James anthem brings legions onto the stage, forcing Tim on to the speaker cabinets for fear of being crushed. In case anyone thought they were playing to the gallery for cheap applause, they finish with Stutter, a nightmare blast of psycho metal. The image retained is that of Andy’s wildly flailing searchlight illuminating corners of the hall, of Tim’s frantic dervlish dance, of Saul roaming the stage like a man possessed and of a pop group at the height of their powers. You could say I was impressed.

I gave it a week. It could have been a trick of the light or something in the lager, I figured. The James World Cup tour finished up at the Birmingham Hummingbird and I proposed to be there. To get some more of this addictive stuff and to sit down with James and a tape recorder. The night in Sheffield had ended in champagne, autograph hunters, eight different types of soft cheese and a curious coach journey to Manchester where the video entertainment came courtesy of Stallone and First Blood, not perhaps an automatic first choice as most people’s idea of fave James viewing.

James arrive in beautiful downtown Brum in good spirits, having had several good gigs in the interim, including one particularly special, emotional shindig at the Liverpool Royal Court. The World Cup tour proper ends tonight, the 20 gigs in 23 nights, although there is Glastonbury and some Irish gigs later. Are these extraordinary scenes of fervour and mass communion seen every night? Tim Booth laughs.

“Not always. God knows what it is that starts them off. I suppose certain songs like What For and Sit Down are very warm and they invite an emotional response. But in other songs like Come Home, you don’t get the same singalong quality, it’s darker… ‘After 30 years I’ve become my fears…..’ But, yes, often the audience seem to get involved in an almost U2 kind of way.”

You see, this has been bothering me. Though there’s nothing of the bombastic or messianistic about James, the last show I saw that had a similar feel to it was a Simple Minds concert. The same sense that for the crowd, and band, this was more than a collection of pop songs played loud but implied some celebration of import. Is Tim insulted by this comparison?

“No because I know what you mean. We’ve always had it, even though in the past the audiences have been a bit thinner on the ground. In Manchester, it’s been a celebration for four years. There’ve been times when we’ve had to stop playing because the crowd was singing so loud it was putting us off! But in the past this never got reported.”

“On stage, it’s a performance but it’s also a reflection of ourselves. Sometimes we don’t want to do the nice songs, we want to do the heavy ones with the nasty lyrics. Then the audience aren’t invited to join in, it’s more like ‘witness this’. We like those as well, though the sound people say ‘that was weird’.

“This tour I’ve encouraged people to sing Sit Down. In London they wouldn’t. But I guess I shouldn’t really try, it’s a bit of a cliche. So sometimes it’s a celebration – uplifting and rewarding. Other times, we release demons.”

Larry : “There used to be a real barrier between us and the audience. It was a criticism that was thrown at us a lot … that we were separate, somehow insular and aloof with all this improvising on stage and stuff. And we didn’t realise because we were concentrating so hard. In effect it was like a practice room with 600 people.”

Jim continues this rueful reflection. “We were much more self conscious then. Much more vulnerable. Going on stage was terrifying because we were right on the line, taking real risks…. and sometimes it would go badly wrong. It would fall apart and we’d all freak out, all turn round and retreat, heads down and face the drummer. Try and get off quick.”

How about the audiences themselves? Who comes to James gigs these days?

Tim : “Well on this tour it’s been young girls. Loads of them. That’s certainly never happened before. I can’t remember when it started…..”

Saul interrupts. “Basically it’s been since I joined the band, hasn’t it?”

Larry : “I think partly because we never made it, our records have become very dear to people. It’s as if there have been a lot of people quietly rooting for James who are now coming out of the closets.”

Jim : “It seems to go in pockets around the country. In Glasgow and Norwich, it’s older people. You can see the odd grey hair in the audience. But you go elsewhere and there’s these really young girls down the front.”

I ask whether they are beginning to get tired of hearing that James areon the verge of stardom. Larry is quick to reply. “What, after seven years of it, you mean?”

Tim takes up the thread. “No, it’s very different now. This is it. In the past our music was often quite skeletal and difficult. But now there are seven of us, working hard and the sound has become more accessible. Fleshed out and huge. Like Johnny Yen, which has always been a good song has now become an anthem.

“There’s a real wave of support now. The biggest we’ve ever had,” continues Jim. “You definitely get the feeling something is happening.”

Tim : “It’s a new band. I’ve wanted this for so long but we were never able to find sympathetic musicians. Now we have. I wanted to change the name to emphasize this. But I’m glad we didn’t now because it’s become a good name again after a period of being terribly out of fashion.”

Larry : “I’m glad we kept the name too. For me, it’s like The Fall. They’ve gone through so many changes but they are still The Fall. The same spirit persists. And we’re still James. It’s just that now there are seven of us playing to the same principles that the four of us once had.”

Jim : “For me, changing the name was about destroying the preconceptions that people had about us. It was going to be a way of saying ‘Look we’re back and we’re completely different. Forget all that bollocks you read in the past.'”

And what preconceptions might those be, I ask innocently. Jim eyes me with a wry smile.

“I don’t really like to repeat them because it only helps to perpetuate them. You know that in the past we’ve been associated with…….” Tim clamps a hand across Jim’s mouth and doesn’t remove it until he’s certain Glennie isn’t about too say anything too incriminating. “… some softer areas of music. Yes, we do have our quiet moments. But really, we play half a dozen heavy metal songs in the set and people still say we’re a folk band. How can anyone who plays a song like Stutter be described as a ‘folk band’? It’s as if people are desperate not to confuse the issue. ‘Look you’re vegetarians, we suspect that you’re Buddhists, you do the odd acoustic number. You’re a folk band!”

Larry : “It’s like touring with The Smiths. We did that specifically to destroy the endless Smiths comparisons. We thought that by going out and playing with them every night, we’d hammer home the point that we were nothing like them. But it backfired. It just made the association stronger.”

Tim elaborates on this theme. “At the time the things that Morrissey said were very flattering and we were very grateful but when we didn’t make it, it became this millstone around our necks that we had to put up with for five years.”

James, undoubtedly, are a group reborn. They have not disowned their past but they have built something completely new from its foundations. At what point did this rebirth occur?

Tim : “In some ways it was external events like coming off Sire and Gavin (ex-drummer) leaving. That was a stimulus. We’d wanted more people in the band for ages.”

Jim : “We tried everybody. Ron Johnson. Blokes from the Halle Orchestra. Clint from the Inspiral Carpets. But it never seemed to quite work.”

Then Tim makes a shock admission. “You see I’ve always been a big fan of Bruce Springsteen live. I’ve seen him a few times and I’ve always been blown away by the real depth of talent within his band. That’s something I’ve wanted for James but it never seemed to work until this year. It all fell together.

“Andy’s really the most freelance of the four. He’s got his jazz band. Dave was suspicious because he’d been badly ripped of in the past. And in the beginning he had to join on trust because there was no money to pay him with. At the end of the first tour I think he was amazed when we paid him. Mark is extremely talented but so quiet that for a year we didn’t know whether he was enjoying himself or not. (He also has a sense of humour. In the tour programme, he lists his least attractive trait as being ‘loudmouth and pushy’) And Saul was spotted by Larry, doing his bit in a get-up-and-improvise club.

And how did Saul feel, I wonder, about his discovery, a la the Human League girls?

“Well, it came at a particularly good time for me as I was doing absolutely nothing. Indeed, I was up a particular creek without a certain implement. I’d never played on a stage in my life and within two weeks I was playing to 2000 people at the Free Trade Hall. I gradually learnt stagefright.”

It would seem to me that only a person stupider than a very stupid thing could not be enchanted by the new James. But have there been any mealy mouthed cries of ‘sell out’?

Tim : “Well, there have been the reviews. For the first time in our career, we were landed with a whole batch of pretty vicious reviews saying ‘what a good LP Stutter was’ which, of course, no one said at the time.”

Larry : “It’s ironic really, this talk of ‘selling out’ because we never saw ourselves as being particularly oblique at the time. We always wanted to be popular as well as experimental. An esoteric pop group. We thought we were accessible when really we weren’t. Stutter has its difficult moments, though a lot of it was naivety. We didn’t realise that there was anything odd about songs with no choruses.”

But, around the time of the Stripmining LP, things had reached a low ebb. Faced with public indifference and an uncooperative record company, there must have been a strong case for packing it all in. Larry pales visibly.

“There was one point. Sire had pretty much refused to do anything with What For and our management then couldn’t seem to do anything. I remember the four of us being in a cafe and I think it was Gavan who said ‘well, that’s it then’ and I think it all swung on the next remark. But fortunately someone said something to the effect of ‘let’s show the bastards’. I knew I wasn’t prepared to be told that my career was over by some bloke in an office in America who knew nothing about James.”

But did you ever feel, like many others did, that James had had their chance?

Tim : “Not really. We knew our music was improving. We were always confident that we’d be one of the biggest groups in the world. So we waited with a kind of arrogant patience.”

Cynics might suggest that your rocketing popularity has more to do with a general infatuation with all things Mancunian rather than your own qualities.

Larry : “Are we seen as part of that scene? I’m not sure that we are. There may be some overlap but I don’t think that it counts for very much.”

Tim : “When we toured with the Mondays well before this Manchester thing, we were beginning to get big audiences and a great vibe. You can’t win. Someone said ‘Oh you’re getting popular now because The Smiths had gone,’ but The Smiths have been gone for years now. So then it’s ‘well, The Stone Roses are doing well’. How can you argue with that?

And are these the happpiest times ever for the James gang?

Tim : “Musically, yes. My personal life is in a shambles. But everything to do with the band is very exciting and uplifting at the moment.”

And does the imminent threat of fame appeal to you?

“It used to frighten us; back in the days when everyone was saying it was bound to happen. But then it passed us by. We thought ‘we’ll never know’. Now we can’t wait. I’m getting used to all that strange business about feeling watched all the time. Being asked for autographs in nightclubs. And then there’s the sex……”

Pardon?

“The feeling of it being around all the time. The constant availability. It’s both very frightening and very exciting.”

I bet. That night in Birmingham the James World Cup Tour 1990 came to an exhilirating end. I was converted for the second time in a week. The air crackled. The rafters rang. And by Sit Down the band gave up and simply let the crowd sing the chorus in proof that sometimes pop music can still be powerfully affecting without resort to schmaltz or overblown, fake sentiment.

Backstage there is an intoxicating, gentle euphoria. For me, there is the joyous realisation that pop music doesn’t have to pick its spots and pull some potato-faced sneer in the mirror of its mum and dad’s house to be wildly, dangerously brilliant. Backstage, a hugely, tipsily pregnant woman gets Tim to sign the stomach wherein resides her unborn child. Is this making you feel sick, rock n rollers? Good. You’ll be getting a hell of a lot sicker before this party is over.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘I am in love insane with a sense of shame

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Down to a three-piece, the band were at rock-bottom. But they didn’t give in. They still burned with a basic faith in the power of what they were doing, they found a new w