Setlist
Really Hard / What's the World / Vulture / Skullduggery / Mosquito / Leaking / So Many Ways / Fairground / Charlie Dance / Doubts / Ya Ho / Whoops / Riders / FolkloreSupport
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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.”
Following the move from Factory to Sire and the release of the Chain Mail (Sit Down) EP, James released their debut album Stutter 38 years ago in July 1986.
Skullduggery / Scarecrow / So Many Ways / Just Hip / Johnny Yen / Summer Song / Really Hard / Billy’s Shirts / Why So Close / Withdrawn / Black Hole
Release Name: | Stutter |
Artist Name: | James |
Release Date: | 21st July 1986; Reissued on CD May 1991 |
Format: | Studio Album |
Catalogue: | LP – JIMLP1, CAS – JIMC1, CD – 7599-25437-2 |
Related Release(s): | So Many Ways (Single) |
Stutter was recorded at Liverpool’s Amazon Studios in the winter of 1985 following James’ decision to leave Factory for Sire’s offshoot Blanco y Negro after the successful EPs Jimone and James II and a protracted bidding war.
James had originally wanted Brian Eno to produce the sessions, but he was unavailable at the time and the role of producer went to Lenny Kaye of the Patti Smith band. On release, he was widely accused by the press of knocking the corners off James sound in the studio.
Looking back, the band recognise that they did not let Kaye do the job he was brought in for. The band’s inexperience in the studio and their bloody mindedness instilled by Paul did not allow outsiders to tinker. Tim refused to allow any effects to be used on his vocals.
Lost Innocence was the original title for Stutter, but this was changed a month or so before the release.
When the album was released, James did not tour to promote it, having toured the UK earlier in 1986. With hindsight the band regret this as being a poor method of promotion. Sire were disappointed by the album seeing it as too English (whatever that means) to reach a mass audience and the promotion of the album was restricted. It still managed to hit number 68 in the album charts, a fairish performance given the less favourable climate for Indie at the time.
Reflecting on the album, James regret now not having done their debut album for Factory – most of the songs on the album were already two to three years old and were familiar from radio sessions and concerts. Tim is still proud of the album but has been quoted on several occasions as wondering what he was singing about at times.
Summer Song is track six from the 1986 James album Stutter.
The song deals with the theme of reincarnation which Tim had a deep fascination for at the time he was getting involved in non-medicinal ways of dealing with his chronic liver illness.
Song: | Summer Song |
Released: | 21st July 1986 |
Main Associated Album (or Single): | Stutter |
First Heard Live: |
Why So Close is track nine on the 1986 James album Stutter and track six on the 1989 live album One Man Clapping.
It is a semi-acoustic rendition of the Fire So Close track off James’ debut single Jimone and the Village Fire EP. The song was brought back into the setlist for the 2011 orchestra tour.
Song: | Why So Close |
Released: | 21st July 1986 |
Main Associated Album (or Single): | Stutter |
First Heard Live: |
Withdrawn is track ten on the 1986 James album Stutter.
It featured in Model Team International’s set supporting The Fall at Manchester Poly in 1980. It was Factory’s preferred choice to be the band’s first single, but James insisted on recording What’s The World instead.
Song: | Withdrawn |
Released: | 21st July 1986 |
Main Associated Album (or Single): | Stutter |
First Heard Live: | Liverpool State Ballroom - 23rd March 1983 |
Johnny Yen is track five from the 1986 James album Stutter and also features on the two-disc version of the 2007 singles compilation Fresh As A Daisy.
Live versions of the song also appear on the 1989 album One Man Clapping and the 2002 Getting Away With It Live album and DVD. A live acoustic version of the track appears on the Unhinged CD sold with initial copies of the Best Of.
Johnny Yen is a character in Iggy Pop’s “Lust for Life” song. The lyrics are about a self-destructive artist and could be directed at some of the previous members of James who had been caught up in the drugs or crime scene.
The song was premiered on a Muriel Gray radio session in 1983. At the time of recording, Gavan wanted this to be the lead single from the album but was outvoted by the band and Lenny Kaye, who was trying to get the band to write a hit single whilst in the studio.
The song itself still features frequently in the James set today and sounds as fresh as ever , allowing Saul room for his violin playing and Tim to improvise lyrics on various subjects – boy-bands, Oasis, Kurt Cobain, male/female relationships.
Song: | Johnny Yen |
Released: | 21st July 1986 |
Main Associated Album (or Single): | Stutter |
First Heard Live: | Leeds, August 1984 |
Just Hip is track four on the 1986 James album Stutter.
It first featured in the James repertoire in 1980 at the Fall support show at Manchester Polytechnic. The original lyrics to the song are reported to come from cutting out sentences from reviews in the NME and making them fit the music.
Song: | Just Hip |
Released: | July 21st 1986 |
Main Associated Album (or Single): | Stutter |
First Heard Live: |