Tag Archives: 2004

At first, I don’t recognise Tim Booth. With his shaved head and pointy Errol Flynn beard, the former frontman of indie survivors James looks less like a million-selling pop musician than a pantomime child-catcher. The look isn’t exactly softened by his black combat pants and black sweatshirt: all that’s missing is a large net and a bag of candy. I’m not the only one who’s confused: after being introduced to Booth, our photographer, a self-confessed James fan, squints and says: “I didn’t recognise you without the hair.” “You say all the right things,” Booth replies despondently.

When he left James in 2001, it looked as if Booth had given up music for good. In a statement to fans, he said he wanted to leave while he was still on top and concentrate on writing and acting. He’s won a best newcomer award for his part in a stage production of Saved, written a screenplay and, most recently, landed a small part alongside Christian Bale, Michael Caine and Gary Oldman in Christopher Nolan’s new Batman movie – as a baddie, naturally. Yet even with this formidable workload, Booth found himself drifting back towards music. Now he’s released an album, Bone (so called because of the stripped-down production) and is steeling himself for his first proper solo tour of the UK.

“I think I’ll always write songs,” he reflects over lunch near his Brighton home. “Whether they’re for me and my friends or for public consumption, it’s something I’ll always do. Other people write diaries, I write songs. They always show me a lot about myself.”

Yet Booth insists that he never intended to make another album. “The plan was to sell these songs to other people. That was partly because in England I felt I always got such a hostile reaction with James that the songs wouldn’t get a fair hearing if I sang them. But as we went on with the demos, I guess I gave into the inevitable. I think I felt too attached to them to give them to someone else.”

One of pop’s great eccentrics, Booth has long been ridiculed for his alternative lifestyle, which takes in tantric sex, scream therapy and five-rhythms dancing (“a system of movement that takes you into your instinctive self. It’s like getting high without drugs”). He and his band once joined a spiritual cult that involved meditating for days at a time and enforced celibacy.

His interest in alternative healing and spiritualism stems from a spell in hospital when he was 22 after he discovered that he had Gilbert’s syndrome, an inherited liver disease. “I stopped breathing and nearly died,” he says. “It’s not a big deal if it’s diagnosed, though if it’s not and you’re eating the wrong foods and your liver can’t digest them, you go as yellow as a Belisha beacon. Being jaundiced creates a very strange mental state – very isolating and paranoid.”

As he found he was able to control the symptoms, his interest turned into an obsession. “I’m fascinated by the potential of what we are,” he says. “The original name for New Age was the Human Potential Movement, and it was for people looking to try and get the full potential out of human beings. I think everyone has a sense that we’re much more than we’re able to be. I don’t believe there’s such a thing as incurable illness. I believe that somewhere out there, there’s some method of curing everything, and if you get sick you have to find it. You might not find it, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. That’s my thesis. There has to be a purpose when things go wrong.”

It’s with a mixture of humility and self-assurance that Booth looks back on his 20-year tenure with James. He’s dismissive of the music press, which he feels built the band up only to tear them down. “In the music business, there’s always an allocated time schedule you’re meant to keep to,” he reflects sardonically. “Once you’ve had your time in the limelight, that’s it. After that, it’s like, ‘What are you still doing here? Isn’t it time you were somewhere else? Get out of here, you’re too old.'”

Is he still hurt by criticism? “Yes, I am. I know it shouldn’t matter, but it does. I think within us we all have a saboteur, a voice in us that readily seizes upon that thing. A friend of mine, Gordon Strachan [the former footballer and manager] said there could be 50,000 people at a match, with 40,000 really behind the team. But there was a row of old guys there who really hated him and he could hear them talking about him every week. No matter where he was on the pitch, his ears would somehow pick up on them slagging him off. I think that’s the nature of the mind; it gravitates to that stuff.”

The story of James is by turns triumphant and calamitous, involving internal disputes, record company clashes, tax bills and a ruptured disc for Booth. The band formed in 1982 when the 16-year-old bass player Jim Glennie found Booth dancing wildly at a nightclub in Manchester. Booth was a drama student at the university. He joined the band, then called Model Team International, as a backing vocalist but was soon promoted to lead vocals.

“They were a very hardcore band back then,” Booth says. “The first singer ended up in Strangeways. So did the first guitarist. When I arrived, I think they’d stolen their equipment. But they were great, they had a real fire to them. Then they asked this posh kid to front them, which was very bizarre.”

The change of name came soon after: James was picked for its innocuousness in an industry they felt was dominated by huge egos. “We saw the band as being about music and nothing else,” Booth says. “At the start we refused to do interviews or have our pictures taken. Once we agreed to a photo-shoot as long as the pictures didn’t show our heads. We soon wised up, though.”

Booth’s nickname in the band was Monty Moneybags due to his prosperous, middle-class upbringing. He’d attended a public school in Shrewsbury where pupils wore hats and carried briefcases. “Actually, everyone carried briefcases but me. I had this bag, a hand-me-down of my dad’s from the Second World War. All my brothers and sisters had used it; it had all their names on it, crossed out. The last was Penny, so that became my name at school.”

In the early years, James were heroes in their hometown – Morrissey declared them “the best band in the world”, while Noel Gallagher, then a roadie for Inspiral Carpets, is said to have decided to form a band after hearing a James soundcheck – but they were ignored further afield. After putting out two EPs on Factory records, they signed a contract with Sire, a move that Booth now describes as “really, really foolish. They had signed Talking Heads and done the first Patti Smith record, but by the time we got to them they had just signed Madonna. An English indie band was really not what they wanted.” After releasing two albums, 1986’s Stutter and 1988’s Strip Mine, they extracted themselves from the label through a loophole in their contract.

For the next two years they lived off the dole, occasionally earning extra money by acting as human guinea pigs for medical experiments in a local hospital. At the end of the decade, however, they found themselves swept up in the baggy tide alongside their Madchester contemporaries The Stone Roses, Happy Mondays and The Charlatans. “Sit Down” became one of the anthems of the early Nineties, and the flowery James shirt turned into a ubiquitous fashion item among students and indie kids.

Their success, Booth says, was both a blessing and a curse. They began to rebel in concert, refusing to play any hits, while their next album, 1992’s Seven, was viewed as an ill-judged stab at stadium rock. The following year they secured the services of Brian Eno on Laid, a moodily experimental album that proved hugely popular in America and prompted the band to embark on a three-year tour in the US.

By the time they returned, their British fans had all but forgotten them. But that was nothing next to the nightmare that was to follow. Over the course of a year, Booth ruptured a disc in his neck, the guitarist Larry Gott decided to quit along with their long-time manager, and the band discovered they were broke.

“I got misquoted in an interview saying we had made millions out of selling T-shirts,” Booth recalls. “Bizarrely enough, a tax inspector read it and we were investigated. It was a complete disaster. We realised we hadn’t paid any tax for five years and our manager hadn’t made any provision. We were suddenly hit with this huge bill that nearly killed us. It took us years to crawl out of that hole.”

The band decided to take a long break, during which Booth worked on a well-received solo album with the composer Angelo Badalamenti (Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet) called Booth and the Bad Angel. In 1997, James made a spectacular comeback with Whiplash, a boldly melodic album that yielded their second-biggest single, “She’s a Star”. A best-of album the following year served to restore both their confidence and their finances, shifting more than a million copies. Two more albums followed – Millionaires and Pleased to Meet You – after which Booth decided to call it a day.

He believes that adversity always brought out the best in the band: that, and his indomitable self-belief. Even now, however, he admits to being fearful about pursuing a career under his own name. “There was some safety in the collective of James,” he says. “Psychologically, I liked the protection. Even though it was me that took most of the shit in that band, I still had somewhere to hide.

“But I’ll stand by this record. I’ll stand by any of the choices I’ve made. You just have to get big in your own attitude again, build a bubble of positivity around yourself. Seriously, I’m ready for whatever they throw at me.”

Tim Booth plays the New Stage at Glastonbury tomorrow, and then tours. ‘Bone’ is out now on Sanctuary. The single ‘Down to the Sea’ is released on Monday

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English Google Translation:
“Things are going great for me,” says Tim Booth when Gaesteliste.de met him in Cologne at the beginning of May. “My partner is giving birth in two weeks and I’m playing a serial killer in the new ‘Batman’ film. I’m also writing a script for TV and then my new album is coming out. How could I be bad? I’m very happy at the moment. Sometimes I’m almost a little overwhelmed – but in a good way!” Tim Booth finally turned his back on his band James at the end of 2001 after almost twenty years, but music hasn’t completely left him. “Bone” is the name of his new solo album, on which the singer from Manchester dares a little more musically, without forgetting that his old band went down in history as representatives of the great pop song.

Was it really a feeling of relief that prevailed when he left James, or was there also a little fear of the future? After all, James were a safe bet commercially, at least in England, and regularly filled huge venues like Wembley Arena. “When I left the band, I felt like I was doing the right thing. I could have taken the step a few times before, but I always missed them, and then you have to wait for the next opportunity, which may not come until a few years later. What did I feel? I think I was relieved, because splitting up with James meant that I could tackle the other things that I had always put on hold before. The fear only came a year later, when I slowly but surely ran out of money. I thought: ‘Ugh, what now?’ I felt like a fisherman casting three lines at once. One for acting, one for music and one for writing. Everything was going well and – to stay with the metaphor – there were bites everywhere, but nothing really pushed itself to the forefront. Recently, everything has been moving a bit more again. First the music, so I’m devoting more time to that now.”

Although Booth intends to continue pursuing his writing and acting ambitions this year, “Bone” is the focus of his attention for now. Two short tours with his newly formed band The Individuals are planned for July and September, a sign that music is still very important to him even after the end of James and that the album is not just a personal gag for him. Booth wants the record to be successful and therefore agreed to his label’s suggestion to release the work under his own name, although he would have much preferred to hide behind a band name.

“Bone” is of course not the Brit’s first solo album. In 1996 he worked with Angelo Badalamenti (and Bernard Butler) and released the album “Booth And The Bad Angel”. At that time he was still firmly integrated into his old band, whereas now his solo works are his only opportunity to implement his musical ideas. Did that make a difference in the approach? “Good question, but it made no difference at all! Before our collaboration, Angelo had only made the Julee Cruise record, and that was exactly the direction I wanted to go in. What I didn’t realise at the time was that he wanted a lot more of my rock thing on the record. Because he’s the better musician, he ultimately got the upper hand. If it had been up to me, the album would have been a crooner record in the Julee Cruise style. Angelo, however, really wanted to make a pop record.”

Compared to his records with James, the new songs have a lot more groove, although the use of vocals and the structure clearly refer to Booth’s past. What inspired him to seek out a producer like Lee “Muddy” Baker who specializes in groovier stuff? “I think it has something to do with the fact that I have been giving a few courses in movement technique over the last few years. It’s about how people can reach a different level of consciousness, a trance state, through dancing: getting high without drugs! I’ve actually been doing these courses for years, but always ‘undercover’ while I was still in James. Of course, to get people to move, you need the right music. So I listened to thousands of songs that would entice people to move in ways they would never normally do. I couldn’t use much of James for this, because we were never particularly good in that area. I really enjoyed choosing them, after all, I’m a dancer by nature. I love dancing! So in the end it made sense that my songs had this very specific groove without being dance music.”

While Booth liked to have everything under control in the early days of his now twenty-year career as a musician, he has also learned to appreciate collaborating with other artists over the last ten years. No wonder, since he has always had greats like Brian Eno, Angelo Badalamenti and now Lee “Muddy” Baker at his side. “When you work with big artists, it’s always a give and take. It was always a pleasure with Angelo, and the new record was no different. I love James, but the atmosphere at work there was always very tense. There were so many people with different ideas, so the band often lacked playfulness. The new record, on the other hand, was created in an environment that was very playful, and I think you can hear that in at least some of the songs.”

Original German:
“Die Dinge laufen großartig für mich”, erzählt Tim Booth, als ihn Gaesteliste.de Anfang Mai in Köln traf. “Meine Lebensgefährtin bringt in zwei Wochen ein Kind zur Welt, und ich bin im neuen ‘Batman’-Film als Serienmörder zu sehen. Außerdem schreibe ich gerade an einem Script fürs Fernsehen, und dann kommt noch mein neues Album heraus. Wie könnte es mir da schlecht gehen? Ich bin im Moment sehr zufrieden. Manchmal fast auch schon ein wenig überwältigt – aber das im positiven Sinne!” Seiner Band James hat Tim Booth nach fast zwanzig Jahren Ende 2001 endgültig den Rücken gekehrt, doch die Musik lässt ihn noch nicht ganz los. “Bone” heißt seine neue Solo-Platte, auf der der aus Manchester stammende Sänger musikalisch ein wenig mehr wagt, ohne dabei zu vergessen, dass seine alte Band als Vertreter des großen Popsongs in die Geschichte eingegangen ist.

War es wirklich das Gefühl der Erleichterung, das überwog, als er James verließ, oder schwang auch ein wenig Zukunftsangst mit? Schließlich waren James zumindest in England kommerziell gesehen eine sichere Bank und füllten regelmäßig Riesenhallen wie die Wembley Arena. “Als ich die Band verließ, hatte ich das Gefühl, das Richtige zu tun. Ich hätte den Schritt schon einige Male zuvor wagen könne, aber ich hab sie stets verpasst, und dann musst du auf die nächste Gelegenheit warten, die vielleicht erst ein paar Jahre später kommt. Was ich dabei gefühlt habe? Ich denke, ich war schon erleichtert, denn die Trennung von James bedeutete für mich, dass ich die anderen Dinge angehen konnte, die ich zuvor immer zurückgestellt hatte. Die Angst kam erst ein Jahr später dazu, als mir langsam aber sicher das Geld ausging. Da dachte ich schon: ‘Uih, und nun?’ Ich fühlte mich wie ein Fischer, der drei Angeln gleichzeitig auswirft. Eine für die Schauspielerei, eine für die Musik und eine für das Schreiben. Alles lief ganz gut, und – um im Bild zu bleiben – überall bissen sie an, aber nichts drängte sich richtig in den Vordergrund. In letzter Zeit sind alle Dinge wieder etwas mehr in Bewegung geraten. Zuerst die Musik, deshalb widme ich mich der nun verstärkt.”

Obwohl Booth auch in diesem Jahr seine schreiberischen und schauspielerischen Ambitionen weiterverfolgen will, steht “Bone” nun erst einmal im Mittelpunkt seines Interesses. Im Juli und September sind zwei kürzere Tourneen mit seiner neu formierten Band The Individuals geplant, ein Zeichen dafür, dass ihm auch nach dem Ende von James die Musik weiterhin sehr wichtig ist und das Album nicht nur ein persönlicher Gag für ihn ist. Booth will, dass die Platte erfolgreich wird und stimmte deshalb auch dem Vorschlag seines Labels zu, das Werk unter seinem eigenen Namen zu veröffentlichen, obwohl er sich viel lieber hinter einem Bandnamen versteckt hätte.

Dabei ist “Bone” natürlich nicht das erstes Soloalbum des Briten. Bereits 1996 arbeitete er mit Angelo Badalamenti (und Bernard Butler) zusammen und veröffentlichte das Album “Booth And The Bad Angel”. Damals war er ja noch fest in seine alte Band integriert, während jetzt seine Solowerke seine einzige Möglichkeit sind, seine musikalischen Ideen umzusetzen. Machte das einen Unterscheid bei der Herangehensweise? “Gute Frage, aber das hat überhaupt keinen Unterschied gemacht! Angelo hatte vor unserer Zusammenarbeit damals nur die Julee-Cruise-Platte, gemacht und in genau die Richtung wollte ich auch gehen. Was mir damals nicht klar war: Er wollte viel mehr von meinem Rock-Ding auf der Platte habe. Weil er der bessere Musiker ist, hat er letzten Endes die Oberhand behalten. Wäre es nach mir gegangen, wäre das Album damals eine Crooner-Platte im Julee-Cruise-Stil geworden. Angelo allerdings wollte unbedingt eine Pop-Platte machen.”

Im Vergleich zu seinen Platten mit James fällt auf, dass die neuen Songs viel mehr Groove haben, wenngleich der Einsatz des Gesangs und die Struktur klar auf Booths Vergangenheit verweisen. Was inspirierte ihn denn dazu, sich mit Lee “Muddy” Baker einen Produzenten zu suchen, der auf groovigere Sachen spezialisiert ist? “Ich denke, das hat damit zu tun, dass ich in den letzten Jahren einige Kurse in Bewegungstechnik gegeben habe. Dabei geht es darum, wie Menschen durch das Tanzen eine andere Bewusstseinsebene, einen Trance-Zustand, erreichen können: Getting high without drugs! Eigentlich mache ich diese Kurse schon seit Jahren, aber stets ‘undercover’, solange ich noch in James war. Um die Leute dazu zu bringen, sich zu bewegen, braucht man natürlich die richtige Musik. Also hörte ich mir Tausende von Songs an, die Menschen dazu verleiten würden, sich so zu bewegen, wie sie es für gewöhnlich nie tun würden. Von James konnte ich dafür nicht viel verwenden, denn auf dem Gebiet waren wir nie besonders gut. Die Auswahl hat mir sehr viel Freude gemacht, schließlich bin ich von Natur aus ein Tänzer. Ich liebe das Tanzen! Deshalb machte es letzten Endes auch Sinn, dass meine Songs diesen ganz bestimmten Groove haben, ohne gleich Dance Music zu sein.”

Während Booth in den Anfangstagen seiner inzwischen rund zwanzigjährigen Karriere als Musiker gerne alles unter Kontrolle hatte, lernte er in den letzten zehn Jahren auch das Kollaborieren mit anderen Künstlern zu schätzen. Kein Wunder, standen ihm dabei doch stets Größen wie Brian Eno, Angelo Badalamenti oder nun eben Lee “Muddy” Baker zur Seite. “Wenn du mit großen Künstlern zusammenarbeitest, ist es natürlich immer ein Geben und Nehmen. Mit Angelo war es immer eine Freude, und bei der neuen Platte war es nicht anders. Ich liebe James, aber die Atmosphäre bei der Arbeit war dort immer sehr gespannt. Es gab so viele Leute mit unterschiedlichen Vorstellungen, deshalb fehlte der Band oft das Spielerische. Die neue Platte dagegen entstand in einer Umgebung, die sehr spielerisch war, und ich denke, dass kann man zumindest einigen Songs auch anhören.”

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