james Q 1992

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oR JAMES.THErRFrRSTDAy rN AlaenrcR
did not offer the big, big welcome that greets
so many would-be British invaders of the
land of the free. Within three hours of stepping offthe plane at Los Angeleswhere they
were due to make a video, guitarist Larry
Gott was mugged. At gunpoint.
They had just booked into the Chateau
\{armont Hotel (where John Belushi died and
The Doors and Led Zeppelin disported) where
they had a self-cateringapartment. Being a "butter addict", Larry had stepped down Sunset
Boulevard in search of a grocery. Successful,he
u'as turning back into the hotel side entrance,
s'hen suddenly his nape hairs prickled with a
senseof imminent threat. "It cameto me too late.
I turned around and there was a guy coming up
the steps towards me. I was about to react when z
x
another guy turned the corner, with a gun out. 6
Then I knew that this was fucking serious;it was T
ior real. Give us your jacket, they said. Give us
James, before going into the Top Of The Pops studio, Elstree, February, 1992: (from left) Dave Baynton-Power, Jim Glennie,
SaulDavis,LarryGott,AndyDiagram,
MarkHunter,TimBooth.
vour wallet. I said,You got it - it's in me fucking
I'd always been fascinated by the schizophrenic
elbowed unceremoniously from Shrewsbury for
coat. Then they casually walked down the steps,
state of mind of the witch doctors and the artists
being a bad influence.
turned around and said,If you contactthe police,
"I was thrown out of the back door, told to
and the persons taking drugs, and where those
s e'll come back for you.
"In the hotel reception I said,It's your fucking
states of minds linked with the holy man. I read
leave - and if I didn't, they'd formally expel me.
R.D. Laing's The Divided Self when I was 16 and
So I went." The memory still pricks. "Then, three
country,it's your fucking town;what do you do in
years ago, I was driving by Shrewsbury and I
thought it was brilliant, then The Outsider by
this situation?Phone the police. They came: an
Camus,and the other Outsider, by Colin Wilsonstarted shaking.Fucking hell,I thought, still some
old guy with half-glassesand a shorter guy with a
a paper chaseof books pursuingthis theme."
unresolved emotions here. So I went back for an
creu -cut and a gap in his front teeth through
From the mid-'8Os,James have been a deep
u hich he constantlyspat out streamsof phlegm.
old boys' thing - and you're not meant to go back
and elusively meaningful band beloved of indie
if you've been thrown out - but I never really
Thcv r.r'eremore interested in finding out exactly
sorts and, since the Manchester dance explosion,
u hc'rerather than what had happened;ifthis gate
understood why and wanted to find out. The
of the better-read raver. But in their earliest
housemasterwho threw me out got quite drunk
h;i
been 15 yards further down Sunset
incarnation, in post-punk, Joy Division and Falland kind of apologised.'I was new,'he said, 'and
Boulevard, it would have been somebody else's
dominated Manchester,James were not James
I didn't know how to deal with you.'I wasn't one
patch. All this time, their radio was blaring out:
but a distinctly low-brow, punk racket called
of those rebellious kids who smoked on the firet\\ o streets away a woman had been garrotted
Venereal And The Diseases.BassistJim Glennie
escape or got drunk; I was just different, awkfrom behind by two guys who fitted my descrip"A friend bullied me into it!"
is
the
sole
survivor.
ward,
and they didn't know what was going on in
was
tion: there
somebodyheld up at knifepoint,
says the hitherto directionless lad, recalling his
my head. I hated school and they knew it. There'd
somebody else at gunpoint. It was constant.
"The younger cop asked me about his gun. He
induction into a rock'n'roll band. This friend, guibe one guy in the house who'd get all the shit, and
tarist Paul Gilbertson, is James's lost founder
he'd usually be small and Jewish. His life would
pulled out his gun: Like this one?I saidit wasalso
member. "He'd bought a stolen guitar for a tenbe made miserable.I was OK but I had to hide my
a black automatic but much smaller. As I
ner, and said our group didn't need a drummer
emotions all the way through. At the end,I think
motioned to the barrel to point out that theirs had
becauseof drum machines,but that we'd always
they thought I would go wild, so they kicked me
a silver stripe, he pulled back and said,Touch that
need a bassist- so get a bassguitar! For some reaout before I did. They did it an hour after my last
and vou're fucking dead . . ."
'A' Level exam.Why bother? It was symbolic and
son, my mother bought me one. I was going to see
groups like The Fall and Teardrop Explodes and
quite unpleasant."
ITHIN HOURS,Lnnny WAS BACK ON
ended up in a weird crowd, smoking draw."
Convinced that acting was a life survival skill,
the plane to Blighty, with road manArmed - or burdened - with their aforemenTim went to study drama at Manchester
ager Richard taking his place in the
tioned moniker, Paul and Jim's group played
University, where he was a contemporary of Ben
Mojave Desert-set video for the sintheir first gig: "I got the buzz, and listening back
Elton. One evening at the University disco, his
gle Born Of Frustration. The mild
to our songs,if you can call them that, on a tape
free-style dancing was noted by members of
violenceJameshave a habit of attractrecorder, this crackly cacophony, I thought,
Model Team who were there enjoying the subing is not the least of the paradoxes
Yeah!" The band evolved through a successionof
sidisedbar. "Paul came up and asked if I'd like to
that attend this band who are reputed to be hardjoin their band," Tim recalls. "I'd drunk quite a
personnel and name changes
Volume
core brown-rice fiends and meditation addicts.So
Distortion and Model Team International: "Paul
s'holesome,indeed, is their image that for some
bit and woke up the following morning with this
had a girlfriend who worked in a modelling agenphone number written on my hand with the
vears they have felt the need to undermine it by
cy called Model Team International, so we got Tinstruction:6 o'clock, scouthut.I went along and n
confessingto the odd brush with pharmaceuticals,
shirts ready-made with the name
and, more particularly, to send it up at every
on, until they threatened to serve
opportunity.
us with a writ. So we called ourProbe a little deeper, however, and the 3Lselves Model Team so the shirts
vear-old singer will vouchsafethe sort of intense
would still be just about wearable!"
and bookish confession that has maintained for
Which is where Tim Booth
seven years his personal cult following among
came in - not, at first, as singer,but
those rock fans who like their frontmen pale and
as the band's pre-Bez idiot dancer.
interesting.
"Every artist I'd ever liked had often used
A reject of the public school system, Tim was of a church-going
drugs to get to a certain state of mind," he
family who nonetheless was
declares.in his soft Mancunianised accent. "and
"EveryartistI'd ever
likedhadoftenused
drugsto getto a certain
stateof mind."
F O R T YF I V E G
there they were rehearsing - naive, two-chord
stuff, but it had something.I like Iggy Pop for his
state of mind but Patti Smith was everything to
me. I went to two rehearsalsthen we had a gig
supporting Orange Juice. I shook a tambourine
nervouslyand sangbacking vocals.
"After one rehearsalwhen I still didn't really
know them, Paul said, Let's go into town. When
Paul was in the toilet, Gavan (Whelan, the original drummer) said, Now, you mustn't be too
upsetif Paul gets into a fight. Fights seem to happen around Paul. But he doesn't start them. Sure
enough,we left the club and Paul wanted a piss,so
he started pissing against a car, and this bloke
came out and started fighting him. It wasn't even
his car! There were thesetwo guys rolling around
in the gutter and me thinking, Bloody hell, what
haveI got myselfinto?"
"ended up in
One member, Danny Ram,
"The first
Strangewaysfor GBH," they claim.
"he
presswe ever got!" As for Paul Gilbertson,
changed," as Jim delicately summariseshow the
guitarist's enthusiasm became diverted towards
"He'd throw
lcss constructive leisure pursuits.
"He had a
himself into everything,"Tim recalls.
real naive enthusiasm- and no fear. That was his
rr eakness."Gradually, Paul's self-immersioninto
other pleasuresdistanced him from the band he
founded and Larry Gott, a former guitar teacher,
nas recruited to cover his increasingly erratic
plaf ing. Finally, they confronted Paul with the
stark choice of getting his act together or leaving
the band. "We knew he was on a self-destructive
path sir months earlier.and we thought, Let's try
lo r-r.rchthese statesnaturally, through meditalion." Tim remembers.
"We were looking for a safehaven for us - and
for him. It nearly worked. But we lost him."
Y NOW, THEY HAD SETTLED ON THE NAME
James, like fellow Mancunians The
Smiths, a starkly anti-descriptive handle
in reaction to the likes of Orchestral
Manoeuvres In The Dark. Keen to capture on vinyl the nervous, eclectic guitarrock with which Manchester club audienceswere rapidly falling in love, they recorded
ts o critically adored singleson Anthony H. (then
plain Tony) Wilson's Factory label - Jimone and,
after a mystique-building gap of several months,
J a m e sI I .
"We only wanted a singles deal and told him
rr hr,: inefficiency, and this idea that they didn't
have to promote a record becauseJoy Division
had got massive without any promotion - apart
from the fact that the singer had killed himself,"
Jim wryly notes. "Bands on Factory would disappear becausethey weren't getting promoted. But
he got us what we needed:attention." Supporting
The Smiths on tour, James were assistedby the
endorsement of Morrissey as his favourite band.
"We were flattered. but didn't think we needed
the boost to help our career," remembers Jim.
-At the time, we were concerned to battle the
negative side - that people would think we were
like The Smiths.. ."
Tim grimly recalls how, after first avoiding the
rock press and the necessity to construct for
themselves "an image," James bowed to the
inevitable. "For one photo session,we put on
F O R T Y S I X
"Foronephotosession
we
putonwackyjumpersand
of
funnyhats-apiss-take
thecoolimage.Butpeople
tookit seriously."
these wacky coloured jumpers
and funny hats - a piss-takeof
the cool image. But people
took it seriously! As d musician, you naively think your
music is wonderful and it will
reach people. Then you suddenly realise that people want
you to sell a personality- and it
doesn't even have to be your
own!"
In search of both "alternative" kudos and big-league
promotion, Jamessignedto the
New York-based indie-within-a-major, Sire,
whose stable included Talking Heads and
"A
Madonna, and whose boss is Seymour Stein:
"He
stood out because
shy man," Jim recalls.
everyone else on Sire was like a second-handcar
salesman.A quiet man - and we fell for it!"
Though they recorded two acclaimed albums,
Stutter and Strip-mine, the cash-registersfailed
to ring. Despite maintaining their live following,
by '88 James's career appeared to have stalled;
meanwhile, it seemedthat they would be washed
away by another wave from Manchester, on the
crest of which surfed The Stone Roses and
Happy Mondays.
That they came to ride the same wave themselvesowes something to the musical changethat
followed the departure of drummer Gavan
Whelan. "We kicked him out," Tim confesses.
"He wanted the music to go one way and we
wanted it to go another. He got frustrated
becausehe couldn't communicatehis ideasto us
and for over a year at every rehearsal we got
bogged down in argument until we said,This isn't
working. After Gavan left, we had to write songs
with a drum-machine, and that influenced a new
direction in our music. Larry would find a preset, and, for the first time, a drum pattern would
remain constant throughout our songs because
we didn't know how to change it." James had
already been on the lookout for additional musicians: "We'd done the four-piece," summarises
Tim. "Let's see what other colours might be
added to our palette. But we didn't expect to end
up as a seven-piece."Drummer Dave BayntonPower replaced Gavan, and James added trumpeter Andy Diagram (ex-Diagram Brothers and
Pale Fountains), violinist Saul Davies and keyboardist Mark Hunter.
In '89, James toured with Happy Mondays in
support. It was the year of "Madchester" and the
new crossover of indie rock and E-generation
dance. The realisation that they were being
swept into the new scene came at shows in
Blackpool, where weekending Mancunian ravers
would wig out to the new seven-piece,dancefriendly James. Even as they had let their Sire
deal lapse, James inadvertently tapped into the
scene'scraze for clothes with their eye-catching
T-shirts. ,A fan designed the first of these items
("We had to keep finding him to give him more
money becauseit did quite well") and the band's
manager, Martine McDonagh (also the mother
of Tim's child, Ben), designedthe others. Kids
who had never heard the band wore the clothes,
and today James's turnover and profit is "far
greater" from the T-shirts than the records.
AMES RE-ENTERED THE RECORD FRAY WITH
a self-financed live album, One Man
Clapping: "We got a bank manager,Colin
Cook of the Royal Bank of Scotland, to
see us play a concert in Manchester with
"He
3,000 people there," Tim chuckles.
gave us this huge loan, the biggesthe could
authorise. We had no collateral but for the great
gig." Out on their own label, One Man Records,it
was distributed by Rough Trade and went to
Number 1 in the indie charts- for one week. With
an advance from Rough Trade, James recorded
"We gave
their next studio album, Gold Mother.
Rough Trade the singles Sit Down and Come
Home, and they said,This is great, we love it, but
you have to understand,boys,that thesewill never
"They must have
reach a big audience,"sighsTim.
backed so many bands they loved who didn't get
anywhere that they must have lost faith in their
own judgement of what would sell."
Next stop Phonogram,with a completed album
up for grabs if the vibes were right. Not only did
Phonogram acceptthe whole of the Gold Mother
album as it was but, when asked how much they
thought it might sell, instead of the expected 50"about 30060,000copies, the company replied,
400,000 a bigger number than we'd had in our
wildest dreams." And, kick-started by the band's
anthemic single,Sit Down, this estimateproved to
be "quite accurate".
On the eve of the releaseof their new album,
Seven (which has already been snubbed by some
critics as "stadium rock"), James are learning to
live with the mixed reception that is the flipside of
pop stardom.
"I went to a bar for a drink," Tim unwholesomelyconfesses,"and thesefour ladswere going,
This guy thinks James are a load of fucking nancies.This guy props himself up on the bar and says,
Yeah, Jamesare fucking poofs. So I say,Yeah, we
are; we love sticking our penisesup each other's
arses.We do it all the time. Really into it. Didn't
you know we were gay? Whatever he said, I just
went with it, and he was fine after that. And at the
Reading Festival, I was watching a band, and this
guy in his mid-thirties who looked like a geography teachercame up: I've alwayswanted to talk to
you, he said,very nicely. Five yearsago,I thought
you were so important, the best band. But now
look at you - you're awful! You're crap! What
happened? Well, I said, we sold our souls to the
Devil. The Devil! We decided to make music that
would make us lots and lots of money, and that's
what Gold Mother and Come Home are.I knew it!
he said,and walked away.Fucking hell, I thought,
you can't argue with somethinglike that. . ."