Travis - Select, October 1997

"I Don't Fucking Know"

TRAVIS frontman Fran Healy on ghosts, bears, and the importance of The Stupid Factor.

You recorded the album in upstate New York. Was it a rustic bang and blast?
"Oh yeah, it was the middle of winter, fucking freezing, deer, bears running about all over the shop. We stayed there for two weeks, recorded most of the album in four days. We would record a song, play it twice and Steve [Lillywhite, the producer] would just say, 'Yeah, that's it, next one.' We were like, 'Whaaat?!'
"The other thing is the fucking house was haunted. Absolutely for a fact. It was in this place called Purple Creek. I was in the house by myself a couple of times and things started going mental. At one point, I was just leaving the house and someone whistled at me fromthe room I was leaving. I looked around and there was obviously no one there. It was a big old strong whistle. It was fucking weird. Pretty scary.
Radiohead also recorded their new album in a haunted house. What do you think of the Radiohead comparisons Travis gets?
"Aye, I read that in Select. Aye, us and Radiohead, eh? Quite spooky. Nah, on the album, 'Funny Thing' does sound like Radiohead. I have to agree with you. [laughs] Very Radiohead. There are worse things to sound like."
You've expounded on The Travis Stupid Factor. Does that come through on the album?
"Oh, definitely. The Stupid Factor is basically not thinking about things too much. You never go in thinking, 'I'm going to give the best ever performance.' So you don't get in a situation where it's coming through your head when it should be coming through somewhere else. The Stupid Factor is also the angel thing that I talk about. About how little things happen and end up something great--happy accidents. There's loads of stuff on the album like that. Like on 'Falling Down,' it ended up with this great tambourine on in the middle, even though we never recorded any tambourine on it. Then we realised that a tambourine had been lying on one of the speakers and that had started it vibrating. Of course, Neil, our drummer, was pissed off: 'Aw, fuck, man, that should have been me doing that.'"
Does it come through on the songs themselves?
"So many people ask me what the songs are about. I don't fucking know. Just fucking enjoy it. [laughs] People were saying 'U16 Girls' is about the kind of Lolita thing. I mean, y'know the bit where it says, 'I met a girl in Paris...' She was actually a 36-year-old Japanese woman I met when I was 17 when I went to Paris for the weekend with my mum. We just spent the day wandering around together and chatting. I write about any bollocks. I had this title 'U16 Girls' 'cos I thought it sounded like an old World War II bomber."
Select
October 1997
by Roy Wilkinson

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