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Highlander Fidelity | |
Armed with song and feel-good charm, Travis drops a Britpop classic on the U.S. charts.
When home is rural Scotland, where salmon farming is the major distraction and men in plaid skirts represent the height of bad behavior, little prepares you for the demands of fame in New York City.
Travis frontman Fran Healy was feeling a bit cocky last year. His band--semi-unknowns in the United States despite multiplatinum magnificats in the U.K.--had just sold out its first show at Irving Plaza; fans were literally blocking traffic to get autographs despite a torrential downpour. So what to say when a drunken male groupie belligerently insisted that the impish singer sign his, um, member?
After Travis met Travis Bickle, cooler minds intervened and the psycho was arrested. But in that harrowing moment at bladepoint, Healy realized that things in America were finally turning around--at least somebody felt something. "It was just one of those magical nights," he recalls, taking a leisurely drag from a Silk Cut cigarette. "Even before we went onstage, you could feel it in the air." The band's second album, The Man Who, would go on to sell a respectable 250,000 copies in the States--without heavy airplay or video screen time--making them more than just the Billboard quickie of 2000.
A year later, that same stifling rain has turned Manhattan into a Bikram sauna. But the band's spectacular 29th-floor view from a plush midtown hotel suite affirms Healy's premonition of impending stateside greatness. Travis is back in town with The Invisible Band. Recorded in Los Angeles just two days after the group's 18-month world tour ended, Invisible sandpapers their soft spot for pure pop hooks. (Travis regularly includes a stunningly sincere version of Britney Spears's "Hit Me Baby One More Time" in its live show.) Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich was brought in to supply a new layer of fairy dust, forging a sound sure to please indie purists and the TRL nation alike.
"Once you're rid of the ego," says bassist Dougie Payne, "you clear out a petri dish where everything can grow."
What germinated isn't just the album of Travis's young career; it may also be the first U.K. import since "With or Without You" days of U2 that bridges guitar-bass-and-drums rock with AM-radio-style instant gratification--the kind of traction Oasis and Radiohead have never been able to achieve here.
"There's no point in functioning if you don't want to get anywhere except your own country," mumbles drummer Neil Primrose, after some late-night bar-hopping in Chelsea.
Still, the band is patient. After all, as Healy points out, it took ten years for Travis to become glossy-mag cover boys in Britain. They're fully prepared to wait.
"If this record doesn't take off, we'll just do another one. We're not going anywhere," Healy says nearly jumping out of his chair. "We've set ourselves a totally impossible goal and we're fookin' going for it."
"It's kind of who we are," Healy explains, "but stick around: We can be horrible sometimes."
Maybe so, but between Healy's impersonation of German journalists ("You vill tell uz about zee new album now, yez?") and Payne's take on overbearing soccer parents ("Fook you, you fooking wanker!"), it's easy to see how their John-and-Paul personalities buoyed their rise from Glasgow art-school dropouts to Britpop royalty. The band's first album, 1997's Good Feeling, didn't fill British critics with same, and they deflated The Man Who for being "overloaded with ballads." Still, Travis wasn't as abrasive as Oasis or as confoundingly pretentious as Radiohead, and they bided their time in the wings. At the band's now-mythical performance at the 1999 Glastonbury Festival--during a transcendent version of "Why Does It Always Rain on Me?"--the heavens opened on cue like a Cecil B. DeMille flick and left the Kingdom with goose bumps. The Man Who would sell more than 2 million copies in the U.K. and skid across every major best-of list.
"It's better to think you're shite all the time," Healy says.
Despite all the clowning, self-loathing is the manna that sustains this group. Take Healy, for instance: Of the band's 230-odd taped shows last year, he could bring himself to listen to only four.
"I can't listen," he explains, "because I hate the sound of me own voice."
"It's a life of dissatisfaction," Primrose allows. "But it gives us something to strive for."
Travis may have flown high as a fledgling, but pop rules the airwaves on both sides of the Atlantic--it's a difficult time to be a cheery guitar band. Back across the pond, Popstars, the debut album from the telegenic, color-coordinated band Hear'Say (think 0-Town with perms and jackboots), is devouring the British charts, selling 680,000 copies in its first week of release--the equivalent of 5 million albums in the United States. Rock's footing in the mainstream is so shaky that Bono, the genre's self-appointed scold, has called on his fun-strumming brethren to muscle the lightweights off the stage. For its part, Travis is ready to enlist.
"We're going to work our bollocks off," Healy promises, his eyes widening at the thought. All that's missing is the blue Highlander face paint.
"And then," Payne pipes up, "we'll meet up with Bono and chase pop down the street."
Details
"The guy was being a dick," Healy recalls, running his hand through his newly peroxided mohawk. "But I didn't think he'd pull a knife."
"Like in all music, there's two sides to it," Healy explains. "The Beatles had Lennon, the arty, pretentious side, and McCartney, the populist side. What was produced was very balanced and universal."
Eleven a.m. is the crack of dawn by rock standards, but the reflexively nice blokes in Travis seem incapable of misplacing their manners despite working on just a few hours of sleep. They pour each other coffee, creaming and sugaring in a polite assembly line before lighting each other's cigarettes.
Now, having gone on to sell 3.3 million records worldwide, Travis has adopted an ultrahumble approach to success.
June 2001
Text: Barton Blasengame
Photography: Dennis Kleiman
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