"I'm called Fran, and I'm the singer."
"I'm called Dougie, and I'm the bass player."
"I'm Neil, and I play the drums."
"I'm Andrew, and I play guitar."
Upon learning that this is not a radio interview and that no dorky station IDs will be needed, the
band breathe a collective sigh and a normal conversation begins. Chattiest of the bunch are
singer/songsmith/guitarist Fran Healy, a dark-ginger Aidan Quinn lookalike (and not the N.Y.
Mets announcer), and the blond and funny bassist Dougie Payne (the bespectacled Andy Dunlop
and the soft-spoken, faintly devilish Neil Primrose complete the quartet).
With their blend of fists-held-high anthems played with that classic Glaswegian shambalic
good-timey vibe, all Travis want to do is put a good feeling into music. Their debut slab,
appropriately titled Good Feeling, veers from perky pop ("Happy"), to epic rock ("Good
Day To Die"), to the powerful stylings of the extraordinary first single, "All I Want To Do Is
Rock." In fact, the album is fit to burst with radio-ready oughta-be-hits. The rave-up "U16 Girls"
is an admonition against messing around with young women, a warning that very possibly exists
to serve as a reminder to the band. "Tied To The '90s," is, of all things, a Slade-stomping anthem
in favor of being proud of your era, which in the light of most kids' '70s/'80s
nostalgia, is a pretty bold statement. Just ask Ethan Hawke.
The tale of Travis (named after the Harry Dean Stanton character in Paris, Texas) pretty
much conforms to the standard rock myth: a bunch of lads looking for a way out. "We've been
together for six years as friends, pretty much," Fran says. "The band is a sideline to the
friendship."
"Neil and I met 'cause we were both working in a shoe shop together in Glasgow," says Dougie,
"a shoe shop called 'Shoe' imaginatively enough."
"And I met Neil at the same time," Fran says, "'cause Neil was also workin' in a bar called the
Horseshoe Bar."
"There's a lot of shoes in this story," laughs Dougie.
"And Andy was a cobbler," quips Fran, to a burst of laughter from his mates.
Anyway, on the day Fran matriculated into art school, he joined a band called Glass Onion with
Andy and Neil. "And we were shit," says Andy.
"It was rubbish," Fran agrees. "Like most bands are when they start out. And, like most bands do,
you go along and you kinda cut your teeth, playin' toilets everywhere. But as it progressed,
something had to change. The songs were crap, really crap, and I decided to leave art school to
concentrate on doin' just the band, and kinda took over as main songwriter, just so that there was
a certain amount of consistency. In a way, it was like the youngest member of the band turnin'
around and sayin', 'Right, I'm gonna be the leader of the band now.'"
Enter Niko Bolas. The famed producer was up in Scotland working with Mike Scott and heard
Travis doing a session on Radio Scotland. Impressed with what he heard, Bolas spent four days in
studio with the young band, four days that taught the lads how to be a proper band.
"Before Niko, it was all over the place, too busy, too much 'look at me,' and that was to do with
the fact that the songs weren't there yet," Healy says. "We were overplayin' 'cause the songs
weren't sayin' anything."
To remedy that situation, Fran went to an island on the west coast of Scotland, "with the sole
intention of writing the best song I'd written. Up to that point, I'd been very higglety-pigglety, all
over the place, so I went and came back with 'All I Want To Do Is Rock.' That was the first song
I thought, Whoa! I didn't write that! If you're any kind of artist, you've probably found that 90
percent of the time you write averagely, and 10 percent of the time a special thing happens.
Sometimes it's a horrible thing, 'cause it doesn't feel like you ve actually done it."
"The pen runs away with itself, y'know?" says Dougie.
After that, it all began to fall into place. The two brothers were sacked and Dougie, who had
never played bass before, was enlisted on four-string duty. Travis rehearsed hard for the next two
months, got tight, and soon signed a publishing deal on the basis of their "All I Want To Do Is
Rock" demo. With that money, the four moved down to London and self-released "Rock" as a
seven-inch single. They were promptly signed by Andy MacDonald, founder of Go! Discs,
discoverer of such illustrious artists as Portishead and the Housemartins, and now the proud papa
of the new Independiente label.
To record their debut, Travis were shipped off to America--Bearsville, New York, to be
specific--to work under the supervision of Steve Lillywhite, who was also responsible for turning
one of Travis's most famous fans onto the band. "Morrissey came to a gig in London and loved
it," Andy says.
"It was like, 'Who's the guy in the front row with the quiff?'" chuckles Fran.
"Who's the one moanin' every minute?" adds Dougie, who then begins to sing, Smiths-like,
"Ooooh, this pint isn't warm enough."
Morrissey isn't Travis's only Mancunian supporter. The band are currently Noel Gallagher's
favorite new combo, the only band he's gone back to see twice.
"Four times now," Dougie and Fran point out as one.
"It's music that makes people smile," Fran says of any similarities between the two bands. "To get
as many people as possible to listen to it, that's what it's about, really."
That's a rare attitude for a bunch of art-school boys, don't you think?
"That's one of the reasons I left," Healy says seriously. " 'Cause you're surrounded by arseholes
who basically go, 'The sun shines out of my arse and I am the center of the universe.' Artists have
such a high priority of themselves, and I don't believe that for a second. Artists serve as makers of
backdrops, and musicians and songwriters serve as people who make soundtracks for your day to
day."
"We went to art school, yeah, but we weren't these pale, fey guys sittin' in the corner readin'
Keats, y'know?" notes Dougie. "We were the guys sittin' in the art-school bar drinkin' pints."
That populist-versus-pretentious approach goes a long way toward explaining Travis. Simply put,
Travis are the long-needed link between the working-class anthems of Oasis and the pompous art
rock of Radiohead.
"Oasis are here," Fran Healy says, gesticulating with his left hand, "and Radiohead are here," with
his right.
"And we're here," he says, pointing with his head at a spot between his outstretched paws.
Not a bad place to be.
Detour
October 1997
by Michael Krugman
photo by Simon Obarzanek
