Brighton, the final frontier. The last outpost of humanity before the hopes and dreams of
youth give way to the eternal abyss of the grey, forbidding ocean. Or "Camden-on-Sea" as it's
affectionately known these days. And as we walk that long road from the station down to the sea,
we think of Jimmy in Quadrophenia, and of youth's last stand against the establishment,
the last great rock'n'roll outlaw on the last moped out of freedom city, as another crumb on the
rocks of British life is washed away by the ruthless waves of modern capitalism and the icy waters
of authoritarianism. And that.
Actually, we are thinking about where a nice spot to take a picture of Travis, since that
was the main reason we came down here. But since we're here, and this being an issue of
NME about youth under attack, you can't help thinking about this place's heritage in
youth culture. And you start to wonder, if Jimmy the Mod were around today, wouldn't he have
stayed on his scooter when it went off that cliff? Because the way things are going, there wouldn't
be a great deal of hope for a kid like him. So much for chasing your dreams--he'd be forced to
take a shitty job licking stamps or humping bricks for barely more money than the dole, or he
wouldn't have enough money to live on Special Brew in a doorway, let alone keep his scooter in
petrol. That's going to be the situation for hundreds of thousands of kids when they leave school,
unless they have a spare few thousand quid to go to college, or parents rich enough to pay their
way, or maybe a part-time career in drug dealing and bank robbery. So what can a poor boy do
except to sing for a rock'n'roll band? Oh sorry, you won't even get to do that the way things are
going--you won't have the time or the money for a start, or the motivation after a soul-destroying
day doing some fat bastard's monkey work for a pittance. Oh yeah, and you'll have to be indoors
by 10 p.m.
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Travis are one of the many bands who would have found life infinitely more difficult, and
might never even have formed, if they had been forced to work for their dole, and pay to go to
college. Fran Healy went to art school, traditionally the place where creative working-class kids
get the chance to find themselves and avoid having to flip burgers for peanuts. It's an institution
that has produced a whole history of great British rock bands, from The Beatles to The Who to
Britpop luminaries such as Pulp and Blur. Fran got kicked out, but not before it had helped form a
lot of his ideas about music and inspired him to form a band.
"It's not so much the fact that I went to art school," he says, "it's the fact that it's a chance
to develop your creativity and socially interact with like-minded people. Because it's always the
misfits who end up there--the people who can't deal with the idea of nine to five. The people who
go to art school are the ones who stand around banging their heads against walls and pissing their
trousers, and people think, 'Fucking hell! He's a bit gone,' but if you go to art school everyone
says, 'Great! That's some good hitting your head against the wall there son.' Which is bollocks, of
course, but it gives you a chance to make an arse of yourself and get that out of your system and
find a way of expressing yourself best. And to me it's better to actually create things than learn
about English Lit or Economics for three years. That's why so many people end up forming bands
out of art school."
"We were all on the dole at some point over the years," says guitarist Dougie Payne, "and
I think we would still have been in this band even if we'd had to work for our dole. But it would
have taken a lot longer than it did. Everyone's got a different story of college or dole but it's about
people getting thrown together, and the way it motivates you to do something by the boredom,
and by not wanting to take a shitty job, to make something of yourself other than what you're told
to."
Fran: "The worst thing about the new bill is that the employer gets £60 a week per
person for each person they get on the scheme--which is nearly twice as much as you get on
the dole. So the Government is spending twice as much money in order to get the figures down so
they look good and can stay in power, rather than actually tackling the problem. It's cheap labour
in return for massaging the figures. That's the most disgusting thing."
You might
ask what this "politics" has got to do with a band like Travis. But the truth is
they are inherently political in nature, because they're a classic case of a gang band, formed out of
a community of attitude, shared passions and an old-fashioned proletarian determination to
squeeze some good times, some good feeling and some meaning out of this humdrum existence.
As such they're as likely to write a stomping celebration of love, drinking and the absurdity of the
modern world as they are a desperate downbeat ballad trying to mend a broken heart. Because
unlike, say, Radiohead, to whom they're often compared, they're not naturally introspective. They
want to share the feeling, good and bad, and make the spirit of communal rock'n'roll see them
through.
"Radiohead are fantastic," reckons Fran, "but they're a bit of a 'monkey band.' They only
have one emotion or method of expression. There is something limited in that approach that
doesn't deal with all sides of things. For us it's as important to lift people up as it is to bring them
down."
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"Thirty-five quid a
week to save up to buy a guitar, strings, rehearsal time, a loaf of bread and a tin o' beans. That's
not a nice life, but you'll settle for it if you want to do something
artistic."--Dougie |
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In that sense, Travis's music is political because it's motivational. It wants to galvanise
people's hearts and minds. And in a time when, in order to gain artistic credibility, you're expected
to write inward-looking, obtuse suffering-artist stuff obsessed with your own intangible inner
pain, songs like "Happy" or "All I Wanna Do Is Rock" are bordering on the revolutionary.
Travis's songs
have a soul and resonance to them that only exists in the hungriest people, those with a fire within
them fuelled by the desire to eat life for breakfast and the world for lunch. If that isn't political,
then the word might as well be meaningless.
Following the idea of political music being motivational music, you could argue that the
likes of Radiohead or Spiritualized are anti-political, personal music to the exclusion of the
outside world, whereas the likes of The Verve (their "let's have it" approach encapsulated every
time Richard Ashcroft shouts "Come ooooon!"), Oasis or Travis are political. Even bloody "Roll
With It" is political. No, really.
Which brings us slightly clumsily round to Travis's recent history, and in particular their
support tour with Oasis, after having been personally invited by Noel Gallagher. So one assumes
it was two weeks of writhing atop a mountain of cocaine with a Jacuzzi load of TV weather
presenters at 30,000 feet?
"Oh yeah, there was that," grins Fran. "But the one big effect it had on us was that we
never stopped saying 'Bangin'! Brilliant! Buzzin'! Top on!' all the time."
Dougie: "You come off with a really enthusiastic Manc accent--everyone's saying,
'Fookin' top! Top! Double top!' It's just like one big long buzz. But they're great boys. And Liam,
contrary to popular belief, was such a lovely bloke."
Andy: "He can smash up my plane and swear at the pilot any time."
Neil: "He invited us round to his house for 'A coop o' tea and a slice o' cake wi' me and
Patsy.' Now there's an enduring image."
"Us and Oasis have got a lot in common," reckons Fran. "We appeal to ordinary people,
not just students, because what we both are is fundamentally a bunch of mates, and seeing them
you understand a lot more than on records. We're both gangs, and when you see them, you
become part of that."
He's a bit of a thinker, this lad. And Fran even has a theory about what makes Travis, and Oasis come to that, work as rock bands.
"It's the Stupid Factor. On the one hand, keep it simple, like that old art school idea of
keeping it to just the four colours, or you muddy the palate. Keep it instinctual and it'll hit people
harder. And in another way, the Stupid Factor is jsut having no fear of making a complete cunt of
yourself. Just do it. The Stupid Factor incarnate is a painting I did at art school. I was doing a still
life, but one day the model didn't turn up so I just drew this huge knob on it and a comedy head.
And they said, 'This isn't art' and I said, 'That's what art school's meant to let you do,' and they put
it in an exhibition and it was the only one people stopped at because they couldn't stop laughing.
It's called Some Mother's Do 'Ave 'Em. I got kicked out after that."
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Right. So in what way exactly can this episode enlighten us?
"Well, it's just about not worrying about what's cool. If everyone cared a little less about
looking uncool, it would be a better place. Put it out there, express every side of yourself. The
best
artists totally put themselves on the line, don't calculate some mystique."
Witnessing Travis on the Oasis tour, you were struck by how tailor-made their music was
for large crowds, such that you can fully imagine Travis's determinedly simple,
broad-strokes approach and anthemic tunes blaring out of radios and rocking enormodomes
across America. As long as they don't drive themselves insane first...
"We loved it in America but it does do your head in," says Fran. "It's so massive, and it
made us think we'll never conquer it. You could sell 15 million records and you still wouldn't have
conquered it. In the Midwest, they're like, 'Who the fuck are the Beatles?' But it's good fun."
"Some weird shit happened to us on the road there," recalls Dougie. "For example, we
were in this place in West Virginia in the tourbus and we saw this big golden sign saying 'The
Scottish Inn.' We thought, 'We've got to stay here, it's fate.' And it turns out to be The Bates
Motel and The Shining rolled into one. It smelt of dead grannies. Anyway, I decide to ring
my girlfriend, and I'm told the phone is in this back room in the office, so I go in and it's dark and
I trip over something. I look down and it's a body! And then I look up and there must be about 15
bodies! And I'm looking at them, convinced they're corpses. And so I get back to the hotel, shut
up to bits. I pull the covers over me head and I'm just getting off to sleep when I hear this
'Wooooargh!' and a banging at the door. I'm fucking shitting it, then I realise it's Fran
sleepwalkin', trying to get out the door of the room. And the 'bodies' were illegal immigrants, in
sleeping bags. But that shows you how America fucks with your head."
This puts Fran in the mood for a "confession."
"I have a real problem with sleepwalking. I once took a shite in the airing cupboard in me
house, with me mum watching me. And you wake up in the morning and you remember going for
a shite in your dreams. And another time I walked naked through my brother's house, stood on his
study table, steaming drunk, and he's going, 'Franny! What the fuck are ye doin' mean?!' and I'm
like, 'It's nae bother mean,' and it turned out I was totally naked and I was pissing on his desk! So
if you're ever in a hotel and you see a naked man wandering round the corridor, show me the way
to the toilet!"
Thanks for that. On a more palatable note, given their talent for stadium singalongs, it was
only right and proper that Travis should have been asked to write a contender for the Scotland
World Cup song.
"Yeah, I did write something," admits Fran, "but I'm glad we're not doing it. That kind of
thing can be dangerous. I think Del Amitri are doing it now. I hear it's a version of 'Nothing Ever
Happens'--'Nothing ever happens, no-one ever scores a goal / The defence is crap and the
forwards are shite and we're all coming home very soon...'
"More importantly to me, though, is that when Scotland got into the World Cup the
Scotland fans were singing 'Happy'--now that's priceless to me--way better than a Number One
or a Brit award."
It's reflective of the way music inevitably articulates and encapsulates feelings not only of individuals but crowds, communities and whole societies. It still does now, whether it's "Happy" or "Tubthumping." So if music can motivate a football team to greater achievements, then you'd have thought it could motivate people to change their situation. Or maybe we're just being hopelessly naive idealists in a modern Britain where there is supposedly no such thing as society, and music is "just music," as countless slightly dim musicians insist on telling us in these very pages every week.
"Politicians have always been corrupt," shrugs Dougie. "If they're after power, then they're
the wrong people to have power."
Yeah, and I don't vote, 'cos the government always gets in...
"NME readers know about all this," says Andy, "and to actually change things you
need a massive groundswell. I don't know if it's possible, but they did it with the poll tax."
Fran: "With Tony Blair you've got someone who's the assistant manager of a shop who
everyone's got along with and he's made the manager and he's got to be a cunt. Every day he
looks more like that New Labour New Danger poster. They've had to clear up the Tories' mess,
so they're bound to look like cunts. But when they're proposing curfews and doing everything the
Tories were doing, they've got to realise that it's not gonna get them anywhere, and they'll look
every bigger cunts. There's one thing worse than being a Tory and that's saying you're not a Tory
but doing everything they did."
"The youth always get it first," adds Dougie, "because there's all these bitter old bastards
who say, 'Youth is wasted on the young.' They always resent the youth 'cos they envy their
freedom. They'd rather we had boring lives like them."
Fran: "Young people are an easy target because they're naive. But that naivety gets to the
core of some simple truths, and that's why young people need to have the means to express
themselves."
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"Radiohead are fantastic, but they only
have one emotion or method of expression. There is something limited in that approach that
doesn't deal with all sides of things. For us, it's as important to lift people up as it is to bring them
down."--Fran |
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Fair enough. So what would you like the Government to do for bands?
Fran: "They can't do fuck-all on one level--you can't go down the job centre and find a
bassist."
Dougie: "The dole used to be called 'the John Major music scholarship.' Thirty-five quid a
week to save up to buy a guitar, strings, rehearsal time, a loaf of bread and a tin o' beans. That's
not a nice life, but you'll settle for it if you want to do something artistic. You've got to
prioritise--I mean, I'd rather give people a home than give a band a rehearsal space. But you can't
force them
into work or something they don't wanna do--they should be on the most basic living standard at
least."
Fran: "I honestly think that what drives most successful bands is the desire not to have to
go back to that life. It's not fucking fun being on the dole, without making you do a shitty job for
it, as well. It's fighting against going back to that which drives me, and I hope it drives other
people too."
On which resilient note, Travis walk off into the distance and into the sea. But it's only a photo
opportunity. They'll be back shortly, fighting the same good fight as ever. The rest of us,
meanwhile, have a bigger battle ahead. Will we fight them on the beaches? On the streets and in
the dole queues? In the schools and student unions? In the clubs and at the festivals? Or will we
just surrender to apathy and let them fuck us over yet again? The choice is yours.
New Musical Express
March 14, 1998
by Johnny Cigarettes
pictures by Kevin Cummins
These days it's all hit records and Oasis support slots for TRAVIS.
But if they hadn't won their John Major music scholarships (that's the dole to you) and been to art
school, it would all have been so different...Yes it's fucking political.
