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The Men Who | |
"People go, 'What inspires you?' It's everything. Life. You're a teabag, and all these little
experiences you pick up through your life are little tea leaves, and you add a cup of hot water, and
you get a cup of tea. It might not be yours...but it's mine."--Francis Healy
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Franny Healy, Travis's singer/songwriter, is talking about his
new album. That's Travis--the gig-happy, guitar-friendly creators of storming anthems like "All I
Wanna Do Is Rock," "Happy," and "U16 Girls." Then came "More Than Us," offering us a
glimpse of future Travis. A Travis that wouldn't be tagged as a wannabe Oasis, but as a band who
could write songs that drank deep from the wellspring of emotion and melodies you could eat for
dessert. After an absence of little over a year, future Travis returned with the single, "Writing to
Reach You," a twisting lullaby that made the top 20.
Their second album is called The Man Who and is one of the finest, well-crafted, and
whole albums of the year. On the eve of its release, and that of the second single from it,
"Driftwood," we're talking influences and Franny's talking cups of tea.
"I never bought records," explains the slim Scotsman, all angles and sharp blue eyes, "I've got the
worst CD collection in the world. I always liked playing with words; I always just liked moving
words about--the way you can take one line, change one word in it, and the whole balance of the
song changes."
Franny's lyrical fascination is the driving force behind his songwriting excursions. Born as much
out of a primal urge to communicate as a desire to craft poetry, Franny's word fixation rests on
unusual principles.
"Words hold a fear and a fascination," he explains intently, "I don't read books. It fucks me off
because everybody's so into it, and I just don't see it. To me, reading is like the equivalent of
taking a boat the America when you can fly. Music isn't what interests me; it's words that interest
me. I'm, like, fascinated with words and what you can do with them and the power of words.
That's why I write songs. I'm constantly trying to think of ways and words to explain things, so I
write a song to put across exactly what it is I want to say, to who I want to say it to; then you put
the song out and somebody asks you what the song is about and it starts all over again--I thought
I was making myself clear. We're just chasing our tails constantly."
So, a self-declared hater of books, Franny is actually a self-confessed telly addict.
"I sit with my remote control and don't move for hours. When I come back of holiday to the band,
there's no calluses on my fingers, just a big one on my thumb from turning the channel over. I find
it so stimulating. I think people who don't 'get' TV were not really brought up with it as much as I
was."
The lulling, hypnotic
precision of the first single from The Man Who, "Writing to Reach
You," reached No. 14 in the charts. Franny's obsession with words and their impact are
exemplified in the chorus: "My inside is outside/My right side's on the left side."
"That comes from being bullied at school. Whenever someone was attacking me, I got this feeling
like my legs were crossing, literally; I felt like a corkscrew being twisted--my right going to the
left and my left going to the right...your hands swap over and it feels really disorientating."
The song is pretty much reflective of the whole album in that the predominant flavour is
melancholy.
"It is quite a melancholic album," muses Franny, "but it's not miserable. It's romantically
melancholic."
"It's quite vulnerable," adds Dougie, Travis's bass player, "it's definitely in touch with its feminine
side but I think that there's an underlying vulnerability to it where it's kind of, 'Don't be afraid of
that'."
"I walk about in London," explains Franny, "and I look at people who are adults and I think,
'You've fuckin' lost something there,' I mean, 'You've lost that thing'. Everybody walks about with
their guards up 'coz everybody thinks that everybody is out to get them. It's like, Piss off, man.
But I can see why everybody's like that. We're living in a society where everybody's like 'Attack,
attack,'--but I'd rather be a doormat than a cunt who walks over people. 'Coz if you're that, you're
open to so much good stuff. You end up probably being a lot happier."
"It's [the album] a lot happier and a lot sadder," contradicts Dougie, "but in the end, it's knowing
you're alive. You know when you stub your toe, you feel totally alive? You're like 'FUUUUCKK!
I am so alive right now! AAAAHHH!'"
The melancholy that infiltrates the album can be seen as a therapeutic solution; a response to
events like getting bullied at school.
"I suppose it was like therapy," admits Fran, "I'm quite happy now. I think there's two theories
that run through the album: one is, like, trying to understand something. You know if you're in
love and you just get chucked, out of the blue? You don't know how to deal with it, so you write
a song. And in the song, you're asking questions: Why this? Where then? And then there's the
accepting part of it. 'Why Does It Always Rain On Me?' is another example of 'Well, it's gonna
piss wherever I go anyway.' It's literally about it pissing wherever I go on holiday. I went to Israel
after the first record 'coz Steve Lillywhite was like, "I think you should go to Israel or something.
You need some sun--you're very white.' I went and it was pissing with rain. Everywhere I go.
When we were recording in France--we went to the World Cup--Scotland against Brazil, and we
were beaten, and it was pissing down with rain. In the summer, in the middle of Paris."
Do you find it more difficult to write songs when you're unhappy?
"Yeah. But I'm just lazy at the best of times," yawns Franny. "When I'm sad and down, I'm just as
lazy as I when I'm up and happy. I know I'm good at what I do but it's that old thing of 'The youth
is wasted on the young.' I wish I had the hindsight of a 70-year-old, like my grandad."
How old are you now?
"25. I've really got to motivate myself because I can see myself being 50 and thinking, 'I wish I
pushed a little bit, just tried to work a bit harder'."
"I think people should always think like that," adds Neil, the band's drummer, "and not be afraid
to push themselves or make an arse of themselves. You need to get on with it."
Dougie, with the last word on this matter, says, "Kurt Vonnegut said, 'The human condition can
be summed up in one word: embarrassing'."
It seems
ironic that despite Franny's dislike for reading books, he has names his album
after a book by Oliver Sacks called The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, a case
study on schizophrenia. It is doubly ironic that the title was chosen in response to critics'
descriptions of the band's musical direction as being schizophrenic. The Man Who is a
concise, smooth, holistic album.
"This album is much more us, much more like what we are--so that's good. There's that thing with
us. We've got this thing about proper bands. Proper bands are bands that didn't want to be in a
band but just stumbled together and just fell into it. You meet people that you have a common
bond with; in our case, I don't know...going to the pictures or something."
"I think that comes into the spirit of bands like U2 or REM," explains Dougie, "there's a shared
history of shared experiences that makes them that much stronger."
"The thing about these bands is," marvels Franny, "is that all the time they've got this thing above
them which is, like, a work in progress all the time. I'm never disappointed with an REM album
because there's..."
"...a truth and honesty behind it," adds Dougie. "They're just doing the next thing, never
finishing."
Is that what you're trying to achieve?
"Totally, man," agrees Franny. Then adding, "I don't even know..."
"We won't even know," interjects Dougie, "what this is about until we've totally finished. Fifteen
albums down the line."
"I think," continues Franny, "if you take it back to the simplest thing: when you sit down and
write a song--I don't know what I'm going to write about or what the tune's going to be. I just sit
there with a dictaphone going, 'Fuck, fuck, fuck, this is shite.' And then I go and watch the telly
for three weeks, then come back and maybe do another two minutes. I had to get Andy
McDonald [label boss] to come every Wednesday at 1 o'clock, to the house because I took three
songs off the album, and I didn't have anything to put in their place. I just watch telly--I'm an
addict--so I phoned Andy and asked him to come round and he was like, 'No, that sounds too
much like the taxman.' And I'm like, 'Please, just come round. I need you to crack the whip and
get me to do a bit of work.' And he came round every Wednesday at 1 o'clock and I was shitting
myself by Sunday evening thinking, 'Fuck man, I've not done any work and Frasier's on in
five minutes. Fuck.' So Andy would come down: 'Give me your songs.' And sometimes I wouldn't
have any...But 'Driftwood' was written during that period. It's great when you write something
that's good, but 90 percent of the time it's torture, man. It's a nightmare because it's shite--and I'm
not going to put shite out. But you've got to put something out."
"It's like The Shawshank Redemption," smiles Dougie, "you know, when Tim Robbins
goes through the big tube o' shite and then escapes."
Trawling through the "shite" has proved to be a most worthwhile exercise for Travis. And, with
The Man Who, they've even come up smelling of roses.
Flipside
Words: John Pugh
Photo: John Cheves
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