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"We're still the sort of band who thinks everyone's going to hate us" | |
What's with this bout of self-loathing from Britain's favorite tunesmiths, Travis? And who does cut their hair?
NME: You lot all seem like such a nice bunch of blokes. Are you really nice all the time?
Has anyone ever thrown anything at you?
What's the most extravagant thing you've done with your money? And when did you realise that you'd made it?
Neil--what's the inspiration behind your Three Musketeers-style beard?
Where do you get your hair cut, Fran? And what do you ask for?
What was the last thing that made you physically sick?
You travel the world all the time. What's in your suitcases? And what would you like to take with you that you can't?
What's the worst trouble you've ever been in as a band?
If the Travis Learjet crashes, and you all live, who would take command?
What were you like at school?
What would we learn from a Travis-themed episode of Big Brother?
NME
Fran: When you're dealing with people all the time, you have to treat them with respect. The people you love the most you probably treat them with the least respect, because you know them. If you're having a bad day, you can't just go, "Fuck off..." to somebody.
Dougie: We spend our days meeting strangers, and, as they say, you never get a second chance to make a first impression. When you're meeting strangers, you act more mannerly. We are going to have Travis C--- Day, though...
Fran: You know, "Can you sign this for me?" "Fuck you."
Neil: "Fuck off, or I'll stab you."
Fran: I recently got smacked in the face by a CD in Germany. To be honest, it was five CDs in a row. He was a good shot, throwing them from 30 feet, and two out of five hit me. The first one hit me straight in the face--it's weird when something like that happens when you're concentrating, I completely shat myself, and got very, very angry, very quickly. We've got it on video...
Dougie: It's a fantastic midsong rant. It was so succinct.
Fran: In very calm tones, I just said, "If another CD comes on this stage, I'm going to come down there, and I'm going to kick your fucking face off, I swear to God. We're going to walk off this stage..."
Dougie: "...and I'm personally going to make sure you get your c--- kicked in."
Fran: It was an Alan Partridge moment. But no more CDs came up on the stage.
Andy: I think most of the time we're pretty reasonable.
There's you lot, there's Doves, Embrace, and there's Coldplay. You seemed to be getting on well in that photograph. But if it all kicked off, who would be best in a fight?
Fran: Chris Martin's a big guy.
Dougie: He is a big guy.
Fran: Big hands. Big feet. You know what they say about that.
Dougie: He could kick your balls.
Fran: Neil's keeping quiet.
Neil: I can be pretty handy, put it that way.
Fran: We've not bought the gold-plated bus, yet, with a name down the side of it, like, "ARSEHOLE." Did you see that? Down the side of his bus: "SHAGGY."
Neil: We're going to put our money into a musical: Fanny--The Story Of Travis.
Fran: It'll be like Annie, just with an F. I was saying to Neil last night in the bus, "Wow, we've just headlined Reading."
Andy: We're still the sort of band who think, just before we're about to go on, that everyone's going to hate us.
Dougie: Like, "Aw no...it's a really rock crowd--they're gonna kill us!"
Fran: Imagine getting hit in the mouth by a sockful of shit.
Dougie: Peter Andre got hit with a bagful of sick at a German festival. All his dancers had left the stage because they were getting pelted with stuff, coins. And he was out there braving it, and he gets hit on his muscular chest with this bag of sick. The fact that someone had gone to the trouble of throwing up in a bag...
Fran: You never really feel like a big band, even though you are.
Neil: Chiefly an unwillingness to shave it off. I had a proper beard when we started together six years ago, and it got smaller and smaller, I think I suit it.
Fran: There's not enough beards or moustaches going about any more. I was watching the Match Of The Seventies, and every guy had a moustache. Same in America as well, when I was watching the '70s baseball. Everyone had one, even the people in the crowd.
Andy: The '70s was a golden age for facial hair.
Fran: I experimented with facial hair. When you grow your beard and you shave it off section by section. You come out with the sideburns, then you come out like...The Edge! And then you're left with just a Hitler thing in the middle.
Fran: I get it cut in the place I've gone since we all came to London, which is Cuts in Frith Street in Soho. I remember when I first went in there. it was quite intimidating. There's Goldie getting his hair done. I don't know what it's called. The Hoxton...
Dougie: ...Hyena?
Fran: The buddha hawk. Pete, my hairdresser, dyes it. It takes a while. They did it yesterday, on a recommendation from the hairdresser. I was sitting outside, people double-taking, not giving a shit. When I was in there, though, there were all these people taking photos, which was weird.
Fran: Jackass. He does this thing with a chef's hat on and says, "Today, we're going to make an omelette." He eats all the ingredients, then breaks two eggs, and drinks it down, and at that point I was like (gags). "I'm gonna be sick!" He threw it all back into the bowl. Then fried it and then ate it.
Andy: Clean underwear.
Dougie: Berocca. Solpadeine. Always Solpadeine.
Fran: Computer. Never travel without my computer. Though I don't have it with me just now because it's broken. Digital camera.
Dougie: Address book for all my phone numbers. I don't have a mobile phone, I can't stand them. I use other people's out of necessity, that's the level of hypocrisy I'm at.
Neil: I do miss family; home comforts.
Dougie: We've been home two weeks in the past three-and-a-half months.
Fran: We've been back about three weeks, four weeks for the whole year.
Andy: You like being in a band and going to places, but there are by-products of it that you don't like.
Neil: We came in on a flight from Singapore to Australia, and there was a smell of burning on the plane. The captain came on and in rather a worried voice said, "Everything's alright..."
Dougie: He was trying to calm us down, saying, "Well, we've got a slight electrical... fire onboard. Nothing to, er, worry about..." It was very, very uncomfortable.
Neil: You get used to it. It's the safest form of transport. But you do cut your odds down.
Dougie: I woke up in trouble this morning.
Neil: I didn't keep my Air Miles intact, either.
Dougie: I think Pete, our tour manager, would take charge because we're fucking helpless.
Andy: It takes you a good few days when you get home to...
Neil: ...work out the toaster.
Fran: We work really well as a team. Neil would be the chef of the island. I'd be the bait for the animal.
Dougie: Wide-eyed.
Fran: But who would be the first to be eaten?
Dougie: I've got quite a meaty calf, as you can see (rolls up trouser leg and displays what is indeed, quite a meaty calf). We could probably live off one of them for about a month. We wouldn't have to resort to murder.
Neil: You've got quite big knackers as well, so we could use them.
Fran: You'd have to drain them though. Do the siphon thing. Put your balls high and the bucket low.
Dougie: Balls High, Bucket Low--the new album from Travis.
Dougie: Very, very short, until end of fifth year, and all my mates were like six foot. And that's why I'm clumsy. You get used to being that height and then I grew.
Fran: I was really tall. I was the first one to sprout. I had the first sprout of hair, but I was really embarrassed. If you think about it, you should have been going, "Check it out!" I hung out with some clever people rather than all the wee neds.
Neil: I was short and quiet. Then I moved schools, to a new one with really nice people, and it was great. The school I went to originally was filled with nutcases with blades and crowbars. (It was) beside a prison in Glasgow, so all the kids that were there were sons of prison warders, so you can imagine what kind of shit they were coming home with. So that was a bit interesting 'til fourth year, then I moved out of Glasgow to somewhere else, and it was cool, no bullying or anything like that.
Andy: I was quiet at school, kept myself to myself.
Dougie: My school was kind of half-hard, half-posh. If you lived in a house with stairs you were... a cock.
Andy: When we moved to London, we did all live in a house together, and it was a real tip.
Dougie: You'd learn how manky we were, really. We lived in squalor.
Andy: We didn't just make that house messy. We ruined it, probably forever. If something broke, it would never get fixed.
Fran: Crumby floors. A breadcrumb that had been sitting there for a month. It could kill you.
Neil: There were some cracking turd smells kicking around. There was a lot of lager consumed that summer.
Andy: We had a webcam in the studio for about five weeks, The first two days, you sit in front of it and you're pulling poses and that. By Day Five, you're picking your nose, hands down your trousers...
Fran: Someone on the Net's compiled all these photos and called it Is (Travis producer) Nigel Godrich Masturbating? All these photos of him with his hands down his pants.
8 September 2001
Text: John Robinson
Photography: Andy Fallon
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