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Does Travis Have Us? | |
When Travis released its beautiful, catchy bummer "Why Does It Always Rain on Me?" in the U.K., they were showered with adulation. Why? Because they understand that sad songs say so much.
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When I showed up to meet Healy and bassist Dougie Payne with the initial stirrings of a miserable New York flu, I experienced firsthand just why "Why Does It Always Rain on Me?" hits people in such a personal way: Everybody has days when life feels rotten. Like the bulk of Travis's work, it's a song to commiserate with--its string gently comforting, Healy's tenor so achingly beautiful it even made Oasis's Noel Gallagher cry. When I told them I wished I was more up for them, they didn't miss a beat: "Don't worry, we'll be up for you!" As Madonna's "Om Shanti" played over the stereo during the course of our interview, Healy and Payne discussed their own spiritual relationship with music and where it's taken them this past year. It turns out that sometimes reasonable guys do finish first.
Ray Rogers: Your recent show at New York City's Bowery Ballroom was an instant sellout. Things have made a complete turnaround from the last time you played here.
Fran Healy: It was such a lovely, warm feeling. The time that we played here before was when you had all of these British bands coming over, the British export, as it were. You know how when you buy something sometimes, they'll try to sell you by saying, "It comes free with this!"--we were like that freebie, we weren't the main picture then.
Dougie Payne: At that point, Oasis had their album coming out, as did Radiohead and the Verve. We were the runts of the litter.
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FH: When the reviews of the album came out, we thought they'd be good. Instead, it was, "Fuck, they're slagging it off, and this one's slagging it off, and that one's slagging it off as well." To me, the venom in all of those reviews was just outrageous.
RR: What do you think inspired that?
FH: They just didn't like us as a band, because we're so ego-less, I think. I believe that ego is the enemy of all art, if not everything. Ego is the thing that causes wars and fucks things up. You're got to understand, people think we're so "nice." We're just reasonable people. We feel lucky enough to be vessels for loads of really beautiful songs. It humbles you. You realized that it's what you're carrying that's important and not so much you. You're just a messenger.
DP: A lot of bands tend to forget that, and it messes them up. They start thinking, "I'm brilliant," and they've got all these people around them, patting them on the back and perpetuating that. Then you drop the thing that you're carrying, the precious thing.
RR: And then you're big-headed and empty-handed.
FH: There are bands that put out a brilliant album and then put out a horrible record, and you're like, What happened? This is what happened: The muse jumped ship. There were too many rants on board. There's like an invisible contract that you get when a song's delivered. It's like having a child. You sweat in a bedroom for ten minutes, and you come, and nine months later, it's finished, and in that nine months, you've got to make sure that it's healthy and when it first comes out, you've got to look out for it, and if it comes back from school with a band report, you're like, "Hey, what's going on?
RR: Do you know right away when you've hit upon one of those special songs?
FH: It's an instant thing. I'll write 99 shit songs, right? And then when this song is given to you, I swear to God it's the most amazing feeling, somebody's got your hand and it writes itself. Music is something that can remove you from life's gray area for just a second to remind you what it was like when you were pure, when you were a child.
RR: Is it difficult to hang on to that idea as you become more and more successful?
FH: Ever since this new album was released, we get questions like, "Are you rich now?" I'm like, Man, I've always been rich." I've got the best friends in the world, I love the people in my life. We live in a consumer society, in the West anyway. "You must have this car, you must have this fridge, you must have this watch, you must have this shampoo…You're going to die if you don't have them." You're going to die anyway.
DP: True wealth does not manifest itself in money, it manifests itself in moments between people. Or it can manifest in a piece of art or by just smiling at someone in the street--or somebody smiling at you. That's what makes you truly wealthy as a human being, inside.
FH: People think that we've come so far away from that [purity]; we haven't really. Music and art and all stuff like that can bring you back to that point. A song can tap into what's inside you. Have you ever heard a song and been totally humbled by it? I've had that happen. That's the power of what music contains.
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FH: The most recent song that did that is Lauryn Hill's "To Zion." It's like a ego vaporizer: Pow!
DP: Jeff Buckley's version of "Hallelujah" does that for me. When you hear it, you feel completely vulnerable and absolutely naked.
RR: People clearly feel that way about your songs.
FH: No, they're not our songs really--they're everybody's songs.
RR: Songs that have come through you, then.
FH: [laughs] I'd love just for it to be that. There's a song called "Flowers in the Window" that will be on our next record. When it was written, and I was playing it back to myself, I ws shaking and crying my eyes out, no control whatsoever. I was completely humiliated by it. It's that humiliation that cracks the geo. We only hit on this last night in the bar, this idea about the ego. We were trying to figure it out. We're kind of humble people, and I think it had to do with that maybe. I mean, I've got an ego, everyone's got an ego, you can't help it. But certain songs, when it hits you in that way, it just like cuts it all out like a cancer.
RR: It's interesting you said that the first batch of reviews referred to the album as a commercial suicide. Why do you think it is striking such a chord with people?
FH: They finally played us on the radio. We always said, Come on, give these songs a chance. If you play them, people will like them. Radio One [in London], thank God, said, "We'll do it." They played the first two singles and then hammered "Why Does It Always Rain on Me?" and then all the commercial stations picked it up. People just felt like, "Oh! I really love that song!" They don't go, "I love that band!" And that's exactly what we've always wanted.
RR: Speaking of songs, why do you cover Britney Spears's "…Baby One More Time?"
FH: We did it for a laugh the first time. And as we played it, the irony slipped from my smile. It's a very well-crafted song. I found that it had that magic thing.
DP: It's great when we do it live. At the beginning, people are laughing and then by the end, they're like, "Wow, that's a great song. I never really listened to it."
FH: It's like, well of course you didn't. Because of the way it's been dressed up. Our version is more naked.
Interview
April 2000
story by Ray Rogers
photos by Andrew Hetherington
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