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The Nice Men Cometh | |
Happy. Friendly. Kind to their mums. And just plain nice...Are TRAVIS
too good to be true?
You'll never lose a fight you don't start. Love is letting go of
fear. Smile at your enemies--you're in the stronger position.
Welcome to the moral universe of Travis, where an estimated 95 percent of people are "pretty
decent," where bottling up your emotions just leads to an ulcer, and where, given the chance,
strangers are friends you just haven't met yet. Unlikely though it seems, these four young
Glaswegian men who swear like Vikings and like a drink are very much the rock
equivalent of a Patience Strong calendar.
Despite being utterly besotted with each other, with their music, with the whole dazzling potential
of rock 'n' roll, despite having just finished a second album of which they are fiercely, paternally
proud, they still refuse to embark on any flights of fancy. Clearly, they missed the foundation
course in pretension back at the Glasgow School of Art and unlike, oh, Gay Dad, they won't be
theatrically claiming to be "avatars of aheadness" or entertaining the masses with messy public
dissections of their sequinned lives. They might intend to set the world on fire with their songs,
but only if there's no damage to property or loss of life.
"We just write nice, good songs that are destined to be coming through the sound system in Pizza
Express," shrugs singer Fran Healy, excitingly. "That's where all the best music ends up."
Travis are nice. They write good songs. They want to make people happy. What kind of freaks
are they, for God's sake?
"We wanted to make a video that was part porn film, part nature documentary," announces Fran
cheerily--and loudly--as the band roam through a quiet west London record shop. "The thing is,
we wanted to film both parts in exactly the same way."
And that's as near as you'll be getting to wild rock beast excess for a while, so enjoy it. For such
openhearted boys--and somehow, for all their grown-up relationships and newfound worldliness,
they are definitely boys--Travis are a mystery. They live in the realm of the truism, they write
songs about love for people to sing along to, and most distressingly, they even fulfill one of the
music world's most frequently told lies--they actually do make perfect sense live. In a world
dedicated to extremes and earth-shattering thrills, that should destine them to an eternity in local
'Battle Of The Bands' contests, yet somehow Travis have all the grace and charm of the spheres,
transforming the base currency of wanting to rock into a golden glow. Their new single, "Writing
To Reach You," might be a fragile, raw-nerved love song, yet the "You" in the title is meant in
the plural. It was for good reason they toured with Oasis and Catatonia, that they've just recorded
the new, as-yet untitled album with Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich--make no mistake, it's
you they're after.
Sitting around a pub table, Travis are the kind of band you can easily imagine being good with
animals and children. Fran's nervy intensity is tempered by the memory of him out in the park
earlier, shouting with delight as geese took off nearby. Drummer Neil Primrose is bluff and
friendly. Guitarist Andy Dunlop is quiet and friendly. Bassist Dougie Payne, meanwhile, is camply
avuncular, occasionally sounding like the headmistress of Saint Trinian's. "'Enemy' is a very
serious word to bandy round lightly!" he'll say. You expect him to call you "young lady." In fact,
you expect him to call Fran and Neil and Andy "young lady" sometimes.
You can see why this isn't quite enough for some people. Good songs, good blokes--all very nice,
but this is rock'n'roll. Where's the passion, the drama, the thrills?
"Bands get in the way of music," decides Fran. "It's like standing in front of a painting and going,
'Look at me, I did that!'"
"It's part of coming from Glasgow," explains Dougie. "Up there, people don't like you being
untrue to yourself, or false."
Have you never wanted to be a glamourous and outrageous star?
Fran looks thoughtful. "Maybe when I was eight and I wanted to be Luke Skywalker, me and my
mates dressing up as stormtroopers. But that's the movies. Music is about communication in a
very un-visual way--you've got to create a picture in someone's head. That's why I hate Bowie so
much. He's a brilliant songwriter, but every time I hear 'Ziggy Stardust' I think of him dancing
around in a leotard."
"There's room for that," says Dougie, not surprisingly the band's resident Bowie fan. "But for us it
would seem false. If one of us came in behaving like that, it would be, 'Oh dear, do shut up'. We're
trying to create something quite emotional, and to communicate emotionally, you have to be
honest and human about it so people can really get it and understand it."
This is their overwhelming desire, and when people don't get it, they have enough self-belief to
believe that it comes from suspicion and fear. The idea that another guitar rock band might not be
what they need never enters their heads, so strong is their belief in a universal appeal.
"I think the first album fucked a lot of people off," admits Fran. "'Why have you recorded a song
called "Happy" then followed it with a sad song called "I Love You Anyways"? You can't do
that'. Fucking hell, that's such a horrible thing to say." He looks genuinely distressed. "The person
who says that is probably the person who doesn't like kids--you know, 'Act your age'. There's a
great suspicion of Travis--'What are they so fucking happy about, wankers?' Listen, if you're
allowed not to have a shitty job, to perform onstage with your mates, that is fucking amazingly
happy. I'm one of the most miserable people I know, but when I'm there, I'm happy."
Fran, it transpires, is the weakest link in the chain of good vibes, the man who writes music
because he fears he can't make himself understood any other way.
"We were wondering how people perceive us, and it's still something that worries me. It's one of
the things that keeps me up at night. I think I'm a really good songwriter and we're an excellent
band, but that's on a good day. Most of the time, I'm racked--there's a song on the album called
'Why Does It Always Rain On Me?', which is probably to do with coming from Glasgow."
"Wherever you go you take the weather with you," smiles Dougie.
"There's a line in the second verse that says, 'I can't stand myself'. It's like the line in 'The
Line Is Fine'--'Look at me I'm so disgusting'. I'm an eternal..." He pauses as if he can't
decide. "I'm always looking for people's bad points, but it starts at home. I'm obsessed with it, you
know."
Ask Travis about their dark side, and they have to think long and hard. "Er, it's the ability to be
complete fucking hedonistic animals," says Neil gravely. "We just love drinking and go for it big
time. When we're firing on four cylinders and have a day off, fucking hell. Not much of a dark
side then. It's bright white."
"Andy's going through a stage when he's a bit of c--- when he's drunk," declares Dougie, as the
guitarist nods happily. "It's OK, it's alright, but we can see when he's gearing up to be immensely
offensive to someone. 'Run away! Come here! Don't go there!'"
Since they formed in 1991, Travis have been the gang they never had. All four of them were
bullied--for having long hair, for liking music, for not liking sport, for being too small.
"Oh man," sighs Dougie, "I got to think my nickname was 'poof'. I'd be walking down the street
and all these guys would be going, 'Fucking big fucking poof' and I'd be like, 'Whaaat? I'm trying
to go to school. Give me a break.' It's funny how that's the worst insult people can think
to call you."
They bear no malice, they say. Now, when they see them on the streets, they shake the hands of
their persecutors. The important thing now is their gang.
"It's a shame that bands lose that whoe reason why they get together," sighs Neil. "They lose the
essence of that friendship, forget all the good times they've had. It could just be having a smoke
one night in the house."
It's always such a disappointment when bands start travelling in separate buses...
"Oh yes! Oh God! It's terrible!" they yell.
"It's like trying to make conversation out of unconnected words," says Andy quietly.
"We're massively feminine," asserts Fran, pointing out he was brought up entirely by his
mother. "But even though Embrace are dead laddish, at the root of it all, they're onstage singing
and it's really...poofy. Just like us. Don't misquote me now, because it's just like us. Just like
Oasis. Just like the Spice Girls. All art is feminine."
Fran pauses angrily.
"I've got a thing about men," he announces. "Men do my head in. Men made my mother's life a
misery, men make women's lives a misery. Men are the seven deadly sins, really. I'm aggressive,
and I've got to sort it out. I've got a really bad streak in me, and I can't figure out where it comes
from. At one point, I was going to see a therapist, because I've got an incredible temper
sometimes, but I'd rather figure it out myself. Therapists have a tendency to divert the problem
back onto another thing. Like leaving your luggage at a station, only you're on a circle line so you
just come back and pick it up again."
"For most people, your dark side comes in moments of paralysing self-doubt," says Dougie.
"That's when all four of us have an amazing support network. We have a shared dark side. We're
just like a big therapy groups. The Golden Girls."
"For me," reckons Fran, "it's based on not being able to communicate properly, not being able to
speak properly. I've got a real hang-up about not reading, not listening to music. I went on Sean
Hughes's radio show and he was asking me what I liked to do. 'Do you like going to the pub?'
And I was like, 'No man.' 'What bands do you like?' 'I don't really listen to music.' 'What books do
you read?' 'I don't.' And he just said, 'I'm sitting here with the most boring man in the world.' I was
like, 'No, I can't be--but maybe I am'. Maybe that's why I'm so angry. I am the most boring man
on the planet, only I'm not willing to admit it. I just surround myself with exciting people."
The band grin and nod approvingly. "Come on everyone," shouts Dougie, trying for thrills. "Let's
go down to Boots and buy some glitter!"
It's not always so easy to dazzle. Not when all you care about it honesty and humanity and
integrity. Not when you're good and nice and in that 95 percent of pretty decent people. The 95
percent who are normally never rock stars. But then, Travis aren't afraid. They answer to a higher
force.
"If you're in favour with the angels," smiles Fran, "they give you little gifts from time to time."
And you know whose side they're on.
New Musical Express
If it all seems
artless, they'd be quite happy with that. Even Fran's description of their career
path is notably lacking in guile. "This time round, it feels like we've done the nursery bit, and
we're now at primary school," he says. "Less fun and more work. And at the end of this, it'll be
like when you go to secondary school and all the bigger guys go, 'Man, they shove your head
down the toilet when you go there'."
This bonding against a
wicked world, this vulnerability beneath the tough old macho veneer of
guitar-bass-drums will serve them well in the eyes of converts.
February 27, 1999
Text: Victoria Segal
Photography: Hamish Brown
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