Travis - NME, March 29, 1997

Ooh-aah! Just a Bickle bit!

"There's a lot to be said for art school in the rock 'n' roll tradition," says Travis's mop-cut bassist Dougie Payne. "William Morris, the guy that Jimmy Page likes, set up the first art school in Britain, and Malcolm McLaren talks about that, and if it wasn't for him doing that, you can forget about your Led Zeppelins and your Beatles and your Who."
Three Scottish heads nod in agreement and the gab-gifted mouth belonging to Travis's singer Francis Healy unleashes another bold comparison: "Going to art school taught me that I didn't want to be a painter, I wanted to be in a band, so I dropped out of sight...just like John Lennon! That's brilliant, isn't it?"
Fear not, the walls of the pop gallery are not about to be hung with a prissy art school-inspired Beatles pastiche. The Glaswegian foursome's tartan-guitared swagger is the result of an off-on six-year history that saw themselves ditch art and nail themselves to the cross of steel-bolted, pretension-free, good-time rock 'n' roll.
"Mention Jacques Derrida, I'll kill you!" says Dougie in Mary Chain-esque rocker tones. Dougie may have the full-on early Bobby Gillespie pudding-bowl haircut, but Travis are no more beholden to old Glaswegian rock traditions past than to the lo-fi Scottish present. "There's a very singular chemistry to this band," they declare, and indeed it is so.
Too articulate to fit into any hard-lads stereotypes, they're a faultless blend of basic pop instincts and gang solidarity. Cute, lippy, loud, and wry enough to let a stray dog wander into their video for their current chant-along "U16 Girls" single, Travis are tailor-made for post-Oasis adulation on a level that'll make the mad scenes of their Mansun supports look microscopic.
The wilderness years took Fran, Dougie, drummer Neil Primrose, and guitarist Andy Dunlop from jobs in shoe shops, Glasgow scene infighting, and line-up changes to last year's cocksure own-label debut "All I Wanna Do Is Rock."
"It was 'All I Want to Do Is Fuck'," says Fran. "But 'rock' sounds better phonetically, and anyway, me Mum would kill me." No longer in need of Mum's approval, they're living together in a house in London, signed to Independiente, and gearing up for a ballistic summer.
"The reason why I think this band are good is because we're not fashion-conscious and never have been," says Fran. "I get more inspiration from going to see a movie and coming out and going, 'That was fucking great'." Apart from Dougie's admission that he might have some Placebo sympathies ("but only because of being 16 and getting called a poof on the streets of Glasgow"), Travis present a united front of indifference to the bands and scenes around them. They are, they reckon, straight from real life into your living room. In which case, "U16 Girls"--which advises you to "Make sure that she's old enough before you blow your mind"--must be a true tale of underage sex.
"No, it's more or less an observation about what's going on," pleads Fran. "I don't do any of that shit. I think it's horrible. You can really fucking abuse your position in a band, and it's not nice. So no! It's not based on experience. I would've used a different age, but that'd be like Chuck Berry saying, 'Sweet 18.' It doesnae sound right."
Soft hearts, wise words, hard tunes, Travis are one of the few bands around who should be allowed to dally with Lennon and Chuck Berry comparisons. From their middle-eights to their end quotes, they're as artlessly classic as it gets.
"People talk about rock 'n' roll being an art form, but it shouldn't be," concludes Francis. "Because the fact that it's so fucking simple. It's like a beautiful leaf and you don't want to put it under a microscope. If you look at the classic bands or entertainers, Frank Sinatra or anyone, it's pure entertainment. It's a show. It's a rock act! The Spice Girls are an act. And we are a rock act."
The distinction is clear, and so is the potential for Travis's rock domination.
New Musical Express
March 29, 1997
by Roger Morton

He-ey!

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