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Who's Travis? | |
Two million U.K. fans can't be wrong...can they?
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Fran Healy and Dougie Payne--mouse-quiet Glaswegians in desperate need of a cigarette--are huddled in the smoke-free bar of their posh San Francisco hotel, waxing philosophical and struggling to make sense of it all. Only a year ago, when the tarnished crown tumbled from Britpop's shaggy head, few scenesters would've expected it to fall into the lap of Healy and Payne's quirky quartet Travis. Their ebullient-toned sophomore outing The Man Who didn't swagger with oafish bravado, à la Oasis. Nor did it clobber with subliminal smarts à la the brainy Blur. The songs--all penned by sensitive chap Healy--were unaffected, shamelessly catchy, with a startling blend of processional pacing and surreal sonic twists. The lyrics were openly self-effacing, almost geekishly frail (think Radiohead on a really depressing day). And Healy's singing--part Perry Como crooner, part Jeff Buckley iconoclast--was liquid, lissome, and lamb-bleat gentle, strangely comforting in an age of rabid over-emoting.
Yet The Man Who (finally seeing Stateside release now, on Epic, a full year after its U.K. debut) has bred five chart-topping hits; sold more than 2 million copies in Britain alone, a freakishly rare feat; remained in the U.K. Top 20 every week since it hit stores; won Brit Awards for Best Group and Album; and made instant cover stories out of Travis's shy, regular-Joe band members. Here in the U.S.--where Travis's '97 album Good Feeling failed to dazzle--the band still remains Scotland's best-kept secret, a situation that seems set to change once The Man Who word leaks out. The buzz was already deafening at Travis's recent showcase in L.A.; industry movers and shakers who'd crowded into the sweaty Troubador treated the group with reverent enthusiasm, even when Travis gave a passing (and decidedly unhip) nod to trendy teen pop via an earnest cover of Britney Spears's sugarsmacker, "...Baby One More Time." And that's Travis's secret weapon, smirks Healy: "We've never been cool, and we embrace that. And that's the whole idea, our whole message, if there is a message."
"Don't be afraid to be vulnerable," pipes in bassist Payne, a red-haired spitting image of old John Hughes alumnus Anthony Michael Hall. "Everyone's so afraid to be vulnerable."
Healy--Travis's 27-year-old guitarist/frontman--doesn't dress or act the superstar. In the bar, he's sporting ratty jeans, his skinny form buried beneath a huge ringer T-shirt and baggy hooded sweatshirt. He frequently pauses to shellac his short brown hair back up into its small, Ed Grimley-sharp Mohawk, giving him the quaint look of a Rhodesian ridgeback, fresh from its bristly doggie bath. "I think so many people, generally speaking, walk around with their guard up, like this," he frowns, balling his delicate fingers into fists, then holding the fists in front of his eyes. "They don't wanna laugh, they don't wanna cry, they don't wanna show they're vulnerable in anyway way. And it starts from the moment you're born--you're born sort of perfect and vulnerable in every way. I mean, look at kids running around in the playground--they live extreme lives. One minute, they're crying, the next minute, they're laughing. They never live in that horrible gray area in the center where they'll all end up as adults." Lower your defenses, he continues, and sure, "someone might pop you one, make you fall on your arse and look stupid. But you could just as easily be kissed. So you've gotta lower your guard, because when you've got this up here," he peeks from behind his fists again, "you can't see a thing, you can't see reality."
| TRAVIS'S DESERT ISLAND DISCS Whenever Travis frontman Fran Healy gets stranded on a desert island, these are the discs he prefers: | |||
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Hunky Dory--David Bowie (Virgin) Blue--Joni Mitchell (Reprise) Music from the Big Pink--The Band (Capitol) Grace--Jeff Buckley (Columbia) After the Gold Rush--Neil Young (Reprise) Revolver--The Beatles (Capitol) Albums I-IV--Led Zeppelin (Atlantic) (What's the Story) Morning Glory--Oasis (Epic) Back in Black--AC/DC (Atlantic) Green--REM (Warner Bros.) | |||
Healy shifts uncomfortably in his seat when asked to pinpoint his metaphors. "To me, most of the songs are about this thing one day and that thing the next. I'm still clueless. They're just lucky words and a beautiful melody, and that's about it. And I’m thinking not so much of what it sounds like, looks like, or how it's spelled. I’m asking, Does it work? Does it have soul? And what's going on inside you when you hear it?" Healy views songs as a kind of celestial energy, pre-written, predestined, just floating through the universe until they beam down to a composer's receptive antennae. "So the music is just the wrapping paper around what Travis is actually peddling, which is shit bare, emotional thing."
With guitarist Andy Dunlop and drummer Neil Primrose, Healy and Payne formed Travis four years ago while still attending the Glasgow School of Art. One primitive demo and one scratchy EP later, they became the first much-hurrahed singing to Go! Disc founder Andy Macdonald's new start-up, Independiente. Rock rags alternately carped and swooned as neophyte Travis (named for Harry Dean Stanton's character in Paris, Texas) scrambled up marquee bills, headlining over bigger Britpop contenders several months before they bothered to record the Steve Lillywhite-helmed Good Feeling long-player. Even Oasis's Noel Gallagher--the reigning king of Britpop at the time--jumped aboard, citing Travis as his favorite young band and inviting them to open his '97 coliseum jaunt. And he's since gone to the mat for Travis again; the band is slated as warm-up act for several Oasis dates this spring.
Healy can't help it, he sighs: As a side effect of all that art training, his senses are permanently humming, attuned to the world around him. "You're always taught to look and listen," he explains. "When most people don’t."
Payne, nodding in agreement, turns to address his chum. "The one really basic thing in life is just to pay attention. Pay attention to what's going on around you, and you'll find that beauty comes in between."
"Or don't even pay attention, sometimes," Healy swivels to counterpoint. "Because beauty exists without you paying attention." "Yeah," Payne responds. "But it's good to have that awareness."
Healy scratches his chin, watches a toddler pass by the bar window, tugging a balloon. "Do kids pay attention?" he wonders.
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"Yeah," Healy considers, "but they're not trying to pay attention."
Payne looks hurt. "Well, I'm not saying you have to make an effort. Just pay attention."
"Aye...aye," surrenders Healy in his soupy Scottish burr, turning back to the interview. But he's staring furrow-browed into his coffee cup, suggesting he hasn't come to the same conclusion his partner has. Still, a solid portion of any Travis chat consists of playful Healy/Payne quibbling. Three years ago, discussing Good Feeling, they argued over which could bring you greater sensory pleasure: a good painting or a really tasty sandwich. But there are many things they do agree on: The Man Who title, they elaborate, was nicked from the Oliver Sacks psychological case study, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. And Sacks could probably scribble an entire companion volume on the "Everyman" figure who populates Travis's ethereal videos. In one, Everyman (always played by a poker-faced Healy) is stoned bloody by small children, then machine-gun strafed by the same brats from a World War II bomber; in another, he rises to a Payne challenge and proceeds to perform dawn-to-dusk pushups in a village square. Says Healy, "This guy's on a quest of some kind, and he just keeps getting fucked over. Then the next video comes along, and it's like nothing's happened, he's back again and he's still trying to get to where he's going or to find something but you never know what it is."
The clips fall right in line with Healy's key Travis strategy: "Don't ever fight against anything--just go with it." This pacifist logic has kept his life simple as his band's business affairs grow increasingly more complicated, post-stardom. "But the thing that I'm realizing about Travis is that it has very little to do with music," grins Healy, punching Payne affectionately on the arm; Payne, in turn, lightly thumps him back. "We'll end up coming off like total loonies, I know, but when the four of us, long ago, sat it that room and played [what would be come the first Travis single] 'All I Want To Do Is Rock,' well, just before we played it, we all stood there and looked at each other, and for the first moment, were staring at it."
"It"?
Healy chuckles. Greases that Dimetrodon do one final time before heading outside for a well-earned smoke. "Yeah...'It.' This nice, positive energy. And if you get four people standing around 'it' in a huddle, like in American football…Well, that thing we stood around that day was small, like the size of a cookie. And now it's like this big," and he extends his arm Atlas-like, as far out as he can. "I mean, we could've been four mathematicians--it wouldn't have mattered. 'It' was infinitely expandable, infinitely dilutable. And now we've got 2 million people gathered around 'it'--it doesn't seem to lose its potency, and it just keeps getting bigger and bigger and BIGGER…"
Pulse
April 2000
story by Tom Lanham
photos by SK©ID
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