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Jocks Away! | |
It's all blue sky for TRAVIS, the Number 1 Glaswegians who make gay men swoon and Liam Gallagher weep. "We always thought we'd prevail," they tell Paul Elliott.
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In the departure lounge at Stapleford Airport in Essex, over a breakfast of coffee and cigarettes, Neil Primrose speaks for all of Travis when he says he feels like a "doofus." For a trip to Newquay in Cornwall, where they will mime two songs for the Radio 1 Roadshow, the band have chartered a light aircraft--an eight-seater Beechcraft Kingair 200 turboprop--at a cost of £800 per hour. Flying is a necessity because Travis must be in Elstree, Herts, by 3 p.m. for Tops of the Pops, where, ironically, they won't be miming.
"It's got bad connotations," the drummer shrugs, "but it has to be done."
Days like these are now the norm for Travis, which pleases Primrose, who was growing bored of sitting at home. Following a sluggish start to their career, the Glaswegian foursome's second album The Man Who was certified platinum (300,000 UK sales) a week after the eclipse. Three days later, it went to Number 1.
Not bad for a band who only six months ago were rumoured to be suffocating under a mountain of recording studio bills; a band whose low-key comeback gig at London's King's College in March was savaged by rock weeklies in what one fellow musician described as the nastiest reviews he has ever read; a band who played their first gigs together as the Glass Onion back in 1991, when they sounded "Wonderstuffy" and singer Fran Healy would wear a surgeon's outfit onstage.
"We were shit," Healy admits now, "but I always thought we'd prevail. I have massive belief in this band. Ever since I joined, I've had it."
When Travis played their first Top 10 hit, "Why Does It Always Rain on Me?," at Glastonbury in June, it pissed down. In Newquay, on the lawns of the stately Headland Hotel, a crowd of kids and bored surfers basked in sunshine as Travis fake it, strumming unplugged guitars. Cheating? Guitarist Andy Dunlop laughs. "I lost my conscience a long time ago."
The last time Dunlop appeared on a Roadshow stage, it was pride that he lost. A talent contest pitted him playing the Benny Hill Show theme on guitar against a small boy playing his armpit. The boy won.
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In Newquay, Dunlop and Travis are victorious. Cast are a little hairy for this audience, Enrique Iglesias rather contrived, and pop chancers BB Mak simply faceless. The young girls in the crowd, like Robyn Rasmussen from nearby Bude and Christine Matthews from Stoke, find a place in their hearts for Travis alongside Steps, Stereophonics, and Hanson. They fancy Fran and "him with the glasses," bassist Dougie Payne. Eighteen-year-old James Hayworth, from Portsmouth, rates Travis up there with Oasis, Supergrass, and Manic Street Preachers. One of the 50,000 people who bought Travis's first album, Good Feeling, he sums up the band's appeal simply. "Good songs. Quite sentimental."
Next stop for the Roadshow is St. Ives. Travis head for Tops of the Pops.
A bottle of Moët is opened during the return flight. Primrose falls asleep, mouth agape, so Healy sketches him, then reveals his not entirely serious yearning for a head implant. Steve Lillywhite, producer of Good Feeling, described Fran Healy's head as the smallest in rock. This troubles the singer.
"Everyone who's big in rock has a big heed," he sighs. "Look at the Beatles. Or Oasis."
At Tops of the Pops, Travis enjoy the Beeb's hospitality to the full. They eat sandwiches from the infamous BBC canteen--the tuna salad baps are slightly "on the turn"--then withdraw to the bar, an astonishingly tatty student union-styled prefab where Ross Kemp and the regal Barbara Windsor are getting them in after a day on the nearby EastEnders set.
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Currently working on the next Radiohead album, Godrich is thanked on The Man Who "for turning this crazy bird around." Certainly, the sound of the record--"scruffy and not particularly well recorded," in Godrich's words--flatters the humble intimacy of Healy's songs, but just as importantly, it was Godrich who brought the tiller under control after the original producer, Mike Hedges, departed after finishing just four tracks.
Best known for his knob-twiddling on the last two Manic Street Preachers albums, Hedges recorded the band at his Chateau De La Rouge Motte studio in southern France between June 4 and June 24, 1998, and for the first week of July at Abbey Road in London. The four tracks, including "Why Does It Always Rain on Me?" and the next single "Turn," were "fucked up" (i.e., remixed) by Godrich during sessions at London's Mayfair studios, where the remainder of the album was recorded from scratch, in six sessions spread over as many months. Former Smiths and Blur employee Stephen Street produced another track, "Flowers in the Window," which Healy believes is among the best he's written, but band, label, and producer were unhappy with the results.
As for Mike Hedges, his labour on the Manic Street Preachers' This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours had left him, in his own words, "knackered." But grapevine whispers of the producer undergoing a nervous collapse are dismissed by all.
"We got some really good performances with Mike Hedges," Macdonald explains, "but he had other obligations. It's no dis on him at all, but there's something very special about the relationship they have with Nigel."
Godrich, 28, is laid-back, shaven-headed, and wears his end-of-the-millennium sonic guru laurels with ease.
"Anyone who has exposure to Fran for more than an hour is won," he explains. "It's more than the music. He's inspiring. It's just a guitar band, nothing too challenging, but we made a good record."
An expensive record?
"I won't discuss exact figures with anyone," Macdonald snaps. "It wasn't astronomical. Let's just say that on a scale of one to ten, it was a six. A fraction of the cost of a lot of major recrods."
Was this a make-or-break record for the band?
"I think every album's make or break," Healy sniffs. "We're on an independent label, so by defnition, we're not rolling in cash.
"I still think Good Feeling is a cracking record, but the timing just wasn't right or something, it didn't connect with anybody. So it's important that we did well, but there wasn't pressure in the studio. I'm kind of daft that way."
Macdonald concurs. "If you want a record as good as can be, it needs time. I was only really concerned when we needed a couple of songs, and they weren't coming."
More specifically, Healy had not written enough top-quality songs to make an album everyone was happy with, so at the singer's suggestion, Macdonald began weekly visits to Healy's flat to bully the singer along. This unusual arrangemenent produced a handful of songs, among them "Turn" and the pivotal, Radio 1-A-listed "Driftwood."
Recently, the 26-year-old Francis Gillian Healy (in truth, he has no middle name, but that is the one he would have liked) experienced a pop star moment virtually on his doorstep. In the la-di-da London district of Crouch End, where he has lived for a year, Healy popped into a newsagent to buy a Fuse bar. The shopkeeper recognised him and even knew his name.
For Fran Healy, fame is a strange feeling. He might fancy himself the equal of Noel Gallagher as a songwriter, but he has no yen for the Gallaghers' rock star life.
"Even the Beatles stood in front of their work too much," says the unassuming rock 'n' roll singer, who performed on Top of the Pops in the clothes he'd worn all day: grubby denims and a Gilbert & George exhibition t-shirt. This while, next door, an army of stylists fussed over Geri Halliwell. According to The Man Who song "As You Are," Healy is "not like all the other boys."
"I'm quite a feminine bloke," he allows, "but I can feel that bloke thing kicking in sometimes. I hate it."
Healy was brought up alone (though there are half-brothers and sisters) and was raised by his mother, to whom he dedicated the first Travis album. On his mother's advice, he declines to talk about his father ("I'd rather not go there") and is quick to stress that the domestic violence portrayed in "Blue Flashing Light," a hidden track on The Man Who, does not allude to his own childhood.
"It's not a regular Travis song," he protests. "It's a made-up story about a wee guy who knows that the guy next door beats up his wife and daughter. It's about that attitude people have--it's none of our business--until something terrible happens."
Healy also has a cult gay following, as highlighted by a recent letter to queer style magazine Attitude by "Gordon from Chester."
"He said he'd strum my guitar any day of the week," Healy chuckles. "The first cover we had for this record was from another gay magazine, Boyz. The interview was hilarious. This guy asked, When you're onstage, do you notice certain boys in the audience touching themselves?"
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"That was the icebreaker in our relationship," Healy remembers. "We were touring with them, and Liam was sitting backstage in Aberdeen one night playing a guitar. He asked me to play him a song, and I played him 'Luv,' and he went off on one telling me it's like John Lennon and that I should ride a penny farthing in the video. I gave him a demo of the song, and he came back 20 minutes later with huge red eyes and told me I was weird. Then Liam played the song to Bonehead, who cried so much he had to hide in a cupboard."
Healy wrote "Luv" in 1995 when a girlfriend dumped him and left for university. When he finished the song, he recorded a four-track demo and stalkerishly posted the tape to her.
"Months later, I asked her, Did you get the tape? She said, Oh yeah, it was alright. She hadn't even listened to the words."
Healy currently lives with a handsome makeup artist called Nora, a member of today's Travis entourage. Explaining her firm handshake, she states matter-of-factly: "I am German."
Back at Top of the Pops on August 19 to perform "Why Does It Always Rain on Me?" for a second consecutive week, Fran Healy is playing snooker on the next table to a shockingly scruffy Neil Hannon and celebrating a platinum record with a solitary bottle of Becks.
"When it happens to you, it doesn't feel like you think," he shrugs and pulls the hood of his Portishead sweat-top oer his tiny head. "The album's going to Number 1! We're taking Boyzone from behind!" he sniggers. "Very messy."
Healy was on the dole when the melody for "Writing to Reach You" came to him one night over Christmas 1996 as he fooled around with the chords to Oasis's "Wonderwall" and the Connells' one-off hit "'74, '75." Back then, he was so broke he would empty his ashtray every morning to make roll-ups from the previous night's butts, but even then, he believed he would write the songs that could mean as much to other people as the songs of the Beatles and Oasis meant to him.
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"We thought he might turn and go totally apeshit," Healy laughs, "so we played him something else. In the end, they didn't give a fuck. They liked the song. Noel actually said to me at the Kosovo benefit gig, You're right--there is no fucking wonderwall."
And then again, who needs "Wonderwall" when Travis's faintly gauche, wistfully sung, cockle-warming songs offer such a sociable solace?
"Songs are bookmarks in people's lives," Healy expounds. "A great song is one that the whole world knows, that seeps into the public consciousness. Most people don't know what bands look like. They hear a song and go out and get it."
Do these people buy Travis records? Fran Healy--The Man Who Would Be Number 1 But Able To Buy A Fuse Bar In Peace--hopes so.
Q
November 1999
story by Paul Elliott
photos by Eva Vermandel
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