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The Men Who... | |
...kept their heads when, all around, people were losing theirs and sold 1.3 million albums while trendy people weren't looking. En route they've camped it up, written "shit songs," and sacked the blind bassist, for they are TRAVIS and even Germany likes them. "We're the luckiest, best band in the world," they inform John Aizlewood.
She's a middle-aged hausfrau with a piggy face, highlighted by pinched eyes and lips so thin the money she squanders on her toilet is leavened by minimal lippy outlay. She works at Frankfurt's HR radio, and her job is to make guests Fran Healy and Dougie Payne of Travis sound like acoustic gods.
She's already had a tantrum when Healy sat on the DJ's desk to give the studio's ill-positioned microphone a more than minimal chance of picking up his 1947-vintage acoustic guitar, and as the pair struggle through "Turn," she scowls at a younger, prettier woman lured from another studio by Turn's effective melody. "How," she spits, "the fuck did this get to Number One in Britain?"
Behind soundproof glass, Healy and Payne had sensed but not heard the engineer's disdain. However, the old bat had a point: how exactly did Travis get to Number One? "Absolutely no idea," admits Healy, sole songwriter and thus group leader. He worries about his head being too small, anatomically speaking.
"I don't know," shrugs bassist Payne, who would be as camp as a row of tents, if those tents were occupied by very camp men. He wears a badge saying "I Love Fucked Up Noise" on his thigh.
"If I'd knew, I'd be doing it every day," sighs guitarist Andy Dunlop, who's impossibly quiet until drunk. Then he's quite quiet.
"Pure belligerence," muses drummer Neil Primrose, a computing graduate. "And luck."
It may sound cheesy, but there's a magical aura around Travis, underpinned by decade-long intra-band relationships. Gang-like, they go out together, they finish each other's sentences, they're tactile as newborn babies, and they share a gentle but sharp sense of humor. "We don't prey on people's weaknesses, we prey on our strengths," explains Dunlop, closest to Primrose. "The music comes from our relationships. The important thing is not to let shite get in the way."
"The only thing we fear," confesses Primrose, "is that our relationships dissolve."
"Our friendship could have existed without the band," adds Payne, closest to Healy, "but I don't know if the band could exist without the friendship."
"Slowly," notes Healy sinisterly, "they became the same person."
The magic extends to Travis's best moments: the almost throwaway "so cold, so cold" in "Why Does It Always Rain On Me"; the coruscating introduction to "All I Want To Do Is Rock"; the whole of "The Last Laugh of the Laughter." It's there in their live shows and their sales figures (Britain only). More importantly, Travis, to a man, believe. "It's invisible," says Healy, fairly sagely, "but if we had egos, forget it, the magic wouldn't come through."
Magic is in short supply later that evening when Travis play the Capital in Offenbach, a few kilometers from Frankfurt along the mighty River Main. Initially, the gothic venue seems normal enough, despite the faceless statue of sperm-shaped women encircling the upper tier and the opportunity to purchase Siglo No. V Cuban cigars for 52DM apiece. There's a Cuban theme to the Millennium too, where for 1999.99DM (just 1399.99DM to lovely frauleins), those with "no jeans, no sneakers" will have swung along to Cuban bands and watched "grosses indoor Feuerwerk!"
The almighty domed ceiling is a clue, although the plaque outside is explicit enough. It used to be a synagogue until Kristallnacht, November 1938. That funny smell must be the stench of terror then. It never quite goes, apparently. "I must say," chuckled Hermann Goring the morning after the night before. "I wouldn't like to be a Jew in Germany right now." The complex surveillance equipment, plus an omnipresent police car, outside Offenbach's new synagogue, suggests it can't be a barrel of laughs toady either. It doesn't seem quite fair to share this information with Travis.
This time last year, Jeremy Proctor was a fish merchant in Morecambe who had never played in a band. Now, he's Travis's touring keyboardist. What's your greatest fear, Jeremy?
"The sack."
Healy and Payne answer the DJ's questions ("You recorded your album in Normandy. Do French bread, wine, and cheese influence your music?") and try not to laugh while she has a coughing fit caused by overpreening herself. Afterwards, as Travis's German radio promotions man does his Spinal Tap routine ("I am so sorry, that was all my fault"), Healy raises his eyebrows and smiles. At least the DJ had translated his phrase about Travis being good music to have sex to without squirming, and they'd resisted the customary pressure for their version of Britney Spears's "Baby One More Time."
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Neil Primrose Drums
What do you bring?
Could Travis exist without you?
Why aren't you jealous of Fran?
What do you do while he's writing?
Will the money change you?
Close, aren't you? |
Dougie Payne Bass
What do you bring?
Could Travis exist without you?
Why aren't you jealous of Fran?
Your songs are...
What do you do while he's writing?
Will the money change you?
Close, aren't you? |
Andy Dunlop Guitar
What do you bring?
Could Travis exist without you?
Why aren't you jealous of Fran?
Your songs are...
Is it an ambition to write a Travis song?
What do you do while he's writing?
Will the money change you?
Close, aren't you? |
I don't know if there is anything. I'm not charismatic. I've not got a great gob on me. I'm never the guy you would have up front. I'm warm, I don't get riled, and I'm a good listener. I'm not in your face. I'm just there, hovering.
Because he's my mate. To feel jealous would be ridiculous. I'm proud he writes such amazing songs and I'm proud to play on them. He's a very emotional man, and that's why he strikes a chord; everybody feels love, fear, and guilt. I was jealous when he played with Paul McCartney at the Millennium Tube, though. I was at the back glowing green, muttering, You bastard.
I add rock. I was brought up on AC/DC and have the most horrible embarrassing rock collection in the world. It descended to Ratt. Personally? I'd like to think I add a little smile.
When Travis take flight--"Driftwood" is especially gorgeous--the magic peeks through, and when Healy almost begs the crowd to spend New Year's Eve with "someone you love," a few hundred German hearts melt. Whisper it soft, but Travis are, in the weakest of words, nice.
"I wouldn't say we were nice," snorts Healy, nicely, "but we stand out in a pile of shit, fucking greed and me-me-me-ness. We're just reasonable people. We're not nice. Stick around, I can be a right cunt."
Travis take their Trathens of Plymouth double-deckered tour bus (with a dinky trailer pulled behind) to Munich. They will drink tequila, listen to early Queen, thrash each other at PlayStation soccer, and smoke so many cigarettes that tomorrow's sun rises over a German tobacco shortage.
They even have a court jester in tow. Adam Buxton from The Adam & Joe Show is filming everything. He has alien's thumbs the shape of tablespoons, an unfeasibly hairy back, and is reassuringly funny. As reward for bonhomie, Travis let him play tambourine on "Coming Around" (so close to making The Man Who that Healy discovers a German copy with it listed) a few days later in Berlin. He is beyond rhythm.
Berlin. So good they actually did name it twice until The Wall tumbled. Today, among the volk of the old East, there is such near-universal hankering for the DDR (not shared by the citizens of Rostock and Dresden who now have the liberty to firebomb Turkish hostels) that there is a term--ostologie--for it. Travis domicile themselves in the former East Berlin, and it is there that Healy receives the call from his label boss Andy Macdonald confirming The Man Who has sold its 1,200,000th British copy. It is, as Healy does not care to note, a long way from Stafford.
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"I am the result of a shite relationship," he notes. "I am this thing. I wouldn't say I'm great about everything." His mother's side was all stifled creativity and premature death.
"I remember Granda's little poems and pictures. His sister was really good at drawing. My Uncle Hughie could've gone to art school. My auntie was a brilliant artist except she fucking drowned. Another uncle was run over by a horse and cart. The thread was untapped talent."
An only child, baby Francis was one when his mother fled Stafford and his father to live with her parents in Glasgow. They've made a pact not to speak of what happened, but it was not alcohol-induced.
"Basically your mum--or someone close to you--say, Listen, I have this scratch that I don't want to get scratched again. When my mum eventually passes on--in another 100 years--I'll probably be quite happy to talk of this."
His mother never remarried.
"My mum's 53. She worked 25 years part time in the band. She didn't want to remarry. She was, Fuck guys, man. Jesus, I'm surprised more women aren't lesboes."
Indulgent yet protective, his mother loaned Travis money toward recording their first single: a self-released "All I Want to Do Is Rock."
"She's great. If anything, she's guilty of overprotecting. Her mother's first child drowned catching butterflies in the Forty & Clyde canal aged nine. He'd got new taps in his shoes to save them from wearing out. He slipped, fell in, panicked, and was pulled down. My mum was the next born, so my nanna was protective. My mum was like that with me."
He last met his father when he was 14, has never met his paternal grandparents, and recently bumped into a paternal cousin working at London's Shepherd's Bush Empire.
"These people didn't exist. They might have the same blood, but it doesn't give anyone any fucking claims to anything. I don't have a dad. You're forced to think that your parents and relatives are divine. Blood's thicker than water: I hate that saying. It sucks.
"I've got my mum, my auntie Babs, my cousins, my girlfriend, the band, my mates, my granda who's dead, and my Uncle Bill who's dead. They formed my life, made me the person I am."
And if the paternal family resurfaces...
"It's something I'm sure will come up. I quite relish that (he grins with tangible malice). I'll handle it when it happens. Now I don't have any fear at all, but I used to be so scared as a child."
Like most offspring of a damaged relationship, Fran Healy has his demons. He holds up his knuckles. One is stunted. He hits things (not people, he emphasis, never people) and then slips into the depression dark Travis hints of.
"I could easily put my head through a wall. I've got so much anger inside of me, masses of it. It's never-ending. Anything can trigger it off, but I'm a reasonably person and keep it under control, partly because I have songs to put it all into."
He may have found a soulmate in his older German girlfriend Nora, whose background is similar. "It's the strangest thing. We're living together, and I didn't even think about it. At the end of the day, the deal is that you look after them, they look after you, and we'll get from here to there together.
"I used to think opposites attract. They do but not for life. When you go Chalk and they go Cheese, it's a horrible moment when you'd thought they were the same. Maybe were my parents went wrong."
He frets about fatherhood.
"Absolutely. I go through phases of saying I'm going to have kids but more of wanting never to be a parent. I don't know if I'll be good one based on what I know of what I've got inside me. It shouldn't put me off because we're all monkeys. We're not here to write songs, we're not here to build bridges, we're here to push on the gene: to eat, sleep, and fuck."
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"Never."
Never ever?
"Never."
In 1991, as Healy was securing entry into Glasgow School of Art, Andy Dunlop, AC/DC fan and jeweler whose adoptive father worked in a bank, and Neil Primrose, a promising swimmer whose father's engineering job meant an itinerant, dislocated childhood, were part of Glass Onion, a nowhere-bound quintet. Healy, friend with barman Primrose, usurped the female singer, although music was hardly his guiding force.
"I never bought records as a kid, there was enough music on TV and radio. Ninety percent of people aren't into music. I fall into the 90 who love a song, but don't buy it, play it to death, fucking dress up like the band, and see the gig. I've got millions of CDs, but they're all freebies, and I never listen to them. A good song will go in your ear and it's yours, you don't actually have to won it. You don't have to hear 'Good Vibrations' again to sing it."
Glass Onion were there for the taking and would be Travis, from a character in Paris, Texas, rather than Bickle or Dave Lee, by 1994.
"Shit songs, really shit songs," winces Healy, "but they were really good together."
"Nobody liked us in Glasgow," remembers Dunlop. "We were shit, fucking rubbish and cheesy."
Healy, a leader of men, took control. "Sometimes I've got to be the cunt. It's to do with being the youngest."
Ever ambitious, they won a contest organized by something called The Music In Scotland Trust, who promised 2,000 pounds so Travis could deal-hunt at the New Music Seminar in New York.
"Two weeks before we were due to go," says a still-rankled Healy, "They said they weren't giving us the money because they were putting it into The Music In Scotland Trust Directory. I thought that was fair enough, not just helping one band. They sent us the book, and it featured every single band in Scotland. Apart from us. We were always ignored, we were always shunned. There's a resentment of us. I don't know what it is. I can't get it, and although we've sold a million records, we're still outsiders."
Then, magically, American engineer Niko Bolas, longtime Rolling Stones, Neil Young, and Hindu Love Gods associate, heard a Travis session on Radio Scotland. Hearing something special, he instantly traveled to Perth to see them.
"A tiny guy, but very charming," smiles Healy. "He told us we were shit, took us in the studio for four days, and taught us how to play properly, like a band. He was bolshy, rude, and New York pushy. He didn't believe my lyrics and told me to write what I believed in and not tell lies. He was Mary Poppins, he sorted us out."
"He said we weren't playing to the song, just mashing about being total fannies," adds Dunlop. "He told us to keep it simple and let the song take it where it wants to go."
Then, Bolas was out of their lives, almost forever, but three years later, when Travis played New York, he was there when they dedicated the opening "All I Want To Do Is Rock" to him. The old buzzard wept.
Still lacking any spark of greatness, Healy identified the keyboard and bass playing Martyn brothers as the problem. The crunch came the March 1996 night they supported Trash Can Sinatras in Edinburgh.
"The bassist has gone blind over a two-year period," explains Healy. "He head a white stick, and we had him onstage with his back to the audience. That whole night was really sad, I felt it was over. I phoned my mum, who said my granda had just died. From that point, everything went into focus. Although I had massive guilt over a long period, it was alleviated by my granda dying. I didn't care if I hurt anyone's feelings because I 'd lost a massive part of my life. I don't think there's any bad blood."
Healy decided Travis would no longer have a keyboardist and the bassist would be Dougie Payne, their Glasgow School of Art chum and possessor of a degree in sculpture (a first, at that) who had worked in Schuh shoe shop with Primrose. Magically, Payne and Dunlop's banker fathers had regularly lunched many years ago but had lost touch. That Payne couldn't play bass was merely a technicality.
"I kept saying no," admits Payne, who was working in Glasgow's Levi's store. "Franny was not happy. He was coming to my house and going, Fuck, this is just fucked. That I couldn't play--it's only the fucking bass after all--didn't bother me, but the thought of joining a band I'd know for years did. Eventually, Franny gave me a tape. I sat in my room for two weeks, practicing. Every so often, they'd check up on me."
The first time they rehearsed, in free space above Primrose's employers, the Horsehoe (Europe's longest bar, allegedly), was also the magic's debut. They still seem transfixed.
"We did 'All I Want to Do Is Rock'," swoons Dunlop. "There was something we'd never felt before. There's a million wrongs for everyone but very few rights. It's hard enough to find one person in life, but we each had to find three. The magic was pulling us together."
"That moment meant something massive to each of us," says Healy. "I know it did. I remember standing there and going, This is it, this is the fucking band. The stars had come into line, and fireworks went off. I'll never forget it."
"You know that bit in Wizard of Oz," continues Payne, "where they end up getting together and walking down the road. That's what it felt like."
"...except we were walking down the road stoned out of our nuts," finishes Primrose. "W went for an Indian buffet and got absolutely flumped. At that point, everything stopped. It was a moment of total clarity, we know it was going to be all right."
In April 1996, Healy and Payne visited London with the last proceeds of the former's publishing deal. They found a rehearsal space, a communal flat off Green Lanes in North London, and Tasmin Archer's management: a member of raincoat-ensemble-period Thompson Twins and partner.
The foursome moved to London in June. Neil Primrose broke off his engagement ("It wasn't her fault, it was just circumstances. I didn't need to think about it. We knew it for the best.") and gave it six months.
Andy Macdonald, multimillionaire and former head of Go! Discs, needed a band to anchor his new label, Independiente. Intrigued by a Travis tape, he propositioned Healy at the Water Rats pub in King's Cross during a gig by A Secret Goldfish.
"He shuffles in, sidles up to the bar, and goes, You're Fran, aren't you? I thought, Oh man, I've been in London for a month. My mother warned me about people like him. It was like he wanted me to get in bed with him. In a funny way, I did. It's the 10-second rule: you meet someone and should be able to make a clear judgement based on their eyes. He's a very inspiring man. It was love."
"We thought, Oooh, look, Franny's pulled," quips Payne helpfully.
The subsequent 12-song debut, Good Feeling reached Number 7 in 1997, despite being recorded mostly live ("That's where the magic happens"). Healy's dark side was overlooked amid the uplift of "U16 Girls," "Happy," and "All I Want To Do Is Rock." Literally hundreds of shows followed, some supporting Oasis after Noel Gallagher decided he liked them.
"He's not a friend," declares Healy, Travis's only Catholic. "I'm an acquaintance of his, I don't go round his house for tea, but he's a lovely man. I hate muso shit, and Noel's exactly the same. I have a lot of respect for him as an artist; he's a cracker. He made it look almost too easy."
That thing didn't seem wholly right was partly by design. Healy allowed everyone outside the band--marketing and art departments, etc., the "invisible men" who would be namechecked on "Why Does It Always Rain On Me?"--to do it their own way at first.
"They didn't know anything," he claims. "In six months, they were trying to get what had taken us years to understand. When we released "U16 Girls," everybody said we were going to be massive. So I expected it to got Number 1. When it reached 40, we though, Ah, we won't be listening again.
"The second single went to 39, technically an improvement. The third went to 38. It'd be another 37 singles until we got to 1 at that rate. We realized it was going to take a little longer than we thought. As soon as you realize that, everything becomes OK."
Recording The Man Who was traumatic. Producer Mike Hedges couldn't finish what he'd started. Healy sent himself home to write three new songs after realizing some of the initial batch didn't fit. "Driftwood" was the last to be completed, an hour after "Writing to Reach You," following weeks of sitting around and false starts.
Not the most immediate of albums, reviews were mixed. "You got the feeling a lot of people wanted to stamp it out before it had a chance," laments Healy.
Even so, The Man Who entered the charts at 5, better than Good Feeling. Therefore, Travis could watch it slide to 19 with satisfaction, if not unbridled joy. Then something, yes, magical happened. Travis were booked on 1999's British festival circuit, bookended by Glastonbury and V99. At Glastonbury, as they began "Why Does It Always Rain on Me?," the heavens opened. Travis had themselves an anthem.
"We're the luckiest cunts on earth," smiles Healy. "The week after, it stayed at 19. We were like, Oh bless its little claws, it doesn't want to leave the Top 20. Then it started going back up, and one day, you wake up and it all means something. People saw us play or on telly and realized they liked these songs and feel they're vehicles for their emotional state."
At V99, Healy announced that The Man Who had topped the chart that very day. "There was no animosity," remembers Primrose, "just a cheer of goodwill and thousands of happy people."
And that, woman from Frankfurt--through talent, luck, determination, their relationship, and yet again, magic--is how Travis reached Number One.
"Travis," declares Healy, "are the luckiest, best band in the world."
The show at Berlin's Columbiahalle is a jollier affair than the Offenbach business. Dunlop wears a Ben Folds Five deerstalker, a comedy T-shirt resembling a German policeman's outfit, and plays some of his best guitar lying on his back. The crowd form a moshpit and almost understand some of Healy's cute anecdotes.
It certainly goes better than a visit to MTV Berlin, where Healy and Payne do their acoustic stuff again.
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MTV: "'Baby One More Time'."
Travis: "No."
The welcoming spread of old bananas and cold tea bodes ill, as does the Berlin representative of their label, who demands they stop singing autographs for a handful of fans outside.
The pair had willingly got down on their hands and knees to potato-paint T-shirts, but as they reach the climax of "As They Are," it's truncated by Bush's "The Chemicals Between Us." This time, Healy--who'd cheerily shrugged off the elephantine director knocking his prize guitar off its stool--is less sanguine. He takes a solo cigarette break and watches a Moby video: "Ha! Didn't cut the fucking end off that, did they?" His eyes have gone. Nothing happens.
After Travis have taken January off, they'll record their third album, possibly in Los Angeles where they remain not only unrecognized but unheard of. Most of Healy's songs are ready, but any day now, big money is going to come their--especially Healy's--way.
"This is not a democracy," Healy admits. "There's the human aspect of a guy sitting in a room for fucking two months writing songs, something he absolutely hates. I could get really fucked off about it, but that is why I get paid more than the rest of the band. I don't have a problem about it. I used to, but we discussed it."
A second songwriter might help. Dunlop and Payne are separately tinkering, and Healy may share the load.
"They'd better be fucking good songs," he challenges. "That's all I'm saying. I hope they bloody do because I'm getting bored. I could write songs and hopefully get good ones for ever more, but it would be exciting to think someone could give me a wee shake-up.
"I'm jealous of the Beatles. One person would come in and go, Check that out. The other one would be, Fuck you bastard, I'm doing something better. If there's anything we're lacking, it's that, but with Dougie and Andy, the possibilities of it happening are great."
That, though, is the future. For now, all is well.
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"Far too many bands undersell themselves," admonishes Dunlop. "It's through insecurity. At any sniff of success, it's, Oooooh, are we up to this? We've always felt up to it."
"The thing that sets Travis apart," speculates Healy, tugging at his Simpsons socks, "is that we just get on with it. We've always just got on with it. There's one thing you can't take away from us: our shared history and our memories. We've been together as friends for so long that when it comes do it, technical ability doesn't even come into it.
"Fuck, here we are. We're only two albums in, we're selling a million records, and it's all going great. People are getting to hear the music. If a million people buy the record, ten million have heard it. We can take America, you know. Aye, we can rule the world."
Q
February 2000
Text: John Aizlewood
Photography: Rankin
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