Travis - Quotables

Quotables

"What is a poet? A poet is an unhappy being whose heart is torn by secret sufferings but his lips are so strangely formed that, when the sighs and the cries escape them, it sounds like beautiful music."--Francis Healy, reading from a postcard
Who is Francis Healy? Francis Healy is a chatty being whose presence is often required for press interviews but his lips are so often moving that, when the words and the laughs escape them, it sounds like something horribly apt to put on a quotables page.
Such as this is.

Have you ever...

...walked out of an interview?

"Not yet. It nearly happened yesterday with this German writer. He couldn't understand what we were saying and after every single answer, he was making this face and going, 'Err...Eh? Errrr...'. Now, I'm as patient as the next man but he was just taking the piss. I just thought, 'I'm gonna fucking kill you in a second'. It wasn't as if we were going to walk out, but were going to smash his head through a plate-glass table. I"m going through an impatient stage at the moment. You can probably tell." (Select, May 1998)

...punched a member of your own group?

"Nah, man, wouldn't do that. That's the one thing that's maybe different about us. It freaks me out sometimes because we never fight, we've never come to blows about anything over the seven years we've been together. Very strange." (Select, April 1998)

...been booed off stage?

"Nah, but I've had knickers thrown at me. This woman threw her pants and they stuck to my monitor. She was having a good time, getting sweaty down the front. More of it, I say." (Select, Feb. 1998)

...bought one of your own records?

"Yeah. I bought a copy of our album after checking out a shop to see whether it was there or not. I tried to distance myself from what we're doing by buying it as a punter would. But it didn't work; I still felt like I was buying my own record." (Select, Jan. 1998)

...gone onstage blind drunk?

"Yeah. It was at a place called the Clyde Bar in Helensborough, Scotland, about three years ago. I was so pissed I lost my guitar lead and was standing onstage looking for it. I must have been there for about five minutes when the sound engineer got up and walked from his desk, through the crowd, on to the stage, and took the lead off the mikestand. It was right under my nose and he shows it to me and plugs it in. He goes, 'Come on mate, get a grip.' You make a complete arse of yourself once and you don't do it again." (Select, Dec. 1997)

...been stalked?

Yes, when I was a wee guy at school. It was by horrible wee guys. I walked around as if I had a huge neon light that said "weird," even though I looked like everyone else. It's never happened since I was in a the band, just when I was at school when I got bullied. They used to follow me home and beat me up. (Select, July 1999)

...made a ridiculous rider request?
You can order socks and pants! Maybe I'd ask for a small dog, like a Yorkie. But you'd have to take it for walks. You'd have a troupe of them by the end. But remember, a dog is not just for a tour. Maybe I'll just stick with the pants and socks. (Select, August 1999)

...thrown up in an embarrassing place?
Whenever I've been in Edinburgh. I don't know what it is about that city, but I always throw up there. I also pissed over my ex-girlfriend's brother's study stuff and his computer when I was sleepwalking. That was pretty bad. I was naked, standing on a chair. In the middle of it, he wakes up and goes, "What are you doing?" I said, "Don't worry, Frank, it's no baw juice..."--you know, "baw" meaning "balls," so I reckon I was saying, "It's not spunk." I ruined all his notes. He stopped doing medicine soon after that. (Select, September 1999)

Rocktropolis allstar news

These originally appeared on http://www.allstarmag.com/news/.
During a recent interview for allstar, Fran Healy of Travis revealed that what attracts him most to a woman is not the usual body parts but...good teeth and arms. "You American women, I love you," Healy told the female journalist interviewing him. "You and your dental plans, fantastic! I've got this thing about teeth, I totally love teeth! Teeth and arms, weird combination...and obviously all the other parts, and they've all got to be in good working order, but teeth and arms, man that's just the killer. And I'm in the wrong place [London]," Healy continued, "but people in general, they just don't have a fucking clue about teeth. They don't look after themselves. And arms are important because they're probably the only thing that's always on view, you know? Women don't get their boobs out and men don't always have they willys out. So arms are important." Good thing they're not on display or Healy would be mooning over those parts too...
The Gallaghers misunderstood? Nah. But that's Travis frontman Fran Healy's assessment of the boys -- well, at least of Noel. He says that both Noel and Liam Gallagher are "really sweet." Healy, whose band just finished touring with Oasis in the U.K., says that "Liam is so funny. He's a really sweet guy. Kind of misunderstood, if you know what I mean." (No pun intended.) "[Noel] is a normal bloke, who just happens to write songs." Healy relays a conversation with Noel about Oasis's first single off of their current album Be Here Now: "I burned him about the song, 'D' You Know What I Mean?' 'Cause I was like, everyone says that at the end of their sentences -- especially in Britain -- they say, 'Blah, blah, blah, blah. D'you know what I mean?' And I was like, 'You've just taken one of these universal sayings and stamped Oasis on it.' And he was going, 'Yeah.' And I said [to Noel], 'Did you do that deliberately?' And he said, 'Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah,' and it surprised him that no one had ever thought, 'I'll write a song with that, called that.'" Now that everyone's thinking of Oasis when they're asking if they're understood, maybe on the next Oasis album Noel will write a song called, "How's it going?" and ruin that common greeting for the world over.

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