star All We Want to Do Is Rock star

The last time I interviewed Travis for this paper was in 1997. Their debut album Good Feeling had just come out and the Glasgow foursome had played a gig as part of a mini-festival in Amsterdam. The morning after the concert, the photographer wanted to take pictures of the group floating on pedaloes on some of the city's more pungent canals. After a heroic evening's post-gig drinking, they all looked as green as the algae they were sluggishly paddling across.

At the time, the health of their fledgling career was no less fragile. Good Feeling came out just as Britpop was gasping its last breath. An album of its time, it had much of the same punchy swagger exhibited by Travis's peers, but it gave few clues as to why Travis would go on to become the biggest band in Britain while most of their contemporaries would sink with little trace. Four years later, Travis are in decidedly rude health, and a lot of that is down to singer Fran Healy's bald self-belief. Emotional honesty is an unpopular badge among most bands, who prefer to cover everything in a veneer of slick yet cynical cool. But that's just not Healy's way. "In this life, and a lot of people don't understand this, you can do whatever you want," he says. "If you really want something then you can go for it and get it. The hardest things to achieve in life are inside (he taps his chest). The outside is easy."

It's worked for Travis. Their second album, The Man Who, has sold 3.5 million copies and rising. Their latest album, The Invisible Band, was released in June and went double platinum in little over a month. With the possible exception of Radio 3, every radio station in the land plays at least one Travis tune a day. When Healy changed his hair colour for the recent headlining slot at Gig on the Green, the "news" made the front page of Scotland's biggest-selling tabloid. That pale morning on Amsterdam's waterways seems a very long time ago.

Sitting in a London photographic studio with the band, Healy reckons that it's easy to account for their success. Rocket science doesn't get much of a mention. "We write great songs, and I think we play great gigs. We work really well in the studio, and that's it. It's all we've got."

It may be all they have, but it seems to be enough. However, such a simple explanation only serves to arouse suspicion among the band's detractors, of whom there are increasing numbers. Some people can't get their heads around four young guys playing catchy songs that a large proportion of the public want to whistle along to.

There is a formula to the widespread media sport of Travis-kicking, and this is how it pans out. First, because the band's popularity is becoming wider, accuse them of becoming unbearably mainstream and of trying to create as bland a sound as possible to appeal to as many people as possible. Climbing on a high horse makes this easier, but be warned that Travis are forewarned and forearmed. "People accuse us of all sorts of things," says Healy. "We've been accused of trying to be the blandest band in music."

"That would suggest that we go into the studio and actually think about how to make our music bland," smiles guitarist Andy Dunlop. Then bass player Dougie Payne addresses the accusation and sardonically spears it by adding, "and we don't. We're just naturally bland."

"We annoy certain factions because we don't mystify it," says Dunlop, warming to his theme. "We don't shroud what we do in smoke and say: 'This is really hard.' A song should make you feel something. It doesn't matter if it makes you feel happy or if it makes you feel sad or like dancing or singing. If it connects with you then it works. Music doesn't exist until people are connecting with it."

Failing to score a direct hit with the popularity-equals-populism manoeuvre, step two in Travis-baiting for beginners is to sneer that the group are just all too nice, that they are too polite to be proper rock 'n' roll stars. This tactic doesn't cut much ice with them either. "You can only push a Weegie so far and then we'll explode," says Healy. "We'll go with things so far and then if we think you are taking the piss then we will put our foot down. All Scottish people are like that, not just the Weegies."

Drummer Neil Primrose doesn't say all that much, but when he does he has the kind of heavy, gravelly rumble that Taggart baddies would kill for. It's the sort of voice you sit up and listen to. "We all grew up in Scotland for Christ's sake," he growls. "We grew up in Glasgow, so we've got a lot of manners and modesty, but we also don't take any s**t from anyone."

If you are still undeterred then the next target on the Travis horizon is that they are not "cool," that they don't buy into rock 'n' roll rebellion. The politics of protest are fashionable again, but Travis have refused to jump on the bandwagon. In these No Logo times, such an admission is tantamount to youth treason. Unlike, say, Radiohead, Travis have no pretensions about making political music. They haven't set out to save the planet, the whale, or the Labour Party. Dunlop puts it eloquently when he says: "Music should be about personal revelation rather than political revolution."

Healy puts it differently but his meaning is the same: "Songwriting doesn't come from your conscious. It comes from an invisible part of your brain. It doesn't go through your intellect, and you don't sit down and write a song with a specific effect for it to have in mind." If Travis are unfashionable then they are proud of it.

"There are people out there who are constantly trying to keep up with some definition of cool," muses Dunlop. "It is the most boring thing in the world, done by the most boring people in the world. They are people who are scared of being themselves."

Travis don't play that game. They take a pride in what they do (Fran quotes Muhammad Ali and says: "If I were a dustman then I would be the best dustman in the world"), but they don't have to squeeze themselves into somebody else's parameters. "If you don't like our music, then it's not meant for you," says Fran before doing his best to slay his Mr-Meek-and-Mild image. "Music is meant to entertain you, not f**k you off, so if you don't like it piss off. There is an open door there, so if you don't like it, just f**k off."

That's that settled then. The truth of the matter is that with Travis you get what you see. They are famous but they aren't rock stars. They view fame as a by-product of their songs' success--hence the album title The Invisible Band.

It seems old-fashioned and it shouldn't, but when they say that the music is all that matters, they mean it. As Healy puts it: "We use the band as a vehicle for the music. Sometimes record companies use music as a vehicle for the band. We are famous, but we don't use that. All we have done is put songs on the radio. We haven't done any big PR scams. There has been no scheme to get Travis on the front cover of magazines by giving us a kilo of charlie, 10 hookers, and sending us off to the Met Bar."

Scotland on Sunday
September 9, 2001
Words: Jonathan Trew

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