New Art Riot

They were born of British art schools, but there's no surrealist pseudery or situationist revolt with TRAVIS. Instead, this year's best new band champion heartfelt rock, getting pissed and climbing up drainpipes. It's Radiohead meets The Monkees after an eight-hour lock-in...

During the summer of 1993, a piece of environmental sculpture stood outside the entrance to the Glasgow School of Art. It wasn't anything special, but it was very big. So big, in fact, that every day 19-year-old art student Francis Healy arrived at the college, he'd end up tying his bike up next to a bit of it: the big E of ENJOY, the question mark at the end of DO... It took him a whole week before he realised what it all said: DO YOU ENJOY WHAT YOU DO? Simple as that. In massive, moulded white letters. No, thought Frannie, I don't actually. In fact, I'd rather be in a band. So he quit his painting course, went on the dole and started writing songs. Pretty good songs at that.

"So you see," smiles Francis Healy today, "we wouldn't even have existed if it hadn't been for Art."

The list of bands with their roots in the British art-school scene is an impressive one. Whether it's The Who banging on about auto-destruction, The Sex Pistols' 'cash from chaos' situationism or Pulp's ugly-beautiful "Mis-Shapes" aesthetic, the point has always been the same--to break with the routine, to set yourself apart from the norm as that little bit special, and disrupt the divisions between high and low culture as you go.

Travis are no different. Their complete recorded output so far has been two singles. Yet somehow, even this small canon has sought to upset the simple, reassuring divisions of pop music. Their first single, an eternally deferred pop anthem entitled "All I Wanna Do Is Rock," was only available in a limited edition of just 750 10-inch singles. They were excitedly being hailed as the new Radiohead, and no one could even buy their singles.

Yet it was when they released their next single, "U16 Girls," that things really kicked off. A more wildly different follow-up would be hard to imagine: both a blaring glam racket and something far more sinister, "U16" also contained lines like, "Make sure that she's old enough / Before you blow your mind." It sounded like it was based upon some unsavoury personal trawl through a twilight of underage sex. Yet the band insisted that this wasn't the case and that the song was in fact a cautionary lecture to dirty old men who find it difficult to control their libido. It was like finding out that Desmond Morris was penning hits for The Glitter Band.

People were offended. To invest in a bunch of sensitive Thom Yorke types, to have them rock out on you, and then for them to admit they were being educational--that's just not on. It was a confusion that Travis seemed to revel in. The "U16" B-side, "Hazy Shades of Gold," was a perfect example--a twisted Faces rocker besmirched by the sound of an out-of-tune pub piano and Frannie soundly castigating the other band members for the poor quality of their, apparently, sauce-wrecked playing.

Such emotional schizophrenia spilled over into the recent live dates, revealing a band, and particularly a singer, whose demeanour veered wildly from a boozy, how's-it-goin' bonhomie to twisted edge-of-the-stage, "listen-to-my-music" psychosis.

With pop music caught between the twin worlds of Weller-patented authenticity and lumpen, Mansun-endorsed irony, Travis reinvested it with something else, a sense of the unpredictable. A sense that one minute Travis were your best mate, the next they were looking to glass you in the face.

"There ye go, f__in' open up a beer!" We're barely through the door of the Travis communal abode, a semi-detached slum in North London, and already Select has been presented with a can of strong export lager, a gargantuan hunk of cheese-and-sultana bread from the nearby Hellenic bakers, and a hearty invitation.

"Get drunk!" implores drummer Neil Primrose. "Our philosophy of every f__ing day!"

They got very pissed last night, did Travis, so they've decided to cut their losses and carry on right the way through today as well. It's three in the afternoon and already the front room island of lager cans, wine bottles and ashtrays is in a healthy state indeed. Like a cross between one of Therapy? and all of Frank Zappa's Mothers Of Invention. Neil makes for a very frightening master of ceremonies, dilligently making sure that everyone's OK for Greek bread and potent booze. Guitarist Andy Dunlop, the one who looks like the lost fifth member of Weezer, is swearing off food today, reasoning that it's probably best to stick with what he knows best.

Bassist Dougie Payne is content to just drift aimlessly round the house, running a hand through his C86 bowlcut and singing along to the copy of Suede's Coming Up that's blasting out of the bedroom. Meanwhile, Frannie sits in the front weed garden, supping a Foster's Export, scratching at a healthy three-day stubble and regaling the Select photographer with his recent antics.

"I climbed up the whole side of our house the other night," he boasts, proudly. "Pissed!"

Born into a skint Catholic family in Stafford in 1973 and brought up in Glasgow, Frannie Healy was blessed with the looks of a young Bruce Springsteen and an overly generous mum who believed fully in his desire to be a pop star. She bought him his first guitar at the age of 14, after he'd seen Roy Orbison play "Pretty Woman" on The Jonathan Ross Show, lent him the £600 to record his first session and gave him the self-confidence needed to be a lead singer.

"I love arguing," he announces, apropos of nothing. "The other day I sat arguing with two born-again Christians just because I had an hour to kill!"

Attempting to have another shimmy up the house for the benefit of the cameras, he only gets as far as the bricked archway above the door.

"Useless," he shouts. "Not drunk enough."

Back in the grubby front room, a still breathless Fran, brushing the brick dust from his knees, settles to explain the Travis aesthetic with the help of a fresh bottle of Beaujolais Villages.

"We believe very strongly in what we call 'The Stupid Factor'. It's about going totally over the top with the most insane idea and not worrying about what anyone thinks."

"It's about the basic human condition," adds Andy, "wishing that you didn't give a f__."

"We believe totally in The Stupid Factor," continues Dougie. "People have said that 'U16 Girls' was ironic. It wasn't, it was stupid. From the heart. No irony," he spits. "We want to eradicate the whole thing."

"'All I Wanna Do Is Rock' was from the heart," clarifies Fran. "'U16' was plain stupid."

"In the past five or six years," explains Andy, "the turnover of music has been enormous. Because of this, new bands are just jumping on to whatever sound is current and journalists are in the position of having to sum up a band's career with their first single."

"We've been called the new Longpigs," says Dougie, "a '90s Glitter Band... one review just said, 'Why do I hate this so much?' Hur, hur... People are confused."

"I think we're just trying to slow things back down," reasons Frannie.

"From the heart," reiterates Dougie.

"Or the self," posits Andy.

"Ah," says Fran, "but what is the self?"

"OK!" shouts Neil. "That's enough!"

And another bottle of Beaujolais Villages is fetched from the kitchen.

Neil Primrose did not attend Glasgow School of Art. Born in Cumbernauld in 1972, he was, thanks to bohemian records and an expansive record collection, probably one one of the few children who grew up wanting to be Levon Helm (rustic, bearded drummer with The Band). He hated other kids because they weren't into The Walker Brothers. While the other three future members of Travis were still up the road attempting to locate their muse in rich oils, he was working in the stock room of a local shoe shop and drumming for a band called Glass Onion along with Andy Dunlop and a girl singer who thought they were going to be the next Starship. Neil also worked part-time as a barman in The Horseshoe pub.

After college, Fran and Dougie would go into The Horseshoe and talk to the barmen about the awful band he was in. By August of 1991, Neil had decided he'd had enough of being the next Starship, sacked the girl singer and given Frannie a call.

For two years nothing happened. Demo tapes did the rounds. People thought they were good. No one did anything, until Frannie saw those words about enjoying what you do outside his college. He'd always had a problem finishing paintings (the band's London house is full of Frannie's ghostly, half-completed character studies) but with songs he found it much easier. With two weeks' dole money in his pockets, he rented a chalet in the working-class holiday resort of Millport on the west coast of Scotland and wrote some songs.

Back on the mainland the band sacked their manager, borrowed £600 from Frannie's mum and went into the studio. In the summer of 1996, Charlie Pinder of Sony Music offered the newly rechristened band a publishing deal. Their first gig as Travis was at The Stones Bar in Edinburgh in October '95. By all accounts, according to those who were there, it was bloody awful.

"Well, the band just looked shite!" exclaims Neil. "We had a bassist who was modelling himself on Mark King from Level 42. That's probably what started the riot."

Riot?

"Aye," continues Neil. "The place was full o' neddas, you know, real malky bastards--'Gi' a sho' o' year drums, big man!'--all pissed up. It wouldn't have taken much to set 'em off. We played two songs, the PA blew up and then a huge fight broke out."

The band decided that they'd had enough of Scotland. There were too many bad associations. Frannie got rid of Mark King and recruited his art-school pal Dougie as the new bassist. They started to talk about 'giving ourselves up to the angels' and moving away from the security of Glasgow to the uncertainties of London. It's why they're called Travis--a reference to the eternally drifting character played by Harry Dean Stanton in Paris, Texas.

Ever since they changed their name and made the move from Glasgow, they believe that the angels have been on their side. It's difficult not to believe them. On 1 June 1996, the band moved to London. The first song they played together was "All I Wanna Do Is Rock," released on their own Red Telephone Box label that same month: 750 copies, now rather valuable.

A re-released version of "All I Wanna Do Is Rock" will be Travis's next single. It deserves to be re-released. It was the song that won them the Sony publishing deal, and it was one of the key factors that convinced Andy Macdonald's Independiente label to sign them. And it's brilliant. However, attempting to hear any other forthcoming Travis product is nigh-on impossible. The band recorded their debut album with Steve Lillywhite nearly eight months ago. It took them just four days. They've very proud of it. Yet they insist that even they haven't got copies of it. It would seem that, in the wake of the collapse of his former label, Go! Discs, Macdonald is being over-cautious in his plicing of the Travis campaign. Their debut album is a closely guarded secret. The band are understandably chuffed by this.

"Aye, they're being dead precious about the album," explains Frannie. "Andy is very anti-corporate. He's trying to change the record industry in favour of the artist, running his company in an honourable way."

Andy Dunlop thinks he has a better theory. "You know when they destroy the Death Star at the end of Star Wars? They couldn't use big things, they had to use wee things to get it. That's Andy Macdonald. We gravitate towards that."

Somehow it becomes 11pm. The band enter into a blurred cyclical discussion of, well, themselves. Dougie is holding court and has, for some time, been attempting to sum up this thing called Travis.

"It's about moments," he reasons, "like when you're looking down from the top deck of a bus and you see a knitted toy on the top of a bus stop... It's these tiny things, little moments saturated with passion. They stay with you. It's realising that the mundane is romantic. The way that Fran writes it's... ow! I've just set fire to my trousers."

All of the band are now officially drunk. Certainly they've had enough to successfully negotiate an ascent of the north wall of the house. In fact, this may well be their last climb.

"We're moving out soon," explains Fran. "It's time for Travis to move on again. The angels are on our side."

Select
June 1997
Story by Andrew Male
Photos by Deirdre Callaghan

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