Travis - V99 program

V99

Looking forward to V99?
Yeah, I love festivals. We've just played one in Denmark and T in the Park in Scotland, which is my home town of Glasgow. We're really enjoying playing live at the moment. In Scotland, the tent we were in had to be closed off because it was packed, and about a thousand people couldn't be let in. There were people crawling under the tent, and the security guards were just going fucking mental! It was a great gig! Denmark was amazing, as well. It's strange because nobody knows who we are there so it's like going back in time by about three years and starting all over again. That's the great thing about this business: it keeps you young becuase you keep going back in time. When you go to another country, everything becomes brand-new. It reminds me of going around Britain when we first started out. It's like having your own little time machine! V99 is great because it's such a good idea to do two places with the two days being swapped over. I think that's dead clever. It's good value for the money.
If you weren't playing, who else would you be going to see at the festival?
Definitely Gomez. They play really well together, and they're a proper live band, do you know what I mean? James Brown because, well, he's James Brown, isn't he? I can go and see Supergrass, which I'm looking forward to. And Faithless, who are fantastic live--they're a much better live than they are on record.
A lot of people say that.
It's often the case. If you're a good live band and you try to put that down in the studio, especially with a rock album, it's really difficult to record. It's almost impossible to get the same energy that you get when you plug into a massive PA and you're playing your music really loud. That happened to us on the first record. You really had to see it live to fully understand it.
Is it true that you recorded the first album in just four days?
Absolutely! In the old days, it was always like that, you used to do the album in a day. Atlantic Records used to close the office at the end of the day and then record an album during the night. The next day, they would open up the office again and work on selling the record! I was really pleased that we did the album in four days becaues the rest of the music industry is so slow. The funny thing was that I read this review of it that said that we suffered from being overproduced! I couldn't believe it. I was like, what do you want us to do? Record the thing in three hours? The new album, The Man Who, took quite a bit longer, though. It's a lot mellower. I suppose we've grown up a bit.
Is it true that you are a fervent diarist?
Oh absolutely. I've kept diaries since I was dead, dead wee. I've kept millions of diaries. I think that's one of the main reasons why I'm a songwriter.
The Secret Journals of Fran Healy?
Yeah. Instead of Anne Frank's Diaries, we're calling them Fran's Angst Diaries. Ha ha. To me, my favourite book is a totally empty book--once I start writing in it, I cannae put it down. It's almost like I've got to fill the book. It's nice because if you record things, then you remember things--people forget that! If you take a photograph, record a piece of music, or write something down, what you are doing is recording a moment, a memory. It means you do things twice; you do it and then you record it so you remember it more. If you just do something and then forget about it, you just forget about it. Everybody should do it; it exercises the mind.

He-ey!

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