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You're quite successful in the UK, right?
Neil Primrose: "Allegedly".
Well, you recently did a massive gig in Scotland...
NP: "Well, it's a home-coming gig in Glasgow when you play the Glasgow
Barrowlands. When we were all growing up together in Glasgow you'd go to
the Barrowlands to see bands. It's not a large club sort of venue, but it's
like an old ballroom with nice wooden-sprung floors, really high stage and a
nice roof with stars and a big glitterball. It's a classic venue, it's
beautiful.
Every band, especially American bands, love playing there. So it was good
to come back at Christmas and play, so I suppose you're right, it was a big
show. There's two in a row, one on the twenty-fourth and one on Christmas
Eve. We could probably play there for two weeks every night and sell out,
and we probably will, because we don't want to play any of these big giant
shit venues where you get ten-thousand people. It's horrible. Maybe up to
five, six-thousand because then people can still see you. Maybe a bit more,
but not any more than that. But unfortunately if things keep going well, we might have to you know, we don't have much say in it. You've got to let everyone who likes the band come and see you. We
don't really call them our fans, they're more like friends, really. The word
‘fan' is just like a commodity. People are people. And our website as well, it's
a bit more open approach, everyone is welcome. So we'd rather play somewhere
where everyone can get a good line of sight and be able to hear everything
properly, rather than put them into a big shed and just forget about them
all. Just playing and walk off. But it's easy to have expectations like
that, but because of the business, the way it is, it's dead hard to stick
to your guns."
So is it then a lot of fun to come to a country like Holland and play a
venue like the Melkweg?
NP: "It is, yeah, I love it. We played the Milkyway November, was it? I
really enjoyed it, it was a really good venue. I didn't enjoy the little
club down by the river so much ‘cause it's just too small. One stage, the
VPRO place, the tiny little club. We played there a couple of times as
well.
That's alright, it's nice, but it's just like, for us on stage we're all
like [plays the air-guitar in a crammed position] you've got to find
somewhere you can move your arm! And it's dead quiet as well. But it was
good the first couple of times. But the Milkweg [sic] is excellent. It's
good to come back to small venues. We played a club tour in America
recently, about two weeks ago we came back, and we did between six and
eight hundred people in those kind of venues, and we did like seven shows, and
they were all fantastic as well, really really good. So it's good to come
back from two-thousand and go down to that. You can actually see people's
faces, which is very nice. Creates a bit more of an atmosphere and it makes
you play better as well, got to work harder. Because a big venue's got a
massive sound and it's like ‘oh we know the sound is kind of big', you
know, but because you can't see people there's none of that relationship."
No people jumping on stage...
NP: "Well, we get that now and again, but that's kind of dying down a
lot with the new record it's a bit more mellow. But it's still an
up-record, it's not a sad record. It's a record I think is uplifting
although it might be sad. It's about ‘well here it is, I'm just going to
get on with it, let's go."
It's a great record.
NP: "Yeah, everyone absolutely adores it, and it's great you know, but it's
just one of those things that we end up doing. With Travis we go out and do
something without any intentions, and then you get that."
In a way it is completely different from your last album
NP: "It is."
But in a way it's still completely Travis, it's a Travis-sound...
NP: "It's still a Travis-sound yeah. A lot of people go 'oh you've got
older, you've matured' or whatever, and I suppose in a way you have, but I think
we all try and retain our child-likeness, our youthfulness. What changed us
was the fact that we've been on the road for a couple of years and played so
many shows together and been in the studio a lot and after a while you just
get kind of chilled out, you know. You don't just want to go in there and
make a noise, you want to actually... When Fran [Healy, the singer] writes
these songs you want to go in and add something to them and keep it really
simple but not try and make a big statement by turning the guitars up or
whatever. Some songs we have. We've done a b-side recently which is almost
AC/DC, it's absolutely brilliant. So it works for that song, and other
songs don't need that. You've just got to make it sound the way it should."
'Blue Flashing Light' live is also quite... wow!
NP: "It is a great song. It's probably my favourite on the album, some
times."
So why is it a secret track?
NP: "It's just a last-minute thing really. We were meant to do it as a
b-side, and... that's the mad thing about us. We go into the studio sometimes
and Fran's written a song, like a couple of days before. We don't even
rehearse it or learn it. We just listen to it and then we play it. We
wacked that one down in the second or third take, it's like 'fucking hell!',
fucking rocking! And then we thought 'well the album's coming out, we can't
just stick it on', and also the fact that it's about domestic violence and
stuff, about Fran's dad I think, I think that's what it's about really. And
also, in Glasgow there's a lot of that going on sometimes, so we thought
we'd put it down on the album, but maybe just hide it a wee bit. It's like
a bonus as well, so when your CD runs out, three point one four seconds
later, which as you know is pi for a circle, mathematics..."
So there's a whole theory behind it?
NP: "Yeah, we're quite mystical about that, 'cause it's a number that keeps
cropping up in our history. We've seen it on clubs, and on car registration
plates. It's weird. It's happened a freakish amount of times. We'll all be
walking down the street and something comes by and says three point one
four or three-one-four, and we're like 'woooh'. So we put that amount of space
on at the end of the tracks and then put that track on in the end. Just as a
surprise."
English bands are always imitating each other, and Scottish bands are
always original. Why is that do you think?
Andy Dunlop: "England especially tends to be quite regionalised. If there's
a Manchester scene going on everyone's sort of involved in it, and if there's
a Liverpool scene everyone is involved in it... And with Scotland everyone is
just doing their own thing, they're just in a room somewhere. Because
it's raining all the time they're stuck in a room just playing the guitar,
trying to make weird noises, something like that."
NP: "You've got to try and find something different, I think, because it's
so... not bleak, but it's just kind of... What Andy's saying, as soon as you go
down south it seems to be... pockets, whereas in Glasgow everyone's jamming
about, doing different stuff. And we were always kind of, not the
underdogs, but just outside of all that. I think we, because of our friendship, we
just learned how to make things together, musically or whatever."
AD: "We never had any musical allies in Glasgow, someone who could go 'oh
you're the scene' or something like that! Yeah, we were never part of
anything like that. At first you're like 'oh why aren't we part of a
scene?' and then after a while we were like 'I don't care', it doesn't... Once you
realise you're not, it's quite freeing because you don't have to keep
looking around you to see what's going on."
NP: "If you're on your own you can perceive it as being really lonely, but
then on the other hand you can also say 'I'm actually by myself here, I can
do this and I can do that, I don't have to rely on, whatever'. Again, it's
about relationships with the four of us, and not being part of that. So
we've just done our own thing."
English bands always split up very quickly if they're not successful, and Scottish bands seem to go on forever...
NP: "Oh that's weird though. I suppose that's true as well. A lot of
Scottish bands, the people in them were all friends before. I've read things about
Belle and Sebastian, Teenage Fanclub as well, they've all known each other
for years and years. So when you start a band there seems to be a bit more
of a ground in there for them to build on."
AD: "I think especially in London there's a music mentality with bands where
you're like 'right I want a guitarist' and that's how you get your band
together. And with that... it's alright, there's been some nice bands
come out like that, but there's not that bond from the beginning, there's
not that reason for wanting to be together above music, above anything.
That was the thing with us, you know, we had the band... We could exist like mates
without the band, because we did before the band, but the band couldn't
exist without us being mates as it is. I think that's quite an important
thing."
Your videos: what are they all about? Fran being chased by two children,
Fran doing push-ups...
NP: "It's about trying to create some kind of dialogue or plot, but not
doing what every other band seems to do or what videos generally have done in the
last few years, which is create a performance situation or create a
situation where it just seems loads of money has been spent but for no
effect. We used to have a say in what we wanted with our videos but we
realised after a while that we do what we do quite well, and if you get a
really good director and go down the pub and have a pint with the guy and
get to know him, and just say 'here's the song, do what you like with it
and just make up something, make something crazy or something just a bit off
the wall, or just create a totally different setting as a visual backdrop for
the song to play over', rather than us doing the usual video thing. But
luckily, John Hartwick [?], the guy who's done two of our videos, and
Hammer & Tongs, who did Turn, have all had the same kind of, not vision, but the
same kind of concept..."
AD: "Insanity."
NP: "Fuck it, let's have a laugh, and let's create something a bit off the
wall, you know, make something interesting, rather than just putting on the
usual boring pop-video."
AD: "I think when the video first started it was fairly exciting 'cause it
was a new medium, and in the early nineties it just started getting really,
really dull, it was just performance videos everywhere. I think now it's
beginning to change a bit more that people are beginning to realise it is
sort of quite a useful medium. It's not so much in Britain really, 'cause
nobody watches MTV in Britain, and there's no actual vehicle for people to
see videos anymore in Britain. I don't know about Europe... 'Cause MTV's
pretty like, not many people really watch it in Britain at all. You need to
have satellite television, and most people don't have satellite television.
NP: There's hardly anybody that actually watches it, whereas in America
it's massive. But in Britain it's tiny, innit?"
AD: "The video as a sort of a medium in Britain isn't that powerful as such,
but we still like to make good videos, you know. If you're going to make a
video you might as well make one that's interesting."
NP: "It's good to have two things running parallel, the music and some
interesting vision. Because if it's something that's joined, then you can
go 'bloody hell that's weird/that's the song/that's weird/that's the song',
whatever. But people will after a while have got really into the videos and
it becomes almost like a trilogy, or a set of stories. 'Cause they've all
got that theme of some kind of punishment to Fran, hahaha!"
AD: "There's an element, especially in the two John Hartwick videos, like
Why Does It Always Rain On Me?, you just look at it and watch it once and
you're like that 'what the fuck went on there?' so you have to watch it again and
again and then it sort of starts cracking bits and things like that, but I
think that's good. It pulls you in rather than alienate you in any way."
Why did you dedicate The Man Who to Stanley Kubrick?
AD: "And Shirley. Well when we were mastering the album, Stanley Kubrick
died that week, and we'd all been big fans of his movies, he's an incredible
artist. Everything he made was perfect, he was a complete perfectionist,
and you've got to really respect a man who can control his work that well,
'cause most people don't, most people let it slip and let it out of their
hands. For all his life he held his work straight in his hands. And it's an
incredible talent he had. And just that week a light went out, so you've
got to respect that and say, you know, 'well done'."
Are you like him as well?
AD: "We all aspire to a certain point of perfectionism, and I'm sure with
Fran, when he writes songs, he won't let any bad songs through. We won't
even hear them. For every hundred songs he writes, we hear two of them,
'cause with the rest he's like 'oh they're not good enough'. And that's
sort of perfectionism. And [Kubrick] could've made ten films in the times where
he made two films. They were great films, and that's the point. So I
suppose everyone aspires to that sort of thing."
NP: "There's no point in doing something unless you're going to do it good.
I think that should be true for most things in life, but unfortunately it
isn't."
AD: "The other name on it is Shirley, which was a dog, which was just always
happy. It was a friend's dog, and it was a lovely dog, it was always
wagging its tail and everything like that, and that died that week as well. So
that's where we stand. Somewhere between a happy dog and Stanley Kubrick."
NP: "Hahaha! That's good enough for me as well actually."
'The Man Who' came out last summer, and you've played the songs on there at
least a thousand times. Don't you ever get bored with them?
AD: "No, on different nights different things jump out. I think also, if you
were playing them in the studio a thousand times, yeah, you'll probably get
bored. But when you're playing them in front of different sizes of
audience, different people, every night you're playing in front of different people,
every night something else will jump out. So there's enough there that it
will always be exciting. The whole live thing is an incredible buzz. You
almost sometimes just sort of switch off from the songs, and you're just
playing for the whole experience, the whole buzz of playing live in front
of a new set of people. So no, it never gets boring."
NP: "It's about emotional contact in some way, trying to... what I was saying
earlier, you know, sharing something with everyone and getting it over from
the stage to them. Because everyone is in the same room together it
shouldn't be any different. I think that's what changes it every night.
It's simple really."
AD: "I think the thing about playing live is it's almost as a shared energy
between you and the crowd. And therefore it's above physically just playing
the songs. It's about having a good time in that room that night. So
physically we play the songs, yeah, 'cause that's why people come, but the
whole feeling is above that. Half the time you don't even notice you've
played the songs."
NP: "Yeah, it's like an hour-and-a-half show fly by, and you're like 'bloody
hell!' you know. But you should always be concerned with what people are
feeling at the time and that's what's dragging you along, and it just goes
by."
AD: "You don't have time to get bored!"
You did play a new song last time you were here.
AD: "Yes, it's 'Coming Around'."
NP: "It's going to be our next single in Britain."
AD: "I don't know... Obviously the record-company will decide when it comes
out here, but I think it's coming out in Britain on May 22nd."
Is that a taster of what the next album will be like?
AD: "Well, yeah, that's off the next album, yeah."
NP: "It's off the next album. I wouldn't say it was an indication of how it's
going to sound..."
AD: "Because we haven't recorded the next album yet, so you never know! We've
got the songs there, but you know, it's just that thing that until you get
to the studio you sort of like... We never plan. You never plan how an album
is going to sound, like 'we've got this song, so it's all going to sound
like this'. You just go into the studio with a collection of songs and...
NP: 'Cause we're working with Nigel [Godrich] again, as well, it will
probably... somehow it will just end up being another one of our albums, and
it will be really good, it will be cracking, because, as Andy is saying,
you've got all these songs together and you don't know how they're going to
turn out, but especially working with Nigel and we all get in there and got
on with it, it's just going to start forming, it will just take off on its
own. That's what you look forward to, just like to do that sort of thing.
That way you get the best stuff."
Mansun once sang "the lyrics aren't supposed to mean a thing, they're just
a vehicle for a lovely voice". Do you agree?
AD: "I think there should be a marriage of the two, really. I think if
you're saying absolutely nothing then there's no point in saying it. Like words as
such... I was a big fan of the Cocteau Twins when I was younger, 'cause I
thought that was beautiful, just songs. But I thought that was perfect
because she didn't want to sing about anything in particular, just the
noises were nice. But if you're going to say something you should at least
be... I'm not saying 'have a big statement', have a big political statement,
but talk about life, about emotions, just something that people can relate
to. The thing is, with a great song, it's a marriage of the two. You don't
necessarily notice the lyrics because the two almost neutralise each other
out, it just all goes as one. You're not necessarily noticing the music,
you're not necessarily noticing the lyrics, it's just like one thing."
NP: "It should become a good sentiment or some kind of emotional thing,
especially. I think that's what should some over. And like what Andy's
saying, some words will stick out and you go 'well alright, OK, fair
enough', but overall they'll make you feel 'oooh' or it'll make you 'aaah'."
AD: "But I think there should be a marriage of the two. You shouldn't
underestimate either one really. And to me, unless you're going completely
for absolutely nothing, it's just laziness really."
NP: "Yeah, just cop out."
AD: "That's the perfect song, with the perfect words and the perfect melody."
NP: "Better to wait if you have got a song, rather than just put a whole
load of rubbish."
So no Spice Girls lyrics for you?
NP: "Spice Girls are pure pop, that works fine on its own level. They're
brilliant at what they do, and a lot of boybands as well, it's just pure
pop, it's just like total bubblegum and that's cool."
AD: "They're not necessarily saying something, but they're saying something
to wee kids. And for wee kids it doesn't have to be... It's just nice and
simple. I think the thing is about all those bands, they're going to get
slagged off. They're a bunch of guys put together by a manager that gets
some songs for them, but at the end of the day, if they get some ten
year-old into music that wouldn't be into music, that leads him on to other
things, then I think they all serve a purpose. And it's better that, than
say a ten year-old not listening to music just going 'right I'm going to go
out, play Nintendo all day' or something. At least there's that door there
for people to get into music and then maybe say 'ooh, but I like that as
well'! When you're in a record shop you start getting a bit more
adventurous, to a certain extent!"
So you'll start getting worried when seven year-olds turn up at your
gigs?
AD: "No not at all. Music's here for everyone."
NP: "We've got quite a wide audience that ranges from young kids right
through to grannies."
AD: "The one thing I've noticed about our music is that very, very small
children get it, which is a good sign, 'cause they are the only people at
their purest point. It's like when you're three, four, when you start
creating your personality but you're not in any way cynical. You've not had
the love of the world knocked out of you that you get when you go to school
where they're like that, 'this is what's right, that's what's wrong'.
You're still making up your own mind about things. I think that's a key point in
being a human being that most people get knocked out of them, so that by
the time you're fifteen you're like 'that's what's right, that's what's wrong',
you know, 'that's my life'. That's why when you're fifteen you're still
generally full of angst because you've just been told how to feel and how
to think by loads of people. I think that when you're that age you're not.
Yeah you get told 'don't climb on the sofa' or something, but you don't get told
'this is the way life is, this is the way your life is going to go, decide
what you want to do'. So I think for young children that age to be getting
into us is quite special because it is in some way pure."
At some live shows you've played a cover of Britney Spears' Baby One More Time. What's next, What A Girl Wants by Christina Aguilera?
AD: "Well, I don't think What A Girl Wants is really as good a song, haha!
Baby One More Time was just a great song."
NP: "I dunno. Christina Aguilera..."
AD: "It's an alright song, aye, but it's hardly Baby One More Time."
NP: "No, it's not the same."
AD: "I don't think we're going to have a full cover-versions album, somehow!"
NP: "We're not going to do one every year. When that came out we were all in
the studio when we saw the video, and it's like 'OK, dressed up as
schoolgirls, great', but if you listen to the song, the lyrics, it's
actually a pretty potent song."
AD: "We sort of made the point I think, not necessarily trying to make, but
what was to be made of that song is that it's actually an alright song but
the way it's dressed turns so many people off, 'cause suddenly there's this
young girl in a schooluniform and it's like 'oooh God that's pop, I don't
want to listen to that!' or like when there's something on MTV and you're
like 'oh that's rap, I don't listen to rap!', so you immediately close your
ears before you've actually listened to it. So we were like 'yeah that's a
cool song'. Maybe it was dressed in the wrong way, or maybe it was dressed
in the way you don't want to listen to, but at the end of the day it's a
cool wee song."
NP: "A few girls have come up outside to us you know and like 'why the hell
are you doing that? I fucking hate her'!"
AD: "Forget that, it's not about that. It's about the song. It's not about
us when we're doing it. If you don't like us you can still listen to the song
and just say it's a good song, is it not."
Maybe Britney could do 'Why Does It Always Rain On Me'?
AD: "I hope not, hahaha! Nah, I don't know. She was quite chuffed that we
did a cover of it."
She knows about it?
AD: "Yeah, I've read an interview where she was saying 'yeah it's cool' and
everything. But again, it's not really about her, it's about the song."
She didn't even write it.
AD: "Exactly! So that's the thing, it wasn't like we were all like 'oh
Britney! Wow!', it was like 'oh that song's great!'. Max..."
NP: "Max Martin, a Swedish ex-heavy metaller, who now writes songs for a lot
of pop bands and boy and girl bands, and Britney Sprears, he writes a lot
of her stuff. He's done stuff for Mariah Carey and people like that as well,
so he's that kind of writer. But I would say that's probably been his best
song so far. That's the one that stood out and that's probably why we covered
it."
AD: "Quite intense if you actually listen to the vocals, the lyrics of it.
Quite dark."
NP: ""This loneliness is killing me" blahblah, it's quite an in-your-face
line."
It's a perfect Travis lyric. You could have written it!
AD: "I dunno, I would have loved to have written it yeah! Some of the words
you can put in anyone's lyrics. It's quite intense. Take someone like Thom
Yorke singing "my loneliness is killing me", of Radiohead, it wouldn't be
out of place. If it's coming from pop, people are like 'oh it's bubblegum'.
And it's instantly that they're dismissing it. Whereas it's actually a
great song. [...] We did German Top of the Pops last week, and there were the
Vengaboys and all that..."
They're Dutch actually. It makes you ashamed to be Dutch.
AD: "Ah, haha! Oh... Good god no. Everyone's got something they are ashamed of
in their country. Can't think of..."
NP: "We've got... What have we got?"
AD: "Jesse Rain, hahaha!"
NP: "Oooofff... Wee girl... Rubbish."
AD: "But you know, it all serves a purpose. Of some sort."
http://www.kindamuzik.net/interview/travis/travis/414/
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