L.A.Times, the title track of Travis' tenth album, opens with the sounds of wailing police sirens and whirring helicopter blades, frontman Fran Healy talking aloud as he walks the streets of his adopted hometown ("I look around and all I see is pain and suffering, reflected on the 50 facets of a diamond ring") and swiftly declaring, "Get me off this fucking rock before I fucking fry."
The song is a striking, somewhat surreal vision of the stark inequalities that exist in the City of Angels, with Healy, 50, sounding like a man at the end of his tether, his frustration and fury all the more palpable for being delivered in calm, measured tones. For those more used to hearing the singer's warm, welcoming voice on huge, stadium-friendly radio hits such as Sing, Driftwood, or Why Does It Always Rain On Me? it's quite disconcerting.
Healy has described L.A. Times as his band's most personal album since The Man Who, Travis' hugely successful second album, released back in 1999, which made the Glasgow band superstars in Britain, and paved the way for the likes of Coldplay and a generation of introspective, thoughtful singer/songwriters. It's an album which seeks to make sense of the modern world, and of the journey Healy has taken to reach this point: it's also an album that might remind people that Fran Healy is one of Britain's most gifted and often under-rated songwriters.
Today, on the morning after lengthy celebrations for his son's high school graduation, the flame-haired musician is a little tired, but he's charming, funny, engaging and extremely honest as he looks back over his career, recent turmoil in his professional and personal life, and his hopes for what may lie ahead in his second half-century on this "fucking rock".
First of all, having dived straight in to the title track of L.A. Times, I'd just like to congratulate you on your new gangsta rap approach...
Hahaha. You know, the artistic process is a weird one, it involves a lot of digging and sieving until you find the thing. I never have an agenda, so with that song, I wasn't thinking, Right, I'm going to swear a lot in this song, and I'm going to make it more spoken word than singing. A friend of mine from Germany, he was like, 'Oh, I really don't like that song. It's not becoming of Travis.' It's funny how people think things are, and aren't you. I grew up in Possilpark, in the heroin capital of Europe, and I'm working class, and our vernacular is very much in that song. I've never really spoken in a pissed-off way like I have on that song, but when you're pissed off in Glasgow, there's a lot of 'fucking' involved. I don't know what it is about Los Angeles, but man, it's oil and water to me.
You've something of a love/hate relationship with Los Angeles?
Um, I don't even know if there's love involved, it's a weird relationship. More has happened to me that has endangered my life in this city than in any city I've ever lived in. Two days ago, I got into a fight with a homeless person. I was trying to shoot a video in an alleyway in Santa Monica, and it was horrible, horrible. Also, I came home one day and found a homeless person in my house. He was big, he had knives, and he was off his face on something, and I had to gingerly escort him out of my house, while thinking, I could get killed here.
It's a funny city, I could go on and on. Like, one day, I was in an attempted car-jacking, with this guy trying to pull me out of the window of my car to fight him, because he was crazy. I've never, ever, ever, in my life - not even in Possilpark - been in such mortal danger, which gives you a lot to sort of write about. After I finished writing L.A. Times I felt relief like I've never felt before. L.A. can't help the way it is, it's desperately trying to be a good city, but it's up against such a steep hill, and it's so segregated and polarised. I kinda love L.A. - I must do as I'm still here - but maybe it's time to move on. You try to banter with anyone here and they look at you like you're from Mars.
You wouldn't go back home to Glasgow? Is that not a consideration?
No, I would definitely not go back home, but not for any other reason than I've done it already. And also Glasgow for me... when you grew up in a poor place, and you get smashed about, it leaves a bad taste in your mouth. And you're like, I want to get out of here and I want to move to a nicer place where people are friendlier. And so now I find myself here, and it's like, Fuck, is this the bookend of my life? Am I gonna die soon. Maybe. Who knows?
All the guys in Glasgow that used to beat me up, they're all dead now. And they're dead because they were heroin addicts.
That's a nice cheerful thought.
Well, you know, the guys in Glasgow that used to beat me up, they're all dead now. And they're dead because they were heroin addicts, and were found up a close somewhere, with a needle hanging out of their arm. Poverty is a real hard thing. A lot of people who read broadsheets, they've got no idea what life is like when you're poor, they have no idea what it does to people, that lack of opportunity. So I'm going to keep on moving.
To rewind, in your early days, was music an escape for you, with the songs you listened to, and the songs you wrote?
Movies were an escape, music was the soundtrack to life. I never had big brothers or sisters, I didn't have a dad, and I didn't have a record player. I just heard music coming through other people's windows, and I went to Catholic school and sung a lot of hymns. I'm not religious at all, it's for the birds, but the head teacher always used to say, 'He who sings, prays twice', and I was like, What? That's a bargain! So I always liked the idea of singing, but it was like secondary smoke to me. And then my mom got us a record player when I was about 12 or 13, and so then you hear a bit of everything, and start to go, Oh, I'll buy that record.
I found a handful of 45s [singles] from when I was first got a record player the other day, in fact, and I played them all in the house, right, and it was brilliant. It was shit like Lionel Richie's Hello, which was the first record I ever bought. Anyway, then as I went into my teenage years, music became much more of an expression of who you were, and me and my mates got into U2, in a big way, especially the Under A Blood Red Sky video. We watched that hundreds of times. The, one day when I was about 15 or 16, my English teacher, who looked like Leslie Nielsen in Naked Gun, came in, slammed a book down on the table, and shouted, 'R.E.M. are the greatest rock band in the world.' So then I managed to get a tape of Green, and that was really the beginning for me.
When you encountered the London music business for the first time, did you feel like outsiders?
Yeah, we were outsiders from the very start. I made a documentary about the band a few years back [Almost Fashionable] and one of the nice moments is us sitting on a bed in Mexico, the four of us, talking about that time. In Glasgow we were outsiders, and then in London we were outsiders again, but then something flipped and we went from being completely unknown to being it, and suddenly we were completely on the inside and everyone else was on the outside, trying to get in. It was a weird moment.
Your first record, Good Feeling, was a Top 10 record in the UK, but then the second one, The Man Who, was massive, like, nine times platinum in the UK alone. When you were writing that record, did you feel like you'd something to prove, or was it simply the next batch of songs?
It was just the next batch of songs. With every song you ever write, you want it to be the best song you've ever written, and I still believe that that song is floating about out there somewhere. I'm addicted to trying to find the ultimate melody, the melody that no-one's found yet, because it's out there.
We met Bowie, McCartney, Oasis, everybody. Once you've sold your million records and you're in the club, it's pretty great.
When you had that huge success, did you enjoy the fame that went with it, or the acclaim, at least?
Yeah, it was nice. Getting to number one was amazing. but it was more that: for a good three years, we were the band. What I didn't like was when you're walking down the street, people would be saying to each other, [whispers] 'Oh, there's that guy from Travis', and it was always the 's' from Travis you heard, like, 'sssssssssss': it was like there were wee snakes everywhere. I didn't really like that because I'm quite introverted, I'm not a very out-going person: even at the graduation yesterday, it's highly stressful to be within such a large amount of people. It's much easier being on a stage when there's no one around you, and all the large groups of people are aware far away from you.
But, yeah, bits of it were amazing. We met Bowie, [Paul] McCartney, Oasis, everybody. Once you've sold your million records and you're in the club, it's pretty great. What else is great... fucking making some money is amazing, buying your mum a house is amazing, there's lots of brilliant things that come with it.
Did you find yourself losing yourself at any point? With that level of success, it can be easy for people to lose a sense of themselves and get a bit carried away with ego or over-indulgence.
Probably definitely, but I don't think I noticed it. But what I did notice, was that the band - the other three guys - treated me differently, because so much of it became about me, because I'm the singer in the band. I didn't want it to be about me though. I don't have an ego about this, I'm a postman, this is my job. I've never been, like, Oh, I'm brilliant, ever: I'm a fucking working class Glaswegian person, It's just not in my DNA to do that. But it's how people change and treat you differently that becomes weird.
I don't know if the other guys remember this, but I remember once being in Notting Hill, standing on the corner outside a Starbucks, and saying to everyone, You need to understand that this is happening to me right now, and I hate it, it's horrible. Everyone's looking at me and and I need your support, I need you to be there. I know it's probably frustrating to you that you're not getting, you know, the praise or the attention, but that's not what I want either. And that talk sorted us out.
With success, you get to a certain altitude, and not everyone is comfortable at that altitude. We were a Cessna that flew at the altitude of an Airbus 380. We should never have gone up to 50,000 feet, because shit starts to rip off a Cessna 50,000 feet and you need oxygen. When Neil [Primrose], our drummer broke his neck in 2002 [after diving into a swimming pool in France] we were forced to come down to our to our altitude, and it's great. We survived, we're still in one piece, we're still the four guys, and we still love each other. Nothing's that's happened to us has been so insurmountable as to break us up.
Musicians are the most insecure people in the world
I wanted to ask you about The Invisible Band, and working with Nigel Godrich, because apparently that was a really tough experience for you. I read that, at the time, you wrote in your journal, The producer thinks we're shit, I think we're shit.
I think Nigel feels really bad about that. But yeah, that is true, that's exactly how I was felt. He'd just come off working with Radiohead [on Kid A and Amnesiac], literally had a day or two off and then came to work with us, and you could not find two different types of bands and two different types of work environments. We'd had this huge amount of success with our last record, we were in this amazing studio, and we were being silly and daft, and he'd come from this really intense situation with Radiohead and was having issues there, in that camp, and he brought them into ours.
I've got this mad little thing - this is one of my little things that helps me get through the day - where I imagine that there's a little carton of chocolate mousse attached to everyone's head, and you get to taste their chocolate mousse. Sometimes, you're like, Wow, man, that tastes fucking great, but most of the time, you dip into it, and it's off, it's sour and tastes awful. The point here is that people will make you feel how they feel, and Nigel was really not feeling good at that point. Musicians are the most insecure people in the world. There's a lovely scene in Above Us Only Sky where John Lennon is asking a photographer from the NME if Imagine is any good. You're thinking, Are you fucking kidding me? But you don't know, that's the thing, so you live in this weird, unsure, insecure bubble. So if someone comes into your world and they're in a bad mood you just think, Oh, okay, you've just confirmed to me that I am shit. So yeah, that was really, really hard.
But we had it out. We had this lovely confrontation in the Spaghetti Factory, this restaurant on Sunset [Strip], and continued it at the Bar Marmont [at Chateau Marmont hotel]. And my relationship with Nigel is such that I can have those difficult conversations, and he's smart enough, and kind enough to go, 'Oh, fuck', and then turn it around and realise that this circuit is not wired properly. And then the next day at the studio, we had him back, and we made a record, and it was great. But that's what making records is like, and it's what friendships are like. Nigel's like my brother, we're more than friends and that relationships is massive relationship in my life. It's all about relationships: some pass like ships in the night and others you attach yourself to like barnacles.
I remember Lemmy from Motörhead complaining about how everyone knows him from Ace Of Spades, from 1980, but he'd run into people in LA in the late '90s, early 2000s, and they'd be like, "Oh, yeah, Motörhead, cool, do you guys still play?" as if they didn't exist in the present tense. Your... altitude, as you mentioned, is lower than it was circa The Man Who and The Invisible Band, so do you ever have people say similar things?
Um, no, but it's like, if you're not out on the circuit, you don't exist, so I sort of get it. I'm very, very, very, very competitive, and I think I'm more talented, and I've got more to offer than a lot of other people, and I feel like there's plenty of gas still in my tank. And I'm massively ambitious, ridiculously so. But I have to focus my laser on one thing at a time, and I chose to focus my laser on my son for the last 17 years. And you know what? I'm fucking so glad I did. But now that he's graduated, I'm back on my thing, and I've got unfinished business. Whether that leads to huge success or not, it's not about that for me.
It might not even be about music, I love filmmaking, I love storytelling, I love drawing, I love painting, and I'm really good at all of these things. But I don't want to just do things for the sake of doing it, or to get famous. So I don't know where I'm going next. But you know that video for The Sweetest Thing, by U2, where Bono is in the boxing ring, and he puts his gum shield in, and he can't wait to get stuck in? That's how I feel right now, raring to go.
Don't ever misconstrue melody with weakness. I think Thom [Yorke] misconstrues that
On the new record, it struck me that a more cynical songwriter might perhaps cut out some of the audience-friendly singalong parts, but you seem unafraid of those super-melodic, populist hooks and melodies, whereas someone like.... let's say Radiohead, no longer has that kinda... 'I'd like to teach the world to sing' attitude.
Yeah, like I say, I love melodies. Don't ever misconstrue melody with weakness. I think Thom [Yorke] misconstrues that, or associates melody with a sort of namby-pamby-ness or whatever, and I think the opposite is true. I think to be melodic is one of the strongest things. Why do we know Radiohead? Why are we still listening to Radiohead? It's not because of the last record they brought out, are you fucking kidding me? Tell me what track four was? Go on. You could ask Radiohead's greatest fan what track four was and they wouldn't fucking know. But they'll know what track four was on their second album, because it was melodic, and that melody got them. Every band worth their salt, it's melody that got them where they are, and I'm not afraid of that. And they are.
I know you wouldn't want to put words into anyone else's mouth, but that does that come down to some people having a sort of embarrassment or even contempt for a mass audience?
No, absolutely not. I know Thom, and Thom is just as ambitious as I am. But Thom... There's a Q interview around Kid A, where he talks about how difficult it is to find melody, right? And he just figured out how to do his business without writing songs. He created what would be probably like classical music, and his voice is like an instrument, like an oboe or, or some reed instrument, that meanders across the top of a beautiful soundscape of music, and it's indirect, and it's mysterious.
But it's very brave to be direct, it's not brave to be meandering and mysterious, but the press are like, well, we must be seeing something really fucking meaningful, because I don't know what it means. No, he's fucking just havering over the top of a beautiful bit of music, and it sounds great. But, we're still singing Creep. We're still singing Street Spirit. We're still singing the songs that made them famous. And that's what he turned his back on.
I mean, I don't want to get in a fight with Thom because I like him, but that's where I get frustrated with someone as talented as Thom. I'm like, Come on, man, you were one of the greatest melody writers that there was, and you shat out of it. I'm still putting my fucking neck out there looking like a twat, trying to find those melodies.
Here's an interesting little anecdote. Just before we put the record down, I was having a lot of difficulty getting the running order. So I called up Chris [Martin] from Coldplay, he's an old friend - I mean, we don't go and have cocktails and go surfing together, you know, but he's there, and I'm there - so I called him up and said, Mate, could you help me? We'll just drive up the PCH [Pacific Coast Highway] and listen to the record and can you help me order this because I cannot fucking hear this record now? And he was like, Sure. He's 35 minutes away from me, so I drove over, and we're in the car, and got to a song called Alive and he's like, 'Why aren't you doing the 'Na Na Na' bit after the first chorus? Why did you just go into the second verse? You know, I like a Na Na Na.' He's like, 'You're crazy. Put another one in there, you got two here here, put one there.' And I said, I wanted to do that, but my inner Thom Yorke was like, 'Don't do that'. But I've Chris Martin literally sitting in the car beside me going, 'Do that!' He was like, 'Are you fucking crazy, it's so obvious that you should do this!'
Did you go back and change it?
I did. And he was right. I shouldn't call it my inner Thom, it's my inner Nigel [Godrich]. Like, Nigel fucking hates Flowers In The Window [from The Invisible Band]. When we were driving back from recording that, he said, 'I'm going to be hanging in my fucking bedroom, and that's going to be playing on the radio. He hated it so much. So, yes, I do wrestle with it sometimes, but melody always wins.
When Raise The Bar came out as the first single from L.A. Times, there was a quote in the press release saying that Chris Martin said it's one of the best songs you've ever written. Does that sort of compliment from a peer and friend still matter to you?
Of course. There's two types of people: there's people who, when you're driving along the motorway, and you indicate to pull out, they speed up and don't let you in. And there's people who slow down, and let you in. So there's people who, when you play them your song, will see that you're vulnerable about it, and they'll take your soul and shit on it and stay quiet and not say anything, and let you let you fester. And then there's those who'll lift you up. And Chris' Martin is the guy who lets you out. he's the guy who lifts you up. I love that song, but you don't know, so to get approval from someone who you appreciate and admire, a contemporary who you rate, that's great.
Travis were a bigger band than Coldplay at the start of the millennium. Would you fancy that level of success again?
Yeah, absolutely. And I feel like I would be more ready for it, because I did it before. But it's a weird world out there, and who knows what the future holds? Listen, when your record flies, it's luck, it's pure fucking, What happened there? No record company, no band, can make that happen... but you can be prepared for it. I'm feeling like I'm in a good zone now. I'm definitely never going to play the full game, but if the wind blows, we're ready for it. And that's all you can be.
