Oh sit down. . . with James! 35 years of music stardom

The game was up 12 years ago. After 24 years, James had run out of steam. They’d recorded songs that had become anthems – Come Home and Sit Down being foremost among them. They’d cracked America, shifted millions of records – the total is presently some 25 million or so – and surfed all manner of scenes.

They’d flirted with Madchester while sensibly refusing to be defined by it; they’d also remained on the sidelines when Britpop catapulted the alternative into the mainstream. For a while, it seemed as though they’d enjoy the same sort of perennial stadium success as Irish rockers U2. But James were always too wilful, too cussed to embrace that fate. Their career has followed in the slipstream of such alternative greats as Lou Reed and The Velvet Underground or Patti Smith, rather than such establishment figures as The Beatles or The Rolling Stones.

Across three decades, James had seen it all. The sex, the drugs, the drugs and the drugs. They’d been ‘the next best thing’, survived bouts of self-immolation and fallen foul of the rock press. But somehow, they’d emerged stronger. They’d written their own story of being a thoroughly modern rock‘n’roll band who simply refused to quit.

From the experimental beginnings of Stutter through to their imperious phase of Gold Mother and Seven past the critically-acclaimed Laid and on to the reinvention of Millionaires and Pleased To Meet You, they’d left no stone unturned in their quest for creative fulfilment.

After the crash came the renaissance, of course. Hey Ma, their 2008 comeback, was their first new record in seven years and provided a welcome return from their hiatus. But it was 2014’s La Petite Mort that saw James reach a new peak. Inspired by the deaths of singer Tim Booth’s mother and a close friend, it sparkled in the ether. Two years ago, they followed that with the exceptional Girl at the End of the World, another classic James record. And suddenly they found themselves enjoying the most successful phase of their career. Girl at the End of the World gave them their highest charting record since the 1990s and was only denied the number one spot by the multi-million-selling Adele.

Adored by critics and fans alike, it marked the latest stage in their creative resurgence. The band’s new record, Living In Extraordinary Times, bookends the remarkable sequence of records that began in 2014.

The latest release is the band’s 15th studio album and delivers the same vigour and urgency as its predecessors, a fusion of social commentary and personal reflection, covering everything from the current political climate in America in the frustration-charged Hank – ‘This crack heads tiny fingers / Accusing you of what he’ll do / White fascists in the white house / More beetroot in your Russian stew’ – to the lonesome Father’s Day in the heartfelt Coming Home (Pt. 2), which features keyboards from long-time collaborator Brian Eno.

Tim says: “We knew something was up when Leicester City won the Premiership then Brexit, then Trump. It’s as if we’d slipped into an alternate reality, a Philip K. Dick reality. We are living in extraordinary times.”

The album started life during jam sessions at Sheffield’s Yellow Arch Studios and was finished at Iguana Studios in Brixton. Beni Giles was already working with the band on creating a new rhythmical approach when Charlie Andrew joined the project after being blown away by the band live. “This album is full of big tunes,” Charlie says. “Tim and the guys are all very good at writing huge hooks. There’s some really big, energetic tracks and some nice, chilled ones; and there are some monstrous tracks, such as Hank, which is just vast with layers and layers of drums.”

The striking album artwork was created by contemporary artist and former Vivienne Westwood designer Magnus Gjoen. Magnus draws inspiration from street and pop art aesthetics, juxtaposing them with fine art. His work challenges preconceived notions of objects, exploring the stark contrast between power and fragility where something which is potentially extremely destructive can be made into beautiful yet fragile objects of art, tying in with the themes of the album by exploring the gaps between politics and tranquillity.

The addition of Charlie Andrew was key. The Mercury Music Prize and Brit Award-winning producer has collaborated with a variety of musicians including Alt J, Madness, Matt Corby, Nick Mulvey, Rae Morris, Eugene McGuinness, Clive Langer, We Were Evergreen, Sivu, Francobollo, Marika Hackman and more.

Tim says. “I’d been in touch with Charlie about Alt J before it got really popular. I compared it to OK Computer in terms of sounding contemporary. We discussed working together and he came back stage and said he’d make a record. So we got our dream team together made a new record that’s sounding fresh. Our songwriting doesn’t seem to be diminishing. We had a team that was helping us to go in directions that don’t sound like familiar James.”

The statement hangs in the air. After 14 records, James are quite happy not to sound like themselves. They’re happy to tear up the blueprint and head into new territory.

Tim concurs. “After all these albums we don’t want to sound like James. We can’t avoid some aspects of our sound, like my voice, but we are always looking to stretch ourselves and take ourselves in new directions. There are songs on the record, like Heads, that are quite unlike anything we’ve ever done.

“When we set out to make the record, we wrote 30 good songs and whittled it down. I wanted to release a double album and there were big fights over that but I lost. So there will also great B-sides and a special edition with some of the songs on there.”

Recording in Sheffield was a boon. Yellow Arch Studios, which were converted from abandoned Victorian factory workshops, have welcomed great bands in recent times, from Arctic Monkeys, My Darling Clementine, Tony Christie, Goldfrapp and Funeral For a Friend to the studios’ ‘resident guitarist’ Richard Hawley.

“It’s a hub for music and a supportive environment. We wrote virtually the whole record there. We refined the jams, then I wrote lyrics.”

Tim subscribes to the theory that the band are enjoying a glorious autumn to their career. He’s been buoyed by the outpouring of public affection for their most recent records and by the fact that their concerts have become bigger and more commercially successful than those around the time of Come Home and Sit Down ever were. This winter, they’ll be returning to the nation’s arenas and Tim is gleeful.

“The recent era has been really great. We’re aware of these three records being a particular renaissance and flourishing for us. We’ve changed. Some of it is to do with the bass sound. Jim’s got into playing in this dirty, sexy way. We’ve got more grooves. And Mark, our keyboard player, has also come to the fore.

“Mark is really shy and generally keeps himself turned down. So we’ve made him turn himself up. He’s always been the quiet genius before but we’ve outed him now. So those natural changes have shifted our sound to some degree.”

Tim sees the turning point as the death of his mother and the death of his best friend, prior to La Petite Mort. “My mother died as did my best friend and that puts you in touch with something pretty primal. Then we just kept going. In terms of lyric writing, I’m always digging up stuff. I’m fascinated in consciousness.”

Most bands drift apart as they move into middle age. The birth of children, shifting priorities, success, financial success and the desire to move in different creative directions creates a wedge. Rather than finding the cohesion that they had when they started out and wanted to change the world, bands grow fat and tired. They no longer burn, burn, burn like Jack Kerouac’s fabulous Roman candles. Instead, they drift slowly and become a pastiche of their former selves.

Not so James. Rather than moving apart, the band have been moving closer together. On Living in Extraordinary Times, four members moved in together so that they could create their newest masterpiece.

“The four of us were sharing a house for a few weeks, writing new songs and were getting on really well. It’s quite entertaining at times. It’s not Big Brother. It’s people who respect each other and like each other’s company.

“The song Moving On was writing about my mother and my best friend and I wasn’t always able to get through that when we played it live because it was too moving. There’s another song that I can’t sing live because it’s so emotionally charged. But we’re at an age when these things happen. Jim’s mother died recently, so the song has new resonance for him too. We have that shared experience.”

Moving On has struck a chord, not just with band members but with the wider world.

Tim has been pleased by that. “The amount of letters I have from people who’ve lost loved ones or who have listened to the song to get through a difficult time has been remarkable. It’s become this thing. Everyone is writing birthday or Christmas songs to connect with the listening public but by accident we’ve written a death song that’s made that connection. It really has taken on a life of its own. It’s been played in hospices for dying children. People have taken it to the hearts.”

Tim is thrilled with the band’s renaissance and that James find themselves more popular than before at a time when most rock band’s careers are at an end.

“When James started, for the first seven years only John Peel played us. It was only when we got to the point that we were selling out two nights in Manchester that the media came our way. The same goes now. Radio One won’t play bands like us because they only want to know about music that’s made by people up to 28 and we’re a bit passed that. So we can’t really have hits. But Moving On is a hit. Nothing But Love was used everywhere too. That was a hit. We just keep on going and playing to bigger audiences then we played, even more than the 90s. We’ve been there before and we’re there again. We just do our thing. We consider it art. It’s our art. Yet we’re out in the pop world. We’re being promoted in a pop world of disposable music.

“We’ve been around for 35 years and will be around longer than most of these bands will ever be. Our mentors are Leonard Cohen and Patti Smith . . . Lou Reed and The Velvets. That’s who we aspire to be. We’ve got a lot of good music and when we write our setlist for gigs it’s almost overwhelming when we think about what to include. But we’ve always been in this for the long term. We weren’t part of Madchester or Britpop, even though people tried to put us into those scenes. We’ve always just gone our own way.”

In the final analysis it’s not about having hits, of course, nor of making money. James exist to make beautiful music. As corny as it might sound, they do it for the love of it. “Totally. We live in a bubble of our own delusion. We love what we do. What you gonna do? Stop doing something you love?

“We’re lucky enough and blessed enough to be passionate about the work we do. Even though the new album is just out, we’re still writing now, we’re already moving on to new stuff.”

There’ll be more shows soon enough. James will be returning to such venues as Birmingham Arena and Wolverhampton Civic Hall to reconnect with fans. Their most recent concerts were spectacular – marked by classic songs and band member forays into the audience during encores.

Tim has no plans to stop. “It’s important to be out there and for the audience and in the big venues I’m always thinking of those poor people at the back in the cheap seats. The end of the shows usually involve me running round the back when the fans are calling for an encore and getting onto the ninth floor so that I can sing from there.

“For the recent tours, I was looking into hiring a zip wire to get across the venues but that was impossible because of health and safety, or ir was too expensive. It was £20,000 a night to hire a zip wire.

“But being out in the audience is important because I want to make contact and make the shows intimate. There aren’t many performers who can make people feel they’re singing to them. There’s only Springsteen really . . .”

Springsteen – and James.

Britain’s greatest live band have outlasted and outlived their fiercest critics and defied expectations by entering the most glorious era of their career. Long may it last.