JAMES (TIM BOOTH & JIM GLENNIE)

“LIFE LIFTS UP HER SKIRT AND GIVES US A FLASH OF HER MYSTERIES,” SAYS TIM BOOTH, TALISMANIC FRONTMAN FOR MANCHESTER LEGENDS JAMES, OF LA PETITE MORT.
The band’s thirteenth studio album was released a year ago, and they have been dancing in its wake since. LA PETITE MORT displayed all of James’s familiar strengths (‘in the moment’ and impulsive but also considered and multi-layered), and saw Booth tackling the profound implications of being alive. The album shone a little light over the spiritual connectedness of all human experience – specifically the circular relationship between sex, birth and death – and spoke in equal measure to head, heart and hips. Twelve months on from an intimate album launch show in Camden, and after several festival appearances, arena dates and much media coverage, the resurgent James are here by the seaside on a Friday night, and about to take the stage at the Open Air Theatre in Scarborough, North Yorkshire… In a sometimes staggering interview Booth and bassist Jim Glennie sat down with The Mouth Magazine just before showtime to reflect on the themes of LA PETITE MORT…

IT’S BEEN A YEAR OF HARD WORK IN SUPPORT OF LA PETITE MORT. THE ALBUM WAS RECEIVED EXTREMELY WELL DESPITE THE DARK SUBJECT MATTER, WHICH WAS FUELLED BY YOUR PERSONAL EXPERIENCE, TIM. OVER THE LAST COUPLE OF YEARS YOU’VE SUFFERED TWO MAJOR BEREAVEMENTS – THOUGH I’M ACTUALLY VERY CONSCIOUS OF INCORRECTLY USING THE WORD “SUFFERED” BECAUSE YOUR REACTION TO THOSE LOSSES SEEMS TO HAVE BEEN PROFOUNDLY POSITIVE… LA PETITE MORT WAS NOT A DOWNBEAT RECORD.
TB: Yes, but that’s not really my responsibility. That’s this cheerful band that I’m in… We like working with counterpoints. There may be a really depressing lyric and there may be a really uplifting tune – or vice versa – and we like those conflicts. We actually thrive on them. But, yes… My experience of my mother passing away. She was ninety, she died in my arms, with my sister there too, in her arms too – and that was an amazingly positive experience. It was clearly a birth. The only thing I’d ever been at that was anything like it was a birth. So it was like “Oh – that’s what this is”… And that wasn’t an idea – it was a complete understanding. For both me and for my sister. So although we did have grief and tears and all of that, ultimately it was a beautiful experience. Yeah. A really beautiful experience.

A FRIEND OF YOURS ALSO DIED…
TB: Yeah, one of my best friends died about five months later. I didn’t get to say “goodbye” and had the opposite experience – a feeling of great loss, that they were far too young and all of that. Just after the first loss I’d thought “I’ve cracked this thing called death”, and that second one came along and whacked me right in the face… So I had these two really conflicting experiences of bereavement, which fuelled most of the album at various levels.

WAS WRITING ABOUT THEM DIFFICULT?
TB: It was easy in many ways, lyrically. There was so much emotion coming through me and it’s actually quite easy to write when you’re emotional.

ONE OF THE THINGS THAT SURPRISED ME ABOUT LA PETITE MORT WAS HOW EXPOSED IT WAS DESPITE THE FACT THAT YOU’RE ENGLISH. THE UK IS QUITE ‘BUTTONED UP’ ABOUT, WELL, NOT JUST DEATH… A LOT OF THINGS… SEX… THESE ARE THINGS PEOPLE ARE EXTREMELY UNCOMFORTABLE TALKING ABOUT. WHY DO YOU THINK THAT IS?
JG: Culturally I think the… I was going to say British, but I think probably, yes, the English more than British, are not so great at acknowledging that death exists. It’s thrust upon us. We bury somebody and then we crack on like it’s never going to happen again. There are other cultures which seem to be able to deal with it in a much more open way than that. The album cover is kind of based on the imagery of the Day Of The Dead…

… THE MEXICAN HOLIDAY ON WHICH THE DEAD ARE CELEBRATED…
JG: Yeah. And there’s a fair bunch of other countries where the dead are much more a part of people’s everday life. The relatives that are dead are still present in their lives. I don’t know why we’re so weird about it. Death just never seems to exist in people’s lives here until the brutality of it appears – the pain and the trouble it brings – and we do our best to get through that bit and then we put it to one side again. We have an odd way of dealing with something which is inevitable for everybody, in this country…

… PARTICULARLY WHEN, NOT SO MANY GENERATIONS BACK, IT APPEARS TO HAVE BEEN LESS TABOO THAN NOW. A HUNDRED AND TWENTY YEARS OR SO AGO, VICTORIAN TIMES, FAMILIES WOULD ACTUALLY TAKE PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE DECEASED…
JG: Yeah, they did. Quite often it was the only photograph they’d have of somebody. When they were dead they’d sit them up and have a photograph taken of them as a keepsake. Bizarre…
TB: Wow… Well, I’m going to confess something here… I took a photo of my mum. I felt like “Is this going to be seen as ghoulish?” but I really wanted it, so I could remember the moment. I’ve hidden it somewhere, like some kind of illegal pornography collection or something, because clearly in this culture having that photograph sounds a little weird. When my dad died I flew back from America and they’d promised to keep the casket open because I knew I had to see him dead, to have some kind of closure. But they’d closed the casket by the time I got there… so I never saw him, and I’ve always regretted that.

IT’S ACTUALLY REALLY IMPORTANT TO SEE THEM, I THINK.
TB: It is. And it’s ridiculous, our culture. The Victorian culture was also a ridiculous culture in many ways. Even though they had that thing about death, their idea of sex was so bizarre. They had the prim “Oh, we don’t do sex” thing, but then record numbers of prostitutes in London – by about five times the figure we have today. In a smaller London, you know? Because women couldn’t make very much money being seamstresses, but you could get two tricks as a tart and make enough for a whole week of being a seamstress. There was no social sort of… erm…
JG: … safety net… Exactly. It was purely for survival…
TB: … yeah. So prostitution was rife – and yet there was a complete denial of sex. And that whole thing about the vibrator. I don’t know if you know how the vibrator was invented?

I DON’T…
TB: Right, well, it was invented as a tool for doctors to cure hysteria in women. Victorian women had this habit of fainting, which they now think was due to their corsets being too tight. So this doctor came up with this whole new thing about… erm, I don’t know if I can say this in The Mouth Magazine, can I?

YOU CAN SAY ANYTHING YOU LIKE…
TB: Good… This doctor came up with this thing that, essentially, stimulating a woman’s clitoris was a way to get rid of hysteria. They hadn’t equated it with sex. They thought it was something different when they touched them there and they had this sort of spasm. So women flocked to doctors’ offices in Victorian England and doctors complained that their surgeries were packed with women and their arms were getting tired. And so they invented the very first vibrator. That’s how the vibrator was created. It’s insane, isn’t it?

IT’S AMAZING!
TB: It’s like… our knowledge of our bodies, and sexuality, has been suppressed by religions for the last two thousand years. Do you know how the clitoris was discovered?

I’M COMPOSING A SELF-DEPRECATING JOKE…
TB: Ha ha ha… The guy who believed he discovered the clitoris was one of Leonardo Da Vinci’s anatomists. He recognised this protrusion on a woman that he kept drawing. He’d touch it and they’d go a bit frozen for a moment, and have a reaction… So finally he announced to the world that he’d discovered this new organ on the body, called the clitoris… and he was immediately arrested by the Church and thrown into jail. It’s so bizarre. We’ve had two thousand years of the Dark Ages in terms of our own bodies! It’s all been about shame. It’s all been about guilt. It’s all been about this being a body of sin. You can’t use condoms. You’ll fall from Eden if you have sex with anybody. Or, you know, you get circumcised as soon as you get here. A baby arrives and you chop a bit of his penis off. What’s that telling a child? And then there’s female genital mutilation… And so, there’s been so much suppression of who we are, and of our bodies, and stopping us from enjoying our bodies… We’ll fly to the moon, we’ll map the moon, but have we mapped our bodies? Sorry, I’m going off on one aren’t I?
JG: You are, aren’t you? That’s true!
TB: Sorry about that! Ha ha ha…

WE’RE TAUGHT TO SUPPRESS OUR FEELINGS, TOO. BUT THE INCREDIBLY VIVID PROCESS THAT DEATH PUTS YOU THROUGH – GRIEF – IS ACTUALLY ONE OF THE ONLY THINGS YOU ENCOUNTER IN LIFE THAT CAN MAKE YOU FEEL TRULY ALIVE… IT DELIVERS YOU TO EVERY SINGLE CORNER OF EVERY SINGLE EMOTION YOU POSSESS…
TB: That is beautifully put… Wow.
JG: Yep.

… CLEARLY THAT’S HOW IT WAS FOR YOU?
TB: Yeah. The same with birth. Birth is some sort of nuclear explosion in the heart. You’ve suddenly got this little thing to care for – you are responsible for creating a life and for taking care of it. That’s breathtaking. So those two things cut right through some of the plastic of what we think is reality, this culture that we live in. As does living in nature… Jim lives in the wilds of Scotland and I live in California. I went for the land, and Jim went for the land too. That’s because it’s real – far more real than the culture. It’s wanting to keep connected to reality.

JUST TO GO OFF AT A TANGENT FOR A MOMENT… FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF THE FACT THAT THE MEMBERS OF THE BAND LIVE ALL OVER THE PLACE… WHEN YOU RECONVENE TO WRITE, RECORD OR TOUR, DOES IT TAKE A WHILE TO SETTLE BACK INTO EACH OTHER?
JG: We’ve got used to that now. We’re all still getting on pretty well, though there’s a few spiky bits, isn’t there?
TB: Ha ha…
JG: … but that’s always been the nature of the beast. Even when we were all living in the UK, geographically relatively close, you’d see each other when you were working and it’s all pretty intense. You’re working hard together and you’re living together as well, whether it’s in the studio or out on tour… it’s pretty full on… So when those things finished you tended to go away from each other. You’d get on with your own life and that space was there. So whether it’s fifty miles or five thousand, it doesn’t actually make a huge amount of difference… As soon as we get together we’re straight into a state which overrides the normal niceties or there being something uncomfortable or awkward about finding your feet with each other again. Or fear, adrenaline… We’re into something full on which supercedes that. The importance of it, perhaps.

AND IT IS SUCH AN IMPORTANT PART OF YOUR LIVES… TIM, WOULD YOU SAY BECAUSE OF THE REALITY OF THE EXPERIENCES BEHIND LA PETITE MORT, THAT THE BAND IS STILL WHAT DEFINES YOU OR HAS IT BECOME JUST THE OUTLET FOR EXPERIENCE?
TB: Well, I guess it’s all of our outlets… It’s this thing where we come together and find a strange collective language. And it goes from being extremely intimate to being extremely public. When we create the songs it’s just us improvising, and no-one bringing anything in beforehand. Just making it up. That’s, in a way, the most enjoyable bit somehow. It’s quite magical to see something, to see a song, just appear between us – no one is creating it. It’s between us. That’s intimacy…
JG: Yeah, that’s the best bit.
TB: … and so then we have to craft them into songs, and edit them and try and learn to play them and… it has different stages. Something comes from our unconscious and we have to make it conscious before we can take it out there into the world. And then it’s something else. It’s public…

YOU’VE HAD SEVERAL SONGS OVER THE YEARS WHICH HAVE BECOME THAT, BECOME ‘OWNED’ BY THE PUBLIC AND PERHAPS NO LONGER BY YOU…
TB: Yeah, absolutely. The minute they’re released they’re owned by the audience, to some degree. They’re really not yours after that. You get enough letters from people picking out the obscure songs and saying “this song changed my life” or “this song saved my life”… “This song stopped me from committing suicide”… It’s very humbling. You get those letters telling you that this stuff isn’t falling on deaf ears just because it hasn’t been played on daytime radio… Even if they don’t become that well known they seem to find a place in someone’s heart…

… AND I WANTED TO REVERSE THAT BY ASKING YOU ABOUT THE SONGS FROM LA PETITE MORT. OBVIOUSLY YOU’RE STILL PLAYING THEM LIVE, BUT ARE YOU NOW ‘OUTSIDE’ THEM?
TB: We love them. We’re playing about four or five of them tonight – and we’d play more if we felt there wasn’t a damned lake between us and the audience which means we’re going to have to play it a little bit safer than we’d normally choose to…

LARRY JUST TOLD ME THAT YOU’D WANTED TO SAIL A BOAT OVER THE LAKE AND PLAY ON THAT – BUT YOU CAN’T BECAUSE OF PROTECTED SPECIES NEWTS!
JG: The newts, yeah!
TB: We had all kinds of plans for tonight and they’ve all fallen through… so we’re separated from our audience by a lake. It’s the most stupid bit of planning for a James gig that anyone could have made because we thrive on intimacy, on connection. That’s the whole point of what we do. But we’ll make something work! Erm… back to your question about the songs…

YEAH… WHETHER YOU ARE STILL ‘INSIDE’ THE SONGS…
TB: It was weird, it was like… I wrote the lyrics and it was easy, natural, it just flew. Then came to record a couple of them and got really hit emotionally by what they meant… Came to play some of them live and it was, like, “Holy cow… I don’t know if I can get through this”, ha ha… To the point where they were all watching me to see if I was okay, to see if I could get through…
JG: There have been times when we’d just stop a song because we knew Tim wasn’t going to be able to sing it. Or times when we’d just keep an intro going while Tim sort of settled himself… We were very very aware, from the off, that we might not be able to play certain songs – or that we might reach it on the set list and start but have to stop or change it, you know? And that’s fine – there’s no greater thing, I think, than for a musician to play a song which has that importance or relevance to them. Everyone in the band has, I think, suffered the death of a parent or someone close to them…

… WE’RE AT THAT AGE…
JG: Yeah, we are. I’ve had some painful… Well, my dad dying was like your mum, Tim. It was as good as it could be – all the family there and everything. But then some not so great ones. So… with playing these songs at gigs, you’re aware of emotions. You know, you want to do it, you want to get through it, you want to throw your emotions into it. But you’re aware that sometimes Tim might be on the edge of being able to do it. I mean, I don’t have to stand there and actually sing about one of my losses. I’m not sure I could do, to be honest with you.

AND THESE ARE SONGS THAT NEED THAT INVESTMENT. THEY’RE NOT SONGS TO BE TOSSED AWAY ARE THEY?
TB: There’s one song in particular, called ALL I’M SAYING, which a few times we’ve had to just stop and not play it. Sometimes that’s because the audience weren’t in a place to listen. “Unless you’re quiet, unless you can listen, we can’t play this. This isn’t appropriate here and now”…
JG: Sometimes it wouldn’t be right to just, as you said, run through it for the sake of it. You know, nail it and move on. There’s no point, that’s not doing the song or what it’s about any justice at all… It was difficult sometimes, as Tim said. If there was a bar at the back of the venue and people were chatting we’d try to quieten them down a bit but sometimes you can’t. So we’d just leave it and move on.

ANOTHER INTERESTING SONG FROM LA PETITE MORT, WHICH WE TALKED ABOUT IN OUR PODCAST LAST YEAR, JIM, WAS CURSE CURSE. YOU DESCRIBED IT AS “COMPLETELY MAD”. BIZARRELY, FOR A SONG THAT IS “COMPLETELY MAD”, IT EVENTUALLY CAME OUT AS A SINGLE… IT’S DIFFERENT, I THINK, TO THE OTHER SONGS ON THE ALBUM…
TB: That is a fairly separate song. That one really isn’t about death at all…

… IT’S ABOUT SEX…
TB: Yeah. We spend a lot of time in hotel rooms, and it’s that thing of hearing a couple in the room next door having sex. And you’re trying not to listen, but you can’t not! You’re wondering whether you should turn the telly up or go knock on their door and see if you can join in… It’s that weird situation you find yourself in, in a hotel room, and lyrically it went from there. I felt that song was an updated version of LAID – kind of a funny, playful, sexual song.

THERE’S A EUPHORIA IN IT, EXPRESSED MUSICALLY IN A KIND OF TRANCE-LIKE DANCE SECTION… I WONDERED, TIM, IF YOU’D PERHAPS DONE YOUR FAIR SHARE OF CLUBBING TO ESCAPE YOUR GRIEF…
TB: It wasn’t really conscious like that. I mean, a few of us are quite into dance music. Mark, our keyboard player, is quite shy and retiring. You often can’t hear him, and on LA PETITE MORT we made sure he was turned up in every song. So he became much more of a feature on that record, and on the one we’re right in the middle of recording right now. So, we ended up with quite a few more grooves – and Jim got into groovy bass playing, so some of the songs ended up with a more sexy kind of lilt to them. The new ones we’re working on have that too. We’re really enjoying that kind of freshness. Well, for us it’s freshness. It might not be for other people, but it’s fresh for us…

THIS IS A GOOD PLACE TO ROUND UP REALLY – WITH WHAT COMES NEXT?
TB: Life after death, ha ha…

WELL, YES. I WONDERED WHETHER, BECAUSE LA PETITE MORT WAS SO VIVID, SO DEEP, WHETHER THERE WOULD BE A NATURAL INSTINCT TO STEP BACK AND DO SOMETHING LESS DEEP… LESS… INTENSE?
TB: Sure, we’re going to make a really superficial record now, ha ha… Well, we’ve actually done the first chunk of the new one. We’ve been recording – and the lyrics are coming, ha ha…
JG: Ha ha… You kind of get what you’re given, don’t you? Lyrically… The way Tim writes is that he waits for inspiration to strike and it’s usually at bizarre times of the night. Four o’clock in the morning or something…
TB: Yeah! Four or five in the morning sometimes…
JG: … so it’s not as if there’s a theme decided in advance. Obviously stuff spills through when it’s important – people around you dying, that’s always going to end up in there. But it’s not like you consciously go “Oh, I’m going to write about this” is it?
TB: Never ever. I can’t do that. And I don’t have the choice about it, you know? Some of them come during the improvisation. I’ll get a few lines, and we’re stuck with it from that point. Like “Well, that sounds like the right lyric for that song” so then the rest of the lyrics have to fit with that… We write these songs and go “Oh! This could be a single!” and I come back with a really heavy political lyric for it, ha ha ha, and everyone goes “Oh! Maybe not!”
JG: Like HEY MA…
TB: Yeah. “Hey ma, the boys in body-bags coming home in pieces”…
JG: Kind of blew daytime radio, that one.
TB: Ha ha, yeah, that was the end of it. That lyric came at the first jam and everyone went “Well, we love that. We’ve got to stick with it”… but then it’s “Yes, but that means the song is obviously going to have a lyric about that“… The Iraq war… Probably the poppiest song on that album! Mind you, having said that, the song which won the Ivor Novello award this year was a song about homophobia in the Church, so… Great… I haven’t heard the lyric for it, I don’t know the lyric, but it makes me think “Maybe now I won’t be alone anymore, singing about these crazy dark things over pop songs”… Ha ha ha…