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TIM BOOTH INTERVIEW PART TWO The album, was it recorded before you met most of the band? Yeah, nearly all of it, Lee obviously the exception. Did you try and get a record deal earlier when you’d first left James? Not for a long time. Peter (Rudge, Tim’s manager), I think was fishing but nothing that we were looking for. I needed a publishing contract, because I wanted to write the songs for other people. So we got a publishing contract quite quickly and quite easily. But we didn’t know what to do with the music. All the time I was telling Peter “I’m not going to release this music” so he wasn’t really looking. I think he fished, because he always fishes but at the same time I was telling him I wasn’t going to front the music. So the album started off working with KK? Almost immediately, we’d written some songs before James had finished including Down To The Sea, about five demos. I remember playing them to Saul and Mark when we were editing the DVD so just after James had finished. And it was very casual, he’d come round twice a month with a laptop in my bedroom and we’d just write a few songs together. And then what happened was we’d put together about 15 songs and then, I guess this blowing the trumpet of the material as he hadn’t been able to get much work beforehand, those demos were getting KK great work. Bjork took him off to New York for a while, he’s been programmer on Madonna and Britney Spears. It opened some really great doors for him, but it meant we couldn’t finish our work. And we also couldn’t finish our work because I couldn’t pay him and he was broke. So he went off to get as much work as he could to keep the bailiffs from the door. And so I was left with all this music that I couldn’t finish. I didn’t know what to do with it and it was about six months before Lee turned up. And it was then “Oh great, here we go, this is the next bit.” At the time music was not my priority. My priority was having a break, writing my screenplay which was an idea I’d had for five years. I thought it was going to take ages to write so I literally thought it was going to be a really tough thing. I’d never tried writing anything longer than songs or poems and it seemed terrifying to me, the idea that I’d be sat down and left with a blank page to try and wade myself through a whole storyline in my head. Did you write it quickly then in the end? What I realized was, that it was like singing. I can’t have an instrument, an instrument distracts me from singing, from improvising, making songs. I played a little bit of guitar, I’ve had some piano lessons. But I can’t do both. And I realized it was the same with typing. I ended up asking a friend and I gave her some money and she came in and she’d be with me three or four hours a day, three days a week and I wrote the bulk of it in two or three weeks which shocked me. And the other thing was that I was almost performing for her. It was like she was my audience and I was making up this screenplay. I had a fantastic time, I was so high from it. I had this amazing mentor, Debbie Horsfield, who’s the screenwriter of Cutting It and a few other TV shows. We got to know each other because she tried to cast me in a few of her pieces. In one piece, she had cast me, it was this awesome TV show with an amazing cast and I had a great part, and it didn’t get commissioned. I went up for Cutting It and she wanted me in that and the director wouldn’t have me in because I didn’t have any experience. And she said to keep in touch and send her the script and all that kind of stuff and was really helpful. I remember ringing her after a couple of weeks and asking her “How long should a screenplay be?” We hadn’t even counted the pages of what we’d written and she said that about 120 pages was right and we counted them through and I’d got 110 pages and it was then “fucking hell, we’ve nearly finished this”. I was shocked, it really was not how I thought it would be. I did then write eleven drafts. Just like writing music, the initial improvisation is instant and fast and full of excitement and emotion and then you have to polish the diamond and the diamond can take ages. You can’t believe how long that stuff takes, you’d think “no way can it take that long” when you’ve got the bulk of it in an instant. Was it completely different by the time you’d finished the eleventh draft? No, it’s quite similar. I think I added a character. It was more weaving in a few more plot and sub-plot lines. The first time I wrote it, I wrote it quite naively as I think somebody would, virtually from one character’s point of view and I had to go back and make other characters much more interesting and get some subplots in and cover some areas I was interested in. You’ve recorded Bone and it sounds like it’s a fun record, free from the shackles of James and being in a band when it was written. Was that the way it was? Yeah, every time we wrote the songs, the whole thing. KK used to come and stay the night, we got on really well, he’s a sweet guy Very shy? Yes, very shy, but when he comes to stay with you, he opens up. He was very much part of our family. Ben loves him. Kate loved him. It was great him coming to stay. Lee is the same. As a family we’re amazing. Lee just worked on a stencil for my son’s guitar for a day. This most beautiful stencil and showing Ben how to do that and teaching him a bit on guitar and just encouraging him. We had a great time. Kate, I, Lee and Holly go out about once a week so we’re really really close. We got so close so quickly, that he was a bit scared and worried that this might burn out. I had a bit of an issue with that as well but he got really worried about it because we got on so well. We’ve had a few conflicts definitely but we always have the language to get through it, the emotional language which is crucial to me. I’ve done a lot of work in therapy and I’m really interested in that and it teaches you emotional language and communication and how not to be at loggerheads with people. Lee’s always willing to work things through with me and that’s great. With the album, is it just this album and the b-sides, or is there much more to come? We’ve got a few more songs we’ve written, we’ve got some great b-sides for the next single that another friend did who was a very interesting man to work with on stage sound and videos. So it’s not just an album, two singles and a tour? No, especially now the band is rocking. After that little tour we’ve moved on. It’s amazing. I remember for the first seven or eight years of James you would tangibly know, you’d feel when the band suddenly grew. You’d do a thirty gig tour, come off it, have a little break, start rehearsing and suddenly you were a different band. It was like “we’ve jumped into another league here”. And the band have done that since the last gig. We started doing some amazing stuff in the last rehearsal. Is there going to be something different on this tour then? Different from the ones you got used to? People have got to catch up to what you’ve got used to and so a lot of that is going to be in there. There’s one song different that we’ve learnt. We’ve hit some slight problems. Well you can imagine that since the last gig I’ve been promoting six days a week, I was out in Germany, I’m going to Spain on Monday, and Portugal at the weekend, and I’ve had a baby. So we’ve only had two or three rehearsals, so we haven’t had the time in this period to put together a lot more. We put together one new song that will be a big surprise. It sounds fantastic. Lisa is going to play bass on it at Glastonbury and she’s never played bass in her life. She’s a trucker, she’s really great. Are you looking forward to Glastonbury and the festivals? I am, I don’t think ahead that far but I am starting to feel Glastonbury calling, but I also don’t want to look ahead that far or I’ll get nervous. I’d much rather turn up on the day and just do it. Nerves can get in the way of it being a blinder. Do you feel it will be a bit different playing on the smaller stages? Yeah, we’re on a good stage at Glastonbury though, it’s a really good slot. Second on the New Tent. And not a clash with the football? There’s football on. Yes, there’s football on, but not England Great. It’s a great slot and I like Zero 7 too, so it’s great to be on before them. What we’re doing with this band is starting from scratch. We’re going to get some people who are curious but the media isn’t going to help me too much. It’s like people won’t know I’ve got a record out there I think. And if they do, I’m sure they’re not going to read very nice reviews. They’ve been pretty mixed, good and bad. I was just assuming. Are you going to be doing much more radio, that’s a way to get it out there? We’re going to be doing quite a bit more radio, but everything’s become so much more corporate in the past few years. We won’t get a sniff at Radio 1 and I think Radio 2 said they wouldn’t playlist the song because the lyrics are too dark. That’s what the producer said. That was an off-the-record quote from him to our radio guy. That’s odd, the lyrics seem quite optimistic. This is how it goes. You get all these reactions you can’t control and you just have to accept it. I get what you’re saying. The verse lyric is quite dark, then the punchline in the chorus. And it was the same with Sit Down, the verse lyric is quite dark, it’s no darker than that one, but that’s the way goes. |