James To Close Their Touring Year With A Huge Run Across Australia

With over thirty million albums sold across a storied career, JAMES are amongst the most commercially and artistically successful bands of their era. They return to Australia and New Zealand for the first time since 2018 performing all the songs their iconic album Laid plus a career-spanning set featuring greatest hits and deep cuts. The highly influential English band formed in Manchester in 1982. Known for frontman Tim Booth’s enigmatic vocals, introspective lyrics, and fearless spirit of genre experimentation, they are key figures in the legendary ‘Madchester’ scene.

JAMES achieved massive success with anthems including Sit Down, Getting Away With It (All Messed Up) and Laid. The band celebrated their fortieth anniversary in 2023 and released their eighteenth album Yummy in 2024 which reached #1 in the UK Albums Chart, their first studio album to do so. The band release a documentary detailing their whole career directed by Chris Atkins (Who killed the KLF, James Blunt: One Brit Wonder) which is out now. Saul Davies talks to Rob Lyon about their upcoming tour with Razorlight.

This is really shaping up to be one massive tour. You must be really looking forward to getting back to Australia?
A: Well, yeah, very much so. I’m quite surprised partly that we’re coming to do much bigger venues than we’ve done before, which is really gratifying, and I’m not quite sure what’s going on there, really. Why people have suddenly, perhaps to some extent, in slightly larger numbers, want to come and see us, which is amazing. I think probably the combination of us and Razorlight together is a nice combination of fans, and people think, well, that’s got to be worth a few quid. So, you know, it’s great. I personally am very glad I’m coming back this time, because last time the band came to Australia I didn’t. I wasn’t able to go because I was quite unwell. I have been down to your part of the world for… wow, fuck now, it’s like ten years or something. So it’s really quite interesting, actually and also it’ll be the last playing that we do as a band this year, so it feels like it’s a nice way to end in such far‑flung territory. But no, it’s great and I’m sure that we’re going there specifically, as you’ll be aware, to do the Laid record, which we did very successfully last year in America, and it’s really heartening and pleasing to have the chance to go and play that record again. I mean, you’d think we could just play it any time, but it doesn’t quite work like that. We’ll play a load of other stuff besides, but it’s interesting to be forced to play that record. It was last year in the States, and for me personally, I think I should probably… I speak for all of us, but it’s a real… it makes up for a very different kind of show. It’s great, it’s interesting.

When it’s eight years between Australian tours, do you start to get a bit worried that it may not happen again, or the likelihood of returning? It takes a significant amount of work to just try and make it happen.
It takes a fucking huge amount of money, time and effort just to go to Australia on a fucking holiday, never mind take twenty five people and play some shows, do you know what I mean? It’s like, how are you going to do that? I mean, it’s like, how much money do you want to lose? But it’s an important music country, so we have to go there when we can. So it’s really gratifying to have the chance to go back. I have to say, I thought that we might not, just because of logistics as much as anything. We do great shows, we always do, I think we’re in very good form as a band at the moment. We’ve been playing very well together, I would say. We’re tight as hell now and we’re coming to do proper shows, we’re not going to short change people at all. I think that surely gives us a chance to come back within eight years, do you know what I mean? Because eight years from now we might not exist.

I think that’s probably the most frustrating and unfortunate thing for any band, how much money you’re going to lose. It’s a really bizarre time when you have to think about it in those terms, and no band wants to sink all that money in and not really get a return back on it.
It is, but I’m not going to moan about that. I think it makes it difficult, you go, oh, how are we actually going to do this? You always find a way. We have a very strong bond with our fans, wherever they are and people always come, and they buy shirts, and they do stuff, and then we walk away and go, actually, we broke even. Well, amazing, yeah? I mean, I don’t want to make this conversation about economics, but you guys live a long way away. Anybody coming out of Australia or New Zealand or anywhere down in that part of the world needs to go to the rest of the world to be heard, don’t they? That creates its own issues, we’re all in this together. But we are determined to get around wherever we can, really. I mean, we are surely in the home straits of being a band. We’re just putting finishing touches to what is our twentieth studio album, which will come out about a year from now and then the year following, there may be another record, which we’re also working on. There’s no let‑up in the creativity of the band, which I think flies in the face of what fans expect to happen to them. People who follow bands expect their heroes to collapse into nothing, just becoming greatest hits, if they’re lucky enough to have hits and we’ve not had to go there. We’ve still continued to plough our own path. So I’m particularly happy that the band is in that state, and can be bloody‑minded enough not to have to do that, but also to have the support of people so we don’t need to do that. I mean, okay, we’re doing this tour and we’re doing the Laid record plus, right? We’re going to do new stuff, which nobody’s heard at all as well, just to warn people out there that think they might be coming to get a greatest hits tour out of James. That won’t be happening, but we will be playing loads of tunes that everybody knows, of course we will. We’re not going to shoot ourselves in the foot, but we also see it as an opportunity to come in front of what is a relatively new audience and play new stuff. What a privilege for us to be able to do it and I think if you’re an audience member coming along, then you should be part of it. That’s rock and roll, really.

That’s got to be mind‑blowing that you’re still so massively creative, and it’s not forced, and it keeps coming?
Yeah, we’re really lucky in that respect, because we don’t have trouble, we’ve never really hit a wall with our creativity and I can’t imagine what that would be like if you were in a band and suddenly you didn’t have anything to say. Or you had things to say, but you’d lost the language, you’d forgotten the language that you’ve used to be able to say it. Songs are just stories, and surely we are able to create stories into our older lives. I think, if anything, we’re probably more creatively together and active now than we have been maybe for decades, actually, in some ways. We don’t seem to be able to fail. That will be the famous last words, I know, when I look down on my gravestone from above and see the word “failure” written on it. But as a unit, we seem to be in very good spirits and in very good form, as I said before. So it’s almost like when we get together to write, the four of us that do the writing in our band, we don’t seem to do anything other than come out of those sessions with a load of good material. On this record that we’ve been doing, this recording we’ve been doing on and off over the summer in between playing shows, we’ve been working with a brilliant producer from Australia, actually, Catherine Marks and what a joy she is. I don’t know if you know her or know her work, but she’s from Australia, been based in London for fifteen years, won Grammys and all the rest of it, worked with St. Vincent, also… I don’t know, all sorts of people. Killers, probably, I think. Anyway, for some bizarre reason, she wanted to make a record with us. So we’ve had her breathing down our necks in the studio for the summer, and yeah, it’s been interesting. We’ve had a very serious, very tough, very talented lady shouting at us, half Australian accent, which has been quite funny. “Limey bastards” was one of the things she said about us at one point, which is pretty cool.

How is it trying to balance so many different opinions in the band? Is that a tough juggle?
No, that’s why you get Catherine Marks in. She just tells you what to do. Now, in seriousness, well, some of it is that, actually. A great producer, which she is, has not the last say, of course, but can guide us through the recording in a way which makes a lot of sense. But we’re very open to hearing each other, and I think it’s one of the strengths of the band. It’s not something that we consciously do, I suppose, but if I’m thinking about it, I guess we’re good at giving each other the space to be able to have opinions and really hear each other, and actually honour the experience that each of us brings to the table. Honour, this will sound perhaps odd, but honour the love that we have for each other. We’ve been making records and working together since 1989. Obviously the band started in ’81, but that’s a long, long, long time to be making records together and going through the things that we have together, great, amazing things, and also some difficult things. It is love that we have for each other. It’s a deep respect. Kinship and it’s what allows us to be able to play together in the way that we do, actually.

Also having the documentary that’s just come out as well, how was that, and was it as revealing as what you thought?
Well, revealing is a word you could use. There’s a bit in it where I’m caught naked, trying to burn my pubic hair with a lighter on Lollapalooza, so that’s quite revealing. “Hey, what happened to those Fae English indie jangly folk people? Discovered America.” No, that was then, and this is now, right? So looking, watching that documentary a few weeks ago, we did a… this is a bonkers thing, really. We released the documentary, which none of us wanted to make, but decided, well, let’s make it. Universal said we’ll pay for it, so we made it with this great director. We’ve done several of these things before, won awards and all that kind of stuff, and we did what we needed to do. We all watched it together in a big theatre in Manchester. We also played live, and it went out across, well, like one hundred and fifty cinemas across the UK. So that’s pretty bonkers. It was really a special moment for us actually. Most of us were there together to be able to watch it with fifteen hundred people in the room, also perform a little bit, which is interesting in a kind of stripped‑back kind of way.

It was a beautiful evening. It is a revealing documentary, it’s a great story. The story is very well told. For anybody who’s vaguely interested in what it is like to be a band, do the kinds of stuff that we’ve done, then I think it’s a really good example of it and particularly, there’s things within it that make it very, very James. The history of James is typical, in some ways, of what you might imagine a band’s life would be over forty five, forty six, forty seven years. But some of it’s very specifically down to the people that are actually the main characters, the people that make our band. We have our own stories within it to tell. We’re an eclectic and strange bunch of people, but we do work as a whole very beautifully together, and the documentary captures that. I’m loathe to use the word proud, I have trouble with that word, but I can’t think of a better word to describe how I felt watching it. It is momentous. I hate seeing myself on camera. I think most musicians are very uncomfortable being in front of the camera, sounds counterintuitive, but it’s generally true. Singers love being in front of the camera, that’s why they’re fucking singers, right? For the rest of us, it’s a little bit weird, and then you see yourselves twelve feet high on a huge IMAX cinema screen, and you go, oh my god, there’s no hiding place. But I’m glad we did it.

It would be remiss of me not to mention the single Laid. Even now, is it mind‑blowing, the impact that song’s had? I reckon on radio here, I don’t think there’s a day that goes past where I haven’t heard it played. It must be mind‑blowing, that sort of longevity, and how it keeps resonating and finding new people all the time?
There’s something in our music, at our best, we peddle some depth, even though the music can be mind‑bogglingly simple. Sit Down is a very simple song, beautifully produced by Gordon Orton, but still very simple. Laid is similarly a bit dumb, even, in a way. But the lyrics, the combination of the lyrics, which tell an amazing story, that’s where the depth is. It’s the interplay, the contrast between this almost childish music and a very deep lyric, which by turns is funny in the case of Laid, as well as poignant at some points. That’s a song about domestic violence, really, dressed as something else. There’s depth there, and people don’t even get that, but they know it because they hear it. They sense it. They sense that something is there. It’s a huge celebration. I think it’s about domestic violence, Tim might say no, it’s about whatever, but that doesn’t really matter. When you make a song, it goes into the world and becomes about the things people think it’s about. Sit Down is, I think, the best song I’ve ever heard about mental illness. These are unusual and difficult subjects for pop songs, but that’s James and that initial riff of Laid is just so achingly simple, you think, why has that not been done before? How can it be that that wasn’t done before? For some reason it wasn’t and I’m eternally, not surprised, but eternally, and I do mean this, grateful to people for their support of our band. I don’t care how they come to us, whether it’s that song or whatever it is. That’s one of the things that motivates us to keep making new music: that we will unearth other gems that won’t be huge songs like Laid or Sit Down, probably, but they will be songs that people, even in small numbers, might cherish and take with them into the rest of their lives. Songs can make a difference to people. That song is a huge celebration, and that makes a difference to people. Celebrating is a good thing, I think.

On the flip side, no one ever wants to view their songs as being a curse, but you’ve done that many other good things since as well. Do you wish you would able to say, well, we’ve done all this other great stuff as well?
No, I don’t… I think it’s great. I don’t care what people come to us for, or how people come to us, as long as they do, if they do, you know what I mean? Our music, if you look back overall, when this record comes out, it’ll be twenty albums, as I say, and if you sat and spent a week just listening, God forbid that anybody would do that, right? It would drive somebody insane to do that. But if you listened from Stutter all the way through, you’d see a very, very eclectic and strange band that has tended… oh, of course, attended B‑sides and all the rest of it. It’s hundreds of songs we’ve released. There’s no rhyme nor reason why somebody necessarily gets into something and I don’t think Laid or Sit Down or Getting Away With It, which is a massive song sometimes, these huge songs that we have, they’re not millstones for us. I think it’s amazing that we have these songs.

Interview By Rob Lyon

Catch James on tour with Razorlight on the following dates, tickets from Destroy All Lines…