James’ Tim Booth Talks U.K. No. 1 Album, Touring With Johnny Marr

The eyes of music lovers are once again trained on Manchester, U.K., thanks to Noel and Liam Gallagher’s surprise, box office-busting Oasis reunion and former Smiths frontman Morrissey‘s comments about a proposed reunion with his long-estranged bandmate, Johnny Marr. As they’ve done for 42 years, Manchester rock outfit James are perfectly content to float above it all, and it sure seems to be paying some late-career dividends.

In April, the nine-piece, Tim Booth-led group improbably scored their second U.K. No. 1 album with Yummy, and first since the 1998 compilation The Best Of. Their iconic 1993 single “Laid” also enjoyed new life thanks to a memorable sync in season three of The Bear, and a high-profile performance at this summer’s Glastonbury festival demonstrated James’ multi-generational appeal.

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Now, the band are on tour in North America with Marr through Oct. 18 in St. Paul, Mn. — a full-circle flashback to James opening for the Smiths on their 1985 U.K. trek in support of Meat Is Murder. The Smiths were such big fans of James at the time that they even covered the band’s song “What’s the World?,” one of the only tunes they ever performed other than Morrissey/Marr originals.

James frontman Tim Booth hopped on Zoom with SPIN to reflect on the Manchester music scene of the early-to-mid 1980s, his long friendship with Marr and his original kinship with Morrissey, and what James can do now in 2024 that they couldn’t do decades ago.

You’re in the States with an old pal from your Manchester past. What are your memories of the early days of the Smiths, which line up pretty closely with the early days of James as well?

Tim Booth: Well, we were going for probably a year before the Smiths. I was invited to see them play at a club called Rafters. Johnny says it was about their fourth gig, and they were ready to go. We weren’t. We were like the guys who had stolen the equipment a few months earlier and were still learning how to play it. I was learning how to sing. The Smiths looked huge, which was the way they were. They had the charisma of a fully formed entity, even at that stage. When they broke, they asked us to support them at the Hacienda as this kind of hysteria was taking place across Britain around the Smiths. I got on really well with Morrissey and Johnny. I think Morrissey saw a kindred spirit with his vegetarian, meditating, no alcohol, no drugs thing. There was a kinship there. And yet, we were a working-class band, which was equally bizarre. We were really close for a number of years.

They took us on that 1985 tour and they bigged us up. Morrissey said we were the best band in the world. They tried to take us to America, but we actually turned them down. We thought that was a step too far for us. We knew we weren’t ready, so that was the last time we played with them. But they came to the studio when we were recording our first album, Stutter. I remember Morrissey and Johnny came and listened to our songs and said ‘Johnny Yen’ should be the single. They were right, but it wasn’t, and unfortunately we didn’t get to choose. I’d bump into them over the years. I was always really friendly for the next 10 years with Morrissey, but then it wasn’t so friendly. I can’t tell if it was because I started eating meat or what. He goes through people quite quickly and he started behaving differently to us. But it was very good in that time period and very sweet. I remember him as such a shy individual who really wanted success but was also very frightened of it, quite rightly. And Johnny was the grounded one. He was the one that kept the whole thing on track. I think he managed them for the last number of years.

The Manchester bands really helped each other, even though we were all making very different music. The Fall gave us our first gigs. New Order and the Smiths took us on tour. Later, we took out the Happy Mondays, Inspiral Carpets, and Stone Roses. I would hope it was the same at CBGB with Talking Heads, Patti Smith, and the Ramones. There was something uniting them, which was a bloody minded individualism. It was similar in Manchester, in that they were all their own units and they got along.

The tour James did with the Smiths was when they were supporting Meat Is Murder, which was not only when they were at their most popular but also at a point when they weren’t destined to be a band for all that much longer. It must have been interesting to not only watch them on a nightly basis, but also observe how people were feeling that music so strongly.

It was surreal, because these were your friends and you were seeing them worshipped. It was very much like, I don’t understand this, but you could see it had its toll. It was my first encounter with people who were becoming famous.

And here they are then covering a James song in their own sets from time to time.

That was sweet, because that was the only song they ever covered. It was the first lyric I ever wrote for James. I remember Morrissey calling me to the house, asking me for the lyrics, him writing them down, and then watching his eyebrow arch when he could really make out what I was saying. We shared a love of Patti Smith, who has probably been the main inspiration for both of us becoming singers. He introduced me to Mary Margaret O’Hara’s music, which was a big, big deal to me. We used to go walking in graveyards, as was his want at that time. We have really great memories of that time, but we knew we weren’t ready. We didn’t want to do photos. We turned down the NME front cover. We didn’t really even want to make music — we wanted to play live. We felt that was the litmus test of a great band. Watching them become really famous, it was all a bit unreal. So, we just carried on rehearsing and getting bigger and bigger in a very underground way. Seven years later, we broke.

Then, Morrissey wrote that song ‘We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful.’ He denies it now, but he asked us to be there for Its unveiling, because he told us what it was about. But now he says it wasn’t about James. I go, well, why did you ask us to be there for its unveiling, then?

Beyond this tour, Yummy debuted at No. 1 in the U.K. after 17 prior albums, and ‘Laid’ had a big sync in The Bear. I imagine it feels good to be in James at the moment.

We’re playing to the biggest and youngest audiences we’ve ever played to. We’re having more success now than we ever did in the ‘90s, but it’s different because we’re older and because we don’t get played on commercial or mainstream radio. So, it’s kind of undercover, but we’re having the best time. We’re a nine-piece band now. These two amazing women joined us five years ago and they’ve really added a lot and helped to balance us in ways we didn’t know we were unbalanced. We’re very joyful live now. We still have some of that ‘tortured artist’ edge that came from watching Patti or Iggy Pop, but we’re having more fun than we’ve ever had. You know, we’re a fucking weird band. We’ve got trumpet player and we’ve got a guitar player who’s a brilliant violinist. We’ve got another guitar player who’s a brilliant cello player. You don’t form a nine-piece and think you’re going to make a lot of money. It’s never been about that.

We did an incredible gig with an orchestra and choir in Athens and filmed it in the amphitheater at the foot of the Acropolis — the oldest amphitheater in the world. We just edited it and it’s fantastic. Coldplay just went there in the summer, but we did this about a year ago and only just got around to finishing it. That’ll come out next year. We had a No. 1 record and knocked Beyoncé off the top slot, and then Taylor Swift took us off the next week. We’ve always felt we were about longevity and we were always playing the long game. When the Manchester scene came, people tried to equate us with the Smiths and we were like, no, we’re not the Smiths. We’d feel a bit insulted because we were going before them, you know? We felt like scenes only last a few years and we didn’t want to be one of the ones that got swept away. Then, we were linked with the Britpop scene as the godfathers. We’ve always kind of steered our own path to try and avoid being pigeonholed. People are getting us now, but we’re still a tough fish to catch. We change the set every night, but that was more conservative this year than usual because there are some really, really strong, interactive visual aspects to the show we’ve never used before. I want it to be a live experience. Playing a gig in Monday in Washington is totally different than playing on Saturday night in New York. You try to feel what the energy is and make a setlist that responds. It’s about like communication. We feel that that’s being a live band rather than a theater performance, where you just repeat the same shit every night.

Are there things James can do now that they couldn’t do in the ’80s or even the ’90s? What is James now that it wasn’t before? 

In the ‘90s when we got successful, there were the usual addiction issues that came up and it dispersed us and diluted us, I think. Now, we know what we’re doing. We know how good we are. You can put us out in front of any audience and have a blast. It’s just very interesting what’s going on with us. A couple days ago, the neuroscientist Andrew Huberman was on a podcast with Steven Bartlett, which is one of my favorites. He said the best live band in the world is James and that we give him a high for two days that he doesn’t come down from. When we were in Athens, Yanis Varoufakis, the Greek finance minister who is a socialist philosopher and brilliant man, came to the show. I ended up going off with him on his motorbike the next day.

What music has inspired you lately, even if it’s not necessarily by a young or current artist?

We’re so full of music as musicians and we’ve just finished editing this endless thing from Athens, so I often don’t have time to listen to too much music. But of the stuff I’ve caught recently, IDLES at Glastonbury were stunning. It reminded me so much of that spirit of 1981 and ’82, when all the bands were just doing what the fuck they wanted and creating music for the sake of it, and then some of it would accidentally become successful. It was like seeing Nick Cave in the Birthday Party for the first time or the Pixies in the ‘80s. I thought Black Country New Road’s first few albums were just incredible, especially Ants From Up There. That was one of the strongest records I’ve heard in 30 years. Leonard Cohen, his last album before he died — imagine writing that on your deathbed.

At various times across our history, I’ve been close to R.E.M. or Flea or Bernard Butler. I did an album with Angelo Badalamenti because I loved his work, which was a real blessing. It’s got to move me. We’re old school, so it’s got to sweep you away in some way. I’m not really into commodified pop, but every so often a pop song can cross through and blow you away. The rules can be bent.

Being in a band that tours internationally may sound glamorous to some, but the day-to-day of travel and stress can add up if you don’t have some systems in place to keep yourself sane. What helps keep you grounded?

For me, I get massage and body work. In the mid ‘90s, I ruptured some discs in my neck and was disabled for a couple of years. [bassist] Jimmy [Glennie] turned around to me and went, you have to have your own personal roadie for your equipment. That has really helped me wind down after a gig, so I’m not up until five in the morning, buzzing. I meditate. I try to get out and have stops in nature so I’m not just going city to city. I came to Rio a few days early to take in the mountains and go swimming. We’re also better at supporting each other emotionally and mentally than we were in the ‘90s, but we’re passionate about what we do and we accept that traveling comes with it. You can’t moan about it too much. Sometimes it’s very stressful and other times it’s just a pure joy.

I lost my voice about four weeks ago and it came back just before an important television gig. I struggled for the next two weeks to keep it when we had gigs. Those periods can always be tough, but you come out of it and then suddenly you’re feeling great again. We did two of our biggest gigs when I had COVID this year, including Glastonbury, which I did straight out of bed, and Rock in Rio in Lisbon, which was broadcast live all over Portugal. Those were great gigs, so, go figure. You’re almost more vulnerable when you’re not well, and I think vulnerability on stage is charismatic. I like the artists who walk the edge, not necessarily through psychedelics and drugs. It feels like they’re bringing back something to the culture that other people haven’t articulated yet.

What can you tell us about your new book? 

I have a novel that came out in England and will be out in the U.S. at the same time as the tour. I can maybe do some readings or at least sell it at the gigs. It’s called When I Died for the First Time and it’s about a fucked-up singer coming back from rehab. I have an inherited liver disease. I died of it when I was 21 and was revived in hospital, so I was never able to go down the path of drugs and alcohol. I watched a lot of addiction issues, so this book is almost like, what if I had gone down that route? It’s a dark comedy about the dark side of my world and the music industry. I wrote it over 10 years in between James projects and I’m really proud of it. It went top 10 on the bestseller list in England. It’s sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll, and it’s funny and filthy and outrageous and all the things a book should be in that genre.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask about yet another Manchester band in the news right now, considering how many tickets Oasis have sold for their reunion shows.

I mean, Noel is on record as saying that he got the idea of forming a band after being a roadie for Inspiral Carpets when they toured with us. Every time I’ve met them, they’ve been very generous and sweet. Then of course you read the stuff in the press and it doesn’t tally with who they are. I wish them luck. I want tickets! I’ll go see them. I only saw them once the first time around. It’s obviously such an archetypal relationship, the brother aspect, that captures another level of imagination and mythic resonance. So many bands wind up hating each other, and it seems such a waste when you’re doing something that you love so much.

I was told this story about watching Simon and Garfunkel bicker about who was too loud in the wedges during a soundcheck for their first reunion performance years ago. These are people who’ve made magic, but they’ve lost perspective. They couldn’t put aside their differences as individuals. Over the years, I’ve met a few bands that really get on, but most really don’t. We’re in this amazing position right now where we really get on, which wasn’t always so in the ‘90s. We had about four or five years that were awful, but that’s a waste. You get to a certain age where you go, enjoy it, because we’re privileged to be making this amazing music that people want to come see and celebrate. As you get older, you give less of a fuck about critics or online trolls. You just do your thing and have a great time, because you know its value.

To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, click here.

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