I love the band called James. I mean, really love them.
This is a recent revelation for me, and when it hit, letting go of my previous #1 band was a no brainer. They were Queen, and they happily slipped to #2, realising I’d made a much deeper emotional bond with the 7 (8, or 9) blokes from Manchester.
Let me tell you a story (or several) about James. Really. It’ll be fun.
The first time I saw “Sit Down” played live was the day I met my wife
It was December 1992, and needless to day, she doesn’t remember meeting me.
I was also going out with someone else at the time, and we were on our way to see Voice Of The Beehive. Their encore was a cover of James’s breakthrough hit, “Sit Down”. I didn’t like the song much then, and I don’t like it much now.
And yet, ask anybody if they know a James song, and it’s always bloody, bloody “Sit Down”. Or maybe “Sometimes”. This is unlikely to ever change.
Anyway, as current James gig-goers know, James no longer play Sit Down. They’ve had enough of it. Too easy, too obvious, I guess.
First loves
My parents were farmers, and our Land Rover had padded benches in the back, carpeted floor and ceiling (don’t ask) and a tape player, with a lot of speakers. We had Boney M’s Greatest Hits and Queen’s Greatest Hits on cassette.
When I got my own Walkman, it was Tears for Fears and Duran Duran. But through the 80s and 90s, there was always Queen.
When Freddie Mercury died on November 24th 1991 (I was waiting for a curry in the Indian on Harbour Street, Whitstable that used to have its outside wall tiled) I had no idea. There was no social media; no rolling news. We had Usenet (ask your grandad), but only on campus.
After I heard the news on the Monday morning, I cycled into Canterbury to lectures with the second guitar solo from Show Must Go On playing in my head.
Later that week I wrote a 12 page letter to the Queen Fan Club. I was gutted. Fred was just 45 years old.
When the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert tickets went on sale, I had joined the fan club and I got early tickets. I bought 6.
I’ll be able to tell my grandchildren that I’ve seen Metallica (Black Album lineup), Guns and Roses (original lineup), and Spinal Tap (original lineup). I’ve even seen David Bowie do the bloody Lord’s Prayer. And if you listen carefully to George Michael’s version of “Somebody to Love”, I’m there, singing my fucking lungs out.
There was an unsettling, possibly spiritual moment at the end of the concert, when “God Save The Queen” was played from tape (as is traditional at Queen gigs), and on the massive video screens Freddie appeared to walk onto the stage. I was confused as to whether he had come back to life. And probably a little dehydrated.
And then something happened.
I listened to Queen II, and Queen I, and Jazz, and News of the World, and Sheer Heart Attack and Jazz and The Game. Mostly I listened to Live Killers. One of the 6 tickets to the Freddie Tribute Concert went to a friend who took me back and made me listen to early Queen. Lordy, I had missed so much!! This was (and still is) utter genius. I mean, really.
The first time I got stopped by the police
I was driving the Land Rover (with the carpeted ceiling) slightly racily up Ufton Hill. I was late. The Quo were on the stereo.
“Daddy’s car, sir?’” I’m sure they asked. I was only 18, after all.
The next time I was stopped by the police was in 2016. I’d just taken my son to a James gig (his second — education is important) at the Brixton Academy.
“Where have you been tonight sir?”
“Brixton Academy”
“Oh sir, who did you see?”
“James”
“Oh sir, James! Did they do ‘Sit Down’?”
“No officer, they don’t do that live any more”
Seriously, it’s become quite a big thing for the band. Although I see they played in it Mexico recently.
The next time I was stopped by the police was later that year, having seen “Lazarus”, the David Bowie musical. It was the same bloke. He just likes hanging around the Sainbury’s car park in Morden on a Saturday night. Try it. He may not even be an actual police officer.
Anyway, where were we?
Ah yes, James.
In 1992, I nearly bought a copy of James’s album “Seven” (see what they did there?) from Gatefield Sounds in Whitstable. But I didn’t.
My brother and his wife seemed to love James for years and years, went to James gigs and festivals where James were playing. Jesus, enough James already!1!!
“Laid” was fun. But no dice.
But then, in 2008, two really very strange things happened:
- I started running
- James, having split in 2001, reformed
So: I ran my first race; I bought my first James album, “Hey Ma”.
I ran on my own a lot. I spent hours piecing together and honing playlists to keep me going. There was a lot of Chemical Brother, Arctic Monkeys, Queens of the Stone Age, Muse, and The Apples (try them).
But from “Hey Ma”, there was “Bubbles”, “Waterfall”, “Upside”, “Whiteboy”, and “I Wanna Go Home”.
I don’t really listen to song lyrics, but these songs brim and surge with life. And to write down the lyrics separately from their music is to lose their magic. And seems slightly vulgar. Oh well, I’m going to do it anyway:
Whiteboy says:
Every night microwaved, TV dinners
Mobile phones make her brain shimmer
Don’t say the c word she got the all clear
That joke’s bad taste and so dog-eared
And then it says:
She wants this, she wants that
She wants bling, she wants tat
She wants creams that can cover the cracksWedded bliss, cancer scans
She wants family man
Self-esteem and her old body back
She says
And I’m thinking: Ah, OK.
(It also contains the wonderful line:
My mum says I look like Yul Brynner
Too old for Hamlet, too young for Lear)
Then in 2010, James released a pair of “mini-album”s. “The Night Before” (19 April) included a reworking of Issac Asimov’s Fantastic Voyage, called “Dr Helier”:
He enters my bloodstream
With a crew in a capsule
He takes the wheel
With hands that were made to heal
The ending crescendo and guitar riff is utterly sublime.
“Porcupine” is a favourite to run to, due to its incessant bass line:
Please don’t stop, you’ll get past my defenses
My body armour’s plated all the time
I got away with it once, but I soon became addicted
Porcupine, porcupine
At the edge of the world
Leave my things by the door
I surrender control
Diving into the fall
By this point I’m thinking: a lot of these songs are about cancer.
And then my Mum died, of cancer ultimately, on August 31st 2010, having seemingly been given the all-clear earlier that year.
On September 6th 2010 James released the other half of the pair of mini-albums, “The Morning After”, which, whilst it includes a song about living in an old people’s home, appears to be mostly about cancer. I’ll tell you about “Dust Motes” later, but first, here’s “Rabbit Hole”:
My life
Is just a fake
Put my fist right through these walls
If I concentrate
And by “Kaleidoscope”, a song about the pain of divorce, we’re left with a devasting shock at the end.
You left a message on my answer phone
There is something you can’t tell me
Don’t have much time
Test came back and doctor said
There’s no answer to the cancer
Don’t have much time
Mum’s funeral was September 14th, just over a week later after the release of that album. I wanted to say something at the funeral, but I wasn’t ready. Instead, I ran. I had to run. And run.
The morning of the funeral, I ran a half marathon. It’s all I knew how to do.
Running has always helped me.
26.219 miles
Since I’d started running I’d discovered a lot of people I knew were runners. Then I worked at Dresdner Kleinwort in a team of 10 where everyone was a runner, and most of them seemed to have run at least one marathon. They were nutters. Why would you even do that already? 10 km is hard enough. To go further than a half marathon was madness.
When mum died, there was only one way I could commemorate her — to run a marathon — it seemed so obvious!
Training for the marathon helped me enormously. I can’t recommend it highly enough.
Anyway, when James released “La Petite Mort”, all the publicity (they even appeared on The One Show) was about how Tim Booth had lost his mother and also a close friend to cancer, and how the album was a “return to form”.
Erm. Right. Someone’s not been paying attention. Also: those last 3 albums were sublime. My favourites, in fact.
A few more words.
“Walk Like You”
So this is it,
A life on earth,
We’re made of stars,
We’re made of dirt
“Moving On”
God didn’t see it coming,
Never said I love you, hope you knew.
Now my bags are packed and my sails are tacked
And my course is marked by stars
If you listen careful, the vulture of “Dust Motes” reappears as a raven in “All I’m Saying”. The richochet of “Shine” bounces back in “Walk Like You”.
First gig
The first time I saw James live, it was December 10th 2010 at the Brixton Academy, and approximately 18 years after the Voice Of The Beehive gig.
Now, James have a long history of trying to annoy audiences, and the first song they played, whilst the audience was still talking and not at all interested by this new album track, was “Dust Motes”.
Which is about my Mum.
I wept. A lot.
That night, they even did “Sit Down”. Oh well, you can’t have everything.
For all of the above, this isn’t about a band that sings songs about cancer. There is so much more. For me, it’s really more about the music.
I have no idea whatsoever what “Vervaceous” is about, but it’s a favourite, and a perfect demonstration of where a James song can take you. You should watch it live.
Hearing 4000 James fans sing the chorus of “Sometimes” is just such a euphoric, transcendental moment, I’ve never known anything like it.
Moving on
And then one day earlier this year it suddenly struck me that my emotional bond with James, with Jim, Tim, Larry, David, Saul, Mark, Andy, Adrian and Michael was actually a lot deeper than that with Roger, Brian, Freddie and John.
Since then I’ve been going back through the last, ahem, 35 years of James material and catching up.
This weekend is my birthday. I am now the same age as my beloved Freddie was when he died.
I will be trying to break a long-standing running challenge, set for me by my running buddy in my first ever race 10 years ago, when I was 10 kg lighter.
The penultimate song on the race playlist is James’s Ring The Bells. Here’s the best bit:
When you let me fall
Grew my own wings
Now I’m as tall as the sky
When you let me drown
Grew gills and fins
Now I’m as deep as the sea
When you let me die
My spirit’s free
There’s nothing challenging me
I’m often to be found running through the woods singing this song.
Yours,
The fat, crying, laughing runner.
