We feared we’d end up as pop Driftwood
TRAVIS BRING CLASSIC ALBUM HOME – 20 YEARS ON Scots band reflect on the two decades since the record which turned them into global stars was released
THEY’LL return home in triumph at Glasgow’s SSE Hydro tonight to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the album which made them one of the biggest bands in the world.
Yet there was a time when Travis frontman Fran Healy feared they were set to follow Sheena Easton into Scottish exile.
In 2000, their second album The Man Who propelled them from the ranks of indie also-rans to leaders on the world stage with hits such as Turn, Driftwood and Why Does It Always Rain On Me? but Fran still fretted that they were only a gig away from it all ending.
The band headlined Glasgow’s Gig on the Green in 2001 – the biggest hometown performance of their careers – yards away from where Easton had been disgracefully booed off during her appearance at The Big Day 11 years before.
Despite being on what looked like an unstoppable upward trajectory, Fran admits he thought it was all about to fall apart.
The 45-year-old said: “I remember being backstage at that gig and being really nervous. Green Day were on and the drummer set his kit on fire. I remember thinking, ‘How do we follow this?’ I clearly remember being beset by constant self-doubt.
“At the back of every band’s mind is the Sheena Easton moment on Glasgow Green. People threw things at her, she got on a plane and nobody ever saw her again. That was at the back of my mind at that gig.
“It’s a Scottish thing, it’s inbuilt. It’s better to think you’re s**t than you’re it. I never thought we were the best. Ever.
“But when we went on stage that night, it didn’t matter. It was like everybody in the crowd was in the band. It was a really special show.”
The era-defining concert was captured on the band’s 2001 DVD release More Than Us. It is one of several films they’ve made including the most recent Almost Fashionable, which won the audience award at this year’s Edinburgh Film Festival.
In an era when Scotland tried to sustain both T in the Park and a Gig on the Green in a single summer, More Than Us captures the band on the verge of their commercial peak.
A year before, it had all been very different. The Man Who had only been moderately successful but that changed after their Glastonbury performance in 2000 – when the clouds opened just as they played Why Does It Always Rain On Me? The chance
At the back of every band’s mind is the Sheena Easton moment DOUGIE PAYNE ON THE SUCCESS OF THE MAN WHO
meteorological moment made them the festival’s buzz band. TV coverage focused on the rain fluke and the song and the album headed to the sunnier end of the charts, eventually scoring them a Brit award for Best Album.
Fran said: “Everything Travis have ever done has always been done quietly. I think that irks a lot of critics, especially in the Big Smoke. This performance was no exception, we very gently crept under the radar.”
The touchpaper lit, the Travis bandwagon rolled across Europe and into the Americas, where they still have a strong fanbase.
Fran added: “In those days, videos had an incredible budget, like £100,000. That would be a whole campaign now. Back then, you could take that, go and find a film-maker, ask them to come up with something brilliant for £100,000 and shoot it.
“We hired a Messerschmitt for a shoot and got the guy who flew the plane in Empire of the Sun for Steven Spielberg.
“We just kept rolling. We did 256 shows then went right into recording the next album, The Invisible Band.”
With success came unimaginable lifestyle changes. Fran moved to Berlin and started a family with wife Nora, while bass player Dougie Payne married actress Kelly Macdonald, the pair having two children before separating in 2017.
A far cry, as Dougie puts it, from “bonding over pints of free lager at Glasgow School of Art’s Freshers’ Week and talking about The Monkees.”
They had worked in clothes and shoe shops around Glasgow and rehearsed at the city’s Horseshoe Bar. Less than a decade later, they were recording albums in Abbey Road studios in London.
Dougie said: “It was madness. We had this boyish exuberance and everything was turned up. But that’s the thing about youth, everything you do is for the first time. You think that’s just the way it’s going to be.”
Their most recent album, 2016’s Everything At Once, landed in the UK top five, and there are plans for a follow-up, which Dougie has hinted could be their first recorded in Scotland. If so, it will involve a longer flight home for Fran, who now lives in Los Angeles. He said: “We just decided to have an adventure. We found a good school for our son Clay, packed up and off we went. I’m glad we did.”
Dougie acknowledges the success of The Man Who changed his life.
He said: “These days, life is about picking up the boys from school, walking the dog, doing a lot of cooking, going to Waitrose.
“The best thing about what this has given me is time. It buys you time. You get to spend days, weeks and months with your kids. I can be working in the studio, or on the road with the band but the rest of the time I’m just Daddy.”