SIT DOWN? MAYBE SIT STILL? NEVER...

TIM BOOTH TALKS TO ASHLEY DAVIES ABOUT SPREADING THE JOY, AND WHETHER OR NOT YOU’LL BE HEARING ‘THAT’ SONG AGAIN...

ZOOMING from his Airbnb in London, an embarrassed Tim Booth is recounting the mutual shock experienced when, walking stark naked through his temporary home a few weeks ago, he discovered a strange woman in one of the rooms. This couldn’t have been further from a rock’n’roller/groupie situation, though: Tim hadn’t realised someone would be coming in to clean.

‘They hadn’t warned her or me. Daniela and I are now on intimate terms though,’ he laughs, pausing to thank her for her work (in her language) as he moves elsewhere to allow her to continue her work.

The lead singer of James, who’s been living in the wilderness of Topanga, California (‘around animals that could kill you’), for the past few years, is back in the UK to play the Isle of Wight Festival, as well as a few others, and is gutted to have discovered that a long-anticipated gig at Kenwood House in London has been cancelled because heavy rain made it unsafe to construct a stage.

He’s been here since June, unable to fly home for his son’s 17th birthday due to lockdown restrictions, but still manages to be chipper, friendly and articulate. And polite when it comes to answering questions about that song that he’s probably addressed a million times. But more of that later.

Despite spending much of lockdown worrying about the frequent forest fires in Topanga (so much so that he and his family sold up and moved away), Tim has achieved quite a lot over the past year and a bit. He and the band wrote and recorded their 16th studio album, All The Colours Of You, part-inspired by quarantine experiences. Some of the most memorable tracks on the LP, produced by big shot Jacknife Lee, include Recover, a tribute to Tim’s father-in-law, who died from Covid, and Beautiful Beaches, inspired by the need to flee to the coast to avoid Californian forest fires.

Themes such as climate change, the post-truth quagmire of American politics and the fleeting nature of existence run through the poetic lyrics, but it’s infused with that

‘I know how important it is for us to play a set that’s true to us and the times’

typically heart-swelling James sound, which reminds us to be hopeful.

‘It’s quite amazing to me that most bands don’t go for joy, for uplift,’ says Tim. ‘There’s a whole thing around coolness. Anger and conflicting emotions became the badge of honour of a lot of musicians to some degree, and the trouble is the alternative to that, too often, is hollow pop.

‘We’re a strange pigeon: people want to label us as indie, which gives the impression of a cool, tortured artist, not very big-hearted, looking down at their feet, and yet we’re not like that. We’re fairly uplifting and joyful generally, even when my lyrics are dealing with difficult subjects.’

Tim has also finished a major draft of his novel, which tells the story of, in his words, a ‘f*cked-up singer coming back from rehab and attempting to get his band back to the levels of success they almost achieved before he crashed’. Is that based on his own experiences?

‘Addiction’s never been my own issue. I could never afford to be an addict

because I have an inherited liver disease that wouldn’t let me,’ he says, before adding, with a twinkle, that it’s ‘written from jealousy because I could never go down that path’.

He’s also editing a live DVD as well as learning more about the therapeutic potential of psychedelic drugs as a way of curing posttraumatic stress disorder and depression (he’s following with close interest the trials being conducted in the US and at the Imperial College of London). It all sounds very Californian, particularly when you compare it with his English, single-sex public school background, where boys were trained to compartmentalise emotions and had very little understanding of those from different walks of life. You’d never know he was educated at the same school as Michael Heseltine.

In recent months, Tim’s been working to get his voice match-fit for gigs. ‘It’s been hard not playing for two years, and I’ve been scared my voice wouldn’t hold out,’ he says. ‘I’ve been trying to hammer it for the last couple of months to get it up to scratch. I’m lucky it’s still working.’

If you’ve ever heard James playing to what Tim refers to as a ‘mixed’ audience, at a festival, you might be familiar with the sound of people bellowing for Sit Down. If this has ever annoyed him in the past, he takes it in his stride now. ‘I know how important it is for us to play a set that’s truthful to us and the times,’ he explains. ‘If we don’t, we become liars; we become karaoke. That will affect how we play the whole set, and the whole set of a gig is much more important than one song.’ The band, he argues, have written about 300 songs, so, statistically, if they’re playing about 20 of those at a gig, there’s a strong likelihood that somebody in the audience isn’t going to hear a tune they were hoping to. ‘We have to live with the fact that at some level we will always disappoint people,’ he says with a smile.

Interestingly, American fans don’t seem to care too much about Sit Down. There, they yell for Laid, while in Portugal they demand Getting Away With It. And in a lot of places audiences get hacked off if Sometimes isn’t on the setlist. The real fans in the UK complain when they do play Sit Down, he maintains.

This doesn’t mean you definitely won’t hear it, however. As Tim puts it, ‘I know what the band need to play. I know when a song has got stale and needs to be rested. We haven’t played it much in recent years but I feel that coming out of lockdown it’s got a new resonance, and I feel a Sit Down period coming on.’

What you can expect at this gig is Tim’s unique moves, he doesn’t phone it in while he’s in the groove. ‘When I’m dancing, I’m dancing. I’m really dancing,’ he says. ‘Dancing to me is another way to reach ecstatic states – it’s the same as singing, the same as making music. As Mary Margaret O’Hara said: “Joy is the aim.” The aim is to reach heightened states of awareness, whether it’s through yoga or meditation or dancing or singing or playing instruments.’

James headline the opening night of This Is For The NHS, Newcastle on 16 Sep. Tickets to buy or free for NHS staff at thisistomorrow.co.uk/ this-is-for-the-nhs; they play Isle of Wight Festival on Sep 17, isleofwightfestival.com