Travis

<BODY TEXT="#000000" LINK="#666666" VLINK="#000000" ALINK="#FFFFFF" BGCOLOR="#99CCCC">   <br> TRAVIS: POTTED HISTORY "When I think of songs, I think of a dark midnight sky and a firework flying up and exploding. It lights up everywhere, you see everything and then it fades away. But it leaves a little star in the sky where it exploded. That's a song. That's Stevie Wonder's 'Superstition', or 'The Weight' by The Band. 'Yesterday', The Beatles.' It's the song, not the band." Fran Healy said that in early March 2000. A few days earlier Travis had won two Brit Awards, for Best Band and Best British Album. Music industry magazine Music Week would that same year give them the same honours. At the Ivor Novellos, Travis would carry home the Best Songwriter and Best Contemporary Song for 'Why Does It Always Rain On Me?'. Travis were on a roll. The Man Who had been one of the biggest selling albums by a British band in 1999. Buoyed by 237 gigs played during an 18-month world tour, it would be a fixture in the album charts for most of 2000, too. By early 2001 global sales would reach 3.5 million copies. One in eight UK households would own a copy of their second album. Travis were one of the biggest British bands around. Good stuff, for sure. Almost a decade after their first gig - they were called The Glass Onion that starry night at Glasgow School Of Art in November 1991 - and four years after they had shipped down to London in pursuit of a record deal, Travis had Made It. They were massive. Brilliant, eh? Yeah but no but yeah: they hadn't got into this to be pop stars. Healy certainly hadn't come with the intention of being a dreamboat frontman, of being known as the cute Scottish guy with the stickie-up hair. "I'm aware of it," he conceded of his visual appeal. "If your aim is to build a fire, to heat the crowd, you can't say you're allergic to the smoke that the fire makes. You just ignore it. You think, I'll put up with it because everybody's getting warm off this fire..." But still. It's the song, not the band. That's what does, and what doesn't, matter. To underline that point, Travis would call their next album The Invisible Band. "The band is just the gunpowder. Nowadays you look up and they're flying everywhere, bang bang bang. And there's no stars being left. And we use these stars to navigate through our life. We need them there." A further reminder of this mantra came in autumn 2004, as Travis peppered their back-to-basics club tour with daytime stints busking up and down the country. Those Travis songs rung out across city centre Britain, clear as a bell. Just acoustic guitars and unplugged percussion, No bright lights, no rock'n'roll fuss, no stickie-up hair even. Just urban folk songs. Modern standards. Played on the pavement. And passers-by joined in, 'cause everyone knew them, and everyone responded: Ł942.00 found its way into Travis' empty guitar case. The folks at The Big Issue were very pleased. Travis moved down to London on 31 May 1996. As with many moments - big and small - in Fran Healy's life, he wrote a song about that fateful point in the band's history. 'Coming Around' would, four years later, enter the charts at Number 5. Healy: "It's about that doubt. You know something's coming and all you need to do is move in its general direction. But it's a tough move." Within six months of taking residence in a house in north London they had signed a record deal and a publishing deal, appeared on Later... With Jools Holland, and had sneaked out their first single, a limited edition 10-inch called 'All I Want To Do Is Rock' on their own Red Telephone Box label. By year's end they and producer Steve Lillywhite had decamped to the legendary Bearsville Studios in Woodstock in upstate New York to begin work on their debut album. Early 1997 found the music weeklies foaming at the mouth about this new Glasgow band, months before they'd even released their first proper single. "1997 will see front covers, chart hits and mucho hyperbole. That's a promise," raved Melody Maker. "This is an absolute buzz of a band... Cherish them and take their awesome racket into your heart and soul," frothed NME. By the time the spring release of 'U16 Girls' came around, Melody Maker were even more enthusiastic: "Like everything we hope Oasis might become four years from now," they said. That summer they would make the 'proper' release of 'All I Want To Do Is Rock' their Single Of The Week, with NME weighing in with the opinion that Travis were "one of the few bands around who should be allowed to dally with Lennon and Chuck Berry comparisons." A summer of festival appearances followed. In September they release their debut album, Good Feeling, with cover art featuring a surfboard customised by former Stone Rose John Squire for WarChild. The album's chart position - Number 9 - matched the hyperbole. Travis introduced the album to the arenas of Britain while supporting Oasis on the Be Here Now tour. Travis were up, up and away. Athough when Melody Maker opined that "if Lennon and Dylan had got it together that night when Bob got The Beatles stoned for the very first time, Frannie might well have been the product"... well, that was a bit silly and over-the-top, wasn't it? In 1999 things got properly mental. Four Top Ten singles: 'Writing To Reach You', 'Driftwood', 'Why Does It Always Rain On Me?', 'Turn'. 'Why Does It Always Rain On Me?' became the sound of festival Britain that summer, summoning appropriate rock'n'roll meteorology at Glastonbury, V99 and T In The Park. In August, 13 weeks after it was released, The Man Who reached Number One. In these overhyped, ultra-marketed times, Travis had redefined the phrase 'People's Band'. By year's end they were the 3rd biggest selling artist in the UK. And on and on The Man Who phenomenon rolled. Summer 2000 found the band still on the road. They went round the world and headlined the main stages at Glastonbury, T In The Park and V2000. They headed into the year's last lap touring America with Oasis. In Los Angeles, such was the turn-out at an instore signing that police had to close Sunset Strip. Unusually for a British band, Travis were making serious inroads into the American market. Those pesky little songs knew no boundaries... Keeping up the momentum, Travis had stayed in the US after the end of The Man Who tour. In Los Angeles that October they began work on their third album in the famed Ocean Way Studios with Nigel Godrich, producer on The Man Who and Radiohead's "sixth member". Following a much-needed break back in London and Scotland that Christmas, they resumed recording in LA in January. On 23rd March 2001, Nigel Godrich finished mixing the new album. The Invisible Band would enter the charts at Number One. It would stay there for ten weeks. The first single was called 'Sing'. It was about how Healy's girlfriend wouldn't sing in front of him. She was happy to holler along to Nirvana or Dr Dre in the car, but she'd never do it in front of him. To Healy, this was annoying. If you love someone, you shouldn't be so inhibited. You should just sing. "The love you bring won't mean a thing unless you sing." It was another Travis song that underscored the primacy of the song. Radio - one of Fran Healy's favourite mediums - responded to this. That summer it was the most played record on the British airwaves. Another year-long tour followed, with assorted honours picked up along the way - a third Brit (Best British Group), Top Of The Pops' Top Album, GQ's Band Of The Year (for the second time running). But the Travis charabanc ground to a halt in July 2002 when drummer Neil Primrose sustained multiple fractures to his upper vertebrae in a swimming pool accident in France. The band would later release 'Love Will Come Through' as a download single, in aid of The Spinal Injuries Trust. Like the songs, Primrose proved himself resilient, making a full recovery. "I spent a couple of months at home being a moany old bastard," recalled Primrose. "But I knew how lucky I was even to be able to walk." The band took some much needed time off. But out of the cloud of Primrose's injury came some light. "Little cracks had started appearing in 2001, around the time of The Invisible Band," said Healy last year. "We hadn't anticipated The Man Who doing so well. It was an emotional roller coaster for us. Being Scottish, we're very reticent about being famous pop stars; it's encoded into our DNA that we can't be brassy or show off. But suddenly, we weren't this little band in Glasgow any more. We desperately needed to take a step back and re-evaluate. After Neil's accident it came close to the end of Travis - this band would no longer exist without one of the four members - but we were given another chance." Travis regrouped and re-evaluated. They moved into a cottage in Crear, West Scotland and set up a little studio. They played, wrote, cooked, laughed and drank. They came up with nine new songs in two weeks. Refreshed and emboldened, they decided to produce their fourth album themselves. Enter 2003's 12 Memories, a warm, organic-sounding record, shot through with pointed lyrics about the war in Iraq, domestic violence, peace and love. It entered the album charts at Number Three. It was real, and fresh, and honest, and catchy as hell. A Travis album. "People who are trying to be cool are pretentious and I hate any form of pretension," said Healy at the time. "Travis are about being decent and honest. For us, truth the bottom line. Truth is the most powerful thing in the world." And now here we are, at the end of another chapter. And another new beginning: Travis have been in the studio with Mike Hedges and Nigel Godrich, working on their fifth album. But 17 singles in, Travis have collected all of their signature songs so far on one album. Little stars, or fireworks. Moments to cherish. Back in 2000, still wondering what to do with those Brit Awards, Fran Healy took a moment to remind himself what Travis were here for. Gongs and plaudits were all very nice, thanks very much. But for Travis it always came back to the same thing. "I don't care about anything other than the music. I wouldn't murder anyone for it, but I'd jump in front of a train." He thought about this, you might say extreme, position for a minute. Then, sure of what he meant, he pressed on. "I'd die for it. If you think a song's going out to millions of people, it's worth it." Music, then. To paraphrase the late great Bill Shankly, it's not a matter of life and death, then. For Travis, it's more important than that. Travis: Singles bookmarks the end of one era and the start of another for one of the UK's most popular bands. It's been a remarkable journey so far. Signed in 1996 and now eight years later Travis have amassed four top 10 albums in the UK (including two number one albums), three Brit Awards, an Ivor Novello , several sold out tours across the US, they headlined the Glastonbury, Reading, T In The Park & V Festivals, triumphed over adversity in the wake of Neil Primrose's near fatal accident , and have been lauded by critics worldwide and embraced by their fans as the everyman's band; and amidst all this have gone on to sell over 8 million records worldwide. Travis: Singles, a collection of all their singles to date, plus an accompanying DVD are both set for release on November 2. The album features a recently recorded brand new track, "Walking In The Sun," a slice of breezy melodic pop. The track was produced and mixed by long time collaborators Mike Hedges and Nigel Godrich. The accompanying DVD is another must have for Travis fans. It includes all the band's videos, unseen footage, home videos, live footage and Fran & Dougie's spellbinding rendition of "Hit Me Baby One More Time" from VH1's Storytellers. Selections: Sing | Driftwood | Writing To Reach You | Why Does It Always Rain On Me? | Re-Offender | Walking In The Sun | Tied To The 90's | Coming Around | Flowers In The Window | Love Will Come Through | More Than Us | Side | U16 Girls | Happy | All I Want To Do Is Rock | The Beautiful Occupation | Turn The band is currently in the studio working on their fifth album, the follow up to 12 Memories, due for release next year. \Singles Release Date: Nov 02, 2004 Track listing for DVD Video ( 58951 ) All I Want To Do Is Rock (Live on Later With Jools Holland 1996) Why Does It Always Rain On Me? (Live at Glastonbury June 2000) Sing (Live on Top of the Pops 2001) Baby One More Time (Live VH 1 Storytellers 2002) Buy Singles Release Date: Nov 02, 2004 Track listing for CD Album ( 93519 ) 1 Sing ra wma100 2 Driftwood ra wma100 3 Writing To Reach You ra wma100 4 Why Does It Always Rain On Me? ra wma100 5 Re-Offender ra wma100 6 Walking In The Sun ra wma100 7 Tied To The Nineties ra wma100 8 Coming Around ra wma100 9 Flowers In The Window ra wma100 10 Love Will Come Through ra wma100 11 More Than Us (Single Version) ra wma100 12 Side ra wma100 13 U16 Girls ra wma100 14 Happy ra wma100 15 All I Want To Do Is Rock ra wma100 16 The Beautiful Occupation ra wma100 17 Turn ra wma100 18 The Distance ra wma100 Buy 12 Memories Release Date: Oct 14, 2003 Track listing for CD Album ( 90672 ) 1 Quicksand ra wma100 2 The Beautiful Occupation ra wma100 3 Re-Offender ra wma100 4 Peace The Fuck Out ra wma100 5 How Many Hearts ra wma100 6 Paperclips ra wma100 7 Somewhere Else ra wma100 8 Love Will Come Through ra wma100 9 Mid-life Krysis ra wma100 10 Happy To Hang Around ra wma100 11 Walking Down The Hill ra wma100 Buy More Than Us - Live In Glasgow Release Date: Mar 19, 2002 Track listing for DVD Video ( 54209 ) Bonus Features Chapters Special Features Buy The Invisible Band Release Date: Jun 12, 2001 Track listing for CD Album ( 85788 ) 1 Sing ra wav wma100 2 Dear Diary 3 Side wma56 4 Pipe Dreams ra wma100 5 Flowers In The Window ra wma100 6 The Cage ra wma100 7 Safe ra wma100 8 Follow The Light ra wma100 9 Last Train ra wma100 10 Afterglow ra wma100 11 Indefinitely ra wma100 12 The Humpty Dumpty Love Song ra wma100 Buy The Man Who Release Date: Apr 04, 2000 Track listing for CD Album ( 62151 ) Side 1 CD 1 1 Writing To Reach You ra wma100 2 The Fear ra wma100 3 As You Are ra wma100 4 Driftwood ra wma100 5 The Last Laugh Of The Laughter ra wma100 6 Turn ra wma100 7 Why Does It Always Rain On Me? ra wma100 8 Luv ra wma100 9 She's So Strange ra wma100 10 Slide Show ra wma100 Buy Good Feeling Release Date: Oct 07, 1997 Track listing for CD Album ( 68239 ) 1 All I Want To Do Is Rock ra wma100 2 U16 Girls ra wma100 3 The Line Is Fine ra wma100 4 Good Day To Die ra wma100 5 Good Feeling ra wma100 6 Midsummer Nights Dreamin' ra wma100 7 Tied To The Nineties ra wma100 8 I Love You Anyways ra wma100 9 Happy ra wma100 10 More Than Us ra wma100 11 Falling Down ra wma100 12 Funny Thing ra wma100   <font face="arial,helvetica" size="2"> <B>Your browser does not support frames!</B><BR><BR> Some of the features on this site require a frames-capable browser. For best results, we recommend that you download the latest version of <A href="http://home.netscape.com/download/sd_cc32d474en.html" target="_blank">Netscape Navigator</A> or <A href="http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/default.htm" target="_blank">Internet Explorer</a><P> <A href="http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/default.htm" target="_blank"><IMG src="http://www.sonymusic.com/images/animated_logo.gif" width="88" height="31" border="0"></A> <A href="http://home.netscape.com/download/sd_cc32d474en.html" target="_blank"><IMG src="http://www.sonymusic.com/images/netscape_now_anim.gif" width="90" height="30" border="0"></A> <B>AOL Users:</B> You must be running AOL 2.5 or later for Windows to use Netscape (Keyword: UPGRADE). You will also need to download and install WINSOCK.DLL (Keyword: WINSOCK). Macintosh users should contact AOL directly for help.<BR><BR></font> <script type="text/javascript"> var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www."); document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E")); </script> <script type="text/javascript"> var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-296211-40"); pageTracker._initData(); pageTracker._trackPageview(); </script> </BODY>