"It's One Of The Strongest Records We've Made" Travis Come Out Fighting
Fran Healy on crafting a career-high album amid the pandemic...
*Travis *have always been a band with a richly defined visual aesthetic. Playful, idiosyncratic and with just the right touch of mystery they’ve always accompanied their melodic and tender music with some iconic imagery and have strived to be as creative as possible.
On their ninth album ‘10 Songs’ band leader and singer Fran Healy has firmly taken the reins to follow up his passions for filmmaking in order to create a series of beguiling videos to complement the album’s singles while also trying to navigate the tricky process of actually trying to get anything done at all during the coronavirus pandemic.
We caught up with Fran from his LA home to find out all about his unique year and some of the stories behind the work of a fascinating project.
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*How has lockdown and this year in general been for you and what was it like trying to make and produce your own videos in a creatively interesting way in the time of COVID?*
I’ve been really really busy. The lockdown has been a moment where I could either sink or swim. No one has the budget these days to deal with Coronavirus while making videos. I had to do it myself because we could then chop hundreds of thousands of dollars off the budget to do what I wanted to do.
With the animation for instance I did it myself. The video for ‘Valentine’ that I made, the record company wanted to do just a lyric video. Their budget was shit. Had I been the younger me and less experienced in the business, this idea of paying peanuts and getting monkeys, I would have been like oh yeah and handed it off. I thought no, I'll have a think about the idea and I think the video needed to be more than just a lyric video. I had an idea, went off and shot it and it went really great.
The hardest one was with Susanna Hoffs for ‘The Only Thing’. That was quite tricky.
*Have you had to adapt and look for different ways of doing things this year with this album’s series of videos?*
Not really as I’ve been doing this sort of stuff for a few years now. I have a production company over here. I had to start it to make the documentary about the band. You just have to make videos and just do it. The animation videos were in the midst of pure lockdown. Nobody was working. You couldn’t get anyone. No one would leave their house. Everything after has been like a normal shoot but I've just been hustling like a crazy man to get people to do things for free. Being the producer, director and doing a lot of jobs. Just making it and no more. If i had to write songs right now i would not be writing songs. That would be difficult.
*So was the album totally done and ready before the pandemic struck?*
We got very lucky. We were in London in RAK studios. It was Thursday 12th March. It was all beginning to get a little bit, woah something’s happening here. I sang my last vocal in the studio. We were in the middle of the mix of the record and I had one more vocal to sing. I sang it on Thursday, called the airline and changed my flight and I got back on Saturday. I just went into quarantine and mixed it over the phone.It was totally done and everything was in the can. We were really lucky. I’ve been thinking a lot about songwriting and hearing people saying i just can’t do this and i can understand it.
Songwriting is very different from recording. If you were able to take a pie chart and say how creative is songwriting then there’s a tiny sliver of the pie that’s the creative part. The rest of it is sitting and waiting. Doodling or fishing in a big giant lake. Just chipping away at something. It’s a very manual task and doesn't take a lot of creative power. The only creative part is when you get that little thing and turn it into something.
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*Travis have always been a really visual band with a strong aesthetic running through your imagery and all your videos going back to the start of the band? Do you think the band in general and your creative side are slightly underrated now and is it important to emphasise that side of yourselves?*
It’s massively important. I think we’re just overlooked more than anything. The world of pop music is so fast and furious. You open the window and it’s like a hurricane outside. We’re the absolute antithesis of that. You won’t see us in the storm as much. What allowed us to be seen back when ‘The Man Who’ was out was just a bit of freak weather. It was like the storm eye passed over us.
I’m not fucking Cardi B. I’m not going to be a big sensational stormy character. I am me and we are us and that's how it is. Eventually though people discover bands. People will discover our band way down the line and when they do discover the band I want them to think wow the music’s great, the visuals are great, everything about it has this heartbeat. A similar resonance and it has to be of a similar quality. I’m really meticulous.
*At what point in your career did you begin to think about film production and making your own videos and imagery?*
That was when I was in Berlin. I became very good friends with the actor Daniel Bruhl. Daniel introduced me to the German director Wolfgang Becker. His company X-Filme who made Run Lola Run and Goodbye Lenin, they’re the best film company in Germany. Through him I met Tom Tickford and his wife Marie. Marie is a great friend and her connection to the film business helped. Her and Wolfgang were instrumental in giving me the confidence to go and do it. I thought I needed permission. That’s something that everybody thinks they need. You don’t. Just go and do it. Make sure it’s really good and then no one can stop you.
The first video I made was one with Wolfgang for ‘Another Guy’ in 2013 and we co-directed together. Our director of photography was Fassbender’s DP. Our crew was insane. He got us free time in this green screen place in Berlin. I thought I could maybe do this when we did the album ‘The Boy With No Name’ in 2007 and the video for ‘My Eyes’. For ‘My Eyes’ I drew the storyboards and came up with the idea of us being born and sliding out the chute into the maternity ward. Bit by bit you get a bit more ambitious and confident. I’m still really early on but I get more pleasure doing this than singing.
*What different buzz do you get compared to coming up with a great melody?*
It’s completely different. Coming up with a melody is just boring. It’s mundane. The thing about filmmaking is you have a brief. You’re not starting with a blank sheet of paper. You’ve already got the song or the story. All you have to do is get creative. That’s a lot of fun. That’s the best bit. The whole clockface is creative with film. It’s so collaborative. I’m learning so much.
On this last shoot I met this brilliant guy who was the assistant to Tom Sigel who was the director of photography for Bohemian Rhapsody and The Usual Suspects and X-Men films. He’s big name Hollywood stuff. His assistant was a guy called Micah, we hit it off. He was an oracle. I sat next to him and soaked up all of these stories. He was telling me an interesting thing as I don't quite yet know how everything works.
He told me that the film business is structured like the army. You don’t cross ranks. You would never get an orderly breaking ranks and talking to a general who is like the director. You have people between you.
He was telling me that because I was going around talking to everyone. The reason is because directors in Hollywood like Frank Capra came back after the second world war and they structured the business the same way. It has stayed that way forever. That was a huge lesson I learned.
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*What was the concept behind the video for the album’s first single ‘A Ghost’? It’s really striking with a unique look.*
The concept to ‘A Ghost’ began when I was sitting in RAK studios in London recording the song. That was the first time that I had an idea coming at the same time I was recording it. I was looking at pictures of ghosts. I love classic ghosts. The white sheet ghost. I had an image in my head of me in an alleyway in my red jumpsuit and red cap and a band of ghosts playing instead of the guys.
I had a feeling the guys wouldn’t be able to come but this was pre-COVID. I mean pre by just three weeks. I couldn’t get any crew but I had this image. As long as you have a starting point and in this case the starting point felt like the end of the video. So it was a case of how do I get to this image. I’ll start off by myself and meet a ghost and another ghost until I play with them all at the end.
So I just put my head down and do 17 hours a day for 30 days.
*Have you always been into drawing and animation?*
I have never animated before but I’m a good drawer. I had been on Twitter at the start of my quarantine. Right at the start of all the lockdowns. All the celebrities getting up and playing their songs. I didn’t want to do that. That’s not me. I’m not a born performer. What I’m good at is drawing. I said to everybody on twitter tell me how lockdown is making you feel and i’ll draw you a picture. Instead of me signing everybody a song i’ll draw you all a bunch of pictures and that’s me doing my bit.
It started off silly but I started to get really into it. By the 25th drawing you could have made a book out of it as it was really good. That was the thing that sparked me into thinking I could probably animate this. It took fucking ages!
*Looking at the intense red imagery of the next single ‘Valentine’ where did that come from and more importantly what’s the story behind the now iconic red jumpsuit that links everything?*
The look of the record is the red jumpsuit. That was the decision in October last year. I wore a jumpsuit for the first time at a show in Jakarta in June last year. I was fed up getting on stage wearing clothes like jeans. Performance is quite aerobic with a lot of jumping around. It’s so stupid i should have done this years ago. I went into a period of about 15 years of just wearing fitted jeans. You can’t do anything in them. Try raising your leg to jump onto a bass amp or do a scissor kick. You just can’t!
I put a black jumpsuit on. It looked really good and felt great to finally be free on stage. I went on a site called Al’s Big Deal. This woman makes really cool jumpsuits. The only one she had was red so i thought fuck it i’ll just get one, it’s for stage so it might look good. I wore it for the first time in Mexico and it looked amazing. You could see me from the back of the crowd. That’s why I decided to wear the red jumpsuit and keep it as a thing. It’s a really striking colour. The colour scheme for all the videos is black, white and red.
*How was it working with Susanna Hoffs? The video featuring here is really graceful and beautiful.*
She was brilliant. She’s the voice of ‘Eternal Flame’ and ‘Magic Monday’. That voice is like a time machine to me. When I hear Susanna singing it takes me back to a simpler, happier time. Sitting in a front living room with her on a mic and me going ‘Can you just do that again?’ with a knot on my tummy. I think I pushed her to the edge of the cliff. She was a trooper.
For the video we had to observe very strict COVID procedures. I had to be 20ft away from Susanna. Her husband is Jay Roach who is the director of the Austin Power films. He’s Hollywood and they’re doing things in a very COVID secure way. She felt comfortable with a very big area around her. That’s what everybody is doing here. It’s not 6ft it’s like 20ft. We had to work with that. I got a technodolly. It’s like a 30ft track with a 15ft arm with a camera on it that is motion controlled. It will do the same move again and again. It’s an amazing bit of equipment. I’ve literally still got scabs on my knees from all the begging I did to get that.
Susanna was amazing throughout the process. We had mega problems with the lights but she was really patient. She’s a consummate professional. Before that though we had to shoot the band in Glasgow. I convinced the theatre royal to open their doors and let us go in there for an afternoon. They were brilliant sports. Everyone went in there.
I had a crew shooting that and I had an ipad facing a monitor in Glasgow on the stage so i could see what the director was saying and I had another iphone conversation with the cinematographer through an earpiece. I was talking to him and the band on another phone and another trained on the monitor so that’s how you direct over the atlantic remotely.
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*What’s your feelings on the album and what does it mean to you at this point in the band’s career?*
It’s a really strong record. It’s one of the strongest records we’ve made since ‘The Man Who’ and ‘The Invisible Band’ time. Song wise, truth wise and life wise it’s absolutely there. The songs are up there with my best songs.
If you hang around long enough a really good album comes around every ten years. You need to give yourself a lot of time to write something like that. You just have to sit and wait for a kernel. You might get that in 2015 and you’ll come back to it in 2016, 2017 and push it a bit further down the road and you’ll come back to it and it still has a pulse. It’s still alive and you’re like it has a heartbeat now and it’s grown. They’re like children. They start off as embryo’s and then they get bigger. Some of them don’t though. They have a heartbeat for two minutes and then it goes.
I’ve been living with these songs for up to four years and some just 10 months. I’m confident they still have legs a few years later. I always hope that songs still have a heartbeat in 25 years. The only reason they will have a heartbeat is if you write directly from your heart. All these songs are. It’s a special record because I've literally done everything. I’ve hired the camera. I’ve shot the cover. It’s a home made thing because of this fucking COVID.
*Does that make it more rewarding for you doing everything on your own?*
That’s not the motivation. I’ve had all my rewards for this album already. When you see the first reaction when you play it to someone and they go that’s fucking brilliant. That's the reward. Everything after doesn’t register because it doesn’t get better than the very first reaction when you play it to someone. Travis are not and will never be a hurricane band. We’re very modest but I am certain that when people come across this record they’ll find it’s solid and good and I'm very proud of it.
*Have you got any plans to bring the album to life? Obviously it’s difficult because you still can’t play shows due to COVID?*
We’ve got lots of things. I can’t really say because they require the element of surprise. This is COVID in a nutshell.
I’m coming over to do a bunch of shit. I get on my plane, fly over to Britain, have to not leave my room for two weeks, quarantined and then I have to work for three weeks but I can’t got back to America directly so I have to go somewhere else and quarantine and then when I get back here I have to quarantine for two weeks. So for three weeks of work I have to quarantine for one and a half months.
I can honestly say: fuck you COVID!
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Travis will release new album '10 Songs' on October 9th. Catch the band at London's Roundhouse on May 11th.
Words: *Martyn Young*
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