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James  

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Suite Festival

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Been a fan of James since the 90's and had only seen them once before in Manchester in the Mid 90's (appx) but I am a music fan period and I see a lot of bands/singers but rarely does a gig blow you out of your socks and through the doors like the Llandudno event did - Five new songs on the set-list from the forthcoming album to be released in August - every new song was awesome!

There was something about the band AND the

audience at the gig but I couldn't put my finger on it and I left the gig with one goal in mind.... attend Parr Hall Warrington the night after... I tried but it was in vain due to the demand and was sold out 10 minutes after the tickets went on sale. (Source Parr Hall Box Office)

So, after obtaining a ticket from a great fan in Prestwich Manchester on THE DAY, it was on to the King Georges Hall Blackburn on the Saturday night.

I didn't think the band could top Llandudno but the feedback from Warrington was amazing and then they performed at Blackburn... I can only describe the gig as IMMENSE! By now I'm out of socks, blown off by the energy from the band and

the fans... An explosive unification of sound and love....

I needed a recovery period as I have disabilities, and it was Tuesday I was reading the reviews on Halifax - I just inquisitively had a check on a fan-fan site to see if any poor soul couldn't attend and would sell their ticket for Middlesbrough... lol

Up I went to Cleveland on Wednesday for the hat-trick. Honest opinion, I think the all-seater venue had a slight dampening effect on both band and crowd although it was still a fantastic gig, it just lacked that explosion that I experienced at the previous two, but take nothing away, this was still an awesome evening.

I dare say, had I not already been committed to another event on the night of the Finale to the tour in Scunthorpe a couple of days later, I'm sure I would have been heading over the Pennines AGAIN lol

The new album 'Living in Extraordinary Times' is set for release on 3rd August and to showcase the album the band are playing the rebuilt (2010) Scarborough Open Air Theatre on 18th August, with it's 6500 capacity, I can't see there being tickets available for long.

(In order to appease younger fans that may not get tickets, Scarborough had to ask Britney Spears to play the 17th August as a second prize for them (lol - Only joking) but it does highlight the attraction of this venue and looking down the list of Artists having played the venue, the names get bigger each year,

culminating in 2018 hosting The Script, Gary Barlow, Steps, (My sister tells me this group can sell-out 20-30,000 arenas??) Alfoe Boe, Il Divo and Bastille. THE Great Tom Jones having played in July 2017

The O.A.T is rapidly turning into a must play venue for the top artists and thus the arrival of James and the army of souls that are connected to this remarkable band, both musically and spiritually, will descend on Scarborough with a treat in store for many people at the gig AND within earshot -

What is certain to be the new anthem of James, MANY FACES, has the most poignant chorus sang by the entire audience for 2-3 minutes, (last tour appx's) in my opinion, if carried on the a low cloud it has the potential to bring the town and it's visitors to a standstill - this is an incredible experience both being in the audience singing along and hearing it.

Lead singer Tim Booth had encouraged the audience at Venue Cymru (Opening night of the tour) to sing along with the chorus, but I'm not sure even he and the other band members could have expected the reaction from them - EVERYONE was singing these touching four lines back to them. This for me and my three attendances was the highlight of the tour.

(although available to hear on you tube and was heard live on Jools Holland's show (09/06) the mobile phone recordings at the venues and the missing 3,000 backing singers on Jools's show couldn't reflect the soul caressing emotion the lyrics heard/felt in that fashion induce)

Llandudno 9/10 - Blackburn 10/10 - Middlesborough 8/10 (The all seater venue just took away a slight edge but still great) Overall 27/30 - As a gig attendee for nearly 40 years now, I like to think I can give fair critical analysis of a performance, the fact I attended three gigs in a week states a lot and using a score from 20 for a single event, 16/20 would be outstanding for any band/artist, only Amy Macdonald, Birdy, Nerina Pallot and Stiff Little Fingers (in my opinion only) have emulated James in the past couple of years..

If you ever can... YOU MUST SEE JAMES - It's a music experience you will never forget....Needless to say my ticket for the Scarborough event is already sitting in my drawer...

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James is not a person. That’s the first fact we need to clear up. The second is that their best song is “Sit Down” (which was infamously beaten to the top of the charts by a certain Mr Chesney Hawkes).

The band has been recording and performing together for most of the last thirty years and has produced so broad a range of music with a fluctuating line-up that they are hard to categorise. Once they were folky, then they mastered late-‘80s jangly guitars, recorded an excellent live album and saw their record company go bust. Then their sound matured: they neatly side-stepped the Madchester scene while riding on its coat-tails to popular acclaim, became big on American college radio with “Laid” and recorded an album of experimental tunes with Brian Eno. They’ve worked with him since too.

I first saw the band perform live at the Leeds Town & Country Club in 1992. They could have filled bigger venues but they chose instead to perform an acoustic tour in preparation for their upcoming gigs with Neil Young. Stripped of their electric backing, some bands flounder. Not James. The band understands the importance of melody and in Tim Booth they have a singer whose lyrics poetically expose his vulnerabilities. Their 2011 tour with the Orchestra of the Swan and Manchester Consort Choir similarly demonstrated the strength and versatility of the band’s music.

Yet this band’s sound can just as easily fill arenas. In Manchester, their home, Booth will gladly walk among the audience of the Arena as he sings before returning to the stage for the band to unleash the full power of its art. In conclusion, this is a band which will adapt its sound to the venue and whose next step can never be predicted. See them at a venue near you.

I first saw James live back in 1998, when I was just fifteen. I saw them a further four times between 1999 and 2001, but haven't seen them since.

I can't properly describe how amazing they were last night (10th May 2016). I was expecting the band to be good, but not THAT good! They may even have been better than the last time I saw them.

I was (as always) front and centre, so got to witness the entire performance close up.

Tim Booth's voice was haunting, passionate and beautiful. His stage presence as ever enigmatic, dancing like a man possessed.

The band were on point, the musical arrangements stunning with the use of strings and brass making their old and new hits sound orchestral in the vintage grandeur of the Bournemouth O2.

I know James are pros at audience inclusion, and Tim is prone to wander the crowd during gigs, but to have him stood above me on the barrier, then crowd surf across me was brilliant! Then for him to climb back up on the barrier later and come down to dance with us was awesome! I danced with him once before, in Brighton, but really wasn't expecting to have so much interaction with him again this time.

The new album is great, and the setlist really brought old and new together in a seamless way.

I really did have a brilliant night, and will make sure I don't leave it another 15 years to see James live again, even though I'm sure they'll still be performing by then - in fact I'm pretty sure Tim Booth will last longer than I will (despite him being 23 years my senior) judging by his energy and how I feel today!!

Been a fan of James since the 90's, I am a music fan period and I see a lot of bands/singers but rarely does a gig blow you through the doors like the Llandudno event did - Five new songs on the set-list from the forthcoming album to be released in August - every new song was awesome!

There was something about the band AND the audience at the gig but I couldn't put my finger on it

I left the gig with one goal in mind.... attend Parr Hall Warrington the night after... I tried but it was in vain, so it was on to the King Georges Hall Blackburn on the Saturday night -

I didn't think the band could top Llandudno but the feedback from Warrington was amazing and then they did Blackburn...IMMENSE evening! By now I'm out of socks, blown off by the energy from the band and the fans... An explosive unification of sound and love....

I needed a recovery period as I have disabilities, and it was Tuesday I was reading the reviews on Halifax and I immediately began to 'see' if there was availability for Middlesbrough... lol

Up I went to Cleveland on Wednesday for the hat-trick. Honest opinion, I think the all-seater venue had a slight dampening effect on both band and crowd although it was still a fantastic gig, it just lacked that explosion that I experienced at the previous two. I am already commited to an event on Friday or I would have been on the mission to Scunthorpe for the finale.... If you ever can... YOU MUST SEE JAMES - It's a music experience you will never forget....

"I'm going to see James tonight" is a comment usually met by the response "Who?" or "Weren't they popular in the 90's?" "Oh , I remember them, Oh Sit Down..." etc But let me tell you this band is still amazing. They are current (new album out this year), they are nostalgia (Sit Down) they were ahead of their time in the 80's and the lead singer is as mad as a box of frogs but bloody hell he can sing. Tim Booth is the eccentric lead man of a band full of excellent musicians. The music is many layered and Tim Booth is hypnotic. He dances like he is melting into a spiral and you can't take your eyes off him. I have seen them 3 times now and you get between two and two and a half hours of solid music. He has as much energy and enthusiasm at the finish as he does at the start of the set . The gig on 23.11.14 at the NIA Birmingham was a mix of old and new material. Highlights of which were Tim crowd surfing and singing without missing a note, he appeared in the stands and was mobbed by fans but yet again note perfect. The only disappointment was that they had to miss out some of their big hit s like "She's a star" but I am still incredulous that they didn't do "Sit Down" But, do you know what?, the atmosphere at that concert was electric without it and anymore excitement and I think the crowd would have spontaneously combusted!

I've lost count of how many times I've seen James. Big venues, intimate venues, even rubbish venues - always astounding. Seeing them has become a pilgrimage rather than a night out and this is how they infect you. They attract & encourage an eclectic crowd who are always well behaved (apart from the dope who threw a bottle and who Tim insisted be ejected - proceless). The set list is always a surprise so beware, familiarise yourself with the back catalogue before you go, no song is so sacred as to leave it out eg "Sit Down" made it last night but I've not heard it live for years. Tim holds the audience in the palm of his hand and jokes that they are not perfect that James "f**k up", but surely that is in itself perfect, reminding you there are human beings creating the sound. To me it's beautiful. Top tip - put your phone away, see through your own eyes, get lost in the music and beckon Tim over. He's likely to accept the invitation. I understand & respect if James aren't your bag but please, please, please find an artist/group that is & watch them live. You won't regret it. I've been to Castlefield Bowl twice and really rate it. A natural space for theatre and really well organised.

Probably my best James gig ever though I've many to choose from! Stunning location and backdrop of the stained glass windows and domed ceiling of the Albert Hall,. Starting with an excellent set from Slow Readers CLub, James treated us to an improvised mini set/jam/Q&A plus some songs with a 4 piece string ensemble including a heartfelt and sublime version of Sit Down (not a song they play too often), James Allen of Glasvegas also played some songs before our James returned to indulge us with a gorgeous mixture of old and new tracks. My personal highlight was Come Home/ (but then maybe it always is) but in the heart of Manchester it was even more special. They never ever disappoint and always seem to strike the right balance of much loved classics, something you've not heard for a while and what's to come in the future. Brilliant night, a very worthy cause, wonderful crowd and a night you could just lose yourself in!

Absolutely fantastic. James is a wonderful band. I've been a fan since I first got the album, Laid on cassette in high school. However this is my first time to see the band live. The lead singer, Tim Booth was a wonderful show man and the band was really killing it! The band members are talented musicians, there was a horn player and a mandolin even came out at one point. The crowd was entranced and loving the performance. If you get a chance to see James live, I really think you should. I didn't even get to see the main act, Psychedelic Furs but I wasn't disappointed at all. I completely got my money's worth! I would recommend looking into seeing James as a main act. I missed out on "Say Something" and "She's a Star" because there was no time for an encore but the crowd was really wanting one!

I decided to head to see James on my birthday at the echo arena in Liverpool. And also that i was gonna busk me and my mate way in one way or the other. So i made a sign and found a good pitch just outside the arena. It didn't take long to get some tickets off some kind people who had spares for one reason or the other. made a few beer tokens too so we headed in and found our seats. I've been to see them many times before and they were as good as ever. We enjoyed Born of Frustration the most as he started the song stood right beside. There's a few youtube clips that show my mate offering Tim Booth a beer before he goes climbing through the audience. See you in Brixton and Birmingham in a few days x

Wow, what an amazing venue, definitely going back there, James came on just like a support act, no smoke, no bells and whistles, just casually walked onto the stage, took their places and played an amazing acoustic set, so laid back but brilliant, then they left the stage, "see you later" said Tim

Sure enough, back on they came to the more familiar smoke and darkness, although Tim was on crouches, that didn't stop him from dancing, it did, however, stop him from his usual surf crowding, and dance away he did, along with just about everyone else in the venue when I looked around, what a fantastic night, thank you James, yet again, just brilliant, can't wait to see you again and again and again.

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Guanamor Teatro Studio

Music Feeds Live - A Concert To Fight Food Poverty

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James announce new double album and orchestral 40th anniversary tour

The new album will feature orchestral reworkings of the band's biggest hits

James have announced details of a new album and 40th anniversary tour, both featuring an orchestra and gospel choir – see dates below and buy tickets here .

The Manchester legends will release the as-yet-untitled new album next year, which will follow 2021’s ‘All The Colours Of You’ and feature reworkings of the band’s biggest hits as well as rarities and one brand new song.

Next April, they’ll then head round the UK for a tour featuring an orchestra and gospel choir to celebrate four decades as a band.

Discussing the new album and tour, frontman Tim Booth said: “There are a number of great bands who have been around for 40. But to get here and to be having the best time of our lives. To be part of a supportive loving family that still has something to say and new ways to say it. To be turned on by every gig and song. To fall in love over and over again, Groundhog Day, with our bandmates and audience. Damn. That’s time well spent. “We should have recorded the orchestra tour first time round, as many of you have reminded us. Well, we’ve done it now. And here comes the tour. The Orchestra and Gospel singers expand our palette, heighten the tenderness, heighten the celebration and, despite their numbers, somehow leave us feeling more naked and raw. It will be different, probably each night, because we are James and Joe knows how to dance with us. And because you are different, each night.’ Bandmate Jim Glennie added: “Has it really been 40 years? In some ways it feels like yesterday and in others, many lifetimes. A family of brothers and sisters, willing to support each other musically and emotionally. Uniquely challenging, always pushing ourselves into the new and taking risks collectively and individually, looking for transcendence.”

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James: ‘We were so hopelessly indie-schmindie it made Belle and Sebastian look like Whitesnake’

Near-death experiences cults getting thrown across the stage by keith flint an audience with the manchester band is never dull. as they return with a new album, they reflect on their hallucinatory 40-year-long career and how some unconventional therapy saved them with mark beaumont, article bookmarked.

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T im Booth hesitates at using the words “spiritual vision”, but there seems no other description for his glimpse of blazing armageddon last year. “I had a vision,” he grins, fully aware of his astral surfing reputation – not just as the frontman of Manchester indie legends James but a veteran of alternative therapies ranging from primal scream to intense meditation, ecstatic dance and being set on fire with rubbing alcohol. “It was during a ceremony with an indigenous shaman from Peru. I saw earthquakes and fires in California and I saw myself driving our family out, and we got away. I saw this devastation.

‘It was like watching a movie,” he continues, “and then it stopped, and then it started again, on repeat. My mind came to a crashing halt after about 25 minutes. I virtually convinced myself that these were my own apocalyptic fears just externalised. We woke up the next day at nine o’clock, and the whole place was full of smoke and California  was  on fire.”

In a year of fear, tragedy and upheaval for so many, Booth has certainly felt the heat of the times. After several years of close calls (“We had wildfires at least once a week, within five miles of us,” he says) and keeping emergency bags packed by the door of his family’s home in the wilderness of Topanga Canyon near Los Angeles in case of sudden evacuation, Booth’s “vision” finally convinced them to move out to Costa Rica. His days of singing to the coyotes and bobcats and “getting a little Californian ruggedness into my brittle English bones” may now be behind him, his premonition still inching towards reality.

“In England, the climate extinction crisis isn’t so obvious,” he says, horizontal on his sister’s couch in London as if awaiting Zoom interview therapy. “America, with its extreme climate, typhoons, tornadoes, hurricanes, fires, it’s going to exponentially increase in the next few years, and I’m going to look to see where we’re going to be able to land.”

In the year it took him to relocate to Central America, Booth also lost his father-in-law to Covid and watched American democracy very nearly collapse around him. All of which fed into James’s 16th album,  All the Colours of You , written collectively pre-pandemic and recorded remotely during lockdown with Booth’s Topanga neighbour and superproducer Jacknife Lee at the dial; a deal sealed when, driving home from a toe-dip meeting, Booth was flagged down by two women in the road, scared of a rattlesnake in the road. “I said ‘hop in’ and I turn the car around and drive them back up the hill. And it’s Jacknife’s wife and daughter.”

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The new album merges the Manchester indie legends’ mastery of the soul-searching guitar anthem with elements of future rock, synthetic psychedelia and electro rave, marking another stylistic twist in one of rock music’s most successful and unpredictable comebacks. Since reforming for 2008’s  Hey Ma (following a much needed seven-year hiatus, to clear the air between them) James have bucked the flash-bang reunion trend to grow in stature.

Over an uncompromising decade they gradually rebuilt their standing until 2016’s  Girl at the End of the World  and 2018’s  Living in Extraordinary Times  reclaimed the chart highs of their early Nineties peak, when “Sit Down” and “Come Home” helped define the communal euphoria of the Madchester scene and “Laid” set America aflame with passionate love. “The album’s really positive,” says bassist Jim Glennie from his Highlands home. “Some of the lyrics are dark, but [Lee] adds a joy to counterbalance that, which I think is really needed now – the last thing people want is a depressing record. He’s contemporised us, he’s pushed us kicking and screaming into the 21st century.”

The record certainly needed lightening up. “Beautiful Beaches” captures Booth’s escape from wildfire country; disco noir single “Recover” details the isolations of lockdown and the death of his father-in-law “ in a world all alone ”. Does it help to confront grief in song? “It helps me, selfishly,” Booth says. “I hope it helps other people. I’ve had mainly positive responses to it. I had one furious reaction saying ‘we’ve all suffered, you self-indulgent t***, you should be uplifting us, that’s your job, earn it’. It went on for quite a few tweets, it was quite spectacular. I figured they must have lost somebody.’

“I personally think grief is, if you can, something to face and to walk into. It has a purpose and its purpose is to break our hearts. And when our hearts are broken, hopefully we expand. Look at Biden. I might not agree with him politically but he’s had deep grief in his life and it’s made him empathetic. And the contrast to Trump is just profound. It’s maybe all that’s needed right now, somebody who actually gives a s*** about people suffering.”

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Though Booth is at pains to avoid painting  All the Colours…  as a political record, it’s nonetheless an unflinching reflection of the world in 2021. State-of-the-States lament “Miss America” attacks the USA’s inherent historic racism and “love of guns”. The brutal and cinematic “Wherever it Takes Us”, inspired by the Portland protests, follows an injured, tear-gassed protester transcending into a digital multiverse afterlife of pure data. And if their previous album was something of a lament for truth, democracy and humanity in an era with “ white fascists in the White House ”, the new album’s title track reads today like the door hitting the former president’s backside on the way out, likening Covid quarantine with being trapped in Trump’s “ dis-United States ” and declaring “ he’s the Ku Klux Klan, coup-coup, coup-coup ”.

“I wrote that lyric eight months before the coup,” Booth says. “Trump is a potential fascist dictator. He has gone on record as saying we have to stop the mass of Americans voting because if they do vote the Republicans will never win another election. And that’s what they were trying to do, stop the vote. So my take on [the election] was, if Trump gets in, America will become an overtly fascist country, and definitely there’s some weird f***ing link going on with other dictators. The way he was subservient to Putin was very strange. The other aspect was, I thought if Biden got in there would be some kind of attempted coup, and then there would be so much white terrorism in America that it would again become very hard to live in… the contemporary versions of the Klan that we see in America, who can put up a scaffold in front of Congress when they’re looking for Nancy Pelosi to hang, you’ve got some major white terrorist organisations going on there and we don’t fully get our heads around that in England, how [out in the] open those people are.”

Trump was an amazing cult to some degree, he was a really abusive cult leader

Booth thinks America’s white supremacy problem isn’t going back underground any time soon. “It’s not going to get back in [the box], it has to be met. Too many people have gone ‘we’re OK now, Biden’s got in’. Oh, no, all you have to do is drop into the reality tunnels of Fox News or the other even more right-wing news organisations benefiting from Trump at the moment, just drop in for 20 minutes and you’ll see that they are alive and kicking and speaking to 30 odd per cent of Americans. It’s really scary… We are in a time where consensus reality is crashing and people are fleeing to different belief systems for some kind of certainty. QAnon is obviously a massively impactful cult [and] Trump was an amazing cult to some degree, he was a really abusive cult leader.”

Booth knows a thing or two about cults: he once joined one. Early in James’s career, he had a near-death experience in hospital due to an undiagnosed liver disease that had made his teenage years at boarding school a living hell and left him “sick of life”. “I remember breathing out and out and out and dropping back,” he says of the experience, “and going ‘Hey, this is really peaceful, this is great’. And then I remember a commotion in the room and a nurse coming in and making me breathe, and being a little bit pissed off. A deep sense of peace was my memory of it.” Told by a doctor that western medicine could do nothing for him, he began a lifelong exploration of alternative eastern ideas instead. “I went to Chinese herbs,” he says. “I was doing yoga, I started meditating, I started doing visualisation to try and heal it, I went on a vegetarian diet, I did enemas, I did every f***ing thing out there.”

Healing too slowly and short on will to live, Booth soon found himself drawn towards stricter, more cult-like practices. Alongside Glennie, he joined Lifewave, a meditation group founded by John Yarr that demanded a strict routine of sobriety, celibacy, fasting and meditation sessions of up to 16 hours at a time. “I was a monk. Celibate, no alcohol, no drugs, meditating hours every day, hours every weekend,” Booth says. “It saved my life. Jim said it saved his too. It was a f***ed-up cult, of course, but the thing about cults is they often have something at the centre of them that’s really positive. I wanted proof of the existence of some intelligence behind life, and I found it in meditation, for me. I got my dramatic moment where I went, ‘Holy f***, there’s something here, that is behind all this’. I gave myself a year, quite frankly, to find proof of the existence of some intelligence to life, or I was going. And I found it within that year. So I’d say it probably saved my life.”

“I don’t think I’ve had any singular bigger positive impact on my life,” Glennie agrees. “We joined a ridiculous cult with a ridiculous leader that ended up shagging half the women, just the total cliche, but I went into that angry and pretty messed up and it focused me and sorted me out for the rest of my life. It gave me a huge amount of self-discipline at a time when I really needed it. I was really surprised that we weren’t asked to pull the plug. If Lifewave would have wanted us to leave, we would have left the band. So I’ve got that to thank them for, that they didn’t make us leave.”

When Lifewave collapsed in 1987 over accusations of Yarr’s sexual misconduct amongst the members (“one of the ‘enlightened teachers’, who got sent abroad to Africa so [Yarr] could f*** his wife, went round and beat him up,” says Booth), James were already earning themselves a name as the modest men of Madchester. Multi-instrumentalist Saul Davies, joining on violin in 1989, found a band happy to ohm away in their own little sonic world.

“There was this mad self-belief in the band that we had music that we felt like people should hear,” says Davies from his own Highlands retreat, “but they were knocking back opportunities to be on the front cover of  NME  and  Melody Maker  and  Sounds , going ‘no, we don’t want to be successful, success will kill it, we just want a few people who love what we’re doing’. Just prior to me joining they’d written this song called ‘Sit Down’. We did a really weird version of the song at Bath Moles club and Edward Barton did a video with sheep in it. We were so hopelessly indie-schmindie it made Belle and Sebastian look like Whitesnake. A lot of our peers were much more ambitious. You saw the [Stone] Roses wandering around and you thought ‘f*** me, they sing about being the resurrection and they f***ing are, they know how to be proper rock stars’. Here’s us sitting in [Manchester vegetarian hangout] the Eighth Day Cafe eating our f***ing carrot cake. It may be the case that when you least look for something you get it. By 1991 we were filling arenas and people were saying we were gonna be the next U2. How did that happen?”

As with so many rock’n’roll stories, James’s success with 1990’s breakthrough album  Gold Mother  and its arena friendly follow-ups  Seven  (1992) and  Laid  (1993, the first of five albums produced with Brian Eno) planted the seed of their (thankfully brief) demise: they became a James of two halves. Booth, keen to reach the state of onstage abandon of heroes like Iggy Pop and Patti Smith without drugs and alcohol, continued exploring alternative therapies. “I want to feel my fear,” he explains. He practiced his famously jelly-limbed dancing eight hours a day as a route to altered states, working with shamans aplenty and recently discovering the wonders of psychedelic therapy, “whether that’s MDMA, ketamine therapy, or psilocybin therapy. I’ve been lucky enough to work with that, and it’s astonishing. Without therapeutic grounding, it’s dangerous. But with a really good person holding space, it can be a year’s worth of conventional therapy in one session.”

His bandmates, meanwhile, were quietly turning into Manchester’s Mötley Crüe. “We were quite uptight early on,” Glennie explains, “Getting success the first time round was a weird puritanical mission to justify what we’ve always been trying to achieve. There wasn’t a lot of fun involved. And then when we got the second wave, in the States with  Laid , it was ‘well, let’s enjoy ourselves’. We drank a lot, and everything else that came our way as well, we just went for it, and we seemed untouchable.

“ No one seemed to believe it was happening. We had journalists with us on the road, yet virtually nothing would get written about – because it clashed with how somebody wanted to portray us, they just completely ignored it. It’s almost like we had this get-out-of-jail card that meant we could do sodding anything and we were virtually invisible. I think the problem with Tim was because he’s always had health issues and a weak liver that he’d inherited, it was physically difficult for him to party. And we stupidly let the gap grow, we let there become a division between us and him.”

“We went on a tour with Orbital, The Prodigy, Snoop Dogg, Tricky, Tool and Korn, and the security would say, ‘watch out for James, they are the biggest f***ing troublemakers here’,” says Booth, who spent that whole 1997 Lollapalooza rodeo on a separate bus, having a dancing injury tended to by a nurse. “They were completely rat-arsed by midday. If you ask Orbital they will probably tell you some funny stories about James stealing golf buggies, crashing them into the stage and being chased by security with guns.”

“I remember walking down a corridor backstage at Lollapalooza [1997] wearing some stupid little shorts and high heels with ‘F***’ and ‘ME’ written on the fronts of my legs,” says Davies. “Madonna came out of a room and said ‘wow, you look awesome!’ I’m thinking ‘that’s cool’. I must’ve looked preposterous.”

There was a lot of addiction going on… I thought someone would get killed

Driving Suede out of their Reading festival dressing room with “intense techno”. Cross-dressing to provoke the American rock audiences who were flinging homophobic slurs at them. Davies being thrown across a Lollapalooza stage by Keith Flint in front of Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee, then banned from hanging out with The Prodigy for being “a bad influence”. The stories mounted; the fractures deepened. By 1999’s  Millionaires  the band – and particularly Booth and Glennie – were “in a difficult place with each other” so, with relations “civil” on 2001’s  Pleased to Meet You , a connoisseur’s James album, Booth felt it was a good time to go out on a high. “There was a lot of addiction going on… I thought someone would get killed. I thought someone would die in James and I didn’t really want to be around or feel like I was any part of enabling that.”

The James of 2021 are “reformed” in so many ways. Davies decided to take a fortnight off drinking 14 years ago and never went back. Glennie has acknowledged that accepting the differences in the band and treating his relationship with Booth as “fragile” are key to keeping James together. And their appeal today stretches far beyond mere Nineties nostalgia value. They remain an ambitious, creative and unpredictable act capable of forming real communal connections with audiences. They still walk an adventurous line between worldly mysticism and melodic Manchester grit. And they’ve stayed prescient, pertinent and politically charged ever since suggesting we “ break down government walls ” back in 1990. So they’ve naturally envisaged the post-Covid new normal.

“It’s almost like the Matrix dropped,” says Booth. “Certainly the capitalistic Matrix, the Matrix of money… Now I’m fairly sure, we being humans, if the machine gets up and running our amnesia will kick in within a month or two and we may forget some of these lessons, but I don’t think we should. I think we have to use this to challenge the hypnotism we live under… [Society] is an agreed set of beliefs that we think we have to play by and Covid has smashed many of those agreed sets of beliefs. I don’t want to go back to playing by them, because they were pretty hollow to begin with. The endless consumerism, the endless sense of wanting more, the endless bulls***, the endless fear[-mongering] from media news.

“Before Covid,” he continues, “the idea of trying to respond as a global human race to the extinction crisis seemed an impossibility, because we’ve never seen every country work together to do the same thing. After Covid, a response to global extinction, you can’t argue against that anymore. It’s obviously absolutely possible.”

All the Colours of You is out now

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Plus special guests Razorlight

• Date 15 June 2024
• Venue The O2 arena
• Availability On sale now

• Saturday 15 June 2024 Doors: 6:30 PM Buy tickets + Add to calendar

Event Details

James has announced a headline show featuring special guests Razorlight at The O2, taking place on Saturday 15 June 2024.

Following on from a hugely successful 40th Anniversary year, the band will be releasing their 17th studio album in April 2024, the first single of which will be announced in January, with further details to follow soon. Fans have a chance to access pre-sale tickets for the tour if they pre-order the new album. The pre-order link is here. 

James were honoured at The Ivor Novello Awards 2023, receiving the PRS Music Icon Award, kick starting a whole year of celebration for their 40th Anniversary. This prestigious award was followed by the release of their orchestral double album Be Opened By The Wonderful which reached #3 in the UK charts in June and a run of sold out tour dates, receiving the best reviews of their career. Throughout the summer the band then headlined multiple UK and European festivals, culminating in two unique shows backed by full orchestra and choir at The Odeon Of Herodes Atticus, Athens and a Special Guest headline slot at Latitude Festival.

James have entered in to a golden era, and will continue to do so in 2024 and for many more years to come.  

Tim Booth says “Deeply proud to announce that we are touring next year to coincide with the release of a rather wonderful new album that we are mixing this week. The new songs sound belting, and will fit this arena tour. Really looking forward to celebrating with you. Expect a mixture of the expected and unexpected - just like life. Nothing but love”

Jim Glennie says “We are delighted to announce our 2024 Arena Tour, supported by the wonderful 'Razorlight'. Come and share a night of biggies, rarities and a sizeable chunk of our exciting, next NEW album! See you there folks. With love, Jim from James”.

About James

One of Britain’s most enduring success stories, James have released 16 studio albums, selling over 25 million copies with their recent run of Top 5 albums proving to be a golden era for the band. All The Colours Of You released in 2021 was their most critically acclaimed in years, preceded by Living in Extraordinary Times and Girl at the End of the World which narrowly missed out on the top spot in 2016 to Adele.

James are: Tim Booth, Jim Glennie, Saul Davies, Adrian Oxaal, David Baynton-Power, Mark Hunter, Andy Diagram, Chloe Alper, Deborah Knox-Hewson.

About Razorlight

Since forming in 2002, Razorlight  have cemented their place as one of Britain’s Classic Indie-Rock bands. Their debut album ‘Up All Night ’ came out in 2004, capturing the incendiary energy of early 2000s London and carrying the era defining hits ‘Golden Touch’ and ‘Somewhere Else’.Their self-titled, UK number one follow-up  ‘Razorlight’ made the leap onto the international stage. Lead single, ‘In The Morning’, reached number three in the UK, and 'America’ went straight to number one. After 4 million albums, headlining Reading Festival and the front cover of Vogue, the band went on hiatus, gradually reforming in 2021 with the legendary line up of Johnny Borrell, Andy Burrows, Bjorn Agren and  Carl Dalemo. New songs ‘You Are Entering The Human Heart’ and ‘Violence Forever?’ from their 2022 Best Of album ‘Razorwhat?’ proved that the creative spark has been relit and a sold out 2024 UK tour reminded of their ability to deliver a masterclass in genuinely live, no-backing-track rock’n’roll.

Important Information - How to download your tickets on The O2 app

For this show, if you’ve purchased your tickets from theo2.co.uk or AXS.com you’ll need to display your ticket on your phone via The O2 app. Ticket purchasers will receive an email with news and information on  AXS Mobile ID tickets  and how you can download your tickets to your phone. 

If you’ve bought your tickets for this show via AXS then you can re-sell your tickets with AXS Official Resale   which gives you a safe, simple, and fair way to buy and sell tickets.

For more information on re-selling tickets from AXS and other ticket agents  click here .  

Please note:  If you purchase  resale   tickets for this show through any website other than via theo2.co.uk or axs.com, your tickets may not be valid and access to the venue could be refused.

Sign up for updates and pre-sales

Plus special guests

Latest News

Celebrate 30 years of colin james & the little big band at the commodore, feb 2 & 3, 2024, travel through france with colin james in october 2024, colin james’ “open road” nominated for blues rock album, invermere, bc, bellingham, wa, seattle, wa, portsmouth, nh, colin james on facebook.

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Sequim City Band to kick off summer concert schedule Sunday

Photo by Richard Greenway/Sequim City Band Concert-goers enjoy music from the Sequim City Band at the City of Sequim’s Independence Day celebration at the James Center for the Performing Arts in July 2023.

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• Q&A: James Taylor on his 2024 U.S. tour, the possibility of…

Q&A: James Taylor on his 2024 U.S. tour, the possibility of new music and his legacy

He's gone to Carolina in his mind and on tour for much of 2024.

Not long after his 76th birthday, James Taylor & His All-Star Band will take their show on the road in the United States, hitting 24 cities for 31 shows in five months.

Over Zoom from his studio in western Massachusetts, Taylor tells The Associated Press "It's been September since the last time I've been out." That, he says, is "a long time for me."

The tour kicks off in Los Angeles at the Hollywood Bowl on May 29 and ends at Wolf Trap Filene Center in Vienna, Virginia, on Sept. 15.

The tour hits Salt Lake City; Morrison, Colorado; Kansas City, Missouri; St. Louis; Highland Park, Illinois; Noblesville, Indiana; Nashville, Tennessee; North Little Rock, Arkansas; Thackerville, Oklahoma; Clarkston, Michigan; Darien Center, New York; Syracuse, New York; Bethel Woods, New York; Bangor, Maine; Gilford, New Hampshire; Lenox, Massachusetts; Philadelphia; Wantagh, New York; Saratoga Springs, New York; Bridgeport, Connecticut; Burgettstown, Pennsylvania, and Boston.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

AP: Before the continental U.S. tour, you're headed to Japan, the Philippines, Australia, New Zealand and Hawaii. What keeps it interesting?

TAYLOR: The audience, always. The event itself has never failed to supply the motivation and the energy that is required. You know, it's very compelling to go a great distance and to find a crowd of people that have bought tickets to come see me and the band play again.

Over time, it's something you learn to do, to keep your strength up, keep your health... also, I don't do more than a couple of shows in a row without a day off. I'll do more than that if I'm in one town, but generally speaking, we pace ourselves now.

AP: That's good advice.

TAYLOR: I definitely burned myself out a few times.

AP: You're performing at Tanglewood, in your home state of Massachusetts, 50 years since you first performed there. What significance does it hold?

TAYLOR: I was trying to figure out whether or not it was 50 years or 50 shows that I've been playing at Tanglewood, and it turns out it's both. 1974 was the first time I played there. It averages out to one a year, although at one point we skipped a whole decade.

We had an episode where one of my crew members, in a fit of pique, drove a truck across the Tanglewood lawn and made a mess of it. He was told he had to get the truck off the lawn because it had been raining and it was making an imprint on it. As we were breaking down after the show, he was driving out there to unload the mixing board and stuff. But he put it in reverse, stomped the accelerator and tore a great trough, a great furrow in the Tanglewood lawn. And they never asked me back. It was only when (my wife) Kim came along and resurrected my reputation that I was allowed to come back.

It's been a great privilege... It's turned out to be a great thing for me, to play Tanglewood every year.

AP: Does an anniversary like that — 50 years — allow you to reflect on your career?

TAYLOR: This is the time of life when you feel like you ought to get in touch with a lawyer and make a will. You see, the older generation, the people that were your friends and mentors, sort of checking out one by one. It is a time when you feel as though things are being summed up a little bit and you start thinking about, the whole thing as a totality. You know, a line from one of my songs, "Copperline," is "I'm only living 'til the end of the week," and I think that really does describe me.

But, you know, it is a period of time when you look back and see the whole thing, it's important not to internalize that idea of being a big deal. It's important to focus on what it is that you do — and that thing as a craft that allows you to have your place in the world.

AP: What has that allowed you to learn?

TAYLOR: As time goes by, I think it's wrong for people to judge other people and even to evaluate them, and yet it's something we constantly do, and we can't avoid it. But we should mitigate it by knowing that when we judge someone, we've got it wrong. They know who they are, and not we. But, of course, in a million ways, all day long, we evaluate ourselves and other people and it's complicated. It's not up to me determine what my ultimate position in popular culture turns out to be 50 years from now.

AP: That's a value judgment, too.

TAYLOR: I see people selling the rights to their catalogs. That baby boom generation musical expression, which happened between '62 and 1980, that sort of 20 years of amazing activity that happened, I was in the center of it and actually got my start in London with the Beatles. So, I had a real sense of this generational phenomenon that the music that I was part of, was a big feature in the landscape and we were communicating to each other. We invented a kind of music there. It was predicted by rhythm and blues and folk music. And those two resurgences sort of fueled it and supplied it. It was big.

You see those people now, being in my sort of age group generally, selling the rights to their catalogs and sort of evaluating what their life's output was worth. You know, David Bowie 's went for like 250 million. I think (Bob) Dylan... got like 300 million... (Bruce) Springsteen is said to have gotten more than that, like half a billion or something. It's sort of like monopoly money.

AP: What do you hope people take away from your live show, and are you working on a new album?

TAYLOR: I feel like I've got another one in me — sounds like an egg — but I'm writing a little bit.

And as to what I hope people take away from live performances, I hope they take away a sense of connection. You know, live music — the thing that I'm so attached to about it, why I can't let it go — is that there's something (that) happens when people come together for a couple of hours for two or three hours and have a sort of collective experience.

It's indescribable. You prepare for it, but when it happens, it's spontaneous and, in a way, unique. I love it when that happens, and it does most nights.

AP: Give us a call if you consider selling your catalog.

TAYLOR: If someone comes sniffing around, I'll get in touch.

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Live archive: 2023

‘james lasted’ orchestral tour with joe duddell, orca22 & manchester inspirational voices choir, summer festival season, rescheduled dates for ‘james lasted’ orchestral tour with joe duddell, orca22 & manchester inspirational voices choir.

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Live concerts returning to the Santa Cruz Wharf

The Santa Cruz Wharf announced the start of its annual Tuesday night live summer concert series.

On the second Tuesday of every month from May through September you can see a new music group on the Wharf Common's stage.

The lineups are as follows:

- May 14 - TinMan

-June 11 - Tsuami Band

-July 9 - The Joint Chiefs Band

- August 13 - The Lost Boys Featuring James Durbin

- September 10 - Viva Santana Show (Nor Cal's #1 Tribute Band)

In addition to the live music, there will also be games from 6 to 8 p.m.

For more information on this summer concert series, click here.

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The Intriguing World Of Entertainment

Golden Age Hollywood Actors at Warped Tour ’99

By Nick Lee | May 6, 2024

Imagine a world where the glitz and glamour of Golden Age Hollywood collides with the grungy, punk rock vibes of Warped Tour ’99. What would it look like if silver screen icons like James Dean, Marilyn Monroe and Judy Garland traded in their red carpet couture for ripped jeans and band tees to rock out at the quintessential emo music festival?

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About Nick Lee

Nick is a Senior Staff Writer for Ned Hardy. Some of his favorite subjects include sci-fi, history, and obscure facts about 90's television. When he's not writing, he's probably wondering how Frank Dux got 52 consecutive knockouts in a single tournament. More from Nick

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