„Hopefully it won’t be ten years until the next time,“ Fran Healy said to me at the end of our last conversation in 2020. Yes, we made it! Fortunately, fate was quicker to reunite us this time, as four years after their 2020 album ’10 Songs‘, Healy’s band Travis have released their new studio album ‚L.A. Times‘.
Every time I talk to Fran Healy, I remember someone telling me, many years ago when I first started working as a journalist: „Fran Healy is by far the nicest guy you will meet in this business“. And fourteen years after our first conversation, I can confirm this is still true.
Healy pops up on my computer screen, wearing black-rimmed glasses and a new, bright orange, Johnny Rotten-esque spiky haircut. Our conversations have always been personal, and this time that seems to make even more sense, as he describes ‚L.A. Times‘ as his most personal album since the band’s legendary breakthrough ‚The Man Who‘. So you could say that we stray a lot, but in the end we both agree that this is what the album is essentially about: life in all its forms. The personal stories you need to tell. The flickering of your creative flame.
It has been proven once again: Fran Healy is not only the nicest guy you could meet in the industry, but also one of the most interesting.
So, it’s been almost four years since we last talked.
Oh yeah. It’s been an interesting three and a half years.
How have you been? How has life been?
Life has been good. It’s been very, very busy. I feel like my late forties has been one of the busiest, most intense periods of my life. Maybe it’s post Covid or the way things are done or my age or whatever… but the late forties have definitely been challenging. Just the sheer amount of things happening. Making records, doing all the other stuff that you do with life… I know people who have staff and PAs because they are busy people. But I’m like: No way! I don’t like hiring people to come in and fix things. If I can do it, I’ll do it. I’m handy. I do all my own stuff. But it’s busy! Life is busy. But it’s good! It’s very good. I like busy.
Life somehow feels even busier than before Covid, doesn’t it? I remember you telling me last time we met that it was a bit like a well-deserved break being granted, and that you really needed it. Then we came back from it, and now we’re sometimes like: How did we even do this before?
I think for musicians, or all the people who couldn’t work, it was difficult. To make money to survive, you were like… fuck! You’re paying your bills every month, but then the thing you do to pay your bills is taken away. There were a few things you could get as help for musicians. But for me – I mean not especially me, but for all the people I know on my side: crew members, people who relied on the live business… you suddenly realised how big the live industry is. It was really nice to finally go back and play shows. For bands, but also for people. And now it feels like Covid never happened! It feels back to normal again. It’s a bit weird, like you say: how you get into that pace of living, then you go out of it, then have to return to that normal pace again. And there are things we brought with us from the Covid times, like this (he points at the screen, referring to how we are talking over Zoom right now).
And some things I feel we never learn.
No, we never learn. We learned as well that school – as much as we’d like to think it’s about education – is more about childcare. It’s like a big, giant nursery for kids of all ages. They learn a bit of something that has no meaning or bearing on the rest of their lives. Unless it’s maybe English or basic arithmetic. I don’t know anyone who uses algebra or geometry in their everyday life. I know people who use art every day in their lives, but that’s looked upon as this thing that’s not important. The world is upside down. Teachers should be paid the same as high court judges and lawyers. Actually, we should swap the pay. What you would find is: smart people would all go into teaching. Imagine paying teachers $200,000 a year. Imagine how great education would be if you attracted people who were really smart. But it’s not gonna happen. There’s a lot of really good teachers, but not enough. It’s generally filled with people who are just doing a job. They just punch in and punch out. I was lucky to have some amazing teachers. And I was that little boy at the back of the class looking out of the window, dreaming. But they saw something, took me and polished me. They gave me confidence.
Fran turns his camera to show me a little grey cat, scratching at the terrace door. As if demanding to join the conversation, one of my cats shows up too. We have a lengthy conversation about cat food. We chat a bit more about school and education, because we have kids of approximately the same age, and we always dedicate a bit of time to catching up with how they are both doing. But then we finally remind each other that we’re slowly running out of time and that we’re both here to do our job!
We’re actually not even that far away from your record. Because we’ve been talking about life, and I feel like so many aspects of life come together in this album. The good things that happens, the shit that goes down, how you get through it… and also, you are questioning yourself a lot, I feel. And I think that you can only make great art when you are questioning yourself. Would you agree?
Well you can only make art – I wouldn’t even call it great art but any art – when you have something to fucking say! Write a song or make a piece of art. Express yourself! I’m so lucky to do it as a job. But everyone should be making art! Everyone should be telling stories. It’s all about stories and passing them on. All our albums are like this though. The last record yes, definitely, the record before that, the record before that not so much. I wasn’t really… I was focusing on my son, my laser was on him. We talked about it last time. But now my laser is back on this. And it should be! Im back to „I’ve got a problem with this person“ or „I love this“ or „I really fucking hate that“. And I write about it. That’s what you do. You get up, you go out into the world, things happen to you.
When I read your tracklisting for the first time, I laughed out loud at the song title „I Hope That You Spontaneously Combust“. (Fran laughs) That is one of my favourite song titles ever.
How many people would I love that to happen to at the moment! I think it’s the internet that made it possible for people to be absolutely the worst versions of themselves. It’s the idea that people say things they would never say in a million years to someone, if they were standing next to them in a bar or a town hall. Everyone starts behaving incredibly badly. And then it spills into real world situations. It’s beginning to happen in person, because it started in a chat room. That song is about all these people online I abhor. I really don’t enjoy social media – it’s anti-social! Again, we’re living in a reflection. We’re living in this Stranger Things world, the Upside Down world. It’s like 1984, it’s so fucking weird right now. I kinda love it, because it’s so interesting. But it’s a curse.
What I also love about the album is, how you have „The River“ and „L.A. Times“ back to back. „The River“ is the most Scottish song you’ve ever made, whereas „LA Times“ is the total opposite.
Interestingly, the reason why we put these two songs together is because they are both very Scottish. „LA Times“… the subject matter is not Scottish, but I’m speaking for the first time, spoken word, I’m speaking in my accent. I swear a lot. Scottish people, Glaswegians, we say „fucking“ all the time. And again, when I write a song, it just comes out. You don’t know what shape it’s going to be when it’s inside you. It just comes out in a shape, and that shape had lots of swearing in it. So those two songs, to me, are the most Scottish songs I’ve ever written. So that’s why they are together.
Yes, that is actually true.
But maybe you can’t hear the accent?
No, I do! I have to admit, I was more focussed on the musical side. But I’ve actually been thinking about it, while listening to „L.A. Times“ – I love how you‘ve always kept your accent.
Yeah, I would fucking not lose my accent. Your accent is your identity. It’s how you tell stories. It’s a hard accent to lose though. Scottish is an old accent. The older the accent, the harder it is to lose it.
My son came in when I was listening to it and said: „That man is swearing a lot!“
Oh gosh (laughs). You have to live in Glasgow for a while. It’s just the way people speak. The song is a bit of an angry song. I was pissed off with a lot of what’s going on here. I had to get it off my chest. I really felt great after I wrote it. Because a lot of stuff happened, you know. My studio is in Skid Row, so I see it every day. How people have to live is awful. I was driving into the building and this guy stopped my car. I thought it was a security guard and he tried to pull me out of the window of my car and carjack me. But my seatbelt was on and he didn’t know where the button was to open the door. I was halfway out of the window and he was screaming: „Get out of the fucking car!“ I kinda punched him in the face and he went to the back window, trying to get in there. I waited until he let go of the car and then I drove off. I came home once and there was a homeless guy in our house. Life is dangerous. Oh, and I got bitten by a dog, see my scar? (He holds his hand up to the camera, so that I can actually see the scar). I saved my neighbour’s dog from being hit by a car and the dog bit me (laughs). So yeah, if you go out into the world and you’re sensitive, in a city like Los Angeles… if America was a human body, Los Angeles would be the pressure point the therapist would put his finger on and the person would go „Aaaahhh“! (He does a very accurate impression of a person in pain) It’s got the biggest homeless problem of anywhere I’ve seen. It’s on a fault line, ready to blow up. Then you’ve got this disparity of wealth and poverty. You have all the crazy racism that happens here… it’s an interesting place to live. In good ways and bad ways. It’s an amazing place to live. And it comes out in the music. I made a good album. I’m happy.
Do you think you would have made an album like this ten years ago, fifteen years ago?
Yeah! Because I’m just telling the truth. That’s the most important thing as an artist, that you don’t let the flame go out on you telling your story. That’s all you’ve got. You’ve got to protect it from the winds of life. The flame of truth, your own flame, should never go out as an artist. You have to just say what you say. Sometimes you might not sell loads of records. People may be like „Oh, I don’t like that“. You have to be like, “Fuck it, I’m doing my truth”! I’m saying what I believe, I’m telling stories, and that’s it. So yes, I would write the same record. But the same as in „my truth“. I’m still doing that, and hopefully my flame hasn’t flickered out yet.