Tim Booth on Morrissey, Marr, The Smiths & James

An epic first interview transcript from the A Light That Never Goes Out vaults

This is the first of several upcoming posts about the band James, who will also be the subject of the next Crossed Channels podcast. The interview that follows with their lead singer and lyricist Tim Booth is also the first of many interview transcripts that I’ll be publishing from my Smiths’ vault. For those who don’t know, I wrote the book A Light That Never Goes Out: The Enduring Saga of The Smiths, and if you don’t mind my saying so - and I will anyway - it’s the definitive biography. If you haven’t read it yet and would like to buy a copy, visit this page if you are in the U.S., and this one elsewhere.

The US and UK hardback editions, respectively, of my Smiths biography, originally published in 2012.

Also for those who don’t know, the band James predated The Smiths. However, as the two Manchester groups moved at a different pace - details of which will emerge below - it was the former who ended up supporting the latter in Ireland and in the UK in 1984 and 1985, from which long-term friendships were formed. Some of them were for life: I first saw James live when they opened for The Smiths in Britain in 1985, and last saw James live when they opened for ex-Smith Johnny Marr in New York just last month. And some of those friendships, perhaps, were only for a certain time: Tim and Morrissey were tight back in the day, but Tim is certain that the Morrissey song “We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful” was written about his own band’s post-Smiths global success.

As already noted, James are my personal treasure. Specifically, Tim Booth is my favourite lyricist in the world, the diarist to my life, and there will be much more to come on that subject, not least on the forthcoming Crossed Channels episode, where my co-host

Dan Epstein

is going to have a hard time keeping me under an hour, given that James released their 19th album, I have seen them play on more continents than any other act, and I can talk about and to them for hours. Somewhere in my vaults, I have an interview I conducted with Tim in 2004, during James’ hiatus, for his second solo album Bone; after he received my questions by e-mail he asked to do it by phone instead, and it became quite the back-and-forth. By the time we spoke again for the interview being republished here, in what would likely have been 2011 - again, by phone - we had had an interesting in-person conversation after a James show in New York in 2008, which I think helped Tim feel more at ease. Certainly, we covered a lot of ground in this second on-the-record conversation. And for all that it purports to be an interview with Tim about The Smiths, there is so much to be learned here about Tim, and by extension, the band James also.

“Two of our band members ended up in Strangeways for GBH [grievous bodily harm]. It was a tough band. I was the middle-class ponce in the front – in the same way that Morrissey looked slightly different to the rest of them.”

This interview is for my paid subscribers; that tends to be the case with my transcript archives. Writing is what I do for a living, and I appreciate your understanding and supporting that living. Subscriptions are just $5/c.£4 a month, 20% discount on a full year, and not only do you unlock this particular post, but you get access to all the archives (which otherwise go behind the paywall after 12 weeks), all future exclusive posts, and the Crossed Channels podcast: the James episode should drop a week after Thanksgiving. For those who do get to read below the fold, I’ll split this interview over two parts, not just because it is long, but because all of it is worth publishing. I hope you enjoy it.

Tim Booth and Morrissey, 1984. “The whole band was so welcoming to us. So welcoming it was incredible. And Morrissey became a friend, and I used to see him a lot. We used to go for drives around Manchester; we had all that going.”