It’s been a whirlwind year for James. In April, they soared to the top of the UK album charts with their latest release, Yummy, and have been on relentless touring ever since. In just over a month, the nine-piece band will cross the Atlantic to embark on an extensive U.S. tour alongside the legendary Johnny Marr. But before that, they’ll be lighting up stages in Dublin, Portugal and Greece.
We recently had the pleasure of sitting down with multi-instrumentalist Saul Davies during a rare break in the band’s hectic schedule. Relaxing outdoors in the sunshine, he embodied the essence of a rockstar, sunglasses on, as he chatted with us about all things James.
Hey Saul, how are you doing? Having some well deserved downtime?
Hello! Hi. There’s no downtime coming at the moment, I’m afraid. But yeah, it’s all good. Work is good for the soul.
More so if you’re doing something you love! Speaking of things we love, your latest album Yummy has been out for a few months now. In the run up to its release, you said that your favourite track is ‘Stay’ – has that changed?
No. I think my original choices have stayed the same – they were also ‘Butterfly’ and ‘Shadow of a Giant’. They’re still my favourite songs on the record, and they’re my favourite songs to play live.
Have you gained a new appreciation for any of the others since they’ve been worked into a live setting?
I’ve become more and more convinced how poor they are in relation to those three.
Tim [Booth] has called you a reluctant violinist the past. I’d say that your violin is one of the key contributors on the album – what inspired that shift?
It was just a mistake, really. I don’t think there’s a lot of violin on the record, but I suppose when it is there, it’s quite prominent.
I’m quite glad that with the song ‘Shadow of a Giant’, I discussed with Leo [Abrahams] who produced the record, that there was space for something, like that part that comes at the beginning of it. John Hopkins played that piano. Mark had originally played amazing piano in the jam, but we were playing gigs and Leo wanted it tightening up. While we we weren’t around to do that, his friend, John was popping in for a cup of tea and did it, based very much on what Mark had done, just timed up a wee bit. After that happened, I thought, there is actually space here for something else.
I think that given the nature of the song, the violin is natural in it, but it’s a hard instrument to play in an environment like ours, which is why I don’t do it very often. When I do, it ends up being very much the focus of what we’re doing in a song, which is what I don’t like about it. I like it when it’s more hidden. But I also understand that we’re up on stage to entertain people, and if that’s part of our package of entertainment, then there’s a place for it. Tim is right in some ways, although it’s slightly pejorative. I wouldn’t say I’m reluctant, I would say I’m very intelligently attuned to where it might be useful or not. I also think that maybe it creates an opportunity for a little flavour every now and again.
If you use it too much, it just becomes commonplace. I’d be struggling to find an identity for it, and then it would just become a bit the same. Then everybody would be saying, “oh, why don’t you shut up?” Like when when Larry used to play slide all the time, I remember people started to get annoyed by it, and I’d say “well he’s the best slide player I’ve ever heard, so I think he should play more”. It’s quite ironic how all these years later, Tim’s saying almost the same thing to me, but about my that instrument.
It adds a real element of beauty to your shows. Most notably during ‘Shadow of a Giant’ in your current set. That’s a really interesting track, particularly with the pacing.
Actually, my main contribution to that song is not the violin. In fact, it’s a hidden contribution, but it is the most important contribution. I suggested to half time the song – it was originally double time, and I didn’t quite like it like that. Other people thought it was pretty good, but it wasn’t special. It was okay. It was a bit James by numbers. And then I said, how about if we half time it?
So literally, if it was a 140 beats per minute, we made it to 70, and we had a bit of a mess about with it. There was some reluctance within the group because the idea was a bit math. It was a good idea, but it was poorly realised. Leo, I and other people spent a bit of time trying to at least give the idea a shot at working, and it did, then it became that song. So without that interference from me, it wouldn’t have existed. I don’t think it would have made the album, actually, in the guise that it was, in the way that it had been previously offered.
For this release, you’ve actually given the songs that didn’t make it a platform, on a separate CD titled ‘Pudding’. Are there any tracks on there that you wish had made it onto Yummy?
There was one on there. I can’t remember what it’s called, that I put together, which is great song. It’s got lots of percussion and stuff on it. I really like it. I put that together and thought it could be something, but it never went anywhere because we generated lots and lots of demos.
The one thing that we do, which is a bit stupid, is we forget, because we’re getting old. We get quite forgetful and forget what we’ve done. Then a year goes by, and there was something that was really cool. So never deliver anything first, because whatever gets delivered first will never make it on the record.
It’s a nice position to be in though! You’ve got that much strong material that some of your best songs have actually ended up being B sides, like ‘All Good Boys’.
That’s the best song we ever recorded. It’s absolutely incredible. Tim might call me a reluctant violinist, I would say that he’s not an entirely reluctant all good boyer, but he’s a half reluctant all good boyer. I don’t think anybody else in the band likes the song as much as me, so I end up being a lone voice for it. I think we all think it’s a great song, but I think it’s especially great – I think it’s the best song we’ve ever written and recorded, in fact, so it’s my number one James song, by some distance.
I agree, it’s a phenomenal track. I’d put it in my Top 3.
What would be your other top 2?
‘Tomorrow’, and maybe ‘Ten Below’. Actually, anything from ‘Pleased to Meet You’ – I love ‘Space’, it was great to you play that with the orchestra last year.
That’s my favourite album. Then Laid, then I would say, La Petit Mort. I think ‘Space’ is incredible. And again, I can’t quite understand why we don’t play it more. But, anyway, maybe it’s time has come and gone.
We were talking the other day about songs like ‘I Wanna Go Home’, which we haven’t played for a very long time, and I think that was really good live. Maybe we’ll give that a little shot in America. Although it looks like we played it quite a lot last time we were there, so actually that probably won’t happen. What’s that other song… ‘Play Dead’!
That’s a brilliant track. It was one of the highlights when you played the We Love Manchester gig back in 2017. I don’t think you’ve played it in the UK since.
It’s a great song, I think we might resurrect it. I love the way it starts with “music depresses me”, that’s so cool. There are loads. I mean, I was looking at songs recently like ‘Junkie’, which I think is an amazing song.
And ‘Strangers’, which is a great song from Millionaires. A very simple song that if it was done by somebody much bigger than us and much more commercial than us, it would have been a global hit. “Worn down by strangers, all you need’s a friend” – I mean, that’s like a Coldplay song to happen, isn’t it? Maybe not them, but do you know what I mean? Somebody that could actually nail a pop song rather than us lot, who just kinda come up with sketches and then go “oh, that’s quite nice” before moving on. We never actually realise the full potential of what we’re doing, you know, in some ways. We’re scared of success, you know, in some ways.
We desperately want to be successful, but we’re also very scared of it, so we write these things and go “Oh, that’s really cool. Anyway, let’s not do the thing that’s really obvious because it’s really obvious. It might become successful and then we’ll have sold out and people might like us”.
It’s an interesting way of doing things, that’s for sure. Unique.
Well, when you look at the history of the band, we’ve demonstrated that when we have guidance, we can nail big songs. I don’t think we’ve had commercial guidance, frankly, for a while in that sense. The proof of that is that there are numerous songs since we reformed in 2007 that could have gone on to be massive, massive, massive hits.
Although how you define a hit nowadays is obviously quite different to how we used to. It used to be just radio playing sales. Now it’s it’s different, obviously. But, nevertheless, we’ve had numerous opportunities – songs that we’ve written just by mistake, really, that have got huge potential, but we haven’t realised it.
‘Gone, Baby, Gone’, ‘Many Faces’, ‘Moving On’. It’s endless. There’s loads of them, but we didn’t actually capitalise on the commercial potential of the songs. And it is an interesting facet in James that we tend to shy away from the obvious.
I suppose we also become our own cliche to some extent as well. There’s something comforting about being a cliche of yourself, because you’re being you, and I suppose that’s okay. But at some point, before the band disbands, I’m sure someone will come along and shake us up a little bit, and we’ll end up with a with another global effort somehow from somewhere. I don’t know who that would be or where that would come from, well, we’ll write it, but somebody needs to help us.
Well, you’ve just had a number one album, so that’s a good start!
No. It is. It’s very gratifying.
You mentioned earlier that when you’re on tour in the states, you’ll be looking at the set list from the last time you played each city. You have shows in Greece and Portugal coming up – do you approach writing the set list differently in different countries?
Yeah, and we have to do that – we have to recognise that when we go to the States, a lot of the people that come to see us on our current tour, will have seen us on the last tour.
We have to make sure that we don’t end up mistakenly playing a core of the same songs. That would be a mistake that can be avoided just by looking at what we did last time and making sure that we change it. Naturally, it will have changed, and we’ll want to do a lot of the new record. But outside of the new record… in fact, we’ve only got an hour and 10 minutes to play on this tour with Johnny Marr. That’s probably 12, 13 songs, I would suggest, max.
That’s pretty difficult to do. We have to be quite careful, you know, that we stretch people a little bit, and and certainly playing the bulk of this new record will do that. I’m sure that for people who’ve come to see Johnny Marr primarily and end up in front of us, they won’t know our record. They might have checked it out just to see what the vibe is.
I think we managed to get our heads around how to perform the album. We actually rehearsed very well, and we got our shit together. Like you said, I think we’ve done pretty well, making it sound good. Tim and I were talking the other day, and I said, it might be quite cool in one or two of these gigs for us to just to play all 12 songs off the album, that’s it. He was like “fucking hell”, so I asked why not, and he said it might be quite cool.
Absolutely, Frank Turner did it at Glastonbury this year! I was actually wondering if you were planning to do it at your album launch shows at Banquet Records later this month.
I have no idea! I don’t think we’ve got very Iong. We’re doing two sets, in one day. I think they’re only an hour each. Maybe we should do that, maybe that’d be really cool. And I think anybody who’s in the room would think it was great, wouldn’t they? I don’t think there’d be anybody crying because we didn’t play ‘Sit Down’ in that room.
I love the idea and no, it’s definitely not that type of show.
You know, it’s the only time in our in our careers that we have done an afternoon and evening performance.
Making history! Obviously no two James shows are the same. How many tracks do you typically take on tour with you, so to speak?
There’s a core of songs that we know, obviously, that we just need to run through to make sure that technically things are working and we all know what we’re doing. We don’t have a lot of time between now and when we go to America. Given that we’ve only got, as I say, 1 hour and 10 minutes to play, I’m sure what will happen during that tour, which is often the case in all of the tours that we do, is day by day, we’ll throw something in that we’ve not played for ages. We’ll have a go, it might not quite work, we’ll try again, maybe throw it into a gig, then it might disappear. Certainly, going into the tour, there’ll be quite a body of work, that we can choose from at the moment. But coming out the other end, it’ll be massive, because we will add to it as we go along.
It’s difficult to say, but we certainly take far more than we would necessarily need and far more than most bands would probably rehearse, but then our show is quite different to a lot of bands – it’s not really worked out in advance, we put it together as we go along. Slightly less so on the arena tour that we just did because we built visuals to go with some of the songs, and we wanted the visuals to work with those particular songs. Those songs kind of had to be in the set, which slightly dictated the choice of songs. But that was that was the first time that we’ve done that in our career.
I recall you mentioning that when Chloe and Debbie first joined, it limited the spontaneity of your set lists. But now, they’re practically veterans. I’m sure they’ve got a solid grasp of the back catalogue by this point.
You’re absolutely right. Those guys are kind of very embedded – we’ve touched on and rehearsed pretty much songs from every year of James with them, right back to the early eighties.
Chloe has had a big part to play on this last record, I think, in a very obvious way. Debbie has had a lot to say about it rhythmically, but it’s less obvious. With Chloe’s singing, it’s very obvious that it’s her voice. Those songs are kind of hers in some ways. I hear her so, present in those songs.
Her vocals really enhanced the record.
I think she’s definitely brought a different flavour. She’s changed the sonic nature of the band, and some of the melodic, identity also. It was very cool that she was able to have and then take the space for her to impose herself on. She brought good quality to the record, it’s great. And Debbie, from a rhythm perspective as well. I don’t want to forget about Deb’s at all.
You’re playing some beautiful venues in America. Are you looking forward to the intimacy, or do you prefer the larger venues you typically play in the UK?
I think I prefer the bigger ones, really! Because I like being on a big stage. I understand from an audience perspective that if you’re a fan of a band, then seeing that band in a smaller place might be really cool. But I think as a performer, I like to be on big stages.
There is something, of course, that happens in terms of the intimacy between a band and their audience in smaller places. That’s obvious. It’s a compromise for us with 9 people going on a small stage. I’m not sure we can quite do ourselves justice. I’d rather we perhaps played almost semi acoustically, with just a few of those on a small stage.
If you’re gonna be intimate, be super intimate. Just take away up to the sound. I don’t know if you saw any of those shows that we did a few years ago where we opened up for ourselves with acoustic jams, then the curtain came down, and we were James James. I thought it was great.
That was a really special set up. They were nice and intimate venues as well, similar to the ones in the States. When Johnny Marr supported you at a couple of festival shows last month, he joined you for ‘Laid’ – can we expect any more surprises in the states?
I don’t know! That was just a nice thing that happened during those shows.
It’s not a very, very long tour, but it is long for us, I would say. It does put you under pressure and it’s quite stressful. Great fun and hugely rewarding, of course, but America, because it’s so big, italso throws up its own difficulties. Like the first gig we do is in Denver, then the next one is 2 or 3 days later in Vancouver, and it’s 1800 miles. It’s like driving from Inverness to Berlin or something. It’s mad. Or Madrid, in fact. We won’t be driving it, we’ll be flying it, but nevertheless, distance and the travel associated with it kill you a little bit, so it is quite energy sapping. As a consequence, just holding it together becomes the main thing, and then you go, right, well, we’re holding it together, what else can we do to bring value to the process or enjoy the process?
I genuinely don’t know what might happen along the way. We might bump into all sorts of people. God knows. Of course, it goes without saying that is was a huge privilege, to have Johnny play guitar on that song. He’s an iconic player, obviously, an iconic figure, and that’s an iconic song. It was kind of amazing. And he really nailed it. It was fucking great.
It was brilliant. It’s a real shame that you joined James after they’d supported The Smiths.
I think it’s very gratifying for Tim and Jim, as the remaining members of that original incarnation – not quite the original, but that particular incarnation – of James, to meet up and spend time with Johnny again. He was obviously more than partly responsible for the decision to take James on tour in the first place, and it’s arguable that without it, the fortunes of the band wouldn’t have been as they are. Although we were unable to capitalise on the success that we had, and we had a lot of success the first few times around America. We got so tired and ill that we had to give up for a while, and that killed us in the States. But yeah, if that hadn’t happened, we would’ve gone on to do really well in America. And I think the fact that The Smiths took James on that tour in 85 was really part of that, because it was referenced all the time by people.
Johnny’s not only an amazing musician, but he’s also a very, very nice man. He’s a joyous hero.
Before I let you go, I wanted to quickly touch on the fact that you’re tee total. Would you say that influences your creative process, and does it help with staying energised on tour?
Being the age that I am, I think it does help – I think as you go into your fifties, you can’t drink and work. I don’t think that works at all, I think it’s insane. I mean, people do and they do fine, but no, that wouldn’t be right.
It must affect creativity, and I’m sure that it affects creativity badly in some ways in the sense that if you’re fucked like an asshole, then the limits change. Right? It might mean that you fall off a building, because you don’t understand your physical limits, or you might be really rude to somebody, because you don’t understand cultural limits anymore.
You might be less creative in some bizarre way. But on the other hand, I’m not sure that any of that’s true. Well, I’m certainly not sure it’s true that you become less creative. It’s arguable that you become creative in a different way. Age and life experience change how you create, so it should probably change all of the time.
I can’t imagine what circumstances there would be in my life to want to drink again. I’m not interested at all in doing that. I quite like being around people who are drinking, and I’m never tempted to do so, but I don’t think it’s a particularly good thing for people to do, really.
Thank you so much for taking the time to chat, Saul. Enjoy the rest of your day!
That’s alright! You too. Cheers. Yeah. Bye bye. Ciao.
