James

James is one of those British bands that had enormous anthems and that, even so, a lot of people cannot name.

Coming out of Manchester, they made a luminous, emotional, slightly mystical pop-rock, with the trembling, sincere voice of Tim Booth up front, and a rare ability to write songs that people sing in chorus with their arms in the air and a lump in their throat.

They were not the loudest nor the most fashionable, but they left behind a handful of songs that in the United Kingdom are part of the collective DNA, and a career of more than forty years made of honesty and of not giving up.

The singer came in dancing

The band was founded in 1982, in Manchester, by Jim Glennie, Paul Gilbertson and Gavan Whelan. Tim Booth was not there.

Booth was studying drama at university, and they saw him dancing at a student venue, with that way he has of moving, eyes closed, as if in a trance. They invited him to join as a dancer.

Shortly afterwards they promoted him to singer.

Before they were called James they went through a list of gloriously bad names. The first one, for their first concert, was "Venereal and the Diseases". It lasted exactly that one concert. Then came Volume Distortion, Model Team International —after the modelling agency where Gilbertson's girlfriend worked, from which they kept the T-shirts— and Tribal Outlook.

They settled on the simplest name in the world in August 1982: James, plain and simple.

Morrissey adopted them

Before they were known, James had the best possible calling card.

Morrissey, the singer of The Smiths, loved them. In November 1983 they shared a night at The Haçienda. In November 1984 he took them as support act around Ireland, at his own personal invitation. And between February and April 1985 he took them on the British tour for "Meat Is Murder".

The Smiths even covered a James song live.

Having the most revered band of the moment choose you as its opening act was a blessing: it put you in front of exactly the audience that was going to understand you.

It is worth telling how it ended too, because it was not an eternal patronage but an intense two-year enthusiasm. That spring of 1985, James turned down the chance to accompany The Smiths on a thirteen-date tour of the United States, and Morrissey pulled away.

Years later there was a curious return: at Glastonbury 1992, James replaced Morrissey on the bill and opened their set with a cover of one of his songs.

An anthem for sitting down together

Their biggest song, "Sit Down", has one of the loveliest and strangest ideas in rock.

At a time when stadium anthems called for jumping, for raising your fist, for euphoria, James did the opposite: they wrote a song that invites you to sit down.

The lyric says something simple and beautiful: if you are suffering, if you feel alone, if you are lost, come, sit down next to me, because it happens to all of us. It is an anthem to compassion, to keeping each other company in pain.

The original version, from 1989, ran almost nine minutes and barely reached number seventy-seven. They re-recorded it in 1991, shorter, and then it worked: number two, three weeks, six hundred thousand copies. The only thing that kept it from number one was a Chesney Hawkes song that spent five weeks at the top.

And something remarkable happened with it. In the late eighties and early nineties, when "Sit Down" played in the clubs of Manchester —starting with the dance floor of The Haçienda—, people really did sit down on the floor, all together, and then got up singing.

Booth told it as a rite of collective communion. Jim Glennie, the bassist, gave a considerably less mystical explanation: it is a song that is hard to dance to, and you look like an idiot trying, so sitting down takes your legs out of the equation.

Both versions are probably true.

"Laid", their other big hit, produced by none other than Brian Eno, showed their other side: cheeky, playful. It opened up American college and alternative radio, where it reached number three, although the album stalled at number seventy-two on the Billboard chart.

A singer who is many things

Tim Booth is one of the most singular characters of his generation, and not only because of the music.

At concerts he dances in a hypnotic way, eyes closed, given over to it, as if the music possessed him. It is not choreographed, and he links it directly to altered states of consciousness.

Outside the band he has a life of reinvention. He is an actor: he played Victor Zsasz, one of the villains in "Batman Begins". There is a perfect anecdote from that shoot: Christian Bale, without dropping character and using the Batman voice, told him that "Laid" had saved his life.

And he teaches 5Rhythms, the movement meditation practice created by Gabrielle Roth, which he took up precisely when he left the band. He explains it like this: a lot of people in the West find it hard to meditate, and the 5Rhythms are an alternative way of reaching states of ecstasy.

That search —that of someone who treats music as a form of almost religious connection, not as a show— is in everything he sings. He also recorded a duo album with Angelo Badalamenti, the composer of "Twin Peaks".

James was never a band of poses. It was a real band, one of those that try to touch something inside you.

What to remember

In 2001 Booth left —after eleven albums, he said, it felt like the moment, twenty years and still on the way up— and the band fell apart. They came back in 2007 and have not stopped since.

And there is one fact that crowns the story better than any other: in April 2024, with "Yummy", James got their first number one album in the United Kingdom. Forty-two years after they started.

Put on "Sit Down", "Laid", "She's a Star" or "Sometimes", and you are going to hear the kind of British pop-rock that truly moves you, made by a few guys from Manchester who were never the most famous but were among the most loved by those who know them.

James is a band to discover late and regret not having listened to sooner.

Sources

James, British band formed in Manchester in 1982 by Jim Glennie, Paul Gilbertson and Gavan Whelan. Tim Booth, who was studying drama at the University of Manchester, joined as a dancer after being seen dancing at a student venue, and shortly afterwards became the singer. Before adopting the name James, in August 1982, they went through Venereal and the Diseases —the name under which they played a single concert, at the Eccles British Legion—, Volume Distortion, Model Team International, Model Team and Tribal Outlook. Morrissey and The Smiths supported them between 1983 and 1985: they shared a bill at The Haçienda in November 1983, were the support act on the Irish tour of November 1984 at Morrissey's personal invitation and on the British tour for "Meat Is Murder" between February and April 1985; The Smiths covered "What's the World", by James, live. The relationship cooled when James turned down the chance to accompany them on a thirteen-date tour of the United States. At Glastonbury 1992, James replaced Morrissey and opened with a cover of one of his songs. "Sit Down" was originally released on 19 June 1989 on Rough Trade, with a running time of 8:39, and reached number 77; the re-recording released by Fontana on 18 March 1991 reached number two for three weeks and went platinum with 600,000 copies, kept off number one by "The One and Only" by Chesney Hawkes. The remix "Sit Down '98", by Apollo 440, reached number seven. The audience's custom of sitting down on the floor during the song is documented on the dance floors of Manchester clubs in the late eighties and early nineties, starting with The Haçienda; Jim Glennie has attributed it to the song being hard to dance to. "Laid" (1993), produced by Brian Eno —who also produced "Wah Wah" (1994) and "Millionaires" (1999)—, reached number three on the American Modern Rock chart and 61 on the Hot 100, while the album reached 72 on the Billboard 200 and went gold. Tim Booth played Victor Zsasz in "Batman Begins" (2005) and voiced the character in the video game; he teaches 5Rhythms, the movement meditation practice created by Gabrielle Roth, which he took up after leaving the band, and he is not a yoga instructor, as is sometimes claimed. He released "Booth and the Bad Angel" (1996) with Angelo Badalamenti. Booth left James in 2001 —his last concert was at Wembley Arena on 10 December of that year— and the group reunited in 2007. Other British chart positions: "Come Home" number 84 in 1989 and 32 in 1990, "Sometimes (Lester Piggott)" number 18, "She's a Star" number nine in 1997. Their album "Yummy", released on 12 April 2024, was their first number one in the United Kingdom, forty-two years after the group was formed. Externally authored text, edited and verified for Rebobinados. Interpretations of the meaning of their work are offered as the author's reading. No song lyrics are reproduced, for copyright reasons. Information drawn from Wikipedia, AllMusic, NME, Official Charts, The Guardian and other press coverage.