Tim Burgess was born in Salford in 1967 and spent his formative years in Northwich, Cheshire. He first sang in The Electric Crayons before joining The Charlatans as their lead vocalist, enjoying success with their 1990 baggy era-defining single The Only One I Know and debut album, Some Friendly. Their third long-player Up To Our Hips in 1994 pre-empted Britpop with its warm vintage sounds, but the recording was marred when group co-founder and organist Rob Collins was sentenced to eight months in prison for assisting an armed robber. The band were back on track after his release with 1995’s self-titled fourth LP, but then disaster struck again when, during the recording of their fifth, 1997’s Tellin’ Stories, Collins was killed in a car crash. The band soldiered on, supporting Oasis at Knebworth and, with replacement Tony Rogers, recorded a further eight albums, taking in Stonesy rock, dub, reggae and spoken word. The band was upended yet again in 2013 when, after a brain tumour diagnosis, drummer Jon Brookes passed away.
“It’s been tough,” says Tim Burgess from his Norfolk home. “But we learned quickly in The Charlatans that we often do our best work when we are backed into a corner. When the pressure is on, we always come out fighting.” Burgess also helms a successful solo project and, as he prepares for the release of his fifth solo record, I Love The New Sky, he guides Record Collector through his rich back catalogue.
If we go back to the beginning… Manchester was a huge influence on the teenage Tim Burgess, living 20 miles away in Northwich.
Yeah, I’d get the train with my mates on a Saturday to go to the underground market and buy my records and punk clothes.
I remember getting a copy of the Destroy T-shirt that Vivien Westwood designed and the Pistols wore. I got my first Exploited single there. I was really into all the second-generation punk bands: Discharge, Crass, UK Subs, the ones everyone thinks are crap nowadays. It was quite threatening there in the late 70s, early 80s. We hid our money in our boots and walked around with clenched fists but I was seduced by the whole culture.
Did you see those punk bands live?
I saw Crass and Subhumans when I was 13. Both played in Winsford, which is four miles from Northwich. Crass played in the scout hut and Subhumans at the Civic Hall, both pretty tiny venues. The audiences were really enthusiastic – we felt so lucky that they were playing locally and at Crass everyone was doing the Madness dance. During the Subhumans’ first song, their lead singer smashed his head open with the microphone and I thought that was amazing.
Factory Records were hugely important in your musical education, too. You’re known as a massive New Order fan.
Yeah, my mum worked in a paper shop in a village near Northwich and [Factory co-founder] Alan Erasmus used to get his paper there everyday. One day he gave my mum a handful of change and in it was a FAC 51 badge. She gave it to me and, from then on, I thought she was the coolest mum. She told him I was a fan and he’d drop things off with her to give to me.
I got white labels of Duritti Column’s [1981 album] LC, [New Order’s 1983 single] Confusion… he’d leave them with her with handwritten letters on Factory notepaper. It was mind-blowing for me.
Your first band were The Electric Crayons, named after the 1986 Rubble compilation The Electric Crayon Set on Bam-Caruso. Who were they?
We were really just a covers band. We were into The Stooges and The Doors. We did a cover of LA Woman [laughs]. We had a single, Happy To Be Hated/Hip Shake Junkie, which came out on the day I joined The Charlatans.
How did you join them?
The Electric Crayons supported The Charlatans at Northwich Vics club, late ’88, early ’89. After we’d played and before The Charlatans came on Rob [Collins]
was trying to convince Martin [Blunt, bassist] to get me in the band. I don’t think Martin was that keen but I had their demo tape and I knew the words to their songs. Martin asked me to get up onstage and sing backing vocals and it felt like a communal thing. Martin and I bonded over bands we liked like the Small Faces, The Prisoners and I’d liked Makin’ Time, Martin’s previous band. Steve Harrison [Northwich music impresario and Charlatans’ manager] told me they weren’t sure how long it would last with [original singer] Baz [Ketley], and then Martin went to Baz’s to tell him it was over and before he could, Baz said he didn’t want to be in the band anymore and I joined in his place.
Success came quickly, with second single The Only One I Know hitting the Top 10 in 1990 and debut album Some Friendly making No 1. Did you enjoy it?
It felt like it had been a long time coming. Even though I was only 23 I felt like it was my last chance and it couldn’t come quick enough. When I heard the demo of [1989] first single Indian Rope I thought it was the best thing in the world. It was all Rob Collins, his Hammond solo with me singing on top, and I thought I’d joined the greatest band ever. Then the songs just came flooding out: The Only One I Know, Polar Bear, Opportunity… it was fantastic. We were in Smash Hits, on Top Of The Pops… We tapped into the dream.
1992’s second album, Between 10th And 11th, spawned the propulsive Hammond-led hit Weirdo, but the rest of the album was more downbeat. There were line-up changes, too: original guitarist Jon Baker had been sacked and Mark Collins came
in to replace him.
Jon [Baker] wasn’t feeling it and Rob wanted more from a guitarist and there
was a moment after many moments when
it felt best that he left. Mark auditioned, thinking we wanted a second guitarist.
He was a friend of a friend and fitted in perfectly. I’m not sure what he thought of us, though, as we were pretty dour and it was a struggle writing that second album.
I was living in London and the band were in Birmingham. I’d travel up in the week and stay at Jon [Brookes’] or Martin’s and it was like I couldn’t string a sentence together. Writing Weirdo, Can’t Even Be Bothered, The End Of Everything was like pulling teeth. [Producer] Flood saved us.
Steve Hillage then produced the follow-up, 1994’s Up To Our Hips. That seemed like a quirky choice; back then, prog was still a dirty word…
I really liked his album L, with Hurdy Gurdy Man on it, but Mark always says
I employed him because I liked his eyes and he had a really kind face. With Flood we’d made an electronic-sounding record and we wanted to get back to basics, get the feel of the records Martin and I had bonded over in the first place like the Small Faces and The Prisoners.
Which you did, presaging Britpop in many ways with the album’s first single, Can’t Get Out Of Bed.
We were in the studio and Paul Weller called us out of the blue, asked for a member of The Charlatans. I just happened to pick the phone up and he congratulated us on what am amazing song it was. We couldn’t believe it; it was nice to get that extra bit of validation.
Then, of course, it all went belly-up when Rob went to prison after being found guilty of helping his friend commit an armed robbery.
We found out early morning he was in custody. We went through every kind of emotion: anger, disbelief, upset. We had until his trial to get as much of the album down as we could and, when he went away, Mark’s brother John [Collins] came in and finished off some of the keyboards. There was a sense of urgency. We didn’t know how long he’d get; we didn’t know if this was it for us.
The Charlatans (1995) was written straight after he came out of prison.
A triumphant statement of intent, it’s got some of your finest songs on it with Crashin’ In, Just Lookin’, Just When You’re Thinkin’ Things Over…
Steve Hillage said to us that, as soon as Rob got out, he’d be desperate to get into the studio, so when he did come out, we immediately started writing and got first single Crashin’ In and B-side Back Room Window, then second single Just Lookin’ and B-side Bullet Comes. Then we had a hit with Just When You’re Thinkin’ Things Over.
This was at the height of Britpop, when Oasis and Blur were battling it out in the charts with Roll With It and Country House respectively. I remember hoping you’d somehow sneak past both of them. You did manage a very respectable No 12 and got on Top Of The Pops, though.
[Laughs]. It was a good time. When we first started writing at the beginning of the band, it was all of us together, and when Rob was sentenced, me and Mark started writing together. We only wrote one for Up To Our Hips, which was Another Rider Up In Flames, but The Charlatans album was pretty much all me and Mark. It shifted the dynamic and cemented mine and Mark’s friendship.
How was Britpop for you?
For me, it was centred around the Heavenly Sunday Social club nights. They were the best thing that happened to me since the HaÇienda in terms of meeting like-minded people. I was hanging out with Tom and Ed from The Chemical Brothers, singing
on their records [he sings on 1995’s Life Is Sweet]… I was their support DJ. I’d be playing the Beastie Boys, Barry White and The Creation, and they’d do their thing. It all seemed to cross over. Bobby Gillespie turned me onto Gram Parsons at this time and I was playing him a lot and seeing a lot of [Primal Scream’s] Andrew Innes, Richard Fearless, Jon Carter, Kevin Shields – there was lots of going out and talking about music and being in bands. It wasn’t just about Blur and Oasis. It was an incredibly fertile period.
But the good times were cut short when Rob was killed in a car crash halfway through recording fifth album Tellin’ Stories. How did you cope?
I don’t think I did. Ten years down the line I was really struggling with alcohol and drugs and I can only think that was a consequence of Rob’s death. None of us took it well although none of us were surprised. But tunnel vision took over. You know, we were in our twenties. He died outside Rockfield where we were recording. We packed our bags, we left. I only went back with the recording last year of I Love The New Sky.
How was that?
It was good. I invited Mark to play on a couple of tracks and he stayed in the same room he’d stayed in in 1996. Nothing had changed but everything had changed.
Three weeks after Rob’s death you were supporting Oasis at Knebworth with Duffy from Primal Scream on keyboards. What was the prevailing mindset in The Charlatans camp at that show?
We were surrounded by really good people who helped us through the time.
[Heavenly label boss] Jeff Barrett said we had to do Knebworth and Duffy stepped in and saved us. We had 10 days and it felt like three minutes. We flew in by helicopter because it was the only way we could guarantee we’d get there on time. It was all very chest-thumping and, by the time we came offstage, we were depleted. Me and Mark thought it was the end. We drove back during Oasis’ set and heard it on the car radio.
But then you finished the album.
We felt we should for the sake of the songs. We went through what we already had – One To Another and You’re A Big Girl Now – and we found recordings Rob had been working on with recordings of him as a child. I always felt he knew something.
Shortly afterwards, you moved to LA.
I’m guessing this was another consequence of Rob’s death.
Yeah, I had to get away. It didn’t help that the band moved to Cheshire [setting up live-in studio Big Mushroom] which was my worst nightmare as it’s where I grew up. Moving to LA was also a response to that. I liked the idea of stretching the band as
far as it could go and seeing if it could bounce back, and I think it did.
Tony Rogers came in on keyboards and you recorded 1999’s Us And Us Only, the first Charlatans album without Rob.
I don’t remember a lot about the recording of the album. I remember Tony didn’t want to play Hammond so we used lots of mellotron and Fender Rhodes, which immediately made the sound different. We also went from using tape at Rockfield and multitrack to recording everything digitally at Big Mushroom, and that naturally changed the sound as well.
It sounds like a band forced to grow up and be adults.
That’s a very good description. It’s a very low-key record but I think the singles – Forever, Impossible, My Beautiful Friend – are good. But at the same time our accountant ran off with a huge amount of our money and we had to pay back eight times that in taxes. I went to LA and threw myself into life there.
Your infatuation with the city and its culture was infectious, so much so that you managed to convince the band to come over and record Us And Us Only’s follow-up, 2001’s Wonderland, with Danny Saber.
I wanted to do it in LA. Mark was game and me and him did some demos at Danny Saber’s house. He was a fan of the band and got what we were trying to do. We made a fully-formed demo of Love Is The Key and sent it to the band and they loved
it so we did some more stuff and they loved that and so they came over and we all lived in LA for a while. We went to Mulholland Drive, used Sly Stone’s mixing desk and immersed ourselves in the alternative culture, and the results were good. If we had to grow up and be sensible for the album before, we got our chops back with this one.
So, just as the band had bonded again, you went and made your first solo album, 2003’s I Believe.
Yeah, I wanted to stay in the world we’d created while recording Wonderland and everyone else wanted to go back to Cheshire. I’d read about [filmmaker] David Lynch’s creative process, which is based in routine –he does the same thing every day – and
I decided I’d do the same. So everyday I walked from my house in Hollywood to the corner of Franklin & La Brea and met [songwriter/producer] Linus Of Hollywood there and everyday we ate pizza at the same time from the same place and then together we made I Believe. Some of the songs on there could fit on a Charlatans record and some I would have had to really fight to get on there. My solo records let me explore places The Charlatans wouldn’t go.
Those creative differences between you and the band came to a head on The Charlatans’ 2006 dub- and reggae-influenced Simpatico. You quit drinking and drugs after the making of it. Was that decision connected?
Yeah. As a band we were fragmented.
I wanted Adrian Sherwood to produce the album and we ended up using the producer for Stereophonics [Jim Lowe] so that was where the band was at. I lost because I couldn’t hold up a proper argument, because I was too wasted. That was one of the main reasons I quit drinking, because I couldn’t fight my corner anymore and I didn’t like that.
How bad had the addiction got?
I was drinking and taking coke the whole time. I’d throw up, pass out, wake up in the middle of the night and everyone would have gone home and I’d start drinking again while I was still lying on the floor. I remember seeing The Strokes in Hollywood. I got to their dressing room before they came offstage and, when they finished Julian [Casablancas, Strokes singer] opened the door and I was throwing up in the sink.
How hard was it to stop?
It was hard. I toured Simpatico sober and I was very fragile, a completely empty human being. It was like I was inside an egg without any yolk. But from the moment I stopped, I started to re-build my life, this time filled with real feelings rather than amplified drunken ones.
There was a session with Joaquin Phoenix around this time that’s never seen the light of day.
Yeah, I don’t think it ever will. Anthony Langdon from Spacehog was producing. He got me in and the songs, which started out heavy, morphed into these fantastic Anthony Newley/David Bowie-sounding things with these amazing lyrics written
by Joaquin. I sang backing vocals on four of them. It was two very strange and fun weeks of my life and then it was all over.
I never saw him again.
So, it was back to the day job and 2008’s You Cross My Path with The Charlatans, which became the first release to be given away as a free download via a radio station. What were you thinking?
[Chuckles] A lot of people have asked me that. But it was at the beginning of free downloads and me and Alan McGee, who was managing us then, were on a train and we thought it would be great to give away an album through a radio station. It felt like quite a radical, punk thing to do. When it was put to the band, they thought it was an OK idea, but they thought if we gave away the best album we’d ever made then that would make it a great idea. So that was the goal and we did a pretty good job. Alan Moulder mixed it and we’d wanted to work with him for a long time. Oh! Vanity and BIRD are just gorgeous. We got a million downloads and got to play in Australia for the first time on the back of it, so something good came out of it.
2010’s Youth-produced Who We Touch followed, which hit the Top 30, but while on tour in the US Jon Brookes collapsed and was diagnosed with a brain tumour which sadly led to his death in 2013. It must have felt a bit like history repeating.
As soon as he got the diagnosis, we all knew what the outcome would be. Jon was such
a driving force in the band personality-wise, and he wanted to take it to the max – that’s how he lived his life. He wanted to go over the life expectancy of someone who had that condition. We played live a couple of times with him but that was really hard as he really suffered backstage after, and recording was just out of the question. There was this huge sadness when he died but, at the same time, I’d just become a dad for the first time so
I also had this huge joy.
Modern Nature (2015) was the first album recorded without Jon. Was it tough?
No, because it was us celebrating his life. It felt like he was in the room with us, like he was guiding us. It was a joy to make. It was easy, came together naturally, and we had an amazing time making it.
Then, with 2017’s Different Days, it was a free-for-all involving the likes of Paul Weller, Gillian Gilbert and Stephen Morris, Johnny Marr and Ian Rankin.
I bumped into Johnny Marr while we were recording and I asked him to come up and see what we were doing, he stayed for three songs: Plastic Machinery, Not Forgotten and Future Tense. It went from there. I’d just finished writing my second book, Tim Book Two [the follow-up to his 2013 autobiography, Tellin’ Stories], where I’d been getting friends to recommend favourite records to include in it. Johnny had been involved in that, Paul Weller, Shuri Endo, Ian Rankin, and it felt very much like a community thing.
Which brings us to your fifth solo album, I Love The New Sky. Previous solo outings have focused on collaboration: As I Was Now (2008) saw you team with members of The Horrors, Primal Scream and My Bloody Valentine; Oh No I Love You (2012) was written with Lambchop’s Kurt Wagner; Same Language, Different Worlds (2016) was recorded with [Arthur Russell band’s] Peter Gordon. This one you wrote on your own…
That was intentional. I’d got off touring As I Was Now, which I’d made in 2008 but hadn’t come out until 2018’s Record Store Day. I had such a great time and was so energised by it I wanted to get straight back into making music. But this time I wanted to show everyone there is more to me than just the collaborative guy. I wanted to prove I could do it on my own.
So now you’ve proved that, what else is there still to achieve?
Put that way, I’m really not sure [laughs]. But you never know where the next idea is going to come from and where it might take you. You’ve just got to be open to the opportunities.
I Love The New Sky is on Bella Union. Also look out for Tim’s Twitter Listening Parties, every day @tim_burgess
