Tim: Yeah, I still feel the same naivety. I think naivety is one of the best things ever, It keeps you fresh and exciting, you lose that and you become trapped.

But how do you keep that feeling?

Tim: By continuously delving into things you don't know about. It's dead easy for us to say no as well, that's our favourite word! People think that success goes with selling yourself, we just want to be ourselves and if it is a success, well that's brilliant, but you've got to stay realistic and be yourself.

Are you happy with what you've achieved so far?

Tim: We haven't really done anything yet, we still feel like a new group, we've done fuck all really. We never take anything for granted, we never sit back and think, this gig, or this single, is going to automatically do well. Having a turnout in Bridlington on a Wednesday night in the middle of June really surprises us, you know.

Are the charlatans stroppy bastards then?

Tim: I've always been stroppy anyway! We're just not interested in suffering fools.

How hard is it being with each other constantly?

Martin: You have to give each other space. We take our own little diversions, that's kept us closer together.

What sort of diversions?

Martin: Just outlook and attitude, first of all, with the music, which is to please ourselves. If people like it, great. Its always been like that.

Tim: It's something you have to stick by, you can't become a commodity! It sounds really snotty but integritys important. We go against the grain of the rules of marketing, we want to get off that single, tour, album tour treadmill. Its fuckin' boring!

What happened with yourself, Martin? There were reports of you being hospitalised for manic depression?

Martin: It had all been building up since August, really. I took a bit of a turn for the worse. Contrary to some of the papers, I didn't go to hospital, I convalesced at home for two weeks. I just seemed to take everything on top of me, but mainly it was due to things outside the group.

What was the bands reaction to this?

Tim: I just thought he was a miserable bastard!

Martin: You would!

Tim: Most of it, like Mart said, was to do with things outside the group, so nothing was said apart from, Get well soon, and, Don't worry about it.

Mark, what did you honestly think of the band before joining?

Mark: I thought 'Then' and 'Over Rising' were good. I thought they were a decent band. They asked me down for a rehearsal, I didn't really think anything of it and it just seemed to work.

Tim: He hasn't been asked to join yet, he just won't go away! But no, seriously, it's official, folks, Mark is the new Charlatan. Poor sod!

Lets talk 'baggy' fellas. What you do you think people got from the whole Manchester thing?

Martin: I think it was really positive, inspired a lot of people to form bands and create something.

Tim: The whole 'scene' angle was never really there, we never really knew any of the other bands anyway.

You mean you're telling me that you lot, the Mondays, the Roses and the Inspirals never hung around around Manchester together, swapping ciggies and shouting out 'Nice one!'?

Tim: Sorry to shatter your illusions, Gary! But we've never really hung out with other groups,though a 'scene', to me, suggest bands being similar and doing and saying the same things, groups generally just hanging out. We've never tried it, plus, I don't really like anybody else. We respect those bands but at the end of the day it's not about what the group across the road are doing, it's all about what you're doing.

Do you think the Charlatans will be going in a few years time?

Martin: Who knows?

Tim: If it becomes meaningless, absolutely no way. You see some bands, not mentioning any names and you just think, Why don't you just leave it and stop making idiots of yourselves? I don't think any of us could do that. I really
don't. But having said that, I don't think we've touched greatness yet. No way.

Whats the most embarrassing interview you've ever done?

Tim: It's got to be the one when Rob chucked up over a journalist in France! The worst interviews have got to be the ones when Rob's being interviewed and is asked a question and doesn't answer at all. I like it when the tabloids make things up about us, I always find that really amusing. I remember the Mirror phoning us up in America and I just slammed the phone down on them, I couldn't do it. I remember one of them saying The Charlatans are that anti-rock 'n' roll that they clean up their own hotel rooms after a party! And also that anti rock 'n' roll, they get all their mums on tour to cook their food for them!

What have your parents made of it all?

Tim: My mum always says 'Don't keep pulling those ridiculous faces in photos!' My Dad was really concerned about Martin after reading all that crap in the press recently. He said 'Do you know a lot of famous people have been manic depressives? Tchaikovsky, Charles Dickens.' I said, 'Oh, alright Dad!' I thought that was pretty cool. They've been pretty supportive when they've known something's going down but they never really got the picture until 'Indian Rope'.

Why did you join the Charlatans, Tim?

Tim: I was a bit of a pathetic child at school and singing was possibly the only thing I could carry off to a relatively decent, nearly good degree. I could never have been a car mechanic or a soldier, imagine me in a trench! I use to mime to 'Love Bites' by The Buzzcocks and I used to like to be the person who knew every word to a song that was a bit left-field to what everyone else was into. I'm good at informing people, boring people almost, about music! I'm pretty good at singing the words to all my favourite songs but when it comes to the Charlatans songs, I forget everything!

If the band - heaven forbid- split and a film was made of the Charlatans, who would you like to direct it and who would play you all?

Tim: I'd like Ken Russell. He's supposed to be doing a video for us soon, he's our hero in film, he's like the fish 'n' chips of directors, so it would be a cross between A Hard Days Rut and The Tragical History Tour. Ha ha ha! No it would probably have to be a documentary-type thing. Playing me, its go to be Keith Richards. Kathleen Turner to play Rob and Frank Zappa to play Jon.

Martin: Spike Milligan for me!

Mark: Dustin Hoffman

Gary Crowley

Tim gives his views on the rest of the band...

Rob Collins...He's a total eccentric, very English, very working class. He comes up with the most ridiculous, amazing ideas. He wanted to change his handwriting and signature recently, just to try and confuse me! He's fucking gone, totally! I think he's a genius on the keyboards and his general musical ability brings a lot to the group.

Martin Blunt...Martin's a realist, he's the one who makes sure that no one gets over-excited about anything. We're dead close.

Mark Collins...Mark is the ultimate socialist, that's why he gets on so well with Martin. I think that's really cool. We're not realy into that whole football thing, but he plays for a footie team called Red Star Chorlton! He's pretty against the grain, we always thought of him as this aloof but dead energetic character that we knew but didn't know enough. So when Jon left he was the ultimate person we could have had in the group.

Jon Brookes...Jon's sort of similar to me, and that's why we fight. We just dig at each other all the time. I remember in Japan I had a go at him about his drumming, said his drumming had turned a song into a rock song. He said, Bullshit, and it all went off! Two minutes later I apologised.

Tim Burgess...To be honest I think I get on people's nerves quite a lot. I talk too much sometimes. I come up with a lot of ideas, some that are decent, some that aren't. I'm always throwing my weight in, but I write the words so maybe I should speak the most.

The band...Someone was saying the irony of the Charlatans is they want to be massive but they don't play the game. My view on that is that we want to be massive but we want to do it on our own terms, we don't want to play those games of pampering to people or over selling ourselves. We want to grow and expand, we don't want to let other people take us to bigger things. We used to be naïve and very single-minded, not scared of anything. But as things have become more commodity-angled, we want to go against the grain of the business because we're not into business, if we were we'd have been bank clerks. We just want to be a pop group, full stop.

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