From Select
September 1995

Have another go if you think you're hard enough...

Kids today, eh? Make them baggy superstars, and they'll be alkies, cocaine burnouts and jailbirds in five minutes flat. Only thing is, The Charlatans know they're too good to grind down. "This is a long weekend, and we're only up to Saturday morning…."

"hey who are you guys? Are you famous? Are you a young aspiring band? Say Cheese!" For people who could easily make a few bob as tour guides on the Hell-And-Back Express it has to be said that The Charlatans are amazingly cheerful. This may be their thousandth photo shoot but it could easily be their first as the five members of the band gambol around Primrose Hill, cadging fags, drinking beer and generally acting like fifth formers who have just seen their school sink into the Atlantic trench. They don't grumble even when they have to trudge all the way up London's Primrose Hill. Even when they're kept out in the 100-degree heat making shapes for the best part of an hour. Or even when a passing group of cackling teenage girls ask them whether they are indeed a young aspiring band.

"Um…well, not really," Tim burgess politely replies as the teenagers click away. "We're The…" "Thanks," they shriek before disappearing over the horizon waving their cameras. "When you're on Top Of The Pops we'll be able to say that we spotted you first! Byeeeee!"

It is the kind of incident that is too cruel to take advantage of. And too funny not to. So, Tim, after six years, three albums and ten singles, are The Charlatans still a young aspiring band?

"Yeah, I guess," he laughs. "But that's cool. I'm always saying we're only just starting. She had me going though. For a second I thought she was going to ask if we were the Inspiral Carpets..."

Even at the age of nine Tim Burgess Knows the score. Tinker-tailor-soldier-ICI. Except, living in Northwich, there are no alternatives, just ICI. The petrochemical company owns an enormous plant in the town and everyone works there. The guy next door, the guy across the road, Tim's dad. Sure, he knows the score. IC fucking I.

Tim buys his first record. 'Judith Says (Knock You In The Head)' by The Vibrators. Tim jumps around his bedroom. Tim reconsiders his options. Tinker-tailor-soldier-pop star? Naaah. He can't sing. His uncle tries to teach him the guitar but Tim doesn't have the patience. If you can't do it now ... then what's the point?

Tim spends all his pocket money on records. At eleven he goes to see Killing Joke. In his school uniform. He hears Primal Scream's 'It Happens' on John Peel and skives off school to buy a copy. He hears New Order and his world explodes.

Tim: "I used to come home from school, go up to me bedroom and stay there all night listening to music. This is going to make me sound like a right fucking c***, but I'd write down imaginary set lists for New Order and The Fall. You know, what would be my total fucking favourite gig of all time. It's sad but true. I still do it."

Tim starts hanging around a record shop called Omega Music run by Steve Harrison. Seems like a bit of an upper-class kid but he knows his music. They start going to gigs together. In 1983, Tim leaves school with one O-level - in English - and the nightmare begins. ICI. Licking stamps. After a while he's 'upgraded' to fitter's mate. Tightening nuts and bolts in the freezing cold. But at least there's still the music. And the dancing, and the endless lists. Bernard Sumner. Mark E Smith. Mick'n'Keef. They know, man. They know.

Some mates form a band. The Electric Crayon Set. They do covers. 'Cold Metal' by Iggy Pop. Zeppelin stuff. Tim stalks the stage screaming his head off. Pretending he is Iggy. Leather jacket. Crewcut. Those big lips. He knows he looks cool. Early 1989. Steve Harrison calls. There's this new band doing the rounds. The Charlatans. Steve and Tim check them out. Tim's immediate reaction: they need a decent frontman.

The Charlatans have been going for about a year. They're an odd bunch. Martin Blunt: bassist, scooter boy, Motown fanatic, much too quiet. Jonny Brookes: drummer, reggae fan, metalhead, much too quiet. Rob Collins: organist, proud owner of every Who album ever released. Rob's old man made him learn the Hammond as a kid. He'd hated it. Wearing headphones in this huge shop and playing stupid nursery rhymes. But now it's paying off. Jonny and Martin are good. Laying down those off-the-beat rhythms like there's no tomorrow. The organ makes it sound different too. Right up there, in your face. The trio enlist guitarist Jon Baker who turns out to be even quieter than Martin. They have a singer. But one day the singer leaves. Martin knows Steve Harrison from the scooter circuit. Martin asks Steve if he knows any singers. Steve says maybe...

The audition takes place in Walsall. Martin asks Tim if he wants to sing. Tim has a go but it's straight Iggy: shouting like a maniac, ranting, screaming. They stop. Martin tells him to sing properly. Don't fucking shout, man. Sing. Jonny and Martin hammer into the beat, Rob cases his Hammond into cruise control. Tim starts adlibbing, sliding into the music. It's sounding good. Scratch that, it's sounding great. By the end they know. They fucking know.

All of them have shit jobs. All of them want out. They know it takes work. Over the summer they write and rehearse. Numbers come together out of endless jams. Over one weekend alone they write four songs. They sound good. Particularly one called 'The Only One I Know'. Dark. Funky. Lots of organ but with a bass break straight out of The Supremes. Tim tells his mates that the band are going to be bigger than New Order. They laugh in his face but it feels good. This pride. This mouth.

By September they're ready. The gigs come in. Walsall Overstrand. Northwich Victoria. Dudley JB's. Tim notes them all down. Steve Harrison recommends the band to anyone who comes to the record shop. He also agrees to manage them.

They debut 'The Only One I Know' at Crewe Oakley. The crowd go apeshit. Tim can't help wandering around with a smile on his face. It's not a matter of whether any more. Just when. After a few months they support Cactus World News at Manchester's Boardwalk: 210 people turn up. After The Charlatans finish, 200 of them leave.

Manchester is becoming the business. The Mondays and the Roses are in the charts. Everyone's wearing Inspiral Carpets T-shirts. But no one will take a chance on The Charlatans. So they release 'Indian Rope' on their own Dead Dead Good record label. The initial pressing sells out in a week and goes to number one in the indie charts.

Jonny: "I was at home, got up and put on 'The Chart Show'. I knew it was out and I knew it had done well. But when I saw it was number one I went fucking mad. I did a lap of honour in the front room. We didn't have a video, but it was more romantic because they had a still of the first sleeve which was a picture of me playing the drums. It looked like some mad garage kid smashing the shit out of his drums. I had to put the kettle on immediately."

Journalists turn up and ask about Madchester. Tim talks about the music. About Sly Stone. And Free. And the Stones. He is met with blank expressions. But when he starts running off at the mouth, saying The Charlatans are the best, everybody else is rubbish, they can't write it down fast enough. One by one the band pack in their jobs.

Jonny: "I was working as a wood machinist, processing wood for kitchen units. Every week I'd have a couple of days off to play a gig in Crewe or somewhere. I said to the boss, Look man I've got to have two days off this week. He said, I know what you're doing and if you take two days off then don't come back. I just got me coat, man, and said, I'll see you on TV. And it fucking worked! I felt like Clint Eastwood."

Suddenly, The Charlatans are top of every A&R man's gig list. Strangers buttonhole band members and point to their Rolex watches. These could be yours, they say. The band adopt a no gifts policy. No free lunches. No nothing. Eventually they sign to Beggars Banquet on the grounds that they seem like "really nice guys." The deal is struck at a pub in Jonny's home town of Wednesbury over a plate of cheese sandwiches. In April 1990 Beggars release 'The Only One I Know'. It debuts at number one in the Indie charts and number nine nationally.

The band are asked to do TOTP but decline. (Jonny: "We were on tour in the Outer Hebrides or something.") They carry on recording and touring. Their debut LP, 'Some Friendly', goes straight in at number one. The band hardly notice. It just seems like destiny. They go to America. Some hippy comes out of the woodwork, claiming he owns the name The Charlatans. They have to become The Charlatans UK in the States. Tim gets to do his Kerouac thing. Getting lost in the desert. Riding around with pissed-up Mexicans.

They go to Japan. They go everywhere. The money starts coming in. Tens of thousands of pounds. Jonny buys a Merc. Everyone goes on holiday. They've made it. They're there. Not quite as big as New Order. But close. "We're not even successful yet," Tim says in an interview. "We've got a lot more to achieve before we autodestruct." Somehow he forgets to touch wood.

By the summer of 1991, being in the Charlatans seems like the neatest place in the world. They have hit records. Magazine covers. The whole enchilada. But within the group bad business is going down. Martin becomes depressed. Withdraws. Worse still, when the band start demoing new material the record company suggest that maybe they need another 'The Only One I Know'. That organ. That drumbeat. Come on, the kids love it. Tim tries to explain that it doesn't work like that. The band do what they do. They're the ones who have to live with the music. Nobody listens.

They play The Royal Albert Hall. The next day Jon Baker says he's leaving. (Martin: "He's probably in a potting shed now. He was always a big gardener. Always tending his greens.") Jon is replaced by Mancunian native and ex-Carpets driver Mark Collins. But not fast enough to stop the Charlatans Split! stories. The band go in to record their second LP with Flood, who is fresh from transforming stadium-rockers U2 into post-modern ironists and has ideas coming out of his ears. Dig this sound. Listen to that sample. Never mind the Hammond, get a load of the synth.

Rob: "Flood was really good. But in the end it didn't really sound like us. I remember him trying some stuff out and it just sounded like Dr Who's Tardis. He got pissed off with me one day because he'd spent three days mixing this song and getting all the faders in the right place on the mixing desk I came in and pulled all the switches down. He got so angry. I was pissed up. I didn't know."

Mark: "It was a fucking nightmare. Martin was going through a rough time. He was a bit depressed and wasn't talking. So, I'm thinking, is this my fault? I thought I'd jinxed them. I became an alcoholic within about six months. One night we were doing a session for the album down at Rockfield and I drank so much I completely missed 24 hours and woke up pissing blood.

Mark sobers up. Following a brief period of hospitalisation Martin starts talking again. Eventually the album is finished. There are doubts about the production but the band know that, with songs like 'Weirdo' onboard, they could have recorded it in a cowshed and it would still be a hit 'Between 10th And 11th' hits the record shops in March 1992. It enters the chart at 21.

Jonny: "We were coming back from Copenhagen when the manager called up and told us. The plane could have crashed and we wouldn't have given a shit. Rob's always been quite pessimistic. He's always said, well, you know there's going to be a backlash. We're going to have to ride it out. And he was fucking right."

The media have new fish to fry. Nirvana. Pearl Jam. Soundgarden. Anyone with a check shirt and an overdrive pedal who isn't an organ-led Brit pop band. Oh yeah, and it turns out The Charlatans were only ever a cut-price Stone Roses anyway.

Rob: "Some of the reviews were just ridiculous. One said, There's no tune, no song, no chorus, no melody and no verse. That was the whole review. I thought, Fuck it. This is one man's opinion. It's just a shame that a hundred thousand people are going to read it."

There are good things. Singles continue to chart. Gigs still sell out. In August Madonna turns up to one of their shows in New York.

Tim: "It was pretty funny. We'd just done this gig at the Limelight and Madonna walks in with Seymour Stein. I'm just lying on the dressing room floor. She looks at me and says I'm gross. And I said, Yeah, well you're an ugly fucker and your videos are stupid. No, actually, I said that I thought the first three tracks on her album were smart. But then I say that to everyone."

Tim and Martin begin writing together. The stuff sounds good. Looser, but still cool. Flood is contacted about the next LP. He's busy. But that's OK, because Gong/System 7 head honcho Steve Hillage keeps calling the management. He thinks that if only they can record what they do live then something really special might happen. The band agree. Reviews Just keep on getting worse and worse. But screw them. They don't know. And, anyway, what the fuck else can go wrong?

Rob Collins will later look back on the events of December 3, 1992, and describe his actions as "really stupid". But "really stupid" doesn't really cover it, "Really stupid" is not taking videos back on time, or using the wrong side of a RizIa to roll a joint. What Rob does is drive the getaway car at an armed robbery.

The band have just returned from a tour of Japan. Rob and a mate drive over to see Jonny. On the way Rob's friend holds up an off-licence. Rob knows he should drive off. But they're mates. Rob lets the guy back in the car. That night the rozzers invite Rob down to the station for a quick chat. The chat lasts five days. The band plough on with the album. Nobody really believes that Rob is going to prison but, just in case, he lays down as many backing vocals and keyboards as possible.

In September 1993, Rob's case comes to trial. The judge gives him eight months. The first thing Rob sees at Shrewsbury jail is someone having a cup of boiling water thrown in his face. That night his cell-mate tells him that he murdered his wife and put a knife through his father-in-law. Next morning a guy approaches him in the showers. This is not good. The bloke looks at Rob then starts whistling the organ break from 'The Only One I Know'. "Good band, mate," he says and walks off. Within two days everyone in the prison knows. Most people think it's cool. Rob is left alone. It's no cakewalk. But, it's survivable.

The recording continues. It seems terrible but, even without Rob, things really start clicking. And when the band do get down then there's always Mr Good Vibes himself: Steve Hillage.

Jonny: "He was really buzzing off what we were doing. We'd been getting into different stuff. The Faces. Funkadelic. We just bounced our ideas off him. One day someone brought in the 'The Flying Teapot' (ludicrously pixie-oriented mid70s Gong opus) and we couldn't stop laughing. There was this feeling of all or nothing. But it was also, like, right, let's fucking show them."

The album is completed, and in January 1994 Rob is released from jail. A week later he's on TV.

Rob: "I came out on January 15 and we were on TOTP on the 24th. I could just imagine them all inside watching the TV going, you fucking waaaaanker. I have managed to put most of it behind me, but every now and again it keeps coming back. When we were playing at Glastonbury someone started shouting, Jailbait, Jailbait. I went, what the fuck are you on about? SHUT UP!"

The Charlatans' third LP, 'Up To Your Hips', charts at number eight. Relatively unknown Djs The Dust Brothers do a remix of 'Patrol'. It rocks. Ears begin to prick up. Realising they're on a roll, the band head back to the studio in the summer of '94. And wait for the next disaster.

"This album is fucking perfect," explains Tim Burgess after we have re-located from Primrose Hill to a nearby hostelry "It's like 'Up To Our Hips' only perfect. I wouldn't want to do it again. It's got all my favourite things - a bit of Sly And The Family Stone, The Beach Boys, the Beasties, Black Sabbath. A bit of fucking everything."

There was no disaster. No death. No plague of giant locusts. Just six months of writing and recording in the Monmouth countryside. Of course, it wouldn't be a Charlatans record without some sort of incident. The services of Mr Hillage were semi-amicably dispensed with halfway through, while Jonny broke his ankle during one of the band's more vicious football fixtures. Oh yes, and on a two-week break in LA Mark shoved so much cocaine up his nose that he's now only able to smoke the stuff. ("No, I didn't go and see a doctor. What's he going to say- Stop shoving cocaine up your nose!") Apart from all that, the band were able to concentrate on the music, with recording ending in March this year.

In short The Charlatans are back. Back and hip. Sell-out tours. Hit singles Good reviews. And, remember, it was Tim rather than, say, Bobby Gillespie or James Dean Bradfield, who got to sing on the recent Chemical Brothers album ("Well, we're mates. But it was nice to be asked. They could have got anyone.") Not that any of this comes as a surprise to the quintet themselves. After all, this is what they've been telling us for the last five years. Given their fairly shoddy treatment over the past half decade you might expect that the band, and Tim in particular, might be more than a tad suspicious about this whole rock'n'roll business. Yet, seeing him jabber on about obscure New Order B-sides or wailing out Rod Stewart classics, it's clear that he has kept both his love of music and his sense of humour.

In fact, after a few pints it's almost too easy to lob names at the guy and watch him go. Oasis? "Rate them. They're ambling slightly but that's not a crime." Suede? - "Not a fan. Phantom Of The Opera." Blur? "I've met them. They're OK. I'm not a fan. But that don't make me a sinner."

Then there's the big one. What about The Stone Roses? Isn't it just a mite ironic that the band with whom you've been (unfavourably) compared to a million times now appear to be substantially worse off than The Charlatans?

I don't know," he replies, actually appearing to consider the matter rather than merely rattling off his usual list of prejudices and devotions. Always thought we were coming from completely different places anyway. They spurred us on in the early days. And we spurred them on in their bleaker days. You know, we're not pretend groups. Even from the start we've wanted to get this across. It's not a hobby. I still see these groups coming up all the time and you just think hobby, hobby, hobby, hobby. For us it was never that. It was always a means of getting out."

"There's no way I'm going to be Alf Roberts. No fucking way." It is late. Very late. But back at The Charlatans' hotel it appears that there is still mucho serious business at hand. The Stone Roses' second has yet to be bellowed in its entirety. Then, naturally, we'll be moving on to that age-old parlour game, What's your favourite Bob Dylan album? But before all those shenanigans can commence it's going to be necessary to decide, once and for all, who's going to be Alf Roberts?

The video for the new single, you see, is to feature The Charlatans as gangster-types roaming London's mean streets in an array of sharp suits and nifty cars. Think Sweeney. Think Long Good Friday. And, in particular, think Get Carter, which features the legendary scene in which East End hood Michael Caine informs Brian Moseley (AKA Coronation Street's Alf Roberts) that he is indeed a big man but sadly out of shape. "I," Caine intones before beating him up, "do this for a living." Once the possibility of including this in the video has been mooted there is some disagreement over who will say what to whom.

"You're a big man, George, but you're out of shape..." says Tim

No fucking way.. You're out of shape," replies Jonny "I do this for a living."

Watching all this with an air of decidedly amused detachment is Martin, a man whose laid back demeanour makes Gentle Ben look like a fascist bully boy. Not that the guy finds all this a bizarre way to be paying the rent.

"Well I've never seen it as a job," Martin replies in his hypnotically soft Brummie burn "Being in The Charlatans is a long weekend, you know. And we're up to about Saturday morning at the moment."

"I don't feel like we've won anything," interjects Tim, having dealt with the Alf Roberts business ("We'll sort it out in the morning.") "I don't feel as if we deserve a pat on the back. It's just doing what you're into and believing in your actions. I would fucking die for these songs. If people want to slag it in print, then that's fine. But if anyone comes up to me and slags this group to my face ... I'd smash their fucking teeth in."

Ladies and gentlemen... The Charlatans. Nice guys. But approach with caution. Remember, they do this for a living.