From Vox Magazine
March 1997
 

The Mourning After...

For a tight band like THE CHARLATANS, the death of keyboardist Rob Collins was devastating. Still mourning, but determined to carry on, they're about to release a new album, 'Tellin' Stories'. "We want to push out, not pull in," they tell VOX.

Jon Brookes was at home in the Midlands on the night of July 22, the night his close friend and colleague Rob Collins was killed in a car accident in Monmouth, South Wales. The grief hit the drummer hard and immediately, smashed into his soul with more force than anything he can remember. The Charlatans are an extremely tight unit, but Jon was particularly close to the late keyboard player. The shock was overwhelming and devastating.

Isolated from singer Tim Burgess and guitarist Mark Collins (no relation), who'd spent the evening with Rob before the crash, and from bassist Martin Blunt, who was at home in the North West, Jon took his grief down to his local and drank in the pain behind locked doors until early the next morning.

Then he started to put things back together. At a meeting four days later, the band learned that Rob's father had telephoned their manager to tell him that Rob would've wanted the band to continue with their business and they agreed that it was the only thing they could do otherwise they'd grind to a professional and personal halt.

They cancelled that weekends Oasis support at Loch Lomond, but vowed to work towards playing with them at Knebworth in August. They'd need someone to play Rob's keyboard parts though, so they phoned Primal Screams Martin Duffy and he agreed to step in. They would rehearse together for a week, they said, and if it worked out OK then that was brilliant. If it didn't they'd have to think of something else. But first there was a funeral to attend in Rob's native Wolverhampton.

So Jon went into Birmingham to buy a suit for Rob's funeral. After an afternoons difficult shopping he decided he needed some comfort food and ducked into the nearest McDonald's. Glancing to his left in the queue he thought he recognised the small, bushy character in the next line. Fuck me, he thought. That's Noel Gallagher! What's he doing buying a Big Mac with his two bodyguards in Birmingham?!?

"Really sorry to hear about Rob" say's Noel shaking Jon's hand. "But I'm glad you're still playing with us at Knebworth. That's why I'm here actually. We're rehearsing down the road at the NEC. Do you fancy popping in later and having a drink?"

So Jon and his girlfriend turned up at the NEC a few hours later and were ushered through the layers of security into the main hall where Oasis performed a short set for, well, just Jon and his girlfriend actually.

"She couldn't believe it" he laughs. "But it was brilliant. They're very genuine, nice blokes. We had a few beers after and they were really polite to my girlfriend, and we just had a good time. It wasn't awkward at all. And they were really concerned about how we were since Rob's death. But then I find that most people really are..."

He pauses. I think of Rob every day, you know, and I probably always will. I love the guy, he was one of my best friends. The great thing, though, is what he's left behind. He's left the world a legacy. He was one of the greatest keyboard players who ever lived and that belongs to the planet. I salute him for that. And you never really knew what would happen next with him because he was pretty I00 miles an hour, was Rob...

"Ah, brings a smile to my face just talking about him," he says, staring hard at the table and pursing his lips.
"Brilliant."

He raises his glass and silently toasts the air.

The four quarters of The Charlatans are sitting around a table in an East London photo studio leafing through a pile of old magazines and chatting idly. The band have taken one day off recording to perform these promotional duties, but also for a change of scenery. They'll be heading back to Monnow Valley in South Wales to continue mixing their album tonight.

There's Martin Blunt, the intelligent, sensitive bassist and father who thinks long and hard about everything he says, and who sometimes has difficulty putting all his thoughts in the right order, but makes a great deal of common sense when he does. Opposite him there's Mark Collins, the wiry, forthright Mancunian who replaced original guitarist John Baker in I990, but who breathes the same mixture of optimism, belief and pragmatism as his fellow Charlies.

Striding through the studio's doors with a can of Coke is Jon Brookes, a direct, sincere man who sweats decency and who, you imagine, has little time for much of the fluff and pomposity of the business that surrounds his band.
And then, hanging from his chair to our left, there's the wide-eyed spirit of the band. The fidget who can swing from hysterical giggles to forlorn introspection in the blink of a pretty eyelash, the goofy dreamer who deals alternatively in riddles and blinding truth, the gregarious idealist who really does believe anything is possible. He's Tim Burgess and he's the singer.

"We still talk as five people," says Martin. "We have to because that's what we are and always will be. I look around the table and look at us five and I think someone's missing because there used to be five of us and now there's four.
I think the time for grief will be when we've finished the album. I'll never come to grips with it for as long as I live.

"I still think of all the good times with him, but I've still got total belief in what we're doing now. We've got better. The enthusiasm, the zest, the lust for what we're doing is just as strong."

He looks up and sees his bandmates discussing a pose for the photos, moving a chair about in front of the camera and swapping places on the seat. He stands up and smiles wanly.

"We've got some new poses for our photos now." He shrugs. "We're a four-piece, you see."

"You know that feeling when you're totally helpless and you can't do anything," says Tim over a pint of strong lager in a pub around the corner a little later. "That's how I feel. Just helpless about the situation. But... but... you've just got to move on to the next bit. There wouldn't be any point in carrying on if we had been totally fulfilled with what we've done. But obviously we haven't been.

"We alI know that we've got a better place to get to musically, and Rob's part of that, too, because we'd recorded I2 songs with him when he died. I know what we've lost is big, but I know that what we'll get is big. So it's phase two..."
He rocks back in his chair and starts giggling and flicking his finger. "Prog!"

Of course, it's not prog really. Phase Two for The Charlatans started with the blinding 'One To Another' single, The Charlatans' very own 'Gimme Shelter' which roared into the chart at Number Two last summer, a month after Rob's death, but still riddled with his devastating keyboards.

The next step is 'North Country Boy', the new single that dramatically changes their tack again. This time they've recorded a lush, melodic country-rock-tinged pop song that Tim says is about: "Love and forgiveness, I think. Relationship bollocks that means...a lot to me. And to you too probably." Along with Mark's sweeping guitars ("he's very underrated," notes Martin), the song's most prominent feature is the sweet keyboard hook that carries the song on its back.

They're Rob Collins' keyboards and he was on his way back to the studio to mix the song on the night he crashed his BMW and died, adding more poignancy to an already affecting track.

"Me and Tim were in cars in front coming back from the pub to the studio to mix 'North Country Boy'," says Mark, "and Rob was in the car behind... and then he wasn't. About an hour after we got back to the studio, the police came around and told us to get down to the hospital. We'd only been told that he'd been in an accident and expected a broken wrist or something. Didn't expect to be told that he was dead. So we ended up sitting up all night getting absolutely slaughtered. Got pissed for 48 hours, and then went home.

We were in the middle of recording when Rob died and we took three months off. It did run through my mind when we came back, you know will there be a few ghosts knocking about the studio? - but we just sank our teeth into it. Had to.

"A week after he died we decided we had to do those gigs, otherwise we would've just been sat at home twiddling our thumbs, going: 'Oh, for fucks sake!' Even though we didn't know whether we were starting or stopping, coming or going for that first week after he died, in the back of our minds we knew we had to get into what we are. We're a group and we'd got so far with the record it would have been criminal to have just stopped.

"This band has changed so much with each album and now we've taken a new twist. Some twists are really good and this one is really bad. What else could we have done?"

"It's been great listening to the songs we recorded," adds Jon, "because you can hear Rob talking between tracks. He was a good lad. And he worked a hell of a lot, but he always worked at night. He was a bat. We'd be in bed and he'd continue all night until the afternoon, and then he'd go to bed and we'd get up and continue. He was a lone swordsman."

Jon picks his spot on the table and stares hard at it. Clearly, all four Charlatans are deeply affected by what happened last summer, and when you meet them there's a strange, changed atmosphere about them. A little of the bounce has been knocked out of their stride, as if they are literally weighed down by grief.

But what is noticeable is the determination to remain positive about their situation, to avoid the mentality that they are merely carrying on, but to view the whole situation as simply another diversion in their course.

'"We're not carrying on in memory of Rob," says Mark. '"We're still going because we're still alive."

"I just feel comfortably numb about it," explains Martin. "But on another level, to lose a son is terrible. It should go in a proper cycle, shouldn't it? You don't bury your son. Our loss is nothing compared to his parents; we're just in a group. They lost a son. But you either turn it into something positive or a complete loss, and we're turning it into something positive.

"We have unfinished business to attend to, loads of ideas that still have to come out. There's so much more music still to come out."

"You wait until you hear the album," says Tim. "It'll knock you over, man. It's the best stuff we've ever done, I think, Really strong songs. Brilliant melodies and, er, good lyrics. Best fucking words you ever heard. Without boasting or anything, of course!"

"Ah, the lyrics are really, really brilliant," nods Jon in agreement. "I'm finding a lot of solace in Tim's lyrics right now."
What are you singing about, Tim?

"Everything real. Giving it to 'em real. And raw. just about people and me and the world."
"Every song tells a story," explains Jon more helpfully. "And we've tailored the music around the lyrics and I think that works really well. It's why 'North Country Boy' is so different from 'One To Another'. I think people will be surprised by how much better it is."

"Can I say that the album is called 'Telling Stories'?" asks Tim nervously.

"No, you can't!" shouts Mark. lt's not sorted, someone might nick it."

"Well..." Tim weighs up his options. He twiddles with his collar and rolls his pint glass around the edge of the table. He shakes his head from side to side, contorting his face in various grimaces. "lt is called 'Telling Stories'. That's its title. And it's absolutely amazing!"

He shrugs and looks very, very sad. And then bursts out laughing. If ever a movie is made of his life then Tom Hulce's portrayal of Amadeus Mozart would be the perfect model.

"That's probably the only thing I feel bitter about," says Martin, rocking slowly in his seat. That this is the best stuff we've ever done and Rob's going to miss out on it."

The room suddenly becomes very quiet, save the two blokes at the bar discussing the various merits of West Ham's current defence and Spurs' attack and the gentle whirr of a fruit machine mixed in with the mumble of Newsroom South East on the telly.

Tim coughs.

"Do you think it would be rude if I went and bought us all another drink now?" he asks.

The first tentative step back, then, for The Charlatans after Rob's death was at Knebworth, supporting Oasis.
At the biggest gig in this country ever. Are they not tougher than Bruce Willis and completely and utterly mad?

"The gig itself wasn't that daunting," says Jon, unbelievably. "Because there's only so far you can see with the human eye and that's only as far as Linford Christie can run in 20 seconds or something. So, at a gig that big, you don't look out much because you can't see. You look inward. You become Roger Bannister. I just felt numb. The general consensus was, I think, that it was a marvellous achievement by a group of bands, including Oasis, to ever get that far, but that it perhaps one step too far."

"I thought it was alright, the size of it," says Tim. "I thought our gig was okay, not mesmeric. But afterwards I felt awful. The build-up was big for us, you know 'We've got to be there and be good, be brilliant', and afterwards we thought
we hadn't been as good as we could've. Plus, it wasn't our gig."

"For me," says Mark, It felt weird from the moment we stepped off stage, not because of he show that we'd done, but because we hadn't had a moment to think until the moment we stepped off that stage. I used to stand next to Rob onstage for five years and for the first time he wasn't walking off stage with us. That's when it hit me."

"It was year dot from the end of that gig," says Jon. "lt was the point where we took that first step forward to somewhere new. It was the first gig after Rob's death and it was good to do it, it was important to make that step forward. The whole day was unreal and mad, though. We arrived US-Air-force-style in this great big helicopter and we got them to fly us around the place a few times just to size it all up. When we landed we got picked up in these little buggies and then they drove us to our dressing room. All very strange, but quite an experience."

And since then they've been in the studio - apart from the three months they allowed themselves to mourn privately - finishing the work they'd started with Rob early last year. Duffy has been playing on some of the tracks, but, with respect to him, The Charlatans view it as Rob's album really. Partly because he did complete the bulk of the tracks before he died, and partly because it just seems right. They won't be revealing who played on what song on the sleeve.
I think we're closer now than ever," says Jon, suddenly, "That might sound weird considering we've lost an integral part, but it's brought us even closer. I don't mean that in a self-righteous way and it's not a big pride thing either. We've just started to wise up to what we want."

"We want it big," states Tim simply.

"I do," continues Jon. 'We always have, though. But before we were five people who used to have it all in our hands and we'd piss about with it a bit much. Now, Rob's death has focused us. It's a very humbling thing. Like realising how amazing music is, how amazing it is to be making the music that we do and can make. Our music is going to liberate us and hopefully it's going to liberate a lot of other people, too."

'We've probably got what we wanted on every single album," says Tim, "at that time. But we're growing and as you grow, you want to grow taller, as tall as you can, to reach up and fucking scrape the stars, and that's what we're aiming for now."

He stands up to reinforce his point and knocks his head on the Christmas decorations above his head.

No! I'm cracking my head open on paper decorations now! Heeeeee! But... I don't know how brilliant our interview technique is. We don't stand and practise in front of a mirror or think about what we're going to say like some, and I'm not arsed about that. I don't care about that really. I just want us to be truthful, to speak the truth, to make the best records we can and to have it. If that's alright."

What if you made the best record you could and you didn't have it. What if you made that great, classic record and nobody was that bothered?

"Well," considers Tim, If you made your best record and nobody bought it then you'd have to face up to the fact you were boring."

That's a bit harsh. There's loads of lost classics out there.

"A few, yeah, but normally the general public pick up on good bands in the end. They get it wrong a lot of the time, too. Look at Phil Collins. But they get it right. Look at Oasis. And, you know, maybe look at us."

"Sometimes," says Jon, introspection baffles people. A lot of people like our band and our music and if we were to get introspective they'd say: 'I really like what you're doing, but I don't understand you. ' There's no point in being complex and speaking double Dutch. That's not what The Charlatans are about.
.
'"We know that everybody is the same the world over. We understand that people need to connect, that they don't need in-jokes. We're in front of our audience. We don't want to implode. We're an out-going thing, man. We want to push out, not pull in."

And there and then, at 7:45pm, in a grotty L-shaped pub in Whitechapel on a freezing cold evening, Jon Brookes has nailed down exactly what makes his tidy little band tick. They are the people's choice. They have battled through huge adversity - from losing their first guitarist on the eve of recording their second album to Martin Blunt's breakdown to Rob Collins' imprisonment and death - and yet their resolve and drive and appetite has never really been blunted. In fact, it grows with each new release.

And now, on the eve of their fifth album it seems that, on the back of two huge leaps forward in the shape of 'One To Another' and 'North Country Boy', once again they're about to realise their enormous potential.

"Obviously," says Martin, "you can never be completely satisfied with what you've done in retrospect. But at the time, all our albums have been right for us then, and we've been behind them totally. And we're not afraid of sounding how we feel like and doing whatever we want to within the song.
"If it's good, it's good. We can listen to new stuff like the Wu-Tang Clan or whatever and get off on that, or we can pick on something that sounds like it was made ages ago and get that. Like bloody Neu or Can. And we'll carry on writing good records without Rob, because his spirit will always be there.

"But the thing is, this record really is the business. It feels so right and sounds good. It's like a cross between Dexys' 'Searching For The Young Soul Rebels' and 'Let It Bleed' by the Stones. That's the spirit behind it. And our belief is as strong as it was seven years ago. It's spiritual. And I don't think cynicism has eaten away at the group the way it could've done."

'What's the point in being cynical anyway?" asks Mark, rhetorically. "Enjoy life. You only get the one."