Prison, death, fraud and depression: lesser bands might have been crushed by the hand that fate has deal the Charlatans. But their best album yet demonstrates their talent for making good karma out of a crisis.
'Welcomes to the inside of our heads.' Wales, Thursday. Tim Burgess, 34 but still boyishly cute, is mumbling to the audience in his soft Mancunian burr, but they can't hear him. They're too busy cheering the first live appearance by the Charlatans in 18 months. Two years ago, after 10 years with the band, Burgess moved to Los Angeles, where he now lives with his American wife; his bandmates continue to live in Manchester, Walsall and smalltown Cheshire.
Many of the audience, all fanclub members and persistent visitors to the band's website, probably thought they'd never see this day. How does a band rehearse, let alone make music, when the frontman lives 5,300 miles away? They may have released six albums and 20 top 40 singles, but how do you maintain momentum when many of your more-lauded peers from the past 12 years have disintegrated under the weight of herculean drug habits and the tectonic clashing of egos? And they didn't have to contend with prison, death, embezzlement and depression.
Shouldn't these almost-famous five have been done for a long time ago? If not destroyed by creeping indifference or changing tastes of plain old fatigue, then at least by their own often farcically rotten luck and some occasionally heavy partying? The more interesting question, though, is how did they triumph over tragedy and their sometimes sluggish track record to make Wonderland, their best record yet and the most exciting British rock album of the year? Have they finally shaken off the Curse of the Charlatans? 'We want to win,' Burgess reflects later. 'And I do think that, now, becoming the biggest rock'n'roll band in the world is a little bit easier than before.'
Tonight was just a warm-up. Burgess flew in from
LA only two weeks ago for a few days of rehearsal at Big Mushroom, the
band's studio/HQ in rural Cheshire. This is where Burgess stays when he's
in the country, and all the band live within a 45-minute radius.
Tim Burgess may have enjoyed being an iconic pin-up of British alternative
music throughout the Nineties, but he's no cock of the walk. He may like
a drink or 20, and will freely admit that some of Wonderland was recorded
under the influence of Ecstasy, but he is devoid of rock-star posturing.
In a forgiving light he may throw a few Mick Jagger shapes, give off a
Jim Morrison vibe. But turn the dark off and he is revealed as a bit Bob
Dylan (meditative), a bit Jarvis Cocker (drily humorous), and a whole
lot Tigger (irrepressibly enthusiastic).
On stage at Wrexham, guitarist Mark Collins is overwhelmed by feedback, Burgess' voice packs in, and keyboard player Tony Rogers is subdued throughout the set. Burgess is disappointed, but the Charlatans could be forgiven for having other things on their minds tonight. For it was Wales, on July 22 1996, that the band's original keyboard player, Rob Collins, died in a car crash. The band were in the middle of making the fifth album, Tellin' Stories. That night they were returning to their studio in Monnow Valley, having been out drinking. Collins, 33, had drunk more than twice the legal limit when his BMW spun violently out of control on a country road. He wasn't wearing a seltbelt, and was thrown from his car as it smashed through a hedge. By the time the band arrived at Abergavenny Hospital, he was dead.
Greece, Saturday. Sitting on the roof of their Athens hotel, the Charlatans can see the clouds rolling in from a distance to obscure the morning sun. That night, just before they are due to go on stage at the Rockwave Festival, and five minutes into the first band's opening number, thunder and lightening strike. It is the country's worst storm in 30 years. It soaks the Charlatans' equipment, which is set up, uncovered, on stage. Between squalls, stage crew armed with hairdryers will attempt to dry amplifiers. Five minutes music is all the festival gets. 'But,' drummer Jon Brookes says brightly, later, 'if they'd gone another year without rain they'd have had a severe drought.' It is a very Charlatans view to take - to be optimistic in the face of disaster.
England, Tuesday. The band are in the London offices of their PR company choosing B-sides, reviewing sleeve artwork and drinking lager. They all gather round to talk, save a pale Tony Rogers, who says he isn't feeling too great and would rather sit this one out.
Wonderland is the band's seventh album, but the first they have recorded outside Britain. More than half its tracks began life in a studio in Los Angeles, a short drive from Burgess's California home. The location choice wasn't just a practical response to logistics that had seen Burgess, Collins, Rogers, Brookes, and bass player Martin Blunt - thirtysomething family men though still legendary party animals - shuttling back and forth from across the Atlantic during the writing of the album last year.
'We had a vision,' Burgess declares, sprint-drinking Stella Artois, 'of driving down the freeway in LA, and having the soundtrack of your life blaring away in the background.' Madonna's Music, he reveals, was one influence. 'We compared Music to Wonderland, and ours sounded better - and that was it. When I come home late at night I listen to a lot of records, and because the state I'm in by then, they tend to be pretty much party records - Black And Blue by the Rolling Stones has been played a lot. Barry White, Ohio Players, Al (Green), Curtis (Mayfield).'
Wonderland's centrepiece is A Man Needs To Be Told, its 'anti-macho' lyrics reflecting the emotional candour that settling down has brought the leas singer. Marriage suits Tim Burgess. He met his wife Michelle (who works in the local music industry) at a Chemical Brothers gig in LA just over two years ago, and moved there shortly afterwards. Mark Collins thinks that for the first time Burgess has found a place where he feels at home. 'You can't keep running away!' Burgess declares with a grin. 'LA has been good for me on every level. I love adventure. Maybe I've been stifled before. I don't miss narrow cobbled streets, I don't miss the fact that in Britain everyone's rushing to get somewhere but they're not really going anywhere. I do think people in Britain are very scared to say what's on their mind.'
Burgess is a shy boy but a restless soul. He can't sleep at his parents' house in Northwich, Cheshire: the walls in his childhood bedroom are paper-thin; the house, and village, are too quiet. His parents found LA 'too fast' when they few over for their son's beachside wedding two years ago.
Does he think he's good-looking? He pauses before saying, with a cheesy smile, 'I think I'm a bit of a catch.' Did that work in the band's favour in the early days? 'Maybe, in the beginning, it helped to disguise the fact I might not, ultimately, have been making much sense. Although I did know what a melody was....' They first convened in Northwich in June 1989. Just up the road in Manchester, or 'Madchester', the Stone Roses and Happy Mondays were kings and New Order's nightclub, the Hacienda, was the pleasure palace, as rock music and dance music hopped into bed together for the first time.
But despite London record companies' enthusiasm for all things Manc, the Charlatans were unable to secure a record deal. So in February 1990, using money raised by their manager Steve Harrison and his sister, they released the single Indian Rope on their own label. It sold 25,000 copies. 'By word-of-mouth,' beams Blunt., 'and it sounded like Deep Purple.' That autumn their debut album, Some Friendly, hit number one. In the following year the original guitarist, Jon Baker, left, to be replaced by Mark Collins (no relation to Rob) and Blunt was admitted to hospital suffering from clinical depression.
But these early struggles to get a record deal, to be taken seriously, to keep going, helped define the band and tightened their bonds. 'Why have we survived?' considers Brookes. 'Because initially we didn't get it right. We were stumbling along doing our thing, and people related to it because it was totally honest. But we were learning as we went.'
In 1993 the band was forced into limbo when Rob Collins spent four months in prison for acting as a getaway driver in the armed robbery on a West Midlands off-licence. When he died three years later, the band were about to release their best single, the now-classic One To Another, and were due to play crucial shows, including supporting Oasis at Knebworth. Why didn't they give up when Collins died? After all, they were a gang of friends much more than they were a band. 'We hadn't really finished what we'd started,' explains Brookes.
After the funeral they went home for three weeks and took stock. They cancelled their appearance supporting Oasis at Loch Lomond, and were considering doing the same with Knebworth. But their press officer told them, 'You have to do it', and gave them the telephone number of Primal Scream's Martin Duffy. He was happy to stand in as keyboard player until a full-time replacement was found.
So, after being persuaded by Collins' father, the Charlatans soldiered on. They dedicated Tellin' Stories to their friend, and included on it the songs How Can You Leave Us and Rob's Theme, which features the recording of a three-year-old Collins talking to his aunt. 'Rob was a very stubborn guy,' smiles Brookes, who remains close to Collins' family and still keeps his wallet at home. 'He never knew when to lie down. And that's rubbed off.' 'He would have wanted us to struggle as well, mind,' Burgess adds with a chuckle. 'Oh, he'd have loved the accountant thing,' agrees Mark Collins.
The accountant, Trevor Williams, had been stealing from the band for some time. He had also been dipping into the pension funds of his other clients. By the time he was exposed in late 1998, it was estimated that he had embezzled £1 million of his clients' money. The Charlatans lost the £350,000 they had put aside for their tax bill, while Steve Harrison lost the six record shops he owned.
Half an hour after being informed of Williams' misdeeds, the band confronted him in his house - located, ironically, across the road from Big Mushroom. But they were perplexed: all he had were a couple of swimming medals on the wall, a black-and-white portable television and a little sofa. He couldn't drive, 'so it's not as if there was a Ferrari parked in the drive!' snorts Collins. As far as they could tell, he had no expensive drug or mistress habits to fund.
To this day the Charlatans have recovered only £30,000. Williams is due to be released from Fazakerley Prison in Liverpool later this year, having served half of his five-year sentence. 'It could have been a lot worse,' the Charlatans sniff as one. 'Never bear a grudge,' says Blunt. 'Yeah, man. If you get bitter, you're beaten,' retorts Brookes.
This is, again, a peculiarly Charlatans viewpoint to adopt: that they, the victims, are not in fact the losers in all of this. But what would happen if they were to bump into Trevor Williams one day? After all, his mother still lives just around the corner from Big Mushroom. 'My first reaction would not be to deck the bastard,' quips Collins. 'I'd probably ask, 'What's it like inside?' Nah,' he continues, to nods from the rest of the band 'life's too short.'
But the Charlatans' hope that they had finally escaped from the shadow of bad luck that has dogged them to determinedly throughout their 12-year career has not been fulfilled. For in the midst of preparations for their seventh album Tony Rogers learnt that he had testicular cancer.
After filming the video for their new single Love
Is The Key in Los Angeles, he flew home. The next day he went to a private
hospital in Sutton Coldfield, where he underwent a radical orchidectomy:
the removal of one of his testicles. A week later he is in Big Mushroom's
lounge area, awaiting news from the urologist about the next step: radiotherapy
or chemotherapy? The suggestion of a shadow on his other testicle means
there is a chance he will have to have that removed as well. If so, he
has already considered freezing some of his sperm. 'In February I noticed
that one of my testicles was slightly hard,' he says. 'My GP told me just
to keep an eye on it, because it didn't seem to be getting any bigger.
But five weeks later it had enlarged. The stupid thing was that I didn't
go back to the doctor, because we were in the middle of the album. I didn't
want to disrupt things.'
Rogers' testicular cancer was confirmed on the day of the Wrexham show.
he arrived at the venue 90 minutes before the Charlatans were due on stage.
When he told Jon Brookes, the drummer reassured him, 'We'll do this together,
like we do everything together.'
'I can't remember much about the gig,' says Rogers laughing. 'There was such a huge cheer when we came on, and for a second I forget everything. It was as if: now I know where I am.'
Testicular cancer is the most treatable form of make cancer, with a 95 per cent success rate. Rogers, 35, is optimistic, and seems remarkably cheerful. He's trying to concentrate on the band's upcoming American gigs. 'The whole band is a unit,' he says. 'Nobody has to deal with anything on their own, come good or bad things. We do seem to be the unluckiest band in the world, but I'd turn that around: we're the luckiest band.'
It's worth asking again: why have they survived? 'Because we're the Charlatans,' responds Burgess. That is, they're five firm friends who, because of - no despite - being assailed by more ill-fortune than any one band should have to endure, they have kept their heads. 'Absolutely,' says Burgess, 'and we probably brought some of that on ourselves. It's been a test. But I think as a group our karma's really good, I do.' You don't think the Charlatans are cursed? 'No. And if we are, it's only to teach us a few things in life.'