Rock and Pop: Interview - Liam Fray from The Courteneers
Published: 29 April 2010
by ROISIN GADELRAB
LIAM Fray’s got a plan. He’s only minutes away from playing Q The Music Club Live at Hard Rock Cafe London with his band The Courteeners, but the future of his country’s at stake.
So he’s determined to do his election homework.
We’re sitting in Hard Rock Cafe’s rock vault on a church pew once owned by Jimi Hendrix and Liam is in a reflective mood.
He said: “I’ve Sky-plussed the [leaders’] debate. I’ve not watched it yet, I’m going to have a marathon. I’m going to watch them all, it’s like 24 I’m going to get the box set out.”
He admits he didn’t vote last time around, but this one’s different.
“You’ve got to get involved, but there’s so much swindling going on it’s difficult for people as well,” says Liam. “You need to be properly informed before you make a judgement. The problem is a lot of people aren’t informed. I’m going to do all three hours.”
The Courteeners have just released their second album, Falcon, and Liam’s already thrown himself into writing new material.
He says: “We’ve been in the rehearsal room, writing new stuff. I seem to be in a very rich vein of thought. When we did [first album] St Jude we were in the very stages of infancy, we’d only been together for about a year. We were only little babies, we didn’t really know what we were doing so it was good to have (Blur and The Smiths producer) Stephen Street there because he definitely oversaw things. If we were with someone who wasn’t maybe as focused as him we would have got into a lot of trouble trying out different stuff but we were pretty down the line. This time I’m a lot more confident with my songwriting.”
Liam credits folk singer Laura Marling as his latest inspiration: “I got Laura Marling’s album the other day. It’s the first time I’ve emotionally invested myself in an album in a long time because nothing’s really grabbed my attention. I really liked her first single, New Romantic. I went and bought it and it was really good, and I was like, ‘you know what, I’m going to start writing again’.”
The band, who hail from Manchester, once featured in a plotline for Coronation Street and Liam has revealed he’s in talks for a cameo appearance.
He said: “They asked, ‘do you mind being written into the script?’ – I was like, ‘thanks, can I have a walk-on part?’ I’ve asked them, it’s in the pipeline. Morrissey got a walk-on part in Brookside.”
And speaking of the North, Liam once had a run-in with Greater Manchester’s finest – over a wrongly discarded bus ticket.
He says: “I was fined £60 for throwing a ‘missile’ out of a moving vehicle – a bus ticket. I rolled it up, it was literally a quarter of the size of my little fingernail. There was a bus next to me and I was in a taxi and the bus window was open.”
So he tried a bit of target practice: “It hit the window, you couldn’t even see it and then sirens were going. It was cops. I thought, ‘something’s wrong with the taxi driver’s boot lights or something’. It was funny because the two officers were both arguing. One was like, it’s only a £30 fine’, and the other was like, ‘no it’s not it’s £60’, and they had like a row about it.”
But Liam’s not one to shy away from challenging abuses of power, as could be seen during a gig in Chester.
He says: “I actually stopped a gig because a bouncer kicked this kid out. It was at the university I think. This kid was dancing down the front and the bouncer grabbed him by the neck and threw him out. It was halfway through Acrylic and I put the guitar down, went through the crowd and got him back in, somebody was abusing his power.”
With his long sideburns and Noel Gallagher-type haircut, Liam may look like he’s modelled himself on Oasis, but he admits he’s not too distraught at their demise.
“They were a massive massive thing, it was a full movement, you only have to look at Italy and Japan and people are dressed in their parkas and whatever.
“But I think it’s good that they’ve finished, not good that they’ve split up, but they probably have a lot of different things they both want to do and get out of their system. They were a massive export.”
For now, they’re just enjoying their own success and have a European tour to look forward to.
Liam said: “We’ve done bits and bobs in Europe, but we’re going out fully in May. Munich’s pretty nice, it’s beautiful, Rome’s alright, Amsterdam has its benefits, but I’m not a smoker, so not for me.
“It’s just so exciting to be able to go to these wonderful places to play songs you’ve written in your bedroom. It’s very humbling to be honest with you. The fact that people, well at least one promoter, thinks maybe there’s a little bit of demand there for us, it’s a very nice feeling. Because we never take it for granted – but it’s weird you forget there’s a whole world out there you can go play songs to.”