As Travis release a new album and set out on an autumn tour, impress your friends with our ten facts about the much-loved Scottish band…
1 Travis were initially called Running Red then changed their name to Glass Onion after the Beatles track of the same title, before eventually deciding on Travis. The origin Travis, as a name, is hotly contested. Some say it was taken from the charac
ter Robert De Niro played in Martin Scorsese’s film Taxi Driver, others say the band is named after a school friend of the band. There is even speculation that Fran Healy stole the name from a local touring band.
2 Fran Healy is a part of the Make Poverty History campaign, having recently made two trips to Sudan with the Save the Children organisation. He is now concentrating on raising awareness of a specfic slum in Sierra Leone. The Kroo Bay slum is one of the most underdeveloped places on earth, lacking clean water or electricity. You can find out more about it at this website:
www.savethechildren.org.uk/kroobay/webisodes.php.
3 The album The Boy with No Name was named after Healy’s son. Healy and his wife Nora couldn’t think of a name for their sprog for nine weeks, thus he was known as “the boy with no name”, until they finally they came up with Clay. Poor little blighter.
4 Although it is commonly believed that Travis were signed to Independiente Records, they were in fact signed to Andy MacDonald himself, the founder of the record label. Having heard a demo from the band, MacDonald used £100,000 of his own money to sign them to himself. Travis have recently left MacDonald and returned to their own label, Red Telephone Box.
5 Travis are such sticklers for precision that when recording a remake of the Beatles’ Lovely Rita, in celebration of the 40th anniversary of Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, they insisted on using the same Abbey Road stairwell as the Beatles had used to record the guitar tracks.
6 Healy recently lost his wedding ring during the V Festival. Stopping in the middle of Flowers in the Window, to announce his loss to the crowds, he likened the situation to Lord of the Rings. Luckily for Frodo Healy all was not lost – the ring was found, Middle Earth was saved and the set was finished.
7 The birth of Healy’s music career coincided with his first attempt at cross-dressing. At the grand old age of six, Healy was to perform Westering Home, a traditional Scottish song, in a school concert. The required costume was a kilt, but he couldn’t find one to fit so Healy took to the stage in a miniskirt instead.
8 Bassist Dougie Payne refused to pick up his new wife on his wedding day for fear his kilt would fly up and reveal his dangly bits. You’d presume she’d seen it all before, but perhaps not.
9 Neil Primrose, the band’s drummer, was the only member of Travis who didn’t attend Glasgow School of Art. Primrose was a barman in the local Horseshoe Bar where, while he was pulling pints for the other band members, they decided to take him on as a drummer. Primrose was also a mean swimmer in his day – butterfly being his stroke of choice – and made it to national level.
10 Healy’s body tells a good yarn. He’s suffered two scars at the hands of the same woman. One on his hand was gained at 16, from the morally questionable activity of chasing her into a toilet (he put his hand straight through the glass door as he pushed it open). Later the same girl rang to check he was alright, Healy ran for the phone and fell, planting a nail in his knee. Love hurts eh? But the dentist hurts more. A further third scar was dealt by a clumsy dentist who lopped off a bit of his lip whilst pulling out a tooth. Healy hasn’t been to the dentist for 18 years because of it.
• Travis play the Ironworks, Inverness, tonight, Aberdeen Music Hall tomorrow and the Picture House, Edinburgh, on 25 September. All dates are sold out. Travis’s new album Ode To J Smith is released on 29 September.
The full article contains 736 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
