CityLife

Interview: Liam Fray

Fray in concert

LIVE hard, play hard: it’s a motto Liam Fray might just consider for his epitaph when the Grim Reaper comes to get him.

But today, when CityLife drags The Courteeners frontman from the studio for some media down-time, he’s more interested in talking about bringing his band back to life as a live outfit.

They’ve spent great chunks of this year holed up in recording studios in Brussels, New York and London writing and mastering the band’s second album, Falcon.

The record pretty much cleared out the coffers, and if it wasn’t for a family funeral a couple of weeks ago, rehearsing it would have sunk them deeper.

“We were supposed to be going up to a house in Cockermouth a couple of days before that and we just said, ‘You know what, we’ll just leave it for a few days and we’ll go after the funeral’,” Liam recalls.

“Obviously, there was somebody looking down on us because all the stuff would have got ******* ruined and we’d have been in deep ****.

“All the guitars, all the amps would have been there. We’d have been there on the Monday and on the Wednesday there was nine feet of water in the front room of the place, it was up to the ceiling. It literally would have cost us £10,000 to replace everything and we haven’t got it.

Serious showcase

“Even though we’ve been working, we’ve not really played much together,” he says, oozing with excitement for the gigs ahead.

“The previous three years, it was just gig, gig, gig, gig, gig. So I’ve got a lot of energy that needs to be unleashed. I feel like I’ve been on a year-long hibernation.”

People of Manchester: be warned. Because tonight the band – fronted by Liam and ably staffed by guitarist Daniel Moores, bassist Mark Cuppello and drummer Michael Campbell – play the biggest headline show of their career at Manchester Central, a staggering 10,000 capacity venue that sold out months ago.

A year of endless touring in 2008 and an album packed with sucker-punch attitude have transformed The Courteeners from Manchester’s best kept secret into bona fide international stars – and they’re planning on staging a serious showcase to prove how far they’ve come.

Since they stepped out as last year’s greatest new band, they’ve had a No.4 album, played Dubai (“It’s like waking up in Legoland, everything’s just plonked down on a grid”) and even dented America this summer – despite being unsigned across the Pond – thanks to a support slot with Morrissey.

“We kind of sauntered through America,” Liam laughs. “Just strolled through with our hands in our pockets. We finished at Carnegie Hall. But the atmosphere was ****.

“You buzz off it because it’s, like, the most famous venue in the world, but when you’re actually there it was like, ‘Sigh... I’d rather be in Joshua Brooks’.”

If Fray’s chest is puffed out today it’s because, in his own words, he expects the Central crowd to be ‘blown away’ by the new tracks. They’re ‘meatier’, ‘dancier’, even ‘epic’. “Let’s go with that”, he nods confidently.  “Courteeners release epic second album.”  Fray is, of course, the classic face of a) rock stars called Liam, and b) rock stars from Manchester.

He’s self-assured, warm and cocky. Read him wrong and he’d look like a braggart, but he chooses his words carefully, and you don’t need to read too many Courteeners interviews to work out that Liam reveals very little about himself. Today, all he’ll admit is that he isn’t going out with Florence ‘+ the Machine’ Welch.

'No PR machine'

He is, he says, uneasy with the attention of certain magazines. “As soon as you write a song you’re putting yourself on the line for that,” he sighs.

“I’m always open for the questions, but then they start asking things that aren’t to do with the music. Everyone’s entitled to ask those questions but I am quite a private person.

“I’m very sure of the band, very sure of the songs that I write and very sure of the lyrics. But sometimes, you know, I’m not quite so sure of myself.

“We’re all human. I’ve had a bit of a **** year; my grandad passed away and the only thing that keeps me going through that is knowing at the end of this year we’re doing a show for 10,000 people.”

Does the thought of becoming tabloid fodder intimidate him? “Oh, they won’t put me in the tabloids,” he dismisses. “My nose is too big. And I’m not having a nose job, they can **** right off!

“If I wanted to go and knock about Mayfair and get on the red carpet, then I’d go and do it. But you know, what we’re doing is real, there’s no mad marketing campaigns, no PR machine grinding behind us. I write these songs and we’re four mates in a band – that’s it.

“I wish it was more spectacular, I wish Campbell was a junkie, but he’s not. I was really scared about life changing, of me sitting in my first class jet smoking a big cigar, six strippers, you know? But fortunately that didn’t happen last year so it’s not got into the album.

“It’s still like, sit on the Magic Bus with a pasty…,” he pauses, then laughs. “No, it’s not, it’s not.”

In truth, Liam’s current regime probably doesn’t involve buses at all. In fact, you’d be more likely to see him jogging past you at the bus stop than stopping to hail the 192.

“I was running a lot during the making of the album,” says Liam. “It keeps the mind clear. I like to be fit. If you’re gonna go on a three-day bender, you’ve got to be match fit for it. I’m off the lager. I’m on a new regime. I try tee-total, but it lasts about 12 hours. I’m on vodka lemonade, bit of squeezed fresh lime.

'We're gonna deliver'

“The thing is as well, I was looking at the setlist for the October tour ’cos I was thinking that obviously for this tour we’ve got a lot more songs to play, so it was difficult thinking about St Jude and what we weren’t gonna play. So I just thought, ‘**** it, we’ll just play it all. Two hour set every night. Give people their money’s worth’.

“When a band first gets signed, you’re in a band, you’re 22, you go and do what you do, you have a good time. And then when we got to the fifth tour in the UK and it was bigger venues, I was like, ‘**** man, my throat’s gone’.

“You can’t be doing that when people are paying money to see you. We’ve never put on a bad show and we never ever will. If there’s a show, you’ve got to rein it in a bit. You have days off afterwards and you can go mental.

“You’ve got to look after the people who are coming to the shows. If you turn up ****** or your voice is gone, that’s just lack of respect, and I’m not into that.

“Somebody told me that St Blaise was the patron saint of sore throats,” laughs Liam. “Which I thought was ******* hilarious. First of all, how good’s that name? It sounds like a Wesley Snipes character.”

Was Falcon a particularly sore throat album? Liam smiles. “The second album is the goods. We’re gonna deliver.

“We’re just pleased 10,000 people are showing the love.”

Manchester Central - December 11, 2009 - SOLD OUT.