Nine Songs: Tim Burgess

Nine Songs

Tim Burgess

The Charlatans frontman talks the songs that spoke to him at key points in his life.

29 June 2018, 09:00 | Words by Binita Bantawa

(Tim Burgess) (The Charlatans) (Nine Songs) (Latitude)

A mixture of joy and melancholy runs through the pivotal songs in Tim Burgess’s life, but it’s the darkness of his selections that really strike a chord with him.

“There is a melancholic side to me. If we have an upbeat song, I tend to write something that’s not as upbeat, it’s kind of an oxymoron.”

From classics by New Order and The Fall to one of his latest favourites, a hip-hop track by Jean Grae, Quelle Chris and Dane Orr, each song choice harks back to a particular time in his life. There’s also a sense of direction and choice, whether that’s going against something or deciding to leave it, which has a certain irony; The Charlatans are as solid as ever and set to embark upon an international tour, starting with Latitude Festival, fleeting through Japan and ending in America.

When we meet Burgess is animated, reminiscent and thoughtful. “These songs absolutely did shape me. You’ve given me quite a conscience now!” he quips. Whether it’s buying music from the local record shop in his youth to gems he’s discovered from the internet and Social Media, Burgess is unashamedly passionate when he talks about the songs he loves. He can’t get enough of finding new discoveries to listen to, so much so that he manages to fit in a trip to Rough Trade between our chat and his next meeting.

Burgess finds a fascination in the process of how these all pieces of music are crafted but ultimately he’s a fan of the songs and artists that inspire him. “I think they’re all brave people, the people who made these records. That’s something that I admire and aspire to.”

“Systematic Death” by Crass

“I started listening to music very early on, I bought my first record when I was six and I got into punk music aged 11. I remember one day a friend of mine came up to me at school, gave me a copy of ‘Reality Asylum’ by Crass and said, “Don’t listen to the Sex Pistols or The Clash anymore, that’s over. This is what it’s all about.” He gave me this record and it was everything he said it was going to be and it was quite scary, it got me at an important time in my life.

“’Systematic Death’ came out when I was 13 and it was the first record I bought on the day of release. They were one of the first bands I saw live, the lead vocalist of the band was Steve Ignorant, but on the album it’s from he didn’t sing anything, it was all about the women in the band and I just thought that was an amazing concept. The band went around doing interviews and everyone was embracing the fact that the women were fronting this record. It taught me a lot.

“At the time, we were living under Margaret Thatcher who had told us there was going to be a nuclear war and that times were hard, but on the other hand there was the Eurovision Song Contest and Bucks Fizz. If I’d have listened to them then maybe I would have a different view of the world now.”

“Leave Me Alone” by New Order

“What I got from the Crass record was that the system has plans for you from a very early age, but then New Order’s ‘Leave Me Alone’ was the response to that.

"New Order were my favourite band, I followed them round the country and they had a massive impact on me. It was something that I could really relate to as a 16-year-old Tim and it was just ace; buying my records from Woolworths. Also, two of them are from Manchester and two of them are from Cheshire and with me, I was born in Manchester and I grew up in Cheshire.

“They were tough and they had music that was otherworldly and once you got in deeper you realised that there was Joy Division before that. On any other day it could have been ‘Blue Monday’ or ‘Your Silent Face’, but with ‘Leave Me Alone’ it was kind of a melancholy song and it was kind of a political song in a way, but it brought more of a freedom; it was liberating.”

“Cash Still Rules / Scary Hours (Still Don't Nothing Move But The Money)” by Wu-Tang Clan

“I’d been into hip-hop and I really liked A Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul, anything from the late ‘80s and ‘90s. I didn’t hear anything that blew me away for a couple of years but then I heard about Wu-Tang Clan and I started reading about them.

"It’s the gang mentality I suppose; they were from the boroughs of New York, Staten Island and Brooklyn and they bridged the gap between rival gangs. It was like a brotherly camaraderie thing and taking it on as an army of men to the world.

“Wu-Tang Clan came to me during the time I was making records. I really got into the idea of their lyrics and the way that they rhymed and I suppose it influenced The Charlatans in some weird way. Sometimes when I write songs I try to imagine other people and other artists and during ‘North Country Boy’ I thought ‘What would Method Man do?’”

“The Winner” by R. Stevie Moore

“I like the fact this song is called ‘The Winner’ but that it’s not from a winner’s point of view, it’s self-deprecating.

“I went to Nashville to make a solo album and I looked R. Stevie Moore up on Facebook, I had some of his records and I wanted to find out more about him. I’d make the record from 10am to 5pm and then I’d get in the car to see him in the evenings. It was amazing, eating pizza and drinking wine, the first night we met we just talked about Manchester and his encyclopaedic knowledge of records.

“When I was making the music I tried this song called ‘The Doors of Then.’ It wasn’t working but I loved the song so much, so I asked Stevie to come to the studio the next day. He came and played all the parts and the song became a single.

“He was the godfather of home recording. In my opinion he was as talented as Brian Wilson, but he never had the equivalent of Capitol Records behind him. He did all of his recordings at home with a cassette player and that’s why you get a bit of a wonky sound with them, but its imperfections make it perfect to me.”

“I'm Into C.B.” by The Fall

“I love The Fall and how they bridged the gap between Crass and New Order for me, I remember getting drunk in Northwich and stumbling home, reciting all of Mark E. Smith’s lyrics. There could have been so many of The Fall’s songs in this, I’ve pretty much got everything of theirs so it was hard to pick just one song.

“‘I’m Into C.B’ is funny and it’s Mark E. Smith at his most funny. People will have seen him at his worst and people will have seen him at his so-called most acerbic, but this is him being really funny and having a go. It’s about something that was culturally quite popular in the early ‘80s and I remember going back to people’s houses and saying, ‘I’ve just had an aerial put up’, ‘Wow what’s that all about?’ ‘It’s for my C.B.’”

“I Couldn't Say It To Your Face” by Arthur Russell

“Ed Simons from The Chemical Brothers was the first person to play me ‘I Couldn’t Say it to Your Face’, so it goes to show that he’s not just into beats. I think this song is about leaving a relationship, just walking out of the door and maybe writing a letter or a having phone call later on. I think we’ve all probably either done it or thought about it.

“Arthur Russell was an artist who was very eclectic. He made disco records as well as his orchestral work, but this is more from his country era when he made a couple of records with Peter Gordon and Peter Zummo. After Oh No I Love You. I made a record, Same Language, Different Worlds, with both of them so that’s how it all ties in.

“I was really feeling this record at one point in my life and what’s amazing about that and the R.Stevie Moore record was that it was very influential to me during the time of Oh No I Love You, the record I made in Nashville in 2011. I just fell in love with it, it’s fantastic and beautiful. It’s a comedown record.”

“Gold E” by Nik Colk Void

“I wasn’t involved in making this record but I witnessed it and I was an assistant to it, so that’s why it’s important to me. It’s on Ogenesis Records which is the label I have and Nik Void is a part of it.

“Nik wanted to make something that was destructive; something that was a sandpaper sleeve record so that all the records around it were destroyed. She made and recorded it, then we got a test pressing made and she cast it in polyurethane. We sanded the moulds down and put them in with a white label record so that you could actually play the sleeve. It destroyed the needle and it’s a bit hissy, but you could hear it. In some ways it was the best record I ever made, she did what she said she was going to do and it was a beautiful thing. Only 250 people own that record and that’s special.

“’Gold E’ was one of the first records released on Ogenesis Records, I think it was Ogen 007, so it was a very early way of giving the label some identity. It was something that was arty and destructive, where nobody was telling us what to do.”

“I Wasn’t Born To Follow” by The City

“I first heard this song in 1991 when Mark Collins joined The Charlatans, we were both big fans of The Byrds but we liked different albums. The Byrds recorded a version of ‘I Wasn’t Born to Follow’ and I’d always known the song to be by The Byrds until 2015, when I bought a Carole King record at Festival No 6. It was by The City who I knew about vaguely and when I played it I heard this version and I’d never knew it existed before that time.

“It’s just the most amazing record. It means more to me that it’s by Carole, it just resonates more. To just hear her singing, ‘And in the end she’ll surely know / I wasn’t born to follow,’ the sign off is an amazing statement and look where she went after that, it’s inspiring.”

“Gold Purple Orange” by Jean Grae & Quelle Chris (feat. Dane Orr)

“’Gold Purple Orange’ is weird, it’s almost psychedelic. All of the lines are blurred as far as hip-hop is concerned and it’s changing in a very good and exciting way. This is the best hip-hop track I’ve heard since Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s Return To The 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version. It just blew me away, the lyrics are amazing and I love how it includes modern day things to rap about.

“I got in touch with them on Twitter and I told them how amazing they were. For me, Twitter and the access you have to people makes things more interesting and easy. Before you would have to go through people and they’d put stops to things if they couldn’t be arsed or if they didn’t think it was a good idea themselves. Going direct is always the best thing, I love this song and I really wanted to tell them in the best possible way.”