Advertisement
Music

Fran Healy: ‘Blondie is connected with really traumatic memories’

Travis frontman Fran Healy reveals the musical inspirations that made him the man he is today.

As is the way for many of us living through the ongoing pandemic upheaval, 2021 has found Fran Healy and Travis in a reflective mood. Looking back across their 20-plus year career, the Scottish alternative rockers are reissuing some of their best-loved albums.

This month, they’re revisiting their eclectic 2007 release The Boy With No Name. Frontman Fran Healy says it’s a dense album, “packed with some our most memorable songs”. Its lead single, Closer – which was released with a touchy-feely video featuring Ben Stiller – certainly feels timely once more. Featuring the refrain “Just need to get closer”, it’s a perfect soundtrack for the return of hugging.

Fran recently joined us on The Music That Made Me to talk about how he was shaped by Joni Mitchell, Michael Stipe and Roy Orbison – and to lament the dearth of real songwriters working today.

Heart of Glass and traumatic memories

The first song that I remember hearing and singing inside, was Heart of Glass by Blondie. It’s connected with really traumatic memories for me: going to school for the first time, leaving my mum and all these things. The melody was like a mantra that went round and round in my head, like non stop. And they were like kind of weird soundtrack to this fear. And so began 12 years of absolute, ‘I’m in prison’.

Roy Orbison on Jonathan Ross

When I was about 13 or 14 years old, I got my first acoustic guitar. The reason I got that guitar was that I saw Roy Orbison on a Jonathan Ross show called The Last Resort. It was a Friday night show, and Roy Orbison came on and sang Pretty Woman. This was years before the movie. Had I not seen that, I don’t know if I’d be here right now. I just got hypnotised and asked my mum to change my present at Christmas to an acoustic guitar.

Joni Mitchell fracks out the feelings

I went to an art course in Scotland when I was about 17. There was a teacher there called Gerry Kelly. He’s the best art teacher in the world, he’s amazing. Gerry’s a keystone for me. He would put on Joni Mitchell’s album Blue. There was something about it: the honesty or the quietness of it and the simplicity of it. I thought, well, I’ve never heard music like this before. I’ve never heard songwriting like that before. Before it was all very blokey. Joni came along, and that opened the door to this other write-about-what-you’re-feeling-inside style of songwriting. That’s when I started to want to express my feelings a bit more. I think songwriting or poetry or art, these are ways to frack feelings out of your system.

Advertisement
Advertisement

REM offers something more

I was going from the schoolboy sort of thing – which was U2, INXS, Simple Minds – to something a bit more. That was a four-piece band from Athens, Georgia, called REM. REM became the template band for me. I liked Michael Stipe’s behaviour on stage. It wasn’t macho, it was something else. That appealed to me. I mean, you wouldn’t really hear that in Travis’s music… but it’s there.

Pomme: a real modern songwriter

You don’t really have songwriters writing songs anymore – you have producers writing songs, and singers. When those people write songs, they’re writing from above the neck. There’s no fracking going on. If it’s been written from above the neck, it’ll just tickle your brain. And that will be it. If it has been written from below the neck, the hairs on your arms will stand up. You’ll stop in your tracks and you’ll pull the car over. It’s the closest we’ve got to a real magic spell. I don’t really hear much at the moment. But there’s an artist from France called Pomme that I am really into. It’s all in French, so I don’t know what she’s saying, but it is definitely coming from below the neck. You can tell.

The Boy With No Name vinyl reissue is out now.

Advertisement

Change a vendor's life this Christmas

This Christmas, 3.8 million people across the UK will be facing extreme poverty. Thousands of those struggling will turn to selling the Big Issue as a vital source of income - they need your support to earn and lift themselves out of poverty.

Recommended for you

Read All
Laura Mvula: 'I don't know if I'd be a singer without my family'
Laura Mvula recording her rendition of Paul Simon's 'I Know What I Know' for John Lewis. Image: John Lewis
Music

Laura Mvula: 'I don't know if I'd be a singer without my family'

Reverend and the Makers release Samaritans charity single: 'You don't have to be on your own at Christmas’
Jon McClure from Reverend and the Makers
Music

Reverend and the Makers release Samaritans charity single: 'You don't have to be on your own at Christmas’

New Order's Transmissions podcast digs up wild new stories of the band – and I'm mad for it
New Order in 1989
Music

New Order's Transmissions podcast digs up wild new stories of the band – and I'm mad for it

Sells like teen spirit: Nirvana stopping being a band when Kurt Cobain died – now they're a brand
Music

Sells like teen spirit: Nirvana stopping being a band when Kurt Cobain died – now they're a brand

Most Popular

Read All
Renters pay their landlords' buy-to-let mortgages, so they should get a share of the profits
Renters: A mortgage lender's window advertising buy-to-let products
1.

Renters pay their landlords' buy-to-let mortgages, so they should get a share of the profits

Exclusive: Disabled people are 'set up to fail' by the DWP in target-driven disability benefits system, whistleblowers reveal
Pound coins on a piece of paper with disability living allowancve
2.

Exclusive: Disabled people are 'set up to fail' by the DWP in target-driven disability benefits system, whistleblowers reveal

Cost of living payment 2024: Where to get help now the scheme is over
next dwp cost of living payment 2023
3.

Cost of living payment 2024: Where to get help now the scheme is over

Citroën Ami: the tiny electric vehicle driving change with The Big Issue
4.

Citroën Ami: the tiny electric vehicle driving change with The Big Issue