The Manchester hideaway of James’ singer is a calming place, heavily influenced by natural E, pentacles, crucifixes and Native American animal spirits. But then, it’s easy to scoff
Although the other members of James are scattered throughout the world, Tim Booth still likes to retain a flat in Manchester. He divides his time between Brighton where his son lives, and New York, home town of fiancee, Kate, which doesn’t leave a lot of time for the city that so heartily embraced his band circa Sit Down.
A pleasant walking distance from the city’s ‘Curry Mile’ (more curry houses per square mile than anywhere else in the Western world) Tim lives in the kind of artsy community common to Douglas Copeland novels.
“This house is like a way-station for creative people,” says Tim nonchalantly. “Actors and directors and producers come and go every month or two. One of the tenants is about to become a director on Coronation Street.”
But despite the Parisian Left Bank atmosphere indoors, the surrounding area is not without its problems. It’s quite a rough area, warns Tim, with more than its share of burglaries. Only last week Tim’s car was broken into.
“I feel quite vulnerable letting you into my room,” Tum admits. “But I also feel quite open, because I make my house a place of calm, as my life is so intense. I try to make a room a place of magic and fill it with antidotes to life in a rock band.”
1 SNAKESKIN
“This is the skin from a corn snake owned by Saul Davies (James violinist). It’s non-venomous and actually very sweet. Snakes shedding, their skin is a great image – the Native Americans saw it as a symbol of transformation. In Morocco, a snake-charmer once put a poisonous snake around my neck and then dropped it. Everyone else fled in terror, but I just sat their calmly, and thought it smelt like chicken. Later on, after the snake had been removed, a bead of sweat dropped where the snake had been and I jumped and screamed “AARRGH!” If I’d reacted like that earlier, I’m sure I would’ve been bitten.”
2 TIBETAN OIL AND DRUM
“These were given to me by a Tibetan shaman. He was trained from the age of 3 to 27 as a healer, which is a hell of a burden to put on any three year old. His element is lightning and thunder, so he uses shock as part of his healing. Whether you believe this or not, part of his training was conducting lightning. The oil takes seven years to make, and he gave it me to rub on my back. I use the drum for ceremony purposes. I wouldn’t play it onstage, because it’s too precious.”
3 CROSS
“I’ve got a couple of crosses – they’re just gifts from different people. I’m not into Christianity on any level, though. If you look at the history of the Catholic Church, they may have well have been the Mafia. The way they killed each other to get power, the way they raped their sisters – it’s fucking atrocious. I think the story of Christ is an amazing story, and if he were alive today, I’d be the first knocking on his door, but I don’t think the Church has anything to do with Christ. They’ve hijacked an astonishing man, as most religions do.”
4 PENTACLE ENGAGEMENT RING
“How much of this can I tell you without sounding like a complete wanker? This ring is a pentacle, and it represents the relationship between the Sun and Venus, which is a symbol of love. I initially decided I was only going to buy it if there was some kind of sign, and the next song on the radio was ‘Take Five’. A week later I showed the ring to one of my fiancee’s best friends and she went white as a sheet. Two days before she’d had a dream that Kate and I were making love and a guy with top hat and tails was saying ‘Their love-making is so profound, they’re making the star break out of the circle’. She then drank ten cups of tea in the dream and at the bottom of the last cup was this symbol.”
5 NATURAL ECSTASY
“It’s not chemical. It’s made out of kava nuts. It’s a legal high that works as an amazing aphrodisiac – it came top of a Cosmopolitan review. I have tried Ecstasy but it didn’t do anything for me, and the person I was with had a terrible comedown the next day. I want to reach those states in life, and there’s many ways to do it – through breaths, through loving sex, through dancing. You can find those ways and they don’t damage you physically.”
6 BUDDHA STATUE
“I love the work of the potter who made this – his work comes alive, especially when you’re in an altered state. I got in touch with him two weeks after he’d decided to stop being a potter, and he’d smashed all his work up. He’d become a school teacher, and I went round to see him to try and talk him out of it. I like the Buddha because it has a touch of the extra-terrestrial about it.”
7 COLOURED ROCK
“This is an amethyst geode, and it was given to me as an engagement present by a wonderful clairvoyant who’s helped me for a number of years. Amethyst is actually for developing clairvoyant powers as well as having calming properties. You just have it around and treat it like a great flower – feed it and clean it when you can.”
8 CARD WITH A PICTURE OF A TURKEY
“This is a Native American animal card. They’re more gentle than tarot cards because they’re less specific. To a Native American, every animal carries an energy, and the animal can give you that gift of energy. So a fox is about invisibility, because they have to stay hidden, and an eagle is about truth because they have great vision. A turkey is about giving things away – Native Americans would often give all their possessions to people in the belief that things would come back to them.”
9 DAMIEN HIRST POSTCARD
“That was a gift from Brian Eno, I love Damien Hirst – I’d describe him as a three-dimensional philosopher rather than as an artist. Most of his ideas are about life and death and sex, and finds a 3D way of bringing these issues home. Socrates said that philosophy was about preparing you for death, and Hirst has the same kind of concerns.”
10 LEEDS VS MANCHESTER UNITED TICKETS
“I usually shy away from talking about football. I don’t like the partisan shit and I especially hate the violence between Leeds and Man United. It all dates back to the War of the Roses – we laugh at the Turks and Kurds hating each other over things that happened hundred of years agom but we don’t realise that exactly the same thing happens here. I’m a Leeds fan, but I’ve been to see United a few times, because my son is a United fan. They used to play ‘Sit Down’ before games, which was weird.”
11 BACK MACHINE
“You attach this machine to a door and hang upside down, like a bat. I’d been hunting for one for ages because I ruptured a disc while dancing. I tracked one down and I rang up and left a message on the phone. A friend of mine from San Diego rang me back and said that he was the person who made them! I’ve been hanging from door-frames ever since. It aligns the spine and alleviates the pain.”
12 TOP HAT
“Jesus, this gets worse. I bought this in LA for Halloween. It’s a seriously pagan festival in America, much more intense than here. I got a really weird fishnet stocking mask to put over my head, and together with the top hat, it put me into a dark and dangerous place. We went to a great gay area where there were lots of transsexuals and amazing parades, and everybody was embracing their dark sensuality. It was great fun.”
13 EDWARD BOND SCRIPT FOR SAVED
“This is the play I’m going to appear in for a four week run in Bolton. I carry it with me every day and I hope that by some process of osmosis I’ll learn the lines – it doesn’t work, unfortunately. Plays are the scariest things of all things to do, as you can’t do a reshoot if you fuck up. This is the first time I’ve acted in 13 years, I acted in plays when I was a student in Manchester, and I even played a small role in a play directed by Ben Elton. But I wasn’t very good in those days – I had no sense of confidence.”
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