The Guildford Festival is very different to the hedonistic Glastonbury experience isn’t it?
We did – as you call it – the hedonistic festivals last year, so we felt we’d OD’ed on that. This year’s detox, and then next year we’re going back into the frying pan again.
Would you like to share a favourite festival moment?
At Lollapalooza we played before bands like Korn so the audience kept shouting “faggots” at us. We went out and got these glitter tops and skirts. I was in a neckbrace, wearing a cowboy hat and glitter outfit, and when they’d scream abuse, I’d walk out into this audience. I had a really good time playing up this “cabaret transvestite” we all have inside of us.
Why are James seen as a big festival band?
We know how to reach out to large numbers of people. I think a lot of bands keep their eyes down and don’t really see who they’re communicating with. And other bands hide behind technology and lights.
Have you ever taken too many drugs and lost it?
I used to go to those really small harvest festivals, they were really wild. I remember my first acid trip at one of those. I saw an American sweat lodge with all these naked people. I thought it was a hallucination but these people were naked and were dancing around a fire and going into a steam tent.
If you had to expire at a festival, which time-honoured method would you choose: on-stage electrocution, drug overdose or hypothermia?
Struck by lightning! Last year at V-ninety-whatever-it-was there was rain and there was lightning, and we started with “Sometimes”, a song about a boy wanting to be struck by lightning. A puff of smoke, then. I’d like there to be no remains except my boots.
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