This is a fascinating interview from Jim Glennie, founder member of James who next year will have been around for 40 years.
Here he talks about first meeting Tim Booth, the Manchester scene in 1980s, musical influences including The Fall, touring with Neil Young, working with Brian Eno, and the issue of mental health in the music business. He also talks about the many of the myths of being a professional artist. Its a terrific insight into the reality of being an international artist and the work needed to become successful. In this BGT and X Factor era its all to easy for the wider public to imagine that people can ‘make it in the music business” without doing all the real work that is needed.
The reality of course is that its a tough life for any artist and few bands and individual artists are able to engage with millions of people in both selling albums and filling gigs. James have an extraordinary history of success, starting out in 1980s and having a terrible time with signing to Sire Records, before then moving to Universal and completing an eight album deal. Green Eyed Records champions “creativity through collaboration” and part of this ethos is sharing good information about the reality v the myth of “the music business”. Jim confirms that when working for a record company artists are often expected to be available 24/7 and we are grateful that he was good enough to take time out to talk to us.