James turned down a Factory Records album because they distrusted studios
Tony Wilson spotted the young Manchester band James while editing concert footage in 1982 and offered them an album deal with Factory Records. They were so wary of spoiling their songs in a studio that they accepted only a three-track EP. Their early gigs had even gone out under the name Venereal and the Diseases.
The group began in Whalley Range, Manchester, in 1982, when Paul Gilbertson talked his friend Jim Glennie into buying a bass. Gavan Whelan joined on drums, and after cycling through several names they played improvised jams as Model Team, once supporting the Fall. Singers came and went until they met Tim Booth at a student disco; invited to their Withington scout hut as a dancer, he soon became frontman. In August 1982 they settled on James, after Glennie, reasoning that the other members' names were either too awkward or sounded too heavy metal.
A Haçienda show on 17 November 1982, alongside New Order and others, was filmed for a Factory video, which is how Wilson noticed them. Their debut Jimone EP was recorded at Strawberry Studios in Stockport in August 1983, and in 1985 they toured as support for the Smiths, who covered one of their songs on the road. Progress stalled, though. Gilbertson's drug problems forced him out, replaced by the band's guitar tutor Larry Gott, and Booth and Glennie joined a restrictive sect called Lifewave.
Deciding Factory cared too much about image, James signed with Sire. Their debut album, Stutter, appeared in July 1986 and reached only number 68; the more conventional Strip-mine was held back for over a year, remixed for radio, and peaked at 90 in 1988. The band then used a contract clause to leave Sire.
The 1990s brought the breakthrough: four top-10 singles and, over their career, nine top-10 albums in Britain, with songs such as Sit Down and Laid among the best known. After Booth left in 2001 the band went quiet, but they reunited in January 2007 and have since released seven more albums, still treating live shows as central. By 2010 they had sold over 25 million albums worldwide.
Source: James (band)
