{"id":226220,"date":"2025-10-20T06:06:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-20T06:06:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/226220\/"},"modified":"2025-10-20T06:06:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-20T06:06:11","slug":"i-used-to-take-drugs-after-a-charlatans-gig-now-its-smoothies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/226220\/","title":{"rendered":"I used to take drugs after a Charlatans gig. Now, it\u2019s smoothies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Back in 1990, just as acid house and indie rock had a one-night stand and gave birth to the Happy Mondays, the Stone Roses and the whole Madchester movement, a group from nearby Northwich in Cheshire came along sounding like, in the words of the bassist and songwriter Martin Blunt, \u201cthe Spencer Davis Group on E\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Charlatans\u2019 first two singles, Indian Rope and The Only One I Know, combined the swirling Hammond organ-led brightness of Sixties mod and soul with the hedonistic energy of rave. Suddenly they were in the Top Ten, on Top of the Pops, and their pretty, bowl-haired singer, Tim Burgess, was a star. The remarkable thing is how enduring they have proved. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted to get back to feeling we had something to say,\u201d says Burgess, bowl cut still in place at 58. \u201cMartin likes to say things like, \u2018I want the album to sound like us.\u2019 I suppose the question was what \u2018us\u2019 in 2025 sounded like.\u201d <\/p>\n

I first met Burgess in the late Nineties, when he was defeated by the challenge of putting a stylus on a record, and that was at ten o\u2019clock in the morning. Now, as we sit down in his publicist\u2019s London office to talk about the Charlatans\u2019 first album in eight years, he comes across as a rather more sober, unquestionably more capable figure.<\/p>\n

The new album, We Are Love, recalls the psychedelic innocence of the early Charlatans singles, albeit with the tinges of sadness experience inevitably brings. Burgess came up with The Only One I Know, a song about teenage feelings of unrequited love, while walking from his mum and dad\u2019s house in the village of Moulton to the garage to buy a packet of cigarettes. That kind of thing can be hard to emulate when you\u2019re a 58-year-old father of one. <\/p>\n

\u201cThese days ideas come through meditation,\u201d Burgess says. \u201cLyrics come from the subconscious and then you make sense of them. They\u2019re impressionistic.\u201d <\/p>\n

The album also has a degree of tragic resonance. We Are Love was recorded at Rockfield, the residential studio<\/a> on a Welsh farm where the Charlatans made their 1997 classic, Tellin\u2019 Stories. It was where Rob Collins, the band\u2019s Hammond organ player and a troubled soul, who in 1992 was imprisoned for his part in an armed robbery, was killed in a car crash on July 22, 1996. Three weeks later the Charlatans supported Oasis at Knebworth. Liam Gallagher dedicated the song Cast No Shadow to Collins. <\/p>\n

\u2022 Oasis at Knebworth during the Britpop summer of 1996 \u2014 in pictures<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cRob died at the bottom of the driveway,\u201d Burgess says. \u201cThe recording session had finished and we were out drinking to celebrate the birthday of one of the engineers when we got the call. Now it feels like a potent memory, but also like a dream: it was ten o\u2019clock, maybe eleven. We went to the hospital, and that\u2019s where we found out he died.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The Charlatans in the 1990s<\/p>\n

TIM RONEY\/GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n

How did they pick themselves up from there? \u201cWe knew Tellin\u2019 Stories had the potential to be great. Even the ballads were bangers. And there was so much going on at the time that we hardly had a chance to stop. I remember getting a phone call, saying, \u2018You\u2019re still doing Knebworth, right?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Martin Duffy, a teen prodigy from Birmingham who spent the second half of the Eighties in the cult band Felt before joining Primal Scream, stepped in at the last minute. (Organ players in the Charlatans do seem to be under a curse: Duffy died in 2022<\/a>, aged 55.) \u201cMartin [Blunt, bassist] was showing Duffy the chords moments before we went on stage at Knebworth. After that everyone collapsed.\u201d<\/p>\n

All this happened a few years into the career of a band who went from releasing their first single to selling out the 2,300-capacity Forum in London in a matter of months. Indie bands of the 1980s were for the most part a niche interest: something confined to the student union for people with drainpipe trousers and spiky haircuts. Then in November 1989 the Stone Roses and the Happy Mondays appeared on the same edition of Top of the Pops, making way for the Charlatans and, ultimately, Oasis. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe got together in April 1989 and it felt like a beautiful love affair,\u201d says Burgess, who at the time was working for the chemical manufacturer ICI and singing in a Doors-influenced band called the Electric Crayons. \u201cThese were the people I had been waiting to meet all my life. Within two months we were playing all over the north, and by January 1990 we had our first single out. By the time The Only One I Know was released in May, everything went nuts.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The band has survived many ups and downs over the years<\/p>\n

CAT STEVENS<\/p>\n

Perhaps the band had a unique quality due to its members\u2019 wildly different backgrounds. Blunt had been a teenage mod, but Burgess\u2019s life was changed when he saw the anarchist punks Crass in a scout hut in Cheshire, aged 13. \u201cThey gave me vegan soup afterwards,\u201d he recalls. \u201cCrass\u2019s DIY spirit showed me that anyone could do it, so when the Charlatans happened it felt like the moment we had been waiting for. And it couldn\u2019t happen fast enough. Our attitude was: if we don\u2019t make a demo in three days we\u2019re screwed.\u201d<\/p>\n

By the time Britpop exploded in the mid-Nineties and Blur and Oasis became a national obsession<\/a>, the Charlatans were veterans of the scene. \u201cThe only time I felt a part of Britpop was when the NME reviewed Just When You\u2019re Thinkin\u2019 Things Over alongside Country House by Blur and Roll with It by Oasis, and made it single of the week,\u201d Burgess says, with a slightly mischievous smile. \u201cBut we were on TFI Friday seven times with seven singles, and being on the telly was very much a Britpop thing. It was a fun, youthful time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2022 The wild summer when Blur and Oasis divided the nation \u2014 by a music insider<\/a><\/p>\n

Remarkably, the Charlatans never split up. Burgess moved to Los Angeles in 1999 and stayed there until 2010, cleaning up in 2007 after realising that drink and drugs were taking over. \u201cIf you fill your life with alcohol and drugs, you become that person,\u201d he says. \u201cElton John said getting sober was like being inside an eggshell: you have to fill the egg with new ways of doing things, and if you\u2019re not careful the shell will break. But when you do get through it, there\u2019s a new light after years of life being repetitive and dark.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Collage<\/p>\n

Burgess with Rob Collins, c 1989<\/p>\n

TIM RONEY\/GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n

What goes into that new life? \u201cNature, walks, smoothies \u2026\u201d Burgess cracks up at the rather Californian image he\u2019s painting. You can see how this might work at his home in London, but how about on the road, when not everyone wants to relax with a smoothie after blowing a few thousand minds with a killer gig? \u201cEveryone in the band was cool about it,\u201d Burgess says. \u201cI stopped entirely, the others carried on but at a more manageable level. Coming off stage [without taking drugs] was definitely a challenge, but I got used to it. Now the comedown after the gig is a natural process.\u201d<\/p>\n

We Are Love is a product of all the band have been through. From the Beatles-esque harmonies of Now Everything to the sweet folkiness of Salt Water, it\u2019s a gentle album, imbued with the Sixties influence that brought the Charlatans together in the first place. One song, Glad You Grabbed Me, tells the story of how it all started.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s about Martin Blunt,\u201d Burgess says. \u201cWe\u2019re on this journey together, we want the same thing but we come at it from different directions, and our relationship can be fractious. But is it worth it? Yes it is.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"Group<\/p>\n

The band in 1990<\/p>\n

MARTYN GOODACRE\/GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n

How would Burgess describe his fellow band members? \u201cMark [Collins, guitar] is a Leo: domineering, but a sweet guy. Martin is a Taurus: quite stubborn. But he needs to be because I\u2019m a Gemini, which is an air sign. I\u2019m floating up there in the clouds. Someone has to pull me down.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2022 Read more music reviews, interviews and guides on what to listen to next<\/a><\/p>\n

The Charlatans have survived ups and downs, bust-ups, and the loss of Rob Collins, Martin Duffy and the drummer Jon Brookes, who died from a brain tumour in 2013, aged 44. What does Burgess put the longevity down to? <\/p>\n

\u201cThe Charlatans are the brothers I never had,\u201d he replies. \u201cIt\u2019s never been easy. It took two and a half years of pushing and pulling to make this album, and I have nightmares about the band, but the moment we unlock a song together \u2026 what can I say? It\u2019s magical.\u201d <\/p>\n

We Are Love by the Charlatans (BMG) is out on October 31 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Back in 1990, just as acid house and indie rock had a one-night stand and gave birth to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":226221,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[49,48,75,341],"class_list":{"0":"post-226220","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226220"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226220\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/226221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}