Tim Burgess

Musician, 55

Tim Burgess is lead singer with indie rock band the Charlatans, who have released 13 albums and had more than 20 Top 40 singles since forming in 1988. He released his sixth solo album, Typical Music, earlier this year and has written five books on music. During the Covid pandemic lockdown, Burgess launched “Tim’s Twitter Listening Party”, where he and guests would tweet while listening to an album: there are now more than 400 episodes available on timstwitterlisteningparty. com. He lives in Norfolk and London.

BEST CHILDHOOD MEMORY

Definitely the childhood holidays that I had with my family in Tenby and Ilfracombe. We would always camp and it was all very basic, but when you’re a kid from the NorthWest in the 1970s, you don’t have anything more glamorous to compare it to. I used to love hearing the rain pound on the tent canvas at night.

My dad passed away in 2020 and I have a photograph of us on a beach together as a family (though I notice that Dad is clenching his fist in the photo, so perhaps he wasn’t having as good a time as me – maybe he’d just done battle with a sleeping bag).

BEST PIECE OF ADVICE YOU’VE EVER BEEN GIVEN

When I was very young, I was talking to my dad as he was clearing out the garage and told him I wanted to be a draughtsman, like he was, when I grew up. He turned around and said: “That’s not you.” I think even then he could see that I was obsessed with records and was maybe slightly from another planet to him.

BEST PERFORMANCE

Glastonbury 2019 is my favourite. The Charlatans were called in after Snow Patrol pulled out. I think the fact that we had almost no time to prepare gave me more adrenaline than usual. The BBC kept that gig on iPlayer for a year after we played, so I loved the fact that so many people who weren’t there also got to watch it too. Also, I was wearing some really good dungarees.

BEST PARTY YOU’VE EVER BEEN TO

The Listening Parties on Twitter, which I started up during lockdown, have been the best parties of my life! The idea was to get an artist to tweet throughout an album, which everyone listens to together at home.

We’ve done hundreds now, but my favourite was probably Paul McCartney. Usually when I go online and ask an artist if they will do a listening party with me I get a “yes” pretty quickly, but with McCartney it took six weeks. Eventually I got a thumbs-up emoji from him and he was wonderful. He sent me a signed copy of his McCartney III album. I don’t think it gets much better than that really.

BEST MUSICIAN YOU’VE WORKED WITH

The drummer Jim Keltner [a session musician who has played on albums by John Lennon, George Harrison and Bob Dylan]. We worked with him in LA when he played on a couple of tracks on the Charlatans’ Wonderland album. Our drummer [Jon Brookes, who died in 2013] was a colossal fan of his and he was so thrilled that the album has their two names together on the credits. I remember Jim wore wraparound shades and really exuded rock ’n’ roll. He did what he needed to do on our tracks in about three takes – a total pro.

BEST COMPLIMENT YOU’VE EVER BEEN PAID BY A STRANGER

Every day I get told lovely things by strangers about how the Listening Parties helped keep them together during the pandemic lockdown. I’ve also had couples tell me that they were brought together by some of the music the Charlatans have made, so I think I’m very lucky to be told nice things on a pretty regular basis.

WORST GIG EXPERIENCE

It was an outdoor gig in Athens when the Charlatans were on the bill with PJ Harvey and the Fall. It looked glorious but then the heaviest rain storm came in. It was so bad that it actually broke our organ: the keys swelled with the rain and it wouldn’t play.

The whole gig was then cancelled and I remember going back to the hotel and hiding under a canopy with Mark E Smith [the late lead singer with the Fall] and PJ Harvey. That part was wonderful – but we never did play in Greece again.

WORST HABIT

Once I find a food that I really like, I eat it constantly. The most recent one was grapes. I had friends tell me they knew where I had been because I left a trail of grape stalks everywhere – even in the foot wells of cars I had been travelling in.

WORST REVIEW YOU’VE EVER HAD

Definitely from my mum when I was playing some really early Charlatans demos at home and she would tell me to “turn that racket off”. I think that I probably did was I was told: I was paying minimal rent to her at the time…

WORST THING YOU’VE EVER EATEN

I remember the Charlatans were in Poland and our manager brought some food to us after a gig. We had no idea what it was.

When we asked the local tour guy what meat it was, he couldn’t explain in English, so tried to make the noise the animal would have made when it was alive – it sounded like some sort of pig/ deer hybrid. It was a horrible sound and it really did taste bad.

I’ve been an on-and-off vegetarian since I was 13 and that was an experience that definitely got me back on the veggies again.

WORST SONG OR ALBUM YOU’VE EVER MADE

Carl Barat [singer and guitarist with the Libertines] and I had an idea that we would get together and record a song that lasted for an entire week. It was called Kicking Against the Pricks and we called ourselves the Chavs. That didn’t get very far.

I also wasn’t hugely happy about the Charlatans album Up At The Lake at the time it came out [2004]. In retrospect I like it, but at the time I was living in LA and I wanted to keep on going out there. But we came back and recorded the album in Devon. Going from living in Hollywood to recording in a studio on Bodmin Moor was a bit of a stretch.

WORST HECKLE YOU’VE EVER RECEIVED

Well, we recorded the Charlatans track Weirdo after a heckle from the crowd. I couldn’t really hear much heckling during Charlatans gigs as the audiences were usually very big, but I’ve heard more since I’ve toured solo in smaller venues.

I do remember a few where I have ended up actually having to talk to audience members and it’s a point where I feel less like a musician and more like a part-time stand-up comedian – which really isn’t what I’m paid to do.

THE ABSOLUTE WORST

I really hate the hand dryers in pub toilets. Why do they have to be so ridiculously loud? And what’s wrong with just walking around with slightly damp hands? There seems to be a macho thing of blokes whacking the button to turn it on as hard as they can. Totally pointless.

‘Typical Music’ by Tim Burgess was released in September on Bella Union. Listen to his Listening Parties on Twitter or at timstwitterlistening party.com