There's a very good reason why James' 10th album is called Millionaires. Well, when they released Laid in 1993, their sexlives improved considerably; 1997's Whiplash saw frontman Tim Booth spend the best part of a year in a neck brace, so when the time came to christen their latest opus, what the hell. On a dreary, cold Dublin morning, Booth laughs, dismissing the title as "playful, wishful thinking".
However, wishful thinking or not, Millionaires could be another self-fulfilling prophecy for the band who have been releasing music since 1983. They have a string of hit singles as long as a pole-vaulter's arm and yet have never hit the commercial heights of some of their contemporaries. Millionaires could change all that.
Not since Laid have they created a long player than sustains anything like the momentum of their hits, and upon its release in October, Millionaires was almost universally acclaimed as their finest moment yet. The enigmatic Booth wasn't completely surprised, though.
"I never try to anticipate the British music press, but I kind of felt that our record deserved a lot of support, cos it's a great record," he stresses. "But you can never double-guess what the music press is going to do, in England anyway."
But does what the press think mean anything to him after all this time? Surely, no matter what someone at, say, NME, thinks of the album, they have enough fans who will go out and buy it anyway?
"We do," admits Tim, "but we are still trying to reach other people who haven't cottoned on to us yet. So it would piss me off if I felt that the press might prevent the odd stranger from checking us out."
However, bad press doesn't affect him personally any more, he proclaims.
"Gone are those days," he says with a wry smile. "I haven't read any of our press for four or five years, but that's probably because I have a thin skin rather than a thick skin."
He admits that it is a tad unusual for a band to reach their creative peak after almost two decades. With the likes of Oasis playing by numbers after two albums, surely the odds would be against such a feat?
"I suspect that is quite unique," he says. "James has always been this thing that never fitted into categories - that's why we've been so hard to sell. We never really fitted anyone's expectations, including our own, so I'm proud of the fact that we can produce a record after 17 years that people think is our best record."
Does he think it's their best record?
"It's impossible for me to tell, 'cos when you work on a record you just hear it again and again," he says, "and I haven't got to the point where I can go back to it and listen to it. I probably will, in about six months time, and then I'll be able to tell you. Often, you go back to a record years later and usually love it. There's only one or two of ours I don't like, but that was more because of production or my singing out of tune on the first record. Most of them I am very proud of."
It has been well documented that after their last album proper, 1997's Whiplash, failed to ignite the world, the band went through a low ebb, which only lifted when their Best Of . . . compilation sold over one million copies and gave them their first number one. According to Booth, there have been more than a few times in their career when the band have been treading on very thin ice, commercially.
"I remember in America, one record company who were going to sign us didn't, 'cos they couldn't see me going down very well in the deep South amongst all the rednecks," he laughs. "You get some really weird comments like that, beauties that you can keep and treasure."
He also recalls when they had recorded Gold Mother, and their monster hit 'Sit Down', but hadn't released either. "Geoff Travis from Rough Trade told us that we'd never sell more than 20,000 records and we were always going to be a minority interest," smiles Booth. "That was about four months before we kind of exploded."
One musical luminary who has kept the faith with James is former Roxy Music virtuoso and producer extraordinaire, Brian Eno, whose Midas touch last graced the band's work six year ago, with Laid. Surely there is no coincidence that when he returned to knob-twiddling duties for the band, their muse returned with a vengeance. I wondered what form of magic dust Mr Eno brings to the studio?
"I expect that he brings something completely different to every project," muses Booth. "That is really his skill. Most producers bring something very predictable, be it a sound or a technique. Brian is good at everything and he is not stuck in any one style. He is one of the most independent-minded people I have ever met. He is able to look at a situation, assess it, see what it needs and fulfil it. It is as simple as that, but you cannot stress how incredible that is because no-one else can do it. It is a joy to work with him.
"He teaches us more than anyone else has ever taught us. He is just a pleasure to have around as a human being: very witty, very playful; hardworking, incredible concentration, and a great drinking companion, even though I hardly ever drink."
Another special guest who features on Millionaires is none other than our own Sinéad O'Connor, who dropped by the studio to see Eno and promptly had a mic shoved under her nose.
Sinéad's distorted vocals ended up on the beautiful, ethereal album closer, 'Vervaceous', and also on a duet with Booth, 'I Defeat', which didn't make the finished album but ended up as a B-side on the glorious 'Just Like Fred Astaire'.
"I felt like 'I Defeat' was written for her," recalls Tim. "I tend to write, not really thinking about how it relates to my life, 'cos that way I'm less conscious, more instinctive, more creative. But I wrote this lyric and I couldn't understand how it related to me, I didn't get it. Then Sinéad walked into the studio the next day."
This rather otherworldly theory is not Booth's only foray into the paranormal. He has on occasion referred to songs as being like spells, an odd sentiment for a million-selling rock star in this day and age. But Tim has always been a fan of the spiritual, once admitting to five 18-hour days of meditation, and also dancing himself into an "ecstatic altered state" without the use of small white pills on more than a couple of occasions.
"I used to practice a lot of meditation, and teach meditation," he says. "Mantras are a series of sounds, usually vowel sounds, that you repeat, which affect your whole physical make-up, your well-being, your health system, your so-called spiritual system, aligning everything. I worked out from years of saying certain sounds with an intention to cause effect, that words and sounds repeated can have a strong effect on the psyche and the physical well-being of people. From there, it's quite simple to see that a curse is really concentrated hatred, concentrated negative thoughts. If you think negative about people, they can usually feel it: it usually diminishes their confidence, their relaxation and their ability to be themselves - they feel criticised.
"So, songs that get repeated over and over again on the radio are powerful mantras," he continues. "I really believe they have a powerful effect on culture and society. Songs can be very much like spells or charms - they can have a positive or negative effect. And it's a very powerful thing, mixing music and words. Why do three notes strung together in a certain way make you cry and another three notes make you block your ears?"
* * * * *
One song on the new album, 'We're Going To Miss You' opens with Booth declaring "This is not a song/This is a shield/This is a charm with your name on". What's that all about then, Tim?
"That is the only time that I have utilised a song as a spell," he says. "A few people have wished us ill over the years, some very personal curses. And the only way to protect yourself from a curse is to surround yourself with a mirror and reflect it back to the source. This is not something I actually wanted to do: because I don't necessarily want that person harmed in the way they want to harm me, but that is the only way to get rid of it, and that is what that song is about. And it's a cheerful, uplifting pop song to boot," he laughs.
OK, spiritualism aside, some of Booth's songs are hopelessly, unabashedly romantic. Take recent single 'Just Like Fred Astaire', a gloriously, soaring melod, with Booth gushing "I believe in Hollywood/Don't believe that love must bring despair".
"It's about the nature, the madness of romance, so it hs to be shamelessly romantic," he says. "It's about romance as a sickness, a guy going to a doctor because he is lovesick. It gave me poetic licence. By setting up that scene, it enabled me to be incredibly romantic. I needed that excuse, 'cos I'm English. We English need a good intellectual context to be romantic in - we can't just do it," he laughs.
"I've really avoided romance and love," he says. "I've hardly written about it in the whole of my time with James. This record, I couldn't hold back any more 'cos it was so strong in my life, so I let myself go on a couple of the songs." [Booth is referring to his forthcoming marriage to long-time partner, Kate - JW]
Speaking of his personal life, Tim Booth has a reputation as an enigmatic loner, so much so that he has often been compared to the quintessential outsider, REM's Michael Stipe, "because I have a certain sexual ambiguity, and that loner, offbeat thing," admits Tim.
How does such a description sit on his shoulders: the person who distances himself from the rock 'n' roll hedonism of his peers, playing solitaire while the rest of the band indulge themselves in the traditional excesses of this business we call pop?
"I'm happy with that," he smiles. "That's my place. Me and the rest of the guys balance each other out. Some of the other guys go headlong into it, but I'm not really interested in that lifestyle, partly because I'm physically not able to carry it. I sometimes think that if I started to binge, some of the others would become ascetics. There's a very important balance going on. If I jump off the see-saw, some of the others could end up in orbit."
I put it to Tim that while Stipe has suffered at the hands of the tabloid press, who seem to be in a constant state of anxiety over his sexual preferences, he has never had to endure the same prying into his personal life.
"I've been open about my sexuality," he says. "It's in lots of the lyrics, many of them are written from an asexual point of view. Like 'Laid': "Dress me up in women's clothes/Messed around with gender roles/Lined my eyes and thought me pretty". That's very forward in many ways.
"Part of me has always felt that I should be gay or at least bisexual. I've tried to be, with men that I've loved and wanted to go to bed with, but it hasn't really worked out. I figured that was an experience I should have had as an artist, and as someone who has some really close male friends who you feel, 'I love this person, so why shouldn't I be able to sleep with them?' I don't want to be limited to gender. But it doesn't work out like that. I'm a woman's man in the end whether I like it or not. But I have a strong affinity to feminine sides in men. I don't really get on with macho men, and I've never minded people thinking I was gay.
"On the Lollapalooza Tour, we were going on before death metal bands, they were shouting 'faggots' and stuff. We immediately went out and got skirts and I'd walk out into the audience, singing in the faces of these huge guys. These were stadiums, so the cameras would follow me, and these guys didn't know what to do when 10,000 people were looking at them. The first guy I did it to had been screaming abuse at me, and after a minute and a half he asked me to give him a hug. It was amazing.
"I had a neck brace on and was as fragile as hell. If any of them had hit me I'd have been in hospital, but it didn't happen. I did that every day and it was the highlight of Lollapalooza for me."
So here we are, 17 years since the band formed, and it seems they are enjoying life as a rock band more than ever, which is probably due to their current creative pinacle. While admitting that he never saw James lasting this long, Booth feels that they are still cutting their teeth, to an extent.
"We've been very slow learners," he confesses, "in terms of dealing with success. We have turned down many things that would have made us huge worldwide, because we were frightened of it. We've been learning to deal with it on our terms, gradually. I don't know how huge bands manage it. I'd obviously love the money, but not the lack of freedom. You want money 'cos it gives you freedom, not because it takes it away.
"I think Bono said that it's not an ego-trip, it's an ego-bust. Where normally, you can look like a dickhead in the privacy of their own home, you're suddenly looking like a dickhead on the front of a newspaper. Any cracks in your personality get exposed and you have to learn how to deal with that."
If James were to have a huge international hit single tomorrow, would it be something they'd enjoy?
"Probably," he says. "We'd enjoy the money. It's not something that feels like it's in James' fate, which has been quite a ragged strange line. But it could be a nice irony. I think we have made songs that could have done that, over and over again, but you have to have so many other things to fall for you. Unless you get a lucky break of some kind, you can't really plan anything like that."
Hit singles aside, Tim foresees a lot of family life in his own future, and he has also returned to his love of acting in recent years. "I did a play last year in England, which was really challenging. I was up on stage for two and a half hours every night and I loved it," he enthuses. "In fact, I couldn't do it when I was younger because I didn't have enough confidence. I'd love to do more acting. I get offered soaps and all kinds of stuff in England but I don't want that: I'm looking for more unusual film parts."
If Millionaires spawns the kind of success it deserves, though, he might have to delay his acting career by a few years yet. But whether it be as a musician or a thespian, Tim Booth could end up being a Millionaire yet, without the help of Chris Tarrant. n
* Millionaires is out now on Mercury Records