Manc Generation

“Have drugs impacted on my life? Yes they have! But it all depends on whether the parents are gonna see the piece, doesn’t it? I think it comes down to the mindset of the individual. I wouldn’t dare preach one way or another. In this day and age, when you’re not allowed to fuckin’ smoke in a building, I think it’s fucking ridiculous. I don’t even smoke, and people say, ‘It doesn’t affect you.’ Well it fuckin’ does when ten of me best mates are outside and I’m left in a club alone for half an hour. It totally does!”

And that’s Courteeners frontman Liam Fray’s tuppence worth on the subject of narcotics for the HP Drugs Issue. Mind you, his slightly ragged demeanour this afternoon suggests ethyl alcohol might be the most lethal drug of all. When we catch up with the singer, he’s suffering from a bad hangover in the back of the band’s van. But hungover or not, there’s something else Liam is at pains to clear up. Let it be noted for the record: he is not, nor at any point in the past, was a solo singer-songwriter act.
“It seems to have been blown out of proportion, that,” he grimaces. “I was just mucking around doing a few open mics, and because my name appeared on the poster once or twice and the songs were good, attention was drawn to it quite early on. But it was always a band outfit, d’you know what I mean? We’ve got to to nip that in the bud really, ’cos people seem to think I was some sort of pied piper traipsing around with my battered acoustic, but it wasn’t really the case. Y’know, Noel Gallagher wrote songs on acoustic guitar, then he was part of Oasis.”
Ah yes, the O word. The Courteeners may be a bunch of shag-cut guitar-toting Mancunians with a mouthy singer called Liam, but they’re way sarkier than even Noel G. The band’s debut single ‘What Took You So Long?’, a lean and tidy swipe at hipper-than-thou net nerds, unites several generations of spiky Brit guitar bands (The Kinks, The Jam, Arctic Monkeys), although the conversational, unpretentious nature of Fray’s delivery has as much in common with Mike Skinner or Kate Nash.
“I love them as well,” Fray confirms. “I think there’s a skill in getting the right mix between the art and the ordinary. When I was young I used to listen to a lot of Paul Weller and Ray Davies and I suppose that’s rubbed off on me slightly. But then, I used to write my own poems in school, and little short stories, so if anything I’m probably my own biggest influence through writing my own stuff. I think that probably comes through in the songs more than any other songwriter. I always say things like The Smiths and The Kinks just for an easy reference point, but to be completely honest, I don’t really look to those people even though I enjoy listening to them. I take stuff from everywhere. The guy in the chip shop is an influence, and the woman on the bus is as much an influence as Morrissey or anyone else.”
Speaking of the Moz, The Courteeners’ forthcoming debut album was produced by none other than Stephen Street.
“He rang us and said, ‘Can I do it?’” Liam reveals, “and we were like, ‘Yeah!’ We thought it was a joke at first. I didn’t want to give my songs away to anybody, and I think we were always wary that if we were going to work with a producer, he’d have to be brilliant, care about the songs a lot and listen. A producer is 80% people skills rather than knowing which knobs to twiddle, making people believe what they’re doing is good. If you’re a singer and you’re doing the third or fourth take, he’s got to keep you buoyed, but also get you to do another take.”
Did they feel compelled to make a definitive statement with their first album?
“You know what, I don’t think we even had time to think about it, because we already had gigs planned and were playing in Manchester every couple of nights to a couple of hundred people, and that turned into 500 in August, and that turned into 1000 in October, which turned into 1500 in December, up and up and up. We were on tour with The Coral and then we did another UK tour and then another UK tour, it’s brilliant, but we’ve not even had a chance to think about it. Which I think is a good thing; if we had three weeks off in the middle we might have went, ‘What’s going on?’ But we’ve taken it in our stride. I’m proud of the album, I think it’s really good.”

'What Took You So Long' is out now, distributed by Universal