Travis frontman reveals he wanted to name album after Evening Times

“Stormy weather makes life interesting,” says Travis frontman Fran Healy.

The lead singer of Glasgow’s Brit award-winning band is talking about the inspiration for their 10th studio album, L.A. Times, which is released via BMG on July 12.

Weather analogies seem to be familiar ground too, with the band’s hits including Why Does It Always Rain On Me? from their second album, 1999’s The Man Who.

READ MORE: We'll 'try to blow The Killers off stage': Travis frontman Fran Healy

Healy, 50, now lives in Los Angeles, which has inspired their new album moniker.

“It’s all about what you’re going through at the time. The album’s called L.A. Times,” he explains, but the truth is, he’d had another title in the back of his mind.

“I always wanted to call an album Final Times because of an old man in Glasgow in 1990 who sold the Evening Times (which is now known as the Glasgow Times) outside of Marks and Spencer on Argyle Street,” he says.

“He would go ‘final Times’ – because it was the final edition… I put it on a mixtape for my girlfriend back then because she used to do an impersonation of it and I loved it.

"So I always wanted to call an album Final Times, but it always seemed a bit negative.”

(Image: PA)

Enter L.A Times the album, which includes tracks Gaslight, Alive, Home, I Hope That You Spontaneously Combust and L.A Times, with Raze The Bar featuring guest vocals from Coldplay’s Chris Martin, and The Killers’ Brandon Flowers.

“I’ve been living in Los Angeles for the last seven years, and it just so happened to be an extremely stormy seven years, emotionally speaking, inside and outside,” Healy explains.

“Like all these crazy things happening to me in LA.

"And I think if you want to make any kind of art, I think it probably goes without saying that you need to bump up against a few things.

“Stormy weather makes life interesting… And when you hit a squall, it’s interesting.

"And when you get through it, you feel lighter… and then you hit another thing.

"So I’ve had a good run of major weather events in the last seven years…”.

READ MORE: I saw Travis at the Hydro - they dedicated a song to Glasgow

It is a world away from the beginnings of Travis, who emerged from Glasgow in the early 1990s where they were thrown in with the Britpop crew amid a wave of excitement at the prospect of Cool Britannia.

But the quartet – Healy, Andy Dunlop, Dougie Payne and Neil Primrose – were distinctly different from contemporaries like Blur and Oasis, with The Man Who rocketing them to international acclaim and often cited as the inspiration for bands like Coldplay and Keane.

Healy, who has a son with German photographer and former make-up artist Nora Kryst, speaks openly about the “crazy LA things” he references earlier.

“In our life, my wife and I separated.

"It’s a big change and we’re friends and everything’s cool and we’re parents, and the thing is, you see, we’re no longer married. We’re not divorced yet but we are separated for four years…”, he says.

“The last record was actually the break-up record. I couldn’t talk about it at the time. I just didn’t want to because it was personal, but I still don’t really want to talk about or go into any depth”.

While living in LA, Healy says he’s been the victim of an attempted carjacking and allegedly been assaulted.

“I’ve got into a karate fight with some guy, I almost lost my finger in a dog bite trying to save my neighbour’s dog from traffic…” he says.

“I love the metaphor of you’ll just be coasting along and the boat is suddenly in the sunshine and then you’re like, ‘Oh, wait a minute. There’s a big cloud over there, and you can’t avoid it'.

“And that’s the thing about life: Life will just throw you these storms. You either ride them out, strap yourself to the boat and just get through it.”

For more than three decades, Travis has more than done that. Impressively, they’ve had an unbroken line-up since their formation at the Glasgow School of Art in the early 90s, a rare feat in the turbulent world of music.

They are, Healy says, first and foremost friends.

“When Dougie (Payne) joined our band… the balance of our band was a bit skew-whiff, and then when Dougie joined, it just balanced. We’re a four-piece band. We’re friends, first and foremost… and it’s not changed,” he says.

“We were out last Sunday doing socials, it was supposed to be like for social media, doing TikTok videos around Camden, all the bars we went to in 1996, a good mix of the Dublin Castle, The World’s End etc and we ended up getting absolutely lashed but we’re mates and we’re hugging and laughing, and we went in the studio the next day and I totally wrecked my throat doing a James Brown impersonation – and that’s us.”

“It’s just the same. And that’s why it works because it’s real.

“I think one of the things that you see when you go and see a band like that live – you’re not just going to see all the hits and all the songs that you know that are bookmarks in your life. You’re watching live friendship and that’s rare to see.”

Travis has already performed with American rock band The Killers across their 16-date UK arena tour through June and July, and come December they embark on their own headline tour with dates in Leeds, Liverpool, London, Sheffield, Glasgow and more.

“It’s not like brotherly love… this is like love, real love, whatever that is…,” Healy says of the band.

“It’s like a special kind of love.

"There’s a song called A Groovy Kind Of Love, and it’s this thing where it’s not quite brotherly, or sisterly, it’s not quite friendly – you feel like they make you complete.

“And without my band… I couldn’t be in another band. We don’t do gigs without each other.”

L.A. Times is out July 12 and the tour begins in early December, closing at the OVO Hydro in Glasgow on December 21.