What it lacks in excess and rock-god high jinks, James Yorkston's memoir of a musician's precarious life on the road makes up for in keeping things real, writes TONY CLAYTON-LEA
IF YOU’RE the kind of person who keeps an ear to the ground for singular musicians and songwriters, you might have heard of James Yorkston. He’s from the unlikely-sounding Scottish village of East Neuk, where, between childminding and composing sombre acoustic songs, he can normally be found dreaming up ways to plot the downfall of Simon Cowell. He is, as they might say in Fife, his own man.
Yet recently Yorkston has changed creative tack, tapping (rather than taping) his words into book format, and next week will see the publication of his excellent on-the-road memoir, It's Lovely to Be Here: The Touring Diaries of a Scottish Gent. It is, as you can probably imagine, the polar opposite of the on-the-road reminiscences of, say, Keith Richards or Slash. The only high-grade stuff that Yorkston needed to keep him on the straight and narrow was regular nips of Talisker single-malt whisky and books by Chekhov, Brautigan and Dostoevsky.
“When I stated to write the book I actually wrote a lot of it on the road, getting to gigs, on one of those tiny laptops,” he says. “I mean, from where I live in Scotland it’s over six hours to London, so if you put your mind to it you can get quite a lot of work done on the train. Plus it made the time go quite fast. I spend a lot of time on the road, and it’s good to be doing something creative as the hours are going by. You feel as if you’re not wasting time too.”
Yorkston says he played the on-the-road details mostly for laughs, but there are times when you’d wonder about his sense of humour. It’s dour with a capital D. Whatever about the sly, dry wit, there is certainly a lot there for people who think that being a touring musician is a bundle of fun. Chance encounters with pushy fans, run-ins with hotel staff, talks with record-company people, interviews with the media, making nice with strangers: all are observed by Yorkston’s beady eye. Indeed, sometimes the book reads as if even the gigs themselves – surely the only sane reason for touring – were sometimes not worth the hassle.
“My wife read the book,” says Yorkston, “and she said it didn’t fill her full of joy that I’d travel all the way to, say, America and ruin the gig because I got drunk the night before. All that time to play a gig, and you can’t do anything because you’re suffering from a hangover. When you put it like that, the hassle part makes sense.
“That said, I do try to make every gig special. Doing what I do for a living is such a privilege, and, okay, so perhaps a gig doesn’t go well, but it doesn’t eat me up. And yet I understand the reaction from some members of the audience might be, ‘Well, why does he show up on stage when he clearly doesn’t want to be there?’ It’s all about making an effort.”
Yorkston’s least favourite aspect of touring is being away from his family. “It was lot easier before I had children. You just did the shows, no matter where they were. But when you have a young family it’s completely different. It’s so conflicting: you know you’ve got to be on the road to earn a living, but you so much want to be home. But then, when I’m home I’m home all the time. With the job I do I get long holidays. So being away from home, and flying . . . Aye, I really dislike flying.”
His most favourite aspect is meeting friends, old and new, and getting back in touch with what he describes as “an odd but nice community of people”.
The sense remains, however, that the musical lifestyle that Yorkston (and many thousands more) has chosen is quite an absurd one to follow, especially at such a financially unrewarding level. He agrees that it’s a precarious occupation, “especially now, because you make very little money selling CDs in comparison to how they sold years ago. But when you come into contact with other people at a similar level doing exactly the same thing, then you have a bond, because you all understand why you’re doing it. I make a lot of friends on the road, and they’re people I value very highly”.
Have there ever been occasions when he wondered why he travelled so far to play to less than, say, 50 people? “It depends on the reaction you get at the gigs: how many people are there, how much trouble the promoter has gone to and so on,” he says. “On the bad nights it makes you really question what you do. But the opposite is that you go somewhere like Switzerland, where the promoters are amazing, and you’re treated with so much respect. When they’ve put a lot of effort into making their venues warm and comfortable, then it’s completely different; you really get the feeling you’re being valued.”
We all know that art and commerce are generally unhappy touring companions, but for quite a few music acts (some of which have higher profiles than sombre singer-songwriters from Fife) the number of T-shirts sold is the difference between a tour’s profit and loss. Does he find the business end of touring difficult to deal with?
“When I don’t get paid, or the promoter reneges on the deal, then I get really annoyed about the financial side of things,” he says. “I’ve gotten harder, though, as the years have passed. Now I never book a tour unless I know I’m going to make money from it. The merchandise on top of that is more petrol money than anything else, while the rest of the money is what I look after my family with.
“For me there’s no point in saying yes to a show that pays £100 but which costs me £150 to get there, what with a BB, a taxi and so on. I’m not interested in that any more, and I’m not a kid any more, either. Selling T-shirts isn’t in my line of work. Selling songs? Yes. I’m selling books at the moment, too.”
It's Lovely to Be Hereis published by Domino Press on Friday
Rocky road: Recommended reads
Diary of a Rock'n'Roll Starby Ian Hunter (1974). The frontman of 1970s pop-rock act Mott the Hoople gives an insider's account of the extremes of tedium and excitement on an American tour. Forget sex, drugs and rock'n'roll: what is highlighted is the pace of the touring lifestyle, from frenetic to static.
The True Adventures of the Rolling Stonesby Stanley Booth (1985). The American writer delivers a half-biography, half-travelogue as he enters into the spirit of the 1969 Rolling Stones tour of the US. Cue the dystopian abyss of Altamont, Keith Richards's drug habit and satanic nastiness.
Nico: Songs They Never Play on the Radioby James Young (1992). The English musician James Young hitches a lift with former Velvet Underground muse and singer Nico, just as she is descending deeper into her heroin addiction. A superb, often humane book about a career sliding ever downwards.
Australian Tour Diaryby Bob Geldof (1994). Not a book but a brutally honest feature that Geldof wrote for Q magazine. "Wake up at 4am with a terrifying sadness that later subsides to a vague depression," he writes. "There's some fan in the lobby. She sent a tape to the room. It's shit. She's bright-eyed with hope and joy and nerve. I say: 'It's great.' 'Really?' 'Yeah, really, it's fantastic.' 'You're so fantastic,' she says. 'You're my inspiration.' My depression is now complete."
U2 at the End of the Worldby Bill Flanagan (1995). The American writer hops aboard U2's biggest tour – Zoo TV – and argues the toss as he watches the band (including Bono) bar-crawl in Australia, visit strip clubs in Tokyo and join Greenpeace in the Irish Sea. It's authorised but is not without grit and substance.
