To mark the release of their first album in eight years, ‘We Are Love’, The Charlatans entertained a crowd of more than 200 fans with a lively Q&A session at Resident in Brighton.
The West Midlands band, responsible for hits like ‘The Only One I Know’, ‘One To Another’, ‘North Country Boy’ and ‘How High’, spoke about what it had been like to get back into Rockfield Studio in Monmouthsire together to record their 14th album, particularly as they hadn’t recorded there since the death of drummer Jon Brookes from a brain tumour in 2013.
“I think enough water had passed under the bridge for us to go back and not feel like it was tinged with sadness,” guitarist Mark Collins told the audience. “When we went back a lot of positive memories came back. It just had the right vibe for us.”
Frontman Tim Burgess added: “There were a lot of good times had there in the past and Jon had a great time there as well. It felt like he was there anyway.”
The album grew out of an idea to record in 2019 that was scuppered by Covid. Four years later, after a postponed 30th anniversary tour became a 32nd anniversary tour, also because of the pandemic, the band started writing new material.
Said keyboards player Tony Rogers: “We had a few writing sessions anyway, but I think it really started to get together after about the third session, we went back into Big Mushroom [the band’s own studio in Cheshire] and we started jamming, and we knew where we were going then.
“We had a bunch of songs which were good, parts were good, but didn’t quite gel, and then I think there was a couple of songs that we jammed out – ‘Deeper And Deeper’ and ‘We Are Love’ – and then as soon as we got those two… we knew that there was something about them and then the rest of the songs all came into life.”
Burgess said the prospect of getting back together had been daunting at first. “It felt like it was going to be a big project,” he said. “Especially writing a record, recording a record, having expectations of what it should sound like and all that. Before you start, it can feel a bit like an ordeal.”
Added Collins: “It was just a timing thing, I think we all had it in our minds that we wanted to do it, just no one wanted to say it first and I don’t think anyone did – I think it just all happened spontaneously.
“It just took us all a little bit of time to agree that we wanted to be there, but once we were all in that mindset, then we were chomping at the bit.”
The 11-track album has a past and present feel with echoes and samples of older tracks while promoting a message of love and renewal. “It felt like it would be a good time to focus on love, in a world full of craziness,” Burgess told the audience. “Bring people together and to put joy out into the world.”
The band will be touring later this year and early next, including a date at the Brighton Dome next April. “It’s always a good one,” said Burgess. “We’ve been to Brighton loads and we look forward to it.”
The city has happy memories for Collins, not least because he won a cuddly toy on a pleasure pier grabber machine earlier that day. “I was very pleased with that, my first time,” he said. He recalled his first visit to Brighton 30 years ago when playing with Ride. “That was 1993 and we had a good time, it’s a fond memory,” he said.
Burgess recently used his sizeable social media following to make a stand against secondary gig ticketing, where resale sites sell tickets for two, three or four times their value. “I just think it’s wrong and it would be great if it was stopped,” he said.
“I saw one gig and it funny because they were advertising [tickets with] inflated prices when you could still get tickets for the regular price, so it just seemed really, even more bizarre.”
The Charlatans are playing at the Brighton Dome on April 25. Tickets are still available from brightondome.org.
