James (band)

History

James got its start in 1982 in the Whalley Range area of Manchester, kicked off when Paul Gilbertson talked his friend Jim Glennie into buying a bass guitar and starting a band with him. The lineup took shape when Gavan Whelan came in on drums. They played a series of shows under names like Venereal and the Diseases and Volume Distortion, eventually settling on Model Team International, which they later shortened to Model Team. Their early sets were mostly improvised, built from jam sessions, and they once opened for the Fall at a gig at Manchester Polytechnic. Singers and other musicians came and went quickly until the band met Tim Booth at a student disco. Gilbertson invited him to the band’s scout hut in Withington to join as a dancer, but Booth soon became the lead singer.

In August 1982, after a short stint as Tribal Outlook, the band renamed themselves James, taking the name from Glennie. Glennie later explained that nobody ever called him James, so it didn’t feel like his own name; Tim was out because he was the singer and that would be odd; Gavan sounded too heavy metal; and Paul was the other option, so they went with James. It didn’t seem like a big decision at the time—they just thought it was cool.

On 17 November 1982, thanks to a recommendation from Mike Pickering, James played at the Manchester nightclub the Haçienda alongside New Order, the Durutti Column, Section 25, and others. That show was filmed and released on video in 1983 by Factory Records as “A Factory Outing.” While the footage was being edited at Factory’s offices, it caught the eye of Factory co-founder Tony Wilson. He offered James an album deal, but the band, by then a steady live act, worried about ruining their material in the studio and instead agreed to a three-track EP. Their first release, the Jimone EP, was cut at Strawberry Studios in Stockport in August 1983 and came out on Factory Records that September. That EP led to James supporting the Smiths on the Meat is Murder tour from February to April 1985. During that tour, the Smiths covered James’s song “What’s The World.”