James Bourne Interview
Doug Burke:
Welcome Back story song, I'm your host Doug Burke, and today, we're here with James Bourne, formally of the band Busted. James Bourne is the co-founder and instrumentalist with pop punk bands Busted and Son of Dork, as well as a solo electronic project Future Boy. His band has achieved gold and multi-platinum status, won three Brit awards, achieve eight number one singles, including a record of the year in the UK, and sold over 1.5 million concert tickets. James has also written songs extensively for many other pop artists including Miranda Cosgrove, the Jonas Brothers, and Train's Pat Monahan. James has also written several theatrical musicals including Loserville, Out there, and Murder at the Gates.
Great, I'm here with James Bourne of many different incarnations. James this is backstorysong.com, we go into a deep dive on the vision, inspiration and creative process on individual song of yours, what song would you like to talk about first?
James Bourne:
Well, I feel like Busted and McFly, I think I'm best known for those bands, and those songs, but I feel like maybe it'll be good to shine a light on some of the songs that no one really knows I've done, but amazing artists though. There was one particular song that I did with an artist called Pat Monahan with the band Train, who's one of my favorite singers.
Doug Burke:
Great singer.
James Bourne:
He's an amazing singer. He's such a pro. He's one of the coolest people I've ever been in a room with. Obviously, Drops of Jupiter, which was the biggest... Well, arguably, at this point, because they had a comeback with Soul Sister and that led to a whole second life for them. But when I was working with Pat, he was in the middle. He was talking about a solo album, and I got a call from my publisher, it was really weird. I got a call, and they said, "Pat Monahan's in London." And I was like, "From Train?" And they were like, "Yeah." And I was like, "Wow." And they were like, "Yeah. Do you want to... He's going to be writing this day, we're looking for people who want to write with him." I'm like, "Yeah." Who doesn't want to do that? I immediately I just went and I met with him in a studio in London that had been booked by EMI at the time, before it was Sony. This was quite a long time... This was like 2006 or '07, it was one of those years. It was before his solo album was released, so you'd be able to figure that out by that. His solo album was called Last of Seven. But I met him when he was trying to figure out that album, just doing that, that writing. I go down there and I meet him, and he's quite the star. You know that people have that star quality-
Doug Burke:
Except he seems so down to Earth and approachable-
James Bourne:
He is, he is, he is.
Doug Burke:
... as a performer.
James Bourne:
But you can still have star quality and be that way.
Doug Burke:
Yes, no, that's a rare combination though.
James Bourne:
Yeah, exactly. That's what Pat was like. He was just super cool, but also a star. And I couldn't really believe that I was being given the opportunity to write with him, because all of my hits at this point, and success, had been with Busted and McFly, who were young pop guitar bands. And even though I believed in those songs and I'm really proud of them, at the time and because I was so young and we were so young, I wasn't really the obvious candidate to be working with a Grammy award winning rockstar. Do you know what I mean?
Doug Burke:
Yeah, yeah.
James Bourne:
And I went into the studio with him, and EMI had arranged another guy to come down, maybe because they weren't sure because I was so young and quiet... I'd had songs that had done very well in the UK, but I hadn't ever worked with anyone on Pat's level before. And they sent this older guy, I knew, a friend of mine, actually, called Pete Woodroffe, who was also a songwriting friend of mine. We'd done some songs for my band, Son of Dork, which was a band I had after Busted. And he was invited to the studio to go between, a middle man, just to check that it was a smooth session, but he was also a songwriter signed, like I was. And we go into the studio, and it was... At the beginning of any writing session it's also, sometimes a little awkward, because someone has to say something, right?
Doug Burke:
Yeah.
James Bourne:
And we're in the studio, it's this underground studio, there was a piano in there. It's like, I don't even remember the name of the studio, it was really cool. And I had this piano piece with a melody, and I had it in my back pocket, before I went there, and I thought, I really want to show this to Pat, because when I hear Drops of Jupiter, I hear Elton John for some reason.
Doug Burke:
Uh-huh.
James Bourne:
And I just felt that this song... I think the obvious thing would to be show him something on a guitar, make something rock, but I just had this thing and I wanted to show it to him, so I did. And I kind of hummed the melody, without any lyrics, there were no lyrics, just a melody, and a piano. The thing that... It was a piano piece and the melody together that made me feel like it was worth showing, so I did.
Doug Burke:
Were you nervous about it?
James Bourne:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
You were like, "How's he going to react?"
James Bourne:
Yeah, well, because he could have said-
Doug Burke:
That sucks.
James Bourne:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
Let's do something... Here's what I really want to do.
James Bourne:
Exactly. I played it for him. And before he could say anything about it, Pete, my friend, said, "Yeah, I'm not sure if that's the right thing for this session, James. This isn't... Yeah, that's not what he needs." And before he can finish talking, Pat interrupted him. And Pat didn't know our relationship, because he could say that stuff to me, easily, because we had a creative relationship, and it's easier to honest with people that you have a background with. But Pat had no background with either of us, and he had no problem telling this guy... He interrupted him, and he just said, "So are you an executive?" And Pete said, "No, I'm actually, I'm a songwriter. I'm here... I'm signed to EMI, and I was invited to the session just to help." And he said, "Oh, because I'm going to do the lyrics and we've got the melody and the piano, and I don't think we need anymore help here. I think we're good." And-
Doug Burke:
Very polite. Very diplomatic.
James Bourne:
Oh, it was... I've never seen anything like it actually, and... Because I think he was... I think what it was, Pat loved it, and Pete didn't think it was right, so at that moment, I think Pat just felt like, "Well, I love it and I'm going to do lyrics, and I think we're good." He kind of threw him out of the session, and Pete was really cool about it too. By the way, because he's really cool, and he just went, "Oh, yeah. Of course." And he left. And we still laugh about it to this day. It's just so funny. But then, all of a sudden, he left, so I watched him throw him out of the room, in a really professional, non-crazy way, but it was kind of frightening. I was like, "Wow, I've never seen anyone do that before." But in such a professional way too. Then he looked at me and went, "Well, I'm going to go to the park and I'm going to write lyrics, and then you're going to stay here, and you're going to start building the track. And when I come back, I'm going to sing it." And I was like, "Okay."
Doug Burke:
Wow.
James Bourne:
He left-
Doug Burke:
And he had this whole melody in his head.
James Bourne:
He recorded it.
Doug Burke:
Oh, he-
James Bourne:
He had a Dictaphone.
Doug Burke:
He just had it on a phone, and he just was listening to it.
James Bourne:
He just recorded me. He recorded me playing it.
Doug Burke:
Okay. So he-
James Bourne:
The singing and playing.
Doug Burke:
He's listening on his smartphone.
James Bourne:
He recorded me doing the melody and the piano, and he took it to the park in SoHo somewhere, because the studio was in SoHo. He took it in to SoHo square or somewhere like that, and sat in the park, or wherever he went. He said he was going to the park. And I started building the track in the studio, and I couldn't... I was like, "This is pretty heavy." All I did, I showed him it once, he has it recorded, he's writing lyrics, I'm building a track. It was all very... I've never done anything this way before. It was a new way of working for me, and showed back up at the studio about... it couldn't have been more than an hour, hour and a half, had all the words. He had them all written down, and he got in the studio, and I had built a track, and he sung the whole song.
Doug Burke:
And the song is called?
James Bourne:
Great Escape.
Doug Burke:
How many takes?
James Bourne:
The first take was good.
Doug Burke:
Get out.
James Bourne:
No, I don't remember if it was a one take thing, but I know that it easily could have been. He's that good. He's just a really amazing dude to work with, and also, for all we know... This was before Soul Sister, which was I guess, the big comeback for Train, and before Soul Sister, this was between his solo album and his comeback with Train, I was also bumping into him a lot. And because that session went so well, we had other sessions, and we wrote other songs, and I would go to SAR with him, after he finished rehearsals, and we would write songs in the evening, if I was in LA. We went to Malibu one night, and wrote an amazing song. We had a great time. We did some really good songs. But I would also be in studios where I would go into a vocal booth to lay a vocal down on a new song I was working on, and the production team I was working with was also working with him. And I would see lyrics that had been left behind, by Pat from a session the day before, and I would just say, "Pat Monahan's been here." Because the lyrics would just be amazing, they would just be like sat there, from when he had a session from yesterday. It was a really cool time. I'm glad that in that time of my life, because this was after my band, and I had... And it was the beginning of a long period of just straight up songwriting for me. I didn't do anything else. I just wrote songs, and I wanted to better myself just as a songwriter.
Doug Burke:
I've interviewed a lot of the Nashville songwriters, and this is much more similar to kind of the way the Nashville scene works. Where publishing houses hire people to write songs, and they put them together sometimes, and say, "You two, you three, you're going to sit in a room... We're going to rent you a house, and you guys are going to sit in that house, and just write. What instruments do you need in the house, and we'll put them there. You're going to make art together."
James Bourne:
Together. Yeah.
Doug Burke:
Whereas in rock and pop, it's not always like that, often the artist writes the song and then performs the song as an independent exercise, and this is much more like the Nashville style of songwriting in some respects.
James Bourne:
Yeah. Well, it was a very natural way of doing it, but it was a way that I wasn't used to.
Doug Burke:
Yeah. Yeah.
James Bourne:
He-
Doug Burke:
You'd done the other thing, where the group got together and created a song, at Busted.
James Bourne:
Yeah, but Busted was just a complete unique.
Doug Burke:
Sure.
James Bourne:
It was just a complete unique experience to anything I'd ever... I'd never done anything before, it was my... I was a teenager. I was-
Doug Burke:
Sure. Yeah, I get that. Let's stick with the Great Escape.
James Bourne:
Great Escape. Yeah, that's the name-
Doug Burke:
Great Escape. What's it about?
James Bourne:
Pat, I guess, would be able to give the best... Because he did the lyrics.
Doug Burke:
Sure.
James Bourne:
I don't know if I'd even be able to do that question justice-
Doug Burke:
That's fine.
James Bourne:
... because those lyrics actually didn't come from me, they came from Pat. I just did the melody and the piano.
Doug Burke:
But do you feel like the lyrics captured... Because part of what I try to understand-
James Bourne:
Oh, yeah, they did. No, he nailed it. He tuned straight in to the tone and the emotion of the music.
Doug Burke:
Which is?
James Bourne:
Well, I was slow, it was motivational or inspirational, I guess, uplifting, in the chorus. It's very hard to put it into words, when you start getting this deep.
Doug Burke:
Sure.
James Bourne:
But he just tuned in to the frequency of what the music was, and came back with the right lyric.
Doug Burke:
I understand it's very challenging. What I try to do is understand, what I call, the invisible language, which is this marriage-
James Bourne:
That's what it is. It is an invisible language. It's not really even a language that can be spoken, I don't think. It's a language that can only be felt. Do you know what I mean?
Doug Burke:
Yes. And it's this marriage of the words and sounds. All kinds of sounds, and people don't realize the range of sound we live in.
James Bourne:
And that, I think, the thing that you're talking about, we're speaking about, is... I think that's the thing that separates real songwriters, because I think to really be a songwriter, you have to understand that. If you don't, I don't think you can truly be one. Because people talk about melody, lyrics, and music, but no one every talks about what you're talking about.
Doug Burke:
That combination.
James Bourne:
No, because-
Doug Burke:
It is the combination-
James Bourne:
Yeah, because-
Doug Burke:
... that makes it all work.
James Bourne:
Yeah, because that's also conceptual. It's like, that's the thing. That's the secret part.
Doug Burke:
And it was recorded by Pat or the band.
James Bourne:
It was recorded by Pat for his solo album, and it was Last of Seven, that was the name of it, and I think it's track 10, I can't remember.
Doug Burke:
Were you in the recording session? Or your track was just used and he brought in session players and-
James Bourne:
No. The track that I built in SoHo, it was very quick and it was a demo, and in the end, Patrick Leonard was actually the producer that produced his album, and who is an amazing producer. You know Patrick Leonard? He did Madonna. I think he did Like a Prayer, didn't he, for Madonna. And tons of other-
Doug Burke:
Pretty good song.
James Bourne:
Yeah, tons of songs, but I went to the studio, and I heard it being tracked by Patrick Leonard. I was invited down and it sounded unbelievable. That's the other thing that comes with not being the producer, is that then you meet all these producers. It's part of the reason why I've never fully transitioned into being a producer, and I'm just a songwriter. Is because, from a young age, I've had a luxury of being in the room with the biggest and best producers in the world, and it's... In a way, you get... "Oh, well, this amazing producer that I know, can do this."
James Bourne:
I have produced.
Doug Burke:
You've given it a crack.
James Bourne:
I can produce.
Doug Burke:
Yes.
James Bourne:
But I think the things is that I'm still learning.
Doug Burke:
Life is a continuous learning-
James Bourne:
Yeah, yeah. That's what I'm saying.
Doug Burke:
... experience for all of us. I get it.
James Bourne:
The time will come when I will produce a lot of my stuff, but it's not now, because there are too many people that I've made friends with through my songwriting, that I trust more to produce my songs, if that makes sense.
Doug Burke:
Yeah. What did he bring to the song? I always think of the Saturday Night Live skit with Chris Walken and more cow bell.
James Bourne:
It was just sonically a whole lot better. It just sounded better. It wasn't radically different. The parts that I came up with in SoHo are all in the song. There's guitars, there's stuff like that, that come in in the song, and they were all there in the demo. That's what great producers do sometimes, they know not to mess with it if it works. But he made it sound much better.
Doug Burke:
Great. The Great Escape. Let's talk about a Busted song. You had a ton of hits in that era in the UK. Year 3000, What I go to School for-
James Bourne:
Yeah, let's talk about Year 3000, just because I feel like that song has the craziest story-
Doug Burke:
Okay, good.
James Bourne:
... behind it.
Doug Burke:
I asked my daughter about his, and she's like, "Oh, I love that song-
James Bourne:
Yes.
Doug Burke:
... by the Jonas Brothers."
James Bourne:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
I was like, "Ah-
James Bourne:
Well, I'm super grateful that they did, because at least-
Doug Burke:
better.
James Bourne:
... people in America have heard of the song. Don't let people know that it's a Busted song.
Doug Burke:
What she said was profound to me, and I asked her this morning, I said, "I'm going to interview the guy who wrote Year 3000." She said, "I love that song." I said, "Why?" She said, "Because it has great storytelling."
James Bourne:
Yeah, that's what everyone says to be about it. Yeah.
Doug Burke:
Anyway, but I don't mean to interrupt your story.
James Bourne:
No, that is... A lot of people they say they same thing. I think the lyrics are so not normal. They're not the typical lyrics that you hear in songs. There are certain lyrics that are destined to be song lyrics, and there are some lyrics that aren't, and I think Year 3000 has a lot of those lyrics in them, because that song really was musical improv.
James Bourne:
I was bored. I was sitting at my piano, and I'd been writing a lot of songs. And most of them, at this point, were with Matt, from the band.
Doug Burke:
Matt Willis.
James Bourne:
Yeah. He would come and stay at my house, and we had been introduced to write songs together. We'd known each other a little bit before, but we both auditioned for the same band that we didn't get into. And so, we were like, "Let's start our own band." We had this manager, who, I don't know, he saw in me that there was this writing ability, but he was a big part of why I started to take songwriting seriously, because he was the first person to tell me that my songs weren't very good. A lot of family members... Your mom and dad are always going to love your songs-
Doug Burke:
Right, sometimes.
James Bourne:
Yeah, well, they don't tell you your songs are bad, because they don't know... they don't want to discourage. But he would be like... I'd play him songs and he would have no problem tearing them apart, and "that's not a song." And one night we did come home from a night out, quite drunk, and we did write a song that ended up being the first song that he approved of, which was What I go to School for, which was our first single. That was the first good song, that we wrote, and it was a hit. But Year 3000 came after this, and the way that it came about was, we'd been writing so many songs, trying to get approval from the people that we knew believed in us, but weren't prepared to take it further, unless we got better songs. We were writing a little bit like our lives depended on it, and it was a lot of songs. Year 3000... It was like, we were so exhausted from writing songs. We'd been writing songs all day, every day. Just songwriting. A couple of kids, couple of teenagers in my parents, and we'd sit there in the day, and "What are we going to write today?" And I had this piano, which was in the dining room of my parent's house, and it was in a window. And I sat at it, and we were quite unmotivated that day. I just started bashing the keys, like three chords straight. Not the way it is right now, but it was just C, G, and F all white notes, because I wasn't a very good piano player. I was teaching myself to play piano. And I was playing those chords over and over again, C, G, F, C, C, G, G, F, F, F, F, C, C, G, G, F, F, F, F. One day, when I came home, at lunchtime. And I just started singing the song. And that's why the lyrics are so stupid, is because I was making them up as I went along. And I started singing the song, and I was just making up a stupid story. I was just telling a story to myself, and I was doing it over those chords. And I sung the whole verse, I played the chords of the pre-chorus, but I didn't have any lyrics, because my mind gave up on me. But then I get going and I went back into the verse, which I turned into a chorus, because the chorus is the same chords as the verse. And I started singing Year 3000, and it was improv. The verse and the chorus, as we know it, was improv.
Doug Burke:
Just stream of consciousness.
James Bourne:
Stream of consciousness, in the moment, just like... And not even believing it would go anywhere. Not even dreaming that it would be anything. But there was something about the way the chorus wrapped up with the great, great, great granddaughter line.
Doug Burke:
Oh, I love that line.
James Bourne:
It's pretty fine, which the Jonas Brothers changed for Radio Disney. That's another story that they... But I got to the end of the chorus, and Matt was sat right next to me, and he was listening and watching, and I looked at Matt at the end, and I was like, "Is that anything?" And he was like, "Yeah, yeah. I kind of like that." And he went, "It's something, but it's a bit silly, but maybe." And I was like, "I think if we could figure out what the words are between the first verse and the chorus, it could be something." Because if you look at the lyrics between the verse and the chorus, they don't transition.
Doug Burke:
Right.
James Bourne:
It was like, "How do we do that? What are those lyrics?" And so we spent, Matt and I, we spent an hour forcing... We just wouldn't give up on the lyric. We were determined to find the two lines to bridge the gap between the two sections. And we were stuck. I didn't think we would get it, because sometimes you have those moments, where you think, "Can we even get it?" You know?
Doug Burke:
Right.
James Bourne:
But we just didn't give up on it. Because you're kind of, "We have to get it. There's got to be something there." And I knew that I wanted it to rhyme, because it was a very rhymey song. And I knew that I wanted it to make sense.
Doug Burke:
Yeah, because time travel makes sense.
James Bourne:
Yeah, well, because I think... Yeah, exactly. Well, time travel... That was funny. Sorry, I'm-
Doug Burke:
But I get it.
James Bourne:
It's early in the morning.
Doug Burke:
I didn't mean to interrupt you.
James Bourne:
The thing is is that, what you've got to remember is is at the time it was the year 2000, and Robbie Williams had this song called Millennium, and it was everywhere. It was a huge, huge song. You couldn't not hear it and if you lived in England around that time, you heard that song everywhere. And I just thought... I think that was in my mind, when I was originally coming up with the words, was what about if we just did a song about the next one, wouldn't that be cool?
Doug Burke:
About the future?
James Bourne:
Yeah. And I'm a huge Back to the Future fan.
Doug Burke:
Obviously. It's-
James Bourne:
Back to the Future was everything to me.
Doug Burke:
Because you have a band named McFly and-
James Bourne:
Yeah, well, that whole-
Doug Burke:
... this song is very Back to the Future-
James Bourne:
Yeah, for-
Doug Burke:
... referential, right?
James Bourne:
I wasn't in McFly, but the band-
Doug Burke:
I know heard you wrote songs for them right?
James Bourne:
But the band originated with me and Tom writing songs. Tom auditions for Busted, when we looked for a member. And then Tom and I, we remained friends. I invited him over to write songs, and those songs, eventually, became for the band McFly.
Doug Burke:
Right, right.
James Bourne:
But with the pre-chorus, we got the lyrics, "He told me he built a time machine like the one in the film I'd seen," and that was the empty space that we needed.
Doug Burke:
Yeah, yeah.
James Bourne:
And then by the time you get from the first chorus all the way to the end... So the first verse, the first chorus, you have the song, the song exists. Year 3000 existed like that for a long time, because we didn't know if it was sensible enough. We didn't understand what we had. You know what I mean?
Doug Burke:
Uh-huh. Because it's just this idea in a room at this point.
James Bourne:
Yeah, yeah. We didn't get it. We knew it was funny. We knew that it was... Sometimes songs can be a little bit serious, especially... It's like the package. You've got artists, if you've never heard of an artist before and they go, "Sure, I'm going to be huge, check out my song." And the song's really serious and they're really honest or whatever, it's not fun. And I think part of Busted's appeal was that it was fun.
Doug Burke:
Yeah, I think you and Blink-182 had... There's a tongue-in-cheek aspect-
James Bourne:
It was fun.
Doug Burke:
... to-
James Bourne:
It was just fun. It just put a... yeah.
Doug Burke:
... do funny things in your songs.
James Bourne:
It just put a smile on people's faces, and we were of an age that it felt not out of place. We just let the song sit like that, that version that Matt and I had in that room at my parent's house. And it just sat there and our manager kept saying... We'd evaluate all the songs that we had, and what songs are we going to play when we see record companies? And what songs are going to be the first ones that we record when we go in the studio.
James Bourne:
He kept saying, "The song that always showed true potential was the land of 3000." Because he'd never remember the names of the songs. And-
Doug Burke:
It sounds like the land of the dinosaurs, some-
James Bourne:
Yeah, he had these other names for all of our songs, and that was what he called that song. One day in a hotel room in London, we would meet a lot of... we'd do a lot of our meetings there, with record companies. They'd be invited to the London Intercontinental at Hyde Park corner. They could come and hear us play acoustic, and we were leading up to some meetings in the hotel, and it was, at this point, Charlie... Charlie was in the band, and we tried to find a second verse for Year 3000, and it was really funny, because it was actually, probably the best time I've ever had writing a second verse, because it was such a funny concept. You could say anything.
Doug Burke:
The second improv session, following the first improv session.
James Bourne:
Well, it wasn't an improv session, because-
Doug Burke:
No? It was orchestrated?
James Bourne:
No, it was very different to the first part, because we had the song really.
Doug Burke:
You had song structure.
James Bourne:
Yeah, we had the structure of a verse, a pre-chorus, and a chorus, and we knew the second pre-chorus was probably going to be the same, that's what we were doing back then. And we knew that the chorus was... The pre-chorus was like another chorus that went before a chorus.
Doug Burke:
Sure.
James Bourne:
So we knew we had that. We knew we needed three lines, really, to finish the song. What we thought would finish the song, so if I told you some of the lines that were-
Doug Burke:
Oh, I'd love to see the outtakes.
James Bourne:
If we tried to do a reconstruction of that whole scene, it would just be... it's too funny, because our manager would always try and chime in with lines. And they were the worst lines ever.
Doug Burke:
Do you have those outtakes? Do you have that written down? Any of this stuff?
James Bourne:
I know exactly-
Doug Burke:
Okay. You have it in your head.
James Bourne:
... because I can't forget it ever, because it was just... It's too funny.
Doug Burke:
It was so bad, it was good?
James Bourne:
Yeah, it was so weird. But eventually we got the lines, the boy bands and another one and another one and another one, and because it was just like, "Hey, let's just paint a funny picture of the next millennium."
Doug Burke:
Triple breasted women, swim around town-
James Bourne:
Yeah, which is like-
Doug Burke:
... totally naked.
James Bourne:
Yeah, which is just... It's a stupid... Like I said, it's a stupid song, and it's just a bunch of teenagers in a room having fun. We got that, and we went to record it. It was one of the first songs we recorded with the producer at the time, Steve Robson, and he also really thought the song was good. And we got to that point, he was tracking the song, and that funky guitar part, was never really in the song in the beginning. It sounded too much like Sweet Home Alabama.
Doug Burke:
Uh-huh.
James Bourne:
It was like, right?
Doug Burke:
Right.
James Bourne:
Which is Sweet Home Alabama with different chords, so we wanted to change it up and make it... That guitar part came later. I put that in later, but the middle section, the "I took a trip to the Year 3000," it was Charlie and I... We were in the studio, and Steve Robson got to that point in the song, well, he turned around and went, "Okay, so what happens now?" And I was like, "Well, that's it. That's the song." And he goes, "No, what's the middle section? What is it?" I was like, "We don't have that." And he was like... And he looked at us really unimpressed and he was like, "Go outside and write it now. I'm tracking. Go and do it now." I was like, "Okay." Me and Charlie, we went to the stairwell, which was outside the room that we were recording in and we just came up with, I took a trip to the year 3000 part, and the song had gone multi-platinum and out sold Michael Jackson. All those lines... That section happened in the studio, and Charlie and I did that. And then we went back in and put it down. He was like, "What is it?" We sung it and he went, "That's great." It just went over the existing music. The existing chords, so... And that's the song.
Doug Burke:
And I think that last part is what makes people feel like it's storytelling. You start off going to the year 3000, and then in the end your record becomes a big hit, the seventh album.
James Bourne:
And the weirdest thing was is that our second album, it got released the same week as Michael Jackson Number Ones.
Doug Burke:
Oh, really, yeah.
James Bourne:
Yeah, and we almost out sold it, but he beat us by 500 copies. The song just had this personality that struck a chord with everyone, and I don't think you can plan that. I don't think you can... It's not something that you can just create on demand. Right, it's just... there's either a thing there or it isn't there. It's very difficult to try and recreate that. I don't think it's easy to write another one like that, because a lot of it had to do with our age. I don't think we could write that song now.
Doug Burke:
Fast forward, not to the year 3000, so much, but to the Jonas Brothers picking up Year 3000, and wanting to do it.
James Bourne:
international number, and I picked it up, and it was called Dave Massey, who's a record executive in the US. And I'd been writing... Actually, this kid had cut my song when he was 13, and his voice hadn't broken, and his name was Nick. I was a song called Appreciate, and it happened through Dave Massey. And Dave Massey said, "It's not working out for Nick. He's solo things just not happening right now, we're going to do a band with him and his brothers. We want to do a Busted style band with them in the US, and we want to find songs for them like Busted, and we want to do Year 3000. Is that cool if we do Year 3000?" And I said, "Yeah, I don't think you need my permission to Year 3000. It's out there so you can cover it, right?" It's not a big deal, lots of people cover songs. And he said, "No, but we need to change some of the lines. There's a couple words in there that Radio Disney won't play." And I was like, "Well, what do you want to change?" And he was like, "Well, we don't want to say pretty fine, because we want to say doing fine. We don't want to give Disney a reason to not spin it. It has to be really clean, really clean." And I was like, "Okay." I said, "These are all really minor things." And he was like, "Yeah." And then they said about the Michael Jackson thing, which I don't know, I always sing the Michael Jackson lyric. I'm a huge fan. I think there's no proof of anything, and I just feel like I'm a huge fan and nothing's ever going to change the music for me, and it's a huge inspiration, so they wanted to change that line for Radio Disney. And I was like, "I think that's really lame, but..." It's an executive calling me from another country, and I was like... I didn't know this band. I didn't think anything was going to happen with the song. As far as I was concerned, it was like, I'm going to say yes, because it's this powerful record executive calling you. I'm also 21 at this point, I'm just grateful for any opportunity that comes. I was like, "Look, if you think the song's a hit for them, and you want to change a few words around." I was like, "Fine. If that's what you want to do, but I don't particularly want to change the words. I like the words the way they are, but if you want to change them, change them. But you can't get publishing for it. That's got to be the thing, because the song's already out there. It's already a hit song."
Doug Burke:
It's my song.
James Bourne:
Yeah. It's not your song, it's my song, but if you want to move those words around, you've got my blessing. That's what they wanted. I was like, "Yeah, do that." I didn't think, honestly, I'd ever hear it again from them. You just don't think that that stuff's going to happen.
Doug Burke:
Who's this Nick Jonas?
James Bourne:
Well, yeah. But honestly, it's like those things seem so far fetched. So I was in America and I was at my friend's house, and there was a Miley Cyrus concert playing on television, and all of a sudden the music changes and I recognize the song and these three guys come out, and one of them is wearing a gold jacket and... I'm like, "This song sounds so familiar." And then I realized, "I know this song. It's my song." And then all of the sudden, everyone knew the song in America. It was a big hit. It made a lot of noise over here. And I'm really glad that we did let them move a few things around, because they took the song to a whole new audience. It's been incredible for the song. It's global now.
Doug Burke:
Yeah. That's got to... What makes you feel like to have a global hit like that?
James Bourne:
It's really... It's special, because really anywhere you go, people have... In America, I spend a lot of time in America, I've got my Visa and I do a lot of music here and people know me, really, as the guy that wrote Year 3000. They don't really know about Busted. It just shows, that there's different levels of hits. You could have a hit song in one country and no one knows about it in another country. To have a global hit song is a lot-
Doug Burke:
Different.
James Bourne:
It's very different.
Doug Burke:
Yeah.
James Bourne:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
I think a lot of your music in this era is really focused on teenaged angst and addressing it. This song maybe not as much as What I go to School for, if you want to talk about that one.
James Bourne:
Yeah. What I go to School for, Matt and I we came home drunk and-
Doug Burke:
Home from where? From school?
James Bourne:
No, from...
Doug Burke:
Home from the bar.
James Bourne:
No, we came home-
Doug Burke:
Or from the pub.
James Bourne:
... it was a night out. It was about 1:30 AM, we got home. We were in the dining room again, which is where we wrote all the songs. It was like the music room, I guess, where all the music happened. And the table was just... We have a very cluttered room. It's a very cluttered dining room. The piano's in there. There Year 3000 piano. And then what happened was we were just in the... We were not tired enough to go to bed, and the guitar was there, and Matt picked up the guitar and he started playing some chords and singing. He was singing a melody and some words. He as singing a song.
But the song was like... I love what he was playing, I loved the chords, I loved the feel of it, but I knew that the lyric was just not quite there. I liked the words, but I just didn't think... He had this verse... Or he may have thought it was a chorus, I don't know, but it was just this thing that he was playing. I don't know if he thought it was a chorus or a verse, but for me it sounded like a verse. And he had these lyrics, her voice is echoed in my mind, I feel a aching all the time, can't tell my friends, because they will laugh, feel like I'm heading down that path. Those were his words.
Doug Burke:
Right.
James Bourne:
Two of those lines are in the song, in the beginning of the song, and what happened was, was I said... The line that stuck out to me the most in that verse, was can't tell my friends, because they will laugh. That to me unlocked the story. I was like, "Well, why can't you tell your friends?" Do you know what I mean? What would you not want to tell you friends? I was just thinking. I was just going off on one... The 100 mile an hour thoughts, just flicking through. And I was like, "What rhymes with laugh? And what can't you tell your friends?" I coined the phrase, member of staff to go with I love a member of the staff, because it rhymed with laugh.
Doug Burke:
Yes.
James Bourne:
And that unlocked the concept of What I go to School for, because it's a song about to being able to tell your friends that you can't stop thinking about teacher.
Doug Burke:
You have a crush on the teacher.
James Bourne:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
A big crush, on a teacher.
James Bourne:
Yeah. And I thought, that's cool.
Doug Burke:
And she's hot.
James Bourne:
Yeah, so I was like, that's a cool concept, and Matt loved the concept.
Doug Burke:
Was there a Miss Mackenzie? Or was she a composite?
James Bourne:
You remember what I told you about our manager would used to spurt out lines that were always dreadful? This was actually one good thing that he came up with, and that was the name of the teacher.
Doug Burke:
Okay.
James Bourne:
We had this line, girlfriends, I've had plenty, and he came up with actually... He actually did come up with the Miss Mackenzie part.
Doug Burke:
None like Miss Mackenzie.
James Bourne:
Yeah. He suggested the Miss Mackenzie part.
Doug Burke:
So there wasn't actually a Miss Mackenzie in your-
James Bourne:
No, it was about a teacher. It was a real story. I don't think you have to have been through that to be able to write.
Doug Burke:
I understand.
James Bourne:
Does that make sense?
Doug Burke:
No, no I-
James Bourne:
But Matt was definitely... When I mentioned the idea of writing a song about that, Matt was all about it, because he said that he had also felt that way, when he was at school.
Doug Burke:
Yeah, no, I think many, many young men do feel that way.
James Bourne:
And in a way I feel like you do have those moments. I never have had... I personally, never had anything like that, but he was like "Yeah, I'm all about that concept." Because you know that some people do, it's quite relatable to a lot of people. And then we wrote the song, we just started writing this song. When you unlock the concept, it's very easy to find the words. If you ever can't find the words... If you ever struggle finding the words to the song, it's normally because you don't know what the song's about. Just saying, you know?
Doug Burke:
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
James Bourne:
That's what I've found. Some people go, "Oh, how do you get over the writer's block?" I don't think anyone's ever sure of melody, I don't think anyone's every sure of music ideas, I think normally, writer's block is a lyric thing, but it's a concept thing. That was the thing that opened up the gates.
Doug Burke:
Well, I think if this song helped Matt get good grades in middle school, his parents probably didn't care that he had a crush on Miss Mackenzie.
James Bourne:
We'd left school at this point. And also, Matt and... We weren't in the best place with the... We had dropped out... We were dropouts.
Doug Burke:
At a private school, right? As I remember your bio.
James Bourne:
No, Matt went to a... he had a scholarship at a stage school in London.
Doug Burke:
Okay, okay.
James Bourne:
Which wasn't an academic situation, it's like you do a bit of singing and dancing-
Doug Burke:
Performing schools.
James Bourne:
Yeah. It's a good one. It's like a-
Doug Burke:
A prestigious one.
James Bourne:
Yeah, very prestigious stage school. He went there and then I went to this school... I think my parents hoped that I would go to the really good... where all the smart kids go, and I went there. I got in, after the GCSEs, when I was 16, and I went to the open day, and they wouldn't let me have time off for music, so I didn't go. And they were really... I think their dreams were shattered a little bit when I didn't go. But they were also really encouraging for the music, but they were scared I was going to ruin my life. For sure, yeah.
Doug Burke:
This chart is in the UK. Is this the first song of yours that you heard on the radio?
James Bourne:
Yeah, we were in a car, and we were promoting the song. At this point we were signed, because when we wrote the song, so much happened between when we got signed... Because we were writing all these songs, and we were working with Steve in the studio. That all happened and... It was like a year or 18 months maybe-
Doug Burke:
And you're playing clubs?
James Bourne:
No.
Doug Burke:
No, not performing.
James Bourne:
Zero.
Doug Burke:
So no one knows you guys.
James Bourne:
No, we played zero shows.
Doug Burke:
But you'd been signed, just based on your talent.
James Bourne:
Yeah. We got signed off the songs.
Doug Burke:
Off the songs?
James Bourne:
Yeah, we got signed off the songs, and we performed acoustically in the offices. Simon Cowell was the first person to... We played for him in his office, and he was like on the spot, offering us a deal.
Doug Burke:
Wow.
James Bourne:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
People didn't know who Simon Cowell was back then as much.
James Bourne:
It was the very, very first... Before American Idol, it was Pop Idol, and it was in the UK, but this was the very first season, so he was becoming... In England it's a small place-
Doug Burke:
Sure.
James Bourne:
... it's a small country.
Doug Burke:
Sure.
James Bourne:
And so it's easy to become-
Doug Burke:
Famous fast.
James Bourne:
Yeah, if you're on television, you can get known quite quickly in England.
Doug Burke:
But the government funds a lot of the television, and so there's not a lot of choice of creative outlets. There's not 500 government funded channels, right?
James Bourne:
No. No.
Doug Burke:
There's a handful. But if you're on, you're on.
James Bourne:
Well, at this point... It's even more fragmented now than it was back then. But back then, there was certain things that the whole country watched.
Doug Burke:
Right.
James Bourne:
There was music shows, a lot more of them, that were widely watched.
Doug Burke:
So you first premiered this song, What I go to School for, where?
James Bourne:
The radio. The first time we heard it on the radio, we were in a car somewhere. I don't remember where we were, but we were in a car and we were going between radio stations and we'd just been into a radio station, and they said they were going to spin it. And we had the radio station on in the car, because we wanted to hear it, and then it came on. We were semi-expecting it, but it doesn't matter, it's still cool to hear your song on the radio.
Doug Burke:
I am sure. How's you feel?
James Bourne:
I'm trying to remember it. It was... Everyone was super happy. There was a lot of laughing and disbelief, a lot of that. It was little bit overwhelming, because the way that we came about in the beginning was very... It was almost like to people on the outside, that it happened overnight, but it didn't. It happened quickly. Sometimes it takes people a lot longer, but the planets lined up for us, quite quickly. And it was crazy, because this experience of hearing the song for the first time on the radio, it happened a lot more. It happened in different countries like in France and in Germany and Austria and Italy. We'd been all these places. We had a major record company behind us, and they were sending us everywhere. And sometimes you'd get in the car and you wouldn't know where you were going.
Doug Burke:
Sure.
James Bourne:
Your tour manager had your passports and if you needed to get on a plane, you weren't... I probably was told and there was a dairy, but I didn't look at it. Do you know mean?
Doug Burke:
Yeah, yeah.
James Bourne:
I was like 18 at this point.
Doug Burke:
So let's talk about something you're doing for yourself.
James Bourne:
Yeah. I think doing some music by myself is something I've always thought about doing. And time just felt right to do some. I've been writing a lot and recording a lot, and so at Sundance, this has been my first show, for my new music. First chance to test drive new songs in front of a new crowd in a different country. Which I wanted, I wanted it to be that way. I didn't want to be in front of a familiar crowd. I want it to be as fresh as possible. The Sundance just felt like a good place to do that. You know you're going to be in great hands. You know that it's ASCAP. You know that they don't mess around, and you know that you're going to be on stage with great people out front, great fun house. It's just a stress free environment. Just to get up and do something unplugged.
Doug Burke:
With a friendly audience.
James Bourne:
Yeah. I didn't know how friendly it was. That was really nice. That was really surprising.
Doug Burke:
Oh, that's nice to hear.
James Bourne:
Because I've never been to Sundance before, so I don't know.
Doug Burke:
Here you are, you performed all over the world. We're you nervous coming here?
James Bourne:
I was, I mean-
Doug Burke:
Getting up on that stage was... This is my new stuff and what are they-
James Bourne:
Yeah, and it was nice to feel that way again.
Doug Burke:
Oh.
James Bourne:
Do you know what I mean?
Doug Burke:
Yeah. A little-
James Bourne:
Because I think-
Doug Burke:
... adrenaline.
James Bourne:
I've stopped getting that a little bit, and I got it again. The first day that I played, I drove from my place in LA, and drove all night and got here a minute before soundcheck. And then I played without any sleep, and I played six original songs. So it was a bit like, "Whoa."
Doug Burke:
Yeah. That's a 10 hour drive, I've done that.
James Bourne:
Yeah. I thought I was going to have more time. I didn't have a tour manager. I did it by myself. I just drove here and played the songs. It went through a lot of different feeling in the middle of it. It was like, "Wow." It's so bizarre to be singing the same songs for the last four years and then to all of a sudden to be in a new country, with new songs, and a new project. It definitely threw myself in the deep end a little bit.
Doug Burke:
Let's talk about some of those songs you played.
James Bourne:
Yeah. One of the songs that went down really well was a song called Batman's house, which I wrote about a night that I bumped into Robert Pattinson on a night out and we ended up at his house, and he was telling me he was going to play Batman. And went back to my house after... I was with my friend, we went over there and then we left and I went back to my house and it was just one of those surreal nights, where it's like... In Los Angeles, sometimes, stuff like that happens, and you find yourself in places that you never dreamed you'd end up. And I just thought to myself... I've had experiences like that before, but if the three year old version of me knew that that would happen... If I could go back and see the young kid version of myself, and I could say, "We went to Batman's house." Do you know what I mean?
Doug Burke:
Oh, yeah, no. Your songs reference Star Trek and Batman, that's the stuff that all kids-
James Bourne:
Yeah. I was like... Yeah, and I got back to my house and my guitar was right next to me and I just picked it up, and I recorded my... It was written... This never happens by the way, but it was actually the first song I've written like Year 3000, since Year 3000. In that it... Not that the songs are similar in style, but the way that they were written. The way that it was like improv. But this song was no... This was improv from beginning to end. It wasn't like we needed a break or... Because I'm a lot more... I think I understand my ideas better now. I understand, when I come up with an idea now, I can understand it sooner than what I used to, because I've written a lot. In the last 20 years, I've-
Doug Burke:
Yeah, you've matured and grown as a songwriter.
James Bourne:
I've done it a lot. I think the more you do it, I think you get a little bit more... get better at it.
Doug Burke:
Yeah, I think that's true with almost everything.
James Bourne:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
Practice, practice, practice.
James Bourne:
Yeah. If you write with some older songwriters that have been doing it for 50 years, they have this... it's really natural thing about their ideas that just feels like you don't get that without that time.
Doug Burke:
That experience.
James Bourne:
Yeah. But so the song was... I made a voicemail. So the voicemail exists of the song as I'm writing it and then I went into the studio. I wasn't going to record it and then I did, and it was... Again, like Year 3000, wasn't sure whether to take it seriously or not. Wasn't sure whether it was appropriate. Wasn't sure... Me and John, who I recorded the song with, we were asking ourselves all those questions, and we just did it. And I said to him, "John, what's a solo album for? It's to do the ideas that are too stupid for the band." And then he was like, "Yeah, yeah." And then it... But it's going down so well. It went down so well at Sundance, and-
Doug Burke:
So Batman's house, what's the song about?
James Bourne:
What it's about? It's about what it says. It's about going to... Because Rob Pattinson is the new Batman, and he was talking about it and I was asking him about it, because if you hung out with Rob Pattinson, you're going to want to know, so Batman-
Doug Burke:
Because Batman's house is Bruce Wayne's house, and Batman lives in a cave.
James Bourne:
Right, so there are actually two different ways to interpret the song, and one of them is that way. The lyric works both ways, from different perspectives. There's the one way where it's just the story that happened, which is just finding yourself at the guy that is playing Batman at his house, the actual guy that plays Batman. Or there is the version where I imagine the Joker singing it, about... Did you see Joker?
Doug Burke:
Yeah.
James Bourne:
The new one?
Doug Burke:
Yeah.
James Bourne:
There's a scene where he goes to Batman's house, and I imagine the Joker singing that song.
Doug Burke:
Interesting.
James Bourne:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
Definitely the Joker, not... Could you see any other villain also singing it, or is it the Joker? Because the Joker's a very specific villain.
James Bourne:
I think it's the Joker.
Doug Burke:
Okay.
James Bourne:
Yeah. And there's a scene where he goes and you see young Batman, and I get a lot of ideas from films too. Like Year 3000, even What I go to School for, a lot of those lyrics have come from Back to the Future and Crash the Wedding was Wayne's World and-
Doug Burke:
Yes. Oh, I didn't know that.
James Bourne:
Yeah. Wayne's World two. Yeah. The scene where they crash the wedding.
Doug Burke:
Okay.
James Bourne:
Yeah. Gordon Street. I had that in the back of my mind as well, when the song was being written.
Doug Burke:
On Batman's house.
James Bourne:
Yeah. It's a different feeling to the other songs on my solo album, it kind of has it own place and I guess there are two interpretations for me. And you can interrupt as you want, but it's like that's what it is for me.
Doug Burke:
You're writing the lyrics on the voicemail first, and then-
James Bourne:
No, I was singing and I'm improvising.
Doug Burke:
The just the whole thing. The lyric and the melody-
James Bourne:
Improv.
Doug Burke:
... came together-
James Bourne:
Improv.
Doug Burke:
... on this voicemail.
James Bourne:
Yeah, improv.
Doug Burke:
Okay. Stream of consciousness-
James Bourne:
Yeah. As it happens.
Doug Burke:
And the mood and the feeling you're going for in the melody, you thinking about that at all? Or is it just coming-
James Bourne:
It's nostalgic. It's nostalgia. Because it's three years old, running around the garden dressed as Batman, and now I'm here.
Doug Burke:
Kind of a surreal feeling or-
James Bourne:
It's like thing... It's quite theatrical.
Doug Burke:
Theatrical.
James Bourne:
Right. It's darker than the other songs.
Doug Burke:
Yes. It has to be, it's Batman, right?
James Bourne:
Yeah, exactly. And the strings are a little bit Batman, and it was cool because the lyric opened up a lot of production stuff. Again, we're going into that place that we touched on the beginning of... when started talking, that it's hard to describe. It's that tuning into the frequency of-
Doug Burke:
The invisible language.
James Bourne:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
And I think Batman represents the invisible language more than any other superhero, because he does not have a super power, and yet, when the stuff gets rough, all the other super heroes turn to Batman and say, "What do we do Batman? What do we do know?" You know?
James Bourne:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
And I always think that he's got really high emotional intelligence, and that's the thing. And that's why Superman and Spider-man and all the other super heroes turn to him in that moment, even though he doesn't have the super power, they say, "What do we do Batman?"
James Bourne:
Yeah. He can out think.
Doug Burke:
But part of it comes from having been through such a dark life experience to get there.
James Bourne:
Yeah. Well, when I imagine it, I imagine it's like, it's not a sunny day. You know what I mean?
Doug Burke:
Yeah.
James Bourne:
It's like Year 3000's a sunny day.
Doug Burke:
Yeah, I know, he's the dark knight.
James Bourne:
Yeah. Batman's a cloudy day, overcast, moody, going to storm day.
Doug Burke:
Yeah.
James Bourne:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
Like a day in London.
James Bourne:
Yeah. Like a overcast, about to have a thunderstorm day.
Doug Burke:
Not that there aren't nice days in London, but that's famous for that.
James Bourne:
Yeah. No, I mean, the lyric... Because I guess... If you had to split it down to the millisecond, if you're improvising, what is coming first. Because you're doing lyric and melody, but I guess the lyric is slightly before the melody, because I hear the lyric just before I sing it. I think of the lyric, right before I sing it. Right?
Doug Burke:
Interesting.
James Bourne:
If you're doing improv, if you're just improvising-
Doug Burke:
Because you know the melody's coming up in your fingers somewhere-
James Bourne:
Well, I think... In improv I'm singing words, I'm not wording singing. Do you know what I mean?
Doug Burke:
Uh-huh
James Bourne:
The lyrics really are choosing the melody, not me.
Doug Burke:
Wow. Well, James Bourne, I've taken a lot of your time.
James Bourne:
Yeah, but that's fine.
Doug Burke:
Are you having fun?
James Bourne:
Yeah, yeah. It's cool. It's cool to talk about the songs and reminisce, so yeah.
Doug Burke:
What's the name of the album?
James Bourne:
I don't have a name for it, and I'm pretty sure that it might end up being a self titled album.
Doug Burke:
James Bourne.
Yeah. Just because, if I don't have a name that is obvious, I don't want to inflict on it. Maybe I'll think of one that makes sense, but if I don't, it's probably going to be self titled.
Doug Burke:
Okay.
James Bourne:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
Do we have a release target date? I know these things are subject to a lot of variables.
James Bourne:
I'm thinking it's going to be the summer.
Doug Burke:
Okay. We can't wait.
James Bourne:
Yeah. I want to release some singles just off the album to give people a taste of what's to come, and eventually release the album, and then... I don't play too many shows before the album comes out.
Doug Burke:
Will we get a tour after the album comes out?
James Bourne:
I do want to play, absolutely. I want to go as many places as possible.
Doug Burke:
And will it be solo or a band? And what are you thinking?
James Bourne:
Well, because my album will probably... Well, I depends how well it goes, because I can go and play the songs anywhere by myself and it's no sweat. It's just like me going anywhere. But if I want to have... I guess, the level of production of my live stuff is going to depend of people like it, and if it takes off. I don't know.
Doug Burke:
Maybe something for all us to look forward.
James Bourne:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
Okay, I can't wait to hear it, and see you again on tour. Thank you James Bourne. This has been really terrifically fun.
James Bourne:
Yeah.
Yeah. That was a really weird story. Busted broke up in 2005. I started another band, and I think it happened after my other... Because I had another band, Son of Dork-
Doug Burke:
Son of Dork.
James Bourne:
Yeah. And that band I think... Oh, I know. I was still in that band, and I was planning a show for that band, where we were going to bring a lot of unsigned bands to London, and I was in a meeting for that. And the phone rang and it was an
