Coinciding with their 40th anniversary,
James were recently honoured with the Icon award by The Ivors. It’s the biggest prize in British songwriting, which many would say is overdue for a band who’ve created classics including
Sit Down, Laid, Born Of Frustration
and
Sometimes.
The band themselves were less certain of their status when they attended the ceremony last May, as multi-instrumentalist Saul Davies admits: “We sat there, thinking about the luminaries who’d won Ivors before us, how they’d studiously sit around a piano and write songs in a technically able way. Then we thought about the unholy fucking mess James are when we write. If the Ivors knew what they were actually honouring, it’d be hilarious.”