"We will be in tears", says James frontman Tim Booth as he talks of his band's homecoming shows in Manchester this week. The band will perform an extraordinary selection of their back catalogue reworked and backed with a full live orchestra over two sold out nights at Manchester's 02 Apollo.
And for the Manchester-formed band, being back on home turf and playing the emotional new takes on the classic songs will indeed be a heart-wrenching one. Not least as this new endeavour marks the 40th anniversary of James releasing their first single, famously with Manchester's Factory Records, back in 1983.
The band's talismanic frontman Tim says fighting back the tears really is a challenge with these new interpretations of their classic hits, as well as rarely played B-sides and fan favourites.
READ MORE: Join the FREE Manchester Evening News WhatsApp community
"The hard bit for me as a singer," Tim confides, "Is that you can cry to some degree and sing, but there's a point where you really can't.
"It's a really powerful feeling having an orchestra enlarge upon a song you wrote when you were 20, or a song where you wrote a self-deprecating or self-hating lyric in your 30s and it's suddenly got this swell behind it and it hits you in a different way.
"The process has been amazing and very emotional. Hopefully we take the audience into a euphoria."
The band will come home to entertain the home town crowds ahead of the release of their new double album, Be Opened by the Wonderful, which was recorded at Salford's Blueprint Studios late last year. They took over fellow Manc band Elbow's studio space in a hush-hush venture which will see the album finally released on June 9.
It means fans heading along will be hearing many of these new orchestral versions for the very first time - the likes of Sit Down, Sometimes, Tomorrow and She's a Star in a whole new way. Tracks have been orchestrated and conducted by Joe Duddell, known for his collaborations with New Order and Elbow, with the ORCA22 Orchestra and featuring the Manchester Inspirational Voices choir.
It's certainly quite a way to mark the band's landmark 40th anniversary, with a fitting "made in Manchester" production.
Tim, 63, laughs: "Most people get to 40 they try and hide it, but you can't do that with a band. But also we're really proud of it, we've embraced it.
"Our manager, he twisted our arm on the orchestra thing because it's a lot of work and we're lazy buggers at times."
The band played memorable orchestral gigs across the UK in 2011, but Tim says they regret never recording or filming it at the time.
He said: "It was clearly one of the highlights of our career, one of the most extraordinary events, and this will be too. So we were like, let's go back, let's get some extra songs, bring it up to date with some of the new songs.
"The intention by Joe originally was to get one song from every album so that's why it really spans our career. And here we go.
"Our manager had a great idea, it won't make us money, it's purely an artistic concept when you're paying 40 people in an orchestra every night. We're not Ed Sheeran standing on his own with a beatbox and a guitar."
Returning to Manchester is always a homecoming for the band, which now features the lineup of Jim Glennie, David Baynton-Power, Saul Davies, Mark Hunter, Chloe Halper, Debbie Knox-Hewson, Adrian Oxaal and Andy Diagram. Tim says: "There are other great cities for us, Glasgow in particular, and in Greece and Portugal, but Manchester is our home."
The band first formed in Manchester in the 1980s, but it was not until the 90s that they would find huge success. Tim, reflecting on the early days of the band now, says it was a deliberate intention to stay "off radar".
Tim was famously recruited to the band's fledgling line-up when they spotted the Manchester University student "dancing at a uni disco".
He says: "I was the only student, they were 16 year olds who'd stolen the equipment off the back of a lorry. There was a little age difference and a cultural difference, but it was fantastic.
"We never set out to make records, we just wanted to play live, we felt live was the litmus test of a band. We only had our arms twisted to making a single by Factory because promoters wouldn't put us on to play gigs unless we had a single out."
Back then the band took a deliberate stance not to court publicity. He says: "We wouldn't do press, our first photo shoot with Kevin Cummins we all turned our heads away and he shot the back of our heads. We were the only band to ever turn NME cover down. We were there for the music, and we knew we needed time to learn our trade.
"Our drummer Gavan [Whelan] was really technically gifted, but the rest of us were completely learning on the job, so we needed those seven years. We were rehearsing for four, five days a week for seven years. It left us in great stead because by the time success came, we were ready, we knew our identity, we knew how to improvise for hours, and we could write songs much more easily, it was such a blessing those seven years of preparation. It was like learning a trade."
In 1990 the band would release their seminal album Gold Mother amid the success of anthems Sit Down and Come Home. It hit just as the Madchester phenomenon was on the rise, but Tim says James deliberately tried to distance themselves from the Manchester "scene".
He says: "We always wanted to be about longevity, which is why we did slightly distance ourselves from the Manchester "scenes" that we almost got kind of pulled into. Because we felt like they won't last long.
"Scenes only last a few years. And we wanted to be this kind of band that kept going, and kept their standards high."
Since then the band has gone on to release an extraordinarily prolific amount of albums - the latest will be number 17. But Tim says: "Hopefully It's not just being prolific, that's just pumping stuff out, it's the quality of the babies.
"For us, our last album was one of the best albums we've ever made, that's where we're at. We may not be a household name, but we sell more tickets now than we ever sold at the height of our fame in the 90s."
James new album Be Opened by the Wonderful is released on June 9. The James Lasted Orchestral tour plays Manchester Apollo on May 9 and 10, before continuing their UK tour to Blackpool on May 12, Nottingham on May 13, Bath on May 15 and the Royal Albert Hall in London on May 17.
Read next:
- Kym Marsh and lookalike daughter make joint career announcement
We tried supermarket quiche - and one went straight in the bin
Take That's Mark Owen "unrecognisable" at Coronation concert
- The Cheshire farm shop with brand new play area and cookie van
- The chocolate box village with one of the UK's best pubs
