‘I’m not famous. But I can’t go to the chippy’: Courteeners’ Liam Fray on filling stadiums, defying extinction – and wearing M&S pants

Interview ‘I’m not famous. But I can’t go to the chippy’: Courteeners’ Liam Fray on filling stadiums, defying extinction – and wearing M&S pants Fergal Kinney He launched a guitar band just as the world was moving on. But they still went stratospheric. Fray talks about uniting Manchester after the attacks – and writing his first single on a Fred Perry comp slip M anchester has yet to erect a structure that hometown boys Courteeners cannot sell out. But tonight, a stadium band is squeezed into the narrowest of venues. At a heaving Night & Day cafe, disbelieving fans snap photos of their entry wristbands to a rare intimate show in honour of a new greatest hits collection. “Twenty years,” marvels frontman Liam Fray, contemplating his band’s lifespan. “You don’t get rid of us that easily.” For most of the audience there has barely been a Manchester without them. Charlotte, 18, has seen Courteeners at their enormous Heaton Park shows. “All my friends like them,” she says. Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham tells me he became a fan through his son. Paul, 56, has seen them more than 100 times. “There’s not many actual bands any more,” he says, which seems key to their appeal. Arriving in 2008 as British guitar groups were becoming extinct, Courteeners survived a critical backlash to become one of their generation’s most enduring bands. They fill big rooms nationwide and huge fields at home. It’s left Fray with a complex profile. “I’m not famous,” he says. “But I can’t go to the chippy.” He recently overheard a secondary school band practising in the same rehearsal unit that Courteeners use. They thrashed out a crisp Not Nineteen Forever, his band’s signature hit. Delighted, Fray went and had photos with the stunned kids. “We’ve gone multi-generational,” he says proudly. Days before the Night & Day show, Fray, 40, greets me at the rehearsal unit where the band also keep an office. He’s strikingly tall and warm, if nervous. “I’m a social creature,” he says, ushering me to...