a monthly trip
through music’s
golden years
this issue: 1982pp�

nicK caVe“Irresponsibly violent”
starring...

the jamthe clash
the stranglers
fun boy three
dexys midnight runners
ozzy osbourne
phil collins
the cureu2

PLUS! the who | neil young | felt | wham | miles davis | lemmy1982m o n t h by mon th

Welcometo 1982“I

t’s got a bit straitlaced of late,” says Lemmy, speaking about
his interviewer’s employer, the New Musical Express, but also
incidentally about the world in general. “If I want to readabout CND or unemployment, I’ll buy the Times.”
The Motorhead frontman is right and he’s wrong. Things
have certainly got serious. In addition to the suspicion there
will be an imminent nuclear attack, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher
now offers the young people of the UK some more concrete worries: highunemployment and a war in the south Atlantic.
Duly some of the music of 1982 is serious too. Records by the Clash and Robert
Wyatt address specifically the violent dramas unfolding at home and on the
global stage. The explosive music made by our cover star Nick Cave, and his
group the Birthday Party, meanwhile, offers a dramatic and cathartic release to
the dissatisfaction of the time.
Perversely, it is also a time for a flowering of glossy “new pop”, which seems
actively to represent the Conservative Party’s policy of putting yourself first.
Duran Duran are in their imperial phase. On a happier note, The Jam, a vibrantforce since punk, decide – at the peak of their powers – to quit before they
become as complacent. Nor are UK artists the only active ones. Writers meet US
superstars like Rick James, rejoice in new work by Marvin Gaye and impressive
shows by Neil Young and Talking Heads.
This is the world of The History Of Rock, a monthly magazine which follows
each turn of the rock revolution. Whether in sleazy dive or huge arena,passionate and increasingly stylish contemporary reporters were there tochronicle events. This publication reaps the benefits of their understanding forthe reader decades later, one year at a time. Missed one? You can find out how torectify that on page 144.
In the pages of this seventeenth edition, dedicated to 1982, you will findverbatim articles from frontline staffers, filed from the thick of the action,
wherever it may be.
That might mean talking with Paul Weller about “art school wankers”. Having
a cup of tea with Kevin Rowland and Van Morrison. Even discussing drugs, (andThe Slits) with William S Burroughs and Brion Gysin.
Perhaps, in such stimulating company, there’s reason to be optimistic, after
all. Even an old hand can ignore some of the bad stuff.
“You might get rid of some of that,” Lemmy tells NME’s Gavin Martin. “Youlook like a fun-loving lad…”

HISTORY OF ROCK 1982 | 3

•

1982

m o n t h by mon th

Bowie is Baal. Ozzy bites a bat.
Rick James explains his
remarkable rise. Introducing Felt
and Monsoon.

U2“We built this band about aspark,” says Bono, as the singer
explains his take on God, “Zeppo”
and the magic of being in a band.

PaUL naTKIn / GETTy

Clarke. New album A Broken Framemight not please the critics, but itshows a possible way forward.

32 Albums

Robert Wyatt’s Nothing Can
Stop Us. Along with new ones fromIron Maiden, Richard & Linda
Thompson, and Jimmy Page.

34 Fun Boy Three

New Order develop theirtechnological and emotional
new music.

The new post-Specials
formation. Lynval Golding
recounts his horrific recent attack,“Ghost Town” and the demise of
their former band.

20 Ozzy Osbourne

40 News

18

Live

An audience with the singer(and his dwarf) in the bar, at the
Alamo, in jail and then, finally,
onstage.

26

Depeche Mode

The unassuming Basildon
band ponder life without Vince

Joe Strummer is missing!
Introducing...Yazoo and taking
an American politics lesson with
Gil Scott-Heron.

46

Everything But The Girl

Immediately before theyjoin
p forces,rTHE

Fun Boythree– page 34

BIRTHDAY
PARTY
DEAD

JOE (3.08)
C."

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• .�,���.��.���a:

HOCK•

Ben Watt and Tracey Thorn
explain their present
music and what they
hope to achieve.

50 Albums

The new RoxyMusic album. The
Clash’s Combat Rocklines up against Duran
Duran’s Rio.

52 TheAssociates

Billy Mackenzie
and Alan Rankine
explain their unique,operatic, potentiallyworld-beating
sound.

56 Scritti Politti

Green Gartside
talks political theory
and soul. Scritti, hesays, are actuallya one-man band.

AI('EElIE AAt[SOMx
EUEuxn0áx M�oxwsá

EEYEE42 IEAxSfOMfEAMS
MAPSMALLEAEMSMAW

60 Live

Miles
Davis comes toHammersmith witha band featuring guitarist
Mike Stern.

62 The ClashJoe is back! But
now Topper’s gone! The bandaccount for their strange recent
developments – not least the factthey’re in the charts.

66 The The

72 News

Robert Wyatt releases
a new single, “Shipbuilding”.
Introducing Eurythmics.
Lemmy gives a state of the rockworld address.

78 The Birthday Party

Nick Cave and his bandtake a violent rampage acrossEurope. “Eeech,” he says, “I’ve got
blood on the end of my boot.”

A promising, slightly
paranoid young musician called
Matt Johnson talks nightmares,
sell-outs, and his uniqueone-man band.

84 Albums

71 Letters

86 Dexys Midnight Runners

The Cure, wronged by MM twice! The Jam vs The Clash! Theseand more from the mailbag.

iii

RIP IT UPq�E

CLASH•('ONBAT

Contents

6 News
12N�It’s Hard by The Who.
The Party’s Over by Talk Talk.
Meanwhile, look out bands: Paul
Weller reviews the singles!

A searching interview with
Kevin Rowland, now pursuinga new sound and a new look. “Youthink my clothes are scruffy?”

94 Live

Talking Heads and the Tom
Tom Club storm Wembley Arena.

NN

96 The Stranglers

After years in opposition,
The Stranglers find themselves in

4 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982

0
1

TUES
20th
APRIL
BRISTOL
COLSTON
ALL TIC
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IS[

1 $O

BRIGHTON DOME
4L_

TKa(TS(S$O

THURS 22ní! APRILTHAMPTON GAUMONT:remstssoon
SÁ 20th• IL
CASTLE CITY HALLc■[Ts [Sthe Jam– page 138

So( S 21the heart of the mainstream, andenjoying success with “Golden
Brown”. It’s “not about heroin”.

100

News

The nation’s newest TV
channel launches a new pop show:
The Tube. Jimmy Page in court.
MM vs Bauhaus. Introducing...
Wham!

106

Orange Juice

Edwyn Collins unleashes
vitriol on the “new pop”. A new
member, Zeke Manyika, brings
an interesting backstory.

110

The Gun Club

From the Blondie fan clubto the blues... Jeffrey Lee Pierce’s
life has been a strange trip.
A journey through American roots.

114 Albums

Marvin Gaye’s electronic,
sensual new work, Midnight Love.
A debut album from Psychic TV.
On import, Prince’s new one 1999.

116

William Burroughs

The Final Academy
brings Burroughs to Britain,
accompanied by his pal Brion
Gysin. The influential pair talkdrugs, control, and The Slits.

120 Live

Neil Young returns to
the UK with a band featuring
Nils Lofgren.

122

Culture ClubA fry-up with the new
king of clubland. Boy George wryly
enjoys the limelight.

126
Duran Duran

]e
o33pz

TEREO
3:S2

The banddefend themselves
against their critics.
It’s all down to Roxy,they confess.

MARVINSEXUALGAYE
HEALINGUES 27th APRILNCHESTERAPOLLOT
u1TS

130

The singing drummer
reveals how his marriage came toan end, and how his solo careercame to be. And yes, he can still be
the drummer in Genesis, thanks!

134 The Cure

Frontman Robert Smithponders the nature of his band,and insists that people who think
The Cure are miserable have
simply missed the joke.

L'• :KITS O SO (InHAMMERSM/TH ODEON
ncAr rs r. oo a rj so
rN7Atr30bSArtM0W

Phil Collins

LSSot32SWED HEMPRILBIRMINGHAM ODEON

GAfG.eo+wnctsroAotrA/ts

138 The Jam

Paul Weller and band
quit while they’re ahead, before
country houses and complacency
set in. Their triumphant final
shows are reviewed.

145 Letters

What will we do without
The Jam? Genesis drummer
throws down epistolary gauntlet,
and more from the mailbag.

Time Inc. (UK) Ltd, 3rd Floor, Blue Fin Building, 110 Southwark St, London SE1 0SU | Editor John Mulvey, whose favourite song from 1982
is New Frontier by Donald Fagen dEputy Editor John Robinson The Bitterest Pill by The Jam art Editor Lora Findlay Bad Education by
The Blue Orchids production Editor Mike Johnson Take A Chance With Me by Roxy Music art dirEctor Marc Jones Don’t You Want
Me by The Human League dEsignErs Becky Redman Straight To Hell by The Clash, Jonathan Sellers Living On The Ceiling by Blancmange
picturE Editor George Jacobs Eye Of The Tiger by Survivor covEr photo Bleddyn Butcher thanks to Helen Spivak, Claudia Elliott
MarkEting Charlotte Treadaway suBscriptions Letitia Barry gEnEraL ManagEr Jo Smalley group Managing dirEctor Paul Cheal
covErs and tExt printEd By Wyndeham Group | www.uncut.co.uk
REx FEaTURES

Time Inc.

Subscription rates: One year (12 issues) including p&p: UK £119.88; Europe €179.40; USa and Canada $203.88; Rest of World £155.75. For
enquiries and orders please email help@magazinesdirect.com. alternatively, from the UK call 0330 333 1113, or overseas +44 330 333 1113
(lines are open Monday–Friday GMT, 8.30am–5.30pm ex. Bank Holidays). Back issues enquiries: Tel: 01733 688 964. www.mags-uk.com

HISTORY OF ROCK 1982 | 5

1982

JA NUA R Y – M A R CH

Ozzy OsbOurne, u2,
Depeche MODe, FunbOy three anD MOre

A tramp with an
ear for a song
MM Feb 13 David bowie stars in bertolt
brecht’s baal.

bbc photo library

A

FTER a lEngThy period of inactivity, except
for buying Mari Wilson singles at the Virgin
Megastore, David Bowie returns to the public eye
at the beginning of March.
He makes his BBC TV drama debut on March 2 inBertold Brecht’s Baal, an hour long production, whichis terribly meaningful and full of Brechtian social
comment. Bowie plays his less than urbane self,
appearing as a tramp with an ear for a song.
To mark the occasion, RCA are releasing an EP ofsongs from the play on February 26. Bowie sings five
Brecht compositions, “Baal’s Hymn”, “Ballad Of The
Adventurers”, “Remembering Marie A”, “TheDrowned Girl” and “Dirty Songs”.
Bowie, meanwhile, is reported to be going into thestudios in the spring to record his first album of newmaterial since Scary Monsters.

6 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982

David Bowie in thetitle role of director
Alan Clarke’s 1982
adaptation of Baalfor the BBC

HISTORY OF ROCK 1982 | 7

1982

J a n u a r y – M a r ch

hoodlum scenarios may have brought
the bucks rolling in but he maintains
the reality is only round the corner.
“Y’see, I’m a street person,” hedeclares in a final, I-take-no-shit tone.
“My roots are from the street. I know
the street. I know the people on thestreet – the pimps, the dope dealers,
the prostitutes, the junkies, the thieves– and I love ’em, y’know. And I relate tothem, y’know.”
Rick has a pretty low opinion ofpoliticians and spliced between his
high-camp stage antics are heartfelt
raps and chants against everythingfrom Ronald Reagan to the Ku
Klux Klan.
“I know that’s unusual,” he admits,“but I’m not your usual American
performer. I’m willing to discuss theKlan. Y’see, I really don’t like them at all.
And Reagan, I don’t have much love forhim either, so I just express it.”
Whether any of these stands arecarried further than the mega stadiums
is another matter entirely. It’s hard to
suppress the nagging doubt that thesedays American kids buy their hip radicalpose with a 10-dollar ticket. Not only
will the revolution be televised, it’ll bebeamed round the world by satellite.
Saying he always expected to reacha vast audience, Rick shrugs off the old“responsibility to the fans” number.
“I think kids, schmids, y’know.
They’ve got minds and I think they know
what’s right and what’s wrong. I don’t
do that stuff for someone to follow oremulate, but I hope people appreciate
the fact that I’m free of the bullshit,y’know.
“I don’t expect everybody to smoke
grass, but I think people pick up on me’cos they realise where I’m coming from.
They’ve had so much bullshit; I think it’s nicethey’ve got someone they can really relate towithout any of that glitter and glamour. I doshit and fuck and cuss, y’know, and they do. I’m
not Donny Osmond or Michael Jackson. I’m
me. Plain or dirty – that’s honest.
“Trouble is, kids here today got everything:
the money, the drugs. They’re spoilt, they’resoft, they got nothing to holler about. There
could never be anything like a ’60s movement
now, ’cos these kids are just too stoned out!”
After being kicked out of one too many
schools – “I never felt I had a need for them”– Rick joined the US Naval Reserve. Being
underage didn’t bother him, but a trip on
Uncle Sam to see foreign places and kill the
inhabitants did. He went AWOL, fled to
Canada and met up with Neil Young. Together
they formed the Mynah Birds, taught eachother a few tricks and then went theirseparate ways. “It was great, because me and
Neil were like students in life. I was a black
beatnik. We were learning and starving todeath at the same time.”
Back in the States, after visiting India andSouth America, he began to realise his“predestined” path to fame and glory.
“I knew I could funk ’n’ roll better thananyone. Like Bootsy [Collins] can’t write – hecan’t really sing either. I mean, who wants to“Me and Neil
[Young] were likestudents in life”:
Rick James in 1982

“I’m not your usual
American performer”
MM JAN 23 “Y’see, i’m a street person,” says rick James. “i know thepimps, the dope dealers, the prostitutes, the junkies – and i love ’em.”

mark weiss / getty

F

LASHbACk TO THE tail end of ’81.
A sacrificial policeman gets kickedaround the stage of the LA Forum bysuper vixens. The Stone City Band – tall blacks
in stacked heels – pump it hard and tight. And
what do the kids do? They go apeshit, of course.
In the centre of this cartoon freak show,
Rick James stands between two pillar-sized
plastic joints which glow in the dark. The
real prince of punk funk is wearing a seeeverything spray-on space suit and a coolsmile that silently says: “I’ve arrived andnothing but a full-blown earthquake canshake me down now.”
It’s true. After six months of hard touring,
America is his… and he knows it.
A slick package of sex, drugs and rebel chictheatricals set to a soundtrack based aroundthe double-platinum Street Songs has madethe bad boy from Buffalo a star in teenage wet
dreams from coast to coast.
Yet just one album back Rick was down
and very nearly out. Too much of this anda lot of that gave him hepatitis. For a while
his spectacular success in bringing funk tothe masses looked finished.

8 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982

Tired and introspective, he recorded
Garden Of Love, a move towards soul and lush
ballads that even his most devoted fans foundhard to stomach. Today he reckons the record
still has its merits, but through this failure he
rediscovered the golden rule of showbiz: give
people what they want.
“When I did Garden Of Love I was sick, mybody was through, my mind was through. It allcaught up with me. I was doing a lotta drugs,
like cocaine and everything. But the master(that’s God, not Berry Gordy) has a way ofshowing you when you’re out of pocket andit’s up to you to bring yourself back. He putthat hepatitis on me. You know, I had to get
my act straight or die. But I survived.”
Naturally – he always does. Like it says in“Below The Funk (Pass The J)”, he was raised ina New York ghetto along with seven brothers
and sisters by a mother who helped run the
Mafia’s chain of illegal gambling to pay the bills.
As he lounged nonchalantly in the airconditioned cocoon of an LA hotel, sippinglemon tea for a ravaged throat, the cruelrealities of those mean streets seem a longway off. The fake stage lamp-posts and black

S

Books
The I Ching
The Picture Of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde
Les Chants De Maldoror Isidore Ducasse
Narziss And Goldmund Hermann Hesse
The Prophet Kahlil Gibran
Auto Da Fé Elias Canetti
Demian Herman Hesse
Psycho Cybernetics
Arthur Rimbaud
The Vatican Cellars
André Gide

FilmsSalò (20 Days In Sodom)
Pasolini
Casanova Fellini
The Grid Joanne
Woodward
Midnight Express
Alan Parker
La Cage Aux Folles
Les Enfants Du Paradis
Cabaret Bob Fosse
L’Age D’Or Salvador Dali, Luis Buñuel
Jaws Stephen Spielberg
Mr Smith (a B-movie)
Orpheus In The Underworld
Jean Cocteau

records
The Troggs Tape Venom Engineers
The Royal Wedding Service
Humpty Dumpty Various Artists
Sparky And The Magic Piano S and the
Magic Piano
Swan Lake Tchaikovsky
David Jay and René Halkett
Desert Shore Nico
Theme from Coronation Street
Theme from Crossroads
Theme from Stingray

TV programmes
The Royal Wedding
Soap
Venom Snipers
In The Altogether

pastimep O rT r

Er

Stalking the Capercailliecar
MM FEB 6 rip Lightnin’ hopkins

AM “LIGHTNIN’” HOPkINS, one of the greatest of traditional blues singerguitarists, has died in a Houston hospital of cancer. He was 69.
Lightnin’ was born on a farm near Centerville, Texas, and raised in Texas bluegrasscountry. He learned from his two guitar-playing brothers and also came under the influenceof his cousin, Texas Alexander. But his principal early inspiration was Blind Lemon
Jefferson. He also picked up on the guitar work of Lonnie Johnson, who often worked with
Alexander. Hopkins was already making a living on the streets and in the joints of Houston’s
black section during his teens. And Texas remained his home base for the rest of his life,
although he travelled quite a lot in later life – reaching Britain with the American Negro
Blues Festival show in 1964.

Reliant Robin (Plastic Pig)

colourWhite

peopleThe Prince andPrincess of Wales
Dorian Gray
Quentin Crisp
Glenda Jackson
Oscar Wilde
HISTORY OF ROCK 1982 | 9

mark weiss / getty, paul natkin / getty

Goin’ away

ONsu MI

s it a bird? Is it a plane? Is it a bat? Well, yes it is.
Some unfortunate soul decided to lob a bat(fledermaus to you German opera fans) at Ozzy
“Bites The Head Off Doves” Osbourne during a
concert in Des Moines, Iowa, last week.
The Ozz, knowing a good snack when he sees
one, instantly bit the head off the bat and lobbed
the corpse back into the audience. What he didn’t
realise was that bats happen to be among thechampion carriers of rabies on the planet.
Ozzy (did you know his real name was John?) iscurrently reeling under the impact of several tonsof anti-rabies shots and the thought that thisparticular disease takes about 14 days for its
symptoms to show up. Also, the American cops aredesperately attempting to find the kid who brought
the bat because he too is probably infected.

NME FEB 20
The Bauhaus
frontman reveals
his favourite things

Ac

MM JAN 30 Ozzy bites the head off a bat.

PETE
MURPHY

isT AsAnti-rabies shots

May 29, 1982:
Oz at the Alpine
Valley Music
Theatre, East
Troy, Wisconsin

O F T hEA rT

recovered from his brush with the reaper,
I wonder if he feels he could ever fall fromgrace again.
“Well, if you start thinking you are a
god then you’re on the verge of being
taken out,” he replies without hesitation.
“Jimi Hendrix thought he was a voodoo childfrom space who could drop 90 pounds of acid,take all the heroin he wanted, smoke all theweek, snort 10 pounds of cocaine and gooutside naked and not catch a cold.
“He was a crazy nigger for thinking someshit like this. He was nothing but a nigger who
played real good guitar, real good. And
he shoulda understand that, know what
I’m saying?”
Whether we’ll eversee the golden ass of Mr
James waving aroundon a British stage is still
uncertain. He says he’dlove to come to England,
but then again so did
Elvis. For the time being
he’s written a musical for
Teena Marie and a semiautobiographical book.
“We hope to film that,”
he announces with alascivious grin. “It’s agreat love story:
sex, drugs and funk ’n’ roll! It’ll be hot to trot,
I promise you that!” Ian Pye

hear ‘yabba dabba doo’ all the time, andGeorge Clinton and the Funkadelics write
about spaceships and bop guns all the time.
The world was ready for me, y’know.”
He was right. It was. Come And Get It andBustin’ Out Of L Seven, his first solo albums for
Motown, both sold more than a million copies.
As more tea lubricate his throat and themorning moves into afternoon, theostentatious Rick James ego seems to takeover from the quieter James Johnson, ahomely figure who likes to breed horses on his
ranch and listen to classical music.
Like a young Muhammad Ali, his talents run
deep. As well as producing he sings and writes
all his material, plays numerous instruments,
manages his own career and still finds time tochurn out hits for his protégé, Teena Marie.
Combine these elements with an incredible
crossover appeal and you can see that Jameshas more in common with Marley (he evenbraids his hair to look like locks after the Masai
warrior tribe of Africa) than a piece of soul
beefcake like Teddy Pendergrass. A point hereadily agrees with: “I do feel I had somethingin common with Bob, because he was a street
person too. And he believed in the ganja andI believe in Mary Jane. He was also very much
involved with the politics of suppressedpeople, which I’m into also. I’m outspoken, I
say what’s on my mind, y’know.”
Now that he’s back on top following therelative failure of Garden Of Love, and fully

A iT

1982

J a n u a r y – m a r ch

“The only good thing about
psychedelia,” says Gary smugly,“was Brian Jones’ hair.”But, deny it or not, Felt are
psychedelic. They take for granted
their listeners’ active imaginations,exhibit shock and surprise if
their motives and methods arequestioned. “There’s no message
in the words at all. I just look on it as
poetry, really – imagery.”
Lawrence is unsure to what end,
if any. “I dunno… I just look on it as
putting words together to sound…
I dunno… you just look at the lines
and think, ‘That’s good!’ You don’t
have to understand them. That’s
what I do; I read stuff and I don’t
understand it. I just think, ‘Phew!
That sounds brilliant!’”
february 19, 1982:
Felt can also be classified
Lawrence (left) andGary Ainge in Golden
psychedelic
because they’re naive,square, London
self-obsessed and intellectually
lazy, prone to acting on impulse andexpecting others to comprehend
why. Their music is a moving mosaic,
a nostalgic mantra. Their extended solos arenothing to do with versatility or expertise; theirsongs embellish their solos instead of the otherway round. Their songs are, in fact, their solos,
and they’re haunting, not hackneyed.
MM FEB 6 Introducing… “naive, self-obsessed” Birmingham band Felt.
“‘Birdman’ is like a dream or something,”says Lawrence, “it just goes on and on.
eyed on the eve of Futurama III and that crucial
he first time I talked to Felt, we sat‘Fortune’ is just Radio 2 stuff and ‘Evergreen
ton and a half. “It was disgusting,” musesaround tense and tongue-tied. Soon
Dazed’ – the instrumental one – is so easy
Lawrence, embarrassed. “We knew it would
after, their second single, “Something
listening it’s untrue!” Last year he wasbe terrible… but I thought, in the back of mySends Me To Sleep”, bombed without trace,
convinced that Antiseptic Beauty would
mind, that it just might work out. But it didn’t…”
their bassist and guitarist upped and left andconquer the world. He was wrong and now he
The album, fortunately, did. Crumbling The
my feature never appeared.
knows it. “I was going round going, ‘It’ll appeal
Antiseptic Beauty is a six-track exploration of
The last time I saw Felt, they died a million
to everybody – not just the young but yourone person’s vision. Recorded last summer,
deaths. Two scruffy boys strummed shyly on
granny as well. It’s like Simon & Garfunkel!’”Lawrence considers it “one of the best albums
stage to some 8,000 of Stafford’s greatHis future plans veer more towards easily
I’ve ever heard”.
unimpressed; they earned themselves £150
accessible three-minute pop songs because,“We were just like fourand bought a new set ofhe says, “the British best-selling album of all
fans, really, and this is the
bongos. They lost face,time was Bridge Over Troubled Water. He
record we always wanted
pride and reputation.
grins. “The music that people are buying mostbut couldn’t buy anywhere;
Looked, sounded –is stuff you can sit down and listen to at home.”
everything we wished fromliterally were – half theFelt Mk 6 will be a trio. They’ll never attempt
our favourite records.
band they used to be.
to replace Maurice – “He was our favourite; we“I wanna mention some
Funny that… they still
were working with our hero” – nor his cheap
bands, but if you print ’em
are. Felt today are
guitar with the wonky pick-up that “made ait’ll sound like we’re jumping
Lawrence, their small,sound like pins popping in your head” and wason a bandwagon – which
cocky creator, and Gary,stolen by a mohican in – of all places – Malvern.
we’re not – but anyway, I was
their secretive drummer.
“If I ever catch up with that bastard,” says
listening to Television and
An album, their debut, isGary, “he’ll be the last of the mohicans.”
The Byrds, mainly American bands, but
released this week by Cherry Red Records
Future Felt will live up to their names: a dull
everyone had something wrong with them.
and features Felt – a quartet! Yesterday’s Felt.
mixture of amorphous insulation and vivid“I’d think, ‘God, the cymbals are awful,’ or ‘IfTime to explain. Felt Mk 1 was Lawrence
emotion reflected in tranquillity. “I don’t have
only they hadn’t used a bass on that.’ I couldn’t
cobbling together a single called “Index” inany technical terms for it,” says Lawrence. “Ifbuy a complete album that was perfection, so
his Birmingham bedroom. Corny, eh? Felt Mk 2
it tingles, it’s in.”
we put in all the things that we really liked
was Lawrence and Maurice jamming together
The last time I heard Felt, I dreamed
listening to and came up with this.”for something to do. Felt Mk 3 actually took toa million dreams. Steve Sutherland
This is, in fact, a hypnotic, cymbal-andthe stage, with a mate called Nick – “ahi-hat-less evocation of atmospheres
complete musical novice” learning bass,
with vocals mixed so low that, even if
writing a fan letter to The Fall, cadging thethey meant anything, all meaning
boys three support slots on tour and thenwould be lost. It’s also brilliant.
playing drums – “like Moe Tucker – badly!”At the time of recording, it was out
Felt Mk 4 found Nick back on bass and Garyon a limb, as far from James Brown asin on drums – “He saw the ad we put in a shop
it was from James Taylor. A million
window.” Gigs and assorted accolades followed,
miles from the dancefloor. Unique.
a studio booked, the album underway andNow, of course, what with all thisthen… there were two. Something to do withsummer of love stuff floating about,conflicting dress sense and “nylon pockets”.
it’s almost uncannily in vogue. And
Felt Mk 5 were under-rehearsed, sad andFelt, of course, want no part of it.
songless, left not-so-high and scarcely dry-“If it tingles, it’s in”

T“I was going roundgoing, ‘It’ll appeal
to everybody –it’s like Simon& Garfunkel’”

david corio / getty

RLl

10 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982

IL
gll.Y�

flll \\11V11F.

MN

TJa n u a r y – march

1982

sheila Chandra:“this record mightprove a common
denominator”“A whole new attitude”

NME MAr 13 Introducing… Monsoon, featuring former Grange Hill star Sheila Chandra.
hear a sweet naive voice of reason and it flows fromthe lips of a 16-year-old Asian girl.
Don’t worry, this isn’t an introduction to the latest in along line of child gurus, leading the way to Nirvana from theback of an armoured limousine. This voice more modestly
belongs to Sheila Chandra, ex-pupil of Grange Hill andpresently singer with Monsoon.
Monsoon are an Anglo-Indian fusion led by one-time
Status Quo arranger Steve Coe and their first major single– “Ever So Lonely”/ “Sunset Over The Ganges” – looks set
to chart, if sales eventually match its current airplay. An
exotic blend of the oriental – sitar and tablas – and theaccidental – guitar and keyboards – it is immediately
appealing, persistent without being too pushy.
It’s a long way from the corny cultural crossovers likethose well-meant George Harrison instigations of a decadeago, which inevitably only reached Western ears. The
more obvious participation of Indians makes “Ever So
Lonely” the most positive Anglo/Indian pop form yet andone that might this time be listened to by both English andAsian communities.
Steps have been taken to bridge the wide cultural gap
before, by the provocative Alien Kulture and the muddy
gloom-mongers Safe House, but Monsoon’s is the first to slip
straight into the mainstream – well, since the insipid Biddu.
However, Sheila is sussed enough to know the record’s mostimmediate attraction is its novelty value.
“People are bound to take it first of all
as a novelty,” she asserts, “something
different, that they haven’t heard before,
and they’ll compare it to something theyknow, like George Harrison. But I hopethey’ll go further than the comparison
and realise there’s something more to
be explored in Indian culture thanGeorge Harrison.”
Getting through to the Indian
community might have proved more
problematic if Sheila wasn’t Indian herself. Born of an
Indian father and half-English/half-Indian mother, she’s
grown up with the two cultures and has a pretty good graspof the difficulties Indian kids have relating to both. She has
had the advantage of a mother who encouraged her to attend
stage school, which led to her winning a part in Grange Hill’s
second series and her eventual meeting with Coe.

➤ John Cooper
Clarke has three
tracks on an album
recorded at the
Poetry Olympics at
London’s Young Vic
theatre last year.
The album will be
released on the new
All Round Records
label on February
19. Also featured
are contributions
from poets like
Roger McGough,
Heathcote
Williams, Michael
Horowitz, thewonderfully
named Atilla The
Stockbroker, but
no Paul Weller.
MM Jan 23“Young Asians say
it would be easierfor their parents toaccept if there werean Indian singer”➤ Depeche Mode
have a new single
out on Mute on
January 29. “SeeYou” and “Now ThisIs Fun” is released tocoincide with thegroup’s British tour.
MM Jan 23
HISTORY OF ROCK 1982 | 11

fin costello / getty

I“Steve had a lot of Indian friends, which obviously had an
influence on his writing, and he wanted an Asian singer,”says Sheila. “He heard some demos I made for Hansa
Records [which came to nothing] and arranged a meeting.”
The closeness of the Indian community has always
mitigated against a cross-fertilisation of ideas, especially in
pop and rock. Pop music as it is often represented is quite
often alien to Asian ideals of familial loyalty and stricter
morality. Sheila herself has suffered slightly because ofdifferent standards.
“There was once a mention in Jaws in Sounds with allthese puns about saris and that’s fine,” she recalls. “Theymentioned tandoori and after that they needed a word
starting with ‘T’ to continue the alliteration that meant
pretty girl. It read ‘tandoori temptress’, though temptresswasn’t perhaps the best word to use.
“I realise it wasn’t meant literally,” she laughs, “butobviously you have to be a bit careful because an Asianmight take it the wrong way. I was a bit taken aback when
I saw it. What people have to realise is that with this typeof [mixed] music they’ll need a whole new attitude to deal
with it.”Hers was only a slight case of misunderstanding; otherIndian kids’ embracing of Western culture could lead togreater, more disruptive tensions. “Ever So Lonely”, hopes
Sheila, might have some soothing effect.
“Young Asians have always said that it
would be easier for their parents to accept
pop if there were an Indian singer.”
Conscious of her role as community
representative, she thinks her presence
might counter the media myth of
dissolution, thus facilitating easiercommunication.
“If this record is successful it could add
another more moderating influence,”
she conjectures. “It could become atalking point in the Indian community.
Before, Indians often got their music from Indian-language
film soundtracks, so they would always have different topics
of conversation from English youth. This record mightprovide a common denominator.”
Or it might turn out to be just another novelty hit. Timewill tell if “Ever So Lonely” has a more lasting impact. Wait
and see. Chris Bohn

➤ The forthcoming
Jam album, The
Gift, is set for
release on March 12
and it comes in a
special candystriped bag withwhat Polydor
describes as “anextra special picturelabel”. Produced byPeter Wilson, withart direction anddesign by Paul
Weller, the album
features Steve
Nichol on trumpet
and Keith Thomas
on saxes. Tracklisting: “Happy
Together”,“Ghosts”,“Precious”, “Just
Who Is The 5
O’Clock Hero?”,“Trans-Global
Express”, “Running
On The Spot”,“Circus”, “The
Planner’s Dream
Goes Wrong”,“Carnation”, “Town
Called Malice”, “TheGift”. MM Feb 27

1982

J a n u a r y – M a r ch

July 31, 1982: U2 playa set at Gateshead
Stadium before
headliners The
Police take the stage

12 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982

U2

“We wanta gut-level
reaction”
D— MELODY MAKER FEBRUARY 6 —own the Liffey from thesea and up past the stately
grey of Trinity College, thewind whistles down the ear.
“Hey, Bono, how’re yer
doin’?” Robbie and Donal
greet U2’s singer with a flash of teeth. They’ve
spent £20 each on getting the train down from
Belfast for tonight’s concert at the Royal Dublin
Society Hall and have been wandering aroundthe centre of the city looking for members of
the group.
The three of them chat like old friends,
though Robbie has only met Bono once before –backstage at a gig, when
he swapped shirts with Adam,
U2’s bass player. He’s wearing the
prize paisley trophy ready for
tonight’s big event.
Just five hours later, Robbie’s
priceless shirt is soaked inperspiration, caught in the tangle ofgrins, hair, flesh, smiles and limbs
that erupt as the first reverberated
shivers of The Edge’s guitar archacross the ceiling and splinter.
There’s some very special magic in »HISTORY OF ROCK 1982 | 13

rex features

An encounter with
U2 as they continue
to convert hearts andminds on the road.
Frontman BOnO helps
to articulate theirvalues. “U2 is notabout fashion,” hesays. “I can tell whena singer is singing
what’s in his heart,or if he isn’t.”

1982

J a n u a r y – M a r ch

the air tonight… The concert is a symbolic homecoming for U2, the local
heroes returning to their city of birth after a year spent seducing hearts inforeign parts, but that doesn’t even begin to explain what’s going on in
here. The way U2 transform this massive cattle hall of several thousandpeople into an uninhibited expression of mass joy has to be experienced
to be believed.
It’s impossible to talk solely in terms of the group’s “performance” orthe electrifying atmosphere, as if the two can be taken separately
and analysed; U2 and their audience are realising an intimate,
two-way celebration.
“Your knees go weak, your adrenaline starts to go crazy, your bones justseem to rattle and blood shoots up your veins.” Bono is trying to describe
what it feels like when the group trigger that kind of reaction. “You think,‘Right, there is something about this band!’“You see, we built this band around a spark – we could only play threechords when we started, but we knew there was an excitement within justthe four people, and even when playing to just 10 people we seemed tocommunicate that. We put our lives on the line
and just kind of went for it… and when you see
the reaction you just feel… phew! It’s very hardto talk about it, really.”
Bono continues, almost at a loss for words,
scarcely able to believe that he’s all part of this.
“One thing I’m into is the type of people who areinto us. They’re prepared to give, they’re areaction-orientated audience.
“It’s everything that we wanted when we werea garage band. We just wanted that total thing,people just up.”
A few years ago, when U2 were just beginningto build up a following in Dublin, they foundtheir fans weren’t getting in to see them when
they played pubs because they were all underage. “They were the same age as us!” says Bono, incredulously.
The group obliged by playing a gig in the local car-park, and at the RDS
Bono dedicates a song to everyone who was there.
The strangest thing is that despite the forbidding size of this cold hall it
still seems as if they could be playing in that car-park – the communicationis that close, the excitement that feverish, the message that direct. The
following day the Irish government falls.

something? I’ve been watching him for a year now, and I do it every day,and I can’t figure out. I don’t know what he does or how he does it!’”How about Larry, U2’s thunderous drummer? Does he go aroundthrowing TVs into the hotel swimming pool or crashing Cadillacs
through plate glass?
Larry is, in fact, the group’s quiet guy. Blessed with boyish good looks,
a disarming smile and an apparent fear of the camera – he tries to hidebehind the others – he’s shy, rarely saying a word. Larry spends a lot oftime with his girlfriend.
In the three days I spend with U2, Adam, the oldest member, is the only
one who goes out for the traditional post-gig wind-down; out to a disco
after a concert at Cork City Hall. The manager – also the gig promoter – isa middle-aged man who fusses around, taking souvenir photos andadvising the DJ to play an endless stream of U2 records (which are totally
undanceable, it would seem).
Adam sits and signs for the inevitable autograph hunters – no chance ofanonymity here. He has an air of refinement and maturity, a man who
savours good Guinness and oysters.
But where does all this leave the singer, theone who addresses the audience as if he knowseach member personally?
Vox means “voice”. Bono Vox talks… andsome. But he’s not a gab-merchant or idle
attention seeker… it’s just that he’s got so much
bubbling away inside him that he’s got to get itout somehow. As a fully-paid-up over-the-top
person, Bono has few rivals.
“Pete Wylie is the only person I know that canout-talk me,” he says about his Wah!-mate. “Hefills in the gaps where I have to take breaths!”
If the other members are the special
ingredients of U2, I suspect Bono is the catalyst,
the match that lights the fuse. “Life is thepermanent possibility of sensation,” is one of his favourite quotations(though he can’t remember who said it), and he seems to spend all of histime putting the dictum into practice.
“Without sounding a total idiot, I can’t remember being bored over thelast 10 years,” he lilts in soft Gaelic tones. “An hour on my own is justspecial to me; I just don’t get bored; there’s too much happening.”
U2’s tour of Ireland is actually only three dates, Galway, Cork andDublin (Belfast has been cancelled owing to a floor collapse at the hall);they can only play the largest venues. In a listeners’ poll run by Dave“We built thisband arounda spark – wecould only playthree chords”

2 are currently the biggest group in Ireland – possibly thebiggest ever – and hot property in Britain andAmerica. U2 are also all between 20 and 22 years old
and live at home with their parents in Dublin.
July 3, 1982: U2 playa festival date in
The group’s comparative youth is essential to their character;
Torhout, Belgium
theirs is a natural enthusiasm, a deep belief in the positive side ofhuman nature. U2 play music that is richly rewarding, spiritually
uplifting, so lacking in cynicism that it borders on naivety.
The defences are down, everything is offered, every inneremotion bared – and that’s some big risk; it makes themvulnerable to doubters (and there are plenty). It also pays richdividends to those prepared to invest their trust.
And how have these four coped with the pressure of being
acclaimed as Ireland’s finest? Has fame gone to their heads?
Mercurial guitarist The Edge (they really do call him thatin everyday conversation; his real name is Dave) seems so
unaffected that it’s almost uncanny. When Pete Townshendhung around with the group last year, he said he felt like giving
up guitar when he heard his playing… yet watch The Edge onstage; there’s none of the usual strutting antics and immodest
manoeuvres associated with guitar “heroes”, just a slightshuffle of the hips and a cascade of sound that can send sparks.
The Edge meets the fans after the shows (and looks exhausted
afterwards), talks quietly and exudes unforced, natural charmand good humour. The story is that he only takes his guitar out
on formal occasions… never practises, never rehearses, neverthinks about the instrument too much, but just lets it flow.
“I tried to do the soundtrack for his guitar once” says a popular
Irish vocalist. “I plugged the guitar in the way he does, set up themachines the way he does and got the same plectrum andplayed the same chords he does. And after I was making thispitiful noise one of the engineers came up and said, ‘You know

rob verhorst / gettyU

14 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982

“There are too many
people hiding behindthe haircuts”: U2 (l–r)
The Edge, Bono, Larry
Mullen, Adam Clayton

Fanning’s late-night rock show on RTE,
Ireland’s national radio, U2 took six places outof the 50 top classic tracks of all time, capturing
the first place with “11 O’Clock Tick Tock”.
Travelling between Cork and Dublin,
the group use two modest estate cars andBono spends most of his time engaged inconversation. He’s not very excited by muchcontemporary music, he says, though he goes
wild when played a tape of The Associates andloves Elvis Costello – and is more interested inpeople like Lennon, Dylan, classic punk (Clash,SLF) and early Who (“Live At Leeds was a very
important record in my life”).
It’s not that Bono doesn’t want to keep up withthe current trends… it’s more that he hates what they imply.
“There’s too many people hiding behind their haircuts,” he opines, andhis eyes light up when the phrase “cocktail mentality” is mentioned.
“The cocktail mentality,” he repeats, savouring the phrase. “Yes, I like
that… the cocktail mentality!
“The star-trip is more in vogue now, with the kind of wallpaper bands,
than it was with ELO and Zeppo and all those,” he complains. “It seems
the whole gloss thing is so strong now, and in ’76 we maybe naively at 16
had the belief that music is more than that. We wanted a gut-level
reaction, an aggression, a heartbeat.
“U2 is not about fashion. We don’t want to be in fashion, because being
in fashion is going out of fashion, you know?”“At the same time I’m sure there are some great
pop songs, but I want more out of music thanjust that. I want music with the X factor, musicwith that heart and soul. I don’t want to soundpretentious, but to me truth is like a two-edged
sword, it cuts deep. I can tell when a singer issinging what’s in his heart, or if he isn’t. There’s
a big difference, and there’s a lot of glossy pop
songs that can maybe make us cry, but it’s a bit
like watching Lassie or The Little House On the
Prairie, you know; it’s not real emotion.
“The trust is when that singer is saying
something that comes from right down within
him, and it affects you right down within you…
and that’s when you start talking about greatmusic, as distinct from nice music.
“Like the word ‘nice’ is a horrible word… music for lifts, music forsupermarkets. I think that’s fine if you’re into shopping or going up anddown, but I want more than that. Is that wrong? Is it wrong to want moreout of music? I’m not suggesting U2 are Wagner, but when it comes to it
we’re just four people playing music the way we see it.”U2 don’t just ignore the conventions of a 25-year-old rock’n’roll
tradition, they deliberately push them aside and breathe their own newlife into the body. It’s nothing weird or radical – just voice, bass, guitar,
drums – but it’s the belief and imagination that counts. And U2’s music
can’t help being influenced by the Irish tradition – it’s laced with alyricism and melodic sense that’s missing from so much English rock.
“The Irish aren’t into much bullshit, really,” says Bono. “They’re notinto designer jeans, you know? They’re a more down-to-earth race, andI think they see through the fashion angle pretty quick. The Irish are alsoa very aggressive race, which makes for good rock’n’roll.”
The audiences at Cork and Dublin are aged predominantly between
14 and 20, but it’s not age – at least in the literal sense – that’s the defining
characteristic, it’s the attitude. U2 fans are open, accepting, enthusiastic,
emotional – they’ve not yet given themselves up the cause of cynicism orworld-weariness. You can be 40 years old and be young enough for U2…
or 15 and too old. È

ono gets excited, stresses his words, becomes animatedand agitated. I get the feeling he’s been waiting to say this tosomebody from the press for a long time, anxious to out acrosshis ideas and reassert some sanity.
“If people like that sort of atmosphere in music, fine, but what I’d like to
see is people burning the rulebooks… the rulebooks that say they have tolike this type of music and nothing else. I think people should broaden
their vision… There’s some great music happening on ethnic fronts, like
African music, and I’m particularly interested in traditional Irish music.

B

HISTORY OF ROCK 1982 | 15

j van houten / rex features“I want musicwith theX factor, withthat heartand soul”

1982

J a n u a r y – M a r ch'Aparents’ lives, and they broke out of that. And I think
Cynicism is “the city sickness”, thinks Bono,rebellion… it’s just that the rebellion was diluted bya protective veneer developed as a reaction to life
escapism, through drugs.
in small spaces on top of people.
“That’s how, if you like, the world dealt with it, it
But how can you have rock’n’roll without ancalmed it down. And with punk it’s the same thing,accompanying sneer? Tradition states that rock is
but what does it turn into? Tribalism, another form
rebellious; common practice assumes it’s implacablyof escapism. I like to think of our music as aa threat. Grease back your hair, bare your teeth andcelebration, just breaking down those barriers.
thrust out your groin and the captains of industry will
“This country has been cut in two for too long, you
be quaking in fear on the top floor of Harrods… or is it
can see the scars on people’s lives, and now with mass unemployment inoften just an excuse for not rebelling, for not doing anything that
Britain you can see scars there too. Great music should be able to breakgenuinely threatens the structure of society? Who is more subversive – adown those barriers, class barriers or whatever.”Barry Manilow fan who’s a militant shop steward or a member of The Fall?
Can music change people’s lives?
“That old cliche of rock’n’roll rebellion is a joke at this stage,” says Bono.
“Well, in ‘Rejoice’ I said, ‘I can’t change the world, but I can change a world“It’s so conservative you could actually write a rulebook, you know, on
in me.’ Music can possibly direct you and change you as a person.
how to behave as a rock’n’roll rebel… and I think rebellion starts within“I think the ultimate revolution is the one that goes
your own heart. I think going out and getting pissed and shouting andon in a man. I’m not saying, ‘Join the revolution,dyeing your hair red is not necessarily any indication of a menace at all.”be like us’… where you go isUnquestioning conformity doesn’t seem quite the angle either.
“When I was 16 and couldn’t cope with the idea of getting a job, getting
your decision.”
lyCEUM
lonDonmarried up, growing up and dying – I wanted more and almost fought to
But U2’s desire is to communicate seems
break out of that rut. In the ’60s you had this love-and-peace movement
so extreme it’s almost like a kind of crusade,where people were rebelling against the standards and hypocrisy of their
isn’t it?

LIVE!

Awkwardly naive
A

DECEMbEr 6

MM DEC 11 U2’s live show becomes a spiritual crusade.

shaped like the stern of a galley, the viewer
their attitude becoming increasingly
glass spire shattering, thecould be forgiven for expecting Bono to slap
conservative. That now they emerge fromaction of The Edge’s guitar makes forthighs in deference to Crusoe.
a year spent hidden from the public gazea spellbinding exhibition, so the presence
Anyone else who had the nerve to sing “We(having completed a third album) and thenof ham is tragic. Casting the youth-boundWish You A Merry Christmas” to an audienceplay a set based overwhelmingly on their firstparent-baiting of countless predecessors
would at least be covered by the saving grace
LP, Boy, is not only an act of cowardice but an
to the wind, U2 managed to breathe lifeof irony, but when Bono gets involved in suchinversion of the spirit of dynamism that gave
into the crusty old carcass of rock’n’roll bya dodgy venture the most frightening thing is
the group their initial thrust.
paradoxically celebrating some of its oldest
that he really does mean it.
The obvious conclusion must be that U2
traditions when they burst into public view
This embarrassing hokum ill-becomes U2.
don’t feel that their new songs come up to
two-and-a-half years ago.
To call for “surrender” at the end of this mostscratch, and though musically nothing to be
Their denial of rock’s useless fake outlaw
depressing, disheartening
ashamed of, the material on
mythology – surrogate rebellion for those tooof years is not only to invite
view suggested a static
chicken to operate more subversive schemes –ridicule from the harddemeanour, thestood in stark contrast to the yahoo nastinessbitten but to flounderpresentation a vulgarof those who surrounded them (Killing Joke ethopelessly in the eyes
sentimentality.
al), and if their glorification of the crowd andof their sympathetic“Surrender”, one song,
remarkable lack of spite seemed sometimes
periphery. The answer towas a cue for white flags tooverly forced and awkwardly naive, it somehow
the “war” between “good”
be run up poles (the album
didn’t really seem to matter too much.
and “evil” was never thatis called War) where theyU2 put themselves on the line and played
simple, and to suggest
fluttered in an artificial
with an intelligently sculpted force that
otherwise is tantamountbreeze, and with the stage
could, amazingly, sweep away all nagging
to mystification.
doubts and sceptical
I respect honestly
world-weariness.
held religious views
A year ago came thewhen they’re kept inrevelations of religious
the inside pocket, or
fervour, and hints thateven flashed about
this might penetrateoccasionally, but
their music to a deeper,
object to the use ofless ambiguous level
the drip-feed. As
during the subsequent
for pantomime, theperiod in hibernation
last one I saw wasgave cause for concern.
Dick Whittington
The group’s
at Golders Green
performance at the
Hippodrome. It closed
Lyceum on Sunday
about 15 years ago.
confirmed these fears;
Remember what
U2 are emphasising thethe converted usedcrasser aspects of their
to shout as they ran
appeal, their anthems
up the aisle of Billyto the joys of youth
From Ireland
Graham’s marquee?
gradually being taken
A Dand Ihaf s different,
smart manK
Well here’s news.
over by something thathaunting. intense
And one of the mostelectrifying nre acts In longer than you
unremember
I do not surrender.
seems to resemble
Tornadoa spiritual crusade,Lynden Barber
Produced by Steve U ynhne
The Edge. the í�nano � tnousand“Surrender” wasa cue for whiteflags to be run up,
fluttering in an
artificial breezeI

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“I’m notreligous at all,but I dobelieve in God
very strongly”“A lot of people found October hard to accept
at first,” says Bono. “I mean, I used the word
‘rejoice’ precisely because I knew that people
have a mental block against it. It’s a powerful
word, it’s lovely to say. It’s implying more than‘get up and dance, baby’.
“I think October goes into areas that mostrock’n’roll bands ignore. When I listen to thealbum, something like ‘Tomorrow’, it actually
moves me.”nd next? they’ve alreadycompleted a new single, as yet
untitled, and have tried out
controversial Blue Öyster Cult producer
Sandy Pearlman in the studio. Bono says they want less of a “cinematicsound” and denies that their interest in Pearlman contradicts this aim.
“He produced the second Clash album, and it’s raw, and I like that
aggressive sound. And also he puts himself out… In America he wasflying around to every city we played just as a fan. I like him”
The only result of the studiotrial is “a sort of psychobilly”
track which they couldn’t
complete because “we need48 tracks for it”. One possibility
is that they’ll use threedifferent producers for the
next album. In the meantime
I’ll stay at home and play therecords; bathe in their lush
romanticism, revel in theirblunt aggression, dream ofanother time, another place…
like that special night at
Dublin RDS. Anybody can fallin love with U2 if they want to.
You, too… Lynden Barber •A

HISTORY OF ROCK 1982 | 17

rob verhorst / getty“that old cliche ofBono seems a little defensive.
rock’n’roll rebellion“It’s not a plan. We don’t say, ‘Let’s be aggressive,
is a joke at this stage”:
let’s really communicate and be passionate.’
Bono clambers up
the stge scaffolding
Sometimes to think about it is to destroy it. U2
in Belgium
is natural, we’re really just four people – within
ourselves we have a very strong relationship,
like a love between the band, which spreads
into the crew, our sound engineer, to the
management, and even to the record company,
and then spreads into the audience.”
And what about Bono’s religious beliefs, I
venture tentatively? It’s a subject that’s so easy
to latch on to and blow up out of proportion. Do
people have a stereotyped idea of his views?
“I think people understand now that I’m notreligious, they understand that I’m nearly antireligion… When I talk of religion I’m talking
about the force that’s cut this country in two. I’m
not religious at all, but I do believe in God verystrongly, and I don’t believe that we just kind of
exploded out of thin air, I can’t believe it.
“I think it’s the spiritual strength that’s essential
to the band. People have got to find their own way;
I’m not into standing up and saying, ‘Hey, you
should be into God!’ My own life is exhilarating
through an experience I feel, and I feel there’s nopoint in talking about something which shouldbe there in your life anyway. You don’t have topreach about it.”Has he always felt the same way?
“No, when I was 16 I really had a hunger, I wasn’t
going to accept… I’m quite violent, actually. ‘I
Threw A Brick’ is an attempt to use that kind ofviolent image. It’s like seeing a reflection of
yourself in the window and seeing who you are
just for a split second, and you realising you don’t
like what you see.”Has U2 changed him?
“I’ve changed as it’s gone through. When it
started I was very drunk on being in a band, very
confident, it was everything. I couldn’t see thewood for the trees. You get bitter, you knock otherbands… I had a lot of hate.
“That’s changed in my life. U2 has broadened
my experience and allowed me to realise that
wherever you go in the world, people are still flesh
and blood, and if they would only realise and stophitting each other over the head.”
But wishing or singing about it isn’t going to
make it stop, is it?
“No, you can only make it stop in your own life.
U2 has helped me realise that wherever you go people are being cheated.”
And what about views in the rest of the group? Is there a high degree ofconcurrence, or the usual tensions?
“There is a natural friction, wonderful friction,” says Bono. “I don’t
think our egos are self-egos; we’ve a band ego. I can say to The Edge,‘I don’t like that thing you’ve just played,’ and he doesn’t go, ‘And I don’t
like what you’ve just done’; he goes, ‘You must be right, otherwise you
wouldn’t have said it.’”Bono is keen to talk about October, the group’s second album. When it
was released last autumn they deliberately kept clear of the press. Bonosays he didn’t fully understand it at the time.
“I’m much happier talking to you now, because October now is clearer
in my head. I listened to it last week for the first time in ages and I couldn’t
believe I was part of it. It’s a huge record, I couldn’t cope with it!
“I remember the pressure it was made under; I remember writing lyrics
on the microphone, and at £50 an hour that’s quite a pressure. Lillywhite
was pacing up and down the studio… he coped really well. And the ironic
thing about October is that there’s a sort of peace about the album, eventhough it was recorded under that pressure.”
Like Bono, it’s taken me several months to fully come to grips with therecord. Initially I found that some of its spiritual side grated; the word
“rejoice” used repeatedly in two songs, for instance…

1982
Divinely LIVE!
physicaldance musicJ a n u a r y – M a r ch

NOrth LONdON
POLytechNic

JANUAry 22

MM JAN 30 New Order slug London with passion
irst the resounding echo of the cumbersome
mythology surrounding this group, then the subsequent,
inevitable dismissals and sneers. Now, perhaps for the
first time, it’s possible to listen to New Order freely, untainted byexcessive fears or prejudices.
Not that they don’t share responsibility for some of the moreunfortunate aspects of their image. Nobody can control thestupid dead-pop-star religion, for sure, but New Order seemed
too keen to encourage the growth of some special aura, quite
happy to be shrouded in mystique on some sacred pedestal ofmusical greatness.
There was the reluctance to speak to the press, of course, andthose portentous lyrics and self-important song titles – “TheHim”, “Truth”, etc, but it didn’t stop there – these tendencies
found a natural reflection in the music, too. When does passion
stray into pomp and dignity into posturing? Their first album
seemed to suggest they weren’t even sure themselves.
To judge New Order properly the myth needs to be shattered– they’re ordinary, down-to-earth people who happen tohave a bent for music, right? – and at tonight’s gig, in a small,high-ceilinged student hall, they oblige perfectly.
Humanity, frailty? At first things look like becoming a disaster.
On “Denial”, the second number of the set, Bernard Albrecht
seems totally out of touch with what the others are playing, his
guitar cutting in and out at inappropriate junctures. Whether it’s
incompetence or just a technical fault (bad monitors?) doesn’t
seem to matter though; from here on New Order launch into
a selection of some of themost divinely physicaldance music you’re likely
to hear all year.
Live they aren’t all dark
and gloom at all. Those
negative tints are there to
add emotional shadings,
not to dazzle; standwatching in too much
awe and you’ll miss out
on some of the pure joy
involved in their music.
New Order provide a much-needed slug of passion tonight,
reviving nerve endings that have grown tired from under-use.
Too many groups at the moment are content with just playing,making sure they’ve got the notes right; New Order are moreconcerned with the way they play, pushing themselves to thelimits on every song, forcing the pressure at all available points.
There’s two responses to all this – stand and gawp (as most of
the audience did, still obsessed by the myth, no doubt) or throw
yourself into the music with the spirit it demands.
General preconceptions of what kind of rhythms constitute“dance music” are still so narrow – too many people assume that“white rock” ain’t for dancin’ and “black funk” ain’t for listenin’.
New Order are proving that’s not necessarily so; their lastpiece, an irresistible application of Giorgio Moroder’selectrodance ideas (in much the same style as “Everything’s
Gone Green”, excluded from the set), hit a gloriously punishinglevel of intensity from the first note and never let up. New Ordermay only have just begun. Lynden BarberF

GARY LORNIE

Stand watching in
too much awe andyou’ll miss out onsome of the purejoy in their music18 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982

new order’s
Bernard Albrecht: it’s
the way he plays it

HISTORY OF ROCK 1982 | 191982

J a n u a r y – M a r ch

“I’m a bitover thetop”
It’s been a very
strange coupleof months for
OZZY OSBOURNE.
His arena shows
are all selling out,
but what with thebats, the doves and,now, the Alamo, it’s
been a chaotic ride.
Here, he spills all:on prison, abattoirs
and the correct way
to hang a dwarf.

20 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982

HISTORY OF ROCK 1982 | 21

getty

Ozzy Osbourne
in 1982: “I’m aclown, a terrible
old showbiz ham.
I’m not a singer”

1982

J a n u a r y – M a r ch

April 5,1982: after the deathof guitarist Randy Rhoads in aplane accident on March 18 andthe subsequent cancellation ofeight dates, the Diary Of A
Madman Tour arrives at NYC’s
Madison Square Garden— MELODY MAKER MARCH 20 —n the other hand, there’s a fist; and on thefingers in great big letters, he’s tattooed his
name: OZZY.
“Which one of yew’s Allin Jownz?” he asked,
bleary-eyed beneath a greasy sheep-dog fringe.
“Him,” [photographer Tom “the Chief”] Sheehan
grassed, a portly Judas in CAFC colours.
“Yewr the one Tony Iommi whacked, intcher?” Oz continued, tail up forbar. This was true: four years ago in Glasgow, Tone settled an old score bybeating me senseless in a hotel car park.
“The last time I saw yew,” Oz said, trying to attract a cocktail waitress,“yew were flyin’ across the bonnet of a car, covered in blood… Is that the
scar? Nasty.”
The waitress arrived to take our order; the Chief and I went for the
Heineken; Oz asked for water, said he’d had a rough old night: “I’d ’ad a few
drinks, slapped the band about a bit and ended up in the canal.”
The waitress returned with our drinks. Ozzy looked at the glass of water.
“Fuck it,” he said. “Bring me a Heineken and a large brandy… Yew know,”
he continued, turning to the hack, “what Tony did to yew, that was reallyoffside. Yew was just a scrap of a thing. Real skinny little punk in a leather
jacket an’ chains, as I recall. An’ he just went whackwhackwhack. He wasa monster, Iommi.”
This talk of Black Sabbath’s guitarist was making me nervous; I asked
Ozzy how the old tour was going…
“Grayyyt!” he exclaimed, brightening. “The dwarf got hit by a lump offrozen liver the other night.”
The dwarf?
“Yeah… we’ve got a dwarf on the road with us.”
Exchanging worried looks with Sheehan, I asked Ozzy what they did
with the dwarf.
“We hang him,” Ozzy said. “During the ballad.”Ozzy said it was that kind of tour: crazy. The other night, the cops had
found some kids trying to smuggle a cow’s head into one of the concerts.
“It’s been happenin’ ever since I bit the head off that bloody bat,” he said.
Oh, yes: the bat, Ozzy’s most recent cannibal outrage.
“I honestly did not know it was a bat,” Ozzy claimed innocently. “Yewknow, these kids’re always throwin’, like, plastic toys… so I just grabbed
this thing, bit the head and thought, ‘Fuck me!’ And it was flappin’…”

larry murano / gettyO

22 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982

Opposite me, the Chief was turning queasy and muttering something
under his breath about voodoo; I asked Ozzy what raw bat tasted like.
“It was like eating a Crunchie wrapped in chamois leather,” he replied
informatively. “It had real leathery skin and the bones went crraaack…
I tell you, though, I suffered for it later. I had to have these rabies shots.
Real bad news, man.
Terrible. Imagine someone injecting a golf ball into your leg. I mean,it’s such a thick solution, it doesn’t disperse. Agony. The syringe was likea bicycle pump. The nurse told me to walk around. It would’ve been easier
to fly. I told ’em I didn’t want any more…”
But, Oz: what if you actually contract rabies?
“Buy me a muzzle,” he said, whipping back the brandy, reaching for
the Heineken.
heehAn wAnted to take the snaps outside the Alamo, theshrine of Texas liberty; a cherished national monument to theAmerican spirit. A kind of adobe John Wayne, the Alamo is an
old fort in the middle of San Antonio where 200 Texan heroes diedholding off a Mexican army of thousands to win independence forthe Lone Star State.
This seemed colourful enough, but Oz said he’d have to go off andchange. He came back dressed as a woman, in a baggy blouse and illfitting culottes with white socks that stopped short of his knees; and on
the knees were two tattooed, smiling faces, whose eyes blinked when theskin around them wrinkled.
“You never told me he was a roarer,” the Chief hissed.
“I thought you’d know,” I said, negotiating Ozzy toward the nearest taxi.
And it all seemed to be going so smoothly…
The Chief was a-snapping, Oz was a-posing, the sun was a-shining ina bright blue sky.
Then Ozzy decided he needed to take a piss; so he pulled down his
trousers and went where he stood, pissing all over the front of the shrineof Texas Liberty itself.
“That’s the man, officer, that’s him!” cried the redneck vigilante withbulging eyes.
Ozzy had just clambered into an alcove halfway up the front of the
Alamo; he looked down on the Texas Rangers like a transvestite gargoyle.
“Get down, boy,” the lead Ranger glowered, hand on his pistol hip.
The Rangers surrounded Ozzy, who now had the brim of his cowboy hat
dangling around his neck. The bulb-eyed redneck put the finger on Oz:

Sozzy osbourne

he’d been seen urinating on the Alamo. The Rangers flinched at thesacrilege, looked ready to lynch the hapless Ozzy.
“It was the most terrible, terrible thing ah’ve seen in mah lahf,” theswollen-eyed vigilante bleated, close to tears of agonised disbelief anduntinted fury.
“This true, boy?” the Ranger asked, almost afraid to believe it.
“There’s the STAIN!” yelled one of the gathering hanging party.
The San Antonio Police Department arrived; they weren’t listening to
any arguments: they were booking this beano in the weirdo drag. Ozzy
still couldn’t see what all the fuss was about.
“Mister,” the lead Ranger simmered, “when you piss over the Alamo,
you piss over the state of Texas.”“Oh,” said Ozzy, impressed.
“Uhhh… by the way, why have some of your bullets got yellow tips?”
The Ranger’s face purpled up like an excited bruise.
“Boy,” he said through clenched teeth, “if you hadn’ta got off that wall,
I’da showed you whut they whuz for.”“Name,” barked the SAPD patrolman.
“John Osbourne,” Ozzy answered. “But me mates call me Ozzy.”
The cop took off his hat, looked at Ozzy.
“You ain’t the guy who eats bats, are you?” he asked and Oz nodded
lustily. “Fourteen years on the force an’ I ain’t missed a single freak,” thecop continued. “Mister, we are taking you in.”
And off they went in the wagon.
ArK-eyed senoritAs with bulging bellies hung aroundthe walls, waiting for their men to be released; it was a busy
afternoon at the San Antonio lock-up. The floor was litteredwith cigarette ends, the chewed up butts of peoples’ lives. Behind thewire and the mesh and the bars, the guards looked like they knew
they’d never get out either.
Clangclang go the jail guitar doors! With a single bound, Oz is free.
“They put me in a cell with a murderer,” he gushed as we escorted him
to the elevator.
“He’d just bitten out his wife’s throat. He was covered in shit and blood.”“Lucky,” Sheehan said, “they didn’t put him in with the Birdmanof Alcatraz.”D

ZZy wAs 16, growing up in Aston,a grim Birmingham suburb; his only
ambition was to become a Beatle,
preferably Paul McCartney.
He lived in a two-bedroomed house with hisfather, his mother and five other children. It wasa surprisingly musical background.
“Me mother was always entering talent
competitions,” he chuckled, “and me dad wasalways drunk singing in bars.”
Ozzy couldn’t keep a regular job, drifted inand out of employment and eventually into
petty crime. “It was just a way of getting along,
you know. I had a whole racket going, a whole
big underground thing. I had thishideout place in an old cricket
Ozzy and wifepavilion. It was like a bloody
to-be/manager
department store. I had everything
Sharon Arden,
daughter of thethere. Cigars, booze, the lot. I wasnotorious Don
only 13,” he sighed nostalgically.
Eventually nicked for attempting tosteal a colour television set that was
simply too heavy to haul from thescene of the crime (Oz tried to get itover a wall; it fell on him, pinning
him to the ground), dear old Ozzy
was sent down: three months in
Winson Green prison.
“In actual fact,” he said, “this tattoo
was done by a guy who was in there
for three murders. He beat three
prostitutes to death…”
Apart from the convenienttattooing facilities, what else didprison have to offer?

“They put me
in a cell with amurderer. He’dbitten out his B
wife’s throat”

ACKstAGe At sAn Antonio’s
cavernous Convention Hall, Ozzyand his band were preparing for thatnight’s extravaganza.
Thinner than Sutherland’s disappearing
thatch, guitarist Randy Rhoads was slipping
into pipe-cleaner leather trousers; bass player
Rudi was back-combing his hair;
drummer Tommy Aldridge wasbouncing heavyweight sticks off his
biceps; former Rainbow keyboards
player Don Airey was telling me howmuch Ritchie Blackmore had enjoyed
my piece on Castle Donington two
years back.
“I’m thrilled,” I said. “I neverrealised he was a fan.”
Sheehan, meanwhile, waschatting up John, the tour dwarf.
John looked pleased that he’d finallyfound someone on the tour that hecould talk to without having to standon a chair. Across the room, Ozzy
was squeezing himself into a pinkchain-mail leotard fronted by a great
big codpiece.
“They put me in a cell with amurderer,” he was telling someone È
HISTORY OF ROCK 1982 | 23

getty

O

“Nothing,” Ozzy insisted. “I tell you, when they sent me down, it
frightened the shit out of me. When you go in there, it just degradedyou. It’s like you’re no longer human. They give you a number and that’s
your life. That’s your only identity. You’re not a man anymore, you’reprisoner 1237486.
“I experienced some wild things in there. When I got out, I sat down
and cried my eyes out. That place was like a sewer. I don’t believe people
should be put in luxury cells with colour tellies and maids, but there’s apoint where you have to draw the line. To be locked away from your loved
ones is one thing; to be forced to live in absolute filth another.
“And most of the people in there had been sent down for things like
non-payment of maintenance or driving offences. We used to have an
hour’s exercise a day and I met this guy who’d worked in the meat market
with me, and he said he was in for four years. I thought he must’ve robbed
a bank. I said what did they get you for?
“‘A box of Mars bars and 40 Park Drive,’” he said.
Recently, he was bemoaning the severity of English tax laws; someone
told him the money went to a good cause: the state. Ozzy exploded.
“I said, ‘What’s the state ever given me?’ Three months in Winson
Green. That’s all the state’s done for me: put me in jail and caused mymother and father countless years of misery. You know, I watched myfather die of cancer at the age of 63. And I looked at him and I thought,‘You poor bastard. What have you seen of this world? You’ve seen a war.
You’ve seen poverty. You’ve scrimped and saved through your tiny little
life, to be put in a fuckin’ closet in the death ward of a hospital…’ I thought
I’d rather die of a fuckin’ overdose than end up like that. At least that’ll be
the way I want to go.
“After being in prison, I knew I wouldn’t go back, and I knew that I
wouldn’t be told how to live, what to do, when to work, when to have me
tea break. I saw me father going through all that. The man never missed
a day’s work in his life, and he dies in this closet. There’s no dignity in it.
And there’s millions like him. You know, why don’t they have a state
funeral for somebody like that, instead of some arsehole who’s probably
ripped the country off and led us into war…”
I wondered whether rock’n’roll and prison had been the twoalternatives in his life.
“Actually,” he said, throwing me again, “I never really thought aboutbecoming a singer. I always wanted to join
the merchant navy or the army or something.
I went to join the army once. They wouldn’t
have me. The guy turned around and said
they wanted subjects, not objects. I didn’t get
through the door. I thought, ‘Great. If they callme up for the next war, I’ll tell them to fuck off.’”

1982

J a n u a r y – M a r ch

who hadn’t heard about the afternoon’s adventure outside the
Alamo. “He’d just killed his entire family. With an axe.”
Oz tried to make himself comfortable in the codpiece, andnoticed John.
“’Ere, John,” he said, “when we hang you tonight, don’t forgetto wriggle…”
zzy Swigged hiS beer and said that he’d always been a very
soft kind of person; he was one of those guys who watched adaft old movie on the television and ended up with a Kleenex
overdraft. His reputation for outrage was accurate, he confessed; but
he was usually provoked.
“I think in this world you have to shock people,” he said.
“Especially in rock’n’roll. It’s expected of you. But it has go to the point
now where if I’m sitting quietly, people come up to me and ask me if I’m ill.
If I’m not screaming off the chandelier or throwing members of the band
against the wall or pissing over the Alamo, people think, ‘Oh, he’s ill. Bestget the doctor.’ Sometimes, I just want to sit down, have a smoke, think
about the day. But it’s impossible.”
And were all these outrages committed on impulse?
“Honestly, I don’t even know what I’ve done
usually. When I got nicked at the Alamo, I didn’t
even know what I’d been done for. ‘Pissing overthe state of Texas’. Fuck me…”
Biting the head off a dove at a record company
reception seemed rather more premeditatedthan showering the Alamo; a damned sight
more grisly, too.
“You’ve met these people,” he said, pleading
mitigating circumstances. “These record
company executives in their satin tour jackets.
They’re a pain in the arse. It’s all, ‘Hi, Oz, reallygreat to see you. Love the album.’ And they
don’t give a shit really. As long as they’reselling enough records so they can go to theseconventions once a year in the Bahamas and go
raving mad and party it up at my expense.
“The original idea was to get these two doves andthrow them up in the air, cause a bit of a stir. ThenI thought, ‘Fuck it.’ And I bit the head off one of them.
I thought, ‘Right, I’ll give this lot something to think
about.’ And then I did it. And they freaked out. I justwanted to make those people sit up and say, ‘Hey!
This guy is for real. He is nuts…”
Do you really think you are nuts, Oz?
“Nah,” he grinned, taking aboard the rest of his beer,“I think I’m a bit of an eccentric. I think I’m a bit over the
top. I just don’t care. That’s what frightens people.”
We’ve already heard about the kids turning up with a cow’s
head at his gig; just as bizarre were the rumours currently hot on
the wire spreading the word on Ozzy’s pre-gig pastime of sacrificing
puppies, blowing up goats. Just to get him in the right frame of mind, youunderstand, for the musical holocaust of his performance.
People were beginning to believe all this. Baton Rouge was alreadymaking threatening noises about banning him. Surely the old legend was
getting a tad out of hand.
“It is getting heavy,” he agreed. “Especially here in the States. Anythingsensational, you know, they just go for it. I’m desperately frightened thatsome guy’s going to blow me away. It just frightens me, ’cos some of theseguys are nuts, they want to take it too far.
“All it is, you know, I’m a clown. A terrible old showbiz ham. I’m nota singer. You’ve heard the show, you know that. So why do they take it
all so seriously?
“I just get people off. I’m their joint, if you like. They smoke me andthey get high. People say, ‘Don’t you realise what effect you’re having on
people’s minds?’ And I say, ‘Look, go home and watch the television news.
There’s much worse things happening. Don’t give me a hard time. Go
back to your television station and look at the news, and you’ll see six
people being blasted in a bank raid, and they’ll show you the blood andthe guts.’ What effect is that going to have? They don’t give a shit over here,
they’ll show you everything. Murder’s a way of life here…”
Lennon was gunned down, he said – who could’ve predicted that? Of
course it could happen to him.

O

“It’s an occupational hazard. It does worry me, but I can’t let it stop me
doing this. Because if it’s going to happen, if somebody’s out to do you,they’ll do you. And I think there’s a lot of people out there capable ofdoing it. Actually, I do believe that 90 per cent of the audience is sicker
than I’m alleged to be. Listen, there’s a point in the show where we throw
liver and offal at the audience and the kids’ll be clamouring to get a piecein the face.
“I fail to understand it, really,” he continued, touched by a genuine
bewilderment.
“Why in this day and age do people like to see so much gore and disgust?
I mean, I’ll give it to ’em if that’s what they want. They’re paying money tosee me, so I’ll do whatever they want me to do.
“But I often say to myself, ‘If I was in the front row of a show and someprick on stage threw a great big piece of shit all over me, I’d get up there
and punch the guy out.’ That’s why I got the dwarf to throw the liver. He’s
too small to hit.”This seemed like an honest enough definition of commercial cynicism;but was there a line where he put an amen to exploitation?
“I dunno, there’s just a point where you know you’ve gone far enough.
Like, at the beginning of this tour, we were going to sell tour humps
instead of tour T-shirts. T-shirts with HUMPS!
And club feet!” Chuckles consumed him at thevery memory.
“But then I said to Sharon [Arden: manager/
constant companion], ‘What if we ’ad a son andhe came home from a concert covered in shitwith a hump on his back and a club foot?’ It’d bea bit bizarre.
“‘Where the ’ell ’ave you been?’“‘T’see Ozzy Osbourne!’“‘Gerrup those bloody stairs!’”“That’s why I
got the dwarf
to throw theliver – he’s too
small to hit”

24 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982

hAd tO LOOk twice and even thenI wasn’t sure that I wasn’t sufferingsome violent Heineken-withdrawal
hallucination. The taped overture had reacheda climax of apocalyptic frenzy; the entire audience wason its feet, Zippos aloft, Ozzy’s name on their lips; a10,000-strong chorus, baying for their hero, the frothalready foaming at the corners of their mouths.
And on the stage, the curtains were slowly partingand I was blinking hard, cursing the morning’s
Heineken binge. Sheehan looked just as amazed;
I knew then that it was for real. The stage wasdwarfed by a towering set that looked like a nightmare
vision of some diseased Camelot. Torches blazed highabove towers and battlements, arches and turrets; there
was a drawbridge, a portcullis; chains a-dangling, thick,heavy, covered in dank moss.
An empty throne stood imperiously at the head of a flight of stairs
that swept down to the front and centre of the stage.
POW! An explosion shook the auditorium, probably popping zits in thefurthest gantries, miles away from the stage. There was a whirl of smoke,a flash. And Ozzy was suddenly on the throne, apparently beamed infrom nowhere. He was holding aloft a massive, neon-fronted crucifix.
As he waddled down the stairs, belly wobbling under the pink chain
mail, the mascara already running tearfully down his chubbed-out
cheeks, the drums pounded through the PA.
Tommy Aldridge, surrounded by more drums than a popular witch
doctor at a public exorcism, was rising slowly on another dais, behind
the throne. Behind Tommy stood his drum roadie, dressed like amedieval executioner.
Randy and Rudi romped on from the wings, amps cranked up wellpast the legal limit, thrashing away as Oz carried them into “Over The
Mountain”. The audience knew the words better than Ozzy, but loved
him anyway; and he responded by turning on the fireworks, hanging thedwarf, setting the band loose on pyrotechnic solos that burned off theears and made nonsense of the average digestive system.
The cheers from the audience drowning even Randy’s jet-fuelled riffs,
I retired back to the stage, ears ringing like alarm bells, my heart trying
to argue its way out of my chest. From the high arch above Tommy, John
the dwarf was hanging from a scaffold, little legs kicking beneath his
monk’s habit. For a moment, he looked like Sheehan and I feared – thatI

the roadies had lynched the wrong little chap in thebackstage pandemonium…
Then the Chief was at my shoulder, muttering
darkly about voodoo, and we watched the finale,with Ozzy advancing out into the audience on a giant
hand; and we winced to our very souls as the hand
exploded with a force that would’ve reduced the
Alamo to rubble and Oz tumbled into anotherspotlight and flung himself into a hoarse,
dangerously berserk body-check version of “Paranoid”.
I first heard that song when I was making my debut on acid; it stillsounded terrifying.
ALLAS: Ozzy And I were enjoying an early-afternoon
sharpener in the bar of the Fairmount hotel. That weekend,
the Fairmount was hosting a beauty convention; we weresurrounded by decaying Southern belles with skins like stretched
Formica. Their eyes glistened with an artificial sheen; their teeth
clearly slept in separate beds; their mouths were greedy, their tongues
rattled; their perfumes clung in the air, like stains on a sheet; they
believed that they’d never get old, were mostly already dead.
We were talking about his current success in America (Diary Of A
Madman, his second solo LP since leaving Sabbath, was shifting units
on the Billboard chart at a rate that was exhausting his accountants);
we moved on to the present tour, and I wondered whether after nearly
15 years he hadn’t seen enough of the world’s hotel rooms. He’d go on
forever, he said; right now, he felt like the Bing Crosby of HM, with three
generations of fans coming to his concerts, but he’d go on until they
stayed away.
Was there anywhere that dulled his enthusiasm for touring?
“Germany!” he yelled with some conviction, attacking another lotion.
“Hate the place. I hate their arrogance. And they don’t know when tolaugh. The only time they laugh is when they’re starting wars. The war
hasn’t finished for those bastards. They still hate everyone in the world.
Germany, it’s got this cloud of doom and depression hanging over it.
“The most happening place I went to in Germany was Dachau. Therewas more life there than on the Reeperbahn. Belgium’s the same. If you
want to get depressed, go to Belgium. The worse thing that could ever
happen to anyone would be to have been born in Belgium. It shouldn’t
even happen to a Belgian. Belgium’s probably just a good place to die…”
Alex Harvey just did; of a heart attack, I told him.
Ozzy was immediately contrite.
“Whorra bummer,” he said.
“Well, there you go… I suppose the same thing’s going to happen to me
one day. The price you pay, I suppose. The death rate in rock’n’roll isphenomenal. You live at 100 miles an hour, 24 hours a day: and your bodycan only take so much stress.”
So what do you do to wind down
after a tour, Ozzy?
“Do you know what I really likedoing?” he declared, almost
overtaken by his own gush ofenthusiasm.
“Fishing and shooting,” hebeamed. “Enjoying thecountryside.”Uh, what exactly did he likeshooting?
“Rabbits. Pigeons. Pheasants.
Vans. Policemen.”
Given his previously expressed
concern for the way the world was
running down (we’d been talking
about a song of his called“Revelation (Mother Earth)”, allthis hunting and killing seemed
contradictory.
“Not at all!” he insisted eagerly,
between gulps of alcohol. “I eat
April 5, 1982: (l–r) Bob
what I shoot. I don’t just go bang!
Daisley, Rudy Sarzo, Ozzy
Osbourne, Tommy Aldridge
I don’t leave the bodies there to rot.
and Bernie Tormé (Randy
I go hunting for food. I don’t justRhoads’ replacement) at
kill, there is a purpose. I mean, if
Madison Square GardenD

there’s a crisis, a food shortage or a war, I’ll know
how to survive. Most people wouldn’t. ‘Oh, thebutcher’s closed, where am I going to get somemeat?’ You won’t hear me whingeing. I’ll be out
with me gun.
There’s so much hypocrisy about all this,”he complained bitterly. “Like there’s this guy
interviewing me once and he’s got this big fat greasy
steak in front of him on his plate. And he says, ‘Don’t
you think biting a dove’s head off is cruel?’ And he’s tucking into his rumpsteak. So I said, ‘Listen, mate, you’re the one who’s eating a cow’s arse ona plate.’ I said, ‘Don’t you realise what you’re eating?’ He says, ‘Food.’‘Don’t you realise that food used to hop around a field, mooing. Minding
its own business. And now you’re eating its arse off a plate.
He couldn’t accept the idea that I might’ve bitten the head off that doveto show up all these hypocrites… That’s why I do these things.”
Was there a stunt he’d committed, an outrage he’d caused, thathe actually regretted; or could he justify everything with such
persuasive humour?
“I’ve done some terrible things to animals,” he finally confessed, aftersome deliberation. “When I worked at the slaughter house, I used to dosome grotesque things which I really don’t want to talk about.”
Turning pale, I was frankly relieved. Ozzy went on.
“I was just a kid then,” he mused reflectively. “I was just screwing
around. I’m sure everyone’s done something they regret… I once saweda sheep’s head in half.”
It was dead, I hoped.
“No,” he said. “It was alive. It wouldn’t have been any fun if it’dbeen dead.”
I presumed that he’d used a high-powered chainsaw, to get the job overwith quickly, if not without a considerable mess.
“It was a hacksaw, actually,” Ozzy remembered, and his elbow
automatically went into a sawing motion: a slow, deliberate momentum.
I was feeling thoroughly nauseous.
“The look on your face!” he roared, laughter doubling him over onto hisknees. “It’s a killer!”I suspected a wind-up; Ozzy insisted that the story was true. He wasstill laughing; I joined in, clocking in at chuckle central, though I didn’tknow why.
“One thing’s for sure,” Ozzy bellowed, guffawing into his drink as weboth howled, “the sheep weren’t laughin’…”
One of the convention’s beauticians came over and asked Ozzy if he’dhave his picture taken with a group of her friends; they were all fans; had
luuuuuuuurved the show in Houston. Ozzy agreed; the beautician went
off to organise her chums.
“Old witch,” Ozzy said, watching her fuss. And then he was away,pulling faces for someone’s Polaroid memories. Allan Jones ¥HISTORY OF ROCK 1982 | 25

Larry Marano / getty

ozzy osbourne

1982

Ilpo Musto / REX

J a n u a r y – M a r ch

Depeche Mode: (l-r)
Andrew Fletcher,Martin Gore, Dave
Gahan and Alan Wilder

26 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982r

� �'� �'` .:�►�d�t�'° 4t,4��4

Tough times for DEPECHE
MODE. Vince Clarke hasleft, and their second
album has been panned.
The Basildon boys havethe support of local
mums, and urge fans tostick with them for thelong haul. “I mean we’ve
only just started having
to shave every day!”“Punk
hasn’tchangedanything”
HISTORY OF ROCK 1982 | 27

1982

J a n u a r y – M a r chA

— NME MARCH 20 —part from his clothes, which are meticulously
modish, Martin Gore’s baby blond curls, bashfulexpression and exceptionally sweet smile make him
look like the boy in Bubbles, Millais’ famous
Victorian advert for Pears soap.
His group mate Andrew Fletcher looks
comparatively harsh by Depeche pop standards: sandy hair sticks up
straight from his head and his manner, although chatty, tends towarddry. It’s a dark Dave Gahan, the singer with the soft face and sunny smile,
who opens the door of his parents’ semi-detached house in the satellite
suburb of Basildon.
There seems to be something in the air which encourages clear
complexions, wholesome electro-pop, clean-cut teen culture anduntroubled eyes. The taxi from the station bowls along the wide, smoothroads between the low, grey rows of modern estate housing, past broad
sweeps of spring green. On the surface it’sa closed world of comforting order, easy
affluence, unchallenged conformity andmodest domesticity. Depeche Mode
– a little flushed from the drowsy afternoon
combination of sunshine, central heating anda flaring fire – sit in the small, square cosy livingroom of a house identical to the ones they all
share with their respective parents.
A bright, neat girl sits at the end of the settee,
quietly flicking through a magazine. Dave
Gahan makes coffee, although he drinks hot
chocolate himself. Audible through thewafer-thin walls, now nearer, now farther,come the thin tones of Dave’s younger brother,a squatter, pudgier version of Dave himself, as hewanders through the house with a small Casio keyboard.
“He usually plays it in the loo,” says Dave, “because it’s got good reverbin there.”
All over Basildon, Andrew tells me, young synthesizer bands arestarting up, despite the lack of rehearsal rooms or places to play. For
Depeche Mode, who smile and reminisce their way through an afternoon
at home, it doesn’t seem so long ago that they were playing house-gigs
themselves to a small audience in pyjamas with additional soft toys andteddy bears.
Time has flown, they think, since they caught the commuter train to
the bank, the insurance office and college every morning. Because
Depeche Mode signed to an independent label for no advance, they werestill doing day jobs when “New Life” was at Number 20 in the charts, anda week after they finished work on TOTP. Four months ago Andrew
Fletcher had never flown, now he finds air travel no more or less exciting
than catching the 7 o’clock train into town.
This is the first day off Depeche Mode have had in months, sandwiched
between a trip to Spain and a spell in the studio. And although they werelooking forward to an uninterrupted reunion with old friends and family,
they’ve amiably agreed to do one more interview. Depeche Mode are just
too nice to say no.
“Every day there seems to be something,” says Dave resignedly. “Up
until a certain point you do begin to wonder what good it actually does.”
Does being nice come naturally?
“Not any more it doesn’t,” says Andrew, whose
irony is in counterpoint to Dave’s ready chatter andMartin’s shy, attentive silence. (“He’s got a lot to say,
but he never says it,” explains Andrew. “He’s notvery good at interviews.”)“You’re thrown into something and you act
naturally and that’s what comes out. Then you’reknown as being nice and cute all the time, andwhen you’ve been touring for three months, youjust want to explode. But when you’re surroundedby nice people who are so friendly, you trust them,
if they say something then it is hard to say no. Dan(Daniel Miller of Mute) has done so much for us, you can’t get stroppy
with him. All the people in the office really work hard for us, you can’t
upset them. The main thing is, we’ve been so lucky, you feel, why should
we be arguing? We’ve got somewhere and we should work.”
Depeche Mode aren’t a rock ‘n’ roll band, they tell me, and they don’t
enjoy the traditional tour trappings. At their Hammersmith Odeon
concerts, which they filled twice in a fortnight, their show was
remarkable for its fetching simplicity and lack of spectacle, its narrowingof distance and rejection of elitism, its guileless involvement andunselfconscious innocence.
Yet here they are between tour and LP, still bubbly but worrying a little
about becoming blasé over continents and countries, jets andhelicopters, video and TV. Dave Gahan’s got a swelling stye on one eyefrom infected water in a Spanish shower.
“If I’m wearing sunglasses in the pictures, you’ll have to explain it wasn’t
trying to be cool, I’m embarrassed about my eye.”Is there any way in which they can avoid stepping into the spiralling
restrictive trap of success?
“We don’t want anything,” says Andrew.
“We just carry on from day to day. We haven’t
got any ambitions. Our ambition is to buy ahouse or something like that.”“Obviously to be more successful would bea good thing,” adds Dave. “Or to just stay as weare now and keep releasing good material.”“Things don’t happen so fast that you don’t
really know what’s going to happen,” says
Martin softly.
“To go back now would be really hard,”
Andrew continues. “There’s so many people wehave to pay. It’s the album-tour-album-tour
trap that’s the worst thing. That’s why Vince(Clarke) left, he probably felt that he was getting
trapped because that’s what he saw in front of him. He looked at it witha bigger scope than we did, I think. He looked ahead more.
“The only point of bitterness is the fact that we’re really working hardand promoting his material and he’s doing what we want to do but can’t.”“Vince has got all the time in the world now,” adds Dave. “He’s donea few adverts, a few jingles. Peter Powell’s got a new programme out andhe wrote the theme tune for that. We were offered a Tizer advert but wejust couldn’t do it. It would be really good if we had the time to do things
like that, just look at it in a bigger way, different ways of earning money.”
Far from falling flat on their fresh faces, as some feared they would dowhen primary writer Clarke left, Depeche Mode have recruited newmember Alan Wilder (not present today since he’s only temporary), andgathered new strength since “See You” has taken its proper place in themost exhilarating chart for months.
Why do they think some people relate to them so well?
“I suppose it’s because they see us as the boy next door,” says Dave.
“The blokes see us like lads, electronic versions of the Angelic Upstarts,”
adds Andrew. “You get those sort of people outside the dressing room
door going, ‘Oi, Andy!’ You have to speak to them in your best Cockney
accent. You go, ‘Yer, alright, ‘ang on.’ You get the little girls that you haveto be really nice to because they’re like your little sister.”Andrew blushes just a bit.
“It’s a funny sort of audience,” says Dave. “I think they just see us on thesame level as them really. It’s good in a way, ‘cos
they’re not embarrassed. I remember going to gigs
and being embarrassed to move ‘cos it’s not cool todance. I remember going to see Gary Numan at
Hammersmith and just sitting through the wholegig. You’re really enjoying it but you can’t get up
and go HUURRAAY! At our gigs they aren’t
embarrassed about anything.”
Depeche Mode may jokingly fantasise about
running on stage and doing scissor jumps,
detailing a roadie to pull them across the stage ona go-kart attached to a piece of string and feel
gently aggrieved by Paul Weller whiningly callingthem wimps;
but in reality
their artlesslack of ego is“Our ambition
is to buy ahouse orsomething
like that”

28 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982

often seen instead as anonymity. “There was a thing in The Sun
reviewing our single and it said ‘another record by a faceless group’.
I think people who read music papers might know about us, but thegeneral public couldn’t put a face to the name,” says Andrew. “People
say, what’s it like to be famous? But there’s no difference. When I walkalong in Basildon they might recognise me, but if I go up to London andwalk along the King’s Road, I wouldn’t be recognised.”“I think it’s better not to be hip, it’s definitely safer,” says Dave.
“I remember when we first described ourselves as a pop band andAndy went wild!” adds Martin slyly. “He said we’ve had it now! How can
you be a rock ‘n’ roll star and walk into the house and see your mum…”“…have a fight with your brothers in the living room…” adds Andrew,“…and you’ve got all your sisters in the house,” continues Martin.
“We don’t go clubbing it in London or anything,” adds Dave. “I don’tknow how bands can do that. They’re touring the world and they’ve got
records out every week. They must be so tired.”Flossy barnets:“We don’t get massive guest lists with stars on them,” says Andrew.
Dave Gahan and“I think that’s why people relate to us. We don’t attract that sort ofMartin Goreaudience. We’re not a liggers’ band. Backstage there’s just a load of ourfriends from Essex.”
Are Depeche Mode puppets of Mute maestro Daniel Miller, thepretty faces fronting an electro-pop masterplan? Somehow it doesn’t
seem that simple.
“Daniel’s boys,” smiles Dave. “Daniel’s like a friend really. “It’s not likea business relationship. He comes everywhere with us. In the studio hedoesn’t actually take part in the recording apart from the producing. I’dsay a lot of other producers take more part than Daniel does.”
They don’t feel they’re being manipulated?
“It’s hard to say,” replies Andrew equably. “He advises us what to do, but
we find it hard to say no, so in a way he does.”
hat a way to start. Alan
By those who don’t understand the place in pop for such a sweet andWilder dances in Vince
optimistic celebration of potential, Depeche Mode are often crudely
Clarke’s shoes and his first
dismissed as lightweight. Would they like to be taken more seriously?
Depeche Day in the home
“I think what we do is very easy, that’s why it’s good,” says Andrew. “Butcountry involves knocking out
we’re on an independent label. We’ve never been hyped, we nevera Top Of The Pops
advertise. That’s one reason why we never get into the top five.
performance then
They can’t afford to give us that final push to No 1. When you
dashing down to
PARiS STuDiOS,
sell as many records as a group that gets to No 3 or No 4, andParis Studios for
LONDONyou only get to No 8, you start to wonder why.”an In Concert“None of us are on an ego trip. We do things as they
with Talk Talk.
There he is…
come along,” says Dave. “It’s a job, we moan about it, buthair red (neat), suit
I couldn’t see us doing anything else. In three years’
well pressed andtime, Martin might be a producer or a general writer.
FEBRuARY 10
fingers tumbling
Andy might be making synthesizers. We’ve done
over the favourites.
something in a different way.”
Not a startling 40
Depeche Mode are the fast way forward to the future. Lynn Hanna

Lei

Signs of extra variety
MM FEB 20 Depeche Mode air some new numbers
and a fresh face at BBC Paris Studios in London

W

T— MM OCTOBER 2 —he middle-aged mum on the Basildon train greeted Davelike a son, long presumed lost, safely home from the Falklands.
“Like your new one,” she beamed, juggling her shopping. “Goodone… the best one yet.” Dave blushed hard, accepting accolades shyly.
“Depeche Mode attempting to twist pin-up appeal into nursery
neurosis is like asking the Banshees to play ‘Little Deuce Coupe’.”I’d written these words two days before, summing up my attack of their
new LP, A Broken Frame. Dave flushed hard, taking insult to heart.
“Of all the bad reviews, yours was the one that hurt most,” he insists
over a fast-diminishing pint. (Yes, it’s true; these Basildon boys don’t
drink Babycham!)“But at least it read like you’d actually listened to the record!”
Still simmering from the half-expected critical lashing administeredby the weekly big four, Depeche Mode are holed up in rehearsals, taking
deep breaths, turning the other cheeks and thanking the Lord for themums of this world.
It’s a year now since Speak & Spell launched their ridiculously simple
synthesised translations of established pop clichés into the charts; ayear, that is, since Vince Clarke built his reputation as a stylish pop writer
only to quit the fold and tout his talents with Yazoo, a year that’s
inevitably twisted the cowardly critical acquiescence that accompanies
any new cult riding the crest of a wave into frowning familiarity.
Last December, Depeche Mode could do no wrong.
“Now we can’t do anything right,” moans singer Dave Gahan.

minutes from the Mode. They
have been harder, tighter andbetter practised – still, this is
the first UK appearance fora while and there’s plenty toworry about.
Will the newboy makegood? (Hedid.) Will the
new numbers
stand up?
(They do.)Let’s talk
talk about
songs. Martin
Gore is aromantic soulunder his flossy barnet. All
those twirling lines that spin
through “See You” have matesin the rest of his efforts. Maybe
they don’t punch you out as
fast as old Depeche, but they
wrestle you to the ground andkeep a foot on your brain.
Vince’s departure must have

The songs wrestle
you tothe ground andkeep a foot on
your brain

HISTORY OF ROCK 1982 | 29

david wainwright

C
!C
LIVE!

brought a few moments ofhead scratching and Depeche
Mode are still in a pensive
mood. It’s done them good as
there are signs of extra variety
and silkier twist winding roundthe familiar TEAC drum track.
Even that’s been shakenaround by new sounds andrhythms which feint for thehead then fall at your feet.
A handful of gigs will pull the
fresh stuff as taut as favourites
such as “Puppets” and “What’sYour Name”; they’re not there
yet. In Concert never saw
the light of oldies such as“Photographic”, “Dreaming
Of Me” and “Ice Machine”,
but there was time to air “SeeYou”, “This Is Real Fun” (evenstronger than the record) anda newcomer
which wasthe bullet ofthe show,“Meaning Of
Love”. This isheavy metal,
isn’t it?
Well, it’ssomething.
What achorus,crashingaround the ears as if the band
had given the PA a push andsent it reeling into the crowd.
I wish I could chat chat about
Talk Talk, but there’s not a lot
to say. The coast of poppy
emulsion isn’t thick enoughto hide the stubby rock ‘n’ rollwall behind it. Paul Colbert

1982

J a n u a r y – M a r ch

Marks the end of
a beautiful dream
MM SEP 25 Post-Vince Clarke, thesecond Mode album receives a pasting
Depeche Mode A Broken Frame
MUTE

What a difference a year
makes. The Depeche Mode of‘81’s Speak & Spell seduced
their way into our hearts
and into the charts with
unblemished innocence; thesynthesized soul brothers ofcartoon punks, the Ramones.
The role and execution were
essentially simple: perfect pop
with no pretensions. Such(a)cute timing could scarcely
be dismissed as contrived, such
sublime straightforwardness
blossomed beyond all
critical sniping.
But, though
in many ways
ambitious andbold, ABroken Frame– as its namesuggests –marks the endof a beautiful
dream. Now Vince Clarke’s(selfishly?) split the market,
A Broken Frame sounds sadly
naked, rudely deprived of theformula’s novelty.
Whereas past pilferings
were overlooked as
springboards towards anemerging identity, thelarcenies of A Broken Framesound like puerile infatuations
papering over anonymity.
What it also illustrates is thatgrowing up in public is muchthe same as it was in the ‘60s
– that once established as acommercial viability, pressure,pride or self-opinionation
invariably pushes a band
beyond compounding
their capabilities and fuels
daft aspirations to art.
To be fair, the one factor
in favour of Depeche
Mode’s commercial
decline, the sole gracethat saves A Broken Framefrom embarrassment, isthat their increasing
complexity sounds lessthe result of exterior
persuasion than anunderstandable, naturaldevelopment.
It may lack Vince’s

REVIEW
1982

gossamer sleight of hand, theponderous “Monument” maysound positively ugly
compared to the wry “Boys Say
Go” but A Broken Frame iscloser to Speak & Spell than its
tricky veneer might suggest.
The lyrics have matured fromwide-eyed fun to wild-eyedfrustration, but the weary
words of “Leave In Silence”,
just like the glib ones of“Just Can’t Get Enough”,
are words and nothing more.
In attempting the balance
Yazoo get away with, the new
Depeche Mode overstep
the mark. Vinceis adept at
conjuringmusicalmoods and
Alf’s voice isearthy andhumanenough to
con us there’s
emotionbehind their candyfloss,
but the Mode remain
essentially vacuous.
“Shouldn’t Have Done That”,
the album’s most ambitious
departure, proves beyond
doubt that Depeche
attempting to twist pin-up
appeal into nursery neurosis
is like asking the Banshees toplay “Little Deuce Coupe”.
The boys’ pluck should be
applauded and we should
be grateful that they refuse
to tread water.
But the plain fact is, they’redrowning. Steve Sutherland

Sounds sadly
naked, deprived of
the formula’s
novelty

30 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982

ALBUMS“I suppose, at the beginning, we were flavour of the month, thenew, young, fresh … y’know. Everyone’s gone through that.
Haircut One Hundred, ABC … we’ve watched them all get thesame as we got – ‘Oh, they’re wonderful!’ and then suddenly,‘Oh, they’re bad!’ I think it’s disgusting. You spend threemonths in the studio working as hard as fuck to put out a good
album and…”“It’s like a year at work,” Andrew Fletcher intrudes, obviously
agitated, “and you get your appraisal at the end of it fromsomeone who doesn’t really bother.”“I don’t think it does you any great harm,” reasons sole songwriter,
Martin Gore, through his lop-sided grin. “I mean, you can’t say it doesn’t
concern you because it does but I don’t think people decide whether tobuy a record or not on the strength of a review.”“The worst thing is,” badgers Andy, bitterly unassuaged, “say you’re ina pub or something and people shout ‘You’ve ‘ad it!’ – when that starts to‘appen, once you’ve become an established band, it puts so manypressures on you. We shouldn’t have to put up with that.
“We produce our music and we get criticised by people who are …
nothing really, people who’ve never done anything like we have, football
hooligans who don’t deserve to be on earth really. See whatI mean?”This verbal venting of bottled-up bad feeling is occasioned, not so muchby the fact that A Broken Frame has been panned inconsistently
as overambitious, underambitious, senseless and pretentious, as the factthat the band feel they’ve been wilfully misunderstood.
“The thing you’ve gotta remember,” Andy insists, letting the skeleton
out of the closet, “is that eight out of the ten songs on the last album wereVince’s and Martin doesn’t write like Vince.
“The new album is different not because we’ve deliberately changed
but because Martin wrote the songs, not Vince.”“We’d been playing the songs on that first album for a year and a half,”
Dave reveals. “We went in and whacked them down – we knew exactly
what we was gonna do. It would have been so easy to go in and dothat album again but you can play safe or experiment a bit more,
and we experimented.
“I don’t play Speak & Spell at home any more. At the time it was ouralbum but looking back, it was just a collection of songs and I’m sure
Vince would agree that what he’s doing now and what we’re doing now
are real albums.
“It’s not false, it’s not overproduced, it’s just us – how we were feeling atthat time, how we’re feeling now. What we’ve done is natural and if
people can’t accept that – well, that’s the way it goes – there’s nothing you
can do about it.
“I think the worst thing is if you do things to please other people, if you
give them the obvious and make money from it. I don’t think any of us
want to be big stars and have ten Rolls-Royces and all that crap. All wewant is to be a successful band and for people to buy our records andappreciate what we’re doing.”“I think people have got over the fact that Vince has left now,” adds
Martin, pensively, “and we have, too. At the time it put pressure on me
because I’ve never been a prolific songwriter and, when Vince waswriting, I just didn’t feel the need, I was lazy about it.
“That’s dying off now. At the beginning, when “Only You” came out
and Vince was on every front cover, ‘Vince and Alf’, ‘Alf and Vince’, ‘Alf’s
voice’ and everything – even going into the Mute office, everything was
Yazoo this, Yazoo that – it was hard. But we’ve faced the fact that they’remassive now!” Martin laughs. “And obviously
we’re taking a big risk with this album – ourpopularity might suffer because of it.”
“But we’re in a really weird position,” Andy
insists. “We’re a very young band, we’re only
about 20... 19 when we made the first album, andwe’re still growing up in certain aspects.
“We’re not like most 30-year-old musicians in aband set-up – we’re seeing things we’ve neverseen before, listening to different music all thetime and, as we grow, we’re sounding different.
“I mean we’ve only just started having to shave
every day!”Fair enough. No one’s asking Depeche Mode tojog on the spot – very glad they aren’t, in fact – butwhat precisely these changes are that soured thesweet simplicity of Speak & Spell into the clumsy

I�A

�I

I-

��� �

�INAL �Depeche Modecower from thecritical maulingof second album

poetics of A Broken Frame, and whether these changes work, are different
issues altogether.
“I think they work,” Dave Gahan frowns. “I mean, when we started out,
we didn’t intend to do anything, we didn’t plan out ten years and say‘we’re going to do this’. We just wrote songs and went out and played themand got our deal through that.
“I mean, a lot of bands get credit for what they do and where they go – tothe Bahamas to record their album, to Sri Lanka to record three videos– but so what? Who cares about that? What it’s about is recording music
and selling music to the public and if people like the music, then they’regonna buy it. That’s all it is…”
“And we never take the public for a ride,”
Andy claims, pointing out that the Mode
have never released money-spinning remixes
or picture discs.
“People don’t give us enough credit for thethings we’ve done. Like, we manage ourselves,
we’ve stayed on an independent label, we’ve
always refused to be tempted by the large sumsof money and we’ve had five top 20 singles on
the trot with no hype – just on our music alone!
“I mean, it seems to be the thing at the
moment to slag off electronic bands but I thinkthat’s a bit of a fallacy because there’s only about
three real electronic bands and there’s about
three million that play guitars.”“So really, we’re doing something different,”
Dave claims. “Just because we’re not getting up
there and getting down on our knees and giving it
all we can with our guitars or whacking away atdrums doesn’t mean we’re not a good band.”“At the moment it’s back to what it was before
punk – punk hasn’t changed anything. It’s all backto big limousines and all that crap,” mourns Andy.
Surprising really, since many would cite Depeche
as instrumental in the establishment of our new
shallow pop.

“We don’t lead that sort of life!” Dave howls at my accusation.
“We don’t! I never rode in a limousine – I don’t think I’ve even been
in a Rolls-Royce.”“We didn’t ask for the screaming girls,” Andy insists. “We wanted tokeep away from that. We just believed in what we were doing.”“We never really aimed for our music to be fashionable dance music,”
Dave continues. “We’re not telling people what to do or what to wear.”“What it’s all down to is the music. Punk was all look – people say it
brought back the grit but it was a look, it made people dress in that way.
I don’t think you can write about banning the bomb or politics – it might
do something for the band but it doesn’t do anything for the public.”“All the big punk bands are just sell-out groups anyway,” says Andy.
“Take The Clash, right, they go about politics ‘n’everything yet they’re on the most capitalist
label in the world!”“We just try to please ourselves,” says Martin
simmering down.
“As long as a song’s expressing to me what I
want it to express to me, that’s what’s important.
I just sit down and write them – I don’t reallyintend them to say anything in particular.”It’s exactly this denigration of the potential of
pop to move people, this forgettable matrix ofpatronising little in-jokes that allows Martin toclaim that “The Meaning Of Love” was“intended to be sickly”.
“The thing is,” says Andy, cynically honest,“I don’t think A Broken Frame is the tester, really.
I mean, I hope a lot of people will go out and buy it
because it’s us and it’s got three hit singles on it.
I think the next album will be the real teller…”“That’s it,” enthuses Dave, grasping the wrong
end of the stick. “It’s always the next thing. We
haven’t lost any of the excitement for it. Like thenext single – who knows what it’s gonna be like?”
And time will tell who cares.
Steve Sutherland •HISTORY OF ROCK 1982 | 31

DaviD Corio / getty“People don’t
give usenough credit
for the things
we’ve done”

1982

J a n u a r y – M a r ch

stormer performed withimmense passion.
Thankfully the band asa whole has managed to
cut down a bit on the oldharmonised twin lead
guitars, which were
getting to be a bit ofa pain, and they’reringing the musicalchanges more. Clive Burris getting away from his
occasional ‘everything
including the kitchensink’ drumming style andguitarist Dave Murray
and Adrian Smith areplaying with a lot of class– most noticeable on“22 Acacia Avenue” and“The Prisoner”.
Well done, Maiden.
You’ve come up witha goodie. Brian Harrigan ,MM Mar 27

Jimmy Page Death Wish II
Soundtrack SWANSONGIn the days when
“Stairway To Heaven”
was always number
one in the Peel poll,
ALBUMS
Jimmy Page losing
his plectrum wasfront page news.
But fashions
1982
change; if you blink
you’ll miss one
disappearing.
Disappearing as quickly
really rated him with Samson
as Jimmy Page’s reputation.
and I thought Maiden had madeIt’s pathetic that Page shoulda fundamental error in selecting
allow his first solo album to
him to replace Paul Di’ Anno.
be associated with such
Instead both sides benefitted –a provocatively unpleasant film.
Bruce Dickinson improved
You know the story anyway –considerably and so did the band.
Charles Bronson as the world’s
On this album Dickinson lays
unluckiest householder getsclaim to being one of the best
duffed up, learns his daughter
hard rock singers around. (Suredies at the lusty hands of LA
about this Harrigan? – Ed.)
muggers, and goes around
The other great strength of
topping everyone under 25.
this album is the standard of
The justification, of course, issongwriting. Steve Harris, who’sthat the punks would only go to
written five of the eight songs
prison, and the pistol is mightier
here and composed two of thethan the parole.
others, has finally fulfilled theJust because Page happens topotential he’s previously only
be director Michael Winner’s
suggested. “Children Of The
next door neighbour is scant
Damned” is a Sabbath-influenced
reason to be involved with suchsong which Ronnie Dio and Co
a dubious project. Bronson’s
would have been proud to write,
wooden acting is matched bywhile “Run To The Hills”, theirPage’s dreary score. It’s pretty
current single, is a punchy
much your standard Hollywood
soundtrack, withsynths replacing
plucked strings toindicate suspense.
There’s sufficient
gut-wrenching guitar
to keep ardent Zep
freaks happy, notably
on “Who’s To Blame”,
which also has a vocal

REVIE
W

Iron Maiden: Bruce
Dickinson & Co comeup with the goodies

ALBUMS

MichaEl PuTland/GETTY

Iron Maiden The Number
Of The Beast EMI
For some unknown reason– personality defect I suppose –I keep expecting Iron Maiden tofall flat on their faces. God knows
why, because they’ve come up
with some sterling records in thepast and I suppose there’s noreason why they shouldn’t
continue to do so.
Perhaps it’s because they lackdistinction that I don’t take them
seriously enough. They don’t
have the single-mindedness ofMotörhead, the sure feel formusic, the breadth or delicacy ofRush, nor the sheer instrumental
skill of, say, Sammy Hagar.
Despite this, they keep on
coming up with the goods andadmittedly, they have surpassed
themselves with
The Number Of
The Beast. There
are two main reasonsfor the success of
this album.
First and mostobvious is leadsinger Bruce
Dickinson. I never32 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982

from Chris Farlowe. Eight years
on from the original Death Wishsoundtrack (which was scoredby Herbie Hancock) this is a veryquestionable album, morally
and musically.
What does 1990 hold? Anageing Bronson as the Toxteth
Vigilante with a soundtrack from
Jimmy Pursey? Patrick Humphries,
MM Feb 20

Robert Wyatt Nothing Can Stop Us
ROUGH TRADE

Inquisitive, worried, sometimes
probably depressed, Robert
Wyatt looks at the world and its
bloody history of oppression,mourns for the victims of
injustice, but refuses to be bullied
into total despair.
Nothing Can Stop Us isa celebration of the ability tosurvive in a world that mostly
resembles a cross between amadhouse and a carnage factory;
it’s a moving testament to the
stubborn determination ofordinary people to battle
through the messy frustrations
that daily afflict them, thecourage with which they standup to ignorance, prejudice, andthe threat of violence.
Aligning itself with aninternational struggle for
freedom and independence,
Nothing Can Stop Us is a political
record. Wyatt, however, avoids
the familiar, shallow, romantic
association between rock ‘n’ rolland rebellion (Sandinista! by
The Clash serves as a perfect
example). There are no false
heroics here, no cheap clarion
calls to man the barricades.
When Wyatt sings the socialist
anthem “Red Flag”, it’s with analmost forlorn regret that thestruggle for class equality will
never be won. Again, though, herefuses to surrender to grief orhelplessness; the ideal is still
worth fighting for.
Scanning the flashpointsof global conflict, Wyatt
simultaneously attempts toillustrate the spirit ofinternational resistance byassuming the most appropriate
musical settings at his disposal.
To the extent that it recreatesa variety of potent folk /ethnic
styles, Nothing Can Stop Us
is something of a musicaltravelogue; but it’s never content
with superficial atmospheres.
It looks beyond local colour
towards a greater understandingof the importance of music andsong, especially in Third World
societies. With “Caimanera”
and “Arauco”, Wyatt feeds theoriginal South American rhythms

Iof this LP; a melancholy
belief, maybe, that thisis the natural order:
a belief that we must
learn to live with oursuffering, the inflictionof grief; a belief,
too, that whatever
the betrayals, thetragedies, life will
go on. Wyatt hascompiled an important
LP. Allan Jones, MM Mar 20

Richard and Linda Thompson
Shoot Out The Lights HANNIBAL
It’s like there’s a sort of rock ‘n’
SINGLESroll wilderness, where cults are
Classix Nouveaux Is It A Drean?
consigned to rot amid the dead
LIBERTY
flowers. It’s a long way frombrightly lit twin cities of Fame
Funny old world isn’t it? Thereand Fortune.
they were, every pundit’s tip
Richard Thompson has
to flourish in ’81, but Sal andperversely shunned those
the nose brigade somehow
blandishments. Instead, overmissed out. On the basis of
the past ten years, he andthis hilariously mannered,
Linda have concentrated
sickeningly contrived mess, theon a series of brilliantly
public for once is proved right.
constructed, emotionally
MM Feb 27
searing albums.
David Bowie
Shoot Out The
Baal EP RCALights is their
S
E
L
G
IN
first album since
Bowie’s fascinationS
the patchy
for Bertolt Brecht
Sunnyvista
isn’t so surprising.
three years
All that drama,ago. Let’s not pull
angst, brutal
1982
any punches, it’sdescriptiveness anda stunner, their mostvivid seediness…
consistent work sinceplus the fact that Brecht
the classic I Want To See
wound up in Berlin. This is
The Bright Lights Tonight.
a five-track EP, taken fromLike all great albums, the riches
a forthcoming television
are revealed with each play.
adaptation of Brecht’s first play
The title track smacks of vintage
in which Bowie plays Baal,
Thompson in its brooding,a reprobate poet-singer who
sustained intensity. “Wall Of
bags off with a lot of women,
Death” sees Richard returning tomurders his best mate, andhis fairground fascination and isdies of pneumonia. Only thesensitively sung by Linda, with anmorbid “Drowned Girl”
irresistible chorus. Typically,
features the music of Kurt
Thompson sees the “Wall Of
Weill, the others are all set to
Death” as a symbol of hope, butmusic by Dominic Muldowney.
only by risking everything.
In the circumstances critical“Walking On The Wire” dwells
analysis is pointless – Bowie’s
on a similar themes, but takes itback to sounding like Anthony
into deeper, darker areas. “DidNewley and appears to bleed
She Jump, Or Was She Pushed?”a great deal in the process.
is a chilling, remote observation.
MM Feb 27
It’s not an album of unremitting
Monsoon Ever So Lonely
gloom, because burning at its
PHONOGRAM
heart is a bright light of optimism.
The songs are so tightly
I’ve often wondered why thedisciplined there’s no need forcharts have always been rather
flamboyant instrumentation.
short on Indian music, but
Thompson’s eloquent guitar sees
I think this little pop gem willto the colouring and Linda’s
change all that. Monsoon’s
singing extracts every ounce of
16-year-old singer
emotion from the lyrics. It is an
Sheila Chandra has
album of textures, finely wroughta lovely voice andby a craftsman who’s been incoupled withthe wilderness for too long.
Steve Coe’saWelcome back. Patrick Humphries,
sensitiveapop
MM Mar 13

production –reminiscent ofDammers’ sideof “The Boiler”– I see a fine
future for this.
MM Mar 20

Felt Something Sends
Me To Sleep
CHERRY RED

So, Sutherland wasn’t lying.
This is sparse, insistent andultimately gripping. It’s beenout before and Steve reckons
they’re capable of better, but
it’s nevertheless a confident,
powerful introduction. MM Feb 27

W
REVIE

Bauhaus Kick In The Eye
BEGGARS BANQUET

The Bauhaus boys don’t seemto like me. Pity because I reallylike this. Mind you, it’s the only
half (in)decent thing they’veever plonked out, and a certain
Mr Bowie could have more thana mite to do with that. “Kick”
has actually been out walkies
before on a much tighter leash
and, as the Northampton dracs
don’t seem to be gaining thenotoriety I expected of themlast year, I doubt this one will
creak open the ol’ coffin lid andswoop up the charts any morethan it did last time round.
MM Feb 20

Alexei Sayle ‘Ullo John! Gotta
New Motor? SPRINGTIME
Fact of life: good comediansmake lousy singles (exception
is Benny Hill’s “Ernie”). And
lousy comedians are evenworse. Sayle appears to havegained some dodgy credibility
with ‘new wave comedy’, but
being socially aware and not
telling racist jokes doesn’t
automatically make him
funny. This sends up
people who buy
new cars andmake small
talk – andit’s a dud.
�•���0 � �`so►��i MM Feb 27

HISTORY OF ROCK 1982 | 33

c.

I

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david corio / GETTY

and melodies through the filterof his own musical imagination
without losing the rebellious
fervour that initially inspired
their composition.
“Caimanera” (better known as“Guantanamera”) is especiallystriking, with Wyatt’s vocals
swirling high above Harry
Beckett’s warm flugelhorn.
A similar vocal technique(familiar to Wyatt aficionados) isapplied to “Born Again Cretin”.
A bitterly ironic, angry song
about the imprisonment in South
Africa of Nelson Mandela,“Cretin” reminds us that rage
isn’t the exclusive property ofinarticulate youth, can be
expressed without the howl ofguitars and a lot of ill-tempered
bellowing. Wyatt’s rage hasa dignity, a solemn poise,a poignant edge.
More blatantly ironic, Wyatt’s
version of “Stalin Wasn’t Stallin’”
has a thrilling momentum thatevokes the original’s stirring
patriotism and still manages toexpose the frightening banalityof its sentiments.
With telling force, PeterBlackman closes the LP witha reading of his poem,“Stalingrad”, which evokes theheroic battle for that city with anaffecting gravity. A more
intimate, emotional violence isapproached from diverse angles
on the versions of Chic’s “At Last
I Am Free” and Ivor Cutler’s“Green”. The Chic song isa lonely, elegant evocation of
personal heartbreak eventually
overcome, while Cutler’s morbid
Celtic obsessions are brilliantly
set against an arrangement thatfeatures tablas and shehnai
courtesy of Disharhi.
Perhaps the most memorable
performance is reserved for
Wyatt’s reading of “Strange
Fruit”; originally recorded in the’40s by Billie Holliday, it deals
with a gruesome clarity withlynching in the Deep South.
Wyatt sings the lyric like he’s
exhausted by the horror of theviolence the song so vividly
documents. It’s typical of a kindof sadness that infiltrates much

Alexei Sayle:Liverpool comedianis no Benny Hill

1982

J a n u a r y – M a r ch

“Togetherness
is moreimportant”
After the demise of
The Specials, threemembers form the— NME FEBRUARY 13 —t ain’t what you wear… it’s the way that you wear it. In a bald
FUN BOY THREE. Terry
flash of bold fashion, the Fun Boy Three lope languidly into thefoyer of Coventry’s Belgrade Theatre like a team of modern
Hall, Lynval Golding
pentathletes limbering up for an afternoon’s training.
Clad in their craggy kit – dread-plaits and sweatshirts, moccasins
and Neville Staple
and tracksuits – the three interlopers cut a stark and imposing
spectacle for the city-centre shoppers and some startled schoolgirls.
talk urban violence,“I think I might come ’ere and see a play someday,” muses the mischievous
Neville Staple, oblivious to the turning heads of the baffled bystanders.
explain the Specials“A play? You’d ’ave culture shock!” retorts the droll Terry Hall.
The third Fun Boy, Lynval Golding, meanwhile, shies away from thesplit, the surprisinghorseplay and concentrates instead on the entrance to Shades discotheque,not far down the road. It was there that he was viciously assaulted, beaten
truth behind “Ghost
and almost killed in a mindless, totally unprovoked attack five weeks ago.
The scars and stitches that Lynval received that night remain in the deep,Town”, even the
surly furrows that mark the right side of his face and neck, making it
difficult for him to move his head more than a couple of inches. He still
appeal of “punk”
allows himself a withering glance in the direction of the pub doorway.
“I’ll never set foot in that place again,” he murmurs before heading backband Bananarama.
to join Neville and Terry for the photo session.

I

Lynval spent a week in hospital, the first night in intensive care, and is due
to see a specialist shortly to determine whether his sight has suffered any
lasting damage. Three white men, meanwhile, havebeen arrested in relation to the attack.
On the surface, Lynval has been recovering well.
He meets the photographer and I off the train witha grin and a can of Heineken and he deals with thenumerous well-wishers keen to remind him ofsomething he’d sooner forget. The mental bruises,
though, cut deeper than his facial scars. He wasconscious all the way through it.
“I remember just staggering around. It was likedancing across a tightrope, trying to balance myself.
I could feel myself going… falling… but I just kept »ebet roberts / getty

FUN

34 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982

BOY

THREE

atl*ri..
Is

The lunatics takeover New York City:(l–r) Neville Staple,
Lynval Golding
and Terry HallHISTORY OF ROCK 1982 | 35

1982

J a n u a r y – M a r ch

thinking that I had to keep myself together. The worst thing I have everexperienced was thinking that I was going to die.
“The evening after it all, I couldn’t get to sleep because I had a real fear of
dying. Even at 3am in the morning, after I’d been stitched up and I wasstarting to nod off, I just had to pull myself together and stay awake. It was
just awful.
“I’d never been in hospital before and it just totally freaked me out.
When they started to talk about my religion and next of kin andeverything, I began to think, ‘BLOODY ’ELL, I’M GOING TO DIE.’ I’d neverexperienced anything like that before. I was in the intensive care unit andall I could hear was the guy in the next bed coughing all night long.
“At first I didn’t realise how badly I’d been cut up. It wasn’t until I tried
to get a glass of water and couldn’t hold the glass that it hit me. My nerves
were all dead down that side of my body. I couldn’t do a thing. I was likea little baby. I suddenly realised that I was pretty badly hurt.”
n spite of the horror of the attack on Lynval, the Fun Boy Three
have good reason to be guardedly optimistic about their future.
Their debut single, “The Lunatics (Have Taken Over The Asylum)”
was a sizeable chart hit, giving the trio an early confidence boost in thewake of their departure from The Specials in the autumn.
Their second single – a cocksure cover of Jimmie Lunceford’s ’30s swing
standard “It Ain’t What You Do (It’s The Way
That You Do It)” – saw them team up with atough and torrid Bananarama, London’s all-girlvocal triplets, and that now looks set to emulate
the success of its predecessor.
Then there is the trinity’s debut album, The
Fun Boy Three, due for release by Chrysalis at
the beginning of March. The two sides of the
LP showcase the two main lyrical concernsof the Fun Boys: Side One deals ambitiouslywith global problems via tracks such as “TheLunatics…” and “Life In General”, while Side
Two takes things down to a more personal levelin songs like “Ain’t What You Do” and “The
Telephone Always Rings”.

J van houten / rex featuresI

It is a brave debut, the group’s rough-and-ready attitude to the recording
studio producing some challenging, untutored pop noise: each song isbuilt up from a rhythm box base and then recorded and mixed byproducer Dave Jordan in just one take for maximum spontaneity.
The songs are usually stark and straightforward, respecting one
tradition in the use of classic Jamaican three-part vocal harmonies andtoasts but challenging another in the rejection of the rigid instrumentalroles of The Rock Band.
Such a free-and-easy approach sometimes results in sprawling, heavily
percussive excuses for songs and rambling, indulgent instrumental
excesses. At their best, however, the Fun Boy Three make music that is
active and enticing, music that says things that need saying without
being grey and worthy, music that is strong and vital because of thesimplicity of its statements – a set of sounds that make a mockery of thedivide between rebel music and the new pop.
The Fun Boy Three are as straightforward in conversation as they areon record. They are also a motley crew, the extreme differences in theirpersonalities giving them their greatest strength as a group.
Fun Boy One Neville Staple has an excess of natural energy and is
the most ebullient member of the trio. In the space of one afternoon,
he manages to try his luck good-naturedly chatting up almost every
young woman he comes into contact with. When it comes to theinterview, perversely, he is the quietest of
the three, a reticence he puts down to his
recent throat operation.
Fun Boy Two Terry Hall, he of the deep-set
Vulcan eyes and shaven sideburns – “Oncea week at my local Coventry barbershop” – isdry and laconic. He will occasionally grin tohimself at the realisation of some deep irony inthe conversation, but it will be something heusually keeps to himself. In The Specials, hesaid little. Now he will talk openly andintelligently, relishing the comparative
freedom he enjoys in the Fun Boy set-up.
Fun Boy Three Lynval Golding is the mostthoughtful, reflective member of the band.

“I felt reallysad for thepeople that did
this to me…
they’re sick”

FB3 with Bananarama
collaborators: (l–r) Sara
Dallin, Siobhan Fahey
and Keren Woodward

36 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982

THE

THREE
BOY
FUN
WFTH RANANARAMA.

One of the most humble musicians I have yet met,
he is also the group’s most loquacious spokesman.
The plaintive sadness of his best Specials songs –“Why?” and “Do Nothing” – is in sharp contrast withthe courage and optimism of the man attacked andnearly killed in a Coventry nightclub last month.
Somewhere between the two, lies the heart andhope of the Fun Boy Three.

fun boy three.,q

have caused friction. Some of them probably knew
it was on the cards anyway…

Wasn’t it deceitful to form the fun Boy threebehind the back of the rest of the specials?
terry: It wasn’t deceitful. They knew it was coming.
Originally our last gig was going to be the Campaign
DO....
YOUWHAT
IT HINTFor Jobs at the Rainbow. But the three of us decided
to stay on for “Ghost Town” and an American tour just to see if there wasYour reaction to the attack was very noble. Most people would feel
any way that we could hold on. By the time we got back from that tour
there was no way. The Specials had become one big joke. Jerry was
only anger, or maybe a thirst for revenge, but you were humble anddrafting people into the band and the first we’d know about it was when
forgiving. it must have taken a lot of inner courage given the state thatthey turned up on stage! And then you’d have people walking off stage
you were in physically.
during sets! I’d be doing my compere bit, introducing the members of the
Lynval: The thing is that I’m not the sort of person who likes people
band, and when I looked around half of them weren’t there!
fussing around after me. I’d rather keep it to myself. I’ll go through the
Lynval: We all tried very hard to keep the band together, but the politics
pain and I won’t tell anyone that I’m going through the pain, even if it
within the group just weren’t right. We just couldn’t communicate withmeans going through hell. I’d never been in a hospital before and I felt
each other any more. We couldn’t work together any more. That was theembarrassed about ringing the bedside bell to bring the nurses running.
worst thing, the thing that annoyed me the most.
I’d rather keep it within myself.
neville: It got to the stage where we didn’t all have a say in what The
The other day, though, I got really annoyed. I was feeling really low,
Specials were doing. But we’re not kids, so we should have a say. People
really down, and I just thought to myself, ‘Why am I going through thiscan’t be yes-men all the time.
agony when the person that did this to me is suffering no pain?’ I had areally hard time over that… but I still think that drawing blood from that
Just after the second album, More Specials, you took a six month breakperson isn’t going to solve any problem. That’s not going to make it better.
from touring and recording as a band. Was that the trial separation that
The best thing to do is show the other side. Show that the only way
preceded your divorce from the rest of the specials?
forward is not to be as violent and silly as they are. I don’t believe in
Lynval: I think that period really helped us. It showed the three of us thatrevenge like that. I don’t believe in drawing someone else’s blood.
we could work together. The three of us went into TW Studios last January
At the time, I felt really sad for the people that did this to me. Someone
and put down some demos. What we did then was the Fun Boy Three inthat goes out with the intention of killing someone has to be in need of
its original form, well over a year ago. There were a lot of rumours ofhelp. They need to be put in hospital and looked at. People like that are
unrest in The Specials around the time of “Ghost Town”.
sick people. It would be wicked of me to go out and attack such sick men.
These people are disturbed! It’s like the person that shot John Lennon…
terry and Lynval were said to be unhappy with the way their solo
these men are ill.
compositions turned out on the “Ghost town” ep.
Lynval: I was far from happy with the way “Why?” turned out. The
Are you any the wiser now as to the exact circumstances, or the
production was lousy, particularly as we’d done demos of the same song
motives for the attack?
as the Fun Boy Three which were much better.
Lynval: It was just weird. I just walked into something that I didn’t know
terry: The trouble with those songs was that we always had to have aanything about. It’s not as if I went out to get into a fight. I didn’t throw
guitar part and a bassline and so on just to accommodate The Specials
a punch… I wasn’t prepared for anything. It came as a total shock, just as
if I’d walked into a brick wall. Now I’m just asking myself why? I just can’t
as a band. I wanted the song “Friday Night Saturday Morning” to bework it out really.
recorded with just a piano and vocals, as if it were being sung by a blokein a pub, not by a band.
Do you look on it as a racially motivated thing, or was it just somepersonal dispute that you got innocently caught up in?
What about the “zoot” image that you were pushing on Top Of The Pops
Lynval: I think it was a personal thing in that these white guys wereat the time? it seemed very forced. it looked as if you’d nicked it fromlooking for revenge over something that had happened to them a few
Blue Rondo À La turk.
weeks ago. But it was also a racial thing in that the white guys that did it
terry: I wasn’t very keen on it at the time. It was as if the skinhead image
went into the club with the sole intention of getting as many black guys as
had gone out of fashion and we had to find the next big thing and ended
possible just ’cos they were annoyed with one black guy.
up in zoot suits.
neville: One tried to have a go at me and I just jumped out of the way
neville: I hated the way we looked in the “Ghost Town” video. I looked abecause it had nothing to do with me, but if I’d known that Lynval wasright stuffed prat in me double-breasted jacket! It was as if we had no ideas
going to be attacked, I’d have been in there too.
of our own and had to follow somebody else. We had to copy someone andat the time it was Blue bloody Rondo!
it’s bitterly ironic that you should be the victim of such a mindless act
after writing a song, “Why?”, that condemns just that sort of thing.
You must have been happy with “Ghost town”, though.
Lynval: “Why?” was written about what happened to me about a year
neville: We were happy enough with the song itself, but we didn’t get any
credit for our part in writing it. I wrote most of the lyrics to “Ghost Town”,
ago in London when I was beaten up outside the Moonlight Club, but the
Jerry did most of the music.
song seems to have even more meaning now. It’s all in that song. After
Lynval: The lyrics of “Ghost Town” came from a trip me and Nevillethis, I don’t know what I should say next, really. You just get confused.
All I was saying in that song was, “Why do you have to do things like
took to Jamaica. Kingston is a real ghost town. The place is a complete
that?” and it still happens. What do I say next? The greatest thing would
wreck and that was what gave us the idea for “Ghost Town”. It was the
be to actually get through to the people that did this to me. You’ve got tofirst time I’d been to Jamaica in 20 years and it was frightening! You go
keep on. I’m not the sort of person who gives up. If I believe in something,
downtown and you get people begging you for a dollar, begging you for
I’ll carry on regardless. I might get hammered and god knows what, but
the shoes on your feet!
“Ghost Town” was inspired by Jamaica, but it’s about Britain too.
I won’t shut up. I’ll keep on singing songs like that.
We’re going through a similar thing over here. Coventry is supposed to
the fun Boy three’s break from the specials last year seems to havebe an industrial town, but now that all the industry is closing down, it’s
been planned well in advance. Your debut single was in the charts only
becoming like a ghost town.
a couple of weeks after the split and the fact that Lynval and terry did alli thought that “Ghost town” worked particularly well as an ep,
the interviews around the time of “Ghost town” hinted at the various
factions that were pulling the band apart.
a complete package. the three tracks went together really well,terry: It was planned in advance, but there was no real point in telling theincluding terry’s “friday night saturday Morning”, the one that
others when we first started thinking about breaking away. It would only
people tend to overlook. È
HISTORY OF ROCK 1982 | 37

1982

THE

FUN

BOY

THREE

J a n u a r y – M a r ch

Terry: The thing about that was that it showed thetwo sides of Coventry. On one hand you haveunemployment, the youth getting angry and fighting,and on the other you have the typical Friday-night
scene in the taxi queue, the vomiting and pissing.
It’s a very vivid portrayal of the traditional workingclass weekend binge, the Locarno drinks, the hen
party and their leather bags, the pie and chips at thetaxi rank and so on. But you look on that sort of life
with disdain, almost contempt, just as The Specials did in the pastin songs like “Nite Klub” and “Stereotype”.
Terry: “Friday Night” is about me. I was saying, what’s the point in me
going out and doing all that? But I wasn’t knocking it. That’s what I used
to do every weekend. I was always getting turfed out of clubs and chased
and beaten up.
Then I got to 21 and began to think, “Fuck it, I don’t want to get beaten up
any more.” That lifestyle was great at the time, but you get enough of it
after a while. It’s a mundane song about a mundane lifestyle.
Neville: I don’t go out and get pissed up. I might have a drink but I always
like to know what I’m doing, so I don’t get drunk. When you get pissed,
you’re not in control of that.
Lynval: Then again, I’m the complete opposite… I’ll still go out and get
absolutely paralytic! It’ll probably be about six months before I get to thestage where I can do that again, though. I used to feel really free and easy
in clubs. Now I’m going to be really paranoid. Last week I went to London
for the first time since I was beaten up. I went into a pub and I just couldn’t
handle it! There was a load of people around and I just started shaking.
I couldn’t feel comfortable; I’m going through the same thing that I went
through after begin beaten up in London. It took me a long time to be able
to relax in a club after that.

andre csillag / rex features

The Fun Boy Three seem to be a far more democratic group than The
Specials ever were in terms of songwriting and recording. Is that an
intentional reaction against the frustrations you felt towards the endof The Specials?
Lynval: Because there are only three of us, we tend to be a lot closer thanwe were in The Specials. In The Specials, we were really close at first
because we had one thing in mind – to get the 2-Tone thing across topeople. We were close then, although we were never really friends. It wasmore of a working relationship.
The great thing about the group
now is that we have no fixed
instrumental roles. I enjoy
playing more now, because I’m
not just confined to the guitar.
I can play the drums, bass,
piano… it’s a totally different ballgame now! I used to enjoy playingin The Specials, but I also had alonging to play other instruments
as well. The Specials never gaveme the chance to do that. We’ve
got a lot more freedom now.
The link-up with Bananarama
looks like a pretty sharp move.
How did that come about?
Lynval: We just heard theirsingle and that was that. We
knew immediately that they
were the right lot for us.
Terry: We like the idea of having
sidekicks and we liked the way
Bananarama looked in their
pictures. We wanted people that
we could nick ideas off, people
that could nick ideas off us. It
was obvious when we saw
Bananarama – three girls doing
more or less the same as us.
We enjoy working with
Bananarama ’cos they don’t have38 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982J

any studio experience. That suits our way ofrecording fine. It’s more natural. They don’t know
all the tricks of the recording studio, so they justwent in and sang. They didn’t know what “cans”
were. They called them headphones. It was likebeing in a punk band again.

Your method of working, recording andmixing each song in just one take must leave
a lot to chance. Wouldn’t just a little discipline
be a good thing in the recording studio?
Terry: But recording the way we do is more disciplined than theconventional way! If you don’t rehearse everything beforehand, you haveto give it your full concentration when you actually record a song! You
don’t have four weeks or whatever to come up with a certain song. You justhave to go in and do it.
That’s the best way to do it. In The Specials there was always this reallyintense pressure in the studio. Every record had to live up to the last one.
Sometimes we had to follow a No 1 like “Too Much Too Young”, and that
does put a lot of pressure on you.
I would have thought that sort of pressure could also act as an incentive,a kind of creative tension.
Terry: It can also restrict you, ’cos you think you always have to write
absolutely wonderful songs. But since we left The Specials our attitude torecording has completely changed.
The sort of liberties you allow yourselves now can also result in the kindof indulgent garbage that PiL sometimes serve up. Are you aware of thedangers in such an anarchic attitude to the recording studio?
Terry: In a way, yeah, but it’s more like a hobby with us. It’s somethingthat really matters to us. We just want to go against the whole process ofwriting, rehearsing and recording a song the way we did in The Specials.
We record for ourselves, but we release records for other people. If werecord something unlistenable, then naturally we don’t release it.
The Specials hit a new peak – artistically and commercially – with thesuccess of “Ghost Town”. Wasn’t it something of a gamble leaving thegroup when you did, a matter of weeks after their biggest hit?
Terry: I suppose it was a gamble leaving when we did. We’d have been areal laughing stock if we’d fallen flat on our faces. The fact that people havetaken to us pretty well has been great.
If we hadn’t left The Specials when we
did, we’d probably have been stuck
there for the rest of our lives.
Lynval: I’d hate to see the British
music scene become like theAmerican scene where everybody
plays safe and sounds exactly thesame as every other band. I’m gladthat there’s a place for groups likeus. In England, when it comes to
new ideas, our young musicians
can be the most creative andoriginal in the world.

Terry Hall: “It wasa gamble leaving
The Specials
when we did”

Did The Specials achieve what they
set out to do?
Lynval: By the time we split, yeah,I think we had. We achieved one of
our aims, which was to make theyouth a bit more aware of things
around them.
Terry: I think that’s all you can hope
to do – make people aware. I mean
“Ghost Town” was No 1 in the chartand there were still riots and fights
long after that, so it didn’t achieve
anything as far as stopping that. It
just highlighted it. It’s the same withthe anti-racist songs. It might help
make some kids more aware, but it
doesn’t stop racism.

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1Illl,illlli'“Seven years ago
we’d have been
throwing bricks ateach other”: Fun Boysin the studio, 1982

So where do the Funboys stand in the current
scheme of things? Post-punk rebels?
Neville: Me a rebel! We’ve always been rebels!
It’s the way we grew up, so we don’t need to talkabout no street credibility or nothin’ like that.
It’s not something that we think about. We’re not
middle class. We’re from the street, always beenstreet boys. We know what we’re singing about’cos we’re from the same level.
Terry: It’s like racism. We don’t need to talkabout it, because we’ve all been through it. It’s
pretty ironic how the three of us are together
now when seven years ago we’d have been
throwing bricks at each other! I can remember
being in the same gang fights as these twoguys, only we were on different sides! We were the kids we sang about
in The Specials.
Neville: We don’t need to go on about all that street credibility shit, ’costhat’s where we come from. I’ll tell you this. Everybody that’s on thestreet wants to better themselves. They’re all sick of the streets! They
have ambition.
My dad said one thing to me and that was, “Try and make something ofyour life.” That’s what I’m doing! Your roots are always with you anyway.
I still get up to things that I shouldn’t. I don’t nick things like I used to, but
I’ll still mix with people that I shouldn’t mix with. That’s just somethingthat’s within you, something that you can’t break away from.
Lynval: I still see Coventry as my home. I’d like to travel, maybe spendsome more time in Jamaica, but that’s not my home the way that Coventry
is. People in Jamaica think that me and Neville are foreigners. To them,
we weren’t Jamaicans, even though we were born there. We talked
differently and we lived a different lifestyle.
Home is where you lay your head, not where yourparents’ roots are. A lot of Rastas think that theirhome is Ethiopia and they want to go back there.
But to me, home is where you are happiest, and I’m
happy here.

encountered. Just ’cos I don’t smoke ganga I was
getting hassle from all the dreads. Those guys
took the piss out of me just ’cos I didn’t smoke.
But if I smoke that stuff I just end up flat on me
back! It’s not me.
I think that a lot of the black and Indian kids
in England are really confused. They haverejected their family’s way of life and they
don’t want to know about their ethnic cultural
background. They consider themselves British,
which is what they are. They weren’t brought
up in Jamaica or India, and they wouldn’t beable to live there if they went back. England istheir home.
A lot of those kids feel disenchanted. They are
the first to be denied the material rewards that the British educational
system promises them. But I know all that, ’cos I’ve experienced it. WhenI first came over here from Jamaica I was 11 years old and I had to go
through all that discrimination at school.
I went through hell trying to adjust. It was very difficult, but I adjusted’cos I know that there’s good and bad in all races in the world. As long as
you realise that, you can’t go wrong.

Do you feel part of any black British culture?
Lynval: In some ways I do, but to me togetherness
is more important than being part of that culture.
I went to see Black Uhuru play in Birmingham lastyear and it was the heaviest atmosphere that I’d everDespite all that you’ve been through, your message seems basicallyto be one of hope.
Lynval: It has to be. You’ve got a small band of people preachinghatred, but they’re only a small minority. It’s important to realise
that. Most people are not racist. If the majority of people were, there
would have been a lot more bloodshed in this country than we’ve seen
so far. I feel that people are beginning to come together more, even the
Indian and Pakistani kids.
They’re all part of the same culture, really;they’ve all been brought up in the same country.
I don’t think we should try and separate ourselves.
Togetherness is more important.
People have had three years of bands tellingthem that there is no future. At that rate, they’regoing to start believing it, which is just plain
stupid. I still think there is plenty of hope.
It’s all down to the way you use yourself.
There’s always hope. Adrian Thrills ¥HISTORY OF ROCK 1982 | 39

j van houten / rex features“I adjusted ’cos
I know there’s
good and badin all racesin the world”

1982

a P r il – june

ThE ClASh, gil SCoTThEroN, robErT wYATT,
YAzoo ANd MorE

“A serious rethink”
NME MAY 1 Ahead of a UK tour, Joe Strummer
goes missing…

T

he Clash postponed the first two dates in their“Know Your Rights” UK tour this week – at Aberdeen(Monday) and Inverness (Tuesday) – because lead singer
Joe Strummer has gone missing. And the remaining
18 dates in their schedule are in jeopardy, unless he shows
up without further delay.
He was last seen on Wednesday of last week, when hecompleted a phone interview with a Scottish newspaper.
He then walked out of the Clash office – and at press time on
Tuesday there was still no sign of the elusive Strummer. So
now the band’s manager Bernard Rhodes is appealing forhelp in finding him.
Rhodes told NME: “Joe’s personal conflict is – where does
the socially concerned rock artist stand in the bubblegum
environment of today? I feel he’s probably gone away fora serious rethink. The first two dates have been postponed,
but we must have him back Wednesday (28) at Edinburgh.
Please can you help us find him?
“We are concerned about it, but I think he will be back once
he gets wind of how important it is. At the moment we’ve got
everything on hold and it’s costing us a lot of money. If I knew
where he was today then we would be playing tonight.
“I think Joe has just gone away to examine what it is allabout. He’s not gone religious or taken drugs or anything likethat. He was feeling really positive about things but I think hefeels some resentment about the fact that he was about to go
slogging his guts out just for people to slag him off, saying he’s
wearing the wrong trousers. It is a bit of a drag. He just got the
feeling people were being belligerent about things.
“A lot of people want to destroy the group, but that won’t
happen because we are an international group. But they could
still destroy The Clash in this country – which we don’t want tohappen. Everyone is making out that punk is old-fashioned,
but it doesn’t look as if anything important has taken overfrom it. Joe was one of the people who came up with punk andhe’s been through the whole thing, so if people are going toturn around and blow him out they’d better make sure there’s
someone better to take his place.
“The kids are going to have the opportunity to get theirmoney back for the postponed shows. They can either save it
to buy a new ticket when the gigs are rearranged or they can goout and spend it on a new pair of trousers.
“But we’ve got to find this bloke. He’ll get a bollocking when
he gets back, but it’s still better that he comes back.”
Anyone with information about Strummer’s whereabouts
should contact Sheila at the Clash office (01-485 8113).

Walter McBride / getty

Stop press

40 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982

At press time NME received a report from The Facejournalist Steve Taylor, who had shared a compartment
with Strummer on last Thursday’s boat train to Paris.
Strummer was travelling with a girlfriend and was “looking
tired, wearing shades, travelling light and consulting acheap paperback guide to Paris. It looked like he wasplanning to stay in the city.”

-~Rlmmmqlb.
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Joe Strummer:
socially concernedrock artist goesAWOLHISTORY OF ROCK 1982 | 41

1982

april – ju

neYazoo: Alison‘Alf’ moyet andVince clarke“You’ve got tohave freedom”
NME APRIL 17 Introducing…Yazoo. “It’s nice tohave a vocalist who sings with feeling”
NLY A YeAr ago Mute was apioneering cottage industry operatingout of front rooms and cupboards.
Today, three Depeche Mode hits on, they havea West End office and an improved cash flowthat supports an expanding, diverse roster,which now embraces two German groups
and…Yazoo.
Who?
Let me introduce you. Yazoo are two, one ofwhom you should already know and the otherbeing the surprise element that makes theman even more unlikely combination.
Yazoo are Vince Clarke and Alf. Alf isfemale and tall. Vince floated to the top of thepops pile in the Depeche Mode bubble, while
Alf barely survived the gruelling bars ‘n’ grime
circuit of Southend and Canvey Island blues
clubs and bars.
Though both come from Basildon and have
known each other for years, theirs still sounds
like an impossible match – something like
Kraftwerk fronted by Maggie Bell. But theirdebut single “Only You” argues otherwise. It
adds a new dimension to the passing electro
dance, the novel element of emotion coming
not only in the deep swell of Alf’s voice, butalso in the heartfelt sentiment of Vince’s
words and more sombre arrangement.
Best of all, it’s not a clumsy hybrid of two
incongruous forms so much as a crafty use of
two highly distinctive voices – his electronics

EbEt RobERts / gEtty

O

42 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982

and her singing.
It couldn’t haveworked anyother way, as Alf’s too much of a purist to evenconsider messing up the blues with a synth!
“Yeah, I’m a traditionalist,” she asserts.
“I can’t accept the fact of blues withsynthesisers at all – you can’t bend the stringsof a synthesiser can ya?”
“Anyway,” points out Vince, “we’re notsetting out to do anything inparticular, like blending
blues and pop. The stuff
we’re doing in the studio,
neither of us would’ve done
anything like it a year ago.”
Neither of them would’ve
crossed paths a year ago.
Then, Vince was writing the
Depeche Mode hits, which
eventually alienated himfrom the grind that goeswith success. He left during the charting of“Just Can’t Get Enough”.
“It wasn’t that I was unhappy, I needed achange from the whole atmosphere,” he says
simply. “The recording, tours and interviews –it was all too concentrated, heavy, getting likea job really. You’ve got to have the freedom tomove around, but it was too businesslike.
There was no room for doing anything otherthan that which people expect of you.

“I didn’t have any particular plans,
other than staying at home to think. But
after a week I got fed up of doing
nothing, and so I decided I’d like to do‘Only You’…”
Alf, on the other hand, had all the timein the world. Her blues band couldn’t getwork and thus eventually fell apart.
“We were too rootsy to becommercial,” she says. When she got
a call from Vince she swallowed her
distaste for all things poppy andfrivolous and gave it a try.
“At the time, Depeche Mode neverimpressed me,” she giggles. “I neverlistened to chart music at all, I wasn’t
even exposed to it before I was withVince, let alone impressed! The only
chart stuff I really like is Chas and Dave!”
How does Vince feel about the blues?
His face assumes a slightly embarrassed
diplomatic expression, until Alf nips in.
“He hates it, don’t ya Vince? You say
it’s really boring.”“I like, erm, goodtime R&B,” hestutters. “I can listen to about threeminutes of it, Dr Feelgood, what with its
beat ‘n’ that, but actual Muddy Waters,naah, it’s not got enough textures formy tastes.”
Alf begs to differ. Vince holds his
ground. How on earth do they geton in the studio? That’s no problem,
they point out, as each is aware of
the other’s abilities.
“I think Alf now accepts thesynthesiser as an instrument in its
own right, not just something thatmakes funny noises…” says Vince.
Though Alf and Vince haveapproached music from opposite
extremes – he the flighty andephemeral, she the traditional andenduring – Yazoo doesn’t reallycompromise either. Armed with abattery of new instruments, including a microcomposer bought on Vince’s Depecheearnings, each studio venture is as much a trial
for him as Alf. He’s excited by the possibilities
opened up by new technology, talks ofexperimenting with subliminal low
frequencies to create odd intangible
atmospheres, but all thatis still up in the air.
More concrete is Alf’s
voice, which has given him
greater incentive to value
words for their meaning aswell as their sound. “It’snice to have a vocalist whosings with feeling,” says
Vince. “It’s something you
don’t get with mostelectronic bands. Those
feelings add a whole new texture. I think thevoice is the most important instrument.”
Because the combination has been such a
success, what began as a one-off now looks
like becoming a more permanent proposition.
“Yeah, this is a group,” grins Vince. “This is
not Vince Clarke, ex-Depeche Mode…..”“And Alf is not a project,” adds Alf with adefiant smile.
I’m not about to argue. Chris Bohn

Theirs sounds an
impossible match– like Kraftwerk
fronted by
Maggie Bell

exile on Oxford street:
more than a thousandstones fans vied for £5tickets to the 100 club

NME APR 10 Blank tape levy debate in Lords

he music busiNess finally got its
Parliamentary debate on the proposed new
copyright laws. It came last week when Labour
Lord Lloyd of Hampstead – expressing the precise
sentiments of the industry – initiated an attack on lastyear’s Government Green Paper on copyright.
He baulked, in particular, at the handling of thehome-taping question, accusing the Government ofbeing lax in its support of copyright owners. He wasendorsed by Labour Lord Willis – author of Dixon Of
Dock Green – who suggested the Government “didn’t
care a tinker’s damn…”
The Government’s answer to all this was that it was
still officially in a period of consultation, but nothing
was said to suggest it had changed its view that a levy
on blank tapes was anything but inequitable,
inflationary and unlikely to get to those with thegreatest claim.

1982➤ Rumours are
growing that former
Led Zeppelin
vocalist Robert
Plant will shortly be
returning to live
work, andspeculation has
intensified thisweek with the news
that his debut solo
album is being
released by Atlanticon June 25 – titled
Pictures At Eleven.
Produced and partwritten by Plant, theLP also features Phil
Collins and Cozy
Powell (drums), Jezz
Woodroffe(synthesisers), PaulMartinez (bass) andRobbie Blunt(guitar). NME Jun 5

More surprises
on the way…
NME JuN 5 Stones spring a West End set
he Rolling StoneS played a surprise gig at
London’s 100 Club on Bank Holiday Monday. At
4pm, posters went up around the West End and the
350 tickets, priced £5, were snapped up as crowds
estimated at over 1,000 besieged the ticket outlet.
The Stones played a two-hour set; and theirappearance lays to rest rumours that they would beplaying the Venue or Brixton’s Fair Deal. “Neither of
those places were ever under consideration,” said a
spokesperson, though more surprise appearances areplanned throughout the country.
Rather less than gruntled by all this were The Lydia
D’ustebyn Swing Orchestra whose gig was scrapped at
the last moment to accommodate the Stones. “Fancy
cancelling us for that bunch of clapped out creeps,” said
Miffed Ms D’Ustebyn. “Of all the lousy joints in theworld, they had to pick on the one we were playing in.”
Or words to that effect.

T

A bizarre flying accident
MM MAR 27 Ozzy Osbourne’s guitarist Randy Rhoads is killed
zzY OsbOurNe’s LeAd guitarist, Randy Rhoads, was killed ina bizarre flying accident in America last week. Rhoads, who was 25,
was killed in Orlando, Florida, along with the Ozzy tour bus driver,Andy Aycock, and the band’s wardrobe mistress.
Aycock, who held a pilot’s licence, was flying the plane and, according to a
spokesman for Osbourne, he was going through a series of stunts in it. During
one manoeuvre, the plane’s wingtip smashed into the back of the tour bus,
causing extensive damage to both. The plane flew out of control, crashed intoa house and burst into flames.
The future plans of the rest of the band are unknown. The remainder of the
US tour is in doubt but it seems likely that they will find a replacement for
Rhoads, who was discovered by Ozzy two years ago when the guitarist wasplaying in an LA band called Quiet Riot.

O

randy rhoads:
dead at 25➤ Funboy Three’s
Neville Staple issnapping his Shacklabel back into
action. The
upcoming single is“It’s A Brand New
Day” by Coventry
band Splashdown,
and it’s produced by
Neville with former
Special Lynval
Golding. Release
date is June 25. NME
June 12➤ David Bowie ispoised for a returnto the concert
platform later thisyear, after his threeyear incursion into
films, TV andtheatre. NME
understands that
he is planninga string of London
concerts in latesummer or early
autumn, probably at
Wembley Arena –though it’s notcertain they willmaterialise, as
Bowie’s penchantfor changing his
mind is well known.
But our sourcesindicate that he’s
determined – at the
moment. NME Jun 5
HISTORY OF ROCK 1982 | 43

MichaEl Putland / gEtty, Fin costEllo / gEtty

Inequitable andinflationary
Ta p r i l – ju ne1982

april – JUNEother cultures. In that respect, while
I deal in American terms, I am veryagainst trying to overwhelm people
with what America is or is not.”Today he lives in Virginia – “because
there’s less distraction so it’s easier towork” – but back in the ‘60s he helped
spearhead the black revolutionary
movement in New York and, until
recently, his records all carried a logothat seemed to epitomise the street
romanticism of the day.
That logo – a mean-eyed gorilla
wearing combat gear, ammunition
belts and toting a Communist AK47
rifle and a Mexican joint – hasvanished, but according to Gil his
spirit lives on.
“See, I didn’t drop him because
I don’t believe in violence anymore– I never did. I’m sorta against people
killing each other – killing is oldfashioned! I guess we’d just used him‘bout as much as we could.
“Like we always saw this armed
gorilla as non-violent anyway.
Gorillas are vegetarians, they’remonogamous, they’re familyorientated and yet they’re hard todeal with when they’re provoked.
And in our community we’reoften provoked.
“The reason we do the song
‘Gun’ (on Reflections) is not because
the people have guns but because
the police do. And one out of five
black men shot in the community isshot by a policeman. So we feel
we have every right to defend
ourselves. But you will neversee us going into someone
else’s neighbourhood and doing
something to offend them.”
Gil’s gorilla recalls the time theBlack Panthers stalked the streets
armed to the teeth, both for
propaganda and protection.
“The idea there was that somepeople thought it was necessary
for us to be armed to defend
ourselves and make a stand.
Y’know, the police walk down thestreet like armed desperados.
They got the guns here, thenightclubs there, they got the dog and theriot-sticks and the shotguns and the rifles
in the car. You’re supposed to feel at homein your neighbourhood yet you’re really
under siege.”
The fact that so many community leaders,gil scott-heron:
beyond the cooland nobody’s fool

“Killing is old
fashioned!”
MM APRIL 17 Gil Scott-Heron lays down the law on
Reagan, and the new black politics
ight descends as the sun’s light
ends, and black comes back to blend
again. The last poet of the apocalypse
is on the loose, threatening to sing a new songfrom Evita: “Don’t Laugh At Me Argentina!”
For 12 years now, from Johannesburg toMontego Bay, the precious words of Gil ScottHeron have rained down on us like gold dust.
A searing storm of invective which began withhis first novels The Vulture and The Nigger
Factory, raged on in verse, Small Talk At 125th
And Lennox and finally curled around a seriesof crucial albums tracing the pain andabsurdity of contemporary oppression.
His running commentary on the black
experience is unrivalled. His perceptionstranscend race and his observations – “The
Revolution Will Not Be Televised”– haunt theradical consciousness.
Still angry at 33 – check the latest bulletin,“Reflections”, for a withering commentary on
Ronald Raygun (his spelling), the poor man’s
John Wayne – he fills any room with a lean

Erica EchEnbErg / gEtty

N

44 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982

six-foot-plus
frame anda personality
to match.
Beyond the cool and nobody’s fool, hespeaks in the deep, honey-textured voice thathas grown to enrich his music and sports
a badge on which a well-known B movie actor
says in a bubble: “Give Me Your Social
Security By Sundown!”
The son of a Jamaican professionalsoccer player, he grew up to see theAmerican dream as a cruel nightmare
and turned back to roots long before
that quest became one more
TV serial. While the focus may
point to the west, the source of ideas
is international.
“That’s one of the big problems
with America today,” he says. “Theythink the rest of the planet revolves
around them. They don’t have any
consideration for other people andNME FEB 20 The former
Soft Machine and Matching
Mole man casts a discerning
eye over cultural artefacts

Songshopelessly Without You Carroll Thompson
You Bring the sun Out Janet Kay
Love don’t Live here any More Rose Royceevery Little Bit hurts Brenda
Holloway
i Put a spell On You Nina Simone
Love Me tonight Trevor Walters

Tune
Peace Ornette Coleman (fromThe Shape Of Jazz To Come LP)

Recent LP
Wynton Marsalis

Drummers
Max Roach, Connie Kay and
Brian Abrahams.

Arrangers
Melba Liston (“A trombonist who’s worked with
Dizzy Gillespie, Charles Mingus, Quincy Jonesand – a particular favourite – on Randy Weston’s
Tanjah LP.”)
Fela Kuti (“I know he’s only got one arrangement, but
it’s so good it doesn’t matter.”)
Philip Loutev (“A Bulgarian choir arranger, a kindof Bulgarian folk version of what Gil Evans did forMiles Davis.”)Soviet musicians
Alexei Koslov – jazz reeds player and arranger
Igor Brill – jazz keyboards
Folk and jazz from the Southern USSR(“I like Soviet jazz very much. It’s unusual in that themusicians are often highly trained formally, but theyalso play very fiercely, avoiding formal straitjackets.”)

Films
ceddo Ousmane Sembene (Senegal, 1976)
death Of a cameraman Faliero Rosati (Italy, 1978)
the Outsiders Mrinal Sen (India, 1977)
india song Marguerite Duras (France, 1976)

Some authors I like
Jean Rhys, Frantz Fanon, Jack Santa MariaRadio programmeAlex Pascall on BBC Radio London(“He does the Black London programme,
which is a community show that actually
responds to what people want to talk about– a breakthrough in radio. He also plays records
nobody else plays: soca, calypso and music forolder black people in England – Nat King Coleand suchlike – which I like because I’m old, too.”)

Political commentators
Noam Chomsky
John Pilger
Jonathan (as opposed to David) Dimbleby

Newspaper
Morning StarHISTORY OF ROCK 1982 | 45

Waring abbott / gEtty

P o RT R

ER

oNSuM

Ian Pye

ROBERT
WYATT

Ac“Before you canchange the world
you need to getyour housestraight”

I ST A S

politics and radio airplay in
America mix like oil and waterand not much better elsewhere.
America may be waiting…
but not to hear about the
problems of black South Africans.
It’s a tribute to the man who after
years on the frontline can shrug this off
with a philosophical indifference.
“I don’t suffer from not getting
airplay,” he says. “They suffer fromnot hearing me! I never equate
a lack of Americanisation withsuffering. I don’t
suffer from a lackof anything as far
as America’s
concerned. The thingis they didn’t wantto know about South
Africa, just like they
didn’t want to know
about slaveryor the genocide
committed against
native tribes of
their country.”
They didn’t wantto know about rap, either. He’s beenusing those hard-nosed street
rhythms for years, and then suddenly
New York and London discoverrapping.
Maybe it had
something to dowith the fact that
all the cowboys andgangsters in
Gil’s songs hungaround the WhiteHouse and not
Studio 54.
Whatever, heremains open but
critical of the latest line in street jive.
“Y’know, if I turned in some of that
stuff when I was in the seventh grade
they would have kicked my ass. But
you can’t chastise young people
for being young. You can’t jump
on folks who want to dance. The
black movement is about that too– letting young people be young.
“And beyond that, a lot of
young people are now
seeing that it was a mistaketo put Raygun in power.
He got 26 percent of
the registered vote, but
only 59 percent of theregistered votersbothered to vote.
There was no choice.
It was either this jackassor that jackass.”
The real question now thenis what are you going to doabout your B-movie president?
“Well, I’ll tell you what we’regonna do – we’re gonna learn
to do without him! We’regonna stop being extras in his
features, right?”

o F T HEA RT

many of them ministers, were killed,
attacked, beaten and shot caused theemergence of The Panthers. “It
became symbolic of our struggle anddetermination to survive and defend
ourselves at whatever cost.”
But ultimately the activist arm of
the black movement failed, not justthrough establishment repression, but
because it lacked the depth of support
needed to sustain any long-term
survival, he feels.
“People who couldn’t be bought
were incarcerated by interminable
legal proceedings or simply murdered.
These were the three alternatives ofrepression. However, the Panthers also
realised they didn’t have the fullunderstanding of the community as towhere they stood and why.”
Cue for Gil Scott-Heron, “See, I feel
my chief potential not only lies in myability to perfect my art but todisseminate ideas. Before people canbe organised they have to be informed,
and a lot of people try and skip that stepon the way to activism. In other words
activism is further down the road. If
there’s no grass roots education you
can’t organise the people.”He sees the overblown superfly
leaders of the movement as largely
irrelevant now,
suggesting futuretactics will have to be
more painstaking
and less outlandish.
He cites Eldridge
Cleaver, forexample, authorof the celebrated
Soul On Ice.
“There’s a workthing involved inorganising people. It has more to dothan just standing on the corner
popping off. There’s actually someorganisation to be done. And as far as
that’s concerned, a lot of people who’vebeen known as black leaders never led
anybody as far as here to that door!
“Before you can go and change
the world you need to get your housestraight. Then you need to deal with
the next house and then theneighbourhood and then thecommunity. A lot of people jumpstraight to changing the world before
they’ve done any of the elementary
steps that would lead to that possibility.
“A lot of folks were mesmerisedby the chance of making statementsthat would bring the media running.
That’s why I did ‘The Revolution Will
Not Be Televised’. It seemed that morethan changing the community theywanted to enhance their image as
black leaders.”
In 1975 Arista released a single called“Johannesburg”. Though it’s probably
his best known number in Britain, in theStates it’s an obscurity, as is the album
it’s lifted from. And the reason doesn’t
require a lot of imagination to guess:

A IT

198
APRZ

March25,1982e
TraceyThornand
Benn WattbytheRiverThamesin
Richmond,SouthWest London

46 ' HISTORY OF ROCK 1982e-Cut off fromwhat isfashionable"i[lLi°IDUMIGIO&M YU1,`
is a lyrical songwriter who has worked
Tracey- Thorn -leads
MARINE GIRLS,)rkedEVERYTHING BUT
THE GIRL

1

APRIL 24 �

LOUDS TUMBLINGABOVE us, the sun on the run;a woman on a park bench, crying; and Ben Wattattempting to define his views on pop music.

"Actually," he said, "I used to sneer at it until quite.
I thought it wasrecently.I never thought it was important'. NowI realise thatits reallyveryimportantand
disposable
vital. The mostessential thing is the abilityto communicate.
And pop
music communicates. Simplyand directly.
''"I think that its important that there
sabalance
between afizzinessin pop music and the seriousness of, ifyou likeun
. Like, in,-pop music
the theatre, ifyou look atthe literarystage, it's always an examinationof the human condition and a continual dissection and p ointing out ofhuman failings, tellingus howawfulwe are andwhatawaste of time itis beingalive. Which is perhaps the kind of feeling thatIan Curtis andJim Morrison expressed. »AVID COR[0 / GETTCHISTORY OF ROCK 1982 147

1982

a p r i l – J U NE

“But bands like Joy Division have to play off bands like Haircut One
Hundred, because at the same time, we need an examination of ourselves
and a pointing out of how awful we are and we need to have our spirits
lifted, to be shown how marvellous we are or can be.
“If we were continually bashing our heads against the wall saying how
weak and frail we are and what failures we all are, we’d probably end up
topping ourselves, as some people have done. So we need bands like
Haircut One Hundred and Orange Juice and fizzy pop bands, to prove weare marvellous and can just dance and forget and be entertained…”
Ben Watt paused to light a cigarette. “Oh dear,” he said, “I’m afraid I’m
not feeling terribly articulate today.”
Ben was listening to a lot of music, but very little of it was actually saying
anything. The immediate impulse was to form a band, but he didn’t know
any musicians. No problem; he’d play on his own; just a guitar, voice andmaybe some backing tapes. He hustled a gig at a club in Richmond, run at
the time by Mike Alway of Cherry Red, the independent record label. Thiswas in October, 1980.
Alway was impressed but not convinced by Ben Watt’s performance at
the Richmond club; he asked him to record a demo for Cherry Red. Ben
went home and wrote 10 songs in 10 days, went into Alaska studios in
Waterloo to get them down on tape. “To my amazement, Cherry Red
actually liked them. They said they wanted to sign me; I thought they
were mad. Really, I mean, those songs were just awful. I couldn’t listen tothem now. They were dreary and tuneless. Joy Division was the big thingat the time; they kind of defined the prevailing atmosphere.
“Listening back to the original demo tape, I think, would be
excruciating. I’m sure it sounds diabolical. I now realise that those songs
were written from the head, not the heart. I remember at the time, I wasn’t
completely convinced by them; now I know why. I don’t know how I wrote
those lyrics. They were so ponderous, so serious. Boring, really.
“You try to be really serious at 17, try to make out that you’re older than
you are. It wasn’t until last summer that I realised that you can get acrossa lot more if you’re prepared to write about yourself. If you can write
about your own emotions it’s a lot more effective than a lot of vague
philosophising about the state of the world. I’m just relieved that I
realised that in time.”
he most recent recorded example of Ben Watt’s confident
talent is a 12-inch EP on Cherry Red. It’s called “Summer Into
Winter”, and as its title suggests, its mood is generally
autumnal; poignant and reflective, the songs reach out for fading
innocence, declare affections for passing loves.
“Walter And John”, with Robert Wyatt supplying a touching vocal
counterpoint to Watt’s yearning lead, evokes a childhood friendship,
regrets the eventual separation with a drifting, melancholy elegance.
More sensual, “Aquamarine” is a deep-sea boom of echoing guitars andvoices that anticipates the rich acoustic grace of“Slipping Slowly” and “A Girl In Winter”, whichfind Watt located in the kind of territory mostrecently occupied by John Martyn. There are
intimations here, too, of Tim Buckley (Blue
Afternoon and Lorca) and Dino Valente.
“I think the gentleness and the swirlinessof the songs that went onto the record werecomplemented perfectly by Robert,” Ben Wyattsaid, explaining Wyatt’s presence on the
12-inch. “I just knew he’d be perfect. The
softness of his approach, the trickling, waterypiano style he has, his voice, they were all soright for the mood of the songs.”
Too young to clock the original releases of
Wyatt’s formidable solo LPs, Rock Bottom andRuth Is Stranger Than Richard, Ben picked up
on Wyatt through his Rough Trade singles,
notably “Strange Fruit”. That led him backthrough Wyatt’s previous work and eventually
into his living room.
Wyatt had been approached by Cherry Red toappear on “Summer Into Winter”, he’d expressedsome interest, but a definite commitment was slow
in coming. Ben was about to start a university course
in English and Drama in Hull, and was becoming
increasingly impatient with Wyatt’s prevarication.

T“Finally I said, ‘Right, I’ll just go and see him.’ I just wanted to getsomething sorted out. I phoned him and he invited me around and by theend of the afternoon it was all settled and he said he’d really like to do it.”
What were his impressions of Wyatt?
“I was rather shocked, actually,” he said, “by his melancholy. I don’tknow, perhaps he still hasn’t come to terms with the fact that he was oncea great drummer and he’s now in a wheelchair. And it’s been, like, eight
years since his accident, but I got the impression that he still finds it hard
to come to terms with the fact that he’ll never do again what he reallywanted to do: be a great drummer.
“I remember talking to him after we’d done his session for the 12-inch.
We were sitting in the doorway of Alvic studios waiting for his cab, and it
was very sad. I asked him if he was ever going to do another album and hesaid he didn’t think so, he had no real aspirations. He didn’t know what to
do next, but he really felt there was something else he should be doing at
this time in his life, but he really didn’t know what it was. He felt he wasjust drifting from day to day.
“One of the main things that seemed to engage him was politics. Hispolitical convictions have become very, very strong. Like, he’s got El
Salvador stickers on the wheels of his wheelchair. I just hope he feels
encouraged by the reviews of Nothing Can Stop Us. I mean, he should berecording, he’s so talented.”
Another, perhaps more curious, focus for Ben Watt’s admiration turns
out to be Paul Weller.
“I have a massive regard for Weller. Which is quite strange. If someone
listened to my 12-inch, they wouldn’t think that I’d be into Paul Weller.
But I really do admire him. I think it’s perhaps the earnestness of his lyrics
that I like. The bitterness with which he sings them. The total conviction.
“Sometimes I get the feeling that he’s not particularly well informed
and that he tends to generalise, but that may be because he’s selling toa young market, and I don’t think especially subtle imagery would mean
very much to them.”
Don’t turn over the page yet: there’s a little more. Who should be waiting
for Ben when he turned up to enrol at college in Hull? Why, Tracey Marine
Girl! Since Cherry Red had just signed that sheerly wonderful combo,
they suggested that Ben and Tracey might get together to while away
those lonely hours on Humberside. They did, working under the nameEverything But The Girl. They’ve cut a forthcoming single, a beautifully
haunting version of Cole Porter’s “Night And Day”.
“She’s a great singer and I’m a competent guitarist,” Ben said, “andthe common ground was jazz. She’s really into great singers like Billie
Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald. We’ve rubbed off on each other in the sensethat she’s introduced me to a lot of contemporary pop music that I’d neverlistened to before, like Aztec Camera and Orange Juice, and I’ve shown
her a lot of things that I was into, like The Doors and John Martyn.
“I don’t know if we’ll do any more work together, though. There’s been
talk of an album and Thomas Leer has said thathe’d like to produce it, but I’m not really sure.
What I really want to do is an album of my own.
Cherry Red have given me the go-ahead for that,and I’m very grateful. As a few people there havecommented, they’re very possibly the only
company who would’ve signed me. Because mymusic is very unfashionable, I suppose.
“Which isn’t to say that I cut myself off fromwhat is fashionable. I mean, I don’t sit at home
all day listening to John Martyn, Kevin Coyne or
Robert Wyatt. I listen to them as much as I listen
to Haircut One Hundred, Orange Juice or the
Marine Girls or Scritti Politti. It just happensthat when it comes to my music, I write in acertain way. And I think it would be foolish to goout and try deliberately to write a fashionable pop
song if it’s not in you.
Actually, I think it would be quite nice if fashion
came to me. I’m certainly not going to chase it.”

“There are
difficulties inbeing anall-girl bandthese days”

48 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982

Allan Jones— NME APRIL 10 —t was by the shore of the modest boatinglake in London’s Regent’s Park that I firstencountered the Marine Girls, three young
women who appear to have an unnaturalIo where do we go from here? Down to the lake I fear, to hear
the Marine Girls’ story in their own words in the Saturday
afternoon of Regent’s Park. The sun is shining, so I decide to get
my feet wet and we hire a couple of rowing boats, head well away fromthe shore and hear Tracey explain her songs.
“At first they might just sound like wimpy little love songs, but they are
all about things that have actually happened to me. They’re all about
someone, but we never say who each one is actually about. Sometimes
if something happens, I’ll write it in my diary as a song. I couldn’t justsit down and say, ‘Right, I’m going to write a song about unrequited love,’cos that would be really crappy!
“I don’t know if people will look at it as typical girlish stuff. There are
difficulties in being an all-girl band these days. There are pressures
on you to be either this wonderfully glamorous trio of females like
Bananarama or to go completely the other way and do something like
The Raincoats and come across as strong feminists or whatever. It’sdifficult to try and do something in-between and also show intelligenceand some perception of what it is to be young.”
Tracey, Jane and Alice will probably shortly be accused of coming on too
winsome and childlike for their own good, although their persons arevery much their own and not some contrived exploitation of their obvious
teen appeal. And the sweet surface of their songs should not hide what isbasically a hard and honest, realistic and unromantic approach to affairsof the heart. Of the 16 songs on Beach Party, there is hardly one that
portrays a completely happy and harmonious relationship, the love-lines
always containing a subtle twist of bittersweet vitriol and irony.

S

April 3, 1982: (l–r)
Marine Girls Tracey
Thorn, Jane Fox
and Alice Fox
boating in Regent’s
Park, London“Quite a lot of people think that we’re just cutelittle girls singing about lovey-dovey things,”
says Jane. “But they just can’t have listened to thewords of the songs. And nobody would be able to call Alice ‘sweet’ to herface and be able to get away with it!”
The Marine Girls’ refreshing and original approach to their music andthe fact that they are female might just be coincidence, although I can’t
help but feel that they have benefitted in some respects from never being
part of the schoolboy rock tradition, taking up their instruments at aslightly later age and with a wonderfully untutored individuality.
“In some ways it is limiting not being able to play your instrument very
well,” says Jane. “But it also gives you more scope in that you’ll find a new
way in which you can play it. You play it in an unconventional way ’cos you
are desperate to get some sort of noise out of it. It’s an advantage in someways and a setback in others.”
Their current sounds is light and melodic and probably all the better forthat. But would they ever consider tightening up towards something a bit
more robust?
“Sometimes I think our sound is just great as it is,” says Tracey. “It isclean and bright and there is nothing there cluttering it. On the other
hand, it is also very tinny. I can never decide – it might be an idea to havea percussionist or another guitarist, but not a drummer. That would
destroy it, ’cos we put most of the emphasis on the singing rather than theplaying – the harmonies and backing vocals.”
Rather than start hunting for a major record deal, the Marine Girls arereasonably happy with things as they are at the moment. With Alice stillat school, Jane hoping to go on to study printmaking at college after her
foundation year in St Albans and Tracey at university in Hull, thelooseness of the independent world suits them fine for the time being.
With the Easter holidays now approaching, they are hoping to resume
live work for the first time since last summer and have arranged a local
date at Ware in Hertfordshire and one further afield in Birmingham in
the coming weeks. Their leisurely, fluid attitude to the band, however,does present its problems, particularly with Tracey resident in Hull for
most of the year, where she is also working on a single under the nameEverything But The Girl.
“Sometimes it means that we don’t practise for 10 weeks and we haven’t
written any new Marine Girls songs for a while,” she reflects as we headback for the shore. “If you’re in a band it helps to see the other people andbounce ideas off one another.
“Obviously we’ve had to rethink things lately, ’cos so many things havecome up at once with the single and exams and my solo stuff. It neveroccurred to me that I’d have to think so seriously about the group before.
When we did our first cassette, we only pressed up copies so that ourfriends could hear us. We never actually expected people to want to buy it.
“We used to treat things as a real joke. The interest people have been
showing lately has given us a real incentive.” Adrian Thrills •HISTORY OF ROCK 1982 | 49

david corio / getty

fascination with all things maritime. The Marine Girls don’tsing solely about the seaside. It just seems that way sometimes– their two cassette albums have been called A Day By The Sea
and Beach Party, the latter distinguishing itself with the tracks
like “Holiday Song” and the murky “20,000 Leagues”, while
their distinctive home-made handbills are liberally sprinkledwith sand-shuffling slogans like “Go Dolphin Go” and “CatchThe Cod”.
But there is something more than the merely fishy going on
here. The Marine Girls are crafting some of the most memorable,melancholy love-pop since the post-punk heyday of Buzzcocks
and Undertones.
The Marine Girls sing what guitarist Tracey Thorn calls“drippy love songs”. And she should know, for most of
those whimsical and occasionally ironic songs comefrom her perceptive pen – vignettes that are in turnvulnerable and vitriolic, capturing the joy, theuncertainty and the bitterness of an affair withconversational ease and unpretentious honesty.
Like most good bands, the Marine Girls began asa hobby. Tracey, then in the sixth form at Hatfield
Girls School, had quit as guitarist in local group The
Stern Bops and was looking for new musicians. She
found them in her classmates Gina and Jane, thelatter’s younger sister Alice later joining as anadditional vocalist.
Early performances were confined to bedrooms,
parties, sheds and garages, one of these surfacing on theC30 cassette A Day By The Sea, to be followed by the more
ambitious Beach Party, now available on vinyl on the TV Personalities’
Whaam! label. Other than this, the girls contribute one track to the Naïve
compilation Rupert Preaching At A Picnic and recently released theirdebut 45 “On My Mind”, an NME Single Of The Week.
Like On My Mind, the Beach Party cassette was released on the small
Essex independent In Phaze and produced by the label supremo Patrick
Birmingham. Despite its low-budget lo-fi approach – the 16 tracks wererecorded and mixed in just two days – the album contains some stunningmusic, Tracey and Alice sharing vocals with Jane bossing the bass andGina, who has since left the group, contributing the chiming guitars.
Like many female groups, the Marine Girls’ music is completely
devoid of the cack-handed bluster often associated with your average
male rock band. The trio don’t even possess a drummer, although Aliceoccasionally chips in with some hand percussion. This more natural
approach to the propensities of sound gives them a deftness of touch thatgets their witty words across with the minimum of fuss – even the more
epic of their tunes rarely exceed two minutes in length.

1982

a p r i l – J U NE
Everything about
Avalon has been
precision-honed
and upholsteredwith velvet
specificallyto1982
seek out thosemost-intimate little
places inside your Total
Exclusion Zone. Oncethey’ve got this far, there’s
nothing you can do about it.
Roxy invade your most
fatuous, potent emotions
with deadly precision. Y’knowthat old saying about every
good cliché containing akernel of truth? Well Bryan
Ferry knows it, too. Ask
anybody what they think
about “More Than This”, forexample, and they’ll either
tell you it’s a classic pop songor they’ll sneer. If they sneer,
they’re lying.
“More Than This” hasbeen equipped with justenough pace to launch
here, it’s “The Chauffeur”, whichsurprise attacks from jukeboxes
is a bit too ponderous for its
and radios everywhere, and is of
immediate company. If there’s acourse armed with one of Ferry’s
catch, it’s that – honest to God –most exquisitely haunting
Rio is so good, and defines such
melodies. Not to mention thosean exuberant majesty, where theimmaculate little stings of guitar.
hell do they go from here? Steve
Elsewhere here, the Roxypersonnel exhibit considerable
Sutherland, MM, May 15
cunning in their ability to filter
Roxy Music Avalon POLYDOR
almost anything into their lushsoundscapes. In “The Space
Immaculate, out of reach,
Between”, genteel suggestions
pristine and contemptuous,of funk are topped off with some
Roxy Music have simply sailed
discreet saxophone from Andy
away. Out of the blue andMackay. In “India” (never wastecomprehensively (as theira single B-side), the guitar
accountants would probably tellsuggests remote whispers ofyou if pushed) into the black.
the Raj in an instrumental which
From shock troops of thenever strays far enough fromavant-garde to gossip columns
AOR safety to upset anybody.
and household names, a faultlessBut throughout all this, fromprogression. “But where’s yourthe unambitious mid-tempos ofsoul – you’ve a thousand faces/“The Main Thing” or the achingly
I’ll never know,” writes Bryan
delicate chord changes of “To
Ferry in “True To Life”. It doesn’t
Turn You On”, the thing I missmatter, actually. Technology
most is the humour which Ferry
sees to that.
used to wield. Behind the weary
Writing about Avalon is very
man-who-has-known-sorrow
similar to reviewing an Eagles
image there used to be an acidalbum. Both parties haveand self-mocking wit. Perhaps
everything sewn up, fromtheir new listeners frown uponartwork to inside leg
such indulgences. After all, if
measurement. I should tell you
you’ve got to the stage wherethat I’m not immune to Roxy’s
you need coffee-table albums
sensuous blandishments.
like this, humour is the
one luxury you can’t
afford. Adam Sweeting

ALBUMSREVIE
WRoxy Music:
invading youremotions withdeadly precision

ALBUMS

geTTY

Duran Duran Rio EMI
When Duran Duran’s debut
album started sneaking up thecharts, the taste-arbiters tutted
dumbfounded and hastily
rewrote the rock ‘n’ roll rule book.
Pre-DD it had been customary
to chastise any old thing,irrespective of emotional ormusical merit, if it didn’t attempt
to express some environmental
opinion. It was expected, at thevery least, that pop should try tochange the world.
Duran Duran put the kibosh onthat, shoved a good half decadeof hysterical angst and squat
mentality back in the closet, andsnipped the purse strings froma legion of hypocritical breastbeaters using punk and its
protest as a shabby short-cut togluttonous stardom. Along with
Spandau, the Human League,even Altered Images, DD
couldn’t care less about changing
the world… but they changed theface of pop regardless.
Pride in the art, the image andespecially the SONG ousted
cheap dole-queue patronisationand had the temerity to suggest,by active example, that to be
young and poor and unemployedneedn’t necessarily lead tothe morgue.
Now, though, there’s only
Duran Duran left. Spandau tried
to dictate terms three or fourtimes too often and the trick
wore thin before skill could takeover. Altered Images actually
altered their image, leaping
scared from Siouxsie Sioux’s
50 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982

coat-tails and re-emerging
pathetically paedophiliac… andDuran Duran? Well, Duran Durantoured, gave people tunes fit tosing along to again and then, to
top all, they made Rio.
Rio is the true culminationof the much misunderstood
New Romanticism – energetic,
proud, enthusiastic, joyous;
something to escape FULLY into.
It cultivates the class that makes
Roxy great, it encompasses
almost every trend and rhythm
going, embraces everythingfrom funk to Thin Lizzy and stillsounds unmistakeably like Duran
Duran; an unashamed new breedof rock band, the unrivalled
masters of melody.
Specifics? Where to start? Rio
scurries off like a speeded-up
film of a Saturday shoplifting
spree in a crowded store full ofmusical clichés. The hit single,“My Own Way”, gets a reworking
that shapes up into a full
re-definition with a right bruiser
bass-drum muscling throughgaggles of gossiping guitars tothat lonely beauty on the edge ofthe dancefloor, and effectively
Sweeney Todds those Haircut
wimps with one savage belch
from the bass.
“Last Chance On
The Stairway” boasts
what has to be theultimate catchy
chorus, “Save
A Prayer” is smoothand slinky andseductive as silk,while “Lonely In YourNightmare” is a HIT.
If there’s a duff ‘un

MM, May 29

The Clash Combat RockCBS

With macabre irony,
The Clash present
their would-be
assassins with the firstround without a shot

Anti -Nowhere
League: been to
Hastings, been
to Brighton…

“Just freedom to move, to live, forwomen to take a walk in the parkat midnight.” It’s intercut withquotes from Paul Schrader’sscript for Taxi Driver – “Thank
God for the rain to wash the trash
off the sidewalk...” The subject isserious, but the inspiration issomeone else’s. The song isn’t
really about the people’s fightagainst street violence; it’s abouta Martin Scorsese movie.
With “Sean Flynn”, same again.
It’s ostensibly inspired by the
Vietnam journalist and son ofErrol, but doubtless The Clashhave nicked the idea fromMichael Herr’s
Dispatches or
Apocalypse Now.
“You know he heard
SINGLESSINGLESthe drums of war,
Bananarama &each man knows
Fun Boy Three
what he’s looking
Really Sayingfor.” Strummer
Something
DERAM
sings it over slow
1982
drips of percussion,
The Funboy
with a few splashes ofThree’s radical mask
guitar and a minimal bass
sure has slipped some.
and drum pulse. It’s eerily
Physical appearance must
effective, a lingering piece ofbe the sole cause for hiring
atmosphere….don’t look forthem, ‘cos it’s becoming
anything more.
increasingly obvious that the
Seen this way, Combat Rock is
Bananas CANNOT SING FOR
merely showbiz; a demonstration
TOFFEE. Three voices getof the boundaries rock ‘n’ rollboring without a hint of
can never cross. But it’s a record,
harmony, whatever the quality
not a book, and the music isof the vocal chords (and here
increasingly effective the more
it’s low, so low); this version of
you listen to it. The Clash havea song by Motown’s Velvelettes
always been able to throw in
suffers accordingly.
a few surprises to keep you
Great tune, gels,guessing, though the hard, dry
but remember it
mix means you have to work at it.
ain’t what you
But anyway, the tough, ragged
do; it’s thedance beat of “Overpowered By
way that
Funk” is swiftly effective. “Caryou do it.
Jamming” has a persuasive
Just tojerking motion fired up with hardsave thisrhythm guitar, and “Rock The
recordCasbah” is a seductive Latinfrom being
shuffle driven by chunky pianoa purelychords. “Straight To Hell” isnakedplaintive, quietly desperate.
exercise in
And to finish the LP, there’s thecapitalist
off-the-wall “Death Is A Star”. It’s
marketing techniques,
a dark little vignette of love andthe B side saves the day,death, sung breathlessly by
a Funboy instrumental swathed
Mick and Joe with a little spoken
in heaps of atmosphere, thenarrative from rap-man Futura
Fungirls wisely kept down in
2000. Cocktail piano tinkles
the mix. MM Apr 3
a tango over an acoustic guitar
The Rolling Stones Going To
strum. It’s strange and moody
A Go Go ROLLING STONES
and I like it a lot.
Result: I like the record, hate
The trouble with the Rolling
the title. I have doubts about theStones is they never let go of
more exploitative aspects of The
anything. Despite their quite
Clash and the way they milk
extraordinary ability to keep
death and repression until they
become meaningless, but I’ll belistening to Combat Rock for awhile yet. Does this review tell
you anything you didn’t know
already? Adam Sweeting , MM May 15

W
REVIE

abreast (c.f.
“Start Me Up”,
Black And Bluefunk) they’ll
periodically trip
themselves up
by nostalgically
invoking their past,
thereby spoiling it.
NME Jun 12David Bowie Cat People(Putting Out The Fire MCA
Judged by name, the latest
Bowie associate this timeround should have ensured
better results. The music has
been written by Giorgio
Moroder for Paul Schrader’s
new film, Cat People. So why
does this song conjure up
images of longhaired rockbands wearing
tight satin
trousers?
Eno, yourcatalysing
talentwas moreessential
than youhave beencredited for.
Come back,
immediately. MM Apr 3

The Clash Rock The Casbah CBS
The Clash’s faith in rock as(in this case corrupting)catalyst for social change is
as unshakeable as the Muslim
faith they’ve inanely chosen to
mock. Clash-bah! NME Jun 12

Anti-Nowhere League Woman
WXYZ“Seriousness that asserts
itself. Never believe in it. Neverconfuse it with gravity.” Jean
Cocteau said that. The AntiNowhere League are notserious. They are nothing to
get offended about. NME Jun 12
HISTORY OF ROCK 1982 | 51

Andre CsillAg / reX

being fired. As the real blood
washes up on the stony beachesof the Falklands, The Clash comecrawling from the bunker in theirbest wasted-guerrilla togs anddeliver a record called Combat
Rock. You almost have to laugh.
But, as usual, there’s more to
the new Clash LP than the
packaging (which is especiallyunpleasant this time).
Combat Rock is a fairly logicalsuccessor to Sandinista!,
18 months on, but it’s leaner
and more concentrated – still
eclectic, not very electric. Lotsof layers. Because of theirsloppiness, The Clash frequently
manage to persuade the listenerthat they can’t write tunes
anymore and don’t give a toss.
This isn’t true – the music here isvaried and mostly works. Their
attitude and subject matterremains ambiguous, though,often delivering attractive
imagery but leaving you withdoubts about its motivation.
They give you the worst firstwith the tedious “Know Your
Rights”, a non-single if everI heard one. “Murder is a crime!
Unless it was done by a policeman
or aristocrat.” How quaint.
The Clash wish they’d beenborn ten years earlier. They’resteeped in ’60s ‘radical’
sensibility, preoccupied with
Vietnam vets, street poetry,
guerrillas, death-as-film noir.
So, you have Allen Ginsberg
delivering a few lines about
urban angst as a preface to“Ghetto Defendant”, a song that
could easily have been written in
Chicago in 1968. “Ghetto
defendant/it is heroin pity/nottear gas nor baton charge/thatstops you taking the city.”
Eldridge Cleaver Joins The
Clash Shock.
It’s strange that the blood andbroken heads and napalmed
children can seem so romantic
now. There’s a darkness here,
yes, but it’s distanced, a zoom
shot from a low-flying helicopter.
Like editors of old documentaryfilm, The Clash re-process
imagery through the shifting
lenses of their music – reggae,
some funk, hints of salsa, scene
painting, a bit of rock.
But is voyeurism valid? You
could argue that “Guns Of
Brixton” was prophetic, but you
didn’t even have to go there toknow that. It’s all on TV, innit?
Similarly, “Red Angel Dragnet”
here finds Paul Simononchanging the scenario but
singing the same song, this timeabout New York’s GuardianAngel vigilante subway patrols.

1982

a p r i l – J U NE

January 30, 1981: a rare
live appearance by
Associates Alan Rankine(left) and Billy Mackenzie
at the University Of
London Union

52 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982

THE ASSOCIATES have a
low opinion of pop. Rather
than play the game (orindeed play live), they’re
doing completely their own
thing – which well fits the
Scottish band’s uniquely
eerie and dramatic sound.
“We’ve never really got
on with anyone in themusic business,” says
singer Billy Mackenzie.

“Justhorrendous”— NME APRIL 24 —n a stretch of lush greeneryin the heart of edinburgh, acouple of men in white shirts
and dark trousers are enjoying
a spot of judicious exercise.
taking great care not to exert
themselves unduly, the pair gently tease andamuse a brace of whippet puppies, cutting afaintly ridiculous spectacle in the shadow of
the haughty splendour of the city’s castle highbehind them.
the two men are Billy Mackenzie and alanrankine, singer and chief instrumentalist
respectively in the associates. the two dogs arethor and tonto, Billy’s new pets
and an excuse for him to devotea larger chunk of his daily routine
to an outdoor life.
as we amble through stcuthbert’s Burial Ground ina blaze of spring sunshine, Billywarns his dogs not to go picking »david corio / getty

O

HISTORY OF ROCK 1982 | 53

1982

a p r i l – J U NE

at any loose bones they might find under the marble headstones, while
Alan wryly surveys the shoppers up on nearby Princes Street.
Mackenzie – who sings soul with a scope and grandeur that shames
most of his contemporaries – is dressed impeccably in a navy mohair
suit, the jacket draped casually over one shoulder and the trousers
tapered to the knee to resemble a pair of jodhpurs. His unruly black hairflops over his craggy Celtic features, but there’s a fire in his deep-browneyes, a sparkle that seems to gently ridicule everyone around him. His
manner is casual to the point of being almost offhand. This suave
assurance is shared by Alan Rankine.
After spending most of last year based in London, the pair have now
drifted back to Scotland; Billy back to his native Dundee and Alan to
Linlithgow, a small town between Edinburgh and Glasgow. They
claim the move away from the capital means they lead a healthier, lesshedonistic lifestyle – one which allows them to concentrate more on
their work.
Billy: “The better shape I’m in physically, the better I feel I am musically.
I’ve got to be dead straight to give my best. I don’t need any drugs toinfluence my thoughts and I don’t drink much these days. If I do, I just go
off my head and get upset, start crying, walk about the house and start
kicking things. It’s basically down to the fact that I can’t standhangovers… the pain of feeling someone sticking sand in your eyes.
“As I’ve said before, I relate music and emotion to athleticism.
Athleticism is really important. The cover of our first LP, The Affectionate
Punch, was a way of saying that, with the two of us hunched together at
the start of a running track.
“That’s one of the reasons I’ve got these two wee dogs. When I was
living in London I was just drinking myself silly to try and relieve theboredom and ended up feeling rotten all the time. That’s why I’ve moved
back up to Scotland and started to exercise myself; I just hate feelingunder the weather.
“Actually, sometimes I get this horrible feeling that I’m growing up.
My voice is starting to lower and I’m starting to act more like an adult topeople like this wee niece of mine. I keep her away from the puppies andlittle things like that. I’m getting a bit worried about myself.”
The Associates are not a group to stick to the simple formulae belovedof the major record labels. As a legion of other bands theorised aboutsubverting the numbing cycles of the music business while slipping
languidly onto rock’s eternal treadmill of albums
and tours, The Associates let their actions speak
louder than their words.
Last year the band released seven singles, mostof them on the London independent Situation 2,
a subsidiary of Beggars Banquet. They refused tomake an album or play live.
It was an oblique strategy but one which broughtits dividends when – after signing to Warner
Brothers at the end of last year – their stately single“Party Fears Two” brought them the wider chart
success that their persistence deserved.
Five of those seven singles – “Tell Me Easter’s On
Friday”, “Q Quarters”, “Kitchen Person”, “Message
Oblique Speech” and “White Car In Germany”– are now available, with various B-sides,
on a Situation 2 German import album,
Fourth Drawer Down.
As a document of the quizzical,
haunting pop music created last year by
Mackenzie and Rankine, the LP is an
essential compilation. It would havebeen even stronger if their other two’81 singles, “Kites” and “Bounceback”,
were also included.
That, of course, would have been
too simple and straightforward for
The Associates: they release theirrecords with a wonderfully spasmodic
irregularity and the two remaining
singles in fact surfaced on different
labels; “Kites”, a cover of the Simon
Dupree standard, under the guiseof 39 Lyon Street on RSO, and“Bounceback” on Polydor.

Billy: “We just put a load of singles out for a laugh. We sometimes do allthese daft things just for the sake of it, just to try out different approaches.
The good thing is that we never have anyone on our backs, no record
company to bother us. Even Warners leave us pretty much alone. They
know we’ve got a lot of good pop songs, so they just leave us pretty much to
our own devices and on a good day we let them hear what we’ve done.
“We’ve never really got on with anyone in the music business. I’ve yet tocome across anyone in an influential position in a record company who
has any idea. Basically, they’re all just stupid and their ideas are rotten,
just completely tasteless. Just look at the work that they do! All those
disgusting records and horrible artworks. Most of it is just horrendous.
“Basically, there was no one that we could trust, no one that we could
put our faith in, so we just had to stop working their way. We had to juststop and put our faith in our wee selves.”
Before moving to Situation 2, The Associates had been signed to Chris
Parry’s Polydor-affiliated Fiction label, but found the set-up too limited
for their expansive aims. The flexibility they enjoyed on an independentlabel allowed them to nurture and refine their telling talents, so thatthey are now much better equipped, both musically and mentally, tohandle the massive pop success that will surely come their way in the
coming months.
So, does signing to Warner Brothers signify a move towards a more
populist, mainstream approach – a coming in off a limb?
Billy: “I think it’s a quite natural way to go. Doing all those singles lastyear has given us the confidence, the ability to talk back to people and get
our own way, even with someone like Warner Brothers. I suppose we are
getting more mainstream musically, but not in a wacky way. Our next
single, “Club Country”, is still a real cross-pollination of ideas. It’s quite
cinematic. I think quite a lot of our songs are quite cinematic, but withmore of a steady dance beat and more of a storyline to them.”
Would they consider using a “name” producer – a Rushent or Horn –to sharpen further the sound? Their five Situation 2 singles were all selfproduced, with the help of engineer Mike Hedges, but better production
facilities are surely now also available to them.
Alan: “To tell the truth, I think if we went for a Trevor Horn production,
people would get fed up with seeing us in the charts. I know that we havesongs to achieve that sort of success. It probably will happen that wehave a few more hits this year, but I wouldn’t want it to happen too
quickly. I don’t want to slag off people like
ABC, but it does seem that they are doing
everything too quickly.”
Billy Mackenzie has been singing for as longas he can remember – since about the age offour – entertaining aunties and uncles andladies across the street with that dulcet,
dignified voice. His childhood days were hard
but happy; his home was on the Catholic sideof Dundee, and his family is half-Scottish andhalf-Irish, with a shot of gypsy blood.
Billy: “We always used to be very open
about things in our family. I was always
allowed to do what I wanted. I had all thefreedom in the world from the age of fiveonwards. I’d get up to all these terrible
things and never get touched for it.
Then I might nick a biscuit orsomething and I’d get done in!
“I always knew that I could sing.
I used to be in school choirs andeverything and I got in the cub scouts
when I was a wee boy just because I
could sing ‘The Sound Of Music’ fortheir annual musical. On the Irish
side of my family, the musicaltradition has always been reallystrong, just as dancing always is, andI just absorbed it all up.”
After leaving school at 15 and biding
his time as an apprentice electrician,Mackenzie worked selling whisky ina London Scotch house and travelled
to America and New Zealand, before
returning to Dundee to open his own“The themeson Sulk start
off quitemoody but end
up very elated”

54 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982

the associates

second-hand clothes shop, an enterprise now run
by his brother. This interest in style is stillreflected in his own quirkily original dress,
assorted hats and berets being a speciality. In a
recent NME Portrait Of An Artist, he had theimpetuosity to list Italian casual wear 1952–’59 asa fascinating fashion fetish.
Billy: “Up in Dundee it’s easy to get hold of good
clothes quite cheaply. I just really like the feel ofgood materials. The Italians in the ’50s were really good at that. It was all’50s suits and trousers, the sort of stuff that places like Robot are doing now.
“There was a big market for it in a place like Dundee because there werea lot of soulboy types who would be really into all those cuts. We used to
be able to get £20 or £30 for a pair of trousers back in 1976.
“This all happened when I was about 19. It was just a great opportunity.
I already knew that I was able to sing, and this gave me the opportunity
to do something else – design clothes and do window dressing. It gave mea chance to pursue those different angles. For me, it was a very similar
thing to the songwriting. It’s just the thing of making strong decisions,putting this here and that over there.”he partnership between Mackenzie and Rankine dates
back to 1976. Billy had been fronting a blue-eyed soul band in
Dundee for two years – “a sort of cross between Harold Melvinand the Average White Band” – when he met Alan at an audition for acabaret group in Edinburgh.
Alan: “We just clicked. Hit it off straightaway, partly because we sharedan interest in film music. Musically, our partnership has always worked
really well because we have the same interests. On a personal level, we
haven’t always seen eye to eye, but in the main things go OK.”
Unhappy with what they were both doing at the time, the pair pooled
resources and formed their own combo, playing the Scottish cabaretclub circuit for 18 months and earning over £100 a week apiece for
their dedication.
Alan: “It was great training, because you could play basically what you
wanted to play. It wasn’t just a matter of rehashing all the standards. We
could play whatever we liked as long as it sounded classy and wasn’t as
loud as the club jukebox. We did a bossa-nova version of ‘The Fool On The
Hill’, stuff like that!”
Billy: “We were dead naive about it all, and we started writing our own
songs for the set, all these really stupid cabaret-type songs. They were
all dead humorous. The most famous one was ‘The Shadow Of Your
Lung’, which was basically ‘The Shadow Of Your Smile’ with added corny
lyrics and a saxophone. I would be playing that and the people would begoing loony!”On the horizon, meanwhile, a musical watershed that was to havea profound effect on their future direction was looming loudly.
Billy: “We were doing all these daft songs about the same time as punk
was beginning to emerge, and it seemed to fit in quite well with our ideas.
One of the songs we were playing pre-punk was called ‘20,000 Years Of
Mental Torture’, which had punky lyrics and a real Batman-type theme
tune, all real ramalama stuff. So when punk came along, we could
immediately relate to it. Musically, punk was based around Batman riffs.
“I don’t think of our songs as being unusual, but I suppose they are toa lot of people, because there are a lot of odd sounds in them. I’d hateanyone to think that our music was ‘weird’, because I just can’t stand thatsort of thing.”
A colleague, when I told him that I was to interview Mackenzie, told me
to find out just what the hell he was on about in those vague, intuitive
songs of his.
Billy: “If you listen to everyday conversation, people don’t always talk instraight lines anyway. Conversation cansometimes get really abstract, so why can’t
a song be like that? People don’t always talkfact. You have to have a wee bit of nonsense
in your life.
“My lyrics are a bit like the kind of people
I like. I can’t stand down-to-earth, normal
people all the time. I get nauseated after
about an hour. I need to be around people
who have strange personality quirks.
“Sometimes my lyrics start to nauseate
me a bit too, so I start to slip in somethingTa bit daft to keep myself interested.
“I don’t really like doing interviews that much,because there are no really strong tangents withthis group, other than talking about the songs. And
I’d rather just do the songs than talk about themreally. You either like them or dislike them.
“People like David Byrne really get up my nose,
theorising about things all the time. As far as I’mconcerned, you do it and people take it or leave it.
With us, the songs either hit the button or they don’t.”igning with warners at the end of last year doesn’t mean
they’ll break their ties with Situation 2, who are set to release theGerman Fourth Drawer Down compilation and are also planningto make the band’s early sessions for The John Peel Show available asanother set of singles.
The band’s next single for Warners, “Club Country”, is released next
week, to be followed by an album of new songs, Sulk, on May 14. As if thatis not enough, their debut album The Affectionate Punch has been
remixed and recut by Fiction, with the band’s consent, and is to bereissued shortly. Mackenzie and Rankine, meanwhile, are due back into
the studios in June to begin work on songs for what will be their fourth LP!
Such proliferation seems to come naturally to the pair. They reckon tohave at least 60 more songs down on demo tape, including two, “18 Carat
Love Affair” and “Waiting For The Loveboat”, that are already earmarked
as future singles. I wondered whether having such a library of songs on
file took some of the spontaneity out of recording?
Billy: “I don’t think so, because once we start work on them again, it allsounds fresh and we start to change them around. The riff of ‘Party Fears’
was five years old, but we changed bits here and there to make it soundfresh. But we like demo songs for future reference, just to have somebasics to refer back to… or go back and laugh at!”
There is also Billy’s involvement with the British Electric Foundation
project Music Of Quality And Distinction, an album on which he covers
two songs, Bowie’s “Secret Life Of Arabia” and Roy Orbison’s “It’s Over”.
Billy: “They asked me to do those two. I don’t think I would havechosen to do ‘It’s Over’, but I was able to bend the melody to find myown way of singing it. It was the same with ‘Secret Life’. I twisted thesong to suit myself.”
Sulk, the forthcoming Warner Brothers LP, should be a fair indicationof whether the group are able to maintain and build on the momentumof their five Situation 2 singles of last year. So what are we to expectfrom Sulk?
Billy: “The themes on it start off quite moody but end up very elated.
I don’t want it to sound like some great concept, but that’s the way it
progresses. But, to be honest, I think that there’s only one really greatsong on it, which is one called ‘Skipping’. That’s the only song that we’ve
ever recorded that I can just sit back and go ‘aaaaah’ and really relax to.
It’s got a really good vocal sound… not just my usual screeching hysterics!
I just feel that I’m using my voice in a much more suave manner.”
And at that he bursts into a fit of mocking laughter and lolls back onto
the lawn beneath the castle and starts to chide Tonto and Thor, as if
negating any pompous statements he may have made in the interview,leaving me to ponder just what precisely drives this singularly odd couple
in their pursuit of pop class and excellence.
Alan Rankine best sums it up in what I take to be a reference to Chris
Parry, their former producer and label manager at Fiction Records.
“Let me tell you,” smiles Alan. “There’s this inane little New Zealander
who once came out with the line, ‘What we’re dealing with here isa couple of talented and uncompromising megalomaniacs!”

S

Adrian Thrills ¥HISTORY OF ROCK 1982 | 55

1982

a p r i l – J U NE

“A one-man
show, ifyou like”
Introducing a newversion of SCRITTIPOLITTI, a “sort ofproduction company”
for the works of Green
Gartside. Now lessabout the politics
of his early work,
his debut album
will be “something
like a milestone
in British pop” –although it shouldhave been out a year
ago. “I’m just very
confident,” he says.

W— MELODY MAKER MAY 29 —lawrence lawry / photoshot

ho are Scritti Politti? If most of the pranksters
gaining spoonfuls of praise from a hyperbole-fixatedmusic press turn out on close inspection to be so muchstagnant pondweed, then Scritti are the lilies floating
serenely over the scum.
If the current demand for a bright, gleaming pop in ourpubs and clubs means that built-in-obsolescence is the rule, the music of Scritti isan exception, an irresistibly attractive brand of song infused with sumptuous
depth and keen intelligence.
But who are the purveyors of this seductive blend of sublime new textures,
velvet soul and heart-moving pop? Who takes the credit for the mellifluous floodof melody, uplifting rhythm and bounce and fibres of funk-and-think being
poured into honeyed moulds under a collective Scritti Politti banner?
Once Scritti were tiny in fame, an almost archetypal Rough Trade recording
group – politics upfront, image intellectual, music like chicken wire. Now Politti
are bulging with reputation and drenched with promise, collecting wildly
enthusiastic accolades from press and a rapidly growing band of cognoscentiby the cartload.
Last year’s “The ‘Sweetest Girl’” single announced the transformation.
The current single “Faithless”, a sponge of gospel-flavoured liquid, is theconfirmation; the long-awaited album Songs To Remember (due for release
any moment now on Rough Trade) is the blossoming of the style.
When interviewed for the MM just after the release of “The ‘Sweetest Girl’’several months ago, the name Scritti Politti
referred officially to singer and songwriter,...
`
Green Strohmeyer-Gartside, rhythm person''
Tom Morley and organiser Matthew Kay, though
the ever-voluble Green completely dominated
�UMS
the conversation.
,
This time, though, everything’s gone Green;
IN','SALEM
his is the sole face for the photo session, his is
the chosen voice for the interview – though »RITTILITTI

56 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982

L

�
��

s

=

Green Gartside in
1982: “No way am I
prepared to end up
another lost cause
in British pop”

HISTORY OF ROCK 1982 | 57

1982

a p r i l – J U NE
a photograph, 40 people standing in a kitchen
making tea – in retrospect a lot of it was a lot of hot air.
All that has gone and this is where we are now, justdown to me. Which it always was.”
But who are Scritti Politti? Matthew stumbles
when asked – it refers to a “collective to a degree”– and Green sounds vague.
“We exist nominally as a group, and there area pool of people who make the records – they mightchange, depending on what sort of records I would
like to make.”
A conclusion: Scritti is a “kind of production
company”.
ONGS TO RemembeR may be unfortunately
titled in view of new albums from Vic Godard
and the Gang Of Four (respectively called
Songs For Sale and Songs Of The Free), but it’s aname that is at least apt.
Green has turned his musical concerns awayfrom the scratchy experimentalism of post-punk
independence – he doesn’t deny those days werea necessary part of his musical learning process,incidentally – and has focused on pop.
But this is not the pop that snaps, cracks and fizzles
brightly and then dies. Scritti pop is multi-layered,
immediate and accessible enough for instantconsumption and superficial listening, andconstructed with enough care, intuitive feelingand lyrical interest to ensure a wider and longerlasting set of responses.
Scritti music is fresh and airy, mixing black
influences like lovers rock (also the title of one of
the album tracks), soul, funk, gospel and jazz withthe kind of natural melodic sensibility inherent in
the best pop.
Though there are no immediately obvious musicalparallels, Songs To Remember could turn out tooccupy a similar position at the helm of the ’80s as
Stevie Wonder’s Music Of My Mind did in the ’70s – aninspirational injection of vision into the pop and soulmainstream, turning traditional virtues into sharply
contemporary style.
Musing agreeably on the Wonder analogy, Greensays he did listen to the man’s work at the time,
though it’s not a comparison he’s really thought
about. He takes it as a huge compliment,
nevertheless, and confesses that he can easily
foresee Scritti Politti selling vast quantities
of records. Green not only possesses heapsof talent, but knows it.
“I think the LP is something like a bit ofa milestone in British pop, quite honestly,”
he opines unselfconsciously.
“I do think that. I’m pretty proud of it; I do
think it’s quite a remarkable record, and I will
be extraordinarily angry if it doesn’t get the
exposure and the sales it deserves. You learn as
you carry on that things in this industry aren’t
always earnt by merit.
“I’m glad to see ‘Faithless’ is starting to pickup the kind of reviews it deserves. Did you see
Martin Fry’s thing in Smash Hits? He’d made it
his single-of-the-month or something, he raved
over it, which was nice. Things like that mean a lot to me, particularly
other musicians really respecting it.
“It’s very important that the machinery of the industry locks in behindyou – that is why Matt’s important. No way am I prepared to end up
another lost cause in British pop, one of those greats about whom people
end up saying, ‘Why didn’t it happen?’ I don’t think that’s very likely now,
because we’re wise to it.”
When asked if he thinks it likely that within a year he will be “a star”,
Green replies in the affirmative without a moment’s hesitation. And does

S

Green in performance:“I was interested inall sorts of post-punkdeconstructionalist
twanging and banging”

Matthew turns up to keep a generally silent
watch on the proceedings.
“It just came about quite naturally as a resultof the fact that Tom never actually said anything
in interviews,” explains Green as first pints sinkto stomachs in the opulent surroundings of a
Mayfair public house.
“It just became increasingly apparent that it
was sort of a one-man show, if you like. There’s
me who writes, arranges and makes all thedecisions about everything, and Matt who puts
them into practice. Tom didn’t play on ‘The
Sweetest Girl’ or ‘Faithless’. I haven’t seen
hardly anything of him since.
“I mean, he really doesn’t do anything at all.
It’s very nice for him, considering he gets a wage, but a bit ridiculous.”(A phone call to Tom later establishes that he did, in fact, programme all
the drum machines and computers.)
Hold on – aren’t we heading for a sticky, blubbery me-situation here?
Aren’t journalists the ones who are supposed to throw around firstperson singulars like confetti and indulge in the practised art of theslag-off without a second thought? More clarification.
“All the old claims to this pseudo-collectivism that went on, thatwere enormous back in the very early days – I remember we posed for

Chris Mills / getty“I’ve got
40 songs
stockpiled that
I think arewonderful”

58 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982

Scutti,Pa&t,L/

he look forward to that situation?
“I guess so. I shouldn’t imagine it’ll beawfully different from the way things areone&
at the moment. I’m just very confident,
I’ve got 40 songs stockpiled that I think
are wonderful and I’m just waiting torecord them, and record them well. We,
at least, are an unstoppable machine; it’s
just a question of dealing with it allconcertedly and sensitively.”
Considering the contemporary
ambiguity of the concept of “pop”, it
may seem as if Scritti Politti simply
know a good bandwagon when theysee it. Not so.
Recorded with bass player Nial Jinks(who’s since departed), keyboard player
Mike McAvory, backing singers May,
Jackie and Lorenza, Robert Wyatt adding keyboards on “Sweetest Girl”,“Asylums (In Jerusalem)” and “Lovers Rock”, the album dates back to
1980, preceding the current pop boom by a considerable period of time
– “It’s a shame the album didn’t come out when it was made, in the springof ’81 it would have been quite remarkable,” comments Green.
The decision to opt for pop fame came about during a long illness(psychosomatic – not hepatitis, as reported in last week’s paper) when
Green indulged in large amounts of reading, bringing pop to the centre of
the intellectual stage. The resultant change was dramatic: not only had
there been a conscious decision to shift musical emphasis, the results
reeked of an unmistakable maturity. Had the switch been difficult?
“No, it’s a question of simply making the decision that there are now
standards that you want to attain and just simply do whatever’s
necessary to get them,” says Green. “I have a fairly good idea of theelements I want in something; I talk it over with Adam Kidron [Scritti’s
producer], get the necessary hardware and individuals and go and do it.
“I think it’s the writing and arranging that really matters; I tend tohave fairly firm ideas about how those might go and they come to mequite easily.”
Was there any point where he realised he had the capacity to write
strong melodies and arrangements that held the possibility ofcommercial success?
“Yes, well, I think I always knew it, but fought against it very often for
the first however many years because it didn’t seem the proper thing to
do. At the time I was fairly anti-pop and I was interested in all sorts ofpost-punk deconstructuralist twanging and banging, whereas I used tosit down and write a lot of the songs that then weren’t recorded, that were
nice, very simple, very lovely tunes.”S.� Re4nefJvL,/

critti interviews, at their worst, can degenerate into
unwieldy, impenetrable language as Green lights the blue
touchpaper under the didactic
fireworks spilling out of his brain.
An illustration: after interviewing themseveral months ago I rang Green to ask for atranslation of one of the more oblique passages
in his structuralist theory of pop. He was out,
so I left a message.
Late on a Sunday night, the article written
and typed up, I received a phonecall fromGreen from what sounded like a crowded pub.
He’d received the message and had “takensome notes”, he said, before launching intoa stream of theoretical consciousness lasting
two or three minutes and expressed in weighty
academic jargon.

S

It ended with five classic words:“Does that make things clearer?”
Any attempt to make theoretical senseout of the jungle-world of music must beof interest; Green’s seemed especiallypertinent – he celebrated the primacyof pop in terms of its position as achannel of mass communication –but seemed unnecessarily dogmatic.
He was, for example, prepared todismiss less popular forms of music –jazz, in particular – as “marginal”, andtherefore not really of great importance.
He now admits to a change in attitude
since that earlier interview, mentioning
an interest in doing “jazz-based things”
in the future.
“I’ve eased up a bit on all the broadsides
I was firing at every faction other than burgeoning pop,” he comments.
“I think you can relax a bit. It comes with gaining confidence as well, you
don’t feel it necessary to carve up history in quite as rigid a way. At thetime I was quite scared by the trap of marginality and just how stultifying
the discourse around it is. Listening back to the LP, there are definitely
some jazz influences in it.”He waxes lyrical about Jamie, the sax player heard to particularly goodeffect on the 12-inch version of “Faithless”.
“It takes my breath away to hear him play,” he enthuses, adding that
he used to listen to “black loft import jazz” at about the same time as
he was buying records by Sparks, Rod Stewart and traditional English
folk singers.
Though current songs are lyrically less “Big-P Political” than those ofyore, Green still sees Scritti Politti as “a profoundly political undertaking”.
“On almost any political map you’d have to acknowledge that pop
music, in its history, in its entirety, was a significant political phenomenon– and that’s looking at things in a very traditional political way.”
A former left-wing activist, Green now rejects the theoretical approachof the organised left as being “reductionist” (ie, oversimplifying complex
phenomena). The political influence of pop “would have to be
subversive”, he says, citing the fact that in some places it’s banned as
evidence. “In Vietnam and China they’re hysterically afraid of it.”Green doesn’t see Scritti’s music as being in any way “propaganda”
in the crudest sense of the terms. “The stuff I’m putting out at the
moment is a lot more intuitive after years of fairly heavily theorised
stuff; it’s more likely to be appreciated a bit more intuitively, do you
know what I mean?
“But I could quite easily be polemical again and use it to those ends,
or a lot more literal again. Songs like ‘Sweetest Girl’ and ‘Faithless’ werein a way about not having any belief in a cast-iron guarantee to yourown beliefs. It’s about baseless, shifting ideology, with no anchors of
an immutable truth.”“‘Faithless’
was, in a way,about baseless,shifting
ideology”

aithless, Green seems to havesuch a strong belief in his own ability
that it can border on arrogance, butthere’s a frail side to his nature too – herefers to some of his past experiences of live
performance as “nightmarish”, which partly
accounts for Scritti’s current reluctance toundertake any gigs.
Possible alternatives include singing tobacking tapes à la Heaven 17 and concentrating
on video promotion.
But first things first. Songs To Remember are
songs you will remember. Lynden Barber ¥Fr

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a p r i l – J U NE

Miles Davis: thePrince of Darkness
returns to the stage
at hammersmith
Odeon in april 1982

60 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982

miles davis

Spellbound
MM APRIL 22 Miles Davis weaves his magiciles has certainly worked on his band
since he unveiled it for his much heralded
return at last year’s Kool Festival in New
York. Both it and the leader seemed certain andcommitted at Hammersmith, and if it wasn’t the new
direction that everybody anticipates with Miles, it wasa good clean synthesis of several past directions,and not a note of narcissism in evidence.
Ill-health may have left him limping and asconfined in movement as a man in stitches,
but his chops are ferocious. Miles spitting
spaced singles can indicate the speed andmood of a piece like nobody else, but his
economy tends to turn the rest of the team
into windbags. Ex-Blood, Sweat & Tears
guitarist Mike Stern, in particular, detailed towring out the climaxes, came over as repetitiveand emptily grandiose as a Heavy Metal hero.
Stern is the link with Miles’ Fillmore period, using
those Hendrix techniques that fascinated Milesand Gil Evans, and have proved so tricky to house.
Jazzers, not averse to a bit of loose-washer rhetoricon other instruments, will find the acid sound of it
on guitar plain unpleasant, while the density ofvolume makes a poor equivalent for the layers inan orchestral ensemble.
There were times when the rub-a-dub drummingand jerking guitar created brutal obstacle courses forthe horns, cancelling all possibility of lift, float, soar,
swoop or cadence. Bill Evans’ tenor, which can drive
like Wayne Shorter, often sounded as if it wereshaking the bars in frustration.
Like Ornette’s Prime Time concept, it’s a pretty
chewy prospect for the listener, but it certainly ain’t
facile, cash-in or bad-ass. Two drummers, electricbass and electric guitar doesn’t give you much of
a middle shot to orient.
The first half finally threw out some clear compass
bearings from the past as the amplitude sank in theWest, casting a purplish muted mood for Miles’
ruminations around a “Summertime” theme. Thiswas magic.
Evans churned in, Stern strummed a relevant jazzsolo, and Miles grabbed back the action, bipping andchirruping with savage accuracy. Mino Cinelu didsome wet-finger stuff on the hand-drums with Miles
breathing a few hairline cracks on the eggshells.
After the interval, the old Gil Evans palette reigned
supreme, Spanish tinge and all. Miles established thehush with a few dabs of keyboard, and Evans sighed
flute over Al Foster’s bells and chimes. Trumpet slid in,choked tone, a quiet drizzling of intense beauty. Everynote was precisely placed on the subtly tugging andbuilding groundswell of rhythm.
This cast the spell of great musicianship, andright on cue came cries of “Gerronwivit!” from thetraditionally discerning Odeon audience, starving fora few volts of guitaristics. Stern obliged, Foster
dished out a backbeat, and Miles cut loose with thefull range, before monitoring the mood back down.
Lovely duets and unisons between Miles andEvans over a forlorn funk preserved the feel of“Saeta”, padding and circling and swatting together,interacting like the great days of Miles and Shorter.
Miles Davis is back all right, not peddling yesterday’s
fish, not perhaps quite what you want, but deliveringsome profound goods none the less. Brian CaseM
HAMMERSMITHODEONAPRIL 22

HISTORY OF ROCK 1982 | 61

david redfern / GeTTY

LIVE!

1982

a p r i l – J U NE

“A real shock”
In spite of setbacks –JoE StruMMEr going
AWoL; topper leaving –things are going better
than ever for tHE CLASH.
Never mind the Falklands,
Combat rock isin the top ten!

H
getty

— NME MAY 29 —62 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982

alf-past one on Portobello Road.
Past the chippy, opposite the bookshop,
within earshot of a man with anamplified mouth-harp honking
and scything through Little Walter’s
greatest hits.
The sun comes down hard on the cast of the street parade,on the bikes and push-chairs and the stalls, a crowded
pavement where money changes hands, time is passed
and everybody seems to be waiting for something different
to happen.
And it does: one by one, The Clash appear. First Paul
Simonon, dressed in his usual black, then Mick Jones inkhaki pants, bleached denim jacket and huge Rasta cap,then Joe Strummer, greasy, stubbled and buttoned into
his trench-coat.
“oKAY! HERE WE Go! JoE’S BACK AnD ToPPER’S GonE!
WHAT ELSE Do YoU WAnT To KnoW?”
That’s approximately what Kosmo Vinyl had said a coupleof hours earlier on the phone, so we deal with that.
This is Saturday, while the FA Cup Final is going on, and theprevious Thursday, The Clash reunited in Amsterdam toplay the last-ever gig with Topper Headon. Strummer had
returned after weeks of rumours – working as a navvy inMarseilles, fished up out of the river in Glasgow, what did
you hear? Did you believe it? – from a sojourn in Paris, during
which time an entire British Clash tour was cancelled
and rearranged, and Combat Rockhad reached number two in thealbum charts.
obviously, there are a few things
to discuss.
First, Topper. Why’d he go?
“It was his decision,” Strummer
replies. We’re squeezed into a boothin the corner caff: Strummer
hunched in the corner, Simonon
and Jones opposite, Kosmo Vinyl at
an adjoining table and Bernard
Rhodes leaning over Strummer’s
shoulder anxious to answer thequestions first. »

.

�

R

II/

i�

And then there
were three: (l-r)
Joe Strummer,
Mick Jones andPaul Simonon

HISTORY OF ROCK 1982 | 63

1982

shinko music / gettya p r i l – J U NE

“I think he felt... it’s not too easy to be in The Clash. It’s not as simple as
being in a comfortable, we’re-just-entertainers group, and he just wanted
to do that, just play music. He’s a brilliant multi-instrumentalist – what
used to be called that – and it’s a bit weird to be in The Clash at the
moment. Well, it was. He has to sort of strike out in another direction,
because I don’t think he wants to come along with us. There are things
that we all want to do...”“We all feel the same,” Jones chips in, “and he don’t, really.”“We’re going to continue as a trio,” resumes Strummer.
“I’m going to play the drums,” announces Simonon brightly. “We’regonna get some guest drummers in, and they’re gonna play with us
whenever we want to make a record or play some shows.”
OK. Why’d you vanish, Joe?
“Me? It’s a long story.”
Gonna tell it?
Strummer sighs. “Well... it was something I wanted to prove to myself:that I was alive. It’s very much like being a robot, being in a group. You
keep coming along and keep delivering and keep being an entertainer
and keep showing up and keep the whole thing going. Rather than go
barmy and go mad, I think it’s better to do what I did, even for a month.
“I just got up and I went to Paris... without even thinking about it. I might
have gone a bit barmy, you know? But anyway, I went to Paris, and I knewthat there’d be a lot of people.. the fans were disappointed, the road crew
had sold their motors to pay the rent fucking around with this lot. I knew
a lot of people were going to be disappointed, but I had to go, and I went,and I’d recommend anybody else to do that if they have to.
“And once I got there... I only intended to stay for a few days, but the moredays I stayed, the harder it was to come back because of the more aggro
I was causing that I’d have to face there.”
What about the agreements that you’d broken
by going? Were you thinking of them?
“Yeah! We’d never blown out other gigs except
for the time that Topper got stabbed in the handwith a pair of scissors. Even when the gear
doesn’t arrive and we’re in a foreign city and the*THE“I wanted toprove to myselfthat I was alive”:
Joe Strummer
explains his‘disappearance’r64 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982

trucks are held up at the border, we’ll still play the show by borrowing
stuff off the support band or whoever we can get it from. We’ve got somepride in that direction – the show must go on blah blah – than to cut out
permanently, you know?”
So what would have happened if you hadn’t gone?
“I think I would have started drinking a lot on the tour, maybe. Started
becoming petulant with the audience, which isn’t the sort of thingthat you should do... but it’s very different now that Topper’s left. It’s backto the old trio now,” he concludes with what can only be described as
anticipatory glee.
So what did Paul Simonon and Mick Jones feel about the wandering
Joe’s pilgrimage?
“Well, I felt that anything he does is all right,” replies Jones, staring out
from under his cap. “Obviously we were disappointed that we weren’t
going off on tour and everything, and we were disappointed that someof our fans would be disappointed, but – I said this before while Joe wasaway – I felt sure that whatever he had was a good reason. And he’s suchan extraordinary person that it was fine: we could handle it. Hold the fort
was what we did.”
Were you in contact while Joey was away?
“No,” volunteers Simonon. “We knew he was all right because hephoned his mum. He’d told her to keep schtum but I think Kosmo wore
her down.”
While you were away, did you consider not coming back at all, doing thefull vanish?
“I don’t think I had the... it’s pretty hard to do that, to disappear forever.”“Bernie was saying,” says Jones, indicating in the general direction of
Rhodes’ manic grin and impenetrable shades, “‘Now this is like Brian
Jones or Syd Barrett or something, now you’re one of thesegroups’ so it is possible to vanish forever. OK! We’re The
Pink Floyd now! And,” he continues, warming to histheme, “Joe was Syd Barrett.”
Yeah, but he didn’t vanish physically.
Jones considers this. “Ah no, that was Vince Taylor,wasn’t it?”Was Joe thinking while he was away about what wasgoing to have to be different when he got back?
“No, not really, I was just pleased to have an... escape.
It’s great bunking off work, really great – as you well know
– and it was a bit of that. I was just enjoying being alive.
I just wanted to prove to myself that I was alive... that
I existed, that it wasn’t over. It was OK. We’re doing thisfirstly for ourselves...”“And it helps clear the air, anyway” – Simonon – “Thefact that he went just cleared the air and made you realise more ofwhere you stood individually as well as to two other people, threeother people, or whatever. I knew he was coming back.”
Strummer picks up the thread again. “I was saying that we’resupposed to be doing this for ourselves, and when you lose sight ofthat, you’re in trouble, because you start to think, ‘Those people
out there don’t really care’ – that’s the people who come and see
you and buy your records. It’s been a bit of a desert for us lately, but
we’re Number Two this week with the album – which is a realshock, I can tell you...”Obviously! While the sheer fact of a record’s presence in thecharts is not necessarily a relevant signifier, Combat Rock is themost extreme and direct Clash album since the first, and its readyacceptance and acknowledgement by the purchasing public
indicates that there’s far more support than is often supposed
both for The Clash themselves and for the militancy that they
once again represent.
See, The Clash had become first accepted, then absorbed, thendeclared quaint, obsolete, null and void. As soon as it became‘safe’ to like them and they started touring the States, it thenbecame ‘safer’ not to. It was a short step from American pundits
hailing them as the new greatest rock band in the world – the new
Stones! The new Who! – to British True Punks and post-rock
hipsters alike to regard them as just another Anglo-American
success story, like Costello before he withdrew, or The Pretenders.
Not hard enough for the Oi Polloi, too rockist for the dancetariat.
And I mean they really show their roots: there’s good old Greasy
Joe with his rockabilly fetish, and Ranking Paul skanking with thesystem, and Mick’s such a poser, always playing too loud... Plus all

CLASII**111Lthe clash

Cl..A511-

���this romantic rebel guerilla chic, all the ethnic
This would appear to be the case.
���snippets...hopeless, boys. Hopeless.
Another new factor in the existence of The Clash is
The trouble is that – in the wake of Combat Rock –the removal of one of the all-time great millstones:
none of that washes any more. Listen to the way
their financial debt to CBS Records. This liberation
Strummer sings “Straight To Hell” or “Ghetto
is due to the much-abused and admittedly��.
.
Defendant”. What you’re hearing is notunwieldy Sandinista!, which has quietly andunsensationally contrived to be purchased bya presumptuous or impertinent attempt toapproximately 197,000 people in this country
associate with the alleged glamour ofalone. They are now out of hock for the first
revolutionary war or urban repression, buttime, a state of affairs which they find highly
genuine compassion for the victims ofsatisfactory. It is, after all, at least as valuable inorganised human stupidity and greed;
terms of independence as cash.
an expression of a desire to draw attention
Kosmo Vinyl recounts that nearly every
to intolerable circumstances and to mobilise
American college the band had visited last time
public opinion towards eradicatinground had featured a bulletin-board offer tothem. I don’t know about you, but I respecttape anybody’s choice of an hour’s worth ofthat compassion.
Sandinista! for around $3. American release
Combat Rock was – as is obvious to anyone
with any knowledge of the logistics of recordof Combat Rock has been delayed so that themaking – written, recorded and designed andsleeve can be reprinted without the ‘Home
packaged long before the Falkland Islands
Taping Is Killing Music’ health warning. “We
represented anything to anybody who didn’t
don’t care how many people tape our records,”
have relatives there, but synchronicity is not
he declares proudly.
What The Clash are in the process ofa myth and this album isn’t just selling because
becoming is – in spite of CBS Records – a genuinely underground band
it’s good product from a popular band. I think it’s selling because a large
and significant number of people want to hear what it says. There’s an(I am choosing, thoroughly arbitrarily, to define an ‘underground band’edge on the album and there’s an edge on The Clash again.
as one which is denied access to radio and TV exposure for reasons other
So what do The Clash want to do?
than unpopularity). This means that their music actually has to be“We want to consolidate something – like us,” replies Jones. “Comingsought out. To see The Clash you have to go to their gigs (whenever they
together and then exploding out. Out of captivity, the captivity of people’s
happen to be), and to hear The Clash you have to buy their record (or tape
expectations of us... and of being contained by the music industry, that
it off someone else who’s bought it). Embarking on this course means ansituation of not being able to get out.”
awful lot of hard work: it means that the band have to stay in touch with
So how do you get what you want out of them without them getting what
their audiences and keep their interest – and in the case of The Clash, thatthey want out of you?
also means retaining their trust – in order to make sure that their work
“Simple!” snorts Strummer. “Make sure that you’re in a position to becontinues to be sought out. Especially in the current climate, one isable to say what you want, make sure that you’re ahead. But as soon as
unlikely to hear “Know Your Rights” or any of the vital album tracks on
you’re not in a position to do that, if you’re not independent enough to do
daytime radio or down the pub.
that, if we couldn’t keep this thing going to the right pitch, then we’d be...
Likewise The Clash are almost messianic in their intensity when it
CBS were coming around to us saying, ‘Right, we’ve got these suits herecomes to ‘providing an alternative’ on the US live circuit. “Maybe they’ll
and we’ve got a nice little number written by Andrew Lloyd Webber...”just think we’re Van Halen with short hair,” Strummer will surmise“And a nice idea for a new haircut,” interrupts Jones.
grimly. “Maybe they’ll just be grunging out on the bass and drums and“...and that would become what we were putting out. It wouldn’t be
guitar.”anything to do with us. You have to be independent enough to remember“Maybe we could put on false beards and stovepipe hats and stick
what you were there to do in the first place, or you’re fucked. They’ve all
pillows up our T-shirts,” suggest Mick Jones helpfully, “and put out a nicegot their lawyers and their legal scene well worked out before we werecountry and western song to get on the radio there... then we could doeven born. It’s very hard to go in there and not go under. I mean, the wholesome dance stuff for the hipper areas...”game is to get you so that you owe them so much money so that you can’t
Three the hard way. I mean, up the hill backwards isn’t half of it. In
say, ‘No, I don’t wanna do that’ without them saying, ‘So how are you
terms of conventional careerism, The Clash are nuts. They are a gang of
gonna pay this?’”loonies. They are out of their fucking minds. They have created an
Bernard Rhodes at this point launches a high-velocity dissertation
objective which – virtually by definition – debars them from utilising
crucial means necessary to achieve it. If they doubt their ability to geton the subject of Control In The Media and the fact that The Clash don’t
successful without getting sucked in, then they’ll set it up so that they
seem to reap the benefits of the airplay shop-window. (This is, after all,won’t succeed. In other words, not getting sucked in is more important
only right and proper. I, for one, don’t want a load of depressing rubbish
than succeeding on any but the most stringently prescribed terms.
about knowing your rights and not heeding the call-up on my shiny
The Clash are totally unreasonable. They work on the principal that theyellow airwaves.)
distinction between method and objective is artificial and spurious, and“...In fact,” Jones sums up. “We’ve written a song about it. It’s calledthat therefore compromise must be kept to a minimum (noises off: rising‘Complete Control’ and we hope to have it out for the summer.”
murmur of “CBS! CBS! ‘Train In Vain’!” etc). The thing is that the amountWell, you can bypass the radio if people will buy your singles whetherof compromise necessary to get a single as hard as “Ghost Town” orthey get airplay or not.
“Going Underground” on the air does not appear to have been crippling.
“We can do that because we’ve always put singles out whether they got
However, I admire The Clash’s intransigence, and the best of Combat
played or not. People have said that we should just do albums, but we likeRock is as powerful as anything anybody’s done for a while. Long may
singles too! But since ‘Capital Radio’ we haven’t been played on Capital
they continue to piss everybody off.
Radio.” Mick doesn’t sound too surprised about that, as it happens.
“I never thought we’d be Number Two in Britain. I really didn’t,”Strummer muses. Rhodes quietly tips a slug of brandy into Joe’s cup of
ust now there was almost a minute of uninterrupted gunfire
black coffee. “There really seems to be something against us here... overon the radio, and the sound was almost too neatly set off by
the last few years, since we started going round the world.”a police siren outside. Right now everybody’s supposed to be“People don’t understand,” Simonon interposes fiercely, “what ‘Boredjacked up to the back teeth with war fever, but just the same there’s that
With The USA’ was about. They haven’t got a fucking clue. If people say
dippy song about peace from the Eurovision Song Contest as Number‘Oh, The Clash did ‘Bored With The USA’ and they’re always going over
One single last week and Combat Rock mashing up the album chart.
there’... they don’t understand the bloody song in the first place!”
There was a song I wanted to hear just then, but it wasn’t on the radio.
“I think Britain is really insular” – Strummer – “They don’t realise that
It went:“It could be anywhere/Any frontier/Any hemisphere/No man’s
there is a world out there. People who spend any amount of time inland/There ain’t no asylum here/Go straight to hell, boys.”
London can’t believe anything outside London exists. I like to travel...”Charles Shaar Murray •“Maybe they’ll
just think
we’re Van
Halen withshort hair”

J

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a p r i l – J U NE

“I see myself
becoming
more cynical”
I

66 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982

M

— MELODY MAKER MAY 1 —att Johnson knew hell was a mistake in judgement– he couldn’t avoid it. For reasons unknown he wascondemned to skirt the abyss and wrestle with a cruelcrisis which could never be solved.
Adolescent bedroom angst seemed like a party
compared to this tortuous misery. No sleep, body cramps,
a threatening sense of futility… “I find it hard to come alive,” he wrote to anyone
who would listen, “when I’m hollowed out from the inside.”That line eventually drifted into a song, “Time (Again) For The Golden Sunset”,
and the song became part of a collection, and as Matt
patently had no particular place to go the whole experience
was encapsulated forever on an album called BurningBlue Soul.
On this he explored the joys of melancholy with anakedness that could have only been equalled by John
Lennon on a gigantic existential downer. And although
you may be thinking that this is just another chapter from
Being And Nothingness complete with mind-shattering
profundities – life as a meaningless comma in the sentenceof time – you harbour those doubts in a crock of bad faith.
Beyond the teenage torpor that fills long grey macs andhumourless indie records is the real thing, and Matt
Johnson is so real, you don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
See, he knows his music is close to an open wound but he »janette beckman / getty

Introducing THE THE,
project of an amiable if
rather paranoid new talent,
MATT JOHNSON. “I’ve been
having weird dreams, almost
nightmares lately,” hewhispers. “I started dreaming
I’d sold myself to the devil!”“A lot of the newelectronic groups havejust substituted theelectric guitar for asynth”: Matt Johnson
photographed in 1981

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1982

a p r i l – J U NE

can still chuckle to himself when he sings:“A hundred thousand people today wereburned/I felt a pang of concern/What are
we waiting for…/…A message from thePope?/I think he got shot… AS WELL!!”
Burning Blue Soul was released at theend of last year on 4AD and almost
universally ignored. Astoundingly,
because Ralph Steadman (the wellknown illustrator of weird and dubious
events) declared it to be one of his all-time
faves, the powers that be have decided toreissue Matt’s masterpiece on this slightbubble of publicity.
It’s just not good enough, though.
A record as crucial as this needs pushing
if it’s going to surface through the slurry of
popular product. The brilliant Thomas Leer,his only contemporary in new-age electronics,
suffered a similar fate in the uncommitted but
well-intentioned hand of Cherry Red. As aresult both have made devastating records andbeen rewarded with cult credibility and sales
that ensure only a bountiful future of bakedbeans on toast.
At least Ralph Steadman got it right, because
Burning Blue Soul is a bona fide 22-carat Desert
Island Disc. It begins with a near-classicalstorm of sound on “Red Cinders In The Sand”,
establishes a vast breadth of range and visionand pulls this big picture into Side One’ssalvation, “Icing Up”. It’s a song that begins with bulging droplets ofelectronic rain which slowly beat out the rhythm of welcome relief at theend of a harrowing journey.
Side Two is no less impressive, opening on the uplifting “(Like A) Sun
Rising Through My Garden” and finishing on one of his best pieces, thedelirious “Another Boy Drowning”, which passionately aches with aworldly resignation and ends with a defiant discharge of bottled-up
tension. It wouldn’t be going over the top to say this record stands
altogether alone.
But it can’t have escaped your notice that the self-important drama of
pop is drenched in casual hyperbole, so when it comes to describing
something of genuine quality there’s barely anything left to reach for. You
certainly can’t expect the man himself to sing his own praises. A moremodest and likable young dreamer would be hard to find.
By fusing the tradition of literary songwriting with a far-reaching feelfor 21st-century electronic wizardry, Matt Johnson is playing Jim Kirk
to Leer’s Spock. Where the latter is menthol cool, Matt comes on all hot
and emotional; burning soul indeed. Most significantly, both, like
Germany’s DAF, have understood the implications and possibilities ofthe modern synth, its power and glory. And to top it all both play every
instrument themselves.
Maybe Matt Johnson is so refreshingly down-to-earth because heknows that not even Jim Kirk can beam himself out of an anxiety attack.
With a crew-cut and tatty denims he looks like he just walked off abuilding site and not his second home, the recording studio.
An outwardly chirpy Londoner, he says his mum and dad, who run apub, wanted him to be a cook, “but as I’d always been in groups since I was
11, I knew I had to do something in music.
“So I bought this book by Tony Hatch called So You Want To Work In The
Music Business. It said if you wanted to be a recording engineer you could
first work as a tea boy. I looked in the index and applied to all the studios.
De Wolfe in Wardour Street were the only ones to reply, so I went up there
and I got the job!
“I started as the tea boy but I made such terrible tea that they promoted
me. By then all me mates had become electricians or greengrocers. I used

to get £18 a week, 10 went on travel andfive to me mum, so you can see I had it
tough when I was little!”
After meeting a few people “who got
me into older groups like The Velvet
Underground”, he started messing
about in the studio in a misguided
attempt at becoming the next Throbbing
Gristle. “I thought I was being very arty,
you know, very meaningful.”
In the wake of a couple of non-startergroups he formed the confusingly
named The The, not a well-known
typing error but a loose collection offriends and associates. “See, I always
thought that people seem to be put off
by the idea of a solo artist. They seem to prefera group identity, so I invented the name The
The even though it’s really only me most of
the time.”
The The released a single on 4AD and a single
on Some Bizarre as well as a song on theirsampler and a similar contribution for CherryRed. Meanwhile, to complicate things, Mattalso formed The Gadgets (not to be confusedwith Frank Tovey’s Fad Gadget), who havetheir third album out soon.
Didn’t he think such diverse projects would
diffuse his energies and widen the focus justwhen it needed narrowing down? “Well yeah,
actually I think that’s a good point and in
future I’ll probably concentrate on Matt Johnson. I’m still not sure about
the name, though. Somebody once said it sounds like a cross between a
cowboy and a car salesman! Can’t you see it, Big Matt’s Cars!”
To date Burning Blue Soul has sold around 3,000 copies, a paltry
amount, absurdly out of balance with the record’s worth. Its relative
commercial failure has at least taught Matt one or two lessons about thevagaries of the pop process.
“Some of the reviews were encouraging to a degree,” he says, “butI never really got behind it and did any gigs or promotion. Mind you,neither did 4AD really. I suppose I was naive enough to think that because
the album was there and because it was a good one it would dosomething, but of course things don’t work like that, do they.”
Rather than getting bitter about the record’s obscurity, he sees thewhole experience as a form of apprenticeship. “I reckon I’ve done mytime being the boy – y’know, the trainee – ’cos that’s what it’s like on an
independent to some extent. It’s all very well and idealistic – you do what
you want and have a free say – but you do what you want as long as you
don’t spend any money. That’s the kind of philosophy involved. Theseoutfits sit on things whether they’re brilliant or not. Quite honestly, it
makes me sick.”
Talking of which, had he recovered from the dip he took when he made…Soul? “Well, last year when I did that album I was nearly suicidal most of
the time and I suppose I’m a depressive basically. I get that a lot. My life’salways been downs and ups, but when I feel really, really depressed it’s mymost creative period. At least I can turn something like that to anadvantage and create something, though; a lot of people can’t.”Grey, earnest apocalypse merchants is one thing Matt can’t stand, so
don’t drop him in that black hole. Where exactly he does fall is hard to say,though. “I’ve been lurking between electronic things and songs, really,”
he muses. “I love contrasts, and that’s what I was after on the album.”His next moves include a single – “I’ll try and make it a bit moreaccessible maybe” – and a joint single with Soft Cell’s Marc Almond.
Despite his roller-coaster psyche, he appears resilient and irrepressibly
confident, dismissing most of the opposition.
“Let’s face it, OMD songs could have been done by Adam Faith. A lot of
the new electronic groups
have just substituted theelectric guitar for a synth.
They haven’t really madeany headway at all. I
realise now that I want tobe successful. I was green“When I feel
really, really
depressed, it’s
my mostcreative period”

68 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982

THE THEenough before to think that it didn’t matter. But to bring what I do topeople’s attention is my definition of success. I want people to hear mymusic. I won’t compromise and I think any changes have been natural,
not forced. Besides, I’m so broke it’s disgusting!”
As he says on “Another Boy Drowning”: “I wanted to be like Bob Dylan,
until I discovered Moses.” Let Matt Johnson lead you out of the wilderness
and pray for his next depression! Ian Pye— NME OCTOBER 9 —he The? An agitated stutter? No, the definitive article, boasts
The one and only The Matt Johnson with a cheeky if none-tooconvincing grin.
Though The The – founded as a duo, expanded into a four-piece andfinally shrunk to its present singular state – is Matt alone, the group still
suffers from internal conflict. Indeed, it – he – is wracked by self-doubts,
even now, when things couldn’t be better. But then, if he had any more
confidence in himself he would have settled for just Matt Johnson, thesignature he put to one of last year’s more neglected LPs Burning Blue Soul.
“The reason I re-adopted the name The The,” clarifies Matt, “was so I’d
be able to put a barrier between people and myself. I dunno why, but I justlike to have it there. Partly because people tend to be put off when they see
the name of a solo artist, I suppose. It kind of weakens the impression.
Also by calling me The The, it allows me more flexibility, styles will
constantly change, anything can actually happen. The The – the ultimate
thing. The definitive…”
Which isn’t to say he’s trying to hide anything. On the contrary, hissongs are almost intimately confessional – without being excessively selfindulgent or particularly purgative. Instead,they register his naive capacity to be amazedby the world and his struggle to make sense of
it. The music is correspondingly inquisitive,
thirsty for new – at least to him – textures, which
he discovers through fresh, brash fusions of
acoustic and electronic instruments.
If at first they sound familiar, they are not quite
what they seem. His forthcoming 12-inch“Uncertain Smile”, released by Stevo’s Some
Bizzare via CBS, exemplifies his approach.
A disconsolate, unrequited love song, Matt’s
brittle blue tenor describes his melancholy
condition, unashamedly inviting the listener todwell in it while luxuriating in the music’s lazyflow; yet the listener leaves it at the other end
perversely bright and refreshed.
Matt Johnson’s presence is similarly invigorating. Despite theintrospective nature of his songs, Johnson is a cheerfully garrulous
talker, whose nervous, non-stop banter begins from the moment weenter his few North London rooms and spin dizzily through countless
anecdotes, quips and ideas, converting fret into self-effacing comicmonologue. Should I have expected anything different?
“Well, years ago I used to bore myself an’ everyone else worrying about
things,” he confides, “but people don’t really wanna know. They go off to
the toilet and never come back! So I got tothinking people don’t wanna put onmusic and think, ‘Oh no, this is terrible.’
But on the other hand you get somereassurances through recognition. Like
I used to get some from reading Sylvia
Plath, whose stuff is a lot more extreme
than me. Like The Bell Jar, even though it
had a happy ending – excepting she killed
herself after that – well, I thought it was
great. Because I could really relate to that,
I felt more comfortable…
“I had this really terrible flu once,” hecontinues. “I thought, ‘Fucking hell, I’ve
got consumption. I was in bed sweating,my head moving so fast, and for somereason I picked up Nausea by Jean Paul
Sartre, and again because I could relate toits agitated state, I felt consoled.”
The point being?

T“I would like to do music which has that uplifting effect, but which at
the same time people can be drawn into and think, ‘Oh this is great!’”Though the LP he’s currently recording continues the selfexplorations of Burning Blue Soul – “It’s probably more introverted
in a way, because it’s analysing the things I did on the first one andslagging them off!” – its buoyancy indicates that morbid introspection
isn’t Matt’s natural condition.
“It’ll probably be the conclusion of that phase,” he assures. “Basically,
once you’ve found out about yourself, you start looking around at
everything else. It’s a natural development. You can only harp on about
a theme so long – you can’t keep singing, “Well, I woke up this morning…’,
which is what I’ve been doing in a way. I see myself changing a lot,
becoming a lot more cynical.”Is “Uncertain Smile” and the whole CBS/Some Bizarre episode a first
step? Not really. Confused and intimidated by big money matters, Matt
simply left Bizzaro Stevo to handle the business side, which he did withhis customary baffling logic. Through some inexplicable dealing helanded Decca with “Uncertain Smile”’s £8,000 recording costs, and after
a midnight rendezvous involving CBS’ Maurice Oberstein and a pair ofpolicewomen atop a lion in Trafalgar Square, he clinched a contract
worth £40,000 to The The.
“Stevo’s a genius, in his own way,” marvels Matt. “He can turn record
companies upside down. His appearance immediately unsettles
them! And he’s not blasé. He could have made a fortune signing up
reproductions of Soft Cell, but instead he’s always pushing forward,
looking for new things.”
After three years on the dole and another three spent releasing
records into obscurity – three LPs with The Gadgets, Burning Blue
Soul, three singles and various compilation
contributions, all before his 21st birthday –he’s ready to accept the breaks Stevo’s giving
him. Predictably, his conscience hasn’t let
his tormented soul enjoy the anticipatory
thrill of a hit for free.
“I’ve been having weird dreams, almost
nightmares lately,” he whispers, “now thateverything’s started going really well and all.
The other night I was in me bedroom, which
is like a little coffin anyway, and I started
dreaming I’d sold myself to the devil!
“I was thinking I was going to die, like allthese other people who’d died young andthey’d sold themselves to the devil too! Thenthe ceiling was coming down and I didn’tknow what to do!”Matt is neither Catholic, nor is he a drug user. “I don’t believe in them,”
he asserts. “I was thinking, ‘God, is this what I want?’ Then I remembered
this line on the new album, which goes, ‘I’m becoming trapped in a tomb of
my own making’. So even at this preliminary stage I can see things gettingout of control, decisions being made without you…”
If the industry is the devil, who might be his conscience?
“I don’t know whether you’ve heard him, actually, but his name’s Foetus.”
Foetus! You mean You’ve Got Foetus On Your Breath! Phillip And His
Foetus Vibrations? Foetus Over Frisco?
Foetus the self-appointed scourge ofthe music business, that extraordinary
masked avenger behind theunderground hits “Tell Me What Is
The Bane Of Your Life?” and “Custom
Built For Capitalism”? – I don’t listen
to anything else!
“Yeah? Innee great! I told Foetus once:‘Fucking hell, you really put me to shame,
you’re saying all the things I wish I could
say, but I’m not…’ He’s a 10 times more
extreme version of how I feel. And he’s
got the guts to do it, whereas me, I’m one
foot in one camp one in the other, afraid
to jeopardise things.”
No need to worry, Matt. The The
might not be a fully formed Foetus, but
it’s more than the germ of a great idea.

“People tend
to be put off
when they see
the name of asolo artist”

Chris Bohn •HISTORY OF ROCK 1982 | 69

—THE
HISTORY

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1982

Ja n u a r y – J une

Readers’ letters

MM JAN-JUN The grim truth on The Cure, damned digital, Cope v Smith and more…

Cure evil
Steve Sutherland’s review of
The Cure at Hammersmith
Odeon (May 3) was a farce.
He is, of course, entitled to his
own opinions, but a report which
devotes no space whatsoever todealing directly with the live
music at the gig in questionis unlikely to command any
great respect.
Instead of giving details about
the concert, Mr Sutherland choseto churn out the depressingly
familiar list of critics’
generalisations, whether or notthey were relevant to theparticular event. As a result heasserts that the songs were,“too intimately miserable tocommunicate anything otherthan boredom” while admitting,almost in the same breath, that“the audience, strangely, gets off”
on The Cure’s set.
My suspicions that the review
had been written several hours
before the gig began wereconfirmed in Mr Sutherland’s
disconcertingly blasé admissionthat he “sneaked off without
so much as the slightest twingeof guilt.”
I had always imagined reviews
were for criticising bands oncurrent evidence, not for
reproducing a tired catalogueof preconceived biases. It seems
I was wrong.
CHRIS GOODBRE, address not
supplied (MM May 29)

Porn under a bad sign
We’re writing about Adam
Sweeting’s review of The Cure’s
Pornography (MM, May 1).
Did he actually have his ears
open when he listened to it,
because the line “Is it always likethis” comes from “Siamese Twins”
and not “The Hanging Garden”
as stated.
It seems to us that he made up his
mind he would hate this LP before
even putting it on the turntable:
there’s nothing but criticism all theway through.
The member of staff whocommented “miserable buggers”
has obviously never bothered to go
backstage after a gig to talk to thegroup. They’re the friendliest
group we’ve met.
If you, Adam, actually went to a
gig and witnessed these songs live,
apart from just judging them by
one listen on vinyl, then maybe

you’d actually feel some of thewarmth, and not the coldness you
write about. Would you like themto sound like Duran Duran or any
other groups who are flooding thecharts at the moment with their
meaningless quick-sellingcommercial lyrics and pop image?
SARAH AND JANE, Park Road,
Didcot, Oxon (MM May 15)
Adam Sweeting replies: Sorry for thestupid mistake, but it doesn’t alter
my opinion. I don’t dislike The Cure,just Pornography.

beautifully sensitive andtechnically perfectly produced
Grace And Danger this is thebiggest load of shit I have ever
heard from you. Of course, I knowthat both yourself and Phil arecapable of knocking anyone’s
socks off, so can only think this is
all down to the label change andthe quest for commercial
recognition. You don’t need it.
Please, John, get back to where
you’re really at.
JOHN WINCH, Nurnburg(MM Jan 16)

Mortal synths

You Jam fools
After seeing The Jam at the Apollo
this week, walking off stage after
an hour (they did come back for an
encore), it seemed to me that Paul
Weller may have his principles
mixed up. If The Clash can play for
two-and-a-half hours at £3 a show(the Jam was £4.50) then why don’t
the Jam give a bit more?
PAUL GORDON, Wyndway,
Carrickfergus, NI (MM Apr 24)
It’s quite simple, Paul. What takes
Joe Strummer two-and-a-halfhours to say, Weller’s got over in thefirst half-hour and with far more
literacy and power – Paolo Hewitt
If The Jam are solely concernedwith message, why do they tour? If
Weller can make all his statements
in 30 minutes, why has he made somany albums? Perhaps he’s partly
motivated by a desire for easy
wealth. (And now The Jam areestablished, wealth does comeeasily). Oooops, sacrilege…
C. J. STEVENS, Hunts Road,
Stratford On Avon (MM May 8)
Yes, it’s Bash Paul Weller week. Wellme and Paolo think he’s fab. God, atleast he tries.

Stolid air
Dear John Martyn, I have justlistened to Glorious Fool again andam not quite clear whether this isa John Martyn record or a Phil
Collins vehicle. After yourI recently heard a comment about
the growing use of synthesizers in‘Pop Music’. While many young
misguided pop fans couldn’t careless, highly trained musicians
could become redundant.
Many pop stars from the past
knew the value of using live
orchestral accompaniment; Frank
Sinatra and Nelson Riddle are
great examples. It will be a sad day
for music if future generations areconned with electronic sounds
produced by computers or robots.
Please encourage your readers tovote for live music, and not to
accept this electronic noise as a
substitute for the REAL THING.
ALAN S. GOTTS, Parkview Road,
Croydon (MM, Mar 27)
Nah mate, keep music digital.

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You’re fired!
The next time that Lynden Barberis about to write one of his
offensive articles might I suggestthat he bear in mind two
important points. First, there’s awell-known saying: “Thecustomer is always right.” Second:the customer also pays his wages.
I for one have had enough, andI shall no longer be helping to pay
the wages of any of you.
NEIL MARTIN, Rockside Avenue,
Downend, Bristol (MM, March 6)

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Can’t cope
I would like to make it quite clearthat Julian Cope has never beennear my bedroom, althoughjudging by his recent photographs
he no doubt would like to be.
Also, any fool knows you don’t
put LPs near radiators (which
I never had where I lived whenI ‘knew’ Cope). He must haveimagined it during one of his
flying-jacket fantasies.
MARK E. SMITH, The Fall (MM Jan 9)
HISTORY OF ROCK 1982 | 65
z

1982

July – sep tember

RobeRt Wyatt, leMMy,
adaM ant, euRythMicS,
StoneS and MoRe

Plaintive but
appealing
MM Sep 4 Robert Wyatt set
to launch “Shipbuilding”

adrian bootT

he ever-wonderful robert
Wyatt applies his plaintive but
appealing pipes to an Elvis
Costello-Clive Langer song
“Shipbuilding”, which gains a RoughTrade singles release this Friday (3).
Back-ups are handled by Steve Nieve of
The Attractions (piano), Mark Beddersof Madness (bass), Martin
Hughes (drums), Clive
Langer (organ) and Elvis
himself joining Wyatt on
harmony vocals. The B-side
is “Memories Of You”, anevergreen ballad penned byoriginal ragtime pianist
Eubie Blake.

72 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982

Robert Wyatt:all-star lineup on
latest single

HISTORY OF ROCK 1982 | 73

1982

ju ly – sep t ember

Publicity-shy:motörhead’s
Lemmy

Desperate publicity stunt are words
not far from people’s mouths withregards to this.
“Really? I’m sorry to hear that. (So are
we! – NME staff.) I figured we were
getting enough publicity – if anything
Motörhead have been over-publicised.
So you can put that one under the fuckin’
carpet right away.”
Whether he needs the publicity ornot, broach any topic and Lemmy’s likely
to have something to say about it.

On the single:“We did it for fun and to turn people’s
heads around. I think the punks andMotörhead’s fans are pretty polarised– us coming together should shake themup a bit. We wanted to destroy a few
misconceptions about Motörhead andabout The Plasmatics. Richie Stotts, theguitarist with The Plasmatics, is a reallyinnovative guitarist and the solo he playson the record is one of the best solos I’ve
ever heard on that type of record.”

On NME:“I’m living out
my fantasies”
NME SEPt 18 Lemmy and Wendy O. Williams record“Stand By Your Man”. Lemmy shares his thoughts
on NME, the Motörhead split… and the Nolans.

I

t’s a marriage of extremes – thequeen of American punk lobotomy andthe clown prince of terminal gross-out
home-made heavy metal. Wendy O. Williamsof The Plasmatics , with her sellotaped tits andMohican haircut, and Lemmy of Motörhead
with his gnarled rabid vocals and years ofconscientious drug abuse, decimating thesacred cow of country music and the paean toservile femininity “Stand By Your Man”.
From the other end of the transatlantic
blower Ms O. Williams tells how this made-inhell’s kitchen hit-boundsound came about.
“I always liked
Motörhead because
for them nothing wassacred and that’s how The
Plasmatics feel as well. We
met last year in New Yorkand decided to do the mostoutrageous thing we could
think of and this was it.
“The original was such asexist song, but Lemmy improved it by writing
new lyrics. Country music has always been
symbolic of conservative lunacy, especiallywith the roles guys and girls have. To me,
people should have the freedom to do what
they want.
“Tammy Wynette is backing George

Wallace forre-election as
governor of Alabama and Wallace is oneof the biggest lunatics America has everproduced, he’s for segregation and all that
shit. ‘Stand By Your Man’ has been Wynette’s
theme song for years and she’s been married
four or five times, so what the hell’s shetalking about?”
Before hanging up, O. Williams said thata third Plasmatics LP recorded in Germany
with The Scorpions’ producer was ready forrelease, and there should
be a chance to see thegroup and her not-soendearing old charms when
they come to Europe earlynext year.
Meanwhile, back in his
London record company
office chasing vodka withsmall cans of Special Brew(very effective), Lemmy
intimates that thepartnership may be renewed at a later date.
He and Wendy may go out to Nashville torecord an LP – although the likelihood of themever getting out alive seems to make thatpretty unlikely.
“I don’t know what NME are making of all
this. What do they reckon up there?”rex features“People seemto have forgotten
rock’n’roll is
supposed to
be fun”

74 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982

“I take it for granted that it’s not the
NME’s cup of tea because it’s got a bit
straitlaced of late. You look like you
might get rid of some of that, you
look like a fun-lovin’ lad. It’s getting
to be an interesting as the Financial
Times; I can’t believe it’s so boring.
It devotes a lot of time to things
that have nothing to do with music.
If I want to read about CND or
unemployment I’ll buy The Times,
it reports on that stuff a whole lot
better. The NME seems to think it’s
the conscience of the nation’s kids.”

On rock ‘n’ roll:“People seem to have forgotten rock‘n’ roll is supposed to be fun. It’s all so
serious – artistic licence and all that bullshit
nowadays. All it is, is the stuff your parents
would never listen to.”On stardom:“The best thing is being able to cash cheques
without a cheque card. I wanted to be in a rock‘n’ roll group since I was 13. I’m just living out
my fantasies – it’s wonderful stuff. You can’t
go wrong, can you?”

On country music:“Yeah, I like a lot of country music. I like a lotof different stuff – Joni Mitchell is a fuckin’
genius, ABBA make perfect pop singles. I like
Dolly Parton, she doesn’t give a shit.”

On the Nolans::“We’re mates, have been for years. The
Nolans are very funny, actually. No one evergives them credit for being human beings; tomost people they’re just four pretty faces who
sing all these sweet songs. I suppose it’s thesame with me, people get an image of you
through the media and think it’s the reality.
But if the truth were known, The Nolans arereally four feisty little fuckers.Our manager
was talking to Linda Nolan at the bar and hedropped some money on the floor and bent

Lemmy admits to being “fed up to
the teeth” answering questions about
Fast Eddie, who departed Motörhead
after the recording of “Stand By Your Man”.
He’s made friends with Eddie again, and theyjammed together at Reading. Lemmy has now
enlisted Bryan Robertson – formerly of Thin
Lizzy – as his permanent
replacement. But is there
not a danger that die-hard
Motörhead fans will feelbetrayed by Lemmy’s
collaboration with Wendy
and look elsewhere for theirenjoyment, just like Eddie?
“They don’t have to buy it ifthey don’t like it, it’s just a
one-off. There’ll be plenty
more Motörhead records
which won’t have changed
much from the old ones.
Then again, who knows?
Maybe I’ve just ruined myentire career by releasing this record.”
He opens his mouth, revealing two rows ofcracked brown and yellow teeth, gaping holes
and broken fillings, and gives a long, loudcackle. Gavin Martin

shocker:
Wendy o.
WilliamsA

dam ant, who was last week divorced
from his wife Eve after seven years, hasissued a statement denouncing the releaseof the single “Nine To Five” by The Maneaters
on EG/Polydor Records.
He explains that in 1977 he was asked to put
some Toyah Willcox lyrics to music for thesoundtrack of the film, Jubilee, in which it was
performed by a fictitious group called The
Maneaters – with Toyah as their singer. He
agreed as a favour to Derek Jarman, eventhough it was a low-budget session – and, heclaims, it was agreed that his name should
appear only as a co-writer and in no way
associated with Adam & The Ants or Adam Ant.
Adam now claims that the record is being
released in a completely different capacity,
implying that he’s
playing a major role onit, though he actually
took part only as asession musician. He
believes it to be a substandard record, andadvises his fans not tobuy it – and as he doesn’twish to profit personallyfrom ‘inferior product’,
he’ll be donating all his
royalties to charity.

Worth £30
NME JUL 10 topper Headon steals
a bus stop. He fought the law…

F

ormer CLasH drUmmer Nicky‘Topper’ Headon is to be sent for trial
on a charge of stealing a London
Transport bus stop. Topper, 26, was granted
bail at Horseferry Road court last week after
being accused of taking the bus stop – worth£30 – in Fulham Road, London, in March. He
was also charged, along with 23-year-old
Donna Gardner, with receiving a stolen
Technics amplifier, and a cassette and record
deck. Headon and Gardner, both of FulhamRoad, were committed to trial at the Inner
London Crown Court. Both were granted
unconditional bail.

NME AUG 21
Ben and tracey
list each andevery favourite

BEN WAtt
HeroesPaul Weller
Sunil Gavaskar
Kevin Coyne
Bill Evans
Orson Welles
Bob Dylan 1961 -64

Songs
that’s entertainment
The JamJust Like gold
Aztec Camera
so strange Kevin Coyne
eight miles High The Byrds
everything Happens to me Billie Holiday
muddy mouth Robert Wyattsolid air John Martyn

BooksFrankenstein Mary Shelley
Vile Bodies Evelyn Waugh
Henderson the rain King Saul Bellow
getting even Woody AllentRACEY tHORN
Heroines
Billie Holiday, Lesley Woods, Siouxsie
Nico, Astrud Gilberto

Songs
Let’s get it on Marvin Gayethe sweetest girl Scritti Politti
Until the real thing Comes along
Billie Holiday
makes me sad
Vic Godard
desafinado
Stan Getz
summertime
Ella Fitzgerald &Louis Armstrong
you’re gonna makeme Lonesome
When you go
Bob Dylan

Films
Badlands, The Misfits
Assault On Precinct 13
Payroll

Books
Jacob’s room
Virginia Woolf
Wuthering Heights
Emily Bronte
on the road
Jack Kerouac
strait is the gate
Andre Gide

HISTORY OF ROCK 1982 | 75

rocky w widner / getty, david mcgough / getty, getty

P O Rt R

ERdenouncing a new single?

ONSU MSong ‘a favour’ to
Derek JarmanAC“We used to go there quite a lot even inadam ant: urges
the mid-60s when I was in a group called
his fans to shun
The Rockin’ Vicars. We got bannedrogue single
because we wore clerical collars onstage.
We got all these letters in the papers – ‘I
invite your prayers to stop this heathen
mob coming over here debasing our religion.’“Every time Motörhead do a tour we play
Belfast. There’s so many groups don’t and I
can’t understand it. It’s fucking phenomenal –Belfast’s crowds are the best in the world. I
think people are shitheads for not playing
there – apart from the reception you should
NME JUL 3 Why is Adam Ant
do it anyway. It’s only over the bloody water.”“I used to know him for a while after he’d left
Them. I remember him sitting on a bed in ourhotel room really down in the dumps. ‘Times
are bad,’ he said, ‘times are very hard having
to work with a bloody showband, I can’t get a
gig anywhere.’ Then in two years he put out
Astral Weeks. He’s a really dirty singer, one of
the great old shouters. A bastard though.”iSt AS

EVERYTHING
BUT THEGIRL

On Belfast:

On Van Morrison:O F t HEA Rt

down to pick it up and she goes, ‘While
you’re down there…’ and his brain nearlycame out of his ear. Because The Nolans
aren’t supposed to say things like that.”

A it

1982

Partners in vinyl:
eurythmics
Dave stewart andannie Lennox

Ju ly – sep t ember“A tough number”
NME AuG 21 Introducing, from the ashes of The Tourists…Eurythmics

fin costello / getty“T

his time,” says Dave Stewart,
with a determined air and a ginger
beard, “we want everything to be
exactly as we want it to be. We feel like we’recoming out, really, coming out the closet.
And when you come out the closet, you’ve
got to have your clothes on, you know what
I mean? With ‘nay tatties on yer plate’ as they
say in Sunderland.”Right, right. But what the hell is he on
about? He’s on about Eurythmics, which ishimself and partner-in-vinyl Annie Lennox,
and he’s on about the lessons they’ve learnt
from their old group The Tourists and themasterplans the duo are hatching for the
future. Nowadays, Stewart and Lennox
amount to the very definition of a small mobile
unit – they’ve even been known to turn up forradio sessions pulling their entire equipment
in a trolley behind them. Fleeing the pressureof the band-format and of hits-at-all-costs,
Eurythmics now pursue a scheme anda dream of flexibility, self-determinationand job satisfaction. Artistically, if not yet
commercially, the approach is showing
signs of paying off.
To recap briefly: Annie and Dave emerged
gratefully from the ruins of the disbanded
Tourists (a band once popular, but not much
missed) and pointed themselves at producer
Conny Plank and his studio in Germany.
Fruitful goings-on ensued; helped out bymusician pals like Holger Czukay, and a debut
Eurythmics LP In The Garden appeared lastyear. A promising beginning it was: all
sensuous electro-mood, melody andmystery…and decent tunes. A single, “This Is
The House” followed a while ago.
But it was Eurythmics’ recent 45 “TheWalk” that suggested they’d finally cracked
76 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982

the combination – especially in regard to
Annie’s singing. The first album was intricate
but definitely low key, a reaction against The
Tourists’ strident ‘60s pop, and the vocals“were like a woman singing to herself as she
did the washing-up,” says the woman herself.
“But my voice was denying itself. It was anexperiment to sing in that unaffected way, but
it was like I was just using one colour from thewhole paint box of choices.”
The unleashed soulfulness of “The Walk”
saw her finding a way forward from that: “It
was an emergence. It really is a landmark for
us – in our development as writers, in mine asa singer. We’ve put our flag down there with
“The Walk”, and the next steps forward will
follow on from there.”
Eurythmics was financed by an RCAadvance to start with, andnow the group function
courtesy of a bankoverdraft. It’s lucky, then,that they’re “rediscovering
the joys of doing things
simply,” hidden away ina small self-built studio,with limited but ingenious
equipment. Friends guest
on recording and help out
for live dates, but
increasingly it’s down to
the two of them. They’veeven shrugged off
management.
Plans for the future
performance are wideopen: they could take ina full-blown line-up, plus
backing singers, or get
stripped back to acoustic

essentials. Freedom of option is everything.
The Tourists’ history, as they tell it, was oneof squabbles –“the relationships were suchthat if looks could kill, we’d all have beencasualties” – and of compromise. Now, theguiding principle is that both should like allthat’s put out in their name: “And that’s atough number. There’s no excuse then, you’re
responsible for what’s released.”
Annie Lennox: “In the old group, I felt likea prisoner, chained to something, like somesilly dancing doll… In Eurythmics, we
expected the music we were going to maketo be the opposite of what people who cameto see The Tourists would like. And we wanted
it that way; we wanted the danger of that.
People would just see me as that figurehead
I’d become – but they’re only seeing one
tiny aspect of you that’s
been blown out ofall proportion.
“It’s like a monster
following you around, evenin the streets, and I had to
get rid of that. This was oneof the reasons I changed
the way I looked, or why
I wore a wig. It was to say,‘That person from the pastdoesn’t exist any more. I
have a right – anybody has
a right – to change andgrow and develop. And
not be put down for it.’
One thing I learned aboutcompromising yourself toany degree is that the only
person who really pays forthat, in the end, is you.”“Anybody has aright to change andgrow and develop.
And not be put
down for it”

Paul Du Noyer

J u ly – september

1982➤ BBC’s QED
Guide To
Armageddon,featuring ex-TV
Smith Explorer Eric
Russell spending
two weeks in afall-out shelter, hasbeen rescheduled
for next Monday
and Friday showings
respectively.
Originally set to run
during the Falklands
crisis, it was thenpostponed so as not
to upset sensitive
viewers. NME Jul 24“A danger to Italian youth”
NME Jul 3 The Rolling Stones face trouble in Italy.
he ItalIans seem to have lost their marbles over the prospectof an imminent tour by pop group The Rolling Stones. Like thegroup themselves there is a belief in Italian political circles thatthe year is still 1969 or thereabouts and that Rolling Stones groupequals drug-taking, anarchy, devil worship, and smelly feet.
The biggest row has occurred in the Tuscan city of Florence where acouncil decision to ban the band was followed by street demos by
thousands of youth. The Florence council seems to have split roughly
in three directions: those on the right who sought to outdo each otherwith scare-raising stories on the nature of British pop groups; andthose on the left, particularly the Communist and Socialists, who saw
the issue as a chance to woo young (youngish?) voters.
Among the very coolest contributions was that by Mario Cristina
Fiochi, president of the right-wing Anti-Drug Coalition, who claims tohave discovered involvement by ‘Rolling Stone group’ in devil
worship, Mafia drug circles, the CIA and MI5. “They are a grave
danger to Italian youth,” she concludes.
Lead singer Mick Jagger, a member of the MCC and former dance
partner of HRH Princess Margaret, has so far declined to dirty himself
entering the debate.
So far there seems to be no threat to concerts planned for July 11 and
12 in Turin. And this is just as well, says our Italian correspondent,“since 32,000 tickets went in two days like hot cakes.”
As well as hot cakes, there are plans to release 15,000 coloured
balloons during the shows and the president of the Turin regional
council, far from crabbing at the expense, has praised the Stones for“bringing culture to an industrial city”.
Mick Jagger is 107.

T

NME Jul 3
ome tapIng mIght be killing music, but
the Rolling Stones weren’t too proud to beg
blank tape manufacturers TDK to sponsor
their German concerts. The group’s choice of
tour underwriter has caused their record
company EMI considerable embarrassment,
as they’re prime movers in the record
industry’s campaign against cassettes. EMI
are quick to point out, though, that thesponsorship didn’t signify the group’s
endorsement of either TDK product or hometaping in general. Just why a group who madea cool eight million dollars from American
T-shirt concessions should need ‘sponsoring’is perhaps a more pertinent question.

H

the big o:$50 million
lawsuit

Suing hismanager
NME SEPT 4 Big O’s royalty battle

R➤ Remaining
Pretenders Chrissie
Hynde anddrummer Martin
Chambers arepresently recording
a new single “Back
On The Chain
Gang”, their firstsince the death ofJames HoneymanScott and thedeparture of Pete
Farndon. Bassist
Tony Butler andex-Rockpile
guitarist Billy
Bremner dep forthe departed andChris Thomas is
producing. They
point out this is nota permanent lineup.

oy orbison, the ‘Big O’ of Top 20
hits during the ‘60s, including threenumber ones, is suing his manager
Wesley Rose for a not-so-cool $50 million.
The mismanagement suit, filed in Nashville,
claims $25 million in compensation for lost
songwriting royalties, excessive foreign
administration fees and tour grosscommissions, while the other $25 million is
NME Jul 24
logged against ‘punitive damages’.
According to Orbison, Rose, one of themost respected businessmen in Nashville and PR6T�NDERí
the son of Fred Rose, Hank Williams’ co-writerand manager, has been on the make since
1958 when Acuff-Rose publishing – a company
operated by Rose and country legend Roy
Acuff – first obtained the rights to Orbison’s“Claudette”, a song that became aninternational hit for the Everly Brothers.
Orbison, whose life has been somewhat
grief-stricken – his first wife, Claudette, died
➤ Patti Smith has
in a motorcycle accident and two of his sonsannounced that she
died in a fire – claims that one contract heavily
will begin to releaseweighted in Rose’s favour was obtained whilesome of the work
she has taped withthe singer was ‘severely depressed’. It is also
husband Fred
claimed that half of‘Sonic’ Smith sincecertain royalties
her retirement towere neverdomesticity in theforwarded and that
Detroit suburbs two
Orbison’s current
years ago. Most ofwife, Barbara, wasthe work was done
misled whenwith Fred’s Sonic
signing a 1969
Rendezvous Band.
The SRB, who
agreement
appeared in Britain
regarding her
several years ago as
future interest in
Iggy Pop’s backing
copyright renewals.
group, incorporated
The suit follows
veterans of thean audit of thesame Detroit scene
Acuff-Rose books,
which made Smith
instigated byfamous as one of the
Orbison last year.
MC5. NME Jul 17

BA CKN

dr

GÁÑA
��

HISTORY OF ROCK 1982 | 77

david redfern / getty, getty

mick Jagger: justcall him Lucifer.
italians confused
as to the natureof his game.

1982

j u l y – s e p t em b e r“Violence asa profession”
THE BIRTHDAY PARTY
crash land into Europe.
Their violent – sorry,“passionate” – shows
are a feast of fists, fireand noise. “Eeeech!”says singer NICK CAVE.
“There’s blood on theend of my boot.”

david corio / gettyB78 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982

— MELODY MAKER JULY 17 —ingo had felt on the outside most all his life.
At school, he avoided the grossest HM, even in thecrack marines he’d styled his hair long under his
beret and turned on after lights out to the Pistols
and Patti. When he fled his privileged post as ahelicopter captain’s batman, quit the wife and kid
in Plymouth and set his sights on self-discovery, he had little toshow for his 21 years beyond numerous tapes of the John Peel show,
memories of Rotten live, two nerve-steeling stints on the Belfast
estates and the sort of physique only a certified psycho would thinkof tangling with.
Drifting from job to job, flat to flat, he felt in aimless command of his
desired free destiny, but somehow missing his spiritual goal. Then,
one fateful night last year, he hit upon The Birthday Party, and neither
Bingo nor band were ever the same.
“I’d read this interview where this bloke Nick Cave was saying that
all English audiences were stupid, like sheep, so I went along to theRock Garden to prove him wrong,” Bingo said.
What he saw and heard that night were his road to Damascus;
what he started to do shocked even him. Stunned by their power,command and commitment, obsessed by the way their bold
confrontations turned his bottled-up tensions into fierce selfexpression, Bingo became a stage-front familiar, regularly roughing
Cave up, becoming more and more embroiled in an escalating ritualof machismo and pride. He’d force Nick to beg for release fromfrequent vice-tight grapples. He’d bite through drumsticks andmicrophone leads. He’d even been bruised and scarred by Tracy
Pew’s bass for pinning Cave to the floor of a stage at the North London
Poly. As audience expectation warped and waned with the band’s
notorious reputation, so Bingo’s role became more perverse.
“I had to force it further and further,” he explained. “The Birthday
Party lost me loads of girlfriends, but I just had to do it, had to pushfurther until, at Hammersmith Palais, I blew fire at them from thecrowd. I’d never done it before, practised a couple of days in advance »November 25, 1982: Nick
Cave with The Birthday
Party at the Ace Cinema
in Brixton, South London

HISTORY OF ROCK 1982 | 79

1982

j u l y – s e p t em b e rwith meths but still burned my mouth badly– lost a whole layer of skin inside, but it wasworth it!”Backstage, Cave demanded to meet his
maniac fan and the blistered Bingo became theband’s new minder. Love and hate are so often
the same. Fear, of course, is another dimension,
so when he stalks in the room with a furrowed
brow, shakes his head and mutters: “Uh oh!
They’re really mad out there!” you know he’s nottalking ’bout showtime at Butlin’s…
Cologne’s Stollwerck Club makes the set of
Escape From New York look like some neatly
designed suburban retreat. A disused chocolate
factory crumbling behind two 12-foot wire
fences, gutted of anything remotely plunderable, vandalised windowless
and wantonly graffitied, the harsh concrete corridors stink like urinals.
Many corners are puddled with vomit and a uniquely psychotic breed ofEuro-punk-hippy wanders around in straggling tribes, begging, gobbing
and scratching their asses.
The last time The Birthday Party played here there was trouble. Subtly
billed as “the most violent band in Britain”, they’d drawn a mangy crowdof mutants so intent on upholding the image of outrage that one of theirglue gaga-ed rabble had clambered onstage and pissed down Tracy’s leg.
Strangely enough, his head wound up split open by the machine heads on
Tracy’s bass.
Tonight looks like it’s going to be even worse. A welcoming posse ofnazi punks, anti-nazi punks and good ol’ unaffiliated hell’s angels are
scrapping outside in the refuse tip of a yard. A scarcely less volatile
cocktail of motiveless rebels are sardined inside the sweat-fungied walls,
and as one of the weary Party accurately complains: “It looks like a gas
chamber out there!”
Rowland S Howard, the Party’s tubercular poet, is pacing the backstage
cell in agitated anticipation of a hostile reception for his opening slot,

slashing feedback guitar over industrial tapes
while his sweetheart, New York punk-poetess
Lydia Lunch, screams her indecipherables.
“Two minutes at most, Lydia.”
She gestures theatrically, brushes her auburn
hair off her ring-punctured nose and coos likesome spoiled movie queen: “But I’ve absolutely
nothing to say.”“Well say that!” he snaps back halfway out thedoor. “I’ve got nothing to play!”“Well play that!” she sarcastically screams,
flouncing after him, momentarily turning toshrug a long-suffering sigh. “Honey, sometimes
you get so uninspired…”
Within a matter of minutes she’s back throughthe door, flushed and soaked but beaming. Ecstatic. What a pit, eh, Lydia?
“Yeah.”
Won’t be coming back here in a hurry?
“No, but I like to try everything once – they seldom ask me back anyway.
Did you see? Boys touched me tonight! I like that! Usually they don’t,
they’re scared I’m gonna kick them or something. Rowland! Boys
touched me! One finger first, just to see if I’d bite!”
Lydia’s brief nightly performance consists of a totally improvised 10
minutes or so ear-bashing an audience who don’t understand one wordof her babble and a frantic rendition of Iggy Pop’s “Funhouse” at the endof The Birthday Party’s set.
“I never get psyched up,” she drawls, “I just charge out on stage and say
the first thing that comes into my head.”Tonight on stage, this is what she came up with: “It would be so mucheasier to walk out and go home/Don’t just stand there/Rip it up/You’re so
uninspired/Does it hurt?/What did you do to deserve this?” Tomorrowin Frankfurt she’ll say: “Don’t just stand there,
stoopid!/Don’t you love me?/I doubt it!”Profound? Profane? Piffle? Last night in
Hamburg was a stunning success. One
NICK
punter clapped.

“It’s definitely
a clash of ideas
rather thana cohabitationof ideas”

Hypnosis
Carolyn Jones (as an alcoholicand Morticia Addams)
Night Of The Hunter (book/film, L.O.V.E/H.A.T.E acrossthe knuckles of RobertMitchum/The Preacher)“The Story Of Love”(original song – The Saints)
Raymond Chandler

getty

Deathlist
Supertramp(“Dreamer”,“Bloody Well
Right”)
Crucial 3
Stevie Wonder(“Sunshine Of
My Life”, “Isn’t
She Lovely”)
Dave McCullough
80 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982

Actress Carolyn
Jones (1930-1983)
as Morticia Addams

p o rt rEr

oNsu M

Anita
Wise Blood (book/film)
Cyrano De Bergerac(book/film)
The Stooges
Carolyn Jones
The FallEvel Knievel
Brad Dourif
Johnny CashSamuel Beckett
George Jones
Tanya Tucker (“SanFrancisco”)
Robert Mitchum
Ed “Big Daddy”
RothrowlaND s howarD
things that Make life
worth livingac

Nick cavE
Best things

CAVE&
ROLAND S
HOWARD

Anaesthetics
Lee Hazlewood (“SomeVelvet Morning” – put manic
surrealism and reversed
country & western guitars
in the American Top 40)
Manhattan Island (loudvolley of jazz drum fire)“Gloomy Sunday” (A song.
American radio promotes
the practice of suicide)
The Bark Tree (book by
Raymond Queneau)“After The Fireworks”(song by The Tuff
Monks/Emotion/Dirt/
One fine damn mess)
Chuckle busters(anything – writing,drawing, etc)
Klaus Kinski (andall other practising
vampires)“Walk On By” (Song.
Pain and anaesthetic)
Adulterers Anonymous(book by Lydia Lunch)“The End” (song by
The Doors. End of
this list)

ist as

NME apr 4 Birthday party loves and loathes.

o f t hEa rt“One fine damn mess”

a it

he organiser delivers
a breathless bulletin: “Thereis much fighting in front of
the stage.”“Good,” Nick Cave sneers. “I hope thepigs kill one another.” The organiser
flees. Lydia started to explain that 10
minutes is not only enough but“perfectly too much” for her to express
herself, and that she’d like to write abook called “101 Concepts Of Art” forother people to implement so shewouldn’t have to put herself out turningtheory into practice. Bingo wanders byjust in time to catch her decadentswansong…
“Honey, I’m the laziest girl in town.”“But you’re always mentally active,”
he chides.
“Yeah, my brain’s always working
but my body would rather dosomething else, like lying down.
Ten minutes is too much – I think
I know when enough is enough.”
The organiser rushes back, flushedwith panic: “Would you go on stage now
PLEASE! They’re all going totally wild!”“OK, OK,” Nick snarls, annoyed.
“Maybe they’ll all piss on us tonight
like the scum that we are. Hey! We can’t
go on yet – there’s too many punk girls
licking the microphones.”
No matter what the obvious
associations and dubious attractions of
the Teenage Jesus, 8-Eyed Spy and 13.13
founder touring with The Birthday

TParty, no matter how deeply they share the same
macabre fascination for death and self-indulgence, nomatter how little their audience seems to mean tothem, the crucial difference between Lydia Lunch andAustralia’s most intoxicating export since Foster’s isthat The Birthday Party don’t give a hoot about enoughbeing enough.
The gnarled and brooding “Kiss Me Black” is barely
beginning to unfold its dark paranoia when Cavewhiplashes his boot into the crowd and a girl reels
back, nose bleeding. As he cowers beneath a showerof fists and attempts to make his apologies, a barely
human lump of muscle and mange slips a claw insideits coat. Bingo’s uncoiled; up and on him like a startled
cat. He struggles back stage left, moments later,
brandishing an eight-inch piece of metal pipe.
Meanwhile, Tracy’s getting riled. Three dopesmoking Mexican girls are gobbing on the ex-con’s
fresh-polished slacks, tarnishing his brand-new
spurs. “Beer, beer. Give us beer,” they demand.
Suddenly, his patience snaps and a flurry of kicks
catches one of the girls in the thigh. He winces as his
privates grind against the penknife he keeps in his
front-trouser pocket to make his meat-hustling
swagger look better equipped. She gobs back, unhurt
but visibly shaken that a simulated performance should
break the bounds of ritual and explode into real pain.
And the Party play a blinder. Nick collapses andwrithes in epileptic fury. Tracy struts and sweats, neversmiles. Rowland glowers like an animate death’s head.
The spittin’ image of a deranged door-to-door bibleseller who sleeps in his suit, Mick Harvey plays with
one hand in his pocket, carves out vicious chords withthe other. Phil Calvert smiles and drums like a butcher.
ack at the hotel, they demand a late-nightinterview that turns into a squabble. Where
they agree, they sound weary.
“I’m afraid you’re flogging a horse that’s very long in
the tooth on this tour,” Nick begins.
“To be honest, I didn’t want to do this tour. Most
nights I get something out of it, though – even if it’s
only exorcising my anger.” This is from Rowland.
“I’m surprised you’re still together” – this fromthe hack.
“So am I,” Rowland concludes.
August 5, 1982:
A second interview requested the next day, to clear
on stage at The
Venue, London
up the carnage from the first, only contributes further
to the public misinterpretation of a widely
Here’s the drunken bones of the first night’s confrontation.
misunderstood band.
Nick: “Personally, I think there’s still far too much humour in our music“Our public image is inaccurate in that it takes the very obvious
and I’d like to make the stuffiest, stiflingest, depressingest record out.”
aspects of the group – which I suppose is inevitable – and makes it seem
Tracy: “Would you? … Well you can get yourself a new bass player…
like that’s the only thing to it.” What Rowland is talking about is violence
and, more specifically, the way Nick and Tracy say and do things for effect
I wish you’d told me in private.”that the others often regret. “Personally, I think our band is a real battle
Hack: “Does working with Lydia alter the way you work?”
Lydia: “Well, they always wear my makeup.”of personalities,” he says.
Nick: “There may be some influence… that’s yet to be seen.”“It’s definitely a clash of ideas rather than a cohabitation of ideas,”
Lydia: “Yet to be obscene.”
Nick agrees.
Hack: “What’s your link?”“The band’s just a little monster we’ve created that we don’t seem to
Lydia: “Brilliance… No, I didn’t say that… Extreme passion.”
have any control over any more,” Tracy sneers.
Hack: “I hear you’re going to be doing an album with The Birthday Party“It’s like the nerve reaction when you pull off a spider’s leg and it keeps
as well as writing a book of 50 one-act plays with Nick?”on kicking…”
Tracy: “That’s for us to know and you to find out, buster.”I think back to the morning when Rowland, Mick and Tracy exchanged
Hack: “OK, tell me about your new album then, Tracy.”punches over who should sit in the front of the van and wonder if
Lydia: “I think Junkyard is the best album ever recorded inthere’s any point in The Birthday Party doing interviews at all.
the history of the world.”“Not a lot,” muses Phil.
THE
Bingo: “I second that.”“They’re so often misinterpreted either by the reader
Nick: “It makes a stand for violence for its own sakeor the writer… just like when we play. It’s inevitable for
BIRTHDAYand violence as a profession… It’s irresponsibly
any group that hasn’t got a really formulated idea of
PARTYviolent. Eeeech! There’s blood on the end of my boot.
what they’re supposed to be …”
The confusion and conflict, the inter-band
I just think, occasionally, maybe tonight, we can be
MiMUlb"if DM1
SAO Off0
bickering that brings this group to the brink andirresponsibly violent… so there!”
DEAD JOE (3.08)
gives it that edge, will eventually blow it apart.
Hack: “Do you feel answerable for it?” »
1-

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TNTM.MI\N.IS

HISTORY OF ROCK 1982 | 81

rex features

B

1982

j u l y – s e p t em b e r

haircuts make a very astutesocial observation.
NC: They’re very scary,anyway!

Vietnamese Rose The Young
And The Free LunA

0

The Birthday Party backstageat The Venue, May 15, 1981:(c/wise from left) Mick Harvey,
Phill Calvert, Tracy Pew,
Rowland S Howard, NickCave“Every record happens to be really bad”
MM NOV 27 The Birthday Party review the singles – two of which pass muster.
PROLOGUE: Consider the
written word struggles to convey
sarcasm. Peruse accordingly.

Carly Simon Come Upstairs WEA

david corio / getty, ebet roberts / getty

TRACY PEW: What was that?

The Church Unguarded Moment
CArrErE

NICK CAVE: We’re basicallyproud to be Australian, but that’s
totally embarrassing to us. We’redesperately in search of someother groups who can help us –not that we’re here to promote
Australia or anything – but itwould be nice if some other
Australian groups came up withsomething that was interesting.
Apart from the fabulous
Go-Betweens and the equally
fabulous Laughing Clowns, I hatethem all. The Church are justhelping to promote ill-feelingtowards Australia.
ROWLAND HOWARD: This
record does have the remarkablehonour of being about the worst
written song I’ve ever heard in mylife, particularly as the singer,
Steve Kilbey or whatever he’s
called, considers himself to be
the best songwriter in Australia.
Ha! They’re just an offensively
smug Tinkertoy group!
TRACY PEW: Australia really
loves them and thinks they’regonna pull Australian rock out ofits ditch. What a fallacy! Thissounds like a high school garage
band’s composition played bysession musicians.

The Damned Generals BronzE

Lene Lovich:
responsible fora “trail of slime”

82 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982

TP: The self-appointed originalpunk-rock group have produced
another gem, totally worthlessand completely piss-weak.
NC: Puerile drivel. They’re abunch of squirts and we’ll fightthem any day! No, don’t put that…
TP: We’ll be in a hell of a pickle
if you run your mouth off.
RH: I think you
should put all thatin the review.
TP: We’llarm-wrestle
them
anyway!

Lene Lovich It’s You, Only You(Mein Schmerz) Stiff
TP: Thoroughly unoriginal.
RH: That’s not entirely true,
because this is the sort of thingthat she came up with in the firstplace. It’s just that everyone else
has ripped her off in the twoyears she hasn’t done anything.
NC: I admit she did come up withthis trash in the first place, so
she’s responsible for the trail ofslime, but in any case, this is a
no-punches-pulled, enthusiastic,energetic piece of bullshit.

Anomy TVC15 innEr LAnDSCAPES
RH: Musically, the equivalentof someone scraping theirfingernails on a blackboard.
NC: We hope they have a headon with a bus.

Bananarama Cheers Then
LonDon

TP: A very amateurish singing
group who should get lessons
from... what’s her name? That
woman who taught the Sex
Pistols to sing. Musically itsounds like Visage, which isa terrible thing.
RH: Midge has got a lot to answer
for, hasn’t he?

Trevor Herion Kiss Of No Return
imPEriAL

Screaming Dead Schoolgirl Junkie
SkuLL

RH: Trevor Herion doesn’t live up
to his name!
TP: But this Glaswegian punkrock group with very strange

NC: Single of the week, nineout of 10. A delightful andbeautiful song. The guitar riffrefers back to certain country
things I like…
RH: It’s also the only vaguely
positive record in the bunch;
all the rest of them are just so
incredibly morose.
NC: Yes, it seems to bereasonably unpretentious
where the halitosis of British
rock, which accounts for the
majority of what we’ve heard
today, is the fact that it totallylacks three things that makea great record: a) a sense of
humour b) a sense of irreverence
towards music and c) that theperformers have, if not theirbrains, then at least their heartsin their records. This song seems
to have all those things.
TP: We threw our panties andhotel keys at the record player!

Panther Burns I’m On This Rocketrough trADE

RH: Groups like this really don’t
live up to their reputation forbeing vaguely exciting andsupposedly wild. For Christ’s
sake, it’s so predictable; it justhas a bit of feedback at the start,
then it’s a real let-down. Alex
Chilton isn’t on this, which would
probably account for it. Alex
Chilton is one of the very best
people alive.

Kid Creole & The Coconuts
Dear Addy iSLAnD
TP: A repulsively packaged
Christmas cash-in. If you ever
get to see Kid Creole perform,
they’re so rancidly stinking dull…
RH: The most repulsive thing
about it is that it’s supposed to beclever, hip trash and it’s really justbad trash. It offends me that they
impress other people.
NC: I personally have neverthought they’ve done anythingworthwhile. They’re a shitty
group. Kill Coati Mundi.

The Beat I Confess go fEEt
RH: It sounds like they’ve tried tobe adult, which is a shame.
NC: What single are we up tonow? The 24th or so? I mean, we
have a reputation for ournegativism, but it just seems tome that we’re being forced to be
negative about every single wehear. How can we help it when wethE birthday party

have 24 pieces of
total shit placed in
front of us? How
do you come up
with anything
positive? This
record’s justrubbish. I
wouldn’t buy it ina fit. No, I mean, go out and buy allthese singles, kids, and then listen tothem and see if you don’t agree withme and my backing group!

Boney M Going Back West AtLAntiC
NC: Abominable.
RH: Not nearly as good as “Rasputin”
or “Ma Baker”. It’s one of theirhorrible acoustic hymns.

Siouxsie And The Banshees
Melt PoLYDor
NC: I’d like to point out that whover
did the cover… Gil Thompson… hasplagiarised one of Gustav Klimt’s
better paintings. On the cover of“Slow Dive” he’s rather clumsily
stuck Siouxsie’s head on top of thetorso and…
TP: …replaced the innocent face withSiouxsie’s eerie monster head.
NC: Look in your Gombrich – you’ll
see the picture intact. The “Melt”
cover is a similar liberation. I admire
her taste, because I quite like thepainter myself, although thisversion’s rather cheap, supermarket
art nouveau, chocolate box... I’m
particularly upset about the “SlowDive” cover because, when I hadn’t
developed properly, I did a paintingof this for my matriculation. I mean,
I admit to plagiarising the same
painting, but I put my own scary
monster head on it. I’d just like tosay, I did it much better than Gil
Thompson – in fact, it got me an “A”.
This is not to say I have anything
against Siouxsie, because I think she’s
probably quite a nice person.
RH: I just wish she’d stop reading
Stephen King books.
MM: What about the record?
NC: What about it? I think that wasa really good review!

Criminal Class Fighting SystemhELL

NC: We lost as many braincells
listening to it as they possesscollectively.

Rock Goddess Satisfied Then Crucified(A&m) (B-SiDE)

TP: Possibly the only British
new-wave heavy metal groupworth listening to. This is the firstpiece of good ballsy rock from the
movement for a long time. It’s funny
and it’s actually loud.
NC: Jesus Christ! I know what it’s
like! They’re obviously talking about
sexual encounters and, personally,

I understand that
title. “Satisfied
Then Crucified”– I understandthese girls!
RH: You canrelate to girls
with pimples on
their wrists.

Dr Hook Rings mErCurY
RH: Interesting how all Dr Hookrecords are about fucking, basically.
TP: Yeah, they seem to have hit upona formula of soft-porn, middle-of-theroad music for promiscuous adults.
NC: We would like to say right now,that we’re totally in favour, total
advocates of this new movement in
American soft-porn music. We’re
totally interested in providing
healthy sexual attitudes, basically– in particular amongst the young,because they’ve definitely gone off
the rails!

The Cure Let’s Go To Bed fiCtion
RH: It’s just the vocal track off any
Cure song over a dance beat. Robert
Smith only writes one song thesedays anyway. It’s sadder than I would
have imagined. This is starting todepress me now.
NC: I can’t believe this record.
Perhaps we’re getting old orsomething, but I just can’t cope,
I just can’t relate to it at all. I thinkI’d better hang up my larynx. I don’tknow why groups do this sort ofthing. Maybe, after five years of
being in a band, one gets a bit sickof living in bedsits and so forth.
TP: It’s called crossing over.
EPILOGUE
NC: Personally, it doesn’t surprise methat every record here happens to bereally bad, apart from the two we’ve
pointed out. Really, for the last two
years, the only British group that I’ve
thought are really worth anything are
The Fall, because they seem to havea kind of mystery about their music,
a sense of humour and a healthy
attitude. They obviously care somuch about their music that it
doesn’t occur to them to release
anything that isn’t true tothemselves. They just seem to haveso much charm and personality,
whereas everything else seems to
be made by people who haven’t got
much personality of their own or areso deeply rooted in British new-wave
traditions that they can’t escape.
This pile of bullshit doesn’t upset
me. In fact, I’m elevated by thissession; it only makes me feel more
comfortable in knowing what The
Birthday Party is doing is right.
RH: I haven’t bought a record for two
years, and I have no intention of
buying a record ever again at this rate.

Nick: “Personally? No… People get killed quite often atconcerts by people like the Rolling Stones.”
Hack: “So one more person getting killed doesn’t matter,is that what you’re saying?”
Tracy: “Well, if people come to our concerts and fight, it’s
nothing to do with us, stupid! We haven’t made them fight.”
Hack: “Yes, you have. By behaving the way you do andplaying music that’s irresponsibly violent, you incite them.”
Tracy: “Who’s irresponsibly violent, you fuckin’ asshole?”
Hack: “Nick said you were.”
Rowland: “Nick was being irresponsible.”
Nick (wearily): “OK, I take it all back. I didn’t mean it.”Hack: “I think you did.”Tracy: “You fucking crud!” (He ups and storms out.)In FrankFurt, a cooler explanation is forthcoming.
Lydia, in attempting to articulate the soiled ins andouts of her latest release, 13.13, her formidable andvolatile output and why she never develops a project, puts
a painted finger on the pulse of the Party’s problem.
“Just because you make a piece of work that takes a certain
stance doesn’t mean you’re advocating it. I mean, when I’mup there wailing, I don’t expect other people to start howlingin the background. I think The Birthday Party are passionate
as opposed to nasty. True passion may or may not besomething you’ve experienced, but it can get so exceptionallyheated that it turns almost into an act of violence.
“I never take into consideration how people are gonna
react to what I write; if people can’t get into the joke, thenfuck ’em! I do what I want to do and hope it’ll upset all thepeople who think they know me from the recordings before.
I’m not like the Banshees – doing the same thing for five
years to please other people. I express myself, so why should
I repeat myself? I get bored to death.”“Everything I do is exceptionally momentary. I don’t feel
I’ve ever needed any band for more than 10 songs and, if
people think my ideas aren’t developed fully enough, theyshould reform the band and do it themselves. I please myself.”
So why externalise your stuff at all?
“It’s nice to think about fucking, but isn’t it better toreally fuck?”
Nick echoes her sentiments a couple of hours later: “I think
there’s a certain irresponsibility about the group in that we
can incite a violent reaction or incite an energy into a crowd
and just leave it at that without giving the crowd any aim or
purpose or channel to focus their energy and violence upon.
See, you’re assuming our main objective’s stimulation – it’snot. Our main objective is to record for ourselves.”
The artistically fortuitous, morally fascinating, mutually
appreciative and musically stunning marriage of Lydia
Lunch and The Birthday Party lurched to a halt at
Frankfurt’s Batschkapp and headed back to Berlin – theband’s new base – to finish Lydia’s next quickfire project andcomplement her duo single with Rowland – in your shops
now! A brutal version of Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood’s“Some Velvet Morning”, it typically strips even the mostfanciful innuendo down to sordid reality.
Backstage, Rowland slaps a punk for throwing beer in his
face and Tracy floors the same punter outside for harassing
Minnou, the tour manager.
“See! Me and Tracy knew he was a bad sort,” Rowland grins
in the back of the van. Mick turns to me somewhat sheepish
and sighs.
“Personally, I find it offensive and embarrassing if either
the audience or the band starts throwing punches or kicking– and I find the idea behind it offensive as well …”
I remember Tracy’s earlier comment that bands whose
members are prepared to sacrifice their personal identities
to toe a corporate line are “disgusting spineless fish” and it
occurs to me that, for The Birthday Party, art and life are one
and the same. They mean the noise they make and the noise
they make means business. We live in dangerous times.
Steve Sutherland •HISTORY OF ROCK 1982 | 83

1982

4

j u l y – s e p t em b e r

The Who: stodgy
onslaught fromthe dogged
old warhorse

waring abboTT / geTTY

THE WHO
It’s Hard POLYDOR
What’s hard? Life? Being
Townshend? Or breathing life
into The Who – an old institution
with no idea of its place in thecurrent scheme of things?
Whatever the title’s portent,
this album sounds like it’s
struggling through a variety ofdifficulties and overcomes noneof them.
I could say The Who’s new LP
improves on the previous one –Face Dances – although, frankly,
that’s not saying an awful lot.
Where the previous effort was anaimless, random scrapbook ofvague and half-realised musings,
the present collection is at leastconsistent in addressing itself
more or less to a single theme:
how to live now, in the teeth ofhorror, without comfortableillusions or self-deceit. Trouble is,such is the material’s scrupulous
attention to honesty thatyou wonder why they don’t
acknowledge the final façade,and admit that The Who havebecome the band out of time.
With the exception of a couple

ALBUMS

REVIE
W

Roger Daltreyof tracks –must havesignificantly, the1982
enough career
ones where The
options open, as
Who aren’t playing
well. The one thing
like The Who –he shouldn’t be doing is
Townshend’s songs are allmischief to the stuff that
but thrown away, tethered toTownshend’s turning out
a formula they’ve plainly
nowadays. The songwriter’soutgrown. The group is a dogged
preoccupations now are nuclear
old warhorse, loyally serving out
oblivion (“Why Did I Fall For
its time in harness to a blinkeredThat”, “I’ve Known No War”), anddetermination: rock will stand,reconciling public faces withright up to the day it keels overprivate truths (“Eminence
backwards. Or else they’re
Front”). Where the lyrics area monument, grand and proud,
subtle, all their
but now caked in pigeon-shit andsuppleness isignored by the new generationTA
crushed by thewho populate the public square.
need to tie each
Either way (for Pete’s sake, andsyllable to thisRoger’s, and everyone’s), there
lumberingmust be other avenues found.
tumbril of tradThere are three John Entwistle
rock. Where thesongs, all sturdy enough, butmessage isdoomed to second-rate-hood in
sensitive andcontrast to their company – evenself-doubting,though (especially as) they makeit’s demolishedawkward attempts to blend withby the demands
it. The bass-man should go offof one of theand relax and jam with Joe Walsh“great rockto his heart’s content. Drummer
voices”, which is
Kenney Jones could look
more suitedelsewhere, too; he’ll not starve.

(strait-jacketed?) to bronzed,
brazen chest-beating.
For all I know, Daltrey may
be genuinely aggrieved that
“People are suffering… hungry…
lonely…” (“Cook’s County”); hemay sincerely be worried by thedestructive aspects of macho
role-playing (“A Man Is A Man”).
But is he the man to say it? It’s notjust him: the whole group, Pete
included, feel obliged to play in
a way that pulls the carpet fromunder them. Only the neat
melodic invention of “A Man Is A

L

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1911br84 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982
THE

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Paul Du Noyer , NME Sep 4

Talk Talk
The Party’s Over Emi
A couple of OK 45s aside (andyou’ll find them both included
here) The Party’s Over marks
the debut proper of Talk Talk,a young quartet formed aroundthe songwriting of singing
Southender Mark Hollis. It’sa decent stab at classic modern
pop – very orthodox in structure
and very ’82 in sound – and it’s
nothing that TT need to beashamed of. It’s a frustratingrecord, just the same, because
for all their ambition, the grouparen’t really there, not yet.
Talk Talk’s strongest attributeis the way they’ve got of knocking
out good tunes. There isn’t oneof these nine tracks withouta class melody line to its name,the “Talk Talk” number itself
being a good example. And thatability suggests that the band
will give a good account ofthemselves before they make or
break. On the other hand…
The line-up dispenses withguitar, relying on voice andwashes of synth to carry eachsong. But instrumentally, theresult is slightly mushy and grey,
badly lacking some hard edge orbackbone. In other worlds: lush,
but limp. Mark’s vocals fit into
this problematic picture all too
well, being smooth and soft andlost inside the mix. He’s also got
this technique of croaking“Ooergh-Ooergh” at momentsof emotional climax, sounding
more like he’s being strangled.
There’s an impression ofwhinginess about this stuff,
borne out by lyrics that are
generally earnest anddepressed, and sometimes giveto E.J. Thribb-style poetry. If
there was some toughening up
done all around, more aggression
and drive, and if the range ofmoods to be tackled could be
wider, then it seems entirely
feasible that Talk Talk might
produce work with a genuinely
epic stamp to it. As it is, the torch
songs flicker but dimly. There’s
beauty here, but I’d love to see it
blazing. Paul Du Noyer, NME Jul 24“Nice song”

MM SEPT 4 Paul Weller
gets some pleasure out of
hating the latest releases.

T

HESE dayS, it’S not so muchpicking out the classics fromthe good records, as moretrying to find just one goodrecord. I feel sorry for journalists
after sorting through this week’s
releases; no wonder most ofthem hate music. So would
if I had to listen to this shit
week after week.
These are only a small
proportion of records I
listened to, there wereothers but I couldn’t facethem. The sleeves looked
like 1968 was back, the groupnames confirmed it. The music
isn’t worth mentioning. Why nottalk about something else?
Week in week out, year in etc
the same old cunts release theirnoise upon us, the papers haveto fill another page and so it goeson. And this is the Golden Age
Of Pop? Do me a favour. Still next
week looms large, thank God.

SINGLESW
REVIE

SINGLES
Rip, Rig And Panic
Storm The Reality Asylum ViRgin
Can I take this opportunity to
say how underrated the Pop
Group were/are? They were
doing the funk fing years ago
and a 100 times better than the
new breed (heh heh!). Anyway
this is nice – the beat don’t drop
and the horns are good. I’m a bit
fed up with 12-inch records at
the moment, but fortunately
this is not a record. Oh good.

Grandmaster FlashThe Message SugaRhiLL
For me the Sugarhill label(along with Greensleeves) has
been the most consistently
good music maker in recent
years, and this carries on thefine tradition. The words willstop it getting daytime airplay,
but The Message could still give
G. Flash a chart hit; I hope so.
This is the first record I’ve heard
for a while with some guts andmeaning (without being
meaningful). Single of theweek, definitely.

The Laughing Apple
Participate autOnOmY
From Scotland, yet anotherridiculous name. But therecord’s good, “Fight For

1982

Your
Right” thesinger sings.
I think they’refrom Scotland, anyway.

The Cars
Think It Over WEa
WAAYHAAY! A new wave
group! Glad to see the lads stillwear skinny ties. This is thegroup OGWT raved over andthe music papers gave a pageor two to a couple of years back.
The advertising slogan says
“Shit music for cunts!” Gota nice ring to it, actually.

Simple Minds
Glittering Prize ViRgin
Modern hippy music; if they
wore cheesecloth and clogs you
lot wouldn’t look twice at ’em.
I still prefer Johnny and the Self
Abusers. Now there was a band,
what? Oh sorry, not to mention
them, right, right.

The public gets
what the public
wantsÉ

SquireGirl On A Train hi-LO
The original mod group, wewere very influenced by Squire,
great, great. Yeh, tell it like it is.
Actually they’re just anotherwaste of good spunk.

Men Without Hats
I Got The Message StRatik
Oh I’m so robotic – I tick andtock – and I stare – etc, etc.

Sweet Pea Atkinson
Don’t Walk Away ZE“Usual thing, swirling synth
opens into a pulsating handclap
bass drum and away you go”…
courtesy of Wish You Were
Here. Oh sorry that was the B
side. The A side is much nicer;
I like this, nice song. I hope it’sa hit, really.

Black Slate
Sticks Man
tOP Ranking

Another in the long line of the
new wave of hippy music. I’ve
heard more melody coming out
of Kenny Wheeler’s arsehole.

Very underrated
group. I thinkthey’re great. This
one is a standard
workout, but pisses
over most that don’teven reach that.

UB40
So Here I Am DEP. int

Sex Gang Children
Beasts iLLuminatEDSounds like Stevie Wonder.
I had to check the sleeve again.
More ‘funky’ than anything
they’ve done before, thesinger’s quite good.

Oh very mad – I mean reeaallyout on the edge baby. Funny
old name innit?

Depeche Mode
Leave In Silence mutE

Rockers Revenge
Walking On Sunshine LOnDOn
MM’s very own soul brother
Paolo Hewitt raved about this,but I’ve also noticed he drinks
a lot – is there a connection?
This is the UK release of very
inoffensive US disco (D Train,etc). The London sleeve isbeautiful, though.
HISTORY OF ROCK 1982 | 85

erica echenberg / geTTYMan”, and the odd moment ofsexual tenderness (“One Life’s
Enough”) offer respite from anotherwise stodgy onslaught.
Even if Townshend’s recent
solo LP has its duffer music(the numbers unerringly chosen
as singles), on the whole itsuggested a more productive
course for him to take: namely
his own, his very own. Sod
democracy for a lark, Pete. I likeyou better playing Hitler.

1982

j u l y – s e p t em b e r

October 10, 1982:
Kevin Rowland
fronts Dexys
Midnight Runners
at the Shaftesbury
Theatre, London

86 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982

“A pure
sound”
Kevin Rowland explains the sound(and the look) of the new DEXYSMIDNIGHT RUNNERS. “People saythat to us – they tell me that I overdo
things, that I go over the top. I don’t
fucking care, because that’s how it
is, that’s how I want it to be.”
— NME JULY 3 —he rain pours down and the traffic piles
up along London’s notting hill Gate as Kevinrowland and myself make our way throughthe grey afternoon looking for a place to havesome light refreshment and continue theinterview which had started the previous day.
so we’re just walking along minding our own, not reallysaying or thinking too much, when there’s a loud banging froma shop front on my nearside. hunched over a cup of black coffee
at a window seat sits a familiar figure. Without really thinking,i automatically nudge rowland. “Look, there’s Van…”Thinks – Van!!? What am i saying?
“Christ! it’s Van Morrison.”
if it had happened in a dream it would havebeen weird, but as it is, i’m still finding what wasa purely-by-chance meeting hard to believe.
i mean – Van Morrison; i haven’t had his records
off the turntable since Christmas, i’ve just spent myholidays in northern ireland so i could see three of his
shows and there he is just sitting there.
Within a few minutes he’s talking away, openly andin good humour. Just talking about his work and thisand that like someone i’ve known, albeit vaguely, all
my life.
Morrison’s involvement with rowland – althoughnever actually consummated on records – dates È

david corio / getty

T

HISTORY OF ROCK 1982 | 87

1982

j u l y – s e p t em b e r

back to before the recording of Dexys Midnight
Runners’ debut LP Searching For The Young Soul
Rebels. Rowland wanted him to produce the record,
and it got as far as Van coming to see the group in
rehearsals, making his apologies and leaving.
Recently, Rowland again made contact and sent
him a demo of two tracks from Dexys’ second LP
Too Rye Ay; they were “Celtic Soul Brothers” and“Jackie Wilson Says”, the latter one of Morrison’s
own songs.
“Celtics” aroused the man’s interest, and he’s
now very attracted to the freshness of the newstring-based acoustic Dexys format, so much sothat it’s possible Rowland and Morrison will work
together. Indeed during the course of our brief
encounter, tentative arrangements were madefor Van to visit a studio where Dexys are demoingsome new material.
Although he never actually asked, I never told
him I was a journalist. Morrison doesn’t dointerviews unless he retains the copyright on thefinished article, so it’s fair to assume he’s suspiciousof writers’ motives. And I must admit that I still
have doubts about whether or not it was ethicallycorrect to start the article the way I just have.
But, hell! Van Morrison! I couldn’t believe it.
As well as making music – live or on record – thatblows nearly everything else around far far away,
September 9, 1982:
Rowland has in the past shared Morrison’s
Helen O’Hara andsuspicion of the press. The conversation
Kevin Rowland at
he has with me is his first official
Diamond Soundrehearsal studios
interview (with the dreaded British
in Birmingham
music press at any rate) for almost two
IIF. C11:1:17C SOCI.
4
RROflIER,
years. Why?
pissing about, things like dedication and craftsmanship were
“Simply to promote my records. I wantmore than welcome. But they were qualities to be worked with,publicity for my records,” he says calmly
not talked about.
but bluntly. “Two years ago was
The vindication came in November when the groupdifferent. I’ve changed quite a bit sincepresented the astonishing Projected Passion Revue over threethen. It was important to me at that timenights at London’s Old Vic Theatre; a show which, according to
not to do interviews; it was important to
Dexys aficionado Adam Ant, should have been seen “in every
what I did then. It’s a good job I did all
town in the country”.
those things or I think the music would
The PPR was a riveting evening of entertainment. It washave suffered. But there was lots ofstructured in a traditional showbiz (as opposed to “rock”)
disadvantages as well (laughs), because
style, but with a content that was at times frighteningly
they sort of got an open hand and could
dynamic. Perhaps its only remote precedent was almost 20
present us the way they wanted.
years previously with James Brown & The Famous Flames’“I don’t think of it as a big deal; the fact
revues at New York’s Appollo Theatre. But really there are nothat I’m doing this interview now isn’t important. Anyone who thinks
comparisons to the near-cinematic force and phenomenom ranging
that is kidding themselves; it’s fuck all really.”
from frustration to tenderness, from lust to passionate resolve.
From the raw punch and incision of their first single “Dance Stance” tothe lusty celebration of their latest single “Come On Eileen”, Rowland’s
Dexys Midnight Runners have seldom made anything less than GREAT
exys are just about to release the new LP Too Rye Ay, whichmusic, and regardless of the frowns, the essays, the image-associations
features the Emerald Express fiddlers and a body of songs
and character assasinations, that’s what really matters.
written over the past two years.
There’s a passion and force that runs through music like “I’m Only
Surprisingly, considering the group’s separatist approach, the LP is
Looking” and “Let’s Make This Precious” which stabs and pounds and lifts
produced by Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley – who also produce
you up the way music, truly life-affirming music, should, but seldom does.
Madness – but then that’s because “they were the only ones who said
Following the release of Searching For The Young Soul Rebels in thethey’d do it”. Personally, I’ll be surprised to hear a better LP all year (apartsummer of 1980, the first lot of Dexys did a runner, Rowland released
from the one released by that small man with the Belfast accent that I met“Keep It (Part Two)” – his favourite Dexys single – and put a new groupon a rainy day in Notting Hill)…
together. “Plan B” – a furious gale of positivity and determination; one
Kevin Rowland is now 28; he didn’t start making music (with hispart “Come Round Here (I’m The One That You Need)”, one part “Lean On
brother’s C&W group) until he was 21. Born in Harrow, he left home at 17,
Me” and five parts sheer resolution and inspiration – was unleashed but
travelling extensively and working in such places as Clacton, Glasgow,
failed to chart because EMI Records withdrew support when the new
Aviemore and Liverpool.
group walked out of the label the same week it was released. The success“It wasn’t like a student going on a summer holiday, I just really enjoyed“Plan B” should have had went to the inferior “Show Me”: the group’s
the idea of wandering around. It sounds like a terrible cliche, but you
debut for Phonogram and their first hit in a year.
don’t half get a good feeling just wandering around and not knowing
In many circles, Dexys became scorned, and it was easy for even thewhere you’re going. You don’t know what lies ahead of you – it could be an
most diehard fan to scratch his head and wonder just what the hell theyadventure or something, it’s a really good feeling.
were up to.
“Like in Liverpool I went from one extreme to the other. At first I was
They could seem pompous, even ridiculous at times. Not because theliving with this group of people who were sort of like hippies. Well, they
qualities that they, and particularly Rowland, based their faith in wereweren’t anything else, dirty and dropping acid and listening to Hendrix
irksome; far from it. At a time when most modern music was simply
all day. Actually, I quite like Hendrix, but I enjoyed winding them up. So

brian cooke / getty

D

88 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982

dexys midnight runners

they’d put on a Status Quo record or something and say, ‘Yeah Quo, manthey’re really, y’know.’ And I’d sit there and nod and say, ‘Yeah, but Kenny
are really good as well’, and that freaked them out. They couldn’t see it
was all the same thing.
“Anyway that came to an end and a few months later I was wearing a suitand managing a shoe shop in the city centre.”
Right now, Rowland is wearing dungarees, drinking tea, smiling a lot
and he’d admit he’s much easier to get on with than he’s ever been. Twoyears is a long time, so we’ve both got plenty to talk about.

It’s taken a long time for the LP to come out and there are four singles
on it. Is it frustrating not to get the songs out a lot sooner, and are you
selling the listener short?
We fully intended to record the record this time last year, but the biggest
problem we had was finding a producer. I’m such an incredibly slow
writer anyway; I could never just pick up a guitar and write a song. Each
one takes about a month or two months to write. I have one of these little
recorders and I go around with it, taping ideas into it all the time andwriting ideas in a little notebook… It’s all part of a continuous process.
But I certainly don’t think they’re instant and they have to be out rightaway; I never get that feeling.
And I must admit I have absolutely no conscience at all about bringing
singles off LPs. I think those songs are right for that LP; they all go
together, with the past two years and what’s gone on.
The record company didn’t want to put “Liars” on the LP, because it
makes it over 46 minutes. But it’s on there because it fits in. We spentages on things like the running order and the space between tracks. It’s
important when the mood changes that it changes in the right way;things like that have to be really right for it to sound good.
the LP is credited to Kevin rowland and Dexys Midnight runners.
Going by recent publicity pictures, Big jimmy and Brian have left
the group…
It’s more a question of working with a small nucleus of people, and it has
been for some time. Jimmy and Brian will probably work with us again,
but it will be more on a session basis, as it will be with most of the people
we work with. I think the idea of groups is almost old-fashioned now.
There’s been too many of them. They all just go the same way andbecome really shallow, useless things. I just think it would be betterto find a different way of working.
We should have done this a long time ago; it’s better to have a small
nucleus, and not have to worry about organising eight people. It’s aburden financially paying out wages and it’s unfair to them because
they’re sitting around half the year while I’m writing songs. They’ve nevereven tried to get session work, which is what they are going to do now.
Their loyalty has amazed me, because they stayed around without any
real success to speak of.
How did you meet the emerald express?
I saw Helen one morning at a bus stop just down
the road from where I live. She was carrying a
violin case, so I started talking to her. I’d wanted
to use strings as far back as the last group, but it
never really worked out. Anyway she and Stevecame down to rehearsals and started playing,as simple as that. Her background is basicallymusic college.
What inspired the three Projected Passion
revues at the Old Vic last year?
Well, there’s lots of reasons. I can’t just say one
thing that gave me the idea. There was The
Intense Emotion Revue which we did withthe original lineup in 1980. Y’know, those six
weeks of hell on the road, just going roundplaying everywhere.
Oh, like a tour?
Yeah, fuck, well what else was it? That gave
me some of the ideas, because I was so fed up– I really wanted to put on a good show. I was
getting ideas but on the road they just get
scrambled and I thought, “Fucking hell, thisjust isn’t working”, y’know. Going round those Tiffany’s places, it was
no good at all. It was just arguing all the time. I was driving the audienceaway at that point, totally.
If you’re playing Tiffany’s or the Lyceum or places like that, the audience
are paying in and getting shoved around by bouncers and you can’t geta drink at the bar or anything. Then you get thrown into your seats, if
there are any. You just get treated like a prick. Who wants to go to thoseplaces anyway?
It’s a really horrible atmosphere as well; before you go into those places
they already have their own atmosphere set and there’s nothing you can
do to change it. I think if there was a group with a strong personality, theywouldn’t have any chance of putting it over because they already have thehorrible personality of the place fixed before you go in.
Also I do want to put on good shows, really good shows. Not bullshit, butsomething really good.
When I interviewed you two years ago you talked of changing the faceof rock music. Hardly due to Dexys, but the mode (an apt word) of themusic has changed. What do you think of it now?
What’s changed about it? I think it’s worse than its ever been. It’s just shit,y’know. People say we’ve got the best going now and everything’s great
and this country – ooooh, ain’t it fantastic, the way everything here
moves so quickly? I think it moves incredibly fucking slowly. They say
we’re years ahead in England; there’s always something happening andthen six months later… there’s something else.
And it’s just shit. I mean that synthesizer thing has been done to death.
It’s time somebody put up something different. That’s all you get on theradio; I just don’t like it – it’s incredibly fucking boring.
You read the music press – well, I try to; I buy one every week, usually
the NME – and I leaf through it and I try to read it, but when I get halfway
through an article I just have to put it down. The way musicians go on
about their music makes me sick.
And the way it’s written! You just get the same thing over and over andover again, and you get the idea that the writer doesn’t actually believe
what they are writing. And when you go to see the group or you hear themand you wait for this great swirling sound or whatever to overtake you andsweep you off your feet, then you know it’s insincere. Too many people arejust writing about nothing, I suppose.
I’m just fed up with people coming up to me and telling me the likes of
ABC are a good group.
Martin Fry’s got some good ideas.
They might be a good comedy group or something; maybe they should
develop that angle of it, I dunno.
Do you spend a lot of time thinking about your group?
Nah, not that much, no more than anythingelse. I’ve got other things more important to me.

“I’m just fed
with people
telling me thelikes of ABC
are good”

Dexys Midnight runners have gone throughthree different “looks” – how have they allcome about?
I thought it was really funny at the time,
because the media and lots of people sort oflooked at us as Yorkshire miners or navvies orsomething. When in fact what it was, was not somuch The Deer Hunter as Mean Streets. It wasa very spiffy look, very Italian with the little’taches and… (clicks fingers)… that hot, sweaty
thing that surrounded the music at that time.
I felt it was a very smoky image.
and the next one, I thought it looked great but
where the hell did it come from?
Again I think it was just right for the music. It hada physical look about it as well with the boxingboots and those sort of trousers. There was alsoa religious feel to some of the music, so the hoods
looked a bit sort of monastic. And the ponytails hadthat sort of discipline that came over with it.
you placed a lot of emphasis on the physicalaspect of the group last year. Was it similar to È
HISTORY OF ROCK 1982 | 89

1982

j u l y – s e p t em b e r
December 3, 1982:
Dexys appear on
Channel 4 pop show
The Tube, performing“There, There, My
Dear”, “Let’s Get This
Straight”, “Celtic Soul
Brothers” and “Plan B”

NEVIN

using dexedrine when the group began, that same sort of alertness
and clearheaded feeling?
(Laughs) Yeah, it was actually, though I think it’s better to do it without
any, y’know. But it was very important last year, running and all that. It
definitely helped the spirit of the group. The togetherness of runningalong together just gets you involved. It gets that fighting spirit going.
We used to come into the rehearsal rooms in Birmingham still sweatingfrom running, and there was all these other groups there and it just put usa million miles away from them. You realise you have absolutely nothingin common with them. It isolated us a bit more, which is what we wanted
at that point.

itv / rex features

Is it important for you to live the lifestyle outside the group?
Yeah, though we all falter sometimes. That’s the only problem, we’re all
only human (laughs). But yeah, it is very important because I’m not justinterested in one thing, I’m interested in things that go right across theboard, everything should project something. Everything from theclothes to the music should all tie in. And that look did suit last year,
those Projected Passion Revues and everything. And this…(indicatessemi-gypsy garb) …suits this year.
How do you explain this Celtic business. Is it part of your background?
Well, it is from a long way back, but not in any great way. When I say itsuits this year I mean us; I don’t mean it suits everybody else, though
I hope it does.
I’ve always liked songs like “Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young
Charms”; my mum used to sing it when I was a kid and she’d had a drink orsomething. And I must admit I quite like the idea of being opposite towhat’s going on at the time. I think it’s a good place to be and what we’re
doing is very opposite to what’s going on.
I also feel it’s a natural thing for us now to go totally acoustic, noelectrical instruments whatsoever. I don’t like to use words like puritan
music, because I’ve gone on about that already. But these are theinstruments for it, y’know – a pure sound. I feel a lot more confident now
90 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982

NOW AND

zvs

of
MIDNIGHT!RUNNERS

than I did two years ago, about
my music and about everything.
I almost know where I standwhereas before I was really waryof everyone, drawing up
ridiculous barriers.
I remember the sleeve notes of“There, There My Dear” read,“Old clothes do not a tortured
artist make.” Is the new look
not slumming it a bit?
These are my best clothes. You
think they look scruffy, do you?
Nah, I’m only joking. Again it
just feels right for the music.
These are great clothes, they
feel great. You go on stage inthese and it just feels right tobe playing “Burn It Down” inthat new way.
Also there’s a slightly comicaledge to these, with the trousers
being baggy, and I really likethat. Everybody else is dressing
up sort of strait-laced and wecome in wearing these and it’s
like, y’know, here we are, a bitof hoedowning is evenpossible.
But I don’t want to make toomuch play out of this being
our Celtic thing. I think I did
that before with “soul” andpeople say, “Oh they’re justripping off Otis Redding and
get it totally fucking wrong.”
I don’t really think this is a
Celtic thing now, it’s just us.

You’ve always had a strategy
for the group?
Yeah, but things have had tobe changed. I think we’ve made a lot of mistakes and a lot of things could
have been done better. The plan for this year was to release “Celtics”, havea hit with it and quickly follow it up with “Eileen”, but the first part of theplan didn’t work. I hope “Eileen” is a hit – I really want our records in thechart, otherwise it’s a waste of time. I wouldn’t keep doing this forever; I’dfind another way of making a living.
Y’see, I fucking know our records are good, I don’t need encouragement
or reassurance. I know that they are better than the other stuff that isaround and I want everyone to know it, not just a small clique of people.
Do you think people have to come round to your way of thinking?
I don’t, y’see. I know what you’re saying, but I think we’re reallycommercial and very accessible, I really do. Now more than ever, though
I never really accepted the criticism that Dexys Midnight Runners werea bunch of gloomy twats who made really depressing music. I think a lotof what we’ve done has been really strong and uplifting.
Y’see, I never had to sit down and think, “This group’s going to becommercial or it’s not going to be commercial”; I never thought that.
Because the music I like is good tunes and words that get something over.
What sort of music do you listen to?
I don’t listen to much music. Nina Simone a little bit, Ray Charles vaguely– the predictable ones really, I suppose. Van Morrison… Van Morrison
more than anyone.
What did you think of James Brown in Birmingham earlier this year?
There was some moments there, I enjoyed it, but some of it was too noisy.
But when he was on his knees singing “Prisoner Of Love” and they were
all at the side egging him on, I thought that was really great because it was
getting through to people.

dexys midnight runners

People say that to us, they tell me that I overdo things, that I go over the
top and overplay things onstage. I don’t fucking care because that’s how it
is, that’s how I want it to be.

control him.” That makes me sick. I think that it’s good to frighten people,
to take them up, then really knock them and take them down softly andget them every way you can.

Would you say as a performer your interest is in human beings – howmuch they can be hurt, how much they can feel elated?
That’s an academic way of putting it. I dunno about analysing it in thatway. I just know that it feels right to put over feelings. I don’t like to use theword emotion, but that sort of expression is important. And taking it toextremes, because I feel those extremes.
It’s like when we go on stage, the first couple ofsongs are always faked a bit. I think you have todo that to get yourself really going. Then after
a while it becomes absolutely real. As soon as I
play “Tell Me When My Light Turns Green” I lookup and I don’t have to think about anything else.
I just know that it’s there. And it takes off fromthere and there’s no faking in it. There may becertain set things that you go through, but it justbecomes real.
I think there’s lots of things we’ve nicked offentertainers, because there’s more than a casualapproach to what we do. We’ve taken the wholeshow and the idea of presenting a show, andI suppose I just judge it by myself. I say, “If I was
sitting in the audience, what would I want to see in there? How would
I feel if I saw someone doing that?” I think you have to please yourself,
because if you tried to please everyone you’d end up not pleasing anyone.
I just think that if you’ve got people in a theatre the chances are there andyou can present them with something a bit different.

Do you think Dexys are misunderstood?
Yeah, definitely. Like when I say that it’s not any great thing – like we’rereally misunderstood, you pricks. I’m not saying that, it’s just a fact – weare misunderstood. Like, they think it’s bullshit, that I’m telling lies.
Y’know, what’s all this projected bollocks? I think a lot of it’s anger, but
I don’t really blame people for getting that
impression. But I do like the things that gowith the music; the whole idea of a group andtheir music is a bit boring, you have to havesomething built around it.

What’s your relationship with the audience?
Well, to compare the two things, that’s what
was so horrible about the last group. Like,
when the first group started we used to get
all these Madness and Specials fans andthey’d be there Sieg Heil-ing and shouting
for “Geno”, and it was so fucking useless,I’d just end up arguing with them.
But now I really respect our audience,
I really do. I think we’ve got a very
intelligent audience.
I’ve never been interested in breaking
down the barriers between the audienceand the group thing. They’ve come in to see
and that’s what we say to them – come in,pay your money and we’ll entertain you.
There’s a tendency when playing ina big hall for a group to play to the first 200
kids, and we’ve always tried not to do that.
We’ve always wanted to get the people atthe back as well, get everybody and justpull them in. Rather than take it to them,
have them come in.
I like to think of it as a celebration, but a bit
inspiring as well. I like to move them, reallymove them. Grip them, really grip them –they should come out feeling quite tired.
Like when you go to see a good film you get
really involved with it and you come out
feeling drained afterwards.

And those essays in the music press, did they
help you get understood?
Probably not. I’m not going to justify it. That
was what seemed right at the time and I enjoyedit the way that people reacted to it all. But wewouldn’t do the same thing now. I had plans at
the time to do a lot more, but the group split up
and that put a spanner in the works.

Why did the first group split up?
I think I was asking them to perform impossible feats, I wanted thepinnacles of achievement. It was a stupid situation, because I’d feel
frustrated if they didn’t come up with what I wanted and they’d feelstupid if they couldn’t get there. Before, I think the problem was we’dkick out in a lot of different directions and people would just get the force
of one thing. I think now the ideas and the music are more concise andmore clearly stated. È

The post-Too -Rye-Ay lineup:( back, l–r) Helen O’Hara,John Edwards, Seb Shelton,
Kevin Rowland, Mickey
Billingham; (front, l–r) “Billy”
Adams, Steve Brennan

You don’t play a character on stage – doyou think that threatens the audience?
Again, it’s hard to say not being in theaudience. I think I’d probably find it a bit
threatening if I was in the audience, and I
think that’s good. For one thing it’s a whole
lot more honest. I can’t stand the shit people
talk about the likes of Ziggy Stardust. You
know – (mock reverential tones) “Bowie
invented Ziggy and then Ziggy nearly took
him over, became so big that he couldn’t
HISTORY OF ROCK 1982 | 91

j van houten / rex features“I quite likethe idea ofbeing opposite
to what’sgoing on”

1982

j u l y – s e p t em b e r

getty

Right through the group, you seem to have based it on ideas andattitudes which mark what I’d take to be your own lifestyle orworld view.
Yeah, but differently now because that’s one of the reasons the first groupsplit up, because I’d based it around my lifestyle and I’d already been
living in it before I met the group. I was really hated around Birmingham
and I used to revel in it. F’rinstance, take your friends The Au Pairs. Well,
I used to write on their posters, things that would get them really annoyed
like “Jane’s got big tits” or “I fucked Lesley last night, signed Kevin
Rowland”. And they’d come along and go, “That’s just what I’d expect.”
I was just playing up to their stereotype of me. I don’t think I’m a hardnut
at all, but they think I’m a working-class thickie, so I was only too happy toplay up the image for them. I just used to think of the most disgusting
things I could to get them really annoyed.
Because those people, they just can’t see. They go on about the British
Movement and the National Front and how everyone who joins it is evil,
but they just can’t see for one second why anybody would want to joinsomething like that, because they’re so far removed.

McLaren had said a couple of things about us, and personally I haveno respect for what he does, but we were just using him to get our feelings
across to EMI and it worked.
I always thought “Show Me” was an odd song for you to have written,
but “I’ll Show You” on the new LP sets it in perspective. A much morehonest way of looking at “the kids” than most modern music.
Those songs were meant to be all one song at one point. “I’ll Show You”
was going to be the B-side of “Show Me”, but I thought the tune of “ShowMe” was fucking useless. I hate it.
But the words are just from personal experience. I went back to see how
the people I’d went to school with had grown up – the kids I thought weregreat. You probably had them in your school – real flash characters who
had all the clothes and all the girls would always be after them. They werealways the ones who’d have the first sex and they’d tell you about it. And
you’d see their fags, their lighters and their watches and you’d think, “Well,when these blokes grow up they’re going to really do something great.”
Then you see them a few years later and they’re ice-cream men or
something, or a lot of them have had real problems because they weresuch big stars in the environment of the playground that when you takethem out of it they don’t know what to do.

There are rumours about what went on at EMI while you were there.
Did you go through a lot of hard times?
I don’t mind all that. Anything I did was the thing to do at the time. I’m not
And the ones you think would sink are making something
saying what I did was always right. I did loads of stupid things, like theway I used to argue with EMI Records.
for themselves?
I just look back to the time now and wonder how
I would have reacted to some prick coming into myoffice shouting and kicking things over, and I can’t
Kevin Rowland
really blame them. I’d probably have a different
holding a copy of
attitude if I was there now, but at the time it was
Dexys’ second
fucking pandemonium. It was like I knew that I was
album, Too-RyeAy, in July 1982
good and I couldn’t understand why they weren’t moreinterested, why they couldn’t see what I was doing was
better than the other stuff they had around.
Y’see, we came up with The Specials and that wholething and people thought, “Oh yeah, here we go – it’stime for the soul revival. We’ve had The Specials doingska and here they come with another load of old songs”,
and they wanted us to wear suits, when in fact it wasnothing like that.
I also wanted to do it a different way, and it was likethose things with the press – I really enjoyed watchingpeople’s reactions. When we started in ’79, The Specials
would come into our rehearsal rooms in Birmingham
and really wanted us to sign for their label, but I didn’tlike the idea at all – I just told them to fuck off.
Then at the other side of town you had The Beat and
UB40 learning as fast as they could to get on 2-Tone.
When all these groups came through, I think it mighteven have looked as if we were copying them.
Anyway, with EMI at the end we just really wanted
to get out. Paul, our manager, stayed up every night for
two weeks looking through a copy of the contract until
he came across an option that they literally forgot totake up. If it wasn’t for him we’d have never got out of it…
But, I don’t know, we pulled a few stunts that had madeus real unpopular.
We stole the tapes of the LP, but that was much earlier– that was really fucking crazy, stealing the tapes of theLP. But what I’m really talking about is Paul grabbing
hold of McLaren, because he was their golden boy at thetime, and saying, “Hello, Malcolm”, and then justcracking him in front of all the EMI blokes. That really
put us down in their esteem.

92 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982

dexys midnight runners

have said that that song sounds dead phoney. But thetruth of it is, that was definitely genuine. Other times
it may have been phoney to a certain extent, butpeople say they want real, raw passion and when you
present it to them they don’t really want it.
That was born out of a lot of trouble with the old�group, that horrible tour and a combination of other
NIIIMIF(�WIAtiVk1�ft\�.MII/Nl(.1ITkL�\IN�
tilNi1(.I11IHI1.
.
things – some of it was written about a similar period
earlier in my life. It was definitely recorded at the
The new version on of “Liars” on the LP is muchright time, because I hadn’t spoken to anyone in the group for three or
better – who are the singers on that?
four dates and when it gets like that, it gets sort of tense. So when we wentThat’s the Sisters Of Scarlet. We just phoned up an agency and they sent
into the recording studio I poured it all out to the microphone, I wasthem. One of them is Katie Kissoon – you remember Mac and Katie
talking to it. People have said the vocal style is exaggerated, but it was
Kissoon? And one of them is Joe Brown’s daughter
definitely genuine.
It was funny getting them to sing “Liars”, because they didn’t really know
I think the worst thing we’ve ever done was “Love Part Two” on the B-side
what they were singing, but they really put everything they had into it. I
of “Celtics”. We had some studio time booked, and although I was really
was telling them to sing harder, because at first they were a bit like foxy…
fucked because we’d done the demo for “Eileen” the day before, I said I’d go
black… chicks, singing very soft. I said, “C’mon, you’ve gotta give it some ofin and do it. I forgot the notebook that I had with all the ideas in it and I triedthat old Southern stuff.” And I don’t know if they were taking the piss, but
to remember what they were, but it just came out really embarrassing.
they started to wave their arms about and shimmy a bit. It worked, anyway.
It’s funny, isn’t it? But I always think that that lot don’t
really know. They always get somewhere, but it’s
probably more through determination and things
like that. I suppose they do creep up later and they get
wiser. But I’ve always had a soft spot for the guys inthe song, because they’ve still got it in them and it’s
there naturally.

Your music and stage show are a celebration of human qualities, but
it’s a celebration which seems rooted in a discipline and belief in the
power of the human will.
Definitely, that discipline and self-will thing is important, but it comesover in different ways. It may be more relaxed now, but there’s still a very
fierce attitude. It’s almost like a religious thing, that’s the connection forme more than anything. Not religion, what it is, but the ideas that comefrom it. The way they go about gospel music and that, I love it. The way
they get so involved with it.
Working themselves up to a state where something else takes over?
Yeah, definitely. I went to an Adventist church, I think it was, one Sunday
in West Bromwich. I just met the bloke walking
down the road, a 40-year-old Jamaican fella.
He grabbed me by the arm and said, “I’m going
to church, where are you going?” It was likesomething out of a dream (laughs). He said it
was one of those churches where you do a lotof singing and dancing and clapping and I
thought, “Yeah, great, I’ll go.”So we got there and there was only about 20
people in a really tiny room and they’re all goingbananas. They did the Lord’s Prayer and it was
just loads of spontaneity and singing.
Last year, I think that was in our music a lot.
A sort of religious fervour, the real proud sort ofstaunchness of it. That’s what I like about it.

You spoke about the audience earlier and their importance to thegroup. Where does the intense emotion circle come into all this?
Well, that’s a different thing. It’s just an idea to make it better than an
ordinary fan club. Everyone who is in it has everybody else’s address,
so they can write to each other or just make friends, meet somewhere
perhaps. People may have something in common… Well, they have one
thing in common because they all like the group.
I’m not in it myself, but in one of the newsletters you referred to it as
The Intense Knitting Circle.
You get the problem that people think it’s music to commit suicide to
and that we’re all really depressed, which is just not true. I get lettersfrom people telling me not to commit suicideor letters that are sort of dead sympathetic tome. I just think… well, some of them are justfucking nutters.

“That wasreally fucking
crazy, stealing
the tapes of
the LP”

Is it based on a belief in God?
Well, no. What I think it was, was more a belief in what we were doing. I do
believe in God, though, but that’s a different thing.
That feeling of religion does carry through; like “Until I Believe In My
Soul” definitely has it. It’s a basic fucking belief in God, but what I’m reallytalking about is a feeling you get. I mean, I haven’t really got any religion –I was originally a Catholic, but I’m far from that now.
It’s not something you can bring down to one thing, it’s more an
instinctive knowledge. I can’t say why I believe in God, I just do. And it’s
not that I was brought up that way, because that stopped a long time ago.
The realisation of the soul – that’s what’s imporant, that you have souland it can be used positively.
Like you can do lots of different things but eventually you realise there
must be something else?
Absolutely (smiles). And that’s what “Until I Believe In My Soul” is about.
About growing up and looking up to brothers or older people and thinking
that they’re sussed and wanting to be like them. Then when you get there
you find there’s nothing there, fuck all. So the back-up singers go, “That’s
all there ever is?” And I go, “Yeah, yeah, yeah”, because I believe there has tobe something else. And the realisation that you have to find it for yourself.
Do you have a favourite track out of all the songs you’ve recorded?
Well, it varies. I liked “Keep It (Part Two)”. Lyrically I thought it was myfinest hour, although the production leaves a lot to be desired. People

When the group started you locked yourselvesaway and listened to old Stax music and stuff
like that. The material you’re demoing now
has a much more “folk” instrumentation. Is
there a similar process going on?
At the time of the first group it was definitely
necessary to listen to all those old records, likea fucking brainwashing process almost, but
now I think it’s a more natural developing
thing. I got a few folk albums as a reference, butthey weren’t really that much good to me.
I like the idea of putting strict boundaries around what you’re doing.
Like there’s loads of groups and they’d rather have a free run. But I think it
stretches you a lot more when you decide you’re only gonna do that andbuild up the walls, because working within that does really stretch you.

What are your other interests apart from music?
Various. Like everyone else, I watch a bit of telly. There’s some good
stuff on TV, despite what people say – some of the plays. And the comedy
programmes are good, like Bilko, and I really like Mind Your Language,
though no one else I know does, but then my friend plays the caretaker in
it. I like to watch athletics on TV; I’d rather watch athletes running roundthe track than watch a fucking group, because at least the athletes are
stretching themselves. Feats of determination are definitely an interest.
Is it important for you that your music should keep changing?
I think it has to change every year; I want it to be ever-changing and everchallenging. Not just the music but the group, the whole fucking thing,always challenging and a little bit threatening at times as well, to kickthings up once in a while, and just be… good, always good.
What’s the value of Dexys music for you?
Well, it’s only fucking music; we just try to do the best we can and use as
much care as possible. It’s no great world-shattering experience. Like I’ve
said before, it’s like a bricklayer laying bricks; you just use all the skill andcare that you can and try to be the best at your trade. Gavin Martin ¥HISTORY OF ROCK 1982 | 93�Endearingeccentrics:
Talking Headsput
bumson seats in
WembleyArena

94

1 HISTORY

OF ROCK 1982TALKING HEADS

Strangely fun

HAT FEAR OF music-or of ticket prices-which is
keeping attendances down seemed to have struck
again when Tom Tom Club took to the stage of a halffull Arena, suggesting that T. Heads were over-ambitious
booking two nights at Wembley, instead of the accustomed
smaller venues. Not so, though: by mid-evening there wasun-bummed seat to be seen, which wasbarely an
gratifying because here are two acts with more to
recommend them than most. Even if I'd muchrather they'd done more dates, in more intimate
places, both the Club and the Heads could havesent very few away disappointed.
"On On On On" came Tom Tom Club withthat very number, taken, like the bulk of thisbrief set, from their first album-the notable
exception being a distinctly gimpy version of"Under The BoardwaIV,to use a Bananarama-ese
term. The Tom Toms, as you must know, are theoffshoot group of the Head husband-and-wife teamof drummer Chris Frantz and bassist Tina Weymouthsupplemented by Tina's sisters Lani and Laurie (theWeymouth trio in cheerleader-style mini-skirtuniform)
plus Tyron Downie (keyboards), Steven Scales (percussion)and Alex Weir (guitar).
The rhythms are crisp;the mood is light and upbeat,a relaxed alternative to Talking Heads' more fractured
artiness and sinister depth. "Wordy Rappinghood"and"Genius Of Love" wrap up the performance enjoyably,
the latter featuring a nice interplay between the gruff
brown vocals of the back-up players and the pink prettinessof the frontline singing trio ofTina, Laurieand Lani.
In total, Tom Tom Club's music is intelligent without
demanding too much of the listener, and tonight it madeforanappealing kind of fun.
The contrast with Talking Heads, as it turned out, wasn't
as severe as you might expect, for the head) iners'set was anamiable affair in a strange way-right from the opening"Psycho Killer", which downplayed the song's manic
intensity, coming on like an almost-breezy reintroduction
between old friends. Throughout the show, David Byrne'sfamiliar, neurotically normal stance is endearingly eccentricrather than disturbing, and the immediate point-ofcomparison isn't so much Anthony Perkins as Basil Fawlty.
It's a more compact lineup than that on last year's
iveLP, comprising the crucial four
segment of the recent I
plus Weir and Scales (of Tom Tom Club) plus Dolette
McDonald on backing vocals and RaymondJoneswho
plays keyboards, freeing Jerry Harrison fora largely
guitar-playing role. This is good news for anyone like me
who feared we might be losing the essential disciplineand structure of the sound, in favour of vaguer and overextended rhythmic grooviness.As itturns out there's only
one lengthy passage, leading into "I Zimbra", where theband surrender to a protracted funk work-out, and getboring in the process. That aside, matters are kept
agreeably economic, strengthened by the group's winning
match of the fluent and the clipped.
Even a full-size set can't find room for certifiedTH
classics
such as "Building On Fire", but we do get "Cities" ("the, uh,only song we do that mentions London," mumbles a bashful
Byrne) and "Once In A Lifetime" and "Houses In Motion".
It's "Life During Wartime", however, which I ifts the show toa climax, picking up a momentum which takes us over into
the encores of "Take Me To The River" and "Cross-eyed And
Painless". New material is kept to a minimum-surprisingwhen you recall how long it is since we had any new material
from the whole band -and doesn't get introduced by name,anyhow. From the overall health of the show, though, there
seems no real reason to fear for Talking Heads' continued
worth and promise for the future. PaulDuNoyer
HISTORY OF ROCK 1982 195

BRIAN RASIG/GE

NMEJULY24

"Guilt
your

Their hit single "Golden
Brown" ("not about
ests theyheroin...")suv
may have mellowed,. NO
THE STRANGLERSA,, ,as combative as ever,discussing motorbikes,
martial arts and the occult.
"Ifyou're not careful,
become people who dabble,"says Hugh Cornwell.

onour "SEPTEMBER 11--

MID THE BRIGHT motes of fairydust caught
floating in the spotlights of 1982's Top Of ThePops,
the recurring shadowcast bythe murkypresenceof The Stranglers has been one of the year's morebizarre chart events.
Butthere it has been: one camera cut awayand

a DJ's plastic smile awayfrom the raging limbs of this week's chart sensation(is itagroup, is itadance troupe, is itateam of Moroccan tumblers?) and theold sewer rats are glowering out like the elder brother and his morose
friends atateenage birthdayparty.
Even more freakish, instead of slugging out the mawkish sweatythud that
their customaryreputationwould demand, the quartet have been piping

melodies ofalmost saccharine sweetness. It's been hard to avoid thesuspicion that there's some sinister sleight of hand atwork here, some darklake troll lurking beneath the innocent rippling waters.

Certainlymanyhave dredged the lyrics to Hugh Cornwell's mesmeric"Golden Brown" (incidentally, the group's biggest single success to date) forsome concealed meaning, and as for"Sweet Little Girl" -well, would you let

your sister tell Jet Black where she was going?
Just as Cornwell denies anyparticular meaning to "Golden Brown" -"justa fewwords strung together"-so both he and Burnel denyanycold-blooded
calculation in the shift of Stranglers music from the icygrip ofBlackAndWhiteto the tuneful ease of their recent hits. Theysee
it as part of continuing evolution. "The last four or five singles

haven't sounded like The Stranglers, according to most people,"says Burnel. "T hey think there has to be one sound, but we'vev

always changed."-most of them
Now with a back catalogue of some seven LPs

chart successes-and a fair litany of hit singles, The Stranglers
are on one level one ofthe mostunlikelylong-term survivors

96

I HISTORY OF ROCK 1982

�
É.

�

A

IR

1982

j u l y – s e p t em b e rof the late-’70s upsurge. They started older, already into their maturity,
and with a music that was cited as having more in common with The
Doors’ ’60s expeditions than the nouvelle vague of the time. “We neverconsidered ourselves really part of what was going on,” said Burnel, “norout of it.” In fact, the mainstream rock traditions of most of their output
have helped maintain The Stranglers’ momentum and appeal – neverreally in fashion, and therefore never really out of fashion either.
No one talks much of the Doors connection these days, long sincedisplaced by the group’s later musical wanderings, but the acoustic
leanings of “Cruel Garden” and “Sweet Little Girl” may well have been
inspired by a re-examination of another West Coast ’60s phenomenon,
Love – or at least, as much is intimated to me by their publicist. “Actually,”
says Cornwell, “most of the music that interests me goes back 300 years –Vivaldi and stuff like that.”
Both Cornwell and Burnel ascribe good relations between the foursome
as one reason for their longevity. “A lot of bands start off as mates atschool,” says Cornwell.
“Then the egos start coming out and they find they’re not such mates
after all. With us it was the other way round – we didn’t know each otherat all when we started playing and then we became friends.”
Have you also handled the business better than some of yourcontemporaries?
“No, it was because we didn’t handle our business better that drew us
closer together. We had this terrible period around the Men In Black LP
when we had so many misfortunes, disasters, over a period of 18 months
that we came to the conclusion the only people we could trust were
each other.”

What have you got from it?
“It’s helped me from becoming a down-and-out lush. It’s easy to geta flabby body and a flabby mind…”
Like most musicians?
“They’re a mess. And they’re a mess mentally. They pack up their ideas
and their bodies.”
These days he spends a lot of time in France. His parents live there andhe goes out with a French girl.
“When I grew up I insisted on being called John ’cos I was ashamedof being French and of my mum speaking in a broad French accent andbeing kissed in front of the school gates. Inevitably kids want to have a
go at you.”
He’s been able to draw on his French heritage musically, notably on “La
Folie”, his personal tour-de-force on the album of the same title, a sombre
piece of Gallic angst, intoned in impeccable Francais.
“I worked on that a bit to get the accent perfect. There’s some kind of
intellectual snobbery in New York arts circles about people wanting to do
things in French and it can sound hammy.”
The French music scene is looking up, he tells me – he produced Taxi
Girl, one of the top groups in France. In general, though, “the French
are still insecure about modern music… at least there’s a situation
where a lot of people want to make music, probably for different reasons
than people in England. It’s relatively easy here to have a hit, to be a
bandwagon jumper. You can be totally obscure and still be this week’salternative chart buster. A lot of people in this country want to makemoney first of all.”j. van houten / rex featuresIn their encounters with the gentlemen and ladiesof the press, The Stranglers have variously abducted
them, left them stranded in the midst of foreign
wastelands, taped them to le Tour Eiffel, and otherwise
berated and insulted them. To speak personally, I havealways found Hugh Cornwell, the group’s tall and somewhat
angular guitarist and singer, an acerbic but agreeable
quantity, possessed of a certain English diffidence andunderstatement. Now in his not so early thirties, he still
looks like an eccentric chemistry teacher.
Jean Jacques Burnel, though, still looks like trouble. Not that
he is anything but urbane and intelligent at our encounter(I meet the duo separately) – but there’s a lithe, alert assurance
to his physical presence – as well as a proven ability to take out
hostile Australian policemen with a few well-aimed karate
blows – that indicates a man unlikely to be daunted by theaggression of others.
Both men are in a confident frame of mind, optimistic about The
Stranglers’ future, which at present includes a new contract withCBS Records, pursuant on their departure from EMI. Cornwell:“We both realised it wasn’t working and we came to an agreement
to leave. They really got us by mistake, when they took over United
Artists, our original label.”
While EMI plan an autumn release for a Greatest Hits
compilation, the group are currently ensconced in West Country
studios for their CBS debut. Cornwell will also be making a stage
debut as the raconteur and presenter of a dramatisation of
Hollywood Babylon, magician and filmmaker Kenneth Anger’s dirtdishing tome on the Californian entertainments industry. Burnel’s
own solo career remains muted since his solitary Euroman Comethventure stiffed out. More pressingly, he’s been banned from riding
his beloved Triumph Bonneville, the result of driving the wrong
way down a one-way street, on the pavement, during a bomb scare.
“And I told these two motorbike cops that they’d stabbed theBritish motorcycle industry in the back when they bought BMWs,”
he recalls fondly.
I ask him about his reputation for trouble.
“Guilty, your honour.”And violence?
“I’ve always had a compulsion to fight,” he admits. “Not so muchnow. I’ve cooled down. Sometimes it’s a question of honour,though; there are occasions I may have done the wrong thing.”
Now 29, he’s still committed to the martial arts he took up 10
years ago: “I’d like to take up Hapkido, because it’s more artistic.
Karate is more macho, it’s not so subtle until you get higher up.”98 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982

Jean Jacques
Burnel: “Theidea of thenation state has
run its course”

the stranglers

Does the Euroman concept still beat strongly in your heart?
“Yes, even though it gets a lot of knocks because people identify the EEC
as Europe and can’t distinguish a grand ideal from the price of butter
tomorrow. The idea of the nation state has run its course and I thinkcontinentalism is the next great step forward.”
He’s in favour of a United States Of Europe, and remains unmoved byprotestations that we are already surrendering our cultural and political
identity to a centralised Euro-monolith.
“Mind you,” he says, “the idea of a country
lacking such confidence or self-respect thatit seeks to emulate another culture – that’s
appalling. I once said ‘Americans have nobrains’ just as a wind-up job, and it worked
wonders. Our A&M contract was ripped up justlike that. American record companies have thistrip of ‘getting involved artistically’ andinterfering all the time.”
The conversation drifts to the subject ofpolitics and The Stranglers’, uh, politicalprofile. Though they’ve been consistent intheir support of CND, the Prisoners’ Rights
movement and other pressure groups, they’ve
always avoided any rigid commitments toideology. Sure, they’ve eulogised Trotsky, butequally Burnel has also evinced his passion for Japanese author andextreme right-winger Yukio Mishima.
“I find the idea of left and right rather absurd, that particular division.
A lot of people think we’re fascists ’cos direct action – like hitting someone– is meant to be fascist because it’s not done by committee. Action seems
to have been sewn up by the right.
“Then there’s us digging Mishima. He was an ultra-right-winger, but hepersonified action, and will.”A dazzling writer, certainly, but how can you hold an outright fascist
like him as some kind of hero? All that worship of the Emperor, themilitarism…
Burnel is quite prepared to admit that many of the Japanese author’s
ideas were frightful, “but he wasn’t just an old jingoist, he had guts, heactually set himself standards and lived up to them. He did what hesaid he was going to do and committed hara-kiri [ritual suicide bydisembowelment] after he’d reached what he considered his peak, after
his body had passed its prime… Another reason why people think we’refascist is because we wear black, which means right wing to most people.”

Kevin Sparrow died on Christmas Eve, victim of drug and alcohol abuse.
The group’s management split with them. A tour manager died aged 24,
of cancer. The quartet were locked in the jail of the southern French
burgh of Nice for the best part of a week. All their gear was stolen as they
entered America for a tour. Crucial tapes vanished, things fell apart…
Burnel wrote up the whole catalogue of misfortunes for Strangled
magazine, the group’s own publication, and of which they are
rather proud.
“A lot of it is to do with the occult,” says
Cornwell when the subject of the Men In Black israised, “with the unfathomable andinexplicable, and if you’re not careful you
become people who dabble in it, like a kid
playing with a red-hot poker and not knowing
it’s red-hot and, um… well, we’re still interested.
The more you read about it, the more you realise
the implications are incredible, the way events
happen, the way the planet’s going.
“Us poor buggers doing whatever we’re doing,
we don’t really have a grasp of who’s pullingthe strings. We think it’s the politicians or
whoever we’re told on TV. All our information
comes to us third hand anyway. Most folks
would say this only shows your inability toaccept the mundanity of political processes, a kind of paranoia…”“Well, there’s no doubt that throughout the last 2,000 years there arecertain running systems in civilisation that are still around now. If
they’ve existed for so long it would be naive to suppose they’re not wellorganised and that they leave everything to chance. Being aware of their
existence is half of the solution.
“I think the way people live their lives… we’re creatures of habit, we
adopt systems of behaviour. With that in mind, people aren’t really awareof the forces operating on them…”
Cornwell talks of the role of “coincidence”, random accidents of fatethat aren’t really accidents at all (of Arthur Koestler’s The Roots Of
Coincidence, for example, or Jung’s theory of synchronicity). What,then, did that idea make of his own time in prison? Did he feel that was
something that had to happen?
“Now it’s over, yes, in a way I do feel that. It was a very good learning
experience. My attitude to certain illegal substances was flippant andactually rather silly. It brought home to me the dependence others had onme. In a group, if you’re out of action you’re affecting them…”
How can you go from that realisation to making “Golden Brown”?
“Contrary to what is sometimes said, it’s not about heroin. There’s a lotof different things it could be about. People used to do this with old
Beatles songs, finding cryptic messages.
“One Dutch journalist even thought ‘Golden Brown’ was about thewhite slave trade – you know, ‘How long have The Stranglers been into
white slavery?’ Unbelievable…
“There was a secret message on ‘Have You Got Enough Time’ on BlackAnd White, a Morse code message that said, ‘SOS This is Planet Earth. We
are fucked.’ One guy wrote in and told us.”
We enter a protracted and tortuous dialogue about The Stranglers’Euro-ideals. He thinks my hostility quaint; I find his enthusiasm
disconcerting.
“The EEC thing seems to have gone wrong, a lot of people are writing
it off already, but how long has it been in existence? Only a few years,
but it’s something that must happen. You can see its growth among
young people, the emergence of French and German music sung intheir own languages – and these feelings and passions can exist inside
a European framework.
“One area where the Euro-idealism is getting screwed up is with theno-nukes thing, which is a very positive and strong force. We played a No
Nukes gig in Utrecht – I think it was the biggest indoor event in Holland
ever, around 30,000 people. They weren’t just Dutch, they were French,
Belgian, German, Swiss – all you have to do is find an issue like that whichgoes right across the board.
“There’s nothing wrong in being proud of being English, French orwhatever as long as you realise that there are people who have the right tobe proud of what they are. One thing I was very pissed off about was thatthe anti-nuke compilation album, Life In The European Theatre, wasn’t
a million seller. None of the audience I spoke to on our European tour had
even heard of it.” Neil Spencer ¥“There wasa secretmessage on
Black AndWhite”So WhY Do you always wear black? What has he got against
colours? He shrugs and looks thoughtful. “Well, I do have a whitejacket.” I ask Hugh Cornwell the same question. What had he got
against colours? He looks slightly nonplussed, raises a white plimsoll
above the table and, on reflection, pulls the waistband of a pair ofbright blue underpants above his belt and laughs.
“Well, you know we did that documentary film on the colour black.
How, for example, the authorities use it to create fear or awareness. Lookat the way it’s used by religions, those women who have to wear complete
black outfits…”
You do it voluntarily.
“It’s a lot easier to keep clean.”And you use it to create this austere, sinister image…
“We look on it as a colour of neutrality; nothing is given away.”
And the Men In Black? Most people seem to believe that the Men In Blackare The Stranglers themselves – being an excusable misapprehension but
a mere spin-off allusion according to the group. In fact, or so the theory
goes, the Men In Black are the minions of dark forces, supernatural
powers that seek to have dominion over Planet Earth. They tend to show
up around inexplicable, paranormal events and manifestations. UFO
contactees frequently have brushes with them, for example.
And… and the full Illuminati-style conspiracy theory of Ultraterrestrial
domination is available for the curious in books such as John Keel’s
Operation Trojan Horse and Geoff Gilbertson and Anthony Roberts’ The
Dark Gods…
Crackpot stuff, of course. Of course. And yet there’s no dispute thataround the time The Stranglers first became interested in the MIB during
1979, a relentless sequence of troubles and misfortunes began to befall
the group. Cornwell was jailed for three months on a charge of cocaine
and heroin possession. Finances faltered. The group’s artist/designer

HISTORY OF ROCK 1982 | 99

1982

OC TOBER – DECEMBERThe Tube, bAuhAuS,
PAul Weller, jiMMy
PAge, WhAM! ANd MOre

November 5, 1982:
Heaven 17 appear on thefirst episode of The Tube,
miming to “Height Of
The Fighting”, “Who Will
Stop The Rain” and “Let
Me Go” in the studio100 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982

“A tremendous coup”
MM NOV 13 The nation’s new TV station, Channel 4,
launch a pop show: The Tube. Paul Weller, The Animals,
Sting and Pete Townshend are on!
ehind the green door, Sting rubbed his half-grown beard,
apparently pondering the meaning of it all, Scritti Politti’s boy
wonder breathed alcohol breath in a teetotal zone, Paul Weller
looked as pensive as only he can and Pete Townshend’s bleary redeyes gazed forlornly at a trailer for Woodstock. It’s amazing what you
can get in a tube these days.
Sitting round a long rectangular table in the mysteriously named
Green Room at Tyne Tees Television’s Newcastle studios, this unlikely
assembly of old, new, borrowed and blue waited for their slot on
Channel 4’s debut pop show.
The Who were first scheduled to fill The Tube’s opening celebrations,but their American tour and Tyne Tees’ deliberate lack of geriatricfacilities meant a job for the group’s spiritual heirs. However, asa link with the monochrome days of real mods and Ready, Steady, Go!,plus a name among others to drop, Townshend had been speciallyflown in.
His entrance and subsequent placing at the head of the tablecompleted an unfortunate picture: a weary man sitting awkwardly
as the reluctant messiah in the centre of rock’n’roll’s last supper.
But if the atmosphere in the Green Room was peculiarly repressed– everybody wanted to stare and nobody wanted to admit it – downon the studio floor the buzz of expectation was pleasingly infectious.
As The Jam set up for their last television appearance and the firstof the show’s weekly hour-long spots featuring a live group, the headof stills glanced their way and asked when “The Animals” would
be ready to play. Then, corrected, demonstrated the crew’s eager
willingness to familiarise themselves with the vagaries of pop…
“All right, The Jam Animals.”
Meanwhile, the hordes of technicians required to produce such an
ambitious programme (as well as the core live performance there willbe 45 minutes of interviews, videos, recorded features and more live
appearances) rush towards the 5.15pm deadline at a pace whichsuggests somebody’s put speed in the coffee machine.
Ignoring the tinsel-town pretence of Top Of The Pops and theuninspired drabness of The Old Grey Whistle Test, The Tube boasts
a multi-levelled high-tech studio which visually represents its worthy
intentions. Designed as half disco, half TV studio, the place is literally
one to see and be seen in.
Divided by catwalks and adaptable stage areas, guests can either
dance to the music, watch the numerous video screens or for those whowant their 15 seconds of fame, pose in front of the hand-held cameraschosen to add to the programme’s live atmosphere.
Again, unlike TOTP there will be no “professional” dancers throwing
themselves around with mock enthusiasm; just those who have beenable to buy tickets and transport themselves to the heart of Newcastle.
Countdown in the Green Room is ticked off as the assorted pop
people gradually disappear to their dressing rooms and the Street Of
Shame newshounds grumble to each other about their delirium
tremens and the complete lack of any alcoholic beverage. Looking attheir faces, the meaning of the Green Room is suddenly apparent.
The dodgy theme music starts up and eyes are drawn to the room’s
two TV screens. Local group The Toy Dolls are playing in the studio’slong perspex entrance tunnel that gives the show its name, but we see
hardly anything of the planned rush to gain entry. No, the camera men
weren’t trampled to death, we learn later, the fans were “so fast they justmissed them”. Such are the hazards of live TV. »rex featuresB

HISTORY OF ROCK 1982 | 101

1982

getty

O C T O B E R – D ECEMBER

As part of a future policy, there’s an interview
with the entire staff of a fanzine that specialisesin The Jam, scooter adverts and perversely
denying their mod connections.
Pete Townshend gets his video thrown in
before the coming interview and upfront in
the proceedings there’s a dash of tokenism –a black Birmingham dance troupe that would
have been better suited to Blue Peter than this
supposedly brash, irreverent pop blitz.
Link man Mark Miwurdz, spelt Minurdz on
the posters, tells us about his soul revue called
Don’t Cry For Me Ike And Tina, and wins a mixed
reaction and honorary membership to the John
Cooper Clarke fan club.
A Duran Duran video passes by with less
impact than a Bounty advert and the jewelof the show – Paula Yates – prepares to“interview” a face called Sting. Together
with ex-Squeeze keyboards player Jools
Holland, she has been chosen to bring a touchof class and experience to an otherwise fresh
cast of presenters.
Anybody who reads her column in The Screws
Of The World will probably already appreciate
Paula’s penetrating observations on the pop
scene, and her showing on The Tube proved
once again her unfailing ability to pinpoint
an artist’s significant talents.
Following a tease reference to Elvis Costello’s
remark that Sting needed a good clip round theear for singing with that silly fake Jamaicanaccent, Paula moved on to tackle a dazzling
myriad of subjects. She explained her foot was
strategically placed behind the Sting posterior

102 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982

in case he needed “a good poke”, made amind-splitting connection with the follow-up
enquiry about the current visibility of Sting’s
sought-after bum (he takes his clothes off in thefilm Brimstone And Treacle), and floored us allwith a frank recollection of the infamous Ritz
interview when ol’ Stingo, as he’s known to hismates, admitted he likes doing it doggy style on
the kitchen table.
On top of all this, the handsome one had toput up with the first of many weary allusions to
Paula’s expanding tum (pregnancy, nudge,
nudge, knoworramean!) andwhen he managed a lookthat suggested he’d rather
be locked in a padded cellwith Richard Branson thandallying with our Paula,
his acting credibility roseby 10 points.
Getting as pink and ruffled
as her preposterous sugarplum fairy dress, Paula
stumbled back on a rivetingquestion about thecommercial potential of Stingo’s original
name (Gordon) and finally asked the sex
maniac of her dreams (dashing Bob Geldof
was too busy adjusting his cap to notice theswoons of his better half) if he was pleased to
be back in his home town.
Of course, was Stingo’s reply, “it’s a reallyspunky place”. Sting, spunk! It was all too muchfor pouting Paula, who was now sniggering redfaced and searching for something even moremundane to say.
But the producers
had other ideas andas we were whisked
into a clip from
Brimstone… anindignant offscreen voice with a
Jamaican accent
could be heard
saying, “Spunky’s
all right, isn’t it?…”
From the ridiculous
to the sublime:
Heaven 17 brought
things back from thebrink and who cares
if they were miming?
They invested theproceedings with the
spark that had so far
eluded a clearlytreacherous format.
And while Paul
Weller was spikey,
asinine and nervous
in interview, The
Jam’s contribution
really got things
going, especially
their tasty version
of Curtis Mayfield’s“Move On Up”.
One hour and 45
Presenters Paula yates
minutes had passed
and Jools holland in thepleasantly and, withperspex tunnel leading
to the offices of Tynea few exceptions,
Tees Tv that inspired
The Tube actually
The Tube’s title

showed some promise. For producers
Malcolm Gerrie and Paul Corley it was avindication of Channel 4’s faith in their ability
to create a pop programme that would help
spearhead the new network’s shiny image.
They were chosen in preference to LWT and
Thames largely because of Gerrie’s deserved
reputation gained producing teeny shows likeRazzamatazz and Alright Now.
The story goes that Gerrie came up with theideas for 10 half-hour programmes and thenleft for a holiday. When they phoned him on
vacation he got the badnews first: his suggestion
had been rejected; instead
they wanted 20 105-minuteshows to run for five months
without a break, including
Christmas and New Year!
“It was a tremendous
coup,” Paul enthuses, “notonly for Tyne Tees but for the
North-East of England. We
were very conscious of theneed to move broadcastingout of London, which can be so incestuous. If
we can make this a success it’ll be like Kevin
Keegan playing for Newcastle!”
Bypassing what they call “the London
attitude”, they’ve already put together material
from the country’s other major towns andcities, placing a special emphasis on unsigned
bands. “Our research is getting so good,”
Malcolm boasts in best Geordie, “that the A&R
men are starting to follow us wherever we go!”Aiming for an atmosphere that’s as live as
possible, they feel future shows should startwith more studio action – Heaven 17, theyagree, should really have opened Number One– fleshed out with coming features that include
Clare Grogan, Captain Kirk, Mick Jagger andathlete Steve Cram.
Both cite the ’60s show Ready, Steady, Go! astheir guiding light.
Paul: “You see, RSG went out at peak time,
and this in itself gives a show importance. It
caused kids to question the values of theirparents because it was so provocative. The
BBC and ITV go wrong because they put theirshows out at obscure times. They almost hidethem away!”
Yet they also maintain their aim is tocomplement rather than compete with theinstitution everybody slags and still watches– Top Of The Pops.
“A show like that can’t fail,” Malcolm points
out. “What we want to do is show the groups
that they can’t, because of the nature of theirrigid approach, and do it in a way that’s notivory towerish.”
Ultimately they would like to see The Tube
become a forum for youth culture and maybe
even change a few things, too.
“The thing about RSG,” says Malcolm, “wasthat you saw a new band on Friday night andon Saturday morning you went out andbought it. It actually helped alter the chemistryof the music scene. If we can do that then we’ll
have succeeded.”It’s obviously too early to judge just what
impact The Tube will make, but right now in
Newcastle the weekend starts at 5.15, on Friday
night, going down The Tube. Ian Pye“It was atremendous coup,
not only for Tyne
Tees but for the
North-East”

O F T hE

MM OCT 23 Bauhaus take issue with an MM journalist.

T

hey say every hack’s a frustrated
performer, but when Steve “Sticks”
Sutherland jacked in his school bandto take up the humble position of Maker pen
pusher, little did he ever dream that he’dfind himself before a hostile packed house at
London’s Lyceum. The boys from Bauhaus – a
pop band from Northampton – invited Sticks
on stage to conduct a “public interview”
before their sell-out gig last Thursday.
Seems the boys had a bone or two to pickabout particularly snide past comments
concerning their likenessto a certain Mr Bowie andso set the hack up for
public humiliation.
Armed with a Fosters,
our man came out
fighting, introduced theboys to their partisan
crowd as “Ziggy Stardustand The Spiders From Mars” and duckeda hail of plastic mugs. “Why,” the Stickboy
wanted to know, “did Bauhaus take suchexception to his comments and then go on
to release ‘Ziggy Stardust’?”“Ah,” said the popular boys in black,“because we’ve been knocking at the doorof acceptability and it just seemed that itneeded a fuckin’ good kicking. Onceinside,” they adamantly assured theaudience, “we shall attempt to follow up
with original compositions.”
Launching into an unprovoked rant, Sticks
summed up 20 very odd minutes of verbal
sparring: “I wrote those articles about you,right, because in my own small and, sadly,
obviously ineffectual way, I hoped it would
do something to actually stop you in yourtracks because what I felt was happening
was you were pioneering a push for poseover purpose [see, he even speaks in analliterative fashion!], pushing forward theidea that almost anybody
reasonably goodlooking, tall and thin witha moderate yen towards
theatricity would make itby saying nothing!”
The crowd reacted
in the only way sane
human beings could:
they bellowed, booed and threw things.
Bauhaus, on the other hand, took it the
only way a seasoned “pop group”
could. They staged a wonderfully
spontaneous walk-off.
Drunk on fame, Sticks refused
to leave and made one final,
largely inaudible speech, before
stumbling off into well-deserved
obscurity. Bela Lugosi“I hoped it would dosomething to stop
you in your tracks”

Cocaine “found on mantlepiece”
Jimmy Page’s career neared a nosedive at the Inner London Crown Court
last week when he faced a possible gaol
sentence after admitting possession of
cocaine. But John Matthews, his QC, argued
that Page was launching a new group which
was to tour America and Japan early next year.
“It would,” he claimed, “result in the loss of not
thousands but literally millions of pounds inthe next few years.”
Not only that, the ex-Zepper ranked alongside
Annie and Julie Andrews in terms of innocenceand purity. He had never relied on drugs andnever became addicted, even though he’dadmitted to taking small quantities for a shorttime during the ’60s. And Page, who was found

NME NOV 13
The Jam’s
frontman on his
favourite things

LabelsFemale vox

Tamla Motown
Stax
Atlantic
TrojanVerve
Mojo
Invictus
Blue Note
Sue/Island
Skabeat/Bluebeat
Greensleeves
CharlySugarhill

Dusty Springfield
Aretha Franklin
Millie Jackson
Nina Simone
Madeline Bell
Sandie Shaw
Dionne Warwick

Coolest cats
Steve Marriott
Jimmy Smith
Vaughn Toulouse

No style
Dirty rock’n’roll“Rock”“Out of it”
Music papers

Style & hip
Keeping straight
Cappuccino
Spa water witha slice of lime
Mr Byrites
RobertoCarlosEuropeJazz andmodernclassical
arethaFranklin:
Symmetry
winning
Soul
Weller’s
Cleanrespect

Male vox
Smokey Robinson
Otis Redding
Wilson Pickett
Stevie Wonder
Stevie Marriott
Reggie King
Levi Stubbs
General Johnson
Michael Jackson
Muddy Waters
Howlin’ Wolf
Terry Hall

I wantA blue-and-orange
tonik suit
An imitation
sheepskin threequarter-length coat
To get on with people
To produce morerecords
To own a clothes
shop and coffee bar

I believein Greek gods
and godesses(I’ve seen some in
Oxford Street)
In Orwell’s politics
In Common Sense
In L.O.V.E.

NME OCT 16 Jimmy page is in court –barrister hints at client’s plan for new band.

with the cocaine in his pocket during a saunter
down Chelsea’s King’s Road in late 1980, had
not actually purchased the offending
substance. It seems he had found the drug on amantelpiece after a party at his home in Clewer
village, near Windsor. “He removed it so
nobody else would find it,” Matthews told thecourt. “Especially his small daughter.”He refrained from mentioning that it was
Pagey’s music that had helped Charles Bronson
wipe out a dope pusher in Death Wish 2, but even
without that final nudge, the judge glimpsed
the halo forming around the Page head andgranted a conditional
discharge, leavingmusic buffs to ponder

about the identity of the band the guitarist was
to form in order to pay off the national debt.
Rumour had it that Page might figure among
the plans for a revitalised Whitesnake.
Unlikely, we felt, but nevertheless we posed thequestion to a Snake-person. “Unlikely,” he said.
Next came a phone call to Swan Song, Page’s
management company headed by Peter Grant.
“Can you throw any light on the lineup of themystery band?” we asked politely.
“Mr Grant will call you back if he has any
information to impart,” came the equallypolite reply. The call never came. Fred Zeppelin

HISTORY OF ROCK 1982 | 103

fin costello / getty, fred a sabine / erica echenberg / getty

ONSu M“Pose over purpose”

aC

Er

PAUL
WELLERIST aSTaking it all too
far: Bauhaus at the
Barbican, London,
March 1982

a IT

a rT

p O rT r

NEWS

1982

George Michael andandrew ridgeley ofWham! make their first
Us tV appearance on
the show Solid GoldO C T O B E R – D ECEMBER“We knew we weregoing to be massive”
NME NOV 27 Introducing… new chart stars with soul on the dole, Wham!.

getty

D

espite appearances, thesuccess story of Andrew Ridgeley andGeorge Michael is no simple triumphof charmed innocence. A strong streak ofnative cunning and a shrewd commercial
instinct have combined with the more slaphappy element of luck in paving the way for
two new conquering pop heroes.
On the morning that I meet them,George and Andrew are pretty pleased withthemselves, as well they might be with theirfirst Top 10 singles – “Wham Rap” and “Young
Guns” – confirming them as the latest chart
darlings of a nation’s young hearts. And at 19,
George and Andrew are still young enough to
be part of a generation whose expectations oflife after education are totally different fromanyone who approached adult life before thepresent government was elected.
On a personal level, it’s about the choice
between enjoying what you do or disappearing
into depression. Wham! appear to speak
simply from their own experience. Such a
direct, enthusiastic appeal was bound to link up
with a new wave of young consumers distanced
from the pop process by an increasingly dreary
parade of the calculated and artificial.
Wham! come from Watford, a town on theedge of North London’s urban sprawl, where
they went to the same school until Andrew
left for college while George stayed in thesixth form.
Both are boys who take their pleasureseeking extremely seriously, and it was in ’78,
as they remember somewhat solemnly, thatthey became involved with a suburban soulscene, moving on to affiliate themselves withthe ska and 2-Tone musical movement when
the discos slipped into a more limpid jazz-funk.
104 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982

“Ska has that energy. That’s what we’ve
always listened to, the stuff that’s got theenergy at the moment,” says George.
While Wham! expended their adolescentenergy in dancing and drinking, school notsurprisingly took second place and theirresults suffered correspondingly.
“Andrew didn’t get our exams because he
was being a college trendy. I was a sixth-form
rebel – which didn’t take much,” George adds.
“I think we both stayed on at school so we’dhave an excuse to stay at home being lazy andwouldn’t have to go out to work. We bothknew that all we wanted to be was pop stars.
“We’re both the types that should have got
our A-levels with flying colours, but we werereally lazy, so we didn’t. We spent most of thetime round at Andrew’s house, mucking about
on instruments and writing songs.”
Inevitably they gathered up a group – a ska
band to start with. When they left school they
signed on the dole and carried on composing.
A year later their second single entered thecharts and in retrospect made their shortcareer look almost like a masterplan.
“We were both convinced that once thesongs were heard by the right people we weregoing to make it. It was justconvincing other peopleof that – like parents, thatwas the hard job.
“You’re surrounded bypeople who are trying
hard and failing dismally,and you’ve got to convince
your parents that you’re
not one of those people.
They don’t realise thedifference between a hitsong and a bad song, they just think it’s totallya matter of luck. I always told them, obviously
it’s a matter of luck, but it’s not all luck. If you
write good songs for long enough, someone’s
going to want to make money out of them.”
In the event their record contract came justin time, since George’s long-suffering father,
incensed by his apparent lack of activity, wason the brink of throwing him out of house andhome. “Now he just keeps asking when themoney’s coming in,” he laughs.
As we talk in a bar a few yards away fromtheir tiny record company offices in the debby
mecca of London’s South Molton Street, you
can’t help feeling that these pleasure-loving,smooth-talking teenagers are the owners of
two very hard young heads.
Wham! are inclined to bandy the jargon
of markets, promotion and sales with acommercial candour that’s worthy of anexperience ad man or a satin-jacketed rock
executive. In part this is no doubt due tothe necessities of understanding the rockrigmarole when you don’t have a manager.
“That’s been an advantage, definitely,”
explains George. “We’ve had a lot closer
contact with a lot of the areas.”“We know themachinations a lot more,”
adds Andrew.
Less charitably, it’s
possible to speculate
just how fine the line
between a refreshingly
realistic attitude to theentertainment industry
and the dismally limited
vision that characterises
The Biz.

NEWS

For the moment, however, the one
debatable financial error Wham! have madeso far is signing a contract so speedily – toInnervision, a small subsidiary of CBS, fora £500 advance each.
“We knew we were going to be massive, so
we didn’t want a big advance,” claims George.
“It was the usual job of panicking andsigning when you shouldn’t really have done it,
but it’s got us where we are now, so it’s nothing
really to complain about. Any mistakes that
we may have made, we’d still do it again to be
Number 10 this week. Every company has its
advantages and disadvantages, there’s notmuch difference.”
After they’d signed to Innervision, theyrecorded a demo tape which had, says
George, seven or eight major publishingcompanies chasing the rights on the strengthof what he calls one “killer single” that they’ll
release at an appropriate time. “A worldwide
No 1,” explains Andrew, “Julio will be green.”“I know it all sounds really over-confident,”
George expands, “but it’s just like we’ve beenable to judge our next steps all the way so far,so why not just keep hoping that you’re right?
We know we’re right.”
Their first record, “Wham Rap”, now due tobe reintroduced to the shops on the strengthof “Young Guns”’ success, coincided with awider realisation of the huge implications ofa young dole-queue generation. A spiritedfist shaken in the face of adult apathy andsuspicious disapproval, “Wham Rap” is a
refusal to be denied thegood things in life, its slick
sloganeering sliced into an
exhilarating funk setting;a spontaneous emotional
response rather than a stiff
political cliche.
“We were writing about
what was happening at thetime that was really typicalof most people,” George
explains. “Obviously morewith people in the North, they didn’t want togo out and do grotty jobs and yet there wasnothing else.
“Where we were, Watford wasn’t that badfor opportunities, we managed to do decent
part-time jobs. But in a lot of places there’s
absolutely nothing. Somebody told me theother day, ‘Your record cheered up a lot of myfriends – which is brilliant!’ We didn’t write it
thinking let’s help kids or anything. We justthought let’s write about what we’re doing at
the moment and make it funny.
“The idea of actually cheering someone
up was great, because we were told that of
the limited sales it did, 70 per cent of themwere in the North. There were people who
were throwing accusations at us for being
irresponsible and talking about enjoying thedole when so many people can’t. At the sametime, a huge amount can and we’re writing forthem. They obviously got the joke.
“Some people are going to take any lyric
seriously, however funny. We were thinking
about doing one on a driving test, and you canjust imagine people slagging you off for that.
You know – don’t you think about all thosepeople who have failed six times?

“We’ve done grottyjobs, so we weren’t talking
off the tops of our heads.
We’ve done all kinds ofthings – labouring, cinema
ushers, warehouse work,cleaning, washing-up. We
realised after a while it was
better to stay at home.”“Young Guns” – a witty condemnation ofa dreary domesticity which can provepermanently crushing when undertaken at
too early an age – has also met its critics who
see an unpleasant male braggadocio beneaththe sparring repartee of those crackling lovehate lyrics.
“What happened was that the lyric wasn’t
as well written as it could have been, because
George had to do it in the studio,” says
Andrew. “The sentiment wasn’t truly
expressed. It didn’t really come across.”“At the same time, I didn’t think there wasany harm in the lyric,” adds George. “It’sworked so well in every other way.
“The idea when we went in the studio wasanti young marriage – of either sex. It didn’tmean to be anti young girls. It just seemed tous that the funniest thing we could think ofrelating to it was the way you get the boys up
the pub saying, ‘Where’s so-and-so? Oh, he’s
at home, she’s kept him in again. It might not
be right or true of all situations, but it does
happen a lot and we’re just commenting on it.
That is what people listen to, and they thinkthey know that situation.
“For people in thatsituation, the girl is the one
to feel sorry for. In a lot ofcases she’s not beenbrought up to expect
anything more than to feel
supported and secure. We
were just looking at it as it
happens. We weren’t
taking sides. It was a comic
observation.”
What Wham! achieved on their TOTP slot
is an abrupt electric shock that jolts the
programme’s flaccid system into instantcharged action. Helped by Dee C Lee andwith Andrew’s real-life girlfriend, blonde
Shirlie Holliman, adding poignancy by posing
as his screen partner, George and Andrew
glide through a cut-and-thrust vocal comedy
with flashy, fluid funk choreography thatshames much of TOTP’s stodgy staple
diet into comparative sleepy senility.
It’s young, fetching and funny, andwith typical opportunism, Wham! haveachieved the best of both worlds byusing the skilled resources ofprofessional session-men for themusic, while ensuring their visual
lineup is instantly attractive.
“When we first approached a record
company, their first thought was we’ll
get you a band together to move thesesongs. We said we didn’t really want aband. It’s better just to have ourselves
as a front.
“What we’ve found is that so far
we’ve had two songs that have been
completely different and appealed to“You work towards
getting as wide amarket as possible
without making
crappy records”

different markets,”
George continues.
“Eventually we’ll havea certain sound that
we’ll keep to, for a while
anyway. You just work
towards getting as widea market as possible
without making crappy
records. If we can keep up the spirit of the
lyrics and the attitude in the record, then it’ll
always sound like us, no matter who we havebehind us. The idea is to keep up the attitudeof the records, keep them sounding young
and fresh and fun.”
Their sparkling crystallisation of that vital,
optimistic attitude has to be central to theirsudden success. “I think people definitely
identified with us on TOTP,” says George,“that’s why the sales shot up. On ‘Wham Rap’
we were playing and singing in terms kids
could relate to. It’s not manipulated, it’s justthat we’re trying to relate to as many people
as we can, because there don’t seem to be
many people doing it.”
Especially at a time when the people making
pop music seem increasingly divorced from its
audience. “It’s drifted back off again into all
the big producers like your ABC jobs, your
Dollars and Bucks Fizz,” George agrees. “Andalthough some of those records are brilliant,they’re across the boards. There’s nothing
really directing itself at the youngsters.
Madness are the closest thing that so many
people relate to, and even they, I think, are
beginning to get a bit bored with what they’re
doing. The music’s not as fun as it was.”The biggest future problem Wham! will
face is keeping that shiny bright sense of
unspoilt ingenuity. “It must be very, very
difficult. That’s one of the things we’re goingto have to fight for, trying to keep a freshsound,” George muses.
In the meantime they’re about to add awhole new meaning to their hallowed maximof enjoying what you do. “We’re just about tohave to work hard for the first time in our lives,
I think,” admits George with the rueful
reluctance of a dedicated hedonist. “We’ve
managed to avoid it so far, but if we want toget further than this, we’ve got to work hard.
This is just the beginning,” he sighs. “We’reaiming at youth, saying enjoy what time you’ve
got, because it’s the best time of your life.”“So far, anyway,” adds Andrew. Adrian Thrills

HISTORY OF ROCK 1982 | 105

1982

O C T O B E R – D ECEMBER“Hate
can bepositive”
ORANGE JUICE have been hailed as fathersof the pristine “new pop”, but Edwyn Collins
doesn’t accept his offspring. “I hate themthe same way I hated progressive groups in’77,” he says. Can the reconfigured group
recapture some of their early magic?

Steve RappoRt / getty

H— NME OCTOBER 2 —ate – without wanting to sound faddish aboutsuch a thing – is once more where the heart is.
“i’m getting more interested in punk again,” declaresorange Juice’s edwyn Collins, his previously boyish
mop mangled into an aborted Eraserhead number.
he’s been announcing his allegiance by way of the Sex
Pistols t-shirt he’s been wearing to London’s ritzier escape routes.
“adrian thrills came up to me at the Camden Palace and asked me why
i was wearing a Sex Pistols t-shirt,” spits edwyn contemptuously throughgoofy teeth, “and how come it wasn’t a Roger McGuinn? and i thought,‘Fuck, pigeonholed again!’”Pigeonholing edwyn and orange Juice might have been a national
pastime, had they come up with the hits everyone predicted for them. as
it is, they’ve been more simply passed over. But orange Juice – Postcard
muddlemind alan horne told us, and we subsequently told you – weregoing to be the alternative pop group. they were, we
wanted to believe, the happy collision of lovesick guitars
and adolescent curiosity, the embodiment of New world– Scotland, that is – optimism and youthful enthusiasm.
Pop music for the young made and controlled by the young.
until they were wrong-footed by the focus switching to
the mainstream, it did seem they were it. when everyone
else was buttoning up his black shirt against the cold, they »106 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982

January 20, 1982:
Edwyn Collins
fronts Orange Juiceat The Venue in
London’s Victoria

HISTORY OF ROCK 1982 | 107

1982

O C T O B E R – D ECEMBER

wore loud checks and warm smiles, covering up
for their inadequacies with a heap of silly grins
and bad jokes.
With the passing of time, though, amateurism
becomes shamateurism. Live or on record, there
was no audible improvement in Orange Juice.
Where the bemused expression of thosewonderful, if rough, Postcard singles rang
genuine enough, it began to sound forced after
it was cleaned up with Polydor money; andEdwyn’s voice cracking up on their biggest chart
shot – a cover of Al Green’s “L.O.V.E. Love” – wasmore careless than cute.
Anyway, nobody needed to tolerate sloppinessin this new age of quality and distinction
heralded by the ABC/Trevor Horn and Human
League/Martin Rushent axis. What’s more,
Nicky Heyward has a goofier, more comfortable
grin. His Haircut 100, Altered Images and therest capitalised on the pop consciousness
Orange Juice helped cultivate.
Hate? Or just bitter about being left behind,
Edwyn?
“It’s not a case of sour grapes,” he counterscaustically, “because I don’t envy them, thesegroups who’ve put the ‘a’ back into pop music.
Ha ha. I really don’t. I know there are certain
factions who insist that Orange Juice propagatedthis wonderful, golden age of pop, but quite
frankly if I thought we’d been in anyway
responsible, I’d feel we’d have a hell of a lot toanswer for. Because I think most of it is shit.
“That’s why I feel we’ve been misrepresented
by the press, who’ve taken the more superficial and crass elements ofwhat we did and amplified them, so they become twee. And because wehaven’t delivered, which to some extent I admit, we’ve become thescapegoat for this horrible saccharine movement.
“It’s not that I’m bitter, it’s just that I hate them,” he continues. “I hatethem the same way I hated progressive groups in ’77; hate was the goodthing about punk. I think hate can be very positive if it is directed in theright way…”
HE POSITIVE SIdE of Orange Juice’s hate is the renewed senseof purpose that followed their virtual demise on the release of
their long-delayed, out-of-date debut LP You Can’t Hide Your
Love Forever on Polydor. They dumped on Alan Horne, fell out witheach other and fell apart, only to regroup around Edwyn and bassist
Dave McClymont. The present lineup is now completed by guitarist
Malcolm Ross, from Josef K, and drummer Zeke Manyika, from
Zimbabwe – the nation, not a group.
They meet me in pairs during the recording of their second LP, Daveand Malcolm outlining the schisms of the past, and Zeke and Edwyn
mapping out the future. Alan, the first pair say, had to go, after planting
the preconceptions in the press they later found difficult to live up to, andfor the hold he had on Edwyn.
“It was Alan who said Orange Juice were going to be a pop group,”
accuses Dave, “that we would be on Top Of The Pops and have huge hits for
Postcard. But I always thought we were like Pere Ubu! That’s why I joined
the group!
“Besides,” he relates further, “I used to be very
close to Edwyn, but once Alan came in I didn’t
speak to Edwyn again for about six months.
I thought Alan was taking over the group, andrather than making some rash statement like,‘Alan! You’re taking over the group’, I crawled
back to the flat and just whimpered.”
Earlier drummer Steven Daly was purged
simply because “I wouldn’t talk to him at all,
we didn’t get on, so the rhythm section was
rubbish. And we would just laugh at James…”…Kirk, their previous guitarist, that is, who,in the revised view of things, carries the can for
Orange Juice’s shambolic reputation.

T

The second Orange Juicelineup: (c/wise from left)
Malcolm Ross, Dave
McClymont, Zeke
Manyika, Edwyn Collins“James was always dizzy-eyed, playing novel things on
guitar and wanting to write stupid twee comedy songs,
like those you get in musicals,” sneers Dave. “A lot of people came to see us
especially for James, because he would always do something wacky, likefall over.”
Malcolm, the gawky shy boy from Josef K, entered the fray only to be
repulsed by all the bitching. “All this backstabbing,” he recalls withhorror. “It was a horrible atmosphere. I just wanted to leave…”
As their most disciplined and composed member, Edwyn and Davehung onto him and sacked the other two. Malcolm’s splendid, terse style,which defined Josef K’s series of excellent singles, isn’t the only stabilising
influence. There is also drummer Zeke…
Zeke, they rightly claim, is their most interesting member. An affable,easy-going 27-year-old veteran of various Glaswegian funk/reggae/
whatever groups, he arrived in Scotland eight years ago as a politicalrefugee from pre-Zimbabwe Rhodesia, where he was drawing too muchattention through the black-youth-consciousness plays he was writing
with other teenagers in the small hometown community in Rhodesia’sheartland. His autobiography goes something like this:“It was a crazy situation,” he recalls. “I was working with other
teenagers during the school holidays, writing plays and staging them.
We used to invite our white counterparts over to see them, but they nevercame, except once, and then they all left early because they thought it was
too political.
“The title of that play, ha ha, sounds really grand and pretentious now,
but it was called Search For Human Dignity. It was just about people
coming out of school, reflecting exactly what was happening to us.
We didn’t think our parents understood thesituation. Most of us thought that our parents
were just weak for accepting all this nonsense
for years. So we were alienated from our parents
just as much as we were from the white people.
“The alternative was to do music, write plays,
things like that to try and show them what wewere going through. But this is the funny part– I didn’t quite know what was happening at
the time. My dad, who was a headmaster then,was secretly working for the Zanu Party [thethen outlawed national party fighting forindependence], his brother was in Mozambique,a young commander in the guerilla force. So hehad good reason to be scared, because maybe I“It was ahorrible
atmosphere.
I just wanted
to leave”

108 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982

oranGe juice

ALBUMSREVIEW

Good for you

MM FEB 20 OJ’s debut LP
is an artifice-free delight.

would draw attention to themand the more important work
they were doing.
1982
Orange Juice You Can’t Hide Yourof expression, the bit where personality“Nevertheless, he was proud
Love Forever polydor
punctures a rigid song formula and reallyof my plays and encouraged me,
rejoices or hurts?
though he told me to be careful. All the
I’ve been waiting on this for a very
Orange Juice do this all the time andwhile he was smuggling books to Mugabe,long time and, believe me, it’s only
Edwin Collins is one fine fruity singer.
during that 10 years Mugabe spent inbecause I can already hear some other
OJ have nothing whatsoever to do withdetention, and I suspect he was passing ondumb hacks tutting and tittering androck’s sordid history. They deal in songs, notletters between people, acting as a link.
scratching their beer-bellies in perverse
poses. Life, not artifice. This record deals“After a while it started getting deadpreparation to pick this bright beauty towith human relationships and the games
uncomfortable; the police started to follow us
pieces that I’m about to make some attempt
lovers play better than any other album
around, kept moving us on, preventing us fromto anticipate most of their idiotic
ever made; it can be more cynical thangrouping together. We were becoming quite aobjections. And then I’ll get down to the real
Kraftwerk, more sexy than Oakey, more
noticeable group in the community. So mybusiness in hand and tell you why this is
cuddly than the Mode and more crucial thanparents, who had some Scottish friends,
possibly the greatest record ever made.
Joy Division, purely and simply because it all
suggested me going to Glasgow.”
Orange Juice can’t play. Dubious but,
comes so naturally.
Didn’t he want to return once Zimbabwe wasadmittedly, not groundless. Here and there
Orange Juice eschew the whoop-de-doo,declared independent?
a guitar will wander away in rapt excitement,
get-on-up, get-on-down myth of rock’n’roll“No, my parents wanted me to, but I was reallyor a drum beat may pursue it’s own pleasantecstasy, see through transparent “chic cold
settled in Glasgow,” he answers. “I just felt apath. But Orange Juice don’t needmisery” and refuse to pander to extreme
solidarity with the people here, I’ve never felt
tightening up.
expectations.
any conflict here. I just fitted in.”On the contrary, its exactly thisOrange Juice look, sound and want to be
In the meantime, his father is now working
lackadaisical bent that constantly tricks andnormal – want to love and laugh and sulk andfrom the Zimbabwe embassy in Yugoslavia.
surprises. There’s much more to Orange
cry and not make some melodramatic fuss
Zeke hasn’t exactly awakened a new political
Juice than will ever reach the average
all about it. Want, as Edwyn said “to take theconsciousness in Orange Juice, but he’s anmuso’s ear anyway. Like, did you know thatpleasure with the pain”.
undeniably important presence, helping check
former member James was bamboozled
So each and every song on this album
their descent into self-parody and alerting
into wearing a square pair of McGuinn’s
is a brave potpourri of puns and romance,them to the world outside the concerns of their
because the others informed him it would
the busting giggle of a bunch of bright lads
love songs, acute though Edwyn’s observations
make him play better? It worked. He did.
who are happy and healthy and absolutely
generally are.
Orange Juice magic.
convinced that there’s more to a girl than“People always ask us about politics, because
Edwin Collins can’t sing. Technically true.
a three-minute grope and then off down
they think we’re vacuous and that we don’t
Our Ed does seem to have a mite more
the pub.
know anything about the heavier side of life,”trouble than most keeping those eager
Orange Juice, as it happens, drink orange
despairs Edwyn. “But it’s not really the case.
young tonsils in tune. So what does thatjuice. They say – and they’re right – that it’s
prove? Didn’t Rotten sound like Albert
I hate being portrayed as being naive about
good for you. You Can’t Hide Your Love
Steptoe, Lennon like Jimmy Tarbuck, Bolan
vices, sex and drugs, thing like that. Which isn’t
Forever is good for you too, makes you feellike Larry The Lamb?
to say we are serious and this is the heavy
like flinging your hat high in the air, like
Since when has pop’s odd stray note
political angle of Orange Juice; it’s just whenskipping down the street when you think nomeant anything other than the finest point
I read the NME Quotes Of The Year which had
one’s looking, like you did when theme saying, ‘I do have ideas about
postman delivered that Valentine.
politics and the world but I’ve forgotten
Funny how it’s always the records out
them for the minute’, I thought, ‘Aw
on a limb that end up defining an era.
fuck, that’s really asking for it.’ What
Orange Juice ain’t Status Quo nor someI mean is, I am quite naive about
new salsa big band. Orange Juice areconventional politics, because I’m notOrange Juice and they’ll mix folk withthat interested… but I think the lyrics
funk if and when they please because it’sare ‘meaningful’ in inverted commas.
there and they hate all these unwritten
I’d like to think they’re stimulating,laws against it.
in that we say things quite simply,
They understand entirely that having tocommunicating ideas succinctly. And
catch the last bus home or the untimely
some of them are quite accurate.”
arrival of a pre-date spot can be the
There wasn’t much noticeable
greatest disasters in the world. And thatdifference in the new group’s firsttragedies go just like they come. Daily.
recorded collaboration, “Two Hearts
Orange Juice know these things
Together”, the sleeve of which had Davebecause they’re young and unwise andand Edwyn staring dewy-eyed athaven’t yet learned to dull all their senses.
prospective buyers. Furthermore, their
I know by now that you’ve all guessed thenew production company titled Holden
end, so how could I possibly disappoint
Caulfield Universal suggested they
you? …Love Forever Is my album of thewere grimly hanging onto their youth
year. Yes, already! Steve Sutherland
by making an easy association with thehero of JD Salinger’s Catcher In The Rye.
“Well, I just thought the novel was so
evocative of adolescence, we’d take a little dig at ourselves,” countersgaze, but the flip’s “Hokoyo” – written by Zeke – and the forthcoming
Edwyn. “It was meant to be self-demeaning; it was meant to be quite
single “I Can’t Help Myself” are agile and intuitive enough to look Holden
straight in the eye without flinching.
wry. Ha ha.”“I do feel there’s a sort of strength back in the group,” enthuses Edwyn.
The overriding preoccupation of the brashly honest, painfully funny“Some of the songs on the new LP are the best we’ve done – a post-postHolden was the deceit that seemed to go with adulthood compromise,
Postcard feel both in timescale and sound.”which he saw blossoming in his “young adult” contemporaries.
Unlike JD Salinger, Orange Juice might just survive the precocity of their
Against his harsh ingenuousness, most everybody was exposed as
early creations to become more than a one-shot wonder. Chris Bohn •phoney. I suspect “Two Hearts Together” would shrivel before his stern
HISTORY OF ROCK 1982 | 109

1982

O C T O B E R – D ECEMBER“Completely
burnt out
and wasted”
From LA: THE GUNCLUB and JEFFREY
LEE PIERCE. Making
vibrant new music fromdeep US traditions, his
patron Debbie Harrywonders why he’s
so depressed. “I’mdeteriorating righthere in front of you
now,” says Jeffrey.

— NME OCTOBER 16 —1. All dressed up like an Elvis from hellJdavid corio / getty

110 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982

effrey Lee Pierce, eyes closed, lies on his back andgroans about how wasted he’s getting. He doesn’t knowwhat state he’ll be in by tonight’s show – when his group
The Gun club make their UK debut, a one-off at
London’s Venue – or even if he’ll make it at all.
A sacrilegious crucifix hangs down over his leather
jacket, along with a fearsome array of animal teeth. A red bandana iswrapped around his cowboy boot, and lank strands of Blondie-esquehair arrange themselves across his bloated face. This boy doesn’t look
to be in good shape at all.
And yet, he says, he’d be happy with a job in the US Library Of
congress, buried in its archives of long-lost American music,
exploring the bewildering richness of the continent’s folk heritage,
its gory lore and legends and all the unsung heroes who forged it andmade some precious makeshift art out of it all. His love and fascination
for all that stuff is obsessive and his knowledge is impressive. But hestill doesn’t look like anyone’s idea of librarian.
And The Gun club, steeped as their music is in arcane influencesand esoteric inspirations, don’t sound one bit like academic
revivalists. it’s all there to be used, Pierce insists, not just to be stuck insome museum and revered. it’s not as if people have really changed
since those old songs were written – the same passions, fears, still
apply. So you don’t go back to the ordinals to pay sterile tribute, but tofind fuel for you own fire.
Pierce is from Texas, grew up in california, andspent the rest of his time anywhere and everywherefrom New york to Jamaica, New Orleans to el
Salvador. Back in Los Angeles – “a desert. A great big
boring, stinking desert. everybody’s an alcoholic” –he started up The Gun club with Kid congo, who went
on to join The cramps. Pierce says he formed a group »October 5, 1982:
Jeffrey Lee
Pierce with The
Gun Club at The
Venue, London..�,, ���ç>.
-�..,.�::.:HISTORY OF ROCK 1982 | 111

1982

O C T O B E R – D ECEMBER

just to fight off the crushing, soul-destroying emptiness of life in that
town, and so he could get into clubs for free. He thought they’d playmaybe six shows and then explode back into nowhere.
But somewhere along the line The Gun Club came good. Last year they
cut a great first album, Fire Of Love, for Slash Records. (Pierce, in his time,
did some rock writing for Slash magazine, too.) What most people
noticed first about the music was its deranged mutation of country blues(the LP even included a Robert Johnson song) howling out through a raw
punk attack that raged and crashed like some awful pain-maddened
monster, blundering out of the swampland undergrowth. Pierce rodethat monster’s back, mouthing savage incantations and spine-chilling
images of death, vengeance, sex and voodoo magic.
He had lost all interest in modern music by 1979. He went back to Marc
Bolan, Creedence, old R&B, then kept on “regressing”. What drives him
now is the rediscovery of pre-war white music – most of it forgotten,
despised as hillbilly trash, much of it as spooky and potent as the black
man’s blues.
But for all that, he kept a fondness for Blondie; he met Debbie Harry
when he presented her with an old Standells single at a record-store
autograph session. He moved up to New York and helped run thegroup’s fan club. And Debbie and Chris Stein helped Gun Club makeanother LP.
Miami, released the other week, is on Stein’s Animal label and heproduces it. Debbie Harry even sings on it. And Miami is another great
album – smoother, more professional than its predecessor, but lacking
none of The Gun Club’s violent virtue.

2. The Fire Of Lovedidn’t know what I wanted to call it. After you’ve written
all these songs and put so much into it, and someone says, ‘OK,
what are you gonna call it?’ It’s so hard, I mean, figure out a title
for all this shit, all this work? Title it? I wish it could just be blank… I’ma lot happier with this title, Miami, because it encompasses everythingthat’s in there, in the record.”
How’s that? It just sounds like a place name to me.
“It basically has to do with my absolute conviction that Miami is thebiggest death house in the world. The East Coast just sends all its
unwanted old people down there to die. I saw people dropping dead in
the streets. It was one of the most morbid things I’ve ever seen, like anelephant’s graveyard. Decorated to look like a tropical resort! The wholeidea that the Americans have created something like that seemed to be
simultaneously the most amazing thing I could think of, and one of thesaddest. Disgusting in one way, and ingenious in another!
“There’s a lot of young kids go down there too, and they’ve got nothing
to do. There’s probably more drugs in that town thananywhere else in America; tons of junkies. And all
the West Indians, practising lots of magic. I justthink that town alone seems to be the sum
the venue
total of everything I wrote on that record.
LOndOnIt’s like, if I ever did something and they
put me on trial, and had to do somethingwith me, well, they should just send me
to Miami!
OCtOber 5“I guess at the time I really felt pretty
hopeless. Chris and Debbie were saying,‘Jesus, the world’s not gonna end, what are you
so depressed about?’ Somebody said to me thedifference between the first record and this one
was the first was fiery and crazy, but this one’s
more like a dirge. That’s exactly what it is, a
Dotson’s lead guitar was a continuous shriek,dirge. At the time I was going backwards anda hysterically pitched counter to Pierce’s
forwards to hospital, I had a bourbon drinking
brooding yowls and hyena screeching.
problem, swollen liver, been on tour for about
For the first 20 minutes, this was a potent
eight months. It was all these things coming to
combination: “Texas Serenade”, “Runa head until you reach a point where you’re justThrough The Jungle” and “Fire Of Love”
completely burnt out and wasted.
were all despatched with a blood-curdling“The album probably sounds clearer ’cos wevenom absent from Chris Stein’s production
had money to produce it correctly. And Chrisof the same songs on Miami.
and Debbie took all this dirgey, self-centred“Like Calling Up Thunder” possessed theneurosis and made it sound like a nice record.
same black momentum: unfortunately it ran“I’m in a better mood now, but last June I wasaway completely with the group. From here
just too damned self-destructive, too
on to Jeffrey’s apparently frustrated anddepressed about the friends I’d lost, the home
ill-tempered exit (to the sound of his own
I’d lost, the complete loss of identity when you
footsteps, it might be added), virtually
don’t live anywhere, just jumping from one
everything was thrown away at a ridiculously
town to another. All personal identity goes out
frenetic pitch that obscured the spirit andthe window. You don’t have a mother or adrama of the group’s songs.
girlfriend, ’cos they’re way back, like a 100 years
Staggering fatly around the stage like a
ago before all this shit started. That’s when you
peroxide Meat Loaf, Jeffrey Lee did little toget real morbid, like Hank Williams did. You
restore anyone’s confidence. As the music
gotta be careful, there’s so many casualties.”

“I

LIVE!

Shambolic but memorable

MM OCt 16 the Gun Club’s London date races towards melodrama.

Looking alarmingly like Debbie
Harry with a fearful weight problem andsounding like Jim Morrison with Iggy Pop
stuck in his throat, Jeffrey Lee Pierce
waddled to the front of the stage, waved
a bottle of plonk at the packed house andconfronted it with a pulpy frown.
“Whaddya want?” Jeffrey scowled, hisbrow rippling like the folds of skin on asquatting porker. “How ’bout a medleyof Rodgers & Hammerstein?”
The audience thought about this like theywould think about a great deal else thatwould follow during The Gun Club’s set:silently, with an almost static sense ofenquiry. “No!” shouted some wag
eventually, a delay of some length making it
impossible to describe his response as
anything approaching immediate.
This kind of hesitancy characterised the
response of both the audience and this hackthroughout The Gun Club’s shambolic but
naggingly memorable London debut.
Whatever lingering doubts and irritation
were provoked by the senseless perversions
they inflicted upon their occasionallycleaving material, it should be noted thatthey nevertheless maintained a kind of
diseased authority; remained compellingeven in disintegration and mucky confusion.
Responsible so far for two albums ofconfused standard, the one rough but
stinging, the other by comparison timid andposturing, The Gun Club proved to be no
more consistent live. Slipping in an earlyhighlight, they featured “Texas Serenade”
from the new LP upfront.
Musically, the Gun Club resembled achorus line of exclamation marks. Ward112 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982

twitched convulsively from one frantic climax
to another, old Jeff hammed it up something
dreadful, posing excessively around the mic
stand and trying desperately to establish
himself as a psychotic rock’n’roll bandit: thiswas all unnecessarily melodramatic anddreadfully boorish of Jeffrey who clearlyneeds a clip around the ear for his behaviour.
Ironically, the spectacle of Pierce groaningon his knees and making the sign of thecross while the spotlight blazed around him
like bristling halos extracted one of the few
positive reactions of the evening. Shortly
afterwards, seemingly miffed by a distinct
lack of adulation, Jeffrey led his disgruntled
troops into the wings. “All the best then,Jeff,” we thought, scribbling our farewells in
the margin of a beer mat. Allan Jones

3. The key to the highway
or the future, Pierce sees himself
developing the country strain
exemplified by the last track of Miami,
the dark and morose “Mother Of Earth”.
Beyond that notion, he’s chronically vague
about what happens next.
“Who knows? That’s so long from now. Maybe
I’ll be a raving nazi by then, or convert to theJewish religion. Maybe I’ll have no control overwhat I’m doing. It’s too bad all this didn’t happen
a few years ago, because I was pretty much awell-controlled kid. Now I’m too far gone…
“I’ve got two opposite directions I wanna go
in. I kinda like that chiming psychedelic sound,and on the other hand I like that real country &Fnovember 11, 1982:
Jeffrey lee Pierce andPatrica morrison, The
gun Club’s third bass
player, at the Peppermint
lounge in new york City

western thing. But I couldn’t do that with The
Gun Club. I’d have to start something new – thefirst drugged-out country singer or something.
I would love to run around just writing slow
E-minor country songs – every one about heroin
and death! Play ’em all on the Grand Ol’ Opry!
“But,” he reflects, suddenly wistful, “theywould probably never allow that. They don’t
have much of a sense of humour.”I mention the resistance to country music
which still exists, maybe as the best old stuff
has been buried, overlaid by three decades ofsaccharine rubbish.
“That’s the damn Yankees. The northerners
always take Southern things and slick ’em up forthe major market. By the time they get over here you get a very diluted
version. Whereas the Southerners live down there in that damned heat,and there’s no money down there, it’s economically destitute. A place like
Mississippi is as badly off as El Salvador. And all those people down there
are completely out of their minds. Absolutely. A lot of those people aren’t
controllable… I’ve started up all these bands now. I decided I got sick ofdoing just one band.”He wakes up out of maudlin reverie to tell me about his new projects.
There’s a group he plays guitar for, Tex And The Horse Head.
“We play all standards like ‘Big Boss Man’, make ’em all sound like
‘Sister Ray’. It’s like where Gun Club’s set ends, this one begins.”
Then there’s a group with Dee Pop of The
Bush Tetras, and more work with Steinand Harry. And then there’s a plan for an
act called Led Zeppelin, A Tribute To The
Doors, the idea being they’d all wear blondwigs and not play a single Doors tune, or
else do them skiffle-style… They tried,
unsuccessfully, to enlist Ray Manzarek –“but I don’t think he found it too funny”.

everybody in the South deteriorates. I mean,
I’m deteriorating right here in front of younow! Everybody eventually becomes a big
burnt-out, wasted alcoholic.
“It’s just the style in that part of the world.
They just can’t seem to do it any other way.
It’s not a very healthy part of the country forme to be in.
“By the time I got to New York I was a raving
maniac. Debbie got real worried about me.
But all those country singers, the Texas people,
they destroy themselves. Unless they makea lot of money, like Willie [Nelson] or Waylon[Jennings], or they hook up with a really good
woman to straighten them out. But Elvis is
ridiculous, and people are so reverent about him.
“I think nothing’s reverent. I guess I’m very blasphemous. I think
everything should be made fun of.”“I’d love to
run aroundwriting slow
E-minorcountry songs”

hate elvis Presley’sguts. He got so bad in his later
years, this dreadful symbolof America. Typical Southerner,“I

don’t really live anywhere any more. All my stuff’s
in storage. I was in New York for a month that was the longest
I spent in one place for a year. Friends start to become
important to you, because you never see them at all. You’re always
arriving in towns like Norfolk, Virginia, or some shit, and you don’tknow anybody, and you look funny,and they all hate you, and think you’re
gay ’cos you’re wearing a leather jacket…
So you just stay in your hotel room andwatch TV and…
“Uh… It’s all gonna come together
eventually. I just wish they’d have a great
big war or something. Just so people hadsomething to do.”Relax, he doesn’t mean it, he’s not thatfar gone. Not yet. What I’d like to see Jeffrey
Lee Pierce do now is make one, two more
LPs like Miami. Then find some good
woman to straighten him out. Thenmaybe take that job with the Library Of
Congress. Paul Du Noyer •“I

HISTORY OF ROCK 1982 | 113

ebet roberts / getty

4. Good ol’ boys

5. The End1982

O C T O B E R – D ECEMBER
and always human. He canpull you into his world
without you noticing and, likethe start of an infatuation,
you’re totally hypnotised.
On Midnight Love, Gaye
has proven that he’s not
only more than capable ofreclaiming lost ground but
actually able to create
pastures new. This LP is not a
comeback but a continuationof a very special talent.
Essential to all soulmerchants and lovers.
Paolo Hewitt, MM Nov 13

Prince1999 WARNER BROS (US impORt)

ALBUMS

Marvin Gaye:
keeping the soullover satisfied

ALBUMS

Gilles petart / GettY

Marvin Gaye
Midnight Love CBS
Nothing to equal the brilliant“(Sexual) Healing” here, butunquestionably the best LP
Marvin Gaye has produced ina long time. Of course, over theyears we’ve come to expect too
much from Gaye, especially after
the ground-breaking successesof What’s Going On and Let’s
Get It On. In fact, the albums
that came later – Here, Here,My Dear and In Our Lifetime –although not classics, have had
to stand unfair comparisons withthese seminal works and havesuffered accordingly.
Gaye, too, seems to havesuffered. Effectively ostracisedfrom his homeland, America, forreasons of a dubious nature, lastyear found him holed up in
London, depressed, miserable
and unsure of his career. This
year it’s a different matter.
Freed of his Motown contract(he effectively disowned his last
LP because of what he called“Motown’s interference”), he’s
teamed up with his old songwriting companion Harvey

114 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982

REVIE
W
1982

Fuqua. Together
they’ve managed to
produce material using
electronic backing that finds
Gaye in one of his most musicallycreative moods.
The songs here don’t reston laurels, but try to pushforward, Gaye trying his hand at
everything; drums, synthesizers,organ, vibes, glockenspiel, evenfinger-popping. Gaye has
written, arranged and produced
everything, except for a coupleof songs, and done it withmasterful ease and confidence.
One listen to “(Sexual) Healing”
confirms this. Both sensuous andrelaxed, it’s the best excuse, if
ever one was needed, for sex.
Most of the LP,
dammit all of theLP, concerns itself
with matters of theflesh and soul,
whether it be thesinuous funk of“Rockin’ After
Midnight” or thelush surroundings
of “Til Tomorrow”.
What makes these,
and the rest of thesongs work, apartfrom the brilliant
combination of stilted
electronic rhythms
layered beautifully with drums,
effective horn work, and discreet
guitars, is Gaye’s voice.
A million times a year the word
“love” is used and thrown away
in songs. Marvin Gaye’s voice is
one of the few that actually makeyou believe in the power of it.
This voice can’t help it. Everyinsinuation, every word
caressed, every little shout,spells sex. Gaye moves fromone extreme to another, his
voice contrasting in a fascinatingmanner with the electronics
behind him, never onedimensional, always intimate..
,,�..�,.

Whether Prince has ditched
the ideals which made his
previous four albums so
provocative for the lucrative
lure of compromise, orwhether, despite what thesales figures say, his
influence has infiltrated
mainstream pop to the point
where his imitators go
virtually unnoticed, the fact
is that much of 1999 sounds
disappointingly familiar.
Perhaps plagiarists such as
The Time and Vanity 6 haveforced his hand, perhaps thedanger of self-parody called
for a dramatic shift ofemphasis but, whatever the
motivation, 1999 sounds likea collection of crudely
calculated manoeuvres towards
popular ingratiation. Gone is theessentially wide-eyed naïfeulogising the joys of sexual
self-discovery; the Prince of1999 is a stud without balls,
paranoically obsessed with his
position as first minister of sexual
politics, strutting mucho macho
bravado and sacrificing tender
intimacy to boasting prowess.
Whereas the breathtakingly
explicit “Do Me Baby” from lastyear’s Controversy album
unashamedly celebrated carnal
ecstasy and, in context with
“Ronnie, Talk To Russia”,
proposed love as an alternative
to man’s self-destruction, muchof 1999 is hackneyed, bopagainst-the-bomb,
outrage-for-outrage’s
sake. The imagery has
grown self-consciously
horny; the automobilehumping equation of“Little Red Corvette”,
the jet-setting clichés of“International Lover” andnudge-nudge, wink-winkinnuendo of “Let’s
Pretend We’re Married”
touting for cheap thrills
and self-aggrandisement.

I suppose, in allhonesty, it wascommerciallyinevitable that
Prince would
become a cartoonof his former
sensitivities,
betraying precious
insistence that any
act of love is naturalfor an antitheticalfreak appeal. But
when the fourthside of this, his first
double album, boasts climaxes
like the preposterously sensuous“Lady Cab Driver” and thewickedly self-deflating “All The
Critics Love U In New York”,
I can’t help but wish that the restof the album’s public exposures
had remained his private
indiscretions. Steve Sutherland ,MM Nov 13

Psychic Tv
Force The Hand Of Chance WEA
Who and what is Psychic TV?
The personnel are half of thedefunct Throbbing Gristle,
Genesis P. Orridge and Sleazy
Peter Christopherson, plus
ex-Alternative TV man Alex
Fergusson, but the aims andmotives behind the projectremain shadowy. Sleazy andGenesis, the masterminds toAlex the musician, made thisalbum after outside pressure torecord again. Their long-term
objective of breaking down thecontrol systems that govern ourlives remains their central
concern, and this is but one
expression of that desire.
There’s something else goingon here, too. When I interviewed
them they were distinctly
guarded on the subject of
cultism, even going so far as tosuggest that this was an area they
were no longer interested in.
Perhaps sensing my scepticism,
they avoided all mention of The
Temple Ov Psychick Youth.
As well as the Force The Hand
Of Chance record, this package
included ‘Psychick Themes’
made by ‘initiates of The Temple’that will accompany portions ofa four-hour PTV video.
According to the literature,
many of the instruments have‘ritual or psychic properties’ andthe music was also designed ‘forsubsequent use by initiates of
The Temple in their rituals.’
On top of this, a small posterpamphlet gives you the option ofsending money to The Temple toenable merchandising and thepurchase of a ‘limited edition
booklet, clothbound and

TV

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illustrated with many rare
photographs on the history
and ideas of The Temple’. Is thisnew-age hippy crap or what?
Some of the music on bothof these records isn’t that far
removed from the awful chantingof the Hare Krishna brigade thathas turned many a rocker’s headin the past. The ‘Themes’ side is,
I suppose, something of a bonus
depending on where you’re
coming from, man, but I’m surethe knowledge that parts of it
were made with 23 Tibetan
human thigh bones, bicycle
wheels and a New Guinea headhunter’s pipe will be enough toensure your undivided attention.
It begins with a slow Harold
Budd/Eno-ish piano exercise,wanders into an unidentified
wind instrument which proceeds
to die on its feet in the mostpainful way imaginable. Whatsounds like a million flies buzzover the corpse before thefuneral proper; then there’s
tinkling bells and other ersatz
Eastern nonsense.
But the real surprises are on
the Chance album. This includes
vocals by Marc Almond, strings
by Andrew Poppy from MM
favourites The Lost Jockey, andthe Beggar and Co horn section.
The mind-expanding lyrics are
by Genesis. The music? Well
imagine a dose of maudlin stringsand simpering guitars spliced
with canyons of the mind poetry
and Ennio Morricone high drama.
Or Jim Morrison as the Lizard
King with no tail and half a brain.
And if you don’t get the message
there’s always the “Message
From The Temple” (previously
titled more appropriately “The
Sermon”) and American-stylemonologue that could bea perfect send up of the fakereligious tone that infests thiswhole concept.
I conclude: The Temple Ov
Psychick Youth is less thana twinkle in the eye of evolution
and a bunch of bad spellers toboot. Beam me up, Scotty.
Ian Pye, MM Nov 20

�Japan: returnto elegance andemotional depth

SINGLES&0011�
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r-�
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SINGLES

W
REVIE
1982

Japan
Nightporter ViRGiNAn arresting andunexpected single in the wakeof their Tin Drum LP. Shapedround some elegant piano andwith Dave Sylvian’s vocals
returning to the impressive
emotional depths of “Ghosts”,
this should give the band’s
critics a little food for thought.
Its affecting musical lilt actuallyreminds me of Kate Bush’s“Army Dreamers”.
MM Nov 13

The Higsons
Tear The Whole Thing Down
2-tONE

Thanks, one would assume,to the keen ear of producer
Jerry Dammers, The Higsons
have produced a record
which at times sounds lovely– particularly the Stax-tinged
horns. It slightly spoils it,
though, when you’ve got
some bloke whining away who
has not the foggiest idea of
how to sing. MM Nov 13

The Undertones
The Love Parade ARDECK
Feargal Sharkey’s tremulous
vocals are shaking so muchthese days they will surely do
him an injury. If that’s the casehe won’t begetting a private
bed from theproceeds of this one.
“Love Parade” is their mostdisappointing single for ages
and arrives at a time when they
really needed something morerejuvenating to make up forlost ground. MM Oct 23

Blancmange
Living On The Ceiling
LONDONThe K-Tel answer
to Simple Minds,
the revoltingly
namedBlancmange
have foundthemselves
a mould and, ofcourse, a shapefollows. Pink, soft
and powdery to taste,
this will remind you ofschool dinners and otherthings too unpleasant tomention here. MM Oct 23aYoko Ono
My Man pOLYDOR
For some reason we are notallowed to actually say what we
think of the efforts of dear old
Yoko. “Always-loved-you; wellsome-of-your-stuff, but-thisisn’t-my-cup-of-tea” is whatgets into print, though “ForGod’s-sake-someone-have-aword-with-her, dissuade-hertell-a-lie-do-anything-butdon’t-please-don’t-let-her-putout-any-more-records” isusually what is on the mind.
MM Dec 4
HISTORY OF ROCK 1982 | 115

fin costello / GettY

PSYCHIC1982
ROW

O C T O B E R – D ECEMBER“Life is a
cut-up”
In London for The Final Academy, a musicalcelebration of his influence, WILLIAM
BURROUGHS is joined by BRION GYSIN for aninterview. “Dentists use music as a painkiller,”says Burroughs. “They always ask me if I wantnovocalm or music and I tell ’em novocalm.”paul natkin / gettyT— NME OCTOBER 16 —his might not be the Garden Of Eden, but God strikeme down if the sunshine don’t bring it somewhere close.
Breakfasting out on the patio – Chelsea Arts Club,
September 30, 1982 – basking in the delayed summer
heat are William Seward Burroughs and Brion Gysin,
venerable serpents if ever there were a pair, whose
forbidden fruit has been the most nourishing food for thought andsavage amusement these past 23 years.
Nibbled at by every subsequent generation and taken up in earnest by
The Final Academy students Psychic TV, Cabaret Voltaire, 23 Skidoo and
Z’EV, it is still subjected to hysterical howls of moral indignation or ardentadmiration, the polarisation itself confirming the pair’s position at theforefront of what Jon Savage describes as “the information war” – or “thewar between knowledge and anti-knowledge” (Genesis P-Orridge).
Burroughs entered it in earnest in 1959 with the publication of The
Naked Lunch (his second novel after 1953’s Junky), which describeda phantasmagorical journey back from The Fall from God’s grace to ahellish heaven of man’s own dreaming via addiction, arousing sex fantasies
and unsettling caricature of stereotypes – all pointing a way to violent
shedding of conditioning.
Though the controversial campaigning, litigation and literary debate,
which finally secured the right to publication in Britain, belongs verymuch to the lingering post-war puritanism of the early’60s, its impact on
an individual picking it up for the first time today is probably as great now
as it has ever been.
So the significance of its publication victory rightly pales besides the more
lasting influence Burroughs has exerted in that same information war. He »116 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982

“The history of thisplanet is the historyof war”: William S
Burroughs in Chicago,
March 25, 1981

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1982

NILS JORGENSEN / REXO C T O B E R – D ECEMBER

was given the most effective weapon by his long-time friend andcollaborator Brion Gysin – a British-born, Swiss national, American-bychoice painter and writer – who accidentally chanced upon the cut-up
techniques – a mechanical method of introducing spontaneity by cutting
passages into strips and permutating them, folding them into other texts– in Paris in ’59.
The cut-up is their most potent legacy, but they’ve also amassed
and exchanged an extraordinary amount of usable information andexperiences. While Burroughs filled Gysin in on the details of his heroin
addiction and his explorations of South America – his experiments withthe telepathic drug yage, his studies of Mayan mythology and symbol
languages – Gysin shared with him his 23 years in Morocco, introducing
him to the trance pipe music of Joujouka and the work of Hassan I Sabbah.
Sabbah, the legendary Old Man Of The Mountain, led a fanatical
12th-century sect of Moslems whose hit squad gave us the word
“assassin”. From Hassan Burroughs picked up the credo “Nothing istrue; everything is permitted”.
Between them, Burroughs and Gysin have merged magic and science
with literature and art. Their writing is effective because it is so accurately
informed and not a little mad, in that it resists conventional logic. They
have made available all manner of mysteries, demythologised theworkings of control organisms, and provided an index of endlesspossibilities via permutation, the methods of which are helpfully
described in their collaboration The Third Mind, in Burroughs’ The Job
and Ah Pook Is Here and the Gysin book of interviews Here To Go Planet
R-101. Their practice is the freedom of information, not the usual selfish
guarding of secrets.
“That’s the idea,” enthuses Brion Gysin in a rich, youthful tenor that
belies his 66 years, “putting an idea out that spreads by itself. We calledthat ‘the open bank’, as a matter of fact. Give away your ideas! Give away
your stock!” He pauses, smiling. “I don’t think it was such a good idea…”
Neither Burroughs nor Gysin are particularly rich, though since theformer returned to America in the early ’70s, he has upped his income
with public readings and the increased royalties that go with longoverdue recognition. As Gysin still lives in Paris, the pair rarely see eachother, except for the occasional conference or something like The Final
Academy, an event, prompted by Genesis P-Orridge’s admiration, which
finally united the two mentors with the groups who’ve updated andadapted the cut-up to modern technology.
“I wouldn’t be here except for these readings,” intones Burroughs readily,“because I don’t travel at all unless someone else is picking up the tab…”
That he travels still is some feat. If, when seated onstage behind a deskwith two microphones, reading in that lovely parched faintly aristocratic
crackle of a voice, he resembles an ageless, dementedly enthusiastic
newscaster, face to face his 68 years are more telling.
His face is deeply engraved with the rigours his thin body has been
through these past five decades. His head topped by a becoming cap, hesways back and forth on a cane like a sporting country gentleman, but I
have no doubt that he can wield it as the deadly anti-mugging device hedescribes in a RE/Search 4/5 interview. He and Gysin as usual areforthcoming with information, triggering off each other’s arcane
anecdotes, odd theories and reminiscences. Yet within the hour’s allottedtime it’s not easy to pursue lines so well documented in the plethora ofextensive interview handbooks already available – mentioned earlier.
What follows, then, is more a series of codas and witty postulations on
the pair’s favourite themes. (Bold type crossheads are gleaned fromBurroughs’ readings and recordings, unless otherwise stated.)
New tunes for old words (Brion Gysin)
BG: …That’s why I used the cut-up thing back there [he was supported at
The Final Academy for some routines by three musicians including Tessaof The Slits]. New tunes to fairly old words, which is one of the things
about the convention, which is about the subject of cutting-up material.
I don’t use it any more, even though I discovered it, first put the idea acrossand everything. Like William I thought it was something you could go on
from – it had more applications in other fields…
WSB: Remember, the cut-up principle of introducing randomity was
actually the basis of strategy in World War II. Read Dr Neumann’s book
Theory Of Games And Economic Behaviour. Suppose you got threealternative flight paths. If the enemy find out which one you’re gonnause, they’re gonna intercept you, right? So minimise! You assume theworst has happened, that they know you’re going to select one, but that
information would be of utterly no use to them, because it would bea throw of the dice! We don’t know ourselves which one we’re going touse until the dice falls…
BG: This is a big step beyond the whole idea of codes – codes which
could be broken. Here you have no coded way of doing it.
WSB: (postulating) Well, of course, life is a cut-up. The consciousness
is cut by random factors as soon as you move; the only place where life
would not be a cut-up is in a sensory withdrawal chamber! Oh yeah, I’ve
been in one. They’ve got them all over the place now, six dollars an hourto go lie in these tanks. Oh well, it’s just restful, just like being in a quiet
place, that’s all. I cannot but feel it’s rather insanitary…
QUESTION: You mean they don’t change the water?
WSB: Presumably they do, heh heh, but how can I be sure of that? Thiswater I’m floating around in…
WSB: The Place Of Dead Roads is straighter narrative more or less,because narrative is more applicable to the material I’m using. The cutup, like any technique, is useful in certain areas and not in others. People
seem to think that one is obligated to use something because you haveused it before, but it’s not like that at all…
Though The Final Academy was in many ways a celebration of The CutUp, Burroughs has for the moment dispensed with the technique hehas applied so relentlessly in writing and, to a lesser extent, the shortfilms he made with the late Anthony Balch, in favour of a morestraightforward structure.
This isn’t to say his most recent novels Cities Of The Red Night and theas yet unpublished Dead Roads are any less adventurous.
Both narratives leap back and forth through time, folding
scientific fiction into hilarious genre parodies, the formerof Graham Greene, pulp detective, the latter – from theextracts heard or read so far – of Western dime novels andmovies. Both return to decisive points in history where,
but for a specific incident, things could have gone either
way. Cities… hinges on the hanging of a pirate, Captain
Mission, who had set up a short-lived control-free utopia.
What if?
Stay out of churches, son. All they got is the key tothe shithouse. And swear to me you’ll never weara policeman’s badge.

Brion Gysin (left) andWilliam Burroughsreunited at one of fournights of reading at the
Ritzy cinema in Brixton,
South London, during
The Final Academy inlate September 1982

118 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982

WSB: Place Of Dead Roads is a sequel to Cities Of The Red
Night. What happened there was, like, commandos wereparachuted behind enemy lines in time and they sort ofcleaned up and drastically altered South and Central
America. …Dead Roads is the same sort of thing applied
to North America.
They did South and Central America and the Catholic
Church; now they’re doing North America and thewilliam burroughs

protestant ethic and the Bible Belt… There’s drastically fewer sexualscenes in …Dead Roads than Cities Of The Red Night.
There’s really not that many at all. It’s really concerned with weaponry
more than anything else. Weaponry on all levels. The whole theory of
weaponry and war. The history of this planet is the history of war; theonly thing that gets a Homo sapien up off his dead ass is a foot up! And thatfoot is war!
Now, there are more advances in medical sciences, say, in one year of
war than there are in 20 or 30 years of stagnant peace. That’s where all
the big advances come from. In World War II, of course, there were
antibiotics, and they really found drugs that would cure malaria, where
quinine would only keep it down. There are all sorts of other vital,
important discoveries. People need pressure to get anything done.
BG: And everyone gets more practice, that’s all. As far as doctors areconcerned, war’s a field day!

All arguments, all nonsensical condemnations as to what people“should do”, are irrelevant. Ultimately there is only one fact on alllevels, and the more one argues, verbalises, moralises, the less he will
see and feel of fact. Needless to say I will not write any formal statementon the subject. (WSB letter to Allen Ginsberg)
QUESTION: Now that censorship has relaxed, are targets harder
to pinpoint?
BG: I don’t think censorship has relaxed; it was beaten down quite legally!
That’s quite different. I don’t think Mary Whitehouse, or whatever her
name is, has relaxed for a minute!
WSB: It didn’t relax voluntarily. These things never do. The French kings
did not abdicate voluntarily (he feints a chopping motion). THWOCK!
Heh, heh. Not very relaxed… Censorship was never an issue. You don’t
have to have something that is presumably
forbidden or difficult, that isn’t
at all important.

BG: That’s right. The hideous trap of the waiting womb is continually
spoken about in The Tibetan Book Of The Dead.
WSB: Absolutely! Say, if that’s not a good pop song: “Closing that old
womb door” (pause/whirr/chuckle) “Don’t wanna come back no more…”
BG: Ha ha. I don’t think The Slits would play that.
WSB: Well, there are whole batches of spells for closing the womb door
in the Bardo Hotel; because you want to be sure you’re going to make it!
You don’t want to close the womb door if you can’t make it.
Like a prisoner who killed his guard, he steps lightly through an
open door.
Sex, in an Eastern scheme of things studied by Gysin and Burroughs, isjust one rite of passage. Other modes of transcendence include trance
music such as that practised by the pipers of Joujouka, who Gysin
incidentally brought to western ears – firstly at the restaurant he ran
in Morocco, and secondly by leading the late Brian Jones up themountain to record them,
What with the villager westernised, the sons of the pipers reluctant tocontinue the tradition, the music festivals of Joujouka are almost a thingof the past. Just when western scientists had begun to explore themedicinal properties of such music, too.
BG …Something enormously important has been lost, yes… It has beenabsorbed into small movements of medical therapy, actually. What themusicians of Joujouka did, they cured mental illness by music. There are
institutes of musical therapy now in France. I don’t suppose they know
exactly what they’re doing, but they know something can be done andthey’re trying things out, getting news about it where they can…
WSB: Of course, dentists have been using music as a painkiller for quite
a long time now. They always ask me if I want novocalm or music and I tell’em novocalm. Heh heh. You see, if there’s a lullin the music, WHAM! There the pain comesback! It has to be pretty constant and loud. It
doesn’t matter what kind of music they use, it’s
simply volume, which will tell us the function of
the scream is to kill pain.
BG: A lot of musical groups have realised this
too, that it’s just volume that counts…
WSB: It’s just volume. One popstar said tothe other, “Be good. And if you can’t be good,
be loud!”“You don’t
want to close
the wombdoor if you
can’t make it”

A running sub-theme through Burroughs’
four readings traced together his contempt
for the “do-rights”, those who for the sake of
expediency will either work for the control
organism or meekly submit to it.
“Junky: ‘Doctor, when I die I want to be buried
right in the same coffin as you’ … ‘I’m putting
you down for additional medication, son.’”Or, from Roosevelt After Inauguration:“Hopkins, unable to control himself, rolled on thefloor in sycophantic convulsions, saying over andover, ‘You’re killin’ me, Chief. You’re killin’ me.’”Better to “scan the horizons for new frontiers of depravity. This is theSpace Age; we are here to go. We can float out of here on a foam runway ofsheer vileness.”
To Destroy enemies and, quite literally, make friends…
Brion Gysin’s Academy readings came from either his book ofinterviews, conducted by the young Englishman Terry Wilson, ora forthcoming novel – the latter read better.

The other mode of transport is less fanciful– ie, space travel. Gysin and Burroughs havelooked back at the ecological nightmare ofthis planet, and have concluded that the only
place left to go is space. What has been done to this Earth in the nameof its people and also to its people, of course, explains their obsession
with control and the need to break its hold. But will man ever get off
this planet?
Burroughs suggests the black hole as a possible exit. “How do you
get from the surface of the water to the bottom without getting wet?”
Burroughs asks. “Very simple. Whirlpool… Well, it can be compared.”Time and resources, though, are perhaps running out too fast.
Any control machine needs time…

QUESTION: Tell me about your novel in progress, Brion.
BG: ’S called Bardo Hotel… Beat Museum – Bardo Hotel, something likethat. Pieces have been published here and there… The idea is that myhero dies and finds the old beat hotel [in Rue Git Le Coeur, Paris, where
Burroughs and Gysin lived awhile, playing host to beat visitors], because
he was very interested in the beats and he intended to buy this place andtake it to this museum in California.
That’s where he finds himself when he is dead. It’s turned into a sort ofTibetan bardo to him: seven floors, seven rooms on each floor, and he has
to go through all the floors of the hotel.
WSB: I think it’s a very good format – between worlds you see the people
waiting to be reborn, whether they’re gonna make it back as a cow or not…
BG: Yes. Also unlikely people meet there… each floor is a sexual
situation; levels of the hotel are sexual levels going right up toabnormality and then out – or back again!
WSB: Because, as you know, one of the great dangers of living between
worlds like that is sex. That is what lures them back into reincarnation.

“Interpol and Deutsche Bank/FBI and Scotland Yard” (Kraftwerk:“Computer World”)
BG: Miniaturisation in time has occurred simultaneously with theminiaturisation in electronic equipment. The whole chip system has
been brought about by people dealing with tiny fractions of the second;smaller quantities of time are continually being broken in on… Williamsaid, “Time is that which ends.” Presumably this is the operation of using
up very small particles. Detecting the various small movements of matter
is using it all up, and once the thing is observed where is it going to go?
Brion Gysin has a bedtime story. It seems that trillions of years ago agiant flicked grease from his fingers. One of these gobs of grease is ouruniverse on its way to the floor.
QUESTION: Have we left it too late to leave this planet?
WSB: Who knows? As the French say, who lives will see. Chris Bohn •HISTORY OF ROCK 1982 | 119

1982

O C T O B E R – D ECEMBER

Uncommon beauty
NME OCTOBER 2 Neil Young and Nils Lofgren jam againJ

ust what is it that has preserved the mystery of Neil Youngthrough this past decade? Whatever it is, he comes perilously
close to dissolving it every time he shows his face in public.
Thankfully that is none too often. After the morbid preoccupationof 1975’s turning point Tonight’s The Night – inspired by the OD
deaths of two friends – he withdrew from the distracting media
glare, retreated to his ranch and released a succession of
bewildered, funny, curious and intensely inquisitive records,
whose contemporaneity transcended trends and their own
roughshod cross-cutting of styles.
They at once fuelled – and were fuelled by – the legend of
eccentricity crystallising around his silence, which in itself has
proved invaluable in preventing him from succumbing to thedissipating repetition and numb acceptance affecting his
contemporaries. Where their responses have beendeadened by the passing of years, his capacity to be
BIRMINGHAM
surprised, amused or moved has only deepened.
NEC
Just as you get a greater feeling of what it might belike to be American from maverick films such as
Melvin And Howard than you would froma Spielberg or Coppola picture, so you are better
SEPTEMBER 24
off turning to Neil Young than the blockbusterrock and disco dominating the US charts.
His songs might be crudely drawn and vaguely
incomplete, his records sometimes alarmingly inconsistent,
but at least they have the sense of moving forward and taking thingsin. Live though – be it in Birmingham last week or on earlier tours,
such as the one filmed as Rust Never Sleeps – it’s all looking back,déjà vu. Less putting his history in some panoramic order thansimply setting out to please by giving the people what they want.
Inevitably this means the slight-sounding but immensely moresatisfying and entertaining work of these past seven years is ignoredin favour of guitar rock staples extending from the comparatively
recent “Like A Hurricane” back through to “Southern Man”.
Of course, his choice of song is partly dictated by thecircumstance of venue, but sticking with stadium rock standards is
too easy, not to mention unworthy. Specially as they only serve toexpose the one area where he has not made much advance. That is,
his guitar playing. In case this sort of thing still interests you, I’ll
report that his soloing and duetting with old buddy Nils Lofgren(sadly behaving like a performing monkey these days) follow thesame cautious progressions they always have done and always will,
given his peculiarly lumpen rhythms.
There are a few moments, though, where the two guitars knot
together with uncommon beauty – something like the two snakes
fucking on TV the night before, all slithering coils and rapture.
Otherwise it’s just so much shedding of dead skin.
It’s a pity he feels such a strong need to please, as the excellent
sound quality quickly does away with the distance and thedisappointment of not being able to see anything, making the whole
event far more personal than I expected. The immediacy of the now
threadbare “Old Man” and “Needle And The Damage Done” haveme yearning for the better “Thrasher” or, Lord preserve us,
something new. On the other hand, songs from his forthcoming LP
don’t induce love on first hearing. Almost all those he showcases areundeniably playful, featuring him and/or Lofgren talking throughtheir guitars, but the resulting homogenous sweep of sound ismore Peter Frampton than a disconcerting Devo or Kraftwerk.
An unfortunate concession to modernity or genuine thirstfor experiment? Even allowing him the benefit of doubt, he still– likeably – comes across as a delighted boy with a new toy. I wish
I could share his joy. For the moment there is more pleasure to be
had lying with the old snakes. Chris Bohn

Hulton ArcHive / gettyLIVE!

120 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982

Neil Young andNils Lofgren: a pair ofold snake charmers

HISTORY OF ROCK 1982 | 121

1982

O C T O B E R – D ECEMBER“No fairy
story”CULTURE CLUB’s BOY
GEORGE explains how
a feisty characterfrom Camden nightlife
became a huge star,to the confusion ofbuilders everywhere.
“Look, don’t fucking
slag me off,” he says,“‘cos if you do I’ll
punch you. I’m always
going to be like that.”lisa haun / gettyI

122 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982

— NME OCTOBER 16 —t’s GeorGe’s birthday – no biologicallandmark but a time of transition fora boy about town with big ambitions.
Today is Tuesday, and Culture Club havea successful single that’s just climbed
the charts to No 3.
This same week has seen the release of their first
LP. Tonight there’s a concert for London’s CapitalRadio to be broadcast from Camden Palace. And,almost overnight, Boy George has become a bonafide popstar, a public figure with a famous face.
The Boy’s full of beans, but not completely
bowled over. He looks back on a life that’s been
crammed with fun, and turns towards the futurewith a trace of trepidation. For a boy who has
always seemed accessible, unselfconscious
and almost everywhere at once – whether
working in a clothes shop off Carnaby Street
or unostentatiously enjoying himself in the
thick of London nightlife, there’s an inklingof other considerations
soon to be confronted…
“The other day I went
into a hamburger place on
Oxford Street. I was dressed
up and I forgot. I mean,
I don’t feel there’s anything
to forget. I was hungry
and I thought I’d better getsomething to eat. These
little kids got round me ina circle, poking me.
“It was quite amusing,
because they were going,‘Are you the girl from
Culture Club?’ And I said
to them, ‘Well, actually,
I’m not a girl’.
»culture club

Boy George:“I don’t think I
look like a girl, I’m
just a bloke withan ego problem.”

HISTORY OF ROCK 1982 | 123

1982

O C T O B E R – D ECEMBER“It’s great, all that, because you don’t deliberately set out to do anything,and I really haven’t. I don’t think I look like a girl, I’m just a bloke with a bitof an ego problem, I suppose.”eorge arrives at the Virgin offices immaculately attired,
his long hair falling in a profusion of plaits from under a highhat, his face perfectly painted, the bone structure delicately
shaded and his eyes emphasised withdiscreet shades of lilac.
Spend a few minutes in his company andGeorge’s appearance and personality blend
into a happy, lively, harmonious whole. But
when we walk through West London to look forsome lunch, strollers stop to gape and doubletake. The Boy is as bold as brass and has thecheek of the devil. When a workman leaningfrom some scaffolding rudely attracts his
attention, not sure at the distance whether he’s
ogling an object of ridicule or arousal, George
looks up sharply.
“Jump, wanker!” he shouts.
Boy George drinks tea and eats steak andbaked potatoes. He’s an anti-elitist who
squashes pretension and pounces on pomposity. George is shrewd andcandid, occasionally spiteful and well attuned to the sheer absurdity of
his own situation. Warm and witty, with one of those faces that explodeinto a smile, The Boy’s no fool and you’ll occasionally catch him shooting
you an appraising look from under his long lashes. Just as Culture Clubare making some of the most logical and delightful pop of the present,so George is all set to become one of the best of modern music stars.
Sane in the right places and humane where it matters most, with
sufficient self-respect not to take himself too seriously, George is
garrulous and fizzy – but not too dizzy.
Point him in the general direction of a question and he’s off ona quicksilver catalogue of loves, hates, fears, desires and furies….

G

loneliest I’ve ever felt. People are being nice to you because…I’m cynicaland if people come up to me and say, ‘Congratulations’, I’ll just say, ‘Fuck
off’. Not because I’m trying to be an anarchistic little popstar, but because
I don’t think I’m someone special and I’m not doing it for that reason. I
don’t need people coming up to me and saying, ‘Now you’re OK, now
you’re acceptable’. I don’t want them involved with my life.
“I’m not frightened of not being successful; I’m frightened of not being
successful as a person. I’d much rather thatpeople think, ‘Oh, he’s a happy person’, rather
than, ‘Wow, isn’t he clever’? Because I’m not. It’s
all luck and what you make of it.
“The only nice thing is that if a housewife
comes up to you in the street and says, ‘I likeyour record’. You feel much better than if
someone with a really sickly sneer on their facesays, ‘Ooh, congratulations, it’s soooo good’.
You just really want to punch them.
“I know why people hate me. The thing is,
if you go to the Palace, those people are very
normal. I’m not saying they’re idiots because
they dress up or they don’t dress up, but theirreasons for doing it are very silly. They reallywant to be normal and they actually fit intothat environment perfectly because they want so much to be likeeveryone else. I suppose I’m the sort of person who spends most of theirtime trying not to be like everyone else, which is probably why I’m soordinary. I feel so natural in what I’m doing.
“It’s quite sad, that big fear of alienation. You get it at school, because
you’re taught not to have a personality, it’s better for them if you don’t.
I’m not saying I hate school, but I think it could be done a bit better. I think
there’s a lot of things about this country that could be done better.
“It’s a fear of not being accepted by other people. I went through thatat school, but it hardened me up. It made me more secure because
I suddenly realised why people were doing it. I mean, I look at people andthink, ‘Idiot!’ But if I meet them I’m prepared to back down. Unless people
meet you on your level, they’re never going to know what you’re like, arethey? They’re going to say, I don’t like him because he wears make-up. Ifthey project their uprightness on you, that’s their problem.
“‘White Boy’ is not about white people; it’s about people who areshallow, see-through. At the time I started there were a lot of cynicalpeople around me, who I don’t mix with anymore. Bow Wow Wowites andvery trendy people. They were saying to me, ‘Ooh, your band’s reallywhite, you should be tribal’. I just kept saying, ‘We’re a rock band, we’regoing to do all the things other people don’t’.The song’s about this guy
who kept saying, ‘You’re really white’. I was supposed to be upset by that.”“I’m justa normal
Hello John
from down
the road”

Origins“it isn’t george and Culture Club, it’s Culture Club – and that’s how
it’ll always be. I really like the band… well, personally there’s a few
things I dislike about them, because I’m a difficult person to get on
with. I’m very temperamental and quite selfish in my opinions.
There was that big thing in NME about how I wasn’t in Bow Wow Wow
anymore and how I should get my own band. I found Jon through Kirk
Brandon from Theatre Of Hate. Jon’s been in a hell of a lot of bands andI knew I wasn’t capable of organising one. I met Michael in a night club.
We wanted a guitarist who was just a competent guitar player, neverheard of me, never been to any of the clubs, just someone who was reallyenthusiastic. I really liked Roy as soon as I met him. He was quiet, didn’t
have a big mouth.
“That’s how it started. No fairy story; basically like a lot of bands.
I wanted to get people who didn’t agree with me. It’s quite good that wegot people who weren’t involved in that cliquey rock and roll thing. I hatethe sort of people who come up to you afterwards and say, ‘Hey man thebass stack was a bit crackly’. That artistic crap. You think, oh God
almighty help me, get me out of here. We’ll all end up like that, I’m sure.
I hope not though.
“I believe in doing what you’re good at. If you’re good at copying
pictures, you should do that; if you’re good at creating things, you should
create them. There’s no Flash Harrys in this band. That’s the mostimportant thing about Culture Club, that we’re fluid about what we’re
doing. If you break up the single, it’s a bit like ‘White
Christmas’ and ‘All You Need Is Love’. If you canreally listen to it, and think what does it sound like?
�– that makes a good song to me.”i''�1��í���The norm, fear and fashion“i’m just a normal person. I’m not an Andy
Warhol, I’m not a concept. I’m just a normal HelloJohn from down the road. I’ve got beliefs, but
I don’t mean that’s it, black and white, and that’s
all you should believe from me. Confidence
comes and goes, it’s a human thing.
“Last night I was so pissed off; I think that was the
124 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982

i
00 Y00 REALLY

Optimismgeorge hails the waiter with a grin and a polite holler. “I’m leaving
the mushrooms. I didn’t think they’d be like that. I’m optimistic.”

Gender“all the other countries are really frightened about the LP cover,because a lot of people just think I’m a girl. Of course I enjoy that, I love
it! It’s great because I’ve got a certain female element to my character.
But I’m not a poof. I’m effeminate in the way I look, but I’m not an
effeminate person. I don’t like effeminate people. It’s like when you
meet gay people and they say, ‘Oh hello’. That is put on, because I’ve
done it, put on a very camp voice.
“You do need gay clubs, because if you’re gay and you walk up to
someone in a club and they’re not gay, they’re going to punch you in theteeth, aren’t they, if you try and chat them up? But
I don’t believe in the gay identity, that you have to
be noted and recognised as a gay.
`�
“In the album there’s a lot of references togender. When we first started I wasn’t aware of it,
but when we did ‘White Boy’ everyone was saying,‘Who’s the girl’? That’s why I called myself
Boy George.
“I really like symbols, so I decided to use thesex symbols on the cover. The picture was really
androgynous. It’s a heterosexual symbol, but it
doesn’t have to be. Things aren’t as black and whiteas they look, which is the whole idea.”

WANT 10

HURT nInstinct and aggression“there is an element of you which wants success, but
you follow your instincts really, don’t you? You want to havea hit because that’s the whole idea of signing a record deal.
But if you start worrying what other people think, you’reuseless to yourself.
“It’s best if you don’t lie to yourself. I don’t mind about lying
to other people – I do it all the time! If you can admit you’rea creep to yourself, you’re halfway to solving your problems.
I always do what I feel is right at the time. Sometimes it isn’t,
but it’s much better to take the chance. I believe in acting how
you feel, I’m very like that.
“Of course, I get annoyed, I’m a human being, I’m not a star.
It’s not all this, ‘Oh you can’t embarrass yourself’. I’d just go up
to them and say, ‘Look, don’t fucking slag me off, ‘cos if you do
I’ll punch you’. I’m always going to be like that, it doesn’t
matter how successful I am. If they’re going to slag me off,
they’re going to get it back.”

Character and stardom

Unity“i’ve got five brothers and one
sister. It’s a real Irish family. You don’t have to accept someone’s culture
to like them. It’s like being Irish, all this Catholic and Protestant thing.
You don’t have to dislike someone for being Protestant just because
someone else does. That was the idea of using all the symbols on theclothes, so that it was like an everyman culture rather than one-sided.
“We’ve dropped the Star Of David now, because I’ve no intention of
hurting people’s feelings, and it’s not a very good time for that symbol. I’m
not anti-Arab and I’m not anti-Jew, but I don’t like the idea of provoking
people, sticking things down their throat.”

Love, sex and marriage“of Course i fancy people, but I don’t usually sleep with people
I fancy. I sleep with people I fancy and then I really like them. I don’t
like people who are physically everything and psychologicallynothing. People who’ve just got their sexuality are pretty sad.
“I’m not a sexy person. That’s one thing about people who are into theband, it’s not like, ‘Phwoooaaar, I’d like to go to bed with George’. It’s morethey like what I say and the idea of me. You are what you give out to people.
“There’s a lot of thoughtless people around. I don’t believe in getting
what you can out of people, whether it be ina relationship or business. I dislike decadence a lot, whether it’s
decadence on Top Of The Pops, with the mini-skirts and girls making

Boy George: the gracious
glow of a slightly snappish
maiden aunt after two
glasses of Christmas sherrythemselves look like they’re nothing. It’s like the whole pop
scene. I can look at something and think, ‘Oh no, it’s awful,please don’t do it’. It’s really hideous and false. The whole idea
of calling the album Kissing To Be Clever is like the kiss ofdeath, the kiss of life. The whole of that album is like a cynicallove song. It’s all about the new boy gender, it’s all about pop.
It’s a very pop album. The songs are very personal, but also
they can apply to other people. It’s almost like saying, ‘Think about what
you’re doing, don’t not do it because it’s right or wrong, but think about it’.
“The best songs in the world are love songs. But love applies to everyone.
It doesn’t just apply to a few people in the room with pink eyebrows andstilettos on. Everybody falls in love and everybody wants somebody tolove at the end of the day. I’ve been in love with somebody for about a year
now, but it’s a bit on the rocks at the moment. I don’t play games withpeople. I don’t not love them because they don’t love me. It upsets me, but
I don’t believe in acting a different way. I’m into relationships rather thansexual encounters. Also, I’d never sleep with fans. None of the band would
do that. I don’t believe in abusing the position.
“I don’t believe in marriage. If you love someone you don’t have to proveit. The thing is, I can go two ways on that subject, because if you love
someone you’re going to want to keep them forever, aren’t you? You can’t
be dogmatic about love; it’s such a heart-rending thing. I’m sure I’d get
married if I loved someone.”

Hypocrisy

david corio / getty“CharaCter’s something you have to create; you
can’t get it by dressing up. I like old women that you meet atbus stops. They’re characters, it’s not someone who comesup to you and says, ‘I was a punk in ’76’. Remember that old
rigmarole? I hated all that, such a load of shit.
“I’ve got a snotty nose. Sorry. It’s very un-star-like, isn’t it?”
Culture Club at Camden Palace for Gary Crowley’s Capitalbirthday are shrill girlish screams and a shower of confetti.
There’s something wholesomely natural about a stage full of
blacks and whites, males and females. Culture Club look good
and are something worth watching, but there’s no sly gloss or
nasty attention-grabbing – two girl singers, one wearing
glasses, have been chosen for more enduring qualities thanmere appearance.
Culture Club make a lovely music that’s
clear and sheer and sunny and there’s
a pleasure taken in its communicationthat defies distance. In the middle ofthis musical melee, George is a warm,
coquettish presence. Handing out
posters, listening to small requests ordedicating a song to his sister, he has
the gracious glow of a cherished but
slightly snappish maiden aunt after two
glasses of Christmas sherry. Something
about the easy joy of Culture Club’s
performance turns a half-hour
recording into a short celebration.

“i’m like that – a hypocrite.”Honesty“an honest hypoCrite, I hope.” Lynn Hanna ¥HISTORY OF ROCK 1982 | 125

1982

O C T O B E R – D ECEMBER“Five very
ambitious
people”
From the top of the
pop tree, “smallcommando unit”
DURAN DURAN taketime to answer theircritics. Chiefly: arethey all style and no
substance? “What’s
wrong with being acareerist?” asks
SiMON LE BON.
“People should be
rewarded for ability
not need.”Ashinko music / getty— MELODY MAKER NOVEMBER 13 —126 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982s the straining cordon of policemen
splits under the frantic pressure of budding
femininity, the coach swerves away from
Glasgow Apollo and speeds through thedark, wet backstreets.
Four hundred teenage girls screaming as
one, weep, wave and stampede, gradually straggling off into
pockets of damp, puffed disappointment. Soon the last gangof pursuers stumble back into the distance and a solitary figure
keeps abreast of the coach, running as if its life is at stake.
The coach just clips through an amber light and still the figure
keeps coming, dodging cars, barely avoiding a bus, madly
ignoring the green cross code.
“Pull up! Stop!” yells Roger Taylor and the coach jerks twice andcoasts to a halt. The automatic doors purr open and young Mark
Duffy, heaving with exhaustion and excitement, staggers up thesteps to rapturous applause.
“Please will you put ‘I was in your coach’?” he asks Nick Rhodes
as the lipstick blond signs his programme.
“Please…otherwise my friends won’t believe me…”
Okay, though the incident’s true, you’ve read it many times
before, Duran Duran, pop stars, teen idols, candyfloss gods to a
new generation of gullible adolescents with more pocket money
than sense. If only the stupid sheep would scream and lend
financial support to the worthy likes of the Gang Of Four, theworld would be a better place. Well… er… wouldn’t it?
I, for one, quite honestly doubt it and have caught a fairamount of flak in the past for being stupid enough to say so.
Here, at Maker Central, my rapturous review of the Rio
album is still the subject of sniggering ridicule andconsidered an unbalanced lapse of common sense.
But just why do the press find Duran Duran unacceptable?
Do they pose some threat to jealously guarded traditional
standards? Is it because they wear make-up? Just why dothey offend mature sensibilities? And why do they sell somany records? Only one way to find out….
Yours truly nipped up north of the border with the express
purpose of confronting Duran with their own reputationand giving them a rare right of reply. The interviews wereconducted in dribs and drabs, usually individual, »Five-headed beast: Duran
Duran (clockwise fromleft) Simon Le Bon, Andy
Taylor, John Taylor, Nick
Rhodes and Roger Taylor

HISTORY OF ROCK 1982 | 127

1982

O C T O B E R – D ECEMBER

but sometimes in groups over a hectic three-day period. Nick Rhodes
provided the most apt preamble:“We are probably, in Britain over the past five years, the only band that’s
known as five individuals – there is no one really major person in theband who has the personality which carries the entire band. We are fivevery different personalities as The Beatles were four.
“The press find it hard to cope with the fact that I might say something
and then Andy might contradict me. It’s never a case of Duran Duran says‘that’, because each member is a fifth of Duran Duran and our opinions
are individual.
“There can be up to five contradictions at any one point. I think thisinterview is important because nobody’s ever asked us this before – we’ve
never ever been able to level out how we felt exactly about all those
things… I think it’s really interesting… about the reasons why…”
Appetite whetted? Here goes…

Duran Duran are all image and no content.

N

ick Rhodes: “Because we came over with a certain
flamboyancy in the initial stages, a lot of people thought wewere irresponsible and naive and didn’t deserve the instantsuccess we seemed to be having because we were only getting thatsuccess due to our image and being in the right place at the right time.
“However, what they fail to realise is that John and I had been working
on the idea of crossing Chic and the Sex Pistols two and a half years before
Duran Duran. Both had records in the charts and we liked them both fordifferent reasons so we thought: ‘Why not make something danceablewith more energy plus some sort of Giorgio Moroder-type synths?’ We
wanted to be striking like I remember Roxy Music were the first time they
were on the Old Grey Whistle Test. I was what? Ten or eleven, andeverybody at school the next day was talking about them. That’s the way
we wanted it to be, bright and powerful.
“I look back at our pictures now from the ‘romantic’ era and I sort ofchuckle at them. Then I think: ‘Well, it was very striking’ and then I think‘what bands are enormous? The Beatles, Pink Floyd, The Rolling Stones…
what did they look like when they came out?’ And I remember those little
black suits and flowery shirts and thinking, ‘Image shouldn’t be taken so
seriously, it’s something you can have a lot of fun with’.
“I mean, now our image is as we are – five individuals, but I think, if wehadn’t had that initial image, we wouldn’t have had such a big impact thefirst time we were on Top Of The Pops.
“I see no difference between us and Edwyn Collins of Orange Juice
wearing a pair of Oxford bags with braces – it’s all image. Take Kevin
Rowland – what a master of image he is! Just because he happens to wear
an anorak and boxing boots instead of a frilly shirt and a pair of leather
trousers, he’s a genius to certain political sectors of the music press.”
Andy Taylor: “How fuckin’ thick of the press to base their whole conceptof a band on image and not on music.”

Duran Duran are a sickly confection.

John TayloR: “The sort of people we sell to, do not question our
relevance to society and until they feel we’re giving them a raw
deal, I don’t think we have to answer to anybody. I don’t see why
we should have to satisfy what I consider to be petty semi-graduate
university thinking. I’ve never liked soap-box rock – it’s just totallyirrelevant to us.
“If you wanna know if we’re any good to anybody and on what level, ask
the kids at the Apollo tonight and they’ll say: ‘While the show was on
I loved every minute, I danced around an I wasn’t reminded how badly
my father’s gonna treat me when I get back to my two-feet square flat in
the Gorbals’. Who the hell wants to remember?”
Nick Rhodes: “We never intended to be
uncompromising – that’s the thing. We neverintended to be on Factory Records. We aren’t
looking for pity; we’re looking for hit songs. We playa role in the entertainment business which has
been necessary for a long time because it gives
people enjoyment. I still love listening to otherpeople’s albums, I like going to live gigs.
“I like seeing music on television and I like
listening to the radio occasionally. If we and all theother bands weren’t there, it would be so drab.
128 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982

I think we’re a catalyst for good environmental karma.”
Andy Taylor: “I don’t even know what catalyst means… I never did get
my English ‘O’level…but that sounds exactly perfect.”Simon Le Bon: “I don’t see it that way at all – that’s like an opium of thepeople kind of thing. We have got something to offer people – an ideologythat comes over in the songs. I’m trying to pick on something positive,
give over a positive attitude rather than a negative one. “As soon as a band
starts complaining about society, everybody says, ‘Oh, that’s a very
valuable band – they’re pointing out all that’s going wrong’, but all they’re
doing is repeating what comes on the news, which is stating the obvious.
“What we’re trying to offer is an alternative point of view, a point of viewwhich says, ‘Okay, so this is going wrong, and this is going wrong’, but
don’t just sit there and moan about it – if anything’s gonna happen, it’s
only you that’s gonna change it, you as an individual, doing what you haveto do, having confidence in yourself, in your own ambitions and ideas.
You should go out and do it, rather than voting for some party who you
think’s gonna do it for you.
“The only thing that’s gonna make anything better is if people work forthemselves. Just because people have need doesn’t mean they shouldhave what they need. Things don’t work like that. I mean, people should
be rewarded for ability not need.”John Taylor: “We’ve always tried to impress upon people a sort ofindividual positivism. I mean, I’m not God. I can’t say: ‘Yes my son,anybody who wants to do it can’, but I’m saying, ‘You’re never gonna getthere without trying, that’s for sure’. I think we’ve made something out of
nothing pretty quickly, we haven’t had it all laid on a plate, regardless ofwhat some people say. Our success is an example, we’re not encouraging
people to gang up and throw bricks at the Houses Of Parliament because
that’s not gonna get anybody anywhere.
“That’s what annoys me so much about those half-baked journalists
who accuse us – I was on the dole for two years! I’ve done that and I know
it’s no fun but, by the same token, it’s no use sitting there moaning about
it, regardless of whether you wanna job on the shopfloor at Leyland orwhether you wanna be a pop star.”
Simon Le Bon: “That’s exactly the whole crux of it. I was in university,
institutionalised to the extreme. There were times when I spent fourweeks on campus without even venturing off it! I had my food there;
I could moan about politics and have deep political conversations andthings like that but not actually do anything.
“Now I’ve split off into a small commando unit of very active people –everybody doing as much as they can, not doing a little bit in a big
machine but doing a lot in a small machine, and that is the basis behind
my ideology and I think, subconsciously, behind the band’s: that people
are realising that politics aren’t the answer to any problems and arelooking to do it themselves.”
Duran Duran are self-obsessed careerists who look to satisfy themselves
within a capitalist system without so much as a passing thought forbroader social welfare.

N

ick Rhodes: “i don’t think it’s such a crime for a band tocomprise five very ambitious people who take a lot of care overtheir artistic values and work hard to try and get through to as
many people as possible.”John Taylor: “We are careerists. I see music as my career, but it’s also my
dream and what I do best so I’m very lucky in that respect. We have had toplan and too many people equate that with being a calculating concern
and not with being professionals and perfectionists…or trying to be.
“We’re not naive. We’ve grown up with our success. I don’t think it’sgrown up ahead of us. If you like, we’ve had five years of success in two
years and I think we’ve probably aged five years in those two years, so
we’ve grown parallel to our success. Look at all ourcontemporaries of two years ago – the Stray Cats,
Visage, Spandau, Adam… they’ve all fallen by thewayside. All of them! We can learn from that –there’s two ways of looking at it: we can either go,‘Nah! Nah!’, or , ‘It proves how easy it is to slip’.”
Simon Le Bon: “What’s wrong with being
a careerist? On the other hand, I agree with what
Pete Townshend said, if you haven’t got an axe togrind, then you should be in cabaret. We have got
something to say – just because it’s not screamingin agony doesn’t mean it’s not a statement. It’s hard

“We have far greater
power over our audience
than PaulWeller will ever
have with his”

Duran Duran exploit the fantasies of teenage girls and laugh all the way
to the bank.

S

imon le Bon: “If you value money more than communication,then there’s a very large danger of that happening. But we’re notin it for the money; we’re in it to prove what can be done.”
John Taylor: “I think we die an artistic death every night on stage. We
almost become what our audience wants. For some reason we make fairly
austere records… well, no grandiose, finely crafted and musical , and yet,when our audience come to see us, they want us to dance on stage.
“At the moment, luckily, it happens naturally, as part of ourpersonalities. I mean, I’ve been a fan. I can relate to them on that level andI don’t like it when people run it down. I think a lot of people go throughthat period of fan worship or whatever before they find themselves.”
Simon Le Bon: “I think it’s crazy. I feel like saying to them when they’restanding outside the hotel in the rain, ‘C’mon, you’re gonna catch a cold.
Go home and have a cuppa tea’, but I’ve tried to tell ‘em before and they
won’t go away.”
John Taylor: “You are responsible for them. We have far greater powerover our audience than Paul Weller will ever have with his because wereally could stand on stage and say ‘Go out and break the walls ofBabylon! NOW!’ And they would!”
Simon Le Bon: “I could think ‘Great, all that power!’ But I don’t
particularly want to do that. I don’t have the right to do that. I think we’ve
given ourselves a responsibility to be honest.”
John Taylor: “Now is the pitfall time. There’s a million traps waiting to
be sprung – traps we could so easily spring ourselves.”
Simon Le Bon: “The more success you achieve, the more hands comeout either trying to drag you sideways into some unreal world of drugs
and perversion, or there’s hands trying to drag you down to the ground,back down to their level because they don’t like to see you up there.
“If you’ve built your success on a tissue ladder of lies and deceptions andimages, then it’s particularly easy to be pulled down, but if you’re honest –and we are honest – you can stand on the ground that you’ve created withyour honesty.”
John Taylor: “The bigger you get, the more honest you have to bebecause you’re living in the public eye and it’s so easy to be tripped up.
I mean, it would be very easy for me to say we were brought up on jazz andfunk but then, if you started talking to us deeply about it, I’d trip myself
up. Now if you start talking deeply to me about Roxy Music, I know
everything they’ve ever done…”
Nick Rhodes: “As the Rolling Stones may well have been to Bo Diddley
and Chuck Berry, so we are to Roxy Music.”
Duran Duran are too damn perfect!

A

ndy TayloR: “i forgot to send my dad a copy of Rio when it
came out, I haven’t had enough time to house-train my dog
properly so it shits on the carpet…”
Nick Rhodes: “I lost my wallet the other day, I lost a camera a month
before and I lost a bag two months before that…”
Andy Taylor: “I used to snap strings.”
Nick Rhodes: “My Own Way”, the single version released in Britain, wasdiabolical. I hated it.”Simon Le Bon: “I don’t talk about mistakes, I learn from them.”

Duran Duran are arrogant little oiks.

N

ick Rhodes: “iT’s not arrogance, it’s confidence!”
John Taylor: “As long as the five of us keep it together mentally,
there’s nobody to move where we can move. There’s nobody tomove into the supergroup, megadrome status. The Human League maysell a lot of records, but they’ll never play Madison Square Gardens.
I think we will…”
Simon Le Bon: “I don’t know. I’m not a prophet, I’m a singer.”John Taylor: “If you look at most of our interviews, one after another isa justification of our own existence. We’ve had to leap to our defence.”M

y sTRaTegem was, of necessity, the wrong tack; forcing
confrontations over my priorities, not theirs. It was, at best,a start to understanding that Duran Duran’s five-way
fragmented philosophy takes no heed of the traditional, patently
ridiculous notion that pop should be naive, overtly rebellious andprone to expressing liberal conscience. Their idea of freedom within
the commercial medium of pop is the only mature, unhypocritical,
honest option that they consider still open.
Duran Duran say pop shouldn’t have to be anything at all and,
therefore, can be anything. I recognised this conclusion too late in mylimited time to tackle them on their terms. That comes next time.
But it’s not too late for you to back off, tear off your blinkers, lay yourpreconceptions aside and listen to Duran Duran for what they are, notfor what your puritanical expectations demand they should be.
Steve Sutherland ¥HISTORY OF ROCK 1982 | 129

peter still / getty

to explain, but we’re interested in the whole scheme of things rather thanjust people among people. It’s to do with living and dying.
“I just don’t think you can destroy the living force, the living energy,
by death. I’m very interested in genetics, which makes me sound likea fascist, but I see the human race as an animal coming to a crucial stage
in its development. I don’t believe that this force within people will allow
the bomb to be dropped because there’s a little bit of everybody ineverybody else and the bomb is the first thing in history that’s everthreatened the survival of the whole human race. If you look at people as
genetic carriers, it cannot be allowed to happen.
“For me, that awareness changes the whole aspect of the world, it
broadens your view of looking at things – instead of just being
prepossessed with having fast cars and women and things like that, it
broadens your mind. We’re like adventurers, I suppose. I see us, in a way,
venturing into the subconscious, into the mind which, for me, is thelargest uncharted territory.”

1982

O C T O B E R – D ECEMBERPhil Collins: “People
say I’m whinging on,
but I write songs as
a result of what
happened to me.”130 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982

“Christ, you
can’t win”
A year after his breakthrough solo album, thedown-to-earth PHIL COLLINS talks Genesis, breadbins,
the Nolans and – of course – love and marriage.
“She doesn’t like being alone,” he says of his ex-wife.
“So she went off with a decorator.”paul natkin / gettyI— MELODY MAKER DECEMBER 11 —f nothing else happened to Phil Collins for another decade, it would just aboutbalance the upheavals, activities and twists of fate that have filled the past two
years of his life. emotionally dazed by the break-up of his marriage, he walked intoa recording studio and completed his first solo album Face Value, a documentationof the ties and tears he had lately shed.
Yet he continued to front genesis, singing his way through their rosy fantasies.
genesis came under increasing attack as the epitome of the ancient, out-of-touch megastars,
while Face Value drew almost universal acclaim. Praised on one hand, hounded on the other,
Phil Collins had to develop a new attitude to his career.
he continued working with John Martyn and this year helped Abba’s frida lyngstad withthe production of her album. A few months ago his second solo lP was released. Hello, I Must
Be Going met with a more reserved reception. Undeterred, Collins
prepared a nine-piece band to take his own music on the road forthe first time.
When you meet him, Phil Collins is polite but confident and has
a snappy sense of humour that even edges towards ‘barrow boy’proportions. he’s protective about how his music is performed, but open
to argument on its value. he jealously guards his ‘down-to-earthness’
and rails at any suggestion of ego-stardom. loyal to genesis, which hesees as a “misinterpreted unit”, he’d like to spend more time on his solo »HISTORY OF ROCK 1982 | 131

1982

O C T O B E R – D ECEMBER

projects but won’t entertain the idea of leaving the band. In one sentence:“I am now at the centre of anything I do.”How does fronting your own show compare with playing in Genesis?
It feels very different. Suddenly it’s two hours of my music instead of
Genesis material that goes back a long way, people come to see bits of thisperiod or bits of that period. With the band, new material always goes
down less well than old stuff, but I haven’t got any old stuff.
It’s less tiring because I’m singing in a range I’ve written for, instead of inGenesis where Mike or Tony will come in with songs written as they were
written, really high. I get pissed off not being able to sing them night afternight because you can’t reach the notes you did as a one-off in the studio.
Are you a perfectionist?
Yeah, but a realistic perfectionist. We spent three weeks rehearsing
just trying to get everyone playing together. I do get a bit frustrated,because to me there’s only one wayof doing it and that’s the way it
should be done. Any deviations
downwards aren’t right.
Do you get annoyed with people ifthey don’t do it the way you want?
Very annoyed, yeah.
You always seem to be working, do
you panic if you have nothing to do?
Yeah, but I quite enjoy what I do.
I don’t struggle to get away from it.
Why are you like that?
I don’t know. I’ve never really done
anything else. That’s how mymarriage broke up. I was always doing something, if it
wasn’t Genesis it was Brand X, if it wasn’t Brand X it
was a session.
So why didn’t that experience scare you intorelaxing?
Well fortunately the lady I’m with now knows what toexpect. I’m sure my ex-Mrs viewed music as the other
woman. I do say ‘no’ to more things now, I have to.
I used to say ‘yes’ to everything. I’ve had lots ofinteresting production offers for people such as theNolans, Manhattan Transfer, Air Supply, Climax Blues
Band, Nina Hagen – an amazing cross-section – but allinteresting to do… the Nolans, that’d be fascinating.
Isn’t there a danger of stretching yourself too thin?
I know whenever I do anything I give 100 percent.
People say you must be saving material from one
group for another, but that’s not true, it’s a naive
enjoyment of the whole thing. I don’t do anything else
apart from occasionally watch Rangers or go to mylocal pub… and I’m gonna buy a pub. We’ll probably
have a music licence. I don’t do anything with mymoney; a pub seemed a good idea.

ebet roberts / getty

Are you rich?
I don’t know. As far as I’m concerned I’m only worth
what I’ve got in my bank account. I was looking at it
and thinking, that’s not really the result of 12 years
with Genesis. I suppose it’s all in theory – they give you
gold and platinum albums instead of money.
Are you happy?
Oh yeah, happier. That situation two years ago when
I went through my divorce… in some respects I’mloathe to keep talking about it because people say I’m
whinging on, but I write songs as a result of what
happened to me. I write happy songs now. When I was
miserable and my kids weren’t with me and I had a sonthat I worshipped and he wasn’t there, I got depressed.
132 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982

Doesn’t it seem ironic that if music caused the break-up of yourmarriage, you should immerse yourself in a solo album while thedivorce was going on?
I didn’t see music as causing it. In 1977 on New Year’s Eve I said to my wife,‘I’ve got to go on the road next year, Genesis has to crack America’. And
she said, ‘Then we’re not going to be together in 12 months’ time.’
I thought I had to do it, I can’t let the boys down, not realising I was oneof the boys and I could say something about it. I just asked her to bear withme for one year. It’ll be all right.
But she was one of those people who didn’t like being alone. In the same
way as you find someone who hates spiders and you put them in a room
full, you can’t say, ‘They’re only spiders, they won’t hurt you’, you can’t tellthem that. I was saying, ‘Just another month’, but she doesn’t like beingalone so she went off with a decorator.
Face Value worked because you obviously had a lot to say and strong
emotions to express. Hello, I Must Be Going, on the other hand,smacks of “Let’s make another solo album”. Haven’t you just done
retreads of that earlier material?
No, I don’t think that. I had a distinct lack of judgement on “ThroughThese Walls” when I used the same drum fill as “In The Air”, but tome that’s where the comparison ends. It’s my voice, I’m writing about
the same sort of emotions. I still pull on that area two years ago.
Man at thecentre ofGenesis: (l-r)
Tony Banks, Phil
Collins and Mike
Rutherford

phil collins

Although it was a depressing time,
I got stimulated by it, it was great to bethat depressed.
It’s a human trait that people feelingsad don’t put on a happy album; they
put on a sad one and wallow in it.
I would have done anything to have
got out of the depression, for it all to beright, but it had very positive aspects.
It was the first time I’d ever finisheda song. Before, with Genesis, I always
had bits because I was too busy tocomplete them. Then I had all thetime in the world.

As inspiration it’s fine, but haven’t you
dragged too much of your personal life
into the second album – all the pictures of kids
and friends in the centrefold?
There are a couple of reasons for that. There isdefinitely a feeling of guilt about what
happened to my marriage and, to be purely
sentimental about it, I loved my dad; I had a dad,but my son isn’t going to have a dad because mywife doesn’t live with me anymore. They’regoing to Canada to live and I’ll see them twicea year for holidays. It was something for him andalso a bit different, maybe… oh… I dunno.
I suppose it doesn’t help, if you’re sitting on thefence thinking this is going to be another go at
the solo album that would probably convinceyou. But I was criticised on the first album for
putting ‘Me –piano’ instead of ‘Phil Collins – piano’; it was ‘too
egotistical’. I mean, Christ, you can’t win. I thought it would be an
informal way of doing things. I took what I thought were humorous
photos for the inside sleeve.

“‘Breadbin’
was in one
song, what thefuck do you dowith that?”

Humorous to you, maybe, but to outsiders?
I suppose so, that’s what I’m finding. I’m not embarrassed to havea picture of my son in a Superman costume but I can see why it’s
misinterpreted by some people.
Perhaps people are suspicious of someone in your position prepared toopen their hearts?
Probably, and I think that’s sad. It’s a drag people are embarrassed aboutthat kind of sentimentality being shown. I wanted Face Value and Hello,
I Must Be Going to be a matching set, something that felt like it was fromthe same bloke. There’s a lot of preconceptions about what I must be
like, because I’m in Genesis, the sort of background I must have. Like allthese letters page things I keep getting in MM about the egotistical rockstar. I really did read that on the tube and I thought, ‘Fuckin’ hell, if they
could see me’.
What sort of audience do you think you have?
It’s different from a Genesis audience, slightly older. Obviously in
London you’ll get a few diehard Genesis fans but it’s not automatic.
Last night was classic, I was singing “If Leaving Me Is Easy” and there’s acouple in the front row and the bloke’s got his arm round his girlfriend’s
shoulder almost as if he’s saying, ‘Darling, don’t let that happen to us’.
Sometimes I think: ‘Oh God, not Barry Manilow, please’. I was saying
to Mike [Rutherford] how good I thought his album was, andcommiserating because everyone criticised it as being exactly what
they expected. I thought that was the furthest thing from the truth, it was
so atypical of Mike.
I’m fortunate in that I’ve done lots of things all the time, people don’tknow what to expect, but Mike and Tony are only associated with
Genesis. In MM, Mike’s last single was reviewed alongside Supertramp’s
crap single, really wimpish, everything people think we are, and thatreally angers me.
But there must be fans of your solo material who ask why you still hangaround with those creeps?
I know, there are friends of mine who don’t like Genesis albums. It’s theobvious question to ask – if youralbums are more successful than
Genesis albums, why hang around.
The point is I do genuinely enjoy
playing in the band.
The vibe for Abacab was great; wewere back writing stuff as a group,
which we do best. Left to our own
devices we get something which ismaybe too pompous. In Abacab wequestioned a lot of what we were doing.
One of my stock answers to why I staywith Genesis is, ‘I’ll stay until we get it
right’. There are still areas of the music
I don’t feel at home with. With Genesis,
it’s not secret, Tony knows I’m lessenamoured with some of his stuff. It’s
weird because he’s probably going to read this;he’s changed an awful lot in the last year, he’s
a lot looser as a person. Tony and Mike comefrom public schools and they’ve been fightingthat upbringing ever since.
I’m the singer in the group; I have to sing thoselyrics. If someone’s not a singer, they come inwith lyrics that look good but aren’t easy to sing.
I’ve had all sort of things to cope with, I mean‘breadbin’ was in one song, what the fuck do you
do with that? One great thing about themsinging on their own albums is they’ll knowwhat it’s like.

How long can it go on?
I don’t see why it can’t go on for a while. We all get on better than we’ve
ever done. We laugh a lot. There’s a lot of humour in Genesis that isoverlooked. Like for the last single we did a take-off of the Beatles“Twist And Shout” cover – the lettering was the same, we jumped off thewall in the same positions, we asked for the sleeve notes to be hammed
up in the same pompous way as the original. Then someone in NME
reviewed it who probably wasn’t ALIVE when “Twist And Shout” wasreleased, and took it seriously.
Are you conscious of getting old, growing further from your audience?
No, I still have the same ‘youthful energy’. I get the same buzz out ofwhat I’m doing.
Do you think the rest of Genesis are jealous about your individual
success?
I don’t think so. I’d like to think it’s the doing of it, the playing the gamerather than the winning. I feel… sorry is the wrong word, I guess
frustrated for Tony and Mike that they can’t be seen outside of what
people think they are. If Mike’s album had been out under another name,I’m sure it would have got better reviews.
I got MM the other day and read about Marillion, who were being
compared to early Genesis. I felt really sorry for them, not only were they
being criticised for copying, but they were being compared to a band noone likes.
What would you like to happen next?
I’d like to spend less time on the road with Genesis… because I’d like tospend more time on the road with my own stuff. There are other things
I’d like to do but I feel everything I touch now, I’m going to ruin!
People said, when I took over John Martyn’s album, it was all
smoothed out. John got slagged off; there was this ultimate cult hero
having been a guitarist on his own, who befriends Phil Collins and Phil
Collins brings these other musicians in and, fuckin’ hell, bang goes theartistic integrity.
John said to me, “I’ve been playing on my own for 12 years, I don’t want
to do it anymore, I want to play with a band,” so it wasn’t my decision.
I had the same thing with Frida from Abba. There was a classic letter inRecord Mirror that said, “That fuckin’ Phil Collins, he fucked up John
Martyn, he fucked up Genesis, now he’s gonna fuck up Frida.”
Y’know, I feel I’ll have to be really careful about what I do next…
I’ll probably fuck up the Nolans. Paul Colbert ¥HISTORY OF ROCK 1982 | 133

1982

O C T O B E R – D ECEMBER“I’ve never
had any
ambition”

7,�CQE-,�.G"r C.T. 8d
m

_

_

—

_

134 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982

ab`.►

}.

— MELODY MAKER DECEMBER 18 —hatever happened
to the Cure? hardly
a question that keeps
me awake at nights,
but part-time Banshee
robert Smith sits in thelounge of the Kensington hilton, sips his ice-cool
perrier and worries whether it’s time to write his
baby’s obituary?
“do the Cure really exist any more? I’ve been
pondering that question myself. See, as I wrote 90
per cent of the Pornography album, I couldn’t reallyleave because it wouldn’t have been the Cure
without me. But it has got to a point where I really
don’t fancy working in that format again.
“Being involved, for four years, I was getting reallysick of being surrounded by the same people all thetime – I just felt really stale, so I tooka break and, in that sense, the Curedoesn’t exist, really. But, I mean, thename’s still there – though, to me,
that’s unimportant.
“people keep saying, ‘You mustn’t
y...
break up’, because it’s become like an
institution – that almost gives me an—
incentive to pack it in anyway. I thinkit’s really awful seeing bands justdisintegrate slowly in a stupid way, »Webet roberts / getty

ROBERt SMith
discusses a momentous
year for thE CURE in thewake of Pornography.
Do the band matter?
Does anything? “We gethundreds of lettersfrom people about what
we’ve done,” he says.
“it’s like a soundtrack
to their crises.”—June 1982: Robert Smith
on stage with The Curein Europe during the
Pornography Tour, whichconcluded with bassist
Simon Gallup quitting

HISTORY OF ROCK 1982 | 135

1982

O C T O B E R – D ECEMBER

don’t you? Whatever happens, it won’t be me,
Laurence and Simon together as The Cureany more. I know that. As to what will happen,
I’ve no idea.”
I wonder if you ever have any idea what The
Cure were doing?
“I don’t know. The last interview I did, earlier
this year, was with a really avid Cure fan andhe had this idea of what The Cure was likethat was completely alien to me. When it firststarted, I didn’t have any objectives or ulterior
motives other than not to have to work, but,
obviously, as time goes on, you develop certain
ideas and follow them through in the hope thatyou’re gonna mean something to a certain
section of the population.
“I don’t think we ever really achieved it. If I’d watched The Cure orbought Cure records, I know, being honest, that they wouldn’t mean what
I was hoping they would mean…”
Which was?
“It’s impossible to articulate really, otherwise I could just have written
a book called The Cure. It sounds really horrible, but it’s more than justwords and music. I’ve always aspired to be like the way certain bands
affected me – Joy Division, New Order, the Banshees, Echo And The
Bunnymen; there’s a very few – but I think they’ve kept a sort of intensity.
“That’s what I was always striving for with The Cure, but there were far
too many things working against it, really; things of our own making likethe anti-image and all that rubbish. Instead of trying to get rid of thatat an early stage, we flirted with it so there was nothing to latch onto.

I realise now that that was probably a big
mistake, not establishing ourselves aspersonalities earlier on.”
The Cure always seemed to me topromote a woolly, unvaried imprecision;
like listening to one long song refusing toentertain any conclusions.
“Yeah, but it wasn’t through choice, it was
through apathy more than anything else. It
wasn’t a conscious decision to nurture thatimage; it was apathy in the sense of notconsciously trying to adopt another. All thatside of things never really bothered me, because
the criterion that was involved in what we didalways came from me – as long as I would havebought stuff that we were producing, then that was reason enough forreleasing the records.
“There was never any idea of covering a certain section of the market
or broadening out and appealing to more people, which we could havedone. I mean, over the years, a lot of record company people advised us
what we should do, but I always thought that if it was forced, then it
wouldn’t be worth it, because I’ve never had any ambition to aspire tothese heights of fame or of meaning something.
“I’ve never been a public face; I wouldn’t ever dare to presume that people
hold me up as some kind of figure, and if they did, they’d be really stupid
because I’m too horrible to be a model for anybody – Iknow that; I’m not just being self-effacing. I would
never hold anyone living to be a model; I’d neveraspire to be like anybody that’s alive, because
everybody’s flawed – you can’t gear your lifeMS
ALBU
around presenting yourself as something to
be consumed by the people.
“I mean, people like Culture Club do – fora brief period of time, everything they do isgeared to public consumption – but going
1982
back to what we were trying to achieve, wewere trying to reach beyond that facade,beyond current fashion to actually do
as he deploys mighty
something that was gonna last.”
drumbeats alongside menacing synths
What virtues and values should such lasting
and Smith’s already desperate vocal.
music exhibit?
In isolation it’s not a bad song. Taken“I can’t say… I can’t say why I like a piece ofas part of Pornography as a whole, it’smusic. It’s impossible to verbalise. Everything
merely another shred of incriminating
we’ve done has been instinctive – that’s
evidence. The first line sung on the album
probably the main reason why it’s been so
is something like “Does it matter if we all
muddled or, as you say, woolly – because it’s all
die…” And then there’s “waiting for the
instinctive, because you never… well, hardly
death blow”.
ever have pure insight. There’s really no
It’s downhill all the way, into everanswers or solutions to anything we’ve done.”darkening shadows. It’s like a ghastly,That’s a cop-out. Your music hardly inspires
inexorable submission. For The Curefrivolity – it’s presented in such a manner as to(to whom all songs are credited),suggest significance.
relationships are merely “creatures kissing“But the first line on Pornography is ‘It doesn’t
in the rain”, great icebergs chipping shards
matter if we all die’. There could be nothingof ice off each other as they pass in the
more throwaway than that. To me that’s a reallysmallest, darkest hours of the night.
funny line…”“‘It doesn’t
matter if we alldie’ – to me
that’s a reallyfunny line”

Ever-darkening shadows

REVIEW

MM MAY 1 Smith enters the abyss on album four.
s it always like this?” shrieks Robert
Smith in a song called “The Hanging
Garden”, as though gagging as therealisation dawns on him. And indeed, thismay prove to be his personal damnation.
The Cure’s depressivist tendencies havebecome a sort of standing joke.
“Miserable buggers,” muttered one
MM staffer as Pornography made its
debut on the office turntable. I foundlast year’s Faith impressive in places,
managing to summon a certain amountof majesty to lift it out of its self-imposedparameters of gloom and almost uniformly
funereal tempos.
This time around, I’m hard pressed to findany redeeming features. It was possible
to view Faith as The Cure working singlemindedly to stake out some territory of
their own, refusing to be hurried by
new romantics or cult vendors of any stripe.
And at least they threw in “Doubt” and“Primary” as breaks in the clouds.
But Pornography refuses to move on,
replaces self-sufficiency with a refusal
to peek through the curtains into thestreet once in a while, and finallyplummets like a leaking submarine
into depths unfathomable by man.
Frankly it’s unhealthy.
There’s precious little melody to speakof. The opener, “One Hundred Years”, isperhaps the least depressing track andis merely intensely gloomy. Drummer Lol
Tolhurst is aided by a busy drum machine“I

136 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982

Occasionally Robert Smithchecks his watch to make surethe Reaper’s on time.
“I will never be clean
again,” Smith sings in “The
Figurehead”, before thegroup decline inevitably tothe dark shriekings of “Cold”,
then into the hideous wailing
stasis of “Pornography”
itself. Finally it’s as silent as
the grave, passing throughchilly marbled archways tothe final rendezvous withthe cold comfort of theslab. Not this time, thanks.
Adam SweetingThE curE

Whimpering and wallowing

Or a pretentious one?
“No, it’s not pretentious – I really think that!
I’m as convinced by arguments for the end of
the world as I am for saving whales – it’s acompletely theoretical area. If I saw someone
jumping on a baby, I’d probably go over and try
positive, perfectly pedestrian. Here, into stop them, but at the same time, I can sit here
he closest the Cure ever come to
the Hammersmith Odeon, they’d dearlyand glibly say that it doesn’t matter if we all die.
touching a core of humanity beneathlike to make an art-rock crossover andIt’s a paradox that’s inherent in everyone.
their fraught facade is, unwittingly,
abdicate into stylish gothic performers à la“It’s not sixth-form angst or immaturity – it’s
through the inherent, though probably
big buddies the Banshees. But the place isunimportant whether you take it seriously or
accidental, humour that mocks their very
too vast, the sound too thin and spineless,not. It’s a paradox in that what we were doing, toname. Seldom have a modern showband
the light show too spartan and the songs
most people, seemed really doomy andsaddled themselves with such a selfthemselves too intimately miserable todepressing and yet, as a band, we were almost
consciously stark and inappropriate
communicate anything other than boredom.
absurdly happy.
misnomer; seldom have three young people
The audience, strangely, gets off on this“I know it’s strange, but people are interested
in pursuit of a clutch of aimless atmospheres
image of three updated Al Stewart bedin us the same way as I’m interested in theachieved so little with such panache.
sitter boy students squeezing their pimples
confusion of other people. I mean, someone can
The Cure – that’s a joke. More like aand translating Camus prose into Shelleyan
stand up and say, ‘I believe in God’, someone
symptom. Where contemporaries like The
stanzas. Titles like “The Drowning Man”
else can say, ‘I don’t believe in God,’ andClash play-act toy soldiers, point fingers,
evoke O-level angst, melancholy musings
someone else can say, ‘I don’t really know,’
stick their necks out and look stupid
like “Siamese Twins” and “The Funeraladvocating simplistic slogans, where
and all three statements are the same.
Party” beg mothering instincts from doeKilling Joke share and shoulder
Some people are attracted toeyed girl fans. The Cure need a good clip
despondency, offer no glib solutions
belief, some people areround the ear.
but
rally
round
nonethelessinattracted to the opposite and
n
odeo
SMith
hAMMerNot extreme enough to stretch toblind, bitter anger, The Curesome are attracted to the
Londonexorcism nor even to elicit widespreadare content to whimper slightly
centre, the middle-groundsympathy, they only ever urge participation
and wallow, mirroring thewhich is, I suppose, where
when they wrap their moaning in Bunnymen
meaningless mess of our lives
we stood – not in relation to
melodrama and a half-decent tune and– are, to be over-generously
religion but in general. I don’t
MAY 1
churn out their biggest hit, “Primary”.
know whether we were everAs I sneaked out without so much as
successful in conveying that.”
the slightest twinge of guilt or regret,Is that what motivates you
Robert Smith was still demanding of
to continue?
no one in particular: “Is It Always Like
“I don’t know… I’ve never reallyThis?” I wish some wag had shouted
considered that I’ve had anything ofAor fir MIL
Ar
m4pl-wsoulm" back: “It needn’t be!”importance to say to people on record
20th APRILTUESWhat The Cure ignore in theirand yet I sometimes underestimate The
HALL
BRISTOL K
stifling,
senselessly cyclical selfCure’s achievements – as I’m doing now
jitt TIC [examination is that rock music may– because we get hundreds of letters
WED 21st APRIL
never provide effective sociologicalfrom people that are very concerned
DOME
BRIGHTTON
answers, but through joy, release andabout what we’ve done; it’s almost beenE
a rare sense of community, it may act
like a soundtrack to their crises.”
APRIL
22nC
THURS
as preventive medicine.
Exactly, The Cure were not a Cure;
UMONTGA
SOUTH AMPTO
No zs
T
And, as any doctor of words,
they were an ailment, pandering to theSAT 24th APRIL
tunes or potions will eagerly testify,
emotional afflictions of their listeners.
CITY HALLNEWCASTLE
prevention almost always pre-empts“No, it’s not like being an incentive for
TS ES SO ES x
►ICKS
The Cure. Steve Sutherland
someone to wallow in their own despair.
N 25th APRIL
SIj
You’re criticising us for not upliftingCS
people, but I’d far rather not attempt toñ AV�sION
GLASC
write music like that, because I know I’d
26th APRIL
MON
fail. I can’t even inspire myself half thetour with the Banshees as a substitute
PLAYHOUSEEDINBURGH
time, so I don’t see how I could hope tofor John McGeogh. Rumours abound27th APRILTUESthat the replacement may proveinspire other people. It’s impossible for
POLL0
MANCHESTER A7
permanent. How ’bout it, Robert?
me to justify what we’ve done, because
so
cs
is
TI
CKETS
“As far as I’m concerned, I’m just doing
it only really mirrored our experiences,
APRIL
WED 28th
this tour. Never believe rumours.”
it never really sought to do anything
BIRMINGHAM�ODEON
Ticu
lystiso
What about as far as the Banshees
more than that.
“And, as to whether people should be
are concerned?
tst MAY
SAT
interested in somebody else’s problems“I don’t know, we haven’t really
TH ODEON
HAMM
f-0ororsc4scj
cERSMIor revelations, that’s debatable, but it’s
discussed it that much. I thought#on DE ►AILS
apparent that they are, because people
it would be very presumptuous tor#CKE►SOMSALC MOW CHECK BOX OFFICES
buy records and books. People aresay something like that, but… well,interested in what other people think – that’s just a trait of human nature.
once a Banshee, always a Banshee. I don’t think I’ve said anything in“I see the absurdity of making records more than most people and what’s
this interview, have I? It’s all so ambiguous. It just perpetrates the
been considered my apathy hasn’t really come from despair at what The
wanton obscurity.”
Cure’s been doing so much as despair at the futility of the whole thing.”
I wonder how much more you know than you’re letting on?
Nevertheless, Fiction have just released a new single, “Let’s Go To Bed”,“Well, that’s the secret, isn’t it?”perversely credited to The Cure but really recorded by Robert and
Ta. You’ve managed to not clear up the Cure and the Banshees mysteries
Laurence Tolhurst as a disco experiment; Laurence has packed inquite successfully.
drumming and is learning keyboards; Simon Gallup has formed his“Yeah. It’s just a state of flux at the moment. As far as I’m concerned
there’s nothing clear-cut to say except… I know what I want forown band and Robert has recorded a “pop” single with Steve Severin due
Christmas, Melody Maker readers – a hologram kit.” Steve Sutherland •for spring release. Meanwhile, the guitarist relaxes out of the limelight on

MM MAY 8 A pedestrian Cure pander to the doe-eyed fangirls.

T

AOL

LIVE!
Irm

AWN

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HISTORY OF ROCK 1982 | 137

1982

O C T O B E R – D ECEMBER“We weregoing toend up likethe restof them”

As it was in the
beginning, so it is at
the end of THE JAM.
Rather than fadeaway, Paul Weller
wants to go out
before the band
becomes routine.
“Where do you
end up? You end
up like arseholes,”he says. Perhaps
a new “English soullabel”, might point
the way ahead…

— MELODY MAKER NOVEMBER 6 —Nerica echenberg / getty

138 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982

ow we’re no longer as thick as thieves… Last week,
after 15 singles, six albums and innumerable tours bothhere and abroad, Paul Weller split The Jam. Arguably
Britain’s most successful group during the last few years,
certainly one of the most talented, the announcement
was premature.
Although Weller had come to his decision last June, he had originally intended
to broadcast the news from the forthcoming TV special The Jam are doing with
Channel 4’s The Tube. Rumours, however, started circulating and Weller
thought it better to come clean immediately.
Just why he’s doing it is another matter. To most people, breaking up a bandat the height of its career must seem
incomprehensible; but then Weller, unlike
so many of his contemporaries, is someone
who actually believes in standing by hisword, whatever the consequences.
It’s exactly this belief in qualities likedignity and honour that has led to his
portrayal in certain quarters as a dour,paranoid, miserable songwriter, incapableof raising a smile. What these people fail
to comprehend is the enormous faith Weller
has in music as a positive force and hisbreaking up of the group is perhaps the »Paul Weller on theroof of AIR Studios
on Oxford Street,central London,
while recording The
Jam’s sixth and final
album, The Gift

HISTORY OF ROCK 1982 | 139

1982

O C T O B E R – D ECEMBER

Not fade away:
The Jam at the
Aragon Ballroom in
Chicago, May 1982

finest example of this belief. Feeling threatened bycomplacency, Weller would rather give it all up now
than cheapen in any way the reputation The Jam
have built up over the years.
How many others would do the same?
We met Monday night at Polygram Studios, where
Paul, with producer Pete Wilson, was putting the final touches to The
Jam’s final single, “Beat Surrender”. This will be followed by a live album
containing about 14 songs, and the band’s farewell concerts. Already thenews was out as papers reported that “close friends” of the group had
spilled the beans.
The Jam never knew they had so many “close friends”. We adjourned toa favourite Italian restaurant and talked about the split; Weller calm, but
anxious to get his view across. Only thing was my tape recordermalfunctioned and everything said went to waste.
After a bit of characteristic moaning (“Call yourself a fucking
journalist?”), we met the next morning in a local cafe, Weller in a cool,
relaxed manner, hip to talking. Here then is Paul Weller’s version of The
Jam’s beat surrender.

paul natkin / getty

Paul Weller: The main thing is that security thing I was going on about
last night. It really dawned on me how secure the situation was, the factthat we could go on for the next 10 years making records, getting hit
records, getting bigger and bigger and all the rest of it. That frightened me,
because I realised we were going to end up the same like the rest of them.
Surely one of the perks of success is the security it brings with it?
I don’t think that. I think you’ve got to build it up and try and be successfulotherwise there’s no point in doing it. But I don’t know about being
secure, because I think if you want to be secure you shouldn’t bothergetting into music. That’s the whole reason why I got into it. If I wanted to
be secure I would have got another job; I would have been a bank clerk or
something. Not knocking it, but that’s not the reason why you get into it.
You get into music – well I did anyway – because it’s different and I justthought that’s where we are. The fact that for the next 10 years it would be
an endless cycle of tours, LPs, tours, LP, singles and where do you end up?
You end up like arseholes.
I remember you saying that you were quite disappointed with The Gift.
Did the situation start round about then?
140 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982

Well, it’s not just that. I don’t think we can take it
any further, know what I mean? If it went on any
further I think, for me, it would just be for the sakeof it. I don’t think we could achieve any moremusically, which is the most important thing as far
as I’m concerned. If we carried on just for the sake ofit, it would just bring our name down.
In your time together, what do you feel The Jam have achieved?
It’s like I said last night, it’s going to sound pompous anyway, but I thinkthat we’ve shown that you can be successful, hugely successful, which
we are, do that and still remain decent, still remain caring and honest.
I think if we’ve done nothing else we’ve done that, and I think we’re thefirst group to ever do that. I don’t think anyone has stuck to theirprinciples more than we have apart from smaller groups, theindependent groups, but I mean for someone to be commercially
popular as we have, I think it’s the first time.
Are you talking about the standard of star lifestyle and The Jam’s
avoidance of it?
Yeah, exactly. We could do all those things if we wanted to. We could havemassive great houses in the country, flash cars and everything, but it’s
not just the material things. It’s the whole mentality, it’s believing in it theway some people do. All these stars, all these wankers, you still get them
now and we’ve never bowed down to that. We’ve always tried to remain
what we are, so I think it’s important to keep it as it is. If we had carried on,
the whole thing would have dissipated just from the sheer fact of carrying
on; it’s got to lose its impetus sometime.
Do Bruce and Rick feel the same way?
I think so, yeah. I think they do. I’m probably a bit more dogmatic, but
I still think they do believe in it, actually.
You were talking last night about the strain of being the songwriter,main songwriter.
Well, not so much that, just that I think there’s been so much shit written
about me, which is all right for your ego but I don’t think it really helps
towards you as a songwriter, because sometimes I can stand outside ofmyself and see this Paul Weller because he’s been built up as such an
established songwriter or whatever he is.

the jam

I want to get back to just sitting down and writing songs because I enjoy
it, not because I’ve got any standards to live up to. There’s loads ofdifferent facets of why I want to do this, but the main one, the one I reallywant to get across, is that I think we’ve achieved all we can.

When did you stop enjoying songwriting?
I think it’s when you do constant LPs and you’ve got to get 12 songs, 14
songs, and it goes on year after year like that. It’s not particularly thepressure, it’s just boring.

fucking carry on just for the money then I’d just carry on doing this for the
next 10 years. But I want to be a good writer and I don’t want to do it just forthe sake of it. Also I want to enjoy some of it. I haven’t had the chance toenjoy the last six years. I’ve never really had the chance to sit back andthink about what I’ve achieved and what I’ve done.
All the time I’m thinking and looking for songs for the next LP or
something for the next tour. I’m not whining about it, but if people want toknow the situation, well that’s it.

Was there any particular LP you wrote because you had to?
I think Setting Sons was when I started doing that, it’s just a drag. The Gift
was a bit more enjoyable because we had that year when we didn’t do anLP, so that was a bit better. But also it was the thought of the next 10 years,
keep doing that for the next 10 years. I just want to get off the roundabout
for a while.

But if you stay in music that’s how it’s always going to be.
Not really, because I don’t think you have the same amount of pressure.
I don’t think anyone really understands the enormous amount of pressure
being in a really big group. If some of them experienced it for a while, thenI think a lot of them would change their minds, be less cynical about it.
Especially if you’re a writer. If things are going well and everybody likes it,then you get the perks, but if people don’t like it, then you get all the stick.

Over the years you’ve branched out a lot musically into soul and jazz,for instance.
In tastes, yeah.

Shouldn’t matter if you believe in it yourself.
You can’t, because however much you believe in it yourself, things likethat always get to you somehow or other in a pressurising way.

Do you feel you could have pulled The Jam into those areas?
I’m not sure, really. I think you could have done, but then it would stop
becoming a group, because it would become like a vehicle for my whims.
Any group that’s only got one songwriter is always going to be pushed in
the direction of whatever songs he’s writing. And that’s fair enough.

What kind of relationship was it with Rick and Bruce?
We used to hang about with each other, go out with each other socially.
But obviously as you get older and you’re meeting girlfriends and that,you split up and go separate ways. So that’s just life, isn’t it? But I think
you tend to grow apart a little bit.

But that’s what would have happened with The Jam if you had
pursued that.
Yeah, but I think we would lose something if we did that anyway.
I think if you’re going to do something like that, then the whole grouphas got to be into that, it’s all got to experience it and feel it. I’m not sure
if it works otherwise.

As you grow older?
Yeah, but if you live separate lives, then you’re closer. But we’ve always got
on really well, probably better as we’ve got older, actually.

A lot of people are probably
wondering how you can give up
such a goldmine, like The Jam.
Well, that’s it. Some other people
have said that, but they’ve obviously
missed the point or otherwise
thought that I never really meant
all the things I said.
It’s like when people say that you’re
only in it for the money. If I wanted to“We’ve shownthat you canbe successful
and remain
decent”“I want what we’ve
built to remain”: (l–r)
Rick Buckler, Paul
Weller, Bruce Foxton

What was the reaction of most people
when you told them?
Well, Rick and Bruce were a bit shocked
really, but I think after a while they’ll
see that what I’m saying is right. It’s allright saying that we can carry on, do
another LP or a single, but the longer
that goes on, the more that security
thing gets you, because the longer itgoes on, the more you worry about itever stopping and it gets worse andworse. Does you in – does me in,anyway – and its unnecessary pressure,an unnecessary situation to be in.
So they obviously weren’t
particularly happy about it. I think
everyone was a bit shocked. That’s
because we’ve become such an
institution, such an establishment.
What’s the point of doing another
LP for the sake of it? It’s like The Clash,they’ll be around in 20 years’ time,they’ll be celebrating their birthdays.
They will. È
HISTORY OF ROCK 1982 | 141

rex features

There’s a lot of these really.
I don’t like the thought of imagining The Jam
when we’re 30 and old and embarrassing. All
those things we’ve done and stood for. Like I said
last night, I think we’ve always stood for youth.
Those first punk bands, all the others always
used to lie about their age and we were the only
band that never had to because we actually wereyoung, and I always thought that came across.
Even now, most of the new groups that arecoming up are in their early twenties, and I
think a lot of people forget that I’m only 24.
I’m not exactly a teenager, but I’m still only ayoung man (laughs), only a boy really, but I thinkpeople forgot that because we started
so young.
That’s the other thing, the thoughtof being secure at 24; it just seems to
be going against my sort of principle.
It’s like having a secure job orsomething. I think if you’re going to
be a writer, and I take myself quite
seriously as a writer, I don’t think you
can afford to be in that situation. A
certain amount is nice, like financial
security, because I’d hate to have toworry about where my next wage iscoming from. That would be a drag.

When did you actually decide to split the band?
I suppose about a year ago or so it’s been on my mind. I actually mademy mind up when we got back from Japan, I suppose. But the other thing
I want to get across is that I wanted to break
the band up because I do care about it. It’s not
because I want to embark on a solo venture andI don’t need Bruce or Rick or any of that oldbollocks – like Bryan Ferry or Rod Stewart shit
– it’s just that I do care about the band. I wantit – I’m not so much talking about immortality– but I want what we’ve build to remain.
Like you once said to me that you should leadby example; well, that’s how I think The Jamshould be. Like a guideline, an example foryoung groups coming up. I don’t think there
were any in the ’70s; there were only people likethe Pistols and The Clash.

1982

O C T O B E R – D ECEMBER

wEMBlEy arENa
loNDoNLIVE!
DECEMBEr 1

Going down with all guns blazing

NME DEC 11 Backed by horns and keyboards, The Jam bid farewell.
t last, a rock career which ends witha bang, instead of a whimper, a squabble
or an overdose.
The manner of The Jam’s leaving carries astamp of style and self-discipline, of honesty
and suss – just the type of dignified exit, infact, that their career deserves. It’s so often
spouted, this ideal of quitting at the top (andThe Jam are, quite obviously, still at the top)
yet it’s so rarely done. Assuming Weller’s got
the resolve to make this break stay clean, thenit seems he’s chosen the best moment. I’mwatching them go with a nice balance offeelings: half regret and half relief. Just right.
On the first night of the final five shows at
Wembley, they start with “Start!” and thecrowd barriers are rushed, and the event soars
to a level of instant intensity from which it
never descends until the very end. How dothey hope to maintain such impact, suchenergy, over all the farewell dates to come?
I can only wonder. What’s clearest, though,is that the fact of The Jam playing Wembley
means this thing has got as big as it should everbe allowed to get. While The Clash might makesomething valid of stadium rock, The Jamdemand something more direct and personal.
They don’t make mega-band music; they’re
not about grand gestures and heroic poses,
dimly viewed from a seat two miles away.
It’s only the unique nature of this event,with all its attendant emotional charge, thatsaves the band’s onstage graft from getting
lost in space. And then “It’s Too Bad” (“It’s too
bad we had to break up”). And then “BeatSurrender”: not surrender in the sense of
defeat, but as in giving yourself, as a positive

peter still / gettyA

142 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982

act, up to a rushing force of excitement. “Away
FromThe Numbers” next, and “Ghosts”, which
momentarily lets the pressure drop frompremature suffocation point. “In The Crowd”,“Boy About Town”, “So Sad About Us”…
It’s not an obvious set, since the numbers
played tonight don’t include several Jamclassics (“Going Underground”, for instance).
But it’s good to hear a massive splash of the All
Mod Cons album: when they go into its first two
tracks you suddenly recall what a revelationthat vital third LP turned out to be at the time.
From the title cut, with hugecheers for Foxton’s urgent
little bass run, it’s straight
into “To Be Someone”, anearly stirring of Paul’sbroader writing abilities.
And later there’s “Mr
Clean” – maybe morepredictable, lyrically,
but still boasting oneof his finer guitar lines,
and a dash of melody
to sweeten thebitterness. In-between:“Great Depression”,“Smithers-Jones”. Like
Rick Buckler, Bruce
might be facing thegroup’s retirementwith some reluctance;
but both of themplay with blatantdetermination to go
down with all musicalguns blazing – almost as

December 3, 1982:
a fan invades thestage during night
three of the Jam’s
five-date residency
at Wembley arena

though they’ve resolved to cram another eight
years’ energy into as many single concerts.
“Precious” expands the sound – the trio areaugmented by the full range of keyboard
players, horns and back-up vocalists. “Move
On Up”, the Curtis Mayfield standard, gives
an object lesson in how to do a soul coverproperly: not an exercise in forging someother man’s emotion, but a feat of capturingsome spark of inspiration in the original, andmatching its rhythm to your own pulse.
Vocal cords take a rest for the instrumental“Circus”, but the Mod Cons era blasts backwith “Tube Station” and “David Watts”.
“Pretty Green” and “Trans Global Express”
send the set screeching up to a brink: theband withdraws, and there’s a long, long wait
for an encore.
Once they’re back and we’ve had “A Town
Called Malice” revisited,history is turned full circle
with The Jam’s first-everrelease – “In The City”. It’s
one of the few explicit
reminders Weller makes
in respect of this special
occasion. He’d come onat the evening’s start witha clipped “Hello andwelcome to the Red Cow”,
and signs off with typicallyawkward gruffness: “Don’twanna get too sentimental
or anything… but thanks forthe last six years.” Hardly
anything else was said. But
much, much more was felt…
…including the beginningof a small lump in thisspectator’s throat as they
took their final bow after
the closing “Gift”.
“Think of the future andmake it grow.” Paul Du Noyer

History is turned
full circle with
their first release,“In The City”

'

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And all these fucking groups, they’re disgusting,a lot of them; I think they’re obscene. What sickens
me most of all is that I used to believe in a lot ofthem. I believed in all the stuff they used to comeout with. Now you find out that they’re a load offrauds, just a load of art-school wankers who want
to be rock stars and that’s all they’ll ever be. I’m nopart of that at all. I don’t want to know about anyof that. That’s why I think The Jam have always
been different. That’s why I think ending it now
will keep that. Like the sharp people will be able
to perceive that and understand it.

&

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“Rock’s likethe emperor’s
new clothes –it’s got nothingat all”

Over the years you’ve really grown disgusted
at that rock-star trip…
I really want to bring it down. I’d like to really doaway with it or help towards pulling it down. A
lot of the groups in the last few years – startingwith PiL, I suppose – have said about doing that,
but they all turn out the same. Either they end up
doped out of their heads or otherwise, because
their companies aren’t selling records, they haveto go out on the road and prostitute themselves.
No, that’s a stupid thing to say, cut that one out, but they have to go out
on the road in the end, so they all end up doing it. Like you see thesegroups, groups that say they really hate the rock scene and rock culture,
but you see them in clubs out of their brains. Could be 1967 – all that’s
different is that their hair is a bit shorter.

You went through that, though.
Of course, and maybe I’m being a bit self-righteous about it because I’ve
finished with it, but I think I’m right really and I regret it. I regret being so
predictable to even get into it.
Mainly I’m just bored with it because I just find it so square and straight.
These people must think they’re really hip and they’re not. It’s like thewhole rock myth about rock standing for rebellion, the NME mentality.
How long has it been going on? What is it? Thirty years! It’s sick, really sick,and they’re still putting people up. Every now and then you get a new face
who becomes The New Face Of Rock Rebellion… Ah, it just pisses me off.
Rock music has no power, then?
Nah, it’s totally redundant. It’s just a big empty fucking vehicle fornothing. It’s like the emperor’s new clothes – it’s got nothing at all.
But The Jam stood for it!
Yeah, I suppose we have done so in our time. I think we all used to believe inrock when we started off. Like punk rock.
Over the last few years I’ve realised whata lot of shit it all is. All this rebel stance.
You still believe in music, presumably?
Yeah, I still believe in music. I think you
have to hit people with feelings. It’s likewhen I think of all the greatest songs,
my favourite songs – and most people
are the same – they’re always thesemelancholy ballads, a Smokey Robinson
song or The Four Tops, and you realise
it’s because they haven’t got any politics
at all, you don’t even think about the
lyrics. I don’t suppose that half thepeople know the lyrics to these songs,
it’s just the feeling that gets you. I thinkthat’s missing in music at the moment
and that’s what I’d like to set about doing.
Try and bring that back.
You’re really turning your back on
a lot of previous work here. I mean
your – crass description, I know –political songs.
I don’t think I am, really. They’re notpolitical lyrics, anyway.

the jAm

T

February 18, 1982:
Paul Weller at
Polygram studios inlondon, where he has
been putting the final
touches to The Gift

Come on. Something like “Trans Global Express”…
But I think that’s got a great feeling about it, anyway.
I’m not going to go out and start writing songs about
tractors and chocolate (grins). I still want to write
intelligent lyrics, but first and foremost you have to
put feel first, otherwise it doesn’t mean anything.
You might as well write a book. If you’re playing
music, then do it. I think we’ve always done that,anyway. Our songs have always had really good
melodies; it’s never been a great barrage ofpolitical slogans, they’ve always been songs aswell. Even if you did take away some of the heavy
lyrics, put ‘I love you’ lyrics in, they would stillsound really good as pop songs.
Last night you mentioned being in astraitjacket, or The Jam being in one.
Well, getting categorised is another thing, asa “political” writer. I think it’s better if you try
and appeal to people’s emotions, get the betterof their emotions.

Sounds as if you’re beginning to mellow…
I don’t feel mellow about it at all. I feel just as angry; in fact more angry
about a lot of things I’m talking about. All those poxy groups – I’m still
more angry about that than ever before. It’s just that I find the whole
Angry Young Man stance… How long can it go on for? Could I still do it
when I’m 32?
Look at The Who. Can you think of anything more obscene? Or the
Stones, who are even more obscene. Look at Jagger – he still believes he’sa rebel, and what’s even worse is all them young people do as well. People
still believe they’re rebels.
I don’t ever want to be a part of that, because I believed in it. Everything
I’ve ever said in songs I’ve always meant, and I think that should stand.
I don’t ever want to see that watered down, don’t want to make a mockeryof everything. I think if you carry on long enough, that’s what happens.
It’s inevitable, really.
Seems a shame it’s got to end at Wembley Arena of all places.
Well, the thing was as we’re doing our last major concerts we want as
many people as possible to get and see us. I don’t really like Wembley, but
I can see it from that point of view.
Looking back, The Jam have probably had the most loyal following of
any group over the last few years.
Yeah, and this is us being loyal to them. I don’t honestly feel that I could
carry on any further with it and still put
the same 100 per cent into it as I havedone, because there are too many
doubts about it after a while. Once you
start getting a few doubts, I think you
have to really look at things. If you’ve got
any guts, you should look at things andthink about them.
See, the thing is, anyone who really
is into us and understands us will
understand what I’m saying. Because
I know that most of our fans, our realfans wouldn’t want us to carry on either,
watch us become embarrassing.
What about your other projects
like the Respond and Jammingrecord companies?
Yeah, I really want to build Respond up.
I want to try and make it into an English
soul label. I want to develop that English
soul thing. It’s not a particularly originalidea. Loads of people have tried to do it,
but I want to try it. And I don’t meana Tamla Motown, not a “Town Called
Malice”-type thing, but an ’80s version.
I think it is possible. Paolo Hewitt •HISTORY OF ROCK 1982 | 143

virginia turbett / getty

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1982

J U LY – D ECEMBEr

Readers’ letters

NME/MM JUL-DEC Bauhausers bite back, Phil Collins flips, heavy metallers grovel…

‘Haus of fun
I still can’t see the ‘meaning’
behind the Sutherland interview
with Bauhaus either! It’s“journalists” like Steve Sutherland
who have continually knocked
Bauhaus that “Ziggy” was brought
out for. Steve kept insulting
Bauhaus , calling them Bowie
copies etc, so they turned roundand did the thing least expected ofthem – reincarnated Ziggy. So
what, there’s no big thing about it,
and true fans are glad that
Bauhaus are getting to berecognised as a major musicalforce in Britain today. If people
like S.S. continue to bite for thebait, then Bauhaus will carry on
throwing it – they are just proving
they don’t need this sort ofunnecessary abuse.
Gill, Aldershot Road, Fleet, Hants(MM, Nov 13)
To set the record straight, thepoint of the Lyceum interview wasto amplify (not simplify) andtherefore make abundantly clear,
the absurdity of the interview
situation. Furthermore, the retort“fuck off” may have been used inanswer to one of Sutherland’s
pathetic ‘questions’, but may
I point out that it was NOT issued
from my lips. Not, my style at all
Steve. (Put THAT down to the heatof the moment and someone else’s
temperament.) Predictably, thefinal write-up turned out to be theinaccurate, scrambled reportage
that usually succeeds the event,and, in the case of the Lyceum, atleast it was an event.
DAViD JAY, BAUHAUS (MM Nov 13)

Paul NatkiN / GEttY

Genesis to MM: fuck off
Dear Adam Sweeting, I read withinterest your short reply to therecent letter praising Elvis
Costello’s concert. I would like topoint out however that Elvis did
not support us on any American
tour, and merely played with

Blondie and ourselves on a varied
and interesting bill in
Philadelphia. Knowing people
close to and in the Costello camp,
I would like to point out that hehimself did not consider thiscombination ‘debasing’. So why
don’t you fuck off and get off our
fucking backs, leaving yourtasteless digs at the door?
Yours, PHil COlliNS, Genesis(MM Oct 23)
Adam Sweeting replies: Dear Phil,bollocks.

Reader to Genesis:
you’re great
I sympathise with Phil Collins(Backlash, October 23), but he canconsole himself in the fact that
there are many people of all ages
and backgrounds who appreciate
the music of Genesis (anyone whowent to Milton Keynes will realisethis), including most of themusical critics in this country.
The only question needing to
be answered is this: why do critics
persistently build up talented
musicians, only to knock themdown again once those musicians
have established themselves?
Perhaps the answer is that themusic press can only flourish (i.e.
sell a lot of papers, thus making
more money for its critics) if the
popular music scene is constantly
changing. Or perhaps it really istheir personal opinion (to which
they are entitled) which I respect.
But is it too much to ask of yourcritics to show a similar respect tothe personal opinions of myself
and thousands who like Genesis
in this country, and not to stoop to
the pathetically disgusting sort ofabuse handed out in reference toElvis Costello the other week? The
answer, I fear, may be yes. Even if
your critics don’t like them, theymust surely admit that they arevery good indeed.
And if they admit that, they may
as well stop abusing them. If,
however, they do not, then theymust be fools/liars not to realise/
admit their worth. Take your pick.
A.G. lOVER, address supplied(MM, Nov 6)

More heavy metal please
I have been reading your mag for
six weeks, I don’t really know why
I chose it when I decided I neededa music paper to keep me up todate, but it was probably because
everyone around me readSounds and NME, and I fanciedsomething different.
EXCELLENT! I really do believethat your mag is the best on themarket. Congratulations on
producing a music paper with atouch of class. But PLEASE can we
see a bit more on Heavy Metal?
GORDON liVESEY, Chaffers
Mead, Ashtead, Surrey (MM Dec 12)
You obviously received the cheque.
If I send another one, will you stop
blathering on about heavy metal?

1963 writes…
I’m a 17-year-old girl, who would
love to correspond with boys andgirls in England. I like swimming,
listening to music, dancing, going
to movies and writing letters. I’ll
answer every letter (if I get any).
JAANA KANANEN, Odensalavagen,19500 Marsta, Sweden (MM, Dec 12)

No surrender!
Well, The Jam may have split but
they haven’t broken “the solidbond in our hearts”.
What The Jam have done for
British music cannot be put intowords, but they provided for us
Jam fans honesty, passion, energy
and, above all else, symbolised
youth and new ideas. The Jam
were one of the few bands who
could generate the atmosphere ofshared motivation at gigs and onrecord. They provided us with
‘Trans-Global Unity’. If The Jamdidn’t get through to you then you
couldn’t have been listening!
EMY, The Ace Face of Stirling!
(NME Nov 20)

Channel 4 pleases hippy
May I be the first to, like,
congratulate the guys at Channel
4 for, like, screening the film
Woodstock. It really, like, blew mycosmic mind, like conveying thewhole spirit of peace in a, like,really vivid way, maannn.
Sometimes we get like, really bad
reception in the tepee, but thistime we just managed to immerse
ourselves in the whole vibrantscene. Thanks a lot maaaannnn.
FRANCiS COSMOS, The
Commune, Himalayas (NME Nov 27)" -00 T�CIE
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What’s this Channel 4 allabout? Is it any good?
Apparently we in this part of theworld won’t be able to get it untillate 1984. Am I missing anything?
The Dyin’ Scotsman, Oban (NME
Nov 27)
HISTORY OF ROCK 1982 | 1451982

m o n t h by mon th

Coming next...
in 1983!

So that was 1982. C’mon boys. C’mon girls…
Because that’s not it from our reporters on the beat. The
staffers of NME and Melody Maker enjoyed unrivalled accessto the biggest stars of the time, and cultivated a feel for therhythms of a diversifying scene; as the times changed, so did
they. While in pursuit of the truth, they unearthed stories
that have come to assume mythical status.
That’s very much the territory of this monthly magazine. Each month,
The History Of Rock will be bringing you verbatim reports from the pivotal
events in pop culture, one year a month, one year at a time. Next up, 1983!

DaviD Bowie

after a break for film commitments, the artist returns to reconsider
his past work, and – at 36 – what the future holds. “I don’t think I would
want to continue performing anymore if I didn’t think I could dosomething hopeful and helpful with my music, both for myself and myaudience.”

New orDer

No loNger are New Order the refugees from Joy Division. A
conversion to dance culture and immersion in the Puerto Rican
nightlife of New York has set them off on a new tack. A single, “Blue
Monday” is its impressive fruit. But can they take their fans with them?
“Preaching to the converted isn’t any fun is it?”

The SmiThS

Morrissey aNd his band make a flamboyant debut. “You see they
understand that I really do mean it when I shower people in flowers,”
the singer says. “They appreciate the honesty in that act. It was
something I felt compelled to do because the whole popular musicscene had become so grey and black, so dull!”PluS…
Fela KuTi!
SuN ra!
eiNSTurzeNDe NeuBaTeN!

146 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982

FROM THE MAKERS OF UNCUTTHE
HISTORYOF

Every month, we revisit long-lost NME and Melody Maker interviews
and piece together The History Of Rock. This month: 1982.
“I am the king!/I am the king!”

Relive the year…

NICK CAVE LED THE BIRTHDAY PARTYON DANGEROUS MANOEUVRESTHE CLASH WERE EVERYWHERE,
BUT JOE STRUMMER WENT MISSING
EVERY UNBELIEVABLE OZZY OSBOURNE STORYYOU’VE EVER HEARD ACTUALLY HAPPENED…and Paul Weller, Dexys MiDnight runners, Phil Collins,
Duran Duran, WilliaM Burroughs and many more sharedeverything with NME and MELODY MAKER

More from UNCUT ...
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