THE

HI

• RY

OF

K

a monthly trip
through music’s
golden years
this issue: 1985

FROM THE
ARNIVES OF
NME&
MELODYJ

tom waits“It’s better to burn hard than rot”
starring...

the smithsrem
the curedexys
kate bushneil youngrobert plant
bruce springsteenjoni mitchell
PLUS! paul weller | Jesus & Mary chain | ToM peTTy | hÜsker dÜ1985m o n t h by mon th

Welcometo 1985

T

om Petty releases a song called “Spike” in 1985, and in it
he makes an observation that holds up pretty well for theentire year: “The future ain’t what it used to be.”As ever with Petty, it’s a smart remark you can take a couple ofways, but however you do, it says something about change. He
might mean to convey a disappointment with the world’s
prospects. He might equally be rejecting glossy modernity in music, andadvocating a more heartfelft mode.
1985 has supporters of both these positions. Enduring performers like Neil
Young, Joni Mitchell, Robert Plant and our cover star Tom Waits display thesame restless creativity deep into their careers as they did at the start – they’realways the same, but always different.
Younger blood is also much in evidence this year. Hüsker Dü, The Jesus And
Mary Chain, Run DMC, The Pogues, The Cure and The Cult are among those to
take something from the past and adapt it for their own ends. So determined is
Kevin Rowland from Dexys to move things on, he runs the risk of leaving hisfans and the record business behind completely.
Then there are those who see their work as a shoulder to a larger wheel. Billy
Bragg is working with the British Labour party. Paul Weller remains alert andengaged. Then, when Bob Geldof announces Live Aid in June, the event
motivates the rock world to stir itself across its genres and generations to help
alleviate the suffering caused by the Ethiopian famine.
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 stylish contemporary reporters were there to chronicle events.
This publication reaps the benefits of their understanding for the reader
decades later, one year at a time. Missed one? You can find out how to rectify
that on page 144.
In the pages of this 21st edition, dedicated to 1985, you will find verbatim
articles from frontline staffers, filed from the thick of the action, wherever it
may be.
On the bus with Neil Young, learning about David Crosby’s drug problems.
Hearing how Mick Jagger fished a paparazzo out from under a hedge and gave
him a cup of tea. At an art gallery with Joni Mitchell, hearing how life has treatedJack Nicholson.
“It’s been pretty fucking good,” Jack says. It’s the kind of year to make you lookback and agree with him.

HISTORY OF ROCK 1985 | 3

1985

m o n t h by mon th

SUS

Contents

6 News

A riot (not the first) at a Jesus
And Mary Chain show. Billy
Bragg meets Labour leader Neil
Kinnock. Introducing Kirsty
MacColl. John Peel assumes the
position for the MM shrink.

12

Run DMCIn on the ground floor with
the NYC hip hop band. Introducing
also their label bosses at Def Jam:
Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons.

BLEddyn BUTCHER / REx FEATURES

16 Mick Jagger

The Stones frontman goessolo. Not, however, without
reference to those Rolling Stones,
paparazzo etiquette and thetravails of life in the public eye.

22 Albums

New releases from
Hüsker Dü, Tears For Fears
and Phil Collins.

24 The Smiths

The
Minneapolitan trio
discuss their planned
escape from punkrock, to make music
which will grow with
its audience. “We’redoing the best we can.”Live!

The Bangles refresh the
pub scene; Simply Red show
post-punkers how to do soul. As
does Tina Turner, in fact.

34 News

Prince retires! A new
Beatles album is shelved. A live
event is planned by the brains
behind Band Aid. Elvis Costello
drops by and Gil Scott-Heron is
on the MM couch.

I

50 Scritti Politti

The charming
Green Gartside
attempts to explain
his beautiful pop
confections. As reviews
attest, however, noteveryone is buying it.

40 Tom Petty

The continually wry Petty
returns with a new album,

54 Robert Plant

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WAITS.mimnlROAW

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46 Hüsker Dü

a m1

the cure– page 90

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.

The former Led
Zeppelin vocalist
returns with a
new album anda surprisingly
candid take on his band’s
scandalous legend.

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DOWNTOWN
TRAINtv
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58 The Pogues

A characteristicallydrunken spree on a European
tour. Amid the chaos – and thegreat music – Shane MacGowan
dispenses his own brand of
wisdom. He’s even let loose on
the singles reviews!

64

Live!

Shows from Frankie,
Lloyd Cole and Sonny Rollins.

66 REMA trip to the band’s home
town of Athens, Georgia – thebetter to uncover the mysteries at
the heart of their third album,
Fables Of The Reconstruction.

'Kate F¢d

72 Albums

New releases from Miles
Davis and prog poppers Marillion.
Also: a new album by Dire Straits,
Brothers In Arms.

75 Letters

Thoughts on the JAMC,
Smiths and Scritti from the
MM and NME mailbags.

76 News

The worldwide
phenomenon of Live Aid.
Dexys are in conflict with theirproducer. Iron Maiden do a bitfor charity. Nick Cave meetsthe Maker shrink.

80 Live Aid

After the spectacle, NME
reports on the realities of the event,even its more distasteful side.

Style
84 TheCouncil

Is Paul Weller’s jazz-nouveau
combeau the “best band in
the world”, as he suspects?
“Bigger than The Jesus And
Mary Chain”, at least.

I
4 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

CHAIN

L

Southern Accents. Whatfollows is a strangely modern
blend of psych, pop
and country rock – anda big hit, of course.

Morrissey meets his first
audience – fanzine writers. In ameeting chaired by MM, the singer
discusses his responsibilities as
Smiths frontman and flexes his
muscles in the spotlight.

32

1.MARYANr•

THE SMITHS

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MONDAY
MARCH
7.30

tv

1

rEM – page 66

Bruce Springsteen brings
his enormous, populist show to
London’s Wembley Stadium.

90

The Cure

Booze? Raw prawns?
Vomit? An interestingly laddishside of Robert Smith is revealed
as the band release The Head On
The Door.

96 Kate Bush

A new dance teacher
unleashes a new creative streak in
Kate Bush. The result? The poppy,
conceptual Hounds Of Love.

100

The Jesus And
Mary Chain

A meeting with the year’s mostdivisive band. How spots, isolationin East Kilbride and planninggave rise to a noise-rockphenomenon.

120 Tom Waits

New releases from
Propaganda, The Pogues andSuzanne Vega.

The increasingly
eccentric singer-songwriter
fences in an abstract
manner with questions
from NME. He’son the rise, but who cares?
“Achievement is for senators…”

106 Neil Young

126 The Cult

104 Albums

MM gets on Neil’s bus
for a full and frank discussion ofmusic, drugs and what remains of
the hippy dream in the Reagan era.

114 News

Robert Wyatt and Jerry
Dammers record for Namibia.
The NME’s 100 best LPs of all
time. Introducing Suzanne Vega.
Mike Scott is next up on the MM
shrink’s couch.

The “She Sells
Sanctuary” hitmakers enter
combat with Melody Maker,
who views them as “the Muppets
Of Goth”.

130 Joni Mitchell

An exhibition of her
new paintings accompanies
discussion of a new album fromthe singer-songwriter. Jack
Nicholson drops by, too.

MI LP: ^M

T IS MPI'MF,
�_vMYF. )[Sc136 Albums

New releases from Robert
Wyatt, Grace Jones and The Jesus
And Mary Chain.

Midnight
138 Dexys
Runners

Has Kevin Rowland blown it?
Getting under the skin of thecommercial failure of his new
album Don’t Stand Me Down.
It won’t be an easy ride.

145 Letters

Live Aid, the NME
albums poll, JAMC and morefrom the mailbag.

Time Inc. (UK) Ltd, 3rd Floor, Blue Fin Building, 110 Southwark St, London SE1 0SU | Editor John Mulvey, whose favourite
song from 1985 is This Is What She’s Like by Dexys Midnight Runners dEputy Editor John Robinson Paintwork by The Fallart Editor Lora Findlay Primitive Painters by Felt production Editor Mike Johnson Nine While Nine by The Sisters
Of Mercy art dirEctor Marc Jones West End Girls by Pet Shop Boys dEsignEr Becky Redman Close To Me by The CurepicturE Editor Phil King Never Understand by The Jesus And Mary Chain covEr photo Alen MacWeeney/Getty thanks to Helen Spivak
MarkEting Charlotte Treadaway suBscriptions Rachel Wallace gEnEraL ManagEr Jo Smalley group Managing dirEctor Paul Cheal
covErs and tExt printEd By Wyndeham Group | www.uncut.co.uk

TimeInc.

11

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(lines are open Monday–Friday GMT, 8.30am–5.30pm ex. Bank Holidays). Back issues enquiries: Tel: 01733 688 964. www.mags-uk.com

OmcYdeHISTORY OF ROCK 1985 | 5

MIKE CAMEROn / GETTy

88 Live!

-iAT

i1985JANUAR Y – MARCHRUn dMC, the SMithS,
MiCk JAggeR, teARS
foR feARS And MoRe

6 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

March 15, 1985: giggoers trash the PA at
The Jesus And Mary
Chain’s North London
Polytechnic show

Arrests madeMM MAR 23 Uproar at a Jesus And Mary
Chain show. Support band attacked!
n estimated £8,000 damage was caused when
violence erupted once again at a Jesus And Mary
Chain gig. Police were called to the North London
Poly in Holloway Road twice on Friday night whencrowd behaviour got out of control. By the end of thenight four people had been taken to hospital. Two were
kept in overnight.
Trouble began early in the evening when fire officers
from the GLC ruled that the doors should be shut oncethe 600 ticket-holders had gone inside. Police arrived todisperse a crowd of 400 people who were left outside. Inside
the theatre, support band Jasmine Minks were forced
offstage after being attacked by the crowd. The Jesus And
Mary Chain followed them on, but went back off after
about 20 minutes when their amps packed up.
Poly promoter Tony Sawcyn said the group refused
to return to the stage, at which point the crowd “wentberserk”. They began hurling bottles and cans, thenpulled down the PA rig and ripped down the curtains.
The police were called again and arrests were made.
“I suspect that this could be the last event at the theatre
for quite a while,” he said.

steve callaghan / rex featuresA

HISTORY OF ROCK 1985 | 7

1985

J a n u a r y – M ar ch

Spandau Balleton channel 4
pop show The
Tube in 1985

rick allen: lostarm driving his
corvette Stingray
on new Year’s eve

Arm amputation
proved necessary
NME JaN 12 Def Leppard drummer
seriously injured in a car crash.

D“Dissatisfaction”
NME FEB 23 Spandau Ballet want out of their record contract.
pandau Ballet are involved ina massive bust-up with their record
company Chrysalis, and have issued
a writ against the label which effectively
alleges negligence.
Spandau want to be released from theircurrent contract, which has over a year torun, and according toChrysalis the issue will
come to court, though ahearing hasn’t yet been set.
Since the matter is now sub
judice, we can only print theofficial statements fromthe two parties.
Spandau’s solicitor
claims: “Their recent writserved against their record
company Chrysalis is adirect result of their dissatisfaction over thecompany’s failure to honour its contract tosupport and promote the group as agreed.
They have also been disenchanted with the
management at Chrysalis, and they feel thequarrels between the ownership haveworsened the situation.

S“Overall, they feel they have not enjoyed
the support to which a band of their provenstature and success are entitled. They are
estimated to be currently responsible for25 per cent of Chrysalis sales alone. They
recently broke all box-office records prior
to Christmas by selling out six successive
Wembley dates anda UK tour.”The response from
Chrysalis is somewhat
more terse: “The World
Parade tour continues
through Europe andAustralia over the next
three months, andChrysalis Records arecontinuing as usual topromote their successfulinternational record career.”
Spandau’s publicity has previously
been in the hands of the Chrysalis Press
Office, but they have now taken on an
independent publicist, Keith Altham –who’s been associated with the Rolling
Stones and The Police, among others.

rex features, tim roney / getty“They recently
broke all boxoffice records
prior toChristmas”

8 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

ef Leppard drummer rick allen,
who was involved in a road crash on New
Year’s eve, was taken to Sheffield’s royal
Hallamshire Hospital at the weekend andhe is now out of intensive care – surgeons
had to amputate his arm last friday, having
previously reattached it when it was severedin the accident.
The crash occurred in the early hours of themorning, when allen’s Corvette Stingray hit
a wall in rivelin road, Sheffield, after failingto take a bend. allen was thrown from the car,his left arm completely severed just below theshoulder, while his dutch fiancée, miriam
Barendsen, remained trapped in the vehicle,
suffering some facial injuries.
ambulance men rushed to the scene, andafter recovering the severed arm, took allen
to hospital where mr robert page, the royal
Hallamshire’s microvascular surgeon,
reattached the limb in a 10-hour operation.
Later in the week, however, the upper arm
became infected and amputation proved
necessary. The hospital issued a statement
claiming that, while allen was still extremely
ill, his condition had stabilised and there weresigns of improvement, even though it would
be some time before the success of theoperation could be fully determined.
a spokesman for def Leppard’s record
company, phonogram, said on monday that,
it was “too early to comment on rick’s playing
future. The band are obviously desperately
upset.” But the drum tracks for their new Lp
had been completed before the tragedy.
Since the accident, the royal Hallamshire
has been inundated with hundreds oftelephone calls, telegrams, get-well cards andletters, many from the uSa, where def
Leppard – Grammy award winners last yearwith their pyromania album – are regarded
as superstars.

“Build together”
t could have been the inaugural
meeting of Redheads Against
Thatcherism – Billy Bragg, the big-nosed
bastard from Barking, and Rockin’ Neil
Kinnock, man of letters and leader of theLabour party, brewing up together inside thehallowed portals of the House Of Commons.
It was in fact the launch of Labour’s New Jobs
And Industry Campaign, one facet of which isa series of live dates in March by His Braggshipunder the umbrella of “Jobs For Youth”.
Such direct party-political sponsorship israre in rock music, and the gigs – in addition to
exposing the way jobs and communities arebeing destroyed by the Tories – aim to help
focus attention on Labour’s policies for the
young in the hope of capturing a larger slice ofthe youth vote at the next election.
Prior to the official Bragg ’n’ Kinnock press
conference in the shadow cabinet room, youron-the-spot NME parliamentary lobbyist
grabbed this exclusive interview with the
dynamic duo. One of the intentions of thecampaign, both emphasised, was to present
young voters with left wing policies in apalatable and imaginative manner.
Says Bragg: “It’s giving them the choice
between living in a caring society and thepresent selfish society. One of the reasonsthat so many first-time voters went for theConservatives last time was that they were
never presented with a proper argument by
the left. They went for Thatcher because
there was no proper alternative.”
Adds Kinnock: “It’s been true for a longtime that Labour have failed to capitalise on
the youth vote. But, as the opinion polls
testify, we now have themajority of the youth
support. The vested
interests of youth and theLabour Party are the same.
We either build together orgo down together.”
So where do Billy Bragg
and the Jobs For Youthtour come into this bid togalvanise youth support?
Bragg: “Basically, it’spolitical sponsorship. We’re not going to ram
it down people’s throats. The gigs are going to
be like any other Billy Bragg gigs, except theLabour party are going to be there. The party
will have a very high profile in that there will
be MPs and other people will be able to put
Labour policies under the microscope. Kids
can come up and ask what the party is doing
and isn’t doing and find out where they fit in.”
To a lot of first-time voters, politics conjures
up stuffy and boring images. Are these gigs
an attempt to rectify that to Labour’s benefit?
Bragg: “The image of the party among
young voters is one of smoke-filled rooms
and all that. Maybe now, with a younger man

Ileading the party in
Neil, the opportunity
is there to build towards
the next election bygetting through to the
15- and 16-year-olds whowill be the first-time
voters when the election
comes around.”Kinnock: “But what
we’re doing now isn’t
new. It’s new to thisgeneration, but back at
the turn of the century
the people who began
the trade union andsocialist movement
were very keen to put
their ideas across inthe most attractive
and digestible way.
“It’s only over thelast 40 years thatpolitics have become
as dowdy and enclosed
as they are now. In the’20s and ’30s, andcertainly before theFirst World War, a lotof imagination went
into the presentationof political ideas.”
So why haven’t the Labour Party put theirname to a tour like this before?
Kinnock: “People in politics have been
afraid of it. They’ve been afraid of rock music.
It’s a question of values. There was a very
talented Geordie musician
who had a pretty strong
profile for us in the early’70s, and by 1979, when hewas very successful, hebegan writing newspaper
articles saying why he voted
Conservative. It was acomplete cop-out and it
took him another two years
to realise that he wascompletely wrong. But heswung back again and now he is lending his
support to us.
“In so far as rock has been related topolitics, that is the process it has gone
through. There was a phase of false
sophistication, of not being involved. Then
there was a swing to the right – every man for
himself and the devil take the hindmost.
“Now musicians are beginning to realise
what a load of nonsense that was. The
government might be making generous offers
to get all the tax exiles back, but when the tax
exiles discover that the kids in their audience
are now on the dole, the more intelligent ones
are linking it up and discovering that there’s“People in politics
have been afraidof rock music.
It’s a questionof values”

June 22, 1985: Billy
Bragg at the longest
day concert in Milton
Keynes and (inset)
neil Kinnock

something wrong. It’s starting tomove a bit and they’re becoming
politicised through that.”
Mr Kinnock’s theories might
contradict the undercurrent of
Toryism that runs through a lot of modernmusic, the images of glamour and successthrough capitalism that permeate mostcurrent chart pop, but the Bragg tour isrooted in more direct radicalism, aiming to
educate and eventually mobilise British
youth politically. The only recent analogy isperhaps the campaign to save the GLC, whichenjoyed huge public support in its musicalmanifestations, although Kinnock, himself afounder member of the Anti-Nazi League,
traces things back further to the RAR gigs ofthe late ’70s. “To some extent we are thegrain,” he concludes. “Youngsters are asking a
lot of questions about jobs, the economy, thebomb, the environment, racism, housing andthe future. Those questions are coming up
without prodding. We want them to know that
there is a party listening to those questions
prepared to give them reasoned answers.
“They are not looking for miracles. They arelooking for people with constructive answers
who are going to work damn hard to apply
those answers. They don’t want reassurance.
They want to know that their opinions arebeing taken into account.”
One last thing. Where do Tracey Ullman
videos come into all this?
“Listen, Tracey’s politics are as sound as her
talent,” Kinnock states. “She’s 100 per cent,that girl. Great.”
No answer to that one. Adrian Thrills

getty, mike Cameron / gettyi

NME FEB 23 Billy Bragg and Labour leader Neil Kinnock
join forces to try and engage Britain’s first-time voters.

1985

J a n u a r y – M ar ch

Kirsty MacColl:“I never got
any kick out ofplaying live”

improved happy house, had a hit
with the disappointing “There’s
A Guy Works Down The Chip Shop
Swears He’s Elvis”, and more successwith Tracy Ullman covering her
songs. As a recording artist she’ssought to sustain her own career.
“I haven’t really been thatambitious. Plus, I don’t do live
gigs because live I don’t reproduce
the sound I get on record. The
sound depends on there being 12of my vocals at any given time.
“My voice sounds great the moreof it there is, but in just a single partit sounds terrible.”
It was during some supplementary
session work as a backing vocalist
on the last LP by Simple Minds (herfavourite group!) that she met Steve
Lillywhite. On “New England” heseems to have got a much cleaner,
fresher sound than he usually doeswith the Messiah men of rock.
“People always say that. They call
him the U2 producer – they forget
he’d done a lot of other different
things. He can’t apply the same
technique to me as he would toa rock band, because I’m a solo artist.
“I have a totally different voice toany of the men he works with, so
NME JAN 12 Introducing a singer-songwriter from the Stiff family… Kirsty MacColl.
I’m not suddenly going to sound like
Big Country.”“I got to see Bill a few
A relief and no mistake.
very so often Kirtsy MacColl
Lillywhite’s contract oninterrupts her career as a songwriter totimes last year; I really liked
Frida Abba’s second LP
issue a sparkling single. Her original of
him and I wanted to have
“They Don’t Know About Us”, made with thea go at ‘New England’. I
has benefitted Kirsty.
great Liam “Akron Compilation” Sternberg,
approached him and said
“If I’d ever thought when
was perfect – almost as good as The Shirelles.
we’d need another verse
I was at school, bopping
because it was too shortalong to ‘Dancing Queen’,A version of The Beach Boys’ “You Believe In
that someday I’d be working
Me” backed with her own “Queen Of The Highto release as a single. So
with someone out of Abba!
Teas”, was another good offering which got losthe dashed off a new one,
“Well, we were all in awe
in a glut of useless vinyl. Happily, the latter had
no problem.”
not escaped the notice of Billy Bragg, who at
Produced by her husband,of her. When we did
Steve Lillywhite, the result is the last Brit pop
harmonies together I kept thinking I should
the time of its release was working in a secondclassic of ’84 and the first of ’85 – skittering beat,hand record shop. So when Kirsty approached
be the blonde one.”bright guitars, sweetened voice, soured love
him to do a version of “A New England”, old Bill
Kirsty and Steve expect their first baby inand social ills.
was only too happy to oblige.
February. At the moment she finds pregnancy
It relates as much to Kirsty’s workinghinders her creativity.
class, O-level, shoplifting, teenage years in“I feel totally fazed all the time; it’s had as
Croydon as it does to Bragg’s Barking
much effect on me mentally as it’s had on mybackground. It was there that she first
figure. So I hope to get down to some serious
started writing songs “to escape thework when I’ve had it.”boredom”. A stint with the ill-fated,
But in future recording she’d still rather
drastically named Drug Addix curtailed her
do covers.
ambitions and her taste for rawck and rowl.
“That way you have someone else to blame.
“I never got any kick out of playing live.
I find it a lot easier to enjoy doing cover versions
than my own stuff, because it’s always moreI could never understand people moaningnerve-racking when you’re closer to it.
about wanting to get back on the road.
“I also find it hard to imagine a different way“It was one of the most horribleof doing it.”experiences I ever had.”
And in February is Kirsty hoping for anything
Her first one-off single with Stiff, “Theyin particular?
Don’t Know”, faded in a distribution strike.
“I don’t mind, as long as it’s a baby.”
She then had a short liaison with Polydor
before returning to Dave Robinson’s new,Gavin Martin“I haven’t really been ambitious”

alamy

E

I

10 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

“I told Billy we’dneed another verse
as ‘A New England’
was too short torelease as a single”

SHRINK
RAP!
JOHN PEEL

MM JAN 26
The Radio 1
DJ undergoes
the Maker’s
talking therapy.

EvertonBlood sports
They killed a fox at the top of our garden lastyear, which I was absolutely furious about.
What appals me is the arrogance of thepeople, and when I phoned up to complain
about it, I was told that if I didn’t want the hunton my land, I should have notified them inadvance, which seemed to me an
extraordinary new principle in criminology –if you don’t wanna be burgled, let me know
and I won’t burgle you. My wife, a wonderful
woman, parked the car across the driveway sothat they couldn’t turn their cars round, and to
our immense satisfaction, one of the huntfollowers put his Volvo estate in the ditch.

John Peel: “I’dlike to have morevices, actually”

formula’s so tight, it has a curious purity of
its own. There’s something endearingly
provincial about it- I don’t think people feelthreatened, I don’t think the fashion is so
fashionable or the dancing so extraordinarythat people feel in any way excluded by it.

people always say is “young people’s music”
is because I don’t try to be anything else.
Quite clearly, when punk started, if I’d gone
wobbling about in bondage gear, people
would very quickly have said, “We don’t want
any more of this twerp.”

Kid Jensen

Heroes

I miss him a lot, I really do. Of all the people I’ve
worked with on Radio 1, he’s the one that I liked
best, so I was very, very sad. I wish he hadn’tgone. I still think he made a mistake, actually.

I’ve got an unlikely bunch of heroes. One
which I’ve never actually admitted to publicly
before. When I was a kid, bearing in mind thatmy background is impeccably middle-classand extremely rural, I didn’t have any friends
really because I lived so far away from anyone
else that I just pottered about on my own. And
one of my first heroes was George VI because
I knew that he had this very severe speech
impediment which he’d had to overcome.
People always think it’s funny, but I reallyadmired him. He made a speech, I think, inmaybe the first year of the war, and if I heara recording of it, it still moves me to tears –the one about the man standing at the gateof the year. I’ve no time for the royal family
really, but as an individual I admired him
enormously, I must say. And then, after that,my first big boyhood idol was Billy Liddell, whoplayed for Liverpool for 21, 22 years. One ofthe very few people whose autograph I evergot. It’s always been footballers, basically –Dalglish – and actors: Margaret
Rutherford, Alastair Sim
and Phil Silvers, obviously,
because he’s fashionable
at the moment.

VirtuesBeardsI’m tempted to be a real smartass and say“Guitar Boogie Shuffle”, which was a hit for
The Virtues in the 1950s, but… I suppose my
only virtue is obsession. Walters would say
it’s obsession, anyway; just a determination
to keep up with all the stuff that goes on to
the point of feeling guilty if I don’t, to analmost unhealthy degree. I’d like to have morevices, actually. I wish I was more capable ofenjoying myself, because I don’t really enjoy
myself a lot. That’s gonna look rather pathetic
written down, but I tend to always be the blokeat the party who ends up sitting on the stairs
that everybody has to climb over to get to theloo and things.

I grew it years ago, when I was about 26, 27,
and I tried a couple of rather bizarre sculpted
forms which now look ludicrous in thephotographs. I grew it really because
whenever I shaved my neck I looked as though
I’d been trying to commit suicide. I have very,
very soft skin and there’s an appalling bloodletting every time I shave, so I thought I’d growa beard because it was alright at the time, andit wasn’t until about five years ago that I tried
removing it. Well, bearing in mind that I was
not a great-looking bloke but a reasonably
Christ-like-looking fellow who disappeared
behind it when I was 27, when I got it all off,
there was my mother – well, more a mixture
between my mother and Mussolini, and theeffect was, frankly, horrifying. So I’m rather
stuck with it now, and my wife won’t let me
shave it off anyway because my children
would be frightened if I did.

Thursdays
Ah, well, yes… I don’t listen to the radio on
Thursday evenings. I would have been happierif the programme had been replaced withsomething vaguely contemporary rather than
the sounds of the ’70s. The argument wasused that they thought they’d try a different
kind of music at that time of night, but they
don’t seem to be showing any signs of trying
a different kind of music on Mike Read’s showor Simon Bates’ programme, so wonder why
it’s my little area that comes under siege onthese occasions. I still feel a bit bitter about it.

Top Of The Pops
I quite like doing it, I must admit. When I first
did one, about Christmas three years ago, a lotof people wrote in and said, “Hey man, you’ve
sold out”, and I’m a great believer in sellingout. I don’t like people telling me how to order
my life, so when they asked me to do them on afairly regular basis, I thought I would. My kids
quite like seeing me on there and the

Washing-up
We bought a dishwasher about six months
ago because my brother Frank’s wife had
always been saying we ought to get one.
And we thought it was a load of middle-classnonsense, but it actually does make life a loteasier – particularly if you’ve got four kids.
I quite like washing-up – I’m very slow, very
methodical and I polish everything. It’s quite
therapeutic, like vacuuming or doing theboiler, which are the other things that I do.

Fashion
Never been a fashionable bloke, never had
the figure for it. I’d like to be fashionable, but
I think one of the reasons people are preparedto put up with a 45-year-old father of four
droning away on the radio and playing what

US comedy actor
Phil Silvers:“fashionable”

HISTORY OF ROCK 1985 | 11

neil matthews / rex features

I was pleased they won the cup last year.
Obviously, I’d have preferred it if Liverpool
had done it, but I think increasingly thesedays it’s Liverpool against the world. Quite
clearly you can’t have Tottenham winning
the title in any decently ordered society, so
if Liverpool can’t do it, I’d rather haveEverton win it than anyone else.

1985

J a n u a r y – M a r ch

“Businessis booming”
In a university dorm room, a rap dynasty is emerging.
NME travels to New York to interview wordsmiths
RuN DMC, along the way meeting producers Rick Rubin
and Russell Simmons – the brains behind Def Jam.
“The street wants something specific,” says Simmons.

L— NME MARCH 9 —AST WEEK in New York I was told to go and meet a tubby 23-year-old record
producer called Rick Rubin. Rick studies video at New York University andestimates that he hasn’t attended one class in the last 10 months. He’s not that
bothered. He’s pretty certain that he’ll graduate at the end of the year.
He lives on campus in a tiny cramped room which has difficulty
accommodating his possessions, let alone his roommate’s. Every available
space is taken up. Shelves are stacked high with records, books and tapes, the floor is covered
with clothes and those all-important Nike training shoes.
It is from here that Rick runs Def Jam Records. His boss, Russell Simmons, operates from theother side of town. But he’s involved in so many other projects that to all intents and purposes
Room 203, on the eighth floor of BNYU’s residential hall, is Def Jam.
So far Rick has produced and overseen the release of three singles: LL Cool J’s “I Need A Beat”,
the wild “Rock Hard” by the Beastie Boys and “T LA Rock” by Jazzy Jay, three undergroundrecords that London’s b-boys have cherished these last few months.
Rick has two more singles on hold, and when he plays you these he cranks up the volume toan almost unbearable level, sits in his chair and, with eyes tightly closed, concentrates on
every sound and every detail with an almost manic intensity. When the tune finishes, Rickremains transfixed in this position for about 10 seconds and then… boom!… he’ll snap out ofit, smile, and change the record.
It’s quite a nerve-wracking experience, but this is not the most remarkable thing about Rick
Rubin, a white native New Yorker. No, the most remarkable thing about Rick is that when you
ask him about music he’ll tell you that his two favourite groups ever are Troublefunk, a go-go
group from Washington, and… AC/DC. No kidding.
He thinks that there is no one to compete with Troublefunk’s dense
percussion attack or AC/DC’s heavy guitars. His ambition, quite simply,
is to merge the two together on his own records. To bring about aconfrontation between the excess of rock and the sound of the beat box.
I'M THE KINGAnd he is not the only one.
THERE

getty

RUN
-DM

12 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

“I’m the King of ROCK / There is no HIGHER / Sucker MCs should call me
SIRE / To burn my kingdom you must use FIRE / I won’t stop rocking until
I RETIRE!” – “King Of Rock”, Run DMC »OF ROCKIS NONE HIGHER
SUCKER MC'SSHOULD CALL ME SIRETO BURN MY KINGDOMYOU MUST USE FIRE
I WON'T STOPROCKIN' TILL I RETIRE

Their Adidas: (l–r) Jason“Jam Master Jay” Mizell,
Darryl “DMC” McDaniels
and Joseph “Run”
Simmons in front of the
Empire State Building,
New York City, May 1985

HISTORY OF ROCK 1985 | 131985

J a n u a r y – M a r ch

I

Where “The Message” left off, “Hard Times” and “Wake Up” pick up.
f the function of the white rock artist in the ’60s and ’70s,
And in something like “30 Days”, which deals with the varied hassles ofgenerally speaking, was to mercilessly beg, steal or borrow fromthe credit card, the boys aren’t shy of including amusing concepts likeprimary black sources – you don’t think Jagger made it by his lips
lovers who “If you don’t like their ways/You can send back in 30 days”.
alone? – the ’80s has seen a dramatic reversal of those roles.
When they do brag about themselves (or their DJ, Jam Master Jay) they
Of course, the white are still plundering like crazy, but in 1983, for theusually do it with one of the most self-deprecating tongues to be found in
first time in years, it was a rock guitar that took a major black artist out ofrap. “If you mess with us you’ll be a real short liver/You may be big but our
his already massive record sales and transported him to complete andbodyguard is bigger!” They cannot be serious.
utter worldwide domination. Michael Jackson’s “Beat It”, featuring Eddie
Over the timespan of two LPs, Run DMC undoubtedly wear you down.
Van Halen, virtually made Michael Jackson. It wasn’t something that, say,
But they bear no shame. As the song goes, it’s like that. And that’s the
Prince, the Isleys, Sly Stone or Hendrix hadn’t attempted before. But it wasby far the most complete integration yet.
way it is.
What’s followed since has been a variation on the theme, and none too
clever at that. For a man of his talent, Prince is mostly slumming it witheems that it wasn’t only Britain which went through someoccasional flashes of genius, Tina Turner is Elaine Page in a mini skirt andkind of positive change in 1977. Over at the Hotel Diplomat on 43rd
only the odd blast like Cameo’s “Talking Out The Side Of Your Neck” isStreet, rap shows featuring Kurtis Blow, Flash, Melle Mel, etc, were
any kind of indication as to what can be achieved.
being run every week. The promoter was one Russell Simmons. His
But that’s the mainstream, which ignores completely one area of blackyounger brother, Joe, was also there. As a rapper, 12 years of age, he wasmusic: rap. Enter stage left Joe Simmons, Darryl McDaniels and Jay Mizell
billed as the Son Of Kurtis Blow.
(DJ Jam Master Jay), collectively known as Run DMC.
Sometimes he would stand behind Kurtis, scratching and playing
In March 1982, Run DMC released a single called “It’s Like That”, a rap
records for Kurtis’ raps and then, toward the end of the show, he would
single that was not only a massive American hit but, as future singles suchtake the mic and rap himself with Kurtis as the DJ. No rap record had yet
as “Rock Box” and “Hollis Crew” would prove, heralded a complete
been made. By 1980, at 15, he was on tour with The Commodores, whochange around for the genre.
used Kurtis as a support act.
Run DMC’s sound is a raw, brutal hammer. The emphasis is totally on
Simmons himself, like the music he creates, does not conform to thethe drums and voices. There is little melody and no lightness to Run
stereotype of the young New York rapper. He came from a middle-class
DMC. At a time when rap was characterised by boring rhymes about fast
family, went to a Catholic school and worked hard at his studies.
cars, flash ladies and the amount of jewellery the rapper could wear in
Darryl, his partner, was a straight-A student, which in English terms
one day, and when musically it could do nothing except haul out themeans he didn’t flunk one exam. As Russell Simmons, now Run DMC’sbassline from Chic’s “Good Times”, Run DMC stripped away all the
producer, remembers it, Darryl was a barometer as to how good a rap
basics and virtually reinvented the form for themselves.
tune was.
At first hearing, you’ll probably feel nothing.
“Darryl was a kid who used to come over my father’s house and I used to
The drums and staggered, splintered rhythms of the beat box seemplay him Kurtis Blow records and he was like the funniest guy. He’d sit
nagging and incessant, dragging painfully. The voices sound bare andthere with his hood up and do this rocking motion and sort of shake his
hectoring and the repetition feels unbearable.
head if it was good. And during the period when we had ‘Throughout The
It’s music that needs perseverance. When you hear people saying it’s aYears’ and some Blow records that were more commercial, he would sit
hard music, it’s ten to one that they’re using the word in its proper context
there and listen and not shake his head. Kurtis and I would look at him
and, unlike the majority, it upsets preconceptions because it is not strictly
and say, ‘Oh shit, we’re not going to sell any records.’”a dance music or an accessible music.
Darryl and Joe met at junior high school, attended different highWhat it is? Basically, it’s a blank rejection of niceties. The drums andschools and met up again when Joe got in touch with Darryl about a rap
voices are embellished with tiny, almost
he’d written. They began working together,
inaudible subtleties – anything from a synthplaying the clubs and looking for a break.
line to some underplayed catchy percussion –That chance came in the form of Russell. Fromthat act as little hooks under the aggressive
promoting shows he then made the transitionattack of Darryl and Joe’s vocals.
from manager to producer of various rap artists.
Like heavy metal, it is relentless in its approach,
Russell took Joe and Darryl into the studio andand it is exactly that link which Run DMC werecut “It’s Like That” and “Sucker MCs”.
the first to spot. Most funk or soul records
Against all expectations, the single sold by
which try to incorporate a rock guitar usually
the thousands. The follow-up, “Hard Times”/
end up sounding, well, just plain awkward. But“Jam Master Jay”, repeated the success andwith rap the mixture is perfect because the style
Darryl and Joe took leave of absence from theand tempo – the recurring rhythms set against
college they had enrolled in.
the loud recurring guitar – are compatible.
“We were there one minute,” says Joe, “and we
Run DMC use the guitar sparingly. They gethaven’t been back yet. The business is booming.”
hold of riffs that any two-bit guitar player has
Indeed it is. Their debut LP was the first rap
record to go gold in America. “I wasn’t
at some time in his life tried to play, and
D.M.U.
surprised,” Simmons says with modesty,
then incorporate it into their harsh, bleak RUN-D.M.C. RUN-D.M.C.RUN-D.M.C. RUNKINGOF ROCK
ROCK
OF
KING
“I thought it was real good.”sound, looping it endlessly, until the
ROCK
OF
KING
RUN-D.M.C.
In many ways it was the third single,
listener finally has to capitulate.
RUN-D.M.C. RUN-D.M.C. RUN-D.M.C.
ROCK
KINGOF“Rock Box”, which proved to be theOn their third single, “Rock Box”, theyKING OF ROCK KING OF ROCK
RUN-D.M.C.
pivotal part of their career. Back in
got too carried away with themselves.
RUN-D.M.C. RUN-D.M.C. RUN-D.M.C.
OF ROCK
KING
ROCK
OF
KING
KING OF ROCK
But with their new LP, the title trackthe early days, Joe would listen to rock
RUN-D.M.C.
RUN-D.M.C. RUN-D.M.C. RUN-D.M.C.
“King Of Rock” and especially “Can You
records – Aerosmith, Billy Squier – and
ROCK
OF
KING
KING OF ROCK KING OF ROCKRock It Like This?”, Run DMC have comelift certain parts, namely the drums,
RUN-D.M.C.
RUN-D.M.C. RUN-D.M.C. RUN-D.M.C.
up with a striking formula that not only
to talk over.
ROCK
OF
KING
KING OF ROCK KING OF ROCK
places them at the head of their field but“It wasn’t on the radio station,” he says,
RUN-D.M.C.
RUN-D.M.C. RUN-D.M.C. RUN-D.M.C.
is the logical conclusion of black meeting“but if we wanted to find a hard beat we
ROCK
OF
KING
ROCK
OF
KING OF ROCK KING
white and turning gold.
would take the break part of the rock
RUN-D.M.C.
RUN-D.M.C. RUN-D.M.C. RUN-D.M.C.
-NG
0 ROCK
Lyrically, as well, they leave the others
record, where it was just drums, and cut
ROC
OF
KING
KING OF ROCK,choking in the dust. At their best, Run
that over and over while we rapped.”'
RUN`.M.C.
RUN-�OCK
DMC’s raps use a wit and imagination
It wasn’t long before they were
RO'
OF
G
KING
C.
that extends far beyond the cliched
incorporating
guitar parts. “We had to
RU
'
C.
RUN
CK
R(
bragging that forms such a central partbe creative,” claims Simmons. “We don’t
OFKING
like to make the same old thing every
in this music.

S“People’sparents aregoing to say,‘Turn thatshit off!’”

14 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

RU

run dmc

It’s tuesday morning in New York. Run DMC, having put theinterview back a day, are an hour and a half late.
“Shall we go for a drink or something?” I ask them. They quickly sit
down. “No man, let’s do it now.”
Interviews make them anxious, put them on edge. Run does most of thetalking, but it’s mainly one-liners, with Darryl throwing in the occasional
observation. Things are made worse by my accent. When I ask them
about a song of theirs called “Wake Up”, they tell me sharply that they
never made a song called “White Cup”.
They dress in the current b-boy style. Straight-leg jeans and trainers
with wide white laces left undone. When they walk they have to drag theirfeet. But it’s the style.
They still live with their parents in Hollis, Queens. “Thus far it’s no
problem,” says Run. Today they’re mainly interested in England. Who are
the big rap stars there? What are the big records?
I tell them that a lot of the rap tunes can only be picked on import.
Consequently, a lot of what does get released here are the boring raps
about how great a lover someone is. Brag-style rap.
“We make records like that sometimes,” says Run, “but there’s different
things you can talk about. We make all types of records.”
What style suits them best? What do they prefer?

“If the person can just smile,”says Run. “A lot of the time thelyrics we write are funny. We justmake sure we’re very creative andwe don’t say the same thing over
and over. I don’t want to make thesame message telling people
about politics. Sometimes I wantto talk about it and sometimes I
just make you laugh.”
Perhaps it’s not surprising thatthey should prefer the quick oneliners to the put-downs.
Given their lyrics to “HardTimes” or “Wake Up”, I would havethought they possessed somepolitical perspective. But it’sa no-go area. Like so manysuccessful performers, if they dohold any views, they’re not, strictly
not, for public consumption.
I ask them about Reagan’s
re-election. They say they don’tcare either way. I tell them thatsurprises me. They shrug theirshoulders. The best they canmanage is, “Well he lives here but
he don’t come to any of our shows,
so why should we care?”Yes indeed, and change the subject. Do you think the sound you’ve
created will start to stale with future records?
“You need a different voice than mine,” says Run. “We can only makewhat we like.”Ever thought about going into other areas of music?
“What do you mean?”Well, ever thought about singing, say?
“We always rap.”
Ever tried singing?
“No, I don’t want to sing. Maybe I can, but right now we just want to rap.”
Embarrassing silence.
“We’re going to make a movie,” Run finally says. “Did you see Wildstyle?
That’s the one I liked. That was the best.”
It was alright. A lot of them are terrible.
“This one will have The Fatboys, Melle Mel, Dr Jeckyll & Mr Hyde anda few others.”
I hope it’s better than the rest of the rubbish. “Breakdance BoogalooJoe” or whatever it’s called.
“Yeah, I don’t like all that. I don’t want to make a movie that bad rightnow, but I’ll make it because of all the traffic. A whole lot of records andmovies on the street, but I’ll just drive up there myself on a one-way street.
Mind if I use your phone?”
Be my guest.

Which way is next? Run DMC boast about being the best in
town, and right now I’m prepared to go along with that.
Certainly, they’re the most inventive and potentially
exciting pair around. The manner in which they deliver their lines –ludicrously over the top – and the challenge of their music make thema riveting proposition.
Whether they can thrive on what they’ve established is another matter.
Their one foray out of rock and rap is a reggae piece to be found on their
new LP. Using Yellowman as a toaster, “Roots Rap Reggae” is an
undeniably limp exercise in soldering reggae to rap. A sign of the times?
“I can’t see Run DMC getting soft,” says producer Simmons. “I know
they need to develop and not compete. There’s always kids that are going
to come up with the most direct street stuff, and no artist can stay on topof that. To build a career you have to be more diverse and you have to showwhat you do best, not what the street wants. The street wants something
very specific, and you only have to plug into that scene to know what it is.
“Now Run DMC have done a couple of things to soften up. I didn’t wantthem to go in that direction, so I think we’re going to go back to our oldformat. The next one will be louder and meaner.”
For now, the Kings Of Rock may polish their crowns. Paolo Hewitt •HISTORY OF ROCK 1985 | 15

alamytime, because people are tiredof hearing it.”
In America at least, Eddie
Martinez’ extrovert guitar
work on “Rock Box” – set against
a barrage of rapping, scratchingand percussion hooks – shoved
Run DMC into the forefront of
mainstream pop. It’s estimatedthat the single has now sold over
800,000 copies, with as many
whites as blacks queueing aroundthe block for a copy.
“Rock Box” is hardly a soft item
either. But it was enough to push
Run DMC onto MTV, have Lou
Reed use them as support and to
be featured in as many rock papers
as they were in the black press.
“We were selling vocals,” claims
producer Russell. “We figured we
had very, very good rappers andwe wanted people to appreciate
what they did. We didn’t want to
overproduce them, we wanted
Rick Rubin as himself inthem, and that’s what we got. They
Krush Groove, the 1985
wouldn’t let us play music anyway,movie based on recordlabel Def Jam’s early days
just wouldn’t let us. We’d say, ‘Putin a little melody here, a simple
melody’, and they’d say, ‘Absolutely not.’”
Simmons grins. “Turned out they were right.”
Run DMC see no disparity between this clash of styles. When I ask
them about the mixture, they just shrug their shoulders. They haven’t
been brought up, unlike the British, to see any differences between
white or black. If something sounds good, they’ll use it and to hell withany contradictions.
“I don’t like heavy metal too much,” admits Russell. “I like AC/DC [!],
but I don’t like some of this new shit. ‘King Of Rock’ is probably more R’n’B
than any other heavy metal stuff. It’s simpler, that’s what I like about it.
It’s more straightforward.”
For Simmons, seven years older than his brother, the rock element is
a way into making, what he terms “teenage records”. He sees Run DMC as
the new Jackson Five, but without the coy sweetness.
“They don’t always have to be records that make people mad, butsometimes they have to. I mean people’s parents are going to say, ‘Turnthat shit off! What the fuck are you playing upstairs?’ That’s what teenage
records are. That adds.
“When Run [Joe, so called because he ‘runs’ his mouth off; the DMC isDarryl’s initials] says, ‘I’m the King of ROCK,” and that guitar comes… inthe morning, if you’re laying there in bed and you hear that, it fucks you
up! I like that idea, I like that idea a lot.”1985

J a n u a r y – M a r ch

“I don’tthink Keith
was pleased”

16 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

— MELODY MAKER FEBRUARY 16 —agger cuts through all the crap…
“When I was in Barbados and Jerry waspregnant, we done a lot of pictures for the press
and we didn’t wanna be bothered any more
and… I could see figures in the garden… y’know,
we done the pictures, we played the game. So
I walked out very quietly and I found this guy underneaththe hedge. He’s lying there and I’m going ‘Heeyyy’ and hegoes, ‘C’mon, just another few rolls.’“So I got him in and he has a cup of tea and he says, ‘I’m
very proud – I was the one who got Princess Di when she waspregnant in the Bahamas, remember that one? Lying on thebeach? The Queen called it the blackest day in
English journalism.’“He really loved it. And he was saying, ‘Oh, thatwas much worse… I had to crawl through all thisstuff,’ and he was giving me the whole works
about how he had to hide all night in this hedge.
What a way to earn a pound note! What can you
do? If you’ve not much going on it’s alright, but if
you have a baby or you’ve got a new bird or you’re
getting a divorce, it’s always a bit dodgy with that
lot. Well, there’s always something.”
Well, if you’ve got skeletons in the cupboard,
Mick, what do you expect?
“That’s right.”
Not so much tornado, more a chilling wind…
Jagger enters the fray just 15 minutes behind »J

Dave Hogan / getty

MICK JAGGER makes a solo album.
In Paris, the singer talks dodging
paparazzi, the outrageous young
Rolling Stones, and the miners’
strike. He even touches on his solo
prospects. “You can’t expect to
get No 1s all the time,” he says,“and if you do you’re a cunt.”

“The Labour party is insuch disarray that who
could trust them now?”– Mick Jagger in 1985

HISTORY OF ROCK 1985 | 171985

J a n u a r y – M a r chschedule. A paltry 15 minutes. Before you even notice he’s there he’s
whipped off his jacket, dumped the poncho, shaken every hand in theroom and, eyes darting in a dozen different directions at once, absorbed
every minute detail of the scene confronting him. Instinctively you know
there is no way you could ever win an argument with this man. Without
having to say a word, the boy, instantly, is in charge.
He looks like… well, he looks like Jagger.
Disturbingly lean and formidably brusque, he is overtly friendly, but
single-mindedly businesslike. He doesn’t waste time enquiring after ourhealth or asking if we’ve had a pleasant flight. “Shall we do the pictures
first then?” he asks lightly. It’s clearly an order.
The photographer is armed and ready. “I know you’ve never done thisbefore, Mick, but do you think you can, er….” Instantly Jagger runs
obligingly through the whole prolific catalogue of sneers and snarls.
Tongue out. Tongue in. Poncho wrapped around his face like a Mexican
bandit. Arms aloft. Arms folded. Finger pointing threateningly. Jagger
leering. Jagger moody. Jagger posey. Jagger the pro.
Yet still I can’t get over how skinny he is. The thought recurs that if my
mum was here she’d give him a sharp clip round the ear and drag him
home for several hot dinners. My mum’s like that. Sadly, she’s never been
to Paris.
It is, of course, a crazy old day in Paris. The Whistle Test team were on thesame plane over… David Hepworth was remarkably civil considering
how rude we’ve been about him. Black Echoes (yep, Black Echoes – “theace up our sleeve”, according to the publicist) were also due in town totalk to the great man later, but sadly John Blake of the Mirror had alreadybeen and gone.
As for Jagger, he hadn’t been up too long. It’s early afternoon, but thenhe was up for most of the night. Not partying – he’s not one to party thenights away so much now – but working on the next Stones album. That’ll
be out… it’ll be out sometime… scuppering rumours of an impending
split in the ranks. But right now Jagger has
allowed himself two days to promote his
first ever solo album, She’s The Boss, witha handful of selected interviews. These heappears to conduct with no obvious relish,
but a spirited amiability. The brave, cheery face
you might present to the dentist.
As a matter of fact, I happen to like his album.
His voice is pleasingly bluesy and the songs
generally seem harder than on many a recent
Stones album. Jagger smiles gratefully. You’re
never too rich for minor compliments. Not,
however, that this is an opinion likely to beshared by most of my beloved colleagues
in the music press. As sure as sure can be,
She’s The Boss will be savaged much as
the single “Just Another Night” hasalready been savaged. Some things are
tediously predictable.
Yet oldist or not, there are few rockheart-throbs even today who didn’t
learn their craft from Mick Jagger…
whether they know it or not. And playacting or not, Jagger remains a rock icon.
All that tartiness, that tongue-in-cheeksexuality, the brazen self-parodying
flaunting of his own legend, and apersistently natural feel for earthy, dirty
rock music… perhaps he might still,even at the decrepit age of 41, beconsidered the definitive rock star.
Perhaps. Perhaps not. But dull he isn’t.
“Nah, nah… it’s second nature to me,”he guffaws in that winning way of hiswhen I ask him if he might be considered
an… ahem… embarrassment playing
hard rock music at his age.
“See, I don’t consider I’d be any good at“It’s a joke on
sexism”: Jagger
anything else. I can do other kinds ofon the title track
music, but hard rock is my main talent
to She’s The Bossand I think I can do that pretty good.
I don’t have any problems doing it.”But you don’t think that 20 years ago you would have been appalled tothink you’d still be at it when you’re over 40?
“Nah. Not appalled. Surprised, perhaps. But all the people I liked when
I was 20 were very much in the forties age bracket. Chuck Berry, Muddy
Waters, Howlin’ Wolf. I thought that Elvis was ancient and he was only
something like eight years older than me. But he was still good. Even
though I thought he was old, I still liked what he did when I was 12 or 13
or somethin’.”Do you really think you’ve still got something to say to a young audience?
“Oh yeah. Yeah. The thing about starting out in a band is that the firstalbums you do tend to be horrible. Most first albums by bands, the only
thing they have going for them is enthusiasm.
“The first Stones album is a pretty good album really, considering when
it was recorded – it has a lot of brashness and enthusiasm – but quite often
that’s all those albums have. You can really play ’em after a while because
they just get boring, there’s not any musicianship going on, there’s
nothing underneath it – it’s just speed and enthusiasm.”
The obvious question is, after a 20-year career, why has Mick Jagger now
decided to put out a solo album?
“The obvious answer is why not?”Obvious but glib.
“ I could say it in three or four languages if you like.”
Go on then.
“No, the thing is a lot of my mates and people like you were always
saying, ‘C’mon, Mick, why are you lazing about?’ Basically, it wasn’t athought-out thing at all, so glib answers abound, but the truth is I worked
a lot in 1983 with the Stones in the studio. We done a lot of videos and I
wrote these songs very quickly, like in a couple of weeks. As I’d been doing
all this work with the Stones, there was no way I was going back in thestudio again after being there for nine months or whatever, including
doing a video, so I thought I’d do demos for fun. Then I thought, ‘Wait
a minute, I might as well do this solo album
everyone’s always asking me about and I’ve
always said, “Oh I might do it one day.”’“It was a good time to do it because I thought it
was time to start breaking patterns a little bit. I
hadn’t been taking enough chances maybe… it
was doing an album and then going on the roadfor a little while, then laying back. I thought thetime was good to get on and do something. And
the record company were very good about it.
They said, ‘We don’t want you to do four albums
with the Stones; we want you to do two on yourown.’ So when I said I wanted to do this solo
album they were very supportive rather thansaying, ‘Oh well, we’d rather have a Stones
album first if you don’t mind.’”Co-produced by Bill Laswell, the album
features a grand old array of name session
musicians from Jeff Beck to Nile Rodgers
and Sly and Robbie. Yet the mostsurprising thing about it is how little itstrays from the basic rock format honed toperfection by the Stones down the years.
Freed from the guidance of Sir Keef andthe others, Jagger was widely expected to
go off at a tangent.
“Well, in a band you expect to come up
with ideas, that’s what a band’s all about,whereas when you’re working withmusicians in this way they basically expect
it all to come from you. All the direction,
the lines of the bass – everything.
“I guess there are some things on there
I wouldn’t have done with the Rolling
Stones in the same way, but with thematerial I didn’t set out to do an
experimental album like some hip-hop
thing or a jazz album, which is what a lotof people thought I was doing.
“So the songs I wrote were basically thesame sort of songs I write for the Stones,
the same kind of material. Whether

rex features“Hard rock is
my maintalent… I think
I can do thatpretty good”

18 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

“He said why not do it
later?”: Mick and Keithin November 1985,
nine months after the
release of the former’s
first solo album

now, and he said why not do it later? And I just said,‘Well, no… I really feel like doing it now. I don’t think
he was that pleased about it, but he got used to theidea. Anyway, I was the only one in the band who
hadn’t done a solo project. Keith had done tours on
his own and Ronnie had… Keith had even put out
a single on his own…”
He pauses to savour the anticipated raised
eyebrows… “It’s called ‘Run Rudolph Run’.”A further dramatic pause to accommodate theinevitable sniggers. “And Bill’s done several soloa album, Ronnie’s done loads, innumerable things
which I’ve helped him with, produced, wrote songs for, everything. I was
the only one who hadn’t done anything, so I don’t think they had any kindof complaints whatsoever. Really. They were stymied.”
The managing director has spoken.
t seems hard to credit it now, children, but there was a time
when society was repulsed by MP Jagger. The immorality of youth,
violence on the streets, drug abuse, the breakdown of law andorder, heavy snowfall in March, losing to the West Indies at cricket,
most of the ills of the western world were at one time or another laid
directly at the door of the Rolling Stones. And when they said Stones
they meant Jagger.
A recent biography of the Stones by Philip Norman suggests that his
current respectability, his elite status in the establishment, was always
something that Jagger craved. Mick was, the book implies, impressedfrom the start by fame, wealth and international status, and whatever thefearsome public image or outrageous headline foisted upon them, he
consistently saw the Stones as a tool to achieve it for himself. A simplistic
view, but like Brian Jones and unlike Sir Keef, Mick enjoyed a relatively
comfortable upbringing. It was the music of Howlin’ Wolf that moved
him, not the desire to completely overturn traditional values.
Now, with a teenage daughter of his own – and he believes in a strictlydisciplined upbringing by all accounts – and the benefit of having
experienced virtually every excess known to mankind, Jagger can afford
to be philosophical about it all. He insists that the Stones always were thereal thing, and while the wild rock’n’roll rebel image was something
fostered by the media, it was never consciously manufactured. È

I

HISTORY OF ROCK 1985 | 19

richard young / rex features

they would have been done differently with theStones is hypothetical.”If nothing else, it has a provocative title. The song
“She’s The Boss” is a pretty standard growly R’n’B
affair which, to me at least, sounds like a backhander
aimed at the more militant elements of the feminist
movement. Jagger denies this quite strenuously.
“Nah, I just made it up on the spur of the moment in
the studio. Most of the vocal is live. I dunno, it’s about
all the executive lady talk. You get a lot of all thatabout the real independent woman, so I just made it
up. I made the words as a spoof on the whole thing.”
So it’s not a reverse sexism thing?
“Nah, it’s not. But you can take it any way you want. There is someserious stuff in there. The guy is screaming that he can’t fuck her ’cos he’s
got to wash his hair… it’s a joke, y’know. It’s a joke on sexism. All thewomen I’ve played it to really like it. All the female executives at the record
company really liked that one.”
You’ll get flak for it, though.
“Don’t think so. Not from any of the women who’ve heard it so far
anyway. Maybe I’ll get it from men. Feminist men. Butch men. Macho
men won’t like it.”
The oddity on the album is a ballad called “Hard To Please”, which
Jagger performs in a weird strangulated drawl. I tell him he sounds like
Dylan grappling with “Lay Lady Lay”. For the one and only time during
our encounter he looks genuinely shocked.
“It’s supposed to sound like Aaron Neville,” he grumbles withexaggerated shirtiness. “That’s what I was aiming at. Someone told me
yesterday it sounded as if I was trying to copy Marvin Gaye. I wasn’t trying
to copy anybody really, but there’s a little bit of everything in it.”Not everybody, it seems, is as thrilled about the idea of a Jagger solo
album. If rumours are to be believed – and I always believe rumours – theother Stones were less than enamoured of the whole escapade and Sir
Keef, in particular, was miffed that the project was occupying so muchtime when he wanted to get on with the next Stones album.
“Yeah…” he concedes vaguely, “but Keith knew I was gonna do this. He
knew I’d planned it, ’cos when we talked about the Stones contracts I said
they wanted me to do two solo albums and I said, ‘I think it’s a good idea.
I want to do it, otherwise I’m never gonna do it.’ I told him I wanted to do it

1985

J a n u a r y – M a r ch

“It wasn’t just a pose in the first place. In that period, we were very angryand violent. But a lot of that soon disappeared when we achieved success;by 1965, even though people still believed that if you had long hair you
were rebellious… and that was it.
“It’s hard to put yourself back. It’s hard to explain to people who didn’t
live through that period what it was like. It was unbelievable. But by ’65
the Stones were part of show business in a way. A successful band,internationally known. And if it hadn’t been for all the drug busts… thatchanged an awful lot… it changed our attitude to everything.”
In what way?
“Well, it brought us back to the… we were just a good-time band having
a very good time on the road making the music
we wanted and making records that I think werepretty good. Then we got into this whole thing of
being busted and went to jail and everything,
and that put us back to where we started, so we
had to spend all our energy and time fightingthat rather than making music, which wasreally boring. Boring and time-consuming. It
made us regress in little ways in attitude.”And that reinforced the rebel thing.
“Yeah, but what I’m trying to say is there wasa period between that when we were really
happy-go-lucky and enjoying life and having a
lot of success and not being excessive in any
way and working very hard producing a lot ofalbums very quickly. On the road permanently
and going all round the world and having a lot of fun. That time from the
middle of ’64 to ’67 was a very happy period in our lives.”
Have you found it hard to hang on to your sanity?
“No, not really. Only one or two times it got a bit difficult. When you’rea kid you think everyone’s against you. That was enough. And then Brian
really bought it over that whole thing. He took it all to heart and bought it,
more or less. He let it fester in him. So that was a tough time. But after that
we began to get back into it.”
Jagger has gone on record as saying that he rates the first Stones album
the best. Which support the widely held view that the Stones went soft
centuries ago. It certainly sounds as if, musically at least, he’s nostalgic forthe early days.
“Well, everyone likes to think about when they were young, but I’m notreally a nostalgia person, I’m more interested in what’s going on now thanwhat happened whenever. Of course, you look back at the past sometimes
with a bit of a glow, but it wasn’t very easy a lot of times, it was pretty awful

really. Well, you must have lived though that. It was very different then.
You couldn’t do just what you wanted. You couldn’t wear what you
wanted without people laughing at you.
“Now you can, more or less… in England anyway. A few people laugh atyou, but everyone laughed at you then. It was constant, so you got very
hardened to that abuse. It wasn’t particularly funny, but being in a band
helped because you could support each other.”
Jagger’s present role in the current scheme of things is, in any case,confused. While the Stones remain more imitated than any other band,
anybody whose sexual adventures inspires such interest in the societycolumns is rightly ripe for derision. Jagger contests that he despises thisclose media attention, but admits that he’ll“play the game” when it suits him.
Despite his riches, he hates the thought thatpeople might think of him as a Tory and claims
to be concerned about social issues. Contrary
to his reputation as a bread head, he claims(though not in this interview) to give away a lotof his money to charity – and he feels it is his
duty to do so.
Genuinely interested, I ask him for his viewson the miners’ strike. It provokes the mosteloquent and lengthy dissertation of ourmeeting. As he becomes more animated, theAmericanisms that creep in during the courseof conversation swiftly disappear, as do thesnatches of yob talk – his trademark – whichhover like a perverse defiance in the face of his huge wealth.
“There is no right or wrong in something like the miners’ strike. It’s themalaise that’s affected England since the turn of the century, the evercontinuing malaise of British industry. And it’s a sickness that England
doesn’t realise or doesn’t want to realise, and certain other people exploitthat unwillingness to change fast enough.
“To change from heavy industry, the over-emphasis of heavy industry,
most of it in the North and the Midlands, right, and Scotland… inshipbuilding, steel, coal, all these things that made England like a great…
well, the first industrial country in the 18th and 19th century.
“It’s a gradual rundown of those industries and the slowness intransferring to other technology… and unfortunately the miners’ strikeis one of the products of that continuing inadaptability, and the people
that don’t want to adapt. And the people who want to exploit otherpeople’s unwillingness to do so. Of course, it’s tragic if you’re living in oneof those places, which I never did.

michael putland / getty“That timefrom mid-’64 to’67 was a very
happy periodin our lives”

The Rolling Stones in
1985: (l–r) Ronnie Wood,
Mick Jagger, Keith
Richards, Bill Wyman
and Charlie Watts

20 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

e talk a little more about music. Jagger has little timethese days for most of the chart bands he hears and is rudely
dismissive of the likes of Wham! and Duran. He admits he’d
get a special thrill if his solo stuff does well, but isn’t expecting miracles.

W

Jagger with
Texan model
Jerry Hall, hispartner since
separation from
Bianca in 1977

“You shouldn’t really worry about all that,
especially if you’ve had a lot of success, because
you’ve got to have ups and downs in your career. You
can’t expect to get No 1s all the time, and if you do
you’re a cunt.
“ Look at Culture Club; that was the biggest thing
since sliced bread. Then they put out a record thatbasically wasn’t as good, and kids didn’t go out andbuy it. The album was pretty horrible, actually… andit stiffed. But that should just make you moredetermined when you go in and do the next one. Your life can’t be run bytotally commercial precepts.”
His main interest – as it has always been – is black music, and he spentmuch of last summer dancing the nights away in London in obscurereggae clubs. “I like to dance,” he says simply. “If you can’t dance to it,then to me a lot of it is useless.”
So you still go out?
“Yeah, I’ve always been able to go out. It’s important not to be stupid
about it and be as ordinary as possible in so far as you lead a pretty
ordinary life and never say no, I can’t do that. A lot of Americans cut
themselves off. But English people by and large – all the ones I know,
anyway – they go out and put up with it. Sometimes you get a bit of argybargy, people come up and say ‘’Ello Mick’ or ‘Fuck off, Mick’, but you put
up with it because you want to be there, whether it’s in a pub or a concert
or whatever. It can be boring, though… you get to learn all the little ins
and outs of how to avoid people bugging you.”
Lennon’s death must have hit you hard.
“Yeah… it was a horrible thing to happen, but you’re not gonna change
your life because of that. A few people might have done that, but… there’s
always the sub-machine gun in the pocket. I think it was an isolated
incident really; it wasn’t like a spate of people getting killed. It’s not
something you want to talk about really, because it gives people ideas.
You say ‘No way’ and then you get some fucking idiot coming at you.”
Mick, what are the high points of your career?
Not a moment’s hesitation.
“The Mod Ball at Wembley, 1964… Ready Steady Go!… I loved doing
Ready Steady Go!. The thing I remember was watching Otis Redding. He
did 20 minutes at the end of Ready Steady Go!, live TV. It was great. Much
better than The Tube. There’s a tape of it. It was lost for a while, but they
dug it up. That was excellent. I remember that. And playing in Richmondwhen it first started to really happen, that was a great buzz. Los Angeles in’81, that was great…”
By this time, the natives are getting well itchy. The first bell rang 20
minutes ago, and makeup ladies are now being ushered into The
Presence to prepare him for his audience with David Hepworth. The
photographer and I are shepherded out.
Jagger whacks us powerfully across the shoulders. “Well, boys, that was
really wonderful,” he says, sarcasm-a-go-go.
Quite. Colin Irwin ¥HISTORY OF ROCK 1985 | 21

robin platzer / getty“I was brought up in a town which was commuter andindustrial, and we had some heavy industry in the town. We had
Fords, which is really close and a lot of people worked there; andwe had J&E Halls, which is like heavy industrial equipment; andwe had Burroughs Wellcome, which is chemicals; and we had all
the chalk and the quarry, which is heavy. And we had coalfields
not far away. So if there was a lull at J&E Halls and they laid off
people at Vickers in Woolwich in the armaments – and there
obviously was a lay-off after the war – people could move to a lightindustry like Burroughs Wellcome, which was a drug industry
and taking on people.
“But if you’re living in a one-industry town it must be very, very
difficult. It’s much easier for somebody like me coming from thatbackground, knowing that with the unemployment thing it’s
relatively easy to switch from one to another. You didn’t have to
move. You just took the bus to another factory. But if you’re living
in a mining community in Wales – and I’ve been to those – thoseplaces are just dead. The mines are dead. So it’s awhole different ball game and people in the south ofEngland probably don’t realise that.
“But that diversification of industry and mobilityof labour is the way the UK, like everyone else, isgonna have to go. The same thing’s happening in
America in the north-east. Slowly. There’s too muchsteel production and all those things, so people haveto move. They did move a lot to the south-west, andthey’re starting to come back now because the northeast is becoming the big place for light industry. Is
this a music interview?”
Go on.
“The children of the people who migrated got
bored because there wasn’t enough happening,
so they come back to that big area from Boston to
Washington. They come back to Massachusetts andthose factories for computers and all that stuff being operated there. The
secret, a lot of it, is mobility and also adaptability.
“It’s unfortunate in England that some mines and other industries haveto be changed, but otherwise the whole thing’s gonna have to go down.
The whole thing about England being an industrial base and a richcountry is gonna go down the tubes. But I don’t think it’s gonna happen,
because I don’t think English people are that stupid in the end.
“The other thing that’s so bad about it is it makes the Labour Party soineffective as an opposition party. Even if I were a Tory – which I’m really
not – I wouldn’t like the idea of the Labour party being so weak anddivided because it doesn’t give the Thatcher government any kind of
proper opposition. The Labour party is in such disarray that who could
trust them now? Well, not trust, but who could rely on them to run asingular policy, which the UK needs, because they are so divided. And
the miners’ strike has divided them even more, so they’re gonna need
another period of a few years to get back together.”
So you think the miners’ strike has been misguided?
“No. It’s not misguided, it’s guided. Some of the individuals might be
misguided, but it’s a very political thing. It’s a guided political motivation,
as was the miners’ strike in… was it ’29? And the ’74 one was a guided
one too. Due to the success of the ’74 one, I thought there was a strong
possibility that this strike would bring down the government, but
obviously, that’s not gonna happen.
“So… and I don’t think Arthur Scargill will be too annoyed with me forsaying it – what they couldn’t do with the ballot box, the miners’ union
were trying to do by striking… bring down the Tory government. But they
didn’t succeed and I think they should really go back to bring the Labour
party back to a cohesive political unit and try to do it the other way. I don’t
think it’s done anybody any good, the miners’ strike. OK, so the miners
are gonna have a slightly better package than otherwise they might havedone, but it must have caused so much hardship to individuals. And all
the thing about it being such a strong union – it’s weakened their union.”
Phew! This is a man, remember, who was friendly with Labour MP Tom
Driberg and once toyed with the idea of standing for parliament.

1985

J a n u a r y – M a r ch

ALBUMS

Hüsker Dü stir up a
Midwestern dust
storm: (l–r) Grant
Hart, Greg Norton
and Bob Mould

ALBUMS

gReg helgeSOn

Hüsker Dü New Day Rising SST
These are fast times that we livein, something that dawned upon
Hüsker Dü long before New Day
Rising glimpsed the light.
They keep a breathless,occasionally frantic pace with all
the strains involved. Although
they shatter barriers of sound,they never seem to break theboundaries of their native land.
Hüsker Dü, like Sonic Youth intheir way or (for all their petulant
protestations) Swans in theirs,
are unavoidably American – thedust of their Midwest heimat islodged deep within the creases
between every chord.
It’s ironic, in these days ofgun-toting, culture-popping,born-again, damn-de-diddle
Yankeeism, that the imagery of
the Midwest through to New
Mexico should have such appeal.
Even those more stateless thanI seem somehow drawn to thesandy wastes and cramped
psyches that (in our minds atleast) have altered little since theage of Faulkner – “Tupelo”, fromthe forthcoming Nick Cave LP,
shows our favourite exile burying
deeper still into smalltown
Americana. But where Cave isalways Malcolm Lowry’s man
apart, Hüsker Dü, like Sam
Shepard’s truck-saddle-sore
wanderers, are more at homearound here. Their journey, for
all its personal detail, is more
outward going.
Hüsker Dü are three, but it’s
the huge guitar of the large Bob
22 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

REVIE
W

Mould that swells to fill theirwidescreen soundscape. The
sound of his six strings has thesame evocative qualities as Ry
Cooder’s – where the sound of
Cooder is the sound of thescorched New Mexico desert, or
the Louisiana swamp, Mould’s isthe dust-grain swirl of the wideopen spaces, where words arescattered like roadside cafes,
domestic traumas bursting insidewhile the litter whirls around thegas pumps outside.
Mould himself is one of thegreat blue-collar endomorphs.
As pictured in NME’s hardcore
issue, collared T-shirt straining
against a blubbery figure, grin
bubbling through a broad face,
the bottleneck peeping from thebrown paper bag in hand, helooks like he could have a heart tomatch his waistband, probably
paired with a clout to clot yourbrain cells. Prod him and he’dwobble, but push him and…
Mould, it should be clear by
now, is no slight man, bolstering
his ego with abarrage of guitar.
His sound,however large,
feels like anextension ofhimself. It’s
grand but nevergrandiose. His
singing, evenmore so on
New Day Risingthan on it’spredecessor
Zen Arcade,sometimes has

the wrenched
Then, disaster.
1985
defiance of the
The charismatic
cornered, sometimes
frontman departed
the strange fragility of
the fold and Genesis
16 tons of sensitivity.
were suddenly a band
So, 59 times the pain, 100 times
without face or voicebox. But,
the feeling, 1,000 times the
miracle of miracles, that little
space. This is the big country –drummer boy had been sitting
for real. Don Watson, NME March 9
on a big, big voice all this timeand he now rushed to thePhil Collins No Jacket Required
rescue, saving the day for
VIRGINmillions of art students while
simultaneously paving the way
The rise and rise of wee Philfor the solo career.
Collins has to be one of the
And now the man who brought
stranger tales in the wacky
the tank top back into pop hasworlds of pop. Starting off asreleased what many folk mighta boy actor, a sort of veryrefer to as his long-awaited third
English Micky Dolenz, thesolo album. Not surprisingly, Noadolescent Phil somehow
Jacket Required contains
drifted away from such aabsolutely no surprises. It is,perfectly acceptable careerquite simply, Phil Collins
into the much more sinister
Superstar doing what Phil Collins
surroundings of the demon
does best, singing and drumming
pomp-rock. Yes, dry ice andon 10 of his own songs, most of
15-minute album tracks werewhich are about the sadder side
the staple diet of a band calledof all things Valentine, with
Genesis for whom the now muchtitles like “One More Night”,
older but perennially wee Mr“Doesn’t Anybody Stay Together
Collins bashed the skins.
Anymore” and“Take Me Home”.
Naturally
enough, it is all
far too smooth,manufactured
and bland toelicit any real
involvement or
response on thepart of thelistener, a sortof desperately
timid, albeit
reasonably
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Simon & Garfunkel of the ’80s
is further bolstered by “I
Believe”, which bears absolutely
SINGLESbackdrop to all our less serious
no resemblance to the classic
The Jesus And Mary Chain
bedroom tiffs.
Bachelors hit of the same name.
Never Understood“Sussudio” you all know
Instead it’s dedicated to Robert
BLANcO y NeGRO
already, of course, only most of
Wyatt, probably the only person
you probably refer to it under its
in the world who will be able toGood old-fashioned racket
original title “1999” sung by thatwork out exactly what the very
from pop’s latest goodincredibly rude Prince chap.
plaintive vocal of young Roland isold-fashioned bad boys.
“Take Me Home”, which wraps
trying to say. Whatever, it’s theSomewhere along the vintage
the whole thing up, will soon
sort of fragile ballad that Art
Killing Joke/Stooges/Pistols
become equally familiar when it’s
Garfunkel used to pipe out notemetal-as-stream-ofinevitably released in single form
perfect to half a million drugged
consciousness axis, “Neverto cash in on the fact that vocals
American students, and as such
Understand” starts at A with Z
are ably assisted by Sting, Helenshould guarantee mega-successin its sights and simply doesn’t
Terry and Peter Gabriel. WhichStateside for Blighty’s
let up. Not unpleasant,is, of course, somewhere nearlatest and hottest
of its kind. Skilfully
where we first came in.
contenders.
amateurish
Sadly, none of this increasingly
Without wishingproduction byfashionable backslapping can
to ruin a positive
SINGLESuncredited
do much to alter the initial
review bybackroom wizard.
impression, that Phil Collins is
introducing a
B-side comprises
a generally sound sort of blokenote of bitchiness,
the threatening
who makes fairly ordinary
Orzabal is very
“Suck” and the
1985
records for very ordinary people
close to becoming
chaotic “Ambition”,
to play at their desperately
a bit of a George towhich produces anordinary parties. Like the man
Curt’s Andrew, taking
effect similar to having
says, no jacket required. And not
the credit on all 10 songsa Black & Decker sander
too much imagination either.
from his big chair while poor
thrust into your face. Spiral
Smithy gets a look-in on just thescratch revisited. By the way,
Barry McIlheney, MM Feb 23
one. Elsewhere, Orzabal teams
which one’s Jesus? MM Feb 23
Tears For Fears Songs From
up mainly with previously
The Big Chair MeRcuRy
Don Henley The Boys Of Summer
anonymous keyboards player
GeFFeN
Ian Stanley, the man responsible
None of you should really be
Glenn Frey The Heat Is On McA
for half of both “Shout” andtoo surprised that Tears For“Mothers Talk”, and as such an
Fears have made such an
How’s about a bit of Don
obviously vital figure in thisexcellent album. The healthy
Henley? Didn’t think so.
group’s stunning transformation
signs were there as far back as
Actually, the old Eagle scoresfrom last year’s bad joke to this“Mothers Talk”. A song thatseveral points over Jagger by
year’s biggest surprise.
paved the way for “Shout”, surely
not being ashamed about his
The final track is called
one of the BIGGEST noises thisage. “The Boys Of Summer” is“Listen”, another smoochy sortside of Frankie.
a likeably unpretentious AOR
of ballad which features Marilyn
Both songs are included on
single – something about asDavid on operatic vocal andSongs From The Big Chair, ancommon as black faces on thewhich has a title that could wellalbum that fully justifies theMM front page – that shows
be used as a one-word summary
rather sneering, told-you-so
how to grow old with grace.
for what you all should do whenlooks adopted by Curt Smith andBetter than just about
confronted with a copy of Songs
Roland Orzabal on the sleeve.
everything the Eagles put out
From The Big Chair.
“The Working Hour” is almostand should be a hit. I know we’re
An awful lot of people will, ofas fast as “Shout”, starting off
not supposed to like records
course, go on and on about
with a sweet little saxophone soloby people like Henley,overcoats, The Lotus
before bursting out into a big,
but given the choice
Eaters and an alleged
wide arrangement full of the
between thelack of depth. And
sound of chiming guitars andcallow efforts
an awful lot ofdrums that always manage toof would-be
people will havestumble their way through to theWestto eat an awfulheart of the matter.
Coasters
lot of words.
“Everybody Wants To Rule The
like Lloyd
World” actually SWINGS, andCole andBarry McIlheney,
provides further evidence thatan artfully
MM Mar 3
2¡MCidWla4vn
16. Ma01

T

IZ,

BM1)

e198

Prince & The Revolution Let’s Go
Crazy/ Take Me With U WeA
Double-header snipped fromthe exotic Purple Rain elpee,
and no doubt this will find theheavily guarded celebrity
speeding once more towards
the top of the charts. “Let’s
Go Crazy” will have all thoseHendrix comparisons making
a comeback, being a frenetic
portion of rock ’n’ soul coveredin caterwauling lead guitar.
“Take Me With U” is morerelaxed, with a quirky stringarrangement papering over
the absence of any great
substance. MM Feb 23

Madonna Material Girl SIRe
Bouncy stuff from the world’s
least virginal female singer.
“I am a material girl,” confesses
Madonna, who is glimpsed on
the sleeve clutching a blue
satin sheet about her naked
personage. Rrrrrrr. The music
is catchy enough, with apurposeful throb in its step.
But what is the strange ringing
noise that comes jabbing out of
the mix? Hit, of course. MM Feb 23

The Damned Grimly Fiendish McA
From the ’60s came jaunty
keyboard-led ditties, and intheir wake Madness. Now, thirdhand, come the eternal Damned– truly a long way from the spiritof “New Rose”. MM Mar 30
HISTORY OF ROCK 1985 | 23

Michael Putland / getty

W
REVIE

melancholy
example of
the real thing,
I’ll plump forthe latter.
Don’s former colleague
Glenn Frey’s “The Heat Is On”,
meanwhile, is evidence thatit’s never wise to trust morethan one old hippy at a time.
Taken from Eddie Murphy’s
new starring vehicle, it has
absolutely nothing to do withthe great Isley Brothers trackof the same name and should
be prosecuted for somethingor other. MM Feb 9

1985

J a n u a r y – M a r ch

“I’m prepared
to go downwith the ship”
On behalf of THE SMITHS, Morrissey meets the fanzine press.
He faces questions about love, Band Aid, the Moors Murderers
and the band’s own unique position in the world. “There arepeople I admire,” he says, “but ultimately we are alone.”— MELODY MAKER MARCH 16 —he following interview was conducted by a panel of fanzine writers including
Dave Haslam from Debris, Tim Barlow from Eat Yourself Fitter, Rob Deacon from Abstract,
Lesley O’Toole from Inside Out, Jon Storyfrom Bucketfull Of Brains, and RobertWatts from Running Order. With Melody
Maker editor Allan Jones as acting
chairman, the panel met at Rough Trade’s London
offices on Thursday, February 14, 1985. What happened
next is what happens next…

rob verhorst / alamyT24 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

RUNNING ORDER: why have you decided to do this withfanzine writers?
MorriSSeY: We had lots of requests and it seemed reallysnotty to ignore them. It seems like lots of people felt thatas soon as we began to chart and became big business,
we would forget all our original ideals. And I get so many
letters from people who are hysterical and frustrated
and it seems that The Smiths are under so much pressure.
The implications seems to be, “When will The Smiths fall
down? When will they forget everybody? When will theyturn into some rigid, surfy pop group?” Which will never
happen. And I get really tired of people suggesting it will…
It seems that every single day I have to go before the courtsand explain so many things. I think The Smiths are under agreat deal of pressure. More pressure than any other group. »Morrissey in 1985:“I think it’s abouttime somebody did
something of value”

HISTORY OF ROCK 1985 | 25

1985

J a n u a r y – M a r ch

INSIDE OUT: Why?
I think probably because so many people had so much faith in us andbecause we live in such a bleak world, people really believed that thatfaith couldn’t really have been authentic and eventually the cloak would
fall and The Smiths would turn into… well, something else…

IO: What is the greatest pressure on you?
There are so many. Where does one begin? Well… The Smiths seem tohave a lot of critics and the greatest pressure I think is just fending themoff. A lot of people don’t give you the right to reply about many things andthey come to assumptions. But this is just modern journalism.
IO: What about the pressure of being a hero to so many people?
I can take it, I can take it.
IO: I mean, you get all these letters from people saying, “If you don’t
write back I’m going to commit suicide…”
Yes, it’s difficult. We can snigger about it, but it’s very difficult because it
happens every day and what does one do? If you reply to these letters you
become immediately involved and you become absolutely responsible,
which is a terrible thing. It’s sad to me that so many people do think
about suicide and so many people’s lives are in a shambolic mess, buthere we are…
DEBRIS: Why is it, do you think, that so many of your songs seem todeal with the adolescent experience, even the work on the new LP?
I mean, you are getting older.
I am, indeed. But why… I think if most people sang or wrote words,
that’s what they’d sing about or write about. I’m not obsessed with it.
It was something, as probably lots of people can gather, I didn’t copewith too cleverly. So I do feel bitterness, but I’m not massively, incurably
obsessed with it.
DEBRIS: Do you think you’ve made a myth out of the idea thatadolescence is something special?
Well, I think it is special. It forms your opinions for the rest of your life.
The very obvious things about adolescence really do shape your future.
If you have a wonderful adolescence, you go on to be a very assured
person. But if you don’t, you don’t really have assurance. It’s the stage
I think you have to go through successfully and very ambitiously,
otherwise you’re in some trouble. That’s my observation. I think weshouldn’t really underestimate it.
EAT YOURSELF FITTER: Do you think now that you are successful
you’ve merely traded one form of misery for another?
No, I don’t think so. Virtually everything about the pop industry, I detest.
I don’t feel a part of it to any degree. But that’s fine, because now we’re
becoming successful, and I think it’s very interesting that The Smiths
can survive, nonetheless, even though we all feel this way. So that’squite unique. But I don’t feel absolutely, entirely miserable. I would do
if I couldn’t do this.
IO: What is success for The Smiths?
It’s just really the very obvious things like selling records and havingsome power, being in the situation where people really have to listen to
you whether they want to or not. That’s success and that’s valuable.
Everything else is just total nonsense, really.
DEBRIS: Did you all sit down and say to eachother, “What do we do to make the second
LP avoid the pitfalls of the first?”
Yes, we did, and there was only one answer tothat and that was to produce it ourselves andhave control to the last detail, which didn’t
necessarily happen with the first LP… But, yeah,
the whole idea with Meat Is Murder was tocontrol it totally, and without a producer things
were better. We saw things clearer.
DEBRIS: What about musical aims – it seems
a bit harder.
Yes, it does. And in a way that’s intentional,
because now that we have quite a big audience
26 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

it’s really important to me thatpeople realise that we haven’t
become sloppy and we haven’t
become cushioned and we haven’t
become fat and lazy. Because wedidn’t want to go into the big league,
as it were, and adhere to all the rules.
That’s pointless. It makes the entire
history of The Smiths totally
pointless. There has to be somethingthat separates us. And to be quite
honest, we are very angry. I mean, invery simple terms we are very, very
angry. We’re angry about the musicindustry. We’re very angry about
pop music. And I think it’s abouttime that somebody said something
and somebody did something thatis of value. Which is always very
difficult, because when you try to
say something with value andintelligence, you have to stand trial,
you have to go before the jury, as it
were, and explain yourself. People
who are idiots and idiotic and blandand pointless and stupid and poppy– they can do what they like andnobody pins them against a wall andsays, “Why are you doing that?” But
if you try and do something with agrain of intellect, you have to answer
for it every single day of
your life. Which to me is
the most irksome part ofthe music industry. In
a way, it means you arebeing taken seriously, butthen as I recollect, it wasalways the very, very dull
people in music who wereever taken seriously. So
there’s really a lot to do.
It’s not easy.
MELODY MAKER: What
specific targets do you
have for your anger?
Journalists, mainly. Well… here we are in critical times, Allan, very
critical times. But would we know it if we looked at popular music andwhat’s being churned out by the old sausage machine? Would we knowthat we’re in critical times? I mean, if some strange creature landed fromanother planet and checked out the hit parade, as it were, he or she would
just presume that we’re living in a life of absolute discofied jubilance –which, of course, is true in your case. There has to be a grain of realism.
MM: So you’re saying that not enough music reflects the times inwhich we live?
Some music does, but sadly it’s all in the independent chart, which, ofcourse, is of no use to the masses because
nobody hears the independent chart. It’s of nopractical value, whatsoever. There’s no point
being incredibly enlightened and incredibly
aware if nobody can actually hear you. You dohave to break through. And I think The Smiths
are the first group in musical history to do that.

“Without
a producer,
things were
better. We saw
things clearer”

DEBRIS: How do you feel about your treatmentby the national papers over the last year?
It’s been wonderful and it’s been atrocious. It’s
really impossible for me to have a very clear
view of it, so I don’t really know. A lot of it has
made me really distressed, but it’s really only
made me distressed because I care so much,

“It seemed really snotty toignore them”: Melody Maker
editor Allan Jones chairs ameeting between Morrissey
and six fanzine scribes who
had requested an interview

which is quite wrong. But I do care a great deal and I do get very distressed
about vulgar comments. But it’s worth it for the times when people
actually really understand what you’re doing.

MM: What about the general thesis that people, in times of crisis,
actually want entertainment?
Well, I don’t really know what entertainment is. I mean, when we say theword “entertainment”, we think of Leslie Crowther – who’s neverentertained me – we think of The Price Is Right. The word entertainment
doesn’t really belong to any scientific language, does it? I don’t think so.
I mean, the things that entertained me in the past always horrified
everybody else. So what does the question mean?
DEBRIS: This is going to be very pretentious…
You always are, Dave.
DEBRIS: …but don’t you think one of the things about our “criticaltimes” is that there is a gap between what is considered art and what
is considered entertainment? In a way, a lot of things are shovelled off
into so-called art and ignored, or shovelled off into entertainment andignored, and as you say, there’s nothing really that is considered tobridge the two…
No… because I don’t think most people believe that they can be bridged.
Most people think that popular music is the lowest possible art form,
and anything that happens in popular music really isn’t important. If
a character like Pete Burns existed within classical music it would be aworld revelation, but because he doesn’t, he’s just there and he’s very silly
and he’s very funny and he’s very entertaining, and ultimately he doesn’tmean anything.

RUNNING ORDER: Did you ever get to meet him?
Yes. I think he’s a wonderful person. He’s one of the few people I can feela great affinity with. Namely, because he says exactly what he wants to.
Which, of course, is a national sin within music, especially considering
the things he wants to say.
EYF: It’s been fairly trendy to sort of scorn and mock Morrissey because
you dwell on the unhappy side of life, but has this strengthened yourresolve to provide an antidote to, like, Wham!?
It’s fuel. It’s really fuel for the old anger. I’m glad about it.
EYF: Is that what that track “That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore”
is about?
Yes, it is. When I wrote the words for that, I was just so completely tiredof all the same old journalistic questions and people trying, you know,
this contest of wit, trying to drag me down and prove that I was a complete
fake. And I was tired of that because it just seemed that, like, even thepeople within popular music, even the people within the music industry,
didn’t have that much faith in it as an art form. And they wanted to really
get rid of all these people who are trying to make some sense out of thewhole thing. And I found that really distressing.
IO: Do you see yourself as a humorous writer at all?
Yes, I do. Nobody else does, I don’t know why. And it’s distressing,
because I often feel that if people don’t consider me to be remotely
humorous, who on earth do they consider to be humorous? So I do feelthat I need some recognition in that area. But then again, knowing myluck, people will probably start comparing me to… um… It’s so difficult
to name names these days… you meet people at Top Of The Pops and È
HISTORY OF ROCK 1985 | 271985

J a n u a r y – M a r ch

Meat Is Murder-era
Smiths: (l–r) JohnnyMarr, Morrissey,
Mike Joyce andAndy Rourke

they’re incredibly civilised and it spoils
everything, because you really want to get insome horrific criticism.
MM: Do you think that too much civility
simply leads to hypocrisy, because people
aren’t being totally honest about how they feel
about each other?
I don’t know if that’s civility. You can meet
people and they’re terribly polite to you, but
it’s not really civility, I don’t think. I think it’ssomething else. I think it’s just a matter of being
two-faced. But no… I’m all in favour of civility.
I think we need a lot of civility. Buckets full of it.

“As long as
humans are soviolent towards
animals, there
will be war”

EYF: Do you think old-fashioned virtues like courtesy have goneby the board?
I don’t think that courtesy is really old-fashioned.
EYF: People would consider it as such.
Well, they shouldn’t do. I think civility and common courtesy are reallyburied within everybody, but now we’re in an age when people feel reallyembarrassed to be polite, and feel quite embarrassed to open doors forothers. And I think that’s sad, but it’s only because I think that to be thatcourteous is considered to be quite weak and trivial.

alamy

DEBRIS: Don’t you think that the tendency which has overtaken is thetendency towards violence?
Oh, completely, completely. But this is because, in my opinion, of nuclear
weapons. Because it seems that ultimately, regardless of what happensin the world, the only way to solve our disagreements is by violence, is by
nuclear weapons. And as long as we live in a world where nuclear weapons
are the only answer, and the ultimate answer after conversation has
failed, I think people will be violent.
DEBRIS: How explicit is the link between personal violence in thehome – or “Rusholme” – and institutionalised violence like the meatindustry and war?
28 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

It’s completely connected. It all weaves in andit’s all kind of embroidered to make one overall
foul image. From the time that you get hit when
you’re a child, as covered in a song called“Barbarism Begins At Home”, violence is the
only answer. Conversation is pointless. And it
continues through school. Certainly if you go
to a working-class school.

EYF: Are you equating human violence
towards fellow humans – “Barbarism”,“The Headmaster Ritual” – with violence
towards animals? Are you saying it’s all
the same thing?
Yes, it is. Because violence towards animals,
I think, is also linked to war. I think as long as human beings are so violent
towards animals there will be war. It might sound absurd, but if you reallythink about the situation it all makes sense. Where there’s this absolutelack of sensitivity where life is concerned, there will always be war. And,of course, there will always be war as long as there are people willing tofight wars in armies. Which is quite another matter, which I must cover
one day on a B-side…
DEBRIS: Where did the image come from on the cover of the LP? Thatmakes a link between war and, well, meat is murder.
Yes, it does. And the link is that I feel animal rights groups aren’t making
any dramatic headway because most of their methods are quite
peaceable, excluding one or two things. It seems to me now that when you
try to change things in a peaceable manner, you’re actually wasting yourtime and you’re laughed out of court. And it seems to me now that as theimage of the LP hopefully illustrates, the only way that we can get rid ofsuch things as the meat industry, and other things like nuclear weapons,
is by really giving people a taste of their own medicine.
DEBRIS: To be more specific, where do you stand on an issue like theGreenham women? They are using peaceful methods.
Yes! And it’s a total fiasco. It’s failing. They’re being kicked about, they’rebeing thrown around, they’re being laughed at, they’re being shot. I thinkthe smiths

it should register in their minds that it’s not actually working. Somethingelse has to be done.
MM: Violence has to be met by violence?
Yes, it does. That’s the tragedy. That’s the massive tragedy of all theseissues. It has to be, because of the present government, who can only
think in violent terms. I wish it didn’t. Personally, I’m an incurably
peaceable character. But where does it get you? Nowhere. You have tobe violent.
ABSTRACT: In that case, do you sympathise with the miners and theway they’ve been violent?
Completely. I mean, just endless sympathy. What can one say? It’s more
distressing than most people realise, I think. I think it’s the end if they go
down, the absolute end. And, of course, it just simply proves once againthat democracy in this country doesn’t exist in any form.
RO: Have you received much feedback from your comments in yourlast MM interview about the Brighton bombing?
Yes. I was hounded from pillar to post. Immediately after that, I went to
Ireland and every time I woke up there was some journalist sitting on theend of the bed – but we won’t go into that. Yes, that was just the absoluterope around the old… ah… young neck, and I couldn’t get away from that.
It seemed almost as if I was responsible for the assassination of Thatcher.
IO: Do you regret anything you said?
No! I’ll say it now and I’ll say it louder and I’ll say it any time you want me
to say it.
MM: You believe in the idea of justified violence?
Yes, I do. Because the violence in this case is in order to preserve the restof civilisation. It’s not simply violence because one is bored because it’sraining and one wants something to do. It’s self-protection. It’s either
them or us, as it were. I mean, when it gets to the issue of life and death,
you have to protect yourself, don’t you?
DEBRIS: Do you think you change people’s minds through music?
Yes. And I know that because people write to me, otherwise I wouldn’t
be aware of it… yes, it does seem to happen. It all comes down to thewritten word, I find. It all comes down to whenpeople are alone in their bedrooms and they’reactually listening to records and they’re
thinking about the words and then it seems
to strike home with people…
BUCKETFULL OF BRAINS: Do you think theymaybe use you as a crutch, because they can’t
sort out their problems for themselves?
Yes, I think so. But that shouldn’t really be ashameful thing. In a very fundamental way,
everybody needs friends and a lot of people don’t
have them. And a lot of people who buy records
believe that the artists who make the records are
their friends. They believe that they know thesepeople, and they believe that they’reactually involved in these people’s lives,and it’s a comfort. We shouldn’t havea condescending attitude to that.
DEBRIS: Are there any allies in yourparticular field of work – ie, pop music– who you consider can help you?
No, I don’t. I feel entirely alone. There
are people that I like and there arepeople I admire, but I think ultimately
we are alone. I really believe that, andI’m glad about that, because not beinga part of the major music industry makes
massive sense.
RO: Are there advantages to being
an outsider?
No. None whatsoever. It’s a horrible life.

MM: What would your reaction have been if you’d been invited along to
the Band Aid recording?
I think I would have read the letter at least 18 times and then I would havebegun to think about it. If I had listened to the record beforehand, I
wouldn’t have done it because I think it’s tuneless and I think that’s really
important. I mean, it’s one thing to want to save lives in Ethiopia, but it’sanother thing to inflict so much torture on the British public. So for thatreason, I absolutely disapprove. It’s quite easy to sit here and agree andfeel very passionate about the cause. Everybody does. But what about therecord? Nobody’s actually mentioned that foul disgusting thing.
MM: Would you prefer just to make your own statements on thesevarious issues?
Yes, because I don’t feel any alliance with people. We get numerous
requests to do benefits, but although I believe in the causes, one has tolook at the people involved. One has to look at the people who are incontrol and the way you’re projected in this whole sphere. And I don’tknow them, so why should I really put faith in them? I feel that whatever
we have to say, we’ll do it on our own, which is perfectly fine.
EYF: What do you think of the news of moves being made to parole
Myra Hindley?
I think it’s mildly laughable if the case itself weren’t quite so serious. But
I don’t think it will ever happen. And if it ever happened she’d certainly
regret it. So obviously I entirely oppose it, completely. I find it quite
dramatic, though. She obviously believes she’s somewhat of a film star.
She wants to make a film. She wants to open an orphanage in Germany.
I mean, the list of ambitions that she has is quite endless, and I think when
one simply scans the list of her ambitions it’s really like a certificate of her
total insanity. So we need go no further than that.
RO: Did you anticipate the reaction to “Suffer Little Children”?
Yes, I did. Yes, I did anticipate it – and when it arrived, I wasn’t ready for itin the least. I was quite confused. I was very distressed by that, but I wasonly distressed because nobody would actually let me comment on it. It
appeared in national newspaper the length and breadth of the country– Morrissey does this and Morrissey says that and Morrissey believes…
and nobody asked me a thing. Nobody knew what I believed or why the
lyrics were there. So that was the only distressing element. But I’m glad
the record got attention, ultimately.

“I’m incurably
peacable, butwhere doesit get you?
Nowhere”

MM: Were you alarmed at the way thesentiments of the song, the basic concept,
the basic sympathies of the song were
so disfigured?
Well, this is the world we live in. It’s not areflection of me, it really reflects the absoluteand barbaric attitudes of the daily press, andso I don’t really feel that I was in the dock, I feelthat they were really. And in essence they were
just really saying how narrow-minded andblundering they were. Some of the reports innewspapers in Portsmouth and Hartlepool –all the places that really count – some of thereports were so full of hate, it was like I
was one of the Moors Murderers, that I’dgone out and murdered these children.
Some of them were so full of hate thatone just had to do something, but notread them. It was incredible.
MM: Do you think this is the priceany writer or musician will have to
pay for dealing with such bitterly
sensitive subjects?
It is, but the sad fact is that I don’t think
many other artists will actually be inthat situation. Because when one
considers the standard of writing in
popular music, it’s largely unlikely thatanybody will be subjected to that. As
before, the people who are saying strong
things have no audience. They’re in the È
HISTORY OF ROCK 1985 | 291985

J a n u a r y – M a r ch

independent market, they’re not in the Top 40, so it
doesn’t matter. I wish it did, but it doesn’t.
MM: So you see yourself in an increasingly uniqueposition: you have a large audience to whom you
can address these concerns and you’re going to be
noticed – has this made you nervous at all abouttackling subjects so straightforwardly?
No! It hasn’t made me nervous, because I’m sodedicated and I’m really prepared to go down with the ship, whatever
happens. And I’m prepared to risk everything, because I don’t haveanything else. This is all that I have and this is all that I am, and all thosevery dramatic statements… but it’s absolutely true. So if somebody fromthe Daily Mail comes along and shoots me, that’s the way it has to be. I’ll
die defending what I say.
IO: Is there a danger that you’re abusing your position as a public figure
and turning into a preacher?
No, because everybody on a public platform is a preacher. But mostpeople preach absolute monotony and it’s accepted, but because I like tofeel in an absolutely misguided way that I don’t, everybody sticks theirpins in me. Which is incredibly painful.
RO: Changing tack slightly, do you find now that, like with the songson the new LP, people are aware of the subject matter before they’ve
heard the songs – like “The Headmaster Ritual” and “How Soon Is
Now?”, for instance?
I can’t really see how they can be aware of it.
RO: Is it not on your mind at all?
No, not really. I think there’s a familiarity now which wasn’t there
before, because we hadn’t made any records. But I don’t really see how
people can be aware completely, not really. I mean, I never felt any
embarrassment about writing about school… I know it’s been done
before and it’s been done very badly, but that didn’t put me off. I still havethings to say.
RO: The newer songs sound more straightforward – do you agree, and isthat due to being misquoted and misinterpreted?
I agree with it, I do agree with it, because I don’t necessarily want to be
ambiguous, because when you’re ambiguous I feel people don’t reallygrasp what you’re on about. So that’s quite defeatist, really. The whole
intention really is to be as crystal clear as possible.
MM: Several of the songs on the new LP seem to have a much more
direct and stronger narrative line than on the first LP…
Yes, they do. That’s certainly there. I didn’t really have any intention of
being misunderstood with the words on this LP. A lot of people wrote
about the first LP and they said things that were very poetic and very
interesting and absolutely inaccurate. So I just felt that on this LP people
should really know which hammer I’m trying
to nail, as it were.
RO: Sorry to seem obscure, but you did once
refer to a track called “Father And Son”. Did
that emerge as “How Soon Is Now?”?
No. It hasn’t emerged. It’s about to emerge, andI’m sure it will change your life.
EYF: Did you get beaten by masters at school?
Yes. I wasn’t really on the hit list, I wasn’t one ofthose people who were dragged out every single
day, but I found that I was certainly in therunning for that. I always found that I was hit
and beaten for totally pointless reasons, which
is what I’m sure every pupil would say. But I
think in my case I demand special consideration…

DEBRIS: Do you consider yourself to be an
ordinary or an extraordinary person?
I’m probably extraordinary.
DEBRIS: And yet a lot of ordinary people canfeel great affinity with things that you write.
That’s because probably everybody’s
extraordinary and the minority of people inthis world are very ordinary.
EYF: What’s behind the fierce outspokenness
against the work ethic in your lyrics?
The realities of work, I think. The realities ofbeing in a situation where you can’t choose youremployment, which is an awful way to be when
you don’t have any skills and you have to take what’s
dished out, take what’s available. There’s nothingworse in life than having no choice, I think. And
this is tolerable, I think, in all areas except
unemployment. When you have to take a job,even if it’s a job you can mildly stomach, if you
have to take it and you have no choice, merely thefact that you have no choice crushes yourenthusiasm for doing the job.
EYF: Did your parents cram the work ethic down
your throat when you were a child, and so you arerebelling against that?
No. I lived with my mother, who didn’t. She let me
do what I wanted to do. She gave me absolutely full
rein to be what I wanted to be, and that was very helpful. But, no… asa direct result of not wanting to take anything, I didn’t work for years
and years and years…
EYF: So your mother doesn’t really resent your observations on
your background?
To this day, she’s completely behind everything I say.
MM: Does she recognise the things that you write about?
Completely. She dissects them, she completely
dissects everything that happens. She reads
every single interview. She produces longmonologues… she’s very, very much
involved in what I do. And hers is the only
opinion that I really take remotely seriously.
So it’s quite treasurable.

“My mother’sis the only
opinion I takeremotely
seriously”

MM: So to what extent are we to take these songs as autobiography
as opposed to social observations?
I think they’ll always be autobiography, and when the day arrives
where I can’t write in that sense or I’m drained, I’ll just step down.
I won’t go on. There’s nothing worse, really, than the writer, the singer,
30 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

who’s outlived their usefulness
and who’ve really drained
their diaries, as it were. WhichI still haven’t done. There’s
nothing more embarrassing
and pointless and sad thanthat. So when I’ve drained theresources, I will step down,much to the relief, I’m sure,of the British public.

RO: Were you being slightly flippant when
you said your love songs were written fromtotal guesswork?
No, I was being absolutely serious. Which isn’t
really funny.

RO: Where did a song like “Hand That
Rocks The Cradle” come from?
Well, that comes from a relationship I had that didn’t really involve
romance. So if we’re talking about romance, well, I don’t really knowthat much about it. But in other things, I’m quite capable of making
an observation.
RO: An observation, in the way that “Girl Afraid” seems to be…
Yes. I think “Girl Afraid” simply implied that even within relationships

Morrissey in 1985:“When I’ve drained
the resources, I will
step down – much to
the relief, I’m sure,of the British public”

there’s no real certainty and nobody knows how anybody feels. People feelthat just simply because they’re having this cemented communion withanother person, the two of you will become whole, which is something I
detested. I hate that, that implication. It’s not true, anyway. Ultimately,
you’re on your own, whatever happens in life, however you go through life.
You die on your own. You have to go to the dentist on your own. It’s like all
the serious things in life are things that you feel on your own.

Touring’s interesting because it’s fascinating to me to meet people.
That sounds silly, but unless we actually tour we don’t actually meetthe people who buy our records. Which is strange. You can havea hit record, or whatever, and loads of people can buy your records,
but you don’t actually meet them. And I never meet Smiths’ apostles
ever – so it’s only by touring that I can actually come face to face withthese people.

RO: Is the problem in relationships largely one of being inarticulate?
Totally, yes. Totally. Which stems from… I seem to have an answer
for everything, I know… but it really does stem from the society that
we live in where the real things, the things that count, you’re supposed
to suppress…

BOB: Is that not one of the instances where you could use violence?
Well, it is… but when you’re just under six foot, you decide to retreat.
It’s the only thing. The next LP is called “Retreat!”, actually…

IO: Do you think it’s trivialised by other people?
Completely, yes. It’s just one-dimensional. They see it in a very flimsy
way. In a way that’s always perfect, whatever
happens. Even when it’s doomed and it fails, there’s
always some curious perfection to it. Like in a Lionel
Richie video…
DEBRIS: How closely do you analyse your motives
for doing things?
Too closely. To a dramatic fault, really. I’ll just haveto stop and get a suntan and false teeth.
BOB: You’re about to embark on a massive tour
– what have you learned from previous
experiences to avoid?

BOB: Well, talking about the present, do you expect to take a single
off the LP?
The next single is called “Shakespeare’s Sister”, a brand-new track, andit’s obviously not a track from the new LP. But I feel quite edgy because
something from the LP should be released, because
I think they’re too good to be buried.
IO: Do you think that everyone should listen
to The Smiths?
Well, I’ve not yet discovered a reason why
they shouldn’t.
IO: But earlier you were saying that people
should have a choice…
(With a final mischievous flourish) Well… insome cases they should. But it is nice to dictate
occasionally. Allan Jones ¥HISTORY OF ROCK 1985 | 31

rob verhorst / alamy

IO: Did you ever make a conscious effort not to write about love?
Yes, I think so.

BOB: Talking of the future…
No, no, no, no, no… let’s not talk about the future.

1985

J a n u a r y – M a r ch

february 12, 1985:
bangles singer/rhythm
guitarist susanna hoffs
and bassist Michael
steele at dingwalls in
Camden, north london

An acid haze of folk melody
mm Feb 23 The bangles bring their glossy, attitude-filled guitar pop to a sweaty Camden club.
our California girls in thisoverheated sewer? Shame! They
made the best of it, though, with
an urgent and good-humoured display of
pop old and new.
Had The Bangles not chosen to exist,
it might well have beennecessary to reconstructthem from neglected but
still vital components.
Evidently, they pay homage
to the Golden Age ofCalifornia pop and theBritish invasion. A song like
“Tell Me”, which I think they
played tonight (if not, it’s
undoubtedly on theirforthcoming LP All OverThe Place), can’t fail to remind the pop
historian of Beatles and early Byrds in its naive
but shimmering charm.
Too much of this can soon cause sighs ofimpatience, however, with its relentless 4/4

Fconvince even the Spanish judge.
job and limited melodic scope.
Lead guitarist Vicki Peterson
Luckily, The Bangles have up
obviously relished the available
their sleeves a handful of heartlondon
space of live performance,
stoppers. For example, theirdingWallS
and her wracked soloing
reading of Soft Boy Kimberley
contrasted sharply with
Rew’s “Going Down To
The Bangles’ over-polite
Liverpool”
recorded sound.
combines
FebRuaRy 12
Centre stage, the petite
the girls’
Susanna Hoffs seemed tooften
be controlling operations withwonderful fourvoice and guitar. “Hero Takes A Fall”,
part harmonies andthe current single, erupted into a showchunky rhythmic thrust
stopping display of controlled energy andinto an acid haze of folk
cascading voices, with Susanne (mostly
melody and simple allusive
invisible through the oppressively dense
power. Somehow it puts
crowd) playing both narrator and musicalthe pock-marked face of
director. In “He’s Got A Secret”, Vicki’s
UK ’85 into haunting longgrowling riff unfolded deftly into the song’s
focus. Shame about the video.
neat pop heartbeat.
Natcho, The Bangles are custom-built for
At times, The Bangles wandered off onto
sexists. These girls are, to be blunt, attractive,
unfocused areas of drab pop-by-numbers,
but if they weren’t, their confident attack andbut their best songs were thrilling stuff
frequently explosive guitar onslaught should
indeed. Just what the world needs now…
California sun, with reasoning faculties.

LIVE!

ANDREW CATLIN

lead guitarist Vicki
Peterson obviously
relished theavailable space oflive performance

Adam Sweeting
32 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

“Bombastic”
nme maR 23 Tina Turner gives
it both barrels in a huge venue.

Somehow when that first
inevitable round of thunderous
applause erupted and Tina Turnerstood there, bathing in a lone
spotlight, you couldn’t help but feelsome small pang of admiration inside
for this woman. Against all odds, fournights at Wembley, a brand-new
audience and top of the world, ma. But
why the tea and sympathy?
Because she married Ike and let
him humiliate her for years without
londonulu
a whisper? Because, after years of
struggle, she’s finally hit theproverbial? And what exactly has
former franticelevator “red”,
Tina got to do with it all? In otheraka Mick hucknall
words, who turned Tina? The most
FebRuaRy 25
recognisable culprits are Mark
Knopfler and Heaven 17. The latterwith a fussy, superficially produced
version of “Let’s Stay Together”; andthe former with “Private Dancer”, asentimental, patronising song wherein
all the woman can yearn for is “to raise
mm maR 2 Simply Red show how post-punk soul is really done.
some kids and have a family”.
second London appearance they’ve not just
If Turner’s career represents some kind
verybody knows that without
mastered their chosen field but look capable
its black roots most pop would amountof feminist victory, as was intimated byof developing a style that incorporates ato even less than it does now. You don’t
Time Out’s revealing interview last week,
sweeping range of influences. Red has
have to be a musicologist to work this out.
Knopfler managed in one stroke of his pen
been compared somewhat optimistically
Check the current charts – yes Mr Wholemeal
to freeze that particular angle.
with Al Green, and the inclusion of his “Lovehimself, the prince of the worldly platitude,
How aware is Turner of this? And what’s
And Happiness” in the set points to their
Howard “Nice Guy” Jones, has clearly found it
the difference between the way that Turnertouchstone, but significantly, they carry
pays to funk. But fortunately, here we don’t
has been moulded and, say, the latest CBS
off this song with all the tenderness it
have to bother ourselves with the burning
signing? Her performance gave no answers
undoubtedly requires.
questions that keep the Jones boy awake atbut did establish that in her current phase
The same could be said of their cover ofnight – what is soul anyway? Does anybody
the voice does remain intact, a spirited,
Talking Heads’ “Heaven”, for their purposes
know what soul is? Etc. No, the real problem is
attacking instrument that provided thetransformed into a dreamy soul ride of sheer
this: simply, can they do it? Can these white
only outlet for any kind of response.
lost-in-space pleasure. And as for theirboys really move you from the rear?
Certainly the (mainly American) bandversion of The Valentine Brothers’ ace
The sad answer is frequently a hollow “no.”that backed her had no kind of feeling for“Money’s Too Tight To Mention”, they
Remember the post-punk trend for white
subtlety, grace or elegance. A twin guitar
manage to surpass the original.
funk? ABC aside, they only had a few goodgroup; a bombastic, insensitive ensemble
On one hearing it’s difficult to judge thesingles and a dubious line in camp.
that churned out all the old tricks andstrength of their own material, of which they
But things have changed. Now, at least,
cliches. Miss Turner, of course, revelled inhave plenty, but as theirsome groups can play their
the sound, probably labouring under theconfidence grew it was
stuff, albeit sometimes in
mistaken impression that it still represents
obvious there was muchthe most rudimentary way.
some kind of musical wildness.
to be optimistic about.
Some are actually exciting
Turner has never, as such, been a soulLaunching off the– witness the new Nickartiste in the traditional sense. And there’s
Al Green classic as if it
Heyward – but others
nothing wrong with her attempting
were a springboard, they
are merely
rock. What’s wrong is that she
particularly impressed withcompetent.
does so with such a brutal
Wembley STadium,pieces like “No Direction”,
And they areapproach. Thus “River Deep”
london“Holding Back The Years”
everywhere.
is massacred by a barrage ofand “Open The Red Box”. Full marks to the
So maybe things haven’t
guitars; “Nutbush City
horn section as well. Their flexibility allows
changed that much, maybe
Limits” reduced to a
the band to slip easily into reggae and thenyou still have to look to themindless melee of scraps;
soar off Rip Rig And Panic style right up to
Statesfortherealthing…orand “Proud Mary” becomes
maRCH 15those mile-high blue jazz skies.
do you? Simply Red only came
too “Loud And Hairy”.
Apparently blessed with more flexibility
together in January, and in the
At the end, Tina duetted withand range than Bronski Beat, and quite
time it takes Billy Mackenzie toBryan Adams – a fitting finalepossibly more true grit than The Kane Gang,
record a drum track, have grown into
– and left her over-30 audience
Simply Red could be the group to make allone of the most formidable outfits going… on
throwing their Barclay cards up in the air
those soul cliches come alive.
either side of the water.
with wild enthusiasm. In the end, it’s not
As Karl Marx said from the grave: better
They are based around ex-Frantic Elevator
so much Tina Turner but the company she
red than dead! Ian Pye
vocalist Red, and judging from only theirkeeps. Paolo HewittLIVE!

Al Green comparisonsE

Talking Heads’“Heaven” wastransformed into a
dreamy soul ride

HISTORY OF ROCK 1985 | 33

ANDREW CATLIN

LIVE!

1985

a P r il – june

ScRIttI PoLIttI, REM,
toM PEtty, hüSkER dü,
thE PoguES ANd MoRE

“I’m going to look
for the ladder”

NME APRIL 13 Prince to retire from playing live.
rince has declared that he is to retire from live
performances at the end of his current American tour. Hislast live show will be at the Miami Orange Bowl on 7 April,and he reckons that thereafter he’ll never again play a publicconcert. He now intends to concentrate on working in the film
and recording studios, although his own enigmatic response
to media questions about his
future was: “I’m going to look forthe ladder.”This substantiates his recent
pledge that he would never perform
in Britain owing to the adverse UK
media reaction to his appearance
at the BPI Awards ceremony. But
this display of sour grapes was
obviously prompted by his
impending stage retirement.
However, his legion of followers
may be consoled by the releaseof a new Prince LP by Warners on
26 April. Titled Around The WorldIn A Day, it comprises 10 selfpenned, self-arranged and selfproduced tracks (one of which iscalled “The Ladder”).

Michael Ochs archives / gettyP

34 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

“Party over, oops, outof time”: Prince inconcert in LA in 1985
before announcing
a discontinuation oflive performances}!

HISTORY OF ROCK 1985 | 35

1985

a p r i l – j u ne

Queen, seen here at
the first Rock in Rio
festival in Jan ’85, toappear at live Aidalong with U2 (below)
and many more

“We must give thema life”
T

Dave Hogan / getty; Mike Prior / getty; Paul natkin / getty

MM JuN 15 A big summer event, “Live Aid”,
will continue the success of Band Aid.

He biggest, Most spectacular live
event in the history of rock music is to
be staged next month by thesuperstars of Band Aid.
A massive concert is taking place at
Wembley Stadium on Saturday, July 13.
Another, at an unannounced American venue,
will be held simultaneously. And a satellite
link-up will beam the shows live to a billion
television viewers worldwide.
At Wembley, the bill features David Bowie,
U2, Wham!, Paul Young, Spandau Ballet, Dire
Straits, Phil Collins, Bryan Ferry, Queen,
Sting, Ultravox, Elton John, Alison Moyet,
Howard Jones, Nik Kershaw, a speciallyreformed Status Quo, Sade, The Style
Council, Elvis Costello, theBoomtown Rats and Adam Ant.
The American show brings
together Duran Duran, Bob
Dylan, Neil Young, The
Power Station, Robert
Plant, the Pretenders,Santana, Simple Minds,
Paul Simon, Thompson
Twins, Tears For Fears, Billy
Ocean, Billy Joel, The Cars,
Eric Clapton, Hall & Oates withThe Temptations, Bryan Adams,
Judas Priest, Kris Kristofferson, Huey
Lewis And The News and Waylon Jennings.
All of the artists are giving their services forfree – and the organisers are quick to pointout that “no pressure was put on any of themto do this… We just let them know it was
happening.” More names may be added toboth bills.
Each act will perform a short set – probably
around 20 minutes. And throughout the TV
coverage, a telethon service will be inoperation, by which
viewers can phone in

36 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

and pledge a donation to the Band Aid
appeal. Bob Geldof, speaking for what will
now be known as Live Aid, said this week: “Wehave kept millions alive, that’s all. Now wemust give them a life.”
The concerts were announced at Wembley
Stadium on Monday by Geldof, English
promoters Harvey Goldsmith and Maurice
Jones, and US promoter Bill Graham.
Goldsmith said: “This is, quite categorically,
the most important concert of all time.”
The Wembley show, which will beattended by 72,000 people, kicks off at 12
noon. The organisers have installed two giant
Diamondvision screens on either side of thestage, which will enable the audience to
see the various acts close up andalso, during breaks, to watch live
film from the US concert.
The satellite link-up
has been achieved byco-operation between the
BBC in Britain and ABC and
MTV in America. Television
coverage – described as a“global jukebox” – extends
into Eastern Bloc countries
and to China.
Viewers in Britain expect up to
15 hours of live music. Broadcasting
starts in the early afternoon on BBC2, andthe live film from Wembley will be intercut
with clips from the States when their concert
starts several hours later. After the close of
the Wembley show, around 10pm, the BBC
will relay the rest of the US gig – due to finish
at 3am, our time.
Tickets for Wembley are on sale from
Friday, June 14, at £25 each, which includes
a donation to Band Aid.

Jimmy somervillewith steve bronski(right) and larrysteinbachek (top)“No hard
feelings”

MM APR 27 Jimmy Somervillequits Bronski Beat.

J

immy Somerville haS finally
walked out on bronski beat –disillusioned with the pressures ofsuccess. Somerville, who sparked off
a wave of speculation after turning hisback on the band for “a breather” inFebruary, has already launched a newmusical venture. larry Steinbachek
and Steve bronski will retain the namebronski beat, and they’re currently
formulating new plans for the future.
a spokesman for Forbidden Fruit /london records said this week: “Jimmy’s
decision to leave was brought on by his
reluctance to accept the pressures of thebusiness of success, and he felt that thebusiness was taking over from the sheer
fun of singing.
“he has teamed up with classicallytrained sax player and multiinstrumentalist richard Coles,
calling themselves The Committee. They
intend using other musicians whenevernecessary, but not on a permanent basis.
Jimmy has described his music as anexperiment with sounds – more acoustic
than electronic – and together they havewritten about six songs.”
in a statement this week, Steinbachek
and bronski said: “There are no hardfeelings between us and Jimmy, andwe both wish him the best of luck in his
future project.”a new bronski beat single is set forJuly release, an album should follow
in the autumn, and a remixed 12-inch
version is out this week. Steinbachek
and bronski have set up their own
recording studio for the
new bronski beat work.

april–june

NME APR 20 The Beatles reject anouttakes album, but don’t rule one out.

You may be tired of the incessant “Beatles
to reform” rumours, but a new Fab Four LP
the beatles on theof 13 previously unissued tracks called
Night Of A Hundred
Sessions was almost a reality when EMI plannedStars show at thelondon Palladium,an official release this year.
July 23, 1964
The scheme was so far advanced that EMI
had published an internal “Master Record
Acceptance” document, with a full tracklisting,
way to the much bootlegged “What’s The New Mary Jane?”.
running times, composer credits and even a catalogue
number. Produced by George Martin and remixed by Geoff
A second under six minutes, this track (which originally
Emerick, the recordings cover the period from 1963 to ’69,
carried a Plastic Ono Band credit) was shortlisted as a White
mainly comprising outtakes. But objections from Paul,Album possible and a Let It Be B-side definite. A typicalGeorge and Ringo stopped the release.
Lennon ramble of the period.
Says EMI’s public relations manager Brian Southall: “TheApple Corp argy-bargy caused it to be dropped at the lastcompany prepared a blueprint – chose a selection of tracks,
minute in favour of “You Know My Name”.
produced sleeve artwork and then presented it to theAnother frequently bootlegged curio opened Side Two:
relevant Beatles. And they turned it down.”“How Do You Do It?”. Destined to become Gerry & The
Apparently, respected EMI engineer John Barrett devoted
Pacemakers’ first chart-topper, this Mitch Murray tune waswhat little time he had left in the last year of his life tooriginally presented to the Fabs by George Martin as acataloguing the countless hours of Beatles tapes at Abbey
possible follow-up to the moderately successful “Love Me
Road, and in the process discovered material only rumoured
Do”. The lads rejected the idea but went through the motions
to have been recorded. And it was from Barrett’s finds thatof recording it, before an obstinate Lennon fished out “Please
the Sessions album was compiled.
Please Me” and won the day.
However, Southall hinted that although the surviving Fab
Track two, “Besame Mucho”, showcases McCartney as
Three didn’t approve the EMI selection, an LP of hitherto
scampi-in-the-basket crooner and harks back to theirunreleased tracks hasn’t been entirely abandoned.
earliest days in Hamburg. The title once showed up in an
Had Macca and his mates given the thumbs-up, what
early Let It Be tracklisting. A rockin’ 1963 version of a Let It Be
would have been on offer, and would you have wanted it?
mainstay, “One After 909”, accounts for the third cut.
A suggested single matched a cover of Little Willie John’s
Ringo’s token feature is the Rubber Soul outtake “If You’ve
1959 R’n’B hit “Leave My Kitten Alone” with an alternative
Got Trouble”, while Paul takes lead on “That Means A Lot”
version of “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da”. A Beatles For Sale reject– the Lennon & McCartney original given to P J Proby backin 1965.
(it would have proved one too many cover jobs), “Leave My
The intended last track proper was George’s acoustic
Kitten Alone” was – if rumours are ever to be believed –version of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”, complete withalmost issued a couple of years ago with a cover of Carlextra verse, while the last three minutes of Sessions were
Perkins’ “Lend Me Your Comb” as companion.
The latter doesn’t show up among the 13 suggested Sessions
given over to snippets from Beatles Fan Club discs –“Mailman Blues” and “Christmas Time (Is Here Again)”.
cuts. Side One would have opened with McCartney’s original
As the project is still on indefinite hold, one can only expect
version of “Come And Get It” – the song he gifted Applethe bootlegger to prove most enterprising. And I won’t even
Beatle-clones Badfinger for the Magic Christian soundtrack.
begin to make a book on how long it will take all vested“Leave My Kitten Alone” followed, after which The Beatles
interest to legitimately liberate all the songs The Beatles
interpreted a Hari Georgeson composition, “Not Guilty”. An
recorded for the Beeb but not EMI. Roy Carralternate version of “I’m Looking Through You” then gave

MM MAY 18 Trouble with the
Police are investigating “outmoded”
Wham! fan club.

W

HAM! HAve officiAlly wound up their fan club following problems and complaints from the public. And
it’s believed that the police are now investigating the management behind the club after a Sunday national
paper revealed that many fans had sent subscription money and received nothing in return. In a letter to fans,George Michael says: “We have changed the staff a number of times in the last two years to run an efficient, value-formoney-club. Unfortunately, as anyone who joined the club knows, things didn’t turn out thatway. Now all we can do is make sure that everyone gets their money back and hope that theevents of the past six months have not bred too much bad feeling. In the early 1970s, if aperson wanted information the fan club could provide it. But these days, with so much
exposure of pop stars in the media, the idea of a three-monthly club magazine had becomecompletely outmoded. We have found it impossible to run a club which we felt gave its
members value for money in the way of exclusive material, and that fact […] has led us to thedecision that it will be fairer to everyone if we do not reopen it.”
To compensate, Wham! will be offering fans advance warning of future British concertsand details of official merchandise.

➤ Motörheadcelebrate their
10th anniversary
with a special party
concert at theHammersmith
Odeon on June 29.
Tickets for the gig– billed as A NightTo Remember – areon sale now at thebox office andusual agents at£5 and £4.50 athrow. Lemmy
commented: “It’sgoing to be a very
silly night and wewant everyone tobring a birthday
cake and, on mycommand, smash
it into the face ofthe person sitting
next to you. Ten
years have gone,
and there’s only
990 to go.” Healso promised“complete mayhem
and plenty ofsurprise guests”.
Motörhead follow
the show with toursof Scandinavia andthe States. MM Jun 8➤ The Cult
withdrew this weekfrom a major antiheroin benefit gig
due to be held at
London’s RoyalFestival Hall on
July 5. The band’s
management areIrefusing to give
any reasons forthe withdrawal.
MM Jun 29➤ Former Visage
frontman Steve
Strange is goingsolo. He announced
this week that hehas severed allconnections with
Rusty Egan, Visage
and Metropolis
Music and is now
recording witha new band. He
hopes to tour
Britain within thenext few months.
MM Jun 1
HISTORY OF ROCK 1985 | 37

keystone / getty; tony MottraM / getty; MicHael PutlanD / getty

Not entirely
abandoned

1985

1985

a p r i l – J U NE
Costello: notproducing aztec
Camera orPrefab sprout“I like being hystericalsometimes”
NME MAY 18 Pogues producer and Coward Brother Elvis Costello talks about
Bruce, “blanket acceptance” and the reasoning behind obscure lyrics.

Brian rasic / gettyL

ast week we thrilled to Elvis
Costello in his IMP Records boss
hat – you know, the straw ice-creamsalesman number. Today we find him in a morerelaxed mood, padding around in the comfy
old carpet slippers of pop’s grouchy but
lovable Uncle Brian, as he is fondly knownin our last remaining haunts of the soulfulsemi-quaver and passion-filled G-string.
Do you relish your avuncular role?
“Wha’?!?”
Like, your bestowal of approval, on such as
Aztec Camera and Prefab Sprout?
“My impression of Prefab Sprout was withthree gigs, and it was as if I’d produced theirrecord or something. They’re responsible for
their own failings; they’re their own band andnothing to do with me. I thought their things
on the first four singles were a load ofnonsense, and I feel the same way about
Aztec Camera. I hated seeing my name linked
with all these people. It’s just lazy journalism.”
As for the second Pogues LP…
“Conspicuously, I’m not producing Aztec
Camera or Prefab Sprout, but I am producing
this album. Deduce what you want from that.
And I believe there’s a version of ‘A Pair Of
Brown Eyes’ being recorded on the otherside of the Atlantic by my brother Coward…”[aka lanky Texan songsmith
T-Bone Burnett, live
collaborator with the solo
Costello late last year as
The Coward Brothers].
“He’s producing a Peter
Case album, who is in The
38 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

Plimsouls, who at last has found his voice.”
Meanwhile, The Coward Brothers’ firstsingle is released in June or July.
“It’s a cultural clash between bluegrass and
Italian Communism. It’s like The Louvin
Brothers backed by The Pretty Things.”
Is the US trad-rock renaissance a
genuine event or a figment of the music
papers’ imagination?
“Ask the bands sitting where they are,and I think they’ll tell you it’s a figment of theimagination, because they’re still struggling
to get a gig. You try and find The Beat Farmers
in Los Angeles and you’ll find them on acollege station struggling
to get on the radio, andthey’re being lauded here
as the Next Big Thing.
“A lot of the bands arereally good, but the danger
is that’s a blanket
acceptance thing. Once
you get a movement, it’s
here-we-go-again, the TwoTone thing, the mod revival.
One band might be good
and the other half dozen a load of rubbish.
“I can name half a dozen bands in America
that I think are really great, which I can’t inEngland. So that means
to me that Americanmusic is moreinteresting at the
moment, simply
because they’re therecords I chose to play.

But that doesn’t mean a blanket
acceptance of everything American.
“What I really hate is the mindlessracist attitude of the English audience
to American acts simply because they’re
American. It’s beneath people to takeexception to people simply because you
don’t like the politics of the country. It’s
ignorant. It’s parallel to the very thingpeople are supposed to be railing at.
“You’ve got to be careful of this blanket
acceptance of American music. It bringsout this whole new brand of conservatism
with a small ‘c’ because it’s so traditionaland everything. But the alternative tothat is this pseudo-sensationalism thatyou have with Prince and Frankie Goes
To Hollywood.
“I think Bruce Springsteen’s a very
sincere person who’s had his life stolen
from him by success. He’s not apparently
affected by it in the ordinary sense, but
his amount of moves has been limited,which is a shame. But he still writes the
odd good song.”
How about Britain’s own Bruce: is Billy
Bragg opening up our ears to a moredissenting rock’n’roll?
“Well, I dunno. There are some people
listening to him and there are otherpeople talking at the back. I wish him all
the very best. I think he’s sincere and I
really like his stuff. I did a show with him at
the Logan Hall and it was extraordinary,
the feeling he had.”
Is Elvis’ prolific diversification in the last
six months a consequence of a fallow
period as a writer and performer?
“I just decided it’d been seven years
without any longer than a month’s break andtwo years with five days’ holiday. I thought it
was a good time to stop, because I was gettingbored. Not even bored, really. I was working
on complete nervous energy for the last
couple of months last year. I was playing
longer and longer shows – it was a sort ofhysterical energy you get when you’re tired.
I like being hysterical sometimes.”
Goodbye Cruel World reconsidered?
“I think it’s the worst record of the best
songs that I’ve written. I’m not saying that thesongs are better than any other I’ve written. It’s
the worst realised. If an
explanation doesn’t
illuminate beyond theaction, then there’s no point
to it. And equally, the action
is pointless if you have to
explain. There’s always adilemma in choosing thethin line between explaining
everything and robbing
people of their imaginative
process and leaving it open
to interpretation and things being lost.
“My reasoning behind writing lyrics whichsometimes people say are obscure is they’redeliberately supposed to stimulate. Maybe
one of the failures of the last record was that
there were very good stories in some of thesongs which the music didn’t illuminate, so forme to illuminate them now is pointless.”
Very succinct. Any last words?
“Er, goodbye?” Mat Snow

“I think Goodbye
Cruel World isthe worst recordof the best songs
I’ve written”

SHRINKRAP!
GIL SCOTTHERONMM JUNE 29
Another pop
ego on thepsychiatrist’s
chaise longue.

Statues
General Ulysses S Grant – there’s a statueof him in the middle of Washington DC
because he was once elected president,
even though I understand he should havebeen a candidate for AA. That’s one of myfavourites… The birds love it!

“You’ve got
one shot whenit’s live”: Gilscott-HeronMTV
Never. I don’t ever have it on in my house.

“B-Movie”

PrinceWhat a midget! I don’t think I’ve ever heard
one of his records all the way through.

Credit cards
That’s just another word for debt. I had one
once, and it took me years to pay off, andeventually they took it back. I don’t think it’sa good idea for poor people, but they don’tallow poor people to have them anyway.

TouringIt’s so alive. I don’t really like to travel, but I
like the feeling of playing once I get there.
You have one shot when it’s live. Then you’ve
either got it or you don’t.

Hip hop
It’s such fun. The kids love it, and I liketo see them have fun. When I was 12, you
couldn’t tell me that Chubby Checker,
The Temptations and James Brown weren’t
relevant. I personally wouldn’t hip or hop
to most of it, but they enjoy it, so it has tobe good.

Nixon
Out of here! The Ex-Officio Blues. I still
see him on TV, just like I also see Lassie,
Leave It To Beaver and all those otherprogrammes that aren’t relevant any more.

Misfortune
Constant. As a matter of fact, I’ve just been
writing a song about it. It’ll be the firstreading of this particular trip, and goessomething like this:Misfortune, is a costume ball
I came as Mr E, she came as Miss Demeanour

I call her Miss Leading, but mistaken wasmuch cleaner
She climbed the poetries – Jim Dandy on
the branches
She called it being free, I called theambulances
Lines of communication misdirects allthat I am;
Ounces pound my reservations,Miscalculate loves Billy Gram
She was misunderstood while she knew
everything
It was misapplication to miss whatnothing means…

Chimps
Tarzan Of The Apes or Bedtime For Bonzo.
That film was such good satire. The night
Reagan got elected, some TV channel
played Reagan movies with the chimp allnight long. We spent all night rolling aroundon the floor and just couldn’t believe thisguy was president. Only in America!

The Last Poets
Niggers that are scared of revolution. They
epitomise white racism. I think they havesome kind of superiority complex. If you
can’t remember the day before you becameaware, then that’s selective amnesia. They
think they have all the answers to the world’s
problems. I’m glad somebody does… So does
Attila The Haig.

SowetoThere’s so much anger and depression mixed
in with hope and inspiration. The placereminds me of San Quentin.

Walter Mondale
Wrong man in the wrong
place at the wrong time.
They had to let him run, but
he was dead in the water. You
see, the Republicans picked the
Democratic candidate – and they
picked the man they could easily
beat. Both Reagan and Mondale
represent yesterday. What weneed are new things happening,
new ideas, and people whoseem to know what’s
going on now. They

feed people crap, and if they don’t swallow
all that flag bullshit, they try and make themfeel unpatriotic. Now is the time to be real;especially for all those people who are being
jammed by this counterfeit prosperity. I wasraised to feel that the things I was talking
about were unpatriotic, because I didn’t say
Sieg Heil, and because I didn’t accept all thethings that America says it is. I accepted halfof it, but found out it was the wrong half.

Death
I’m not afraid of dying, I’m just afraid of all
the exaggerated shit that’s gonna be said
about me after I’m gone. People always ask
me how I want to be remembered, but I don’t
really give a…

“Disco Duck”
No one will remember it now. Only songs
that are balanced well will ever last. The
songs you can hear two years and two days
later and still have something to say. The
classics are all those songs that createda mood that is still relevant today.

John Wayne
Here comes yesterday again. He seems
corny now sometimes, but when thosefilms first came out I thought he was atremendous presence. He filled up the 60ft
stage with great flicks like The Quiet Man.

Band Aid
It’s a great idea. I did a poem called “We
Beg Your Pardon” back in ’75, all about
the wasted food in the States whilepeople were starving in Africa.
If they had done it in ’75 it
would have been great,but better late thannever. As long as
people get something
to eat I don’t really givea damn if the people
involved are using it for
their own ends. If
that sort of person
were elected kingtomorrow, and that’s
what he had planned yesterday,
then good luck to him. It’s on
his conscience.
John wayne:“presence”
HISTORY OF ROCK 1985 | 39

steve callaghan / reX / shutterstock; hulton archive / getty; Bettmann / getty

It’s just a re-run. I’m really not into sequels
per se, but if I’m writing about something,
and the people involved keep doing the samethings, I feel obligated to keepcommenting on it. The original
song was written 10 days after
Reagan’s first inauguration,and I was working out how he’dmanaged it. You know that halfway
through his campaign he started
ad-libbing and immediately started
losing points to Carter, so they told him
to stick to his script – I just loved it.

1985

a p r i l – J U NE

“We mayshock
them!”TOM PETTY is back.
His time off the treadmill
has allowed him toreimmerse himself in
American culture – and to
make one of his strongest,
strangest albums yet.
“I’ve got a little bored ofbeing put in this clubof Bruces, Bobs…”
he says. “I’ve stakedout our own ground.”T
ebet roberts / getty— MELODY MAKER MAY 11 —40 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

he future ain’t what it used to be.”Tom Petty sings that on Southern Accents,and seldom can a line have captured so
effectively the attitude behind an
artistic renaissance.
Petty, the Southern boy, the blondbombshell who eulogised the “American Girl” – the Byrds
pastiche so pure it’s said that when Roger McGuinn heard iton the radio, he was convinced it was one of his songs, but
couldn’t remember writing or performing it.
Petty is probably the epitome of all that’s cool about
American rock – that smart-ass swagger, those cheekbones,
that cruising feeling, that sneer and smile, that raunch that
goes way, way back – and what’s more, is damned, fighting
proud of it. A still point in time. The American dream.
Petty, a kind of Huck Finn from Gainesville, Florida, who
made it all come true.
Petty, the boy and his band, The Heartbreakers, a bunch of
buddies from back home who’d played every jukebox hit inevery jiveass joint so many times they not only sounded likethe real thing, they believed it.
Petty, the pale prima donna on the up who boogied his butt
around Hammersmith Odeon on a night some of us will neverforget, the scarecrow prince at Knebworth with the batteredjet-black topper at a rakish angle on those thinning blondstrands, the star at Wembley with five albums down, sleepwalking through one of the saddest shows I’ve ever witnessed. »July 13, 1985: Tom Petty
backstage at the JFK
Stadium in Philadelphia,
where his band The
Heartbreakers will
open the US leg of theLive Aid event with“American Girl”

�n

HISTORY OF ROCK 1985 | 41

1985

a p r i l – J U NE

Petty, the man whose third LP,
Damn The Torpedoes, rates withBig Star’s Radio City and The
Byrds’ (Untitled) as one of mydesert island guitar discs. Petty,
the hanger-out and hanger-on
who duetted with Stevie Nicks
and found his face on TV.
Tom Petty – all that’s best and a
bit that’s worst about rock’n’roll.
Some of us, as I say, were
worried after Wembley. His lastalbum, Long After Dark, washarder, more Broooce, thananything he’d ever done, butmaybe it was so much muscling
over the same old terrain? Moreworrying still, there was silence.
Over two years of the stuff.
Why?
Petty, my fantasy double,
grins behind McGuinn
shades in a shuttered office off
Sunset Boulevard, LA.
“Ah… well…”
The drawl is unmistakable, thesame slow nasal agonising that’smore droll than dumb.
“Ah… well… for a lot of reasons.
When I got to the end of the lasttour, I was pretty well tired,y’know, and I wanted out fora while. We’d never really had abreak since… but I don’t know when… so I thought I’d push my chairback from the table for a while. I had a good year, I guess, of really doing
nothing but writing. I’d never had that much time before.
“I was a little bored with what we were doing, to be honest. I didn’t
wanna have to go out and play ‘Breakdown’ any more. I just thought,‘Well, it’s nine years now, and if we’re gonna continue to do this, I thinkit’s important that we hit something that keeps us interested.’”What inspired Petty, what forged the concept that built and thendisintegrated into his new album, Southern Accents, was his rediscoveryof his roots – not musical (far from it), but cultural.
“I’d started the album mid-tour, in the South, when we were spending
some time there. Instead of a bus, we had a chartered jet and we werebased in Florida, flying out every day and flying home at night. So I justwound up staying there more than I had for years – y’know, other thana few days, I’d never been back in 10 years and I started realising there
was really a lot down there that I’d forgotten and a lot that had changed.
“There were a lot of memories, and I had theability to look at it as an outsider, too – I saw
things I never would have seen if I’d stayed there
and it just kicked me off.”alamy“I didn’twanna have togo out and play
‘Breakdown’any more”

riginally, Petty envisaged
Southern Accents as a double, entirely
devoted to his rediscovery and, insome cases, rejection of the new South. It
wasn’t to be Neil Young’s apocalyptic warningof impending racial upheavals, nor Lynyrd
Skynyrd beer ’n’ titties macho paeans; more apersonal evocation couched in the everyday,
the way Robbie Robertson worked at his best,
the smallest incident triggering off a series ofhistorical echoes that have set into habits.
Then Petty saw what he considers sense, and having written the bulk of
the material, decided against the full-blown concept on the premise that it
would bore the pants off most folks. The songs that remain from his private
obsession – “Rebels”, the title track and “Best Of Everything” – suggest thatmaybe, in the future, Petty should have a little more faith in his listeners.
During his hiatus, Petty also discovered that life has more to offer thana bottle of bourbon in the back of a limo – a realisation which drew him
into some alien situations.

O

42 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

“Stopping touring made thealbum much more easy to write.
Everyone says it, but it’s true: themore you get wrapped up in ‘aplane, a car, a gig and then you’re
off, gonna make a record andthen you’re gonna go right out
again’, you just quit living life
pretty much, y’know? Duringthat year I had off it was, ‘Wow!
There’s no soundcheck at four.’You’re on your own and you’ve
gotta figure out what to do.
“I travelled around, y’know.
I went to the South a couple oftimes and I’d just do things that
I wouldn’t have been able to do,like say, ‘It’s eight o’clock, let’s go
to Las Vegas!’ There was no ‘No
you can’t go to Las Vegas
because next Tuesday there’s a
gig in Seattle’ and stuff like that.
“It wasn’t really like I was beinga prisoner before, but I was justcaught in the work routine toomuch, and so I went to England
for a week or two and I just foundmyself writing without even
Petty: “By the end
noticing it, without really takingof the last tour, I was
pretty well tired”
it serious, whereas, with theLong After Dark album, I wasreally struggling to write thatthing, just to write 10 songs that
I thought were of the calibre to be on a record.
“This one just seemed to come naturally, so I think that had a lot to dowith it – I’ve gotta be careful not to get into that routine again.”
Revitalised lyrically, Petty could have turned out another set of breezyrockers and doleful country laments about birds and booze and broken
hearts filleted by that jangly guitar, but where Southern Accents reallystands out is not so much lyrically as musically. Petty’s resisted thetemptation to take the easy way out, avoided the self-parody that, headmits, he’s only just skirted on several occasions, and he’s gone forsomething startlingly new. I’ve never heard anything like it.
“No,” he laughs. “No, neither have I.”
While most of the so called young guns of America – your Dream
Syndicates and Long Ryders – are plundering the back catalogue of
Yankee pop for something true and real, some sense of history andmeaning and belonging, some heritage and integrity in an art that’s
almost entirely surrendered its soul to corporate cloning, Petty’s struckout on his own, not exactly turning his back on
the past but refusing to accept that the only way
forward is back.
“Exactly. It’s interesting you noticed that.
Since I’ve been doing interviews again, which I
haven’t done in years, people have been talking
about American rock’n’roll, and I think that’s
fine, certainly that’s OK with me, but it’s almost
a little too nostalgic at times. I think they’ve
come to think that American rock has got to bestraight-ahead, no more than a couple of guitars
and a piano and you can’t blow it, but that’s
rubbish, y’know. Like, I think my record is very
American – there’s even a song called ‘America’– but it’s certainly not Chuck Berry. I’m glad tosee all those guys out there and stuff, but I justhope it doesn’t mean we’re gonna have another bout of nostalgia.”
Southern Accents, with its sitar here and funk-out there, is like somecrazy hybrid that really shouldn’t work but does, effortlessly. How? Why?
Where did it come from?
“Well, I wasn’t listening to much, so I don’t think I was hearing things.
I’d kind of given up on the radio and stuff. I think it was a couple of things– one was that I was in the mood to do something a little strange, and two
I was building a studio [Gone Gator] at home, where you tend to go a little

tom pettynuts and you don’t really worry about cutting“Y’know, I didn’t realise what a weird record
the song in three arrangements because it’s not
it was until about a week before it was about tocosting by the hour. So I did a lot of that – somecome out, and then I’m going, ‘Boy! This is alittle strange. We may shock them!’”of these songs might have had two sets of lyrics
The collaboration that seems to have fired
and three or four arrangements.”
Petty’s enthusiasm the most, and certainly the
Strangely enough, though, Southern Accents
one that’s devastated all preconceptions
is one of the least indulgent records you’re everconcerning the album, is the partnership withlikely to hear. Despite its shattered concept,
Eurythmics’ Dave Stewart, whom Petty met at
it works as an album. There are no fillers, noSunset Sound Studio.
two tracks remotely the same, all fragments“I’d been a fan. I thought they were one of thetorn from Petty’s new-found sense of
better groups that came over that year when so
pioneering and The Heartbreakers’ (who, Petty
many English groups came. I remember Jimmy
says, would probably tour eternally given the
Iovine [Petty’s longtime co-producer] asking,chance) fresh experiences.
‘Well, who’s got songs?’ And I said, ‘These guys’,
While Petty was pottering around at home,because I remember playing ‘Love Is A Stranger’ on the piano. I learned it
the others were out fulfilling ambitions and following their instincts.
off TV and I was thinking, ‘This is a good song no matter how you arrange
Mike Campbell co-wrote “The Boys Of Summer” with Don Henley andit’… and I thought Annie sang great, too…”“Ways Of The Wicked” for up-and-coming country rock band Lone
Iovine was working on a Stevie Nicks session when Stewart called by,
Justice; while Stan Lynch toured with T Bone Burnett and Howie Epsteinand during a lull in recording he called Petty down.
backed John Hiatt. On top of this, in bits or as a whole, The Heartbreakers“Dave says, ‘Well, why don’t we write a song? That’d be something tocontributed to albums by Henley, Dylan, Stevie Nicks, Del Shannon, The
Blasters, Rosanne Cash, Rank And File, the Ramones, Ry Cooder and,do’, which was really pretty odd for either of us. I don’t know why we did it.
weirdest of all, Eurythmics. Such compliments were sometimes repaid.
I thought he was talking about sometime in the future, but he obviously“There’s only been the five of us there on the albums all the time, andmeant right now. And he had this idea which he’d put down on cassette,
we’d shunned having people sit in or any of that; mainly, I think, because
so he played it to me and in about half an hour we’d written ‘Don’t Comewe wanted to be known as a group rather than me and my guys. But thisAround Here No More’.
time I wanted to turn that around, to throw all the rules out at the start,“We put down a little demo there and then went back to my house andand if so-and-so came over we’d let him play, and if it was no goodworked on it for another three weeks of madness and… well, a lot of people
think it’s a strange pairing, but actually we get along
we’d erase it.
fairly easily and we’ve become pretty good friends.”“But what happened was, people came around
70M PETTY
Oddest of the odd is “It Ain’t Nothing To Me”,
and sometimes it would really perk us up and takeus down another road which was interesting.
a loose, jumbled, ramshackle romp through È“We’dshunnedhaving people
sit in on thealbums”

BREAKERSEAKERï

The Heartbreakers
in 1985: (l–r) Howie
Epstein, Stan
Lynch, Tom Petty,
Benmont Tenchand Mike Campbell

HISTORY OF ROCK 1985 | 43

1985

a p r i l – J U NE
“I remember once, just jammingaround, we had this real strange band– me and Dave, Brian Setzer from theStray Cats, Clem Burke playing drums
and… I mean, what a band! It sounded
like rubbish a lot of the time… ha ha!…
but sometimes it was interesting, it
was fun, y’know? It kicked us off.
“I rehearsed with the band justrecently for the first time in a longtime and it was really good. I camehome feeling like I’d been to theanalyst or something.”
Among Petty’s other collaborators
on Southern Accents are Jack Nitzsche,
who scored the title track for a
26-piece orchestra, and Robbie
Robertson, who added horns to “TheBest Of Everything” – as Petty puts it,
another happy accident.
“Robbie asked for a song for The KingOf Comedy movie and I played him
this and he liked it and asked if I
minded if he fiddled around a bit. So I
said, ‘No, why not?’ and when I heard it
I went, ‘Wow! God! Yeah! I never would
have heard it that way.’ I think that was
one of the main things that kicked mein the butt, saying, ‘Look, don’t close
people off, because they might show
you something’.
“I played it to Nick Lowe of all people,
in Atlanta when he was on tour withus, and he loved it – played it overagain going, ‘Boy, this is just a really
Southern-sounding thing, y’know’,
and I thought, ‘Ah, perfect. One songdown. Get this one.’ So it’s probably
Nick’s fault, that one.”
I wonder if hanging out with so manyluminaries has drawn Petty back topop, rekindled his interest in the scene?
“Well, I listened to the Prince thing
this morning and I thought that wasa pretty well-done deal, pretty
adventurous. There’s a groupcalled Los Lobos that I was
TO. $1PETTYZHEARTBREAKP.RS
6�.InumnroRtr.w+iim
listening to in Florida a lot thatare great. And then I’ve got myjukebox with all the old stuff.
�
I’m always listening to a lot of
old singles – I tend to like the’50s a lot, though it’s not very
fashionable. I still listen to Elvis.”
For all his insistence thathe’s a traditionalist at heartwith a brain born to wander,
Petty has taken to video withapparent panache. The vid for“Don’t Come Around Here”
features Petty, Stewart and thechaps in an Alice In Wonderland fantasy, an absurdly effective vehicle forthe song’s schizophrenia.
“My main thing was just that I wanted to do something a little different
than just the fella dancing through the dry ice. We had a good timemaking it, a bit like being children and dressing up in old clothes andplaying with doughnuts. It was just made for entertainment, really – I hate
those videos that are trying to send me some message. I get so confused.
“I’m not really sure what the message is or if I wanted it anyway. So I justthought, ‘Let’s try to make something… uh… psychedelic’, maybe an’80s version of that, just something that looks a little twisted but mightshake these kids up a little bit because most people go on MTV and try to
be really pretty.”

ebet roberts / getty“Well, here’s the tip of
the hat”: performing
live nine yearson, Petty
says he appreciates “anacceptance that I’ve
missed for a while”

funk ’n’ roll that epitomises Petty’s spirit of adventure. I ask him what thehell he thinks he is?
“I’m not sure. Dave Stewart and I were in my bedroom, sitting around,watching the news with the sound off, y’know, and we had a couple ofacoustics up there and it was just one summer afternoon about a year ago
and… uh… he had the main riff, I think, and we were playing and the
lyrics – there was something about the Space Shuttle on or something,so I was trying to picture maybe a road worker in Georgia, y’know, singing
this song.
“It’s sort of a cynical dance song, I guess, and I don’t know, by the time
we had two verses, Dave, who is very impulsive, says ‘Let’s go’ andeverybody was downstairs and we went, ‘Right, stop that, do this!’ Ha ha!
Changed tape and then started doing the song. I think the last couple ofverses were just improvised. There’s only one shot on the vocals.
“In the end, I just left everything in. There’s people talking all throughthe track. Confusion. But it was that kind of record. Stewart was good forthat. Y’know, a lot of people say, ‘Did working with other people weaken
the band? Is the band gonna break up?’ But I think, if anything, it let us all
get our own things out so everyone’s pretty happily back together. I reallyenjoyed it. We had great times and a lot of stuff didn’t get on, but I’d neverplayed with anyone in years other than the band.
44 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

tom petty

There’s a certain cynicism to Petty these days,a certain sting that hasn’t been apparent since
the young buck days of his debut album. “Spike”,
for example, turns the all-American outlaw on
his head, takes the piss out of James Dean
impersonators and yet still there’s tension andaffection inside the sarcasm.
“If you ain’t hip enough to get the humour out of it,then I’m just not gonna worry about it, y’know?”
Petty chuckles. “This was really an album that I had
almost entirely to make for myself, which made ita lot harder because I really didn’t anticipate any
audience for it. Before, we’d stomp that attitude out,
we’d think, ‘No, this is negative stuff’, but I wasn’t
trying to make this for American radio. I just tried tomake it until I liked it, and that, obviously, was hellat times, but in the end I think I do like it quite a bit,so that’s probably a good rule to follow from now on– make it for yourself, and when you like it, put it out.
“This album, which was pretty easy to write,
turned out to be pretty hard to record for somereason – it’s usually the other way round.”Ah yes, those stories…

P

A potent hybrid
MM APR 4 Petty stretches for influences
beyond the heartland on album six.
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers
Southern Accents MCA
Whatever Tom Petty means to you –McGuinn pastiches, sun-bleachedblondes and cheekbones, car cassettes
and highway heaven or absolute
American AOR – Southern Accentswill confound as muchas confirm youranticipations. Whether
by fortuitous fluke orincredible inspiration,
Petty has confronted his
reputation, taken
stock, taken it apartand gone for something
extraordinarily new.
Southern Accents has everything anyone
could have expected – it’s like an archiveof Americana, using the past, polishing it
into a gleaming present and parading
itself as something vitally contemporary.
“Rebels” and the title track areburdened with Robbie Robertson’s senseof history, yesterday’s events informing
today’s habits. “The Best Of Everything”
aches with Springsteen’s humanity, a
melodramatic ballad over bare piano
that, through sheer emotional detail(“The bad nights take forever and thegood nights don’t ever seem to last”)
avoids sentimentality.

ALBUMSREVIEW1985

All this is what we’ve come to consider
Petty’s forte, that blistering croak
bordering on caricature investing clichewith a thrilling intensity. But Southern
Accents takes the ingredients and turns
them around, thanks largely to Eurythmic
Dave Stewart, whose co-compositions –“It Ain’t Nothin’ To Me”,
“Don’t Come Around
Here No More” and“Make It Better’ (Forget
About Me)” – are a
fresh, exuberantly
potent hybrid of
new technology andold instincts.
“Don’t Come AroundHere”, a candidate for single of the year
so far, marries strings and choirs to Petty’s
petulant sass in an unprecedented andpushy manner, while “It Ain’t Nothin’”bumps and grinds along brisk blastsof brass, the vocal phasing out into
the ozone while a roughshod chantpunctures the fabric of the song’s
ramshackle groove. It’s horny and funky,
worldly-wise and yet exhilaratingly freeof convention, a belligerent, playful shotof sexual obsession.
At times, the experimentation issuperfluous – the spiralling trumpet on“Rebel” is never fully integrated into thetexture, an appendage rather than acomponent. But at his best, Petty’s sosleek and minimal it’s absurd no one’s
been here before. “Mary’s New Car”,
for instance, cruises along a breezeof a riff, Petty unashamedly pursuing
the old chassis/screwing equation,
effortlessly. There’s so little here, itsounds so natural; it’s intoxicating, adesign streamlined as near to perfectperformance as possible. Against all
the odds, Southern Accents is thesound of the modern world, aware andalive. Use it. Steve Sutherland“It Ain’t Nothin’”is a belligerent,
playful shot of
sexual obsession

etty says he doesn’t know why he did it,
couldn’t actually pinpoint one particularpressure that propelled his fist into thatwall. It was as if nine years’ worth of showdowns
and slow-ups, halts and hiccoughs, weresuddenly mocking him there on the stair. And theboy lashed out.
Earlier that week he’d taken tapes of several songs
to the record company and they’d made all the rightnoises. Not that they were bugging him or anything,but, well, it would be kinda nice if he could get it all
wrapped up to hit the stores before Christmas. Petty
agreed and launched into round-the-clock mixing,
deciding what should be there, and worse, muchworse, what shouldn’t. He hadn’t slept for days, theothers were upstairs still fooling with the barebones of songs, and he’d been alone witha cassette, despairing. It wasn’t right; hewouldn’t blow two years’ work trying tomix it in a week.
He remembered approaching the stair,
TOM PETTY.,"<°HEARTBREAKERS
then whacking out. Nothing unusual inthat. He often took it out on walls. But oneof those little wooden slats caught his
knuckles at an awkward angle and he could
tell they were pretty well messed up.
The others joked about it. Tom Petty,
some guitar hero – can’t hold a pick, letalone play guitar. But within the hour they
were staring at a hand swollen like Mickey
Mouse’s and Alan, his roadie, suggested it
might not be that bad an idea to go down
and see the ol’ doc.
hat. We’ve endured nine years of thisAny fool looking at the X-rays could see
madness, and at times I’ve felt, ‘Wow!
this was serious damage. Bones smashed,
We didn’t get any credit for that and we$ordGern Acmnq
two broken clean in half. Hospitalisation.
did it before this guy did’, y’know? And
Rumours, he’d never play again. Was theso the nice thing is just to see an
man out of it or what?
acceptance that I’ve missed for a while.
“No, no – and it’s better. It works again. It“I think now I’d just like to go and see
still feels a little sensitive and I can’t lift a lot
the work get better and, hopefully,
with it, but they say it’s gonna come back.” Petty fingers the six-inch scar
break some ground. That’s what I’m interested in doing now, breaking
that runs down his hand and I suggest he kicks walls from now on.
some ground in my own little area. Y’know, I’ve got a little bit bored of“Yeah, yeah. I don’t hit walls any more. It took a lot of my temper back,being put in this club all the time of Bruces, Bobs, Cougars and themillion that came after us. I really don’t wanna be in the club, and now
I can tell you, but it made it a much better album, because when I got out
I’ve staked out a little of our ground, hopefully.
of hospital, after the operation, I could hear really clearly.
“You just can’t get rid of us. We’re here whether you like it or not.
“Y’know, I’m intensely pleased that this record was understood,
because I was all prepared to take it on the chin. This has been a very
We’ll just keep coming back.”
pleasurable experience, putting this album out. It’s nice because it’s such
Petty’s right. The future ain’t what it used to be. It’s brighter.
a good group and it’s finally getting a little bit of… well, here’s the tip of theSteve Sutherland •HISTORY OF ROCK 1985 | 45

1985

a p r i l – J U NE

“Music witha capital ‘M’”
The prolific HÜSKER DÜ have escaped thestrictures of hardcore, to make truly
remarkable music. “There’s nothing incredibly
new about it,” says BOB MOULD. “We’re justdoing what we do the best we can.”paul natkin / gettyI— NME JUNE 8 —n one of her more perceptive Time Out columns recently,
Julie Burchill took a hefty sideswipe at the video popsters’
incessant flirtation with outsiderdom – all that “look at me,
no one understands me” bullshit that still accompanies the highcheekbones and doe-eyed aquillinity – and came to the conclusionthat to be truly revolutionary and original these days, a band would
have to be old, ugly and visually unsaleable. An audio band rather than avideo band. Hüsker Dü may well be the band of which she wrote.
not that they’re that old – no older than Madonna, I’d imagine – or that ugly,
or even that unsaleable (in the current resurgence of American rock, all things
are possible); it’s simply that they don’t seem to give a damn, and never havedone. Almost as if they realised long ago they couldn’t challenge the pin-up
boys of the pop world, and so set about working in a different arena.
Bob Mould – guitarist, singer and songwriter – is soft-spoken, short-haired,paunchy, and wears an anorak over a sweatshirt bearing the legend “American
Wrestling Association”. He looks like he might indulge himself – serious
wrestling in America is a noble sport; but no, he likes to watch it on TV (Bobwatches a lot of TV), and the real showbiz kind, at that. Bob says it’s themodern-day equivalent of Shakespeare, the only place the common man can
get a full-blown morality play, with a bit of gymnastics thrown in for goodmeasure. It’s one of the few subjects on which Bob gets mildly animated. His
greatest desire, while in Britain, is not to see St Paul’s, the Tower or Big Ben, but
to see Big Daddy, a monument among men.
Grant Hart – drummer, singer and songwriter – is swarthy, paunchy, withshoulder-length hair that covers his face like a Hawkwind helmet when he’s
drumming, and he wears white Hüsker boots with half-size laces, no socks,
a garage T-shirt and a rumpled paisley jacket. He’s rather more rowdy than »46 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

October 15, 1985:(l–r) Bob Mould,
Grant Hart andGreg Norton at theMetro in Chicago

HISTORY OF ROCK 1985 | 47

1985

a p r i l – J U NE

4

��

Bob, given to one-line interjections,sometimes accompanied by a cynicalsnort. Strangely enough, Grant’s songs
have a buoyancy, a wistful pop lyricism
that provides many of the group’s mostmemorable – hummable – moments.
Greg Norton – bassist – writes no songs,
fsings no songs, says few words, but is thesnappiest dresser of the three. He also hasa magnificent handlebar moustache, averitable Salvador Dalí of an upper lip.
Apart from this, he seems quite sensible.
On stage, he leaps higher than anyone
since Pete Townshend in his heyday,
which is just as well, since Bob’s couchpotato style and low-slung guitar (at theCamden Palace, there was some difficultyin finding a guitar strap long enough for Bob) militate against excessive
gymnastic displays. Together, they look like the rock’n’roll equivalent of
the Pontypool front row.
With typical candour, Bob cites as reasons for their formation“boredom. And that we liked music, too. Time to kill.” The usual punkapprenticeship, in other words. In those days – late ’78, early ’79 – Hüsker
Dü were pretty much in the hardcore mainstream, such as it was.
“It was real fast, aggressive stuff at the beginning,” says Bob. “We were17, 18 years old then, so I guess we were letting off some steam.”
If I were to call Bob a master of understatement, I would be being
niggardly in my description. Their earliest recorded document, Land
Speed Record, is not so much fast and aggressive as a blur of noise, anon-stop hardcore thrash in which songs seem to melt into each other tobecome one long scream of disaffection. A barrage, pure and simple; andto be honest, hardly worth listening to in the light of what was to follow.
“Those songs were two years old when they were recorded, andrecording them live with a real limited budget – $350 – they couldn’t havegone any further from where they were. The best thing to do was put ’em
down and move on.”What did the hardcore audience think of guys looking like you?
“They were into it. For a while. As long as it sounded like something thatwas within their rules. We get shunned by them now…
“To me, hardcore music, whether it was hardcore jazz, or hardcore
industrial, or hardcore rock’n’roll, was no rules involved – you could doanything you wanted to; it was the intensity you put it across with thatmade it what it was. The hardcore punk thing got to have a lot of rules, andwhen we stopped being associated with those rules – or, as they would
like to think, ‘following’ those rules – we were immediately on the out.
“You grow up, you change your perspective. You’re not always
18 years old, drunk, with a mohawk, driving around screaming andhollering about anarchy – you don’t do that all your life.”
Eventually, after another simple thrash LP, Everything Falls Apart, theyfound a home at SST Records. Their first record
for the label was a seven-track 12-inch called“Metal Circus”, which opened with theirdefinitive statement of being out of alignment
with their former audience.
I say “former” audience, but doesn’t SST, homeof hardcore, typecast them, set them in thesame mould? Bob disagrees.
“I think what Black Flag’s doing is totallydifferent from what The Minutemen are doing,
which is completely different from… All the
bands have a different style; I think the only
thing that might be in common is just theideology, the approach to how to make music
available, as far as how tours are set up and how promotion is done. That’s
pretty much the only common thread I can see.
“The Meat Puppets are out of Phoenix, we’re out of Minneapolis, all theother bands are out of LA, so it’s completely different musicalenvironments. LA is a very plastic music town, whereas Minneapolis is
more of a grassroots bar scene. In LA, Hollywood, there’s all the heavy
metal clubs and all that, and bands are killing each other to get signed tomajor labels. We don’t do that in Minneapolis. We just play.”
From a past of hardcore bamalam, of simple, ultra-fast Ramoning,
Hüsker Dü have somehow fashioned a future of seemingly limitless0w

possibilities. There’s been a host of tricks
turned with the basic guitar, bass, drums
format since Chuck and Bo laid down the
groundwork some three decades ago.
Most have relied on a series of set
structural devices, and an internal
homogeneity: one thinks of The Sex
Pistols (whose importance was,admittedly, mainly gestural) and their
distinctly unrevolutionary use of hardrock guitar with a rhythm section.
The thing which sets Hüsker Dü apart,the core of their uniqueness, is the way
they mix those same structural devices
in ways that shouldn’t work, combining
elements of several genres in one song.
The classic Hüsker Dü sound, as
crystallised on “Metal Circus”, is based on thunderbuck, hiccuping
drums (a bit like Buzzcocks’ John Maher, only more to the point) behind abass that manages to be both solid and swallowtail-melodic at one, able
to carry the tune if necessary, like REM’s Mike Mills; over this are poured
carillons of distorted guitar, with shouted vocals rasping hoarsely fromdeep in the mix.
As that description stands, it could fit a thousand bands since 1977;
Hüsker Dü’s innovation, on their best material, is to combine thisfearsome punk-metal attack with honeyed vocal harmonies and the kindof pretty tunes that just don’t fit the style. Or didn’t. At times they canseem like Motörhead, only musical.
Don’t underestimate the power of one man and his guitar, either. Bob
Mould, like Wilko Johnson and Pete Townshend, can combine both leadand rhythm lines in one, or double up his rhythm lines, but unlike them
he does it at a furious level of distortion. The result is a sound thatsplinters as it chimes, with ringing harmonics and overtones showeringover the layered chords, a slant on the guitar/bass/drums format thatowes more to the likes of Wire’s Pink Flag than to The Clash.
At their only British gig so far – a one-off freebie at the Camden Palace,
filmed for the Live In London TV series – the strange mix of head-on
collision noise and oddly tuneful harmonies seemed more akin to The
Jesus And Mary Chain than their co-compatriots in the new American
rock: no deferential, studied aping of an older genre here.

NEW DAY RISINGüsker Dü are hot-wired, straight off the street, so to speak.
The essence of the sound is bracing, scouring, a healthy
mouthful of Domestos forced down the tender throat of pop.
If, as seems to be the case, we’re in the middle of a rock’n’roll fightback
against the soothing pop placebo, then Hüsker Dü are something ofa tactical first strike, a smart bomb which takes out the life force but
leaves the structures intact and available for cannibalism.
Zen Arcade, the 23-track double album which came out last year, is likea diary of disaffection, often inchoate andinarticulate, but always heartfelt; much of
the music, both here and on the more recent
New Day Rising, is like an atavistic shriek, anancestral folk memory, primal yet bearing
traces of form and order in its tunes. “Hüsker
Dü” is Swedish for “do you remember?”.
Remember what?
Hüsker Dü may be rough-hewn and crude(though not as crude as they first appear), but
at least they try to penetrate to the heart.
Indeed, they have to be that tough and grating
to break through the hardened arteries. They
don’t do many love songs, pure and simple, butwhen they do (eg, “The Girl Who Lives On Heaven Hill”), they’re notexactly tender, but verge on the euphoric.
“It’s not that I don’t feel love or have love or make love or do love, it’s justone of those things that has been overused in popular music and has
become trivialised,” acknowledges Bob.
“Ever since the word ‘baby’ was introduced into a love song – I mean,
can you see this grown man making love to a two-year-old girl? Then you
can tell when groups get mature, because it’s ‘girl’ – ‘Hey, girl!’ – thenwhen you’re Neil Diamond it’s, ‘Girl, you’ll be a woman soon’, then it’s like,‘C’mon, grandma, let’s roll in the hay!’

H“The hardcore
punk thing
got to have a
lot of rules”

48 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985hÜsker dÜ“It’s not that love isn’t a wonderful thing, it’s just that there’s enoughpeople talking about it in songs that don’t mean it.”Nor do they do overt political songs, the usual alternative to love songs(we’ll ignore the sword-and-sorcery crew, thank you very much). It’s notthat they don’t have opinions or deeply felt beliefs, it’s just that they don’t
want to use the stage as a soapbox, preferring instead to make private
donations to local environmental causes, like a group who’re doing a
study on the water table in Minnesota.
So do they believe rock’n’roll is inextricably linked with real life?
“Oh yeah, I think good rock’n’roll is. Rockmusic isn’t. Rock music is completely based infantasy. Good rock’n’roll like The Who or The
Byrds, is based in down-to-earth business, inthe dirty, lowdown, shit-in-your-pants stuff that
happens every day. There’s a difference, in mymind anyway.”
So would you view each album as a diary?
“Definitely. They’re like a documentary of
where we’re at at that period. It’s hard to explain
what goes into an album: we have the songs
written, but once we get into the studio, that’s
where it happens. We don’t have concrete ideasof what should happen; things gel as we’re in
there, and at that point they become notes of where we were at story-wisethat month.
“People always say, ‘Why don’t you play the old songs?’ After a whilea song may lose its meaning to you: it may have been a specific eventthat isn’t relevant to your life any more.”Hence the change from the dark introspection of Zen Arcade to the morepositive, outgoing New Day Rising. The former’s cover – a coloured-in
xerox depicting the three grey-shaded Hüskers wandering through a
junkyard of brightly hued wrecked cars – serves notice of the sounds
inside; the scraps of pessimism and disillusionment tricked out in all
manner of musical finery, verging in places on the psychedelic.
Zen Arcade is one of the strangest, most comprehensive LPs of recent
years; not the happiest, perhaps, but then who needs happiness? Having
stretched out over four sides and tried out other avenues, they returned toa more mainstream format with the triumphant New Day Rising.
What happened in-between?
“It was just a reaction to Zen Arcade,” says Bob. “Zen Arcade was longer,
darker, moodier, it went through a lot of different changes – there were thelittle segues on piano and guitars, etc. With New Day Rising we just said tohell with that, let’s strip it back down and do what we were doing. It was
like starting over again.
“That’s not to say there won’t be another Zen Arcade – there may well be.
It’s really easy to make that kind of record.”“It’s really easy,” adds Grant, “to get into a rut where you’ve got to one-up
yourself all the time, too: oh, the last album had tympani, so this one has
to have harp…”
But don’t you find the guitar/bass/drums
lineup limiting?
“Not for this band,” says Bob. “The function of thisband is to be guitar, bass, drums and vocals.
Anything beyond that, in theory, is not really theband. We don’t have synthesizers off to the side, orroll on the grand piano and stuff, which was what
Zen Arcade was leaning towards. Fortunately, we got
a hold of ourselves and brought it back to reality,
started realising the context in which we performed.
“If a song calls for something, then we’ll get it. The
record we’re working onnow, there isn’t even an
acoustic guitar. The songs
are strong enough that we
didn’t need to fuck aroundwith the shit this time.
“It’s sort of in the samevein as New Day Rising –whichever direction – andit’s more vocal-oriented, as
opposed to a wall of sound.
It’s a cleaner production:
we produced it ourselves,as opposed to having Spot from SST come in and do it, so it does sounda lot better.”
The vocals on New Day Rising were largely indecipherable…
“Thank you, Spot,” Grant sneers sardonically.
“We like masking it a little bit,” Bob explains. “I think sometimes just theorder of consonants and sibilants is as important as the words themselves.
Those songs are more atmospheric than anthemic. There’s a difference:
you can write the songs with the chorus everyone’ll remember, and then
you can write the ones nobody really knows the words to and can phasein and out of as they wish. Like ‘Perfect
Example’, the words are real cloudy, it’s the
feeling that comes across more.”That song’s particularly dream-like. Do you
have an interest in dreams?
“Oh yeah. Dreams are weird,” says Bob. “If you
sleep with the TV on, you have more dreams,
because you’re getting aural suggestions. I put
on the 24 hour news, and I have just the craziest
dreams – you hear them talking, and it’ll trigger
something in your subconscious that’ll get you
dreaming you’re in Africa, or whatever.
“I think dreams are just messages from yoursubconscious, telling you things you might not
want to hear about, telling you realities that are coming in your life. It’s
your little guy on your shoulder, y’know, the voices in your head that you
don’t listen to because you’re too busy.”
Like musical repo men, Hüsker Dü are in the process of reclaiming
discontinued or disgraced threads of rock’s rich tapestry and weaving
strange new garments – unlike most of the other new American bands
engaged in archaeological work, who seem instead to be operating somekind of invisible mending service.
It’s this oddness that gives them their peculiar intensity. Individual
elements of their sound are recognisable, but there’s no single neat littlecompartment you could shoe-horn them into, like ‘country rock’ or‘psychedelia’. Not for them the structures of a Paisley Underground…
“It’s all a buncha hooey!” claims Grant, with customary frankness.
“There’s a lot of people that think they can slap on a paisley shirt and apair of Roger McGuinn sunglasses and take acid and be psychedelic.”“There’s a lot of that kind of stuff,” agrees Bob. “A lot of talking in real
abstract terms and being real surreal all the time… playing in a band andbeing fulla shit…”
By the same token, the resurgence of interest in older musics receives
short shrift, too.
“People lacking the imagination to draw from the future draw from thepast,” says Grant, a trifle harshly perhaps.
Bob is somewhat more reasonable. “But the people who draw from thefuture are people who’re completely into synthesizers: oh, I’m using thetechnology of today to create the sounds of tomorrow – a very unnatural
thing. What we’re doing, and what most of the bands are doing, is not thatnew. Especially what we’re doing – there’s nothing
incredibly new about it. We’re not, like, The New Age.
We’re just doing what we do the best we can.
“There’s some elements of change in the way weapproach the topics, or weave in and out of topics –but again, I don’t think that’s anything new. It’s justa change from what’s going on, to some degree.”
Is what you do Art, with a capital A, or something
less precious than that?
“It’s Music, with a capital M. With all capitalletters.” Andy Gill •“Dreams tell
you things
you might not
want to hear”

1985

a p r i l – J U NE

“All pop
is political”

50 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

T

— NME JUNE 1 —he two singers, a tall fresh-faced
welshman and a soft-spoken bleary-eyed
Mancunian, felt trapped. try as he might
to plot a path out of the complexities of art,
language, politics and even music – allabiding concerns of his group scritti
Politti – the welshman always ended up fronting an
improvised racket. he wanted to break down theideological barriers, his self-imposed stasis.
Joy Division, the Mancunian’s group, had reached aferocious, inexorable peak and for him further elevation
seemed impossible. Long into the night they sat talking on
the stage of an empty electric Ballroom, feeling depressedand distanced – unable to offer solace for each other’s
problems. no resolutions or solutions came out of their
discussion, just a mutual confirmation of boredom andrestlessness. the two, ian Curtis and green gartside, never
met again. within a week, Curtis was dead.
soon after, gartside returned to wales to recover from
illness and reconsider his strategy, as a post-Marxist
agnostic materialist, in the pop marketplace.
thus encumbered, he naturally found himself witha bit of a reputation.
“i think that’s a lot of bollocks actually, the reputation.
i learned a bit too late how you get reputations. For a while
i did try to deny my interests, but i can’t denythem, they are as with me as any other formal
experiences would inform anyone else’s writing.
“it’s very much part and parcel of how you look at
the world. i don’t think you can be impressed by
Marx or Freud and then forget the whole conceptof class or conscience, never let them impinge on
your perspective. it will sometimes surface – forbetter or worse, i might add.” »laura levine / getty“To me, pop and thewhole notion of pleasure,sex, entertainment andleisure is political,” says
SCRITTI POLITTI’s GREENGARTSIDE. “So Dead Or
Alive with their swirlingclothes have as muchpolitical resonance as
Billy Bragg.” Charming
as he is, Gartside’s work
doesn’t please everyone.

N.

�4

� 4.m �,� k �K,

Scritti Politti mainstay
Green Gartside in 1983:“I don’t think you can be
impressed by Marx or
Freud and then forget
the whole concept ofclass or conscience”

HISTORY OF ROCK 1985 | 51

e

1985

a p r i l – J U NE

Gartside with
Americans Fred
Maher (left) andDavid Gamson, thecore musicians on
Cupid & Psyche 85

And surface it did, this concern with thepower of language, in songs like “Jacques
Derrida” and the new sweetened sound on theSongs To Remember LP using soul inspiration,
songs of faith, “to sing about faithlessness”.
Too often it seemed Gartside wascommenting on the pop process at the expenseof his own intuition. Eighteen months afterSongs To Remember came “Wood Beez” acollaboration with Arif Mardin in which he told
us “I pray like Aretha Franklin”. Does he really?
“Do me a favour! It’s very complicated, it’s thewhole question of what pop is; its relationshipto language, power and politics. It’s also aquestion of music’s transgression and abuse ofsome of the rules of language. Aretha was singing what are arguably
inane pop songs and had left her gospel roots. But she sang them witha fervour, a passion, though I hate to use that word because it’s been
hideously tarred in recent usage. To a committed materialist whose
interest had come round to language again – perhaps because of abankruptcy in Marxism to deal with ideology or any artistic community– hearing her was as near to a hymn or a prayer as I could get.
“Obviously I couldn’t make that point in a three-minute pop song. All
I could do was allude to it and hope that someone like you would happen
along me and say that’s a stupid fuckin’ lyric.”
When I meet Gartside I’m pleasantly surprised to find him warm,
expressive and jocular. I had suspicions that a cool, evasive New Age pop
businessman had been born out of his past confusions. But for better orfor worse, to use a recurring Gartside phrase, once the beer flows, the oldsemiotics keep surfacing. And when they do, he falters and corrects
himself, going into long convoluted explanations. Rude and childish as it
may have been, I couldn’t help myself from giggling at such loquacity – it’s
only pop’n’roll after all.
“I certainly don’t subscribe to the view that pop music is any more onedimensional than any other form of production. All pop is political. I hatethe critical attitude that draws boundaries and says this here is politicalbecause it’s waving a flag and it’s saying this.”“To me, pop and the whole notion of pleasure, sex, entertainment andleisure is political. So Dead Or Alive with their swirling clothes and all therest of it have as much political resonance as Billy Bragg. Until that’s
accepted, we’ve got a long way to go. They were making political pop 30
years ago f’rchrissake, and no one called it political then.”“I have these
convoluted
politics thatno one canfigure out”

alamy

One for the moneyoK, so there’s a new album of political pop by Scritti Politti called
Cupid And Psyche. It’s the first with new members Dave Gamson andFred Maher, young New Yorkers in the process of relocating in London,
52 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

and the first since Songs To Remember some
two-and-a-half years ago.
Out of nine tracks there are three pearls – threeof the finest pop songs you’ll hear all year – while
the rest is form held over content, a potpourri ofconfection stuffed into solid studio dance
rhythms. When on form, on the superlative“Lover To Fall”, Scritti swing free and easy,
matching a dazzling and dynamic beatboxinspired rhythm to classy lyrical panache – theperfect combination of rhythm and reason to
obtain the “abuse of language” Green craves.
Still, the materialist Marxist in me isn’t soeasily persuaded. Four previously available
singles is chancing it a bit.

“I think that’s fair.”With the pound’s value, the price of records, unemployment, Aids…
“It’s a reflection of a year’s work.”
But it’s work you’ve already been paid for and now you’re trying toincrease the sales of an LP with singles that have already beenhandsome earners.
“That wouldn’t worry me in going to buy an LP. People have the choice,they needn’t buy it if they think it’s unfair. Perhaps I’ll suffer as a result.”
Giving the listener value isn’t a priority, then?
“I’m not sure that it isn’t value, those sort of arguments were never ones
I was particularly swayed by. If you’ve already got four tracks and don’t
feel like shelling out for the remaining five, then borrow it off someone
else who has it and tape it. I don’t know.”
It’s a subversive’s excuse and I remain unconvinced. But the bulk of therecord – a feasible sound not developed or prodded enough?
“The work went into getting the sound, not as an end in itself, but it’s
all part of learning as you go. It was a socially made record, with Dave andFred contributing as much as me. I do like discipline and I don’t like being
on my own. We’re learning in public, testing each other out, ourrelationship and how far we can take it into music.
“The thing about the record is that it’s a collection of songs quite
independent from the ways in which they’re presented. The fact that to
you there is a homogeneity to the way they’re presented is something
we’re quite interested in fucking with when the time is right.”

People think I’m the life of the party…
the sly, voluptuous “The Word Girl” is proving itself to be morethan soft skank (“How your flesh and blood became the word,” sings
Green – transubstantiation in post-Marxist agnostic pop!) and it’s also
edging up the charts. How does he deal with the pop circus image play?
“I’m uncomfortable with that whole thing. I’m unable to work out its
significance, to work out how much it really matters. But it would seem

scritti politti

a sillier thing by far to try and deny it or wish
not to be a part of it.
“I find it hard to imagine that you could havea pop music that develops people’s attention
span or literacy. God forbid that you shouldhave a pop music that does try to do that… insome ways. By the same token, I don’t think the
pop music I make damages people’s attention
span or literacy.”
While finding the new socialist broad churchof pop “positively good”, he doesn’t get asked
for much participation in benefits, causechampioning and the like.
“I have these tortuously convoluted politics
that no one can fathom out. I also make inane
pop records that don’t begin – how is it? – ‘You
don’t have to take this crap’.”
Maybe two LPs’ worth of love songs has given
people a false impression?
“I can see how that looks, possibly howthat is. It’s a question of what you decide toaddress yourself to, and I’ve had a few quite
unproductive run-ins trying to write overtly…
No, ‘overtly’ is the wrong word – literally
political songs, and they don’t work well.
“My kind of politics is distinct from someone
like Jerry Dammers; I couldn’t write a ‘Free
Nelson Mandela’. Whereas I feel upset about it,
my immediate reaction after years of thinking
about it isn’t righteous indignation. It’s a kind of
thinking about all the political mechanismsthat operate to keep that thing happening.
“I don’t immediately think – the terrible
suffering of this man in prison. Dammers’
response is a bit like the response of theMorning Star calling on the South African
government or the Tories to do this or that.
My response is to be reminded of all themechanisms by which power is heldinternationally. It’s a problem for us both, but it
looks a bigger problem for me at the moment.”
A pity if this all makes Green sound a torturedsoul, as he’s really a good lad. We continue an
exchange of arguments and interests for hours
after the interview, joined by Dave and Fred ina Mexican restaurant. Gartside seems to havean evangelical zeal for the rewriting of criticallanguage. Starting to feel out of my depth, I
wonder if it’s really that important.
“I don’t think anyone is ever out of their depth,
it’s the whole myth of adulthood. I remember
when I was young thinking adults must havethe key to some special knowledge. Well here
I am at 29 finding out it’s all bullshit.”
Perhaps he’d like to become a critic or
investigate music from cultures where
tribal and spiritual rites overtake thefunction of language.
“Oh, but I like dealing with language. I’ve
no wish to ignore it.”
The taxi came to rest outside the singer’s
rented flat in Islington. He’d done it again,
he thought, filled another interview withphilosophical waxings. Why couldn’t hejust answer the questions without tying
the verbal knots? It must have been thelager, he decided.
“I guess I fucked up that interview,” he said
to the journalist.
“Not at all, only a critic can fuck up in aninterview, and you’re not one of those,”
replied the journalist. At least not yet, hethought, not yet. Gavin Martin •Hollow and artificial

NME JUNE 15 Scritti’s glossy, postmodern second deconstructed.
Scritti Politti Cupid & Psyche 85 virgin

It’s a quandary, maybe even somethingof a crisis: either you try and use the
A bunch of words such as can be found on
original, first-hand language, in which
the new Scritti Politti album: heart, her, girl,case you’re forced into irony, or you standbaby, word, reason, love, boy, hurt, sugar,
back and witter on about the language.
heaven, sweet, tenderness, true. All mean
Both ways, you’re getting further fromjust as much (or just as little) as they’ve
the actual experience.
always meant in pop music. Green Gartside
My personal predilection is for music
may well be one of pop music’s mostwhich articulates more authentic, raw
intelligent and thoughtful characters, but
emotions and experience than are
there is a sense in which he lets his head run
traversed here. There is a directness about
away with his heart. His concern with thegospel, blues, and Cajun musics which isway we order our ordering of experiencesometimes shocking: the first time I heardmeans his attention centres more on theBessie Smith, for instance, I was physicallyway phenomena are presented to us,
sick. That could never
and the values we allot tohappen in Green’s pastel
those representations,pop world, for there
than on the phenomena
appear to be no Stones
themselves.
In His Passway.
Thus, in his pop music, he
Similarly, the effusions
plays with the language ofof Bo Diddley, Howlin’
the medium, both verbal
Wolf and Captainand musical, in a way which
Beefheart seem more
implicitly criticises thehonest, trustworthy
way the language was used
representations of maleoriginally. Such issexuality than Green’s
the implication of thehorrid Violet Elizabeth
inverted commas in “TheBott vocalisings and Green and David‘Sweetest’ Girl”, for instance.
Gamson’s synthetic musical stylings,
The effect of this, deliberately ora confection which is, in a pure sense,
accidentally, has been the withering away of
infantile, pre-sexual, a deceit of denial.
pop vocabulary. We may still use the same
All the correct percussive noises areterms, but they no longer have the same
made, every little bit of spare space filledpower: instead of expressing emotions,with banging, rattling and tapping noises,
they become a shorthand for them, a series
courtesy former Material-ist Fred Maher; itof signals to which the consumer ismight even be a form of tinkly-bonk music,
expected to respond.
except that it affects the tinkle without
Unfortunately, when this kind of postgetting down to bonking. And despite themodernist dissection is applied to affairs
use of possibly unusual textural elementsof the heart, it can’t help but come acrosslike glockenspiel and steel pan sounds,
hollow and artificial, because it’s getting
they’re not put together in a way thatfurther removed from theshoots even a sideway glancebusiness of actually moving, ofaway from the dull, drab, sickly
authentic emotional
pop of the past few years.
experience. Instead
I suppose it’s unfortunateof dealing with a girl,
ALBUMS
that Green appears to havedirectly, Green islatched on to black pop
forced to deal withmusic just as it entered
The Word Girl.
its most sterile, formalist
phase with the distinctly
1985
snooze-worthy hip hop and
1q
7
6
wnow go-go muzak.
AAAkp
The back cover of Cupid &Psyche 85 features a piece of meatdraped in muslin, held by three star
C7
studs and a butterfly. How
inappropriate. Might I suggest
instead a great big melting chocolate
heart reclining on a bed of pastelpink satinette. Keep the butterflys5
if you wish, and get the art directorof Jackie to lay it out.
The LP contains the last four singles
plus five other tracks which plough
pretty much the same furrow, so
those among you who lapped up the
45s will doubtless find solace insimilarity here. Andy Gillsi

“Green’s pop
plays with thelanguage of themedium, verbal
and musical”

didik

REVIEW

SOITTI Pol fi'
Oup idvJ sc
Jc 4e
1111POliï(I

HISTORY OF ROCK 1985 | 53

19

APRIL- JpNE

"The banshee
department"
juanPeel listener
ROBERT PLANT:turns.
mwGWIW�IY{ him tiat
erflowed
uncle
the Zeppelin legend, O.
Batzand the occult
pursuits of Jimmy Page?
Apparently it has. "It'snot my job to say theguy plays cricket..

-y�

F KEITHRICHARDS'
guitar playing is, as has been described,
the sound of"grindingsexual blockage, then Robert Plant's
bloozewail vocalese equates with a rabid mongoose sinking its
teeth into a hitherto coiled and recumbent trouser-snake.
Suchwas myimpression when, back in the Jurassic Era, mytender lobes were first belaboured bythatwhite-hotwigged-out
mutha-stompa known onlyas Led Zeppelin's"Whole LottaLove".
And, byastrange coincidence, myfirst impression of the man-inthe-flesh-in-the-very-same-room is thatahorse shouldbe so lucky.
Noteven strides of such summerybagginess as could comfortably
accommodate awhole boatload of Vikings can blur the contours ofwhatmightcome inveryhandyshould the roses everneedwatering.
But let us not mock the stereotype of a huge and pea-brained sockrocker flounderingoutof the primeval morass with aviewto bending
the ears of more advanced species. Let us instead consider that rare
beast, the dinosaur that evolved...

BRIAN RASIC/GETTY

"

�0&

54

1 HIS

JUNE 8 -C1

ONCE SPENTAN evening in a
Puerto Rican nightclub in Spanish
Harlem, and I just sat there allnight and enjoyed all those very, very
sharp people who'd taken so muchpride in themselves and the fact thatitwas Fridaynight.
Everything about
them-their
movements, theirclothes, their »"I'm dogged bytheremains of the lasti8
yearsofmylife":
RobertPlantin1985

TORY OF ROCK 1985 155

1985

a p r i l – J U NE

profiles, their gestures – everything was, like, splendid. It wasn’t glossy
and it wasn’t trashy or kitsch.
“It was so for real it was great. And I realised I wanted my music to be like
that: sharp, mildly aggressive, something that you might stand back fromand squint your eyes at and wonder about. But not so uncomfortable thatyou can’t hold its hand occasionally.”
Such a pristinely romantic vision of the power of music would not issue
from the lips of, say, Mick Jagger these days. Nor
would the Mighty Marf, as evinced by thatdismal She’s The Boss LP, makes so bold as torecord an EP of covers of such as Phil Phillips& The Twilights’ 1959 swamp-pop hit “Sea Of
Love”, or indeed Roy Brown’s pioneering late’40s proto-rocker “Rockin’ At Midnight”.
But that’s what Robert Plant did last year
under the banner of The Honeydrippers. Andeven now a new album of Plant-music hits the
shops: Shaken ’N’ Stirred, despite the gung-ho
diplodorkishness of its title, considerably
betters its two predecessors Pictures At Eleven
and The Principle Of Moments.
A curious record, it mixes and matches ideas
with variable results. At worst it approaches
that fuzak of hyperthyroid drumming and confused chord changes sorightly loathed when played by the likes of Billy Cobham back in the early’70s. But outweighing those delinquent displays of unfocused virtuosity,
Plant’s excursions into the head-rock atmosphere of such as Talking
Heads and The Police develop some of Led Zeppelin’s best latterday
moments like “Kashmir” and “Fool In The Rain”.
Furthermore, the joyous ferocity of old Sun records, a touchstone for
Plant throughout his career, echoes on his new single “Pink And Black”,
where Elvis’ cat-clothes get the agony/ecstasy refurbishment to
intriguing effect. Nor is Shaken ’N’ Stirred without humour: vocal andinstrumental pranks abound, whereas the guffaws in Led Zep’s 12-year
canon were few and far between.
Indeed, if an equivalent exists to this LP in the post-punk genre, it isDavid Sylvian’s Brilliant Trees. So howcum the Most
Beautiful Men in the World also have some of theweirdest tunes?

stuff like horn sections and getting rid of the kitsch and the twee as
we go along.
“I’m dogged by the remains of the last 18 years of my life, and there’s anelement who want me to turn into a cabaret act 30 years before I intend to.
So I thought we could revert it to where we got it from in the first place,which is really a Little Richard thing, and then take it back a stage further
to where Little Richard got his style, from Wynonie Harris and Louis
Jordan. It takes the onus off the banshee
department, you know.”
Personally I still hear more banshee than
“Bloodshot Eyes” or “Caldonia” in Shaken ’N’
Stirred, but I suspect this open, amusing,thoughtful and articulate bloke is capable of
any unlikely cross breeding that takes his fancy.
For he ain’t in it for the money – he doesn’t reallyneed any more, as he readily admits. He’s in it
for the pleasure.
Robert Plant is a capital-F Fan. At 37 hisknowledge and enthusiasm for pop ranges wideand bang up to date. I had fun talking to him.
“Some people, when they have days off, burythemselves in Kafka or go and watch Crystal
Palace. When I’ve got time off, I usually fall backinto the latest Speciality releases through Ace Records. If anybody asked
me what I did when I wasn’t writing fresh stuff and moving away fromthat old role, if you like, it would be to get back into jump blues.”
When did you first get into it?
“When I was about 14 to 15. The only way of listening to records thenwas Radio Luxembourg, somebody else’s collection or American Forces
Network. The quality and delivery of English music then was pretty weak
– the remnants of Decca’s roster of hitmakers like Kathy Kirby, David
Whitfield and Karl Denver. So one tended towards material with meatin it, substance. And it was first on Luxembourg I heard Chris Kenner,
the black pop without the sugar that Motown gave you later on.
“And it intrigued me. It was like Bukka White [’30s Mississippi
bluesman], how maybe those guys would have been expressing
themselves in 1962.
“What happened a long time ago was that people
leaned very heavily on that Muddy Waters, Howlin’
Wolf, Chicago Chess argot, that genre of city blues,
because of the electric guitar and all the riffs that
Wolf had. Everybody ignored more bawdy jumpblues: Roy Milton, Amos Milburn and all that. That
area hasn’t been flogged to death, hasn’t ended up

getty“Jimmy’s
primarily amusician; I
motivate, point
my finger”“T

he Plan is to incorporate thebeginnings of what I hope The
Honeydrippers will turn out to be,
and that is a mild poke at the ’40s and ’50s, using

February 18,1984: Robert
Plant & The Honeydrippers
perform on NBC variety
show Saturday Night Live56 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

in the form Samson now play – that’s about the endof the line for a Howlin’ Wolf riff, isn’t it? That area is
untapped, and all I want to do is jump back into it
and pull out little classics.”
Are you surprised, considering your own
willingness to experiment and indulge yourpassions, that such an innovator as erstwhile Led
Zep partner Jimmy Page has lumbered himself
with fossilised hard rock (of weapon-grade
dullness, it so happens) as purveyed by The Firm?
“Maybe I am surprised, but maybe I also knowthat Jimmy’s intention of maintaining it as apermanent thing is not the case. I know he intends
to record with the Joujouka tribesmen of North
Morocco next, combined with some symphonicthing. He’s primarily a musician; I motivate andpoint my finger and create fuss amongst people.”
Did you ever feel constrained by a formula in
Led Zeppelin?
“Yeah, but I didn’t know it was the case until
afterwards. At the time I was convinced that I was
ultimately very happy with the way things were.
Whilst I was doing it, I was always enjoying it.
“I had so much fun, contrary to how it may bereported sometimes. But at the time I didn’t realise
what you could do if you were holding the reins ofyour own career.”S

Plant: exploring the“more bawdy” jumpblues of Roy Milton,
Amos Milburn et al“Jimmy had his moments when he played his games, but
none of them with a great deal of seriousness, and through his
own choice he never really tried to put the story straight. Now
maybe he’s fully aware of the fact that it’s gone on a little longer
than it needed to. If you’ve heard nothing from the actual
individuals for so long, then anything’s possible.
“It was the fun element: Pagey liked the idea of being
considered man of mystery. He really should have been a San Francisco
version of Simon Templar, hiding in shadows and peeping round corners.
He got some kind of enjoyment out of people having the wrong impressionof him. He’s a very meek guy, shy to the point where sometimes it’s
uncomfortable. But he let it all go on; and it’s his choice whether it allcontinues. It’s not up to me to start saying the guy plays cricket.”Robert Plant, by his own admission, is no “master of
eloquence” as a lyricist. Though he rates the verbal power of,say, Costello’s “Pills And Soap”, Plant’s own approach tends
towards The Phantom, Johnny Burnette, Jerry Byrne and, most of all,Little Richard, where the words are yelps, the abstracted sound of avoice pitching in with the instruments towards an immediate impact
yet lingering resonance.
“This Mortal Coil, for instance, is a platform for so much. You can feelthe nervousness of the whole thing, yet it’s so hauntingly pretty.”
And the Cocteau Twins?
“Maybe the reason I was attracted to them in the first place, when
I heard them on a John Peel session, I related to it as if it was ‘Kashmir’,a Led Zeppelin song, or ‘In The Light’, which had a certain weave, acertain flow to it that was mildly reminiscent.
“When I go and see the Guana Batz, I love the wrecking crews at thefront, the blatant euurgh of the music. Some of that is still bouncing
through me. And I see the audience is totally in sympathy with it, whether
it’s The Prisoners or The Milkshakes. And then I go and see Stevie
Winwood and it’s time to sit down and cool out.
“Somewhere in the middle of that is my ground…” Mat Snow ¥HISTORY OF ROCK 1985 | 57

ilpo musto / rex features

tePhen Davis’ biograPhy of Led
Zeppelin, Hammer Of The Gods, isa rollercoasting riot of mayhem,•
mysticism, groupies, drink, drugs,
Iloócrf 17uuf
brute ignorance and scenes of moral•',
turpitude unequalled since the fallof Ancient Rome. A terrific read,�
but perhaps a little wide of the
Littlemark accuracy-wise…
. I;v“The mood of what has been related•Littleto me is grossly deceptive, because
I would think that about 97 per centof the time over a 12-year period it was
maximum smiles. We held together
and we had a great time, and without.
affecting anybody else particularly andfb mi.
without becoming sadistic morons.
Unfortunately, the more you contradict,the more ammunition and light you give to a subject that has been
turned over a million times.
“Over the years, we’ve all sat back and watched it and smiled. If you getstuck into denying things and setting stories right, then you’re a party toit, you’re prey to these people. Now I look at it with scorn. I find it funnythat people should have waited so long until the heat’s gone and the book
can’t sell to lie so furiously, to paint a picture that’s greyer than it was blue.
“He [Davis] did a lot of investigations with a guy who used to work with
Led Zeppelin, Richard Cole, who, over the years, had shown deep
frustration at not being in a position to have any authority at all. He wastour manager, and he had a problem which could have been easily solved
if he’d been given something intelligent to do rather than check the
hotels, and I think it embittered him greatly. He became progressively
unreliable and, sadly, became a millstone around the neck of the group.
“These stories would filter out from girls who’d supposedly been in myroom when in fact they’d been in his. That sort of atmosphere was being
created, and we were quite tired of it. So eventually we relieved him of his
position… And in the meantime he got paid a lot of money for talking
crap. A lot of the time he wasn’t completely… well. And so his view ofthings was permanently distorted one way or another.”Richard Cole is back in business, teamed up with none other than his
old boss, Led Zeppelin manager Peter Grant. As for this partnership,much diplomatic eyebrow raising by Robert accompanies on-record
good luck wishes.
Ozzy Osbourne once remarked that the only black magic Black Sabbath
every got into was a box of chocolates: what about Jimmy Page’s reputed
pact with the Devil?

1985

andrew catlina p r i l – J U NE

“They seem tohave really got
into it in a bigway”: Shane
MacGowan andfellow Pogues inWest Germany

58 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

“Ambition.
Greed.
Money”
Most of these are missing from THE POGUES as they stagger
across Europe on tour. “Even if I drink myself to death doing
this,” says SHANE MACGOWAN, “I’d still prefer that to theboring, horrible jobs I had to do before this band.”HISTORY OF ROCK 1985 | 59

1985

a p r i l – J U NE

— MELODY MAKER MAY 11 —You’ve got Guinness on your breath
IT was somewhere near old Checkpoint Charlie that we firstcaught sight of the thin white droog. He is dressed in black from head
to toe and has somehow managed to get half a toilet roll wrappedaround his left shoe. His shirt is covered in a mixture of horrible stains
from last night’s gargantuan intake of all things liquid and the residue
from the messiest laugh in show business.
It is in fact this latter noise, more of a gush really than anything else,
which finally convinces the keen-eared photographer that we do indeed
have the man we are looking for. Hey you, you with the bog roll on yourfeet and the Guinness on your breath, you must be the singer and chief
songwriter with the very wonderful Pogues. I say you are Shane
MacGowan and I hereby claim my long-awaited lost weekend.

andrew catlin

Who do you think you are kidding, Mister Hitler?
serIous? LeT’s geT that way right now and talk for a while about
the rather unsavoury events that took place in a venue way out in
the American part of town, in a three-tiered building called The
Loft. Looking back on it now, we should all perhaps have paid a little
bit more attention to the guy in the dressing
room who casually happened to mention thattoday was, ah, Hitler’s birthday and a few of his
spiritual descendants might just take this very
public opportunity to let the locals know thatthe old goosestepper may be gone but is certainly
not forgotten.
The end result of this piece of particularly badtiming was that the sheer unadulterated thrill ofseeing The Pogues play live to a foreign audience forlqqw--.-k60 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

the first time was tarnished by the very different sensation of wondering
what the best form of torture would be for the vile bunch of Nazis down
the front, who were making a very good job out of ruining the fun fun fun
for everyone else.
The increasingly glamorous Rocky O’Riordan, or Cait as shecalls herself this month, opted for the Redskin school of audienceappeasement by offering to take the meatheads on at their own game,
temporary banjo picker and legend in his own lunchtime Philip Chevron
delivered an inspired and perfectly pitched piece of verbal on how
insulted he and his colleagues felt by the sieg-heiling antics of the noisy
minority, and I just stood at the back and felt all sorts of little shivers go up
my back when the proud strains of “The Band Played Waltzing Matilda”
came cutting through the Berlin air like a knife.
The Pogues left the stage to a tumultuous roar and it suddenly hit me
after all this time that they may just be the greatest band in the wholewide world. I went to tell Shane MacGowan the exciting snippet of news
and he collapsed in a heap on the floor.

It’s a long way to Tipperary, a long way to go
someTIme beTween ThIs initial collapse and Spider being sick on
my new travelling bag, six Pogues, a toilet roll, their manager and theincreasingly manic MM team made their way
through East Germany in a van. And just before
the traffic polizei fined us 100 marks and I’ll buy
you a drink, a tape recorder somehow replaceda bottle in Shane MacGowan’s immediate lineof vision.
He took one look at it and proceeded to tell it allsorts of things about life with The Pogues, Martin
Sheen, Elvis Costello and he joys of looking at theworld through the bottom of a glass.

the pogues“It’s the first time I’ve been abroad since I went toFrance when I was about 14. Yeah, it’s alright, but I’m
getting pretty sick of it now and looking forward togoing home. The best thing has been the reaction
from the crowds, apart from last night, buteverywhere else they seem to have really got into it
in a big way. Which is brilliant, ’cos it shows that
there are loonies in every town in every country,
people who just want to go out and get pissed
and have a good time at the shows. Brilliant.”
The mad urge to get home, however, is
probably something to do with the fact that Elvis
Costello, or Uncle Brian as he seems to be called
round here, is about to start producing The
Pogues’ second, and obviously crucial, album.
“Yeah, I’m really looking forward to it, you
know? I’m not sure just how big an effect he isgoing to have on how it turns out, because wealready know that it is going to be quite different
from the first one. There’ll be a lot more slow
stuff on it, a lot more ballads in the vein of “Pair
Of Brown Eyes”, and hopefully it will soundeven better than last time.
“I don’t think that means it will necessarily be any cleaner, or any more
professional, because one of the numbers on it will be the fastest thing wehave ever done, and a couple of the others are fairly rough as well. You’ll
still know it’s The Pogues.”
All this recording and touring business must sap the freshness a bit, no?
“Ha! I lost any freshness I ever had for this band a long time ago. I’ve justdecided that the audience might as well suffer along with me.”
It might be prudent here to mention that the above comments andmost of the ones to follow were accompanied, by the aforementioned messiest laugh in
April 20, 1985: at The
Loft in Berlin, Pogues
show business, that enormous gush which
bassist Cait O’Riordan
is hard to describe exactly, but it’s something
remonstrates withskinheads celebrating
like the noise a very fat badger might make if
Hitler’s birthday
you were to threaten it with immediate
extinction. However.
“So yeah, I’ve lost most of my original motive
for doing this, which was, ah, well there wasn’t
one really I suppose, apart from to get pissed
and play down the local pub. Like if you’d said
to me two years ago that I’d now be worrying
about being professional on stage and all that,
I’d have laughed at you. That wasn’t the originalidea at all.”Laugh away, but if the original motive has
now gone down the drain, then what’s taken
its place?
“Ambition. And greed (gush). ’Cos I’m
prepared to compromise to the hilt so long as itgets me lots of money (enormous gush). So far
we haven’t made anything, even though it all
seems to have happened so quickly. It took offaround the time of the Costello tour and the lasttime we spoke, and since then I don’t reallyknow what the fuck’s going on. But I do knowthat it’s got nothing to do with luck.
“We deserve every accolade
we get, because I honestly
believe that this band is doing
something a lot better than therest of the shit around. The Men
They Couldn’t Hang were theonly ones close to us when they
started off and now they’veturned into a rock band, which
is fine and they’re good at it. I
think we’re unique, definitely.”
But they all say that till the first
hit single comes along.
“I don’t really think that will
make too much difference to us

in terms of any pressures we might have to face.
And anyway, I find it pretty pathetic to carp on
about pressures and all that shit when you compare
it to the boring, horrible jobs I had to do before thisband. Even if I drink myself to death doing this, I’dstill prefer that to all those other jobs put together.”Well, you sure don’t get to meet the director of Repo
Man or Elvis Costello when you’re working on
the railways. How did you first get to meet thegreat Alex Cox?
“I just loosened my trousers and he started
gently nuzzling my thingy.”
So how did you first get to meet the greatAlex Cox?
“We just read this interview where he said that
he reckoned The Pogues were quite interesting,
and we got together as soon as possible because
we knew it would work, for he’s such a nutcase as
well. It’s a bit of a laugh, cos we’re being used as
guinea pigs for Alex Cox to make a good video
and for Elvis Costello to produce a good album
for once. That is only a joke, yes?”
Yes, and somewhere round about now thetape recorder gets edged out of the way to make room for retsina and all
I can hear are bizarre references to Martin Sheen being Shane’s second
cousin, and the equally strange tale of how the chief Pogue started off in
one of the country’s top private schools but left when he had to sit next to[NME writer] Mat Snow.
By this stage we’re nearly back on the autobahn, so let’s just have a final
message for all the folks back home.
“Yeah, tell all the women in my life that I love them.” Ah, ’tis such ashame that he drinks so much, or else. “You shouldn’t worry about me
drinking too much. I only get worried if I don’t drink quite enough,because then I become all sober and a very miserable person. And we
don’t want that now, do we?”“I honestly
believe thisband is doing
something
better”

I

Vorsprung durch alkohol
nearLY 24 hours into it now, and still Spider Stacey, tin whistlerand beer-tray basher extraordinaire, has failed to speak one coherent
word of English. He did, however, agree temporarily to call a halt to the
new language of first-form German mixed with some inspired lateralthinking in order to deliver the following collection of thoughts to ahungry world.
“Hello. I am really surprised at how well the Germany likes The Pogues.
Seriously, it’s been great and there’s a couple of nights when we havereally come together more effectively than ever before. It’s a bit weird, ’cos
I thought the people here would only be into Test Department or punk or
Einsturz… Einsturt… whatever they’re called, but it’s just not the case.
And they also seem to know quite a bit about us even before we go andstart playing. Like as soon as we walk on they all go ‘oi, buy us a drink’ andstuff like that which is pretty funny when you think about it.”And when you think about it a bit more, it’s more or less your own fault.
“Well, I admit that we are primarily responsible for this drunken Irish
image we have, but it’s also a lot to do with how the press write about us.
True enough, we don’t really go out of our way to play it down or anything,but I think the new album might show people that we’re not as stupid
as they think. But I’m not really too worried about all that at the minute,’cos I’m more concerned at the fact that I’ve lost my hanky and I can’t get »HISTORY OF ROCK 1985 | 61

1985

a p r i l – J U NE
This is nothing like as good astheir other stuff. It’s difficult
to tell when you just hear it
for the first time, but I
definitely don’t want to hearit again. It’s just a quite fair
white soul with the Stevie
Wonder harmonica solo
thrown in. He’s done it ahundred times, but not very
recently. Maybe Stevie justwanted to practise it. It’s atleast good news that themoney won’t go to Hari
Krishna or whoever he is.

Dansette This Summer(Gotta Get Up) EMI
I like it. I mean I don’t like itthat much that I’d actually
buy it. I’ve got a soft spot for
flaky disco records. It’s thesort of music I was brought up
with as a teenager. I wouldn’t
recommend anyone to buy it,
but it’s a nice bit of summery
disco. A good party record
for the end of the night.

The Danse Society
Say It Again ARISTA
If you’re going to make pap
records then I’d much rather
listen to something like that
Dansette record which atleast has a nice little tune andit’s not pretentious like thispile of overblown rubbish. I’dbe happy if I never heard thatagain in my life.

Jason And The Scorchers
Shop It Around
EMI AMERICA“I’m quite partial to a bit of a disco”
MM JUL 6 Shane MacGowan puts down his glass and reviews the singles.
The Ramones Bonzo Goes To
Bitburg BEGGARS BANQUET

lisa haun / getty

I like this one even though it’sa bit slow-tempoed for them.
I suppose the Ramones haveslowed down over the years. It’sa grower, as they say in thebusiness, and it’s got the title of
the week. They’re still a hundred
times better than most of the shitthat I’ve had to listen to this week.

brainless, and it’s got everythingthat’s missing from most of theother crap that’s out this week.
It’s definitely not music for
wimps. Here’s evidence thatthey should have given them
£2 million to reform, not just one.
I don’t think I’ll ever be going to
see them live, but the classic
records are still classics.

Nico My Funny Valentine

Deep Purple Black Night EMI

BEGGARS BANQUET

Definitely single of the week.
They’re back! The cover’s evengot a colour picture of Jon Lordmaking love to his organ. It’s ano-bullshit song that’s got guts
and a Ritchie Blackmore guitar
solo. It’s loud, it’s obnoxious, it’s

I really like this one. She’s a great
singer in her own particular style,and it sounds like a record withsomething in it – something more
to offer. It’s as maudlin as The
Smiths, but The Smiths send you
to sleep before you can even get

62 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

out the razor. I’m a bit biased
because I used to fancy her a lot
when I was 16 years old!

Eurythmics There Must Be An Angel(Playing With My Heart) RCA
I don’t suppose I better tell you
my Stevie Wonder joke right now.

e u r

r

1

h m ic 5

I like this one. It’s not exactly
something that’s never been
done before, but it’s good,and has got some guts. It
sounds like the Burrito
Brothers, and I like them.

The Smiths That Joke Isn’t
Funny Anymore ROUGH TRADE
I think the title sums this one
up really. His joke really isn’t
funny any more. The pretty boyson the front cover are getting
younger all the time – I don’tknow what that means. The
lyrics are the usual pile of selfindulgent miserable crap, andthe tune isn’t even as good as it
usually is – which isn’t saying
very much. Do you want any
more? I’m very sorry he’s sounhappy still, especially when
he should be earning enough tocompensate for it by now.

Dire Straits Money For Nothing
VERTIGOThis is the one the Daily Mirror
said had the word “faggot” init, isn’t it? It’s just about being

the pogues

a flash rock star. And
I didn’t hear the word
faggot once! The gay
community is up in arms
about it apparently, so
I suppose quite a lot ofthem must like Dire
Straits. They’ve beenburning their tickets forWembley for nothingfrom what I can hear. The
song is insulting to women,
and probably everybody.
It’s a typical piece of rockarrogance, that sounds likea Stones album track… andI can’t think of anythingthat’s worse than that!

Animotion Let Him Go
MERCURY

This is really boring. This is
the sort of song that makesme think of Capital Radio
early in the morning. I thinktheir name is a really badpun, and the band must
think that they’re Blondie.
They’re NOT!

James Village FireROUGH TRADE

The first track, I thought
was better than The Smiths,
and sounds more like Echo
And The Bunnymen, who
I like. But then the second
track just sounds like thelate ’60s, when people used
to produce any old crapwith supposed credibility
and other people would fall
for it. I don’t like the nameJames either – Jim would
have been much better.

The Opposition 5 Minutes
CHARISMA

It’s quite catchy, I suppose,but not that good. I don’tknow why people botherprinting lyrics on the coverwhen they don’t actuallymean much. They probably
mean something towhoever wrote it, but they
say nothing to me. The only
reason I don’t mind it too
much is because there are
all sorts of bits from othergroups which they don’t
put together well, but
remind me of groups that
I like that do this kind ofthing better.

Mainframe 5 Minutes

his usual good stuff witha bit of hip hop shoved
in between, but theresult is pretty good.

Johnny Rocca I Want You
BEGGARS BANQUET

buy it, but on the other
hand, I wouldn’t buy anyof these really. It would
definitely sound better ina club than on a record
player at home.

Womack & Womack
Strange And Funny WEA
It’s nothing like as good asthey can be. I like the
Womacks, but on thissingle nothing muchhappens. I don’t know why
this is a single – it sounds
like a moderate B-side.
I don’t really want toslag them off, but whensomething is this laid-backand hasn’t a good chorus,
it fails to hit the mark.

Cyndi Lauper The Goonies ‘R’
Good Enough CBS
This is about as exciting
as a good sleep. This is acomplete and utter wasteof vinyl. I loved “TimeAfter Time”, but this isjust rubbish.

Don Henley Dirty Laundry
ASYLUM

This is just a bit of standard
American AOR. I liked“Boys Of Summer”, but thatpisses all over this. It’s stillless annoying to listen tothan the rest of this stuff.

The Burmose Brothers
Skin SOME BIZARRE
It’s not filthy enough.
Marc Almond, who guests
on the vocals, is only any
good when he’s got hisclaws out properly. Marc isa great chanteuse, but thisisn’t a very good record.
Sorry, Marc sweety. I’m
beginning to realise what
you bastards have to go
through when you’rereviewing the singles. No
wonder they sometimes
sound so jaded.

POLYDOR

Manu Dibango Pat Piya

Another five minutes! This
would be great if it was
turned up really loud at a
disco. It’s a bit like “19” and“Relax” and I’m quite partial
to a bit of a disco. I wouldn’t

CELLULOID

This is a really good clubrecord. It hasn’t a hope inhell of being a hit, but I
really like it. There’s somegreat sax playing. It’s justWhen I want to get tosleep in the middle ofthe night I put on theradio, and it’s usually a song
like this that finally does
the trick.

Redds And The Boys
Put Your Right Hand In
The Air…. FIRE ISLANDThis is the best disco
record of the lot. Any
go-go record that hasa chorus like “Put yourright hand in the air/Put
your left hand down in yourunderwear….” has got to be
good. Most of the go-go
scene can be a bit boringand moronic, but this iscompletely over the top –which is much the best way.

Robert Fripp Network EG
Well, it’s got Fripp, Daryl
Hall, David Byrne, Brian Eno
and God knows who else,and it’s still a pile of shit.

The Waterfoot Dandy
14 Days RED RHINO
This one is very weird, very
arty, very clever, and still
a complete load of bollocks.
It’s just clever bollocks
instead of stupid bollocks.

North West Ten
You’ve Got All NightISLAND

Believe it or not, I like thisone. It’s got every single
late-’70s/early-’80s soulcliche there is, but it works.
There are a hundred otherrecords that sound exactly
like this one, but I still quite
like it.

Communal Drop
Fanatics DROPTEL
The bloke does a really
good Lou Reed
impersonation, and thesong isn’t half bad. Aftera couple of bottles of cider
this sort of dance record
would sound really great
if it was played really loud.
A really good noisy noisethat you can dance to.

Bill Nelson Sex Psyche – Etc
COCTEAUI just can’t take it any more.
Take it off! Take it off! I’m
going home!

a good grip on the beer-tray. I’d reallyappreciate it if you could issue and appeal
for a new hankie.”
Anything else while you’re at it?
“Yeah. Vorsprung Durch Alkohol.”

The world is my oyster
The Pogues are, of course, a deeply
divided band in the very best sense, with
the Shane/Spider/Rocky camp doing the
majority of onstage ranting and leisure-time
drinking, while the solid triumvirate ofdrummer Andrew, philosopher andaccordion player James, and the temporarily
out-of-action Country Jem (“He is having ababy, no?” – Spider) provide a more matureand occasionally enlightening perspectiveon the raison d’être of the whole wild
shebang. Suitably enough, the ancient andHanseatic city of Hamburg is just coming intoview as James takes over in the hot seat fromhis schnapp-happy hankieless partner.
“I think the most important thing for me isthat we are still an honest band, and it’s that
belief that keeps me going in the whole thing.
I hope that never goes, because then I’dprobably pack it in and I don’t want to dothat. I mean, this has to be one of the best
situations you could possibly find yourself in.
Going across Europe and you can’t even do
your job properly!
“Although we have improved quite a bit since
the early days, both in terms of our ability on
the instruments and in the dynamics ofactually playing together.”
So what will James do when the storm breaks?
“Oh, I’ve got quite a few plans up my sleeve.
I’d like to act, write a book, buy a canal barge, go
up in a hot-air balloon, all the usual things. The
world is my oyster, Barry. I’d even fancy being
a woodman for a while.”
Spider: “A woman?”Just a wee Lucozade for me, thanks
and somewhere beTween the openingbars of “Transmetropolitan” and the closing
verse of “Jesse James” it became all too clearthat James need not worry about the barge orwhatever for some time to come. Uncle Brianis rocking away at the side of the stage, about
900 Hamburgers are drowning in thunderous
streams of whisky, and I don’t really want togo home in the morning.
Much later on that night, Spider coughedabout a gallon of beer onto my bag, the manager
tried to beat up the roadie and we all ended up
in an Irish bar just off the Reeperbahn that was
run by a middle-aged man from Dungannon.
Andrew told me that he had laughed more on
this trip than he ever had before, and Shane
poured a bottle of vodka over the accordion
player’s head.
This may or may not have something to dowith the fact that the original boy from thecounty hell ended his stay in the Federal
Republic with a night in the local hospital anda very sore jaw. Me, I’m eagerly awaiting the
new album with Uncle Brian at the controls,
and the doctor even says that I might be able togo back to work before the summer.
This is Barry McIlheney, for Melody Maker,
in a nursing home somewhere in Surrey.
Barry McIlheney •HISTORY OF ROCK 1985 | 631985

a p r i l – J U NE

the power ofgloves: Frankie
frontman holly
Johnson in full fig

It was just one of those nights…
MM JUNE 29 Showbiz! Costumes! Frankie Goes To Hollywood theatrically wow the West Coast crowd.

ullstein bild / gettyExactly when it dawned onme that this was the greatest
show on earth is still beyond mycomprehension. It could have been when
the Frankies returned for an encore inheadbanger wigs – Nasher a dead ringer
for Dee Snider, Ped pumping drums undera big-boy 10-gallon hat – and proceeded tobludgeon Springsteen’s “Born To Run”, to theutter astonishment of the strait-laced Yanks.
Sweet sacrilege.
It could have been that perfect instantwhen Mark O’Toole – resplendent in military
trews, bare chest and braces – pummelled out
the orgasmic bassline to “Pleasuredome”. Or
when Holly did a Charlie Chaplin shuffle withhis shadow in a soft, blue boiler suit, bumcutely raised to the audience, striking Judy
Garland poses precisely on the beat andinviting us to “kiss me where it stinks”. Or
when Holly again, mincing under a tacky
blond wig, introduced the entire band (“Nash,the only man with 12 inches!”) after the final
note had been struck? Or when Marx’s headon the video screen illuminated theCalifornian sky until Reagan informed us,“Frankie Say No More.”
It could have been when
the schmaltzy “Power Of
Love” assumed epic
proportions and superseded

64 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

with “Two Tribes”. But more,“Nights In White Satin” as themuch more than this, they do
soppiest anthem ever to touch
GREEk THEATRE,
it their way in a prolonged fit
deep in an emotional moment,
LoS ANGELES
of enthusiasm.
just that crucial whisper from
It’s as if Frankie enjoy theircliche, just that shiver fromsongs rather than perform
parody, sentimentalism
them, like lads cutting a rug toshared. Or it could have been
their favourite songs at theirwhen Paul Rutherford, elegant
JUNE 12
favourite disco. It’s showy
as Errol Flynn, beautifully
without running amok, it’s precise
tanned, pierced nipple erect,
and yet partying, chemical andpoured a bottle of bevvy over his
comical, straightforward and subversive,
upturned head and into his grinning gob,
finger pointing and fun.
then ecstatically showered the front rows
Which was a bit of a shame for Belouiswith spume. Or… I dunno.
Some, because this young whippersnapper
It was just one of those nights, and from thefrom Sarf London is already getting screamed
off, I was gone. Even the first page of theat out here and he’d have toppled any otherprogramme, picturing Ped, the archetypal
headliners over and out. His modern dancebrickie, above the quote “Yeah, I’m well intowith memorable choruses and his style –Picasso” smacked of genius.
brusque and bullying – are efficiently
This Frankie show, criss-crossing the Statescomplimentary and the stuff of which successlike some sane extravaganza, was everythingis made. A tad too Bowie for some (Carlos
Morley’s purple prose promised. It has class
Alomar co-wrote some of the songs and– they carry Anthony Price effortlessly. It has
jammed tonight), Belouis’ “Imagination” andcheek – gay in every sense. It has abundant“Some People” are that uncommonest ofenergy – “Relax” is still brutally infectious. It
phenomena – the memorable hip-swayer.
has charm – the lads never stop smiling. It has
He worked hard to warm this crowd as theirony – they kick off with “War” and bow out
evening chilled and then, yes,Frankie came to Hollywood.
And Frankie conquered.

LIVE!

Steve SutherlandRefreshingly
populist
MM MAY 26 A slimmed-down
Lloyd Cole And The Commotions
debut new material.

LIVE!

Like a peacock’s tailS

MM JUNE 15 Sax colossus Sonny Rollins hits
London, for a show “crammed with berets”.

quoting for caprice, but extending the scope
onny Rollins, the greatest livingof his work through reference so that the
improviser on the tenor saxophone, issong form, rather than just this song, spreadsuch a rare visitor these days that theforth like a peacock’s tail. As at Drury Lane,
Dominion was crammed with berets from“Umbrella Man” hinted and hovered in thesenior to tenderfoot. It is no secret thatwings until its time was ripe.
Sonny’s albums have been a mixed blessing“My One And Only Love” was as
for well over a decade, with masterpieces
exhaustively encyclopaedic. Sonny’s
rubbing shoulders with unworthy funk, but
voracious creativity backed by his staggering
his live performances are something else
instrumental fitness left the house full
again, as his majestic performanceto bursting. On this form, he isa few years back at Theatre Royal,
overwhelming, and one was
Drury Lane, proved.
,
E
THEATRN
grateful for the section whereHis two opening numbers
io
iN
DoM
LoNDoNhe stuttered the theme
settled any question about
through a series of bald pitch
who was The Boss. “I’ll Be
variations, gradually fleshing
Seeing You” found the tenorout the flow, interweaving it
man pouring it on withoutwith “Greensleeves”, jokes
stint on a 10-minute solo thatJUNE
and gross low-register honks –ransacked popular song, not

!
E
V
I
L

a few brief words of thanks, and play
“Charlotte Street” instead of the “WichitaLineman” some of us had been waiting for
all day.
This minor complaint aside, he showed
tonight that he has immersed himself in awhole new range of positive influences, andlooks set to produce a rather special second
album at the end of the summer. Barry McIlheneya graphic demonstration of the process.
The rest of the band got a look in at last on
the calypsos and funkers that followed.
The great soloist, perhaps despairing offinding challenging accompaniment that
fits, has surrounded himself with functional,
reliable players. Pianist Mark Soskin anddrummer Tommy Campbell did what was
expected of them, though neither guitarist
was memorable.
“Don’t Stop The Carnival”, the closer –well, it would’ve been if the house hadn’t
forced him to return for a couple of sardonic
workouts, serves ’em right – came on asmechanical as a studio backing track, but
was emphatically transformed by Sonny’s
final solo. It was another genius helping ofmulti-phonics, total recall and structural
mastery on the hoof. Brian CaseHISTORY OF ROCK 1985 | 65

Peter still / gettyA

new slimline Lloyd Cole
RoCk CiTY,
opens his first English tour
NoTTiNGHAM
for some time by taking thestage to the haunting strains
of Ry Cooder’s theme fromSouthern Comfort. (Not)
MAY 13knowing Lloyd as I do, this issurely no accident, considering
the sense of isolation the man mustfeel from the current unhealthy
climate in this country, a quite hostileenvironment in which to perform fragile
songs about the power of a summer love,
Andy Warhol, and the problems of being
an innocent abroad.
Still, rather than pander to the not-sohard core down at the front by kicking off
with an old fave, young Lloyd insteadreached out toward the great unwashedand uncommitted by actually taking thetrouble to introduce himself and his
dreadfully dull-looking band before a note
had even been played.
lloyd cole and theThis quite unnecessary display of false
commotions at
modesty (“You probably don’t know who
the hammersmith
Palais, sept 2, 1985
I am”) no doubt won over the hearts andminds of some folk here who perhaps
previously considered the former fatboy totrek across the continent and most effective in
be a bit of a smartarse, and this early successthe near-gospel fusion of organ, sparse guitar
was consolidated when the aptly titled opener,
and immaculate phrasing from Cole himself.
“Perfect Blue”, turned out to be a rather witty
Of the more familiar material, “Rattlesnakes”
and refreshingly populist sign of the times.
sounded as inspired as ever, “Speedboat”
Best of a brand-new bunch was “Brand New
Friend”, a radical departure from the backfairly steamed along, and as for “Forest Fire”,
catalogue in its clear exhibition of American
well, absolutely.
musical, as opposed to lyrical, touches,
At the end, Slimline Cole was sufficiently
presumably picked up on the recent lengthy
pleased to permit himself a brief smile, utter

1985

a p r i l – J U NE

“I’m amiserableromantic”

66 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

A

— MELODY MAKER JUNE 15 —hot night in Georgia.
Peter Buck cracked open
another beer and stared
down a long tunnel into thepast, recalled the early daysof REM. Somewhere in theneighbourhood, something howled at the moonand the placid darkness stirred.
“You know,” Buck said, shirtsleeves flapping,forever frantic, “the most fun I ever had waswhen we first started touring, before we had any
records out, before anyone’d even heard of us.
We’d pull into some town and if we were lucky
we’d open for the local hot-shit band and blow the
fuckers offstage.
“In our own naive way, we were kinda arrogant.
We were like headhunters. Sometimes we’d open
for some cool bands, but usually we opened, youknow, for just some nobodies who weren’t very
good and we’d go in and say, ‘Man, let’s blow themoffstage.’ The whole idea was towalk on and do, like, a 50-minuteset that was like a hurricane
blowing off the stage.
“We wanted to present thosepeople with something that was justundeniable. By the time we were
finished, we wanted them to thinkthat everything else was irrelevant.
I just loved that challenge. And we
did it every night, man, in all thosebars. Man, we musta played, like,
200 bars, all over the South. We’dgo in and there’d be maybe 30
people if we were headlining on
maybe a cheap-drink night – ’cos »lisa haun / getty

REM’s third album
occasions a trip to theband’s American South,
where, inspired by ruraltales, they have founda way to retain theircharacteristic ambiguity.
“Too much these days is
simply handed to its
audience,” says Michael
Stipe. “There’s no room
for imagination.”

Michael Stipe :“I’m drawn to thoseromantic ideas of
tradition being
passed down by
way of storytelling”

HISTORY OF ROCK 1985 | 67

1985paul natkin / gettya p r i l – J U NE

we always tried to play cheap-drink nights, ’cos that would draw ’em in– and by the end of the set we’d always be able to kinda go, ‘See – now tell
your damned friends about this.’”Buck sounded nostalgic for that time, but he laughed at the idea.
“God, no,” he said, wiping a flank of hair out of his eyes, looking foranother beer. “When I think back, I just remember all the garbage we
had to go through. The five people to a bed, not being able to afford
hotel rooms, sleeping as we drove overnight, driving all night, all thetime, to get to the next show on time. Not being able to bathe. Not having
money for food.
“We went four days once in New York without any of us eating. On
the fourth day, we borrowed like 20 dollars off someone and went to
McDonald’s and had a feast. So, no… being broke, starving and evicted,
I’m not nostalgic for that at all. I just kinda miss the fun of turning up inthese real small country towns, not knowing what the hell was gonna
happen. It was always an adventure, you know, and that’s what kept us
going. See, whatever happened, it was one more story for us.
“Like, we played this gay bar once and they advertised us like, ‘Come see
the young boys in the band, they’re real cute.’ So all these queens turn up,leching after the band, not really listening to us at all. And backstage,they’re all asking for our phone numbers ’n’ stuff. I just cracked up. I justthought, ‘What a great way to make money.’“Christ,” Buck roared, “we played some weird places. Weird bars where
the audience had to check in their guns at the door, where crazy, drunken
guys would come down front ’n’ yell and scream at us and threaten to killus, you know. Mind you, we were pretty rowdy ourselves, kinda like The
Replacements, getting drunk and falling offstage
and fighting people in the audience, punching someguy if he was bothering us, that sorta thing.
“They weren’t real pleasant places, but we were
never in a situation that I ever thought was incredibly
life-threatening. None of us were ever beaten up,
and at least we weren’t playing those places you readabout in Alabama where they have chicken wire in
front of the stage.”
I told Buck about the Spit Club in Houston where
the stage was fenced off to repel boarders. The
night I was there, it was full of rich young Texans

pretending to be punks, lobbing bottles of chablis at Joe “King” Carrasco.
Buck recognised the scene.
“See, that’s kinda trendy trouble,” he laughed. “I mean, if those kids
came out to some of these bars in the South and tried that, you’d neversee ’em again. They’d be buried out back somewhere. Not everywherein the South’s like that. Like, Athens, here, is a nice, cultured, quiet town.
But if you’re maybe playing the wrong bar in somewhere like Charlotteor Augusta, you don’t pull that kinda stuff. I mean, if you do, you’ll get
like five guys who’ll pull you outside into the parking lot and smash yourhead in.
“But, hell,” Buck smiled mischievously, “I’m just a sweet-natured,
middle-class kid. I never get involved in anything like that.”
ast night there had been lightning all across theseSouthern skies. This morning the air has cleared and Athens
kicks back its heels in the summer splendour of a brightConfederate dawn. The sidewalks echo to the pleasant chatter ofstudents on their way to classes at the University Of Georgia.
Looking around us as we stroll downtown to meet Michael Stipe forcoffee, this is what we find: Athens conforming to an almost classic visionof the South, its architecture a permanent reminder of the great days ofSouthern prosperity and grandeur, those idyllic years before thedestruction and devastation of the Civil War and the bitter campaigns
fought throughout Georgia between Sherman’s conquering Unionarmies and Lee’s retreating rebels. Today, all battles behind them, thebuildings here look cool and elegant, calm in their eternal repose.
Michael Stipe settled in Athens nearly eight years
ago, enrolling at the University Of Georgia as an art
student. Mike Mills, who would later become REM’s
bass player, was also a student there, having recently
signed on with an old high-school friend, Bill Berry,
who would later become REM’s drummer. Peter
Buck, meanwhile, was working at a local hip record
store where he met Michael, a regular customer.
Peter would later become REM’s guitarist. Michael is
now their singer.
And now, too, some six years on from their earlybar-band obscurity, REM are the recognised

L

April 8, 1985: (l–r) Mike
Mills, Bill Berry, Peter
Buck and Michael
Stipe in Athens,
Georgia, “a nice,cultured, quiet town”

68 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

vanguard of the new American rockrenaissance, the band who virtually singlehandedly returned vitality, magic andintegrity to the generally discredited
corpus of white American rock’n’roll.
Drawing on the popular traditions of thatmusic, they have given us two albums of
the utmost majesty, Murmur (1983) andlast year’s Reckoning. Both rank among
the major landmarks of ’80s music andwere, indeed, lauded as such by critics who
found themselves for once unanimous in
their congratulations.
October 25, 1985,
That morning in Athens, Michael Stipe
Tyne-Tees TV studios,
Newcastle: REM
was waiting for the release of REM’s crucial
appear on The Tube
third album, Fables Of The Reconstruction.
performing “Driver
He was also suffering acutely from a lack8” and “Cant Get
There From Here”
of sleep: he’d been up most of the previous
night supervising the shooting of thegroup’s video for “Can’t Get There From
Here”, a bruising cruise buffeted by robust
Stax horns that will be the first single fromthe LP.
We went for a coffee for an hour and talked
about movies and art and death: just the thing,really, to start the day. Then we crossed thestreet and sat under some trees while Sheehan
scouted the locality for some beers and wetalked about Fables Of The Reconstruction.
Pretty girls in shorts were a constant distraction,
walking the tree-lined aisles of the university
campus in the bright morning sunshine like thismight be the last day of their lives.
Michael’s first idea for the new album was thatit should be very clanky and loud and raw; rawer
than Reckoning, and that had sounded as livid
as a Rickenbacker tornado with its strings on fire. It was difficult,
Stipe agreed, to recognise that intention on songs of such delicate,overwhelming beauty as “Wendell Gee” and “Good Advices”, two of the
new LP’s most poignantly graceful tracks. Nevertheless, that intention
was a real reflection of the kind of music he was mostly listening to as heprepared material for Fables….
“A lot of what I was listening to,” he elaborated, a scruffy little figure
with the look of a dustbowl hobo, the brim of his hat pulled downromantically over one eye, “was, like, cassettes recorded in Tennessee, inthe mountains. Appalachian folk songs, field recordings – yeah, literally
someone with their tape recorder, recording an old man with a fiddle,
with a woman in the background with her hand on the stove. That sort ofimage, I think, really infected the way I wanted it to sound.
“I also had the idea of it being a kind of storytelling record,” hecontinued, his voice a husky Southern blur, easy on the ear. “I was very
fascinated by the whole idea of the old men sitting around the fire,passing on these legends and fables to the grandchildren. And, you know,that little boy sitting over there building a teepee out of sticks, listening to
all these stories, taking in all those old legends and tales.”One of the first candidates for the production job on Fables… waseccentric ’60s legend Van Dyke Parks. Last year, Parks released Jump, analbum based around the Uncle Remus stories. Stipe thought Parks would
be in perfect sympathy with the new songs he was writing, most of whichwere emerging as vague but powerfully evocative vignettes with anelusive but eventually quite telling air of rural fable about them that began
to complement the storytelling traditions of the Confederate South.
REM eventually passed on Parks and other names entered the frame.
The group by now had decided not to go again with the Mitch Easter/
Don Dixon production team responsible for
Murmur and Reckoning and unanimously agreed
that it was time to test themselves with a new
producer. Anyway, as Bill Berry would later
comment, Easter was now busy with his own band,
Let’s Active, and was eager to assert himself as a
songwriter and performer.
“I think,” Berry explained, ‘That he was getting
a little miffed by the fact that whenever he did aninterview that he thought was going to be about
Let’s Active, the first questions he was asked
were always about producing REM. I’m sure hewould’ve produced the album if we’d asked
him. At the same time, I’m sure he was relieved
when we didn’t.”
Michael recalled Elliot Mazer, Neil Young’s
occasional producer, being nominated at
one point to work on the record. Bill Berryremembered Hugh Padgham, who’s worked
with The Police, being mentioned as potential
producer. Most intriguingly of all, hementioned that Elvis Costello had at one point
been mad for the job.
“However,” Bill remarked laconically overdrinks one afternoon in the Georgia Hotel, “I think Jake Riviera and Miles
Copeland (boss of IRS, REM’s record company) don’t get along. In fact,
I believe they have a history of intense conflict, so that kinda slowed down
communications there.”
The job eventually went to Joe Boyd, the inspired choice of Peter Buck,a longtime fan of Boyd’s legendary work with Nick Drake, Fairport
Convention and Richard Thompson, one of Buck’s great musical heroes.
Buck: “We just gave him a call and he said, ‘Yeah, I’ll be in the area andI’ve got some free time, let’s do a demo.’ We did something like 16 songs
with him in one day. He was in town, here, like on the Monday. He saw us
play on the Tuesday. I think on the Wednesday we said, ‘Let’s do thealbum.’ We flew to England that Friday.”
The prospect of recording for the first time outside Mitch Easter’s
Drive-In studio in Winston, Salem, in North Carolina, provoked no greatoutbreak of group hysteria.
“I was only worried about the weather.” Buck insisted, “which was
miserable. Y’all lived up to your reputation, fully. It rained every single
day it wasn’t snowing.”
Neither was Buck much concerned that working in England would
seriously affect REM’s songwriting. “Hell,” he said, laughing bubbles into
his beer, “it’s not like we thought that coming to England we’d startcoming out with sea shanties or, you know, Boy George-type stuff.”
Working with Boyd, however, turned out to be a lot more painstaking
than working with Mitch Easter. A meticulous attention to detail meantthat Boyd would spend hours going over tapes of the album, looking forthe perfect mix, the final perspective on every song. Stipe confessed that
he was frustrated at the time, but listening to the finished record, can now
appreciate the rewards of Boyd’s determined perseverance. È

HISTORY OF ROCK 1985 | 69

rex features“We went fourdays once in
New York
without any
of us eating”

1985

a p r i l – J U NE

At the time, though, it all seemed very distant from the atmosphere inwhich REM had produced the mighty Reckoning.
“That was kinda intense,” Stipe grinned winningly, looking
disconcertingly like Kurt Russell in John Carpenter’s movie-biog of Elvis
Presley. “That was a 12-day drunken party. No sleep, just staying up andstaying drunk or whatever. We took things a little, uh, easier, this time.”“We set new land speed records on Reckoning,” Peter Buck said. “It was
mixed and recorded, I figure, in a total of 12 days, including a half day off
for going to a movie. We just knocked the songs out; like all the basic
tracks were done in two days, and most of the overdubs were done on thethird day. After that, we kinda slowed down a little.”
ables Of The Reconstruction is the most stunning rockrecord so far released in 1985, and I don’t think I’ll be alone inthinking so. Combining the physicality – the sheer, imperious
tremendous burn-ass visceral assault of Reckoning – with a maturerevision of the mysterious, glowing atmospheres of Murmur, REM
have here crafted a particular masterpiece.
Boyd allows them to sound expansive without making them soundglossy, urgent without being frantic. The tumbling, impressionistic
beauty of, say, “Green Grow The Rushes” rests comfortably against theharsher lyrical sting of “Kahoutec” and “Old Man Kinsey”; the strange,elemental shades of “Feeling Gravitys Pull”, with its surreal strings andincidental atonalities, falls into place effortlessly alongside the swirling
mysteries of “Maps And Legends”, while “Wendell Gee” is one of theirfinest ever moments; REM themselves defying gravity with a song of suchfragile beauty, one wonders at its very existence.
At every point, this record sings! Buck’s guitar rings through every
groove like heaven’s own chorus, a six-string orchestra. Berry and Mills
punctuate every moment with flourishing drives, discreet accents andpneumatic emphasis; everything they’re asked to provide, they provide,usually with ideas to spare. Stipe, meanwhile, turns in his most arresting
vocal performances to date. Cleverly, Boyd retains his vocal
eccentricities, enhances them, allowing Stipe the clarity of space he’s
always needed for the communication of his haunting, deeply felt andenormously affecting lyrical stratagems.
Like its applauded predecessors, Fables Of The Reconstruction is a vivid
testament to Stipe’s ability to write songs that illuminate, to evoke
emotions and feelings that are never specifically defined. Stipe’s lyrics
and REM’s music describe atmospheres, twists of feeling, emotional
panoramas, without ever resorting to pedantic explanation. In someways, REM has perfected a way of telling the listener everything theywant to know without appearing to have told them anything at all. REM
are masters of suggestion.
REM apparently relish the ambiguity of the music they produce, areexcited by the simple fact that anyone listening to their records will be
expected to concentrate, lend a keen ear towhat’s going on. They’ve put a lot of work into
their music; now it’s your turn.
“Michael gets criticised because people say
they can’t understand what it is he’s singing,”
Bill Berry said. “But I wouldn’t want him tosing any other way, and I’m glad we made thedecision never to include a lyric sheet withthe albums. That would be like going to themovies and getting the script to the film withyour ticket.”“Too much, too often, these days is simply
handed to its audience, complete, like a platter,”
Stipe argued in defence of the inscrutability of
his lyrics. “MTV is a good example. Television,
generally, is a good example. There’s no room for
imagination, no room for improvisation, forinterpretation. Everything is rehearsed. No one’s
able to find out anything for themselves. It’s all
become too easy.
“People need to think for themselves again, use
their imaginations. And not necessarily in an
intellectual way, ’cos we’re not an intellectual band,
we’re not any of that shit, even though we’ve kinda
gotten a lot of that kinda press over here. We’re justasking people to kinda stretch themselves a little andput some of their own experiences into the songs orFtake out of the songs what they recognise…
If that means there’s some philosophy thatthey dig out of the songs that’s gonna change
their lives, then that’s fine – but if they listen to
those same songs and they make you wanna
dance your damned ass off, then that’s fine,too. It might even be better.”“Don’t tell anybody what they already know,”is Buck’s concise definition of what it is that
REM do; or, perhaps, don’t.
eckOning took REM into theAmerican Top 40 – an extraordinary
success for a band with no claim at all
to primetime MTV, whose records are stillallowed limited airplay. On their last tour,
they were playing 5,000-seater basketballarenas and hockey rinks. They didn’t evenhave a record to promote at the time, weremerely keeping their hands in, working up
the live identities of the songs from the newalbum. And yet they sold out every date.
The potential success of Fables… is likely toexert a commercial pressure on them toincrease their public profile, sign on for every
vast stadium show available to them; to accept
the kind of offers they’ve so far turned down;
to turn an impressive independent success into
a crushing commercial victory.
Michael Stipe was looking forward to noneof this; clearly, the mindless adulation of theworld’s impressionable millions didn’t
especially appeal to him.
“I’ve never aspired to that kinda success,” hesaid. “This, to me, is success.” He made a vague
gesture with his hands. “Just being here, doin’
what I’m doin’.”“I really love playing bars,” Buck admitted.
“I like to see who I’m playing for. We’ve playedthese big arenas, man, and we hated it. You
know, we opened six dates for The Police andit was miserable. I remember sitting in
Philadelphia and it was, like, 105 degrees, and they were carrying kids
over the barriers. It’s one in the afternoon and you can’t even walk aroundoutside it’s so hot, and we had to go on in 10 minutes. And I’m going, ‘Man,
I just don’t wanna go on, let’s just break up the band.’“I mean, it was so no fun; we’ll never do thatshit again. As soon as that show was over it was
like, ‘Hell, let’s go get drunk!’ Shea Stadiumwith The Police was kinda fun, ’cos no one in
New York really knew who we were at the time
and we only played 20 minutes – that’s all
they wanted us to play – and it rained during
our set, and so everyone was screwing aroundwith their clothes off when we played, which
made it kinda neat… But every other date waskinda, sheeeesh…” He shook his head indisbelief. “There were all these really moronic
Police fans sticking their middle fingers at us,
booing us ’cos they wanted to see Sting thatmuch quicker…”“That Police tour was a joke,” Bill Berry agreed
vehemently. “The record company tried every
means of coercion to get us to do it and finally wesaid, ‘OK, we’ll do it, we’re curious, maybe we will sellrecords and maybe people will respond.’ But it wasl\INI
Illlld IldllI /if IO
hopeless. We shoulda stayed home and written somesongs and got drunk for all the fuckin’ good it did us.
“And once again, it proved that we are usually right.
We shouldn’t have played that tour. We shouldn’t
have listened to the record company. We shoulda
done what we believed to be right. Just because we’ve
hooked up with this vast business machine doesn’t

R“You know, we
opened six
dates for The
Police and it
was miserable”

70 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

I

mean we have to go along with everything it says. Our
intuition has been more valuable to us than any of
the great words of wisdom passed on to us by thedamned record company.”
That morning in Athens, as pretty girls passedby and the sun glowed hard in a bright blue sky,
I suggested to Michael Stipe that at the heart of
REM’s music was a stirring romanticism, a nostalgia,
almost, for something that America had lost; a sense,
perhaps, that the past was maybe a better place to be,that fundamental values had been lost in the passingof centuries; that our own century had brutalised
imaginations, buried hope, generosity and thecapacity to dream. This was a century of vandalism and de cay. To that
extent, Fables Of The Reconstruction seemed like an elegy to a vanishing
America: lyrical, poignant, heartfelt.
“Maybe,” Stipe shrugged, a little uncomfortable, perhaps, to be caught
in such a close focus. “I guess I’m just a miserable romantic… I’m realsaddened by what’s happened to this century, to the world. Specifically,
America’s become like a dumping ground, its culture is dying, and when
the culture dies, so does the country. I guess that’s why I’m so drawn tothese romantic ideas of tradition being passed down by way of storytelling, by way of folk music, country music, hillbilly music, the music of
the people. Somehow, that has to be preserved.”
It seemed to me that REM were making a brave stand against this kindof degeneration: maybe that’s why their music appeared to possess sucha sense of mission, a defiant optimism in the face of everything violent
and despicable the world could throw against it, remained uplifting in
the jaws of disaster.
“I guess that’s just because we’re the kind of people we are,” Peter Buck
would subsequently reflect. “We’re not overly optimistic. When you lookaround you at the world, you can’t be. There’s
still too many countries where people are beingslaughtered right and left and there’s still a lot of justoutright savagery.
“But you don’t just give in to that. Sure the world
sucks, but whining about it isn’t gonna make it any
better. I hope REM does sound uplifting, that would
be a great compliment to pay our music. I mean,
there are, like, too many professional whiners,
people who are, like, automatically negative.
“You can’t ignore what goes on around you, but you
have to look beyond that. I mean, you don’t want to
get like, you know, Jackson Browne and get reallyobsessive about your problems. You listen to Jackson Browne and you justgo, ‘Jackson, you’re rich and you’re handsome and you’re still relatively
young, will you shut the fuck up! Be happy once.’”“Music should reach out to people – you can’t afford to be so introverted.
I think that anything that reaches out and touches people emotionallyis doing a service, whether people understand why it’s moving them ornot. We always wanted our music to have heart, you know. That’s why
we sometimes sound a little weird or cranky, ’cos we always try to leave
the heart in.
“And also, we always wanted our records to be like doors to otherworlds. We wanted to say, ‘Look, here’s the door, on the other side of thisdoor there’s, like, different rooms, another world.’“We don’t have any answers for anyone; we’re just saying, ‘This is REM,
this is our music, this is the door, why not open it and walk through to theother side, maybe take a look around and see if you like it.’”
Somewhere in the neighbourhood, something was still howling at
the moon, stirring the darkness of another legendary Southern night.
Allan Jones ¥HISTORY OF ROCK 1985 | 71

bleddyn butcher / rex features“America’s become
like a dumping ground,its culture is dying”:
Michael Stipe in 1985

1985

a p r i l – J U NE

Ptartedhmhood✓ALBUMS

reX / shutterstock

Marillion Misplaced Childhood EMI
In which the lamb finally lies
down and brings it all back homewith a vengeance. Or the greatand seemingly never-ending
story of one Derek Dick, aka Big
Fish, part the third. And if we take
Script For A Jester’s Tear as being
the initial calling card that
schooled the world and Fugazi as
the desperate cry of a smalltown
boy well out of his depth and tree,
then it has to be acknowledged
straight away that MisplacedChildhood fits perfectly into its
allotted space as the final
instalment in this strangely
regressive trilogy of growing up
in public. This, however, is nomere exercise for the hit parade
ground. This is serious exorcism.
As such, Misplaced Childhood
is what some folk used to call aconcept album, and in the best
tradition of that particular beast,
this one pauses neither for
refreshments nor even a quick pit
stop along the way. One great
crescendo becomes another’s
opening lazy drawl, one loosely
defined song cascades into the
middle of nowhere, and all of it so
72 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

ALBUMS

immaculately
constructed thatyou can’t really
see the joins.
Amateurshrinks apart,however, thetrue raison d’êtreof MisplacedChildhood must
forever remain
something of amystery tale.
Both “Bitter Suite
Parts I–V” and thestirring “HeartOf Lothian”
would appear
to have theirgenesis (sic) in the Fishman’s sad
Highland roots, but then again
probably not.
This wonderfully adolescentgame of spot-the-hidden
meaning is, of course, half the fun
for the thousands of Marillion
devotees who will rush out totake this new collection to theirhearts and minds and then sit up
all night long to discuss the finer
points of the Fish manifesto
before finally collapsing in aheap, exhausted by the searchbut united through a communal
sense of bygone days and too
many broken dreams.
This enormous
lyrical noholds-barred
expressionof angst anddislocation, whiletransmitted
through an
inherently limited
musical style, isultimately whatmakes MisplacedChildhood far
more than justanother whiteman’s trek
through the

Marillion: (l–r)
Pete Trewavas,
Mark Kelly, Steve
Rothery, Ian
Mosley and Fish

REVIE
W

hysterical jungle
suspiciously likeof the dreaded
the beginningpomp-rock.
of a hugely
Instead, thesuccessful and1985
overriding sensevery lucrative planof blood, sweat andto take over thetears manages toworld known as AOR.
triumph over the in-built
And as with all suchmock heroics and occasional
mega-dollar scams, the basic
delusions of grandeur, thus
idea is remarkably simple.
ensuring that Marillion can now
World-weary, almost whiskyenjoy their finest hour to date.
soaked vocals, a guitar sounddesigned purely for digital
Barry McIlheney, MM Jun 15
recording, and lots more songs
Dire Straits
about TV and girls.
Brothers In Arms VERTIGO
Highlights? Ah, possibly“Why Worry”, a typical Knopfler
It says right here that Brothers
ballad-cum-Tales Of The
In Arms signals the official end ofRiverbank arrangement, anda two-year period of hibernation
most certainly the title track,by Mark Knopfler and the rest
which manages to overshadowof the Dire Straits. Clearly, theeverything else on display,
original Sultan of Swing has ashowing off the major new
rather odd attitude to resting up,
lessons in atmospherics andusing this supposed break fromdynamics that must have been
the platinum trail to get involved
learnt on the recent Cal/Local
in all manner of things, most
Hero soundtracks.
notably film, Dylan and young
Talking of which, Mark Knopfler
Roddy Frame.
will now undoubtedly go on to
Unfortunately for the rest of us,
much greater things, arranging
this admirable spirit of adventure
and producing work for a wholefails to materialise when it comes
host of artists, and generally
to Brothers In Arms. Instead, itestablishing himself as theall sounds just a bit too like thenearest thing we yet have to alast Dire Straits album, whichvery English and much thinnersounded not unlike the last one
Vangelis. When it comes to Dire
before that, which sounded
Straits, however,
the old rockschool restraints
and undeniably
attractive smellof the winning
formula seemto block out
any suchexperimental
work and what
you end up withis something
very like thesame old story.
Barry McIlheney,
MM May 18

Miles DavisYou’re Under Arrest CBS
Judging by the cover shots ofMiles looking studiedly
dangerous with asubmachine gun, andjudging by the music
too, the great man is
SINGLESafter the money on
this one. Those wholong for the old
Miles should go
1985
straight out and buy
Miles Davis & John
Coltrane Live inStockholm 1960 on the
Dragon label or — even older
Miles — the new Boplicity LP,
The Redskins:
At Last!, with Miles and the(l–r) Martin
Lighthouse All-Stars.
Hewes, Nick Kingand Chris Dean
Cyndi Lauper’s “Time AfterTime” — the hit of Miles’ lastRoyal Festival Hall concert —SINGLEShas been issued simultaneously
The Bangles Going Down
as a single, a clue to the general
To Liverpool CBS
intention of the artist. She got
lucky running into a tune like
Some of you poor souls out
this – arise Lady Lauper – athere may find all this a little bit
gloriously drenched drizzle
incongruous. Four gals fromof a trumpet sound. In fact.
the sunny West Coast singing
Miles himself sounds great
about UB40s and a lazy day on
throughout; it’s the concept the
Merseyside might well get up
jazzers will quarrel with.
your precious noses, but look,
The most substantial piece
there’s the door over there andhere, “Katia Prelude” and “Katia”,
we’ll give you a shout when weamounts almost to a little suite.
get to the Phil Collins single.
Plenty of electronic squirts andRight. With their reworking of
ultraviolet gobblings go on fromex-Soft Boy Kimberley Rew’s
Robert Irving III’s synthesizers,“Going Down To Liverpool”,
there’s plenty of rubbery rhythmthe wonderful Bangles havesection chug, and at one point
created a superb slice of pop, so
a near-relative of “Petrushka”
truly pathetic and uplifting all at
appears as a riff. Miles banks inonce that you really don’t know
and out of all this, dipping thewhether to laff or cry. The
beak into the beat or scampering
guitars, which we best describein lithe opposition to it, fielding
as plangent, are permanently
a repertoire of trumpet timbres.
on the point of breaking down,
John McLaughlin takes anwhile the combined Bangle
extended solo which bridges thevoices tackle the whole
two parts, aching and squalling inenterprise with a refreshingly
the usual ghastly manner.
perfect pitch. It really makes
Fans of Sting will probably want
you want to throw the towel in
the album for his two-second
for just a few days, and you’re
imitation of a Spanish policeman
looking for possible flaws whenon “One Phone Call”, though
you remember that the video
fans of Miles will want to tune out
features none other than thethe entire foreground of cop
great Mister Spock. This,
voices and sirens to get at the old
Captain, would appear to be
Harmon mute in back.
a perfectly logical hit. MM Apr 6Tenorman Bob Berg could
The Redskins Bring It Down
have phoned in most of his(This Insane Thing) DECCA
contribution, with the exceptionof the title track, on which he’s
Not as fearsome as one is led toallowed a brief, good jazzman’s
believe, but we won’t hold thatsolo. The final medley features
against them. Ushered in on aembers of “Jean-Pierre”, a lot
magnificently ragged selectionof washbasin noises, and Miles’of bass and drums, it
joke: “Ron, I meant for you topouts and teases
push the other button.”with its odd
None of it sticks to the soulspurts of brass
like Miles on “Walkin’’, “So What”
for so longor “All Blues” from the Dragon
beforealbum. Over to you. Brian Case,seeing any
real action,
MM Jun 15

W
REVIE

Simply Red Money’s Too Tight(To Mention) ELEKTRA
A soul beacon made in Britain
but bright enough to burn theeyes of any young blade acrossthe world. Manchester’s Simply
Red have injected both emotion
and spontaneity into The
Valentine Brothers’ club hit,turning a heartfelt attack on
the new right into the kind ofswelling anthem that should bescreamed out loud for all tohear. Mick Hucknall’s aching
vocals have the mark of a
defiantly individual singer andfirmly set the band apart fromthose white boys who would beblack. He’s been compared to Al
Green, but with respect,
Nina Simone isa more apt
comparison forthe strangely
fluttering
timbre ofsuch aplaintive
voice.
Hitting justthe right
note
betweenbitterness
and energy,
this is one ofthose records thatmakes you want to movethrough its words as well as it’s
rhythm. It’s cheeky, too: “Didthe earth move for you, Nancy,”
says cowboy Ronnie as the fallout settles. If I was Paul Weller
I think I’d throw in the towel
when I heard this. MM May 11

Phil Collins One More Night
VIRGIN

Well, me and Phil, we go backa long way, you know? Why, it
seems like only yesterday hehad a No 1 hit with that young
fellow from Earth, Wind & Fire,but here he is, workaholic of theyear, having yet another stab at
a top spot all on his own. This
one seems more thanlikely to do the job,but really, if he
was playing
outside thefront door I
think I’d still
have to pull
the blinds.
MM Apr 6

Duran Duran A
View To A Kill EMI
The inevitable
marriage: tacky,
nouveau-riche pop stars join
forces with the Bond moguls for
a forthcoming orgy of namedropping, cheap innuendo, bigguns and bare flesh. Nothing on
Macca’s “Live and Let Die” orindeed the seminal Bassey“Goldfinger”. MM May 11
HISTORY OF ROCK 1985 | 73

Leon Morris / getty

that theycome close
to losing it
altogether.
Finally, they
hit it with aramshackle
soul groove
straight out of
Motown circa ’65
and Christopher Moore
begins to strut his stuff withsomething approaching a
vengeance. Seemingly shabby
and disjointed, it eventually
hits all the right buttons with
infectiously hypnotic effect.
Moore rants on about this andthat – as he does – but it’s those
gloriously blustering drums andhorns that come out and do all
the fist-fighting. In the words ofBarry McGuigan, this is a bit
special. MM Jun 15

—THE
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Ja n u a r y – J une

Readers’ letters
MM/NME JAN-JUN Bragg backed, “riot” derided, Moz mocked and much more…

Put him on a pedestal
What a bloody miracle! Mr
William Bragg, alias “Spy Versus
Spy” on Top Of The Pops. What an
amazing feat! Can you imagine his
task? Making it big with a voice likea foghorn and all the technique ofa guitarist with three thumbs. I
have to admit that it was my good
self who, sitting across a table in
the Latchmere, assured the oldboy he wouldn’t get radio pay, letalone Top Of The Pops. I’ve been
eating my hat ever since.
What a bloody hero! I think of
all the cynical, sneering crap he’s
had to push aside to get to thecharts. Long live the lone voice –well done, Billy Bragg!
ANDREW CUNNINGHAM,
Woodside SW19
Hi Andy, can’t keep you out of theMaker these days, can we? Don’t
choke on that brim now – looking
forward to your next missive – Steve
Sutherland (MM Apr 6)

ITV / REX / ShuTTERSTockLife’s not a riot with JAMC
On reading a recent MM, I noticed
a report on a supposed riot at theJesus And Mary Chain gig at North
London Polytechnic on March 15.
In this account, your reporter
states that the “support band,
Jasmine Minks, were forced
offstage after being attacked by
the crowd”. To use the old refrain,
was he at the same gig I was?
As a member of the Jasmine
Minks, I thought I had quite a clear
view of the whole proceedings, but
obviously my eyesight andmemory are not what they were.
The way I recall the events of theevening, the first band on stage,
Meat Whiplash, were attacked bya number of spectators after oneof them stupidly threw an empty
wine bottle into the audience.
We followed Meat Whiplashwith tense feelings about the way
the evening was developing, but
we went down very well indeed,
thank you very much, with not a

missile (or grimace even) in sight.
At the end, the crowd wereshouting for more but we decided
to remove our equipment from thepoly as quickly as possible asanyone with half a brain could tellwhat was going to happen later.
And, as I’m unemployed, I can’t
afford to replace any damages.
I’ve found that the weekly music
papers, in trying to establish thecauses of the “riot”, have ignored
the fact that many people in theaudience were drinking heavily. In
fact, they drank all the beer in thepoly, causing further aggravation
for the thirsty wrecking crew asthey tried to obtain alcohol andtempers frayed.
I found the “riot” quite tedious
really; it was so predictable andI saw many “nice” middle-classboys grin fiendishly to each otheras they reached the (“gosh, how
wild!”) peak of excitement
overturning the PA. We took our£50 and left – hopefully there
should be no effect on future
performances as, having tasted
the grapes of pseudo-wrath, wewill rely on honest presentation as
always and leave sensationalism
to those who seek it.
To return to the point of thisletter, due to the facts not being
checked properly, a total lie has
been printed concerning us inyour publication and some friends
and relatives were worried. I feelI am well within my rights todemand an apology. I bear no illwill to you or any of your staff; I
just want to see the facts in print asthey were in action on the night.
ADAM SANDERSON, on behalf of
the Jasmine Minks
Sorry about that, Adam. We were
too busy dodging shrapnel andsearching for bev to get out facts
right. But then again, facts? Whoneeds ’em? – SS (MM Apr 6)

Heavy words, lightly thrown
I don’t want to join the growing
number of people hurling
unwarranted criticism at
Morrissey, but surely he leaves
himself open to it? Saying video isvile and then doing one for “HowSoon Is Now?” makes you think heshould maybe take Janice Long’s
advice and keep his mouth shut.
As he said on Oxford Road Show,he has all the comforts andmoney he needs now and willfind it heart-breaking to leave
Manchester for “insulated against

real life” London. I’ll try to believe
you, Morrissey, honestly. But
why doesn’t he take that holiday
in the sun – I’ll bet he succumbsto the Yankee dollar. Oh well,that’s progress in the pop world,
I suppose.
Bring on the next righteous
pop group. Oh gawd, don’t bother!
I don’t want to be disillusioned
any more.
MARGARET, unemployed Smithsfan (still the greatest band in Britain
at the moment) (MM Apr 13)�
i lu i ii�r�'I

Rival pursuit
Give me five reasons why yoursquib is superior to NME (apartfrom the fact that they wouldn’t
print this).
ONE OF SIMON BATES’ ANALHAIRS, Crowthorne, Bucks
A sense of humour. An alcohol
problem. A Will Hay Appreciation
Society. Reviews that don’t appear
a month late. Writers who canwrite. OK? – SS (MM Apr 13)

Semiotic-detached glasshouse
The ultimate test of any political
idealist is whether or not theywould spill blood for theirbeliefs. Paul Weller would. The
Redskins have. Where does Green
Gartside stand? Maybe he would
write a thesis.
TONy MEDLyCOTT, Chigwell,Essex (NME Jun 15)

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Why are Gavin Martin and Green
Gartside embarrassed at thethought of excess philosophy in
an NME interview? Why can’t welearn about structuralism andsemiotics through the NME? Is
there no place in England forintelligent analysis of work suchas Scritti Politti’s? Are the French
the only ones who can write
seductively about popular
culture? I am “the girl in the street”
and I demand mental stimulation,
not pleasing the lowest-commondenominator fare.
VICTORIA K, London, SW9
For intelligent printed analysis of
Scritti, semiotics ’n’ all, there aresurely no more “seductive” pages
than those of NME. But for those
who still find Gavin’s piece – not tomention Andy Gill’s LP review on
page 26 of this week’s issue – the“lowest common denominator”,
there are plenty of newsagents
ready to oblige with far morevulgar fractions – Adrian Thrills(NME Jun 15)

1

NAMMfNSMl1N ODEONSAT/SUN/MON15,16,77M MAYAl7 30

oMC SHUT UP!
RUNÉ(liNE talk tENEnn«iiN �O «:.

N7 AND 12 SINGLE-

12/BRW 25 Q)

FREDDIE
MERCURI'I W.4 8a.•b LeE. K.

mji� 60d.á
HISTORY OF ROCK 1985 | 75
A:i1985J u ly – sep tember

thE stYLE coUNciL,
kAtE bUsh, thE cUrE,
NEiL YoUNg ANd MorE

mike cameron / getty.,“It’s 12 o’clock in London,
7am in Philadelphia…”:
Live Aid at Wembley
Stadium on July 13, 1985
– an afternoon of “brutal
contradictions”

76 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

More thanentertainment

NME JULY 20 Live Aid unites the rockworld to relieve Ethiopian famine.

T

1��ít

I

e

p

R�'

.o-

he most remarkable thing about Live
Aid was that it proved to be more spectacularand compelling than anybody had everimagined, raising over £50 million for African
famine relief. Beamed across the world, it filled
the streets and homes of millions with anunholy mix of commitment, sheer trivia andegotistical pyrotechnics.
A Woodstock for ’85, Live Aid, in contrast to
previous generation’s blissed-out fantasies, waspragmatic and focused; a massive celebration ofStar Wars technology harnessed for a people
dying in the shadow of the west’s new digital gods.
Asked to stomach the most unsettling
juxtaposition of images, from pop prancers toslow death in a bleached-out desert, it wasdifficult not to be shocked by the brutal
contradictions inherent in such a display –people frolicked in the sun so others might live.
Only a handful of artists really seemed tounderstand the occasion’s full significance. Elvis
Costello neatly made the link with The Beatles’
first global broadcast with a moving solo version
of “All You Need Is Love”, one of the many Lennon
songs scattered through the shows.
Others channelled their feeling into
WEMBLEY
performance that were charge with
JAIL STADIUMLONDON
Awn
PHILADELPHIA
a self-revealing intensity: Bowie, The
BRYAN
ADAMS
BOOMTOTo WN RATS
TI[
Who, and an astounding Patti Labelle.
DAM
STADIUM
ERIC CLAPTONPLRCOLLBVSWRAIJ DUMN
A spread of black artists would
F1V15 COSTELLOYULl AND wTEs
DIRE STRAf1S
have
made it a real cross-cultural
RR
MICKN
BRYAN FERRY
�
GEE
El
Gp
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E
phenomenon. It was left to the few to
WAYIONLLNNbJGS
A DES
NY: KERSHAWAIDROBERTPM
remind us of music’s real potential – HallAUSON HOYET
POWER STATgN& Oates jamming with The Temptations
QUEEN
PRETENDERS
SALE
underlying what could have been.
SDAU
PAN
BALLET
4=40N
STATUS Q J
Whatever, Live Aid was a classic
COUNCILATIpIS
5
example of western charity. A temporary
ULTRANJ%
VERY
PAUL YoI
relief for a problem with far-ranging
SYNAM
implications, it demonstrated beyond
D*
WLO
*JUL
doubt that pop music really can do morethan entertain.
CARS

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HISTORY OF ROCK 1985 | 77

1985

j u l y – s e p t em b e r“Concernedover drug
abuse”MM SEPT 21 Iron Maiden donate
single royalties to charity.
ron MaIDen are donating all artist
royalties from their new single to anumber of anti-heroin and drug abuseorganisations. The double A-sided single,“Running Free” and “Sanctuary”, wasrecorded live at Long Beach Arena,
California, and is out on September 23.
“On returning from our 11-month world
tour, we were very concerned to readabout the amount of heroin, solvent andgeneral drug abuse that is taking place inthis country,” said an Iron Maiden
spokesman. “The band is totally against
this and we hope that this contribution tovarious drug abuse charities will play somepart in relieving the situation. We certainly
hope that all metal fans have the sense to
say NO. Remember, sport and music is a far
better high than any drug, so take care.”
The single is available in seven- and12-inch versions, and comes in a poster
bag featuring photographs from theband’s recent World Slavery Tour. As wellas “Running
Free” and“Sanctuary”, the12-inch includes“Murders In The
Rue Morgue”,
recorded
at London
Hammersmith
Odeon in
October ’84.
Neither“Sanctuary” nor“Murders In The
Rue Morgue”
will be includedon Iron Maiden’s forthcoming live double
album. All tracks were produced byMartin Birch. Proceeds from the“Sanctuary” single will go to The AntiHeroin Campaign, City Roads, Kick The
Habit and Still Waters.

richard a. aaron / gettyI78 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

Dexys: dispute
could delay releaseof latest album

Seeking an injunctionA

MM SEPT 7 Dexys fall out
with another producer.

Rowland, for his part, apparently claims thats NME went to press on Monday, a court
battle was taking place in which producer
as Winstanley didn’t complete the album, he
Alan Winstanley sought to halt the releasecannot receive any production credit.
of Dexys Midnight Runners’ forthcoming
Hence the legal battle, which could see thealbum Don’t Stand Me Down.
album’s release being deferred.
Roland has been involved in a fracas with aContacted by this paper, Winstanley
producer before. In mid-1980, while working
admitted that he was seeking an injunction but
with producer Peter Wingfield and engineer
felt unable to comment on the case because ofBarry Hammond on the album Searchinglegal complications involved. However, NME
understands that the producer is unhappy
For The Young Soul Rebels, Dexys decided tosnatch the completed tapes from Chippingwith the album’s inner-sleeve credits, which
Norton studio in order to hold EMI to ransom.
read “Produced by Kevin Rowland – Recorded
Wingfield, who confirmed the theft, claimed
by Alan Winstanley”.
The story is thatat the time that he wasWinstanley was contracted
convinced the group would
to produce the album andhave resorted to physicalagreed to do so on theviolence if he or anyone else
understanding that it would
had attempted to stop them.
be completed by March 1
That same week, thethis year, at which point he
Dexys placed ads with all
was to commence work on
the main music papers in
the new Madness album.
which they stated “MusicThe Dexys, believing thatPress writers… try to cover
their own album could be completed by thistheir total lack of understanding behind a hazedate, apparently agreed to Winstanley’s terms.
of academic insincerity. We won’t compromise
But time ran out while Winstanley and theourselves by talking to a dishonest, hippy
band were still in New York readying thepress.” And now the Dexys, whose initialattempt to promote Don’t Stand Down byalbum for mixing. At which point the producermeans of a highly touted Tube gig was
flew back to the UK in order tosabotaged by a recent strike,get the Madness sessions
could find their album in
underway, leaving Kevinfurther trouble as a result
Rowland to mix his own
DEXYS
of Winstanley’s legal
album tracks.
MIDNIGHT
action. There are
Winstanley now
R
UNNERS
some who might
believes that evenpoint out the folly
DON'T STAND
if he isn’t listed as
ME DOWN
solo producer,of saddling thealbum with ahe should at
sd,.,.,
33�' SfEriLO
decidedly dodgy
least receive•
release date:a co-producer
Fridaythe 13th!
credit. But
Those

Winstanley believes
he should atleast receive a
co-producer credit

Thingsein
Rminiaxe
part Two •Listen toThis,.,,,
The
�
Waltz

SHRINK
RAP!
NICK
CAVE

1

MM AUG 3 Nick Cave submits
to the Maker’s probing queries.

Alcohol
I can’t answer that one really.

Elvis Presley
He’s my favourite singer. Well,he’s actually not my favourite
singer; he’s my favourite
performer and alcohol isa convenient substitute.

nick cave: “I hope
this shrink thing isa real scream”

H

E

B

-

S

E

E

D

from Berlin, which gives a plus to
the A that it should have got.

Well, I would prefer to be in
New York than this office,because New York has someinherent atmosphere that thisplace does not.

Revivalism

The Bad Seed
I can only quote from the Bible
here that the… I don’t know if I
want to… I can’t answer thatquestion either… Uh, there’s aquote that goes: “We are born
to trouble as the sparks fly
upwards.” That’s in reference tothat, uh, “The wicked are known
from the womb.” There’s a quoteon every page there.

Tennessee Williams

SuicideMemoryFear

I know I’m in great physical shapebecause I had a test the other day
and my doctor told me that. I’m
happy to have my health.

I, myself, am in some way a slave
to memory and I realise, for me,
it’s the things that have gone, thethings that I wish to have again,
but one pushes on. A man must
do what a man must do.

I only live in fear of death. That’s
the only thing, because I believe
in retribution. I believe thechickens come back to roost,as someone said. Whatyou’ve done now, you
pay for later.

Bingo

Catholicism

Are we talking about my roadie,
my old bodyguard? Well, I’d justlike to say hello to him if he’s stillaround and he’s not required any
more in the services of our group.

I think Catholicism is the only true,
only worthwhile form of Christianreligion. It has its standards and it
has its discipline, and it’s a hardthing to be a good Catholic. If you
asked me about Anglican, I thinkthat is a wishy-washy Sunday
religion, whereas Catholicism
demands a lot more, and I think if
anyone is deciding on religion asa way of going about their life, it’s
the only route to take. The bornagain thing, I think, is puerile.

For me, Berlin – and I’m not reallysure why – seems to offer justabout everything that London
doesn’t offer. The people there
have drive and imagination andspirit. I have a German girlfriend

a nomadic… Forget all that. I havea mother and I have a home.

HealthPass. I will talk to her. Tell Lydia
I’m sorry and come home. Ha!

BerlinPass. I don’t know, maybe I was inAustralia at the time. Or Ethiopia.

Hate

My doctor said that maybe Ishould have a little more fun, but
fun is chasing after… I don’t know.
I don’t know about fun.

Lydia Lunch

Band AidI think that’s probably an
epidemic in the music of the last
10 years and it’s been a constantproblem. That’s why I find myself
drawn far more to the original
than to those who seem to be
making a few dollars out of
imitating the original.

Fun

Pass.

S

Despite popular belief, hate issomething I try not to involve
myself with. It’s hard not to hatesometimes – Grub Street, hacks
and perverts. I’m surrounded bythem all the time. It’s a bad thing
to hate, but it’s very hard not to.

HeroesCarl Panzram, Mezzerine, Cap’nAhab, Raskolnikov, Jack Abbot,
Roberto Durán.

Villains
Carl Panzram, Mezzerine…
they’re one and the same,obviously.

Home
I have a mother but I don’t havea home. I haven’t lived anywhere
for more than two months in six
years, and that was a kind ofexperiment to begin with,something that seemed like a
good idea, but I’ve ended up with“Mr Greed”

Like a hospital, it’s a warm, softlast resort that’s always there andit’s a big comfort.

Ambition
It makes me feel no better to bebigger than I am now or smaller
than I was 10 years ago.

neil matthews / rex features, bleddyn butcher / rex featuresT

New York

ComedyOne can only
be funny firstin order tobe serious.
I doubt thatsometimes, but
I hope thisShrink thing
is a realscream.

elvis: cave’s
favourite“performer”

NME AUG 17 John Fogerty is sued for defamation
by his former boss at Fantasy Records.

antasy recorDs boss Saul Zaentz, who’s not without a bob or two, is currently seeking to put another$144 million into his piggy bank suing John Fogerty for said amount. Zaentz, who’s filed a complaint in theHigh Court against Fogerty and Warner Bros Records, claims the former Creedence hero damaged
Zaentz’s reputation by means of two tracks on Centerfield, Fogerty’s debut album for Warners, namely “Zant Kant
Danz” and “Mr Greed”. The first listed track caused considerable legal in-fighting soon after the album’s release,with the result that Warners were forced to alter the offending title to “Vanz Kant Danz”.
But Zaentz remains unappeased, claiming that Fogerty’s lyrics portray him as “thief, robber, adulterer andmurderer”. Additionally, he maintains that, in interviews following the album’s release, Fogerty depicted theFantasy chairman as a man who so pressurised performers that they lost creativity. This, Zaentz contends,
damaged his business image so badly that Fantasy became something of a turn-off to both artists and punters.

Fogerty: sued
for $144m

HISTORY OF ROCK 1985 | 79

ebet roberts / getty

F

1985

j u l y – s e p t em b e r“The
Woodstockof ourgeneration”
Really? Certainly, LIVE AID
has raised a lot of money.
But with the concert over,
NME ponders the issues,
asking hard questions of
Bob Geldof, the Ethiopian
government and theConservative party. What
has the event said about
the global television age?
And what has reallychanged in aid politics?

— NME JULY 20 —Thanne jordan / alamy

80 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

hough it’s impossible to deride
the achievements of Live Aid, there werenumerous factors in its makeup thatmade it less than the grand display ofcultural, racial and global unity it could
have been.
Live Aid relied almost entirely on Anglo-American
MTV pop music to achieve its aims. In China, Russia and,ironically, Africa they watched as British and American
acts combined with the capitalist hard sell. The west wasseen to be making all the running, and perhaps it was
the most expedient way to organise the show and raise
maximum funds.
But, in the context of white civilised involvement, was itmuch more than a cosmetic exercise? The music industry is
one of the western world’s biggest moneyspinners, and evenwhen united for the noble purpose of July 13, it was unable
and unwilling to address the furious conflict of interestsand ideologies that allowed the African disaster to happen.
“It’s not really pop music’s job to do this, and I haveabsolutely no illusions as to our effect on that level,” said
Bob Geldof last week before the show. “The Frenchgovernment alone could stop this with a relatively small
amount of money. The politics of aid is a nonsense; all down
the line you’re fighting political and industrial interests.” »
.

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July 13, 1985: clearing
up begins at Wembley
Stadium following thedeparture of 72,000Live Aid attendees

HISTORY OF ROCK 1985 | 81

1985

j u l y – s e p t em b e r

President Nixon, 1968: “Let us remember of American aid that it is not tohelp other nations but ourselves.” Nixon’s attitude is one that informs theaid programmes of British and American governments today. When theytalk of giving aid to an underdeveloped country, they usually mean anunder-exploited country.
Ethiopia is just one of roughly 30 African countries ravaged by famine.
It’s also engaged in a civil war as President Mengistu’s Marxist (“fascist”,
according to a Live Aid publicist) government attempt to quell guerrillaforces. Although British relief increased when the famine came to light,
it was merely a redirection of funds from the allotted foreign aid budget,which, on the whole, was reduced by 3 per cent last year.
Long-term aid is only likely to come if the British and American
governments think their industry will benefit and Ethiopia and similarly
stricken countries reform their economies along favourably capitalist
lines. The real work for Live Aid begins after the pop wonderland furore of
July 13 has died down and the funds are collected. Unlike the money fromthe Band Aid single, “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”, which was used for
immediate relief, this time the task is to put the money into schemes
which will encourage self-sufficiency. Geldof
and Live Aid are going it alone; they remain
independent from the Disaster Emergency
Committee set up by Red Cross, Catholic Relief,
Oxfam, Save The Children and Christian Aid.
Geldof: “We have our own co-ordination in
Khartoum. By not operating in the country weeliminate overheads and costs that thoseorganisations have. If you see a Band Aid truckit’s probably carrying Save The Children
supplies. The same with shipping. Because
the cost of hiring is so high, we get three boats
and fill them with supplies from all the otheragencies and aid groups.”
There are advantages and disadvantages toLive Aid’s solo approach. On the one hand theircosts are kept to a minimum, but on the other, without ground workers in
the famine areas they could find it difficult to administer long-term aid
plans effectively in the months ahead. Whereas long-standing charities
like Oxfam have field workers who work with co-operatives and peasantsto target the neediest areas.
It was Live Aid’s high media profile that helped to focus attention on the
Ethiopian disaster, and hopefully the pre-features shown during thetelecast will have highlighted why it was allowed to occur. The numberof world leaders who took part in the broadcast showed the politicalimportance they placed on this epochal pop event.
President Mengistu of Ethiopia asked to appear thanking Band Aid
officials arriving with supplies. But contacted in London the week before
the concert, an Ethiopian government spokesman was reticent to discuss
the wider implications and symbolic resonance of Live Aid.
“This is not organised by our government but by Bob Geldof and his
friends,” he said. “Obviously anything that can help the starving womenand children we applaud. But we cannot really comment much on thisthing, it is very difficult for us. We have been put in a humiliating position,
we have to allow our starving children to be seen on TV, it is negative
exposure for our country.”
He reacted bluntly to reports in Rolling Stone that trucks sent for the
distribution of food were being used for military and commercial
purposes. “That is not true. I feel the Americans are too far removed toknow what is really going on.”What is really going on in Ethiopia remains blurred. There are rumoursthat local bandits plan to storm ports where food lies stockpiled,separated from its intended recipients by mountainous, flooded or
impossible-to-navigate tracks. Meanwhile, boxed lunches from thecapital’s Hilton hotel are much in demand with journalists going to visit
the famine areas. “Either you want to send lots of food or else you want tofeed the starving. In the second case, what’s happening now is
unacceptable,” stated a Red Cross official last month.

And Geldof asserts: “There’s nothing you’d recognise as a road. The EEC
are supposed to be rehabilitating the railways, but I don’t believe it will
happen – they’ve been saying that for six months. Congestion is the otherproblem. People must make a leap in their conception. It’s not that there’s
too much food getting there and rotting; even if all that food got through,it would be only a fraction of what is required.”
Tony Murphy, the Conservative spokesman on foreign andCommonwealth affairs, confirmed that Live Aid hadn’t forced anincrease or new perspective on the government’s aid programme: “Ourposition is that we’ve been giving aid to Ethiopia since 1983, long before
the media attention of last autumn.”
There are many scientific explanations and eye-bulging statistics used
to explain away the fact that over two-thirds of the world live below
subsistence level, while there’s more than enough food to go round andtechnology to make it possible. But none are really satisfactory when you
consider that British farmers are paid £395 million a year just to store
surplus grain, and the UN’s annual aid budget for the whole world is amere £500 million. Or that the average Gibraltarian has 20 times theaverage income level of an Indian but gets 1,300
times as much assistance from Britain.
“With British dependencies there is
obviously a special responsibility,” says Mr
Murphy. The concept that a well-paid, wellfed person is somehow a greater responsibility
than a starving Indian or African kid is one
that I find abhorrent. Obviously the Torygovernment is not yet ready to atone for yearsof imperialist exploitation.
Live Aid is a step in the right direction – it’s
not too much to expect from the musicindustry after the well-documented evidence
of indulgence, waste and food fights it thrived
on in the ’70s. But what happens after
Wembley/Philadelphia?
Ken Kragen and the USA For Africa crew weren’t involved in the event
because, says Kragen, “Bob said this will be the culmination of
everything, but I said I don’t want a culmination yet, it’s too soon.” Heenvisages taking the campaign into other areas, starting with publishing.
He hopes it will continue for 10–15 years.
For his part, Geldof sounds uncharacteristically weary.
“At the moment we’re pinpointing areas we can go into, but after that
I don’t know. I never wanted Band Aid to go on very long; then it would
become an institution like ICI or the NME.”
It would be a shame if pop music missed its chance to build on theimpetus created by Live Aid. There are things that can be done to help
alleviate the world’s hunger crisis that don’t have to involve mass
capitalist/celebrity fund-raising.
Pop stars and their fans can lend their support to a parliamentary
lobby for aid reform on October 22, led by Oxfam. They’ll be arguing for
localised food production, reduction of the debt burden and the arms
trade, and an equalisation of the unequal trading relations between thewest and the third world – where their exports plummet and our imports
flood the market.
Like Band Aid, it’s another small step, but put together they add up. Pop
has shown it can raise funds. Now let’s hear it raise its voice. Gavin Martin“Pop stars are
egotistical, andrich beyond
the dreams ofthe normal”

82 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

— NME JULY 20 —ust about the time that the 70,000 in the centre of themediarena were filing, as instructed, towards the exits, I was
emerging from the local tube station; returning from a dismallyattended benefit for sacked miners in Brixton. Clustered around theunderpass entrance, a crowd of people were huddled around a
portable TV set watching the celebrations and congratulations.
Summer’s here and the time is right… for TV in the street.
In the last few months the power of the cathode ray has brought us those
first shocking
pictures of thehuman misery in
Ethiopia, thesight of burning
stands andflaming fans fromJLive Aid was unmistakably more about television than it was about
anything else. With two giant video screens flanking a distant stage, mostof the attendant thousands were only watching on-site TV. Theoreticallyit subscribed to one of the great misquotes of history – “The medium is themessage.” Just the very fact that the medium (television) was bringing
these images into five billion homes was enough to reason that themessage was clear.
What Marshall McLuhan really said was “the medium is the massage”,
and this was closer to the truth. What Live Aid did, as well as drum up
money from viewers, was provide a relief conscience massage for the pop
stars involved.
“You have money, give it!” Geldof was heard to demand several times,
with the same authority with which he would order people to sing lateron. But what of those “rich beyond the wildest dreams of the normal”. Just
exactly what were they giving, their time??
“These people aren’t playing here for the good of their health,” hecontinued, becoming more and more unbearably petulant. Give this mana knighthood?? With behaviour like this it’s probably what he deserves.
Meanwhile the BBC themselves, who would under normal
circumstances have had to pay every musician a minimum Musicians’
Union fee, made a donation of an “undisclosed sum” to the fund. Eventhat information was reluctantly disclosed.
When politics encroached on this mass-media message, it was
treated with conspicuous unease. The first example was the Austrian
contribution, which was infinitely harder than either “We Are The World”
or “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”. “Famine is a useful method/It keeps
the masters in power,” it proclaimed. “We’re giving money so we can feelbetter,” it continued. This dampening of the generally celebratory
procedure was prematurely foreshortened, however, as the subtitles
went mysteriously missing. All that was left was a bunch of singing heads– just like the others.
It may be seen as a sign of optimism that, in a time when the English
government doggedly preaches the early Geldof philosophy of “Looking
After Number One”, the great media event is dedicated to those goodold-fashioned Tory wet values of care and compassion. Yet whenGermany’s Udo suggested that perhaps some of the money drained into
nuclear weapons could have been poured into the drought-stricken land,
the switchboards were apparently jammed with complaints. That’s how
little the real issues sank in.
“It’s the Woodstock of our generation,” gushed one of the hideously
nouveau bourgeois Spandau Ballet boys. Woodstock was the innocenceand ignorance of a runaway generation; Live Aid was corporate pop
turned corporative charity – royal patronage and all.
Towards the early morning, images of countless stadia weresuperimposed, one upon another, each one flaring lights, milling people
and flashing screens. Members of Led Zeppelin played “Stairway To
Heaven”, Eric Clapton played “Layla”, Duran Duran played somethingthat wasn’t early Roxy Music no matter how hard it tried. It was thetriumphant return of the stadium mentality.
I hope the £50 million does some good – but I didn’t like what I saw.
Don Watson •HISTORY OF ROCK 1985 | 83

rex features

the Bradford City stadium fire,the images of Clockwork Orange
Britain overflowing into a
Brussels stadium and now
Live Aid – McLuhan’s Global
Village party, the biggest media
event of all time. In dramatic
terms, the first three atrocity
exhibitions were all just part ofthe build-up. Live Aid was the
final act – the resolution.
As a media blitz its effect wascertainly devastating. Even
those most alienated from thestadium mentality were pinned“You have money
to their seats by the sheer size of– give it!”: Bob
Geldof visits
the spectacle.
Ethiopia afterI returned home to discover
his memorable
my flatmates, one a member
exhortations
during Live Aidof an experimental pop combo
and the other the bearer ofan unimpeachable pedigree
of hipness, watching Robert Plant and Jimmy Page – “So this is ‘Stairway
To Heaven’.”It blared from every window, it brought TV viewing spilling out onto thestreets, it brought over £50 million worth of aid to the starving – and all by
dangling a few pop-star shaped carrots in front of a few billion people.
Some achievement? Well yes, but…
On the level of its ultimate achievement, Live Aid is irreproachable, as
we were constantly reminded throughout the 16-hour broadcast. Are we
therefore expected to accept that the end justifies the means? Not to saythat there’s something wrong when a man of Geldof’s means, a man witha daughter called Fifi Trixibelle for Christ’s sake, flings castigations into
every threadbare sitting room up and down the country? Or that there’s
a pall of one-upmanship about the bidding for honours to bestow on him– “Nobel prize!”, “Knighthood!”, “Sold!”.
There was always something self-defensive about the presentation ofLive Aid; it seemed to be perpetually anticipating criticism, blacking in
advance the name of anyone who should seek to smear in print thepristine halo accorded to Saint Bob.
Michael Buerk, the BBC journalist whose early reports provided thespur for the formation of Band Aid, was the one man granted the right toinvective by dint of his prior involvement in the tragedy. The descriptionof Geldof as “self-styled clapped-out pop star turned media saint” would
have brought howls of derision and countless accusations of sour gripes
had it come from a less accredited source.
He was also the only one allowed to make a swipe at the “justified selfrighteousness” (The Observer) of the performers themselves. “Pop stars
are egotistical,” he pronounced with the fervour of the blasphemous.
“They’re also rich beyond the dreams of the normal, let alone thedestitute – but they are not indifferent.”
This was the key to the event: if Nik Kershaw is to exist, is it not bestthat he should put his dubious talents to some use that is beneficial
to humanity? Well yes, but there’s still something sick about thejuxtaposition of the preening culture of British pop, so concerned as
it is with third-hand notions of movie-star glamour, with sights ofswelling stomachs and wasted bones. It’s one step away from an eat-in
for Ethiopia.
“It could have been a disaster,” said Mel Smith, making one of themost striking accidental puns of the day, and our sight of the real disasterwas limited. There was Buerk’s hard-hitting presentation at the very
beginning; otherwise our only glimpse of the suffering these faintly
nauseous proceedings were supposed to alleviate was the short clip from
CBS News. “These pictures speak for themselves,” said David Bowie
introducing them. And yet they weren’t allowed to – tragic though thesepictures were, there was something genuinely pornographic about
ladling over them the thick syrup of a pop song soundtrack. To theAmerican viewer, idly flipping through the channels, it must have looked
like the most sensationalist pop video ever made.
“A great use of television,” they enthused on Breakfast Time about theclip. People cried of course, but more because of this use of television
than because of the human misery involved. Did they cry every time thesame pictures were shown on the news?

1985

j u l y – s e p t em b e r

mike prior / gettyv

Paul Weller, Dee C Lee
and Mick Talbot of The
Style Council recreate
a long hot summer in a
London photographic
studio, 1985

84 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

“I dowhat Ido best”

Engaged as ever with youth causes,
a trip to Denmark leads PAUL WELLER
to wonder if the focus has shifted too far
away from his music. “I’m not one of thesesmart fuckers that went to public school.
I’m not a left-wing intellectual who’s got
everything worked out, you know?”— MELODY MAKER JULY 13 —he best band in the world!
Paul Weller said that, and he was talking about Style
Council at the time, that small but beautifully formed
unit he set up around two years ago, after The Jam had
finally come to the end of a very popular road. Naturally
enough, he can easily be accused of being just a touch
biased when it comes to assessing the Council’s position in the overall
scheme of things, but it seems he’s not the only one prepared to standup and make a bit of a claim. Style Council’s second album, Our
Favourite Shop, has just shot into the higher echelons of the charts in
Britain, it’s apparently selling likehot cakes everywhere from France
to the Far East, and even here in
Denmark, well, they just can’t getenough of it.
The people’s champ from deepest
Woking has never been a man for
selling himself short, but it isimmediately clear that the successof this latest project has totally
rekindled the long-lost enthusiasm
for this crazy world of pop and put
him right back at the very top of thetree. Once more then, as I carefullyenquire whether he really believes
that this year’s Style Council iseasily the best band in Britain. »T

HISTORY OF ROCK 1985 | 85

1985

j u l y – s e p t em b e r“We’re the best band in the world.”
Next you’ll be telling me that you’re bigger than Jesus.
“Well, bigger than The Jesus And Mary Chain.”
Some 24 hours before this particular exchange of big talk and bad jokes,
Style Council had travelled to a spot called Roskilde, about 50 miles from
Copenhagen and the home of Denmark’s annual pop and jazz festival.
The welcome they received from the European press corps would surely
have convinced an impartial observer that Mr Neil Kinnock, or at theleast Mr Arthur Scargill, had just arrived in town.
“Anybody got any questions on music?” Weller asks rather forlornly, andyes, we did have six or maybe seven, with the obvious highlights being theunfortunate Scandinavian woman who wanted to compare your lastalbum, The Gift, with your new one (“It’s two different bands, you know”)
and the German chap who told Mick Talbot that Our Favourite Shop wasa bit close to easy listening and altogether too laid-back (“Well, you’relistening to it wrong”).
Everybody laughed when Paul Weller nominated himself as mostwonderful human being for 1985, and then the smudgers came along tosnap away at his new barnet and rather spiffing pair of shorts. And one
hour later, the Style Council played the best open-air show I have seen
this year since Style Council played Glastonbury just a week previously.
We all went back to the hotel as soon as it finished and were in bed wellbefore the local curfew came into effect. Rock and roll, phew!
he town of Elsinore sits on the very northern tip of Denmark
and is, of course, famous to all English Lit buffs for its heavy
Shakespearean connotations. Indeed, a fairly striking statue ofthe young crown prince Hamlet himself stands just a few yards
away, as the keyboards player with the best band in the world
starts talking about life as the less public half of Style Council.
His name is Mick Talbot, and Billy Bragg reckons his excellent
selection of jackets makes him look like a stick of rock, although

getty

T

86 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

Michael himself prefers the more obvious Dick Van Dyke comparison.
He is two months younger than Paul Weller and nobody knows toomuch else about him.
“I don’t really mind the fact that everybody always wants to talk to Paul.
I mean, it’s pretty logical, he’s obviously the frontman and he writes the
lyrics as well. Plus he’s got a lot of history, and that’s very important,especially when you come abroad, because they just want to turn it intoa ‘Paul Weller, this is your life’ situation and go through all his various
stages in great detail. But no, I don’t mind that.
“Basically, we both enjoy a bit of a laugh. I do get wound up about things,
but they have to get pretty extreme, and maybe Paul is more forthright inspeaking his mind than I am. I’m a bit more guarded, which is probably
a bad thing in the long run. And I’m obviously not as involved with things
like the International Youth Year, although I do go along to quite a few
meetings and take a fair bit of interest in the YTS stuff. Anyway, herecomes the leader, so to speak – maybe he can tell you a bit more about it.”
Here he comes indeed, dressed for the occasion in blazer, classic Fred
Perry, white bags, black shoes and, most importantly, not a sock in sight.
Still, at least you’ve got your trousers on, unlike yesterday when the oldlegs were very much in evidence. Pity nobody at the press conference
cracked a joke about them.
“It does piss me off a bit when they only talk about politics, but
obviously there has to be a bit of that because of the album. It would begreat if they could span everything, but I’m not really moaning, because
obviously we set ourselves up for it to some extent with the lyrics and theother involvements.
“What I don’t like, for example, is when I am asked things like was
Arthur Scargill a good leader, or
where did the miners go wrong.
What are they doing asking afucking pop group questions likethat? I just try to look at it from astriking miner’s point of view if
I can. Which is hard, because noneof us had to stay out on strike for 12months or live on the breadline for
12 months, you know?”
You told us yesterday that Labour
would win the next election, and I
wonder if it was just another joke?
“I definitely think they will win.
I can’t see how they won’t get in.
Maybe I shouldn’t say that, but
that’s what I think. I mean, I can see why the Tories
appealed to lots of working-class people, because
they were promising help with your mortgage andthings like that. But by now Thatcher has shit onpractically everyone, and looking at it optimistically
you’d reckon that most of those people who voted forher will have had their eyes opened and change theiropinion because of it.
“If Labour win, I suppose I wouldn’t mind getting
involved. I’d like to have an input somehow, but not
on a body that was just made up of people from the
pop world. It’s a cliche, but it’s true that those people
in Parliament are out of touch.
“I mean, it’s only in the last year or so that Labour
has started to look towards young people again. I
don’t fancy being a local councillor or an MP, but I do
want to contribute ideas. And I don’t want to get
involved with anything that means I have to stop
doing what I do now, because I actually enjoy doing
this. I just do what I think I do best, that’s all.”
There are, of course, a number of folk in this wacky
world of pop who don’t think you do it very well at all.
Young Lloyd Cole is just the latest to have a bit of a dig,
attacking the blustering “Walls Come Tumbling
Down” as a fairly naive piece of work which demeans
the sentiments behind it and sounds like the efforts ofa man who has just read his first George Orwell book.
Weller scarfs it as“Well, I don’t think somebody like Lloyd Cole has
Talbot models latest
got any room to say that. What I wanted to say with“stick of rock”/Dick
Van Dyke blazer‘Walls…’ was quite simple, so why complicate it? Ithe style council

don’t think that it’s naive at all. That’s how
I feel and to me that’s how simple things are.
I’m not really one of these smart fuckers thatwent to public school; I’m not a left-wing
intellectual who’s got everything worked out,
you know?”
Maybe that’s also why so many people aremadly in love with your band?
“Yeah, maybe, I don’t really know. I do
think it’s important that something like theLabour party is given back to working-classpeople, and that also applies to the whole of
the British left.”
he woking wonder is just a bit
closer to that time of life when
teenage dreams seem to be nothing
more than a distant memory. It’s an awful
long way from 1976, but not a stone’s throwfrom 1988, when the original angry young man (“that’s another cliche”)
will have reached the ripe old age of 30. Must be near time to get a real job.
“The sort of thing we did at the festival yesterday felt OK, really natural,but yeah, I’d feel a bit of a tit doing Top Of The Pops or Saturday Superstore
when I’m 30. Anyway, the whole thing about ’76 and ’77 has been totally
romanticised – there were only a couple of other bands that were worth
anything and they turned out to be real wankers in the end.
“I don’t think the same sort of thing will ever happen again, but if it doesand people were to say, ‘Well, that Paul Weller’s a boring old fart’, then fairenough. So long as they are 17 or 18 themselves, that’s OK. It wouldn’t
bother me at all. But I honestly don’t think I’m that far removed from how
I used to feel when I was that age.
“That’s why I don’t really mind when The Redskins or somebody elseslag me off, ’cos I used to do it all the time. It’s dead natural – like the way
I used to slag off Townshend and all that crap. Yeah, I do regret it now, butlike I say, it’s the natural thing to do at that time.
“As for the future, I don’t really look at the Style Council in terms of how
long we are going to do it for. I just feel there is so much left in it, so much
still to do. We’ve got so many ideas that we haven’t tried out yet, things
that we have talked about and are keen to put into action. We get loads ofideas all the time. I’m probably happier now
than I’ve ever been, because I just feel so rightabout what I’m doing in this band.
“It’s really funny for me to say that to you
when you think about it, because I’ve beenplaying music for, what, 14 years, but really, it’s
great. It’s given me a new lease of life and it’ssort of rekindled my enthusiasm foreverything, particularly the potential of pop
music. It probably wouldn’t have been quite sogood if I had done it earlier, because it seems tobe happening at just the right time for me andMick. If we’d done it when we were 18 andhadn’t done all those things in the past, then it
probably wouldn’t have been quite so good.”This is all getting a bit serious, so it’s maybe
time to try out the suggestion that Paul Weller must feel like a bit of afather figure in the band, what with all these young buckos around theplace.
“A father figure?” (prolonged chuckling). “I’m not that fuckin’ old!
I suppose that, yeah, I can see some of my own attitudes when I was 19
in Steve White, but a father figure? Dunno about that one! It’s always
been important for us to work with young musicians if possible, butthere’s not much point in putting together a teenage band just for thesake of it. There’s such a wealth of really good musicians in Britain thatyou never get to hear about – somebody like the bass player Camelle
Hinds, who is brilliant but quite hard to find.”
And you even let the roadie play guitar on the live version of “Our
Favourite Shop”, no doubt in an effort to demystify the whole process,break down the barriers, storm the barricades and all that?
“Nah, it’s just ’cos he’s a better guitarist than me, that’s all. If I could playthat one as well, then I’d do it.”A 27-year-old ex-mod who can’t really play the guitar. Sounds likea perfect candidate for a spell in journalism.

“I still hatemost ofthe things
associated withrock’n’roll”

oon after this last spot of merry banter, Style Council went
home to England for a short break in their extensive schedule ofsummer concerts in Europe and beyond. The best band in theworld? The last great stand against rock’n’roll? A Viking burial?
Dunno about all that, but the good news is that, after all this time, thetop graduate from the school of ’76 is embracing the new politics-witha-grin approach of the best of the class of ’85, and doing it, as always, withquite memorable style. Eight years on, and Paul Weller is at long last gamefor a laugh. Barry McIlhenney ¥S

HISTORY OF ROCK 1985 | 87

ilpo musto / rex features

T“I’ve never really considered a careeroutside music, because I enjoy it so much.
I actually like being in a group, you know?
The thing I don’t like about journalism isthat it’s not very immediate. You never
get to see people’s reactions to what to do,whereas when you play in a band you getthat immediate ‘love it or hate it’ reaction
which I like. Otherwise it’s a bit like all
those old painters who had to wait until
they were dead before anybody appreciatedtheir work.
“Pop music is so immediate, and that’s
one of the things I really like about it.
“We’ve got so
A novel or something requires a lot more
many ideas”:
Weller on
in it than a three-minute pop song, andstage, 1985
I just find it a lot simpler to get my ideas
across within a three-minute song.
“I suppose if I really wanted to write
a novel then I’d go ahead and do it, that’s the way I am. Anyway, no point
in writing my memoirs or anything like that, ’cos they’d be so fucking
boring! And only three pages long.”
Still, there’s always the movies.
“Again, I’ve got no desire at all to become an actor. I can’t act for one
thing, and you only have to look at the videos for proof of that. I like theexperience of going to the pictures more than the actual film that’s on.
The queueing up, the popcorn, things like that.”
Books?
“I’m a bit pissed off with books at the moment; the last one I read was
Nowhere To Run, which is a collection of interviews with soul artists fromthe ’60s. I don’t read the papers either – maybe the Mirror if it’s lying about– and I only read the music press if we’re in it or if somebody like Bragg or
The Redskins are interviewed.
“The one thing I hate about music writers is when they make up thequestions after the interview and insert them into the piece. And also,
the ones who don’t write in the same way they talk. I prefer it to be morenatural than that. Although most of the things written about me havebeen pretty fair, whether it’s criticism or praise.
“I don’t really give a fuck any more about what anyone thinks of me.
That’s being honest. It might sound a bit blasé,
but really, so much stuff has been written
about me and so many people have their own
different opinions about me that I’ve justreached the stage where I don’t care any more.
You spend seven or eight years of your life
justifying your very existence to the world andyou’re continually being asked to explain
yourself in everything you do. It’s ridiculous.”
The man who couldn’t care less. Sounds likethe perfect epitaph for Paul Weller, the one pop
icon who, more than any of them, has had towash his dirty linen in public since the very
first day he set foot on the London stage.
“Actually, I won’t be having an epitaph, ’cos
I’m going to have a Viking burial. They’regonna put me in a boat, set fire to it and then push me out to sea.”Rock’n’roll!
“I still hate most of the things associated with rock’n’roll. Like thatfestival yesterday, there were just so many bands doing horrible guitar
solos, and all that leather. All those horrible rock’n’roll leather jackets.”
Piss off, Paul.
“Nah, yours is OK. It’s not really rock’n’roll leather, you know? It’s more
Take Six that one, innit?”

1985

j u l y – s e p t em b e r

Pandemonium

MM July 13 Bruce Springsteen seduces the masses.

HE CBS HoSpITAlITy enclosure was shielded from the rest of
the stadium backstage area by a structure that took the form ofa car, a very big car with number plates bearing the legend:
BRUCE. The correct pass entitled you to walk through the passenger
doors into the world of New Jersey. Or as close as they could get to it.
Here, the walls were covered with posters of Springsteen, thebar was stocked high with Budweiser and Colt 45, and thecaterers were selling “Bruceburgers – 100% beef”,
weMBley StadiuM“Mainstreet dogs” and “E Street cheesecake”. A man
londondressed as a US cop strolled purposefully around the
popcorn stand.
When Bruce Springsteen comes to town, even the record
company goes crazy.
July 3The build-up, of course, had been going on for months, theexisting fanaticism fuelled by 127 hit records from Bruce anda progressively hysterical reaction from Fleet Street. Finally, thenation was gripped in an agony of waiting.
And as the weeks turned into days and the days flew past and there
was suddenly only half an hour to go, the whole of the Wembley
Stadium felt so much like an unbearably big bubble about to burst thatit really hurt. And then came the relief, the euphoria, the damned greaturge to cry when Springsteen and the E Street Band ambled on stage
and launched into “Born In The USA”.
This is the elusive rock’n’roll moment that we all spend so much time,energy and money chasing, and yet rarely find. When it happens in the
Marquee, that’s brilliant. When it happens in Wembley Stadium, I’mreminded more than anything of Janis Joplin’s infamous quote: “It’sbetter than anything; better than an orgasm.”
More than anything, this night offered melodrama of the highest
order, an overwhelming sense of occasion, the feeling of being at
a Terribly Important Event. I’m a sucker for that kind of thing, andso I loved it, basking in the glow of a star-struck audience when
Springsteen slowed down for “The River” and “I Ca n’t Help Falling In
Love With You”, thrilling spontaneously to the opening bars of “Born
To Run”, singing and dancing with 71,999 others during the rip-it-up“Twist And Shout” medley.
These, clearly, were responses to circumstance, atmosphere,
expectation and almost tangible emotion rather than to what was
actually happening on stage half a mile away. To be truthful, I’m still
not entirely sure how Bruce Springsteen ever reached this elevated,invincible position of his, how he gained the power to create the sortof pandemonium that, decisively, seduced me at Wembley.
When it comes down to it, Springsteen is simply a guy with a guitar,a pair of jeans, a fairly pleasant line in songwriting, an American flag,
and an unspectacular video screen.
I do have my theories about this demigod business: it may be a
generalisation, but people do tend to go to extremes when it comes toselecting heroes. They like flash, dramatic, escapist rock, or they likethe unaffected boy-next-door who also happens to be a tremendously
sensitive soul, forever penning the vague lyrics of life and love thateverybody feels they can identify with, and does.
There’s a certain homeliness about old Springsteen, the wholeromantic image of the all-American smalltown boy who made good, theone who lived through all of our problems and overcame every obstacle
to find himself where he is today. Most important, though – he neverforgets the good old days. On stage, he sends the proverbial postcard
to the folks back home, chatting to the stadium masses about New
Jersey, about his dad, about his sister, about his haircut, his marriage,
his age… just a regular chap, really. There’s hope for us all, Wembley…
Springsteen stands for Good Against Evil, he comforts theconscience of the great moral majority, he reassures, while at the sametime titillating his audience with the “dangerous” connotations of his
medium, which is rock’n’roll.
Bruce is as safe as houses, really. And it’s anirony, a constant source of bewilderment, thatsome of the greatest thrills you can find aroundmusic today can come from someone who could
never be a rebel again if he tried. Carol Clerk

T

alamy

LIVE!

88 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

Springsteen plays thefirst of three dates
at Wembley Stadium
as his long-running
Born In The USA Tour
finally reaches the UK;(inset) the novelty
backstage pass(port)

HISTORY OF ROCK 1985 | 89

1985

j u l y – s e p t em b e r“A bitwayward”
Which is ROBERT SMITH’s
favourite biker magazine?
This and more revelations as
THE CURE frontman spins talesof raw prawns, The Jesus And
Mary Chain, and why you should
never measure up for a pooltable when you’re hungover.
— MELODY MAKER AUGUST 17 —O mOre mad Bob.”
Pardon?
“No more Mad Bob.”
Oh, I see. Robert Smith ishappy. Deliriously happy.
Think about that. Doctor
Doom. Mister Miserable. The Prince Of Paranoia.
Happy. Happy with life. Happy with death. Happy towind us up. Happy to let us down. And happy to talk hishead off about The Head On The Door, the new Curealbum and another departure from what we expect.
So what’s he got to tell us, this smudge of lipstick in alion’s mane? Will he spin us a yarn to match the one hefoisted on Smash Hits –you know, the one about
the album title referring
to a nightmare childhood
vision engendered by achickenpox fever?
“Oh, did I tell himthat one?” Robert grins
sheepishly and attacks
an onion bhaji. “Well…
it’s sort of true. Do you
want me to give you adifferent version?”Oh, yes please.
“Alright then.” (Areyou sitting comfortably?)“When I was little, I used »90 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

bleddyn butcher / rex features“N“I’ve cut down on myvices – I’ve only kept
drinking” Robert
Smith in 1985

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j u l y – s e p t em b e r

to sleep in the same room as my little
sister and we used to have one of those
Noddyland scenes, quite a big event, madeout of felt.”
Oh really.
“Look, this is deadly serious. I couldn’t
make something up like this, now could
I? Right. You had all these particularcharacters who existed in Noddy’s
particular brand of reality, which isbasically Big Ears and his family –hundreds of ’em – oh, and a policeman.
That was about it.
“Anyway, my big sister was going to art
school at the time and she used to make us
toys out of felt, nice things to put in this
two-foot window into Noddyland, andmy brother got the idea that it would bereally good fun to introduce a sort of Texas
Chainsaw Massacre element.
“So there I was, sitting up in my bunkbed
before I went to sleep, and suddenly I
noticed he’d cut Noddy’s head off and it
really, really scared me.
“I went really mental – Noddy had sucha sweet face, he was always Mr Happy, andI remember thinking at the time that it wasa really evil thing to do. Even now it seems
pretty awful. Uh… d’you know, the biggest
evil I could imagine was Catwoman?
Remember they used to have bubblegum
cards? Well, I used to have Catwoman
under my pillow. I used to think that waspretty dangerous, my first stirrings of lust.
“But cutting Noddy’s head off… I was intrauma! And I remember at the same time,“It’s a group again”: (l–r)
Porl Thompson, Robert
Father Christmas arrived in our street on
Smith, Boris Williams,
a lorry. What a pile of cack! It destroyed mySimon Gallup and Lolfaith in things like that. Still, I don’t
Tolhurst on stage inRotterdam, Nov 27, 1985
suppose people of my generation keep thatkind of thing going for their kids. I mean,
how can you possibly believe in the tooth fairy with a Conservative
government? You don’t get something for nothing any more.”
From De Quincey to Kinnock in a couple of breaths. Good going, Robert.
Ramble on.
“Well, there’s a lot of references to dreams in my songs. It seems tobother other people, but it’s never really worried me that I have vivid
dreams. I find it very reassuring. Its not always nice to wake up with yourwhole body vibrating like an engine – it sometimes takes three minutes
to get back to normal – but that’s OK.”
Does Smith the visionary rise, I wonder, from his bed onto someimaginary psychoanalyst’s couch, combing his slumber for secrets
and signs?
“No! I think the whole concept of interpreting
dreams is the biggest wank, really. Freud’s
obviously the most well-known exponent ofdelving into your subconscious and examining
it, but the idea that you can have secrets fromyourself is such a paradox, it’s unreal. I canunderstand it if you suppress things, but you
know, you’re suppressing them. The idea oftricking yourself is one of those imponderables– it’s impossible. Who are you to trick yourself?
“My dreams are very straightforward, verymuch like my life. I murder in my dreams, muchas I murder in real life. I’ve always really wanted
to kill someone, but it’s wearing off now.
Y’know, just a casual murder.”I think I understand. I’ve always thought if
I was gonna go crazy, I’d do it creatively, riding in the passenger seat ofa monstrously fast car, blasting oncoming cruisers with a shotgun. Thatway you get the bullet impact and the crash.
“No, no. Much more physical. If you use a gun, you might as well shoota bird, really. I used to murder a great deal in my dreams – people that I’ve
never even met and who, no doubt, hope I never will. But I wouldn’t
murder any more, I’m sure of it.”Has this Smith, lately labelled a nouveau hippy because of his beads andbaggy bits and pieces, ever hated anyone enough to kill them?
“Oh yeah, of course. I know there’s one that if I ever met him, I’d kill him.
Every fight I’ve ever been in, I’ve thought I’m fighting that person but I’ve
never met him. Not through want of trying.”
What on earth did the blackguard do?
“Ah, that’s a story that will remain forever secret. He once did something– not actually to me but I always vowed to avenge it. It was quite an awful
thing that I witnessed. See, I’m still very moral, I still have the same ethics
I always had, but I don’t really think that if I did
kill someone casually there would be any
retribution if I didn’t get caught. I’d just like to
do it as an experience. I wouldn’t like to torturesomebody or do anything like that.”
I’ve decided this “No More Mad Bob” businessmay be a little premature, but I press on
regardless, wondering if Smith thinks he’d feellike a different person burdened with theknowledge that he’s taken a life?
“Yeah. The sort of thing that always put me off
is it’s not really the sort of thing you can mend.”
And what if you grow to like it?
“Well, there is that. And if you don’t like it,
you’d probably end up confessing anyway.
But it’s not that big a step, is it, not really? We’regonna be rotting in 50 years’ time anyway, so why not rot now and give
someone some pleasure from it? If someone dies naturally, everyone
cries. There may as well be someone dancing around the grave – and it
may as well be me.”“I’ve always
wanted to killsomeone, but
it’s wearing
off now”

92 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

the cureAs I said, Robert Smith is happy, even contemplating the inevitable.
Can this metamorphosis from gloom to glee be permanent, or justanother of his infamous emotional seesaws?
“Well, I’m very aware of my periods of instability and I’ve tried tothink, ‘If it’s going to happen to me, I may as well use it for somebenefit’, but last year all it succeeded in doing was getting in the way.
I couldn’t really do anything at all, whereas now I generally feel muchbetter. I’ve cut down on my vices – I’ve only kept drinking; everythingelse has gone out the window.”
Everything?
“Everything.”
Isn’t that hard?
“No, not at all. I just decided one night. I was doing absolutely nothing,y’know? It got to the point when cleaning your teeth seemed too muchbother. It’s cack when you get to that stage, so I tried to learn to waterski
and things like that – the other extreme. It actually shocked my bodyback into a happy status quo. I didn’t get fit, but at the same time I didn’t
keel over and spend a month in a rest home, which is what everyone said
I should do.
“I thought that idea was bollocks – you know your own body… or you
should do. The older you get, the more you know it. I’m afraid I can nolonger wake up in the morning and boast that I haven’t got a hangover.”Me neither.
Never. Wonder
how this affects
Boy Smith’spublic image?
“I’d be hardpressed toimagine what
my public imageis, to be honest.

Indifferent. It varies, actually, from place
to place. Here, it’s very obvious from thegeneral media myth that’s perpetrated –character assassination, that’s the phrase
I’m after. But in America I’m considereda really radical bloke, a really dangerous
person, on the wanted list, because theyfilter through the more sordid elementsfrom England and they also invent theirown… Oh, and also, when I’m in America
I misbehave more than I do in England,because it’s far away from home.
“In Japan, it’s teenybop hysteria. We
went mega – on television, arriving at thestation. And in New Zealand we’re still
doom and gloom, so when we go there we
only smile behind closed doors.”
I think you deserve an update on thisschizophrenic Smith character, just to
help you make up your own mind. He’s
writing a book on The Cure in conjunction
with a French lady, which, he claims, will
be far more honest than anything I could
cook up. He speeds around in a four-wheeldrive jeep which his friends consider“a post-nuclear vehicle or what?”.
He owns a flat in Maida Vale with asoundproofed bedroom to shield him fromthe professional musical writer upstairs.
He’s decided to holiday in London this year
to catch up on all the movies he’s missed.
He saw Ghostbusters three times at the
Marble Arch ABC, not because he liked
the film (“It was cack”) but because heenjoyed watching the 300 teenies punch
the air during the theme tune –“It reminded me of a David Cassidy
concert – not that I ever went to one,you understand, but it’s the sort ofthing, looking back, that I wish I
had done.”
He never drinks on planes –“You can’t drink on an eight-hour
flight, pass out, then go on stage…
Well, you can, but then you’re
Spandau Ballet.”His back garden is a football
pitch-cum-dog’s toilet – “I haven’t
plucked up the courage to play inthe team yet, but I think, in mycurrent state, I’d probably playa sort of Glenn Hoddle role –fading away for 80 minutes, then a killer 10 minutes before the end.”
His band, The Cure, is now a quintet, Simon Gallup, the original bassist,welcomed back into the fold. Robert’s ecstatic about this lineup – “It’s agroup again” – and the pair of them reckon they’re pretty hot at pool. In
fact, Ex-Mad Bob had a table installed in his flat, a slate bed six-by-three,
but he was “a bit mortal” when he measured it up, so the fit was a mite cosy
– no room to make shots – and the table now resides at a local youth club.
Smith the sportsman warms to the subject: “Me and Simon, we’reknown as The Hackers, that’s the name of our pool team – as in computer
hackers, because we’re both Luddites and the rest of the band are very pro
whatever’s new. Boris and Porl, who reckon they’re the best but we È

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bleddyn butcher / rex featuresj u l y – s e p t em b e r

hammer them, are called the Bros because they both have this fantasy
that they’re constantly driving about on huge, throbbing motorbikes.
“You ever seen the magazine called Outlaw Biker? They’re selling it inLondon now, you’ve gotta buy it. It’s the best magazine ever in the whole
history of printed matter – I mean, it’s even better than Melody Maker!
They have photo stories from the West Coast of America and each monththey feature the best ‘Party ’Til You Puke’. They go to a party and the idea
is actually to be the first one to vomit.
“And then they ‘Burn The Jap Crap’, which means they go out and thefirst Japanese motorbike they come across, they steal it, drive it off to theparty, beat shit out of it and set fire to it. And another thing is called ‘Tits
And Tats’ – Tits is obvious, subtitled ‘Show Us Yer Tits’, and these women
all have breasts which hang down to their knees. And the other one, Tats,
is tattoos, which is the other symbol of being a really good bro’.
“There’s an alternative English publication called Easy Rider which isreally inferior, very sedate, like comparing NME to Melody Maker. The
NME were really upset because I wouldn’t do an interview with them, but
I can’t believe how boring it is. It’s incredible how anyone still buys it. It’s
pointless talking to them, because all they’re gonna do is get someone to
do another ‘We Hate The Cure And Here’s 20 Reasons Why’ article.
“The last piece, by Mat Snow, wasn’t evenfunny, it was just badly done. The worst thing is,
he ended up sort of liking us – I really failed onthat one, but I couldn’t approach it with any sortof venom because he’s the sort of bloke who
inspires boredom. Difficult.”
There’s more you should know about thisSmith and The Head On The Door. Like, if thisis stretching The Cure, it’s by way of a yawn,
a relaxed appraisal of the similar swoops andglides into insanity that graced the superb Top
album. Smith, surprisingly, doesn’t hold The
Top in the same esteem as me. He finds it too
slow, too finicky, too him. He prefers The
Head… because it’s more of a group effort, andplans to record another album, even more group-orientated, later thisyear. The Head…, in a way, is a ragbag of songs, almost arbitrary. Together,as a whole, there’s no clue, no key to its intended identity, but individually
the Japanese-sounding “Kyoto Song”, the flamenco-flavoured “TheBlood” and the disco-tinged “Close To Me” are as strong and strange as
anything The Cure have ever done.
“A lot of what I was writing was really disparate and there was no sense
to it at all. It was like one step on from The Top in that it sounded like adifferent person writing all these songs, and I wanted to keep that idea.
Looking back, although I didn’t think of it at the time, it reminds me of
the Kaleidoscope [Banshees] album, the idea of having lots of differentsounding things, different colours. I wanted 10 songs that all soundedvery different to each other so there was absolutely no logic to it at all.
“I think it’s the most entertaining album we’ve ever done in the sensethat it doesn’t require very much from the listener for it to be enjoyable,
mainly because it’s very simple, intentionally simple. It’s as much areaction against us as a reaction against anything else that’s going on,
because I didn’t want to get too precious again.
“I was getting a bit too close to falling into Mad Bob and people were
saying that to me, jokingly – mainly inspired by what you wrote about
The Top, actually. People picked up on what
you wrote and decided that I was going mental.
Well, for a while I was a bit unstable, but I thinkit’s horrible when people make a career out ofbeing something.”
What, professional loonies, like professional
cockneys?
“Yeah, it’s cack. That last thing I wanted to do
was drive my jeep into a swimming pool.
“I don’t think this record heralds us doing
anything. I know I’m supposed to be selling it,
but I never see it like that. Pornography or Faith
are peculiar in that quite a lot of people probably
think, ‘If I could only listen to one album for everand ever, it would be this album.’ But I don’t“I was awarethat people
thought I was
getting too
obscure”

Smith unleashed:“We’d reached theend of our contract,and I had this suddensense of being able
to do anything”

94 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

the curethink this one’s like that, because it doesn’t inspirethat kind of emotion.
“It’s the same as when The Human League
brought out Dare, I thought it was a really goodcollection of songs. It didn’t send shivers down myspine, but I’ve got drunk to it and danced to it a lot
over the years. Same with this record – I thought
it would be nice to do something entertaining.
Japanese Whispers had the same kind of effect,
but that was a collection of singles and I wanted
something all new that sets people up so they
don’t know what’s coming next.
“I tried to make this album really obvious,
because I was aware that people thought I was
getting too obscure for anyone’s good. Even thewords are obvious, but when I said this to a guy
from Jamming he laughed and gave me someinstances, so I suppose they are still obscure ina way, but they’re as plain as I can be. That’s why
I find most songs in the Top 20 at the moment
really boring, because they’re like end of
conversation, you don’t really need to bother.
“Some of the songs are a bit wayward but ‘In
Between Days’ is probably the simplest thing
I’ve written since ‘Boys Don’t Cry’. I did it on
purpose; I thought, ‘Right, I might as well prove all those bastards wrong.’
I know it’s big-headed, but you couldn’t really make a record if you didn’t
think it was good, and there’s very few albums that I’ve listened to thisyear that people have recommended to me that are comparable.
“Lol told me to listen to New Order’s album and I thought, ‘This is areally dull record for what they can do.’ For me, their record is 100 times
safer than ours.”
Which brings us to the widespread rumour of larceny. There are those
who listen to “In Between Days” and hear only New Order with Smithy
whining over the top. There are those who consider The Cure’s whole
career as a sly regurgitation of others’ choice cuts.
“So the single sounds like New Order, what’s the problem? As soon as we
did it, I knew people would say we ripped them off and I thought, ‘Perfect.’
It was done very tongue-in-cheek. No, that’s not my sort of phrase –tongue-in-wool. It was meant to sound like that. And anyway, on the New
Order album, they’ve ripped off ‘A Forest’. They’ve just slowed it down.
Obviously they put it on at the wrong speed, had a little too much to drink
and thought, ‘That’s a good tune.’“Comparisons between anyone are endless. Depending on where youwere and who you were, you could probably compare us to Wham!.”
Not unless you’re on something damn strong, but still, where did thischeeky new Smith come from?
“It’s just me being gloriously happy, probably. After we’d finishedtouring, I had a sudden surge of thinking that I wouldn’t have to do
anything forever and ever if I didn’t want to because we’d reached the endof our contracts and things like that, and I had this sudden sense of being
able to do anything.”

I feel a story coming on.
“The occasion was me being more drunk than I had
been all year, my one night out in London clubland.
Seriously, I can’t risk more than one night out. See, wewere doing Top Of The Pops and we usually drink
loads and loads of vodka in the bar, which explains
our frighteningly exciting performances. Then weusually go away somewhere because we’re usually somortal, drinking all afternoon. We go home and die
or we just go out for a meal all together and fallasleep in a restaurant, but this time, for somereason, we didn’t go to the Top Of The Pops bar
before we went on and, admittedly, theperformance was probably duller than ever.
“So anyway, we went there afterwards, feelingthat we had to say hello to the doorman and thebarman, because their whole idea of the world
would probably crumble around them andthey’d develop serious personality disorders
the next day if they knew we’d been on the show
without visiting them.
“So we went there and we stayed there until
we got thrown out, by which time we werepretty hot. So we decide to go to eat, but I had to
go to this studio supposedly to do backing
vocals on the new single and listen to the brass section – y’know, give ’em
the Pope’s seal of approval. So we went to the studio and I couldn’t evenmake out what the song was, so I was helped out and we weaved our way
mysteriously down to the Sun Luck restaurant, where I then proceeded toeat a washing-up bowl of prawns – heads and feet and tails, y’know – notthinking, talking rapidly and just eating, and then me and Lol staggered
outside and someone grabbed hold of Lol and said, ‘Excuse me, you’re
The Cure. My friend wants to meet you, we’re drinking in this bar.’ Well,
the next thing I knew we were descending the steps to this really dingy
place and I was thrust in front of William from The Jesus And Mary Chain.
“All these people gathered round expecting a confrontation orsomething, but actually it ended up that I did a little bit of pogoing –y’know, a bit like [photographer Tom] Sheehan teaching me the frug,
same sort of deal, ‘This is how we used to do it’ – and I ended up throwing
up, I think, in the ladies’ toilet.
“I was actually being sick in the sink because someone was in the toilet,
and someone else came in and said, ‘You can’t do that, mate, you’re
blocking up the sink and I want to have a wash’, so I then proceeded topick up all my sick in my hands and throw it on the floor. It was all
perfectly formed prawns, it was no problem – in fact, had I picked up mymeal initially and thrown it on the floor it would have been the same, but
I’d’ve had a really good night.
“As it was, Lol ended up carrying me home, which is why I know it was mylast night out in London, because when you get to the stage when Lawrence
puts you in a taxi and takes you home, you’re in fucking big trouble.”This same story, of course, appeared in the Daily Maxwell recently, only
it claimed Smith had serious food poisoning and there was no mention of
the Jesus bunch. I wonder what Smith thought of them?
“Well, Lol bought the first Jesus And Mary Chain single because hebought the first Sex Pistols record and he thought, being a pretty Hindu
sort of bloke, that he’d complete the circle and step up a level, so no one
would pick on him any more, but I wasn’t impressed by it.”
What about his contemporaries like Billy Idol?
“‘White Wedding’, what a load of cack,” Smith snarls, and proceeds torelate the rather sordid tale of how The Cure did their last-ever support
tour with Generation X only to be unceremoniously dumped halfway
through when Lol happened upon Billy trying to get his leg over a nubilein the Gents and offered a helping hand.
“Next day we were told we weren’t needed on the rest of the tour, so wedropped Lol off at a motorway service station on the way home.”
More tales of exploding cigarettes on planes and fisticuffs with Nina
Hagen in Athens and I’m even less convinced by this “No More Mad Bob”
business. So come on, Smith, what have you got to say for yourself?
“Well, I think if I was 16 again and I wanted to be in a group, we’d be
one of the three groups I’d want to be in – us, the Bunnymen or someone
gorgeous’ backing band just so I could sit and watch someone’s bum
for a couple of hours. And as long as I still think that, I’ll be happy.”“I proceeded
to pick up all
my sick
and throw iton the floor”

MITH’S new SenSe of freedom apparently extends to allmatters concerning The Cure, a radical reversal from his
involvement with the claustrophobically secretive Banshees.
Why, it even extends to videoing the recording of The Head…, a homemovie of daft drunkenness and corny jokes which he hopes to releasesoon to “really take the myth apart”. The funny thing is, though,despite all this gaiety, Robert’s beginning to act as if he’s old. He
recently told some other hack that he’d always anticipated being deadby 25, but here he is, no grey hairs in sight and fitter than ever.
“I feel old because of what people have been saying to me. I’ve
consciously done interviews with Just 17 just because it’s pap – I mean, it’s
all pap really, but at least Melody Maker are at a higher level of pap than
Just 17. But anyway, these 17-year-olds are coming along saying, ‘Well, as
an established band… as a famous…’, and eventually it gets to you.
“But I defy all these people to name me someone we are comparably
old to. I look at the five of us in a metaphysical mirror and we’re still 100
years younger than all these people who are physically younger, because
they’re so fucking worried about nothing. I mean, when I was young
I didn’t feel young, but I still feel younger than any new group… except
The Jesus And Mary Chain.”S

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1985

j u l y – s e p t em b e r“My life
is quite
extreme”

Visitations fromthe dead. Migraines.
Interpretive dance. Allof the above and more
have helped form the
new KATE BUSH album.
“Too many people sit
and think, ‘It’ll just cometo me,’ instead of getting
off their arses and goingfor it,” she says.

— MELODY MAKER AUGUST 24 —“Deeper meaning resides in the fairy tales told to me in my childhood thanin the truth that is taught by life” – SchillerJ

ust like the phoenix, really. Once every two years, sherises out of the ashes to once more bestow a touch of
mysticism, a hint of myth, and a copious supply of inspired
vision upon the burned-out landscape we call the charts.
She smiles. We shake hands. She’s too polite to be a phoenix.
Perhaps a Fairy Queen? Tommy [MM photographer Tom
Sheehan] and I introduce ourselves at the doorway of her dance studio.
“Oh yes, Tom,” she beams, “you’re looking better than the last time
I saw you.”
Young Thomas looks flushed. They’ve only met once before – three years
ago, for about five minutes. Perhaps she does remember?
“Oh yes, and I’ve met you before, as well,” she smiles.
I try to explain this is not the case. Mistaken identity, perhaps? I’m damn
sure I’d remember. But she’s adamant.
“Perhaps it was in another life,” cries a whimsical voice from theroom behind.
“Yes,” she stares at me, considering the matter thoroughly. “It must havebeen in another life.”
Oh dearie me. She is serious. She is incredibly cordial. She isunbelievably beautiful. Over the past two years, the name Kate Bush has
once more receded to the back of the common consciousness, joining thesmouldering ember of the Buzzcocks et al – set for the scrapyard. Yet once
more she has confounded the rumour-mongers who had alreadypronounced her the Lady Lucan of pop, missing presumed dead. Once
more she has created an album to besot and bewitch the coldest of hearts.
Once more she has come out of her isolated refuge with the charm of a siren
and the innocence of a child. Ms Bush is incapableof growing old, she has merely grown up.
But what, you ask, has sister Kate been doing
during this hiatus, this self-imposed exile? As
usual, Kate explains much, but reveals precious
little, slamming the doors of privacy with a single
coy look.
“After the last album, I had to promote it, andthat took me to the end of ’82, so it hasn’t really »96 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

Kate Bush in 1985:“All I ever do islisten to the little
voices insideme… You can’t
disappoint them”

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1985

j u l y – s e p t em b e r“I found an inspirational new dance teacher,” Kate replies with growing
enthusiasm. “The teacher’s energy made me really enthusiastic about
writing again.”
And once again the conversation turns back to the studio. Kate talks
about her beloved studio a great deal – a great deal more than she’s willingto chat about herself. She really doesn’t have any hobbies, mainly because
they wouldn’t be beneficial to her work – the subject around which her
entire universe evolves. The one exception is an avid interest in archery.
And even this she has turned toward work, with the cover shot of the new
single, believing it to be symbolic of Cupid’s bow – an image that ties thethreads of the single together.
And so, naturally, we turn to Kate’s new album, Hounds Of Love, andthe current success of the new single. Another new departure? Anotherrebirth? Another quest for new pastures?
“Yes, I wanted something new, and to begin
with, it was extremely difficult. All the songs I
seemed to write sounded too much like the last
ALBUMS
album. I’ve never seen any point in repeating
things you’ve already done before. I think it’sa dangerous thing not to search for new waysof approaching songs. Too many people sit
and think, ‘It’ll just come to me,’ instead of
1985
getting off their arses and going for it.”
Liam O’Flynn).
Kate, of course, is far too polite to
But the theme is too
name names…
confused and the execution“If you get out and go for things, then those
too laborious and stilted to carry real weightthings will come to you. I think it’s too easy to
as a complete entity.
wait and expect things just to come to you.”Some of the central obsessions of “TheA certain Mrs M Thatcher said similar words,
Ninth Wave” also crop up on the otherbut this time they ring with verity. Must be her“non-concept” side. A deal with God, forsmile. Kate’s new studio, hidden away in theexample, is struck on “Running Up That
overgrown wilds of Kent, enables her toHill”, the hit single. It’s the most telling line
exorcise the ghosts of The Dreaming without
on the album – everyone has made a deal
sending EMI executives into prolonged
with God sometime – and its exotic nature
thromboses over the expense of the operation.
makes it instantly more arresting than the“The pressure of knowing the astronomical
disconcerting admission of fear and faintamount that studio time costs used to makehearts on “Hounds Of Love” or theme really nervous about being too creative.
whimsical meandering of “The Big Sky”.
You can’t experiment forever, and I work very,“Hounds Of Love” is, though, far andvery slowly. I feel a lot more relaxed emotionallyaway the best track on the album… rich andnow that I have my own place to work and acolourful, it successfully overcomes thehome to go to.”disco rhythms that otherwise tend to
Sitting on floor cushions, drinking cups ofoverbalance the album, and inspires Katetea, I can’t help thinking if things got any more
to a truly astonishing vocal performance.
relaxed, they’d be sound asleep. Speak more of
The biggest plus of the album is, in fact,
the new material, Kate. Speak words of love…
her singing: she squawked and shrieked her“This time I wrote a lot of songs and just chose
way through The Kick Inside and Lionheart
the best ones to put on the A-side of the album.
and even on Never For Ever (surely her
I like to think there’s not a song there that’s
greatest work) there were moments when
been put there for padding. Sometimes people
hysteria got the better of her.
get the impression that if you take a long time
Here she has learned you can have control
over something that you’re literally going overwithout sacrificing passion, and it’s thethe same piece again and again, and instead ofheavyweight rhythm department aided andmaking it better, you’re making it worse. I hateabetted by some overly fussy arrangements
to think I’ve ever done that.”that get the better of her. And a pox on theThis striving for perfection might well beconcept album. Colin Irwin
caused by fears about disappointing her
audience or her pet cats. The longer thewait, the greater the expectation.
“There are always so many voices
telling me what to do that you can’t
listen to them. All I ever do is listen to
the little voices inside me. I don’t want todisappoint the little voices that have been
so good to me.”
Of course not. The finely tuned songs
that made the final selection on thealbum differ greatly from the diversionsof previous albums. They are all lovesongs (sigh) using elemental imagery thatform a cogent and cohesive panoply of
emotion. A search and struggle to securesome sort of meaning. The discovery thatbeen that long. My life is quite extreme, really; I go from a very isolated
working situation, to going out and promoting my work and being verymuch a public creature.
“After you’ve been through months of that kind of overexposure, you’releft feeling a bit shellshocked. I needed to take some time off and go
somewhere quite different to write this new album. I didn’t want toproduce it in the wake of The Dreaming.”
A wise move. Music vogues move with such alacrity that two years off
can finish off a career. In fact, such a timespan is the beginning and theend of most groups’ lifespans!
“I didn’t really bother thinking about that sort of thing. I spent the timeseeing films, seeing friends, building my own studio, and doing things I
hadn’t had a chance to do for ages.”Things? You couldn’t elaborate on what these strange and wondrous
things would be? Trout fishing? Hang-gliding? Hamster hunting?

Them heavy rhythms

MM SEPT 21 The one where Kate goes conceptual.
Kate Bush Hounds of Love EMI
Critics – and, I suspect, a large proportionof her fiercely devoted following – seemconsistently unable to explain the elusive
appeal of Kate Bush. How can someone
so charming and giggly and apparently
straightforward get to write a song ascomplex and mystical as “The Dreaming”;
or as blatantly sexual as “Breathing”; or as
evocatively surreal as “Babooshka”?
The question is: is she 10 years ahead of hertime, or 10 years behind it? Whatever…she’s
way out of sync with anything else that’s
going down right now – and that’s probably
not a bad thing. It’s just a shame that,
because she’s so eminently marketable, her
often radical experiments with percussive
rhythms, startling melody lines, ambiguous
lyrics and eccentric vocals haven’t earned
the credit they’ve deserved. Eurythmics forone have surely come under her influence.
This is her fifth album and, we are told,
the second side of it – subtitled “The Ninth
Wave” – is a concept. I can hear the shudders
from here. But then virtually everything
Kate has ever done has seemed like a miniconcept album… all those dramatic
atmospherics and cinematic lyrics. She has
as much in common with opera as she doeswith conventional pop music.
This said, I don’t much care for “The Ninth
Wave” as an idea. Full of hippy talk andreligious theory, it purports to tell the storyof someone skating on thin ice who
promptly gets trapped beneath that ice,with all the panic and psychologicaltrauma such an experience would entail.
But, of course, it’s actually about much
more than that as the tracks flow into a
blurred metaphysical overview of themeaning of life, bringing in themes ofmagic, death, spiritual existence and –ultimately, on the jaunty closing track“The Morning Fog” – reincarnation.
However, it does include one brilliant
extract, “Jig Of Life”, which gives fullvent to her interest in traditional themes
and her Irish background (with John
Sheahan playing some blazing, earthy
fiddle, and driven along by uilleann piper
98 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

Hounds Of Lain

REVIEWalthough you can strip away everything from a person, there
will always be a residue of love awaiting resurrection. Sounds
mawkish, doesn’t it? Jane Austen world have loved it. All thoseover-expressive vocals and delicate orchestrations channelled
into such pathos. Sounds risible, doesn’t it?
Yet the songs’ style and eloquence rise above bathos throughtheir haunting overtones. Phantasmagorical voices tilt therose-coloured world off its trite axis with jagged eerie phrases.
Outside observations are slanted metaphors revealing statesof mind. No longer are we presented with the eclectic collage of
The Dreaming, whose continual shifts and spirals allowed an
escape with diversity. No longer is the entire story of Houdini
crammed into three minutes, until a new fable takes up thetorch. Now the texture is more subtle, the production moreadroit, and the mesmerism unrelenting.
“The last album contained a lot of different energies. It did
take people to lots of different places very quickly, and somepeople found that difficult to take. I think this album has moreof a positive energy. It’s a great deal more optimistic.
“I rather think of the album as two separate sides.” Howastute. “The A-side is really called ‘Hounds Of Love’, and the
B-side is called ‘The Ninth Wave’. The B-side is a story, and thattook a lot more work – it couldn’t be longer than half an hour,and it had to flow. This time, when you get to the end of one
track, what happens after it is very affected by what’s comebefore. It’s really difficult to work out the dynamics withinseven tracks. The concept took a long time.”
Whoops! There goes that word again. Concept – a wordmauled by the memory of Floyd, flares, baked lentils andchronic boredom. It took some time to extract my nails fromthe ceiling and climb back down to earth. It took even longer
to summon up the courage to ask what this concept mightentail. Kate looks upset that I’m not jumping up and downwith ecstasy.
“It’s about someone who comes off a ship and they’ve beenin the water all night by themselves, and it’s about that
person re-evaluating their life from a point which they’venever been to before. It’s about waking up from things andbeing reborn – going through something and coming out theother side very different.”
Sounds suspiciously like The Ancient Mariner revisited…
“Oh no! It’s completely different. It ends really positively – as things
always should, if you have control.”
And Kate certainly has that. From the writing, recording, performing,
production of her tunes to the choreography on the accompanying video.
As usual, the visual imagery is gleaned from a wide variety of sources:from the films of Godard, Herzog and Coppola,
to The Book Of Dreams, yet their accretion with
Kate’s own personal fears and desires isshrouded in mystery.
“There are many films that you don’t thinkmuch of at the time, but weeks afterwards you
get flashbacks of images. Sometimes films likeDon’t Look Now and Kagemusha have reallyhaunted me. You don’t necessarily steal images
from films, but they are very potent and take you
somewhere else – somewhere impossible to get
to without that spark.”
At this moment it is difficult to see how such aplacid, genteel and downright normal musician
could ever produce songs like “Get Out Of My
House” and “Sat In Your Lap”. Perhaps somestrange transformation takes place when she is asleep?
“Yes, I have very strange dreams, you know. Over the years I’ve
collected the most incredible star cast of them. Very famous people
come and visit me.”Curiouser and curiouser…
“Peter O’Toole came round to dinner last week, and my mum met him
and thought he was wonderful. Keith Moon often comes round for tea, as
well. I have a lot of vivid dreams, most of which I can’t mention. The
images I get from them sometimes bleed into my songs.”
Most of Kate’s heroes, like Oscar Wilde, the Pythons, Roxy Music, Billie
Holiday and Hitchcock, have all visited her, but her mum didn’t like

August 22, 1985:
performing“Running Up
That Hill” on
Top Of The Pops

Hitchcock – maybe she was justfrightened by him?
“Hitchcock was definitely a genius. His
dreams must have been extraordinary. He
must have plucked his ideas out of the sky, or had a private line to Mars.”
Slowly, very slowly, we’re edging closer to the point where the musician
and her music bisect.
“I think some people use music as a means of expressing what they feel
about things which they can’t express socially. I don’t really know why
people think my songs are strange. Perhaps because I bathe in goat’s
milk! It’s not something you should really ask me. My mum could
probably help you more. It’s probably
something to do with my childhood.”
I met Kate’s mum in one of her dreams lastTuesday, but she didn’t tell me much either.
The door slams shut again. Perhaps a choiceof character from the scrolls of history mightreveal more.
“I would want to be Breughel, definitely.”Things are starting to come into focus.
Only a fool would have predicted FlorenceNightingale – and Kate is nobody’s fool.
“His work is so real, and yet depicted in a
fantastic way. It’s so beautiful and elemental.
And his faces are so haunting.”
Things seemed to be going well – very
well – until quite suddenly, just as Kate wasrecounting her favourite fairy tales, she comes over all unnecessary.
Lights flash, Kate wilts, and her world starts to spin in the opposite
direction to everyone else’s.
“I’m terribly sorry about this, but I keep feeling worse and worse, andI don’t know whether I can talk properly any more.”
Her companion calls it overwork, the doctor calls it a severe migraine.
We call it a day.
“I don’t know what’s come over me,” she says, embarrassed. We shakehands. She smiles. “I’m sure we’ll see each other again very soon.”
Yes, Kate, I sure hope we will. Probably in another life. We exited,floating through the nearest wall. Ted Mico •HISTORY OF ROCK 1985 | 99

alamy

“I have strange
dreams. Veryfamous people
come andvisit me”

1985

j u l y – s e p t em b e r“We’renot likeanybodyelse”

From Scotland,
divisively: THE JESUS ANd
MARY CHAIN. “We’re notlike any other group,”says singer Jim Reid. “We
don’t fit in with anybody
and we don’t fit in withany particular scene.
We’re not particularly
liked by anybody either.”— NME SEPTEMBER 14 —Mark and Colleen Hayward / getty

The background
Or: it’s no use using Clearasil on
an immaculate conception

100 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

J: What’s there to do tonight?
W: Watch the cracks break out on theceiling of our neatly custom-built
dwelling, get chased around the concreteby the local tuffs like last night, or hatch
the plans for a radical new pop noise.
J: Lemme think about it.
Jim Reid Woke up one morning todiscover a small swelling on his head.
Thinking nothing of it, he went about
his normal business, which consisted
mainly of finding ways to waste histime. There never seemed to be much to
do with time in east kilbride. Time andthe dismal little newtown seemed tohave left one another pretty much alone
since its cluster of concrete had erupted
on the Clydeside landscape.
Jim looked at the swelling with mild
annoyance. “Give it time,” he thought.
After all, there wasn’t much else to dowith it. But instead of easing, theswelling grew larger and moreunsightly. Now, acne he could
cope with – that he’d always
regarded as something sent toplague him – but Job he wasn’t.
With increasing irritation hewatched the swelling grow fromthe size of a large pimple to thesize of a small orange. »Delivering an “awesome
thrill of a noise”: brothers
William (left) and Jim
Reid of The Jesus And
Mary Chain in 1985

HISTORY OF ROCK 1985 | 101

1985

j u l y – s e p t em b e r

Then something strange happened. Jim didn’t know quite what it was,but he began to become attached to the ever-plumpening swelling, evenrather fond of it. After all, he’d never gone out much, so the fact that he was
now housebound was a mere minor inconvenience. He nurtured it
carefully as it grew to the size of his head. Then one day the swelling burst
and, lo and behold, The Jesus And Mary Chain were upon us.
And we, in turn, have waited ever since for The Jesus And Mary Chain to
go away. There must have been many of us who thought, when the firsthysterical hosannas appeared in the Live pages of NME, that we were justbeing palmed off with another set of cut-price prophets (or would-be
profits). A fairly dismal early live show did little to convince me not to kickagainst the pricks.
Then I heard the record. “Upside Down” wasn’t a blinding revelation,
but amidst the terminal politeness of the English music scene, it passed fornoise immaculate. A quick flash, perhaps, to be followed by a fast gush anda long flush. “Never Understand” proved they weren’t so easily disposable,
as it showed them crashing onwards, riding a wave of adolescentirresponsibility and irresistible melody, casting up an exhilarating sprayof sound. Jim Reid might claim that surf songs “bug the fuck” out of him,
but it sounded to me like The Beach Boys cut with the Buzzcocks’ moreexperimental moments. Whatever, it was The Jesus And Mary Chain inexcelsis. They were not going to go away.
“You Trip Me Up” flicked off the fake sunburst
and left them in the sinister shiver of a Silver
Surfer frame. Conventional wisdom branded ita formula follow-up, but it glints with a hundred
subtleties. Listen carefully and you can hear theecho of Suicide’s “Ghost Rider” hero riding off inthe distance, look deeply into the whirlpool ofnoise and you’ll find a razored melody lurking
just below the surface. Then, just as you’re notexpecting it, SLAP! Another wave rears up frombehind the guitar and sends a shock ofreverberating chopping around the sound.
Now, dodging the predictable once more, theycome up with “Just Like Honey”, just the sweetest
pop ballad of the year – a chiming cascade ofguitars around a breathless, fragile vocal – an acoustic guitar version on
the 12-inch. “Sell out!” chorus the visionless in their quaint, nostalgic little
way. In fact, rather than sounding like a strained ploy, “Just Like Honey”
sounds graceful and incredibly natural. It’s not until the B-side, “Head”,
that you realise it harbours their most psychotic moment yet.
The Jesus And Mary Chain are not going to return from whence theycame. Which was… well, nowhere.
“At one time I used to say it didn’t matter where we came from,” says
Jim, talking quietly with definite emphasis, “but thinking about it now,
I realise that a lot of what is good about us is that we were so isolated fromeverything. Me and William just spent the last few years just doing
nothing. The only thing we ever did was to write songs, make demos andbasically get the idea of this group together.
“So many people have been in so many groups that they become kind oftainted; they become part of the music business, even if they’ve only beenin five shitty groups that have played like 50 gigs. Even though we’ve beenaround for over a year now, we’re still totally isolated from the musicbusiness. We’re not like anybody else, we’re not like any other group. We
don’t fit in with anybody and we don’t fit in with any particular scene.
We’re not particularly liked by anybody either.”
All that time, in the minds of two very slightly paranoid brothers in East
Kilbride (ie, nowhere), pop music was slowly mutating.

It’s a much documented feature of this age of MTV that music has
become increasingly masked by the visual image. This, as a principle, is
not too bad – after all, think what it was that meant the most to you, theway Mick Ronson played the guitar, or the zig-zag line on David Bowie’s
face. What is so sad is just how thin on the screen so many of the images
are. As Siouxsie Sioux says (and it takes an icon to know an icon), “I feelsorry for today’s kids. Imagine your hero being Nik Kershaw!”
Let’s face it, no matter how many Julie Burchill columns you’ve read, it’s
hard to pretend that there’s anything exciting about Nik Kershaw orSimon Le Bon. Success, contrary to current belief, is not stardom, and nomatter how much money Simon Le Bon might sink into the trappings, heis not a star. All he has is an image of young wealth, blueprinted straightfrom the bankrupt imaginations of the Penthouse creative department.
He can cause a stir at the yacht club by inviting two women into his
bedroom, he can be painted in newsprint as a drug-crazed tearaway, but
he’ll never have what Nic Roeg in Performance calls “that freaky little
demon” or what Lorca calls duende.
At the opposite end of the guilt spectrum, if not the wealth spectrum,
there’s Paul Weller, who treats style just like Le Bon treats sex – he reckons
if he broadcasts enough he’ll kid us on he’s got it. Unfortunately with style,as with sex, if you scream “I got it” the riposte is inevitably, “No you ain’t!”
Both polarities have something in common –you only have to look at the poster, catch a clip ofthe video, they just cry out at you. Listen:
DURAN DURAN: “We’ve got more money
than taste!”
STYLE COUNCIL: “We’re as dull and smallminded as a Southern satellite town.”
In the midst of all this, The Jesus And Mary
Chain look like gallantly unfashionable, meanfaced, bright-eyed brats from the backwaters.
“Just fuckin’ listen tae this,” they say and they
deliver this awesome thrill of a noise. That’s
what I call war.
Take their performance on Whistle Test. On
that showcase for the “broad spectrum ofmodern rock” (excuse me while I overdose on
Ovaltine), you might have expected a display of the kind of petulant
antics they’re famed for live. Instead, they appeared bloodshot in red
light and crackled across the screen with a measured menace. At the end,
instead of the tedious instrument-trashing demonstration, they
juddered into a finale of gleeful indifference. Perfect.
Then there was the sleeve of “You Trip Me Up” – a guitar distorted by thehorizontal grain of the video image. Nothing spectacular, just the exact
visual echo of their technological reinvention of the elementary
excitement of rock’n’roll. Just exactly right.
“Exactly,” says Jim, “that’s why we belong in the Top 10, because
everything we do is with extreme taste.
“I know it sounds like a complete cliche to say, but I’ve always been a big
Velvet Underground fan, and the effect I want to have on people is theeffect that it has on me looking at pictures of Lou Reed, John Cale andSterling Morrison in 1966. The photographs of them in Andy Warhol’s
Factory just contain everything that made their music so awesome.
That’s what we’re trying to do – our words, our music, our photographs. It
should all be the one thing.”“If we could
get that noiseout of an oboe
or a clarinet,
we would do”

The image
Or: they’ll be looking black and crumpled when they come
J: Is there one rule about style?
W: Only that Paul Weller doesn’t have it.
About this time last year, the first, fairly restrained Live review
of The Jesus And Mary Chain appeared in the NME, squashed onto
the third page of the section. The cover of that issue proclaimed“War On Pop”.
A year later, if anyone is prepared to take on the challenge of reactivating
pop as war it’s the two creased characters who sit in front of me primping
their oversized haircuts. William and Jim Reid do not look like pop idols(this is one of their advantages), but they do have an instinctive grasp of
the power of the pop image to cut you dead.
102 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

The music
J: What do you think of trash aesthetics?
W: Sound like a good slogan.
“PeoPle find it difficult to get over the idea that we put feedback
on records as a main instrument. Too many people just concentrateon that and they don’t realise that there’s more to it than that. There’s
other things on our records other than feedback – there’s melodies,
there’s songs, there’s words, above all there’s noises from a guitar that
I just didn’t think were possible until he started making these strange
sounds in the studio.
“People just don’t seem to see the value of what we’re doing with guitars,
just how different it is.” Jim finishes his testament to his brother’s genius.
William looks sheepish under his pile of hair.
Feedback itself plays a little part in what I’ve heard of the JAMC LP;
it’s more a matter of sheer, orchestrated noise around the electricalconductor of the pop dynamic. I discovered its wonders while waiting
to board a plane, to join the band in Edinburgh.

jesus and mary chain

The spectacle
W: Is it raining?
J: I think they’re spitting at us.
As i Arrive at the Edinburgh gig Jim Reid points across the dressing
room as a gesture of recognition. Following his finger, with someapparent difficulty, he staggers across in my direction. There’s a genialand celebratory mood in the cramped room, fans are hammering at

the door. “This is my wee sister,”announces Jim, dragging overa reluctant, pale-faced young
girl. “What’s that?!”
The questing finger is pointed
vaguely in the direction of thequarter bottle I usually carryfor such occasions. Brandy.
Want some?
Taking me up on the offer, Reid
pours half of it into his can of
Foster’s, then brands me as the“only fuckin’ alcoholic in theroom. Honestly,” he continues,“I never drink spirits. Vodka andorange is my top whack.”
Before long he’s having
extreme difficulty standing up.
“Do you know what,” heannounces in a gurgle of laughter, “I’ve justdiscovered that the whole music business is shit, andthe only ones who are any good are my mates.” Hegives in to the increasingly unpredictable forces ofgravity and lands on a pile of boxes in the corner.
“You alright?” enquires manager Alan McGee. He’s met with anextended gurgle.
Once on stage, Reid renews his struggle with gravity. McGee stands atthe back and assumes a catching position every time Jim sways near. The
set is customarily short and messy. Out of about four songs at least two are“You Trip Me Up”. The audience don’t seem too concerned.
Watching Reid roll around the floor and the audience hurling abuse, it
sinks in at last. The audience don’t want or expect The Jesus And Mary
Chain to be “good” live. What they expect is an antidote to mindnumbing competence. To them the band are a spectacle; to the band theaudience are a bunch of punk nostalgics. It’s a relationship based firmly
on mutual contempt.
“Why should I mind that they’re too drunk to play?” an apparently wellpleased fan asks. “After all, I’m too drunk to listen anyway.”

The context
W: Ever have an identity crisis?
J: Only when I look at my scrapbook.
According to the intolerably smug Max Bell in The Face, people
like me are supposed to look at The Jesus And Mary Chain and say,“Love the music, hate the attitude.” Actually, I love the music, love theattitude but think some of the antics are pretty stupid.
“I would agree with you,” says Jim.
“But most of the antics you’re talking about,” William adds, “areconfined to the first two months, our first two months of fame when wewere making a lot of mistakes, doing things for the sake of publicity.”“It was totally exaggerated as well. Like we did one interview with amusic paper and they’re goin’, ‘D’you want beer and whisky?’ and we’regoin’, ‘Nuh.’ So we’re sittin’ there with tea and scones, because that’s what
we felt like that day. Then you read the article and its like they’ve had avisitation from a posse of Russ Abbot characters.”“Like I might get drunk and go on stage,” Jim says, “but that’s because
I think it’s probably more interesting for the audience to see me rollingaround the floor than it is to see some polished pop show. That doesn’tmean I’m not to be taken seriously or regarded as some stupid young
drunk, because I’m not drunk, I’m not stupid and I’m not particularly
young either.”

The X off
J: Sometimes you wake up in the morning and you could give a smart
answer to any question.
W: Other times you’re a stupid bastard.
“i hAve A terrible fear of being misunderstood, and maybe it isparanoia, but I get the impression that our group has been completely
misunderstood. It does have a lot to do with our own naivety, because
we created a stupid image which we’re finding it very hard to get rid of.
“But when I do an interview I want to describe everything that the bandare doing, everything that we’re trying to be, but there are no easy words.”
Don Watson •HISTORY OF ROCK 1985 | 103

rex features

Standing on the tarmac at thefoot of the boarding steps, I
turned the volume up full on my
Walkman. Guitars billowed
around my ears, planes took off
over my head. It was hard tellingwhich was which, but what thehell, both of them have about thesame adrenal effect, and the
vocals manage just about to ride
the energy.
The way in which The Jesus And
Mary Chain use the guitar it may
as well be a synthesizer or a roaddrill; they have more in common
October 11, 1985:
appearing onwith Kraftwerk than they do withThe Tube
Bruce Springsteen.
“The actual fact that we
use guitars is actually quite
unimportant,” says Jim, “we just happen to be
familiar with them, just because they’re the obvious
things to use when you start making music. If we
could get that same noise out of an oboe, we would
do. If we could get it out of a clarinet, we would.
“Our music is probably more classical than anything else,” claims Jim,
bringing us to another important point in the appeal of The Jesus And
Mary Chain – ambition. The old truism still holds that if you aim for trash
you’ll end up with garbage. The Jesus And Mary Chain, meanwhile, aim
to make three-minute Wagnerian epics and end up with classic comicstrip culture. With their lurid sound and snatches of imagery, their songs
come the closest yet to capturing the morbid fascination of an EC Comic
frame, the tacky gut-bursting splurge appeal of Cronenberg.
“If we’d been around in 1966 we might have been a trash group,” says
Jim, “but nowadays the whole idea is totally outdated, it’s just been ruined
by a whole bunch of idiots. Now the idea of trash strikes you as something
not too serious. We are serious.”
Of course you have to be.
“Trash is like a cheap and nasty sound,” adds William, “ours is about
as classy as you can get really. Listen to the sort of noise that the TV
Personalities get, that’s cheap and nasty; ours is actually a very carefully
crafted sound.”
It takes care and attention to sound cheap and nasty with class. It also
takes attention to violence to capture anything of the best of thepsychedelic era. Where others have indulged in hapless sanctification of
the past, TJAMC realise that the value of The Doors, or the early Seeds lay
in the way the future seeped through their sound.
“A lot of what happened in the psychedelic time was actuallyworthwhile,” says William, “but what people don’t realise is that if thosepeople were around today they probably wouldn’t be playing with guitars
anyway, they’d be messing around with road drills and things like that.
They’d all be fuckin’ psychotic bastards.
“I hate groups like The Fuzztones who, just like you say, are trying totake what was then and put it now. I despise nostalgia, basically.”“I despise it as well,” says Jim, “there’s nothing wrong with taking someof the good bits of what’s gone before. Like we have been influenced by The
Velvet Underground, and I would say it shows but it’s not transparent.”
What is transparent is the difference between the bands who’ve pickedon the Velvets because the chords are easy (Flesh For Lulu, The Pastels,
and a hundred others it’s best to forget) and the ones who’ve caught WhiteLight/White Heat like a viral infection (Fire Engines, Josef K, Sonic Youth).
“When they started they just wanted to be The Kinks or The Who,but what came out was totally awesome and utterly original,” says
William. “Hopefully we sound as different to them as they do to their
original sources.”
We come to pay tribute to another mutation.

50][ ^AIA ONE
SHOE

1985

j u l y – s e p t em b e r

Suzanne Vega:“refreshingand gently
captivating”

ALBUMS
Suzanne Vega Suzanne Vega A&M
The New York Times has called
her “potentially one of the mostpowerful poet singers since
Bob Dylan”, and “one of themost promising young talentson the folk music circuit”. The
Boston Herald claims she is“an absolutely original talent,a mesmerising performer”.
The lady is Suzanne Vega,
and though the accolades are
somewhat overblown, there’s
no doubt that her work is bothrefreshing and gently
captivating. Vega belongs
with the traditional folk-poetadventurers and she couldn’t
object to comparisons with
Joni Mitchell, Rickie Lee Jonesand Janis Ian, but like Laurie
Anderson, she takes traditional
forms and updates theirstructures into something very
personal and just a little different.
Until recently she was playing
only the New York folk clubs,
reviving the arty Greenwich
Village singer-songwriter
heritage that blossomed to its
heyday in the ’60s and early ’70s.
Is there still a place for thisgentle, reflective melody that
couples wistful lyricism andsweet acoustics? Are Vega’s
104 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

ALBUMS

soundtracked poem;
it’s folklore and fableand highly endearing.
“It’s not as romantic,
pastoral or escapist
as the old folk musicwas,” she claims by
way of explanation. “Igrew up in tough New
York neighbourhoods
where what you see isharder and colder
than the things you’dsee in the country. A
lot of my imagery is
about confronting,
not escaping.”
Produced by Lenny
Kaye, ex-Patti Smith
guitarist, the record
will no doubt be seen
as a masterpiece
by New York’s
cognoscenti
and relatively
ignored byeveryone else.
Which is a pity;
Suzanne Vegais quite atalent, and if
you’re prone tothis kind of thing,
this record is an
unexpected find.

REVIE
W

poignant
1985
meanderings merely
the indulgent progenyof an egocentric and arty
form of self-expression?
Unlike Anderson, she
Helen Fitzgerald, MM Aug 3
shies away from avant-garde
The Pogues Rum, Sodomy
distortion. Her songs are straight& The Lash STiFF
and pure and true to strict folk
construction, yet synthesizers
In which the evilly-leeringand electric guitar merge with
Pogues stroll off with far andher acoustics without seeming
away the best album title ofincongruous, and with one or
the year and raise several
two of the tracks (notably(im)pertinent questions about“Neighbourhood Girls”) she
pop, rock and what (if anything)lapses into a rapping freestyle
it all means to us any more. Why,that’s most attractive.
after 30 years of rock’n’roll, are
Vega studied dance at NYC’s
we now listening to Irish pubHigh School Of Performing Arts
rock? Why is folk music suddenly
and cleaves to the NYC “Art”
more acceptable than synth-pop
syndrome that claims all forms
and the Batcave?
of personal expression as thePerusing Stiff’s admirable press
only laudable product ofhandout, I note that many nimble
human existence. If you’re notminds have already applied
expressing or projecting thenthemselves to
you’re not part of the clique.
the naming of
But I like this record and
The Pogues’
damn pretentious theorising ormusic. They
criticism. I like it for the same
“were neverreasons I’d stick by Rickie Lee
meant for
Jones. It’s comforting, warm andanything
intrinsically female… rural values
as delicate
seen through urban eyes, sad,as stereo
broody and wise. “Knight Moves”
equipment”,
and “Neighbourhood Girls” areaccording to oneclassics of the genre, “The Queenof the Maker’s
And The Soldier” is more than ashock-elite. “TheDubliners on
speed,” observed
the Irish Timessuperbly. Perhaps,
fuelled on Jameson’s, I’dhave more time for the leeryaccordion-and-banjo sway of“The Old Main Drag” or work up
a bit more enthusiasm for thetediously energetic “Sally
MacLennane”. The other-ranks’tale of “The Gentleman Soldier”(trad arr The Pogues) also sounds
like little more than a caricatureof folk music.
But the brightest, most intense
moments of Rum… aren’t about
particularities of style or delivery.
This is, apart from anything else,music to hang on to other people
by to stave off brutal fact and theweight of history.
While The Pogues make music
for drunks as well, probably, as
anyone has (even if they soundeddismally under-powered aboard
HMS Belfast the other night),
they’re also dragging an oftenignored folk tradition into the
daylight with an altogether
improbable potency.
Thus, “Navigator” is a slow,
resolute march depicting thegrimy fate of the navvies whodied building railways and canals
to make “way for a commercewhere vast fortunes were made”.
If, like the album title and thesleeve shots of The Pogues
dressed as seafaring personnelof the Napoleonic Wars,“Navigator” flashes back to a
brutal paternalist economy
which swept its debris under theimperial carpet, next up is “Billy’s
Bones”, a brand-new traditional
song about a hooligan who ran
from the law to the Middle Eastand got blown away for histrouble. Still, “he liked a bloody
good fight of course”, which iswhat he got. So, who cares? Just
his poor old mum.
I can tire quite quickly of someof The Pogues’ lachrymose
balladry, and I daresay theseare songs which, more often
than not, sound better on thenight. A cheer, none the less,for Dick Cuthell’s excellent
horns and some poignant forays

Adam Sweeting, MM Aug 10

Propaganda A Secret Wish ZTTiI

Propaganda: manipulating
information for the benefit ofyour own ideas.
Propaganda in this case are
four technocrats in love withimagination. Their songs are areconciliatory exploration ofideas in change; the music follows
finely honed patterns of structure
while their literary pathos pursues
new forms of beauty: they want
the best of both worlds.
Like magpies they steal
quotations from Edgar Allan
Poe, Roland Barthes and a hostof other literary figures. The
inner sleeve’s “Compositions
Illuminated” provides neat
little quotations to explain
the “essence” of each song.
Propaganda enjoy being
cryptic and leading a merry
dance on their philosophicaltravels as though they enjoy
scattering ideas more thantrying to make something ofthem. Dissemination before
collation, they have theirpriorities well considered.
A Secret Wish is producedby Steve Lipson, who engineered
the Frankie album, and features
the additional participation of
Trevor Horn, David Sylvian, Paul
Haig, Malcolm Ross and Glenn
Gregory among others. Anton
Corbijn took the tasteful photos
and the singer’s husband, Paul
Morley, wrapped the entire
collective in a “concept”.
Nepotism? But of course.
Their music is sexual andactive, sublimation through the
dynamics of emotion. “Dream
Within A Dream” opens thealbum with luxurious attraction –Propaganda can make complex
constructions seem simple andthis is the source of their appeal.

“The Murder Of Love” is the
only displeasing track, hovering
dangerously close to Duran
Duran in the special-effects
department. Just as DD werecarried away by Mad Max andJames Bond, Propaganda havetarnished their veneer of aloofby allowing one song to be
indulged by silly noises andeffects. Then again, it was
about time they blotted their
copybook. “Jewel/ Duel” is easily
their most commercial song andcurrently a personal favourite,
though “P-Machinery”, which
opens the second side, ispleasing for entirely different
reasons. Using “Power, Force,
Push, Drive” as its refrain, it
would have made a far more apt
SINGLESsoundtrack for the revamping of
Depeche Modethe film Metropolis than Queen’s
It’s Called A Heart MUTE
feeble efforts. This song is
dramatically flawless andNothing new, nothing
spectacularly produced.
ventured, nothing gained. Safe
“The dark religions are
and predictable synth pop fromdeparted and sweet Science
the Basildon beefcakes, and toreigns” it says on the sleeve.
be honest the familiar
Propaganda don’t
formula is beginninglike being tied toto wear rather thin.
specifics. “DrIt needn’t be like
Mabuse (The First
this, because
SINGLES
Life)” was their
Depeche are
introduction
capable of sometheme and it
surprisingly
still serves thememotional
1985
well, disturbingly
work (such as
insidious, an“Then” from their
obscured view of evil.
Construction Time
“Sorry For Laughing” hasAgain LP), but this single
been penned by Haig and Ross
can’t muster the class or theand is concerned with “strangers
clout of some of their better
uniting in the interests ofwork. MM Sept 28
torment”, which is amusingly
The Cult Rain BEGGARS BANQUET
highbrow and delivered as always
by a resonantly perfect vocal.
Ian Astbury and co need a
But then Propaganda aim to berethink. Although “Rain” is wella perfect unit, which is a very
played and exudes enthusiasm
Continental idea. Four people,
and excitement in all the right
Claudia, Michael, Ralf andplaces, essentially it’s “SheSuzanne, who claim to beSells Sanctuary” revisited, but“chasing after passing visions”.
not as good. Even afterDavid Sylvian wanted the same
repeated plays it falls flat on
for Japan but was taken for a
its face when compared to its
foppish dilettante, which hardly
illustrious predecessor. A bitof a sham all round. MM Sept 28
seems fair. In retrospect, it wasa matter of timing. Propaganda
Iron Maiden Running Free EMi
are protected by ZTT, a record
company who see themselves as
Another live single intended
patrons of the arts and haveas a taster for a forthcoming
gathered the influence to standalbum. And on this one, alltheir ground. “Without Love,
artist royalties are being
Beauty and Danger it would
donated to various anti-drugalmost be easy
charities.
to live,” they
Iron Maiden
echo. As
are one ofClaudia
our morebreathes atconvincing HM
the end of the
bands, and thisrecord, “Is thissingle fits thea dream withinbill perfectly –a dream?” Helenit’s well played,concise andFitzgerald, MM Jul 6

W
REVIE

Depeche Mode:“safe andpredictable”

doesn’t stoop to meaninglessguitar or drum solos. A
pleasant surprise. MM Sept 28

Microdisney
Birthday Girl ROUGH TRADE

Definitely the most commercial
song in Microdisney’s current
set, “Birthday Girl” shoots
out of the starting gate withassured poise and blasts
most of the week’s contenders
into oblivion.
Prodding piano, rat-a-tat
percussion, simple but
effective guitar fills and solid
bass sit impatiently while
Catha Coughlan’s expressive
vocal soars high above
pi 185the action. Articulate
and provocative
lyrics gush forth –MICRODI'I
we witness a0.5000
birth, and feelthe pain andtorment ofSide P
adolescence.
UY
Sorry. Got aproducedllen
bit carried away
Wri
1985oRou9
there. Anyway,
1985 Warnea wonderfulachievement. MM Sept 28

The Jazz Butcher
The Human Jungle GLASS
Ah, a little epistle from the
Butcher baby, and what anutter delight it is. Gentle, but
persuasive, “The Human
Jungle” builds steadily withhi-hat splashes and synth
warblings, a brash acoustic
guitar slots in to provide theunderpinning, and then thesong rockets into action using
clever instrumental breaks andbridges which neatly link theentire work.
And guess what? It’s all about
Herbert Lom, who used to playpsychiatrist Dr Roger Corderin the TV series The Human
Jungle. Lie down on the couch,please… MM Sept 28
HISTORY OF ROCK 1985 | 105

Shinko MuSic / GETTY

on the uilleann pipes for
Tommy Keane. And, finally,
The Pogues take their leave
with the slow, anguishedlamentations of Eric Bogle’s“Waltzing Matilda”, the ghastly
saga of the young Australians
killed and maimed fighting theTurks at Gallipoli. (Inspiration
for Peter Weir’s film, perhaps?)
With The War Game belatedly
on TV even while the governmentis leaning shamelessly on the
BBC over Irish politics, it’s
important that there should
be music aware of history andable to throw clear light on thepresent. “Rum…” has soul, if
not a great deal of innovation,and somewhere among theglasses and the ashtrays lie a
few home truths. Your round.

1985

j u l y – s e p t em b e r“I stand behind
Reagan when it
comes to build-up”:
Neil Young on stagein Los Angeles, 1985

106 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

“I’m init for thelong run”
MM hitches a ride on NEIL YOUNG’s campaign bus tohear about the new album. But what transpires is ano-holds-barred roam across his entire career andmore: Reagan, Aids, David Crosby’s drug problems,
even Charles Manson. “I’ve got a few demons,”
says Neil. “But I manage to coexist with them.”

getty

T

— MELODY MAKER SEPTEMBER 7 —he bus paused for breath at a traffic light, wheezing a little. after all,it had been on the road for 10 years. It had reached a place called Troy in
upstate New York, the original one-horse town. Old men in trucker’s
caps sat on benches in the deserted streets, watching it.
On the roof, the top halves of a couple of old studebakers had been
welded into place like twin observation turrets, silently surveying thepassing scenery. One of them had a windsurfer board strapped on top of it. The sides of thebus were covered with weather-beaten wooden ribbing. as it accelerated away from thelights in a growl of exhaust smoke, bystanders
could see the legend “buFFaLO spRINGFIeLd”
across its rear. The vehicle could have been
wandering the plains forever.
Inside the bus, a hound called elvis sat in thefront seat, keeping an eye on the road. Fittings,
shelves, seats and sideboards were all made fromhand-carved wood, right through from the
kitchen area at the front, via the central lounge
section, to the bedroom in the rear.
The vehicle’s owner patted the dog, who rolled
his eyes mournfully upward.
“I played here once with the buffalo
springfield,” he recalled in a voice which
managed to be both dark and nasal at the sametime. “I remember we didn’t get our money. È

HISTORY OF ROCK 1985 | 107

1985

j u l y – s e p t em b e r

The guy drew a gun on us, told us to get the fuck out. Those were the goodold days.”
Nearly 20 years later, Neil Young had returned with his latest ensemble,
a squad of veteran Nashville musicians called The International
Harvesters. His new country album, Old Ways, is, as its author sees it, thethird in a sequence of records which began with the best-selling Harvest
in 1972, continued with the winsome Comes A Time in 1978, and afterassorted diversions has brought him back to the road in 1985.
Old Ways is a skilfully crafted piece of work, full of perfectly assured
melodies and impeccable performances from familiar Young sidemen
like steel guitarist Ben Keith and Drummer Karl Himmel. Moresignificantly, the record captures the state of mind of a man who’s shot
the rapids of rock’n’roll, lost some good friends along the way, wilfully
turned his back on the charts and pop stardom, and who has managed
to become an adult in a field where the odds are stacked against it. Neil
Young has survived, and he’s grown, too. And changed.
“I think in some ways – only in some ways, but in some ways – rock’n’roll
has let me down,” he said. “It really doesn’t leave you a way to grow old
gracefully and continue to work.”
Why’s that? Because you’re supposed to die before you get old?
“Yeah, right. If you’re gonna rock you better burn out, ’cos that’s the way
they wanna see you. They wanna see you right on the edge where you’re
glowing, right on the living edge, which iswhere young people are. They’re discovering
themselves, and rock’n’roll is young people’s
music. I think that’s a reality, and I still loverock’n’roll and I love to play the songs in my set
that are sort of rock’n’roll, but I don’t see a future
for me there.”
Young paused, his lank black hair flopping
forward, and rubbed his chin, which wascovered in a heavy overnight stubble. “I see
country music, I see people who take care of
their own. You got 75-year-old guys on the road.
That’s what I was put here to do, y’know, so I
wanna make sure I surround myself withpeople who are gonna take care of me. ’Cos I’m
in it for the long run.
“Willie Nelson’s 54 years old and he’s a happy man, doing what he loves
to do. I can’t think of one rock’n’roller like that. So what am I gonna do?”
Old Ways features guest appearances from country luminaries Waylon
Jennings and Willie Nelson, both of whom will be playing some support
dates with Young on his current tour. A lot of the performances findYoung and his International Harvesters playing to family audiences atstate fairs, huge day-long gatherings of people, animals, carnivalsideshows, food and drink, where everyone turns up for theentertainment in the evening. It’s miles away from the rock’n’roll crowds
who’ve flocked over the years to see Young play with Buffalo Springfield,
Crosby Stills & Nash or his perennial backing band, Crazy Horse.

him, probably because he’s seen several friends die from drug abuse.
“David says that he loves to play music with Crosby Stills Nash & Young
more than anything in the world. I told them that when they could proveto me that that’s really what he wanted to do with his life and give up
drugs, I would go out with them. I told them that three years ago, and it
hasn’t happened yet.
“The way I look at it, either he’s going to OD and die or we’re going to play
together sometime. It’s pretty simple. But until one of those things
happens, until he cleans up, I’m not gonna do it. Live Aid was an exception
to the rule which I made up on the spot. They all know how I feel.
“I will not go out with CSNY, have everyone scrutinise the band, how big
it is and how much it meant, and see this guy that’s so fucked up on drugs,
and who’s not really so fucked up that he can’t come back – because we’ve
all seen him when he’s been clean recently, where he’s very sharp just likehe always was.
“But he seems to feel like he wants to do that, or he would stop doing it.
So, y’know, until he has more respect for life and his effects on the young
people… why should some young person who loves CSNY’s old records
from listening to their parents play them, some young kid 12 years old,
why should he see CSNY on TV and know that this guy’s a cocaine addict,been freebasing for fuckin’ years and years and years, and he looks likea vegetable but they’re still on TV and they’re still making it and they’re
still big stars? I don’t wanna show anybody that.
That’s something no one should see.”On the recent Live Aid broadcast, Young andhis band were seen delivering a song called“Nothing Is Perfect”. It’s not included on Old
Ways and is a strikingly forthright declaration ofYoung’s current absorption with family life andan almost gung-ho enthusiasm for Ronald
Reagan’s America. Young in the main steered
clear of the loudmouth leftish politics of Crosby
Stills & Nash, but wrote the scorching “Ohio”
after National Guardsmen shot four students at
Kent State University. It’s something of a shock
to find him supporting Reagan’s arms build-up.
The Loner has turned Republican.
“In the Carter years, everybody was walking
around with their tails between their legs talking with their head down,
y’know, thinking America’s been so bad, we’ve done all these things
wrong. But, especially militarily, we had a lot of disasters and a lot ofthings that never should have happened and that maybe were mistakes
in the first place, although it’s hard to say.
“People were being killed everywhere before we went over to try to help,
and we went over and tried to help them and we fucked up. But y’know,
you can’t always feel sorry for everything that you did. Obviously I wish
no one had to die in any war, but war is, ah, is a dirty game.
“It seems like the Soviets, it doesn’t bother them that much to walk into
Afghanistan and kill people left and right and take the fucking country
and do all that shit. You can’t just let them keep on fucking doing thatwithout saying enough’s enough. So to do that, to have the strength to dothat, you have to be strong.
“Ten years ago, the US was starting to really drag ass, way behind theSoviets in build-up. All that’s happened lately is more or less to catchup, just to be equal, reach equality in arms. At best it’s a bad situation,
but I think it would be worse to be weak when the stronger nation is theaggressor against freedom.
“So I stand behind Reagan when it comes to build-up, to stand, be able
to play hardball with other countries that are aggressive towards freecountries. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.”
But would you have thought that way in 1967?
“No, no I wouldn’t have thought that in 1967. But I’m an older man now,
I have a family. I see other people with families. There’s no immediate
threat to American families, but there is an immediate threat to otherfamilies in free countries, y’know, a lot of the countries on the bordersof the Iron Curtain. To stand there and say it could never happen is wrong,
because it’s happened. We just don’t want it to happen any more – at least,
I don’t.”
It seems utterly insane when you think of the billions of pounds or
dollars that have been spent since 1945 on weapons that have never been
used, surely?
“It is crazy, it’s fucking nuts,” growled Young. “At least in our countries
we have the fucking freedom to stand up and say it’s crazy. And that’s“Rock’n’roll
is young
people’s music.
I think that’sa reality”

Young is still best known among non-partisan observers
as the laid-back whiner who had a hit single with “Heart Of
Gold”in 1972. His early-’70s albums, After The Gold Rush andHarvest, provided a melancholy soundtrack for any number of mentally
unbalanced young people to ponder suicide to. His work with Buffalo
Springfield in the ’60s brought him into fierce creative proximity with
Stephen Stills, and among a bunch of fine songs recorded by the group,
it’s still Young’s dreamlike mock-symphonies “Expecting To Fly” and“Broken Arrow” that remain the most haunting and inexplicable.
Young joined Crosby Stills & Nash as additional instrumentalist anddark horse. His stint with them barely lasted a year, but it got him someprime exposure on their album Déjà Vu and set Young up perfectly for his
subsequent solo career. The association also proved to be something ofan albatross, but as the years passed and Young’s own albums pursued
a grim and tortuous path, it became clear that while CSNY had given
him a priceless commercial boost, it had scarcely hinted at the depth
and range of his talent.
Records like Tonight’s The Night, On The Beach and Time Fades Away
were to prove emphatically that Young could hardly have been less likethe hippy peacenik the media fondly imagined him to be.
Crosby Stills & Nash are still playing together and grossing wads ofdollars, but Young won’t have anything to do with them until David Crosby
kicks his cocaine habit. The topic brings out a hard puritanical streak in
108 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

where he patriotically lamented the demise of the American car industry
what we’re fighting for, to be able to disagree. Openly. And it’s our right,
as the Japanese invaded (“There’s already too many Datsuns in this town”).
and we have to do everything we can to preserve it.
Then there was the hard-driving “Southern Pacific”, a paean to the“So I don’t put down anybody who says we should stop building weapons
disappearance of the old railroads and the men who worked on them.
and everything. I disagree with them, practically. Idealistically, I agree
Young’s current live show contains a powerful reworking of the piece,
with them. It’s like walking both sides of the fence, but I think there’s too
and it sits comfortably alongside his hymns to home, family and anmuch to be responsible for as men and as people, that you have to take care
America dusting off its battered pride. Redneck? Let’s hope not.
of your own. So that’s why I have more of a sympathy for Reagan than otherOn tour, Young travels alone. Dave, his driver and minder, will motor
people would have – a lot of other people in my walk of life.”
from the gig and park for the night at a rest area or truck-stop. Young won’t
But that sounds dangerously like an “every man for himself”
see the band until soundcheck the next day, though he’s in radio contact
philosophy? Correct me if I’m wrong…
with them.
“Sort of, but… I think it’s more like every man for his brother than it is
On board the bus, Young played the perfect host, breaking out the
every man for himself. That’s how I look at it. I think it’s real important to
Budweisers and demonstrating his fruit-juice machine. “Natural fruit
be strong.”juice is great, better’n any drug,” he explained. “Gives you a natural sugar
Young’s attitude has not been formed overnight. Looking back, it’s easy
rush.” By way of a preamble, he also vented some spleen about theto spot traces of it on his 1980 album Hawks & Doves, a patchy phase in his
mauling doled out to him by the British music press on his last British visit,
continuing evolution. “Union Man” was a jokey item apparently
when he played heavy metal at Wembley Arena. He
supporting the Musicians’ Union proposition that
seemed especially incensed by some impertinent“live music is better”, Young celebrating the idea ofscribe who’d alluded to pedal steel guitarist Ben
communal togetherness with an exhausting slab ofKeith’s blow-dried hair. Reading between the lines,
hoedown. In “Comin’ Apart At Every Nail”, he avowed
it appears the tour was a shambles on a musical andthat “this country sure looks good to me” even while itorganisational level. Today, Young seems balanced,
was falling to bits in some respects. The concluding
positive and very clear about his objectives.
“Hawks & Doves”, a powerful slice of country raunch,“I think it’s time to be positive,” he said, looking
examined cycles of history, both in terms of America’s
across the table with eyes that could bore throughpast and as they applied to Young’s own career. He
steel. Tour manager Glenn Palmer says he always
declared himself “willing to stay and pay”.
knows from a single glance if Young is unhappy
In 1981, Young released Re-Ac-Tor, an even scrappieraVe
To Comeabout something. If he is, he beats a retreat andpiece of work. Thematic continuity could still be_Out
And Say It
comes back later. È
discerned occasionally, however, as in “Motor City”,

TORUFFROSPRINGFIEIi

Buffalo Springfield in 1967:(l–r) Bruce Palmer, Stephen
Stills, Dewey Martin, Richie
Furay and Neil YoungHISTORY OF ROCK 1985 | 109

getty

neil young

1985

j u l y – s e p t em b e r

July 14, 1974: Crosby Stills
Nash & Young playing thesecond of promoter Bill
Graham’s annual Day On The
Green concerts at Oakland
Coliseum, California“I think if all the hippies and everything from the ’60s, if they’re still
complaining about every little fucking thing, if they’re not happy about
anything, it’s their own fucking fault. ’Cos they’re the ones who shouldhave changed it. Time has gone by now and what we have is what we’ve
done so far, and if they’re still putting down everything that they’ve done,
then I really don’t feel compassion for that.”
I thought I heard the sound of distant cheering.
“We should be proud of the things we have been able to do, and thepositive aspects of who we are in the world. It’s our own creativity,
ingenuity, whatever you wanna call it. I don’t think all that’s dead in
America, I think it’s still there. I feel that the ’60s was a decade of idealism,
and the ’80s is more of realism.”n the road, Young has time to think and write. By the time
the Maker caught up with him, he’d already written a new song
called “This Old House” and worked it into the set. It’s about theenduring strength of family and a sense of identity in the face of hardtimes and repo men from the bank. “This old house of mine is built on
dreams,” Young concludes.
His writing has always flirted with cliche, and paradoxically he’s often
at his best in that area, working the edge between insight and platitude.
Consequently, he’s always been ready for the country, where homespun
philosophy is the order of the day – but only if it’s been earned by hardexperience. But, crucially, Young’s work has been distinguished over
the years by a mystical dimension beyond the experience of most artists.
There’s a feverish, luminous undertow to his best songs. It’s difficult
to analyse, perhaps because his most powerful images are more visual
than verbal.
I asked him about the new song “Misfits”. It’s the odd man out on Old
Ways, a strange collage of science fiction and apparently disconnectedMichael Ochs archives / gettyO

110 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

scenes, “all related” (according to the LA Times) “only by a modern
isolation as profound as any ever experienced on the open range”.
Young scratched his head, turned to look ahead through thewindscreen, then pivoted back again. “There are a lot of science-fiction
overtones, time-travel overtones, in ‘Misfits’. People at different places
geographically; it could all have been happening at exactly the sametime. All of the scenes in that song could have been happening
simultaneously, and yet they’re also separate. It’s an interesting thing…
“I dunno, it only took me a few minutes to write it. I picked up my electricguitar one night in the studio, I was by myself and I turned it up real loudand started playing, and I wrote it just that night. Just got into it. Jotted it
down on a piece of paper.
“I try not to think about the songs that I write, I just try to write them.
And I try not to edit them, because I think editing is a form of, ah… I know
there’s a source where music comes through you and words comethrough you, and editing is really, uh, something you do to somethingthat you’ve thought about. If you think about it and you try to put it down,then you can edit it. If you’re not thinking about it, you just open up and let
it come through you, then editing it is… you’re really taking a lot of, what’s
the word, ah, a lotta liberties by editing.”
But if it’s yours, aren’t you allowed to edit it?
“Well that’s the thing, I’m not sure that everything I write is mine. That’s
the difference. I think some of the things I write are mine, but I thinksome of it just comes through me. My mind is working behind the scenes
and puts these things together without me consciously thinking of it, andthen when the time is right it all comes out. That’s more like, y’know,
creation in the true sense of the word than it is a contrivance.
“So it doesn’t really need to be edited so long as you get it out right, get
it out clean, y’know, without second-guessing yourself every line
thinking, ‘What are people gonna think of me if I write this?’ That’sneil young

something I try to stay away from. I try
not to worry about what people aregonna think about it till after I’ve
recorded it and it’s too late to change it.
Then I’ll start worrying about it. But thenit’s too late for me to fuck it up, so…”
Do you have to be in a certain moodto write?
“Yeah, it just kinda comes and goes.
Sometimes I write first thing in themorning. There’s no rules. A lotta times
I write driving vehicles, or moving in
vehicles, with no instruments, and I’ll
write the whole song and remember it
all and know exactly what the music is
before I even pick up an instrument. The
whole thing, it just falls into place.”
Do you ever dry up?
“Yeah. That happens. I just wait. I don’t
try to think of something cool to write.
Because sometimes I won’t have a record
out for a long time, and then I’ll have twoor three out really fast. The time between
Everybody’s Rockin’ and Old Ways was alonger period of time than Buffalo
Springfield or CSNY was together. I still
wrote a lotta songs in that period; I wrote
two-and-a-half or three albums’ worthof material, so really I have a lot of stuff inthe can that’s been recorded, and a few
songs that haven’t been recorded.”
The Neil Young roadshow seems to
cut across several generations. The
shows I saw in Rochester and Troywere both in arenas in front ofsome 8,000 people, a lot of themcollege students.
“I just accepted this is what I’m
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be that way.”
Doesn’t it feel strange, singing songs like “Once An Angel” and talking
about your family to a bunch of kids?
“If they can get something from that then fine, and last night they
seemed to,” said Young, the day after the Rochester show. “Even though
they’re young, most of ’em are only a couple of years away from being
married or having a meaningful relationship, and a lot of them are
married. There’s a lot more older people at theback that aren’t running up to the front, so it’s
there for all of them. A lot of them come because
to them it’s history – they’re seeing things
they’ve only heard about.”
The sets contain material from every phase ofYoung’s career, though he’s whittled down thedemented electric side of his music. His mainchance to stretch out on guitar is in “Down By
The River”, where he attacks his familiar black
Gibson as Joe Allen modifies the long-familiar
bassline slightly. Rufus Thibodeaux, the Cajun
fiddler from Louisiana who’s built like Mount
Rushmore, perches himself immovably stageleft, jigging massively in time to Young’s twisted
soloing – though
it’s noticeable
that Young’s
playing is more

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organised and better sculptured than it might have been in a showwith Crazy Horse. Young’s even written a punchy new song about his
band, called “Grey Riders”.
The sets open with an old song, “Country Home”. There are several
tunes from Old Ways, plus “Looking For A Love”, “Helpless” and abeautifully loping “Comes A Time” as reference points. The best receptionof the night, though, is not for “Heart Of Gold” but for the haunted “OldMan”, with the evergreen “Sugar Mountain” running it a close second.
“I do ‘Sugar Mountain’ really for the people more than I do it for myself,”
Young explained. “I think I owe it to them, ’cos it seems to really makethem feel happy, so that’s why I do that. They pay a lotta money to comeand see me and I lay a lotta things on ’em that they’ve never heard before,
and I think I owe it to them to do things they can really identify with.
“It’s such a friendly song, and the older I get and the older my audience
gets, the more relevant it becomes, especially since they’ve been singing
it for 20 years. It really means a lot to them, so I like to give ’em the chance
to enjoy that moment.”
He paused for a moment, then the familiar wolfish grin spread acrosshis face. “I had it on the B-side of almost every single that I had out for
10 years.”
No doubt this careful consideration of the audience’s wishes stems
from the balance Young has managed to strike in both his personal andprofessional lives. His wife isn’t on the road with him this time as she
usually is – she’s back at the California ranch looking after the kids, abrother and sister. Young has another son, who suffers from cerebral
palsy. This has profoundly influenced his outlook on life.
“I’ve always felt that God made my son the way he is because he wastrying to show me something, so I try to do as much positive as I can forpeople like that, and for families of kids who are handicapped. I have a lotof compassion for those people and a lot of understanding for them that I
didn’t have before, and I think it’s made me a better person.
“And I think since I have the power to influence so many people, it was
only natural that I should be shown so many extremes of life, so I could
reflect it somehow. Nothing is perfect, y’know, that’s it.”— MELODY MAKER SEPTEMBER 14 —ooking back 10 years or more, Young can now put his welldocumented bleak period into a longer perspective. After
Harvest had clocked up sales running into millions, Young’sfans were horrified first by the release of the double album Journey
Through The Past, a bitty and meaningless “soundtrack” for Young’s
rarely seen film of the same name. After the album came out, the film
company refused to release the movie, to Young’s continuing disgust.
Next came the nerve-shredding live album Time Fades Away, a dingy
and macabre affair notably devoid of the pure melodies beloved of his
soft-rockin’ aficionados. Young, feeling boxed in by commercial success,had steered away from it. The chart performance of “Heart Of Gold” hadbrought him a lot of things he found he didn’t want.
“I guess at that point I’d attained a lot of fame and everything that you
dream about when you’re a teenager. I was still only 23 or 24, and I realised
I had a long way to go and this wasn’t going to be the most satisfying thing,just sittin’ around basking in the glory of having a hit record. It’s really avery shallow experience, it’s actually a very empty experience.
“It’s nothing concrete except ego gratification,
which is an extremely unnerving kind of
feeling. So I think subconsciously I set out
to destroy that and rip it down, before it
surrounded me. I could feel a wall building
up around me.”To add insult to injury, his next studiorecording was the harrowing Tonight’s The
Night, though with a perversity that was
becoming typical of him, the latter wasn’t
released until after the subsequently cut On
The Beach. Both albums stand up strongly tothis day. Both use the rock format as a meansof redemption and rejuvenation, the very act ofrecording (no overdubs) serving as therapy. »L“Sittin’ aroundbasking in theglory of a hit isa very shallow
experience”

HISTORY OF ROCK 1985 | 111

1985

j u l y – s e p t em b e r

Gulp. Was that before or… after the Sharon
Tate killings?
“Before. About six months before. He’s quite awriter and a singer, really unique – very unique,and he wanted very badly to get a recording
contract. I was at [Beach Boy] Dennis Wilson’shouse when I met Charlie. Coupla times.
“The thing about Charlie Manson was you’dnever hear the same song twice. It was one of
the interesting things about him. He had avery mysterious power about him which I’m
hesitant to even fuckin’ think about, it’s sostrong and it was so dark, so I really don’t liketo talk about it very much. I don’t even know
why I brought it up.”Young stopped talking for a moment.
Thought we’d lost him, but he continued.
“There is a saying that if you don’t look thedevil in the eye you’re alright, but once you’ve
looked him in the eye you’ll never forget him,
and there’ll always be more devil in you thanthere was before.
“And it’s hard to say, you know. The devil is nota cartoon character, like God is on one side of
the page and he’s on the other. The devil lives inevery one and God lives in everyone. There nobook that tells you when the devil said to God‘fuck you’ and God said (makes raspberrynoise). All those books that are written are justone person’s opinion.
“I can’t follow that, but I can see these thingsin other people. You can see it and feel it. But
Manson would sing a song and just make it up
as he went along, for three or four minutes, andhe never would repeat one word, and it all madeperfect sense and it shook you up to
listen to it. It was so good that it
scared you.”
A couple of years later, then,
Young wrote “Revolution Blues” –“Well I’m a barrel of laughs with mycoMeoM 9ABY,.r�—carbine on/I keep them hopping till�L�crlsUo
my ammunition’s gone”… So how—
DONurowN`
did the superstar community take
MEMMAMk
it, Neil?
“Well, see, I wasn’t touring at
the time, so I didn’t really feel thereaction of On The Beach. Then
when I went out on the road I didn’t
do any of it, so…” He did, however,“Tonight’s The Night and On The Beach were pretty free records,”
perform the song on the Crosby
Young pondered, lighting another unfiltered Pall Mall. “I was pretty
Stills Nash & Young reunion tour, to the discomfiture of the others.
down I guess at the time, but I just did what I wanted to do, at that time.
“David Crosby especially was very uncomfortable, because it was so
I think if everybody looks back at their own lives they’ll realise that theymuch the darker side. They all wanted to put out the light, y’know, makewent through something like that. There’s periods of depression, periods
people feel good and happy and everything, and that song was like a wartof elation, optimism and scepticism, the whole thing is… it just keeps
or something on the perfect beast.”
coming in waves.
“You go down to the beach and watch the same thing, just imagine
every wave is a different set of emotions coming in. Just keep coming.
HEN it camE to the release of Tonight’s The Night, Youngagain incurred the wrath and disbelief of people who
As long as you don’t ignore it, it’ll still be there. If you start shutting
thought they knew him fairly well. The album had been
yourself off and not letting yourself live through the things that arerecorded with a Crazy Horse reconstituted after the death ofcoming through you, I think that’s when people start getting old really
songwriter and guitarist Danny Whitten, a close friend of Young’s
fast, that’s when they really age.
who’d given him early encouragement in his career.
“’Cos they decide that they’re happy to be what they were at a certain
time in their lives when they were the happiest, and they say, ‘That’s
Whitten had been due to go out on tour with Young, but was too heavily
where I’m gonna be for the rest of my life.’ From that minute on they’redependent on heroin to cope. Young sent him home. The same night,
dead, y’know, just walking around. I try to avoid that.”
Whitten died of an overdose. Time Fades Away documented the
One of the key tracks from On The Beach was “Revolution Blues”, a
subsequent tour, while Tonight’s The Night was made in memory of
predatory rocker in which Young adopts the persona of a trigger-happy
Whitten and Bruce Berry, a CSNY roadie who also died from heroin.
psychotic, eager to slaughter Laurel Canyon’s pampered superstar
Young remembered the day he’d taken Tonight… into the offices ofresidents. Reflecting on the song prods Young into some unsettling areas.
Reprise, his record company at the time.
“That was based on my experiences with Charlie Manson. I met him“It was pretty rocky,” he grinned. “I would describe that as a rocky day.
They couldn’t believe how sloppy and rough it was, they couldn’t believea couple of times and, er… very interesting person. Obviously he wasthat I really wanted to put it out.
quite keyed up.”
“Some of thethings I write aremine, some of it
just comes throughme”: Young inconcert, 1976

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112 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

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5“I said, ‘That’s it, that’s the way it’s going out.’ It’sa lotta religious people, of course, who feel thata very important record, I think, in my general field
this is God’s work. God’s saying, y’know, ‘No moreof things. It still stands up. The original Tonight’s The
buttfucking or we’re gonna getcha.’” Young cackled
Night was much heavier than the one that hit thedementedly.
U51 HOCKTOTHE COUNTRY
stands. The original one had only nine songs on it. It“I don’t know what it is. It’s natural, that’s one thing
was the same takes, but the songs that were missing wereabout it. It’s a living organism or virus, whatever it is. I‘Lookout Joe’ and ‘Borrowed Tune’, a couple ofhope they find something to stop it. It’s worse
songs that I added. They fit lyrically but they
than the Killer Bees.”
softened the blow a little bit.
Young’s conception of the entire universe is,“What happened was, the original had only
to say the least, unorthodox.
nine songs but it had a lot of talking, a lot of“I’m not into organised religion. I’m into
mumbling and talking between the group andbelieving in a higher source of creation,
me, more disorganised and fucked-up sounding
realising that we’re all just part of nature andthan the songs, but they were intros to the songs.
we’re all animals. We’re very highly evolved andNot counts but little discussions, three- andwe should be very responsible for what we’ve
four-word conversations between songs, and it
learned.
left it with a very spooky feeling. It was like you“I even go as far as to think that in the plan
didn’t know if these guys were still gonna beof things, the natural plan of things, that thealive in the morning, the way they were talking.
rockets and the satellites, spaceships, that
More like a wake than anything else.”
we’re creating now are really… we’re
Why did you take it off, then?
pollinating, as a universe, and it’s part of the“It was too strong,” said Young slowly. “It was
universe. Earth is a flower and it’s pollinating.
really too strong. I never even played it for the record company like that.
“It’s starting to send out things, and now we’re evolving, they’re getting
We made our own decision not to do that. If they thought Tonight’s The
bigger and they’re able to go further. And they have to, because we needNight was too much the way it came out – which they did, a lot of people –to spread out now in the universe. I think in 100 years we’ll be living on
they’re lucky they didn’t hear the other one.”other planets.”
It was here that Young hit the lowest patch, spiritually, of his career,
On a more earthly plane, Young’s excited about the prospect of playing
probably of his life. His impatience nowadays with the hippy generation,a benefit for the people of Cheyenne, Wyoming, whose houses and land
and his endorsement of a right-wing president, believed by many to be
have been devastated by a freak sequence of natural disasters. Young’sband and equipment will be airlifted in for the show, by National Guarda dangerous lunatic, can probably be traced back to the traumas
C130 transport aircraft and by private jets loaned for the occasion byaround the time of Tonight’s The Night. Until then, the ride had beensome giant corporations.
more or less free.
“There’s something different about it,” Young mused, “having theWas it, I queried, a case of Whitten’s death being not only a personal
government help us get there so we can help the farmers. The National
tragedy, but a metaphor for a generation and a way of life? Or death?
Guard’s gonna help us load and unload, get in and outta the place, help us“It just seemed like it really stood for a lot of what was going on,” Young
set up the stage. It’s interesting.”
answered. “It was like the freedom of the ’60s and free love and drugs and
But it’s something else, above and beyond his this-land-is-your-land
everything… it was the price tag. This is your bill. Friends, young guys
preoccupations, that gives Neil Young his lingering aura of menace anddying, kids that didn’t even know what they were doing, didn’t know whatstrange purpose. You can feel it when you talk to him, and it permeates all
they were fucking around with. It hit me pretty hard, a lot of those things,
his best music. He sees it something like this.
so at that time I did sort of exorcise myself.”“I’ve got a few demons, but I manage to coexist with them. The demons
Did you feel guilty that perhaps you and people in your position had
are there all the time, y’know, that’s what makes you crazy, that’s what
encouraged that?.
makes me play my guitar the way I play it sometimes. Depends on the“Somewhat, yeah, I think so. That’s part of the responsibility ofbalance, how strong the demons are that night, how strong the good is.
freedom. Freedom to do what you want with not much experience to“There’s always a battle between good and evil in every second in yourrealise the consequences. I didn’t feel very guilty, but I felt a little guilty.”
life, I think. In every judgement you make, both sides are represented inyour mind. You may hide the bad side, but it’s there.” Adam Sweeting ¥t’S fittiNg tHat Young’s latest re-emergence in public with yet
another shift in musical direction
should coincide with a wave ofJuly 13, 1985: on
new groups who acknowledge a debt
stage at Live Aid in
Philadelphia, having
to his past work. Green On Red’s Dan
made “an exception
Stuart freely admits that their Gas
to the rule” in order
Food Lodging LP was heavily
to reunite with
Crosby, Stills & Nashinfluenced by Young’s epic Zuma
collection (“If you’re gonna steal, steal
from the best,” as Stuart puts it). Jason& The Scorchers play “Are You Ready
For The Country?”, The Beat Farmers
turn in a welt-raising treatment of“Powderfinger”, and Pete Wylie’s justcut a version of “The Needle And The
Damage Done” as an anti-heroin
gesture. And Dream Syndicate’s Steve
Wynn will reminisce about Youngand Crazy Horse any time you like.
With half the material for a follow-up
album to Old Ways already in the can,Young is in the middle of a renaissanceof sorts. Not even the Aids terror candent his confidence.
“It is scary. It’s paranoid, but that’s theway it is – even though it’s not just gay
people, they’re taking the rap. There’s

I

HISTORY OF ROCK 1985 | 113

paul natkin / getty“Earth ispollinating…
We need tospread out inthe universe”

85

R
OCTOBEA-OECEMBE

THE TRAIL OF TEARSONJONI MITCHELL,
DEXYS, TOM WAITS,
THE CULT AND MORE

FIGHT

'lip

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Vol,"

" Part of a campaign"MM
OCT 26OBERT WYATT LOOKED strangely nervous on the Whistle Test,
trying to explain to Mark Ellen what "The Wind Of Change" isabout. Jerry Dammers, who produced the disc, began to liken
Namibian resistance to South African tyranny to the sort of
movement which would have sprung up in Britain had Hitler
managed to invade. Ellen couldn't shut him up quickly enough,and they cut swiftly to the accompanyingvideo. If LiveAid madecharity pretty darn hip, Third World consciousness-raising is atrickier proposition altogether.
"The Wind Of Change" was produced and arranged byDammers,
and Wyatt sings it over a chorus of SWAPO members, SWAPO being
Namibia's national liberation movement.Additional musicians
playing on the trackinclude Lynval Golding, Annie Whitehead, Dick
Cuthell and Claire Hirst. On the B-side, this crew address themselves
to "Namibia", atune originally called "NamibialnkandaVetu"(Namibials Our Home) and married here to a speciallywritten poem
byVainoShivute, a SWAPO student currently studying in England.
Frankly, "The Wind Of Change" isn't apatch on Dammers' classic"Free Nelson Mandela" if we're talking chart appeal. The Latterachieved the hitherto almost unprecedented feat of isolating an issue
and turningit into genuinely infectious pop.
But, as ajet-laggedDammers put it: "Everylittlehelps. With the
Nelson Mandelarecord, it was part of a campaign but it did help topublicise it. I think a lot of people now knowwho Nelson Mandelais,
whereas three years ago there was verylittle publicity about him.
"I think music has always been an important part of anykind ofsocial struggle or whatever, and I don't think Top Of ThePops— OK, thestructure of the charts and Radio 1 and everything—is weighted
against things like that, but sometimes things do break through. Andeven if it's not amas
sive hit, it's still aworthwhile song."
Can't spot anyloopholes in that logic. In apiece called On Politics,
PopAndNamibiawritten to accompanythe release of the newrecord,
Wyatt wrote: "The pop industry exists to perpetuate itself. True, EMI
will promote aJohn Lennon protest song, but itwillalso quite happily
help the racist SouthAfrican occupation crush the local
protest-songmovement byfloodingNamibiawith
Anglo-American alternatives. As long as the giant
record companies monopolise our ears, musicians who
are out of tune with the establishment must conduct
a kind of oral guerrillawarfare behind enemylines."
Wyatt's home in Twickenham is like akind ofmonument to freedom movements of the world.
Stickers, badges, posters, books and magazines are
everywhere, addressing themselves to ecology,

i`"Every little helps": (1-r)
Richard Muzira from the
SWAPOSingers,Jerry
Dammersand Robert
Wyattpose in the Tatter'shouse in Twickenham,South-West London

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1985

OCTOBER – DECEMBER

1985

Terry O’Neill / geTTy; PeTer STill / geTTy

O C T O B E R – D ECEMBER

liberation and racism. It’s here that he,
Dammers, Vaino Shivute and Richard Muzira,a SWAPO organiser, gather to explain thesituation in Namibia and the role that “Wind Of
Change”/ “Namibia” is intended to play intrying to change it.
Richard: “In Namibia you have over 230
trans-national corporations, and 68 of themare British. Out of those, nine of them virtuallycontrol the total economy. They include
Barclays, Standard, Rio Tinto Zinc… and thesevery same people give a lot of money to theTories. Something like 40 per cent of the funds
comes from companies that operate in South
Africa and Namibia. It’s inevitable that theystand in the way of progress.”
Jerry: “It should be seen as part of a campaign.
I don’t think people in this country realise how
important it is that international pressure isbrought to bear on South Africa. Because
without the help of Thatcher and Reagan,
apartheid probably wouldn’t survive, so if you
can turn public opinion in Britain and America
against apartheid and they can take politicalaction in those countries, it does have a very
great effect within South Africa.”
Won’t people look at your record and say
charity begins at home? There’s massive
unemployment and miners’ families still
suffering the aftermath of the strike. Whyaren’t you making records about them?
Jerry: “I don’t see it as separate issues. You haveto have an international view of politics, and if
we’re talking about unemployment in thiscountry, then again that’s the Tory government
that’s bolstering apartheid in South Africa.”
Robert: “I’d like to mention one link that
illustrates what Jerry’s saying. We all know
who Saatchi & Saatchi are, right. They’re the
Ministry Of Propaganda for the Tories. But
they’ve got massive unemployment in South
Africa, they’re trying to recruit white miners
they can incorporate into the apartheid
system, who are easier to manipulate than theblack miners, so in fact unemployment here isdirectly related to South Africa’s problems.
“The British government’s policy of massunemployment is dovetailed very neatly with
their support for apartheid, although officiallythey don’t support it. But sometimes you judge
people by their friends, and Saatchi & Saatchi
are friends of the apartheid government. The
right wing are totally international. As Ian
MacGregor [Scottish-American head of
National Coal Board] says, ‘I don’t vote here. I
vote in Miami’, and he doesn’t care. The whole
scene we live under is an international scene.
“They keep the people they deal with, theworkers they employ and the workers that they
unemploy, divided and separate from eachother. So they sort of blackmail workers in theindustrialised countries by saying, ‘Well, if you
want such and such wages, we’ll get dirt-cheap
labour in another country’, which is exactly
what they do, which is why they imported
South African coal during the miners’ strike.
“So they use their friends’ control of otherlabour markets to blackmail workers in ourcountry. So it’s only if the people in the various
countries see that they’re being exploited by
the same people that they can see that they’ve
got the same problems, they’re dealing with thesame oppressors.” Adam Sweeting
116 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

Unlikely
to exceed£500,000
NME DEC 12 Elton
John wins a lawsuit– but it’s not acomplete victory.

Elton:
unpaidroyalties

lton John and his songwriting partner Bernie Taupin
finally won part of their 50-day High Court action against
Dick James Music last Friday, when the judge ruled that
DJM’s various companies had siphoned off large sums ofroyalties that should have been paid to the duo. Now John andTaupin will collect the amounts due to them, which could be as
much as £5 million, although DJM claim they are unlikely to
exceed £500,000. Despite John hailing the verdict as a total
victory, he and Taupin failed to recover the copyright of 169
songs, including such hits as “Rocket Man”, “Daniel” and “Yellow
Brick Road”, having signed to DJM for life in 1967. If the judge had
also ruled this decision in their favour, the payment could haverun into tens of millions. As it is, a decision on costs has still to be
made; after such a lengthy case, these are expected to top £1.5m.

E

July 6, 1985: Bruce
entertains Wembley
Stadium (and anyone
up to half a mile away)“Enforcement
action”

MM OCt 5 Springsteenshow sparks noise row.

B

RENT COUNCIL IS taking Wembley Stadium to courtover sound levels at Bruce Springsteen’s July concerts.
After the concerts, council members agreed to take theStadium to court. But last week, discussions were reopened ata meeting of the housing committee when councillors were toldthat the sound levels at Springsteen often reached twice thepermitted volume, and that words and music weredistinguishable half a mile away from the Stadium.
When Brent Council takes over licensing arrangements
after the abolition of the GLC next year, they will take“enforcement action” against “both the Stadium and thepromoter of noisy pop concerts” and install electronicequipment that will “give immediate warning when maximum
noise levels are being reached”.

➤ The Jesus And
Mary Chain, back inthe charts with
“Just Like Honey”,
are losing their parttime drummer
Bobby Gillespie.
He’s been withthem since their
inception, but isnow leaving toconcentrate on his
own group Primal
Scream, so they are
now looking for a
new drummer.
Applicants for thevacancy should
write to the band
c/o Rough Trade,
67–71 Collier Street,
London N1 andshould be familiar
with Ginger Baker’s
solo on the track“Toad” on Cream’s
LP Wheels Of Fire.
NME Oct 19➤ Steely Dan havere-formed. Theband had signed toWarner Brothers in
1980, just prior to
the release of theirseventh MCA
album, Gaucho,
but split before
providing any
material for their
new label. Since
then, Donald Fagen
has released a solo
album, The Nightfly,
via Warners, while
his Dan co-founder
Walter Becker has
been working as a
producer. But, inthe wake of thehighly successful
Reelin’ In The Years
compilation, Fagen
and Becker will
undertake the first
Steely Dan tour
for over 10 years.
NME Dec 12➤ Following astatement by Hazel
Feldman, Sun City’sentertainment
director, that “areturn appearance
by Queen should
not be ruled out”
(NME last week), theband have issued
a denial: “Queen
categorically statethat they have noplans, at present, toreturn to Sun City
and wish to make itplain that they havea total abhorrenceof apartheid.”
NME Oct 5

BOB

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5 ARQUEE
MOON

6

7

8

9

10

Wot, no Songs For
Swinging Lovers?

NME NOV 30 NME names the 100 (actually 99…) best albums of all time.
What’s Going On Marvin Gaye (1971)
Astral Weeks Van Morrison (1968)
Highway 61 Revisited Bob Dylan (1965)
The Clash The Clash (1977)
Marquee Moon Television (1977)
Swordfishtrombones Tom Waits (1983)
The Band The Band (1969)
Blonde On Blonde Bob Dylan (1966)
John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band
John Lennon (1970)
10 Unknown Pleasures Joy Division (1979)
11 Revolver The Beatles (1966)
12 The Sun Collection Elvis Presley (1975)
13 Never Mind The Bollocks...
Sex Pistols (1977)
14 Forever Changes Love (1967)
15 Low David Bowie (1977)
16 The Velvet Underground And Nico
The Velvet Underground (1967)
17 Solid Gold James Brown (1977)
18 Horses Patti Smith (1975)
19 Live At The Apollo James Brown (1963)
20 Pet Sounds The Beach Boys (1966)
21 Kind Of Blue Miles Davis (1959)
22 Bringing It All Back Home
Bob Dylan (1965)
23 Otis Blue Otis Redding (1966)
24 The Doors The Doors (1967)
25 Exile On Main Street The Rolling
Stones (1972)
26 Anthology The Temptations (1974)
27 Greatest Hits Aretha Franklin (1977)
28 Are You Experienced The Jimi
Hendrix Experience (1967)
29 The Modern Dance Pere Ubu (1978)
30 King Of The Delta Blues Singers
Robert Johnson (1972)
31 Imperial Bedroom Elvis Costello &The Attractions (1982)
32 Anthology Smokey Robinson &The Miracles (1974)
33 The Beatles The Beatles (1968)
34 Searching For The Young Soul Rebels
Dexys Midnight Runners (1980)
35 White Light/White Heat The Velvet
Underground (1968)
36 Young Americans David Bowie (1975)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9

37 The Poet Bobby Womack (1982)
38 Trans-Europe Express Kraftwerk (1977)
39 Darkness On The Edge Of Town
Bruce Springsteen (1979)
40 This Years Model Elvis Costello &The Attractions (1978)
41 Another Green World Brian Eno (1975)
42 Trout Mask Replica Captain Beefheart &The Magic Band (1969)
43 The Man Machine Kraftwerk (1978)
44 The Mothership Connection
Parliament (1975)
45 The Cream Of Al Green Al Green (1980)
46 Let’s Get It On Marvin Gaye (1973)
47 There’s A Riot Going On Sly And The
Family Stone (1971)
48 Rocket To Russia The Ramones (1977)
49 Greatest Hits Sly And The Family
Stone (1970)
50 Big 16 The Impressions (1965)
51 Blood On The Tracks Bob Dylan (1974)
52 Alan Vega/Martin Rev Suicide (1980)
53 Another Music In A Different Kitchen
Buzzcocks (1978)
54 Closer Joy Division (1980)
55 Mad Not Mad Madness (1985)

56 For Your Pleasure Roxy Music (1973)
57 The Scream Siouxie & The
Banshees (1978)
58 The Harder They Come Soundtrack
Featuring Jimmy Cliff (1972)
59 Entertainment! Gang Of Four (1980)
60 The Velvet Underground
The Velvet Underground (1969)
61 3+3 The Isley Brothers (1973)
62 The Hissing Of Summer Lawns
Joni Mitchell (1975)
63 “Heroes” David Bowie (1977)
64 Meat Is Murder The Smiths (1985)
65 Station To Station David Bowie (1976)
66 Clear Spot Captain Beefheart And
The Magic Band (1972)
67 Get Happy! Elvis Costello &The Attractions (1980)
68 Fear Of Music Talking Heads (1979)
69 Lust For Life Iggy Pop (1977)
70 Berlin Lou Reed (1973)
71 20 Greatest Hits Buddy Holly &The Crickets (1967)
72 Music From Big Pink The Band (1968)
73 Hard Day’s Night The Beatles (1964)
74 Roxy Music Roxy Music (1972)
75 Leave Home The Ramones (1977)
76 A Love Supreme John Coltrane (1957)
77 Golden Decade Vol 1 Chuck Berry (1972)
78 The Greatest Hits Jackie Wilson (1969)
79 In A Silent Way Miles Davis (1969)
80 Stranded Roxy Music (1973)
81 Talking Heads ’77 Talking Heads (1977)
82 The Correct Use Of Soap
Magazine (1980)
83 Born In The USA Bruce Springsteen (1983)
84 Court And Spark Joni Mitchell (1974)
85 Strange Days The Doors (1967)
86 More Songs About Buildings And FoodTalking Heads (1978)87 LA Woman The Doors (1971)
88 Chess Masters Howling Wolf (1981)89 Armed Forces Elvis Costello & The
Attractions (1979)
90 Steve McQueen Prefab Sprout (1985)
91 Paris 1919 John Cale (1973)
92 Forward Onto Zion The Abyssinians (1977)
93 My Aim Is True Elvis Costello (1977)
94 Rattlesnakes Lloyd Cole & The
Commotions (1984)
95 Best Of The Beach Boys (1968)
96 King Tubbys Meets Rockers Uptown
Augustus Pablo (1976)
97 Rubber Soul The Beatles (1965)
98 Suicide Suicide (1977)
99 The Undertones The Undertones (1979)
HISTORY OF ROCK 1985 | 117

1985

O C T O B E R – D ECEMBER“I remember being eight or nine
years old and feeling this kind ofclimate of, ‘Oh, if we can just follow
Joan Baez and sing “We Shall
Overcome”, then we shall overcome.’
Then all of a sudden the ’70s cameand it was, like, that really wasn’t
good enough. You can sing ‘Blowin’
In The Wind’ – and ‘Blowin’ In The
Wind’ is a great song – but it doesn’t
save you from your political situation,
so a kind of cynicism crept in, afeeling of futility.
“And I was very surprised tofind myself in the middle ’70s, allby myself there. Me and someone
else were the only ones playing
acoustic guitar in high school. I felt
very isolated.
“I guess somewhere in the back of
my mind I had the myth of a solitary
person jumping a freight train andexploring the country and just having
an acoustic guitar. And that did notinclude fancy costumes and making
yourself a cartoon character.”Well, I guess Madonna can rest
easy now. But if La Ciccone’s cartooncharacter star is in the ascendantright now, so too is the reaction ofanother section of the record-buying
public. I’ll bet that the purchasersof the 26-year-old Suzanne’s
eponymously titled debut album will
be slotting it alongside Born In The
USA as two sides of the same coin ofauthenticity, minted circa 1971 andsuddenly valuable again. Thatauthenticity, a caring, sharing co-op
of roots and attitude, and thesolidarity of the confessional.
But where, say, Bruce animates
his preoccupations through selfprojection into cinematic vignettes,
Suzanne bares her soul far more
obviously. The letter “I” flourishes inher stanzas like the noble redwoodsof her Californian birthplace; thefamous words penned about Joni
Mitchell by Village Voice guru
Robert Christgau in 1973 spring to
mind: “In a male performer such intense selfconcern would be an egotistical cop-out. Ina woman it is an act of defiance.”
Suzanne pauses for thought.
“It’s not an excuse to become so totally
self-involved that you
write things that are onlyinteresting to yourself, butthere is some truth in that.
“A man is more used tohaving power and using it
and seeing its effect in theoutside world. Dylan cansay, ‘Come gather roundpeople wherever you are!’,because he has some
expectation that when hegets up on the soapbox andsays that, then people will. Whereas a woman
is much less likely to feel that because, I guess,you don’t see a woman being president. If you
are a woman you can maybe expect to have

Suzanne vegain new York:“Leonard Cohen
and Simon &Garfunkel meant
a lot to me”“I think I holdmy ground”

NME OCT 5 Introducing a product of
NYC coffee society… Suzanne Vega.

’d never been to a coffee shop in New
York’s Greenwich Village before, but the
Paradise was just as I’d imagined sucha place to be from movies like Annie Hall.
Loft people idle away the afternoon’s magichour, and yuppie voices rise career-wiseover the strains of piped Mozart and Vivaldi.
Mmmmm, nice.
Yet here was I invading this haven from
Manhattan’s street hassle with a little
hatchetry on my mind. Parked at a spindly
window table between myself and thetowering Derek Ridgers sits the sylph-like
Suzanne Vega, siren of the Nouvelle Vagueof acoustic introspection.
Suzanne’s a Cancer, a lunar child who
swims with the tides and captures the secretrhythms that swell and eddy beneath life’s
surface. Sister moon stuff, tra la la, and while
there’s a bit of that in me, there’s only enoughto make me doubt momentarily my macho
judgement that, yes, Suzanne Vega sings
beautifully wistful music, but the

DEREK RIDGERS

I

118 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

words! My dear! Viewed in bollock-naked print,
Suzanne’s world of interiorisation usuallysummons up but eight clanking letters –“Precious,” she sighs, “is a word I hear a lot...”“I knew I wanted to be a folk singer from thetime I was 16, partly
because it was the music
I had been brought up on.
My father – he’s a novelist,
Ed Vega – had played guitar,
mostly blues: Leadbelly,“House Of The Rising Sun”.
They were both very youngwhen they married – mymother had me when she
was 18 and she’d had all fourof us by the time she was 24.
My parents being so young,we had all kinds of music in the house from the’60s – Dylan, Laura Nyro, a lot of stuff. I liked
Leonard Cohen and Simon & Garfunkel –these things meant a lot to me.

“It’s my goal towrite songs withmore breadth, beless restrained andmore outspoken”

SHRINK
RAP!
MIKE
SCOTT
Mike Scott:life alteredby CS Lewis

MM NOV 30 Head
Waterboy Mike Scottbares his psyche to the Maker.
Patti Smith
A wonderful woman. She was exactly what
I wanted to hear in 1976. “A Girl Called
Johnny” was sort of about her. She’s also
one of the bravest artists I can think of,
because she split when she was doing
well… She just decided she didn’t want to
do it any more and that was it.

CND

The only things I look at are Newsnight,
especially when there are by-elections on,
and Taxi and sometimes Panorama andWorld In Action.

U2
Fine people. Powerful group. They havea fantastic power over their audience andthey’re mature enough to handle their
responsibilities.

EnglandI haven’t thought about it for a while. I’m
not sure what to think… but I like Bruce
Kent… I can’t say anything bad about him.

Funnily enough, I feel quite glad to be backin England after being in America for sometime. I’ve been walking round London today
and I’ve really enjoyed just being here again.

Another Pretty Face

Kahlil Gilbran

That’s the past.

I’ve read The Prophet if that’s what you
mean. It’s a pretty good lyrical book, but
I’m not a huge fan or anything.

The ClashI quite like the single, I’m a sucker for
Strummer’s voice, you see. Always havebeen. I’ve always liked The Clash.

Ireland

Live Aid

The charts

I was there, in the audience. It was a reallyinspiring day… I’ve never seen an audience
so inspired by anything in my life. Even
when there was all this really boring musicin the afternoon. I went home after theshow and watched the American side of iton television and went to bed at dawn andthe thunder was cracking in the sky. The’80s began with Live Aid. You know the
way that most decade’s peak in the middle,
well the ’80s began with Live Aid.

I never know what’s in the charts, I’m nota chart watcher. However, I do know that
we’re in the charts this week. It means
a lot of people are hearing the song, sothat’s good, that’s what you always wantanyway. It also means that more people
have bought this single [“The Whole Of
The Moon”] than have bought anythingelse The Waterboys have ever recorded.
I’m not unhappy about that.

Bowie

I knew you were going to ask that. He
wrote the Narnia stories, which I read andre-read and they altered my life. He wrote
wonderful books and was a great man.

He was one of those who knew exactly
what he was doing at Live Aid. He’s reallycool, that one. I’ve always liked him. I used
to be in a group and we specialised in
Bowie songs… We used to do about 12 of
his songs a set.

HotelsThe Gramercy Park in New York is quite
good. And the Portobello in London.

New York
Yes. I have a lot of friends there. I likebeing there. But I have nothing
sparklingly original to say
about the place.

Television
One of the best things about
Live Aid was the positive
power of television… you know,rather than just the Big Brotherthing. But I’m not a big telly
watcher – I never turn it on.

I love Ireland.

CS Lewis

Touring
I’ve only got boring things to say about
touring – you know, how much I love it.

Sigue Sigue Sputnik
Good luck to them. Do you know if they
are ever going to make a record?

Record companies
Sorry, no real bad experiences. Notyet, anyway.

Politics
For the politicians, it’s all about
competition… that’s why politics neverreally solves anything. I was a memberof the Labour party at
one time, but I’m notinterested any more…
bowie:“cool”
It’s a waste of time.
HISTORY OF ROCK 1985 | 119

Lynn GoLDSmIth / GEtty; DavE hoGan / GEtty

some power in your personal life. Maybe,and not always effectively.
“I think I’m aware of the wider world, but
I tend to write from a very individual point ofview that’s most human, so that in that way I
affect other people, which I suppose in itself
might be a political stance. I don’t always write
about myself; sometimes I try to write fromdifferent characters’ points of view and let
the audience become involved and figure itout for themselves.”
Your songs embody a passivity which I findirksome because it’s clothed in a languageof fey self-absorption long familiar from
Joni Mitchell’s Blue and onwards throughthe Me Decade.
“That’s really interesting. I don’t consider
myself to be an aggressive person. Erm...
I think I hold my ground. I’ve spent a lifetime
holding my ground. It’s very difficult for me tobe overtly aggressive. Even as a child, if I was
angry, I would withdraw.
“In my family there was frequently a lot of
emotional upheaval, and I was the one who’dsay, ‘Well, OK, someone has to make thedinner tonight and I guess it’s going to be me.’
I find myself in a world where everything’s
thrown up in the air and I have to make somekind of organisation out of all this.
“Another thing I also enjoyed about Dylan
and Leonard Cohen, they were symbolic.
They could describe a landscape whereother people could join in. When Dylan sings‘I’ in a song, he’s talking for Everyman. WhenI say ‘I’ in a song, people say, ‘Oh, she’s talking
about herself again.’ Or some people do. I
would like to get beyond that, when I say ‘I’,
to mean ‘all of us’.”At this point, dear reader, you’ll bewondering why, if her manifest goodintentions fail to translate into words to be
clutched to the bosom forever, Suzanne Vega
can command a page in NME and hours ofbrow-furrowing by my good self. Well, thepleasure to be had from her plaintive music
and lovely voice (her band is also excellent)approaches, though not imitates, that of the
Lorelei of Lotus Land, Rickie Lee Jones...
“It’s not a conscious thing. I was aware that
I phrase like Laurie Anderson, very softspoken and self-conscious. Rickie Lee Jones
pours out a lot more, whereas I’m more busyorganising. I like to get everything into somekind of perfect shape, without all kinds ofloose ends. I prefer to find the heart ofsomething, songs that are crystalline.
“The Police songs are like that for me, whenthey’re right on like ‘Wrapped Around Your
Finger’, a really great song with a wholenessand completion. And some of Bertold
Brecht’s songs are like that for me too, acomplete landscape, a complete picture,
a complete point of view. I think that also has
to do with my training as dancer – the lessmovement you use, the better dancer you are.
“It’s my goal to write songs with morebreadth to them, be less restrained and more
outspoken. This is something I’ve been
thinking about a lot as I’ve gone through thecountry and realised how small my corner ofthe world really is and how big America is.
Touring the country really changed
something for me – I’ve gotten arm muscles
now where I didn’t used to have any.” Mat Snow1985

O C T O B E R – D ECEMBER“It’s betterto burn
hard thanto rot”

120 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

— NME OCTOBER 19 —o they tell me the shows
we’re doing in London are
sold out already. I can hardly
believe that.”
Well, Swordfishtrombones
had quite a big impact, Tom.
“Mmm, but there’s the other side of that, it doesn’tlast too long. Everything is temporary – they pump
you up for a little while, dye your hair, see you ina different shape. It goes around for a while andcomes back down again. It’s not something you
can really build on.”Are you nervous about coming to London?
“I am, I’m scared to death. Jesus, I’ll need a bulletproof vest. I need a new hat,a new suit – I can’t go overthere in a raincoat. I’ve told
the band to smarten up, too.
They’re more attuned tothe stuff I’m doing now, butthey’re also capable of doingsome pre-Swordfish stuff but
with a different slant to it.
“So I think it will be OK,
I hope it will be OK. I will
have to talk to my sax player,
Ralph Carney, about hiswhite socks, the white socks
and the navy uniform; I’m
not sure about that.
“Ralph, I haven’t been able
to confront you about this »“S

bleddyn butcher / rex features

With his reputation ona high, a tangential
interview reveals a lot
about the uniqueworldview and oddballtechnique of TOM WAITS.
On the release of Rain
Dogs, Tom talks white
socks, neuroscience andhis new guitarist, Keith
Richards. “We met in awoman’s lingerie shop…”

Tom Waits in
New York’s
Lower West Side,
September 1985

HISTORY OF ROCK 1985 | 121

1985

O C T O B E R – D ECEMBER

face to face, so I’m using this opportunity to talk to you through the press– we must do something about the white socks.”
he only time I’ve seen Tom Waits live was in London, theVictoria Apollo in 1981. The appearance came just after the
release of Heartattack And Vine, notable for its move into bonecrushing electric blues. Waits’ ability to rework the sleazy nightclub
setting had already been proven by the double live album Nighthawks
At The Diner, but in this large auditorium his stand-up bass, drum andpiano set-up couldn’t really carry. I left before the end.
“It’s kinda hard to do that on a big stage, the basic economics of touring
kept me in tow there.”
How did you overcome that problem?
“The new band is all midgets, they share a room, they don’t want to be
paid for their work. They all have a basic persecution complex and theywant me to punish them for things that have happened in their past life,and I have agreed – I’ve just signed something.”
Your generosity is quite touching.
“No, they’re all good chaps, most of them have never been in jail, though
I’m not sure about Ralph Carney.”
It wasn’t the best time tointerview Tom Waits; he was in
the middle of arranging to shoota video for either “Singapore” or“Cemetery Polka” off the new Rain
Dogs album, he was rehearsing
a live band, finalising details for
his first major film role (to be shotin New Orleans later in the year),arranging the staging of themusical Frank’s Wild Years (toopen in Chicago after Christmas),and he’d just become a father forthe third time.
We meet in a diner on New York’s
Lower West Side. Waits arrives alittle late, wearing an old ’40s Burberry,heavy-duty denims and unbuckled
motorcycle boots. The face is grey, thefeatures weasel-like and his hair bears red
traces of henna dye. He looks haggard anda little shy at first, eyeing us cautiously as
we exchange handshakes. Today is Sunday
and the Waits family are observing
tradition – the interview is squeezed
between babysitting and a visit from thein-laws. His wife, Kathleen Brennan, is thegirl eulogised on Swordfishtrombones’“Johnsburg, Illinois” and a scriptwriter at
Francis Ford Coppola’s Zoetrope studios.
“We’ve got three children now – Ajax,
Edith and Montgomery. I must get themenrolled in military school immediately.
I see it like Tobacco Road, the old hillbilly
movie, we’ll all be heading down that long
path together.”
A Tom Waits interview is not a place tocome looking for serious analysis. Waits hassung of the displaced, the dimestore loser
and the hobo for so long that he seems tohave taken on a composite persona, drawn
from his crazy cast of characters. Althoughkind and respectful, he can’t resist turning
the conversation around with an enigmatic
metaphor or some brazen bullshitting.
Whenever necessary he’ll substitute an
entertaining lie for a boring truth.
“Music paper interviews, I hate to tell ya,
but two days after they’re printed they’relining the trashcan. They’re not binding,they’re not locked away in a vault
somewhere tying you to your word.”
The Waits case history is necessarily

rex features

T122 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

littered with truths, half-truths and downright lies. He used to tell writers
he was born in the back of a truck travelling though South LA on
December 7, 1949. In high school he played in a soul group but dropped
out to play accordion in a polka band. He drifted through a variety of jobs
– “a jack-off of all trades” – and was working in a Hollywood diner when hemet West Coast manager Herb Cohen at the turn of the ’70s.
He signed for Asylum, then a small independent rather than a branch of
WEA. After releasing a few promising albums, he found his true artistry
on Small Change and the essential Foreign Affairs and Blue Valentine.
As an arranger and tunesmith working the cool-blue jazz sphere, Waits
was peerless, but his unique power came from contrasting those talentswith his coarse gutbucket growl and mesmerising wordplay. Waits mined
the postwar faultline of Kerouac and the beats, focusing on the loners andlosers that littered America’s highways and byways.
Foreign Affairs had “Potter’s Field”, its epic atmospherics – all deathly
strings and orchestral cadences – straight out of Sam Fuller’s classic noir
B-movie Pick UP On South Street, and “I Never Talk To Strangers”, a divine
duet with Bette Midler, recreating an idiom everyone thought died withTin Pan Alley. He would later revisit the territory with Crystal Gayle on the
One From The Heart soundtrack.
“I guess I did borrow a lot to do stuff like that. But it’s good to borrow;borrowing implies that you’re going to give back. That’s the way allmusic works – you take a little something from here, you bring it overthere and pretty soon it finds its way back.”
October 16, 1985:
appearing on
Channel 4 pop
show The Tube

tom waits

Blue Valentine has the Waits song
I keep coming back to. “Kentucky
Avenue” starts as fanciful childhood
reminiscence and builds toa climax that is at once absurd
and heartbreaking.
“Childhood is very important to me
as a writer. I think the things that
happen then, the way you perceive
them and remember them in later life,
have a very big effect on what you dolater on.
“That one came over a little dramatic,
a little puffed up, but when I was 10 mybest friend was called Kipper. He hadpolio and was in a wheelchair – we used
to race each other to the bus stop.”
His relationship with WEA turned sour when
he tried to release Swordfishtrombones as thefollow-up to Heartattack And Vine.
“They heard it but they didn’t recognise it,so amidst all the broken glass and barbed
wire I crawled out between the legs of thepresidents. It was the big shakedown at
Gimble’s – business, I guess.”
It closed a chapter in Waits’ life – he moved
out of Hollywood’s infamous Tropicana Motel,
split with Cohen and his girlfriend Rickie Lee
Jones, and signed to Island. The ’70s hadn’t
been an altogether easy ride for Waits –constantly on the road, often as a stadium
support to an incongruous Frank Zappa. It’s rumoured he employed
a $250-a-week stooge to bawl at backstage and came close to beingruined by the lifestyle he drew on. Certainly his business was not always
conducted wisely; publishing rights for some of his greatest compositions
fell into other hands.
“Maybe that’s why I write so many songs now; the songs I write now
belong to me, not someone in the Bronx. I did not stay abreast of what was
happening to me. I’m happier to be on a small label, Blackwell is artistic,a philanthropist. You can sit and talk with him and you don’t feel you’reat Texaco or Heineken or Budweiser. There’s something operating herethat has a brain, curiosity and imagination.”
Swordfishtrombones introduced a demented, exotic parade band todeal with the musical junk lying in American attics and basements. Rain
Dogs continues where it left off, and though Waits is writing about thesame sort of characters he has for the past 15 years, the situations heplaces them in differ wildly – maybe they’ve been transplanted to a dusty
western ghost town where the saloon-bar pianist never stops, or castadrift on the Titanic while the band play mariachi tangos and crazypolkas. He can still play it straight, too – dig the country-blue bitters of“Blind Love”, the lonesome lullaby “Hang Down Your Head” – but ingeneral the reassembling of musical influences is perfectly in keepingwith the new images and rhythms of his own language.
Rain Dogs is the first Waits LP made entirely in New York; the bleakness
and claustrophobia never far from the surface bears this out. He’s lived innine different places since moving here – at the moment he resides
between the New York State Armoury and National Guard recruiting
centre and the Salvation Army headquarters.

you used to be noted for a “professional
drunk” image – has that changed?
“Sincerely, I don’t want to romanticise
liquor to the point of ridiculousness.”
Would you like a drink now?
“Maybe I should have a beer, what do
you think? I mean, what time is it here?
I’ll have a Beck’s.”“I don’t want toromanticise
liquor to thepoint ofridiculousness”

Why did you come here?
“I came here for the shoes; it’s a real good town for shoes. It amazes me –I think it’s a good time for music when it’s a good time for shoes. You lookin the shoe store and you see them trimmed down with the points just so– they thrill me, really.”
When was the last time shoes were so good?
“You wait 15 years, it’s a long wait. In the meantime you go where you haveto – Fairfax, 36th and Downing, 9th and Hennepin in Minneapolis.”
When you’re putting together your group, is a sense of humour
important?
“That’s how you audition them, you tell them a joke and if they don’t
laugh then it’s hit the bricks, pal.”

you’ve got your younger listeners tothink of; you’ve got to set an example.
“Yah, setting an example. Well I don’t
think there’s anything wrong with alittle sherry before retiring, read a little
Balzac and then lay out. I don’t drink
and drive. I enjoy a little cocktail before supper,
who doesn’t?”America seems to be swamped with heroes
like never before – bulky bull-headed
killing machines like Stallone, norrisand Schwarzenegger are packing them inin the movie theatres on times Square. it’s
a complete contrast to the characters you
create on Rain Dogs.
“A hero ain’t nothing but a sandwich. It’s toughon the heroes, all they really want to do is strip
you of your name, rank, and serial number. It’s
like a hanging, a burlesque, it’s spooky. They
have you all dressed up with a hat on, makeup
and a stick that goes up the back of your neck. Then they take a 12-gauge
shotgun and blow your head off.”
you worked with Sylvester Stallone once in the movie Paradise Alley.
have you seen Rambo?
“No I haven’t, I don’t want to get drawn into something here just because
I did some work once because I needed the bread.
“America has been looking for somewhere to put the Vietnam war forso long. We’re making movies to help us forget. You hear the budget for
the film was so many millions of bucks, and here’s this guy with all his
muscles and a big machine gun. But the veterans were treated likedogmeat. The film budget was so many millions of dollars and they get$100 a month.”
how did you avoid the draft during the’60s?
“I was in Israel on a kibbutz. No I wasn’t, that’s a lie. I was in Washington,sir. I was in the White House as an aide. I got excused, the way anyone
would get as note from school: ‘Dear Mr President, Tom is sick today andwon’t be able to come along.’”
Can you remember why you became a musician in the first place?
“I couldn’t get into medical school; the administration at the time madeit difficult for me.”i heard you wanted to do neurosurgery.
“I wanted to help out, I wanted to combine yardwork and medicine.
When I was young I wanted to be a policeman – I liked the uniform,
I wanted a bit of authority – but that changed too.”
the influence and approach of the late harry Partch (a sometime hobo
and creator of a new musical notation played on his own range of
instruments) is evident on Swordfishtrombones. What about his work
appealed to you?
“I have a friend called Francis Thuum who played the Partch
chromelodeon. He lives down by the beach in a place called LeisureWorld. He drinks the Ballantine’s, loves the Scotch, the 12-year-old single
malt. He drinks plenty of it and it’s got him into plenty of trouble.
“Anyway, he showed me Partch had an instrument called the blowboy,
it sounded like a train whistle; it was a train whistle, only it was his train
whistle. It blew from out of bellows, reeds and organ pipes; he could play
it with his foot like a pump organ and go ‘hooway, hooway’. I swear it wasa sound that would break your heart. They said in a little documentary È
HISTORY OF ROCK 1985 | 123

1985

O C T O B E R – D ECEMBER

bleddyn butcher / rex features“New York is like aweapon… it’s intense”:
messing about downby the Hudson river,
September 1985

that the instruments he made were so beautiful, theylooked like skeletons.
“I guess I just got more curious, I was getting lazy.
I’m just trying to find different ways of saying thesame thing. I used to hear everything with a tenor saxophone; I had a very
particular musical wardrobe. I’ve opened up a bit more.”further and you have a Gamelan trajectory coming
in. It creates its own geography.
“I overdub now, I’m more paranoid. When I wasworking on two-track I did everything straight. Or
maybe that means I’m less paranoid now, because I’m not afraid to use it.
But you can’t get any ideas from machinery.”Do you think you can tell a lot about a country from the things it discards?
“I guess you can, I don’t know. Everything in the United States is made sothat – I vaant eet and I vaant eet all now. People just don’t have the time,
what do you do? They want things fast, but it’s like an aquarium – you sit
waiting and it all comes by again. I like to mix it; you can learn somethingfrom everything.”

Rain Dogs was written at the same time as the Frank’s Wild Yearsmusical. Did they overlap?
“I tried to keep them separate. Rain Dogs is like… well, I don’t want tosound too dramatic, but I wanted there to be a connection between the
tracks. I was going to call it ‘Beautiful Train Wrecks’ or ‘Evening Train
Wrecks’. Sometimes I close my eyes real hard and I see a picture of what
I want. That song ‘Singapore’ started like that, Richard Burton with abottle of festival brandy preparing to go on board ship. I tried to makemy voice like his – “In the kingdom of the blind the one-eyed man is king” –I took that from Orwell, I think.”

Your writing seems to follow a similar path – you’re neither a curator
nor a documentor. The world you create jumbles memory, reality andimagination to make its own reality. How the listener applies that totheir reality is up to them.
“I think a lot of that comes from being in New York. Everything isheightened; you’re looking through that into this, beyond this into that.
You get picked up by a Chinese cab driver in the Jewish district, go to a
Spanish restaurant where you listen to a Japanese tango band and eat
Brazilian food. It’s all blended.
“New York’s been settled by people that are very separate in a way. They
retain their own culture, its rules, religions and customs. You know when
you pass over the border from one into the other.”
For you as a musician, is it all up for grabs?
“Not so much to be used, I just try to enjoy. There’s a place where Nigeria
will lapse into Louisiana; there’s things about music that happen
spontaneously and you move into places that would otherwise have noconnection. If you play a certain rhythm and move it a little, it becomessomething else; move it back and it becomes a Carpathian waltz; move it
124 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

Which book?
“Mary Poppins, one of the big ones.”
Films and childhood seem important to your work. Where did you firstsee films when you were a kid?
“It was called the Globe Theatre and they had some unusual double bills.
I saw The Pawnbroker on the same bill as 101 Dalmatians when I was 11.
I didn’t understand it, and now I think the programme director must havebeen mentally disturbed or had a sick sense of humour.
“I liked going to movies, but I didn’t get lost in them. Some people
would rather spend time in the movies than anywhere else. On certain
days I would watch 10 movies, spend all day from 10 in the morning tomidnight going from movie to movie. But then it’s the world outside that
becomes the film; the time in-between takes on a very weird
arrangement, that’s what you watch, not the movies.”tom waits“Sometimes I
close my eyesreal hard and I
see a picture ofwhat I want”

How did Keith Richards come to be on
the album?
“We’re relatives, I didn’t realise it. We met ina woman’s lingerie shop; we were buying brassieres for our wives. They
had a little place at the back there where you could have a drink, two cups
at a time.
“No, he’s been borrowing money from me for so long that I had to put
a stop to it. He’s a gentleman; he came into the studio and took his hat off
and all these birds flew out.”“Union Square” is great – it sounds like the Stones haven’t been able
to for years.
“I was going to throw that song out. I said, ‘Call the dustman, this one’s
chewing on the dead.’ But somebody said, ‘There’s something there.’‘Hell,’ I said, ‘there isn’t.’ Then he came in – on the clock he stands with hishead at 3 and his arm at 10. I said how can a man stand like that without
falling over, unless he has a 200lb-test fishing line suspending him fromthe ceiling? It was like something out of Arthur – he comes in with his
guitar valet and it’s, ‘Oh Keef, shall we try the Rickenbacker?’
How did “Frank’s Wild Years” turn into a musical?
“The song was like a fortune cookie; after I wrote it I thought, ‘What
happened to this guy?’ Everybody knows guys like that, people you
haven’t seen in a long time – what happens to these people? What
happened to John Chrisswicky? Oh Jesus, John’s second wife left him andhe went to work in a slaughterhouse for a while. Then he was in arendering unit. Of course, his dad was always in the wine business; that
didn’t interest John. I hear he ended up as a mercenary soldier.
“People go through those permutations in different stages of their life;
perceived by someone else it can look strange. I imagined Frank along
those lines. Y’see, my folks split up when I was a kid and… Hey look, letme give you $100 and I’ll lie down on the couch over there, you take notes
and see if we can’t get to thebottom of this.”
How does it feel to be getting
older and seeing your influencespread? The Pogues write
about “Rain Dogs” in London;
I’m sure they’d acknowledge you
as an inspiration.
“Well, that’s great, that’s what it’s
all about. You break a little trail,
you come through to here, and you
leave some things behind.
“The Pogues I like, they’re ragged
and full of it. They seem to come on
traditional and eccentric. They
shout – I like the shouting. I like
Agnes Bernelle, Falling James and
The Leaving Trains, Jack Drake and
The Black Ducks, they play adrunken reverie, no instruments,
they just bang on things. I like someof that metal music, making musicout of things that come to hand.”Have you got any advice forwould-be musicians?
“Champagne for your real friends,
real pain for your sham friends.

I tell them it’s good to write on instruments you
don’t understand.”No jolly-ups around the old joanna?
“It’s firewood as far as I’m concerned. Slowly
I’ve started peeling the boards off until there’s
nothing left but metal, strings and ivory.”

Many of your prime influences were selfdestructive. Do you feel a sense of duty not
to get ensnared in that myth?
“I think it’s better to burn hard than to rot,
I think that’s right. I don’t really feel a senseof duty, I’m not in the army. Things that you
write about have been written about before, so
I don’t feel I’m breaking new ground or anything. All you can do is listen
to the things that are of value to you and try to find a place for yourself.
“I don’t want to sound too serious here, but it’s like when you’re together
with people for a long time and talking about the things only you know.
That must be the very sad thing about getting very old and all your friends
die, and you’re talking to some guy and he’s nodding and saying, ‘Yeah,
yeah,’ and you’re thinking, ‘Yeah, but he doesn’t really know.’”
How would you like to be remembered?
“Jesus Christ, I’m 19 years old and you’re asking me how I want to beremembered. On my gravestone I want it to say ‘I told you I was sick’.
Achievement is for the senators and scholars. At one time I had ambitions,but I had them removed by a doctor in Buffalo. It started as a cyst, it grewunder my arm and I had to have new shirts made, it was awful. But I havethem in a jar at home now.”oMeTIMe LATeR We’Re driving around New York looking fora suitable photo location. Down towards the river the apartment
blocks get more dilapidated, the wind howls and we watch a bum
foraging in a litter bin.
“There’s that guy, I haven’t seen him in ages, I wonder where he’s been,”says Tom, like he’d just seen an old friend. He tells me he thought Paul
Young’s version of “Soldier’s Things” was a little puffed up, but “it’s always
nice when someone covers your songs. Some of them are orphans, theyneed a home.” He talks about leaving New York.
“As you get older, the things it was once important to have around you
become less so, especially with children. New York is like a weapon, youlive with all these contradictions and it’s intense, sometimes unbearable.
It’s a place where you think you should be doing more about what you see
around you, a place where thedeadline to get the picture of theNovember 4, 1985:
bum outside your apartment
on stage at the
becomes more important than his
Concertgebouw
in Amsterdam
deadline to get a crust or a place tosleep, which is a real deadline.
“You see things like the $400 shoe
followed by the $500 ballgown
stepping into the pool of bloodfrom the bum that was killed thenight before. That’s what I wastrying to get in that song ‘Clap
Hands’ – “You can always get amillionaire to shovel all the coal”,
because millionaires like to goplaces that are downbeat, thataren’t so chi-chi.”S

Where would you liketo live, Tom?
“Kansas, it’s a good place todream. You wake up in themorning, look out the window
and don’t see anything, you makeit all up. I’d have a porch, a mean
dog and a 12-gauge shotgun. You
wouldn’t throw your baseball into
my yard, buddy; you’d never see itagain.” Gavin Martin ¥HISTORY OF ROCK 1985 | 125

frans schellekens / getty

A lot of the songs on Rain Dogs seem to beabout death.
“‘Cemetery Polka’ is a family album. A lot of myrelatives are farmers, they’re eccentric, aren’t
everyone’s relatives? Maybe it was stupid to put
them on the album, because now I get irate calls
saying, ‘Tom, how can you talk about your Aunt
Maime and your Uncle Biltmore like that?’ ‘But
Mum,’ I say, ‘they did make a million during
World War Two and you’ll never see any of it. It’stime someone exposed them.”

1985

O C T O B E R – D ECEMBER“What thefuck isa hippy?”

126 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

“I

— MELODY MAKER OCTOBER 26 —’m a naIve, romantic kid. I’m supposed to besome middle-class drop-out who’s quite welleducated, but I’ve got me ’ead up me ass and I justwalk around going ‘everything’s beautiful’.”I think we’d better start again…
“Kids take us on a more serious level than they
do a lot of other bands and a lot of journalists seem to find thatvery annoying. They seem to think that what we do is shrouded
in a mysticism that we create in order to hide a basic lack ofunderstanding, but it’s not as complicated as that. We’re not thatclever. We’re just two lads from the north, right? We’re doing whatcomes naturally. ’e makes a noise with ’is mouth and I play guitar.
That’s what we do.”I think we’d better start again…
Ian astbury’s one of those people who’s embroidered his pretty
uneventful youth into a diary of momentous incidents and traumaticturning points, and told it to so many people so many times that heprobably now believes it.
“The first gig I ever done was filmed for Tv, my fifth ever gig with
Southern Death Cult was reviewed by the press. anything I’ve done,
people have wanted to know what it’s all about. I just find it so
amusing that all these people keep slagging us off, and I couldn’t givea shit about it, I’m not bothered. People have tried to pound us into
the ground, but they just can’t get a hold of it.”
When Ian astbury talks, he reminds me of nick Rhodes – thick
but authoritative, intoning the most commonplace truism orembarrassing drivel with such haughtiness that you’d believe hebelieves he’s imparting some real pearl of wisdom.
Billy Duffy’s different but the same – he’s confident but sharper;
he listens whereas Ian, for all the community spiel he’s about to »bleddyn butcher / rex features

Very much without
critical permission,
THE CULT are picking
up a large following.
On TV with theirsingles, in the flesh
they face a press
who think they are“the muppets ofgoth”. Not fair, theysay. “What we’vebeen through as
individuals can bevery complicated.”

“We just do what
we believe in”:
Cult frontman Ian
Astbury in 1985

HISTORY OF ROCK 1985 | 1271985

tony mottram / getty

O C T O B E R – D ECEMBER“You take a walk in Newcastle and the kids are expressing a lot of things
unleash, exhibits, in his own favoured condemnation of others, “a veryin the way they’re dressing now, and they look to a band like us to be us,
closed mind”. For someone so intent on letting it be known he’s intent on
we, perhaps for the first time,” says Billy. “In a sort of perverse way, theylearning, Ian actually never listens; he just stares away into a more
see us standing up to what they see as a very conservative music press.
important world of his own and sometimes deigns to descend to my level
Kids think that the NME and Melody Maker are always going on about
to say his peace piece. I’d say he was stoned but….
new funk rock and all this, that and the other, and when they go and see“The funniest thing about the music business is that the people who arethese bands, they’re bored out of their minds. So they look around andmost into the rock’n’roll cliche lifestyle are the ones whose public image isthink, ‘Well, what the fuck is there that’s exciting around here?’ And they
the least like that. We don’t take drugs, we’ve never done it. That’s just alook to us. That’s why you see kids in bright-green paisley shirts – they’re
personal way this band are, and I suppose it’s a paradox. We’re a rocklooking for real bands that they can actually get excited about.
band – we’ve been saying that for quite a while now and it wasn’t too“I agree with the attitude that, in the late ’60s, a certain group of people
acceptable a year and a half ago, it was like putting your head in a
got so far up their own asses, they shit all over themselves,” says Ian.
guillotine. The times have maybe changed a little bit now.”“They did contradict themselves, but look what it produced, look at theI think we’d better start again…
imagination, look what it actually started. The fact that so many young
The Cult are here, now, today, on Top Of The Pops, for better or worse,
people could go on the street and stop a war. The fact that you’ve got CND
and every time it affects me I think of that handiest of phrases: Those who
now. I mean, we’re not into any political movements or anything, but at
do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Or some such.
the same time, CND is a powerful cause, they’re on about the same thing,
And The Cult. The Cult are a rock band with accoutrements, aren’t they?
they wanna fuckin’ survive, they wanna have somewhere to live. All that
A swagger away from Black Sabbath. Something so old that they’re new.
was produced from the ’60s – a lot of very positive things came out of it as
The rock of ages. “Everything in this world right now is fast, fast, fast,” Ian
well as a lot of negative self-indulgence.”
informs me, fiddling with his Led Zeppelin badge. “Fast food, fast TV, fast
If the ’60s achieved anything, it created a youth in the sense that, before,
sex, fast everything. And people just skim on the surface all the time, andyou were a boy and then a man, or a girl and then a woman’ there was
I think a lot of journalists look at us on the surface and pick up on certain
nothing in-between, there was no fashion. In other words, the ’60s madethings. Like the North American Indian thing – but that didn’t justyoung people the most powerful force on Earth solely because it suited
happen to me overnight, that was an experience that happened to me
someone to do so. They were the biggest market.
over five or six years. And hippies…”“Young people, the most powerful? And so they should be,” says Ian.
Ah, hippies. Glad he brought it up. The new Cult album’s called Love,Any yet everything about The Cult screams for the extermination of theand there are some out there who will tell you it’s all you need. Not me.
generation gap in order that lyrics such as “It rained
When we branded Ian as a spitter for Neil The
flowers when the music began” (“Nirvana”) or “I’m on
Hippy, I wasn’t exactly what you’d call blameless.
fire like a kiss from the lips of Ra” (“Phoenix”), guitar
And now here’s this man who claims he’s a boy, with
P .4
4solos filched wholesale from Hendrix and costumes
hair halfway down his back, wearing a cowboy hatwith an owl’s feather in it, snakeskin cowboy bootswith gold points and a Cure badge, staring into
middle space and asking…
“What’s a hippy? A lot of kids who come to see us
haven’t even got any conception of what a hippy
is, except for maybe a teacher at school with long
hair and a beard and some older kids have said,‘Oh, that’s a hippy.’ Y’know. I got called a hippyin the street by some 14-year-old kids the otherday – I wonder where they got it from?”w
I wonder…
“Look, what the fuck is a hippy? I think people see
a hippy as some guy with long hair and glasses with a peace signand flared trousers – it’s just an image, like punk.”“What does punk mean now?” asks Billy, a less bolshie Idol.
Here comes the answer: “It’s a deprecating term. ‘Let’s go andlaugh at the punks down the King’s Road.’”“It’s that guy in the NatWest advert,” says Ian. “The one with
the Mohican haircut who spits at people and headbutts walls.”
Ian’s dead proud of having missed punk. He was in Canada atthat time, in the army, and when he heard the Pistols, of course,
it changed his life. He came over here, hung out in all the rightplaces, met all the right people and picked up on the vibe after
the event as it were. This, for some inexplicable reason, gives
him a unique hindsight which prompts him to pontificate:“I think it’s really nice what’s happening now because it’sunquantifiable. Because so many things have gone in the past,I think what we do is an amalgamation of all those different
influences and it’s gonna be a lot longer lasting.”“A lot of things have been in the negative,” says Billy. “Maybe
now is the time for… well, the positive. That’s been a terrible
word for a few years, almost frightening, but maybe what we’re
involved with is the first thing that’s positive. Every other fashion– hippies, acid rock, punk – seemed to be incredibly against
something. We’re not necessarily against in that obvious way.”
I think we’d better start again… The Cult were once Southern
Death Cult, positive punks, whatever that ironic misnomer wasmeant to mean. Then they were Death Cult, burying their
The Cult in 1985:(c/wise fromhearts at wounded knees protruding through jeans rippedleft) Billy Duffy,
just so. Then they were The Cult, a band going places playing
Les Warner,
turgid heavy metal with aspirations elsewhere. I’ve seen andJamie Stewart
and Ian Astbury
heard it all before, but then…
128 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

.
1

� v
Y

a

the cult

CULT
nicked from The Incredible String Band align neatly
with their self-esteeming notion of rebellion.
Billy reckons “young kids pick up Are You
Experienced or a Doors album and it’s mind-blowing
because it’s so good and they’ve grown up neverbeing told that this great music happened. To themit’s like a new group.”
I think we’d better start again… It’s not that I
have anything against The Cult, it’s just that, for
an art that purports to thrive on revolution, pop’s
an industry paranoiacally opposed to change.
We used to say the haircuts may differ but thehype’s still the same. Now even the haircuts don’tchange, and I don’t think it’s being too cynical tosuggest that the abolition of the memory of pastindulgences isn’t exactly a passport to heaven.
“My image of the ’60s is romantic,” says Ian to
no one in particular. “The colours, the clothes,
the music and the ambience of the concert – notso much the drug culture that went along with
it but the feel of community; a lot of people
coming together and something really exciting
happening. I’d like to be able to experience thatin this day and age, and when I go out and look for it, I’m beginning toexperience it. It doesn’t exist. It’s there if you want it.”He cites Alice In Wonderland, the hardly notorious psychedelic
revivalist dungeon in Soho, as the epitome of what he’s talking about.
A place where you can go and meet like minds, listen to Blue Cheer andponder the meaning of life… I think we’d better start again…
Even their denial of cliches is cliched, they’re buried that far in the
rock’n’roll myth.
“Somebody – I think it was Nick Cave – once said something along thelines of, ‘What’s a cliche? A cliche is the best way of expressing or doing
something, and because it’s the best, it’s become a cliche,’” says Billy.
“That, I think, sort of sums the whole thing up. We almost used toapologise for our existence when we started because we didn’t feel wewere Supertramp. But I think the fact that so many people are either into
the bands or into the music, that’s the justification.”“We reflect what’s going on,” Ian insists. “We’re typical English kids, andI think vagueness and confusion are definitely a big part of people’s lives,
the unspoken word, what’s it all about? I think that element is forward inwhat we do because we’re quite honest and open about things. We haven’t
tried to contrive one formula which is very simple and easy to understand,because what we’ve experienced, what we’ve been through as individuals,
can be very complicated.”
This, I presume, is why their songs are incomprehensible?
“We ain’t got all the answers. What are the answers to everything? A lotof people put pressure on us, as an alternative group. Remember, at one
stage in the Banshees’ career, people were looking to them and saying,‘What the fuck are you saying? Where is it in black and white? Are yousocialists or are you conservatives? We want some sort of doctrine fromyou.’ Well, I think we’ve got to a similar stage in our career; people aretrying to draw manifestos out of the group and they’re not there.”bazookas on it and Japanese nose flutes.” It’s as if
denial of the idiotic excuses the obvious.
I think we’d better start again…
“We haven’t talked about deliberate provocation,”says Billy. “Like calling the album Love. ‘Love’ is avery powerful word and it can mean many things,
not just falling in and out of. To us it’s about respect,space and, perhaps, happiness. It’s anirreverence to certain things that have been
set up, certain barriers that have been put up by
the media to say to kids, ‘Don’t explore thatarea, we’ve been down there and it’s a waste oftime. Basically, all you’ve got to live for is this,because that’s what we like.”
The Cult subversive? I think we’d better startagain… And yet, look around you. Maybe theblack leather and beads, the junkie cross andthe Jesus locks are some sort of renegade
alternative to Wham!. At the very least The Cult
say “Discover the world”, not “Take a package
holiday to Torremolinos”. This may be crucial:“It would be so easy for us to go and piss all overRolls-Royces or do a big turd outside the HouseOf Commons or sign our record contract outside Buckingham Palace andbe sick everywhere or to tell Top Of The Pops to fuck off, but doing things
like that is bad because you lead people to believe you’re something
you’re not. I think we’re responsible to our audience in the sense that we
do what we feel is right; we don’t try and present something that’s not us.”
In short, The Cult are honestly clueless. I think we’d better start again….
I think The Cult are hugely liked largely for reasons they claim to abhor,
for the big gestures, not the sincere gibberish.
“What’s the right reason and what’s the wrong reason?” Ian asks
enigmatically. “We just do what we believe in, and I think it’s basicallya good thing, I don’t think it’s evil.”Ah, that veneer of dimension all over again. For a band who claim sovehemently to be the sum of their experiences, The Cult, live and onrecord, are the most po-faced, humourless group it’s possible tocontemplate. They deny the brighter side of existence for the sake of theirprecious image, an image complete with pseudo-religious trimmings.
“There’s no religion in this country,” mourns poor Ian. “Christianity,
the spiritual side, is a very special part of people’s lives, it gives themstrength just to live and the only thing for kids to look to is the music.
“Music matters. A 14-year-old kid buys a Duran Duran record, grows up
a little bit, becomes a little more wise to what’s going on and sees that
Duran Duran aren’t really saying what they feel, so they go onto
something else, maybe the Frankies, something a little bit heavier,something that makes a statement. And then they become bored withthat and they end up with us.”
A pastiche of knowledge?
“Well, there’s a hell of a lot of kids out there who haven’t experienced
punk rock or a mind-expanding experience; they’ve just picked up on
things for themselves. And I think now’s the time that a new generation’s
coming up, for the first time, that wants something new.”What Ian’s pitching for is, of course, progressive rock, the notion ofsomething more deep and meaningful than something else. And equally,of course, that way self-indulgence lies. And worse…
“We’re skimming the surface of something quite spiritual…”
See what I mean?
“We don’t really want to quantify it. I find it very, very rare to bump into
people who are communicating on the same level, because they’re sohung up on looking cool or hanging round with the right people. It’s sohard to meet people who are tuned into something more than therational world. We’re called hippies because we’re into life, right?”
Uh?
“Look, there’s certain things we just can’t talk about because there’s anincredible danger of being misinterpreted. It’s really sad and unfortunate,
but that’s the way it is.”I think we’d better start again… “When punk happened to me, I didn’t
want to go and make a home for myself and get a wife and kids and that.
I wanted to go out and meet people and enjoy being alive and, if anything,
I guess that’s the band’s message: in whatever way you can, live your life,
enjoy it while you’re here, it’s your time.”
At last. The end. Steve Sutherland ¥�

“We’reskimming thesurface ofsomethingquite spiritual”

Ithink we’d better start again…
The Cult are the Muppets Of Goth, not the Wizards Of Oz. Likening
themselves to the Banshees is patently ludicrous, because they don’t
have the credentials, they haven’t forged anything of themselves, they’ve
followed in footsteps and bided their time, rebellion reduced to its
meekest, warriors drained to their weakest. They’re compliant withexpectation, they’re shadow-rioting, make-believe tripping, they’remaking a nonsense of mystery. And a lot of people who don’t know better,a lot of people who should know better, are being seduced by the noise,taken in by the nuance and ignoring the nonsense for want of anything
better burning more brightly.
“Emotions are something you can’t cliche,” claims Billy. “I think, in theearly days, we were chasing our tails around trying to find some obscureangle to communicate something basically very simple. We went alongthat path with some of our early records, searching for something when
the obvious thing was screaming at us. There’s no point meandering forsix months trying to make a song go to Tibet.”This, presumably, is why, when I ask Billy what’s the worst thing The
Cult could do, he replies: “Make a concept album about gerbils and use

HISTORY OF ROCK 1985 | 129

1985

O C T O B E R – D ECEMBER“I am awitness tomy times”

Back with a synth-heavy
and political album, the
new JONI MITCHELL isn’t
so unlike the old one. “Thedisillusionment, the killingof the president, thestain of the Vietnamesewar…” she says, recalling
her landmark 1970s work.
“It was a natural thingfor people to look
into themselves.”

S— NME NOVEMBER 30 —rex featurescene One: JOni Mitchell, New Paintings
And Songs, an evening benefit for theMuseum Of Contemporary Art at theJames Corcoran Gallery, Santa Monica
Boulevard, Los Angeles.
(Subtitled: All the people at this party/
They’ve got a lot of style/They’ve got stamps of many
countries/They’ve got passport smiles/Some are friendly/
Some are cutting/Some are watching it from the wings/
Giving to get something…”“People’s Parties” from the album Court And Spark by
Joni Mitchell, 1973.)

130 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

A low building in a parade of liquor stores, restaurants
and other sub-glamorous service industry ephemera.
Outside, faces watch figures emerging from cabs andlimousines. Inside, faces are watching faces…
Mitchell’s husband Larry Klein, handsome eyes
shining, is talking with a beaming Pat Metheny, who
suddenly throws his head back and laughs delightedly.
A posse of the curious, gathered close by in the as-yetuncrowded room, pause mid-conversation and smile,anxious to share in the joke. A tall young man with a video
camera balanced on his shoulder moves in towards theroom’s dominant canvas, a vast and semi-figurative work
titled Dog Eat Dog, like Mitchell’s new LP. He is recording
the event for Japanese TV…
Shelley Duvall is looking earnestly at a work called The
Marriage Of Church And State, which features a soiled »

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“The western world has
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Farm Aid concert,
September 1985

HISTORY OF ROCK 1985 | 131

1985

getty

O C T O B E R – D ECEMBER

crucifix hammered onto an American flag. Within the Stars And Stripes
there stands a small army of toy-shop tin generals tacked on by hand. A
woman squeezes past, wine glass aloft. “My God, that’s Barbi Benton. She
looks no older,” says a whisper in her wake . . . a flurry of excitement in theentrance hall and Mitchell herself is here. The presence is palpable, long
before her trademark black beret can be glimpsed amid the clamour,because waves of people radiate from her wherever she moves.
Closest to her are the friends with whom she exchanges kisses andconversation mindful of the audience. Next there are the friends of thosefriends listening in. And by them, a broader band of spectators watch thelisteners listening. Further back linger the shy, the single, the resolutely
un-star-struck. Fame, it seems acts like a pebble dropped into a pond.
“…Life’s been pretty good to you, hasn’t it?” a beautiful, dark-haired girlwith wide-open eyes is asking Jack Nicholson as he lounges in a doorway
granting audiences to a procession of young callers. “Yeah,” replies Jack,giving that slow, wicked smile and tilting his shades forward a little.
“Life’s been fucking great…”
Wayne Shorter’s saxophone trails behind the general conversation
and rises to the ceiling – like cigarette smoke in the smaller of the gallery’s
two main rooms. It is Dog Eat Dog being played on continuous loop
through loudspeakers. Mitchell is now circulating among her guests.
Having been introduced to Sheena Easton, she is craning forward inconversation. “You’re from a small town too, aren’t you?” those passing
can hear her ask.
Outside in the warm, dark-blue night, departing guests are being
presented with copies of the new album. One group pauses on the
sidewalk discussing the paintings inside. “I expected them to be more
figurative somehow, like her record covers,” says one man. Asked about
this, her first ever collected exhibition of art work, Mitchell will say later,“At their most trivial you could think of them [her paintings] as party
decorations for the release of the new album. At their most trivial, they
are at least that good.”

cene Two: AfTernoon tea at the offices of Peter Asher
Management, North Doheny Drive, Los Angeles. Joni Mitchellturns aside from the birthday celebrations of her manager’s
secretary, wipes crumbs from her fingers, and dissects her art,
her music and her increasingly troubled view of America and thewider world.
(Subtitled: “Fiction of obedience/Fiction of rebellion/Fiction of the goodygoody and the hellion/Fiction of destroyers/Fiction of preservers/Fiction ofpeacemakers and shit disturbers…”“Fiction”, from the album Dog Eat Dog by Joni Mitchell, 1985.)

S

The flaxen-haired figure sitting behind a large glass desk in a small
side office looks tired. Joni Mitchell at 41 is an intriguing mixture of sage
and schoolgirl. Clothes are elegant, expensively understated, heavy silk
sleeves carelessly rolled up, emerald suede shoes slipped on and off
unconsciously while considering a response. The look is anything
but Hollywood, just minutes the down the boulevard, and the effect as
unselfconscious as can be. But her beauty and candour are as disarming
as her music.
This is the woman, born in Fort Macleod, Alberta, and raised in
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, who began singing while at art school in
Calgary; who married and divorced the folk singer Chuck Mitchell in the
mid-’60s; whose songs “The Circle Game” and “Both Sides Now” wererecorded by other artists (Tom Rush and Judy Collins respectively) before
she released her first solo album; whose song “Woodstock”, from her
third album Ladies of The Canyon, became the anthem for a generation;
who released the ultimate bedsitter-land soundtrack with 1971’s Blue,
expanded its folk-pop concerns in the following year’s For The Roses, thensold self-pity down the Swanee in the search for jazz.
This is the artist whose 1974 release Court And Spark stands today as amilestone of romantic introspection, leading into a double, Miles of Aisles,
reworking her existing songbook in a jazz-aware framework that would“We were a kind of
freaky generation;very self-centred
as a rule, in a good
way and a bad way”:
Mitchell in 1985132 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

joni mitchellitself lead to 1976’s historic The Hissing Of Summer
Lawns. An impressionistic collection of jazz-pop
vignettes, it contrasted the sterile life of her
suburban sisters with the threatening but fertile
jungle world lying beyond the well-manicured
lawns and airy interiors of Beverly Hills and Bel-Air…
This in turn would be developed into the paireddown, minimal jazz accompaniments of Hejira, analbum that paired Mitchell’s guitar with the brooding
electric bass work of Weather Report player Jaco Pastorius
on songs about flight, fame, fear and escape.
These achievements alone would assure Joni
Mitchell of her place in some cobwebbed hall of
all-time fame. But add a career that continued
to flourish (artistically if not commercially)
through a still more fully blooded romancewith jazz on studio double-album Don Juan’s
Reckless Daughter and the collaboration withthe then-dying composer and bassist Charles
Mingus on 1979’s Mingus, and it becomes moredifficult to fathom Joni Mitchell’s place in thescheme of things.
Has she released an electro album usingsynthesized voices to disguise the vocal
shortcomings of being middle-aged? Has she
published a racy autobiography detailing her
lovelife with California’s mellowest but most macho men? Has she eventurned a well-timed back on liberalism and come out in support ofnuking, nationalism and New Cold War Diplomacy? None of thesethings…? What? She’s even turned in a more than half-way decent new
album that brings her razor-edged lyricism into the ’80s world ofFairlights and pre-Holocaust paranoia? This is not what becomes alegend most, these days at least. Joni Mitchell has some answering to do…

openness regarding homosexuality, the decadent
theatre reflecting the repressed savageness of aculture. Look at German theatre before Hitler. It’svery similar to MTV with all its black studs, that one
pocket that rock went through a couple of years agothat was dominantly savage, apocalyptic… theenactment of surviving a holocaust…savage
scavengers. Even though there’s a certain
theatricalness, there’s also a truth to it.” This awareness,
coupled with the stability of marriage, led her away fromwhat others would call her confessional muse.
“I never thought of myself so much as aconfessional songwriter,” she says, “but in orderthat my work should have vitality, I felt I should
write in my own blood. The closer it was to mydirect experience, the less it was going to behearsay, the more poignancy it should have. My
job as I see it is to be a witness. I am a witness tomy times. The world had become so mysterious
from the vantage point of the ’70s. The
disillusionment, the killing of the president, thestain of the Vietnamese war. It was a natural
thing for people to look into themselves.
“That period was one of soul searching.
The dream, everything that America stood for,was broken, and the people break a little withthe dream. Where do you have left to go but in?”
It was, she concedes, a very particular moment in time, experienced
by those coming of age in the ’60s.
“We really broke from our elders. There was a clear cut. A line wasdrawn. This generation kind of resembles my parents’ generation, likea throwback, which often happens. Their aim is to get a job and hold it
because they came up in a depression, although not one as severe as thatof the ’30s. But they came up under the same pressures. We came up in
the greatest pocket of affluence post-Second World War, though. The
country was rich, the economy was in good shape, and we were raised on
certain philosophies. Like, spare the rod. Yes, do spoil the child. So wenever really reached adulthood in a certain way. We were a kind of freaky
generation; very self-centred as a rule, in a good way and a bad way…”
Liberated from the need to introspect, Mitchell found inspiration in fullmeasure by looking around at the confused kingdom her babyboomer
peers had inherited. To her, one of the most disturbing phenomena was
the eerie interplay between religion and politics which began as a reaction
to the soft-pedal Carter years and which has found full expression during
Ronald Reagan’s presidency. Her song “Tax Free”, from the new album,
analyses the implications, employing actor Rod Steiger’s melodramatic
oracular talents to simulate one of the hawkish TV preachers.
“Lord, there’s danger in this land/You get witch-hunts and wars/Whenchurch and state hold hands…” she sings, as Steiger counters, “I think weshould turn the United States Marines loose on that little island south of
Florida and stop that problem… I am preachin’ love… I am…”
“Tax Free” starts from the premise that the new right-wing religious areplaying the same stadiums as the rock bands they so despise, and can È“The dream,
everythingthat America
stood for, wasbroken”

he legend is laughing. “You know, I’m just one of those Spockbabies. We do everything a little late…” In this case the joke
could be on any one of the many Joni Mitchell fans who rely on
their heroine to articulate those unique-yet-universal stirrings of theheart – the circumstantial minutiae of the love affair. Her own
emotional turmoil has fuelled both her art and the animosity of critics.
She has been called the High Priestess Of Confessional Songwriting insome columns. Rolling Stone, in one article featuring a family tree ofher liaisons, called her “Old Lady of The Year”.
Every silver lining has its cloud. “It took a long time for me to remarry,”says Mitchell, referring to 1983’s ceremony with bassist Klein, 28. “It took
me a long time to find the stability of a partner again. But what am I goingto do now? Torture myself? Sit there and reminisce about the past? It would
be bad for me, bad for my marriage. So with that taken care of, you begin tolook around you. It’s a natural sociological phenomenon, you know.”
She is explaining the logic behind the newfound politicism of her music.
Dog Eat Dog has the odd strand of romanticism in its lyrical fabric, but also
contains attacks on consumerism, right-wing evangelism, media hype,international aid policy and good old-fashioned greed. It’s a list of targets
that might be considered hip if addressed
less articulately by someone half her age.
As it is, Joni Mitchell has made one of
the most political albums to come out ofAmerica this year. The title track refers
to a nation of “snakebite evangelists andmarketeers – a culture in decline”.
“Land of snap decisions/Land of shortattention spans/Nothing is savoured longenough/To really understand…”“Although I see it in America because
I’m here, it’s more of a global point of view,”
she says, gesturing with a cigarette. “We
are so interrelated with the news being
the way it is… world incidents broadcast
into your living room… the western world
has all the symptoms of downfall if you
study it and compare it with all the othercivilisations that have gone under. There
are the youth cult obsessions, a greater

T

m

1985

O C T O B E R – D ECEMBER

outdraw even Springsteen. It then shows how the “immaculately tax free”
preachers combine with the President to inculcate the idea that any
opposition to church or state is Communist-induced, and that perhaps
the right of free speech should be taken away from its instigators.
“So now it starts to get really scary,” says Mitchell, leaning forward andjabbing the air with her cigarette. “You think, we’re only a hairline and a
few laws from incredible censorship. They’re already trying to censor
rock’n’roll. One of the reasons this album is so outspoken in the context of
my work is that I think it’s a case of use it or lose it. If I don’t start speaking
out, taking a chance and addressing things that are important to me inthis way, we might not have this outlet very long.”
aving taken part in the recent Farm Aid benefit andjoined in the recording of “Tears Are Not Enough”, theCanadian equivalent to “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”,did she detect a reactive movement back to more Woodstock-stylevalues among the young?
“Woodstock was Woodstock… it had its own identity. There’ll neverbe another Woodstock” she says. “Every time there’s been one of thoselarge gatherings of people, any one of them, they’ve been entirely
different. Collectively, each of those crowds had its own personality.
To me, Woodstock was a very high event. It was the height of the hippy
movement. Afterwards it began to recede.
“Live Aid didn’t have the same things up against it as Woodstock did. It
was much more commercialised. They were flashing up the band’s latest
album after every song. I don’t think people were weeping in the wings.
I don’t think there was the same poignancy surrounding the event.”
Dog Eat Dog contains the song “Ethiopia”, her own comment on thepolitical inertia and short-sightedness that contributes to the famine
and threatens its repetition elsewhere. It will also provide royalties forcharitable causes, but is far removed lyrically from the self-involved
smugness of, for example, “We Are The World”. It fuses the ecologicalconcerns of past songs like “Big Yellow Taxi” and “The Hissing Of
Summer Lawns” with the bleak, minimal sound of Hejira and provides
a despairing, angry whole. Mitchell admits that, yes, she worried that
she might be accused of picking up on a chic subject and that, yes, there
was opposition in some quarters to its inclusion on the album.
“It’s too good a song to even think about what people might think of iton the downside. I’m used to people thinking of
my work on the downside. I’ve had plenty of it.”
Mitchell’s husky voice has a hard edge to it now.
“The song was too good to kill. I thought, ‘It’s nota pretty subject. It will be too sad for somepeople. They won’t like it, won’t want to look atit.’ But what would you do? If you’d written thatsong, abort it? Wouldn’t you put it on record?”“After I’d done the Canadian Band Aid, I feltthat all the songs that had been written, while
they were good for generating the spirit togather money and to focus people on a cause –in that they were perfect – they were more aboutus, we the performers and we the contributors
of money, than they were about the people of
Africa themselves. So once I had thatidea I did the portrait more of theEthiopians themselves in the context
of our own world hunger.
“To me it’s not like they’re overthere and they have a drought; theymismanaged their soil, it’s now sickand their government doesn’t reallycare about them. That could happen
anywhere in the world at any time,closer to home. We can cause the sameproblems with our pesticides going
into in the ground… You’re going to getme into my apocalyptic vision now…
terrible doings are being done in thename of commerce. The rain forests
are coming down around the globe.
We’re going to have deserts springing
up all over the place. It’s not just going
to be in Ethiopia.”H

The song’s impression is made all the more powerful by the simplicity
of its musical form in contrast to the computer-age pop she has adapted
elsewhere. The sound is expensive – it is Mitchell’s most costly album todate – and, uniquely for her post-folkie work, production credits are given
to outside agents. Nile Rodgers and Thomas Dolby both volunteered, but
she was wary of turning her music over to someone so completely.
“I found it difficult, because I’ve always been kind of a benign dictator
on my dates,” she says of the production-by-committee (Mitchell andKlein, engineer Mike Shipley and, on some of the tracks, Dolby as well)that resulted. “There’s never been a producer. There never was a credit
given, and I leaned heavily on artistic contributions from my players.
“A producer is kind of guy who has the last word. Often he’s a formulaman. He’s trying to make something commercial, and that can be awatering down. I don’t think of producers generally speaking – and there
are exceptions – as people who play long shots.”
Mitchell says that she and her husband had been attracted by the bestof recent music using Fairlights and drum machines, and wanted toassimilate that sound into her own work. But Shipley was invited onto thesessions to handle the more complex functions of the equipment thatthey had not yet learned to perform, and then the need for a fourth person– Dolby – to speed up programming was recognised. There have been
rumours that it was not an altogether harmonious relationship.
“I was reluctant when Thomas was suggested, because he had asked
to produce the record,” she admits. “Would he consider coming in asa programmer and a player? So we met with him and said, ‘Now weknow you’re used to being a frontliner and this is kind of a foot-soldier
position…’, and he said, ‘I would love to do it. I am sick of people always
looking to me for the answer.’“And when he said that, I thought of the play A Chorus Line. I thought,‘I know his intentions are the best and that at this moment he believes hecan do that, but he’s still a lead player and can he go back into the chorusline. He’s going to have to subordinate his ideas.
“So on that level we did have some problems, because he’d get excitedwith some idea and I couldn’t get him off the keyboards. Then I’d feel bad.
I’d think, ‘Oh God, I understand. He’s on a creative roll. But he can’t,
because if he does that he’ll decorate me right off my own project.’“He may be able to do it faster. He may even be able to do it better, but thefact is it won’t really be my music.”
It would be hard not to see the irony in thefact that Mitchell has just released her mostrock-aware album in more than a decade ata time when the American mega-sales aregoing to artists testing their toes in jazz.
Complete immersion in the form led to her
being pilloried by many critics on her home
continent, and being largely ignored by record
buyers. Is she bitter?
“I felt bitter at the time. I had bitter moments.
I had to fight it. But I did not become anembittered person, so I won some of the battles.
I took a lot of hard knocks. Mean knocks, notsmart knocks. People weren’t thinking…
they were just afraid of it.
“It was just different at the time…
and now this is a good time for it. I’m
glad it came about this way, because it
gives me optimism. I like to make thatkind of music, and I like the idea of it
having a broad public communication.
“There is a tendency on some projects
for something to be considered jazz
because jazz is new chic. But it’s notgood jazz. It’s beginner’s. But theplayers that Sting is working with, forinstance – those are real virtuosi.”“I like the idea that goodmusicians can have a broad public
communication. And you’ve got tostart somewhere. Even if I’m thinking,‘God, you think this is hip but you
haven’t even digested the history ofjazz enough to know that, like, thisgiant existed and he did that…’“We’re only ahairline and a
few laws fromincredible
censorship”

134 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

“It may be very beginnerish, but it’s still where to begin to educate thepublic. Maybe if they can like that, then they can like something else too
and gradually acquire a taste for this magnificent pocket of music that has
always been designated as something for, kind of, ’50s cellars in Europe.”
As for herself, there are no plans to explore the area further now that therest of the industry is catching up: “All people have to do is go back andplay the old records,” she says. “I already did that.”
Old wounds are still discernible, though. The Hissing Of Summer Lawns,
widely considered to be her landmark album of the ’70s, was voted “Worst
Album of The Year” by the staff of Rolling Stone on its release in 1976. She
got a telegram from Paul and Linda McCartney that year saying, ‘We
really liked it.’ It was the only good review that it got, and then it wasalmost a sympathy telegram.
“It was destroyed on so many levels, and that really hurt. There’s no way,
just on a level of craftsmanship, that you could say it was the worst record
made that year. If they’d just said they hated it, you could take it, because
it would be a personal opinion. But to say it’s the worst…
“Stay as you are and bore us, or change and betray us. That’s yourchoice.” Mitchell smiles and shrugs, pausing to light another cigarette.
sked to consider her position in relation to thewomen’s movement, she draws herself up behind the deskwith shoulders hunched and hands clasped, like a pupil
concentrating in class. On one level, she has done more than any
other female songwriter to express the sexual and emotionallandscape of the past two decades. On another, she has always
seemed apart from other women, either isolated in her art or distanced
from them by her romantic relationships. She admits she has neverseen herself as a feminist, finding the structures of the movement too
limiting and divisive.
“I had a good relationship with my father,” she says carefully. “He taught
me a lot of things that, had he had a son, he would have taught a boy. How
to make bows and arrows and so on. I enjoy men’s company, and I grew up
enjoying it. My best friendships I’ve made in my life, generally speaking,were with men. It’s not that I don’t like women. I’ve made good friendships

A

with women too, but I’m so driven as women go that I can relate more todriven men. A lot of women would like to paint, for example, but they have
101 things that keep them from doing it. I can have friendships with these
women, but sometimes I remind them of their inability to get going,
which leaves a hole or a potential hole in the relationship.
“Feminism was too divisive. It was us against them… but it did
something to open things up. I hate the word but I like the idea of a person,that a man and a woman can sit and for one moment all of these sexualconsiderations are bypassed and you have an open dialogue from person
to person. I have basically tried to live my life as a person in that way.”
Suddenly she lightens, remembering an article she has read recently
about one of the new right-wing women’s organisations. It is hard for her
to keep from laughing while relating the story.
“I forget the name of the particular group, but it was Christian women
linked to getting the devil’s language out of rock’n’roll,” she says. “Theylike being housewives. They’re anti-feminist, and they were in training
to go out and visit the media, because some of them had appeared on
television and had felt awkward. So the training programme consisted ofa woman standing up and saying, (Mitchell adopts a prissy Miss Manners
delivery) ‘Now remember, girls, on TV your knees are your best friends.
Keep them together…’, and then, ‘Take out your pocket mirrors, girls. I
want you to notice that if, when you’re speaking, you raise your eyebrowsup and down, your voice takes on a more melodious quality.’”
Mitchell is laughing with delight now as she winds up the anecdote:“The last thing the article said was that the women prayed, they sangsongs, and then they looked at an aborted foetus, and I thought, ‘God,
this is a new movement? It’s just as sick and limited as the old one. It’s thependulum sprung back too far against a reaction which was itself alreadytoo extreme. When is the pendulum going to get to the middle?’”She talks a little about the art show, her recent move into abstract
painting – “I’ve just broken into a movement that happened in the ’50s.
I’m still an art student” – and other plans for coming to Europe with herband next year. Outside the room her husband lounges in a chair chattingwith office staff. He grins when he sees her. With the heart soothed, Joni
Mitchell has found fresh sources to energise her music. Alan Jackson ¥HISTORY OF ROCK 1985 | 135

paul natkin

September 22, 1985:
Mitchell performingat Farm Aid in the
Memorial Stadium,Champaign, Illinois

1985

O C T O B E R – D ECEMBERALBUMSThe Jesus And Mary
Chain: “a slick kind ofthrash-without-tears”

ALBUMS

REVIE
W
1985

MARk AND CoLLEEN HAyWARD / gETTy

The Jesus & Mary Chain
Psychocandy WARNERS
The neighbours are having theirflat done up, as it happens.
Hammering, banging andcrashing all day. I stuck the Mary
Chain’s album on and it soundedexactly like they were coming
through the wall with a Black &Decker. Bloody frightening.
Psychocandy is a strangely
tame wee beastie, quite
endearing in a funny sort of way.
It’s rooted so specifically in a
New York situated exactly
halfway between the Velvet
Underground and the Ramonesthat everybody and their dog isgoing to be heartily sick ofhearing the same comparisons in
a very short space of time. Still,this is what you get for serving up
your roots in so thin a disguise.
The Chains have perfecteda slick kind of thrash-withouttears which extends to a kindof turbined-up powerpop inplaces (“The Hardest Walk”, forinstance) or in others becomesa swift, uplifting rush (check“My Little Underground”).
136 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

Vocalsthroughout are
firmly rooted in
the Eldritch schoolof gloom, resonating as if
from across some misty loch or
perhaps from inside a storm
drain a mile or two away. Thisanaesthetises the Reids and cofrom anything like meaning or
intent, while letting you, thelistener, receive this post-dated
package in a sort of void of
abstraction, coloured moreby your reaction to
the myths than to
the item itself.
The best bits arewhere they let you
see the little soft
spots in their hard
northern hearts.
“You Trip Me Up”
could easily havestarted out as an
attempt to cover
The Archies’
farrago of tack“Sugar Sugar”,
and beneath its
scaly covering ofwhining guitars andhyperventilating

percussion it’s achartbuster trying
to get out. “CutDead”, on the other
hand, is merely
empirical proof
that all that namedropping of the
Velvets’ third album
is true. Here, theosmosis is so entire
that you wonder if
in fact they’ve dug
up some obscure
Lou Reed song froma long-lost bootleg.
What else canI tell you? You
should hear “JustLike Honey” andyou’ve probably
heard “Never
Understand”. The
horrible screamingof “In A Hole” reallyis just like having a
tooth drilled, and“Taste Of Cindy”
grinds onward likea four-wheel-drive
Daihatsu going
down Ben Nevis.
Live with it for a
bit and you’ll either
declare it a classic
or sling it out withthe bathwater. I
haven’t decided
yet. Can’t say itsounds much like
pop’s new clothes,
but then who’d want it to?
Adam Sweeting, MM Nov 23

Robert Wyatt Old Rottenhat
ROUGH TRADE

Can politics and music mix? Are
songs about matters commonly
deemed to belong in the politicalsphere not really songs at all, butrather singing pamphlets on a parwith singing telegrams? Should
political songs necessarily beanthemic and sloganising: is their
purpose to stress goals, identify

the enemy, raise the spirits
and unite common causes ina single voice?
What is music for?
Old Rottenhat raises allthese questions; but first
impressions first. How does
it sound? “Musically, I should
say it’s more of a slinking
record than a dance record,”
ventures Robert in his
customarily wry press
release. He’s right. Old
Rottenhat neither quickens
the pulse nor punches the
shadows; rather, it fills the air
with the sound of quietly
philosophical Englishness, apoint of view, a tone of voice,a singular mood.
Robert Wyatt’s quirky
individualism is the strengthof his music and argument. A
Wyatt record is like an old friend;
it neither hectors, lectures nor
harangues as if the listenerwere a public meeting. His
plaintively low-key voice andthe uncluttered, hymnal
contemplativeness of his music
demand you listen hard; its quiet
self-effacement is not only
impossible to ignore, but invests
with personal relevance andresonance tunes hitherto
abandoned to memory’s
stockpile of frozen standards. I’m
thinking of his 1974 version of The
Monkees’ “I’m A Believer” and his
solo rendition of “The Red Flag”
from the 1982 collection Nothing
Can Stop Us; sung by Robert
Wyatt, they find a melancholy
dimension that rings touching,refreshing and true.
Old Rottenhat – as unheroic an
LP title as there’s ever been – isdedicated to Michael Bettaney,“just one of England’s (sic) many
political prisoners”. Since Old
Rottenhat is Robert Wyatt’s first
LP of self-penned songs since
1975’s Ruth Is Stranger Than
Richard, I should imagine hethought long and hard about
this choice.
Bettaney’s trial
for trying topass official
secrets to
Russia indicateda most haplessbungler,
inspired moreby embitteredoutsiderhood
than idealism.
Robert Wyattmakes nodistinction
betweenthis dubious
character anda more noble

Mat Snow, NME Nov 30

Grace Jones
Slave To The Rhythm ZTT
The scene: an unwashed andimpolitely dazed Paul Morley

Watson, NME Nov 2

10,000 Maniacs:
made to sound like
Steeleye SpanSINGLESThe PetShop Boys
West End Girls

SINGLESW
REVIE

PARLOPHONE

Loved this the firsttime it was released and I
love it still, which is interesting
because suave sophistication
normally leaves me cold. ThePet Shop Boys don’t push it,
though; it’s smooth, sinuousand deviously insidious. Who
gives a tinker’s cuss for theirreputation, I’m giving this one
pop single of the week. MM Nov 9

Pulp Little Girl FIRE
A slow-motion nursery rhyme
broodiness that swirls into
alarming hiccupping noises
like you’re playing the record
at the wrong speed – a clumsy
explanation but the execution
is sublime. The song is all about
girls realising that theirdestinies don’t have to be tied
to a man’s. “Hey little girl,there’s a hole in your heart andone between your legs as well/
You never have to wonder
about which one he’s going tofill in spite of what he says.” Thesinger sounds slightly like Lloyd
Cole only harder, and the songpursues an enigmatic simplicity
that further accentuates its
lyric. Excellent. MM Nov 9

New Order Sub-Culture FACTORY
Goal! New Order (the concept)
has somehow remained intact:
the dancefloor dream with theguts of a “rock group”. New
Order (the evidence) doesn’t
always measure up, tricklingout through cold corridors ofmachinery. “Confusion” alright.
“Sub-Culture” is one of theirprecious moments, a delicious
12 inches of luminous purpose.
A crossfire of voices andmachines is deftly edited,
switched, dubbed, faded andLord knows
what else.
There’s also
evidencethat a New
Order witha decent
vocalist
could rule

the world, as
the soulful
female singers
deployed here
1985
(but absent fromthe album version)
add some welcome
red corpuscles to theunit’s frequently indifferent
mumblings. I’ve always foundtheir neutral attitude towards
vocals odd when they take somuch care over everything else.
Have they seen the light?
Brilliant anyway. MM Nov 16

Gil Scott-Heron Winter In
America/Johannesburg ARISTA
Gil is the most criticallyrespected man ever, but clearly
has little chance of getting on
Mike Read’s show. “Winter In
America” is a depressing dirge
about the hollowness ofAmerican democracy, etc, andcommits ritual suicide by having
a flute solo in the middle.
“Johannesburg” was a hit 10
years ago, bubbles alongover a light soul/funkbacking, and Gil’s
vocal is knowing
and agile. On the
10-inch you get
two tracks
from the backcatalogue –“The Revolution
Will Not Be
Televised” and “B
Movie”, both poems
spoken to music. Muchmeatier than “The WindOf Change”. MM Nov 16

10,000 Maniacs Just As The Tide
Was Flowing MYTH AMERICA
It’s getting difficult to knowwhat to say about Americangroups these days. 10,000
Maniacs don’t fit the existing
pigeonholes (ie, no Neil Young
guitar growl and definitely no
Doors), and here, producer
Joe Boyd has made them soundlike Steeleye Span, which was
almost inevitable given Natalie
Merchant’s voice and Boyd’s
track record. This is a “trad arr”
job, and frankly is a much betterchoon than a lot of the group’s
own. Could still use more ballast
and more clarity. Pleasant.
Unspectacular. Miss. MM Nov 16
HISTORY OF ROCK 1985 | 137

ANDREW CATLIN

political prisoner. Whichever,Bettaney shouldn’t be in jail,and Wyatt’s judgement hereis humane, not ideological –a telling gesture.
But of what does he sing?
The majority of songs here areplainly “political”. He regrets thedivisiveness and hypocrisy of the
Alliance parties (“Alliance”);
sighs at the modish view thatworkerism has been underminedby consumerisation (“The Age Of
Self”); confronts white America
with the wilfully forgotten history
lesson of the Red Indian
extermination (“United States
Of Amnesia”); derides British
self-glorification (“The British
Road”); reminds that there issuch a place as East Timor, and all
is not well there (“East Timor”);
implicates our “free press” inthe erosion of our freedom ofthought (“Mass Medium”)…
These are familiar topics ofhand-wringing conversation
amongst Guardian readers suchas myself; but does conscience
only prod if pushed by novelty?
Should concern diminish withloss of newsworthiness? And
would we just stand there and be
buttonholed, however right-on
the message, if the messenger
was a bore?
Luckily, not a note strikes
false nor word rings hollow.
With quiet, mournful endurance,
Robert Wyatt applies steadymusical pressure – a sort ofanalogue to the theory wherereal history is not the surface
activity of the waves, but rather
the great invisible oceanic
movements beneath. Words
may lose their original meaningover time, but music conveys aprofounder spirit. That is whatmusic is for.
By the way, a great record.

stumbles into the
ZTT offices one
day. “But Trevor,
the people are
hungry for
imagination,
stimulation,novelty!”“All power tothe bank balance,”
interjects a singularly
inappropriate Jill
Sinclair.
“Shut up, thepair of you,” snaps
a particularly
repetitive Trevor
Horn. “I’m just putting thefinishing touches to my latest
sound gattucks.”“You mean gateaux,” correctsa shamefaced Morley.
“I know what I damn well mean,
now I wonder if we could justsqueeze a Steve Howe guitar soloin here. And quit groaning like
that, you’re putting me off.”
So here we have the ultimate
ZTT product – Grace Jones, stillsounding like a woman andlooking like a man on a recordthat looks like an album but
sounds like a single. By which
I mean that it’s over all tooquickly (by no means). No, I mean
it contains a single song, “Slave
To The Rhythm”, remixed,rejigged, rehashed (and now
reviewed and rejected).
Of course, this being ZTT, thisisn’t all you get for your money,
oh no. There’s snatches ofinterviews between Grace andPaul Cook of Capital Radio andGrace and Paul Morley, extracts
from Jean-Paul Goude’s
autobiography and snatches of
Ian Penman’s sleeve notes (which
is just as well because you can’t
read them on the sleeve).
As a conceptual joke it has its
moments, “Slave To The Rhythm”
being the most finely ironic
dance record of the last few
years. But you’d have to set me
in manacles before you’d force
me to listen to Horn’s by now
generically tedious pomp-funk(over)workouts. Imagination is
not the extension but theconcentration of an idea. Herethe idea is layered thin but the
production is slapped on in greatslaps of marzipan and cream.
Jill Sinclair: “Give them this,tell them it’s
gattucks andcharge them
five quid.”This consumer:“Five quid for
gattucks –bolleaux.” Don1985

O C T O B E R – D ECEMBER“We’re nota pop group”
Kevin Rowland’s vision for
DEXYS MIDNIGHT RUNNERS
remains uncompromising –but now he seems to be leaving
people behind. Has it all
backfired? “Dexys are not incompetition with Wham!,” hesays. “I am convinced that
there are people who stillwant to hear good music.”

138 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

L

— MELODY MAKER NOVEMBER 2 —et’s get this straight from the start.
Kevin Rowland invited me down to east
London 10 days ago so that he might
eventually sell a few more records. so what’s
new? Quite often the suspicious reporter
will get a hint that this is indeed the case andthat all that other clever talk about an extra insight into
the latest magnum opus and the state of the world beyond
is just so much dung. But this time it was definitely true.
And i know because he said so.
Kevin Rowland also talked a bit about ireland (though
not as much as i had hoped for), a lot about CND (morethan i would have anticipated), and there was theunexpected bonus of hearing him and Billy Adams havea spontaneous chant that could have come straight off theword games on the album.
that album, Don’t Stand Me Down, is, of course, one of
the great mystery plays of the year, a nightmare labourof love against all the odds which has
perplexed and inspired in roughly
equal parts and which, if not quite up
to the impossibly high standards of
Searching For The Young Soul Rebels or
the mish-mash commercial appeal of
Too-Rye-Ay, is still head and shoulders
above most of this year’s offerings todate. it has, however, stiffed out in quite
remarkable style and took a spectacular »Kevin Rowland in an
outtake from thecover shoot for Dexys
Midnight Runners’
third studio album,
Don’t Stand Me Down

HISTORY OF ROCK 1985 | 139

1985

O C T O B E R – D ECEMBER
Today, we just had a bit of a barney. Kevin likes that sort of thing and it
probably helps him sell a lot more records. It would be the easiest thing in
the world to do a little bit of creative editing and turn it all into a first-rate
hatchet job, as he would call it, but there’s not really much point in that,
because it’s just what Kevin expects and it would therefore be boring andas ugly as sin.
It started off with a cup of tea, and a provisional plan to start now andwork back rapidly went from bad to worse, ending up with an attempt toclear the air by talking about Catholicism and class. So here it is, or at least
the bits we both remember. The words have not been changed, although
they might have read a lot better that way.
Are you surprised that the album has
not been a great commercial success?
Or disappointed?
MM SEPT 7 Kevin Rowland“I’m not incredibly surprised. Disappointed?
makes “album of the year”.
No. I have every confidence in the LP. I think it
will eventually be successful and I think
Most people entrust this sort of
it is very early days yet. I really do.”information only to Mike Read and
Was it a mistake not to releasehis “First Love” spot – Rowland
a single?
ALBUMS
puts it on a bloody record! With
“Definitely, although itthat sort of arrogance, how candepends on what you mean by
he possibly fail?
a mistake. But yeah, I’m sure
Ireland, too, is a recurringthat if we had released this
topic. But this is not the romantic,
single before the LP, then the
1985
tourist-eye-view offered on thealbum would have been a great
last album; Helen O’Hara’s fiddle
success. I knew it wouldn’t be easy
playing is more discreet and mournful.
this way and we are now going to
All these aspects make an importantrelease a single after all. It’s called “Ancontribution to the elegaic “Knowledge
Extract From ‘What’s She Like?’”.
Of Beauty”, in which Rowland sings, inThat must have meant some cutting (theclassic Scott Walker style, of a sense oforiginal clocks in at around 11 minutes).
heritage rediscovered. It also enters into
“No, we’re not cutting anything. We’re taking“One Of Those Things”, in many ways thethe first section plus a little bit either side of it
most successful track on the album,
and then making a four-minute version for DJs
encompassing and binding all of the album’s
so they can play it on the radio. There are no
many qualities with its humour, its vigorous
actual edits or bits joined up.”arrangement, its standard soul backdrop
So you’ve changed your mind?
and a sarcastic lyrical shot at the uniformity“Yeah.”of pop music. This, in turn, develops into a
And that is purely because of the commercial
full-blooded blast at the current trendinessfailure of the album?
of obscure political causes while the“I had always planned to release a single
doorstep problem of Ireland is steeped inabout three months after the album. It’s now
general ignorance.
two months, so it’s a bit sooner than I wanted,
After this, the Roxyesque love song “Listen
but the main reason I didn’t want one originally
To This” seems remarkably tame, but it’s thewas because I wanted the album to be seen as
only dull moment. For there is fire in the belly
just that, an album, and it’s OK because it has
right from the opening cut, “The Occasional
been taken as that. The basic problem is that
Flicker”, which starts as a heart-wrenching
not enough people know that it’s actually out or
personal soliloquy and drifts, almost
have heard it enough times to be familiar
imperceptibly, into a fierce rock’n’roller
enough with it and go out and buy it.”before introducing the new Rowland selfMaybe that’s not helped by your reluctancemocking his image of martyrdom.
to do interviews.
But if “The Occasional Flicker” displays an“I think it’s more to do with the fact that we
unexpected wryness, it’s nothing on “This Is
didn’t release a single. That’s what sells albums,

fall from the nation’s charts in the week we eventually met up. Hence theinterview. Hence the need to sell more records.
I was nervous as hell. After all, it’s not every day you get to meetsomebody you used to send fan mail to, somebody who influenced theway you talked, the way you fought and the way you were at a time whennothing else seemed to matter. He seemed relaxed enough, snatchinga couple of hours in-between rehearsals for the forthcoming British tour
on which, if this brief glimpse is anything to go by, the greatest comeback
since Richard Nixon will take place before your very eyes. But that’s forme to know and you to find out when the time comes.

A complete scenario
Dexys Midnight Runners
Don’t Stand Me Down EMI
Compromise, as Kevin Rowland so sharply
observes on the opening verse of thisremarkable album, is the devil talking.
An artist, then, of extremes. A man who
makes an art form out of overkill. A man ofsupreme arrogance. A man of… paranoia?
Such are the conflicts, the contradictions,the confusion of the tortured pop star. But
compromise? Never.
And so. Gone are the dungarees, the gypsy
scarves, the rebel posture, the platoon of
fiddles and the search for the young soul
Ireland of Too-Rye-Ay. Instead we havebutton-down shirts, three-piece suits, Stock
Exchange haircuts and hearts firmly pinned
to sleeves. Yet these true confessions are
laced with bizarre informal conversations,occasional bouts of restraint(!) and even –gasp – humour. This, surely, is a first.
We also have… quite the most challenging,absorbing, moving, uplifting and ultimately
triumphant album of the year.
Being Kevin Rowland, of course, it’s
not just an album. It’s a mood, an attitude,
a complete scenario that extends wellbeyond image, and unlike Too-Rye-Ay, theimage appears to bear little relevance tothe music. What the record does have islight and shade and depth and warmth andhumanity. And where before Dexys havewasted a lot of breath talking about passion,
here they simply provide it… Eat your hearts
out Prefab Sprout. Closing track “TheWaltz” – and it is just that – is beautiful andpoignant, a song born of a disillusioned but
resilient spirit… “I’ve been to the promised
land, I’ve been there/I’ve also been down tothe bottom and looked up from despair”.
The album ends with Rowland howling“Here’s a protest, here’s a protest” amid thebittersweetness; and sardonic references
to British “greatness” suggest the theme of“The Waltz” may be obliquely political. Ah,word games, they always were his forte.
Oddly enough, some of the central themesof Too-Rye-Ay are explored more fully –particularly in relation to nostalgia andchildhood. One short track, “Reminisce Part
Two”, involves Rowland simply talking about
a teenage romance in 1969 over an attractive
piano/mandolin backing. “We decided toadopt a song that was current – she wanted
it to be ‘I’ll Stay Forever My Love’ by Jimmy
Ruffin, I wanted it to be ‘Lola’ by The Kinks.”
140 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

REVIEW

What She’s Like”, which parades a rare
flair for outright comedy. Anotherspoken intro – a dialogue between
Rowland and Billy Adams that could bea sketch from Alas Smith And Jones
which continues its comic ways as themusic blazes and the lyric adopts thepose of a Mike Leigh play.
Sour old Kevin Rowland has taken his
mask off. The soul rebel in him has given
us lots of driving sax; the Celtic soulbrother in him has given us lots of
evocative fiddle; the modern man inhim has given us piano (Vincent Crane)
and steel guitar (Tommy Evans). The
combination is gripping. He’s not tobe trusted with your life, but he’s worth
a fiver of your money any day. Colin Irwindexys midnight runners

no doubt about it. But themedia are aware of what weare trying to do and so are
the people who are keen
enough on Dexys to buy
it in the first few weeks.
We have established that,and hopefully the single
will now be a hit and a
success and the album
will follow suit.”
Perhaps the wholeclimate has changed andrecord-buyers now
demand a much higher
profile from artists. Or
maybe there is a whole newgeneration of single buyers
who have come along andreplaced Dexys with yer
Durans and yer Wham!s.
“Is that what you’resaying? You think that?
Yeah.
“I don’t think so. The climate has obviously
changed since 1982, and I’m sure that Duran
Duran and Wham! fans do want their music
immediately accessible in the way you suggest.
But Dexys are not in competition with them andnever have been. We’re not a pop group. I am
convinced that there are people who still want
to hear good music, no question about it.”
But maybe not enough of them, if the album
sales are anything to go by.
“Well, I can only repeat what I have just said.
I know that the only reason for the LP not setting
the charts alight is because we had no single. I
asked the record company to take the LP aroundthe radio stations and try to get it played as asingle. You know, give it the 20 spins a week on Radio 1 that a single gets, but
the stations wouldn’t do it. They stuck it on their LP slots at seven o’ clock
on a Thursday night and nobody heard it. It didn’t work, and that was myonly miscalculation. You try something different and it is hard to achieve.”
But you don’t think – with the rise of the new pop elite – that perhaps thetimes may have passed you by? That Dexys’ days are over? That themillions who bought “Come On Eileen” have now moved on to different
things and forgotten all about you?
“Do you?”Well, it’s the old devil’s advocate to an extent, but…
“No, that’s what you’re saying, so it’s your opinion, right? And that’sa really fucking stupid thing to say when I’ve just made the best album
I have ever done. I am in the early stages of my career, I’m only justbeginning to develop as a singer, I’m 32 years old and I’m not a pop star.
You mark my words. This LP will be successful; not the next one, this one.
I know it’s only because of the single and because the radio stations
wouldn’t play the album.”
But isn’t this a bit like blaming the music for everything?
“That’s absolute rubbish. Look, I personally believe that the LP is thebest I have ever done. The best ever. And it will be a great success. But you
don’t have to listen to me, you don’t have to believe me. I’m saying: mark
my words, watch me. Ring me up in six months’ time and ask me if it is a
success. Anyway, it already is a success; it was a success for me as soon as
we finished it. I’m already moving on, but I want this one to do well and I
know it will. Watch me.”But you can’t just leave
it at that.
“Why not? In the song,
I make a very definite
point. And it’s simply that it
is very easy for most Britishsocialists who pontificate
about revolutions far away
not to recognise the very
obvious point that the mostimportant problem facing
them is what’s going on in
Ireland? It’s not for me tosay. I’m not a politician.”Yeah, but you must havean opinion.
“An opinion on what?”
An opinion on the
The reduced Dexys
lineup: (l–r) violinist
political situation in
Helen O’Hara, singer/
Ireland, particularly
guitarist Kevinthe north.
Rowland, saxophonist
Nick Gatfield and“I’m not here to talkguitarist Billy Adams
about politics. You work
for a music paper. Politics
in the Melody Maker is a joke.”
What about politics in your music?
“Like I say, it is a very specific statement.
It doesn’t go any further than that and it’s notgoing to.”I think you’re running away from thepolitical situation in Ireland.
“How can you possibly say that?”
Because on the song you seem to be gettingat British socialists who go on and on about
the PLO and Afghanistan but have no opinion
on Ireland. Yet you yourself won’t even givean opinion.
“What I am saying is that Ireland is the mostimportant thing facing British socialists andthat lots of them say very different things but it’s all waffle in the end. It’snothing. Nothing ever gets done. You must know that.”I do, but I’m just surprised that YOU don’t go any further?
“Why should I? I mention it and that’s it. I am not qualified to lecture on
Irish politics. Are you?”
Well, if somebody asks me about it, I tell them what I think. And I thinkthat by going on about it in the songs you then owe it to the listener toelaborate a bit about what you really mean. It seems as if all things
Irish are important to you and that’s it. It honestly doesn’t extend toan opinion?
“I’m a musician, not a politician.”
But all great music is political.
“Everything’s political and there’s politics in my music. Always has
been. I’ve got my own opinions on Ireland and that’s it.”Do you do anything about the situation there?
“I might and I might not. I don’t align myself with any one thing, ’cos
I think that is dead stupid for two reasons. Say I aligned myself to CND or
Animal Rights, then you get people coming to the shows just because
they are into CND and not into Dexys for what it really is; or two, you getkids who are into the music but feel they have to be into the other side of it
as well. So, I steer clear of this.”What about Irish music as an influence?
“It has always been there, so obviously it will come out. But what you
must understand is that this LP is a complete statement. I don’t justsing a line to provoke somebody; it is a complete picture, a complete
collection of thoughts and ideas and feelings and knowledge that I haveexperienced over the last couple of years.
“It’s all there in black and white and all the points I want to make are in
there. I don’t want to elaborate, right?”
I always thought that was what interviews were for.
“I’m here to promote my record. It’s as simple as that. It’s a commercial
decision and nothing else. What else could it be?”Oh, a debate about your work or something like that…
“Well, I’m already doing that, I’m happily doing that with you. I have »“The LP is thebest I haveever done. And
it will be agreat success”“How do you feel about Ireland? What do you think about Belfast?”(“One Of Those Things”)

here are a number of references on the album to Ireland.
Could you elaborate a bit on all that?
“No.”
Don’t you feel you should?
“No.”

T

HISTORY OF ROCK 1985 | 141

1985

O C T O B E R – D ECEMBER

explained my position on Ireland and I have said a lot more about it thanmost people ever say.”Less than anyone else who writes about it that I have ever interviewed.
“Listen, I’m not prepared to say any more. The best nationalist music
for me has always been the stuff in disguise, when you don’t know that itis actually about Ireland at all. I like all strands of music.”
Do you go back there much?
“Yes.”
Family?
“Yeah.”Are you Irish or British?
“I am an Irish citizen. I am an Irish passport holder.”But you were born in England.
“Just because you were born in a stable doesn’t make you a horse.”
When you go back, is it like The Pogues, do you get a lot of snobbery fromthe locals?
“I suppose I get that a bit. But I can see why The Pogues would get a lot ofstick. I mean, you might like them, but personally I detest that. It’s justplaying the drunken Paddy for the Saxon, and I detest it. I find it personallyrepulsive. Irish people have never been about that, it’s just a British myth.”“You’re familiar with the scum from Notting Hill, they’re called the CND”(“This Is What’s She’s Like”)

an you honestly say that a line like that is not designed to
provoke people?
“I guess it is. To some extent, I allow myself that sort of thing.
It’s personally the way I feel about CND. I’m sure it provokes people,
and that’s fine by me.”
Would you care to explain why you equate the CND with scum?
“No. What you must understand again is that there always has to beroom for an argument. No matter where you are, left or right, you have tohave an argument.”
Still, it sounds a bit insulting and a bit generalised.
“Well, that’s how I feel about the CND. I regard it as a totally ineffective
organisation. It’s got no working-class involvement, it is totally middle
class and it will never be successful until it involves the working classes.
I mean, like every sane person, I don’t want to get blown up and I support
their aims, but, ah…”
I would disagree that the CND has no working-class involvement.
“Very, very little. It’s got no trade union involvement, nothing. Thatparticular line came from an experience of mine in Notting Hill where
I saw this guy looking into a window. He had all the badges on – ‘Nuclear
Power, No Thanks’ and all that – and this tramp
came up to him and asked him for 10 pence andthe guy just said no and walked off. I justthought, ‘So pathetic’, you know?
“It’s all conscience-soothing really, nothing
more, and totally ineffective. To be effective, theworking class has got to be involved, and thatway there will be trouble. Clashes with thegovernment and one side will win.”
Is that what you would prefer?
“I didn’t say that. I just don’t feel as strongly
about this issue as those people in CND. I haveno desire to chain myself to a fence to stop a
nuclear war. I don’t feel nuclear war is as big
a threat as they obviously feel.”
One recent example of strong working-classinvolvement is the miners’ strike. Would Dexys have done any benefits?
“Yeah. Because it is an obvious case of helping out people who areshort of money. But have you no questions about the music? This is justa political witch-hunt.”
It’s not meant to sound like that.
“Yes it is, yes it is, and listen, you talk to me about running away from
Irish politics and I’ve said more about Ireland than any other musician,Irish or otherwise, and you, as an Irishman, should be fucking ashamed ofyourself the way you let that Mark Smith guy talk to you a few weeks ago.”
What?
“You looked so weak, so weak.”That was deliberate.
“Weak. It was pathetic. Somebody with ignorant views like that and hejust gave out shit to you, an Irishman, and you didn’t say anything about it.”C

It was designed to read as coming straight from the horse’s mouth,
damning himself with his own words and no qualifications, you know?
“I just thought it was very weak.”I can’t agree and I resent what you’ve just said. But then you probably
resent me accusing you of running away from Ireland, so fair enough.
Anyway, there’s another line…
“Do you not want to talk about the music? Do you not like the LP or
something?”
I do and I’m asking you about your lyrics, which are surely an integral
part of your music, and the bits that I find the most interesting.
“Well, alright… What else?…”“You know the newly wealthy peasants with their home bars and hi-fis”(“This Is What She’s Like”)

hat do you mean?
“Pretty obvious. The nouveau riche, a different people
altogether from the middle classes. You can have all themoney in the world and not be middle class, or you can have nothing and
be really middle class. Didn’t you know that?”
Depends how you define class.
“To me, middle class is somebody who starts off with a university
education and adopts certain attitudes along the way. Most university
graduates end up being middle class and they marry graduates and then
their kids are middle class.”
So you can’t go to university and still be working class?
“You can, of course. But usually end up middle class because you pickup the attitudes when you are there. You get that ridiculous confidenceor arrogance at the age of 18 or 22, when you have really done fuck all.”What did you do between 1982 and now?
“It’s all there, all on the LP.”
Not much point going on then, is there? What could we talk about?
“I don’t know. I think I have said plenty already, what do you think?”
I think we should take a break.

W“You could say that I’m a bitter man, and once again I think that’s true”(“The Occasional Flicker”)

thInK you’ve got the wrong impression of why I am here.
“Well, the basic fact is that you are from the music press, you write
for a music paper and its bad news for you if I am successful.”
Why?
“It’s bad news for the music press because they don’t like Dexys and they
don’t like me.”
But…
“Come on, it’s been a two-month hatchet job
on me. And they’ve got to do that because I am
not the same as them. I have always been at
odds with them and I always will be. It’s good forthe music press if I am a failure. But I won’t be.”
You may as well go back to the old days of nottalking to us at all and just using ads.
“I don’t believe so.”Why, ’cos you enjoy interviews?
“Like I say, I do it for commercial reasons. You
want to talk to me about political things and I’ve
done that. But if you’re saying the Dexys are
running away from politics then you don’t knowwhat you are talking about. You haven’t got afucking clue. I’m not bragging, I’m not interested, but Dexys Midnight
Runners in its short history has been more political than any other groupever, any of them. Just by the force of our actions.
“Do you know any other group that has withdrawn its labour andsucceeded in negotiating a record contract at twice the original amount?
That is political action. A group that has lived outside the system, totallyoutside it for two years, and survived?”
But are you not back in the fold now, with the album, the interviews,
the tour, etc?
“That is my job, but it doesn’t make me part of the system. I’m not getting
at you personally now, but I do have to say again that I have absolutely norespect for the music press. I can’t get excited by 18-year-old kids who
have experienced fuck all, been nowhere, haven’t even worked in mostcases, and then they try to tell me about socialism, you know? I wentI

“It’s good forthe musicpress if I ama failure. But
I won’t be”

142 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

Serious business

MM NOV 23 Dexys’ newpresentation leaves ardent fanspuzzled. Features a policeman.
Doesn’t feature “Geno”.

You know sometimes you want to likesomeone but they don’t make it easy foryou? “Yeah, I know what you mean.” Like
you can understand some of their ideas but
not the chip on their shoulder? “Uh-huh, I’ve
met people like that.” And you want to tellthem to calm it down and stop rubbing
people up the wrong way? “Sure, but you
can’t tell people how to live their lives.” Sowhat advice do you give? “Seems like a lot of
people don’t want to listen to advice.”
Not Kevin Rowland anyway. He’s obviously
proud of the fact, proud of his band. But noman is an island, and pride comes before afall. Tonight’s concert was a superlative event
by musical standards, but it won’t have won
him any friends. When you leave youraudience disgruntled and perplexed (a few
were even laughing, but the joke was on Kev),
you’ve got to reassess your presentation.
Integrity is just a word if you’ve got no one
else to prove it to. From the off, it was obviousthat we were being played to rather thaninvolved. Billy strumming an acoustic at thefront of the stage, Kev strolls up (“Coldnight, isn’t it, Bill?” “Yeah, it’s a badone”), hunkers down to croon asplendidly impassioned version
DOMiNiON theatRe,lONDONof “I Can’t Help Falling In Love
With You”, the curtain lifts andDexys skip, hop and jump into
gear. No time for idle chitand “What’s She Like” werechat; Kev is into serious
NOVeMbeR 12
spectacular, there were also
business, and you can tell fromtimes when his rapping intros
the scowl on his face that he’s notwith Billy and his
tolerating any displays of flippancy.
rising irritation with
Between songs the soul brothers
the audience (by now
holler for “Geno” and the scowl turns into astunned into silence) were
thunderous expression of distaste. Feverishly
plain embarrassing.
pacing the stage like a caged animal, Rowland
It was so absurdly comical
is still burning after all these years, but it’s his
to watch Helen, dressed likeband that makes your jaw drop.
a 40-year-old spinster,“Come On Eileen” swings through at least
clapping and conducting
10 tempo variations and precision-stopthe band with her bow as,
re-routing, drummer Tim Dancy pacing thebehind her, the bass player – incongruously
others with stop-watch accuracy. A bunchbulging in tight satin strides – boogied intoof musos having a good time perhaps, but
the spotlight at every opportunity and aa thing of beauty to watch. Passion is no
policeman was wheeled on for “Theordinary word to Rowland but if the extended
Occasional Flicker” to charge Kevin withvocals of “Knowledge Of Beauty”LIVE!

kevin Rowland:
displaying
classic paranoid
symptoms

the serious offence of “burning” (“Andwhen exactly did the offence take place,sir?” “’71–76”) – an awkward piece of
pantomime that again
seemed more absurd
than appropriate.
Their departure was
abrupt and curt. “Adios,”
he barked as the curtain
closed; no encores, please.
We left, more dazed thanelated. Rowland displayed
the classic paranoid
symptoms of a man “misunderstood”.
He seems to harbour grandiose ideas ofthis own importance and did little to achieve
our sympathy.

Rowland is stillburning, but it’s hisband that makes
your jaw drop

“Belfast, Belfast” Boney M“Whatever you say, say nothing” Seamus Heaney.
h, we talKed some more about this and that, about how
Kevin feels 100 per cent happy with what he is doing now
and how right-hand man Billy Adams believes that this is thebest lineup ever and how the tour should be really something special.

O

I know it will, because I saw them practising and heard them do aferocious “This Is What She’s Like”, a haunting “Knowledge Of Beauty”,
two typically bizarre cover versions in Quo’s “Marguerita Time” andThe Fantastics’ “Something Old, Something New” and I almost heard
enough to wipe the tapes and start again.
But then I thought about some of the things that Kevin had said andI thought how corny a lot of them were and how disappointed I would
be when I listened to them later on and how, ultimately, his heart
appeared to be in the wrong place and that this was the worst thing ofall. So I decided to say cheerio and go home.
The Irish have probably got a word for it, but let’s say it was just one ofthose things. Barry McIlheney •HISTORY OF ROCK 1985 | 143

ITV / REX / ShuTTERSTockthrough all that myself at 18 and I don’t need it now. Putting politics inyour paper or the NME is a joke. And all the criticism is water off a duck’s
back. It doesn’t worry me in the slightest. I laugh at the music press. I think
you’re hilarious.”

Helen Fitzgerald

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1985

F

Readers’ letters
MM/NME JUL-DEC Geldof is a hero, “NME is bollocks” and other observations.

Nobel effort
Live Aid managed to transcend
everyone’s expectations, raisingover $70 million for famine relief.
Bob Geldof mobilised millions
of people to say that they will
not stand for starvation on ourplanet when so many of us haveso much. While Live Aid’s successdoes not presume for a momentthat pop music can save the world,
it suggests that it can certainly
do more than most governments
ever attempt.
What could be better than foodfor the starving millions in Africa
and an end to starvation on ourplanet? And what could be moredeserved than a Nobel Peace Prize
for Bob Geldof?
Congratulations to Bob, Band
Aid, USA For Africa et al for a job
flawlessly done.
Allison Villone, larchmont,
new York
What about the world – wehanded over that $70m! –David Swift (NME Aug 3)

away with murder, literally, andmakes sure that their capitalist
system which causes such things
as famine remains intact andunchallenged by the mass ofthe people.
PAul Drewer, Benfleet, essex
Any more like you? – DS (NME Aug 3)

Ask not for whom the NME polls
Shame on you. The most rockist
exercise in recent NME history,
and such a ridiculous result.
So much esoteric nonsense –you know that 90 per cent of
your readership has never, andwill never, listen to Miles Davis,
John Coltrane or Robert Johnson,
and Sly And The Family Stone or
Suicide are unlikely to receive
more than a perfunctory listen
for potential hipster value thanAlms and the man
The Live Aid concert wasa great spectacle and goodentertainment. The amount ofmoney raised in such a shorttime is an achievement in itself
and shows the effect the wholething has had on the people of
the world. Whilst our attentions
were focused on Live Aid, thefaults of our governments are
quietly forgotten.
We forget that they have cutback on foreign aid over the last
five years, and have done little forthis current famine. We forget
about giant expenses on arms todestroy the world, which we haveallowed our government to getaway with.
The £50 million raised by Live
Aid is piss in the ocean comparedwith the defence spending of
western governments. Perhaps if
we demanded our government
give one day’s defence spending
to the famine appeal, then Live
Aid’s efforts would not havebeen necessary as such a large
amount of cash could nearly solve
the problem.
Live Aid served thegovernment’s interests in thatthey were not asked difficult
and unanswerable questions
as the people had their minds
on the concerts. This situation
allowed the government to get

any consideration throughmusical merit.
Marvin at Number One?
Ho-hum. He may have been thegreatest singer of our time, but
had (for instance) Stevie Wonder
been shot instead of MG, who
would be at the top? Not Marvin,and probably not Stevie – bothhave been responsible for truly
uplifting music as well as
moments of dire crap (“Savage
In The Sack” and “I Just Called…”
to name just two), but I doubt
the gap between the dominationof one and the anonymity of theother would be so wide had
circumstances been different.
The NME is bollocks.
MArtin BArDen, welwyn Garden
City, Herts
You’re entitled to your first and last
opinions, Martin, but…
If you really believe that 90 per
cent of NME readers have neverheard of Mile, Sly, Suicide, etc, theneither you have been: a) sufferingfrom a disease that necessitates
your ensconcement in an isolated

oxygen tent; b) inadvertently
reading another music paper;or c) at the Airfix again.
And personally (I can’t speak
for the rest of NME’s crew), I findyour arrogant nonsense about
Marvin Gaye profoundly offensive,tiresome and splinter-headed.
Midnight Love, f’rinstance, was
NME’s LP Of The Year in 1982.
You, sir, are a clown – Danny Kelly(NME Dec 14)

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Thursday26th Septemberat6.
uu…It polls for theeThanks for the 100 Best Albums
list. It’s good to know that at least
one music paper treats music as itshould be treated, as a cultural
heritage rather than a passing
trend or here-today-goingtomorrow transient anaesthetic.
However, why is it that of theblack LPs in the list more thanhalf are compilations? Have you
got yourself accustomed to blackmusic by listening only to yourown tape compilations? Can’t
black artists be considered on
the same basis as whites?
One of the top soul albums
is by Dexys, while Smokey,
Curtis, James, Aretha, etc, areonly included as a total careeror live “Best Of”.
There seems to be no excuse.
BoB HArris, the Grave
It’s precisely to avoid the odd“transient anaesthetic” stuff
that compilations were included.
To have excluded them would
have effectively disqualified
swathes of rock’n’roll pioneersand virtually all black ’60s acts
who were forced to surround theircurrent hit with assorted turkeys
and issue the resultant malarkey
as an LP. Better the Miracles
Anthology than no Smokey,
surely? – DK (NME Dec 14)

Negative feedback
Who says The Jesus And Mary
Chain can’t play well? Me,
that’s who. They can’t play theirinstruments to save their lives.
Ask for singing and you’ll get
screaming. Then there’s that earsplitting feedback. The Chaingang have no idea at all how toplay or perform and maybe that’s
why they’re so fucking brilliant!
CHristoPHer wHiteHeAD,
Burstall walk, Bridlington
Sir Chris – I can call you Sir,
can’t I? – with folks like youaround there’s hope for us all– Steve Sutherland (MM Dec 7)
HISTORY OF ROCK 1985 | 1451985

m o n t h by mon th

Coming next...
in 1986!

So that was 1985. Every night it’s just the same.
Certainly, that’s not it from our reporters on the beat. The
staffers of NME and Melody Maker enjoyed unrivalled
access to the biggest stars of the time, and cultivated a feelfor the rhythms 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, 1986!

BEASTIE BOYS

IntroducIng the most outrageous band on Def Jam records. “Firstof all, I don’t like intellectual bands, bands who think they know
something rather than just wanting to be in a band and have a goodtime. Like my favourite band of all time is AC/DC,” explains producer/
label boss Rick Rubin. “Secondly, I don’t like bands that have anything
to do with politics…”

NICK CAVE

as strong as Cave’s work is, increasingly he has no time whatever for
the “scum” – the music journalists who write about him. “It really boils
my blood and makes me sick,” he tells the latest leech, “to think that thisis still perpetuated and the same idiotic process continues, of me
speaking a lot of shit to some fool. It’s not what I consider profitable.”

KEITH RICHARDSInterestIng tImes for the Rolling Stones, the band’s main figures
having played separately from one another at Live Aid. Still, the magicof the band remains intact, according to Keith. “I’ll just hammer out
some riff, and if the drums pick up and the bass drops in, then maybe
we’ve got something. The Stones rely on that total feel; the rest of it isjust salad dressing.”

PluS…
PRINCE!
NEW ORDER!
PIl!

146 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1985

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: 1985.
“A Cincinnati jacket and a sad luck dame/Hanging out thewindow with a bottle full of rain…”

Relive the year…

TOM WAITS TOTTERED A LITTLE BIT CLOSER
TO THE MAINSTREAMLIVE AID ROCKED THE WORLDTHE JESUS AND MARY CHAIN GENERATEDSOME POSITIVE FEEDBACK…and MICK JAGGER, ROBERT PLANT, THE POGUES, TOM PETTY,
NEIL YOUNG, JONI MITCHELL and many more sharedeverything with NME and MELODY MAKER

More from UN
CUT ...

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