BOMBS AWAY, BATMAN #1, 1983

YOU MIGHT THINK THIS INTERVIEW'S A BIT LONG FOR A BAND HARDLY ANYONE'S HEARD OF BUT I LIKE THEM AND I THINK IT'S PRETTY PERTINENT STUFF. ANYWAY I'D LIKE TO GO FOR MORE IN DEPTH INTERVIEWS IN FUTURE ISSUES AND THERE'LL PROBABLY BE A PASTELS ONE NEXT ISSUE. FOR THOSE AMONG YOU WHO KNOW NOTHING ABOUT THE MIXERS THEY ARE GRANT MORRISON (RHYTHM GUITAR, SINGS), DANNY VALLELY (LEAD GUITAR, SINGS), ULRIC KENNEDY (LEAD GUITAR, KEYBOARDS, SINGS), RONNIE BOOKLESS (BASS), AND MICHAEL ANGUS (PART TIME DRUMS). THEY'VE BEEN GIGGING FAIRLY INFREQUENTLY SINCE THE TAIL END OF '81 TO LITTLE RESPONSE SO THEY'RE A BIT UPSET. THEY PLAY FAST MELODIC PUNK/BEAT MUSIC AND THEY CAN ACTUALLY SING. ALSO THEY'VE WRITTEN HUNDREDS OF GREAT TUNES AND THEY REALLY OUGHT TO BE FAMOUS.



BAT.: What do you want to talk about?

UL.: The music business.

BAT.: The music business? What do you think about the music business? Shite, eh?

UL.: The answer is 'laughs'.

BAT.: What do you think of the charts then, since you're a group and that?

UL.: The charts could be good if they had us in them. And our friends.

RON.: Predictable.

GRA.: They're so depressing.

BAT.: Well, let's get angry here!

RON.: Smash the tape recorder.

UL.: The charts should be full of angry young men again.

BAT.: Do you consider yourself an angry young man?

UL.: No.

GRA.: The charts make me angry.

BAT.: What about your music? You play pop music, don't you?

UL.: Yes.

BAT.: Don't you think pop music's had its day?

UL.: NO.

GRA.: Pop music nowadays is a stance, a declaration of intent. Or something.

BAT.: So have you got anything new to offer as a band?

UL.: Yes. What's the question?

BAT: I'm asking you what you've got to offer.

UL.: Youthful exuberance. We can sing. We can dance.

BAT.: So what's the difference between you and Duran Duran?

GRA.: There's five of us.....

UL.: What's the difference between us and Duran Duran? There isn't one.

BAT.: So you're really just a bunch of pricks?

UL.: More or less. (laughs)

RON.: What is the difference?

UL.: I was wanting to talk about my new born again Christian......

GRA.: Duran Duran keep writing the same song.

UL.: Duran Duran are bastards. They're Tories. Hippies. We're working class lads. They're actors and everything - Simon le Bon's an actor.

DAN.: A bad actor....

RON.: A good actor.

UL.: We're a fun band.

DAN.: We're a funny band. We do sketches.

BAT.: What's your opinion of this new pop art scene?

UL.: It won't get anywhere. Spontaneous happenings! People don't want to be spontaneous.

RON.: Why not?

GRA.: It's OK if you're in on it but it'll just become a new clique. All the Glasgow trendies turned up at the Pastels happening 'cause they wanted to get in on the new thing.

BAT.: You don't like the pop art bands?

UL.: Who says we don't like them?

BAT.: You said you didn't like the scene.

DAN.: He just said he didn't think it'd get anywhere.

UL.: The best bands in the world are the pop art bands - the Times, the TVP's. The Times are the greatest band in the world. If we could just get an album out....

BAT.: Do you think you could get in the charts?

UL.: Only if we can get in with the pop art scene or something. When the psychedelic thing was going we used to pretend we were psychedelic. We played the same songs but we wore different clothes. We'll do the same for the pop art scene or anything else that comes along,

GRA.: That's true up to a point...

RON.: It's the Fauves.

UL.: Well we don't do funk. I mean if we were really that mercenary we'd do funk.

BAT.: So you're really quite cynical about the whole thing?

RON.: What's the thing?

BAT.: This new youth movement?

UL.: If it happens it'll be good.

BAT.: Don't you think it's happening?

UL.: We want to distance ourselves from it so that when it finishes we can still go on. You just get the feeling that nothing new'll happen ever.

DAN.: We just don't play any gigs.

UL.: Del Amitri started the same time as us and now they're big and we're failures.

BAT.: They're pretty boring though.

GRA.: I think their new guitarist made a difference. They're OK.

UL.: One of their songs had a good tune. They don't even have as many songs as us. We've got millions of great songs but we're failures. We should get signed to Respond Records. (Laughs)

BAT.: What do you think of that?

UL.: Uh, Paul Weller. It's just an ego trip for Paul.

GRA.: He's just doing what comes naturally to someone with a lot of power - trying to create a whole movement in his own image.

RON.: Tracie's rubbish. And the Questions.

UL.: I know. Did you see her live? Crap. A ride though. The Questions are brilliant. What are we talking about? Paul Weller?

BAT.: Respond.

UL.: Respond are a bloody load of crap. He's just a nutcase. He says that the thing was not to have the guitar, to bring out the song 100%, but all he's doing is replacing his Rickenbacker with a organ....

RON.: A saxophone. (Laughs inexplicably.)

UL.: Equally archaic. It's not different from the Jam. It's nothing new only he's become more dictatorial and just got rid of poor old Bruce and Rick 'cause they were good guys.

RON.: They were the Jam for me.

UL.: To me they'll always be the Jam. I'm fed up doing all the talking. Somebody else speak.

DAN.: Ronnie.

UL.: Ronnie. My own son.

BAT.: How did it all come about?

UL.: Too much whisky on a Saturday night. How do you think?

DAN.: We used to be in a cabaret band.

UL.: I'm probably a mistake.

BAT.: In real life.

UL.: What do you mean, 'in real life'? How did we form?

BAT.: Yeah. Why did you bother if you don't care?

UL.: We do care! We do care! Why did we bother? 'Cause we want to make money.

DAN.: We want fame, birds.

RON.: So did Duran Duran. We want screaming girls at the airport.

DAN.: We'd pay them as well.

RON.: That's what we want the money for.

BAT.: Well why? Why bother being in a group?

UL.: Ronnie'll answer this one.

RON.: Why?

GRA.: It's pretty basic....

UL.: We're a group that deserves to be heard rather than all these other millions.

GRA.: That's right. The charts are full of dross. I don't believe there are more than a handful of bands on the whole planet who really care about what's going on and want to change it. And the so-called 'subversive' bands like Crass wouldn't know subversion if they fell over it, that's why they never achieve anything. The Beatles understood the techniques of subversion and they changed the world. It's about emotion and not politics. I think that might be the difference between us and Duran Duran, too.

BAT.: Now we're getting somewhere.

RON.: It's not really punk rock is it?

UL: It started out as punk.

DAN.: Punk pop.

BAT.: But you say you're into chaos.

UL.: Yes. We're going to do something really chaotic, like turn off the tape recorder.

DAN.: Smash your glasses.

UL.: I smashed a guitar once. That's chaotic, isn't it?

BAT.: Possibly.

DAN.: I fell twice in the last two days.

UL.: That's why I smashed it up. Everything kept falling off it. The control knobs fell off and it went out of tune.

DAN.: It didn't even make a noise.

UL.: So I smashed it. It was bad.

BAT.: So what inspires you then?

UL.: That which is good. Jerry Cornelius, Peet Coombes...

RON.: Jenny Agutter.

UL.: Of course.

GRA.: Aleister Crowley.

DAN.: Sid Vicious.

RON.: Malcolm McLaren.

UL. : Pop art.

RON.: The Questions.

UL.: Paul Weller.

RON.: Tracie.

UL.: Hitler's diaries. Ozzie Osbourne. We're not being serious. What inspires us?

DAN.: Good stuff.

BAT.: That could mean anything. In the NME a couple of weeks back Pete Shelley said that music would be a lot better if people just liked music rather than followed trends.

UL.: That's right!

BAT.: Do you agree with old Pete?

UL.: Yes. There should be a mainstream again like there was in the '60s. There's nothing. It's just all tiny little cults going off to the reggae club and the funk club and everything.

RON.: So you hate black people, eh?

BAT.: So you're a fascist?

UL.: So, we just want there to be a mainstream so everyone likes us.

BAT.: You think that could happen again?

UL.: I don't know.

GRA.: Probably not unless some radically new musical form comes along. Even then...

BAT.: But what happened in the '60s then?

UL.: I don't know. It was boom time.

RON.: Well, Weller says that music's not important nowadays - pop music - 'cause Margaret Thatcher doesn't care.

UL.: What's that got to do with anything?

DAN.: She doesn't listen to it anyway.

RON.: Well Harold Wilson listened to the Beatles, didn't he ?

UL.: Ah, I wish there could be a mainstream again. There probably won't be, but you can only try.

BAT.: Why do you think there isn't?

DAN.: Too many types of music now.

UL.: It's the forces at work to keep the youths apart.

GRA.: Yeah. Punk looked as if it was going to turn dangerous so the Powers-that-be engineered all the fashion revivals and music cults through the media of the press and TV to break it all up into little warring factions. Great, eh?..

RON.: And there was a lot of talent in the '60s. Not so much now - apart from one or two groups.

GRA.: It wasn't so much talent as discipline. In those days a song had to have a good melody and be short and punchy or it wasn't a hit. Nowadays any crap can make it so crap is what we get.

RON.: It's America's fault.

UL.: They should just blow up America.

BAT.: America invented rock 'n' roll.

UL.: America invented nothing. Africa invented rock 'n' roll.

GRA.: And before that - the apes...

RON.: The amoeba.

UL. : God invented rock 'n' roll; Praise God!

RON.: It was the Devil. The Devil's got all the good tunes.

UL.: Praise Satan! Why is it we're dedicated to our music ? We'll just go on even...

DAN.: Even when we're old age pensioners.

UL. : ... Even in the face of all the adversity we always get. We go on because we believe in ourselves.

RON.: What about money?

UL. : Everyone's just mercenary. Lots of bands will find the trend - like Orange Juice'll just start playing funk and then they make it but they've sold out to do it. But we wouldn't sell out, we'd just be ourselves.

BAT.: Very admirable.

UL.: Not really. It's just... the attitude.

RON.: In the '60s they were reacting against what the '50s were but there's nothing to react against 'cause we've had two decades of freedom.

BAT.: I don't know. Don't you think they're just trying to bring back the '50s again? Repression. Sexual repression, with the clothes and the politics.

GRA.: Yeah I've noticed that. In all the magazines it's 'fun fashions of the '50s' and all the crap. And everyone's falling for it. It shows you how easy it is to rope the kids in on a general shift towards a puritanical right wing value system - Thatcher and Reagan trying to create the old world again.

RON.: When Labour was in power the music was good. Punk came out when Labour was in too.

BAT.: Yeah, the Tories didn't get in till '79.

UL.: And then it died. It just stopped and got crap.

RON.: It looks like Thatcher'll get in again.

BAT.: What if she doesn't?

UL.: If she doesn't the music'll be good again.

BAT.: What about the SDP?

UL.: They're an unknown quantity. The music will be mediocre if they get in. What about the Ecology Party?

RON.: The Nazi Party.

UL.: It'd be better. At least you'd know where you were with the Nazis.

BAT.: Don't you think it's funny that all these people can copy Bowie and get away with it, but if you copy the Beatles it's unacceptable?

UL.: It's a matter of what you revive or what you copy. If people want to say 'that's no good, that's just revivalist', that's fair enough, but if they turn round and say, 'but this is good', about something equally revivalist then they're just.... shits.

BAT.: Like what's the difference between the Pinkees and Bauhaus when it comes to ripping off earlier groups? They're both crap but some people who think they're really trendy are buying Bauhaus singles. And why should Twisted Sister be in the charts?

UL.: Because they put out a bloody excellent record! God bless them!

RON.: God bless the boys!

UL.: I think it's quite good the way he batters the microphone stand off the bass and then punches it. I like that aggressive music.

RON.: Top of the Pops is shite.

UL.: Unless it's got Tracie on it. Or the Questions. I watched it - it doesn't seem to be as bad as it really was for a while.

RON.: Yes it is.

UL.: When did you last watch it?

BAT.: It's all revivalist. Everything's a revival really. The only difference between a revival and a 'new thing' is in attitude. You can play the same kind of music as a blatantly revivalist band but if you harness it to the feeling, the energy of the times....

UL.: I thought you were interviewing us?

BAT.: This is a dialogue now.

UL.: Well I agree.

BAT.: So how would you classify yourselves? It's sort of '60s influenced music but you wouldn't want to be known as a 60's band, would you?

GRA.: No. People used to always say we were like the Beatles. That's a really superficial comparison - they just weren't listening. We have lots of influences. It was probably just that we used to have mop tops.

BAT.: You don't want to be Scarlet Party?

UL.: Certainly not!

BAT.: Do you want to be the Sex Pistols?

GRA.: No.

UL.: Rather than Scarlet Party.

RON.: The Pistols were a '60s group...

UL.: I know! I was reading an early review of them, saying how they played. '60s R'n'B. It just goes to show how they were originally thought of. It's just that the '60s, well apart from punk which was just the same as the '60s, had the only good music since the '20s or something.

RON.: Since the amoeba.

BAT.: What do you think of other forms, like Heavy Metal?

GRA.: I quite like to listen to Tom Russell's Rock Show. It's really funny - all the records have got the same guitar solo,...

UL. : Heavy Metal's backward.

GRA.: If you choose or opt to be that sort of thing you can't really get away from it. Like, if you say you're going to be a Heavy Metal band then you're completely restricted in what you can play and wear.

UL.: Yeah. We just want to be a band. Do you want to say something about the music press?

BAT.: The music press is a load of rubbish.

UL.: The music press are all these bastards with the ability to go out in their boat to the sea... no, if they say a group is bad people will believe them. They don't deserve to have that sort of power. It's just full of guys who can't make it in any other branch of the music business. The only way they can get into it is to write about it.

BAT.: Fuck off.

UL. : I'm not talking about fanzines. Fanzines are OK.

RON.: Oh shut up.

UL.: But the music press is the establishment.

RON.: It was old guys in the '60s... that loved things.

GRA.: They just had to report. There weren't the same prejudices.

RON.: When old Hitler was in power.

BAT.: The first generation of music fart journalists came out of the '60s. Hippies thinking they'd something worthwhile to say. But the music's just the music. I think they should bring out papers to comment on the music papers as well. You need a paper to criticise what crap the journalists are spouting. Then a third paper to criticise that ad infinitum....

GRA.: Von Neumann's catastrophe of infinite regression, jah? It's all quantum physics really. The music press is popular though.

UL. : I know. Even I buy it from time to time.

BAT.: I mean, why should you be interested?

UL.: You see people on the front and you think they might have something interesting to say, so you buy it.

GRA.: As if just because someone's well known they're going to be interesting as well. Most interviews are a waste of time.

UL.: Like this one.

RON.: They're the least important part of the music business but they can ruin people.

BAT.: What? Papers or interviews?

RON.: Papers.

BAT.: Do you think the music press is better when the music itself's good?

GRA.: Maybe. The papers were a lot more lively and enthusiastic during punk...

UL.: If it's the same old crappy journalists it'll just be as bad.

RON.: Each journalist has his own subject.

UL.: It's the same as the clubs; one covers reggae another covers Oi or something.

BAT.: Going back to what Pete Shelley said, they don't really like music at all, they just like a specific area, so they're not qualified to comment on anybody else's music, just within their particular interest.

UL.: Yeah.

GRA.: But they don't confine themselves to that really.

UL.: Any one week you get one of them reviewing the singles. It's a foregone conclusion what he's going to say is good and what's bad.

GRA.: All the journalists should review the same single.

UL.: They should just... have a purge. New journalists.

BAT.: Constructive criticism...

UL.: Instead of destructive. Fanzines are more constructive 'cause they're done by people who are genuinely interested enough to do it, whereas the other guys are just doing it as a job.

RON.: They were never really that important in the '60's were they?

BAT.: They just had to report. But the music press now is full of people who were punks in '77 and it's still as shit. So what does that prove about youth? That they're a bunch of bastards through and through, every generation. Writing about Bowie - the only reason they care about Bowie is because they remember him from the cradle. I bet they had Bowie haircuts when they were 14 and 15.

RON.: They've got to fill up the pages.

BAT.: People just have nostalgic memories about the stuff that was out when they first started to go out with the opposite sex.

UL.: Gary Glitter. 1974 crap. The music press should be abolished now and the journalists should be shot.

RON.: David Bowie should be shot.

UL.: Hitler would've banned the music press.

RON.: He wrote it in his diaries.

UL.: 'Must abolish the music press....' There isn't a big group that everyone can like. At least with the Beatles all the teenyboppers liked them but even...

RON.: The mums and dads...

UL.: No, I mean even other people who would normally hate teenybop sensations could see that they were good.

BAT.: Maybe you only get one good thing every so often.

UL.: Maybe you only get one good thing ever and that was it and there's no hope again. But you never know.

GRA: There are good groups now but a new sensibility is called for. A whole new approach to everything. We have to pull together now or we lose the last fight and repeat the '50s.

RON.: Record companies are bastards as well.

BAT.: In what way?

DAN.: They don't sign us.

RON.: They just want money. They don't care about music. Back to that again! It's just a product to sell.

BAT.: Wasn't it always like that?

RON.: Not really....

UL.: It was. I think it always was and always will be until power is in the hands of the fascists!

(Dissolve into peals of maniacal laughter…)