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Madness Threatens The World! by John Palmer
The nutty sound of Madness has forced audiences up on their feet all around Britain and Europe, and now the boys from Camden, North London, whose aim is to get everyone dancing, hope to go ‘one step beyond’ by winning over the rest of the world.
For before Christmas they will make their first visits to Japan and Australia, as well as returning to America for their third tour. But before they go, they are busy recording an album to follow up their smash debut LP One Step Beyond, which has been a permanent fixture in the charts since last October, and still shows no signs of dropping out.
Yet, 18 months ago, no-one had heard of them. Sax player Lee Thompson, keyboards man Mike Barson and guitarist Chris Foreman first launched the band and they picked up Graham “Suggs” McPherson as their vocalist before completing the rest of the line-up, with Woody Woodgate on drums, Mark Bedford on bass and Chas Smash, their dancer – who tried his hand at drumming and guitar playing before admitting that he was a better dancer!
While the band were at London’s Eden studios working on the new album, bass player Mark Bedford talked to Look-In’s JOHN PALMER about the phenomenal success that they had enjoyed so far, and about their plans for the rest of the year.
“What is really pleasing is that our music appeals to a very wide cross section of people, from mums and dads to young kids of about ten and eleven. We put a lot of emphasis on dancing, and it’s great to see so many people coming to watch us and enjoying themselves.
“Whenever possible, we play venues where there are no seats, so that people can dance. We have played one or two big venues, like the Birmingham Odeon and the Glasgow Apollo, but you don’t get the same atmosphere there,”he said.
“It’s far too big in those giant halls, and we don’t want to play them, because there is such a distance between us and the audience. The whole point of our music is that the audience can share it and get involved, so we recently did a tour of seaside towns, because you find that their halls don’t have seats in – and we thought it would be good to play at places where the local kids don’t see bands regularly,”said Mark.
Madness’s desire to get people on their feet certainly resulted in a tremendous response, and they have been largely responsible for launching an exciting style of pop music – with a lot of bands following their example. Did they mind the competition?
“Not at all,” said Mark, “because competition is a good thing, it keeps you on your toes. It’s good to feel that what we started with has produced a whole new crop of bands, and some of them are very good, like The Beat, The Selecter and Dexy’s Midnight Runners.”
However, Madness have every reason to feel confident that their own popularity will not wane because of the emergence of the newer bands and their second album is already eagerly awaited.
“At the moment, we have about sixteen or seventeen songs to choose from for the album, but it’s weird because we have recorded songs which don’t have names yet! We don’t have an album title, either,” said Mark.
“The album will be out in September, and we played about half a dozen tracks from it on our last tour. It was a good way of testing the reaction to them … I suppose you could say that we did our dirty washing in public! When we played a new song, we could be critical of it, and back at the rehearsal studios, we changed around the rhythm of the tempo.
“Writing songs is a big joint band thing, and we were working in a rehearsal studio for three weeks before we started recording. The music stays fresh because we all contribute something to the songs. The new album will still have that distinctive Madness sound, but we are attempting to develop, and there will be some changes – for one thing we can play better now than we could when we recorded One Step Beyond,”he said. “It’s going to be quite tuneful, with a lot of melodies, but it’s still what I call a city sound. That’s because all the songs are written about experiences in London, where we come from.”
They have not seen much of their homes in the past year, because they have been constantly on the road, so how did they deal with the sudden change in their fortunes?
“I think we all have our feet on the ground, and we realise that it is easy to fall out of favour. We have always said that we don’t want to be around to see ourselves going into decline, and we realise that we won’t go on for ever and ever like The Rolling Stones.
“When we started to be successful, such a lot of things were happening so quickly that we found we panicked a lot! We are coming to terms with things now, and we are enjoying ourselves,”said Mark.
Yet there are still one or two things they do not enjoy … “We are off to Japan and Australia, and it’s a 14-hour flight – which isn’t much fun for those of us who don’t like flying,”admitted Mark.
“Lee Thompson and Chris Foreman openly have the jitters, and Mike does not like taking to the air, either, although he stays very quiet about it,”said Mark.
“We have little rituals when we have to go in an aircraft. Mike and I always sit next to each other – and always in the central aisle so that we don’t have to look out of the window. Everybody takes a cassette player with headphones so that they can close their eyes and listen to the music. It’s really weird.”
Still, it will be worth it when they get there, because One Step Beyond has only recently been released on the other side of the world, and indications are that it is going to be a massive seller. “It’s lasted for almost a year in the charts over here, and now it looks as if it might start all over again for us,”enthused Mark.
After the Far Eastern trip, they move on to America, “where we are treated as something quaint and English … just like the way American tourists treat policemen,”he added. “Our first tour of America was good fun, because we hadn’t arranged anything, we just arrived at various towns, found somewhere to play, put up our own posters and phoned the local radio stations. They like us in the big cities over there, because as I said I think our music is city music, but we don’t have a big following outside of the big centres.”
In Britain, they have a big following everywhere, and although they are going to be away from us for a few months, they have not forgotten their loyal fans. The good news is that they will be back just before Christmas for a winter tour, when they are sure to drive us all nutty once again!
-Contributed by Lee "Loobyloo" Buckley
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