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Madness in the USA by Mark Williams
Today the UK. Tomorrow the USA? Next week, the world? Are Madness about to get everybody up and dancing again? MARK WILLIAMS sits down and listens to the ambitions of seven non-union members.
“Just look at this,” fussed the secretary with the Farrah Fawcett locks as she and another well-scrubbed Warner Bros press personette surveyed the company’s New York boardroom. “They’ve made more mess than Thin Lizzy.”
Yes, it was a bang-up job all right. Crumpled fag packets, half-consumed sandwiches in mutilated polystyrene boxes, a few dozen beverage cans and a dishevelled plastic and tissue quilt that had been spread across the huge table to protect its fine veneer. Rather ineffectively, as it happened.
This was actually the first time I’d heard any verbal disapproval of our presence, but discomfort was clearly manifest in the nervy, sometimes tetchy manner of almost any of the young executive vice-presidents whose excursions through the shagpile were interrupted by the seven-man team of cultural tag-wrestlers whom I was accompanying on manoeuvres.
But what did they expect? Is Thin Lizzy really the high water mark of rock ‘n’ roll exuberance? Submitting the gentlemen of the press to Madness in neat half-hourly segments and expecting docile lectures on their life and time is something you can rely on the Styx and Totos of this world, but heavens above, don’t these people take any notice of the British press? Don’t they realise they’re dealing with barely reformed street gangsters whose natural boyish hubris is further inflamed by a succession of chart placings that would crack a smile even out of Barry Manilow?
They do not. In fact, they are now whispering in the corridors while the far-from-secret-seven bow down to the WB symbol woven into the reception hall carpet with mock Iranian fervour and Chas Smash and Mike Barson, among others, repeatedly ask anyone who crosses their path the likely whereabouts of Jack. Warner, that is.
“Can someone get them together for the next interview?” someone hisses to Audrey Strahl, the Sire Records press lady whose happy responsibility it is to aquaint the media with this strapping bunch of popsters. Ms Strahl, who is not unused to the more ebullient end of rock ‘n’ roll society, hushes reassurance and adopts the scout-mistressish pose which is about the most effective way to try and whup this lot into line. She, at least, realises that when confronted by smugness, cool authority or vending machines that don’t function properly, the boys do not stand on ceremony. They trample all over it.
FORTUNATELY for America, or at least the bits of it that I’ve seen with them, Madness are generally greeted with at least friendly curiosity. By the time I catch up with them, on a freezing Sunday afternoon in Boston, they’re well into the touring groove and, fortifying oneself with the beer ‘n’ bourbon chaser customarily prescribed by manager Kelloggs, it’s impossible not to be snarfed up into the extreme jolliness of it all. Within minutes of dumping bags in rooms, we’re sitting in Howard Johnson’s lounge watching the winter Olympics on the video screen and overpowering the loud, alcoholic rhetoric of the bar-room athletes yelling the odds over their Michelobs by the simple expedience of out-shouting them.
Suggsy wants to make one thing absolutely clear before we descend into the more relaxing aspects of life on the road, though. “We are going to crack America, my son …”
Gawd, aren’t they all? Every bloody band in England is going to plunder the American treasure trove. Then Japan. Then Australasia. And then they’ll start buying Ferrari Daytonas and cottages for their mums.
“No, listen, we can do it. We’re bloody good. And everybody wants to start dancin’ again, don’t they?”
It’s not really a question, Suggsy is convinced (and I’m not about to argue) that the elemental boppability of the nouveau shankers can harness the restless feet of America with the same unilateral efficiency it did back home. But there are other factors involved.
“Course, we wanted to get here before the Specials, didn’t we?” he smiles mischievously. “And we did! Sire didn’t want to release the album in November when it was out in England, but we said, ‘We’re coming over anyway.’ We ‘ad to go round plastering stickers everywhere and phoning up magazines and radio stations … but that’s pioneering.”
The rivalry between the various current and ex-2-Tone bands seeps into almost any discourse on the wider ramifications of the dancing revolution, and because the circumstances of the genre’s steamroller success has tended to widen any gaps in solidarity or the integrity of those involved into crevices ripe for cynical subterfuge, Madness are careful to qualify such comments.
“We’re all mates,” says Woody, the only member of the band who bears the remotest trace of vulnerability, “but it’s like a friendly rivalry. We kid each other about who’s going to have the biggest hit, but it’s also an incentive to make better records.”
“No it’s not,” interrupts Mike Barson, the nearest thing the band has to a musical director, “we all ‘ate each other.”
The conversation soon turns into a half-remembered blur of anecdotal cross-talking and ribbing, indulgences fitting of a young band surfing on success back home and enjoying a low-budget attack on a much bigger prize. From living in squats and supplementing their dole money with a little harmless pilferage to being a numero uno draw in a little over a year is quite a buzz. But fortunately they don’t need bigger bluebeat hats yet.
“We’ve had quite a good run so far,” says Barson. “Everything’s gone real well for us, ‘cept all that stuff about the Front. I sometimes get a bit worried about our playing, though. Like you can go into a studio and try something ten times, and one of ‘em is going to be okay to put on a record. When we released our 2-Tone single, I was a bit afraid that we weren’t good enough to appear, you know, as a recording group.”
Rubbish. When they were playing pubs in North London, long before they were making records, they were far more competent than most of the new wave bands with fat contracts to whose music Madness presented an obvious alternative. But then Barson is often carping about the finer points of their instrumental abilities … admirably self-critical, I suppose.
Perhaps the key to the relative professionalism of such a short-lived band is hinted at by Chrissy Boy Foreman at this same New York dinner table: “Best thing that ever happened to Lee (Thompson, the man with the golden mouthpiece) was going on the dole. He ‘ad six hours a day to learn to play sax properly.”
And so Chas Smash, the officially co-opted “nutty dancer” of the ensemble, is using his free time on this tour in typically resolute fashion, by trying to master the trumpet. “Should be good enough to play it onstage in about eight months,” he guesses, and starts blowing raspberries down Highway 95 enroute from Boston to New York, Mike Barson at the wheel of the Avis rent-a-greenhouse-on-wheels, while Woody and Mark “Bedders” Bedford wince noisily from the rear seat.
This five-hour trip provides time for what might be described as the only meaningful dialogue between Madness personnel and the reporter in their traditional roles. I think that a detailed description of Woody’s face as Barson reversed the Avis away from its position shielding him from the gazing diners of Howard Johnson’s as he pointed Percy at a Chevy van is as interesting as the scam on such things as Music For Money, Fashionable Excess, Skinheads And Their Real Place In The Scheme Of Things, etc, but it doesn’t sell newsprint. Which brings us neatly to:
HOW TO BE A FASCIST WITHOUT REALLY TRYING
THE unwitting alignment of Madness with the extreme right wing “policies” of the National Front and British Movement came from those organisations’ convincing, if erroneous impression that they were the mainstay of the band’s early support. There was, for instance, the fearsome confrontation between warring political half-wits at the Electric Ballroom.
“That was the worst gig ever,” says Chas. “It was like a bloody rally. They were passing out leaflets at the Lyceum the week before saying ‘We want a good turnout at this gig’. And then all the mods were going round saying the same thing to each other, you know, ‘Should be a good bundle, lads’. What could we do?
“All that bloody right-wing stuff is just fashion. Half the kids down the squats in Kings Cross where I used to live are looking for a bit of excitement, they’re just bored. One week they’re in the NF, the next it’s the BM, and now there’s some bunch called the Vikings. If you try and ‘ave an intelligent conversation about it, they’ve no idea what they’re talking about.
“Fortunately they’ve ‘ad their fun with us now, they don’t seem to be coming to gigs any more. It’s all died off.”
Certainly though, there was a time when they were all very edgy about the political rumblings and while Bedders can now comfortably crack the joke about record royalties going direct to the NF (“That was an actual rumour we ‘eard, no kidding!”), Chrissy Boy had to pull out the “if we wanted to go into politics we’d have formed a debating society, not a band” quote at least once in the WEA boardroom.
THE TRUE MEANING & PURPOSE OF SKA
“THE only thing they know about reggae in America is Bob Marley,” says Woody. “They don’t know the difference between ska, bluebeat, reggae and dub, so they lump it all together. We went on one radio station and played an Augustus Pablo record and the deejay said, ‘That was dub? What’s, er, dub?’ All black music to them is either blues or soul or disco.”
“Yeah, and it’s the same with what they call ‘rock music’” jeers Barson. “They put Chuck Berry and some band like Toto into the same category. I ‘ad to explain to one of those radio people that Toto is not rock ‘n’ roll.”
“And tell ‘im it was rubbish!” exclaims Chas.
“But it goes a lot further than some people are prepared to accept,” says Woody, about to tread heavily on the thin ice of purist sensibilities. “Two of my favourite pop records were Wings’ ‘C Moon’ and Joe Walsh’s ‘Life’s Been Good To Me’. You know why? Well listen carefully to ‘em and you’ll realise they’ve got a reggae beat. Now a lot of people would sorta sneer at that, but what we’re playing is just another type of music that’s using a Jamaican, or sometimes a Motown influence, and they don’t sneer at us.”
EMPIRE BUILDING IN NW1
NUT INC is the shop originally financed by Madness and Stiff supremo Dave Robinson in the Caledonian Road. All the T-shirts, badges, bluebeat hats and attendant swag that Chas and his brother used to flog at Madness’ gigs before Carl became a full-time emcee is sold, and to some extent manufactured by the infamous Tots ‘n’ Whets and additional mates.
“It’s good because it gives ‘em something to do that they enjoy more than working in a bloody office,” says social reformer Chas Smash.
“And it keeps a few of ‘em off the dole,” concludes Barson, rather more pragmatically.
“And the prices are a bit reasonable,” responds Chas to my observations on the high cost of dressing mod a la Kensington Market … just before he tells me that they’re about to open a stall there. “That’ll fix Johnsons,” grins the latter-day artful dodger.
Further evidence of how firmly their brains are screwed into their necks emerges from chat about their publishing company … called Nutty Songs, to which roster they are hoping to add the Mo-Dettes’ “White Mice” (“Gotta have that one on the books,” says Bedders, metaphorically chewing on a Lew Grade-sized cigar) and the Bodysnatchers’ original material – of which there’s less than I’d thought.
“Just protecting the innocent from C -------s Music,” laughs Barson. Ho hum.
WHAT’S WRONG WITH BRITAIN IS ‘THE OLD GREY WHISTLE TEST’
IN between watching out for police helicopters anxious to pick on British rock bands scurrying along at an illegal 70mph to make the gigs on time, most of our post-brunch attentions are centred on Madness’ next record release, an EP hastily recorded with Clive Langer immediately prior to leaving the UK.
Four new songs were originally written for it, but one of the new tunes, “Pete The Beat”, is considered to be of such classical pop proportions that it’s being saved for later and is replaced on the EP by a new version of “Night Boat to Cairo”, which started out as an instrumental until Suggsy came along with some lyrics for it.
“But it won’t be a stitch-up for the kids,” Chas adds quickly, “’cause it’s all new recordings.”
“’Pete The Beat’ was written the day before the Hammersmith Odeon gig,” claims Bedders, “and it went down so well when we played it as an encore, the kids were singing the chorus after the first three verses.”
Some discussion then follows as to the advisability of trying out brand new material on audiences before the band have rehearsed it properly. Naturally Barson is against such practices, but Woody reckons “it’s good to hang out your dirty linen in public – that’s the best test of a new song there is.”
“Yeah, but sometimes we’re not really sure of what we’re playing,” contends Barson. (As if dance-tranced Madness freaks could give a toss, think I).
“Listen,” says a super confident Woody, “if Chrissy starts playing something new, Bedders ‘n’me respond to it almost automatically … we’re doing it all the time on songs we’ve been playing for months. We don’t play the same thing every night, y’know.”
“Yeah, but what if the sound’s crap,” says Barson, losing ground. “It’s important to have the sound right. Remember ‘Whistle Test’?”
Which neatly changes the subject.
“’Whistle Test’ is a joke,” he asserts. “All those guys on there are pissed out of their brains all the time. The woman who’s s’posed to run the teleprompt thing fell off her chair when we were there … she just sparked out.
“S’typical of what’s wrong with the unions in Britain. I used to deliver fruit y’know, and one day I pulled the truck up to Sainsbury’s depot and all the geezers there were too busy playing football to unload me. Eventually I start getting a bit stroppy about this load of bananas I’m carrying’ and one of ‘em says, ‘Are you a union member?’ I tell ‘em I’m not and they say, ‘We’ll let you drop ‘em off this time, but if you come back again and you ain’t got a union card, you won’t get it.’
“They spent more time checking to see if your name was in the book than they did actually working. You shouldn’t be forced to join a union so’s you can do an honest day’s work.”
There speaks a man who’s working his butt off with the same energetic fortitude that characterises Madness’s English appearances, and for a lot less immediate reward. The show at Boston’s Paradise Theatre, a sort of teenage supper club comfortably smaller than The Venue, is being broadcast live on a local radio station and after their gig there last year, the band are apprehensive that the punters will be rather less than crazy about their performance.
“Last time we were here,” recalls Suggs, “they were all sitting round eating ‘amburgers. Couldn’t get ‘em to dance at all, hardly.”
But it’s no sweat. In the past three months a few of the smarter radio stations have picked up on 2-Tonerama, and the eager Anglophiles didn’t need any further prompting to get with the heavy, heavy sound of what’s happening in the Mother Country. This time no one’s eating at the Paradise Ballroom ‘cause most of them are standing on their tables and chairs, and the liberal smattering of black and white uniforms would do credit to a Nut Inc export drive. From bar one they’re moving their asses with a pretty fair approximation of the Brixton bop, and such is the extent of their familiarity with the band’s material that they need little tutelage to chant the chorus of “Chipmunks Are Go” during the second encore.
“I got a bit worried when I thought some of ‘em were shouting ‘Sieg Heil’,” said Barson, “but I got a little closer to ‘em and I realised it was ‘Rude Boys’ in an American accent!”
By the time the band have completed two nights at the Irving Plaza giving a treat to the feet of New York’s rock cognoscenti as well as a large platoon of skinhead facsimiles, it seems evident that neo-ska at least has the potential of denting the American music scene with the same impact as the still (and if anything, increasingly) pervasive new wave did.
Their street savvy prohibits Madness from running away with the idea that ticker-tape parades through every state capital are the natural consequence of their efforts here, but an impish Bedders is not slow to point out that they could pack the Plaza two nights running while the Specials still hadn’t sold enough tickets for a single date five days later at a similar sized venue. “But then they are charging ten dollars a ticket. That’s a bit strong even for American kids,” he suggests.
Indeed, a stern editorial in the latest issue of New York Rocker, admonishing the ex-heavyweight pop promoter responsible for the inflated admission charge and urging fans to boycott the gig, confirms the realisation that these are early days yet … however enthusiastic the attempts of certain down-turned elements of the American music biz might be to locate and exploit a next big thing.
In the interim, all who come into contact with them are overcome by Madness.
Except, perhaps, the ladies in Jack Warner’s press office.
- Contributed by Lee "Loobyloo" Buckley and Steve Bringe
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