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‘U’ trailer advertising ‘XX’ certificate
THE LOS PALMAS SEVEN IN
REVENGE OF THE INVADERS
Exclusively taped in heavy heavy monster sound by Adrian Thrills
WITH THE price of petrol what it is after the government’s latest dose of ‘medicine’ taxis are getting to be an increasingly expensive luxury. Round our way, however, there is one really nutty minicab driver who usually makes the expense worthwhile. West Indian, middle-aged and pork-pie hatted with a greying goatee beard, this Kilburn cabbie keeps his passengers entertained with an animated routine of bawdy stories at no extra cost.
Take the other night. There we were, heading for the West End of London, chugging through Camden Town towards Euston Station, our cab driver in the middle of another anecdote when his attention is suddenly distracted by some lunatic on a gleaming white scooter, zipping in and out of the traffic with the grace and aplomb of a pedigree ice dancer.
“Heeeey! Look at that scooter! Your man must be doing about 50 or 60. Those old scooters are great, much better than motorbikes. I gotta ask that guy what sort of bike that is!”
We finally catch up with this bi-wheeled whizz kid at a set of traffic lights in the Hampstead Road, right beside Capital Radio’s Euston Tower complex. As I wind down a window to ask about this scooter for our cabbie, the rider lifts up his matching white crash helmet to reveal the beaming visage of a bouncy Suggs.
The Madness vocalist grins down at us through the light drizzle. “Where are you lot off to tonight then?”
Spandau Ballet at the Sundown!
“Spandau Ballet? Baaaugh! Didn’t think they even did gigs!”
Suggs, it transpires, is on the way round to visit his mum after a day on location at Dingwalls, filming a scene for the forthcoming Madness feature film Take It Or Leave It. Tomorrow, the group are moving across to Islington to re-enact one of their early live dates for the same camera crew. Come along and see for yourself suggests Suggs before the lights switch from red to amber and the scooter is off into the city night, leaving us for dead from a standing start at the junction.
That bloke is a pop star, I say to the cabman, who is stunned into momentary silence at the thought of someone as regular as Suggs being even remotely involved in the glam of showbiz. He’s the lead singer in a group called Madness.
“He’s a pop star!?” retorts the man behind the wheel. “You say he’s in Madness? He is madness! Shocking!!”
LITTLE MORE than twelve hours later, I find myself in Islington, standing in the shadow of the old North London line. Directions to the Keskidee Centre – a nearby community building where Madness are filming – have been sprayed up in lurid lime green paint on a corrugated iron fence beside the track.
The directions are hardly necessary. The muffled thud of a PA system is pumping out the unmistakable strains of a bluebeaty ‘Swan Lake’ somewhere in the vicinity and it leads me to my destination.
Outside the Keskidee, a gaggle of youngsters from the adjacent St Thomas of York school are waiting hopefully for a glimpse of their heroes or even a Madness autograph. Inside, in an upstairs studio no bigger than a large front room, Madness are at work, rest and play.
The idea is to re-create one of their early, pre 2-Tone live shows for the benefit of the camera. The original show had been in the Acklam Hall in Ladbroke Grove, the group having supported reggae rockers Tribesmen back there in November 1978. The Acklam, unfortunately, is temporarily out of service following the recent skirmishes there between rival football factions, so the Keskidee has been chosen as the closest available substitute.
Onstage Madness – or The Invaders as they were calling themselves back in the pre-nutty, pre-Chas Smash days of ’78 – malarkey around patiently as a cameraman and his crew potter about industriously in front of their noses in search of all the right angles.
For the sake of authenticity, the group are decked out in the sort of gear they might have been wearing over two years ago, mostly jeans, Harrington jackets, button-downs and Doc Martens, although saxman Lee Thompson and keyboard player Mike Barson strike a discordant sartorial note in a pair of bloated baggy suits, El Thommo even topping his oversize grey jacket with a black bowtie.
The classically-trained Barson picks out a tortured sequence from rival Jerry Dammers’ ‘Stereotypes’ to himself as movie director Dave Robinson of Stiff Records ushers two dozen audience extras towards the cameras like the human sheep at a Top of The Pops rehearsal.
With everyone in position, a clapperboard cracks shut and the cameras roll for another take as Suggs introduces ‘Swan Lake’ for the second time, “It’s a bit of classical music for all the chipmunks and bald geezers dahn the front!”
As Madness swing once again into the crooked beat of the nuttiest sound around, the cameramen zoom in on three chipmunks of particular interest at the very front of the stage. The three are skinheads – Chalky, Si and Carl Smith – and they are literally nutting their way through a zany routine that is neither conventional dance not slapstick mime, more a mentally-deranged meeting between the two.
Back in 1978, this trio were no more than ardent fans and followers of the fledgling nutty boys and that is how they are portrayed in the film. Nowadays, all three are well-oiled cogs in the Madness machine, Si and Chalky as long-standing members of the road crew and Carl Smith as his alter-ego Chas Smash – compere, dancer, trumpeter and Coco Brother, Suggs comprising the other half of that little unofficial double act.
Chas, his favoured flat-top rockabilly haircut diminished to a Number Two razor crop for the film, is the visual lynchpin of Madness. So vital is he onstage that it is surprising he wasn’t asked to join the group on a full-time basis at an earlier date – he wasn’t fully enroled as the seventh member until after their Stiff contract was signed at the end of 1979.
It’s no surprise to find Madness putting a lot of time and money into their first full-length feature film. Their powerful comic visuals have always complemented their music without detracting from it and the songs – vivid true-life vignettes and breezy love stories – lend themselves readily to the screen. The group’s appreciation of the potential of the pop video has certainly done their singles sales no harm, Madness emerging as the most successful singles artists of last year in the NME January roundup.
Back to the film. After the disappointing Dance Craze, which featured live footage of Madness, everyone concerned is determined that Take It Or Leave It is a more rewarding project.
As Suggs and Chas explain during a break from filming, the plot follows Madness from their pre-teen schoolday incarnation – Lee Thompson, Mike Barson and guitarist Chrissy Boy Foreman right through their formative years up to the recording of a demo with producer Clive Langer, the demo that eventually became their first 2-Tone single ‘The Prince’/’Madness’.
Rather than get bogged down in the more rarified world of a successful chart group, the film ends tantalisingly with Madness poised on the verge of their debut hit. A sensible end considering how well documented their story has been since then.
“We’re trying to make the film as honest as we can,” says Chas. “There isn’t any dramatised crap. It’s not going to be glossy. We have all the basic scenes worked out, but apart from that we’re making a lot of things up on the spot.
“It’s just about a lot of ordinary people who join a band and make a record,” adds Suggs. “That’s it! Anyone can do that. The film just shows that anyone can make a record. We didn’t want it to be all hotels, tours, albums, studio talk and all the music business things. We wanted it to be about us as people and how the band Madness came to be.
“After all the rubbish like Breaking Glass, we just felt that someone should do a proper film about starting a group.”
FINANCIAL BACKING for the film comes partly from the group themselves and partly from Stiff supremo Dave Robinson, directing Take It Or Leave It just as he has directed all the Madness videos since the ‘My Girl’ single. Robinson views the film as one of the most ambitious ventures Stiff have ever tackled, far broader in scope than Dance Craze, a movie which disappointed all the group.
“The film business is a question of risk,” says Robinson. “This film is a risk for us (Stiff) in terms of our money and in terms of our belief in what we can and cannot do as a record label. We’ve made a couple of tour movies before, but nothing like this, nothing quite as expensive.
“But I think this looks very interesting. I don’t think anyone’s ever filmed a rock film like this before. It moves so much we’re thinking of giving out an air-sickness bag with each ticket.
“We’re trying to capture the various moods of the group from the very start and it seems to be working very well. Madness as a group are probably the least inclined towards superstardom of any band I’ve worked with. Their attitude hasn’t changed particularly from when they had nothing to now when they’ve got a bit of money and fame and I find that pretty unusual.
“They are one of the few young bands who haven’t fallen into the trap of thinking that their IQ has automatically been raised by selling records. Groups live such an unusual life, touring and recording, that it’s pretty hard to find people that keep their cool. The people that manage it are pretty few and far between.”
Robinson has a point. Spending a day on the Keskidee set, it’s impossible not to notice that Madness still approach their work with boyish enthusiasm, a zestful buoyancy that extends to their off-camera personalities. Madness do seem to have been left relatively unscathed by the changes brought on by their massive success. As pop stars, they are naturals. As people, they are still mighty real.
“The film has actually been a good way of making us realise just where we came from,” says Suggs. “We’ve put all our money into the film and it’s put us back to square one. It’s a totally new thing for us, almost as if we’re making our first record again.
“As long as we keep on doing things that are creative, putting our money into things like this, then we’ll keep ourselves together. Another thing the film portrays is … I hate the feeling of people looking up to me, like when I go into a pub. This film shows that we aren’t anything special, just ordinary people. When you’re in a group, people tend to respect you for things that don’t really matter. They respect you just ‘cause you’re in a group but that’s nothing really.”
Chas, his Huffety Puff denim jacket hiding a ‘Fuck Art Let’s Dance’ promo T-shirt that hardly boosts the authenticity quotient of the 1978 scene he’s just filmed, continues.
“The only bad thing about being successful is the hassles that you get. And you do! Like there are a couple of girls who keep knocking me up at one o’ clock in the morning and I have to just tell them to get lost ‘cause I don’t want people coming round to see me at that time of night. That sort of thing makes me sick. On the other hand you get a lot of people who are really alright, like the kids from the school over the road coming across for a chat. You just get a few people who are a drag.”
Madness know that the glamour of their position at the top of Britain’s pop tree needs to be kept in perspective. They seem content to live their lives as normally as possible. As Chrissy Boy observes, Suggs’ material ambitions extend as far as having somewhere to live and enough cash for five pints of lager a day.
“And I’ve got it, I’m there,” sniggers Suggs. “There’s absolutely no reason for us to want to do other things, no reason for us to want to do anything else apart from work with this band. If we keep ourselves interested, then we’ll keep people interested in us.
“You get a lot of groups who want the mystery and the glamour and all that bollocks, but we just want to lead a pretty ordinary existence. I think there are other groups that feel the same way, people like The Specials and The Jam. But I don’t actually think about it too much. I just do it. A lot of groups think about things too much. We just get on with it. If you start analysing it all, you’ll end up crawling up your own bum.”
THE MADNESS organisation, though, is not a rigid set-up. The individual members may not have branched out to the same extent as, say, The Specials with their solo projects, but they do have the freedom to pursue their own interests. Chas and Suggs, for instance, played with Bette Bright at The Venue on New Year’s Eve as The Rubber Biscuits. So have Madness any long-term ambitions?
“I think we just entertain,” says Suggs. “That’s our philosophy, but we entertain properly, not in a schmucky way. That’s our place in the workings of the world. I’m convinced that’s what we’re destined to be. But what we do has nothing to do with people like The Nolans or any of that bollocks. We’re a unit of people with a lot of different options.
“At the moment, the real thrill of all this is being so popular when we’re really just a bunch of absolute knobs! I get a real kick out of seeing all these old lags who are supposed to be popstars ‘cause we’re bigger than any of them!”
AS MUSICIANS and entertainers, Madness are all too often damned with faint praise. Critics are disinclined to slam a group as zany and unpretentious as the nutty boys, so instead they patronise them as a pretty but ultimately disposable pop commodity.
But even on a purely musical level, Madness are in fact a far more mature group than they are usually given credit for. Beneath the vibrant veneer of the heavy monster sound, there is a superb pop craft at work. The early punk ska overtones have gradually fallen away as Madness cleverly honed and streamlined their sound, their deep-rooted influences – the brilliant rock ‘n’ roll caricature of the first Roxy Music album, the cocktail rock of the Kilburns – coming much more to the fore on the handsome ‘Absolutely’ LP. Madness have outgrown their 2-Tone launching pad in style.
“We stuck to our guns in the beginning,” says Chas, one of the six writers in the group. “We always tried to tell people that we weren’t ska. If no-one had ever heard our stuff, we’d probably have been stuck with the ska tag, but luckily we were popular so people did get a chance to listen to our records and they could see for themselves that we had lots of different influences.”
The musical growth of Madness has been accompanied by an imaginative series of televised videos, one for each of their seven hit singles from ‘The Prince’ to ‘Return of The Los Palmas 7’. Dave Robinson claims that these videos have been crucial to the group’s success. A new set of images for each release.
“Right now, television is moving so quickly,” predicts Robinson. “There is a massive audience of people under 20 years of age who buy records ‘cause of what they see on the television. The papers and live work still have an effect, but television makes the biggest impact.
“Take Adam And The Ants. When ‘Antmusic’ came out, it looked fantastic on the television. But now the Ants have just put out their third single, they look just the same on the box and I don’t think the kids will be quite as keen this time. You have to change. You have to adapt and I think that is what Madness have done. I think that’s what they are doing with this film.”
A less laudable aspect of Madness’s success has been the continual lifting of singles from both ‘One Step Beyond’ and ‘Absolutely’, three 45s apiece from each LP. Robinson defends this blatant marketing ploy, claiming that ‘lifted’ singles are the only viable way to promote an LP in the absence of any real album-orientated radio in the UK. He says he could see them all being hits. The group themselves seem torn by the dilemma, appreciative of Stiff’s successful marketing but conscious of the need to be fair to their fans, many of whom will buy singles that they already possess as LP tracks simply out of a sense of loyalty.
“We want people to listen to our LPs,” says Suggs. “But because they are both pretty varied, Stiff like putting out a couple of singles from each one just to give people an idea. But we try not to release too many, just a happy medium.
“When we were first signed we went into Stiff and demanded that they put no singles on the albums, but the record company have proved to us that this is the only way to sell an LP of new songs. At first we argued until we were blue in the face, but if we didn’t agree to it, we’d probably have flopped by now.
“We always like to feel we’re being fair. We always put on a different B-side at least. Like Chrissy Boy doesn’t like the idea of us doing a 12-inch of ‘Return of The Los Palmas 7’, but at least we put three new tracks on it, plus a free comic. We wouldn’t have done the 12-inch unless we felt we were being fair.”
With that in mind, there are to be no more tracks lifted from the ‘Abso’ LP, the next Madness single – already in the can – being Mike Barson’s ‘Grey Day’, with another new song, ‘Memories’ on the flip.
Unlike most of their one-time 2-Tone labelmates – Specials, Beat and Selecter – Madness have always deliberately shied away from making statements, political or otherwise, in their songs. They see themselves purely as entertainers, right? A Slade to Adam’s T Rex in terms of their audience appeal.
However, the recent furore over the sale of fascist propaganda outside some Madness concerts and the increasingly desperate attempts of the extreme right to capture the support of disillusioned white working class youth has dragged the group back into the party-political firing line.
To their credit, Madness have laid themselves uncompromisingly on the line, Suggs even going on national radio to disassociate the group from the white-wing bully boys, although there are groans all round as I broach the subject. Yes, Madness seem to have heard this one before somewhere. They are still prepared to talk though.
Chas: “It’s getting pretty sad. Like the bloke from the Sunday Times reckoned that the group used to be called The North London Skinhead Elite, which is absolute bullshit. Nine times out of ten we’re not even aware of it when people come along to our gigs selling right-wing literature. So what can we say? We’ve already said that we’re categorically against it, but we still seem to get so much shit when we’re on tour with people coming up and accusing us of being fascists. Even in Scandinavia, we had some bloke come up to us with a clipping from a paper saying ‘now, bot eez all dis about se enn heff’. Come on, leave it out! It was getting to the stage where it was driving us around the bend.”
Chrissy: “We try to talk people out of it where we can, but half of them don’t even understand what they are associating themselves with. The other day we saw this kid with a white power badge on and the next minute he was talking to a black girlfriend!”
Suggs: “It all stems from the fact that we were getting a skinhead audience, but we were getting that audience long before the NF thing started creeping into skinheadism.”
Skinheadism!?
“Well, people associate us with skinheads, which is fair enough, but to associate us with anything political just because of that is just rubbish! Maybe in the past we were naïve in not coming out strongly enough against it, but there’s no way that any of us are fascist. We’re categorically against it.”
Like the Madness song of the same name, the Take It Or Leave It film avoids anything of particularly heavy social relevance. Indirectly, it illustrates the lack of real opportunity facing the average comprehensive school leaver in today’s Britain – the old football, rock ‘n’ roll or Borstal syndrome – but doesn’t labour the point.
Concludes Dave Robinson: “I don’t think the movie will constitute any sort of statement from the band. Hopefully, there will be some space in it where you can put in your own thoughts and views as opposed to any kind of statement from the group themselves.”
With filming and editing due to continue into the middle of June, we won’t be getting a chance to take or leave the celluloid endeavours of Madness until the beginning of the autumn term. On what I’ve seen so far, the wait should be worthwhile.
As a cameraman gathers together his lackeys to prepare the set for an après-gig dressing room scene, I decide to cut things right there.
Take five, nutty boys! You deserve it.
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