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EH TU. DEJA TODO Y FIJATE EN ESTO. EL SONIDO MAS MARCHOSO Y VACILON QUE EXISTE ACTUALMENTE. SI VA POR LA CALLE Y EL CUERPO TE PIDE MARCHA, NO TE ESCAPES, ESCUCHALO Y VUELVETE LOCA AL RITMO DEL ROCK CANERO DE MADNESS: UN PASO ADELANTE.
Oi you. Leave everything and take an eyeful of this. The bossest, grooviest sound around. If you're walking down the street and your body tells you to boogie, you can't escape. Listen to it and go crazy baby - the rum-soaked rhythm of Madness: One Step Beyond! (blurb from the back of the 'One Step Beyond' Spanish-version single. Rough translation).
SITTING BY the pool under a beach umbrella, nibbling something nutty ("Budgie food") and supping on a pint of tea the same dull yellow-grey as the dirty LA sunshine, Chas and Suggs are holding court. Tonight they're playing the Country Club, a plush tabled joint in the Valley they quite rightly reckon's "a bit of a hole", sold out like their first show there two nights ago.
The front bit down on the dancefloor was sealed as tight as a jamjar with Americans dressed just-so, clapping, chanting all through the interval and wetting themselves once these two blokes - dressed now in outfits any self-respecting New Romantic wouldn't wash his car with, Chas in his chequerboard square suit with enough space for his arms to twirl like rubber bands and Suggs looking like everyone's big brother, head so smooth and flat you could play snooker on it - got going.
It didn't let up for a second. What you might call a moving performance, the whole place bubbling and shimmying, offstage dancers becoming onstage dancers before getting chucked back onto the dance floor by the club's bouncers. All the old favourites and a bunch of new ones, juicy, bouncy, beat-laden music.
The crowd loved them. Jesus, they'd be massive down in the Deep South where hairless mutants with wide and crazy grins and just-can't-help-myself twitches are just like the guy next door.
"A lot of them think we're soldiers out here," Chas scratches his head. "Especially when we first came out because we used to wear those green flight jackets. A lot of people said, 'you just come out of basic training then?' This is the sort of acceptable college boy nicey-nicey look over here; and when you're in England it's the opposite, bad boy. It's weird."
A female photographer, doubtless from Military Monthly, butts right in and demands they watch the birdie. "Pushy aren't they, these Americans," observes Suggs, and gives his best grimace. Noisy too. Someone foolish enough to undertake the singlehanded task of repairing the Tropicana motel switches on a buzzsaw. Conversation's impossible with a Plasmatics-type backing at 200 dbs so in we traipse to the hotel room with the open suitcase spilling out souvenirs from the Orient (wind-up geisha girl for dad, pagoda keyrings, freeze-dried chow mein etc) and stucco ceiling seemingly plugged with three dollops of plasticine.
"I was charged a thousand quid for those three holes in the ceiling when we were last here," confesses Suggsy. "They said I did them - I really don't remember but I'm sure I didn't. Must have been that broomstick when I was jumping up and down on the floor. A real craftsman fixed those holes!"
THIS VISIT (their third; started out at the bottom of the bill at the Whisky, made it to the top last year, and this time to the 3,000-odd seater) they've played it safe, restricting their jumping up and down to the Robert Gordon and Joe Cocker gigs they went to. They haven't gone too much on any local bands, except The Unknowns, the San Diego band who opened for them Sunday. Not even the LA New Romantics.
"It's all a bit too poncey for me," muses Chas. "Like butterflies, all dressed up to go out. Still if that's what you want to do I don't mind. I'd feel a bit self-conscious really if I went out dressed like that. I mean, I'd never wear half the stuff I wear on stage out. I save that sort of stuff for the stage." Most of the time they've been sitting around passing round cassettes of anything from Phil Collins to PIL, Jackson 5 to YMO, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Gary Glitter, Specials, Beat, David Byrne/Eno, "anything that's good. We all like different stuff," and wishing they were back at the Hope and Anchor.
There's two reasons for the band's quickie visit to America (a five-date tour, pheww!) and neither has to do with the beer. First: they were in Japan, chased around by girls and given gifts by teddy-boys (no skinheads in the Far East) 24-hours a day, and America's on the way back. Second: they're looking for a record contract. Ludicrously (not many visiting bands sell out a mid-sized hall with fanatics mouthing all the lyrics) they've been dropped by Sire, something that doesn't exactly leave them near tears though.
"We were trying for ages to leave," explains Suggs, "but we were contractually committed for longer. We were lucky to get out of it."
"We had to waste our second album on them unfortunately," adds Chas. "We agreed that if we didn't sell so many of our albums here - and we didn't - we were able to leave. But it was a pretty sad way of doing it because we really liked 'Absolutely'; like a Catch 22."
Says Suggs, "But there was no point us coming here to promote an album that if we sold a lot of we'd be with a record company we didn't want to be with. They kept both of the albums, unfortunately, because we'd have liked to have taken 'Absolutely' to a different company and given it another go. We've always tried to push it every time we've come over here. First time we were doing all our own promotion, going round the discos and radio stations trying to get some interest up because the record company wasn't doing it for us. But I don't know, I wouldn't really like to do a really big tour here. Either you get a really big push from the record company or you tour loads of small clubs and do it yourself, and you have to be here for six months for that."
"You could be here for ever," says optimistic Chas. "We just thought we'd play a few dates this time and maybe start some interest, and then we'll go home and concentrate on the next album and see what came out of it."
So far nothing.
"We've talked to just about every record company there is here," Suggs reckons. "Kellogs, our manager, we were talking to him yesterday and he was saying it's just been like 'Madness - are they a hot act in London?' They don't really know we sell records all over, know what I mean? They think we've just had a couple of hit singles in London." A local cult, one of the many they seem to believe. We get to talking about the 'many'.
Suggs: "Fashions have changed at home. I'm starting to feel a bit old now with all this New Romantic stuff."
Chas: "We feel dated."
Suggs: "It's speeding up so much now. There's so many new things."
Chas: "A new style every week. It's like whack, someone's got a new psychobilly, rockabilly New Romantic look."
Suggs: "Everything imaginable's now in London. Every past fashion, every future fashion -- "
Chas: " -- David Bowie freaks, glitter freaks, everything."
SO WHAT do you do - plough through it all and just get on with what you're doing?
Suggs: "We decided that. We talked about it. Obviously when you're touring all the time you get a little bit lost about what you're doing, know what I mean, and also when you've been going for two years - instead of going for a year when you really know your direction - after two years it starts to get harder."
Chas: "We're not on a wave now. When we started we were on a wave like - the Specials, Madness, Selecter - now it's broken up into different things."
Suggs: "So it's a bit lost now. But we decided definitely to stick to what we're doing, what we like, and keep on going. We're always pleased with what we've done, whether or not it's different. We just put out what we think is good whether or not it's what people expect of us. I think almost definitely in the not too distant future we're going to have a few flops, a few records, but we're just going to stick together and just live through it. We're not going to change for any reason."
Chas: "A lot of people when they release stuff, I think, think 'well we've got to think of something new; we've got to change' but we don't feel that's necessary. We feel change comes eventually when you get better and that. Like the difference between the first album and the second is a hell of a lot, but it didn't change because we wanted it to. It changed because the band were getting better at playing their instruments and thinking more about what they're doing."
The band played more new material at the Country Club, basically to see what people thought of it before committing it to vinyl. So far the consensus seems to be "good".
"Because we knew we were going to be away, and we did a film that took a month," says Suggs, "Before we went away we spent a couple of weeks rehearsing and we wrote five songs and hoped that one of them would be a single so that there would be something there while we were away. We would just go off and leave it there." 'Grey Day' got nominated; a surprisingly moody song which they used to end the Country Club set. When they get back home they'll write another 15-odd songs, some of which will go into the film's soundtrack, the rest for the new LP.
"We've got about six weeks to write in - that's more time than we usually have. It's usually two weeks. We're always not rushed but quick. Go in, do it fast and that's it. We don't like to spend a lot of time because you can be too analytical, know what I mean," Suggs asks, "you can think too much about it - 15 keyboard overdubs and stuff. I think - I don't want to say it about other bands, but I think that's a lot of other people's problems, that they think about things too much. You can't analyse yourself, it's much harder, so we just sort of get on with it. Sometimes we go through, like, a bit of difficulties amongst the band, but if you start thinking about it too much you'll probably end up losing all interest in it, get a bit depressed and stop doing it."
What sort of difficulties? Just having seven people in the band with seven different ideas of where you're going?
"Exactly. And also personalities. Like I was saying, we all get a bit lost in our direction, then people start worrying about which direction and then you all start arguing and just talk a load of rubbish and end up completely lost. So we just go into the rehearsal studio and write songs and whatever comes out it's basically what we all like.
"Like the Specials - obviously Jerry thinks of his influence first and then he writes the songs. He thinks of a rough direction first. Like the last one was sort of muzak-y and before he wrote it he knew the whole direction of the Specials was going to be muzak."
"What we do," explains Chas, "is say Bedders writes some words, or Suggsy, and brings them in, someone else will come in with something else. We all listen to different things - at any given time we can be listening to seven different kinds of music - so if one person is thinking along a Motown line or someone else is thinking about a jazzy feel, when you get it all in and it's all put together it just all mixes up and that's what makes our sound. It's not just someone saying what it's going to come out like. No-one cares who thinks of what as long as the end thing is good."
EARLIER THEY were mentioning being too analytical, putting too much thinking matter in. I'd just read the review of Sunday night's show in the Times, a generally unfair piece that said, spit and scorn snarling between the lines, that Madness is okay if all you want is a band to dance to. Do they feel they're a bit short on the social issues in their songs? Suggs calls back from across the room where he's gone to dig out the Spanish single. On the back, thankfully in good old Anglo-Saxon, are the words to another couple of cuts, including 'Grey Day'.
"No-one really listens to us - that's another thing. I'm not saying we don't take our time and think about what we're writing. When I write a song I don't just go vrrrooomm!! We just don't think about ourselves too much. We don't analytically look at Madness and go 'ooh, why aren't we doing this or that'. Read that song there. See, no-one reads our songs. Like 'Grey Day'."
"There's a lot there," says Chas, "but people just don't look into it. 'Embarrassment' is about a girl who had an illegitimate baby. It was black. One of the band's sister had a coloured baby. People don't look deep enough. And we don't have any special spokesman, you know. There's seven of us, there's no leader to the band so there's no like figurehead."
"And also when we do interviews," Suggs goes on, "we don't go on about it. Obviously our main aim is to have fun and enjoy ourselves and whoever comes to see us will enjoy themselves as well. And as a band it isn't our aim to make social statements and stuff as other bands do, but we're not just a load of shit. We are sort of aware."
"People can't say there's no message in our stuff because there is," adds Chas. "But it's more of an observation. We're not telling people to go out and change their ways or do this or that."
Suggs: "We don't have any pretensions about being moody leaders of youth or pop stars or anything. We're just a band and we enjoy ourselves."
Chas: "Our image, if you can call it an image, is just our characters. We go to a place and if we're in a bad mood we'll put across a moody image that day, and if we're in a good mood that'll come across.
"That's why Madness is a good name. Because there are all kinds of Madness - there's happy madness and there's bad madness, freaky madness and sometimes it's downright threatening. It can be taken all kinds of different ways. You could put on our record at a party and dance to it, or put it on headphones and really listen to the lyrics, and get just as much enjoyment out of it. It's just up to what you want."
Suggs: "We are really real. Anyone who thinks this is all to make money or just a false front to get into kiddies' pockets - this is just how we are. When we go to Top of the Pops or whatever, we don't want to arrive in a limo and stand round and be bored. We have a laugh. We don't have any embarrassment about doing stupid things."
The film Madness were working on just before the transatlantic trip is "about us from when we started to making the first single. It's not like a rock and roll film with a load of footage on the road - that's all been pretty much documented anyway in loads of interviews and stuff - so we did it," says Suggs, "about the band starting, how we got together, what we used to look like."
Take It Or Leave It follows Madness back to the old Youth Club days; in Suggsy's case "back to school, because I left straight from school to join the band. It's back to early jobs for everyone else" - concrete-pumping, window-cleaning (Chas's favourite "because it's like performing; you sort of put on a front", whistles merrily "mornin' love clean yer windows', skip a few when they're not looking, no overheads and no problems except who gets to carry the ladder first) - "About how seven normal, extremely normal people can start a band."
GETTING UP at ungodly hours every morning for a month was compensated by the laugh they had reconstructing the old days.
"It was great, uncanny really some of it," says Suggs. "Going back and acting how we used to act, so that a lot of old arguments would come up again," laughs Chas. "We got into a few real arguments, and a few near punch-ups. It's funny really," Suggs muses, "there's a lot of old grudges because a lot of the band have known each other for a very long time, and people remembered right back to the early days, like someone with a car not giving someone a lift home, that sort of thing. One bloke who used to be in the band who was the drummer, we haven't seen him for years. He's married and moved away, so it was really funny seeing him. He's in the film too."
Chas: "It's a laugh. He was a chronic drummer then and he's a chronic drummer now. He knows it!"
Suggs: "We were really chronic. We were all nervous being in front of a camera, which made us sound even more like it was then. We had to reconstruct the day I arrived at the first rehearsal, and I was nervous then, and this time I had to walk in on all these lights and stuff. So it was quite real."
The band roped in as many old friends and drinking partners as they could, with enough real actors to keep the union off their backs.
"What we did was miscast a lot of people," Chas grins. "Like we had these two massive big beefy boxers, really heavy old dudes with scars across their boats, being priests. The actors were real good. We had people who aren't too well-known who we remembered from episodes on TV series we saw when we got home from school, and dug those out."
There's scenes of the band "on a night out for a beano," scenes at school, one scene where they reconstruct their first ever gig "which was in the back of my best mate's house, in the garden. Me and my mate lifted the piano down the stairs all those years ago and it's still down there because no-one ever got it together to lift it back up again! We invited all the people that were at the first party and we were doing these pathetic versions of 'See You Later Alligator'. It was just hysterical."
Instead of working from a script they improvised round scenes decided after fireside chats with the film's producer and Stiff head honcho Dave Robinson.
"We've got four or five endings filmed. We thought of having four different endings, but then it would be a bit confusing. We didn't want the film to be like at the end of the bright lights, the music, all that crap, it's so predictable. But we didn't want an arty-farty ending - just something interesting to keep the old brain buzzing." (Nothing too grand like Breaking Glass. According to Chas, Suggsy started reading the book "and threw it away which I took as a hint not to see the film. Ours is just entertaining and telling the story as it was." Nor is it a straight documentary like Dance Craze. "I don't particularly like it all that much. It's not really a film, it's just pure evidence, not telling you anything. It's a bit of a white elephant. We had no control over it. Jerry Dammers tried to spice it up by putting in those old bits, and that's the only good thing.")
IT'S STRANGE looking back on the past said Chas, sounding like he's talking about twenty years instead of two.
"But sometimes I feel like five or six years have gone by, because we've done so much and been on the move all the time. When you get home you never have a holiday - you've always got to work on the next album, the next video, the next film, the next comic and sit down and plan the next year.
"We decided when we started this that we'd work as much as we could for as long as we could, as long as the interest was there. We'd just put as much into it as we could. The band always comes pretty much first and we try and keep going as much as we can." The only disadvantages to it happening so quick, he reckons, are "you're away from home a lot. You miss a lot of people. But it's mostly good stuff. I'm having a ball. When I'm at home on my own I have to sit and think of what I'd be doing if I wasn't in the band, and I haven't got a clue. Except maybe being a postman so I could wake up people in the morning going (cheery shout) yip yip postie and still get some kind of reaction out of people.
"I don't think anyone takes it all for granted. We're just not that kind of people. When we go home a lot of us hang round together. We don't go out that much, we're more interested in our home life. But when we do everyone sort of sticks together and is very close. Like the roadies are mates we've had a long time, and the manager used to be our tour manager before Stiff fired him, so it's more like a family going round than anything else."
Touring - even America - is fun, Chas reckons.
"It's just like being at home. We're mates, we've all got our pet names for each other, if it's anyone's birthday he gets the bumps onstage, that kind of thing. There's a strength there. We're on the bus a lot of the time but we go out if we're in the mood. When you first start the tour there's excessive beano, you're out all night for three or four nights, but then it starts getting a bit much and you slow down a bit. You've got to remember that you've got to do the show first and you can't be ill and you can't bunk off." Wouldn't have thought anyone would notice someone missing with seven people up there. Chas says that's happened - at the Elvis Costello/UB40 show he twisted his ankle on the way back for the encore and the band carried on without even noticing he'd gone. Other band members regularly get left behind at hotels and airports. Tour managers have been known to go grey and leave after two days.
The new edition of the comic they're working on now will have all this and more: "the reality of it all - the getting up early, the 10-hour drives, the dodgy equipment that you hire and have to get on time, having a sore throat and having to suck throat lozenges while you're singing, how to write an album in two months. When we got back from the last tour, for example, Thommo got his place screwed over and we had to go for a photo session, and he wanted just to stay at home and sort out his place. We're people just like everyone else and we've got as much going on. Like you're thinking about your mum and dad and your girlfriend and your home and mortgages, taxes, bills, albums, there's a lot that goes on and it's hard to put in order sometimes. But we try and stay happy.
"I think a lot of the gigs in England you go along and get told that the world's going to blow up, this is serious. People earn money to go out and enjoy themselves and want to come out laughing. I don't think it has to be miserable all the time. It can be fun too."
SUGGS COMES back in after a marathon phone conversation with his girlfriend in England.
"I think the main object of the band is just to stay the same as we are and stick to our original aims," he says, "which is why Adam and the Ants and the New Romantic thing worries me sometimes, though I do have a lot of respect for Adam. It's just that it's all getting so mega-star-is again. Losing touch with reality. All I've got to say is hopefully we will never be 'popstars' and Madness will always be normal people."
- Contributed by Fredd Boeuf
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