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SUGGS - Graham McPherson
"I was born in Hastings but my mum and dad used to have a lot of trouble when I was young. They got divorced and I ended up living with relations in Wales for three years. We moved about a lot, to Manchester, Liverpool and finally to London when I was about eleven.
I went to school in Swiss Cottage, at Quinton Kynaston. It was one of the schools that was set up in the sixties as an example of the new, easy-going comprehensives. I suppose I was a bit of a hooligan. We used to all go to football matches at Chelsea. But I was never a real mindless vandal. I was just a lot more influenced by the bad kids than the good ones. It was never my destiny to be a real hooligan.
I met the rest of the group through some of the pubs and clubs around Hampstead in the mid-seventies. There was a real 'scene' there, parties and pub discos that they all used to go over to from Highgate and Kentish Town.
The first time I saw them play, as The Invaders, was at one of those parties and I remember thinking at the time how good they were. Even then I thought they were really original, very different from anything else around then.
Then one night they heard me singing at the top of my voice on the way home from the cinema and told me to come along to a rehearsal. They were only mucking about, but I had a lot of front so I turned up anyway and gave them a version of 'See You Later Alligator'. I was pretty terrible, but the other people they auditioned were even worse so they had to let me in. One of the great things about the film is that it shows that absolutely anyone can be in a group. The film shows that we started with nothing, just the basic idea of the band. It shows that anyone can do it!
You get people who think that it's wrong and stupid, but you just keep going on. At times we used to feel really embarrassed because we were playing reggae and bluebeat which was like old fogies' music and everyone else was blasting out punk. But we just kept on going because that was what we were into.
It was brilliant when we met up with The Specials, who had been working around some of the same ideas as us. They'd been playing a little bit longer than us, but our ideas and influences were very similar. It was brilliant around that time because everything was so new, new music and new fashion. We'd play a gig with The Specials and there would be all these different types of people down there - skinheads, punks, mods, straight people, old people, the lot.
The climax of all that had to be the 2-Tone tour. We just went potty! It was great, but it had to be the last time it could be like that, that hectic and chaotic.
But we are still very close to The Specials, even though there is that rivalry between us. We always seem to bump into them when we do TV shows and tours. The great thing is that both us and The Specials are still successful so long after the initial surge of 2-Tone. Even now, if we were billed to play together, it would be really hard to say who would go top.
I think one of the best things about groups like us and The Specials is that we're still very real. Unfortunately, it is ingrained in a lot of people that a pop star is someone to look up to and placed on a pedestal. Personally, I hate that. I really wish it didn't exist.
But I can see things really changing now. I can see fans becoming a lot more involved in what is happening to their group. The Jam do it, in taking coach loads of people to some of their gigs and always talking to people.
That's one of the advantages of having a good fan club. It gives the fans a sense of involvement, like the sleeve of our last single 'Shut Up' being designed by the winner of a fan club competition. I think there's a definite trend these days towards more approachable pop stars.
As for the group as a whole, it's hard to say exactly where we are going. We are getting a lot more individual. We are growing up and everyone is doing their own thing a little more, bringing in their own ideas and influences more. But Madness is going to keep on going. It's like a train and it's unstoppable now!
CHRISSY BOY - Chris Foreman
"I've always lived in London. I was born in the University College Hospital, brought up in Kentish Town and now live in Finchley with my wife and son. I didn't really want to move out so far but the houses in Kentish Town are too expensive.
I went to school at Owen's Grammar in The Angel, the same school as Spandau Ballet. At school, I listened to a lot of different types of music, although Roxy were always my favourites.
My old man, John Foreman, is a singer. He even does gigs every now and then, performing traditional Cockney songs. He always used to try and teach me guitar when I was a kid, but I was never really interested in things like 'Bobby Shaftoe'!
I passed one 'O' level - English! - and left school at 16, got a gardening job with Lee Thompson. We were both quite interested in music and were always saying that we'd start a band. And then we just did! Me, Lee and Mike Barson.
It all started with Lee and Mike nicking an old Fats Domino LP and bringing it back so we could play along with it. We started just playing rock 'n' roll and reggae. The big breakthrough came when someone actually wrote a song!
The first song we ever did was 'Mistakes', which eventually ended up on the B-side of the 'One Step Beyond' single. Our old drummer John Hasler wrote the words and Mike did the tune. We still play the song live. It seems to be a real favourite.
In the beginning, it was only Mike who had any real musical training. He was pretty good. I couldn't even play any chords! I just used to play one string at a time, and even had a go on drums at one stage.
The first time we ever played live was in a garden at some kid's party. That bit is in the first film now. I remember we were really terrible at the time! We didn't even have a proper vocalist then, so we just got in this kid who said he could sing. We gave him the Elvis Presley songbook and he did 'Jailhouse Rock'. Awful it was!
I suppose the thing that really made a difference was the 2-Tone thing. It was really good. The 2-Tone tour we did with The Specials was a real laugh. Every night was completely packed. We were really hip for about three weeks towards the end of 1979!
But even if we hadn't got anywhere, I think me and Mike would still be playing. I never thought that we'd get anywhere anyway, but Mike always seemed pretty confident. If the group had flopped, I'd probably be in some steady job, probably gardening again. But I'd still be playing in my spare time.
It's incredible to think that we went on a world tour earlier this year. In the space of five weeks, we went to Japan, Australia and New Zealand and they took to us all really well. We finished up in America, but they don't seem to understand us as well over there. Japan was the best, although I think they go potty over every English band that goes over there.
When we're not touring, most of the time is taken up with family. The worst thing about it is that I don't really get that much time with them. It's only just lately that we've been in England for a long time.
You do tend to get a bit funny towards the end of a tour. It's great when you start, even though it's hard work. Touring is always a good laugh and it's great going somewhere that you've never been before. But when you're doing the same old things, it's sometimes hard to go into them with the same enthusiasm."
TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT
It all began when Barso and Kix started playing with Chris and Hasler. Kix was just learning to play a sax he'd picked up somewhere and Barso was always getting at him for not playing in the right key but Barso's always been one for pushing his luck and you know what Kix is like ......
The band began to grow, although attendance at rehearsals was a little ... uh ... irregular, particularly where some members - or ex-members, as they soon became - were concerned. Suggsy reckoned that he was the singer that the North London Invaders (which was what the band were called) needed but he had a spell of absence brought on by Barso kicking him out for being more interested in football matches than rehearsals. Hasler started off as drummer, but took over vocals when Gary became drummer and then became manager when Suggsy returned as vocalist. Gary had a friend called Mark Bedford who had a bass and could actually play it and when Gary left after Kix went for him, Bedders got his friend Woody in as drummer.
Chas was always around, even played bass for a while until he couldn't handle Barson any more, but when the Invaders became MADNESS and got to play at the Dublin Castle, Chas was compere and the rest, as they say, is history .....
KIX - Lee Thompson
"I was brought up down the Highgate Road in Kentish Town. I was born there and still live in the same block of flats I did as a kid. It's a lovely place; moving out of that area would be like losing one of the group. As the film shows, all the roots of Madness lie in that area.
It's a brilliant part of town. You still see all the old faces: Mary the cleaner at the launderette, the old couple above, the kids ... how they've changed and how they think I've changed and so on.
I went to school in Tufnell Park, but I wasn't really that interested in it. I suppose I was a little mischievous around that time. In the last year I probably spent more time off than in the classroom. I went in for a few exams but I was really only interested in English and Art. I used to have a gardening job, which I loved. I was even doing that when I was supposed to be in school.
When I left school, I stuck it out in the gardening job for a while. Me and Chris Foreman used to work together, but I could never hold down a job full time. I'd work for, say, nine months of the year and then have the rest of the time off.
All I had on my mind was the saxophone and getting to learn it. It is the only musical instrument that I've ever really played. My first instrument was the clarinet but I didn't really like the sound of that at all. Most kids usually go for the guitar but for me it was always the sax.
It was Roxy Music that really did it for me. They came along with the 'Virginia Plain' single and I just thought 'Wow! Look at that! A big gold saxophone!' Then there was Kilburn And The High Roads, Ian Dury's old band, who I used to go and see a lot in places like Dingwalls and the Hope and Anchor. The only thing I'd go for, though, was the sax player Davey Payne. It was going out to see them that made me go out and get a sax.
That band were so funny, they always made me feel great, inspired me a lot in the beginning. At some of the early Madness gigs, we used to start the set with loads of party poppers and balloons flying everywhere. Davey Payne used to do things like that - have smoke pouring out of his sax. I got a lot of the fun element of the group from him.
The original idea of our nutty sound was to keep the music fun and humourous, almost as a rebellion against the punk thing. We've always wanted to keep music away from politics. Music should be fun and, above all, loving. I was never a punk for that reason. I wouldn't give it an inch because of the way they looked, the aggressiveness and everything.
The original group, The Invaders, had began long before punk anyway. It just started as a laugh one day when Mike Barson invited me around for a jam session. It was just a case of blowing along with friends for a couple of hours, really easy on the mind. None of us had any idea that it would lead onto this.
But after a while, I started getting the hump a lot. I just wanted to get on with the job and have a good old blow, but we spent too much time larking around and talking about last night's film.
Then there were the rows between me and Mike, which led to me leaving the group on a couple of occasions. Me and him just couldn't get on. He used to really push and push and most rehearsals ended up in big rows. We were always pretty close to a real brother-to-brother type physical fight. Once we started gigging properly, me and Mike got that bit closer. But sometimes ... even now ....
You see, I just don't regard myself as a professional saxophonist. When we recorded our last LP in the Bahamas, the producer Clive Langer got me to do a load of overdubs and harmonies which I don't really like because you don't get the real true sound of the saxophone.
I like to keep things basic, even if it means that I'm out of tune. I don't like tarting things up. Our new LP has quite a strong jazz and funk influence, but I could never make a total jazz-funk LP. I actually prefer a sixties' reggae feel, something more straightforward. I like simple music. It's always the best."
NUTTY FACTS
In the past 100 weeks there have been only 25 weeks when MADNESS have not had a single in the charts.
There has been at least one MADNESS album in the charts for 85 of the weeks since October 30, 1979.
Lee Thompson was once late for a television appearance in Australia because he was swamped by a freak tidal wave on Bondi Beach and had to be rescued by lifeguards!
If you laid all the singles, albums and cassettes that Madness have sold end to end, they'd stretch from John O'Groats to Land's End!
Over the past twenty months MADNESS have performed live in front of approximately thirteen percent of the British nation!!
Woody is a vegetarian! His order for lunch one day in France: two raw onions and six chocolate bars!
The 7th single by the 7 members of Madness (which has 7 letters) was entitled 'The Return Of The Los Palmas 7' and peaked in the UK charts at number 7 on February 17!
MADNESS have been awarded 28 platinum, 36 gold and 72 silver discs for sales in Great Britain.
Suggs' girlfriend is Bette Bright who used to be in a band called Deaf School which had a guitarist called Clive Langer who now produces Madness's records and who was once in a band with Barso's brother (Phew!)
WOODY - Daniel Woodgate
"I was born in Maida Vale, but I've lived most of my life in Camden Town, just like the others in the band. We all really like the Camden environment and I'd find it really hard to live anywhere else. It's hard to put your finger on the reason why. It's just the place and the people. It's home ... where the heart is!
I got my first drum set when I was about twelve. An old mate sold me a really ropey kit for a fiver. It was held together with sellotape and wires and the cymbals sounded like dustbins! But I used to practise on it for hours in the bedroom with my brother helping out on guitar.
Sooner or later, the two of us managed to cobble together a band. We called ourselves Steel Erection! It was basically a rock group, real headbanging pop rock. Then we progressed to classier jazz-funk stuff. It was around that time that I first met Mark Bedford who used to come along for the odd jam session, although I was never really in a band with him until Madness.
When I saw Bedders again, he was playing in this group called The Invaders at the summer bop at the William Ellis School in North London. They were terrible in most respects, but there was also something really magic about them - their sound and the way that they put it across was really original. I remember being impressed with Bedders too. In the space of a couple of months, he had gone from being awful to being a really good bassist.
A few weeks later I heard that Gary Dovey, the old drummer, had left the band. So I just got on the phone to Bedders and said that I'd heard they wanted me to join! Of course, that was the first that he'd heard of it but he invited me along to a rehearsal and the group all seemed to really like what they heard.
My initial impression of the band was that they were quite a heavy bunch, down to earth and a bit dangerous. I'd also heard all the intimidating stories about them, but they turned out to be a really friendly bunch of blokes.
The biggest problem that I had was with the music. It was a complete change of style to anything that I'd been playing before. I was used to rock and jazz-funk and they were playing reggae. It took some time getting used to. I'd come along as this really flash little drummer who could keep time and be really fancy, but they'd all want me to play in a completely different, much more simple style. So I had to start all over again.
I suppose my musical tastes were more diverse that the rest of the band in those days. I liked stuff like Herbie Hancock, John McLaughlin, and Gong! The band used to think I was a hippy, but that was the last thing I'd ever class myself as. I was just into the music. I still listen to that stuff now if I get the chance ... but the wife's not too keen on it!
I got married last year to Jane of the Mo-Dettes. We met when she was playing at the Electric Ballroom in London with us and The Specials. I just fell head over heels. It was love at first sight!
There are difficulties because we see each other less than most other couples. But it is easier in another respect because we both have a real understanding of the situation. We both know that your career in the music business might not be that long-lived. It might last five years or so. It's worth putting up with not seeing each other all the time if it means we've built ourselves a secure future.
But the most rewarding aspect of the group for me is the buzz that I get from knowing that so many people are listening to our music, listening to the band. It's great to know that thousands of people are listening to a song that I play drums on. It's great that we can make so many people happy!"
MONSIEUR BARSO - Mike Barson
"It was originally me, Lee Thompson and Chris Foreman who had the idea of forming the group as The Invaders. I had already known those two for years and the three of us are all a little bit older than the other four in the band.
I used to live just around the corner from Lee in Highgate. We used to go to a youth club, The Aldenham Boys Club, and that was where we met Chris. The three of us didn't really go out to gigs much in those days. We were more into our own alternative entertainment. We'd do things like going over to Hampstead Heath and setting fire to loads of dustbins at the top of the hill. We used to jump on freight trains over to Willesden or Tottenham and go on little shoplifting sprees.
I think the film documents some of those early days really well. It's all true! It is a very honest film. The group have obviously changed a lot since those early days, although I'd never have said we were a particularly naive bunch as some people would suggest.
I don't think you see many naive musicians around these days. Everyone is too well aware of the rip-offs that exist, so we've always made sure that a good lawyer saw everything before we signed it.
When I left secondary school in Cricklewood I went to Hornsey Art College to do a foundation course in art, but I found it really boring. The teachers weren't interested in me and I found most of the other kids there real bores. I wanted to do drawing, pure and simple, but they're not really into that at art college these days. They're more into just talking waffle.
So I started playing piano. Quite often I'd go into college and spend the whole afternoon just playing the piano in the hall. I did have a few classical lessons, but most of what I know I taught myself during those sessions. I also learnt a lot just by picking up records by people like Carole King and just playing along with them.
A lot of people tend to write off Madness as just a silly little pop group, but we do all take the music highly seriously. It used to make me well sick when people said we're just a group and nothing else.
Some people seem to think you can sit down and knock out a single just like that. You can't! We have to sit down and think a lot about it and try something different with every song. I think 'Night Boat to Cairo' was possibly a bit similar to 'One Step Beyond' but every single since then has been really different from the one before.
I never want it to get to the stage where we have a winning formula and we just keep whacking out the hits like clockwork.
The most recent one I've written was 'Grey Day' and there was a lot of time put into that. It was originally inspired by 'The Bogus Man' a track off the second Roxy Music album. When we first did it, the song had really steady bassline and loads of echo on the saxophone. But Bedders didn't like it because he thought the bassline was too simple. So we dropped the old version and completely re-did the song.
When we did our first album, it only took us three weeks to finish all the recording, mixing, artwork and cover. But we'd already been playing those songs for two years. We'd had years to work them out so things worked really quickly in the studio. On the second and third LPs, we had to do a lot more work in the studio itself.
I think our albums have got better as we've gone on, but, on the other hand, I tend to be a little more pessimistic about the group these days. I think we've been unhip since the first album. When we were making the second LP, I'd go to the studio on the tube and there would be loads of kids coming up to me with Madness badges, but I think a lot of them have moved on to Adam And The Ants now.
All the others are still really confident because we are still a very popular group. I just tend to be a bit of a pessimist."
TAKE SEVEN: Making a movie with Madness
It's hardly surprising to find a band like Madness re-creating their early escapades on film. A powerful comic visual act has always been part and parcel of their music and a full-length feature film seemed only one step beyond the vivid videos which have accompanied their hit singles.
"We'd talked about a film a couple of times in the past," says Dave Robinson, Managing Director of Stiff Records, "but the band's schedule had always been so tight that it had seemed out of the question. Then, this March came loose by itself. We sat down and discussed it in mid-February and we decided very quickly to go ahead.
"We were going to try something fancy in the beginning but eventually decided on something realistic. I taped interviews with all the boys in which we talked about everybody's lives and built a script up from there."
Making a full-length feature film is a very expensive business and the financial backing for the project was shared between the band themselves and Stiff Records. "The money for the film came from the first big royalty cheque we ever received," Suggs admits. "We thought that the best thing would be to invest it in something like a film, rather than just blow it all. It's a great long-term investment - an opportunity to show the way we were in the early days ... and see the way we've changed!"
In choosing a director for the film, Madness looked no further than Stiff Records and Dave Robinson.
"I would never have set myself up as the film's director had it not previously worked out on the band's videos. I'm against the one-sided thinking that is generally the rule when a director makes a film. It should be a mutual undertaking with me kind of latching myself on to the side of the band and helping them to make it happen."
Madness and Dave Robinson began work on Take It Or Leave It at the start of 1981, taking the film's title from a track on their Absolutely album. In February thirty-six different locations were chosen within easy reach of the film crew's base, a disused warehouse behind King's Cross Station in London.
It had been decided to shoot the film entirely on location with the major incidents in the history of the group being re-enacted in the same streets, studios, houses and clubs as they had taken place in originally. Suggs and Mike Barson gained the crew entry to their parents' homes and Chris Foreman allowed his home to be used for filming. The Dublin Castle and Hope and Anchor pubs, where the band had originally played, gave their enthusiastic co-operation, and a party was re-created at Si Birdsall's house, the site of the first gig by the North London Invaders. A sequence showing the band recording their first single, "The Prince", was filmed in Pathways Recording Studio, where the disc had originally been cut.
London Transport allowed the unit to film in Aldwych Underground Station. Aldwych station is closed on Sundays but on the particular Sunday when filming took place, the city was unusually busy with crowds watching the progress of the London Marathon. At one point during filming a member of the public somehow appeared on the platform and, after watching the filming for ten minutes, enquired when the next train was due .....
The only location problems arose when it came to re-creating two of the group's early gigs. One venue, the Nashville, had since been gutted by fire, while another, the Acklam Hall, had been badly damaged in a riot only a few days before filming was due to begin. In both cases, however, suitable locations were found in Dingwall's dancehall in Camden and the Keskidee Community Centre in Islington.
As to other difficulties encountered by the crew and Dave Robinson: "I think everything that could go wrong has gone wrong at one stage or another. The first couple of days' work went down the drain through the lab overcooking the developer. Then I've had cameras break down, hairs in the gate (whatever that means ...) radio mikes that haven't worked and, to cap it all, I nearly broke my leg!"
Robinson fell from an improvised camera tower a couple of weeks before the end of filming and directed the rest of the film from a wheelchair with a sprained ankle encased in plaster.
"It certainly has been eventful and the way I feel right now, I wouldn't make another film for all the money in China!"
One of the more engaging aspects of the film is the way the early sequences are in black-and-white and the rest is in colour (it took the Beatles one film to experiment in black-and-white and another to sort out colour!). There must be method in this Madness - what's it all about then?
"Real life," says Dave Robinson.
"We ran out of black-and-white film," claim the band.
Technical buffs will doubtless be thrilled to learn that the film was shot on 16mm film and then blown up to 35mm at the Stockholm Film Institute in Sweden: "Because they're the best." No expertise spared, by the sound of it.
The group themselves believe the film succeeds as a humorous and accurate account of their early days. As Suggs puts it: "It's about a bunch of ordinary people who form a band and eventually make a record. It just shows that anyone can do it! It's about us as people more than us as part of the music industry!"
The multi-talented Chas Smash, compere, trumpeter and dancer extraordinaire, adds a note of caution.
"The film shows exactly what the people in the band are like. It really is honest. Obviously there's no sex and violence, though. You can't be that honest, but otherwise, it is totally accurate. There's no glossy dramatisation or anything. It's just us!"
So how does each of the nutty boys come across in their first celluloid adventure? The band's witty deep-thinker Lee Thompson has each member well pinned down.
"The film shows the innocence and naivity of Mark and Woody when they first joined the group; the frustrations of Carl when he wasn't a full member; the humpiness of me; the paranoia of Mike; the kindness and thoughtfulness of Suggsy and the wit and sharpness of Chris!
"It gets us all down to a tee!"
So take it or leave it - the return of the Los Palmas Seven as you'll never see them again. It would be Madness to miss it!
BEDDERS - Mark Bedford
"The first music I ever got into was Motown. That was at a really early age, when I was at primary school in Islington, where I've always lived. I can remember it on the radio in the morning before I left for school. Tony Blackburn was on the breakfast show and at that time he was the champion of Motown, playing all the new stuff first. That's really the first music I heard.
Then there was a bit of a gap and I lost interest in music until I was about 14. It was then that someone bought me a plastic record player for my birthday and I started buying the pop songs played on the radio. The first record I ever bought was 'I Can See Clearly Now' by Johnny Nash.
About a year later I got my first musical instrument, a bass to play in a school band. It was just a typical school group doing Beatles stuff, nothing special.
I got into Madness, or The Invaders as they were then, through their old drummer Gary Dovey, who was in the same class as me at William Ellis School. The old bass player had left and he got me into the band as a replacement. Gary Dovey and John Hasler left this band, leaving me feeling stranded in the group. It was a bit unnerving to suddenly find myself in a band with older blokes who I had no connections with.
Funnily enough, the first gig I ever played with the group was at my old school. I'd organised this summer bop myself, a free concert for all the kids in the school. We hired a PA and printed tickets to make it seem like a proper event, and it turned out really well. In fact, the first few gigs were all great. It was that whole feeling of doing something, being part of something.
It was great, too, when the 2-Tone thing happened. Everything suddenly became so hectic! Our first single "The Prince" was originally done just as a demonstration tape for 2-Tone and it ended up getting released. Then we signed to Stiff and recorded our debut album in a couple of weeks!
Our first year with Stiff was also pretty frantic. We just didn't stop working. We were on the road continually. It was a really fast year. It was only when we came to start work on the second LP that I began to feel part of the machine, part of the rock routine. The good thing about that LP was that we'd already been playing some of the songs like 'Embarrassment' and 'Baggy Trousers' for a few months. But there was still that pressure to write songs to order.
And now there's the new LP, '7', which we're pretty pleased with. I think there was quite a lot of pressure on us to change, to get away from the original nutty sound. I think we had to do that to keep people interested.
The horn section is getting quite prominent now. Carl is getting a lot better on the trumpet, Lee's still there on sax and now me and Mike have started playing horns too. That will hopefully become more and more prominent as we all learn. With a bit of luck, there'll soon be a four-piece horn section in Madness. That would be really exciting.
As for playing live, we want to expand the line-up even more. There is talk of an extra percussionist and maybe some girl back-up singers. I still really like playing live. I think it's the most emotional experience you can get in a group.
Hopefully, the group will be quite a long term thing. I can see it really changing in the next year. If we were to do another couple of LPs, I'm sure you could hold the fifth one up to the first one and they would be worlds apart. It would be fantastic to actually listen to the changes."
CHAS - Carl Smyth
"I've lived in London most of my life - born in Middlesex Hospital - but I used to travel around with my mum and dad when I was young. Both sides of my family are Irish and both my parents were dancers. It was basically very traditional Irish dancing, very competitive.
I don't think that's how I picked up my dancing though, because I never used to dance when I was young. That all started at the Madness gigs down at the Dublin Castle pub in Camden. At that time Lee Thompson was always doing nutty things for a laugh, so one night he asked me to come onstage and introduce the group just for a change.
I always used to dance in the audience, then I just started dancing on stage to give it that extra bit of impact. I was having such a laugh that I never got off!
I'd known all the band long before they actually started playing anyway, from hanging around pubs in North London. I was never a member of The Invaders early on. I used to play bass! It was a real laugh, but I left after an argument with Mike Barson. He'd promised me a lift home one night and never given it to me, so I rang him up and told him I was out of the group the next day!
The first music that I ever got into was through singles that my old man used to buy, stuff like Manfred Mann. The first record I ever bought myself was Marc Bolan's 'Bolan Boogie'. These days, though, I'll listen to anything. I used to collect records but it turned into a really expensive hobby. You wind up paying a couple of quid for a record just because it's on a certain label.
A couple of us were skinheads for quite a while, because we liked the whole style of it and some of us had been skins first time round. The funny thing is that we never really planned it. One of my mates had to have his head shaved because of a nasty cut he got after a fight in the Hampstead Classic cinema. So he was the first. Then one night Lee Thompson said that he'd pay for anyone who dared to have a crop and that was that!
After that we did get quite heavily into skinhead culture and music, the boots and braces. I loved all that. We used to collect all the records. We were into collecting old stuff, Motown, reggae and R&B. It was all stuff that people weren't really into at the time because there were hardly any other skins then.
We never used to go out and see groups much then. We'd just go to pubs or bring our own records along and gatecrash parties. We used to mess around a lot, bunking trains, spraying silly things and generally having a laugh doing daft things.
If the group hadn't made it, I think we'd still be knocking around together. I'd probably still be in the same job, probably in a better position. I used to do agency work, just bullshitting my way from job to job, trying to get a better rate. I wouldn't like to stay in one job too long. I like change. I could never do anything too mundane.
I don't know if I've actually changed a lot since those days. I don't think you ever really change inside. You just give yourself different rules. I hate the idea of 'maturing'. No one ever really wants to mature. I want to have a laugh, but your laughs get different as you get older.
I like touring. I like the sort of feeling it brings, having things to do all the time. We take things a lot easier on the road these days though.
For three years it was just smoking and drinking for all of us, one big beano! We used to come back from a tour looking knackered - white faces, spots and everything! A lot of us got really concerned about that. Now we even go out training to try to keep fit. I don't even really drink anymore. If we go out to the pub, I'll usually just have a pint.
When I'm not officially working, I like to be at home, although there usually isn't much time as we keep ourselves to such a heavy schedule. It's still really hectic.
We want to get some writing done soon, rather than wait until it's time to do the fourth album. We want to try and pace things a bit better, try and put even more in."
- Contributed by "Loobyloo" Buckley
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