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Madness - No Longer Mad by Cary Darling
Los Angeles - "Hey you!" The deep-throated shouts from the audience continue throughout the set, peaking in intensity during the encores when everyone just knows that Madness' Carl Smyth is going to step up to the microphone and let out the trademarked salutation. But it never happens.
Sure, the band performs "One Step Beyond" - the song which features that commanding opening - but gone is that distinctive rap. Hey you! Don't watch that, watch this. This is the heavy heavy monster sound, the nuttiest sound around. So if you've come in off the street, and you're beginning to feel the heat, well listen brother, you'd better start to move your feet to the rockingest, rock steady beat of Madness.
Those words almost sweep the listener away in time, back to 1979 in London when the two tone/ska movement blasted out of England on the back of do-it-yourself optimism pioneered by punk three years before. Ska, with its hyper-reggae beat, message of racial harmony, and utilitarian fashion sense, influenced a number of British bands - the English Beat, The Selecter, the Body Snatchers, The Specials, and most popular of all on an international level, Madness.
However, Madness isn't mad anymore; not mad as in angry but mad as in madcap. From their first album cover in 1979 through nearly all their videos, the guys in Madness have come off as six good-natured loons larking around London for a laugh. Their music, often a manic blend of frantic ska and English music hall, only underlined their sense of humor. But the members of Madness say that it's time to alter that image.
"Someone used a quotation from Smokey Robinson's 'Tears of a Clown' to describe us," explains drummer Daniel Woodgate. "He was saying how serious we were trying to be and that it was the sort of sadness of a clown. In a lot of ways, that's one of our big hangups because of our past recognition with the wacky, fun, happy image."
He gestures wildly to emphasize his last few words. "But there's a lot of sadness that goes with it. There's a lot of our own personal side that we would like to be serious about."
"If you categorize yourself as only fun, you want to get serious," says vocalist Graham McPherson, who goes by the nickname of Suggs, and who feels there will always be an underpinning of humor in Madness.
Still, the band has had a lot to be serious about lately. Founder/keyboards player Mike Barson recently left to live with his wife in Holland, throwing the group into a funk about its future. They played a date in Poland, giving the septet a glimpse of a world rarely seen by Western pop stars. Also, Madness has become involved with such causes as CND (Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament) and Greenpeace in Britain. But, most of all, Madness - who started when the band members were in their teens - has grown up.
"When we started, we were young and enthusiastic and very spontaneous," says bassist Mark Bedford. "While we're still young, we've got sort of old heads on our shoulders." The other "old heads" are vocalist Carl Smyth, sax player Lee Thompson, guitarist Chris Foreman, and - on a temporary basis for now - keyboards player Paul Carrack, formerly of Squeeze, who performed a solo version of "Tempted" during Madness' recent spate of California dates.
The new album, Keep Moving - their fifth in the U.S. - follows in the footsteps of The Rise and Fall, their last British album, some of which showed up on their eponymously titled Geffen debut last year. Gone is the zaniness and the ska of their first two Sire albums (One Step Beyond, Absolutely) and it has been replaced by still optimistic yet sober pop looks at English life, as in "Our House" and "The Sun and the Rain." "It's getting increasingly hard to become the image we've been as in the past; these fun-loving wacky boys," Woodgate muses.
"The humor comes across from watching the videos but the videos are totally separate from he music," adds Bedford. "There's no relation whatsoever. For the videos, we didn't want to do just the guitar/group shot, playing our instruments. We just wanted to fill them with our own ideas."
However, even the videos will be taking a different turn as "Michael Caine" their new British single, which actually features the voice of the actor of the same name, sports a video without jokes. "We were thinking of things to do and we realized we'd done them all before," says McPherson.
"We'd always said, 'Oh, we're sick of doing these silly wacky sketches' but when we were going the video, we would try to come up with something funny at times and then we'd remember, 'God, this is supposed to be serious,'" recalls Woodgate.
The departure of Barson, coming at a time when Madness was enjoying its first broad-based U.S. success, put a cloud over the band's future. "We asked each other what we wanted to do and we all wanted to carry on," reflects McPherson on the aftermath of Barson leaving. "There was no danger of it falling apart but no one knew. We haven't done any recording yet. That'll be the trying time."
"It has made everyone more aware how important it is to write songs, we just had enough for an album. You think of someone like Elvis Costello and we're quite lazy as songwriters."
"I must admit I spent a few good months being depressed about it (Baron's departure)," concedes Bedford. "On looking back on it, we could've made some rash decisions about the whole thing; thrown in the towel, really. But we rode the storm out and things are looking up now."
One of Barson's last "official" acts as a Madness member was the Polish date. "We got offered their one music show they have on TV. We thought we might as well take it and see what it's like," offers Bedford. "It was definitely different but not as bad as I thought it would be. There weren't as many soldiers on the streets as I thought there would be."
He laughs. "The thing about the soldiers was that there were some about but it was so cold that they were hiding in doorways."
"There were about 30 kids down front who did know the music but it was real prestige thing for the audience," says McPherson. "We were miming our songs and most of the audience was there because it was music from the West; most of them were this Politburo bourgeoisie. At other times, we spent a lot of time talking about politics and it does open your mind up a bit. But I still didn't see what it was like with real people. Musicians never see that. It does seem a cruel way of life. It gives you a funny perspective of what you see when you come over here. It kind of exaggerates America, with all its advertising and such."
Back in Britain, Madness has become increasingly involved in various environmental causes, which is somewhat ironic as - in their early days - the band members had been pegged by the media as reactionary racists because they attracted a lot of skinheads - a right-wing British working class subculture - to their gigs. "It still kind of lingers," says McPherson, with a sigh. "That was a real millstone around our necks for the first three years. You get catch-phrases stuck on you and for us, it was either 'nutty' or 'skinhead.' We didn't ignore it. If people said we were racist, we'd say the opposite but the innuendos would still linger."
Madness was susceptible to such charges as, ironically, skinheads have a taste for ska and bluebeat (a predecessor of reggae) and Madness was one of the few major ska bands without a black member. "It's gone in England, fortunately," he says of the skinhead influence in the audience. "As we became more pop, we lost the hardcore. We get a much wider audience now. The skinhead movement is sort of dying out generally and we've got an audience, in England, who have changed with us."
In terms of their own politics, there's a Greenpeace logo on the bottom right corner of Keep Moving. While the band has done numerous benefits, their music still concerns itself mostly with interpersonal relationships. "We don't want to get too seriously into it," observes Woodgate. "We show our support because it can actually open up people's minds who wouldn't normally have thought about it. Just for the fact we've done the gig, they might look into it."
For McPherson, writing a song with a message puts him in the midst of a dilemma. "It's difficult to put a message into a song; it may not make an inch of difference to the people who are involved. In some of the songs, like 'Turning Blue,' we raise the issue of spending money on nuclear weapons but it would be different trying to write a song about beating up seals. On the LP, we don't say 'Go and support Greenpeace' but that we support Greenpeace."
Madness' music and lyrics have always been as thoroughly British as a kidney pie and ale picnic on the moors. "We just try to write about our surroundings, where we live, what we do," explains Bedford. "For a lot of American people, it does roam into more the realm of fantasy because what's instilled in people here is you get in your car, you drive, or whatever. We just right songs about us, and it's not about getting in cars. It's about getting on the bus..."
"Or pushbike," smiles Woodgate.
"Our writing is pinpointed that it sounds very English," Bedford continues. "I think it's changing now but we don't tend to write about general things. We've gotten microscopic and honed in on things. Other bands tend to generalize more."
"I just write about things that are close to me. It just so happens that they are from my past and my surroundings," explains McPherson.
The band has taken some knocks in the British press for being pretentiously working class but McPherson laughs at the suggestion. "I don't think anybody could call us working class," he retorts. "First of all, you have to be working to be working class and I don't consider this work."
It is this utter English orientation which is perhaps one reason why it took them nearly five years to earn any mainstream success in America. "I don't think it ever bothered us, really. We never went out of our way to be big in America," Bedford replies. "It was never a priority. We didn't have a record deal here for two-and-a-half years. Then we sort of woke up to the fact that a lot of English bands were doing quite well; radio was changing over here and everything.
"We had the rest of the world going wild over us so why band your head against the wall for years and get nowhere when you can actually go to territories that want you? It didn't seem America was interested in us so we weren't interested in America."
"But we always like the sunshine," jokes Woodgate.
"And America has always been good for audiences. We got great reception when we did Anaheim with David Bowie. We did a Day On The Green in San Francisco with The Police and we went down really well; better than we anticipated," states Bedford.
However, their American fans are often stuck in a time warp, relating to Madness as if it was still 1979, wearing black and white clothing and pork pie hats, in perfect ska fashion. McPherson takes a philosophical view of the whole thing. "It doesn't bother me. I prefer to be more acclaimed for the new songs but I don't dislike our old songs. It's difficult to put down the people who are enjoying what you're doing. Obviously, if I went to see Madness, I'd want to hear 'One Step Beyond.' It's easy to be cynical They're really excited and I prefer to have people jumping up and down."
But they have differing views on bands in L.A., which has been the home of a lively scene - merging both the rock-oriented mod and the reggae-oriented ska fashions for the last two years. "the mod thing was more popular in England but it's more ethnically mixed in America," observes McPherson. "I've seen The Untouchables and I think they're very good."
When informed that there is a local mod/ska scene in Los Angeles, Woodgate asks with a sense of bemusement, "Are there any?" At one point, he investigated the LA pop scene and came away sorely disappointed. "I went to the Whisky when it was still open. I would have paid to get out."
While Madness' music is perfect accompaniment for a night of pubcrawling, the band's actually putting brakes on the tour bus. "In this day of video and whatever, touring just seems to really be like banging your head against a wall for no reason," Woodgate explains. "We spend vast amounts of money to go out on the road and we've never actually made money on the road, ever. We've gone into many markets around the world - 'markets,' that sounds awful - and it's done us no good at all. We've had sellouts everywhere and it's been good touring but we've never really benefited from it."
"Playing live does get difficult to enjoy the longer you spend doing it. You become more cynical and you can get more cynical about your audience," adds McPherson.
Cynicism about an audience which has made them stars upsets him. "It does frighten me but it doesn't happen often; and you're more cynical about the situation than the audience. It happens whenever you don't want to be doing what you're doing. Fortunately, we're in a position now where we don't have to go out on the road all the time."
Those few Americans who Madness' feature film, Take It or Leave It which showed the members of Madness re-enacting the beginnings of the band, know that the group got together out of excitement over a shared passion for ska/reggae and R&B rather than out of a desire to develop musical skills. In fact, the only member or the original band who could really play his instrument was pianist Mike Barson. But, for McPherson at least, there were and are no grand goals beyond music.
"It is pretty horrible business; the falseness of it all. There's nothing noble about being in a band," he says quietly. "I don't know what else I could do. Sometimes I think, fuck all, what can I do? I can't be working class. I can't go on the dole. I can't do a proper job anymore. And this is what I want to do."
For now, the members of Madness plan to concentrate on recording themselves and producing others - they've just finished building a new studio in London - and McPherson is even toying with the idea of working in television. "We could do a TV series; we've had vague offers. I don't know if I could be a good film actor but I think we could do a TV series."
With the entire two-tone movement a part of the past in England, he feels it is very important to move into new areas. "I don't think it died as much as people moved on to different things," he says of the heady days of the ska movement. "The porkpie hats are gone but those people are still around. There's a big soul thing going on right now and a lot of the scene has shifted from the live clubs to the discos but those are probably the same people."
For Woodgate, he wants to get back to playing music. "For years and years, we were playing music but there was so much more involved. We had no time for ourselves and in the end the music could suffer, if we let ourselves be influenced by record companies who constantly want us touring and all the rest of it. It gets to the point where you're doing so much work promoting the band, you don't have time to write music. Now we've got the chance to do it right.
"Music is what it's all about. It's kind of ridiculous for a musician to say this but it looked that way. We used to go to rehearsal and get a phone all every five minutes saying that we had to do this interview or that photo session. I might as well have gone into the office and waited for the phone call to come in."
It is one of the supreme ironies of the tumultuous British music scene that, Madness, each of the members being in their mid-20s, is perceived as being a band of elder statesmen in the world of English pop. McPherson acknowledges that he sometimes feels over the hill. "But obviously we aren't. There is something perversely satisfying about seeing bands come and go - but it's a small amount of satisfaction," he laughs. "You see these bands with these 19-year-old guys - like I was four years ago - and it does make you feel old."
For now, worries of being past their prime have to be put aside as the Madness players begin to concentrate on the first post-Barson album. It appears that now the group's songwriting skills are going to be put to the ultimate test. Can they come up with the goods? "With music, you can't tell," sighs McPherson. "Even if I had Holland-Dozier-Holland here with me, who knows?"
- Contributed by Steve Bringe
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