Sam's Minneapolis 20th May 1981 - DomP Remaster

 

Still just in time for its own birthday! DomP reminded me this morning about a gig that he sent to me back in December. This gig from Minneapolis (like many from those '80/'81 US tours) sounds superb and even better for getting a bit of a DomP workout.

Hugh is in a particularly mischievous mood on this night telling stories of royals that could get him hanged for treason!

As always thanks to Dom for the work and the share.

FLAC: https://we.tl/t-PpaNrBTeDAWsBrO1

Artwork: https://we.tl/t-4ZMab79E254momiV

So 45 years ago tonight... enjoy!

1981 Demos/Rehearsals

An odd little assortment of tracks here, perhaps again from Jet's place. Another version of 'Tomorrow Was' with JJ covering vocal duties, but not the best sounding. There is a much better (and dare I say it funnier version by virtue of JJ's Bobby 'Boris' Pickett vocals!) on here somewhere if you care to look.

I have no further information on the story behind this particular recording. A brief message exchange with Chatts has come up with the following scenario. Listening back to this collection, 'Tomorrow Was' is not live, it is the SIS version. Either whoever put these four songs together way back when just added it as a 'rarity' or something else was going on. Could it be that after release of 'Tomorrow Was (The Hereafter)' by SIS (SIS 001) in 1980 the song may have been considered for inclusion in the live set and inclusion here of the 1976 version was the initial step to working the song up to a gig ready state? If this was the case, it came to nothing. But perhaps the seed was sown in a way that resulted in the cocktail version of 'Nubiles' (the B-side of SIS 001) featured a couple of years later in the Feline tour set.

All pure speculation of course.

FLAC: https://we.tl/t-cMg6LYkwO0LtqUdG

Artwork: https://we.tl/t-ffu16yNNYMOhMwzE

 

Interview (New Musical Express 31st January 1981)

 Prior to the release of 'The Gospel According to the Meninblack' the band did the usual circuit of the music press. Here's their interview for NME that appeared within its pages on 31st January 1981.

THERE ARE four women in the cluttered cubicle of UA's cramped office. Press officers Pat and Kathy, Pennie Smith and myself are drinking tea and swopping chat while we wait for The

Strangles. Amongst the stacks of records and piles of correspondence some suprising discoveries are being made about the absent members of a group whose unpleasant reputation owes a great deal to their notoriously anti-women aura.

To Pat and Kathy they've so far proved model clients: polite, obliging, even slightly shy. Pennie,

who has met them many times before, quietly states that they're scared of women.

Bulky Jet Black has already arrived and at intervals blunders cheerfully in and out of the office, making a sudden, self-conscious exit when Pat plays some of the tracks from The Stranglers'

forthcoming album 'THEMENINBLACK'. These turn out to be a swirling waltz tune under demented laughter; plus a pleasant but unremarkable Stranglers-style pop song called 'Second Coming'.

When Jet Black bumbles back into the room he asks eagerly for my opinion. My polite but transparent lack of enthusiasm is not an auspicious start to our encounter.

It's almost an hour later when Hugh Cornwell whirls in, fresh from a session with Smash Hits, oozing apologies and oily charm. He plants a deferential peck on Pennie's cheek, shakes my hand and begins to recount a genial denial of The Stranglers' infamous Journalist Kidnapping episode, partly, I suspect, for my benefit.

He passes me a copy of their planned album cover, a reproduction of The Last Supper with the Man In Black (in real life a more mundane employee of EMI) superimposed amongst the disciples close to Christ. On the back there's a bastardised version of The Lord's Prayer with The

Stranglers themselves called Jet-In-Black, Dave-In-Black etc. And the concept is credited to Hugh-In-Black-In-Nice.

We drive to a nearby pub to discuss the significance of Themeninblack project. I'm also seeking some explanation of The Stranglers' bullyboy reputation, particularly in relation to their past portrayal of women. It seems to me that sexual politics is a subject for discussion, not dogma,  and I'm fully prepared for any reasonable justification of the attitudes they've appeared to propagate.

It also seems an appropriate time to once again air the topic of the group's controversial character, since Jet Black has just written a book about the Nice debacle. While he maintains that the fines and suspended sentence imposed by the French authorities were a face-saving exercise designed to stop the group suing for wrongful arrest, he also admits that it was suspicion of The Stranglers that led the University administration to try and stop the performance and indirectly provoke a riot.

Hugh Cornwell is not as sinister-looking as his photographs suggest. and he has a faint air of Jack Nicholson's comic madness: chin stubbled, hair askew and eyes aglint with a dangerous inner amusement. His expression this evening smacks of polite, amused tolerance mixed with a slight lasciviousness that fades pretty swiftly as our conversation continues.

Jet Black is a large, middle-aged man with an old, shadowed, rough-featured face. Sitting round a table in a pub full of excitable boozing city businessmen the interview starts innocuously enough with the original idea behind 'Themeninblack’.

 

IT WAS Jet who first developed an interest in UFOs and the frequent references to related, unexplained men in black. At the time The Stranglers were working on the 'Black And White' .

album; they also discovered a man in black lurking in the background of the cover to 'Rattus Norvegicus•. and this set of coincidences acted as the catalyst for combined investigations.

Who are these mysterious men?

Jet: "Nobody really knows. They appear and threaten people who talk too much about them. The puzzle is,  are they someone from the government saying Be quiet, you've sussed it and we don't want this to get out?"

An earthly government?

"Yeah,  or is it the reverse? Is it someone from a flying object? That was just the central thing that got us thinking about the religious context. When Jesus Christ came down in clouds of smoke, maybe he was in some kind of flying machine. Maybe he was just a mere mortal from another planet. I mean the whole Bible is full of stuff like that."

Hugh elaborates an idea that owes something to Erik Von Daniken's theories and adds that most phenomena that aren't understood are given a religious  connotation. He also explains that The Stranglers' research into the "spacemen" manifestations in the Bible led them to decide that God treated his people with marked malevolence, a statement which I assume refers largely to the Old Testament.

Jet: "The whole thing is that all the Bible is supposed to be a holy book which is supposed to dictate some code of conduct that people have-been following for thousands of years. What we're saying is maybe people should start questioning the traditional beliefs that the interpreters of the Bible have given them. Maybe they've got it completely wrong."

 

SO FAR our interview has been affable enough on either side, but things begin to go awry

when I ask about the strange connotations of the 'Men In Black' track on •The.Raven• album.

Hugh: "Well, one suggested explanation is that we're just a farm for beings from another planet, and that whenever they've got a function on, like a wedding or something, they come down and grab a human and take them back and eat them."

Jet hurriedly adds that the album is a more serious appraisal of those kind of ideas.

"Like, everyone's sitting round waiting for The Messiah to return. Well, maybe when he does he might not turn out to be a bloke with a ring round his head and a white suit on. He might come down and start herding people into space ships and take them off somewhere. I mean you don't know, do you?"

It's at about this time that I realise I'm smiling. My expression isn't complete cynicism so much as mild, well-meaning mockery of this earnest explanation of an outlandish idea. I'm also amused by the thought that such a sinister vision of the Second Coming seems so typically

Stranglers in its tortured, determinedly pessimistic theorising.

However, the effects of my disrespectful levity suddenly show when Jet Black begins to twitch with irritation.

"You might laugh at it, but you can't disprove it. It’s just as good an argument as him coming down to save the world." He barks belligerently, and spinning round savagely in his seat he stops the conversation.

I’ m just asking Hugh flow seriously he treats this space/religious mysticism - "Seriously enough to write an album about it" - when Black barges back into the interview, emphatically prodding the table with a meaty forefinger.

Jet, it seems had a strong Roman Catholic upbringing, and the dire consequences of disbelief that were impressed upon him at an early age have somehow led him not just to reject religion

but to totally deny the concept of love and substitute instead a woolly theory of total, universal, self-interest.

"I don't see any love anywhere. I mean, what is love? Show me some!" he demands ferociously. "All anybody ever wants to achieve is their own happiness. Any kind of love is just the opposite. It’s a totally selfish emotion. Absolutely!"

I disagree strongly, but since I'm unwilling to reveal my private convictions by exposing my personal experience. I'm at a disadvantage. The Stranglers treat this as a tremendous triumph.

On a different level I argue that if an action gratifies yourself and benefits someone else it achieves both aims, and what's wrong with that?

This prompts a fresh stream of nihilistic blabberings from the antagonistic Black, who entirely avoids my question and ends his outpourings by declaring that it'lI take about 5.000 years for him to get his views across to the vast majority.

While Jet sighs and he and Hugh indulge in some sympathetically complacent chuckling, I return to 'THEMENINBLACK. I say that whereas The Stranglers have previously celebrated the darker side of life without proposing solutions, on this occasion they seem to be trying to achieve

something positive by making people question accepted values.

Jet weighs in ponderously. "We want to stimulate brain cell activity. you know? That

means putting something on record that you actually have to think about. And they'lI

have to think about this one."

Taken widely that's a moral judgement on achieving something worthwhile, Therefore you've just indirectly said ...

"You're trying to trap me, aren't you?" Jet accuses sharply.

Yes, of course. You've just tried to trap me.

Jet: "I just think it would be wonderful if the human race stopped lying. Everyone, everywhere's telling a pack of lies .....

And he's off again on the utter deceit of moral codes, personal, political, spiritual ...

Manoeuvring back onto seemingly more solid ground I ask Hugh how he thinks Themeninblack concept is going to go down with Stranglers record buyers.

"I don't know. It's probably going to go totally over their heads." he laughs.

Then he contradicts himself by adding, "We've always aimed our records at people who like to think about what they're listening to, so hopefully they'll make an effort to understand it." This statement leads into my second line of argument.

 

I TELL Hugh Cornwell that a lot of women, including myself, found the songs on the first two Stranglers albums threatening and offensive. If, as he's previously said, The Stranglers claim to be trying to show something to their audience, then what were those lyrics supposed.to illustrate for me?

Cornwell, adopting a lofty air of Detachment,  replies blandly. "I'm surprised you found them threatening. Maybe that demonstrates your own insecurity."

I don't think so. Because…

"If you felt secure." Hugh interrupts, "then you wouldn't feel threatened by them."

But women aren't secure from violence in this world, are they?

Answering, Cornwell becomes sharper and more dictatorial in tone. "So that shows something then. That shows that a lot of women feel insecure."

Yes. But you were playing on those insecurities weren't you? .

"Not at all. I was playing on my guitar." (Great manly guffaws accompany this humorous gem),

"I don't see anything wrong with using song lyrics to extol the virtues of women. Yet women find that offensive. They should take it as flattery. An author like Vladimir Nabokov, who wrote Lolita, spends the first hundred pages extolling the virtues of young girls and yet that's treated as art. whereas a three minute song that's putting it bluntly isn't."

Staggered by such a sweeping comparison, I point out that Lolita is a work of art because it treats the subject truthfully and not as a prurient exploitation of the attractiveness of young girls. At the end of the book when Humbert Humbert finds a faded and pregnant Lolita, he is overcome with regret at never having made an attempt to explore her personality and at

having destroyed something in her by taking away her childhood.

"I'm not into people going round destroying other peoples' lives." Cornwell responds, "I don't want to praise that attitude ... "

So-what about lines from your lyrics like 'Beat you till you drop',

"That was about a particular situation where, um, where a girl is unfaithful and the guy reacted violently. It happens all the time." he adds dismissively. "It's just a document of life."

"Your argument is like saying Tolstoy should never have written 'War And Peace• ... Jet Black tells me.

I don't see how you can possibly compare that with your situation where you’re putting a viewpoint into a three-minute song directed at young people who may not have fully formed their views. It might have been construed, in fact at the time it was construed, that you weren't only advocating that attitude, you were actually glorifying it.

"Then We were misunderstood." Hugh states simply.

Does that give you any regrets?

"No. not at all. I feel disdain and sadness for the way in which our lyrics were interpreted. "

(And in case you've forgotten, let me remind readers of the references to 'pieces of meat', 'peaches', 'nubiles', 'treat you rough', 'smack your face', etc., and the general crass vindictiveness with which The Stranglers' early lyrics treated women.)

I don't think your explanation would satisfy someone who was offended by your songs. You obviously don't feel any sense of responsibility for what you've written.

"We admit certain responsibilities towards people who buy our sort of stuff."

Cornwell replies smoothly. "Of course, we have to. It would be irresponsible not to. But

just because we describe a certain incident, it doesn't mean we're saying go out and do it."

But you didn't make that clear. did you? In one interview, you were quoted as saying women like to be dominated.

"Well a lot of them do. It's down to their insecurity."

 

HUGH CORNWELL'S last statement takes him right round in a smug, simplistic circle of blinkered bigotry. And by this time it's clear that there is very little point in continuing our conversation since The Stranglers are now entrenched in the limited,  juvenile roles they're acting out, flashing conspiratorial grins and fuelling each other's flippancy with forced gales of

laughter.

It's now Jet Black's turn to sally forth from the safety of the defensive, locker-room mentality they've created in their corner of the pub, and he launches into a line of argument that leads him further into the realms of the ridiculous.

This time he pretentiously compares The Stranglers' songs to Winston Churchill's memoirs of the Second World War which, he insists, I'm implying shouldn't have been written either since both deal with strife and are open to misinterpretation.

There follows a tedious argument on the word sexism which Jet persistently declares that I’ve just this minute made up, although he does concede to having previously seen it in print. The only justification that The Stranglers are able to offer about the sexual attitudes illustrated in their songs is that they "love girls". and incidentally, the last person I heard use the old "I adore women" stance as an excuse was Whitesnake's David Coverdale, and that was immediately after he'd just described half the human race as "beautiful animals".

By the same token, they blame the violent incidents with which they've been associated on the absent Jean-Jacques Burnel, and when I ask whether they either disassociate themselves from his actions or can offer any explanations, since they are representing The Stranglers to me tonight, they lapse into muddled denials and more grating mirth.

Eventually Hugh does magnanimously announce that he believes men and women to be equal, but there is of course a catch, and it's my turn for amusement when he trundles out the most banal and boring cliche in the book.

"I think women's mentality is more emotionally geared than men's. You don't?" he snaps, irritated by my smile. "Well, it's just down to personal experience, isn't it. I'm not going to say you're wrong."

TALKING TO two grown men well into their 30s and 40s who treat any attempt to seriously

question their work by retreating behind an unnecessary belligerence or a smug wall of sniggers is a wearing experience that leaves one little inclined for niceties of expression.

I'd say The Stranglers are wrong on many counts, not least their refusal to consider or even admit the existence of any possible causes for the sour, sullied reputation that they've either actively fostered or done little to dispel, and that ultimately degrades and damages them more than anybody else.

Their sort of wilfully perverted pessimism is a dullard's defence against the  blows of

existence that has very little to do with the realities of life for most men and women. Music has moved on since their bleak brand of nihilism first caused a stir, and it's long since left The Stranglers stranded and rattling the bars of their bearcage.

However, back at the bar, they've suddenly revealed that there's an unsuspected and largely unseen streak of humour in their work whose essence Jet loftiiy describes as just "too subtle for the masses".

Giving examples as they go, they solemnly trace this rich vein right back through their work - although I personally don't find 'Bring On The Nubiles' amusing; I can't see anything edifying in the dull darkness of 'Black And White' or even any entertainment in the more varied textures of

'The Raven'.  And I doubt very much whether I'll find much enlightenment in tile unearthly

mysteries of 'THEMENINBLACK' especially when on the evidence they offered me, The Stranglers haven't yet solved the simple, human problem of relating adequately to the opposite sex.

Still, as Hugh says, The Stranglers do represent a sad humour in life.

And, as Jet adds, they are both comedians and tragedians who "observe everything around us and end up singing about it, you know?"

Of course, Jet.

It's just like Winston Churchill.

Bristol Locarno 9th February 1981- Remaster

 

45 years ago to the day (9th February 1981) The Stranglers released 'The Gospel According to the Meninblack'. Back then it was a release that pretty much bamboozled  fan and critic alike, but from a distance of almost half a century it is fair to say that it is now viewed as a classic of experimental post-punk. In other words it is brilliantly weird!

On the same day of the release the band kicked off a promotional tour at the Locarno in Bristol. To mark the occasion DomP has remastered a recording of the gig and in comparison to what came before, it is a huge improvement and this tour opener is now eminently listenable. Cheers Dom...  a great bit of knob-twiddling there!

In a review of another bootleg version of the gig it was mentioned that this gig was the only one of the tour to include 'Don't Bring Harry'. I'll be honest, I haven't gone through subsequent dates to verify this, but I think it is true... it certainly conforms to an established Stranglers' MO of dropping stuff that they do not consider to be coming up to scratch live within a few opening gigs. What happened to JJ's vocal but it disappears part way through giving way to an audience singalong and seeing that such rock star antics were not a part of The Stranglers' repertoire, something else must have happened, equipment failure? A fight?

Oh and if anyone can translate Hugh's piece into the vocoder, please leave a comment!

Clearly some of the untested material that was being unveiled on this night was challenging to play for them all, especially Dave it seems... listen out for some interesting playing on 'Hallow To Our Men' and 'Waiting for the Meninblack'. Overall, a great listen from the band's next chapter.

FLAC: https://we.tl/t-u2gAdhSo08

Artwork: https://we.tl/t-77a2dTF3Ll

The gig was reviewed, less than favourably as became par for the course as the '70s gave way to the '80s in the Sounds issue of 28th February 1981.

2 Tone Top of the Pops

 

Here's something that I was looking to put together for a long time. The 2 Tone flame burned brightly and intensely... but only for a short time. But in those months across 1979 to 1981 it seemed that the world had turned monochrome, at least for a significant section of record buying teenagers.

This collection of appearances from the UK's long running chart related TV show, Top of the Pops, is not entirely complete. There were more than one appearance of some of the tracks e.g. 'Gangsters', some songs went beyond 1981.... The Beat's 'Can't Get Used To Losing You' and of course Special A.K.A.s 'Nelson Mandela'. Nevertheless, it is a good representation of the 2 Tone genre.

'We don't need no British Movement

Nor the Ku Klux Klan

Nor the National Front

It makes me an angry man'

DVD image: https://we.tl/t-fNhZZsQRCD

Artwork: https://we.tl/t-tx2AR7s55R

Terry says 'Ho Ho Ho!'

The Jam Sun Plaza Tokyo 16th May 1981

 

So further along in the 'Sound Affects' story and The Jam are in Japan. This recording was the bootleg LP 'Set Tokya Ablaze'. As single album it is not the full set, but it is a great sounding mixing desk document of the Jam at their peak. The sound has been 'seen to' by DomP who kindly shared this file with me.

I don't know if it is just me but whilst it is brilliant to have the technology available to record a full show with no breaks ('what no tape flip?'  I hear you cry!). I still like the idea of the old style bootleg album... perhaps that's all down to the fact that I could never afford them!

FLAC: https://we.tl/t-AOdoB7u6Js

Artwork: https://we.tl/t-fVcTrJ5cVB

Life In The European Theatre Interview (New Musical Express 12th December 1981)

Not stictly Stranglers, but related. And apt for the uncertain times we are once again living through. In the early 1980's there was much talk of 'The Four Minute warning' - the time that it would take for an inter-continental ballistic nuclear missile launched from the Soviet Union to reach the UK. The Government of the day kindly put leaflets through our doors instructing us how to be have when the warning was sounded... it went by the name of 'Protect and Survive', and it didn't make for very encouraging reading. As the decade progressed an unexpected thaw occured in terms of East/West relations as Mikhail Gorbachev's 'Perestroika' and 'Glasnost' policies began to change the world. The Cold War that had dominated global politics for more than 40 years was at an end and with it the spectre of 'Mutually Assured Destruction' evaporated.

Within the last 12 months there had been more talk of the possibility of deployment of nuclear weapons by the Russians, and more recently, and equally alarmingly, by India and Pakistan, that there has been in the last 40 years. So, it seems fitting to put this interview up at this time.

In the early 1980's the New Musical Express made a conscious decision go beyond music and to be more engaged with the issues of the day that affected the lives of its adolescent readership. Articles concerning animal rights, spiralling unemployment, the rise of the far right and the arms race filled pages at this time. Of course, music was intertwinned to a greater or lesser extent with most of these issues.

In late 1981, a number of British bands contributed to a fund raising album called 'Life In The European Theatre', with the proceeds from sales going to a number of anti-nulear organisations. The Stranglers were one of the bands involved, offering up 'Nuclear Device' to the project. Hugh was heard to plug the album as the band touted the UK on the 'La Folie' tour.

New Musical Express (12th December 1981)

Record Mirror (12th December 1981)

Here is an interview with The Beat's Dave Wakeling and Paul, Bruce and Rick from The Jam talking about the album and the issue behind it's release.

New Musical Express (12th December 1981)

Two minutes to midnight actually. Dave Wakeling and The Jam explain why they've contributed to an anti-nuke LP to fight the lunatics running the asylum.

THERE’S A GREAT poster out now. It's done old movie-style, titled Gone With The Wind, and it shows Margaret (Scarlett O'Hara) Thatcher in a passionate clinch with cracked actor Ronald (Rhett Butler) Reagan. The caption reads something like: "She promised to follow him to the end of the earth ... He promised to organise it."

Brilliant. But let's forget the lunatics who've taken over the asylum, and look at some individuals doing their modest bit to organize the planet's survival-via music.

Survival Music, for it is they, have organised a compilation LP (see News Page) entitled 'Life In The European Theatre'. It features (mostly-well-known) tracks by one of the strongest line ups of British acts you could imagine, who've all donated their music free. Proceeds from the album go to four causes: CND, Friends Of The Earth, Anti Nuclear Campaign and European Nuclear Disarmament (END) - and then 50% to a fund set up jointly by the four campaigns, plus the musicians, plus Survival Music.

A young guy called Chas Mervyn is the driving force behind Survival Music. It was when he was working as tour manager for The Beat that the idea of an album came up- one that would raise funds, get some sort of message across, and demonstrate the strength of feeling on the nuclear issue among musicians of this generation.

Chas left The Beat to work full-time on the project. Months of planning, negotiation and arm-twisting later, the record's ready - to be put out world-wide, through WEA, with sleeve-notes by E.P. Thompson (the great writer / campaigner) and musical contributions from such as The Undertones, the Bunnymen, Stranglers, Au Pairs, Clash, XTC, Dury and Gabriel. Their record companies all co-operated, in the end, but the groups' enthusiasm was total. (Linx were keen too, but found out just too late).

So I met Chas Mervyn to talk about it all. Madness, Terry Hall of The Specials / Fun Boy Three, and Bad Manners - who are all on the LP - hoped to come.along but TOTP commitments wouldn't allow. But The Jam ~ Rick Buckler, Paul Weller, Bruce Foxton were there, taking a breather from recording, and so was The Beat's Dave Wakeling (fresh off the Birmingham Inter-City and a married man of just 24 hours' standing).

So… this is what we sat round and said. Except that my bits have been re-written to make me seem witty, pithy and articulate.

CHAS MERVYN: ALL along it's been the groups pushing. If they hadn't been so keen it would never have happened, because we're asking people to give away something for free. The bands' response has amazed me right from the start.

Paul Du Noyer: The Beat were in on the idea at the beginning, weren't they Dave?

Dave Wakeling: Yeah, we met people from the various organisations when we did 'Stand Down Margaret' (proceeds of which went to the anti-nuclear movement). When they saw there was money to be shared out, they lost their differences, whereas before they never trusted each other. So we thought it'd be a good idea to extend it.

PDN: Chas, how did you decide who to approach?

CM: It was obvious that certain groups were concerned, just by the material they were writing,

and then musicians would suggest others.

DW: There was hardly anyone who said 'No'.

Paul Weller (sharply): Who was the ones that did? Give us the names.

CM (diplomatically): Later.

PDN: What was The Jam's reaction, Paul?

PW: We'd obviously do it. It-was the first time we'd got involved with anything like this – not because we're lazy, but. dunno, it was only the other week that I actually even sent off for a CND membership. There must be thousands of people who are against it but don't know now to get involved. Same with us.

DW: It's a fear of joining organisations. As soon as they get well-organised they end up in-fighting, over who's gonna be social secretary or something. But here, the thing we're talking about is so important, even if that bickering does go on, it's still worth taking a chance on it.

PW: It's the thought of having a card as well it's like joining the Boy Scouts. But it's what it achieves in the end, that's what really counts... The follow-on from all this would be getting people like Sheena Easton and The Nolans involved.

DW: Yeah, MOR Against The Bomb. Probably the majority of people who like groups on this LP already hold that view anyway ... The Nolans were quite into doing it, but I don't know if they'd be allowed to.

CM: It's not as if it's a political issue, it's something that affects everyone's lives. It's just immoral to kill millions of people.

PW: It's a question of your future. At the root of it everyone's interested in their own future, so that'll get across to most people.

DW: It's funny, I think it is having an effect, cos I don't usually think that pop music does have any effect. But the fact that groups are involved has something to do with so many young people being willing to protest in England. Whereas before it used to be just Europe where they'd have big demonstrations and England'd be apathetic.

Rick Buckler: Young people have put it out of their mind in this country for a long time.

PW: But that applies to Britain politically anyway. Whereas you talk to people in Italy or France they've got definite political views.

PDN : Also they don't have this long-standing, complex emotional tangle that we have with America.

PW: But I think that feeling is changing in England now, that we're only like America's sub-let.

DW: We're just the fender on the front of the car: not an ally at all, just a cushion. One danger, though, now that people are thinking differently about America, you could easily fall into the trap of thinking Brezhnev's great- and he's just as uncaring as Reagan.

PW: That's what I liked in Tony Benn's speech at the rally, that you've got to resist American generals and Russian generals.

DW: Yeah, he did a good speech, really good.

PDN: This is the stigma, isn't it, that you're playing into the Russians' hands, that the Kremlin is rubbing its hands with glee at the demos in Western Europe.

DW: That you're not even consciously communist, that you're being duped. But every time America stands up for South Africa or whatever, the Kremlin rubs its hands with glee. They don't need a marketing budget of their own, just keep letting America make mistakes for them ...

Trouble is, neither system is working at the moment. Anyone in power can think, if they can expand that’ll make it look better: all of a sudden you've got plenty of coal, plenty of steel, plenty of uniforms. Put half the unemployed in an army and get them killed, put the other half in factories making weapons.

It's a quick, simple answer. Everyone can get a flag out and feel proud ‘cos they've got something to fight for again . ... We have to pretend that all the kids on the other side of the line really hate us, so we've got to get them or they'll get us first.

RB: As soon as the level of understanding comes up the better. And obviously one way of doing it is through the youth.

DW: The main way of communication among young people is music at the moment. There ain't a newspaper you can buy every day and find out what's happening. A lot of young people rely on music, not just as a way of forming opinions, but of keeping their spirits up ... We're trying to organise a festival in Austria next year -three day event, 50,000 people - half from the East and half from the West, with some bands from the East as well. That'd be good: just to sit in a field for three days with somebody from Poland. A real education.

PW: That is the only barrier, propaganda. It's not even language, you can always overcome that.

(Chas Mervyn explains how the LP's sleeve notes will be translated for each country of release, and all the vital contact addresses will also vary. Both Weller and Wakeling emphasise how travelling in groups has made them aware of what's happening around the world, and of how much we all have in common.)

PDN: This LP contrasts with the American 'No Nukes' release. This is directly political, and specifically anti-war, where that one was more narrowly environmental, rich West Coast dodos, an extension of Me Generation politics.

DW: We definitely learned some lessons from that. It made the whole thing really respectable and comfortable, something to stick on your coffee table and you don't have to think about it any more. In the end there was loads of American groups just dashing to get on that LP, when their record companies were saying, Do you realise your two biggest competitors are on this record?

CM: But I think all the bands who've been involved with this have made it very clear from the beginning how they feel. And instead of being some limp LP that happens to have its proceeds going to a cause, it has some points to make, with a real strength of feeling.

DW: Probably the best way to sell it in America would be the idea that if there's a nuclear war, record sales would plummet …

INTERLUDE

A BAD MANNERED phone-call from Louis Alphonso.

Direct from the Top Of The Pops studio, Bad Manners' guitarist Louis rang me to explain their involvement (namely offering the album's one previously-unreleased cut, 'Psychedelic Eric'). When they were approached, he said, they accepted.right away.

Although 'Eric' itself is not especially anti-nuclear in content, the move's a bit surprising from a group that likes to avoid politics.

"We have basic political beliefs," Louis replies. "But we don't like to preach them."

Much as he respects groups like The Clash and Specials, Bad Manners just don't feel it's them to get too serious in song. That said, they'll use an opportunity like this LP to make a gesture of support for something important.

And then the pips went.

PAUL WELLER: The biggest enemy is the media, especially the daily papers. Like the Right To Work march from Liverpool, that was put down in the papers as more communist infiltration and all this crap.

DW: I think this cause is good, because it's harder to discredit. You don't have to make a huge political decision to decide you don't want to be blown up. It's fairly common sense. . But yeah, it is dangerous when the media have a vested interest in the news and what people are meant to think. As the situation becomes more extreme then music becomes more and more important as means of communication.

PW: Well at the present time it's the only form of media without some sort of censorship.

DW: Yes,’cos the people in control think it's all a bleeding racket anyway. So you can get away with some fairly serious things in your songs and they pass totally un-noticed.

PW: Music is a communication system for young people, but for people in general it's the daily papers. Whatever you see splashed on the front page of the Sun, that's your topic for the day.

DW: And even if they don't totally believe it all, it's still depriving them of real information, so it works just as well. A lot of people go, Nay, I don't believe what I read in the papers, but it's what they don't read there as well.

PW: At the root of it, what I find the most frustrating is that it's the same thing it's always been: the majority, which is us, is ruled by a minority.

CM: And yet that minority are the only ones who are safe if there is a nuclear war.

DW:'I do sometimes think that it's a whole con, and the Americans and Russians know what the plan is for the next ten years, and they need to keep their populations in a state of fear to maintain their respective positions. And if it is that, then it's an even bigger waste of money ...

It's important that the LP's music is fairly different,’cos it's dangerous to have a fashion thing where it's 'in' this week to wear a CND badge. Then all of a sudden, if that type of group goes out of fashion, the people don't want to wear a CND badge because it's musically what was happening last week. It's important to show the issue as being bigger than its constituent parts. In a lot of ways it's a fairly fickle situation, the pop world. And stuff like wanting to survive should be more important …

It is embarrassing to think that we could destroy ourselves, y'know what I mean? You just feel a prat, for being part of a system that can 't do any better than that.

RB: It's like knowing something's gonna fall on you, and not bothering to get out the way.

DW: We certainly feel capable of more than that. Anyonee you talk to in a pub feels infinitely capable of better than that. And this nonsense of, Give us a future, they don't own your future : it's your future, just take it. The question is, are we responsible enough to take our own futures?

(A pregnant pause. We slurp our tea. Paul Weller criticises the insensitivity of all centralised authority. Chas Mervyn relates the year's riots to that same dogmatic lack of official imagination.)

DW: That's the problem with the system at the moment. They're trying to make this early 1950s suit fit somebody who's living in the 1980s. So they keep having to put tucks in it, and hems and darts to make it fit, rather than saying perhaps we should have a new jacket for the '80s. I think Margaret Thatcher was genuinely shocked when the riots happened, really surprised that people were that angry. I used to think she was dead callous, but I think she's just dead out of touch as well! Not a clue, and yet she's making decisions on our behalf.

PDN: It must have been embarrassing for her, if nothing else, when she meets all the other heads of state. Like going to a posh party when.Your own kids have just crapped on the front lawn ...

MEANWHILE, THE absurdities mount up. I mentioned the case of the man' - who spent thousands on a nuclear shelter for his back garden. When he went out to check it, it was flooded : it was letting the rain in.

"Sounds like an Irish bomb shelter," said Bruce Foxton. "One with a sun roof."

"Great!" laughed Dave Wakeling. '''Bomb Shelter With A Sun-Roof'. If you lot don't use that for a lyric then we will"

And, given The Beat' s dedication to this album project since the word go, maybe it's right the last word should go to Dave … Dave?

"Yeah, well, if it all goes wrong, could we just say it was The Jam's idea?"

America Experiences Motorhead For The First Time (New Musical Express 6th June 1981)

By the Summer of 1981, Motorhead had already become something of an institution in Britain and Europe with a string of genre defining albums under their bullet belts. This was not the case  in the US since the inherent conservatism of the Stateside music industry resulted in zero exposure of the American public to Motorhead's brand of rock 'n' roll. This finally changed when the record company executives at Mercury took up the option to release 'Ace of Spades'. It was on the back of this that Motorhead first visited the US, in the capacity of Ozzy Osbourne's 'Blizzard of Oz' tour support.

Here's a despatch from that US tour from long time Lemmy associate, Mick Farren, writing in the New Musical Express.

New Musical Express (6th June 1981)

SCUMBAGS OVER USA

IT’S WHAT'S CALLED cracking it in America the hard way. Three months trailing up and down the country, 80 odd dates, God knows how many miles and more Holiday Inns than regularpeople get to see in a lifetime. Booze, drugs, exhaustion. Disorientation, arguments, fist fights, damage and strange, frequently neurotic young women.

There can be few adventures that are more brutal, not to say brutish, than an old fashioned American rock 'n' roll tour, The kind of thing that burns out young minds and ,turns human beings into Joe Cocker. Bands destroy hotel rooms, managers have breakdowns and roadies discover how it feels to be Rommel.

Indicative of what old fashioned touring is like is that the only people who still do it thafway are British heavy metal and Southern Boogie bands. But, then again, as Lemmy puts, it, "It's better than sitting at home with yourthumb up your ass and your brain in neutral."

The first leg of the tour is made doubly brutish by Motorhead having to open for Ozzy Osborne's Blizzard of Oz. Let's dispose o{ Ozzy before-we get down to business. I know some of you out there have the firm opinion that there is something redeemingly cute about Ozzy's brand of terminal stupidity, but I find him to be the man for whom the word prat was invented. Witness his now near legendary behaviour at the pre-tour press conference. Lips still curl at the way Ozzy sauntered in and how, after regaling the assembled media people with remarks to the effect that punk rockers were charmless, ill mannered suckheads who don't know one end of a guitar from a shovel, he whipped out a live pigeon and chewed off its head. Some David Niven, our Oz.

Blizzard of Oz are slow, ponderous and bloated. They wear tight spandex pants and layered hair. They know just enough not to be wearing gold platform boots. The show opens with taped Wagner and dry ice. (The Wagner is that bit of Parsival that they use in the movie Excalibur. It's about to replace Also Sprach Zarathustra as the number one pretentious pop classic) Ozzy rushes out, arms outstretched, flashing peace-signs to the assembled hordes. It's ... I can't go on with·this.

As far as Motorhead are concerned, their problem with Ozzy is that they're playing on Ozzy's turf. In fact, they are not doing a bad job with what has to be a hard core of Sabbaff lovers. On this circuit, you're ahead of the game if you can even get the crowd to stop bawling for the heariliner long enough to pay you any -attention at all. Motorhead go a few better than mere attention. Once they sledgehammer the yanks with their highspeed wall of noise, they make enough of an impact to cause some dark mutterings in the Ozzy camp. There is no doubt that they are on the way up.

The current position of:Motorhead in the USA is an anomolous one. They are something of a myth and a minor league legend but in no way do they enjoy the success-that they have become used to at ho'me and in Europe. A lot of this is the responsibility of the overwhelming cowardice of the US record industry. Almost unanimously the moguls decided that there was no place in the USA for such a loud, scumbag band. One company declined to sign them with the remark that they'd be a "disgrace to -the label". Others-passed them over out of the simple but real executive fear that one day Lemmy and Phil Taylor might stop by their offices. Even a string of English hits couldn't break the seemingly impassabJe barrier.

Finally, last year, Mercury decided that maybe they might just chance the fall of civilization and actually sign the band. Accordingly, last fall, they released Motorhead's 'Ace Of Spades' album but, seemingly managed to conceal the fact from the majority of the record buying, public. The few individuals,who did happen across a copy were probably totally confused by the spaghetti western cover. Without a prior awareness of the band's background it was all too easy for the average yank headbanger to look at the cover and assume that Motorhead was some sort of Mexican, ZZ Top threepiece from darkest Arizona.

Mercury's almost total inactivity has ensured that all the US interest in the band has remained on a grass roots and word of mouth·level. The corporate executives don't know but the street scufflers understand.

I'M PLAYING CHESS with Lemmy in the bar of the Holiday - Inn in Passiac, New Jersey. We're waiting for someone to organise cars for a 45 minute drive to the New York nightlife. It's something of a reunion. We haven't seen each other for almost two years. Normally I loath the kind of buddy-buddy writer who likes to tell everyone what great pals he or she is with the subject of the piece, In this instance; though, there's no way out. Lemmy and I go back so unthinkably far that it has to colour anything I say about him.

Briefly, we first met up in psychedelic clubs at the end of the '60s. Since, at the time, we both had a clinical interest in how many weeks the human body could go without sleep, the twitch and the babble and appointments with a dubious (and now defunct) Shaftesbury Avenue doctor who wrote prescriptions for methedrine if you handed him a fiver, caused us to recognise each other as kindred spirits. For a while, we were even on the same larcenous record label, me in The Deviants and Lemmy in a raga-rock combo called the Sam Gopal Dream. (You collectors out there - find a copy of their album 'Escalator' if you dare).

Since those days we've written songs together, played on the same stage, outwitted the metropolitan scuffers on more than one-occasion and logged many thousands of flying hours in the Ladbroke Grove Air Circus. The night before I went off to exile in New York City, he took me and my wife to one of those restaurants where they reconstruct hail-ye-wassail medieval feats for American tourists. After we'd bizarred out on the minstrels and boars' heads, we went off to the pub and got drunk. I hadn't seen Lemmy since.

Back at the chess board, I found that he was beating me every game. Admittedly I couldn't remember a Sicilian Defence if my life had depended on it, but that shouldn't have made all that difference. Lemmy had, after all, consumed at least as much as I had plus he'd also just finished a show at the Capitol Theatre. We shifted ourselves to another table that had a built-in Asteroid game.

I swear to God that Lemmy has two brains. He'd have to, it'd be the only way to avoid burn out. With one brain he's chatting about old times·and how good it is that we've both managed to survive since we last saw each other, how good it is not to be poverty stricken any more, and how getting to this first foothold in the USA had, over the years, required a powerful amount of faithkeeping on the part of all concerned. The second brain is keeping up an advanced game of solo Asteroids.

You can say what you like about Lemmy, but not even the strongest of his detractors can deny that he has a truly amazing rapport with his audience. It's a benign kind of control based on a knowledge of the real power balance inside of a rock & roll concert. Everything stems from the absolutely basic premise - "there are three of us" and X thousand of you but you've got to' pay attention to us 'cause we can make much more noise than all of you.put together." It's the same statement that is made by every band that has a predeliction for excessive volume. In Motorhead's case, though, it is simply stated, with an earthy candour that is truly refreshing after the lumpen grimacing of (say) Ted Nugent, the pervoposing of Judas Priest or the self absorption of Rush. It's this directness that is the strength and mass magic of Motorhead in general and Lemmy in particular.

Whether critics or corporations love or detest them is pretty. much immaterial. They have somethin,g that is easily recognised and easily assimilated by large nurmbers of young people who have-spent a whole week having the·piss bored out of them in a factory, warehouse, supermarket or school or being shortchanged by unemployment. The popularity of the band has proved beyond doubt that there is a need and a communication that is very, very necessary. The only question on this first American phase of their careers is whether the same kind of kids in the USA have the same kind of needs. From first observations it looks as though they do, even the ones who have predominently turned out for Ozzy Osborne.

PHIL TAXLOR has been on the receiving end of a bizarre occurrence. It's the morning after the band played two shows at New York's Palladium. He's sitting in the bar of the 'Gramercy Park Hotel looking at a breakfast vodka and orange. The Gramercy Park is generally thoughtof as a rock 'n' roll hotel. It even upped its prices by ten bucks just after Bob Dylan had been a resident during a pre-conversion bout of drinking and fornicating. Part of being a rock 'n' roll hotel is a high incidence of bizarre occurrences.

"I'm lying in my bed, just trying to get to sleep and the night operator calls up and tells me she's going off duty and will come I down and settle my 'phone bill. I ask her what 'phone bill, and she says the $700 call to Tokyo."

This is something of-a puzzlement to Animal Taylor, not to say a source of the kind of annoyance that might, had he been home in the UK, led to some serious hotel destruction. Not only has he not made.any call to Tokyo, but he doesn’t even know anyone in Japan. On further examination, he also discovers that there is blood and junkie garbage in the bathroom. As far as he can peice it together, it would seem that someone has conned a spare key out of the nightclerk, gone into Phil's room, shot up in the can and then ripped off the Tokyo call, leaving Phil to pay the bill. It doesn't improve Filthy Animal's' disposition that people keep telling him how that's New York for you.

Eddie-Clarke is hanging out on the sidewalk outside the hotel looking for a yellow cab and drinking from a fifth of Jack Daniels. Someone (I think it was probably me) points out that what he's doing is technically illegal in New York. You have to keep your booze in a brown paper bag. He ducks inside the hotel and comes out with ·a yellow plastic carrier bag.

"Will this do?"

We assure him it will. For Eddie and Phil both, it is the first time in the USA and, so far, they are treating it with a measure of respect. There is little of the arrogance and capacity for property damage, tales of which filter across the Atlantic. Eddie and Phil are on unfamiliar ground and they are taking it one step at a time. It's only the beginning of a three month tour. There is plenty of time to build to mayhem. At one point, Eddie grins at. me.

"You must really enjoy living in New York, Micky." He'd just been drinking vodka and pina colada mix with Tish and Snooky, fashion arbiters of the Lower East Side and at one time, two pieces, along with Deborah Harry, of the three-piece Stilettoes.

THE LAST TIME that I saw Motorhead was at the 1979 Reading Festival. This was their first shot at Reading, and the point where they proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that they had the total fealty of the vibrating Conanheads who really do the mass thumbs up and thumbs down at that most metallic of open air engagements. On stage in.the USA they seem to have returned to just before that point. They are forced to struggle again. The flying bomber and all the other special effects have been stripped away by the economics of being an opening act. They still have to prove their point. Some of the tunes are unfamiliar but the point was exactly-the same as it was those two years ago. In fact, it's the same as it's always been.

In Toronto, Canada, Motorhead are headlining. Ozzie's itinerary does not permit him to cross the border. Motorhead none-the-Iess tear up the town. The Canadians love them. A friend from up there calls me and tells me how it went.

"The best sound was out on the parking lot. It was more manageable. Jesus, are they·loud. Everyone loved them."

Backstage at the New York Palladium, The.Plasmatics come to pay a courtesy visit. They walk into the dressing room with ' all the visuals of the baddest punkers on the planet, all black leather, shaved heads and bright blue Mohican·scalplocks. That, however, is only the first-impression. A second glance reveals something quite incredible. With the exception of Wendy O’Williams herself, they are actually diffident, tongue-tied. I think the word might even be nervous. If they wore flat hats they'd be twisting them in their hands and scuffling from one foot to the other in the presence of Lemmy. It's almost forelock touching time.

Lem and Wendy chat about Motorhead's fortunes and Wendy’s recent acquittal from an obscenity charge in. Cleveland. Every sexist eye in the room is fixed on her black leather pants and spike heels. As the saying goes, they might have been painted on. She asks Lemmy why he sings with the microphone tilted down from above his head. He grins.

"It's to hi tthose high notes."

After two shows in the same evening, Lemmy's voice is little more than a husk. Wendy's departure is marked by an outbreak of ribald macho comment. There is an American booking agent, record company person or whatever hanging out in the dressing room and drinking the band's beer. He has no discernable purpose in the scheme.ofthings, but he's hanging out and drinking the band's beer all the same. He is at a loss to understand why The Plasmatics should want to visit Motorhead and why when they do they should seem so in awe. He files Motorhead under heavy metal and The Plasmatics under punk and sees no reason why the twain should complicate things by wanting to meet. It's an attitude that makes Lemmy mildly indignant.

"We're not heavy metal. We're a rock 'n' roll band."

The obvious implication is that The Plasmatics are also a rock 'n' roll band and it's perfectly natural that they should want to pay their respects on Motorhead's first night in New York. The booking agent, record company person or whatever isn't buying it. He likes his rock 'n' roll strictly categorised and, in a nutshell, his attitude sums up a lot of what is wrong with the American music business. His imagination doesn't stretch to very much.

Lemmy and others, myself among them, attempt to explain how, from the very start, Motorhead have never had any trouble getting across to punks (or any other of rock's myriad minorities, except perhaps the pretentious and overeducated who prattle on about "good music").

We tell this American about the unique relationship between Motorhead and The Damned, how it wasn't an unusual sight to see Lemmy in the company of Cook, Jones or even Sid Vicious. How Sid and Lemmy even once played together at the Electric Ballroom. Wasn't the whole secret of Motorhead that they made heavy metal noises but they made them at punk speed? The booking agent or whatever can't get a grip on any of this. He clings to his preconceptions.

"That may be true in England but I don't think you'll find it's the case in the USA".

Lemmy mutters under his breath.

"Bollocks."

Interestingly, US writers who have already latched onto Motorhead tend to talk about them more in terms of Blue Oyster Cult or The Dictators or even The Ramones rather than (say) Blackmore's Rainbow or Ozzy's aforementioned Blizzard. Everyone seems to see them as modern rather than a sop to those who grieve the passing Led Zep.

ST MARK'S PLACE is a two-block strip of clothes stores, punk emporiums, head shops, bars, bookshops, not too covert drug vendors, ice cream parlours, damage cases, .Japanese tourists and health food cafes on New York's funky Lower East Side. This shabby, gaudy miracle mile has served at least four generations of bohemia. The beatniks were-there, the hippies were there and now Motorhead are there. On a warm Sunday afternoon, it's nothing short of a scuzzy carnival.

Lemmy and I are standing on the corner of St Mark's and Third Avenue watching some.of the world's most unattractive hookers hitting on depressed looking Puerto Ricans while we wait for Phil, Eddie and Joe Stevens to show up for a photo session. Each time one of the girls scores she takes the john to a flea-bag hotel next door to a building with a brass plaque that proclaims it to have, once been the home of James Fenimore (Last Of The Mohicans) Cooper. The home of James Fenimore Cooper has been converted into a gay bathhouse and swing club. This also is New York for you

The picture session quickly disintegrates. It's virtually the first time since the band arrived that they haven't been confined to the environs of concert hail,-hotel, airport or car. They are like kips out of school. Phil is on one side of the street peering into the window of a biker store called The Pit, Lemmy is on the other side buying a sterling silver skull ring from a sidewalk silversmith. Eddie has seemingly vanished into a bar. They immediately attract attention.

"Hey Motorhead, how ya doing?"

"Alright."

"You staying in town long?"

"Nah, sorry."

Punkettes with pink hair yell at them. Tish and Snooky invite them in for drinks in their boutique Manic Panic. There are greetings, conversations, the odd autograph. The trio are instant celebs and they love it. They radiate a sense of being totally at home. Of course, Motorhead aren't that easy to miss. They are wearing T-shirts, tour jackets, something with the logo emblazoned on it. Johnny Ramone happens by, promenading with his girlfriend. There is one of those polite rock 'n' roll encounters with hand shakes and photographs. Lemmy takes it all in his stride but Phil Taylor has a determined gleam in his eye.

"We're coming back here for a bit of a holiday after the tour."

From St Marks we stroll on down the Bowery, easing past the winos who've gotten mellow from the afternoon sun and a pint of Thunderbird or Nightrain pear wine. Everyone is starting to become very conscious that the cars have to leave the hotel at five to get to Poughkeepsie, New York by showtime. Suddenly, on the corner of Bowery and Houston, Lemmy becomes every inch the authoritarian.

"We've got to get in a cab, right now."

The three of them flag down a checker and pile into it. School has been out for barely two hours, now it's back to business. The car pulls away. The sun's going down and it's kind of sad that they can spend so little time in the outside world, but that's the nature of cracking it in America the hard way.

Mick Farren