Interviews

26.02.02

Justin: The project began as a collection of B-sides and other deleted songs. Then we realised that we had a lot of unfinished material on tape. This dates mostly from the Strange Brotherhood sessions, because after 1994, we became free of all our past recording contracts and began to build our own studio set-up... in other words, we have full copyright ownership of, and easy access to, these tapes. (When I say 'we', the work was mainly done by Michael and myself, though we did often consult with Nel, Dean, Dave and Robert).

As the scope of the project widened, we made a definite decision that we would not go back and record or re-record anything from scratch, so we only worked on tracks where we had the major parts already on tape. We then added or replaced a few vocals and guitar/keyboard parts and mixed the songs. We also improved the mixes of a few tracks that had been released previously. There were a couple of songs that we had played live but had never recorded studio versions (FsharpNY and BD7), so we used basic live versions and added to them. We added the two tracks previously released by EMI without our consent on their 'History' compilation and finally we also decided to use an interesting disco remix of Over The Wire made by a French producer.

Not hundreds actually. 'Strange Brotherhood' has 12 songs, the Lost Songs album includes 15 other songs from those sessions, 'Eight' has two songs that were begun in that period and Justin's solo project has at least four. That makes 33. There are only a few more...

The song you're referring to is called 'Still Here' and contains no direct reference to 'Vagabonds'. As for 'Vagabonds', I am aware that it has become an anthem, but I didn't write it as such. We don't play it often - a handful of times with Ed Alleyne-Johnson in the last couple of years and a few times with the audience singing the melody. Personally, I've always liked the song, which ever way it is performed. The version with the audience singing the riff is always exciting - especially in London 2000.

We don't really worry about that at all... We do worry about people making mass bootleg copies of the studio albums...

Justin: To be honest, we have never planned a future... the 'career' of the band has developed entirely by instinct, song by song, gig by gig. You're right that rock is in revival - which is great and probably why I'm just now recording an acoustic album... And I'm not sure if, across all of Europe, it is such an aging family... in December, particularly of the 2000 in Berlin, we reckon that at least a third of the audiences were under 25. But yes, we will be back 'out' before too long...

What's the worst part about being on the road in one bus with the same people for weeks?
Dean: The loss of privacy. Being with anyone for weeks on end in cramped conditions can be irritating - it doesn't matter who they happen to be. Being on tour can be very tiring; particularly for the crew who get up early and go to bed late, but even for the band it is exhausting. The upshot of this is that small things can become magnified and sometimes you need to recognise the spaces between friends!

Nelson: I'm fairly tall and I can't stand up in the Bus without bumping my head - I hate that. Sometimes it's a little crowded on the bus but we all know each other now and we've learnt how to behave ourselves.

Nelson: Out of the members of the Band it's a toss up between Justin, Dean and Dave. I grind my teeth so I can't complain too much.

Justin: Don't know, I was asleep.

Dean: Depends on who is talking the most rubbish - which is probably me after a few beers too many.
Michael: The cat.

Dave: The bus driver.

Michael: I'm not that old! Depends on what era they're/you're from.

Dean: I think that any band who gets back together and play because they really want to play music, and put their hearts into it, are fine. If it's just for the money then I can do without it!

Nelson: Do you mean tribute bands? Well it's one way to earn a living... I like AB/CD and I've seen some good Doors tribute bands and an excellent Hawkwind 'Space ritual' era tribute.

Justin: Yes. We've never stopped thinking that one day we'll be back in North America in some form or other. I imagine that it would be an interesting time to be there right now.

 

Justin: The band was started in 1980 by Stuart Morrow and me... looking back, I think our primary influences were Punk Rock and Northern Soul* music. Of course our influences have changed since, as so much in the world has changed, musically, technologically and culturally. We are constantly influenced by everything that is around us... but perhaps the attitude of our earliest influences has stayed with us.

[*For people outside the UK, Northern Soul was a mid-'70s phenomenon, based in clubs across northern Britain, where people danced literally all night (sometimes chemically assisted but alcohol-free) to Up-tempo Soul Music from Chicago and northern industrial US.... fifteen years later, a computerised version of this idea, rave culture, swept the world.]

Michael: I'm a musician, I just make music. That's really all I care about.

Dean: The hardest thing was to join into a situation where everyone knew each other so well. Even Michael had been working with the band for several years by that point (as the drum roadie), so I was definitely the new guy! But musically it was fine, though I hadn't been playing keyboards for a number of years, which made things interesting. There is always a temptation with any instrument to play more than you really need too simply just because you can, and with New Model Army there are so many ideas within songs that often it is difficult to play something that will sit in nicely with everything else. The greatest ability any musician can have is to listen to what's being played around you, even when it's extremely loud, and try and find some space in which to play. If there is no space, be brave enough to play nothing at all.

Being by, in or on the ocean, travelling and getting involved.... People. Life.

Nelson: The only person from New Model Army I have worked with on another project is Michael. Actually it was before he joined NMA during a time when the Band took a year off - I got a band called 'Nelsons Column' together and Michael was the original drummer - We recorded a rough demo on my Portastudio but Michael left before doing any gigs with us. However, he did return to help us out on the very last Nelsons Column gig as Michael's replacement had decided to leave and join 'Chest' (An amazing band from Leeds who unfortunately never really got the recognition they deserved). It was good. New Model Army did influence the material written for Nelsons Column a bit but I think it's fair to say that all the other projects I've been involved with have absolutely zilch in common with NMA.

I've been writing and recording some pieces of music with a friend of mine called Geoff Coombs. It's all instrumental stuff for the broader minded listener and we should have a CD ready for release sometime this decade. I worked out recently that we only manage to record one minute per month - we've currently got 32 minutes recorded and I'm really pleased with it. I'm not sure what to do with it exactly as it's not in the least bit commercial but we are hoping to get a contemporary dance group interested in performing to it.

Dean: Actually we all play with other people. I write songs with a friend of mine, though none have come to light yet. We are musicians, and musicians just like to play. Wouldn't mind spending twenty minutes in the presence of Charlie Watts or maybe Neil Young, but then who wouldn't!

Michael: Yes, one influences the other.... collaborations - Jennifer Lopez!

Dave: Martin Butler

Justin: For me there is very little division between what is NMA and my various other projects - it's all writing, performing and communicating. On the (all too rare) occasions when I've been a musician in someone else's band, I've really enjoyed it. Dream collaborators? Well, my favourite artists and influences are well-known by now, so I'll just leave it at that.

Dean: Getting up at four in the morning after half an hour's sleep, driving to Heathrow, getting on a plane, being driven across a country for three hours, setting up, finding the keyboards are knackered, fixing them, re-programming them for a couple of hours, failing to eat, playing for an hour, packing up, driving back across country, getting on a plane, and driving back home can be a little irksome to say the least. But needs must sometimes when the devil drives!

Dave: Could do without Mullets.

Michael: The bus after 3 weeks.

Nelson: Having to rush off straight after we've just finished playing. We'll just be about to wander off to a happening party that someone's told us about, and the tour manager will say 'Hey - where do you think you're going, we're leaving in 10 minutes - it's 750 miles to the next gig'. Also, I'm vegetarian - Some places don't know the meaning of the word. It is getting easier though. It's a good job I like curly cheese sandwiches and chocolate.

Justin: I like it all, really. I've never minded the travelling, though sometimes in the festival season, when we always seem to fly from London, we can do up to 30 hours travelling for an hour onstage. But I love tour busses and I love hotel rooms... and I love the 21 hours a day in which to do nothing but drift and think.

Nelson: Australia. I've never been - I don't know about the playing bit though.

Dave: at the Madejski Stadium

Michael: Different countries we've not played before - but I'm happy to play anywhere.

Justin: Russia especially, but everywhere really - the more obscure and off the beaten track, the better.

Dean: I'd like to go to Brazil as I haven't been there yet, or maybe Japan. We keep almost going to Russia, which would be great, but it never seems to happen which is a shame.

Dean: Favourite gigs: Valencia 2001 for the version of Vagabonds which was fabulous - Ed played a blinder; Athens in 1995, when I realised just how frighteningly intense NMA could really be; the festival in Karlsruhe because there were so many people there, which was scary; Leeds, Berlin and Koln in December were very satisfying; Paris in 1998, from which a lot of the Nobody Else album was recorded... we were so tired and the crowd were so up for it, that we played fabulously well; The Pepsi Island Festivals in Budapest because it's such a great place - either playing or just to be there (particularly the night at the castle when there were a hundred fans there and we sat and drank and talked which was nice); Marseilles in 2001 on the Eight tour because we were excellent. But there are so many more moments I could mention, though often for personal reasons.

Justin: This is a very, very long list for me that constantly needs updating... most recent additions include Leeds and especially Hamburg from the December gigs and the festival in the Jura (Swiss) three days after September 11th.

Michael: It depends - anywhere I played well or where there were the loudest crowds. Leeds Josephs Well (secret gig) stands out as that was the first gig I played for NMA, the first time I played London Astoria with NMA and the Hamburg Christmas show 2001.

Nelson: The first time we played at The Forum Club in Nuremberg, Germany (not the one in 2000). I also remember having a great time at the Metro in Chicago - nothing to do with how well we played - I just enjoyed it and it always comes back to me.

I rarely hate playing a gig - In fact I can only think of 2. One at Brixton Academy when I was really ill and I had to keep running off stage between songs to puke up. The other was in Grenoble in France when the sound was shit - It sounded like a double-decker bus reversing into an aircraft hanger - and I ended up trashing my Bass stack and chucking my guitar in the air and walking off stage before it landed. Somehow all my equipment survived and we ended up doing an encore.

Justin: Reading Colin Thubron - 'In Siberia', Jon Monson - 'Them'. Alan Sullivan - 'The Passing of Oul-I-But and Other Tales' (he was my grandfather, who died before I was born. Although I've always known he was a writer, I've only really just discovered how good he was - thanks to Joolz. This is his most famous book, published in 1913 - a wonderfully evocative and romantic series of short stories about the Arctic wastelands of northern Canada where he lived and travelled).

Listening to Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, the �Dynamite� series of early Ska and Rock Steady compilations, early Leonard Cohen, D12 and Arvo Part.

Michael: Nothing - too busy working with Justin or Dave. Listening to the crowd at Anfield [Liverpool FC] & reading about them in the paper.

Nelson: Books : Tom Robbins - 'Fierce invalids home from Hot climates'. 'Ginger Geezer' - the Vivian Stanshall biography.

CD's : Noir Desir - Des Visages des Figures, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Clangers - Original television music, Anja Garbarek - smiling and waving, Amelie - Film soundtrack music by Yann Tiersen, Muse - Origin of symmetry

Dean: Just finished 'Kitchen Confidential' by Anthony Bourdain, which is a very good read. It's an autobiography written in a Hunter S. Thomson sort of way and is very entertaining. Another recent favourite is 'Easy Riders -Raging Bulls' by Peter Biskind, which is a wild ride through the New Hollywood of the 1960's and 70's. As for music, I listen to a wide range of styles. I'm currently listening to a lot of country music such as Gram Parsons, The Band, Neil Young, and The Jayhawks. I like the emotion involved. Still listening to the Garage punk from the sixties as well - there's something so refreshingly innocent about it. Been listening to the Queens Of The Stone Age, who are excellent, and quite a lot of ZZ Top (the earlier stuff). Just bought the last Mercury Rev album, which has some beautiful moments on it, particularly The Dark Is Ring.

Dave: Emails and Hard drives.

Very much shared influences - punk and soul music - see the earlier question.

Justin: Yes, it's true in most cases and I'm not sure if the proportion has changed... One Bullet, Green and Grey, Aimless Desire are all examples of me telling someone else's story. Most recently You Weren't There or Flying through the Smoke, though told in the first person, are not exactly autobiographical. Truly personal songs like Lullaby are quite rare.

Justin: Coffee, Red Wine & Irish Whisky.

Nelson: Adnams Best Bitter.

Dean: Guinness. Bison Vodka & apple juice (though Red Bull is rather pleasant!) and 'Yorkshire Tea' brand tea..

Michael: Baileys with ice, Vodka & Orange and Red Stripe (though not altogether!).

Dave: SMA White

Nelson: I don't find them embarrassing. I'm happy they're there and they must all be highly intelligent if they like NMA.

Justin: No, not at all... remember that we're all fans of other artists.

Michael: No, I just get on with job of playing songs.

Dean: I recently met Mark Lanagan at a Queens Of The Stone Age gig and couldn't speak to him at all! We are all fans of someone and we all embarrass ourselves sometime! As to NMA fans; on the whole they are very pleasant. I've had some great 'lost' weekends with some of them who have become personal friends. As with all things in life there are some people you like and some people you can do without, though I try to find time to talk with anyone who wants to talk to me.

Dave: No.

Nelson: I don't have any. That's not because I don't like them though. I have seen some amazing ones. I did think about having some done years ago - I remember doing some of my own designs but I decided not to rush out and get them done straight away. Instead I pinned them on the wall where I'd see them everyday to see if they would stand the test of time and if I still liked the designs 6 months later. I was never 100 percent satisfied so I never got one done.

Justin: It's been a long time since I had a new one but I have got a design in mind...

The Justin Sullivan show in Stockholm last year was actually promoted by someone in Demark because no Swedish promoter believed that there was an audience for that show or for NMA. There was (it was packed out) and there is... But these days, large corporations dominate promotion as well as the record industry and the media... and they tend to opt for a series of easily definable (and therefore marketable) 'styles'. The end result is less and less variety (see 'No Logo' by Naomi Klein). Having said all that, we might suddenly arrive to play in Sweden at any time.

Justin: Several years ago, they were changed two of three times depending on my thoughts of the moment. Then the last version stuck. It's not a song we've played much recently as, however 'emotionally true' the sentiments are, there seems to be enough vengeance in the world right now...

Justin: 1992 was a difficult time personally for both myself and Robert. As the writing and feel of the album (Love of Hopeless Causes) developed, it became a darker and darker project - the only light being a kind of out-of-reach sense of spirituality in the wake of my near-death experience at that time. Knife just didn�t represent how either of us felt and so we abandoned it. LOHC remains one of my favourite albums partly because it is such a true representation of our feelings at that time.

Like all the writing and arranging within the band, there are no hard and fast rules or patterns for working. Sometimes they are written entirely by Nelson/Stuart/Moose (or occasionally by Robert or Justin) at the genesis of the song... more often they have been put together later, while everyone in the studio hums melodies and ideas at the poor bass player. We have been fortunate in always having technically brilliant players (especially Nelson) who can play anything and accommodate any number of ideas and styles.

Interesting question. I think he'd have been surprised at almost everything.

Justin: My main problem with major corporate labels is that when you are signed by a company in one country, you are automatically assigned to that label across most of the world, whether or not each separate country actually wants you. The way we work now, is to have our own label and distribute or licence only to different individual companies that want and understand us. Like all modern corporate business, 'Majors' are increasingly dominated by the lawyers and accountants rather than by the creative people and they have such huge expenses (most of which is vanity and waste), that they are not interested in artists who are not platinum or, in their very limited view, possible future platinum. ...

A lot of artists are driven back to Majors because they need advances in order to record. Thankfully, we are not in that position. Also, these days, the Internet allows a band like us to have a form of global distribution without having to go 'Major'.

Because we don't know how the story ends...

The problem is that none of us write music or know the proper names of the various weird chords that are often used. However, we are aware that there is a demand for such a book, so we hope one day to find a way to do one.

Being in the right place at the right time with the right attitude and extraordinary talent.

Ssshhh....

Justin: Poison Street had five different choruses in different keys before Glyn Johns picked the one that was recorded (I've now forgotten the others so it must have been the right one)... I wrote the chords, melody and words for all the parts of I Love the World six months before I finally came up with the right chorus... Robert and I came up with the basics of Wonderful Way to Go five years before I came up with a way of taking it in an orchestral epic direction, as opposed to the obvious R&B route... Someone Like Jesus began life as an electronic didgeridoo dance track (honest)...

The Quickest... No Rest, Vengeance, Bad Old World, Space, You Weren�t There... and many others. But the quickest of all was Lovesongs, written from scratch, arranged, recorded and mixed in the same day.

Justin: Favourite Song to play... Here Comes the War, Flying Through The Smoke, Snelsmore Wood... oh hell, all of them. Favourite Albums... equally - Thunder & Consolation, The Love of Hopeless Causes and Eight.

Nelson: Favourite NMA album - The Love of Hopeless Causes. Favourite NMA song to play live - Here Comes the War.

Dave: I can't hear anything on stage with earplugs in.

Dean: My favourite song is Liberal Education and I'm very happy we've been playing it recently! But listening to NMA depends on what mood I'm in, which is the same I guess for most people and most types of music. There are times when the last thing I want to listen too is NMA (particularly after a tour), and to be honest I don't tend to listen to the CD's that much in any case - I get to play the music in the band, so listening to albums kind of pales in comparison. There are two songs that I both love and hate to play live. The first is Brave New World 2 because it's feels so exposed and if you make a mistake it's extremely obvious. The second is You Weren't There for the same reason. The reason I love them is that because they're so nerve-racking you get a fantastic rush from playing them. Being terrified on stage is good fun at times!

Michael: There are a few favourites and a few not-so-favourites but these can change depending when and how often they are played live.

Dave: I love music and hate politics.

Justin: People have different ideas about 'politics' and music but the idea that they cannot belong together is bizarre, after the hundreds of years in which people have used songs, in every culture in the world, to express their rage at injustice and desire for a better future. Artistically, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't - but then that's just a matter of personal taste anyway. Asking if it changes anything is missing the point. I have never believed that just because you sing about a desire for change, means that somehow change magically occurs. What 'political' music can do, is to unite people that feel the same way, give us strength, make us realise we're not alone in how we feel and perhaps energise people into making the small changes that they can.

Dean: The problem with music and politics is that brainless fools who have an overblown opinion of themselves and their personal philosophy have diluted the impact. There is something rather irritating about being told by some rich rock star that we should do something to help the poor, the homeless, the disenfranchised or whatever. In some ways it�s patronizing, as though we didn't realize in the first place. Their hearts may have been in the right place, but their naivety and inarticulation often result in the debasement of the argument, if only because we have become so cynical about the over-commercialisation, marketing, and publicity involved in popular music. And in this sense you can see it as the vanity of the famous - "I am important because I managed to write a catchy number which sold shed-loads, therefore you should listen to what I have to say!"

However, music has been an effective way of conveying a message in the past. Think about the counter-culture expressed through music in the late sixties in America. That did have an effect in shaping peoples opinion about Vietnam, the Civil Rights Movement, ecology, amongst others, and many good things have come about because of that. Music is a fantastic medium for expression - Nietzsche, whatever your feelings about him, was entirely accurate when he wrote, "By the means of music the passions enjoy themselves." It is almost unique in the Arts in its ability to move people, to manipulate emotions, and anything with that kind of power can be used to change people's opinions for the better or for worse and has been in the past. Think of rise in national anthems in the Nineteenth century, they were a way of conveying a sense of identity and also a way of conveying a point - for instance, there are many in Scotland who refuse to sing the British National Anthem, with good reason, because of the words "rebellious Scots to crush" contained in the verse that has mysteriously vanished from all the official sites (check it out on the web, it's no longer part of the lyrics! An interesting re-writing of history I think!).

As for Bono, and I speak from an uninformed stance, personally I am not a great fan of his political 'posturing', though I would say that he has seemingly been attempting to do something about his convictions not for his own personal gain, but because he believes he is in a position where he can (whether he is or not is another question) - and the fact that is at least attempting to should be commended. If you believe in something passionately enough do something about it.

I don't think the question is that music and politics do not mix, I think it's more of a question of whether they should mix, and I personally find no problem in anyone finding a medium for self-expression - after all, you don't have to listen to it! It does not matter where we gain our opinions from, only that we have formed an opinion. If music has been the medium through which this process occurred then so be it, but it must be remembered that it is just one opinion. To blindly follow some one else's ideas because you happen to like the music is grotesquely shallow.

Nelson: When I go out to a gig or whatever it's because I want to have a good time and enjoy myself. I want to forget about all the problems in the world for a while. I don't usually pay that much attention to lyrics at gigs anyway so it doesn't bother me that much. I know Justin likes to write about some of the problems in Bradford etc. but he's got to sing the songs so it's best if he picks subjects that mean a lot to him so he can express himself and get into it and therefore give a good performance. There's no point writing about stuff you don't really feel something for..

Michael: There is a time and a place and it also depends what the issue is and how much you care about it.

These lines are deliberately ambiguous and can mean a whole host of different things. In this setting, at the time of writing, they just seemed right. As for compromising my writing for fear of being misunderstood, no, I try not to do that. There are songs that are deeply 'politically incorrect' - most obviously 'My People' or 'The Hunt' - but they express genuine emotions, so I've gone ahead with them. Often lyrics that I had thought were very plain, have been misunderstood anyway. As I have said many times, NMA lyrics are not part of some overall philosophy, they are always written from an emotional point of view and, of course, emotions are contradictory. I'm often asked for details about the stories I tell (for example, in this latest set of questions, people asked about 'Brother', 'Marrakech', 'You Weren't There') and I understand why people want to know. But each listener's imagination fills in the missing pictures and events differently, and feels the music differently... that's the point of songs (which is one reason I've never really liked doing videos).

Dean: Wouldn't mind getting my hands on a Wurlitzer organ, or maybe a Rhodes, but I feel money might be the key to that! I should also get all the songs I've written finished and recorded at some point, but there always seems to be something else to do. And then there's always the musical, 'Saucy Jack', to get finished!

Nelson: I joined in January 1990 so that's 12 years of playing and touring. I've always wanted to appear on a decent music programme on British TV - something like 'Later with Jools Holland' and to play at one of the 2 Big English Festivals - Glastonbury or Reading. My Bank account is in the red - it'd be nice to be out of debt. I'd like a new van that will start first time every morning and that wasn't rusting away underneath.... and a slightly bigger home.

Michael: Play regularly and carry on playing for as long as I can...

Justin: To visit some new countries, to live somewhere else (at least for a while), to cross an ocean by ship, travel by dog-sled and see the Aurora Borealis.