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Dazed and Confused
words Sarah Hay - photos Juergen
Teller.
They won't say it so we will. There's no band in Britain today that has
the rich, kick arse history of rock'n'roll careering through their
veins, attacking their brains and consuming their hearts any more than
Primal Scream. Every single reference from Gillespie's acrid,
psychedelic lyrics to the succinct allusions to cult films, books,
musical hero's, politics and even the art on the sleeve of every album
that they've ever done comes with it's own weight. So kick start a
revolution in your head, start looting the knowledge as it's a firing
head trip courtesy of Primal Scream and, if you care to notice it,
everything's for free.
Bobby Gillespie knows this all too well: ten years of interviews where
he's dropped the same hints, ground the same axe time and time again in
the hope of waking and shaking people out of their apathy. Today, when
probed on the politics of both the State and the mind he directs
conversation straight to the music. Perched on a stool, strumming his
guitar, its as if the Glaswegian pied piper is saying, well, the
messages are still there if you want them but because of their past
excesses, because as a band Primal Scream became a huge, human
sledgehammer that slammed hard into the dark recesses of the last decade
(it's a story that'll bring tears to your eyes) and because they purged
themselves of their anger with Exterminator, their personal, new
euphoric headspace demands that, armed with the first true British
rock'n'roll album of the century, they stick to the music and get on
tour. With Andy Weatherall, Kevin Shields (My Bloody Valentine) and Kate
Moss all on board, they're absolutely gagging for it. And as Led
Zeppelin's Robert Plant arrives at the studio to play harmonica on new
album, his presence encapsulates the bands boiling energy that's
perfectly summed up by Plant's past lyrics. Dig out Led Zeppelin's Black
Dog, turn it all the way up and it'll reflect Primal Scream's visions of
what it'll be like as they burst onto stages in this, the summer that
Mani predicts will be the third summer of love. 'Hey, hey, mama, said
the way you move, gonna make you sweat, gonna make you groove!'
"Two years ago when we started this record, I was pretty fucked up in my
head," comments Gillespie who recently became a father, "a lot of the
ideas came from then. Then I guess things change so right now I'm dead
happyit's taken a while." Rewind to '93, when the band and Britain was
beginning its hedonistic fall-out from Screamadelica and the second
summer of love respectively. In an odd situation where no-one could have
forecast what the next seven years would bring, Primal Scream were
sitting by the pool at the Chateau-Marmont hotel, LA. "Arthur lee was
there," remembers Gillespie on the day he met the lead singer and
songwriter of 60s psychedelic band, Love who, along with The Byrds are
one of his all time biggest influences. "I was wasted, everybody was
pretty fucked up, I don't think he was but I said 'Arthur, if I play
Signed DC will you sing?' I started playing the chords, he sang two
verses and a chorus then put his hand into his pocket, pulled out a
harmonica, played the break then sang the rest, it was fucking insane!"
One of the most aching songs to have ever been written about drug
addiction, the band were shocked as Lee took the guitar from Bobby and
continued to give them an impromptu show. Released the following year,
the third Primal Scream album, Give Out But Don't Give Up went down as
one of the albums in recent history as most wrought with rumours of
heavy drug abuse. As America reeled from the death of Kurt Cobain,
Britain's celebrities careered towards the front cover of Vanity Fair
magazine that cried 'Cool Brittania' and in brackets, all the cocaine
abuse that went with it (see the same named chapter of How To Lose
Friends And Alienate People by Toby Young), Primal Scream and,
inevitably, Creation Records were setting the stage to battle their own
demons.
"If you look at Screamadelica as euphoric," comments bass player, Mani,
"Give Out But Don't Give Up was when they were going through a really
bad period of drug abuse, Vanishing Point is the paranoid come-down and
Exterminator was like, we're angry cos what the fuck have we been
doing?!" With Exterminator it was as if the band had wakened from their
Morphic slumber, rubbed their eyes and were shocked at themselves and
the world around them so they produced an angry album that ran on two
trains of thought. "We were trying to plant bombs in peoples minds and
get them politicised again cos that's what Thatcher drummed out of
people," says Mani. "Superpower foreign policies are just so fascist,
destabilising governments and starting revolutions just so that they can
build McDonalds all over it. Serbia and Bosnia are both just aircraft
carriers for the USA to planes off from. We never invited them to our
party, what are they doing? Why are they fucking it up? I didn't invite
'em anywhere." Gillespie treads another more cursory path. "XTMNTR, even
then was more about nihilistic drug culture and control. I have two
theories about drug culture. The first is if you made the choice to
become an addict, in effect you neutralise yourself so really it's like
you become no threat to anybody. That heavy drug culture, maybe it's
sold to you, maybe you buy into it, the fact that its a rebellious
thing to do but now I can just see it isn't rebellious, it's
counter-productive if you want to do anything of any use. I'm
criticising narcosis of a sort, self inflicted, so that was the closest
the record came to being political song and even then it was just kind
of personal you know?"
Two years on and the latest album has just the slightest touch of the
destructive embers finally settling to rest while conversely the band
are on a new celebratory, (13th Floor) elevatory trip. Somehow
everything from 60s garage bands like the Seeds, Moby Grape to anarchic,
electronic bands like Throbbing Gristle, DAS to Can, Faust, punk, Jerry
Lee Lewis and Country & Western are all wired into this new album yet it
all makes sense and works, no more so than on the first single, Miss
Lucifer. "That's the electronic rock'n'roll," says Gillespie who moves
onto a haphazard attempt at explaining the whole album. "It's more
sarcastic, more hateful but it's more funny aswell, more up, maybe not
as angry, something else..sexier I think." Mani your turn. "We've moved
away from the politics, we got that out in the last album. This I think
is just a celebration of life, I dunno that might sound a bit cheesy and
blas? but we're just enjoying what we do so much right now." OK, one
track at a time. From the ashes of Bomb The Pentagon comes Rise produced
by Kevin Shields who was given the musical brief of The Plastic Ono Band
meets P.I.L. Following the media furore caused by the original title and
it's chilling message of prophecy that was yanked into the spotlight as
September 11 unfurled, Bobby says, "There's a song called Rise, there's
no song called Bomb The Pentagon, that's the best way to put it. Songs
mutate into other songs, I want the song to live and breathe in its own
space and not be tied to one thing so it's now called Riseso there's a
balance." Euphoric, electronic and kaliedescopic, Bobby chants image
heavy lyrics like a howling Shaman over Mani's driving bass. It's all
you can do but to hold onto your senses and pray to God you don't go
blind as the track explodes like a flashing, psychedelic cannon-ball
straight through the back of your head before finally disintegrating
into a chaotic dirge.
Deep Hit Of The Sun is ragged and industrial with a freight-train
heart-beat pumping throughout. Guitars wail like sirens singing
backwards (Mani, "backwards shit, all sorts of trickery, whatever you
can throw at it, it's all there" and courtesy of studio trickster Andrew
Innes) while Indian drums and electronic beeps tumble effortlessly
towards the intense build. It's taken over a decade and only Primal
Scream know how close the band came to jacking it all in the
mid-nineties but uplifting and flush as this song is, a line can now
finally be drawn between the joys of Screamadelica to the present day.
Significant in this is the return of Andrew Weatherall as producer on
three of the album tracks, one of which is A Scanner Darkly. Named after
a book by Philip K Dick (author of 'Do Androids Dream Of Electric
Sheep'), it's the disturbing story of main protagonist Bob Arctor who's
so embroiled in his addiction that he can't distinguish between his job
and his junkie lifestyle. Delusions, schizophrenia and hallucinations
all mix into the fold of this heavy story about one man and his mania's
that spin out of control. Gillespie speaks gently and economically about
the books themes (later, stumbling upon a line in the book that reads,
'he felt, in his head, loud voices singing: terrible music, as if the
reality around him had gone sour,' the significance gains more power
than if Gillespie had explained it himself) but quickly he becomes
elated while describing the track as Captain Beefheart over Throbbing
Gristle with Robert Plant on harmonica.
"We all fucking love led Zeppelin, no worship Led Zeppelin!" says Bobby
an hour before Plant arrives at their North London studio. Gillespie's
getting animated, laughing and clapping as he anticipates the lead
singer of one of the world's biggest rock bands guesting on their album.
"Robert Plant, what an amazing rock'n'roller, amazing singer?! The Zep
fucking invented rock'n'roll behaviour! Maybe even better than the
Stones, sexier maybehey d'you know what, they're not better than the
Stones, but fuck me, they're as good as." As Robert Plant arrives in the
studio, a warm gust of blonde hair, jokes and smiles, Primal Scream are
visibly beside themselves. Plant listens to the track once, takes a
harmonica from Throb, the lead guitarist and goes into the next room to
record his material within minutes of arriving. "There are Howling Wolf
style blues on this track and we know Robert's a big fan so when he
passed by the studio a couple of weeks ago we asked if he'd like to
play," says Bobby who's jumping around as Plant shows a real feel for
the dirty, sexy qualities of the track right from the get-go. Another
take and Plant adds some long, skitzy notes and then that's it, he picks
up his coat and prepares to leave but not before discussing the fame and
misfortunes of other rock stars with the band. "You can't live for
disaster," states Plant. Gillespie looks up from his guitar and laughs,
"well, we tried". Quick as a flash Plant floors the band by replying,
"my God, I should know, I was in Led Zeppelin for chrissakes, I never
slept for years!" Knock out. "Well, before I go," says Plant, "I'll just
have one final go" and walks back into the other room. This time Percy's
absolutely cracked it and Andrew Innes has got a grin wider than the
Watford Gap as he records Plant blowing evil, deep down under delta
blues into the microphone. Once Plant's gone, Duffy, the keyboard player
says that it took everything he had not to get emotional. "It's moments
like that," says Andrew Innes, later in the pub, "that keep us together,
that make it all worthwhile".
Another guest to appear on a cover version of Lee Hazlewoods duet with
Nancy Sinatra, Some Velvet Morning is Kate Moss who, after Denise
Johnson is Primal Scream's second chanteuse. "It's a psycho-sexual,
psychedelic cowboy song," says Gillespie, "hopefully we're going to get
it mixed by Georgio Moroder. Us, Kate Moss and Georgio Moroder, fucking
great!" Friends with Kate since she was fifteen, Gillespie only
discovered that she could sing a couple of years ago when she was late
in writing a ditty for a website. "There was a guitar there so I said
I'll write you a song. She had these diamonds so I said alright I'll
write a song called I Got The Diamond Blues Honey," says Gillespie. "It
was good laugh, she's got a good voice, good timing and she's a good
dancer. If you're a good dancer then you've got timing. Singing's not
about being in tune, it's about timing." Then, as he scratches his mop
of black hair, "and you need to have the right attitude, you know?" A
fact that Gillespie himself has only just become truly accustomed to. In
the early nineties he'd do take after take with his vocals. "Since
Vanishing Point I've done everything in one take. (Before that) I used
to get a bit, maybe I was a bit insecure about singing and stuff like in
my head, how it sounded in my head to how it sounded on tape was
different so maybe I'd get a bit uptight. Live I was always pretty good
so I just thought, you know what you've just got to get it down as it
is. So I started just writing the lyrics then writing and singing right
away, when I did that I suddenly became really confident." This is a
rule by which the whole band now work. "The first time I'll hear a song
is when I'm tuning my bass up. I just make it up on the spot," says
Mani. "It's keeps it fresh doing it that way, you don't always get it
like that first time but it's more often than not for me. When you're
stuck in a studio with a lot of boys for a long time it's not good is
it?! I'm a bit of a ladies man myself so I just try and get my stuff
done quickly and then, obviously, it's off to the pub."
So, a belting seventh album in tow, the whole band's in-sync and, in
their words feeling better than they have in years - Primal Scream are
bursting to go on tour. "When we record in the studio I love it," says
Gillespie, "but really I'm always thinking, this is going to sound great
live!" For the next minute imagine yourself as the sixth member of
Primal Scream. "If it's a really big gig," rushes Gillespie, "a really
important gig, backstage we're playing James Brown records then we'll
have the sax boys and the cornet boys playing along, everybody's just
working themselves to go onstage, whatever it takes to get it right.
Then the guy goes right, you've gotta go onstage and you walk down the
corridor and you're just waiting to go and you can just hear the fucking
crowd and all of a sudden someone says go on and you run on, that's
fucking ama-azing that feeling, the best feeling in the world! It's like
slow motion, it's like being in a movie!" Come on the Scream. Though
it's not without some trepidation that they're preparing to tour. "We
once went on tour for twenty-two weeks when Get Your Rocks Off came
out," says Gillespie, "it took me two years to recover." And so did the
hotel rooms. Buried in the history of Primal Scream is one story with
two versions. Photographer, author of Higher Than The Sun and living
legend, Grant Fleming claims that it was England being knocked out of
the World Cup while Mani claims that they were in Japan, it was his
birthday and he'd rung his wife only to find that she was out. Either
way a whole room was demolished. The sofa, chairs, table and TV all went
out of the window. "The window was only so small," motions Mani, "I went
fucking bananas, broke up the couch bit by bit and threw it all out.
Some guy came to the door, there was a cleaner going past so I grabbed
the hoover off her, chased the guy down the corridor with it, got me
cock out and pissed all over 'em. Not like me at all." A benefit gig was
played to pay for the damage. "Typical Primal Scream behaviour,"
comments Fleming, "while other bands were playing gigs to benefit
charities they played a gig to save the promoters arse". None of the
rock'n'roll attitude has faded "We love it on the road," says Mani with
words that have more depth than he's aware, "We half kill ourselves but
now we're bullet proof." Separately, Gillespie adds to the sentiment,
"the band's better than it's ever been, personalities, musicianship,
attitude, nobody's fucked up either which is pretty important." Which
leaves just one final prophecy to be made about this next album and it
has to come from the lyrics of one of Primal Scream's dearest and
biggest idols:
'A movement is accomplished in six stages And the seventh brings return.
The seven is the number of the young light It forms when darkness is
increased by one'
Syd Barrett - Chapter 24, Pink Floyd.
A very special thanks to Sarah Hay for sending me the article
Originally appeared in Dazed and Confused, February 2000.
Copyright © Dazed and Confused.
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