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No More Yesterday
Primal Scream look back to look forward. Simon Reynolds retracts a
few statements but still argues the toss. Pix: Tom Sheehan
PRIMAL SCREAM are pop
fanatics. As they endure the
ordeal of having their pictures taken, they're constantly
whistling tunes -
The Standells' "Dirty
Water". The Stones' Gimme Shelter" and
"Sympathy for the devil" - or bangnging out a
backbeat on their knees, or acting out riffs. The only
time I see them get animated is on the subject of
Nick Kent and his legendary interviews with wasted-
but-literate rockers like Iggy Pop and The New York
Dolls. This is the lineage to which they aspire.
Primal Scream certainly look the part-pale, thin,
dressed almost entirely in black Bobby Gillespie,
their singer/leader, is a beardless, anaemic youth,
softspoken, rather grave; his pipecleaner legs tightly
encased by black jeans. Tambourine player John
Martin is tousled, quizzical, a Rod Hull to Gillespie's
Emu. Only bassist Robert Young seems at all
corporeal being reasonably robust almost ruddy.
Gillespie looks as though he spends the whole of
his life indoors, listening to records in perpetual
twilight Primal Scream are one of the new breed of
rock groups who never went out, who spent their
youth cooped up in dark bedrooms, drowning in
vinyl, steeped in the music press.. .in the process
amassing enormous knowledge about rock, and
fierce convictions about "what went wrong". Groups
like The Smiths and The Jesus & Mary Chain -
classroom dreamers, playground misfits.
Once upon a time pop used to be a commentary
on adolescent experience. Now, pop is that
experience; figures like Gillespie and the Reid
brothers weave their desire from the vast
accumulation of models and imagery in pop history.
The dominant mood in Brit-pop is a nostalgia for
something you never had, a vague, undefined
pining for an era never actually experienced.
Brit-pop is epigonic - sadly sure that the (pop) era
we're living through is less distinguished than
previous ones.
In the Gillespie vision of What's Missing, 1967 is a
pivotal year. I just think that time was probably the
best time for pop music. An enormous number of
great records were released. There always have
been great records but for my taste, more so at
that time.
"But me and the rest of the group don't only like
music from '67. I love The Stooges, New York Dolls,
Alex Chilton, Neil Young, The Pistols, the early
Clash, Bo Diddley, Slade, Gene Vincent . (pause for
deep breath).. .13th Floor Elevators, The Knack, The
Stones, The Byrds, Gong, Love, The Lurkers, Tim
Hardin, The Birthday Party and Nick Cove's solo
.... thousands of groups, I could go on for
hours!"
Do you feel there's a quality common to these
artists that's absent from pop today?
"I think there is. Character, for a start. Today's
groups don't have anything about them that's even
slightly out of the ordinary. And then, how many
records nowadays are really good songs?"
"There's always gonna be people making good
music, but around '67 there were more. Maybe the
climate people were living in encouraged them."
"Perhaps it was because it was the first time; a lot
of people were making a blind leap into the
beyond, blazing trails. Whereas now we have all
these precedents; worse, something to live up to.
And maybe a lot of the scope to do new things was
used up then.
"There was an innocence then, but not a
wimpishness. People did things for the sake of doing
them, without ulterior motives. Then people got
more cynical. I think people now are too paranoid
about making music, scared they're gonna upset
other people; they worry too much about what
somebody's gonna think about it I think it was Sonic
Youth who said that in America, bands are given
time to grow, whereas over here, critics turn on
bands really quickly. I think that sometimes you've
gotto have a kind of tunnel-vision, a certain
closemindedness, in order to achieve anything.
Like the first PiL record, 'Public Image' -
that's arecord that came out of nowhere.
It had no discernible influences at all.
That first single is what I'd call a
psychedelic record."
Gillespie speaks in an agonised whisper, each
comment is deliversd with a pained pensiveness,
extracted like a tooth. It's clear he finds being
interviewed extremely uncomfortable. He's polite to
the point of being almost withdrawn. I am a little
surprised; I'd expected truculence, having heard a
while back that the two live reviews I'd one had
riled the band. On each occasion, bored boneless
by their near-catatonic stage prescence and wistful
listlessness, I ran the gamut of anti-wimp derision -
"namby-pamby; "cissies; "milksops", "pansies",
"drippy; I was spoilt for choice - ultimately
dismissing them as "a foint drizzle of poignancy". I
regret these (uncharacteristically) thuggish comments
now, having come to love several vinyl Primal
moments, particularly "Crystal Crescent" and the first
single on Elevation via WEA, "Gentle Tuesday".
What apparently annoyed the band was the idea
that the innocence of their music was a simple
reflection of how they were as people: the
traditional rock biographical approach.
"I know what you're on about when you talk
about innocence in these articles, but I think you
make everything too black-and-white. Our records
are quite soft, because of the nature of my voice.
And because of that we are always called 'wimps' or 'wet'.
"Now, I'm not a wet or soft person, nor is anyone
else in the group. It's not a macho thing that makes
us resent it irs just that it implies you're a weak-
willed person, that would submit to anything, and
that's just not the case. lt's a real mistake to assume
that because music is soft the people making it are
soft too. Love made the most incredibly delicate
music, and they were all a bunch of murderous, mad
bastards.
"There is a kind of innocence that we believe in,
not a childishness - but I like people who aren't cynical or worldweary,people who can still say
'God, look at that tree', not in a wet way, but in a
good, bewildered way. Not innocence as in some
idiot sin ging about a sweetie shop, that's disgusting.
But.. .well, there's this song by The Misunderstood
with lyrics that go: 'With half a mind you laugh at
me/Cos I speak of colours you've never seen
before/You've existed in a lie that will someday
show/I can take you to the sun... to the sun, but you
don't want to go.' Someone cynical could never sing
a song like that. There's an innocence there, but an
arrogance too. We'd like to project that kind of
innocent arrogance."
Primal aren't part of the cuddly pop side of indie
jangle; there's something aloof un-frisky, cool
about them, A gravity.
"A lot of the calling us wimps thing stems from
machismo, the sort of people who're afraid to show
tenderness."
The "cut the gurly cack"/give us brass-tack politics
and none of this miserabilist introspection/spite,
spike and "attitude" brigade. I know it well. Primal
Scream's sensitivity will get short shrift from these
hard heads, desperate or a confrontational posture
in pop to masturbate over, any posture, no matter
how inane (and you can't get much mars inane than
Grebo). And it's true: there isn't much groin in Primal
Scream's music. Gillespie's voice doesn't simulate the
pulsions, panting and pounding of passion, it traces
the bangs and the pining of the fall in love;
spasms of vision and memory, nather than of the
flesh. Butterflies in the heart, rather than clenched
need in the gut. A voice that swoons rather than
sandblasts with fiery, gritty passion.
At their best a spine-less free-flight of rapture. But
sometimes, just plain spineless. The soon-come LP,
"Sonic Flower Groove", (a rather generic and
over-determined title) is, over all, too much "All I
Really Want To Do" and not enough "Younger Than
Yesterday": there's too much of the kind of trite,
sighing "heard it somewhere before" tunefulness
that the Mary Chain indulge in, plus a bit of that
"la-la-la" shit. But tracks like "Gentle Tuesday;
"Silent Spring" and "I Love You" are biffer-sweet
beauties.
So, about your "complete renunciation of the
pelvis"...
"We're ethereal, yeah ... that's just the way it
comes out I think we will get more abrasive and
rythmic. Jim's starting to play Stones-type rifts.
We're starting to play more from the hips now.
"But I think our music is passionate... whereas
chart music I don't think is that emotional or earthy.
Something like Sly Stone is earthy, a real f**beat, an orgy.
But someone like George Michael isn't
sexy because he goes out of his way to look sexy.
It'ss like if you see a picture of a girl sticking out her
tits it's really gross, she looks like a piece of meat,
whereas if you maybe you just see a girl sitting there
in a sweater, but she's got a look in her eye, and
you think she's got it that's sexy. I think if someone
tries to make a sexy record then it won't be sexy."
What kind of girls do you lot go for? With "your
kind" of group I always imagine the songs are
addressed to thin, sepulchral, sad-eyed girls with lots
of black eyeliner. The Nico look, as opposed to a
more conventionally brassy, curvy ideal of beauty.
"It varies. For me, a current ideal would be
Beatrice Dalle. And she's quite fleshy really.
Otherwise... Marianne Faithful looked really
beautiful."
Pursuing my hunch further ... why are you so
thin?
"I hardly ever eat I dunno - I think I've always
been like this ... I mean, you couldn't be in The New
York Dolls or the Stooges if you were portly!"
Do you like. food?
"I don't mind it"
What do you eat? Do you eat?
"Trash. Some days I almost forget to eat. Then I
just get any old crap and shove it down my gullet I
only eat cos I've got to, in order to live."
Hmm. I've never met anyone who's indifferent to
food. (Bit of a trencherman, myself). What of the
accusation that Primal Scream are musical
anorexics, regressive rockers? That you've turned
your back on the future?
"I don't think it's a question of going back I think
music should be like books - you go in to a library
and there's thousands of books and you can choose
any of them. Great pop records should be timeless
Although a lot of really good records aren't
timeless, they're good for the moment and that's
fine.
"We're no Luddites either, just because we only
use guitars. I like some bands that use synthesisers.
Like Suicide, they used the technology abrasively,
and they also had a lot of heart too. We're not
scared to use technology, but neither do we feel
there's an obligation to use it the way someone like
Matt Johnson thinks there is."
What do you think of the argument that hip hop
and sampling is the future (and you're the past)?
"Some hip hop I've heard is psychedelic. The use
of space, the space it opens up in the head. I've
thought 'God knows how he sculpted that!' It's
interesting, but the trouble is we just don't get to
hear much of it. Same with old soul."
Does the sexism offend you?
"Well, it's not very sensuous music, there's not
much role for the female there. But then, some of
the greatest records have been sexist 'Under Your
Thumb', garage records... there's not much you can
do about that. But with a lot of that aggressive
machismo you realize that it's the attitude of losers,
people who are scared of women and so
overcompensate. All those garage records with
words like 'Go away/I don't need you', you know
the guy has n ever had a woman in his life."
And the anger and violence is so exaggerated
and absurd it becomes dislocated from any real
target, becomes like a burst of abstract energy, a
real buzz.
BOBBY GILLESPIE is 25, and
has followed the classic
decade-long course of
development fat an indie
popster. The Pistols turned
his head, aged 15. "I never
really liked music
before...well, I'd liked T. Rex,
Gary Glitter and Bowie on the radio,
but I'd never gone to buy their records.
Like everyone else, he followed through the logic
of punk: the origins of Primal Scream are a PIL-type
band. "We used to mess around in the scoutshal,
learning to play from Jah Wobble and Peter Hook
basslines." Then, the great crossroads in the post-
punk impetus: you either chose white noise or black
dance, aloof isolationism or shiny entryism. Gillespie
went along New Pop for a while~- "I liked Soft
Cell and ABC, but not Spandau."
But as 1982 spilled over into 1983, New Pop
got fat - it was the year of the obligatoy black
backing singers, the string section. what 'was once
ironic luxury, a post-post-punk binge, backfired. An
expensive, "classy" sound was de rigeur. Mavedck,
imposter spirits like The Associates faded away.
People began to realise the enormity of the con.
There were dissenting spirits. Edwyn Collins
pointedly wore a Sex Pistols T-shirt, a sullen
reproach to the new gaiety. There was a general
retreat from what Julie Burchill called "beigebeat' -
white versions of black dance pop - to a whiter-
than-white new rock aesthetic - The Birthday Party
and The Fall, later The Smiths, Go-Betweens, The
Membranes' flocks of bastardised Beefheart,
Creation's nouveau rockism. "Beigebeat', the
emergent sound of Planet Pop, the soundtrack to
yuppie health, unproblematic sexuality and self-
assurance, was countered, (impotently) by a revived
belief in the misfit-as-a-way-of-life. "Beigebeat" was
and is all about warmth; - soul with its fiery, ecstatic
elements tempered, turning it into a medium for
"communication" rather than an ecstatic expression.
The new white rock was and is all about the chill of
awe and alienation.
There was a retreat from the whole 1982 notion
of eclecticism - the cocktail, the Culture Club/Style
Council rainbow coalition of races and eras, the
black plus white = lukewarm water equation. A
retreat to a dream of "pure pop". More and more
sure that today's planet pop offered them no place,
either as consumers or performers, people began to
look back, lonpingly, to a time when pop did,
Julian Cope's celebrated article on garage
psychedelia was influential, providing a lot of
discontents with crucial data (what compilations to
buy...) You could take Cope as a kind at emblem
for the retro mood and its fallibility. Here is a man
with superb perception about what's great in rock;
who can say something as beautitully true as: "what
kind of person would choose Bacharach and David
over Arthur Lee?", (a romanticist blast against the
classicism of New Pop); who knows exacily what
needs to be done but who can only praduce
something as null as "Saint Julian". The fatal flaw of
literate rock: an understanding of myth and magic is
no guarantee that you too can be magkal- in fad,
an understanding of the process is prabably
counter-productive. Never let a rock critic near the
guitar.
Primal Scream - like The Smiths, Husker Du, Jesus
& Mary Chain - are regressive rockers who've
(largely) evaded the Julian Cope Syndrome. None
of these bands indicate a way into the future, they're
more like a triumphant full-stop to a long line of
development. At their best, Primal Scream, like those
bands, are like an ancestral reproach to the future -
a future, if planetary pop is any indication, of
secular, demystified, hyperactive bland repletion.
They make me wonder whether it wouldn't be so
bad if the future stopped here.
Originally appeared in Melody Maker, August 29, 1987.
Copyright © Melody Maker.
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