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Masters of Ceremony
PRIMAL SCREAM - are
they arrogant? Are they, in
their own words, a "great
group"? Or both? DANNY
KELLY talks pop finesse
with the stylised beat
wonders of Glasgow.
Picture: DEREK RIDGERS.
"I'll tell you 'bout the magic that'll free
your soul/ But it's like trying to tell a
stranger 'bout rock 'n roll/Do you believe
in magic?..."
The Lovin' Spoonful
A vear ago they stuck out from
the effervescent hammer-it-
down-and-turn-it-up of their C86
contemporaries by having the
?merity to attempt something
that was carefully constructed,
lovingly polished. And now their
insistance that whatever it is that
turns Rock to Magic can be found
in crafted quietness, in harmony
and melody, puts them at odds
with the Cult Missionairies On
Acid Will Eat Themselves, and the
designer dandruff brigade.
On stage, too, they're downright
strange, the nervous static intensity of
guitarists Jim Beattie and Robert Young,
and singer Bobby Gillespie (his fringe a
hiding place, his mic-stand a crutch)
contrasting with the eyes-front arrogance
of Martin St John, a tambourine-flaying
skeleton in leather gloves. Primal Scream,
truly, are the sore thumb pf British pop.
And yet for those who, like me, still cling
to the battered belief that guitars, bass
and drums can 'free your soul' this
uncomfortable, unpromising mixture has
been the subject of a prolonged act of
faith, of a blind investment of hope. Based
on just two slivers of evidence (their 'All
Fall Down' debut and 'Velocity Girl'),
Primal Scream have been landed with the
'Most Likely To' albatross. Mind you,
there have been plenty of others who see
them as little more than a joke, an
over-developed sense of pop's past
grafted onto the body of a musical jelly-
fish.
This week sees the issue, on Warners'
Elevation outcrop, of their third single,
'Gentle Tuesday', which will be followed
by another,'lmperial',and a late-summer
as yet unnamed, LP. For Primal Scream,
the moment of truth is just 'round the
corner, the moment when we'll see
whether the last laugh will rest with the
believers or the belittlers. . .
Whether or not they can fulfill them
remains to be seen, but if any band were
ever equipped to understand the expectations of fans then it is Primal Scream.
They are ppp fanatics. Their early interviews were characterised by a Stalinist
credo that excluded all but a sainted few
(The Beatles, a handful of American
garage-punks, Cope, you know the
names). They've widened their net since
then, but the passion remains. The band's
key word is 'master'...
"It's difficult to define", Bobby Gillespie's soft Glasgow tones maintain "but
for us it's all about having acertain spirit.
All the best things I've seen this year had
it. The Weather Prophets in Edinburgh.. Neil Young the other night at
Wembiey. We was a total genius... and
Chuck Brown on The-Tube-what a man!
Those shakeskin boots!- It doesn't matter
about age...you ve either got it or you haven't..."
This stuff is noconvenient glamour by-
association exercise in flame drop it runs-
deep. Primal Scream take their vision of
Rock/Pop - a dodgy cocktail of myth,-
exaggeration, wishful thinking, more
- myth and isolated moments of incandes-~-
ent music and gleefully guLp it down~-
"There's a fairly sane self depreciating,
vein in this group agrees bobby but we
do love all those rock n roll outrage
stories, y'know, about the Stones or the
one about Led Zeppelin whipping a
groupie with a dead shark! That level of
complete debauchery is really funny. And
there was a story about Love taking some
music journalist prisoner and keeping her
as some sort of sex slave for a week..."
That level of complete debauchery isn't
funny at all.
"Oh, don't get me wrong - I think she
was quite willing. Myself I'd love to have
been fucked stupid by alt the members of
Love in the '60's! Even now! If I saw Brian
McLean in the street I'd tell him 'take me
Brian, I'm yours..."
This is hardly what we expect from the
frontman (now collapsed in fits of helpless laughter) of a group constantly
associated with all manner of sexless
wimpery, but like I said, this stuff goes
deep...
And it's their obsessive devotion to
their icons - especially the '60's guitar
giants - that's fuelled the disdain of
Primal Scream's fiercest detractors. They
focus on the band's line in relentlessly
authentic beat hairdos, black clobber and
pointy footwear and see a slavish following of fashion, a pathetic caricature of one
of pop's classic shapes.
Confronted with this, Bobby Gillespie
casts aside his customary calm and snarls
defiance. "I don't wear Chelsea boots
because Love wore them; that's shit. I
wear them for the same reason that Love
wore them... because they look cool..."
But the criticism isn't confined to the
sartorial. It widens out to dismiss Primal
Scream's music as being no more than a
hollow echo of bygone glories, as being
'retro' and 'revivalist'. Gillespie reacts to
those words with a combination of dis-gust, impatience and resignation born of
familiarity.
"Answer me this... ", he hisses, "every
time you fuck, is that 'revivalist'? No! It's
different each time, and the first time isn't
the only one that is brilliant... Same with
music."
"Anyway, we don't have to apologise
for the way we sound and we won't. We
don't want to sound like anybody except
Primal Scream, and we don't. Forget all
that 1967 stuff, we're living human
beings, doing what we do now, 1987..."
But what of 1987 is discernible in your
music?
"If you're looking for electronic drums
or stuff like that, then nothing, but that's
now how it works. If someone hears
'Gentle Tuesday' and loves it and finds it
comes to mean something special to
them, they won't look back in years to
come and say 'oh yeah, that record
reminds me of 1987'.
Having shared their teenage years
with the rise and fall of Punk, Primal
Scream aren't under any illusions about
music changing the world. Indeed, as
children of municipal Glasgow, they
aren't prone to misty-eyed illusions about
anything.
They choose their romantic vision of
the rock 'n' roll world and of their place in
it; they choose to jettison the seen-it-all
cynicism others use to justify ambition-less money-magnet pop; they choose to
view their music for which, don't forget,
Gillespie gave up a secure and lucrative
spot as the Mary Chain's drummer - as
part of a crusade, and themselves as
inheritors of a gift.
"We want to affect people wi' our music
the same way that other people's has
affected us...", begins Bobby, "... to
sweep them away with it... And, sure, it
would be good fun to be a pop star as well,
but the important thing would be to be a
good pop star. We wouldn't be like
George Michael or Mel and Kim - that's
tastless, without class, faceless, emotion-
less, corporate pop. People deserve better
than that."
"And you want your pop star to look
good, don't you? Put it this way - if
Johnny Rotten had looked like Rick Wakman, it would never have happened,
would it? But he looked like a total master
godstar and I think we look good enough
to be up on people's walls.
"That's part of the reason we stood out
last year from all those bands. Not only
were we good songwriters, we were also
much more tasteful, better dressed, cooler.
I know its sheer narrow-minded arrogance
but it's true-we're just far superior
to most groups around, probably a great
group. And like other great groups we
give people- how can I put this? -we give
people that glimpse, that glimpse of
beauty. That, in 1987, is what makes us
important..."
If you need any further evidence of
Primal Scream's perfectionism and 'sheer
narrow-minded arrogance (or, if you
prefer, of the spoiled brattishness that's
indulged when your label boss just happens to be your singer's lifelong bosom
buddy), look no further than the recording
of their new material.
The original sessions, at Dave
Edmunds' Rockfield Studio in Wales;
involved six weeks' hard labour, the loss
of one drummer and a small matter of
£40,000. Then they were unceremoniously scrapped, just like that, and their
producer, highly-rated Smiths' engineer
Stephen Street, elbowed to make way for
Mayo Thompson.
Some weeks afterwards, back with the
relative sanity of The Smiths, Street was
still shaking his head in amused disbelief.
"It was just incredible", he told me "like
nothing I've ever experienced before.
They're nice enough lads but you can't
work with them. It all came to a head when
I found myself arguing with Bobby about
a solitary cymbal-crash in the rhythm-
track of one song, arguing fiercely for two
solid hours..."
This is a man, don't forget, used to
dealing with the far-from-undemanding
likes of Mssrs. Morrissey and Marr, and I
swear that the memory of those weeks in
Rockfield brought tears to his eyes.
Nine times out of ten', a band like
Primal Scream would have me reaching
for the triple-strength vitriol and my
sneer-glands working overtime. The ex-
cesses, the unquestioned heroes and the
attention to quite ridiculous detail (they
refused to turn side-on for out photographer, in case their "thighs looked fat",
and three of them make stick insects
appear lardy!) are habitually the stuff of
nightmares rather than dreams...
But nightmares are never host to the
angelically spiralling guitar of 'Velocity
Girl'. First time 'round, it gave me that hit-
indefinable but unmistakable - of which
only very few pieces of music are each
year capable. It was proof that in all their
care and craft and calculation, Primal
Scream left room for that chemical thrill-
rush sought but seldom attained, in 30
years of pop. And since then I've nursed a
hunch- somewhere between a wish and
a hope, well short of a belief - that they
will do it again.
To be honest 'Gentle Tuesday' failed,
for me at least, to deliver, but an advance
earful of an unfinished 'Imperial' (resplendant with backwards guitars and lyrical
hints of hatred) suggests that my wait will
not be in vain...
Primal Scream - by refusing to accept
the self-imposed limitations and all-bin-done defeatism - swim against the tide of
99% of modern pop...
Primal Scream - as self-appointed carriers of a torch many think long extinguished - still believe in magic...
Primal Scream - until it's been proven
impossible beyond doubt - are expecting
to fly...
Originally appeared in NME, 27 June 1987.
Copyright © IPC Magazine Ltd.
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