Barbara Nitke - 1993

THE RIGHT TO IMAGINATION AND MADNESS

AN ESSENTIAL COLLECTION OF CANDID INTERVIEWS WITH THE UK’S TOP ALTERNATIVE SONGWRITERS.

FROM THE BOOK BY MARTIN ROACH

The son of a publican, Matt Johnson was born and grew up in the East End of London, where he became the young friend of various sportsmen, villains and local characters who frequented his father’s premises. His musical interest was started early and his lofty ambitions were increased by his intense dislike of school. At 15 he left school, and two years later formed The The in 1978, surrounded by punks, guitars and all the sparse crude instrumentation that came with it. Johnson however, gravitated towards the more left of field writers such as Throbbing Gristle and began experimenting with various electronic instruments and gadgetry, utterly against the fashion at the time. Although they were part of the burgeoning London Punk scene, supporting bands like DAF, Wire and Prag Vec,, The The were musically heading in a completely different direction, and consequently gigging only rarely. A single ‘Controversial Subject’ was released in the summer of 1980 and when the band expanded to a four piece they became regulars on the club circuit. After various line up changes it became clear that the creative nucleus of the group was very much Johnson himself and he therefore decided to use the band as a platform for his solo work, with the help of whichever collaborators he felt would fit the bill for each specific project – among subsequent The The honorary members have been Neneh Cherry, Sinead O’Connor, Zeke Manyika, Thomas Leer, Jim Foetus, Jools Holland and Johnny Marr.

By 1981 Johnson had met Stevo, an aspiring young promoter who was creating a new record label by the name of Some Bizzare. Johnson was duly signed up for a solo album, ‘Burning Blue Soul’ which although it appeared as a Matt Johnson credit, is generally acknowledged to be The The’s debut album. It was a highly individual piece and contained many of the ideas that would later come to characterise Johnson’s work, including some of the first recorded use of samples and looping – it was met by widespread critical acclaim. Johnson’s acutely idiosyncratic style had already attracted the attention of various major labels and in 1982 he signed to Epic Records. Just prior to the deal The The had produced another album, called ‘The Pornography Of Despair’ which Johnson was unhappy with and consigned the tapes to the vaults never to emerge again. The first album on Epic marked the arrival of a unique writing talent – ‘Soul Mining’ was a Top 30 album and earned Johnson his first gold record and an ecstatic press response, largely due to the disturbing musical landscapes his lust for perfection has produced.

Johnson’s career has been notable for his absences as much as for his activity – entire fashions and movements come and go in between The The albums, but it does not appear to lessen the appeal. The whole of 1984 was spent recovering from a serious illness, and later he would spend the end of 1991 and all of 1992 recording ‘Dusk’. For now, 1985 saw his return and lengthy isolated writing for his next album. The wait was worthwhile – ‘Infected’ was Johnson’s most highly politically charged record thus far and railed against the sexual, spiritual, and political malaise of ‘80’s Britain. It was an instinctive and angry album, and was received by the media and public alike as a harsh and consuming masterpiece, reflected in over one million album sales. The record was accompanied with an album-length video to complement the cinematic nature of his music. The film was shot at a variety of location including brothels in Harlem, prisons in Bolivia and a disused gas terminal in South London, and ran into trouble for what many saw as excessively violent and semi-pornographic scenes. A premier showing was met with a stunned wall of silence by the gathered luminaries, providing further proof of Johnson’s ability to confound and surprise.

The The has been formed for ten years by now, but since reducing the band to only himself has never actually toured – it was very much a conceptual platform rather than any rigid band entity, and even with the world wide success of ‘Infected’ Johnson resisted pressures to hit the road, instead travelling the world for promotional showings of the film. It was not until the next project that he began to look to forming a working band – for the next album ‘Mind Bomb’ he worked with ex-Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr, ex – Julian Cope bassist James Eller and ex-ABC drummer Dave Palmer. The album was an overtly religious and spiritual statement and widened Johnson’s songwriting frame of reference, although many disliked the unmelodic and bombastic nature of the record. Critical acclaim was not unforthcoming however, with one reviewer likening the record to a modern day version of T.S. Elliot’s ‘The Waste Land’. Strangely, the album gave Johnson his first Top 20 single, ‘The Beat(en) Generation’, unusual for a band with such an enormous cult following, but perhaps typical of a career that has seen Johnson always remaining on the edge of contemporary musical developments whilst pursuing his own very particular approach. ‘Mind Bomb’ provided the band’s first world tour with one hundred shows, all sold out, including three consecutive nights at London’s Royal Albert Hall ( a performance recorded for a ‘The The Versus The World’ video in 1991). More success was forthcoming with the next record, ‘Dusk’ which saw Johnson return to a much more personalised writing focus, all the more intense after the tragic loss of his brother. This interview took place in Johnson’s huge East End residence, an old converted gentlemen’s outfitters, where he has kept the smoking room style fittings intact. The rooms are dimly lit and incredibly spacious, with mountains of electronic gear spread across tables and chairs. Walls are covered in tapes and CD’s as well as books and various other mementoes from his lengthy career. His conversation is intense, highly articulate and as he talks he regularly holds his hands together as if in prayer, touching his fingertips on his chin in deep contemplation. Perhaps most striking was his humour and light hearted demeanour, completely at opposite to the demonic, slightly mad eccentric image I had expected as a result of reading too many stereo-typed press interviews. His enthusiasm for the interview was considerable, even when relating events from years before and he was not afraid to open up and discuss very personal issues, stopping only at one point when discussing obsession, to go away for a cold drink and a breather.

MR: How did your upbringing shape your musical development?

MJ: We lived in Stratford in a pub, and one of my uncles used to promote bands around East London such as Muddy Waters and The Kinks, he even put on some bands in the pub itself. I wasn’t really aware of these bands at the time but me and my brother never had much to do so we tended to play on the equipment and the old piano down there. We invented a fantasy world of our own and our circle of friends would only be the people who worked in the pub, like the barman and the cook. Customers would ask me what I wanted to do when I grew up, and I would always say a singer or an actor, I was attracted to the glamour I suppose.

MR: What were your early motivations to get into music?

MJ: I don’t think it was ever that conscious, and it probably still isn’t. Most people would find it hard to put their fingers on their reasons for doing things, you can’t really analyse that.

MR: So as you grew up how did your interest in music develop?

MJ: I hated school, detested it, and at that time I started to buy singles of all the glam stuff, like Slade and T Rex, Gary Glitter and Sweet. With a friend of mine, Nick Freeston, we formed a band – he was a green grocer’s son and I was a publican’s son. We made our own instruments with boxes and strings, all that sort of stuff, and played in this little coffee bar, but they threw us out because we made such a racket! Then I got hold of an old acoustic guitar and he got a Woolworth’s drum kit for Christmas. I’ve still got the tapes somewhere but they were atrociously bad, although I suppose the point was that we were doing something. I was writing these lyrics which were completely meaningless but you’ve got to start somewhere. I detested school form the time I started it to the time I finished it, so I became obsessed with music. We did a few covers of Bowie, Beatles, Elvis songs, (or rather whoever wrote these songs), and later on Deep Purple. We used to rehearse in this old youth club and we’d tape all the rehearsals – I was obsessed and I would lock myself in my room and make up all these pretend record sleeves.

MR: Was there ever any competition to music for your attention as you grew up?

MJ: Not really, I hated school and I grew to think I was stupid because the teachers told me I was, until I realised that in fact I was just bored. The classes were too big, resources were stretched, there was no individual encouragement for me and I became very lazy and bored. I think a lot of people still fall through the net at school, not because their stupid or daft, but because they find it boring and have no other outlet or interest outside of school. I was lucky in that I did have something that I was really passionate about outside of school, whereas many people don’t have that alternative, so they go through life without finding that idea they can be passionate about. I failed all my exams and was slightly masochistic about it, taking a certain pride about my complete failure, so understandably my parents began to worry about my future. They suggested I go to Catering School and get some proper qualifications but I thought ‘Sod that!’ So there I was at 15 and with apparently not prospects. I worked one day in my Dad’s pub and hated it, so that galvanised me to get into music more. I had this book by Tony Hatch which gave me all these ideas of how to get into the music business.

MR: Isn’t that the man who wrote the tune for ‘Neighbours’ and ‘Sale Of The Century’?

MJ: Absolutely. Using some tips and addresses from his book I managed to get in as a tea boy at this studio next to the old Marquee, and although I was only on £18.00 a week, most of which went on travel and food, I started to learn loads. I smoked my first joint there and got into The Velvet Underground, as well as starting to hear all this music. At this stage I wanted to be an engineer, but I discovered I could work through musical ideas on my own. I bought an old reel to reel tape machine, which you could do sound-on-sound with, and started making my own demos. I created this little studio in the cellar of the pub, and I spent hours and hours down there. There was no air, and my staple diet was Dunhill cigarettes and Fosters beer, because I worked in amongst the stock. If I knew now how many hours you would have to put in at the start, I would have been really daunted, but when you are so passionate about something you just keep going. I found all this self-belief from somewhere, certainly not school. I used to make little cassettes with sleeves and go to gigs and give people these tapes. I formed The Marble Index (name taken from a Nico album), with a guy called Charlie Blackburn, a run-away from Hull who used to live in a ventilator shaft full of cans of Special Brew. We eventually parted company and I advertised in the NME for other musicians and got a reply from a guy called Keith Laws (now a research psychologist at Cambridge) who has a little wasp synthesiser, all very crude. So together we formed The The. The way we wrote songs was very crude, basically riffs, and although my early influences were mainly The Beatles, I actually had no real understanding of song structure. Then I began to listen to more diverse material like Throbbing Gristle, The Residents, Thomas Leer, Cabaret Voltaire and so on. I heard ‘Private Plane’ by Thomas Leer which he did all himself, all the playing and writing, everything. That was the big turning point for me because it introduced me to a whole new form of music away from rock and roll covers we’d been listening to. Leer had all these drum machines and loops and totally different instrumentation, and this whole new world opened up listening to his experimentation with atmospheres. I realised then that I didn’t have to make songs that sounded like everybody else. From a song writing point of view at this stage there was very little structure, it was more based on sound and rhythms. I’d always felt an insecurity because I couldn’t read or write music – even though now I know many technically brilliant musicians who are totally barren creatively, but at the time I was quite insecure. So this new form of music was very exciting to me and represented for me the real punk ethos. Much of punk music left me cold, but the spirit of doing it all on your own was what appealed to me most. A lot of punk was about following a trend and a fashion and there was very little or no individuality in that. These newer musical ideas like that of Thomas Leer, this new post-punk underground movement, was much more interesting. They all looked different, sounded different and paid for all their records themselves. People would buy a stylophone and a small tape player and put out a record they had made in their bedroom. That was really inspiring.

MR: So what influenced you towards the less conventional band set-up which The The developed into?

MJ: Well, we went from a two piece to a four piece and then back down to a two piece again. We were banned from a few placed for being really drunk and aggressive, but we paid our dues, so to speak, in the back of the van. By this stage I was writing everything, and playing virtually everything as well, so I just thought there was no need to have all these other people around. So I broke up The The and wrote this EP which became ‘Burning Blue Soul’. The first song that I consider I wrote was ‘Another Boy Drowning’ which was the first time I really put myself down on paper – it was also the first time that I cried during the writing of a song, although not the last.

MR: Do you still see that song as very powerful?

MJ: Yes I do. It sounds weak, even crude on the production, but the song is there. Melodically and lyrically it has some nice ideas, but it stands out for me because I wasn’t trying to be clever, I was finally being honest. This really strange feeling came over me that up until that point I was merely mimicking other people’s work, and that was a very emotional moment. Finally, I was actually writing how I felt without trying to be obscure. It really represented me and I felt really moved. I can’t remember when I wrote that song but I do remember being at my parents’ house in my room, and realising that I had stumbled on to something new lyrically. I was going through a lonely period when I felt much unrequited love and I would fall for the girls who didn’t fall for me. During this time I became very introspective and lonely – introspection can be very productive for the writer but it has to be balanced with periods of being very sociable in order to maintain some balance, like most things in life. At that time however, being sociable was not an option – I would come home from work and lock myself away for hours and hours. Around this time I really started to develop as a songwriter, the sense of melody and song structure, not by copying other people’s songs but by making my own rules.

MR: What are the mechanics of writing a song for you?

MJ: The way I work has stayed fairly similar since I began. Lyrically I will have phrases lying around on notepads; melodies just come out very easily once I have a basic chord structure to overlay them upon. Once I get to the stage where I have that detail the music is relatively easy. When I start a song musically, usually I can immediately hear all the instrumentation of the piece, the drum sound, the string section if there is one, the degree of instrumentation and so on. I hear that fairly completely and then the process will be a case of putting down what I can hear. Songs grow in different ways after that, and sometimes you’ll strip away the original idea, and just work with what’s left. My only regret is not being more prolific, but having said that if I had been more prolific there would have been a real danger of being much less intense on each project. I think it’s fair to say that each record sounds different yet still like The The, and I wonder if that would have been possible if I had written more.

MR: How does music work for you?

MJ: What do you mean ‘work’?

MR: Well, why does it fascinate you, what attracts you to some music and not to others?

MJ: I don’t know. I still don’t know where a lot of it comes from. Many people are very instinctive with their music, it’s a form of expression and therapy, with a very healing effect. There are some forms of music that make me feel physically sick, music can have that effect. Ska, blues, classical, and Latin music excites me yet reggae, British Folk music, Top 20/MOR really depresses me.

MR: But reggae music can be very ‘up’ at times…

MJ: It can and it’s odd that this will depress me whereas blues makes me feel good. That is the beauty of music really, the variety of emotions it provokes. I like music when I can feel the intensity involved, the feelings put into it. Maybe that’s why I’m so harsh on the radio-friendly commercial stuff, which irritates me because it is so insincere. I realise that as a writer I could be more sensitive to the content of those songs, the motive of the music, which ultimately effects the way you respond to the song, Maybe it’s just my snobbery and my aesthetics which can be a bit left field and peculiar.

MR: So how would you want people to respond to your work?

MJ: I guess the most you could hope for is that they feel similar things when listening to a song to what you had writing it. Even if they feel different to how you did, as long as you get a reaction, that’s the key. I get letters from people saying they have sex to this song, they cry or laugh to this one, they dance to this, whatever, and that really is the ultimate compliment because it means it has become a part of their lives and has effected them in some way.

MR: What is the most intense song that you have written?

MJ: ‘Love Is Stronger Than Death’ is my most mature and best song so far. I have started to discover for myself the more classical song structures. In the same way an artist would paint a picture and would have conventional rules to apply to where he put various details, you can do the same with a song. ‘Love Is Stronger Than Death’ was first and foremost a very personal song, about losing someone very close to me. Secondly, the instrumentation was very classical, acoustic guitar, drums, bass, Hammond organ and harmonica. Thirdly the structure itself, the way the chord changes in the bridge reflected the change in the atmosphere in the lyrics, becoming more uplifting leading into the chorus. Very simple, but certainly the best song I’ve written thus far.

MR: When did this change in your listening habits evolve from bands like Throbbing Gristle to the more traditional writers?

MJ: Well, I’m not sure it has changed much, because I have always been attracted to songwriters. John Lennon was always a huge influence. Syd Barret, Tim Buckley Nick Drake as well though. I would listen to these people a lot when I was younger and I did get into the technological bands and the equipment they were using, the songwriters were always the ones who appealed to me the most. There is something about a well written song that is more substantive and permanent than any amount of technology. I still think song is one of the finest forms of expression, but you have to be careful when you are talking about it because it is easy to come across as pretentious In the 60’s and 70’s the form was relatively new, and was obviously much more influential then – the impact on popular culture of those people was immense and we will never go back to that scenario, apart from anything else because it was all so new. That was great for those people in a way but the other side of that is that so much was expected of these people it was unfair. They were basically entertainers but so much was expected of them.

MR: The argument that the great songwriters are modern poets receives much scorn from some quarters – do you think people like Dylan, Van Morrison and Leonard Cohen can stand by Eliot and Joyce.

MJ: I think so, maybe they might not come up to those sort of standards, but perhaps in fifty years time the 60’s/70’s, maybe even the 80 and 90’s, will be looked back upon as a very significant period in popular culture, and those types of songwriters recognised as bridging the gap between entertainment and thought provoking expression. I think there is something in that, yes.

MR: Do you feel there is a contradictory expectation from the public and the media in that you are expected to pour your heart and soul into your work, yet when you talk about it you are pinned down as pretentious?

MJ: It’s very easy to be misunderstood. Put simply it’s okay for the music journalists and the audiences to take an artist seriously but not for the artists themselves to do so. I experienced this during ‘Mind Bomb’ where I was obviously taking myself too seriously and probably got what was coming to me, but in my defence I was trying to bring something new to the songs with the angle I took on religion etc., But it was slightly ahead of its time and from the wrong artist - if it had been Ice-T doing that in 1991 everyone would have considered it a revelation. It depends on your public image at ‘the moment’, as to how seriously you are going to be taken, and of course, Britain loves it’s people to be as humble as possible.

MR: When you say you ‘experimented’ on ‘Mind Bomb’ what do you mean?

MJ: I decided to experiment with myself, in order to see if I could bring something new to the form. I was determined to push myself further as a songwriter, and I went to great lengths to do this. I firmly believe that each generation has a duty to add to song writing – there are many wonderful writers in the past who I love and respect but unless we are continually adding to the form it will die. With ‘Mind Bomb’ the subject matter was relatively new, the emphasis on religion, nobody has really approached it from that angle before. I also experimented on myself physically, which obviously has been done before I realise that, but I was just eager to experiment and push it to the limit. I wouldn’t eat for days and then I’d do loads of magic mushrooms, I tried all sorts of things which I don’t need to detail. Needless to say, I went slightly mad during the project because I was putting myself through so much I lost it and began to hear voices.

MR: How inter-related are your albums?

MJ: Fairly closely. Because I am largely autobiographical in my work, I tend to see the records as chapters in the same book. It is a weakness in my writing and I am trying to look beyond that and write other styles, to take away that emphasis, but as it stands at the moment the records reflect a great deal of my life. Even the political songs are still very personal – I still get annoyed about the political weakness in this country and it still really pisses me off, but it no longer motivates me to write songs. I have done so in the past but there comes a time when you have to move on - it would be okay for a new artists to discuss old issues, but I think I could have ended up down a very predictable path had I carried on with that material too long.

MR: Have you ever written in character?

MJ: Yes, perhaps the best example being ‘Sweet Bird Of Truth’ because obviously I’ve never flown over Arabia in a fighter plane. The interesting thing about that song was that I was at a party in America and this guy came up to me who had flown missions during the Gulf War and he used to play that song and said it helped him through it. That was fantastic, that sort of response is worth more than a thousand good reviews.

MR: Why have your lyrics developed towards the more personal nature of ‘Dusk’?

MJ: There is a real paradox where the more personal a song is the more universal the appeal can be, and conversely the more global stuff seems to alienate people. That’s what I found with ‘Mind Bomb’, whose huge vision of world religion and ideas was almost all-embracing, but it didn’t appeal to people personally. I’ve tried to get away from all that, and with religion you can dedicate yourself to a lifetime of studying it and there will always be people who know far more. I got to the point where I was very unsure as to whether religion, politics and song writing mix. I thought music was a suitable vehicle for discussing those themes but now I’m no longer sure.

MR: How much is religious thought a part of your conscious now?

MJ: I’ve always said I’m anti-religion and pro-God. I basically believe that human beings have a spirit – people confuse the mind and the brain. The brain is little more than a physical apparatus that basically operates the body, whilst the spirit operates the mind. I think about it a lot, and think about various tenets in various religions. I do believe in God but not as some bloke in a beard that rules by fear. I see religion as no more than a control device, mind control for society, and virtually all religions base their roots on that control. I think most people in religion are well meaning but often misguided; having said that religion can give a lot of comfort to a lot of people. For me though, my experience of religion has not been a positive one. When my little brother died, the local vicar invited us to the Vicarage and we just went along because we were grief-stricken, and even though we never went to church we went anyway. We went in and this guy said the most insensitive things imaginable, he asked by Mum all manner of insensitive questions and she was in tears. It just made me realise that may of these people are not as in touch with the spirit as they intend. I was furious. I though ‘Fucking Hell, you’re sitting here in your vicarage with your gear on and you haven’t got a fucking clue.’ It just confirmed to me that you are either a person of sensitivity and spirituality or you’re not, and being part of a religion makes absolutely no difference. You’re just scoring points in Heaven like that, but I get really annoyed when it is imposed on you. I think if there was somebody called Jesus then he was a natural philosopher who would most probably have been horrified by what has been carried on in his name. That was what the whole project ‘Mind Bomb’ was about, but whether that all came across in song form I don’t know.

MR: To what extent do you have to be sad to write good songs?

MJ: It’s easier but it’s something I’m trying to move away from, because I’ve acquired this tag of ‘miserable bastard’. I have a lot of fun in my life and it’s a shame that people think of Matt Johnson and then think ‘Oh, he’s that depressed bastard’. Yet many of the bands known for larking around are real miserable sods. It is a media pigeon-hole that has been created through journalistic laziness and I sometimes even found myself censoring my work because it’s depressing, which is ridiculous. Having said all that, it is easier to write about the dark side of life, because it is much more tangible as feelings. Happiness is very, very difficult to write about and describe – recently I’ve had some very happy times but I don’t really want to be sat down behind a guitar writing about it, I want to be out there experiencing it. There aren’t many writers who can avoid being trite when talking of happiness. The best happiness comes out of the music rather than the lyrics.

MR: What emotion do you experience the most?

MJ: There has always been a lot of sex in my music, but then again there has always been that in this area of music. I’ve always felt a certain amount of lustfulness and indeed loneliness, which gave me an affinity with blues music. The British attitude to sex creates a lot of hang ups, and I have fought against that frequently. Personally I have fought against these hang ups and have been fairly promiscuous and experimental. If you suppress your sexuality then it will burst up in another area, so it is vital that you face up to that and become comfortable with that. Sexual energy is so immense that it is incredibly creative, particularly in contemporary music, and often great music can have an almost sexual effect on you. In the past I have felt a good deal of anger as well – the anger I expressed on ‘Infected’ is less so now because I have learnt a lot about myself and about how to deal with all that. I’ve always been quite an aggressive person and I am trying to work that out of my life.

MR: You’ve said in the past that you write blues songs – is that still the case?

MJ: Yes, but when I say blues I think of John Lennon, Hank Williams, Tim Buckley, all those people who have this need to express that darker emotion. I don’t believe in the crude categories put onto music, it should be more based on emotions and feelings rather than musical types.

MR: What is your favourite love song you’ve written?

MJ: The audience’s favourite is ‘Uncertain Smile’ but my personal favourite is ‘Beyond Love’, because it has some of the strongest lyrics I’ve written, particularly the second verse: (sings quietly) ‘ The drops of semen and clots of blood which may one day become like us, with outstretched hands reaching beyond love and up to something above’. That particular verse was pure inspiration and I don’t know where it came from. You see, that’s the thing, quite often you can’t remember where you get stuff from. I am not very prolific but I think about songs all the time, the direction I want to take, how my voice should sound and so on. I collect ideas in my head and do an enormous amount of preparation before anything actually happens in the studio. I haven’t written a song now for over 18 months, yet I am constantly working on the next idea. You can literally forget how you wrote previous songs, where did they come from, and that can get scary. Once you start though, the ideas start to come through your consciousness and those little seeds develop and prosper.

MR: You have all these intense emotions which you exorcise or discuss through the catharsis of song writing. Do you think that if you had no outlet, especially for the anger, that you would have character problems, that the suppression of these frustrations and ideas would explode in some other anti-social way?

MJ: (Pauses). Probably, anger is difficult for everyone, and should be expressed in some way, be it exercise, writing or whatever. Continued suppression of these emotions can lead to cancer and serious health problems such as schizophrenia. You have to express this. I think beneath the veneer of civilisation you don’t know what’s there. What is enough to take the average person over the edge. Take former Yugoslavia, there are people there committing the most awful atrocities that a few years ago would have been horrified had you told them they would be doing so. Maybe we all have that capability. Particularly men, but yes, I think we all have that potential.

MR: Do you consider yourself evil?

MJ: No, not at all, but I have that struggle in me between good and evil. I think everyone has that. Without good there would be no evil, and that has been a theme of mine for a long time. The purpose of evil is to help good evolve. As I get older that harsh conflict is tempered as I learn to accept that I’m not a saint, that I do, and will have, dark thoughts. When you accept these thoughts you rob them of their power, but if you keep pushing them aside they will fester and grow. You have to relax with who you are and let everything find its own level. There are very few people who are purely evil but they are there, they are just in the minority fortunately.

MR: That sounds very optimistic to me?

MJ: am very optimistic, but I struggle to break away from the pessimistic tag the media has given me. I have had so many set backs that if I wasn’t optimistic I would have become a drunk years ago and knocked it all on the head. I’m not too optimistic for this country at the moment but everything’s cyclical, we’re just on a downward spiral at present.

MR: Are you obsessive and how does that manifest itself in your writing?

MJ: Yes. The subject of ‘Dusk’ was so intensely personal and I want to live everything I write about, so if an experience hasn’t happened that I am moved to write about, I will make that situation happen, create it and live it, which can be an incredibly selfish thing to do and can frequently hurt people quite badly. The worst thing about that is that you end up justifying things by saying ‘Oh well, at least I can get a song out of it’. I wouldn’t deliberately stop or end a happy situation by I would create an intense event or scene. You see, I have a very low boredom threshold, I get very bored very easily, and all this can be extremely difficult for the person I’m having a relationship with. My girlfriend of 11 years, who I have recently split up with, was very long suffering, and there are all sorts of guilty feelings starting to surface in me now about that. It’s a very difficult time for me at the moment because I have a few problems with some of the things that I did.

MR: More specifically, what are you obsessive about?

MJ: Things I wouldn’t want to talk about. Compulsive behaviour. Or rather, compulsive sexual behaviour, where I felt my life was out of control. I have never had problems with drink or drugs but there came a time where I was not in control or my life from that sexual aspect. I can get carried away.

MR: Are you happy?

MJ: I have moments of euphoric happiness and moments or awful darkness. It’s the same for everybody, except that we experience it to different degrees. In the extreme you are a manic depressive and on the opposite side of that you are so un-fluctuating that you don’t experience anything. Happiness is a by-product of a busy mind and that is when I am at my most happy, when I am at my most active. If I’m writing a song and it’s going well, I feel an incredible sense of purpose and peace, and other things seem to fall into place. Sitting around on your arse wondering why you are unhappy is ridiculous. You must make yourself busy, people will only become morose if they shy away from activity.

MR: Are you satisfied with your work?

MJ: I am satisfied with the work when I do it, but as time goes by I realise that there are flaws. Obviously if I wasn’t happy with it at the time I wouldn’t release it but I do become critical later on. I never take it for granted that I have an audience, but by searching for satisfaction again and again you earn that audience. I once said I wanted to be the greatest song writer of my generation and that caused all sorts of fuss, but any writer worth his salt should aim for that. You can’t say ‘I’d love to be a really mediocre song writer’, you have to aim high and aspire constantly to the very highest standards.

MR: So other than actual record sales, what do you feel you’ve achieved?

MJ: I still feel that I am at the start of my career, even though people see me as a veteran. I haven’t achieved many of the things I set out to do, and I regret not being more prolific. I think I made a positive contribution to videos and using new subject matter within a song. And if I could choose I would like to be looked back upon one day, regardless of my success commercially or critically, as a song writer who stayed true to himself.

THE END.