Photo - AJ Barratt 1986

INFECTED
A MOJO RETROSPECTIVE (2000)

1) When and where was Infected recorded

MJ: It was written and recorded between 1984 and 1986 in London. The studios were The Garden (Shoreditch) Air Studios (Oxford Circus) Livingstone (North London) and mixed at Comforts Place (Sussex)

2) Could you briefly contextualise the album in terms of TheThe's development? Where was your head at?

MJ: Like it's immediate predecessor Soul Mining it was fuelled by speed, ecstasy and vodka but It was a much more ambitious album and I wanted it to be big, aggressive and varied. It was my first time working with real strings and brass and unlike my first album Burning Blue Soul, where I'd played all the instruments myself, I suppose I'd started to realise my own technical limitations as a musician and I started bringing in a lot of other people (although I did still play all of the guitars myself) It was the first time I'd worked with drummer Dave Palmer who was to stay with me for another couple of albums and tours. I also used a few other singers, including Zeke Manyika (my drummer on Soul Mining) and Neneh Cherry.
It was also written at the height of Thatcherism, which seems an age ago now but was a pretty awful period which seemed endless at the time. People may whine about New Labour but they've got short memories because the Conservative party of that era really were one of the black spots in British political history. The pervasive greed culture of that time permanently disfigured aspects of this country and allowed people like Rupert Murdoch to gain a stranglehold on our media.

3) With the benefit of hindsight, how do you view the album now?

MJ: It was very sincere and passionate but I think I made mistakes in some of the song structures. For instance I was trying to be too clever with the song Heartland by just putting the 'chorus' as an outro (This is the 51st state of the USA) I was always (and still am!) making things very hard for myself and succeeded in getting most of the singles banned from daytime radio play for one reason or another. Sweet Bird of Truth because it came out just before the US attack on Libya, Infected because of the AIDS scare and Heartland because of the phrase "Piss stinking shopping centre". But I was and still am proud of the album and taking into account that I was only 23 when I wrote it I think it had some pretty mature songwriting on it and was ahead of it's time in many ways.

4) What can you remember about recording Slow Train To Dawn with Neneh Cherry? How did you meet her?

MJ: I was looking for a singer for Slow Train to Dawn for quite a while. I first saw Neneh singing with the group Rip, Rig and Panic but it was her work on Float Up CP that really caught my imagination. I arranged to meet her round my flat and got her so drunk on vodka she almost fell down the stairs. She was a joy to work with, a lovely warm person.

5) Was the Tim Pope/ Peter Christopherson film released at the same time as the album? Which terrestrial tv channel was it shown on?

MJ: The Infected film was released shortly after the album. Incredibly it was shown on channel 4 twice in it's entirety within months of it's release. A lot of credit for the film has to go to one of my previous managers Stevo who managed to force Epic (almost against their will) to make this huge commitment. We filmed in New York's Harlem and in Peru and Bolivia. It was the first time I'd worked with Tim Pope and his pieces were my favourites, particularly Out Of The Blue (into the fire). I actually wrote the storyboards to Heartland, Infected and The Mercy Beat and Peter Christopherson brought them to life brilliantly.
Another interesting fact about the film is Mark Romanek's involvement. He is now one of America's top video directors. He approached me in Danceteria, a New York night club, and though never having shot a video he pleaded with me to give him a break. I got a good feeling about his ideas and decided to let him shoot Sweet Bird of Truth.
I also toured with the film for a year, travelling across the US, Canada, Australia and Europe showing it in cinemas and giving interviews afterwards (actually it was while I was promoting in Australia that Billy Bragg persuaded me to come out of 'retirement' and start playing live again, starting with his Red Wedge shows)
The film did have a massive impact at the time and I'm proud to say that nothing has really been done like it before or since. Actually in today's tight fisted climate there are very few artists who could afford to do it now anyway!

6) What other recording credits did Steve Hogarth have before Infected. Do you remember him recording the piano on Heartland?

MJ: I've no idea. He was a friend of one of my co-producers Warne Livesey and I hadn't met Steve before or since though I heard he went on to sing with the group Marillion. He was a nice fellow to work with.

7) What can you tell me about the writing and recording of Heartland? Could you develop for me what you were trying to communicate in that song?

MJ: Heartland was probably the most difficult song on the album to write, in that it was written over the longest period of time. Maybe on and off over a year or more. It was a lament for the loss of a country that maybe never was. The post war 'golden age' of the Britain we were brought up with (the old Ealing comedies etc.) was really just a myth I guess but I just felt this overwhelming fascination/nostalgia for certain childhood places/memories (the Victorian parks, Saturday morning cinema, old iron bridges etc.)
Also around this time there was a real sense of frustration and despair in the air particularly as 60% of the population were saddled with a government they not only voted against but for the most part loathed. Unemployment ballooned to obscene levels, the unions were castrated, our manufacturing industries were being dismembered etc. I was also trying to write about Britain's loss of identity during this period and the fact that under Thatcher/Reagan we really were becoming an aircraft carrier for the US (this was just before the US started launching attacks against the middle East from their bases here) Although people may think it ironic that I now live in New York I still feel the same about the Americanisation of Britain. I think the red herring in British political debate is about handing our sovereignty to Brussels when in many ways we really handed it to Washington shortly after WW2. When the US says jump the UK says how high! So, if I'm going to live in America I might as well live in America! But Heartland was a mixture of both personal and political and a song which I'm still fond of.

8) Generally speaking, what are your outstanding memories of recording the album?

MJ: Contrary to what people might think I had a lot of fun making that album. We (my co-producers, engineers and tape ops) spent a lot of time playing pranks and chasing each other round the control room with cream cakes and soda syphons and probably could have got the thing made in half the time and half the expense. I get a bit loopy if I'm locked in a confined space for long periods of time.

9) To what extent was it a cathartic process?

MJ: Every record is a cathartic process. But it's the writing more than the recording that's really cathartic. It's hard to put into words the sheer relief you feel as a songwriter when you write something that gives you goosebumps and brings tears to your eyes. It's as satisfying as the greatest orgasm. Of course not everyone will share your feelings for a particular song but if you can make yourself feel that then your on the right track.

10) Do you remember any reviews which A. Hit the nail on the head or B completely missed the point?

MJ: I didn't (and still don't) read many of my reviews but there was one phrase which always stuck in my head. I think it was Danny Kelly of the NME who said that "Infected to an eerie, ultimately disturbing extent is like Britain 1986 trapped on vinyl" and I suppose if you can represent a particular time accurately that's some kind of achievement. One of my favourite comments though came from John Lydon who came over to visit us at our hotel when we were playing Sydney, Australia and he snarled "Infected was a spiteful album, I loved it" well, I couldn't have been paid a higher compliment than from the man himself. Also, another moment I always treasured was being approached at a party in America by a young black US fighter pilot who told me how the song Sweet Bird of Truth had completely changed the way he felt about his job and made him quit. So who says music can't change the world!

11) Did you feel under any pressure to write Infected 2, as it were?

MJ: No more than writing Burning Blue Soul 2 or Soul Mining 2. I've always felt an intense desire to move on and not repeat myself regardless of the commercial consequences or the fact that a lot of 'fans' are so hung up on the past. You can't battle against people's nostalgia. You just have to walk away.

12) How did Infected change your career?

MJ: I guess more people recognised me in the street because I was on tv quite a lot, which didn't make me feel very comfortable. I also misbehaved a lot more which caused a lot of problems in my personal life. Career wise it's hard to say. I do think though that this being Britain the success of the project created a certain amount of jealousy towards me from certain quarters. This really became manifest during Mind Bomb when Johnny Marr joined TheThe and a lot of people had it in for both him (for daring to leave The Smiths) and me for getting a bit cocky. So we just battened down the hatches and kept each other company as the brickbats and insults rained down on us.

13) Roughly how many units has the album sold to date?

MJ: About 1,000,000 worldwide, but in all truthfulness it's hard to get a true figure because major labels don't account very accurately. I've found so many wild discrepancies over the years with Epic's accounts department that I really have no idea about the true number. The sad thing for this album commercially is that during the first couple of months of it's release CBS (as Sony was then called) had a dispute with all the major retailers in the country so that the only place people could buy their records were in independent stores. It's impossible to know how much damage this may have done to sales.

14) Any interesting, previously undisclosed information about any of the tracks, trivial or otherwise?

MJ: When I started writing the album there were three people I had in mind as producers. I was an ambitious kid so I contacted Tom Waits, Brian Eno and Holger Czukay. Of the three only Tom Waits came back enthusiastically and I actually spent over a week in New York with him checking out studios and doing basic pre-production. He also gave me a sound thrashing at the pool table and even introduced me to Robert Frank (the legendary American photographer who was working on the Rain Dogs sleeve) He was going to produce Heartland, Out Of The Blue and a couple of others. As it turned out he started to go through so many major life changes (sacking his manager, having a new baby, his new acting commitments as well working on his own Rain Dogs album) that he couldn't do it though he did say to me that my demos were so explicit why didn't I just produce it myself with an engineer. I decided to follow Tom's advice and work with a couple of highly talented but as yet unknown engineers/co-producers, Warne Livesey and Roli Mosimann who both went on to become very successful producers in their own right. I also used Gary Langan on a couple of tracks as well.

The Mercy Beat was influenced by my close friend Jim Thirlwell (Foetus). We've spent a lot of time together over the years and this particular time was quite wild with a lot of partying and drug taking (particularly LSD) If you listen to that track you can definitely hear the Foetus influence, especially lyrically.

One of my favourite tracks on the album Out Of The Blue (into the fire) which is basically about fear of intimacy/loss of identity/bought flesh/addiction caused a lot of problems with politically correct males when it came out who got the wrong end of the stick and thought it was sexist. The delicious irony being that this is one of my most popular songs amongst women who found it a truthful portrayal of male sexuality.

I've never viewed Infected as a high or low point in my career, just an earlier chapter in a book I'm still trying to write where all the songs are intimately linked in some way, across time and subject matter. For instance Slow Train to Dawn and Kingdom of Rain are sister songs as are Sweet Bird of Truth and Armageddon Days. Out of the Blue has cousins in Dogs of Lust and WeatherBelle. Heartland is closely related to Perfect, Flesh and Bones and The Beat(en) Generation. Infected, I've been Waitin' for Tomorrow and SaltWater are tied together too etc etc.

So there you have it. It's a sunny day in Bristol as I prepare to play the penultimate show on my latest British tour and that's about as much as I can remember off the top of my head this morning. I'm sure there's much more that I've forgotten about and if the above isn't sufficient then let me know and I'll try to remember.