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Video Stills by Gavin Bush
THE
SAME ...ONLY DIFFERENT.
MATT JOHNSON & JOHNNY MARR IN CONVERSATION . . .
Part
1.
In the winter of 1981 I was, as usual, hanging out at my friend's
house listening to music and trying to stay out of the Manchester
rain. I was 17, played guitar and wrote songs. My friend had
just returned from London with an album by a guy he'd met
on a street in Soho in the early hours one morning when asking
for directions. I was immediately impressed that someone who
was not much older than me had got it together to make his
own solo album, but when I actually heard Burning Blue Soul
by Matt Johnson I loved it. The following week Matt came up
to Manchester to visit my friend and as we sat face to face,
passing my guitar back and forth to show each other riffs
and songs, we knew we had an amazing connection and thought
that one day we might be in a band together. Now, more than
20 years later we find ourselves at Matt's house on one of
the Spanish Islands. Neither of us can really believe that
so much time has now passed. We've both managed to make music
for a living and make names for ourselves, which was our dream,
and from 1988-93 we did get to be in a band together when
I played guitar in TheThe. What follows is a conversation
about TheThe between two friends, who still feel the same
... only different.
J: Well, I've got to ask you this very obvious
question right from the start, so let’s just get this
one out of the way. What were the earliest musical and lyrical
influences that you think were important to you when you decided
to become a musician?
M: I refuse to answer that question (laughs)
J: See? My very first question (laughs) Especially
lyrically.
M: The weird thing was that I didn't really pay
that much attention to lyrics. When I would listen to records
and get affected by them it was more by the spirit of the
music itself. Not so much a case of what they were saying
but more how they were saying it. But living above a pub,
some of my earliest memories are of being surrounded by music
and I suppose the first stuff that made a real conscious impression
would have been Tamla Motown and The Beatles. So in retrospect
just tightly focused and brilliant songwriting. Progressing
onward from there into my teenage years I’d say the early
glam-rock groups. I loved the really chunky guitars
and drums on Mike Leander’s Gary Glitter productions.
Also Marc Bolan’s T-Rex sound was really exciting. That
influence would still be there many years later on songs like
SwineFever (from NakedSelf) where I recorded about 40 guitars
all playing the same simple lines. Continuing from there I’d
say Tim Buckley, Syd Barratt and assorted singer/songwriters,
still including, of course, John Lennon. Then we’d get
on to the post punk movement and Thomas Leer particularly.
He's almost completely forgotten about now sadly, but he was
a huge influence on me, particularly his single, Private Plane.
The fact it was just one guy in his bedroom doing the entire
thing made a massive, massive impact on me. He was years ahead
of his time and actually inspired me to create TheThe really.
He later told me that the reason his vocals were so whispered
on that song is because his girlfriend was asleep in their
bedsit while he did it!
J: So, when he made a bit of money and he could get
in proper studios, his vocals sound changed, because that
Four Movements record ...
M: That was a great EP.
J: I think a lot of people don't realise that
kind of context that you came out of, that post-punk movement,
because most of the people from that era have fallen by the
wayside now, but when we first met, it was Winter of 1981,
and at that time you were just about to start writing Soul
Mining - I think you'd just got your deal hadn't you?
M: Had Burning Blue Soul been released?
J: Yeah, Burning Blue Soul was out but you were just
signing to CBS then weren't you?
M: Yeah, I think I was. But I know what you mean,
that particular little era has really been neglected in the
media. For years, we've heard about the 60’s or about
Punk and now I suppose there's a certain amount of reference
to, and reverence for, the German bands from the 70’s
like Can, Faust, Neu and Kraftwerk etc. but there was
that secret little pocket of post-punk British underground
music. And that’s really my roots.
J: Wire?
M: Yes, they were a really interesting band. They weren't
really punk, they were much more imaginative and out on a
limb than that. Bruce Gilbert & Graham Lewis produced
my first single and some of Burning Blue Soul. We supported
them live too. They were very kind and supportive towards
me as well as being hugely influential. Also, Throbbing Gristle,
Cabaret Voltaire, Thomas Leer, The Normal, Robert Rental,
Scritti Politti, whose early incarnation were also terrific.
I saw their first show and was supporting them on their third.
This Heat were a really great band too and we had some association
with them as well in the early days. They were very encouraging
and let us use their studio in Brixton. And Early Human League,
before they signed to Virgin and got the girl singers ...
J: Being Boiled and ...
M: Circus of Death, yeah. I used to go to a lot
of their early shows, where they just used those simple projectors
and synths and drum machines but armed with a great sense
of humour and irony. Cabaret Voltaire’s early shows
were absolutely fantastic too. I was only about 16 years old
and if I’d been 10 years older maybe I’d have thought
“Well this is just like the early Pink Floyd shows”,
you know, those early multimedia happenings and freak outs
of the late 60’s, but I suppose what makes those things
so intense is one’s age at the time. People say
that contemporary music isn't as innovative but if you were
16 now you'd probably think the music around today was a lot
stronger than the stuff from 10 or 20 years ago.
J: Yeah, but don't you think that was firstly
underground though that kind of movement?
M: Yes it was and the sad thing about it all
is that nowadays, before any fledgling movement even breaks
out of it’s shell and begins blinking in the daylight,
it’s sniffed out by some trendy advertising brat and
featured on a car, beer or financial services commercial.
It’s much harder for things to stay 'underground', for
want of a better word. And I think that was a really
important thing really, that younger generations felt that
there was something they had of their own. I'd imagine
there's a certain amount of resentment if you're young now.
You just discover something that’s close to your heart
and which resonates with your own private experiences and
then before you know it, it’s completely over exposed
and everybody's discovered it, devoured it and then discarded
it. Before it’s even had a chance to breathe and develop.
There's something really important about having your own sense
of culture, and in that respect punk never really belonged
to me, it was my older brother Andrew that used to go and
see the Sex Pistols and all the other punk bands.
J: Yeah, I was the same.
M: I never really enjoyed the music either, I found
it pretty unimaginative generally. The Sex Pistols I liked
and some of The Clash, some of the good New York stuff like
Television, Talking Heads and Patti Smith was great too but
a lot of it I just thought was third rate and dull. But this
post-punk era we’re talking about here? That I found
really innovative. After having been in bands since I was
a little kid, I suddenly realised you could do it all in your
bedroom and on your own. And the one record that really brought
it home with a bang was Private Plane by Thomas Leer .
J: Well I was going to mention that stuff to
you because the difference between Burning Blue Soul and Soul
Mining is really quite drastic in terms of the way that it
sounds in it’s overall production. It still sounds like
it’s coming from the same person but, for want of a better
term, Burning Blue Soul seems more like a bedroom record,
very much like one guy’s endeavour. You used to
work in a studio though didn't you?
M: Yeah.
J: Did you do some of it after-hours or during
downtime in the studio?
M: Some of it, particularly the drum and percussion
loops, which were early forms of sampling really. The company
I worked for had a massive music and sound effects library,
so I would play around with looping sounds although of course
in those days, looping really did mean looping. Huge spools
of tape all over the place. I sometimes go back to that method
of working because I love old tape machines and I just love
tape. Not only the sound of it but the smell and the feel
of it too. It’s funny talking about it now. I start to
sound like my dad talking about his first job, but when I
started working there as a 15 year old, as part of your training
for the first month or so you’d have to sit in the corner
in front of a big old Ferrograph/EMI tape machine. A big old
green thing, with big knobs and dials. You’d sit there
with a pair of outsized headphones on all day long, week in
and week out learning how to edit tape. They’d give you
the gash tape at first. The stuff they were going to throw
out and gradually you’d work your way up to editing the
real stuff, with real music on it. They also taught you how
to do loops and all this sort of stuff, tape delays, flanging
and phasing by running two machines together. You know all
the sort of stuff you can now do with a £15 stomp box.
But they really took it seriously in those days, teaching
you to be a tape-op. Nowadays, kids just start and they want
to be producers and re-mixers before they’ve learned
how to make a decent cup of tea. I could tell you some real
horror stories about that (laughs) anyway, having that kind
of training meant that I built up a vast library of weird
ethnic percussion and sound-effects loops in my spare time.
I was obsessed by it and a lot of that stuff then carried
over into the early TheThe shows and my early albums. I even
used a tape recorder on stage then, an Akai 4000DS mk2 that
I saved up for months to buy. In those days TheThe was just
me on an old Crumar electric piano and electric guitar, both
fed through a big muff fuzz box, with Keith the keyboard player
on a little Wasp synth plus we had an Electro Harmonix drum
machine and the reel to reel tape recorder. It was very mobile
and a lot of fun and I wouldn’t mind trying that kind
of format out again at some point. Anyhow a lot of those ideas
then carried over into Spirits (unreleased first album) and
Burning Blue Soul. The reason Burning Blue Soul sounds very
different to Soul Mining is because there's a missing link
between the two which is The Pornography of Despair. That’s
like a cross between both albums.
J: That makes a lot of sense, because when Soul
Mining first came out it really struck a lot of people, because
the songs on there were quite classic. Here, someone had arrived
who was very much a songwriter and I remember that being the
feeling at the time, that there were all these great songs,
but what was different about it was the context . It
was sparse sounding and it wasn't done on traditional instruments.
There was some guitar playing here and there, obviously that
you did, but on some of the stuff you just used drum machines
and other gear like that. Was that part of the influence of
Thomas Leer and people like him that you were speaking about?
Or was it perhaps more because you liked technology and that's
just what was available at the time?
M: Well both really. I liked and still like technology,
but also maybe because of being somebody who, instead of practising
to be a musician, spent his hours playing with old tape recorders
and bits of equipment. So when drum machines first came out
I just really loved them and took to them instantly. TheThe
were one of the original electronic duos (laughs) just two
guys on stage with a drum machine. There was an amusing rumour
going round when we were playing live shows in the late 70’s.
Apparently the Musicians Union said they were going to make
an example of groups like TheThe because they felt our use
of drum machines could spell the end for drummers. There was
a lot of paranoia in the Musicians Union at that time and
they were going to make an example of us and try and get us
all banned, because they felt it was going to destroy the
livelihood of their members. The irony in all this being of
course, that I went on to employ more Musicians Union members
- orchestras, choirs, brass sections - than virtually any
of my contemporaries. And I always pay my dues (laughs) but
whatever, I just loved those early little Electro Harmonix
drum machines. The ones that looked and sounded like little
tin cans? But also you know what drummers are like to deal
with (laughs)
J: Hell hath no fury like a drummer scorned (laughs)
Who would you say were the key people around you at
that time? Did Stevo, your first manager come into the frame
at that time?
M: Well he was really my second manager. My first
manager was Tom Johnston, who you've met I think. He
was a cartoonist by day, actually I think he's still
doing cartoons for the Daily Mirror now, but he was really
my first manager. One of the first people to really believe
in what I was doing. He met me through Keith Law’s younger
brother and I think Tom actually he paid for the recordings
we did for the first single, Controversial Subject. He was
also friends with Wire, particularly Graham Lewis and Bruce
Gilbert, so he introduced us to them and they took us under
their wing and encouraged us and let us support them at a
show they did at the Notre Dame Hall in Leicester Square in
London. It was a really big deal for us at the time and I
would have been nervous if it wasn’t for the fact that
I was taking my driving test on the same day. Or was it the
other way round? I can’t remember. Anyway, one set of
nerves cancelled out the other and I passed my test first
time at age 17 and did a brilliant show with Wire in the evening.
Useful lesson in life that. If you ever have something coming
up that makes you sick with nerves then make sure you’re
doing two or three things on the same day that make you really
nervous too. Works like a charm. Why can’t life be as
simple and sweet when you reach 40? Anyway, Graham and Bruce
produced the first single and Ivo at 4AD picked it up and
released it. The single did really well. It topped the
independent charts in the days when there really was an indie
chart and John Peel played it to death on his late night show.
Ivo then took a big leap of faith and asked me to do a solo
album for 4AD, which became Burning Blue Soul. A lot of thanks
go to Ivo for giving me that chance. So before Stevo came
along I'd already put out an album and a single and been playing
a lot of shows around London.
J: And then ...
M: Stevo came along. I remember getting these odd phone
calls completely out of the blue by this weird character that
called himself Steve O. He wanted me to support Cabaret Voltaire
at a gig he was promoting in Sheffield. I turned him down
three times because he wouldn't pay any money at all. He just
kept saying it would be good for me (laughs) ... anyhow we
ended up doing it for a crate of beer in the end and Stevo,
another support band and us all travelled up to sunny Sheffield
in a little old Transit van and played the show with
Cabaret Voltaire. It was great really because they were fantastic
guys and I’d always had a lot of respect for them. It
turned out to be really enjoyable. The Stevo connection really
started out of that. Then he put together a compilation album
of so called futurist and electronic bands called ... what
was it? Just called the Some Bizarre compilation album I think.
Anyway, he asked us for a track so we, that’s my keyboard
player Keith Laws and me, put a track called Untitled on it.
The album came out on Phonogram and through it some of the
bands got signed, including Depeche Mode, Blamange, B-Movie
and Soft Cell. Stevo was managing a couple of those bands
and Soft Cell suddenly became very, very successful with their
cover version of Tainted Love. Consequently Stevo had immense
clout within the record companies. Just prior to this I’d
recorded my second single - Cold Spell Ahead - for the independent
side of Some Bizzare. But as his influence grew he then got
Decca Records to pay for me to re-record the song with Mike
Thorne in New York. Mike was Wire’s producer but had
also been responsible for producing Soft Cell’s huge
hits. He was a hot producer in those days. The really
smart thing that Stevo had managed to do though was that he
got Decca to pay for the recordings but he somehow got them
to sign a clause saying that they didn't own the recordings. To
this day I don't know how he did it even though I was in the
office at the time when he was negotiating with their lawyer.
He got the lawyer to sign this clause to say that they'll
pay for it but they don't own it. Amazing. Seeing them beaten
at their own game was a rare delight.
J: Maybe he offered to move in next door or something
...
M: Probably (laughing) I really don't know what
he did, something like that. But I flew across to New York
and recorded with Mike Thorne. After I came back Stevo then
started a bidding war between CBS and Decca. CBS won, with
Stevo famously forcing Maurice Oberstein to bestride a lion
in Trafalgar Square and put pen to paper. So the version on
this new singles compilation is the version that was recorded
in New York in 1982. Its been deleted for about 18 years so
it’s good to have it back in the land of the living and
on CD for the very first time.
J: Oh, so this version of Uncertain Smile is what appeared
as the original 7" single then?
M: Yeah, the original 7" single recorded
in New York in 1982.
J: So this is really interesting. Your first
- I know you'd put singles out before that - but your first
single with a proper budget was done in New York. Why
New York? Did you have an attraction to New York even
then?
M: Not until I got there, although I was always
fascinated by it just through seeing it on those gritty early
70’s films, but suddenly arriving there, there was such
an overwhelming sense of ... Deja Vu. Alien yet somehow
utterly familiar. I don't know whether that was just through
growing up in Britain, where we’ve had such a pervasive
American influence upon our culture and our subconscious.
I had gone to America as a teenager but that was to California
so I don’t know, but we’ve really grown up with
American films and American TV shows to the point where their
culture has been superimposed upon our own, but it just felt
instantly comfortable and I felt more at home than I did in
London. I knew instantly I was going to live there.
J: So it wasn't your decision to go and record
the single there?
M: No, it was just because Mike Thorne was there.
Interestingly enough though around about 1978-79 there
was another band called TheThe, a punk band in New York.
They were only around for a couple of years, but a lot of
people confused us and they would say "Oh I saw TheThe
playing in New York “etc. I only found out about them
after they’d split up but even now I occasionally meet
people who swear they remember seeing me play in New York
in the late 70’s. People always did think TheThe were
a New York band and I suppose now, in a way, it actually is.
J: Why I mentioned this is that to anyone who
knows you there’s always been this strong link to New
York. It's run right the way through your career and up to
the present day. It's interesting that some of your best known
early songs were actually recorded there, particularly
the version of Uncertain Smile that introduced a lot of people
to The The.
End of part 1.
Onto
part two >
Transcribed by Stella Macpherson.
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