Photo - Alex Vanhee 2000

MATT JOHNSON RETURNS
Gary Crossing - Music365 - 1999

THE THE's Matt Johnson returns to his finest, gloomy rock form this week with 'Nakedself', his first album of new material in seven years! He tells us what he's been up to since we last heard from him and talks about life changes, the death of loved ones, globalisation, who owns Britain and the future of music on the internet.

GC: Aside from the Hank Williams covers album 'Hanky Panky' this is the first album of original The The material in seven years. What have you been up to?

MJ: "I did do another album called 'Gun Sluts' which didn't come out. One track from that album, 'Diesel Breeze' made it on to the new album. The Nineties were a bad time for me. There were a lot of problems and every aspect of my life changed. I left England in the early Nineties and spent more time in New York. I worked on 'Gun Sluts' which was a very experimental album. Sony weren't very keen on it. They came over to hear it in New York and were horrified. So then, I put 'Gun Sluts' to one side and started working on this new album. It was a weird situation because my contract with Sony was eventually up after 17 years and they heard the new album and they said 'but we need hits'. I said, 'well I don't have hits. This is what I do, I make albums'. They said 'Well the market has changed you know it's all boy bands and this is the way things are going and to market your record we need hits.' They said 'We can't put this album out unless you sign a new contract with us.' I said 'Well I can't do that. I want the album back and I want to leave'. It was amicable but it took a year of lawyers haggling to get the album back. I the meantime I went to my studio in London and I finished 'Gun Sluts' and then signed to another conglomerate, Universal/Polygram/Seagram, but it's through Nothing Records. The reason I signed to them is the way the industry is going is more corporate than it ever was, so for people like myself who are getting increasingly marginalized it's a bit of a problem. I still need to be with a big label to finance touring or whatever, but Nothing offers a sanctuary within that".

GC: What other aspects of your life have changed?

MJ: "A lot of personal things have been going on. I had a son. He's two and a half. He gives me a hard time, he bosses me about! I moved to New York because I wanted to be in the belly of the beast. It's like living in Rome at the height of the Roman Empire. I'm very interested in all these globalisation issues and living there, close to Wall Street and Madison Avenue, it brought a lot of my political feelings to the surface. I felt numb in England and I wasn't particularly happy living in England anymore. I like England but I felt numb and uninspired. Moving there helped me sharpen myself up."

GC: Don't you have a place in Spain as well?

MJ: "I live in Spain sometimes and Sweden, because my girlfriend's Swedish. It's complicated, chaotic, stressful and confusing at the moment. I like elements of everywhere and I don't know where to live so I'm going to have to make a choice. My son is a native New Yorker and I don't know if I want him brought up around a lot of the stuff that goes on over there." ' GC: Nakedself' has to be the bleakest The The album yet.

MJ:"This isn't bleak! This is cheerful! Isn't it a refreshing change from all this inane dance music? Surely there's room for someone with a point of view? I don't think it's bleak at all, I just think it's good to deal with a lot of these issues that everyone else is ignoring. Like the globalization issues, which luckily people are starting to protest about, like in Seattle recently. I think if you've got strong points of view you've got to get them across, rather than get some DJ in, rap over some stuff and sing about dancing. To me this is an optimistic album. It's very melodic in a lot of ways and the issue of consumerism I think is an important one. I try and make it clear that I am not preaching about this. I am a person that has enough addictive problems and buying rubbish that I don't want I feel very manipulated by it. In America we get piles of these mail order catalogues through the door. I don't know how but you get your name put down for these ridiculous things like gardening and hunting. But if I start reading these magazines I start buying stuff. I feel strongly about the affects of advertising, the fact that it's become cool to sell out to advertising. And if I'm the only person saying it then I like it even more because I like being the outsider".

GC: You said that advertising is bastardising the English language.

MJ: "It's being evacuated of its meaning. Like on the album track 'Boiling Point'. It starts off as a subway journey and everywhere you look you're bombarded by advertisements. But I think the 1984 George Orwell idea of Newspeak is truly with us. You watch the news in America and you don't get journalists, you get soap opera stars reading the news and they talk in euphemisms. So you've got the bombing going on in Kosovo and of course after the Vietnam war they decided that they couldn't allow the news coverage. They had to handpick the journalists. They send them over there and you don't see pictures of dead bodies of course, you just hear about collateral damage, which is innocent civilians being killed. So America says it's trying to bring democracy to these savages when really what they mean is create business opportunities for MacDonalds and this, that and the other."

GC: What are the changes you notice when you return to England?

MJ:"I don't come back very often but when I do I notice lots of trendy coffee bars and restaurants, nicely designed, fashionable stuff. It seems a lot better than it did under the Conservatives. Although I know people are knocking New Labour and I can understand that. I keep in touch through papers and the radio but all this spin doctor stuff and focus groups and opinion polls just get on my nerves. But I think people shouldn't forget what it was like before. But the main thing I notice, and this is stuff I feel very strongly about, and I wrote about it 16 years ago, is the Americanisation of Britain. The Britain that I love is fast disappearing. These giant shopping malls on the edge of these little towns, high streets being demolished or boarded up or you've got aromatherapy shops. Also the fact that Britain isn't really owned by Britain anymore. Our water industries are largely French owned, electricity companies are largely American now. This is the result of privatising all your utilities which I think is a huge mistake. The car industry is either American or German. Five or six thousand pubs in England are Japanese now. My father is a publican and they've just lost their Nomura, one of the most powerful corporations in the world. He and his brothers were the longest serving landlords in Britain -nearly forty years- this was a family pub. They just got thrown out after taking it to the high court. But through that I realised that thousands of pubs are Japanese. The point I'm making is who owns Britain anymore - I know there's this Britain PLC joke- and does it matter. I'm not an economist I'm a songwriter, but it interests me."

What do you think of music at the moment?

MJ: "Popular music is exhausted as a form. Recently I said I feel like a Vaudevillian act. My son will grow up and him and his friends will laugh and say oh your dad used to be like an old music hall comedian. Music is an exhausted form and I think there's a new form around the corner, probably through the internet."

What makes you keep going then?

MJ: "It's my passion, what can I do? I suppose I probably feel like how blues and jazz musicians felt when rock'n'roll and The Beatles came along. Except in my case it's not The Beatles it's kids playing turntables and going on the internet. What am I gonna do, put on a funny hat and play a turntable? I'm not gonna prostitute myself and I still have an audience I think, but I think it's changing. I think there's too much music. You remember when it was just Top Of The Pops and The Old Grey Whistle Test, no videos. You'd sit in your room listening to albums and they'd become these really potent, intense soundtracks to your life. Now advertisers, as soon as there is any kind of trend -for years it's been punk or rap or rave or mods and rockers- it's quickly absorbed and sold back. Any band now is happy to have songs in adverts. Personally I've always turned it down but it seems that everywhere you go you're being blasted by music and youth culture or whatever. So as a form it is exhausted, it exists purely as a form of commerce. I'm hoping that there's something new round the corner, a new breed of people that are gonna react against the Beavis & Butthead generation, this inane cool to be stupid, cos it ain't. I think it's great when you've got people ripping up a field of genetically modified food, going up trees and standing in front of trucks. I think they're a bigger inspiration than any rock band."

How did you cope with losing your mother and your brother?

MJ: "My brother was sudden but my mother was expected. The sudden death is more shocking. It actually gives you a real fear of the future. Every time the phone rings -because that's how I found out about my brother- you suddenly feel fear. It affects the way you view life. Contrary to what people think, I'm actually quite an optimistic person. You couldn't leave school at 15 with no qualifications and whatever, unless you had a certain self-confidence and optimism. But that really rocked me. It meant that I had a real fear of the future and it forces you to view your relationships differently, you appreciate people more, you learn to live in the moment more. When my mother died it stirred a lot of things. A lot of stuff from childhood came to the surface. Where you're going in your life and where you wish you'd gone, are just flooded by memories of childhood. It's very, very powerful. And with my son being born, that stirs up a lot of childhood memories. Suddenly you're seeing things through his eyes. And your feelings about the future of the world change. You start to care more about the world, where it's going and what kind of a world your children are going to grow up in."

What was it like playing live for the first time in six years?

MJ: "I wanted to play very small places to blood the band. They'd played on the album but we'd never played live together. I didn't know what to expect. I knew the music business had gone through a lot of big changes. But everywhere has been selling out, it's been great. The audiences have been great. It was funny, at some shows in America people would be sobbing in the audience. It was amazing. I'm really happy. I didn't know what to expect. I didn't know whether people would remember me actually."

GC: Do you miss working with Johnny Marr?

MJ: "Yes and no. We still keep in touch by email. Johnny's one of my favourite people and we’re very close friends. And we had a very good working releationship. At the same time, that band with Johnny and James and Dave, was together for about six years and it had kind of run its course. They all had children at that time and I moved to America. It was just hard to keep everything together. It took me a while but I've finally got a band which is equal to that band. I think the world of Johnny and we still keep in touch and encourage each other. I've been telling him to do a solo record ever since I've known him, I've been kicking him up the arse and he's finally doing it."

GC: Any advice to young bands

MJ: "The only reason to sign to a major is to get as much money as you can. Don't sign unless they give you a ridiculous deal. I didn't get a ridiculous deal. I signed when I was twenty and I tried to get out of it but they wouldn't let me go. I was there till I was 37. Therefore you're never priority. If they've got to pay through the nose then that way they will prioritize.If it happens and you make it happen yourself then all fair and good. Otherwise do it yourself. Use the internet, roll up your sleeves and if you don't believe in yourself enough to do it then maybe you're in the wrong job. There's actually too much music out there at the moment anyway."

What do you think about music on the internet, MP3 downloads etc?

MJ: "I have very mixed feelings about that because first of all this stuff isn't market driven, it's driven by corporations. OK CDs have been in existence for twenty years. They say roughly there's a twenty year cycle for music formats like vinyl, cassettes or wax cylinders. It's now time, everyone's got their CDs and the industry is thinking 'how can we re-sell the catalogue?' They're worried about the internet, first of all because it empowers the individual artist. They can deal direct with the audience. The record companies are saying 'we can't have that so we'll buy it' it's like buying the pipeline through which the oil travels. MP3 concerns me because, if you're a band that wants to give away music for free, fine, but all this bullshit 'hey free music on the internet', someone's got to pay for it. Someone's got a mortgage to pay and children to bring up. It's not free for the people that make it. If some young band wants to give their music away for free, then fine. Good luck to them. But if someone wants to start bootlegging my stuff for free then it pisses me off and i'll go after them legally. Casio are developing a watch with headphones that you could probably store your entire record collection on. That's all well and good but -and I'm not being like King Canute here or a Luddite- but you've got to think of the consequences. Are you then killing off the industry? People have spent their lifetimes working at something and now you're get all their stuff and give it away for free. You get people saying 'I've been a fan of yours for twenty years, I'm entitled to have it for free'. Well you're not. That's no different to me going down the greengrocers down the road and saying 'well, I've been coming here for fifteen years and so I'm gonna help myself to all your fruit.'"