SLOW BIRTH OF A BLUES MAN

ROSE ROUSE - THE GUARDIAN – 1986

ON THE BIZZARE INSPIRATION OF A SONGWRITER WHO TAKES HIS TIME.

‘Music is like an exorcism, you can’t force it’, says Stevo, Some Bizzare supremo, and much reviled scourge, of the music business. He’s explaining Matt Johnson’s three year absence from the music scene.

Matt Johnson is something of a recluse; he’s also an enigma to the product-hungry recording industry. Thrust to media prominence in 1983 by Stevo’s imaginative negotiating ploys (he apparently persuaded the former CBS chief, Maurice Oberstein, to sign the contract on the back of one of the lions in Trafalgar Square at 4.00am) and a superb album Soul Mining, Johnson then disappeared.

Son of a publican parents, multi-instrumentalist, and an East Ender, Johnson disobeyed the unwritten pop law which states ‘produce prolifically while in the public eye thereby maximising profits’ and followed his natural instincts instead. ‘I spent a year domesticating myself and watching Ceefax,’ he says. ‘For me, after I’ve dragged everything out of myself, it takes three years to fill up again with experiences. Music is a by-product of life but most musicians haven’t the chance to lead any life, they’re so caught up in their lifestyles.’

Soul Mining, an idiosyncratic mixture of emotional purging and sparkling rhythms, sold a million copies world wide. ‘And CBS couldn’t work out why or how it did it,’ says Stevo wryly. ‘I think Soul Mining is very innocent. In fact, listening to it now, it sounds like a very MOR record,’ adds Johnson later.

Johnson defies pop’s convention for outrage with his utter normality. At 25, he has a receding hairline, owns a flat in Stoke Newington, and professes shyness with the media. ‘I’m not particularly at ease with my trade,’ he declares. ‘I don’t enjoy doing interviews or TV show. I don’t like playing live concerts – I’m either embarrassed or violent when it comes to performing.’

On the other hand, he is a brilliant songwriter as well as playing several different instruments. His songs from Uncertain Smile to Slow Train to Dawn, refuse to fall into convenient categories.

Johnson’s most recent release (in limited pressings) in May this year, The Sweet Bird Of Truth, almost became a bone of contention between CBS and himself. Recorded in January, set against brooding saxes and a searing funk beat, its lyrics – a US pilot’s thoughts as he is shot down over Arab territory – eerily predated the American bombing of Lybia, CBS were not keen to release it; however, they submitted.

‘They are a multi-national corporation and after the Libyan thing, they were a target. The Special Branch advised them to take down the American flag. It doesn’t take many brains to pick up what’s going on in the Middle East by watching TV. I wrote it as neither a pro or anti-terrorist song; it’s a reflection of a sensitive situation,’ he says.

Infected, the album due out later this month, has been carefully constructed over the last couple of years and marks a fresh stage in Johnson’s musical development. Aggressive to the point of brutality, Infected makes Soul Mining sound quaint. More mature than his former adolescent outpourings, these songs go beyond the purely personal. ‘I wanted to veer the songs away from myself,’ he says. ‘I’m trying to be more political without being dogmatic or pedantic.’

Notably, it’s his singing voice which has gone through the most startling transformation. Pleasantly melodic before, it is now growling, loud, and, above all, resoundingly assertive. ‘Do you mean you think I’m a big muscular kind of guy when you hear those songs? he grins. ‘I see myself as an 80s blues singer. As well as watching Ceefax that year, I was listening to tapes of John Lee Hooker and Howlin’ Wolf. On Soul Mining, the production was very sterilised and clean, on this one, it’s much dirtier.’

Johnson used 50 musicians, including a string section to achieve Infected’s density of sound. It is Revivalist in spirit, strongly and warmly rhythmic but cold-blooded in its lyrics. ‘I wanted to get a lot of edge into this album. I don’t like stuff that’s overproduced.’ Heartland – his current single – ‘which is basically about the economic colonisation of Britain by Americans. I don’t like the sly way it’s being done’ – is a good example of Johnson’s newfound sense of purpose.

Videos are to be made for every track on the album, one of them to be filmed on location in Bolivia and Brazil. ‘Most videos made on location are slick Duran Duran ones. I want to get all the filth of South America on film’, says Johnson. ‘I want you to taste the harshness of it.’