THIS FEATURE IS NOT FESTIVE

Betty Page - RECORD MIRROR - 1986

1986 has been one hell of a year for Matt Johnson. In fact, he’s been there and back – to hell, that is – for the sake of his art. This has produced ‘Infected’, film and album, both a punch in the head. Betty Page probes the mind behind it all, and guarantees to make you choke on your Christmas pudding.

The Grand Hotel in Stockholm is where Mary Pickford once had her black lace frillies laundered, where Haile Selassie slept with his own slaves on guard outside, and where Gregory Peck arrived, wrapped in a fur coat in a heatwave.

It is also where Matt Johnson has flu and a mind full of powerful, intense images which are provoking reactions worldwide. Matt is on the Swedish leg of his multi territory promotional tour, which is chiefly to preview ‘Infected – the film’, which has just been shown here on Channel 4.

1986 has been the year Matt Johnson has come to real prominence as The The, but not without jumping the combined hurdles of hypocrisy and censorship. With an almost uncanny sense of anticipation, he has presaged media hysteria, specifically about Libya and AIDS. The first single, ‘Sweet Bird Of Truth’, dropped almost the same time as the bombs on Beirut. ‘Heartland’ stuck a knife in the soft underbelly of the charts, but not without the surgical removal of the word ‘piss’. ‘Infected’, the single, touched a delicate AIDS-sensitised nerve and Radio One wouldn’t play it for fear it might catch on.

The IBA took exception to a scene in the ‘Infected’ film, where Matt places a gun barrel inside his mouth. It was reinstated at the eleventh hour. He’s had endless fights about stickers, vetoed sleeves, paintings of wanking devils….. all because nice people don’t want to be reminded of the fall of the Western Empire, especially at Christmas time…

‘Infected’, a series of eight videos shot in South America, New York and the UK, is the most provocative, visually intense piece of film ever shot in the name of ‘music video’. It leaves you punch drunk and reeling from the bombardment of images. We’re dealing with extremes here: powerful symbols evoke powerful emotions. It will shock. Matt hopes Mary Whitehouse will complain. And there’s plenty to complain about: whores, priests, good, evil, self-immolation, gun barrels, bondage… What follows is a portrait of Matt Johnson, tormented artist with a sense of humour, for here is a…..

‘I’m quite pleased with the thing as a whole. I try and reflect certain states of mind and attitudes, and I think I did so fairly accurately: by and large, that’s the way things are. I’m not happy with the way the world is, I’m not trying to idealise things. I’m portraying my part in the scheme of things, things as I generally see them, and it’s not very pleasant, really.

‘The film does bombard you a bit actually, it’s good, I’ve not had anybody that’s been blasé about it. Actually, there was one case, at the New York preview, one woman came up to me and said ‘I thought it was lovely’. How can you say ‘it’s lovely? You either hated it or really liked it. I’d rather someone say it was a pile of crap, at least that would be an emotional response.

‘Most bands tend to make videos for specific reasons, for MTV or kids’ TV shows, purely as adverts. But I’ve always considered video to be a relevant art form, and the kind of people I choose to work with – Tim Pope, Peter Christopherson – have got that mentality as well. The last consideration was whether it would get on MTV, hence the problems about the cuts. I don’t pull punches in the music or the lyrics, so I wanted the visuals to represent that, and there to be not compromise. If I needed to have guns in my mouth and priests doing this, and whores, then I would do that, because that’s what’s in the lyrics; they can’t be interpreted in a visual way which is totally unrelated and inoffensive.’

‘The kind of symbolism I’ve tried to use in all my work, lyrically, has been in three main groups, as far as the real power of words are concerned. These are biblical – angels, gods, devils….I’m actually using them in the way they were written, as in the struggle between corruption and innocence, and my use of them is pure back to basics. I don’t believe in devils. I believe devils exist within the human heart. Those kinds of images were invented as metaphors to describe the extreme emotions. In the bible, that’s what it’s all about anyway, the struggle within.

‘The second group is physical elements – the earth, sun, moon, stars, sea, and the third is human elements like mind, eyes, soul, heart. They’re all centuries old, these words; they’ve been distilled over centuries and they’re very powerful, emotive words. What I’ve tried to do is place them in the context of 1986; UK corral, Yankee station, space shuttles, hamburgers, images that are very current, and mix them in with these powerful words.

‘A lot of people find it quite hard to take this album, they’re quite shocked when they first hear it, and then the more they listen, the more they like it. But it takes people by surprise, and that’s what I wanted it to be like, like a punch in the head. I’ve touched a deep nerve in a way, I’ve invoked a very powerful response in people.’

One of the most primary, stunning images in the film is contained in ‘Sweet Bird Of Truth’ (directed by Mark Romanek), where a fish drops, thrashing, into a puddle, flanked by a glinting portrait of Christ, as painted from the Shroud of Turin. Could the fish symbolise the last, thrashing death throes of the Piscean Age, which started with the birth of Jesus? (Put down your turkey, this is heavy stuff….)

‘It’s a coincidence, I didn’t know that, but it kind of fits in with my general concept, the whole project is related to that anyway. A lot of coincidences like that happen, a lot of people I choose to work with are very sensitive, and have real empathy with my own ideas.’

And then there’s the beetle in ‘Mercy Beat’, drowning in drops of tequila. The beetle is an ancient symbol of immortality.

‘I didn’t know that either, that’s superb, that fits in perfectly because that track is basically about spiritual salvation. With those two things, the fish and the beetle, you could see people gasp when they saw it. I know about the mass psyche, and it does interest me. But the imagery suited what I wanted to do superbly, because the ideas behind this record are basically that, quite apocalyptic in a way, although there is optimism. People have said to me that my stuff is a bit depressing, but I say it’s not. The lyrics on their own may seen extreme, but the music is a language unto itself, that’s very defiant and optimistic and positive. So I see a perfect balance.’

‘The whole concept of ‘Infected’ is based around desire, around the Western Empire, ‘Mombasa to Miami, Beirut to Bangladesh’, the outposts of the Western World. I’m seeing the west as a new Babylon really, you can’t really disentangle it from the rest of the world, but the ideological pollution when the West meets the Third World… Which is why I wanted to go down to South America. Manifestations of desire are on an individual level a struggle between corruption and innocence, and the way desire perverts and corrupts on a global level. If you go deeper into those countries like Africa and South America, people are very pure, but if you go into the areas where they actually mix in Western styles, then they’re worse than the people here – really vile and aggressive.

‘South America has left a stronger impression on me than any other place I’ve been. You could cut the atmosphere with a knife, and there was a lot of magic down there – you could feel it hanging in the air, because of the old Indians, they’re very spiritual those people. And they’re eaten up by the West when they meet it.’

‘Slow Train To Dawn’ is about the psychological relationship between two people and the weakness of the male in that relationship, and infidelity, which is borne from insecurity and weakness; it was a difficult song to write. It’s my girlfriend’s favourite song now. She understands me and lets me get away with a lot, I suppose. She likes what I do so much that she’s always said never to let her feelings get in the way of my artistic expression. Which is great, because at first I always thought ‘I can’t do that’, then I thought I’ve got to’. And even with me parents, having swear words and ‘from my scrotum to your womb’, and AIDS references. But they are very open minded and like what I do. And my brother Andy, of course, does these paintings, a lot of which have been very pornographic, and they’re unshockable now, my parents. I never put swear words in for the sake of it, but to emphasise a point I would always use them. Now it doesn’t matter, because I know that all the people I care about most have given me total artistic licence to be a bastard. The older you get the more you start justifying the things you do, maybe if you’re unfaithful or hypocritical. I think ‘I’m a songwriter, I’ve got to do this, I’ve got to experience this, that’s the way I am, I’m Matt’, which is really disgusting, and it’s not fair for other people. A few years ago I’d have felt really guilty.’

Fact: the latest mugging tactic in New York is to hold people up with a syringe – hand over your backs or you get a deadly dose of AIDS virus. They get the money and often you get the injection anyway. Who needs a gun any more? The slow handgun keeps you in fear of your life for years. Even if it’s sugar water….

Fact: The News Of The World recently ran a piece headed ‘Now you can speak your mind about AIDS’. Just tick a box if you want AIDS victims castrated, sent to a colony, ritually disembowelled ….

Matt continues his fight against such disgusting media hypocrisy.

‘In Britain, quite a lot of my stuff has been censored. What disgust me is the moral hypocrisy, with Thatcher advocating a return to Victorian moral principles, which to me means a society more polarised, with workhouses, slums, poverty. A promiscuous upper class. It wasn’t moral at all, it’s just that people were kept ignorant about sexuality. And now you get people like Mel Smith and all these alternative comedians getting away with toilet humour on British TV and people laugh at it, and that’s allowed. They’re using the same language that I was using and getting laughs on primetime TV. Toilet humour is a reaction to the sexually suppressive society, and Britain is probably the most sexually hung up country in the world. The other extreme reaction to that is the permissive society, of course, and the reaction to that is the hysteria of AIDS’.

More will die through fear and hysteria than anything else. Is it all to do with a deep rooted sense of self-hatred? ‘I don’t know. I used to think, in the gay community, because they were so promiscuous, and were taking tablets for everything because they had so many diseases, like VD, they were taking antibiotics and weaking their immune systems. How has it spread to the heterosexual community, through mass hysteria?’

‘There’s plenty of people who don’t think they’re ‘good enough’, who spend their lives being victims.

‘So the only people who are immune are the ones who are totally at peace with themselves, and unstressed? I don’t know, I’m just totally confused by it, I find it absolutely horrifying’.

Are you scared you might catch it?

I am actually, because there’s been so much on TV about it. Until recently I didn’t even think about it. When all these programmes hit you in the face, then you think it’s got such a long incubation period, and what you did in New York six years ago will suddenly swing up and grab hold of you.’

It’s a fear breeding fear, and fear breeds disease.

‘And really, it’s a way of controlling things, creating this hysteria.’

It’s tailor-made for this government, and the world.

‘They’ve taken all the fun away now, haven’t they? The last thing that you could do, and you can’t even do that now. I think it’s all….

‘Yeah,, it is. What I’ve been trying to touch on is symptoms and/or causes of the fall of the Western Empire. I think of it as an empire, now led by America, inherited from Britain, but I almost try and put myself a couple of hundred years in the future and look back and see this ailing time.’

Do you think it will all end?

‘I entertain thoughts like that, but I’ve avoided having any conclusive answer. This is supposed to be written in Nostradamus, but It actually said the late Seventies. So do you think it’ll get past this stage?

I think this is the testing time, and the only remaining souls will be spiritually evolved.

‘I read somewhere that it’s almost a spiritual cataclysm. I used to read a lot of occult books – occult’s not the right word, but covering all that basic ground….that a New Age is beginning, and the cataclysm is going to be a spiritual one.’

It’s like we’re going through a purge, purging the ills of a sick society.

‘So you think only those people who are spiritually ignorant are going to get AIDS? Horrifying.’

You allude to that anyway, what with the angles and the devils.

‘It’s something I’ve felt instinctively without ever reading that much, I’ve felt for quite a few years now some kind of…..apocalypse is not the right word. AIDS is one thing, but what about nuclear terrorism? That frightens me a lot. So much plutonium has gone missing over the last 20 years. Suppose some Islamic Fundamentalist state said to America ‘ We’re going to wipe you off the face of the earth if you don’t do this,’ and America says ‘ We do not yield to terrorism’? The whole world is held to ransom. They do it once, and that’s it.’

You talk a lot about trapped, unspoken feelings.

‘I think that’s inarticulate intelligence, basically. I still don’t think I can really express what I feel. I’ve become more articulate as I’ve got older. But you still never feel you can express yourself fully. That’s why I say in ‘Heartland’, ‘so many people can’t express what’s on their minds’. It’s sad, but true.’

You are lucky. You can express yourself in words and music. Many people can’t even do that.

‘That’s what that was intended for. On my last bunch of travels, I met a guy in Canada who said how much my stuff had meant to him, and people say it makes them cry.’

I think music is the spiritual language this generation understands.

‘People deride pop music, but when it’s good, it’s superb. There’s a lot of shit around, purely because the time of it existing, the culture it exists in, the Western Culture generally is shit, any industry in the West is shit,’

Politicians would love to affect people as much as music does.

‘That’s why they try and get their hand into it. The Tories realise the power of popular culture. Fortunately they’re alienating people, and f****ing good job. You’ve got to keep kicking against it.’

‘Not in the normal sense, it’s the way as one gets older one can justify infidelities and hyprocrisies. Your original ideals become corroded. In ‘Twilight Of A Champion’, the one with the gun in the mouth, there are references to Citizen Kane, the childhood innocence, and my images of childhood. Those feelings are often overwhelming, often stronger than teenage feelings. ‘Heartland’ was written about the Saturday morning cinema, which is still in Forrest Gate. I often wander around that area and I feel very at home there, but the struggle between corruption and innocence is summed up by ‘Twilight Of A Champion’. In the last line there is a reference to ‘Burning Blue Soul’, where I wrote ‘ the agony has just begun’, and on ‘Twilight’ I wrote ‘the hand that wrote the agony has just begun, will be the hand that pulls the trigger of this gun’, the cry for innocence.

‘That track was set in Chicago, although it was filmed in New York. When I was a kid, I remember lying down with my Dad and above the glow of the electric bar fire there’d by this painting of the Chicago skyline. When I wrote that song, I created this scene where I was in the Chicago skyline at the top of a building and had become everything I’d wanted to become, but had sold my soul. There’s the young boy and the old man, and I’m the one in the middle, between innocence and corruption. Over the last couple of years, having earned, not vast amounts of money, but quite a lot, and realising the shallowness of that, I haven’t sold my soul, but it does happen to people. You don’t see me pull the trigger of the gun. I don’t think I am corrupt, but there are times when I possibly could have been’.

Do you believe in pure evil?

‘I don’t think I’ve encountered pure evil. But a few years ago I had some fairly unpleasant experiences, battles within myself, and the track ‘Mercy Beat’ was based on that experience, spiritual salvation. I’d be talking to lobsters and cats, I really was. I think you can really communicate with animals. I was actually talking to a lobster, which is why I’ve never eaten them since. It was the first time I had been to New York and I was hanging on by my fingertips to my sanity, having these battles inside my head. At the end of this I did win the battle, and I felt almost like out of those Kind Arthur films, I was a knight in armour, it was half ripped off me, there was blood in my spirit, and I was just exhausted. I don’t know how I won this thing, but I did, and that was what that song was based on, a knife fight with the devil. I was scared then, I thought I was actually going to kill myself, I felt this overwhelming urge to jump of buildings, which was terrifying. But I’ve felt a hell of a lot stronger since then.’

Sounds like you’ve put yourself through a hell of a lot.

‘I have, everything I’ve written about, I’ve done. I had a similar experience in South America, the best times and worst times of my life. One time I was on the phone to my girlfriend for about an hour, crying, I thought I was about to top myself. It turned out I was living my songs, I’m using quite wild metaphors to describe extremes of emotion, and then when I was filming them I ended up being part of the metaphors. I think I have been there and back, so to speak.’

‘It’s all based on the worship of money and materialism, and scoring points for heaven. Complete religious hypocrisy. It has lost its meaning. I like Christmas because I get to spent it with my family. You just have to accept you’re going to get pissed.’


‘Infected – The Film’ will be available commercially next year, for those who missed it on Channel 4. And if you got a record token for Christmas, spend it on ‘Infected’ the album. If you never buy another album, buy this one. In 20 years’ time, you’ll look back and say ‘ah yes, that was 1986.