WHAT IT ALL MEANS

GAVIN SAWFORD - TIME OFF - 1987

The total emphemeral nature of modern electronic media has brought Western society closer than ever to Orwell’s 1984 prediction of a past that doesn’t exist because its records are a fluid nonsense.

Pop music, and it’s eighties brain-child the video clip, are among the worst offenders.

At a time when both forms are busily dredging up visual and aural Bex that sell a million one day and are forgotten the next, it comes as a shock to find apiece of work that uses sounds and images which lodge in the memory long after contact, refusing to be easily digested.

Matt Johnson’s 1986 album ‘Infected’ is such a work , combining an intensity of spirit with cutting social observations last seen in the British ‘kitchen sink’ plays and films of the late fifties/ early sixties.

The strength of ‘Infected’ a perfect summation in a single word of the Age of Regan, Terrorism, the J- curve and AIDS – is not just Johnson’s incisive lyrics and climatic music, but the eight song film that accompanies it all.

With contributions from Peter Christopherson, Alexander McIllwain, Mark Romanek and Tim Pope, the ‘Infected’ film combines the perfect images to compliment Johnson’s powerful music.

‘I’d reached a bit of a ceiling with the last album (Soul Mining) and I didn’t know what to do,’ Johnson explains.

‘I didn’t want to start doing gigs again and I’ve always been interested in film.

‘I’ve felt a natural gravitation towards film and this was the ideal bridge for a musician.’

‘What I was trying to do was shift the emphasis of video away from the promotional aspect and into the creative domain.

‘Most groups that I know make their record, and them delegate the responsibility to somebody of the record company’s choice or somebody who’s just a name.

‘It becomes a chore, part of the promotional set-up that doesn’t make it part of the creative aspect – an extension of the words and music.’

Johnson mildly objects to the word ‘video’ preferring to refer to the ‘Infected’ visuals as.

‘I hate video – that look you get with it.

‘Tim Pope just works with film and doesn’t do any video.

‘He’s very clever and very anarchic and he’s become a very good friend of mine since them

‘I think he’s the closest thing to a genius the video world has known.

The trouble with the whole concept of video – promotional or creative – is that it supplies ready-made visuals to the aural material it accompanies.

But Johnson is not particularly worried that four other people were supplying their pictures to his songs.

‘Four of the songs were my own – the storyboards were my own – and Tim Pope picked up exactly what was in my songs.

‘I mean a lot of my lyrics are fairly cinematic and explanatory, and unless you’re going to be totally abstract there is only a certain amount of interpretation you can make.

The fundamental problem I had was that I had to make a choice between the sing and the film

‘The problem with visuals is that takes away an element of the power or beauty from the music because your time is limited.

‘The lesson I learned is that you should be pretty ambiguous so that anyone has the freedom to film nearly anything, or you should be so specific, you can do it yourself so that you don’t have anyone else visualising your ideas.

‘As human beings audiences have a lower threshold for watching visuals.

‘If you’re listening to a record and you don’t like it or you’re not sure you can play it again, but with video you just turn off.’

Not that many people could turn off the visuals that Johnson uses for a number of songs, notably in ‘Out Of The Blue’ and ‘Slow Train To Dawn’.

The latter features co-singer Neneh Cherry lashed to railway tracks, legs spread, as Johnson races towards her in a steam train, frantically shovelling coal into the furnace to keep up speed.

‘A few days ago I bumped into that Rock Arena woman and she said she wasn’t going to use the ‘Slow Train’ clip because it was sexist, you know, erect nipples and legs spread on the tracks.

‘I told her that the whole thing was defused at the end. The train turns into a little toy that races harmlessly past, but she didn’t seem to see it.’

While this neat ending is the perfect symbol of impotency, the accompanying film for ‘Out Of The Blue’ is a lot less symbolic and a lot more explicit.

This is only understandable, given the soul searching, naked truth of the songs (‘She was lying on her back with her lips parted/screaming like a stuffed pig/I was going through the motions/feeling the emotions/wriggling around like a lizard in a tin’) but in the film clip Johnson, stripped to the waist in his skin tight jeans, looked infinitely more attractive than the creature of silks and tulle sprawled on the seedy hotel bed.

‘It was all very well art reflecting life, but when it starts reinforcing questionable images the artist is on decidedly thin ice.

‘It’s not ideal, but that’s what I observe – but then the reinforcing aspect is also a problem.

‘But ultimately you’ve got to be truthful, and there’s more than a little bit of chauvinism in the world.

‘I think that over the past twenty years the scales of sexual equality have tipped in favour of women.

‘That’s not a bad thing, and I’ve found women are much more sexually and emotionally secure than men, but what women have gained men have lost, and people don’t often remember that.’

None of this alters the fact that ‘Out Of The Blue’ is a painfully honest song and one of the best – if not the best – song to be written about a modern relationship.

‘I’m very proud of that song – I put a lot into it- and I think everything comes together, from the distant saxophones at the opening to the build-up at the end.’

If ‘Out Of The Blue’ is the emotional climax of ‘Infected’ then ‘Heartland’ is the social equivalent.

A faultless study of Conservative Britain, it continues Orwell’s original ‘Airstrip 1’ theme, ending on the refrain ‘This is the fifty-first state/Of the U.S.A.’

‘Angels Of Deception’ continues the theme with its picture of Britain as an American wild west (It’s high noon at the UK Coral’), as well as supplying some needed black humour.

‘I want ‘Infected’ to be representative of its age.

‘I couldn’t have made it five years ago, the technology wasn’t available and neither was the subject matter.’

And the solution to the ills that Johnson so eloquently describes?

‘There’s an old railway line which we used to film the ‘Slow Train’ clip, and it’s all been restored with steam engines and everything, and that’s what they should do to the rest of England.

‘Forget the future and bring back the pound note and red post boxes and the old train lines, which would give everyone a job, and turn the country into one great amusement fun park for all the Americans to play in.

‘I mean, everyone goes on about how good we used to be, so why not go back to that?

‘Seriously, the main thing is to abolish the monarchy, or more importantly the people who surround it.

‘I hate the class system – being born to expect certain treatment regardless of whether you’re worth it or can afford it and it’s the worst aspect of England.

‘This total pre-occupation with the past cripples the country, and it’s what made Thatcher so strong.

‘She’s a history leader reviving old glories, but when Regan says jump she asks how high.

‘Her strength comes from bullying the weak and defenceless.’

Not that Johnson is about to jump into bed with ideological compatriots in Red Wedge.

‘I find I have similar ideals to those in Red Wedge, but I wouldn’t want to be affiliated with them – I’ll stand beside them.

‘Music is a medium of communication, and I want to avoid preaching dogma.

‘I represent myself – that’s all I can be persuaded to write about.

I may view myself with contempt, but I think that reflects the experience of British Youth’. That contempt has already lead to Johnson brushing against puritanical British censorship laws, both with his videos and song lyrics, notably the BBC who objected to the use of the word ‘piss’ in ‘Heartland’.

There are two distinct brands of censorship in Britain; moral and political.

‘Moral covers sex, violence, bad language and drugs.

‘Political censorship occurs when an issue of national security is at stake.

‘The trouble is, the government so often blurs the distinction between threats to national security and its own political embarrassments.

‘When you get that sort of information censorship, as we are in England, you lose democracy.

‘The only good thing about AIDS is its effect of the censorship laws, in that there’s had to be a more explicit use of language to get the message across, and even the BBC can’t argue between explicit language or death.

‘The problem is that with AIDS the new Puritanism has risen phoenix-like from the ashes of promiscuity.

‘Freedom of speech is a birthright, and something I will always fight for.
And if there is any doubt about Johnson sincerity, ‘Infected’ quickly dispels it