The title of article

Come the Revolution...

The Reporter was Amrik Rai in
New Musical Express 23rd Mar 85

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Photo by Kevin Cummins

ROCK`n`ROLL LIGGERS Justin loves the burnt-out textile boomtwon of Bradford. He loves football and hates drugs. "It's hard country less illusory than London. Round here you don't have to guess at what's happening to your environment." Sometimes, by night, Justin changes his name to Slade the Leveller, drives out of Bradford and walks onto gaudily lit platforms wearing a red cape, a loud guitar and a louder voice. At other times, like now, he cuddles up to tape recorders and talks until the cassette pops out. "It's pisses me off when you get bands from this area, like `Getting the Fear`, being interviewed on some glossy TV show and what they want most is to get out of here and be ...famous." Justin hisses out the last word through missing teeth. Beside him Joolz, obstreperous girlfriend and cutting rhyme-artist, cackles assent and piles up blame at Southern Death Cult's door. Stuart Morrow and Robb Heaton, Justin's bass and drums, are hardly in the room at all. "The legacy of rock," Justin continues unprompted, "is that music is used simply as a means to an end... having a good time. All these kids from Halifax that put adverts in Sounds- Bass Player Wanted Must Be Into Banshees, Cure etc- they're essentially looking for a licence to be able to behave badly and irresponsibly as they can without getting into trouble. "New Model Army are not in that crappy paraphernalia of rock and neither are we taken in by glamorous, nicely packaged pop presentation." LEVELLERS AND DIGGERS Justin laughs at the notion of Ian Cult feeling at one with the North American Indian, the New Model Army's reference points are much closer to home. "If we're products of anything, it's our own history. We are the result of some old millworker going on strike and being deported to Australia...someone doing that just so that his children will live better. Sod the buffalo hunting expeditions, we have a great history in this country. We are responsible for the start of all socialist thought...look at the Levellers." In the mid-1640s, when England was being torn apart by sects and civil war, John Lilburne and his Levellers emerged as the first democratic political movement in modern England history. Lilburne pushed the Leveller manifesto, including demands for the abolition of monarchy and the House of Lords, through the New Model Army. Now in the 1980s, when cults and civil disorder seem as rife as ever,Justin has reinvented the New Model Army as a compact but vocal pressure group. Since emerging with the `Bittersweet` single on Quiet Records in April`83 and being heralded (in the silly corner) as the new Clash, Justin's Army have been making unprecedented headway with their own particular cult of the uncluttered: rock`n`roll de-mystified and politicised, viewed, lived and played with an extreme, almost uncomfortable, plain-ness. Born into a Quaker family some 28 years ago, Justin flinches at descriptions of `pain-ness`. We're plain maybe," he muses, "but only if you talk in rock `n` roll panto terms. I prefer to see us revolving totally around an approach of common sense. "We're a scourge, if you like, because we stand against both sloppy thinking, all that wishy-washy liberal naff cop-out stuff, and against ignorant peasants." Politically speaking the NMA's loyalties, illustrated with titles like `Vengeance`. `Falklands` and `The Price/1984`, seem to mirror the Levellers` ambivalent plucking from left to right wings. Whereas most pop politicos of recent years have cited the Russian revolution as their root source, NMA stick closely to the Cavalier/Roundhead shootout. "Don't you see how easy it is to use the Russian revolution? Somewhere the SWP have written out a worldview and nothing challenges that. I've got a lot of time for The Redskins, but they do just peddle that one closed view. "As far as I'm concerned, we're different from any other `politically motivated` group around...we actually stir up shit. `Vengeance` and `Falklands` are two examples, there's a couple on the album that are even dodgier...that's great because everyone else just says safe things all the time." Wouldn't some people say that NMA were stirring up shit, as you say, for the sake of it? Reading Christopher Hill textbooks and being daringly contrary? "As far as I can say, the historical references are totally valid. Thatcher comes out and says that it is against the British character to strike and have mass demonstrations...and especially for women to be involved. That's a load of crap. Look at the Peterloo massacre, half of those people were women and children. You have to understand history, our history, to undermine ignorant peasants like Thatcher. POISON - WHAT'S YOURS? Justin's soldiers, we've heard in countless bitchy conversations, do not take drugs or wear war-paint or gloom shrouds. Their rock music is not the offspring of idle teenagee fancy but comes from a much more conscious sense of personal responsibility for their environment and the way they are treated. "It's that rock`n`roll myth again," Joolz cuts in coldly."Nobody understands the power of adrenalin anymore." "Adrenalin is stronger than heroin," says Justin. "You can see all the adrenalin addicts out there on a Saturday night..." ...Kicking each other to death, yes. Adrenalin and snakebite? I'll stick to drugs. Is there a distinction between drudgery and druggery? Drugs reflect a failing in your own self to cope," continues Justin, obviously. "I'd rather have a good game of football if something's weighing on my mind. I don't need to escape and drugs are escapism, pure and simple." Isn't the enjoyment to be had at an NMA concert just slightly excapist? Joolz: "It's a better kind of escapism." Justin: "It's real." ROUND AND ROUND-SQUARE? Justin's handling of the commonplace is obviously more imaginative than most. While the NMA's curious hybrid of down and out rock-somewhere between Springsteen and the Ruts - and forthright politics - somewhere extreme like left and right: puritanical fervour and patriotic romanticism - have met with some scepticism, more than enough people have dropped in to see the light. In less than two years, New Model Army have developed a quasi-cottage industry via relentless touring and record releases on Abstract Records: `Great Expectation`, the indie chart-topping mini-album `Vengeance` and their last single, `The Price/1984`. But why do people, normally quite sane people, travel to places like Stockholm and Copenhagen to crack their skulls open for 50 minutes? "Our following is the cream of the type of people that follow bands around. They stay loyal and put themselves out for us because we've maintained from the start that we're not a fad. We haven't been hanging around in night clubs playing at pop stars, we've been around for these people...and round and round." Sounds a bit square to me. At any given dive in Halifax, say , won't Monday's band be pretty much the same as Tuesday's? "No, of course not!" exclaims Justin. "We have a sense of pride, call it arrogance if you like, in that we're totally distinguishable from any other band. "Look at Marillion, for example. They toured and toured and played every single dive around 25 times over until they'd drilled it into everybody's head that they were THE band. And then when no-one in the rock press had even heard of them, Marillion had a number one album. I'm sure you didn't know who the f*** they were." I cared even less. "Yes, but do it that way and your following will buy your records forever, `cos it's a real following." STEP FORWARD - THE NEW MARILLION? Justin's admiration for Marillion has been taken a step further. Last month, seemingly at the height of their fighting, New Model Army took a decision that has whitewashed a thousand promising rock bands before them. They signed to EMI Records. "It's quite simple," explains Justin wearily. "With Abstract we had five days to make the first LP. Like most independents, they are small company with limited resources and very limited imaginations." How about the old chestnut regarding Thorn EMI's investment in the arms trade? "We get loads of letters from fanzines asking whether we realise we're financing the arms trade. I wonder how many of those people realise that Crass have actually approached EMI to distribute their records for them", clams Justin "there's a turn-up for the books. "As far as we're concerned, all large sums of money are dirty money. If Abstract had borrowed a lot of money to record our next album, which bank would they have borrowed it from? Essentially we've committed the worst crime that New Model Army could have committed in terms of all the popular myths, but you know how we feel about myths. It's a challenge, definitely." Rumour has it that you tried to get a cocaine clause in your contract forbidding EMI employees to indulge. "Ha! You've heard that one," laughs Justin. "Actually we have got that rider in the contract. But it doesn't refer specifically to cocaine because that would almost be a direct admission by EMI. Instead, it's been agreed that while working with us, coming to our gigs, they will respect our social behaviour...which includes all controlled drugs. "That goes for any producer we work with, any member of our crew, any journalists... What time's the next coach home?

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