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Bewtween the Wars

The Reporter was Jack Barron in
Sounds 27th Apr 85

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Are New Model Army really as ugly as they say? Jack Barron flutters his eyes and confesses. Being naive in the methods of sexual come-ons, the question only occurred to me after the interview what the hell, I decided, I'm paid to be nosey. I lifted the telephone receiver, stuck my finger in the big fat zero hole and dialed. Justin, New Model Army's singer, was eventually located. We exchanged a few pleasantries, quickly reaching the crux of the matter. "During our chat you kept saying I had flirtatious green eyes," I explained. "So much so that, when I got home, I started wondering if you were bisexual. Are you?" A stale second of silence shrouded the line from London to Yorkshire. "No, I'm not and anyway, what business is it of yours?" Justin answered. "Surely girls must have told you the same thing before, you just use your eyes to get your own way in situations, that's all I meant... "But I'm glad you rang anyway. The interview, like the one we did with you before, left me with a frustrated taste in my mouth. I think that's down to your interviewing style - you gave us enough rope to hang ourselves. By the way, can you make sure Robb and Stuart end up saying something in the piece?" "I don't think you did hang yourselves, but sure, I'll get them into the feature, "I agreed. Another person with green eyes, Joolz the poet - Justin's fire-haired friend - had already advised me at the recent anti-heroin social at London's Embassy Club to draw out the personalities of Robb and Stuart. She assured me the band's drummer and bassist respectively had interesting stories but were always ignored by the media. She also instructed me to give New Model Army "a hard time". As if I would. The result was an interview in Bradford's Terminal Studios which in Justin's estimation, "verged on hysteria". He didn't mean funny, either. "Once we started arguing my ego took over and Robb and Stuart hardly had space to get a word in," the singer grumbled over the phone. "Instead of giving simple answers, I rambled...and the more we talked, the more obvious it became that we don't rationalise things in the same manner as you do. Maybe that's what New Model Army are about: we just do what we feel is best..." Close your eyes in Bradford and can smell the greasy aroma of the Mona Lisa cafe, in which local rock stars sign autographs over plates of hamburgers and chips to the tune of "me and my mates think New Model Army are fab". This week the shops will be stocking a new lamb to the slaughter, the NMA single called `No Rest`/`Heroin`. It's their opening shot for - yes, it's bizarre-EMI. "They only signed us because they need some kind of credibility," reckoned Justin. A fine, rumbustious, rip-dinger of a single it is too. Certainly the best moment on the group's forthcoming crazy-paving elpee `No Rest For The Wicked`. Compared to their debut album `Vengeance` - still in the indie charts a year on - I find the Army's latest long-player somewhat disappointing. It isn't that the band have done the obvious and traded in talent for commerical ploys. Far from it. If anything, the upcoming vinyl long player is more truculent and dense in noise...but, also in places, less cohesive and prone to preposterous and fanciful bravado. For me, Boy's Own combat fantasy songs such as `The Attack` undermine the Army's greatest asset which was writ large on `Vengeance`, namely bringing an idiosyncratic sense of moral outrage to bear on specific topics like the Falklands fiasco. When I told the trio `The Attack` was something I could imagine, say, Rush doing, they laughed. Things were getting serious. What follows is an extremely condensed version of our chat... Click! I switched on my tape-recorder . Clack! Tommy, the band's road manager, turned on his. The Army feel they were stitched up by a Nerd Musical Excess writer recently and are taking no chances. We begin with a true story Justin is suspicious I'm making up. A while ago myself and Johnny Walker, sometime of this precinct, were taking the last tube back to Brixton. The carriage was full of the usual derelicts and deviants, including four junkies, one of whom had rolled up his sleeves and was miming fixing up. More pathetic than shocking. But what struck me was this bimbo was simultaneously howling out the chorus to NMA's `Vengeance`. This made me wonder if a fair proportion of the audience the Army attract with their honed down and super-heated `heavy rock` only listen to the music and couldn't give a shit about the intentions of the lyrics... "Good. All I can say to that is very good," Justin countered, tapping his punk-ified Northern clogs. "Because surely the alternative to that is to attract a whole lot of people who like the lyrics and agree with the sentiments thereof and what's the point of that?" "The music and lyrics should stand up on their own," chipped in Robb. "I know there's a National Front kid who used to follow us about," continued Justin. "...By the end of the last tour he was carrying a miner's bucket around to collect money for them. "So if we attract a number of people that by nature and instinct are opposed to everything we stand for, then good. We stand a chance, maybe, of changing the way they think about something. Maybe we won't, maybe we'll fail. Likewise, if they start following us about they'll meet our following, the bulk of whom are good people, responsible people, intelligent people." More male than female? "More male than female," concurred Justin. "I think that's accurate, that's in the nature of the music..." "And because we're so ugly," taunted Robb facetiously. "Speak for yourself," jibed Justin. In London there are these posters which say `No Rest`/`Heroin`. As somebody pointed out to me, they're really ambiguous. If you take, for example, the Lou Reed song `Heroin` - "Yeah, but what were we going to call it, `Brown Sugar`?" interrupted Robb, a man who recognises an old Stones tune or two. No, I'm talking about it from a cynical point of view, it can be seen as being - "A pro-heroin song?" cut in Justin fiercely. "Never occurred to me, actually." But not even that, I moaned in exasperation - just a provocative poster? "No," denied the singer, flatly. "We had a lot of discussion with Stuart about what it should be called, because it might be too obvious and also for the reason you suggest. But I thought, let's call it `Heroin` because it'll make people listen to it..." New Model Army, as you may have gathered, are very protective of their work. And with `Heroin`, a nightmare excursion into the shooting gallery, they have every right to be. None of them have tried smack, and the Army's media message so far has been that all drugs are taboo. The problem with this is that, in our last interview, Justin admitted some of the crew smoked dope, though I didn't mention it in print. But since I was here on this occasion to give them a hard time, I wondered how they decided to draw the line on drugs. Illegal stimulants, it turns out, are a no-no when the group are touring. What the NMA outfit get up to at home, though, is their business, according to Justin. "But I don't like people who smoke a lot of dope because they become boring." He added. "It's more a question of keeping your dignity...where you draw the line is knowing when you will start going downhill," Robb concluded. Such tolerance doesn't come through on NMA's records because Justin believes: "In music you cannot carry on an argument." Now that's a good answer. The singer often wears a T-shirt onstage with the slogan `Only Stupid Bastards Use Heroin`. That speaks volumes about the Army's attitude. What, however, the band were geared up to speak volumes about - and did- was their signing to EMI, a move some of their most loyal fans have harshly criticised. Justin promptly justified it by default through libelling every major under the sun. I didn't express much interest in the subject since I can't perceive moral differences so much as musical differences between indies and majors. This peeved him. "Come on, Jack, I thought you were going to give us a hard time," the singer baited. So I tried, once more. I maintained the band's self-confessed non-aligned politics put NMA in a dangerous position somewhere between The Redskins and The Alarm, somewhere between direct action and rebel rock pose. "Well, maybe it's a dangerous position," he hedge. "I've got a lot of time for The Alarm, but yes, I have the same criticisms everybody else has of them, that it's mostly pose...I like The Redskins as well, but the trouble with them is you know what they're going to say...you only have to look in Socialist Worker. "Our purpose is not to put out a political line." So what's your purpose, then? "We make it up as we go along," replied Justin idiotically. I couldn't believe my ears! Or eyes! The hysteria was in full flight. "The more you talk, the less I start to care," he whinged. I took it as a compliment. "We don't have to justify ourselves, you know, other than if our music creates a lot of damage, which I don't believe it does," the singer rationalised. "I think on balance it creates more good than it creates bad." So do I. And that's enough.

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