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RE-MAKE RE*MODEL

The Reporter was Jack Barron in Sounds on 16th June 1984

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"It's strange pop music, isn't it? You've got men dressing up as women and women dressing up as men. Don't you think there's something sinister or warped about that?" Yeah, I know just what he means. The interview might be over but Slade The Leveller still talks sense. This parting shot at genderbenders fits well in New Model Army's universe. There is no room for `raving queens here--that's not the same as being anti-homosexual, as Bronski Beat will tell you. What they might tell you is NMA could just as well stand for New Moral Army. Even after a day on the journalistic tiles of talk and snap! And talk the group are buoyant. They've every reason to be. The band's debut album, `Vengeance`, has just urinated on Morrissey's daffs The Smiths and is bristling with a certain fury at the zenith of the independent charts. Outside Pentonville Road the traffic is building up into mile long metal snakes on a late Friday afternoon as the suburbanites eat exhaust on their way to catch the 5.30 pm from Kings Cross. Beneath his battered hat and ready smile, Stuart Morrow -- the only one of the trio actually born in Bradford, the area they're associated with -- ridicules Andi Sex Gang. "you know, the day I'm waiting for is when he comes up above my knee," Jibes the bassist. Stuart is pretty compact himself. The invective isn't totally gratuitous however. Two minutes ago New Model Army were invited to be special guests at a tribal children gig. It isn't an opportunity they relish, though their faces twitch at the though of pulling Andi's playpen apart through sheer musical might. Last night, apparently, they wiped out The Alarm at the Lyceum. Although I didn't hang around for the Welsh headliners, I can believe it. NMA live are brutal education, rock with brains and backbone. Blond drummer-boy Rob Heaton laughs as Stuart Mimicks the Andi castrato. Meanwhile The Slade, aka Justin Sullivan, aka guitar and vox catalyst, hugs his friend. Screaming red fluorescent hair and apple green eyes, her name is Joolz -- as in p-o-e-t. "We're running a competition at gigs," Joolz tells me with evil intent. "There are several categories from the ugliest person in the pop to the most unusual place you've done it in. The disable toilets in the Social Security is the winning nomination at the moment for the latter." Who is the ugliest person? "well, internationally that guy from Twisted Sister, what's his name, Dee Snider," continues Joolz. What do you think about being dubbed the Munsters of pop, or ultra ugly, in the press? I ask The Slade. It doesn't worry me," Justin reckons, flashing a dental nightmare. "It's good to be seen in extremes, the worst or the best. I take it as a joke." "he's not ugly, he's bloody good-looking I think," assesses Joolz. Quite right, in a way. Next to Slade The Leveller, Boy George is just an idiot in a skirt. In fact, come to that, next to anyone Boy George is an skirt, expect maybe Margaret Thatcher and Nancy Reanan. Oh okay, perhaps that was cheap and obvious and hence nothing like New Model Army's music. Listening to `Vengeance` -- a record they agree is spoilt by a flat and rushed production -- I had them tagged as a mingling of post-Clash politics and u2's instrumental edge. Those rages against the `Christian Militia`, the `Falklands Spirit` and others. Guitars fire from the hip and the world's bastards tremble -- from laughter. This, of course, ignores the group's tender-lion trappings as displayed on `Sex` and `Running` and their views on the pint-pot-in-front-of-the-nose perceptions of those who think life begins and ends in `Smalltown England`. So I was wrong, that's what interviews are for. There's no doubt this band are going to be HUGE. But that still doesn't answer the question: why be in New Model Army when the trio could be butcher, a roadie or a Peace Studies maker? Slade: "It's worth doing. It actually manages to communicate something. I know that if we mean an awful lot to a small number of people, it might increase that number. Number two, because there's nothing I'd rather do personally, or the three of us would rather do, it's bloody better than working in a factory. "The world needs us. If you look at the current music scene, there's a big hole. To be very modest, and not falsely modest necessarily, the reason we find ourselves at number one in the independent album charts is because the rest of what's in there is absolute dog shit. What was post-punk has ground itself into the dirt and there are no hard bands around that have got much life in them ... There's a million and one reasons for being New Model Army..." And so it goes on... talk not really getting to the heart of the matter for a while... Slade: "I don't think the stage show is humorous, it has it's funny moments, the stage show is more human. We play at being pop stars a bit." I noticed. I'm asking these questions now because when you become very famous, people will turn around and say, `Ah a band with great political commitment who are now mere pop stars.` Slade: "No in the first place the politics are there, but we are not a political band full stop. It's a bit like saying Elvis Costello is political artist, although he writes a greater number of love songs than political songs." "Rob: "A serious song writer". Slade: "Yeah, there are all sorts of things to write about. The politics will stay there. I suppose there is this idea that if you sing a song like the `Falklands` (an astute debunking of that farce), and you combine it with pop-starisms on stage it's a contradiction in terms. Yeah." It's a cleft stick you'll never get out of. Slade: "I'll go along with that..." A thought: New Model Army are great live but being relatively inexperienced substitute mania for charisma. That sounds, I know, horribly patronising,but it's meant to be constructive.... Tell me about the Levellers... I presume that's where the name Slade The Leveller comes from? Slade:"Well, it isn't actually where it comes from, that's an in-joke but it does tie in. I'm very keen on that period of history... The name's origins though will remain a secret forever in the same way that how Stuart plays the Beginning of `Liberal Education` on his bass will." Stuart: "That's unless you know already". Time out: I haven't a clue how the bassist elicits the peculiar metal-synth tone on that song. But Justin's nickname is intriguing. Joolz suggested a competition to find out. Anyone who knows the answer send it to Sounds to collect a special prize. Slade: "Stuart's tone at the start of `Liberal Education` is sweet but really grating. That's the sort of mood that runs through our music -- a lot of sweet melodies but really bitter. My personal heroes are Malcolm Owen and Bruce Springsteen, they both have that quality in their music." But you don't sing about cars? Slade: "I know. I think that is because I've never owned one. I can't afford it." (The band are paid £5 a day each!) What is it about Bradford as a cultural base it seems to throw up a lot of politically aware artists? Slade: "I don't think it ever has until now. You mean Seething Wells, Joolz, Little Brother and New Model Army? We all started off together, it has now exploded in different directions, but the rest of the Bradford bands aren't political at all. In fact most of them are very anti that sort of thing. It's very much a don't rock the boat town. Bradford doesn't like us, it has disowned us..." In `Vengeance` (the title track which calls for retribution against a number of targets), there's a verse concerning a pusher and a would-be user. Slade: "The point of that song is to introduce a fairly taboo subject. Young people don't discipline and authority so `Liberal Education` and `Vengeance` go against everything young people are meant to stand for. "Basically it is an attempt to introduce the subject of crime and punishment which has got lost in this society. There's authoritarianism (of the NF kind) on the one hand and anarchism and liberalism on the other." New Model Army inhabit the space between. It's a strong position, one demanding a sense of self-responsibility and equally demanding others to be responsible or suffer the consequences. Blinkered neither by the right, or the forgiving nature of `radicals`, they have a firm understanding of what's acceptable. It comes through in their music. That's partly what singles New Model Army out. Join up now -- dress is definitely not compulsory.

Photos by Eve and Eve

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