scans.
GROWING UP IN PUBLIC
It wasn't so long ago that the Neds were playing every two-bit venue in the country and propping up the indie charts. Now, they're on a sell out tour and with the imminent release of their first major label single, 'Happy', and forthcoming 'God Fodder' LP, everyone's talking serious chart action. CAROL CLERK joined the band on their recent Irish tour. Pics: PHIL NICHOLLS
"FRAGILE". NOW THERE'S A WORD YOU WOULDNT IMMEDIATELY ASSOCIATE
WITH Ned's Atomic Dustbin. "Frightened". There's another.
"Insecure". And another.
This group are just about everything I expected them not to be, and
I'm impressed.
Certainly, their strengths are unassailable: the visual chaos and frantic
musical intensity of their live show; the mixture of compulsion, convulsion
and humour with which they deliver it; their campaign to remain independent
within the corporate structure of their record company, Epic; their
determination to stick to one golden rule which assumes they are part
of their own audience and insists that "there are two ways of doing
things-the wrong way, and our way."
The Neds are selling out major venues when only five minutes ago, they
were slogging it out round the toilets. They had more tee-shirts on
the punters' backs than any other band at the last Reading Festival.
And their first major label single, "Happy", is released this
week to widespread predictions of a hit.
Were they really the comic-strip buffoons so beloved of many imaginations,
Ned's Atomic Dustbin would be blowing their collective trumpet, drinking
Dublin dry, revelling in every minute of their imminent success, or
at least making some substantial show of bravado.
As it is, Jonn, Mat and Alex are sipping a modest Guinness in the hotel
lobby after the last gig of a short Irish tour, insisting that every
positive has a negative, every up a down. Unusually for a young band
in their position, the Neds are human enough to admit to the uncertainties
and worries that accompany their growing fame.
"It's a very unstable life," says Mat, one of the two bassists.
"We don't know where we're going to be next month or how many songs
we're going to write. People could like us today and hate us tomorrow.
It turns into a great tower, and with every block we put on it, the
more precarious it gets, and the further we've got to fall."
"It's just so fragile, our band," nods Jonn, the singer, pushing
back his one-sided flop of hair. "You can start doubting your own
capabilities. At other times, we feel like we're massive and we're sort
of convinced, 'Yes, we're a good band'."
"And that comes from the punters," says Mat.
The punters, however, have gone too far tonight. Earlier, at Dublin's
McGonagles club, Jonn stepped outside to sign a few autographs and was
mobbed for the first time in his life.
Rushing back into the dressing room, he collapsed into a chair and stared
silently at the floor. He looked on the verge of tears; his legs shook
violently.
"That was horrible, horrible," he shudders.
"It was really frightening. I don't like being suffocated. I felt
like I was public property. They crowded around me and shoved pieces
of paper under my nose, and it was just like 'Do this, do that', and
I hated it. I'm never going to do it again."
You might be obliged to.
"Our obligation to our fans is to play well and write good songs.
We express ourselves through our music. People have said I've got an
ego problem, and I have, but it's the opposite to what they think it
is."
"We're not the sort of people who thrive on personal attention,"
agrees Mat. "I find it acutely embarrassing."
When the time comes, Ned's Atomic Dustbin will be most uncomfortable
pop stars.
TO listen to the Neds' forthcoming album, "God Fodder", and
then to discuss it with them is rather like reading someone's diary
and expecting them to answer questions about it afterwards. These songs
are mostly autobiographical and, as such, they reflect the mixed emotions
arising from the events of the last year; how leaving home and going
on tour have affected their standing with friends, family and girlfriends.
And the band are not above drawing in many of the trivial details and
petty hostilities that inhabit even the least flawed relationships.
"The songs are really reflective of the pressures and emotions
that we feel at certain times," says Mat. The first songs we ever
wrote were purely naive little flashes of emotion, and we still don't
want to write about the external. We want to write about the internal.
That's why books about carpentry don't interest me. That's why I want
to be an archaeologist. I want to find out how and why the world has
become so f**'ing clinical.
"Most of Jonn's lyrics are built around negative and positive emotion,
but not in such a specific way that they can't be applied to a large
number of situations. 'Happy' could be about a man and a woman, a bloke
and his boyfriend, a dog and a peewit...
"I think the duality is interesting, Jonn expressing the words
and the rest of us expressing how we feel through our instruments. When
we made the album, we wanted to keep the live power and the live emotion,
but bring out the emotion that's inherent in the song, not in the noise."
"Happy" is not, in fact, about a dog and a peewit. It started
life as a song about parental relationships, a sequel of sorts to the
Neds' earlier "What Gives My Son?"
The latter they now pat fondly on the head as "your run-of-the-mill,
parents-getting-you-down piece of adolescent angst".
"Happy" is indeed more grown-up, certainly musically, balancing
the familiar aggression with a new and intriguing sense of intricacy
in both arrangement and melody. It's clever, even, dare I say it, haunting.
Lyrically, this is the Neds on form, with plenty of domestic warfare,
people flying off the handle and suchlike.
"It's about the idea that your parents want you out of the house,
but you get the feeling that once you've gone, they're gonna miss you
and feel a gap," says Jonn, stressing that this song is more about
other people's experience than his own.
"We get on fine now, me and my parents. I had a very complicated
home life, there were divorces and stuff, but I never suffered greatly.
"I left home about six months ago, and it really hurt me. It was
a situation I knew was going to come, because my dad needed to sell
the house I was living in with him. I was used to living in his pocket,
and we'd been getting on better than ever because I'd started to get
somewhere with the band, and there was a lot of respect between us.
There was no friction when I left, which is probably what made it so
hard. And touring made it harder. I'm probably more affected now than
ever by the fact that home as it was doesn't exist any more. Coming
back and not going home to the place I lived in for 22 years, it's very
upsetting. You're on a ladder and somebody's chopping the rungs off
as you go up. You can't get back down to where you started from."
While Alex is still living happily at home, Mat moved out a few months
ago.
"I always used to have friction with my parents," he sighs.
They were always lenient with me, but just 'cause they were my parents
and lived with me, I just couldn't accept they were being nice, and
I was always very antagonistic towards them. I'm quite ashamed of my
attitude towards them.
"I was always really aggressive towards my brother too, just 'cause
he's younger than me. But now we're all living in separate houses, we
can get on so much better. We have conversations, which we never did
before.
"Now that I've moved to Dudley, I can sit in my room and listen
to my Roy Harper albums and I can feel homesick for Stourbridge from
six miles away.
"I think I abused my home. Maybe I still do. I'm hardly ever there.
I go when I want to, never when my home calls me. I think sometimes
my home needs me to be there.
"At this moment, I'm worried about my cat. She's pregnant, and
I'm frightened I'll miss the kittens being born. My family couldn't
function as a unit if we didn't have cats. They tie us all together.
They're the common thread in the relationships within the family."
"Ours is Aston Villa," says Jonn.
THE Neds are due onstage in five minutes, and they've all got upset
tummies. Well, most of them. The ones who ate the meat last night.
The restaurant, some sort of Middle Eastern place which includes "mashed
foal" among its appetisers, was the last of many disasters on a
Saturday night off in Dublin.
It was a night which found the group scouring the city centre for an
hour and a half for a pub which (a) would serve them, (b) was not in
the process of a bomb scare evacuation or (c) wasn't full to the doors.
A post-closing time excursion to McGonagles resulted, amazingly, in
the band being made to pay admission, only to discover with disappointment
that the club had no beer, just a champagne bar. Later still, one restaurant
after another switched off its lights as the entourage approached the
premises. Only one door was open...
And now, back in McGonagles, this time, I presume, without an entrance
charge, the Neds are paying another price. Jonn doesn't think he can
last the set without an accident. Someone says something about a bucket
for the side of the stage.
But it's alright on the night. The Neds come leaping on with all of
their customary hair-flying abandon, Mat, Alex and guitarist Rat storming
all over the stage in their silly shorts while Jonn holds the mike with
one hand and cavorts around it wildly, legs jumping and flailing in
that excitably gangly dance of his, while he shakes his head vigorously.
The hurry-burly continues unabated through familiar fare like "Grey
Cell Green", "Until You Find Out" and the thrashy anthem
"Kill Your Television" as well as newer material from the
LP, material which points to more varied directions for the group.
Despite the massive noise of Ned's Atomic Dustbin
onstage, a confrontation directed by the furious flurries and thuds
of Dan's drum kit, there's quite an imagination underlying it all; the
frequent changes of rhythm and mood within songs, the interplay of the
two bass guitars with each other and Rat, the vocal repetition and emphasis
and, quite a lot of the time, the fact that there are tunes.
When the band come off after three encores, I suddenly realise that
none of them have been sick, or worse, since the set began.
They put it down to adrenalin. In fact, they put a lot of things down
to adrenalin.
"Adrenalin starts pushing you when you're frightened or angry,"
says Mat. "It's easy to confuse the feelings you get onstage. It
could be fright or just excitement."
"What I have to do is just go at it with all the strength I've
got," says Jonn. "I might be singing about being insecure,
but it doesn't matter as long as I go at it with a lot of energy and
aggression."
Insecure?
I'm very insecure."
What, even onstage?
"Sometimes I suddenly feel like I'm looking off the top of a really
high building. I think, 'It's really frightening, I'm dizzy here, I'm
about to fall off'. I flicK my hair back, I grab hold of the mike very
tightly, I keep my feet in the same place for more than 10 seconds and
I sort of freeze."
Alex: "If you think you look silly or you just did a jump that
was completely out or time and you're in front of 2,000 people and they
think you're the coolest people on earth, then you can think 'F*** it,
I'm up here and you're not'.
"Me and Mat got our basses tangled the other night. I suddenly
thought of two deers on the plains of Africa with their antlers interlocked
in a depraved battle for the lady deer. I don't know why that happened,
but the next thing, I was back playing again."
"Sometimes I get struck by the incongruity of it all," adds
Mat. "I think 'What am I doing here?' Sometimes I feel silly on
the stage, and vulnerable. Sometimes I can just imagine people saying
'Look at that wanker, what a c***'. And I turn ana look at my amp for
a bit and stand still, and then I think 'F*** it, I'm having a laugh',
and off I go again."
"Sometimes I'll look into the audience ana catch somebody's face,"
says Jonn. "I'll catch their expression, and I'll think 'That person
really hates me', and that's a really good one 'cause you think 'F***
it, I hate you too', which gives me extra aggression."
There are lots of girls in the Neds' audience, and quite a few of them
stand at the front screaming at Jonn.
"Some people can play the sex symbol part, but I don't regard myself
as being vaguely attractive. I could try to look more attractive than
I am, but as we've got more popular, I've actually got less bothered
about what I look like and what my clothing is and if my hair is a perfect
Neds' style."
Mat is even more modest.
"I'm fat, stupid, inconsiderate, selfish and insensitive. Well,
I don't know if I'm insensitive but I do try f***ing hard sometimes
to be insensitive, because I feel vulnerable."
Mat is cute and likeable, and he's neither stupid nor fat.
"I was always a fat kid. I just got obsessive about it. Sometimes
I wish I was 65 and had a rotund woman with spectacles and stuff, all
cosy and nice."
"I used to think I was thin and completely unattractive, and then
a girl said to me 'I love thin men'," enters Alex. "I thought
'F*** it'... people see qualities in you that you yourself can't understand."
THIS is the Neds' first tour of Ireland, and they love it.
"It's what England would be if the architects hadn't got their
hands on it," says Mat. "Sometimes I get really worried that
the world is being made out of lines and humankind is being based around
maths and logic and being really linear. Humans try to impose linearity
on a world that's curved and fluffy and lumpy and grassy.
"When you come to Ireland you find the countryside so relaxing.
We were going along the Antrim Coast Road in Northern Ireland and there
was just this f***ing castle on a rock sticking out into the sea (Dunluce
Castle), and it had just relaxed into the environment. When people left
it alone it became stone again instead of a building.
"In England, the fields nave been covered in concrete. Human beings
don't fit into the surroundings they've built for themselves. Human
beings are curved and round, and so is the countryside.
"My most striking impressions of Ireland are the Giant's Causeway
and the Singing Kettle cafe, both on the Antrim Coast. I'd seen pictures
of the Giant's Causeway a thousand times, but when we got there, I just
wanted to take all my clothes off, and I'm normally dead shy about that
sort of thing. It was unashamed, and it was just there. I remember the
smell of it... I can still feel it."
"We stopped at Portrush and went into the Singing Kettle cafe,"
says Alex. "And the people there were just taking the piss out
of us, and singing 'The Magic Roundabout', and they got out this spinning
top thing. People in Ireland, they give you the time of day, they make
such an effort."
"Here, people love each other," says Jonn. "This might
sound like your hippy commune bullshit and in England it's going to
sound very stupid indeed, but the impression I get is that people seem
to understand each other. It's part of their existence and it's natural
to them.
"People talk about the Swinging Sixties and hippies and how they
loved each other, but even if they did, they had to learn it. They weren't
like it originally."
The Neds: love them soon. Coming to your town any day.
Ned's Atomic Dustbin have released their new single, "Happy", this week on Furtive through Epic. The new LP, "God Fodder", comes out on March 4. They are touring the UK now.