scans.
PLANES, TRAINS & AUTOMOBILES
It's been quite a year for the Neds, what with having hits and touring
all around the world and being on TV and all that.
CAROL CLERK met up with them on the eve of their homecoming gigs to
discover a band desperate for a good curry. Pics: STEVE GULLICK
THIS TIME LAST YEAR, NED'S ATOMIC DUSTBIN WERE jumping up and down
on the brink of everything. They were a great white hope for young and
noisy, urgent, agitating music. They were a merchandiser's hot tip.
They were a psychologist's delight. Ned's Atomic Dustbin wanted to turn
the corner, had no choice, in fact, and it scared them shitless. Intimidated
and often panic-stricken by the onset of some unspecified but inevitable
success, they released their anxieties onstage in a furious rush of
sound and tumbling bodies - a madcap mixture which only served to make
more people love them and only added to the certainty that something
big was about to happen, soon.
This time last year, Ned's Atomic Dustbin had just been abroad for the
first time, spending four days in Holland which "we f***ing hated".
Twelve months later, the Neds have had hit singles, TV, a Top Five album
with "God Fodder", sell-out tours, fan and tee-shirt mania
and more world travel than they really wanted. They've spent most of
1991 on the road, in Europe, America and Japan. They've sharpened their
sound and strengthened their confidence live, but the effects of intensive
touring have left them more personally unsettled than ever. I spend
what feels like a lifetime but is, in fact, a couple of days in New
York with the Neds, sight-seeing, drinking, falling over, hanging over
and bursting with excitement at the thrill-upon-thrill of their live
gigs supporting Jesus Jones. We finally find time to sit down and talk
in a bar at JFK Airport, two hours before their flight home to England.
And it's here that they present me with the definitive Neds' review
of the year. For that, read "Everything That Can Possibly Go Wrong
If You're Sensitive Young Men On The Road For Too Long".
INTIMATIONS OF MORTALITY
"WHAT this year has done to me is make me realise what life is,"
says singer Jonn. "It's put me in touch with the bottom line. There's
life and death, which I never thought about - whether you're well and
the people you know are healthy and alive, or dead. I got paranoid about
the amount of flying we were doing. It's scary. I was crying on the
phone to my girlfriend about it." "The possibility of us dying
in a plane crash is getting higher," agrees Rat, guitarist. "I'm
petrified of flying, I think it's the most unnatural thing in the world."
"I used to enjoy flying and now I hate it," says Mat, one
of the Neds' two bassists. "I never thought about death until I
arrived in America and then I spent seven weeks obsessed with it. In
New Orleans, I thought I'd really like to talk to my father, which triggered
off the homesickness and all these very morbid thoughts - whether I
was going to die, or my parents were going to die and I wouldn't find
out until I got back.
"I've been fantasising about murder as well. And Satan. And suicide.
I'm going to kill myself at some point in the future, but I'm too bored
to bother at the moment..."
MISSING THINGS
THE Neds missed Guinness, the Red Fort curry house in Sedgeley, The
Mitre in Stourbridge, The Old Vic in Dudley, The Courthouse and The
Leopard in Sedgeley, their families, cats, friends, girlfriends and
England. Jonn: "I came very close at times to jumping on Mat's
bones cos he wears sandalwood, the same scent as my girlfriend. It's
very frightening. I could quite easily have turned round and snogged
him." Mat: "My accent's changed. It's become more English.
I keep saying 'terribly' and 'awfully' and 'splendid'. I've never done
that before."
DOUBTS
"I phoned my best friend in England from America," offers
Jonn. "I was thinking, 'Do I sound the same? What's he thinking?
Is he thinking I've changed? I hope he doesn't'. It scared the life
out of me. For the first time I'm not sure whether I've changed or not
because I'm too close to it.
"I want someone to turn round and say I'm a wanker if i am. It
won't break my heart. It'll make my day. I'm frightened they won't tell
me and just go off me quietly. I'm scared because I wonder who I am
at the moment, and what will I be next?"
"I guess we're all just confused," adds Mat. "I hate
the way people won't attempt to understand you. They have fixed attitudes
towards what they think you are and what you derive from it. People
say it must be fabulous to have girls scream at you. I really don't
like it. I get satisfaction from knowing people are enjoying themselves,
not people looking at me.
"I'm going to get medically depressed with people telling me I'm
good. Maybe it's cos I don't believe them, I don't trust them. Then
I start to think about what I do, if I deserve what I've got, and I
think, 'No, I don't', and I think I'm inadequate and I've got to do
something to improve it. Round and round in circles, analysing myself.
I get more and more depressed about the person that I am. I'm never
going to think I'm any good."
"It's not our job to look at how talented or untalented we are,"
counters bassist Alex, who is unusually quiet today. "We are creative
and that's what's most important."
BOREDOM
WEEKS and months in a tour bus took a toll on the Neds who coined the
catchphrase "Whatever shall we do?" and resorted to increasingly
ridiculous ways of passing the time. They surpassed themselves with
hard-fought competitions over videos, the winner being the person who
could make the most irrelevant comment about a movie. The year's prize
line was something to do with Argentinian whistling sharks.
Eventually, they declared themselves too bored to sleep and remedied
this by drinking more, thus inviting a succession of hungover mornings.
"What we didn't do was resort to drugs," says Mat, sensibly.
"We now know exactly why people take drugs," continues Jonn.
'They're bored and they're tired."
"Smoking cigarettes relieves the boredom," carries on Mat,
lighting another. "I don't know why Jonn doesn't smoke."
"Other things relieve it too, like the illnesses," enthuses
Rat. "It's impossible to look after yourself on tour. There's no
time for clothes-washing or proper eating. That's probably where all
the illnesses came from. One by one, we all fell."
ILLNESSES
EVEN Dan Dan The Fast Drumming Man, who smiles beautifully, rarely speaks
and hadn't been ill in four years, succumbed to 'flu with the others.
Rat got pneumonia in San Francisco. Alex had an abscess on his arm which
had to be drained every day for a week. Jonn had a fit in the bus, similar
to an asthmatic attack and linked to a heart complaint, plus he threw
up onstage during "Grey Cell Green" while Mat filled in with
some spontaneous vocals: "Jonn is presently being sick." Mat
had a boil in Japan and a wasp sting in Carbondale.
Mat: "My leg was hurting, I pulled my trousers off, and there was
this hole in my leg which was bleeding. I found this wasp in my trousers
and hammered it to f***ing death. When they get that close to your groin,
you've got to hammer them."
LOSING IT
"WE all had breakdowns and fits and moods and we got pissed off
and we cried and we shouted at each other," recalls Jonn, the most
mild-mannered man in pop. Even the most mild-mannered man in pop can
have outbursts of tour madness: the idea of Jonn screaming at a taxi
driver to "Get in the f***ing cab, fatso!" takes some believing,
but I'm assured it's true.
"Little things wind you up," says Rat. "Dan was the first
one to lose it. We found him one day just beating his drums senseless.
He'd gone.
"You have to find ways to release your emotions and pressures.
I found my own by kicking inanimate objects around rooms. It hurts you,
but it helps. One night I was lying in my bunk and I could hear this
tiny drum beat in the room where Mat was sleeping. In my frustration,
I kicked my bunk to f***."
Jonn: "Which woke me up cos I was underneath it."
Mat gets animated. "Me and Alex have the most intense arguments,
we shout at each other like we've never shouted at anybody else, but,
suddenly, if it'll come to a point where you think, We've argued enough',
and then you start kissing each other and fondling."
"I loathe and despise arguments," says Jonn. "It's probably
to do with when I was a kid and my mum and dad would argue, and I'd
just want to hide under the sofa. They'd say, 'Go to bed', and that
made it worse for some reason. If an argument starts brewing I feel
sick, and if I ever do actually indulge, then the others know that I
feel very strongly about it indeed."
"We argue and then we just go back to normal," concludes Mat.
"It's like that whole cheesy 'brother' relationship."
DISORIENTATION
"MY girlfriend, Helga, came over in the middle of the tour,"
begins Jonn. "I thought, 'Bring some sanity over, home and sanity'.
It was great, but it wasn't sanity, it was a different kind of insanity.
It was like, I'd flown my girlfriend to America - 'Why do you need to
do that?' I came face to face with her in Minneapolis and I was thinking,
'What is my girlfriend doing in Minneapolis?'
"I'm not going to find reality, even when i get home. This year
has just destroyed what normality is. There's not even a normal tour
or a normal gig or a normal day at home or a normal night in the pub
or a normal evening with my girlfriend."
"This time last year, I knew I came from Stourbridge," nods
Mat. "Now I don't know where the f*** I come from, I don't know
what I'm doing. Your emotions lose their base line. I now find it impossible
to predict what sort of mood I'll be in in five minutes. I just know
I want a home back. I want a house. I want a bookshelf."
"Touring's great, but it doesn't half f*** you up," agrees
Rat. "It's frightening for me at the moment, going home. I'll walk
in my house, mum will be saying, 'How was it, then?' and then she's
going to say, 'I went out with such-and-such a person last week for
a coffee.' It's the big knock-down, back to normal life. But I'll be
walking round in circles, itching to do something."
DIETARY DISASTERS
NED'S Atomic Dustbin were probably never fussy eaters until they started
touring. Well, except for Rat, who insists: "I've got nothing against
foreign food, except I hate it."
The rest of the band had a slightly different problem.
Jonn: "I found out that everything you loved eating at the start
you got as much of as you possibly could and you ended up not being
able to look at it, like Mexican. Another thing I absolutely adored
was fresh broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, celery and a nice dip. We
put it on the rider and it got to the point where I'd walk in the dressing
room and feel sick just looking at it."
THE TROUBLE WITH GIGS
WHEN you're playing the same set night after night for the best part
of a year, problems can set in. Different members get tired of different
songs. For instance, Mat's sick to death of "Kill Your Television",
which Rat loves, and Rat can't stand "Happy". Jonn, meanwhile,
has convinced himself that he can't sing the vocals on any of the songs
which were singles, apart from "Until You Find Out", which
wasn't a major hit.
Then there's the autopilot trap. At its most minor, it might strike
during the elder "Terminally Groovy", making Rat or Jonn forget
their parts, as they have. At its worst, it can drain the group of their
vital spark.
"We were going through the motions for a while," admits Mat.
"We had to try to put the excitement and novelty back."
"We had a massive talk about it in Boston," grins Rat. "We
admitted we'd been shit for a while. But, after that, we did better
gigs. And I just thought, 'F*** me, we're five very lucky people to
be where we are, doing something we enjoy."
Not that Mat necessarily agrees.
"I do feel lucky sometimes, but it's my prerogative to feel how
the hell I want about what I do. No one should tell me how much I should
enjoy it. If I choose to dislike it, I'll f***ing dislike it. It's very
easy for people to criticise us for being ungrateful, but f***'em."
"I don't feel lucky," insists Jonn, who felt anything but
fortunate before the band's triumphant appearance at this year's Reading
Festival.
"For two days before the gig, I couldn't eat, sleep, concentrate,
be with anybody. I couldn't perform any social functions whatsoever.
I was frightened shitless by Reading, to the degree that I didn't know
where I was. But it was fight or flee. I didn't want to flee, so I'm
clenching my fist, I'm singing into a microphone, it's all I'm doing,
but I'm going to kill them with it, shove it right down their throats,
hurt them with us."
COMING HOME
NED'S Atomic Dustbin are looking forward more than anything to the chance
to write new material. But first, there's Christmas.
Dan, Mat and Alex are fans. Rat likes Christmas Eve, but not the day
itself: "I always convince myself I've got meningitis cos I can't
move my neck and I can't look at bright lights".
And then there's Jonn, who says: "This year is the first I've lived
alone at Christmas, so I don't know what's going to happen. I've got
two mothers, two fathers and shit loads of family, so at the end of
Christmas Day, I'll be knackered.
"Another thing that's changed this year is us going from being
nobodies to be being supposed stars or whatever. Last time I was worried
I wasn't part of the family anymore, I was exterior, I wouldn't be comfortable,
but I went there and met them, and I just wanted to cry because i was
part of it, and it was brilliant. They do love you and you do love them.
I hope it's the same this year."
Ned's Atomic Dustbin start their Christmas dates at Chester Northgate Arena on December 16.