scans.
TRASH CAN SONATAS
On the eve of their In The Park gig in London, the Neds talk to CATHI UNSWORTH about scruffy success, their alternative Freddie Tribute and why the band's new album will be a whole lot harder. Pics: TOM SHEEHAN
THE CROOKED MAN PUB IN STOURBRIDGE IS A ONCE normal building that,
due to some unforseen land subsidence, now resembles the Fun House at
the fair. Surrounded by green fields and shady trees, it is the ideal
quaint, kooky setting for the town's most famous fluffy bunnies, Ned's
Atomic Dustbin.
Or so you'd think. Walk inside the Crooked Man, and its absurd angles
leave you completely disorientated. You feel drunk before you've touched
a drop, and mountain climbing tackle would seem like an essential purchase
before even attempting to prop up the bar. Ifs a place where nothing
can be taken at face value - the perfect spot for the Neds - and the
seemingly amiable, self-effacing chaps, bereft of lip gloss or glamour,
are sweet, in a blundering, very human way.
But, funnily enough, despite the reams of critical abuse that have been
thrown at them, they - along with The Levellers and Carter - have captured
the hearts of the Brit kids. The aesthetic idealists among the press
have a problem with this. The face of the ordinary bloke is not what
they want to see beaming out from the front page. The Neds, they think,
are just too "nice".
"Well, we're not going to be nasty on purpose, are we?" reasons
singer Jonn. "But the thing is that none of us come across as who
we really are, cos the rest of us don't want anyone to know. We are
very ordinary. And the thing we do that isn't ordinary is the music.
It's not like I think I'm the most boring person in the world..."
"But," concludes guitarist Alex, "I'm only as boring
as me cousin. The thing is, there's all these bands that come out saying
we're gonna change the world and subvert things, trying to sound really
hard. And when you listen to the music it's about as hard as me arse,
really. I think we do it the other way around. And those journalists
underestimate the readers as well. Why have The Levellers got so big?
Why have we got so big? Cos the music sounds good when you listen to
it, and that's it. But The Levellers don't go on about how subversive
or hard they are."
OBVIOUSLY, there's more to it than that. The champion bands of the
tee-shirt wearing hordes have laid their foundations by building large,
live followings. But just check the gig guide for a list of the sad
old names that've been tramping the boards for eons and achieving nothing
like the success of the Neds. They've made a connection with the hearts
and minds of their fans that goes far beyond years of slugging around
the circuit, and it is this that has made them so essential to so many
people.
"I think it's cos they can see themselves in us, and we see them
in us, sort of thing," reckons Alex. "Cos we're the same age
as people who like us. Like, I went down to Cornwall the other weekend,
and I went into a pub called The Pig's Ear, and it was just in the middle
of nowhere. And this squaddie comes up to me and says, 'Oh, Ned's Atomic
Dustbin, I love your band. I played your stuff to all the other lads
on the ship, who only ever listen to Kylie Minogue, and they thought
it was great, cos they thought you were just like us - just wanna have
a laugh and get pissed and enjoy life, or whatever'."
By that token, though, The Macc Ladds should be superstars.
"If we were the best band in the world we wouldn't know we were,"
Jonn shrugs. "And we wouldn't release the best song in the world
if we wrote it, cos we wouldn't know what it was. We do blunder. There's
no system to what we do. It's only money that makes things serious,
and that doesn't get serious until it runs out, I don't think!
"The only thing we ever get hassled about is whether we write good
songs. And then, whether we're performing them well. There's a lot of
standards we want to keep up."
Do you think your appeal also lies in the empathy people have with the
doubt and uncertainty you express through your lyrics, those traumatised
teenage emotions?
"For me, unfortunately, if something pisses me off, I sit down
and write lyrics about it. I don't like lyrics that are about things
that make you happy," Jonn explains. "Cos when I am happy,
I'm too busy being happy. I don't wanna write down how it feels because
I'm too busy enjoying myself. Perhaps I ought to write things down then!
But the lyrics are only a part of the song. I can't write about saving
the planet or anything, because I'm too clumsy with it."
Bassist Matt, a far from "nice" geezer, has been snarling
over his pint for some time now. "Who believes in love songs anyway?"
he spits. "Who's ever had a relationship that could be summed up
by a Kim Wilde song?"
"The only time you listen to songs like that," agrees Alex,
"is when you've split up with your girlfriend and you hear a song
on the radio, and all of a sudden it means something. When you're wallowing."
"Well, when I was younger, the songs I could relate to when I fell
out with a girl were by The Wedding Present," counters Matt. There
was a much deeper, more realistic edge to it. It wasn't, 'You've gotta
come back to me cos my tree won't have any leaves'. That stuff is just
written for another world entirely."
"There's things we aim not to do," agrees Jonn. "I don't
ever sing 'Baby', cos it's bollocks. But it's more
an avoidance of things we don't like than an acceptance of things we
do like. When we started, the ideas that we had individually didn't
end up anything like what we finished up sounding like. That's typical
of us."
THERE'S no denying the fact that the Neds' Top 10 success opened up
a lot of doors. Once they'd rammed the charts, it was A&R frenzy
to sign up the next bunch of spunky longhairs. Both Senseless Things
and Mega City Four were pursued rigorously by the majors, before settling
on deals that suited them - and following the Neds into the "TOTP"
studios.
"I'm surprised that bands like that weren't insulted to be honest,"
shrugs Jonn. "But a lot of bands opened the doors for us, though.
It's just the way of the world."
But unlike The Levellers or Carter, the Neds have no political agenda.
Doubtless, all three talk to people about their lives, but the Neds
avoid any issues beyond the realm of the personal. They did, however,
headline the recent Alternative Freddie Tribute to raise money for the
Terrence Higgins Trust - an event that was roundly castigated in this
paper.
How did they enjoy being called losers?
"I'm glad that was pointed out to us," deadpans drummer Dan.
"Cos there's not a lot of people who are that honest to us, besides
me mum and dad."
"It's the same old story," sighs Jonn. "We knew this
would happen before we even started. If you get a lot of good press,
you're bound to get a lot of bad press afterwards."
Did you make a lot of money from the gig?
"Not as much as we could have." says Alex, sadly. "I
don't know about the rest of the bands, but we didn't ask for a penny,
and if anyone had the most expenses it was us, being the biggest band
on the bill. And there were a lot of smaller bands on the bill that
were trying to sell tee-shirts and asking for money here and there.
If you're gonna do a charity gig and you can't afford to do it, you
shouldn't bother turning up."
"It's a vicious circle, really," sighs Jonn. "Cos we're
better off than most of those bands, but we have to pay out more. The
minute we do anything these days it costs a fortune."
"It costs us £12,000 to get out of bed in the morning,"
sniggers Matt.
"I think the whole thing wasn't about raising money, anyway, cos
it didn't," reckons Jonn. "It was more like a statement to
say we miss Freddie Mercury as well, it was just an excuse to play."
Did you think it was important to raise people's consciousness about
AIDS, though?
"It's not our place to raise people's consciousness," sneers
Matt. "Cos, like, I failed Biology O-level. The Terrence Higgins
Trust should have been there, and they would have been, if they'd had
the time to organise it properly. Our function was basically to play
a gig and give people a reason to be there. I'm not going to go spouting
on about AIDS. I don't know enough about it."
"All we know is that it kills people," furthers Alex, "and
as many people should know that as possible. Cos even if we helped half
a person to understand - which we probably didn't, cos all it said was
'AIDS' over the stage - at least people would know we've bothered about
it. But that's as far as we can go, we can't really talk about it."
"I think that's probably about as deep as we'll ever go politically,"
considers Jonn. "And that's something that isn't really political
at all. It's just general interest."
"We're not self-righteous enough to stand there and recite 'The
Lords' Prayer' to people," rants Matt.
I wasn't suggesting you were. I just thought you might have an interest
in a deadly disease that has the ability to affect anyone...
"Except for Jean Alexander," the wit responds. "Cos she's
still a virgin, and she's 55 now."
"I think it's nice to do things for charity," says an embarrassed
Jonn. "We've done things for charity before, but we don't make
a fuss about them, because there's no point. You feel more chuffed about
it yourself, you don't have to blow your own trumpet." "And
if we can turn the demand for us into an advantage for other people,
then that's something nice to do," Alex concludes.
NOW limbering up for their Finsbury Park appearance on June 6, the
Neds are rehearsing, and also writing. They've drafted in a new producer,
Steve Wallace, whose credits include Nirvana and Henry Rollins' excellent
new "End Of Silence" LP.
"We thought it was about time we got someone new in to have a look
at us," Jonn explains. "Cos a lot of the sounds we had on
'God Fodder' I look back on and cringe. And, after we did the last single,
all the ideas we had were drying up. We wanted someone new there."
Their dissatisfaction with "God Fodder" bugs them somewhat.
"I could see people saying that it was a 'nice' album," scowls
Alex. "And I don't like being 'nice'. It's like Matt used to say,
a lot of bands are like geeks, like, (he adopts an ashamed expression)
'Here's our music, hope you like it'. Whereas our attitude from playing
live was to give it a bit of this" and his face
contorts into a Slayer-style mask of venom. "I think 'God Fodder'
was a bit too geeky."
"The thing is," adds Jonn, "we've never tried anyone
else before. We did some stuff with Raven (ex-Killing Joke), and that
didn't work out quite as we'd hoped. But this is working out really
well. It's refreshing to try everything from a different angle. I feel
excited again. We end up staying up all night and doing dumb things
in the studio, which we haven't done for a while."
"He's going to iron out our fluffy edges," smiles Alex, evilly,
"and make us hard!"
SUCCESS. It's come as brightly and warmly to the Neds as the sun over
The Crooked Man. And they still can't really fathom it.
"It's the best way, not to know why it's happened," reckons
Jonn. "Because, if you do know why, then it's contrived."
"This is the first time in four years that we've stopped to think
about anything, and it's quite worrying," laughs Alex. "We
just want to get the new songs down."
Do you feel you've done too much growing up in public?
"Yeah," nods Jonn. "The thing is, two years ago, before
we were getting anywhere, we might have had silly haircuts, and that
mattered then. What matters now, totally and completely, is the music
that we make. We need to do things like this, and we don't need to say
things that are stupid, and there's a lot of things that we need to
be wary of - but the songs are the only things that are important.
"I don't mind looking a prat 90 per cent of the time!"
Ned's Atomic Dustbin play the Finsbury Park Festival on June 6