POP EYES THE SAILOR

Rip It Up, Issue 98, 1 September 1985, Page 20

POP EYES THE SAILOR

Russell Brown

Words With Mockers' Andrew Fagan

He is the Divine Master of the Church Of Physical Immortality. A robust, weathered looking man in a red robe and grey beard, left hand clasped around a wooden staff topped with a globe of the world. He chuckles and waves a cheery farewell, as does his wife.

“What a case!" exclaims Andrew Fagan as he clambers back into the rental van; then launches into earnest praise. We’ve come all the way out to Avondale to see the Divine Master regarding a small boat that he owns and Andrew may wish to buy. Andrew wants to try a few offshore voyages and, faced with upgrading worth several thousand dollars on the boat he lives in on Auckland harbour, is looking at trying to buy one already suitably equipped. Hasn’t really got the money of course. But could well have in the near future.

The DM built his own boat and it’s a meticulous piece of work, Andrew explains.

The guy was even sufficiently dedicated to work for a year in a stainless steel factory so he could do the mouldings for himself after hours. It's lovely, small but lovely. The Divine Master is only selling it so he can travel to the Middle East and spread the word of Physical Immortality.

"What he said was that hed like to let the whole world use his boat, just leave it tied up, so long as people brought it back and fixed anything that went wrong with it," Andrew explains. "But it wouldn't work. Actually, a lot of what he said awareness was really true. If everyone was a bit more aware ...”

Do you know who Andrew Fagan is? He sings in a pop group called the Mockers.

The Mockers have by now launched into an exhaustive tour of the country, going just about everywhere and playing a lot of one-nighters. The tour is in support of

their new album, Culprit and the King. The album is the fruit of keen interest shown in the Mockers by RCA Records Australia and, in turn, RCA America. Where the Mockers’ first album was recorded in the "down time" at Auckland’s Mandrill studios whatever was

spare at the time Culprit and the King was completed during a two month block bookout at a top Sydney

studio. “There were no limits in terms of time or getting things right, whereas with the other one we had to let things go purely because of time. Everything was available anything you wanted, you could call up and it would be there in an hour. It was all very convenient, just because of the pace they move at.

They’ve always got things happening so it was quite vibrant in that respect. In another way I thought it was quite destructive, that pace

of life in the music world in Sydney, in the recording studio. It was very good, but to actually live there and be part of it... I don’t think I’d find time for the necessary peace of mind to come up with songs. For me, anyway, it was all pretty fast track. But we were just sort of plomped into it. Just sitting watching everything happening and going for it”

The first inkling of international interest in the Mockers came early this year when they were invited over to Sydney to record a single and some demos and say hi to the folks. ‘One Black Friday’ came out of that. But the Mockers had rather run out of momentum when another invite came, this time to come over and record a whole album with RCA Australia’s new A&R man.

The recent Radio With Pictures docu-news segment made it clear that people

very high up were interested in the Mockers as a

proposition for success. The man said that the Mockers were one of the bands RCA was really going to concentrate on

internationally ... “It’s funny, that wasn’t actually clear until I saw the TV thing and saw big Brian there saying that. Obviously I think it’s good, because I always make it really clear, and I think it’s a good lesson for a lot of new bands coming up, one has to accept the business side of it. “And the only statement we can make to the record company for them to give us a bigger push or whatever, is our songs. That’s the only thing they listen to. This is overstating it, because

obviously there’s personal relationships and that sort of thing, but the main thing is you’re product to them. It’s a business and they’re businessmen and I accept that.

“And in that game overseas ... or even here it’s things like full-page ads in Rip It Up that puts you in front of the people for them to decide whether they like you or not. And that’s what makes you known and it’s part of the game. That’s why we came out of Wellington and stopped doing singles ourselves, because it was so depressing putting them out and no one knowing them about them. It didn’t matter if anyone liked them or hated them, just no one knew about them. “That’s where the businessmen and their

promotional dollars come in. They say: 'Right, we're gonna put you in front of people.’ But there’s a thin line

between moulding oneself so the businessman will like you and being oneself and

being appreciated by the businessman. "This whole New Zealand thing, the fact that we’re a proven ‘product’ in New Zealand, they appreciate us. Because for them chart success, money, fan clubs talk; they’re business indicators for them. And they say: 'Right, you’ve done that in New Zealand, you’re doing what you’re doing, we'll just pick you up.’ And there was no talk of the haircutting

image thing at all. “I’m not saying it’s been calculated at all on my part it’s just been luck, all the way along. We could’ve been someone else and they might have said: ‘Right, you’ve got to do this,’ but there would have been a few arguments there.” If the pressure had been put on to tailor things to the market? “I’d try to impress upon them the fact that, I don’t know about the other guys, but personally it’s just not me. That’s never been me and I’d have to somehow make it clear to them. The proof of the pudding is all those bands in Sydney like Geishas and Kids In the Kitchen, who are just

copying other British bands, the whole sound, the whole look, everything. It’s just

terrible, but those bands will just be on the heap, they’ll never get anywhere, they’ll never be spearheading

anything by themselves. And I’m not saying that we will be, but we’ve got our own

little niche, we do our own little thing and that’s it, it’s not a matter of copying any of the others."

The Mockers have played their first gig in some months, and the first since the album, the previous night Andrew says there were no difficulties doing

justice to the expensive album as a live band. “Not with the approach they took to recording. The producer was presented with two approaches to take from the demos we did. They could do the whole drum machine-sequencer, very precise sort of session approach or just catch the band basically as the band is, set everyone up in there and play. They decided, quite fortunately for us, that they would go with that sort of live approach.

“The main reason was and it’s all relative and in

comparison with the bands they were working with and the session guys who are in the studuo all the time we were really rough. We were really ... unique. Just because we were a band that had worked together and had got the songs from the band putting them together, as opposed to going in there and getting in a session bass player who plays with Sharon O’Neill or whatever.

“They were listening to demo tapes of of something that sounded to them really fresh purely because of what they were used to listening to in the studio. So subsequently they didn't push us in any direction with any of the songs. I mean, there’s lots of things on there that we couldn't reproduce live, but they’re things that you wouldn’t notice. The base of each song is generally very much the way we were doing them before we got them there. Again, it’s just luck. If they’d decidedthe other way, given the power play of the whole thing, the positon we were in, we would have been

subject to that. But we were fortunate that it’s very representative of the band.

"Actually, to an extent we got a lot more control on this album than we did on Swear It's True with this one there was no one in the driver's seat telling us what to do. They basically said: ‘You’ve got proven product in New Zealand just do your thing.’ We had a really good communication with the producer what he was doing was getting the sounds to sound so that when you hear it on a record player, it doesn’t sound like a demo tape, it just sounds competitive with whatever else is around. Just the sound, not the individual playing or instruments. I’d hate to think what it would have been like doing it the other way it wouldn’t have been us, we wouldn't have been able to reproduce it live and, most importantly, it wouldn't have enhanced the songs.

"And I think the good thing about the record company in Australia anyway is that they seem to be seeing the swing

back to just basic, pure catching a band as it is. It suits them because it’s cheap! It’s suits them that the Eurthymics album cost $40,000 to record when the Real Life one’s costing $200,000 in Germany. There’s an awarness which obviously gives us more freedom than I was anticipating.” The Mockers share a certain quality with a lot of other bands from this country they stake their claims on their songs. That’s almost quaint in a pop industry which has seen a lot of money poured into bands who apparently do not have songs to speak of. But on the other hand one of the main criticisms of the Mockers has been their continuing to write just nice little songs, nothing more ... "I’ve been thinking about this, and I don’t personally aspire to extending the

boundaries of pop music. To me the perfection in pop is being involved in writing a

good pop song. ‘Good’ is so hard to define anyway, but it’s those melodies that... I’m truly enamoured of the concept of the pop song, y’know? Because it’s such a honed-down, concentrated thing. It's such a disciplined thing, everything about it is so worked out, it’s such a real little craft. “With the amount of crap pop songs around, the ooh-baby-yeah-yeah stuff, people lose sight of that and I can appreciate that, but at the same time, the really good pop songs, like 'ltchykoo Park’ and ‘Mother’s Little Helper', it’s a great craft to come up with something like that. I used to listen to songs like that and aspire to writing a great pop song. “And that’s all within the concept of a pop song and that’s not trying to extend those boundaries. I can’t see myself ever wanting to extend those boundaries because I don’t concentrate all my everyday energies into the music we make. That’s one thing I really like doing

and like doing with the band, but there’s other things. "It’s probably because I'm not a musician. Probably if I was a musician and that was my baby, music, then I’d be different. Because muscians tend to, I find, clutter things by throwing in a lot of chords and things. That’s because they know a lot of chords pop songs are banal to them because they’re so basic. I was reading an interview with Lou Reed’s bass player, this gun bassist who was absolutely bored shitless with his songs. But I’m not a musician and if I was I’d probably aspire to taking the songs beyond what they are. The way I appreciate music is just based on how it strikes me, rather than whether it’s interesting or whatever. It’s almost a layman's point of view I suppose.

"It’s the same with poetry, a good poem for me is something that moves me or hits me. It doesn't matter if it’s iambic pentameter or

whatever, just something that gets across an emotion. And I look at something that’s a good poem and that’s what I aspire to writing. I don’t aspire to extending the boundaries of poetry in any way.

"Another thing I like about the category of pop music is that it gives you the scope to take a song in any direction. The song’s the master and whatever’s going to best suit that song you can do.” Since the Mockers returned from Australia Andrew has divided his time between the business of the band a video, interviews, photographs, clothes and his boat. Naturally, he’s been spending quite a bit of time alone on the briny. Now he’s going on tour, where there’s anything but solitiude ... “It’s a real contrast. I like it actually, even though I get a bit cynical and get tired and grumpy at times. I spent a month on the boat going to bed at eight o’clock every night and getting up at

seven o’clock before we went to Australia. Then we spent two months in the timeless vacuum of the recording studio, never seeing daylight and eating takeaways. I really got off on it because I knew it wasn’t going to last forever. If it did I think I’d scream. And it’s the same now, coming back and being on the boat is a change, and being on tour will be another existence.” He’s been spending his time in waders and black jerseys ... “Black gear’s good, you don’t have to wash it. The waders look so dicky round town but they’re so useful for getting out to the boat. Gumboots are no use at all.” Of course now the tour’s begun it’s into frilly stage robes.

"That’s what’s so good, the contrast. It makes it really good fun dressing up. Everyone does it, whether it’s combing their hair in the mirror before they go out or putting on a special outfit. It’s good fun it’s just a bit more extreme the way I do it."

Does your personality actually change when you’re wearing the fancy clothes? "I don’t think I actually feel different; it’s just like putting on a suit or something. I think you tend to adhere to

it mentally. It doesn’t manifest itself so much verbally or physically, but it’s like working in a bank and putting on a suit you feel pretty disciplined and spick and span. So if you want to you can easily slip into a rock star role, but there’s very little opportunity for that anyway. On tour it will be a bit that way, with motels and interviews and everything laid on, but it doesn’t actually change my personality I think. I hope not, but you don’t get a chance for that to be demonstrated anyway. “It's just role play, that’s what I get off on. The whole thing’s a matter of role play and it upsets me when people can’t fathom that and they don’t even perceive that what they're doing in their own lives is role playing. “Working in a bank or being a lawyer with short

hair and a suit, it’s just role play and it’s equally acceptable. My brother in Sydney gets dressed up in a suit every morning, but he sees it like that and it’s fine. But when people begin to take it seriously and they look at other people and the way they dress and not accepting them then it’s dangerous it becomes prejudice based on your appearance. And that’s why I like dressing up in robes and changing roles and that and if people think you’re a dick, at least you’re getting through to them and hopefully making them think and if you can do that you’re winning.”

There’s a sense of the arbitrary about Andrew Fagan being in a pop band. It’s qualities other than musical virtuosity that make him the success he is but he does have a perceptive, idiosyncratic ear for popism. He was at the optimum age when punk suddenly made it rewarding and relevant to play music again; what would he have chosen in 1985’s less rewarding climate? But “being in a band” is still a helluva good thing like the modern-day equivalent of running off to join the circus. And when you set your sights on the stars and then begin to make some progress towards them, it’s an adventure. That’s what he likes. An adventure.