Back in the Kitchen

Rip It Up, Issue 151, 1 February 1990, Page 12

Back in the Kitchen

Pete Shelley & the Buzzcocks

Everybody's doing it—the Stones, the Who, Pere Übu and even the Seekers are hitching up paunches and tinting the grey bits. It's called reforming and it usually happens when solo careers and bank accounts run dry. In the guise of "furthering artistic progression" the old line-ups embark on massive tours of the States fortuitously arranged for such an occasion. News of a Buzzcocks' reformation had a ring of desperation to it. I mean, wasn't punk about fighting old trad rock mores like "once more for the money." "There isn't an awful lot of money

in us reforming," quips Pete Shelley from o rehearsal hall in Manchester, a venue also used by other local hopes such as the Stone Roses. "In fact, we'd almost have to play a gig a night well into the next century in orderfo become millionaires. "We reformed because of popular demand. For abouHwo years in America there had been rumours that we were getting back together and then we had the offer of a tour and everything seemed to be in our favour to do things again, as we weren't busy with our own things." In what way is the current music scene conducive to this reformation? "The people tell us that the current music scene is bereft of what we have to offer. So we're filling the a gap by public demand. When we played in London the gig was only

supposed to hold three to four thousand but they sold five thousand. All the gigs have been sold out and the reaction has been estatic. It's not a nostalgia thing, it's people enjoying the present moment. : "The thing that surprised me was the number of people singing along. It was almost deafeningthey were louder than we were! There was an enthusiasm and vigour that's hard to whip out of people at the best of times." A Habit That Sticks The Buzzcocks broke up at the start of the last decade after a brief but chequered career as one of the few punk bands innovative and inspired enough to emerge from the rubble. • Like the Ramones, they spot-welded gloriously instant pop tunes to a

minimalist energy. But unlike their American predecessors, Shelley's songs had a fragile, personal, confessional core beating against the hard outer shell which produced a tension in their best music that their imitators through the 80s haven't come near. Because of Shelley's intuitive pop skills, the band was lumbered as being the guardians of British pop, whatever that was, and this reputation was cemented by a series of high-octane singles and a debut album, Another Music In A Different Kitchen, the stripped-down hardness ofwhich still sounds totally uncompromising. But it's as a singles band that they'll be remembered, with classics like 'Breakdown', 'Boredom' (both on the essential Spiral Scratch EP), 'Orgasm Addict', What Do I Get'and'Ever Fallen In Love'. "The good thing about singles was that you'd have an idea and you'd be able to do it quickly and people would be able to hear where you were. One of the things that's disappointing about the business nowadays is that it takes six months to write and record an album and another six months to get released and so people only get an idea of where you were a yearago, which hardly promotes excitement. "Forthe past seven or eight years, singles have been marketing ploys to promote albums, or are taken off albums which have been out fora long time. There's no way you can get feedback. It's like if you were to ask a question and even if it only took me five minutes to answer it, it would still make communication very hard. "In any kind of movement you need things that are currently relevant, rather than spending the time writing a book and waiting for it to come out. Fanzines were an immediate form of communication and singles can do that as well."

Back in the late 70s the Buzzcocks could do no wrong. Their press was on par with the untouchable status of

the Sex Pistols and the Clash. Shelley was the pop laureate. "I th in k the best press we got was after we finished. There was a n article in MMFand after reading it I was having serious doubts about whether I'd died and this was the obituary. . "As soon as we'd finished the record company had no interest in us at all because they'd been taken over by EMI and so we were in the big corporate domain then. And in situations like that, unless you have allies, you're nobody." 7 Did you conside the Buzzcocks to be a punk band? "I suppose we did. For me, punk was stripped-down pop. It had the immediacy and energy. "But as soon as it was stated what punk was or people had an idea of what it was, it became hard to do anything different. If you did do anything different, then you weren't towing the line. It was different when it started, like the the Sex Pistols and the Clash and us were different bands, we just happened at a certain. time and place. It was good. Punk shook things up before it ended up being dissipated and taken over by accountants." Like any band lasting longerthan 15 minutes, the Buzzcocks changed and developed a sound that was broader and a little less worried about energy. If Modern World was the Jam's bridge between the punk of In The City and the wider spectrums of All Mod Cons, then Love Bites served the same purpose forthe Buzzcocks, coming as it did between Another and the very underrated A Different Kind Of Tension. "The changes through the three albums were part of growing up and each thing would be different. A Different Kind Of Tension sounds ‘ current to me and I agree, it has ■ probably been underrated, but it's also been deleted for a number of years." But isn't it part of a boxed set of the

complete works of the Buzzcocks that's currently being issued? "Yeah, butthat's only because our last A&R guy before EMI took over is now working for EMI in the

department that puts out the product. So the boxed set has only come about because we've got an ally or a spy in the camp who was interested about what was available in the EMI vaults." Any rancour over the demise of the Buzzcocks? "No. It was good in the beginning when everything was there, and when it wasn't ere we went out and did other things. The whole thing fell apart when the money ran out. We didn't split because of musical u reasons." But you left the band to pursue a more electronic bent? - "Yeah, but the band had reached a point where a break was possible and I just took that option. The two dove-tailed together—one wasn't responsible for the other." Shelley's Blues; Buzzcocks Two On the cover of his first solo album Pete Shelley is decked out in a white suit facing some moderne objects of obscure symbolism. It looked like he'd become one of Gary Numan's ■ electric friends but there were strains of his melodic touch still in evidence: ■ "I listened to it three months ago and it's quite good. There are things that are of their time, quite electronic, and there are things that could be appreciated in the future. In Britain there is a lot of House music and a lot of that is electronically based. When the original House music in Detroit I came together it was by people who quoted albums like Homosapien as being an influence." Influential maybe but Homosapien remains patchy, especially in comparison to XL 1, Shelley's second , album. XL 1 gets the guitar/ synth - balance just right and in songs like Telephone Operator', 'lf You Ask Me', You Know Better Than I Know'

and'Many A Time', he equalled anything that he'd written with the • Buzzcocks. But from there his career became increasingly less-publicised and Shelley, like his original colleague Howard Devoto, became a faint prescence in an environment that he'd been influential in shaping. And so from there his activities ’ become more difficult to trace: "I moved from Manchesterto London in 1985. That year I started doing an album with Phonogram called Heaven In The Sea which was released the following year. It got five-star reviews in all the music papers and consequently did nothing at all. "About two years ago I had a project called Zip and we played support for Erasure and I've done a Deep House version of 'Homosapien' called 'Homosapien Two'. I've been reasonably busy, but not as much to the forefront as I'd like to be." Did you keep in touch with the . other ex-Buzzcocks members during this time?

"Vaguely. We'd see each other occasionally. When I was in New

York in 1987, Steve Garvey gave me 5 ’bring tit thehotel and I'd bump into Steve Diggle but it wasn't like we were friends or kept in touch." What about Howard Devoto? "We saw him after our gig in London last year and we taped an . interview with him where we reminisced about the old days. At the moment he's trying to put together a deal to put out some of our early demos which have come out as bootlegs. There's interest in that, and in a re-issue of Spiral Scratch." . Were you aware of the Buzzcocks' considerable impact on British pop (get out from under that chair Gedgejinthe 80s? "Yeah, but I'd rather other people pointed it out. It would be immodest ‘ of me to do it." Were you aware at the time that the band had something special? "I dunno, like most things you do in your life, it's only with hindsight that you see the influences. We didn't write a song and think, 'oh, that's good, that will influence people's lives'." .... ■ •:At its base level, rock n' roll is a form of entertainment that doesn't

have to mean or promise anything. Ifs a moment captured, enjoyed and then disposed of and re-appreciated in the form of nostalgia. The only concensus is public sales. In that ledger the Buzzcocks reformation makes perfect financial sense but in the punkflesh of 1977 it seemed to me (above McLaren's manipulations) that there was a promise of momentum that would reject and rise above the grubby profit motive. The Buzzcocks reformation sits uncomfortably in this light because even though Shelley has said money isn't at stake, their reunion has not as yet yielded any new material (out goes the creative argument) and try as you may, it is hard to distance this Buzzcocks rejuvenation from the grisly Rolling Stones and Who benefit tours. At the very least, Pete Shelley won't be able to point any fingers: "Yeah. I had preconceptions about bands who reformed and that was one of the reasons I held out for so long with a reformed Buzzcocks. But things tend to have their own momentum. It was so much a . conscious decision as an easy option to take." . , ; The voice of aging realism, a rationalisation of a past that has to become a present to revive flagging careers. Until an album is available laterthis year when the band signs a record deal, the Buzzcocks parade old hits: "Although we've plenty of ideas floating around, we haven'd had the chance of getting them togetherto do new material. And we had a minor setback as after the English tour, drummer John Maher decided he didn't want to carry on. It took a few phone calls but at the moment we're rehearsing with a new drummer, Mike Joyce, from the Smiths." ■ How long can you see the band continuing? "For as long as it's going to be fun, and at the moment that looks like forever"

GEORGE KAY