Multihyphenate musician-soundtrack composer-photographer-filmmaker (and former Bad Seed and member of Magazine) Barry Adamson has now added “memoirist” to that list.
Certainly no moss is growing under the feet of the Moss Side, Manchester-born Adamson. His incredibly evocative, highly detailed and sometimes frankly shocking autobiography, Up Above the City, Down Beneath the Stars was recently published by Omnibus Press, he’s got a new digital EP, Steal Away, just out and has completed a soundtrack for an upcoming documentary about London’s legendary arthouse cinema, the Scala Cinema.
Up Above the City, Down Beneath the Stars is an extremely well-written book, one of the best things I’ve read in ages. And I would be remiss in my duties here not to inform the reader that Adamson is either playing on, or created no fewer than six albums that would easily be in my top fifty: The first three Magazine albums, the first two Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds albums, and his own soundtrack for an imaginary film, Moss Side Story. The man is a living legend.
I asked Barry Adamson a few questions via email.
First, your memory! How are you able to recall such vivid details about your life? It’s extraordinary!
Thanks! Some things are best forgotten, as the saying goes but throughout most of my life I’ve collected snapshots and angles on my own and the lives of others and stored them, committed them to memory like an archive and I never knew why but perhaps now I do. I thought everybody did this and I think to some extent they do. The amount of people I’d say I was writing a memoir to and then suddenly, they would find things stored away in there own archive. There’s also the noir style which helped me put them into a particular context as well.
There’s a very cinematic quality to so many of the anecdotes recounted in the book. Will you be developing this material further, say, writing a script?
I’ve not thought about that but sometimes, borrowing from Dennis Potter, the scenes in the book become ‘film-like’ to almost thrust the sense of that cinematic quality. I needed (in the same way I do with music) to be able to clearly visualise each sentence, so maybe that’s a factor in how the book’s overall filmic structure formed. It was a gamble to try and write it that way but one I think that paid off.
As far as autobiographies go, this one is a very, very nakedly revealing memoir indeed. I don’t get the sense that you’ve held much of anything back. What made you decide to do this?
I put myself as the central character in my life and decided that if it were a film or perhaps a novel, then you would see all the sides of this character; their challenges, struggles, conflict (on many levels) and light and dark and crap decision making and sitting with him throughout the story, so, difficult as it was at times and I make no bones about it, it really was, I knew that holding back would weaken ‘the story’ and that the filmic arc that I wanted to create around those first thirty years of my life could flatten out to a possible blandness which I didn’t want.
You’ve done a soundtrack to a documentary about London’s legendary repertoire moviehouse, the Scala. I’ve been there a few times myself. One time I saw Warhol’s Chelsea Girls and I was the only one in the cinema when it started, but by the time it was over several homeless people had camped out around the room. It seemed like a fairly sleazy place, did it widely have that reputation?
Well, for me, it was a place of refuge where you were fed this… art, art that you didn’t come across anywhere else. Sleazy. Yes. Glamorous. In it’s own way, yes. The all-nighters were events like no others and the fact that those films imprinted themselves so ferociously into my brain is to me, a sign that what was happening there was something special. Interesting that you remember so clearly what film you saw and the homeless scenario. I was possibly one of them!
Below, the video for “The Climber,” the lead track from the new Steal Away EP
Barry Adamson is a musician, composer, writer, photographer and filmmaker. With those credentials, many people (journalists, critics, what-have-you) often describe Adamson as a “polymath.” Fair enough, but it’s not the full dollar. Coz I think Adamson is a fucking genius. And you can print that on a t-shirt and wear it with pride:
BARRY ADAMSON IS A FUCKING GENIUS
‘cause it’s true.
Over the past forty years, Adamson has produced some of the most startlingly original, uniquely brilliant, and utterly diverse music ever put to disc. His back catalog ranges from his time as bass player and co-writer with Howard Devoto’s hugely influential post-punk band Magazine, moving on through Visage, to joining the tail end of the Birthday Party before becoming one of the original key members of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Quitting the Bad Seeds after their first four studio albums, Adamson delivered his debut solo album Moss Side Story in 1989—a dark and epic “filmic suite” to an as-yet unmade movie, which was described at the time by the NME as “one of the best soundtracks ever, the fact that it has no accompanying movie is a trifling irrelevance.” The album was a calling card announcing Adamson’s distinctive and undeniable talent. He followed this up with another slice of compelling urban-noir brilliance his Mercury Prize-nominated album Soul Murder in 1992.
In 1996 came Oedipus Schmoedipus—one of those albums you must hear before you die—in which Adamson collaborated with Jarvis Cocker (“Set the Controls for the Heart of the Pelvis”), Billy MacKenzie (“Achieved in the Valley of Dolls”) and old pal Nick Cave (“The Sweetest Embrace”). Apart from these gems, there was also the thrilling noirish sounds of “It’s Business as Usual,” “Something Wicked This Way Comes,” “The Big Bamboozle,” and a hat tip to Miles Davis with “Miles.” This led to As Above, So Below in 1998—a masterpiece of jazz or “rock-jazz noir” which offered “a bold, satisfying vision from an artist who shows no fear in expressing the seedier sides of life.”
By the turn of the century, Adamson was producing albums of compelling beauty, originality, and genuine thrills with music as diverse as jazz, funk, soul, rock, lounge and movie soundscapes that unlocked ports of entry to unacknowledged sensations. King of Nothing Hill (2002), the masterwork Stranger on the Sofa (2006), with the ecstatic and rousing single “The Long Way Back Again,” the near perfect “tour-de-force” Back To The Cat (2008), the triumphantly brilliant I Will Set You Free (2012), and the astonishingly great Know Where to Run (2016) which saw Adamson moving in new and untraveled directions.
Adamson has also contributed to the soundtracks of movies by Derek Jarman (The Last of England), Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers and David Lynch’s Lost Highway. In fact Lynch commissioned Adamson after spending ten hours non-stop listening to his albums. He then had him flown out to his studio to work on the film.
And let’s not forget his career as a writer of London noir fiction, his work as film director, producer, and screenwriter and his acclaimed photography which has been published in books and exhibited across the world.
Last year to celebrate his forty years in music, Adamson released a kinda greatest hits Memento Mori which to be frank every home should own a copy of this album. Bringing this altogether, Adamson recorded a concert at the Union Chapel, London, which featured songs from across his whole career including “Split,” (Soul Murder) “Jazz Devil” (As Above So Below), “Sounds From The Big House” (Moss Side Story), “I Got Clothes” (Love Sick Dick), ‘The Hummingbird’ (Memento Mori) and the Magazine classic “The Light Pours Out Of Me.” Last week, I spoke with Adamson over the phone about his new album release, his influences, his early life and career.
Tell me about your new live album.
Barry Adamson: It was recorded at the Union Chapel, Islington, London, I was celebrating a forty year period with an album that had come out Memento Mori and it was decided to record one of the showcases around that record just to make a night of it really.
It’s a bit of closure on the last forty years. Just to have something that was a kind of memento of the whole thing—the forty years and the live experience that had not been actually recorded to date. It’s a first on that level.
It’s also for the people that were there that night and the people that weren’t there that night. For people to hear how this transposes in a live situation. I actually think the record’s really great. There’s some great things going on and it covers such a width and depth of the whole sort of things I’ve been involved in.
You were brought up in Moss Side, Manchester, which was at one point called ‘Gunchester’ because the level of deprivation, crime and violence. What was your childhood like and how did it impact on your first album Moss Side Story?
BA: It was very much a black and white world. I can remember observing everything around me—perhaps that was sort of my personality that was burgeoning at the time—but that would have its own kind of cinematic playfulness to my eye and a kind of mystery element to it as well. I found Moss Side bleak, post-industrial, and very much in a black and white way. But at the same time it was kind of vibrant and thrilling.
By the time I came to do solo work I went back to Moss Side and all the pieces seemed to fit together of something that I had observed but couldn’t articulate in my early years. Then I was able to do something with an album by just looking out the window and opening that window and hearing what was there projected from within myself. I think I was a little bit lost at the time.
What do you mean by ‘lost’?
BA: You know those times when you’ve lost something unique? When you have to come back to yourself and find the things about you that make you you and keep yourself in that way.
I was away a lot working with the Bad Seeds in Berlin. My parents were still in Manchester so I would come back and see them. On the trips back I started to make these cassettes of different ideas and little melodies and sounds. It was almost like time-off, almost like being in the studio and there was time to put something together and make a note of it. It was becoming a thing by itself really.
When I did get back, I took a big breath out. That’s when I decided to move into something that was more about myself. I stumbled upon this idea of a soundtrack that wasn’t necessarily to a movie but just a soundtrack to whatever was going on inside and outside and around me.
I think everybody in their own way goes through a dark night of the soul and I wanted to try and bring it to an end. I think things went a little darker for a while. With hindsight I knew that I was embroiled in a very dark night of the soul and I did also have a kind of resilience that took me back to feeding myself with my own energy and my own art and that’s what I think became a place where I could start the work I was supposed to start anyway. I think looking back over the years it was the right thing to do.
That’s how [Moss Side Story] came about.
Your music is so rich and diverse ranging from the filmic to the funky, rock to jazz, and everything in between, how do you go about composing, coming up with the ideas for your music?
BA: It works in really different ways. It’s like you can be sat around and you can see melodies floating by and your job is to catch them with a butterfly net. You know the ones that have got your name on it because you can recognize them and they’re already sort of formed. Sometimes you sit down and you go “Right, I’m gonna write something today.”
I had a period of about five years after Moss Side Story where I was trying to discipline myself by going into the studio every day and writing something no matter what it was, this little squiggle of notes, just to get into the practice of receiving ideas, working through ideas and becoming an artist. Now I’m very used to the idea it can come at any time and you better write it down, you better make a note of it. I keep notebooks and things to record on all the time and I sit down daily to chisel away like a sculptor until you see a bit of a hand or bit of a knee or a leg. Then you start working away.
Do you find you compose more than you record?
BA: For every album you write two albums. I always do that.
I feel like I have to see every idea out even if I get an inkling it’s not going to work I have to see it out. And really strange things happen, you might have a part that melds itself to something else. I had this happen this week. I put down an idea for something then returned with another idea the following day. Then I played the two ideas and saw they were the same idea as a progression which I didn’t think of before. It’s a bit like sitting there and saying that’s got to go and that’s got to go. The stuff that stays with you, the stuff that taps you on the shoulder you stick with because you know there is something in it and you know you can’t throw it away.
I’m very quick these days, for once I really do know something is out—it’s for the bin, it’s over.
“The blues is the blues and if the heart aches then that’s the sound that will come out whether you are playing guitar, a synth, a piano or playing futuristic guitar solos on your iPhone!”—Barry Adamson.
Multi-instrumentalist composer/filmmaker Barry Adamson first gained attention for his rubbery, metronomic and very precise bass guitar work in Magazine and then later in Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. His first solo release, 1989’s moody, astonishing Moss Side Story, was an original soundtrack for a film noir (“In a black and white world, murder brings a touch of colour…”) that didn’t exist and shrewdly announced his intention to compose music for cinema. He’s done that—for the likes of Derek Jarman, David Lynch and Oliver Stone—as well as prolifically releasing his own idiosyncratic, and relentlessly changing music over the years. A chameleonic master of sonics, Adamson is conversational in nearly any musical style, moving effortlessly from covering the Alfred Hitchcock Presents music to a ska version of the “James Bond Theme” to brooding and pulsating electronic beats.
He’s also getting into directing films himself and got behind (and in front) of the camera for his latest video “They Walk Among Us,” which comes from Adamson’s upcoming six-track EP Love Sick Dick out on April 14th. You can get it signed from his online store.
Adamson says of the song and video:
“‘They Walk Among Us’ explores the conviction of who or indeed what lies beneath the mask we present. The fantasy, the illusion and all too often foreboding reality.”
For his darkly literate songs of icy alienation, violence and psychological nonconformity, Howard Devoto has been called rock’s answer to Vladimir Nabokov. Devoto was all of 18 when he split off from Buzzcocks, the laddish punk band he’d formed in 1976 with his fellow Bolton Institute of Technology student, singer/guitarist Pete Shelley. After just one EP and a handful of live shows (including the 2-day Punk Rock Festival at London’s 100 Club which also included Sex Pistols, Subway Sect, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Clash, The Vibrators, The Damned and the French group Stinky Toys) Devoto felt constricted by what he perceived as the cliches of punk’s predictable three-chord thrash. “What was once unhealthily fresh is now a clean old hat” he said at the time.
Devoto immediately went about forming Magazine, a musically complex group who were critical darlings, but whose records seldom charted very high on the pop charts. Magazine‘s unique art rock sound—heavily-influenced by David Bowie’s Low album—was a fortuitous combination of some truly incredible one-of-a-kind young talents: Devoto’s twitchy, half-sung, half-sneered vocals were matched perfectly by the multi-layered keyboards of Dave Formula; the singular guitar sound of the late, great John McGeoch and a phenomenal rhythm section consisting of Barry Adamson on bass and John Doyle on drums. McGeoch, who later played with Siouxsie and the Banshees and Public Image Ltd., has long been considered one of the greatest guitarists of the post-punk era, using flangers, a chorus effect and a percussive arpeggio technique to achieve his influential new sounds. Nothing, and I do mean nothing else sounded like Magazine did when their remarkable first album, Real Life, was released in 1978.
For such a young man, the prematurely-balding Devoto’s deeply cynical lyrics betrayed an intense and often-self loathing inner life. As a poet he was particularly adept at portraying insanity, social alienation and toxic anxiety (“Look what fear’s done to my body!” being one of his more memorable lines.) The music was simultaneously icy cold (Formula’s department), jagged and angular (McGeoch’s) and rocked like hell (credit due there to Adamson and Doyle). Truly Magazine were one of the most instrumentally formidable bands of their day and heroes to the sort of import record-buying rock snob smartypants who loved the Psychedelic Furs, Gang of Four and early Ultravox. Their profile in America was greatly enhanced by their appearance (singing “Model Worker”) in Urgh! a Music War and the release of their instantly classic sophomore effort Secondhand Daylight.
McGeoch quit the group in 1980 after the recording of Magazine’s third album The Correct Use of Soap frustrated with the low income and what he perceived as Devoto not giving his best efforts during an American tour. They recorded one final album without him, 1981’s unremarkable (especially when considering the three stone classics that had come before it) Magic, Murder and the Weather before Devoto would disband the group, finding no suitable guitarist to replace a genius like McGeoch.
After a solo album, 1983’s A Jerky Version of the Dream (if you are of a certain vintage you will no doubt recall the “Rainy Season” video, which at one point was on heavy rotation on MTV) and two albums as Luxuria, the enigmatic Devoto left the music industry entirely and became a photo archivist. A 2002 collaboration with Pete Shelley as ShelleyDevoto saw him get the music bug again, but it wasn’t till 2009 that Magazine reformed, first for a short series of live dates and then the critically-acclaimed No Thyself album in 2009. It’s unclear what the status of Magazine is today, although they did release a live EP (recorded in 2009) for Record Store Day on April 16, 2016.
Barry Adamson is one very hep cat who has been a significant player in two pivotal bands of the 80s, Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds and Magazine, and, as a solo artist, he’s produced an impressive body of work. Over the course of nine albums, Adamson has created jazzy, edgy, erotic mood pieces that are evocative of the shadow world of film noir. It’s no wonder that David Lynch hired him to do soundtrack work on Lost Highway. Adamson’s dark grooves are the things that fever dreams are made of. His music and visual sense are switchblade sharp and sexy as hell.
In these clips, two of which, The Man With The Golden Arm and Moss Side Story, are quite rare, we are invited into the seductive web of the Jazz Devil, a place where a kiss can be deadly and love is just another word for ‘fuck you.’
As the Jazz Devil
Full and greedy
I’m the Jazz Devil
Libido needy
I’m the Jazz Devil
Flymeat in the mix
Where you can call me Agent Double O 666
