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The genius of Barry Adamson: Exclusive interview and DM premiere of ‘Sounds From The Big House’ Live
07.24.2019
07:22 am
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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.
 
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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.
 

DM Premiere: Barry Adamson - ‘Sounds From The Big House’ from the forthcoming album ‘Live At The Union Chapel.’
 
More from Barry Adamson and two more tracks, after the jump…
 

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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07.24.2019
07:22 am
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Magic, Murder and the Weather: The icy cold New Wave art rock of Howard Devoto and Magazine
11.18.2016
04:53 pm
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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.
 

“The Light Pours Out of Me”
 
Much more Magazine after the jump…

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Posted by Richard Metzger
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11.18.2016
04:53 pm
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Post-punk’s Nabokov: Howard Devoto and Magazine, live from Berlin, 1980
12.19.2012
06:17 pm
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“Look what fear’s done to my body!”

This 1980 Rockpalast concert from Magazine must’ve been shown again recently on German television. I snagged a high quality copy of this just last week from a torrent tracker and now it’s on YouTube, I see, with not that many views, either.

The Magazine we see here includes Barry Adamson on bass, Dave Formula on keyboards, drummer John Doyle and of course bandleader/frontman Howard Devoto, but original guitarist John McGeoch, whose strikingly original guitar lines were such a major part of the band’s sound, had by then departed to join Siouxsie and the Banshees. He was replaced for Magazine’s 1980 world tour by Robin Simon of Ultravox, who is on deck here and no slouch on the guitar himself.

This is a pretty amazing concert—these guys were tight—and must be the most substantial record of Magazine performing live during their classic era. If you love Magazine like I love Magazine, then this hour long concert is going to make you very, very happy. Watching the great Howard Devoto captured in his youthful prime here singing his darkly literate songs of icy alienation, violence and non-conformity is a revelation.
 

 
Via La Cumbuca

Posted by Richard Metzger
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12.19.2012
06:17 pm
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Punk 1976-78: The Best of Tony Wilson’s ‘So It Goes’

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I miss Tony Wilson. I miss the idea of Tony Wilson. Someone who had an enquiring mind and was full of intelligent enthusiasms, like Tony Wilson. And who also didn’t mind making a prat of himself when he got things wrong. Or, even right.

I met him in 2005 for a TV interview. He arrived on a summer’s day at a small studio in West London. He wore a linen suit, sandals, carried a briefcase, and his toenails were painted a rich plum color - his wife had painted them the night before, he said.

Wilson was clever, inspired and passionate about music. He talked about his latest signing, a rap band, and his plans for In the City music festival before we moved onto the Q&A in front of a camera. He could talk for England, but he was always interested in what other people were doing, what they thought, and was always always encouraging others to be their best. That’s what I miss.

You get more than an idea of that Tony Wilson in this compilation of the best of his regional tea-time TV series So It Goes. Wilson (along with Janet Street-Porter) championed Punk Rock on TV, and here he picks a Premier Division of talent:

Sex Pistols, Elvis Costello, Buzzcocks, John Cooper Clarke, Iggy Pop, Wreckless Eric, Ian Dury, Penetration, Blondie, Fall, Jam, Jordan, Devo, Tom Robinson Band, Johnny Thunder, Elvis Costello, XTC, Jonathan Richman, Nick Lowe, Siouxie & the Banshees, Cherry Vanilla & Magazine….. The tape fails there!

The uploader ConcreteBarge has left in the adverts “for historical reference” that include - “TSB, Once, Cluster, Coke is it, Roger Daltery in American Express, Ulay, Swan, Our Price, Gastrils, Cluster & Prestige”.

So, let’s get in the time machine and travel back for an hour of TV fun.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

The Best of ‘So It Goes’: Clash, Sex Pistols, Iggy The Fall, Joy Division and more


 
With thanks to Daniel Ceci
 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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08.28.2012
04:37 pm
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