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.
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…