I have a passion sweet Lord... and it just won't go away
www.spacemen3.co.uk | main | words | articles | sounds interview circa Recurring
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I have a passion sweet Lord... and it just won't go away www.spacemen3.co.uk | main | words | articles | sounds interview circa Recurring |
Rock 'n' Roll Suicide
It’s
getting close to seven o’clock in a freezing London photography studio and the
crumpled figure of Pete ‘Sonic Boom’ Kember is shuffling into action. It’s
time to split – fast.
His
ex-partner Jason ‘Spaceman’ Pierce is due to arrive at any moment and, since
the key pair of the recently disintegrated Spacemen 3 haven’t communicated
beyond a grudging nod in the last two years, there’s an embarrassing scene to
avoid.
For
this is a cool rock ‘n’ roll tale of drugs, revolutions, sulks and a
smattering of top pop gear – “all the clichés”, as Jason points out later
on.
In
a classic career bust-up, Spacemen 3 have finally imploded at the very moment
when their ‘Recurring’ album (the bulk of which was originally conceived and
recorded almost two years ago) is finally about to hit the shops.
The
Spacemen 3 bust-up, which first went public with the two main movers’ solo
projects last year, carries onto ‘Recurring’ (where they take a side each),
through a series of whiney asides in the press and a war of nerves that this
round of interviews will hopefully bury for good.
For
the pair’s constant sniping threatens to bury the reason why we’re here in
the first place: ‘Recurring’ is a fine album. Laid back to the point of bed
sores, its hushed vocals, pulsing backbeats and warm walls of sound infuse an
introverted beauty with a keen r’n’r understanding.
The
two sides run on a similar vibe, although Jason’s is a tad more conventional,
riding on vocal atmospherics and a dreamtime feel, while Sonic’s is sparser,
pulling on a more disparate source of influences as shown on ‘Big City’, the
LPs killer cut as well as the current fab single.
It
seems that, despite their suicide, the Spacemen are set to haul in the moolah
and become rock legends.
But
is this enough for Sonic Boom, the lank-mopped guitar hero and slightly dazed
car crasher? No way, Sonic is mad. Barkin’ mad. He’d chew the ratty carpet
if he hadn’t had a few spliffs…
He
hates the former Spaceman manager, Gerald Palmer. He hates the sound of his
tracks on the album. He is not the biggest of chums with former Space cadet
Jason. And he hates his former record company – “Fire were really good when
we signed but when they got wind of us leaving they were bastards…”
Let’s
face it, behind that well brought up demeanour, there beats a heart of a miffed
artist.
The
solo Sonic Boom project is currently seeking a name after its mooted Sun handle
was dropped (because someone else had already got their mitts on that particular
name). Jason’s already in action with Spiritualized, while former bassist Pete
‘Bassman’ Baines and drummer Rosco have got their own Darkside outfit on the
circuit.
Formed
in the backwater town of Rugby in ’83, the past eight years has seen the
Spacemen honing their sound down to the brooding, controlled gear of
‘Recurring’ – a melting pot of MC5, Stooges, Velvets and late ‘60s
garage that’s been updated, remoulded and given a very contemporary feel.
It’s
a ‘90s currency best stated on their ‘Big City’ single, which was recorded
a good 18 months back and saw the Spacemen shake a mop towards the dance scam
without swallowing the whole thing.
The
Spacemen have come a long way from the pale faced, f**ked-up children who stared
blankly from their early record sleeves.
“I
was first buying records just after the punk thing – stuff like Blondie ot The
Cars,” remembers Sonic.
Sonic’s
parents swanky Northamptonshire pad, wit its servants, gardener and swanky
motors (“Not another interview about Pete’s house,” jokes Jason), has been
well documented and Kember has come across live some rock brat straight out of a
‘60s pulp movie, drifting towards pop because he wanted to.
“The
house I was in at school had practising facilities. I wanted to be in bands at
school and there was always a place to rehearse, to mess about. The first songs
I wrote were at school – ‘OD Catastrophe’ and one chord drones like
that.”
Drifting
towards Rugby Art College “to see if I could find any musicians to work
with”, Sonic bumped into Jason, a sunken cheeked, shaggy mop from “the other
side of town”, who was also biding his time at college and so the Spacemen
began.
Born
on the same day in November 1965, the piss thin pair hit it off immediately.
They traded vinyl, with Jason turning Sonic onto the Stooges (he got into them
because of the fab sleeve shot of Ig on ’Raw Power’ which, for him,
personified rock ‘n’ roll) in return for a Cramps fix.
“The
first Spacemen gig was Christmas 1982, it was a lot more Crampsy influenced
then,” remembers Sonic. “I made a decision at this point to drop the Crampsy
stuff as there was a lot of people doing very bad Cramps impersonations at the
time.”
Their
earliest recordings eventually leaked out on the other side of the Atlantic.
“We
did some demos at the end of ’85, which ended up coming out on the ‘Taking
Drugs’ bootleg put out by (cool US ‘zine) Forced Exposure.”
The
project was masterminded by Exposure editor, Byron Coley, long term
Spacefreak, who once claimed that he wouldn’t piss on any other UK band.
So
was this the point that you got into your well documented drug adventure, Sonic?
“Yeah,
I got my first joint when I was about 13. To be fair to the person who gave it
to me, he was only doing it because he thought it would be quite funny to see a
13-year-old kid stoned… Erm, I smoked dope for a bit, got into speed… then I
went to Amsterdam and got into coke and acid over there.”
What
about smack?
“That
was about ’84. I was just trying out any drugs.”
Are
you ‘clean’ these days?
“I
don’t do speed much anymore. I’m partial to a bit of coke now and then. A
bit of smack. I like my dope. Maybe a good trip three or four times a year…
perhaps an E now and then.”
Do
you use drugs as some kind of crutch?
“No
way – not in the way that people use alcohol. To use heroin as a crutch takes
a hell of a lot of time, effort and money. Alcohol s far more dramatic and
dangerous than heroin.”
Sonic
has always been brutally honest about his chemicrazy ingestions. At one point he
believed in a drugs revolution, but he always felt closer to the Mondays than
the core acid house scene that he once dismissed as hype. It’s all gone quiet
out there, man.
Yeah,
but that’s because people have realised that if you make a lot of noise about
it parties get busted. You got to be careful,” he explains, as a man who’s
been busted three times himself.
Jason
has a markedly different attitude towards all that kind of talk.
“The
only thing that really worries me is that it comes over as a boast. I can’t
hold with that.”
Having
spent the early ‘80s working their sound into shape “gigging every three
months”, Spacemen 3 eventually picked up a deal on Glass Records – a
permanently struggling indie run by Dave Barker, a man renowned for cool guitar
taste.
“The
deal came through the Jazz Butcher. He saw us playing the Black Lion in
Northampton and sort of championed our cause. He didn’t really want to give
Glass a tape, because he was having problems with them, but the tape got played
on a tour bus and Dave heard it and got in touch,” remembers Sonic, a man
already at war with the music business.
Glass
put out the first three Spacemen singles ‘Walking With Jesus’,
‘Transparent Radiation’ and ‘Take Me To The Other Side’ and the first
two albums, ‘86’s ‘Sound Of Confusion’ and ‘87’s ‘The Perfect
Prescription’ – two mewling guitar exercises that still exhibited that cool,
laconic, hands-on-the-reins approach that gives the Spacemen music its power and
beauty.
Live,
they were famous for their sat-on-the-stool axe technique and long slow songs in
the era of a frantic, jarring missives. The Spacemen subsequently switched
labels – leaving Glass for the better organised Fire, as Dave Barker
remembers: “Sonic was very much the leader at the time. He was always doing
the ringing up, but he does tend to rub people up the wrong way…”
On
Fire, Spacemen made their first real break from playing to a motley bunch of
pudding bowls stuck to beer stained club carpets, by releasing ‘Revolution’.
They oozed danger with worn out MC5 gear, Suicide, the Velvets and the usual
freaks and stalked the far out edge of the rockin’ universe.
But
it was at this point of early triumph that the cracks began to appear. The first
casualty was the songwriting credits, previously split between Kember/Pierce,
Sonic had them credited apart. It was obviously a toucht situation.
“Jason
would claim that he was playing on songs that he was only putting guitar on. I
mean, I wrote ‘Suicide’, but to get that on the album and get the credits
right for other tracks I compromised and let them put both names on.”
Problem
number two, according to Sonic, was hooking up with Gerald Palmer, a local biz
man who took over as the Spacemen’s manager.
“We
trusted him at first,” spits Sonic. “We both sacked him ages ago, but he’s
wheedled his way back in with Jason, and he’s trying to control the whole
situation through Jason.
“I
was the only member of the band that stood up to him.”
It’s
a trad problem. Sonic comes over as a control freak, but maybe being
“difficult to work with” is another way of describing a musician who knows
exactly what he wants and is not scared to tread on a few toes to bulldoze his
idea through to completion.
“Pete’s
very single-minded and that can cause problems,” says Dave Bedford of Fire
records. “But the main problem with the Spacemen was the general lack of
communication between all the interested parties.”
Sonic,
people say that you are unmanageable!
“I
am unmanageable, because I don’t toe their line,” he spits.
Mind
you with Alan McGee, who has a similar no-bullshit style, as his current
manager, perhaps Sonic has sorted himself out. Their relationship actually goes
back a few years to when Creation attempted to grab the Spacemen, but Fire
managed to cement the deal (with the promise of a CD single).
Although
Jason is more introverted than Pete, he is no pussycat.
“Yeah,
both Pete and myself don’t take much musical advice. We’re pretty much set
on the ideas in our heads. Some people can’t handle that. We used to let each
other work on each other’s pieces, but later on we both knew what each other
wanted.”
The
album that followed in 1989, ‘Playing With Fire’, was the blow-out point as
Jason and Sonic gradually withdrew into separate camps. Rumours of bone
clattering brawls in the Fire offices abound.
“I
stopped going round to his house and he never came round to mine either,” says
Pete of Jason. “He was never really bothered with the business side, he would
like only come in at the end of a deal and throw a spanner in the works. I
wasn’t prepared to do all the work and just get spanners, so I stopped
speaking to him so he could just see how much work I was doing.”
The
final bust-up eventually came with last year’s solo projects. First off the
mark was Sonic with his fab ‘Angel’ single and the ‘Spectrum’ album.
“I
mean they knew about it – Jason even played on a couple of the tracks. There
was resentment that I was doing a solo album.”
What
do you think of Sonic’s album, Jason?
“It
sounds unfinished, unresolved. It sounds like he really lost heart – I mean,
he has got some really good tracks on it. I don’t really see any problem
anyway, if you buy Pete’s album and you buy my mine you’ve got a Spacemen 3
album anyhow, by combining the two, you know.”
Pete
seemed miffed that the remaining Spacemen, bassist Will and drummer John, who
had both been his recruits, defected to Jason’s camp in Spiritualized. On
paper, Spiritualized looked like the Spacemen reincarnate, even going as far as
plastering their debt single – a neat cover of the Troggs’ ‘Anyway That
You Want Mw’ – with ex-Spacemen 3 stickers.
Spiritualized
are currently in the studio working on an album which is due out in April. For
Jason, Spiritualized was a space to breath after the suffocation and the
nastiness of the last 18 months of Spacemen.
“I
just wanted to get back on the road again and I also had songs that were not
really for the ‘Recurring’ album. I mean, if you don’t get on too well
there’s no point in doing the band. It would be like cheating to treat the
Spacemen 3 as a marketable commodity. You could get passionate about the music
but, if there’s a communication break down between the members, there’s no
point in slogging through that.” reasons Jason.
Previously
overshadowed by the far more media-friendly Sonic Boom in the press, Jason has
only recently emerged onto the interview scene. What did you think of all the
drugs and revolution talk, Jason?
“Does
anyone read it? Does anyone really care? Pete always enjoyed doing the press,
but I’m doing the interviews now as well because Pete can’t speak for the
band anymore. But I don’t want to match him bitch for bitch, like trying to
shout louder,” he virtually whispers in one of those softly spoken mutters
that are not pitched for yer tape recorder.
So
‘Recurring’ has finally slipped out from behind a black cloud of bitterness,
as the band collapses into two camps. There will be no more Spacemen 3.
Jason
is glad to get out and pursue his Spiritualized axis, and Sonic is bitter but
excited about his new as yet formally untitled project, who are still going out
as Sonic Boom. The band includes Pale Saints’ producer Richard Formby, bass
player Mike Stout (who played with The Wedding Present and once managed the
Bachelor Pad) and the drummer from Beautiful Happiness.
So,
Jason, what do you say when you bump into Sonic down at Woolworths in Rugby?
Jason
smiles: “I don’t think Pete’s the sort of guy who goes into Woolworths.
Huh! Huh!”
The
trip is over.
[Reproduced
without permission from Sounds, 9/12/1991.]