Tales of the underrated

First published in Bigwig, August 1996

It sounds like the late-70s theme to Jim’ll Fix It. It was recorded by a band on the edge of a nervous breakdown, so short of things to do at night that they’d ride at 70mph on the tops of cars down country lanes. And it features a long-forgotten pub rocker, more famous for being a role model for Spinal Tap’s Derek Smalls, on pedal steel. Altogether then, an unlikely recipe for a summer hit, but We Love You by Menswear is destined to be one all the same.

Introductions first. We’ve got Johnny (vocals, cheekbones) and Porl (keyboards, the Pies) with us this morning, in George And Niki’s Continental Diner, Camden¹. Both are sufficiently well acquainted with the establishment to get a pint of lager delivered to the table before their fry-ups, and relate with glee the proprietor’s claims that Morrissey once popped in for a burger (categorically Not True, I’m afraid). The aforementioned pub rocker is Chris ’Swear’s old guitar tutor, once a member of the (in)famous Kursaal Flyers. So Johnny, for the kids’ sake, who the hell were they, then?

“They were Southend’s unsung heroes, really,” he deadpans. “It’s said that they reckon the Spinal Tap thing was based on them, on their documentary. They were big adversaries of Dr Feelgood, with Dr Feelgood coming from nearby Canvey Island, but they had less success all told². Basically Simon [’Swear guitarist] had the idea to have a bit of pedal steel in the break and Chris knew someone who could play it, because it was the guy who taught him how to play guitar. And he was very happy to do it. Very, very happy. He did it very quickly as well … ”

“Very professional,” nods Porl. Of course, getting people in to play the difficult bits on their records is one of the reasons why Menswear will always be regarded as a bunch of chancers by some critics and all musicians, but this doesn’t bother them in the slightest — they are.

‘People might think that we’re contrived but the only people that created us were ourselves. British people hate people with tself-belief, which is ridiculous’

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Johnny relates that the single was written in a hotel room in the south of France. When asked if he ever thought that he would casually drop locations like that into conversation, when the band was getting their act together in bedrooms and garages, he shakes his head, “Well we never did get our songs together in bedrooms did we? We went straight to the studio.”

Paradoxically though, Menswear are a hard working band. Honest. “Well that’s the bit that’s always left out of interviews isn’t it?” Johnny bites back. “We do work incredibly hard. People might think that we’re contrived but the only people that created us were ourselves. British people hate people with that kind of self-belief, which is ridiculous, I think. Where would Richard Branson be if he’d listened to such advice? He’d be doing a paper round. As it is, he owns an island.”

Precocious is the word most often used to describe Menswear’s, erm, art. With his catty humour, persistent cackling and wide stare, I can’t be the first to have Johnny Dean pigeonholed as a sort of Johnny Rotten Jr. However, despite their considerable success (100,000 albums and an ‘I Am Hooch’ jingle in Japan), Johnny also shares the ‘been there, done that’ ennui of the much-missed Richey Manic. Our first glimpse of him this morning was reaching for the spacehopper underneath his press officer’s desk (don’t ask) but after just a minute’s spirited bouncing through the office with Porl, he glumly concluded: “They’re not as good as they used to be. They’ve changed face on them.”³

He’s even glib about the madness that took the band to breaking point on their last tour. There was their Lord of the Flies evening in Spain, which involved an unnamed band member performing rituals with a gin bottle … “Let’s just say that where the gin bottle went was very dark, very skinny and plays guitar …’

And then came the drink, the drugs and the visit from John Lennon. “It was fine, gig-wise,” he sighs. “But It went very, very, very wrong, a bit … pear shaped. When you’re not gigging, you feel like you still should be, and all that energy’s still there, so you end up biting your hands off, or drinking loads, or taking various substances. But I don’t know anybody who does any different and anyone who tells you that they do is lying.”

Rather unsympathetically (as the fry-ups have just arrived), I ask Johnny how bad it got. “Well, I was contacted by John Lennon one evening. It was a bit odd, really, I sort of lost my head a little. There was no actual hallucinogenic drugs involved if that’s what you’re thinking. Next thing I knew, I was being contacted by John Lennon … and he was testing me. I’ve actually spoken to a therapist about this and she said it’s very common when people hit a low or a breakdown that they start to hear things. So I feel quite fortunate to have had Mr Lennon guiding me back to reality. It was almost like a revelation, quite godly. But it was also something which I look back on now and think was quite silly. I was asked therapist whether John Lennon was important to me and I said, ‘Not really, I’ve always preferred Paul McCartney.’”

“But that kind of thing happens all the time when you’re on tour,” adds Porl helpfully. “We don’t need any prompting to take the piss, so that incident was a real beano for us.”

“I don’t want to deny anything, but I’m not saying that what I do is clever, either,” reflects Johnny. “It’s not, because I’ve ended up seeing a therapist. It’s just something I do, it’s me.”⁴

As they bicker merrily through another round, it becomes clear that a film crew really should follow this lot around on tour one day. Caught on celluloid, magic moments like Porl taking a wander from his keyboards and being bundled into the crowd by security (who thought he was a stage invader) could make the ’Swear immortal, like the Flyers and the Tap. For watching Menswear run amok, without ever bothering to crawl, has been one of the most engaging pop spectacles of the last two years. And they’re showing no signs of growing up just yet.

“We’re using our talent to the best of our abilities and having as much fun as we possibly can. It’s just sometimes it isn’t fun at all.”

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Footnotes

1. A none-more-Britpop greasy spoon, probably due to its proximity to Food Records and Savidge & Best PR. The proprietor seemed dimly aware of the amount of pop stars frequenting his caff, but I think we can take his claim that Morrissey enjoyed the burgers with not just a pinch of salt, but some pepper and a dollop of ketchup from one of those squeezy tomatoes. The interview later continued across the road at the Spread Eagle, a none-more-Britpop old man’s pub. Although, to be honest, the most Britpop thing I ever saw at the Spread Eagle was Lloyd Cole enjoying a pint of bitter.
2. I actually knew all this because I was a devotee of Mark Kidel’s Kursaal Flyers documentary So You Wanna Be a Rock’n’Roll Star. Later, when working at Time Out, I got the chance to interview Kidel and the Flyers’ Will Birch about it.
3. To be honest, I can’t imagine Richey Manic on a spacehopper. Maybe someone should have bought him one.
4. I like this passage. It may be the only documented attempt by a pop writer to try to get to the heart of the “real” Menswear.