THE MISSION -
KEEPING THE FAITH
Articulo & interview de Laurie Russo publicado en Propaganda magazine, 1988
Exam question number I -- Choose the correct statement from the following choices: A.) The Mission have sold out. B.) The Mission are just the Sisters of Mercy part 2, really. C.) The Mission are mindless gothic monstrosities. D.) Absolutely, positively none of the above.
If you choose A, B, or C, you've most definitely got a lot to learn. Read on to receive your education. Those of you who choose D, good for you. Go to the head of the class!
Unlike the traditional gothic death merchants of pop music The Mission are all too often taken for, they actually are a jolly happy lot. And why not, what with a loyal following that's as well known as the band, a hit album (God's Own Medicine), five consecutive hit singles and a six week North American tour under their belts, The Mission certainly have a lot to smile about, especially when you consider their relatively short existence·
And so to that well traveled road, back to the roots of The Mission. Comprising singer/guitarist Wayne Hussey (ex Sisters of Mercy), bassist Craig Adams (also an ex-Sister), guitarist Simon Hinkler (ex-Artery), and drummer Mick Brown (ex-Red Lorry Yellow Lorry), the band had a short career as the Sisterhood in the early months of 1986. Ex Sister Andrew Etdritch then won a legal battle to use that name for his own band. Our heroes changed their name to The Mission and in May 1986 released their first single "Serpent's Kiss" on the independent Chapter 22 label· (That single has so far spent an astonishing one and a half consecutive years in the indie charts and was the top selling indie single of 1986.) After a double A-sided second chart hit "Garden of Delight/Like a Hurricane," The Mission signed a major deal with Polygram. Three consecutive Top 20 singles later and a scant year after their birth, here they are.
Phonogram press supremo Sian is in a bit of a state today. It's 1:00 p.m. and her boys still haven't arrived at the office. A phone call to the hotel reveals that they are sitting in the hotel lobby, very well behaved, waiting for their car which is unfortunately late. Another call to the car company is met with the question, "Was it a car or a bike you wanted?" Sian collapses in a fit of nervous, exhausted laughter.
"There's four of them! A BIKE??" 1:30 comes and there's actually only three of them. Craig is ill in bed, no doubt still recuperating from the now infamous end-of-tour party. Better late than never, The Mission arrive led by Wayne, resplendent as always in his purple Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, complete with matching purple fingernails. All this so early in the day? I glance over at Sian. She's positively radiant; her day will proceed as planned. I get the funny feeling that mine won't.
I'm teamed up with Simon and Mick (whose main concern at the moment seems to be whether or not my name is Irish) as Wayne is hauled off to do an interview with someone from Finland. But he promises to join us afterwards, an event I'm sure I could manage to escape. Or could I?
So, guys, now that you're with a major label, you've had a string of chart successes and you've been on Top of the Pops; in some quarters the cry is "SELLOUT!" How do you answer this charge? I'm offered the reply in stereo. "Idiots!" say Simon and Mick in unison. "There's this trendy idea that just because you're making money and you're successful, you've sold out," continues Mick. "It's stupid, really, because if we didn't make good records, we wouldn't be successful, and if we weren't successful, chances are these people wouldn't have heard of us anyway -- so what's the bloody point of what they're trying to say?" Simon joins in again. "Anyway, our real fans are happy for us, and they're glad we're doing well. What can we say to the other people except that we're happy with what we're doing. Our fans are happy with it, and we'll continue doing it."
While we're on the subject of fans, The Mission's faithful, known as the "Eskimos," are probably the most celebrated group of fans in Europe. Surprisingly small in number (actual Eskimos number only about twenty; the rest are known as Missionaries), they even have their own special "Eskimo" t shirts. Needless to say, they follow the band everywhere and can also be found at most gigs of sister band All About Eve. I ask what kind of relationship The Mission would like to have with their fans, Eskimos and Missionaries alike. Mick obliges. "Our fans are quite sweet. We get on really well with them. They know that we always show them respect so they do the same for us." "But," adds Simon, "there's always that elitist element -- not the Eskimos -- that feel no one else should 'enjoy us. Those aren't our real fans," he adds. "See, our fans are pretty important to us. If we treat them like rubbish, they'd never come back -- then where would we be? Like with our fan club, we read every single letter addressed to us personally, we really do."
And The Mission are as good as their word. Recently, Wayne attended a London performance of All About Eve and was set upon by adoring fans from the very moment he arrived. Not once did he turn down a request for an autograph, a kiss, or a few minutes of conversation. Every fan received his undivided and patient attention until the next one cut in. Mission fans are a very luck bunch indeed, especially when compared with how other bands treat their followers. I ask if the other band members resent Wayne being in the limelight. "No, not at all," offers Mick. "It's usually like that anyway; the lead singer gets the attention in most groups. It doesn't bother us at all, really." Simon laughs. "Yeah, it's the same way with the girls. There's a certain hierarchy, if you will, to being in a band. These girls strut backstage, boobs first, and go down the line. If the lead '; singer's not having any, they try the lead guitarist, then the ' bass player..." "Yeah, and the drummer's always last," sighs a wistful Mick, not without humor, and much to Simon's' amusement.
Actually, I've noticed that Simon is perpetually bright and smiling. Now aren't The Mission supposed to be all dark and dreary and gothic and stuff? At least that's what the trendy little crypt dwellers would like to believe. But tell us in your own words, Simon, are you really all that miserable? The smile turns to a laugh. "'No, not at all. Quite the opposite, in fact. We're actually very happy people!" Mick busies himself rolling a cigarette, then considers the question. "1 don't know where we got that image, really. We don't put that across, I don't think. We have a good time, and anyone who's ever seen us on or off stage should know that!"
Ain't that the truth. In their early days, The Mission's offstage reputation was such that they were denied an appearance on Britain's premier chart show Top of the Pops even after "Stay With Me" reached No. 11. The same applied to "Wasteland." but finally the BBC relented when "Severina" went Top 20 and The Mission enjoyed their heretofore finest professional moment. Oddly enough,"Severina"is one of the most played records on the jukebox of the Queen Vic, resident pub of the BBC's Eastenders, Britain's most popular TV show. Big time.
So what's next for The Mission? "Well, we're touring here, there, and everywhere for the next few months," answers Mick. Simon finishes. "We'll be doing some recording in the autumn, and there should be an album out in the new year"
Unfortunately, due to their late arrival, we have to end it there.,. "Nice boys," I think as we're walking through the maze of Phonogram corridors. Suddenly out of nowhere, we're cornered by you-know-who. Obviously, this interview isn't over yet!
"Oh, you're finished?" asks Mr. Hussey. "1 wanted to speak to you too." Inexplicably, Simon and Mick are spirited away by Sian, and I'm left alone with this person I've been slightly afraid to meet. Within minutes, I've learned a firm lesson about judging the proverbial book and we're chatting like old friends. He laughing!), suggests that I only live in Islington because it's Spandau Ballet's hometown. I tell him he wouldn't even raise an eyebrow in Islington, not with Zodiac Mindwarp walking around. He counters quickly "Oooh, I'll have to change that. I'll put on my best party frock!" He asks me what I think of The Joshua Tree, because he thinks it's brilliant. We mutually agree never to discuss the Cult -- EVER. We also agree on arrangements to continue the interview when there's more t me. He's altogether much more friendly and articulate than the flighty nut case I imagined. This is only one of the many illusions Wayne Hussey will shatter before we're through.
A few days later and Wayne's holding court magnificently at the Hammersmith Clarendon. Even though we are here to see All About Eve until they hit the stage he is the undisputed star of the nigh:, just by being there. "I love being the most famous person in the room," he giggles. "Everyone always keeps looking over to see what you're doing!" He obviously enjoys his role as a star, but what about a private life? "1 don't really have one," he admits. "Sometimes I forget what it's like to just sit there watching television. I'm very rarely alone." (No comment....) "Hey wait a minute. Contrary to popular opinion, I do not take a different young lady to bed every night. Or even every week for that matter. There's so many stories circulating about me that just aren't bloody true. But what can I do about it?"
At first glance and at first read, Wayne Hussey is an idiot. A party animal. Drunken, uncouth, a purple fruitcake, etc. You name it, they've said it. A very slim (don't ever call him "skinny") person, quite often in a dress and with the ever present bottle of Blue Nun clutched in his painted fingers, I suppose it is rather difficult to take him seriously at first. But the public side is far removed from the private side, and to use his own favorite description of himself, there's more to him than meets the eye.
"Why does everyone always say I'rn gothic?" he wonders as we peruse the lyrics of his newest song only written that day. "Why? Just because I use words like 'blood' and 'knife'? Alright then. I'm just soooo gothic!" Well maybe not necessarily "gothic," but you must admit, Wayne, that the majority of your songs are not exactly sunny and cheerful. "Severina" is downright scary. "But not all my songs are about death and misery. Take 'Love Me To Death,' right?" (Must we?) "That Song is a celebration. A celebration of life and love." (It's also obscene.) "It's not obscene! Why is it obscene?" (Oh come on, Wayne). He relents a bit. "It's very ambiguous. It treads the fine line between obscenity and beauty. You could take it either way." (No it's not, no it doesn't and no you couldn't. It's just plain obscene.) "Only you would take it that way," he laughs, trying to turn it around and make me the pervy one. A sly one, this small but perfectly formed pain in the arse -- but strangely endearing.
Wayne has on his turntable today a pre-release copy of All About Eve's new single "Our Summer." He's all smiles for a number of reasons. All About Eve are the band closest to The Mission, with singer Julianne being featured on the God's Own Medicine LP. And if that's not enough, "Our Summer" was produced by none other than Wayne and Simon. "They're such a brilliant band," enthuses Wayne. "Julianne has one of the best voices I've ever heard. She's lovely." And that she is. Actually beaming as the record plays on, I almost expect him to start handing out cigars. I steal off quietly to make a cup of tea during the haunting B-side "Lady Moonlight." Another Pleasant Valley Sunday...
It's been a lousy Sunday for Wayne Hussey. His beloved Liverpool have lost the only Cup competition they were left in and he's devastated. After a decent period of mourning (his) and gloating (mine), talk turns to the upcoming American tour. "1 can just see it," he muses. "Two months of not knowing where I am. This is what it will feel like -- interview, sound check, gig, interview, bed. Interview, interview, sound check, interview, gig, interview, interview..." But he knows that once he gets started, he'll have the time of his life. I'll be playing in all these places I've never heard of. I mean, places like Arizona only exist in my dreams, and now I'll actually be playing there."
The Mission face the grueling and unenviable task of trekking across Canada and the U.S. for almost two months. Then it's back to Europe and back to America again, followed by the recording of a new album and probably another British tour. Doesn't all this take a bit of a toll on your mental and physical health, not to mention your personal life? Wayne ponders the question for a moment. "Well," he begins. "Let's face it, I'm a musician. My job is to play gigs and make records. I don't really have time for much else, except maybe interviews and stuff. That's it. That's the extent of my life right now."
Ah, but then again, he's done it all before. Since it's the question on everyone's lips anyway -- the one I haven't asked -- Wayne takes this opportunity to set the record straight, once and for all, on the Sisters of Mercy. "Look, the Sisters were a great band, and I'm very proud to have been a part of it. But it's over. Finished. I just wish people would accept that and stop living in the past. The Sisters are no more."
And to their credit, The Mission do not rely heavily on the past glory of any of the four band members for their live show like some bands do. True, old Sisters lave rave-up number Iggy's "1969" does creep into the set, but strictly as a crowd pleaser, not as a cheap and desperate attempt to gain favor with the audience. That's really the last thing The Mission need. Wayne, Craig. Simon, and Mick are four very popular young men these days and for some startlingly obvious reasons too. Besides being talented musicians, they enjoy a warm relationship with their audience, based on mutual respect and affection· not a bad foundation to build upon.
And these are early days yet.
The night before they're due to depart for America, Craig, Simon and Mick return to London, and The Mission reunite for a rave-up of their own. The next morning, Wayne is still awake, a bit off his game, and can't wait to sleep on the plane. As he stumbles into the hotel lobby with wet hair and a three-day growth on his face, he still looks every inch the star. But does he look too rough to pass inspection at Immigration? "1 can just imagine it -- I'll lose my voice on the first night of the tour and get deported for lack of artistic merit," he jokes. (Not bad for 10 a.m. I still think the guy is a walking sense of humor.)
So as I watch The Mission head off for the airport, ready, willing and able to conquer America, I feel a strange sense of loss. I realize this has been no ordinary interview, and I'm really going to miss Wayne and the boys But they'll no doubt touch many more lives on their travels. Mission Accomplished.
MISSION UPDATE: Many things have changed since this interview was first written. The six-week American tour lasted three months, the highlights being an appearance on Joan Rivers' talk show and a mini-tour with the Psychedelic Furs, culminating with a show at New York's famed Radio City Music Hall. The low point being bassist Craig Adams' collapse from nervous exhaustion and subsequent return to the U.K. On the British side, Phonogram has released a compilation of the early Chapter 22 tracks, appropriately entitled The First Chapter, which, appropriately, shot into the Top 20 immediately upon release. The Mission have supported U2 twice in Britain, headlined the Reading Rock Festival and made yet another trip to the U.S. The Mission just released their new album called Children and introduced it to an unsuspecting American public with a mini-tour of the States this past February .
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MISSION IN ACTION!!!
NME September 24, 1988
Yep, and you thought the two-part On The Road Rock Monster feature had died a death.
Not so. Climb aboard and disbelieve as THE MISSION led by the noble HUSSEY travel the highways and bi-ways of South America, wooing the rock fans.
Meanwhile, the NME's own Gulliver TERRY STAUNTON goes on a mission from Goth and has his buttocks groped by a gang of underage prostitutes, gets drunk with RONNIE BIGGS, and ms, supposedly, mistaken for STING by blind Brazilian schoolkids. The boys from Leeds caught Sugar-loafing about by DEREK RIDGERS.
The saintly figure of Christ stands high on the mountain overlooking Rio De Janeiro, arms open to welcome all pilgrims, and looking not unlike a whitewashed Wayne Hussey (Whaaaat?!- Ed).
A narrow gauge railway track girdles the sleep incline and a slow train carries The Mission upwards towards the most profound experience of their entire South American excursion - a masturbating mountain man.
"It was weird," recalls guitarist Simon Hinkler "there he was standing in this derelict hotel on the mountainside, goin' for it in a big way"
"He were a big lad," comments drummer Mick Brown.
"The weirdest thing" continues Simon, "was that he came exactly at the point we passed him, pints of the stuff everywhere It's probably the thing I'll remember most from this entire trip, an image that wilt stay with me until the day I die.'
Weird indeed, but perhaps only slightly stranger than a barbecue with Ronnie Biggs, three-wheeled tour buses, underage prostitute disco dollies, an Argentinian Arthur Daley, an acid flashback kids' TV show and petrified piranha paperweights.
Somewhere along the way The Mission played some concerts as well, in Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay- the lager's first ever musical guests from the West.
They sang some songs and sold some records, then returned with armfuls of anecdotes and experiences that most right-thinking human beings might dismiss as utter bollocks.
"Nobody's gonna believe some of this stuff," Mick tells me, "You're gonna have to try and put it all down on paper, you poor bastard."
The capital of Uruguay in Montevideo, a Spanish word meaning Betamax. The city is almost obsolete, as if it is only allowed to exist out of a sense of history
The city center resembles a neon-fixated New York of the 1940s, littered with coffee bars, prototype Woolworth stores and clothes shops which seem to deal exclusively in cheap check shirts and Adidas denim Montevideo is not geared towards European or American visitors and communication can be a problem, although even a plank like myself can understand the signs on the buses: 'Prohibido salivar y fumar'
"Sting! Sting!" Two girls shout and point at my hair in the square by our hotel, which either means I resemble the English pop star or the word translates as "A prat who can't speak our language".
The Mission are in the country for less than 24 hours to play just one show, the NME posse have been here for three days, as our visas for Argentina weren't ready on time, But Wayne Hussey fills me in off what I missed over a couple of vodka and oranges ("vodka makes me violent") and it would appear I've drawn the short straw.
"Buenos Aires doesn't have the vague American feel of Montevideo, it's more like 1930s Berlin, actually. It feels very Eastern European and I sensed some kind of familiarity with the place even though I'd never been there before, and the people were the warmest I've ever come across. We couldn't go out of the hotel there,"
"I suppose part of the reason they're so keen over here is because they don't gel many English or American groups coming over and they may well act the same way for everyone. But at the same time we've been told that we are something special over here, and I can sense that, it's nice."
The Mission were nearly a few fans short during their Argentinian slay, a group of followers had a brush with death in their efforts to be close to the band. Well, a brush with the wheel of a bus at least,
"Some of them followed us around in taxis everywhere we went and once, when we were on our way to a TV show, they nearly copped it,' says Simon.
"All the drivers are mad and there's traffic everywhere. So, we turned this corner and the next thing it was 'Clump!' The back wheel fell off the bus! At first I thought we'd run over someone and then I looked out the window and saw this wheel bouncing down the road, narrowly missing a taxi full of our fans.
"It was a bit embarrassing, we had to walk the rest of the way to the TV studio and apologize to the fans on the way past, apart from that everything went swimmingly. Nobody mentioned the Falklands at all, it seemed as it everything had been forgotten We got asked more questions about Led Zeppelin, actually."
No dodgy jalopies in Montevideo although The Mish very politely put up with a stowaway We first meet Georgie at the hotel on the way to the evening show, insisting that the band were better than anything he's heard, 'I like you, better than The Who's 'Magic Bus', or Janis Joplin. You beat U2."
Georgie is the widest of wide boys from Buenos Aires, who has followed the band across the River Plate regaling us with pidgin English stories about his import/export business, We say our goodbyes and board the hits, thankfully with a full quota of wheels h couple of miles down the road we realize that Georgie is still with us, riding shotgun up front with the driver.
Casual inquiries are made when we arrive at the venue, Cilindro Municipal, a huge basketball arena last used for the South American championship final in which Brazil stuffed Puerto Rico 13 t-16.
We wait until Georgie is out of earshot and then try to establish a few facts "Who is he?"
"Dunno, thought he was with you"
"No, I thought he was with you," and on and on.
The Mission sneak off for a soundcheck leaving the journos, manager Tony and Sian from the record company to entertain Georgie, liberally offering him cigarettes and wondering if he's going to try and sell us something.
"I like this group," he says "I see all the English groups and I like this one the best. You know Rod Stewart?"
Er, yes...
"Next time you see him, you tell him hello from Georgie in Buenos Aires"
Georgie eventually disappears (off to phone Elton John. no doubt) and backstage the band are not looking forward to the show. The cavernous venue resembles the inside of a baked bean tin, the stage is being held up by condemned scaffolding and the impressive cloth backdrop of the 'Children' album cover is more than obscured by the drum kit. The sound is terrible, as if someone is playing a second set of d rums at the back of the hall.
Despite it all, the show is a huge success, with close to 6000 people screaming their bloody beads off Beatlemania style. Nervous Craig Adams is at one with his bass, having settled his butterflies with a good upchucking session in the dressing room, Wayne plays the figurehead superstar with aplomb, bouncing across the stage and risking his neck by prowling the narrow walkway in front of the PA speakers,
But it's freezing, colder than England for this time of year (all right, it is the winter over here). The band do not want to hang around afterwards, preferring the warmth of the hotel, so a runner is arranged. As they wind up with an encore of 'Like A Hurricane' and 'Wishing Well', the cars are prepared, two Chevrolets with open doors and engines running are waiting in the backstage drive-in area, white the rest of the entourage sit patiently in the bus.
The show is over and The Mission head for the tunnel, Wayne with a white towel draped over his shoulder like a prize fighter. They literally dive into the cars, the gates swing open and in seconds all that's left is the smell of burning rubber.
One slight snag, however. Immediately outside the betiding the convoy takes a wrong turning and is confronted with a set of concrete bollards. Backtracking is out of the question as the fans are in hot pursuit - A Hard Day's Night or what! Our chauffers have the solution by spinning off to the right and charging across a park, rattling everyone's bones as they go. Fingers cross in unison and silent prayers are said in the hope that we make it back to the hotel with all four wheels.
Back in the hotel bar (the oddly named Victoria "pub") it's time for an appraisal of the night's show, and it is obvious that The Mission are big business in Montevideo, The majority of he fans knew all the words to the songs, even if they might not understand what hey mean
Does the language barrier bother lyricist Hussey? He says 'Yor-a-gwy', hey say "Oo-ra-gwee'. let's call the · whole thing off?
"I don't mind that barrier because sometimes I don't understand what I'm saying, and I'm sure the rest of the band don't really. Everybody has a different interpretation of it, that's the beauty of making music, it can mean something. different to each and every individual
"It's an overall atmospheric effect that people go for, I think, and the words are just one part of it. I don't think people who can't speak English are going to reject English music just because they don't know what the singer's going on about."
Gigs last for a couple of hours a night but The Mission are doing most of their performing on this tour in front of the press and Montevideo is as hectic as anywhere, perhaps more so because of the limited time in the country. The morning after the show is busy, busy, busy.
Surprisingly, Uruguay still has a pop industry despite the country's bleak economy - but its disappearing fast. Ten years ago a home-grown group could expect sales of up to 70,000 for an album, but now, as the purse strings are pulled tighter by the day, pop music is a luxury for the few.
Piracy and home taping have taken over to such a degree that The Mission's latest album 'Children' has sold, officially, only 1000 copies. That's still quite an achievement, a couple of thousand more and they've got themselves a gold disc. Sting is the biggest noise in town, having gone platinum with 6000 sales of his latest effort.
A visit to the Polygram offices is an eye-opener. In complete contrast to the plush foyers of their British and American counterparts, the Montevideo headquarters is reached by strolling first through a record shop (ironically selling bootlegs of the company's own releases), end then through a book store.
The company chief is a small, Dickensian figure in his eighties who's more at home with a fountain pen than a personal computer. It is on these premises that The Mission must record an interview for the following weekend's video show on national TV, and they are somewhat taken aback when the interviewer is none other than the label's own product manager.
"He's also the host of the biggest pop show in the country," Sian tells me. "No wonder we got three videos screened on last week's programme."
Next it's on to the airport for the live hour flight to Rio. "Where's Harry?" everyone asks at check-in and it is here we meet a saint.
Harry is the tour manager who speaks the lingo, understands every currency in the world and basically looks after The Mission and shields them from the dreary tasks most travellers have to perform. He runs round the entourage collecting our tickets, passports and luggage, and checks everyone in while we nip off to the restaurant for a meal.
He performs similar miracles when we land, although he couldn't prevent Wayne and Mick being taken away by passport officials. But surprisingly, they are not subjected to the strip searches that airport staff relish when they see rock star types approaching.
"I haven't a f--in' clue what all that about," says Mick when he emerges a few minutes later. "They took me passport off me, and came back having given it a good wipe with a damp cloth! I must admit it were a bit mucky"
And neither could Harry fix the roulette wheel that acts as Customs Instead of walking through areas marked either 'Goods to declare' or 'Nothing to declare', everyone has to press a button on their way out. Should it flash green, you're free to go. If it's red and the buzzer goes off, you're hauled away and your luggage is given the once over. There is some kind of perverted justice at work which decides that I am the only person out of a 17-strong entourage that gets the red light.
Red lights of a different nature are at work once we've made the half hour coach journey to the Hotel Rio Othon Palace on the Copacabana Beach. Rio's playground is very much like a film lot, all glamour and glitz out front with the grime and grubbiness hidden behind. The coach takes us through the ghettoes and slums that make up the majority of the city, through the dock area where it's not particularly safe to walk durng the day, let alone at night.
Rio would seem to be the highlight of the itinerary on paper but having been there a week earlier on a brief promotional visit, The Mission hated it. However, they did find a nightclub, Help!, which Wayne insists on visiting again. What seems at first to be a large scale Mecca ballroom soon lakes on a different complexion as we head for the bar.
Young girls, many not old enough to see 15 certificate films, squeeze our buttocks and tweak our nipples as we edge past. When we're finally settled with a drink there is an endless parade of young "Fifis" who dance provocatively in front of us, beckoning us onto the dance floor and beyond.
A rough estimate suggests that seven out of every ten males in the hall are American sailors looking for a good time; nine out of every ten females will give it to them once they've seen the colour of their money. The pop star counts for little here, should a member of The Mish wish to "jiggy-jiggy", it will cost them as much as the next man.
"These kind of places are really the heart of cities," suggests Wayne "It tells you an awful lot. I always make a point of going to red light areas when I first visit a city, not to partake necessarily, but to observe.
"It fascinates me, it's the sleazy side of life that I find quite appealing, it appeals to something in me that is very base, a different kind of instinct. On the one hand you're appalled by it, hut on the other you're fascinated by it"
Does it provide you with material for songs?
"Well I haven't written anything down about this trip as yet, but Ill probably jot a few things down when I get home and see if any of it can be worked into something for the band. I don't think any of this will be a direct inspiration for a new song, but you can't help but be affected by it."
When the "Fifis" realize we're not buying, the heat dies down and we meet some genuine Mission fans who only want autographs. Not for the first time on this voyage I am a surrogate Craig Adams as the bass player has gone off to bed early with his temperamental stomach.
"Just sign anything they put in front of you," is the advice I'm given, "They'll be happy as long as they get four signatures on a piece of paper,"
Rio's most famous resident is also one of its greatest tourist attractions. Most visiting Brits do their best to meet up with Ronnie Biggs, and the train robber claims Rick Wakeman, Ozzy Osborne, David Coverdale and Sting (that man again!) as close friends.
The night after the visit to Help! he's in the hotel bar with his lady friend Raimunda, son Mike and one of Mike's pals, ready to board the group bus to the night's show.
The NME fixed it for Biggs to meet The Mish and vice-versa, forging a great friendship for years to come, which leads to one et the strangest parties any of l he group has ever been invited to.
The show is mayhem Whereas 6000 comfortably stood in a huge arena in Montevideo here we have The Mission in a club with a capacity of 2400- and the promoter has sold nearly 5000 tickets. Doors are smashed as funs without tickets try to force their way in, the barrier at the front of the stage is vibrating like an Electrolux in final rinse. The group debate whether to play or not while Craig goes to the toilet to throw up again.
Finally, they go ahead, much to the delight of Ronnie who leaps up and down throughout the set, "they're great" he shouts in my ear. "They sound just like the London Irish Fusiliers!"
Backstage the Mish are congratulated by Ron and they have their photograph taken together. Biggs Jr gets well stuck into the beer and the 14-year-old delights in telling people outside the door to f-- off in his best Cock, flay wide boy accent, Not bad for a kid who's rarely been outside his native Brazil. This drunken revelry is tolerated by The Mission; after all, Mike, as a member of The Magic Balloon Gang, has sold something like 20 times as many records as his hosts and knows how to act like a pop star.
Wayne, meanwhile, is getting on with Ron like a house on fire when the world's most lovable criminal extends a sincere invitation: "You must all come round to my gaff tomorrow afternoon for a barbecue and I'll teach you to samba"
Mr. Hussey accepts immediately, and everyone gets stuck into the beer again, particularly Mike. Later we discover that Ron writes off his car on the way home (thankfully no injuries) and Mick is sick everywhere... but hey, that's rock 'n' roil
Getting back on the tour bus is hell, except for Craig who appears to have sneaked by unnoticed, leaving me to confront fanatical autograph hunters once again, Simon Hinkler is visibly shaken once he has found his seat.
"It's bloody madness, there's practically no security. I get really frightened when there's hundreds of them just grabbing at you, I'm still not used to this star thing.
"I want to just keep shouting at them, 'Leave me alone, I'm only a lad from Sheffield. I'm normal'."
But this is South America and nothing is normal if you're with The Mission. Any fragment of normality still loitering around will go straight out the window ' tomorrow when it's time to take part in the most surreal TV of all time, followed by the Biggs' barbecue.
"Samba time at Ronnie's tomorrow.", declaras Wayne. "Could be fun"
Could be.
To be continued next week...
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SMASH HITS, 1986
Interview by Sylvia Patterson
The Mission might have a big hit with "Stay With Me", but they still can't afford their own make-up bags -- so they have to borrow one from Smash Hits "reporter" Sylvia Patterson! And then they try to turn it into a hat... (??)
Somewhere in the midst of swinging London there's a record company interview room with a very horrible plastic bat dangling above the doorway - while the door itself is emblazoned with the scribbly words "Goth City". This, apparently, is to make The Mission "feel at home" - and they also find it very amusing.
"Well, you've got to have a sense of humour, haven't you?" sniggers lead "singer" Wayne Hussey (who sniggers rather a lot), "'cos as far as we're concerned this is Carry On Goth!"
Well! In fact, the four blokes who make up The Mission are all having a birrova laugh today - being waited on by various record company persons to bring them any amount of chicken sandwiches, tuna sandwiches, packets of gaspers and rather a lot of wine for a Thursday lunchtime.
"Fame?" muses Wayne, taking an extra large swig of wine. "Well, it'll never change us - we'll still get drunk? It's true - they are, after all, nigh experts at "enjoying" themselves. The Mission have been together a mere 10 months - releasing two extremely successful independent singles, "Serpent's Kiss" and the double A-side "Like A Hurricane/ Garden Of Delight" before they signed to a rather large record company and "Stay With Me" swirled its way up the flingaway charts.
This instant success, however, has quite a bit to do with the band members' previous paths of "glory". Wayne and Craig Adams were once in quite famous and very brilliant group the Sisters Of Mercy - which Wayne now reveals was "one big joke - that nobody got! And we're another joke that nobody's going to get... They were good days, though, great days..." until they split up rather mysteriously last summer. In fact Wayne was in another band for a while - the very famous Dead Or Alive, though he s dead chuffed he got out before they became "embarrassing" and is rather pleased he's still got the hat that Pete Burns gave him "for services rendered" . Mick Brown was in another quite famous and rather brilliant band called Red Lorry Yellow Lorry, while Simon Hinkler was in... er, a band called Artery.
"A not very famous but brilliant band called Artery!" "corrects" Simon, a trifle miffed but looking somewhat embarrassed/anyway. But then - spiralling mists!! - the ever-pokesome finger of life that is FATE! thrust our hapless heroes together·..
"In a toilet in a warehouse. Honest!" pipes Wayne, not looking very honest under his darkened spectacles. "We met in a toilet - all the best people do, y'know. And now we've got the world at our feet and that's... er, about it!'
Mmmn. So much for history then viewers. At the moment The Mission "lads" are frolicking around in their interview room and they'd much rather talk about, shampoo.
"I bought some shampoo yesterday for the first time in bloody ages, reveals Craig for some reason.
Simon: "What kind of shampoo did you buy, Craig?"
Craig: "I got some good stuff with conditioner an' that. Well, it were expensive so it must be good ...'cos, y'know, you can t be too careful.
Mick: "It were probably beer shampoo, knowing you!"
Craig: "Yeah, just bang some lime in and it's ssllllrrrpppp! Ha ha!"
Wayne: "I bought a new makeup bag yesterday..."
Craig: "1 could do with a new make-up bag actually - mine's split."
Well - spook upon spooks! - it just so happens I've got a spare one in my bag. (Produces very horrible plastic quilted "effect" green make-up bag.)
Craig (quite delighted): "'Ere! It looks like one of them hats. One of them hats except we could dye it black! Y'know, sort of like a cossack hat. (Wears make-up bag on head - very fetching.) Aw - it's too small But innit like one? No, really we'ye been discussing the possibility of getting some of these for ages - I tried to get one yesterday but they were all too small. I'm Sorry, we don t have any in your colour, sir! Ha ha!"
Wayne: "1 bought a new coat yesterday an' all. That one there. (Points to black 'n' billowy spook-coat hanging on the back of the door.) A hundred quid.
Eh? A hundred smackers for a coat?
Craig: "That's what I said "
Wayne: "Yeah - I'm rich? (Smirks widely, though he smirks widely most of the time anyway.) Yeah - today I m getting a cheque for 1300 quid - that's my bonus - me wages for two weeks. Actually it's just for the weekend ha ha! No - 750 quid a week - I'm rich and it feels... fine!"
Mick: "We get 25 quid a week and as much semolina as we can eat har har...."
Wayne: "II mean, all those indie bands with their martyred attitude... living for your art and starving - that's bollacks. Get rich!"
Surely, though, as ones who began "life" in the "indie" scene (man) they must quite like some of the music?
Wayne: "Aw God, no - it's all this pseudo 'eavy metal stuff, innit? All these young bands trying to do guitar solos when they can't even play the guitar.., er, who's a good example?"
Craig: "I don't listen to any of 'em."
Simon: "I don't listen to anybody."
Mick: "I'm deaf."
Wayne: "1 bought the new S-Star album the other day..."
Simon (visibly horrified): "You bought a S-Star album?"
Wayne: "Yeah - it's a good album! I really like the singles off it so I bought it! It's just good songs/see that's all that matters. Good songs. They're a bit weird them, aren't they (i.e. S-Star)? They're meant to be really shy and all that. I do like Deniece I must say... (swoons a bit...) I like Madonna too!"
Mick: "Oooh - come 'ere baby!" Yes, well, that's enough of that. You are fascinated by dodgy old '70s bands, though, aren't you?
Wayne (rather snippily): "By good '70s bands. There were a lot of good songs from then - 'When The Levee Breaks' by Zeppplin (i.e. Led) and Deep Purple, The Doors...
And "naturally" enough at this point, in strides their manager Tony and proceeds to light very '70s joss-sticks all over the place letting off an almighty mustified reek. I thought you lot were goths and not hippies?
Wayne: "We're goppies! Actually, Simon is a hippy - he's the only genuine hippy we know!"
Simon: "Well, everyone says I am so I suppose I must be..."
Craig: You've got favourite trees and bushes and stuffl."
Simon: "What are you talking about?"
Craig: "He has, y'know! We recorded our album down on a farm in Surrey for three weeks and he had a favourite bush..."
Mick "Yeah, we recorded the album on a 24-track milking machine har har..."
Craig: "Yeah, his bush - it were about this big (leaps up in demonstration) about shoulder height sort of like a big Tardis... and he were leant over It going 'Karma! Karma!' You told me it were your favourite bush!"
Simon: "Er... welt, me memory leaves a lot to be desire...it must have been purely phallic - the earth's energy,/know..." (?)
Yes, well, anyway, The Mission are now "very proud" to present to the universe their first ever LP "God's Own Medicine", which is rather splendid and not-at-all the doomesque piece of melodramatic misery most "goth" types are often accused of.
Wayne: "Y'know, that's exactly what we're not" he states boldly. "We're not one of those 'orrible bands with po-faced.., faces. I can't believe those people who come to gigs and just stand there in their black clothes being miserable - they've just no sense of humour and they've got totally the wrong idea of what it s all about - I mean, we're good time boys out to enjoy ourselves.., we're the new wild men of rock,/know!" You write very grand lyrics, though "Grand?"
Well, it's not exactly 'hey baby git on down with me'-type stuff, is it?
"Yes it is - it's just more subtle ha ha! Y'see, I just like words.., words like.., precious and.., sunshine... beautiful words. I'm very sweet, me, really y'know."
Er... did you know you'd become a sex symbol?
"Really? Aw, that's nice. I get all me jewelery from girls now, y'know! And they send us all clothes too."
Craig: "Buy nothing!"
Mick: "He (Wayne) got mistaken for Boy George once, y'know! Yeah we were coming back from Spain or somewhere and we were on one of those moving pavement things going one way and these girls were going the other going 'Is it? Is it? It is! Boy George!' Ha ha!"
Wayne: "It's happened a few time, though obviously- I'm much better looking than him! Better legs an all - don't forget the legs. You must admit, though, we have got good legs - just look around - there's four good sets of pins 'ere."
Craig: Oh yeah - tree trunks!" (Stands up to display his tree-trunks.)
Wayne: "Well, we just aim to cater for every taste, y'see... I tell you, I was in this club in Sheffield the other week and I walked past this group of girls and they started screaming 'aaaah! aaah! ' Like that! Really! So I walked past again!"
Simon: "Yeah, you went to the toilet 20 times that night, didn't you! (Snigger.) I was in a club the other night and 'about ten girls went 'eeeeh! eeeeh' and started chasing after me. So I walked a bit quicker!"
Wayne: "I would have just lain on the floor and let them have me!"
Ah yes, but as "rumour" has It, you're not exactly fussy, are you?
"No."
Simon: "Yeah - that could be the title on the page - 'Hussey.'s Not Fussy" ha ha!"
(I think not - Ed.)
Subir
The Maturing of The Mission
SOUNDS February 6 1988 Following a hectic and often hair-raising year, including four months spent aboard a bus touring the States, THE MISSION are propelling themselves into 1988 with a new set of music which threaten to reshape rock 'n' roll to their own masterplan. Report NEIL PERRY. Rapport PETER ANDERSON
JEZ, MISSION roadie and budding Bono lookalike, takes a deep breath before plunging loudly into a heated swimming pool.
"Bloody 'ell!' he splutters, his eager exuberance nearly resulting in a bellyful of warm chlorine.
"This new LP.., the lads have cracked it. I'm really bloody excited, an' everything !"
Late one November night at The Manor-- a huge and splendid residential studio set in a quiet Oxford backwater --- the end of The Mission's eleven week stay is drawing near.
With the last weekend approaching and the final notes of the band's new LP 'Children' recorded, high spirits aren't confined to just the swimming pool.
In the spacious kitchen, the man they call Mental Mick Mish rushes back to his seat in readiness; seconds later a new Mission song called 'Hymn For America' careers from two speakers.
As furious, galloping drums kick into a vicious metallic riff Mick explodes into action, wildly attacking an imaginary drum kit, eyes bulging as a huge crowd roars in the mega-stadiurn of his mind. Mick would like to own a wristwatch with just the word 'Now' on it.
Nearby sits a tired but jubilant Wayne Hussey; in his arms a softly cooing bundle of joy called Hannah, his four week old daughter. Wayne eyes his drummer friend for a second, head shaking with mirth, before returning his attention to his very own baby girl,
"You are beautiful, aren't you? Yes, you are. Goo goo goo. Coochie coochie coo. Aren't you gorgeous? Yes, you are. Coochie coochie coochie...'
As the Mission have changed, so this is not quite the same Wayne Hussey, not the one so beloved of the nation s gossip columns 12 months ago.
1987 saw The Mission working hard and playinq harder. They performed in huge stadiums, dingy little toilets and all points in between, all but running themselves into the ground in the process.
Wayne Hussey became good copy as one vomit-stained nightclub saga flowed into the next, The Mission gaining a certain reputation in the fast and loose rock 'n' roll lifestyle stakes.
Loved or loathed, revered or reviled, few were ignoring them.
Mention children, and Wayne will tell you he's undergone certain changes as far as rock 'n' roll is concerned; with 'Children', The Mission have made a rock album that will propel them into a different league altogether.
Be it the driving melodic force of 'Beyond The Pale', the sultry tones of 'Heat' or the razor-sharp nightmare charge of 'Hymn For America'; 'Children' is the sound of a band reshaping rock to their own masterplan.
'Tower Of Strength', the first single from the LP, is a song of epic proportions, a hypnotic, symphonic anthem released just as The Mission reach their second birthday. Like the other eight tracks on 'Children', it was produced by former Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones, who also provided some keyboards.
The Mission are the first band he's worked with since Zeppelin's demise 12 years ago.
"He thought we were awful when he saw us at Elland Road with U2," Wayne laughs, as he lounges on a cosy Manor sofa.
"But even then he recognized that we were a band, He said, Well, it was a bit slack lads, I was going to get on the next bus home. He's easy to work with, very proud and aware of what zeppelin achieved, but totally unaffected by it all,
"We say, We're doing this on our next tour and he says, Oh Yeah, we did seven nights at Earl's Court and Madison Square Gardens, Oh, God..,"
The U2 supports at Leeds and Edinburgh formed a ragged end to The Mission's first world tour, which began way back in November '86 with the release of 'Gods Own Medicine', By the time the band got to America six months later, the dehumanising process had begun, and the idea that The Mission would celebrate their second birthday in one piece seemed increasingly unlikely.
"'Hymn For America' sums up that episode in LA," says Wayne, referring to when bassist Craig Adams finally snapped, wreaking a trail of destruction which ended when he was knocked flat by a police van in front of the band's hotel. The song is probably Wayne's finest vocal performance to date.
"Up until that American tour I never really saw this band existing for very long. Like, it happened and it was brilliant, and as soon as it wasn't brilliant I thought, finish it. Then America, and a lot of good and bad things happened. You could feel it building up and someone had to crack. , Craig is a little more volatile than the rest of us,
"We Were on our bus, and Craig said, I m going, I don't want to be in the f**king band; He punched the window. broke his hand, and stormed out. Everyone sat down and cried! But I thought; f*** it, we're going to finish this f***kng tour, regardless. If we'd all come home, we would have split up.
And it wasn't until they entered The Manor that The Mission could really pull themselves together; one thing that they did know for sure was that their American excess was an experience never to be repeated.
"A lot has happened to us in such a short time," continues Wayne. "My attitude has changed. A year ago I wanted to be a pop star, I still do, but I won't play the game in the same way. Around the time of 'Wasteland' or 'Severina' my head was going, it was all happening so fast and it freaked me out.
"I thought I knew what I was doing a year ago, but there are certain things I couldn't go through again. I'm not doing as many interviews anymore, I've had my say, people know I'm a big mouth. We live in f***ing cloud cuckoo land anyway, I don't know what's happening in the clubs or on the streets. ,man, I don't know. I haven't got a clue what goes on out there anymore."
Like the rest of the band, Wayne has been living with the album for a long time. Not that his enthusiasm is tainted one bit.
"There's more substance to it, it's more powerful. I also think it's less instant, although the lyrics are more pointed. My belief is such that I can see it being massive.
"The predominant themes are children, heat and America, it's a concise ' history of the last year. We were at Ian Copeland's house and in his basement he had a drumkit and guitars and mikes and stuff. Mick and Simon started playing, then Ian joined in, and then Ian's little girl started to sing with 'em! Children at play..."
Wayne Hussey has mellowed considerably. Last year's amorous pop charlatan has come this year's righteous rocker, although the Hussey heart is still brandished on his sleeve; if anything, his vulnerability has grown with the band's profile.
"What J was saying earlier, about not knowing what's going on... quite often I think your own self importance grows, you perpetuate things in your own mind. Someone said to me the other day, When you listen to your words you're a right miserable bastard, but knowing you you're not! That's the conflict.,, will the real Wayne Hussay stand up?!"
With the birth of his daughter and the rebirth of The Mission after America -- the sense of family is very strong.
"Having the baby, having her here, it makes me realize that making records is a pretty meaningless thing. It means a lot to me, and the records mean a Jot to a lot of people, but put it against a four week old baby...
"It's the best and biggest thing that's happened to me." continues Father Hussey, "I love this band dearly but it is no longer the biggest thing in my life. Being a father isn't a responsibility, it's a pleasure! It just changes your whole perspective, changes your whole life."
It was also at The Manor that the band's respective parents all met for the first time.
"I think a lot of minds were put to rest' that Weekend. Mick's Dad said that watching us four together was like in the war, soldiers' camaraderie or whatever. But then Jez, his opinion I probably value more than the hand's. Because he's slightly more objective, like he's the first member of The Mission.
"As a whole unit we're very strong, we're the kind of people who always look on the positive side. There's a lot of intelligence in this band, I'm dwarfed by the other three. But our expectations are so high, of ourselves, we forget we're such a young band."
Mick Brown, an ex-trucker still hopelessly in love with trucks, takes a break from invisible drums to show off his design for the LP sleeve.
"I got way too drunk that night," be says, talking of the first Mission gig proper at London's Electric Ballroom.
"The drum kit made it worse, everything that could break did. I remember coming off, I ran straight outside and started banging my head against a wall. Billy Duffy's stood behind me going, 'You should be more professional!' And I'm braining myself, thinking, Tell me about it..."
Two years on and he's still breathing, eating, drinking and throwing up The Mission. On his Harley Davidson T-shirt are the words, "If I tried to explain, you wouldn't understand".
"There's always been a good attitude generally. Whenever the shit hits the tan, so far anyway, there's been an ability to cope with it. It's difficult to reason, it's more emotional than rational. I'm believing more and more in following your heart as much as you can. I like dreaming, it's stuff like that that makes it all worth going for."
The last Weekend at The Manor, and The Mission headline a Charity gig at Oxford Poly; some of the Manor staff ready looking tearful at the band's imminent departure.
Back at the Manor, in a relatively quiet corner stands Wayne, oblivious to the post-gig party as he copes well with his daughter's essential late-night nappy change.
The New Year and The Mission are in another recording studio, this time in London, putting the finishing touches to various B-sides. Together with guitarist Simon Hinkler, Craig has written a grandiose orchestral theme, and they play it back for the first time.
"Can we put cannons on at?" inquires Craig. "Goon, let's bung loads of cannons on it... "
At the mention of America and his temporary loss of reason, Craig smiles. "I was completely knackered!
"'I've stopped going onstage out of it. When you do it's complete panic and absolute paranoia for the first three songs. Now, because I've stopped doing those things, it's sort of... more of a laugh. Before, we were mixing it with other things that became more important, which was our own fault. It all got a bit stupid..."
Not that the experience has dulled Craig's -- or The Mission's desire to go on the road. It was simply time to be sensible.
"We had to! It was a no option thing, otherwise someone would have been seriously injured. We couldn't have carried on like that. It was dreadful, you made your own rules, perhaps that's why I went to go on tour again, something rotten! Let's get out and break something! But not us this time, other things. Not people, I've mellowed out me, I have....don't smoke by half as many cigarettes."
Fanatical Leeds United supporter and ex-member of infamous outfit The Elyis Preslays From Hell, Craig prefers to remain in the background as far as The Mission are concerned; preferably in his own room.
"When our parents came down to The Manor, we all gave our bedrooms up and had to share, it was like the first tour again. Four of you in a room and someone would fart....like, shit, I hate sharing a room with these people. "
A little later Simon Hinkler, the big guitar-toting cowboy from Sheffield, sits and nods slowlv as he talks of his true vocation. "I genuinely think 'Tower Of Strength' is incredible.., whoever did it, it would be one of my all time favourite songs. It's excellent. I just want to get out and play the songs now, that's when they take on new meanings."
It is the patent Hinkler guitar attack that is most immediately striking as far as The Mission '88 are concerned; on 'Children', the guitarist has emerged as the band's secret weapon...
"I'm in this band, more than anything else, for rockin' out. Touring, playing live, having a lot of volume coming from me amps behind me. I get off on it; it's one of the few things I do get off on.
"The rest of the time I walk around in a daze, really. You know, photo sessions, interviews, meeting foreign record company people. I don't really want to do all that. Those people talk a different language to me, a stupid language, a language of things that aren't essentially important. I really can't bring myself to speak like that." He shrugs and smiles.
"I've got f*** all to say, really, Mostly because I think anything I say doesn't make that much difference. I got fed up with trying to be clever and smart and having my wits about me. I've long since decided to be tough and stupid..."
When John Paul Jones asked his management to spread the news that he was looking for production work, The Mission wasn't a name on the tip of his tongue.
"I was interested in more work, but it's hard to make it known yourself... after a situation like Zeppelin no one will believe that you ever want to do anything again, or in some cases are even capable of doing anything again."
Having worked with Ben E King and on some classical projects as well as his own solo efforts, why choose to work with The Mission?
"Yes, I ask myself that. Phonogram approached my management, and they sent me some tapes and every press cutting since, oh, 1949. I listened to the tapes and thought, They sound great. Then I read the press cuttings and thought, no way. It was only after I met them that I realized you shouldn't believe all you read in the press."
JPJ hit it off with The Mission immediately, and soon acquired a taste for Metallica T-shirts and staying up very late. He also played keyboards and made The Mission sound like they always should have done. What of the results?
"Utterly fantastic. I'm extremely pleased with it, they're a good bunch of lads to work with. They seem to like it... They don't throw things at me. You see, I knew how they felt, it's one of the things I can bring to that situation. I can see things from their point of view."
And how did The Mission first treat this ex-member of Led Zeppelin?
"Well... they were a little bit in awe of the name, I suppose. But that soon broke down with personal contact, a drink and then the abuse followed.
"The thing is, once you start with this lot it never bloody ends, it's a lifetime contract I daren't produce another band. I think nobody can say goodbye. We've never actually said, This is the end of it, it's been great, The last thing we always say is, See you next week."
In another studio in another corner of London, Mick and Wayne listen to the final mix of 'Tower Of Strength' at deafening volume, their fixed grins and exchanged looks of joy saying it all.
"We're a bunch of lads just f***ing doing what we want." says Mick, well aware that by the end of the year they may not be just any old bunch of lads.
"it's so important to us it's not true, but by the same token we can still trash it. It's music, if we didn't exist it would be somebody else."
"And there is no hierarchy in this band," stresses Wayne, "that was developed by the media. And it got to the point where I was alienated."
"That's my biggest fear that," admits Mick, "being shut away. And if I'm aware of that, think how much worse it could be for Wayne? I mean, no one knows who the f*** I am! I've sat in a dressing room -- right?--- full of fans -right? -- and there's been somebody next to me going, It's only Mick's autograph we need now!"
What all this boils down to is. The Mission have stopped dicking about. And coming from this particular load of two year olds, that means big trouble for everybody else.
With the look of one who has obtained Nirvana and then swapped it for something better, Mental Mick Mish completes a final drum roll on the Manor's kitchen table. He leaps up, flips the tape, presses play and waits expectantly.
"You know," he ponders, "it's being so cheerful that keeps me going..."
SOUNDS February 22, 1986
ANDREW ELDRITCH is currently at number one in the indie charts with his band THE SISTERHOOD while CRAIG ADAMS and WAYNE HUSSEY have just finished a European tour with their band... THE SISTERHOOD. Confused? Yes, so were we so we assigned a special investigative team of two reporters to the case. MR SPENCE and MARTYN STRICKLAND get behind the ELDRITCH beard. NEILPERRY and GREG FREEMAN go French with ADAMS and HUSSEY.
THE ADAMS, HUSSEY STORY
Big things, little things. Steel cold sky, under which torrents of maniacally-driven automobiles flow like molten lava, past the ultra-flash shops and the shivering hookers.
Paris in the winter, tonight playing host to the Cult-Sisterhood mystery trip. Tickets ready please.
Cut to the Eldorado, like a scruffy, scaled down Lyceum. Wayne Hussey walks up to his mike and whispers "Jesus loves the Sisters", and a thousand or so young Parisiennes get very excited.
You can see it in their eyes, we love you too.
This is the sixth gig The Sisterhood have played ever.
During the fag end of last year the magnificent machine that was The Sisters of Mercy ground to a halt amid recriminations, rumours and bitching. The Sisters' vocalist Andrew Eldritch claims, among other things, the rights to the name "The Sisterhood", and brought out a single under that name recently.
With the rise of this Sisterhood, namely Wayne Hussey and Craig Adams from the Sisters, Mick Brown from Red Lorry Yellow Lorry and Simon Hinkler from Artery - the temporary madness that always occurs after the death of something much loved has just started.
As the Cult hurtle into their set, Craig, Wayne and I return to their dressing room in the depths of the building. Simon and Mick are nowhere to be seen. Craig is mischievous and quiet, Wayne elfin like and eager to talk. The spectre of Andrew Eldritch hands over us. Well what about...
"The Sisters' split needs to be documented once and for all," says Wayne, with the air of one about to embark on the telling of a children's story. "As far as Craig and I were concerned, we'd resigned ourselves to sticking it out, and maybe it would've got better. But in fact it was getting worse. I went to Hamburg for a month with Andrew to try and write songs for the second Sisters album, and we came back with all my ideas rejected and Andrew's very skeletal.
"We got to doing the second albuma nd Andrew said, "I'm not singing any of your songs. That's what it boils down to. Craig walked out of rehersals and a day later I did. He was listening to things like Fleetwood Mac, Stevie Nicks, Foreigner, and there was us listening to Motorhead or whatever. And it showed."
But did the Sisters achieve what they set out to?
Wayne" "That was part of the problem, we'd done it, we'd done what we wanted to achieve/ In doing that we'd lost the original essence of it... we'd lost the joke of it. Because that's what it was originally meant to be. A joke."
"A joke?
"A joke, yeah."
But I thought that...
"... It was a culmination of all the f***ing rock and roll cliches." Wayne allows himself a grin. I think he's enjoying my amusement.
But ultimately it came over as original.
"That was the problem. We started taking ourselves too seriously, thinking we were more important than we were. In terms of rock and roll history we thought we were more important than we were. I think Craig would vouch for that." (He does)
But the Sisters were a great rock and roll band.
"They were a great rock and roll band, there's no doubt about that. But I believe that was down to our acknowledgment of our heritage more than anything else."
Was all of it completely contrived?
"It was, it was!"
That cold and clinical?
"Yes."
"The Sisters of Mercy were a conglomerate of everything that's gone before," continues Wayne. "I defy anyone to say they're totally original. It was definitely contrived. You saw me out on stage tonight, playing with the audience. It has to be contrived."
So is the very action of standing on stage and playing contrived?
"Yes, it is. Because you have all these visions of people who have gone before you."
So where does Wayne Hussey come into this? How much of it is you?
"Predominantly, its you. But its your interpretation of everything else. Someone once said to me that the holes in my jeans were well placed. Well contrived holes! Ha!
Is there room in The Sisterhood for ideas that would never have occurred to you before?
"We, we only got Simon three weeks before this tour started. But our songs are good in the first place. We're going to play more than the Sisters ever did. If we wrote a song it would take us three f***ing days because we had to program the drum machine. This is a new band, we'll never cover our old stuff, that would be a mistake. We've got more songs. I'm a songs man."
So what's in a name?
Wayne: "Andrew wanted to start making songs by himself and kill the Sisters. By doing that he wouldn't have come out on top, because as far as most people are concerned The Sisters were Andrew Eldritch. Craig and I are proving that it wasn't.
"The Sisterhood was the name of a group of friends who followed us about. I think it's a wonderful name not because of the old association, but because of the imagery you can actually use with it.
"The thing about Eldritch..." Wayne pauses, and looks around the room, "...is, he's dried up. I personally think he's been one of the best rock lyricists over the last few years, but now he's dried up. I still respect him. Whatever he's done, I reserve judgement."
"Sisters of Mercy - Trans Europe Excess says the roadie's sweatshirt. Have you read Hammer of the Gods?
"Its our tour bible. Instead of a tour itinerary we all got a copy of that book. I asked Jimmy Page to produce our next record."
And? What did he say?
"No."
The Sisterhood are graceful, careful in their songs. The face of The Sisterhood is warmer than its mother's ever was. Wayne is thinking again.
"The potential of this group is enormous. The songs are more melodic, more accessible in a broader sense. Its about the very fact that you're here. If this were the Sisters you wouldn't be here!" Why not?
"Because it was part of the psychology of The Sisters of Mercy. You'd have made the effort, not us."
So why am I here now?
"Because you have to play the game. There are ways of playing the game and keeping your dignity. Not playing the game means copping out. The common accusation of selling out is bullshit. You first sold out when you formed a group! You're in a group and you want to sell records.
"Being in a group is 75 per cent being aware of the business, and that's one thing I learnt from The Sisters. No disrespect to you, but the only reason I'm talking to you is because we need a feature in Sounds , we need the exposure at this time.
I hadn't assumed I was here for any other reason.
"It would be different if you were a mate but you're not. I don't know you. Do you want to share a hooker?"
No, its OK. Are you a star?
"I've got it in me, but that's not the point. It's unfortunate in a way that I've got a music background already. "
Its also very useful.
"Its very useful. But it's a hindrance as well, people shouting for "Temple of Love" or whatever. But that won't last long. One thing that I don't want to happen again is one person becoming the center of attention, because this is much more of a group in that respect."
But you've done all the talking this evening...
"Of course, but that's delegation of responsibility. It's important that this comes over as a group. It will take time, as always. But we are strong in our resolve to do it.
The morning after, and photographer Greg and I are sitting in the hotel foyer at an optimistic eight for The Sisterhood's photo shoot. Nothing stirs, except for Ian Astbury who stumbles over to us looking as rough as I feel.
"Do you know they confiscated 17 knives and two loaded pistols at the gig last night! God, think what got in..." He is happy. He loves touring with the Sisterhood.
"Wayne? Ah salt of the earth that boy, salt of the earth."
The photos are taken, and it's off to the airport for us and a long haul on the coach to Lyons for the band. They pull faces at us from the back window. Games, jokes rule... Wayne's personal philosophy seems razor sharp and muddled all at once, and left , not a little confused, but no matter.
None of it's particularly important, because I believe The Sisterhood are going to be one hell of an electrifying rock experience, because their music touched me. Because.....
Subir
SOUNDS - November 29, 1986
THE MISSION
"We Are Absurd And Ridiculous!"
Inside - Wayne Hussey tells all
THE MISSION'S Wayne Hussey - an outside looney with funny shades and a habit or a regular guy who cries when he's lobely? ROBIN GIBSON looks behind the post-goth curtain of myth to find the man, PETER ANDERSON takes seascapes.
A dim afternoon in Manchester, and I'm feeling much the same as a certain local radio DJ in Aberdeen.
The man recently told The Mission's Wayne Hussey, "I can't believe how civil and well-behaved you are...I was expecting you to come in here with a syringe hanging out of one arm, a bottle of wine under the other and a straw up your nose, telling me to f*** off."
Wayne and I are sat in the dining room of something which could be an up market bed and breakfast or an aspiring hotel, and he's working his way, carefully, through his first bottle of wine.
Far from being an arrogant bastard or a complete fool (I had expected a kind of half-arsed combination of the two), he's friendly, articulate and merely swaying between a good-humoured paranoia - which is a result of pondering his recent drunken appearances in the press - and a nervous, conspiratorial giggle.
He's not going to surprise me too much, but he throws me a little when I ask him what he got off on when he was a kid.
"I used to go to church," he replies, in deadpan Leeds. "That was the major part of my life. Not just Sundays - Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and on Saturdays there was always some sort of social event...
"I'm still a baptized Morman, but I'm obviously not a practicing one. I can see the value of religions like that, though. It gives people a purpose.
"My family are still very devout Mormons."
So what did you get out of it? It obviously didn't give you a lasting purpose.
"No, no. A lot of it was indoctrination because I was brought up a Morman from a very early age. So until I was 14 or 15, it was like... blind faith. But I got off on knowing my religion, and studying it. I did get something lasting out of it. I've got my own set of morals. I fan live with myself...there's nothing I feel any guilt about."
Still, Wayne Hussey has been learning too late for his own liking, to rely on his wits. That's why he's drinking slowly, clear or drug talk, and generally doing his level best to dump the barrow of gleeful excess which The Mission have thus far been wheeling proudly in front of themselves.
"Course I do," he scolds, "We all go for it! Everybody does. I like extremes. I hate mediocrity."
Do you think extreme?
"I'm extreme to what I know, to the way I was brought up. But by the same token, I think I was very extreme when I was younger, in a religious sense. I used to get up in the morning and pray. I used to pray before I'd go to bed. I used to have evenings spent in church when other kids were out playing football and screwing girls...
"You talk to the other three in the group - they were the lads, they've all been done for being drunk and disorderly when they were 16, and stuff. That, to me, is normal. I can see that my life as a youngster was extreme. But then again most 27-year-olds don't do what I do either, aren't as extreme as I am now..."
The Mission are halfway into their biggest tour yet, have just released their first album 'Gods Own Medicine' on Mercury and are selling out the country's dancehalls, sprung floors and all.
One of them has already found time to discharge himself after one day of a recommended ten-day spell in hospital and, today, they're taking it easy through necessity. They've been watching the countryside roll past through the back windows of a van unashamedly decked out with dire sounds (Queen's 'Sheer Heart Attack' assaults me the one time I venture inside) and they're living out of bags.
Wayne admits The Mission has got little to do with real life.
"But I think the same with all music. Being in a group is ridiculous. You loose all perspective on things, locked away in a studio, or touring. And you're surrounded by people who want to take something from you. In the end they're just...closing in, really. I mean, there are times when I feel really lonely, pissed off, and there are times when I feel like crying..."
When was the last?
"Last night - because I was here on my own, in my room, and the night before we'd been playing in front of a thousand people, holding out their hands. . . Can I have a bangle? Can I have a kiss? Can I have a photograph? . . .
Wayne Hussey reckons there's no sure and proven way of remaining sane, though he reckons his experiences with the Sisters and Dead Or Alive have prepared him better than most for the hairier aspects of success. People grabbing him, and stuff.
So much, at present for Wayne: a pretty regular guy.
The Mission, live, thunder comfortably and I like it. Functional rock, yes, but exciting. Hussey may have done some time, but he never seems jaded.
'Gods Own Medicine' is a good album; not a classic, but songs like 'Sacrilege', 'Wasteland', and 'Let Sleeping Dogs Die' are memorable, go easy on the psuedomystical gothic breast-beating, and harbor a knowing love of pompt and pretension which Wayne sees as tongue in cheek and which a large proportion of his fans, he agrees, probably don't.
"Some good rock songs", the Sun said. That was its complete review of 'Gods Own Medicine'.
There are flashes of inspiration frequent enough to provide "a great gig" or a song you'll throw on the turntable again and possibly again. In the world of pop, The Mission are as far from revolutionary as Blanketey Blank is in the world of broadcasting. Some people think that's reason enough to write them off, though I can't see why. The Mission are - without wishing to sound as inconsequential as the unwittingly perceptive fellow at The Sun -a good group with the makings of a massive one and a custom-built star in Wayne Hussey, his charisma and his daunting voice.
"To me, it's a classic album, because it...means so much to me. But I know what you mean, in terms of making a classic, seminal album. It's like 'Marquee Moon' is a classic to me, 'Sergeant Pepper's', the first Velvets. . .
"It was never our intention to be considered seminal like that. We know that we're not innovative enough, for a start. I don't think we've got it in us to be innovative. What we are good at is dealing with cliches, and making them seem absurd and ridiculous... which is what, I think, we are."
Even so, he's at paints to point out that more or less every Mission song is an intensely personal song, for him. Which may be the case. . . there's certainly none of the lyrical claptrap I'd expected: rather, some credible if indulgent excursions into love, lust, jealousy and even (what some would have as) eroticism. Me I'll just hit the twentieth century and Chambers dictionary, thereof, pull a grubby scrap of paper from my underwear and ask, What does the word melodrama mean to you?
"Well, overly dramatic...taking things to an extreme."
Are the Mission melodramatic?
"Yeh," he grins.
Unfolding the scrap, I begin: a kind of romantic and sensational drama, crude, sentimental and conventional, with strict attention to poetic justice and happy endings. . .
"Let's have a look...yeah, that's alright!" Throaty laughter. "Well, God, yeah. . . I wish I'd thought of that one."
Chambers got there first, but he'll go for it, anyway. Isn't crude and sentimental a bit derogatory, though?
"I don't think so...yeah, I am a sentimental person. There are people I care deeply for, people I haven't seen for years, but still keep in touch with, still feel very sentimental about. We all do, though, if we're honest with ourselves. What else? Conventional? Yeah, I think we're pretty conventional."
Crude?
"Yeah, we can be crude. Try us!"
Musically, personally, or both?
"I think, um, we're musically crude in as much as we're pretty blatant. Personally crude...no, I don't think the lyrics are crude. And I don't think I'm a crude person."
Poetic justice? Is it better than real justice?
"Yeah. And I think The Mission are poetic justice. There's people who'll hate the fact tat we're successful. To me, that's poetic justice. It's just having a last laugh. I'm a vengeful person. If somebody crosses me, somebody I've put trust in, ten I'm vengeful."
It's perfectly OK to say The Mission are hots on for nowhere, though unless you're familiar with an LP called 'Presence' you probably won't. But if I thought The mission were meant to be important, I wouldn't enjoy them.
"I'm not cool to save my life, mate. I'm being reserved, tonight. It's like learning to play the game properly. You have to make mistakes along the way. I think I'm probably making one now, in being this cool."
By the time we get to the dressing room and Wayne is making up and getting a little more seriously drunk, he's kind of blowing his covera nd he laughs because he knows it.
"I know this is a stupid question, Robin, but...have you got any speed?"
Honestly, The Mission play a blinder, and I don't know where, but he must've got hold of some. I slip back to the point in our interview here he's feeling remorse, worried about the land speed record he's setting for infamy. Where I ask him if he relishes the idea of being a bad influence.
"No, because for better or worse, I'm more responsible than that. I hat ethe idea that a 14-year old kid can read an interview with me, where I'm glorifying, say, the use of drugs - let's not beat about the bush! - and think, yeah, well, he does that, so it must be good. Even though he looks like a zombie. . . "
But surely the best thing about great rock n' roll bands is that they're irresponsible? Wayne agrees, but reckons that they all must feel flashes of conscience, occasionally.
"You just caught me on a particularly pensive day," he decides wearily.
Wayne Hussey's apparently gratuitous shades are, in fact, bona fide spectacles.
"I've always felt special," he tells me confidentially, peering through them.
Doesn't everyone?
I thought they did and I've asked a few people this, and they don't. I've always felt that I could be special to . . . a lot of people. There are times when I'm onstage, I feel that I could play God. I feel like I could get that audience to do almost anything I want them to do.
"Not in the normal course of events, no. But that's the thing where you get carried away, and it's a reciprocal thing. The audience want you to play that figurehead.
"Actually," he mutters, belatedly stepping back from that pratfall of too-much honesty. "I'm more like that bastard son of god."
More like a regular bloke. Today Wayne Hussey has the weight of the world on his shoulders, and he's made me think that having some good rock songs must be a real trial sometimes. Back at the Manchester Ritz, he comes offstage completely disconsolate after playing a blinder, playing as close to God as you're going to get in a 1200-capacity Mecca.
Wayne Hussey invites me back to his hotel for a drink, but I decline. And then he goes back - alone - to his room, where he probably feels really lonely, pissed off, and close to crying again. It's justanother rainy, dull day in this rainy, dull town.
Subir
The Mission and The Wonder Stuff-
Miles and Wayne shoot it out SOUNDS 3 de marzo 1990 Mouths off
Are Wayne Hussey and Miles Hunt the best pop stars we've got or just the biggest gobs? Ann Scanlon listens to The Mission and Wonder Stuff mouthpieces sound off about fame, fortune, self-delusion and their forthcoming tour. Brothers in arms by Mary Scanlon
THE MISSION? I wouldn't jack myself off over one of their records!"
Not the greatest of compliments, much less a way of endearing yourself to the band concerned.
But it comes from the mouth of Miles Hunt, a sneer on his lip and a tongue full of bile.
What The Wonder Stuff singer didn't know, when he casually name-checked The Mission in one of his characteristic rants, was that two weeks later he'd bump into Wayne Hussey in the less than spacious surrounds of Camden Town's Dingwalls.
"I died on my feet that night," he remembers. "I walked into the bog, saw Wayne and thought, Ah. f***-! Then later this guy that I'd gone with introduced me to him and I was basically in the shit."
Unbeknown to Miles, though, Wayne had seen The Wonder Stuff a couple of months before and loved them. And, more to the point, privately agreed with what Miles had said.
"We get slagged off by loads of people," says Wayne, "but most of them are just laughable, But what Miles said actually hit home because he was going on about our record sleeves and, around the time of 'Children', the whole idea of The Mission had become career orientated. We started seeing the band as a corporate thing becoming part of the whole circus.
"So Miles was right but, in the meantime, we'd said, No more of this, we're gonna do what we wanna do and to actually see somebody else say it really hurt."
But Wayne, ever the gracious one, extended a hand of friendship to Miles and the Hussey mouth lapsed from its usual pout into a warm smile.
"And I thought, What a top geezer," continues Miles, continuing , You're a f***in' wanker and I wouldn't piss on one of your records or whatever. I would have ignored anyone who'd said that about me or basically given them a mouthful of abuse if they'd been introduced.
"But Wayne was a bigger man than me," he pauses and smiles. "Then."
The pair ended that particular night by drinking their way towards the early hours in Miles' room in a Sloane Square hotel. "That was one of the highlights of last year," enthuses Wayne "We just sat up all night, chatting and playing each other our new demos. Miles gave me a Joni Mitchell tape and I gave him a John Lennon CD."
NINE MONTHS later, Wayne and Miles are drinking Jack Daniel's and coke in London's Columbia Hotel and the bond between them has now extended into a genuine sense of camaraderie between the rest of The Mission and The Wonder Stuff.
After the Reading Festival (where they both took premier places on the final bill) The Mission invited The Wonder Stuff to play at their Fan Club convention and the latter returned the compliment by getting The Mission albeit in the lurex splendor of their glam alter ego, The Metal Gurus- to support them at one of their Christmas homecoming shows in Birmingham.
And once The Mission have taken their third LP, 'Carved In Sand', 'round the UK (officially kicking off in Liverpool this week) they'll be drafting in The Wonder Stuff's support for the European and American legs through April and May.
But unlike The Mission, who played their second ever gig on the Continent and have never had much of a problem with it, The Wonder Stuff haven't attempted e European tour since their infamous first one was aborted after just six dates 15 months ago.
Sick of trying to flog their three-month old debut LP ( The Eight Legged Groove Machine') to non-plussed audiences, The Wonder 5tuff offered a unanimous V-sign to the promoters, packed their bags and returned to London declaring, "We came back because Europe's not finished yet".
"We were just like little kids." shrugs Miles (who later eulogized the experience on '30 Years in The Bathroom'), "it was. F*** you and we wouldn't let anybody say, but if you do this then you can do that and then you can be happy. We just said, No, we're not happy now, we're going home and off we went, stamping our feet."
"And we always said that the only way we could go back to Europe would be supporting. Because I don't actually care whether anybody likes us, I can't really be bothered to win anybody over and that's what you've got to do when you're doing dubs. Whereas if you're supporting it's just like, Oh, well, it's not our gig."
Wayne, however, doesn't see The Wonder Stuff's support slot in quite the same way.
"Having to go on after the Stuffies every night will keep us on our bloody toes. We won't get complacent and lethargic."
"But I'm really excited about going on tour again. And the idea of doing it with the Stuffies-it', that sense of travelling family, and I can see there'll be some nights where they'll get up and play with us and we'll play with them just for the laugh of it."
Even Miles, not renowned for his love of the road, seems genuinely excited at the prospect of 30 gigs in a row.
"It will be like everything double fold, cos everyday we'll get to the gig and not only am I seeing my brother Russ, who works with us, and Ad (Booker, roadie) and everyone but this lot will be there, so you're gonna be in a good frame of mind."
WHILE THE Mission kept out of the public eye for most of '89, preferring a couple of benefit gigs and eight dates in the Scottish Highlands to their usual assaults- The Wonder Stuff's profile was bolstered by two UK tours (the latter a sell-out), three chart hits, a Top Five LP. 'Hup', and a successful first stint in the States.
By December, the band were recording new songs which - to their marketing men s horror- they were determined to release on a third LP in the Summer.
At the same time, however, their charismatic bassist Rob Jones (better known as The Bass Thing) announced that he'd had his fill of The Wonder Stuff and was off to New York.
"When Bob told us I thought, Yeah, t want you to go," says Miles, "because we'd reached the point where we didn't talk anymore. But once he told us he was leaving I had the best month I've had with Bob in two years, just me and him going out and getting drunk."
"Bob was brilliant," joins Wayne. "He was the first Stuffie I ever met and it was actually in this hotel, downstairs, r saw him sat in the corridor and I said, Oh, is that one of the Stuffies. I II go and talk to him. And he heard me and he said, F*** off! And I turned round and said, Perhaps I won't - that was my first experience of the Stuffies!"
"I think Bob's the kind of guy-tell me if I'm wrong here- who'd prefer to stay in bed most of the day."
Miles: "Indeed he would. And did. "Basically, Bob just found the whole thing incredibly boring and pointless. And I'd agree with him, but I like the old bicycle pump on the ego"
"He said to me just before he left, I bet you're jealous as f***, aren't you, Of me? And I said, How do you mean? And he goes, Well, I've got the guts to go and find something new. And, in my drunken stupor, I kind of agreed with him."
"Somebody once said to me that I can be like a little kid that's built something really impressive with wooden blocks. But whereas Bob had to kick his blocks over it's enough for me to know that I can."
If anything might have tempted Miles to kick his blocks over, too, it was the tedious task of teaching a new bassist their back catalogue. Consequently, The Wonder Stuff decided on a three month break.
"We lasted three weeks," laughs Miles. "I wanted to do all this big band jazz stuff and I knew there was a guy I could do it with, but I had no energy whatsoever. You can't do it on your own, you need the band."
The Wonder Stuff's third LP probably won't appear until autumn, but they'll have a single next month (not taken from 'Hup', but the previously unrecorded 'Circle Square') and have found a replacement bass thing in Paul Clifford, an old friend from the West Midlands who'll be with them for The Mission dates at least.
As for The Mission, their line-up will also be supplemented by a new face, that of former Red Lorry Yellow Lorry guitarist, Wolfie The decision, it seems, is a last second whim of Wayne's.
"Why?" he asks. "So I can run about more. It just struck me today that on every song we were rehearsing I was playing guitar and I just thought, This is no good, I can't climb up the PA!"
IMPORTANT AS their forthcoming tour is, one of Hussey and Hunt's main aims for 1990 is to organize an all-day, free concert in London this summer.
Provisionally titled Day Of Conscience (though, considering the reputations of those concerned, this may well degenerate into a Day Of Unconsciousness), the original idea was Inspired by Wonder Stuff guitarist Malcolm Treece's reminiscences of the Anti-Nazi League Rally in London in the summer of '78 featuring The Clash, X-Ray Spex, Steel Pulse and The Tom Robinson Band.
Wayne: "Male had seen that gig in the park and it's still a very vivid memory cos it was such a special event."
Miles: "It was free, it was chaotic, it made the Six 0 'Clock News and there was a load of great groups on"
Wayne: "And that's the basic idea behind the Day Of Conscience, but because the finances that you need are vast, we're gonna have to get some kind of sponsorship -- from where, we don't know yet."
"It's just an idea that the youth of Britain, I suppose, gets together and stops the traffic at Hyde Park and does have a voice and something to say. To a degree, the bands that are on are incidental but the most important aspect of it is that it's a fun day."
Miles and Wayne have already written to Greenpeace, Amnesty International and Friends Of The Earth and hope that these organizations and others like Child Line and CND- will lend their support. But they're adamant that it won't be anything like the late '8Os spate of charity rock events and, as Miles puts it, no one will be "getting up onstage and gobbing off about what people should be doing".
Miles: "What's important to me about the idea is, can you imagine in the current climate of politics in England and the sort of bands that are around, us setting this up? We don't want to be slapped on the back for it, but the people that follow The Mission and the people that follow us are going to make a very untidy view point of the Bayswater Road.
"I find that thoroughly exciting and, even if we don't end up playing, I want to be there. I want to be part of it. The idea is to reverse what all those charity things have set up over the past few years -just promoting the artists. We want to do something where that's not important."
Wayne: "It's to do something that's an occasion, that will be remembered in ten years time- like Malc remembered the Anti-Nazi Rally. And I know it's what Tony (Perrin, Mission manager) wants to achieve more than anything else this year."
In the meantime, The Mission are making sure that their fans enjoy the current tour by giving them the right to record the gigs.
"Initially the bootleg market will be flooded with Mission tapes," says Wayne, "but because people have their own that demand will eventually go, so it's a good way of combatting bootlegs.
"I got the idea from the Grateful Dead when I was over there at Christmas time. They're playing massive gigs and they've got this area sectioned off behind the mixing desk and people go in there with 24-track recorders and stuff and I think it's brilliant."
"I mean personally I hate listening to them, but I really resent the fact that people will go out and pay L2O for something that's really inferior quality. This way somebody can come to the gigs, go home with a tape in their pocket, and the voice they hear when they play it back going, Hussey you're a wanker - it's them!"
DESPITE THEIR close friendship, Miles' and Wayne's public images couldn't differ more. Whereas Miles is generally regarded as stroppy and gobby, contemptuous of his contemporaries and abusive to press and audience alike, Wayne is warm, open and sure to give great copy.
"I had a conversation, the other night actually," the latter begins, "with someone who was having a go at me for being far too honest in interviews. They were saying, You should be more mysterious, hold back more." "That's bollocks! It would be so pretentious of me to do that. It's a weird thing, but sometimes in interviews I'm more able to say things than I am to my closest mates. It's a way of getting something out of your system. That whole thing of mystique and trying to be something you're not I can't deal with it. People don't want bullshit, they want honesty."
"But you know, the only time I think about what I do is when I sit down in an interview situation. There's far too much intellectualisation goes on in music· Music is an instinctive thing, it's a language of feeling, that's all."
Three years ago, when The Mission first touched the Top 20 with 'Wasteland', Wayne admitted to thriving on adoration and is thus willing to lay his heart on the line to any journalist who comes along.
"I want people to like me. Yeah," he admits. "But this is me - I wouldn't talk to you any different to the way I'd talk to Miles at a table in a bar."
As for Miles, although he is equally keen to be adored, he wears his heart where God put it on the inside.
"I ain't gonna bare my soul to anyone cos at the end of the day you walk out of this room with the last f***in' word. That's why I'd never go to the lengths that Wayne goes too even if that person's a friend - cos I ain't gonna let anyone walk out with the last word."
So what's the worst thing that someone could say about you both?
Wayne: "They would have had to have met me, got drunk with me, then turned round and said that I'm a bastard or a horrible person."
Miles: 'I'd just think, F*** you, you've lost out. Oh, I'm totally impressed with myself I am. I know I'm weak and f*** up a lot but if you can't be in love with yourself, who can you love?"
Wayne: "Do you never have self doubt, though?"
Miles; "All the f***in' time. You'd deserve to be called a wanker if you didn't... What, you don't?"
Wayne: "All the time. Believe it or not I think I'm a really shy person and it takes either a lot of guts or a lot of alcohol to overcome that."
For all the stripped soul behind Wayne's dark shades, though, he is probably well aware of exactly which parts of himself he gives away·
"I'm not sure that I agree with you," he says. "I was given a questionnaire yesterday that asked, Skeletons in your closet? and Hick (Mission drummer) turned round and said, Hey, you bloody haven't got any in yours have you? It's almost true. There's nothing I could tell you that you probably don't already know about me."
"And basically I couldn't give a f* * * what people think, whether it's a journalist or a fan. I mean, yeah, I wanna be adored. I think we all do that's part of the reason we're doing it."
"Yeah," agrees Miles. "We've all got a huge ego problem."
Of course, where the ego goes paranoia often follows. As Wayne, who once resorted to cloak-and-dagger to go down the Camden Market, knows only too well.
"That was around the time of 'Severina' and 'Wasteland' wasn't it?" he asks. "Yeah. I was f***in' totally self-deluded. I was going out on the street and thinking that everyone was staring at me. But they weren't staring at me cos I was Wayne Hussey, they were staring at me cos I was walking around with nail varnish, a skirt and a beard!
"It's self-delusion and a large part of what we do is self-delusion.'
So has he overcome this paranoia. "Well, I've given up wearing skirts," he laughs. "Yeah, I have, without a shadow of a doubt. In the last year, which was a relatively quiet year for us, there's a lot of things I've realized about myself."
Miles, on the other hand, has simply relied on a cruel tongue to quell even the slightest notion of grandeur.
"I'd be completely abusive to anyone who came up and asked me to sign a record or the back of their jacket. I'd go, F*** off! Grow up! I'm nobody. Buy the record, listen to it that's all there is"
"Then one day I was completely vicious to this poor girl in Walsall, where I live, and Clint (from Pop Will Eat Itself) was with me and I walked away, pissed off, after it had all happened. And Clint said, You bastard. Imagine if you'd bumped into Joe Strummer when you Were 14. How insecure do you feel anyway when you're that age - you'd have stayed in for months! And he said, Why don't you just accept that people like you."
"It boils down to treating people the way you want to be treated yourself," tuts Wayne.
"I've got time for people now," qualifies Miles. "Before it wasn't cos I wanted to be cocky and tell people to f*** off, it's cos I didn't know what to do. I was thoroughly embarrassed.
"I'm better now, but sometimes I'll flatly deny being me cos I don't like the idea of a complete stranger coming up, already knowing something about you. I feel like I've got the downside of it, even though all they want to do is say hello."
Wayne: "You're far too suspicious."
Miles: "I am. I'll see the bad side of anything before the good side."
Wayne: "And I'm the opposite... There was a time, in Japan actually, where me and Mick were walking around and there were these school girls following us. After a while they muscled up the courage to come over, went up to Mick, asked him for his autograph, and totally ignored me They thouoht he was the guy out o' Bros!"
Miles (warming to the subject): "I was once walking up Corporation Street in Birmingham and I knew that the two girls behind were talking about me. At first I thought, Oh, God and then then I thought, I'll get a bit of attitude and be really nice."
"So this bird eventually grabbed my shoulder and went, Excuse me and I went (flicks hair back and flashes a pearly smile) Yes? And she goes, Where'd you get your boots from?"
THE MISSION's strong links with their fans have been well documented: their loyal Eskimo following, the 'Carved In Sand' party where they invited a dozen fans to listen to the finished tracks rather than a bunch of Phonogram execs and, of course, the fan club office where Mission devotees can ring up and tell the band their problems.
"It's not like Uncle Wayne's here to ,answer your questions "he corrects "It's like they ring up and go, Hi, Wayne, how s It going? Fine. And yourself? Yeah, yeah. What are you doing tonight? Oh, I'm off down the pub."
"Obviously there's some people who go, Wayne, I'm really depressed. Why are you depressed? I've got no friends. Well, get the f*** out and choose some.
"The original inspiration for 'Amelia' (a highly emotive song about child abuse) was actually born out of a letter from a fan who was being abused by her father. I mean, there are times when it's like, that's heavy shit and, in a way, just replying is patronizing. I can't give that girl any words of comfort because I've never been in that f***in' situation.
Basically it boils down to caring for other people whether you know them or whether you don't - that's the whole basis of The Mission."
Nevertheless, you can't imagine Miles - a man who made a career out of verbal abuse until he realized that "basically, I was being Gary Glitter" having a comforting chat with his fans.
Wayne: "Oh, he's a little darling, really."
Miles: "It's just my own personal brick wall."
Wayne: "I mean, Miles, how old are you, 23? And he's like the oldest person I know. I don't mean that in an offensive way, but he's one of the world's biggest cynics. It's funny, I'm 30 and I'm sat here talking to Miles and he's cynical about this and cynical about that and it's like, you can't really be that miserable all the lime. And be goes, Yeah, I am and I go F*** off. Why are you doing it?
"I remember that conversation we had in the studio and you were going, I hate making records, t hate going on tour, I hate being in a band, the only bit I like really is writing songs and rehearsing the new ones.
"But he's a little darling really. God bless him - actually Sheryl (Wayne's best friend of the past two years) said today that I say that more than anything else, and she hates it.
"It's actually a real term of endearment, it's like giving someone a cuddle, God bless you! But she probably hates it cos I only say it when I'm drunk."
Miles: "it's when you get rid of your inhibitions. It's like with my closest mates I'll go. I love you, mate, whereas you wouldn't really do it at half ten in the morning"
Wayne: "That's one of the thinqs I notice about you and I. When we first get together it's like. Alright. Miles, how are you? Yeah, I'm fine. But a couple of drinks later it's, I love you and I love you too!"
THREE AND four years down their respective lines, neither The Mission nor The Wonder Stuff have ever pretended to be anything more than a great pop band full of life and humor and with genuine personalities in their frontmen.
And whereas Wayne, like his hero Marc Bolan, has married the bluster of rock 'n' roll to the excessive glitz of a Hollywood star, Miles has relied on the bored nonchalance and garage know how of punk.
"I grew up with things like T Rex. Molt The Hoople and David Bowie," says Wayne, "and Miles was more with the punk stuff, But I suppose the spirit is the same and I think that's why we get on it's that sense of adventure and pioneering with what we're doing."
Indeed they've already proved a source of in inspiration to each other.
"There was only two bands that I saw last year." declares Wayne, "that I thought, F***, this is really good, and that was The Wonder Stuff and The Waterboys, They're very different, but there's an energy- and it's something I think we have when we're good and there's very few bands, big or little, that have it.
"And I just went home- after both shows actually - and wrote a song. It's called 'Divided We Fall' and it'll be the next single or the single after that. It doesn't sound anything like The Wonder Stuff - it was the first song in the set ('30 Years In The Bathroom') and I thought, yeah, I really like that."
"It started off as a drone and the way The Mission works it ended up being... more like a drone."
"The same with The Waterboys, I went home and wrote a song on a mandolin and that ended up being 'Paradise' on the album - utter garbage. It was just something that I wrote in half an hour and Sheryl was sat there laughing as I was going. "Paradise will shine like the moon..." and I thought, I'll keep it in if it's that funny."
A similar impromptu spirit lay behind The Metal Gurus- and, for those who missed their two live shows, there's a video and record due shortly.
"It's great," enthuses Wayne. "The next incarpation is gonna be punk classics and the one after that will be goth classics- we'll be alright there, I've written a few of them meself!!
But if both bands disappeared tomorrow what would Wayne and Miles like to think that The Mission and The Wonder Stuff had given their fans?
Wayne: "Maybe that same feeling of liberation that I felt when I first saw T Rex. But that again is self-importance, I dunno, just to touch people with your music, I suppose, it doesn't really matter to what degree. Just a bloody good night when they come and see us live."
"Much of the same," nods Miles. "The only thing I can add is the original title that we had for 'Hup' - 'A Little Information On How Not To Live Your , Life'.."
For now though, Wayne is confident that The Mission's tour with The Wonder Stuff will surpass even last year's fling in the Scottish Highlands.
"It was the perfect thing to do after finishing the album. All the fans had to get the same ferry as us so it has like a 3arty on the boat - this vast selection of Highland whiskey and everyone going, 'I'll have one of those, next! next! And he next minute everyone was throwing up over the side!
"It was the best tour we've done since the first, but before we did it people yore saying, Why the f*** are you doing hat? It's not a good career move. Bollocks to that!"
And amen to that.
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Mission Impossible
Star Hits Magazine
August, 1987
Published by: Pilot Communications Inc.
25 W. 39th Street
New York, NY 10018
Meet Wayne Hussey - a man who's been a Boy Scout, a Sister and has "lovely legs." Susan Colón decides to accept The Mission U.K.
Just who IS this person going on about his legs and being perfect? Wayne Hussey, of course, a guy who used to be a Mormon, then became a Sister, then a missionary, then a member of swirly goth-hippie group The Mission ... But what does this have to do with his legs? Maybe we should start at the beginning.
"I was a very sweet kid," sez Wayne. "I was a good kid! I wasn't evil at all!" Really? "That's what my mother says and that's what I think. I used to go to school, I didn't used to bunk off (cut class) very often," smiles Wayne, halo aglow. "I was never a bully-I was too small to be a bully. I never got bullied either."
Wayne's parents were (and are still) devout Mormons (just like the Osmonds!), so Wayne spent a lot of his childhood in church. In fact, one of his first public performances was when Wayne, still a sweet-faced child with very short hair, played his guitar for the congregation of The Yate Church Of Jesus Christ The Latter Day Saints!
And when he was not in church, little Wayne was NOT off smoking cigarettes behind the barn (so to speak). "I used to do good deeds, stuff like that. I was a Boy Scout for about a year! I was Patrol leader by the time I was twelve, and then by the time I was thirteen I left."
Even though the guitar was always hanging in a closet somewhere in Wayne's mind, his involvement in the church was so deep that he almost became (gasp! Hint of irony) a real Missionary!
"We'd always hoped Wayne would go on a mission," says Wayne's mom, Mrs. Wendy Hussey. "When he was about 19, a year after moving to Liverpool, he called and said he'd decided to give up music and go on a mission. We were delighted! My husband, who was working in Saudi Arabia, said he'd stay out there for another year to raise the money for him, and we bought all the books. Then he came home at Christmas and changed his mind!"
What Wayne had changed his mind to was not becoming a missionary (yet) but a Sister instead. You look surprised. Well, little joke-he actually became a part of a group called The Sisters Of Mercy.
The Sisters were a very dour goth-wretch band that for some reason always insisted upon being consumed in smoke during their concerts. They also inspired a fanatical devotion from a small cult which was mainly interested in The Sisters' singer, Andrew Eldritch.
"Andrew was their god, Andrew could do no wrong," remembers Wayne (who had also done some time in Dead Or Alive). "The thing that frightened me at first was that The Sisters incited that much devotion. It very much felt like an albatross (i.e. a very heavy weight no one in their right mind would want to lug around), this stigma."
Being choked by smoke and dragging albatrosses must have been too much for The Sisters, for after about five or six years they broke up. "We just got tired of playing with one another…didn't get on anymore and we weren't enjoying it," Wayne says, not looking too unhappy about it. "Rather than just carry on for the sake of it, we just called it quits."
Wayne, having quite a few years to go before retiring, grabbed fellow ex-Sister Craig Adams, got together with a bunch of groovies, and began The Mission. "Craig's my best friend in the world. Most times we don't even have to talk about things, we just look at each other because we know what the other's thinking. We decided to dispense with the drum machine mainly because drummers have a better sense of humor than drum machines. Mick Brown lives just around the corner from us in Leeds, so we asked him to play with us. We auditioned about 20 or 30 guitar players; Simon (Hinkler) we chose because he could speak more than one language ... plus he's got long hair, which is essential." Thus, The Mission was born!
Or should we say, The Mission U.K. was born. Why must they have the U.K. attached to their formerly streamlined name? "Because," sighs Wayne, "apparently in this great country of yours, you have ANOTHER Mission. I don't think they're any big deal," huffs Hussey, "but they have the rights to the name over here. It's like The Chameleons, there's The Chameleons U.K."
Or Wham! They used to have a "U.K." "It's not often that we get mentioned in the same breath as ‘Wham!'."
Uh oh. Ah have offended Wayne. "It doesn't bother me," he continues, referring to the "U.K." "At some point I reckon this ‘other' Mission will just disappear and we'll have the rights to the name. That's our plan-KI LL THEM OFF!"
So much for the man who used to be a Mormon and now calls himself a "goppie" (a cross between a gothic and a hippie). This weirdo mix was thrown into the cauldron along with howling, galloping guitars and, with candles lit in the studio, The Mission (U.K.) created "God's Own Medicine." It's a pretty mystical album with a rather heavy statement in the beginning; "I still believe in God;" Wayne intones, "but God no longer believes in me." Subtle! What can he mean?
"I think a lot of people take it too seriously, too literally," Wayne insists. "It's meant to be very tongue-in-cheek. We're very tongue-in-cheek about what we do. Seriously!"
Is Wayne also serious about the way he describes himself? Aside from having "lovely" legs and being "perfect," how does Wayne describe Wayne in one word? "God-like," he smiles broadly. "I like the fact that you can play god sometimes. AGAIN," he leaps, "that's NOT meant to be taken seriously!"
The funny thing is, you really don't mind Wayne's boasting. He is actually very self-effacing (referring to himself as a "piss-artist") and terribly sincere. And, as he puts it, "You shouldn't believe everything you hear and read."
Shouldn't believe everything I write either.
"And you shouldn't believe everything I say."
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THE MISSION UK Interview
Featured in Scotland Calling Issue 4 January 2000
Chats with James of Scotland Calling about The Mission. We would like to thank Wayne for taking time out from his lovely weather over in the west coast of the USA to take time to chat with us and let us all know what went on and how the reforming of the Mission came about. Hope everything goes great on their tour in October in the USA.
SC! :- Since the break up of the band in 1996, what sort of things have you been up to?
Wayne :- Well, I moved to Southern California with my wife & daughter, built a new studio which took me the best part of a year to put together and started doing remixes (GLJ, BowWowWow, Christian Death, The Sweet, Berlin, Missing Persons, A Flock of Seagulls, Cheap Trick, etc.), a little production (Gossamer), and a couple of things for film ('Shadow of Doubt' & 'Kitchen Privileges'). I've also contributed new recordings to various compilation and tribute albums - a new recording of '1969' for the "Black Bible", "After All" for 'Goth Oddity', a David Bowie tribute, "All I Want is You" for a forthcoming 'U2' tribute, and "Love Me Two Times" for a future 'Doors' tribute album. I've also written the occasional new tune, none of which have yet seen the light of day but hopefully soon, and I've also been working on an album of 'old Mish' faves for a kind of 'Mixed Up' album, that I'm hoping to have finished shortly and ready for the forthcoming autumn tour.
SC!:- Why do you feel the Mission had to go their own ways back in 1996?
Wayne :- It was time. In fact it had probably been time to do it for a few years, but circumstances beyond my control forced me to make at least one, and maybe two albums, that really should not have been made. That's not to say I don't like those albums, just that I'd rather not have made those albums under the circumstances that I found myself.
SC! :- Who made the suggestion about reforming for this forth-coming tour, was it yourself or Craig or a joint effort?
Wayne :- It was Craig who suggested the idea to me actually. Periodically he'd make the suggestion, usually whilst inebriated, and I'd dismiss it out of hand, but this time he was sober so I knew he was serious. And the idea of being part of a 'package tour' was, and is, far more appealing than going out on our own.
SC! :- Will the band be writing any new martial for the tour or just playing the classic Mission songs?
Wayne :- No, no new stuff, just classic 'Mish' songs that you all know and love (or not, as the case may be)...An outright and blatant exercise in nostalgia....without the hat!
SC! :- There is a big buzz over in the Uk about the band reforming, do you think you will bring the tour over to the UK or just wait and see how the US leg of it goes?
Wayne :- There are no plans to play in Britain or mainland Europe at this point. It's only just 3-4 years ago since we last played in Britain whilst it's almost 10 since we played here in the States. That's not to say that if we enjoy this little jaunt that we wouldn't consider doing more, and if there is a demand from Europe, then who knows?
SC! :- Are there any plans to release any of your back catalogues in the near future?
Wayne :- No, not as such, although I am working on some old 'mish' songs, as mentioned earlier. I reckon that most people who want the older stuff will already have it. I can't imagine that we've won many new fans in the last few years of our residing in the 'where are they now?' file!
SC! :- We notice that it is going to be a three bill tour, are Gene Loves Jezebel headlining the tour? How long do you think The Mission will play for?
Wayne :- It's supposed to be a package tour with no headline band as such, but the truth of the matter is that GLJ actually mean't more here in the States than we did so I'm more than happy for them to go on last every night. That's if they're OK with following us of course, 'cos we were always a far better live band than them....! The plan is for Mike to play 30-40 minutes, we will play for 50-60 minutes and the Jezebel's can play for as long as they want but I would hazard a guess at 60 -70 mins.
SC! :- How does it make you feel the demand for The Mission is still there?
Wayne :- I'm not sure it is. This tour will prove to be interesting in that respect. I know there is interest & activity on the net but I don't know how much of that kind of interest is from real people or from weirdo's who spend all their time on the computer 'cos they don't have a real life. Like me.
SC! :- There seems to be a lot of the New Wave/Goth/Rock bands of the 80's reforming, what did you think of the Cult reforming, and was this what made you think of reforming the Mission?
Wayne :- Indirectly, yes. Both Craig (Adams) and James (Stevenson-GLJ) were in the last incarnation of The Clut (intentional), and I think both were dissapointed not get a call when they heard that Ian & Billy were getting back together to play some shows. So they decided to do something about it. Hence the idea for this tour was hatched. As for bands reforming generally - not a big fan of the idea, I'm afraid. It always reeks of desperation to me, always seems a little bit tacky, like the individuals concerned have failed in their repective solo careers....so what do I do?
SC! :- What are the fans going to see from the new Reformed Mission?
Wayne :- Less hair and more stomach
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The Rock City - ‘A Slave To Black'
Entrevista a Wayne Hussey y Julianne Regan
The Rock City Review talks exclusively to Goth pioneers Wayne Hussey from The Mission, and All About Eve's Julianne Regan about the monster they created.
Written by Claire Dyer
Why do you think music and fashion is so closely related ?
J. I think because they're both very obvious ways of expression and even if you're dressed unfashionably you're making a kind of statement, you're kind of saying “Well I don't care”. I think especially in Britain its become a kind of tradition that people who do music are kind of expected to look a certain way, to look like they've made an effort. And I know that was out of fashion for a while because the grunge thing just completely wiped that away.
What do your clothes say about you ?
W. I think these days I'm far more practical than I used to be !
Is that through age ?
W. I don't know whether its age or whether your priorities shift. I mean 10 years ago it was a different picture, what the hell was I wearing, how the hell did I get away with that ? But it was of its time and I suppose to a degree when we were at our most popular here we were considered fashionable.
Did you ever consider yourself to be a goth ?
J. We were kind of ‘soft goth' we were very non-dark goth, we were quite colourful. If you see some of our videos there were lots of pre-Raphaelite take offs and things, its all very velvet. I suppose we were gothic in the proper sense of the word, you know like the Mary Shelley film Gothic ? We were that side of it rather than the dark side.
How did you first get into your style of dress ?
J. We really actually thought about it. It was when there was three of us all those years ago, and we just thought that we had to look a bit different from everybody else, and so we decided that we'd all wear white ! But then once you get on stage you can just fulfill your fantasies. I mean, we have made some dreadful fashion mistakes and sadly they are all documented !
At what age did you feel particularly comfortable in your appearance ?
J. Well, not for ages. I would say I was in my late 20's when I felt comfortable . I was kind of ‘rent-a-person'. Whatever gig was on I'd go appropriately dressed for that crowd.
Were you a geeky teenager ?
W. I was a geeky teenager. Going back to when I was at school, all the kids had Ben Sherman shirts and Doc. Martins and my mom would go down to the market and get copies. I wore glasses and I was small. You know the type ! That was me. When did I become comfortable ? I don't really know, I don't think I was ever really uncomfortable. Probably from about 20 onwards maybe. I may have looked like a twat, but I didn't particularly feel like one.
How is your appearance a reflection of yourself ?
J. In that it's a dead giveaway of how I'm feeling. Like what I'm wearing now is saying : ‘ I'm getting into a van and traveling to Nottingham'. I think I'm quite low key and I don't bother much and then when I do bother people go ‘God you look really great !' It depends on hoe busy you are. I used to be a lot more affected in my appearance, but not so much now.
Does music dictate fashion or fashion dictate music ?
J. I think I would go as far to say that music dictates fashion because if you think of the grunge thing, that was a complete back-lash, and that did come from the bands. And also, they do scout round the streets for fashion don't they months before, and go round the clubs. I think that the club scene is definitely a big influence. People have got there own thing going and designers go round the clubs and then go home and do what they do.
Do you mind it when people base heir appearance on the way you look, or have looked in the past ?
W. No not at all, it was funny. It was a weird thing because we never considered ourselves to be gothic, we never really aligned ourselves with that movement, but for some reason that was the majority of our audience.
J. They don't dress like me very much anymore because they don't really know what I dress like. But I found it quite flattering when it happened. It was weird though, because I never thought I had a ‘look'. When it gets taken a bit too far then that's a bit freaky. I don't mind with clothes because that's just temporary, but once I met this guy who had my face tattooed on his arm. I mean, O.K., if you're going to have your bike jacket done, but not your skin ! You want to say ‘God, what have you done ? You've mutilated yourself ! You might hate me in a few years !' But you have to say ‘Oh. It's lovely !' Because this guy's got to live with it.
What are your favourite clothes ?
J. I've got so many old things that I love. I am a slave to black, I like boots, I've got some lovely 16 hole docs with a zip so you don't have to lace them up. They look really big and ‘Fuck off !', but they're also really comfortable. They're definitely my favourite things, completely gorgeous things, and you can put them on and it doesn't matter what else you've got on, they look OK. They're like a kind of security blanket !
W. There's actually a couple of jackets that I've got. I went to a wedding a while back and I wore a suit for the first time in a long while and I really liked wearing it. I felt brilliant, it was smart. I wore a shirt, but I wouldn't wear a tie !
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Entrevista con Simon Hinkler
Primer guitarrista de The Mission 85-90
Had you taken part in the writing of Masque or in the beginning of some songs ?
No, that was all done after I left.
What did you think about Masque album ? Have you been shocked by the particular sound of this record ?
I remember writing a review of Masque for Rock World magazine. I thought it had a few nice moments, but mostly I didn't like it. I guess I was the wrong person to ask for an opinion, because I'd just quit the band. It takes more than a Mission record to shock me!
What is your opinion about the different members of the band in 1990 ?
On Masque? That album was just the 3 remaining original guys. After that… I guess Andy Cousin was the obvious choice to replace Craig. I think Mark Thwaite was trying to copy my style at first… it can't be easy to try and replace an original band member when the band had been so successful. He had my sympathy.
After the recording of the "Sand Session", did you have (personally) some plans for the future of The Mission ?
I was starting to write some soundtrack music and looking for film commissions. I hoped the band might mature a little more, tour a little less, and write some different music, but that didn't happen.
How do you analyze the first period of The Mission (1985-1990) from your point of view ?
1985 to 1987 was an outrageous non-stop party. The band had success amazingly quickly, and it was impossible for us to keep a perspective on what was really happening. It felt like we were doing something worthwhile, offering an alternative, as the music business was in a mess in those days (even worse now.) This was up until doing the second album, Children. During that recording session, and after that, it became clear that we were on the major label treadmill, and although we still had a hell of a good time, it felt like we were often just fulfilling obligations… TV appearances, radio, press interviews… our schedule was always full and very hectic. By 1990 I had just had enough of the bullshit. All I wanted to do was play guitar and have a really bloody good laugh.
What are the mission' songs you played an important part ?
Oh it varied from song. Almost always, Wayne would write a basic version and make a 4-track recording with drum machine, bass, and a couple of basic guitar parts. Then he'd bring it to the band and we'd all work on it in rehearsal. Change things around, add sections, add guitar parts etc. Then we'd try it in a live situation, and eventually record it. When we recorded, we'd often change bits and pieces again. So yes, it was always different with each song. I wrote and played everything on “Breath,” and all the guitars on “Tomorrow Never Knows” and “Heat.” I remember doing the eastern strings in Tower of Strength.
After time, what are your favourite songs from this period ?
“Beyond The Pale” is my favorite Mission song. It kind of sums up that “Mission sound.”
What are your important musical discoveries from the 90 ?
I discovered midi and sequencing and started working with samples. By 1993 I stopped making guitar music completely, and worked on electronic music with my band “Mindfeel.”
Do you listen to Aura ?
No.
What do you think about the come back of The Mission ?
It's difficult to know what to do with your life after being in a popular band. I don't blame anyone for going back to it after a period without it.
Do you want very much to come back to music ?
Yes! I have ideas for a new album, and I know the vibe I want to achieve, but just don't have the time to work on it. But I will do it. Maybe next year.
Actually, what is the music you listen to ?
Nothing really new… I have a 200 CD changer which I just leave on random. So you'll hear Iggy, followed by Ravi Shankar, then Motorhead, then Hawaiian slack key guitar, then some Mariachi, then Neil Young…. You get the idea. It's like a jukebox with somebody putting on your favourite music all the time.
Excuse me for the following question but everybody is wondering (in France): If Wayne would ask you, would you accept to come back in The Mission ? (The band need always a guitarist).
Well… I have to be honest. I look back to the old days very fondly, and miss a lot of things about the lifestyle. But there are also a lot of things I don't miss and wouldn't want to go back to. I have discovered that it is very important to me to be doing my own thing, and being in the Mission didn't sufficiently fulfill that need. I enjoyed playing a few songs with them in Seattle a couple of years ago, and would gladly accept any invitation to play the occasional one-off show, but Wayne knows as well as I do that it wouldn't work out on a full time basis, so it ain't gonna happen mate.
You said to me that you will come back to England. For music ?
More for the family, friends, pubs, and scenery actually. It probably won't happen for a few years.
Is your child proud to have a daddy-rock-n-roll star ?
He's only 7 months old, so I don't think he's quite able to grasp such a concept. I've been sitting him at the piano every day since he was born. He loves it, and is showing a real instinct for it. I just want to make music available to him. He can decide for himself if he wants to pursue it later in life.
Some free words to French fans ? (that's true, nobody has forgotten you here)
What can I say? I am very grateful for the support and affection that so many people have shown the band, and I'm flattered by all the kind words people still write to me after all these years. Love and thanks to all those good people, and viva la France!
By Jeremi, with the help of French Missionaries
February 2002
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RAW # SAND DANCE KIDS
Interview by Nancy Lanthier with John Paul Jones and Wayne Hussey
THE MISSION'S third album has rocketed into the national charts, with the first two singles, 'Butterfly On a Wheel' and 'Deliverance' introducing them to a wider, Pop Rock audience. Gone are the daze of drugs and Goth Rock; instead Wayne Hussey's latest persona is wracked with emotion and strung out on a love for his fellow man. All this and some anthemic sounds and social politics too. MAURA SUTTON invites them to tell RAW more over a spott of puff pastry...
"We're not complicated."
Wayne Hussey's impenetrable John Lennon shades perch on the end of the vocalist's nose like twin black holes. Seeing all, telling nothing. I she joking? I she serious? Behind the shades, Wayne Hussey's eyes may be jumping around like possessed ping pong balls, or they may be dozing. It is, after all, late at night and The Mission have spent yet another day chatting to an endless line of journalists and posing for a cavalcade of photographers.
Time for a nose bag? Wayne and extremely affable drummer Mick Brown snatch a bite in a London brasserie (or "brassiere" as they prefer to call it). The complexities of the menu are no problem for these worldly campaigners. Mick: "This is all bollocks, innit? I'm not 'aving anything with puff pastry. Not in RAW!" Wayne, having already dismissed my humble suggestion that The Mission are a complicated band, proceeds to question vigorously my next statement, that 'Carved in Sand' is the most traditional of the three Mission albums.
"Traditional? In what sense?"
Er...the tracks are shorter.., more traditional. "1 see it as the most natural record we've made. It was a lot of fun to make. We didn't feel any pressure. We didn't feel that we had to justify ourselves to anyone apart from ourselves and hence I think it was the most natural record we've made. It's been the most enjoyable to make, so in that respect I think it is the best."
It appears to be dealing with raw emotion on a much more basic level than previous Mission records.
"I think our stuff's always been like that," challenges Hussey. "It's just maybe that I'm getting better at articulating myself."
"There's another confidence on this album that maybe weren't on there before," concurs Mick philosophically. "We were able to say 'this is good enough' a lot quicker than we've ever done before, and be, like, really happy with it and get on with it. It was a really happy album to make. It reminds me of happy times."
"It's a more optimistic album, that's without a shadow of a doubt," states Wayne, appearing to sense my doubt.
Even with the opening track, 'Amelia' - a particularly moving, no-holds-barred account of horrific child abuse. That's hardly optimistic?
"It's a brill song!" defends the vocalist. "Even though it is a brutal, harrowing song and it disturbs people, I think it's still very up."
Why?
"Because of the fact that I could write it. Maybe I would have felt angry two years ago but not been able to write the song. It's got a very strong point to make - that's why it's the first track, side one."
Has it prompted a strong reaction?
"Yes. It's had an immense amount of feedback. Most of it's been good actually. The NME slagged me off for writing it, which I thought was really stupid. They said it was too brutal, too hamfisted."
"They said it was too clumsy," adds Mick. "They rang up the N.S.P.C.C. to try and get them to say it was a terrible idea to do the song, but they actually endorsed it, thought it was a good idea."
Wayne: "It was inspired... inspired is probably the wrong word actually... motivated by a fan of ours that was writing to me who had been abused by her father. The first time that she wrote to me it coincided with a couple of things that were on TV. It just made me angry and I felt angry enough and confident enough of my songwriting ability to put it in song. In my own mind there was never any doubt where it was gonna go on the record. It disturbs people and that's the desired effect 'cause when you disturb people you get them to recognize that maybe we're all capable of abuse, of varying degrees, and once you recognize that and acknowledge that, you're part way to preventing it."
The next single, after the top ten 'Butterfly On A Wheel ("it was nice to have a hit single and be on Top of The Pops," says Wayne) is the epic 'Deliverance'.
"That's a classic Mission anthem really. It was one of those that we started off playing live maybe a year ago and the fans immediately took to it. They love it."
And so, by all accounts, do the Americans, where 'Deliverance' was the first single from the album.
"It's actually doing really well. We've got a great 12-inch version, 'The Sorcerer's Mix'. I had this dream - this is true - a dream about a 12-inch of 'Deliverance. I woke up in the middle of the night and wrote it down. How I wanted to do it, what I was gonna sample from where, the whole format of the song and I went in that weekend and did it. It turned out really good."
'Carved In Sand' also contains some typically confusing Mission tirades. 'Belief', for example, with lots of customary Biblical references.
" 'Belief' is actually one of the first songs I wrote after the last album. The language of it is still in the same vein as earlier songs. I'm not really sure what that song's about 'cause I wrote it in three or two lines, meaning something in itself, and then put it all together. It's just poetic license really. Maybe it'll all come to me in two years time."
Do you approach lyric writing as if you were writing poetry?
"It varies. Sometimes I write the lyrics and it's just a set of lyrics that I suppose in its own way is poetry. I do see my lyrics as being quite poetic."
Would you consider writing a book of pure poetry?
"I'd like to, but the lyrics are written for songs basically."
Another new song that uses word power to dramatic effect is 'Hungry As The Hunters'. Again the lyrics are less than straightforward. Is it a song about drug abuse?
Hussey gasps. His eyebrows shoot up from behind the shades to meet the brim of his hat. "God! You're one of the few that's picked up on that, without a lyric sheet as well! It's a song about addiction, yeah. It's essentially about the heroin addiction of a friend of mine, but the 'she' in the lyrics could also be woman. Women can be addictive. There's a film I saw in America recently called War Of The Roses and it's frightening to see the disintegration of a relationship like that, because of obsession. It happens. Any kind of addiction or obsession can be harmful, not just drugs·"
Would you be pleased if one of your fans gave up drugs after hearing it?
Well, people have in the past. Actually..." (starts to giggle!) ..."one of the wierdest backhanded compliments we've received was after the first record. Somebody wrote to me and said, 'After hearing your record I gave up heroin and started doing speed!!' It was like, 'What!!?' 'God's Own Medicine' is definitely a speed-fuelled record. I'd just spent five weeks speeding when we were recording that, just wouldn't go to bed for days and days. We'd finish in the studio at two in the morning then Tim the producer would go to bed and he'd come down about eight in the morning and I'd still be there, sat in front of the fire, strumming my acoustic guitar writing new songs. "Again, it's something to look back on and it's easy to see in retrospect. It wasn't good for me. It's well documented that I was brought up as a Mormon, so in a way I've led a very restricted childhood. I mean, I didn't get drunk 'til I was 21, didn't smoke 'til I was 23. And I've made up for it! You have to go from one extreme to the other to find your own middle ground, your own balance."
Displaying the other, socially aware side of their natures, last May The Mission played Live benefits for the Lockerbie Air Disaster Fund and for the Hillsborough fund. Unbelievably, this led to criticism from other bands about "career moves" something Wayne describes as "way off the mark". For The Mission, the '80s was certainly a hard and brutal decade to live through.
"It was, but I think in the last couple of years there's definitely been a twist. A turn for the better. There's a new set of values, a new morality coming into play. It's good, there's a real feeling of hope and optimism on a general level and it's being reflected in the music of the time as well. It's a positive thing."
Is 'Carved In Sand' therefore an album of its time, a reflection of that hope?
"I've always felt we were of our time. Basically the records are just a document of us at that particular point in time, the way we're feeling. As I said before, it's all down to feeling. That's what you try to convey in the songs. It was a lovely summer!"
THE MISSION MANIFESTIO
Wayne Hussey: "We're all basically humanitarians. We deal with personal politics rather than general politics. We all have opinions. We all have a concern for what's going on. The four of us don't necessarily agree on politics, but we feel that we are caring people. We care for each other, we care what happens to people. If we can get that point across in what we do then that's great."
Mick Brown: "We compare and we see going on how well we operate and deal with each other. Not just us four, but the whole Mission family. They're my best mates. I love 'em and we care for each other. You have your good times and your bad times and people fuck up but you don't leave 'em alone. You help 'em. We've learnt how to do that. It takes a little effort and a bit of learning but it's nothing that people can't do."
Wayne" "The whole basis of the band right now is friendship and that's a really nice position to be in. It really boils down to treating people the way you wanna be treated yourself."
Subir
GRAFFITTI 1988
Interview by Nancy Lanthier with John Paul Jones and Wayne Hussey
When you think of the most influential and successful bands of all time, two names come to mind. Led Zeppelin and The Mission.
The death of John Bonham in 1979 put an end to Zeppelin's quest for eternal rockdom, but the surviving members still manage to dust themselves off for the occasional rock'n'roll endeavor. In fact, bassist and producer John Paul Jones has signaled an end to the years of comparison and rivalry between his band and Wayne Hussey's by producing The Mission's second platter, due for release any day now.
Surely the world will change in a way that'll make it different from what it was before.
Graffiti planned to speak to both mega-rocksters simultaneously during a conference call to New York, but Goth Guru Hussey was suddenly ushered to the airport to catch a plane back to London, England, where he was to appear on countless TV specials and attend all the major media events.
Meanwhile, John Paul, the quiet member of Zeppelin, was ready to speak to the world. The degree of artistry and craft, not to mention good-time R'n'R, involved in completing The Mission project has left the man feeling rejuvenated: He took on an impossible mission making the British band sound even better than they were before- and he feels he's succeeded. But it still came as a surprise to hear J,P. praise a band that has constantly challenged his own group in the ultimate Gods of Rock pursuit.
"The Mission," he declared unfalteringly, "outshine any other band in the world at the present time. No question."
Whenever the interview seemed to delve too much into Led Zeppelin's past, J.P. would explain, "This should be a Mission interview, you know." And who better to discuss the magnitude of the Mission than someone who's felt the awesome power of the music being made right there in the studio, before his very eyes? We'll join the conversation with John Paul Jones in progress.
Graffiti: Do you still feel as creative now as you did 15 years ago?
John Paul Jones: Certainly! More so, I'm more experienced; I know the conditions in which I like to work; I know what to choose as stimuli, and how not to get the blahs.
G: Do you listen to Led Zeppelin records very often?
J.P.: No, not at all. But I did take a listen to them just recently, funnily enough, having worked with The Mission, because they were very enthusiastic about certain things and they tend to have the tapes. They'd talk about what they liked and occasionally it was like-'All the things we wanted to ask Led Zeppelin and now we can? 'How did you do that?' 'What did you do to get that?' But it had nothing to do with making their music, which is entirely different.
G: Why did you decide to produce The Mission?
J.P: Somebody in the record company decided it'd be an excellent idea.
G: What does it take to be as good as Led Zeppelin?
J.P.: Dedication, love of music, hard work. Desire for professionalism, desire to have a lot of fun, something I think The Mission have got.
G: Did you feel like you were part of a phenomenon in Led Zeppelin?
J.P.: Not really-you're too busy. I mean, yes, certain things were surprising. The level of interest was surprising in the early days. But you're working, you're creating-you have good days and not so good days and life goes on, it's not so monumental-I mean obviously It you look lmm the stage and see 100,000 people in the audience...but apart from that...
G: Kids are still buying Zeppelin records and they'll likely be part of teenagers' lives for a long time to come.
J.P.: Yeah, it's great...What good taste they have!
G: Do The Mission have the talent to affect generations like that?
J.P.: yes, I would say that. I'd say they'll be very inspirational for a lot of musicians.
G: Have you made them sound much different from their previous projects?
J.P.: Not at all.
G: When people say music, or culture in general, isn't as good now as it was 15 years ago, what's your response?
JP: I say generally nothing has changed that much. People tend to remember all the good bits. There was as much dross then as there is now. And there always will be. You're just in the middle of it now. In 10 years' time, people will look back on the '8Os and say, 'Oh, my God, it was much better then.'
G: Who's really good these days?
J.P.: The Mission are really good. They outshine every other band (and so on).
G: What about all these rumors about pacts with the devil? I heard that you not agreeing to it had something to do with the break-up of the band.
J.P.: Led Zeppelin broke up because they lost their drummer, if you remember rightly. He died. When one member of a band dies, it can have an effect on the other members, I wouldn't worry your head about pacts with the devil.
G: It was just rumors?
J.P.: Rumors! It's utter bollocks, my dear.
When we finally caught up with Wayne Hussey in London, England, he was on the tail end of three days of incessant self-abuse and recreational witchcraft, The man was exhausted, and admitted to barely being able to string a few sentences together. The high powered world of rock stardom is not for the meek, The conversation was quick and to the point. "My brains are scrambled," said the almighty one. I had to act fast; he had another appointment in mere moments.
G: Wayne, the world awaits your response: What's important to you?
Wayne Hussey: Hanna, my baby, then the band.
G: What are you listening to these days?
W: The Mission,
G: Will the new record be major?.
W: I feel it should be if there's any justice, I mean, it's never a consideration when we're making a record, but I'd like to see it sell, I think it's going to do us an awful lot of good, put it that way. We'll sell a whole lot more records than we've done in the past.
G: Is it the best record there is?
W: No.
G: What would John Paul have to say about that?
W: He'd probably agree. I think he sees the potential of this band as vast and we've yet to fulfil that. It's very close to a perfect record, but not quite there. But I think our fans will think we made a wonderful, wonderful record.
G: John Paul says you're the number one band at the moment,
W: Yeah, I think he's right, Yeah. And we're only just beginning to realize what we can give,
G: Wayne, what makes the Mission so special?
W: It's the rapport between the band members. And the rapport between the audience, I don't know if
you've ever been to one of our shows, specifically here in Britain, but there's no other atmosphere like it-there's no other relationship like it. It's all very, very close, I mean, I walked home today and still felt the waves of affection and I want to give back as much Of it as possible. The audience is....it's just one big family, really.
Subir
Melody Maker - 23.06.1990
The Mission - Boston, Axis 24.05.1990
HIT AND MISH
After guitarist Simon Hinkler quit the band, cynics worldwide asked the question, is The Mission through ? Tonight, Wayne thumbed his nose at the doubters, proving, even with clipped wings, The Mission can still soar. It would be naive to assume that Simon`s absence leaves the band unaffected. Quite the contrary, the guitar bite is noticeably missing. Temporary replacement Wolfie (Red Lorry, Yellow Lorry) doesn`t even play most of Simon`s flashier licks. But what The Mission lack in prowess, they make up for in heart. Wayne has never sounded more anguished. "Mr. Well Adjusted" is once again fraught with angst, and we`re all the more thankful. As he wails, he looks like he`s about to cry. A lump fills my throat.
The Mission slash through "Amelia", and Wayne`s pain cuts through the packed club. He wears a rainbow coloured shirt and dark sunglasses. which he never removes. Slinging a 12-string, he could pass for runner-up in a Neil Young lookalike contest.
Most of the set is culled from the first three albums, and the mix is bass heavy, giving The Mission more of a gothic edge than usual. "Serpents Kiss" and "Child`s Play" start the crowd bouncing, while "Beyond The Pale" picks up the pace and "Butterfly On A Wheel" is tender and emotional. The lack of punchy guitar, however, takes some of the sting away from "Deliverance" and "Into The Blue".
A blushing blond girl, struggling to prevent being crushed against the front of the stage, hands Wayne a bouquet of purple flowers during "Tower Of Strength". He nods in appreciation.
Wayne plays the crowd as well as anyone. During "Sacrilege" he throws aside his instrument and ascends a monitor. He spreads his arms, beckoning to the masses that worship idly at his feet.
The highlight of the show is undoubtedly the encore, which begins with moody acoustic solo versions of "Stay With Me" and "Dancing Barefoot". Wayne begins "Like A Hurricane" alone, the band join in midsong and, together , they close with a rousing version of "Wasteland".
By the end of the show there`s not a dry eye in the house.
Subir
MELODY MAKER - October 25, 1986
(please note - corrections to be made shortly - was typing from a crummy xerox!
THE MISSION - A taste of Gods own medicine
Mat Smith takes his life in his hands and joins THEMISSION on the rampage in Germany. Is Wayne Hussey really Ian Astbury in disguise? What did happen at the death of Sisters of Mercy and why can't they talk about Andrew Eldritch? Rockism is alive and well and living in the new wild boys of rock. Mission impossible: Tom Sheehan
Wayne Hussey is distraught. Having managed, by hook or by crook (probably the latter), to secure not one but two ????? for his band, he's ???? at the Bonn Biskuithalle ????? and measly six cans of lager sitting shyly on the dressing room table.
"You drank all the rest at the sound-check yesterday," says Pete, the band's tour manager unsympathetically. The Mission state at each other with ?????? of horror and amusement - it's only ????? and they're not due onstage 'til two in the morning. "I wouldn't mind but I've been asleep most of the time I've been 'ere," Wayne moans.
Understandable really. Bonn is the liveliest city in Europe. The biggest laugh is watching "the New Avengers" dubbed in German. The ????? thank God, isolated pockets of resistance ?????? depressing norm, and tonight, lager and ??????. The Mission's dressing room will be ????? them.
A deal is struck. A couple ???????? almost audible sigh of relief ????????? and the room. Almost audible, that ???? the sound of Paul Rodger's voice belting ?????? Rock n' Roll Fantasy". It is. It really is. By 11 ????? has mysteriously vanished from the backstage toilet and at the witching hour the seal of approval is given and the immortal words are finally ????? above the din. "I think we're building up ????????? one. We're gonna be peaking just as we hit that stage."
"Yeah!" A thick Yorkshire accent echoes. "Its gonna be 'Allo, we're the Mission'...THUD! Forty minutes of applause."
The dole officer told Craig there was no future in music and would he please accept this nice job they'd found him as a park keeper - or else. Simon was busy fixing vacuum cleaners while Wayne was dipping elements in acid and cleaning kettles. And Mick? Well Mick had been sacked for crashing a fork lift truck into his site manager's office pinning the old bastard up against the wall along with his filing cabinets and beloved mahoghany desk. It couldn't go on like this, music was the only way to go.
The Mission were formed just 10 months ago yet in that time they've gotten galvanises and polarised opinions to such a degree that nary a week goes by without the Maker positie belting under a sackful of Mission missives declaring the band to be anything from the saviors of rock n' roll to a mindless bunch of Cults.
They're neither. From the outset the Mission made it clear that they were never going to trade on former glories however hard won they might have been. With two indie hits already under their big black hats the band signed to Polygram and now their current single "Stay With Me" is snaking up the charts and the spectre of Andrew Eldritch is at least beginning to fade away. The king is indeed dead - though not perhaps forgotten - but more of that later. What we want now is...
"Non-stop nobbing!" Mick Brown steps out of the toilet, stares at the Robert Palmer video flickering in the corner and repeats his favorite phrase. "Non-stop nobbing!" ???? are as wide as a hippos arse and twice ????? on his head he's wearing a green cap with ???? alerting the public to the fact that he has reached the level of "Space Cadet" - whatever that means. It's five o'clock. Again. And It was a good one. Again.
Like a gothic Faces, The Mission can be pissed as rats but they'll play like demons. They can be almost incapable of standing up yet they can still strut, sweat and sneer their way through a performance with an uncontrollable whiplash energy that is a pure joy to behold. They can juggle an initially uncertain crowd without any hammy tricks and they can, on their night, blow virtually anyone else away.
Back at the hotel Mick has calmed down and my room has been chosen as the target area for the bombing...... ???? interview.
"I don';t think ???? be any reverence with this band," Wayne ????, one eye on a wine bottle that's doing ???? and the other on the Palmer vid. "There was always that thing with the Sisters, but with the Mission I don't think there ever will be. Alright, we're precious about our songs but we don't mind trashing them - as everyone saw at Reading. That's not to say we don't care."
This is precisely why I like The Mission. They're cocky, self-assured and aware of the value of what they have. But precious? Never. A worthy asset when so many are becoming entrenched in the hollow romanticism of the indie ???? It's very easy to be indie - you just sit and ???? but poverty is boring and a betrayal of ???? instinct. The Mission are alternative but they're not isolationist.
"It annoys me that people think that just because you've signed to a major label you've lost your character," Wayne argues. "You haven't. You've just got the resources at your disposal to do things properly. Its like if you can sell out large gigs you might as well do them and present yourself properly. I hate playing in small places where people can spit at you, and.... touch you! I think we should be trying to educate the person who only buys one LP a year - the person that sees music as nothing more than something you can listen to in your car. If The Mission can create enough of an impression so that one LP that person buys is our LP then we will have provided a true alternative.
But to do so surely you'll have to use mainstream methods.
"Yes. But first and foremost we are entertainers anyway, " Mick interrupts. "We're not preachers on soapboxes. We all have our certain politics which we do by putting a little X in a certain box every now and then but we do not take that onstage with us."
"I think some of our fans will be worried when they see us on 'Wogan' or 'Razamatazz'," Wayne continues. "But I'm sure most of them will laugh at it like we laugh at it because it is highly amusing. It's like our video, we call it the hammer house of goth. There's a bit in it where a bat flies over me 'ead and you can see the string holding it as plain as daylight. There's another scene where Simon's sitting in a coffin playing a 12 string guitar. I mean think about it, it's fuckin' hilarious."
Its also laying yourself open to a lot of stink and misinterpretation.
"Yeah, but that doesn't bother us. Some of the reviews for our last European tour were terrible but we were still selling out the venues. It's the critics artistic license to give us a hammering, just as it's ours to release records that annoy them. Also I think that we can get away with it to a certain degree because we've got some much more character than most of the bands around today."
The fact that his statement contains so much more than a grain of truth will not stop The Mission being herded into the first available pen along with The Cult an dthe empty-headed plagiarism of Balaam. Won't stop them being seen as one third of a tripartite conspiracy intent on returning rock to the bad old days. They aren't, of course.
"The mere fact that Balaam and The Cult are friends of ours doesn't mean that we're part of any new movement - they're our friends, that's it. They share the same musical taste as us, that's all. In fact I get very hurt when I get letters saying we're like The Cult and that I should be in The Cult cos I wanna be Ian Astbury. I don't. I'd like to fuck Ian Astbury but I don't want to be him." Wayne grins.
"A lot of the bands around today, including the so-called alternative ones are really regressive. They try and emulate bands that have gone before. ????? we rip off, left and centre but ultimately ????? we do sounds like The Mission. ????? think we're a very clever band. We live ??? instincts. The thing that I liked about albums made in the seventies was that they were so much more complete. They contained a broad spectrum of ideas. These days with ands like the Banshees and the Bunnymen you get eight tracks fulfilling a very small criterea whereas if you look at an LP like "Led Zep 3 the spectrum it covers is vast."
Ah, Led Zep... there's a band the Mission are often compared with.
"Yeah we are. We don't like it or dislike it, we just say we like Zepplin. We know in our hearts we're not really like that. The fact that we like them is evident in our records, but there's no blatant element of plagiarism. I mean, they used to nick all the time anyway, didn't they?"
Why do people get embarrassed when they hear the word rock ? Is it for what it was in the first place or what it has become? If it's the former then surely the bands themselves are to blame. If it's the latter there's still no reason to suggest that The Mission haven't learned from history and thus aren't, for want of a less damning term, doomed to repeat it. No reason to suggest they'll fall into the same traps that befell their heroes. And yet....
"I remember one hotel we stayed at we were all throwing up on the balcony, I think it was someone's birthday, and every time one of us spewed this woman would come out with a big broom and slosh it all over the side screaming 'You kanot be zik on my balcony!' Mick thought he'd finished do he went and had a shower, put on his clean clothes, stepped out of his hotel room and threw up all over himself again!"
There was a genuine surprise in some quarters when yours truly returned relatively intact, if a little frayed, from a Euro jaunt with The Mission. They have managed to build a reputation for walking on the wild side.
"I think I've slowed down a lot actually," says Wayne. "I don't drink as much as I used to and I don't stay up so many nights on the trot. I mean I couldn't do this every bight - if I did I'd never get anything done.
"Believe it or not I do feel a responsibility to my fans. You have to be very careful what you say or how you say it. Yes we all do speed, loads of it in fact, but I'd never advocate it to anybody else. It's fun for all of us but I think we're quite responsible. We've been at it a long time and we all know our limits."
Come Wayne... how many people have said that and then not woken up the next morning?
"Loads probably, but I'm sure none of us would ever end up as casualties. We don't do smack and I know for a fact that no-one in this band would ever touch it. I've seen what that drug does and it isn't nice.
Mick: "I think that what'll happen to us, if anything, is that we won't get fucked up by the drugs, we'll get fucked up by the pressure." That may be true but ol' Wayne is no strange to TTT these days and he does seem to be taking the words of his hero Oscar Wilde a little bit seriously: 'There's only one thing worse than being talked about and that's not being talked about."
"I can't help it. I'm a sociable person. I go to parties. I get drunk and I fall down, but now its got to the point where people expect me to be like that all of the time. I get terribly lonely. I know it sounds pathetic but on the bus coming over I was almost in tears. All it seems is that there are people grabbing and taking bits of you all the time and no-one giving. I tend to wallow in self pity which is a very destructive thing to do. It's something that's only started to happen in the last couple of months.
"When I was in the Sisters I was under a different kind of pressure. Me and Craig were feeling the same pressure and we could talk to each other about it. Now we seem to have grown apart because he feels the same pressure that he always felt, but I'm feeling more. When we started The Mission I thought - "yeah, I can handle it'., now sometimes I'm not so sure. I know the realities and practicalities of the situation - I'm not running away from anything, but it doesn't make it any easier - it does your fucking 'ead in.
"I went through a funny time when we were doing the album" - "Gods Own Medicine", released by Polygram next month - "and for one reason and another I alienated myself from the rest of the group. I started going a bit nutty. I hadn't been home for months, the only person I'd spoken to outside of the group or its circle of friends or the people who work for it was me mum. In that sort of situation it gets really hard to keep any sort of perspective but you have to, otherwise you're finished.
"The only thing I worry about, and this is the God honest truth, is what me mother thinks. She's me favorite person in the world. She doesn't think much of what I've done but I know that I can phone her from anywhere in the world and we can talk about me aunts and uncles which, when your caught up in a world like this, is something you really need.
"There's a line in "Bloodbrother" that says 'Mother I wish I could tell you I love you.' I sent her a tape of that song along with some money so that she could go on holiday with a PS - 'I love you too.' It was heartbreaking. All this to me is temporary. It wasn't here a couple of years ago and it might not be here in a couple more but I know, God willing she'll always be there."
Do you object to the term 'rockist"?
"Do you object to the term 'wanker'?
I mean, what is 'rockist' apart from being a Paul Morley word? Loud guitars, long hair and a certain code of behavior I suspect, but by the same token where it begins and where it ends will be different in everybody's mind."
"Stop being serious," Wayne shouts from the toilet. "This isn't the bad news tour this is Spinal Tap."
"Oh, by the way I've just thrown up in your toilet bag."
The Mission don't deny their heroes for the sake of instant cred. Don't care about washing in public what some would deem decidedly dirty linen. But hang up the offending items for everyone's enjoyment or embarrassment.
"Robert Plant was gonna be on the LP, but he missed his bus," Mick laughs. "We like to jam with the people we like and it adds a different edge to the show. We got Speedy Keene up onstage at Reading without knowing about his past - we got letters from people thinking he was a guitar roadie - poor Speedie! To us he was just a great bloke who was full of hilarious stories from the Sixties about people like The Who and Hendrix and how he got lost in the corridors of the Albert Hall one day, walked through a door and found himself onstage with Led Zepplin."
"We're not ashamed of our heroes," Wayne continues. "Music is the greatest thing in our lives and if it wasn't for these people we wouldn't be here. As far as cover versions go they're not premeditated either. We just do 'em at rehearsals and if we fall into hysterics we do them onstage. The latest one we're doing is 'Tomorrow Never Knows'. In the song book it's only got one chord, but we added two more to it. That's how talented we are. We can fuck about with Beatles songs."
Fading, but not quite gone. What did you think of the Sisterhood album Wayne?
"I really thought it was an appalling record. I reviewed it for Sounds (apparently a music paper) and it dawned on me a couple of weeks later what he did it for. It was a business move more than anything else."
And explanation follows into the whys and wherefores of the Eldritch way of doing things. One day the truth about the Sisters split will come out and a lot of people who previously thought of Andy as some kind of latter day God may begin to realize why The Mission put him more on a par with the child catcher in the "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" movie. And if you think this feature has been short on the old Sisters anecdotes its because Wayne and Craig were recently forced to sign a contract forbidding them to talk about the old days. But scars still run deep.
"It's strange," Mick offers by way of explanation, "cos it still permeates the whole of the band. It's so hard to gain Craig's trust in anything for the simple fact that he was viciously fucked at the end of the Sisters - he's never gonna let that happen again. You can understand why he can't trust people anymore - even us. It must be impossible trying to live with what Eldritch has left him."
"What I find heartening thought," Wayne adds, raising the spirits a notch or two, "is the number of letters we get which end up by saying, by the way, who were the Sisters? I think The Mission are maybe less well known than the Sisters were but we're certainly more popular."
Quite so. And that has everything to do with what The Mission are rather than what they may try to be. The Mission are never so serious to pretend they have all or even any of the answers but at the same time they're not so empty-headed to believe that the music is all that matters.
At the start of this year I said that they were a good rock n' roll band. I take that back. They are of of the great rock n' roll bands.
Subir
Melody Maker December 23/30 1989
XMAS EXCESS
The Paper Moon
"THIS IS NOTHING. ONE TIME, WITH THE Sisters, we were on our way to Boston and we had a drinking competition on the way over-- Andy, Wayne, me and Gary Marx. We had the seat for four in the middle of the plane. We were on the Blue Label vodka. I'd had 15, how many'd you had Wayne?"
"Thirty-five..."
"The vodka was being kept by Commander Eldritch in the middle. Anyway, when we got there, I got another litre of vodka, Wayne had a bottle, Gary had a litre of Pornod and we got on the bus, this minibus and we're all drinking away. By the time we got to Boston, we'd all drunk a litre of spirits and Wayne was asleep on Gary Marx's lap. I was sitting at the front and I heard this huge BLEEEUGH! and Gary'd been sick all over Wayne's head. There was puke everywhere."
"That's the first time I wore a hat."
"And he's worn that hat ever since."
"And we can thank Gary for that, Gary's contribution to The Mission's image."
We raise our glasses in a toast to Gary Marx. To Gary! To Wayne! To 10 years of drink, drugs, puke and stetsons! To The Mission!
Hic. Anyone for a drink?
We've learned to fear these meetings. The first time we met Wayne, we were left stranded in Somerset for three days. Then, at Mark Price's wedding, we met Wayne, Simon and Mick and ended up sleeping on Victoria Station. Recently, by pure accident, we bumped into Mick in Leeds-- one of us was left there for two days, the other threw up all the way back to London.
It's two o'clock in the afternoon. This might sound terribly dramatic, but afternoons with The Mission have a habit of turning into nights with The Mission and nights into days. This could go on indefinitely, one long, interminable party. And if it ends, it's certain to end with a whimper. There's a danger, a very real danger, that the decade might pass without us knowing that we'll wake up somewhere (where?) confronted by carnival debris and an al en numeral (f"'! 1990!)
The Paper Moon seems a safe bet. It's changed since we started frequenting it more than a year ago. A year ago it catered for SE1's criminal fraternity and a few old soaks that'd managed to toiler up from Cardboard City. It really was the sort of place that filled you with a mixture of dread and anticipation. A Paper Moon joke: What's green and gets Vom drunk?; Someone elso s Giro.
Now it's different. A while ago it enjoyed a facelift. Suddenly it was all gleaming chrome, Carara marble, cocktails and a comprehensive vegetarian menu. It feels spacious, safe and civilized. Antiseptic, even. An ideal place, we think, to meet The Mission.
Beyond that there exists, we are told, a small but influential lobby at Phonogram Records who're intent on giving The Mission themselves a facelift. Rumour has it the Mish are going upmarket. This probably goes some way to explaining why a recent rendezvous we'd planned with the band was preceded by numerous phone calls from their press officer forbidding us to go anywhere near the hotel. When we did meet them, it was in a pub and under the strictest supervision.
"Obviously," remarked Wayne at the time, "someone, somewhere has got it into their heads we're a lethal combination."
Nice.
Well not today. Not on your nellie. We're with Phonogram on this one. There's no way you're gonna catch us lounging around in a pub all day, poncing about in some club and then back to a hotel. No way.
"I said,'Anyone want a drink?'"
Um... yeah, two pints of Tennants please.
"So that's three pints of Tennants,, two pints of cider, a bottle of Pils and a large Baileys."
Cheers. Were things always this bad?
"They were worse, they were far worse, says Craig. "Remember those parties you used to go to when you were about 15? A bottle of cider before, a bottle of cider there, then stagger upstairs and carve your name on the wardrobe."
Charming. But not the kind of thing you can get away with easily.
"Talking about that, says Mick, I remember one party when I were about 13 or 14. I remember me mate, it were round his house and he were madly in love with this girl called Shaz or Kaz, and he were leaning over the washing-up bowl that he d been sick in and he were writing her name in the bottom. I thought that were a lovely touch, that."
Wayne: "Nothing like that ever happened to me. I always used to be down the Mormon Church Hall and the dances always had a theme."
Mick: "What, like Enchantment Under The Sea?"
Craig: "Or God?"
Wayne: "No like a ball or a disco. No question of eyeing up girls, it wasn't like that. I didn't even get drunk till l was 21."
Poor Wayne. Still, he's making up far it now.
By four o'clock we're aware of an oncoming dementia, distant, threatening but not yet certain. Craig's grinning a lot, Mick's getting louder and more anecdotal, Wayne's quieter and more showily sober and Simon ruder and more arrogant (actually difficult for Simon who's pretty rude and arrogant anyway).
The Moon s looking nice lots of gold and silver hanging over a perfect cone of a Christmas tree, with a touch of red to complement its warm pine-green. A designer tree.
All going home for Christmas, them?
"Generally I go home," says Wayne, "but this year I'm going to California. I'm going to San Francisco to see The Grateful Dead."
"Don't know about this year," says Craig. "but last year we went to a castle in Scotland, we rented a castle for a few weeks. We haven't had a record out this year, so we can't afford it. We got there on Christmas Eve with the manager (Tony Perrin) and his girlfriend and Jez our roadie. We were woken up Christmas morning by Tony's girlfriend with champagne and tea and biscuits and she cooked the dinner and it was really great. But when it came to dinnertime at three o'clock she was so blathered she dropped most of the food on the floor."
So much for the management's contribution to the facelift.
"Tony was in bed with 'flu so it was a bit of a disaster, really."
"I'm going to Leeds" says Simon,"and Mick's not."
Very mysterious. Why is Mick not going to Leeds? Indeed why is Simon going? It's a dreadful place. Christmas in Leeds, it's like a birthday in Belsen. It's just not on.
"I remember one year," says Craig, "I went into town on Christmas Eve and I ended up in the taxi queue outside Leeds Station. You know the one... "
Much laughter. Wayne Simon, Mick and Craig all seem to share fond memories of that taxi-rank. We don't. Obviously time and distance do help. For us it was less than a month ago that, after an unforgettable evening with Mick, one Vayne, and two Parachute Men, we stood in one of those undignified ensemble that in Yorkshire pass for a queue. The man, the prototype man, directly front of us asked us for a cigarette. We, more out of pity than generosity, gave him two.
"that's a foony accent," he grunted.
Not at all, we're from London.
"London? Looky t'be alive. Where ya bin?"
A pub. Taxi!
"A poob? Looky t'be alive."
Really? TAXI! TAXI!!!
D'ya llke football?
Uh Chelsea maybe.
"Chelsea? Chelsea? Bloody looky t'be alive."
And so we leapt into a mercifully prompt cab, doubtless intended for our simian Cassandra. "Take us to the finest restaurant you know,' we demanded The cabbie turned his grizzly leer towards us, Berni Inn written all over it. "On second thoughts take us to the finest restaurant in town."
No, Leeds and that taxi-rank are not places we shall hurry back to. Mick loves that story. It makes him homesick.
"Well anyway," continues Craig "you know that taxi queue. I was there on Christmas Eve one year and I met these blokes who were gonna walk my way, towards me parents, and we got as far as the end of the road before we all fell asleep in a doorway. Never again."
"I stood in that f***ing queue one Christmas Eve," says Mick, "must've been around the same time. I stood in that queue for over an hour, nearly two hours. We got to the front of the queue, got n our taxi and we only had 10 bob on us. So the, driver said 'Right, where to?' and we said,'Ten bob's worth towards Bramley please'. He took us 15 yards and chucked us out. We had to walk home."
Christmas in Leeds.
"There was this other time..."
Spare us, Mick, spare us... !
"Another Christmas. I'd done in this club and fell asleep in the toilet. When I woke up they were vacuuming and stuff like that, all me mates had f**'ed off. So I went downstairs and there was a taxi outside with no one in, so I sat in the front passenger seat and fell asleep. At some point I must've woken up and thrown up on the driver's seat because next thing I know it's 'What the fookin 'ell are you doin' in......bleedin' 'ell, get out' and I turn round and go, 'Bramley please'."
So you threw up on a cab driver's seat.
"Yeah."
The cabdriver, no doubt tired after the long Christmas haul, sat in your vomit.
"Yeah."
And then you asked him to kindly drive you home please.
"yeah."
You're lucky to be alive. Soft Southern pooftahs like us would've, not a little reluctantly licked the seat clean before quickly calculating the Cabby's projected earnings for the evening and paying him in full. Either that or done a runner. Cleady what we lacked in Leeds was Mick's brazen Northern charm, his cheeky effrontery, his incorrigible but loveable sense of fun, his immense height, his 240 pounds of muscle and his generally thugglsh demeanour.
"There were puke everywhere," adds Mick with a wistful smile.
Wayne? Care to raise the tone a little?
Wayne looks up from a very tone-raising Baileys Irish Cream.
"I don't really remember much about past Christmases. When I was in Liverpool I used to hitch-hike home to Bristol. It was the only time I got fed properly."
Oh dear. Anyone for a drinkie?
What a surprise. To the bar.
One large Baileys and a pint of cider, two bottles of Pils, another pint of cider, a pint of lager and a large Jack Daniels please. Oh and, uh, something for us too.
The barmaid offers us a quizzical smile.
"Celebrating lads?"
(Jesus, it's almost Christmas, what's wrong with these people?)
Not really no. We re with a group and we're on a crazy rock' n' roll rollercoaster to oblivion.
"Oh. Would you like a tray?"
Wayne, Craig, Simon and Mick are admiring pictures of themselves, colour transparencies of them standing in Brighton Pavilion, black and whites of them running Beatles-like along Brighton beach and, of course, the usual plethora of mooch/Mish mug-shots. Taken by Kate Garner, former singer with Haysi Fantayzee and now photographer for The Tatler, they're all actually quite good, very classy. Mick looks rather aristocratic, Wayne very pretty, Simon vaguely demonic and Craig very young and not a little pugnacious. Craig looks worried.
We know what s happening. If he feels anything like us then that soft pulse in the head is turning to a dull thump. His chest's beginning to tighten. We talk about politics, bullshit about the Berlin Wall, about disasters, The Mission's Hillsboro' benefit and, oh God, is that the time?
It's seven o'clock and, other than Simon and Mick, everyone's expected elsewhere. Mick stands up and, for the briefest moment, looks a little queasy. Subliminal. A future flash.
Ho, ho, ho! Green Giant.
THE BIG WORLD
The cab's a big BMW. The London traffic's surprisingly swift and agile. Before we know it, we re out of the West End and into a glaring tunnel tiled like a urinal that swings from left to right and finally pitches us up violently somewhere near Shepherd's Bush.
Craig's wearing something very furry on his head. He seems to know where we're going -- Olaf Street, the Westway Studios, home to "Big World", that terrible programme that for some weird reason has included all of us, every one of us, on its guest list.
On the way through the gates we meet The Quireboys. Spike, their singer, asks us what we're doing. Working, we tell him. He gives us a long, hard look. "Lucky you're not on the piss."
Funny man.
Anyone for a drinkiepoo? To the bar.
"Uh, a pint of cider and 11 bottles of Pils please. Actually no, on second thoughts make that two pints of cider and 22 bottles of Pils. Save me coming back."
And people say Simon's mean. Cheers, Simon.
Craig's still looking worried.
"Ah, Craig worries about everything,' says Mick. 'He does all our worrying for us."
Mick looks like he's never worried about anything. He looks lucky. Lucky Mick, the type soldiers would slick close to in the trenches. Wayne seems self-contained and on top of it all. Simon looks, well, vaguely demonic. And Craig, Craig looks worried.
"I do worry, I worry about everything and I like to inform, people about it all. In a closed community like ours, it s like nothing else matters unless I get on the bus in the morning and go, 'There are 400 miles today and we're playing tonight. And there s hotels, I hate hotels."
You can't hate hotels. Hotels feel like... freedom.
"Well I hate them, but I like them too. I think they're run by the most irresponsible bunch of people."
We've been at this for five and a half hours. There are 22 bottles of Pils in front of us and we all know that in an hour the ashtray's gonna look like a bad day in Aberfan. And you consider yourselves a responsible bunch of people?
"Well, no, but I do think people should do what they say they're gonna do. I'm actually doing a bit of a study of hotels at the moment, about how we get treated differently to people who turn up in suits and BMWs. It s like the more hoity-toity the hotel the worse you get treated."
Don't you find that under those circumstances you begin to revel in the role of barbarian invaders. We know we do.
"Well," says Simon, "we get a bit snotty."
Craig: "Phone them up immediately if there's anything even slightly wrong with 0the room."
Mick: "Which is definitely an improvement because he used to phone me up. It were like four in the morning and it's like BRIII NG, BRIIING, and I'd go, 'What. What?' and he'd go, 'Me TV don't work, me f*'*ing trouser press is knackered.'"
Craig: "Well, you need your trouser press to heat your room. I complain about everything."
Wayne: "He does really well out of it too. He gets bottles of champagne and stuff.
Craig: "It's true. You say something's broken and they'll bring you a bottle of wine up. Then you say, "I'm not paying for the room service because the food was cold." You still eat it, but you refuse to pay for it, you don't have to pay for if."
Can't be that bad though. For every hotel porter that treats you like scum there are a thousand fans that treat you llke God.
"Nah."
Come on, there must be loads of boys asking for your autograph, loads of girls beating on your dressing-room door.
"No, not really," says Mick.
Come on.
"No, really, they come in the dressing room and it's like ZOOM straight to Wayne. Then it's the lead guitarist and by the time they get to me it's, Oooh dear, f"' that! I don't want anyone else's cast-offs."
Craig must've swapped his beaver cap for his feminist hat. He looks distinctly peeved by this turn in the conversation.
"It's a fallacy," he says, "a fallacy that just because you're in a group you've got loads of girls draped all over you."
Well, we were in Brighton a week ago with Wayne and there were loads of girls draped over him.
Craig is adamant. "Yeah, but they didn't want to sleep with him."
"Not necessarily, no," says Wayne.
Do you think they fantasize about you, Wayne?
"Yeah, I suppose they do. But I fantasize about them."
How far does that go, do you masturbate about them?
A full second's silence followed by a drunken guffaw.
Wayne: "Well, that was direct and to the point"
Mick: "On a good night we wank each other off."
Wayne: On good nights we have posh wanks."
What s a posh wank? Do you have a manicure beforehand?
Mick: "No, a posh wank's when you use a Durex."
Simon: "It s the only thing I ever use those things for. Girls, eh, who needs'em?"
Craig's looking really annoyed: "Well I don't know what you're all talking about, I m a happily married bloke. I don't understand all that stuff about girls on tour, I never thought it was worth the hassle. It's ridiculous, it's just not worth the shit you get for it."
What sort of shit do you get for it?
"You have to talk to 'em afterwards, don't you?" says Mick, much to Craig's consternation. Simon chips in with a song.
"What do you get when you fall in love/A smelly wet knob and a load of earache'. That's what I say."
Craig shakes his head and sighs, despairing of his lead guitarist. "I just don't know why girls do it."
Because they want to?
"But they'll regret it," says Wayne, "it's a horrible experience.
What, it's a horrible experience sleeping with one of you?
"No, no, I don't mean that," protests Wayne.
Mick butts in. "It is a horrible experience. We've got really small dicks. They're like dicks, but smaller."
"More drinks?" asks Simon. We'll get these.
Ah, okay. I'll have a large Jack Daniels please. I believe in mixing it."
So, that's, um, a large Jack Daniels, one pint of cider and 20 bottles of Pils. Oh, and a tone-raising Baileys Irish Cream for Wayne.
The barman eyes us with weary indifference. "Someone's birthday, lads?"
(It's almost Christmas. The festive f***ing season!) No, we're with a band and we've got a one-way ticket on the highway to Hell. And, er, could we have a tray please?
They're still talking about it. Well, everyone except Craig who's sunken into what looks like silent, brooding rage.
"There's the occasional time," says Wayne, "when you can be with someone all night and you don't actually bonk. You can be as intimate as with anyone you've ever met and that's wonderful, but there's this whole ritual that says you're supposed to bonk. And that's not always necessary."
"It's not always possible," says Mick.
"You know," interrupts Simon, "it's always when you come offstage. There's the drink you had before, the drinks you had during -- I get through a bottle of wine every gig--and then a load of drink afterwards and, by the time people come into the dressing-room, you're really pissed and your sliding-scale goes straight down. You'll have anything."
Craig turns furious eyes towards us: "I would just like to say that this part has nothing to do with me. I don't have anything to do with this shit at all. When this shit starts up, I leave."
Wayne turns to Craig. The curious and undeniably revolting mixture of cider, pils and Baileys makes him evermore diplomatic.
"It doesn't have to be shit though, Craig. All these kids want is to be close to the band and they think they have to sleep with you to be intimate, they think that's what bands are like. But really you can just sit up all night and talk and be just as intimate,"
"Yeah," says Mick, "and you stand a better chance of remembering their name afterwards."
Simon, being Simon, is not in the least bit diplomatic. Simon, being Simon and a Simon full of beer and Jack Daniels at that is a social bulldozer out of control and heading for Craig's feelings.
Simon roars, with laughter. "Ay, it's really funny when you can t remember their name. 'You can't even remember my name, can you. You can t, can you?' 'Well, love, I wouldn't exactly say that. I do have a name for you'."
Craig's bubbling ominously at Simon's vile parody of a recently despoiled Northern girl.
No, Simon, no. Not the names.
But he's determined to ploy his ace. He purses his lips for the P in pig.
"Look, look," interjects Wayne, " It's Siouxsie."
What? What? It is Siouxsie, and her blonde friend, Budgie. What are they doing here?
"That's why we came," says Wayne despondantly. "The Creatures are playing."
Oh great, when?
"About half an hour ago," says an alien voice.
We look up. The stars are out tonight. It's Tony from Big Country. Wayne excuses himself and wanders off with Tony to Siouxsie's table. A minute later, Simon and Mick spot some friends. And we're left with a black-faced Craig.
We beam at him.
He leans forward, evidently ready to impart some all important nugget of truth.
"If you ever, ever misquote me, I'll come round your house and stab you."
Clearly the mixture of cider, cider and cider doesn't bring out the statesmen in Craig. We suggest that maybe we should go into the fresh air, slap one another on the back and sing a few football songs. The Zen Cockney Mantra possibly--"'Ere we go 'ere we go, 'ere we go." Or should that fail, a long and loud rendition of "Come an' 'ave a go if you fink you're 'ard enough " addressed to the bouncers. This, we've found is guaranteed to inject some spirit of community into even the most extreme misanthrope.
Craig shakes his head. He just wants to go home to the wife.
As a last resort we suggest our own personal favorite -- "You're gonna get your f*ing 'ead kicked in."
No, it's hopeless. Craig is beyond consolation. He gets up to leave. He looks truly sick of it all.
Ho, ho, ha! Green Craig.
THE COLUMBIA HOTEL
"I've got nothing against you, I've got nothing against the Mish, I've seen you before. But no drinkie, you look like trouble."
We don't know how we got to The Columbia. We know we didn't walk because we couldn't have. So either we got a cab or Mick carried us. We turn to Mick. It must've been a cab.
We don t know who this man is. He's short, polite and absolutely determined that we leave immediately.
Mick, who is this man?
"I dunno. Wayne?"
"Nope. Simon?"
"He's a bastard, that's who he is."
Well for God s sake tell hin, tell him it's your perfect right as guests of this hotel to have a drink whenever you want one.
"Well, we would but we re not staying here. We only came for a drink."
"I say no drinkie. Leave now or I call the police."
There's a moment of doubt. Subliminal. Then bravely and decisively we stagger into the bar, prepared for anything.
"Bloody 'ell," says Mick. "I weren't prepared for this."
We stand stunned and swaying in the doorway. Before us, like in some futuristic Madame Tussaud's, are sifting and standing a gallery of... of, well, Eighties pop personalities. At the far table are The Primitives. Along from them Happy Mondays Over there, The Almighty. Here Mary Margaret O'Hara. In on corner Frazier Chorus. Okay, so maybe not a gallery in Tussauds. Maybe a couple of exhibits and half e cleaning staff, but it still looks a party to us.
We take pole position, nearest to the bar, nearest to the door, our two options a swift pint or a swift exit. We do our best to look as unlike trouble as possible.
Obviously our best just isn't good enough. The short man who threatened us with the law has closed the bar snd, unbeknown to us is serving everyone, everyone else that is, through a small and cunningly placed arch in the corridor.
"How long are we gonna sit here without a drink?" asks Simon.
"We're beginning to sober up," adds Mick.
Tracey Tracey appears.
"If you need a drink you can borrow my room-key," she offers.
Extraordinary. We thought she came from Leicester. Well, she does but her voice is perfectly free of any regional intonation. We all remark on how odd that is. What's that called, that way of talking?
"Poncey?" asks Simon.
No, no, REP. Received English Pronunciation.
Either way we toke Tracey's keys and, after pausing briefly to ponder on the devilish things we could do with them, take them to the bar and wave them at the short man.
"I say no drinkie, I mean no drinkie." We return Tracey's keys to Tracey and for a full half hour sit drinkless in despondent silence. We're almost looking forward to the promised arrival of the police when a red-faced fat person asks us if we'd like a drink. How kind.
"Well, give us 20 quid and Ill get the five of you one."
"Twenty quid? Twenty bloody quid?"
Do you wanno drink or not?"
We hand him a £20 note. We're not proud. Bastard.
"Our problem," says Wayne cheerfully, "is we lack self control."
It had occurred to us.
"Mind you", says Mick. "I do remember once we were on a plane, we were going to Germany to start a tour and I took it upon myself. I got up, grabbed everyone's attention and said, 'We're gonna be really busy this year, we're gonna have to account for each other, look after each other and want everybody to try their hardest to be serious.' I was drinking for four days after that."
Hic. Doesn't all this hard living business bugger up your performances? (it's about time we talked about the music).
"I think we got through it fine in the early days," says Wayne, "but I don't think I could go through it anymore. I think it s probably something to do with age but it's also to do with your sense of responsibility. I know I can t go on stage speeding out of my head and still cut it. We remember gigs now, which is something very new to us..."
Lucky you. We never have a f**ng' clue.
Do you like your reputation?
"What reputation?"
Your reputation as pissheads.., basically.
Wayne: "I don t see that we've got that reputation really, I don't see that we're any worse than anyone else. It was just something that people picked up on."
Odd that.
Simon: "I think it's down to the individual really. I mean, I get drunk every day, whether I'm with the band or not."
Wayne: "See, I don't. I get drunk maybe once a week."
Mick: "Big time. It lasts the week."
Ten minutes later, Mick's carrying Wayne to a homebound cab.
Ho, ho, ho! Green Wayne.
THE AVERARD HOTEL
We walk to The Averard. We definitely walk to The Averard. We know this because we moan all the way, all 150 hopeless, pain-racked yards. Beyond that we've done something only the very drunk can do. We'v poisoned ourselves into sobriety.
We're a so desperately hungry but haven't a penny between us. In one of those foolish moments of drunken altruism we gave everything to Wayne. For one fatal split-second it was us and Wayne against the world.
The world won. Everyone hates a drunk especially the world, and we're broke, all four of us. Our only hope's The Averard. If we con fool the concierge into giving us a room we will not only avoid the 20 mile trudge back to Croydon, we'll also stand a fair chance of abusing roam service.
"Room service?" grins Mick "You're joking, The Averard's bollacks."
What, you're coming too?
"We're staying there, you silly bastards."
Excellent.
Mick's room's smaller than we expected. There's barely enough room for us all to lie prostrate on the floor. But, pokey and dusty though it is, it does have the advantage of housing Mick s two large cans of Miller Lite. These we pass round, taking democratic mouthfuls.
"Food," we moan.
"No chance," says Simon.
We dial zero for the concierge. The phone rings for ages.
Ah, good evening.
"Good morning sir."
Would there be any possibility of you rustling up something delicious for us?
"No sir, we do not provide that facility."
We're staggered.
Oh come on mate, you must have some bread lying around somewhere.
"All right sir, I'll see what I can do."
Great. We're in Room 210.
"I'm afraid, sir you'll have to come down and collect it."
"Jesus Christ! You're a servent aren't you? Well serve.
We're possessed by Craig's righteous spirit. At least one of us is. The other's as dead as the phone and dribbling copiously on to Mick's bed sheets.
Ho, ho, ho! Green Stud.
LATE morninq hits us like a bomb, unexpected and unwanted. The phone's wailing and a hard winter sun explodes like magnesium. There's a tide of nausea followed by total disorientation.
Where the f*** are we?
The Averard. Oh no, no. Where's Mick and Simon, this can't be their room, Unless, unless of course in one fatal moment of drunken altruism it was us and them against the world and they got the bath.
We answer the phone. Mick.
"I'll meet you downstairs in five minutes- we'll get summat t'eat."
Five minutes? It's a good job we didn't take our clothes off.
Simon paid for the room. Mean Simon. He's downstairs with Mick.
This, of course, was nothing. We step into a cold December morning and the unkindest of lights. We're lucky to be alive.
Have a goffin' good Christmas.
IN THE MAKER'S BUMPER NEW YEAR ISSUE: THE MISSION PART II. Surprise surprise, The Studs actually sober up enough to, talk to Wayne about "Butterfly On A Wheel" the Mish's new single, and the band s plans for 1990.
Subir
Record Collector - No.174, Febrero 1994
Pat Gilbert quizzes Wayne Hussey about The Mission's New Greatest Hits Collection
Wayne Hussey is full of surprises. For a start, he's got no illusions as to where the Mission fit in. "We had an overblown sense of melodrama," the Goth king says from behind his shades. "It was great - pompous songs, big grand statements." Erm, Wayne? You alright? "We've never attempted to do anything that's innovative, we've just made music we like. We were the Goth Simple Minds, and they're the group I hate most of all! We've never thought, oh, we're creating a work of art. If you go out with that intention, you're going to go up your own arse." We're sitting in a quiet Hammersmith pub on the Monday before Christmas, and Wayne's definitely on form. Now married and living near Hereford, he exudes the quiet confidence of a man who's been to the edge and back, and survived to tell a few tales. "These days, I'm moderately, rather than excessively, wild," he smiles. "But there's a time and a place for everything." Luckily, Monday the 19th is not earmarked on the Hussey calender as a day of coke-snorting, hotel-smashing or any other rock'n'roll excess. In fact, the whole demeanor of the singer, who's currently working on a fifth Mission album with long-time drummer Mick Brown, is that of a man who's off duty or, at least, of someone who's opted to shift down a gear and drive in the bus lane for a while. Gone is his customary Goth garb and pasty complexion, to be replaced with casual clothes (black jeans, a huge blue zip-up duffle coat and a Stussy baseball cap) and a fresh, healthy glow. He looks more like a sound engineer who's just popped out for a pint than a mystical Rock God whose albums can expect to clock up worldwide sales of at least 250,000 copies. Even so, despite his banal appearance, the stardust never completely fades from Wayne's cheeks - which might help to explain the success of the Mission's seven-year career, which began in 1986 with the No. 1 in single, "Serpent's Kiss" . Certainly, many the songs on their new 'greatest hits' compilation, "Sum And Substance" , benefit from charisma and energy. And, as Wayne Hussey the barefooted, Romantically-attired persona, the singer can breathe life into simple cliches and give freshness to tired, anthemic chord changes. The Mission are Gothic pantomime for grown-ups (oh no, they're not!), offering doomy escapism via fine, ringing, guitar-laden rock. They demand nothing except that you enjoy yourself. So, on a rainy December day, I ask Wayne to talk us through the tracks on "Sum and Substance", which includes two newies, the rather spiffing "Kiss Me...'-era Cure pastiche "Sour Puss" , and the warm, indulgent "Afterglow" .
NEVER AGAIN (Single from "Masque" LP, 4/92)
Wayne Hussey: (Laughs loudly)
RECORD COLLECTOR: I'll just put "laughs", shall I?
WH: You could put that about every track was really disappointed that it didn't do better than it did. I thought it was really strong. I was really excited about the way that gone musically - for us, it was breaking ground, and different to a lot of what going on at the time. You like to think your audience goes with you, but they didn't with that one. They expect us to be these overblown, melodramatic, pompous, lipstick wearing, whining woosies. (Laughs) I know!
HANDS ACROSS THE OCEAN (Single, 11/90)
WH: It's actually one of my favourite songs to play live. It's got one of those great soaring choruses where the audience sing along. I like that. The chords are based around B, but the bass changes: A-flat bass, A bass, then A sus2 on guitar. Brilliant.
SHADES OF GREEN (Single from "Masque" LP, 11/92)
WH: It's a great song. It was originally to be the title of the last album, "Masque". it would have emphasised that particular which the record company don't like to happen. I thought "Masque" was better. Album titles are funny things, actually. They usually have a working title that becomes a title of a song. I liked the idea of hiding behind a mask; however, the album cover pictured me without my dark glasses for the first time.
RC: Why do you wear dark glasses?
WH.. 'Cos I'm short-sighted. Why don't I wear clear ones? 'Cos Im shy I guess. It's a form of self-preservation. I go to the cinema in these. The first date I went on with my wife, she took me to the cinema, and I wore these. It was 'The Flat-Liners'. My dog doesn't recognise me when I wear my dark glasses. My wife does, but she hates it. She says I've got lovely eyes.
LIKE A CHILD AGAIN (Single from 'Masque", 6/92)
WH. It's a love song about my wife.
INTO THE BLUE (Single from "Carved In The Sand', 2/90)
WH: It's about drugs. I got the phrase from a book by Danny Sugarman (the Doors' biographer) "Wonderland Avenue'. He got into heroin for a while, after Jim Morrison died. The phrase he used when he was jacking up on heroin was 'into the blue'. I kind of liked that, because there's a lot of songs called "Out Of The Blue', but none called 'Into The Blue'.
RC: Was it really inspired by hearing 'Wasteland" played backwards?
WH: Not really. How it came about was that I was in a cottage in Wales for a few weeks writing songs. I was writing a tune a day and demoing them on a four-track. This one day I got stuck because I didn't have a startingpoint. I was talking to our manager on the phone, and he said, why don't you do another 'Waste- land'? It was a case of doing this kind of bass line, this kind of verse, this kind of chorus. It was a bit of a formula - that whole album, 'Carved In The Sand", is a bit of a formula.
RC: Is that a good thing?
WH.. Well, it depends what you want in life.
RC: Erm, what do you want in life?
WH: (Thinks) I want a reasonable living from something I enjoy doing. But I don't enjoy sticking to a formula.
DELIVERANCE (Single from "Carved In The Sand', 2/90)
WH: Again it was written to a kind of formula. It's got a big, fuck-off chorus: "Give me, give me, give me. . .' What can it give me? 'Deliverance"! Lyrically it's nonsense. I'd just read the 'Mists Of Avalon', it's a great book, I was really into it. There was a lot of that on that album.
TOWER OF STRENGTH (Single from "Children", 2/88)
WH: I still think that was one of the best records of the '80s. When we were cutting this Greatest hits', I hadn't heard it for a while - it's not a thing you do at home, listen to your own records - and it was like so big and huge. Each stage of the song lifts it up a bit. It's really up, and I like that. A lot of music is really negative, it's easy to write songs that are negative. That's why I like Bob Marley, because all his stuff is up - it's great.
BUTTERFLY ON A WHEEL (Single from "Carved In The Sand', 1/90)
WH: Again ... I'm not very fond of "Carved In The Sand", you see, which was our biggest seller. By then the formula had reached its peak, we needed that big record to break us worldwide. I didn't have a lot of self-esteem at that period, 'cos of what we were doing in terms of the band. We were playing the game, we were doing everything that was expected of us. And we never started out with that intention - we got steam-rolled into it.
KINGDOM COME (Single from "Children', 11/88)
WH: It's a song about a blow job in the Arizona desert.
RC: What, actually in the desert itself
WH: Yeah.
RC: Not in a hotel in the desert?
WH: No, in the desert.
RC: You can't have a blow job in the desert!
WH: You can have one anywhere you like!
RC: Not in a desert, though, you'd get sunburnt!
WH: It was at night.
RC: (Consults press release) Well, it didn't say that here!
WH: Well, youd better put a footnote then!
BEYOND THE PALE (Single from "Children", 4/88)
WH: It's a song about oral sex! (Laughs) No, it's a song about oral masturbation. (Laughs even more) I still get a big kick out of playing that live. It's got that long meandering begin- ning. We've always done it better live. When we were compiling this record, I couldn't believe how much reverb was on it. There's more reverb on that record than all the other ones put together. We used to equate reverb with big, but it's simulated bigness, it's not really big.
SEVERINA (Single from 'God's Own Medicine', 3/87)
WH: It's named after the daughter of Nina Antonia (Johnny Thunders~'biographer, member of the Mogadons and occasional RC contributor, who shared a house with Hussey in the early '80s). It's gibberish, really - I'd read a bit of Aleister Crowley.
RC: He's just had a CD of his warblings out. Are you into that? Do you conjure up Beelzebub in your front room?
WH: I have a few times, actually.
RC: (Long pause) What does he look like?
WH: (Laughs) He looks like someone both you and I know.
RC: Who's that then? Andrew Eldritch?
WH.. (Laughs knowingly) It's a crap joke.
STAY WITH ME (First single on Mercury, 11/86)
WH: Again, we've always done it better live. I found the demo three or four years after it was released and it's better. It was just a little beatbox, a guitar and me singing.
RC: Do you often find that your demos have something the final versions don't.
WH: Well, the thing is, if I put a demo out it wouldn't have done what the single did, with the production. But quite often I prefer my songs stripped down, just me. The stuff I listen to at home is quite gentle. It's not rock'n'roll - more like Faure's "Requiem" which I was listening to on the way down here. Neil Young's acoustic stuff is great.
WASTELAND (Single from 'God's Own Medicine', 1/87)
WH: It's a punch-the-air type thing. The bass line is a direct rip-off of the Bunnymen.
RC: "Over The WaIl", with a bit of "Show Of Strength", I think.
WH: "Show Of Strength'? Which one's that? I'm not very good with song titles - even ours.
GARDEN OF DELIGHT (Second indie single, 7/86)
WH: I prefer the "God's Own Medicine" version of this with the string quartet. That was the crooning version. I quite like the idea of being a crooner in later life, doing Vegas. I've never thought of my voice as being a rock voice. I sing low, and to make the track sound good, it's really hard work. If you've got a voice that's high and thin, then you can have the track really loud, it makes it really exciting.
LIKE A HURRICANE (Neil Young cover, B-side of 'Garden Of Delight', 7/86)
WH: I'm a big fan of those choruses. I'm finding it harder myself to come up with those sort of things. I've found that I've almost exhausted the vocabulary for those sort of songs. There's these two or three-word choruses which you repeat and repeat and they're great.
SERPENT'S KISS (Debut indie single, 5/86)
WH: (Having just raved about the new Nirvana album, "In Utero") That was a radio friendly unit shifter! It was the biggest selling indie single of that year!
SOUR PUSS (Previously unreleased, 1993)
WH: It's a new song that we did after Craig left. It sounds like the Cure, it's playful. It's a song about relationships we had lying around and which we couldn't find a use for.
RC: It would make a good single.
WH: Hmm. There were certain people at Phonogram who wanted it as a single, but I'm not sure. It's a bit too much of a pastiche.
RC: Do you think the Mission essentially deal in pastiches?
WH: I think we have done - a lot more than we're given credit for, too. People have always taken us far too seriously. What we've done in the past has had a sense of humour, but not very obvious. I think you need to see us live once or twice to understand that humour. We've always been the sum of our parts and our influences.
AFTERGLOW (Previously-unreleased out-take from 'Masque', 1992)
WH: It's gonna be a classic Mission number. Our new version, which will be on the next album, is nine minutes long. It's like us trying to find our direction again.
"Sum And Substance" is released on Vertigo on 7th February 1994, preceded by a Youth remix single of 'Tower Of Strength". Subir
AURA - Notas de prensa
Three years ago Wayne Hussey was re-recording Mission hits...The only way forward was either to give up entirely or achieve a near-impossible career rejuvenation by writing The Mission's most satisfying album to date. Incredibly, Hussey has achieved the latter with an album that has the potential to reach a new generation of black-clad admirers. Aura oozes sleazy theatricality and citrus-like humour as the singer documents flamboyant sexual encounters in songs such as the anthemic (Slave to) Lust and Evangeline. The album stretches from Catalonian bars to the neon streets of Tokyo, freely indulging in the forbidden fruit of billowing, Banshee-esque guitars and guilt free pop choruses.
4 out of 5 Stars - Q Magazine (UK), Steve Malins
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Though The Mission reached the summit of their art with Carved in Sand in 1990, the band had since sunk into oblivion, after a fistful of uninspired albums and the successive departures of its original members. Returning to the sources of their gothic and lyrical rock, with Aura Wayne Hussey signals a long-awaited comeback album.
The electronic arrangements that corrupted the sound of the group in the 90's has been relegated to the background, and Aura takes over where Carved in Sand left us ten years earlier, restoring the power of the guitars and mystic hymns which made their success. The return of bass player Craig Adams, after an interlude with The Cult, only confirms this resurrection .
If the tones are familiar, this last decade seems to have provided Hussey with an unexpected but welcome second degree. As such, one can follow his love escapades around the world with a certain irony.
Aura opens with "Evangeline", the unstoppable single whose arpeggios are reminiscent of the grand hour of "Beyond The Pale" and "Deliverance". "Shine Like The Stars" and "Slave To Lust" are mid-tempo tracks in the vein of Children . "Mesmerized" is a haunting lament of which the band has the secret. "Lay Your Hand On Me" alternates between the calm and the storm. "Dragonfly" is catchy sugary which comes to awake "Butterfly On A Wheel". "Happy", a bit too joyful and naive, seems to fall back into the adolescent "Like A Child Again". If "To Die By Your Hand" is rather laborious, "Trophy" and "The Light That Pours From You" return to known territory. Hussey reuses Iggy Pop's famous "Night Clubbing" intro for a bittersweet piece about a grotesque moment. "Cocoon", typically Goth, allies arpeggios and a deep voice with a very Cure-like bass. "In Denial" concludes the album with suffering but in beauty.
With Aura , The Mission has returned to its trademark sound and in the process reawakened the sensations thought to be buried forever.
Fred Thom, Plume-Noir
"This is the album of the year to me. It spins you from passion to tenderness and makes you forget to breathe. It would be unfair to categorize it as it is music for people, made by people that love music". "...I think his (Wayne's) history is enough to make clear to anyone his huge musical fingerprint..."
Metal Hammer, Greece
"First and foremost, we can enjoy the comeback of the year: THE MISSION are not only back, but have come up with a new album - a piece of art of the kind that's very rarely made by bands these days."
Zillo Magazine, Germany
"And then, all of a sudden, THE MISSION came up with "AurA", an album that can not only compete against its best predecessors but also leaves behind everything the band did in the last ten years. Now, how many bands are capable of doing this after more than fifteen years in this business?"
Sonic Seducer Magazine, Germany
"The Mission are back. And "Aura" is pretty much what you could expect. Sentimental gloomy rock, very much like what they have produced previously. Many of the songs echoes from albums like "Children" and the earlier material. Come to think of it, it's really good! (...) The Mission are back. And there are some truly superior songs on 'Aura'. You should take a closer listen to the single Evangeline, (Slave to) Lust, Dragonfly and the exceptional Trophy/It Never Rains."
Anders Wiik, releasemagazine.net
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AurA Review - Jan 01
"The Eighties are just around the corner in time"
This British band makes a comeback after many years absent with "Aura", clinging to their own stile of two decades ago.
They're back after 6 years and they've done the best way possible: being themselves, without getting lost in technological messes or anything like that just to prove they are up to date with the modern world.
source: HERALDO DE ARAGON.- Spain
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AurA Review - Jan 01
"Come Back from the Grave"
They Knew better than anyone how to create the best dark songs. They are the main reference for new gothic bands. They will be masters for ever.
source: ROCK & TIPO. - Spain
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AurA Review - Dec 01
"Right On The Spot"
It was time for The Mission to do an album that met the standards of the albums they released during the eighties. This time they have achieved it.
source: LA VOZ DE ASTURIAS
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AurA Review - Dec 01
The Old School
The Mission became a dinosaur before to be a really big band. This is a risk if you make music with epic and dramatic vocation. Now with "Aura", the band claims its right not to be cornered at Arqueological Museums. Not Yet…
source: ROCK SOUND - Spain
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AurA Review - Feb 02
An album that reminds of the glory days of "Carved in Sand"
source: Platomania - Holland
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AurA Review - Feb 02
Suprisingly strong return to form - 4/5 stars
source: Gazet v Antwerpen - Belgium
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AurA Review - Feb 02
"Aura is a fantastic album. Wayne Hussey is on his best form. For the early fans, this will be a true feast of recognition. "Wayne is back"
8 out 10 score
source: Music Minded magazine - Holland
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TourA AurA Review - Mar 02
I knew something was amiss when the tube system wasw not overflowing with beautiful, black clad people. My worst fears were confirmed when I arrived at a jam-packed Astoria at 8.40pm - to find Wayne and the boys already on stage. What had I missed? After months on tour, I guess they wanted to get their last gig going. Ten minutes in and Wayne was bellowing out (Slave To) Lust. Reckon I'm gonna be a slave to timekeeping after this.
My spirits were soon raised by a can of Strongbow and Severina. Everyone was well behaved. Could it last? Thankfully, no. Hussey is no youngster but he's looking fine (forget the black mane - it's red, short and spiky these days) and he likes to leap around. Casting aside a white guitar almost as big as he is, he scaled the speakers during Trophy - prompting a mosh frenzy. Craig and Rob did a lot of shoe-staring but Wayne was unstoppable. What a man.
For two hours I revelled in a showcase of Aura (The Mission are back at their best after some ill-advised 90's forays) but the anthems were not neglected. Sacrilege and 1969 had even the oldest goths hopping about, with Butterfly On A Wheel offering a more tranquil moment. There were two encores - the first preceded by a strobe-tastic rendition of Daddy's Going To Heaven Now. Deliverance delivered us to the end of a memorable gig. Long live The Mission.
source: Leigh Mytton, BBC Ceefax
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TourA AurA Review - Jan 01
Ce concert restera certainement comme l'un des meilleurs jamais vus à Paris. L'objectif affiché : faire mieux que lors du concert précédent en qualité et en entrées (on comptait en novembre 2000 450 entrées payantes).
Pour mon plus grand bonheur, j'ai eu la chance de distribuer les flyers du site officiel (MWIS : www.themissionuk.com), ce qui m'a permis d'entrer plus tôt que le public dans la Loco. Avec beaucoup de bonheur, j'ai pu assister à une partie de la balance au cours de laquelle le groupe a joué The Garden of Delight, Raising Cain et In Denial, morceaux qui ne seront pas jouées lors du concert. Comme je bossais pendant la première partie, je n'ai rien à en dire. En revanche, une fois que la lumière s'est éteinte, vers 22h, applaudissements et frissons étaient au rendez-vous. Le rideau s'ouvre sur Tadeusz en guise d'introduction et le groupe s'installe. Défèrlement de guitare sous un tonnère d'applaudissements : Evangeline. Dieu que cette chanson est géniale !!! Les morceaux vont alors s'enchaîner sans fausses notes. Hands Across The Ocean, A Child Again (dans une version rock époustoufflante), Slave To Lust, Severina, Dragonfly, Amelia (version rock avec guitare électrique 12 cordes), Trophy / It Never Rains, Sea Of Love, Beyond The Pale.
C'est à peine si l'on peut distinguer les nouvelles chansons des anciennes classiques tellement la qualité est là. Wayne saute partout sur scène, rigole, l'ambiance est bonne enfant et n'entâme en rien une qualité musicale rare et impressionnante. Histoire que tout le monde reprenne son souffle, Swoon (Reprise) permet une régulation du système cardiaque avant un nouveau sprint : Shine Like The Stars (le prochain single), Wasteland (avec Marian) et, j'en frissonne encore, Daddy's Going To Heaven Now, avec un final exceptionnel de puissance et de maîtrise, doublé d'un jeu de lumière stroboscopique et psychédélique plus puissant qu'un trip d'ecstasy. Une petite pause, vraiment courte, s'impose, et le premier rappel repart sur les chapeaux de roue Butterfly On A Wheel, Never Let Me Down (tellement bien approprié par the Mission qu'on en oublie que c'est une reprise de Depeche Mode) et 1969. Nouvelle Pause. Et c'est reparti : Wake, Tower Of Strength et, pour finir, Deliverance. Ouf ! Nous sommes tous assommés. Le concert a duré deux heures. Wayne a joué avec son charisme, baptisé le public de bière et de flotte, et surtout, interprété les chansons qu'il a chanté. Je veux dire qu'il a fait l'acteur du début à la fin, rappelant au passage que The Mission a toujours été un groupe de scène. Craig, toujours discret n'a rien caché du plaisir énorme qu'il prenait sur sa basse. J'ai cru que Scott allait définitivement éclater sa batterie avant la fin mais elle a tenu bon ! Rob Holliday a assuré à la guitare, y compris sur les morceaux qu'il jouait seul (et ce pour faire taire certaines rumeurs). Tout ça pour dire que The Mission confirme sur scène l'excellence du nouvel Album (AurA). Les échos après le concert sont éloquents : génial, fabuleux, splendide!
source: Jeremi Sauvage
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TourA AurA Review - Mar 02
With another sold-out show The Mission triumphantly continue to clawback a fan base. They've ditched the epic '80s bombast of old and now sound more like an American garage outfit. New songs are tolerated, some are even celebrated and Like A Child Again gets a grungy makeover. Behind Wayne Hussey's sunglasses there's a glint in his eye, a new confidence inspired by the band's massive success in Germany - he's a proper rock star again and he loves it - 8 out of 10
source: Channel 4 Teletext (UK) |
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Anuncio de Wayne Hussey sobre Discos pirata / bootles
Publicado en Melody Maker en Febrero 1990
En las semanas que precedieron al Deliverance Tour en 1990, Wayne Hussey anunció que debido al gran número de grabaciones pirata (bootlegs) que se vendían a precios escandalosos, los asistentes a los conciertos podrían entrar con sus grabadoras a los conciertos a pesar de la desaprobación de la productora Phonogram.
Existen infinidad de discos pirata de The Mission (de los cuales incluimos varios en esta lista, pero seguro que faltan, si conoces alguno más no dudes en enviarlo a nuestro e-mail para incluirlo), junto con The Sisters of Mercy fueron los grupos más pirateados en los años 80 después de The Beatles
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Wayne Hussey interview with D-SIDE 2006
Q) How has a man named Jerry Lovelock become Wayne Hussey ? Where does this name come from at the beginning of the story ? How did you create this character ?
A) Well, contrary to popular belief my real name IS actually Jerry Wayne Hussey. That's the name on my birth certificate and in my passport. However, for some inexplicable reason my parents, from day one, called me Wayne rather than Jerry. Lovelock is actually my mother's maiden name and at times I've wanted or needed a pseudonym I have adopted the name Jerry Lovelock, even at one time recording under that name. And that's where I believe the myth grew up........ Being a Hussey, though, has been a good name to try and live up to........
Q) Some contradictions flow through the Internet about the name of the band : is there a direct to your childhood and the fact your parents wanted you to be a missionary, or is there more a link to the Mick Brown's favourite amplifiers trademark (“Mission”) ?
A) Both. When the band first started Mick and I were up very late one night at my house in Leeds. We were doing a lot of speed at the time and this particular night, with the cats running up the hesian wall, we were trying to think of a name for our new band. Obviously, in that state of mind, we were coming up with some awful names but one name that was suggested that night, and I can't remember whether it was Mick or myself that actually first said it, was The Mission. I had a pair of Mission speakers that we were listening to music on that evening and we were writing all the names that we were coming up with in a missionary journal that my parents had given me a few years earlier when I had, indeed, considered going on a mission for the Mormon church. It was just one of those strange moments of synchronicity. Nothing was decided that night but when Mick and I came back to the subject a day or two later, after we had slept, the only name that made any sense was, thankfully, The Mission.
Q) Some people say that the song “Sour Puss” made for “Sum And Substance” is dedicated to Craig and that it's a song caused by his previous departure from The Mission, in the nineties. Is it true, and how would you express today the feeling you have for the person of Craig ?
A) No, it's not true. That song was written about somebody else. But that is something that a lot of people have said to me over the years and I guess, listening to the words, it's easy to see why. I mean, Craig can be a bit of a sourpuss........and most of the Mission audience have, at one time or another, witnessed that in him. But I don't really have any feelings towards Craig anymore. We went through a lot together and only he and I will know what has passed between us. I was angry with him for a while after he left the band in South America in 2002 but that passed a long time ago and if it hadn't have been for that incident I would never have met Richie who, I think, is a superior bass player to Craig anyway. No, maybe that's unfair, they're both great but have different qualities. Richie is more musical than Craig and is certainly a lot easier to be with. I don't miss Craig, and I'm sure he doesn't miss me, and I will never work with him again on a permanent basis. But, all that aside, I wish him no ill.
Q) Another mystery for me is this famous joking band called Punk Floyd. Was it a project that carried you in mind to come to the idea to come back with The Mission in 1999 ? Had you recorded some things with this project ?
A) Again, Punk Floyd is one of those flippant remarks that I made that seems to have passed into Mission folklore......We did The Metal Guru's glam rock thing back in 1990, which was an awful lot of fun, and once, some time after, when I was asked if we had any plans to resurrect the idea I replied something along the lines of “No, but we're gonna form a punk rock cover band and call ourselves Punk Floyd.” It was never a serious consideration and we never recorded anything with that in mind. Although it's not a bad ideA.......mmmmmm.........
Q) [Another thing I cannot miss even if it's a cliché, sorry… so…] The Sisters Of Mercy still are alive on stage. Have you recently heard the band live, and how do you understand the way Andrew Eldritch pursues this adventure without publishing nothing new officially?
A) The last time I saw Andrew and SOM was at Mera Luna in 2001, I think it was, when we played on the same bill together. I saw a little, through all the smoke, of their show from side stage but drinking in the bar seemed like a far more fun proposition so I left after about 1 1/2 songs........I did see Andrew afterwards and that meeting is memorable if only because of the verbal exchange between Andrew and myself. Andrew: ‘We're just shadows of our former selves”, to which I replied “Speak for your soddin' self”. I think it's remarkable that Andrew has managed to maintain his mystique and the draw of SOM as a live band. Maybe that's the secret - don't release any new records. Certainly, if you don't release any new records then you can only be judged by what you have done in the past. As a live band I have heard nothing but bad reports from the last couple of tours, but then again, I don't think anyone who knows my past is going to say to me that they were brilliant. However, these same people who vow every time to never go and see them again are always the first in line for tickets when a new tour is announced. Good luck to Andrew. The music scene these days is bereft of characters like him and a less amusing landscape for it.
Q) Since D-Side has interviewed yourself, you've released with The Mission several things : firstly, this famous compilation called “Aural Delight”. For you, is it a thing that has obeyed to the same process that “Grains Of Sand” ?
A) Pretty much. Although expediated by slightly different circumstances. Whilst ‘Aura' was released pretty much everywhere around the world, the singles from that album were not and so there were a lot of Mission people that couldn't get hold of them. So, to give them a chance we put all the ‘b' sides and extra tracks from the singles onto one album. And called it “Aural Delight'. But, largely through the ineptiude our record company at the time, that album barely saw the light of day either.
Q) Listening to the single “Breathe me in”, which came before the “Lighting the Candles” DVD, I had the feeling that you wanted to capture a very natural and typical Mish sound, by yourself alone in studio. Have you thought at a moment to give a more organic feeling to the sound (I mean by some real drums, for example) ?
A) OK, I feel I am forever having to justify the release of this song. Let me make it clear that ‘Breathe Me In' was written for a specific purpose with specific perimeters. I was asked by a young Spanish film director, David Iglesias, if he could use ‘Deliverance' as the song that is played over the end credits of his film. Whilst I didn't object I did suggest that I could and would write a new song for him and his film and he jumped at that suggestion. He sent me an animatic of the film, which I watched, and then he gave me a rough tempo, a rough timing, and an idea of the dynamic that he needed and wanted for the song. He wanted it to be ‘classic' Mission. So, with all those criterions I wrote and recorded ‘Breathe Me In'. I was in Brazil at home at the time and there just wasn't the budget to fly the band over to record the song so that is why I did it on my own. The reason we released it as a limited edition single to precede the DVD release was because I felt it would be good to have something to take to radio and maybe get a play or two to help promote the DVD. We did consider using the ‘live' version of ‘Butterfly on a wheel' as the leading track but it was suggested to me that radio doesn't play ‘live' tracks......So, the film not yet having been released, I had ‘Breathe Me In' waiting there to be used. I never intended for it to be included on the next Mission album and I saw this as a good opportunity to release it. It was never designed to be a ‘hit', hence the very limited release which all sold very quickly. And it did it's job. It raised our profile a little at a time it was needed and we did get some radio airplay on the song.
Q) There's been a lot of personal involvement from yourself on the live DVD called “Lighting The Candles”. Did you feel today that this effort will perhaps be done again in the future for some formats like this, or was it too tiring ?
A) In the words of the song.......'Never again'........ This project took over a year out of my life and, whilst I am proud of the end result, it's certainly not something I would want to do again in a hurry. I think of myself as a creative person and I would always prefer to work on something new rather than going over old ground. And with the LTC DVD, it was all old stuff. I don't mind dedicating a few weeks to looking at old stuff, but a year! You've got to remember that whilst i was working on the DVD I couldn't work on anything else...... And that was frustrating to me.......
Q ) The previous labels of The Mission have released this year some various retrospectives : the DVD “Crusade / Waves Upon the Sand” and the compilation “The Phonogram Years”. How do you explain this sudden wake-up of you previous record companies ?
A) Well, it's only really Universal. They released both items. I think it really came about because they employed someone new, Julian Fernandez, in the capacity of looking after their back catalogue who was familiar with us and our glorious past and thought that there may be some mileage there. Julian approached me and I gave the project my blessing as well as assisting with choosing the tracks and writing sleeve notes. It's a good release, I think, and every Mission home should have won. For me, the anthology is a better compilation than ‘Sum & Substance', which was our original greatest hits released in 1993. Julian has also intimated to me that he's considering another Mission release for next year, maybe a re-mastering of the original Phonogram albums, but we'll see.......
Q) Have you kept some contacts with the previous musicians of The Mission, I mean Rob Holliday & Scott Garrett ?
A) Sporadically. I've never really fallen out with any of the former members of the band and I have been in touch with all of them at some point or another over the last couple of years. But we don't send christmas cards to each other.......
Q) You seemed to be so happy with Rob Holliday's guitars… How do you personally like the return of Mark Thwaite in The Mission nowadays ?
A) Yeah, I really like the way Rob plays guitar. The way he plays is an extension of his personality. I guess it's the same for everyone but with Rob there is a real ‘edge' to him and that comes across in the way he plays, and I liked the quality he brought to The Mission. Also, because he is a singer himself I think he listens to the song a little more than your average guitar player and plays more with the vocal. Having Mark back in the fold is great. The only downside to it is that I had to lose Rob for it to happen. Mark is very positive, very enthusiastic, and very willing to contribute. The fact he is also a very good guitar player is a bonus. Mark is also very used to me and my methods of working. We haven't always seen eye to eye and sometimes there has been tension between us in the studio but I like to think that by my pushing him I get the best out of him. It's good to have him back as he does take some of the musical weight off my shoulders.......
Q) How do you appreciate on an artistic point of view the profile of the band nowadays ? Have you not the feeling that it's perhaps one of the hardest/rocky line-ups that you've ever had ?
A) Well, we've yet to record with this particular line-up but I've always felt that the live show was, and is, a different beast to what actually works in the studio. I think The Mission as a live band has always been harder and rockier than we've been in the studio. The two things are very separate in my mind. I think Rob brought an edge to it that maybe wasn't there before and since he's gone it's remained. Maybe that is his legacy as far as The Mission are concerned. Mark is always trying to push me in a harder direction but I'm a crooner at heart and would always prefer to sing rather than shout. I prefer to be seduced rather than raped, although on the odd occasion...........
Q) Have you finished to compose the new album, and have you a working title for it ?
A) We have about 12-15 songs almost finished in the writing, aside from the lyrics, and we're looking to record between 16-18 songs. Some of these won't make it onto the album but we will need extra tracks for single ‘b' sides so it's always better to record more than we need. The working title for the album is “Moist” but that will more than likely change over the course of recording.
Q) Is the writing of the new songs a thing coming from your own and principal inspiration, or is it a this time a more collective effort ?
A) No, this time it's more of a collective effort. A lot of the ideas I have had have been bits and pieces that we've been glueing together with ideas from the other 3 current members of the band. There have been some complete songs but mostly it's been, and will continue to be, a collective effort.
Q) How would you describe the aura of the new songs ? Do they have a classic orientation ? You had said in the past that it would not be…
A) It's difficult to say but some of it has the essence of ‘classic' Mission whilst some of the other stuff is probably a little broader than the last couple of Mission records. Maybe that's because there is more creative input from Mark, Richie, and Steve.
Q) Is it confirmed that Simon Hinkler will do some guitar parts for the next record ?
A) Well, we have communicated a bit over the last year or so and Simon is definetly up for playing on a song or two. And I would definetly like him to. Once we have the songs basically recorded I will send him a couple that I think will suit Simon's guitar playing and hopefully he will come up with something that adds to the tracks. Simon is very good at that. Listening to the song and knowing what it needs. I'm looking forward to it. Also, I have been in touch with Julianne from All About Eve and it looks like she will be doing some backing vocals on one or two of the tracks as well. It's just like the old days..........
Q) You've given to D-Side an exclusive and first of all track signed by Wayne Hussey and not The Mission. Does this mean that you think to launch a solo studio career apart of The Mission in the near future ?
A) Not neccesarily. I have always done other music outside of The Mission but never before actually released anything under my own name. The genesis of ‘One Thing Leads To Another' is that I came up with the music as a contender for the menu music for the ‘Lighting The Candles' DVD but it didn't get used. When I was asked to contribute a track for the D-side CD I thought I would use the opportunity to try something a little different for me. And this is the result. I've always intended one day to record a solo album but it's never been a priority and it still isn't. When I have time I will do it.
Q) Do you think you'll give us a solo record after the next Mission one ?
A) Possibly. I'd like to do it but it's only if I have time.........
Q) How did the opportunity come to play this year solo on stage in London ?
A) The organisers of the ‘festival of shadows' (Camden Electric Ballroom on Sunday 27th August) knew that I was going to be in the UK around that time recording with the band so they asked me if I would play the show. I haven't played any shows this year and I am starting to feel the itch so it seems like a good opportunity........And because it's as much to rehearse for one show as for several I thought I'd put a few more in....
Q) You've composed some soundtracks at the end of the last century. Have you still some projects like these ones ?
A) Not at the moment. There are a couple of tentative projects on hold but my first priority right now is to finish the new Mission album before the end of the year. But scoring a complete film is still one of the few ambitions that I have yet to fulfill...... Hopefully there's a new and upcoming film director out there that likes the music I have made over the years and would be willing to give me a chance on his/her film..... I think I would be really good at it.........
Q ) A few years ago, you had launched with the guys of Votiva Lux a new project called Vessel. Have you finished the first album together and will it soon see the light of day?
A) Unfortunetly that project got put on hold whilst I spent the year putting the Mission DVD together. When I did eventually have a little time to dedicate to the project Votiva Lux had unfortunetly split up in acrimonious circumstances and it was decided to shelve the project. Maybe it's something we can revisit in the future as there is some very good music there. We did complete one song, ‘Change In The Weather', which turned out really well. Also, the lyrics for ‘One Thing Leads To Another' were lyrics that I had written for a Vessel song and because it didn't look like they were gonna be used I thought I would commandeer them.........
Q) It seems that your lyrics are more in the realm these last years than at the beginning of the band. How would you express today your relation to the words, and the work on them ?
A) Well, there's a lot less drugs involved in the writing process these days so there's a little more clarity of thought, I think........Also, as with anything else, the more you do something the better you, hopefully, become at doing it........I think in the early days I tended to have very little to say for myself so would shroud the lyrics in a language that was designed to hide that fact. I don't really have anything more to say for myself these days but I do feel I am more able to articulate that......(hahahA...) Lyrics, for me, are still the hardest part of the process and having written over 150 songs it gets more and more difficult to find things to say without feeling that I'm repeating myself too much.......
Q) Can you please speak a little from your parents ? I read you came from a mormon environment. Is it right and how do you think that it has influenced your art ?
A) Yeah, my parents are devout and active Mormons and I was raised in that particular denomination but come my teenage years, and like all teenagers, I rebelled.......I don't know if it has had any direct bearing on the music I've created over the years. If anything I guess the biblical references in my early lyrics were a clue.......
Q) How did your parents see your choices in life : to become a musician, to do some rock music, etc. ? Have/had you an appeased relation to them
A) I get on very well with my parents and have done for years.......but they probably did think my desire to be a musician was a teenage whim that I would eventually grow out of......But to be fair they have always supported me and my choices if not always understanding them.
Q) Another mystery to me : where does the famous original Mission logo come from ? Who has realised it ?
A) I 'stole' the image from a photograph that was in a British magazine of French rescue workers. One of them had a little hat with the logo on top and I thought it looked great and adopted it. To me, it represents freedom and liberty..........
Q) Bizarrely, I remember today that The Mission was once assimilated by the press to this famous “hippie-goth” movement, but I know also that you've never really wanted (and I think with reason) the band to be reduced to a simple sticker. Simply, did you find yourself sensible to the power-flower cause once before ?
A) I don't think I've ever been an out-an-out hippie, or goth for that matter, but I guess I've shown tendencies towards both lifestyles over the years.......and it's easy and convenient journalism to 'label' a band as part of a movement/sound.......I no longer care at all what we are 'labelled' as we have our own unique identity I think......
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