| "I'll
never be a big pop star... if I'm on the dole next year I won't mind,
I'll have had me run." He's been plying the fringes of attention
for so long he seems like a fixture, a rentable oddball, ready for anything.
Jah Wobble's enterprises stockpile into a profusion of activity; he
gets bored easily. Let's
meander through the recent history.
THE HUMAN CONDITION
"It was a weird band - pretty good but, I dunno, I just got a bit
bored. We did about 17-18 gigs altogether, loads of quiet little gigs
with no publicity. Most of the time people went 'What the fuck is this
?' And then they'd get into it. "We did a cocktail bar up in Liverpool
- worse than London 'cos I thought they'd all be mad Scousers but that
decadence cancer's spread everywhere now. I suppose they thought it
was going to be white reggae. So we did the heaviest set we ever done
and it just drove them out. That's my kind of gig."
INVADERS OF THE HEART
"The new band's fuckin' great as well. I must admit I lose concentration
with things, but there's a lot of possibilities with this one. "I
got the name off a video(*) of a Romany Trail through Cairo. The Islamic
bands there have a name and the nearest translation is Invaders Of The
Heart., "These birds do hypnotic dances and the way the geezers
play is supposed to invade your heart. It's a bit tongue-in-cheek 'cos
there's so many doing this 'Oh, I'm into drum sounds from Gambia' bit."
Jah Wobble snaps on a tape of the Invaders' only gig to date(**).
A mighty coiled sound roars
from the speakers. Guitars do a cod-Casbah chiming line, a synthesizer
loops fabulously away into the ionosphere, and Wobble's grunting bass
levers up a rhythm like a slow fever. "I wanna get some birds in
to do a bit of that", he shouts above the music, going into a Wilson,
Keppel and Betty sort of Pharao's dance. Now it's going into a Brazilian
rhythm - "whatever we want to do, we do." A trombone parps
in inebriate accompaniment to the others. It sounds like no other group
on earth. Wobble's head nods in appreciation. With his bearded face,
hair frantically aspray and quick clever eyes he has the features of
a humorous lion. "So
that's what's happening now."
THINGS EASTERN
"I think I must have
that in me blood. I was working on all these rhythms and then I heard
these record series, 'World Of Islam'(***), and they were the same.
They're great because they're all so committed. I think religious maniacs
make the best music. Religious maniacs, alcoholics and general nutters
like Holger (Czukay, a frequent collaborator). "He phoned up the
other night. He's got a message on his Ansafone about 'I vos Adolf Hitler's
shepherd dog' and he's taping everyone's reaction to hearing that. And
he's working on music from satellites and stuff."
Wobble is pleased at the
enterprise. He has a new single recorded with Czukay, apparently held
up through record company doubt (****). A familiar problem to him. Jah
Wobble loves music, sounds, the propensities of noise, the possibilities
of sonics. His cosy flat, situated near the disheveled and dying docklands
of the East End, is full of machines to record or play or adjust. A
big bass leans respectfully in one corner. A silent television flickers
patiently. Wobble lies on a comfy-looking mattress and ponders the living
qualities of natural instruments. "You can't wipe out something
that's taken millions of years to develop, just because it's the '80s.
I fuck about with rhythm boxes, they're quite handy at times. There's
always people who do interesting things in that field, but mostly they're
pretentious arseholes."
The key to Wobble's work
is its organic sense of growth and flow. In his fascinating series of
records this year alone - the pulverising Human Condition 'Live In Europe'
cassette, the 'A Long, Long Way' single with Animal and the new 'Body
Music' single for Island - Wobble's inquisitive moulding of whatever
meets his ears is more than mere dabbling: it's a concern to breathe
in unfamiliarities, not just poke tentatively at them. The obsession
with the sheer physical presence of sound can bring it to devastating
states.
BODY MUSIC
"Island let me do a
one-off now and then. I went and said I want to do a new record, and
they said why don't you do some African music? I said - African music!
They said, well there's an advance, and I said oh, you can get into
it, can't you?" Wobble can tell a good story. "Me and Ben
(Mandelson, of Orchestra Jazira) wrote the piece by playing around with
different riffs and that. I don't think it's an African record - I can't
play bass in the African style - but it turned out nice, uplifting,
some good little changes. If it got to number one it wouldn't help in
any way African music."
What would it do to him?
"I'd be in beer money for a few months. Oh yeah, I'd probably do
it again too. If anyone asked me to do a Chinese record I'd have a go.
You can't afford principles with the price of beer today. I said to
them, what about some Islamic stuff? But they said no. "Music's
just music. I think it's dodgy when somebody says do it in an African
style, but when you're offered... if you were offered £ 500,000
to do the story of Van Halen, you'd do it, wouldn'tcha?"
I'd think it over. But what
of the temperamental artist - musical principles, all that? "Sure,
but what the... You lose all your dignity in life anyway. You can afford
principles if you've got the money. I could probably bash out a few
pop hits if I put my mind to it. "I love playing in a heavy band
and arranging a sculpted, total, heavy sound. With this group we thought
we'd forget it and earn a few bob with a little pop band, but then we
started fuckin' about with a few rhythms and right, it's another heavy
band - another non-commercial proposition! "I can't concentrate
on anything commercial, 'cos my mind always wants to strain everything
to the limits. So I talk about having no principles but really I can't
help but be an artist. I have to be engaged in making new sounds."
Wobble's plain honest face
is without self-consciousness. "I'll never be a big pop star but
if I have five years in the game I'll be all right. If I'm on the dole
next year I won't mind, I'll have had me run." I wonder, thinking
back to Wobble's swinging pop ('Betrayal'), total noise ('Dan McArthur'),
heavy metal jazz (The Human Condition), is there anything he wouldn't
try? "Nothing. Just crazy music. I saw Stockhausen at the Lyttelton
Theatre and what he talks is absolute sense. He was saying that music
is the same wherever. It's just notes, and there's only a certain number
of notes we can hear, and that's it. "When he went to Japan people
said oh, you're being influenced by the Japanese. He said no, I've found
the Japanese in me. Well, I've found the Arab in me. Music's everywhere
- it's there to be plucked out of the air."
We roam the world for a moment
- Africa, India, Latin America - cultures cross and dissolve. I listen
to try and catch the universal humming in the atmosphere. Wobble's cheerful,
irresistible irreverence is one way in this cosmos. The talk gushes
on. "I always find working in tandem with someone else is better,
rather than a group. Just a couple of people bouncing around ideas.
There's never really room for more than two egos. "But I'm always
interested in working with other people. I dunno about producing - I've
had a couple of offers but I'm not sure I could give them a hundred
per cent. I ought to get four or five years more experience in studios
first. "What I could do is work with a young group who wouldn't
know if I was making mistakes. Actually I've helped a couple of people
out that way this year, advice on setting up gear and stuff.
"I've got a kind of
tunnel vision anyway. I like neat sounds, getting the rhythm section
nicely lined up, wide soft stereo tones from the guitars. I'll do any
work fast, in a couple of hours, 'cos I've got a short attention span.
I just burst in and do it. "I never think of 24 channels, just
of one sound, a whole entity. A whole set that you play is one thing
from start to finish - that's how it was with Public Image. Most bands
have notchy sounds, and that doesn't cut it. "It's like this cancerous
thing. I know a lot of people like it, but a lot of people like crap.
The highest TV ratings are when there are Satans on every channel -
'Game For A Laugh', that stuff - people being humiliated. Other people
like to see that.
"I feel like we've only
got a few years left. The whole culture's dragging. If there's such
a thing as national mood then here it's despair. "We went up Moss
Side when we played in Manchester and it was all gloom and nothingness.
People just ain't got dough now. Everyone who's out of work just sleeps
all day in bed and then the one thing to do is drink.
"I came in the other
night - I'd had a drink - and AJP Taylor was on. Even HE was saying
it's the end, an old establishment geezer like that." Then why
does he stay here? If all is misery and despondency why not look for
a different base for Wobble Inc.? "Well," he says, working
it through, "I don't travel very well. And I've got some ties here,
my girlfriend and that. But it's something that I've been thinking about.
I've done a bit of travelling and always looked forward to coming back,
to the down-to-earth British, and last time it was like coming back
to East Berlin. I wanted to cry. Everyone's desperate. People certainly
are close to the fuckin' edge.
"I've always felt you
can travel in your head anyway. There's something dodgy about Englishmen
abroad - you meet these expatriates and there's something dodgy about
them. I suppose my advice to anyone who's rootless is pack up and go
to America. They love the English over there. And there's always more
respect - even for jobs people spit on over here, you get respected
for whatever you do."
FAME AND FORTUNE
Wobble left PIL at a point
where, had he stayed, he might have secured a lasting piece of a lucrative
pie. As the group stumbled through the ludicrous 'Flowers Of Romance'
album it became clear how much of a debt they owed to Wobble, usually
branded as the erratic layabout of the team. How does he feel about
the prospect of fame now? "Public Image was always Rotten's vehicle.
I figured that out. I took about nine months for me to decide to leave,
and it was finally because I couldn't stand the pretentiousness of it
all. "Three quarters of the signal on 'Metal Box' is me - it could
have done with a bit of editing, and the playing could've been a lot
tougher. But it seemed pretty deep, even having it in a box, something
to be dug up in a thousand years' time.
"I just like discipline
in a group - working comfortably. I think you're lucky if you're in
a group and I wouldn't abuse that position. Public Image went a bit...
it was supposed to be an umbrella organisation, which it never became.
"The video, our own label, none of that ever happened. I started
to feel embarrassed. Those gigs in America, playing for twenty minutes
and getting into this corny audience conflict situation - it wasn't
leading anywhere. A performer has got a responsibility, especially in
a ritual music like PIL played. It's give and take.
"The same thing's happening
in football society - it's a lack of respect for people. Respect is
always missing. As a performer you're a servant of the people. That's
where we could learn a lot from the East - everything is turned around
on itself. "I'm not too interested in fame, not in people running
down the street after you. Once you've been in a big group like PIL
you have to start all over again when you leave. You learn quickly what
the big record companies are like, that they're just a big jail. Once
they know you've got them a bit sussed, they're very dubious about long-term
deals. The PIL thing with Virgin was very dodgy."
How would he use the influence
accorded by greater success? "It's a Catch 22 thing. If you get
so big it's having a mass appeal. The very strength of you getting there
is the big weakness as well. The bigger you are the less can you do,
'cos you're tied up in a hundred contracts. But to be free of that is
to lose your appeal, so it's totally hopeless. "There's certain
groups, like Siouxsie And The Banshees I respect a lot. They never got
up on a soapbox, they've kept their mouths shut, put out the music they
want, kept their dignity. They've earned my respect. The other bands
from that time - The Clash, they're happy-go-lucky geezers but they're
one of the biggest embarrassments."
AND NEXT
Nothing seems to bother Wobble
much - the world is there to be given to, learned from, worked with.
What plans or ambitions does he have left? "I've started to plan
a bit more ahead now." he says, stroking the two cats that pad
delicately over the floor. "A couple of months anyway, and always
to have something happening, a continuity of action. This next year
will probably be my busiest. "The Human Condition was like a celebration
of the end, but now this band is much more about release - a rush of
the old spirituality up the arse. It's uplifting. A lot of these instrumental
bands that are about now don't understand about holding a groove and
turning it inside out, knocking out notes without even thinking about
it.
"These cassettes did
about 7000 or 8000. I thought the cassette market would take off a lot
more than it did. People still just like vinyl. I like small contained
things like cassettes, they're more refreshing. The Human Condition
was a contained band like that too. "One thing that Jim Walker
(Condition's drummer) and me agreed on was to be around for 20 or 30
years. The rock industry is about the quick burn-out and when you meet
rock stars you realise they're very scared people. They know they could
be on the way out. People like me and Holger, we get a small and steady
little following and we're all right.
"It's weird. I gave
up Catholicism when I was 13, 14 and had a lot of battles with my family
about it. I've talked to other Catholics about how it's haunted them
- you get guilt feelings instead of a sense of discipline. It was always
an ecstatic religion. "I went through a very tough Catholic primary
school and sometimes those images come back to me, in dreams or something.
God seemed like something to be feared, an indiscriminate slapper. "We
were all scared of the altar, like it was somewhere you didn't wanna
be on your own. Rotten turned it into a vogue to be a tortured Catholic,
but it really bothered me when I was young. "They taught me well,
but it fucked me up then. They want you to feel guilty and unclean.
I don't disbelieve in the strength of the religion but I think a lot
of the mystery went out of it when they changed the Latin mass to English.
The Latin mass gave people a release anywhere in the world, and bringing
it down to a chat on the doorstep wasn't too clever.
"I can push bad experiences
away and then in the middle of the night they'll come back to me. I
used to do the requiem masses for meths drinkers and that. We'd have
to prepare the altar for some geezer in a coffin with no mourners. An
image that stays with you forever. "People don't want everything
brought into the light of day. They need mysteries. We're not that far
advanced. We're nearer to the jungle than we are to a brave new world."
He jumps up to play a tape
of a Latin mass taken off the radio. The rosary is being said. The celebrant
intones the grave elegance of the words, as Wobble's bass lowers ominously
in response to the other voices. The spirit sings. Suffused with memory,
fuelled on the here and now, Jah Wobble has a long, long way to go yet.
I hope he's still here in those 20 or 30 years to come. |