Keith Levene interview
First published Fodderstompf, November 2003
© 2003 Fodderstompf.com
Fodderstompf.Com: We first interviewed Keith Levene for Fodderstompf around 2001. Keith had just finished his extensive PiL interviews with 'Perfect Sound Forever' and we didn't see the point of going over all that again, so the plan was to concentrate on his MissingChannel project, and his post-PiL solo work. The interview went well, maybe too well, and basically descended into a conversation about music in general, while Keith let us hear his new material; which at the time was still unreleased. I eventually turned the tape recorder off, and we made plans for a fuller interview taking in anything we wanted, including PiL... For one reason or another it never quite happened, but now it has...
Keith is a hard man to pin down, his mind races from one subject to another at lightning pace, throughout the interview he's off at tangents, always thinking one step ahead, he only pauses for a Marlboro, or to gulp down some food. Though to be honest I probably couldn't have interviewed him at a better time. After years of careful planning, and the odd set back, Keith, with his MurderGlobal collective are about to see their plans finally start to take fruition. Among the most interesting of his forthcoming projects is a new collaboration with Martin Atkins, his one time public enemy number one in Public Image? Surely a complete turnaround? Well maybe not... That's not to mention the forthcoming MurderGlobal album, a change of instrument, dabbling with film, his work with Plakka, and his thoughts on a certain Public Image Limited... Interview conducted for Fodderstompf November 2003.
I'll
start with a question you've probably never been asked before...
Overall did you enjoy your time in PiL?
Oh yeah, it was totally the best time in my life, until now, sure...
A lot of
people, especially in the music press, often think PiL was just
an elaborate joke, a big wind up, which it obviously wasn't.
So many people just missed the point...
Listen, whoever it is that are calling PiL a joke obviously wasn't
there. If they were calling PiL a joke after I left, or a few years
after I left, I can see why that might have happened. But we always
had that thing with the press, we'd make a record and they'd
slag us off for totally the wrong reasons. They'd think they
were slagging us off, but they'd actually be giving us a really
great review! They'd point out all the good things on the album
by trying to be negative. But we knew they were being defensive.
It's really weird, I just dunno why they were so sensitive
about it, why they gave a fuck. The media doesn't give a fuck
like that now... Though a lot of people talk about 'Metal Box'
these days and they don't get it wrong, they know we put out
a serious fucking record. And I dare anyone who's into music
to listen to the first record and tell me it's not a great
first record, for any band. Man, we hadn't been together five
weeks when we made that record...
Did the band have a set idea of how it wanted to sound on that
first record, or was it just a case of everyone jamming and seeing
what happened?
That's exactly what we did. At the beginning all we really
knew was who we wanted in the band, and that was really the main
thing... We were definitely what I would call a 'progressive
band', not a 'prog-rock' band. We got together after
the Sex Pistols, and the way we kind of saw it, the Sex Pistols
were the last rock n roll band. I don't think we actually sat
down and said it between us, but John knew it, and I knew it, we
were just gonna move things on. It wasn't like we were gonna
set the world on fire, but we knew we were gonna do something different.
And when I say something different, I mean something in the context
of what was going on then...
I mean we were all brought
up on reggae, and listening to dub and stuff like that, but you
have to remember that John was a very, very hip guy at the time.
He was such a, I think the word they use now is, such an icon, such
a popular figure and he had a lot people around him that looked
to him. Lets say a third of his crew, a third of his home boys,
were black guys, Rastas. Don Letts being the obvious pinnacle of
the hippest of them, but there were a bunch of other very cool guys,
then there were these other sort of audiophile white guys. Another
guy that comes to mind is John Grey, who was a great influence on
John Lydon with his music. He'd get all these pre-releases,
and all this reggae stuff. Me, John Lydon, Wobble were all totally
into Trojan reggae and all that stuff, so it was just obvious, we
didn't have to talk about what we were gonna do, we knew what
we were gonna do...
I might have actually said out loud 'It's gonna be slower
now isn't it'. Cause I remember out rightly saying with
The Clash 'This is gonna be fast, whatever happens we're
gonna do it three times faster than anything that's going on',
and with The Clash that worked to an extent but they never took
it to where I wanted it to go hence we parted. And with PiL we knew
that a lot of stuff was gonna slow down, so the first album was
sort of shedding the rock n roll thing, but doing something with
it, ala 'Theme', ala 'Annalisa', ala 'Fodderstompf',
and the introduction of that 'Metal Box' thing.
And then 'Metal Box' itself, it's weird, it almost
could have came out after 'Flowers of Romance', it's
almost treated as if it came out after 'Flowers of Romance'
But actually, if you want to find the real PiL action you're
gonna find it on 'Flowers...' and the fourth album, which
is debatable which album that is but basically within the two releases
- between my 'Commercial Zone' and their 'This is
What You Want...' - you're gonna find what happened to
PiL. It's a shame you can't find it on 'Live in Tokyo'
and that's my fault because I left the band. You would have
found it definitively on there, but I made a mistake. Not that I
made a mistake leaving, I just left it at the wrong time.
So do you regret leaving PiL when you did?
I don't regret leaving PiL when I did, I chose to leave PiL
when I did for very specific reasons, but in hindsight, it's
always 20/20, but in retrospect I kind of wish I had went to Japan
and had a really good album with 'Live in Tokyo'. It was
kind of childish of me not to do it but I was under a lot of pressure
at the time, I was going through a lot of things personally, like
getting married, and I'd really, really, really had my fill
of John and the whole situation going on in Public Image ltd, and
that's really it.
Was
the decision to go with a slightly more commercial route on 'Commercial
Zone' forced on you because of money problems?
No, no. I mean I'm not gonna pretend that Virgin didn't
hold our advance back for the record, but they were just playing
business games with us, because we were playing business games at
the time too, well, I was anyway. So I'm not gonna pretend
there weren't financial problems, but basically 'Commercial
Zone' conceptually was a really great idea, and you're
definitely gonna hear it more on my version than theirs but it ultimately
didn't matter, it worked. The way it worked was we, we... well
yeah we... me, John and Martin, wanted the band out there, lets
say in the 'Commercial Zone' manifesto, which was again
never really discussed, but even then I still felt John had more
of an idea of what was going on than he did, and that's when
things started breaking down, but it's not like we were forced
to do that.
The reason you wouldn't see PiL everywhere, was that we didn't
want people to look in any fucking paper and think 'Oh, there's
PiL you can see them anytime', we wanted people to say 'Oh
fuck man there's a PiL gig!' And if people bought loads
of tickets we would have made sure there was two PiL gigs in wherever
that place was. That was our outlook to gigs, and we kept it with
the 'Commercial Zone' thing more because we were in control
of it...
Even when we promoted 'Metal Box' in America, with Warners,
we did that on our own terms. We were doing gigs in places but we
were staying there longer, like we were doing three nights in between
gigs, doing our own thing, and then doing another gig. Sometimes
we did two gigs running and stuff like that. It was great. That's
what we wanted to do... It's like we'd go to New York
and do the gig we had to do, and you're in town and you pick
up on a few people and they're saying 'There's a
great place there' and we say 'Would you like us to play
there' and they're 'Yeah!' And you go do the
gig. And we did that, 'cos we could, it was fucking great.
The 'Commercial Zone' manifesto, and the Ritz riot, you
do a gig like that, you can't do another gig for four months
minimum because there's no point, there's no point.
I mean after that gig everyone in New York said 'Would
you come to our video club and fucking wreck it please!'
(laughs), and it was like 'NO'!
Would you agree that the events leading up to the Ritz gig helped
make it more of a happy accident than a pre-planned event?
No. It was an accident that I was there in New York, I went there
for a holiday and the next thing I know I'm doing interviews
and this that and the other, and discovering America, and I said
'Guys you've got to get over here I'm getting
more done in two weeks than we've done in the last two years'.
But there's no fucking way the gig was an accident.
While I was in New York
I was trying to sort out video for PiL anyway, I'd been going
to the Ritz with Eddie Carabello, who was a video guy. In New York
there were all these guys around and they knew what they were doing,
they were right on the cutting edge of video. I found out that the
Ritz was the only fucking club in America that had widescreen display
video projection, the only one, the next one was in Japan. Then.
I mean they've got them everywhere now, but that was really
important... For whatever reason Bow Wow Wow cancelled and the Ritz
offered us the gig, we said we want you to bill this as a live video
gig and I think it actually said something like 'Johnny Rotten
and the PiL' were playing or something like that! (laughs).
And all these guys came wanting to see the Sex Pistols, so we could
have done with a New York city crowd, not the crowd we got...
When you were in PiL there was a lot of talk about video and
film work, was anything actually filmed?
Yeah stuff got filmed. We had this dynamite camera it was like a
Panaflex 35mm but it was this super 8, and it just did everything.
It was one of the coolest most technically advanced cameras around
at the time. We used it at the Ritz riot gig and we used it at the
beginning, we shot some production footage. We were prepared for
the gig, we had interviews shot, we had stuff that we had shot in
London, and had some stuff that actually Dave Crowe, the secretary
to PiL, had shot, stuff like that. Maybe a little footage that Jeannette
had scripted, and I had shot just to check it out. Then I shot some
more stuff in New York, and I was trying to get Jeannette and John
over to make more pre-production. I remember even saying 'Oh
fuck it then, don't come over I don't care we're
still doing the gig, then they sort of showed up and they weren't
helpful, we didn't get much more pre-production done, so I
just set up all the equipment behind the screen. So we knew, lets
say, we knew there was gonna be an improvisational accident element
there but that's because I couldn't get them to follow
through on things I wanted to do...
That's why things started going wrong, I couldn't get
them to follow through on the commitment about what we were supposed
to be doing, you know, you can't do everything. I even had
my own director, I had my art director, I had a technical director,
I was directing myself, and I had a technical director with Eddie
Carabello, I had Ariel doing art direction. And Jeannette was there
but she just stood around and had her shoes filmed! I mean this
guy just kept closing in on her shoes. And when the gig started
we were doing numbers live, we were miming to our own numbers and
a bottle hit the fucking deck and as soon as they realised it was
a record, which everybody uses now anyway, they started
throwing bottles at the screen and other issues came up, like our
lives!
Were
you planning to do a film with the video footage. Maybe short films,
or experimental things, or a bigger project and put something together?
I wanted footage from the audience and I wanted footage of the stage
stuff, but after the riot I had a camera on my shoulder because
Warners wanted a press conference the next day, so I videoed all
that, because it was almost like carrying a gun around, it was like
if I had the camera on my shoulder we were safe, that's how
good it got. It was like that, so in a way we had a very cutting
edge video experience, it's just that it didn't have the
impact it could have had, it was just one of those things. And that
was basically because half the people involved didn't understand
what had happened.
Was it just a case of getting as much footage as you could and
seeing what you could do with it?
Yeah, but there was a lot of footage I didn't even bother with,
the footage that the Ritz used, they said look, we took this, or
you took this on our cameras, and we're keeping it, and I said
you can do what you like with it, but we just want it too and I
think they gave it to us, but I never did anything with it, I wasn't
interested in it. By then I was carving up stuff on film, and we
were getting into all the new stuff, all the high definition stuff,
by then I was getting into that.
You mentioned before that dealing with the press and record companies
became a bit of a game at the time, you seemed to enjoy that.
At the time especially.
I dunno if it's the right word, but you seemed to enjoy
adding to the hype, but looking back do you think that maybe you
predicted too much, and when it never happened the press couldn't
wait to round on you?
A lot of that stuff happened with PiL, we were enthusiastic, we
were in a really great position, but it's one of those things
that, I mean a lot of the ideas I had in PiL I'm still executing
now with the stuff I'm doing now. I mean really, when I look
at it I feel like fucking hell, everything I'm working towards
is really basically the stuff I was talking about when I was like
22 years old when I was in PiL.
Was Public Image Limited really set up as a limited company?
Yeah, we set it up as a company, we bought a company off the shelf
called 'Tinkascus', because you do that, you buy companies
off the shelf and Public Image Limited was a limited company. It
was involuntary liquidated too. And I think John re-registered the
PiL trademark after I left the band, but I don't really know
much about it after that. I tried to speak to John a few times after
that but he never showed up at the places we arranged to meet, and
really, I've never spoken to the guy since I left the band.
What was the reasoning behind setting the band up as a company?
I dunno, at the time it just made a lot of sense.
There were also other sub-companies later in PiL like PEP and
MIC, through whatever you've done you've always did it
as a company. You like a company!
Yeah (laughs) P.E.P., I couldn't resist it, pep-pill. I mean
PiL was like a pill with a line down the middle, what could it mean!
And then you know, Public Enterprise Productions I was all over
these company names. The thing with Public Image Limited was we
were very serious about a whole corporate thing, no manager, we
don't need a manager, we can manage our own affairs, we can
use a lawyer, no producer, we know how we want to sound, we'll
produce ourselves. That meant a lot of income came back into the
company, and we were trying to run it that way, but it was very
difficult to do that. Doing the recording, doing the music, recording
and producing it man! If you're not all doing that,
and not switched onto that programme, it's a lot of work. We
had a secretary, we had Jeannette, we had what, two other people
in the band to help administrate it, and I had a commitment to the
business side of it, and John, I guess John was, again, the icon
for the band and he knew much more what was going on until it really
all broke down, the whole business thing started breaking down...
Do
you think all that stuff just ended up getting in the way of the
band, and kept PiL from actually getting to play or record?
I dunno I think everyone helped. On the road and things like that,
Jeannette took on a different role and she became a kind of plugged
in hip conduit for the band. For instance we'd be doing a gig
and this guy would come up to me and say I've just been talking
to Jeannette Lee blah, blah, blah would you come down to this radio
station and do this. Then another guy would say look while you're
doing that would you go over to MIT and do a radio interview up
there, and I would say 'Ok, John will you do that one, and
I'll do this one', 'NO'. So I'd say
will we do both of them, sometimes he might, sometimes he wouldn't
do any of them, you never knew, but basically I did all of them
I could, and the point is, I'm not saying John didn't
do anything, he just did more what he wanted, whereas I'd do
pretty much anything. I had that kind of commitment that I just
thought we can't not do this.
John was obviously very wary of the media after all that had
happened before, even in your short time in America, with stuff
like Tom Synder.
The Tom Synder thing yeah, we thought it went wrong then we realised
how right it went! With American Banstand we had it by then, we
knew how to deal with Americans by then, it really took just that
one experience, I mean we'd never even seen Tom Synder, we
didn't know who he was. We landed, we got taken in a limo to
NBC studios, me and John just poured talcum powder over each others
head, and the next thing we know we're on national fucking
TV in America! Big cameras pointing at us, I'd never been on
TV before in America and it was like I had a bit of a lump in my
throat for a few minutes, and Synder was talking about the Sex Pistols
and that was pissing me off, and that was pissing John off, just
like it's pissing me off now that we're talking about
PiL a bit too much, and so the Synder thing happened and we're
walking round the street that night and they're going 'Hey
man that was fucking great, hey Johnny, hey Keith, that was so great'
and the next thing we know Warners Brothers pick us up, because
they basically made us go home in a taxi that night, and they pick
us up from the hotel in a limo the next day, and again, bang I've
got a video camera on my shoulder and we're doing another press
conference. A very similar thing happened later with the Ritz riot,
but you know like I said, I used to use that video camera like a
gun!
Bringing us nearer to the present, last year you played on 'Closer
to Heaven' on Martin Atkins' Pigface album, how did that
come about?
Martin had very bravely made a couple of attempts at contacting
me, and that was kind of a bit funny, a bit suspicious, because
everyone knew that when I left PiL it had a lot to do with Martin
Atkins. As much as it had a lot to do with whatever other reasons
I had for leaving. I mean I left because of Jeannette Lee, and the
reason she wasn't in the band or the company anymore. AND I
left because of John and way he was handling things. AND because
of corporate things, and just being fucking dropped right in the
middle of when we were doing 'Commercial Zone', when we
had it, when we were finally just just about to nail what
we started out doing. We did have a few really good moments in the
studio doing 'Commercial Zone' but then something, a load
of shit went wrong literally in the space of 18 hours that made
it that I just said 'Fuck it'...
I was gonna ask you if you still blamed Martin?
No, I don't blame Martin because I've spoken to him recently,
but I'll tell you about that in a minute. I've had a lot
of conversations with Martin recently, it's took about two
years to get from emailing each other to talking properly. But to
answer the question you originally asked which was how did the Pigface
thing come about, it was basically through the internet. Martin
sent me some backing tracks, and I think he was really shocked that
I said 'Sure, I'll put a guitar on it' so
I put this guitar on it, but I can't hear the fucking thing...
Yeah, I was about to say that, I can't hear it either!
That's cool, because the actual thing I did with the backing
tracks that Martin sent me, he obviously did something with them,
because he made me send the guitar track just separately on its
own in the end, so he's obviously used it somewhere... He sent
me this tune, a bit of electronics on it, some Martin drums, and
the bass, nice backing track. I'm listening to it back, and
I heard this tune. And there was only one thing to do to it, which
I did, and you'll be able to hear it on the MurderGlobal album,
or you can hear it on the pre-release now. I call it 'The Love
We New'. It's a little play on words because of Martin,
I could put 'The Love Renewed' but it wasn't renewed
so I just put 'The Love We New', but basically it's
me playing a fucking Beatles tune under this backing track, you
know, “We were talking about the love we knew” so I called
it 'The Love We New' and I spelt it “NEW” .
I couldn't help it, that was the tune that was begging to be
played...
What's the pre-release you just mentioned?
It's a 12 tune pre-release I've done for the MurderGlobal
album. A mixed media thing, it's got a little video on it,
and a load of pictures of ME, and other stuff with ME on it, and
songs by ME. You'll like it, you'll like it a lot, it's
a great pre-release because it ain't the album, and if you
like the stuff it'll really make you want the album, and you'll
be really glad you've got the pre-release when you get the
album...
It's
been a year since you released the EP, how is the album progressing?
Oh it's progressing! I now actually know what the album
is. I'd never quite known what it was until maybe the last
of couple of months, but now I've nailed it... What's
happened is I've really gotten into playing bass and it's
changed my whole musical scope completely. It's really weird
because I've always played bass, but not like this, it's
like I'm a bass player! I play bass minimum of four hours a
day, I play it much more than I play six string guitar at the moment.
For some reason playing bass has just been the most musically prosperous
thing for me in a long time, and it was also the thing that helped
me nail the MurderGlobal album. The album has had lots of different
names, but now I'm gonna call the record 'The Perfect
Crime', and it's gonna be released through Invisible.
At the moment we're making this video for the EP, which is
also gonna be released on Invisible...
So the EP is being re-released then?
Well, the EP never really came out yet. I've never released
it properly, it's really just been on private stock through
my website, and that was the only way you could get it. But soon
you'll be able to get it via Martin Atkins company. And I suppose
that begs the question 'What the fuck am I doing with Martin
Atkins'!
I was just about to ask you if you planned to work with Martin
again in the future, but you've just answered that!
Well we did the Pigface thing, and it was cool doing it, but as
I said before, at first we were very, very shady and standoffish,
but Martin communicated a few things to me that made a lot of sense
over that time, and I started talking to him again recently because
I decided I wanted to put the record out, and I didn't want
to put it out with EMI. Not that I had the straight choice between
EMI and Invisible, EMI did have an option on me but I've overridden
the option now. And I'm actually putting it out with Martin
for a good reason, I'm making a point because, no fucking way
are we reforming PiL, no fucking way, but me and Martin are going
to be working together in the future, most definitely... I can't
believe people are still talking about PiL as much as they are,
they obviously really want a fucking a “now” version of
what that was, and a line up like me and Martin...
Hardly anyone got to see that early line-up of PiL, I think that's
got a lot to do with it.
Well, that's never going to happen. The closest you'll
get to seeing that PiL playing live is either with MurderGlobal,
or with a band me and Martin put together. MurderGlobal is totally
up for giging, not touring, and we're trying to put that together.
It's funny because I've been looking for a MurderGlobal
band for a long time and now I've got kind of three different
line ups, I've got this MurderGlobal soup! And if Martin isn't
the drummer in MurderGlobal, I'm gonna be in a band
with Martin doing something.
Will that come under Damage Manual?
I don't wanna say too much, but lets just say that once the
EP is out we'll start looking for a name for this project,
but NO it won't be the Damage Manual, and it won't be
Pigface but then again it might be MurderGlobal. It might
just be stupid not to do it. We've got to see how the sessions
go, but whatever happens there's no way me and Martin are not
gonna make a record now, unless one of us shoots each other or something!
Because we've got the ideas, we've got the tools, we've
got the talent, and we want to fucking do it. And you know what?
We need to do it, and as someone said to me, it's about
fucking time. And the thing is, it doesn't seem like it's
20 years later, to me and Martin it seems like it's about three
years later. We are gonna make this record, and it's gonna
be a killer record...
To me Martin is the perfect example of another guy from PiL fulfilling
the PiL manifesto. From my point of view he's fulfilled a situation
since 1987 where he's put Invisible Records and Underground
together, he's done it really well and there's no point
in me putting a bunch of distribution companies together with a
load of people I don't know anymore, when he's dealt with
it. It's great he's put that effort in, and now I can
pay him back by saying 'Martin I'm taking you into
the studio, that's what you do'. Martin is a master
drummer percussionist, and the guy has been wasted on all this other
stuff, and I know what he's going through because I've
been there, he's in the studio and he's producing and
doing everything else, but he's getting no fucking attention
himself. So I can give him the production attention he needs, he
can give me the production attention I need, and then we can go
in there mash these tracks out, we can really make a juiced up record
here, I mean there's no way we're not gonna do it...
Do you want to do everything on the record by yourselves, Martin
on drums and you doing bass and guitar...
Yeah, that's what I wanna do. Listen, you don't get many
rhythm sections as good as me and Martin Atkins, I guess people
out there are gonna have to take that on face when it comes to me
playing bass, not that I have to sell myself as a musician, that
rhythm section has to be heard. So I'm gonna do the
rhythm section with Martin and then I'll jump into my guitar
guise, and he'll jump into his producer and other things guise.
I can sing on it, and maybe we can get other cool people to sing
on it. Maybe somebody like 3D or Horace Andy, there are other people,
but they're just somebody who came to mind and obviously they
came to mind because they were most influenced by PiL and they said
so, who fucking knows? I mean if Paul Simon came along I'd
have him on there! But I don't think he's going to...
We'll do the rhythm section and we'll mash it, and then
I'll go in there with Martin and maybe I'll take the reigns
a bit with the top end of the music and when it comes to sealing
it off, me and Martin are gonna co-produce this record, and that's
what's gonna happen.
How
has playing bass affected the way you approach your music?
It's phenomenal, it's phenomenal. I've just re-recorded
'Killer in the Crowd' for the album, and I did it specifically
because of the way I play bass. I'm really glad I made this
little discovery and hadn't put the record out yet because
it's really changed everything...
Have you re-recorded anything else?
No, 'Killer in the
Crowd' is the only tune. I was just playing around in my studio,
and running through 'Killer in the Crowd', and I immediately
realised that if I'd done the bass we'd have a completely
different record. Don't get me wrong I love the 'Killer
in the Crowd' that's on the EP, but this new version is
gonna be the definitive version... I'm also thinking of re-doing
'Back too Black' from Violent Opposition', it might
even be the next single if it works out right. Though it would be
much easier if I could get the multi-tracks back from the guy I
did the deal with, but that's another story...
The whole bass line thing has really put the lid on this record
and it's given birth to the Plakka thing. It's given birth
to being able to know exactly what I can do with people like Martin,
and there's some other stuff coming into the picture for MissingChannel
that I can't really talk about yet ...
For the people who don't know, can you tell us the difference
between MissingChannel and MurderGlobal?
Yeah, think of MissingChannel as my studio and my production company,
and MurderGlobal as the main band that we have.
So would Plakka come under MissingChannel?
Yeah, if and when I produce Plakka I'll put them out on MissingChannel.
Can you tell us a little about Plakka, are they a young band?
Well they're younger than me! I'd say they average about
33 years old, so these days they're just about ripe to be doing
a band. They're from up North, I call them the Velvet Beatles,
they're great kids, and they've really got fantastic musical
knowledge, they love music. They all play synthesisers, and one
of them plays guitar, not like me, but he plays guitar, and he's
getting better. I've came in and played bass and it's
really helped the band obviously, and we've pulled this drummer
in, but really they're drum machine driven really. Real Plakka
I think will probably be with the drum machine but it was the only
way to make it possible to do gigs.
Plakka is up northern for plastic, right, so that means it's
not real, but what we're trying to do is real Plakka ok? So
if you get a bit arty and take that point of view we're trying
to do real Plakka. It's something they know I understand and
I'm the obvious choice to produce them because I live next
door to them, and you know, I mean there's no way I could play
with these guys if they didn't have something fucking interesting,
I'm into it. I want it to work but at the moment, I'll
be perfectly honest with you, I don't know what is gonna happen
with Plakka yet. If they can just get it together a little quicker,
see I won't interfere with them, I can't be bothered,
I'm not there to play manager, I just wanna produce them and
help out on bass.
I'm good friends with the main guy in the band, BK13, even
though they're all really the main guy, and that's the
thing that keeps bringing me back to them, but when I'm back
they will do something that makes me think 'This is good,
I could get into this'. If anyone in the world is going
to record these guys it's gonna be me'. It's looking
like I will produce their next 12” and probably an album, but
it'll take a little time because I'll be doing my own stuff
first. We're definitely gonna make a vinyl record, there's
no way we can put out a Plakka record without it being vinyl.
You mentioned some MurderGlobal video work earlier, what are
you working on?
We're making a little short movie called 'The Camera Dodger's'
right now, and we're doing a video for 'Killer in the
Crowd'. But it's very expensive shit. We're also
in the middle of a screenplay for a thing called 'Ratattack'
which is gonna be our 'Blairwitch' 'Friday the 13th',
kind of thing. It's our first shot at movie that's over
an hour...
So you'll be scripting and doing the score etc?
I'll definitely be working with Shelly da Cunha, with her doing
the screenplay and writing, and me directing. It will be much more
than a classy music video, and if I can get budget, if I can get
real budget then who knows, but for the time being the reality of
it is we're just using digital cameras. We're just putting
it together, who knows, because the people we are talking to right
now, they might say do you want some development money for it, you
know, I don't really wanna say no more (laughs)!
Do
you think that when the record is out, it might lead onto other
things and you could maybe do something like a separate CD-ROM of
film work?
Well, there will be at least two videos on the CD version of
the MurderGlobal album. One being the one that's on the pre-release
now, which is just me putting 'Mind Chaos' together with
Dan Hyams, it's not the version that came out, it's just
a little video. There will also be the video for 'Killer in
the Crowd' I hope that will make at least the album, if not
the EP release. We should have the video ready in time for the EP
release, so I'll make it so you can see it on a PC or a Mac.
Have you got a release date in mind yet for the EP?
I'd imagine it's gonna come out in January or February because
I don't think Martin will be able to get behind it properly
until he's back on his feet after the Pigface tour, and we
all get over Christmas. By then we'll have a situation where
I'll just be putting the cap on the album anyway.
How many tracks have you got for the album so far?
Right now I've got 14, I think it's gonna be about 16
tracks, but some of those tracks are like 53 seconds long, one minute
33 seconds long, two or three of them are like that...
What's happening with your website?
Nothing! (laughs). I've been so busy with other stuff I just
left it, and the other reason I've left it is because I haven't
been jammed up enough to want to upgrade it, see I do my own website
and I'm trying to get my artwork people to take instructions
from me, and do it for me and at the moment...
It's the old cliche but if you want a job doing right, do
it yourself...
Well that's what keeps happening, I mean by website hasn't
moved for what 18 months, not a dicky bird, I don't care, but
what I do care about is when I do upgrade it, you will know! I'm
gonna wait till it's really worthwhile. I've got the EP
coming out, the album on the way, I'm in the middle of production
on this 'Camera Dodgers' thing, because that's the
thing we're quite excited about, doing 'Camera Dodgers'.
Have you actually started production yet?
'Camera Dodgers' has been around for a long time, one
of the tunes on the album is a sort of short version of the whole
score of the movie, which is done by me of course! But anyway when
that stuff is really happening I'll put it on the MurderGlobal
site.
Who
exactly are Murderglobal at the moment?
There are a lot of people involved. Obviously, there's me,
but there's also Shelly da Cunha, Teresa O'Hara, Lena
Thomas, there's this guy, Subasa we call Subs, there's
Daniel who plays drums. I don't know if Martin wants to be
involved or not, I haven't really formally put it to him. Most
of the people involved in Murderglobal are there because they know
about all the other stuff, and they're pushing for that. There's
other things being offered to MurderGlobal right now, this stuff
is recent, and it's what we've been working towards.
MurderGlobal has only been together, what 18 months, maybe two years,
and MissingChannel has been together three and a half years, but
it's taken that long. It's taken me since 1998 to get
this going. That's why I was getting so up and down with it,
I could see the potential of it, and then nothing was happening,
and I was getting really freaked out, but now that's ended
up giving the situation really strong roots, and given us time to
really question where we're coming from, what we're doing,
why we're doing it. I guess that's why I'm saying
there's loads of other things going on that I can't really
talk about because I just don't want to put the moggers on
them until we're definitely doing it, then I can say I'm doing
this thing, that thing, with he or she on that, and when I know
I'll tell you...
'Public Image' promo pic, 1978 © Dennis Morris
PiL: BBC, OGWT 1980 © unknown
The Ritz Riot 1981 © Marcia Resnick
PiL circa 1981: Lydon, Levene, Lee © unknown
PiL summer 1983: Lou Bernardi, John Lydon, Keith Levene, Martin Atkins, NY 1983 © unknown
Keith playing his Parker Fly guitar, London circa; 2001 © Bobby Fisher / MurderGlobal
Keith, London circa; 2001 © Bobby Fisher / MurderGlobal
MurderGlobal: Killer in the Crowd EP 2002