Music > Interviews

The Membranes

23/08/16

 

Wounded Bull in Victorian England. Love Yr Puppy. Spike Milligan’s Tape Recorder. Fuck My Old Boots. The Universe Explodes Into A Billion Photons of Pure White Light. Just a few of the bangers created by The Membranes, the much lauded post punk outfit headed up musical legend John Robb. After over two decades of doing other stuff, their fantastic new album Dark Matter/Dark Energy has been critical acclaimed. The Membranes are headlining Outline’s night at The Owl Sanctuary as part of Norwich Sound & Vision this year, so we had a gas with John himself about space, phone boxes and the origin of punk’s rage.

 

We’re so delighted that you’ve agreed to headline our night at Norwich Sound & Vision – thank you!

No problem! I’ve been to Sound & Vision a few times; it’s always a great event and Norwich is a cool town to go to every year. It’s far enough from London not to be tainted by it – it’s got it’s own little flavour going on which is always quite interesting.

 

I know you were very excited when you saw Let’s Eat Grandma play at Norwich Sound & Vision two years ago at The Birdcage. Now they’re huge!

It’s going pretty well for them now isn’t it? That gig was so amazing. They were so young and couldn’t really play what they wanted to play. The guitar strap broke, they were trying to fix it, they started playing and this really magical droning sound came out. I love that at a gig, where something comes out of nowhere and you just don’t know what to expect. I mean you’re kind of with them from the start because the worst thing in the world is cover bands..I don’t really care if bands are young and they can’t quite do it, it’s still better than seeing or hearing something that’s been done before. So I knew it was going to be interesting and then when they played it was so much better than I expected, totally mesmorising.

 

 

The band began back in 1977 in Blackpool. What was the town like back then, and who were you seeing live and listening to?

Blackpool’s the butt of metropolitan jokes, considered a run down, tacky, battered town, and there is an element of that that’s actually quite attractive in a way but underneath there’s always been a really cool scene with music and weird artful stuff. In the pre-internet era we were pretty cut off up there, so even going to Manchester felt like a major adventure. Section 25 were from Blackpool, they were on Factory Records and their debut album was as good as Joy Division’s but they never quite got the attention they should have had. They were Ian Curtis’ favourite band and he used to go round their house. We never knew this cos at the time, in ’78 and ’79 you’d be really into Joy Division but had no idea that Ian Curtis was about 600 yards up the road every Saturday! The idea that anyone would come from Manchester’s music scene, which even in its early days was so cool to Blackpool seemed really bizarre but looking back on it now why not, because Section 25 were a really great band. When we started the band we were very young – I was 16 and the drummer was 13 – we definitely had ideas on how we wanted to do things, in the same way as Let’s Eat Grandma I suppose! We were just fumbling about, trying to make music that was far too ambitious for our capabilities.

 

Your music, certainly in the first part of The Membranes’ career, was rageful. What were you raging about in those early days?

The thing about punk in those days was that lots of people were raging but no one was really sure what they were raging about, there was no direction really. Because of the 40th anniversary of punk this year you’ll see lots of talks with people saying how critical it was, but it was far more shambolic than that, just a massive wave of energy that no one knew what to do with. That energy was very attractive, people were really fascinated and intoxicated by what was coming from punk and that was the key part. There was a lot of frustration in that small town, because you were definitely on the outside. Before punk I really liked glam rock back in the 70’s when all those great Top of the Pops were on, like Bowie, Bolan, Mott the Hoople, even the uncool glam bands like The Sweet who were actually a great band. They all seemed so exotic to us, and like it could only exist in London or outer space, and even London felt like outer space! We felt like we were being told we couldn’t make music because we weren’t from London so I guess some of that rage came from that claustrophobia. We used to live near the promenade in the north of Blackpool, and in the winter we used to sit for hours on magic mushrooms watching the sea crashing against the prom. There was the rage and violence of nature that always intrigued us as well, that idea of the well ordered suburbs up against the dark, violent, endless ocean. There was a real edge. So when you talk about rage in punk it came from several different places, it wasn’t all about political manifestos. Anyway pretty quickly we got into more surreal stuff because to listen to punk you had to listen to John Peel, and he was playing acts like Captain Beefheart and even a bit of prog, so quickly your attention would drift away from the year zero list of punk records. Blackpool wasn’t like London or Manchester, there weren’t loads of different scenes so we all had to go to the same pubs, the hippies, the punks, everyone..we all knew each other’s music. Groups like Hawkwind were in the mix and krautrock like Can. We had no idea they were cool groups at the time. I’m not trying to make out I was a super hipster! It wasn’t until about 25 year later that I realised they were hip groups.

 

You got a great response to your debut single Muscles including accolades from Peel. Were you thinking at the time that you could make music as a career?

don’t even think I have a career now, you just get up and do all the same things you’ve always done. Start writing, make some music and it just carries on until 2 in the morning and then you go to bed, just like when I was 16. Nowadays I get paid sometimes which keeps you going for a few months. But back at the start there was no notion that you could do it as a career especially in Blackpool – who’s ever going to find you there? So when we started getting good press it was amazing, like being on a little desert island and a boat going past discovers you! Even if just one person heard your record being played on the radio that was amazing. Me saying this makes no sense to anyone under 30 right now – they’re probably thinking why didn’t we just go on Facebook! But we were just sending endless records out and then suddenly you’d be record of the week and you’d be like, fuck! How did that happen? There was no plan but I was trying really hard to get the band out of Blackpool. I would spend hours in a phone box at the end of our road with the wind swirling round outside with a bag of washers that our drummer had stolen from where he worked that were the same size at 10p pieces. So for two years we didn’t spend any money on phone calls! Long cold hours in that phone box. It’s so DIY! A lot of bands who were kind of our contemporaries in a way, musically speaking, who came out of punk but went in their own direction like The Birthday Party or Big Black have all got these really great back stories..they’re from New York or Berlin, and we’re from Blackpool in a poxy phone box! But you are who you are.

 

So it’s even more amazing that you guys managed to get out of Blackpool nonetheless! You were nearly the first band to be signed to Creation Records, you were on Marc Riley’s label In Tape and you were one of the first acts that Steve Albini recorded. Is it only in retrospect now that you can see how fortunate you were to be dealing with such leading lights of the music scene?

In a sense, but they weren’t big names back then. At that point in time we were pretty much the best known ‘noisy band’ in Britain, we’d had loads of great press and were touring a lot, so when Albini first came over to the UK we were kind of the go-to band. He’d never recorded before so we asked him when we played in Manchester. We went to his house and he had a load of our records and fanzines, and turned out he was a big Membranes fan. Marc Riley was in The Fall and was in another band called Creepers who were on the same circuit as us at the time. So they were just people we knew who could help us out and we in turn helped other people out. Pulp supported us, and now they’re now a stadium band. But in the early days they had no fans – you’d go see them play in Sheffield and there’d be no one there. For 10 years they were a completely ignored band, so it shows amazing self belief that they managed to keep going for so long – they were just slightly out of time until Britpop came along. It’s like Manchester, the Mondays  and the Roses– until people started taking drugs these psychedelic-tinged indie bands made no sense but when people all had wonky minds it all came together! So you either  drive where everyone’s going or you drive and eventually everyone comes to you, - it’s just right place, right time.

 

“Everybody has their own version of what punk is”

 

You came back as a band in 2009 at the request of My Bloody Valentine to play All Tomorrow’s Parties. What was it like to still have an eager and enthusiastic audience after a 26 year break?

MBV supported us when no one knew who they were and their guitar player has always played with The Membranes, I did their first interview because they were friends of ours and a good band. I used to lend them my pedals because he was trying to get a particular sound..he had them for about six months. They were really hard to get back off him! They used to live in a squat in Kentish Town, in a house that’s worth millions of pounds now. It looked exactly what you’d imagine a squat looks like! They lived there with all their friends and we stayed there a few times. We’ve shared a lot of good memories and are still really good friends with them, and the thing about My Bloody Valentine is they’ve always been very loyal to those who have supported them. Like, those people who went to the very early gigs, they always put them on the guest list when they play in Manchester. So part of that loyalty was putting us on at ATP and we played that on the second stage. We didn’t think anyone was going to come, no one was there when we started but when we walked out the place was full and we just thought wow. It was great because we didn’t know if anyone remembered us. We decided to ditch all the old stuff and just play the new songs because we figured that we don’t really have any hit songs anyway, no Top 10 indie chart singles so we’re not burdened by the past. It’s more about the spirit of the music than the songs themselves. I don’t mind a band that plays all their old hits – if you go see an old punk band it’s great to play those old songs, but we have the luxury of being able to do what the fuck we like, you know.

 

Your latest album Dark Matter/Dark Energy is so crisp and clear but still has that wonky feral bite to it. How much of the album was created around the theme of the universe and to what extent do you think it was a reflection of the important life events that you had all experienced during the time that had passed since you last recorded together?

That’s a perfect description! I’m writing that down now! Yeah completely. Our early stuff was very youthful – we were very young. Even when I was in my early 20’s we were trying to make music that was far too complex for our capabilities. We did pull it off sometimes, some of the albums have stood the test of time but not all of them. What I wanted to do was to make a record that I was completely happy with from the start to the finish so we started writing some songs. I did a TED X talk about Punk DIY and met Joe Incandela, particle physicist and former spokesperson for the CERN organisation who wanted to talk to me about The Buzzcocks and I wanted to talk about the universe! He told me all this mindblowing stuff about the multiverse, how they don’t really know what dark matter is or what’s going on in outer space. I thought if I can make a record that makes my head feel like it does when he’s talking about the universe that would be the album that would be amazing. The album didn’t have to be all about the universe, I just wanted to get that feeling of when your head spins from stuff you can’t quite understand, that idea that if you resist understanding it it makes you back off, but if you just open your mind and let it go in..that’s the sort of music I want to make. Initially it might be difficult to listen but if you just let that go then it could be really captivating. The universe is such a fascinating thing it did affect a lot of the lyric writing. As you get older there’s more darkness in your life –my father died while we were making the record and that kind of affected it as well. It’s a reflection of life and death in the universe, and I like the idea that we’re all made up of bits of the universe so in a way we all live forever, not in a concept of heaven, but more that little bits of you just float away. Obviously when you watch someone die it’s on your mind for several months but in a way it’s kind of liberating as well..death happens to everyone. Music can be about anything you want, some of the greatest songs are about nothing at all!

 

I hear you’ve been working with choirs for the first time recently?

I saw a choir play pieces by Arvo Part and folk songs in Estonia. I thought it was amazing and decided I wanted to do a gig with them. I could hear the similarity in the drones in both the choir and our music so I thought if I could get them to pitch in where the drones are it would work. I’d never worked with a choir before but I just had to go with my impulse. We’ve done about six gigs with different choirs now. They’re very professional musicians..it’s not like in a band where the members are like I’ve forgotten what I’m meant to be playing or I’m a bit drunk! The choir is all about doing the job right and do the parts they’re told to play. Initially it was 25 female voices, which gave the music a completely different spin – often music is a very male environment and it’s good to try and break away from those kinds of clichés and get a different dynamic.

 

 

Will you be working on recording more material in the future?

Yeah we’ve pretty much already written the new album, we’re just trying to get it together now.

 

What would you say has been the most exciting musical moment or development since the 80’s?

I think now it’s micro moments. Music doesn’t have anything that goes right across all different genres, but it’s always morphing all the time. At the moment I think it’s more fascinating than ever – I think if John Peel was still alive now he’d need a 10 hour show to keep up with it! You can go all the way from drone rock to the fringes of black metal right through to grime and even good old punk rock played by 16 year olds can sound great. To see stuff that’s so wilfully eccentric, like Let’s Eat Grandma is important. People always say “music was better in my day”. I’m lucky, I get to go out and see that it’s still good. There are tiny revolutions going on all the time.

 

As well as being in The Membranes and Goldblade, you’ve managed Therapy? and Cornershop, written several books about music, run a record label, produced a quarterly music magazine, been a pundit and a journalist. In fact you were the first to interview Nirvana and you coined the word Britpop. What’s been your biggest achievement thus far would you say?

For me it’s just making music. All the other stuff comes from music – if you’re into music you can talk about it, if you can talk about it you can write about it and everything comes from that. To be able to create something from nothing and to be able to finish it off, that’s the thing.

 

What do you make of the 40th anniversary of punk celebrations that seem to be cropping up everywhere this year?

 

The first thing I can’t believe it’s 40 years ago! It doesn’t feel like it could have happened in our generation. Classic punk is so contradictory – on one level it was never about looking backwards, but on another level it’s really great to celebrate a really important moment in time when people did say no, and a really complex pop scene developed that was never really resolved. It wasn’t quite formed when it hit the mainstream, so no one really knew what punk was, it was a load of question marks, not a definite culture. That was what was really good about it because it could be anything you wanted. But it collapsed quickly before anyone could work it out so now you get a situation where everybody has their own version of what punk is.

 

I know that seeing The Membranes live is a legendary experience. What can we expect from your show at The Owl Sanctuary, capacity 160?

We’ll deliver a dynamic performance – there are quiet songs as well as loud and fast ones. We still have a lot of energy when we play and intensity as well. These are all hallmarks of how we experienced music when we were young, how we understand how to make music. Also even though a lot of it is fairly leftfield you can actually dance to it as well – the songs are heavy because they’re on heavy subject matters but we definitely want people to have a good time at our gigs!

 

 The Membranes play as part of Norwich Sound & Vision at The Owl Sanctuary for Outline Magazine on Friday 14th October. Support comes from Knowpeace, Luminous Bodies and another act TBC. Wristbands and tickets are available from norwichsoundandvision.co.uk.