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By John Dingwall
Veteran pop legend Suggs can't wait to bring some Madness back to Loch Ness
26 May 2013 07:50
FRONTMAN Suggs is proud of his Scottish roots and looking forward to his return north where his band will be one of the highlights at the RockNess Festival.
Suggs of Madness performs at SECC in Glasgow.
MADNESS star Suggs is fed up with the group being described as quintessentially English – because he’s Scottish.
The veteran pop act’s snappily dressed frontman says his late father was a Scot and there are Irish and Scottish members of the band, including Edinburgh-born co-founder Mike Barson.
Suggs said: “We get called a national treasure, elder statesmen and quintessentially English.
“We’re not. My family was from Scotland and the band members came from all over the place, including Ireland, but our sentiments are what I would say we like about Britain as a whole, not England.”
Madness are still going strong as one of Britain’s best loved bands, having formed in 1976. They split a decade later but reformed in 1992.
“The most difficult thing for me is that when you achieve a certain level of fame, it is hard to wander and observe the streets in the way that I like,” Suggs said.
“But 30 years on, I live in the same house and people don’t bother me any more. Ironically, I have gone back to being anonymous. Rod Stewart has only just written his first record for 30 years because he spent most of his life around a swimming pool in Beverly Hills and it’s difficult to connect with the average person if that’s how you exist.
“Unfortunately, I had the luxury of not having to exist like that but there were times when I got more famous than I wished. I’m not complaining because it facilitated my life, which is one of relative pleasure.”
The band are heading to Scotland on June 9 and will be one of the highlights at the RockNess festival.
“We haven’t got a lot on,” Suggs added. “We picked things we hadn’t done before and RockNess is one of them. I’ve heard it’s brilliant, it’s a beautiful setting and a great atmosphere.”
The festival date comes 34 years after the band’s first trip to Scotland as part of a tour with 2 Tone labelmates The Selecter and The Specials.
They played a sell-out show at Tiffany’s in Glasgow’s Sauchiehall Street as well as other Scottish shows, hot on the heels of their 1979 debut hit The Prince.
“It was one of the happiest times of my life,” Suggs said. “I was 18 and on tour with The Specials and The Selecter.
“It really was the most tremendous time. It was
pre-mobile phones so the tour manager had to stop at every service station to make calls on the way up to Scotland.
“There were riots outside some of the venues because the whole phenomenon of 2 Tone was exploding all over the country. The venues were selling out so fast and I think there was a riot outside Tiffany’s.”
As well as introducing the ska sound of Jamaica to a mainstream British audience, the label spurred a fashion craze and Suggs became a style icon.
“The thing I remember is how young the demographic was,” he said. “It was 13 to 16-year-old kids outside and the Harringtons with the badges were the fashion.
“As a kid, I had seen people like David Bowie then Roxy Music and they influenced the way people were dressing.
“I never thought that would be something we’d be involved in. Suddenly, every kid in the land seemed to be wearing a Harrington covered in badges and all the semi-skinhead Mod gear.”
He added: “I went to Jamaica about 10 years ago and there was such a great feeling from people because of what happened with 2 Tone and with the likes of UB40.
“It was also the first time those artists ever got paid. When we covered their songs or The Specials did, we made sure they got royalties.
“I was 16 in 1977 and I went to the Roxy where it was all starting in London. I always felt it was amazing seeing these bands of 14 and 15-year-olds. A year later, I was in a new band. It was all to do with kids doing it themselves outside the norms of the journalistic intelligencia.”
While 2 Tone spawned a raft of acts and dominated the charts in the years that followed, Madness left and signed to Stiff Records midway through that first 2 Tone tour in 1979.
“I remember the last night of the 2 Tone tour, we were playing in Aberdeen,” Suggs said. “Madness were leaving at that point to go off to America. As The Specials were playing, we walked across the stage with our suitcases and straight on to our bus that was that.
“We went to Stiff Records after that. We didn’t feel like we wanted to stay on 2 Tone. We loved it and Jerry Dammers of The Specials gave us a good break and it was an amazing time.
“As history will tell, we weren’t just a ska band, although we loved that music and we still do. We felt the confines of 2 Tone were going to be ska orientated.
“We’d always played a variety of music and Stiff had our hero Ian Dury and so many maverick bands. It seemed the best place for us really.”
As it turned out, Madness enjoyed spectacular success on Stiff. Despite splitting in 1986, the group spent more than 200 weeks in the singles charts in the 1980s. And the band’s visits to Scotland, performing Baggy Trousers, Our House and Embarrassment, stick out in Suggs’s mind.
“I remember we played the Glasgow Apollo with the really tall stage,” he said. “We had some polystyrene cabers made. We thought we’d keep them for the whole of the Scottish tour.
“But we launched them into the crowd and they smashed into a million pieces. The artist Humphrey Ocean, who did the illustrations for the cover of Baggy Trousers, introduced us and then promptly fell off the stage.
“Our friend Willy came to see us and made us sit in a semi-circle in the hotel reception and ordered bottles of Glenmorangie. He ended up threatening the night porter.”
Suggs was due to return north with his one-man show My Life Story at Glasgow’s Pavilion theatre last night and may add further dates.
In it, Suggs, who releases an autobiography later this year, talks of his life from being born Graham McPherson 52 years ago to failing to reunite with his heroin addict Scots father, the late William McPherson, who walked out on his family in Hastings when he was three.
He said: “In my one-man show, I talk about a number of things, including my search for my dad. I also talk about the burnout the band faced when we split up. We became the biggest band of the 1980s. We split up in the
mid-80s at a time when we were newly married with young kids.
“The constant touring meant we were very rarely at home. The schedule was relentless, three singles, videos, an album and touring for the rest of the year. We were tired. Now bands take a year off but in those days, we were working on a template from the 1960s, pushed to keep going for fear that it might stop.
“Unfortunately, it went too far and the first to crack was Mike Barson. We should have seen the signs he was fed up when he turned up at a photoshoot wearing a balaclava. Shortly after, he stopped turning up altogether.
“We struggled on, the six of us and made a not-bad album Mad Not Bad, but we should have taken time out. There was that intensity and then suddenly it was all over. It collapsed.
“Madness is still kicking off, right, left and centre. But we are like a family and families have fights, as well as love and all the rest of it.”
Entertainment Music Music News RockNess
By John Dingwall
Veteran pop legend Suggs can't wait to bring some Madness back to Loch Ness
26 May 2013 07:50
FRONTMAN Suggs is proud of his Scottish roots and looking forward to his return north where his band will be one of the highlights at the RockNess Festival.
Suggs of Madness performs at SECC in Glasgow.
MADNESS star Suggs is fed up with the group being described as quintessentially English – because he’s Scottish.
The veteran pop act’s snappily dressed frontman says his late father was a Scot and there are Irish and Scottish members of the band, including Edinburgh-born co-founder Mike Barson.
Suggs said: “We get called a national treasure, elder statesmen and quintessentially English.
“We’re not. My family was from Scotland and the band members came from all over the place, including Ireland, but our sentiments are what I would say we like about Britain as a whole, not England.”
Madness are still going strong as one of Britain’s best loved bands, having formed in 1976. They split a decade later but reformed in 1992.
“The most difficult thing for me is that when you achieve a certain level of fame, it is hard to wander and observe the streets in the way that I like,” Suggs said.
“But 30 years on, I live in the same house and people don’t bother me any more. Ironically, I have gone back to being anonymous. Rod Stewart has only just written his first record for 30 years because he spent most of his life around a swimming pool in Beverly Hills and it’s difficult to connect with the average person if that’s how you exist.
“Unfortunately, I had the luxury of not having to exist like that but there were times when I got more famous than I wished. I’m not complaining because it facilitated my life, which is one of relative pleasure.”
The band are heading to Scotland on June 9 and will be one of the highlights at the RockNess festival.
“We haven’t got a lot on,” Suggs added. “We picked things we hadn’t done before and RockNess is one of them. I’ve heard it’s brilliant, it’s a beautiful setting and a great atmosphere.”
The festival date comes 34 years after the band’s first trip to Scotland as part of a tour with 2 Tone labelmates The Selecter and The Specials.
They played a sell-out show at Tiffany’s in Glasgow’s Sauchiehall Street as well as other Scottish shows, hot on the heels of their 1979 debut hit The Prince.
“It was one of the happiest times of my life,” Suggs said. “I was 18 and on tour with The Specials and The Selecter.
“It really was the most tremendous time. It was
pre-mobile phones so the tour manager had to stop at every service station to make calls on the way up to Scotland.
“There were riots outside some of the venues because the whole phenomenon of 2 Tone was exploding all over the country. The venues were selling out so fast and I think there was a riot outside Tiffany’s.”
As well as introducing the ska sound of Jamaica to a mainstream British audience, the label spurred a fashion craze and Suggs became a style icon.
“The thing I remember is how young the demographic was,” he said. “It was 13 to 16-year-old kids outside and the Harringtons with the badges were the fashion.
“As a kid, I had seen people like David Bowie then Roxy Music and they influenced the way people were dressing.
“I never thought that would be something we’d be involved in. Suddenly, every kid in the land seemed to be wearing a Harrington covered in badges and all the semi-skinhead Mod gear.”
He added: “I went to Jamaica about 10 years ago and there was such a great feeling from people because of what happened with 2 Tone and with the likes of UB40.
“It was also the first time those artists ever got paid. When we covered their songs or The Specials did, we made sure they got royalties.
“I was 16 in 1977 and I went to the Roxy where it was all starting in London. I always felt it was amazing seeing these bands of 14 and 15-year-olds. A year later, I was in a new band. It was all to do with kids doing it themselves outside the norms of the journalistic intelligencia.”
While 2 Tone spawned a raft of acts and dominated the charts in the years that followed, Madness left and signed to Stiff Records midway through that first 2 Tone tour in 1979.
“I remember the last night of the 2 Tone tour, we were playing in Aberdeen,” Suggs said. “Madness were leaving at that point to go off to America. As The Specials were playing, we walked across the stage with our suitcases and straight on to our bus that was that.
“We went to Stiff Records after that. We didn’t feel like we wanted to stay on 2 Tone. We loved it and Jerry Dammers of The Specials gave us a good break and it was an amazing time.
“As history will tell, we weren’t just a ska band, although we loved that music and we still do. We felt the confines of 2 Tone were going to be ska orientated.
“We’d always played a variety of music and Stiff had our hero Ian Dury and so many maverick bands. It seemed the best place for us really.”
As it turned out, Madness enjoyed spectacular success on Stiff. Despite splitting in 1986, the group spent more than 200 weeks in the singles charts in the 1980s. And the band’s visits to Scotland, performing Baggy Trousers, Our House and Embarrassment, stick out in Suggs’s mind.
“I remember we played the Glasgow Apollo with the really tall stage,” he said. “We had some polystyrene cabers made. We thought we’d keep them for the whole of the Scottish tour.
“But we launched them into the crowd and they smashed into a million pieces. The artist Humphrey Ocean, who did the illustrations for the cover of Baggy Trousers, introduced us and then promptly fell off the stage.
“Our friend Willy came to see us and made us sit in a semi-circle in the hotel reception and ordered bottles of Glenmorangie. He ended up threatening the night porter.”
Suggs was due to return north with his one-man show My Life Story at Glasgow’s Pavilion theatre last night and may add further dates.
In it, Suggs, who releases an autobiography later this year, talks of his life from being born Graham McPherson 52 years ago to failing to reunite with his heroin addict Scots father, the late William McPherson, who walked out on his family in Hastings when he was three.
He said: “In my one-man show, I talk about a number of things, including my search for my dad. I also talk about the burnout the band faced when we split up. We became the biggest band of the 1980s. We split up in the
mid-80s at a time when we were newly married with young kids.
“The constant touring meant we were very rarely at home. The schedule was relentless, three singles, videos, an album and touring for the rest of the year. We were tired. Now bands take a year off but in those days, we were working on a template from the 1960s, pushed to keep going for fear that it might stop.
“Unfortunately, it went too far and the first to crack was Mike Barson. We should have seen the signs he was fed up when he turned up at a photoshoot wearing a balaclava. Shortly after, he stopped turning up altogether.
“We struggled on, the six of us and made a not-bad album Mad Not Bad, but we should have taken time out. There was that intensity and then suddenly it was all over. It collapsed.
“Madness is still kicking off, right, left and centre. But we are like a family and families have fights, as well as love and all the rest of it.”