Melody Maker 20th October 1984, price 45p

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Back to top	Front Cover   Cover photo/feature: - BIG COUNTRY AT THE GATES OF EDEN: CENTRE PAGES.   Other features: - AFRIKA BAMBAATAA: THE SOUL SONIC STORMTROOPER, THE FRIGHTENING WORLD OF... THE FALL, CLINT & THE GENERAL, THE DAINTEES, ZERRA 1, GIL EVANS, IRON MAIDEN   Big Country photographed by Tom Sheehan
Back to top	Page 2 - CHARTS   SINGLES - UK 2 (1) THE WAR SONG, Culture Club (Virgin) 10 (4) PRIDE, U2 (Island) 15 (15) SKIN DEEP, The Stranglers (Epic) 21 (11) BLUE JEAN, David Bowie (EMI America) 22 (18) EAST OF EDEN, Big Country (Mercury) 25 (-) LOVE'S GREATEST ADVENTURE, Ultravox (Chrysalis) (Pos this wk/last wk)   ALBUMS - UK 1 (12) THE UNFORGETTABLE FIRE, U2 (Island) 3 (1) TONIGHT, David Bowie (EMI America) 9 (5) NOW THAT'S WHAT I CALL MUSIC 3, Various (EMI/Virgin) (Pos this wk/last wk)   Big Country "East of Eden" with images from the official video, uploaded by Nalani Ó Dubháin
Back to top	Page 4 - RECORD NEWS   FAST FORWARD RICHARD JOBSON - he of Skids and currently Armoury Show fame - has a solo album out shortly on Les Disques Du Crepuscle. "An Afternoon In Company" is a recording of spoken verse and music.   RICHARD JOBSON "An Afternoon In Company" (A side) 1984, uploaded by Ju S. Ju
Back to top	Pages 8 & 9 - TALK TALK TALK 3   PHOTO: Ronnie James Dio, John Hurt, Jimmy Bain & Richard Jobson.   THE HURTING KIND SCOOP! Scoop! Scoop! New mega-band formed at booze-up shock! Name these four famous urchins and you win a blow-up copy of the NME... we send it, you blow it up. To make it easier for you, we'll tell you. The one on the left with the mega-nose offering the champagne to our photographor is well-known midget Ronnie James Dio. Next to him is The Elephant Man, noted for his portrayals of John Hurt, and acclaimed for his performance in the new movie of George Orwell's "1984". The Elephant Man's caricatures of Hurt were so accurate that co-star Richard Burton collapsed and died soon afterwards. Next to him is some bozo from Dio's band that nobody here recognises. And on the right is Richard Jobson, cheerleader at Arsenal Football Club and currently teaching his hair how to fly. They discovered a mutual interest in getting wrecked at a party to celebrate Dio's London concert the other day. We hope they'll all live happily ever after.   BOY George took his life into his hands on Saturday when he paraded in front of the world's most danoorous warzone - The Shed at Stamford Bridge, Chelsea. Not famous for his interest in soccer, George was clearly suffering from henna on the brain when he dragged Culture Club along to the Bridge to film a video immediately before the Blues took on Watford. Mikey Craig - happily re-instated as a full member of Culture Club first team having been excluded from some recent publicity photos and rumoured to be seeking a transfer - displayed some unexpected skills... But the gorillas who populate the Shed are tetchy at the best of times and greeted George's arrival on the pitch with a hail of not entirely affectionate abuse. Even George, for all his experience at fighting on the front lines of Fleet Street, looked shaken... Chelsea's Scottish winger Pat Nevin, an avid Crispy Ambulance fan, was unimpressed and Chelsea were so stunned by being in the presence of royalty that they lost the match 3-2 to a Watford side featuring one Richard Jobson playing at centre-half... A versatile boy that Jobbo, but then times must be hard for the Armoury Show. One person not there to enjoy Watford's first win of the season was chairperson Elton John, busy in Washington cancelling two shows following a "mystery illness". Is Elton's interest in Watford waning? When they were on their way to the Cup Final last season, Elton had a live telephone link installed in his Australian hotel rooms so he could keep tabs on his boys. Now they're bottom of the league Watford manager Graham Taylor says he hasn't heard from the chairman for six weeks. Maybe the missus is making him go shopping on Saturday afternoons now...   According to Level 42 "The Chant Has Begun"; according to The Alarm "The Chant Has Just Begun", This is going to be awfully confusing for all those nice disc-jockey people who get confused enough trying to pronounce awkward names like Sade, Depeche Mode and the Smiths. Two entirely different bands releasing two entirely different songs with similar titles in the same week could bring Broadcasting House to a standstill...
Back to top	Page 18 - IT'S ALIVE!   BLAZE OF GLORY   THE ALARM   Heaven, London   WHAT the devil, I asked the curious Japanese businessmen who dominated the artefact-packed Sherlock Homes pub just around the corner, were The Alarm doing playing this partial palace of pretension?   "Shaking the building until it squeals with delight," they said, and they were right! And what's more, there was none of the usual daren't-dirty-our-strings-until-the-witching-hour-is-upon-us crap, so noticeable in nightclubs. The Alarm were already pumping vigorously through their first number when I oozed through the door before 11, sparing the loyals the unnecessary walk home. A little consideration goes a long way.   Ah, they haven't changed. Their hair continues to bring back memories for Jack of the Beanstalk and their guitar straps are still long enough for those wide arcs of gesticulation. Within minutes the atmosphere of celebration has scraped your bones clean and you're on top of the world.   The Alarm get the audience thoy deserve, and for once I mean that in the nicest possible sense. From front to back of the heat-haze hall, it was 99 per cent mentals, something I've not seen in four years. They tapped occasionally into call and response but generally took off on their own vocal additions, which, at times, bordered on the uncanny, contributing their alternative backing vocals in large numbers of purely by instinct; something of a phenomenon!   And these songs which can often sound billious on record (when are they going to find a decent Producer, for God's sake?) leapt from the blustery PA furry but furious. "Deceiver", "What Kind Of Hell?" and "Another Step Closer", just three of many energetic and hard entities, seemed deceptively easy, while the newer material, "Absolute Reality" and "The Chant" (the next single?), was bold and precocious with a smoothly powerful edge.   On a night like this, where they flesh out the anthemic role they seek, it's the close rapport with the crowd and their own obvious and natural delight in the situation that lends itself to cynical cries of fakery, but even a simpleton should be able to it's no more than good old (fashioned) enthusiasm.   "Third Light" appeared to be going backwards at first, but the cumulative effect of their rousing material made the concerted encores a mini event to themselves. Guitar held high, "Blaze of Glory", lump in throat, "68 Guns", stretched out too far, "Marching On", benefitting from the breathing space with the band and audience of equal importance.   We pay with our sweat (I was up half the night washing my tee-shirt) and The Alarm will end up in their forties as hunchbacks, regarded with awe by their neighbours. "Our guitars were heavy, our postures extreme.." they will say.   I've seen them play better, in better places, but I've never seen them so effective.   It would be heresy to disagree.   MICK MERCER
Back to top	Pages 22 & 23 - The Working Week   PHOTO - Level 42 FOLLOWING the deserved success of their cracking single, "Hot Water", and with a new album "True Colours" to promote, Level 42 (above) begin a 20-date tour this week. Thwacker King and his Level-headed chums turn up at Norwich University of East Anglia on Sunday, Loughborough University (Monday) and Margate Winter Gardens (Tuesday) with the rest of the dates stretching well into November. Also on tour: Elvis Costello, Spear Of Destiny, Marc Almond, Depeche Mode, The Fall, Everything But The Girl, Aswad, Van Morrison, OMD, The Truth, Twelfth Night, A Certain Ratio, Big Country and Gary Glitter. Finally, smooth operator Sade smooches into Newcastle City Hall on Tuesday to Start her 13 date UK tour. More demon diamond details next week.   Wednesday 17th BOURNEMOUTH International Centre: Big Country + White China DUNDEE Fountain Nite Club: A Certain Ratio SHEFFIELD Polytechnic: Spear of Destiny + Lost Loved Ones   Thursday 18th GLASGOW Henry Africas: A Certain Ratio NEWCASTLE University: Spear of Destiny + Lost Loved Ones   FRIDAY 19th DUNFERMLINE Johnsons: A Certain Ratio GLASGOW Strathclyde University: Spear of Destiny + Lost Loved Ones LONDON Hammersmith Odeon, W6: Big Country + White China   Saturday 20th EDINBURGH Moray House: A Certain Ratio LONDON Hammersmith Odeon, W6: Big Country + White China   Sunday 21st AYR Pavilion: Spear of Destiny + Lost Loved Ones   Monday 22nd EDINBURGH Palais: Spear of Destiny + Lost Loved Ones   Tuesday 23rd MIDDLESBOROUGH Town Hall: Spear of Destiny + Lost Loved Ones
Back to top	Pages 24 & 25   RETURN TO EDEN   Despite everything, BIG COUNTRY are still managing to hang on to their sanity ... just. Carol Clerk, who lost her sanity years ago, joins the circus in time for the Scottish leg of their British tour and interrogates Stuart and his chums on their new album: 'Steeltown'. Pictures by Tom Sheehan   "IN a lot of ways, we're winning."   Backstage at the Edinburgh Playhouse, hidden away in a dressing room strewn with empty cans and half-bitten scraps of salad, Stuart Adamson wobbled backwards and forwards on a rickety wooden chair as he contemplated the changing fortunes of Big Country.   His eyes were still flashing with the exhileration of the evening's performance; his conversation bristled with an unspoken excitement, the natural consequence of a spectacularly emotional concert. And yet the pride, the confidence, with which he spoke of the band and their music sprang from deeper sources, from some unassailable place far beyond the temporary dizziness of a great night onstage.   We're well aware by now of Stuart's complete disregard for the glory games and the greed that pervade the record business: he's told us often enough. Time and again, he's insisted that Big Country exist simply to communicate, to make music that should be shared and embraced by group and fans alike, and to endow it with a lyrical substance that can inspire thought, appraisal and reappraisal.   In his own words: "Success to us is just as much as we're able to get across, put the words across, put the whole song across. The feedback we get when that's happening is just brilliant. All that Big Country are is a sum of the people who like the group."   And so in the week that brought them back to the British tour circuit, in the month that sees the release of a fabulous second album, Big Country are winning.   Characteristically, though, they refuse to assess their progress in terms of specific achievement.   Sitting in a plush hotel bar earlier with Tony and Bruce, Mark had this to say: "We don't all look at it and judge as if we've got a beginning and an end. The whole point is growing and developing naturally, and you can't measure it. We've still got a long way to go.   "You know, you hear of bands who never last long enough to produce that wonderful work that's expected of them. I want us to reach our maximum potential. I want to see this band survive all the things that are thrown at us."   Certainly, Big Country have had plenty of things thrown at them over the past few months: this has probably been the most difficult period of their career, people and circumstances bombarding them with every test of endurance and patience. It's only this year for instance, that they've been confronted by any real volume of criticism.   After an unusually lengthy honeymoon with the press and public, the inevitable backlash begun with a vengance, tying the group up with U2 and The Alarm and accusing them variously of pomposity, emptiness, deception, complacency, pop star posing, rockism... all the things, in fact, that Big Country have consistenly stood against.   Lighting up another Regal in this scrawny dressing room which was only recently vacated by support band White China, Stuart seemed surprisingly unperturbed.   "I'll no be hypocritical," he responded. "It is offensive. Of course it hurst when people slate you to death. Of course it hurst when people come up to you in the street and say 'You're a c***'. But we're getting a backlash and it was obvious it was gonna happen cause we set ourselves up for it.   "When Bruce and I started writing songs in the community centre, we weren't bothering our ass what people were saying or writing about us, so to bother about it now would be wrong. It's like Lenny Bruce said: 'There's only what is - what should be is a dirty lie.' We're just a set of people playing music, trying to touch more people, making people understand how we feel about certain things, and if people dinna like it, up to them.   "I dinna see any shame in being in the same squad as them, U2, The Alarm, and the Bunnymen. The Smiths are a guitar group too... I dinna see any shame in being in a guitar band. Slagging groups is wrong - every single group has merits in their own right.   "It's well weird for me, cause when I first met U2, I went to see them play live. Mr Gavin Martin slagged me off for going to see them and slagged off Bono for wearing leather trousers. He said, 'I get a bit worried for U2 when I see them wearing leather trousers and hanging about with the likes of Stuart Adamson'."   With the increasingly frequent accusation that Big Country, under the guise of men of the people, have actually turned into the pop stars once abhored, I wondered if the band themselves could foresee any pitfalls, any threat of being sucked into the system or gradually getting used to and expecting the best treatment wherever they go, the good food and the top hotels. Stuart's reply was succinct:   "Have you seen me staying in a hotel this week?"   It's true. He hadn't. That night, and the one before in Glasgow, he'd travelled home after the shows to be with his wife Sandra and son Callum - a fact which made the process of seeing Stuart, never mind interviewing him, something of a difficult business.   Tony, Bruce and Mark had been easier to track down. The hotel bar was always the safest bet and it was there, in Edinburgh, that they surveyed the offensively early Christmas decorations and considered the most recent developments in their well-documented battle against the pop star syndrome.   "I was in a pub one day and two wee guys came in," started Bruce. "They were going 'There's Bruce Watson, big c***, he must be a pop star'. I went over and said 'Can I no come into a pub and have a drink?' But then I just gave up. When you're on the box, folk tend to think you dinna exist as a human being, and you learn to live with it.   "We're proud of the fact that none of the band have turned into shitheads. We're still like we were when we started, like boys having a laugh."   "The personal touch is more difficult those days," conceded Tony. "You still meet people where it's possible, but it's disheartening when you have to disappoint kids. "This group would split up before we'd become complacent and pompous. It really isn't worth being Big Country if our attitudes and ideals started dropping.   "There are dangers. By becoming a media personality, you can become complacent. I realised that when I did 'Pop Quiz'. I love being a quarter of Big Country, shielded by the others, but when you start to get singled out, you do come into dangerous territory.   "At 'Pop Quiz' they treat you as a star. You're ushered about, and they do this and that and they give you expensive food to eat, and it was all a bit plastic for me. I'd do it again, but what I shouldn't do is let it become a normal part of my life and expect it every time I go into a TV studio; not sort of stand in the street and say 'Don't you recognise me, I was on telly'."   Of the four, it's Tony who's been most hurt by the recent press attacks on Big Country. While Bruce admits to being "disheartened" on occasion but is equally able to laugh at the more vicious reviews, while Mark simply wonders, as many have before him, why journalists can't offer "constructive criticism", Tony looks genuinely wounded behind his pint of beer.   "When 'East Of Eden' came out, we thought we'd get slagged for it, but I didn't expect it would be slaggedd so maliciously. I don't mind people airing their opinions about records, but some of it had nothing to do with the single. One paper actually said 'Big Country are for big c***s'. To insinuate the people who buy our records are big c***s is not very nice. It upset me totally. And the next time it happens, it will upset me again. It's like somebody coming up to my face and calling me a black bastard."   Stuart's reaction was merely defiant: "'East Of Eden' is very very full, musically and lyrically, and I'm real proud of it." He scrunched another cigarette butt firmly into the ashtray.   WHILE Big Country were on the receiving end of their first real roasting from the papers, they were at the same time experiencing the rough end of long-term touring.   "Just being away from home and separated from the family is an awfully hard thing to take," Stuart decided. "Having to stay in hotels is like being in jail, and it's also hard physical work that we do, especially onstage. It's just a matter of trying to care for yourself and not abuse yourself too much."   Mark, in contrast, offers no complaints about the road, but for Tony and Bruce. there have been endless traumas.   "We went through a lot of personal turmoils, personal things," declared Tony, shuddering in recollection. "We'd done so much touring and been so many different places on the strength of one LP, I went a bit potty now and again. We'd shout at each other, or take it out on the wife. You think you can cope with all but you need a release so you either take it out on people or keep quiet and whimper and start going a bit mad. The great thing is, if you do go mad, you've got the other guys to help you out."   "It all started in America," added the...   Page 25   ...incorrigibly chatty Bruce. "Eight-week tours... every day it was get up in the morning, go to 10 different radio stations, do every local newspaper, go to the soundcheck, then go and do an in-store talk to the kids with the braces on their teeth, do the gig, go to the hospitality room after the gig and meet all the reps... every day, and it all got a bit too much. Sometimes we'd get drunk too much. You tend to hit the bevvy."   "That's right," agreed Tony. "You get pissed like idiots because there's nothing else to do, really.   "But all the problems came to an end when we went to Sweden in June to do the album. By the time we got there everybody was bursting with ideas, and it was a time for everybody to just relieve themselves."   I don't think he noticed the double entendre.     THERE may still be some misguided souls on this planet who continue to think of Big Country as a collection of unutterably serious individuals, po-faced and staggering under the weight of some colossal social conscience, earnestly waffling of "passion" and "honesty" from sun-up to sun-down. They should try a night out with the intrepid trio!   In Glasgow, after their Apollo gig, Mark, Tony and Bruce were up until dawn at a party in their manager's room. There was Bruce, swigging white wine and reeling with laughter at the antics of Robbie Coltrane from "A Kick Up The Eighties" who was uninhibitedly performing a series of familar sketches — Robert Carrier, "Mr & Mrs" and a hundred more. Last I saw of Tony and Mark, they were under the table. Literally.   Next night in Edinburgh, they were back on epic form, holding court in the late bar until the moment it shut with a colourful array of anecdotes.   "Did you hear about the time Bruce was arrested in Japan for smuggling a Vick Sinex into the country?" inquired Mark, stretching out long legs as another round of McEwans arrived on the table.   "Oh aye," chuckled Bruce. "They went through my poof bag, sorry, my toilet bag, where I had my shaver and my toothbrush and my powder puff, and they found a Vick Sinex... they must've thought it was a coke device or something like that. I was fingerprinted and everything, and I had to get bailed out."   This, however, had nothing on the experiences of the hapless Mark who was carted off into the night by armed Police in New Orleans after a chain of misadventures that had occurred through no fault of his own. After seven hours incarceratod in some horrendous cell with "prostitutes, drunks and a gay guy", Mark went to court, was discharged and given a formal apology.   "They gave me the 11,000 dollar bail money he recalled, "But the lawyer we hired cost exactly the same amount.   "It was awful, I was 110 per cent innocent. caught up in a position that wasn't my fault. My biggest fear in life, other than getting cancer or something like that, is being locked away for something I haven't done. Another human who has the power to put you away can suddenly change your life just through circumstances working against you.   "When they took me into the photographic room where they do your mugshots, I was really scared. Then they said 'Just stand in front of the camera' so I did, and just before they took each photograph, I had a Policeman join in on every snapshot — 'This is for my boy, John'... And then there were eight policemen who came in, lined up in front of me and produced notepads for me to sign autographs!"   The stories, the reminiscences, the jokes careered along jovially as the progressed. There was the day a Mexican jumped out in the road in Chicago with the intention of getting knocked down by Bruce; the morning Bruce was caught stark naked by a fan's mother, the day he flooded his hotel room on his first attempt at using a bidet, there were lurid descriptions of some extremely dubious devices in the shops of the USA, there were toilet tales that bear no repetition here.   Mark, however, was preoccupied for much of the evening. He's just bought a house.   "Everywhere I go, I'm taking in information I might adapt for my own use. I'm thinking of my house all the time. I'm looking at the curtains in here now, and I'm wondering what they are — some sort of pleats or double gatherings...   Mark has all the makings of a brilliant eccentric.     THE tension in the dressing room at the Glasgow Apollo was enough to make everybody nervous. There'd been a warm-up the night before at Lancaster, but this was Scotland, this was the first major date of the tour, this was stand or fall for the new material.   It stood. While the fans were particularly riotous during the big hit singles and other live favourites like "Lost Patrol", "Inwards", "1,000 Stars" and "Angle Park", their reactions to the unfamiliar numbers were everything the group could've hoped.   They danced along good-humouredly with the jig/hornpipe uplift of "Raindance" (a brave opener), stamped spiritedly with the thrust of "Steeltown", cheered the up-tempo melodies of "Where The Rose Is Sown" and punched arms in the air to the slow insistence of "Come Back To Me", just as they'd done to "Chance".   At the end of it all, their enormous response was simply for the music and the group who had made it. There were no rabble-rousing stunts here, no extravagant visuals: just a simple show with a couple of backdrops and the odd puff of dry ice.   But if Glasgow was a triumph, a show to stoke the confidence and comfort the nerves, Edinburgh was a revelation, a packed-out, knocked-out, overwhelmingly ecstatic experience, the text-book example of band and audience as one, devouring each other, urging each other on to heights that really did take your breath away. Big Country had to pause between every song, quite unable to compete with the roar of the crowd singing lustily to them.   And in the middle of it all, one little fellow, aged about six, found himself lifted up on to the stage. Steering him over to the mike, Stuart persuaded him to sing, sing again, and again. The crowd bellowed delightedly, and then, at a whisper from the guitarist, the boy jumped back down on to the shoudlers of his older friends.   "I just told him he'd better go back or the big gorillas would come over and get him," laughed Stuart, whose own son had been at the gig and insisted on being taken into the auditorium after everyone had left, just to investigate. Indeed, over the two days   continued on p37
Back to top	Pages 26 & 27   SINGLES   THE ALARM: "The Chant Has Just Began" (IRS) Which chant though? The one about recession and the "monetary sound", the one full of heavy overproduction and electronics, the one with tribal cries of "Weialala leia Walleia leialala" a la Heaven 17 - which one? The song's got them all, with a few Thirties' figures from the BBC Hulton Picture Library thrown in for good measure in case there's a minority or pressure group left unappealed to. Probably it'll be a big hit, but as far as social conscience goes, it's about on a par with Alvin Stardust's tale of teenage pregnancy.   THE ALARM - "The Chant Has Just Begun" - 19/10/1984 - posted by dougm1971   SIOUXSIE AND BANSHEES: "The Thorn" (Polydor)   REMIXED and remodelled with strongs, choirs and all the production of a Hooked On Classics effort, "Overgroup", "Voices", "Placebo Effect" and "Red Over White" do the Banshees credit - it doesn't sound in the least but silly, cliched or pretentious, three traps which previous classi rock experimenters have into headfirst. In fact the power of a classical orchestra is the perfect foil for the band's grindingly insistent sounds, and there's somthign about Siouxsie's voice which benefits from such a combination of chaos and formality. "Overground" is the undoubted highlight, with the orchestra churning away at a sort of spaghetti western backing full of castanets and snare drums while the guitars snarl angrily between them. A little reminiscent of Deep Purple's "Concerto For Group And Orchestra"... but let's not go into that.   Siouxsie and the Banshees - "The Thorn" EP [Full] (1984) - posted by Ersayin Kunter   ALBUMS   ROADS TO FREEDOM   BIG COUNTRY: "Steeltown" (Mercury MERH49) I DON'T think I've ever wished so much for an album to be great and strong and certainly never in my experience has an album fulfilled so many promises.   "Steeltown" is, simply, superb, everything Big Country ever said they were and we sort of hoped, with fingers crossed, they might be. There's no ifs or buts about it — no "if only they weren't so naive", no "if only we weren't so cynical", no "if only The Clash hadn't cocked it up so badly for everyone else", no "if only didn't wear those checked shirts", no if anything.   The sound that eminates from this album exhilarates — the power is internal, dynamic and emotional, not external cosmetic bluster. All the rockist arguments have been defeated, we never stop to consider this passion might be posturing. Thin Lizzy don't come into it, nor do those nagging doubts that the bagpipe guitars might br a gimmick. This is sheer purpose made practise, adrenalised action.   The debate whether Adamson is capable of reinvesting clichés with meaning is rendered redundant. The deed is done. Big Country, all four of them, have grown in stature and sensitivity and there are no failures here excused for their good intentions. There is only the fact: "Steeltown" works.   It's grown in so many ways, so far from "The Crossing". The title track with its dark images of busted industry and broken people, is far more politically explicit than anything Adamson's attempted before and you can't tell me that Reagan's farcical visit to Ireland and "Flame Of The West" coincidentally inhabit the same 12 months.   "Steeltown" is the bravest record this year. There's a growing confidence in Adamson's narrative style that exorcises any embarrassment we might feel at being force-fed homilies. "Come To Me", for example, is "Chance" grown up — the deserted housewife is now the pregnant girlfriend of a dead (Falklands?) soldier, left to face life alone while a local hero returns in triumph, intact. "I watched them gather round him/When he stepped down from the car/While tears fell on my cigarette/He handed out cigars."   Set in a lament not that far from Country & Western, "Come Back" is poignant and singable, avoiding sentimentality. It's folk music for today and folk music, remember, is for and of the people, a usable companion, a social documentary. wisdom and woe handed down. It's unashamed honesty embroidered into myth, it eases pain in the telling and shares common experience.   Adamson's about as unselfconscious as a pop star can be nowadays, he sings a woman's words and he doesn't blush, he's turned himself over to his songs, to history, to us.   Lyrically, "Steeltown" is less exuberant than "The Crossing" but that's inevitable. Big Country have an audience now, the first struggle's over and there's no fear they'll spill their seed on barren soil. "Steeltown" needed to be explicit though, to ensure no complacency crept in. And there's no mistaking this album's intentions.   "Where The Rose Is Sown" is an anti-war anthem, a tale without blame. It works as Adamson always maintained a song should, on a human not polemic level. There are no rights or wrongs, only people. "If I die in combat zone/Box me up and ship me home."   Surprisingly, there's no sign of the feared formula either, no evidence of relaxation or fatigue. "Raindance" is hard, eschewing one tradition (Scots) for another (almost hillbilly) with an ease that shows Big Country mining the source not the style. "Tall Ships Go" even straddles the sort of mechanical rumble you'd expect to confront in Cabaret Voltaire. Big Country, once a vision are now a band.   There are no signs of strain, no stress in the structure. "Steeltown" sounds so natural that it's only an afterthought that the ballad "Grey With Grey Eyes" is, in fact, as tender and free from chauvinism as a love song has ever been. It doesn't try, it isn't forced, it just is, and there's the improvement, the mighty leap from the struggle and inspiration of "The Crossing" to insight and instinct.   It's during the monumental "East Of Eden", a typical song of critical self-doubt cauterised by a rushing jig, that Adamson sings:"Some days will last a thousand years/Some pass the light of a spark..."   Well, some records live forever. "Steeltown" is one of them.   STEVE SUTHERLAND
Back to top	Pages 32 & 33   HIGH DEFINITION   ON THE AIR   Wednesday, October 17 RADIO 1 - 7.30pm: JANICE LONG. Our Jan, now settling well into her new weekly timeslot, has Strangler Hugh Cornwell as her guest at 8pm. They'll be discussing and playing some of Hugh's fave records. Also The Cure in concert.   Sunday, October 21 RADIO 1 - 4pm: WHO'S THAT GIRL? Re-run of Janice Long's interview with the great Pretender, Chrissie Hynde.   Monday, October 22 RADIO 1 - 7.30pm: JANICE LONG. A session from the Armoury Show.   DESSA FOX REVIEWS VIDEO PROMOS   U2: "Pride" (Island) BONO'S most wonderful quality is that he's always singing about something than is mightier than he is, which reverses the customary pop conduct. All praise then to director Anton Corbijn then for resisting the temptation to put a gilt frame around these people. Sometimes simplest is best. "Pride" is, like the Pretenders' "Thin Line", a flatly superb performance video.   U2 - Pride (In The Name Of Love) official video 1984, uploaded by U2
Back to top	Page 37   RETURN TO EDEN (continued)   ...from p25   ...in Scotland, both Bruce and Stuart had had the full family turn-out of parents and relatives.     ONE of the most compelling aspects of Big Country live is the sight of Stuart and the immense power that he wields onstage.   One somersault of his arm is enough to provoke storms of yelling. One kick of a leg enough to guarantee the arrival of 10 more tartan scarves at his feet. It's a power that Stuart acknowledges and is determined to use — hence, for example, his public association with the anti-heroin campaign, whose tee-shirt he wore at the Glasgow Apollo.   "Whether groups like it or not, what they do can be very influential," he affirmed as we continued our dressing room discussion. "I know how much listening to music and musicians influenced me when I was young. Folk really believe in music, so groups should realise the position of responsibility that they're in and use it as such. They should talk to people about important things.   "Nobody's pretending to be Joe Politician or whatever, but I think it's important for musicians to stand up and say drugs and stuff aren't glamorous in the slightest. I think it's a shame it had to be musicians in the first place who glamorised heroin.   "Recently in Scotland, a lot of really sad cases have been brought to liqht. There was a newly-engaged couple who OD'd at the same time, and there are 13-year-old kids doing it. I can understand why people could be tempted to do it, there's a whole lot of disillusionment at the moment, but heroin isn't a glamorous way out. It's completely squalid. People are lying to themselves and other folk to get money to get it."   But while Big Country are determined to take useful advantage of their position, they have to be careful not to abuse it, not to cotton on to the latest cause just to be seen to be doing something.   Bruce: "Ian, our manager, phoned me up and said Big Country, or members of Big Country, had been asked to do something for the miners. My dad's a miner, so I phoned him up and said 'I'm going to do a benefit'.   "But he said 'It isnae worth doing it'. He said the money wouldnae go to tho Scottish miners, it's just going to go to the GLC. He wasnae going to benefit, nor any of his striking miner friends up in Fife. If there was a Scottish one for the miners in Fife, I'd do it definitely.   "I found out about the strike when we got back from Japan. It fucked my head up a wee bit. We had complete mayhem doing the gigs, everything was done for us, everything on a plate, and then we came back to see all the miners in the high street with their boxes for the fund. My dad's quite old, he's in his fifties, so he doesnae picket. But he's getting on alright. I'm bringing money in, and I dinna mind. When I was on the dole, they helped me out."     THE new Big Country album, "Steeltown", is fuller, fatter, more varied and ultimately more rewarding than its predecessor, striking a convincing balance between the obvious need to diversify and the obligation to remain true to the real essence of the Big Country sound. The group are justifiably proud.   The lyrics, while still employing richly romantic imagery, are more hard-hitting than ever before.   "I wanted to be more direct this time," nodded Stuart, ploughing his fingers through wedges of stage-sodden hair. "With 'The Crossing', me and Bruce were writing as our ideas came. With this one, I was aware of ideas but trying to be more black and white."   As usual with Stuart, there's a certain amount of social and political comment, presented through situations and characters of his own acquaintance.   Perhaps the most stirring is the anti-war couplet that closes side one: the bloated patriotism of the army and its recruitment services, the misguided prospects of fame and glory even in death, are conveyed effectively in 'Where The Rose Is Sown" (probably the next single).   And that leads into "Come Back To Me" where the juxtaposition of the dead soldier with the homecoming hero renders all the more poignant the anguish of the pregnant widow and the bereaved mother.   "The mother and son and the wife and the husband... I wanted to see every point," explained Stuart, almost immediately leaping into a major digression. "That's what the Labour Party is screwing up just now. They're become really narrow-minded about everything, shouting other people down for saying what they feel.   "Everybody, even Tufty, has been shouted down. Can they no see there's people crying out for a solution to everything, and all they're doing is arguing amongst themselves. It only alienates people.   "All it does is make you think 'Here's something I believe in, they're meant to represent me, and they're arguing amongst themselves.' It must be crap: Neil Kinnock's got a harder job than Boy George."   In its different lyrical concerns, title track "Steeltown" is equally affecting, painting a disturbing picture of hopelessness and desolation. "Finally the dream has gone," sings Stuart as he recounts the traumas of the men and women who left their homes to look for work in England.   "The steeltown is Corby," said Stuart, growing visibly agitated. "It's a big new town built round a steel mill. All these Scottish guys went there work, a travelling population who no longer have any work at all. Norman Tebbit said 'Get on your bikes and find work'. Six years later, the mill's closed down.   "It does worry me, not so much the fact that industry is breaking down - it's the breaking down of people. It's how I felt about industry in my own area dying out, and in places like Liverpool... thinking what it must have been like to leave your family, get a job, bring the family down to live in this new town, and than it happens. It's really fucking sad."   "East Of Eden", on the other hand, is deliberately more generalised.   "It's just basically an idea, the idea of people searching for something better when they're in a bad situation. The only better things that can come are through other people.   "We made a video for it, and we took one example. We made it like a Scottish family, the father's a drunk, the mother cares about everything. The son has to go to the shipyards, and then he gets a letter saying his father died and he has to go home and look after his mum. People get trapped into situations — I've seen it happen."   Elsewhere on the album, Stuart's concerns range from the notion of "Western-style Fascist dictators" on "Flame Of The West" to more personal emotional explorations: "Sad Grey Eyes" is a love song to his wife; "Tall Ships Go" examines his early relationship with a father who was away in the merchant navy.   Violence against women, the differences between shop floor workers and management and the plight of two people attempting to reconcile contrasting lifestyles are among other subjects to come under the Adamson scrutiny.   "I'm completely proud of the album," he asserted as we wound up our discussions. "It's a very good representation of what the group is now, it shows much more group involvement and it shows more of our ideas."     LATER, much later on, Mark has momentarily abandoned his investigations of the furnishings in the bar to muse on the lessons he's learned in Big Country.   "Travelling and seeing all walks of life and different races and people has been very educational. It removes that narrow-mindedness you get from living in an island in the middle of the North Sea. It's taught me that everyone is basically the same, everyone feels love and hate and jealousy, and if there ever is a World War Three, it's completely insane.   "The fundamental things we all believe is that we're all human beings. That's why as a group, we don't get blasé, we stay down to earth. Our entertainment when we play is our audience and theirs is us. so we're the same. And we never forget how fortunate we are to make a living out of what we enjoy."

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