39 years and 15 albums later, here we are in the (new) Batschkapp, catching up with Justin Sullivan of NEW MODEL ARMY.
Discussing ghosts, Normans, Brexshit, humility and mostly music:
JS: The key to a happy life is good health and a bad memory.
NS: How has the tour been going?
JS: Remarkably well, we have done really well in Germany (most venues sold out).
Germany because
1: We were never a media-friendly band. Especially in Britain, journalists and the cool people in the scene, they like to find something that they can interpret to the audience. We are not that kind of band, you either understand us or you don’t. You don’t need a journalist to get us. The British media like their artists to have a kind of knowingness, a sense of irony. So, if you look at people, they love Morrissey or Jarvis Cocker, they can write but they have a knowingness about them, but little passion and straightforwardness. They like their passion to come with a bit of irony. We were never a media band.
In Britain five people meet up in a pub and decide what is going to be cool. The same happens in France. Germany this never happens because you don’t have a centralised media. There isn’t a central idea of what is cool and what isn’t. When we started out, Germany was still a bit divided from the reminiscence of the Second World War, the South was exposed in the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s to a lot of American music, the North part of Germany was exposed to British music. But people like what they like and are not told by one media what they can or cannot listen to.
2. There is a network of clubs in Germany and we worked our way up, from small to big. If you have a good reputation as a good live band, the Germans catch on. Germans like good live bands. We have always been with the same promoter (Contour) over here and they have always managed to find us the right venue.
3. National stereotypes: Germans have got this remarkable contradiction at their core, between a society which is quite stratified and a language which is very precise. It is well known that the Germans make all the best stuff. This kind of precision of doing things well and in this culture the people are quite direct and aggressive, at the same time I have never known a German who isn’t deeply romantic and in love with all things nature and this nature romance. All German folk stories which have gone all around the world are all nature, this lost in the forest theme. Underneath this Christian society as a thin veneer, the Germans are all deeply pagan, deep in the forest. Quite direct and aggressive mixed with romance and nature is what New Model Army do, so there is this connection
NS: How do you go about writing your music?
JS: We never had any kind of idea which kind of band we were. There were no rules, no genre. I remember a few years ago, we played in successive weekends, a folk festival, a rock festival, a goth festival and a hippie festival. I couldn’t think of another band who could do that. We have never really had a genre, we belong nowhere, we belong everywhere. Our music borrows and steals and gets inspired by so many different sources. Everybody in the band is into different stuff. We once tried to agree on one album in the history of music that we all unreservedly loved, and we could not agree on one single one. That is unusual for a band.
Personally, my first love is Northern Soul, Motown. 60’s soul music? There’s tons in New Model Army, it’s just people aren’t looking for it. What goes with that is my understanding of music, which is all about the rhythm section, it is all about the bass and drums. The keyboards and guitars are just a bit of decoration on the top. I knew that from Day One. I have had a succession of brilliant drummers and bass players and I have tried to set them free, wherever they wanted to go. Mikeis an amazing drummer, Robert (Heaton) was an amazing drummer, Michael (Dean) is different. And then we had amazing bass players. That kind of drive, to me, is what makes a good band. This thing about it being all about the singer and the guitar player- no, it’s not. The Clash wasn’t about Joe Strummer and Mick Jones, The Clash were about rhythm.
NS: Yes, Punk bands like The Clash, but also you led the path with the power of percussion, rhythm, but also the war cries. A lot of bands have used this and made it their own.
JS: I once read this phrase “One of the things that makes humans so different from monkeys, is for one thing, that we create music.” And then I saw this documentary about chimpanzees in the jungle and these chimpanzees would go to this hollow tree every day and do this – makes drumming sound – for no other reason than to please them, to make this sound. Basically, drums and bass.
NS: At the base of the new album may be bass and drums (see what I did there), but songs like “Passing Through” are almost too romantic for the current climate. Is it because you are getting older and wiser to incorporate these melodious tunes? Is the song about loss? Transience?
JS: How does that saying go: The more you know, the more you know nothing. When you’re 15 you think you know everything. When you are 20, you are sure you know everything. When you are 63 you know you know NOTHING. There is an element of that. I remember saying to my mother: “Mother. Why is all poetry about loss and melancholy and more loss?” She said, “you’ll find out.” And someone said to me the other day in an interview, why do you use the word ‘ghost’ a lot in your songs? Well, I am 63, there are a lot of ghosts in my life. The older you get; the more ghosts surround you.
I think there is a thing that runs through “From Here” which is a plea for humility.
First of all, life is transient. That becomes more obvious the older you get.
But also, in this day and age, where everybody is so self-important, the last lines of the album “Look ourselves in the mirror…..and laugh”, it is a plea for common sense.
The whole idea about “From Here” is that we thought about this album a lot. We have always thought about creating music but with “Between Dog and Wolf” we really thought about a concept. The band dynamic also changed when Ceri (Monger) arrived and Michael and I had talked about layering drums for years. So, we started thinking about an album as a journey with a sound, with a feeling that runs through the album. And we were told, nobody builds albums anymore. Nobody has time. People want singles. But I don’t think that is true. If you look at people watch, sure they want to watch short YouTube videos, but they also want to watch long series which have got atmosphere. So, this idea of making an album which has got atmosphere and vibe is what we tried to create. The reactions have been so different, from people going “I have listened to it a lot of times, now I get it” to “I loved this straight away”. That is because overall it has a feeling, not necessarily you immediately get it the first time you put it on, but the flavour and atmosphere is there.
We thought about musically and lyrically- we love working with Lee Smith and Jamie Lockhart- and our last album was recorded in their studio in Leeds (Greenmount Studios) which is very small. But we love recording on tape, it sounds so much better than computers. It sounds so much better and they work well with us and even though they are much younger than us, we have a great relationship with them. They have a different take on it all and “Winter” sounded exactly like a record recorded in a small room with a small production. It was recorded just before the referendum in the UK and Trump in America and we knew what was coming. It is a bit of a Zeitgeist album. There is loads of stuff to tell you that this shit is coming. And then it came. And so, with “From Here” we wanted Jamie and Lee, but we wanted something really BIG. A big studio with a big sound. They found this remarkable place in Norway we went to, the most incredible studio in the world (Ocean Sound Recording Studio in Giske). If you want the actual big drum sound and the tom in the room, then if you have grunge guitars will take away from that and mute the sound. So, all the guitar sounds on “From Here” are clean Telecasters or acoustic guitars. They give room to the drums. When I was writing the words to the music, I really wanted to take a step out. We are living in the world where everybody is screaming at everybody. And I wanted to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. We have written a lot of songs about “Us” and “Them” over the years, but in “From Here” it is about us.
The thing which bugs me most about Brexit is about how small and parochial this nonsense is in comparison to what is going on, on the planet.
NS: Saying that though, you had the answers all along. You wrote about all this stuff back in 1985?!
JS: True.
NS: So why is nobody paying attention to what is happening?
JS: Are you suggesting that someone in the White House is going to put on a New Model Army record and they will change their mind?
I don’t expect what I write to change the world. I just think that you write what you write, and some people will feel validated. And that is a strengthening act when you go to that gig and are surrounded by likeminded people. I have noticed in the last five years the gigs have become more charged with energy, because all of us who don’t agree with this fucked up view of the world, we need each other, and we need to join together and feel the presence of each other.
My favourite gigs are Markthalle in Hamburg, Backstage in Munich and Maroquinerie, Paris because they have this amphitheatre feel to it. The Greeks had it sussed. The places I mentioned have this dancefloor and these raised bits around it. This way the audience can see the band, but also the rest of the audience. This is really important.
The one gig that changed my life was seeing “The Ruts” in 1979 in this little pub in Bradford. It was the best gig I ever went to and the power transformed me. 200 people but alongside was the floor was this bench, which I stood on. Not only could I see the band, but I could see the audience, that is important. That sense of the band and audience connecting.
NS: So, let’s cut to the chase. We can connect at gigs. But Britain has become divided and will remain so for the next 40 years. Would you agree?
JS: Yes. Clearly yes. Britain has been divided since the Normans invaded since 1066. There is something in the British class system that has made us very divided from that time. The ruling class weren’t ours; they were invaders and took everything. All the people they defeated, the Saxons, could do is show them the fingers (showing the V sign the other way around). That divide is so deeply set.
Loads of people have been cheated in Britain, I said this in one of the current songs “You’ve been cheated, but not in the way you think” (End of Days), and they have been deprived. People who have been cheated and deprived get very angry and people who are angry are susceptible to nonsense sold to them. Brexit is nonsense. I can’t believe that after the carnage of the 19th and 20th century people are gathered around flags. I can’t believe we are taking this seriously. All these flag waving things take place against a backdrop of the fact that in my lifetime, 40% of all things on the planet have died, trees, animals, insects, and so on. 40%! That is terrifying. And in that context this flag waving of “my country this, and my country that” is nonsense.
Really what Brexit is all about is people like Johnson and Rees-Moog not wanting the EU to look into their tax affairs. These people who hide all their tax money are largely British; have a look into investment companies in Bermuda, Cayman Islands and so on.
There is a company in Britain which is a booking system for transportation. Someone traced the 75p you have to pay for the booking commission and after 14 different companies, do you know where it ended up? The Cayman Islands. Not a penny taxed. For booking a journey in Britain.
The financial structures of the world were kind of revolutionised in the 1980’s and when I get asked if now is like the 80’s I categorically say not at all. We are now in what is the result of the 1980’s.
Fascism relies on the glorification of a fictional past.
NS: What does the future hold for us, for New Model Army?
JS: What is the function of an artist? Their function is to hold up a sort of mirror. Having said that, there are multi-functions. I have never been into ugly art and although New Model Army is savage, it has always been beautiful to me. It is always harmonic and melodic, and we try to make records you can lose yourself into.
NS: And that is what people need.
JS: Creating music with these guys is easy. This is the easiest version of New Model Army I have worked in, my favourite I have ever worked with. It is the FIVE. We are good together. One new person changes all the dynamics and Ceri has been good for us. We are so different. We have completely different lives, we don’t ever meet socially, we just make music together. But it works so well. It is easy and such a good balance. Sadly, we lost Marshall in the middle of the tour, as he had a bereavement in the family and had to go home. The rest of us four have made it work. The music works. And we are in touch with Marshall to make sure he is doing okay with all he has to go through right now. He will re-join on the British leg of the tour. But this chemistry between the five of us makes it so worthwhile.
There is something that Neil Young once said, I am a massive fan, “if you follow your own star long enough, people will eventually trust you”, so we have been doing that and maybe that is why we have been doing so well.
Thank you, Justin for taking the time to talk to ROCKCULTURE®.
