Jill Bryson interview
9 June 01
Have you heard any of the stuff she's done since?
She sent me a copy of her CD which I thought was quite nice, but I didn't listen to it much. I thought her voice sounds nice, but there's too many things tied up with it, too many images of having things thrown at me! [laughs] I do have some happy memories of recording the album and some not so happy. It just depends what mood she was in. You couldn't really say what was going to happen, you didn't know when she was going to...go. And it was obviously all about control, and I wanted to be part of a partnership, not be fighting with somebody the whole time. That does seem to be what happens unfortunately, it's not unique is it?
At that point I used to shake if somebody mentioned her name, now it doesn't bother me. I don't want to remember Nazi flag in the bedroom or whatever. It's a shame cos I don't think she's like that, I don't think she's a bad person at all. It's just bad influences. It's a shame cos she'd a lot of the innocent about her and to come from that kind of background and do what she did is pretty good. She'd a lot of good points and it's a shame to ruin them all. She'd a lot of creativity, but she wouldn't allow anybody else to have any credit, it was 'me me me, I don't like that, I'm not having that', it really gets you down after a while. We'd do interviews and she'd be 'I do this, I do that' where I would always say 'we'. You can only do it so long.
There's a photo of you at Red Wedge's launch. How did they get you into that? Strawberry Switchblade don't have much of a political tone to them.
I can't remember how I got involved with that. At that time I was a member of the Labour Party, but it wasn't through that. I think I met somebody who was organising it and they asked if I would do it. Thatcher was in at that time, you know? So I went along, I met Neil Kinnock, it was great.
Did you do any of the Red Wedge gigs?
No, because Rose was so totally not into politics. She'd say 'I'm into personal politics not party politics', she was totally against that, it wasn't something she was interested in at all. I went along to the launch, it was really interesting to meet all those people.
What is it like in retrospect? Red Wedge is now largely seen as a half-arsed thing.
I thought it was well meaning, I'm not embarrassed to have been part of it at all. We did Artists Against Apartheid as well, well I did it anyway, I can't remember if Rose did much with it. It was just something you got asked to do. It was a real 80s thing. It was well meaning.
I think Band Aid gets really overlooked as a cultural phenomenon, after that there was a whole load of stuff with people using music in that way.
It's not anything that I feel embarrassed about. At that point I felt there was - and there still is - a lot of apathy with young people about voting. Rose would say 'I'm not going to vote, they're all the same'. There was Neil Kinnock's Labour Party and Margaret Thatcher's Tory Party; they're NOT the same, they are SO not the same. You may not be able to say it now, but at that point they were NOT the same. They were different parties, they did different things. You've got to find out about the history, people died to get you a vote. You don't have to vote for Labour or the Tories, you can vote for another party, it's worth doing. So I felt, why not? Especially when Thatcher was in, she was SUCH an evil bitch. They were such an appalling party, they did so much damage to this country, it's never recovered. And I felt really strongly about it. Even if it is half-arsed it's better than doing bugger all. You just go along, a picture gets in the paper and somebody sees it and decides to vote. They can vote whatever they like, but just think about it, do it.
It's a measure of how different the political landscape was then - the idea of a whole load of good people saying 'yay vote Labour' now is unthinkable. That time was the beginning of the convergence of the main parties, and the consequent encouragement of what gets called apathy, which is usually not apathy at all but actually disgust with the whole system. The Labour Party at that time had just turned their back on the miners, they were disowning Liverpool City Council and abandoning commitment to nuclear disarmament. These days we see it was the beginning of their launching on to the corporate capitalist agenda giving people no party political choice outside of that, and so maybe that's why Red Wedge is dismissed, it was a campaign for the Labour Party just as they became Tory Lite.
I think that's pretty unfair though. It's fair enough to say just vote. I voted Labour and so I didn't mind standing up and saying I voted Labour. At that point that was what I believed in and I wasn't ashamed of saying it.
Did Red Wedge do any good, do you think?
Nah. Not at all! I don't think so. They didn't win did they?
Which of your contemporaries did you like and feel part of a scene with? It was a really great time for bittersweet melancholy indie music being huge with The Smiths coming through and Soft Cell just gone. Which of it were you listening to at the time?
The Smiths. And Orange Juice, we knew them and I liked them. I didn't like their recorded stuff, but I liked the weird jangly stuff, I've got loads of demos of theirs that are fantastic but, again, when the record company got hold of them they kind of sanitised them. They tried to make Edwyn into a soul singer which he clearly isn't! I mean, he's got a great voice, but it's weird, it's not Al Green. I remember wondering 'why are they doing [Al Green classic] L.O.V.E. Love? Who put that in their heads?'. I was listening to Aztec Camera. I listened to John Peel a lot, all the stuff on John Peel. I liked a lot of the Glasgow bands, we'd spent a lot of time going around to see them. I really liked the Pastels, I thought they were just fantastic, that real spirit of punk bizarre mixture of people, just great. Always good going to see them; they were hit and miss but I always thought that was great.
They're still really acclaimed now, their name crops up a lot in indie zines.
I really rate them. Bry Superstar the guitarist, he looked like he worked in bank and he actually did work in a bank, but he was really....he didn't have a bank mentality! I don't know how he did it. The Smiths were always on, always playing.
M: It's difficult to overstate the importance of the Smiths in music at that time. Every album track, every single, every b-side of their was great, no other band had done that. And at such a rate - an album a year plus a few singles not on the album, all with new tracks on the b-side too.
The Smiths are one of the bands I can remember seeing on Top of The Pops really really well. But yeah, all that kind of indie guitar bands. I recently found loads of tapes a friend made just after that point and they'd put a lot of electronic stuff and Janet Jackson type stuff and I can't actually listen to it. I remember thinking at the time it was quite funny, but I just can't listen to it now.
It was a music press inspired thing to pretend to be into soul music more than you were, and so to take any contemporary black artist and try to pretend they were as good as Marvin Gaye.
It makes bad listening now. I put a tape on and thought 'this might take me back'. It did, but it wasn't good.