Greetings. For those who missed it, this was in Daily Express TV magazine on
Saturday:
ON WHAT FUN WE HAVE
There's never a grey day for Suggs right now as he returns with C5's Night
Fever and a new Madness album. But life has had its nutty moments, he tells
Jennifer Selway.
THERE was a man walking ahead of me as I arrived at Virgin Records' de-luxe
premises off the un-de-luxe Harrow Road. It was Suggs from Madness, but more
solid and grown-up than I'd imagined. As he climbed the stone steps I caught
a flash of green Argyle sock. Maybe it wasn't Suggs after all. Would Suggs
be wearing Argyle socks, as well as a striped blue-and-white shirt and
smart-ish chinos? Where were the Ray-Bans, the pinstripes, the baggy
trousers, the fezes, and the ducking-and-diving Cockey boy nuttiness? This
nearly middle-aged man looked perfectly sensible.
I hesitated, suddenly uncertain whether I should tap him on the shoulder
and say, ''You are Suggs, and I am your interviewer.'' Supposing it wasn't
Suggs. I'd look pretty silly wouldn't I?
The man, whoever he was, disappeared into the building and I presented my
credentials at reception. Minutes later I was taken upstairs to someone's
luxury office. There were velvet sofas, scented candles, baskets of French
pastries, platters of imaginative sandwiches and lots to drink. The usual
record company blandishments.
The man in the Argyle socks put aside his half-completed roll-up, stood up
and shook my hand vigorously. Suggs, just as I'd thought.
Suggs and Madness have been an item since 1979, so it's not surprising
that he's changed a bit, filled out in the intervening years. He looks
well-kept and comfortable with himself and there's always been something
about his sleepy eyes which reminds me of a koala bear.
Latterly he's been presenting Night Fever on Channel 5, a merry boys v
girls game show with a karaoke theme. It's just returned for a third series.
Meanwhile, Madness have made their first album for 14 years. Its called
Wonderful and is released on October 18. But is this wise? Don't old rockers
ever call a halt? It was 1988 when Madness split up and 1992 when they
appeared in their first comeback concert.
''We started talking about doing a new record as long ago as 1994,'' says
Suggs in his trademark breathless Cockney accent. ''It was a difficult
decision because there are seven of us in the band and everyone had to be
available. And as we've been in the public eye so long, we're sort of like
public property. Everyone had a view on whether we should do it or not. We
wanted to be sure that what we were doing was...you know, dignified.''
Madness, dignified? These are not words that readily go together. In the
early Eighties, Madness were reggae and ska, with touches of big jazz band
bravado, gaudy vauderville and debts to The Kinks, The Small Faces and Ian
Dury in the lyrics. Their songs were shot through with cameos of teenage
life. Baggy Trousers became an anthem for schoolboys everywhere (Naughty
boys in nasty schools/Headmaster's breaking all the rules).
In an era when the music scene was divided between punks and New
Romantics, Madness were neither. They were simply themselves, utterly
original. Madness were laddish before laddishness. But it was the
laddishness of boys who want to be men; whereas today it's about men who
want to be boys.They were never particularly sexy either.
''I remember being at an airport and there were thousands of screaming
girl fans - we were trampled as they rushed past us to get to Duran Duran.
We had two girls with carrier bags waiting for us. They used to follow us
everywhere,'' recalls Suggs.
Like so many bands before them, the strain of touring proved too much and
after the split Suggs was left to himself, wondering what he should do with
the rest of his life, when he was still in his twenties.
''I was beginning to think that I wasn't a bona fide paid-up member of the
world of rock 'n roll. At that stage I couldn't imagine singing on my own or
joining another band. Not that I got any offers.''
He had a breakdown. ''Well, kind of,'' he says, looking into the middle
distance, slightly embarrassed by the word. ''I went to see a therapist, but
it was a friend of mine, so that was a bit of a cop-out. I hate all that
therapy stuff. I only went to see him a couple of times, but it was enough.
I was grateful that he gave me some superficial tools to help me cope with
my feelings of confusion and anger. But it got to the point where I could
have started to unravel my whole life and I really didn't want to do that.''
The 'whole life' began in 1961 with the birth of Graham McPherson (Suggs's
real name). His mother Edie was a singer and his father was someone called
William who left home when his son was three. Suggs has no sense of who his
father was and it is still a subject which causes his mother pain.
''He disappeared and that was the end of it - a bit of a mystery. Once, we
heard he was in Birmingham or somewhere like that. I was curious when I was
younger but I've stopped being curious now. It's just a space in my life.''
He and his mother lived in a variety of bedsits in central London. She
worked as a barmaid in Soho's bohemian watering holes - the French House,
Kismet, Gerry's and The Colony Room. Suggs hung around with vague memories
of the likes of Francis Bacon, George Melly and Jeffrey Bernard breathing
brandy fumes in his face.
''My mother's friends were people who always found time to go for a drink
in the afternoon, pressing �10 notes into my small hand when they'd had a
piece of luck. There was a heady mix of characters - Maltese gangsters,
actors who still had their make-up on, ladies of the night. I remember one
club with a navy blue ceiling with stars and moons cut out. I remember
looking up at it and through all these extraordinairy people, like a Fellini
film.''
When he was eight his mother sent him to stay with his Auntia Diana who
had three children and lived in rural Wales. Like a war-time evacuee he
stayed for three years and rather enjoyed himself. On his return to London
he was sent to a tough comprehensive on the Finchley Road where he made
strenuous attempts to disguise his newly-acquired Welsh accent.
''It was chaos in the school and the teachers were under seige. I met a
cab driver the other day who was in my class. He asked me if I remembered
the maths class. We were 14 and still doing adding up, like four plus four.
In the end the teacher said we were so disruptive that he'd prefer if we
stayed away and he'd just sign us in. I didn't go into school after that.''
Does he regret it? ''I regret it because I wasn't stupid and there were
things I could have done if I'd stayed at school. On the other hand that's
why I joined the band, and by the time I was 17 there were kids who would
have given their right arm to do what I was doing.''
After leaving school Graham McPherson reinvented himself as Suggs (after a
jazz flautist called Pete Suggs). There is no question that during this
period Madness became the family that Suggs had never known.
''The paradox of the band was that it was a group of loners. But it was
like my family. I was always looking for a father figure among the members
of the band because some of them were older than me and I looked up to them.
There's still an element of that. I'm searching for a male figure who's kind
of perfect, but of course, there aren't any.''
After such a fractured childhood, Suggs has tended to make a virtue of his
stable home life. His wife Anne (ex-lead singer with Deaf School) gave up
her career to look after their two daughters, Viva and Scarlett, who are now
teenagers. Suggs reckons he compensated for having no father of his own by
giving the girls an easy time. ''I didn't know what the rules of fatherhood
were,'' he explains.
He has always lived in London's Camden Town, in a resolutely unshowbizzy
way. ''There's an underlying current of ordinariness in the band. A lot of
the guys are with the same partners that they were with at the start.''
Suggs had been so thoughtful and reflective about his life that I'd almost
forgotten his laddish side. He was talking about his early life, the
seductive appeal of those Soho drinking clubs, and the hazards of bar-room
philosophy. ''It can be disruptive,'' he said, lighting another roll-up.
''You mean nostalgia?'' I said earnestly.
''No, I meant drinking,'' he said with a great guffaw. ''I probably drink
more than I should,'' he added. ''Because it's part of the fabric of my
being. But as far as I can gather it's only a problem if it starts
interfering with your life. And it hasn't yet. But I am feeling a bit rough
today.''
After Madness split up, Suggs tried his luck as a stand-up comic. It was
disastrous because he assumed he could keep an audience amused for 15
minutes with any preparation. He numbed himself by drinking so much he'd
fall into the audience, leaving an empty stage.
Even so, he is prone to nostalgia. His mother Edie still lives in Soho
near her old haunts and they both lament the passing of the seedy place that
Soho once was. ''All this pedestrianising stuff,'' says Suggs scornfully.
''All those pavement cafes. That's suburbia isn't it? There's something
about not having cars that kills the spirit of the place.''
He regrets the way Britain's cultural tribes are now taken up by the media
and sanitised. ''That bohemian, eccentric, theatrical side of British life
is very much what Madness has always been about. And it's been destroyed by
advertising agencies and people with mobile phones. Everything is gobbled up
by the media. It's like when you get Salman Rushdie writing about
football...'' He shakes his head at the absurdity of it.
Suggs himself was a victim of media hype after writing the theme song for
The Avengers, last year's movie flop starring Ralph Fiennes. ''By the time I
started doing the publicity rounds, the film had been dead for two weeks. I
was doing the rounds as an apologist for the film. I was on the train and
couldn't get off. It was a disaster. But then I have a favourite saying: You
should always temper success with a certain amount of blame. It's a British
thing.''
Relishing his ordinariness, he is always wary of pretension. When they
toured America, Madness were described as ''awesome''. Suggs finds this
hilarious. ''Awesome is God coming down from a mountain. Madness is not
awesome. Madness is a not-bad pop band from England.''
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