'I've seen so many people DESTROY themselves'

Scream Cracker: Everett True (Words) & Tom Sheehan (Pics)

Angrier-than-ever PRIMAL SCREAM frontman Bobby Gillespie takes an state-funded drug addiction multinational madness and 'tight-assed f ***ing assholes'. Exterminate! Exterminate!

PRIMAL Scream are back. Hold an a minute. Do you feel the excitement yet? The band who released the pivotal UK album at the Nineties ("Screamadelica") and have outraged and amused generations at tans with their drug-fuelled antics and impassioned love for music have returned. The Last Gang In Town have a new album out "Exterminator", which writhes and wallows like an electronic 21 st-century version of George Clinton's funk-driven early-Seventies outfits, And guess what? Frontman Bobby Gillespie - the man who once convinced me to pay 20 quid for an import copy of The Faces "Ooh La La" through sheer passion alone - is right here ranting. Are you starting to feel the magic yet? Primal Scream are back!

"Why do I make music in 2000? Because I f***ing love making if," Bobby explains simply, "It's the greatest feeling. We've got a great band, writing great songs, exploring new sounds and rhythms. As I get older, I get better as a songwriter, and I've got a muthaf***ing great outlet - like Parliament or Funkadelic in terms of the music we're putting out. It's high-energy shit. It keeps me alive. It's a reason to live."

"EXTERMINATOR" is an excellent adrenalin-fuelled, hi-NRG dance album for the start of the new century If throws in full-on political imagery (the single "Swastika Eyes", and the no-nonsense opening track "Kill All Hippies") with vicious, vitriolic dance beats ('Accelerator", which sounds like German cost-riot grrrl apocalyptic noise terrorists Atari Teenage Riot). It slows down and swoons momentarily with a few tracks which owe plenty to Primal Scream's first and second incarnations - "Keep Your Dreams", "Five Years Ahead Of My Time", And then it races on full speed with a track ["Pills"] which amazingly features Gillespie rapping and sounding like he wishes he was in the Wu-Tang Clan. Primal Scream are back, and they ain't stopping for no lame-ass passengers, "'Swastika Eyes' is a good, powerful authoritarian image for a song," explains the Glaswegian singer. "It's about the American multinational corporations, dropping bombs, being able to commit mass murder anywhere they like in the world. It's white fascism, getting out of control. No one is able to stop it. The American Empire is getting bigger and bigger. They're all over Europe. I guess that's what the song's about.

It's a punk song, but we made it disco as well, so it was quite jolly and people could dance to it" Many critics have marked Primal Scream down in the past as being all mouth, no trousers, "It Gillespie could write music as well as he could talk it" they'd say. "Primal Scream would be the greatest rock'n'roll band in existence," One listen to Gillespie enthusing about music, and you begin to understand why. "The influences on the new album are Joy Division, late-Sixties/earty-Seventies-period James Brown, and Miles Davies live albums from the same time," Bobby begins, before going on to mention another two dozen bands, including 13th Floor Elevators' mentally deranged Roky Erikson, Moby Grape's mellow and disturbed Alexander Skip Spence, Screaming Trees' poetic Mark Lanegan and Fred "Sonic" Smith of The MC5.

"That was a lot of the shit we were listening to over the last few years," he explains. "I watched that Clash film 'The Clash: Westway To The World' recently - that was great very emotional. I was almost in tears watching that film, it's beautiful. That band had so much love in their music. Music today seems so loveless and so conservative, Thatcher's children have taken over. I'm not negative, and there are some great bands out there, but they're few and far between."

PRIMAL Scream began in a Glasgow bedroom in the early Eighties, where a youthful Gillespie, inspired by the noise experimentation of Can, Suicide and Public Image Limited, would batter out rhythms on dustbin lids - before briefly joining The Jesus And Mary Chain, in the seminal line-up of the Reid brothers' doom/insurrectionist outfit Early albums on Creation saw Primal Scream switdhing between Byrds-esque jangling pop ("Sonic Flower Groove") and full-on MC5 raw power rock ("Primal Scream"), before '91's acid house-influenced "Screamadelica" opened the floodgates. Within months of it's appearance, it seemed the whole world was fusing dance rhythms to rock guitars, no doubt inspired by "Screamadelica"'s ubiquitious single "Loaded".

Its follow-up, the controversal "Give Out, But Don't Give Up", embraced the funk visions of early-Seventies Rolling Stones wholesale, and failed to convince critics wanting another epoch-defining album. But 1997's much underrated, scuzzy "Vanishing Point" rode the criticism like a rabid bedst - recalling distant hazy road movies starring Jack Nicholson in the Satanic role. It looked back to the era of the militant funksters like James Brown and Fela Kuti, embracing their improvised funk patterns.

And now Primal Scream are back - funkier and angrier than ever.

"I've always been quite politically aware," Gillespie states, "but the more I see the way things are working and the way this country is going, the angrier I become. It's swung so far to the right there's no leftwing opposion left at all. There's no room for debate or opposition. Thatcher smashed all of that out of Britain in the Eighties. And it's happening all over the world - America, Australia, multinational f***ing madness. It's become such a death culture, I've seen so many people destroy themselves. The amount of heroin in Glasgow is terrible it's now £20 a bag where It used to be £100, and also, all the cocaine. I really believe it's population control on the government's part. Ecstasy was a communal drug which brought people together during the house music days, while heroin draws people apart. So all at a sudden, those are the cheap drugs."

Bobby hardly pauses for breath, letting all the fervour and passion flood out in streams at indignation. When he's worked up to full steam, Gillespie the orator, the idealist, the activist, is almost a torce ot nature hard to ignore and impossible to resist. "It's a real f***ed-up situation," Bobby continues, eyes wide with emotion. "The heavy drug use is tolerated because it keeps the population down and it's used to control it. I know it sounds like a paranoid conspiracy theory, but that's what happened in America in the Sixties with the Black Panthers, and in both Briston and Liverpool after the riots, They'd never seen it before and suddenly the places were a wash with the stuff. Brighton is now covered in heroin, It's not good,"

Do you get angrier as you get older?

"I get angrier as I become more and more aware," the singer replies. "The whole thing with Nato, bombing the shit out of Yugoslavia, that was insane, Tony Blair on British TV high on bloodlust They didn't touch the Yugoslavian army, instead they bombed girls, bridges, motorways, city centres. They completely destroyed the infrastructure of the country It was insane and the middle-class papers were tull ot bloodlust and love for war. The Guardian had editorials on it, It was insane, the amount at pro-Nato propaganda."

No point interrupting Bobby now, he's on a rant. "So afterwards, the world bank, IMF - which is basically America - will loan Yugoslavia millions at dollars with which to rebuild their country, and all the contracts will go to America, Germany, France, Britain. . .and at course they won't be able to keep up with even the interest rates an the repayments, so they'll be in debt to us forever, They'll build a Coke tactary, an arms tactary ..that's what the world is about nowadays, finding a new place to build aircraft carriers for the States. The Eighties and Nineties were times at mass depoliticisation tar the kids in Britain, so many nowadays don't have any views at all, It's total mind control, man."

Bobby takes a breath.

"Let's get back to the music..."

No problem, Bobby. Only too happy.

"EXTERMINATOR" is seriously lively, an unashamed sexual came-on, a fist in the face at conservative conformity and apolitical late-20th-21st-century apathy. The beats blister paint where they fall. Feel the heat yet? Primal Scream are back! And they have plenty at triends and collaborators an hand to help them f*** shit up. A list at names which reads like a Who's Who at British independent dance/rock - The 'Chemical Brothers, Bernard Sumner, David Holmes, Dr Octagon, Kevin Shields.

Friends, friends - always friends. Primal Scream have had an enormous ettect on contemporary British music, even it Bobby doesn't want to acknowledge the tact "I'm not that enamoured at much contemporary music," Gillespie explains. "I love Royal Trux's 'Accelerator', that's tantastic rock'n'roll. My favourite ,record at last year was 'I See A Darkness' by Bonnie 'Prince' Billy [Palace Brothers' Will Oldham], it's just so emotional. I just got the new Make Up album and I love that. Besides that, I don't hear anything new that I like. I can't say much about us being an influence, maybe on Death In Vegas and The Chemical Brothers, I don't know. It's not for me to say. Maybe not in terms at copying our music, but in widening people's listening tastes. A lot at barriers have been breached in the past decade - a lot at record shops here now have reggae, tunk, alternative, electronic sections. It's more mixed and open to ditterent stvles than when we were young." When was the last time rock music was exciting?

"For me?" Bobby asks. "The Jesus And Mary Chain. I know it sounds obvious, but they were one at the last great rock'n'roll bands. Nirvana, too - I loved Kurt Cobain. I had a lot at interest in that guy I think rock'n'roll has disappeared from the world since he died, the same way that jazz disappeared tram the world when Miles Davis and John Caltrane died, and when all those guys died who were responsible for that awesome Anthology Of American Folk Music' which appeared a couple at years ago. Maybe you can still go and see Motorhead and get a dose at high-energy rock. . . but there's no rock'n'roll left. Maybe it has to mutate. I think we're a pretty good rock'n'roIl band."

WHAT excites you right now? "I've been so immersed in finishing my record, I can't answer," Bobby pauses, searching his memory for a name to champion. "I love that film-maker Harmony Karine ['Gummo']... anything new that he does. He's young, American, same attitude as us, an attitude that is sadly missing in tums right now. It's the same as music, it's became very right wing and conservative. The people making it should really be bank clerks or marketing executives. The film-makers should be pirates and outsiders, but right now everyone is a great tight-assed f***ing asshole." It's typical that the singer in such a cinematically aware group as Primal Scream should start looking towards tum when thinking about the shack at the new. And he's not finished yet

"There's a film called 'Ratcatcher'," Bobby goes on, made by a 25-year-old Glaswegian girl about the dustmen's strike in '75 when they brought in the army because there was so much garbage everywhere. The plague was on the streets with rats everywhere. I remember playing a game of football against the army when I was 15,16. So that tum's great. But musically I'm not that excited by anybody."

Bobby Gillespie not excited by music? Say it ain't so!

"I listen to the old stuff not because I'm old but because there's a whole attitude missing nowadays. People in bands now are so un-opinionated. Who isn't? Mogwai. They're a really good band with a great attitude. They're cool. Music is just so conservative nowadays, man. It's really f**ing bad." Bobby pauses. The interview has already run for more than double the allocated tlme.

"Is that it?" Bobby asks. "Because I have to run round to a triend's to return some records."

THE ALBUM 'EXTERMINATOR' IS OUT NOW ON CREATION

Touched by the hand of Bob.

Those Primal Scream collaborations in full

Bernard Sumner
(New Order)
New Order frontman Sumner adds an excellent Joy Division-style guitar solo to the final trck, the Krautrock-esque "Shoot Speed Kill Light"
BOBBY: "The last rack we asked Bernard Sumner of Joy Division/New Order to do some guitar playing becasue we felt he was the only guy who could play that sound. There's a real Neu/Krautrock/Motorhead feel to it. He plays an amazing guitar solo there, like it's taken directly from [Joy Division's] 'Unkown Pleasure.' It's so emotional."

Kevin Shields
(My Bloody Valentine)
Kevin Shields, from classic late-Eighties noise-pop band My Bloody Valentine, threads a high-octane guitar solo through the centre of prvious single "If they move Kill 'em", an excellent mystical piece of noodling nonsense.
BOBBY: We've got Kevin Shileds on the album too - he's another great high-energy guitar player."

David Holmes The dance world's own John Bary extends the beat in the reletless, film soundtrack-y 'Blood Money" even further to his own warped visions.
BOBBY: We asked David Holmes in on 'Blood Money' because it's quite film soundtrack-y, Public Image-y track - and we know he loves all that shit. We have our own studio. Andre Innes produces and records everything, then we ask different people to mix different songs."

Dr. Octagon Primal Scream have collaberated with deranged rap doctor Dr. Octagon, aka The Automator, before,on the exceelent, nihilistic "Kowalski".
BOBBY: 'We worked with him before on 'Kowalski'. I'm really pleased with what he's done this time."

The Chemical Brothers
The dance gurus are responsible for asecond full on techno mix of "Swatika Eyes."
BOBBY: "I sang on 'Out of Control' on their ablum, so they returned the favour."