Primal Scream . Webadelica

The Angry Brigade

Former apolitical drug dusthins Primal Scream now sound like the most vital, radical band around Select tracked them down in Australia and found revolution in the air... STORY BY Steve Lowe
PHOTOS Richard Dillon

It's late afternoon in the heated climes of Perth, Australia and before us is a hearetening sight to behold. We're only half an hour from the bush on the edge of the most renlote major city in the world. Even so, word has clearly arrived that the return of Primal Scream is something to be celebrated in euphoric style.

As, back home, jaw-dropping new album 'Xtrmntr' gathers a unanimous critical thumbs-up not seen since 'OK Computer' over heere on the other side of the world, the group has just descended the metallic ramp at the back of the dance tent at the Big Day Out Festival . Following the touring jamboree on it's five-date crawl from east coast to west, their performance have sharpened to the point where they practically play out of their skins.

As admiriers such as Goldie and Bell Orton look on from the opening headrush disco of 'SwastIka Eyes' through to the teeth-clenching pink turmoil of 'Accelerator' the Scream weirdly combine the imperious communality of old with ne-found sense of fiery desperation. During the intro to 'Kill all Hippies', Bobby Gillespie crouches down like a cross between Johnny Rotten and a leopard. Mani plays his bass like about four demons are simultaneously trying to exit his body. Og the three guitarists, only Kevin Shields - recently joined fulltime from the dissolved My Bloody Valentine - is a still, stroking his instrument as though lost in his own private storm. The hour-long set only leaves room for focused aggression. Every song is relayed with a mutinous zeal that hasn't been witnessed on a rock stage in years.

Simly put, Primal Scream casued a commotion. It was great.

Now, though, they're sprawled over the grassy backstage enclosure, beaming anf hopping about teenagers. Bobby, still buzzing, climbs the security fence to have hispicture taken by a fan on the othe rside. Others are armed with high-pressure water rifles and Gary 'Mani' Mounfield holds his arms up wide to take on the full force. Andrew Innes, sporting a camouflage headdess look that Bobbie compare to Mick Jones's in The Clash's 'Rock the casbah' video is clearly still overrawed by his bands performance. Of the set's jazz-noise freakfest centrepiece 'Blood Money', he declares: "jeez, it's just gets more intense everyday, that one."

Eventually, the group files into the minibus for the trip back to the dressing room. Having finished this Australian jaunt on such potent form, there's a profound sense that this particular mission has been absolutely accomplished. Chief cheerleader and irrepressible loud person, Mani looks around from his front-seat and articulates the general feeling of the ensemble, sternly declaring: "Right, that's it. I'm going to get naughty now. Very naughty indeed."

WHEN, IN 199O, PRIMAL SCREAM RELEASED A single called 'Come Together', they were co-opting (after The Beatles, obviously) a slogan coined by LSD guru Timothy Leary for the original psychedelic revolution of the 1960s. Back then, the notion of psycho-sexual liberation being only an E or acid tab away seemed to reach effortlessly through the intervening decades. Everyone hold hands in the sun and everything will be alright. It's a beautiful world. So smile. Be happy. Since then, though, Summers Of Love have been in short supply Today, Primal Scream have a song called 'Kill All Hippies' and they articulate a very different kind of revolutionary fervour. While it would be slightly two-dimensional to describe 'Xtrmntr' as simply a 'political' record (it's about drugs, too), it does consistently fire astonishing amounts of vitriol at the status quo. Sloganeering lines like "You got the money/I got the soul" and "Keep your dreams/Don't sell your soul" make the message clear. Say yes to everything that capitalism demands and you're fucked. It's a dirty world. So question. Fight back. Sure, they've got their contradictions - not least in doing their bit to support the highly exploitative cocaine industry. But then so have all bands who take on politics - except, that is, for the really tedious ones.

"We had to make this music and say these things," Bobby says of the album. "It was just building up. People have been depoliticised. There's a whole generation not knowing anything other than just feeling impotent. They don't know the power they have potentially got." So were you inspired by the recent riots in Seattle and London?

'Absolutely. The best thing about those guys on that In The City riot is they're organised. You read media reports that try and block out that fact by saying they're wild, violent anarchists. But that WTO thing in Seattle, people stopped that - just ordinary peaople, farmers, trade unionists. People fighting back, man. It's inspiring. Even those kids going down to the City Of London and doing in McDonald's and going into the fucking stock exchange and having it with the brokers. I love that, man, because the City Of London is the centre of all evil. That's fucking black magic. They worship Satan." So how much was the album a response to Tony Blair and New Labour?

"It's not so much about Blair. I wouldn't credit him with enough importance. He's only helping along what was already in place. Britain's just a completely oppressed country. We deserve better than this. It's just like that [adopts slouched, dead eyed position], dead in the head, beaten down. Accepting anything they're given. I'm sorry but I fuckin' ain't accepting that shit, man. I'm from the school of get up, stand up. I believe inserection. I believe in civil unrest. I believe in change. But organised social change. I'm not talking about just getting in the streets and firebombing some shops. I'd really love to see socialtion, an egalitarian society where everyone has a good standard of living, you know?" So do you believe in the Malcolm X-inspired doctrine preaching justified violence "by all ecessary"? "Yeah."

How far would you go? [Long pause] Well... under which circumstances? Are you talking about getting in the streets with guns and stuff?"

Yes.

"[Another long pause] But it would have to be a very well organised revolutionary front. This is going to sound ridiculous coming from me... But what I mean is, like, it'll probably never happen in Britain. People are too sleepy and too repressed and the British ruling class are so clever at giving people just enough that they don't go over the edge. But then, the difference between rich and poor is getting so massive now, it does feel like something might break."

Despite his protestation that he's a rock'n'roll singer not a politician, all his recent public utterances have been sprinkled with references ranging from NATO's bombing of Serbia to Britain's insanely long working hours. After years of sullen introspection, he's now once again a vital presence. Anger; as John Lydon once sang, is an energy- And it's one that has given Bobbie Gillespie a new lease of life.

But although he might have the most words, the whole band has shifted from its chemical landfill status to a point where confrontational music and confrontational politics are firing off each other in a way reminiscent of prime-time Clash or Public Enemy. "People are like hamsters on a wheel," ventures Mani. "I don't want to exist. I want to live and I want people to live. I'm fucking 37 and I could be ready for my Val Doonican phase of cardigan, slippers and pipe. But I don't feel that way. I still feel like a 14-year-old Clash City Rocker in here [thumps chest]." "We're taking politics with our drugs now," is how Innes describes the transformation. "We were just sick to death of everything. Shields has got this great quote about Britain - it's self-induced stupidity~ It's like 1984 but instead of overt oppression there's just this bland stupor.

"I think it's time for all the apathetic people of the world to wake up," Mani again. "That's what we're trying to do on the album, just liven up people's consciousness. There needs to be a voice of fucking dissent."

SCREAM GUITARIST AND ACKNOWLEDGED studio mastermind, Andrew Innes is the band's premier mediaphobe. Typically, for his individual portrait on the 'Vanishing Point' inner sleeve, he sports a US fighter pilot's helmet. Such is the band's current mood, though, that he happily holds forth on the no-go issue: the band's mid '90s low point, the period when the drugs took over and the music turned bad.

"We had what we called a Year In A Minor," he recalls ruefully. "We were too paranoid to change key. This tramp used to sleep outside the studio, and one night he died of a smack overdose. It was a bitterly cold night and we were off our heads jamming rubbish all night. We invited him in, saying, 'Come in, have a couple of lines.'

"He goes, 'You used to have a song that goes, "I was blind but now I see". Could you play it for me?' So we tried to and we couldnae do it. And he got up and fucking walked out going, 'I thought I was gonna hear some rock'n'roll. I'm going out to get some sleep'. We were, like, 'Right, if homeless people would rather sleep out in the freezing fucking streets than listen to us play, it's time to get our shit together."'

They were lost. And now they're found. In fact, there's a palpable, surging sense of upbeat enthusiasm around all the members of the Scream that makes genuinely pleasurable company - something that couldn't always be said in the past. There's a communal feeling that they're doing something very special. And, well, they are. In short, they're refusing to follow the script, the one painfully adhered to by other longestablished 'major' artists, the one that demands that you lose your fire and start finding merit in pretending it's 1974.

Instead, they've actually managed to emulate their heroes Miles Davis and James Brown by, 15 years into their recording career, rejecting the metaphorical supper-club route to instead renew their musical and political radicalism to set about discovering vital new ways of making music. Basically, in the history of white boy guitar bands, this has never happened before. Ever. Two days before the Perth triumph, they are commandeering the hyper-kitsch lobby of the Adelaide Hilton, chewing the cud with fellowtravellers like Dave Grohl and Alec Empire. "It's good going on at six," claims Mani of their midpoint dance tent slot. "We're on the piss by half seven. In bed by 11... [smirking] in the morning."

One (it's eventually usurped by a few thousand more Mondeo drivers getting hip to the hot ne~ sound of Travis). Add to that the Antipodean 41 degree sunshine and the famously untazin~ schedule of the 'Big Day Off and you have an astoundingly buoyant bunch of late-thirtysomething rockers. The tour manager breaks the news that 'Xtrmntr' is at Number Two here in Australia. "What's the matter with these people. It should be Number One, man!" roars Mani.

Robert 'Throb' Young, by repute a dark, dangerous six-string warlord, starts singing, to the tune of Diana Ross' 'I'm Coming Out': "We're comin' back! I want the world to know".

"I hope it goes mainstream and people buy it as much as they bought the Travis LP" Mani continues. "People should go and buy ours now. It's better than fucking Shania Twain."

Hitting on a current band obsession/in-joke, Throb and Mani spontaneously break into the cheekboned one's 'Man! I Feel Like A Woman!'. So what happened to the urban paranoia? The dislocation? Where are the clenched fists and molotov cocktails? This is all very odd.

SENTIMENTS OF 'INTEGRITY' AND 'NO SELL-OUT' usually come in the dourest of musical wrappings. By contrast, Primal Scream's new music is an impossibly vibrant, full-blown psychedelic riot. It's a good advert for insurrection. But while no-one around the Scream is naive enough to suggest a single album will actually change anything in the wider world, there is the possibility of offering a much-needed jolt to today's moribund music scene.

"It's a big 'fuck you' to the music business," Gillespie claims. "Because it's just run by accountants. There's no flicking wild-eyed crazies. Even in the bands, there's no crazies. I just don't understand how you get all these young bands that sound like Bryan Adams. Conservative people making conservative music for conservative people. We need some rebel music, people willing to go out there and try something new. I'd like this record to prove to people that you don't need to play the game."

The band does acknowledge like-minded comrades in arms. Bobby has recently done an interview for Swedish magazine 'Bibel' with Atari Teenage Riot's Alec Empire ("The angle was about anti-fascism. But we got Jerry Lee Lewis in there and shit"). Also rated are Mogwai live and the latest Make Up album. Mani, meanwhile, namechecks Rage Against The Machine ("Zack and the boys aren't afraid of speaking up").

Then there's the long-standing alliance with Asian Dub Foundation, with whom Bobbie and Throb joined in a protest outside the Home Office for the Free Satpal Ram campaign. In true passing on-the-flame style, young ADF protege's Invasian will (along with Death In Vegas) be supporting the Scream at their 'Easter Uprising' all-nighter at Brixton Academy on 22 April. "They're about 17, they're rappers and they're fucking hardcore," reckons Innes.

They are, then, not alone in their desire to righteously kick shit up. But what of the passive non-conformism that's been fashionable over the past two years - as epitomised by Belle & Sebastian and The Beta Band? Bobbie pauses, looking doubtful.

"I like confrontation," he finally pronounces. "I don't like retreat. It's too easy. You've seen us play live, and it's totally constand face to face and look them in the eye. That's Primal Scream. Our heroes are militant guys like Peter Tosh, you know that song 'Equal Rights'? "Everybody's talking about peace/No one's crying out for justice/I don't want peace/I want equal rights and justice". That was fucking militant, man."

Three other "poetic, soulful" alternative rock godheads also inspire his current outlook. There's Kurt Cobain for the uncompromising statement of 'In Utero'. Joy Division's Ian Curtis, traces of whose majestic alienation is scattered throughout 'Xtrmntr'. And John Lydon, whose PiL incarnation is another clear influence, and whose vocals are emulated on the live version of 'Shoot Speed, Kill Light'. There's a big old statement of 'No' running through all three figures...

"Well, those guys were good because they rejected conservative, malnstream, masculine society. But I don't think they were negative, I think they're uplifting because they were all for the outsider, the loner."

He spiritedly recalls the formative punk-rock revolution and the subsequent Rough Trade distribution system that allowed labels like Creation to deposit records into shops. "It allowed alternative ideas to filter through to the youth culture," he enthuses. "Creation was all about allowing crazies to make crazy music. And that isn't being allowed to happen any more."

In the context of the label's fall, there's an elegiac quality to Bobbie's music bix pronouncements Yes, it's heartening that the last record released by the label set up by his friend Alan McGee almost two decades ago is such a blistering declaration of independence. Butit is still the last record on Creation.

So how would you feel about inspiring a similar attitude now?

"I'd love it. That's part of what Alan McGee's doing, he's breaking free of the corporate shackles. Everyone in the press got it wrong. They thought he was sick of music. He's not, he's sick of conservative music. He wants to put out radical music and he can't do that on Sony. We've done it with this album but only because we were on Creation."

So where does that leave you now?

"It leaves us - can you believe this? with not one label within Sony having asked to pick us up. And we might have a Number One. So that shows you the state of play with these motherfuckers. Apparently, they're all scared of us."

How does that make you feel?

"[Grins] Great."

THE PUNGENT SMELL OF STRONG MARIJUANA hails from the neighbouring dressing room belonging to Aboriginal rockers Yothu Yindi. Mani has, though, changed from his 'Cannabis' T-shirt to one sporting the motif 'LSD'. Dovetailing neatly is the 'Mau-Mau' guerrilla/fashion label sported by keyboardplayer Martin Duffy.

Backstage at the Adelaide leg of the travelling festival, the band is facing the prospect of playing a cattle shed. A very large catfie shed, but a cattle shed all the same. Not that they're worried. They set about the beer supply with gusto, lolling relaxedly over the central seating area.

There's something slightly comical about the sight of the latterday Scream, a ragged ninepiece with a dividing line between members and collaborators that's increasingly hard to place. They started out as a similarly fluid arrangement, filling the stage with assorted extras as the whim took them. These days, though, rather than getting mates to stonedly shake tambourines, they've instead drafted in some of the best musicians of their generation. This loosely sewn together long-in-tooth conglomeration really shouldn't be the greatest rock'n'roll group in the world. But, right now, it feels like they are.

As well as the old core of Gillespie, Innes, Young and Duffy there's the rhythm section of Darrin Mooney and Mani. There's the brass section of Duncan MacKay and Jim Hunt. Even co-producer Brendan Lynch is hanging around having a long-overdue holiday. Then, crucially, there's Kevin Shields - nicknamed Bagpuss by Innes, for his shape and dormancy. "It makes it more interesting, cos after 15 fucking years," enthuses Innes of his fellow soundscaper, "when you pick up a guitar, you tend to do the same thing you've always done. So it's good if Kevin Shields comes in. He goes, 'Here's a fuzzbox'. And you go, What the fucking hell is that racket?"'

"He's a fantastic musician," adds Bobby 'And it's great to have three guitars. It's like a guitar army, you know?"

No-one is too sure what Shields is actually doing when he's onstage, but there's a textural depth to the guitar strafing that's surely something to do with the presence of this effects legend. Also crucial is the live chemistry between Mani and cockney geezer drummer Darrin Mooney - the man who was drafted in when Reni rejected advances from his old Roses colleague Mani to fill the hot seat. That might sound like a missed opportunity for a made-in-heaven match, but Mooney's neo-brutalist approach is wholly appropriate to their current scheme. It's Innes, though, around whom the maelstrom revolves. If Bobby is the public face of the Scream, the one with agendas, the quotes and outward charisma, Innes is his private equivalent, the figure who defines which sonic boundaries Primal Scream are going to cross next.

"We just wanted to make it harder, funkier, more aggressive," he claims.

Brendan Lynch remembers it more bluntly: "They just wanted it to sound horrible." The sight of representatives from The Stone Roses and My Bloody Valentine up alongside Primal Scream - if somewhat strange - is something for many a UK rock connoisseur to cream over. But, rather than the time-honoured four guys agalnst the world template, this freewheeling musical collective assuredly works.

"You know what it's like?" contends Gillespie. "It's like P-Funk. George Clinton got all these great players from other places, like Bootsy Collins and Fred Wesley from Tames Brown's band It's the Scream Mothership. Haha!"

'Xtrmntr' is, then, the record that today's music scene has been waiting for. Suddenly, we no longer have to equate musical experimentation with prog-inclined Americana or slumberous post-rock skronk. As of now, the cutting edge is both deeply funky and unflinchingly rocking. Which, everything considered, is much better.

AT THEIR HOTEL IN PERTH THE DAY BEFORE the show, the band attack the stocks of the hotel bar. Dufly takes to the mini-grand piano. The blinding honky-tohk blues that emanates from the corner marks him out as the Tools Holland of the psychedelic stormtrooper set. A cocktall jazz take on Billy Joel's 'I Love You Just The Way You Are' is more surprising still.

Innes reveals that, with each gig, they're trying to take the noise levels higher. Which helps explain why tomorrow's show will be so devastating. It also serves notice that their return to these shores will be a shock to the system. "We're cooking already but by the time we hit Britain I think we're going to be wasting people," nods Gillespie. "Levitating them. Space-rock!"

Bobby decides to head up to his room to catch a showing of the Clash documentary Westway To The World. Before he leaves, he admits: "It's like being reborn. We were dead for a while. Really, really dead, you know?"

Extermiator FIles: An inside guide to the only proper album of Y2K so far.

'Kill all Hippies'
Deep, soundtracky funk. Acid bleepage. Falsetto vocals. Best start to an album in an age. All Co produced witb Brendan Lynch. Based around the titular spoken sample, used liberally onstage between songs circa 'Vanishing Point'. Mani: Marco Nelson played the bass on that, him and Innes made it up one night. Which is fine by me. What's for the good of the whole is for the good of the whole."
Gillespie: "The title came from Dennis Hopper movie called 'Out of the Blue'. It's about this loner girl called CB. Here mum's a slut, ajunkie slut ahd her Dad's in jail. She loves punk rock and the Pistols and she sits up all night talking to people saying things like "Kill all hippies, destroy, pretty vacant, punk is not sexual, punk is just aggression, subvert normality." She says all this mad stuff and she's such a beautiful little punk kid, and it's such a beautiful beautiful film, it'll break your heart if you see it. So we based the whole track around that sample. We got the track funky and shit and, I don't know I just started singing, "You got the money, I got the soul can't be bought, can't be owned". It just came.

So there's no real intent to kill hippies, then?

"Well... take it which way you will. Ha ha."

'Accelerator'
Stooges garage-rock given all the distortion a modern studio will allow - courtesy of that man Shields. Best second track to an album in an age.
Gillespie: "It's just Detroit high-energy punk. "Come on/ come on/Hit the accelerator". It's about... it's about going to score drugs About taking drugs. [recites entirety of lyrics] Me, Shields and Mooney laid it two takes. Then Mani came in and put the bass on. It's about big city frustration, the way it gets you, so you want to get fucking out of it and one way of getting out of it is leaving - whether it's taking drugs or fucking getting in a fast car. It's about acceleration, it's about speed, about geting out of your skin, about getting out of this repressed fucking environment that we're in. It's a drug song."
Innes: "The best racket we've ever made. It's probably my favourite on the album."

'Exterminator'
Johnny Rotten meets Shaun Ryder in this loping, darkside electro funk floor filler Top whiplash one-note bassline.
Bobby: "I think its like the JBs. A friend said it sounded like Fela Kuti, which was an incredible compliment, you know? Its my description of how I see modern Britain [recites almost all the lyrics]. It's about the control Its a fucking weird country, man. It's no controlled its unbelievable. So it's just like a poem about that.

'Swastika Eyes'
The Jags Kooner mix. Mani comes over all Peter Hook on this dirty disco rant. Makes more sense here than when first released on the single. Lynch: "They wanted it to sound like The Bee Gees and Blondiw and George Moroder. If you listen to it, it doesn't sound anything like that. But it's got that feel.
Gillespie: "American military-industrial fascists. They just bombed Serbia unde the guise of helping the peope of Kosovo. But really it was about expansionism. They destroyed bridges, schools, hospitals, roads. It's going to take bilions of dollars to rebuild the country. Five days before they signed the preace agreement, the contracts for, like, the main bridges that cross the Danube and stuff were up[ on the World Bank website. They went straight away to German and American Companies. With people so poor there, you're going to get loads of companies moving in to exploit all that cheap labour. It's America colonialism."

'Pills'
Wu-ish string courtesy of Andrew Innes. Mixed by Dan the Automator, famed for work on the classic avant-rap album 'Ecologyst' by Doctor Octogon. Previously described by Bobby as a "hilarious hangover song". The title might refer to illegal drugs.
Gillespie: "The rap was spontaneous, That was how I felt about myself that day. I just woke up and felt so degraded. [again, recites most of the lyric]. And then the 'Sick! Fuck!' stuff just came out. Just total self-hatred. I just started singing [shouts] 'Sick! Fuck! Fuck!' Then Andrew put down all the strings and shit."

'Blood Money'
The Hunt/MacKay partnership comes into own of this enigmatic interlude. John Barry-ish keyboard motif. Gangster movie rhythmn section. Jazz-rock never sounded like this.
Gillespie: 'Duffy wrote the keyboard thing - it's a cimbalom, a Hungarian instrument. It's looks like a little piano and you hit the strings with a hammer. We already had the horns, but it needed something else, so I got Duff to write a melody and we got a cimbalom player in. There's only two in Britain. They used it on 'Get Carter' - that's where we got the idea. We love using different sounds."

Were you apprehensive about dipping so overtly into Jazz? "Not at all. It's llke punk Jazz, you know? We listen to Miles and we listen to Public Image. It makes sense, really."

'Keep your Dreams'
The ballad, mixed by David Holmes. Joy Division synth sweels. Primitive drum machine pitter-patter. Wonderously understated climax. Heartbreaking masterpiece, all told.
Gillespie: I've got to tell you, the lyrics are 'I believe that sinfulness can burn your soul away" [continues reciting first and second verse], but some fuckers in a couple reviews wrote that it was "I believethat syphillus can burn your soul away"! I was like, 'No it's not that!' It's kind of morality song. Everyone's got that duality in them. Well, I have a t least. I can go either way, you know? I'ta bout getting stuck, it's awarning song, saying ' Watch youself, man, because if you stay there too long, you're gonna jusst dissolve. You're gonna rust. And die. You know what I'm saying? Keep your Dreams'. It's a love song.

'Insect Royalty'
Robotic hip-hop with vicious horns and bug obsession. First put out (in instrumental form) on 'The Acid House' soundtrack. Re-recorded with aidof original electro-dub warrior Adrian Sherwood from On-U-Sound
Gillespie: 'That was just about some psychic disease. It's about some sort of parasite inside your sould or head. Some psychic parasite."

Have you felt like that, then?

"Of course. I wouldn't write about it if I hadn't. Of course I have. The first verse was pretty much automatic writing. The second verse I had to think about a bit."

'MBV Arkestra
Kevin Shields' remix of 'If they move Kill 'em' released last year on limited edition single. Set the unrestrained tone for 'Xtrmntr'. Goes against grain to put remix of old track onto new album, some say. But what else was 'Loaded'?
Innes: "Oh, that's beautiful, that is. That's what we always wanted it to sound like. Hopefully he'll make a record next year, he seems to want to."
Gillespie: 'When we released that it was only 15,000 copies, mostly sold in Britian. We just thought people all over the world have got to hear that. And the mix he did of that soung, it's incredible. It's like miles or something.

'Swastika Eyes'
Chemical Brothers' Hi-NRG version found place on album at last minute, making for similar patterning to 'Higher than the Sun' reprise on 'Screamedelica'
Gillespie: "That was Andrew's idea. he wanted it on there. And I thought it was good idea to have two versions becasue they were so different."

'Shoot Speed Kill Light'
Cruising motorik brilliance produced by Shields and Tim Holmes. Utterly transcendent guitar solo from Bernard Sumner. Four words, all of them good.
Innes: " For that, Mooney goes, 'Do you want the bell-end beat?' And we go, 'What the fucks' a bell-end beat?' And he says, 'Relentless, no feeling." And we said, 'Okay'. Everyone thinks it's adrum loop but it's all him live."
Gillespie: "We had the music anf I just started singing those words. Again, they just came to me like that. And you can take that any way you will. I think i'd be a classic single. I'd like to see that. Everybody thinks I'm nuts to say that."