Primal Scream . Webadelica

Shout Demons Shout!

"Screamadelica" has earned PRIMAL SCREAM many critics' vote for Album of the Year. That makes them prime contenders for Band of the Year. John Robb speaks to puking Bobby Gillespie and between them they tidy up the whole mess.

"It's a party, a non-stop f***ing party. This is not like a normal tour you know, it's madness, complete madness," screams a member of the Primal Scream entourage, a ramshackle hedonistic bunch of old school rawk party animal attitude and new generation B-fuelled New Age freaks.

Backstage at the International 2 in Manchester, Teenage Fan Club on a night off hang out with their fellow Glasgow pop conspirators. Creation boss Alan McGee makes an increasingly rare appearance, Happy Mondays' main wheel Nathan McGough appears and disappears, Peter Hook shows off his Viking love child, whilst Andy Weatherall takes a break from cranking the records. Creation's latest signing, Velvet Crush look on bemused. Half the people that they read about as US anglophile music freaks chunder around, nail some of the beer and come down slowly after the Primal Scream show. This is their second show in the city in two months and another stunning blow out by the hottest and homiest pop band in the UK '91.

The lovely Scream, buoyant after the sales/critical success of their 'Screamadelica' album, are even more confident than last time. Frontman Bobby Gillespie is stick insect cool, a spazz dancer throwing askew shapes, a different kinda funk than Jagger but sexy in a similar sort of androgynous way, pale-faced like proper stars, his face, like Ken Kesey once remarked about John Lennon, the pale sheen of a much photographed phisog.

The guitar core pair of Andrew and Robert hang stageside, menacing black leather and dazed expressions; the true rawk core of the Scream, they are the serious party animals. Bobby may do all the talking but these two are the action, the Keefs of the band, stoking up the heat. And there's plenty of space for guitar action in the current Scream, with Robert's cranked up hard, almost Pistol strokes and Andrew's sweet sweet slide, that is the closest a white man is getting this year to the feel of the smokin' cool of the Delta bloos. Upfront and outta sight with Bobby is Denise Johnson, black and beautiful with a powerful voice. Denise takes, lifts, tracks like 'Don't Fight It, Feel It', bolstering Bobby's velvet larynx. Oozing a cool sexuality, Denise gives the walf a run for his frontman money.

This is pop with an attitude, with Primal Scream throwing those R 'n' R shapes like Guns N' Roses, but cutting a far darker, far more subversive shape by riding along on a keen intelligence. The waif that shot his mouth off, the string-thin gobshite that almed for the stars and hit, Bobby Gillespie and his cohorts delivered the multi-dimensional cool pop album that everyone was praying for. And the excess-allareas-tour schedule that's brightening up this winter.

So is this the guns 'n' drugs classic r'n'r tour Bobby...

"Yeah, I'm thinking of getting a gun, I know a guy that sells them...!"

Gillespie the wired up kid, a non-stop mind kicked into action back in the year zero of punk rock. A 1976 schoolkid transfixed by the turning point of the Pistols, the escape from the grey conformist trap that was offered all those years ago.

"It was '76 and we were at school dodging class, I saw a picture of Johnny Rotten singing with stuff like Ted shoes on, looking insane and I remember being transfixed, I thought what is this, I like it. This other guy had a music paper and there was a poster of an advert with a picture of the Queen with her eyes ripped out and I thought 'hey this is really cool', these people hate the Queen as much as I do. I really thought that there was going to be a revolution."

The young Gillespie, a cool footballer with a father in politics, was the perfect point for this radical conversion. Drifting through the Glasgow scene, roadying, depping for Altered Images, playing bass in Factory clones The Wake, hooking up with Jim Beattie in the earliest industrial noise incarnation of Primal Scream, Bobby was on the trip from the intro.

"We just wanted to make a racket, we really liked the sound of things getting smashed, pushing trolleys full of metal over, that sort of thing."

Falling in love with Love and other major influencesto-be of early nineties guitar pop, he started to build up a gunslinging record collection. Meeting fellow travellers like the Mary Chain or Alan McGee. Putting together the Splash One club in Glasgow, a club that opened up the possibilities for the next generation, with its mix 'n match DJ - mg, colliding the energy of punk rock with the melodic knowhow of the aforementioned Love. Putting on Sonic Youth or Big Flame, getting a club together where things happened, not the bog standard neds on the piss dumps of the eighties. That's the attitude that still runs through the Scream, enthusiasm for rock 'n' roll, the lifestyle, the music, an endless charabanc plundering into the night looking for kicks with a neat non-stop soundtrack.

Primal Scream were always about chasing possibilities, taking risks. Their enemies have them nailed for careerist bandwagon hoppers, but Gillespie has always stuck his neck out from the top, quitting the fast rising Mary Chain (where he was drummer) to make a go of the original Primal Scream. Formed by Glasgow hard nut with a soft heart, Jim Beattie, currently in Spirea X, from the start it was soft pop played by mean kids, and to be a pop romantic in a city like Glasgow meant a keen mind and a thick skin was vital.

"Yeah, I remember getting on a train dressed head to toe in black leather, oozing attitude and all the guys on the train wanted to kill me..."

Gillespie is a pop culture machine, it runs through his blood. His flat is strewn with the debris of the art form, his conversation swings from the Stooges to Sun Ra, to the Pistols to John Coltrane. It's all the extremes, the music that really went out there, from Coltrane's lifeblood sax that bled a restless spirit in improvisation, to the Pistol's furious joyful scream for the real possibilities of life. Gillespie had twigged this, he feels alive. Primal Scream is about hIe. this is a positive rush, the song titles say it all, 'Don't Fighi It, Feel It', 'Come Together', 'Higher Than The Sun' frorr the upside thru' being 'Loaded' to the eventual small hour'. glide back to reality of 'I'm Coming Down' or 'Inne Flight'.

If this is a furious gush, then it's because so few band.' have actually got the guts to breathe fire and life into thei pop, those hack smartass creeps like Kingmaker and the res of the class of '91 look sad and pointless in comparison just filling in time playing half empty gigs on the small clul circuit, listless sad parodies of energy long since spent whilst the action has long moved on elsewhere, far awayfrom the rock circuit and into clubs that breathe the true fire of R 'n' R. Primal Scream are clour and life in the truest sense and in the worn out directionless bumble of '91, where all the groups think that they are controversial by having 'F**k' on their t-shirts, they are a godsend.

This band is aiming at the stars. Gillespie leans forward hunched up, he knows what he wants. "'Higher Than The Sun' is really beautiful, I love that track, it's a sad song, like it's got a really tragic feel in the same sort of sense as Scott Walker. It's a spiritual statement more than anything, more like a feeling, feeling strong about your soul. Mind you I don't like trying to define things, it can really spoil it for the listener."

'Higher Than The Sun' works so much better on the album, almost as a culmination of the astonishing flow of ideas that surrounds it, oozing in on a shimmering intro it just builds up to Jah Wobble's guttural, or wobbling, bass that blows the track heavenwards, on the same rocket ride as Sun Ra's trip to Jupiter. 'Sun' hooks in on the space age jazzmaster's feeling for space and timelessness, loose and untidy but collapsing into the right shape, the right vibe. Spiritual.

Bobby feels that the album is up there with all the great forms.

"We're influenced by the blues, I think we've always been a pretty soulful band. People are cracking up all the time, music is a release, an outlet for a lot of feelings."

Gillespie the pop star is also Gillespie the fan, switching from pumping up Primal Scream to his many idols, understating their worth, like any true believer of the music flame.

"I really love David Bowie, a great artist, he made so many great records, he took chances all the time, while all the other bands stuck to the same thing. I think that he was a restless spirit between '72 and '80, an album and three or four singles a year, and always with a change of style...and the music worked."

The chameleon method that Bowie employed has got Primal Scream into trouble occasionally, switching their style in two great shifts, from their original melody and deceptively light workouts to the leather tuff of their second album. Switching from being the archetype of coolest Brit janglers to road hardened rock warriors. Then the post Shoom, post Ecstasy experience that resulted in 'Loaded' (never the desperate switch to house music that some would have you believe, but the tail end of 'I'm Losing More Than I'll Ever Have' the best track on the album). Confident, the Primals retreated to their Hackney eight-track studio and set out to make the album that encompassed all their tastes.

"We wanted it to be like The White Album, it's very eclectic, every track has a different feeling, like we've got a great rock 'n' roll track called 'Move On Up', the record company think that it's going to be top forty in the States, it's like a big song, like The Who or Bo Diddley, but with a gospel feel, really joyful..."

Although their projected support tour of the States this month with Electronic has fallen through, Primal Scream have their hearts set on the States.

"I'm looking forward to America, it's the land of milk and honey. I love the attitude of Aerosmith, they are a cool rock 'n' roll band, I'm in love with that rock 'n' roll thing, Sean Tyler is magical. My two favourite rock 'n' roll bands in the world are Aerosmith and Teenage Fan Club. The TFC album is a classic," namechecks Bobby. It's that mutual Glasgow respect, the pop classists, the stubborn outsider spirit foisted in the Jocko city that's given us TFC, the Primais, The Mary Chain, The Pastels, The Vaselines, BMX Bandits - all mavericks creating guitar pop music on their own terms, all with that curiously yankophile leaning of Britain's most eastemmost city, but shaped up with enough anglo eccentricity to put their own stamp on.

After a couple of years getting bombed out in the clubs, slowly getting the album together, the Primals have hit the circuit for two tours, the first a ramshackle rock 'n roll experience culminating in the Leicester Square triumph, whilst the second, riding on the crest of a top ten album, was a cool breeze. Bobby has been looking forward to the road for a long time. Basically a live band, Primal Scream, apart from a few dates in Japan, had been off the circuit too long.

"Yeah, I was really looking forward to it, I wanted to know what sort of people were buying the records. I want everything to be really joyful, there are different levels of hysteria; it just depends on the audience, and we always get a lot of girls which is really cool. Music is a good force in the world, my idea of rock 'n' roll is to ride into town wearing a gold suit, sat in a gold Cadillac."

Shades of Nick Cohn's fictional rawk star in extreme, Johnny Angelo, abound...

"Most British bands are so unassuming, I like glamour in pop stars or at least a bit of weirdness."

Gillespie is a man made for this rockin' lark, beating a beat heart, a romantic soul lost in the beauty of pop at its purest. Realising the need for a wild 'n' free lifestyle, Bobby feels himself to be rootless.

"I've always had an urge to move, I find it hard to relax, have to keep moving, I don't want to sit down, I've always got to he doing something, why curb your natural feeling? I have so much energy sometimes, maybe the music is my meditation. I'm never happy in one place too long, I really like being on tour, it's completely transient, it just flows and time itself becomes transient, I'm just not that good at sitting in a room doing nothing."

Don't you worry about getting older?

"Never really think about it. Look at Muddy Waters, he's survived the really hard times and he's a dignified intelligent person, he's got a big soul, the feeling you get off his records is amazing."

Gillespie gets off his seat, sticks his fingers down his throat and retches into a nearby bin.

"My stomach is wrecked," he gurgles, adding, "too much speed."

Let this be a warning to you kids, only a mad fool would live like this, a chemically induced roller coaster to keep this experience going onwards and upwards.

"We're not a career band," he gasps, wiping his mouth. "We might not even be going next year, but I'll always make music, I don't want to get trapped, maybe that's the beauty of this group, we can do anything that we like."

Gillespie staggers off into the night to paaarty, get down, the punk rocker living out his R 'n' R fantasy, a popaholic, articulate in battered chords.

'Screamadelica' the album that he talked up for two years is the peak of the Creation myth so far, the tour a celebration of the whole McGee foisted scene from the Living Room onwards. This could be their pop dream, an aural and physical experience, the mind blowing sensation of good drugs, wild people, great situations, 'Screamadelica' is the album of the year, but don't let 'rock critics' put you off, it really is a good platter. These are the kinda times that an active mind needs EU

Originally appeared in Siren Issue 5 Copyright © Siren

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