To be a pop star you need
to be good-looking and wear stylish clothes. |
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Larry: |
It´s obviously not true if you look at us, it is? |
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Steve: |
There´s always been bands like us anyway – just ordinary bands. |
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Jimmy: |
I think the music should stand on it´s own. If you´ve got
something good then you don´t need to sell yourself because what you´ve
got is good enough to get in the charts. |
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Larry: |
We´ve almost done it in a reverse way by dressing down and not
doing what everyone else does. |
|
To make it in the music business you need to know the right people and
be seen at the right place.
|
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Larry: |
That´s a pile of crap ! Yoe´ve got to hate the right people
and hate the right places and don´t go to them. That´s what I do. |
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Steve: |
We don´t go to the places where you read in the papers that pop
stars go. People think that it is glamorous and the thing to do, but
it´s not particularly glamorous paying 1,50 Pounds for half a pint of
lager – it´s just a waste of money. |
|
Electronic music is cold and emotionless.
|
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Steve: |
I think they used to say that because there was only cold amd
emotionless synthesiser music around a few years ago.
|
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Jimmy: |
The point is that some bands who play sythesisers, they´re not
very imaginative with it. They use the sounds that areactually here, ratherthan experimenting with it or changing the sound. |
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Larry: |
I chose electronic music because I was more interested in sound
creation than music originally. I don´t think there´s adanger of getting so caught up in the technology that you lose sight of
the music – some guitarists spend hours and hours
getting a guitar sound; it´s the same with a synth. |
|
Doing cover versions means a band hasn´t got any decent songs of it´s
own.
|
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Jimmy: |
No, that´s not true cos we change cover versions to suit us.
we did “It Ain´t Necessarily So” cos it´s a fab song and Porgy and Bess
(the musical it´s taken from) questions racism. to do something like
that in the 1930s was really brilliant. The
song´s so twisted and full of double meanings it´s incredible. It seemed
like the perfect song for Christmas, because although Christmas is a
nice time, things like racism like happen. Most of the covers we do started with Jimmy singing them because
they´re songs he enjoys singing. We never listened to the original of
“Ain´t Necessarily So” to copy it anyway. |
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Larry:
|
|
All scots are drunks / football mad / skinflints. |
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Jimmy: |
Drop the football, but they´re definitly alcoholics ! I do
drink a lot, but I don´t smoke and I cycle quite a bit so I´m fairly
healthy really. |
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Larry: |
I always find the Scots very warm-hearted…and drunk! |
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Jimmy: |
I think it´s got a lot to do with licensing hours and social
conditions. Lot´s of people in the place where I came from were always
drunk, but if you see the area then you´d understand why – it´s their
only chance of a bit of sanity. Do I see myself of a stereotype Scot? Oh
God noo…I´m not bitchy enough for a start ! I´m not a nationalist at
all, I think it´s dangerous – it causes wars. |
|
The video is all-important.
|
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Jimmy: |
That´s not true for a start because no one´s ever seen hours !
They´ve just not been shown on television. |
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Larry: |
I think it´s because they touch on sensitive subjects. TV
companies don´t want to take the risk of showing them. |
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Jimmy: |
“Ain´t Necessarily So” is on at the moment with “Ghostbusters”.
It has´nt been show on TV because it´s meant to be
blasphemous, but people in the cinema have been squealing with laughter
at it. It about a mince pie competition and this boy goes up to the
altar in a church and is sick over the priest´s cassock cos he´s eaten
to many mince pies. It´s just funny. Most videos have nothing to do with
the song. Surely the idea is to get something that relates to the song. |
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The music industry is bitchy and superficial.
|
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Larry: |
I find it really ditressing when you get these bitchy media
people who just sleg off other people and get publicity for it. I think
it´s a horrible msuse of their position as a musician. |
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Jimmy: |
Well, I was just outraged when I was voted sixth in a national
poll of people most in need a plastic surgery. I bet half the people who
voted for me are ugly bastards themselves! If you took everything like
that personally you´d be suicidal. You just avoid it. |
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Larry: |
It opens your eyers though. |
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Jimmy: |
Like all the stories you think couldn´t be true and you find out
they are. |
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Larry: |
You find out a lot about yourself, too. Sometimes we do regret
things getting this far – you spend sleepless nights
woorying about things you wouldn´t have wooried about this time last
year. You do get to see the world though – and it´s better then the army! |
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Travel broadens the mind
|
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Jimmy: |
Definitely true, but it can be confusing if you go to a lot of
places and can´t speak the language. We went right across
Europe playing and doing TV and we´d go from France to Gemrany and still
be saying ‘Merci’, then back to Britain and going
‘Danke’ all the time. We forgot where we were! |
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Larry: |
I like travelling on trains cos you always get to meet
interesting people. |
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Steve: |
You don´t always get to see the places though. We went to Madrid,
but only saw it from the window of the taxi – we had to do three radio
stations, a press conference and a TV show, the home! |
|
America is the land of the free |
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Jimmy: |
It is hell! |
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Larry: |
America is the land of the blue rinse, that´s all. |
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Jimmy: |
New York is America to mee, and I love it there – it´s a wild
place. |
|
Larry: |
I think if you lived there under that regime you´d find it
threatening, especially if you happened not to be white. We had great
fun when we played though. It was in this small place the Pyramid Club
and we were supported by this huge skinhead called Dean Hayes. He is
going to do a cover of Tom Jones´ “It´s Not Unusual” – he´s like a gay
rapper! |
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Jimmy: |
We´re doing a tour there and I cannae wait. We´re not worried
about getting the same reaction as Boy George got –
being called the Devil incarnate – I think it´ll be a squeal! |
|
British police are the best in the world. |
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Jimmy: |
Ha! No comment! |
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Larry: |
They wear the most comical hats in the world. |
|
Jimmy: |
I used to go on a lot of demos and thingsl ike that and I´ve got
such a big mouth I was always getting into spots of bother. |
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Steve: |
I got arrested for being drunk. Came out of this party and before
I could get a taxi they arrested me! They kept me in
overnight – I woke up in the morning and didn´t know where I was. They
asked me what my occupation was and I said ‘pop star’. |
|
Pop music can´t change anything.
|
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Larry: |
It doesn´t need to change anything on a massive scale, but if
you help one person by what you do then it´s worth it. We
know from letters we´ve had that we have helped people. |
|
Jimmy: |
Most lyrics are meaningless or quite obscure – like rhyming a
word for the sake of it rather than making some content out of it.
Iwrite about things that upset me because there´s so many devisions in
the world. A lot of people say that´s the way the world is. OK that´s
the way it is, but that´s not the way it should be. The point is
everybody should be equal, nobody´s got the right to be better than
anybody else, cos when it comes down to it all we are is feeble human
beings. Nobody´s got the right to suppress or be more powerful than
anybody else. |
|
Too many cooks spoil the broth.
|
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Jimmy: |
It all depends what ideas are being thrown in. It´s OK if
they´re all good and productive, but if they´re so far away from what
everyone else wants there´s no point. |
|
Steve: |
We tend to be quite democratic, but we do argue a lot. |
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Larry: |
We argue as any close friend would. |
|
Jimmy: |
It suits us working as a small unit. But then you look at film
crews and how many people are involved and you can get
brilliant films, so sometimes you need too many cooks. |
|
The band that plays together stays together.
|
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Larry: |
I think that´s probably true. If you recruit a band from the
pages of a music paper you can say to them you do this or that. We´ve
all involved our creativity at the same time and grown together. |
|
Jimmy: |
We don´t socialise together as much now as we did, partly because
we´re not all living in the same place. |
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Larry: |
Most of the time we want to do different things socially anyway. |
|
Steve: |
And we work together so much as well. Like when we touring we see
each other ervery day, and get up each others
noses. |
|
Larry: |
And it´s not like we´ve got a wife and kids to come back to.
We´ve got all the problems of gay life to face – boyfriends
here and boyfriends there, gold diggers here and gold diggers there…! |
|
Boy George has helped the gay movement.
|
|
Larry: |
Definitely not! He´s helped Kensington Market and places like
that… |
|
Jimmy: |
He has made people aware that androgyny exists. Before he came
along no one knew about it – men were men and
women were women. He´s brought it out into the open much more than
people like David Bowie – he´s made it worldwide, which is one step.
It´s very commercial, but at the same time we´ve had ti be commercial to
an extent. It´s inevitable if you want to do what you´re doing. |
|
Larry: |
We´ve hat to take the “Age of Consent” off the album in America –
they just freak out all things like that. |
|
Steve: |
It´s better to make certain concessions and get something through. |
|
The more you pay, the better quality you get.
|
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Jimmy: |
You may get better quality but you won´t get better music. |
|
Larry: |
It´s a myth, really.. We wrote all our songs on a Portastudio
with one synth and a drum machine. Recording now is totally different
though. It´s better in a way, but we´ve gone to the other extreme –
we´re surrounded by so much technology it´s ridiculous. We´re going back
to basics a bit more now. You can spend a fortune and come up with
nothing if you haven´t got a good idea. |
|
Steve: |
The Frankie Goes To Hollywood sinlge “Relax” was done for the
same price as our entire album. |
|
Playing benefits buys you credibility.
|
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Jimmy: |
Noo. The miners´benefit we did (at the Electric Ballroom)
brought a good Christmas and presents for a lot of families in South
Wales. Doing benefits it´s really important – we do a lot of gay ones
because the gay community is quite small and a lot of money´s needed for
defence costs and things. |
|
Larry: |
I think if you can help and you´re in the public eye, you should.
You feel much better about it as well because you´ve
done something. |