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Bronski Beat Interview - January 1985
Bronski Beat explode some music business myths and knock down a few pop stereotypes.
 

To be a pop star you need to be good-looking and wear stylish clothes.

 

Larry: 

It´s obviously not true if you look at us, it is?

 

Steve: 

There´s always been bands like us anyway – just ordinary bands.
 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.
 

Steve: 

I think they used to say that because there was only cold amd emotionless synthesiser music around a few years ago.
 

 

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.

 

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.
 

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.

 









Larry: 

All scots are drunks / football mad / skinflints.
 

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.

 

Larry: 

I always find the Scots very warm-hearted…and drunk!
 

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.
 

Jimmy: 

That´s not true for a start because no one´s ever seen hours ! They´ve just not been shown on television.

 

Larry: 

I think it´s because they touch on sensitive subjects. TV companies don´t want to take the risk of showing them.

 

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.

The music industry is bitchy and superficial.
 

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.

 

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.

 

Larry: 

It opens your eyers though.
 

Jimmy: 

Like all the stories you think couldn´t be true and you find out they are.
 

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!

Travel broadens the mind
 

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!

 

Larry: 

I like travelling on trains cos you always get to meet interesting people.
 

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
 

Jimmy: 

It is hell!
 

Larry: 

America is the land of the blue rinse, that´s all.
 

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!

 

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.
 

Jimmy: 

Ha! No comment!
 

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.

 

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.
 

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.
 

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.
 

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.
 

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.

 

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.
 

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.
 

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.

 


   

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