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[ February 1, 1990 ]
NME: Housemartin Implosion 1988
NME
Housemartin Implosion
Feb 1988
Written by Nick Swift
Courtesy of G. Dipper
As the Housemartins approach the moment when they voluntarily implode, Swift Nick anticipates the fall-out to pick over the pieces.
The Housemartins were conceived in the legendary year of 1984 during the great miners strike. Their hometown Hull provided, and indeed generally reflected the bleak Northern backdrop of despair and despondency, a scene attributed to the nasty face of Thatcherism and fronted by a phoney, opium-like popular culture.
Some honesty had to emerge, to infiltrate and agitate. The Redskins made a commendable attempt but failed, due to their inability to fool the media by making the necessary compromises to completely enter the pop world. The Housemartins, in this respect succeeded.
Q: Do you feel you betrayed any ideals on the way to the top?
Paul Heaton: No, not really. Here and there we went astray at times but the actual ideals were never forgotten. We were still playing stuff like "The People Who Grinned Themselves to Death" on telly right at the end. I think the worst we ever did was allow our music to be trivialised at times. I don't think we betrayed out original message, I think it just got misrepresented sometimes.
Q: What exactly was the original message?
PDH: Mainly to push the lyrics and politics along with the humour of the band and get the ideals over to as many as possible. It was good that we did manage to bring the politics in through the pop world but it would have been better if the music of The Housemartins had been talked about more.
Journalists came to inspect our politics. To be honest, they wanted to crack this myth that they hoped we were. It got to the stage where Steven Wells was sent up to stitch us up, basically.
Q: What was this "myth" they were trying to discover?
Paul: Well it was this personal inspection, to check if our politics were genuine, to check if we were really normal. I mean, by being normal and honest in the first place we thought we'd have been void of inspection but the very opposite happens in pop music. If you are normal everyone wants to dig in and prove, try and prove, you're not for some reason. To smash what they think is a myth.
Q: Your religious connotations have been greatly misunderstood and misinterpreted. Can you finally put us straight?
Paul: How can you say it's a wind up when Stan has just spent the last month in a monastery in the Scottish Highlands, as a retreat?
Q: Is this true? What exactly were you doing there?
Stan: Retreating! No really, I've needed time to think and a monastery was the most spiritually relaxing place to do this. I've been really concerned about the Australian Aboriginal problem and it was really doing my head in towards the end of last year.
Q: So do you want to end maintaining the claim that you are genuine Christians?
Stan: We're as much Christians as anyone else. A lot of people who claim they are Christians are not really, like the Pope for instance.
Q: Don't you think you may have had some dangerous influence by guiding younger fans towards some conception of Christianity, when we all know that the accepted form of Christianity is a reactionary, right wing distortion?
Paul: Good, they may start burning down churches then. If you look at the established and accepted idea of religion, you think of the church. But the people, who at the moment form the congregation, are the morally corrupt, elderly, middle class. So if we can help the younger ones see this, they may then attack the political system that these wankers also uphold. Its good. I'm not really interested in talking about religion though, it was just a phase we went through. Religion is to do with guilt and regret.
Q: You've experienced all the trappings of pop success, but you've still managed to be held in high esteem by the music scene intellectuals. Can you explain how you managed to maintain this crossover and was it deliberately intended?
Paul: I don't think we did remain in high esteem with the music intelligentsia. A few have supported us in the serious papers but in general we lost a massive amount of support.
Q: But you've just appeared as Fourth best band in the recent NME readers poll.
Paul: OK, on behalf of the band I'd just like to say "thank you NME readers, you've really rocked us." It did surprise me actually, I thought we'd get worst band or something. Maybe they have got a higher opinion of us than I thought. There again they're probably more perceptive than most of the journalists. Anyway, no it wasn't a deliberate attempt to make any sort of crossover. WE just wanted to get the Socialist message over to as many as possible and that included appearing in Smash Hits.
Q: You've had the finish planned well in advance. How could you be so confident you'd stick to a time limit?
Paul: I think it was a stopper me and Stan had imposed on ourselves when we first started, so we could stop and assess if we still wanted to be part of, and carry on in, the pop world.
Stan: This was supposed to be an interval, y'know, a chance to buy ice creams, but also it's an interval which, like when you're at a bad film, means you can get up and walk out.
Paul: We decided that it would be a good thing to stop now, as the Housemartins. We decided we wanted to do other things, with other people. We thought, when we set out, that it would probably have become stale by the end of three years, which it has. The smell of stale musicians absolutely reeks in fact.
Q: What do you feel you've learned from the past three years?
Stan: Well, we've had a lot of experience in the last three years which we've learned from and, of course, we've grown up. which you do obviously but I couldn't really write it down, y'know like the Housemartins Book of Knowledge.
Paul: for me it was confirmation rather than realisation. It was confirmation of the myth of capitalism. Stan and I both realised, when we were entering the music business, that it was really just another part of the BIG NOTHING. We've now also realised that the music business is just a big bubble and the most stick we ever got from the journalist was whenever we tried to prick the bubble and burst it. To explode the myth of this thing called pop. It was dangerous, a threat to the security of the arty, middle-class morons that make their living resting on top of this pile of shit. A band like us actually criticising music itself was worrying to them. It's really right on to criticise Thatcher and South Africa but to actually criticise the industry that you're in is taboo. Alright, they make little references occasionally but they never try to explode the myth because that myth provides them with their extravagant ways.
Q: What releases have you got planned before the definite end in June?
Paul: We've got this song "There's Always Something There to Remind Me" recorded, from a session, and that's probably the one we'll use if we decide to release a single. We're also going to release a double compilation album, which is a mixture of bit and bobs.
Q: So what are the immediate plans what are you going to be doing individually?
Paul: Well, Norman was a professional DJ before joining the band, so he'll probably carry on doing that as well as concentrating on the dance remixes, which he's good at.
Stan: I'm thinking of sheep farming. I don't know if the monastery will have me back.
Paul: He had an affair with one of the friars. Fish Friars.
Stan: There is one other thing that I haven't told the band about yet and that is that I'm planning to release a solo album of Bavarian Zither music.
Q: Do you think the Housemartins will be well remembered in the history of pop music?
Paul: As you know, some songs become classics, like The Animals' "House Of The Rising Sun", it's on all jukeboxes and it'll always sell. I think "Happy Hour" and "Caravan Of Love" will always be played by DJs so I don't think we'll ever be totally forgotten.
Q: What about the continuation of the Housemartins spirit?
Paul: The Dixie Hummingbirds have been going for fifty years haven't they, so we mentioned selling the name of the band to another group to keep The Housemartins going. We're serious about some other, suitable, band continuing in our name.
Stan: So if there's any young bands out there who want to be the Housemartins get in touch.
Q: Will there be a reformation?
Paul: I feel at the moment that there won't be. But, I've just got this feeling that one day, maybe seven, maybe 20 years away, one of us will be in desperate straits and the others will have to come to his rescue.
Stan: What will definitely happen is that one of us will have a debt that's too much to handle, so the music world will be treated to the sight of us with big fat beer bellies, beards and slightly balding on top. "It'll be like The Who. Don't forget "Happy Hour" is such a good cabaret song, so it deserves that sort of treatment.
Q: The wall on the "Build" video had "Housemartins RIP" sprayed on it, can you elaborate on your epitaph. A sort of final statement to the world?
Stan: God is love
Paul: Top 30 we read your arse.
* * *
The effect that an openly political pop group can have is often underestimated. The Jam were a valuable source of inspiration to me as a socialist and Paul Heaton described to me how The Clash had a similar effect on him. The Housemartins have had, and are still having, that same effect on many of their young fans. They were much more important than they ever realised themselves. For all their modesty and self-depreciation in their, albeit once again tongue in cheek, splitting up statement, I know that the Housemartins made a massive contribution towards that goal.
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