[ May 1, 1991 ]
Vox: Sneaking Beauties
Vox
SNEAKING BEAUTIES
Shh! You Know Who
May 1991 Issue No. 8
by Stephen Dalton
Courtesy of Richard Stevenson
DON'T BE TAKEN IN BY PENSIONER POP. WATCH OUT FOR THE KINGS OF ROCK 'N' WOOL. BECAUSE MEMBERS OF MILD-MANNERED BAND THE BEAUTIFUL SOUTH CONCEIL DARK SECRETS BENEATH THEIR COSY CARDIES. IRRESISTIBLY DRAWN TO A GROUP WHOSE MANAGER IS CALLED BAMBI. STEPHEN DALTON ASKS "IS THIS THE WAY TO DO IT?"
Paul Heaton glowers like Mister Punch's suicidally depressed uncle with a killer migraine and inflamed piles. He is not a happy man. On-going whispered debates between all six of The Beautiful South keep arriving at the same firm conclusion: absolutely no cover photos with just two band members. The counter argument suggests group shots will be overcrowded. But top level negotiations from both sides eventually reach a three-person compromise and, several hours later than planned, the photo session is sulkily concluded.
 
It would be easily here to dismiss The Beautiful South as prima donna, displaying precisely the sort of sickening inflexibility that they would despise in their chart-topping contemporaries. It may seen so from the outside, but beating at the group's schizophrenic heart is a fierce anti-stardom stance so alien to their status it is a miracle they have survived this long. Especially when the same battle must be fought over every interview, every photo shot and television appearance. Today is just another dilemma-filled episode in the struggle for survival by the rare species, The Pop Star With Principles. You thought they were extinct?
Paul Heaton's Band are not a democracy. That would be too obvious, and whatever else they may be, at least The Beautiful South are never obvious. Heaton writes the words - bitter, beer-stained vignettes about masturbation, mid-life crisis and mismatched marriages - and guitarist Dave Rotheray douses then in the kind gently splashed melodies that are rarely heard outside small-hours Radio Two playlists.
"I'm sort of a midwife rather than a father", explains Rotheray of his songwriting role. "Paul is the mother and father; I ease the birth. And this lot are the white coats and masks, scrubbing up". In contrast to his still-simmering partner, the amiable Rotheray is unruffled by earlier arguments over pictures. Or perhaps "resigned" would be a better description. "The photographer picks his star - it's a never ending self-fulfilling prophecy. I don't mind not being photographed, but I do mind the way people presume the rest of us are inherently boring and make no intellectual contribution to the band. Plus there are at least two of us who are better looking than Paul. In fact I would say five".
Skinhead bassist Sean Welsh succinctly summarises Heaton's dilemma. "He wants fame for the band but he doesn't particularly seek fame for himself. He doesn't want to be seen as The Paul Heaton Experience".
The Beautiful South is an organisation with subtly-operating divisions of caste. "Tin Machine" is the in-band category shared by Welsh and Rotheray. A strict hierarchy places them below Heaton and Irish singer Briana Corrigan (who occupy the highest level, known as 'Petal') but above drummer Dave Stead, who labours in the one-person underclass 'Felch' - sometimes also referred to as 'Driver', ever since Stead was mistaken for the tour-bus driver by a Go! Discs employee.
"Paul specifically selected people to work with him who could add something to the group", insists singer Dave Hemmingway, another fully paid-up 'Petal' member since he and Heaton disbanded the Housemartins. "There is no beef about him being the main focus of attention, he is for all of us - he writes the songs". All the Beauties tell a similar story. But surely the band's working structure is incompatible with democracy?
"It doesn't want to be a democracy", remarks Welsh. Rotheray agrees. "It's like a benevolent dictatorship, a dictatorship with respect, but that's not to say that band members don't have vetoes... democracies are incompatible, unless all members of the band are artistically equal, which they never are. The person who originates the ideas has a certain right over them, and they ultimately deserve the last word".
Rotheray insists there is a unified band stance based on personal principles. For example, he cannot envisage ever befriending a Conservative voter except perhaps a "working-class Tory, someone who's been honestly taken in". Welsh opposes this romantic notion. But they both agree that The Beautiful South are a no sell-out, no compromise outfit. Very traditional terms for the '90s? "If you call good taste and political consistency traditional, I suppose so".
Outside observers may struggle to locate this political consistency. Rotheray would never play benefits besides "maybe something for Sinn Fein", but happily attended the all-four-charity backslapping Brits bash where The Beauties picked up Best Video prize for Number One smash 'A Little Time', (The recent half-million selling Beautiful South album Choke contains a tellingly cynical track called 'I've Come for My Award').
"There was a fair amount of back and forth about whether we should go", he confesses. "I think in the end we just went for the fun of it, but the party afterwards was sickening. All this money being splashed around... if it was bombarded and you were in there you'd feel total sympathy with the people who did it".
It's not all heavy political debate in this hotbed of feeling. The Beautiful South have a sense of humour ten times bigger than their social conscience, and never was this more plain than when Big Night Out star Bob Mortimer sat in for drummer Dave Stead - un-noticed by BBC top brass - during the band's mimed Brits appearance. Poor Steady, who'd broken his leg, suffered further indignity when several TV viewers didn't miss him.
Three months after his accident, Stead still walks with a stick, and reluctantly recalls that painful December night in Brussels. "It was pretty icy on the pavement and basically I just slipped. No mystery, really. I could make something up if you want..." He conjures and operatic tragedy involving hysterical crowds, stage invasions and giant gongs crushing his limbs. Welsh is inspired to join in. "People all assumed we'd finished the gig, because the traditional gong had sounded!" in moments like these it's easy to love The Beautiful South.
Once upon a time there was a cheeky cartoon four-piece called The Housemartins, self-proclaimed fourth best band in Hull and purveyors of ideologically-sound indie pop. The Sun hated them for lashing Maggie, Queen and capitalism with their dry Northern wit, but every sane person in Britain loved them to death. Consequently, they split up.
"I know from doing The Housemartins", recalls the veteran Beautiful South manager Paul 'Bambi' Thompson, "Paul wanted to do something a bit broader, make more varied records". Bambi firmly believes in Trojan Horse theory of supervision, using mellow musical subtlety to sneak political messages past the doorman at Pop Music plc. In Beautiful South songs, vaudeville pianos tinkle and trumpets twiddle while Downing Street burns. But given the general banality of their target market, isn't all this finely-wrought cleverness a wasted effort?
"I don't think it's a lost cause", argues Bambi. "Every time we get a record in the chart, at least there's something which appeals to more sides of the brain than usual". Press officer Sallie Johnson likens The Beautiful South's softly-softly approach to that of David Lynch, a comparison endorsed by Go! Discs boss Andy MacDonald. "On one level it's quite an elegant, melodic sound, but lyrically there's some quite dark stuff in there".
Life most left-wing intellectuals Paul Heaton hates being called a left-wing intellectual. But he can cope with being dubbed the Ald Serens of fags-and- football soul music, and as for Clown Prince of Pensioner Pop... "I like that. We've got a new image!".
Most of The Beautiful South do dress like senior citizens, in cardigans, scarves and sensible windcheaters. They write songs - like the current single 'Let Love Speak Up For Itself' - about middle-aged romance turning sour, and the video for 'I'll Sail This Ship Alone' was a veritable sixtysomething Blind Date. "It's important for people to understand that love can go wrong during marriage and in the middle of your life", insists Heaton. "It's not just mild teenage angst, then finding a partner and settling down for life".
A few gins and the promise of escaping in time to catch the football highlights have lightened the man's mood, and the subject of his benevolent dictatorship can now be broached. "There is a class system in the band when it comes to making decisions. I make most of them, but only because I've had more experience".
Copper-topped Briana Corrigan, most recent band recruit, claims she joined the Beauties accidentally after an unsatisfactory grounding in theatre and dance. Two years on, the London-based singer still feels uneasy being the band's sole female member and the only one who doesn't live in Hull.
"I used to have a real problem being one woman with five men - on tour there about 15 men - but it's getting less of a problem. It's outside perceptions of the one-woman-in-the-band that are the problem, now".
Heaton is disillusioned with male-domination politics. For the bands imminent American tour he aims to tackle industry sexism head-on, by positively discriminating in favour of female tour staff. If he can find any, that is. Unlike some left-wingers, he doesn't consider feminism secondary to the class struggle.
"We're only half of the community, so it's got to be of prime concern", agrees Corrigan. "Most of the people who say the class struggle is everything are men". But surely any socialists - The Beautiful South included - are fighting against basic human nature?
"We're going to get into the nature/nature debate here", interrupts Heaton, "and it's going to last all night, And I'm going to drink a lot and come out with loads of things about tits".
A joke, of course, but this kind of laddishness is certainly in mode. Witness laddishness is certainly in mode. Witness how former Housemartins protégés The Farm (Heaton has a production credit on their new album from several years back) are portrayed in the media. "I think they're heading for the same problems the Housemartins had: this simplistic loveable-rogue thing. But when they have a record in the charts we're pleased".
A simplistic image was the least of The Housemartins' worries. Shit-stirring tabloid The Sun ran a sustained hate campaign against them, printing bogus interviews with "Potty Paul Heaton", and fabricating allegations that the band were gay public-school southerners.
"We were quite lucky that not many people in Hull read The Sun", chuckles Heaton. The trials of being in the Housemartins have determined how he now runs The Beautiful South who, in comparison to the Housemartins, present a more complex public picture (arguing over band photos, for example) and pretend less to be fiercely normal.
"The band is less ordinary than The Housemartins, where we were trying to play down our eccentricities. I would probably qualify as an eccentric. I keep a book on every single Italian first-division side, and I've started on the second division. But I'm not trying to be different it's just an uncontrollable hobby".
Similarly, The Beauties are not on any hell-for-leather rollercoaster to success. "We're trying to follow up 'A Little Time' with as many crummy singles as we can, and it's working". The big hand in-joke is how Heaton- crooned singles always crash out of the charts, while duets between Heaton and Corrigan reach number one. "Yes, it hurts", sobs Heaton. "I wouldn't mind one last hit before I thrown in the towel".
Popular misconception has it that arch irony merchants The Beautiful South hate pop music. This springs from Housemartins-inspired anti-fame sneers like 'Love Is..." and 'Straight In At 37". Nowadays, though, Heaton is perfectly happy with moderate stardom.
"I think I'm the perfect pop star", he beams. "I was built for it from an early age. Just having the chance to mouth off, run your own show, and the people you deal with are basically stupid... you can pull the wool over their eyes. It just come naturally to me".
The Beauties - led by Heaton but with strong competition, especially from Dave Rotheray and Sean Welsh - continue to write superficially mundane ditties underpinned by mildly subversive intelligence. If just occasionally, they seem a better idea on paper than in the flesh, spare a little time for Potty Paul Heaton's songwriting manifesto.
"Pop in general is mundane, so we're not steering away from it. We're just trying to write something interesting. I find it difficult to write straightforward optimistic love songs... I throw in a row, a fight, get a few knives out. But I'm trying to get rid of that because it's a lazy short cut to a good song".
So will the sun shine on the Beautiful South more frequently? "I hope so. Our next single 'I Drowned Your Mother' is much lighter". For the first time. Mister Punch laughs long and hard.
Delores / Link to Here
|
