[ October 22, 1998 ]
Telegraph: Band That Gets A Round
The Telegraph
The Band That Likes to Get A Round
22 Oct 1998
Writen by Tom Horan
Courtesy of D. Cohen
Tom Horan finds out why the Beautiful South's memorable songs owe so much to time spent in the pub
IN pop the "hook" is all. Most bands struggle to come up with that snatch of tune that sticks in the mind. But the Beautiful South have a well of them that seems never to run dry. The professionally Northern six-piece, sprung from the remnants of the Housemartins, are one of Britain's biggest-selling bands of the decade.
For the whole of the Nineties, Hull has been the home of the hook. Singer and songwriter Paul Heaton is in a west London studio, recording B-sides for the band's next single, Dumb, in his crisp falsetto. The voice is instantly placeable, though 36-year-old Heaton is only one of three lead singers (the others are 22-year-old Jacqueline Abbott and ex-Housemartin Dave Hemingway) whose harmonies make up the band's measured sound.
Songwriting partner and guitarist Dave Rotheray is at the mixing desk with their engineer, who is comfortably the best-dressed man in the room. Last week, the band released Quench, their seventh album, on Go! Discs. By the end of the week, it had sold 96,000 copies.
Knock on doors anywhere in the UK, and one in seven households will produce a copy of the group's 1994 hits compilation Carry on up the Charts (three million sales and rising). It's possible, though, they may deny owning any such thing - Beautiful South records score no points with the lifestyle pundits who dictate what is cool in modern Britain. But that might just be the key to those multi-million sales.
"A lot of rubbish dance music has saturated the charts in recent years," says Heaton over a lager top, after the B-side has been laid to rest. "We're the absolute opposite of that. We do try to be commercial, but we also want to make pure pop singles, and we've got something to say."
"The more dance stuff there is," adds the taciturn Rotheray, "the greater our sore-thumb-ness.
"Sorry, Dave?" says Heaton.
"The more we, you know, stick out."
There's a pause in the conversation. "I think it's your round, Dave."
Rotheray and Heaton have been writing together for almost 10 years - the band's first single, Song for Whoever ("I love you from the bottom of my pencil case"), went to number two in the charts in June 1989. The camaraderie between the two, and within the whole Beautiful South set-up, is palpable, and is as much a key to their longevity as their way with a tune.
What might seem to be less in their favour, in terms of making pop millions, is the fact that Heaton is a die-hard socialist. But he certainly puts his money where his mouth is: the band is run on an equal-shares-for-all system, avoiding the divisiveness of an Oasis-style arrangement, where one or two members take most of the money.
Coggy, a loping giant with a tell-tale Hull mumble, is warmly welcomed to the table. "He's been selling the T-shirts since the beginning," says Rotheray. "Your round, Cogs."
Bizarrely, Heaton is also a confirmed Telegraph reader. "It's the only half-decent paper, i'nt it? Best news, best football and the Matt cartoon. Its politics are rubbish, obviously, but you've got to know what the other side's thinking - that way you can second-guess them.
"Politics is half the reason I formed a band in the first place. We're not like Sting or Phil Collins, where they're successful first and then they start doing so-called political songs. I keep trying to get our record company to get us on Question Time. I reckon we'd do all right. I don't like Blair, mind. I voted Socialist Labour Party at the last election. I was lucky enough to be living in Leeds at the time."
"Now there's a rare example of a wholly original sentence," deadpans Rotheray. "Your round is it, Paul?"
Pub life seems central to the Beautiful South ethos. With its convivial cast of all-sorts and undertow of melancholy, the boozer is a key element in the very particular songs that Rotheray and Heaton write. Acid observations are couched in the sweetest singsong melodies.
"I tend to criticise men a lot," says Heaton. "I like to take an eagle's-eye view of the way people behave."
"You and your eagles," Rotheray sighs.
Heaton has a fascination with birds of prey that often sees him jetting off to Europe on beer and ornithology jaunts. He puts it down to seeing Ken Loach's film Kes as a boy.
"I haven't seen an eagle this year. I saw a honey buzzard, but that's not quite the same. Spain's the place to go for eagles - Zamora, near the Portuguese border."
Given that he, along with the rest of the band, still lives in Hull, Heaton has a singularly cosmopolitan life. Besides his beloved Sheffield United, he is a keen follower of Italian football, and makes regular trips to watch Inter Milan.
"It's nice to have the money to take a group of mates over. They say Italians fall over easily, but what about that English referee Paul Alcock [pushed to the ground by a Sheffield Wednesday player recently, to great uproar]? "It happens I worked with him for three years in the same office, in Redhill, in Surrey. He was sales ledger and I was bought ledger. I've pushed a bunch of bought-ledger charts into his chest - and, I tell you, he never fell over then."
Heaton's Beautiful South colleagues seem quite content to indulge his idiosyncrasies, and the demise in 1988 of the chart-topping Housemartins appears to have been equally amicable.
Indeed, former member Norman Cook ("his real name's Quentin," giggles Heaton) - subsequently a big-time dance producer and DJ under the aliases Fatboy Slim, Freakpower and Beats International - was involved in the production of Quench.
"Norman's very relaxed in the studio and he came in to help with a few ideas for drum tracks," explains Rotheray. "Rhythm Consultant, we called him," says Heaton. "I think his music's fantastic. I listen to quite a lot of dance music, but you won't find us going in that direction - I haven't got the energy."
Sensing the approach of yet another round, the record company girls at the next table remind the two songwriters that duty calls, in the shape of a glitzy launch party for the new album.
"I'm not going, and that's that," says Heaton.
"Where is it, anyway?" Rotheray asks.
The girls trill that it's at the London Aquarium, in the old GLC building.
"Means nowt to me, that," mumbles Heaton.
"Opposite the Houses of Parliament." Rotheray brightens.
"Great. Perfect sniper's position."
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