[ 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."
Delores / Link to Here
[ October 18, 1998 ]
Jam TV: Revel in Contrasts
Jam TV
The Beautiful South Revel in Contrasts
October 18, 1998 (??)
by Brandon Barber
The Beautiful South revel in contrasts.
Over the course of a five album, ten-year career, the band have developed a reputation as clever pop craftsmen capable of delivering charming melodies with a caustic twist. Like candied apples pregnant with razor blades, their sweet melodies belie an insidious lyrical center.
Former Housemartins bandmates Paul Heaton (vocals) and Dave Hemingway are the willful architects of this artistic double cross, an approach that has gotten the pair in trouble more than once.
"It's often said that we're a bit too clever for our own good, that people don't get the message," explains Hemingway, "But I'm not sure that's true. I think people are a lot more intelligent than they're given credit for."
The band is also accused of being too English, of allowing their Hull roots to stand in the way of greater fame stateside. "I don't agree with that one either," says Hemingway. "We all speak the same language."
Nonetheless, something strange is at play. While the band has been wildly popular in England, their 1994 compilation Carry On Up The Charts did just that, becoming one of the best-selling albums in British history, they've never quite broken through in the U.S.
"I don't think (Americans) know what slot to put it in really," Hemingway says with a laugh. "Maybe it's our fault. I don't know. We had a number one [single] over here with 'A Little Time' [off of 1990's Choke], but it was (mis)perceived as a country and western track in America. I think we're accessible to a lot more people than we seem to be getting through to."
With their latest release, Blue Is The Colour on Stewart Copelands's Ark 21 imprint, the band is poised to make another run at stateside success. Still treading the same caustic ground as before, Heaton seems to have perfected the difficult balance between poignant and droll, as in this lyric from "Liar's Bar":
And the grave digger's smiling,
at his reflection in his spade.
He's visiting the seediest,
the shallowest of graves.
The vocal chords of elephants,
and the characters of mice.
They're singing "whisky whisky,"
so good they named it twice.
Delivered with the affected rasp of a lifelong drinker, the song evokes a place where misery and humor can coexist over a pint of beer. It's the sort of setting that might suit a music veteran like Hemingway, a man who knows better than to look too far into the future.
"We've been going nearly ten years now, and we never look beyond the next," he admits. "We don't want to turn in to some kind of dinosaurs, chatting our stuff up past our sell-by date. We enjoy doin' the records and doin' the singles and everything that comes with it. As long as that continues, we'll continue to make records."
Delores / Link to Here
Record Mirror: Never Face a Bourbon Cream
Record Mirror
Never Face a Bourbon Cream
Date/Author Unknown
Courtesy of G. Dipper
NO! NOT THE BISCUIT TIN!
(THE RULES) In the Biscuit Tin there are 100 envelopes. Each contains a fiendishly difficult question. You must open 20 envelopes at random and answer the question inside. You can only pass on one.
THE FIRST QUESTION FROM THE TIN IS ...
Q. WHAT BRAND OF SHAMPOO DO YOU USE?
I don't really wash it that much. When I was a kid I used Vosene and I use Wash & Go. I wash it about once every three or four weeks. That's normal, innit? Once I went without washing it for a year and a half.
Q. WHAT DO YOU LIKE MOST ABOUT YOUR HOME TOWN?
The fact that people in Hull are friendly and that I know a lot of them. I like the size as well. I know that sounds a bit weird but 'cos it's quite small you bump into a lot of people you wouldn't do if it was bigger. I miss it when I'm away but not as much as the others do, a lot of them have long relationships with babies. Sorry, long relationships and they have babies.
Q. DO YOU KEEP UP YOUR LAWN?
What, as in mowing it? I haven't got one. I know that's a bit "I'm a man of the people" but I genuinely haven't. There's several reasons: 1) I wouldn't be able to keep it up and 2) there's lots of parks nearby. It's just one of them things innit? The answer, if I had one, is No.
Q. WHAT'S YOUR COOKING SPECIALITY?
Toad in the Hole. Same mixture as Yorkshire Puddings with sausages. I used to be a vegetarian but I'm not any more. I don't eat it very often really.
Q. WHAT IS YOUR OPINION OF THE MANIC STREET PREACHERS?
I don't really have one, I can't remember hearing anything by them. Dave Rotheray likes them.
Q. WHAT'S THE MOST RIDICULOUS THING YOU'VE DONE TO IMPRESS SOMEONE?
Probably joining a pop group. To impress an ex-girlfriend or something. When I was working in an office I told someone I was leaving to join a group and he said, "I think you're being totally ridiculous". I think of him a lot, and how wrong he was.
Q. WHICH IS BEST - BEVERLY HILLS 90210 OR BAYWATCH?
Never watched either. I've heard that people watch Baywatch just for the women's breasts.
Q. WHAT'S THE WORST ROW YOU HAVE EVER HAD WITH YOUR PARENTS?
I don't think I ever had an argument with both of them - you tend to argue with them separately, don't you? Once they got this letter saying that I'd let off stink bombs at school, misbehaved and wasn't to be let back into the school without an escort. I just denied the whole thing, but that could have been a big row. My mum still thinks I'm innocent.
Q. DO YOU EVER LOOK AT YOURSELF NAKED IN THE MIRROR?
Yeah I do. I usually look at myself half-naked 'cos I usually wear a shirt to bed, so I can see the bottom parts - the interesting parts.
Q. WHAT TV AD DO YOU HATE THE MOST?
I really hate that Cheddery one. It's a scouse mother and daughter. I hate that coffee advert that Michael Elphick's in, where he does that hand movement with the beans and says "I've always wanted to do that". I like that Mad About the Boy one though.
Q. HAVE YOU EVER FANCIED ANYONE OF YOUR OWN SEX?
(Laughs) That's real weird that. I just knew this question was about whether I was gay or not. I haven't fancied sleeping with a block or anything, but I find it easy to be affectionate with men. Basically I don't really find men's bits appealing.
Q. DO YOU BELIEVE IN REINCARNATION?
No. Not one iota. It's just the right-wing trying to make people believe they've got another chance if this life is bad. There's not much evidence is there?
Q. HAVE YOU EVER TAKEN DRUGS?
Yeah, this afternoon. I wouldn't advocate it though.
Q. IS IT PECULIAR SEEING YOURSELF ON TELEVISION?
It's exciting at first, but the thing is I don't associate seeing the band with seeing me. It's two different things. I can't believe the way I speak on TV. I sound like John Inman, a real camp Northerner.
Q. HOW WOULD YOU LIKE TO DIE?
Don't fancy any way. My friend's grandfather died in his armchair with a can of beer in his hand, reading the paper and watching the television. That sounds good. Die in your sleep with the telly on. One of them BBC2 Chemistry programmes.
Q. WHO'S YOUR BEST FRIEND?
In a light-hearted way I suppose my mate Trotsky.
Q. WHAT WORDS DO YOU MOST FREQUENTLY USE?
Swear words mostly. I used to say "basically" a lot. I use the word "And" a lot as in "And ..." And "so", I use that a lot.
Q. WHAT'S YOUR FAVOURITE CHAT-UP LINE?
What you do is you lick two fingers, wipe them on somebody's back and say "Better come back to my house and take all those wet clothes off". Some idiot told me that.
Q. DO YOU HAVE ANY FAMOUS ANCESTORS?
Yeah, my mum's great-grandmother was the last ever woman to speak Cornish. Trouble is, of course, towards the end she didn't have anyone else to speak it to. Her last words were "nonnee thaa arass ybrd".
Delores / Link to Here
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