“IT’S THE MESS AND THE CONFUSION WHERE THE BEAUTY LIES”

ASHLEY HEATH ON POP
By MARK HOOPER

MARK HOOPER: Let’s talk about the instability of pop culture, particularly in Britain. There’s a very unique, ingrained attitude that was summed up by Tony Wilson of Factory Records when he said that there’s a cycle in British culture. At the moment we’ve seen a period of novelty acts and one-off singles dominating the charts, and he sees that as a sign that there’s something exciting just around the corner – just as there was in the mid-’70s before punk, or the late ’80s before acid house.
ASHLEY HEATH: There’s no question that we’re living in a very confused moment right now, where a lot of people are scrabbling around for trends or movements or what they see as resonant pop culture, and my feeling is that we should stop thinking about it and just try and feel it. Whether it’s in fashion, or in pop music, or in film, or in art for that matter, there is no question that there have been amazing things happening in the last six months. And I think the problem is that, in Britain especially, there is this critical tyranny that has sidelined stuff that’s really interesting and fantastic and has promoted stuff that’s actually a little bit dull.

Can you think of specific examples of things that have really excited you in the last six months?
Yeah. I’m someone who, because of my profession, goes and sees the fashion shows a lot, so in terms of fashion I saw the last Raf Simons show and it was literally one of the five best fashion shows I’ve ever seen in my life, just in terms of sheer excitement. It was just a great mood, an amazing energy, amazing spirit. You look at fashion and it’s like fusing rock and rap music together. It can either be incredible or terrible, and Raf Simons manages to put together a bunch of black outfits inspired by anti-corporate protestors and young people, and he does it with such elegance and originality – that’s an example. In terms of music, I always believe that there are ten great records released every month. There’s so much music coming out. I think it’s interesting that I find I’ll listen to music from so many genres and countries now simultaneously, quite happily. I think the new Noreaga single that the Neptunes have produced is just phenomenal. And there’s another one they’ve done for Clipse called “Grindin’,” which is just awesome. And then I watch Pharrell Williams of the Neptunes walk out at the MTV awards in the middle of some P Diddy extravaganza … I refuse to be cynical about something that looks that incredible and I don’t need anyone to tell me that Public Enemy in 1989 or Sugarhill Gang in 1980-whatever were more important or better, because on a real excitement level, P Diddy doing some MTV extravaganza and then Usher dancing almost like a new Michael Jackson with Pharrell Williams strolling on and singing Sly Stone-meets-Prince pop, blurring the boundaries between hip hop and R’n’B and pop – I think there’s real genius there. I’m excited by a Noreaga record that the Neptunes have produced in a time when they’re also producing fantastic pop records for other artists, and they’re also producing fantastic show-stopping performances on MTV. It’s legendary. I know these guys are just inspired by Jam and Lewis, trying to do this black/white crossover thing, but they’re in real danger of being better than their mentors. But there’s lots of other records. There are these people called Sun Cycle who I just think are phenomenal. Young kids doing an R’n’B meets British garage meets ragga sound, which I think has never been done before. There’s a lot of elements you can hear there. There are a lot of exciting records, exciting things happening. I don’t think there’s a movement there though.

I think if you talk about a movement, you can only really do it retrospectively; you need some perspective. But I think it’s wrong to say there’s a cycle – there’s lots of different things going on simultaneously and it’s the critics who move in cycles.
You know, Tony Wilson theorizes a lot. I’ve got an enormous amount of respect for him because I grew up obsessed with his company, obsessed with his record label and obsessed with a couple of the talents – principally I suppose Martin Hannett and Peter Saville – that he allowed a platform for. His great genius was that he allowed a completely open platform with very little editing. But he seems intent now on imposing some kind of theoretical structure on everything. There was no theoretical structure, so far as I understood it, for him simultaneously releasing records by ESG and Vini Reilly. Why is he now, afterwards, trying to pretend that there was? That’s the problem with a lot of this cultural criticism: it’s not very interested in blood, sweat, and tears. It’s just interested in pontificating for the sake of it.

A lot of people involved with Factory have said that really there was no plan. One hand didn’t know what the other was doing, the bands never got to see Peter Saville’s covers – and afterwards Tony Wilson would make one of his grandiose statements about what it all meant.
Peter Saville has made to me the most interesting comment about Factory Records and that whole culture when he said Manchester is a city of Gothic cathedrals and motorway underpasses. That was smart because it tapped into what I just described as blood, sweat, and tears: i.e. people’s hopes and fears and dreams, and that’s all that counts. I saw that Factory Records film 24 Hour Party People and I did really enjoy it. I thought it was funny and clever, but by definition it was really crude. What excited and enthralled a lot of people about Factory Records is that it just didn’t make sense. It wasn’t tidy and it wasn’t comfortable. The Happy Mondays made two great albums – incredible albums – that no one ever bought. People still don’t understand that first record, Squirrel And G-Man. It didn’t make sense. It was produced by this bloke from the Velvet Underground (John Cale), they were this mad band, and still now even music critics, even obsessive little white boys who read and write for the NME, don’t quite understand where that record fits in with the “Oh, they took ecstasy, they got dance producers in to remix their records and suddenly they became big.” I think both Squirrel And G-Man and Bummed in its original incarnation, produced by Martin Hannett, are more exciting records than the remix of Hallelujah. At the time they sold nothing, but it was mad stuff that kept people enthralled. As soon as it became a tidy story, as soon as everyone understood the Happy Mondays, suddenly it was all wrong. Once the crossover’s there and people understand it, it’s not very interesting. I just think trying to put things in tidy theoretical pockets is a mistake because it’s the mess and the confusion where the beauty lies.

Which brings us on to the idea of whether great art comes from chaos …
Yeah. Does chaos produce great art, great pop culture? Possibly. But unlikely. Great art, great pop culture is more likely to result from a really harmonious combination of vision and revision: i.e. some inspiration, but a lot of hard work, a lot of editing, a lot of paring down, a lot of going over, re-writing, re-drawing, repeating … and what’s important is that the mad creative act is still allowed room to breathe. I think that’s true of anyone involved in something artistic. Take photography. As soon as technology becomes involved in photography, make sure your procedures allow for mess, randomness, mistakes. But inevitably great art doesn’t just come from chaos. It comes from hard work, but allowing some chaos to live in there.

David LaChapelle said recently that it annoys him how everyone thinks he creates all his images on computer when in fact he spends weeks building huge sets for his shoots. It’s like they’ve got it the wrong way round; the computer comes in at the very end …
Absolutely. And also the fact that for LaChapelle, his starting point is very much gut, soul, heart-based. He doesn’t think, “OK, what would sell a lot of magazines?” He’s a very colorful, pretty camp guy who’s in his photographic studio dancing around like some mad bint to a Nelly record and shooting people that he finds really interesting and inspiring. It’s all part of his dream, it’s part of his own little world to make everyone else’s world potentially more exciting. It’s a labor of love and once again, critics don’t understand that. Whether they like his work or hate his work, you don’t hear critics talking about how he’s actually this camp guy dancing around to Nelly’s “Hot In Here,” trying to make these pretty bizarre fuck-up American people appear even more colorful, larger than life fuck-ups on magazine pages, or on the walls of art galleries for that matter. That’s what it’s all about. It’s about the mess. As soon as I see some pop cultural commentator try and put something into a bracket or explain it, I start to get really worried. You know: do I like David LaChapelle’s photography? Some of it. Do I like all of it? Absolutely not. But on what grounds do I even like it or not like it? You’ve got to remember that when I was working with The Face full-time, we got a lot of flak for using a photographer like LaChapelle. People were like, “Oh we’re into this computer thing,” or, “We’re not into this computer thing” – it wasn’t about computers, it was about, on a gut level; did it feel right at the time? It felt right at the time because it was the opposite of what everyone else was going on about. It wasn’t being confrontational for the sake of it, it was like, “This is interesting, this is mad, so let’s give it a platform.”

It’s interesting, that whole obsession with reality and keeping it real. You get this attitude that P Diddy is suddenly vulgar because he’s celebrating the fact that he’s made it and he’s not keeping it real. For me the whole point of pop culture is the opposite of keeping it real, it’s about fantasy.
Absolutely. I’m not a die-hard fan of P Diddy’s, but I think he makes some great records – and sure he deals in clichés, but does he deal in clichés any more or any less than Nan Goldin? Or Daft Punk? Or Helmut Lang? Fine; contrast, compare, debate. But he provides a mad, incredible escapist fantasy. And it is a fantasy, and it’s there for you. Take what you want from it. I think he’s doing really important stuff. It’s very commercial and it’s very in your face. There’s not a lot of subtlety to it, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s of no value.

I think that touches on a very English attitude too – the idea that once something’s become commercial it’s somehow lost some artistic merit …
But the truth is people forget, The Beatles were culturally sidelined pretty much for ten, fifteen, twenty years. The critics, the NME and the white critical mafia … not mafia because they’re all back-biting and sniping about each other … but the white middle class liberals spent twenty years trying to convince the world that the Rolling Stones were better than The Beatles. They didn’t win, because they were wrong. And no disrespect to the Rolling Stones and Iggy and the Stooges and Suicide, but The Beatles were better. They were a mess, of course, and they made some bad records, and some really bad moves, and some terrible movies, and did some stupid things, but in many respects what they achieved was just astonishing. I think we should just remember how many pop critics took the line that the Stones were the bad boys, the more soulful band, the more authentic band … all these ridiculous notions of revolution and authenticity: it was wrong. I was actually reading an extract at the weekend from Martin Amis’ new book Koba the Dread about the Communists in the West and the way their thinking changed; they were wrong. Similarly, a lot of pop cultural thinkers and writers were wrong. We’re back into that “disco sucks” debate, but they were wrong, and they lost. The Beatles triumphed; Abba triumphed; disco triumphed. Don’t think it, feel it. Just because something’s super successful does not mean it’s of no merit; in fact it’s more likely to indicate there is some merit there. Of course you can’t overestimate how naff most people’s taste is. Most people will buy white plastic garden furniture as cheaply as possible given the choice. But hey, maybe there’s something really good about that furniture. There’s no hard and fast rules other than: get stuck in and try it. Taste it for yourself, feel it for yourself, because if you go in with a closed mind, you’re never going to get it.

I find it fascinating the way The Beatles set off to make Roy Orbison and Little Richard songs and yet they managed to fuck it up so much they created something entirely new.
But The Beatles were phenomenal, and whether they were inspired by Little Richard, or Elvis Presley, or Roy Orbison, or for that matter Berry Gordy’s Motown label, they were inspired on a real heart and soul, excitement level. And they just tried to recreate that. And they managed it. They had the whole fucking world – excuse my language – screaming. It wasn’t about Elvis being a white guy nicking black music or whatever. I mean: “Who’s better, Elvis Presley or Little Richard?” What a boring debate in comparison with, “How amazing were both Elvis Presley and Little Richard?” Or, “Why don’t more people now try and copy Little Richard records?” Because they’d make much better records as a result. But they were just trying to recreate excitement. They weren’t trying to recreate ideas. And something new and original came out of it, because everyone has a different fingerprint and a different cognitive structure, so it’s always going to be made different. The Beatles understood about trying to get that energy and excitement. And it was a mess. There were so many influences in there; some black, some white. If you listen to early Beatles records there’s so much country in there, there’s so much British folk sound, skiffle …

But there are these ridiculous “rules” about The Beatles: it’s alright to like the White Album, but not Beatles For Sale, which could arguably be said to have more merit. For me, by the time they’ve got to the White Album they’re being a bit self-indulgent.
I know what you’re saying, but they put a record out in a plain white sleeve with no singles. And it had “Dear Prudence” on it, and it had “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” on it and it had … I’m trying to think of a Paul McCartney song so that I feel fair

about him. The trendy record is Helter Skelter, but “Back In The USSR” is a mad, stupid song that I think in many years to come people will say, “How mad is that?” Because McCartney’s commenting on the mood of ’68, and rather than saying, “Hey, revolution on the streets, Street Fighting Man,” he talks about this quite crazy and actually fucked-up appreciation of all things Russian and all things Communist. Russia had seen thousands slaughtered and thousands starving, and Paul McCartney writes a stupid sub-Beach Boys pop tune about the kind of girls you find hanging out in Russia. It was very much the mood of ’68, and for me it’s of equal interest as John Lennon singing about revolution, or Mick Jagger talking about French students rioting in the street. But I take your central point that the stuff that’s critically lauded isn’t necessarily the most interesting. It probably isn’t in fact, because if there’s one hard and fast rule, never trust a well-educated middle class critic.

I was thinking more about the rules that are invented as to what’s cool and what’s not, which are usually totally arbitrary but most people go along with …
Exactly. It’s this tyranny of cool. There’s nothing much cooler for me though than Diana Ross, for instance. She’s still bizarrely a completely underrated singer. She’s an awesome singer. She’s a much better singer than Minnie Ripperton for my money. And yeah, it’s probably because she’s been prejudiced against because she sold a lot of records and she became this big diva and was a bit of a pain in the ass probably in real life. But go back to those records, you listen to the first Diana Ross album, it’s an amazing record. And it’s not just amazing because of Diana Ross. It’s amazing because there’s some phenomenal talent there: the musicians, the songwriters, the production … it’s already interesting. Again it’s back to “Don’t think it, feel it.” All these people are running around second-hand record stores now, searching for obscure records that DJ Shadow has got. I mean credit to DJ Shadow, he’s a really cool guy who pretty much single-handedly brought back David Axelrod, which is a great thing. But there’s hundreds of thousands of interesting talents out there equally worthy of your time and your energy and your excitement. They don’t need to be critically revalued, they just need to be enjoyed, and people just need to get stuck in.

It’s like when there was all that fuss about Fischerspooner; we put the album on in the office and everyone said, “Yeah it’s okay, but it just sounds like Depeche Mode.” And then someone brought in their Depeche Mode Greatest Hits and you’ve never seen a record make so many people smile in the office, even though everyone used to deny they liked it …
Because Depeche Mode weren’t cool. It’s the tyranny of the NME critic. Depeche Mode were and are great; they made a lot of incredible records. So did OMD for that matter, so did a lot of untrendy bands. Depeche Mode filled stadiums with people jumping up and down to “Personal Jesus.” Radiohead ripped the same thing off and critics say it’s some great event in music culture. Greil Marcus and some other American phoneys start saying, “This is the best record made all year,” even though it’s not selling as much as the previous one. It’s just a Depeche Mode rip-off. And Depeche Mode were better. It’s as simple as that. Which is why the only reliable indicator any of us has – especially people like you and I who are making a living either writing or putting pretentious magazines out – is: Did the record make us dance? Did the fashion show or the clothes make us feel great? Did the film make us either want to laugh out loud or cry? You have to respond to pop culture and art on a purely blood, sweat, and tears level. I really like the Fischerspooner album. Why? Because I remember buying it; I went and bought it in Rough Trade. I try and buy as much stuff as I can because I think you get a different feeling than if you get sent stuff. I heard it was good, I went and bought it, I went in the basement of my house, played it loud. It sounded great. I love that era anyway of electropop that he’s obviously inspired by, and I had my girlfriend coming down saying, “What’s this? This is great!” It was as soon as it got repackaged and suddenly I saw adverts around town saying, you know; “I Feel Love; Blue Monday; Emerge” – Emerge has got no right to be even mentioned in the same breath as I Feel Love and Blue Monday. I just think it was a good record. It was fun, it made you want to jump up and down and be violent – how many records in the Top Ten this week make you feel that passionate? Not many. But I hated the way it was re-marketed.

Regarding the marketing, Peter Saville said that when he started the major record companies he had no idea about the packaging of the product – they’d say, “I don’t care, just release the thing, it doesn’t matter what the picture looks like.” And what was great about Factory was that Tony Wilson would say to him, “The cover is as important as the record. Make it look brilliant.” And he actually felt guilty that we’ve now got to the point where the majors say, “We’ve got this niche, we’ll make it look like this and people will buy it. And by the time people realize it’s shit we’ll have done another one.” It’s packaging without product.
Yeah. And the great shame is the packaging really isn’t that good. It’s a bit formulaic and you’ve seen it all before. What Peter Saville did was genuinely groundbreaking. It was pretentious, or it certainly had high ideals, but it was different. I don’t think we see a lot out there at the moment that’s generally different. Which is a shame. There’s no reason that people can’t do something a bit unusual. There’s this tyranny of good taste, and good taste is boring.

Even the whole pop production line you have now – I’ve got no problem with that. Motown was a production line. That doesn’t upset me, but I really hate the way Simon Cowell and Pop Idol has taken away the mystery. It’s like the Wizard Of Oz – you take the curtain away and you see the fat bald men running the whole thing. I find that really bad for pop music.
I think there’s always this division between the fantasy, or the art if you like, and the reality. If you looked behind the curtain of the Wizard Of Oz that was Elvis, or Lennon, or Ralph Lauren, or Calvin Klein, or Andy Warhol, you’d probably be a bit disillusioned and a bit disappointed. I think the thing with Simon Cowell is: what does he stand for? Does he really believe in championing talent or does he just want to make some easy money? The suspicion is he just wants to make some easy money. And you know, fine. But actually, making money for the sake of it is one of the most boring things. What are you going to do with it mate? Buy clothes, go on holiday? Great, fine. People who stack shelves do that. This whole marketed pop thing – maybe great songs, great art, great pop will come out of it. And I think you’re right, Motown was such a factory for producing great pop records. But the fact is there were at least 30 phenomenal songwriters there, before you start talking about the musicians and the producers, let alone the singers and the bands. So there were probably 100 phenomenal talents involved in that, if you like, hit factory. And it was magic that all those ideas came together at the same time. What’s the difference between Motown and Pop Idol, as Motown was a money-making enterprise too? I guess it all comes down to creativity. I mean Motown had some pretty off-point singers. Diana Ross is a great example. She’s not necessarily a great singer technically, but she had something. Critics say Diana Ross was not even the best singer in the Supremes and that she forced herself forward. But she had the hits. Holland Dozier Holland were not having Diana Ross sing their songs because they were told to. Fact: they were the greatest hit machine with the exception of Lennon and McCartney in the ’60s, and they were having hits with Diana Ross cooing “Set Me Free” and “Baby Love.” The whole manufactured pop thing we’re living through now – who knows, maybe it will deliver something really cool. It could turn up a front person or a singer-songwriter that could change things. Unfortunately you suspect it won’t, because the criteria isn’t to do that. It’s to pander to markets and niches that have already been identified. And also it’s cheesy. It’s cheap as chips. There’s no aspiration, there’s no shoot for the stars, it’s all about whether  you can get your face on TV? You look behind the curtain that is modern TV; it’s cheap. It’s pretty cheap in America, it’s really cheap in Britain.

So do you feel pessimistic about the way things seem to be moving?
Not necessarily. But I do think that more and more now, people are just picking and choosing. It doesn’t matter about feeling part of a movement. To get lots of people excited about something, all it takes is for people to go out and have a good time. If it’s literally tens of thousands of people going out and learning to salsa dance, then so be it. I certainly don’t have the right to say salsa dancing isn’t as important as pogo-ing or spitting. I’ve never tried salsa dancing so I can’t really say anything about it, other than it’s a good way to get men and women – and men and men for that matter, and women and women – close. Which has to be a good thing.