1985

SUGGS: We were never seen as rock ‘n’ roll, which was taken quite seriously. But we worked as hard as anyone else and took what we did seriously. Even making those videos, it may seem that we’re messing about, but we were trying to do something.

BEDDERS (speaking in 1985): Artistically, our next album will be better cos we’ve taken our time over it and put a lot more preparation into it than any other album we’ve done before. Commercially? I’m not sure.

LEE (speaking in 1985): The lyrical content to Apeman is as important today as it was when it was first released by the Kinks 15 years ago this December. I’d been wanting to record this track ever since Liquidator studios had opened but just never got round to booking up. When I mentioned it to Ian Horne, our engineer and philosopher, he said, ‘Book in Thommo, I can call in a keyboard and guitar player for you, probably Norman Watt-Roy on bass. Yar!’ We booked the studio for June. When I arrived we had half the backing track for Under My Thumb, the guitarist from Charm School – John; bass player from Frankie Miller – Chris; banjo by Rob, backing vocals by the Soultanas. Tom Morley saved my face by laying down the drum pattern and we were on the road to a mega hit.

JEREMY LASCELLES (Head of A&R, Virgin): There was a debate between Yesterday’s Men and Uncle Sam as the first single. Uncle Sam was more obvious, a tip of the hat to the old sound, even though the lyric had an edge to it. But they were trying to be taken more seriously and Yesterday’s Men was the more thoughtful track, so we thought we’d go with the bolder choice. We thought it was a good pointer to their new sound, with a slower tempo etc.

SUGGS: People probably expected us to come back with a real nutty, Madness-type single, but this was a real departure in style. Not taking ourselves too seriously had become the most prominent thing about the band, but it worked against us musically. People thought we were just aiming our stuff at kids, but we wanted our records to be enjoyed by everyone.

JEREMY LASCELLES: We were very much involved in choosing the singles as a team at Virgin. There wasn’t a huge amount of tortured debate. We were always looking for the opportunity to do it differently and not to just play the obvious card from day one.

SUGGS: It’s a song about those 90-year-old politicians who think they’ve still got their finger on the pulse. It started off with someone in the Government saying, ‘It’ll get better in the long run’. It’s a famous cliche and it’s always been a load of bollocks. The song was supposed to be about the whole Conservative Party premise – that things will get much better in the long run, so in the meantime, tighten your belts. But things never really get better in the long run, and the people who have to tighten their belts are the section of the population who have nothing already.

CARL: It started after I read a quote that said, ‘It will get better in the long run, but in the long run we’ll all be dead.’ So where’s the bottom line? How long is the long run?

SUGGS: Then Chris came round with a demo that he’d lovingly recorded one bright, sunny morning, with the sounds all pretty much finished.

CHRIS: I’d borrowed this thing, like a Casio keyboard with a little drum machine, and me and Suggs did a demo on a little four-track, just to show everybody else that they could do it at home.

SUGGS: It was a mellow item that was very enjoyable to write words to and record. A nuance of soul, a smidge of jazz, a twinge of reggae, and a heap of irony. The arrangement stayed much the same on the final record I think.

BEDDERS: Suggs’s vocal is perfection and the track lost none of its naivety and pathos on its journey from home to studio; I just wish we could have captured that more often. Sometimes the gloss of a big recording studio smoothes over these things.

CHRIS: Yeah, in the end, it cost about £30,000 and we could have done it cheap all along!

SUGGS: We didn’t notice the irony of the title until it had actually come out. It wasn’t meant deliberately; I think sometimes these things happen subconsciously, so it was perverse.

MIKE: It was a great song but a rather unfortunate name, because it rather gave food for thought for certain journalists, making easily derogatory remarks about the band. They should have called it something else.

SUGGS: It was a sort of epitaph, but we weren’t conscious of that. Just listen to our records around then and you can almost hear the split coming. Unfortunately, we were the last ones to hear it.

CHRIS: It was ages before it came out, and when it did it was a slow old thing. That was the beginning of the end really.

CARL: Part of our audience had grown up with us, but another part found it hard coming to terms with songs like this, which were quite mellow and not in the least bit ‘wacky’. It was partly our own fault – I’d hardly call My Girl or Grey Day frivolous, but there was always a light-hearted video or silly dance to go with them and some people couldn’t let go of that. So I love the song but I don’t like the video. For me, it was just throwing money at it, without a good idea. No one really had a solid idea and everyone was just chipping in little bits.

CHRIS: We used our old pal Chris Gabrin as director and filmed it inside and outside Brixton Academy. For some reason I though it would look good to have a white Levis jacket and jeans and a white hat.

LEE: I like being Max Wall in that one; with all the glitter coming down. I got right into that.

CHRIS GABRIN (video director): There was some surrealism about it, with Lee on wires again. The zebra crossing was a studio set. We did this mock trial and they came up with the idea of a bouncing globe. More serious possibly but maybe I put that down to being longer in the tooth in the business.

CHRIS: Of course, it’s years later, yet you can see the wires when Thommo’s flying. That’s progress for you. Maybe we should have painted them black.

CARL: So we went on, then they said they didn’t want us back because we didn’t perform and weren’t animated enough – but we were doing Yesterday’s Men!
 That kind of stuff really got us down: ‘Come on – be wacky.’ But then on the other hand we’d also been banned from TV programmes for being too anarchic.

SUGGS: By this time we were so tired of projecting having a good time, we couldn’t even muster a grin – we’d been working for so long we were seen as part of the furniture. As each new thing came along, they’d be seen as artists, whereas we were still just seen as chancers.

SUGGS (speaking in 1985): We keep on at him incessantly about it and that only makes him all the more determined not to get it cut. I think he’s very brave and he hasn’t wavered yet even with the bald boys down at the front. What he’ll probably do is shave it all off for the last night of the tour and then wear a huge wig which will be attached to a piece of fishing wire. And whoops, off it comes!

CHRIS (speaking in 1985): It’s not fashionable is it? I’d hate to be fashionable.

SUGGS: It all started when Lee and Chris had a bet to see who could grow their hair the longest.

CHRIS: There was no particular wager involved – just a bet.

SUGGS: Lee then had a fancy dress party and the day before, he dyed his hair totally black so we thought he was going to come as Abe Lincoln or somebody like that. Instead, he fooled us all by shaving it all off and coming as a Hare Krishna disciple.

CHRIS: At the same party I went as Uncle Sam, Suggs as a Hassidic Jew, Carl a samurai warrior and Bedders in a US Army uniform. So I won the bet and had long hair for quite a while, as my girlfriend of the time liked it.

SUGGS: Luckily it was during our Howard Hughes period, so nobody worried too much.

CHRIS: And it’s all quite ironic, as I don’t have any hair now.

SUGGS: There were loads of instances around this time when we would be working on a song and it just sounded shit but we would keep at it because we had to keep faith. It’s a bit like trying to prize the jewel out of the oyster and you have to be able to visualise what the song will be like at the end of it all. Nothing sounds good when one of us bangs out the chords on a piano but if you can visualise it, you can go somewhere with it. It was basically an act of faith.

BEDDERS (speaking in 1985): You don’t get many groups these days that just play one instrument each and mesh together to make a sound. It’s not the current vogue. It’s almost regarded as old-fashioned.

WOODY (speaking in 1985): People expect that, just because I’m a member of the band, I’ll get up and dance – it’s excruciatingly embarrassing. I’ve never danced in my life; I don’t have a natural tendency to dance. I am extrovert in some ways – I suppose verbally but not in actions. It’s just that I’m not often seen being wacky and nutty.

CARL: All they wanted to know about was nutty ska-suits and 2-Tone. They kept asking, ‘Vy haff you chanzed your clothz?’ We told them the other ones were smelly.

WOODY: In Europe it was terrible – they almost saw us as some sort of circus act. We were like, ‘We’re a band, we’re here to do a gig and promote our record. Why do you want us to act like a bunch of idiots?’

CHRIS: We often thought that we’d try and be a bit more serious. It was hard.  You know how some comedians are right miserable bastards in real life? We’re a bit like that. But we couldn’t help larking about when there was a camera there.

SUGGS: Certain people in the record industry had tried to make us too… y’know: ‘Your purpose is to liven up a dull day.’ Which is fine, but we’d been pushed around and called the Nutty Boys for so long that we started getting more and more serious as a sort of antidote. But that was equally false: it was the baby out with the bath water. We discovered afterwards that the best things are happy and sad at the same time. It’s pathos, but you have to have some sort of education to know that. Someone has to tell you. Otherwise you go round in circles until you realise there’s a word like that – it’s all the things you’re trying to get at, but you’re just not sure where you’re trying to get.

SUGGS (speaking in 1985): I don’t worry that much about getting old. I just hate the idea of glamour and what it does to people. You see pictures of Hollywood actors or, say, Diana Ross and they’re always airbrushed so they look around 21. Then you see them on TV and it’s like a horrible joke. I’ve aged a lot in the last five years though. I’ve just had so much more to worry about than I did when I was 18 or 19. When you start being in a band you just think, ‘Cor! Crash, bang, wallop!’ but obviously you can’t go on living your life like that. You end up like Rod Stewart – a clapped-out old fart. You end up with no friends, no base, no roots, and no life of your own. I don’t wanna be dead and have a few pictures of me and a few videos and albums. I want to be dead completely happy and content that I had a happy family and got on well with people that I knew.

CARL: Backing singer Jimmy Helms was a bit of a one for the ladies. We arrived at a hotel on tour once and there was an air stewardess in the foyer. And within two seconds he had her upstairs. He said, ‘I’m a leaper baby.’ He really could pull the old sorts, that man.

SUGGS (speaking in 1985): We have changed. We’re a lot more sensitive now. It’s a matter of realising what you want, knowing that there’s more to life than going to discos, showing off and being aggressive. You can direct your energy more positively than flying around the world, going bananas and just smashing things up. I’m still just as excited about music as when we started but it’s just a matter of getting it in perspective. You don’t want to wake up in your hotel room three years later and think, ‘What have I been doing?’

CARL (speaking in 1985): I was really pleased Yesterday’s Men got into the top 20… and it’s certainly a good feeling to hold the record of 20 consecutive hits. But it probably worries us more because we have to compete with ourselves, let alone other people. I mean, you do the song and then that’s it, you’ve done it and you move on, I mean it’s great live but after listening to it in the studio for months on end…. The best part of it apart from writing it is the recording of it, and then you’ve done it, it’s sealed in a sort of time capsule. You move on and the challenge is to write something else and/or to perform.

CARL: Uncle Sam was the odd one out – it was a feeble attempt and we really let Virgin push us into releasing it.

JON WEBSTER (Virgin): When Uncle Sam came out, we realised how difficult it was. I remember the band being on the case, sharp business-wise, compared to a lot of other artists I’d met. They asked lots of questions. They were cynical about the whole process.

CHRIS: Mark had found a picture for the cover by photographer Diane Arbus which showed a young American with a flag and a ‘Bomb Hanoi’ badge. However we weren’t allowed to use it, so we asked Seamus the keyboard wizard to reenact the pose, which he did.

CARL: It was released when the rot was setting in, when we felt that maybe we were gonna split or something, without really knowing. We shouldn’t have released it, we should have released The Coldest Day, ‘cos that would’ve been more representative of the mood of Mad Not Mad.

CHRIS: We were back on form with the video. It was done at short notice but John Mills came up with all the goods. It was supposed to be about some paranoid gun nut who was imagining that all of this stuff was happening.

SUGGS: Hopefully we got a bit of the fact that it was based on someone obsessed with America and the American Army in the video. If nothing else, it allowed us to dress up in all those clichés about America…

CARL: …all the uniforms and survivalism, and the ongoing threat of ‘us and them’ that goes hand in hand with America. It’s all that stuff about putting your boots on, getting your survival knife and your hip flask and gas cannister…

SUGGS: …and then going out to defend hamburgers with your life.

JOHN MILLS: I wanted to do a sequence before the track started, with Suggs as the narrator sitting on the post box. The house was over Ealing way. It was quite difficult to find that little cul-de-sac location.

CARL: Lee was back in a dress again; I like Lee in a dress. He looks good in a tight skirt. And Mark looked good in uniform – very convincing.

CHRIS: For did the flip over the barbed wire on to the island, Lee used a small trampoline.

CARL: He was actually going for lessons to learn how to do them properly.

JOHN MILLS: The other great scene was going down Putney High Street on an amphibious army vehicle. That was a hoot. We went down the ramp into the river and up the Thames. They have all these weapons because they’re dressed as soldiers. Lee’s spinning a rifle on his arm and it dropped into the water! Then suddenly, there’s some guy with this loudspeaker on the terrace at the Houses Of Parliament, ‘You on that boat over there! That is illegal!’ They gave us a stern warning and the river police came past. So that video went back to a bit of the wackiness they’d lost.

CHRIS (speaking in 1985): One thing we’ve done over the years is have Suggs as some kind of narrator who’s involved in the action but singing the song. It works very well. So that was his role in Uncle Sam, with Carl as the mad general and us just sort of running round.

SUGGS (speaking in 1985): Making videos does get harder in that you’ve done most of the things you wanted to do. You start off doing the things you image you’d like to do when you were younger, then you run out of ideas.

CARL (speaking in 1985): We’re in serious trouble if we have to shoot one scene over and over again because you lose the spontaneity and then we start getting bored and disinterested.

WOODY (speaking in 1985): Old Robbo was right – if the camera crew didn’t get us first time, then forget it, we were hopeless.

CARL (speaking in 1985): One good thing about Robbo was that he let the cameramen keep rolling even after the scene had finished. A lot of what was interesting was off-camera and spontaneous. You get a funnier reaction when the band don’t even know they’re being filmed.

SUGGS (speaking in 1985): I think there are times when we could have had excessive violence…

CHRIS (speaking in 1985): …but we’re not into that. We like to make entertaining videos that we’d like our children to watch.

SUGGS (speaking in 1985): Every video we’ve made has cost slightly more than the previous one. We started off at about £2,000 and they went up to £13,000… £20,000… so we’re not going to make another one.

CHRIS (speaking in 1985): The cost of the video is getting in a stylist but we do that ourselves. We decide on something we’re gonna wear and we save a lot of money. Suggs goes and has a haircut the day before and Carl does all his own make-up. In fact, Lee wrote a song recently that would come out very well as a video; it’s about a time traveller. We haven’t recorded it yet, but I think we will.

BEDDERS (speaking in 1985): The records and the videos are two different things. For the videos we just had fun, and I think that’s how they came across.

SUGGS (speaking in 1985): It is funny looking back and seeing your life like that. If you see One Step Beyond on the TV you realise how young and fresh-faced we were. But I don’t actually watch the videos that often; once a year probably, and even then only one or two of them.

WOODY (speaking in 1985): It’s frightening to see us when we first appeared on Top of the Pops with The Prince. Talk about wide-eyed and innocent.

CHRIS (speaking in 1985): It’s more of a shock listening to our earlier albums.

CARL (speaking in 1985): We’re lucky in that we’re not bored with our older material and I personally believe in still trying to please the public by playing what they want to hear. After all, they’re the ones who actually pay to the show. I’ve said it before, years ago, and it’s still true; I want to entertain people and have them go out at the end feeling happier and smiling and not with the weight of the world on their shoulders.

TERRY DISLEY (keyboards): I wasn’t a fan at all before the tour. I was into bebop jazz and classical music. I thought it was quirky postcard-humour pop and the chord progressions of tunes like Our House made no sense to me. I had a really hard time learning the material for their tour dates as I couldn’t see the logic in the writing and they had a lot of material in the show. Funny, looking back now I can see the brilliance and value of the whole thing. Their material is truly unique and that’s rare in pop music, plus it’s totally English.

TERRY DISLEY: I went in totally prepared and knew every song backwards but there wasn’t much enthusiasm among the Madness members. Seems it was a low time for them. They referred to myself and the other session players as part-timers. At the start especially, they would be eating sandwiches, reading the paper. I was used to rehearsals where everyone worried about using the time effectively. Lee spent most of the time working out how they could get giant balloons ordered for the tour and how to fly on the Kirby wire above the crowd. He hardly played his sax and was mainly interested in the entertainment side. He was pissed off because he had rehearsed part of the show where he could run up to a small trampoline, do a forward somersault and land in front of the microphone, all playing the sax at the same time. They wouldn’t allow him to do it in case he swallowed his mouthpiece.

ADELE WINTER (The Friday Club): This was the moment of a lifetime, to be on the Madness tour and be on 2-Tone! Ecstatic but always aware that we had to work hard, I will always remember being stood out front watching them perform It Must Be Love and we all looked at each other and knew this was a moment from heaven. Suggs wore a green suit and red gloves for much of the tour and had a thing about asking the audience to look under their seats only to find nothing there – he loved it! As people, Madness were always really friendly and supportive – Suggs, Carl and Lee were always making sure things were alright for us and reminding us that they started their first tour staying in tents. They gave away tickets to kids for their concerts, especially in Ireland. I have many memories but one that stays in my mind. After performing in Cork, I was out front watching them when Suggs announced he had been helped back to his hotel after some lads found him collapsed drunk outside a local radio station. Immediately this lad of about 10 said to me, ‘That was us miss’. It really tickled me and the same thing happened in Dublin! They are such a lovely bunch and real family people. I can still remember so much and know it was a really special time.

TERRY DISLEY: I didn’t really connect much with Suggs, he was always off somewhere. I don’t think we had a single conversation. Chas was my buddy. He used to talk wine and music with me and I found him the easiest one to hang with, along with Bedders, who was the one that kept everyone in check musically. He acted like the musical director and liaised between the session players and the hardcore band members. He was into jazz, too. Chris was always being funny, and Woody was real nice and mellow; a real gentle and respectful soul.

ANDY BROOKS (The Friday Club guitarist): I have brilliant memories of the tour. Being down to earth, Madness treated us very well. Suggs was particularly friendly and Lee, too. They were aware we were staying in dodgy B&Bs and we were invited back to their hotels for drinks many times, which always got messy. I have a particular memory of being in Lee’s hotel room soaking wet after being in his shower fully dressed, stood on a table reading the fire instructions while he filmed me!

ANDY BROOKS: They made sure we were given proper sound-check time and that the tour crew were supportive. We were aware that Madness had not toured for a couple of years and that this was their first album without Mike, so there was a cloud over them, though if you saw them play in 1985 you wouldn’t have guessed: they were brilliant live and the crowd reaction was amazing every night. The punters absolutely worshipped them. 

JIMMY THOMAS (backing singer): We had such a ball on that tour – so much fun. They were lovely guys. My most intense memory was Dublin. We checked into our hotel with those guys from Spandau Ballet. We hung out with them and Carl, Suggs and both the Kemp brothers ended up in my room getting sizzled all night long. We were just drinking and talking shit, man. We rapped; it was fantastic.

ANDY BROOKS: For the most part the gigs were great, but there was still quite a large skinhead following who at times were pretty hostile.

TERRY DISLEY: I remember the skinhead fans spitting then and that scared the hell out of me. Every night, they would climb up on the stage and get thrown back into the crowd.

TERRY DISLEY: The other keyboard player, Seamus Beaghen, fitted in much better than I did. I had long hair and liked jazz, which didn’t go over too well with the full-timers. But it was a great learning experience. I went in thinking just about the musical notes and came out understanding that the ‘show’ can be just as important – sometimes more so – and they did put 100 per cent into a fantastic show for the fans every night.

TERRY DISLEY: In Cornwall, there were Hell’s Angels and skinheads and some guy got stabbed. I’ll never forget Suggs saying on the microphone, ‘If anyone wants to fight, come and fight the band.’ I was going to resign my keyboard position right then.

SUGGS (speaking in 1985): Before I was in a band no one took a blind bit of notice of me. I think it’s a lot to do with just being famous and having money really. There are a million people who look like me wandering round. They’re not in bands and so don’t get that kind of attention. It’s certainly nice to be liked – everyone wants to be loved – but I never thought I was anything special. I’ve changed quite a bit since I was a teenager; I was spotty and boring. When I was 17 I was aggressive and boring. My mum says I’m better looking now, so I suppose I have to believe her. But I never try and project myself like the best-looking bloke in the world. I don’t think it’s important really. It probably does help – you sell records. I think there are lots of people who say they’re not sex symbols but you can see from the pictures they’re desperately trying to be sex symbols. First click of the camera and off comes the shirt.

BEDDERS (speaking in 1985): I think the reason for our longevity is we’ve always been slightly to one side of the pop game thing. We’ve talked about this ourselves. If the telly shows a history about what has happened in the past five or six years in pop music, we’re never really featured.

WOODY (speaking in 1985): We’re like the unspoken rules in a gentleman’s club… you can’t go there unless you know them.

SUGGS: You look back sometimes and think, ‘Aw man, I could have sung that better.’ But I know who that kid was and he was doing his best and he had something, that kid. But I never felt confident about my singing really. I’ve found my own way of doing it, and you get more confident obviously as you get older and you have a bit of success, and I think, mainly, performing in any way is to do with confidence, isn’t it? And then you’ll find things about yourself that you maybe didn’t even know.

CHRIS: That’s one thing that’s unfortunately always underestimated about Suggs. He really does have an ability to sing a strongly emotional song without making it appear sentimental.

SUGGS: On stage I always try harder, make an effort to look more exaggerated because I’ve always had the feeling that it’s entertainment, showbusiness… though I hate the word. 

SUGGS (speaking in 1985): With this tour I sometimes think, ‘Am I going mad or am I too old?’ But that’s how you think no matter what your age is, unless you’re Mick Jagger. I look at people like Ian Dury who remains interesting, you never know what he’ll do. Paul McCartney, Rod Stewart and The Stones seem to be stuck in a certain period and don’t have many, err, exciting traits. Mind you, that also applies to some bands who’ve only been going a couple of years! It’s only being in Madness that inspires me to sing.

WOODY (speaking in 1985): I always thought when a band had been going for mega-years… well, the ones I used to see were all really boring. But the thing is, the only reason they’re there is; they like playing music, and you can’t stop people from doing things they like.

SUGGS (speaking in 1985): We’re the poor man’s Talking Heads. We try to act serious but we never do. It’s more enjoyable that way. We try to be funny but we’re serious about it. Some bands try to be funny to appeal to kids and it doesn’t work. They try to be wacky or whatever. It’s a bit of a shame really.

CHRIS (speaking in 1985): People have survived into their 40s and 50s due to compromise; they’re playing music they were playing when they were 18. I’d rather end up like Ian Dury instead of a lot of people. Everyone as they get older hopefully throws out a lot of the junk.

CARL (speaking in 1985): In the early days I just used to go mad for the whole time I was on stage, never stopped jumping around from start to finish. I used to go and see these other bands and think that there was something wrong because none of them were sweating. But yes, we have slowed the pace down a bit on stage, it’s not the total action that it was in the 2-Tone days.

SUGGS (speaking in 1985): The thing is, 95 per cent of this business is fantasy, so to keep any sense of reality you have to live in the real world. You can’t write about reality unless you live in it. And you can’t live in it by travelling around in limousines.

CARL (speaking in 1985): You can’t travel in limos every day and I hate getting used to it. No one’s sure of anything in this life. We don’t want to pretend to be anything, cos you end up what you pretend to be. By not doing all that stuff we avoid all the problems that go with it. We just want to be as far away from it with losing it as possible. That’s the phrase at the moment.

SUGGS (speaking in 1985): We did consider splitting up, but at the same time we realised that we had more ups than downs and we should keep moving on. Maybe it’s the money as well. I’m 24, I’ve got a wife, two kids, a house and a car; isn’t it wonderful that I can afford all this by making the occasional record? But saying that, I also think we maybe have a different outlook on life than some of our contemporaries. I don’t like to flaunt what money I have. So I’ll come down to the pub on my bicycle and everyone will laugh at me, but they just want to flaunt it more than I do.

SUGGS (speaking in 1985): We’ve always been unprofessional.

CARL (speaking in 1985): It’s crazy, it’s not as though we’re The Sex Pistols or anything.

SUGGS (speaking in 1985): The trouble is that we started off with a bad image and it’s stuck with us – even after a two-year break. We keep making plans to be professional and cooperative, but we never are. Still, if we were perfect, we’d be boring.

SUGGS: By this stage, the age-old problem that had haunted us for years had got even worse. We were sick of putting red noses on and cheering up the planet. Every TV show wanted what we’ve done before, and we didn’t always want to do that.

LEE: When it’s forced on you – ‘You be wacky, you do the combat roll, do the wacky walk’ – we were eventually like, ‘Nah, not today mate. The noses are off.’

SUGGS: It was getting less fun, for sure. We had made the conscious decision not to do anything hilarious any more. And of course, by doing that it meant that things were less hilarious. We didn’t really want to do anything funny. But then what else could we do? Stand around on plinths with nicely coiffured hair?

WOODY: We were spontaneous people; we did things because we wanted to do them. As soon as we were told to do them because we were supposed to it was like, ‘Fuck off.’

CARL: We only ever wrote songs and did the wacky moves to keep ourselves happy.

SUGGS: People would still say, ‘Here come Madness! Yeah! They’ll get the party going!’ But after five or six years, the energy started to drain away. We always had this love/hate thing with the media because they knew we’d liven up a dull day. There was always a thin line between turning it into complete anarchy.

SUGGS: We were always on the cover of Smash Hits but there were no articles in the Sunday Times about Madness. There was no cerebral content in our coverage whatsoever.

CARL: The way people see you does affect you. And that’s not a good thing. It’s hard to remain fixed on your goals and your directions.

SUGGS: Also, it’s difficult not to be cynical when you’ve been around for so long. You see people grinning and trying desperately hard to be jolly, and you know what they’re really feeling.

JIMMY THOMAS: When we played Helsinki, we had such a good time. It was snowing and cold and we had to leave about five in the morning because there was some blizzard coming, and if we didn’t leave that early, we’d be snowed in.

BOSCO DE OLIVEIRA (tour percussionist): As we played this ballad, I couldn’t see Lee onstage. The sax solo was imminent and still no Lee. Suddenly I hear the sax and he comes in flying over the stage on a harness, with a roadie pulling the other end of the rope to make him swing. Very funny guy.

SUGGS (speaking in 1985): I think we’re more relaxed at the moment, as a band, than we ever have been, and that breeds confidence. I think the best thing in music is to affect people, not to be transitory or flippant. The less calculated it is, the better.

CARL (speaking in 1985): It’s the best job in the world; you can’t complain. If you’re not an idiot you can have such a good time. We’ve got a few years in us yet, especially when you see some of the old cack in the charts.

SUGGS (speaking in 1985): We’re like an unstoppable train…

CARL (speaking in 1985): …and we’re going to keep stoking the boilers.