2009

Following the digital download in December 2008, the band continue to prepare for the physical release of Norton Folgate, tweaking some tracks and adding new ones to the running order of the special editions that will appear later in the year. Working with long-time collaborators Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley, and with Suggs in particular fired up, a year of promotion and live appearances is duly pencilled in.

Financially, the band are now in their strongest-ever position, thanks to an investment deal with Power Amp Music. Instead of a traditional advance from a record company – which then requires paying back from the sales of a new album – this agreement sees the band receive a more significant investment in return for a cut of all their future revenue sources, ie record sales, gigs, merchandising, sponsorship and publishing. Any releases are put out on their own label, Lucky 7 Records.

The Dublin Castle landlord, who gave Madness their first residency way back in 1979, dies aged 73 after suffering cancer. Members of the band attend his funeral, which sees his coffin carried from the pub through the packed streets of Camden.

Along with Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour, actor Bob Hoskins and comic Tim Minchin, the frontman stars at a fund-raising auction and concert to help a local boy with a brain tumour visit America for treatment. Taking to the stage at Coldfall Primary School in Muswell Hill, North London, he quips, ‘Before I can perform, I need Bono’s sunglasses to cover my eyes, I need Tracy Emin’s handkerchief to mop my brow, and I need Gordon Brown’s whisky, for which no explanation should be necessary.’ These items are among those that have been signed and donated for the auction, which raises £50,000 for seven-year-old Fabian Burke-Georgiou.

The e-commerce firm, which has been handling orders for the upcoming Folgate box set and Madstock tickets, goes into administration. After a few hiccups and delays, all orders are resolved.

A remastered CD version of the 1982 greatest hits album is quietly released. With no adverts and no promotion, it’s a rush job, designed to get Madness back on shelves before a proper compilation package (Total Madness) is put together. Despite the soft launch, and to everyone’s astonishment, it climbs to No38 in the UK charts and, by the end of the year, has sold more than 30,000 copies. At one point, it is even withdrawn from sale for a few weeks to stop it hindering the success of The Liberty of Norton Folgate.

The singer partners with Zoe Ball to recreate the iconic Vincent Vega/Mia Wallace dance scene in Pulp Fiction. They crash out in fifth place.

The bassist announces he won’t be joining the band on the upcoming Australian tour, with his place taken by Graham Bush, AKA Bushers. Bush had first played with Madness at a charity gig in Wrexham in 2005, and had been introduced by previous stand-in and Blockhead Norman Watt-Roy, who had originally taught him how to play. Bedders does return for UK album promotion appearances and tie-in gigs later in the year.

Madness head Down Under for a seven-date tour of Australia. The set is a mix of classic tracks and new numbers from the upcoming album.

Pork pie hats, cherry-red Doc Martins, suspender belts and the occasional mohawk were sprinkled throughout the crowd, with the crowd density a step up from the recent diluted Stranglers concert at the same. Dispensing with any suggestion that the band had degenerated into a flaccid imitation of its former glorious self, the Twin Geezers of Ska, Graham ‘Suggs’ McPherson and Chas Smash, bounded onto stage with the same youthful energy of yore. With their dunny-brush flat-top haircuts, Ray-Ban sunglasses and dapper suits, Suggs and Chas have safely preserved the visual aesthetic readily associated with Madness. Guitarist Chris Foreman wore a bowler hat and matching grey suit, while saxophonist Lee Thompson – arguably the only band member to genuinely betray the band’s longevity – forewent formal attire in favour of the cloth cap and Fred Perry shirt look favoured in various London working class circles. Opening with the rousing One Step Beyond, the Palace was soon littered with white-boy imitation ska dancing and bouncing bodies, the crowd chanting along with Chas’ bellowing vocals. With a set-list that borrowed well from the band’s back catalogue punctuated with the odd new song (which while certainly not generating the acclaim of the singles, were politely received), Suggs did his finest ‘nutty Kray brother’ routine, Chas continued his distinctive ska shuffle, Foreman accentuated the generally subtle guitar licks and Thompson battled the effects of middle age in invoking the squawking saxophone so critical to the Madness sound. But it was in the latter part of the set that Madness brought out its classic hits, rendering the atmosphere in the venue as thick as the proverbial London pea soup fog. House of Fun was a shot in the arm for any old fart moaning about the good ol’ days of Thatcher’s Britain, Baggy Trousers was a welcome trip into latent high school memories and forgotten ‘80s fashions, the lush harmonies of Our House reminded us of those crazy days of housing affordability and sanitised domestic solitude and the emotion generated from It Must Be Love was so compelling it might have reconciled the warring parties in the Middle East. The final bracket was the icing on an already rich and satisfying cake. Opening with Tarzan’s Nuts, followed by Madness and finishing with the all-too-easily forgotten Night Boat to Cairo (and a certain Beat editor in the ska-pit), Madness were in its absolute element, a bunch of London geezers with a bagful of great songs and a host of vivid memories. Not bad for a nutty band.

Patrick Emery, beat.com

Suggs quips, ‘I don’t know why it’s been 23 years since we were last here?’ A voice then pipes up on the backing mic, ‘I do! It took us that long to save up the fare.’ The band also poke fun at the lighting guys by thanking them, because due to Victoria’s extended daylight savings period, it’s still broad daylight.

Julien Temple’s film of the 2008 Hackney performances is screened at the Coronet as part of the London Independent Film Festival. Each song is intercut with funny interludes or dark commentary, including an epic poem by Carl, performed in the style of the Dickensian character he played on stage at Hackney. He and Suggs also pair up for a wander along the cobbles through the smoke-filled streets of London, passing gravestones of old friends, tramps, and Jack The Ripper, telling tales of hardship and woe.

The band open the show with Dust Devil and close it with Embarrassment, with Suggs and birthday boy Mike interviewed in between.

Travelling on an open-top double-decker bus, members of Madness play at four locations at the popular North London music festival, which is also broadcast on BBC 6 Music. Firstly, Suggs (vocals and tambourine), Bedders (ukulele) and Lee (sax) busk a couple of numbers outside the Roundhouse, Edinburgh Castle and Dublin Castle, with a lucky competition winner joining them on kazoo. They’re then joined by Woody, Mike, Chris, Carl, Steve Turner (sax) and Joe Auckland (trumpet) at Inverness Street Market for the gig proper. Here, they perform One Step Beyond, Dust Devil, NW5, Forever Young, Baggy Trousers, Clerkenwell Polka, House of Fun, Our House, It Must Be Love and Night Boat To Cairo.

You can’t possibly not have fun watching Madness perform live. Even the band themselves, some of whom are in their fifties, still bounce around with the youthful enjoyment they began depicting over thirty years ago, and here in Camden’s Inverness Street Market, round the corner from the Dublin Castle pub where they started their career, their trademark exuberance was as evident as ever. Though the boys know most North London venues better than any young band playing at the Crawl, this gig was the first they had played on top of a bus. That’s right, a double decker bus was parked up on Camden High Street, Inverness Street Market was cleared and chaos was ready to ensue. Arriving 45 minutes late (insert your own buses being late joke here) didn’t matter a jot once the words ‘hey you, don’t watch that, watch this…’ were bellowed from Carl Smyth’s lungs. The unpunctuality was forgotten, and a party was ready to commence. Even new songs ‘NW5’ and ‘Forever Young’ carry the celebratory appeal of the band, leading to a wave of skanking sweeping the crowd. Dancing to Madness basically seems to consist of jovially jogging on the spot or pogo-ing up and down with maximum energy. Both moves are utilised to the maximum. ‘Let us delve into the big velvet bag of Madness classics’, says Suggs, pulling out ‘Baggy Trousers’ to a rapturous reception, following it up with ‘Our House’. With the band attempting to address the audience from all angles, which included a crowd that the band had their back to on the High Street, people standing on top of pubs and bars along Inverness Street and hanging out their windows on the opposite side of the road , the unique atmosphere of this festival was captured. Ending on a beautiful ‘It Must Be Love’, that when sung by a crowd of people sends shivers down the spine, and coming out for an encore of ‘Night Boat to Cairo’, the North London boys are a band that could not sum up the festival feel better, particularly on their own stomping ground.

tourdates.co.uk

Running in aid of the MacMillan Cancer Support Charity, the drummer completes the race in three hours, 42 minutes and eight seconds, finishing 6,209th out of 35,000 runners.

Mike and Suggs play Dust Devil and Tomorrow’s Just Another Day, acoustically on piano and egg shaker, while talking about all things Suggs, Dangermen and the new Madness material.

The 7” vinyl version features The Roadette Song on the B-side. The single reaches No1 on the indie chart and No64 in the UK chart.

Directed by Adam Smith, Jaime plays an out-of-control drinker on a night out, with the hand-held camera following her as she causes mayhem, with Alfie trying to get her home. Suggs, Carl and Bedders make a brief appearance, but otherwise it’s Madness-free as a few of the band are still in Australia when it’s filmed.

The band star in a spoof washing powder promo to plug the upcoming album. The ad also trails the upcoming Madstock gig in Victoria Park on July 17.

The band’s long-awaited ninth studio album is finally unveiled – and is well worth the wait. Released to universal acclaim, it enters the UK charts at No5 in its first week. The extended version of the album features additional tracks Let’s Go, Mission From Hell, Seven Dials, Fish & Chips, One Fine Day, The Kiss and Hunchback of Torriano, which was originally demoed for Wonderful with Lee on vocals. The album eventually makes 3rd and 9th place respectively in the BBC and Mojo ‘Best albums of 2009’ lists.

SUGGS: The clue’s in the title – it’s about London, as are most of the other songs on the album. It’s a lovely explanation of all the diversity that London has to offer, with a very positive and optimistic take on the idea that it’s not always easy to live in a sprawling metropolis, but if we all put in a bit of effort, maybe we can all rub along smoothly.

BEDDERS: The words and the music were written by Mike. It was actually recorded some time before the rest of the album tracks in Toe Rag . The idea was just to make it very, very simple and very, very 60s and very much of that time.

BEDDERS: I think what struck everyone about this song when we heard it was that it sounded instantly good. Suggs came in, he’d written the lyrics, and he’d also written a very simple reggae piano part. And that was all it needed.

SUGGS: It’s a very simple song that partly came out of The Dangermen. Playing those tracks made me remember how simple great songs can be. So I was trying to write a song that was quite simple sentimentally, and also about the dangers of getting too crystalline in your old age, so you may be getting creaky physically but you don’t have to be creaky in your mind and can still keep the same excitement for life.

BEDDERS: We did try fiddling a little bit with it, adding some bits and remixing it, but in the end we just felt it was best left alone to be what it is; a really lovely reggae song.

SUGGS: I think I was looking into my own kids’ eyes for it. As much as old people teach young people, young people can teach you when you get older; if you’re not careful, you can get bitter and twisted about your failings and regrets.

LEE: By the time we finished, we had six versions of this in the bag – the Bob Dylan one, the T-Rex one, the Johnny Cash one…

SUGGS: This is a lovely little toe-tapper about the gaieties of life and skipping to and fro between various parties and people.

BEDDERS: This was written by Lee and Mike. When we were sitting in the rehearsal room trying to get it together, the idea was to just have one groove and make it go on and on and on. We wanted to make it as simple as possible and just have the rhythm pulsing away. I think, once again, it just harks back to old soul records – that’s certainly what we were trying to aim for.

SUGGS: This is a reference to a certain style of Jaguar car from the 1960s, which I very much liked. They were always very evocative of old spy films and 60s gangsters and all that sort of stuff, and that’s really what the song is trying to evoke. It’s about a guy leaving a girl to go and do a bank job, but it’s sort of left hanging in the air as to whether he gets away with it or comes back.

MIKE: We were going through everyone’s songs, old and new, for the album and I came across this and thought it was a good song – some tunes are just darn timeless.

SUGGS: It’s about a rather disgruntled girl who’s fed up of her husband being boring and goes out on the town. So it’s a bit of a role reversal from the normal situation when the man’s out causing all the trouble. And he’s sitting at home, waiting for her to come in, all worried about where she’s been. It was nice to get Rhoda [Dakar] involved and sing on it because we know her from a long time ago. We were looking for someone with a bit of character so it was good to get someone with a connection to our past too.

RHODA DAKAR: Madness sent me the tune and I thought it really suited my voice because it was in the right key. The fact it was on one of their very best albums was the icing on the cake.

SUGGS: This one is the story of an old tradition in London called being ‘rolled’ outside a Tube station.

LEE: It’s about a bad experience I had down in Camden Town, when I got mugged. I went to a club and ended up having my bag and bits ‘n’ bobs taken off me. It was my own fault though. I got a bit of a whack on the chin, but due to the amount of alcohol consumption, the legs gave way. I thought, ‘Cor, they’re a bit rude, those dudes walking away from us, looking over their shoulder. Bit unsociable.’ Little did I realise. I woke up the next day, had a shave and realised I’d been done over. It happened outside a Mecca ballroom – hence the name.

LEE: This one is about me and my childhood friend and former partner in crime, Bobby Townshend.

SUGGS: It’s a very serious song about being treated like an idiot; a universal theme.

BEDDERS: When we were sitting down to put it all together, it just said to us that it should sound like Diana Ross and the Supremes. That was definitely our influence – to get that sort of Motown groove going.

SUGGS: This is about someone in London daydreaming that they’re in Africa. It’s got a nice melody and a simple, rather dreamlike, state ensues after listening to it.

CHRIS: It’s certainly an evocative and atmospheric little number. I did a good moody Edge-like tune on it, plus some wah-wah as well. The rest of the band? Well they’re on it somewhere.

BEDDERS: It’s yet another product of the fertile writing partnership between Lee and Mike. It was done a long time before the rest of the album and is about our old stamping ground, Kentish Town, NW5.

LEE: It’s about friendship and how life can change you. I wrote it when I was feeling very sorry for myself. It’s basically about friendships – starting, being, ending – and some that last forever, and some that don’t. I mean, me, Mike and Chris have known each other since we were 11 or 12 years of age, and have been through those ups and downs. It’s about falling out with friends that you’ve known for so long and all the memories that go with that.

CLIVE LANGER: It’s a great example of how Lee’s an amazing observer of life; he really puts it down like it is.

SUGGS: This one was about the emigrés who started all the radical newspapers in Clerkenwell. It’s got a lovely toe-tapping beat and if you’re not careful, it speeds up towards the end.

SUGGS: If you’d said to me when I was 18 that one day I’d do a ten-minute song, I would have been shocked and horrified. I was working on it for some time, but basically it’s just four or five songs stuck together; there’s some stuff from Carl, some stuff from Mike and some stuff from me, without too much indulgent noodling or guitar solos that go on for weeks.

LEE: Suggs and Chris were really at the top of their game when they wrote this one. It has such great lyrics and it’s all over the place.

WOODY: Once we got the idea that we could really stretch it out, it became Madness’s Bohemian Rhapsody. It was really an experiment in how far we could extend one track.

SUGGS: It was quite complicated and quite a challenge, because we don’t really write songs that long. It took a long time to put together, and because we were recording in an eight-track studio, we had to rehearse and rehearse. We’d start at the beginning and say, ‘Right, see you on the other side.’ And eventually we managed to play the whole thing the whole way through.

WOODY: It was an epic journey but we all really enjoyed. It explained London, where we came from, and it opened up a new understanding of the band itself, our history and influences.

SUGGS: It was seven minutes longer than I’d been used to. But I had too much to tell for a mere throwaway pop song. Instead, it tells the history of Shoreditch from the Huguenots through to the Bangladeshis. Hundreds of years ago, the places outside the city gates were called ‘liberties,’ because that’s where the police took liberties with young boys and prostitutes and where new immigrants arrived. They established their own communities outside the gates because they couldn’t get in. Norton Folgate was one such liberty and became a shanty town for people who’d been chucked out of the city, full of immigrants, outsiders, writers, musicians, libertines and nutters. It had its own rules and laws, becoming a peculiar community of freethinking people, which I thought was a rather marvellous thing to contemplate. If Madness had been around, that’s where we would have lived. So on one hand, the song is about that, and on the other it’s about how the joy of living in London is that it’s always changing. In the current climate, it seemed worth saying. Plus I just thought that The Liberty of Norton Folgate was such a great name for a record. Every British person’s dream is to live slightly outside the law, under the radar, running their own village society. It’s a very romantic notion.

LEE: It’s a phenomenal track and was a really enjoyable experience to do – it’s something I wished I’d done years ago.

WOODY: It gave us a ton of confidence to be able to say, ‘What we do, we do well, so let’s not pretend to be anything else’. In the past we used to say, ‘We’ve done that, let’s try something new’ but by now we were comfortable in our own skin, comfortable with what we did. We thought, ‘If it ain’t broke, why fix it?’

LEE: I love it because it’s got that real Pink Floyd type vibe to it – you sit back, light up a jazz woodbine, have a glass of wine and it just takes you into different dimensions.

CHRIS: The line ‘In the beginning / Was the fear of the immigrant’ was derived from being Irish in London when there was, ‘No blacks, no dogs, no Irish’ signs around. Through travelling and seeing the perpetual scapegoat in every society, you develop an understanding that there’s always someone to blame – whether it’s the Americans blaming the Polacks or the Dutch blaming the Belgians.

CARL: It’s very strange – on one side the government encourages an influx of cheap labour and yet they do nothing to protect people from the hatred it brings.

WOODY: It was a bit of a departure for us as we don’t really do political comments. All we do is comment on our own experience in life and our own experience in life is us growing up in this big town called London.

CHRIS: It’s allegedly about a guy who lived in Torriano Villas, a block of council flats off Torriano Avenue. Woody had written the song, and I remember walking riding my bike along the canal and the guitar part just came to me – it had a bit of Keith Richards, a bit of Duane Eddy and a bit of Angus Young.

At a point in their history when you’d confidently expect them to be creeping about the gaff in elderly slippers looking for their reading glasses, Madness have instead made a really good album. Ambitious, tuneful, exciting, wise, and with a finale that kicks them up a level into an undreamed-of musical dimension. Over the years, Madness have had quite a few false-ish starts. There was The Madness, a very odd semi-reunion album. There was Suggs’ karaoke solo album, there was the Dangermen collection…all target-missers on various levels. But The Liberty of Norton Folgate – a title which makes sense in context but is otherwise unlikely to be jamming up the ringtone sites – is Madness in both their pomp and their prime. Like most grabs for reheated glory, it sounds like their entire career in one go. There are echoes of melancholy stompers like The Sun And The Rain; there’s the rocksteady, bass-heavy (lots of bass on this album!) Forever Young, which is a slightly less-grey cousin of Grey Day. Any number of brilliant Madness character sketches are recalled in the splendid Idiot Child (which also has the spectral quality of the post-Mike Barson Mad Not Mad.) But none of these stylistic revisits are retreads. Everything is infused with some of the best melodies of the band’s career, and everything is enthused, too. The tiredness of Keep Moving and Mad Not Mad has been replaced with an older, but fresher, sound. Songs like Forever Young and Sugar And Spice sound like singles, and should be. Everything seems to gel – the arrangements are the best ever, the production is thoughtful and smart, and the influences melded perfectly (we all know Madness were more than the sum of Ian Dury and The Kinks, but we all chose to ignore the huge, conspicuous chunks of Mowtown and The Beatles also in there). And there’s a new layer to Madness, as well. Previous efforts suffered because the band seemed unkeen to leave their comfort zone. Every musical territory that Madness had ever visited was revisited again and again, with diminishing returns (by the time Suggs got round to covering I’m Only Sleeping, the template was starting to look like tracing paper). But this time round, things are different. Idiot Child may be a short, sharp character sketch, but it’s more barbed and less cosy than before. Africa is Madness’s most extraordinary lyric in which for once they stop banging on about London (on an album obsessed with the capital to the extent it contains a song called We Are London) and write a song about, amazingly, leaving the capital and going to Africa in a dream. It’s a lyrical fantasia slightly related to Michael Nesmith’s Rio and unlike anything else in the Madness jukebox. What else? Well, there’s Clerkenwell Polka, which is a spookier cousin of Waiting For The Ghost Train and contains the best and possibly first use of the word ‘rectilinear’ in a song. There’s NW5, as good an entry point single to this album as anything. And – oh yeah! – there’s The Liberty Of Norton Folgate itself, which gets its own paragraph. There’s a lot to say about The Liberty Of Norton Folgate. For a start, it’s 10 minutes long, which is unusual for a tune by Britain’s Official Greatest Singles Band. It’s a song simultaneously influenced by Ian Dury, Peter Ackroyd, Bollywood, Charles Dickens, Kurt Weill, John Barry, and, so far as I can tell, Muffin The Mule. It is in some ways The Pogues doing Good Vibrations and in others Oliver! performed by Prince Buster. Best of all, for a band who began their career in skinhead controversy while writing great songs about miscegenation, it’s a song that takes their obsession with London, the city of nations, to its logical conclusion, being a historical and musical tribute to a brilliant mixed-up mongrel culture. ‘In the beginning was the fear of the immigrant,’ they chant, implying that such fears are for the weak of mind and chin. It’s a song that only Madness could write, and it is quite mad, a great argument against racism that makes you proud to be British, and a fantastic conclusion to a very, very good album.

David Quantick, Uncut, 4/5

‘We are London,’ contends Suggs on the bouncy tune of that name, which opens Madness’s first studio album in a decade. Of all the bands in the capital, his sprightly survivors have a better claim than most to ‘be’ London, and the quintessential Camden geezers’ love affair with their city is still going strong. On this album, London is the backdrop for little dramas about capitalism’s deleterious effects (Clerkenwell Polka), departed friends (NW5) and the East End’s status as a haven for artists and eccentrics (the title track). The songs are wordy and disappointingly light on the knock ’em dead catchiness that was once their forte, but what The Liberty of Norton Folgate lacks in hit singles it makes up for in glorious ska/reggae arrangements and Suggs’s perpetual chirpiness, which is laced with the bemusement of a chap who can’t work out where the years went. A graceful return from the nutty ‘boys’.

Caroline Sullivan, The Guardian

The public appetite for the ska-infused 2-Tone sound of 30 years ago is, apparently, as hearty as ever. In the past couple of weeks, the Specials have been packing in the crowds on a sensational reunion tour. Meanwhile, Madness, their erstwhile label-mates, recently performed atop a double-decker bus at the Camden Crawl festival, filling the surrounding streets with joyous scenes of ‘nutty dancing’. It’s an auspicious moment, then, for Madness (with all seven original members still in place) to offer up their first album of new material in 10 years. Nominally, The Liberty of Norton Folgate is a concept piece inspired by the once self-governing east London district of Spitalfields. Fans will probably not notice any major deviation from the septet’s usual service; as Suggs, their garrulous singer, points out in his colourful liner notes, what have they ever done, apart from celebrate their native city? What some may have forgotten about Madness is the fact that their albums were never about unremitting escapism and hilarity. Even on many singles, they were the masters of maudlin, bittersweet pop. Here Sugar & Spice, a corker penned by pianist, Mike Barson, looks back on marital dreams gone sour with ‘bitterness and pain’, while Idiot Child is a caustic portrayal of encouragement-free parenting. By the finale – the panoramic, 10-minute Norton Folgate – Madness today seem less like chroniclers of London, than of adult life, in all its complexity, disappointment and anxiety chroniclers of London, than of adult life, in all its complexity, disappointment and anxiety. Lovely, lovely music, though.

The Telegraph, 4/5

It’s probably stretching a point to suggest that the current 2-Tone revival says as much about our present social corrosion as any learned sociological treatise; though certainly, the last time blue-eyed ska bands were this popular, the country was riven with inner-city riots and being bled dry by complete bankers. Sound familiar? But while the gloss may have been taken off the Specials comeback by the non-involvement of Jerry Dammers, the return of Madness lacks no such lustre. After 2005’s insipid Dangermen Sessions set of reggae covers, even the one-time nutty boys themselves accepted that, to all intents and purposes, the game was up. Which just makes the success of The Liberty of Norton Folgate all the more extraordinary. A concept album about London town might seem no great surprise, but the aplomb and intelligence with which it’s been executed may surprise those who have taken the band’s ‘tasty geezers’ image as their actual character. The album derives its title, and its 10-minute title-track suite, from a short stretch of Bishopsgate in east London which until 1900 was administered by the inhabitants rather than the surrounding boroughs, accordingly attracting a populace of rogues and artists. For Madness, it clearly represents the essence of the freewheeling Cockney spirit sketched out in the album’s 14 songs: as they claim in between the blizzard of namechecked locations in the opening We Are London, anything is possible ‘if we all live together as one big family’. And so it proves, across the capital, from the Kentish Town celebrated in typical jaunty good-time style in NW5, to the Chelsea Mews equivalent of a bedsitter vignette retailed in Mk II (a Jag, rather than a Cortina). Sugar and Spice is especially well-wrought, a Squeeze-style short story of youthful romance, marriage, and inevitable disillusion set to piano and reedy organ: ‘Sugar and spice / Everything was so nice / Now it’s just not the same / It’s bitterness and pain’. Similar territory is covered in the haunting That Close and On the Town, about a relationship past its snog-by date; while elsewhere Idiot Child, Rainbows and Forever Young chart the progress of scallywag kids, the latter pithily summarising youth as ‘paradise lost and innocence gone’. Musically, it may be the band’s most successful work, their ambition summarised both in the morphing movements of the title track, and in the way that the Clerkenwell Polka transforms from tuba-driven oompah band into a sort of double-time Balkan/Dixieland knees-up, without straying too close to Chas and Dave country

Andy Gill, The Independent 4/5

A decade since last testing the murky waters of the album market, the septet make a triumphant return with an impressively sophisticated set of songs. Opening with the complex culture clash of Mike Barson’s Overture, the erstwhile Nutty Boys proclaim We Are London. From anyone else it would sound both presumptuous and pretentious, from Madness it is but a cheery matter of fact. Sugar And Spice is a great narrative, Suggs waxing nostalgic about getting a flat in Golders Green ‘with a second-hand fridge and a washing machine’, with shades of Squeeze’s Difford and Tilbrook. But the strength is in the consistency and the rich diversity of the record’s musical texture, the vocal exchanges of On The Town, or reflective melody of Forever Young, illuminated by an out-of-the-box electric guitar solo. Mk II boasts the most sumptuous of pop melodies, stacked with dramatic chord changes to match, all packed into less than two-and-a-half minutes. Idiot Child puts the skids under progressive education through gleefully gritted teeth, and NW5 is a deceptive sing-along with a sting in the chorus. This is how a truly modern musical should sound, full of colour with razor-sharp lines. Beaming out from the footlights is Suggs, a vocal entertainer at the top of his game.

Colin Somerville, Scotland on Sunday

At a stage of life when they might be endlessly revisiting Our House and Baggy Trousers on the 1980s nostalgia circuit, the much-loved ska-pop band, 30 years after their debut, have ripped up the form book and delivered a knockout album.

Financial Times

Norton Folgate is Peter Ackroyd writing for The Kinks, it’s Sherlock Holmes in Albert Square, it’s a Mike Leigh movie of Parklife, it’s Passport To Pimlico meets Brick Lane, and it is Madness’s masterpiece.
The Word

Still totally themselves, Madness have made the album of their career.

MOJO

Their best album in 20 years.

Daily Mirror

The band play live and take part in a signing session. During the event, Suggs jokes that the stage is too near to Heavy Metal and should be moved closer to the Urban and Dance section. The band play One Step Beyond, Dust Devil – which is introduced as ‘the number 1 single’ – NW5, Forever Young, Baggy Trousers, Clerkenwell Polka, House of Fun, Our House, It Must Be Love.

The official launch party is held in – where else? – Norton Folgate, at the Light Bar. In attendance are the band, management, creative partners, industry, friends, family, residents, celebrities, web workers, and some lucky fans, not forgetting a pearly king and queen or two. Madness play a short 14-song set, including nine tracks from the new album. Suggs introduces the title track by saying, ‘It’s great to see so many friends and faces, some we haven’t seen for a few years. Here is what the press are calling Madness’s 10-minute masterpiece, heaven forbid that I should contradict them. What do I know? This is the title song of our album, we are standing right where this used to be: The Liberty of Norton Folgate.’

We are London / Dust Devil / Embarrassment / Bingo / NW5 / The Prince / Sugar and Spice / On the Town / House Of Fun / Clerkenwell Polka / Forever Young / Our House / The Liberty Of Norton Folgate / It Must be Love / ENCORE: Madness / Night Boat To Cairo

Two hundred years ago, Spitalfields in east London contained an anomalous self-governing enclave known as the Liberty of Norton Folgate. Free from the laws that governed the rest of the capital and administered by trustees, it became home to a host of writers, artists and bohemian types, plus a significant population of drunks and libertines. Madness have long been London’s prime chroniclers in song, with Suggs in particular taking a dogged interest in the city’s history that extended to presenting the Disappearing London series on ITV a few years ago. The upshot is this show in a tiny but heaving Spitalfields bar to launch The Liberty of Norton Folgate, their first album in 10 years and possibly the strongest of their three-decade career. The tone is set by the rambunctious opener, We Are London, which sees a bowler-hat-sporting Suggs undertake a whimsical travelogue across the capital from Baker Street to Camden and Soho. ‘We used to write songs about burgeoning relationships; now we write about them disintegrating,’ the frontman notes before Sugar & Spice, a song about love and loss in Golders Green. But in truth, Madness songs have always covered the whole spectrum of emotions. The band throw in a few crowd-pleasers – House of Fun, Our House, It Must Be Love – but new songs such as Bingo, a wide-eyed reel through the capital’s secret pleasure points, also sound like instant classics. ‘We’re just a clapped-out 80s pop group,’ jokes Suggs, but London’s perennial house band are patently nothing of the sort.

Ian Griffiths, The Guardian, 5/5

In a light-hearted promotional stunt at the Light Bar, the singer is joined by Bedders to call the long-defunct ‘parliament’ back to session after 100 years. Daytime news crews capture the event as Suggs announces new laws, with a town crier starting proceedings.

Members of the band take part in the Tracks of my Years feature, picking two songs each day.

The band kick off another summer of live gigs back with a racecourse appearance.

Madness embark on a European jaunt, playing a mix of old and new songs on their first stop at the annual Dutch festival since 1981. New tracks Dust Devil, Clerkenwell Polka and Forever Young go down well with the 60,000 crowd.

Tonight’s gig is noticeable for two things – Lee is missing and That Close gets its first-ever live airing. Forever Young is also announced as the next single, and during Shut Up, Carl changes the usual ‘One, two, three’ count to ‘Eins, zwei, drei.’ Support comes from The Pokes.

One Step Beyond / Embarrassment / Forever Young / The Prince / NW5 / My Girl / Dust Devil / The Sun and The Rain / Return of The Los Palmas 7 / Shut Up / I Chase The Devil (aka Iron Shirt) / Clerkenwell Polka / Grey Day / That Close / Bed & Breakfast Man / House Of Fun / Wings of A Dove / Baggy Trousers / Our House / It Must Be Love / ENCORE No1: Madness / Night Boat To Cairo / ENCORE No2 : Pigbag

Madness return to the UK briefly, supported by Aswad and The Dualers.

Madness play a private concert for Radio Nostalgie, which is later broadcast on July 12.

Repeating their roles from the Camden Crawl in April, Suggs, Lee and Bedders make a one-off appearance on the ship for the Busking Cancer event, which sees musicians raising money for Cancer Research UK. The trio play a shortened One Step Beyond, as well as versions of Dust Devil, Waterloo Sunset, The Prince, It Must Be Love and Madness.

In a nod to tonight’s stately venue, The Violin Monkeys finish one song with the opening bars of the National Anthem.

Madness perform on the Pyramid Stage on the final night of the festival, third on the bill behind Blur and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, and following various veteran acts such as Status Quo, Tony Christie and Tom Jones. (The Specials had already played on the Friday). During their set, fan Chris Carter-Pegg holds aloft a two-sided banner that reads, ‘Give Madness their f**king Brit/Norton Folgate 4 Mercury Prize!’ The banner is picked up by the BBC cameras, and Suggs also announces, ‘We have to say thanks to the guy with the ‘Give Madness an effing Brit Award’ banner.’ During the performance, Lee takes to the air during Baggy Trousers, to the delight of the 75,000 crowd; his flight is admired even more when Suggs tells the crowd that he’d broken several ribs the night before, falling from a human pyramid with son Daley. The set contains 10 tracks that also featured in their previous Glastonbury appearances in 2007 and 1986.

One Step Beyond / Embarrassment / The Prince / NW5 / My Girl / Dust Devil / The Sun and the Rain / Iron Shirt / Clerkenwell Polka / Bed and Breakfast Man / Shut Up / Forever Young / House Of Fun / Wings of A Dove / Baggy Trousers / Our House / It Must Be Love / Madness / Night Boat to Cairo

Madness are presented with the Icon Award for their musical achievements spanning more than 30 years. The Awards, which have been running since 1976, raise money for the Nordoff-Robbins music charity, which specialises in working with children.

Madness return to Denmark for the first time since 1985.

The fifth Madstock takes place away from Finsbury Park, with two stages. On the first are Suggs’s daughters Scarlett & Viva, Hayseed Dixie, Gregory Isaacs and Bjorn Again. On the other are Man Like Me, The Aggrolites, Jerry Dammers and the Spatial AKA Orchestra, The Blockheads, The Pogues and Madness. Along with Rhoda Dakar and Terry Edwards, Jerry Dammers joins the band for Night Boat To Cairo, during which he’s heard to shout, ‘What key is it in?’ Suggs replies, ‘It’s in fucking C, Jerry!’ Unfortunately, the gig is marred by two things. Firstly, people without the costlier premium tickets rush the ‘Golden Circle’ at the front. Secondly, gangs of organised pickpockets cause chaos during Madness’s set, with numerous fans being robbed of cash and phones. At one point, Suggs has a wallet thrown at him – one of dozens that’s been stolen, stripped of cash and hurled towards the front. Ugly scenes ensue amidst the drizzle, with numerous fights erupting and security struggling to control pockets of irate fans taking matters into their own hands.

One Step Beyond / Embarrassment / The Prince / NW5 / My Girl / Dust Devil / Take It Or Leave It / The Sun and the Rain / Forever Young / Shut Up / Iron shirt / Clerkenwell Polka / Grey Day / Taller Than You Are / That Close / Bed and Breakfast Man / Norton Folgate / House of Fun / Wings of a Dove / Baggy Trousers / Our House / It Must be Love / ENCORE 1: On the Town / Madness / ENCORE 2: Night Boat to Cairo

There’s nothing quite so dispiriting as a festival on a dark, dank, damp, Dickensian evening. And with the briskest of chill winds whistling through Hackney, you could have wept for the fifth Madstock, where ice cream vans were unpatronised and coffee stalls were doing better trade than the beer tents. On one stage Shane MacGowan sported an ominous eye-patch as The Pogues stumbled through their hits. On another, Bjorn Again’s Abba karaoke battled with the rain and lost. I don’t recall the original Take A Chance On Me having a spectacularly inept rap halfway through. And then there was Madness and suddenly all was well with the world. As young men, Madness always had an umbilical connection with their crowd. Thirty years since their debut single The Prince, the connection is unbroken and unquestioned. From the opening One Step Beyond, the sodden turf was awash with middle-aged folk doing the Nutty Boys dance, grinning like children, alongside their own children. When the wind didn’t distort the sound, the hits remained undimmed by time, be it the knowing innocence of Our House, the all-too-apt Grey Day or the delightfully silly Night Boat To Cairo, which featured Specials leader Jerry Dammers, whose regrets about missing his own band’s reunion can hardly have been assuaged. As singer Suggs said, ‘it’s a London thing’ and Pearly kings and queens introduced the encore, before dozens of smiling, gyrating relatives invaded the stage for the grand finale, the song Madness. Cor, and further more, blimey.

John Aizlewood, Evening Standard

Minus Carl, who is in Ibiza, Madness perform new single Sugar & Spice on the daytime breakfast show. The band talk about filming the video for the new single, which was completed the previous day, and also answer questions on the new album, Madstock and their fans. Lee also reveals that his two grandchildren appear in the new video.

The singer stars in a two-hour afternoon show called A Month Of Sundays, playing his favourite tunes and those that have influenced his career.

For the first time, Madness’s new single is available as a download only, with no physical formats. The lyrics are slightly different from the album version, and an accompanying track also features an original demo with Mike on vocals. Filmed on stage at a local theatre, the video see Lee cavorting in a wedding dress. The single doesn’t chart.

Following on the heels of his TV shows, this 320-page hardcover book sees Suggs taking a journey through the main drags and side streets of his beloved London, uncovering the city’s hidden treasures as he goes.

Headliners Oasis cancel their huge show at Rock en Seine Festival at the last minute. Promoters panic and plead with Camden’s finest – who had already played earlier – to fill the empty slot. Madness agree, to the delight of both fans and shaken festival bosses. During the set, Violin Monkey Mike Kearsey plays a short burst of Wonderwall during his trombone solo.

Madness play a short set at the annual event, which also features Tony Christie, Paloma Faith, Pixie Lott and JLS. Comic Alan Carr presses the button to turn on the famous illuminations.

Madness take to the stage for day two of Ireland’s Electric Picnic festival

Despite being universally acclaimed, The Liberty of Norton Folgate fails to make the nominees list for the annual music prize, awarded for the best album released in the United Kingdom by a British or Irish act. The trophy is eventually won by rapper Speech Debelle for her debut album, Speech Therapy.

Supported by an extensive TV and billboard campaign, another greatest hits package hits the shelves. This new CD/DVD box set features 21 tracks and videos from The Prince to Lovestruck, plus album tracks Madness and Bed and Breakfast Man. The digital download has the same track listing plus Johnny The Horse and Drip Fed Fred. Due to licensing problems, none of the four singles released on Zarjazz in 1985-6 are included. It goes on to reach No11 in the UK charts, making it the band’s third hit album of 2009.

Suggs and Woody appear on the draw, plugging both Norton Folgate and Total Madness.

Madness play a free 45-minute set in front of 250,000 people at the tenth Regent Street Festival, which sees the famous street closed off for the first time ever. The band are supported by Suggs’s daughters, Scarlett and Viva, with the gig also broadcast on Absolute Radio. Following this gig, Bedders decides his break from the band will be permanent.

One Step Beyond / Embarrassment / The Prince / NW5 / My Girl / Dust Devil / The Sun And The Rain / Clerkenwell Polka / Taller Than You Are / Forever Young / House Of Fun / Baggy Trousers / Our House / It Must Be Love / ENORE: Madness / Night Boat To Cairo

Following their work with Suggs and Lee in 2005, the duo get the Madness keyboard maestro to play on album track Twist Me Up, with Suggs on backing vocals. Suggs also plays harmonica on ska house tune Goodbye. The subsequent album – Higher Than Eiffel – is released in March 2010.

The channel devotes an entire evening to Madness, with back-to-back screenings of the band live at Glastonbury, the Young Guns documentary, Julien Temple’s Norton Folgate film, and Take It Or Leave It.

Madness travel to Paris, where they perform four songs for ARTE, to be broadcast early in 2010.

On the 30^th anniversary of its original release, a remastered two-CD version of Madness’s debut album goes on sale with five promo videos, the John Peel session and bonus tracks, including singles, 12-inches and B-sides. The digipack also features original album artwork and a 24-page colour booklet, including liner notes by Trainspotting author and Madness fan Irvine Welsh. Entering the UK charts at No67, it gives Madness their fourth chart album of the year.

Still minus Bedders, Madness appear on the annual telethon, performing a live version of It Must Be Love.

The show devotes a small segment to Our House, with Suggs and Carl both interviewed.

The band film a guest appearance in a festive edition of the show. During a break, Tate appears in character to present their gold discs for The Liberty of Norton Folgate.

The Liberty of Norton Folgate 30^th Anniversary Tour kicks off on the south coast. The tour is noticeable for its smaller venues and for the introduction of old album tracks such as E.R.N.I.E. and new songs like Paul Simon’s Mother and Child Reunion. Matinee performances are reintroduced at the Southend and Newcastle shows, with a nutty-decorated Routemaster bus also rolling up at some venues. The gigs see Chris’s ‘Showtime’ routine become a regular feature, where he takes the mic towards the end and tells a joke or sings a song before introducing some of the band’s best-known hits to close the show. Madness also ask fans to send in pictures of their homes, which are flashed up on the big screen behind them during Our House. USB audio sticks are made available to buy after every gig, with a recording of the night’s performance.

One Step Beyond / Embarrassment / The Prince / NW5 / My Girl / Dust Devil / The Sun And The Rain / Idiot Child / Take It Or Leave It / MK II / Sugar & Spice / Chase The Devil / Clerkenwell Polka / Mother And Child Reunion / Girl Why Don’t You? / That Close / E.R.N.I.E. / Forever Young / House Of Fun / Wings Of A Dove / Baggy Trousers / Our House / It Must Be Love / ENCORE: We Are London / Madness / Night Boat To Cairo

As well as the evening gig, Madness play a special matinee show for younger fans.

A special Saturday afternoon performance is again provided for younger fans.

‘Are you alright up there?’ a concerned Suggs asks the balcony. ‘They’ve been stuck up there since Rod Stewart in ’74 y’know.’ Groan. The Nutty Boy’s gag is the mouldiest of mouldy old Christmas chestnuts, but no one seems to mind – they’re just here to dance. After being bagpiped on in a skirl of Scotland The Brave, co-frontman Carl Smyth bellows: ‘Hey you! Don’t watch that watch this…’ The first fruity sax snorts of One Step Beyond squelch into life, the fezzes fly and the elbows pump. Ladies and gentlemen, Madness are here, you’re 13 again…go mental. Warming up for their Hogmanay headliner in Edinburgh, the magnificent seven (with a lookalike standing in for bassist Mark ‘Bedders’ Bedford) then tear through foot-stompers Embarrassment and The Prince without a pause. However, punters expecting the usual nostalgic string of smashes trotted out as a Crimbo cash-in are in for a surprise – it’s mixed nuts all the way tonight, with newies and classic album tracks served up slap-bang in the middle of a Greatest Hits sandwich. The first section includes My Girl, the classic tale of marital strife, and the homage to British weather, The Sun And the Rain, which has 3,000 souls bouncing along bellowing: ‘Doo-da-doo-doo-da-doo-doo-doo’ (but only after keyboard guru Mike Barson fluffs the intro and they have to stop and re-start after some good-natured ribbing). As well as the expected nod to the past, stonking new album The Liberty Of Norton Folgate features early on too, with Barson’s menacing piano intro on NW5 giving way to the delightfully infectious chorus, followed by the nudge-nudge-wink-wink of the saucy Dust Devil (‘She keeps a gizmo/Under her pillow’). So far it’s Utter Hits 5 Other Bits 2, but all that’s about to change as the Nutty Boys suddenly veer away from The-Ones-You-All-Know formula with some more unusual choices – to the delight of the diehards. ‘We decided in this 30th anniversary of the band to do a tour playing a mixture of old, new, borrowed and whatever,’ Suggs announces…and he’s as good as his word. Classic singles like Shut Up might have 3,000 souls bawling along lustily to every word, but there are some surprise – and welcome – presents in this Madness stocking. Long-forgotten album tracks In The Rain and E.R.N.I.E. are given a dusting down and receive a rapturous reception – particularly the latter’s garbled tale about, er, Premium Bonds. There are also four other numbers from Folgate, with the pick of the bunch Clerkenwell Polka, which sounds like a bizarre Russian drinking song and has the sea of novelty fezzes bobbing in appreciation as it reaches a dizzying crescendo. In the relatively cosy Academy, it’s just great to see the lads up so close – particularly the antics of sax player Lee Thompson, who spends the evening pulling faces, gesturing to the balconies, chatting to the front row and, like his bandmates, generally having a bloody good time. Meanwhile, Suggs is still throwing out those chestnuts: ‘I like to drink my whisky neat…but sometimes I loosen my tie, take off my jacket.’ Boom, and indeed, boom. He also forgets the words to Bed & Breakfast Man and sings the same verse twice (hey, five series of Night Fever would rot ANYONE’S brain) in a mid-section that also includes Max Romeo classic Chase The Devil (aka Iron Shirt) and the gloriously catchy Johnny The Horse from 1999’s Wonderful album. I make that Utter Hits 6 Other Bits 11…is that the sound of an office party getting restless? But of course, you don’t stroll into town as the biggest singles band of the 1980s without giving the punters what they want – and luckily Madness have plenty of classics to choose from as it’s back down Memory Lane for the triumphant third act. Guitarist Chrissy Boy Foreman takes the mic and, in the worst Scots accent since Groundsman Willie, announces: “Let’s get rrrready to rrrrrumble..the louder you scrrrream, the faster they’ll gooo!” It’s the cue for a storming five-song climax that begins with a joyous version of House Of Fun, then rips into the gospel-tinged Wings Of A Dove before everyone’s favourite tales of youth, Baggy Trousers and Our House. The place goes barmy; you can’t tell up from down and it’s BRILLIANT. Next up, Barson’s tinkling ivories herald the mass singalong that is It Must Be Love, prompting the extraordinary sight of thousands of roly-poly rude boys in a group hug, clammy Fred Perrys clasped together in a sweaty, swaying embrace, heads thrown back bellowing the chorus as the backdrop shows fans of various age and girth sharing that love (maaaan). The band depart but local lad Johnny Gauld pipes them onstage again for oddball instrumental Tarzan’s Nuts and the chaotic Prince Buster classic that started it all: Madness. They set sail for the evening on Night Boat To Cairo, Suggs donning a towel as a makeshift head-dress and Thompson plucking a lucky blonde fan from the front row, handing her a spare sax and urging her to join in the chaos. It’s a fitting end to what’s been a true Christmas cracker. And that final score? Hits 12 Bits 13. Now that’s what you call a selection box. Bring on Hog-mad-ay…

Iain Mason, News of the World, 5/5

Before tonight’s gig, the Total Madness tour bus takes 35 lucky fans on an hour-long journey from the Dublin Castle to the O2, with hits and videos played on board. During the gig, the band are joined by Clive Langer and Rhoda Dakar for a special rendition of Madness, while Lee takes over the lead vocals on Tarzan’s Nuts. Support comes from Jerry Dammers and his Spatial Orchestra.

The band appear as carol singers in Catherine Tate’s pre-recorded festive special. She interrupts their rendition of Good King Wenceslas and instead, they sing over a backing track of Baggy Trousers.

Madness end the year north of the border, headlining the Concert In The Gardens. Also braving the -8^oC chill are The Enemy and Noisettes. It’s been a successful year for the band, selling a combined 250,000 copies of The Liberty of Norton Folgate, One Step Beyond, Complete Madness and Total Madness. The latter greatest hits collection has sold well over 100,000 on its own.

Aggressive Coventry lad-rockers the Enemy and the pleasant but insubstantial Noisettes didn’t quite have the populist appeal to carry off an event of this scale. So it’s fortunate that Madness manage to dominate it with a cheeriness, professionalism and good humour that entirely dispel memories of Suggs hosting cheap karaoke-based TV shows and the sense of enduring dismay that they’re now the kind of group who have inspired a musical based on their songs. For nearly an hour-and-a-half, with a five-minute break for the countdown to midnight and a monumental firework display, the black-suited 10-piece group deliver a cavalry charge of instantly recognisable hits that are perfectly pitched towards the party atmosphere. Suggs, a white silk handkerchief sprouting from his suit pocket, summons a performance of such droll, expletive-peppered deadpannery that it raises the question, has he been indulging in the party spirit(s) before taking to the stage? If so, it only aids the show, with his cheerful introduction of the band’s sound technician LJ – whose birthday the bells also heralded – and their manager’s pregnant wife building up a charming communal atmosphere. That the more reflective half-hour that saw out 2009 could find room for such lively tracks as One Step Beyond, Embarrassment and The Prince was demonstration that this group have never really made music to sit still to. These were mixed with an a cappella take on the Beatles Help! from Suggs, which naturally doesn’t remain a solo version once the crowd find their voice, and the group’s final live track of 2009, Forever Young, which is thematically appropriate but probably the set’s least entertaining song. No stop remained unpulled for the second portion of the set, however, with House of Fun, Shut Up, Baggy Trousers and Our House joined by a smooth cover of Max Romeo’s reggae classic I Chase the Devil and It Must Be Love, the one point at which balladry is positively demanded from this group. Yet it provided only a short break from the mass skanking, and the band’s own title track then the closing Night Boat to Cairo finished out a celebratory set that was more successful than even the event’s organisers must have hoped for.

The Independent