“It Was a Horrible Atmosphere. I Just Wanted to Leave”

1982 ER OCTOBER – DECEMB wore loud checks and warm smiles, covering up for their inadequacies with a heap of silly grins and bad jokes. With the passing of time, though, amateurism becomes shamateurism. Live or on record, there was no audible improvement in Orange Juice. Where the bemused expression of those wonderful, if rough, Postcard singles rang genuine enough, it began to sound forced after it was cleaned up with Polydor money; and Edwyn’s voice cracking up on their biggest chart shot – a cover of Al Green’s “L.O.V.E. Love” – was more careless than cute. Anyway, nobody needed to tolerate sloppiness in this new age of quality and distinction heralded by the ABC/Trevor Horn and Human League/Martin Rushent axis. What’s more, Nicky Heyward has a goofier, more comfortable grin. His Haircut 100, Altered Images and the rest capitalised on the pop consciousness Orange Juice helped cultivate. Hate? Or just bitter about being left behind, Edwyn? “It’s not a case of sour grapes,” he counters caustically, “because I don’t envy them, these groups who’ve put the ‘a’ back into pop music. Ha ha. I really don’t. I know there are certain The second Orange Juice lineup: (c/wise from left) factions who insist that Orange Juice propagated Malcolm Ross, Dave this wonderful, golden age of pop, but quite McClymont, Zeke frankly if I thought we’d been in anyway Manyika, Edwyn Collins responsible, I’d feel we’d have a hell of a lot to answer for. Because I think most of it is shit. “James was always dizzy-eyed, playing novel things on “That’s why I feel we’ve been misrepresented guitar and wanting to write stupid twee comedy songs, by the press, who’ve taken the more superficial and crass elements of like those you get in musicals,” sneers Dave. “A lot of people came to see us what we did and amplified them, so they become twee. And because we especially for James, because he would always do something wacky, like haven’t delivered, which to some extent I admit, we’ve become the fall over.” scapegoat for this horrible saccharine movement. Malcolm, the gawky shy boy from Josef K, entered the fray only to be “It’s not that I’m bitter, it’s just that I hate them,” he continues. “I hate repulsed by all the bitching. “All this backstabbing,” he recalls with them the same way I hated progressive groups in ’77; hate was the good horror. “It was a horrible atmosphere. I just wanted to leave…” thing about punk. I think hate can be very positive if it is directed in the As their most disciplined and composed member, Edwyn and Dave right way…” hung onto him and sacked the other two. Malcolm’s splendid, terse style, which defined Josef K’s series of excellent singles, isn’t the only stabilising HE POSITIVE SIDE of Orange Juice’s hate is the renewed sense influence. There is also drummer Zeke… of purpose that followed their virtual demise on the release of Zeke, they rightly claim, is their most interesting member. An affable, Ttheir long-delayed, out-of-date debut LP You Can’t Hide Your easy-going 27-year-old veteran of various Glaswegian funk/reggae/ Love Forever on Polydor. They dumped on Alan Horne, fell out with whatever groups, he arrived in Scotland eight years ago as a political each other and fell apart, only to regroup around Edwyn and bassist refugee from pre-Zimbabwe Rhodesia, where he was drawing too much Dave McClymont. The present lineup is now completed by guitarist attention through the black-youth-consciousness plays he was writing Malcolm Ross, from Josef K, and drummer Zeke Manyika, from with other teenagers in the small hometown community in Rhodesia’s Zimbabwe – the nation, not a group. heartland. His autobiography goes something like this: They meet me in pairs during the recording of their second LP, Dave “It was a crazy situation,” he recalls. “I was working with other and Malcolm outlining the schisms of the past, and Zeke and Edwyn teenagers during the school holidays, writing plays and staging them. mapping out the future. Alan, the first pair say, had to go, after planting We used to invite our white counterparts over to see them, but they never the preconceptions in the press they later found difficult to live up to, and came, except once, and then they all left early because they thought it was for the hold he had on Edwyn. too political. “It was Alan who said Orange Juice were going to be a pop group,” “The title of that play, ha ha, sounds really grand and pretentious now, accuses Dave, “that we would be on Top Of The Pops and have huge hits for but it was called Search For Human Dignity. It was just about people Postcard. But I always thought we were like Pere Ubu! That’s why I joined coming out of school, reflecting exactly what was happening to us. the group! We didn’t think our parents understood the “Besides,” he relates further, “I used to be very situation. Most of us thought that our parents close to Edwyn, but once Alan came in I didn’t were just weak for accepting all this nonsense speak to Edwyn again for about six months. “It was a for years. So we were alienated from our parents I thought Alan was taking over the group, and just as much as we were from the white people. rather than making some rash statement like, horrible “The alternative was to do music, write plays, ‘Alan! You’re taking over the group’, I crawled things like that to try and show them what we back to the flat and just whimpered.” were going through. But this is the funny part Earlier drummer Steven Daly was purged atmosphere. – I didn’t quite know what was happening at simply because “I wouldn’t talk to him at all, the time. My dad, who was a headmaster then, we didn’t get on, so the rhythm section was I just wanted was secretly working for the Zanu Party [the rubbish. And we would just laugh at James…” then outlawed national party fighting for …Kirk, their previous guitarist, that is, who, independence], his brother was in Mozambique, in the revised view of things, carries the can for to leave” a young commander in the guerilla force. So he Orange Juice’s shambolic reputation. had good reason to be scared, because maybe I 108 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982.

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