THE FUGITIVES by Mick Mercer Zigzag December 1984

In a darkened room the populace came to trust or loathe called the music business of cadillac shaped singles, where the power, perfection and poise of computers gently hum to the top ten pop print out a stifled sob comes from crawling shadows down by the skirting boards.

Elsewhere a prematurely senile man pats his leather jacket affectionately. "Sorry old lad, truly I am but you've had a good innings. Everything has to die."

He closes the wardrobe door.

The sob becomes a shriek.

HOW MANY TIMES DO I (your friendly forest ranger) HAVE TO TELL YOU? Playing with fire is bad. Dancing in the flames is naughtier still.

“We've tried to put something in and that's all we can do. To get this record out is an achievement for us. We've banged our heads against so many walls..."

I recognise that voice! Pauline Murray, the small and frowning girl from Penetration and The Invisible Girls, is-it-not?

"It's everything against you, like you're going against the tide. Something like that. In every way."

Thought so!

Robert Blamire (rhymes with spire), steadfast companion through creative days, puts his hands under Pauline's armpits, lifting her high above the crowd, as she begins to scream . "And you know you're right. You feel like you're RIGHT. `I'm fucking right!' "

Politely they came to our stronghold in the lukewarm sector of the City. Peeping curiously around the door Pauline and Robert took tea with us, unpicking the eiderdown of `82-`84, fuelled by commitment stronger than a sheet of metal.

"At the start of the year," Pauline recalls, toying with her sweet martini and lemonade in a downtown bar, "you begin to think, `God! Am I getting out of touch? Am I going mad? Am I just getting old?"'

Wrinkled, insane and desensitised they reached swift conclusions.

"We meet people. We met you today and you think the same. They say people aren't bothered but they are because they're so busy worrying about their daily life. "People are just being totally exploited," she continues, dwarfed by Robert. "Do you think it's because we can see it or we don't have any illusions on it all? Is it because they're younger and this whole illusion has been put up again? I think things are in a bad state actually.

"You feel totally aware. Perception just seems so clear, you know what I mean? That's the frightening thing because you can see it all, you can see every change that happens. You notice everything. Other people can't.

"You feel totally isolated and all the others have gone and fitted in. People you know from the same time have started to go normal. We can't believe it! It's the easy way out.

"The lack of life that's about!" she groans, bemused by it all. "They've settled down... that's it now: they're there. But there's others that have kept to this knife edge, that are ready to go into this next thing, whatever it is.

"I feel we're stepping out into a new time, a new part of time. People are wanting to give their hearts to something, willing to give their all to something but there doesn't appear to be anything there."

She sighs, then laughs.

"Let's not get depressed!"

No, no, let's not but there is that dreaded confrontation between security and a possible wilderness.

"Walking on the edge! It's like a balancing act isn't it? Gotta be right!" Wheelchairs set on stun we freewheel down the slopes towards those barricades...

It is hardly surprising to discover their resolve intact after so long because Penetration were the embodiment of what `it' was all about.

After the forerunners had startled with their free range shows Penetration (along with The Adverts) were the first to step out of the audience and onto a stage, inspired by overwhelming sensations. They used their energy and thrust in conjunction with a stretching of their abilities rather than a placatory furtive WUN CHEW FREE FORE.

Attracted and trapped by Virgin Records they lasted until 1979, suffering ignominiously traditional problems along the way. Original co-founder Gary Chaplin left, taking his guitar with him, leaving dual replacements Fred Purser and Neale Floyd to argue themselves into the ground and vows of silence. And all this time, remarkably, wunderkid drummer Gary Smallman was fantasising about playing Northern Variety clubs, whilst Penetration were headlining The Rainbow!"

Pauline: "I think we were a bit of a weird band really."

Above all else Penetration were fallible, fabulous and vulnerable. "We were always vulnerable," agreed Pauline. "Looking back I think we were truer to what it all was than anyone else. We were the absolutely pure punk spirit. We came from this place (Ferryhill, Newcastle) and although we've since seen these people in London were very calculated we didn't know that. We just went out and did it. "We even split up when things started to go horrible because we didn't want that. Split up and destroyed ourselves."

Messrs Floyd and Smallman vanished as Pauline and Robert continued in cahoots with The Invisible Girls project, creating many fine moments with Martin Hannett. Fred Purser joined Tygers Of Pan Tang.

The Invisible Girls, good though they were did not last. Somewhat pressurised into it in the first place ('a solo career') disenchantment with management rumbled alongside RSO severing links.

ON THE LAST TOUR OUR MATES JUST COULDN'T GET IN...

Pauline and Rob found limbo their horizon, as Robert explains.

"Right from the start we'd had the same management and there's this barrier between yourself and anyone from the press or friends. Friends would come to the gigs and couldn't get in."

"Yeah and you don't know what's going on," fumes Pauline. "You're getting ready to do a gig and you don't know the manager's saying to your friends, `What are you doing here?' Really cutting them down and they feel awful, which creates this huge gap. We've since found that they only do that to keep themselves in a job. Since we've been doing this on our own we've realised you don't need them at all. They have bigger egos than the band really.

"We were out of control of our own lives. Had to back out of that. You've got to be careful not to be seduced by it all - to be flashy and all that. You're dragged on this course and suddenly you think, `I'm not gonna have this! I'm gonna pack up, suffer the consequences, then they can't drag us anywhere. I'll just say, `I'm not doing it' and see what happens!' `That immediately cuts you off from everything."

A recent Yello interview that impressed them greatly is paraphrased to sum up.

"They throw `the gold' at you and all you've got to do is throw it straight back. Don't be touched by it because as soon as you are you've had it. He was saying he'd made a film and they'd got him to cut out bits because they didn't quite like it. He said he did that and he felt ill, like he'd lost at least an arm. First they starve you of the gold and when you start looking successful they chuck nuggets at you."

Pauline and Robert burned the treasure map, walking away into a whirlwind of problems.

"See you've lost all your contacts," explains Robert, "with your friends and the roots from where your music was coming." "You lose contact with yourself," adds Pauline. "I didn't know what I was gonna do. I found I couldn't write songs of my own making, didn't know about singing and felt really nervous.

"The two of us, outside of it all! It's very hard to explain what's happened."

Popular rumours, speedily dispelled, had it that Pauline entered willingly into house wifely oblivion. Not at all.

"I split up with my husband so that's probably where the housewife bit came from... but you know that bit in Zigzag (letters page) about the `less traumatic lifestyle?' At that time we were living in Princess Avenue, Toxteth. Moved there to get away from it all and the next week there were riots. I thought, `My God! This is all we need!' That was a weird year."

As Pauline drifted into confusion and paranoia of sorts Robert produced the Liverpool band Send No Flowers and then completed an album with ex-Scar Robert King, which never saw the light of day. He phoned round after further work.

"I rang round about bands I was interested in doing- you don't just go in and do anything: least I wouldn't, we've never been like that. I couldn't find work, there was nothing to do. And I wasn't going to join another band."

"Nothing is easy, Life gets too tough, Sometimes you feel, That enough is enough. Running away, Every night, every day, Stand up and fight, Every step of the way... "

The rain clouds obscuring Pauline's vision cleared. Demo time again. Why?

"I thought, `Well I've got something," she recalls, "because I've made people happy before, so I must use whatever is in me to contribute to whatever.' I thought it would be an absolute sin to let myself or my voice go to waste in that way."

"But don't give up... Stop your crying, Don't give up... "

"Friends helped a lot. They kept at us and made sure we didn't float away forever. They kept saying, `Oh, I saw so and so today. They asked how you were and what you were doing' and I couldn't escape any further. Too many people bringing us back. It's just dead weird."

Even now she looks completely amazed.

"I didn't believe anyone was interested any more, thought everyone must have forgotten about me. I think it was to do with all that isolation. I thought I was from another time and people might be into other things... but all that time I've watched it and there's never been anything else come along that people have got right into. There's been all little things. I've been able to recognise how great Penetration were! It's not until you see it in different perspective, then you think, 'Yeah, it must have been really exciting!' and everything."

The struggle began. Armed with their demo they took to tackling the beaky noses and stuffed ears of every A & R department in the land where ventriliquist dummies droned, `Out to lunch! Out to lunch!' Unctious verdicts failed to stop them.

"How do you market that'?' they'd say," snorts Robert, "and there's no marketing involved. You just put out a record and it's a good record and by that time you go and do some gigs. There's nothing simpler than that. They think people won't buy it for the music alone, there has to be some angle to make them buy it. You've got to spend eighteen grand on the single. That's bollocks."

SOMEONE'S REALLY SMART...

"Another one we went to," says Pauline, mightily aggrieved, "was totally insulting. He held up the Invisible Girls album and said, `Had you come in with this we'd have had no problems'. I said, `If you'd heard the demos for that you'd not even have signed me.That's a finished album. Money was spent to get it right. What are you talking about?'

"Well, I dunno who we'd sell you to.' I asked him who did he think? `Well, we might get all the New Order fans out of the closet!' I sat there and I was really upset. I couldn't believe there was someone sat there calling me a has been. We're not trading on the past at all. There's nothing there that I'm ashamed of, it's great! I love it all but today's today. Then I said, `That's it. I don't even wanna face these people again!' No way we'd go back. Ever."

Had any of them shown signs of encouragement'?

"No. Not one of them."

Red Rhino to the rescue.

"He knew all about us, about Penetration and The Invisible Girls," says Pauline with evident relief. "We told him we had everything ready (label name, sleeves, label centres, tapes)... we didn't even have to say, `Will you put money up for it?' "

Robert: "With a major you could spend a year discussing what sort of deal you really wanted. We went down one day and he said, 'Well we can get it out in five or six weeks eh?"

Pauline beams. "So we got ourselves a record."

And quite a record it is too.

"Holocaust," an old Alex Chilton (Box Tops, Big Star) song, released under the name Pauline Murray and the Storm, is `dead short', a sadly swirling silven creature lapping lazily at your feet, surrepticiously creeping up to enshroud your throbbing head.

Constructed with precious few instruments (keyboards quaver with a punctilious rhythmical advance) it pushes pointers at you.. `You're a holocaust'... and stops. Abruptly.

Flipper "Don't Give Up", by Pauline Murray and the Saint is a classically vibrant optomistic radar screen, perfect for when you find your resolve slipping. Stirring sentiments, wispy, twisting, gripping song.

The next step of course and eagerly awaited by them both is live work. Auditions have already been fluffed.

"I hope people like the record," Pauline bubbled, "because it's all we can give them. I'd love to get back to doing live stuff but we don't have the resources to do it and we don't have a band. We've tried looking for people and it's the same thing, the guitarists have all sounded like U2."

Cripes!

"As soon as you turned off the echo effects," laughs Robert, "then turned off the distortion... there was nothing there! The whole thing had gone. They were just playing these one notes. That's not what we're looking for."

"We'd love to get someone younger," continued Pauline. "I hope some kid will come along with talent. He'd have to learn a lot before he got free reign with it."

This is a throwback to Penetration days where collisions began.

"It goes to their heads immediately because they've never had to struggle with the bottom line of it," she states firmly. "I was too soft in Penetration.

"When the first guitarist left he'd formed the band with me and we never really had a leader, didn't know you had leaders! Suddenly I couldn't get out of it and had to go forward. So we got guitarists in, but I'd never had the leader mentality... used to let everyone do what they wanted and that's what broke it all because they could never agree. Eventually it all got too much."

You'd be a lot harder now?

She nods. "He'd have to be kept within it until he got better, until he could become a total part of it. I don't think we'd get someone straight in... and that's not an ego thing. It's because we've heard different standards of guitar playing.

"I mean.. drummers! I'd much rather have a real drummer than a drum machine but a lot of them are naff! "If we don't find the right thing," she decides, "we'll have to go live, just the two of us but we'd have to be exciting, have to modify what we've got. I'd love to have a band because I think it's great that other people are involved.

"We'll play anywhere, I'm not bothered where we play. It's like this record - let's get it out and it exists."

And as for the different names on the record...

"We decided it's a bit vague to make up a new name and a bit naff to put Pauline Murray and Robert Blamire so we thought what does this backing sound like? It sounded like a storm. And what did the other side sound like ...they're really a name for Robert. We'll find names that are right at the time. When we're live there might be something that conjures up something totally different."

Robert: "Storm's a good name. Good name for a band."

They're quite content, particularly with the record. Pauline remembers feeling soiled when that anonymous man held up the Invisible Girls album, as though somehow the record belonged more to the biz than them but now it's all back in their court.

This is Joe Public speaking.

"All the songs we've demoed have been optimistic, it' surprising. When I was really fed up we'd end up writing how we felt and it was really horrible, you wouldn't want people to hear that type of thing. Self indulgence to let people hear that."

Beattie likens the record to a baby.

"You're the third person to say that," says Pauline, semi-stunned.

"That's what it is. Because you're doing it yourself you feel like you've scored a goal. All those majors..."

Her face screws up.

Robert: "To get your record in the racks means there's not enough space for one of theirs."

He sticks pins in his A & R voodoo wally dolly.

They troop upstairs to have their pictures taken, with Pauline worrying that her hair reasonably long for the first time in her life-might be taken for hippy punk tresses and Robert bemoaning the curse of height (something which I can fully sympathise life on stilts is an acquired taste).

Pauline: "I don't even think of it as `coming back'. It's me pulling myself together. It's my life."

COMPLETE CONTROL.