Matt Johnson The frontman of The The spent his formative “This is the land where nothing changes; the land of red buses and blue-blooded babies. This is the place, where pensioners years living above his dad’s happening are raped; and the hearts are being cut from the welfare state. Let the poor drink the milk while the rich eat the honey; let the east London pub, now the subject of a bums count their blessings while they count the money.” documentary film, Tales from the Two It was more than 30 years ago that Matt Johnson of The The penned these lyrics for ‘Heartland’, a biting critique of Thatcher’s Puddings. He discusses the trajectory Britain and the opening single from the 1986 album Infected. Born in 1961, Johnson spent his early years living in the Two of his career, from lo-fi experiments in the Puddings pub in Stratford, east London. Known locally in the basement to the excesses of stardom and 1950s as ‘the Butcher’s shop’ due to its cream-coloured tiles and the amount of blood spilt there, the pub was transformed the pleasures of creating film soundtracks. by Johnson’s landlord father Eddie into one of the happening pubs of 1960s London. In 2012, Eddie published the book Tales from the Two Puddings, released through Matt Johnson’s publishing house Fifty First State Press. The book tells the story of the pub’s heyday, when bands such as the Small Faces played early gigs and where famous East End boxers mingled with artists and local gangsters. The pub inspired Barrie Keeffe’s screenplay for the 1980 film The Long Good Friday. And now a new documentary based on the book chronicles the place Matt Johnson called home in the mid-1960s. “My earliest memories of the pub are very vivid, particularly the smell of the place and the noise drifting up through the floorboards,” Johnson tells me at his home in east London. “Me and my brother Andrew would play downstairs when it was closed. I became aware at an early age that buildings have an almost magnetic recording quality to them. You would sense the ghosts from the night before while smelling the cigarette smoke and perfume. I found it very comforting and reassuring.” Above the pub was the Devil’s Kitchen, the first disco in east London, run by Matt’s uncle Kenny and a place of wonder for the two brothers. In the Tales from the Two Puddings film, Andrew Johnson recalls it looking like a “psychedelic ghost train” due to its blue UV lighting and drawings of monsters on the wall. “It was very trippy in there before of course we knew what trippy was, so without knowing it they had created a psychedelic event,” says Matt Johnson. Equally evocative to the two brothers were the bright lights of Stratford Broadway. “I do have very strong memories of it,” says Words Andy Thomas Johnson. “We weren’t allowed to play out on the street, so me Portrait Helen Edwards and my brother would be upstairs, looking down on this very J&N 65 Matt Johnson busy road with all the shops lit up with neon. I really did think of it know what day it was. So I abandoned the sessions and Stevo and me did this as the Broadway of the song. It was so big and there was music mad Fear and Loathing-style trip to the roughest part of Detroit. By then, I was everywhere and cars and people running around.” I became aware that buildings a CBS artist and they must have wondered, what have we signed here?” Growing up at the Two Puddings, music seeped into the soul Following Johnson’s excesses, the rest of the subsequent Soul Mining LP of the young Matt Johnson. “As we weren’t allowed down in have an almost magnetic was recorded back in London mainly at John Foxx’s Garden Studios with the pub when it was open, we never really knew if it was bands producer Paul Hardiman. “Me and Paul were on the same wavelength and playing or the jukebox, but there was always music,” he says. recording quality. You would I really liked his sound,” says Johnson. Far removed from the claustrophobic “Some of my strongest earliest memories were of Tamla atmospherics of Burning Blue Soul, Soul Mining found Johnson mixing his Motown, the Beatles and the Kinks. And then as a kid, things sense the ghosts from the studio experimentations with the ‘new pop’ aesthetic of the early 1980s. He like the Crazy World of Arthur Brown’s ‘Fire’ really stirred the has subsequently called Soul Mining the second ecstasy album after Soft imagination and stuck in my mind.” night before while smelling the Cell’s Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret. Listen to the euphoric ‘Giant’ for a sense of While Johnson recalls playing around with instruments left where Johnson’s head was at during the recording. “What is interesting about behind by bands at the Two Puddings, it was when the family cigarette smoke and perfume. ‘Giant’ and ‘I’ve Been Waiting for Tomorrow’ is they were very much ahead of took over a second pub in Essex on the outskirts of London Still from Tales from the Two Puddings, 2016 their time,” says Johnson. “They were almost written in a sequencer-style that his interest in music took hold. “There was a piano there Courtesy of David Simmonds composition without a sequencer. This was before midi. So what I did was and I used to go down and practise on that a lot,” he says. I played the same parts for like six minutes, just repeating these same little “My dad also put on folk nights at the pub so there was always together our backing tracks. And around the same time we also riffs. Just doing that again and again and building it up. So I think that’s why equipment around for me to practise on. Then, when I was got friendly with Wire through Tom Johnston.” they sound so contemporary today.” around 11, a friend of mine called Nick Freeston suggested we Wire’s Bruce Gilbert and Graham Lewis offered to produce The Soul Mining sessions included players such as Jools Holland on piano, form a band. We were called Roadstar and started with Nick’s a couple of tracks for Johnson’s group. “So we had now been Zeke Manyika on drums, Thomas Leer on synth, Paul Wickens (Wix) on little Bontempi organ, a Premier drum kit and an old bashed up taken under the wing by two of my favourite groups,” says accordion, and Jim Thirlwell of Foetus (credited as Frank Want). “They were acoustic guitar. I didn’t have any musical instruments but I did Johnson. “We went into Blackwing Studios [home to early all people I knew already really, apart from Jools,” says Johnson. “At this stage, have the old family reel to reel tape recorder. I would put the Depeche Mode and Yazoo recordings] and they produced I really started to know my limitations as a musician. Up until then, I was microphone into the acoustic guitar and you could turn it on ‘Controversial Subject’ and ‘Black and White’. It was an playing most of the instruments myself. But as a songwriter, I could hear things so it was like a little speaker system.” education for me being in the studio with them.” The resulting in my head that I couldn’t really play. So I started to delegate and that was a joy When did that experimentation become more serious? tapes found there way to Ivo Watts-Russell of 4AD records, hearing things like the incredible piano solo of Jools on ‘Uncertain Smile’. “My brother had bought me this book by Tony Hatch and it home at the time to Bauhaus and the Birthday Party. The I couldn’t dream of playing something like that.” It was on Soul Mining that mentioned all these well known recording artists that had subsequent single ‘Controversial Subject’ (backed by ‘Black Johnson earned the tag ‘existential blues man’. “I’m just a symptom of the started as tea boys. It recommended that is what you do. I hated Two Puddings pub, London, 1960s Photograph Alf Shead and White’) was released by 4AD in August 1980. The LP for moral decay. That’s gnawing at the heart of the country,” he sang on ‘The school and had failed all my exams. So I thought this could be an 4AD that followed, Burning Blue Soul, was recorded at a cost of Sinking Feeling’. outlet for me,” says Johnson. “I used to read this book religiously. he says. “My first experiments were very primitive using an old Cossor tape £1,800 while Johnson was on the dole. The use of tape loops and As with all of The The’s albums and singles, the cover artwork was by Matt’s It explained all about songwriting and working in the studio, but recorder from the 1960s. Then I saved up to buy an Akai 4000DS MKII various electronic effects on this experimental, lo-fi LP by the brother Andrew, ‘Andy Dog’, who died recently. “That was actually a painting also in the index it listed almost every recording studio, music (four-track reel to reel tape recorder) that had a sound on sound facility. By teenage Johnson would form part of his later musical template. Andrew had done of one of Fela Kuti’s wives with a joint in her mouth,” says publisher and record company in the country.