T OMOIIOW ' S ~ REBEL MC f • 11IE HffMAN AND HIM - B-52'5 ·~,~ • I " 1 I , I I :f I . I "'iii ::, :e z PRINCE X•CLAN BOO YAA TRIBE THE 'TOP OF THE • POPS' CHART ..... -·s Ill D 0 ► IN CHICAGO DEL AMITRI are straddling the Atlantic In their cowboy boots , with ' Move Away Jimmy Blue' In tho charts In Britain and 'Kiss Thi s Thing Goodbye' storming up the charts In America. Tim Nicholson (words) and Phil Ward (pictures) travelled to Chicago to taste th.a1~~,.-:, rock ' n' roll life THE NIGHT CHICAGO DIED The Windy City may be mighty pretty, but at night Chicago is a c·. - . house music came to die. Where once this city was the home of t 1aa • • • • now monsters of rock like Bon Jovi and Guns N' Roses 13 ha. foundations of a house that has been dismantled and rebuilt o~ " - by hyperactive Italian squatters. Del Amitri are at the forefront of the British foreign legGl\l. r:i-!!com~~ 4~ Chicago's empty clubs. They roam the foggy streets, trampm:1:l o dance u e a ,.,rw:F wherever a stray beat shows itself. They are no longer the t:.'il' • rigst_-JJ~e~. short back and sided youngsters of yore. They are d ~ e-~t r~k monsters. Well, kind of . Justin Currie, vocalist and all-round Del Amitri mouthpiece, !;ii , • enfunt~hf '-1':;:.ut their avoidance of barbers. " In the Eighties it became a purE ng,-~11 square-jawed guys and pretty, flouncy girls ... yeuch! Havi ~ hairJOS1/' 0 like being a blonde in a band all over again. Glasgow in par tar.ha. s 'usi c1c01 e legion of shorn heads. I guess you could say that we grew , r a,r to· th a IC Wl!houi'-:_o:.. at } short haired attitude, and I don't think we could play this mu. l 119G9 hair: and cowboy boots anyway." DEATH DISCO Del Amitri may be the archetypal example of the haircut as a state mt, but 'their music goes somewhat deeper than that. Justin and guitarist lain" arvie have always been great songwriters and, although many of their records a. e now legs apart, power chord epics, the songs remain the same, if a little more co• plete than before. But one thing is certain: their stance is diametrically opposed t , the danc~ · music which is dominating every aspect of music in Britain at the mo ient. And, 1f ,.•' taking rock to America is like coals to Newcastle, then taking rock t sound of Chicago ,s like electric bar fires to the Sahara. So, whe• th.~ "°"' .' inevitable Andy Weatherall remix come into play? 1.es the• '' "Never," says Justin firmly. 1 Never say never. The Wonder Stuff said 'Who Wants To Be The Di 'l:IJ mn?• '' Or I :, Next thing you know they're jumping up and down shouting " I do, ff • • J " I can't see it though. I really like The Happy Mondays, but I thu k 11 horrendously cowardly of these bands who are just climbing on board a tr thought and having their songs remixed by a DJ. We've always been obstreperous people and I can't see us going back on our word. "It's to do with trust. U2 are a band I don't trust. There's something r& preconceived about the whole 'Rattle And Hum' trip. Here's this band with this dnve to be the biggest rock group In the world, but also with this big chip on f shoulders about coming out of punk rock and not wanting to be seen as part rock trad,!lon, desperately trying to got their faces In the rock past - even t extent of pulling Elvis beside them on the covor of their album w1lh John Le , an· that. It 1ust seems like such a desperate attempt to re-invent your whole plac In rock's 11nnats." ' HOT YOU TOO? But CJ&I Am,tn could just os oaally bo accuaod of having re-Invented their past. "Belrovo It or not, we toyed with the Idea of chnnAlng 011r numo," admits Justin, C O N T N U E D 0 N P A Q E 3 0 28 f< M l CONTINUED FROM PAOE 211 "because we did realise thal we are bUicalty a different group lrom the one that was around toor yeora ego But I think u·, natural for us to have changed alter all that tImo. I think the aonos we wnte now are belier and more direct, and, I don t care what anybody says, I have never listened 10 The Eagles "When wo were over here last yoer to mix IOtn8 traclla, we aaw • video of a performance we gave when we wore In Amtrtca In 1987 Evon !hough II was only two yoara before, there were half a dozen songs that I'd forgotten even tl0$led. When we were gu11ts on an American radio 11otlon. the DJ asked what Iha first song wo ever wrote waa and could I play II? I thought for a minute and I realised that I couldn't remember how to play 'Sanso Sickness', so I battled out That's why we aren't playing any old songs live 01 the momenl They Just don't lit I don't think 11 would 110\Jnd like us." e"I think It's What Del Amilri do sound like live Is supremely sell-confident and horrendously lingle-mlndedly raucous, with the odd ponderous. thoughtful moment, The crowd In Chicago were eating out of their hand, as Is the whole of the USA, where the cowardly of llngle 'Kiss This Thing Goodbye· Is already a top SO hit. It was lighters aloft for the CUff911t UK llngle 'Move Away Jimmy Blue', though Jusbn prefers to think lhat, these bands "Del Amitri fans only hold Ironic lighters aloft." But. In the hght of the 'Ironic lighters', whal's going to stop lhem turning who are just convincingly Into a singularly un-lronlc U2? Justin looks homfl8d, but it could happen end has, to Deacon Blue in particular. climbing on "There's celtain mulic that has stadium asplra110ns, whether the band know 11 or board a train not. I think there's something about reformed religion addicts that leads you into that, 10 there's no danger there. I saw Deacon Blue at an AIDS benefit in Glasgow of thought and they did thrN songs, and they were realty good. Soon after thal I saw them again at some open air festival and I realised that their albums had been designed and having for this - all those wee set pieces and all those wee bits of tomfoolery on stage. "I was very aware on the last round of dates m America that we were verging on their songs lhe pantomime. Our album is quite a dry, warm, close sounding record, and I think Kyou want to become a stadium band you have to make those big sweepmg Bryan remixed by a Adams style records. That's not the kind of record we want to make. We want to make records like The Beatles. DJ" BATTLE OF THE BEARDS Del Amitrl's transformation complete. They are now fully fledged rock stars - the most significant metamorphosis being that of lain Harvie. Once a mild mannered, soft spoken twanger, lain has, like Hong Kong Fooey, turned into a crazy axe demon from hell. This most drastic of changes even prompts the odd incredulous look from the rest of the band. During a short photo session in a dank and dingy Chicago subway, lain is spotted wandering off into a world of his own, 111houetted in the shadows and looking the image of a rock cliche, from his snakeskin cowboy bool8 to his battered leather jacket and aviator mirror shades. "Look at that," says drummer Brian McDermott, pointing at lam. "Something just crawled from the wreckage of Lynyrd Skynyrdl" Justin Currie sees Iain's new guise as symbolic of their attempt to lhed their former skin. "lain? Oh, you mean Rock Monst~r. He's changed the way he performs on the stage, which I think was necessary - for all of us. We're still the same human beings. I can still understand why we wrote all those teenage angst songs, bul I'm enjoying the process of getting older. When lain grew the beard for the original cover of the album, a lot of people thought it wasn't him because he tooked ao much older. He had the beard for quite a while and we got a lot of l)OSICIRlt from American fans saying 'the beard is weird'." Which leads us nicely on to the great battle of the beard& which II taking ~ on the American tour. As an Impartial observer (or chicken, as the rllt of the band would have 11), guitarist Dave Cummings explains the concept "The Idea Initially was a beard race, but u lain has a bit of a headalart on the rest of us, it has been decided that the winner will bt the one who can shave It into the most outlandish form of facial hair on the last night of the tour in New York." Dave, however, Is preferring to remain clean-shaven, though when prompted he admits that he "might cultivate a single hair for the occasion." What with the beards, long hair and low slung guitars, Del AmItn are no longer winsome wimps. The question is, does hard rockln' Justin stlll get nosebleeds on stage.