In a sharp move - which has become characteristic of him since - Devoto left Pete Shelly and the band suddenly to form Magazine - signing to Virgin almost immediately and making four albums of new material and one live one during the intervening three years. As the band's latest Magic - Murder And The Weather was about to hit the shops - with equal abruptness - Devoto announced his departure from Magazine and - as a result - the band have split - apparently permanently.

Here Howard Devoto talks to John MeKenna about his own work - that of Magazine and about their reasons for calling it a day.

Real life is just a page away

Me: I always got the impression that your lyrics were a painstaking operation.

HD: Yes. Ridiculously circuitous - is that the ward? they go a hundred miles to travel a hundred yards. I mean - that's the way it goes - but there's a change because they are in many ways a lot simpler and we worked with melody quite a lot more on this album. When you're working to a melody it becomes a lot tighter - the writing has to be a lot tighter - you have to work on it a lot more - whereas earlier things were a bit freer.

Me: Do you prefer the result this time?

HD: It's difficult to say - Y'know - my view of what we do benefits from hindsight as much as anyone else's. Em - I dunno. Yeah - it worked - to me it's less personal and therefore I have to be even more objective and I can't really judge things subjectively in the way that I could judge past stuff.

Me: Do you think it's possible to be objective?

HD: No.

Me: Do you think it's even desirable?

HD: I think that has to be part of It just as- yeah - I mean there's no getting away from it. It might be a subjective idea of what an objective view is - but I mean it's like being your natural self - your natural subjective self -there's no such thing. You have to look outside yourself and go - well - how does everybody else see this? What does everybody else do? I think being totally subjective means being totally selfish - blind.

Me: But people say that though a thing may be subjective they're writing about something that may have happened to everyone'

Me: But I rind that opinion untypical. To me rock language is content to reiterate old cliches and never to explain - it doesn't work be- cause or self-indulgence.

HD: Yes - but you're saying self-indulgence -now most people would say self-indulgence is I when somebody is subjective to a deathly degree or to a pretensious degree - where somebody is writing what the heil they really feel or out of a sense of importance of their own vision. Which might also be reiterating cliche - I mean that is the worst - the very worst - when somebody really thinks - 'oh boy - I'm really getting to the heart of the matter' and it's just- and if they really looked at it - they'd just see they'd ripped It off. But the other kind of reiteration of cliches is - y'know - the songs about rock 'n' roll - about life on the road - the songs that talk about - yes - love songs - 'sweet abandonment' - all those endless songs.

Me: I rind it paradoxical that you should write in a rock format - because to me rock music is mere entertainment whereas I think your lyrics go beyond that.

HD: Well - I think quite a lot of people's lyrics have tried to - and personally it kind of amazes me when - for instance - a David Byrne song is in the top thirty - is being listened to in the same kind of a way as The Nolans - absolutely back to back with it - all that's very interesting. I kind of like that. I think there's something great about that because it's not an artistic garret - it's everybody there - rubbing shoulders - in the supermarket or wherever and I think that's quite healthy. It can be vitalising. But if some get through - it's very exciting. You seem to be saying that It hasn't been successful or hasn't been totally successful - what we've done.

Me: No.

HD: And I can't agree - can't agree.

Me: No - I think you and a few others have succeeded in bringing lyrics and music beyond a level of mere pap. But why align your writing with a musical format? Do you think you can achieve more with lyrics than mere entertainment?

HD: Certainly - certainly - going mainly from my own experience. But I know that music - rock music - opened up lots - opened up the world to me - y'know. Not totally but it was the main thing really - rather than anything else. Somehow that was what got through to me.

Me: Do you think you've been successful in what bands like Magazine have tried to do and done.

HD: Yes - yes - but the evidence I have for that is a handful of remarks made by a handful of people spread over 31/2. 4 years and that's all. Where I've met people. When I think about it - I'm shocked at the void I work in. Where I've met people who just said - in the little time I've had to talk to them - who've just said something - well - that really got through in the way I meant it. But it's very few and far between -obviously the number of people I get to talk to is limited. I mean I hope that for everyone I've talked to - there's a few hundred at least who feel the same. Yeah - to me it still is - to me I'd say it was successful. I couldn't measure it in any conventional way - to say it was successful - in gross units sold or whatever.

Me: Would you like to have received more adulation or commercial success? Which would you have preferred?

HD: Well - I don't really - I suppose I don't really like the notoriety that I had or have. I mean - well - I'd be bound to go for commercial success because I think all the others were kind of there - for good or ill. I mean cause that does tell you something - y'know - writers can fill their pages with what they like - I'm certainly not going to say that we were battered to death by the press. In many cases we received a lot of praise - quite a lot of it inappropriate-

Me: In what way do you feel that?

Me: Do you not think you've obstructed that reception yourself by exploiting characters as vehicles - so people might think you're telling a story whereas in fact it's a piece of self-revelation?

HD: Yes. I don't know. I'm mentioning those two because they were two that were noticed and not put together. I think there's other things that have been almost completely ignored. I mean there's an obsession with memory throughout the albums which even surprised me.

Me: Are you an obsessed person?

HD: I've said that - yes - I am. Yeah - yes. But also - to the extent that I forget them - I forget them - and realise that I've come back to them - that I've come full circle - I've progressed- three inches - meanwhile going right round the block.

Me: Are you happy with the way things developed viz a viz Magazine records?

HD: Yeah - I am.

Me: From a lyrical point of view also?

HD: Oh yeah - yes - I mean there's a few things that I just sort of wish we hadn't done - like putting something like 'Recoil' on the first album - it's very inappropriate. I wish we hadn't done 'The Thin Air' on the second album - that's not from my point of view and I'm not saying it because it's an instrumental - I actually played some keyboards on that track as well - but simply I think that track was responsible for the way that people perceived that album. I mean they talked about the weight of keyboards In it and Pink Floyd was thrown around as a comparison.

Me: Do you feel you've discovered a pee. scud 'artistic voice'?

HD: I think 'Soap' was very consistent - but there again the last two have been less obsessed albums. It's very difficult to gets line between. what you're saying and the way you say It. When I listen to the first two albums - to me they sound a bit overblown. I mean that's the feeling I get from 'Daylight'. I mean the production - the production was criticised slot - in retrospect now I like a lot of it - but I think it was overproduced. Vocally as well - in the way that I sang some things I would have been a little more restrained - eh - and maybe even more so on the first album. On the writing side there's not that much I would change - and I feel fairly confident of that because there's a long gap - y'know - there's agap of three years. Arrangement-wise - on 'Soap' the arrangements are better than on 'Daylight' - there were arrangement changes as well - but I do also feel - I also like the strength of those albums - they really are unreserved - strong statements. Maybe a bit too strong - but I like that. 'Soap' is more personal. The first two albums are really presenting a vision of the world - It's really 'you see it my way - or forget it - don't worry - but just forget it'. We - in fact - worry about It! But 'Soap' is personal In a different way - personal ins much closer way - much more confessional.

Me: Has your personal view changed?

HD: No - not essentially - but I'd say it's become more realistic because between those two albums I had to face up to death - my father died - and everything was suddenly in the real arena - I'd never had to face up to that - to death - really - really there - right next to me. And that made a change - it didn't shake - It didn't - I don't think It shook my vision of the world but it definitely made me feel different. It made me a bit less dogmatic - I just didn't take myself so seriously.

Me: Are you still satisfied with the fist two albums?

HD: Well no - that's what I say - there are definitely different ways. No - not essentially. But 'Feed The Enemy'. 'Back To Nature' and 'Permafrost' are as good as we ever did.

Me: Do you have a sense of achievement

HD: No. you can't - only when I look back - that's okay - but that Isn't enough to keep me going.

Me: Do you think those albums represent the best things you could have done at those times with all those circumstances?

HD: Pretty much so. But that's a different - that's altogether much more mundane. That doesn't teil you very much - all that is - Is school report time - 'yeah - tries very hard'. Big deal. You can try as hard as you like - but there's no reward for effort. And that is what this Is all about - somebody with five minutes can do something that goes right in - where somebody spends six months getting half that distance. Nobody can say - If you try harder your reward will be in Heaven.

Me: The practice of control and law and order seem to recur in your lyrics.

HD: It's not - well I really work very much with In the one person - the individual - and that's the only way you can say that there's a political thing. But what I'm interested in seeing - and see. Is the correspondence between the individual and the whole world - the way it's mirrored. conflicts and everything. But I feel very unhappy about the size of those statements - I don't feel qualified.

Me: I get the impression of interest in the suppression of the individual by various forces.

HD: Well. no. Again I'd turn that around - it's much more - it starts with more 'how am I doing It to myself! - am I - how am I doing it - killing myself? I've got to sort that out before I can sort out how everybody else is doing it - and until I sort out my instruments - I can't begin to measure what is out there - and until I know how I work - I can't begin - really - to try and understand how everybody else works - although it's all part of the process. I can't just close my eyes and be - y'know - the Freudian introspective. I can't do it that way - it is a relationship - howl work with everybody else and howl see everybody else - but it's also my own sense of responsibility. The one thing that impressed me about reading about E.S.S. - y'know - Erhardt - it's a self-awareness and liberation course - the one thing that impressed me about that was that they get about half-way through the course - eh you are brought to the point where you're told 'well - you are responsible for - somebody gets knocked down in Stockhoim - you're responsible - it's your fault - eh - the President of Bangladesh gets assassinated - it's your fault' - but I was quite impressed by that because I'd reached that conclusion myself.

Me: That you are responsible?

HD: Yeah. Well - how do you come to terms with it? It's the easiest thing in the world to be very comprehensively oppressed by it - y'know - the weight of the world on your shoulders. How you get not to feel that weight - I don't know.

Me: Do you personally feel the weight of the world on your shoulders?

HD: Not often - but sometimes:I like to keep in touch. I like to take it out of the covers and see if it's coming along happily.

Me: In a situation like that - if a packet of Planter's peanuts was to come floating by - would you go for the peanuts?

HD: Eh? Oh very possibly - certainly. I think giving in to temptation can be one of the best things you're ever going to do. Yes - very possibly - but then he's going to get the peanuts - eat them and then he's going to go running to catch the world.

Me: Your images always seem to come back to things like power - fear - love - guilt etc.?

HD: Yes - well - well why not. Somebody interviewed me last year and actually seemed to be saying that I was being really kind of naive or dull in writing about what you call the eternal verities. He couldn't understand that - and seemed to say 'all his lyrics are culled from the intellectual last hundred years'.

Me: He was critical of that?

HD: Yeah - and I thought - I'm not going to apologise for that. What do you want me to write about - what's in Titbits this week so that I'm being really modern or what?

Me: There is a tendency today to excuse and applaud that as representing something.

HD: Yes - well there is a thing of getting meaning where there is none - you get that in the street overhearing people - where somebody said something in a very mundane way - something - 'Well - life's like that - isn't it!' and they just meant it and haven't thought any more about it. But if you're in the right or wrong frame of mind - your chemical build-up at that particular time - y'know that can hit you like a hammer - whereas you can't just shrug it off because you've registered it - it's hit you - but it is very difficult when you then say 'My God - you're the successor to Hegel! - cause you've said something that hit me like a hammer'.

Me: I think it's unfair to people like you to extrapolate meanings from the nature of a thing rather than its content. What better thing to discuss than the eternal verities?

HD: Well - yes - I agree - but eh - I know I - I can't - I really can't believe it when people say - y'know - this is just entertainment - or they say - life is just a series of mundanities. It makes me feel very scared and scared for people and it kind of makes me go - well - maybe it is - as well. It seems to me frighteningly timid - so unexcited - but - if it's the truth - it's the truth.

Me: Do you think it is the truth?

HD: No.

Me: Do you think the individual can achieve happiness or contentment?

HD: Only of a kind. Not really - no. Of a certain kind - I think. I think liveable resignation is possible - but I'd hesitate to call that contentment. contentment seems to be a very pale - distant image of Utopia. I really suspect such ideas. They're necessary - they're necessary ideas.

Me: Would you say you personally are happy?

HD: When? Really by definition that word is a temporary state. Certainly I am but it has no moral value whatever when I am - and I don't think it has - it has limits - but I certainly wouldn't use that word. I wouldn't use it about anybody. I'd kind of almost think of it as an insult.

Me: I mean the ability to live with yourself and the world.

HD: Well I do - I do - but it's in a process and not an end - yeah - I feel at my best when I'm learning something and that's it - that's really it. That's all. That's consistent.

Me: Can you make learning a continuous thing - or do you reach a point when you think:I stop here.

HD: All - but that's what I mean. It must be a process. Only in a process. What the end is - well - we say 'God knows' - over here.

Me: Do you believe in God?

HD: Em - no.

Me: Do you then think the individuals responsible for everything?

HD: I dunno. I can't remember. I can't remember what I believe.

Me: Would you say overall you have a sense of resignation?

HD: No - not resignation - but I am a fatalist. I don't know if you can be a percentage fatalist - I'd like a get-out clause - but I think it's true. I think when people meet me - they find me very resigned and detached and so suspect me and suspect my intentions - and kind of measure me to the records which perhaps seem so passionate and think - what a phoney!

Me: I disagree. I would have thought the songs give a feeling of placing the intellect over emotion.

HD: Oh no. Why? A feeling in the songs? No. No. Em - maybe there is a surrender to ideas where there isn't a surrender to emotions and feelings. But I don't think that's necessarily to say that one's over the other.

Me: What next?

HD: It's difficult for me to know right at the moment. I intend to continue writing songs. What I do as me will be quite personal to me - though I have ideas of doing things with other people - but those will probably be sidelines.

Me: Are you still under contract to Virgin?

HD: Right now yes - but I couldn't speak for even the immediate future.

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The Correct Use Of Socks

Me: What colour socks do you wear on Sundays?

HD: I always wear black socks. Why? Andy Warhol has a friend who says the best thing to do is to have different colour pairs of socks because they're easier to pair. The other theory is that you have all the same colour so you don't even have to begin pawing them.

Me: Do you like yoghourt?

HD: At one time I used to eat those big tubs of natural - but I can't touch them.

Me: What happened?

HD: I don't know. I very quickly overdosed.

Me: What would you most like to achieve?

HD: Em - total recall. Ah - although it's probably a mixed blessing.

Me: Who's your favourite author?

HD: I don't have a favourite but there we three I come back to all the time - Dostolevaky - Nietzche and Proust.

Me: Do you think girls should pat on their first date?

HD: Yeah - yes.'

Me: Why?

HD: Well - well it's ah

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