This interview took place on 29th October 1999 at Dave's workplace, on the outskirts of Doncaster. Naturally, seventeen months hence, parts of it are either dated or no longer appropriate for publication. Added to this, it was recorded on a Dictaphone sent by God to test me. As a result parts of it are indecipherable. So, in the interests of providing as complete a transcript as possible, I have noted these garbled sections with "[?]" while subject headers cut to the chase?
DF: Yeah, erm he came out when he was looking around a few studios - and he came in with this immaculate suit, expensive suit-erm-and was dour - he had a dour face on him - and I was whizzing him around and he wouldn't spare the time of day or even acknowledge a presence - and he let me go on for a while and then he said, "It's just a fucking studio! They're all the fucking same! Fucking recording studios. I fucking hate them" - and left.
IG: Was that when they were still on Beggars Banquet?
DF: That's right.
IG: -and they were pushed in your direction?
DF: That's right. it's just that whenever I think of him, this sort of alternative Bernard Manning springs to mind.
IG: Just in personality?
DF: No. It's not fascism, but there is something about him which in a strange way links him to Bernard Manning. I don't know why.
DF: I played with Ludus for about a year.
IG: I didn't know that.
DF: Around 82-83.
IG: When did they finish?
DF: Not long after. (laughs) It was a strange experience watching Linder. What I liked about them was that they were very good with free improvisation. So, she would be very concentrated in reaching very different areas of free improvisation. She would go off in various Yoko-like ways.
IG: Were you present at the Hacienda incident?
DF: With the meat dress? Yes, I was in the band at the time. And on every table-at the time there was a lesbian manager for The Chromes and her job for the evening was to prepare - during the soundcheck - was to put a paper plate on every table, with a tampax - a red-stained tampax - on the plate, on every table. And there may have been a stubbed out cigarette aswell. I can't remember. I think it was just a tampax. And Tony Wilson came in and just went fucking spare. He went completely bananas. I've never seen him lose it like that before - he's normally the urbane Mr. Cool, y'know. He just completely lost it. He was incredibly shaken by it, meaning they put them all away. But then she came up with the trump card of the dress.
[Some background reading from Punk Rock-So What edited by Roger Sabin (1999), namely Lucy O'Brien's essay 'The Woman Punk Made Me' (p.196-197)]
Ludus, too, made few concessions to chart-dom, with their complicated rhythms and Linder's off-kilter vocals. Her final gig at the Hacienda in Manchester perhaps sums up how far, in terms of intellectual and visual resistance, women in punk could go.
'Bucks Fizz had just won the Eurovision Song Contest. At the end of their song the men pulled off the girls' skirts, and that ticked off an outrage in me. Oh no, I thought, it's still going on. At the same time at the Hacienda they were showing lots of soft porn and they thought it was really cool. I took my revenge. I was a vegetarian, I got meat from a Chinese restaurant, all the discarded entrails. I went to a sex shop and bought a large dildo. I didn't tell anybody about it.' (personal communication, 1997)
Just before the show, she and a few female friends 'decorated' the club, tying tampons to the balconies and handing out to the crowd giblets wrapped in pornography. 'The Hacienda was still this male preserve. They were panicking - "It's going to mark the floors", they said. And they refused to do a Bloody Linder cocktail in the cocktail bar'. Then Ludus played the gig, with Linder upfront, covered in meat. At the crucial moment, just like the Bucks Fizz girls, she pulled off her skirt to reveal the shiny black dildo.
'I remember the audience going back about three foot. There was hardly any applause at the end. And that was a crowd who thought, nothing can shock us, we see porn all the time, we're cool. When that happened, when they stepped back, I thought, that's it, where do you go from here?'
Linder had done the ultimate in making the implicit explicit, her imagery not acceptably contained on the video screen. Through the use of meat and tampons she was showing the 'reality of womanhood', and with the dildo: 'Here's manhood, the invisible male of pornography. That it can be reduced to this, a thing that sticks out like a toy.'
IG: The Hacienda Agenda.
DF: Yes. It was good to be there that night. (laughs) The dressing room afterwards was a very strained affair.
IG: What was back-stage at the Hacienda like? Is it all beams like the rest of it?
DF: No. It's just fairly long and runs across the back of the stage. But I remember - I've still got it actually. The Chromes gave every one in the band squirting plastic flowers in a little packet - 'With love from The Chromes for playing with us tonight' - and I put it in a little box and came across it the other day.
We return to a large pile of cuttings scattered between us
DF: In the large pictures of Howard, in different papers, it was a different person. [NME 25Feb78]
DF: God, when I see pictures of Martin Jackson, it's hard to remember he was in the band.
IG: Bob Dickinson - he preceded you.
DF: Yeah, he did three gigs I think.
IG: This by Lynden Barber. (presenting unidentified retrospective article - 'Spiral Scratch' magazine)
DF: Oh yeah, Lynden Barber. I remember this interview, but Ican't remember where it's from. [NME 25Feb78]. That's harsh. That's a harsh front page. It was such a bastard, the NME.
IG: A very unpleasant article, that one.
DF: Charles Shaar Murray.
IG: In contemporary books and magazines Magazine seem hugely under-written, yet they seem relevant at the moment. Mansun are carrying the torch whilst 'Railings' got a huge response. Did you ever hear that?
DF: Yeah.
IG: They did two songs.
DF: Yeah and they came down to our studio to do one of the songs.
IG: I've got a few live tapes, but it's earlier versions of songs I'm interested in. I got hold of the first John Peel session you did with that early version of 'Definitive Gaze'. The lyrics are the same, but the music's more skeletal. What happened to it before the LP? Did most Magazine songs stay with lyrics intact throughout? 'Definitive Gaze' in particular, if you want to start there.
DF: Well, certainly the lyrics didn't change half as much as the music. The structure of the music didn't change either. I think essentially it just became more elaborate or more developed I think.
IG: More embellished.
DF: I was trying not to say 'ornate' because it wasn't ornate. I think the good thing about Magazine, musically was that everything seemed to have a point. It was all put into the arrangement, giving a really strong purpose in the journey of the song.
IG: Howard did say that he always tried to plan the music. I know over the years you contributed more and more to the writing-
DF: Especially with certain elements of 'Real Life', it was all pretty well established but I think because of the way I was playing the keyboards I was opening out that side a bit more. Inevitably we talk about more lushness with the keyboards, certainly on 'Definitive Gaze' which is a perfect example. Y'know, very lush strings and loads of depth. And, yeah, I think I was allowed as much freedom as those fairly rigid structures allowed. Y'now, within that I was allowed to put a lot into it on the first album. A lot happened in the studio on songs like 'Definitive Gaze' and 'My Tulpa'. With things like 'The Light Pours Out Of Me' and 'Shot By Both Sides' [early tracks] there's very little there. And it was stupid to try and go in and push ourselves completely over them.
IG: 'LPOOM' is possibly the most strict. I've got four or five versions and they're all pretty consistent.
DF: Yeah, well, we tried to really change it.
IG: There's Rockpalast in 81 [Top Of The Pops Feb78] where it just descends into white noise.
DF: Well, we re-recorded it with Martin Hannett, and we tried to change it but we couldn't. We ended up, y'know - all we did was create a snare-drum sound by hitting my APR Odyssey synthesiser for the white noise. That was about as experimental as it would go. Like it was stopping you doing anything with it. So, yeah, that was the right thing. I made the right decision not to add anything when we recorded it for 'Real Life'. All I did was add some piano. I had a Yamaha Grand by then and I just turned the volume up to add these weird swirls underneath, apart from the all-ready-set octave thing at the top which was Bob Dickinson's idea.
IG: It's very sensitive. Every part is necessary. What about 'Shot By Both Sides' - did you do much there?
DF: No, we hardly touched it, though we actually re-recorded it for the album.
IG: I've heard the original version. I'm not all that keen on it to be honest.
DF: Oh good!
LAUGHTER
IG: I like John Leckie's work at that time [producer of 'Real Life']. He did some good XTC albums as well. He did everybody.
DF: Very relaxed as well. Just a very cool, relaxed person to work with.
IG: I saw that in a clip of him recording with The Stone Roses, from 'Snub TV' I think.
DF: Did you see that Dr John documentary?
IG: 'Anutha Zone'. I did find that album quite troubling. Spiritualized I can understand.
DF: .but which record company thought of this one?
IG: Yes! Paul Weller validates himself, but I didn't really go for him until the Robert Wyatt album. Have you heard 'Shleep.'
DF: Yeah, he's [Weller] a mate of mine.
IG: Where did you grow up then. Were you in Manchester?
DF: Yeah, I grew up in Whalley Range.
IG: How did you get in touch with Howard then?
DF: It was Martin Hannett. Er, I'd known him for a long time. We played in casual set-ups, because he was originally a bass player , and we'd always been friends and kept in touch. And with my wife, my girlfriend then, we moved out to Bowlington, near Macclesfield, for a statutory year in the country and hated it. We came back to Prestwich of all places - we'd always lived in South Manchester - and that's where I met Alan Wylder, who you may or may not know. And we lived in Prestwich for ages. Once there was a large chap sat outside our house, always outside our house whenever we left or came back. After about three days I got sick of this, opened the door and went up to him and said "What the fuck do you want? Who are you?"; (stammers) "I'm a neighbour, I just want to make friends. I knew the people who lived here before" Within days he was pouring water through my letterbox, y'know, as a sign of endeaarment. Funny man.
IG: When did you become Formula?
DF: Well, I got a phone call. About a year after the boogie band I got a call from Martin saying this band was looking for a keyboard man and they're on Granada on Sunday, so watch it. They filmed it at Queen Elizabeth Hall. And I rang Martin and said "Yeah, there's something about that music. I really like it." So we went for a meet with Howard. I say it was Stretford, but Howard says it was North Manchester. We both knew of this strange pub called The Bass (as in fish) Drum. And it was all to do with Bass beer, hence the pun - ha ha ha. So, anyway, we just met and chatted for a couple of hours. And I felt it was like a personality audition, y'know, for Howard. And then I was invited to rehearse with them for a week and I went, and that went very well. Then there was a tour coming up, including the 100 Club. And then I did the tour and then it was like, "Yeah, great. You're a member."
IG: The earliest I've seen is OGWT. Where were the promotional films shot [as seen on the Virgin video collection [Promo Videos]].
DF: At the Rainbow.
IG: It looked like exactly the same stage that every other band on Virgin did their videos on.
DF: Yeah, Virgin had an arrangement with the management.
IG: How was Howard early on? He seemed to hate the press. Was that the climate early on?
DF: I think you should ask him.
IG: I do want a third person on it.
DF: Well, I was convinced by it. I was convinced that he did have a definite problem with certain areas of the press. And I do think he had a problem with it to the extent that at virtually the first gig we did as Proper Magazine - well, as I call it - at the 100 Club, there was a massive queue all the way down Oxford Street. And Howard's instruction, of which he asked for our permission first - we always discussed things - and he said "I. Don't. Want. Any. Journalists. Getting. In. There. For. Nothing. All the journalists will pay to come and see us." And they didn't like that. He felt they counted for nothing and made a real point of making them all pay.
IG: Did this contribute?
DF: Well, I think it set the tone.
IG: Pick the worst photo, do the worst write-up.
DF: I mean. he was. Linder and him were a couple at that point. I don't exactly know how things worked between them, but I think they really worked on how he was between them. She was very responsible for what he wore, make-up and stuff like that.
IG: Did this help?
DF: I think it helped.
We discuss the band image, apparently during a freak blizzard
DF: I don't think it matters whether it's packaged or an actual thing within itself, because I think it worked very well.
IG: It was the nature of the time, I think. Bands had a right to be difficult or blunt about it.
DF: What was that quote that deemed Howard "the Orson Welles of punk.".
IG: These comments are meaningless. You said 'Proper Magazine', but do you think that was the case right to the end? I like MMATW but a lot of people thought once McGeoch had left, Magazine lost something.
DF: I think there was a perfect chemistry and balances of imbalances, which I really did believe in.
IG: If you remove one element, it goes.
DF: Exactly.
IG: There was that comment Bill Drummond made about Ringo Starr, where if he really had been sacked it would have ruined the set up despite his lack of brilliance. Without him, it wouldn't have been the Beatles.
DF: Exactly, I think so, yeah.
IG: What was the response to McGeoch leaving?
DF: I think the reason why he left and the reason it upset things links into what we've just been talking about. That whole thing about Howard being seen to be difficult and stopping any kind of commercial development, although, again, another argument is that Howard was very pissed off that we weren't selling millions. Like all of us, he believed in the music incredibly intensely.
IG: He expected to retire on 'Motorcade'.
DF: The weird thing is that by the time we'd got to do CUOS - although in retrospect people say they really liked SHD, well, thanks very much, but we really had a hard time - somehow, quickly, the reception of Magazine was back on track with CUOS.
IG: An album you can't get anymore.
DF: Is that right?
IG: Only in America.
DF: I thought they put it out on CD?
IG: It needs re-pressing.
DF: I find that really odd. But, yeah, we made that and got lots of good reviews. There was some kind of resurgence of interest, like it had never gone. And obviously at the time John had been doing lots of moonlighting with the Banshees and stuff like that and I think there was a certain amount of poison poured in his ear from that camp - "Come this way and you'll make a lot more money" - and I think, quite rightly, he started to think, well these seem to really have an eye on the way to make a commercial success of what they do without too much of a compromise. And I think he generally felt that, rightly or wrongly, Howard was over stroppy, even at that point, despite his changing attitude, etcetra. He still, I think, felt that Howard was obstructive in making the Magazine thing spread more widely. And I think that, combined with the feedback he was getting from the Banshees camp, prompted the move.
IG: MMATW. What were you trying to do there?. 'About The Weather' is very different It feels quite Motown-y.
DF: It's supposed to be. I did the arrangement on that.
IG: It's quite a dense record. Who did the artwork, again?
DF: Malcolm Garrett.
IG: The old Buzzcocks guy. I'm always told Howard stayed involved with them, but no one explained exactly how.
DF: Richard Boon, I think. He was a friend of Howard's, who was important in the development of the Buzzcocks. He never fell out with them
IG: Oh no, I don't get that impression at all. It's just a long time ago. I can appreciate that Howard is sick of talking about 'Spiral Scratch' - one little record he did once. Were Magazine much associated with Buzzcocks, what with the shared fanbase?
DF: No, no. Totally independent. He will probably have a different slant on it. With MMATW, I think we were just in shock really.
IG: The pressures to complete something?
DF: Yeah and I think we had problems with another guitarist. We took Robin Simon on a tour of America, Australia and I think New Zealand. Talk about chemistry - it was like just not having him in the band. A very good guitar player, but all he was doing - he was just doing a cover job for John. We tried to do some recording with him, but then that didn't work out. But then I remembered this friend of mine, [Ben] Mandelson, from way back who came in. He was quite a quirky guitarist, but that didn't work out because he didn't get on well with Martin Hannett. (and seems shy to discuss it [Ian Greaves Dec99])
IG: What happened? Was it a loss of interest on your part or the label?
DF: I expect Howard knew exactly how everyone in the band was feeling. I mean Ben, bless his heart, but after doing that album I thought it had some good stuff on it. It had some awful stuff on it as well.
IG: I wouldn't say that, but it was erratic.
DF: Yeah, but I think everyone realised that it wasn't going to go anywhere. I'm not ashamed that there's never been an attempt to reform or anything like that.
IG: I always hear rumours. What about Howard edging back into songwriting and talking a lot more to Barry [Adamson]. Will that develop anywhere? He always had that rule of never using more than one Magazine member at any point otherwise it will be too much like a reunion.
DF: He's always kept in touch with Barry. We do get offered certain amounts of money to reform and do TV shows but we've never considered it for more than two minutes. Barry and I were in Austrailia. We came over on a social trip to see some people. And we got this phone-call from Howard saying, "I think we should call it a day", and we went "Yeah, you're right. Fine." And we were in Australia, which was miles away.
IG: Barry joined The Bad Seeds and you were on 'Jerky Versions', Ludus before that. Visage? There were two albums.
DF: We released two, made a third and it all went horribly-y'know.
IG: I've got the first and the comp. How did Visage come about?
DF: Barry and I were sharing a flat just off Harley Street [in Central-ish London] . We got to hear about it and had to go down on the Tuesday and McGeoch started to go down as well. And we just got to know Rusty Egan, [Midge] Ure - and there was a demo, presumably left over from the Rich Kids conract that both Midge Ure and Rusty were involved with. Steve Strange's main complaint about running The Blitz [his nightclub] was that there wasn't enough electronic dance music to play on the Tuesday night so they ended up with all sorts of stuff they didn't want to play. So, really, literally, "Why don't we put a band together that particularly fills this role? Maybe someone will release it aswell." And that was the kick off of that and then they went 'round to decide who was in the band. Rusty and Steve were big fans of Magazine and Ultravox, so that's how Billy Currie got involved, and Midge Ure became the singer of Ultravox.
IG: The credits are very mixed up. Seven names as the credit to one song, for example. Were you on 'Fade To Grey'?
DF: Yes, I played the keyboard part. I wrote the other side.
IG: So, the third album never came out. What went on?
DF: McGeoch had gone by then. Barry had gone by then. I'd got quite friendly with Billy Currie so I hung in for a while.
IG: Have you kept these recordings?
DF: Yeah.
IG: I have a soft spot for Visage.
DF: A soft spot. They did a few good singles.
LAUGHTER
IG: 'JVOtd', then. How did that come about?
DF: A phone call from Howard. "Dave, I'm doing a solo album. Would you like to get onboard and help me do it?" Not on a production level, he didn't ask me to do that. I kind of after-reacted to it to some extent.
IG: Do you think he needs collaborators?
DF: Oh yeah, totally. He enjoys it. I find he has an exciting way to work - a creative way to work.
IG: And Bernard Szajner? Forgive me if I'm pronouncing that wrongly.
DF: Oh, I could do no better!
LAUGHTER
IG: I've got that album, but it's very hard to find out what went on behind the scenes.
DF: I went to see them perform live actually.
IG: I've got that tape. Never circulated. Howard just walks on for four numbers and then leaves the way he came.
DF: Yeah, absolutely.
IG: What was that Szajner thing. Was it just another phone call?
DF: Yes, I don't know how he made the connection - I don't remember the story, again ask him.
IG: Was this Howard looking to try out new things after Magazine, with all options open to him?
DF: Yeah, I think so. I think that one was just an experiment.
IG: Was 'Jerky' the final album due to Virgin?
DF: Yeah. Virgin at the time are like a ghost never to be seen again, for real independence. They were all incredibly indulgent towards bands, and to Magazine particularly.
IG: XTC were badly treated, that's well documented.
DF: .but if we wanted some extra cash to go to America, they never, never said no. Maybe a couple of times. We really could have signed for as many albums as we cared to. They were very keen for us to be there, like XTC. We could have stayed on the label 'til the mid-Eighties, no problem at all.
IG: It changed a lot around 92, with the merger.
DF: Well, Simon who did A&R had a lot of time for the band and he allowed a lot of freedom.
IG: Beefheart was on Virgin by then.
DF: That's right, yeah.
IG: Beefheart was their tax-loss to start with, then XTC.
DF: Oh, they had quite a few tax losses!
LAUGHTER
IG: Jerky. Adultery. Luxuria. Were you witness to this transition? Barry's on 'The Unanswerable Lust' but you're not. I take it you were aware of what was going on?
DF: Yeah, I wasn't around when it was being recorded. But I knew what was happening, we always kept in touch. I never lost contact with Howard. I was busy planning and putting Strongroom [Dave's recording studio] together at the time [1987/1988].
IG: Luxuria had a weird reaction and the video is oddly the only item available now [no longer! - ig2001]. Beast Box was next, a very good album.
DF: Well, yes, he'd heard some of the stuff I'd been producing up at Strong Room.
IG: Who like?
DF: Oh, no one. I'd done this band called The Watchmen, but Howard said 'Would you like to come in and co-produce this?' - the location of the studio being quite near Howard, and the fact that I knew him very well in the studio and we were comfortable working in that situation.
IG: Reliable?
DF: Yeah. And Howard said he thought that was some of the best work he'd ever done. At the mixing stage, he turned round and said "This is the last Luxuria album. This is the final thing."
IG: On the first LP he's wonderfully verbal, on the second even more enthusiastic but nothing happened at all. They toured America with The Fall. The papers were supportive, but people had trouble with it.
DF: Well, I think the country had changed dramatically. From Howard 78-79-80 and the the mid-Eighties. That whole Thatcher thing really changed people, in that sort of time. If Luxuria had come out as in parallel with Magazine, if we'd had a clone of Howard doing that I think we would have done incredibly well.
IG: What about the clones of HD in the audience at early Magazine gigs?
DF: He did it twice, once in the North East [Middlesborough] and then at the Lyceum. It was the guy out of The Mekons, this dome-headed man who was not dissimilar fashion-wise. So we sent him under the lights. The audience would be confused. It seemed a good trick. We'd come on and play for a couple of minutes and then Howard comes on, the crowd roars and then. Howard comes on! It's a good visual trick, a Houdini trick.
IG: What about Momus?
DF: He's got a tiny label. Around that time, when Howard was doing "Railings" he kept getting in contact with Howard and Howard was all like, not really keen on it. I don't think he's really mad about it.
IG: Does he still write?
DF: A book. Yeah. He's writing an autobiography. He's been asking about it. He came up to my house early last year for a few days. We spent two days together. Basically he wanted to talk about Magazine - faulty memory syndrome and all that thing - just to sort out quite a lot of things for the book. And we just had a good time, a very relaxing time and he hadn't been up for quite a few years. He did a lot of eating, a bit of drinking and a lot of talking. I wouldn't want to say what he was planning musically, but he has just done a thing with Noko for Apollo Four Forty. Yeah, I'm sure he's got a plan in mind For what, I don't know.
IG: Has he changed recently?
DF: Er, what was the latest thing. Big glasses. Big square glasses. Bald head. Not much different, really.
IG: I shortened my hair in respect to him
LAUGHTER
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