Cold Light of Day: Magazine and I

My main memory is of snow and of waiting. The weekend had finally arrived and there was time to visit the nearest town to purchase a long-anticipated album. Trapped in my home in the bleakness of the Welsh countryside at night, snared in school during the day, I was always miles from anywhere both literally and metaphorically. Until the advent of Punk Rock, which united individuals in their common difference to the majority –their relative uniqueness.

My reference sources say 'Real Life' was released in June 1978, but I recall getting up from bed early that Saturday morning after the album was released to find there was relatively deep snow carpeting the county. Perhaps the references are incorrect, maybe the album was out sooner or later, or perhaps I wasn't the early bird my memories assure me I was, but one thing I'm not mythologizing was the snow. It was cold, hard and freezing. I dressed and walked the mile to the bus stop, where I waited for an hour; there was no sign of the 332. I would have to walk the three miles to town; I had to buy the new Magazine album !

By the time I reached my regular record shop my feet were permafrost. The air felt thin and fresh (these are not retrospective thoughts referring to a later album, this was how I experienced that day, a kind of augury). The sun started to emerge from the lamina of clouds that had obscured it. I found the album, bought it and walked home, which was even more exhausting. I had only spent an hour in town (I had to get home to hear the record) and had walked eight miles in total, but it was worth it.

In the warmth of my room, as my flesh thawed (I can still recall vividly the icen chill in my feet), I slid 'Real Life' from its Odilon Redon sleeve, unaware that the artist was one of the great symbolists of the late nineteenth century (whose work I would later become enamoured of, another discovery I owe to Devoto), and settled the disc on the turntable. The music was as sharp and frosty as the wintry day, sparking with modernity and incisive rock violence. The keyboard theme that preceded the first verse of 'Definitive Gaze' was THE subject amongst the more aesthetically-minded Punk Rockers in school the following week. It was a challenge, a manifesto; there was nothing as modern as that theme. When I say modern, I don't mean contemporary. I mean Modernism as in the great art movements that spattered across Europe and America from the late nineteenth century until postmodernity set in during the mid-eighties and petrified everything into soundbites and shallowness. Modernity was the timbre of Magazine's tone-colours, and thus they still sound ahead of their time today.

Tracks like 'Motorcade', 'My Tulpa' and 'Parade' were flawless; at last, here was another band besides The Stranglers with a lyrical skill in their musical style whose expression matched their aggression and sense of Now. Another band where the guitar was as eloquent as the keyboards, where the bass spoke; it wasn't merely there because a rock band had to have a bass player by definition. And the lyricist/singer was the match of McGeogh, Formula and Adamson. As great as 'SBBS' and 'Touch and Go' had been, these great singles still didn't prepare us for the grandeur and reflection of 'Parade', from the sublime piano intro to the brief but heartrending sax solo. What on earth was the size of our lives ?

For myself and several friends, Magazine had established themselves in the front rank of late seventies UK groups. They were matched only by The Stranglers (who with 'Black and White' produced their own hypercold 'Secondhand Daylight'), Ultravox ! (whose eponymous first album of 1977 was a Burroughsian analogue of Magazine as filtered through John Foxx' obsessions with Ballard, Warhol and London street decadence) and the rapidly developing Japan (whose 'Obscure Alternatives' revealed a savage, cluttered obliqueness that complemented Devoto's subtler wordplay). With Devoto as their frontman, they were arguably (lyrically speaking) the most literary and sophisticated of all of these great bands.

'Secondhand Daylight' was different, and arguably better than its illustrious predecessor; John Doyle gave the band a pow-wow power akin to that Paul Thompson gave to early Roxy Music. Formula had broadened his soundscapes, allowing McGeogh to express himself more clearly over the sheets of rippling synthesis. Meanwhile, Adamson took the lead often, his bass proving that the instrument could be used as melodically as the guitar, destroying the old arguments that the four-string was mean to ground the sound of a band in a groove. Along with JJ Burnel and Mick Karn, Adamson pioneered a bass revolution in rock that sadly went no further than themselves –maybe all for the better, for it cemented their uniqueness of these different but complimentary players. Adamson was the New Wave equivalent of the great German electric bassist Eberhard Weber (check out his ECM album 'Yellow Fields' for superb instrumentals that any fan of Magazine's instrumental skills would enjoy –amazingly lush keyboards, sax, expressive lead bass and crisp drums).

For some of course, it was too much. The album was too 'musical', it almost sounded like Prog Rock ! What bollocks, I said. Progressive musicians would have been unimpressed by the relative lack of chops Magazine displayed compared to their exalted selves. What magazine had was STYLE, which when added to above average technique, creates the philosophers' stone of rock; Individuality.

'The Thin Air' spoke to me through the environment, just as 'Real Life' did; shortly after 'Secondhand Daylight' was released, I found myself walking down the country lane near my house, handheld cassetteplayer emitting the great instrumental into the silence, complimenting the birds. The April sunshine was bright, the morning cool and clear. The eloquence of the bass, the pulse of the cymbals, the plangent echoes of the synthesizers all climaxed in a sax solo that again said everything. It was the perfect compliment for my surroundings, reminding me of the harsher coldness of the day I bought 'Real Life'.

That was the secret of Magazine; they were a multi-dimensional band in a time when expression was being reigned in again. If one was a Punk, one couldn't do this, wear that, or listen to that. What was liberating became a straightjacket. But with Magazine, you could go 'Back to Nature' if you wanted to. I couldn't go on with punk as it was, I wanted to walk where the power really was, in bands who had something to really say and the skill to say it. And you could still wear your leather jacket with pride if emblazoned with a Magazine badge !

I continued to buy every Magazine release, both singles and albums until their demise, followed by Devoto's solo work and that of Luxuria.

For those of you who remain uninitiated, I advise you to check out the work of 'Play'-era guitarist with Ultravox ! ('Systems of Romance') and John Foxx ('The Garden', 'The Golden Section') as well as the first two Uvox albums ('Ultravox !', 'Ha Ha Ha), which I assure you are unlike the more famous material by the band. For similarly lyrical guitar and keyboard work to 'zine, peppered with bleak aggression, try The Stranglers first three albums. For introspection of an emotional kind that echoes the intellectual wonderings of Devoto, try Japan's 'Quiet Life', a lush smoky landscape of synthesizer, bass, guitar and sax that is more akin to 'Secondhand Daylight'.

Jack Prussia, 2001