| Rays And Hail | Unofficial website of Magazine et al.

Sleeve notes by Mick Wall

Always hot - forever cold. Boldly original - queenly and kitsch. Strange and yet enticingly familiar - Magazine was a band that revelled in its own self-inflicted contradictions. It's what made them great - in the beginning. And finally - it's what killed them off - never to return - after just four mostly excellent - sometimes infuriating - always tantalizingly unpredictable albums.

Arriving at a time in Britain - 1977 - when punk was reaching its giddy - snot-nosed apotheosis - and anything in the least bit 'rock' was regarded as vile and embarrassingly cliched - Magazine managed to straddle the hastily erected hustings of punk - thou shalt not use keyboards - thou shalt not exult in heavy guitar Sounds - thou shalt not write arty or pretentious lyrics - while retaining a punk credibility that went deep into the very roots of what had quickly butterflied into the New Wave.

In Britain - punk was a pop phenomena that originally revolved around the then vibrant London pub rock scene - the Sex Pistols - the Stranglers - the Damned - the Clash - those were the names that breathed life into the phrase 'punk rock'. By 1977 - however - in the wake of underground hit singles like 'Anarchy In The UK' and 'White Riot' - and heavily publicized - if mostly aborted attempts by the Sex Pistols to mount a full-scale - nationwide tour - some important new bands were starting to emerge from outside London - mostly in little pockets of mid-Seventies disillusion like Manchester - Liverpool - Belfast and Glasgow.

The first of these provincial punks to make an impact was a band called the Buzzcocks - who first made a splash when they supported the Sex Pistols at the Lesser Free Trade Hall - in their hometown of Manchester - in July 1976.

Formed initially to perform the songs of guitarist Peter Shelley and singer Howard Devoto - this original incarnation of the Buzzcocks released only one recording together - a self-financed - independently produced EP called 'Spiral Scratch' - which contained - next to Richard Hell's 'Blank Generation' - one of the quintessential punk classic that would help define the era - 'Boredom'. Devoto announced his 'retirement' from the group just as the record was released - at the start of 1977.

At the time - it was regarded as a startling move - here was the first punk band outside of the London-New York axis to become well-known enough to mention in the same not breath as proto punks like - say - the Ramones - and just as everybody's learning how to spell his name - the singer ups and commits career-suicide - without so much as even a terse statement to the press.

Not that it stopped them writing about Devoto - even if they had trouble understanding the whys and the what-the-hells. And it turned the spindly - beady-eyed singer into an enigma overnight. Breaths were suitably bated in readiness for his next move. They wouldn't have to wait long-

Described at the time of its release by Rolling Stone as 'the best rock 'n roll record of 1978 - punk or otherwise' - 'Shit By Both Sides' - the first Magazine single - took up where the first Buzzcocks EP had left off. Indeed - the song was a hangover from Devoto's last days in the Buzzcocks (Peter Shelley gets a co-writing credit for the music) - nervy little guitar lines humming like an ugly wake-up call - far too hasty drums - and Devoto's paranoid sniffling: 'I wormed my way into the heart of the crowd / I was shocked to find what was allowed-' It was his first real hit and already he was singing his own epitaph.

But that was Howard Devoto. Quoted in his first major interview with a national music paper - the now defunct Sounds - dated November 5 - 1977 - Devoto made his position - as he saw it then - plain: 'I'm not interested in being 'beyond' most people: i.e. over their heads. I get vertigo just like the rest. Sometimes it's better just to get under people's feet.'

The other members of the original Magazine were John MeGeoch (guitar) - Barry Adamson (bass) - Bob Dickinson (piano and 'possibly some violin' - soon to be replaced by Dave Formula) - and Martin Jackson (drums - later replaced by John Doyle). But the star of the show was indisputably Howard Devoto.

It was around this time that Virgin Records first heard a demo-tape of the band. The tape contained just three tracks - two of them destined later to become hits - the aforementioned 'Shot By Both Sides' - which hovered like an angry bee over the UK Top 10 in March 1978 - 'The Light Pours Out Of Me' - which followed 'Shot-' into the UK charts the same year - and 'Suddenly We Are Eating Sandwiches' - which-er-didn't.

Their first album - 'Real Life' - also released in 1978 - was - as advertised - a jumble-punk confection - heavy on the garagey guitar - piercing on the bitter - sharp as ice vocals - and it - too - landed feet-first into the UK Top 10.

Hugely acclaimed by the critics - Devoto adored the success - but hated the attention delighted at his fevered messages being read so avidly - he fiercely rejected the idea that he might be some sort of spokesperson for a generation of pale - young persons.

'I never pretended to be anything so earnest - ' he intoned solemnly in interviews. On the contrary - Devoto declared his dilettantism to be 'an essential part of my work.'

'Secondhand Daylight' - the second Magazine album - released in 1979 - had a lot to live up to. The arrival of Dave Formula - who wrote the music to Devoto's increasingly bizarre words on two of the album's tracks - 'Feed The Enemy' and 'Back To Nature' - ensured that this would be a much more swish - keyboards-oriented affair than its thrashy predecessor. Inevitably - it fell some way short of expectations - particularly those of the critics and the hard core punk section of their fans - though 'Permafrost' - the single from the album - remains a delight.

Magazine's next album - however - 'The Correct Use Of Soap' - released in 1980 - was a huge return to form. For the first time - Magazine really sounded like a band - as opposed to somebody's Big Idea. At last they had an integrated sound: something you could point to and actually say that could only be one band. Tracks like 'Because You're Frightened' were as aggressive and full of brittle punk swagger as anything on 'Real Life'. While others - like 'You Never Knew Me' - featured a delightful keyboard melody laced like brandy in honey-funk bass and juddering percussion.

Elsewhere there was a brilliantly dome-headed version of Sly & the Family Stone's 'Thank You (Faletinme Be Mice Elf Again)' - destined to become another hit. And of course '-Soap' also contained one of the most famous Magazine tracks ever - the frankly autobiographical Devoto magnum-opus - 'A Song From Under The Floorboards'.

Magazine toured the world that year-Britain - the U.S. - Europe - New Zealand and Australia- during which time they played to sell-out crowds but lost John McGeoch (to Siouxsie & The Banshees). They temporarily replaced him with ex-Ultravox man Robin Simon for the recording of 'Play' (rush-released into Christmas stockings in Dec 1980) - the live document of what was to be - though nobody except Devoto could have suspected then - their last big world tour.

Ben Mandelson joined the band on guitar for the fourth Magazine album - 'Magic - Murder And The Weather' - released in July 1981. Three weeks before its release - however - for the second time in his short-lived career - Howard Devoto quit - briefly commenting that 'the timing of my decision might seem odd - what with the new album just coming out - but I feel that a change for me has been long overdue - ' before vanishing into dust.

As with four years before - the timing was what startled everybody. Devoto was at the height of his fame with Magazine and their fourth and final album together certainly betrayed no signs of the creeping ennui that had apparently overcome its voice - the single from the album - 'About The Weather' - was probably their best and biggest hit yet.

'I could've held off for another six months but I didn't want to tour to promote the album - ' Devoto later attempted an explanation. 'I realised that even if after touring and everything the album was hugely successful I'd still want to leave. So what was the point of waiting?

'As to where I go from here - it's too early to be specific. I can only say that I won't be forming another group - though I intend to continue writing and recording. Whether this will be in the traditional 'going solo' vein - or something altogether more anonymous - I haven't yet quite decided.'

He still hasn't. Perhaps the key to the Howard Devoto enigma lies in a quote that comes from an April 1981 issue of the NME - taken from an interview he gave a month before he secretly told the rest of Magazine that he was breaking up the band.

'Everything begins with anxiety - ' Devoto declared. 'In a way - it's the very meaning of being human - that you live in some degree of fear. Probably - it all comes down to a fear of death. I can't fail to believe that most people find the world weird. But they can't find a way to think about it - or they'd feel stupid talking about it. It scares them and they just push it out of their lives. People who are creative have found a way of releasing some of that and not feeling bad about it. Feeling positively about it - maybe.'

One listen to ('Rays & Hail') and you will realise just how positively Howard Devoto really meant those words.

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