I prepare to leave when I am summoned to the phone. It's Virgin Records on the line. This is strange as Virgin PR supremo Al Clark publicly estranged me from the company as a direct result of my 'negative' Steve Hillage review.

Savouring the possible venom of this call - I grasp the receiver. Instead a Pleasant-sounding female voice wafts over the line. Would I like to interview Howard Devoto - she says.

Before I can answer - Devoto himself is on the line.

"When?" I ask.

"How about right now?"

I look at my watch. I look at my wrist - punch my rotting tooth in the face with my fist. My blood is up all of a sudden. No - there are no pressing commitments. Yes - Howard I will meet you in the pub over the road from Virgin. An hour? Done.

A sprightly rain-check on the ensuing scenario. Turn on objective antennae. Cue Howard Devoto story - thus far. Real name: Howard Trafford. Devoto is a Latin derived term for "bewitching" High forehead (useful amongst splenetic hacks who find it jolly clever to refer to HD as a 'balding twerp') - feminine glazed eyes - gaunt wax-works cheek bones. Short and frail of physique.

The Devoto moniker started gaining attention due to his involvement with Buzzcocks - after The Sex Pistols and Damned the third 'new order' band whose official debut on July 20 - 1976 - predates them by a hair's breadth from The Clash.

Devoto / Trafford met Pete Shelley at college and the Buzzcocks nucleus was formed. Devoto was inspired by his three Stooges albums - Pete Shelley by Can and Marc Bolan. Seeing The Sex Pistols lit the connection and fired the combustion.

Three compadres located - the Buzzcocks played a dozen gigs with Devoto fronting before the latter left.n a fit of non-commitment trauma - just as the other four were discreetly at odds with their (ex) singer's confusion - all to a man desiring a consummation of commitment and direction.

Only an E.P. - the ground-breaking 'Spiral Scratch' - remains as a testament to the Devoto / Buzzcocks liaison. A month after its recording he was gone - though no animosity existed and Devoto still harboured plans to write lyrics for the band.

Meanwhile the ensuing month found him furtively in the background - in the shadows of clubs and unapproachable. An enigma was being assiduously formulated even though a finite vision and direction had yet to make itself fully apparent.

Then during one session with Shelley - working on ideas for possible Buzzcocks material - the latter played a chord sequence that Devoto found so captivating that his elated response immediately caused the guitarist to give him the motif.

Devoto matched the chords with a lyric based around the phrase "Shot By Both Sides" that he'd been carrying around in his head for over a year - and thus a new phase began. Fuelled additionally by his speedily growing disgust at the sameness of so much 'punk rock' - Devoto speedily drew tip a blue-print. A unit - later named Magazine - congregated within the space of a month - and the green light poured all over the project.

Prior to Magazine's initiation - media interest was cultivated by our own stalwart Devotee - Paul Morley - who had written about yon Howie even during his periods of inactivity wherever the chance occurred.

Magazine didn't waste time. First there was a Virgin record deal - then an apparently startling performance on the hate - lamented So it Goes - and the fuse was lit. 'Devoto - The Man For 78' screamed the headlines in Melody Makers the year was ushered in. Inside was Devoto - eminently quotable with reposte hike "Calling me an intellectual is like calling commonsense witchcraft."

Here it was all too easy to define a man who'd checked out the aesthetics of mischievous enigma building - and was out to seize the time - his time.

And if the aforestated wasn't enough (which it wasn't) - then Devoto and Co backed it up with the epic 'Shot By Both Sides' - followed by the confusing but impressive 'Real Life'.

However there were dissidents in the camp

Our own Charlie Murray - bowled over by the So It Goes spot - went along ready to proclaim Devoto hot stuff - only to be faced with an "arrogant introvert" with whom communication was both taxing and annoyingly obtuse. His subsequent piece was a tad on the vitriolic side - but Murray now recalls Devoto as someone obviously imbued with a striking talent who gave the impression of being utterly hemmed in by his problems and yet glorifying them.

The latter definition is indeed perceptive far more perceptive than the host of fairly vicious backlash pieces that have since been penned. Paramount among these was a review in a rival organ who chivved up a recent Magazine single - spewing out one dumb insult after another and basing the whole thing on the fact that because he couldn't understand what Devoto was declaring in his songs he must therefore be an utter charlatan worthy only of rejection and ridicule.

Magazine's progress - large sections of touring culminating in an excellent second album - 'Secondhand Daylight' - hasn't stopped the wolves either. Of all the reviewers - if appears that only yours truly whipped out the 'thumbs up'.

Sounds sucked into ifs boundless vat of half-backed spleen to accuse Devoto of charlatan tactics "while constantly failing to communicate anything except his superiority over the human race".

Melody Maker - though more reasonable (but of course) - concluded that the record was no

more than a string of unresolved contradictions buoyed up by a band excellently disguising Devoto's insignificance. The latter communicated nothing more than his own "focusing-in on reconciling his intolerable public image with his one personal obsession (i.e. himself) and his distrust of others becoming - in the process - frantically indulgent and solipsistic."

A record for university halls - public school studies and the bedrooms of tortured male adolescents was the verdict. Humour and warmth-were the required balm for future forays.

So Devoto is currently second only to Gen X in the spleen venting rock critics sweepstakes and - although the two units have nothing in common - one perhaps spurious parallel becomes clear. For just as Billy Idol is bucked and spurned for his all too overt prettiness - so Devoto's alien visage creates an instinctive mistrust among those all too wary of being duped by something they can't quite grasp.

Return To The First - Encounter. Part 2

'We must Have Come To A Secret Understanding'

Approx 6.00 pm. Devoto isn't hard to spot in the pub. Leaning against the pin-ball machine with a half-pint - he greets me amenably as I stand brusquely sizing up my prospective interviewee. Dowdily - none descriptly dressed in functional duds - with a grey - creased jacket made from decidedly untrendy boiler suit material hanging on the torso - his face still holds all the alien bizarreness of his photographs - even though no make-up is perceptible. All angles and doe eyes - there's a quiet inscrutability to his manner that - matched with his other-worldly mug - reminds me of the line in Dylan's 'Can You Please Crawl Out Of Your Window' "When he needs a third eye he lust grows one's".

We depart from the pub and head round the corner to a pancake house where - by chance - the rest of Magazine are also sequestered.

Devoto and I sit at the other end of the room and talk. I mention the toothache - which prompts Devoto to slyly refer to his knowing in advance about said disability. Whether this is meant as an example of my compadres oblique wit - or whether this boast at telepathy is an example of the enigma that is Devoto - I don't know - but it puts me on my guard immediately.

So why does he want to do this interview with me - then? I quickly inquire - genuinely interested in a straight reply.

"Well - you were the one who gave us the pat on the back this time (referring to complementary critique of 'Secondhand Daylight') so I thought it only fair."

I find this just a touch condescending - but instead of launching into some feisty dialetic the context of my position causes me to launch into a long rap on music - centering my diatribe on a sequence from William Burrough's Junk wherein the author recounts his cold-turkey withdawal from heroin by stating that the whole debilitating experience awoke in him a passionate love of music that manifested itself in the hero slumped over a local juke box constantly playing his favourite song over and over in order to attain relief! release from his sickness.

Devoto becomes interested in the process of withdawal - which leads me to explain that when addicted to narcotics one is cocooned away from one's true emotional extremities - instead choosing to wrap one's feeling in a numbing - grey tinted cotton-wool midway land.

When weaned from the drug however - those emotions previously supressed come flooding back running the gamut from manic depression to hysterical elation. After weeks of unbalanced gushes emotion one finally reaches a state of natural equilibrium.

The description obviously strikes an emphathetic note with Devoto as he almost enthusiastically reveals that such feelings formed hiss concept of 'Real Life' the first album.

"Yeah - that's it exactly. Uhm yeah (he smiles to himself as said empathy had caused a release of intimacies). See - people always took it (the title) to be me wanting ways - or looking for ways out (real life natch). But I meant it to be taken as the exact opposite of that meaning that there is only at one moment itself this thing that people refer to - or think of - as real life. But everything - its all real-life and they're - we're solidly in the middle of it."

"And that's what that album was all about. It's about the feeling that people consider too be unreal - but they are real - for Gods sake. They're happening in a room - or somewhere - right now while we're talking here. Every incident - every conceit - every scenario - every action."

Suddenly Devoto looks at his watch and realises that he is late for what I gather to be a rehearsal - The -'rest of Magazine have left some 70 minutes before - stopping only for a handshake - and to hand Devoto the bill - who accepts it with a wry fatalistic smirk.

A connection has been made however - and the promise of a full-length uninterrupted session is insecrated. He leaves brusquely - concerned we meet again and do this interview properly. For my part my anger is assauged - and my touch-ache has gone. Even though I get handed with the bill I feel that Devoto and I may have come too the beginning of a secret understanding My job is to make it public.

The Second Encounter Howard Comes Clean.

The third day - it happens to be Easter Sunday - is as drab as hell so the encount even at 9 pm - is an amenable one for me. A car drives me to some godforsaken part of Chelsea/World's End in the belly of wharfland not far from Cheyne Walk. Inside - a vast vacant rehearsal room is stripped of everything except a piano and two or three chairs. Howard Devoto couldn't have picked a better scenario for himself. On the third chair nestling by the cassette player - lay Devoto's sparse travelling accroutements: a shoulder bag - a note book - and a six pack are the entire constituents of this collection. He's dressed in the same ensemble as three days ago - the only difference seems to be an air of fatigue that throughout the interview causes him to contort his face with his hands continually. The following dialogue was not necessarily in the order laid out here but seemed as good as way as any as straddling together the dialogue.

NK It's funny. - ironic if you like - but the of your current single 'TV Baby' ('Rhythm Of Cruelty' from 'Secondhand Daylight' being the a-side) Sounds like your homage to 'Funhouse'.

HD Really? God - I didn't think of that at all. It was the last track we recorded for 'Secondhand Daylight' - our blow-out track if you hike - which we played live with Colin (Thruster - producer/engineer) laying it straight down onto a two track tape.

NK I can't see how you didn't notice the 'Funhouse' influence. I mean - everything. the title is pure Iggy - the sax pure Steve McKay - the dynamic - the manic scream thing:. -

(Devoto simply looks bemused - shaking his head.).

NK Oh well - let's not press the issue (laughter). But starting at the outset - I recall you saying that 'Funhouse' or the three Stooges albums available at that time were the actual inspirational force to form a group to make music of that ilk. Was that quote accurate?

HD Oh yes - very much so. In fact it was literally one inspirational moment that I had with 'Funhouse'. Which activated putting a band together. 'Cos I'd.oh everyone was getting fed up with rock music in that horrible barren mid-'70s period. The pre-Pistols sterility period. And I was starting to listen to jazz - classical music - ethnic music - just anything to get away from rock. And I'd almost well my rock

listening was pared down to the three Stooges albums because they were the only records that made sense to me. Plus it was such a shitty period of my life. I found it so glorious to wallow in the hyper-negativity of that music.

NK Why shitty?

HD Because I was trying to study - making various stabs at subjects that I never pushed through. I was working every evening as well at a mail order place just to support my studies at this - uh - glorified technical college. Actually they did have quite good departments but well. anyway for this one year I was working really hard cos I decided to do this one course - the only one open to me given my limited credentials - by the way. I tried to study. Anyway what with all the fatigue and boredom the Stooges music really made a profound mark on my consciousness. Then suddenly one day it all just clicked because well there were loads of days of 'Aaah - this is s-o-o-o great' - but one day the connection was made and I thought 'Well yeah listen to this - I'm sure I could find a guitarist to play like that and I'd sing'. Soon afterwards met Peter Shelley but we never got anything together until we saw the Pistols providing a living breathing example of 'it'.

NK What common ground did you and Peter have? I mean as a lyricist he's almost the antithesis of you.

HD Yes well Peter is more personal and - um - accessible. When I left Buzzcocks there certainly wasn't any personal animosity. There wasn't any forseeing and there were no clashes - like - say Peter wanting to write more. But then again we weren't forseeing anything when we started off.

NK Do you consider your work with Buzzcocks aesthetically succesful?

HD No - the success well - yeah - but only in the way that success for me was putting a band together - going on stage - getting songs together.

NK Was it a calculated move to heave the band then?.

HD No - no - not at all. I wasn't as committed as they were - that was half the reason. - The other half was that I was getting a bit fed up with the sameness of the music and the fact that there was suddenly loads of bands doing much the same thing. Plus 'Spiral Scratch' wasn't out until I left so no one knew the words. I mean - there was 'Boredom' they could grasp that - and 'Breakdown' ditto - but.

NK My thing about calculation stems from watching the way you unfurled Magazine.

HD Well first let me say that when I left Buzzcocks I had no plans for the future whatsoever - beyond vague plans to continue writing lyrics for them. One thing - though - I've said this in interviews before but it's a key factor to the way I function - is that I thrive on what I'd term 'negative drive'. I get bored very easily and that boredom can act as a catalyst for me to suddenly conceive and execute a new vocation if you like. In fact negative drive was always what I believe the punk ethic was about. Or should have been about; constant change - avoidance of stale conceits - doing the unacceptable. I remember seeing that gig you reviewed - the Buzzcocks and co. at Harlesden in '77 - and being disgusted by the sameness of it all. That sparked an active reaction off in me and 'Shot By Both Sides' was the blueprint if you like.

NK The blueprint?

HD Hmm.well let's say more the starting point - It was written whilst I was helping Peter (Shelley) on some tentative Buzzcocks songs. He played the chord sequence and I was really impressed - said so - and he just gave them to me there and then 'The Light Pours Out Of Me' was created the same way.

NK The lyrics from 'Shot' - did they stem from an autobiographical-situation?

HD Well (pause) ah ha. Acutally the phrase was said to me once. I was told by someone I was arguing with "when the barricades go up you'll be shot by both sides."

NK A fairly malicious remark - Sounds like. A real classic leftist 'We're all comrades' harangue.

HD Well yeah it was stated by someone of that order though I don't recall him subscribing to any political line. But I used to find myself trapped in so many of those typical 'yes - but' arguments. You know - the dogmatic statement and me inevitably - virtually sub-consciously retorting with 'Yes I see your point but etc. 'Anyway that's how that came about and soon enough I began to think 'Well yeah maybe that is my position.'

NK So is fire character in the song almost totally autobiographical?

HD Well most of all I was fascinated with the phrase - the title itself as a slogan. But the central idea of 'Shot' is that of the character as born victim - that blighted thing that certain people seem fated from birth to be. Their life goes that way and it appears they actually want it that way. Plus it was also the idea of the man in the middle - whatever the two sides - and to simply view those two sides as political left and right is just too facile and convenient - too narrow-minded a context. No - you conspire to put yourself in the middle - you're a part - you're born to it. It's got nothing to do-with moderation. You can throw yourself either way and you still feel trapped. (pause) Plus there's the motif of crime in it - saying 'Whatever's laid down in the books I don't want it. I just want to tear it up and that's exactly what I'm going to spend my time doing'.

NK 'The Light Pours Out Of Me' as a title Sounds like a line - albeit an inspired one - you may have picked from one of those 'Jesus Sunbeam' pamphlets.

HD No - I can't honestly remember. I certainly could be that (chuckle). I'll tell you a little secret. Working from books; I used to note things down that hit me but I would often not note down the context of the quote. So I rarely recall who I may have ripped off. Plus I'm astonishingly forgetful. (Pause) Actually I've found a quote. (He locates the page in his notebook and recites. "How much stranger in youth the urge to shine was than the urge to seek by the light me had.") That explains the song better than anything. One thing most people missed out on was the fact that the light - by pouring out - was also draining the character. He's being emptied. It's a very high contrast feeling. Very much black and healthy; you just empty yourself until you're. a black hollow.

NK On to 'Secondhand Daylight' The sound is far more texturally diversified although the lyrics appear wilfully obscure in parts. At a guess though I'd say 'Back To Nature' and 'Permafrost' are the pieces de resistance.

HD And 'Feel The Enemy'. That song just lives with me all the time.

NK So where do you place yourself in the song?

HD Give me the options.

NK Well - are you one of the plane crash spectators? Does your sense of the morbid extend to that?

HD (laughs) Ah - I see what you mean. I'm one of the many. the silent majority - yeah - maybe - I'm one of the ones for whom things are totally arranged.

NK It seems a familiar role for you. The total fatalist.

HD Yeah - I suppose. It's like - O.K. you can go and take this bit of action but whatever you do - like all the other thousands you're condemned to an arbitrary destiny.

NK And the "Enemy" are?

HD Ah - what I'm saying is that it's not a matter of choice. The line is "whatever we do/we have to feed the enemy" and also it's back to the 'Shot By Both Sides' obsession. You're on one side or the other whatever light you see you're in - and you want to feed the enemy. I mean is there really anything beyond good and evil? If you choose to play the good guy - then however you like it - by the role you're pursuing you automatically give a pat on the back to the bad guy.

NK Or the enemy within - the self-destructive part of the psyche - presumably.

HD Yes exactly.

NK What about 'Back To Nature'?

HD Well first of all it was the tentative album title. Straight after 'Real Life' I conceived it as my usual startling little jape. (chuckles) At the same time I went up to a very remote part of Scotland - by a loch. no electricity and so on. And I was not impressed. There I was surrounded by nature in all its supposed glory and I'm not impressed. What else can you show me? Thus the concept. Because a l ot of people do have this idyllic vision of going back to nature - that we've all host some link with our true nature souls which is I think a totally fallacious idea. It's all just a hoax - a blind alley. You've got to have responsibilities.

NK OK then to 'Permafrost'. The delivery Sounds incredibly -vindictive.

HD (Almost shocked) No ! No !

NK It's sung very cold bloodedly for God's sake.

HD Well - to me it's quite warm. I mean - haven't you experienced the infinite irresistibility of the inert body?

NK Franky no. Plus it would be bloody cold. No - listen - two important final questions. The first is exactly what is the deal you have with Virgin Records? I ask because the industry's buzzing with stories of 'Mickey Mouse' deals.

HD God (pause) How discreet should I be ? (Another pause) Now - whose good am I doing this for?

NK Well - if you've got a bad deal it'd be to Virgin's good and if it's lousy then it would be of benefit to young impressionable seducable bands.

HD Well I'll tell you. I negotiated the deal. So what we have is a deal that is not. well - I'm not genned up on the money score so I can't honestly tell you about that though we're OK. I wanted Virgin straight off the bat because it was a small company -at that point I had no manager and I felt the business end would be easier to deal with. I mean - there were calls from CBS and EMI but I just couldn't handle that. But. what we got was a deal with lots of get out clauses. Low on the commitment side because I really had no idea how long wanted to stick it out. There's actually a clause which claims that I can suspend all activity at a moment's notice. I think it's quite a unique deal for them in that respect. And I certainly don't have to make B albums. On our side though - I must say we don't find them bad people at all. They're pretty good to work with.

NK - OK. Concluding shot. How committed are you currently feeling?

HD- I'm casting my eyes this way and that way. I feel fine about the band but I certainly want the next album to be totally different from what's come before. I want to write more precisely than I have done. But I find the same old obsessions are forever pushing their way through.

NK Which are?

HD We-elI - the well documented "confusion" syndrome - the "yes-but" argument syndrome. the negative drive action time syndrome. All of those things plus uncertainty in all directions. And wanting to hold onto that uncertainty.

NK You actually strike me as far more the archetypal Colin Wilson outsider than 'one of the many'. Your ego seems - very strong.

HD I never get to work that out. I do a lot of things that could be considered strong evidence for a positive reply.

NK Well - there's the strong image - the determination - the enigma construction that looked hike you were being wilfully obscure and ponderous. The fact that you're obviously someone with talent out to establish himself in no uncertain terms. You've as good as said you played 'Dylanesque games' in your interviews - certainly at the outset anyway.

HD Oh yeah - that's all true. You're right. I've got one of those egos. But no uncertain terms I'm none too sure about - simply because certainty and I don't exactly thrive together. Actually I think my ego is more perverse. Perversity and I are much closer companions.

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