I'm deaf in one ear and I do well while I'm writing this. I think you should know these things - because at this present time I'd be in bed for any other band - bar NONE. Magazine it seems - are keeping me alive and kicking and clicking.the exhaustive keys of a pent-up emotion that must be exorcised - layed to rest.

I've returned from Glasgow and Magazine. I'm anxious and openly worried - and for the moment those two are sitting just above the shoulders of a knawing - road-life-in-a-day fatigue that won't let go.

Now I'm pushing to the back of my brain those leering externals: AIf Garnetts - silly articles by silly pseudo -modern(e) Cure and Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Accepted Sense albums you're being press ganged into clawing - silly articles by silly people - silly cIothes - the usual humdrum nightmares of a gleefully collapsing set of values and attitudes. No love. Burn the books! Play at pretend houses and hope the grown-ups won't send us to bed.

So I think hard of Magazine. Even the name seems so accepted - so normal - rational - gobbled up and spat out again so many times like any other band - except that as sure as the Cockney Rejects are a pile of old empty laundry baskets Magazine aren't like any other band.

Look: we passed over the Lake District in the plane and I squealed in glee to Slattery and we both peered down like little boys while the rest of the plane took no notice and went on with their Financial Times Crossword.

A train of thought; when I saw those powerful - barely snow-peaked brown ridges of mountain from above - I thought of Magazine - I felt they were being ignored and I felt - perversely - part of the conspiracy. You label a band. You push them in a corner. Snap! You've broken them and their spirit and squeezed out the lift force within them until they're functional dead - wood kept afloat by dead attitudes and dead people.

Magazine - the band - are finding themselves at the same time as Magazine - the commodity - is reIatively struggling. Mere cult status for Devoto? Magazine as a safe coffee table band? Neglect? Open- dismissal?

And with a record - a third album as young and fresh as 'The Correct Use Of Soap'? Where has it all gone wrong - I thought half jokingly as the Lake District floated past and I felt - just a little bit- sad.

For such answers we went into a hotel room and played at doing an I'interview' -. We laughed. Magazine minus Devoto - are warm and intelligent individuals who eat curries - have Northern accents and are given to wearing floppy tee-shirts.

Recently - it can be added - they've begun formulative courses in 'Doing Interviews' and - lacking the minutest hint of any of the pompous/cold clinical attitudes you might expect from McGeoch - Formula - DoyIe and Adamson - they tend to go through these newly fangled interviews with combined looks of 'Are we doing all right - is this what you want - is this too frank for an interview?'.

Howard stayed in his room. I was told: 'Its his nervousness - he doesn't want to see you or talk to you he doesn't even want you there when the photographs are taken.

I felt like a tyrant with a big stick and I asked myself whether Howard has a sense of humour ! but - that's at once rubbed out - of course - he has - whether he realises that attitudes and people change or (the one I've almost settled for since) whether Howard Devoto - that esteemed insect - is really a peculiarly shy and - in a meaningful sense - delicate individual. In a I way - the fact that I scarcely even saw him drew me closer to him more and more - I found a perverse kind of understanding in him from I the isolation.

I saw Howard - other than on stage that night - once and once only. I'd come tumbling out of Barrie Adamson's room after the Tandoorified interview and - laughing abstractedly - I came face to face with the fraught and doleful features of the unmistakable insect that stood - frightened - outside his own hotel room with his keys in his I hands.

Bang ! Like a slap in the face. We nodded at each other and he scampered off.

But it mattered little. The route to the meaning of Magazine via Howard can be narrow and inpenetrable - as has been amply shown and that's no discredit to Mr. Devoto. Far better - as I discovered - to let what the rest of the band say wash over you and pick out the essentials that are Magazine - especially considering what they did say was for the most part frank an uneqivocal.

I am surprised all round. Magazine are friendly people - they search themselves for answers. I ask John McGeoch - a robust Scot - if Magazine are disappointed with how far they've come. He thinks long and hard.

"Yes - I am"

Why? -

"Because I think - shit - we're worth more than we've had."

I mention the legendary NME label on Howard at the beginning: "Howard Devoto - The Most Important Man Alive."

John: "Yeah - I mean - live with that Howard gets a lot of stick because he doesn't go out and have a beer. You never see him around he's sort of- like - since I've moved to London I've got to know loads- of people out of bands."

"But Howard's not like that. I think to reflect that throughout the rest of the band - with Howard as leader - maybe explains some of the fact that we haven't fulfilled some of our potential. It lies not with us - it lies with our unwillingness to do certain things people have suggested we do to make us more successful"

John Doyle - the smallest drummer I've ever seen - pipes up; "It boils down to ignoring commerciality. It's hard to say - but a lot of it's that"

John McGeoch: "No - I'd like to sell more records - but I'm not going to do it at the - expense of putting out -. - sixties records or something "

Dave Formula also amicable but speaks in coded metaphors: "We walk into walls if we meet people more than half-way. British radio is one wall - apart from John Peel - God Bless him -"

Is there any hanging back from being successful?

John McGeoch: "I don't know to be honest maybe if we'd go - 'right let's write a single!' it'd be okay. But we don't work like that "

What about the three successive singles you've just released. Was that not geared towards having a hit? (From the look on John's face I realise I'm wrong as soon as I've said that)

"But that would be the last thing we'd do if we wanted a hit"

Dave Formula explains: "At one point we thought of not putting an album out at all. Just release all the songs as singles - one after another. - that was an idea that came up -when we were in a 'think situation' when we were asking - 'well - how should we approach the next state?' -"

Those are the problems and the worries. Magazine are trapped in a set of preconceived attitudes that aren't their own. They are being lumped with The Rest while trying to remain spikey. They are - wishes - almost already sucked in the Orchestral Manoeuvres of this world the grey area where everything is characterised (sic) by virtuosity without values and talent without character. Just like 1975 (and we already have a new Genesis in the esteemed Cure)

It's partly Magazine's own fault and they know it. But with 'The Correct Use Of Soap' they're at least struggling in the net: the album is a magnificent reassessment of Magazine's position - as if they've become aware of the (albeit negligible) aesthetically speaking coffee-table dangers that hung around the magnificent 'Secondhand Daylight' like a bad smell underneath the layers of Dulux Gloss.

That change - that re-evaluation is important and real - and it's stamped throughout the fresh ness and uninhibited elan of the new Magazine know where they are again. But will you realise ? That's the worry.

Among the externals that prompted that change were an extensive American tour and a return to producer Martin Hannett of 'Spiral Scratch' fame.

Concerning the first - I ask if there's been in-the past a division in the band between lyrical content (Devoto) and the music (the rest).

John Doyle: "We're getting a lot better."

Dave: "We do know each other better and better"

He seems disillusioned with the States in 'Philedelphia'.

John McGeoch: "He's got a sense of humour - you know - Howard. When we got back from the States we'd a full six months off and when we eventually got back in the studio after pur various holidays and things - the writing was coming thick and furious. we also agreed we'd write the whole album together - and that everybody should get a credit because everybody was involved. that was a good symptom of the fact that we were just feeling dead excited about the songs that were coming up-"

The album does sound more urgent than the others. John: "That's good - because that was a conscious step we tried to inject into the songs. much has the acquisition of Martin Hannett to do with that?"

Dave: "It's always been talked about - using Martin - but we sort of said to ourselves - 'don't go back' (re 'Spiral Scratch') - but on the evidence of what he was doing and what he felt - it was all lined-up"

John McGeoch: "So that last June we did 'Thank You' and a new version of 'The Light Pours Out Of Me' that was a really mad song"

The same can be said of the-flip of 'Floorboards' a song called 'Twenty Years' which is positively dishevelled by Magazine standards.

Dave: "The thing about Martin is he hasn't got an establishment approach to producing"

John: "I don't think he can even spool a tape up"

Dave: -"Martin gets inspired - he improvises - which is great for us"

The title of 'The Correct Use Of Soap comes originally from the line in 'Twenty years ago I used your soap'

Dave: "We thought that was such a good line when Howard came up with it. We made a party game out of that song - that sort of freedom and release we got early on with Martin developed obviously over the album"

The album title also comes from the -'American phrase 'to soft soap some one' which if nothing else is another example of - Devoto's wry sense of humour.

How do you go about writing songs? Dave:

"You just jump in with a bit of music - jump in with a bit of lyrics"

I reel back at the spontaneity both of what Dave Formula says and - more urgently - the way he says it. This isn't the dour old Magazine we've been conditioned to love or hate. They seem fresh and alive and willing to I adapt to suggestion and criticism.

John McGeoch: "Howard - like a lot of people who write - carries a notebook around with him and he jots down lines in that. And he also - secretly and privately I suppose - tries to assemble lyrics from those ideas. It's a kind of college session when we write. I don't think we've ever started from a set of lyrics -. I should say that Howard writes music as well."

The note of doubt when John talked about Howard Devoto writing lyrics "secretly and privately - I SUPPOSE" is interesting - but division between Howard and the rest of Magazine is a division of mutual understanding - rather than one of barely - contained friction. Howard's eccentricities and aloofness have come to be worked in and accepted - and Magazine don't even have to be defensive about the social and creative split any longer. It's a good working relationship.

John McGeoch - pointedly: "I suspect you're fishing for us to say Howard comes in and slaps down a set of lyrics in front of us - but he doesn't - it doesn't happen that way"

There's a feeling akin to loyalty in Magazine these days. It's chiefly illustrated in John McGeoch's staunch

standing beside the group - despite an offer to join the Banshees on a permanent - basis. He obviously looks upon the Banshees as aprt time hobby - though "I became very comnitted. I want to play with them again - I've recorded the next single with them and some songs on the next album - I've even written one song for them."

Dave and Barrie have also had offers - Dave's reportedly very keen indeed to join other bands for periods. But the feeling is distinctly one of Magazine come first - we'll win through in the end.

That's night's gig fully justified the faith. The I band played a refreshingly revitalised and uninhibited set - starting off with a disco beat version of 'Feed The Enemy' and continuing in similarly revamped - remodelled style even at times coming close to subtle piss-takes of what people once expected of them. 'Permafrost' was a highlight - likewise 'Model Worker' and 'Because You're Frightened'- from the new album.

But - more important by far - was the fact that the audience consisted largely of young kids of 12 - 13 and 14 - the kind of audience which people sceptical of Magazine's future perhaps mightn't expect as Devotlees.

Dave: "We've noticed that this time - after touring for years - that we have quite a young audience"

John: "Maybe it's the venues we've been -playing - we're trying to shift it a little"

Dave: "We sat down - we actually sat down this time and thought about where we're playing. We were unhappy"

with playing the usual big seated venues - it's better to have a riot on your hands than a comfortable 2,000 people.

More and more - the unshackling of the Magazine myths goes on Dave Formula thinks hard about the music he's making: "A lot of people want everybody to be acceptable all the time. I mean - I feel Hitchcock can get really boring - but I like sleeper films - I like it when you understand what's going on and go 'Yeah' I hate it when you can work out everything - I feel as though I've thrown my money away "

I remembered what Dave had said about Hitchcock. In his coded way of talking he's obviously been forming comparisons between Magazine and Hitchcock. That night I went to bed late - turned on the radio like I always do to fall asleep - and - feeling the beginning of the exhaustion that's now covering me creeping up - the very last thing I heard before I fell wearily asleep was a news flash that "the great Hollywood film director - Sir Alfred Hitchcock is dead."

A chill ran through my body. I can still remember it.

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