In the (long) wait before the concert I drink warm lager by the gallon. Devoto's and former Magazine manager - the near legendary Raf more than hints that Virgin aren't backing Devoto as they might. They're staying - he and his brand new band - at a cheapskate hotel.

Raf says: "We've got to get his (Howard's) face seen again - and seen big." We both watch Top Of The Slops - sadly - hooting with laughter. Hal describes so many chart acts as "Making torpedoes - it's like that - like wartime - it's so frantic out there in chart land."

He seems as miffed as I how to make Howard as big as he ought to be. But being too good the the (sic) charts is like saying his "death was greatly exaggerated". It don't work.

Finally (penultimately ?) a car trip to old Mancunian quay side areas for photographs - Howard sits huddled up to his girlfriend. I don't think I'm breaching the code of personal conduct I'd like to retain with Howard when I say that the two are patently Very Much in Love. They live in Hackney - which they don't seem to like.

Fact one. The first solo Devoto album "Jerky Versions Of The Dream" - is a scorcher in the very best Magazine fashion - wherein there are only degrees of varying excellence. Aka: Is "Jerky" the relative lukewarm outpouring of genius that was Murder Mystery And The Weather? Or. is it another Correct Use Of Soap?

Early bets say it's a mixture of the two and hence very probably the finest LP of this year.

Fact the second. The Hacienda gig suffered - typically for the place unfortunately - awful sound but revealed that - in a bunch of new players apart from old faithful Dave Formula that suggest - pleasingly - the rookie and who all look like expelled college students - he has a band to be reckoned with.

Moments of Magazine-ish excellence were there to be sampled. A girl singer wails and dances away beside Devoto. The guitarist in best Devoto side-kick fashion just the right amount of hair pouring over the eyes; pure venom when he slashes rarely at his guitar is a stand out.

Cut to two chicken kormas:

The GUITARIST was fantastic.

Devoto: "Alan St Clair - - - He used to fix my guitars. And (smiles) Magazine's. I met him cos I went into the shop one day - I don't know - for some little item."

CUT! In many ways the main theme of this article. if there is any - is that the Devoto of '83 is not - as "Jerky" could suggest. suddenly transformed into a clown figure - or even into a "nice guy" figure - coming clean - slapping us journalists on the back for all the hard times he's given us in the past and calling it a day with his old intellectual self.

If anything a night with Devoto proved to me how much he lives up to those old hoary cliches. He is bad tempered when the poor Indian waiter reported that they didn't serve alcohol he rapped out "Oh - I don't believe it "

You got the impression he was about to cut the fella's neck off with a machete.

There was much else to prove that the Old Intellectual Devoto was every bit as good/bad as the cliches would tell you. A true Nietzschean. A desperate romantic. A curry expert. Return.

"Alan just said - If you ever need a guitarist well - I'm available and I'm good too. So - I'd see him from time to time still - and then about a year ago it seemed right to try something It was quite early on - we demoed the songs with a rhythm machine. Alan's in a band called Dive Dive Dive - they're from the Harrow area. It was through him I met the drummer Pat - who's also in that group."

Did you consciously go out looking for new players? "No - it just came together over the last year. from the time that I was looking for a girl singer to sing my stuff. I did three tracks with Barry Adamson at one stage - that was another little project that didn't come to anything though there are some tracks on the new album that started from that."

"But when I came back from Paris and Bernard (Sjazner). Barry had gone hack to Manchester and so acting on my premise that I shouldn't play with more than one ex Magazine person. I contacted Dave Formula. "

From "Jerky Versions 0f The Dream" I get zest. vitality coming through - you're having fun - there are less dark shadows than before.

"Certainly - yes. It comes partly out of not writing so self consciously with myself in mind. You know - some of these new songs I've been writing over the last two years I was writing at home - not really knowing what would become of them. Kind of hoping for this girl singer: that she'd sing them for me!"

Were you unhappy with your own voice and presentation?

"I was - - - just happy with someone else doing the front stuff. It's writing the songs that's the main thing! And recording then - I like-"

Perhaps surprisingly to some - the music is as good as before: There isn't merely lyrical overkill now!

"Of the Magazine albums - there was only "Real Life" that I wrote a substantial part of. Now I would say the form of the new songs - the main themes - are nearly all mine. I've somewhere got a cassette of me sounding like. Noddy music!"

Are you musical?

"I'm musically naive. I do envy virtuosity. I dunno! You work with what you have. I demoed on keyboards or guitar."

I noticed the old songs you've retained from Magazine are the more dramatic numbers --- which seems to fit the new material - the way it's going as well.

"Our basis for doing that was Dave and I keeping the songs we felt were more our songs than some others. "You Never Knew Me" is substantially mine: "Parade" Dave's; "Permafrost" mine; "About The Weather" - who knows with that one! I feel close to it though."

Are you disappointed with the (non) I progress of "Rainy Season"?

"I am - yes. I do know that the record company was quite excited by it. I just presented them with the album it was their choice of release."

Do you think you can survive with Virgin again - without a hot single?

"That remains to be seem. I don't know what would be good for either of us at the moment. it's hard to say. We do have the album coming out though!"

Did you ever consider not returning to music?

"Not really. Because in the last year of Magazine I'd started accumulating all this equipment - which I'd never done before. Before I'd never anything more than a cassette recorder like yours. I'd find it really enjoyable - with Magazine. when I'd the time to work like that I really believe there is something there in an initial idea; just that beginning little fragment of a song. If it caught your ear the first time when it came out then there's something there - you just have to manage to put It in the right place."

"I just found myself putting together little parts of songs that I thought good and which I wanted to see recorded. Definitely. But. I wasn't sure about getting involved at the front again."

"Which brought me to the girl singer. If you think back there were an awful lot of them around a year or two ago! Quite a few of them I liked-"

I can't invisage a girl singing "Permafrost".

"I never look upon that song as a victim song. No. let's just stick to that - shall we"

I think - it's irrelevant somehow going into the details of the album. Let's talk about general points. Your skill with words in music is amazing and out of place slightly right now - the imagery in "Rainy Season" is delicious: you are in a true sense ahead of your time.

Do you ever feel merely that you're fighting a losing battle?

(Coughs - polite hand across mouth.) "Did I ever talk to you before about 'amor fati' - I think that's the right spelling? Love of fate - yes?-It's just four days into the tour - let's put it this way - and already is has been very good. And it's just been that simple thing of people turning up. And that amazes me."

Even dumb heads are starting to realise that for some reason Magazine have still an extremely loyal following -

"Well that's what I'm saying. And t really has surprised me! Also - the set is two thirds new material - one third Magazine material - Of course - it's inevitable the latter gets the best response (tonight was the coolest gig so far) but I was just amazed at how well the new stuff went across - Normally - audiences have difficulty with new material. it really touched me. that's all."

Some people would be astounded to hear you put anything as simply as that - from someone dedicated almost to the paradoxes and parallels in life.

"It is as simple as that."

I was surprised - and I shouldn't have been by how much the love relationship - totally without symbolism and taken in a literal sense - plays a central role in the new songs.

"That's the dream of the title - The romantic dream"

Have those affairs - those love difficulties - stemmed from your private life?

"Somewhat - Quite a few. Quite a lot of them."

Often on "Jerky" you step back from the music and shout something - some aside. some pun - almost as if you're in awe of the music going on. As if you were a child.

"Maybe I am a child. I hope I'm better at it than that implies though - Better at the music than a child would be-"

How much of the music - the parallels in lyrics for example among certain songs - the mannerisms how much of all this is thought-out?

"Oh - quite a lot. I like the other way though. "Out Of Shape With Me" is one of my favourites from the album - and the coming together of that song was very spontaneous"

"I wrote it drunk at seven am in the morning and that is basically what t is about. I did the final vocal so lazily I didn't know t was happening; I thought it was another run through."

"It's a very varied album - there's nothing terribly thematic about it - I hope the title conveys that: Versionszz - plural - of the dream."

I can't see what your central motive is at all - Usually when you interview someone even just once you come away with a vague idea of it - I've talked to you now several times - and still I feel I could say. that you're hiding something. that I don't in any way know you.

(The longest Devotoesque pause ever!) I'm making a living. I'm making a living at something I like doing - in a way like doing - which gives me a lot of time free. I can stop doing it if I want at any time - and just have done - for two years apparently - I value that very much. I like writing and recording. As for the rest of it. I don't know. I just don't know. I have liked doing these concerts very much -.

"But. I almost couldn't care less about being famous. I really couldn't! Ha ha ha! Well - it's true."

What would happen if you'd a Number One hit? Would t change drastically certain things you value?

"It might do. It might well do. I'm still discovering what I want out of it - I can't say it's as important for me now as when I was a teenager - You just can't see records as that important anymore. I don't see anybody doing anything that important any longer. Maybe they're there - but I can't see them"

"It's not like it was then (during punk rock) I'm now just a guy making records - that's all there is to it. I don't think that's important at alt - I mean - I have found out during this tour that some people find it important - Definitely - But - really they are a few people! And even then I can't see it as being important."

Why did Magazine split then?

"It stemmed from when John McGeoch left - the band was never the same after that - And I lost my will to pull it all together - But anyway. I had to stop at that time - I needed to - I've no regrets at all"

Was it tempting to return with a fresh face as t were - as the "nice guy" now willing to unravel those private obsessions? As a regular chap?

"I am."

"It was difficult enough for me - this first album. It took a long time to do. Just to do it for the first time for myself was hard enough! And so - there are certain ways in which I can see - consciously and unconsciously that I have gone for the same sound as before. And I t would like to change that the next time - I've been seriously thinking about dance music - and I've also been seriously thinking about instrumental music"

It'll seem a shame having to drop the powerful instrument you have at the present - and have had in Magazine.

"I'll have to try it - I've got to find a way into those new areas at the moment. I mean - in a sense - I've so far relied on what I'm familiar with - just to apply it differently in the future "I'm sure I can do it with the players I have at the moment " "

How solid is the present group?

"Mm - That you never tell - the reason it's "Howard Devoto" is that I don't want to find myself in a group situation wherein I'm committed to three or four others who will obviously want to record or do live gigs et cetera."

"I've a feeling that from now on I'll only be doing an album once every three or four years if I have the privilege to do so. So there won't be the activity to keep a working unit together perhaps."

Are you lazy?

(Another world-beating Devotoesque pause.)

"I suppose a lot of people would say I am. But I would say I'm very busy. I'm always looking for spare time it seems to me. Yet I've more spare time than most people have."

Is your private life as fragile as the songs would suggest?

"Yes - sometimes it is. Definitely"

Do you think others lead a steadier - less fluctuating existence? "Yes. I surely hope so! Not all of us have the - ah. graph that some of us do. They can't do. The world just wouldn't function."

Cassette turned off - we sit in virtual silence oven the remains of a very drab pair of kormas -

I - trying to wrench more out of this impossible fly of a man - Howard. seemingly in a depression that I'd say could be habitual.

A few remarks remain (he hates the cassette clearly: he hates interviews - that is now certain - his usual choice of exotic locations surely being the compensation - pathetic as it is - for the stony silences he knows will follow in them).

On people: "They have to realise that God is dead. They have to learn to start doing something with themselves now."

On trendsome '83 living: "There are so many books that are read wrongly - so many films seen wrongly so many records heard wrongly."

On Just surviving in '83 "There's so much coming at you. at me - So much information that you almost can't take it all in at once - You find you have to sit outside in the garden - away from it - trying to get back to that - to contemplation maybe. That's what's so hard."

I shake hands in farewell with Howard and his lady - as they prepare to head back to the Dickensian hotel - Anyone as out of shape with rock n' grind as Howard is - is the reason he ought to be centrally in it - unflappable and slightly majestic -

Jerkiness after all - extreme jerkiness is what t is all about. About the whether.

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