Shot By Both Sides (P.130)

From 'Uncut' Take 42 (p.72-75) By Paul Morley - this glossy is pure class with free CD every month.

Loved by Radiohead and Mansun - MAGAZINE were the Punk Floyd - bringing musical ambition and intellectual weight to new wave. As for enigmatic leader HOWARD DEVOTO - he was the most important man alive - and now he's back.

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And then - in 1976 - when Howard Devoto was 24 - he wrote and recorded four fast songs with the group Buzzcocks - and they became the EP Spiral Scratch. This EP on the New Hormones label in an edition of 1,000 copies helped spawn an independent music scene in this country that stretches all the way from The Fall to Aphex Twin - from The Normal to Clinic - from Cabaret Voltaire to Moby - from garage (punk) to garage (club). From here to there - from nowhere to everywhere.

Spiral Scratch in its black and whiteness - its grey areas - its flatness and richness - its psyched-up wile - and in the colour it left in the imagination - colours that seemed newly invented - was like ground zero. The four rushed songs sound as if racy ridiculous thoughts about the quirks and crush of existence have come to amplified life in a snapshot moment of mayhemmed-in guitar-drum-bass-voice. The voice of the 24-year-old Devoto is that of a Northern lad who's been Rottenised and Americanised - but ultimately liberated - from his immediate surroundings - and from a mundane future. Now - in the new world - same as the old world but nearer and faster - it sounds ancient and modern - relevant and irrelevant. It cuts into your life fresh as a crazy dream.

And the 24-year-old Devoto promoted also two Sex Pistols concerts in Manchester during 1976. The first show at the Lesser Free Trade Hall - attended by somewhere between 50 and 100 curious souls - featured as a support group a bunch of Devoto's friends from Bolton who played cover versions of songs by Man and Mountain. (The Pistols played covers of songs by The Who and Iggy and the Stooges - and the rest is sociology.) At the second Sex Pistols show at the Lesser Free Trade Hall - in front of more people - Buzzcocks were the support - along with Slaughter and the Dogs - who played covers of Bowie. (Buzzcocks - who had analysed the make up of the Pistols like artists and scientists - played Troggs covers - because the Pistols played Small Faces covers. The rest is philosophy.)

And then - after a dozen or so gigs with Buzzcocks - pissed off with newly minted punk clichés - Devoto left the group - and formed another one. It was a shock at the time.

The new group was called Magazine - and they embraced the idea that punk went beyond the guitar and the anger - and into the very heart of versatile things. The group played cover versions of songs by John Barry - Beefheart and Sly Stone - their guitar player (John McGeoch) could play Marquee Moon note for note - their keyboard player (Dave Formula) knew the A to Z of Zappa - their bassist (Barry Adamson) appreciated the secretive Residents - and they reacted not only to Iggy and punk - but to other things - from Soft Machine and King Crimson - to - oddly enough - Tortoise and Radiohead. And the rest is drama - if not tragedy.

The 24-year-old Devoto looked older than he was - 24 years later - as he sits in a North London pub - he now looks younger than he is. He hasn't changed shape at all - not like most of his contemporaries. He sits with a pint looking like someone who has - in middle age - got a little used to his own intensity - but I could be reading too much into a two-hour meeting. Then again - history is often based on such short encounters.

Once upon a time - I liked to open a Howard Devoto interview by asking - Why are you here? As in - "Why are any of us here?" Some things aren't meant to change - and so I ask once more. But some things are meant to change - and so Howard embarks on an answer that makes only some sense - or too much sense - but marshals the plain facts. In his emphatic - particular way - somewhere between funny little man and wise man - a way that when you are at the centre of attention can come across as quaint - he explains that - although he may be invisible these days - perhaps a rumour edging towards Kevin Ayers and Syd Barrett proportions - he had his heyday - and he doesn't want himself to be wiped out of history. And so he's taking the opportunity given to him by the release of a couple of Virgin compilations of the Magazine work to look back over his shoulder - almost expectantly. "If you stay out of the little slice of limelight that is sometimes bequeathed to you - " he says - somewhere between shyly and wryly - "then your time eventually comes round again."

He doesn't like reminiscing in public. "In private - of course - I love it- I didn't like talking about the past up to a while ago but I realised that if you don't stick up for yourself - you can be written out of the story - and that annoyed me a bit. So now I have tried to put my ha'porth and my oar in when invited to."

When Mute put out their smartly done re-releases of Spiral Scratch and the Buzzcocks bootleg Time's Up earlier this year - Devoto did a few interviews - during which "I would indulge my practised whine about Virgin not doing something similar with the Magazine songs. Now - of course - not so much because of my whine - perhaps just because of a new catalogue manager - they have."

And very nice the compilations are - and very proud Devoto is - in a private sort of way. He's quite surprised by his old young self and the extent of his ambitions and obsessions. He particularly likes the fact that there are photos of the group in the art work - something which never used to happen in the mystery days. Funnily enough - these photos make Magazine look just like a serious five-piece rock group from the late Seventies/early Eighties. The compilations - a single CD - Where The Power Is - and a triple pack - Maybe It's Right To Be Nervous Now - remind you that Magazine were of their time - out of time - ahead of time and obsessed with time. And for a while it seemed they had all the time in the world. And they stand the test of time with only a minor buckle at the knees - a twinge around the ankles.

Back then - back when - Devoto was written about as the most important man alive - or as the most self important man alive. At the time - he switched from Buzzcocks and Magazine - and signed as a big deal to Virgin - and released a song based on a Peter Shelley pngt of a riff - "Shot By Both Sides" - Devoto did seem on the verge of a kind of stardom. This was interesting - because he was as arty as sin - and sulked and scowled as if perpetually burdened by life's big and little burdens - and the Magazine songs had stories to tell that were moody and full of subtle feeling. Their debut album - Real Life - was a series of almost fast songs engorged by self delight and self doubt - alive with dubious self awareness. Magazine music span past punk around a dizzy still self centre. On stage he attacked the idea of performance like a man possessed - even if only by himself - and his alarming nerves. His manner was cryptic and aloof - his sense of humour twisted - his intentions mysterious - and well guarded by an interview technique that was somewhere between absurdly intimidating and slightly mad. He gave vanity a good and bad name.

"Dylan was my model - " he remembers - somewhere between wistful and watchful. "How did he deal with all the attention? How did he play the game? Mr Invulnerable - mystery man. Smarter than you on the lip. I liked the idea of that."

"He couldn't maintain it for more than a couple of years. I certainly couldn't."

For a while - somewhere between a week and a year in 1978 - it was all there for the taking. As "Shot" rang around the post-punk world - this decisive account of indecision that was a damn near existential compression of punk rage and pop delirium - it seemed as if Devoto was to fulfil some fantasy destiny and became the king of the world. Or at least - the shadow king of a shadow world. Rotten - the roar and the reason - and Dylan - the mental sleight of hand - combined in one - with a tart dash of Iggy and - absurdly - a chip off the old bleak block of Beckett. Imagine what Yorke has become - but with more balls - more unhinged poetry - saucier spirit.

As "Shot" shot chartward - Magazine were offered Top Of The Pops. They turned it down. They had their pride. The second week - the song in the Top 40 - they reluctantly agreed. There was a part of the pride of Devoto that also fancied being crowned a part of rock royalty. A part of Devoto that thought he could cope - with the near real life of the near real rock world. Up to then - there had been all this forward motion: suddenly - the motion stopped - because Howard stopped. In fact - he stopped on Top Of The Pops. He decided to express his indifference with the processes involved with selling yourself - not your art - which he was sure about - but your self - by presenting one of the most compelling songs of the rock age standing completely still. Other members got into the spirit of it all. But Devoto br()ed himself out. In full view of an entire nation - a nation that seemed on the verge of being gripped by his manias and paranoias - he disappeared.

The next week - "Shot" dropped down the charts. The momentum of Magazine - and their unlikely but charismatic singer - came to spellbinding nowt. It would be Jim Kerr of the Simple Minds - who once supported Magazine - and who nicked whole portions of Devoto's presentation - who went on to slide through international success and amass a fortune. (The rest is business.) And - to Devoto's barely disguised disgust - Kerr even called an album Real Life.

"Yes - I can find it in my heart to be quite irked by the success of others from time to time - " he admits - somewhere between lightly amused and slightly bitter. "But it doesn't eat me up. If by my age you haven't learned a few things about the nature of things then you're in trouble."

And then Magazine made some more records. Their second album - Secondhand Daylight - came extravagantly wrapped in a non-punk non-new wave non-minimal over glossy gatefold sleeve - and that combined with an instrumental track and keyboard-heavy production led to a suspicious response.

Were they more Pink Floyd than punk? Punk Floyd - perhaps. The LP seemed at the time to be in a very diffrent kitchen in a completely different house from Spiral Scratch - but perhaps it wasn't. It was - after all - in the same house - but up in the well-decorated bedroom - where Devoto lay on the bed spending a few sleepless nights. If Devoto - as one chronicler claimed - is the Orson Welles of punk - then this is his Magnificent Ambersons.

And then The Correct Use Of Soap appeared to correct certain things even if they didn't need correcting. It is one of the great beautifully mental albums of what I believe is all time. "A Song From Under The Floorboards" - the only known example of sensually splicing a Dostoievski short story into an artpop song - produced with casual concentration by Martin Hannett - suggested that while the popular glories promised by "Shot By Both Sides" were another thing - there was a kind of future for the wound down enigma - perhaps even a princely one. But the group broke down - due to all the old differences - and mundane real life.

Devoto - as perverse as ever - split the group just as the album was about to be released. Magazine were merely ticking over. It all seemed so ordinary. Devoto wanted none of that. "Give me everything - " he once sang with his usual radiant sensitivity - and anything less was less than everything.

And then there were the Eighties - because there is no getting away from them. "Oh - I hated them. They were horrible - " he says - somewhere between amazed and appalled. Fashions changed. New heroes arose. Devoto's enigma dwindled. He tried a job at a book publishers. There was a humbling year on the dole. He was forced to return to music : all he had - it seemed. His efforts - solo - or with new group Luxuria - started to look more and more dislocated and poignant.

By the end of the decade the man who would be king above all real life - the man whose words could be as charged as Dylan's - as stinging as Malkmus' - the man who handed on the baton to any number of pretenders from Kerr to Yorke - had given up. The rest is influence - although Devoto says - somewhere between modestly and immodestly - that he has not heard of any other group who sound much like Magazine.

And then he remembers - somewhere between preciously and pragmatically- "The second Luxuria album I thought was bloody good. But no one else did. I thought - 'Hang on. Forget it. I've got it all wrong.' In the end - I seemed destined for all the hells and ignominies and anonymities that I've always thought were my due - with this little detour along the way. But by then I know how to deal with the rejection on a practical level. I knew that - in the real life - there was an alternative. I got a job." As he once sang - he came from nowhere - and he was going straight back there.

And for the past few years - Devoto has worked in a photographic agency - organising their systems. "It is only since I've done the job that I have a practical view of the future - and therefore a degree of- well- happiness. It is such a relief not having to rely for my survival on my creativity or lack of it. There is the thing about how - after what I was and what I might have been - I end up doing a job that can be seen as pretty- boring. Well - I could never have worked in the music business. My pride would never have let me. Whatever I feel about not being involved in all that is far outweighed by the relief of not having to perform all the duties you're expected to if you want attention."

And Momus wrote a song suggesting Devoto was truly the most important man in the world.

"Bless him - " Devoto says - somewhere between sane and insane.

And then he wrote a bit with Mansun - who - he says - had a couple of Magazine albums in their collection. Why them?

And then he started writing his memoirs. "My scribblings - " he calls them. He is going to speak them and intends to donate them to the National Sound Archive when he is done. He's not sure they'll ever be published as a book. After four years of work - he's just reached the end of part one : 1975 - when he leaves Bolton for Manchester - and a future that is what it was.

And then he was born in Cleethorpes.

And then he started masturbating - the year of the summer of love.

The light started to pour out of him. And the rest is anthropology - or anthology - or biology. Or because of what happened when Devoto was 24 and 25 - and 26 - and 27 - history.

And then in the year 2,000 he started writing songs with Peter Shelley again - just for the heaven of it. A reunion - I say - somewhere between ugh! and wow!

"It's good to do this - but by the end of the year - after all this coming out for a bit of a chat - and working a bit with Peter - I imagine I'll slip away again. That will be it for me for quite a while. My work - my relationship - my scribblings take up 120 per cent of my time - and there's just nothing left for any kind of comeback." (The rest is silence! - Devoto not so much a Welles - or an Icarus - but a Rimbaud - or a Pynchon.)

And then he was at a sort of peace.

And then at 48 - Devoto said - "I can confirm that I will not be giving up the day job under any circumstances."

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The compilation Where The Power Is and box set Maybe It's Right To Be Nervous Now are available on Virgin.

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