Sounds
December 14th, 1985
By Jane Simon
Article scanned
and submitted by Per-Ake Warn
Pete of Play Dead is showing me snapshots from one of their tours.
"This is one of Si, our manager, semi naked in Geneva. He thought it would be a
really good idea to take all his clothes off and dance around with his hat on, singing 'I
love your knob' in French. They didn't even charge us for the second night in this
place..."
Rob, who is Play Dead's singer, makes a strange noise in the back of his throat, like two
chickens fighting in a bucket. He warns me that all of Play Dead have rather
individual laughs - a totally irrelevant piece of information, as it turns out.
For the five years they've been together, Play Dead haven't taken anything very
seriously at all.
"In a way, that's hindered us, by not being business-like in the past. We never
seriously bothered that much about trying to broaden the audience, at one time. It
was more like we'd just go out and have a laugh really, whereas I realise now that's the
wrong way to do it." says Pete.
As for Steve and Wiff, the other half of Play Dead, I'm told that one is quiet and the
other one is obnoxious in a nice sort of way, but not necessarily in that order. In
any case, neither of them turn up for interviews, which is perhaps just as well.
Three bottles of Vin Very Ordinare, even at £1.25 a bottle, will only stretch so far.
They claim to have taken some seriously dodgy karma over the years-record companies going
bust without telling them, tour managers losing their passports.
But until recently, none of this bothered them too much. With each record, they were
happy to try out difficult techniques; slipping into styles as easily as putting on a
false moustache, and watching while contemporaries like New Model Army, The Cult and
Killing Joke, weighed down with Big Bucks, got through.
This is what people say - Got Through, as though rock were like a cavalry charge across
enemy lines and, if there's no sign of them after two albums, don't even bother to send
out a search party. I suppose this is fairly accurate.
Then, like a sign, a large German figure appeared in the shape of Conny Plank.
His credentials were flawless: Can, DAF, Ultravox, Holger Czukay. . . His hands were clean
and his fee was microscopic. That clanging noise you hear is the sound of everything
finally fallilng into place in Play Dead's world.
With typical Conny Plank ferocity, he cut through five years of overgrown jungle to the
beat at the heart of Play Dead's sound.
"What is this track about? Give me a picture of how this song looks to you. Why
do you hear the guitar that way? Get rid of the Linn drum, you don't need it - you
make a good enough noise of your own."
Rob: "He said everything that you imagine producers would say, but never do. And the luck of him choosing to work with us is incredible. You go to his house and he's got buckets of demos from everybody, but he listened to all of them, and only wanted to work with us."
What do you think he liked about Play Dead?
"I think he's just striving to make the ultimate Play Dead album and he wants bands that are willing to experiment, who haven't developed a sound. We were trying to find an identity and he was into everything we were into."
"That's why he doesn't work with Ultravox any more. After 'Rage in Eden' he said, 'Look, you've decided the direction you want to go in, and I don't like that direction.' He turned down U2's 'Unforgettable Fire' as well because he said he couldn't stand to be in a studio with them for more than ten minutes."
Already Mike Read has played their "The Other Side of Heaven{sic}" single at half past seven in the morning and civilsation as we know it has so far not ground to a halt, so this is a promising sign. The mood surrounding the new album, 'Company of Justice' is hugely optimistic.
"It's really uplifting having this big travelling crew who come to all our gigs," says Rob, "When we were having a bit of a depression before we got the new deal sorted out, and we mentioned that we might call it a day, it was shocking how emotional everyone got. There were big blokes - the sort if you see 'em at a gig, you think I'm going to keep out of his way - and they were crying."
Pete: "They were saying, 'What are we gonna do? We're gonna have to get a job. We live for you.' They were giving us their old tour T-shirts, saying 'I've done 51 gigs with this on,' and they wanted us to keep them. That keeps you going, things like that."
What do you get depressed about?
Rob: "The way the British taste has become really gross. The music, the TV, the best sellers - It's a really flat contrived time. Like the new Clash single. How can they sing about kids on the streets when they've been living in Hollywood? It's more honest for Wham! to sing about drinking coctails because they're just selling fantasies, like Star Wars, that's all they're trying to do."
If Wham! are Star Wars, then what are Play Dead?
"I think we could have been seriously involved in the making of 'A Streetcar Named Desire' says Pete, in a very ripped T-shirt sort of voice.
"I thought Marlon was a good boy in that - very explosive, but fallible, and he knew he was fallible. It was really human. It's great to see people showing their weaknesses like that."
Rob: "I think we'd be a Roman Polanski - The Tenant - that's the sort of this Play Dead are about. You never know what's coming around the next corner, but it keeps your interest there. Like all relationships, you love the person, but there's still something more about them that you want to know. They keep an air of mystique. I want people to get intrigued more than anything."
Pete says: "It's fire. If you want a word for us, that's it."
Play Dead have found out the hard way that credibility won't feed you - credibility in the sense that they haven't done anything they've disowned. Pete says he's never done anything against his morals, but that's not saying much. Maybe their name has held them back. Should they go the way of Alex Harvey's Sensational Southern Death Cult And The Spiders From Manchester and abbreviate to accumulate?
"I think you forget why you call yourself something," says Rob. "I remember I just came over and said 'What do you reckon to Play Dead?' and they said 'Yeah, that'll do, cause it didn't matter then.'"
"Well, when we started five years ago," Pete explains, "There didn't used to be all this whatever sort of music beginning with a G"
Goat music.
"Thank you, yes, there didn't used to be any goat music and we were compare to people like UK Decay and Bauhaus, but then, how could we see how it was going to go?
"This kid came up to me the other day and said, 'How do you feel being lumped in with all these other bands?' and I thought he was going to say the big 'G' and I thought, ok F*** off. And he goes, 'Yeah - how does it feel to be the New Hippy Underground?' and I goes 'Whot? Are we this week??!' I always thought we were heavy metal.
"You go see us - we're very metal and very heavy, though we don't wear a pound of pork sausages down our trousers."
