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CHAIRMEN OF THE ALL ABOARD - Shack, Les Rhythmes Digitales, Campag Velocet, and Coldplay [NME (January 15th, 2000)]

CHAIRMEN OF THE ALL ABOARD

Wa-hey! The NME Premier Tour is coming – which means four bands, one tourbus and mucho mayhem. So join the head honchos of Shack, Les Rythmes Digitales, Campag Velocet and Coldplay for a bonding session as they prepare to take on the UK together.

Text: April Long Photography: Roger Sargent

“THEY’RE ALL GREAT LADS. THEY’RE ALL VERY TALENTED LADS.” - MICK HEAD, LUV’D UP ALREADY

A well-spoken novice with a predilection for chocolate. A jet-setter with an unnatural interest in the fashions of the 1980s. A medieval-haircut-sporting iconoclast. A somewhat pished national treasure. Against all odds, these fellows have something in common: they’re all poised to hit the road on the NME Premier Tour. Accordingly, we’ve brought them together in a north London photo studio so that they can meet one another, have a few drinks, tell us some stories and, perhaps, set the scene for their impending musical expedition. So far, things aren’t going terribly well.

In one corner, we have Chris Martin, the extremely polite, deferential vocalist for Coldplay, whose daunting task it will be to open up the Premier stage every night. Coldplay’s line is melodic and sincere, and although chances are good that they will melt any hearts their fragile, finely wrought songs come into contact with, Chris isn’t overconfident. “I don’t imagine there will be anyone in the venues early enough to see us. But that’s OK, we know our place. I’m expecting just to keep quiet and let the other bands do their stuff.” He smiles, frequently and shyly. This is Coldplay’s first major tour.

Across the room, Jacques Lu Cont, Les Rythmes Digitales’ electronic maestro with the two-tone hair, is settling into the studio’s worn leather couch. Jacques is relentlessly bright-eyed, easily amiable, and possibly the luckiest man alive. “I’ve never had to do a toilet tour. Things had already started happening in my recording career, which meant we could go straight on to a tourbus rather than a Transit van. I’ve kind of escaped all of the shit. I’m also quite lucky in that doing DJ touring you get all that’s great about touring – seeing the Seven Wonders Of The World, hanging out on beaches, etc – with none of the other crap. It’s great! We’ve been to Mount Fuji in Japan, Mount Rushmore in America, Australia, which have all been amazing – I’ve been buzzing for the last year of my life.”

Pete Voss swaggers in an hour late, looking majestically dangerous in an outsize sheared sheepskin coat. Next to Chris and Jacques he appears rough, volatile and a little bit suspicious. And suitably so, for it is Campag Velocet – always unpredictable, forever riding some dark wayward groove – who will inject the skunk rawk attitude into the Premier proceedings. But first, Pete wants to get one thing straight. He hates touring. Passionately. “I think touring’s shit,” he spits. “I just want to do the gigs, I don’t want to sit in the van. I detest travelling. If I had my choice I wouldn’t even go to foreign countries, I only do it because they pay me. I can’t be bothered with it. It’s all like people speaking in weird accents and you have to ask them what they said about three times before you can understand what they’ve said. Anyway, I know exactly what every place is like already. They’ve all got McDonalds’ and they’ve all got Boots the chemist. There’s just no point leaving England, really.”

When Michael Head slopes through the studio door even later than Pete, he’s been celebrating since mid-afternoon, but can’t seem to remember what it was he was celebrating in the first place. As lead singer in the legendarily chemically addled Shack, he is the elder statesman on this tour, and we trust that he will be the one to regale us with tales of depravity and heroic tour mayhem. Michael has a mystic’s eyes, and speaks in careful, slow, Liverpudlian tones. He always sounds as if he’s either about to divulge the greatest secret ever told, or utter something profoundly filthy. Usually, he just says “nice one” a lot, and nicks the NME’s beers.

So here they all are. Certainly, no-one will be able to suggest that this year’s Premier lineup isn’t diverse. Now we just have to get them to gel. Problem is, that’s not happening. Chris has headphones on, Jacques is playing table tennis, Pete is making a drink and Michael is deep in debate with the NME photographer. See, the band members were originally meant to be wearing special T-shirts in the photos for this feature. Like a team, only not exactly. Just a unifying visual signature, a gesture of solidarity. Michael has decided that he doesn’t want to change into the T-shirt; he wants to wear his coat instead. He says it’s for “the benefit of civilization”.

Once Pete gets wind of what’s going on, he agrees with Michael. He doesn’t want to wear the shirts either, because they remind him of football shirts, and he “fucking hates football”. His shirt said ‘I Hate Football’, by the way. At any rate, a decision is quickly reached – they will all be photographed in their coats. Which is fine, except for one thing. “I can’t be photographed wearing this coat!” Chris exclaims, worriedly, “It’s my brother’s and if he finds out I’ve been wearing it, he’ll kill me!” He takes the chance.

By the end of the photo session, the four renegades have bonded. Michael is patting Jacques on the shoulder and nodding to Chris, “He’s a great lad. I like him.” He grins broadly at NME. “They’re all great lads. They’re all very talented lads.”

When they settle down to talk about the tour, all agree that they are looking forward to it, and even though no-one knows exactly what to expect, they imagine they’ll all get on fairly well. Chris’ excitement is the most transparent: “We’ve probably only been on tour for two weeks total, ever. And we’ll be playing the Astoria, which is amazing. When we first came to London I saw a band there and I pledged that I’d play there someday. And now we are!”

With this nascent camaraderie, surely there will be all manner of pixilated late-night hi-jinks to look forward to. One can easily imagine what might happen when four bands unite under a common cause, careering from venue to venue with nothing on their minds other than having a good time. However, none of these fellows will admit to having any sort of penchant for bad behaviour. “You know the sort of debauchery that goes on on tour,” Chris shrugs sheepishly. “You’re up till 6am playing drafts and chess. Having a crazy time.” He laughs, and seems to actually mean it. “We’re really not that rock’n’roll a band. Although on our last tour we did have big minibar bills because we ate all the chocolate. I wish we could say, ‘Yeah, we stole four horses from a farmer and threw them out of a window,’ but we didn’t. We’re quite well-behaved.”

“You’re forever hearing these touring stories,” Jacques muses, “like urban legends. There’s one about this rock band called Skin or something, and they were so horrible to their support band that every night on the tour the support band used to go into their dressing room while they were onstage and wank on their sandwiches.”

Everyone looks vaguely nervous.

“We’ve never really done anything out-of-control,” he promises. “Well, there have been a couple of things… but I can’t tell you about them now.” His eyes glint mischievously. “I can tell you one thing that happened, but it isn’t that bad. We played at this Belgian festival, and our single ‘Sometimes’ with Nik Kershaw singing had for some reason really gone off in Belgium. So all day everyone was like, ‘You are going to play ‘Sometimes’,’ and we were like, ‘No we’re not actually,’ and they’re all like, ‘Are you mad?’ And we’re like, ‘Nik isn’t with us, we can’t do it!’ So anyway, we did the gig and they wanted an encore and they were all chanting ‘Sometimes’. I was like, ‘What the fuck am I going to do?’ Finally I just gave my tour manager a pair of aviators and a Wall Of Sound T-shirt and made him go out and pretend to be Nik Kershaw. So he went on and mimed it, and they had these huge video screens at the side of the stage – but they fell for it! I’ve been meaning to tell Nik about it for ages. I hope he’s not offended.”

“I nearly got into a bit of trouble recently,” Pete admits. “It was quite funny, really. We were in this bar in France, and on one of the tables there was this cage that had this big bronze dog on it – some big Great Dane cast or something. I was quite drunk and I decided to check out my skill with the old tablecloth trick where you whip out the tablecloth and whatever’s sitting on it stays in place. So I whipped out the tablecloth and obviously the big metal dog didn’t stay there, it crashed to the floor and sort of bounced and its head came off and rolled into the crowd. I just fell to my knees and crawled up under the bar and hid. There were two girls there who were quite cool because they pretended they didn’t see me. But later on, I saw a bloke drilling holes through the table and then wiring the dog’s feet to it.” His forehead creases, “I’m probably going to get billed five grand now for telling you that story.”

These anecdotes are no doubt tame in the extreme compared to the vicissitudes of experience Shack have borne witness to. Indeed, their documented tales of overcoming the follies of the rock’n’roll lifestyle are nearly as heartwarming as their music. Still, tonight, Michael denies ever having broken any rules. “We’re good lads, really,” he whispers, then leans back and closes his eyes. After some cajoling, he relates a vague memory of once having been so discombobulated he emptied his bladder on the floor of an LA bar, unaware that he was in the middle of a crowded room rather than the toilet. “Someone had given me acid and I didn’t think it was acid. Simple as that. I got kicked out.”

Appropriately, the night he remembers as both the best and worst touring experience of his life also had a little to do with misidentified narcotics. “Best time I’ve ever had was playing with Love. Everything that went on, whether it was good or bad, right or wrong, was fucking incredible. Basically, I met this dude Arthur Lee from LA, and he had heard about us in Liverpool, who could play his music. Me and my brother were thinking, this fellow who we really believed in when we were growing up, who is like our hero, is coming over to England and wants us to back him! I needed to be smacked across the face a couple of times. I just couldn’t believe it. It was such an honour to be on the same stage as him. We only did three gigs: one in Paris, one in London, one in Liverpool. Paris and London were fantastic, but when we got to Liverpool, I thought, ‘Jesus Christ’. This was before our band had done anything, we were like in no-man’s-land, and us being onstage with Love in our hometown was just overwhelming. So I thought, I’ll have a little E. But this girl in Liverpool sold me an E that had a trip in it. Bad move. There I was onstage with my hero, tripping, completely off my face. Fortunately, I managed to keep it together.” He winks, leans back on the couch and closes his eyes again.

Chris struggles to come up with a treacherous experience to rival Michael’s. “Well,” he begins, hopefully, “we’ve got this piano that we can’t get on certain stages so we can’t play some of our songs. It’s this big old thing from the 1970s. And people keep trying to convince us to get one of those naff digital piano things, but we won’t. So that’s been a bad thing. That, and sweating a lot onstage. I remember once, when we played in Manchester, by mistake I forgot to take my jumpers off. So I was wearing like two jumpers and five T-shirts and halfway through the gig it was like wearing a wetsuit. It was really horrible. No-one could possibly get into it, because we looked like we had just stepped out of a gym.” Bless.

“We’ve had a few bad experiences,” concedes Jacques, surprisingly. “Like a drunk, coked-up tour manager trying to drive us home on a 17-hour journey from Nuremberg. But even though that was bad, it started off well because we actually played in Nuremberg on the Formula One circuit. So I got to drive the tourbus around the Formula One circuit!” Jacques’ enthusiasm begins to fade into contemplation: “You take the rough with the smooth, I guess. There was even one weekend when we were supposed to be doing three gigs, in Paris, Copenhagen and Paris, and our equipment kept getting flown to the wrong city. By the time it reached Creamfields, it was all smashed up. But I figure, anything bad that ever happens, you have to look at as an education. It’ll probably only ever happen once.” He smiles winningly, the picture of optimism. “I’m never worried about anything, really. Everything’s practically perfect. I’ve got a band together who I really love, and everybody here is cool.” He gestures to his coat-wearing Premier partners-in-crime, “This is going to be great!”

Pete nods: “I just need to find ways of not being conscious while travelling. That’s the big one. Finding ways around the absolute utter boredom and despair of travelling.” He brightens, “But I am looking forward to doing the gigs and getting out of it afterwards.”

“What I love about all of this,” adds Michael in a philosophical whisper, “is that if the band are not getting on together before we go onstage – and being four fellows, there’s enough situations where that happens, it’s like a relationship – when we actually get out there, everything is beautiful. The main thing about getting a good band together is that they may all be very different individuals, but you know that when the chips are down they’ll all pull through.”

The same thing may be said about putting together a good tour. Four very different bands hitting the road together can result in all sorts of unpredictable, harrowing and extraordinary incidents of unity and disarray. By the end of this evening’s get-together, there appears to be the sort of alchemy between these four characters to suggest the tour will be one hell of a ride. There are, at least, a few things we can be sure of. There will be chocolate. There will be tunes. There will be no football. And there will be surprises. Rock’n’roll has the power to bring individuals together like nothing else. Half the fun is just waiting to see what happens next.

Name: Chris Martin Band: Coldplay Age: 22 Marital Status: “Nothing.” Best Feature: “Fingernails… I don’t know. I always get airbrushed.” Biggest Influence On Career: “This music teacher called Mr Tanner who I had when I was 11, because he let us play keyboards. He was the first music teacher I ever had who made it seem like you didn’t have to play classical music to be accepted. And he got our first ever band together.” Advice For Young Pros: “Always carry a pair of pliers.” Favourite Car Music: “I don’t have a car. I was in a taxi today and he was listening to Radio 2, but that wasn’t my choice. There are certain things that are particularly good when you’re in a car, though, like the Allman Brothers Band. Likes: “The Flaming Lips. Neil Young. The Beatles. Recording. Having longer hair.” Dislikes: “Holes in the bottom of my shoes.” Favourite Pre-gig Meal: “I tend not to eat anything except Lockets. I get quite nervous before gigs and can’t eat a thing. Plus you’ve got to look slim for the ladies.” If Not A Musician, What Would You Be? “A singing butcher. Also, I’m also quite good at table tennis.” Favourite Telly Programme: “As a band, collectively, we enjoy Neighbours and Fifteen-To-One. And anything with Chris Morris in it.” Worst Telly Programme: “I don’t like the Bravo channel. Or that DJ bloke from America, Howard Stern.”

Name: Pete Voss Band: Campag Velocet Age: 30 Marital Status: “I’ve got a nice girlfriend.” Best Feature: “The one Ted Kessler wrote.” Biggest Influence On Career: “My management.” Advice For Young Pros: “Don’t get pushed around. Don’t let anyone shave the edges off your music or ruin your image, because you will have people in every single corner trying to tell you what to do, but you just have to remain sound.” Favourite Car Music: “New York Dolls.” Likes: “Sleep.” Dislikes: “Getting up in the morning.” Favourite Pre-gig Meal: “Steak and chips.” If Not A Musician, What Would You Be? “A professional layabout, I would think.” Favourite Telly Programme: “Any documentary.” Worst Telly Programme: “I absolutely cannot stand Jerry Springer.”

Name: Jacques Lu Cont Band: Les Rythmes Digitales Age: 22 Marital Status: “Undergoing intense testing.” Best Feature: “My biceps.” Biggest Influence On Career: “Jean Michel Jarre. Because his was the only non-classical music that my parents would allow me to listen to when I was growing up.” Advice For Young Pros: “Don’t trust anyone.” Favourite Car Music: “‘Parallel Lines’ by Blondie.” Likes: “Kindness, honesty, a good pop star, painting and decorating.” Dislikes: “Potatoes and liars.” Favourite Pre-gig Meal: “Grilled chicken salad.” If Not A Musician, What Would You Be? “Computer programmer. It’s the only thing I’ve ever done other than music. So I’ve put the two together, to do electronic music.” Favourite Telly Programme: “Only Fools And Horses.” Worst Telly Programme: “ER. I’ve just never understood it.”

Name: Michael Head Band: Shack Age: 15 [actual age back then: 39] Marital Status: “Single.” Best Feature: “Lips.” Biggest Influence On Career: “Arthur Lee. Because when I was looking for something to do in the early-’80s, there were hundreds of bands in the city where I was living but they didn’t inspire me. He was a total, massive breath of fresh air. I lived in Liverpool and this dude lived in LA, and he was writing about Elizabethan Englishness and I could understand exactly what he was fucking talking about.” Advice For Young Pros: “If you’re going to go forward, and you’re not going to change the world or give it a kick up the arse, you’ve got to believe in what you’re doing. If you believe in yourself, you’re alright no matter what.” Favourite Car Music: “Miles Davis, ‘Kind Of Blue’. Going across the Pennines from Liverpool to Leeds, pissing down with rain.” Likes: “Creativity, love, trust, respect.” Dislikes: “Arseholes. People who don’t understand or believe in live and let live.” Favourite Pre-gig Meal: “Ecstasy.” If Not A Musician, What Would You Be: “Some sort of sub-Dennis Potter, probably working for BBC.” Favourite Telly Programme: “Man In A Suitcase, ’cos he gets his head kicked in quite a lot.” Worst Telly Programme: “Top Of The Pops.”

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