#but the city i am at for uni has terrible winters so can’t enjoy it anymore

[suretkerim]

winter is here ( ◞ ‸ ◟ )

[b-sidemusic]

INTERVIEW: “MUSIC COMES FROM DESIRE” - A WORD WITH JUSTIN SULLIVAN

Justin Sullivan is a man who knows how to engage his fans. He’s the frontman of New Model Army, a band who inspire loyalty and a fervent following. He’s currently enjoying a tour on his own, performing stripped-back versions of NMA songs, revisiting some of his 2003 solo album (‘Navigating by the Stars’), and experimenting with some new material. The online feedback has been superb, and the energy at the gigs is electric.

B-Side’s Francine Carrel spoke to Sullivan before his solo gig at the John Peel Centre for Creative Arts in Stowmarket (read the review here), and found him happy to chat for nearly an hour: about music, performance, spirituality and the human experience.

B-Side: Hello, Justin! We’re looking forward to this evening’s performance. This is part of a whole string of solo gigs, right?

Justin Sullivan: Yes, it’s a tour. Every now and then I do a solo gig, and every time I think: “Oh, that was good… that wasn’t so good…”, and so I think the best way forward was to take it on tour. When you tour something you’re always much better after a few shows than at the beginning.  This is my first tour ever alone alone. I’ve played as part of a troop and I’ve done a lot of shows in duos with Dave from New Model Army and with Dean [also from NMA]. But doing it alone alone is something I always felt I wanted to do.  Although, actually, tonight is a special night, as I’m here with Tom [Moth – harpist for Florence and the Machine, with his own repertoire of impressive solo stuff], who’s the brother of our bass player Ceri.

B-Side: The timing of this tour is interesting – New Model Army are doing extremely well at the moment, with the ‘Winter’ album being very well received last year. Why is now the time to focus on solo stuff?

Justin: We released ‘Winter’ in August last year, and toured through the autumn and spring, so, by this summer, the Winter thing was kind of over! We then did festivals through the summer, and now would usually be the time to sit down and work on the next project. But, actually, we’ve released 32 songs over the last four years – we’ve been very productive, and everyone feels like it’s the moment to step back for a few months. For me, it’s the moment to do this tour.

B-Side: We’re in the John Peel Centre tonight – am I right in saying that (venerated Radio One DJ) John Peel gave New Model Army airtime at the beginning of your careers? Did you know him personally?

Justin: We’re one of many, many, many bands that owe a lot to John Peel! He was the first person to play our very first singles. We did a session for him and he was very supportive of the band in our early years. I do remember being in a car parked on a cliff in Cornwall, listening to us being played on John Peel. I was terribly excited.  The first time I met him – when we did the sessions we never actually met, we recorded and it got played – he came to do a DJ spot at Bradford Uni, so I went along to talk to him and say thanks. By this point we’d signed to EMI, and he said, “I really like your band and I’m sorry I can’t play you any more.” He was just extremely generous and knowledgeable.

B-Side: All the things he’s known for!

Justin: Yes, exactly. All the things he’s known for.

B-Side: NMA are notoriously difficult to fit into a genre. Would you say your solo stuff is easier to categorise? Folk, maybe?

Justin: See, it’s not our problem to think of a genre, it’s the journalists’! So you tell me, after you’ve seen the show. I will play some New Model Army songs, remember.  The thing about New Model Army is, everyone who’s ever been in the band has come from a different place, musically. We once had a meal, I remember, where we tried to agree on one album in the history of music that we unreservedly loved. And we couldn’t agree on one. And I think that’s unusual for a band. We take from everywhere. I come from a Northern Soul background myself but, growing up, I always loved folk melodies; I wasn’t so much into blues melodies. At the same time, Dean and Marshall are very much blues guys. There’s then the whole heavy drums thing, which I’ve always been into.  But then when I strip the songs back to me and an acoustic guitar… is that folk, because it’s one bloke and a guitar? Well, maybe, I don’t know.

B-Side: How about (2003 solo album) ‘Navigating by the Stars’?

Justin: ‘Navigating by the Stars’ I don’t think is a folk album, actually. Maybe in a way.  The features of the album were the wonderful bass playing of Danny Thompson, who’s a folk legend, but also the producer, Ty Unwin, who’s best known for film and TV music. He’s orchestral. We met in a place where they fixed keyboards, and we started talking.  I said, “Do you know a lot about recording technology?” He said, “Yes, that’s what I do.” So I asked if he knew about classical arrangements. He said, “Yes, that’s what I do.”  So I said, “Do you like Arvo Pärt?” (an Estonian composer). He said, “Yes, I majored on him when I was in music school.” So I said, “Do you want to produce an album?” – and he said, “Yeah, all right.”  OK, so some of the songs… are they folk? Folk melodies, up to a point. But there’s a lot of classical stuff on it, especially the title track. As both fans of Arvo Pärt, we were kind of taking that as a starting point.

B-Side: Have you found the writing process any different for your solo stuff?

Justin: Pretty much the same, actually!   I was reading Bruce Springsteen’s autobiography the other day, and I didn’t realise this: he was writing ‘Born in the USA’ at the same time as he was writing ‘Nebraska’. And he just went “that song belongs in ‘Born in the USA’, that song belongs in ‘Nebraska’…” and it’s a bit like that. Sometimes I write songs that I think are more solo, sometimes they’re more New Model Army.  A lot of the time with New Model Army we actually write by starting with drums and then we build songs up starting with the drums. We’ve always done that – maybe that gives us a particular feature.  Some of the songs I’m going to play tonight didn’t even have an acoustic guitar on them originally. But it’s interesting – you can take anything and reduce it to vocals and acoustic guitar.

B-Side: Do you get a lot of input from other people?

Justin: Yeah. I’m up for input from everybody, all the time. I can’t work alone, anyway. I have to have someone to bounce off. I have too many ideas: half are good, half are bad, and I need someone to tell me which the bad ones are.

B-Side: The touring itself must be quite different when you’re away from the rest of the band?

Justin: Yeah, kind of… with the band, there’s more people and it’s louder. Apart from that, it’s the same principle.  I’ve found that with the band I’m standing on stage and it’s a bit like steering a truck downhill. All the power is from behind me; all I’m doing is roughly steering. When I’m playing solo, I’ve got to generate all the energy. In some ways it’s harder work. I feel more mentally and physically tired.

B-Side: Do you still get nervous before certain gigs?

Justin: Yeah, I do. Not before every gig, but certain gigs. When I’m trying stuff I’ve never done before, or in a new environment.

B-Side: Do you have any venues that stick out as an amazing place to play?

Justin: There are certain venues which are basically amphitheatres. Wherever you look, there is a face, and that is very exciting. You can see everybody. It’s wonderful. But it does mean that there’s nowhere to hide.

B-Side: Are there any gigs that really stand out to you as being the best or the worst?

Justin: A few! It’s quite nice that, after three or four thousand gigs, the really great, special ones that I’ll remember forever still come around every now and again.  Terrible gigs? We’ve played a few. The moment I remember was when we were playing Das Fest, a big free festival in Karlsruhe [a city in Southwest Germany]. There were about 80,000 people all up this hill in front of the stage. We were at the end of five shows and I had no voice. I remember walking out on stage in front of 80,000 people and this [strangled noises] – this croak came out! It reminded me of Sampson in front of the temple with his hair cut off.  I wished the ground would swallow me up.

B-Side: You started in the 80s – have these live performances changed over the years?

Justin: No, that’s the thing about live music – recorded music has changed quite a lot, and music technology has certainly changed a huge amount, but the basic principle of standing on a stage and singing at people hasn’t changed since 1000BC. The idea of a minstrel round a campfire singing to people with everyone joining in the chorus is a principle unchanged since time immemorial.

B-Side: Do you have an opinion on the new phenomenon of people filming a whole show through a phone or iPad?

Justin: [Big sigh.] I always think, “Just watch the concert!” They’re thinking more about the filming than the moment. They’re recording the moment to enjoy later, but they won’t enjoy it as much later as they would in the moment. But honestly I don’t think much about it. I’m not in the business of telling the audience what to do.

B-Side: You guys are very European in your outlook, and you spend a lot of time on the continent. Is that going to get harder after the… er… events of the next couple of years?

Justin: Oh, god yeah. We don’t know what’s going to happen yet, but we’re dreading it. It doesn’t make any sense, and everyone knows it doesn’t make any sense. It reminds me of the Vietnam War: everyone involved knew it was a mistake, but they couldn’t stop. They went deeper, at every stage going, “this is a mistake!”  I feel at home anywhere in Europe.  I remember doing a tour of North America years ago – I like America, it’s very interesting, but it’s very alien. We came back to Estonia of all places, and I remember getting out of the plane going, “Ah… home!” Estonia is more home to me than America. I don’t hate America, but it’s alien.

B-Side: Would you ever consider settling abroad?

Justin: I’m easy. I don’t really want to live anywhere for more than two weeks. I get itchy feet. I’ve been in Bradford for 40 years, and it’s a good base, but I don’t want to stay there – or anywhere – all the time.

B-Side: Which bands and artists inspire you?

Justin: My first love was Motown and the Northern Soul thing of the 60s and 70s. Beyond that, the whole post-punk thing, where all the rules about how you had to make music were kicked into touch. The Banshees and all that stuff – it was a wonderful era of creative freedom. I was always a big fan of Kate Bush. Neil Young remains, to me, the only guy from the 60s who is still really relevant. Bruce Springsteen really can write.  At the moment, I’m really into this whole wave of music around the Sahara – from Morocco, across North Africa, Egypt and back round Niger and Nigeria. It really centres on Mali. I’m a big fan of Hindi Zara, from Morocco.

B-Side: What are your tips for aspiring musicians?

Justin: There’s one big one: do it because you love it. If you do it because you want to be someone else, you won’t be – you’ll still be yourself. Worse than that, if you become successful you’ll be yourself surrounded by mirrors. That’s what fame is – being surrounded by mirrors 24/7. If you’re not at peace with what you’re doing, if you don’t love what you’re doing, then you’re in trouble.

B-Side: New Model Army have been very well known for a long time, but never “on the front page of all the magazines” famous. Has this been the best of both worlds?

Justin: Yeah, I think so. Somebody said to me, “In the early 90s you were on the edge of being a really big band – where did it all go wrong?” And I thought – well, here we are in 2017, making the music we like, putting it out there in the way we like, where we want, when we want… how much better can it be?

B-Side: So you’ve managed to keep a decent work/life balance?

Justin: Mainly. In the middle of the 90s, we were a little bit adrift and a guy called Tommy, our tour manager in the 80s, came aboard and said “I’m going to manage you – we’re going to do everything ourselves. I’ll run the record company, I’ll run the management, leave it to me.” And this served us incredibly well until he very unexpectedly died in 2008. We were then left saying “Oh, god, what do we do now?” In the end we started doing it ourselves – which does take up a lot of time. There’s a lot less money in the industry, as well, so we can’t just pay people to do the boring stuff.

B-Side: You’re on Spotify, and I’m guessing some other streaming services: what do you think of the rise of these services?

Justin: Apparently, they’ve saved music, indirectly, because record companies get paid by Spotify. Unfortunately, artists do also get paid, but it’s pretty relative. I got a cheque from Spotify last month for £14. YouTube pay a third of what Spotify pay.

B-Side: So the artists make most of their money from touring?

Justin: Yep.

B-Side: How about selling physical copies of music?

Justin: Because our audience is older, they do like physical things – and, of course, there’s the revival of vinyl. This does make some money. We don’t make as many physical copies as we used to, of course.

B-Side: Your last album, ‘Winter’, is very dark. Why?

Justin: Yes, it is. It was written through 2015, when Brexit was coming – it was before the referendum, but we kind of got the feeling of what was coming. Then came the rise of the right wing, and Trump, and everything… we had the feeling, and now it’s upon us. And, on a personal level, 2015 wasn’t a very good year for any of us.  I have to say, though, that Michael and myself particularly, share a love of bleak. I spent some time on the East Coast recently – Felixstowe, for instance – and it’s very bleak, and I liked it!

B-Side: What’s in the pipeline? Another solo album?

Justin: Eventually, yes, but it takes a lot of time and energy. And New Model Army, right now, is in a very good place as a very strong unit – and so I think that there’s at least another album to make there before I step too far outside it. These solo shows are just a quick thing, I’m not looking to do a whole year of it.  New Model Army have some Christmas shows coming up where we’ll be doing all kinds of interesting things – two sets, stripped back stuff – and then there’s a big project in April that I can’t tell you anything about!

B-Side: Boo, cliff-hangers! Moving more into the abstract, then: the ‘Navigating by the Stars’ album, in particular, is very evocative in its description of the outdoors. Do you have a favourite place in the world?

Justin: I love the sea, which is obvious from the album. I actually think the north coast of Cornwall is the most beautiful place on Earth. I’ve been all over the world, but I don’t think there’s anywhere more beautiful.  The thing about ‘Navigating by the Stars’ – around that time, just afterwards, I did a trip across the Atlantic on a freight ship. Everyone assumed I wrote the album on the ship, but it was quite the opposite. Music comes from desire. If you’ve got the girl, you don’t really need to write about the girl. If I’m on the ocean, I don’t need to write about the ocean, I just enjoy being there. It was the desire: the dreaming, the imagining the ocean, that made me write about it. I wrote most of the album in Bradford!  I’ve known a lot of musicians who’ve got a dream place they want to be; and they get there, to their nice place in the country with their studio in the barn – and then they just stop. They’ve already got what they want, so what do they have to write about?

B-Side: Right, dream dinner party! Five people, alive or dead. Who do you pick?

Justin: Like most of the population of Britain, I’d have David Attenborough. Jaz Coleman, from Killing Joke, would be entertaining. This is difficult! Mary Renault, the author. Anyone from the English revolution - Oliver Cromwell? Oh, and Betty Davies! She’s a wonderful storyteller.

B-Side: Are you a big reader?

Justin: I do read. I’m not as big a reader as some people think – I’ve had a long, long association with the poet, artist and novelist Joolz Denby, and she reads the books and tells me what’s in them, so I can go around pretending I’m well read!  I do read, though, and I really enjoy reading when I do read. I keep coming back to Mary Renault, her books about Ancient Greece. It’s historical fiction – I also enjoy Hilary Mantel. The history is interesting, but people are people in every generation. I like anything that’s a good story, written well, I’m quite simple in that sense.  Recently, I did an interview with an American punk rock website, and they asked me “what was the lyric I most admired”, or something like that, and the answer they got was not the one they were expecting: it’s ‘Jolene’, which is an entire story, with very strongly drawn characters, and a whole situation, in 12 lines. I love story songs. I don’t write much about myself – I like songs that tell stories.  I also love radio plays, even more than films. You are doing the work of making the pictures, therefore you’re more personally, emotionally involved in it than you are when the pictures are just coming at you. That’s especially true of the modern fantasy films, with CGI – they look real enough, in a way, but they don’t feel real.

B-Side: Sounds like you’d be into the Norse sagas!

Justin: I don’t know them well, but I expect I’d like them if I listened. The thing about a lot of the Norse and old Greek gods is that there are gods for different occasions, and different human attributes. I think that’s much more real and natural. We are complicated monkeys, but we have a certain number of emotional responses. This idea of dividing the world into good and evil doesn’t quite work, it’s not really our experience.

B-Side: Are you religious, then?

Justin: I am religious. I come from a religious family, and I grew up very religious. I was in a lot of cults as a teenager. My father was very religious, and he was in loads of cults as well – but he was in them all simultaneously because he thought they were all the same. So he’d go to Quaker meetings, and to Mosque, and to the Catholic church. I’m exactly the same now. I think they’re all the same.  There is another world which is not the physical world going on all around us – it’s so obvious to me that I don’t need to do anything about it, or go to any particular group to worship. It’s just here.  The way that this common human experience of the spirit world has been divided into different cults over the years which then war with each other over who’s the true cult… it’s all nonsense, really.  We live in, theoretically, a very secular age – but I don’t think people are any different, and people’s recognition of that other world is the same as it’s always been. The problem is that it gets channelled off into cults.  The truth is that everything is very basic, it’s made of the same thing: everything is one. If we go back to art, I’m very fond of Van Gogh – and the reason for that is the background and the foreground are all made up of the same brush strokes. There’s this sense of everything being made of the same thing. That, to me, is the basic truth of the world.

New Model Army’s European Christmas tour kicks off at Kentish Town Forum in London on 14th December.  For tickets and info, visit www.newmodelarmy.org

Words & Photo: Francine Carrel