END OF A MISSION

First to clear up the rumours: The Farewell Tour is the final tour of The Mission, is it?

Yes. I'm planning to do other stuff, but who knows? Maybe there's a point in the future, when I want to come back and do a little more, but in the moment I have no intenetion doing that. The last three or four years I have spent pretty much soul for The Mission and there are other things I wanted to do and had not been able to do. So I give myself the time to do what I want to do for a while. I have been in The Mission for 22 years, that's the majority of my adulthood.

So you're on a farewell tour. Let's take an overview on your career. When you startet making music, you we're playing in Dead Or Alive and the Ska-Punk-Band Walkie Talkie. Please tell us something about that time and the musical scene of your Area.

I moved to Liverpool 76, 77 or something like that. Walkie Talkies were the first proper band I was playing with and we ended up supporting a lot of Bands like B52s, Ultravox, Pretenders and stuff like that when they played in Liverpool. We did some shows with Joy Division too, before they released their first record. I remember the band beeing friendly and liking beer but Ian would sit basically in the corner being very quiet.
When the Walkie Talkies split up I played with Pauline Murray And The Invisible Girls for a while and with a few other little bands around town and stuff. Pete Burns asked me if I wanted to join Dead Or Alive. I did that for a couple of years and it was a lot of fun. Dead Or Alive was an independent band, released one or two independetn records and did the occasional show. It was more like being in a gang. It's no secret, that most members of the band were gay and we go out to the gay clubs and Pete showed me, how shall I say, to another side of life, I'd never been exposed to before which was interesting...

The Sisters Of Mercy have always been a great legend here in Germany. So let's ask straight forward: How did you get into Sisters Of Mercy?

We were making an album for CBS with Dead Or Alive at this time. While recording it, it became evident that my role in the band became increasingly redundant. I was a guitar player and at that age you want to play guitar, you wanto to be on the records. I made the mistake early on at Dead Or Alive introducing a Roland SH-10 synthesizer which I could plug my guitar into and it would give a gadget sound. So we used it on a few things and it was in that days so pretty midi so basically the band would have to play along by the tempo set by the synthesizer. We really liked the effect, that we ended up by one of the first midi systems. Everything I wrote on the guitar ended up getting put in the sequencer. When we made the record I was starting to feel like redundant. So it was time for me to go really and coincidently Andrew Eldrige of Sisters Of Mercy was taking to our record company that he has lost his guitarrist and the people of CBS recommanded me to him. And that was it. No big legend! I went to Leeds and that was it. Walked in the living room where Andrew used to live and got the job even without an audition and that was it.

There are so many legends about the SISTERHOOD-affair, when the Sisters Of Mercy were splitting. Most people here didn't get more than any roumors... Can you please enlighten us?

When Craig and me left the band, we didn't know what to call ourselves. For want of anything better we called ourselves "The Sisterhood" and Andrew took a fence of this quiet righly so... We played some show and he did the thing in the old kind of escalating way. He used to talk to the British music press and it became a big deal for a while. But it certainly didn't harm either us then the Sisters. It gave us both good publicity a time we both needed, I suppose. Andrew solved the problem by releasing "Gift" album. But I don't care, in the end it was a bad name anyway. It was a funny game for a while.

As long as you can wave a friendly "Have a nice day" to eachother...

Well, I even don't know Andrew. When I was in The Sisters, it's no secret, him and didn't see always eye to eye. You know we're two very different kind of people or we were and our working methods were very different. But of that tension there came out some very good music. Quiet often, when there is a tension between two creative people it can create something quite unique and I think it did that for a little while. But after a while it became to much stress and you waist your life on, really. So me and Craig left and formed The Mission.
I saw Andrew a few years ago, when we played at M'era Luna together. We get on fine, when we see each other but it's like if you're seeing someone you used to work with some 15 years ago for instance. I don't send him Christmas cards and we don't ring eachother for advice. We have no contact ever within. But whenever I see him it's fine.

Together with Craig Adams you founded The Mission in end 1985, releasing your first album the following year. Your intro of "Wasteland" is still a devine chorus for people from that time. Can you please tell some story behind the lyrics of that special song?

You know, I have no memories. At this time I used to take a lot of S... I had a whole bunch of songs, after we had finnished the "First and Last and Always" album of the Sisters. I was a young musician, constantly writing new material, new songs. A lot of what ended up on "Gods On Medicin" were actually tunes I put together for a second Sisters album.
I don't know, I can't remember when and where I wrote this lyrics. I thing they were put together over a period of time, if my memory serves me right.

Is "I still believe in God, but God no longer believes in me" a quotation?

No, I don't think so. I think we was in the studio and I was doing the vocals for "Wasteland" and I said this right in the beginning of the song and the producer said: "Wait, wait that's brilliant! Let me role back the tape and say that again." This was one of this wonderful, spontanious things.

I was and I am a huge music fan. I wouldn't say that either Patty Smith or Neil young were big influences on me but I do a lot of what they have done. This two songs were simple straight forward songs so it was easy for us. I find it very hard to work out other peoples songs, that's why I have always written my own songs. I find it easier to write my own songs then to play somebody elses.
Both of this songs are fairly simple when we first were learning them. I mean certainly with "Dancing Barefoot" we were in the studio and we needed an extra track and once again it was a spontanious decision. And it was a one-take-thing, you know.

On Children there's a song "Hymn (for America)". In that song you bless "America". Would you still do today?

There's a sort of irony, when I say "God bless America"! That's one of those things that Americans say. That song is quiet damning of America, actually.

What thought's about the "51st State of America" you have?

Well, I haven't lived in Britain for over then years. I live in Brazil now and before that in California. So what they do I don't really care. To me, when I get back it's gets a little sadder and sadder. Well I mean, I like getting back, it's a good family and friends a lot of people. But I think as a unique culture and a country with its own idendity it lost in the last twenty eight years. I think it has become very homogenized. But in the end I don't care as long it doesn't affect my friends. It doesn't really affect them directly. It doesn't seem to. I have to say the economy here... things have gotten cheaper which is good for the people in the material sense I suppose, but the same time I think that thing Britain had, the uniqueness, the cultural uniqueness; I think it lost that.
I'm not really of that country anymore. I am English but I haven't live here for over ten years. I sit here and watch TV and have no idea who is who and what is what. And the rest of the band was talking about this "celebreties" here and I have no idea what they are talking about. And I'm thankful for that in a way.

"Butterfly On A Wheel" from "Carved In Sand" is a real great love song. Expressing feelings with music is some kind of therapy, isn't it?

Of cause it is. If I'm feeling blue, I stroke my guitar or sit on the piano. If you're sitting in a dark place music has a way lifting you out. And if you're in a happy place music has a way of reflecting that. Music is life.

The "additional" album "Grains Of Sand" came out in 1990. On that album there are two real great songs on: "Bird Of Passage" and "Devided We Fall". There's a lot of loss and hope in both of them. Where do you get your inspiration from?

It is cliche but ... life! Love, life, sex... things that are happening to me, things I see to other people. That's basically it. Sometimes lyrics might be a stream of consciosness.I have no idea at that time what they actually trying to say. Maybe five years later, when I listen to that song or when I'm singing it at stage or whatever an than suddenly it means something. There are no rules for writing. Songs don't even have to mean anything. Sometimes in the band we're joking. It takes a lot time writing the lyrics and often a lot of blood, sweat and tears and the rest of the band is saying: You don't need to bother about the lyrics, sing anything because it's only journalists and other singers that listen to the lyrics. I thing it's an element of truth in that.

The next record was "Masque". Personally I didn't like it that much...

You're not allone with that, there were a lot of Mission fans who didn't like that record. But I have to say, if we didn't make that I wouldn't be here today, I know that for sure. At that point I was feeling really strait jacketed by The Mission. The Mission became very formular. We had a very formular way of working and we needed to break that process to do something different for our creative cells and "Masque" did that. And I still think there are some of the best songs I've ever written on that album. This is not a typical Mission record but if you look at David ...s records, he has tried different things over the years, something worth and I haven't. In a lot of people's opinion "Masque" didn't work. It's not a typical Mission album but there are still some great songs.

In the end mainly you have to be satisfied with as the artist...

Yeah, I think any artist can't be totally satisfied with any album. If you are they make support it making another one. The album when it was made reflects me and the band who we are and where we are at that time. When we made "Masque" we lost Simon. We made three albums pretty much in the same way. We wanted to do something different. So it was an experiment, some kind of public experiment. It was experimental for us. But nevertheless it was a fun record for us because it was different.

The best "Neverland" track "Raising Cain" appeared on Mick Mercer's "Gothic Rock II" among other, much older songs of Bauhaus, Christian Death, Skeletal Family and others. Had you been lucky with that choice?

I have no idea. I never met Mick Mercer. I know he did the Gothic book which I have a copy of but I don't know that he compiles albums. "Raising Cain" is a good song. I think "Neverland" should have been a shorter album, this would have been better.

On "Aura" there is a real erotic song: "(Slave To) Lust". How do you like the idea of people having sex while listening to The Mission?

(laughs) Good! I love the idea a lot but's something I can't do. Ican't even listen to music while having sex. It's very strange for me. So if I say, Portishead is on and I'm having sex I start listening to the chords structure and the lyrics. Best thing for me is having sex with classical music. There are no lyrics (laughs)


With "Aural Delight" you have rereleased rare material. A honest question ;-): There are numerous "The Mission" releases. Do you still keep all collectors item?

No, there's quite a lot stuff, I don't have. I don't have copies of the first two singles... Usually I get a few copies and give them to friends and family thinking I get some more later and then I never do. I'm no collector. I have most of my own stuff but it's more by accident then by life-long dedication.

The new album "God Is A Bullet" came out in April last year on Cooking Vinyl. Can you please tell us something about the musical and lyrical concept?

There isn't particullary a lyrical and musical concept. It's just what we wanted to do at this point and time. Or what I wanted to do at this time. A couple of members of the band would have preferred to have the album heavier...
Lyrically it reflects, where I am and where I was when writing that lyrics. I've been in a really good place emotionally so I think that's reflected in the record. Musically I think it's a record that abides to the Mission parameters in a way but it also in a few instances it trys to stretch those parameters. That's what I think, a good Mission record should do.

Who are your comrades on "God Is A Bullet"?

It's been the same for two, three years, which is quiet a long time for me: Mark Gemini-Thwaite on guitar, Ritchie Vernon on bass and Steve Spring on drums.

Mark Gemini-Thwaite played in "Theatre Of Hate". Do you sometimes talk with him about the "good old times"? ;-)

Sometimes it might come up and we laugh at a memory or we laugh at someone we knew by then but it's not like as we sit down and cry like "Oh the good old times". Fuck nostalgia man and move to the future. This Farewell tour is all about nostalgia but it's one last time I just figured that way to bow out. But basically into the last show I'm going to be emotional and some kind of sad. But at the same time I think I can be very relieved.


I have to confess, that I've lost the traces of other The Mission-members. Do you know what Craig Adams, Simon Hinkler and Mick Brown do now? Are you still in contact with them?

No, I haven't heard from Craig for three or four years. I think he's still playing with Mike Peters in The Alarm.

The Mission have always emphasized on a high recording quality and clear sound. Are you a sound fanatic?

No, I wouldn't say so but I'm a quality fanatic. You know, there are bands that film every tour they dso and release a DVD every six months, they make albums quickly and cheaply and they release albums all the time. In the end I don't like that. I made some mistakes in the past with the quality of products and it made me feel bad to put out stuff, that I'm not behind, I can't believe in.


You are a guitarist and singer. Can you please tell us a musician joke about a drummer or the bass player?

What do you call someone who hangs around with musicians? A drummer. But you can choose singer or bass player as well.

Last question: What are your actual plans?

After the Farewell tour I'm going to do a US solo tour together with Miles Hunt of The Wonderstuff. Then I will do some solo shows throughout South America in the end of May / June. After that, I'm gonna spend a little time with my wife and then I decide what I do. Probably there will be a new solo album. For information The Mission website will keep on going. I should tell you that actually there is a solo album I just recorded. Basically it's accoustic reworking of some old Mission songs and some cover versions and that stuff. But it's only going to be available to buy on the tour. It's called "Bare" by the way.

All pictures were taken from The Mission's website www.themissionuk.com

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