MIND BOMB
[EPIC, 1989]
For this incarnation of The The, Johnson decides to assemble a full band – including an old friend from the North West
Johnny Marr and I have known each other from the Burning Blue Soul days. I used to go up to Manchester, I was out all the time, and I met a lot of people, including Johnny. He then formed The Smiths and used to stay at my bedsit in Highbury when taking their demos around. Then we sort of lost touch. Meanwhile, I was touring Infected in Australia, and I met Billy Bragg who invited me to play at Red Wedge. I enjoyed it, and I thought, ‘Maybe I should start thinking about playing live again…’ And so as I was writing Mind Bomb, I started writing it with the idea of a band. I got Dave Palmer and James Eller, and we’d already started doing the recording before Johnny got involved. We hadn’t seen each other for years, then we bumped into each other at an Iggy Pop gig. He came over to my place in East London, and we ended up sitting up until 6am, by which time it was agreed he was joining the band – coming on tour, everything. The album was done over quite a long time – it cost about 300 grand! The recording was intense – I went on this diet that I forced some of the others to go on, where we’d drink distilled water and eat organic grapes for months ’til people started hallucinating! During the writing, I’d meditate and do magic mushroom tea. So that’s where all this stuff was coming from: clash of civilisations, Islam… Oddly, Mind Bomb did well when it came out. But it’s one of those records people say has become more relevant due to what’s been going on since.
DUSK
[SONY, 1993]
A difficult album for Johnson: recorded following the death of his brother, it also marked the dissolution of the Mind Bomb lineup
My younger brother died suddenly in the middle of the Mind Bomb tour. I took three months off, I was devastated, we were a very close family. My mother never really recovered. I had huge support from everyone around me at the time, but when we went back on tour again, it was awful because I kept seeing my brother’s face in the audience. When that tour finally finished, it really hit me, I went in a quiet, deep, sad state. So Dusk was focused on personal things, and “Love Is Stronger Than Death” was written for my brother. And, to be honest, I lost a lot of focus in terms of being a strict taskmaster. Things started to fall apart with that band. Dave Palmer [drums] started to get into some serious drug thing, his timing got affected, he was showing up late, and Dave was always very professional. So I warned him, then I fired him halfway through the album. I brought in Vinnie Colaiuta, from Zappa’s band, and Bruce Smith from The Pop Group. The odd thing is, although it was more of a band recording – there was more live recording than with Mind Bomb – I felt the closeness of the band wasn’t there so much anymore. Johnny had started doing Electronic with Bernard. Dave was all over the place. James was still focused, but it didn’t feel as much of a band effort as Mind Bomb. It’s funny, though. It’s one of my favourite albums, Dusk, I love that record. Everybody did a fantastic job, but at that point, I went on tour and the band had already fallen apart.
HANKY PANKY
[SONY, 1994]
A new band, plus an unexpected career swerve: an album of Hank Williams covers, no less
I was always a big fan of a great songwriter. Hank Williams, John Lennon… Because I was taking so long writing, I thought, ‘You know what, I just want to enjoy being a singer.’ I don’t even think I played any instruments on that album. I put together another band, with a chap called Eric Schermerhorn, who I’d wanted to join for the Dusk tour but he was with Iggy Pop at the time. Brian MacLeod, Gail Ann Dorsey, who then joined David Bowie. It was a good band, but I just wanted to get inside another songwriter’s songs. It was almost like a vacation in terms of my songwriting. Dusk was quite a hard record to write, given the subject matter, but I wanted to keep working. There were a lot of raised eyebrows at the label, but at that point I think they were used to my behaviour. There’s a good phrase that sums it up: ‘Making all the wrong career moves for all the right reasons’. But to be honest, they did get behind this record. It got fantastic reviews over in America. Hank’s daughter wrote me a lovely letter saying, ‘My daddy would be proud with what you’ve done with his songs.’ So it was an interesting project.