[kj] ZigZag (March 1985) interview

[Antoni Adamiak]

I see that Madani's got a link up to the Mick Sinclair archives but it only
appears to have an interview of his from Sounds in 1983 - there was further
Mick Sinclair KJ interview, this time for the ZigZag magazine in March 1985.
Possibly containing a bit too much talking about the music biz for my
liking, though it contains an honest appraisal of the struggle between Fire
Dances and Night Time from Big Paul in terms of E.G's desire for that big
hit single - it sure does document our boys lofty ambitions at the time &
therefore I feel that having Dave Grohl on the new album carries on the fine
tradition of making some people feel very uncomfortable. Are you with us, or
against us ? You have a choice.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Enjoying greater success than they have for many a moon KILLING JOKE
convince MICK SINCLAIR they they're nice girls really.

SPARE THE ROD

(MS) I wouldn't normally do an interview in a pub but ... with Killing Joke
it just seemed right. The lightweight banter and jovial repartee unfolded in
the amiable manner. which you would expect (wouldn't you?).

There was a distinct absence of Jaz (we left him at EG) and as Paul was
later to observe. "Normally we just sit and listen to him".

'Night Time' by Killing Joke is a surprisingly surprising LP. Perhaps closer
in heart to their long ago first album - in terms of rhythm, vitality and
feeling of being drawn through an emotional mincing machine to emerge
scarred but maybe wiser - than it's more immediate kin, 'Fire Dances'.

PAUL : "The album does have a lot in common with the first album. It's less
'experimental', got more melody and emotion and variety in it. It's a
superior album in our estimation, never mind anybody else's. It's the first
album where we felt musically competent as if everything was in control and
we just did it the way we wanted instead of the odd occasion where things
would get a bit hazy -  sort it out in the mix, so to speak.

"Lyrically it's far more coherent as well. As always we all work on the
lyrics but this time there is more direction in what we were actually
wanting to write about than there has been in the past. The subject matter
was pretty much the same. It's as broad or as narrow minded as you like to
take it. Jaz and myself were getting pretty much into Meshima at the time so
there's a lot of S&M in there, There's still stuff about fanaticism, the
coming race - the usual stuff you expect from Killing Joke !"

GEORDIE : "It's a bit more down home this time. You can see our point of
view a lot more clearly."

PAUL : "I think people can relate to the lyrics better than they have been
able to. It's actually a bit more humane I think ... in it's fascism".

(MS) Ah, yea. For many non-combatant stand-offs Killing Joke are a mystery
who have come to embody lurking evil, vile menace and a liking for good ole
gas chambers.

PAUL : "I don't know if that's our fault. I don't think so but ... you've
been on tour with us, you know we're not ..."

GEORDIE : " ... that horrid."

PAUL : "That horrid, we're not that nihilistic. We do actually consider a
bright future and just because we think what we exist in at the moment is
pretty bleak, it doesn't mean we've got a completely negative attitude."

GEORDIE : "What it is, is that I find most journalists are a cross between
frustrated musicians and frustrated psychologists. They like to get on well
with a band and describe a band in a way that makes it look like they have a
complete comprehension of it and then offer their own creativity to it.
They've never been able to do that with us so they just insult us and try
and label us fascist as they have done for the last five years.

"It's because we used to smoke a lot and we are quite mischievous
characters, we used to bait them and get them completely
off their trees. As off as we were but they weren't used to it. And then
we'd just go for it, like complete character assassinations just for our own
amusement because we could never take it seriously. It appeared to us to be
funny but to them, I don't think they could quite handle it. They retaliated
by writing all sorts of shit. That's their problem we're still here."

(MS) But you contributed to the, shall we say, misunderstanding ?

GEORDIE : "Just out of mischief, it was harmless. There was no bad intent
but they probably didn't see it like that."

PAUL : "We wuz just having a giggle."

GEORDIE : "A giggle, maybe at their expense. There was no malicious intent
... Honest !"

(MS) And a sensationalism emerged.

PAUL : "No, I mean the incident yesterday with the boardroom table
(apparently they managed to squash the piece of E.G. furniture - value
£3000) ... things like that just tend to happen).

(JOKING APART : In the summer of 1983 I was commissioned to write a Killing
Joke biog for their record company. This was my first 'involvement'. Life
suddenly became eventful, a string of strange coincidences and genuinely odd
occurrences ... have I ever looked back ?)

(MS) A funny thing happened to me on the way ... (laughter round the table)

GEORDIE : "Try explaining that to people."

(MS) : I have. I can't.

PAUL : "Things just happen to us. We're bad karma basically, to each other.
We enjoy the torment. We enjoy the complete chaos."

GEORDIE : "I can't imagine anything worse than working intensely with a
group of people who are congratulating and stroking each other off all the
time".

PAUL : "The last thing that we do is congratulate each other. Which is a bit
of a shame sometimes. Something that's done well gets completely ignored and
some real foul up lasts for a long time."

(MS) In an effort to jolt the subjective reaction to their name, Killing
Joke sent our review copies of the 'Love Like Blood' single with no name or
title. Probably this had little affect on the (un)consciousness of the media
cheeses who doubtless found out before committing themselves. In their
noddles it maybe furthered the notion that Killing Joke are 'difficult'.

PAUL : "It was just an idea to make people open to what they were listening
to and maybe they could listen without prejudice. It might not work but
you've got to try these things haven't you."

GEORDIE : "I'd like to see, when we're at the stage where we're selling
their papers, whether these journalists will stand up to their commitments,
if they've always hated us, and leave the paper if they're sent to review
us. That would really interest me and you know who I'm talking about don't
you ! They're always the first to come at you if they think you've
compromised your ferocity to sell records but they're in exactly the same
situation. I wonder if they'll stick to their guns as we have".

PAUL : "People who've always hated you will start to join in when you become
hip and fashionable. It's like hippies when the Pistols were playing
around - 'well, I really hate this band' and then the fashion catches on and
they cut their hair off and join in."

RAVEN : " Now they've all got black drainpipes, white sneakers and work for
record companies."

PAUL : "We're compromising ourselves all the time, always have done, always
will do. We're called Killing Joke, we're entitled to."

RAVEN : "But no one else is."

(laughter around the table)

(MS) : It is still a shock that in this day and age Killing Joke, without
notable chart placings, can sell out major venues - with ease.

PAUL : "Success is relative. I think we're very successful in that we can
exist without being in the Top Ten or even Top Thirty. And we've really
tried on occasions to compromise our music but we knew it didn't work so we
don't consider that now. We just play exactly what we like and can afford
to. And that really is success, being able to do what you want to do.

"As for commercial success and the public eye - I've always found that
difficult to envisage with a band called Killing Joke.
I'd actually like to sell a lot of records as I'd like a lot of people to
appreciate the music for what it is. But that doesn't mean there's any
necessity for fame. The fortune everybody's into but the fame ..."

(MS) Who needs it ? The weak egos ? (See The Weak Ego's colour spread in
next week's Smashed Mirror Record Hits.)

(MS) The 'Eighties' video has been on rotation longer than any other on MTV
in the States. And it was voted number 7 in a network top ten alongside
Michael Jackson et al. All this despite, or perhaps because of, the fact
that it doesn't set each member of the group as a little actor in their own
little film. Instead it bombards the viewer with clips of news broadcasts
from the 'real world'.

PAUL : "We put in the usual sort of stuff that gets banned in promo videos.
We do things that startle people into some kind of, not necessarily action
but some, emotion. We want to avoid the syndrome where bands see themselves
as movie stars and hope to be offered a part in a major film like Sting or
Paul McCartney."

(MS) But that is what pop music has become. From bedroom to boardroom and
back again with no 'rebellion' stage in-between. Are the 'stars' (bless 'em)
to blame when the rewards (monetary) are there ?

PAUL : "But they are responsible for what it has become, they can't blame
anyone else. If you're fool enough to present yourself as a faggot because
it's hip at the time ... that's what's in you, it's not what's expected by
anyone else. The rewards are there if you don't do that as well. The rewards
in this life are what you want and what you take out of life. ?They're not
for pandering to other people's taste. You can perpetuate the madness or you
can go against it and do what you think is right whether that's mad or not.
Geddit ?"

(MS) Got it. Do you like other groups ?

Paul : "Other music. We're not narrow minded in what we listen to and we
listen to a broad selection of music from classical to Country & Western -
Hank Williams, of course Jaz hated it but ... we are actually very receptive
to what's around us. We might slag most of it off but that's anyone's
prerogative."

(MS) This "bright future", it means ... ?

GEORDIE : "Getting all the rubbish out of the way."

PAUL : "Everybody's bright future is for them to decide. We look towards a
time that might not actually be in our lifetime but .... we still do believe
in the concept of the superman or super race or whatever. That is a bright
future, a future when you're not constantly against the majority of people
who're trying to drag you down. Where you have an idea and that idea can't
thrive and blossom. It's just a change from this environment, from this
turmoil that especially this country is going through at the moment. Total
economic decline where the mentality seems to be going in a downward spiral.

"The brave new world if you like is that opportunity of some climbing toward
a common goal that is the advancement of humanity. We think about things
like this, it's not necessarily what the music is about."

GEORDIE : "But it's what gets our ganda up !"

PAUL : "We see ourselves as a bright future. We see our music as hope. We
get a lot of emotion and enthusiasm out of our music. No way is it
nihilistic - we're not preaching the end of the world. Our music is like the
primal instinct that gives life."

GEORDIE : "I feel that the emotion and frame of mind that our music creates
is the necessary level of emotion to see through the next few years.
Carrying a level of emotion that some people find threatening but which we
see as necessary to continue in the present climate."

PAUL : "We'd like our music to be popular because we'd like people to glean
from the music the vitality that we fell for it and to put that into their
own lives. We may be totally misguided but that doesn't matter because we
appreciate fanaticism whether misguided or not. It is pure, not walking
around in circles.

"We hope people can listen to our music and find in themselves, some real
purpose because that's all that matters, ultimately to anyone. And I'd like
people not to think that we're preaching at them - says he as we preach -
we're not preaching, our music is really there to be listened to.

"Unfortunately with interviews it always finished up as spouting long
monologues about what we think about life, which is pretty tedious. I never
read interviews with musicians because I don't give a toss what they say
basically. It's really boring to hear a musician talk about his principles
of life - despite the fact that I'm doing it. It seems to be demanded by
journalists because they want to talk about your motivation. Really our
motivation is ..."

GEORDIE : "Selfish."

PAUL : "Selfish. It's what we like to hear. If we liked anything else we'd
be doing something else. In interviews you sometimes find you're talking a
complete load of cack because it's the first thing that comes into your
mouth."

RAVEN : "Like gas chambers and stuff."

PAUL : "I suppose it's pretty Freudian. People like us, we psycho-analyse
ourselves all the time. Well me and Jaz do and don't know about the other
two."

GEORDIE : "I find thought is very distractive to me personally. I prefer not
to think and just jump in with both feet and see what happens. See what
breaks and see what still stands. I think we're still brats."

(JOKING APART : In the summer of 1983 the Killing Joke touring vehicle is en
route from Glasgow to Durham, travelling through an area of many rivers and
streams. The vehicle halts and sophisticated fishing rods are unloaded from
the rear. Geordie casts off and eventually catches a minnow. Photos are
banned and the incident, much like the sinking of the Belgrano, is hushed
up.)

*** THE END ***

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So, there you have it. Fishing, eh ?!? A bunch of bleedin' anoraks if you
ask me !

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Regards,

Antoni

* http://home.clara.net/antoni/ *