Sinister: B&S - Q Article - April 1999

[Katrina House]

hello,

i don't think this has been sent yet, enjoy! :)

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Forget Jarvis Cocker waggling a derogatory arse at Michael Jackson or
Chumbawamba emptying an icebucket over John Prescott, the Brits Upset
1999 was by far the most ludicrous. Miles away from the
cocaine-encrusted celebrations at London Arena on February 16, the
mild-mannered janitor of a Glasgow church - accustomed to polishing
floors and setting out tables and chairs for pensioners' coffee mornings
- was the author of an incident that would have The Sun up in arms
within a week.
	Following the news that, four years into their existence, Belle &
Sebastian had scooped the Best Newcomer Award - as voted for by the
listeners of Radio 1 and accepted by bemused drummer Richard Colburn and
trumpeter Mick Cooke - the band's songwriter/frontman Stuart Murdoch
phoned his mum and then quietly broke out the champagne. As he has done
throughout Belle & Sebastian's rise to prominence, the 30-year-old
part-time ecclesiastical caretaker refused all requests for an
interview. Meanwhile, in London, Pete Waterman alleged that vote-rigging
had swindled his pop charges Steps out of their rightful award. Two days
later, The Sun demanded a phone poll recount, deemed unnecessary by
Radio 1 and the BPI.
	This faintly ridiculous affair added another surreal twist to the
history of the Scottish octet. Media-shy and purposefully obtuse, the
band have only been photographed on a handful of occasions. Furthermore,
the bulk of their interviews are now conducted by their drummer or, for
the purposes of European phone interviews, their manager impersonating
their drummer.
	For the uninitiated, Belle & Sebastian offer a
gossamer, hushed acoustic folk that at times echoes Nick Drake as
captured on a four-track in a Kelvingrove bedroom. Fronted by the
peculiarly Anglo-vowelled Murdoch, the songwriter's skewed lyrical
observations regularly examine some form of pervy puritanism (sample
line: "She was into S&M and Bible studies"). To generalise even more
grossly, Belle & Sebastian followers are the bookish, boo-to-a-goose
type last spotted in 1989 before "baggy" led the independent charge over
the commercial horizon, leaving those with a fondness for duffle coats,
lightly strummed guitars or twee lyrical conceits in their wake. As a
result, B&S seemed destined for a life of Top 10 independent chart
status while rarely troubling the "proper" rundown.
	But then, in September last year, the band's third album, The Boy With
The Arab Strap, entered the chart at Number 12, only one position behind
the aggressively marketed Hole. To date, it has chalked up 60,000 sales.
And following the controversial Brit Award, even those who'd dismissed
Belle & Sebastian as fey, awkward, underachieving, pretentious bastards
were forced to sit up and take notice.

On a sunny, pre-spring Monday afternoon in Glasgow, the B&S contingent
democratically elected to receive Q - drummer Colburn (tea) and
pixie-like keyboardist Chris Geddes (surprisingly rock Jack Daniels and
coke) - sit in the basement of an organic café/bar around the corner
from CaVa Studios where the group are recording their fourth album. 
	While the former shares church lodgings and janitorial duties with
Murdoch ("Especially at the moment, it helps you maintain some level of
sanity"), the latter first encountered Murdoch at a string of Glasgow
parties where the uniquely attired songwriter could often be found
haranguing revellers with blunt look-at-me tactics. "He was always
trying to play people his songs," Geddes recalls, "and having folk go,
Look Stuart, just shut up. It was like, Get away you mad guy in silver
trousers."
	As reluctant as he may now be to step into the spotlight, four years
ago Stuart Murdoch was desperate for attention. While one apocryphal
version of his pre-B&S past has him stopping potential band members in
the street, it is known that he would regularly hitch south to London to
drop tapes off at Broadcasting House for John Peel. Having become
involved in Beatbox, a music workshop for the unemployed, he hooked up
with bassist Stuart David ("Quite contemporary compared to us," jokes
Geddes. "He's got a computer and a puffa jacket^Å") and the two began
recording Murdoch's songs under the name Rhode Island. 
	They answered a small ad placed by Alan Rankine, former Associates
guitarist-turned-lecturer on Glasgow's Stow College music industry
course. Rankine was searching for bands willing to become guinea pigs
for the college's annual project - which involved students in every
aspect of a record's release, from sound engineering to press and
promotion. While previous years had yielded singles, when Rhode Island -
now renamed Belle & Sebastian and expanded to a seven-piece - were
selected, they used their five-day studio session to record an entire
album, Tigermilk. Only 1,000 vinyl copies were pressed (now changing
hands for up to £200), but the record created enough of a stir to prompt
A&R excitement amongst the major labels. 
	Instead, Belle & Sebastian signed to minuscule London-based label
Jeepster, founded by former EMI publicist Mark Jones. The label boss
recalls the first time he saw Murdoch play in a bedroom at a Glasgow
party: "He just came in wearing a vest, a pair of shorts and Doc
Martens, put his foot up on one of those white traffic bollards and
started playing these incredible songs." Still, the band affected a
half-arsed attitude towards Jones's initial advances. "It was really
funny the first few times he came up," Colburn admits. "He sat there
getting paranoid 'cause none of us would say a word."
	"They were unimpressed by anything I tried to say or offer them," Jones
marvels. "Half the band would just bugger off and Stevie (Jackson,
guitarist) would sit there playing with a teabag, dunking it on a plate
for a half an hour. But I thought there was something completely magical
about them. For three months afterwards, I still couldn't even really
talk to Stuart because I was just so in awe of him."
	Q asks Murdoch's bandmates to sum up their colleagues in a sentence:
cellist Isobel Campbell is deemed "totally fantastic^Å really talented";
trumpeter Mick Cooke "makes less mistakes musically than all the rest of
us put together^Å and more mistakes personally"; violinist and "novelty
instrumentalist" Sarah Martin is "the most indie out of us all"; and of
Stevie Jackson we learn that "White Lines is his favourite tune". Yet
they stall and stumble over their words in attempting to nail their
frontman in a soundbite.
	"He's just^Å a guy who happens to be a really good songwriter," Geddes
mumbles. "I wouldn't put up with anyone else phoning the house at the
hours he does, but you let him get away with it because it's him."

Becoming anxious that Belle & Sebastian were being increasingly viewed
as a one-man operation, insiders claim that Stuart Murdoch tried to nip
his burgeoning cult of personality in the bud. Of course, his subsequent
refusal to do any interviews whatsoever has had the opposite effect,
bathing the frontman in a more enigmatic light.
	"It's definitely been made a bigger deal out of than it should've
been," reasons Geddes. "He'd done a few interviews, wasn't happy with
the way they put the band across, so he decided not to do them. I don't
see anything abnormal about that."
	"I think it was a lot to do with him being misquoted and stuff,"
Colburn offers. "He just wasn't happy with being interviewed and then
reading it all jumbled up." (Q subsequently offers Murdoch an
opportunity to tape any form of interview he might agree to, in an
effort to assure him that he wouldn't be misquoted. He declines,
relaying a message via his press officer that "he really doesn't like
talking about himself".)
	Belle & Sebastian's attitude to promotional photographs of themselves
has been weirder still. To date, these have included: album covers
featuring shots of friends, one breast-feeding a toy tiger; a group
painting with the supposed band members  (more of their friends) posing
in the background; cellist Campbell with her face obscured by a surgical
mask and a re-enactment of The Last Supper featuring a smattering of B&S
members and - hey - their pals.
	"We just want pictures to look good," Geddes insists, "and basically
most snapshots of eight-piece bands look awful. I don't see why there's
a problem. There are photos of everyone in the band. It's not like we're
like (hides head under jacket). It's just not wanting to have too many
crap-looking pictures. The Daily Mail took a photo of all of us
backstage after a gig and we're just sat around looking awful."
	The consequent lack of a band identity gives the group's constituents
plenty of room for manoeuvre. Less a band, more a confederation of
independent states, most have other musical projects on the go. Stuart
David's short stories-with-samplers project, Looper, is already
attracting attention, while Isobel Campbell plays a major role on The
Gentle Waves' debut album, The Green Fields Of Foreverland. Stevie
Jackson helps out The Secret Goldfish. Colburn assists Camera Obscura.
Colburn and Campbell played on Snow Patrol's Songs For Polar Bears and
Chris Geddes, Murdoch and Campbell are on the first Arab Strap album.
Geddes is in the dancey V-Twin and DJs as Twin Tub. And that's probably
just the tip of the iceberg.
	So far it's Belle & Sebastian who have captured the public's
imagination. Record buyers want to know about them, so isn't there a
responsibility to communicate with the public, even via the press?
	"I disagree," argues Geddes. "If people have a right to demand anything
of you, it's that you make good records. If you go out of your way to be
a media pop star, then you will get to a point where people can
legitimately say, Well this is the sphere you operate in, you do have
these obligations. But, I mean, all we've ever set ourselves up as was a
bunch of people making records and as far as I'm concerned, that's the
only responsibility we've got^Å"

oday, Belle & Sebastian are doing a bad impression of a "difficult"
band. Rather than mystique-mongering, Colburn describes the artful
troupe as basically comprising "six blokes and two birds". 
	They're keen to explode certain other myths about themselves, including
that they snubbed the offer of a support slot from Radiohead ("It was in
South East Asia and we couldn't get the backing because we're on such a
small label"), that when performing live they play ridiculously quietly
to test the patience of the audience ("There's folk playing recorders
and the cello^Å we're not AC/DC or The Who") and that they turned down
Top Of The Pops for This Is Just A Modern Rock Song ("Top Of The Pops is
definitely one of the few collective ambitions the band has^Å the record
just didn't go in the charts high enough").
	Even the suggestion that two members turning up at the Brits seemed
like not-a-very-Belle-&-Sebastian-thing-to-do is roundly rebuffed by
Colburn: "It would've been a fairly obvious thing not to go because of
The Verve refusing and stuff. You get invited to a party, so you go."
	As regards Pete Waterman's vote-rigging allegations, Chris Geddes is
keen to point out that B&S fans are highly Web-literate (their site
averages 200,000 hits per week). "We've got 60,000 fans or something,"
he states, "and out of them, it's understandable that 10,000 bothered to
vote. OK, Steps have got a fan club of half a million, but they couldn't
be bothered to vote." For the record, then, the keyboardist did
personally vote in The Sun's phone poll recount. "The whole thing was
hilarious," he grins. "In the space of three days, we'd become household
names without leaving the flat^Å"
	While that sentence alone seems to sum up Belle & Sebastian and
everything might appear rosy in their world, an uncomfortable atmosphere
descends when Q accompanies the pair back to CaVa Studios. Stuart
Murdoch, it transpires, is working in the basement studio below our very
feet. Ever-diplomatic, Colburn shrugs in explanation, "It'd be great to
hang out, but y'know, the rest of the band are downstairs and stuff^Å"
	Hiding, effectively. Perhaps, in retreating further into the shadows,
Stuart Murdoch is complicating matters for himself, with what appears to
be a mediaphobia. Moreover, if Belle & Sebastian's profile and sales
increase, it seems unlikely that anyone close to him will dare question
his strategy.
	"Say if Paul Simon or Bob Dylan or one of those type of people turned
up on your doorstep," Jeepster's Mark Jones offers, drawing mighty
parallels. "You'd kind of have to think, You're absolutely amazing^Å you
can do whatever you want."

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cheers,
Katrina.
		
-- 
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