THE MISSION'S third album has rocketed into the national charts, with the first two singles, 'Butterfly On a Wheel' and 'Deliverance' introducing them to a wider, Pop Rock audience. Gone are the daze of drugs and Goth Rock; instead Wayne Hussey's latest persona is wracked with emotion and strung out on a love for his fellow man. All this and some anthemic sounds and social politics too. MAURA SUTTON invites them to tell RAW more over a spott of puff pastry...
"We're not complicated."
Wayne Hussey's impenetrable John Lennon shades perch on the end of the vocalist's nose like twin black holes. Seeing all, telling nothing. I she joking? I she serious? Behind the shades, Wayne Hussey's eyes may be jumping around like possessed ping pong balls, or they may be dozing. It is, after all, late at night and The Mission have spent yet another day chatting to an endless line of journalists and posing for a cavalcade of photographers.
Time for a nose bag? Wayne and extremely affable drummer Mick Brown snatch a bite in a London brasserie (or "brassiere" as they prefer to call it). The complexities of the menu are no problem for these worldly campaigners. Mick: "This is all bollocks, innit? I'm not 'aving anything with puff pastry. Not in RAW!" Wayne, having already dismissed my humble suggestion that The Mission are a complicated band, proceeds to question vigorously my next statement, that 'Carved in Sand' is the most traditional of the three Mission albums.
"Traditional? In what sense?"
Er...the tracks are shorter.., more traditional. "1 see it as the most natural record we've made. It was a lot of fun to make. We didn't feel any pressure. We didn't feel that we had to justify ourselves to anyone apart from ourselves and hence I think it was the most natural record we've made. It's been the most enjoyable to make, so in that respect I think it is the best."
It appears to be dealing with raw emotion on a much more basic level than previous Mission records.
"I think our stuff's always been like that," challenges Hussey. "It's just maybe that I'm getting better at articulating myself."
"There's another confidence on this album that maybe weren't on there before," concurs Mick philosophically. "We were able to say 'this is good enough' a lot quicker than we've ever done before, and be, like, really happy with it and get on with it. It was a really happy album to make. It reminds me of happy times."
"It's a more optimistic album, that's without a shadow of a doubt," states Wayne, appearing to sense my doubt.
Even with the opening track, 'Amelia' - a particularly moving, no-holds-barred account of horrific child abuse. That's hardly optimistic?
"It's a brill song!" defends the vocalist. "Even though it is a brutal, harrowing song and it disturbs people, I think it's still very up."
Why?
"Because of the fact that I could write it. Maybe I would have felt angry two years ago but not been able to write the song. It's got a very strong point to make - that's why it's the first track, side one."
Has it prompted a strong reaction?
"Yes. It's had an immense amount of feedback. Most of it's been good actually. The NME slagged me off for writing it, which I thought was really stupid. They said it was too brutal, too hamfisted."
"They said it was too clumsy," adds Mick. "They rang up the N.S.P.C.C. to try and get them to say it was a terrible idea to do the song, but they actually endorsed it, thought it was a good idea."
Wayne: "It was inspired... inspired is probably the wrong word actually... motivated by a fan of ours that was writing to me who had been abused by her father. The first time that she wrote to me it coincided with a couple of things that were on TV. It just made me angry and I felt angry enough and confident enough of my songwriting ability to put it in song. In my own mind there was never any doubt where it was gonna go on the record. It disturbs people and that's the desired effect 'cause when you disturb people you get them to recognize that maybe we're all capable of abuse, of varying degrees, and once you recognize that and acknowledge that, you're part way to preventing it."
The next single, after the top ten 'Butterfly On A Wheel ("it was nice to have a hit single and be on Top of The Pops," says Wayne) is the epic 'Deliverance'.
"That's a classic Mission anthem really. It was one of those that we started off playing live maybe a year ago and the fans immediately took to it. They love it."
And so, by all accounts, do the Americans, where 'Deliverance' was the first single from the album.
"It's actually doing really well. We've got a great 12-inch version, 'The Sorcerer's Mix'. I had this dream - this is true - a dream about a 12-inch of 'Deliverance. I woke up in the middle of the night and wrote it down. How I wanted to do it, what I was gonna sample from where, the whole format of the song and I went in that weekend and did it. It turned out really good."
'Carved In Sand' also contains some typically confusing Mission tirades. 'Belief', for example, with lots of customary Biblical references.
" 'Belief' is actually one of the first songs I wrote after the last album. The language of it is still in the same vein as earlier songs. I'm not really sure what that song's about 'cause I wrote it in three or two lines, meaning something in itself, and then put it all together. It's just poetic license really. Maybe it'll all come to me in two years time."
Do you approach lyric writing as if you were writing poetry?
"It varies. Sometimes I write the lyrics and it's just a set of lyrics that I suppose in its own way is poetry. I do see my lyrics as being quite poetic."
Would you consider writing a book of pure poetry?
"I'd like to, but the lyrics are written for songs basically."
Another new song that uses word power to dramatic effect is 'Hungry As The Hunters'. Again the lyrics are less than straightforward. Is it a song about drug abuse?
Hussey gasps. His eyebrows shoot up from behind the shades to meet the brim of his hat. "God! You're one of the few that's picked up on that, without a lyric sheet as well! It's a song about addiction, yeah. It's essentially about the heroin addiction of a friend of mine, but the 'she' in the lyrics could also be woman. Women can be addictive. There's a film I saw in America recently called War Of The Roses and it's frightening to see the disintegration of a relationship like that, because of obsession. It happens. Any kind of addiction or obsession can be harmful, not just drugsˇ"
Would you be pleased if one of your fans gave up drugs after hearing it?
Well, people have in the past. Actually..." (starts to giggle!) ..."one of the wierdest backhanded compliments we've received was after the first record. Somebody wrote to me and said, 'After hearing your record I gave up heroin and started doing speed!!' It was like, 'What!!?' 'God's Own Medicine' is definitely a speed-fuelled record. I'd just spent five weeks speeding when we were recording that, just wouldn't go to bed for days and days. We'd finish in the studio at two in the morning then Tim the producer would go to bed and he'd come down about eight in the morning and I'd still be there, sat in front of the fire, strumming my acoustic guitar writing new songs. "Again, it's something to look back on and it's easy to see in retrospect. It wasn't good for me. It's well documented that I was brought up as a Mormon, so in a way I've led a very restricted childhood. I mean, I didn't get drunk 'til I was 21, didn't smoke 'til I was 23. And I've made up for it! You have to go from one extreme to the other to find your own middle ground, your own balance."
Displaying the other, socially aware side of their natures, last May The Mission played Live benefits for the Lockerbie Air Disaster Fund and for the Hillsborough fund. Unbelievably, this led to criticism from other bands about "career moves" something Wayne describes as "way off the mark". For The Mission, the '80s was certainly a hard and brutal decade to live through.
"It was, but I think in the last couple of years there's definitely been a twist. A turn for the better. There's a new set of values, a new morality coming into play. It's good, there's a real feeling of hope and optimism on a general level and it's being reflected in the music of the time as well. It's a positive thing."
Is 'Carved In Sand' therefore an album of its time, a reflection of that hope?
"I've always felt we were of our time. Basically the records are just a document of us at that particular point in time, the way we're feeling. As I said before, it's all down to feeling. That's what you try to convey in the songs. It was a lovely summer!"
Wayne Hussey: "We're all basically humanitarians. We deal with personal politics rather than general politics. We all have opinions. We all have a concern for what's going on. The four of us don't necessarily agree on politics, but we feel that we are caring people. We care for each other, we care what happens to people. If we can get that point across in what we do then that's great."
Mick Brown: "We compare and we see going on how well we operate and deal with each other. Not just us four, but the whole Mission family. They're my best mates. I love 'em and we care for each other. You have your good times and your bad times and people fuck up but you don't leave 'em alone. You help 'em. We've learnt how to do that. It takes a little effort and a bit of learning but it's nothing that people can't do."
Wayne" "The whole basis of the band right now is friendship and that's a really nice position to be in. It really boils down to treating people the way you wanna be treated yourself."