Wayne Hussey of the Mission gets rm reports arrested, takes a sick bucket on stage with him, drinks a lot, has slept with loads of people, but his main ambition is to be on 'TOTP'. And he gets really gooey when fans send him heart-felt poems imitating his own romantic lyrics. Will the real Wayne Hussey please stand up?
Story: Roger Morton The honeymoon couple sit quietly at the hotel bar. Their backs are turned on the motley infestation of long haired rock musicians and video pros slumped out around the rest of the bar.
The honeymooner's prim reserve suggests that they'd like to be left alone. But no... A slightly embarassed figure in black n' tat leans in on their silence. A bottle of champagne for the newly weds, compliments of his band, The Mission. So this is Wayne Hussey. So this is the new 'wild man of rock n' roll'.
As Wayne Hussey knows very well, getting a name for yourself in the pop world is as easy as throwing up. As more and more musicians turn into healthy careerists, so the media appeal of a drinking, drugging, rock n' roller grows.
In the six months since the indie success of the Mission's first single, 'Serpents Kiss', Wayne has played the game for all it's worth. The chart successes of 'Garden of Delight' and 'Stay With Me' gave him even more room to try it on.
This is the man who claims he wants to out-do the worst excesses of the heavy rock fraternity by having a bow-tied dwarf come on stage to deliver his drugs on a silver platter. This is the man who, just prior to this interview, got rm's Stuart Bailie arrested on his way to France by trashing his ferry cabin. This is the man who says he wants to f*ck Ian Astbury. This is the singer of a band who go on stage with the sick buckets already lined up.
All of which might not win your critical approval, especially when the band makes a more or less traditional noise, but it will certainly get your attention. As Wayne is later to quote (from Salvador Dali!): "You don't read what's written about you...You weigh it!" Hey! This man just doesn't give a damn...Or does he?
On the night before the video shoot for 'Wasteland', the Mission's latest piece of pomp-ish pop, insane Wayne - vain Wayne, piss-brain Wayne - is sitting in a North Devon hotel bar, getting all sentimental over some honeymooners. What on earth is he playing at? Who's fooling who? And who the hell needs the Mission anyway?
Bottle in hand, Wayne leaves behind the other three Missions - Craig, Mick and Simon - and leads the way to his hotel room for a journey into the heart of Wayneland.
Wayne: "I think every interview we've done has been a wind up."
Is that such a good way to go about it?
Wayne: "I still go about it like that most of the time, but I think maybe I'm going to stop reading our press. It doesn't make you believe what you read, but it makes you think you must live up to certain expectations. You know, I'm supposed to be 'The Wild Man Of Rock', and I think 'Oh these guys are going to be so disappointed if I don't go round trashing this hotel room.' "
But you brought that on yourself.
Wayne: "yeah, it is self perpetuated but the way I see it is that we all do things that we know aren't good for is, but we like doing them. That's why we do them. I mean, I like drinking and causing havoc.
"But I think as far as our audience is concerned, we're beyond what's said about us in the press."
Do you not think that the escapist, fantasy, rock n' roll lifestyle is an essential part of what the Mission are about?
Wayne: "I think there's an element of that in it, but that applies to us as much as to the audience. It's great to go out and be these rock n' roll rebels. To get pissed out of your head, to get a Record Mirror journalist arrested. I think that's wonderful because it's escapism for us too."
So it's just an excuse to piss around?
Wayne: "Well, it is. Being in a group is an excuse to be irresponsible. You get away with murder. Like you go places and you can be the most obnoxious, arrogant people on earth and people will accept it. If you went there for a holiday and acted that way you'd get beaten up!"
But then holidays don't figure very much in Wayneland. The Mission's non-stop touring machine keeps Wayne in a long dark tunnel called "being on the road". The never ending line of dates, along with the recent burglary of his home in Leeds, has led Wayne to give up having a permanent address. Never much inclined to venture forth in daylight, Wayne's view of the world, from behind the ever present sunglasses, becomes increasingly one of gigs, hotels and wine bottles.
What happens when you drink?
Wayne: "It depends on how long I've been drinking for."
Do you get more honest about yourself?
Wayne: "Yeah, and the more I drink the more obnoxious I become, so I think I'm probably a very obnoxious person. There is this streak in me that's so self-righteous and so all-knowing. Yeah...I mean I don't trust anyone who doesn't drink.
"It's a very extreme life that you live, being in a group...It does your head in. The fact that we can get a bottle of wine at L9.995 a time, just by clicking our fingers...that's ridiculous, isn't it?"
You seem to enjoy it.
Wayne: "Yeah, I love it. And I'm coming to expect it, which is probably bad for me. If Phonogram sends me a car now, I won't get in it unless it's a stretch limo. That's not being obnoxious or arrogant, you just want to see how far you can take people."
Don't you think that's a dangerous attitude?
Wayne: "No, because quite frankly I've got a good head on my shoulders, and anyway, if I started f*ckin' up in that respect, the rest of the group would just clip me round the ear. Thankfully they're more down to earth than I am."
Wayne might be quite happy to play along with his 'image' but every now and then the mad-hatter takes off his disguise and shows us this intelligent, sensitive man, who sometimes simply can't help being himself.
To be sure, his religious upbringing as the eldest of five Husseys born in Bristol to Morman parents, came out a bit twisted on the 'God's Own Medicine album. But this is no Satanic medicine man, more like a decent soul who can't resist playing the pop tart.
Wayne: "I do like to tart it up a bit. I like glamour, the tacky glamour thing. I mean, I like Madonna having a beauty spot in a different place on every photograph. I love it. I'e started doing that, I've got one by my nipple right now."
But nobody's going to see it, Wayne.
Wayne: "Ah, but I know it's there and that's good enough for me."
Your appearance is like a disguise; like you're trying to hide something.
Wayne: "You mean if I took my hat and glasses off no-one would recognise...Apart from the people I've been to bed with, and there's quite a few of them over the years," he grins.
Er...Yes.
Wayne: "It's not on conscious thing, but when you bring the subject up, it is probably a form of defense, self-preservation.
"It's a weird thing. The vast majority of the British public doesn't give a f*ck who I am, but there's this minority who, if they had the chance, would tear me to bits. Not just sexually, but critically too. I mean, there have been occasions that I've gone out where people have wanted to beat me up just for the mere fact that I'm Wayne Hussey."
And it's probably going to get worse. You see, Wayne has these 'ambitions'.
Wayne: "My first ambition was to own more than one guitar, and my second was for my amplified to be flight-cased. Now I've achieved them, so the immediate ambition is for an appearance on 'Top Of The Pops'. Because, unfortunately, that's the way the nation as a whole judges whether you're successful or not. And I know it would please my mother to no end.
"Everyone says to her 'Your Wayne's done really well...But we haven't seen him on 'Top Of The Pops' yet, have we' "?
Not yet. But if, as seems likely, the majestic guitar melodies and the desolate, windswept vocals of 'Wasteland' take a hold on the charts, it won't be long before our Wayne's up there hamming it up with all the other flirts.
Whatever the attraction or repulsion of the adopted Hussey persona, it's undeniable that the Mission are on the whole VERY POPULAR. And yet they're popular at a time when, according to the theory, all that brooding, Goth-type rock should have drowned in its own pomp. For God's sake, this band covers Neil Young songs!
The truth is that the appetite for the Mission's style of glittering, soaring, rumbling 'rawk' never has gone away, and never will. They're part of an ever present, broad church of bands, from Led Zeeplin to the Cult, from the Doors to the Banshees, who's mystical, artificial wasteland provides the only musical landscape for a constantly regenerating audience.
What saves the Mission from being another overblown, self-important, monster rock band, is: a) they don't take it serious, and b) those tarty pop instincts of Mr. Hussey.
Wayne: "We've never ever claimed to be an 'innovative' group, or to make records for the future. We make records first and foremost for ourselves, which means trying to make them for the moment.
"We're not trying to make a Led Zepplin record, we're trying to make a record which pleases us. And as much as I like Led Zepplin, I also like Prince, and Madonna, and I think all those facets are in there. People who say we're regressive are just looking at the photographs before hearing the record. It's ignorance.
"Pop is short for popular, and there are ways and means of making what you do popular. I don't think we're the sort of group to ever have a number one, but then I once said that when I was with Dead Or Alive. The musical climate changes...I don't know, it could be that we make rock music popular."
But shouldn't pop music make an effort to relate to people's lives in the present?
Wayne: "Well, all I can say to you in our defense is look what's happened to us in the six months since we released our record. It's incredible, and it's happened because there has been this desire there, amongst certain people, for a group like us.
A desire for all that dark, mystical brooding?
Wayne: "I don't think of our music as dark. I've got no obsession with darkness, or black magic, or being a mystic. I do read about it, but that's as far as it goes.
"The lyrics, to me, are very personal. They're something separate, even from the fact of being in the band."
Is your audience meant to take the sinister, melodramatic imagery seriously, or to laugh at it?
Wayne: "I think that they're meant to laugh at the overall thing, but there are facets in it that mean an awful lot to us. I mean, I genuinely believe that we've made an outstanding LP. But when you take everything else into consideration, I find it laughable, and I think that's what people should see in it."
Letters strewn with black magic symbols are noticeably absent from the pile of fan mail that Wayne shows me in support of his case. What we do find, however, is an abundance of letters from teenage girls who seem to see Wayne as some sort of alienated sex symbol.
Who the hell needs the Mission? Well for the time being, Emma does, and Alison does, and Sally does. Their little gifts and heartfelt poems, imitating Wayne's romantic lyrics, spill out of the envelopes and Wayns starts to go all misty-eyed.
Wayne: "I know it sounds silly, but it touches you," he sighs. "There's a lot of letters that just say "I love your words. They really mean an awful lotto me, and I cry when I hear them.' Like this one 'I send you all my love and I love you to death... PS: Please send your autograph. I have enclosed a sae.' Ha ha!...No honestly, it's so lovely.
"These mean more to me than a good review in a paper. Just one letter like that justifies what we do."
Do you think they really care for you?
Wayne: "They care for what I stand for. For the words I write, for the way I look, the way I sing. I mean, there are letters here saying 'I know that girls only go with you because of who you are. They don't really care.' Which is right, I suppose.
"I don't know if I'm being obnoxious here, but I must be quite a big score in some circles... 'Yeah! I f*cked Wayne Hussey! Ha ha ha."
But Wayne, didn't I read something about you and your 'lonely hotel rooms'...
Wayne: "Well, to tell you the truth, there's a reality most of the time. You know, one of the best nights on the last tour for me was when I met this girl in Ayr, of all places, and we spent the night just walking around the town, talking.
That was great because there was no expectations on either of our parts. It's like, when someone else comes back to your hotel with you, because you're Wayne Hussey, they expect you to be up all night nobbing 'em. You're not. Half the time you're f*cking incapable anyway."
Er...Don't you...
Wayne: "I think there's a certain faction of people who go to gigs and that's their soul aim. We were in Belfast the other night and there were these girls telling us 'Oh yeah, we met the Damned on Tuesday...Rat Scabies is a great f*ck!"
That's really degrading though, isn't it?
Wayne: "Yeah. It's a terrible thing, yeah. But, I mean, he still got f*cked!"
Ah yes, this is the stuff. Wayne has had quite a bit to drink by now. Behind his Raybans, there's a light in his eyes which betrays the flickering presence of that other Wayne. The one that trashes hotel rooms, and says THE MOST TERRIBLE THINGS.
Are you bisexual, Wayne?
Wayne: "I've had relationships with blokes, yeah, but I find they have to be more developed than with girls. There have only been about three in my life. It's a lot harder...You have to take more DRUGS!
That's the stuff. What a lot of sex n' drugs n' rock n' roll fun. But honestly Wayne, who's fooling who?
Wayne: "No....These days it has to be about love, even with girls. That's the f*ckin' thing. I don't go with anybody just for the sake of it anymore. As I said, that night just walking around Ayr with that girl was the best night of the tour. Just walking about, talking to each other."
You're a bit of an old hippy really, aren't you?
Wayne: "F*ck, NO! I'm not an old hippy, I'm a f*cking human being!"
The following day, the human being stands amongst a wilderness of sand dunes and presents himself to the video cameras. Dressed in full voodoo gypsy garb, Wayne's purple-red mouth lip-synchs to 'Wasteland'.
"There's a crystal view, from my window..."
The singer's expression is deadpan. But off camera, the rest of the band are giggling and cracking jokes. The Mission might trade on the imagery of rock Gothdom, but they know, and the little girls know, that it's a camp version. A veneer of mysticism. A clowning rock rebellion.
It starts to rain, and a video hand rushes to hold an umbrella over Wayne. A sand dune messiah, in an artificial wasteland, giving in to temptation...Prettily.
Photography: Patrick Quigly