THE MISSION
"We Are Absurd And Ridiculous!"
Inside - Wayne Hussey tells all

THE MISSION'S Wayne Hussey - an outside looney with funny shades and a habit or a regular guy who cries when he's lobely? ROBIN GIBSON looks behind the post-goth curtain of myth to find the man, PETER ANDERSON takes seascapes.

A dim afternoon in Manchester, and I'm feeling much the same as a certain local radio DJ in Aberdeen.

The man recently told The Mission's Wayne Hussey, "I can't believe how civil and well-behaved you are...I was expecting you to come in here with a syringe hanging out of one arm, a bottle of wine under the other and a straw up your nose, telling me to f*** off."

Wayne and I are sat in the dining room of something which could be an up market bed and breakfast or an aspiring hotel, and he's working his way, carefully, through his first bottle of wine.

Far from being an arrogant bastard or a complete fool (I had expected a kind of half-arsed combination of the two), he's friendly, articulate and merely swaying between a good-humoured paranoia - which is a result of pondering his recent drunken appearances in the press - and a nervous, conspiratorial giggle.

He's not going to surprise me too much, but he throws me a little when I ask him what he got off on when he was a kid.

"I used to go to church," he replies, in deadpan Leeds. "That was the major part of my life. Not just Sundays - Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and on Saturdays there was always some sort of social event...

"I'm still a baptized Morman, but I'm obviously not a practicing one. I can see the value of religions like that, though. It gives people a purpose.

"My family are still very devout Mormons."

So what did you get out of it? It obviously didn't give you a lasting purpose.

"No, no. A lot of it was indoctrination because I was brought up a Morman from a very early age. So until I was 14 or 15, it was like... blind faith. But I got off on knowing my religion, and studying it. I did get something lasting out of it. I've got my own set of morals. I fan live with myself...there's nothing I feel any guilt about."

Still, Wayne Hussey has been learning too late for his own liking, to rely on his wits. That's why he's drinking slowly, clear or drug talk, and generally doing his level best to dump the barrow of gleeful excess which The Mission have thus far been wheeling proudly in front of themselves.

"Course I do," he scolds, "We all go for it! Everybody does. I like extremes. I hate mediocrity."

Do you think extreme?

"I'm extreme to what I know, to the way I was brought up. But by the same token, I think I was very extreme when I was younger, in a religious sense. I used to get up in the morning and pray. I used to pray before I'd go to bed. I used to have evenings spent in church when other kids were out playing football and screwing girls...

"You talk to the other three in the group - they were the lads, they've all been done for being drunk and disorderly when they were 16, and stuff. That, to me, is normal. I can see that my life as a youngster was extreme. But then again most 27-year-olds don't do what I do either, aren't as extreme as I am now..."

The Mission are halfway into their biggest tour yet, have just released their first album 'Gods Own Medicine' on Mercury and are selling out the country's dancehalls, sprung floors and all.

One of them has already found time to discharge himself after one day of a recommended ten-day spell in hospital and, today, they're taking it easy through necessity. They've been watching the countryside roll past through the back windows of a van unashamedly decked out with dire sounds (Queen's 'Sheer Heart Attack' assaults me the one time I venture inside) and they're living out of bags.

Wayne admits The Mission has got little to do with real life.

"But I think the same with all music. Being in a group is ridiculous. You loose all perspective on things, locked away in a studio, or touring. And you're surrounded by people who want to take something from you. In the end they're just...closing in, really. I mean, there are times when I feel really lonely, pissed off, and there are times when I feel like crying..."

When was the last?

"Last night - because I was here on my own, in my room, and the night before we'd been playing in front of a thousand people, holding out their hands. . . Can I have a bangle? Can I have a kiss? Can I have a photograph? . . .

Wayne Hussey reckons there's no sure and proven way of remaining sane, though he reckons his experiences with the Sisters and Dead Or Alive have prepared him better than most for the hairier aspects of success. People grabbing him, and stuff.

So much, at present for Wayne: a pretty regular guy.

The Mission, live, thunder comfortably and I like it. Functional rock, yes, but exciting. Hussey may have done some time, but he never seems jaded.

'Gods Own Medicine' is a good album; not a classic, but songs like 'Sacrilege', 'Wasteland', and 'Let Sleeping Dogs Die' are memorable, go easy on the psuedomystical gothic breast-beating, and harbor a knowing love of pompt and pretension which Wayne sees as tongue in cheek and which a large proportion of his fans, he agrees, probably don't.

"Some good rock songs", the Sun said. That was its complete review of 'Gods Own Medicine'.

There are flashes of inspiration frequent enough to provide "a great gig" or a song you'll throw on the turntable again and possibly again. In the world of pop, The Mission are as far from revolutionary as Blanketey Blank is in the world of broadcasting. Some people think that's reason enough to write them off, though I can't see why. The Mission are - without wishing to sound as inconsequential as the unwittingly perceptive fellow at The Sun -a good group with the makings of a massive one and a custom-built star in Wayne Hussey, his charisma and his daunting voice.

"To me, it's a classic album, because it...means so much to me. But I know what you mean, in terms of making a classic, seminal album. It's like 'Marquee Moon' is a classic to me, 'Sergeant Pepper's', the first Velvets. . .

"It was never our intention to be considered seminal like that. We know that we're not innovative enough, for a start. I don't think we've got it in us to be innovative. What we are good at is dealing with cliches, and making them seem absurd and ridiculous... which is what, I think, we are."

Even so, he's at paints to point out that more or less every Mission song is an intensely personal song, for him. Which may be the case. . . there's certainly none of the lyrical claptrap I'd expected: rather, some credible if indulgent excursions into love, lust, jealousy and even (what some would have as) eroticism. Me I'll just hit the twentieth century and Chambers dictionary, thereof, pull a grubby scrap of paper from my underwear and ask, What does the word melodrama mean to you?

"Well, overly dramatic...taking things to an extreme."

Are the Mission melodramatic?

"Yeh," he grins.

Unfolding the scrap, I begin: a kind of romantic and sensational drama, crude, sentimental and conventional, with strict attention to poetic justice and happy endings. . .

"Let's have a look...yeah, that's alright!" Throaty laughter. "Well, God, yeah. . . I wish I'd thought of that one."

Chambers got there first, but he'll go for it, anyway. Isn't crude and sentimental a bit derogatory, though?

"I don't think so...yeah, I am a sentimental person. There are people I care deeply for, people I haven't seen for years, but still keep in touch with, still feel very sentimental about. We all do, though, if we're honest with ourselves. What else? Conventional? Yeah, I think we're pretty conventional."

Crude?

"Yeah, we can be crude. Try us!"

Musically, personally, or both?

"I think, um, we're musically crude in as much as we're pretty blatant. Personally crude...no, I don't think the lyrics are crude. And I don't think I'm a crude person."

Poetic justice? Is it better than real justice?

"Yeah. And I think The Mission are poetic justice. There's people who'll hate the fact tat we're successful. To me, that's poetic justice. It's just having a last laugh. I'm a vengeful person. If somebody crosses me, somebody I've put trust in, ten I'm vengeful."

It's perfectly OK to say The Mission are hots on for nowhere, though unless you're familiar with an LP called 'Presence' you probably won't. But if I thought The mission were meant to be important, I wouldn't enjoy them.

"I'm not cool to save my life, mate. I'm being reserved, tonight. It's like learning to play the game properly. You have to make mistakes along the way. I think I'm probably making one now, in being this cool."

By the time we get to the dressing room and Wayne is making up and getting a little more seriously drunk, he's kind of blowing his covera nd he laughs because he knows it.

"I know this is a stupid question, Robin, but...have you got any speed?"

Honestly, The Mission play a blinder, and I don't know where, but he must've got hold of some. I slip back to the point in our interview here he's feeling remorse, worried about the land speed record he's setting for infamy. Where I ask him if he relishes the idea of being a bad influence.

"No, because for better or worse, I'm more responsible than that. I hat ethe idea that a 14-year old kid can read an interview with me, where I'm glorifying, say, the use of drugs - let's not beat about the bush! - and think, yeah, well, he does that, so it must be good. Even though he looks like a zombie. . . "

But surely the best thing about great rock n' roll bands is that they're irresponsible? Wayne agrees, but reckons that they all must feel flashes of conscience, occasionally.

"You just caught me on a particularly pensive day," he decides wearily.

Wayne Hussey's apparently gratuitous shades are, in fact, bona fide spectacles.

"I've always felt special," he tells me confidentially, peering through them.

Doesn't everyone?

I thought they did and I've asked a few people this, and they don't. I've always felt that I could be special to . . . a lot of people. There are times when I'm onstage, I feel that I could play God. I feel like I could get that audience to do almost anything I want them to do.

"Not in the normal course of events, no. But that's the thing where you get carried away, and it's a reciprocal thing. The audience want you to play that figurehead.

"Actually," he mutters, belatedly stepping back from that pratfall of too-much honesty. "I'm more like that bastard son of god."

More like a regular bloke. Today Wayne Hussey has the weight of the world on his shoulders, and he's made me think that having some good rock songs must be a real trial sometimes. Back at the Manchester Ritz, he comes offstage completely disconsolate after playing a blinder, playing as close to God as you're going to get in a 1200-capacity Mecca.

Wayne Hussey invites me back to his hotel for a drink, but I decline. And then he goes back - alone - to his room, where he probably feels really lonely, pissed off, and close to crying again. It's justanother rainy, dull day in this rainy, dull town.