Are Wayne Hussey and Miles Hunt the best pop stars we've got or just the biggest gobs? Ann Scanlon listens to The Mission and Wonder Stuff mouthpieces sound off about fame, fortune, self-delusion and their forthcoming tour. Brothers in arms by Mary Scanlon
THE MISSION? I wouldn't jack myself off over one of their records!"
Not the greatest of compliments, much less a way of endearing yourself to the band concerned.
But it comes from the mouth of Miles Hunt, a sneer on his lip and a tongue full of bile.
What The Wonder Stuff singer didn't know, when he casually name-checked The Mission in one of his characteristic rants, was that two weeks later he'd bump into Wayne Hussey in the less than spacious surrounds of Camden Town's Dingwalls.
"I died on my feet that night," he remembers. "I walked into the bog, saw Wayne and thought, Ah. f***-! Then later this guy that I'd gone with introduced me to him and I was basically in the shit."
Unbeknown to Miles, though, Wayne had seen The Wonder Stuff a couple of months before and loved them. And, more to the point, privately agreed with what Miles had said.
"We get slagged off by loads of people," says Wayne, "but most of them are just laughable, But what Miles said actually hit home because he was going on about our record sleeves and, around the time of 'Children', the whole idea of The Mission had become career orientated. We started seeing the band as a corporate thing becoming part of the whole circus.
"So Miles was right but, in the meantime, we'd said, No more of this, we're gonna do what we wanna do and to actually see somebody else say it really hurt."
But Wayne, ever the gracious one, extended a hand of friendship to Miles and the Hussey mouth lapsed from its usual pout into a warm smile.
"And I thought, What a top geezer," continues Miles, continuing , You're a f***in' wanker and I wouldn't piss on one of your records or whatever. I would have ignored anyone who'd said that about me or basically given them a mouthful of abuse if they'd been introduced.
"But Wayne was a bigger man than me," he pauses and smiles. "Then."
The pair ended that particular night by drinking their way towards the early hours in Miles' room in a Sloane Square hotel. "That was one of the highlights of last year," enthuses Wayne "We just sat up all night, chatting and playing each other our new demos. Miles gave me a Joni Mitchell tape and I gave him a John Lennon CD."
NINE MONTHS later, Wayne and Miles are drinking Jack Daniel's and coke in London's Columbia Hotel and the bond between them has now extended into a genuine sense of camaraderie between the rest of The Mission and The Wonder Stuff.
After the Reading Festival (where they both took premier places on the final bill) The Mission invited The Wonder Stuff to play at their Fan Club convention and the latter returned the compliment by getting The Mission albeit in the lurex splendor of their glam alter ego, The Metal Gurus- to support them at one of their Christmas homecoming shows in Birmingham.
And once The Mission have taken their third LP, 'Carved In Sand', 'round the UK (officially kicking off in Liverpool this week) they'll be drafting in The Wonder Stuff's support for the European and American legs through April and May.
But unlike The Mission, who played their second ever gig on the Continent and have never had much of a problem with it, The Wonder Stuff haven't attempted e European tour since their infamous first one was aborted after just six dates 15 months ago.
Sick of trying to flog their three-month old debut LP ( The Eight Legged Groove Machine') to non-plussed audiences, The Wonder 5tuff offered a unanimous V-sign to the promoters, packed their bags and returned to London declaring, "We came back because Europe's not finished yet".
"We were just like little kids." shrugs Miles (who later eulogized the experience on '30 Years in The Bathroom'), "it was. F*** you and we wouldn't let anybody say, but if you do this then you can do that and then you can be happy. We just said, No, we're not happy now, we're going home and off we went, stamping our feet."
"And we always said that the only way we could go back to Europe would be supporting. Because I don't actually care whether anybody likes us, I can't really be bothered to win anybody over and that's what you've got to do when you're doing dubs. Whereas if you're supporting it's just like, Oh, well, it's not our gig."
Wayne, however, doesn't see The Wonder Stuff's support slot in quite the same way.
"Having to go on after the Stuffies every night will keep us on our bloody toes. We won't get complacent and lethargic."
"But I'm really excited about going on tour again. And the idea of doing it with the Stuffies-it', that sense of travelling family, and I can see there'll be some nights where they'll get up and play with us and we'll play with them just for the laugh of it."
Even Miles, not renowned for his love of the road, seems genuinely excited at the prospect of 30 gigs in a row.
"It will be like everything double fold, cos everyday we'll get to the gig and not only am I seeing my brother Russ, who works with us, and Ad (Booker, roadie) and everyone but this lot will be there, so you're gonna be in a good frame of mind."
WHILE THE Mission kept out of the public eye for most of '89, preferring a couple of benefit gigs and eight dates in the Scottish Highlands to their usual assaults- The Wonder Stuff's profile was bolstered by two UK tours (the latter a sell-out), three chart hits, a Top Five LP. 'Hup', and a successful first stint in the States.
By December, the band were recording new songs which - to their marketing men s horror- they were determined to release on a third LP in the Summer.
At the same time, however, their charismatic bassist Rob Jones (better known as The Bass Thing) announced that he'd had his fill of The Wonder Stuff and was off to New York.
"When Bob told us I thought, Yeah, t want you to go," says Miles, "because we'd reached the point where we didn't talk anymore. But once he told us he was leaving I had the best month I've had with Bob in two years, just me and him going out and getting drunk."
"Bob was brilliant," joins Wayne. "He was the first Stuffie I ever met and it was actually in this hotel, downstairs, r saw him sat in the corridor and I said, Oh, is that one of the Stuffies. I II go and talk to him. And he heard me and he said, F*** off! And I turned round and said, Perhaps I won't - that was my first experience of the Stuffies!"
"I think Bob's the kind of guy-tell me if I'm wrong here- who'd prefer to stay in bed most of the day."
Miles: "Indeed he would. And did. "Basically, Bob just found the whole thing incredibly boring and pointless. And I'd agree with him, but I like the old bicycle pump on the ego"
"He said to me just before he left, I bet you're jealous as f***, aren't you, Of me? And I said, How do you mean? And he goes, Well, I've got the guts to go and find something new. And, in my drunken stupor, I kind of agreed with him."
"Somebody once said to me that I can be like a little kid that's built something really impressive with wooden blocks. But whereas Bob had to kick his blocks over it's enough for me to know that I can."
If anything might have tempted Miles to kick his blocks over, too, it was the tedious task of teaching a new bassist their back catalogue. Consequently, The Wonder Stuff decided on a three month break.
"We lasted three weeks," laughs Miles. "I wanted to do all this big band jazz stuff and I knew there was a guy I could do it with, but I had no energy whatsoever. You can't do it on your own, you need the band."
The Wonder Stuff's third LP probably won't appear until autumn, but they'll have a single next month (not taken from 'Hup', but the previously unrecorded 'Circle Square') and have found a replacement bass thing in Paul Clifford, an old friend from the West Midlands who'll be with them for The Mission dates at least.
As for The Mission, their line-up will also be supplemented by a new face, that of former Red Lorry Yellow Lorry guitarist, Wolfie The decision, it seems, is a last second whim of Wayne's.
"Why?" he asks. "So I can run about more. It just struck me today that on every song we were rehearsing I was playing guitar and I just thought, This is no good, I can't climb up the PA!"
IMPORTANT AS their forthcoming tour is, one of Hussey and Hunt's main aims for 1990 is to organize an all-day, free concert in London this summer.
Provisionally titled Day Of Conscience (though, considering the reputations of those concerned, this may well degenerate into a Day Of Unconsciousness), the original idea was Inspired by Wonder Stuff guitarist Malcolm Treece's reminiscences of the Anti-Nazi League Rally in London in the summer of '78 featuring The Clash, X-Ray Spex, Steel Pulse and The Tom Robinson Band.
Wayne: "Male had seen that gig in the park and it's still a very vivid memory cos it was such a special event."
Miles: "It was free, it was chaotic, it made the Six 0 'Clock News and there was a load of great groups on"
Wayne: "And that's the basic idea behind the Day Of Conscience, but because the finances that you need are vast, we're gonna have to get some kind of sponsorship -- from where, we don't know yet."
"It's just an idea that the youth of Britain, I suppose, gets together and stops the traffic at Hyde Park and does have a voice and something to say. To a degree, the bands that are on are incidental but the most important aspect of it is that it's a fun day."
Miles and Wayne have already written to Greenpeace, Amnesty International and Friends Of The Earth and hope that these organizations and others like Child Line and CND- will lend their support. But they're adamant that it won't be anything like the late '8Os spate of charity rock events and, as Miles puts it, no one will be "getting up onstage and gobbing off about what people should be doing".
Miles: "What's important to me about the idea is, can you imagine in the current climate of politics in England and the sort of bands that are around, us setting this up? We don't want to be slapped on the back for it, but the people that follow The Mission and the people that follow us are going to make a very untidy view point of the Bayswater Road.
"I find that thoroughly exciting and, even if we don't end up playing, I want to be there. I want to be part of it. The idea is to reverse what all those charity things have set up over the past few years -just promoting the artists. We want to do something where that's not important."
Wayne: "It's to do something that's an occasion, that will be remembered in ten years time- like Malc remembered the Anti-Nazi Rally. And I know it's what Tony (Perrin, Mission manager) wants to achieve more than anything else this year."
In the meantime, The Mission are making sure that their fans enjoy the current tour by giving them the right to record the gigs.
"Initially the bootleg market will be flooded with Mission tapes," says Wayne, "but because people have their own that demand will eventually go, so it's a good way of combatting bootlegs.
"I got the idea from the Grateful Dead when I was over there at Christmas time. They're playing massive gigs and they've got this area sectioned off behind the mixing desk and people go in there with 24-track recorders and stuff and I think it's brilliant."
"I mean personally I hate listening to them, but I really resent the fact that people will go out and pay L2O for something that's really inferior quality. This way somebody can come to the gigs, go home with a tape in their pocket, and the voice they hear when they play it back going, Hussey you're a wanker - it's them!"
DESPITE THEIR close friendship, Miles' and Wayne's public images couldn't differ more. Whereas Miles is generally regarded as stroppy and gobby, contemptuous of his contemporaries and abusive to press and audience alike, Wayne is warm, open and sure to give great copy.
"I had a conversation, the other night actually," the latter begins, "with someone who was having a go at me for being far too honest in interviews. They were saying, You should be more mysterious, hold back more." "That's bollocks! It would be so pretentious of me to do that. It's a weird thing, but sometimes in interviews I'm more able to say things than I am to my closest mates. It's a way of getting something out of your system. That whole thing of mystique and trying to be something you're not I can't deal with it. People don't want bullshit, they want honesty."
"But you know, the only time I think about what I do is when I sit down in an interview situation. There's far too much intellectualisation goes on in music· Music is an instinctive thing, it's a language of feeling, that's all."
Three years ago, when The Mission first touched the Top 20 with 'Wasteland', Wayne admitted to thriving on adoration and is thus willing to lay his heart on the line to any journalist who comes along.
"I want people to like me. Yeah," he admits. "But this is me - I wouldn't talk to you any different to the way I'd talk to Miles at a table in a bar."
As for Miles, although he is equally keen to be adored, he wears his heart where God put it on the inside.
"I ain't gonna bare my soul to anyone cos at the end of the day you walk out of this room with the last f***in' word. That's why I'd never go to the lengths that Wayne goes too even if that person's a friend - cos I ain't gonna let anyone walk out with the last word."
So what's the worst thing that someone could say about you both?
Wayne: "They would have had to have met me, got drunk with me, then turned round and said that I'm a bastard or a horrible person."
Miles: 'I'd just think, F*** you, you've lost out. Oh, I'm totally impressed with myself I am. I know I'm weak and f*** up a lot but if you can't be in love with yourself, who can you love?"
Wayne: "Do you never have self doubt, though?"
Miles; "All the f***in' time. You'd deserve to be called a wanker if you didn't... What, you don't?"
Wayne: "All the time. Believe it or not I think I'm a really shy person and it takes either a lot of guts or a lot of alcohol to overcome that."
For all the stripped soul behind Wayne's dark shades, though, he is probably well aware of exactly which parts of himself he gives away·
"I'm not sure that I agree with you," he says. "I was given a questionnaire yesterday that asked, Skeletons in your closet? and Hick (Mission drummer) turned round and said, Hey, you bloody haven't got any in yours have you? It's almost true. There's nothing I could tell you that you probably don't already know about me."
"And basically I couldn't give a f* * * what people think, whether it's a journalist or a fan. I mean, yeah, I wanna be adored. I think we all do that's part of the reason we're doing it."
"Yeah," agrees Miles. "We've all got a huge ego problem."
Of course, where the ego goes paranoia often follows. As Wayne, who once resorted to cloak-and-dagger to go down the Camden Market, knows only too well.
"That was around the time of 'Severina' and 'Wasteland' wasn't it?" he asks. "Yeah. I was f***in' totally self-deluded. I was going out on the street and thinking that everyone was staring at me. But they weren't staring at me cos I was Wayne Hussey, they were staring at me cos I was walking around with nail varnish, a skirt and a beard!
"It's self-delusion and a large part of what we do is self-delusion.'
So has he overcome this paranoia. "Well, I've given up wearing skirts," he laughs. "Yeah, I have, without a shadow of a doubt. In the last year, which was a relatively quiet year for us, there's a lot of things I've realized about myself."
Miles, on the other hand, has simply relied on a cruel tongue to quell even the slightest notion of grandeur.
"I'd be completely abusive to anyone who came up and asked me to sign a record or the back of their jacket. I'd go, F*** off! Grow up! I'm nobody. Buy the record, listen to it that's all there is"
"Then one day I was completely vicious to this poor girl in Walsall, where I live, and Clint (from Pop Will Eat Itself) was with me and I walked away, pissed off, after it had all happened. And Clint said, You bastard. Imagine if you'd bumped into Joe Strummer when you Were 14. How insecure do you feel anyway when you're that age - you'd have stayed in for months! And he said, Why don't you just accept that people like you."
"It boils down to treating people the way you want to be treated yourself," tuts Wayne.
"I've got time for people now," qualifies Miles. "Before it wasn't cos I wanted to be cocky and tell people to f*** off, it's cos I didn't know what to do. I was thoroughly embarrassed.
"I'm better now, but sometimes I'll flatly deny being me cos I don't like the idea of a complete stranger coming up, already knowing something about you. I feel like I've got the downside of it, even though all they want to do is say hello."
Wayne: "You're far too suspicious."
Miles: "I am. I'll see the bad side of anything before the good side."
Wayne: "And I'm the opposite... There was a time, in Japan actually, where me and Mick were walking around and there were these school girls following us. After a while they muscled up the courage to come over, went up to Mick, asked him for his autograph, and totally ignored me They thouoht he was the guy out o' Bros!"
Miles (warming to the subject): "I was once walking up Corporation Street in Birmingham and I knew that the two girls behind were talking about me. At first I thought, Oh, God and then then I thought, I'll get a bit of attitude and be really nice."
"So this bird eventually grabbed my shoulder and went, Excuse me and I went (flicks hair back and flashes a pearly smile) Yes? And she goes, Where'd you get your boots from?"
THE MISSION's strong links with their fans have been well documented: their loyal Eskimo following, the 'Carved In Sand' party where they invited a dozen fans to listen to the finished tracks rather than a bunch of Phonogram execs and, of course, the fan club office where Mission devotees can ring up and tell the band their problems.
"It's not like Uncle Wayne's here to ,answer your questions "he corrects "It's like they ring up and go, Hi, Wayne, how s It going? Fine. And yourself? Yeah, yeah. What are you doing tonight? Oh, I'm off down the pub."
"Obviously there's some people who go, Wayne, I'm really depressed. Why are you depressed? I've got no friends. Well, get the f*** out and choose some.
"The original inspiration for 'Amelia' (a highly emotive song about child abuse) was actually born out of a letter from a fan who was being abused by her father. I mean, there are times when it's like, that's heavy shit and, in a way, just replying is patronizing. I can't give that girl any words of comfort because I've never been in that f***in' situation.
Basically it boils down to caring for other people whether you know them or whether you don't - that's the whole basis of The Mission."
Nevertheless, you can't imagine Miles - a man who made a career out of verbal abuse until he realized that "basically, I was being Gary Glitter" having a comforting chat with his fans.
Wayne: "Oh, he's a little darling, really."
Miles: "It's just my own personal brick wall."
Wayne: "I mean, Miles, how old are you, 23? And he's like the oldest person I know. I don't mean that in an offensive way, but he's one of the world's biggest cynics. It's funny, I'm 30 and I'm sat here talking to Miles and he's cynical about this and cynical about that and it's like, you can't really be that miserable all the lime. And be goes, Yeah, I am and I go F*** off. Why are you doing it?
"I remember that conversation we had in the studio and you were going, I hate making records, t hate going on tour, I hate being in a band, the only bit I like really is writing songs and rehearsing the new ones.
"But he's a little darling really. God bless him - actually Sheryl (Wayne's best friend of the past two years) said today that I say that more than anything else, and she hates it.
"It's actually a real term of endearment, it's like giving someone a cuddle, God bless you! But she probably hates it cos I only say it when I'm drunk."
Miles: "it's when you get rid of your inhibitions. It's like with my closest mates I'll go. I love you, mate, whereas you wouldn't really do it at half ten in the morning"
Wayne: "That's one of the thinqs I notice about you and I. When we first get together it's like. Alright. Miles, how are you? Yeah, I'm fine. But a couple of drinks later it's, I love you and I love you too!"
THREE AND four years down their respective lines, neither The Mission nor The Wonder Stuff have ever pretended to be anything more than a great pop band full of life and humor and with genuine personalities in their frontmen.
And whereas Wayne, like his hero Marc Bolan, has married the bluster of rock 'n' roll to the excessive glitz of a Hollywood star, Miles has relied on the bored nonchalance and garage know how of punk.
"I grew up with things like T Rex. Molt The Hoople and David Bowie," says Wayne, "and Miles was more with the punk stuff, But I suppose the spirit is the same and I think that's why we get on it's that sense of adventure and pioneering with what we're doing."
Indeed they've already proved a source of in inspiration to each other.
"There was only two bands that I saw last year." declares Wayne, "that I thought, F***, this is really good, and that was The Wonder Stuff and The Waterboys, They're very different, but there's an energy- and it's something I think we have when we're good and there's very few bands, big or little, that have it.
"And I just went home- after both shows actually - and wrote a song. It's called 'Divided We Fall' and it'll be the next single or the single after that. It doesn't sound anything like The Wonder Stuff - it was the first song in the set ('30 Years In The Bathroom') and I thought, yeah, I really like that."
"It started off as a drone and the way The Mission works it ended up being... more like a drone."
"The same with The Waterboys, I went home and wrote a song on a mandolin and that ended up being 'Paradise' on the album - utter garbage. It was just something that I wrote in half an hour and Sheryl was sat there laughing as I was going. "Paradise will shine like the moon..." and I thought, I'll keep it in if it's that funny."
A similar impromptu spirit lay behind The Metal Gurus- and, for those who missed their two live shows, there's a video and record due shortly.
"It's great," enthuses Wayne. "The next incarpation is gonna be punk classics and the one after that will be goth classics- we'll be alright there, I've written a few of them meself!!
But if both bands disappeared tomorrow what would Wayne and Miles like to think that The Mission and The Wonder Stuff had given their fans?
Wayne: "Maybe that same feeling of liberation that I felt when I first saw T Rex. But that again is self-importance, I dunno, just to touch people with your music, I suppose, it doesn't really matter to what degree. Just a bloody good night when they come and see us live."
"Much of the same," nods Miles. "The only thing I can add is the original title that we had for 'Hup' - 'A Little Information On How Not To Live Your , Life'.."
For now though, Wayne is confident that The Mission's tour with The Wonder Stuff will surpass even last year's fling in the Scottish Highlands.
"It was the perfect thing to do after finishing the album. All the fans had to get the same ferry as us so it has like a 3arty on the boat - this vast selection of Highland whiskey and everyone going, 'I'll have one of those, next! next! And he next minute everyone was throwing up over the side!
"It was the best tour we've done since the first, but before we did it people yore saying, Why the f*** are you doing hat? It's not a good career move. Bollocks to that!"
And amen to that.