We critics hate it when groups like M People become successful. Yes, we expect them to sell articulated lorry-loads of albums, and to hear their hits wafting out from the local Spar or a passing taxi, but we draw a line in the sand when it comes to gong-shows like the Mercury Music Prize. Award ceremonies like those are supposed to sort the serious artists out from the pulp pop pap, aren t they?
Hence the appalled scorn and bilious begrudgery that filled the air when Mike Pickering, Paul Heard and Heather Small aka M People walked away with the prize in 1994 for their second album, Elegant Slumming, leaving the likes of Blur empty-handed and open-mouthed.
Pickering (whose initials, incidentally, form the basis of the group s name), is justly proud of that achievement, but nonetheless remains anything but triumphalist about having kicked over the Britpop applecart.
It s true, he says, that the music papers in England have a very narrow idea of what constitues good music, and so it was good from that perspective to show them that there is life beyond your Oasises and Blurs and the like, but it wasn t like they were all sulking in the corner and saying we shoulda won . In fact, Damon congratulated us and wished us well and he meant it.
Nevertheless, there was a suggestion at the time that M People s victory was simply a token nod to dance music from a Prize that, still in its infancy, was trying to find its feet.
I don t think we were a totem for dance music, to be honest, Pickering replies, because if you look at some of the other winners of the Mercury Prize, you ll see dance-type stuff being recognised, like Portishead and now Roni Size.
Indeed, a possible future single off M People s new album, Fresco, is Avalon , a drum n bass reworking of the seminal Roxy Music ballad. With jungle now moving overground due to the success of Goldie and the Reprazent collective, can we expect to see M People march to the sound of a different breakbeat in the future?
Well, that was only for just the one track that we did that, states Pickering. I ve always loved Avalon and I brought it into the studio to see what we could make of it. Heather was initially sceptical about whether it would work, but after she started singing the words, it fell into place and sounded great. But I don t think we re going to move into hardcore drum n bass or anything like that.
That said, I have been listening to a lot of it. There s nothing better when you ve finished a hard day s work in the studio than to go home and listen to Goldie on the headphones and really chill out with a joint or whatever. But I listen to all sorts of stuff: jazz, salsa, soul . . . everything. It goes back to my time as a DJ I was taking in so many different styles of music.
True to form, there is an impressively wide variety of musicians at play on Fresco. Terry Burrus, who has played keyboards with the likes of Miles Davis, whiled away many hours in a New York studio with Pickering and his People, while His Highness Johnny Marr makes sure that there s six-strings attached to three of the songs.
Pickering and Marr go way back to the earliest days of the celebrated Hacienda Club in Manchester, where MP was DJing. He is even responsible for having introduced Marr to New Order s Bernard Sumner; so we now know who to blame for Electronica!
Other friends eclectic who lent their talents to the album include a list of engineers who collectively count the Fugees, Mariah Carey and The Prodigy on their CVs. But despite the catholic pool of co-workers, Fresco is still very much an M People record, with its polished pop/soul interface still the main musical blueprint. It s smart, well-produced and contains, I would hazard, more potential hits than Carlos The Jackal s filofax.
But no matter what the trajectory of its sales is, one thing s for sure: none of the profits will be going to the favoured charities of the late Princess Diana.
I think it s a disgrace, Pickering spits, the way anyone who isn t wandering around the streets of London with their heads up their arses and crying into their hankies over Diana is perceived as being heartless and insensitive. It s got way out of hand.
I went to see Primal Scream soon after it happened, and Bobby Gillespie came on and said it was a pity the rest of the royal family didn t come a cropper too. He s a great guy, Bobby. You could certainly never accuse him of being a monarchist. We need more people like him.
Pickering has his own spin on what happened that fateful night in Paris.
I heard that there was drugs in the car, he announces conspiratorially. It was well known that Dodi liked his charlie. He was regularly seen in certain London nightclubs off his fucking face. I know someone who worked in one, and she said that he signed a cheque for #3,000 one night. Now you don t run up that kind of a bill if you re only on G&Ts for the night. It s a notorious place. This is the club where Robbie Williams used to be a regular, and we all know what he got up to before he straightened himself out! n
Fresco is out now through BMG. M People embark on a short Irish tour when they play The Point, Dublin, 11th November; Millstreet, Cork 13th, and King s Hall, Belfast 15th.