Do mention the war

“The nominees for ‘Best Dodging Of A hotpress Interview’ are... The Wildhearts – ‘Our singer’s punched a kitchen cabinet and broken his arm’; Midge Ure – ‘My motorbike’s been stolen’; The Beautiful South – ‘We forgot England v. Denmark is on the telly’; and Massive Attack – ‘We’ve got to go and storm parliament with Damon from Blur’. And the winner is... those Wild Bunch boys, Massive Attack! Big round of applause...”

Yup, there I was five days ago waiting to give Robert “3D” Del Naja the nth degree when word came through that him and his anti-war protester mates were on their way to Westminster. A veteran of many a Bristol City terrace contretemps, one had visions of him being wrestled to the ground by flak-jacketed coppers as he attempted to lob a molotov cocktail into the cradle of British power, a defiant gesture against a sabre-rattling regime that can’t accept its empire is long gone. But not quite, as it turns out.

“We had a few drinks for Dutch courage, turned up, did as many TV and radio interviews as we could and then went back to the pub,” reveals Bristol’s one-man Baader-Meinhof gang. “The only argy bargy came afterwards when Newsnight rang wanting us to appear live. Damon was all for it but I was like, ‘Go on pissed, and have Paxman make mincemeat of us? No fucking way!’ We had a very heated two hour row about it, but we’re mates again now!”

While some rock stars – hello, Sting! – spend their whole life doing valuable work on behalf of Single-Parent Gay Rainforests, this is the first time Del Naja has publicly attached himself to a cause. Is he worried about having to drop the “Attack” part of his band’s name again?

“I was going to do it myself as an anti-war statement, but then I remembered how hysterical it was the first time round and thought, ‘No, however carefully we present it it’s going to be misconstrued’,” he reflects. “How can certain songs and films be more offensive than bombing civilians? The reason we took the ‘Attack’ off in 1985 is that we were naive and allowed our manager to bully us into it. All the stuff about it showing that we were peace-loving was bollocks. It was a commercial decision so that radio stations would keep playing our records. I don’t have many regrets in life but bottling it like that is one of them.”

Forgive the amateur psychology, but is the protest stuff now an attempt to make up for that capitulation?

“It’s a combination of things,” says 3D. “I’m not sure if I’m any wiser, but I’m older and better able to detect when I’m being conned, which is what George W. Bush and his mini-me, Tony Blair, are doing at the moment. I never thought I’d utter the sentence, ‘Well done to The Daily Mirror’, but the cover they did with the oil company logos says it all.

“There are dozens of countries with nuclear and chemical weapon capability, but only a few that Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney have oil company associations with. Britain – moreso than France, Germany or any other NATO country – is in a position to stop this war happening, but we’re behaving like America’s lapdogs. Whatever about the Conservatives, you don’t expect that sort of behaviour from a Labour government. I don’t want to turn it into a party political thing, but Tony Blair conned his way into Downing Street. The vast majority of people who voted for him don’t want this war.

“Which, I may add, has been planned by the United States for the last two years and is going to happen regardless of what the Weapons Inspectors do or don’t find. Imagine if you’d been sat there in Dublin since 2001 knowing that a superpower’s about to bomb the fuck out of you? Having terrorised Iraq psychologically, we’re now going to bomb them to pieces. Which is great news for the Liberal Democrats who are going to have millions of people defecting to them at the next election.”

With all this talk of Gulf War 2: The Sequel, it’s easy to overlook the fact that Massive Attack have just released a new album, 100th Window, which in addition to the omnipresent Horace Andy features Sinéad O’Connor on three of its tracks.

“Everybody thinks she’s a nutter, but I found Sinéad to be perfectly fucking calm and functional,” 3D states. “The way the world is at the moment, we wanted to work with people who are honest and bring spirit and passion to the party. She has a lot of good ideas and normally nails her vocal first time, which given the snail’s pace we work at was a revelation! There’s a bit of electronic skullduggery here and there, but otherwise what you hear on the record is what she did live in one take.”

Given that the process was so painless, would Del Naja be up for doing a whole album with her?

“Absolutely. There are two amazing tracks we did with Sinéad that didn’t make it onto the album because they were at odds with the overall mood. One’s a bizarre-as-fuck flamenco guitar thing with a fast electronic beat. It’s really scratchy and intense. We also worked on a track with her and Damien Dempsey, which is beautiful but not relevant to this record.”

I remember bumping into Damien one drunken night at Whelan’s – aren’t they all! – and, well, let’s just say he was looking forward to the royalty cheque.

“Yeah, it would’ve been a few bob for him. I don’t know whether it’ll be as a B-side or on the next album, but it will get used eventually and hopefully open a few doors for him. Getting back to Sinéad, I was talking to her the other day and she’s really excited about touring. She’s going to do a lot of the gigs, in Europe especially, which is fantastic. On top of everything else, she exudes charisma. If there were a hundred people in a room, she’d be the one you notice first.”

Talking of charisma, were the Wild Bunch suitably blown away in 2001 when they got to collaborate with David Bowie on the Moulin Rouge soundtrack?

“Believe it or not, it was all done via e-mail,” 3D reveals. “We’d already met him at a gig, though, and knew he was a top man. I’d actually been quite resistant to us covering ‘Nature Boy’ – it’s a simple song that you can’t really hammer things into – but then Baz Luhrmann played the Bowie card and I thought, ‘Fucking hell then, let’s do it!’ The three of us talked on a conference call, David sent his vocal over and we set about deconstructing it with Craig Armstrong doing strings and stuff. I’m not sure what I think of it, to be honest. It’s okay for a cover but not something I’d stick on a ‘Best Of...’”

Who sets the Del Naja pulse racing faster – the still-Thin White Duke or top Bristol City onion-sack man Scott Murray?

“It’s a bit of a dead heat. David Bowie probably, although if Scott were to score the goal that got us into the First Division I’d have to revise that. I’m a bit pissed off with footie at the moment, what with England going backwards and Napoli getting relegated to Serie B. There’s talk of them filing for bankruptcy which will finish me off completely.”

While Del Naja rejects the notion of it being a solo album by proxy, 100th Window was assembled without Mushroom who’s left the fold permanently, and Daddy Gee who’s, er, become a daddy and was on paternity leave for much of the sessions.

“Me, Gee and Mushroom were never ones to sit round the piano, drinking brandy and penning lyrics,” he chuckles. “It’s more like one person on their fucking own for hours, feverishly trying an idea out on a bit of equipment. Then somebody else drifts in, adds their input and the track starts to develop. I wouldn’t say there was a bad vibe, but the Mezzanine tour did highlight the differences in our personality and the way we’d all drifted apart a bit. The realisation that Mushroom didn’t want to work with us any more, and vice versa I guess, came when we’d been home a few weeks and nobody had bothered to phone the other up. We’d been mates since way back and, for a while, thought about splitting the band completely. Gee becoming a father at exactly the same time was an extra pressure, but we stuck with it and everything now is cool.”

I never believe anything I read in music magazines, but at one stage there were reports of Massive having over 200 songs stockpiled.

“200 songs, no. 200 snatches, half-ideas, quarter-ideas, yes. We spent a whole year working on drum programmes for ‘Antistar’, which is the album’s shagging song. You start when the bassline kicks in and finish whenever you want. It goes on for ages, so unless you’re into the old tantric it’ll do the job!”

Something to try at the weekend, kids. Is there a Massive Attack equivalent of Robert Smith slapping his leather trousers to get the percussion sound The Cure wanted on ‘Caterpillar’, or Cactus World News using gas canisters to get just the right thud on Urban Beaches?

“Sadly, yes, there is! The most ridiculous thing that happened whilst making 100th Window was me leaning on the keyboard, and my arm and elbow coming up with a fucking amazing chord, which we then fed into the machines and had our evil way with. There was one point on ‘Antistar’ where we were stuck and picked up anything that you could click, move, tap or knockover to make a drum sound. Kevin Shields had nothing on us!”

Giving hotpress the inside story on their last album, Mezzanine, Del Naja divulged that The Clash, Pop Group, Wire and Gang Of Four had been the bands on the studio CD player. What were they listening to this time round?

“What Gee does, being a DJ rather than a musician, is set his decks up in the studio and slide stuff in like that. It was a fresh, hip hop way of doing things at first, but then it became a little too predictable and rigid a formula. So, there was less listening to records and more working with drum machines, keyboards, harps, violins, guitar – there are lots of different instruments on the album. Rather than sample sounds, we made ’em ourselves. That said, I did spend the time between Mezzanine and 100th Window buying loads of really obscure prog rock and jazz funk records. If you listen carefully you’ll hear some Emerson, Lake & Palmer in there!”

Having lived with 100th Window for the past month, I’m pleased to report that he’s lying. What’s fact is that in a complete break with slothful tradition, they are already planning their next album which could be out as early as spring 2004.

“We’re hoping to hook up with Tom Waits in the autumn when we’re in America,” 3D volunteers. “We talked on the phone last year, but he had two albums of his own to worry about, and nothing came of it. I’ve been a fan of his for, well, ever and was thrilled when he was over doing press and said some nice things about us. Another person I’ve been emailing who wants to work with us is Mike Patton from Faith No More.”

Also in the offing is a 100th Window remix album that’s likely to surface on the net.

“I want to do a .5 version which is stripping it back so you can hear the layers underneath, and adding different guitar parts that are either left over from the original sessions or have surfaced as we’ve reworked the tracks for the stage.”

Finally, what’s this about 3D, Liam Howlett, ex- Hot Press staffer Paul O’Mahony and a hardcore porn film?

“You want the whole sordid story?” Del Naja laughs. “Right, after leaving Hot Press Mr. O’Mahony landed a job with Private who are Europe’s biggest producers of hardcore porn. I don’t know if it came from him or somebody else there, but they sent us this really OTT orgy scene they wanted sound-tracking. Perfectionists that we are, me and Howlett had it up on the flat screen for a fortnight, syncing the sound to the film. We had the synth stabs coming in at just the right moment… it was dead classy!

“Anyway, I was in Barcelona, where Private are based, for the Barca/Bayern Munich Champions’ League and decided to check the finished film out. I got there and discovered to my horror that he’d dubbed all these slapping and slurping sounds over it. I was gutted!”

Ah, we train them well!

They wouldn’t give a xxx for anything else

Massive Attack’s soundtracking of The Uranus Experiment is just one example of rock ’n’ roll’s love affair with porn. Here are five more bands and singers who like their movies mucky…

Add N To (X)
Having treated us to a spot of animated robot sex on their ‘Metal Fingers In Me’ video, the UK bleepers gave two American porn actresses handicams and let them film the promo clip for the ‘Plug Me In’ follow-up.
“The girls genuinely enjoyed the shoot and were very much in control during the filming,” proffers X-man Barry 7. “The result is an intimate, sensuous film of two people having fun. I always thought if David Attenborough was able to give gorillas cameras for a week, Wildlife On One would have made much better viewing.”

The Bloodhound Gang

Not content with eulogising about XXX star Chainey Laine on the Hooray For Boobies album, the Bloodhound Gang spent much of their 2000 World Tour shooting their own digicam porno flick.
“We’ve got some great stuff,” Jimmy Pop enthuses. “At a festival in Sweden, a girl came backstage and said to our guitarist, Jared, that she wanted to be a porn star. By way of an audition, he bent her over the table, poured Frosties and milk into the small of her back, and banged her while having his breakfast.”
Bet you she was grrrrreat.

Tommy Lee
Truly the King of Filth Hounds, the ex-Mötley Crue man co-starred in a home porn movie with then missus, Pamela Anderson. Being a drummer we knew he was good with his hands, but the scene where he drives a $1.2 million yacht with his tummy-banana shows he has penile dexterity too.

Lemmy
Man and womaniser of the world that he is, Lemmy was delighted when he was given a part in the John Wayne Bobbitt biopic. Literally.
“As Lorena Bobbitt drives away, she throws the dick out the window,” he says, setting the scene. “I’m sitting in this park, for whatever reason, it goes by me and I go, ‘What’s that? A fucking dick? At least it ain’t mine!’ And I walk out of the picture.”
Never mind Jack Nicholson, give this man an Oscar!

Snoop Dogg
Renowned for his sensitivity and sympathetic portrayal of women in his music, it was no surprise last year when Snoop teamed up with Hustler supremo Larry Flynt to release his own porn film, Doggystyle.
“We’re rapping about it when we’re doing records,” the canine one reflects. “We’re in the studio doing it, we’re making hardcore, and we should be able to put out hardcore. And this is an avenue to do it.”