GET STUFFED!

I WAS a bit reluctant to share this with you because it means admitting that while of sound mind and under no physical duress, I actually paid good money to go and see Motley Crue.

But, hey, I can live with the ridicule and if they cancel my VIP membership to Lillie’s Bordello, fuck ‘em, I can always stay at home and watch Prisoners: Cell Block ‘H’ on the telly.

Anyway, to the story. The Crue have just cranked out a sedate little number called ‘Shout At The Devil’ and as the crowd goes none too quietly nuts, Vince Neil bellows the immortal words “Glasgow, how ya’ doin’? I hear you guys like to party on a Saturday night!”. I’m sure they do – the only problem being that this is Friday and we’re 400 miles away from Scotland’s cultural capital at the Hammersmith Odeon. Which, of course, has absolutely nothing to do with The Wonder Stuff except that Miles Hunt seems to be in a similar state of befuddlement over his present whereabouts.

“Er, we’re in Montpellier or Lille or somewhere that’s not Paris. To be honest, after the first couple of days touring becomes a complete blur. You travel to the venue, soundcheck, get a meal, play the gig, have a few pints, go to bed, get up and then repeat the process for the next six months. I don’t mind the on-stage bits but the rest of the time I tend to switch off.”

Alright, he may not know what city he’s in, or even which country sometimes, but apart from that, is Miles Hunt a good tourist?

“Well,” he reflects, “I’m not the sort of person who goes abroad and says, ‘Fuck, why aren’t they speaking English?’, but then again I don’t sit at home with a Linguaphone course trying to learn handy phrases for the Japanese tour. My key to on-the-road survival is having clean underwear. As long as my Y-fronts aren’t crusty, I’m a happy camper.”

CHILD MOLESTORS

Unless you’ve spent the past couple of months shut away in a sensory deprivation tank, chances are you’ll be aware that the Stuffies have been working cash-registers overtime with their Construction For The Modern Idiot album. Although stopping short of re-invention, it certainly moderates the wackiness of old and tackles lyrical issues that the original Eight-Legged Groove Machine would have avoided like the proverbial plague. Was this a conscious attempt to get away from the ‘novelty band’ jibes that followed ‘Dizzy’ and ‘Size Of A Cow’?

“As far as things like that go,” he retorts a tad haughtily, “I honestly couldn’t give a shit what other people think of us. Our attitude has always been that if we write the best songs possible and give 100% live, the rest will fall into place. We don’t sit around with our manager and our record company plotting the next move. If the glove fits that day, we’ll do it. That was the story with Vic (Reeves) – he came to us with an idea which we thought would be a bit of a giggle and a couple of days later we were in the studio, end of story.

“I can’t understand why – in Britain anyway – having fun is considered a hanging offence. A lot of journalists have honed in on the videos but, really, they’re just an aside. Personally, I find them incredibly tedious to make and that means you tend to muck around to compensate and end up with four minutes of daftness like the one we did for ‘Size Of A Cow’. That doesn’t mean we’re stand-up comedians, though. We leave that to other bands.”

Now now Mr. Cutting, back into the knife drawer with you! Having established that, no, The Wonder Stuff haven’t joined an obscure puritan sect, can Miles explain what lies behind the writing of a song like ‘I Wish Them All Dead’ which deals with child abuse and the swift retribution that ought to be dealt out to the perpetrators.

“It’s a very raw, gut reaction,” he explains, “to a group in California called the M.B.L.A. – the Man Boy Love Association – who are trying to get paedophilia legalised. I know this is hard to believe but they’ve even got a P.R. guy who goes on radio and TV to promote their objectives. Anyway, the Geraldo show managed to smuggle a camera into a secret M.B.L.A. meeting and I thought, ‘if you can get a camera in there, why not a machine-gun and blow the cunts away?’ I’m not a Conservative MP – I don’t want people flogged for not paying their community charge – but those bastards have forfeited the right to life.”

Regardless of the hostility they may encounter, the fact that organisations like the M.B.L.A. feel confident enough to argue their case in public and, by and large, get away with it seems to underline the curious blend of tolerance and apathy that has crept into modern thinking. If child molesters belong six feet under, what’s Miles’ attitude to, say, racists who also inflict untold suffering on innocent victims?

“At home, at the moment, we have this thing with the British National Party and on one level you think, ‘right, ban ‘em’, and on the other you’re going, ‘hang on a second, this is a legitimate political party. If we close down their shop and make them illegal, who’s going to be next?’ Having said that, I wish them dead as well.”

CREATURE COMFORTS

Coming from the West Midlands – an area with one of Britain’s largest ethnic populations – are The Wonder Stuff disappointed that their audience is almost exclusively white?

“That may be a bit of an over-generalisation but, yeah, our gigs do seem to attract a predominance of spoilt white middle-class people and that’s probably because there are five spoilt white middle-class people up there on stage. If you got a few Asian bands appearing on Top of the Pops – and there are a lot of Asian kids doing music – I reckon you’d soon see audiences becoming more mixed which would be brilliant.”

While The Wonder Stuff have always made it perfectly clear where they stand on racism, sexism or any other -ism you care to mention, they’ve never really used their music as a vehicle to reflect those beliefs. Is ‘I Wish Them All Dead’ an indication that they’re now prepared to be more confrontational?

“I try to steer clear of politics in music because I just find myself to be a very ignorant person. I’m not qualified to speak. I’m a drunk. Why should I have a platform? I’ll write about stuff, and I’ve always taken my lyrics very seriously, but I’m not the Reverend Miles Hunt. I don’t preach.”

And what about the Huggy Bears and Levellers of this world who do sermonise?

“I honestly don’t give a shit about the Levellers and I’m sure they don’t give a shit about The Wonder Stuff. If that’s what they want to do, great, but don’t expect me to listen to it.”

The one thing that the Stuffies and the Brighton branch of the Wurzel Gummidge Appreciation Society do have in common is the rabid loyalty they inspire among their fans. Did Miles ever pack up his troubles, along with his Doc Martens, in an old kit bag and follow his teenage heroes round the country?

“I never took it that seriously but Malc, our guitarist, saw The Ruts something crazy like a hundred times. The closest I got to that was going to see The Jam whenever they were in the Midlands but I’m too fond of my creature comforts, I’d probably die if I had to spend a night in a shop doorway.

“It used to worry me that these kids hitch hundreds of miles with only 50p in their pockets but now I can see they’re having fun and as long as they’re sensible enough to look after themselves and don’t get in any bother, there’s no problem.”

You can almost hear Miles flinching at the other end of the line as the word ‘mature’ is mentioned but, delicate sensibilities be blowed, Construction For The Modern Idiot boasts a certain lyrical and musical depth that up until now seemed to be beyond the Stuffies’ reach. A few of the tracks still have “Made In Stourbridge” proudly stamped on their bottoms but otherwise it’s a record that shouldn’t have any difficulty selling itself on the export market – particularly in the States where, as I’m sure Miles is all too aware, fellow Brits Radiohead and Catherine Wheel are doing a roaring trade.

HEART ATTACK

“The less time I have to spend in America the better, to be honest. You get there and it just seems very, very business-oriented. The gigs are fine but that leaves another twenty-two and a half hours to kill which is a pain in the arse, especially when you can’t get near the Sega or the video because the fucking road crew are hogging it.

“There’s definitely a cultural divide between Britain and the States. If the conversation doesn’t get around to money in four minutes, you start thinking ‘fuck, there must be something up here’. You might ask your best mate who you’ve known your whole life what they earn but you don’t do it to a complete stranger. Although I’m sure The Wonder Stuff cracking America is pretty high on the record company’s agenda, we’re more concerned about coming up with ideas for songs and wondering when the fuck we’ll get the time to do some writing.”

Some of the euphoria associated with releasing a new album – particularly one as undeniably wonderful as Construction For The Modern Idiot – was diffused in September by the news that original Stuffies’ bassist Rob Jones had died from a drug-related heart attack in New York where he’d been putting together an outfit called The Bridge And Tunnel Crew. Did Miles keep in touch with him after he debunked to the States?

“Sadly enough, no, but that’s how he was. I first met Rob before The Wonder Stuff in 1981. We were decent mates until ‘83 and then I didn’t see him till ‘86 because he cleared off somewhere and got up to God knows what.

“I’ve said this before but Rob’s death was the most unsurprising surprising news we’d heard. It was always on the cards really and if you do have nihilistic tendencies, New York is the worst place on the planet to be.”

Miles is making no promises but March or April looks a reasonably safe odds-on bet for The Wonder Stuff’s next visit to dear old Erin.

“Ireland’s one of the few countries I can actually remember something about,” he laughs, “Fucking great place!”