‘The music industry is run by bank managers nowadays, man. You see interviews with people, and they’re talking about ‘breaking key markets’ and shit like that. Fuck off! It’s just not relevant, is it? I don’t want to hear Taylor Swift talking about money.’
Reverend And The Makers’ Jon McClure is back. We spoke to him about the importance of lyrics, his band’s new album, the death of artistry, and the pitfalls of living with Arctic Monkeys’ Alex Turner:
What’s different about your new album?
‘It is, in every way, shape and form, completely different to everything else we’ve ever done. How? Well, where to start… There are no synthesisers. I don’t sing all of the songs. There are string sections on some songs, and there’s a brass band on there. It all merges into one, so it never stops. There’s a film that accompanies the entire album, too.
Was it always your intention to make a ‘different’ album?
‘It was a total accident! I went into the studio with Ed (Cosens, guitarist) straight after we’d finished the last album, and because we were a bit bored we just started dicking around. It was a conscious attempt to not think about what we were making, really. There were no rules at all. We just went in and let ourselves let go, in a way that we’ve not done for a long time. The results speak for themselves – people are loving the new stuff, and people who have long since dismissed our band are suddenly really into us again. It’s great, really. I just hope that people will listen to the album. I think that a lot of people who, as a rule, don’t like our music may well dismiss it, but if and when people listen to the album then I think they’ll really like it. Therein lies the battle – to get people to people listen to it.
There must always be a risk that people will just define you as ‘that band who did Heavyweight Champion Of The World’…
‘Yeah, but we’re a bit of an odd band to be honest. We’re a one-hit wonder who’s had four top twenty albums! We exist in a little bubble of our own, really. We’ve got a bit of a cult following – our live business is very strong, but I do understand that we haven’t made a record that’s of the same standard as our live shows for a few years. That’s the thing – you can get comfortable, and you can just keep making records that are a bit patchy.
‘I think that our last album was definitely guilty of that. I don’t mind that, though. When you get ten years into it, it’s alright to say that you’ve made patchy albums – Bob Dylan’s a legend, and he’s made loads of patchy albums! When you’re young, you seem to think that every album you make is a work of genius. As you get a bit older, you realise that it’s okay to make albums that are a bit average, because someday you might stumble across a brilliant one. On this occasion, we’ve made a really good one, and the fact that we’re getting a load more interview requests and offers from all around the world for gigs speaks for itself. We’re even being played on the radio!
‘I think that being a bit older suits me, too. When this band first came out I was a bit of an arse, what with being off my head all the time and that, so being older probably suits me. I can be more considered about the records I make and the things I say.
Why did you decide to release a film alongside the album?
‘I wanted to make a visual album. Because this album all blends into one, I thought we might as well make something that’s visually appealing to go with it. I think that in this day and age, people grasp things better if they can watch it. I’m a big fan of Jamaica, and I think that it was good to go there and not make a reggae record. That wouldn’t have been visually appealing, so we used the location of it to really inspire both the album and the film. It’s got a bit of a psychedelic vibe to it, really. Roger Sargent, who did the film, is an absolute genius, so it was great to be able to work with him. The plan is now to go around and show the film to people, which I’m really looking forward to.
‘That’s the thing, isn’t it? Culture is so dictated by the metropolis nowadays – everything comes from London, or is on the internet, and nobody ever brings things to the regions, do they? I’m like, fuck it, I’ll come and stand in your local pub and play a little gig for you. Why not? People remember that stuff. Some guy the other night in Selby, he had my name and the date tattooed onto his arm. Once you’re dead – I’ll die one day, and you’ll fucking snuff it – all that’ll be left are the memories you’ve made and the things you’ve created. All I can leave to people is the memories and the music. That geezer in Selby, he’s never gonna forget that night. The music industry is run by bank managers nowadays, man. You see interviews with people, and they’re talking about ‘breaking key markets’ and shit like that. Fuck off! It’s just not relevant, is it? I don’t want to hear Taylor Swift talking about money.
‘That’s why I struggle. I’m not media-trained – I’m real, and that’s why I upset people sometimes.
‘I dunno, I quite like people who make mistakes and who aren’t perfect. That’s why I kinda like musicians who make a shit record and then go and put out an absolute banger, y’know? It’s just more believable. I don’t want to believe that people are perfect, no matter who they are. Not every song you write is going to be good.
‘It’s like this album. It wasn’t even supposed to be an album – it was just supposed to be me and Ed messing around in the studio. It took us no time to write. We crowbarred in mad things… There was a comedy Mexican song that we tried to make sound like Love Forever Changes, and we wrote that when we were fifteen the first time we had a spliff. We remembered it when we were making this album, and I was like ‘let’s listen to it!’ Ed, our guitarist, was like ‘really?’, and I was just like ‘yeah, why not’. So we did it, and it sounded amazing. It’s all the stuff like that, stuff that we would never have tried before – that’s what made this album so good.
You’re also publishing a book of your lyrics and poetry – have lyrics always been important to you?
‘Yeah, the words have always been important to me. It comes from growing up in Sheffield – this is the home of people like Jarvis Cocker and Alex Turner, people who believe that the lyrics are very important, and I’m no different. I listen to a lot of music and go ‘that’s rubbish’, purely because the words are nonsensical bullshit, y’know?
‘I started out as a poet, and it’s good for people to be able to see the words in print. I’m also writing a novel. It’s good to just try different things, y’know? I’ve been fortunate enough with my poetry to work with people like John Cooper Clarke and various other people, so long may it continue. I like words, man. They’re good.
Who’s your favourite writer?
‘I like the work of a local guy named Barry Hines. He’s the guy who wrote A Kestrel for a Knave and all sorts of other things, but I just think he’s great. In a poetry sense, there’s a guy called Miguel Pinero who’s like the Hispanic Gil Scott-Heron. He’s brilliant. In a contemporary sense, I like Jason Williamson from Sleaford Mods. I love the vitriol he has in his words, and I just think he’s wonderful. I try and keep my eye out. I think that poetry, unfortunately, has become the preserve of the privileged, and that it’s only ever written about on certain websites or in certain newspapers where they expect you to be Keats. I quite like words and poetry that come from a different place, from a working class writer… Things that are a bit more edgy and raw.
‘I think that sometimes people can think that just because it’s not using flowery language, that it’s somehow not relevant, and I totally disagree with that. My work, I would suggest, falls more into that category, and I guess that hip-hop would fall into that category too. People from a less privileged background are using words to say something that matters. Even in this country, guys like George The Poet… There are lots of people out there doing interesting stuff. Even in a songwriting sense, people like The Libertines are great. Some of the lyrics to their songs are brilliant. Lyrics are important, and I wish that people paid more attention to words.
‘A lot of people have got my lyrics tattooed on their body, which is a real honour.
‘I’m just like ‘you’re gonna have that shit when you’re ninety’, y’know? It’s a real honour that you’ve been motivated that much by something I thought of one day. That’s what good art should be – it should move you, and make you wanna do something. I had somebody tweet me yesterday saying ‘one of your songs made me wanna quit my job and start my own business’, and he did it and now he’s doing really well. I also had a guy tweet me one time saying how he wanted to commit suicide, but how my lyrics made him not want to. Whether or not he really meant it or whether he was saying it for effect, it’s neither here nor there, but you don’t read about that in the newspapers or in the music press, do you? All you read about is what jacket some fucking dullard had on. It’s wrong.
Out of every song ever recorded, which do you wish you’d written?
‘Fucking hell, that’s a statement and a half… Maybe something clichéd and obvious, like Subterranean Homesick Blues by Bob Dylan. He just nailed every single person in 1960s America in like three minutes, y’know? Bang. Done.
‘There are so many nuances in that song that people don’t understand. For instance, the line ‘you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows’. The Weathermen were a political pressure group in the sixties in America. People hear it now and they’re thinking about Michael Fish or some shit like that. There are loads of things like that in my songs. People hear it and they think ‘that’s a shit lyric’, and I’m just like ‘just think about what it MEANS’. People don’t think about words any more. They just take them at face value, and it does my head in.
‘I’ll give you another example of that.
‘There’s a Bob Marley song called Small Axe, and the opening line is ‘if you are the big tree, we are the small axe’. People in this country listen to it and go ‘yeah. Tree. Axe. Got it.’, but he’s Jamaican, isn’t he? He’s not saying ‘tree’ – he’s saying ‘three’. There were three major record labels at Jamaica at the time, and Bob Marley set up an independent record label called Tough Gong. The industry was entirely dominated by these three main players, and what he was really saying was ‘we’re going to make our music ourselves’. Do you see what I mean? People don’t stop to think about it anymore. There’s an English professor in America who wrote a book called ‘Bob Marley – Lyrical Genius’. I read this book, and I was convinced that Bob Marley was the greatest poet who’d ever lived. Maybe one day I’ll write a book about the real meanings of people’s song lyrics. They’re so deep sometimes. They’re packaged up in a catchy melody, and you might be pissed in a bar when you hear it, so you never really get the chance to make the connection and pay the words the attention they deserve.
Who’s your ultimate musical icon?
‘I quite like Yoko Ono. She’s brave. In the face of almost universal criticism, she still carries on being weird as fuck, and I can’t help but respect that. It’s the same with David Byrne from Talking Heads. He put being an artist before everything else. It’s a trap that I fell into when I was making the last album – ‘oh, I’ve got to hurry up and make another album so I can get back out on the road and start playing live again’. It was almost like I was making fucking Big Macs, y’know? I admire people who stay true to that sense of artistry. Bjork, Beck, people like that – I’ve not been strong enough to maintain that artistry that they’ve had. It’s easier for them, because they’ve made music from the nineties backwards, so they haven’t been faced with the economic pressure of having to do well enough to be able to make another album. That’s why the music industry isn’t blessed with a flurry of truly artistic people anymore – the record labels can’t afford to support them, so they’ve all had to go and get jobs.
‘That’s what I’ve figured out recently. The key is to just do alright.
‘You don’t have to be Coldplay – just do well enough to be able to go and make the next record. People like Sleaford Mods – they go, they play the gigs, and they do alright. Once that penny clicked in my mind – that I only need to do alright – that’s when I knew I could just crack on and make the music that I wanted to make. I’m from Sheffield, and I used to live with Alex from Arctic Monkeys. They’re a phenomenon, and I used to measure everything I did against their success. A couple of years ago, I thought ‘hang on, maybe I don’t want to be that famous’. I can still hang around Sheffield and write poems and novels and tunes and stuff, and it’s nice. Don’t get me wrong, people come up to me and ask me for selfies and stuff like that, but it’s on a level that’s manageable. I don’t have to walk around with a security guard or anything like that. I’m comfortable with that.
Describe yourself in three words?
‘Honest, evolving and happy. You never thought you’d hear me say that, did you? Happy.