Theatre Of Hate | Rebel With A Brain

THEATRE OF HATE are taking on the West World. Kirk Brandon’s gang state where they stand. Not so much another rock group, more a brand new state of mind. You’d better believe it.

Article published in NME, 6th February, 1982

Theatre Of Hate | Rebel With A Brain | THEATRE! WHAT ARE YOU . . . THEATRE? If you know the “poetry” of Rik Mayall/Kevin Turvey, this is a question you might have lost sleep over. I’ve been wondering about it, too — only this is a very different kind of Theatre.

This Theatre — the Hateful kind — has been absorbing me ever since I caught one of its epic performances last year, a chance encounter which sent me off to gobble up whatever recorded mementoes I could find.

And now, after a year of steady progression, Theatre Of Hate are poised to command a full house. The release of the group’s fourth and best single, ‘Do You Believe in The West World’, has won them a bigger audience than ever before. And that means there’s a lot more people around who’ll testify to this music’s strength.

Theatre Of Hate: Kirk Brandon, the singer and writer; Stan Stammers, the bass-player; John Lennard on sax; Billy Duffy on guitar; and their brand new drummer Nigel Preston. Theatre Of Hate have fought their way upwards and outwards, clear away from the murk of the punk underground, building a solid and fashion-free reputation by virtue of music that’s got guts to spare.

Theatre Of Hate | Rebel With A Brain

On stage, the sound of TOH is powerful and pulsating: constantly inventive hard rock with an inspirational edge and a rebellious energy. Kirk Brandon’s voice is one of those rare and impressive beasts, assured and strong, that defies you to feel uncommitted.

Allied with what you can only describe as a magnetic stage-presence (don’t worry: when you see them they’ll bring these cliches to life), the effect is of a man who’s high on self-belief -but unselfishly so, rich with a generous passion.

They play with disciplined aggression — offset by some wonderfully emotive sax — and dramatic visual style that stays the right side of hollow posturing. And more: there’s a special quality to all this excitement, a darkly inviting element of mystery. It persuades you that there’s more going on behind that noise than might immediately meet the ear. You detect a depth of thought and an intense pride.

AND MEETING Theatre Of Hate, those suspicions are borne out to the full. The band, and especially Brandon who’s the unchallenged spokesman of its shared outlook, are devoted to the idea of Theatre Of Hate: to them, the name represents a very wide vision.

Doomyness

There is none of your coy it’s-just-entertainment, we’re-only-a- pop-band platitudes here. In the current climate of strained gaiety, their refusal to limit themselves to the disposable role of happy dance minstrels will, inevitably, lead to cries of ‘pretentious’, and fatuous allegations of ‘doomyness’.

I shouldn’t think they give a shit. The blond, quiet-spoken, but eminently pleasant Kirk Brandon gives only occasional clues to his inner intensity, when the relaxed chat gives way to flashes of clipped, bulldog determination.

“If you wanna call this ‘pop’ music, then it’s pop in as much as it’s popular — people like it, it’s good. But they’re not liking it cos some silly bastard’s thrown £80,000 into pushing it, or slapped your face on everything from The Times to some teddy bears’ picnic type paper.”

Even though ‘West World’ is suddenly picking up mainstream radio airplay, the group deny it was ever planned to be the song that broke them. It s something they wouldn’t do. Because they’re winning success on their own terms, perhaps, the problem of commercial compromise is one they haven’t had to worry about. And besides, as they’ll repeat obsessively, TOH are too special to take their patient place in any queue.

They’ve vowed they’ll never be just another group on that glittering conveyor belt which runs between obscurity and oblivion. ‘Do You Believe In The West World’ will be the title track on their forthcoming LP —officially their first album, since nobody seems keen to include last year’s cassette release ‘He Who Dares Wins’ — a so-so live tape put out to satisfy fans’ demand, at a time when there was no money to make anything new.

Theatre Of Hate | Rebel With A Brain

The single follows three earlier ones: ‘Legion’/’Original Sin’, ‘Rebel Without A Brain’/’My Own Invention’ and ‘Nero’/’Incinerator’, all issued on their own label, Burning Rome (initially called SS, but changed to avoid misunderstandings).

The LP is, in fact, a tremendous achievement, fully worthy of the band, but there’s still no release date. (Stop press: There is now. See News Pages).

Kirk explains: “Burning Rome is only one man, Terry Razor (TOH’s manager), that’s it. It’s a small operation, but all the people in it, that’s Terry and the band, and Flea the roadie, are in it 101% and that’s why it succeeds.”

Promotion of the single was down to the group — Stan taking copies to DJs personally — with some help from people at Chrysalis, with whom Kirk has a publishing deal. But the day the BBC charts came out, with news that ‘West World’ was in at 42, life at Burning Rome took a dramatic turn.

DJs have to play it

If you wanna be heard, those DJs have got to play it, you can’t just rely on John Peel all the time. And the other thing is the money. There was enormous debt. A lot of the time, we’ve been on the road simply to stay alive as a band. If we didn’t there’d be no money to do anything. The whole thing has to keep moving, just to survive. There’s no backing here, no big deals of tens of thousands of pounds.

“But now, they’re all ringing up with astronomical deals. That’s irrelevant, the money’s irrelevant. We’ll have to license to some major company because of the physical practicalities, and financially. You can’t do everything on your own. A lot of people will say, Oh, you’ve sold out, you’ve sold out.

“But there’s no sell-out. We’ll still be Burning Rome, nothing’s changed, and I hope people can understand. Cos it would be very hard to have to turn around in a month’s time and say that’s it, Theatre Of Hate is over, we’re so much in debt.”

Stan: “Yesterday it was incredible. We were sitting here, and we got the news it was 42 in the charts. And the phone was just constantly ringing with all these people, record companies saying, Congratulations. Can we talk some time?”

Theatre Of Hate | Rebel With A Brain

The LP, like previous singles, is produced by Mick Jones of The Clash: “We were doing a show at the Venue, and Mick was just standing in the queue outside, down the street. We went up to him, he says (cool shrug), This is the way it should be, stand in the crowd. We said, Come on! He came in. Wasn’t the old boy network — come and produce our album . . .”

The group themselves describe Jones as an underrated producer, and don’t regret their involvement with him at all:

“It’s the logical step, us using a new producer like him, because the band’s trying to do something new.”

All the same, he gave Kirk a hard time with his singing:

“Any word he couldn’t catch, he’d go, Diction! Some words I’d end up doing 30 times.”

Brandon’s vocals

It’s been a common comment with TOH, that you couldn’t make out the lyrics — not that that prevented the group’s appeal and message from coming through, purely on the playing and the sheer sound of Brandon’s vocals.

It isn’t altogether bizarre that the singer’s been told he’s more operatic than punk. One thing the LP should make clearer to people — partly thanks to production, but also for its range and variety — is that TOH cannot go on being lumped together with the ‘Gothic’ school of twilight punk: Bauhaus, Killing Joke etc . . .

“Originally, there never was any inclination towards that sort of thing. All that music’s dead as far as I’m concerned. It’s not going anywhere. And if you’re gonna talk about punk, well that’s something that’s dead from a few years ago. But the motivation behind it — do something different — that is what we’re doing.”

THE INTERVIEW is taking place at Burning Rome HQ, alias Terry Razor’s basement flat. Kirk Brandon, as the public face of TOH, tends to do the talking. (“We believe totally in what he’s writing — we’re a platform for him,” as one member puts it).

But we wait for the whole group to arrive, anyway. Newest recruit — so new that no one knows his second name, until I ask him — is Nigel Preston. Like the others, his background is with little-known outfits: he turned up after the vacancy was advertised; an ad that drew some intriguing enquirers, like The Who’s Kenny Jones, and the drummer from Supertramp, ( ‘Yeah, it’s a bit of a mystery to us as well.”)

Theatre Of Hate | Rebel With A Brain

Since the monster juggernaut drum sound of predecessor Luke Rendall was so vital a feature of the old TOH, will Preston be able to maintain that?

“If you can believe it,” I’m quickly assured, “this guy is even more lethal. He’s not sloppy, there’s no thrash to it. But it’s controlled aggression. We used to be in the rehearsal room with Luke, and it’d make your ears hurt. But this guy will deafen you. But he’s cool —we wouldn’t have him if he wasn’t.”

Brandon lookalike, bassist Stan Stammers arrives late, after being stopped by police outside Earls Court station: “Round there, they think you’re soliciting if you stand around.” Happily, one of the officers had heard ‘West World’ on the radio, and let the musician go, but not before Stan would explain the meaning of the group’s name.

Okay, so what are Theatre Of Hate? To the group’s relief, this conversation goes around the name, somewhere towards an idea of what the band is actually about. There’s only one false start — when I find a ceramic green frog lurking inside my cup of tea, which throws me from the very start.

Attitude

Kirk Brandon speaks slowly, carefully and thoughtfully — suddenly speeding up as an idea its conclusion. The idea of Theatre Of Hate, a vague idea which seems to haunt and obsess him, is picking up momentum too: events are accelerating all around. What’s important about Theatre Of Hate?

“The group . . . is an attitude. Also it’s an awareness. There are certain people: Elvis when he was young, the Stones, although I wasn’t around then, the Pistols definitely, The Clash definitely. They were aware of where the kids — and if I use the word ‘kids’ you’ll forgive me, right? — of where the kids were at the time. And they were aware that the whole thing was moving.

“It’s not just like people appear as an audience, then go and you clear up afterwards. There’s a lot more to it — it’s a way of life. It’s a change in the mentality of the population.

“Like, those hippies, now they’re in the lower echelons of the American government. And what’s coming in the next 10 or 15 years is what’s happening now. And it is moving. It’s a whole mass-consciousness, and it’s moving forward — probably unknowingly, to a large degree, but it is moving and it’s becoming more and more conscious of itself, when you get that kind of massive numbers, you get what politicians would term power.

Theatre Of Hate | Rebel With A Brain

“But the thing isn’t so much a power struggle; it’s coming back to what it always was — just people. Their minds, strip away the cars, the houses, the stereos — it’s people. And their minds are developing. A whole consciousness is developing. But it has to be an aggressive thing, because it’s destroying what has gone before. It’s destroying the Old Man mentality. It’s rebellion. We have to destroy it, or ignore it, and go straight on through.

“But there’s only a certain amount of people who are aware of it. And this (Theatre Of Hate) is aware of it. This focuses it. That is the rock that it stands on. And the moment it’s no longer relevant to that, then it’s dead . . .”

Clearly, this is Big Stuff. Brandon is defining the group in terms of nothing less than society’s collective consciousness — or at least that part of society, mainly the young, who truly represent the spirit of the moment.

Theatre Of Hate, he’s saying, are attuned to that spirit, to that moment, and it’s from that basic fact that their power comes. Although it can’t be properly seen, or touched, or captured in words, it’s that awareness which is at the source of their impact and attraction.

There’s a pause settled on the room. My eyes are fixed on the frog inside my tea cup. Brandon sits back, relaxed again.

“. . . All that, it’s something simplified. Which even I don’t claim to understand.”

Has it been hard to get the group’s purpose properly represented in past interviews?

“It’s down to whatever level people talk to you at. If they give you, You a punk-rock band. John? then they’re gonna get a certain type of answer. It’s very easy just to be another rock’n’roll band, which this is not. It’s an attitude.

Glorification

“The press, by and large, haven’t interpreted it in its moment of time. Say tomorrow it folds up, it still will have stood for what it stood for in its moment of time. The people that it’s meant for actually know. They know, or, else they wouldn’t bother turning up. We’re hoping that one of these days — maybe today — that the thing will get placed in its proper perspective. Not some sort of glorification, but in the perspective of now . . .

After all, the NME is accepted as the credibility paper. So whoever the bloke is, even if it’s Errol taking the piss, it gets taken seriously.”

Great noise

On the other hand, as Brandon’s quick to admit, you could take Theatre Of Hate too seriously. Or rather, you could take them that way without taking them in other ways as well. Which you should. For instance, they make a great noise. They can make you feel happier: really obvious and valuable things like that.

“Yeah, it’s a very uplifting thing, this band. When people come to see us, they enjoy themselves. They do. They’re honest. I honestly haven’t seen that in bands since ’76 and ’77. I’m not trying to overstate it, or just state something that you’ll print. But that’s the way I believe it to be.”

Billy Duffy: “People come to see us because they appreciate a certain amount of honesty in what we do. They see we’re not just trying to be pop stars. There’s no trouble, there’s just this certain atmosphere . . .”

Stan Stammers: “An atmosphere of good fun. I go along to gigs of bands who’ve supposedly got as much energy as us, that we get labelled alongside. But I feel when I go to those gigs, I wonder if there’s going to be a fight, if that geezer’s going to hit me. And there’s some bloke up there going, Get out on the streets! Crush the system! Well, we’re not preaching any of that. We’re just preaching awareness — think for yourself. Beware. Be aware. ‘The word ‘rebellion’ gets misinterpreted. It doesn’t mean grab a gun.”

John Lennard: “It’s more pro the individual than anti anything else.”

“YOU KNOW that album — yeah, ‘West World’ — it’s the questioning. And from here on in, we’re going for the solution. Sometimes when I’m feeling stupid I wonder, Am I a waffler, or what? Then one day we turned up in Amsterdam, and there’s 400,000 ‘people on the street in a big anti-nuclear thing. Well, that’s a great thing, and that’s a part of it. There’s an enormous mass consciousness in that 400,000 people, and it’s going the right sort of way.”

Kirk’s recollection prompts Stan to mention another experience that impressed them deeply. They went to Berlin to play at an anti-drugs festival (a cause they all support very firmly).

Doom and Gloom

Afterwards, driving back to the airport, they got caught inside some violent riots:

“We were literally escaping through the middle of it.”

Billy: “You can’t just see something like that and not be aware. You can’t go (shrugs) well, time for another gig, let’s get drunk.”

And yet, however grim the issues that concern them and inspire some of their songs, Theatre Of Hate’s music is the opposite of despondent. Those gloom-and-doom descriptions are more than facile: they’re wrong, and hopefully dying out. It’s the difference between being serious, and being miserable. Kirk Brandon isn’t miserable.

“There’s no way you can speak to people if you’re like that. You can’t reach them. You can’t function like that. The whole thing is up, uplifting. That’s the only way anything can be done. It’s nothing to do with a gun. There’s more said, and more done, by one man getting one line together, saying one thing that influences people enough to think, to take things one stage further inside their minds. And if a lot of people do, then collectively it moves forward.”

The group call their music optimistic, and so would I. The thing to get hold of is what optimism doesn’t mean. They’re not trying to say that “good times are just around the corner”, nor that the future is necessarily going to be a pleasant or easy place to live.

The optimism consists simply of a belief, a feeling, that you’ve got the spirit to fight your way through to the other side. (Even pop music groups can give you inklings of ideas like these. Now and again.) It’s the will to survive — but surviving by being everything you’re capable of being, not by compromise or surrender.

Last Decade

This awkward attempt at instant summary seems to go down well with the group. (“That is it,” confirms Stan). Kirk asks if I agree about “the consciousness going somewhere”.

Well, it seems that it is. After the barren, confused years of the last decade, an issue like the nuclear one is acting as a catalyst or focus, especially in mainland Europe, to bring about a wider sense of common purpose.

Something like that movement of ’60s youth idealism, starting with Kennedy and leading to the climax of 1968. There again, I might have as much real idea as the frog inside my cup. You can’t usually see or understand these shifts until years afterwards.

Kirk: “What you’ve just said, it’s what I believe Theatre Of Hate is. And maybe in a few years time people will see that it was something more than just a stupid punk band . . . Something else: d’you think that people’s music always softens?” When success comes, yeah, I suppose it usually does.

No soft songs

“I don’t think that we will soften. There isn’t any room for it to get soft.”

Billy: “We watch that very carefully.”

Kirk: “I don’t think we’ve even begun to soften up. I think it’s got stronger.”

Stan: (points at leader amid much general laughter): ‘This man is incapable of writing soft songs!”

Billy: “Even his soft songs are hard!” Stan: “The black heart!”

THE BLACK-HEARTED Brandon asks for another cup of tea, and considers the Point Of It All.

“You know, a lot of people would say we’re just playing silly bastards in a group, that it’s just an escapist thing. But it’s not. You could walk down Oxford Street and a bomb goes off — things like that. It’s only the other shade of tomorrow. And if you forget about it, just go down to the bar and order a gin and tonic, it’s crazy. You’re blanking out what’s going on.”

Billy: “Things like that are always going to happen, so in that way the band’s approach will never soften. There’s always going to be that. And that’s more fuel for us to burn — to keep on what we’re doing.”