Monocled Alchemist

Carol Clark traces the shockwaves and adjusts her Guinness as the Angelic Upstarts go pop.

Article published in Melody Maker, 8th May, 1982

The Angelic Upstarts | Mensi’s Marauders | “COME here, you!” bellowed Mensi across a crowded and quite respectable lounge bar. The reverberations thundered over the heads of the lunchtime clientele, their salads and glasses of white wine, and assailed the unfortunate victim.

The barmaid looked admirably unperturbed; trotted obediently over to the table and fiddled with a hairstyle that looked like the result of some particularly vicious nuclear explosion.

“Why don’t you get your hair cut,” roared Mensi, “and get that mushroom off the top of your head!”

She registered no protest but turned meekly to Decca who was describing to her exactly the woman he wanted to marry, while Mond and Tony Feedback giggled like naughty boys in the corner.

The Angelic Upstarts were in fine spirits that day, and it surprised me. I’d expected a confrontation; found a conversation. The barmaid returned to the pumps, the Upstarts returned to their discussions and the pub returned to normal.

THE Upstarts are the sort of band who follow their instincts and do what they do without giving a fiddlers what anyone else thinks, least of all the press. Headstrong, entirely well-meaning, they’ll shrug off adverse criticism rather than bridle at it. They’ll talk about the controversies they’ve created instead of licking their wounds and storing up resentments.

The Angelic Upstarts | Mensi’s Marauders

And so we met to consider the band’s latest album, “Still From The Heart”, and the shockwaves it triggered in the press and beyond . . . way beyond. A real atrocity, a transformation of mind-boggling proportions, it gave us the Upstarts at their most perverse: as pop stars, playing pop songs of unbelievably insubstantial texture — as threatening as a feather in the breeze and as tough as a china tea set.

“It’s as weak as piss,” conceded Mensi as we settled down to chew over this bewildering phenomenon. “It’s a pop record, and if it’s gotta be very poppy, it’s gotta be very weak.”

So why did you decide it had to be “very poppy” then?

Why sit on the fence?

“We wanted to show people that we could do that as well,” he said. “There’s a track on there that sounds like Adam and the Ants and it was intentional . . . to show we could. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Why sit on the fence? Why be a President Reagan when you can be a Thomas Mensforth?

“You tend to get a bit bored with repeating yourself, so we did it for a change. Although if I’d produced it, it would have been a lot stronger. We took a chance. We took one more step towards trying to be acceptable to people so we could have more chance to do what we wanted.”

Were the record company putting any pressure on you to go for a more commercial sound, or was this entirely your own idea?

“Well, EMI were putting pressure on us,” he admitted. “It’s their job and it’s business and they’re trying to sell records. It’s not their job to worry about Mensi singing about his troubles and his strifes. We’ve done four albums which have been for us, so I think it’s fair to give them an album.

“It wasn’t a snap decision. EMI is the best company we’ve ever had, and we all had a think about it and talked at great length. It hasn’t been a complete failure. It sold as many as the others in the UK, and my lyrics are as strong as they ever were. ‘Never Say Die’ (the single) was a flop, but it got more radio play than the previous one. That’s four plays. We’re still suspect to the BBC.

The Angelic Upstarts | Mensi’s Marauders

“I said to Cliff Richard once — I’m name-dropping now — it’s no use preaching to the converted. It’s no use for us singing about police oppression to the kids who are always there if they’re the only ones who are listening. That album was a chance to break out . . . to get to more people. But we didn’t because the BBC didn’t play it. Punk was always about shock —and now we’ve shocked the punks. Because they didn’t expect that from us. “We’re still a punk band. It’s a way of life to us; it’s not a fashion.”

WHILE Mensi and the other Upstarts —Mond (guitar), Tony Feedback (bass) and Decca (drums) — are prepared to defend their decision and to confirm their satisfaction with the lyrics, they’ll agree that they weren’t fully committed to the music they were recording.

We sold out

“It wasn’t the album I wanted to do,” said Mensi. “When I sing live, I put a lot into it, but I didn’t put my whole heart in the album. I’m not ashamed of it, but I’m not proud of it either. It’s just an album.”

Some people could say you sold out.

“That’s garbage,” countered Mensi, pausing briefly for a yell of “Hey, mushroom-head!” across the bar. “As soon as you sign the dotted line on the record contract, you sell out. The only band in this country who haven’t sold out is Crass.

Are you disappointed that the experiment turned out as it did?

“I don’t regret having done it,” he responded, admitting too that he felt frustrated at the fate of some potentially storming songs.

“If I could go back in time I’d still do it. But now we’re gonna go back to what we want to do. We’re gonna go back to the roots and put out an EP. We’re gonna call it ‘Just When You Thought We Were Finished’. I think we’ve done enough shocks.”

The Angelic Upstarts | Mensi’s Marauders

The other Upstarts were quick to leap to Mensi’s defence during the conversations.

“I felt really sorry for him when the reviews came out,” said Decca. “He got all the slagging for it and I think we should all have got it. The Upstarts is a ship and if it’s a sinking ship we’ll be there when it goes down. We’re a very unpredictable band, and the day everybody susses you out, you’re fucked.

“The songs on the album didn’t come over like we thought they would. I like two tracks — ‘Soldier’ and ‘Flames Of Brixton’. I don’t want to listen to any of the others.”

“There wasn’t any soul in it,” added Tony. “I was disappointed, especially with the production.”

“I listen to everything and I listen to nothing,” commented Mond mysteriously, bringing this part of the interview to an end as the others found new diversions.

“Hey, mushroom head,” screamed Mensi. “Are you coming to the 100 Club tonight?”

IF YOU got called up to war would you go?” inquired Mensi, raising one of his favourite topics. I said I hoped it wouldn’t happen; but the Upstarts are prepared for the worst.

The Angelic Upstarts | Mensi’s Marauders

“There’s nobody more anti-war than I am,” asserted Mensi. “I hate the thoughts of death, but there’s a time for aggression and if we’ve gotta fight, then we’ve gotta fight. if we become threatened by fascist dictators, then we’ll all join up.”

“Mensi’s Marauders,” mused Decca.

“If the Russians get involved in the Argentina business then we’ll all get called up,” continued Mensi.

“The Russians are as big a threat as Adolf Hitler was in the Thirties. They’re not even proper Communists . . . some of them are driving about in big limos, and there are people going to discos.”

What about the wars at home, Mensi? You do sing songs of the British Army in Northern Ireland.

“Well,” he said. “I’m sorry for the soldiers who are working class, turned against the working class there. I’m a Protestant, so I’ve got a lot of sympathy with the Protestants, but I’ve also got a lot of sympathy with the Catholics who’ve been oppressed for hundreds of years. Hate’s bred into those people; it’s working class against working class, keeping each other down. I’ve got no solutions. But the greatest thing that ever came to Northern Ireland was punk.

“I said to Cliff Richard, I said that religion has kept people apart for hundreds of years and now rock ‘n’ roll is bringing them together. He said religion wasn’t the cause of the trouble in Northern Ireland. It’s so easy for people like him to sit back and say ‘Let’s love each other’. It’s harder for a kid in Belfast getting petrol bombs thrown at him to say ‘I love God, so it doesn’t matter’.”

The Angelic Upstarts | Mensi’s Marauders

There’s no doubting the sincerity of Mensi’s concern for the working classes and his unswerving patriotism. It’s the latter, reflected in songs like “England”, that has encouraged an element of racist yobs to the band’s gigs, leading to misplaced doubts about their intentions.

“I never take anything back about what I sing about England,” said Mensi. “We will not be deterred by a minority of filth, the racists and the fascists, who attempt to corrupt the good name of England. We’ve been written off for being patriotic, we’ve been written off again for the album . . . but we’ll never die.”

And on that note, Mensi again instructed his favourite barmaid to be at the 100 Club that night. She was. And she hadn’t cut her hair either.