Monocled Alchemist

FELT boast of their brilliance to MICK SINCLAIR

Article published in Sounds, 9th October, 1982

Felt | More Than A Feeling | JUST A sound coming over the horizon . . . clippity clop drums (no hi-hat or cymbal clutterings) like a quartet of galloping hooves pounding across dusty desert soil, a breathy whispering voice, wrapped up in a a golden-toned hazy maze of guitars, filling your ears with soft hints of Mexican sun-blessed imagery.

It’s by Felt and it’s their new single called ‘My Face Is On Fire’. If you haven’t heard it you’re in the missing-out majority.

While Cherry Red, Felt’s record company, were gearing themselves up for the 27th (it seemed) torrent of torture from Eyeless In Gaza, Felt were spending an incredible eight months and a staggering (for a combo of their modest means) £1,000 on this solitary 45.

I met up with them on a park bench. At least, the closest thing you can find resembling a park bench in the middle of Birmingham. Lawrence is the composer, singer and guitarist. That’s not Someone Lawrence or Lawrence Someone, but just . . .

Lawrence: “We’re not lazy, it’s just that we’re perfectionists, I suppose. We certainly wouldn’t want to put out anything that was sub-standard.”

Sub-standard the new vinyl most certainly isn’t. It’s like a rare jewel among a trayful of imitation stones. The more it’s played the more it grows, blossoming like a flower in a garden of weeds. It’s excellent. It . . .

Lawrence: “Oh er you like it then . . . good.”

Mick (bass player): “D’ya think it’s better than the old stuff?”

The ‘old stuff’ being the ‘Crumbling The Antiseptic Beauty’ six-track mini LP of around last Christmas time. On that disc the Felt talents were steered into tingling instrumentation that stretched and sprawled across the grooves. ‘My Face Is On Fire’ gathers together the loose strands of the album and knots them tightly into what is virtually a perfect pop single. I said perfect pop single, not ‘perfect pop’ single, a la ABC, Scritti etc.

Felt | More Than A Feeling

Lawrence: “I’ve listened to the construction of so-called pop records and there is always that vile bit in the middle. There’s probably a musical term for it, but it’s like a bridge between the verse and the chorus. I don’t write like that.

“It’s bugging me now whether I should have knocked out a verse before the solo and had a massive climax at the end.” (Actually Lawrence it’s fine as it is — like a three minute ‘massive climax’ of pop ‘thought’ mating with beyond-words pop emotion.)

“But it’s written to make some cash, a conscious effort to make money. We’ve got a whole load of them planned, really good pop singles. We’re fed up with being on the dole. ‘Crumbling . . . ‘ will take off in ten years’ time, becoming one of the records people will reel off in their lists of all time greats. But we need to make some money now.”

FELT AREN’T exactly veterans of the gig circuit. There are no reports of conquered crowds, won-over punters, screaming girls or jiving in the aisles.

Lawrence: “We did play in Dublin in July. We hadn’t done any gigs for ages so we thought we’d make a comeback. We’ve finished again now though (laughs). Originally we heard from Cherry Red that so and so were going to Europe and we thought why couldn’t we go, we’d like a holiday. We could have just made up half an hour’s worth of songs and gone down great because it would be, y’know, foreigners.

“But the tour fell through so we did one date in Ireland instead. Just a day’s holiday. It was brilliant! We walked off after 15 minutes and got £400. I mean, it’s not bad is it, getting £400 for a quarter of an hour?

“It wasn’t big-headed of us, honest.” (Throughout the day they’re continually asking me if they appear big-headed, arrogant or conceited as if it’s really something they worry about — not that anything I say would make the slightest difference, they would still carry on being just as big-headed, arrogant and conceited.)

Felt | More Than A Feeling

“We didn’t plan to walk off, it was just that I was standing there with my guitar thinking ‘All these people are being conned’. They were clapping after every song but we were really bad. We were insulting their intelligence.

“We’re planning to do instrumental sets now. I mean, you can’t just go onstage and ‘do the single’, there’s no way to sing onstage like you can in the studio. All you can do is go on and sweat and sing out of tune.”

On the one occasion I saw Felt treading the hallowed boards, Lawrence seemed keener to swallow the mic than sing into it. It was as if his tonsils were itchy and needed scratching while his hands were inconveniently full of guitar. The singing wasn’t so much out of tune as plain inaudible.

He continues: “By the end of the set your hair’s a mess and you look an idiot. We want to go onstage and look good and remain cool. Oh, not ‘cool man’ but just cool as in not hot. And looking good in what we wear normally. Our sort of clothing hasn’t really come into fashion yet, y’know, dressing in rags.”

Kevin’s Midnight Levi’s?

“But that’s so obviously phoney. We naturally dress in rags.

“It’s all so slow at the moment, I get so bored, I wish things would speed up. We want to get out of Birmingham and see places. Go abroad.”

‘Abroad’ is spoken of with the romantic inflection common to the rarely travelled. In such a person’s mind ‘overseas’ is a place where all things are possible and the imagination can run riot.

Later in the evening we pass a ‘Princess Grace In Crash’ billboard and Lawrence, with a look of faraway fancy, utters “a film star who married a Prince” and then, as though it’s a real possibility, ruminates: “If we went abroad Gary (Felt drummer who rarely speaks) might marry a Princess”. Gary, unmoved, grunts and walks towards a chip shop.

Felt | More Than A Feeling

Lawrence: “I’ll never play the single or the LP again. We learn from other people’s mistakes, every other band that’s gone before has made really terrible mistakes. We’re in a fortunate position in 1982 to be able to look back and see what’s gone wrong.

“It’s awful when bands play shoddy versions of their hits, I’d much rather have a record as a memory of a particular song. It’s awful when bands split up and reform years later to play all their old stuff. I’m dreading a Television reformation, I bet Lloyd rejoins, Verlaine still plays ‘Marquee Moon’ live. One of the best songs ever written and he’s reducing it to that, it’s just not on.”

BUT DOESN’T your lack of real commercial success bother you? Others rushing up the charts while you sit around bored?

Lawrence: “No. We’ve only released one commercial single and that made a profit (thus considered a success). I want ‘Face’ to get into the top ten of the indie chart. We’re realists, we’re not pretending we’re going to sell millions, but getting into the indie chart top ten means we’re stepping up the ladder.”

While some zoom up the elevator . . .

Mick: “We don’t want to be one of those ten minute bands who just get forgotten.”

Lawrence: “We’re timeless, we follow in a tradition of brilliant bands, in ten years time people will reel us off as one of the greats who . . . I mean, we wouldn’t want to be in the press every week for a few months and then nothing. One interview a year is enough as long as it’s a good one and the photos are right.

Felt | More Than A Feeling

“Last time, Dave McCullough (the old bugger had his penetrating way with Lawrence about two years ago — the Felt boy still walks with a noticeable limp) twisted everything we said. Hey! Don’t print this because we’re waiting for him to come back to us, he always goes back to bands after a couple of years, but if you write this he won’t. He just made things up, nice things mostly but some of the things he made up really made me look stupid.

“And the photos (winces), I was laughing in them. That Slattery bloke stood there deliberately making me laugh, sod. People look at those pics and think we’re a joke band.”

Lawrence sits stony-faced in anguished recollection of these horrors while I keel over in insane hysterics, start chewing bits of grass and begin baying like an over-excited rhino.

The grin-quotient soars to an even loftier level of stomach straining when Lawrence, seriously and in total innocence, asks “What O-Levels do you need to write for Sounds?”

Amid gushing tears of mirth I manage to murmur something about social class and breeding being more important than common or garden qualifications.

“Oh, it’s a doddle then, innit?” replies Lawrence and, without a trace of sarcasm, adds “D’ya think you’ll ever be able to make a living out of it?”

No chance of that, but it is a damn good giggle at times.

Lawrence: “But seriously (I’m still quaking with jollity), McCullough lumped us in with Orange Juice and Teardrop Explodes and I was amazed. We were ten times better than them at the time. Maurice (ex-Felt extra guitarist) used to laugh his head off (which probably accounts for his ‘ex’ status) at those bands. Those bands were below us. Our album was so deep, it was a classic, it must’ve been, it said so in the papers.

“I suppose the pop stuff we’re doing now is more overground.”

Mick: “I HEARD somebody on the radio talking about a ‘really good pop record’ and I realised that our stuff is ten times better from a ‘pop’ point of view. It’s worth all the waiting to get something that’s worthwhile. Our records are the only ones that I can play over and over again.”

Lawrence: “‘My Face Is On Fire’ is the record we wanted to hear but couldn’t so we made it ourselves.”

Mick: “We’re not bitter, though, are we. Are we?”