PWEI Nation Interview

Interview Conducted by PWEI Nation

1996 was supposed to be Pop Will Eat Itself's brilliant year. 1994 had seen the release of the
successful "Dos Dedos Mis Amigos" album and a major worldwide tour which culminated in a support
slot for Nine Inch Nails, gaining the band priceless exposure in the American market and a bumper
crop of converts to boot. In '96, the tenth anniversary of the band's existence, they were expected to
release their sixth "proper" studio album, embark on another full scale world tour and consolidate their
position as one of the UK's most innovative acts.

But this is Pop Will Eat Itself we're talking about here and they've never been a band for taking the
orthodox route to fame and fortune. At the end of 1995, fans received an unwelcome Christmas
present in the shape of the departure of co-frontman and founder member Graham Crabb, who left to
pursue his own solo project, Golden Claw Musics. Despite this setback, the band forged ahead with
the new album, enrolling one-time guest guitarist The Buzzard full time, recording tracks with producer
Alan Moulder and airing some of them on a short UK tour hosted by the Holsten brewing company in
March 1996.

It was about this time that the collective nostrils of the fan base first detected a whiff of discontent - intelligence reported that the band weren't happy with the way that the songs were panning out, they'd ditched Moulder and had cloistered themselves in their newly constructed Birmingham studio for a second stab at the album. Both record company and management remained positive about the appearance of the elusive album, despite the slip in schedule.

Then in May, the dread rumour hit the PWEI Nation mailing list that everything was far from well and that the band had actually split. The PWEI organisation clammed up immediately, eventually relenting and claiming that due to some internal problems, the band had decided to spend some time away from each other and pursue their own interests. But it wasn't really a split, oh no, they'll probably be back early next year, we'll just have to see. In the meantime, the Poppies played another short set of gigs, ending up at the massive Roskilde Festival in Denmark. A Nation waited with baited breath to see if PWEI had really played out their days in a large Danish tent.

But the dread rumour refused to lie down and die quietly, and, as is the wont of an immediate medium like the Internet, conflicting stories continued to bounce back and forth across the list and Usenet, aided and abetted by supposed first-, second- and nth hand quotes from various band members and accomplices. As time passed, Pop Will Eat Itself quietly slipped below the radar, the state of their existence only occasionally marked in some of the specialist or local press. The fan base decided to exhale and wait...

Frontman Clint Mansell decided to move base from the throbbing metropolis that was PWEI's home town of
Stourbridge to the rest and repose of New York City :-) After a few months of silence, he made guest appearances in September at a handful of showcase gigs for Nothing Records bands (PWEI's US label). The
NYC gig was filmed by MTV for a "120 Minutes" special on Nothing bands. Interviewed briefly by MTV's
Matt Pinfield, Clint seemed cagey and uncertain about both his and PWEI's future.

However, three months is almost as long a time in the entertainment industry as it is on the Net and now it seems that opportunity has starting knocking again, big time, on Mr. Mansell's door. It was a much happier, more optimistic Clint to whom PWEI Nation had the pleasure of speaking just before Christmas, as he kindly agreed to clear up some of the mystery surrounding the Poppies' Midsummer Crisis and tell us about what he's got lined up for the future.

So take it away, Clint - the mike is yours (again... :-)

PWEI Nation: First of all, thanks for agreeing to talk to us.

Clint: I suppose this will be the first thing I've done for a while.

Yes, we haven't heard anything from you in ages. There's been a press blackout on PWEI, which is not really surprising I guess.

Yeah well it's been a weird time really. I didn't feel comfortable going back to that with all this going on - it's just taken me a lot of time to... I suppose it's taken all of us a lot of time to sort out what we want to do, where we're going and so on. I don't know who might even be interested in talking to me anyway but I know that you guys have been championing our stuff so that if there was a point in time to say something that this would probably be
the first way to do it.

Yes, and at least we'll be sympathetic, eh?? Can I start off with the video? Sioux sent me a copy of the anti-fur commercial that you did the soundtrack for. How did you get involved with that?

The guy that lives next door is a fashion photographer called Judson Baker . We just sort of got talking one day. Actually he came to see me play when I played with Nine Inch Nails.

In September?

Yeah, and then after the gig we got talking and hung out all night afterwards and we just became friends really. He kept saying to me, which I now remember but I didn't then, "Oh, I'm doing this video for the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and I'd love you to do the music!". I went "Yeah, yeah" and because we were both drunk I forgot all about it. And then one night, it was about one in the morning and the door was banging and banging and I'm just ignoring it but I knew it was Judson. He just stayed there so I had to get up and answer it in the end and he said "This video's got to be finished by Monday!" and this was Thursday night. He'd already shot the footage but he needed the music so I just pulled out a new song that I'd been working on anyway. I tried a few other things and they didn't quite fit with what he had and then when I put this one to it everyone seemed to really like it and it came to life. But Judson literally lives across the hallway and as I say, he's a fashion photographer and this is the first video thing he's done. It was done really bare, really cheaply, everybody including the models just gave their time for nothing...

Bare, ha ha ha, yeah right...(note: all the models are butt naked!)

Yeah! So that was how I did it. Another bunch of friends of ours, a company called Wild Kind, did the production so it was a good little project for all us to be involved in. But it was particularly good for me because it made me focus on something and it was probably the first stuff that I'd played since the band that I'd played to other people and it got a pretty favourable response so that was nice.

It sounded pretty good from where I was sitting but I only saw it a couple of times. I got the tape, I watched it a couple of times and then I immediately bundled it off our video guru to convert it so we could put it out on the Web. It seemed as though it was a progression from the Dos Dedos days. Is that a fair assessment, you're still going down that "towards industrial" kind of path?

I don't think it's so much that. When I did the first lot of demos after that album for the band, what was becoming more and more apparent was that I just like doing it myself if you like, even if that means to a certain degree having to settle for my own limitations. I just liked the idea of almost being like the boy in the bubble or something, that film that John Travolta's in, just making up the noise he wants to hear. If he had to make up his own songs he'd just have to live with them the way he wanted them, he wouldn't be able to tart them up with ther people's input. It's great, you can really get great stuff by collaborating with other people but I guess I started to feel that I'd been doing that for ten years... And then with Graham leaving the band, we tried to hange it slightly, which we were all into and gave it a go but really, without Graham being there, not that he was particularly the driving force or anything, but without him being there it wasn't really Pop Will Eat Itself as we know it. So making compromises seemed almost... well, not even worth it - you're just thinking "Well, I'll make the compromise but it's not going to be in the way I want to do it" and maybe it's time to think about doing something else. So what I'm saying is that when I did those demos, they were more based on one person doing things on his own and I guess that's what I'm still working at really.

Nobody's really talked about Graham leaving. It got a two inch obituary in the Melody Maker I think (or was it the NME?) last December and then that was it. Was the lack of attention of surprising?

Well, in the same way that we haven't really talked about the band splitting, we didn't really talk about that. In the way that we like to operate, it's not a news item, if you see what I mean. It's like what's going on and what we want to do, it's not about column inches at that point. A lot of these things come down to personal things, and when I say personal things I don't mean between one another, I mean about people's lives really. The decision for somebody to leave the band may not be particularly based on the fact that "Ooh, I'm not into it any more" - there's a lot more to things than "musical differences" if you like. So it's not really a matter of perpetuating the band machine just to get some press to tell this story. It wasn't really what any of us wanted, except for Graham himself to a certain degree, but it was just time in people's lives to do something else.

How long had that been on the cards, because we heard a rumbling about it in September '95 and we said "No, no, no, you're confusing it with his Golden Claw project" and then of course it turned out that there was this big announcement in December. How long had the writing been on the wall there?

To be honest, it's wrong for me to talk for Graham here, but he'd never been particularly happy touring, ever, even going back to real early days, aside from our first lot of gigs that we did together in England and we were travelling around, sleeping in a van, getting drunk and having a laugh!

Couldn't stand the B.O in the back of the Transit van, eh?

I think we all got used to that to be honest, our nasal passages have given up the ghost I think! But he was never overly happy touring. As a band, Pop Will Eat Itself became... I don't know how to really describe it... we became kind of big but at the level we were at, we were kind of too big to support ourselves to a certain degree. It was weird really because it cost so much for us to tour and it was, I mean I thought it was, good fun touring
but cost-effective-wise, it wasn't.

You seemed to be halfway between the two - you were an extremely popular touring band that could never sell.

Yeah, it would never really convert into record sales so it would really cost us a lot to tour but if we didn't tour, certain territories wouldn't release our records so it was a real Catch 22 situation.

I almost died of happiness when Nothing put up the money to bring you over to the States...

It is really expensive and like I say, you can't really support the things you want to do. For instance we built a
studio towards the end which was great, but by that time I didn't want to live in England so it was almost self
defeating. Graham wanted to spend more time in the studio which I think we all did but all in different ways.
After ten years I suppose everybody has an idea of things they want to do and things they want to express and
with trying to keep a whole bunch of people happy, you end up with nobody being happy.

So in your mind, have you actually now decided that it is all over or is PWEI still a going concern?

Well, to be honest, I don't know. Korda (Infectious Records supremo) says "PWEI 1999" has got a really good
ring to it!

Ha ha! So, who knows eh?

I haven't got a problem with it but having said that I was probably one of the main instigators of wanting to jack it in but for my own reasons.

It just wouldn't be the same having Pop Will Eat Itself as an entirely studio band?

That was part of it. We all like different things about being in the band and if things are going to change then we said "We've got to look at how it's going to change and if it's not what people want then we've got to be honest about it" which wasn't easy. To be honest I found it particularly difficult even though I was one of the ones saying "I'm not sure about this" and it's taken a long time to, not get over it, but when you spend a lot of time in a band, it's probably a bit of your identity and so forth and then you change it all, it's a bit weird really.

It sounds like you're coming out of a divorce or something!

I suppose it is you know. It's like a security blanket really - you do definitely rely on each other and when things are going really bad, it's going really bad but you're all together, which is great in a way. I think it was time for people to get out there and see what the big bad world had to offer them.

What led to Kerry (Hammond, aka the Buzzard) being brought into the band full time then if you felt like you were on the ropes at that point?

It wasn't so much feeling on the ropes, it was an attempt to make a positive change really. Kerry'd played with us before and he was a good mate and we just thought we'd try and work things out. Again this is particularly one of my ideas, I mean I like his guitar work and and so we just gave it a try and it seemed pretty good. He's got a very good positive attitude and he's a really good character to have around and I knew this would take us into a different area rather than try to replicate what Graham did. It would be a new phase, be it good or bad. We worked on a lot of stuff, everyone worked on it really hard but you just think about things over time and by then I'd written these demos that I liked the way they were. I've said this to people before - you do a demo and you sit there and listen to it in your bedroom and think it's great but then you record it with the band and you think "Well, the demo was better" but I don't know whether part of that is the fear of playing it to the world. If you've got your little demo in your bedroom on your own, it can be anything - you don't have to explain it to anybody or whatever - but on the other hand, maybe I'm just a control freak and I just like things the way I want them to be, be they good or bad. You like to be really confident about what you've done, go "OK, if somebody doesn't like this that's up to them but I think it's great". When you collaborate with other people you've got to allow them their say in it as well so you might end up with something that you don't think's bad but you think "Weeeell, I might have done it differently". But you see that's what happens, you gain confidence, maybe rightly or wrongly, maybe it's ego talking, but you do gain confidence about your own ideas.

It sounds like you have because I remember reading a book by Martin Roach ("The Right To Imagination And Madness") about indie songwriters in the UK and you seemed to be very leery about, or prone to attacks of "stage fright", when it came to playing your new demos for songs to other people.

Oh yeah, you know, I hate it!

Do you worry a lot about whether or not they're going to work?

Well, you know I've just finished off a batch of demos now that I've got to play to people and I'm thinking "Ohhh God..." but what can you do? I've been through some pretty bad times with stuff I've done and people have said to me "Well, I don't think this stuff is working, this is good but that's shit" and you can take their advice or not. Just because somebody says doesn't make it necessarily so. But I think generally you know inside how you feel about what you've done or what you've been involved in doing and I think what happened for all of us really was a case of well, we know where we're at and what we've done but maybe it's time to explore and see what happens. Just follow your own instinct and go for it.

This batch of demos - are these actual songs or are you still in the soundtrack world or what?

I've had a really intense few weeks actually because I had to get a bunch of stuff together for this film...

Is this the David Lynch movie?

No this is another film I'm doing here.

Oh, what's this one?

This is a film called "Pi", you know the Greek symbol in mathematics...

Oh, I was writing down P-I-E... ha ha! What's this one about?

It's about mathematics funnily enough. There's a guy called Darren Aranovsky who's a film maker and a writer and his producer is a guy called Eric Watson who used to be a video maker or video producer or something like that. Darren wrote this film called "Pi" which is about the search for the meaning of life through mathematics basically. It's not like your Sunday afternoon weepie, that's for sure! In life there are spirals, DNA's a spiral, the galaxy's a spiral, sunflower heads are spirals, all this type of stuff . This guy's a mathematician and he believes that maybe there's a cycle in life and if you crack that code, you know when things are going to come around again. You could predict God knows what, predict Wall Street or Stock Exchange or whatever. So he's locked himself in his apartment for years - his whole apartment's like a massive computer - and he's going through numbers trying to find systems and cycles. He gets involved with a big corporation who want to give him a lot of money because they think he's onto something. He also had a mentor who used to think this but he's had some kind of breakdown and he's not really sure of it all any more. Then he gets involved with Hassidic Jews who also think that the Hebrew language can be broken down into numbers and you can get the cycle from that. So it's a pretty intense film and it's shot in black and white; it's like an independent New York movie. These guys have worked really hard on it and it looks really great. I went down to see a lot of the sets and the shooting.

But anyway, Eric knew Sioux Z from when he was doing videos and he approached her about doing the music supervision for the movie, just finding stuff that would be right for the film. He said they were looking for somebody to score it and she said "Well, why don't you speak to Clint?". So we
met and got on really well, we talked about the music and the films we liked and he said "Well, would you do a track and see if it comes out right?". Now I've always wanted to do something like that so I did this piece for them and they loved it, which was great! This was just at the end of summer so I wasn't feeling that great at the time but they loved what I'd done so it really gave me a boost. But it's like a sci-fi movie so the music's sort of... I mean my favourite movie composer is John Carpenter...

Just missed the job for "Escape from L.A." there then, didn't you???

Well, I haven't seen it actually, I never even went to see it! Anyway, it harks on his stuff to be honest but it's got this... when I did it I thought it was pretty much like a jungle beat but now I think it's a bit slower than that. It's pretty intense. Anyway, that went really well so I got the gig basically! It's going to be a big learning experience for me basically, it's going to be very much like hard work. But the film's going to look great when it's done - they shot it in black and white and it looks like a really good print of something that was shot in the twenties, it's really cool.

That sounds great! When is it due out?

They hope to have it finished for June and then they're going to hit all the festivals. They're going for Sundance and so on so God knows when it could be out! Obviously it depends on how things go over the next six months. I mean if people get interested then who knows but it's an underground film, it's not suddenly going to trouble Mel Gibson or something I don't suppose. I think it's a good story and a good premise and it's a bit weird - he
drills his brain out at the end and stuff like that...

Ugh!!! Thanks Clint, you've spoiled the plot!

No no no, that's not it, that's not really THE END you know but it's a good intense story, really builds well. When I went down to see it being shot, I was really blown away, it's pretty intense.

Well it sounds like you're finding yourself a niche. It seems like the move to New York was an extremely fortuitous one.

Well, who can say? These are all good things that are happening and I've got to work hard to make them be realised I guess. I can honestly say I've landed a little luck here but I'm just going for it really. I guess one thing you never quite realise and what you should realise is your own ideas are no worse than anybody else's and you've just got to put them forward.

But going back to your point, these demos are my own thing - I'm working very much towards doing my own record. Somebody asked me the other day "Are you a musician or have you just got a bad hairdresser?!" or something like that and I said "Well, I'm supposedly a musician!". They said "What are you doing then? Have you been in a band before?" and I said yeah but I suddenly got that rush of ego where I thought "It's all about me!! I'm going off to do my own thing you know!". But I just want to see what happens and where it takes me. I've just finished one track - I know it's not quite right yet but I'm going "This is exactly how I want it to be". I guess I'd just started to feel uncomfortable with having to explain myself to people. It's nobody's fault but it's just difficult.

Does writing soundtracks represent a very different change in style or writing method for you or are you pretty much using the same techniques?

I suppose it's a bit different really. The first thing I did was a piece which I thought would be the theme music, and that's just like an instrumental track. It builds and it probably sounds like me really. But then when I went down to the shoot and saw different things, I realised that in films you have lots of different levels going on so I did a few downbeat type of things which I wouldn't even know how to use in the context of a band. It was just
different - I don't know how we'll use it in the context of the film but it'll just be sort of like suck it and see really, try different ideas. With this type of film, I've done lots of drones and lots of electronic noises, just to add to the atmosphere. It's not like looking for the big break where the hit single comes in, it's not really that type of thing.

When I went back to England in August, I met Craig Jennings (PWEI's manager) and he told me you had some kind of project going called "The Outsider". Are these demos an extension of that or was that just something you were kicking around?

I had this one particular track that Korda really just wanted to stick out - he said this is fucking great, we should release it - and it was all built on samples. We recorded it as a band and it just sort of like... If you did a song with samples but then you actually played it as a band it just wouldn't work because the integrity of what you've done is gone. If you're actually playing somebody else's riffs, you're just playing somebody else's riffs.
Anyway, it just didn't work as a band and I realised that I wanted to go this other way, just blending all these sounds together. I mean I'm not a DJ but I wanted to be like this guy that just stuck things over each other. I just liked that idea. I'm not knocking anybody else there, it was just the way I wanted to hear the stuff.

Then the idea came up that maybe I could just do it as a solo single. I wanted to do it under the name of The Outsider and somebody else was called Outsider or something and there were the Neurotic Outsiders and then I came up with the Hands of the Outsider because it was all really stuff that I'd done with my hands and I thought it sounded like a Kung Fu movie or something! And then I got sick of all that and time had gone on and I'd just
started getting frustrated and was having all sorts of different ideas about how I could present the track. It's like leaving a big company and starting a new company, that was what I was thinking. I had new ideas about how I wanted it to be put across so consequently I wasn't putting in the ideas for Pop Will Eat Itself. I'm not blowing my own trumpet here but over the years, a lot of the artwork and so on has come from me and I like to get excited about those things. I started thinking about all the things I'd have to do for another Pop Will Eat Itself album which I'm sure all the others were thinking as well, another photo session, another this, another that. I found I was enjoying thinking about other things more and we all talked about it and said "Let's not stand in each other's way about what we think". Who knows who's right? It was just be yourself and do it.

So are you working entirely on your own now? I keep hearing these interesting tidbits like "Clint's been spotted working with Foetus" or "Clint's been spotted working with Orbital" and things like that. Have you managed to work with other people since you've been out in the States?

No, not really, I am working pretty much on my own at the moment. The only thing I did was a song which was put forward for the soundtrack for David Lynch's new film. Trent Reznor is producing the soundtrack for it and just after I first moved over here, he called up and said "I think this song you've done would be perfect for the movie. Do you fancy coming and working on it and see what David Lynch thinks?". Of course I said yes so
we did some work on it and we gave it to David Lynch. However, when I saw a rough cut of the movie, the spot for the song already had a song in it and that song was "Song to the Siren" by This Mortal Coil, I think. So as good as Trent and I thought my song was, I guess David Lynch had pretty much in his mind that he wanted something else in it so it didn't get in in the end.

Oh well. Shit happens.

Yeah, you know... But it was a great experience for me just to go down to New Orleans and work at Trent's place and hang out there. That was part of the way I suppose that Trent asked me to do the gigs with them. So that's the only thing like that I've done really while I've been here. As I say, I've spent pretty much ten years working with someone else so now I'm just sort of enjoying, and being frustrated by, my own limitations if you like. I know at one time I'd do a demo and I'd take it to Rich and then me and him would work on it further and we'd improve it or whatever. I mean I enjoyed doing that - I'd be up for doing it again - but at the moment I'm really just enjoying finding my own feet.

You did a couple of gigs with the Nothing crowd didn't you?

Three. New Orleans, New York and Atlanta.

Was it good to get out on the road?

It was good just to sweat a bit I suppose. I didn't feel too much pressure about it really, it was somebody else's thing. I mean I suppose it could be a bit rock and roll getting up and doing whatever but it was good fun.

PWEI without the pressure?

It was good fun, you know, I enjoyed it. It was nice to be amongst friends enjoying yourself.

It looked like everyone was having a blast from the MTV clip!

It was, it was really good, all of them were good. It was funny though because by the time I got down there, they'd already started rehearsing andwhen I heard them playing "Wise Up Sucker", even though it's pretty much the same version, just hearing different people playing it was reallygood. There's a guitar part on "Wise Up Sucker" that's just played on one note and we used to use it as a sample though it never quite came across
that much. But when I went down to rehearse, Trent played it on the guitar, because there was like three guitarists on it or something like that, and it sounded brilliant and I thought "Why the fuck didn't we ever think about doing it like that!". But it was really refreshing to hear other people playing something of ours, it was fun.

So can you see yourself out on the open road again as Clint Mansell or the Clint Mansell Band or whoever you decide to go out as or will it just not be the same?

I've no idea at the moment. I'm certainly not ruling it out because that's the way it might have to be done. I'd have to think of a different way of doing it I suppose because everything I do is all technology-based. I went to see a band the other night called Atari Teenage Riot and they really reminded me of Pop Will Eat Itself to be honest, not that I've ever seen Pop Will Eat Itself, but there were these two guys jumping up and down and they
sounded like this thrash punk band but they were doing it with electronics and that.

Two guys jumping up and down sounds like Pop Will Eat Itself to me!

But even though they had a lot of guitar samples and riffs, I did honestly think those riffs were so great that if you'd seen somebody playing them they would have blown you away. People used to say to us "Oh it'd be great if you had a live drummer" or if you did this. It's like the Prodigy getting a guitarist, it's all selling yourself to people. They were good, I enjoyed them, don't get me wrong, but I knew it would have been so much better if
they'd actually had someone banging those riffs out. They would have sounded like Discharge or something!

How did you feel about the last set of gigs the Poppies did together, coming as they did hard on the heels of the split rumour? Did they feel like contractual obligation or was it fun? Were you nervous with the new material?

Actually because we get along so well, we'd made the decision about what we were going to do and it wasn't a hardship. We didn't feel that the new songs we'd done were bad or anything, it was just that they weren't going quite where we wanted to go. People wanted different things, the major one being that I wanted to be here and didn't want to be in England which made things difficult, but we'd made the decision about what we wanted to do and they were fun to be honest. The last gig we did was Roskilde I think... The last time we played Denmark, we played to, I kid you not, seventeen people on the Dos Dedos tour and then we played, I should imagine, in a tent in Roskilde to the best part of five or six thousand people and we went down an absolute storm. It was brilliant and it was a great way to finish if you like. We were good that night, it was a really good gig, though I must admit I remember having a terrible cold and went straight home to bed afterwards but it was a really good gig and I was amazed! But I say, we'd all made the decision about what we were going to do and so we did it.

I'm regretting not buying the plane ticket now... You keep saying that you were keen to leave England at that time. Was there anything in particular that made you want to leave? Were you getting sick of working there or the attitude?

It was just... you know when you need a challenge in life and you know when you're not happy, you make attempts to make yourself happy. I wanted to be here and sitting working in England wasn't doing it for me. And particularly as I've said, because I'd written songs I was happy with that got changed and then I wasn't happy with them, I was just thinking "What am I doing?". I think we all felt that if we'd have just seen it through, it would have been like a contractual obligation and we knew that we just wanted to move on a little more.

Do you find New York much more inspiring?

Oh God, undoubtably I suppose. Having said that, maybe I've just taken what I wanted from where I was. You can't ever say one place is better than the other but here, it's just a different stimulus I suppose. Obviously I've met new people. Look at what I've got involved in since I've been here - it wouldn't have happened for me in Stourbridge - and I was looking for something else. That's all I can say really. We all always felt that when we went on the road and went out of the country, how much more positive people were abroad rather than the backstabbing you get in England. Maybe that could be translated into "Well maybe you can't cut it in England" so you've gone off somewhere where maybe you can.

Oh I don't know, I've been out here about, what, three and a half years now and when I look back, there does seem to be a little petty and parochial atmosphere sometimes and I just want to say "Oh come on people, grow up, you just have no idea about what you could be doing".

Well that's it exactly, there's a very small town mentality. I'm not saying I'm big or great or anything but after a while, it just did my head in, I just got fed up of it.

Tired of kicking against the same pricks?

Let's face it, anybody in life, from whatever you do, be you at school or just going down the pub or whatever, you're not going to hang out with a
bunch of people who piss you off. You're going to hang out with people who you get along with, who you communicate with and who you enjoy being
with and, fortunately or unfortunately, that just happened to be here for me. So that's what happened.

So who do you listen to these days, who do you go out and see live?

Let's see, I've already mentioned I saw ATR the other night, saw Jon Spencer, Chemical Brothers the week
before, Orbital a couple of times. I'm going to see them again on New Years Eve. They're playing in London.
Saw T.J. Booker recently as well, he was good.

You're absorbing a wide variety of sound!

Well, I've always done that really. Who else? Mansun, Placebo...

What do you think of the so-called "scene" in the UK at the moment?

Well, you know, it's the same as ever really, it doesn't really bother me that much. I mean. I don't want to get into it because it's just wasted energy. I just don't like certain things and it's nothing to do with whether they're current or not. I mean, all these bands trying to be like the Sixties, I didn't like the Sixties anyway.

Have you heard much of the stuff by the other guys in the band since you all went your separate ways? Have you heard Rich's EPs (Bentley Rhythm Ace) and stuff?

I've heard Rich's stuff. Rich's stuff is crazy, it's not really me to be honest, but before I came away, he did play me some other stuff that he'd done. I spoke to him today actually and he's doing an album now. I don't really know what the album's going to be like but the two EPs aren't really me but that's why he's not doing it with me I suppose! Me and Rich get along musically very well you know. He did play me some stuff that I really liked but
the two EPs he's done so far haven't really been me. He's certainly doing OK.

Yes, it sounds like the interest is picking up for him there.

I just know that he's happy and that's as important as it can be really.

I heard he was finally able to jack in the bar job and give it to Adam!!

Where do you hear all this stuff????

We have spies everywhere! And I pick up the odd tidbit from the occasional call to the guys at Chapter 22 and Infectious. They're really cool to us, it's been nice to have their support.

I think it's really interesting and I suppose nice that somebody is keen enough to pursue something like this. Like I said, I haven't really felt comfortable talking about anything for quite a while really and I hope really to be moving into a period of activity but I'm going to be starting making plans soon I suppose.

Right, she said frantically flicking through the list of questions! In the March issue of Future Music magazine this year, there was an article appeared about the band and there was a track on the CD there called "Zero Return". What's the story behind that one?

Ooh, I don't know, I wasn't there when it was done!

Was that one of the others then?

We wrote a track called... um... er... good grief... I'm trying to remember what it was called!!

"Point Blank"? (Thank you the chap behind the counter at Tempest Records in Birmingham for that monumental piece of trivia!!!)

"Point Blank, Zero Return", that was it! No, we did this track and we all liked it but it was just one of those things where we just couldn't agree on certain elements. As part of doing the interview we'd committed to giving them some music and so, in fairness to Rich, Rich just did a mix of that track, just different elements of it. So that was a bit of a contractual obligation really - we said we'd do it but we weren't happy enough with the full track at that point to give the full track so Rich just did a mix of it. But I was reading in Future Music the other day, someone had written in saying "That's going to be a collectors item that is, it's the last track the Poppies ever did!".

Yes, I saw that! I'm hanging onto mine! So what is going to happen to all that stuff? It sounded as though there was a bunch of tracks finished or nearly finished. We heard about another version of "Their Law" and you were even doing a Gary Numan cover at one point?!

Yeah we did that.

Did that go out?

It's coming out or it's come out, I don't know.

Right, I'd better check on that again because I haven't looked into that one for a while. That was "Friends" wasn't it?

Yeah, "Friends", not "Are Friends Electric".

Were you a fan?

Well, I liked bits, you know. It was just like a good interesting thing to do while we were sorting ourselves out.

Yeah, cos I used to be quite a fan, I have that track and really liked it and thought how the hell are you guys going to do that one! I shall await that version with interest! What do you think of the Prodigy's latest version of "Their Law", have you heard it?

Well, the single went to Number One in England and it was on the B-side so that's great news as far as I'm concerned! I hope it won't be the nearest I'll ever get to being Number One but you never know, it might be!

Plenty of time yet, Clint, plenty of time yet.

I saw them a few weeks ago, they filmed an MTV thing, "Fashionably Loud" or something and I saw them then. No, that's cool. People like that track and I'm pleased that they do.

OK, well, I think we're winding down here... Six months ago, everybody was really unsettled. Do you feel
much happier about what you're doing now, much more settled?

Personally, yeah. It's a long trip I suppose but that's the way I want to go. You know it takes time to sort out where you are, what you want to do, personally, business-wise, all that type of stuff. I've got to talk with the powers that be around me and see what we think the plan is. Everyone's just telling me to take my time and make a great record and of course I always want to make a great record but I hope, as I say, that the powers that be will as excited about the demos as I am.

Are you still under contract to Nothing and Infectious?

Well, that relationship's kind of different really. I mean I am... but now the band have split up, nobody's under contract to anything really - things change at that point. It's up to the record label at that point but both infectious and Nothing have been very good to me. It was both of them really in the first place that I went to when I said look, I'm having these thoughts about this, that and the other and they've both been very supportive of me so. I mean, at the end of the day, if I come up with something that's a piece of shit, I'm sure they're not going to put it out but hopefully that won't be the case!

Believe me, we hope that won't be the case either! And on that note, I make Clint swear to keep us posted about any upcoming developments and leave him to finish packing for a short trip back to Blighty for Christmas. Thanks Clint, it was a pleasure and a privilege!

It's not fun watching your favourite band vapourise in front of your eyes but these are the curve balls life throws at us and however Pop Chooses To Incarnate Itself in the future, we just have to wish the guys all the best and hope that wicked Poppie edge continues to poke through whatever they do. At the moment, it sounds like we won't be disappointed. :-)

"... I have seen the future and this is how it begins ..."

© Alison Crompton, Dec 1996. Thanks to Ken Spickler (the video guru) and Sioux Z (the fixer). Graphics by Alison and Ken. Images from Infectious Records, MTV and Future Music magazine. If you feel the urge to go round quoting chunks of this article then please have the decency to quote "PWEI Nation" as the source and provide our URL, which is "http://kzsu.stanford.edu/pwei.html". Thank you!