Barry Adamson played bass for post-punk pioneers Magazine before going on to write film scores for David Lynch. We salute an unsung Manc music legend
We can all reel off the obvious names ? New Order, The Smiths, The Stone Roses ? but one man rarely gets his dues for his unique contribution to Manchester's rich musical history. Barry Adamson, whose bass guitar playing helped give the band Magazine a creative edge in the late 1970s, took a different path from most of his Manchester contemporaries after the band split in 1981.
First he spent six years with Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds, before making a clutch of noir-ish cinematic solo albums and graduating to composing actual film scores. He contributed a wonderfully disorientating piece to the soundtrack of The Beach and made a trip-hop version of Serge Gainsbourg's Je T'aime ? Moi Non Plus. His brand of uneasy listening has won him some influential champions, including film director David Lynch, who employed Adamson to work on the soundtrack to Lost Highway. Now, his latest project is a film, Therapist, that he's written, edited, scored and directed himself.
Adamson was at Stockport College when punk broke. He heard Howard Devoto was looking to recruit musicians for his post-Buzzcocks band Magazine, so he went to Devoto's house, sketched out a bassline for The Light Pours Out Of Me and was given the job on the spot. "And there I was," says Adamson, simply. "I'd been inspired by Howard's work but I never expected I'd be in the same band as him. It was a precious time. It was exciting, I was 19 years old, and in this great band playing great music."
Adamson has many fond memories of the fertile Manchester music scene of that time, of mixing with the likes of Joy Division, Linder Ludus, Paul Morley and particularly Morrissey. "I take my hat off to him," says Adamson, of the former punk scene kid who became an international icon. "I bow before him. What he's achieved is fantastic." Although Adamson moved away from Manchester when Magazine found success, he returned in the late 1980s, towards the end of his stint with the Bad Seeds. He was beginning work on his debut solo album Moss Side Story, conceived as a soundtrack to an imaginary, semi-autobiographical film noir, set in the darkly oppressive streets of unregenerated Manchester. "My parents were still there. I'd stay with them when I came off tour. The influence, the history ? I found everything I needed right on my own doorstep."
Moss Side Story and the seven solo albums that followed pack an emphatic emotional punch. "I don't really fit in anywhere and that can evoke darkness," explains Adamson. But the critical success of Moss Side Story led to offers to contribute to the soundtracks to Gas Food Lodging and Natural Born Killers, as well as Lost Highway, The Beach, and many others. His directorial debut Therapist has just been premiered around the country and 2011 is already shaping up as a very busy year for Adamson. In addition to sharing his thoughts and stories in conversation at MIF, he's currently finishing off a new solo album and scheduling a tour for the autumn. And it turns out that there's even more in the pipeline: "I'm finishing the score to a new Carol Morley film, I'm mixing some tracks for a steampunk band in America, and I'm writing a screenplay for a feature with Graham Duff [creator of the sitcom Ideal]." Is this restlessness? "I see that as settled. Nothing excites me more than talking about what I'm doing now. That, to me, isn't the sign of someone who's unsettled."
Adamson's plethora of interests means that he's impossible to pigeonhole, and the fact that he'll breezily reference Michel Houellebecq or discuss the influence of JG Ballard on his work is in stark contrast to the "I don't read books, me" cultural vacuity of some Manc rock stars. Not that Adamson makes a big deal of this. He's happy to follow his myriad creative desires while appreciating that it's his roots in Manchester that have given him the confidence to keep trying new things. "I grew up in an atmosphere where anything was possible. Even before punk, I felt that Manchester was somewhere that pointed towards America one way and to Europe the other way. I felt I was living at the centre of things."
leslie nielsen jd salinger l\'il wayne emma watson janet jackson
No comments:
Post a Comment