NME
18th May 1985
By Mat Snow

THE RIGHT STUFF

Into the dizzy azure of the pop stratosphere comes SCREAMING BLUE MESSIAHS, latest test pilots of the rhythm 'n' blues beyond. Mat Snow fastens his seat-belt with Messiahs' high flyer Bill Carter and gets ready to reach for the sky. Hot shots: Anton Corbijn.

"There was such a scary thing about going out to the bush. You hit the landing zone and it's hot. That door opens up and you run out screaming. There's little rocket ships whizzing through the air. You feel you can stick out your hand and catch a round. I could have beat Bob Hayes in a foot race with all my gear. I could have hidden behind a pack of Camels with no part of me protruding. That's got to be the hairiest thing in the world. Adrenaline for days."
(Anonymous Vietnam veteran, quoted in Nam by Mark Baker)

"When I was just a baby / My mama told me, son / Always be a good boy / And don't ever play with guns / But I shot a man in Reno / Just to watch him die / When I hear that whistle blowin' / I hang my head and cry."
('Folsom Prison Blues' by Johnny Cash)

"If you're a long way from home / Can't sleep at night / Grab your telephone / Somethin' just ain't right / That's evil / Evil is goin' on / I'm warnin' you, brother / You'd better watch your happy home..."
('Evil' by Howlin' Wolf)

SCRAMBLE!
Lasham by name and lash 'em by nature.
A relentless northerly wind whistles down the corroded nascelles of a defunct Gloucester Meteor and gusts over desultory, dismembered wings, cables and ailerons strewn haphazardly over a field bounding a Home Counties airbase.

Grounded for good, a once-soaring Hawker Hunter and Sikorski helicopter sink slowly into the weeds. Overhead the screeching flight of a new generation of war 'plane seems to mock the ill-tended elephants' graveyard below.

Bill Carter likes Lasham.

"Actually, I did try and join the airforce when I was a bit younger, but I had bad eyes and couldn't do it. I wasn't very good at physics either, al that kind of stuff.

"I like it when it's a bit exciting, when it gets unusual. Like when we took this train journey from Ostend to Stockholm, 35 hours. That was really atmospheric, at night you go through goods yards and all that kind of stuff. It can get quite disconcerting really..."

Exciting. Unusual. Atmospheric. Disconcerting. Good words for The Screaming Blue Messiahs, rightly regarded by many as the most dynamic British band to emerge in the last year. Even WEA, the Arsenal FC of record companies, have endorsed this view with a handsome cheque to woo them off the small but enterprising Big Beat label. Thus last year's magnificent 'Good And Gone' EP is re-released with moderate hooplah and an encore of rave reviews. The buzz of those three USAAF Thunderbolts on the sleeve is getting louder and louder...

THEY CAME OUT OF NOWHERE
Fifteen years ago the still youthful Bill Carter quit his native Teeside seaside town of Redcar for the Bohemian life as an art student in London's suburban Bromley. That much we know...

"I didn't murder five families and do a runner, though some people might argue. I don't keep old pictures; I like to keep going forwards. I've had situations in my life but I don't really want to talk about my... everyone has their own story of situations. If I told you, say, this happened to me and that happened to me, and that's why I feel like this, I wouldn't feel it, it would take something out of me.

"I'm actually getting a lot out of ordinary things, which is, for me, quite refreshing. Very exciting. Sometimes you get so screwed up you can't see further than your feet. I'm enjoying being alive, I s'pose I find that quite fulfilling at the moment..."

GOTTA FEELING INSIDE - CAN't EXPLAIN
"You're always looking for excitement, you're always looking for it. But it's a matter of finding something that fits your capabilities otherwise you feel out of place. This is the most exciting thing I've done, being in this band."

"Looking back, I never really liked it. It was all right, you know, same as anybody else. It was a bit frustrating really, I didn't understand it. You don't understand what you're supposed to do. It gets a bit kind of... meaningless.

"This band is the first time since I've been playing that I've really believed it. It's an unusual sort of outfit."

That it is. The Screaming Blue Messiahs are the sort of band that one thought had become extinct by the early '80s, fallen pray to the same lack of fashionability as did for Bill's only previous name group, the highly-reputed Motor Boys Motor. For if the Messiahs have an obvious ancestor, it's Dr Feelgood, a lineage reinforced by their EP being produced by Vic Maile, who in the mid-'70s powerfully vinylised the Canvey quartet's classic cuts.

But thought The Screaming Blue Messiahs look more like a darts team than a pop group, their appeal lies not in beer-bellied good nature; rather, a far more sulphurous gut reaction. If Wilko Johnson's pudd'n'-headed psycho-chopping put an edge on the Feelgoods, then the Messiahs take that mania all the way. They are harder, heavier and sharper by far. And not a little bit stir crazy.

"I like the effect we're starting to have, the way we feel, the atmosphere of it. I do feel that what we do is something that everybody wants. You have things in you which don't necessarily work in a normal kind of situation, but work well in another. It's a good way of channelling a way of being that I find very exciting. That hour on stage makes a lot of things make sense to me.

"I suppose it's performing, but I don't think of it as performing. I think of it as being. It's not a circus, it's a meaningless thing. It don't mean nothing to nobody but at the time it's great."

Zen-like but true. The record is ace, but live is where you catch these guys in full flood. Chris Thompson on bass and Kenny Harris on drums have taken the foundations of R&B backbeat just about as far as they'll go. Did you know there are infinitely sophisticated patterns you can play whilst still socking out a massive drive? Chris and Kenny do – immaculate foils for the virtuoso smokestack lightning of Bill Carter.

White shirt, blue suit, bald head, bug eyes – Bill Carter is simultaneously hilarious and menacing. Whereas most players become as one with their guitars, all natural phallic protuberance and fluid grace of movement, Bill bashes away bare-fingered at a battered Telecaster as if it's some curmudgeonly old blunderbuss likely to backfire at any moment. Add to that the agile choreography of a jut-arsed bear on rollerskates and you have a performer plainly not of the common run and thus all the more riveting to behold.

:I saw the Sex Pistols at the Nashville. I didn't like 'em at the time but I'd probably like 'em now if I saw them. I had a different attitude then, I liked rhythm 'n' blues – to a fault. I didn't like anything else at all. People used to say at the time that Dr Feelgood were better than the Sex Pistols. I used to think they were – miles better. I always saw the Sex Pistols as a teenage rebellion thing, and personally I'd been through that with The Who and people like that. It was a bit secod time around for me. So maybe I missed the point.

Guitar inspiration?

"Pete Townsend originally. And old Wilko. And Howlin' Wolf stuff. I liked Hubert Sumlin. I like Jimmy Vaughan of The Thinderbirds. I like it when it comes over really definite. Not so much musical as personal. Which I suppose is why I like the blues, because it's got a lot of feel to the vibe of it."

Singers?

"I like Beefheart, the way he's personal. I like the 'Clear Spot' album. I like the guitar-playing in a lot of Beefheart stuff, the odd rhythms. It wouldn't surprise me if Wilko had given a listen. Some people say I play like Wilko, but I don't think so at all. People like to place things, it makes them feel more secure."

APOCALYPSE NOW
'Tracking The Dog' always gets a big cheer live and has proved a surprise dancefloor hit. Lyrically it trespasses on Gun Club territory with some crazy rant about shooting 'God's little Elvis', bringing to mind that story about Jerry Lee Lewis trying to break into Gracelands armed to the teeth in order to put a few holes through Elvis, just months before he died anyway. What's it all about Bill?

"I don't know, really. I'm more interested in the mood of things. I like it when things float, when it's not really too earthly. The idea is to get off the ground and create a kind of atmosphere which I can get involved in and, hopefully for other people, will touch on something.

"I am trying to avoid saying what it's about because I think that takes away the magic of it in a way, the mystery of it. Sometimes you think of things but you don't quite know why. The fact is, if it's that moveable. it's got a bit of life about it, and once you start putting it into boxes you kill it."

Talking of boxes, "If I die in a combat zone / Box me up and ship me home" and "Your X-rays have just come through and we think we know what the problem is", both Vietnam War catchphrases used in your songs? Is Vietnam a special interest?

"Yeah, I went through... I'm interested in any situation which puts... I'm interested in how people behave in extreme situations. Endurance and what it does to the mind. How people are affected by the horror of it all... and just getting up in the morning, really. You see these extreme things and sometimes it helps you understand about yourself, things you have to deal with. You get a certain amount of strength from knowing that these people did that, and how people cope."

Your song 'Someone To Talk To' contrasts wartime deathwish scenarios with the plea "I need someone to talk to". Macho vulnerability?

"Yeah, well I think that's being brutally honest about it. You've got to be vulnerable otherwise you never hit on situations. Contact's easier said than done, real contact is a rare thing. It's like Voyage Of The Damned sometimes. It's not a deathwish; I don't want to die.

"Violence is part of life, but there's ways of using violence. That was one of the motivations for starting this group, to get the violence into a positive kind of... er... I s'pose it is harmless. Not actually hurting anybody. Violence is a very exciting thing. That's why people are fascinated by war and killing and all these films. Violence is their norm. Inside you it's a fascinating thing, to be able to get on stage... I see it as creating a workable reality for it. There's no blood, it's not a negative violence. Like an exorcism type event, it's more than that. It's quite creative. Things happen that are beautiful through the violence in us, in people. A feel..."
Fact: '19' is Britain's number one single.

TRUE RELIGION
"I'm not really interested in rock 'n' roll. It's only a couple of things I've seen that have kept me in that vehicle. I really don't like rock 'n' roll. I don't like most people in groups. I don't like most people in the business. I don't like the values and I don't like the music. I think most of it's crap, the level of fuckin' living is worthless. I am not a rock 'n' roll fan."

But whe like the smell of napalm in the mornings?