SOUNDS
21st December 1985
By Neil Perry
Photos Gavin Watson

Messiahs Talking Sense

Who killed the cat with his guitar and gave Neil Perry a kick in the thalamus? Bill Carter of The Screaming Blue Messiahs owns up as Gavin Watson gets him up against the wall.

We are, believe it or not, a race with two brains.

The thalamus is a small, pinkish cluster of nerves and cells which lies at the bottom centre of the brain.

The thalamus – Greek for 'hidden chamber' – is a legacy from our animal ancestors, and it is thought that here is seated our 'sixth sense', powers of telepathy, and (yes, there is a point to all this) our appreciation of music.

It is on this extremely sensitive organ that music makes its unique effect, and when the reception of music is good a kind of 'brainwashing' takes place.

In other words, when you hear some sounds and your heart leaps or your spine tingles, your thalamus has decided this is it and isn't going to let you forget it.

The sound of the Screaming Blue Messiahs did that to me not so long ago, and when I met Bill Carter, their singer-guitarist, a few days later we talked of the same thing, that... naked singularity if you like.

"It's gone anyway, you can't analyse it the next day, it's gone." says Bill. "People try to write a book about it. Some people are up for that spark, and others just wanna fuckin' knock.

"Some people don't want nothing good, because it makes them feel insecure... a lot of people have got their own little world, and they don't want nothing to fuck with it.

"But if you're still hungry and up and looking for things, life can be a lot more exciting."

Bill is intense in his conversation, as he is with his music. The figure he cuts on stage conjures up all sorts of images – 'vicious', 'hypnotic' and 'disturbing' are the words used to describe him.

"It's getting in a sort of mood. I've got ideas about how I feel. You know like when you see Mohammed Ali and he starts mouthing off, well he probably doesn't know what he's going to say and that's how I feel, I look back on it and think, what was all that about?

"It's just that I know it feels right when I'm doing it, it feels right, you know that you're hitting the spot. It's a powerful form of music, it's a... feeling, a feeling."

Brought up on a diet of The Yardbirds and Geno Washington, without his music Bill says he would be "staring at the walls."

With their next album dues sometime early next year, the Screaming Blue messiahs have reached, he says, "the end of an era", with the new direction leading off with the recent 45 'Twin Cadillac Valentine'.

Does the physical release stop you killing the cat?

"I've already killed the cat, I dropped my guitar on it." (That'll teach me not to be so clever.)

"No, it makes a lot of things make sense, that's exactly it. It's a bit of everything. Sometimes I think it's funny, sometimes I think it's quite sinister. But it's a powerful way of communicating.

"You can do what you like, say what you like. It's nice manipulating that situation and taking advantage of it, it's interesting and exciting."

Is it ever a waste putting out that much emotion to people?

"The problem is, you gotta play the record to people, and if they don't have that emotion – and i don't think a lot of people have, 'cos it's sorta been beaten out of them – then you wonder who you're playing to. You wonder who's out there who could be possibly interested."

And what of the people who come to see you?

"I think the audience is great. I like them, because I think they're up for it. You're not there to hurt people or to teach them a lesson. I don't know..." (very long pause) "... I just think they're not cunts."

The incredible tightness of Kenny and Chris, drummer and bassist, tells of a compelling fusion of ideals.

For all the positivity, i still get the feeling that you could be a heavy bunch of characters if the urge gripped you.

"It is unusual to find three people who get off on the same thing, and can do it together and help each other do it.

"We don't socialise that much or anything, everyone's got their own lives to lead. I don't see the others that much apart from when we play, and when we do it's like all of us jumping off a building together.

"There is a chemistry there, and we're all hungry... all hungry. I've started believing in myself a bit more. Anyway, it's only a guitar, you do what you fuckin' want with it.

"I think I'm playing less and less as well, which is good because it gets less musical.

"I can see how that comes across, but as people we're more than reasonable. It's channelling that side of yourself, that part of you which is in everybody.

"It just happens to be that's what we want to channel. It is a heavy thing, it's a heavy thing for me to do, it's psychologically heavy. That's one of the beauties of it, because you don't have to walk down the street like that."

But for the people who can't...

"Exactly, that's why there's so many rapes and murders and stuff, that's why there's a lot of screwed up people."

I compare Bill's stage persona with the man who's sitting in front of me, and unwittingly open a flood-gate, as if he'd been bottling it up.

"When you're on tour and you're doing that every night... it's a fine line, a fine line. You can get well psyched out, but I try to keep my feet on the ground.

"You can get far too involved with what you do on stage, and you start behaving like that in real life and become a cunt.

"It is a powerful position to be in, and you could quite easily start to believe in it.

"I like music, I like the feeling, and to me that's more about being alive than rules, or society... I don't understand most of it. I'm not being deliberately obtuse, I just don't get it. So you end up thinking, what can you do? So I play my guitar and do that. It's a job.

"You can sit next to a footballer and say, well you're not kicking a ball around now, are you? He's good at it, so he plays on Saturdays, and that's what I do. I can't walk down the street like that. I'd get put away.

"It's an exaggerated situation, and that's the whole point of it."

We sit in silence for a while. I remark, perhaps rather flippantly, that he doesn't relish doing interviews and in a brief moment of frustration he retorts: "Well, would you? A fuckin' relative stranger asking you loads of questions. Fuck it..."

He left me with a few words that have made a lasting impression, words that cut through to the very centre of all we'd talked about, and more.

"You know, I love and respect my parents, I've got some good friends, I try to be a reasonable person.

"I'm not out to prove anything, but I'm a human being and there's a lot of violence in human beings. You have to put brakes on your own personality, because it's endless.

"Someone once said this to me, when we were well involved with this and I was well off the case.

"They said, 'don't mess with the infinite...!"