SOUNDS
31st October 1987
By Neil Perry
Photos Russell Young

The Gospel According To Bill Carter

Back in action with 'Bikini Red', THE SCREAMING BLUE MESSIAHS are now more lethal than ever. NEIL PERRY is born again with BILL CARTER, RUSSELL YOUNG just looks to the heavens

If you walk under the Westway, the huge elevated ribbon of concrete that slashes West London in two, it is said that sometimes you can hear the last excited rant of a maniac driver, long since despatched to the great highway in the sky.

"Four wheels, spinning round, heading down to the edge of town... you wanna get out? You wanna get out now, too fast for ya? Huh? Too fast, huh? Ha!..."

You think of smoking, screeching tyres, of white knuckles on the steering wheel, the awful scrunch of metal meeting metal, head on, at high speed. You wonder about his passenger, and shiver. You walk on.

Screaming Blue Messiahs mainman Bill Carter is waiting for me in a Ladbroke Grove pub, possibly the same one in which we last met two years ago.

He's still shy, he still needs a lot of prompting, but he smiles a lot more; it seems hard to believe his was the voice on 'Twin Cadillac Valentine', a psychotic Messiahs tale of cars, death, love and loneliness, and one of last year's most dynamic singles.

"I feel a bit more... happier, really," he says thoughtfully. "The truth is I've now got a different perspective. Things things happen that make you realise the only way to be is positive."

"Somebody said to me that they thought the music we're doing now is less mean-spirited than it was. Which I think is a good thing."

Screaming Blue Messiahs have been very quiet in the UK since last year's LP 'Gun-Shy'. While it contained the vicious trinity of 'Twin Cadillac Valentine', 'Killer Born Man' and 'Wild Blue Yonder' – Carter and the Messiahs at their hardest and sharpest – the energy seemed confused and diffused.

Not so with the new LP 'Bikini Red', where Carter's intellectual thuggery is blessed with a whole new outlook of nuance and subtlety. There are eleven songs, and all of them are different.

"I've been having acupuncture, actually," Bill confesses. "trying to give up drinking and smoking. Well, drinking anyway."

He sips a tonic and stares, in mock depression, at the cigarette in his hand.

"No, I'm not satisfied at all. But I can get up in the morning and not feel really bad. I used to just get really pissed off and now I've decided not to do that ever again."

Why aren't you satisfied?

"I like the journey, you know? There's a lot of things I need to do. I feel as if we're just starting off. If I could just get to the stage where I had enough money to fix my car (a Dodge Challenger; the engine blew up) and enough money to buy petrol and stuff, I'd just take off. America, Mexico...

"It's just dreaming, you know? But not impossible."

Certainly not impossible, as the past 12 months have proved.

After one rip-roaring gig at Dingwalls last Christmas, Screaming Blue Messiahs effectively vanished, only to reappear this summer supporting of all people David Bowie.

In between, the Messiahs have laid a solid foundation for themselves in the States, and maybe it isn't such a strange thing; Messiahs music, with a firm base in rhythm and blues, and its contrast of murderous city life with simple country ethics, is almost tailor made for the home of the brave.

"they're sensible, educated, intelligent people," jokes Bill. "No, they're much more open to our kind of music. It seems more relevant there. I don't think people even know about us over here. You ask anyone in this pub."

Does this sadden you?

"no. You need somewhere to play. America's as good a place as any. Over here people are up to their neck in mortgages and stuff. This is a very straight country, very house-proud. In America, they're much more into that rock 'n' roll dream thing."

The Screaming Blue Messiahs have made a record that glitters and shines with inventiveness, a record on which Carter – with the juggernaut accompaniment of his partners, Chris Thompson (bass) and Kenny Harris (drums) – continues his exploration into the dark and quirky sides of the human condition.

A classic power trio, which, thinking about it, Britain probably doesn't even deserve.

Bill insists that I listen to some of the album there and then, and the first thing that strikes me is the variety. 'Gun-Shy' and the Messiahs' six-track debut 'Good And Gone' were cold, almost unfeeling constructions.

The power and threatening fury of those records (as is still true of the Messiahs live) couldn't fail to impress, but there was never much room to breathe, as if a break in the onslaught was an admission of failure.

'Bikini Red' circles slowly, takes stock, then goes for the jugular. There's bully-boy funk with 'Big Brother Muscle', the fairground organ swing of 'I Can Speak American', and the more familiar guitar swathed charges of 'Sweet Water Pools' and 'Jesus Chrysler Drives A Dodge'. At the comic bed-rock of 'I Wanna Be A Flintstone', I begin to laugh.

"It's supposed to be funny!" says Bill. "We have a lot of fun, it's not deadly serious... I don't think. It's slightly tongue in cheek," and here he gets a little exasperated. "It's only music!"

But Messiahs music is only music in the way that Cadillacs are only Cadillacs, or Triumph Bonnevilles are only Triumph Bonnevilles. The mad bad world of the Messiahs is something to which Bill has dedicated his life, and while he may shrug it off, I've seen people back away from the stage when he came too close.

"But on a good gig it doesn't seem to me like people are frightened – they're enjoying themselves. What's to be frightened of? It's only music."

I remember the way the very air seemed to shimmer when Screaming Blue Messiahs kicked into 'Tracking The Dog' or 'Someone To Talk To' at Digwalls last Christmas. OK, there's you onstage, the violence with which you strangle your guitar, the way Kenny and Chris push it all to the edge (he's smiling now) the way that...

"Actually," he admits quietly, "a lot of people have said it was frightening. I thought that was a bit detrimental, I wanted it to be exciting.

It is exciting. Screaming Blue Messiahs, if nothing else, have always been celebrated as a band who know how to rock; but like the proverbial search for Colonel Kurtz down the river in Conrad's Heart Of Darkness, the further you explore, the tighter the vibes will grip you.

One theme that has followed through on 'Bikini Red' is Bill's love affair with the automobile.

"I always think that music is best heard in a car when you're driving. This album would sound much better if you were hearing it in a car rather than a pub, or a sitting room, or a disco.

"They're not all about cars, there's other bits for people who don't like cars. But all it takes is to be in one and then you realise everything else is boring but cars..."

Is 'Jesus Chrysler...' autobiographical?

"I'm not totally removed... they're always true in some ways. I think of them as dreams. I like daydreaming. I like the idea of something being completely different from the music."

"It's better than drugs and drinking and all that. I prefer to have a little dream, driving in a car, meeting people, keeping moving. Probably quite adolescent, but I feel that way."

Meeting people – fans – is there any one constant that strikes you?

"Yes there is! It's how they feel the same as I do. You always think you're alone. Perhaps that's why I'm happier, I've met a lot of people who recognise something of themselves in it. They give you warmth. I like that, it's like making friends.

"A lot of times they know more about it than me, I don't know what I'm doing half the time but they know.

"You ask me what it's all about and mostly I haven't a clue. It's a mystery, like a trance. It's quite exciting, but once you start believing it you get into trouble."

Bill Carter onstage is truly Messiahs music personified, as he roams his patch, hammering mean chords from his guitar, wild eyes staring. Offstage, he often reminds me, he's just your average Joe.

"If you're gigging for six months, you start to lose one person and turn into the other. It's a fine line between being a reasonable person and a crazed whatever. I've seen a couple of things of us on video, and I've thought, I don't like the look of that."

He reveals he is most likely to calm down on tour with some old Irish dance music or a Pogues tape, and his own musical evolution can be heard on the 'Bikini Red' track 'Waltz', a fragile ballad that he wrote for his mother who died last year.

"I sent it to Dolly Parton," says Bill, "but..." and he shrugs and smiles.

He lights a cigarette, pulls on it once, and then stubs it out quickly.

"That's it, that's the last one!" he exclaims. "Never again."

"Don't mess with the infinite," was the last thing he said to me after our first meeting, and that could be what the message of Screaming Blue Messiahs is, that's if you were looking for one in the first place.

It's more likely that the real answer is locked away in Bill Carter's head, and even he's not sure where to start searching.

A wave of the hand and a "dunno" is how he often reacts to a question, not out of boredom or ignorance but because whys and wherefores are anathema to him. Not particularly bothered with winning the race, just as long as it never stops.

Whatever, Screaming Blue Messiahs are a machine so simple, so effective, so spontaneous; this year's model.

0–60 in no time at all. Watch them move.