	Reviews

GIMME (HELTER) SKELTER

What a roller-coaster ride this teething year has been for guitar-fuelled pop rocketeers MANSUN. By their 15th gig, they were playing to an audience of 4,000 and by their January Brats appearance they'd 'lost' one of their number to the pressures of rock'n'roll. And that's not forgetting their run-in with Charles Manson's record company. So what next for these Chester 'Suns? JOHN PERRY finds out. Hat tricks: STEFAN DE BATSELIER
Here's a face that's been ravaged by the most debauched adventures with wine, women and song. A face on a tangled helter-skelter body that has done the lambada with Beelzebub himself. It is the face of purest madness, the face of Manson. Charles Manson, the hairy, scary star-f---er that is, not Chester's guitar-fuelled pop rocketeers Mansun, a band distinguished from the lunatic cult-head only by a wayward 'u'. "The whole Charlie Manson thing was a complete and utter f--- up!" spits Mansun's singer Paul as he scowls at the 'Charlie Don't Surf' poster gaffer-taped, perhaps in a fit of irony, to the Essex University dressing room wall. "We were always 'Mansun', named after The Verve track 'A Man Called Sun'. But we had some T-shirts printed which came back with the 'Manson' spelling, so we had to stick with it." "Until we were sued by Charlie Manson's record company," says bassist Stove, allowing a shadow to fall across his cherubic features. Seeing as we're staring through the eyes of madness, squinting up from a different angle, could Mansun's resistance to any connection with the psychotic would-be Monkee be more than grumbling over spelling mistakes? Could it be that Mansun identify with The Man Who Assassinated The '60s? That the smell of brimstone has been in their nostrils all the way through their own meteoric rise? "Yeah, it's been a complete f---ing rollercoaster, man!" yelps Paul, his focus flitting around the room, resting anywhere except on those eyes peering down from the poster. "We were sucked into a whirl of alcohol, drugs and women; the early gigs were total mayhem. We'd get completely off our faces, go out and play, thinking, 'Wow! This is f---ing amazing!', while the audience would have their fingers in their ears screaming, 'What the f--- was that?'" It's a phrase that could apply to the whole spitting, whirling Catherine wheel path that has left Mansun's collective head reeling. Tonight, in this draughty Colchester seat of learning, the band seem genuinely shaken by the screams of an overwhelmed crowd who threaten to drown Mansun's laser-guided melodies with their shrieks of delight. After only three limited-edition singles and a handful of gigs. Mansunmania seems set to sweep the nation. Or Colchester, at the very least. 'Being thrown in at the deep end' doesn't really do the story justice; 'being hurled from a tower block with a piano tied to your neck' is perhaps closer to the truth. THE LEGEND of Mansun runs something like this: stuck in the wolly-back wilds of Chester, Paul, Stove, drummer Hib, guitarist Chad and original fifth-Mansun Mark (no surnames here) spend their one day off from the factory floor "dicking about" in a rehearsal studio in Liverpool. In the evenings Mansun began to lay the foundations of their two-fisted attack by frequenting "sad rock fart" club The Tivoli, where they absorbed endless Rainbow, Led Zep, and Hendrix records. Inevitably, when Mansun came to plug in, they were drawn to the buzz of playing stupidly loud. "England's about your haircut above your music," argues 22-year-old Paul, tugging his Reni hat further over his eyes. "But we're coming from a different angle than all these indie bands, we come from a culture of rock guitars. We're literally a rock band, we just happen to play pop tunes." "That's why we were a standing joke in Liverpool," recalls Stove with a shrug. "They thought we were the worst bullshit part-timer knobheads going because we didn't listen to the same bands as them and we wouldn't jump any bandwagons. And suddenly we're in the fast lane overtaking everyone with the world zooming past!" The first handbrake turn was 'Take It Easy Chicken', the fantastically catchy first single that took shredded baggy beats and spread them thickly on squealing guitars. Predictably, Mansun's unholy marriage of Oasis with Faith No More had salivating record companies falling over their ponytails to knock on the door. But it was the release of last year's nail-bomb pop 'Skin Up Pin Up' single and accompanying 30-date tour that the accelerator was really nailed to the floor. "Pure f---ing madness from start to finish!" exclaims Paul. "We were surrounded by people who were happy to feed us on our spiral to oblivion. We were acting on pure instinct and there was absolutely no control." The crunch came the night of Mansun's triumphant appearance at the Brats in January, when psychosis completely swallowed the band and spat them into the gutter, as Mansun's 16-year-old samples man, Mark, simply disappeared. "It really wasn't Mark's fault, he just couldn't handle the pressure," says Stove shaking his head. "I mean, it had been an unbelievable ride. We'd done like, 30 gigs and there we were playing in front of 2,000 people who were totally into us, being hailed as one of the best new bands in the country. It was a total headf---."
"When we finally tracked him down, he was completely out of the game," says 20-year-old Stove quietly. "Paranoid, shaking, he could barely speak. We felt really sorry for him, I mean, at 16 you just want to go and kick a ball with your mates, don't you? You don't want to be stuck in a studio for five weeks. It's made us all insane, but for us, it's a positive insanity." Indeed, Mansun crackle with an electricity that suggests teetering on the edge of the abyss is the very cornerstone of their creativity. Either that, or they're fond of nylon undergarments.	"A window opened because of the potential we showed, and we jumped through it with both feet." - Stove
"Yeah, man, we totally identify with people with an edge to them, people you can believe in," says Stove. "I mean, just look at Chad, he's smashed up every guitar he's ever owned, he runs up huge hotel bills, and gets his head kicked in almost every week! He's completely self-destructive, but he's such a fantastic guitarist, he's irreplaceable." "The trouble is he knows it," adds Paul. "Every time we threaten to kick him out, we find him at five in the morning, fully clothed in a swimming pool." So Mansun have carelessly mislaid one pimply twagger and regularly find their resident tortured-messiah-cum-wanker dripping wet on the doorstep. Surely Mansun's mop-topped minds will be the next casualties? Paul rubs his eyes slowly and says: "We're an explosive band, but it's the only way it can work. The first rule is that you've got to be who you are. You can't switch it on and off, the songs are representative of who we are and the way we play is representative of our personalities. It's just real, man." Despite the fact that reality is clearly a far-from-regular caller at Mansun's house, Paul's blanked out eyes come to life as he warms to his subject. "I couldn't write dipply jangly songs about how I love the girl down the road," he seethes. "Songs like 'Egg Shaped Fred' are about our lives: being trapped in shit-holes, wanting, needing to escape. And people connect with them because of that and because we play them with great tunes. It's pure intensity, man!" Pure guitars, pure drugs, pure intensity, pure Evian... Mansun's walk on the Northside has been a perilous tiptoe in outsize duffelcoats. In a blur of blistering tunes, jumbled lyrics, and soaking-wet socks, Mansun have spent their teething year playing with grown-up's toys instead of doing their homework. But the wriggling energy of Mansun's latest offering, the imaginatively-titled 'Mansun One EP', shows that heads rattling with pills, thrills and bellyaches can explode in thundering internal combustion. Opening track 'Egg Shaped Fred' is The Bluetones force-fed fried Anthrax records, while 'Ski Jump Nose' is the sound of a herd of hippos in very big anoraks stampeding through your head. Pure Mansun. Paul nods earnestly: "We came into this like a whirlwind; our 15th gig was at the Brixton Academy playing to 4,000 people (supporting The Charlatans) and I was so high I didn't know where I was. We were just these knobheads from 'up north' and we wanted it all right now. "Sure, it was a real scream, but we went completely off the rails and almost blew ourselves to pieces before we'd even started. The morning after the Brats we woke up and swore it'd never happen again. Now we've got the space to take all those mad trips we've been through and channel them straight back into the music. And we will, because we've got a responsibility to the 6,000 people who bought our singles, the little lads who come to gigs wearing fishing hats. We can't let them down by being dickheads." Stove's bright eyes twinkle as he realises Mansun are about to leave their days as 'the worst bullshit part-time knobheads going' far behinds. "A window opened because of the potential we showed, and we jumped through it with both feet," he gushes, "but we'll never let it close now. We're a serious group, we'll have a legacy of great albums. We'll never be an 18-month sell-your-soul-to-the-devil front cover band." "Besides," says Paul, squinting up at The Other Manson. "I think the devil's sick of hearing our name."

30 March 1996