Backstage, singer Paul Draper slumps into a chair and cracks open a Carlsberg. He grumles about the sound quality and fends off the fourning of a local journo with admirable restraint. "Not a great gig," is the general verdict, "but what can you expect from a venue that really is a converted toilet?"
Then, from the backstage lavatory, comes a rumbling. Enter Chad, the hedonistic heart of Mansun. heart-throb to legions of girl fans the length and breadth of the country, and official Maddest Guitarist In Existence. He whips off his shirt, wrings a stream of sweat from it and glares avidly around the room. He has a need, a desperate need.
"For Christ's sake!" he groans. "Where's my f---ing mineral water?"
All change. This is the last stop on the Mansun roller coaster ride to oblivion and beyond. Time to take it easy, chickens...
MANSUN ARE The Oldest New Band In Britain. Y'see, most fire loined young rock stormtroopers can expect to enjoy a few years of angst-free rampaging before Mr Head F--- comes calling. Mansun's career, however, has been stuck on fast-forward since day one. They were signed soon after starting their first rehearsals last January, crammed their fast-living years into the following three months and were almost burnt-out before their first soundcheck.
"We used to get paralytic just to play a gig," Paul whispers, head down, in the corner of an un-trashed hotel room. "It was all just a blur really. I can't believe we're still here. We should've just been buried at birth. It was pure Sex Pistols, we couldn't play at all! The band was just falling apart. I thought it was the end, or more like it'd never f---king start. It was like this was not meant to be.
"I thought I was gonna die a few times. Like when we had to cancel playing here last time around. I was in some hotel down the road, just stiff, couldn't move. I was like it for about two days."
There were more final straws than they can remember. Their 16-year-old samples fella Mark left the band following a paranoid fit after their Brats gig in January, while original drummer Hib (replaced by ex-Kinky Machiner Julian) walked out during the summer, unable to cope with Chad's 24-hour party agenda. Their live sets, when they actually managed to turn up, started looking more like scenes from Dawn Of The Dead than gigs. Amazingly, though, the band's central trio - Paul, Chad and bassist Stove - stuck with it, learnt some recognisable chords and Got Professional.
"I think on the last tour we thought, 'Christ! We've got fans now!'" Paul explains. "So we had to try to live up to what people expected.
"As a band of people we're dead quiet. We're in the eye of a hurricane with all this chaos going on around us, but it's dead quiet in the middle. Chad's totally teetotal since he smashed his hand open on his guitar a few months ago. We thought we'd better draw the line after that."
Do you feel lucky to have survived a whole, erm, 18 months?
"I'm happy we're still making records and they get in the charts," Paul says, earnestly. "It's like defying gravity. We should've fallen long ago. It must be destiny to come through it. We're all really straight now, dead focused. We've gone from nothing to chaos and now to equilibrium in the space of nine months."
What are your views on the wonderful and frightening world of drugs now?
"I think drugs destroy bands, destroy personalities, destroy music. You've gotta know the time and place to have a party."
Wise words from deceptively youthful lips. So let's fix a date shall we? The time is right now. The place is your stereo. And the cause for celebration is Mansun's chipper new single 'Stripper Vicar', a firebrand collision of funked-up chunky rock, errant choirboy harmonies and a hefty dose of honest-to-goodness sacriledge. Let's see... a seemingly responsible man of the cloth goes in for a spot of extracurricular disrobing before dying in a bizarre stockings/inner ear accident. Hmmm. A comment on the inherent immorality of organised religion perchance?
"I reckon it comes from going to a horrible Catholic school with mad nuns who'd kick f--- out of you if you didn't do your homework," Paul says, the glint of revenge in his eyes. "Since then, I've viewed religion as a vehicle to confuse people. If you scratch away at the surface of anyone, no matter how prim and proper, you'll always find something sinister underneath. It's human nature, innit?
"I'm disgusted with religion. The Catholic religion is the biggest company in the world. They've got loads of gold reserves and they harboured Nazi war criminals after the war. They'd have a big push with collections if the stock prices went down!"
But hang on! The poor parson is only exercising his right to expose himself for the entertainment of paying adults. Why does he have to die at the end?
"It was just good to see him die. It's funny."
Ah, that'll be that legendary Chester 'dark humour' in full effect. But then it's Mansun's practise of veiling their intensely dark moralisations with surreal comedy (singles so far include 'Egg-Shaped Fred' and 'Take It Easy, Chicken') that makes them far more intriguing than yer average Noelrock lobotomy victims. Doesn't stop them going for the obvious gag when they feel like it, though.
"I went on as a vicar one night," Paul laughs, "and we were trying to get a vicar and nun to support us on the tour and get their kits off, but none of the venues would have it. We eventually found this guy from a strip-a-gram agency who was up for it, and when our agent told the venues, they'd turn 'round and go, 'But he's not a band!' and we'd go, 'He's a solo artist!'"
Enough! For a while Paul bases his songs on character he imagines living in a fictional computerised village ("I had a very strange childhood, I suppose"). He always focuses on the twisted, tormented or downright perverse sides of his protagonists' natures, fascinated by the stickiness behind the façade. Never felt the need to croon sweet nothings to your bay-yay-beee, then?
"I've never been in love," he deadpans. "I don't know what it's like, so why should I write about it? I just wanna do something different. If Elvis or Bill Haley had started off singing about vicars and chickens then maybe everybody would be doing it today - 'Hard Day's Egg' or 'Jailhouse Vicar' - and then maybe I'd be writing about love."
SADLY, IT seems Mansun have broken the cardinal rule of pop - they've started something they couldn't finish. It may be the end of the hedonism line for the band themselves, but for The Kids the party is still in full, chaotic swing. Already on their current tour they've had moshers put their heads through Stove's bass amp, crack Paul's teeth with the mike stand and, in Newcastle, actually leap onstage and try to throttle them. Through it all they've been attacked by the gutter press, eager to dredge up some dirt concerning the implications of 'Stripper Vicar' and, worse still, only a few nights ago Stove found himself having to fend off a mad, front row heckler with his bass.
"We seem to attract that kind of mad element," Paul muses, "obsessive death threats amd all sorts of crazy shit. There was a guy who said if we played Reading he'd kill us. We thought it was fantastic! Brilliant! If someone bothered to hate us that much we must have something!"
No wonder Paul is the only sure-fire rock star in waiting who doesn't fancy being a star at all, thanks very much. He may be the singer in the most incendiary live act to hit our stages since The Amazing Gibbo And His Exploding Sideburns, but, for him, having people remember his name means a more accurate address on all those firebomb parcels.
"If you're in a band and you sell ten million albums, it doesn't mean you've got ten million fans," he intones, leaning forward in his chair, "it means there are 40 million people who hate you. That's the Mansun view."
Ahh, life through blood tinted glasses. It's a prettier view than you think...
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