Paul Trynka takes the tram

People like the Housemartins. Some people think they're the future of Pop music, some girls think they're the sexiest bunch around, but most people just like them.

There's obviously something Machiavellian about this. This group was obviously constructed from Plasticene prototypes, the product of many years' market research, a modern day Monkees. The funny thing is, the faceless media persons at Go-Disc Records, the hub of this exercise, consist of Andy and Juliet McDonald, faithful assistant Porky, and a rather scraggy dog. So how did it all start, guys? Stan Cullimore:

"We met because Paul (Heaton, singer) put this advert in the paper saying buskers wanted, and together we just started busking as a two piece in Hull, purely because we were both a bit skint at the time. Then we moved from busking, because we wanted to play a few gigs indoors, and we became a four-piece and started getting normal gigs. We still used to busk as a four piece,though, in York and Hull, which was good fun, with just a snare drum, acoustic guitar, and a bass amp with a little battery in it..."

These extra personnel were Ted on Bass, (who left earlier this year due to what The Sun called 'political differences' in their 'Top Group Want To Kill Off Royals' expose), since replaced by Norman Cook, and Hugh Whittaker on drums. Somethings might have changed since then, but they've still managed to keep everything pretty portable.

"We don't take much gear out with us these days — we're surprisingly lightweight. We've done gigs where we're the headliners and the other bands are taking their stuff off stage before we go on and they're bringing up these enormous artics full of flight cases with their names sprayed on them in big letters. Then we arrive in a Transit van with seats in it, back it up, chug chug chug, and everyone shouts 'Hey, Noddy's arrived!' We've got two guitars each, our amps are about this big, and the drum kit fits into two shoeboxes."

'This big' is about the size of a Sessionette, which Stanley swears by. The bass amp is a small HH combo. Guitars consist of a Rickenbacker 610, and Tokai Tele, with a Fender Contemporary bass. Not that they're really equipment buffs, as Paul reveals:

"We spend about 10 minutes a year talking about equipment, we spend most of our time talking about football, our relationships..."

Stan interrupts: "In a way we feel it's quite naughty, like not doing your homework. I have to remind Hugh to get a pair of drumsticks before gigs a lot of the time. We don't have a lot of technical interest, though I suppose we have a comfort interest, like Norman wants a bass that isn't too heavy, I want a guitar that doesn't break any strings, Hugh wants a drumkit that he can put up quickly."

Mind you, it wouldn't do for Hugh to have a drum kit that he could put up too quickly, because that would cut down on the football. In true Housemartins fashion the rest of the band plays soccer while he sets up his kit. Presumably their choice of support for their tours is heavily influenced by their competence as an opposition football team. Even if their gear's still minor league, though, they're now firmly in the First Division. To some people it looks as if they've come from nowhere, but that isn't really the case:

"Everything's happened in such a gradual way that we haven't really noticed. For a start, we were working together for a year before signing any record contract, and we had Flag Day as our first single, which we were really excited about, but which didn't really do anything. Then we were in Peel's chart last year, the Festive Fifty, and we got a little following that way, and by playing around the country. Then the next single, Sheep, just got in the bottom of the charts, about number 50, so to us it seems like a slow process of growing. To people who only take notice of what's in the Top 40, which I suppose is the majority, it does appear that we've just arrived like that. To us it seems like we've been going for years..."

The Housemartins are obviously in a good position with Go-Discs; they've now had the predictable offers from the big companies, who think that temptation is personified by large advances. All the same, after one success, the pressure is obviously going to increase. Stan:

"I think even now that Go-Discs, and Chrysalis, will be looking for another hit record — they won't be looking for any self-indulgence from us. From now on every record will have to be aimed at the top. I really do reckon that we'll be one hit wonders..."

"I think we'll get a hit next year," Paul Heaton continues. "I don't think we really give a toss, but you can never tell. After we've had a flop, we might get really depressed about it, but at the moment we don't really mind. There's an unsaid and unwritten pressure, there's a natural progression where you have to get higher".

"I really do reckon that we'll be one hit wonders"

"There's this thing about permanent expansion," says Stan, "to increase your profit". Pause. "It's depressing really" (sobs uncontrollably).

Of course, they're all so fundamentally depressed by the magnitude of the financial task in front of them that they're planning to sustain their bright and cheerful image by releasing... something pretty different.

"We wanted to re-record Think For a Minute using a really big drum sound, but when we arrived to record it we decided we were all bored shitless by the idea of recording it roughly the same, so we decided to do it as a ballad, with acoustic guitar and stuff."

This version also features a session trumpet player, and Norman on piano.

"It was the third day before we really got anything on tape," Hugh explains. "We find rehearsal studios depressing, even the nice ones, it's got to be soundproofed, so there's no windows, and it's all a bit claustrophobic. So what we ended up doing was not only completely re-arranging Think For a Minute, which is completely different from the version on the album, but we also trashed together a new instrumental in the studio. In one sense it's a bit extravagant, in so far as it's studio time, but in another we've found it so conducive to working — for a start it's a pleasant atmosphere, secondly you know you're not going to get disturbed. When we're up in Hull, rehearsing in Paul's house, the phone could go, you get constant interruptions."

So you just rehearse in Paul's front room — do you use amps, or what?

"No! That's the remarkable thing — when you consider how far we've got rehearsing in someone's front room — but all we did, all we still do, is to set up a very basic kit — hi hat, snare, bass drum — fortunately none of us has any ego about playing loud or anything. Stan plays acoustic guitar, Norman uses an amp, really quietly, and Paul just sings acoustically. I have my kit really damped, and just keep the beat. Everything's covered in coats and tea towels — it looks like I'm playing a suite of furniture. That's how we've managed up to now, and there's no reason why we shouldn't continue to do that. I think may be we've got to the point where we do need to also rehearse at stage volume as well. Rehearsing at a low level of volume can be really helpful, because you can hear what you're doing and put mistakes right; we rehearse at such a low volume that everyone can hear what everyone else is doing."

Logistically, this band takes a lot of beating! On the rehearsal front, I wondered at this point how the Housemartins' live act had come about. If you haven't seem them, suffice to say you get good value for money; just prior to this interview they'd played a gig in Hull which consisted of a 25 minute acapella set, and a main set of well over an hour, culminating in solo appearances by Stan (Freddy of the Dreamers impression), Hugh (Tony Bennett impression), throwing in a Grandmaster Flash and Burundi Brothers routine complete with synchronised dancing, which ends in the band dismantling the drum kit and walking off stage whilst still playing — and all of this for 99 pence. So how do you acquire a live act like that?

"The bulk of the set we're doing now we've been doing for several months. There've been one or two innovations, namely the go-go bit where we dismantle the drums, and the acapella set. Both those things originated from the first time we played Europe, in April or May it was. We'd just played our first British tour, which was quite successful and left us on quite a high, and then we went to Europe for a month and it was like being back at the beginning. In the case of Holland, where we went first, they were all really sparsely attended gigs, and we were faced with the position of really having to fight to capture what audience were there. That made us fight, struggle, and cast around for ideas, and one idea which came up was the acapella set. There was no support wherever we played, there was just us and a disco, and we were thinking 'What can we do, we can't just go on cold, we'll die a death, by the time we get warmed up we'll be at the end'.

"Then we hit on the idea of using all the acapella songs we knew, and doing a separate set. That seemed to go down pretty well, and the go-go thing, where we dismantle the drum-kit, came from the same thing, of constantly trying to come up with something different. I don't know if we'll have anything up our sleeves for the next tour — that's one thing we'll work on after we've finished our video, before we tour in October. We like doing different arrangements in a set. All our songs are political, but on the faster material it's more up-front and aggressive, the acapella songs are more of an appeal to the heart."

At one point in the conversation, Stan mentioned that the band were musical simpletons: "In fact, we're not just musical simpletons, we're social simpletons as well!"

All the same, they seem to have captured a slot aspired to by a lot of people. The secret? Well, that's probably summed up by one of their badges:

The Housemartins are Quite Good.