Total Madness!
Dec 8 2007 by Gavin Allen, South Wales Echo
“THEY say money can’t buy you happiness but it can buy you whatever misery you want.”
Those brilliant words came direct from the mouth of Madness, Chas Smash, the soul of the reformed eighties ska-pop giants.
“The filthy lucre,” says Smash when asked why the band are back together again, “It ain’t all about health and happiness.”
When Smash picked up his mobile phone to take my call he was already in the middle of a conversation; “...so the money isn’t always in touring. Last time we did that we lost £10,000. Hello?”
He excused himself from the Crown and Goose in London’s Camden Town and stepped outside to find enough quiet to tell me what makes Madness special.
“I always liken us to a dysfunctional family,” he says, his accent as London as Big Ben.
“We share a creative consciousness.
“We like all the same things – Miles Davis, Max Miller, Tommy Cooper – and we are a bright shining beacon of joy, which is why we always do well in recession.”
Smash, Suggs and the rest of the suited-and-booted boys from the band are out on tour to wear in some news songs as they prepare their comeback album.
“I’d like to think this album is going to be our best in a long time so I’m in no rush,” said Smash, who will be 49 in January.
“We’ll probably only play three or four off the new album because, above all else, you want people to have a good time.”
Smash, real name Carl Smyth, considers himself the living embodiment of Madness, their spirit and passion, and that rings true.
He once formed a company called An Englishman, An Irishman and a Scotsman because it would sound funny being read out in court if the venture went pear-shaped.
So rapid are his quips that talking to him is like communing with the ghost of Groucho Marx and I imagined him tipping a cigar with a raised eyebrow even when being serious.
And Smash does take Madness seriously.
It was he who reformed the original line-up for their landmark Madstock gig in 1992 and has fought to hold the band together since, through bad times and good.
“There have been bad times but we are friends who have forgiven each other so much that it outweighs any of the other stuff,” said Smash, also the record label boss who discovered Just Jack.
“I fell out with one band member for eight years (he wouldn’t say who) but we didn’t get separate caravans at the studio like some bands do, we stayed in the same room, and eventually sorted it out.
“But we have kept it going, kept playing live even if we haven’t been recording together.
“Morrissey once said to me ‘It doesn’t matter how many hit albums you have, as long as you are doing it as a live band you are in the game. Some albums will be good and some not so good, it’s what you do across your career that counts’.
“And we are what we are,” he concluded of a career that started in 1976 and spawned 17 top ten singles, eight albums and two Ivor Novello Awards.
“We are a great live band. I’m not Stevie Wonder and neither is Suggs but when you put us all together we’ve got something, although I’ve no idea what that thing is.”
