Madness - One Step Beyond, From Ska To Pop

Formed in 1976 from the ashes of the North London Invaders, Madness were undoubtedly the most explosive phenomenon of the Two-Tone era, both for the staggering success they achieved (to this day they still share with UB40 the unmatched record of 214 weeks spent in the UK Singles Chart), and because their blend of ska, new wave, punk and reggae managed to bring thousands of teenagers back onto the dancefloors, contributing to the reclaiming of working-class pride and to the growth of youth subcultures at a time of profound political and social upheaval.
Towards the end of the Seventies, in fact, England was going through the most delicate transition of its recent history, caught in a severe economic depression, and Margaret Thatcher's arrival at Downing Street, with the public spending cuts that came with it, only drove unemployment higher among the poorest sections of society. Given the multi-ethnic nature of British cities, the crisis often spilled over into racial tension, which found its way into music as searing invective — "White Riot" (Clash) and "God Save The Queen" (Sex Pistols) being the best-known examples on the subject.
Behind the scenes, though, another young skinhead was ready to shuffle the deck and redeal the cards: Specials keyboardist Jerry Dammers, who had founded the independent label Two-Tone with the aim of tearing down every barrier, at least through music, to bring black and white together under a single banner.

Intro: ska, second-wave ska and Two Tone Records

Ska (or blue-beat) was born in Jamaica in the 1950s, with the declared aim of lifting people's spirits and getting them dancing, as they hoped for a better future despite the island's difficult economic situation. The genre combines the folk styles of mento and calypso with other sounds popular in the nearby United States, such as jazz, jump blues, swing and R'n'B, which filtered in over the radio from New Orleans, Louisiana and Miami. Mento is rooted in traditions brought over by African slaves and uses purely acoustic instruments (guitar, banjo, percussion, kalimba). Calypso is very similar, though it originates from Trinidad & Tobago, with strong political overtones that made it unpopular with the authorities.
Given its festive nature, ska reached its peak of popularity right after 1962, following independence from British colonial rule, when pioneers Prince Buster, Stranger Cole, Clement "Coxsone Dodd" and Duke Reid came up with the first rudimentary Sound Systems to answer people's craving for escape: these were essentially mobile discos, with speakers mounted on trucks and a DJ brought in to play music all weekend long. The four pioneers were active mainly in Kingston, recording for Federal Records, Studio One and WIRL a series of songs marked by accents on the second and fourth beats of the bar, with guitars emphasizing the off-beat (later variants would emerge, such as reggae and rocksteady, substantially slower, given the need to ease up the dance tempos a little because of the heat).

In the postwar years Britain saw a sharp increase in migration flows, but while Indian and Pakistani communities proved reluctant to integrate, South American ones — and Jamaican communities in particular — managed to blend into the social fabric with remarkable ease: this gave rise to a second-wave ska (or two-tone ska, as we'll explain), which combined Caribbean dancehall with the aggression of local punk-rock, and found its hub in Coventry, in the West Midlands.
Dammers (born in India in 1955) moved there with his father Horace, a senior missionary for the Bristol Church. As a teenager he began attending Lanchester Polytechnic and, like any committed mod (modernist), responded positively to the blending of new cultures, in fact trying to emulate their lifestyle and absorb their musical language to enrich his own. After playing in various proto-bands (The Automatics, Coventry Automatics), he founded the Two-Tone Records label to release "Gangsters", the first song by his band The Specials; to fill out the B-side, he remembered that his friend Noel Davies had recorded at home, together with drummer John Bradbury, an instrumental track renamed "The Selecter", over which a ska-flavoured rhythm guitar was overdubbed. The historic split single "Gangsters vs. The Selecter" came out on 28 July 1979 in a run of five thousand copies, exceeding every rosiest expectation, so much so that the label, in order to widen its reach, immediately struck a deal with Chrysalis, while still maintaining a deliberately libertarian policy that allowed contracted bands to leave the roster even after releasing just a single track.

For a record label this was an unusual arrangement, but perfectly in line with Dammers's convictions, underpinned by a deep humanitarian meaning that went beyond the purely artistic sphere: no creative constraints, though in most cases mixed black-and-white line-ups were favoured, precisely in an attempt to do away with injustice and give voice to the mixed-race sounds of the ghost towns. Great care was also given to the visual side and the "checkerboard" artwork, a symbol of racial unity, celebrated by the distinctive logo devised by Dammers with the help of former schoolmate Horace Panter and graphic designer John "Teflon" Sims: it depicts a man in a black suit, white shirt, black tie, pork-pie hat, white socks and black loafers, a look inspired by Peter Tosh on the cover of "The Wailing Wailers". The fictional character is named Walt Jabsco and quickly became a staple icon, appearing on T-shirts, badges, parkas, tattoos, Vespas and Lambrettas, helping cement an entire identity-driven culture.
In front of the stage, mixed hordes of unemployed rude boys, rastas and hardcore punks looking for a way out; on the stage, The Specials, Bad Manners, The Beat (or English Beat to Americans), Akrylicz, Apollinaires and Bodysnatchers, and further afield even Elvis Costello and The Higsons. Paradoxically, though, the most celebrated interpreters of the Two-Tone philosophy turned out to be an all-white band, one that, moreover, released just a single solitary single on the label.

NW5, the Invaders

NW5 is the postal district in North-West London covering Camden, Tufnell Park, Kentish Town, Dartmouth Park and Gospel Oak, but it's also the area where three schoolmates from working-class families began thinking about something more than graffiti and petty crime. Mike Barson (or "Monsieur Barso", born 21 April 1958, vocals and keyboards) grew up in Kentish Town and developed a passion for science and cartoons, before trying his hand at printing and advertising graphics. In the meantime he fiddled around on the piano, but "not the classical stuff, because Beethoven and the rest — he's keen to point out — sounded off to me, I was just trying to keep up with my brother Ben, who was a brilliant modern jazz player. We had a nice Keith Jarrett box set at home, a few reggae and Tamla Motown records, but I also listened to 'Tumbleweed Connection' by Elton John, Joni Mitchell, Carole King, 'Fire In The Hole' by Steely Dan and 'Sad Lisa' by Cat Stevens, which I'd play at half speed trying to get it right. Then there was Robert Wyatt with Soft Machine, and of course the Beatles. I spent a lot of time playing on my own and I liked it, hanging out with other kids seemed boring."

Chris Foreman, or "Chrissy Boy" (guitar, born 8 August 1956), also lived in Kentish Town, right by the railway bridge on the road to Parliament Hill Fields, in a funny little terraced house that "shook every time a train went past, like the house in The Blues Brothers. My parents were divorced, I lived with my dad, who was on the folk-song circuit and gave me a guitar. Since he was a teacher he had nice long holidays, and being a left-wing troublemaker, he'd drive us camping in places like Yugoslavia. We didn't have much money or a TV, but I listened to a lot of Roxy Music, Kilburns and Alice Cooper on the radio. I met Mike when I was ten, his mother knew mine, so we'd bump into each other now and then, then around 1971 the kids from Highgate Road in the Kentish Town area clumped together into little gangs, we'd have fun setting fire to bins and at night the watchmen would chase us. There were a couple of other kids with me and Mike, including Lee Thompson, we usually walked up and down from the Lido to the hill... Then for secondary school I enrolled at Islington, the same one as Spandau Ballet and Alan Parker, but the music teacher was rubbish. So I went off to Haverstock, where I found Lee again in my class, who was mad about singing: we often said we'd start a band, and to save up money I started working as a gardener, which let me pick up other odd jobs in painting and pottery too."

The Lee “Kix” Thompson in question (born 5 October 1957, tenor sax and vocals) is the wildest of the three, given that his father is serving a twenty-five-year prison sentence and his mother, a waitress in Great Yarmouth, can't keep him in check, so he spends more time in the arcade than in the classroom. He's a shady character and the other kids' parents don't like him, since he fancies himself a petty delinquent – they call him “Kix” because he's a brawler who's handy with his feet. “I was into English literature and art, and I also owned a clarinet and a huge record collection,” Lee recalls. “I dressed like Bryan Ferry, and together with Chris and Mike we saw loads of gigs at the RoundHouse, the Nashville and the Hope&Anchor: David Bowie on the ‘Aladdin Sane’ tour, Gary Glitter, the Feelgoods and Ian Dury, but unfortunately never Bob Marley or anyone like that, since there was very little blues or reggae around.”

The lads get hold of a £100 Selmer MK6 sax (“I still owe my wife for that one,” Lee jokes) and a cheap guitar they stick note stickers onto, so Chris can learn to read chords. In the afternoons they gather at Mike's house to rehearse a few Fats Domino, Poison Ivy and Little Richard numbers, then fall head over heels for reggae, to the point of raiding their trusted record shop on Upper Street for Jamaican pressings on Firefly, Bluebeat, Punch Records, Fab and Melodisc. The real revelation comes with Prince Buster's “Ten Commandments Of Man” and “Follia”, who would later play a key role in their debut.
They cut their teeth as the North London Invaders, gradually expanding the ranks by recruiting drummer John Hasler, Cathal “Chas Smash” Smyth (born 14 January 1959) on bass, and singer Dikron Tulane. In '77 the sextet is joined by a bohemian from Sussex, a certain Suggs (real name Chris McPherson, born 13 January 1961), who asks to sing with them after watching them play in a friend's garden: he takes Tulane's place (who will go on to have a decent career in theatre) but is soon kicked out, seemingly far more interested in Chelsea's matches, which somehow fill the void left by a father in the grip of heroin.
Lee Thompson is the next to leave, irritated by Mike's digs about his supposed lack of sax skills, followed by Cathal Smyth, after yet another blow-up from Barson, who replaces him with his brother-in-law Gavin Rodgers. In short, there's tension within the band; things settle down though in '78 when, after making peace, McPherson and Thompson are welcomed back, and alongside them come two new permanent members, Daniel “Woody” Woodgate (born 19 October 1960, drums) and bassist Marc “Bedders” Bedford (born 24 August 1961), who ousts Rodgers.
After accidentally discovering that a band called The Invaders already exists, playing decent r’n’b in Bermuda, for a brief spell our lads rename themselves Morris And The Minors, then in 1979 settle on the name that will go down in history, Madness, a tribute to a track by their idol Buster.

1979: the Prince, Madness, One Step Beyond!

An earthquake is erupting, but not in Orange Street
a ghost-dance is preparing, you got to help us with your feet
if you’re not in the mood to dance, step back, grab yourself a seat
this may not be uptown Jamaica, but we promise you a treat
(The Prince)

On the eve of their official debut, Chas Smash also returns to the fold as backing vocalist and dancer; so, to recap, there are now seven of them, and they build up a decent following on the London circuit, playing regularly at the Nightingale, the Dublin Castle and pretty much every pub in Camden, until on 10 August of that year “The Prince” comes out on Two-Tone Records, a tribute precisely to maestro Buster (it borrows the melody of his “Earthquake”), who had exerted such a strong influence on the boys' chosen path. The first tremors of the Madness earthquake are felt at Pathway Studios in Highbury, where the legendary single is recorded for a mere £200, with a cover of the eponymous “Madness” on the B-side (the original version can be heard on the Jamaican singer's 1963 album “I Feel The Spirit”). Screeching sax, hooky guitar and a wobbling groove: “The Prince” lights the fuse at number 16 on the UK charts, and to fan the flames Madness embark on a joint mini-tour with fellow Two-Tone labelmates the Specials and the Selecter.

It's the prelude to One Step Beyond…, which climbs to number two on the UK Album Chart, where it stays for more than a year. Produced by the reliable team of Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley (who also worked with Morrissey, Dexys Midnight Runners, David Bowie and Elvis Costello), it's polished off in some twenty days at Eden Studios in London and released in October by Stiff, a label more associated with punk-wave in the vein of Devo, the Damned, Nick Lowe and Lene Lovich. The impact is thunderous, and while many accounts will remember Madness as one of the most prolific “singles bands” of the era, it's in the full span of each LP that the real sense of their mission comes through, with their kaleidoscopic command of styles enjoyable in every facet.
The title track “One Step Beyond” is a genuine call to arms, stating its intent immediately with a manifesto of an intro: “Hey You! Don’t watch that, watch this! This is the heavy-heavy monster sound, the nuttiest sound around, so if you’ve come in off the street and you’re beginning to feel the heat, well, listen buster, you better start to move your feet to the rockin’est rock-steady beat of Madness, one step beyond!”. This track too is a tribute to Buster, but unlike the original, which is essentially instrumental, Madness add Chas's spoken intro and a barely audible, insistent “Here we go!” in the background, topping off a riot of sax and organ run through an Eventide harmonizer. That line “Don’t watch this, watch that!” (lifted from another Buster track, “Scorcher”) instantly becomes their trademark, relaunched via MTV promos and used as the opening anthem of every gig, while the following line, “This is the heavy, heavy monster sound”, quotes “Monkey Spanner” by Jamaican vocal duo Dave and Ansell Collins. The video, shot by Chuck Statler on 7 October 1979, captures the seven goofballs inside their favourite haunt, the Hope&Anchor in Islington, and the result is an unstoppable ska-punk roller coaster with a quirky accent that is in fact the quintessence of the real Madness: irreverent, swaggering, over the top, even downright silly. In a word: “fun”, with an invitation not to take themselves too seriously.

And the public certainly notices: in a turbulent year that also saw the release of the Clash's “London Calling”, Pink Floyd's “The Wall” and the anguished “Unknown Pleasures” by Joy Division, One Step Beyond… captures the shift from the intoxication of youth to adulthood with a devastating blast of ska, jazz, rock and commedia dell'arte energy, reshaped with punk insolence, even as it betrays an undercurrent of melancholy.
In chart terms, the title track does even better than “The Prince”, settling at number 7 for 14 weeks (the B-side “Al Capone” is, needless to say, yet another Buster cover).
At Christmas it's immediately followed by the other single, “My Girl” (number three), driven by surprisingly gentle keyboards, which perhaps makes it all the more appealing. The song is an account of relationship anguish and misunderstanding; Barson had sung it on the demo and performed it live several times back in the Invaders days (working title “New Song”), having written it for his then-girlfriend Kerstin Rogers, but in the final version Suggs takes the lead, performing it on Top Of The Pops in January 1980, in an episode of the show worth remembering in its own right, since it was the first of the new decade, with Madness chosen to kick it off (and also, finally, the band's first all-round hit, unlike the previous “The Prince”, “Madness” and “One Step Beyond”, all rooted in Buster's catalogue).
The lyrics range with boldness and irony from love to noir to nonsense, right through to more socially aware slices of London real life: “Believe Me”, for instance, is a breezy love song with Sixties echoes set to doo-wop piano; “Bed And Breakfast Man” retells in psychedelic slang the strange case of the unforgettable former drummer John Hasler, who had helped glue the band together in its early days and used to sleep on Chris's sofa; “In The Middle Of The Night”, meanwhile, is the grotesque tale of an elderly newsagent named George who roams the neighbourhood at night stealing underwear (a plot similar to Pink Floyd's “Arnold Layne”, with a brit-pop swagger that anticipates by some fifteen years Blur's “Modern Life Is Rubbish”; in Italy, Statuto, VallanzaSka and Casinò Royale would later try to follow in their footsteps).
The upbeat military-style march “Land Of Hope And Glory” rides frantic ska rhythms toward the land where the sun never sets, while the jungle-drumming “Tarzan’s Nut” nods to the 1966 “Tarzan’s March” (the theme of the TV series starring Ron Ely) and plays on a line from a KP nuts advert (“What's Tarzan doing in a plastic loincloth? Keeping his jungle of nuts fresh!”). Incidentally, it was saxophonist Lee Thompson who coined the term “nutty sound”, turning up one day with “That nutty sound” sprayed in marker pen across his jacket, hoping the band would become a cross between pop and circus (while the “nutty train” is the distinctive single-file dance immortalised on the album's legendary cover and mimed by the seven of them in various videos).
Indeed, the acrobatic reworking of Tchaikovsky's traditional “Swan Lake” ballet stays true to Lee's prophecy, as does the macabre existential tale of a thirty-year-old who, in “Mummy’s Boy”, still lives with his mother and is involved with a twelve-year-old girl (nice horn riffs alternate with Suggs's vocals). The hallucinogenic piano of “Razorblade Alley” sounds not unlike Ray Manzarek's work with the Doors, set against jazzy bass lines, while “Rockin’ In A-Flat” mixes rockabilly guitar with ordinary two-tone madness.
Rounding out the tracklist are “Madness” and “The Prince” (offered here with slightly tweaked lyrics), the closing a cappella motivational piece for jokers “Chipmunks Are Go!” and, above all, “Night Boat To Cairo”, another heavyweight in their catalogue that deserves a mention of its own. If “One Step Beyond”, as noted, usually opens their shows, “Night Boat To Cairo” closes them: after “My Girl”, the band had no intention of pulling further singles from this album, but Stiff boss Dave Robinson, who disagreed entirely, decided to ride the wave by putting together the Work Rest And Play EP as an addendum, which proved a smart investment. It contains the outtakes “Deceives In The Eye”, “The Young And The Old”, “Don’t Quote Me On That” (a nod of thanks to Peter Tosh) and, indeed, “Night Boat To Cairo”, the set's main draw, originally an instrumental piece by Barson that was then reshaped into a song at Suggs's insistence, who skilfully fit words into an unusual structure built on sax and sudden key changes. Given the limited time available, the accompanying video is low-budget but highly enjoyable, shot in British colonial outfits, shorts and Zulu helmets against the backdrop of an Egyptian pyramid, while onscreen a karaoke-style bouncing ball highlights politically charged syllables (in Cockney slang, “night boat” still means “unemployment benefit” today): it's the perfect seal on a terrific debut – smart, cheeky, and even if it can't faithfully reproduce Caribbean ska down to the last detail, it certainly resurrects its joviality, delight and love of dancing.

One Step Beyond… is promoted from early November with a tour of England and Scotland, then at the end of the month they set off to conquer the United States, with key dates in New York and Boston, but they fail to break through in America, since “over there they barely know who Bob Marley is, and they don't distinguish between ska, dub and blue beat” – as Woodgate explains – “For them black music is either soul or disco. It would have been nice to go over there with other Two-Toners, but the Specials were struggling to even produce their own records, whereas we were already rich.” Black-British music never really manages to take root in the US; in Europe, however, Madness-mania spreads like wildfire and grabs hold of people's souls: young fans trade leather jackets and coloured mohawks for sharp three-button suits, bomber jackets, Dr. Martens and thick sideburns. Some, though, get the wrong idea, and a few shows are disrupted by skinhead violence. “Part of the press branded us racists and National Front supporters, probably because we were the only band with no Black members. Nobody really knows what I felt when crowds at gigs greeted us with ‘sieg heil’ salutes – I wanted to jump off the stage and kick their arses!”.
These and other anecdotes, along with live footage, can be found in director Joe Massot's documentary “Dance Craze”, which closely follows Madness during that tour before widening its scope to take in pretty much the whole Two-Tone scene (the band features on the rich soundtrack with “Razor Blade Alley”, “One Step Beyond” and “Night Boat To Cairo”).

Baggy Trousers: this is England

If in 1979 One Step Beyond… had opened the door to ska's acceptance, in 1980 Absolutely speeds up its march toward mass appeal, thanks to incisive songwriting and a pop turn that, while it makes purists of a rough, dirty sound turn up their noses, works wonders in Britain, where the album storms straight in at number 2, propelled by the monster hit “Baggy Trousers” (top spot belongs to the Police's “Zenyatta Mondatta”, who, as it happens, were themselves dabbling in reggae-tinged experiments at the time).
The songwriting grows more mature and dense; the main author is Barson, but the other six also contribute, having in the meantime sharpened their playing too: “Baggy Trousers” is a belter, driven by catchy melodies set to uplifting lyrics that Suggs devised in response to Pink Floyd's contemporary “teacher, leave us kids alone”, even though “it certainly wasn't about me,” Suggs clarifies, “I never went to a public school, just a fairly relaxed comprehensive with no selection criteria. I was lying face-down in a sleeping bag on Lee's floor after a rough night at the Anchor, with pen and paper in hand, and I started jotting down my memories, trying to create something in the style of Ian Dury, stringing together a stream of phrases one after another. In a couple of hours I'd written six pages, Chris had the right riff and the words slotted in perfectly.” The video, shot at Islip Street primary school and in Kentish park, captures carefree schoolyard vibes, with saxophonist Lee flying through the air for his solo, suspended from a crane (“we'd seen Peter Gabriel do that at a Genesis gig at Drury Lane while singing ‘A Flower?’” – the gag is often repeated live). The baggy trousers worn by Thompson, a metaphor for teachers' authority, had once belonged to actor Peter Ustinov; the track, meanwhile, has no real chorus, just hammering verses over a couple of chords that kick in right after the school bell rings.

Oh, what fun we had but did it really turn out bad
All I learnt at school was how to bend not break the rules
(“Baggy Trousers”)

The second single, “Embarrassment”, is another smash, thanks to classy arrangements set to razor-sharp lyrics, where teenage pregnancy and mixed-race relationships are likened to war crimes: the subject of the scandal is Tracy, Lee's younger sister, who gets pregnant by a Black man; her father even tries to talk her into having an abortion, out of embarrassment over neighbourhood gossip, but the story eventually turns out fine with the birth of little Hayley. The track's strongly anti-racist stance also helped silence those accusing the band of being in cahoots with the National Front. Urban music, unease and suffering, but also a desire for redemption, joy and pleasure: the instrumental divertissement “The Return Of The Las Palmas 7” (released as the third single) anticipates the brightness of the Eighties with cha-cha-cha moves that, despite straying from the format, get heavy airplay on BBC Radio 2, drawing new generations of fans to Madness (the colourful video flashes through quick snapshots of famous faces, from Bobby Moore to Han Solo, via Nixon and John Lennon).
“In The Rain”, a love song, returns to traditional two-tone with blues-soaked vocals and finds its logical follow-up in “You Said”, which captures the same relationship between two young people now coming to an end. “E.R.N.I.E.”, meanwhile, channels the hardships of the working class and the false promise of turning one's life around by hitting the jackpot on Premium Bonds (the acronym stands for “Electronic Random Number Indicator Equipment”, the random number generator now replaced by lotteries). These are the highlights of a tracklist that otherwise doesn't quite match the explosive evocative power of One Step Beyond…'s “heavy, heavy monster sound”, but still offers, it must be said, a thoroughly enjoyable and innovative soul-pop hybrid, especially set against a time when the aforementioned Clash and Police – but also Slits, the Ruts and the early Gang Of Four – were already showing interest in off-kilter sounds, while progressive rock was running out of steam.
The rap-like “On The Beat Pete” describes the daily grind of a neighbourhood policeman, with punchy sax and several false endings, while the reggae harmonica of “Not Home Today” stokes social shaming with a gripping choral performance about the drama of a thug jailed for assault. The metallic clang of prison bars also takes centre stage in the sinister “Close Escape”, a B-movie sequel to “In The Middle Of The Night”, picking up from the final scene where old newsagent George (remember him?) graduates from stealing knickers to making obscene phone calls. By contrast, “Solid Gone” (the only track credited to Chas Smash) is a breezy pop'n'roll pastiche in the style of XTC, poking fun at rockabilly fans still mourning Elvis's recent death.
“Shadow Of Fear” is more visceral and closer to ska, and also worth noting are the dub-piano of “Overdone” and the Kinks-like touch on “Disappear”, further proof of their growing compositional skill.
Closing things out is the melancholic “Take It Or Leave It”, the band's appeal, set to a sophisticated 4/4, to be treated like ordinary people despite their now well-established superstar status: across the Atlantic, they take the hint and then some, snubbing them as total unknowns, the album stalling at an anonymous number 146.

Rolling Stone dismisses Madness as a pale imitation of the Blues Brothers, but England dotes on them: the leap from cheeky upstarts to polished gentlemen is a short one, and, notwithstanding some bad reviews and the odd excess of sparkle, the Magnificent Seven still haven't started taking themselves seriously, and Absolutely manages to be great fun, so much so that a new autobiographical documentary comes out (directed by boss Dave Robinson and partly funded by the band members themselves, £20,000 each), also titled “Take It Or Leave It”, which starts out on a distant grey day in Camden in '76 before plunging into the roar of the big arenas – a fitting conclusion to this first thrilling phase of their career.

From House Of Fun to Our House: the 7 lives of Madness

In October 1981, the third studio album 7 opens up a second, equally intriguing phase, though the change of direction begun with Absolutely becomes a point of no return, as the band's original joyful ska instincts give way to a sparkling, cross-pollinated wave sound that flirts openly with the charts. Guitarist Foreman justifies the choice as an evolution necessary for the times, Suggs also waters down his boozy tone a little to suit the demands of the upper charts, and the cash registers are delighted, with seventeen singles crammed into the Top Ten between 1980 and 1986. Not bad for a niche band, who in summer '81 set off for Compass Point Studios in Nassau, in the Bahamas, to record the thirteen tracks of the new LP.

You can take Madness out of London, but you can't take London out of Madness: the City is still at the centre of their universe, and the chimney-stack single “Grey Day” turns out to be one of their sturdiest, most beloved tracks, present in every greatest hits compilation despite its unprecedented dark, sooty beat (the North London Invaders had already sketched it out live back in 1978 at Aklam Hall). The clip shows the band riding an open-top double-decker bus or strolling past Bowmans' shop windows, the same British locations used for the other standout track “Cardiac Arrest”, in which stressed-out commuter Cathal Smyth suffers a heart attack on his way to work, set to piano patterns lightened by a cheeky marimba (the fading outro mimics a heartbeat; curiously, a screenshot of the incident turns up in Morrissey's “We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful”, who also dedicates “You’re The One For Me, Fatty” to Smyth).
The tracklist notably broadens its rhythmic palette with carnivalesque flourishes, skits and fictional characters, ranging effortlessly from the whirling “Benny Bullfrog” to the home-invading burglar of “Shut Up”, a too-rye-ay-flavoured mash-up in the style of Dexys Midnight Runners.

I’m as honest as the day is long,
the longer the daylight the less I do wrong
(“Shut Up”)

Behind the hilarious gags, however, lurk thorny subjects such as depression, sex and mortality: “When Dawn Arrives” casts a disapproving eye on the exploitation of prostitution, “Pac-A-Mac” alludes in shadowy terms to sex with minors, while “Tomorrow’s Dream” deals with animal testing.
The stylistic tour de force continues with “Sign O’ The Times” (close to the indie happy-hour sound of the Housemartins' “London 0-Hull 4”) and the white soul-funk of “Mrs. Hutchinson”, which recalls Spandau Ballet's “Chant No. 1” and takes aim at the National Health Service (it tells the story of an unfortunate woman who, after misdiagnosis and poor treatment, falls terminally ill).
“Missing You” shifts key with a lovely sax run, “A Day On The Town” slows the pace further with a laid-back, pleasantly reggae feel. Less memorable is the filler track “Promises, Promises”, while the instrumental “The Opium Eaters” and the romantic classic “It Must Be Love” remain thoroughly enjoyable – the latter a non-album single released in December that becomes one of their most celebrated tracks ever (reaching number four, it's a cover of a Labi Siffre song, recorded for the soundtrack of the film “The Tall Guy”, starring Jeff Goldblum, Rowan Atkinson and Emma Thompson).

April 1982 is time to take stock, hence the first best-of, The Complete Madness, which besides “It Must Be Love” itself contains two further unreleased tracks: “In The City”, written for a Honda City advert, and the epoch-defining “House Of Fun”, in some ways their masterpiece, since it gives them their only number one single ever. It was originally meant to be called “Chemist Facade” and tells the story of coming of age through a teenager who, having just turned sixteen – the fateful age of consent – heads to the chemist's to buy condoms; being very shy, though, he disguises his request with slang euphemisms like “boxes of balloons” or “party hats with coloured tips”, prompting the shop assistant to remind him he's not in a toy shop, and to suggest he go to the House Of Fun instead. The song is something of a summation of the Madness style, opening with a few drum hits and the simultaneous entrance of keyboard, electric guitar, sax and trombone over a whirling uptempo 126 beats per minute (set on the rollercoaster of Great Yarmouth's funfair): in England it's a triumph, while it isn't released in the United States, though the video still does the rounds on MTV, somehow paving the way for the other smash hit “Our House”, which a few months later would manage to break down American resistance as well.

I think the most lucrative song I ever wrote was Baggy Trousers, but as a band Our House was probably our most successful
(Suggs)

“Our House”'s climb is a gradual one; the fourth album, The Rise And Fall (5 November 1982), which contains it, in fact isn't even distributed in the US at first, and that's a real shame, because it holds genuine little gems from the band's new direction, still in the vein of a witty fusion of pop, jazz, dance and music hall. It had been conceived as a concept album about each member's childhood, though that idea was eventually dropped, and only three or four lyrics actually stick to the original premise. Either way, the irresistibly catchy title track “The Rise And Fall”, the excellent second single “Tomorrow’s Just Another Day” (of which a twelve-inch blues variant exists featuring Elvis Costello; Blur would later make it their own “Parklife”), “Blue Skinned Beast” (a bitter satire of Thatcher's mishandling of the Falklands War, even though the band had said they wanted to steer clear of political point-scoring) and the Beatles-esque “Primrose Hill” make up an explosive opening quartet, which according to NME is already more than enough to make The Rise And Fall the best Madness album, or at least their most formally outward-looking one, often compared to the Kinks' “Village Green Preservation Society”, with the difference that while Ray Davies dreamed of his ideal Britain, Suggs and co. examine the one that actually exists. “In my opinion, the Kinks' ‘Lola’ is the perfect song,” Suggs confides in an interview, “impossible to pick apart musically or lyrically. I mean, I grew up in and around Soho, my mum sang and worked in bars, I hung around those clubs and saw everything ‘Lola’ describes: women dressed in feathers, champagne, drag queens… to me it's truly autobiographical, and that's why I love Ray Davies so much; writing songs that rhyme and still stay captivating isn't easy, so I tried to follow his example.”
As for Madness, their own perfect song can rightly be called “Our House”, a joyous working-class anthem celebrated within domestic walls through a farcical, Benny Hill-style fast-forward video, in which the band perform with their instruments in the living room before heading off to school or work, while in other scenes they play squash or relax in the hot tub of a terraced house on Stephenson Street, in north-west London. Reaching number five in England and winning Best Pop Song at the Ivor Novello Awards, “Our House” also earned well-deserved recognition on the other side of the Atlantic, when Madness later decided to release it via the self-titled Madness, a kind of substitute compilation for The Rise And Fall, which brought only some of the new tracks to the American market alongside their biggest past hits: today it's sung in the Premier League by Aston Villa fans in honour of towering defender Kortney Hause, while back when it came out, it was thousands of Swedish, Norwegian and Canadian fans who made it number one in their respective countries, as well as the band's biggest-ever showing on the Billboard Hot 100.
The rest of the tracklist confirms a clever leap in arrangement quality, evident in “Sunday Morning” and “Madness Is All In The Mind” through Bedders' acoustic bass and, even more so, the patchanka flourishes of session musician Geraldo Rondo (percussion and strings). Worth a listen are the Syd Barrett-ish psych vignette “Mr. Speaker Gets The Word”, the Indian-flavoured “New Delhi” (featuring sitar and violins) and “Tiptoes”, about a boy trying to work through his insecurities by dangerously walking along rooftop ledges. It's a shame the unfinished “Are You Coming With Me?” stumbles into slightly over-elaborate swing-jazz pretension; “That Face” and “Calling Cards”, on the other hand, try to reawaken the beloved ska impulses that never quite went away, though unlike on the early albums, they no longer drive the core groove, limiting themselves instead to nostalgic sax solos. Overall, The Rise And Fall probably isn't the most fitting example of their signature nutty sound, but the sheer popularity it achieved makes it their most varied, colourful work, as well as an admirable snapshot of its times, marked by caricature-sharp causticity and feigned respectability.

Keep Moving, Mad Not Mad and the Break-up

Once the promotion of The Rise And Fall was over, a third phase of the band's career began, taking them even further from old habits. But first there was room for another couple of boisterous non-album experiments: among the less traumatic were the piano-driven "The Sun And The Rain" and "Driving In My Car", in line with the pop productions of the moment (the video, with the band in mechanics' overalls, also features a cameo from their friends Fun Boy Three), while the riskier but genuinely successful choral gospel romp "Wings Of A Dove" (featuring contributions from the Inspirational Choir Of The Pentecostal First Born Church Of The Living God) was recorded for the non-profit compilation "Greenpeace – The Album".

1984 is the year of the Los Angeles Olympics, and Madness decide to celebrate the Games with the cover of their new album Keep Moving, which portrays them as latter-day sprinters on an athletics track. In the UK charts the album sprints to number six, warmly received by critics, who look favourably on yet another dynamic shift from a band that always manages to channel its communicative urgency into cheerful, carefree harmonies on the surface, despite content that grows ever more emotionally fragile and reflective. By now it's genuinely fair to expect anything, from the young man in "Time For Tea" who dies shut inside a fridge trying to scare his friends, to the violent husband in "Give Me A Reason" who has been left by his wife after beating her, to the immigrant in "Prospects" who realises Britain wasn't the promised land after all.
Our boys lose a bit of their "mad boys" appeal in favour of a balanced sophisti-pop. The big single "Michael Caine", for instance, jokes about IRA spies with vocal melodies that only seem innocent, made more graceful by the backing vocals of Afrodiziak (the video features a small cameo from Michael Caine himself and some vocal samples taken from the 1960 film "The Ipcress File", in which his character Harry Palmer, under torture, obsessively repeats his own name amid lines of paranoia and mental disintegration). Better still is the other single, "One Better Day", with its delicate soft-jazzy moves à la "Smooth Operator".
Only six years have passed since their debut, and Keep Moving wants to show just how far the band's sound has evolved, from the ska whirlwind of their roots to the sensual Terence Trent D'Arby-esque r'n'b of "Turning Blue", all the way to the waltz of "Waltz Into Mischief" or the funky dance-pop of the sinuous title track "Keep Moving".
Hidden gems include "Victoria Gardens", about a homeless man in the well-to-do neighbourhoods of the "cardboard city", and the quirky ballad "Samantha", about a relationship's sudden breakdown. Closing the circle more anonymously are the measured "Brand New Beat" and "March Of The Gherkins".

Keep On Moving is the last LP with Barson at the helm. Mike, in fact, about to move to Amsterdam with his wife, had already said goodbye to the band during a show held in December '83 at the Lyceum Ballroom, before agreeing to finish the recordings (he would, however, be left out of the videos' scripts). It's also the last album produced by Stiff, who weren't particularly taken with the English lads' new artistic direction, prompting them to go it alone and found their own label, Zarjazz Records (a Virgin subsidiary), through which in September 1985 they released their sixth studio album, Mad Not Mad, aided by Elvis Costello's longtime right-hand man Steve Nieve, who replaced Barson on keyboards.
Although it marks their lowest point at home so far (the album only reaches number sixteen, while "Uncle Sam" and "Sweetest Girl" become the first singles to miss the Top 20), critical reception is as kind as ever, to the point that NME ranks it 55th in its list of the 100 best albums of all time. The songwriting quality is indeed still high, but the arrangements and melodies turn out a bit too arty for longtime fans, who this time are genuinely thrown. Yet the contradictory title already hinted at a sharp shift in identity from the usual standard, confirmed by the moody "White Heat" and by the satirical funk-rock opener "I'll Compete", which pokes fun at their declining popularity with eloquent lines (“Affrettiamoci/ il nostro tempo è arrivato/ siam vicini alla pensione”).
The brit-jazzy groove of the single "Yesterday's Man" (reminiscent of "Sign Your Name", again by Terence Trent D'Arby), the angelic cover of Scritti Politti's "Sweetest Girl" (practically identical to the Welsh band's original masterpiece from "Songs To Remember"), the dreamy vocals of "Coldest Day" and the electro flourishes of the title track "Mad Not Mad" are memorable flashes within an otherwise thin and scattered synth-pop tracklist, partly redeemed on "Time" and "Tears You Can't Hide" by lovely reggae shades that testify to an undying ingenuity but leave a bitter aftertaste for what Mad Not Mad could have been, rich as it is in rhythmic ideas that are guiltily underused.

In short, it lacks the spark or the killer chorus — though live, at least, there's no shortage of either, and in July the band throws itself into a triumphant tour across Australia and South America, rounded off with various European festivals, after which the survivors, now orphaned of Barson, try to sketch out eleven tracks for a new full-length, which however, due to internal artistic disputes, will never see the light of day. The "Unreleased Madness Album" (or "Lost In The Museum", according to rumours about its title) is promptly replaced by the anthology Utter Madness, after which a farewell song, "(Waiting For) The Ghost Train", is released — genuinely lovely, though it passes almost unnoticed: it's a fatalistic rock-blues written by Suggs, primarily referencing apartheid, but dedicated more broadly to everyone in life who waits for a particular moment, their moment, that never comes.

Waiting for the train that never comes,
I hear the ghost train rumbling along the tracks and I hear them
it’s black or white, don’t try to hide…
(“Waiting For The Ghost Train”)

After "(Waiting For) The Ghost Train", the band throws in the towel, but somehow regroups a couple of years of silence later, when the four diehards Suggs, Chas Smash, Lee Thompson and Chris Foreman add the article to the band's name, turning it into "The Madness", and to play it safe they bring in their friend and mentor Jerry Dammers, who had been left practically unemployed since he too was dealing with the break-up of the Specials and the declared shutdown of Two-Tone Records, which had just pulled down its shutters around that time.

Madstock & Nutty Boys

Alongside Dammers, the project also recruits Steve Nieve and Bruce Thomas, both former members of Elvis Costello's Attractions, plus a dense array of session musicians, including Earl Falconer of UB40 on bass, Rick Walker, Simon Phillips and various others. The newly reorganised collective releases The Madness, put out in 1988 by Virgin and produced by The Three Eyes, a pseudonym hiding mysterious identities that most people assume to be Suggs and Foreman themselves. Going by the numbers, it's an embarrassing flop (the album peaks at number 66 in England, not to mention the singles missing the Top 75), but this is a case where the figures really need to be taken with a grain of salt. Anyone expecting a powerful two-tone resurgence from this specialised line-up will be disappointed: that thrilling era had already fired its last shots, whether due to the inevitable generational turnover or to a radically changed historical context. On the other hand, the few brave souls who decide to buy the album will come away satisfied, because The Madness, far from being a kitsch-revival move for a band in decline, proves to be a dignified compromise between retro modes and the new possibilities offered by technology.
The record is recorded at Liquidator Studios on Caledonian Road, housed in an old basement owned by the band and also used by Feargal Sharkey, The Farm, Deftones and Apollo 440. The increasingly prominent synthesizers bring a trendy breath of fresh air to the sound, reshaped in the image of the high-flying electronics of giants like Heaven 17, Depeche Mode and similar acts, with the difference that here and there exotic elements like Indian sitar and tabla are worked in (the Eastern-tinged single "I Pronounce You", about a young bride's arranged marriage), pronounced ska/reggae echoes ("Beat The Bride" and "Nightmare Nightmare"), trombone and other typically Madness-esque tricks that thaw out the robotic chill ("Neil Down The Days", "Thunder And Lightning" and the tropicalist "Oh" are the warmest). "Gabriel's Horn" polishes up a demo discarded from that phantom album that had been in the works in 1986 before being aborted; also worth noting are "Song In Red", written by Suggs in memory of a cousin who died young, and "What's That", adorned by the lush horn section of the Potato Five (the CD edition adds the four bonus tracks "Flashings", "4 B.F.", "Be Good Boy" and "11th Hour").

The poor commercial results, however, lead to an irreparable split and yet another break-up: Bedders keeps his bass chops sharp with Voice Of The Beehive and on Morrissey's "Kill Uncle", then collaborates with Terry Edwards' Butterfield 8. Lee Thompson and Chris Foreman, for their part, carry on as a duo and produce, via Street Link Records, the clumsy Crunch under the name The Nutty Boys, since their former bandmates forbid them from using the old moniker.
It's 1990, and meanwhile in the United States a third wave of ska is taking hold thanks to Californians Rancid, Green Day and Offspring, who try to fuse European two-tone with hardcore and heavy-metal aggression, while others like No Doubt, Aquabats or Dance Hall Crashers instead lighten the intensity somewhat, softening it towards pop and wave.
Crunch evidently breathes this air of resurrection, recovering at least in part that combative nutty groove: while the single "It's Okay I'm A Policeman", "Pipedream" and "You Got It!" surprise with frantic rhythms and effected vocals, elsewhere Thompson's hoarse, impersonal delivery makes one miss the charismatic Suggs (who nonetheless appears as guest of honour on the opening blue-beat track "Magic Carpet"). "Daydreamers" and "Pipedream" readapt ska and reggae melodies to the beat of innovative drum machines with uneven results; a small consolation is "Für Elise", which transfigures Beethoven's "Per Elisa" into classical-wave (it pairs with the older "Swan Lake" and lifts the spirits a little in this less-than-transcendent back-to-the-roots effort).

The February 1992 best-of Divine Madness at least helps refill the coffers by presenting the complete run of singles from 1979 to 1986 in chronological order ("The Sweetest Girl" is omitted, the only one from that period to miss the Top 30), and given the compilation's unexpected success — number one in Britain — talk of a sensational reunion starts to take shape.
Monsieur Barso, Chrissy Boy, Suggs, Chas Smash, Kix, Woody and Bedders: on 8 and 9 August 1992 the seven of them appear at Finsbury Park in London in their original line-up for the first time since Barson's departure in 1986, and it's a triumph, in front of a crowd of around 75,000 people gathered for a two-day event that also features, as headline acts, Morrissey, Ian Dury, Blockheads and Gallon Drunk. The event ends up on the DVD Madstock!, which, besides the setlist performed live by the band, also contains a cover of "The Harder They Come" by the Jamaican reggae prophet Jimmy Cliff.

Afterwards, the band renews its open-air commitment for three more editions of the festival, held every other year in 1994, 1996 and 1998, and then again in 1998 comes Universal Madness, a document of a show held at the Universal Amphitheatre in Los Angeles fourteen years after their last US show in 1984.

The Return of Madness: Wonderful, Dangermen and Norton Folgate

The enthusiastic reception received during their recent appearances suggests it's worth taking advantage of this fertile moment to get back into the studio, and so in 1999 Wonderful is born, the eighth album that marks the grand-scale return of the Mad-nificent Seven. A comeback doesn't always work: sometimes the results border on the ridiculous, to the point you wonder if it was even necessary; other times the offering sounds as credible as if the musicians had never stopped. Wonderful largely falls into this second category, starting with the strong single "Lovestruck", which reaches number ten, confirming the band's renewed appeal, not having hit such a high position since "The Sun And The Rain" back in 1983.
Back at the controls is the Langer/Winstanley production team, and it shows, although the result can't quite be called ska proper, but it's still close to the spiced-up wave of the early Eighties. "The Communicator" is the one that comes closest to their old, robust ways, shouting "All aboard for the Madness nation", but also notable are the sweeping, piano-driven country-blues of "Johnny The Horse", the pop-rock of "Sunday Night, Sunday Morning" (reinvigorated by well-placed sax solos) and the Tom Waits-esque backstreet march "Drip Fed Fred", with off-beat horns and verses enriched by the heroic Ian Dury (by then in the final stage of an interminable battle with cancer, he would die a few months later in March 2000).
Among the other highlights are the orchestral "Elysium", the brisk rhythms of "Going To The Top" and the almost-gypsy trumpets of "The Wizard", while "If I Didn't Care" reworks an old African-American barbershop number by the Ink Spots, written in '46 by Jack Lawrence. Finally there's "No Money" and the rather dull "4 A.M.", which admittedly chase their own tails a little, but don't dent the overall clarity of a tracklist where the joy and desire to make music, whatever the genre, are plain to feel. Welcome back.

Meanwhile, from 28 October 2002 to 16 August 2003, the Cambridge Theatre in London hosts the musical "Our House" (adapted by Labi Siffre from a story by Tim Firth and based on the band's music), which wins an Olivier Award for "best musical of the year": Suggs plays the role of the protagonist's father for a week, while the others take the opportunity to build around it the new greatest-hits collection Our House, which includes the unreleased tracks "Simple Equation" and "Sarah's Song". A welcome breath of fresh air for the seven middle-aged lads, who, to mark their twenty-fifth anniversary, decide to turn back into kids by putting together an all-covers album of the teenage listening sessions road-tested on afternoons at Mike's house: to do so, they adopt the pseudonym Dangermen and play a series of low-key gigs without giving too much away, before transferring the material in 2005 onto a proper album titled The Dangerman Sessions Vol. 1. The lavish booklet details, in full, the fanciful origin story of an "influential reggae group founded in Havana in the Sixties", with each member adopting an alter ego, each with its own curious fictional backstory to tell:

– Mark Bedford/Lester Bernham, son of the sea, plays a bass made of driftwood washed up on Cuba's shores;
– Chas Smash/Jimmy Ooh, itinerant musician;
– Daniel Woodgate/Daniel Descartes, naif Parisian percussionist and leader of the aforementioned itinerant band;
– Mike Barson/Professor Psykoticus, Hungarian musician born in the village of Mezȍhegies, who worked in sonic-weapons research in the USSR before being recruited into Descartes' collective, out of which the Dangermen were born;
– Lee Jay Thompson/Unnamed, nameless, atmospheric scientist and part-time saxophonist;
– Suggs/the poet Robert Chaos, one of the founders of the Dangermen, found by Dexter Gordon shut inside a Gladstone bag near the feet of Miles Davis;
– Chris Foreman/Christofos Formantos, about whom no reliable information exists.

Sticking strictly to the music, the tracklist (opened by the brief thirty-second service announcement "This Is Where") allows for sporadic regressions to its etymological roots, as if to show just how renewable the peculiar madness-ian lexicon is, sifted through the Caribbean eldorado and the dusty Motown registers but also through good old iconic 60s pop-rock (a similar meltin' pot would take shape around the same period on Sinéad O'Connor's “Throw Down Your Arms” and Gilberto Gil's “Kaya 'Nga Ndaya”). Not everything works as it should, though, despite the presence at the console of Barbadian guru Dennis Bovell, in his first collaboration with the band after fruitful spells alongside Thompson Twins, Fela Kuti, Pop Group and Bananarama.
Among the best moments are the danceable cover of Lord Tanamo's “Taller Than You Are” and the sprightly bluebeat of “Girl Why Don't You” (the inevitable Buster), which light up like a Saturday-night-fever brass party, while Bob Marley's “So Much Trouble In The World” tenderly weighs up social abjection. The harmonious r'n'b gem “You'll Lose A Good Thing” by Texan Barbara Lynn and “Shame & Scandal” by Sir Lancelot (a confidently strutting calypso-ska) can also be counted among the highlights, but the problem is that the echo chamber, slow tempos and thin bass lines favoured elsewhere by the DJ give a soporific dubby touch to Rudy Mills' “John Jones”, Max Romeo's “I Chase The Devil” and the evergreen “Israelites” by Desmond Dekker & The Aces. The immortal “Lola” by the Kinks and “You Keep Me Hangin' On” by the Supremes suffer roughly the same opiate treatment, both disappointing despite otherwise fine orchestrations that are unlikely to win over detractors of what is, ultimately, an uneven and not entirely heartfelt LP.

Fingers crossed for bolder ventures, in 2005 the modest single “Sorry” comes out on the band's own newly founded label, Lucky 7: this time on guitar is Kevin Burdette, standing in for Foreman, since Chris had already, in the midst of the Dangermen jam sessions, floated the idea of leaving the group, only to return to his usual spot for the Christmas Tour 2006.

A couple of years later, in June 2008, three consecutive nights are held at London's Hackney Empire theatre, previewing songs (handed out to those present after the show via USB wristband) that would form the backbone of The Liberty Of Norton Folgate, the ninth studio album, released in 2009 to coincide with the band's thirtieth anniversary. Unlike the dazzling One Step Beyond..., now three decades in the past, there are no colossal hits to celebrate here, but rather a Sherlockian puzzle in fifteen tracks (twenty-two if you count the second disc of the maxi-release) that demands total immersion in the concept, led by the hand through the streets by the seven indefatigable guides, assisted behind the scenes by Langer and Winstanley.
It's perhaps the band's most ambitious and noir-tinged work, complete with an “Ouverture” for brass straight out of the last century and an intricate ten-minute title track (something of their own “Bohemian Rhapsody“) that tells the story of a hidden corner of East London, an artists' ghetto administered by residents under the aegis of St. Paul's Cathedral. Norton Folgate is a lesser-known patch between Bishopsgate and Shoreditch High Street; the liberty in question is Madness's freedom to colour any pop song with the most disparate shades, without any particular missteps. The unmistakable British watercolours still recall the Kinks and Ray Davies in their melodic clarity, while the Dickensian scribbles nod to nineteenth-century social fiction and Pickwickian humour.
“We Are London” immediately reminds us why, for thirty years now, they have by definition been the most representative band of the Union Jack, offering a full tour of key landmarks around the capital where “everything is possible if we live together like one big family”.

From Regent’s Park Mosque on to Baker Street
down to the Cross where all the pipesmoke neat
to Somerstown where somethings never stop
the Roundhouse, the Marathon Bar and Camden Locks

But the London of 2009 is no longer the carefree playground of Kentish Town; now there's a reckoning with bitterness and regret to face. The gypsy-pop of “Clerkenwell Polka” denounces the harmful effects of capitalism, while “Rainbows”, “Idiot Child” and the resigned “Forever Young” mourn the farewell to the age of innocence, bidding goodbye to the maturing of the former tearaways. Brass-band music, horns and vaudeville, but also waltz, Caribbean rhythms and reggae-folk: nothing convoluted or overwrought, just a soundtrack of existence that makes creative craftsmanship its DNA. “Sugar And Spice” opens with a romantic take on infatuation and is perhaps the only track to boast a truly catchy, memorable refrain (over beds of piano and pipe organ); also worth noting are the hammering little march “That Close” and “NW5”, which mourns departed friends and had already been released a couple of years earlier as a single (which is why it's Kevin Burdette on guitar rather than Foreman; the B-side features a cover of the Undertones' “Bittersweet”, left over from the Dangermen Sessions).
The other tracks betray a certain similarity to one another, tied together by the saxophone acting as a common thread, though each has its own particular point of interest: see “On The Town” with its female vocals (guest star bodysnatcher Rhoda Dakar) or “Dust Devil”, which underlines the choral spleen; “Bingo”, on the other hand, starts again from classical piano before accelerating once more into ska and dub-beat; “MK II” slows things down again with stop and go pauses. Finally worth mentioning is the lovely “Africa”, which, in a rare and unusual move, ventures onto the African continent, stepping away from London everyday life: Julian Temple made a 64-minute documentary about it (also titled “The Liberty Of Norton Folgate”), screened at the London Independent Film Festival.
Some have gone so far as to call this the best album in the whole Madness discography: that's probably overstating it, but it's certainly true that anyone expecting to find them stalling after a decade spent between live shows, covers and greatest hits will be left open-mouthed by a work of this calibre, applauded on 17 July at their traditional (fifth for them) Madstock gathering, where they're supported on stage by The Spatial AKA Orchestra, the new project of their friend Jerry Dammers. Other prestigious festivals follow, including Pinkpop, Splendour and Glastonbury, as well as an appearance in Carolin Tate's spin-off of Nan's Christmas Carol.

From 2010 to the present day: memories of a Rude Boy and Can't Touch Us Now

Right after picking up the Idol award at the Q Awards in September 2010, Chris Foreman announces that the follow-up to The Liberty Of Norton Folgate is in the works, but the gestation is a long one, passing through a number of shows (Earl's Court, Hull, Sheffield, Meltdown Festival), the most significant of which takes place at the Royal Albert Hall, where they're introduced on stage by the legendary Ray Davies, in what feels like a meaningful passing of the torch.

In the summer of 2012, to mark the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, they climb onto the roof of Buckingham Palace to play “Our House” and “It Must Be Love” against a backdrop of animated projections, and are then the first act invited on stage for the closing ceremony of the London Olympic Games. In late August, “Death Of A Rude Boy” is made available as a digital download, a teaser track for the new album Oui Oui, Si Si, Ja Ja, Da Da, released in the UK on the following 29 October. Even the jokey title hints at a lighter, less demanding listen compared to its predecessor: the tracklist is dominated by exuberant pop rhythms and a jovial mood, but there's a bit of a shortage of genuinely interesting moments, aside from the Beatles-esque cover artwork by Peter Blake (the man behind “Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band“, no less, who here depicts the names of several songs left on the cutting-room floor, crossed out in pen).
Up to now, the great thing about Madness has been their ability to age alongside their own audience without caring a jot about marketing; this time, however, the lead single “My Girl 2” winks at easy listening with an undeniably crowd-pleasing chorus (it's the sequel to the successful northern-soul-flavoured “My Girl”), but that's not enough to shake off the feeling of déjà vu. Worth salvaging are the Seventies-disco “Never Knew Your Name” (flowing strings and the usual sturdy sax solo), “Misery” (a decent rock feel and a tiny musical nod to Beethoven's Fifth Symphony) and the grimy reggae-blues of “Kitchen Floor”, which will please the nostalgics among us. The band's worst flaw, though, is paradoxically their unchanging loyalty to a formula that's stayed the same for decades and shown little appetite for updating (although listening to the improbable Latin settings of “La Luna El Mariachi” does make you wonder whether sticking to the tried-and-tested formula wasn't such a bad idea after all).
“Circus Freaks” confirms their innate gifts as entertainers with Bowie-esque grandeur (rolling piano and a little circus tune), “So Alive” plays the card of timid two-tone echoes with Suggs's voice pitched a whole octave higher than usual, while the homespun ballad “Leon” and “How Can I Tell You?” (about unconditional love) slip by, limp and anachronistic. A cut above the rest is the dub-requiem “Death Of A Rude Boy”, which pays tribute to that kind of respected figure whose passing leaves a hole in the community, set to psychedelic atmospheres à la “Karmacoma“: Bristol, after all, isn't so far away, and its trip-hop echoes resound in “Small World” too, which closes things out with delicate female backing vocals. Nothing special, all told.

In 2014, though, Cathal “Chas Smash” Smyth shakes up the risky impasse with a surprising solo debut, A Comfortable Man, which moves with ease from light singer-songwriter piano-and-voice fare in the style of Coldplay (“Are The Children Happy?”, “You're Not Alone”) to electric Radiohead-esque surges (“Shabat She Comes”, whose structure at times recalls “Creep”), by way of the moving “Goodbye Planet Earth” and a number of finely orchestrated romantic gems (the aching “Love Song no. 7” and “Love Song no. 9”, and the more easy-going “Do You Believe In Love?”, with violins that are the crowning touch of a set centred on the end of his own marriage and the perks of no longer being a desperate stay-at-home dad).
Chapeau: simple and honest, but genuinely lovely.

Perhaps for that reason, once the solo interlude is over, Smyth chooses not to rejoin his bandmates, who decide to carry on as a sextet, releasing in 2016 Can't Touch Us Now, to date their most recent album of new material, built from the same formally flawless but by now stale and repetitive pastiche, even though the grandiose title suggests the band itself is well aware of having reached the status of untouchable legends in the pop pantheon. A bit of ska, a bit of reggae, a bit of dub, a bit of cheer, a bit of pessimism, a bit of everything: it worked, on and off, on Oui Oui, Si Si, Ja Ja, Da Da, but this time the script is genuinely thin and the musical ingredients seem to have been tossed into the pot at random. Not so the lyrics, which instead stand out for their poetic quality and emotional depth.
“Pam The Hawk” is a legendary toothless West End bag lady “who smiles like a machine gun as she feeds the last of her coins into the slot machines, she'd be the richest woman on Wardour Street if she didn't spend it all on horses and bookies”. Hers is a tale of sorrow underscored by a melancholy sax solo, jazzy acoustic guitar and a stormy horn section, but sketches and characters of this kind, as ever, abound throughout. “Herbert”, for instance, is a racy ode, somewhere between ska and music-hall, to an overbearing father-in-law who guards his daughter with a shotgun against some dodgy character (a “herbert”, in British slang); “Mr. Apples” puts social hypocrisy on trial via the portrait of a rough man “sat at the head of the table at the Rotary Club, never in doubt which shoulder to rub”; the bleak “Blackbird”, meanwhile, is a touching spoken-word dedication to Amy Winehouse (“the voice of fallen angels”), whom Suggs had met just days before her death (a soft Merseybeat-style gait building into brass, mellotron and gospel choirs).
There are a couple of further gems worth flagging too, like the Brexit-era skank of “Mumbo Jumbo” (very close to the raw early-Eighties sound), the sinister waltz-in-black “Whistle In The Dark”, and the gunshots of the spaghetti-cartoon “Glam Slam”, which takes aim at the alpha male (“Grand Slam, is he the man? Relentless turbo-charged homo sapiens”).
Sixteen songs, though, is objectively too many, and the rest drag along, worn thin and watered down: the piano-led title track “Can't Touch Us Now” stumbles along with plinky plonky patterns and bland rhythms, “Good Times” (“where did all the good times go?”) preaches nicely against rampant consumerism but delivers little beyond a jittery sax, and “I Believe” is an amusing religious digression with off-beat bells and Jewish harps. “Don't Let Them Catch You Crying”, “Soul Denying” and “Don't Leave The Past Behind You” are ultimately negligible filler. Better, then, to sign off with the sugary “You Are My Everything”, which winds itself up in xylophone flourishes and sensuous Mayfield-esque arrangements.

Produced at Rag Toes Studios in London by Clive Owen and Liam Watson (fresh off a Grammy for his work on the White Stripes' “Elephant”), in June 2016 Can't Touch Us Now is performed in full at Glastonbury Festival, and then on the road around the world on an exhausting tour that in 2017 takes in Europe, Asia and Australia.

In 2018, “Madness Rocks Big Ben Live” is held, a lavish New Year's Eve show broadcast by BBC One amid the fireworks. In 2019, meanwhile, to mark the fortieth anniversary of their debut, there's a series of celebratory concerts at the Houses of Parliament, Kenwood House (accompanied by a special orchestra) and Camden's Electric Ballroom. Finally, in December 2019, comes the single “The Bullingdon Boys/Don't Get Bullied By The Bully Boys”, partly breaking the drought, which was then definitively ended in November 2023 by Theatre Of The Absurd Presents C'Est La Vie, Suggs and co.'s thirteenth studio effort and the first entirely self-produced.

Theatre of the absurd

Theatre Of The Absurd Presents C'Est La Vie was conceived during the Covid lockdown, which fortunately served to strengthen the band's team spirit. The result is an ambitious concept album structured like a three-act play, dedicated to the memory of their friend Terry Hall, frontman of The Specials, who passed away just a couple of weeks before the band began work at the Cricklewood studios. The ska-punk directives of the golden era haven't entirely died out, so some of the guiding principles that marked the legendary nutty sound of their early days survive in the go-go brass, sarcastic lyrics and imaginative arrangements that run through the tracklist.
British actor Martin Freeman performs on “Prologue: Mr. Beckett Sir...”, cordially addressed to the Irish playwright (“Mr. Beckett Sir, it's time, your audience awaits”), before the near-title-track “Theatre Of The Absurd” kicks off the show proper. The song is a melancholy, Beatles-tinged vignette in which, to translate some of its more telling lines, “the actors stumble with their masks but there's no real plot, there are no exit signs and all the doors are locked”. Organ and percussion dominate the choral “If I Go Mad” and the dispiriting, autobiographically tinged tale of petty thieves “Baby Burglar”. From the prologue we finally move into the first act, built around three tracks tinged with a mix of anger and resignation, namely the other semi-title-track “C'Est La Vie”, “Hour Of Need” and “What On Earth Is It (You Take Me For?)”, the latter surprisingly sung by Thompson over a danceable groove. The second act is shorter, made up solely of “Round We Go”, a more classic, relaxed pop song, while the third act turns the clock back to the pandemic days, urging listeners to unplug and denouncing the damage caused by social media overuse.
There are no sensational hits, but there's a huge range of expression to enjoy: from the synth-pop of “The Law According To Dr. Kippah” to the ballad “Beginners 101”, via the soft disco-soul of “Set Me Free” and the jazzy contaminations of “Is There Anybody Out There?” and “In My Street”. All in all, it's a successful project that, bar a couple of compilations, brings the band to the top of the UK charts for the first time, almost forty-five years after their debut.

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