No. 34: Lu Edmonds

Sense, nonsense and Captain Sensible, with the globe-wandering wizard.

OK again, let’s keep the intro short. Easter holidays, Covid, all sorts tripping things up, I’ll fill you in over on my other email which I promise I’m going to kickstart again this week, honest. BUT we’ve got this amazing profile for you. I mean just look at Brian’s pictures, even if you don’t know who Lu Edmonds is, you want to know what his story is right? And he’s as wizardly as he looks. Not in the futurist cyborg wizard way that our previous interviewee Mark Leckey is, but in a quite ancient, shamanic sort of way.

In fact, Edmonds has made a significant amount of shamanic music – literally – with the various Siberian / Tuvan musicians he’s played with over the years, as well as a lot of other far out world music, free jazz and punk, starting with a tenure in The Damned around their second album Music for Pleasure. But he’s also been through the 1980s maintsream, playing for Kirsty MacColl, Billy Bragg, The Waterboys, Shriekback and more, as well as being a paid-up member of the mid-80s manifestation of Public Image Limited – who he’s back with now – and a Mekon for “27, 28 albums” right up to the present day.

His story is as unorthodox as that implies, and this interview absolutely whirls back and forth through the decades. I think we’re going to have to do a part two on this one, as there’s so much that gets skirted over, particularly as I was fascinated by his thoughts on improvisation and collaboration, so honed in on that wherever possible. We did discuss big 80s budgets and studios briefly, as you’ll see, but there’s easily a whole other interview to do just on that topic. As there is on the topic of the opinions of his bandmate John. Lydon, but I didn’t want to let that dominate here - and in any case, I’m much more interested in the lost PiL dubs tape that Edmonds casually mentioned.

But anyway, as you’ll see there’s more than enough to get your teeth into re punk, Venezuela, Irkutsk, Tajikistan, free jazz, fishnet tights, bodies in the streets and more. Edmonds was a delightful presence at the other end of the Zoom, very keen to evangelise at all times, whether for obscure musicians or the big projects he’s part of, and oddly showbiz in his intonation when he did so. So, at his request, DO check out the tour dates for PiL and Mekons (there’s a LOT of both), and please do enjoy this wonderful sprawling conversation. We started with him explaining we needed to get the interview done that day as he was about to start a week of hard rehearsals.

What are you going to be rehearsing for this week?

That's Public Image Limited.

When does that start?

Well, there's a 40-date tour this summer so that's pretty much my thing at the moment.

OK that'll keep you busy... And how is John? How's he as a band mate these days?

He's good, he's happy, he's really keen to get up and start singing again, after all the stuff he's been through for a few years.

And this week will be the first time you've played together in a while?

Well, he lives in America, so yeah because I'm in London, he's in LA, and Scott, our bass player, he lives in Norwich, in the east of England, and Mark, our new fabulous lovely drummer, he's in Ealing. So we've been playing a little together and just getting used to stuff. But he'll be coming in next week, maybe week after.

And what else has been keeping you busy? You seem to have a lot of irons in fires...

Mostly A Bigger MOUTH, have you got the record?

Yes, it's fantastic.¹

[he goes into Smashie & Nicey showbiz mode] It's a fabulous new album called Bandstand by A Bigger MOUTH and there's also a CD of totally another set of music that's coming up. [me rummaging about under my desk, finds album in pile, holds it up to the Zoom camera] Yeah, there you go. Thank you. Yeah, so that's been the last three or four years. It's very much came out of post-COVID, because I got totally destroyed by COVID. All the gigs, all your work, all gone zzzzzzsplat [divebombing motion], you know, collapsed. A lot of musicians, I think all over the world, we got absolutely decimated. So the idea came up where, how are we going to play music? How do we rehearse? And so the obvious answer is you just play music that you don't rehearse. You're just on the spot out of thin air, you know. So I've got a friend called Mike Walter and he had a band called MOUTH with Lol Coxhill. And Lol Coxhill, one of the great sax players in British, free, whatever you call it, but actually just one of the best sax players in Britain ever². And he was obviously a member of The Damned. That was one of my first attempts to be a musician back in 1977. And he was a sax player. He was actually the fifth member of the band. I'm the sixth. So yeah, Mike said, let's do the second Wednesday of every month up at the 100 Years Gallery in Hoxton. And so we just gather and we just make stuff up.

But you'd had experience doing pure improv before?

Yeah, I mean, with Lol. I used to play a lot with Lol, Lol was just... I don't know, just, just the most incredible... Oh, hang on, look i've got a picture of him here... excuse me [holds it up]

Excellent.

There you go, [points] that's Lol and [points] that's me well...

Flinging a banjo?

It's a cümbüş³, OK, cümbüş is like a Turkish banjo you know c-u-m-b-u-s, you can look it up, it's the hardest instrument to play on the planet, but I actually made a bass version and Lol liked it. Anyway he was always very kind to me and he said “Go on Lu let's play some,” so I was like “But you... but no... I don't know how to play jazz!” He said “We're not going to play jazz we're just gonna play music!” and, well, OK... So I did quite a lot with him and I did stuff with him and Hugh Metcalfe, you know him? He played a lot with Tony Oxley and all sorts of people, he's got a band we made called the Squeaky Donkeys and recently Mark who's the new drummer from PiL who's in A Bigger MOUTH with me and Mike... is this confusing? [laughs] But we we did a gig at Café OTO with Hugh – he's got another band called Fuck Off Batman...

Great, excellent, just as it should be...

...which is good, which involves him putting bicycle lights in his underpants, fishnet tights and saying a lot of bad words – and you know how Café OTO is, there's a lot of people go there because they like music and then there's another lot which go there because it's pretty cool to be at the Café OTO... well, we cleared that lot out in five minutes, it was quite fun, that was a nice gig that was with the Bohman Brothers⁴ um you know Adam Bohman?

Oh hang on, wait a minute... Hugh Metcalfe – did... did he used to run a little club down in Nunhead?

Yeah... Klinker.

That's it! Oh man I used to live up the road and went a good few times, amazing night out⁵.

That's one of the best clubs in London, all the way through the 80s and 90s and all the rest of it. Fantastic club. Really interesting. And for a fiver, or even less, you could get in and see poets and bands and all the time. People used to stay away. I mean, London is so conservative. I mean, it's got a lot of great clubs and a lot of people and a lot of interesting stuff.

Yeah, I had some magic nights there. People bellowing through traffic cones and all the rest of it.

Yeah, you could see whatever, man.

But the cabaret format is so underrated, it's conducive to anarchy, it's great to just be able to throw anything at people – you sort of ease them in with something they recognise, even if it's just the format, then go crazy.

Do you remember New Variety in London with Roland Muldoon, who ended up as the guy who ran the Hackney Empire, which was one of the big old musical theaters in the East End? Roland Muldoon got a little grant from Red Ken Livingston, and he did a network of pubs in London where all sorts of people were basically, for two or three years, they learnt their trade. And they were fantastic. I have one local here to me in Brixton, the Old White Horse. And you could see some great things there. I mean, the Klinker, we had some people who turned up, and their piece de resistance, was that they'd all strip off naked, and they'd run around the pub like dogs with these huge peacock feathers sticking jammed down their bum cracks. I mean, that was Nunhead. What's wrong with that? It's what people need!

It really is. I used to, for a couple of years in Brighton. I used to have a little show like that and we had some very serious musicians and you know we would get interesting poets and comedians and stuff, but equally it would have a bunch of lads in speedos throwing offal at each other. That was in the rave years, so we would have it all done up as a rave with ultraviolet light everywhere and lots of techno and it was great.⁶

This is what we need. And it's not expensive going to these clubs. I mean, the Klinker was so, so cheap to get in and it wasn't, you know, you go to a pub and it’s eight pounds for a pint now. And it was all, you know, good humoured, but you'd be challenged. There'd be different, sometimes difficult things to listen to. And then there'd be funny things, just things you didn't expect... anyway, so yeah, Hugh Metcalf did the Klinker Club. He's now still doing it up in the Ipswich area, in Suffolk. So people who live around there, you should go and check out Hugh Metcalf! He's on Facebook. You know he's a really fantastic guitarist? I mean, you know, anyone who played with Tony Oxley has got to be good. Tony Oxley probably the most fluid drummer in the world, ever. I mean, I'm, you know, in terms of just sort of like, like this and all the rhythm. He played, actually, on John McLaughlin's first album...

I didn't know that, wow, OK.

Which McLaughlin refuses to acknowledge, it's called Extrapolation, and he's got him and John Surman on sax and a guy called Brian Odgers on bass. And it's the most fantastic record⁷. It's before McLaughlin went all and did all the Miles Davis stuff, which of course was fantastic. And it was before McLaughlin got into Mahavishnu, which is all fantastic too – but at that point he was one of the top session guitarists in London. And it's just jazz, but it's, you know, it's him playing jazz guitar and acoustic guitar, really. And Oxley's playing on that was really good. And he said, “Oh yeah, that was that pop album that I did.” [laughs] It's all relative, isn't it?

But anyway, Hugh Metcalf. So me and Lol and Hugh used to play a lot together. There was a lot of two in a bar pubs, because in those days in London, there was a licensing law where you could have musicians, but only two. So what we used to do is get musicians to appear in the pub, people used to pay to get in, and then we'd all play in different duos together. People like Pat Thomas. So yeah, no, I like all that free stuff because it's, it's like... it's like going into the sauna, you know, you sweat out all of that filthy, intentional bollocks from your, your pores. You know, like, [fancypants voice] “I am going to play a really fantastic melody.” [hoots] And it just washes all that out of me. And you just end up with pure noise and music. Yeah, sometimes it's horrible, but every now and then it's just amazing. So I'm OK with, with all that.

So that is A Bigger MOUTH. Been very busy with that. And yeah, Mike Walter is the guy behind it. We've got great players in it. Mike is on synths. He's got a very nice Moog, and he plays soprano. Him and Lol. And then we've got Paul Taylor on the trombone, and he's very good on elephant farts. We have Mark Roberts on the percussion. I played a cümbüş. Where is my cümbüş? [He reaches up to the wall behind him, and brings it down]

Fabulous!

See, and I've got a little bit of a pickup there [points] so I can put it through pedals and do things that people don't understand, which is... or I understand, I don't understand. So that's me. And then we've got Gabriel Keen on the old keyboard, who's fantastic, can play anything. He's like, you know, really beautifully... and on that record, he's playing on a proper Steinway, and it's a really great record just to hear Gabriel. He really is, I think, kind of the musical centre of the group on that record. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And what else? And, um, Triaboliques, I've got a little trio called, um, Les Triaboliques, that's myself, and Justin Adams, and Ben Mandelson, Justin's interesting, he plays the guitar in that, and he played a long time with Robert Plant.

I saw him once with Robert Plant, and an African musician...

Juldeh Camara... He's a griot!

Yeah he was in the band, but I seem to remember they had one of the other acts guest with them on a track too, it was a WOMAD thing⁸. Argh, can't remember who. Anyway...

Okay, but yeah, nd of course Robert plant being the singer in Led Zeppelin, for anyone who doesn't know. One of the great bands of the 60s, 70s and beyond. So yeah, so Justin's been doing that and he's fantastic, and Ben Mandelson⁹ who was in Magazine, you know? He replaced John McGeoch. He's on the mandolin. So that's nice. We did a couple of gigs in South of France, in Marseilles and Arles, recently, that was good. We've got an album, which we've got yet to do... So what else? Mekons! Yeah, so the Mekons just got a new album out. I wish I had a copy It's called Horror¹⁰. Mmm, and we recorded that in the in Valencia in Spain... So this year is already three albums in... And I got a couple more to make – one with Triaboliques and... and also one with Murray Lachlan Young, you know him?

The poet?¹¹

This is our band, look, [holds up CD] this is a very good record. This is the last one we did.

[reading] The Edge of Reason... Blabbermouth. Excellent. Yes, funnily enough we had him at our cabaret as well once!

Oh he's really good and that's Mark Roberts who's in A Bigger MOUTH and now in PiL with me with Murray Lachlan Young, so we've got another record that you know we sort of 78% of the way there... so yeah you know just making records, which is of course as you know a highway to nowhere these days – you don't make money, but yeah you just do it because you can, you know? And of course lovely old PiL which I thought was toast following the death of John's fantastic lovely wife Nora and then his best mate John Rambo Stevens who was our manager... you know, it was like “Oh well that's the end of PiL” but we put a lot of energy in and tried to support John and in fact he's come through, and it's really good to see him where he is at the moment so...

Very glad to hear it! And Mekons, have they been a continual going concern all the way through?

Well, we were certainly a continual going concern. What day is it? We were a going concern last week. We played Rough Trade West, up in Notting Hill, and also the Signature Brewery. But we did it in the Mini-Mekons format, because half of the band live in the States, half of them are here, and it's like it was me and Susie Honeyman on violin. You know her? Yeah, yeah. She played a lot with Vivian Stanshall¹², who is like the man who should have been the poet laureate, but because the royal family had no sense of humour... [sighs] Although they're very nice and lovely, and we all obey them... and me and Tom and John of the original members. So we did a couple of shows just on the Mini-Mekons thing. But they've got a tour coming up starting in May. They're playing all over the UK and in Europe. I'll send you the list if you could sort of post it up on your blog and encourage people to come and see. It's just a really great show. I mean, it's a good laugh, it's always interesting and amusing, and it's good for the mind!

They've always occupied their own very specific space really, the Mekons, haven't they? They never never quite fitted with one thing or another... in the best possible way.

I think if I can interpret your subtext is that they were never taken into the bosom of the punk orthodoxy...