Option
c. 1987
by: Brad Bradberry
"I once worked out that it would only take four pop musicians on bicycles, two gallons of petrol, a couple crates of empty milk bottles and a few old rags, about three hours to torch every major record company and publisher in London," remarks the mastermind of the pop duo Cleaners from Venus, Martin Newell. "Unfortunately, it could result in jail sentences, and we may not be able to take our portastudios with us," Newell continues half-glibly. And that pretty much sums up the long-standing attitude of both Newell and Giles Smith, the Cleaners From Venus' other half. Started in late 1979 by singer-guitarist Newell and drummer Lawrence Elliott as primarily a home recording project with no ambitions to sign with a record company, the Cleaners quickly gained a cult following in the underground cassette culture. From their very first tape, Blow Away Your Troubles, to their first "real" vinyl outing, Going To England (their fifth tape, Under Wartime Conditions, was later released on vinyl and compact disc by Model Records, a small German label), the Cleaners have done things against the grain. Though now signed to a multi-record deal with English indie Ammunition Communications (as well as distribution deals with RCA-Germany and CBS-France), all their tapes contain the anti-copyright message "no rights reserved, if you have money, buy it, if you don't, copy it," or similar sentiments.
It's a puzzle as to why the Cleaners have received little attention either in their native land or from Anglophiles in the U.S. underground. With their cheery, infectious harmonies, full guitars, and droll, idiosyncratically English humor, the group fits squarely in the eccentric British pop tradition begun by Ray Davies and Syd Barrett in the sixties, and continued by such latter-day acts as XTC (in their lighter moments) and the Television Personalities. Their affinity for classic sixties-style British Invasion pop is obvious, but the forward thrust, lovingly textured sounds and thoughtful, witty compositions place them in the here and now. At home with upbeat rockers and moody, meditative numbers, as well as with acoustic guitar (or even a capella) ballads and drum-machine driven rhythms, the Cleaners have an unselfconscious eclecticism that is beyond the capabilities of contemporary revivalist outfits.
Having played in various bands (the Mighty Plod, Gypp, London S.S., the Dead Students, the Stray Trolleys) in addition to playing backup keyboards for vocalist Helen Terry (later of Culture Club), by the time the Cleaners came about, a slightly disillusioned Newell had seen it all. Some of his ex-bandmates had gone on to form such well-known bands as The Clash, Generation X, and the Damned (Newell would later replace Robyn Hitchcock as ex-Damned member Captain Sensible's lyricist-collaborator). Perhaps his biggest claim to fame had been his solo single on Liberty Records, "Young Jobless." Though it wasn't a hit, it became the theme for a British TV series, Job Hunt ("I was ripped off right, left and center," complains Newell).
Now happily at the helm for the Cleaners, Newell retraces the band's beginnings: "Lol Elliott and I became firm friends with much in common: psychedelic music, Beatles, Bonzos, Small Faces, XTC, Teardrop Explodes and Todd Rundgren. In November of 1980 we set to work in my cottage doing music on a hand-cranked, mud-cooled, reel-to-reel, sound-on-sound tape recorder. Lol played drums and banged and twanged things. I played guitar and we started doing these marvelous ersatz pop songs. The rule was two songs had to be written and recorded every Monday before my miserable girlfriend (at the time) got home from work and told us to stop. We both worked in a restaurant as part-timers. He was the cleaner and I was the washer-up. Round about March of 1981, we found we'd got about 40 songs, so we picked 18 of them and sent them to Sounds magazine, who said they were really good. We said anyone who wanted a copy had to send a blank tape or 50 pence (about a dollar). This tape was called Blow Away Your Troubles. It was in flawed mono with dropouts and hiss... but very good fun.
"Lots of people sent in for the tape, so we kind of came into existence by default really," admits Newell. "At this point we had to think of a name. We called ourselves the Soft Humans for about a month before we became the Cleaners From Venus (we nearly chose the Brotherhood of Lizards and the Peach Wellingtons). We chose that name partly because we were 'cleaners,' partly because it rhymed and was silly (we'd hate to come on too serious), and the 'Venus' thing. Lol and I were brought up on sixties TV as kids and still had a Twilight Zone idea of aliens being green with special powers, etc. It's sort of a hangover from acid/deviant/comic book humor."
Though early recording sessions were erratically disorganized if not successful, the Cleaners persevered. Finally, as the direct result of pent-up creative frustration, Newell dumped both the "mud-cooled" recorder and the interfering girlfriend. He picks up the narration: "I worked three months day and night in the restaurant to afford the portastudio. I had a vision. I wanted the Cleaners to make a stereo cassette which would be like a proper LP; good songs, well recorded. I knew it would be tough, but I had to do it. Lol and I were living in the same house now. As we began working on it, I became obsessed, I'd stay in all weekend. I'd rush home from work to the portastudio. The cheap echo unit, homemade bass and crummy speakers would all be laid out messing up the dining room. Other people who lived in the house had to put up with eating their meals while I got on with this obsession."
In his efforts to become more proficient as an engineer, Newell gave himself a crash course in recording techniques. "I read everything I could about four-track recording and listened to Shadow Morton records, Shangri-Las, etc. I wouldn't even go to the pub. I'd send Annabel or Lol out to get me a couple of beers while I hunched maniacally over the mountain of cheap gear like a low budget Spector. But by March 1982, I had my Rolls-Royce amongst cassettes. We called it On Any Normal Monday. I sent it to everybody except record companies. Loads of people bought it. I'm still really proud of it even though I can see its faults now," Newell reflects.
In the next few years there would be more tapes (Midnight Cleaners, In The Golden Autumn, the aforementioned Under Wartime Conditions, plus solo projects Two For The Winter (a cassette single) and Songs For A Fallow Land), as well as a key personnel change. Though they had used guest musicians on occasion, the Cleaners were essentially a duo. Exit Elliot: "Lol had moved to the West Country to be with his girlfriend," recalls Newell. "I'd more or less given up the idea of him being a Cleaner again." Enter Giles Smith, a University student and keyboard player nearly a generation Newell's junior. "Giles came around to my house in the summer of '85 with some songs he'd written. He wanted me to help record them. We'd worked on various sessions before and admired each other's work. At this point I said, 'How would you like to join the Cleaners?' Of course he kneed me in the crackers and told me to piss off, but later relented when I told him there might be some money involved. I was surprised to find that the first live rock band he'd ever seen had been the Mighty Plod all those years ago when he was 12 years old. It made me feel quite old really. We like to think of ourselves as the best father and son team in the business," jokes Newell.
Living With Victoria Grey was their first project together. By this time, they'd been picked up for distribution stateside by Green Light (a small independent tape distributor in Cleveland) and were beginning to generate a small but avid cult following in America. Still, Newell was reluctant to sign with any organized music-related company. "We were offered contracts by at least two major companies, but I was fed up with the music industry. I'd been reading a lot of anarchist literature and was sick of being ripped off," he offers. "I wanted to try a new way without 'big daddy music biz' getting in the way, so I simply released tapes and didn't bother to talk to anybody in the business. If asked, I simply used to say, "what if they started a record company and nobody signed?'"
With a professional sound and fully realized presentation that few cassette-only releases attain, Victoria Grey was unquestionably the band's finest effort to date. Featuring stellar two and three part harmony, the highlights ranged from the lovely, acoustic McCartneyesque rocker "Clara Bow," the soaring a cappella voices of the affectionate Beach Boys tribute (or parody?) "Pearl," credible blue-eyed soul, and the thundering title cut, which is as good as anthemic British pop got in the mid-'80s. While the infectious melodies pointed their sensibilities firmly towards a pop-rock direction, lyrically the songs suggested something weirder, with odd meditations on pop culture icons, a curious nostalgic longing and a vague dread of the present. A few cuts with thickly-textured, droning guitar give vent to the Cleaners' darker side, expressed most poignantly in the melancholy, acoustic reprise of the title track that closes the tape. The Monty Python-like banter between songs adds to the curious charm of the work.
Finally relenting in the quest for a larger audience, Newell and Giles signed to Ammunition Communications shortly after the release of Victoria Grey. Their debut was the album Going To England, a resequenced, remixed collection of many of the tracks from their previous tape and other originals. "Ilya Kuryakin Looked At Me," with guest guitarist Captain Sensible, was an immediate underground favorite with its ringing Beatle-styled guitar (as well as direct Beatle references), fine piano work by Smith, and cool tongue-in-cheek lyrics by Newell. "The Man From U.N.C.L.E. was just something I watched on TV as a kid in the sixties," claims Newell. "I don't think of it as particularly special, but Ilya Kuryakin (David McCallum) was a pin-up with the girls at my school and I wasn't and desperately wanted to be, so I sort of alternately hated and admired him."
"It's the first record the Cleaners have released in England, and we think it's pretty spiffing, excited, and slightly flawed in places, like a good debut album should be," says a proud Giles Smith. "If it has a sixties feel, then this has more to do with our fondness for certain kinds of melody than with any wish on our part to resurrect those years. It strikes me that the sixties was in many ways a hideous decade, all those bombed out zombies wandering around trying to levitate buildings and imagining they were on to something significant."
States Newell in direct contrast, "I'm a bit of an old hippie, really... there are far worse things to be. No, we're not psychedelic revivalists, we're modern English pop musicians with certain a sixties influence, yes. Bit it was, after all, only our heritage and the soundtrack to our childhoods. The Cleaners are trying to forge a new 'organic' sort of pop based on real songs. Sometimes I jokingly compare it to the revolution that's taking place in the food industry where people want food without additives, and plenty of roughage!"
"For the most part, the songs on the LP are little vignettes of Englands of the past; sixties England, Victorian England, Edwardian England, along with a couple of swipes at the England of the present," adds Smith. "They're set to tunes we feel comfortable with. We like to think they're tunes you can whistle, and if I ever hear a postman whistling one of our songs then I know we'll have cracked it."
Though they're essentially a recording project, the reclusive Newell has been prodded of late into getting together a "live Cleaners" - which includes Newell, Smith, bassist Peter Nice (who played on the LP), and drummer Ichiro Tatsuhara - for some gigs in small English clubs. "Oh, sure, I like performing, but 90% of it is hanging around, and that's what causes the stress. We think that if you get on an album-tour-album-tour syndrome, you get burnt out very quickly. This industry sees you as a short-term, high-yield investment. I would like to be writing music when I'm 60 or older. Therefore, we won't be touring at all and won't be doing gigs very often. I'm mentally fragile and have a tendency to work myself to a frazzle and not realize it till it's too late. I think the time is better spent in the studio."
An always opinionated Newell, though content with the band's progress, has some harsh words for the music business at large. "The music biz is full of people who shouldn't have anything to do with music. If the state of music is poor at the moment, it is almost entirely the fault of the industry. There's too much waste of resources. We've never been so rich in technology and so artistically impoverished. What's the use of all this new gear if no one's got any ideas? We ought to go back to writing songs, then start using the gear."
Just to keep things balanced through this newfound success, Newell has kept his day job part time. "I don't really have to work anymore with the records bringing in a little bit of money now, but I think working keeps me in touch. I've got a part-time gardening round. To this day, I can be seen with a trailer full of tools that I tow behind me as I go to cut this lawn or dig this flowerbed or whatnot. People in the village know I'm sort of a pop star 'cause they read about me in the mags or sometimes hear me on the radio. But they've long since given up asking why I do anything. They just think I'm a bit mad. I must admit it is a bit strange when one day I might be doing a TV or radio thing in London and the next day I'm weeding somebody's flowerbed, but I think it's jolly good for me."
The immediate future of the Cleaners (Giles Smith is about to receive a Ph.D. in literature at Trinity College, Cambridge, but is planning to remain with the act) is set. "We're contracted for five LPs. By the time your readers read this, we'll have already nearly completed another one (working title Strict But Fair). The record company releases what they want. That was the deal, we get left alone to do the music, but they choose what to release. This obviously means I'm going to do my level best to make sure everything is good, maybe two albums a year and six singles a year which aren't necessarily on the LPs. I don't know of any other artists who write as much as we do. It's because we come from the cassette world where you do everything because you love it, and we love it."
"Writing songs is what I do," concludes Newell. "I'm getting quite good at it now and I'd happily do it for the rest of my life, even if I don't get paid. I believe that it's a tremendously powerful force for good and one of the few chinks of light in this great dark chasm we know as life."
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Originally collected by the kind folks at the now-defunct Long Play Records.