Feel free to breathe a huge sigh of relief: The Beta Band have stopped pissing about. Sure, they’re still a bunch of village idiots, but as they admit in a candid interview, they no longer feel obliged to rubbish their own work. Jim Butler blags an invite to their kung fu space party…

A typical exchange with The Beta Band No. 1

Is ‘Hot Shots Il’ an improvement on ‘The Beta Band’?

Richard: “A vast improvement.”

Robin: “A turnaround.”

Silence...

Did you realise when you were making it, it was a ‘vast’ improvement?

Robin: “Well, it was Monte Carlo or bust.”

Sunday 25 June 2000

As the sun begins to set on another Glastonbury Festival four cheeky chappies, seemingly extras from ‘Full Metal Jacket II: VC Hits Back’, are guiding 10,000 or so blissed out, stoned immaculate revellers through a ramshackle waltz of fairytale psychedelic pop-folk.

Whereas a year previously at their nadir, the band had sluggishly strummed, beaten and hammered their way through their biggest London gig to date at The National in Kilburn, now they soared, their out-there, retro-futuristic organic grooves sounding once more majestic, transcendental, verging on genius (albeit flawed - the true mark of genius).

Momentarily lifted from the weight of expectation and the despair of depression, Steve Mason, John Maclean, Robin Jones and Richard Greentree peer across the throng and allow themselves a little smile. It is, as Robin will gleefully admit nearly a year later, a “special moment.” Special for the simple reason that it’s the exact moment when The Beta Band started giving out once more and stopped giving up. The exact moment when The Beta Band stopped pissing about, realised the depth of affection with which they were held by their people and got on with the job in hand. The job of making the finest dislocated, elegiac musical funkungfusion known to three Scottish hoodlums and a sharp-witted Portsmouth ginge.

Hampstead Heath, north London, May 30, 2001

Ladies and gentlemen, we are floating in space(suits). Perched beneath a tree in England’s green and pleasant land, The Beta Band are mooching about in-between having their photos taken.

Apart from hastily erecting a homage to a wilting flower and scoffing falafel wraps and tuna nicoise salads, the band are whistling-cum-humming various pop ditties – some sane, others not so. Those overheard include Elvis’ ‘An American Trilogy’, Destiny’s Child’s ‘Survivor’ and Barry Manilow’s ‘Copacabana’.

Where sanity ends and madness begins is becoming ever more blurred. But then this is a band that have never had much truck with the commonplace.

Ostensibly a rock’n’roll band, if only in the traditional sense, much of their red-hot praise has come from dance quarters, to whom their fevered live events recall Happy Mondays’ loose-limbed funk and Primal Scream’s frenzied ‘91 spiritual vibe. They are a band whose surreal antics include looking ghetto fabulous in their various military, Egyptian, kung fu, Mexican bandito, medical and now, otherworldly spaceman garb. They are a band whom Noel Gallagher wished Oasis sounded more like.

And, most crucially, they are the band who famously sabotaged the potential success of their eagerly anticipated debut album by declaring upon its release that it was ‘fucking awful’ and ‘the worst record made this year’ (1999). A disappointment that’s still palpable and upon which they remain unrepentant.

“We kept assuming that we’d turn up at the studio and it would all unfold,” drummer, percussionist and perpetual little boy lost alike Robin offers, before half-shamefully dropping his head. “But it didn’t happen.”

“It just wasn’t very good,” states Steve bluntly, freshly shorn contours in his hair marking his barnet out as a new variation on ley lines for dope smoking wasps: “I was really disappointed. I was heartbroken because I wanted the first Beta Band album to be the most amazing... I wanted it to be as good as this album, you know.”

However, as much as the band remain down on their first album they are positively enamoured with ‘Hot Shots Il’. Following their triumphant Glastonbury performance last summer word began filtering through that far from being on the edge of jacking it all in, they were rejuvenated. That with the pressure off, they were concocting all manner of sonic mischief. And perhaps most implausibly of all, they were willing to talk about it.

Which is why on this most glorious of early summer mornings Jockey Slut finds itself in the middle of a sheltered glade in Hampstead Heath privy to The Beta Band’s mad hatters’ tea party. Us, The Beta Band and what’s left of William Hague’s bemused travelling band of barmy army ramblers, retired officers and disapproving old grannies.

So is ‘Hot Shots Il’ a better representation of what The Beta Band is about than the first album then?

“I think that was a representation of what we were about then and this is a representation of what we’re about now,” Richard offers none too helpfully. Their press officers may have been telling the truth when they said the band were willing to talk, but despite our idyllic surroundings, the birds tweeting and one of this year’s ‘must have’ albums to discuss, The Beta Band remain contrary bastards to a fault.

Indeed if Richard is not deadpan, he most definitely resembles a selection of kitchen utensils on life support.

So you still think ‘The Beta Band’ is fucking awful?

Robin: “On the scale of things it’s like a boring chapter in a book.”

‘Hot Shots Il’ is the interesting bit then?

Richard: “Yeah, it’s the chapter with the dirty stuff and all the sex.”

So was this time easier because you were working with someone (British R’n’B linchpin Colin Emmanuel) who understood you?

“This guy was just as bad,” Steve guffaws, prompting much hilarity from the others. “No, it was a lot easier because he’s (C-Swing) on the same wavelength as us, he listens to the same music as us, so we didn’t have to spend hours explaining things to him.”

How did you come to work with him?

Richard: “Miles (Leonard, boss of Regal Recordings) was working on another project with him (Jamelia), and we’d gone through lots of different producers with the feeling that none of them were going to work.”

Steve: “Plus he was looking to get away from being labelled solely an ‘R’n’B/hip hop’ producer. He just wants to be known as a ‘producer’.”

Were you concerned, though, that people, as is their wont, would automatically put two and two together and come up with five. Start screaming: ‘Oh well, this is The Beta Band gone R’n’B’?

Steve: “The sort of people who are scared of things like that are the same people who want us to do ‘Dry the Rain’ (their epic first single) for the rest of our lives. The sort of people who want us to continue down that acoustic, countryside, shambolic route.

“We always wanted to be moving forward and for me the last album was a real plateau. It just didn’t go anywhere, whereas before we’d been soaring up from the first EP onwards. Again, with this album we’ve gone up another level, so to us it sounded like an exciting combination and I believe it’s made our album really exciting and hopefully when people hear it they’ll be excited too.”

A typical exchange with The Beta Band No. 2

What would you be doing if you weren’t doing this? You said Monte Carlo or bust?

Steve: “I’ll take the bust. No, I’d be a frustrated car mechanic.”

Richard: “I don’t know, off somewhere. Somewhere remote.”

John: “I’d be the classic starving artist in some dingy bedsit somewhere scraping beans off the wall.”

Richard: “With paintings that are covered in beans.”

Robin: “I reckon I’d slow down to...”

Richard: “Monte Carlo!!”

Robin: “No, to such a state that I’d be sat there waiting for something to command me. And then I’d do it.”

Like all true originals, The Beta Band’s wilful experimentation will always make them easy targets for derision and scorn. Why stretch your mind when a drug can do it for you? Why push the envelope marked ‘new and unexplored’ when the lumpen meat and potatoes thud of anodyne house music or the graceless crack of indie can make you feel safe, warm and accepted?

However, like this year’s other mavericks – The Avalanches, Daft Punk, Basement Jaxx and The Neptunes – The Beta Band play by their own rules. More importantly, they are all genre-bashing while remaining resolutely POP. This is the essence of ‘Hot Shots II’.

A magical melange of 60s San Francisco garage noir, late-90s Shadow-like head music, epiphanal Axelrod symphonies, spooked FX that hints at Squarepusher at his most accessible and harmonies that the Beatles would have traded Yoko and Linda in for, it is a collection of classic urban hymns. Utterly modern. Utterly now.

Where the first album was muddy, dirty, full of half-realised ideas laying deep below layer upon layer of dense, muddled production, this is clean and crisp, Mason’s inimitable voice floating around like a Gregorian monk chanting the scriptures of William Burroughs. No wonder Steve – who when silent can give off the demeanour of a studious bore or appear unforgiving and rude – is so animated.

“I think it’s a really good record, because it’s a record that everyone can get interested in, if they’re open-minded enough,” he suggests.

But too many bands aren’t open-minded; in fact, they’re anything but. They’re insular, closeted and not willing to accept the flux and change that is life.

“Yeah, but the bands that you’re referring to are only playing music for them and their mates,” scoffs Richard while fiddling with his shades. “They dress in one style and play in one style. We’ve never done that; we’ve always looked elsewhere.”

What about when the Manics’ Nicky Wire said that you didn’t mean anything to anyone?

Steve: “You can only really get upset about criticism when it comes from people you respect and they inhabit a completely different world to us. It’s irrelevant.”

But he obviously thinks the Manics mean something. Is it important to mean something?

Steve: “Of course.”

Are The Beta Band important then?

Steve: “Yeah, of course. We wouldn’t be doing it if we thought it was irrelevant. I think we’re the most important band in the country.” 

So, if you’re the most important band in the country, what are you saying that people can pick up on?

Steve: “Nothing that we’d like to write down in print so that people can subscribe to some lifestyle.”

What about politics? Is it redundant?

Steve: “No, I think politics is incredibly important. But I think it’s important to focus on the job in hand. I think a lot of people like us because we’re hopefully an antidote to all the mediocrity and blandness that surrounds us.” 

Robin: “We’re just creating an option.” 

But you’re not the last gang in town?

Steve: “More the village idiots. Four village idiots.”

The last idiots in the village then?

Steve: (laughing) “Yeah.”

A typical exchange with The Beta Band No. 3

Where do you see yourselves in ten years’ time?

Richard: “Sitting here probably chatting to you about ‘Hot Shots IV’.

John: “I see myself in Hollywood.”

Richard: “Doing what?”

Robin: “Gaffer!”

John: “Hanging out on Venice Beach.” 

Richard: “Muscle Beach, more like!”

John: “Yeah, strolling down Muscle Beach. By then I should have built myself up.” 

Richard: “Nah, I can see you being a video director or a film director. (Turning and pointing at Robin) He’ll be in Broadmoor probably.” 

John: “I’ll be making short films about Robin.”

Steve Mason is calmer now. It all began to go right for the man with The Stone Roses lemon tattoo when he started kung fu.

“And the anti-depressants,” he casually concedes. “Plus being able to write some really good songs.”

So what is it you get from kung fu?

“Well, a serious beating four times a week, for a start. No, it makes things bearable and it’s complete escapism from the band.”

Being at the centre of the media storm that enveloped The Beta Band four years ago seemed to hit Steve the hardest. Being seen as the saviours of music lay heavy on the band (“That’s when Steve had his beard, the messiah,” Richard quips). Noel Gallagher, for one, was outspoken in his admiration, and the likes of Primal Scream, The Verve and The Chemical Brothers were also singing their praises. Do you believe people stole your ideas?

“I don’t think he (Noel) did, but I think he was influenced by us,” Steve responds.

Richard: “What I find most annoying is when people take our ideas and then dilute them so the essence of what’s good about it has gone.” 

And it’s a curse that’s penetrating the UK double hard, they concur.

Richard: “People have got confused about what quality is. You know, it’s like we’re out the back of a shop with a juice squeezer and a pile of fresh oranges and they’re all out the front queuing for Sunny Delight even though it’s turning all their kids orange and giving them all sorts of cancer. They’re like: ‘Sunny Delight are on the adverts, you’re not, so we’ll have that’. There’s complete confusion as to what’s quality and what’s not. And anything that is quality the media pounce on it and package it before it’s even had time to develop these days.”

It’s something the band have had first-hand experience of.

Steve: “That’s why we’ve deliberately held back till now. I mean, we got offered £80,000 when we were on our way to our first gig at the Water Rats to use ‘Dry the Rain’ in a Budweiser advert. But we knew we’d be known as that ‘Dry the Rain’ band.”

And despite doing a small Levi’s campaign in the States they aren’t allowing fiscal concerns to compromise their beliefs.

“We got offered, like, half a million dollars to do an Oldsmobile advert in America,” Steve says incredulously.

You weren’t tempted then?

“No. We wouldn’t do one for cars.”

And that’s why The Beta Band mean something. Like they say, they’re creating an option, planting ideas. Their over-arching ambition, once perceived as a hindrance, could now be their trump card. When asked what their ambition is for ‘Hot Shots II’, Steve replies: “To stay at number one for ten to 15 years.”

What, so you don’t have to make another one?

Steve: “No, to give us the money to make another one. A really good one with loads of packaging and a different free gift in every one, and we get to go to everyone’s house who’s bought it and play for them in their front room.”

It looks like it’s over to you lot then.

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