Armed with only the dubious information that Steve Rawlings had been hailed as the 'next musical messiah', I arrived at Arista's London offices to interview the label's latest proteges - Danse Society.
Fortunately due to a misunderstanding between the record company and the band over the venue for the interview, vocalist Steve Rawlings and bassist Tim Wright arrived late. I say fortunately since this gave Stella and Claire in the press office the opportunity to gen me up on the band and their inspired brand of music. In fact having listened to Danse Society I was fully prepared to meet a group of post punk dopeheads, wearing psychedelic boots, but instead Steve and Tim are about as normal as the blokes who live next door.
So who are Danse Society? Danse Society are Steve and Tim, plus Paul Gilmartin on drums, Paul Nash on guitar and Lyndon Scarfe, who I had the pleasure of meeting later, on keyboards. Originating from Barnsley in South Yorks, the five musicians first got together as a band back in 1980. "We really developed from two bands", explains Tim. "To get ourselves started off we set up our own record label called Society Records and released a 6-track mini album, we had also released some singles before that which we distributed around the radio stations, doing all our own promotion".
"Coming from Barnsley, we just weren't getting any recognition at all", continues Steve. "We had to do a lot of self promotion just to get our name about even though we had quite a strong local following amongst friends and people who just liked our music". The mini album entitled 'Seduction', was obviously a good decision since it reached No 2 in the independant charts.
"We released a mini-album to make us stand out from the rest and at that time there wasn't another mini album out, so we put 'Seduction' out as a thing on its own", Steve explains.
I asked Steve what he thought to being dubbed by music press scribes as a psychedelic band and, indeed 'the next musical messiah'. "Really I don't take it too seriously, I don't think anyone takes what is said in the music press seriously anyway" (cheers Steve - still I did say I'd try not to misquote you !) I think the psychedelic thing might have something to do with our latest single which is a better version of the Rolling Stones' '2000 Light Years From Home'. (To think I read somewhere that our fresh faced musical messiah was modest! Although in this instance I think his momentary affectation of a 'rock ego' is justifiable.) "We really just picked upon that song because we liked it as a song, not because of any psychedelic connections. That has come about since then, since journalists and big thinkers have heard it."
"No-one in particular, the punk era of 77/78 had a big influence if there is one, I suppose this sparked us off" concedes Steve. "There's such a cross section within the band, we all listen to all sorts of different music, we don't really have a specific type of music that we listen to, it could be anything from Pink Floyd to Van Halen to Echo and the Bunnymen - anything really."
I enquired who wrote all the lyrics to their songs and whether there was any particular message attached to them. Once again it was Steve who answered first.
"It's usually me and Lyndon, the keyboard player. We're not trying to put any message over to people. We believe everybody should be free to think their own thoughts and it's not for us to dictate ours to them. If we bend towards anything it might be putting thoughts into their minds, but if people want to read anything into the lyrics then they can. Most of our lyrics are simply a collection of our personal thoughts and observations" - Well I suppose I asked for that reply!?
Having done jobs of one sort or another before becoming a professional band, I asked Steve and Tim whether they saw their musical careers as a permanent thing.
"Well hopefully! We want it to be" declares Steve. "Although we had apprenticeships, we only started them because it was expected of us. In a way it wasn't permanent, just a means of financing what we wanted to do", explains Tim.
"We generally want to continue on the path we've been following, just expanding. We don't want to change ourselves to become more commercial, but we are getting stronger all the time, pulling more people to see us. People are changing their views and growing to like our music, so its a gradual process for us to get bigger. In two years time we still won't have reached the peak of our careers", Steve expounds. "In fact in two or three years time we think we will still be establishing ourselves, like the Stones for instance. We hope to be moving off to a another level and reaching different people and not just standing still."
- Well I think that we've all got the message that Danse Society see themselves in the long-term anyway?
Since I was anticipating seeing their band live at the Dominion Theatre that night, I asked the lads, now joined by late-comer Lyndon, how they would describe their stage act. I recieved the seemingly typical inexplicit response.
"Totally amazing", quips Lyndon - he of the cynical sense of humour. "We move all the time to create something really good to look at", adds Tim. "We like to use strong images", divulged Steve - "Everybody comes out in their own individual ways, and can use their own personality. It's the same off the stage, nobody is the mouthpiece for the band, we all are. We all think the same about the band so we don't mind who does the speaking for us. We want to keep it like that and not have one main spokesman".
One 'natural' spokesman continued.
P.S. The post-script to this article is written the morning after I had witnessed Danse Society live at the Dominion.
Having left the Debut offices at 9pm, I sped up to Tottenham Court Road unfortunately too late to see the band actually come out on stage. Nevertheless the wall of sound and vision that hit me as I walked into the auditorium exceeded my expectations of the 'boys next door' that I had sipped tea with that morning. True to their word, Danse Society's visual impact is strong and in places sinister. Slides are projected on two huge screens above, showing striking and often disturbing images of Egyptian-style paintings and sculptures interspersed with pictures of human turmoil and hell-like flames.
Bathed in dramatic lighting Steve is having a field day with the heavy echo that is being put out over the P.A. system. Feline-like he wends his way around the stage contorting his body to the strains of the all consuming music. Something about his stage persona provoked memories of both Marc Bolan and Jim Morrison which at times proved somewhat eerie. It also passed through my mind that if it was whisky that he was swigging throughout the set then young Steve might be poised to follow the same path as the late and great Mr. Morrison. I sincerely hope not - he seemed such a nice boy!
The imagery created by the combined visuals of the musicians, the lights, the intermittent smoke screens and the projected slides provide an excellent backcloth to Danse Society's latest album 'Heaven is Waiting'. Material from the album featured heavily in the set and I for one found it to be deliciously self-indulgent and ostentatious and at the same time both moving and inspired.
If you can't manage to catch Danse Society live, (after the UK tour they are scheduled to tour Europe, the States and Japan) then I recommend purchasing the album to enable you to judge for yourselves.
Well for a person who only 24 hours ago knew precious little about the band, save their name I suppose I can be ticked off as having been successfully converted. My thanks to Steve, Tim and Lyndon plus Claire and Stella at Arista for the education
- oh and the wine and sarnies!