My Brilliant Year: Madness's Chas Smash

6:00 AM GMT 02/12/2009

MADNESS HAVE SCALED MOJO's 50 Best Albums Of The 2009 list, and London concept suite The Liberty Of Norton Folgate has prompted comparisons with Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Chas Smash, Madness' shamanistic vibe controller, looks back on the Nutty Boys' reunion and rejuvenation in 2009. Surely it's worth all those "personal differences'?

The Liberty Of Norton Folgate is one of MOJO's albums of the year. Do you feel like you're getting the last laugh on the naysayers?
Of course, there's no doubt about that, absolutely! I suppose I'd thought about it being our Sgt Pepper's, which is a bit cheeky, but there you go. The nature of the album is based around London and the history of London. There's an immigrant romantic aspect to it, and also a historical aspect...

It does seem to cross over into different epochs.
That's because things don't really change. A man's needs are the same, essentially, and fears. I picked up A Tale Of Two Cities the other day, and on the second f___ing page, in about the third paragraph, he goes on about the French printing paper money and spending it, the fact that the mayor of London's been held up by highwaymen, and that crime and prostitution is on streets and virtually accepted. And you think, F___ me, nothing at all's changed, absolutely nothing!

The band are the original seven again, unlike 2005's The Dangermen Sessions...
It's totally the sum of its parts. And that works on a lot of levels. Everything does sound like Madness when you bring it to the band, and maybe someone in the band hasn't written so many songs, but it doesn't really matter 'cause they're an integral part of the whole piece, and the whole piece becomes a life journey rather than a musical career in a way. Being in the band is always about relationships, which has its pluses and minuses. I mean, it's f___ing exhausting at times, let me tell you, and completely bonkers, but the idiosyncrasies that are contained within the process of deciding why are we doing it and when are we doing it, it makes it what it is.

Something that your old chums The Specials seem to have forgotten...
I quite frankly wish that they'd resolve their differences with Jerry [Dammers], and I recommend that Jerry just goes off and writes the fucking next Specials album and then says to them, 'Look, there it is.' With Jerry it always takes so long, but everything he works on sustains. The brass intro to Free Nelson Mandela - f___ me, is that uplifting or what?

Should we expect another album anytime soon?
It's being discussed but right now we're working out our personal differences over the last project. Again and again and again and again... it's just a process that keeps the band as it is. You have to approach it cautiously, it demands integrity - it's like some shamanistic fucking ritual we have to go through! But it's not a bad one, it means well.

Interview by Ian Harrison

Posted by Ross_Bennett at 6:00 AM GMT 02/12/2009

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