Average Jesus
I had wanted to tell a horror story about club land for years. The dance music scene that I had inhabited for most of the 90's had an ecstasy fuelled positive sheen of optimism and goodness that often belied dark and disturbing truths. No matter the volume of happy pills being consumed this was still the gangster-stained world of drugs and prostitution that night life had always been and always will be. Not only that, but all those thrills and pills had a schizo-paranoiac flip-side to them. I've seen DJs believe they have become gods - people little more than kids hiding from "them" from "there". A friend of mine used to run an infamous club in a historically blood soaked area of South London where, when he knew the crowd were at their most vulnerable, would switch the lights off - and lock the doors. Also my favourite hip-hop has always been the darkest storytelling. Brutal and honest re-enactments of crimes and horror in the ghetto.
I started the piece with only this general angle in mind - the plan being to create a simple but effective backing track that a vocalist could develop a storyline over. I employed the darkest tricks I'd picked up in Techno, Drum n Bass, Acid and Hip-hop, each sound referencing some scary tune in a damp basement on a long regretted night of raving. I then had to find my vocalist and storyteller.
There were a number of good leads I followed up in the hip-hop world and met some wonderful people, but within the culturally enforced credo of optimism, my world of horror was just too much. The Techno boys also got scared off - fluffy-land simply refused to be disturbed. I eventually widened the net as far as great story-tellers rather than disco divas - and found my Average Jesus.
I had worked with Pete Hope as far back as '86 on what was my first album Dry Hip Rotation, recently re-released after a 23-year break. His gravel pit deep voice and fearless grasp of the most uncompromising stories would be perfect. But after years of banging his head (often literally) against the clique-ish and insubstantial world of a provincial music scene, he had turned his back on the business and moved to the Isle of Harris to create from a pile of inauspicious stones the award winning Black Sheep House. Nevertheless I sent him the tune with the same simple directions I had given those before him - tell me a horror story set in clubland. A few weeks later I got a CD from Pete which made the hairs on the back of my neck stand. He had created a world and a character so convincing that I felt I knew this cannibal personally. Pete's years on the road as a singer, waiting around in darkened backstage areas talking to the undead who live there, lend his story and performance an unassailable authenticity. You can feel his breath on your face as he shouts into your ear to be heard above the techno din. You can see the world-weary distain on his face for the ravers in "punterland" - the well-rehearsed arrogance afforded him by the Access All Areas pass - his need to make friends in the ephemeral world he inhabits. From here it's no great leap to the freezers, the knives and the murder.
All that was left for me was to reshape the music to the narrative - to amplify the fear and make the setting more complete. I re-recorded sections of the tune through a PA at a rave in Germany and sourced the finest distortions and sharpest acid-lines.
The result is a rich but untold story that a whole generation of ravers will recognise but have never had the courage to face.
Wicked - truly so.
