Urusei Yatsura are having a tour of mixed fortunes. Elaine [bass], Fergus [guitar / vox] and Ian [drums] (Graham [guitar / hammond / vox] has mysteriously vanished) are, on the one hand, very happy to be on tour with a band they respect both musically and intellectually (Super Furry Animals please stand up) but on the other are getting tired of playing to hoardes of bemused Animal-lovers.
| “It’s weird,” Ian confesses, “in Ipswich we played to about 500 people and not one of them even batted an eyelid. They were just stood there like sheep staring at the stage. That’s a really unnerving experience ‘cos we’re not really used to it. Normally we’re headlining a 200-capacity place and everyone goes fucking mental.” |
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‘Fucking mental’ is perhaps not a phrase one would immediately associate with these mild-mannered Scots, but beneath the plastic ray-guns and comic kitch lies a ferocious manifesto to subvert the course of British music as we near the 21st century. Fergus divulges all: “...fucked up pop-songs, basically. We try and write really catchy pop-songs and then put really horrible noise on top of it. A lot of people don’t get it”. Ah yes, but the masses are arse, clearly. “We get lots of people coming and saying they’ve come to the gig just to see us,” says Ian, “but then you get people coming up and saying ‘What’s your name again? You were fucking shite’. Occasionally, you get, like, five guys at the front totally avidly jumping around in their own little mosh-pit and everyone else is, like, ‘er...’ It’s pretty bizarre”.
The freak shall inherit the earth, of course, but until that time, do Urusei Yatsura have any plans to become as big as the comic of the same name is in Japan and sell their souls in a Faustian manner to The Man and his money? “We’ve had lots of offers...We’ve never really felt the need. But we’ve not closed our minds to it in the future...” |
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So, five years from now, lifts will whir to the sounds of ‘Phasers on Stun’, shoppers will purchase fruit in vast quantities humming ‘Death 2 Everyone’ and five-year-olds will dance round their living rooms in a ridiculous manner to ‘Pow R Ball’. Probably. On a more realistic note, do the Yats’ have more er, immediate ways of preparing the general public for eventual world domination? “We’ve got a tape of our new album but we haven’t had the guts to listen to it yet,” says Elaine “We’ll be playing a couple tonight. It’s kind of weird because you’re subjected to constant noise so much, you don’t want to listen to music that much when you’re on tour”.
So how do they relax after the stresses and strains that any constant dash round England would entail? Ian enthuses, “I’ve started a great book called ‘Ridley Walker’ by Thomas Holburn. It’s totally brilliant. It’s set in the post-Apocalypse future in the south of England after the bombs have gone off. It’s written in a kind of Trainspotting way, with dialect and stuff”. |
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So there you have it; Urusei Yatsura, not just a pretty name. But how do they feel about being marked down as just another band from Scotland, especially now the divide between Scotland and England has, politically at least, been further cemented? Says Ian, “It’s like they [the music press] tried to set up a scene or a movement that involved all the Scottish bands, but the bands are just so different that it’s basically impossible....”
He has a point. Can the likes of Bis, Mogwai, The Delgados and Arab Strap and no doubt countless others really be shut away in a box marked ‘Glasgow - Mid- to-Late-90s’? If Urusei Yatsura and their singularly twisted and loud take on pop is anything to go by, not unless the box is soundproofed. |
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Urusei Yatsura were talking to Nina and Dave, in November 1997.