Things have turned up roses for Lush. So why are they
looking so glum?
A few years ago, the manuscript for
a novel called 'Cold Turkey
Sandwich' was sent to several
London publishers. It was the
tale of a two-boy, two-girl indie band and
their adventures in the music business.
As the story unfolded, the group learned
what life on the road was all about. There
were cramped nights spent in a tiny van.
Managers who didn't like their music.
Explosive bust-ups between the two
main songwriters. Endless parties.
Interminable hangovers. Yet one thing
drove them on: their complete and
unshakeable belief in their music.
Those who saw it thought 'Cold Turkey
Sandwich' was a rip-roaring read. And like
many first novels, it contained more than a
hint of autobiography. In fact, it was the tale
of a very real band that its author, Steve
Rippon, had played in for three years in the
late 80s. And, if you haven't guessed already,
that band was Lush ...
4th March 1996: Nomis Studios is hidden
away in a long, sprawling Victorian terrace,
far from the weekday bustle of nearby Shepherds
Bush. For the last few days, Lush have
been booked in here to rehearse for their forth-
coming UK tour to promote their third album,
'Lovelife'. The LP is set to become their most
successful to date, thanks in part to two
dazzling tasters, 'Single Girl' and
'Ladykillers', which both made the Top 30.
Spookily, a builder across the way starts
whistling 'Single Girl' as I buzz on Nomis's
anonymous entry phone. It's a sign that Lush
are reaching a whole new audience.
But the people I meet inside hardly seem
flushed or elated by their new-found success.
In fact, our lunchtime chat, which chronicles
a band forever on the up, seems to get more
downbeat as we go along. By the time we
reach 'Ladykillers', all four members are staring
glumly into space, chins propped up on
palms. Cheer up, I say, it can't be that bad.
You've got another hit!
'I know,' says singer Miki Berenyi,
ruffling her famous flamingo hair. 'But what's
annoying is that people are insinuating that
everything we did before was shit.'
'It's all sort of begrudging,' adds
handsomely-attired bassist Phil King.
'They heard 'De-Luxe' six years ago, put
on the new record, listen to the first three
notes and think, same old crap,' whines
guitarist Emma Anderson.
'And there's all these fucking stupid
Elastica comparisons,' says Miki. 'The Top
20 run-down went 'though they've been round
for years, Lush are actually younger than most
of the female Britpop bands'. We're not
younger than Justine. We never said we were.'
'They ought to say, 'the next person who
compares Lush to Elastica gets a smack in
the mouth,' counters drummer Chris Acland,
cheering up a bit.
Oh yes. Fame, fatal fame, it plays hideous
tricks on the brain. But Lush do have a point.
For years they were written off by their critics
as an ethereal shoe-gazing band, whose only
redeeming feature was their (yawn) Abba-esque
line-up. And now that they've injected
their music with some mad-cow bully beef,
the Elastica comparisons are flying round like
red-hot bomb shrapnel. But has anyone
listened to the group's old records recently? I
hadn't - and when I did, I got a surprise. Far
from the mewling shoe-y bollocks I seemed to
remember, I found instances of unfettered
punk rock. Dance tunes. Rampant lo-fi grunge.
Sun-kissed pop with Easy Listening harmonies.
Aching choral folk. Pristine electric
guitars. Pummelling new wave mosh-fodder.
Great pop music, for chrissakes!
And the more I read about the early lives
of Emma and Miki, the more it all made sense.
Sure, they went to nice schools and had
middle-class backgrounds, but the emotional
bruising they got along the way - thanks
largely to parents who never understood them
- was as deep and lasting as the hurt felt by
any other artist. Ironically for a band with
such a strong image, there's very little that's
cosmetic about Lush. When Emma first played
Chris the track 'When I Die', written about
the death of her overbearing father, he nearly
cried. If you listen closely, you'll cry too. It's
completely crushing.
Lush matter, and it's about time we
realised it.
Back in Nomis, Emma Anderson - quiet
but forceful, and prone to pulling you up with
a matronly 'Do you mind!' - is outlining the
band's early years. They go a long way to-
wards explaining why Lush's music is so
exquisitely tortured. The daughter of an army
officer turned Arctic explorer, Emma was
brought up in the stem surroundings of a
gentleman's club in Piccadilly, which her
father ran after he retired. Following spells at
several private girls' schools ('schools for girls'
privates!', shouts Chris), including an
austere boarder in Littlehampton, she ended
up taking her 'O'-Levels at the exclusive
Queen's College in Harley Street. Because it
was a fairly posh school (Michael Heseltine's
daughter was there at the time), Emma's
parents invented a double-barrelled name for
her: Emma Elersley-Anderson.
It was at Queen's that she met Miki
Berenyi, who'd also spent her childhood being
pushed from pillar to post. Her previous school
had been a Ladbroke Grove comprehensive,
at which she was badly beaten up on her first
day - apparently for jumping a queue for the
tuck shop. Miki's father was an exiled
Hungarian journalist, who'd met her Japanese
mother at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, where
he'd been posted as a sports correspondent.
They married and moved to London, where
Miki was born a year later. When she was
four, her parents split up. Eventually, her
mother remarried and moved to America, leaving
Miki to an unhappy teenage life in
Willesden, in the care of her bullying and
neurotic Hungarian grandmother ('She was
born in Transylvania. Which figures.'). At 14,
Miki couldn't take much more, and suffered a
'sort of nervous breakdown'. It was around
this time she took to getting rat-arsed every
night on cheap vodka.
When their paths crossed at Queen's, Miki
and Emma found they had something else in
common besides their unsettled backgrounds:
music. To begin with, Duran Duran were
favourites, but their tastes quickly shifted
towards Goth, and before long they were soaking
up the maudlin sounds of Rubella Ballet,
Play Dead and Bauhaus. Gig-going became
their main pastime. During their 'A' Levels,
they published their own fanzine, the now
near-legendary 'Alphabet Soup', which was
full of teenage bile and a lot of swear words,
but not much else. Both were now playing
guitar, but not well enough to form a band.
In autumn 1986, aged 18, Emma and Miki
enrolled on different English Literature
degree courses, with Emma heading off to Ealing
College (now Thames Valley University) and
Miki to North London Poly. In her first year,
Emma hitched up with the Rover Girls, an
otherwise all-male covers band who got as far
as recording a demo with Kevin Shields from
My Bloody Valentine - Emma's boyfriend at
the time. Wayne Morris at Lazy Records heard
the tracks, and offered to put a single out.
'Nothing came of it,' says Emma, who played
bass then. 'He wanted to change us, and said
we ought to wear this or that. He wanted to
market us as ... well, it doesn't matter who,
but the thing was we weren't a serious band.
I never wrote anything. It was Elvis covers.'
Meanwhile, Miki was adding primitive
guitar to rockabilly garage band the Bugs, and
even accompanied them on a European tour
to promote their August 1987 album,
'Darkside' (which she didn't actually play on).
Around this time, Miki and Emma began
hatching a plan for their own band, initially
called the Baby Machines. Recruiting two of
Miki's classmates, singer Meriel Barham and
Kendal-born drummer Chris Acland (then
Miki's paramour), they began rehearsing in
Miki's bedroom. After a few weeks, they
realised they needed a proper bassist, and
approached another student, Steve Rippon,
who was five years older than the others and
originally from Bracknell. 'I was in their class
as well,' recalls Steve, phoning from Ireland.
'I was sitting in the college canteen one day,
and they sidled up to me, really embarrassed.
They said can you play bass? I said, no. They
said, great, can you learn in six weeks?
'I went down to an audition at this place
behind the Holloway Road,' he continues.
'They were possibly the worst group I'd ever
seen in my life. It was an absolute cacophony.
The songs were really simple and had titles
like 'Female Hybrid', 'See-Saw' and 'He's A
Bastard'. I thought, yeah, I can play bass to
this.'
The urgency to recruit Steve was because
of an impending gig at the Camden Falcon on
6th March 1988, supporting the Rosehips. In
the event, the night passed as smoothly as
could be expected, and the band branched out
to play other venues on the London toilet
circuit. They even supported Ted Harris from
'Playschool' at Ealing College. After they cut
a four-song demo, internal tensions bubbled
over and Meriel was given the push. 'She just
wasn't interested,' sneers Emma. 'We'd
organise all these gigs and she couldn't play
them because her boyfriend was going away
the next day or whatever. He came first. But
she also felt uncomfortable playing guitar.'
Meriel went on to join fellow 4AD shoe-gazers,
the Pale Saints.
Over the next year or so, Lush kept plugging
away, borrowing equipment to play their
abstruse indie-pop to largely indifferent
student audiences. Emma took a year off college
to work for Jeff Barrett, who was then doing
press for Creation and Factory. He also booked
gigs at the Falcon, and whenever a band pulled
out of a gig, Lush would get the call to fill the
gap. One night, they were added to a bill
featuring the Senseless Things, Snuff and
Perfect Daze. A 'Melody Maker' correspondent
in the audience was totally gob-smacked
by their primitive pop, and filed a review
saying they were going to be bigger than the
Middle East. At the next gig, 12 A&R men
turned up to see them. Only one ever called
them back.
Undeterred, Lush sent a new demo tape
off to 4AD, One Little Indian, Rough Trade
and Mute, before heading off on a mini-tour
with House Of Love in May 1989. The band
had their final exams the following week. 'We
had to revise in the back of the van,' laughs
Chris. 'It used to belong to British Telecom,
and had a wet mattress in the back. We got
stopped by the police coming back from
Newcastle one night. They got us all out of the
van. They claimed we were doing 90. If it had
gone that fast, the fucking thing would've
exploded.'
4AD supremo Ivo attended the Colchester
gig and, liking what he saw, agreed to finance
some more demos - against the advice of his
colleague, Howard Gough, who 'thought they
were shit'. Meanwhile, Miki, Chris and Steve
signed up on the Enterprise Allowance Scheme
('£340 a week and you got your housing benefit
paid,' points out Chris), while Emma returned
to finish her college course. However, the EAS
soon become irrelevant when, in September
1989, Ivo opted to release six Lush demos as a
mini-LP, 'Scar'. It was an inspired move. Kicking
off with the jagged, lo-fi punk of 'Baby
Talk', it took in a range of different moods,
from the whispering choral pop of 'Scarlet' to
the aptly-named and deliberately-mispelled
'Etheriel'. In one fell swoop, Lush had
invented shoe-gazing - a downbeat, effects-
heavy re-reading of '60s pop and American
garage punk. Or maybe they hadn't ...
'All that came later,' says Emma,
dismissively, picking at a Nomis salad
sandwich.
'I didn't think we were similar to those
other bands like Ride and Chapterhouse,' says
Miki.
'It had a lot to do with Howard Gough,'
grunts Chris, through a mouthful of egg and
chips. 'He decided he did like us after all and
became our manager. Then he signed up
Chapterhouse. He was the Larry Parnes of
Shoe-y!'
The success of 'Scar' led Lush to sign a
five-album deal with 4AD. Tours with the
Darling Buds and Loop followed, as did
another release, the 'Mad Love' EP,
which included a brisker reworking of
'Thoughtforms', and saw the band
experimenting with complex, folky harmonies on
the trippy 'De-Luxe'. The single was produced
by the Cocteau Twins' Robin Guthrie, who
left his mark on the layers of textured guitars
and vocals. 'What people still think of as the
Lush sound is really Robin's interpretation of
our songs,' says Miki. 'But we went along
with it at the time.'
Perhaps put off by Lush's esoteric veils of
noise, the weeklies kept their distance.
However, come the autumn, the group had become
too big to ignore. After more touring to pro-
mote another single, 'Sweetness & Light', the
band landed the cover of the 'Melody Maker'.
The feature centred on the group's first trip to
North America, where the material on their
first three records had been compiled onto an
album, 'Gala', also released in the UK as a
luxuriously-packaged limited edition. In
Canada, they went ice-skating and got the
red-carpet treatment at one radio station
which mistakenly thought they were hosting
Rush. Then it was off to Japan, before returning
to the States to play a joint-headlining
tour with Ride. 'That was the best tour for
actually seeing America,' says Miki. 'We were
enjoying it for what it was. Ride were much
bigger than us back home, so it seemed odd
going on after them.'
Between July and October 1991, the band
worked on their debut album, 'Spooky', at
September Sound Studios. Guthrie was once
again in the producer's chair. As the sessions
progressed, he became increasingly taken with
the idea of swamping the mix with swirling,
phased guitars. Chris was also persuaded,
perhaps against his better judgement, to
forsake his normal drum-kit for a set of Simmons
electronic pads, and to play to a click-track.
The summer of '91 was the golden age of
baggy, and Lush became the most visible part
of the Scene That Celebrates Itself - the indie
drinking clique which hung out in Camden
and the Syndrome club on Oxford Street. The
rigging didn't stop there. Few album, single or
book launches went by without at least one
band member turning up to neck a few free
bottles of Bud. In a word, Lush got
themselves a band [should this be 'bad'? -phil]
name. 'Yeah,' says Chris.
'Us and Blur.'
Miki and Chris were big Tottenham fans,
and the Lillies' 3-1 trouncing of local. rivals
Arsenal in the FA Cup semi-finals pleased
them no end. So much so, that they appeared
on a track called 'And David Seaman Will Be
Very Disappointed About That', which was
pressed up on flexidisc and given away with
issue 24 of 'The Spur' fanzine. Credited to the
Lillies, the song was written by Simon from
the Cocteau Twins and also featured
members of Moose. The lyrics? 'Three-one,
three-one, three-one!' All the way through ...
Following a deliciously askew taster single
- the dancey 'Nothing Natural' (backed by a
cover of Dennis Wilson's 'Fallin' In Love') -
and more tours, the album finally appeared in
February 1992. It divided the critics. Guthrie
had succeeded in making the music a wash of
dreamy melodies and guitars', but the clinical
sound seemed to suck out all of Lush's live
bluster. Yet in 1996, it sounds strangely
refreshing, redolent of a much-missed, polite
'80s indie sound, and overdue confirmation that
a record doesn't need to rock to be tough. There's
a lovely, skewed beauty about tracks like
'Monochrome', and a pure pop lilt to 'For Love',
but 'Spooky' is most startling for being a
gonzoid riff-free area. Play it again and see ...
Around this time, Lush found themselves
short of a bassist. During the final mixing of
the album, Steve Rippon had left to travel the
world with his girlfriend. Emma has no doubts
as to why: 'He didn't like being away from
home. We'd toured for a whole year, and I think
the prospect of being away from his girlfriend
was too much.'
Miki agrees: 'I remember Howard told him
he'd be on tour for the best part of a year. His
face drained of all its colour. You could see him
thinking, I'm not fucking doing that.'
'We were just friends, really,' adds Chris.
'He wasn't really a bass player. Looking at his
record collection, it probably wasn't really his
sort of music anyway.'
Rippon, who now works for a computer firm
in Dublin, admits that the idea of touring did
get him down, but also hints at another reason
for leaving. 'I wanted to write more of my own
stuff, but there was no sign that they were
willing to play it. In the early days we rehearsed
two of my songs, 'Under Dreaming
Spires' and 'Alice Springs Eternal'. They said
they didn't fit in. I recorded seven tracks with
our soundman, Pete Bartlett, with a hope they
could use them on B-sides. It didn't work out.
It wasn't really a bone of contention. In my
mind it was, but I didn't cause any arguments.'
The following year, Rippon wrote 'Cold
Turkey Sandwich' about his experiences. It has
yet to be published...
In December 1991, Lush found a replacement
bassist, Phil King, a picture-researcher
and occasional reviewer for 'NME', and also
veteran of loads of '80s indie acts, including
Alan McGee's Biff Bang Pow, the Servants,
Hangman's Daughter and C.C. Rider. Evidently
a case of have bass, will travel.
After 'For Love' was lifted as single, and
another UK. tour, Lush disappeared for two-
and-a-half years. Or it least it seemed like that
to their British audience. The chief reason was
that their management and record company
were keen to consolidate the inroads they'd
made on the lucrative American and Japanese
markets. And that meant touring, touring and
more touring.
'Some of the European tours were pretty
bad,' sighs Miki. 'Seven weeks, with six days
on and a day off on Sunday. You wouldn't have
a hotel, and you'd be sleeping on the bus in a
lay-by in Avignon, and it would be raining
outside. There weren't any shops open and all you
get was ice-cream, when it was fucking
freezing anyway! We didn't have hotel for the
first two weeks. You'd be in Hamburg having
to go into the station for a piss.'
'It was horrible,' Emma agrees. 'I remember
showering at the venue in Frankfurt. All
the local crew were just the other side of this
flimsy curtain.'
'We'd turn up and they'd only be 120 people
in these huge echoing halls,' says Miki. 'We'd
say to the promoter, what went wrong? And
they say, no, this is really good for here! You'd
think, what?! The Bugs tour was like that, but
it was OK because you were just excited to be
there. But when you've sold quite a few records,
you have different expectations.'
That summer, the band set off on the
Lollapolooza tour - a travelling Stateside rock
festival that draws huge audiences. Lush played
near the bottom of a bill including Red Hot
Chili Peppers, Ministry, Pearl Jam, Ice Cube
and Soundgarden. The schedule was designed
to keep the bands alive and relaxed, but the
rock'n'roll lifestyle still took its toll. 'There was
a party in New Orleans,' Emma explains. 'I
got a bit out of it, and smashed a window with
my hand. I thought, that felt good, so I did it
again. There was a lot of blood. I went to
hospital, and was so out of it, I couldn't bear to
wait. I ran out into the street without any
shoes or socks on, and hailed what I thought
was a cab. It was just some bloke in a van.'
'I got hammered on tequila,' says Miki, not
to be outdone. 'Ministry were playing and I
decided to stage-dive into the audience.
Everyone got out of the way. The crowd then picked
me up. I was unconscious and covered in blood.
People were crying. They thought I was dead.'
'It was like a scene from 'Carrie',' laughs
Phil.
After Lollapolooza, it was off to Japan and
Australia, before the band finally came off the
road in early 1993. By the following June they'd
demoed all the songs to their follow-up to
'Spooky', but had trouble getting a producer.
Their first choice, Sugar's Bob Mould, was too
busy, while they toyed with the idea of getting
in Led Zepp's John Paul Jones, before deciding
he wasn't suitable. In the end, they settled for
Mike Hedges, known for his work with the
Banshees and the Cure. After performing at
the ICA in Pall Mall as part of 4AD's week-
long '13-Year Itch' celebration (they also
appeared on a rare promo album of exclusive
4AD tracks of the same name), and supporting
Rage Against The Machine at Brixton Academy,
they ensconced themselves in Rockfield
Studios in Wales. However, Emma still found
time to play guitar on the Drum Club's
'Everything Is Now' album - the band reciprocated
by putting out a promo featuring remixes of
'Stray' - while Chris sat in with Moose for
some French dates. They also issued a flexidisc
via their fan club, featuring a version of Jackie's
'Rupert The Bear'.
The new album, 'Split', was completed by
December, but wasn't issued until June 1994.
To promote it, someone had the idea of releasing
two different singles on the same day. For
a band that had been out of the public gaze for
over two years, it was tantamount to commercial
suicide - especially since 'Hypocrite'
wasn't a particularly strong track, while
'Desire Lines' was the kind of languid and ethereal
song that Lush were trying to disassociate
themselves from. Emma explains the management's
rationale: 'They thought it was going to
go mad for us in America, so the album was
pushed aside here. Two singles, six gigs and
then it came out. We did a shitty promo tour of
the States instead.'
In the UK, 'Split' got a lukewarm reception
- which it didn't really deserve. Lush's
experiences on the Lollapolooza tour hadn't
exactly forged them into a hard-assed rock
outfit, but it had toughened up their sound. Some
of the tracks on the album, like the full-on
choral punk of 'Blackout' and terse, scary blaze
of 'The Invisible Man', were visceral and exciting
indie, while 'Undertow' and 'When I Die'
had the same languid, jarring strangeness as
Blur's 'Sing'. 'Lovelife' is probably their finest
moment ever. 'Split' was never a pop album,
but it was bloody accomplished stuff. 4AD
even paid to have a black cab sprayed with
the artwork.
Sadly, America wasn't convinced, though
the album still picked up some valuable
airplay. Much to the band's dismay, plans for
another UK single and tour in the autumn
were shelved, as was a trip to Japan. It was
suggested they forget about 'Split', and start
work on a fresh album. Lush were incensed,
Something had to give - and it was manager
Howard Gough. 'We got rid of him,' says
Emma. 'And things started looking up.'
'He let us down on a very personal level,'
rues Miki. 'We put so much into 'Split', we
really did. And then for someone to tell you
it's not good enough, and saying you should
write songs like Elastica or the Cranberries is
fucking infuriating.'
'Yeah,' spits Emma. 'It was like, Miki,
why don't you stop playing guitar then you
can dance like Dolores. They lost faith. It
scared me that you could put so much into
something... especially when you feel all the
support you had before falling away from you.'
For Lush, 'Split' was a turning point,
echoing the kind of make-or-break period Blur
had endured after 'Popscene' two years earlier.
And like Blur, when the going got tough,
Lush got going. After parting with Gough -
who now runs Laurel Records, home to Menswear
- the band began demoing new material.
It was harder, brighter, with Emma and Miki
dropping their voices down a register, to give
the lyrics added oomph. The swathes of
melancholy guitar went, as did many of their
trademark harmonies. Jarvis Cocker duetted
with Miki on the Jacques Brel-inspired Parisian
knees-up of 'Ciao!'. The lyrical immediacy
of their very earliest songs made a comeback:
eight years down the line, the sentiments of
'He's A Bastard' had been revived for
'Ladykillers'. Lush had grown teeth.
The album was recorded in London last
summer, and mixed that autumn in Boston,
by Hole/Radiohead producers Sean Slade and
Paul Kolderie. The pure punk-pop of 'Single
Girl' was originally planned as a B-side, but
it was eventually chosen as a first single. On
its release in January, it was A-listed by
Radio 1, and following several airings on TV
- including a memorable performance on 'The
White Room' - it shimmied into the Top 20.
Hot on its heels came a follow-up, 'Lady Killers',
a brazen and joyous indie party-popper,
avec soupcon d'Elastica (hopefully Acland can't
read French). 'Lovelife', the album, sky-rocketed
into the charts in late March,
triumphantly working the ethereal elements of old
with a new-found pop sensibility. And
although a promo of 'Ciao!' has been
dispatched to radio stations across the land,
the next single is scheduled to be the bouncy,
Lemonheadsy tune, '500'. Hurrah!
So here we are, hanging out in, er,
Shepherds Bush, with all-day breakfasts and
(cold turkey) sandwiches duly scoffed, and
Lush looking all upset about the fact they're
bona fide pop stars whose songs are sung by
scaffolders. Behind the cheery facade, Lush
are a serious lot, and you can't help feeling
that they feel compromised by their success.
Perhaps their next album will be deliberately
difficult, maybe a bit more honest. Life's
getting tough for the middle-classes.
Special thanks to Lush, Steve Rippon, Dave
Wilson (for help with prices and illustrations),
Jo Brooks, and Tony Morley at 4AD.
'If you walked in now I wouldn't start,
I wouldn't frown,
And if you just appeared I wouldn't cry,
Or think it weird,
Cause you are still around,
You're in the air, you're in the ground,
And you can't go away,
I'm afraid you're here to stay...
Curse the English day for what it forces us to say,
Banish all the pain,
Cause when I die, I'll see you again.'