Interview Steve Mason: ‘Nostalgia Is For The Weak Minded’

There comes a certain point in any artist’s career where every facet of their musical character coalesces perfectly, to make a masterwork. In Steve Mason’s case, his new record ‘Monkey Minds In The Devil’s Time’ seems to be his own personal opus.

Following on from the acclaimed introspective melancholy of 2010’s ‘Boys Outside’ it sees the former Beta Band leader delivering a concept album that brings together a quiet rage and sense of fury at the injustices of 21st century society while aligning it to some quiet beautiful music.

DIY catches up with Mason to find out a bit more about the album, the strong political underpinning the songs, his views on humanity and his severe dislike of the political establishment.

If we could go back to the start, what was the genesis for this album and how was the writing process?
It was one of the hardest records I’ve made. I think I felt that ‘Boys Outside’ was probably the best record I’ve ever made, so I kind of managed to intimidate myself which is a new one! It was a real struggle. I just didn’t think it was possible and I managed to get myself in such a mental quagmire that I was close to just walking away from it. I didn’t want to just release something for the sake of it. Whenever I make a record, sometimes you fail and sometimes you succeed, but you always want to make a record that’s better than what you’ve done before and try to keep moving forward. The genesis of it really started straight after ‘Boys Outside’, but getting to the point of actually writing these songs and putting the whole thing together in a sort of coherent way, that was all done relatively quickly. Once I started to write it was fine, it’s a process that I really enjoy. Thinking about and trying to write, though, that’s the part that you could really do without, it’s horrible.

Was there one specific theme or idea that jumped out at you and pointed the way ahead for the album?
No, not really. I mean, you could kind of say that there’s one theme holding the album together - that would be human politics. What it intrinsically means to be a human being living on planet earth at this specific time. What it means to me, and what it maybe should mean to everyone else and maybe what has been lost along the way. More importantly, what has been taken away from us without us knowing. You can’t exactly walk up to someone and say that though, because they’ll just put you in the David Icke camp, so you have to attempt to draw a picture which people will hopefully be able to relate to. Once you’ve shown them that picture and asked them to take one further step back to see how all that links in to consumer capitalism as we know it and the society that we live in, hopefully things might become a little clearer. Or at least start a dialogue. That’s the biggest idea.

Are these the sorts of ideas that you have always been trying to convey in your music but this is the first time you’ve been able to fully expressive them in one album?
Yeah, pretty much. There were bits of politics on the first Beta Band album. There was a fair amount on ‘Hot Shots II’ but it was all hidden away. Y’know, something like ‘Eclipse’ which is the last track on ‘Hot Shots II’, that’s in someway saying exactly what I’m saying now. But I guess it comes across as a quirky little Beta Band song. But it’s not really. It’s asking some pretty fundamental questions about information, withholding of information and victors’ writing the history, all these kinds of things but it’s done in a frivolous way. There’s been politics on every record I’ve made. For me I don’t ever feel that I’ve seen an improvement in the political situation. When I say the political situation, I don’t mean party politics, I mean the politics of being a human and how consumer capitalism has destroyed and affected almost everything that used to be really good. On a more fundamental human level it’s been eroding what it actually means to be a human being. The more that happens the less likely we are to be able to recognise the problem when it’s starting us in the face. That’s why a lot of people are called conspiracy theorists. It’s a kind of instant blanket to put over someone that effectively says they’re a nutter. Even George Bush after 9/11 actually said, “let us never entertain wild conspiracy theorists.” I think that’s very interesting for the president of one of the most powerful countries in the world to take time out of his day to speak about such things as conspiracy theorists. It sounds like a very odd thing to do. Why would he be so afraid of conspiracy theorists that he’d have to bring it up?

Rather than focusing on sloganeering, the album seems to represent politics as primarily a human emotion; the political is based firmly in the personal. Do you think it’s possibly to be a political person without engaging in activism and working through traditional political channels?
The short answer is yes, of course. The long answer is that I used to think I wasn’t a political person. I thought that politics was party politics. Politics has everything to do with your daily life though. It’s your relationships with your peers, friends, enemies, loved ones, work colleagues - that’s all politics. That’s really what I’m talking about. Also, how we as individuals interact with the system that’s been put in place for us and not by us. I think what’s wrong with the UK is that we’ve been slowly de-politicized. If you look at the last election it had the lowest turn out for many years. Much as I think that voting is a complete waste of time, I also think that it’s a slightly sad indictment of how disinterested the general public is in politics.
I was in London when the riots happened in summer 2011, that was around the same time of the bank bailout. In Hackney where I was, I was well aware of community centres being closed down and the fact that there’s a bit of a gang problem down there. The protest that went on was so lacking in any kind of vision or direction, which is why it became this massive raid on JD Sports. That was one of the saddest things I’ve ever seen. What was supposed to be some kind of protest or show of anger, initially about Mark Duggan and a girl who was beaten in front of the police station, became a catalyst for communities that had everything taken away from them, what little that they had. You have all these things brewing up, and what do they do? What do these capitalist consumers do? They use it as an opportunity to get some new fucking trainers!

The whole thing seemed really surreal and desperately sad watching the footage…
It was. You had local businesses being burned. Just the idea that that situation could be used to acquire yet more useless consumer goods seemed like the saddest thing in the world. What we have here is a lost generation, a generation that is very poorly educated, generally from a single parent family, has very little in the way of father figures or someone to tell them that’s wrong. Nobody cares about them. They’re people just like us, just because you see them on the news with a hood up coming out of a sport shop, they’re just like us. They’ve had a completely different life experience from me or you. It made me very angry as well.

Do you feel that there’s anything that can be done to stop that level of apathy and were you mindful of that when writing the words for this album? Did you want your words to inspire or provoke a reaction in people?
The whole point of this record is, of course; there’s a way to stop that. There’s a way to stop racism, sexism, homelessness etc. Any problem our society is facing there’s a way to stop it. In order to properly get to grips with that problem you have to take a few steps back and look at the whole thing. It’s only until we remove this system that’s in place, the monarchy and the political system and class that we have in the UK that is essentially keeping the status quo, working for the banks and the military/industrial complex and the energy companies. Baron Nathan Mayer de Rothschild said about 300 years ago: “I care not what puppet is placed upon the throne of England to rule the Empire on which the sun never sets. The man that controls Britain’s money supply controls the British Empire, and I control the British money supply.” Nothings changed. These politicians are here to keep the money flowing away from people that need it, that earn it, into a very small minority of people’s bank accounts. The greatest way to control people in a capitalist economy is through debt.



That seems to be a situation that is arguably getting worse under the current coalition government. I presume you’re not a fan of Cameron etc?
Oh, absolutely it’s getting worse. I believe they’re trying to bring it to a critical mass. It’s kind of what’s happened in Spain and what’s happening in Greece. These countries have essentially been sold by governments to the banks. Gordon Brown got rid of our gold, all the gold in America has been sold off so there’s actually nothing propping up these currencies except what’s actually in the country. What’s in the country is our properties, us. Everything that we have, that’s the infrastructure that’s been sold to the banks.
I have a good friend in London who describes herself as a feminist and is always talking about feminism; it makes me laugh because I find it ridiculous. You can look at anything whether it’s racism, sectarianism, anything intended to divide, these things will never disappear while we have the system that’s in place in this country and the world. It’s all linked. You can’t think in the terms of, we’re Scottish, you’re English, or we’re European you’re American. If we want to move forward as human beings, you can’t think like that anymore. We’re all brothers and sisters under the sun. We need to start thinking on that level because we’ve been divided and shat on from a great height for too long. I tell you, whoever it is that’s telling you who your enemy is, these are the people you need to be aware of.

Do you think then that the general world situation is heading towards some sort of critical implosion?
You only have to look at what’s happening in Greece. You need to be clear that that’s coming here. It’s very difficult to imagine right now. This is the idea behind the title of ’Monkey Minds In The Devil’s Time.’ It’s like someone holding a really busy picture in front of your face and a pair of headphones on you that’s playing fucking Rihanna. No wonder nobody can see the problem because it’s all happening around them. That’s the idea of the title - start reading, start listening, be aware and don’t trust mainstream media. It’s the shit pump of the government and it’s there to feed you misinformation.

Do you feel that protest music in a sense is more important than ever?
Well I wouldn’t suggest that the only way to fix this, is for everybody to go out and join a band! I suppose I’ve been thinking a lot about protesting on the street and I’ve concluded that I just don’t think it works. It’s meeting the beast on its own terms. I think we need to start trusting each other again; we need to start talking to each other when we see people in the street, engage with your fellow human beings. It’s like I said on the album, “little victories open conversation.” You’d be surprised how much of an effect little things can have. What you’re hoping for is a critical mass to build up and cause a chain reaction.

There’s a quiet rage running through some of the lyrics on the album, but the music is never aggressive. Was it your intention to combine lovely melodies with these harsher lyrics? Do you think that the words are even more powerful in a way when they are set against gentler sounds?
Yes, I think if you set powerful or angry words against aggressive music you can just sound like an angry teenager whose mum won’t give him any more pocket money. Being a 40-year-old man there was no way I was going to go down that road. I suppose it’s very subjective, but I think I prefer something more powerful to be delivered in a calmer more menacing way when you’re actually able to take on the gravity of what’s being said. I love Stiff Little Fingers as much as anyone else though and what they were saying was delivered in a kind of gnarly way. For me, I suppose I’m more from the Roger Waters school of songwriting. I just love the menace he gets into his voice.

Where did the short instrumental passages and pieces of sampled noise and dialogue that feature throughout the album come from?
When I decided to make a concept album, and you’re trying to get over a specific idea, sometimes it’s difficult to write a song about every subject that you want to talk about. What’s really good fun to do and a great way to get certain messages across is just to use pieces of music where you don’t have to worry about a chorus, verse or structure. It’s one of the things that I missed about The Beta Band. These days I’ve become a bit more of a standard songwriter so I’ve missed the haphazardness of all that. I really wanted to do these things. You can tailor the music exactly to the message.

These pieces were all recorded at home in Fife right? Do they have any greater resonance for that reason?
I demo’d the whole album at home in Fife. With the pieces in between, in terms of texture, I really wanted to keep the originals. Just so you have that extra texture and you’re not just settling into one specific sound. A sort of collage idea.



One of the samples features Tony Blair; is he your perfect example of a tainted politician?
I think it’s very difficult to bring together the good and the bad that he’s done. The bad is so very bad. He led our country into two illegal wars. Even just taking that into isolation, just think about that for a minute. Because he did that, he’s a war criminal. They were illegal invasions. He should be on trial in The Hague. He’s a war criminal just like George W Bush and his little gang of psychopathic gangsters. I used to think about him a lot and watch his interviews and I firmly believe that Tony Blair is a psychopath. A lot of people think that means he is some sort of serial killer. A psychopath though, is essentially a person who is lacking in empathy and finds it difficult to think about anyone else’s feelings. That’s the sort of man who makes a decision to ignore a million people protesting on the streets of his country and ignore this dossier where they all knew that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction. This is the kind of man who knew that Al Qaeda is a fictitious organisation dreamt up by the CIA in order to prosecute Osama Bin Laden for the Bali bombing because they needed to link him to an organisation. Al Qaeda’s literal translation is “The List”. This man knew all this, and I don’t believe that he didn’t. It takes a certain type of person to make that decision. You think why is he making that decision? He’s making that decision for the energy companies. BP paid him a billion pounds for Megrahi. For me, these are not the thoughts of a rational human being who should be the Prime Minister of any country. What we’re dealing with here is an incredibly cruel and selfish man, who has no sympathy and who’s only looking to further himself and his corporate friends’ interests. He doesn’t care how many British or Iraqi soldiers die, how many innocent Iraqi men, woman and children die. This man has a lot of blood on his hands and we’re now paying him £100,000 a year for his personal security from taxpayer’s money. For me these things can’t be forgotten and can’t be forgiven.

You used a different producer for the album instead of Richard X who produced Boys Outside and some of your previous work. Why did you now decide to work with Dan Carey and what did he bring to the music?
Dan was a suggestion from Laurence, who runs Domino. He really helped me shape the sound of the record. ‘Boys Outside’ was essentially made by one person, me. For this, I just wanted to get more of a live, band sound. It needed to be human.

Do you think this will be a good album to tour in a live environment and have you formed a band to take it out on the road?
I do have a band. It’s going to be really interesting in terms of how we recorded it. I’m hoping for a lot more randomness. When we toured ‘Boys Outside’, a lot of it was from a backing track on a hard drive. That’s not ideal, you feel slightly fake. The songs are exactly the same every night, all spontaneity is gone. You don’t really feel like you’re in a band. I can afford to take a keyboard player out this time so that’ll make a big difference.

Is the period now reminiscent in a way of the earlier days of The Beta Band? Do you have a certain nostalgia for those days?
No, I don’t believe in nostalgia. Nostalgia is for the weak minded who have given up on life. I’m certainly not at that point yet.

Finally, you said at the beginning of the interview that you felt ‘Boys Outside’ was the best record you’ve ever made. Do you now feel that ‘Monkey Minds In The Devil’s Time’ is now your defining work and you’ve topped that record?
I think I have. Fuck knows what I’m going to do next! Making two good albums in a row is even worse than making one good album. Luckily, that’s nothing that I have to worry about right now. I think it is my defining work because I wanted to do something that tried to pull together everything that I’ve learned as a human, an artist, and a musician and try to condense it into one-hour long piece of music. I think I’ve got close to achieving it. I can’t think of anything I would change about it.

Steve Mason’s new album ‘Monkey Minds In The Devil’s Time’ is out now via Double Six Records.