Mansun

MANSUN FORMED IN the summer of 1995. The band were originally named Grey Lantern, (which was supposed to sound like Pink Floyd) but then renamed themselves “A Man Called Sun”. This was later shortened to Mansun after the discovery of another band called “A Man Called Adam” which was thought to be too similar to their own name. The band’s first release has the name spelt as Manson. Legal action was apparently threatened by Charles Manson’s estate, as his name was patented for merchandising rights. This early brush with controversy set the tone for the band’s rise to fame, often shrouded in controversy and always chaotic.

The band, all members in their early 20s, was formed by Paul Edward Draper, Dominic Chad and Stove King, friends from the city of Chester in the North of England, about 15 miles outside of Liverpool. Draper hailed from the Wavertree area of Liverpool, King from Ellesmere Port on the outskirts of Merseyside and Chad from Cheltenham, the birthplace of his spiritual mentor Brian Jones. By coincidence the three all resided in the Chester area although none were actually born there. The only native Cestrian in the band is Andie Rathbone who hails from the Blacon area of the city, which is supposed to be the single biggest council housing development in Western Europe. Rathbone did not want to join the group to start with as he originally thought the band were going to play “Britpop shite” as he once put it. Dominic Chad ended up living in Chester after being ejected from a degree in Russian and French at Bangor University, North Wales. He worked at Bangor’s Fat Cat pub in the evenings and after he left college took up a job as bar manager of the newly opened Fat Cat in Chester.

Paul came to the city via another Welsh connection, he moved from Liverpool to Deeside, a Welsh industrial town only a few miles from Chester. He and Stove, friends from a mutual interest in graphic design, used to be frequently found in the Fat Cat pub, drinks supplied courtesy of Chad and it was here that the band began. The band were all friends after leaving school when Paul attended Art College and Stove attended the Liverpool Graphic Arts College.

Paul and Chad were in various school bands but nothing serious and drifted into jobs while always threatening to form a serious group. Stove had never picked up an instrument before Mansun. Andie had played the drums since he was a young child.

Like all great groups the band freely admitted in later interviews to not being able to play a note when they first formed, and chose their name (quite a few names actually) before even picking up an instrument in anger. Stove bought a second hand bass specifically to learn how to play so he could be in the group, fortunately he never went the way of Stuart Sutcliffe. Paul had played acoustic guitar and had written songs from the age of eleven, but neither he nor Chad had played in a professional group before. In interviews the group have stated on many occasions they wanted to form a group simply to get out of Chester – this would explain why their desire was much greater than their talent in these early days.

The three rehearsed at Crash Rehearsal Studios in Liverpool on a Sunday to relieve the boredom of working during the week. A sampler provided breakbeats and a drummer was not to be found with the embryonic Mansun. The breakbeats can be heard on nearly all of Mansun’s early recordings. The band then recorded a 4-track demo at a local studio, which cost them 150 and took a full day to record. This demo consisted of Take it easy Chicken, Skin Up Pin Up, Moronica and She Makes My Nose Bleed and can be found occasionally as a bootleg. These demos are the same recordings as the commercial releases but the band played them to no one, they had refused to ever send tapes round to anyone at this point.

IN TRUE ROCK and roll legend tradition the band were discovered by a passing A&R man who was visiting Liverpool to listen to another relatively famous Liverpool band in an adjacent rehearsal room one Sunday evening. Through the door he heard a noise which approximated NWA samples with Punk rock guitars. This was Mansun. He asked the band if they had a tape, they said yes but it was crap and that they were working on better material, but were persuaded to part with the tape. Until then no one had heard it and it had laid around for months. Not surprisingly when the tape was taken back to London and played around A&R circles the biggest A&R scramble in history broke out around the band, who had never even played a gig at this point. Every label in the land and many American labels courted the band, both legally and illegally. The band were bribed with cash in envelopes, drugs, prostitutes, Concorde tickets to New York but incredibly the band turned down all offers. Instead they printed up 1,000 copies of Take it Easy Chicken, a track from their demo, onto vinyl. The same track was on both sides of the vinyl as this was all the band could afford. There was no artwork either, it simply had “Manson” stamped across the record. Without either a record deal or a manager the band sent copies to shops in September 1995 and these disappeared within 48 hours after the band crucially sent copies to John Peel and Steve Lamaq at Radio 1. Both DJs were knocked back by the recording sent by the unsigned, unheard of band. Peel immediately invited the band to do a session while Lamaq made the record his single of the week, not once but twice!

Instead of capitalising on the interest they were generating in the music industry the band decided to put out a second record on their own newly christened DIY label “Sci Fi Hi Fi”. Skin Up Pin Up/Flourella entered the Indie Chart at No.4 in November of 1995 and hung around for months. Still the band had no record deal and had not even done a major interview at this time, in fact only a select band of people had even heard of them. With the release of this record the band played a handful of small gigs, with Chad just recovering from a broken arm (having fallen off a ladder drunk about four weeks before). The first gig of the embryonic Mansun being at the local Lomax club in Liverpool, the band were apparently heckled and jeered, reports suggest the gig only lasted 15 minutes and ended in a large fight in the audience (every kid in Liverpool and Chester claims to have been there that night, but in reality the audience consisted mainly of sniping Liverpool bands intent on causing trouble for the new band).

After hearing a Mansun demo Tim Burgess of The Charlatans asked the band to support them on their UK tour at the end of 1995 and these became the first big gigs the band had played. In fact Mansun were playing at Brixton Academy only a handful of gigs after forming. The music papers related reports of madness on that tour, with one live review reporting an incident between Chad and a hotel manager!

DURING JANUARY 1996 the band, completely penniless at this point, bowed to the inevitable and signed to Parlophone Records in the U.K and Epic in the U.S. They laid down a detailed plan that they wanted from a deal which included putting out a string of EPs instead of highly promoted single campaigns, total control of all music by self-producing everything and the backing to tour constantly during the following year so they could learn how to play. On the back of this deal they went into Angelshare Studios, Deeside, only a stones throw from where the band lived, and home of the abortive recording sessions for the Stone Roses’ Second Coming LP. There they recorded the bulk of their first four EPs. The band worked at breakneck speed producing and mixing themselves before heading off on the road to play an estimated 200 gigs in the ensuing period before the release of their debut LP.

The band had to grow up in public, learning the ropes of touring and travelling round in a transit van. None of the band had been in a professional group before, never mind done a full tour. A lot of these early gigs ended in chaos. More than once the band played one or two songs before the equipment packed in, or the PA blew up, a few venues refused to have the group play as they were so loud they blew up the monitors and the PA system.

The band were tipped by the music press to be the next big thing in January of 1996 and their first EP on Parlophone, released in March, entered the UK national chart at 37, selling all 20,000 printed copies, and was deleted after that first run, only to be reissued 18 months later. The band supported Audioweb, then Cast on national tours in the first three months of 1996. At this point the music press were painting the band as having a reputation for rock’n’roll excess, and this wasn’t far from the truth as the band were managerless and directionless at this point. They left a trail of smashed hotels and vans, and during the Cast tour, Stove was involved in a fracas with a member of the audience who chanted homophobic abuse at the make-up adorned grown up. The band who profess to be very left wing took enormous offence at this and Stove jumped into the audience, swinging his Fender Jazz bass by the head and cracking it round the heckler’s head. Paul launched his guitar into his amp stack and left it in two pieces on the stage in disgust at the crowd’s attitude.

The group thought things couldn’t get more chaotic until they were stopped on London’s Westway, on the way to the gig at the Kentish Town Forum, by anti-terrorist Police following a spate of recent IRA bombings in London. The band were held up against a wall, each with a machine gun on them. The tour van was searched and a small amount of drugs were found. The police turned the incident into a full-scale drugs bust as a result. Sniffer dogs arrived and a strip-search of the band and crew ensued. Chad later admitted in the Melody Maker to have luckily left all his drugs at the band’s hotel. Incidents followed shortly after where the band was ejected by security from a hotel in Norwich during the middle of the night, and Paul Draper and Peter from Cast ended up in Police custody after evacuating the Marriott hotel in Newcastle one particularly riotous night. All this led to press speculation of an imminent implosion within the band. During this rocky part of the Cast tour the management team of Dave Nicoll and Rob Swerdlow, who managed the legendary La’s and now Cast stepped in and offered to steady the ship by taking the group under their wing during the remaining dates of the Cast tour. Mansun are still managed by them at present and they have seemed to have had a stabilising influence on the band’s career.

MANSUN SUFFERED EXPLODING drummer syndrome la spinal tap in those early days, and lived the whole rock and roll clich during the first six months of their inception. Although starting with a drum machine the band wanted Andie Rathbone, a mate of theirs from Chester, to join the band initially. Rathbone was already in a local Chester group while he sold Audi cars during the day.

The band replaced the original drum machine with a succession of friends who played with them while they were looking for a full time drummer to complete the lineup. Rathbone contacted the band and forced them to now let him join, (reputedly after hearing a demo of Wide Open Space in early 1996).

The band put out a second EP in June 1996 which entered the UK National Charts at 32. The band then supported Shed Seven and released their third EP, Stripper Vicar, THREE EP. This was their first track to be played extensively by radio stations, and entered the UK charts at No.19. The band played their TV debut on TFI Friday the following week before notching up more live dates round the UK on their third headline tour heading towards around 200 gigs that year. The band later put their breakthrough down to constant touring in those early days.

The group played at the Reading festival and the T in the Park festivals (Steve Lamaq pronounced the group the best band of the T in the Park festival on Radio 1’s Evening Session radio show), between touring during the summer, although the band had to cancel a few shows after Chad severed a tendon in his right hand after fighting with his reflection, taxi driver style, in a hotel room mirror, (Chad has since been seen at the Chester branch of the AA and is on the wagon as far as we know). The band then went into the studio towards the end of 1996 to record their debut LP Attack of the Grey Lantern.

The fourth and final EP of their masterplan, Wide Open Space, was released in November 1996. It entered the chart at 15, and was the No.1 played track on National Radio in the UK until the Christmas period. Over Christmas and the New Year the band made their first ever Top of the Pops appearance performing Wide Open Space, and supported both Sleeper and Suede on their UK tours before putting out their first record of 1997, 5EP with lead track, She Makes My Nose Bleed. It entered the chart at No.9 (the band’s first Top Ten single), resulting in a return to both Top of the Pops and TFI Friday. The band then set up a gig two weeks later on the Isle of Man to launch the album. It was in the Stakis Casino in Douglas, and journalists were flown out to witness a riotous gig after which the band’s own tour manager smashed the bar up. Tables and chairs flew and sporadic brawls broke out, although the band professed not to be involved at all. The whole entourage flew back to London the next day, a good time had by all.

THE DEBUT L.P. “Attack of the Grey Lantern” was released on the following Monday, 17th February, to rave reviews in the NME, Melody Maker, Vox, The Times, The Independent and The Guardian. The LP was described as the best debut since Oasis’ “Definitely Maybe”, and as a watershed, the LP sounded a million miles away from the current Britpop scene that dominated the British Charts. It entered the UK Chart at No.1 on the back of critical acclaim and their already fanatical fanbase, knocking off the Spice Girls and Blur from the top of the charts. The LP went gold in its first week, and this raised many an eyebrow as the band could be described as relatively unknown at this point. The LP was described as a concept based around characters that could be found below the surface of any British town. Set in a fictitious town (I suspect this is either Chester or Liverpool) the LP is a series of short stories bleeding seamlessly into one another told through a series of wacky characters. Draper has described his influences for these characters as anything from Lennon’s “Eggman” to the cult 60’s TV show, “The Prisoner” where a spy is trapped in a small fictitious village peppered with bizarre characters such as “No.2”, “The Colonel” and “Rover”.

After the release of their LP the band attended the Brit Awards sitting at No.1 in the charts and having been nominated in the Best Newcomer category. They spent the whole of March on a sold out UK tour to promote their new album, before immediately embarking on a world tour starting in Australia. No one had envisaged the massive success of the LP and when it was decided Taxloss should be a further single from the LP the band were already out of the country. The solution was to put out a single while the band were away. Roman Copola, son of Francis Ford Copola (Director of “The Godfather”) was brought in to make a video even though the band weren’t in the country to make one. Copola’s idea was to give away the money they would have spent on making a video, as a Taxloss. This he achieved by taking a team of men up onto the balcony surrounding London’s Liverpool Street Station’s central concourse during the morning rush hour and flinging the cash into the air to come raining down on the heads of the commuters, the entire proceedings to be captured on video tape, as there was no money left to film the event on proper film stock. The station was of course brought to a complete standstill and British Rail were threatening to sue the band for the inconvenience caused. That is until the video was released showing British Rail employees pocketing handfuls of the cash.

Meanwhile the tour was taking the band from Australia to Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong and Japan, Denmark, Norway, Italy, Germany, Canada and finally the USA, although they nearly didn’t make it out of Malaysia having lost their departure cards causing the authorities to detain them at the airport.

Having made it safely back to the U.K. the band started immediately on yet another headline tour. The first night took them to Wolverhampton complete with a new lighting rig, which blew up after the third song, forcing the band to continue the gig with all the houselights on full. The band continued with the tour playing their largest ever London headline at the Kilburn National, and their first ever home gig at the Northgate Arena in Chester. An anonymous phone call on the day caused the whole of the city centre to be closed down with a bomb scare, but this didn’t stop the sell-out crowd from turning out in force to witness their first Chester gig. In this same week, the Taxloss EP charted at Number 15 and the band were invited on to both Top of the Pops and TFI Friday.

IN MAY ’97, the band travelled first to Cannes to play live on French TV from the beach during the Film Festival, and then to New York for a week of promotion for their American label, Epic, and also to play their first U.S. gig at the Wetlands Club on Manhattan. The gig was packed out; bootlegs of it are available off various Internet sites in the US. Following the gig the band went on to a Greenwich Village Chinese restaurant, staffed entirely by transvestite waitresses. The lovely “ladies” allegedly took quite a liking to Stove who got more and more drunk and began to care less and less about their true gender. Ice cubes and legs apparently saw some action but Stove was removed from the premises before getting too “friendly” with anyone.

Having returned to the UK the band played two further live shows before the end of May. The first was the support on the Manic Street Preachers’ NYNEX Arena show in Manchester in front of 15,000 people. The gig was broadcast live on Radio 1 and again bootlegs are widely available. The second of these gigs was the band’s own sell-out show at Glasgow’s Barrowlands, receiving some of their best live reviews to date.

In the first week of June they were invited onto the “Later With Jools Holland” show where they performed Mansun’s Only Love Song and Wide Open Space, before shutting themselves away in their Liverpool studio for two weeks to begin recording new songs which they had written for a new EP. They then headed off for a preliminary excursion into Europe to play at the Melkweg Club in Amsterdam and the Hurricane Festival in Germany, before playing their first Glastonbury Festival at the end of the month. This, however, proved to be something of a non-event for Mansun who were due to be the penultimate band on the second stage for the weekend. The crowd had been throwing mud at the bands on stage throughout the whole three days and by the time Mansun arrived the generator supplying the stage with power was apparently caked in dirt. It held out for the duration of Stripper Vicar, but gave up soon after and the band were forced to return home early, receiving rave reviews for their one completed song (very strange?).

In July the band supported David Bowie on his three Italian shows where the man himself apparently hung out with the band and showed his appreciation of the energy of their live show. Mansun then co-headlined the NME stage at the T in the Park festival near Perth. Here they played to a packed tent, the crowd reportedly going wild before they had even played a note and the gig ending with Paul sliding around the stage on his back still playing whilst Chad crouched over him pretending to make love to him with his guitar, the press reported this as the new Bowie/Ronson performing on stage (I’m sure Paul and Chad would have loved that one).

The band then chose four of their new songs for their brand new EP No.7, to be released at the end of September. The recording schedule was tight and the record was finished before flying out to the US to tour with the Seahorses until mid September. As the band arrived in the US for their first tour Wide Open Space was already all over the radio and sitting at No.25 in Billboard’s Modern Rock Chart, no mean achievement for a band that had not yet toured there. Reviews of the shows via the US press and the Internet were almost the same in every town, Mansun had been blowing the Seahorses off the stage every night of the tour, with Chad battling with John Squire for the crown of Best British Guitarist being fought on foreign soil. With the band firmly established as an amazing live entity and innovative on record, the next stage in their career is to take on America, only U2 and Oasis had made it there in recent years to any large degree. This is the close of the opening volume in the story of Mansun, who knows what the next will hold…