Forgive the cliché, but they say you should never meet your heroes. However, I’m here to tell you that if your hero is Madness frontman, Graham McPherson aka Suggs, fear not. In conversation he is everything any fan would want him to be; warm, funny, deadpan, and clearly riding high ahead of a summer of outdoor performances including a headline show at Royal Windsor Racecourse. Yes, the Nutty Boys are back, and on the road to promote their latest compilation The Hit Parade (1979-2024).
Have you already planned out your summer set lists, and what can we expect?
We have. It’s a greatest hits show, so it's not daft to think that's what people want. They want a very good time, and that's what Madness provides: a good time.
You come across as very knowable, and I wondered what might surprise people to learn about you.
Possibly I am. I mean, I like people, and yeah, maybe I am knowable.
So no surprises?
Um… I've just got an allotment. That's not international rock star is it? [he laughs]. If David Beckham can get into it in his white tracksuit and his white trainers…
I like painting. Anything else you don't know about me? I mean, I like everything. I like reading, I like getting involved in life as it comes along.
And are you happy with where life has taken you?
Yeah. I mean, it's a great privilege having been in this band all this time – apart from being in this flipping band, driving me flipping mad and wanted to kill them all! No, it's a great privilege to be in the entertainment business, especially music.
I remember one time I was coming out of my house, and I saw my postman who was a friend of mine. It was like six in the morning, and he said, 'You're alright’, and I said, ‘It’s a bit mad, I've got to go to Paris, you know, six in the morning’. He went, 'You're moaning about it? I've got to go down the streets of Holloway for the next four hours with this flipping trolley full of letters, and you go on stage and work for one and a half hours a night, and you're complaining’. And it's so true – you see the world, and you see lots of different people, and get involved in lots of things that you wouldn't have, just because you are in this funny old business.
Are you nostalgic about the past?
I don't think the past is what it used to be...
[I laugh] Ha ha, very good.
No… I think it's a funny thing; nostalgia. Songs are nostalgic, because pop music reminds people of a certain period in their life. And there is always a nostalgia about what you do as a band, but at the same time, we're looking forward.
Do you think ska was a product of a certain time, or is it still relevant?
It was certainly it was a phenomenon but again, you know, it came back. It was a big thing in the 60s, and then there was us back in the 70s, so it always rolls around. I remember in America in the 80s it became big, and now I go around Europe, you know, there's like old/new ska phenomena in Spain and France. Each generation find something in it.
Madness have become part of the British DNA, and I wonder, where is the weirdest place in the world that you’ve found a fanbase.
Funnily enough, we went to Mexico a couple of years ago it was like we were One Direction. Sixty thousand people turned up – I had no idea.
[Madness] weren't really ‘worldwide’ – we weren't really massive in America particularly, but it's funny because that creates little pockets of – what do you call it? – cult. You know? I was in India, in some little caff, and a Madness record came on.
As a band of musicians, do you feel you’ve had the acclaim your music deserves?
That's a very good question. A very nice question, because we've never considered ourselves musicians as such. Because of our self-deprecation, but also the videos that we made were often more important, so people didn't realise the amount of work that went into the music.
Two things I remember. There was a big, kind of look-alike band [that emerged] when we split up in 1986. These successful sessions musicians were trying to play Madness songs and finding out they are much more freaking complicated than you realise. But, I think the real turning point was when we did come back, and we were sort of floating about a bit, we made this album called The Liberty of Norton Folgate. It was the first time people – like the broadsheet newspapers – were going, ‘actually, they are a really good songwriting band’. That was the first time, I think, we got any credit for that.
It’s never mattered though – you know? What matters is people pay money to come and see you, and they've been doing that for 50 years, regardless of whether we're particularly amazing musicians or not. But, of course, it's nice to be recognised,
With that in mind, what do you think is your most underrated song; the most overrated; and the one that best sums up the band?
Underrated? I think that's hard to say, because when you had 25 top 10 hits, well, they all got rated, didn't they? I think The Liberty of Norton Folgate turned the tide [in terms of] getting out of that 80s nostalgia thing.
Overrated? Not any of them, really. [He pauses] Possibly The Return of The Los Palmas 7. We just put out this instrumental and it was still a hit. What was the other one?
The one that best sums you up. Like, if you had to put one in a time capsule to represent the band.
Well, I mean, nothing can really, because we did so many different things. If you put me on the spot, the one that keeps turning up is It Must Be Love. It’s played at weddings, funerals, parties, and it's so simplistic, it could be trite, but it's not. It Must be Love; it's a universal thing and that just always moves people in some peculiar way.
It must be very obvious that speaking to you is one of my pinch-me moments. I wonder if you could tell me one of yours.
I suppose it's got to be meeting David Bowie, really. What an amazing person.
I have told this anecdote before, but I'd met him a few times and then our producer, Clive Langer, was doing the soundtrack to a film called Absolute Beginners for which Bowie wrote one of his best songs. We were all on a driving holiday, with our families to France, and Clive gets a call from David Bowie saying, ‘I've got house in Gstaad, come over and stay for a couple of nights’. You can’t not, so we took a diversion down the driveway to this sort of James Bond apartment in the mountain. The garage doors open, and there he is in the backlight – the ‘man who fell to earth’ – and he's waving. We forgot we were in this Range Rover with all our suitcases on the roof, and as we went in the cases got knocked off and my suitcase exploded. My underpants and socks are blowing around David Bowie's driveway, and he's helping me to find them.
An amazing guy and also just a very humble, beautiful human. He just wanted to go for a pint and have a fag, you know? He realised that his schtick was to be mysterious and weird, but in fact he was just a very normal down-to-earth person. Definitely the one I feel most privileged to have met.
I could never do the mysterious, unfortunately. I wasn't thin enough.
I just think you're perfect as you are...
Madness will be performing at the Royal Racecourse Windsor on Thursday 13 August after the evening racing. This huge open-air concert promises a summer’s evening of sing-alongs, smiles and ska pop classics. For further information and to book tickets, visit yoursummerlive.co.uk.
Image (C) Ash Youd
