INTERVIEW - JON MCCLURE - THE REVEREND AND THE MAKERS
Interview, 22/10/2007
Review by Ciaran Jones
“In what’s become more turbulent times – the world’s got more fucked up since Vietnam – people are scared to speak out,” says Jon McClure, Sheffield’s most renowned preacher.
“These people don’t want to know about political things – they’re the very people I want to make know about it. I want to wake this country up; we’re a sleeping giant. We’re in a state of terminal decline and I’m trying to reverse that. There’s an inherent violence in British culture, a repression. Why is alcohol such a mainstay of our culture?”
It’s hard not to become intoxicated by the Reverend. His oratory is superb; passionate, vivid, and suffused with memorable epithets. And it’s these soundbites, whether in his songs or in interviews (he recounts a recent barracking for calling Johnny Borrell “a bell-end”), that convey his message, even if they cost him a few quid: “I’m willing to sacrifice record sales to get across the truth to people. I write pop songs, I’m not going to shy away from that, but I want to entertain people as much as educate them – I call it edutainment.”
“My detractors would confuse it with a desire for fame and money, call it revolutionary bluster. It’s fucking not that. Let me tell you something: I had an Iraqi girlfriend for five years. The first two years were harmonious and beautiful, and then the Iraq war happened. Her uncle went missing. Her family were all there. So when they call it revolutionary bluster, how do you think that makes me feel when I’ve spent years of my life trying to stop a war?”
The approach is very much ‘for me or against me’, but the Reverend does also seem to see the differing shades of opinion. His emotions shift quickly and perceptibly when we talk about the NME: The review of The State of Things (a scathing 5/10) was “wrong” but “it’s freedom of speech, and people have died for freedom of speech”. He is defiant, but also dignified: “There are some people at NME who really like my music – they’ve actually just offered me a weekly column. I was in their office the other day and someone offered to let me piss on the guy who wrote the review’s desk.”
However, critical ambivalence didn’t preclude mainstream success (“to a degree”, says Jon) and his attitude of “making music for the people, not critics” seems to be paying off: “No matter how much these critics want to destroy me, they know they can’t. I’m too strong for them, I’m out of their hands now. They think they’ve got me in a box, but the second album is going to be a million miles away from the first album. Then I’ll do a poetry album, then I’ll do a book. Then I’ll go to The Congo with Damon Albarn and The Arcade Fire and make a record.”
But for all the bravado and arrogance, it’s important to remember that he is only human, a fact which he acknowledges with unusual humility: “Sometimes I get it wrong, but at least I give a fuck. Of course I have doubts and sometimes I get so down, I go home and cry my eyes out over what people say about me. People forget I’m a person.”
In fact, it seems I’ve caught the Reverend on a rare day of doubt. For all his repeated insistence that he “feel[s] more powerful every day”, it is clear that the burden of responsibility he has volunteered himself for is taking its toll. “I’m at a crossroads in my life; you’ve met me at crossroads day. I’m a bit stressed out and I’ve had to do a lot of soul-searching about whether I’m going to push through with this, because it takes bollocks”.
Through the course of the interview, he plays four new songs on his acoustic guitar: they are more overtly characterised by political zeal than anything on the debut album. This is a natural consequence of needing initial exposure, or, as Jon puts it, having to be “as mainstream as fuck” to gain some initial recognition. “I’m glad I’ve got the support of the radio because it enables me to reach the masses, and without them we’re fucked, the battle for hearts and minds becomes fruitless. I’ve got the ears of the masses now.”
And it is the masses that need to rise with him, to rebel and make the shift to create change. The interaction between music and politics is something we discuss in great depth, and we conclude that, frankly, it’s all a load of bollocks. “Consider this,” says Jon, stubbing out another cigarette. “Bono got a Nobel Peace Prize the other week sat next to George Bush Senior who, along with his son, has been responsible for some of the worst atrocities in the modern world. Bono’s being arrogant, as is Bob Geldof, if they think they can effect change by being nice to these neo-cons. If they spat in their face, there’d be world headlines.”
The true rebels, he says, are always “pushed to the wall” because the powers that be “don’t like dissenting voices”. In this context he refers to the Dixie Chicks, whose second album bombed in America after they spoke out against the Iraq war. These, he says, are the type of people with whom he identifies, along with Manu Chao, 3D from Massive Attack, Ian Brown and, overwhelmingly, Bob Marley. He is not happy to be seen as some sort of lapdog for Arctic Monkeys; he may “encourage” them to do certain things, like put their demos online, but they are separate entities.
We digress into the online music phenomenon: “With the internet, you can’t have the diktat of ‘cool’. Who’s to say what’s ‘cool’? Because cool implies uncool, and uncool implies inferior, and inferior implies fascism.” It is then that we make an agreement: he is planning to record a demo of his new album and give me the CD to leak onto the internet (in the event it doesn’t happen after the laptop crashes and all the songs get lost).
The Reverend is at turns bewitching, emotive, funny and angry. It’s not bluster; this is a man devoted to real change. Ignore him at your peril.
Review by Ciaran Jones 22/10/2007
