The Icicle Works, January 1986
This wasn’t the easiest interview I’ve ever done. During the 1980s I was so used to Liverpool bands who wanted to talk about politics – it was such a huge part of the culture of the time – that I was a bit taken aback by a band who didn’t want to have that conversation.
The line about “juvenile slogans in downmarket rags” still stands though. Just replace “downmarket rags” with “social media”.
I had first come across the group through the “synth pop” tape mentioned in the interview, and went to see them at Liverpool’s Warehouse club on the strength of it. A lot had happened since then.
Melody Maker, January 18, 1986
Have THE ICICLE WORKS suddenly become hip? Do they actually have something to say? Penny Kiley thinks so. Purposeful photography by Gary Lornie.
CHRIS Layhe is being contradictory. "What do you want to talk about? Music or politics? Because I only want to talk about music. The way music papers are getting into all this political stuff I personally think is nonsense, when the NME does a feature on Derek Hatton - when I buy a music paper I want to read about groups, if I wanted to read something like that I'd go out and buy a good reliable source, I certainly wouldn't buy the Melody Maker."
Well, I only asked ... Ian McNabb has just been expounding on the thinking behind "Rapids", probably his most explicitly "political" song to date and one that he felt strongly enough about to print the words on the inside sleeve of the record. This, along with public appearances and attendant dialogue, suggests a stance is in the air, perhaps even that The Icicle Works after years of wilful obscurity are beginning to recognise that music exists in the real world. It isn't, and they’re not: at least not in public. "This group doesn't make statements," states Ian McNabb.
The Icicle Works are full of contradictions. In fact they've surrounded themselves with contradictions from the start, and it's that which has made them even at their most unhip (and they've been very unhip in the past) just obliquely unhip enough to remain tantalising.
The one event which summed up, if anything can, what The Icicle Works have become was their appearance at the Liver Aid concert at the Liverpool Empire in September, an event which for many observers, they saved single-handed from total indignity. After six hours of musical mediocrity interspersed with the clash of egos, The Icicle Works came on stage, dropped a guitar, spoke up for a cause, spoke out against politics, and dived into three songs mighty enough to erase all the nonsense that had gone before. That was the strongest statement that The Icicle Works can or will probably ever make.
"We thought we should participate in it but when it actually came together I was really embarrassed by doing it," recalls Ian. "Not from the Ethiopia point of view, because you've got to remember that that's more important than any of the petty squabbling that might go on around it. I think we were probably as bad as anybody who was on, but at least we were there. We lent our names to it so we did it, but it was a fiasco.
"There are obviously a lot of bands who are doing it for what they could get out of it themselves, but I don't think that matters because look at Live Aid. To get on Live Aid was the biggest single thing that anyone could do to manipulate their career, but that to me doesn't matter because at least money is being generated for the famine relief."
His objections to such events are different. "The thing I couldn't handle about the People's Festival and the Liver Aid thing was the politics being brought into it. People like Billy Bragg are preaching to the converted."
Yet they found themselves playing to the same converted, a few months before the Liver Aid event. The People's Festival is a propaganda event organised by the soon-extinct Merseyside County Council (nothing to do with the newsworthy Liverpool City Council, except perhaps through some of its sympathisers). This year the Icicle Works were the surprising headliner.
"You had Western Promise on, you had Billy Bragg on," recalls Ian, "all building up to this climax of a political finale and then we came on and started playing 'Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun'! Then, of course I said 'We're the SDP contingent', just to throw a spanner in the works, which was the worst thing I could have done. A lot of people can't take a joke."
So why do it? It was, they say, all a mistake. Out of the country when it was arranged, they were keen to play again in Liverpool and, as it was put to them, for Liverpool. But, says Ian, "we shouldn't have been there - we'll never get involved with anything like that again."
Under the circumstances, "Rapids" seemed the best possible commentary: "I sing this song with my tongue in my cheek/For the jilted, the jaundiced, the angry young men/Who somehow believe that the status quo changes/With juvenile slogans in downmarket rags".
The Icicle Works have always stood apart and that detachment is one of the few things about the band you can rely on. "We've got nothing in common with any other Liverpool band," claims Ian. "It's not like a group policy, it's just because as individuals we like to keep ourselves to ourselves. We have our own personal beliefs and the rest of it is unimportant, we don't like to get involved with anything."
This is contradicted, however, by the fact that they've recorded a track with Pete Wylie as their contribution to the anti-heroin campaign, based in Liverpool, which Pete Townshend is involved with. Missing last year's drum marathon - "We were in France at the time but we sent Chris to bang a few drums" - which was taped for a future LP, they chose to cover Neil Young's "The Needle And The Damage Done".
"To me" says Ian, "that song is still very succinct, and it's still relevant, especially up here." It's still uncertain when the track will appear - having donated it, it is (literally) out of their hands now. "It's something that we do feel quite strongly about so we were prepared to get involved," admits Ian, but adds "that's out on a limb - it's not The Icicle Works."
So that's those contradictions sorted out. Okay Chris, let's talk about the music. Back to the beginning. "The only time we were a synth group was this tape we recorded in Ian's bedroom. After 'Love Is A Wonderful Colour' people were still calling us a lush synth pop band like the Lotus Eaters and we were getting bracketed with them... Nowadays we're very wary of using synthesizers."
They're also very wary of getting bracketed. "You always get bracketed over here, more than in America," Ian complains "As soon as somebody thinks they've got you down it's like 'Ah! That's what they are!' We hate that, we always try to be shocking people a bit. With our last LP we tried to be as diverse as possible, and it was hard getting a running order because a lot of the songs don't belong together. For instance, on side two you've got a song like 'Saints Sojourn' which is typical Icicle Works which goes into 'All The Daughters' which is not typical Icicle Works. "
Hang on - weren't you saying there's no such thing as typical Icicle Works? Aren't you contradicting yourself?
"Typical Icicle Works is always predictably unpredictable. I know what we're like - I think we're very predictable because as soon as I hear one song I know what the next one's going to be: completely different."
Hence their continually dubious relationship with fashion. Starting their days when nothing pre-'76 was whispered of, their music hinted of record collections most people would rather forget about, and even Buffalo Springfield and The Byrds were kept quiet when Ian first started wearing a buckskin jacket in public.
"Now you've got this influx of American bands everyone's going 'Oh! The Byrds! Oh! Neil Young and Crazy Horse! Oh! Gram Parsons! Oh, I love that stuff!' When we used to do it people used to go 'What the hell are they doing - bloody hippies'."
In the past, The Icicle Works' espousal of those influences was confused by over-the-top psychedelic trappings, tongue-in-cheek pretentiousness, and a magnitude of scale that a pop group shouldn't have dared to attempt. Their melodic and emotional grandeur was finally distilled into no less than a good old fashioned rock album, "The Small Price Of A Bicycle". There's a mini-LP due in a couple of weeks, called "Seven Singles Deep" and comprising 12-inch singles previously released by the group.
But even that's contrary to usual expectations, as Ian ruefully expounds: "When a band starts out they get great reviews and all the critics like them and then they get fabulously successful and then they get slagged off. What happened with us was when started off we were hated by the press and we had a hit very early on in our career, went to America, made loads of money blah blah blah, and then we came back and now we're a critics' band which doesn't sell records, we're like a really good indie band. We're doing everything backwards. We'll probably get together in six months and form a band!"
Ian McNabb’s laughing as he speaks. The Icicle Works laugh a lot - at themselves, and, safe behind their contradictions, at you. Playing games with identity simply by being themselves, they'll tell you how serious they are.
"We've got to take it seriously," says Ian, "with a pinch of salt."
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