A ROUND TRIP TICKET TO OUTER SPACE WITH... THE COMMUNARDS

A ROUND TRIP TICKET TO OUTER SPACE WITH... THE COMMUNARDS

Barbara Pepe

If there’s any single thing that’s sustained Jimmy Sommerville thus far, it’s his passion—passion for living life in whatever way he feels, passion for politics, even passion for pizza. Not that passion’s always been good to him, Back on the streets of Glasgow in his teen days, it earned him more than one fist in the stomach, and after his falsetto had become Bronski Beat’s trademark, it even talked him right out of a job. But no tears, please, ’cause really, the lad’s done all right for himself. Here he is, back again with another band he likes better, a new partner named Richard Coles who agrees with all his principles, and now, gosh darn it, they’ve got a hit in America.

So when he thinks about it, the wee redhead’s got very little to complain about, except maybe having to settle down and write the Communards’ next album. “Me, I just like to have a laugh, really,” he admits candidly, spouting words in a Scottish accent thicker than a Walker’s shortbread. “Richard’s the one, really, quite the devoted artist/musician. He wants to work non-stop, then I just want to go and make a bit o’ tea. No, I don’t take my commitment as seriously as I should. I treat it all as fun, which drives some people in the band quite mad.”

Well, that’s always been our Jimmy, out there having fun—and finding himself in the process. When you come right down to it, he never even wanted to be a musician in the first place. “One day I discovered ! could make this noise which people liked,” he says, raising the eyebrows that are so light they’re nearly invisible. “It was great fun. Then there was all this interest from people. We could play somewhere and people would want to come and see us. What a crazy idea!” And now? “I can actually quite honestly say I don’t know what I want to do. I’m enjoyin’ this, it’s good fun and all, but sometimes I sit down and say, ‘Is this what I really want to do?’ I don’t know. I’ve always been a bit indecisive, an unmotivated person. I don’t have ambitions.

I really don’t.” ,

Or pretentions, either. Even with the dough he’s raking in now, Jimmy’d rather take the tube than hop a black cab around London—and, as for flaunting one’s wealth, well, that had a good deal to do with why he left Brbnski Beat, didn’t it? Wasn’t there being able to stand the fancy Italian sports cars and assorted flash gear that suddenly began showing up? That kind of stuff sort of rubs the old socialist principles the wrong way, especially when one is barely six months off the dole and has got quite used to lining on 23 pounds a week. But we get ahead of ourselves here. Back in the beginning .a,.

. . .there was Grandpa, who kept a card in his wallet certifying that he was a dues-paying member of the Communist party. Until Stalin took over the revolution and started all that gulag crap, that is. Dad, meantime, labored on building sites around Glasgow; his was one of the bacljs on which the town was built. “There was this awareness that the class system was ail wrong. Here was my father working five days a week from 7 o’clock in the morning til 6 o’clock at night for somebody else who was having quite a nice, luxurious, relaxed fife. I just felt it was wrong.’’

Sommerville also thought it necessary to rebel agairtst the smalltown mentality that couldn’t see beyond the traditional stereotypes of what constitutes proper behavior for boys and girls. “I went quite mad. 1 grew my hair really long, then had a wedge cut| which was popular with young kids who went to discos and listened to soul music,” he says, running a hand over the mere strawberry blond fringe that exists today. “And I used to wear eye make-up. You couldn’t miss me on the street, basically.” Parental approval? You’ve got to be kidding. “My dad used to swear at me. We’d have screaming matches that would end with him not lettin’ me out the door. As far as my grandfather was concerned, any trouble was my own fault. Once I got beaten up and the only thing he could say was, ‘What do you expect if you run around lookin’ like a bloody girl?’ ”

Jimmy’s first outing to London, meant to be just a weekend one, was an eyeopener, to use typical British understatement. “The first place we landed was Earl’s Court, where there were sex shops and prostitutes on the streets. Now, I come from a place where you don’t have such things as sex shops, and prostitution is a very low-key thing. I didn’t think it was awful, just unbelievable. Then when I saw some men hoidin’ hands in the streets, I said, ‘This is just too much.’ Of course I decided to stay.”

Squatter flats cross-town in Kings Cross weren't exactly top drawer—in fact, they were downright seedy—but Jimmy adjusted. “It was a case of me sayin’ to myself, ‘Well, what are morals and what are standards anyway, except something that’s just drummed into you.’ ” A decent job in a department store, augmented by restaurant and bar stints, helped improve his self-image greatly.

So did running into a couple of guys who were about to make a documentary of what it was truly like to be young, gifted and gay, the ’80s way. Framed Youth, according to Sommerville, who lent a helping hand as interviewee/set-builder/gofer/ camera person and anythingi else, was “all about bein’ positive, bein’ proud and bein’ assertive.” Recently—the same night the Communards headlined Royal Albert Hall, in fact—the BBC finally aired the four-year-old show, but not until after the British Film Institute had sanctioned it by bestowing its prestigious Grayson Award. “Now all these benders have a plaque in the BFI,” Jimmy chuckles.

Besides giving him an education in politics of the gay, female and black variety, Framed Youth introduced Sommerville to all his future partners. Coles was involved in the project, and, as it turned out, one of the women working on the film shared a house with the Bronskis and invited Jimmy around. He visited, then visited again, and soon these high energy synth pop tunes were bursting out all over the old council flats. Within a ridiculously short period of time, at least as far as Sommerville’s psyche was concerned, he found himself tumbling about the world, fronting this trio touted as a “gay political band” and making enough money to last him for the rest of his life.

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“Richard and I, we don’t see ourselves as British, we see ourselves as European. I just hate that what being British stands for, this whole idea that Brittania still rules the waves, when it’s more like America’s back door. And in a way, British culture has drawn on other European countries, so we think it’s really important to establish those links.” So voila—the Communards, whose moniker derives from a 19th century band of French revolutionaries who took over the streets of Paris briefly. “They took control of their own lives, rather than have someone oppress them,” Jimmy explains. “I think that’s important.”

Coles, the other, albeit somewhat silent voice in this duo, nods in agreement. Looking, depending on your eyesight and/or your point of view, like Buddy Holly or an ex-choirboy gone wrong, Richard, with glasses perched atop the pointy nose, Prince Charles ears and extremely noticeable Adam’s apple, provides an intriguing contrast to his self-taught, working class partner. Country born and bred, the budding musical talent landed a scholarship to the Royal School of Church Music where he sang ’til his voice broke, literally. They kept him on, studying piano, violin and organ, but he had this habit of throwing poker dice during communion. "It was a secular school that just happened to be run by priests,” he recalls. “It really wasn’t adequate to the demands of the 20th century.”

After the Bronski experience, Coles and Sommerville embarked on a benefit binge, playing in England and New York to raise money for everything from women’s groups to the Gay Men’s Health Crisis. They also wrote songs. Deliberately non-political songs. "What we’re doing now is meant to be just good fun,” the singer declares. “I honestly wouldn’t want to go to a concert where someone is doing just these really depressing, heavy songs all night. I think it’s great fun to escape and forget things for an hour or two.”

In the back of his mind, though, lurks a lesson in radio homophobia. “Bronski Beat nearly had a hit in America, until radio programmers discovered we were a gay band. Then they wouldn’t play us any more.” So if one has a burning desire to say things that could just possibly be construed as a bit controversial, and if one knows one might never get heard if one doesn’t tone it down a bit, wouldn’t it make sense for one to find a way of, well, compromising just a teensy bit to keep those lines of communication open? And wouldn’t that be more subversive anyway? “The thing to do is not be so insular or ghettoized. You’ve got to broaden your politics, to say it’s about being black, being a woman, about being a minority who’s oppressed by the bloody majority,” he theorizes. And besides, any love song the Communards decide to do will be deemed a political statement anyway, even if “Lover Man” is meant to tweak the sensibilities of all those tragedy queens who just think it’s too, too awful about Judy. And Marilyn.

There is a musical side to all this political stuff, believe it or not, and it surfaced most recently when Richard and Jim were making their album. “I listened to everything from Connie Francis and Patsy Cline to Madonna and Prince to 1001 Strings,” laughs Sommerville. “I just love loads of different things. I must admit, though, they always tend to be either quite tacky or quite emotional.” Coles enjoyed playing keyboard wizard, gypsy music and dragging together eight more musicians—seven of them women—-to mash together into a full fledged band. “I did all the work,” he underscores with grinning sarcasm “but we had a good time.”

Now that Thelma Houston’s “Don’t Leave Me This Way” has been properly revived, a money-making European trip and whirlwind reconnaissance mission to America executed (sorry, four dates in five days just do not constitute a proper tour), the boys are left scratching their heads for an encore. Yes, they’ll do Eastern European shows and Richard will move into his new flat, the one that’s already been robbed, but really, what’s next?

“Well, uh, I’ve got some work on film scores and with a couple of people in the band, I’ll do some classical concerts, Coles offers brightly. “Other than that, nothing special.” “I’m going to give myself a crash course in technology,” Jimmy thinks aloud. “Frankly, it’s embarrassing when we go into the studio, how little we know. We haven’t a clue. Then we’ll be writin’, too, and ... well ... just havin’ a break, really. I’m going to be lazy and have some fun.”

That’s passion for you.