Return to Madness (From The Northern Echo)

Return to Madness

3:07pm Thursday 12th January 2012 in Features & Interviews By Steve Pratt

The voice of Madness, Suggs, tells Steve Pratt about his decision to stage a solo tour before his band return to the recording studio.

SUGGS has, he admits, got lost in the jungle of his life but happily reports that he’s found his way out and has now “got the hang of it”.

That’s not so much getting the hang of life as of performing his one-man show Suggs: My Life Story In Words And Music. Not quite solo, it would seem, as “musical accompaniment and pointless interjections from his loyal pianist come manservant” are also promised.

Yet for all the seemingly anarchic approach to the project, Suggs is taking it very seriously, even subjecting himself to a morning of interviews to promote the show which he accepts as “all part of the job”.

He has the cat to blame, among other things, for putting his life story on stage.

That was just one of a series of apocryphal things that happened to him. “I got to 50, the kids left home and I had space in my life,” he says. And then the cat kicked the bucket. “My cat did die,” he insists, when I ask if that somewhat unlikely story is true.

“I’d had a party the night before and the following day was feeling the worse for wear when I heard a great crash and the cat had jumped off a shelf and died,” he recalls.

He wasn’t the only one upset by the moggy’s demise. Later he was in the back of a cab and chatted to the driver about his 50-year moment. When he told him about his children leaving home, the cabby merely said that he’d been glad to see the back of his. Then Suggs related the tale of the cat – and heard sobbing coming from the other side of the partition.

“It showed me our affinity with pets,” he says.

Suggs – or Graham McPherson to give him his birth name – has plenty of life experiences to talk about. Most know him as frontman of Madness, but he can add musician, songwriter and DJ to his list of achievements.

He’s doing the show while writing his autobiography. “The two things are pretty much in tandem. There’s only so much I can get in this show and great thing about a book is you can expand on things,” he says.

He was fortunate to have a close friend to help him write the show. He’d done lots of research for documentaries and was very useful for the arranging the chronology of Suggs’ life.

“There were all sorts of things I needed to find out about. I never knew my dad and thought there would be endless searching at Somerset House but my friend said, ‘have you ever thought of looking yourself up on Wikipedia?’,” he recalls.

So he looked and, as useful as it was, his entry does contain a few mistakes which he makes a joke about in his show.

His criticism was somewhat tempered when he found the facts were taken from an interview he’d given.

At first, he didn’t think he’d need a director but got one after his producer suggested it would help. It did, changing the show from a monologue into a theatrical piece, helping Suggs get from one story to another with a cry of “There I was in a pub in 1975 ...” or some such link.

“So the show is 80 per cent theatre – just chatting and five or six songs,” he says.

“It’s very challenging and ultimately very rewarding. I have learnt as much about theatre as myself. And it’s a great thing when you get a laugh. You’ve written something in the office and thought it was amusing but to hear people in the theatre laugh at it...”

What he finds interesting is the interaction with the audience, which is different to being in a band which is “pretty much euphoria from beginning to end”, he says.

“With this show you can tell very early on what the audience is like, what age they are. If there’s no laughter, you know they’re younger or older than you. Most nights I got a standing ovations which makes it really interesting.”

He tried out the show for a couple of weeks in a pub theatre to iron out any problems. During those two weeks was when he got lost in the jungle and had his confidence dented. His wife telling him “For God’s sake, you’ve been telling these anecdotes for ten years” helped him get through it. He’s now confident enough with his lines to go, as he puts it, “off piste” during the show.

It may look like he’s making it up as he goes along – and most people seem to think that – but he’s not. There’s a narrative thread and a chronology, but also a few scenes where he can changes things.

He’s done a bit of acting in the past – a few months in the Madness musical Our House and the odd TV cameo – and thinks this show could lead him to do more. “You have to do a bit of acting when you’re repeating things every night. But I feel this throbbing in my mind when I’m learning lines.”

He’s not yet said goodbye to Madness.

The band is recording a new album with a big tour planned towards the end of the year. “Hopefully, we’ll have finished the album by then,” he adds.

• York Grand Opera House, Jan 26.

Box Office: 0844- 8713024 and atgtickets.com. Newcastle Journal Tyne Theatre, Jan 27. Box Office 0844-4939999