Martin Newell
In its broad outline, the plight of British guitarist and songwriter Martin Newell will sound familiar. Since 1980 Newell has been releasing brilliant, deliriously tuneful pop records–as the Cleaners From Venus and the Brotherhood of Lizards as well as under his own name–yet he’s received scant attention and had little commercial success. Even in his own country, he remains largely unknown to the musical community.
(4) Music too far ahead of its time.
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Apparently Newell doesn’t want to be famous. According to the liner notes of a wonderful new British compilation that spans his entire career, The Wayward Genius of Martin Newell, he refused to quit a prog rock band he was in during punk’s heyday simply because his bandmates were “the nicest bunch of blokes I’d ever played with.” Once, when Charisma Records offered him £25,000 to make an LP, he said he’d make the record for £5,000 and that they could give the rest to Ethiopian famine relief.
Music writer Richie Unterberger asked Newell about that flap in his recent book Unknown Legends of Rock ‘n’ Roll: “The British press are quite ruthless in pursuit of a story,” Newell said. “They’ll tell any amount of lies, and they don’t care who they sacrifice. It turned me into a druggy, paranoid little recluse. It helped me spawn Cleaners From Venus.”
Over time, the sound quality of the Cleaners recordings improved, and Newell’s songwriting became even sharper and more multifaceted. Cleaners lyrics tended to be about girls and sundry English locales, but Newell also sent off salvos of cleverly worded antiestablishment vitriol. In “Living With Victoria Grey,” for instance, England is a beautiful, callous woman: “Her lovely face was everywhere / Someone pretending to care / The image of Victoria Grey / I heard some hungry children cry / Rumbling wheels passed them by / The carriage of Victoria Grey / Save it up / It’s for a rainy day.” Yet no matter what the subject, his verses were always couched in infectious pop of the highest order.
In his 1995 Internet missive, Newell took time to sum up his position in the contemporary pop landscape: “I believe that a good song should have lots of interesting little corners in it, rather like an old house with secret rooms. I don’t hate dance music as such but I’ve begun to think of the beat as a tyrant. The message from the mainstream is, This is the beat we have selected for you for the current five years. If you are a customer you WILL listen to it. If you are a musician you WILL use it. Or you will be considered unfashionable and unworthy of attention and will be banished to the hinterland.”
