Artikel: NOW AND THEN #001: MARTIN MOSCROP
NOW AND THEN #001: MARTIN MOSCROP
An up-front chat with people of note. Exploring what was and what is, across their lives and style, their city and culture.
#001: Martin Moscrop. Guitarist, A Certain Ratio
It’s a brisk, grey Manchester morning when Martin Moscrop arrives at Sackville Gardens, not far from the centre of town. The gardens are a postage stamp of green penned in by a combination of listed red bricks and Canal Street, centre for the city’s LGBTQ+ community. We meet at the Alan Turing statue in the middle of the park, a five-minute walk from the rest of the world via Manchester’s heaving terminus, Piccadilly Station.
‘Over there.’ Martin gestures to an ornate three-storey building, ‘Is where my dad studied textiles after the Second-World War. That bench was outside my office window when I was head of campus at Manchester College.’
He directs my attention to a steel seat facing the building, its back turned suggestively to the park where a bunch of guys sit drinking cans and smoking Spice and crack. ‘The shit I used to see going on at that bench, you would not believe.’
“I had this guitar and I could play a bar chord, so me and a couple of mates formed a group. We split after two rehearsals due to musical differences because the drummer was into the Beatles.”
To the uninitiated, Martin has spent the best part of forty years as the guitarist in pioneering punk-funk band A Certain Ratio, which makes him a contemporary and a forebear of just about every major Manchester act you’ve heard of.
A Factory Records grandee, ACR’s propulsive sound sprung out of post-punk before evolving into something lither, more fluid and danceable, drawing on acid house and electronica, jazz and world music. They went on to influence everyone from Talking Heads to the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, and it all traces back to South Africa.
‘My family moved there from Oldham when I was four. Because there wasn’t a lot of work in the UK, countries like South Africa and Australia were paying skilled people like my dad to go over. I spent my childhood slap bang in the middle of Apartheid. That taught me a lot — what not to be, basically.’
He grew up listening to Radio Bantu, a local station that played the latest black African artists and bands from the area, before returning to the UK with his family in 1976.
'Manchester was very grim, especially in winter. There was really high unemployment — there was a recession on and all the buildings were black from the smoke. I remember we stayed with my uncle and auntie while my dad was looking for work. We came into Manchester for the day and parked near Oldham Street, now the Northern Quarter, and every building was unoccupied. That whole area was just derelict, you know.'
His parents lasted a year before emigrating for a second time, but Martin stayed in Manchester, becoming an apprentice for Mirrlees Blackstone in Hazel Grove, outside Stockport, helping to make diesel engines for ships and tugboats, living on his own in a bedsit, aged sixteen.
'The music kept me here, the fact punk took off. I thought, I’m not going anywhere whilst this is happening. That’s when I got deeply into music, wanting to be in a band. I had this guitar and I could play a bar chord, so me and a couple of mates formed a group. We split after two rehearsals due to musical differences because the drummer was into the Beatles.'
After that Martin joined a glam punk band from Stockport named Alien Tint. One of Alien Tint’s shows at Manchester’s legendary Band on the Wall venue booked them alongside A Certain Ratio, who then consisted of guitarist Pete Terrell, vocalist and trumpeter Simon Topping, and bassist Jez Kerr, who now fronts the band.
'It was Jez’s first gig. They were watching Alien Tint, thinking, that guy doesn’t look like he should be in that band. He’s dressed like us,’ Martin remembers. ‘I was wearing baggy demob trousers with turnups and a white college short sleeved shirt. The rest of Alien Tint were wearing make-up. The guys from A Certain Ratio spoke to me after and said, do you want to join us? So I did.'
Small wonder that a band Tony Wilson is said to have described as ‘having all the energy of Joy Division but with better clothes,’ came about thanks to a double-breasted suit with wide lapels — handed out to unemployed soldiers in need of something to wear for job interviews after WW2.
‘The clothes all came from a second-hand store run by the St Johns Ambulance. There was just thousands of them. We used to wear these demob suits — we’d look like we were out of a 1940s film, with short back and sides and that. Later we got into the army surplus thing. In 1982 we started wearing a sporty, almost Perry boy style, then it was more fashion-led, the kind of stuff Duffer of St George would make, or a shop in Manchester called Geese near the Royal Exchange.’
Now that the grimness and baggy suits are a fading memory, I ask Martin what he can only get in Manchester that he can’t get in other places. What’s its charisma or secret sauce?
‘Friendliness, for a start. In London, people don’t talk to each other on a tube or a bus. It’s not the same openness. I also love the multiculturalism embraced by Mancunians. It’s always been a city of immigrants. It doesn’t matter where you’re from. I consider myself a Mancunian because I’ve spent most of my life here. And other Mancunians consider me a Manc for that same reason. I think its welcoming nature is really unique. The north of England in general has a sense of community, but Manchester has a north of England village mentality in a city.'
"I worked on the film 24 Hour Party People as musical director, and was amazed at how hard they work in the film industry. When I taught at college you’d get a lot of students choosing music because they thought music was easy. They thought all they do is make music. No, you don’t. You’ve got to work and work and work at it. It takes most artists ten years before anyone knows about them.”
Today there’s three core members of ACR. Jez, Martin, and drummer Donald Johnson, whose arrival pushed the band towards the beat-driven sound they’re best known for, plus a sequence of guests on bass, keys and vocals. All of which keeps things fresh. Martin DJs and collects music that keeps him inspired. ‘It’s about difference,’ he says, the unknown that makes it happen. He still feels as excited by hearing something new and different as he did at eleven, when music first exploded in his head.
'The thing about A Certain Ratio is it’s ever changing. It’s important to retain an interest in what you’re doing. I think with music, unless you’re searching, you’re never going to get the satisfaction out of it that you should. I think bands who find a winning formula then stick to it and make fucking loads of money, I think, if ACR had done that, we probably would have been more successful, but would we still be here, and how happy would we be?”'
The band have plans to re-release and tour Force and Sextet, two of their finest and most popular albums. They also released three albums of new material between 2020 and 2024. Creativity is, Martin says, all about relentlessness.
'I’m surprised when I look at other artists and they release a new album every six years. I mean, do you work in a coffee shop or something? I listen to interviews with artists and they’ll say it’s six years in the making. Fucking six years. To me if something’s good, it’s done really quick. If you’re spending time on it, you may as well just park it. I’m hard working as far as music goes. I’m quite proud of the fact I’m relentless at wanting to create new stuff all the time. I worked on the film 24 Hour Party People as musical director, and was amazed at how hard they work in the film industry. When I taught at college you’d get a lot of students choosing music because they thought music was easy. They thought all they do is make music. No, you don’t. You’ve got to work and work and work at it. It takes most artists 10 years before anyone knows about them.'
"Sometimes I feel sorry for solo musicians. I really respect them that they can do it on their own, but I think, hold on a minute, music is about community. It’s about doing things together. Collaboration. I think collaboration is really important."
But that’s not to say that hard work doesn’t pay off, and that music isn’t vital. At home Martin loves venues like Hidden, the White Hotel and the Carlton Club. The Golden Lion in Todmorden, Yorkshire, which ‘might as well be in Manchester because when you go there, 60% of people are Mancs.’
He DJs on NTS; he had a spot on Gilles Peterson’s Worldwide FM, and helps out at the Joe Strummer Stage at Glastonbury every year. He’s even had an adidas shoe named after him. Music, Martin says, is about community. It’s about doing things together. Collaboration.
‘It’s really hard to earn a living from it, then you’ve got people like Live Nation commandeering all the festivals and all the big venues. You’ve got Spotify that pays hardly any money. It’s a really, really difficult environment to be a musician. It was a lot easier when I was younger. I know that. The positive side is music brings people together. It’s great being someone who is respected by other people for making their lives happy, you know. There’s a Brazilian band called Azymuth who’ve been going since the ‘70s. They fuse Brazilian music with jazz and funk. Their pathway was similar to A Certain Ratio’s in that they’ve never been massive but they’ve always been respected. They’ve been working and working and they’re still at it now. They still come to Manchester and they still tour Europe. They just keep going. They’ve been a massive influence on so many musicians that I know. For me, that’s a great legacy. If I were them, I’d be happy with that.’
Stay up to date with Martin and A Certain Ratio here. As always, support the artists. Buy the album. Buy the merch. Go to the gig. You won't regret it.
Until next time.
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