Martin Aston

I interviewed Jimmy Somerville for Attitude's July 2014 issue, on the 30th anniversary of Bronski Beat's "Smalltown Boy," one of British pop's most striking and vital singles.

IN 1982, THE LONDON-BASED Lesbian and Gay Youth Video Project made Framed Youth: Revenge Of The Teenage Perverts, the first time that gay youth in this country had been given a legitimate public voice. Among its VHS-enshrined testimonials and vox pops (“how would you feel if your daughter was a lesbian?”) was another first; two minutes of music, called Screaming - Jimmy Somerville’s first attempt at singing.

It wasn’t just the tone of this uncanny, tremulous counter-tenor out of nowhere, but he similarly haunted folk-blues spiritual he sang, like an exorcism. Among the cutting shards of words: “My lying my deceiving… My physical abuse… My loneliness my aching brain… My tempting to destroy… My confusion disillusion… My wanting just to scream.” 

Life has indeed been an ordeal for the young Somerville, and in 1979, aged 18, he’d fled for London (he didn’t tell his parents for three months). In 1984, having formed Bronski Beat with synth bods Steve Bronski and Larry Steinbachek, the first ‘out’ all-gay band, he addressed that fear-and-flee feeling in an astonishing song. Smalltown Boy was as haunting as Screaming, but prettier and charged with a propulsive electronic rhythm to reinforce the sense of movement: “You leave in the morning / With everything you own / In a little black case / Alone on a platform / The wind and the rain /On a sad and lonely face.” Jimmy also took a train to London in the song’s promo video, where his bashful cruising at the swimming baths had ended badly and bloodily, at which point he decides to leave home. Larry and Steve join Jimmy on that fictitious train, and their exchange of grins as the train departs suggests a pot of gold does exist at the end of the gay rainbow.

Today, Smalltown Boy appears just as emotive and groundbreaking, the first clear and necessary pop-cultural slice of social realism into the teen gay experience, as opposed to the heady hedonism of Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s Relax and its’ video’s unbridled leather-bar fantasy. On the occasion of the song’s 30th anniversary, a time to celebrate its significance, its bravery, honesty and anthemic legacy, Somerville admits the song has been many things to him: a fight for freedom, the path to success, and an echo of the fame he both craved and rejected – he thinks this is his interview in ten years, and it’s clear that the pot of gold is a fiction. But he says he’s come full circle with Smalltown Boy, and he not only loves it again, he even has new plans for it…

Did you know there are almost 20 cover versions of Smalltown Boy on Spotify? Yes! Actually, I’m going to post something on Facebook, starting with the original, then all the covers, and finish with a little reprise that I’ve just recorded of the “run away, turn away, crying to your soul” part. Some are absolutely brilliant, like the metal version [starts screaming the chorus], what the fuck’s going through their heads, you wonder? It’s mental. I like Dido’s version too. It’s nice to hear women sing it. The strange thing about my voice, it was so unusual that people didn’t think it was a man singing. It’s like I’m the bearded lady! It’s a shame, because I’ve often felt detached from my voice, I thought it was a bit of a circus act, but in the last decade I’ve come to understand my voice, to realise it’s a beautiful and soulful voice, and I love it.

Was Smalltown Boy inspired by a real incident, perhaps at a swimming pool? Or a general feeling? It was just in the air. Kings Cross and Euston stations [in London] are iconic in regards to people moving south, to escape. There’s something very powerful about that but also sad. They’re gateways to London but things don’t always work out and not everyone survives. But there’s something about trains that I love, they’re hypnotic and evocative, and the song tried to evoke the romantic notion of this journey, and a positive outcome, so the music has that pulsing feel, and for me, my cry is almost like the whistle of a train. But again it’s sad. I didn’t want to leave Glasgow, but circumstances drove me away. 

Some background, please. I spent most of my youth being traumatised and bullied, like this little bear to be baited. I was red-headed, short, very sensitive and obviously gay, I was always mistaken for a girl, which I’d use to manipulate people and get what I wanted. There was a suicide attempt… The doctor suggested I was better off in a psychiatric hospital, but after two weeks my mum realised it wasn’t right. But, really, I had no boundaries or adult guidance. I was sneaking into clubs, doing things most boys my age weren’t, in the bus station toilets. I had a few encounters, a couple of sexual assaults, but I returned regardless of the danger, which became the pattern for the rest of my life. But I met other young guys there, and we’d just hang out. Glasgow actually had a gay centre then, in Sauciehall Street, and we got encouraged to hang out there. That’s where I got introduced in politics, reading stuff like Gay News. But I was always moved by the injustice and difference. My brother’s wife was black, and their kids mixed race, and in school holidays I’d work in refuge shelters for battered wives. At the same time, I was running around like a disco dolly and drinking. To be honest, that was my main interest! But for some reason, I always felt I had to get away, which saved my life, I think.

Presumably London represented salvation.

Sadly, I did the same in London as I had in Glasgow, just up a notch because London’s that much bigger. I was a rent boy around Piccadilly Circus, but this surgeon, who living in Hampstead, offered me and a friend a room in his house, so we moved there. Though I still carried on, wanting the extra money for clubbing. But I worked at Heals [department store], and a pub, and I was on the dole too. I was carefree, but it was chaotic too. My goals were sex and alcohol, and I got into speed too, just total hedonism. But I found myself part of a new underground scene that started at the Carved Red Lion in Islington, Saturday nights in the basement bar, a club called Movements. Heaven [nightclub] was trying to mirror the San Francisco idea of gay, but a bunch of us didn’t fit into that: we loved Talking Heads and Lou Reed as well as Donna Summer. That’s when I crossed over from this wandering, lost, little soul boy into politics and alternative gay life. I met my boyfriend Lawrence, who had a PhD in history, economics and politics, he was quite a Trotskyite. We started dressing like little rockabillies with flat tops, very visible with our badges, like the pink triangle. Suddenly I was part of something rather than just reading or knowing about it.

You had no fear about being a target? You don’t exactly resemble a bouncer. No, I just got very passionate about it all because I’d finally found a voice, this tribe of people with political ideas that made sense to me, because I had an understanding of what it was like to be different, what people have to put up with. I was fearless, and mouthy!

Before Framed Youth, you’d really never sung before? I was a bit of a loner, and some of my evenings were spent wandering the streets being a little human synthesiser, singing the synth lines to I Feel Love or Mighty Real. So I developed a tone, but I’d never tapped into it until Screaming, which I think you can hear in the emotion and rawness of my voice. It was such a release for me. Larry and Steve knew Jill, who worked on Framed Youth, and I moved in with to their squat in Camberwell. That’s where we worked on Smalltown Boy, I had the refrain, “run away, turn away, to your soul,” and the three of us worked on the verse and the music. Before we knew it, record companies were coming to see us play and we got offered a record deal.

Why do you think Smalltown Boy matters? It’s not a throwaway moment, it’s a very important moment in pop and gay political history. To sum it up, it’s real, raw, emotional, heartfelt and original. There had been gay singers before but not this kind of evocative, emotional plea. We didn’t or drown the song in ambiguity, we didn’t disguise it, or who Bronski Beat were. It wasn’t just gay men that liked it either, it tapped into a universal feeling of needing to change, to explore, to be free. Later on, the song meant a lot to Eastern Europeans, for example. It’s that haunting melody and the tone of a voice that’s never really sang before, a voice I wasn’t quite in control of because I’m discovering it myself, so there’s a vulnerability there, in stark contrast to that pulsing electronic rhythm that’s about moving, to get away. It just gelled.

The video was equally memorable, equally real. That was down to Connie – Constantine Giannaris - who’d also worked on Framed Youth. We wanted the antidote to the Duran Duran kind of blockbuster video. The swimming pool was to inject shock, like, how far can we push this? It was important to get this unashamed sexuality in there. And there’s no distraction, it’s a guy looking at a guy in Speedos in a swimming pool. It’s so strange because ten years later, MTV unofficially banned it for another ten years, because it was obviously someone cruising someone else. Can I mention the record sleeve?

 The artwork was brave too, centering on a pink triangle. If someone wore a pink triangle badge in the early Eighties, you knew they were gay. The first book I’d read about gay politics was about why men wore the pink triangle, to mark them out in the concentration camps. We wanted to use imagery that would get people curious. When we did interviews, we’d mention it and automatically you’re on to gay politics.

Smalltown Boy reached number three in the UK chart - what was its impact on the band? Suddenly we were huge, we were absolutely everywhere. Then we went to New York to do the album [The Age Of Consent]. For someone driven by sex and clubbing and alcohol and danger, I’m suddenly popped into Greenwich Village, well you might as well have stuck a cow-rod up my arse, I was on fire! I was so into the music but the other stuff was far too powerful. Looking back, I don’t know how my little head processed it all. That’s when it started going wrong with Larry and Steve. I think I’m always pre-destined to destroy things. I’d got involved in something I hadn’t dreamt about doing, being a singer in a band, being famous and successful, I just went with it. But we’d been drifting apart, the band wasn’t based on strong friendships, and I was the cash cow, as long as I was doing everything, it was working. But I just imploded. When I do that, I close down and everything else doesn’t exist. So I left and constantly returned to New York, meeting and dating guys. But then I wasn’t hearing from them again. I realised later on that they’d died. Now that was a real mindfuck, totally bonkers.

Did the Aids crisis radicalise you further? It did later, when I went to ACT UP meetings and the idea engulfed me that there was this drug, AZT, which wasn’t widely available, and was so toxic, yet there was such a desire and demand to have access to it. There was so much fear and discrimination and so much death. But at that time, it was too much to take on. I coped by closing down, and going into dark places, through alcohol. I realised, as I got older and did work on myself, that I was an obsessive-compulsive kid, and when things get too much, it gets really narrow, like a pinhole, and I don’t communicate it until I’m practically destroying myself.  I became a master of balancing this and the public persona and no one really knew what was behind this dark curtain in my head. There were times when I was in a very manageable and loving and nurturing place, but then I’d be in the throes again of messing it up. It’s like going to hell and back.

Does that help explain why you haven’t been interviewed for ages? Despite having strong material to promote [2010 acoustic covers album Suddenly One Summer and three EPs since]?  No, I love singing and writing, I just don’t like the game that goes with it. But if you don’t have a public persona, no one will hear else. I can’t remember the last interview I did. I don’t think I’ve ever done one with Attitude. I don’t care what people say, but there was a period where no one was interested in me or my history. If you don’t whore yourself, you don’t get noticed. It’s been a constant battle. I’m famous, and I loved it, I’m an exhibitionist, and the experience was so powerful, but I was always so self-conscious, I couldn’t manage it. I feel more comfortable when I’m not so public. People recognise me but I don’t go out of my way to say hi, I’m over here.

You must have been surprised to see Boots using Smalltown Boy for their Christmas ad last year. That was very clever, actually, it brought back memories for people and evokes a feeling,  Because I was so out, this gay artist an d singer, everything I was about was gay, but really the song was just emotional, raw, heartfelt emotion, and that’s why it still resonates with people.

In your head, where does Smalltown Boy now fit? It took me a long time to sing Smalltown Boy again - about 20 years, actually. Part of me was embarrassed about it. Over the decades, I’ve given myself a very hard time about what I was doing and who I was, and it sounds really odd, but I had to have a period of grieving, from having had all this fame, and then people saying, didn’t you used to be famous? That fed my demons. But when I started singing it again, the connection with the audience was, oh my goodness, it just all came back home, about what it is that I can do with a song and my voice. But I now totally understand why I have a desire to sing and create, I totally get that now. And it’s important to see that my journey started with that song. The thing I want to stress is that moment of Smalltown Boy, that moment of release, there have been constant releases all through my career, songs like For A Friend or By Your Side, where I’ve really connecting with what I believe and feel. That has been my medicine. It sounds dramatic but they’ve dragged me back from darkness and made me aware of the optimism and goodness of life.”

What’s next? I’ve just finished a full-on disco album. It’s hilarious, but very grown up and real, and I think the songs are great. I’ve had fun with it, but a couple of tracks are motivated by trying to appeal to someone’s heartstrings. And one lyric I’m told is so agit-prop! But a part of me is still motivated by that. It goes, “it’s a welfare war” with a big full disco chorus, “life must be more than this!” The biggest political thing we’re facing is a war on what welfare actually means, its true meaning has been distorted and lost. Sadly, people see it as someone taking money from the state, benefit scroungers, where it should be about mental health, about social and personal welfare. We’re a very rich nation that should be looking after the less fortunate, but we’re demonising them. It’s still about injustice for me.”

ends