"
Which one's Ron McNasty? "
The cover of the NME, 3 August, 1991, had ' The Farm ' standing on the New York shoreline holding up cartons of ' Farmers ' flavoured milk shakes... with Lee Mavers inset, bottom right corner. The ' pixels ' effect is the way the newspaper is printed..
" Hey! It's The La's! " he observes, loudly. He is followed by another man in a crap 60's suit who, bizarrely, also belows' " Hey! It's The La's! " Lee Mavers and his drumming brother Neil smile benignly as the first geek says, " We're going to see you guys tonight! " while the other geek shouts, " We paid $16! ". Guitar La Paul ' Cammy ' Cammell is absorbed in the contents of his fingernails. Bass player John Powers has an evil look in his eye. " You guys are the new Beatles, right? " says Geek One, adding merrily, " Which one's Ron McNasty ". Geek Two further adds to the comedy factor by shouting, " Hey, is it true you guys think your record's shit? " The La's adopt the furious silence of the deeply offended. Every schoolchild in the world knows that The La's think that their record is abysmal and an insult to their artistry, but it's not done to discuss it. This has not occured to the geeks, who blather on and on. " We're in a group - We're called The Mooks, " continues Geek One. " Bye, " mutters Rob the manager. " We're the american La's, " says Geek Two, unheeding. John grins and surveys Geek Two's supremely duff attire. " Yeah? " he snorts. " Well, you'd better buy a new f---ing shirt then, la'. " " Hey! " says Geek One. " I love your sarcastic English sense of humour! " " Bye, " says Rob the manager, much more loudly.  We meet The La's at their soundcheck a few hours before the Geek
incident. They are standing in the street, happily mocking an advert for
the new Top single. " That song, it's ' Son Of A Preacher Man ' , " says
John. John is proud of his melody-spotting abilities. " I can put a tune
to anything,
Instead, John is about to enter a far from hygienic club across the road from the New York Inspectorate Of Emissions (honest) and do a soundcheck. La's soundchecks are about as dull as anyone else's so we stay only briefly. Lee plays ' Son Of A Gun '. John plays a splendid new song of his own making called ' Follow Me Down '. Despite the Geek incident, the show that night is fine, ie The La's hated it and everyone else went mental, whooped a lot, sang along to ' There She Goes ', marvelled at the self-referential perfection of ' Timeless Melody ' and agreed that the newish ' I Am The Key ' is a weird and lovely epic. Afterwards The La's meet their American record company to have their pictures taken pressing the flesh and then - tired but blind drunk - we all go home because we have to go to Washington in the morning. So far Lee Mavers has spoken but two words to me. They were " How do? ", which is pleasant enough but isn't going to fill many pages. Now I am in a minibus with him and we are hurtling down the New Jersey Turnpike at 55mph together. It is a sunny, we are four hours from Washington, the radio is playing everything from The Allman Brothers to EMF and I suggest to Lee that perhaps we might have a chat later. Lee grimaces. " Just soak it up, la', " he suggests. " Soak it up and do it that way. You don't need to do an interview. " With that he leans back and discusses with Cammy the merits of Paul McCartney's solo version of ' We can work it out ' which is on the radio. Lee opines that it is " slack ". My attemps to learn more of the mysterious Mavers are bounded by the fact that he keeps falling asleep,only waking to opine on the records on the radio. I do, however, manage to soak up that he finds reference to masturbation in Billy Joel's ' Captain Jack ' reasonably amusing and is quite fond of Elton John's ' Honky Cat '. We stop for snacks at a service station and I find myself strolling along with the affable Cammy. Cammy is keen to talk about the band's visit to Honolulu. " We played Waikiki Beach, which is this tourist resort, " he confides. " It was shite. It was like Blackpool. " We get back in the bus and, after much more driving, we reach Washington, home of the White House, Capitol Hill and the 9.30 Club. The 9.30 Club is the size of a large sub-post office and its dressing-room contains one of the most spectacularly libellous pieces of gossip about a pop singer I have ever seen. Curiously, said pop singer is Lee Mavers. 
Picture caption: Cammy and John re-enact the La's supper. The Soundcheck is brief, Lee sings ' Son Of A Gun ' and John sings ' Follow Me Down '. We check into our hotel where, to our horror, we meet Ned's Atomic Dustbin. " Washington is groupie city, " claims one chap in the 9.30 Club, but apart from the Neds, who have followed us, we can see no one who might engage in rock'n'roll rumpo, so we watch The La's again. They are fine except that Lee has taken exception to being photographed onstage and keeps mouthing " F--- off! F--- off! " at Tim Jarvis. The set rattles along and The La's encore with ' I Am The Key '. " This one isn't finished, " grins Lee. " But you don't mind. " The dressing-room afterwards is chocka. There are teenage girls who have heard of The La's and there are teenage girls who haven't. There are dodgy old men called Dave (ahem) who think that I am in The La's and congratulate me on my album. And there are The La's themselves, exhibiting grace under pressure as 40 Washingtonians grapple with Liverpool accents and say " So how come you think your album is shit? " Conversations bat about the room. " I used to live on snacks when I was a kid, crisps and Ringos and stuff. I was totally hyperactive, " reveals John. " They used to call me the Ringo Kid. " " When it comes to what we do, whether it's for the art or just for being in a job, " declares Neil, " it's the art that's more important. " " 808 State ? " says Lee. " Techno bullshit. " " You guys are kinda like REM, " says a teenage girl. Time to go. 
Picture caption: " Shit Lee!...the NME have said we're good again! " The night passes in the twinkling of an eye and we assemble in the hotel lobby. Today we are going to Asbury Park, New Jersey, home of Bruce Springsteen and something very disgusting called salt water taffy which we shan't discuss here. And today I am in a car with John Powers to have a chat, John being the most talkative of The La's and, indeed, a man who declares himself to be Mr Interview. Do The La's like America? John is philosophical.
Talking about acts being got together brings to mind a weird thing about The La's, which is that they've been going ten years or so and yet in that time they've managed to release just one LP. Even now their stage set contains only five new songs. One might suspect The La's of indolence on an ocean-going scale. " We know that, " John sighs. " There's loads of new stuff, la'. There's stuff we've never even done live, which is going to make it even more exciting for us. Cammy's been getting loads of riffs, Lee's got loads of tunes, and for me this last year an' a 'alf has been f---ing brilliant for writing. " We pass what seems to be the 95th Roy Rogers Snack Bar (noted for Our unpleasantly Rubbery Hamburgers) of the day and ponder the question: will The La's consider their second LP to be as bad as the first one? John shakes his tousled locks. " We had a pretty good idea of what we wanted with the first one, " he insists, " but it was getting it across to people. Hopefully we know what we want in the studio. You learn from your past, like. We wanna produce it - if that's what you call it, like. we just wanna get a true representation of the band down on record, that's all, like. " Tricky, for despite it all, few people sound like The La's. We take a break to listen to a Bob Dylan tape. John practises his Dylan impression. Like Lee he is a horrendously good mimic and could give the boys and girls on Stars In Their Eyes a run for their money. Time for another question. Many people find The La's blend of Mersey harmonies, jangly guitar and top tunes a touch retro. John shrugs. " Let them. You can't please all the people all the time. There's always going to be some c--- whingeing. I don't know what retro means. You shouldn't deny your history, you should take it and learn from it, but I'm living today, I'm living now. You know, I wasn't even in the f---in' '60's. " Our car - spookily - is travelling parallel to the tour bus. We can
see Lee Mavers sleeping.
" Some people take the wrong end of the stick. People who are sound get on with us, they can handle a bit of this and a bit of that, they don't get uptight, " insists John, subjectively. " But some people who come in and meet us, we'll just pass comment, like, and they'll be freaked, they'll think of us as arrogant bastards. There should be no problem with feeling confident, it's just that sometimes people take it the wrong way. " He sighs at the strangeness of the world. " That's their f---in' problem, not ours. Anyone who knows the band knows that ... I can get on with anyone, like. " 
Picture caption: Lee ' Majors ' settles for a big Mack. Asbury Park is pure end-of-the-world movie set. Out by the boardwalk,
a derelict ballroom stands on the beach, supported by stilts. Half collapsed
clubs are scattered about the streets. The Asbury Park Rock'n'Roll Museum
is closed and there are no tourists here to buy the salt water taffy.
The locals are immensely friendly and soon we are all jiving to Bruce Springsteen Records. By the pool table, Lee meets a cheerful man called Rick and they become firm friends. At least, Lee keeps shouting " You just bought yerself a can o' whup-ass! " at Rick who keeps whooping and slapping Lee's hand. Lee is patently in an excellent mood and the show is the best of the past few days. The La's even encore with their wondrous Led Zeppelin instrumental pastiche ' Swashbuckler ' and there is much backstage jollity. " Whoop! " shouts Rick. " You guys are good! " " You just bought yerself a can o' whup-ass! " retorts Lee. The next morning brings grey skies, an epic breakfast on the seafront
and a chat with Lee. Lee is expansive to the max.
" We were looking forward to going, before we came, " he concedes. " It's been hard. Problems with the sound. The last two nights were not so good. I couldn't hear meself sing, like. But there have been a couple of good gigs. " The next La's album will, Lee is insistent, be splendid.
And how will that be? Lee is happy to " explain ".
Of course. Moving swiftly along... while most pop acts are concerned - well, obsessed - with the " direction " they are going to take on their next album, Lee regards the sound of The La's as something that exists outside time, space and the confines of fashion. Or, as he shrugs, " The songs we're doing now are still straightforward. Why regress? " 
Picture caption: The La's gang in town (l to r): Cammy, Lee, Neil and John. The r-word provokes one of the most furious outbreaks of shrugging in the history of time. " The people that say we're retro , they're the ones who are retro, " raves Lee. " Something that's good is futuristic. Now's now. Why aren't they now? Happiness is now. " Lee - silent for so long - is unstoppable. " We've been thrash punk, y'know, we've been places where people like Ride have been.... We've been over that. " So is everyone crap apart from The La's? Lee thinks long and hard. " I like Happy Mondays. They're very good, " he decides. " It's attitude... Attitude's where you are. " And in the end, with The La's it does all come down to attitude. The band may be blessed with a gnat's comprehension of what doing a press feature involves ( Lee, for example, seems to regard having your picture taken for an article as " posing " ). But hey! They were sociable and, in the end, we got most of what we wanted done. And in the end The La's make remarkable records and maybe to do that you can't be Mr 24 Hours A Day Jollity. " What keeps us going is memories of the future, " says Laughing Lee, " the spirit of the thing. The flames are dampened but there's life there. " Are The La's crap? The La's are not crap.  |