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Bid and The Monochrome Set turn 40… “Like The Tremeloes playing ferry gigs”?
Post-punk dandies, obsessed with Roman Catholicism, sex, vampires, freemasonry, the class system and Kenneth Williams, the Monochrome set are celebrating successfully evading commercial success for 40 years in 2018.
the release of their 14th studio album, Maisieworld, ties in with the arrival of a 6CD boxset anthologising their earliest works, while original guitarist Lester square has been recalled for two concerts in which they will play their two 1980 albums – The Strange Boutique and Love
Zombies – before the new-look Monochrome set embark on a leisurely ‘weekends only’ tour of Britain. “It’s a Harlem Globetrotters thing,” singer Bid tells Uncut, a little uncomfortable with the one-time Rough trade cool dudes trading on former glories “like the tremeloes playing ferry gigs”.
survival, though, is the key for Calcuttaborn Bid, whose Indian physicist father designed the aerials on top of the Post office tower. A self-confessed “indie professional”, the 59-year-old has made modest commercial success into a viable career. “It’s a bit like being in the army,” explains the West Ham fan. “You go off on campaigns and you’ve got to be really efficient. You have to be a tony Pulis or a David Moyes and manage your resources really well.” such stringent talk jars somewhat with the opium-den opulence of the music the Monochrome set released during three phases of existence – 1978–85, 1990–98 and 2010–now. Bid, his Battersea Grammar schoolmate Andy Warren (bass) and Lester square (very much the long mac Hank Marvin) congealed to form the core of the ‘classic’ Ms lineup in the late ’70s, but continuous stylistic feints and swerves stopped them from joining former bandmate Adam Ant in the proper pop charts.
“I’ve always thought we were a mainstream band myself – just a small mainstream band,” says the dapper Bid, not unhappy that he never made the front cover of Smash Hits. “It’s the difference between JK Rowling and Vs Naipaul; literature is a two-pronged thing and so is music. that whole taylor swift thing is a different planet, a different calling.”
Happily, their knotty aesthetic (“I learned a lot of my craft by reading Restoration poetry,” says Bid) has earned them an eclectic but dedicated following. Genuinely big in Japan in the ’90s, they could apparently count the head of the Church of satan as a fan – a friend in LA heard “the Devil Rides out”, from ’82’s chaise longue fantasia Eligible Bachelors, being played at a party held by Anton LeVey.
the key to their longevity may be keeping themselves guessing. “We don’t know what we’re doing,” admits Bid, who discovered after suffering a stroke in his early fifties that something inside him had been writing all his songs for him all along.
“I went through periods of aphasia where I couldn’t understand any language at all, but I was still quite happily writing away,” he says. “My consciousness didn’t have access to the lexicon any more and this other creature did.
“I have to wait for it to appear and then I let it write what it wants,” he adds with a sigh, explaining how he keeps up the good work. “I don’t try to analyse what I’ve written – I just take out the naughty words.” Maisieworld and 1979–1985: Complete Recordings are out Feb 9 on Tapete. The Monochrome Set play Strange Boutique at London Lexington on Feb 10, followed by Love Zombies on Feb 11. A full UK and European tour begins Feb 24
“It’s a bit like being in the army. You go off on campaigns and you have to be really efficient”– Bid