A Conversation with The Mission’s Wayne Hussey – HuffPost 10.24.13

Mike Ragogna: Good morning Wayne! Or good afternoon, whatever it is. How and where are you right now?

Wayne Hussey: I’m fine, thank you. I’m actually in Brazil, that’s where I live, so it’s actually early afternoon here. Where are you?

MR: I’m in Iowa.

WH: I’ve heard of Iowa. That’s where Field Of Dreams was, wasn’t it?

MR: Yup. “If you build it, they will come.” The problem is they came and left. No, just kidding!

WH: Yeah, well at least you got their money first.

MR: [laughs ] That’s so wrong. Okay, do you have a couple of seconds to talk about Silver? How did it all begin, as if I didn’t know?

WH: In 2011, we were approached to do a twenty five-year anniversary show. The other members of the band were up for it and I thought, you know, it’ll get me out of the house for a few weeks, so yeah, why not? So we went and did that and it was a lot of fun, and we filmed the London show for the DVD.

MR: The 2011 performances also included Cologne and Frankfurt, right? And it’s a 2007 release but now it’s seeing the light of day.

WH: I don’t know if you know, but also in the US, we just had our new album released. That’s our first official release in the US in twenty years.

MR: Why, I imagine you’re talking about The Brightest Light!

WH: I am talking about The Brightest Light, yes.

MR: Let’s talk about both projects, but let’s finish up talking about Silver.

WH: Yes. What I was leading to was that we got back together in 2011, we did that tour, and we actually really enjoyed it, enjoyed ourselves and enjoyed each other, and thought we actually made quite a good noise. We decided to do more shows and then one thing led to another and we thought, “Ooh, maybe we could make a new album.” So whilst the original intention was just to go out and do the nostalgia thing, it’s kind of moved on from there.

MR: Wayne, The Mission is considered one of the pioneers of goth along with Sisters Of Mercy, et cetera. However, nowadays, it’s kind of morphed into something else. There are all of these subgenres and it’s gotten tricky to classify.

WH: That’s a blessing in many ways, but it’s also a curse, I find, because I know we certainly have problems at radio. The hard rock stations say we’re not hard enough, the alternative stations that say we’re not alternative enough, and the pop stations that say that we’re not poppy enough. We kind of fall between a rock and a hard place, really, and whilst I’m proud of that fact, I do think that the media as a whole finds it quite difficult to get a handle on things that they can’t put in a category.

MR: Lately, we’re seeing groups like The Cult, Depeche Mode, and others almost more popular than ever. Now, The Mission has a very strong following. How do you explain the longevity of a genre that may have been, at one point, looked at as, “Okay, we’re just going through this phase”?

WH: I don’t really know. If I had an answer to that I’d bottle it and sell it and make my fortune that way. I like to think it’s something to do with integrity, that our audience recognizes an integrity about what we do. I think we played the game in the early days with the interviews and the promos, the things young bands and new bands try and do to get their records on the radio and on TV; we did all that stuff. But I think you quickly come to realize that there’s not a whole lot to that really. It’s not the be-all, end-all of life. I’d like to think it comes down to integrity and our audience recognizes that, but I might be completely wrong. It might be the haircut.

MR: [laughs] Or perhaps it’s the selections you play at the concerts and record as well? And after all of these years, how are performances of the band’s more “classic” songs hitting you?

WH: It was great when we got back together and started playing them because in the interim years, we’d had many lineups of the band and different people had come and gone. With each member that came in, they would listen to the records and they would kind of assimilate what they would hear into a part of them. I don’t sit there and listen to my records and stuff, so it was quite amazing when we got back together to hear the songs as they were originally and how different they had become and how they’d evolved over the years with the various members. So that was quite interesting. There’s no right or wrong way to play a song, really. A song can be played in many different ways. But it was quite interesting after all twenty-five years of various lineups going back to, ostensibly, the original lineup and essentially hearing the songs how they were first written.

MR: And when you play things live, it feels like it really should be a different thing from the record since they already own it. You’re not a jukebox.

WH: Absolutely! I think that’s the answer to your question, actually. There are times when I get bored with playing certain songs and I’ll drop it for a couple of years and then maybe revisit it and it’ll have kind of a new life, you know? Basically, the way I look at it is that when we play a show, we have to give the audience at least a little of what they want. We have to give them a little of what we think they should have, and we have to give ourselves a little of what we want. You add all of these factors together and, basically, you’ll get a set list that’s a mixture of old and new and cover versions I suppose.

MR: When you came together for that Silver concert, were there any songs where the chemistry of the original members surprised you?

WH: Yeah, one song in particular was “Naked And Savage,” because we’d played that over the years but it never really gelled, but when we got back together, it was like, “Wow, that’s great.” It’s actually become one of my favorites to play live. And that was the B-side of the first single. But it is a lot of fun for us to play that one.

MR: By the way, what music are you guys listening to these days for enjoyment?

WH: I listen to all kinds of stuff, but I’ve tended to go backwards, actually, rather than forwards. I’ve kind of listened a lot to delta blues and old Hank Williams and older stuff. And sixties and seventies music. There is modern day stuff I like; I like The XX, I like Laura Marling. There’s a band from California called Tamarind, which I quite like. Smoke Fairies is one, too.

MR: I imagine you get requests all the time to guest on others’ albums since people idolized you when they were forming their own groups.

WH: I’ve done a little bit of that over the years. People have asked me to sing or contribute guitar. I always say, “Before I commit to do anything, let me hear it first,” because it has to be something that I feel like I can get the teeth into.

MR: Onto The Brightest Light. So the three of you are like hanging out, having a good time and then someone goes, “Okay, let’s do this, let’s do a studio album.”

WH: Well, one of the conditions we kind of set ourselves when we got back together in 2011 is we’d only play songs from albums we recorded together, which was basically the first three or four albums. There were whole periods of the nineties and the two thousands where we ignored albums that we didn’t record together. We thought about extending the set list, but it was just a natural course of events, really. It wasn’t something where we sat down and said, “We really need to make a new album.” It was somebody said, “How ’bout we make a new album?” “That’s a good idea! Okay, how do we do this, then?” “Oh, write some songs.” That’s how it came about.

MR: So it was a natural process.

WH: Yeah, it wasn’t forced. When I was writing songs for the record, I wasn’t writing songs for a mission. I was just writing songs. I think certainly if you’re a fan of our first album, the odds are you probably won’t like the new one, The Brightest Light. It’s twenty-seven years later, so we’re different people. But it’s a good album. It’s a rock album. It’s probably not “goth,” as some people might suspect.

MR: Right, but then again the field itself has changed. It’s evolved, as we discussed earlier. It isn’t exactly what it was years ago anyway.

WH: No, absolutely.

MR: Children was your breakthrough album, obviously, but you have your other albums, and as you said, there’ve been progressions with the band lineup and the sound. So how did creating the new album work? Was it a different process than you originally used to make earlier albums?

WH: Yes, actually. One of the things we talked about before I even started writing the songs was that I usually demo with a full band so I have drums and guitar lines and bass lines. It’s kind of fleshed out a bit, and this time, the band said, “Just write songs. Put them down with an acoustic guitar or a piano and a voice and we’ll fill in the blanks.” It gives us a broader color palette, which is great, absolutely. That takes a heap of pressure off of my shoulders and it affords me the luxury of using the time just to write as opposed to demo, which it did. I ended up writing twenty-five, thirty songs in the space of thirteen months. I hit a rich vein. It was one of those things where for a couple of months there, I’d have a new song every day, which was great. As I said, it was a great luxury not having to worry about doing the demos. I just sent the band the songs on piano and voice and when we got to rehearsals, they all had ideas for the songs which we kind of worked on. They all brought something to the songs. That’s something that was a little different from the past when I’d basically say, “This is the bass line, these are the guitar parts and I want the rhythm to do this.” This time, it was a bit more collaborative.

MR: Do you think all of these songs will see light of day? Do you perhaps slip them into concerts once in a while?

WH: We recorded sixteen as a band, so there are twelve on the US version and there are a couple of extra tracks on the deluxe version along with five or six of my demos, the better ones, and then the other tracks we’re releasing as part of an EP in the new year. All of the other songs will get used. I’m planning to do a solo album in the next year, so the songs that are left over I will use for that. They’ll get used. If it’s a good song, you’re not just going to leave it there in the bottom drawer, are you?

MR: I’ve heard from many of my recent interviewees that they’ve been working out songs on the road.

WH: We don’t actually do a lot of touring, so it’s not like we have that luxury to go out and work things out on the road. Before we went into the studio to record, we went and did three very small shows on a boat in Bristol in the UK and we basically did a set in front of an audience with all the new stuff. We would stop songs halfway through if we were making mistakes and we had lyrics sheets and crib sheets; we all sat down with music stands. It was an awful lot of fun and I think the audience really felt that they were privvy to something special, because you don’t normally see a band at that part of the process. Then we did a second set, later, of old songs. But it was a great thing to be able to go out and play these new songs in front of an audience and see how they evolved in front of an audience in a way that they wouldn’t have evolved in a rehearsal room.

MR: Nice. And of course, you guys are also touring as The Metal Gurus.

WH: [laughs] We might actually resurrect a song or two for the December tour. I don’t know. Depends. We’ve got a lot of new songs to learn from the album, so it depends on time.

MR: What advice do you have for new artists?

WH: Try and be true to yourself. Try and be as honest with yourself as you can be. It’s not always easy but try and be true to yourself.

MR: What would you have said to you as you were starting out?

WH: Get a bloody haircut, will you?

MR: [laughs]

WH: I probably would have said the same thing. Whatever you do in life, not just making music, try and be as honest with yourself and what you do and you hope that somebody somewhere is going to like what you’re doing. But to try and do stuff to be successful, I don’t know if there is any proven way of doing that, and I don’t necessarily think that’s the way to go.

MR: For both your groups–Sisters Of Mercy and The Mission–what kind of a mark do you feel that those bands have left?

WH: That’s a good question. I don’t really know. I think the fact that both bands are still going fairly strong is a testament to our past and what we’ve achieved and the music we’ve made. It’s impossible for me; I’m probably too slow to really recognize. People say, “Oh, they sound like The Mission” or “They sound like Sisters” and I very rarely can hear it, to be honest. [laughs]

MR: Do you have side projects going on right now?

WH: Yeah, I’ve always got side projects. Not right now, but earlier this year, I released an album with a Swedish poet. I went to Sweden and spent the week there and we just basically went into the studio and made music behind his narration. That was really another very creative time for me. We did the whole album in a week and it was great fun to do. There are always things on the go; I’ve always got ideas. But at the moment, I’m kind of wrapped up in The Mission because a new album’s been released and I’m wrapped up in doing extra stuff and b-sides and all that at the moment.

MR: I always find it interesting when a group releases a tour album or a live CD or DVD that obviously took place a year before the project was released because and groups sometimes then have to go back out on tour to basically replay things you did the year before.

WH: Well, I don’t know. We just toured the US, we did ten shows and finished a couple of weeks ago and that wasn’t really a consideration. When I worked with John Paul Jones, a piece of advice he gave me was, “When you go on stage, give the audience two or three songs that they know and you’ll have them eating out of your hand. Don’t go on and play a new song.” That’s kind of a piece of advice that I’ve adhered to all of these years apart from the recent tour when we actually did start with a new song. But it worked very well.

MR: Okay, Wayne Hussey a year from now. What do you think you’ll be doing?

WH: A year from now? I’m not really sure. As I said, I want to do a solo album, I’ve got a bunch of songs left over. The Brightest Light is a rock record and the record before that was with a Swedish poet and the record before that was a collaboration with Julianne [Regan] from All About Eve who’s kind of techno-pop, so I think the next record’s going to be a mellow acoustic record. I kind of switch and go opposites with each record.

Transcribed by Galen Hawthorne