There’s a line that jumps out of Cognitive Dissident, The The’s latest single. “Truth stands on the gallows / Lies sit on the throne,” the group’s leader, Matt Johnson, snarls over a descending spiral of guitar. Is this an insult directed at King Charles and the British monarchy?
“It’s a general metaphor about power,” says Johnson. “‘Truth stands on the gallows.’ The truth is now so ridiculed and disbelieved and marginalised. We live in a society where the politicians lie, the media lie – about everything, all the blooming time. You can’t believe a word. That’s why the trust in politicians is on the floor. And why the trust in the mainstream media is on the floor. People aren’t stupid. Their instinct tells them, ‘This person is lying to me.’ Lies have become the currency of the day. Hopefully there will be a reaction. There is a reaction against it. People are getting fed up.”
The The were one of the most important British bands of the 1980s. Albums such as Soul Mining and Infected were huge critical hits that blended melodic rock and politically charged lyrics – the 1986 single Sweet Bird of Truth, from Infected, critiqued US interference in the Middle East. They were commercially successful, too: despite their challenging subject matter, Soul Mining and Infected were both top-30 hits in the UK, elevating Johnson in the public consciousness as a songwriting peer of Morrissey and Bono.
Where he differed from those artists was that he didn’t bask in the attention. Fed up with the politics of the music industry and haunted by the sudden death, at the age of 24, of his brother Eugene, he decided he had had enough, and in 2003 he put the project on hiatus. But he returned to touring several years ago and in September he releases a new LP, Ensoulment, preceded by a date in Dublin this month, at Collins Barracks.
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Johnson, speaking from London, is a chipper, chatty sort. He feels frustrated when described as a political songwriter. He says most of his lyrics have no social commentary whatsoever: they’re about love, loss, fear, resentment, joy – the full gamut of the human experience.
That said, when he goes political he slides in studs up – as he does on Ensoulment and songs such as Kissing the Ring of Potus. No prizes for guessing that it’s about the one-way relationship, as he sees it, between the United States, on one side, and the UK and Europe on the other. He says this several weeks before Keir Starmer is elected the new UK prime minister. The prospect of a changing of the guard in Westminster does not fill him with hope.
“It will be more of the same. Starmer’s no different than Sunak. You don’t get a knighthood at that young an age ... He’s a knight, for Christ sake. If they win with a landslide he’s going to be a very authoritarian leader, Starmer. He’s a Tony Blair-type character ... He’s no different from a Tory. There is no real opposition.”
Johnson is a survivor. The 58-year-old struggled with chronic-fatigue syndrome at the height of The The’s success, and then, in 1989, Eugene died from an aneurysm. In 2016 another brother, Andrew, also died, four years after being diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumour. That was followed in 2018 by the death of Johnson’s father, at the age of 86, just as The The were embarking on their first tour for 15 years. Two years later Johnson himself almost died when he contracted a rare neck infection that required emergency surgery.
“Unfortunately, there’s been a lot of tragedy within my family. I’m just hoping that there’s no more,” says Johnson, who says songwriting has helped him negotiate grief. “I’ve tried to use it as a form of therapy, music. Using it as a way of expressing very deep feelings. It’s the only way I can respond to those sorts of situations, really. By trying to turn it into something positive.”
He never regretted stepping away in 2003. He certainly didn’t miss the machinations of the music business. The only real loss he felt was for the connection with his audience.
“I’ve always been a bit detached from the music industry. Audiences – yeah, I missed performing in front of an audience. That is wonderful. I’ve been blessed with a wonderful audience – very loyal and responsive. So I missed them.”
It’s very Orwellian, what’s going on. They’ve expanded the parameters of hate speech so that everyone gets offended about everything
Johnson’s father, Eddie, was a publican in the East End of London. Before that he had been a dock worker who had become involved in the stevedores’ union. He raised his children in the British left-wing tradition – though Johnson sees no contradiction between his leftist values and his conflicted views on Europe and the European Union.
“Tony Benn, who was obviously a very famous British left-wing politician, he was very anti-EU. Because the problem is ... you have the EU commission, which is like the Soviet politburo. You’ve got Ursula von der Leyen” – the president of the European Commission – “who’s a complete power freak. Who votes for her? I didn’t vote for her. She keeps getting selected and put into power. And that’s where you’ve had this reaction: populist parties [taking power] across Europe. Because people are sick of it. What the EU started as was a sort of loose association – and then got more and more draconian.”
His views on Brexit are more nuanced than his opinion of von der Leyen. “It should have been a ‘remain and reform’ option. It was just ‘remain’ or ‘leave’. There’s a lot that’s good about Europe. I love Europe. I love the European countries, European culture. [But] there are elements of the Brussels bureaucracy that are completely out of control – power-mad – and treats the citizenry of Europe with contempt. It needs to be overhauled. You need more democracy, real democracy.”
Johnson believes we are in danger of sleepwalking into dystopia. It’s one of the themes of Cognitive Dissident: that people are too afraid of public shaming to express an opinion.
“It’s very Orwellian, what’s going on,” he says. “They’ve expanded the parameters of hate speech so that everyone gets offended about everything. It’s very hard to say anything – or even think anything. Which is an Orwellian concept. Everybody’s doing it. It’s not healthy. It leads to a lot of suppressed feelings that can manifest in very dark ways.”
His lyrics can hit like a blunt object. Consider the 1989 single Armageddon Days (Are Here Again), which contains the line “Islam is rising / the Christians mobilising”. Did he ever consider changing the words?
“It’s already out there. It’s already finished. There’s nothing offensive in that. It’s an anti-war song. I wouldn’t want to tinker with that. I performed it on the last tour and left it as it is. The only people who could find that song offensive are people who love war, I suppose.”
Johnson formed The The in 1979 and is the group’s only permanent member. But he has always been open to collaborations, musical and otherwise. At the behest of Billy Bragg he joined Red Wedge, a 1980s coalition of musicians affiliated to the British Labour Party. In 1988 he welcomed the former Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr to The The as the band were about to record Mind Bomb. That album also featured a contribution from Sinéad O’Connor, who sang on the track Kingdom of Rain.
“I was very sad to hear about Sinéad passing,” he says. “We didn’t know each other that well. We hung out for a bit in the late 1980s. We spent a bit of time together. And we worked together. I enjoyed her company, I liked her as a person and I respected her as an artist. I was very sad about the news of her passing. And what she went through as a person. She suffered emotionally. It made me very upset.”
He recalls O’Connor’s voice as a unique instrument. “I remember sitting there watching her sing, bringing my words to life. It gave me goosebumps and brought tears to my eyes. The vulnerability, a delicacy, but with this hidden power that suddenly comes to the surface. It was so perfect. I wrote that song with her in mind. She was the only person I wanted to sing it with me. She was pretty self-sufficient. I sat there, gave her a melodic idea. She made it her own. She added her own stamp. She didn’t need a lot of guidance. She was very self-sufficient – very professional, very focused.”
Johnson can be intense, and von der Leyen probably shouldn’t hold out hope for a Christmas card. But he exudes an exceedingly English sort of geezery mateyness, too. For all the talk about modern dystopias, he is good company. Fans attending The The’s Dublin concert are in for a treat.
“It’s the same band I did the last tour with – the Comeback Special tour. Many of them I’ve known for years. A great bunch of musicians – very good musicians and good guys,” he says, suddenly cheerful. “So we always have a lot of fun and a lot of laughs working together.”
The The play Collins Barracks, Dublin, on Sunday, August 25th, as part of the Wider Than Pictures series; Ensoulment is released on Friday, September 6th
