Working with Madness
I first worked with Madness and met Lee Thompson when I was the cameraman for the video of Baggy Trousers I then met him again as a cameraman on House of Fun I didn’t see him for a while after that but I work with him and Dave Robinson directed a film called Take It or Leave It then I next met Lee the late 80s when the Band had become The Madness for whom I did some camerawork. That band didn’t last that long and Lee started a band called Crunch alternatively known as the Nutty Boys a band who formed with Chrissy boy. Lee asked me to make videos for two tracks.
I had a poor education and had to figure out what was going to do as an adult. When you have nothing you have nothing to lose. After leaving school at 16 I felt I wanted to do something creative. It took a couple of years then I managed to get a job with training, initially as a photographer, then at the age of 22 I got into film school. Film school was a revelation I met people from all over the world (there are 22 different nationalities in my year of 60). It took a while to assess what was going on.
Lee Thompson also had to invent himself after a poor education and had a similar attitude as me so we struck up a relationship.
I worked with Madness again in 2002 and 2007 then in 2014 I had an idea of how to make a documentary about Lee. I thought it would be a good idea to interview people who knew Lee and his work and then edit those interviews down and have Lee play the characters using the original voices. I didn’t know whether it would work so I started by interviewing Debbie his wife and then his sister Tracy then I got Lee to play both characters. He is a very funny impersonator, I then got to interview Dave Robinson from Stiff and the musicologist Neil Brand. The basic structure of the film was to follow Lee’s song writing development and use the videos I have made and the songs that Lee had written either for the band or his other various projects.
Baggy Trousers - Madness 1980 Baggy Trousers - Directed by Dave Robinson As well as starting to direct I was still working as a cameraman and my friend Phil McDonald was working for the newly formed Stiff Records. Dave Robinson, who had set up Stiff with Jake Riviera, decided he could direct music videos and had recently signed the band Madness. For their single “Baggy Trousers” a song written by Suggs in response to “Another Brick In The Wall” by Pink Floyd. A school in Islip Street Kentish Town was used for the location and the video centred on two performances by the band, one on the school stage which I livened up by rushing at them with a hand held camera on a wide angled lens and then them playing on the school field where a little way into the song Lee Thompson the saxophonist takes off. Lee had been a fan of artist such as Peter Gabriel and Alex Harvey who liked a bit of theatrics and persuaded Dave Robinson of Stiff to hire theatrical wire artists known as Kirby wires to organise the flying. It was a grey day and we shot on 16mm film and were very pleased when the rushes came back and we couldn’t see the wires against the grey sky
. House of Fun - Madness 1982 _ Directed by Dave Robinson I next came across Madness when I was asked to film a day on “House Of Fun” – as often the case with larger bands 3 members would turn up, ask where the others were, then finding out they hadn’t arrived would disappear, usually to a pub. I filmed the sequence in a chemist shop, with Lee, Mike and Chas dressed as women doing a synchronised dance. Then Suggs approaching the counter of the chemist to sing the verse where he tries to ask for condoms. We asked the photographer Clare Muller to be the chemist and had to stand her on a box so Suggs could look up to her. Dave Robinson noted how good the band were at improvising when Lee and Chas ducked up and down with their brass instruments in the refrain. After the chemist we went to Escapade the joke shop in Camden to film Mike Chris and Chas do a synchronised hand jive as shop assistants – all worked out on the day. Chris Morphet who also shot the devil sequence shot the funfair sequence in Great Yarmouth.
Cardiac Arrest - Madness - 1982 This song was written by Chas Smash (Carl Smyth) after his father had a heart attack. The band put a lot of energy and ideas into their videos and filming the was always very creative and fun. Directed by Dave Robinson I fphotographed the fist day of this video on the bus then was due to do a second day the following Monday but my wife went into labour with our first child, so I called up Dick Pope who was available and able to cover the second days shoot.
Uncle Sam - Madness - 1985 This has all the hallmarks of the high energy lunacy that Madness would bring to their videos. Filmed in suburbia with a full scale attack on a 30s house and in the studio along with an amphibious vehicle sailing down the Thames past Parliament. The video was photographed by me and directed by John Mills, a long time collaborator To accompany the single the band released a music video which can be viewed as a parody of US participation in the Second World War. The video opens with a milk float approaching a row of British terraced houses. A man, dressed in suit and a cowboy hat, with a briefcase, walks down the path from the front door gesticulating and hollering. A paperboy and other working men approach along the pavement. A news announcer breaks in with an "important announcement," and the video cuts to a toy battleship sailing on a map table in an upper room of one of the houses. The man operating the ship is dressed in a military uniform, wearing a World War II type steel helmet and a French Foreign Legion jacket with large epaulettes. His uniform includes the 1st Foreign Regiment and 2nd Foreign Parachute Regiment wings insignia. The music begins. The singer, sat outside on a pillar box, interacts with the working men. As he sings, he dons a wizard's hat and the house's garden in transformed into a battlefield with an armed JEEP, a fallen bomb and a barbed wire fence where troops are attacking the row of houses. The troops, all sporting wizard hats, succeed in taking the house and sit, snacking, on the sofa. The scene changes to an improbably tiny desert island with the US flag, with the band dressed in US naval uniforms. The General figure sits reading the Gung Ho Yearbook 1985. The troops from the house arrive with their bomb, which they explode. Back at the terraced house, a man dressed as a woman appears, breaks plates and attacks the General figure and wrestles him to the ground. The wizard sits in the house and sings. The band plays on the island. The scene changes and the band, dressed in naval uniforms, launches in an amphibious vehicle. The band proceed down river, waving to passing boats and saluting a prominent nearby building. The scene cuts back and forth from the river, to the island, to the house. The video ends with a giant can of Coke, dropped by the General in the house, falling onto the island.
Waiting For The Ghost-Train - Madness - 1986 "(Waiting For) The Ghost-Train" is a single by Madness. Released in 1986 shortly after the band announced they were to split, it was their last single prior to reforming in 1992. It spent nine weeks in the UK charts, peaking at number 18. The song first appeared on an album on the band's 1986's Utter Madness greatest hits compilation, issued one month after its single release. The song was written by Suggs about apartheid in South Africa, with its chorus "It's black and white, don't try to hide it" and the line "The station master's writing with a piece of orange chalk / One hundred cancellations, still no one wants to walk" (in reference to the South African flag). Mike Barson reunited with the other members of the band to record this song, although he did not appear in the music video.
I Pronounce You - Madness 1988 The video was made for this track, it features an appearance from John Hasler, the ex-Madness drummer and manager. When their guitarist Chris Foreman was asked about the music video in an interview for Guitarist & Scootering, he said "On the one video we've just done we tried to be serious, but Lee's got a Mohican haircut and in a bit of it we dyed his face red and things like that"
It's OK I'm a Policeman - Crunch 1992 When Madness split up Lee Thompson and Chrissy Boy formed a band that they first call The Nutty Boys then renamed themselves as Crunch. Chris lived round the corner from me at the time and asked me to make a video - They painted a cyclorama at the studio bright yellow where we shot the bad performing then Lee assumed his alter ego as an undercover policeman and we filmed the exterior scenes, busking it all the way including filming outside Harrods without permission. Strangely Buster Blood-vessel stopped to say hello as he was off to Harrods to buy his girlfriend her favourite chocolates
Crunch - Magic Carpet - 1996 Madness got back together in 1996 having has a break and we used Wembley Arena to record this performance of Crunch filming it after the sound check - Lee in his white make up and Chrissy playing the guitar hero
Drip Fed Fred - Madness 2002 The band approached me to make this video which features an all time hero of mine Ian Dury. Ian was quite ill at the time having been diagnosed with cancer but agreed to do the filming. The song is a Lee composition and he had many of the ideas for the video. Lee arranged the sedan chair which the band carry Ian in around the grounds of Kenwood House, one of Ian's favourite haunts.
Sugar and Spice - Madness 2008 This song is a Mike Barson composition which I filmed with my long time collaborator Nick Edwards. Nick came up with the idea of using theatrical painted backdrops and also created the environments behind the silhouettes. We filmed it in a day with a combination of performance against the theatrical backdrops and vignettes against green screen. Nick then compiled the images digitally
I decided to make a documentary about Lee Thompson, interviewing the other members of Madness along with his family, the parents of members of the band along with Neil Brand, the musicologist, a psychologist, the manager of Stiff Records and their record producer. The conceit was that members of the band were in different parts of the world.
One Man's Madness - Feature documentary 2019 I decided to make a documentary about Lee Thompson, interviewing the other members of Madness along with his family, the parents of members of the band along with Neil Brand, the musicologist, a psychologist, the manager of Stiff Records and their record producer. The conceit was that members of the band were in different parts of the world. I interviewed several people including Madness's lawyer and accountant, Fat Boy Slim and their managers. I then edited down the interviews and got Lee to play each of the characters using the original voices, hence the tittle One Man's Madness
Lee Thompson - Sit Down and Wonder 2018 Lee wanted to do a video cover of Prince Buster's "Sit Down and Wonder" which I shot in my kitchen against a 3 meter square green cloth - the video comprises of 5 takes that I then manipulated in Final Cut to make the video you can see here.
Promotion for House of Common event -Madness 2017 The band host a festival on Clapham Common on the bank holiday in August and wanted to advertise it suggesting they had a bunker headquarters in camden similar to the one in Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove. I talked to Nick Edwards who reproduced the environment digitally and we shot the band against green screen to fit.
Promotion for House of Common event -Madness 2019 The band host a festival on Clapham Common on the bank holiday in August and wanted to advertise it suggesting Mike was Moses parting the thames to get to south London with Suggs. I talked to Nick Edwards who reproduced the environment digitally and we shot the band against green screen to fit.