Justin Sullivan (New Model Army)

have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest this week is Justin Edwards Sullivan,

English singer and songwriter. He's the frontman and lyricist of the British rock band New Model Army, which he formed in nineteen eighty together with drummer Robert Heaton and bassist Stuart Morrow in their hometown of Bradford, Yorkshire. In the early eighties, he performed under the stage name Slade the Leveler. Their latest record is called Between Dog and Wolf and

was released in two thousand thirteen. The New Model Army record Thunder and Consolation is one of Americanized favorite records ever. Here's the interview. Hi, Justin, Welcome to the show. I am extremely excited to get you on. Every once in a while we are able to get a guest who has meant a lot to me over the years. Your music, I mean, for since I was fifteen, has been some of my favorite and I think Thunder and Consolation is probably in my top five records of all time time.

So I'm really excited to talk with you. Lovely good. So our podcast is called The One You Feed, and it's based on the parable of Two Wolves, where there's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson and he says, in life, there's two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One's a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and thinks about it, and

and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Quite a lot. Actually, I came across this parable um a bit ago and I and uh from you and somebody else simultaneously, Um and I. I like it. It's a good parable. Um Do I live by it? Well? Do any of us live by the parables? That we know? Why?

It is good? And sometimes? Uh? You know, it's like every every poet, religious leader, wise man, singer, every every every wise person has ever lived in the world has ever always told people that money doesn't make you happy, it doesn't stop everyone chasing it. What does this mean

to me? Makes good sense? But I do actually think there's something interesting about people, which is that people, you know, being part of nature and being a microcosm of all the forces of nature in the world, act collectively rather like nature acts in the sense that life on earth. You know, there's a basic chaos theory. I guess the life on earth exists because of the sort of constant

movement within parameters. So wherever you go in the world, whatever political system, whatever religion, whatever standard of living, in a poverty or wealth or whatever, you seem to end up with the same balance of characters. You get people that are basically happy by nature. You get people that are basically miserable by nature. You get people that are lucky, people are unlucky, people that like complaining about everything. You

get people you know what I mean. They always seem to be the same balance of all these different forces going on in groups of people, just like there are all these same balances within nature, like the weather. Really, you know, and if anything ever true new modal army songs is they've all got the weather in them. Yeah, the songs all do have the weather. Someone did, someone did tell me your your sounds are like a bloody weather forecast. Well, it's such a good way to set

the stage. I think it's because when it's because I think so. Yeah, I think that every I hate lyrics, which abstract lyrics about the inside of the writer's head. They just don't interest me. They don't draw you in. I like stories, and to tell a story, I always think you need time of day and place and weather. Then you're kind of halfway there. And then you tell the story maybe but maybe maybe it's just a British

obsession with the weather. You know, Yes, one time we one time we were working with Nicopolas, you know, when we did the Love of Hopes courses. He's a wonderful guy. He did a lot of the Neil Young stuff and he was producing that when we're doing it in Liverpool, and he uh, he's a good Greek American, has spent a lot of his life in Los Angeles. And one day we were walking through Liverpool and it was cold and wet, and I was complaining about it, and he goes, you,

British is so lucky you've got weather. Give him Give him about six months there, you might think, you might think differently. I think he's very about Chicago now. Actually, yeah, well the weather. I was in California for a while and I did miss the change in the seasons. But now that I'm back in uh, back in a colder climate, I sometimes wonder if I if I misjudged how much I missed the seasons. I remember the years and years ago thinking I just have never terribly liked something California

or something about it. Sort of I'm not sure, and one time we were doing it rather a rather grim tour in the Northeastern United States, and it was cold and wet, and we played a particularly grim club somewhere in the Northeast and on a freezing cold night in a really really horrible rundown punk club, and it was you know, this is a rock bottom, really And the next day we flew to Los Angeles and we ended up on someone's balcony up in the Hollywood Hills in

the sunshine and gorgan Villea on the veranda and stuff, and thinking this is pretty good. Yeah, exactly, so completely off your point. We were talking about parable Yeah, so the the parable um you were talking about how all things in nature seemed to have sort of a balance. It seems to balance itself out. And I'm always curious about the ability of humans to change who they are.

What's our ability to improved to become different people? And your song inheritance, right, you're really getting right at that thing. How much of us is our parents versus how much of it is our So that's sort of the genetic piece of mother father, those battles that have men of the long, long silences lay between these don't try to

tell me that all those word inviting. Sometimes these things we line up at the wedding rose decet eyes find formal dresses yet a proper suits and ties like a family and months and I really bad, guys do I thank you? Thank you? Wus you are these Transtritt shout for me the ones you left by the way. Our want yours, yours, not mine. What do you think about people's ability to make change in their own life nature versus nurture? Yeah, when there's a it's a question, it'stever.

It's like the chicken and egg, isn't it? But change in your own life. I think that people's nature stays essentially the same. How early it forms is very difficult to say, you know, whether whether your nature is already formed when you're in the womb or there's that old Jesuit saying, is gonna give me a child or six? And me is these mindful life? I think that I think that people's nature, and they're very very early life

doesn't essentially change. But what you do with that nature obviously, yes, you can change. You can learn um and that does depend on you know a lot, on your environment, whether you're lucky enough to have education. I think education is a wonderful thing, and it's terrible how little valued it is in certain parts of the Western society, you know, where we fought for everybody to have good schooling and then and then it's not valued, which is a disaster.

I think, Um, and I was lucky enough to have education, and I sort of appreciate it. I think the thing about education is that the more you know, the more interesting the world is, because you start to see connections between everything, and just life becomes so much richer. As you get older, you get a bit wiser and you get a bit harder, and I think that's inevitable. I think that change is inevitable and trying to hold it back is pointless. So as you feel yourself change, you've

got to go with it. Excellent, So offer your most recent record. You've got a song called March in September, which UM, I really love. UM A couple of the lines in it. Now you can count up everything that you have. Never stops the craving, And ain't it always the ones that want to be saving? Yeah, that's very true. You to do water boom, wish you well? You never saw that you shouldn't you try to preak a bottom

the world. You never saw that you could. You can count soup that he never stops the cravings, the ones that save, that saving, the second line, and it all dose the ones that want to be saved to do all the saving. It just seems an observation about everybody I know who works in caring jobs and goes around, you know, being caring and being loving and helping people. And often these are the people that really really want

to be helped. And actually the people that are not bothered whether help or not, don't tend to help other people. Which which camp do you fall in? I got a foot in both. Actually. Over the years there's been a kind of dynamic in my writing between myself and a long time associate, Jules Denby, where she comes from. I come from sort of a liberal background, and she comes from an army background, and all her instincts are kind

of tribal. All my instincts are liberal and individualistic, And the play between those two value systems has run through through a lot of what the model army has done. Think that we understand that whole thing of tribalism. You know, my people, right or wrong, we don't necessarily adhere to it. We don't necessarily think it's right, but we definitely understand it. But at the same time, there's a lot of kind of liberal you know, follow your own star. You know

that quake. I was born in a Quaker family, so that individual UM follow your own conscience or listen to your own conscience, as opposed to a kind of tribal loyalty system I was born into. And there are two different systems, and neither is absolutely right or absolutely wrong. In most parts of the world, people would here mostly to the tribal one because they have to, because you know, family is the only family or tribe is the only protection you have in what is a difficult, in hostile world.

And so most poor people especially adhere to that one. And then it's the the luckier or often richer or people that can afford to go more than individualistic. Um. You know, I follow my own conscience. UM. I don't have absolute loyalty to any tribe or family. UM I must follow my own star. You know, that's very enshrined

in America because that's how America is born. In the sense of all the people coming from Europe and everywhere else in the world, following their own star, going to make a better life for themselves, irrespective of old tribal loyalties. Like I said, that they're interesting systems and that whole play between those they're opposing, and that that runs through a lot of what we've done to What do you think is interesting about a lot of your music is?

I do think that theme of tribe and family comes up a yearning for it um and also a fear, distrust and a recognition of the pain that family or tribe can cause when it's um, I'll just call it, you know, dysfunction or for lack of a better word. Yeah, like everything else in life, in this is double edged.

Do you feel like you have found for yourself, for lack of a better word, a tribe that works for you obviously not not on a nationalist sense, but in a sense of finding your people and finding the support that you want in that realm. I'm not sure. And my own life has gone through various changes in recent years for whatever reason. Um. I do think that it's good to have some fixed points in life. But uh, just when you think they're fixed, um, they turn out

not to be. In some ways, nothing's fixed. It's a little bit like relationships. You know, there is a there is a dream that you that when you're a teenager, you meet the love of your life and you start this wonderful partnership and you fall in love and you fancy each other, and you stay together for years, and you have children and you still love each other and fancy each other, and then you have grand children, your gal together and you die to you know, uh, it

does happen occasionally. I do know, I do know. I do know one person that's happened to, you know, one couple that's happened to. But it's very uncommon, especially in the modern modern era. Ah and for forever people who always making kind of relationships they they hope are strong again. I think relationships change and you have to let them change. But what the one thing I think is, you know everybody learns eventually is that nothing, nothing stays the same,

and nothing is quite predictable. I think that's that's what I've learned about life. I knew nothing stayed the same, but I've been surprised how unpredictable life is actually, just

in a personal way. And it seems like that, you know, things seem the same seem the same and then boom something you know, it's just it's so the speed by which sometimes it changes it can can be so shocking and go ahead, and that when you that's when you either need the support of you know, family or relationships that are kind of fixed or or something very strong inside. And if you don't have either of those, then that's

very hard for people. And I think now these days that I think that families tend to be more fragile, family relationships a bit more bedraggled. And people's own sense of self inside I'm not sure if it's as strong as it perhaps, I don't know, but but if you don't have one of those, and it's a very difficult world of think what do you do for yourself if you're you know, feeling down or sad or up? So how do you find how do you find comfort for yourself?

I was brought up religious apparents were Quakers, although actually my dad went to went to mosque as well because he said and and and and Hindu things and also all sorts of stuff because he thought they were all the same. Um as wish I sort of adhere to really on the level, all the same at some level. So the idea of um, this kind of idea of God in a very abstract way, was something I grew up with and kind of deep and then I find found it in the idea of nature and that's pretty

common as well. So my idea of God is pretty universal and energies nature. Um, I find a huge amount of soulless just in the turning seasons and looking at the sky and stuff like that. Uh. And also just you know, people I don't know, I get, you know, like everybody, I have my down moments, but they don't. I don't suffer from depression. I know a lot of people that do, and I'm definitely grateful that I don't. I tend to bounce of my own accord back out

of that day. I'm also I'm also dead lucky because you know, like a music so, um, you know, music is a wonderful catharsis I think I'm I always felt terribly sorry for pop bands or like comedians. You know, people who have to go on stage and be happy and they're paid to be happy. That must be hell on earth. I think that's why comedians are all mad and pop acts tend to be much more troubled people than than bands that play aggressive or cathartic music, because

we've got a perfect expression for all our demons. That's a very interesting concept. I never thought of it that way. Most of the most troubled people are in other people who have to go on stage and smile. Yeah, you know, it's easy. It's it's to manufacture. That must take a huge amount of effort to go on stage and manufacture anger, even when you don't feel it. It's pretty easy. Actually, you can just take it off the audience and give it back to them. That's but that's easy. But smiling

when you're when you're dead inside, that's hard. Hard. I'm glad I never had to do that. We've had a few. I found on tours sometimes when something real happens in the outside world um or even within the tour. You know, whether there's you're going through bad and there's something bad happens on the tour, or or just you know what's going on in the world. That being able to go on stage is and do the catharsis thing, because it's wonderful. Lucky,

We're lucky. We're lucky. You were just talking about finding some comfort in nature. And one of the songs I really like of yours is called High and You. You you talk about how life is about perspective, UM, and that that when you are you know, you describe being up on a hill, but also within nature that you that that puts things back, polies, you feel so much submission place of you see. I've got this theory which I've sort of put together over many many years that

works for me. I'm not saying it's true for everyone, but I've got a theory that when you have you can see internally in exactly the same perspective that you can see externally. So if you are on top of a mountain or in a desert or by the ocean, and you can see for miles, then all as you look inside yourself, all the everything goes into perspective. You can see what's close and what's far away, what's important,

what's not. And I think that when you're in a city, particularly some cities more claustrophobia than other, especially flat cities, um, where all you can see is wall wall wall, or actually I'm not too for keen on forests either, or you can see is tree, tree, tree, and you feel hemmed in then when you look inside yourself, then you can't see perspective, and everything gets terribly confused, and then

you can't see what's important what isn't. And I find that I like to be and I like being on top of the mountains and or you know, if if I'm stuck in a city, then I like to be high in the city, high above. You get up to the top and get up on the roof of the high buildings to get that sense of perspective. I think the thing about the sea is that it's it represents nature to us in a way that he's kind of operating in our time scale. So you can see the

constant play of water waves and so on. You can also see daily and other tides coming and go out um whereas mountains are also moving but you but they're not moving in our time scale, so you can't really feel that. But with the sea, it's it's like it's a kind of mirror of what's going on inside us. I think storms calm, you know. Yep, you had said once that and it's an interview that was a few years old, but that the most played person on your

iPod was Gillian Weltch. Do you think that's still the case. I mean, I'm a big fan of her stuff, but I'm curious if I haven't looked, I haven't done the count recently, I'm not sure, but she would definitely be up there. I think there's something. I think she's a brilliant artist actually, and every time I've seen her three times, I've been stunned, really just and you've got to give Dave Rollins, you know, equal really because they they they've

got this kind of telepathy together. Um, so they don't they they sort of perfectly work together and sync without even looking at each other because they've done it so many times, um, and they are in that kind of perfect musical sync. I think she's a great writer direction. I think she's written countless lines that I find myself quoting. And it is that ability to write very simple ideas but they're sort of perfectly encapsulated. I really admire that.

There's one of her lines, I never minded working hard, it's who I'm working for. I find myself quoting that all the time. That's a great one. Yeah, I don't think I've heard that one. Yeah, it's a wonderful line that sums me up pretty well. I think the the song Artum is um. It makes me think of the dea. There's in certain you know, Buddhist circles. There's this idea of meditating at the at the graveyard at the Charnel grounds because it helps you to remember how precious life is.

And I think you're you're really driving at that in the song art still supporting go to ball like the paper money pulls allers stealing the whole line. It's only bigginiginning for people say, I'm quite keen on that song. It's kind of got that everything's fucked um, the sense of that we write about sometimes because I do feel that sometimes when I look at the world. But it's also got the chorus, Okay, everything is beautiful because everything's dying and true in a like you said, Buddhist kind

of way. Um. But it's also kind of funny, especially when, especially when it's not exactly acquire. It's every whoever we could get in the studio. At times we cobbled together twenty people that were lying around to come and sing the chorus, so it sounds a bit like a congregation. It's not actually acquire, just sounded congregation of people singing clean kids. Everything is beautiful because everything's dying. And it's like I always wanted to hear that sung a song

by you know, a church in church. It's sort of and when when they come in at the end of the the thing that it always makes me smile because it's sort of black humor in a way. Yeah, it definitely is um And it's a great, great guitar line at the beginning to it's awesome. So what would you say is the lesson that's taking you the longest to learn in your life? Well, I have i'ven't quite got that yet. You know, I'm sixty next year, but I don't think

it's quite done. I think we've talked about this already. You know that life's pretty unpredictable. One last question and I'll let you get back to the depressing election results. But but are there is there anybody else's um, you know, an idea or somebody's work or music that you're that you're kind of coming into now that you're really excited about, or that's really making you think. Actually, my favorite current music is the soundtrack from the movie Timbucto, and I

don't know a huge amount about it. Um. The movie is out at the moment. I've never been terribly into of African music, or I've never got really into it

studied it um, but more and more I do. There's a kind of thing on the last couple of New Model Army albums where we started to get we just got a little bit bored of guitars and bassed and drums used in the conventional way, and we started using various other instruments and and perhaps different slightly different approaches to arrangements and stuff, you know, whether that I'm not sure what we're doing next, and we've already started the next album, We're not quite sure what shape it's going

to take you, but all that different, slightly different way of looking at um instrumentation and particularly rhythm. I mean, everybody knows New midlamire obsessed by rhythm. We've had two fantastic drummers, amazing drummers, and then we did go out of Christmas with three drummers on stage and that was fantastic love drummers and one of my first first love in music. And what I always go back to is late sixties old Northern what we're calling the Northern seul Tam.

Basically Tamla Motown and all the copies of Tamlamtown and it's all about um James Jameson and Danny Benjamin and James Jameson is my favorite musician of all time by quite a long way. The Motown based player. I think he astonishing. And that use of rhythm which is also melodic, that cross of rhythm and melody which is at the base of the base of all sort of popular music, I guess, but I've sort of started to find that

a lot in some some African stuff. Excellent. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show. It's been a real pleasure talking with you. Pleasure, cheers, cheers. You can learn more about Justin, Edward Sullivan and this podcast at one you Feed dot net slash Justin sun City Videos. Basis, we are kicking out behind the second