Interview - Clive Langer
Published: 8 December, 2011
by ROISIN GADELRAB
Camden’s music history is undeniable. Setting aside the fact he’s the father of Man Like Me frontman Johnny Langer, has produced for Morrissey, Elvis Costello, Madness, Dexy’s Midnight Runners and Hothouse Flowers, Clive Langer – under the alter-ego Cliff Hanger – is also part of cult band Deaf School.
The eclectic band, credited with helping revive Liverpool’s post-Beatles music scene, have revitalised themselves and are on the road, playing Jazz Café on December 21 with Lee Johnson from Madness and ska orchestra in support.
“The first London gig we ever did was the Roundhouse in 1975.
Thinking about playing the Jazz Cafe now it’s quite funny, like coming home.
It’s the biggest gig we’ve done in London since 1978,” says Clive, who lived in Lyme Terrace for more than 20 years and went to William Ellis School.
Clive was always going to be a musician, forming a band in primary school and playing Swiss Cottage Odeon: “We were listening to The Animals and the first Bob Dylan album. I started off with The Shadows, the amazing sound of an electric guitar… I’ve been obsessed by music, I was brought up buying every Beatles album the day it came out.”
As a teen, he worked for free at the Roundhouse in the hope of catching a glimpse of visiting acts. “It was really intriguing, the old hippy days,” he says.
“Just before The Doors gig there was a big jam and some of The Doors, Jefferson Airplane and Steve Winwood started jamming. I just gawped at them, never thinking I’d be on the same stage.”
He later headed to college in Liverpool, where he met Steve Allen (aka Enrico Cadillac) in the first term, and soon formed Deaf School.
“In those days you went to art college if you wanted to be in a band. A famous band started off at Liverpool Art College so it intrigued me.”
He describes Deaf School’s first incarnation as “like a commune”, with about 15 people in the line-up, adding: “We were selling out gigs, there were queues… it was a renaissance of pop music in Liverpool. We wanted to entertain, didn’t want to be boring, didn’t want long hair, flared jeans, it was kind of pre-punk with almost a punk ethic but we were a bit more retro.”
They signed to Warner Brothers and moved to London, touring internationally.
Clive moved into women’s clothes shop Swanky Modes in Camden Road – where Grand Union is now – later marrying one of his housemates.
At the same time, Madness frontman Suggs was wooing Deaf School singer Bette Bright, who he later married and also lived in the shop. “I remember Suggs climbing up the drainpipe to see Betty Bright,” Clive says.
“It was 1am, the lights were off and he suddenly appeared though the upstairs window – that was quite a memory, I think it was romanticism and alcohol.”
Although successful in Liverpool, Deaf School found London tougher: “We kind of got smacked in the face by punk because the journalists… didn’t realise we were a grass roots band, they thought we were a Warner Brothers band out of nowhere. Punk came along and we were kind of too arty, we fitted into the post punk period more, the new wave…”
Clive started working with Suggs and Madness, producing first hit The Prince, and subsequent albums, spending the next 20 years as a successful producer and co-writing Shipbuilding with Elvis Costello.
The hardest working musician he worked with was Dexy’s Midnight Runners’ Kevin Rowland, on Come On Eileen: “At rehearsals they performed for us, did all the moves… and dressed the part all the time. It was very disciplined. There wasn’t so much for me to do as there was with a Madness record where you did half a song that could be a hit and you help finish it with the rest of the band.”
He says Morrissey had the most eccentric way of working, taking the backing track and returning later with vocals, “that was pretty bizarre because I was used to working in the rehearsal room knowing what was going on from the beginning. “
Morrissey moved to Parkway: “There was a big rockabilly scene that really influenced him in Camden Working Men’s Club, which used to be in Kentish Town,” adds Clive. “We went every Thursday, that’s how he got his band, basically he was going for the look rather than how good they were at playing.”
• Deaf School’s new album is available at www.deafschoolmusic.com