Clash Music

Speaking to Jon McClure, head preacher man from Sheffield’s Reverend and the Makers, you immediately sense that he is a passionate man with a strong gospel to promote.

When Clash catches up with McClure, he and his Makers are on the road in Middlesborough, spreading the word of rebellion to the good folk of the North East. After spells in bands with the likes of fellow South Yorkshiremen Alex Turner and Matt Helders (“We were shit, it was basically bad pub rock”), McClure eventually got around to forming his current vehicle for anger management after recording some demos in what was essentially “an old factory shed.” The Makers were soon ‘made’ out of former musical associates from those “shit bands that used to play pub rock” and people who McClure had heard were “just bad-ass musicians”.

Initial demos alluded to a love of reggae and funk, something which the promo writers are still using to describe Reverend and the Makers. It’s all wrong though, because McClure’s recent efforts are just as much Jacob Marley as they are Bob Marley; darker with predictions of impending doom. Not that the reggae/funk influence is to be denied. “Yeah, I grew up listening to a lot of funk and reggae, a lot of Bob Marley,” he explains. “Obviously when I grew up I managed to branch out a bit. I’m of the generation of Oasis so that got me into guitar music but as I’ve got older I’ve got into literally everything and I’ve developed a love for dance music.”

Recent single, ‘Heavyweight Champion Of The World’, a favourite of Radio 1’s Jo Whiley, has gone down well with the musical flock, tapping in, as it does, to the mediocrity of the mid-Noughties nine-to-fiver. But, according to McClure, we don’t have just another ‘22 Grand Job’ or ‘Living For The Weekend’ on our hands. “A lot of bands are just saying ‘oh it’s shit’”, he explains, “but I think my stuff goes far deeper than that. I can’t stand this ingrained culture of society: go to school, get a job, get a trade, find a wife or husband, give money to your mortgage company, get fat and then die in front of Pop Idol. It’s utter, utter bullshit and people should just reject it absolutely.”

So what’s the reason for all this anger? Is McClure just another frustrated young man from a once grim northern town that isn’t so grim anymore? Is he simply lecturing on rebellion because life isn’t really that bad at all and he has nothing else to believe in? Is he simply searching for an identity that has been lost as northern towns become more and more like the faceless Home Counties that are no longer so different to the ‘gritty reality’ of Northern England?

Perhaps, but then again McClure does have more uniquely personal reasons for anger ventilation. Already on his third ‘proper’ band I ask him why things have only recently started to happen for a man for whom music is a vitally important and integral part of life. “I got really sidetracked,” comes the answer. “My girlfriend’s Iraqi so when the war happened she were in a right mess and it threw me totally off track. Her family are ok now, they’re in Jordan, in relative safety, but yeah, it’s been fucking shit man. I’m back up for it now though.” And it’s explanations like that which mean McClure’s lyrics rise above the empty ‘living for the weekend’ philosophy. Even if McClure is only living for the weekend, at least you know he’ll be doing something with his 48 hours and not just watching Hollyoaks repeats or waiting for Keith Floyd to appear on Saturday Kitchen.

But what would McClure have us over-weight, boring, spoon-fed, reality TV lovers do instead? “I think people should just fucking rise up man. For example, we’re having Brown in”, (adopts sarcastic air) “Oh yeah, great idea, let’s get rid of the man who made the war in Iraqi and let’s get in the man who paid for the fucker instead. It’s bullshit. They’re not fit to tell you what to do and they are not fit to lecture me. But people can’t be arsed, they’d rather sit and watch Fame Academy.”

I put it to McClure that it’s not just the general public who can’t be arsed, it is their musical idols and cultural guides who can’t be bothered either. And it is now that the anger really starts. “Well I tell you why they can’t be arsed mate, they’re scared of fucking alienating their target audience. You read interviews with bands going on about ‘yeah, we want to break America’ – you’re musicians, you’re not working in fucking telesales. Pricks.”

“People have got no opinions on anything. By and large musicians are an intelligent bunch but they’re too fucking lazy to say anything. They may have a picture of Strummer or Marley or Lennon or Dylan on their t-shirt and act like they’re some kind of rebel but there’s no rebellion there. It’s all bloody shit, nobody’s got anything to say.”

Nobody apart from Jon McClure it would appear who has nearly finished his debut album and, unsurprisingly, has “done lots of gobbing off about how it’s going to be the best album ever.” Let’s hope it is, or else there is going to be one very angry young man stalking the hills of Sheffield. And I don’t mean Peter Sutcliffe.

Words by Simon Cooper

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