Some musicians spend their careers carefully constructing dark, angst-ridden stage personae. The The, the obtusely named group responsible for such iconic post-punk albums as Soul Mining and Infected, have been working equally hard to show the world they’re not as dark as all that.
“I’ve often been characterised as a very moody, gloomy person, but that’s not at all accurate,” frontman Matt Johnson says. “That’s lazy journalism. In England – particularly in England – you get a lot of very lazy journalists. Somebody may say something, and it gets repeated endlessly. My public persona has always been highly inaccurate.
“There’s a lot of laughter that goes on behind the scenes with my bandmates, and some of that translates onstage. We’re very intense about our performing, very disciplined. It’s a very tight band but, at the same time, there’s a lot of fun and lightheartedness as well.”
The The haven’t mounted a stage in Melbourne since 1989. At the time, Johnson was recognised for the experimental music videos accompaning Infected – videos that featured Johnson tripping out in the Peruvian jungle, holding a loaded gun in his mouth “to see what it felt like” and surviving a fully unscripted attack by Maoist guerillas, among other things. He recalls enjoying the warm reception he got from Melbourne crowds, despite the dissociating effect of a seven hour-long jet lag.
“I’m curious to see how much the country’s changed,” Johnson says. It’s probably become even more Americanised, because it was already well on the way 30 years ago.”
After his 2002 show at London’s Royal Festival Hall, Johnson decided to take a sabbatical – one that ended up running until 2018. Tickets to The The’s unexpected comeback tour often sold out in minutes.
“I didn’t intend for it to be 16 years, but time goes fast,” Johnson says. “Obviously, I’ve got a lot going on in my personal life, even in my family life: children being born, and people dying as well, so it’s quite an intense time.”
The passing of Matt Johnson’s older brother Andy Dog – who designed the band’s most recognisable album art – prompted Johnson to record the elegiac ‘We Can’t Stop What’s Coming’ alongside Johnny Marr of the Smiths. Johnson was drawn back into music also by scoring films directed by his brother Gerard.
Johnson, whose bookshelves are lined with studies of Kubrick, Fellini and Polanski, says film composing is easier than cutting records because there’s no need to tinker with lyrics.
“I find Hollywood very, very bombastic,” Johnson says. “The blockbuster type music doesn’t interest me at all. It’s overpowering. It doesn’t add much – I find it actually detracts from the movie experience. You can tell when the composer has had some creative interaction with the director rather than just painting by numbers to create a big, boring Hollywood score.”
Johnson has no sympathy for the ‘80s nostalgia currently washing over pop culture, preferring the composers who helped define the spaghetti westerns and spy thrillers of the ‘60s and ‘70s: Nino Rota, Ennio Morricone, Henry Mancini and others. Johnson seems untroubled by the weighty expectations created by The The’s 16-year absence from the stage.
“Some performers get nervous, but I don’t,” Johnson says. “I have the reverse problem. To me, walking onto a stage is just like walking into the living room.
“For a long time I haven’t really cared what people think of me, and that gives you a certain amount of freedom. I want people to like the music, but I’m not anxious about it.
