Interview
by SashaS
23-9-2005
   
   
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  More on: The Mission

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The Mission: 'Lighting The Candles' DVD
The Mission regained
The Mission: still vital after all the years


The Mission, arguably one the Goth-fathers of rock, continued to play shows around the globe and in April 2004 filmed and recorded their show in Cologne, Germany for a DVD that is entitled ‘Lighting The Candles’. It is extremely comprehensive release of 355 minutes!?

“I’m not quite sure about the running time,” Wayne Hussey replies, “but it started out as a live show but then I got involved and wanted to add extras and bits. The whole project turned into a retrospective and it is pretty comprehensive DVD for a first release. I was very involved with it, all the way through… And it took a year out of my life.”

Rather a long time to ponder over one’s past…

“It’s the longest I’ve ever spend on any one of my projects. What really surprised me was it being 20 years later. If somebody told me back in 1985 [when he and Craig Adams left The Sisters of Mercy] that the band would still be going 20 years on, I’d have told them not to be ridiculous. I’m still here, doing this and being fortunate to be doing what I love, really.”

On the creative side, what’s the overview of the band’s legacy?

“I feel I’m much better now and lyrically - I can express myself better, I can articulate what I want to say; musically, I’m far better musician than I used to be. It is all to the loss of innocence and having worked on the DVD, I realised that there were songs there I’d never be able to write.”

“There is new material on the DVD, such as the [former] single ‘Breathe Me In’, the title track and all the incidental music. ‘Lighting The Candles’ started out as a piece for one of the menus, I then added vocal and we made a video for it. So, it is the only place where it would appear.”

Two decades on and your motivation doesn’t appear to be extinguishing?

“I have a studio at home, I live in Brazil, and every day I go in to do something. I have to confess that some days nothing happens but I’ve got to discipline myself… Some days things go so great that it gets so exciting that makes the whole creative process really thrilling. Touring, I really enjoy it and that’s where motivation comes from.”

Brazil is a far away from your beginning…

“Well, I moved there about two and a half years ago; my wife is Brazilian. We used to live in Los Angeles but had to move… I used to love going to tour there but found that living in LA was difficult and making friends was near impossible as Californians are such clichés. I live about two hours out of Sao Paolo, in the country.”

Do you care to keep informed about the latest musical developments?

“Occasionally I’d tune into BBC [via the ‘Net] and listen to a show, log onto different magazine sites to see who they are writing about this week but, in general, I don’t listen to much new music when I’m at home. When I do come to England, which is two or three times a year, I buy a lot of CDs and catch up.”

So, on this visit, what have you spent your money on?

“I bought The Magic Numbers album, which is kinda cool, there are some nice pop songs there; I’m a great Beach Boys fan and like all the harmonies and stuff… I like the last Nine Inch Nails’ album and it is surprising because I’ve never liked more than two or three songs on any of their previous ones… I like Franz Ferdinand but to me, being old enough to remember bands like Teardrop Explodes and Josef K, early Talking Heads, or Orange Juice… But, most of the today’s kids have never heard of Josef K…”

In a peculiar way these bands also cause old bands to reform, for instance Gang Of Four?

“True, but when I was a kid a lot of bands used to make references to other bands… I was into David Bowie and he’d mention The Stooges and I’d got and listen to them… Or, The Doors, all these bands were before my time but because they were referenced by people that I liked, I’d go and discover them.”

“When we started becoming successful I’d reference bands and artists and fans started listening to them. Reformations, it is all caused by rediscovered interest… We reformed although I thought we’d never do it again after I had had enough of the band back in the mid-1990s. I knocked it on the head for a few years, moved to Los Angeles, my wife at the time being Californian… The Cure came through town one day, them being friends of mine, invited me to play guitar on stage with them, which I did…”

“I was hanging out with them after the show and thinking that it was good being in a band and then they got on a tour bus and went off and I was driving back home on my own… Then, there was an opportunity for us to do an American tour which we hadn’t done in number of years and at point - there was no long-term plan, just to do that US tour.”

“Once we started doing it, the band felt good, we made an album and it just carried on.”

The Mission are just completing their biggest UK tour in years before embarking on the European dates. It will be then followed by a new album sometime in 2006 and Hussey admits to have about 30 or 40 songs he can work on for the disc.

The Mission have regained the old magic.

Tour dates:

23 Sept - Academy 3, Manchester
24 Sept - Astoria, London


SashaS
23-9-2005
The Mission‘s DVD ‘Lighting the Candles’ is released 26 September 2005 by SPV