Buzz Bites

It goes without saying that without the likes of Orgasm Addict and Ever Fallen In Love, the face of rock music and the advent of punk would have taken an altogether different hue. Manchester's Buzzcocks burst forth alongside geographical and musical contemporaries Sex Pistols and The Smiths as beacons of light in a politically tumultuous time. But what set the band apart – and what has them still together, playing strong tours spanning four decades – is the inherent balance of political disenfranchisement, emotional upheaval and an undercurrent of effervescent hope, all coloured in with verve, swagger and panache. Now back on Australian shores as part of the Hoodoo Gurus-curated Dig It Up! Festival, the Buzzcocks juggernaut continues to roll on unabated, despite the fact that the current members are scattered across the globe.

“I live in Estonia at the minute; we played a show here about a year ago and I've stayed ever since,” Shelley laughs. “It would be easy to just retire, but it's even easier to get up in the morning and play music. And it's easier still when someone invites you to Australia to play, which always is a definite yes.”

Headlining what is fast becoming a go-to annual event for touchstones in rock'n'roll both past, present and future, Shelley is growing more comfortable every day with the idea of being noted as a musical legacy, especially as ever-expanding technology makes such an idea increasingly hard to fathom.

“It's quite flattering really to be honoured in such a way,” Shelley muses. “I guess it helps people to still pay attention. I read an article a few months ago about how music has no linear structure now. Decades ago, when you discovered a band that you liked, you would have to wait months or years before you could get any new material from them, or sometimes to even find someone likeminded in their musical direction or sound. All music was seen in a linear way. Now with the internet and YouTube, you can find out about all sorts of things across genres and time frames in a matter of seconds. People don't need to raid their parents' or aunts and uncles' or brothers and sisters' record collections anymore. It's no longer 'in the family'; quite often there's no personal experience at all.

“That's how I got into music,” Shelley continues. “I was spending the summer at my auntie's place in Scotland, it was raining a lot and she had this great old radiogram with all the records she had bought when growing up as a teenager. So my musical education was listening to those records and discovering things that had bypassed me because I hadn't even been born (when the records came out). Now young people who come to a Buzzcocks show, they are there because a current band they liked mentioned us, or it's linked to something they have listened to on iTunes. And hopefully there are still the ones where they might go into the garage and go, 'Dad, what are these?' 'Well, they're records, son!' And five minutes later, after the kid has stopped laughing, they'll listen and go 'Oh, I quite like this.' Regardless, it all becomes connected in some way, so that rather than just listening to music from now, you can listen to music from all of time, really.”

For a band that has continued to play their embryonic hits alongside their older, wiser gems like a badge of honour, it's a sign of how indelibly prescient and timeless much of the band's initial sonic aesthetic has remained. This is something that has not always held true for much of that era's other punk visionaries, a fact that Shelley holds is quite simple.

“It comes down in part to the song structure and lyrics, obviously, but also it's a matter of people taking those songs and investing themselves in them,” Shelley insists. “Often music is made very much of a time and place, and when you take that on board you can appreciate what the song is doing at any time and appreciate it for that, without necessarily connecting with the song itself. It becomes more of a history thing, linking to it because it represents a time. Political songs in particular hold true to that. But people, rather than externalise things that affect them, they internalise them: 'this is how I feel, this is what I would say, this is how it happened to me.' And so they become autobiographical, these emotional songs, and that is why they last so long. They are also really good songs, don't forget – everyone loves a good tune. People like things that are upbeat in some way. That's why I'm not a big fan of Coldplay.”

Identifying what helps the Buzzcocks withstand, and indeed defeat, the test of time is one thing; imparting this knowledge and identifying it in modern bands is something else altogether. “I certainly don't know, but I imagine there will be bands that do the same, as there are generations of people now that are identifying with certain elements and trends that will resonate in their future,” Shelley concedes. “There are trends that are fads that will fade away over time, but such things existed in the '60s and '70s too. It's that emotional investment that people come back to, not some YouTube sensation that has captured imaginations for 15 minutes. Personally, I haven't bought a CD in a long time, so I'm not claiming to be 'down with the kids', but I can say that things go in stages – you can tell from a certain band or generation that they don't like prog rock or something. It churns, and it's a natural thing anyway to move away from something in order to come back to it. Occasionally I will hear something that I like, and I'll get the album and find that the song is the only thing I like on it. I do that, and I do check out the latest releases on Spotify or whatever, but I mainly don't chase anything down. Sometimes we'll tour with a band and I'll think they're brilliant, but within a few years unfortunately success eludes them and they split up.”

Nevertheless Shelley admits that he doesn't see an end to the tunnel for the Buzzcocks. “There is no rhyme or reason to it, really, and we are very lucky to have been able to sustain making music as a living for as long as we have,” Shelley admits. “Even now, when we get together there is this excitement like meeting old friends. Our last show was in Bratislava, which was three months ago now, and the itch is already there. Then we have three gigs in the UK before coming down to Australia, and we'll dust off some of the old classics, get into shape. There are moments when you are geared for a show and half way through you go, 'why the hell do I sign up for this?'. But that never lasts, because you have another show to start things over. If it got to half-mast, where it's no longer fun, then the plug will be pulled. But look at it this way – there's a party every night where you're the main guest, everyone wants to talk to you, there's drink and there's food, and you get to go up and play loud music whenever you want to, which is usually all the time. What a fantastic life.”

Buzzcocks will be playing the following dates:

Thursday 18 April - Rosemount Hotel, Perth WA
Saturday 20 April - The Zoo, Brisbane QLD
Sunday 21 April - Dig It Up!, Enmore Theatre, Sydney NSW
Wednesday 24 April - Fowlers Live, Adelaide SA
Thursday 25 April - Dig It Up!, Palace Theatre, Melbourne VIC