Madness: the band who caused two earthquakes
Certain musicians are the embodiment of self-fulfilling prophecies. For instance, a band named Sex Pistols were always destined to pull the sensible rug on society, or perhaps in a more modern context, a band named King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard are simply fulfilling their name’s duty of becoming psychedelic rock gods. So, what happens when you name your band Madness?
In the late 1970s, the boundaries of what many would consider madness had been well and truly stretched. Keith Moon was wrecking hotel rooms, David Bowie was smuggling cocaine into the hospital for a bed-ridden Iggy Pop, and Ozzy Osbourne was biting the head off of live bats. I guess everyone was naturally wondering what Madness—a two-tone ska band wearing suits—could really bring to the table.
So, as the decade turned a brighter 1980s, a vacuum was ready to be filled by a band that could deliver the unbridled sense of chaos that has always been at the heart of music popularity, but perhaps in a more euphoric package. And so they did, to great success. Their fearless leader, Suggs, ushered in a new dawn of youthful rebellion that saw traditional big-band sensibilities repackaged into something quicker and more chaotic, with a croon-cum-rap vocal style that spoke a disenfranchised youth. But it did so by rallying the troops, not pointing a finger at the enemy. A mantra displayed no better than in their seminal hit, ‘One Step Beyond’.
“‘One Step Beyond’ is like a rallying call, and it’s always been so; the whole of it gets the crowd going. It’s like a free ticket to euphoria. When we decided, it just made sense because we were obviously trying to promote the album. Also, the song itself just had enough in it to get away with being something that wasn’t 100 miles an hour.”
It’s a certified foot-stomper, and with the band’s signature walk inspiring the hips of fans all over, when ‘One Step Beyond’ drops into its first note, the ground begins to shake. No, the ground quite literally begins to shake.
The band played a show at Finsbury Park in 1992, and the British Geological Survey’s annual report that year stated that on two different occasions, there was news of earthquakes in north-east London.
“Well, it was bizarre,” Suggs told The One Show. “We hadn’t played for about six years; we had taken a few years out; I think we had gone to live in Holland. A guy called Vince Power used to do an Irish festival, and he said, ‘Look, I can keep the staging up if you want to have a bit of a reunion.’ Anyway, 35,000 people turned up, and when we started ‘One Step Beyond’, they started jumping up and down in unison. And as it said there, they had to evacuate flats.”
So if your rock-loving uncle ever complains that stories of real rock and roll chaos were reserved only for the days of tight leather trousers and never-ending guitar licks, remind him that the mere sound of one Madness song started an earthquake. Twice.
