The Liberty of Norton Folgate (Expanded Edition)

MIKE, CHRIS, SUGGS, CATHAL, LEE & WOODY ON WRITING & RECORDING MADNESS’S MAGNUM OPUS

Suggs: After Divine Madness had gone to number one in the charts, and Madstock had caused an earthquake, Virgin Records got on to us to make a new album. Half the band did want to do it and half didn’t, but we said, “Alright, we’ll make one more album” That was Wonderful. But we weren’t really in the groove, even though there are some good songs on Wonderful. So we did The Dangermen Sessions album to get the cogs whirring, to get the mechanics of the group going again, like a football team playing a few friendlies to get back in shape. And after that I thought, “We’ve got to do a really, really good album”” Because we were in danger of going down some 80s nostalgia hole… Not to slag anyone off, but there were all these nostalgia festivals full of all the 80s pop stars happening at the time. I thought, “We’ve really, really got to make sure we don’t get sucked into this”.

Woody: The Dangermen Sessions Vol One reinforced our idea that we’re much better at doing our own stuff. It’s always better when we’ve written a load of songs, gone out and played them live, and then recorded them. Back in the day, we literally wrote a live set and then went into studio recorded it. We wanted to get back to that sense of excitement.

Mike: On Dangermen, the record company were an obstacle – they kept coming up with funny ideas, and we thought they knew what they were talking about, but in hindsight I question whether they did. We ended up compromising, and the record hadn’t been very successful. So we decided: no more compromising. We’re just going to do what we want to do. Cathal and Suggs were a bit of an intellectual team, and they came up with the concept – Cathal had always wanted to do a concept album. They’d been reading books about London, and so we decided to make an album that shamelessly drew upon Englishness, upon London, upon being a British band. If the Dangermen album had been about us going back to our roots – to when the band was starting out in a bedroom, learning old songs – then this album would examine what Madness really symbolises, what Madness stand for.

Suggs: I’d read This Bright Field, written by William Taylor about his time as vicar of the parish of Spitalfields. He was there from the time of the Krays, through when it was a fruit and vegetable market, to when it started becoming super-fashionable. That was the first time I ever read about Norton Folgate. I learned that outside the walls of the original city of London there were “liberties”, these independent areas that were under special jurisdiction, and the Liberty of Norton Folgate was one. The city of London had become a bit overpopulated, so if people wanted to have a laugh, they climbed over the walls to these liberties. And the Liberty of Norton Folgate became an environment all of its own, a community of artists and musicians. I was fascinated by it. So we decided to write an album of songs about London. Chris said, “What do you think all our other songs have been about?!?”

Woody: London was my world, the hub of my universe. But I’d seen it change. I grew up in leafy Maida Vale, which was beautiful architecturally, but very rundown. Then I moved to Camden with my dad, when it was predominantly Irish and Greek communities, when Camden Lock was all wheelbarrows with tarpaulins over the top. I went to school in Chalk Farm, and it was real. And then the markets appeared, and Camden got trendy and materialistic, and it has become like everywhere else. The real communities were pushed out by McDonald’s, by Starbucks, by Costa, and all the supermarket chains. The whole world is becoming joined up by the big “M”. So the opportunity to write an album about a time in London that was lost now appealed to all of us.

Mike: We were rehearsing in Highbury, in this old 60s office block that was being renovated.

Chris: This guy owned the building next to 167 Caledonian Road (our old studio and office). I met him a few times with our accountant Colin, because he was always trying to buy 167. He was building a crazy subterranean club next door to 167, a real Tardis. I asked him if he had any vacant properties we could lease, and that’s how we got the empty office block. We got a small PA in, some sound-proofing for the drums and a few sets of keys. It was pretty isolated, so we could make loads of noise 24/7. It looked like a post apocalyptic film set with dusty old computers and empty offices.

Mike: There were still typewriters, office equipment, desks and everything there. It reminded me a lot of when we were kids on the streets, not that long after the war, when there was a lot of regeneration that needed to be done, and a lot of empty buildings to hang out in. We rearranged the office block, and tried to soundproof it a little bit. It was a nice space, and when you got bored you could wander through all these little rooms and look around, like, “Ooh, what’s in this drawer?” It reminded me of when we started, when we had this rehearsal place owned by the dentist dad of a friend of ours, with all these teeth on the wall he’d extracted from his patients.

Woody: I like modern recording processes, modern studios. Because we’ve come out of the fucking dark ages! And I like to hear people properly, and it was a struggle. I mean, drummers and keyboard players have different challenges. Mike was clearly happy. I wasn’t. I had to learn the songs without really, you know, being able to hear much.