WONDERFUL
VIRGIN, 1999
The original lineup reconvened after a series of reunion shows, bolstered by a cameo from Ian Dury, who made his last appearance on Top Of The Pops with the band.
SUGGS: We’ve all had our periods in the wilderness and mine came around this time. But then I got back right into it. My thoughts were we’d do this album, reconnect with each other and then really get our act together with the next one. Frustratingly that didn’t happen but I think it’s a stage we are getting back to now with the new album.
FOREMAN: It was a good return to form – we went into a studio and recorded a lot of songs without Suggs. Chassy [Smith] was getting prolific but the songs aren’t Madness without Suggs, it’d be like Oasis without Liam. Suggs came back and we redid them, though I think musically some of the demos are better. Lee saw Ian Dury in a bar and thought it would be great to have him on “Drip Fed Fred”, which was great because he’d been such an influence on us. But it was sad too; the last time he appeared on Top Of The Pops was with us doing that song. When he died they wanted a couple of Madness to carry the coffin. I thought the frontmen Suggs and Carl would be asked but because The Blockheads were small they asked Lee and I, and we carried Ian. I was crying, it was all very emotional.
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THE DANGERMEN SESSIONS VOLUME 1
V2, 2005
An album of cover versions which gave the band their biggest album chart hit since 1984.
SUGGS: The Dangermen Sessions went through about nine machinations. It was originally going to be our 1978 Invaders [Madness earliest incarnation] set with “Downtown”, “For Once In My Life” and “Tears Of A Clown”. We did a few of those but it just sounded like a disparate set of old Nuttiness. My idea was to get everybody up dancing like we used to at the Dublin Castle on a Friday night and then make the album that we’re doing now showing our pop sensibility, something that is dense and rich. Get the old feet going again and then add the cream and the cherries.
FOREMAN: We did the gigs at Dublin castle as a warm-up to recording the album, which was great – but a bit parochial. I wanted to do a tour of small places around the UK, blow the place apart then record the album – but that idea got blown out of the water. It just didn’t seem good enough for my band to be doing cover versions that don’t have an extra spark. Our body of work is too good for that. I left but last year I came back to the band and I was onstage at Brixton and I got a bit teary eyed and thought ‘I love these blokes.’ You get to a certain age and people’s habits become annoying. I have fallen out with them – but I still love ’em.