TATTOOED LOVE BOYS (1997)



They came from nowhere, or Walthamstow, which it resembles in so many ways, and their mission -- should you choose to believe them -- is to go straight back there. While his shiny-pated bandmate John Hendy lounges on the bedspread of a luxury suite in one of London's swankiest hotels, Tony Mortimer of East 17 is thinking about the future. "Prince," he concludes. The diminutive genius is proof to him that there can be creative life after smash-hit singles aimed at the teen market.

For East 17 have reached that awkward age where teen adoration and assured chart places are no longer enough. The previous night, at a relaxed, invitation-only showcase to launch Around The World: The Journey So Far, their singles album, they'd been terrific fun, stuffing an arena-sized backing band into a small theatre and letting rip. The chemistry that has resulted in a dozen-plus hits was mirrored in their appearance on stage: to one side of the three tattooed love boys, John, Terry and Brian in their vests and puffa jackets, stood stripling Tony in a plain white shirt, looking like a member of a different group. Their swingbeat sensibilities set against his love of hip hop, rap and classic songwriting.

Tony Mortimer may well turn out to be East 17's George Michael, but the others are no Andrew Ridgeleys. Songwriting is shared between all four, and it's been said that should the group break up they'd have no trouble establishing themselves as a strong British swingbeat unit, especially with soulful singer Brian upfront. They insist that there's no danger of a split. But like most bands who bring out a greatest hits album, they feel it's the end of a phase. So where do they go from here?

"Now we can get ambient and artistic," deadpans Tony Mortimer, the founder of the group and the more articulate of the pair here this afternoon. "No, it's definitely the end of a phase. The end of that market that we . . . well, we reinvented it, anyway, and Take That rode on our backs, because they were doing shite for two years before we came out. Then we came out and created this market and we've done it and took it to there." He extends a pointing finger. "And now it's got to go somewhere else. The kids are growing up."

"I think we've taken it to the point where it can't go no further," pipes up Hendy. "Not with the pop scene. Because you're getting all these new bands coming out now, just making us look silly." By new bands, they're meaning "all the new boy crap that's coming out and making us look cheap", as if you didn't know.

"Caught In The Act, Upside Down--"

"--911. It's all toot, that."

It embarasses them? "Big time."

"I wouldn't mind it if they dressed, like, streetwise," says Hendy, "but they all look like they've just come out of stage school or something."

Their dilemma is that, like generations of street kids before them, East 17 believe that anything in the charts sucks. Even if it's them. And it's not like they're embarrassed by a mere few of their early tracks; according to a spluttering Tony Mortimer, "the whole lot's shite".

"The club stuff was good, but anything in the charts is shite. I remember when 'I Got The Power' by Snap come out. That was just killin' it in the clubs and in the back seat of the car, and then it went to Number One and everyone went -- pchoou ... quick, turn the radio down. If you're going to get in the charts, don't worry about being credible. Going in the charts, don't matter what it is, is gonna kill it. People like ... obscurity."

It can't all have been bad. Since the band started, what's been their moment of greatest bliss?

"Extreme bliss is sadness, though, isn't it?" Mortimer replies, and I swear he's smirking. "You always cry when you're really happy."

John: "Our first album going straight in at Number One."

Tony: "That sort of killed it. We couldn't go anywhere else, could we?"

What about the moment of greatest despondency? After a very long pause indeed, Hendy answers, "I suppose the papers, press. Always digging at us, putting us down."

Tony: "Writing about you. Why the fuck do they want to write about you?"

Like what?

"Like printing pictures of your house. Bang out of order. You'd kill normal people for doing that, but you just got to let it ride."

John: "They take pictures of what's going on in private, walking down the street with your missus and your baby."

Tony: "I think being judged is probably the most depressing thing ... you feel like you're being judged sometimes, being judged ..." He fades out like a white, amateur-hour Lee Perry.

East 17 lore has it that he's the spiritual guru of the the band, but he isn't in much of a mood to show it today. Or even, one gradually suspects, at the best of times. Maybe he's suffered at the hands of the press, but I've met others who've had it worse, and I still didn't distrust them as much as I do him. It could be that he doesn't want to get mystical in front of his old mucker John, but the way he brushes aside questions of a spiritual nature with a bad quip or by descending into vague, daft mumbling about how he wants to make music that'll "make people's chakras revolve the other way or something" makes his alleged spiritual interests seem more like a neat angle than a commitment. He's no preacher, that's for sure.

"I think it's important for me to keep on the spiritual aspect of things," he begins, "because I think that's the core of the whole universe. If we keep that in our songs, we'll touch people all the time. And music as well. Music's deep, because the walls of Jericho was brought down by a load of trumpeteers playing the root note of the foundations. Sound can heal, too, and I think that's closer to where we want to go. It's 1997 now," he declares, rather prematurely. "It's not The Beatles no more. We're trying to reach out there . . . write a song for aliens. Yeah, let's give the aliens some rhythm when they come down."

I turn to Hendy and ask if he and the rest of the band take note of where Tony's head's at, if he really is the spiritual voyager who does the groundwork for the others to follow. Mortimer shakes his head, interrupting, "I just came at them with the idea of the group. I'm the one who started it, so everyone looks at me as the leader or something, but I'm not at all."

"Yeah, like, Tony's been writing since he was fourteen," Hendy begins, as Mortimer tries to laugh it off. "Since his schooldays he's been into spiritual and ... you know what I mean? Went round his house one day, he'd left his body and all that, his mum says he's not in and I saw him at the top of the stairs, so, like, erm, know what I mean? It's just been in him, do you know what I mean? I wish I would've read all the books, but I'm not too with it with reading books."

All of which unearthly babble sits uneasily with the East 17 image as streetwise neds with a past of petty crime and mild substance abuse. "I think we should all just have kept our mouths shut," is what Hendy has to say about that, but it's a subject he can't resist for long.

"Even I still nick stuff now and again," he confesses, to Mortimer's delight. "I do! I'll be there and I'll be [mimes looking around shiftily and slipping something into his pocket] and I'll walk out feeling, Woah, yeah! Why? I dunno. When I was younger, I always used to nick things. I think that's where the bad boy image comes from. We used to nick a few car stereos. But maybe if I was brought up in a different area I wouldn't have been like that. I don't think it's a bad thing, anyway. I've had it all done to me. I've done it, so it's obviously come back on me. I'm only taking little things like a packet of chewing gum, but I wouldn't damage anybody's property or break into anybody's home, 'cause I know they've worked hard for that."

Did they still carry on with the old herbal and pharmaceutical enhancement after they got famous?

Mortimer, who finds the phrase hilarious, answers. "I suppose it trickled in, yeah, but we'd already done that, because in the area we grew up there was a block that was our block and we'd walk around certain roads and it was all dark and that, and we'd sit in one of our friend's cars and sniff butane gas or something, if there was nothing else happening on that night. It was something to be done. Walking up and down the road, the girls would have thinners up their sleeves and stuff, and we'd have butane gas. I guess it's like every inner city place. We were just having fun amongst ourselves, we weren't hurting anyone."

Brian got busted, didn't he? So it continued long after you got famous.

"Yeah, being famous doesn't mean you're invincible is what we keep telling him. But he doesn't care. Old Bill come, you got something, you nuts it, don't you, you puts it down your nuts. Or in your mouth, 'cause they're not allowed to do oral searches. They're not allowed to go down your private parts unless they arrest you, and they can't arrest you without reason. But if you wag it around, you're gonna get caught."

As if intent to distance themselves from other boy bands, they've turned their smarm generators down today. Ask Tony Mortimer if he would be disappointed if his music turned out to be nothing more than an ephemeral, passing thrill, and his answer is surprisingly hard-headed.

"We don't look into it. We're too busy doing what we do. We don't look into the fans. We try and do a service -- the clichéd stuff, a fan club, give them information and stuff -- but we don't really look into fans, do we? Because there's four of us in a group, I think we all pass the buck on the attention. So it's not like if it was me solo, and there's 10,000 people there for you."

Hendy's rule of thumb is that the majority of fans fancy Brian, then Tony, then himself and Terry. "No, you get more than me," Mortimer shoots back. "You do. I get psychos."

"Yeah, you do get problem ones, don't you?" concedes Hendy, and spends a few moments silently enumerating his blessings before alighting on the explanation. "It's 'cause you're spiritual."