Take It or Leave It, starring Madness
Director – Dave Robinson – 1981 – UK – Cert. 12a – 86m
*****
Struggling with their day jobs, some friends get together and form a band, which becomes the ascendant ska / dance band Madness – previews on Wednesday, September 30th, out in cinemas in the UK on Friday, October 2nd, and on Blu-ray from Monday, October 19th
The band Madness occupy a unique place in British pop music history. They first appeared In the brief space following the punk and new wave movements of the late 1970s which embodied the idea that anyone could learn to play a musical instrument from scratch and any group of people could put together a band. It was very much a DIY aesthetic.
What Madness had is different, however. Like the title of their debut album One Step Beyond and its iconic cover photograph capturing the seven band members one pressed behind the other walking forward in a synchronised movement, they embodied, as their promotional catchphrase would have it, “that nutty sound”.
Very much a dance band, albeit one unlike any previous combo that had coined that term, they built their songs on ska rhythms and incorporated saxophones into the overall sound. Like punk and new wave before them, they were a breath of fresh air who seemed to come out of nowhere. As such, they were a perfect fit for Stiff Records whose initial roster included punk band The Damned and new wave artists Elvis Costello.
After a string of hit singles and two albums, the seven piece band felt that their logical next step – or perhaps their nutty next step – would be to make a film. Working with A budget of £400 000 – £250 000 from Stiff Records, £150 000 from themselves and their own management – the band collaborated with Stiff Records co-founder Dave Robinson who took the role of director, something he had never done on a feature before although he had already directed numerous pop videos for the band.
While it never really had a script, the film most definitely had a basic underlying structure holding it together. Robinson conducted numerous interviews with the various members of the band to find out their favourite stories from Madness’ brief history, turning these into the five and a half pages which formed the basis for what was filmed, relying heavily on improvisation.
Although this could have been a recipe for disaster, the seven members of Madness were by now undeniably strong performers with a solid reputation as an enjoyable and entertaining live act, so perhaps all this was less of a foolhardy gamble than it at first sounds.
Shot partly in rough and ready black & white around London’s Camden, its early scenes feature various members of the band in scenes from a variety of day jobs, some of which don’t work out, as well as going around to each other’s houses to play instruments with each other and attempting to form a band.
One of its most memorable moments has one of them driving a builder’s van containing scaffolding pointing forward under a bridge which is too low, causing the, angled scaffolding to catch on the bridge and shear off half the top of the van, a situation of which the occupants of its cab remain blissfully unaware until they arrive at their destination and begin to unload the scaffolding which turns out to be no longer there.
What builds up through all this is a sense of two or three characters trying to put a band together, pulling in others to build up their sound, and playing early gigs such as the one outside a residential house.
Simply by virtue of what it is, the film provides an amazing time capsule of everyday, working life, the Camden music venues of the period and other sights and sounds of the immediate local area. This writer was living in London at the time, and shots of ticket machines at Camden tube station brought back memories of the capital’s transport system as it was back then, a system far less easy to to navigate in those pre-Oyster card days.
As the film progresses, the band go from a few friends who don’t really know what they’re doing trying to make it happen to, by the end, a tight little outfit playing small Camden gigs. If, like this writer, you only have a passing familiarity with the band and its members, the film doesn’t do a terribly good job of telling you who’s who, but given that the young men who make up the band – Suggs, Bedders, El Thommo, Chas Smash, Woody, Chrissy Boy and Barzo – are all what we might call ‘characters’, the camera loves watching them, and simply being themselves provides the film with the momentum necessary to keep it going.
It not exactly acting, more like presence. Yet it’s more than enough to make the film work.
The whole thing has such a feeling of exhilaration about it that you come out both feeling suitably satisfied and with a stupid grin on your face.
Take It or Leave It starring Madness previews on Wednesday, September 30th, is out in cinemas in the UK on Friday, October 2nd, and is on Blu-ray from Monday, October 19th.
Trailer: