PAULINE PICKS UP THE PIECES






THE FURTHER PERILS OF PAULINE

  Martin 'Zero' Hannett lifts his lurid pink socks off the maze of
switches and buttons on the 24-track console and jumps up from his easy 
chair behind the mixing desk. A series of directions are bellowed to a 
percussionist in an adjacent studio.
  "That's just crying out for a Bell flanger, Dave!"
  Returning to his throne, Hannett waves a curt go-ahead to the
percussionist, Dave Hassell, who proceeds to activate the spring-loaded 
slapsticks, two hinged blocks of wood which produce a sound remarkably 
similar to a firework being detonated at arm's length.  
  Pauline Murray grins patiently and awaits her turn in the same booth.
More vocal overdubs. This is the night-shift at the Stockport rabbit 
warren that goes by the name of Strawberry Studios, and Hannett is a 
demanding taskmaster.
  The song the collective are working on is an airy, insistent rocker,
'Shoot You Down', destined to emerge on the RSO-sponsored album by 
Pauline Murray And The Invisible Girls this autumn.
  The pairing of the former Penetration chanteuse and her bassman 
sidekick Robert Blamire with sound sculptor extraordinaire Hannett and
his Mancunian cronies Hassell, guitarist Vini 'Durutti Column' Reilly,
drummer John Maher and organist Steve Hopkins, is one of the most 
inspired matches of the year. 
  Forget Yes and Buggles, Dury and Wilko, even The Clash and Mikey 
Dread. Murray and Hannett is a musical union to set anticipation at 
fever pitch.
  Did not Penetration, in their more inventive moods, always hint at 
the sort of transcendental, spatial rock that Hannett's gothic rock
sensibility thrives on? Pauline's haunting vocalising has always cried 
out for the sort of clarity and focus with which Zero has moulded the
atmospheric ambiences of Joy Division, Magazine and U2.
  And wasn't it about time that Hannett broke away from male rock bands
and applied his superb sense of texture and balance to the relationship 
between the electric guitar and the female voice?
  Both parties obviously thought so.
  It was Pauline herself who first approached Hannett back in February
with a view to recording a one-off single. The resultant 45, 'Dream
Sequences', recently dented the Top 75. With that fillip, work began
last month on a dozen new Pauline Murray songs from which the album 
will be culled. 
  Pauline had first been attracted to Hannett's dynamic touch at the 
controls by his early production credits - 'Spiral Scratch', the Jilted
John EP and, of course, the first Joy Division album.
  "I'm still more of a fan than anything else," explains the elfin 
Pauline. "I only knew Martin through what he'd produced. He just seemed
to have the knack of putting things in the right setting.
  "We decided to do that single and see how it went and he just put a
whole new aspect on things. He works in a totally different way to any 
other producer we've recorded with. He doesn't even re-play songs on 
the tape very much. He has it all in his head.
  "It was strange working with him at first, it took a while to come to
terms with it. He's a weird bloke but we work really well with him. We
work through the night and at first it seemed that we were getting 
nothing done by doing it that way. But then you look at what you've 
actually completed and it's hell of a lot.
  "I had been stuck in a rut and I needed something like that to show 
me some sort of light. Martin was just the right person."


  Penetration - Murray, Blamire, drummer Gary Smallman and guitarists
Neale Floyd and Fred Purser - split up last November, shortly after the
release of the second, decidedly shoddy Virgin LP 'Coming Up For Air'.
The split came at the end of an arduous UK tour during which the band's
internal tensions had gone from a state of creative rivalry to total
communication breakdown.
  Pauline recalls the end of Penetration with what seems like 
bitterness - in cold print some of it looks uncharacteristically bitchy
- but there is little venom in her thick Geordie brogue, just sheer
exasperation at how low her dreams had actually sunk at that point.
  "When we formed the band, everybody was really committed to it and
we all wanted to see it do well, but by the time we split up no one 
felt like that. At the start, everybody was putting things into the 
band - we all put our money into it - but after a while it got to the 
stage where people were just taking what they could out of it.
  "I was probably thinking about the split at least six months before 
it actually happened... not so much thinking about it as a definite
plan, but the thought of it kept creeping into my mind."
  Matters first began coming to an ugly head during the recording of 
the second Penetration album with producer Steve Lillywhite who, in the
circumstances, did remarkably well in simply holding the sessions 
together.
  "The second album, I don't feel proud of at all. It leaves a lot to 
be desired. When we were making it, the two guitarists (Floyd and 
Purser) weren't even talking to each other. Right from the start of the
band, they were expecting everything to be handed to them on a plate.
  "One of them would go in and do a solo and the other one would say it
was absolute shit. The rest of us were stuck in the middle of it, and 
by that time we couldn't really be bothered to put things right. We 
lost interest, and that's really bad. That's when you've got to stop. 
It was awful. We just had to split."
  Penetration played thair last gig at the Nashville in West Kensington
on Guy Fawkes Night last year. Neither Pauline or Robert have seen or
heard of the other three members since, although Gary Smallman is
rumoured to be drumming in a local jazz-funk band.
  Pauline began to pick up the pieces towards the end of the year.
  "For two months, I was just so sick of everything that I knew I just
had to get away from it. It took a long time for me to get Penetration 
out of my system. It took a long time to start looking at things from
other points of view 'cause you tend to get into a rut with your 
thoughts.
  "I felt really fed up for a while after the split and it took me that 
long to look elsewhere and see what else there was."


  The messy demise of Penetration had set her against the constrictions
imposed by a working band, blundering aimlessly from tour to album to
tour under record company pressure. A somewhat looser set-up was called 
for, something that would give Murray and Blamire the chance to develop
their talents without being tied down, something that would be more fun.
All roads led to Stockport and The Invisible Girls.
  Pausing only for a one-off duet with Only One Peter Perrett on his
CBS country single 'Fools' in January, Pauline set about recruiting a 
strictly part-time assembly of musicians with the aid of the 
indefatigable Hannett, the resulting band comprising largely of John
Cooper Clarke's touring squad.
  With Virgin declining to take up their option, Murray started work on
forming an independent label, Illusive Records, with Blamire and former
Penetration manager John Arnesson.
  The original idea was for Illusive to be totally independent, with
distribution handled through the usual Rough Trade/Sparton/Pinnacle
network, a plan which was subsequently shelved when Robert Stigwood's
RSO Records, home of The Bee Gees, stepped in with a totally unexpected
licensing offer that the three Illusive shareholders found impossible 
to resist. 
  Pauline, whose view of the major labels was severly jaundiced by the
neglect Penetration encountered at Virgin, is nonetheless optimistic
about the potential of the RSO alliance. 
  "It's purely a licensing deal which leaves us with the final say on
all the important things. Every other label that approached us only
talked of options and one-offs, but RSO were the only people to really
show a genuine interest after the split.
  "Out of all the labels we talked to, they were the ones that gave us
the biggest buzz. They're so unfashionable with the rock audience too, 
with The Bee Gees and all that, and that sort of appealed to me in a 
way too.
  "It's totally different to the way we've worked before. We won't 
necessarily do all our recording as Pauline Murray and The Invisible 
Girls. We want to have lots of different people. I don't want to have a
permanent group again really. Up to now, I feel as if we've been 
hampered 'cause of that sort of situation."


  Which brings us back to the cork-walled mixing complex of Strawberry
Studios with the dawn rapidly approaching and a rough mix of the 
completed track on the album blaring out of a pair of massive speakers.
  The six tracks that I heard - 'Shoot You Down', 'Mr X', 'Dream 
Sequences', 'Screaming In The Darkness', 'Drummer Boy' and 'Judgement
Day' - were more than enough to indicate the wisdom of forsaking 
Penetration for The Invisible Girls.
  The difference between the two bands is staggering. In surrounding
herself with truly creative musicians in a conducive working 
environment in place of the honest if workmanlike riffing machine that
Penetration had become by their second album, Pauline is allowing her
vocal and songwriting talents to flower properly for the first time.
  The songs themselves are harder and fuller than anything 
Penetration ever did, with the possible exception of a few highspots on
their debut 'Moving Targets' LP. There is more melody, less rifferama.
There is the startling piano of Steve Hopkins and even drummer John 
Maher, the man behind the often cluttered beat of The Buzzcocks, has 
been coerced into playing simply and effectively.
  Robert Blamire, too, is extending his horizons, adding some guitar 
and even a smattering of horn to his elastic bass playing. As the 
beanploe of a bassman says himself, "As we're going on, the songs are
becoming deeper musically and lyrically. The songs that Pauline was 
writing just after the split reflected what was happening then. The
songs we've done more recently reflect what's happening now. They're
very different."
  Pauline herself is loath to discuss songwriting, finding it 
"pretentious and embarrassing" to talk about her lyrics in detail.
Strictly take-it-or-leave-it.
  "I don't think it's worth making a big deal about the lyrics. A lot 
of the songs are basically just pop songs. There's not a great deal you
can say or read into them apart from that. Most of them are very 
straightforward really.
  "The songs that I like the best are the ones that I just sit down and 
write in one go. Sometimes you find yourself pondering about it too
much and those are usually the songs that you look back on and wish 
you'd done differently."


  As Pauline points out, the Invisible Girls project is very much a
fresh start and should be viewed as such. But what of the old 
Penetration audience with it's sizeable hard-core punk contingent? Are
the old fans going to be left floundering in the wake of the new 
departure?
  "I think the single will have surprised a lot of people. I think some
of the old Penetration fans won't like it, but I don't think you should
play to your audience's expectations.
  "I think that some of them will stay with us, but a lot of the new 
songs are not as riffy as the old stuff so we might lose a lot of the
hard-core punks. I don't think you should ever rely on an audience. You
should never expect them to like everything you do."
  The hard-core Penetration fans - the die-hards of the Hounslow Mob
who received dedications on album sleeves - should soon get a chance to
see for themselves the changes that have taken place. In addition to 
the LP, the entire Invisible Girls assembly, Vini Reilly and Hannett 
included, are going out on the road in the autumn with Pauline and
John Cooper Clarke as joint headliners. The tour will only take in six 
or seven dates, but should be well worth catching even if it means 
travelling.
  Pauline Murray, when she put the first version of Penetration 
together at the start of 1977, helped start a line of bands, largely
from the north of England, who took the spirit of punk and welded it
to a vision and invention that was sorely lacking in many of their 
bigger-name London contemporaries.    
  The line has since stretched from Penetration, Buzzcocks and The Fall
through the likes of The Human League, Gang Of Four and Magazine to Joy
Division, Teardrop Explodes, Echo And The Bunnymen and beyond.
  Pauline Murray is ready to muscle back in on that heritage.