Lives in the Balance

Artists drawing pictures of U2 on the sidewalks. Zooropa playing in every pub. More shrink-after-one-wash t-shirts than have ever before been gathered in one town. The Joshua Trio soundchecking for a perfectly timed pisstake gig at the Rock Garden. People all over town frantically looking for tickets . . .

The excitement surrounding U2's Dublin shows, their end-of-tour homecoming, was almost unbearable. But not, strangely enough, for Rob B from the UK's Stereo MCs, who expressed about as much excitment over Zooropa as a clock about to strike the hour, the afternoon before his band's support slot on Saturday night.

"I've got no aspiration toward that kind of thing," says Rob. "I guess a lot of people would have thought I had, but I haven't. Over the years I've come to realise that I just want to do the music we're doing, I love doing the shows we do. I mean doing this is alright but it's not really a goal for me, playing in a stadium. All I want to be doing is making the freshest music I've ever made."

This isn't to say that Rob and company haven't enjoyed their support slots on the Zooropa tour - it's just not the mind-blowing, ego boost of an experience some might have assumed.

"What U2 are trying to do is put over a show that is worth people coming to on this scale. And I think they put on quite a good show. Stuff they do is quite spectacular and that's the aim of it. Our aim when we play live is totally different.

"But I look at what they're doing and see one of the world's biggest rock bands and I think at least they're trying to say something. You know, they're doing things in their music and trying to say things at their concerts about the troubles in the world and the fascist people on this planet. I think it's good that there are people who, even on that scale, haven't become rock and roll mutants who are just part of the whole establishment.

"These days it's accepted that rock'n'roll musicians will take drugs and get fucked up and what use is that? What use is that to kids in the slum, kids living on the street and youngsters every day being faced with drugs? What use is that when the children of the world are the most badly treated people in the world? With starvation, child abuse and child prostitution so prevalent, I think that groups should take more responsibility for the messages they're sending out."

Anyone who has read anything at all about Stereo MC's will know that, while not necessarily at the forefront of a campaign to legalise marijuana, the band support the cause in their own way. Is there a contradiction here?

"I don't call weed a drug," Rob asserts, "because it grows out of the ground like a piece of mint or basil does. As far as I'm concerned, I don't like powders, pills, chemicals, syringes, none of that business - because I've seen what it does to people. I've seen people close to me become junkies and it's not funny. People lose their soul and their spirit, their identity. But weed, to me, makes you feel what is real."

Rob talks passionately about his views on religion and the immorality of the glaring social and moral injustices in the world.

"I just try to put what I see going on around us into the music so it has some purpose," he says. "I believe if you ask for guidance you are guided. I feel that sometimes I do things wrong and don't heed the guidance I'm given. And if I do feel inspired or anything, I try to put it in the music and in that way I'm passing on anything that may have been given to me - for real or not for real, just as I feel it, but for me it's always real. That's the important thing."

Many an aspiring band would love to know who to ask for guidance and how, if it means that they'll fare as well as Stereo MC's have recently. Hit singles from their Connected LP continue to permeate the global club circuit with their addictive dance grooves (it's not uncommon to hear two or three of them during one night out) and near constant touring since '91 has pushed the group's audience into astronomical figures. Who's responsible?

"Guidance comes from God," Rob insists. "Inspiration has to do with your spirit. A different part of you that you can either acknowledge or brush over when you get too caught up in the materialistic world. That's when you start to lose your inspiration and a feeling of freedom in life."

Is this to say that 'Step It Up', 'Connected', 'Creation' and the like are religious works?

"I wouldn't call it religious. I just think that my life is one whole thing. Music is my life. I believe in life. I believe in God, but not like this picture of a white Jesus. Not this only-on-Sundays kind of religion. Not this religion that divides people up and tells you to shoot someone you don't even know, just because they're of a different religion. I'm not part of that religion.

"I'm part of a religion which feeds my music, which feeds my life, which feeds the loves of my life, which guides me in my relationships and which guides me in my music, which guides me in what I do and how I think and how I behave as a human being. My religion is a reflection of the higher self within myself which is a reflection of God.

"I believe the Bible is there to teach and the Koran is there to teach, and that all those books are just part of the same thing. Man kind of knocked around with it and decided that Jesus should be white. I mean what about the other prophets? I believe in people who treat other people as brothers. I think that's the way it should be."

Rob knows as well as the rest of us that the way things should be and the way they are, are sometimes as different as land and water. He complains about the lack of media coverage given to the shooting of a fourteen-year-old girl in a crack-related crime and the inordinate attention lavished on a minor injury suffered by a policeman.

He discusses a famous encounter concerning a dolphin enclosed in a small tank at a Stereo MCs' show while on tour with Jesus Jones: "The pool was about twice the length of the dolphin and it was clear that this highly intelligent mammal floating around in this horrible, dirty water was in agony. One of the organizers came up to us and said 'if you say anything about the dolphins you won't get paid'. To me that just says it all. People know that they're doing the wrong thing and they just can't face up to it."

He turns to humans in captivity, and talks about discrepancies between the numbers of blacks and whites who go to prison: "Just say to yourself, now why is this? It's obvious why, because the whole balance is just totally out. People don't get a chance to even start thinking about a life that doesn't involve breaking laws. What's the bigger crime, bringing in immigration laws that prevent people who are starving from coming into a country or robbing a bank? Where's the real crime there?"

But wait a second: The Stereo MCs aren't a political band, are they? "To the left, to the right, step it up, step it up, it's alright" is a far cry from "Fight the power...we've got to fight the powers that be," On close examination it's clear that Connected, is no Cop Killer. Even Deee-lite's World Clique had a sharper political angle.

"I think we're just motivated by what we see," says Rob. "If you check out the words you can make your own interpretations. But I think the words are quite explicit and relevant to the time we're living in. It's just that we're trying to make music. You've got to feel the music. It's got to be an inspiration. You can't just say this law is bad, police are always beating on people. It's bad the way women are beaten by men. That ain't music. You've got to put what you feel and what you know into music. For me, anyway, I can't make music like that.

"There are too many barriers in music telling you what to do - what kind of people can make this music, who's political, who isn't, who's got soul and who hasn't got soul. I don't think any of those terms really correspond to the music they play. So much music these days is formularized. I'd just prefer it to be more open minded."

Wouldn't we all, Rob, wouldn't we all.