one step beyond...

Madness took over with the rock steady dance frenzy of the heavy heavy monster sound.  The group had formed in 1976 as The North London Invaders with Mike Barson (Monsieur Barso), Chris Foreman (Chrissy Boy), and Lee Thompson (Kix) on saxophone and vocals. The rhythm section of John Hasler and Cathal Smyth (Chas Smash) came next, followed by lead vocalist Dikron Tulane.

They released a number of singles on 2 Tone Records, a subsidiary of Chrysalis Records formed by  Jerry Dammers of the Specials as part of their record deal.  Madness toured with The Specials before signing to Stiff Records for their debut album 'One Step Beyond...'.  

Foreman remembers:   “We used to go round to Mike’s house.  Mike was a really good on the piano. He always seemed to be able to play, from when I first knew him. His brother, Ben, is really good too and has played with lots of people. And Ben had a lot of equipment – like a piano and an amplifier.    First of all it was just something to do on a Saturday and we used to learn songs that we liked. The sort of stuff we liked was Motown, reggae, R’n’B, and rock’n’roll. It took a lot of time until we actually became Madness and we had loads of different people before we got the Madness line-up. And then we started writing our own songs, which was important and we stopped doing all the rock’n’roll songs. We still kept doing the reggae ones because nobody did them. And then the Two Tone thing came along and we were well away...It was the best of a bad bunch. All these labels were after us purely because it was the in thing. You know how it happens. Say you get a group like Tears For Fears and everybody’s after groups like them. That’s what it was. They were offering us lots of money but they didn’t have a clue of what we were about. The main guy at Stiff, Dave Robinson, he talked a lot of sense. He didn’t think we were just one-hit wonders...That's one of the reason for our longevity, the fact that it wasn’t just two people like in Squeeze. At the beginning Mike used to write a lot of stuff, and Mike often used to write with Lee. There were really good combinations, Mike and Lee were really good because Lee would write lyrics – he writes a lot of lyrics – and he would just give them to Mike, who’s the sort of person who could look at them and think of a tune. I'm not very good at that, I just used to do a tune at home and play it to everybody and then maybe one of them would take it home and come up with some lyrics. But there wasn't any of that thing: ‘Right, I'm going to write a song with you’. If I had a tune and one of them liked it, then we had a song out of it.”

'One Step Beyond...' features Graham McPherson (Suggs) on lead vocals;  Mike Barson (Monsieur Barso) on  keyboards;   Chris Foreman (Chrissy Boy) on guitars;  Mark Bedford (Bedders) on bass;  Lee "Kix" Thompson on saxophones, backing vocals, and lead vocals on tracks 5 and 10;  and Daniel Woodgate (Woody) on drums and percussion;  with Cathal Smyth (Chas Smash) on backing vocals, fancy footwork, and lead vocals on tracks 1 and 15.  John Hasler was their "minder".    The album was the first production job for the team of  Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley.  

'One Step Beyond...' went to number one hundred and twenty-eight in the US, twenty-two in the Netherlands, and two in the UK, where it was certified platinum.  






http://www.madness.co.uk/







"'One Step Beyond" went to number twenty-nine in the Netherlands, twenty-eight in Ireland, seven in the UK, and three in Switzerland.  Suggs says:  "We used to play the Hawaii 5-0 theme as a novelty cover version to start our shows. When we got bored we did this track instead, but the original recording was only 45 seconds long. We didn't even think it would get on the album. Our record company boss heard it and got our producers to loop it. We still start every gig with it. We've tried other songs but that's the one we always come back to. Cathal's introduction is a clarion call."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-uyWAe0NhQ






"My Girl" hit forty-six in New Zealand and number three in Ireland and the UK.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF1IpBD8i2I





"The Prince" charted at number sixteen in the UK.  
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_srIE-YAb8





"Madness"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlh7vaVyvZA





'One Step Beyond...' 
full album:
https://myspace.com/dangermenaremadness/music/album/one-step-beyond...-17268618





"One Step Beyond" – 2:18 (Campbell)
"My Girl" – 2:44 (Barson)
"Night Boat to Cairo" – 3:31 (Barson, McPherson)
"Believe Me" – 2:28 (Barson, Hasler)
"Land of Hope and Glory" – 2:57 (Foreman, Thompson)
"The Prince" – 3:18 (Thompson)
"Tarzan's Nuts" – 2:24 (Barson)
"In the Middle of the Night" – 3:01 (McPherson, Foreman)
"Bed & Breakfast Man" – 2:33 (Barson)
"Razor Blade Alley" – 2:42 (Thompson)
"Swan Lake" – 2:36 (Tchaikovsky arr. Barson)
"Rockin' in A♭" – 2:29 (Wurlitzer; Bazooka Joe cover)
"Mummy's Boy" – 2:23 (Bedford)
"Madness" – 2:38 (Campbell)
"Chipmunks Are Go!" – 0:51 (C. Smash, Brendan. Smyth)

our house

Madness had their most enduring hit with this bouncy tribute to domestic disturbances.  'Our House' composed by Chris Foreman and Cathal Smyth, with Foreman writing the music and Smyth the lyrics.   The song became the leadoff single for their experimental fourth album, 'The Rise & Fall'.  Producers Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley had produced the band from their first album and with their continued success were able to get them into London's AIR Studios.  The sessions included Suggs (Graham McPherson) on lead vocals; Mike Barson on keyboards and harmonica; Chris Foreman on guitar; Mark Bedford (Bedders) on bass; Lee Thompson on saxophones; Daniel Woodgate (Woody) on drums; and Chas Smash (Cathal "Carl" Smyth) on vocals and trumpet. 

Langer admits:  "Even though I think many of the album tracks were really good, you'd have to be a fan to get into them, but then we'd get a big single and we'd be off again, flying along. In fact, at one point they went to see Trevor Horn when Stiff thought it was maybe time for a change, but that's when 'Our House' popped out and so we maintained our relationship. I mean, we always had a great relationship with the band, but our professional relationship was maintained by their choice of songs or their songwriting and then us arranging the numbers and going through the studio process...Then there was Carl's really fast vocal in the last verse, almost pre-empting rap.  It was just so much fun and absorbing to work on that song, because you knew you were creating this very clever thing, without trying to be too clever."

Winstanley considers:  "Carl had come a long way in a short time.  On the first album he wasn't even in the band. Only the other six guys appeared on the sleeve, even though he was the one shouting 'Hey, you!' on 'One Step Beyond'. That's all he was at that point; the kid who got up on stage and did the introduction as well as the nutty dancing. Then they let him into the band for the second album, and he was great, because he really wanted to contribute. He learned to play the trumpet, and even though he wasn't the greatest trumpet player in the world, he played it on 'Our House'. It took him a long time to actually nail it, but he wanted to do it and we didn't say 'Nah, bollocks, let's just get a session guy in.'  On some of the tracks, including 'Our House', we actually did have a brass section, but Lee and Carl played as a part of that section, and on other songs Carl played the trumpet on his own. So, he really evolved from being the kid who just did the nutty dancing to someone who played the trumpet, learned to play the guitar and also wrote songs, including one of their biggest hits; certainly their biggest hit in America."

Hunt recalls:  “There were certain little techniques that we developed. One of them is that we’d all dress the same in the video. We’d decide on something that we were all going to wear, which I think is quite good because you stop being so anonymous. In a way you are becoming anonymous because you all look the same but it gives you a sort of group identity. In the video we’ve just done, we were trying to be a bit different but that was one thing that we kept – we were all wearing these little Prince of Wales check suits and white jumpers.  Another thing we’d do sometimes was Suggs would be a kind of narrator. He’d be telling the story. So in ‘Our House’ for example, we’re all dressed in cloth caps but he’d be dressed different and that kind of separated him from us.”

Suggs says:  “We’ve got the full spectrum, people who are mad, bad and dangerous to know, through to people who are lovely, cuddly and beautiful. The fact that all seven of us managed to keep it going is in itself an example of what’s possible within your own community."

'Our House' went to number forty-nine in New Zealand, seventeen in Australia, ten in the Netherlands, seven in the US, five in the UK, four in Switzerland and Norway, three in Ireland, and number one in Sweden. In the UK, it became their ninth in a string of nineteen consecutive top twenty singles.  It won Best Song at the 1983 Ivor Novello awards.  Madness holds the record for most weeks on the UK singles charts during the 80's with two hundred and fourteen weeks.  








http://www.madness.co.uk/













http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXA6CLTDekw






Father wears his Sunday best 
Mother's tired she needs a rest 
The kids are playing up downstairs 
Sister's sighing in her sleep 
Brother's got a date to keep 
He can't hang around
Our house, in the middle of our street 
Our house, in the middle of our ...
Our house it has a crowd 
There's always something happening 
And it's usually quite loud 
Our mum she's so house-proud 
Nothing ever slows her down 
And a mess is not allowed
Our house, in the middle of our street 
Our house, in the middle of our ...
Our house, in the middle of our street 
Our house, in the middle of our ... 
Something tells you that you've got to get away from it
Father gets up late for work 
Mother has to iron his shirt 
Then she sends the kids to school 
Sees them off with a small kiss 
She's the one they're going to miss 
In lots of ways 
Our house, in the middle of our street 
Our house, in the middle of our ...
I remember way back then 
When everything was true and when 
We would have such a very good time 
Such a fine time 
Such a happy time 
And I remember how we'd play 
Simply waste the day away 
Then we'd say 
Nothing would come between us 
Two dreamers
Father wears his Sunday best 
Mother's tired she needs a rest 
The kids are playing up downstairs 
Sister's sighing in her sleep 
Brother's got a date to keep 
He can't hang around
Our house, in the middle of our street 
Our house, in the middle of our ...
Our house, was our castle and our keep 
Our house, in the middle of our street
Our house, that was where we used to sleep 
Our house, in the middle of our street
Our house, in the middle of our street







Madness performed 'Our House' on 'The Young Ones':
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nW4jW-FDV3g





A musical called 'Our House' was based on the book by Tim Firth; featured songs by Madness; ran in London, Japan, and Israel; and won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Musical.  
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xCqKZqbqyM





The band performed the song on the roof of the Buckingham Palace for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee.