vant now than it ever
Jean-
Michael
out with just an acoustic guitar and play
little folk clubs, and then get back
together with The Alarm and rip it apart
as only we can. It’s the rich tapestry of
life. And now to be able to go back
like I just did and rewrite the past in a
whole new light, through the prism of
time? It really gives you a sense of closure.
The Alarm, 2020
y
was.
IE: Your “Big Night Ins” are very reflective,
too.
MP: Yeah. We’re showing a lot of photography
that captured the moment, and
we’ve got this massive archive of materi-
IE: In the early days, you learned new
ways of miking your acoustic guitars to
sound cathedral-bell huge.
MP: Hey — you adapt to survive. Or
necessity is the mother of invention.
When you’re put in a position where to
07•2020
al — we’ve recorded everything and
kept all the tapes and videos. The band
even used to do on-the-road diaries in
1987, and we filled them all. So people
don’t realize just how vast our archive is.
And it’s been quite revealing, these Big
Night Ins, because we’d never really
started looking at all this old stuff — I
wouldn’t do it, I was always fast-forwarding
into the future, going on to the
next project, so I never had the time to
stop and look back. The Alarm wasn’t
just this music centered around playing
survive, you have to be creative, that’s a
whole different kind of creativity. That
really takes you into the moment. So this
feels almost like our first album
(Declaration, 1984) again. It wasn’t our
most successful album — our most massive
albums were four or five years
down the line. But the music that really
stays with people comes from that period
where you’re trying to make your
mark on the planet, and you’re trying to
write the song that you think is going to
do it. And you can’t get to that point
without necessity of those recordings on
the road. They're very beautiful. I think it
might be some of my best work in terms of
composition and sonic innovation. Part of
me wants to get back to the studio to finish
that.
The Alarm's Hurricane of Change double
album is out now
Tom Lanham
14 illinoisentertainer.com july 2020