Thursday, Nov. 18, 1999 | 5:04 a.m.
"We get along better than ever," Pete Shelley says. Shelley, the singer of the Buzzcocks, is reflecting on the 10 years that have passed since the band first reunited for a tour in 1989. The comment is vintage Shelley--seemingly forthcoming, but at the same time offering plenty of wiggle room. After all, the original Buzzcocks formed at the end of 1976, broke up within four years, and had numerous personnel changes along the way, including the departure of founder Howard Devoto after only 15 shows.
So, even though they get on better than ever, does that mean they get along at all? "It's a wonderful thing to get away from each other, but when you get back together it's even better," Shelley says. In fact, since reuniting, the Buzzcocks have moved through one entire rhythm section and only Shelley and guitarist Steve Diggle remain from the original group.
Filled with Shelley's tuneful, ironic pop masterpieces and interspersed with Diggle's straightforward rockers, Modern, the band's new album, has the unmistakable sound of vintage Buzzcocks. Thick with wordplay and puns, Shelley remains the voice of unfulfilled lust and disintegrating relationships. It forces the question of how, after all these years, Shelley has succeeded in remaining so miserable with the partners he chooses. "You can think about an awful situation, and sometimes people tell me their stories, and you can use bits of that and make a song out of it," Shelley says. So, does that mean that Shelley himself has finally found a happy relationship? "Well, no. There's always a yearning for something more."
On the band's early recordings, Shelley's yearning came out on sophomoric Buzzcock's classics like "Oh, Shit," and "Orgasm Addict"--an infamous homage to masturbation with lyrics like "You sneak into the back door with dirty magazines/ and your mother wants to know what those stains are on your jeans." "You know, those are the songs I most revel in," says the now forty-something Shelley, who still performs "Orgasm Addict" nightly on tour: to this day an unrepentant punk.
But by the time the Buzzcocks said goodbye for the first time, they had--perhaps surprising even themselves--recorded the most sophisticated and melodic catalogue to come out of British punk, thanks to Shelley's crafty, hook-laden songwriting and increasingly witty and articulate lyrics. Songs like "I Don't Know What to do with My Life," "What do I Get?," "I Don't Mind," and "You Say You Don't Love Me," remain winning pop gems that can still make a listener's pulse quicken. Not that it did them much good; without the sales of the Clash or the notoriety of the Sex Pistols, the Buzzcocks legacy seemed to be admired rather than listened to. In fact, the only Buzzcocks song to become widely known was "Ever Fallen in Love?" and that was in a slicked-up version recorded by the Fine Young Cannibals.
During the years before the Buzzcocks regrouped, Shelley recorded solo albums of mostly club and dance music that surprised many of his punk fans. Of course, in retrospect, with the rise of techno and remixes, Shelley seems downright prescient. "In a way I can be blamed for having a part in both threads in popular music," Shelley says. His stylistic change, however, may have had more to do with message than music. "Homosapien," the most successful of his solo singles, underlined gay issues only hinted at in his Buzzcocks songs and, at the time, more sympathetically accepted by disco fans. Despite being one of the only punks to out himself, to this day Shelley is made uncomfortable by questions about his sexuality.
"I don't really fit into the gay stereotype. The way that all the gay issues have gone is better handled by the people who handle those kinds of things other than myself, because I am a bit of an amateur, and I usually end up saying the wrong thing." For whatever reason, after reforming the Buzzcocks, Shelley shelved his solo career and dance sound to return to the guitar rock that he excels at.
When Operators Manual, a best-of collection from the band's first incarnation, was released to coincide with the band's reformation, it was gobbled up. For once, time was on the band's side; it was also the beginning of the alternative rock craze, and the Buzzcocks had created the formula for throwing melody into hard-driving punk, which disciples like Green Day took to the bank. During their time apart, the Buzzcocks went from outsiders to legends without ever having a hit. Since then, the band has continued to tour and record, and while you may never hear them on the radio, an audience will always be there for the last great British punk band.
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