Welcome to the Amalgamation Tour 94 - a punk rockin' feature package deal organised by Clint of Pop Will Eat Itself in order to let The Kids sample the incendiary pop racket of Compulsion, Blaggers ITA and Dub War and bring the Tory Government crashing to its knees in the process. Or perhaps have a few drinks with Miles Hunt instead.

"I'm absolutely crap in bed, I am!" shouts Clint Poppie somewhere between Derby and Birmingham on a rain-slewed Monday midnight. "I get in in the middle of the night absolutely shithouse and.... well, it's just roobish, isneet? I feel sorry for Sarah, roi-loi, sometimes she must get the right hum.... pah-ahahah!"

 

Ciderous mirth billows around the Pop Will Eat Itself tour bus as Clint's chums have a jolly good laugh at their "leader"'s jocular confession. Then they all agree they're equally as "shithouse", so that's alright then.

 

"So, tell us this," enquires Clint, leaning over the table to affix your reporter with a beadsome glare, "does size matter?"

 

Yes.

 

In unison: "Shiiiit!"

 

The men of Pop Will Eat Itself: pretentious? Not bloody likely, pal. Persons of "comedy accent" tend to be this way. (Incidentally, having seen the band entirely naked in their dressing room three hours earlier, their size-concerns are for comic purposes only. All in the line of "duty", you understand)

 

We've joined them in hell, ie. Stoke-on-Trent, on Day Two of the Amalgamation Tour `94 - a six-month, multi-band, vaguely anti-fascist led sojourn round the Isles of Britain and beyond as engineered by Clint in a bid for "value for money". On this particular "leg" they're accompanied by Dub War, Compulsion and Blaggers ITA, and, far from this being a hands-across-the-nation-big-pals-joined-together-to-fight-the-powers-situation, none of the bands have even seen each other yet, let alone conjured up a marvy ruse to blow up the House of Lords. They're even booked into separate hotels due to space. Still, they've met before and it is, of course, "early days".

 

In a dressing room that looks like someone's mum's living room, the band are drinking their rider into oblivion. Clint says he's got some catching up to do: last night in Milton Keynes he had one drag on a spliff "and started shaking and sweating and nearly passed out. Had to go to me bed! Lightweight..." It's a syndrome he calls The Green Man. Green-free for the moment, he and everyone else are making an utter buffoon out of Fuzz, the beleaguered drummer and Official Scapegoat. His crime? Style. He's tying up his lovely new green trainers and thus is deemed "Jamiroquai" and puts up with them hollering "doo-bee-doo-bee-doo-wah-wah!" and dancing like their feet are on fire. As if that wasn't "bad" enough, he does crosswords all the time. "Phew! Rock `n` Roll!" sniggers Adam (currently on crutches due to a football injury). and that was before Fuzz put on his fine quality kilt (he wears skirts a lot due to "comfort", likes disco, reads Buses magazine every month and is, frankly, an absolute dreamboat with the best legs in pop - fact!). There's some fans here who won a competition to come to the gig in a stretch limo. They were picked up instead in one of the crew's Fiat.

 

It's a genial family set-up here at the roving Pop's headquarters. They've been together for ages, of course (PWEI - `established 1986` - Fuzz being the `newcomer` at three years) and they're all proper pals. Outside of the band, they play football together, (apart from Fuzz, he's far too noble). Straight after the gig tonight they're bolting home to play their fifth ever game as A Proper Team.

 

They're a league side now , you see. In fact, to anyone who'll listen, Clint bawls "have you heard about our team?" and goes on about it for 27 years. They're second bottom of the Kidderminster Sunday League, Division Six. The team is called VSK2000 (after the number plate on Fuzz's Land Rover), so picked "because we thought it sounded like an East European flair side". So far they've been roundly cuffed four times: 3-2 ("unlucky"); 2-1 ("very unlucky"); 4-1 ("they were a good team") and 11-1 ("erm, we hit rock bottom"). Tomorrow, vows Clint, "redemption!"

 

He's more excited about that than tonight's gig. Which makes it all the more remarkable that, onstage, jovial footer fanatic Clinton Mansell (31), becomes a stunningly charismatic Rock God Amongst Men.

 

"Ich bin ein Auuuuussss-lan-daaaaaah!" he bellows in his Bono-esque goggles (plastic - ?2.99, a snip!) arms outstretched in the Crucifix position. These days, post RCA, Pop Will Eat Itself are a band reborn in the spirit and sound of a Rage Against The Machine.

 

"Clint thinks he's Perry Farrell!"

 

The girl's groping her way inside the dressing room window, desperate to check up on the post-gig "action". Clint is mortified and puts his towel on his head.

 

"You think that's bad!" he says later of the New Hairdo Abuse - "I was standing in the street the other day and this bloke came running right up to me and goes `Rod! Rod! Oh, Christ! I thought you were Rod Stewart! Rod the Mod!` And I've had Sid Vicious and Billy Idol. Rod the Mod, hehehehe. At least I've got the nose for it."

 

It wasn't some monumental life decision to get it cut either. It was his girlfriend Sarah's idea.

 

"She'd been on at me for ages," muses Clint, "saying it stinks! And it did."

 

His mate hacked it off for him one night when they were "blind drunk". He has one complaint - his head is the size of a golf ball. He put a suit on the other week for a wedding "and I looked like David Byrne in Stop Making Sense. Couldn't wear it!" Generally though, it's a Good Thing.

 

"I think if you look in the mirror and see something different than you're used to," he lilts, "it generates something in you. Maybe it's a lot to do with all the changes that have been going on for us the past year, but I feel much more... focused. Maybe the hair's part of that. I've even been going to the gym."

 

The philosophy being, the fitter you are, the more you can drink?

 

"Well, if you're strong your body can take more damage so.... yeah!"

 

Blaggers ITA would doubtless think "gym" is something that comes before "Beam" seeing as right now, in Manchester, their dressing room is awash with cans and spliffs and persons welding bottles of Amyl Nitrate and making enquiries as to where their E's are coming from. (Nowhere it seems). Matty looks totally binned. A couple of Dub War are in here. One of them's called Stubbs or something and he and Christie Blagger have something on their mind. This'll be the blowing up the House of Lords moment, then.

 

"Richie Manic is no alcoholic," states Stubbs from out of nowhere. Christie agrees.

 

"I've toured with them!" he's bawling, "and I've never seen Richie take a drink once. Ever. And that was this year when he was supposed to be on a bottle a day! And if he'd drunk it in his room you'd have seen it a mile off in the morning. The guy was totally clean."

 

Your reporter is having none of it. An argument ensues. Stubbs thinks I've "been fooled" and should see The Light: that the Manic's management have covered up Richie's insanity with alcoholism so the public can relate to it. He and Nicky are despised for walking around Blackwood like they're "above everyone". Richie's an arse for making self-mutilation/starvation/alcoholism fashionable: "What kind of an example to kids is that?" explodes Stubbs. "It's a f-cking disgrace! Standing there on the front of the NME all cut up?! He knew there was a camera there! You tell me he's not exploiting it!" Plus, James is an ex-football hooligan and legendary "lad" around town, but, he's keen to stress, "an absolutely top bloke. He's never lied about himself. I just don't think anyone knows about it."

 

Hmmm. We agree to differ on the grounds of evidence. Time for some serenity through in Compulsion's dressing room. A few cans of beer, a nine-pack of Spar Crisps and some amiable Irish punk rockers talking about the vocal splendour of Tony Bennett and Tom Jones. That's better. The tour's "pretty good" so far, they're saying, but as for the United-Up-The-Revolution angle, they didn't even know that the word across the top of the stage was "Amalgamation".

 

In the bar of the fancy Ramada hotel the spliff-sparkled Poppies are celebrating their Manchester gig triumph with tequila slammers and a pronouncement that the tour has officially "kicked in". Everyone's shouting and roaring something called Klinsmann. From the "Klinsmann scores!" hollerings, one deduces it's something to do with football. It's been their Big Footer Day because this morning, they actually WON: 4-2. And Clint scored a goal. They're all shouting. All singing, "Here we go!" and bawling "and Klinsmann's there! Klinsmann shoots! And he's down! But there's Mansell now. Mansell with the dummy. Mansell with one two and OOOOOH! It's OFF THE BAR! Ha ha ha Hoo Hoo!"

 

There's three actor blokes from Prime Suspect here. Clint's never seen the programme so the thesps get a good slagging for being Sheffield Wednesday fans. They got off lightly. There's a Swedish gentleman here. His English is not so good, so they all talk to him in "Swedish", ie. "hurdee gurdee!" Then Graham rugby-tackles the blighter to the ground. Then they all pile on top of him. Then quite literally take flying leaps from one side of the bar to the other. They fly! "Klinsmann's there!" They soar! "Klinsmann's... aaargh, me bloody head, Grae!" etc. Ver Management turns up. Three of them. "Cool it, cool it!" honks the Top Suit, "you'll smash the place up, it's not on, not on." He's going to call the police. He's going to kick them out in the street. Graham is what you'd call "spoiling".

 

"Come on then!" he howls, puffing up his chest. "COME ON THEN! COME OOON!" His mits are up in "come and have a go if you think you're hard enough" fashion. Craig the manager and two bodies hold him back. Graham gives up. Craig has a "discussion" with the management, assures them they'll go quietly. The thin, pinched spectre of the Management Three stands on the stairs, arms folded, and watches. For an hour. Until Graham can soar no more. He keels over and then wakes up at 5am. Wakes up and finds himself walking the corridors of the hotel without his key. Naked. "Pull yourself together" he's saying to himself, "come on, what's your room number..." He thinks it's 907. Unfeasible, it is 907. And the door's open. Meanwhile, over at the Blaggers' hotel, themselves and the "odd" member of Dub War are in the swimming pool. And being ejected from the swimming pool by some more management who tell them the police are on their way and there's "no way" they're staying in the hotel. Jason, the drummer, pleads for mercy. They quieten down, go off to someone's room and drink themselves into a coma. So far, on the Amalgamation `94 tour, for the "sensitive" face of alternative music, all is going very much to "plan".

 

Next door to the Compulsion dressing room, Derby, where Irish persons are screaming "up yer ARSE!" in very loud voices, across the corridor from the Blaggers dressing room where there's a sweepstake going on to guess how many T Shirts they've sold so far (19), past a giggling Richard who's just been asked to buy a raffle ticket to win something he's signed, a figure lurks by the Poppies' doorway.

 

"Milo! How's it going?"

 

Why, it's Miles Hunt, up for the evening to see his old pals from home. He doesn't half go on. Sits himself down with a beer and he's off. On about their mutual chums back home, on about the label he's starting up and on about how he's just been to Belgium to interview J Mascis, "git". He likes his new job as an MTV "jock", though, apart from the travelling which of course he's always hated. He says the only place he'd consider living apart from Britain would be Australia.

 

Australia? Bit boorish, don't you think?

 

"What's boorish?"

 

Right now, he's after some ideas from the band for a forthcoming interview he's set up. Miles wants "something imaginative", perhaps a bath idea. Weird that, I say to Clint. He talks like a TV person already.

 

"Well...." he sighs, "fair enough, I suppose. Good luck to `im"

 

Clint doesn't bad-mouth his mates. They all pile over to the pub across the road.

 

"So!" chimes Clint to Miles, "Have you heard about our team?"

 

Clint Poppie isn't quite the self-confident character his "legend" suggests. There's something quite nervy in his manner. In conversation he swings from skylark optimism to almost a resigned defeat. He still dreams of selling a million records one day but thinks the music's "too complicated" but that's OK 'cos he's staying true to himself. He's cut down on his drinking these days. "I have! At one point I was drunk every single night for a year! Couldn't do that now. I was getting nothing done. Sitting around and drinking beer and smoking draw all the time you're gonna lost the plot. You've got to do things with your life, achieve things, it's the most important thing in the world." He hasn't gone mad for ages.

 

Not like the first time they toured Canada when the bus broke down at 4am. "I was completely out of control I was going (shouts), "Just get me a new f-ing bus right f-ing NOW!" And which one would you like, sir? The blue one? The green one?" He's been with Sarah "on and off" for eight years now, Clint's "misbehaved" plenty in the past but he's getting better. "I think I used to be sort of quite good at lies. Pretty shallow. Pretty pathetic. Now I really suffer with a great deal of... paranoia. I get quite depressed if I... misbehave. To be honest, I'm kinda good now. The way I see it is if you don't buy the ticket then you won't win the raffle."

 

Generally, Clint's enjoying life with the Poppies more than he has done for years. he hopes you can hear it in the music (you can). He loves his mates and is still enough of a teenager to think touring is the biggest wheeze on Earth.

 

"The thing with us," he says, "is we're genuinely friends. And, alright, most of the time we're up to ridiculous drunken nonsense, but who wouldn't want to get paid for that? You can keep reality. At the end of the day everyone wants to so something larger than life, something more than just cashing your Giro. So we're incredibly lucky. Hopefully we do a brilliant show, get offstage, still having fun, and then we go out and get absolutely hammered. Weeell, I'm allowed now! I'm on tour!"

 

Clint laughs, a big crinkly-eyed "hee-hee" that makes him look - and sound - like Des O'Connor.

 

"Des O'Connor?" he chokes, "Des O' bloody Connor? To think only yesterday I was Rod the Bloody Mod!"

 

That's "the road" for you.