J ust over six years ago, Matt Johnson announced the The’s first shows in 16 years, including a prestigious concert at the Royal Albert Hall. Then he started to panic: “No one’s going to come. No one’s going to remember who I am.
I didn’t want to humiliate myself.” He hadn’t released an album of original material since NakedSelf in 2000 and it had been even longer since 1986’s highly political, Top-20 album Infected went on to spend 30 weeks on the album chart . However, his songs hadn’t gone away; the accordion-driven This Is the Day , from 1983’s Soul Mining, had even become a cultural touchstone.
“People have got married to it, been conceived to it; it gets used in a lot of films,” Johnson says with a smile, relaxing into a sofa upstairs at the band’s nerve centre in east London. “If I could compress its plays over the years, it’d be No 1 for weeks.” The gigs duly sold out within minutes.
The The’s HQ houses all manner of releases and memorabilia. Johnson first arrived in the building when he was 21 and it was the Ultravox singer John Foxx’s Garden studios; the likes of the Cure and Depeche Mode recorded classic albums here. Johnson loved the place so much he eventually bought it.
Like its owner, it has had its ups and downs – Johnson closed it as a commercial studio in 2012 – but recently he has been here recording Ensoulment, the first album of new the The songs in 24 years, as well as running a label and publisher called Cinéola.