Madness have announced that they are returning to Camden for the first time in 40 years with a one-off show at KOKO to mark the release of their 13th studio album.
The ska and pop band, who first formed in the backstreets of Camden Town in the late 1970s, have 10 UK top ten albums and 15 top ten singles to their name.
They say that they owe their very existence to the North London music scene and that their homecoming is long overdue.
Speaking to the Standard, frontman Suggs, 62, recalled how they initially struggled to land gigs and “used to just knock on the doors” of the local pubs before The Dublin Castle in Parkway decided to take a chance on them.
“We said we were a country and western band. And when seven skinny teenagers started leaping about playing ska music, the Irish regulars were somewhat bemused,” he laughed.
“But we sold a few pints of beer and got a residency there, and without that we wouldn’t really have got anywhere so [Camden] is very important to us.”
They were originally performing under another name when a gig at KOKO led to them changing their name to Madness.
Suggs – real name Graham McPherson – explained: “We were playing there when it used to be [called] the Music Machine [and was] 50 pence to get in. We were called The Invaders at the time, then we found out there was another band called The Invaders so we had to change our name.
“Mike, our keyboard player, very kindly made some posters calling us Morris and the Minors. I wasn’t mad on being Morris and the others weren’t too keen on being The Minors, either!
“So we sat around in the dressing room that night thinking, ‘maybe if we pick a song from the set’... ‘My Girl’ came on, which sounds like a boyband. ‘One Step Beyond’ is not bad. And then ‘Madness’. We were doing a Prince Buster cover, and that was it, that’s when we became Madness, in that very place. So that’s quite nice, to be able to go back 40 odd years later.”
They have other unique memories of the venue, too, while they were still trying to make their mark.
The Baggy Trousers hit-maker said: “There was a fire escape at an office block next door, and our saxophone player worked out that if you climbed up eight floors of fire escape, there was a hole in the dome on the top of it that you could jump in and bunk into KOKO.
“The only problem was it was pitch black so you would have a bunch of pigeons fly out towards you out of this hole, and then a 12 foot jump and end up at a VIP bar at the top floor, the top balcony of KOKO.
“So you would come out covered in pigeon s**t and you’d have to try and pretend that you were somebody famous in the VIP bar.”
That shouldn’t be an issue this time around, as not only will the band be headlining, the venue recently underwent an extensive £70m refurbishment.
The group will be playing for a relatively intimate crowd of just 1,500 people on October 18, compared to their arena show at the London O2 later this year.
Fans who pre-order the new album from the official album store will receive access to the exclusive ticket pre-sale for the show. The pre-sale will run from 9.30am on Thursday October 5 until the general sale which starts at 9.30am on Friday October 6.
Teasing what those lucky enough to get tickets can explect, Suggs said: “We’re going to preview our new album Theatre Of the Absurd Presents C’Est La Vie (released November 17) so it will probably be like eight or nine songs from that.
“Obviously that’s not something we do on a regular basis, but our real fans will get to hear the majority of our new album. And then we’ll play some bangers after that, the old chestnuts. So it’s going to be in two halves.”
