Steve Mason is remembering the day in 2004 he was told the Beta Band was over. “There was enough money in the bank account to pay each of us a month’s wages,” says the singer, seated in a busy London greasy spoon. “And by that point, we were only on a grand a month. Then that was it.”
For the previous eight years, life in the band formed in the Scottish seaside town of St Andrews had been one of constant reinvention and innovation. They’d made fiercely original records and experimental films, while putting on visually stunning live extravaganzas. Their transatlantic fanbase included Oasis, Radiohead, Irvine Welsh and actor John Cusack, who’d recommended their song Dry the Rain for a now-famous scene in High Fidelity. Playing a record store assistant, Cusack announces: “I will now sell five copies of The Three EPs by the Beta Band.” He then puts the CD on and the shopppers nod their heads to Dry the Rain.
Although the Beta Band were popular, notching up top 20 albums and biggish shows, they should have become massive. Instead, they ended up owing their label Parlophone £1.2m, reflecting all the money spent on recording, touring, videos and more. They weren’t expected to pay it back – but the plug was pulled, and the band was over.
“Something like that is so intense,” says Mason. “It’s a big part of your life that’s gone. At the same time, a relationship I had with a girl that had run concurrently with the band ended as well. I had a monumental breakdown. I had a plan to kill myself. Then I tried to get myself sectioned.”
But now, 21 years on, they’re back, with a reissue campaign and UK and US reunion tours to “celebrate the music”. Keyboards/samples man John Maclean says he came to regard the debt as a “badge of honour” and Mason, still only 49, certainly has no regrets. “We never wanted to be rock stars or make lots of money,” he says. “Our ambitions were solely artistic and we pushed ourselves until the last minute. Then we split up. But how many bands can say they spent £1.2m on art?”
Mason was working as a mechanic when conversations with old pal Gordon Anderson and Maclean, who the latter had met at art school, gave him an epiphany. “I’d never heard people talk unashamedly about art and poetry before,” he explains. “I came from this toxic male culture where everyone tried to be tough and there was a lot of tabloid newspapers and talking about women in a certain way. But I suddenly realised the real bravery lies in art.”
Anderson soon left, for reasons concerning his mental health, and the lineup became Mason, Maclean, drummer Robin Jones (another art school student) and bassist Richard Greentree. Pitting themselves entirely against the GB jingoism and posturing of the tail end of Britpop, they created music that was completely different: engrossing mixtures of guitars, house grooves, ambient drones, R&B, psychedelia and haunting, enigmatic lyrics.
“We went clubbing and listened to the Stone Roses,” Maclean remembers. “But I’d sample a bird sound rather than someone in America going, ‘Wassup?’ It was very organic. We worked with tapes. Pre-computers. Technology was catching up with us. We were constantly making videos. Way before TikTok and YouTube.”
Champion Versions EP, made for just £4,000 in 1997, was immediately playlisted on Radio 1. “Driving to our first gig,” says Mason, “we pulled up next to some builders and our song came on their radio. We all started cheering.” In the 1990s, major labels could lavish cash on artists, so the Betas told Parlophone: “All we want from you is the money to pursue our ideas, then to be left alone.”
After early compilation The Three EPs reached No 35, further catapulting expectations, Mason felt “on a mission from God” when they were then given £300,000 to record their eponymous debut in four cities and one isolated hut in Scotland. “The original idea had been to record in three different continents with Indigenous musicians,” he sniggers. “But that would have cost a million.”
However, they then disowned the album. “In those days,” says Maclean, “Oasis would release a new record and claim, ‘This is the greatest ever!’ So there was an element of us going the other way.” Mason now admits the album has flaws, but is not without its moments: “We were still finding a way of writing together. The best tracks are the ones we worked hardest on.” The album reached No 18 in 1999, but two years later the band were still dismissing it, not least in a notoriously grumpy interview with the Guardian in Atlanta. Mason says it was sprung on them just as they came off stage, tired and still jetlagged. “So it was a disaster.”
Hot Shots II, made with R&B producer C-Swing, was released to rave reviews in 2001. The album reached No 13 in the UK and dented the US Billboard charts, but by then the band had acquired a reputation for being difficult. Mason says: “When we recorded the single Broke for Top of the Pops, I said, ‘We’re in the belly of the beast now boys!’ as the song started. So it was never broadcast.”
Squares, the single that followed a year later, would surely have been a huge hit – had Sheffield electronic act I Monster not released a song containing an identical earworm sample of Daydream, Günter Kallmann Choir’s trippy 1970 single. “I’m still suspicious,” admits Mason. “What are the odds on that?” Radio 1 played I Monster and the Sheffield boys went Top 20.
Some of the Betas’ adventures are quite Spinal Tap. They spent £4,000 on Velcro suits which a roadie left on the tube. They got themselves stage outfits that lit up. “We’d hear the crew walking down corridors muttering, ‘The fucking suits’,” Mason laughs, “because they were always breaking down. They were only powered by nine-volt batteries but one night Richard threw his bass down and started ripping off his jacket. He’d been sweating so much he was being electrocuted by this little battery.”
The band once turned up in a small US town only to discover that the venue was “a scout hut”. They had to halve the show’s capacity just to get their equipment in. “We put on a hundred-grand show for 150 people,” laughs Mason. “But I still get messages saying, ‘You changed our town!’”
High Fidelity and tours with Radiohead boosted their American popularity enough for Mason to justifiably claim to have been “bigger in the US than Manic Street Preachers or Robbie Williams”. But then, as the singer has revealed in previous interviews, an onstage joke in Texas, about clubbing together to get a rifle to shoot President George Bush, led to a petition to deport him being sent to the FBI.
Today, Mason insists such behaviour wasn’t self-sabotage, but was actually caused by his struggles with mental health. “I was suffering a monumental lack of confidence and other stuff. I was so disappointed with the debut album. I mostly used to smash up my own possessions. Then once in rehearsals, I read some comments in the music press slagging us off. I picked up a samurai sword and caused four grand’s worth of damage to our equipment in 60 seconds. I remember John saying, ‘Well, that’s the rehearsal over.’”
Maclean thinks that rather than rush to record 2004’s Heroes to Zeros, their third album, they should have taken six months off to recharge their batteries and repair their relationships. “But there was never a plan,” he adds. “It was always, ‘Right, we’re all moving into one house.’ ‘Right, we’re splitting up!’”
With hindsight, Mason thinks the biggest reason they didn’t become as successful as they should have was “a lack of effective management or guidance. So we made poor decisions, especially choosing the second manager because he had eyes like a great white shark.”
The week after they found out they owed £1.2m, EMI signed Robbie Williams for £80m. A more pressing issue was the £120,000 the members collectively owed the tax office. Mason sighs: “It took me 12 years to pay my share off.”
Still, things haven’t turned out too badly. They’ve all got families. Mason, much happier, has made five solo albums. Greentree pursued carpentry. Jones and Maclean became film directors, the latter after actor Michael Fassbender liked the Beta Band videos and suggested collaborating. This led to the acclaimed 2015 experimental film Slow West. Maclean reveals that his new movie, Tornado, is loosely based on the Beta Band video for Trouble. “A samurai comes to Britain, suffering nightmares. But instead of me in it, it’s a Japanese actor called Kōki – and instead of Robin’s dad, it’s got Tim Roth.”
Meanwhile, it’s hard to argue with how Mason sums up these upcoming tours: “A chance to see one of the greatest British bands of the last 30 years – before they turn us into holograms.”
• The Beta Band’s UK tour starts at Barrowland, Glasgow, on 25 September. A deluxe reissue of The Three EPs is released at the same time, with more to follow.
