Mick Jones is back from the Clash thrash 'n' crash with a Bond guitar and a new set of ideas and henchmen. Big Audio Dynamite are set to arrive with a bang...

"I think what's good about us is that we're not all musicians, as such, I which means that we might do things that trained musicians wouldn't normally think of; we're not restrained by the usual formulas. That gives the music an element of freshness."

Dan Donovan plays keyboards in BAD. Until very recently he had been their photographer. The BAD album cover is his doing. But he knew what he really wanted to do was be a professional musician, and so after a while he let it drop that he played a little keyboards, and it progressed from there. He explains his position: "I'm what Mick calls the musical director, which means that I go in with the rest of the band and make sure that they get all the parts right. And then Mick can come in as the conductor."

The rest of the band are Don Letts — effects and vocals, Leo 'E-Zee Kill' Williams — bass and vocals and Greg Roberts — drums and vocals. 'Mick' is Mick Jones, the same one who left The Clash all that time ago to do something different. After a two year period of careful gestation he has come up with BAD (Big Audio Dynamite) who have recently released their first single Bottom Line from the even more recently released album. This Is Big Audio Dynamite.

The album certainly is rhythmically and texturally fresh, eminently danceable, optimistic and generally very appealing in all sorts of ways. It's well worth considering for your next vinyl investment. Coupled with a reportedly impressive presence on stage, this has to be the proof of the band's merit, after all else is said and done. I went to meet the BAD boys Mick and Dan in Mick's West London house to find out the precise nature of what 'else' they might have to say or do. Mick was delayed with other business and thus it was Dan who had started things rolling. As keyboard player and MD he uses a Roland JX3P synth, a Yamaha DX-7, an Ensoniq Mirage sampling synth and a Roland MSQ-700 sequencer. Man and machines in perfect harmony?

"Technology has brought about a change of roles so that you're not just a musician anymore, you're a composer," offers Dan. "But in some ways that's bad; I mean I don't like sequencers because it's only by playing that you get ideas; I'm a bit suspicious of all that."

Dan drifts into a thoughtful pause, and at this point bassist Leo ambles casually into the room. I enquire politely as to how he's going: "All right." he replies. "When you going to ask me about my Steinberger?"

How's your Steinberger?

"It's great. I wish they'd give me one."

Thank you, Leo. Any more hardware insights for the readers?

He smiles. "I have a custom Fender, too, called a Leo Special, but I don't play that much."

Dan, it seems, has had ample time for thought, and is keen to return to his somewhat polemic attitudes towards sequencers — and 'all that'. I beg him to continue: "I just think that you have to jam in order to be creative."

A wave of concern passes over me. This is just the sort of sweeping statement that can back a chap, particularly a chap of such an ingenuous nature, into a rather nasty corner. I try affecting an ironic look by way of warning, but to no avail. Dan recommences: "These days it's pretty easy to produce good Pop records. It wasn't in the old days because you had to play it."

"A sequencer can speed up ideas," Leo interjects. "Especially if you're a musician who understands both the music and what the technology can do; then you can really use the combination. But to rely on the machine is a danger."

"Right. That's what I was saying," agrees Dan, still apparently stuck in reverse gear, and intractably set on a course for the depths of the nearest corner: "I guess I'm just a fan of real music." (Left hand down a bit).

I enquire, somewhat advisedly, as to what he means by 'real' music — (straight back as you are):

"Well, anything before 1975," comes the astonishing reply. "I'm not knocking everything that's going on now. There's some interesting stuff coming out of New York at the moment."

Like?

"DefJam..., The Beastie Boys."

So what constitutes 'real' music, Dan?

"Something that produces emotion of some kind; that's emotive. Whether it makes you want to get up and dance, or it makes you sad. Just something that's interesting and emotive. It's a never ending battle against mediocrity. Nowadays it's easy to slip into a mould. Either the Mid-Atlantic thing or the English mould of what we call 'Kill Yourself' music — all that really depressing stuff. What we're into is optimism, coupled with the dance aspect."

He's quite right, of course. So let's talk about BAD music production. In the basement of Mick's house is a small eight-track demo studio/rehearsal room simply equipped with a Fostex A-8 tape machine, a Fostex 350 mixer, a Roland 301 echo unit and a few dynamic mikes. How much pre-production or demoing did they do before going into the studio?

"By the time we went into the studio, we had pretty well finalised what we were doing. We left room for spontaneity, but I do think you have to set yourself some limitations; it's all very well to go into the studio and mess about for five months with a single like some bands do, but you can do that until the cows come home, and so I think you have to formulate what you want and then do it the best you can within a certain time limit."

"It's better to look good and play shit, than play good and look shit"

While I've been talking to Dan and Leo, the rest of the band have been drifting in one at a time. Mick is the last to arrive. "Right," he says. "Let's do it."

Is it your band then, Mick?

"Yeah, you could say that. But it's everyone else's band as well; it's definitely a group. We're all in it together; I'm the leader of the band, the conductor."

You took your time putting this outfit together. What was it you were looking to create?

"Something fresh. I wasn't looking for a bunch of semi-pro musicians down on their luck, looking for the right break. I wanted people who were a bit more, although they didn't necessarily have to be musicians. In fact I wanted a mixture of totally unknown, possibly worthy, musicians (laughs) — that's Greg (drums) and Leo (bass), and non-musicians, or in Dan's case non-professional musicians. Dan's a great musician, he's just never played professionally before. Don is actually a non-musician, and with him I was much more interested in ideas than in technical virtuosity, although all that's okay in its place."

General nods of agreement are forthcoming from the rest of the band, but Mick hasn't finished. He's about to be quite honest with me: "To be quite honest with you, one of my by phrases was, 'It's better to look good and play shit, than play good and look shit'."

What happened to all that talk about 'real' music? A wave of dismissiveness passes over me, but I stay calm and journalistically objective: What does that mean, Mick?

"It means that everyone looks for their entertainment in different places, and I think if you're on stage you should be entertaining and glamourous, you should look good; as well as all the other things; but the other things are fine in their own place: Jazz clubs, and so on."

Yet, some people would say that one of the troubles with Pop today is that the music has been given a back seat to image.

"We don't use the word 'image' here."

I apologise.

"We prefer to use 'imagery'. 'Image' is where a record company contrives a group and dresses them up in trendy costumes to push them out on the unsuspecting public to sell as units. We don't have to do that. We just fall out of bed and go 'like this' with our hair (runs hand through hair), and put on what we're wearing, and we can just as well go and have our photos taken."

So, what about looking glamourous?

"It's all a matter of taste, isn't it? I think Little Richard looked great in his hey day, and so did Jerry Lee Lewis, and that brings me to Rock 'n' Roll which is what we are: Rock 'n' Roll as opposed to Rock Music, which is Rock'n' Roll with the 'and Roll' castrated off it.

"Me, Leo and Don were all around when the Punk thing started, and we're all really still Punk Rockers, we still know what we learned then."

What did you learn then?

"Everything. That you can do anything you want. If you want something you just have to go and do it."

Very valuable, but are they really arrogant enough to think that such a realisation is unique to Punkhood? This is surely youth at its most self-possessed. Mick continues apace:

"10 years on we're really happening because we've been through all that, we know all that stuff. Whereas Greg was a musician, right, and he was up the M1 somewhere playing in a soul group. So we had to tell him later, then he saw it, he saw the movie of the real thing, and he said, 'Yeah, this is it. Why was I up the M1, backing Geno Washington?' or something. You know what I mean?"

"I was getting my musical experience," counters Greg somewhat bemused by this account of his past. But Mick is in full flight: "It's great, though, because we've got people from all different fields. Don was an eminent film maker (major Pop promos), Dan was an eminent photographer, and they're the good people, because they're creative. They come into the group and give me the kick up the arse that I so rightly deserve to make me come up with something new and fresh and exciting; and it's a celebration of how music can be enjoyable, entertaining, make you dance and at the same time be intellectually stimulating."

"These days it's pretty easy to produce good Pop records"

Very different to The Clash?

"The Clash was great at the time, and I'm sure they'll come up with something good again. But it was too restrictive for me, this is much more of a free range situation, that I share with my compatriots."

Although the whole band has input to the music, it is Mick and compatriot Don who are the official writers. How does that work?

Don: "There's no set way in which we work. Mick does a bit, I do a bit and we bounce off each other. It's not really that ritualistic, is it?"

Mick: "No, the way it happens is spontaneous, there are many variable ways that it can go. It doesn't have to be lyrics first or music first; it's somehow fitting the three things together: the rhythm, which is the groove, the chords and the words. It's kind of mix 'n' match."

Don: "Anything but ritual, in fact. We like to keep it open."

Mick: "We're not too precious about who does what, we just like to get it done. Keep it moving. The whole album took seven weeks to record, including the mix, and now it's done, now we're on to the next thing. Like, Don might come up with some musical ideas, but he won't necessarily play them. That doesn't matter."

There's no one single thing that makes the album work, but Don's sound effects and excerpts from old movie sound tracks definitely give it a hugely important lift. How much of a non-musician are you Don?

"I play percussion to a degree, but to be quite honest with you, I'm not that great a fan of being a musician. I'll maybe think of a musical idea, but then Mick or Dan will actually lay it down. I'm quite happy with my ideas input. On stage, I'll be doing percussion, sound effects and vocals."

How easy is it going to be to recreate the recorded sound live?

Dan: "With all the samples and effects, we do have to work out the logistics of how to make it work on stage."

My suggestion that they might be bringing in extra players for the tour is met with high degree of outrage. Dan's first in with a strong denial: "No. If there's something we can't do, then we don't do it. We're not going to start thinking of things that we can't handle ourselves. Anything we put in the arrangement, we are able to do."

"As long as we're doing it all ourselves and we don't have to bring in a bunch of session musicians, then we're cool," adds Mick.

On the album, Mick's guitar playing is very solid and unflashy. After a fairly brief romance with the Roland G700 guitar synth a little while back he returned to the immediacy of the standard Rock 'n' Roll machinery. I say standard, but in fact Mick's main instrument for some time has been the Bond, with its famous and much publicised lack of frets, which he plays through a Boogie 60 watt graphic combo, using a Marshal 14x12 extension cabinet.

Mick: "I do like the stepped pitch board but it's really the shape, the look and the sound that I like. It's got a wide range of really great sounds."

The lads aren't big on muso-talk and the conversation drifts back to the degenerate nature of the music biz. Don sums it up very well: "I reached a point in making promo's where I was tired of being asked by the record companies just to turn out something to sell their act. They don't want anything too clever, just something to turn over the units. The music might be crap, and the band might look just like dogs and I've got to do something to make them look good. It's rough. Art versus the business, it's the same old argument. But you have to deal with it."

How are BAD going to deal with it?

Don mimes the use of an M16 automatic weapon: "We're here to make the goods and all they have to do is move them, and that's it. We ain't looking for a love relationship here. It's mutually satisfying to both — they make the bucks and more people get to hear our music. I'm sure other musicians have the same idea too, and it's time for more musicians to have new values. If you don't want what they're offering totally, then you can leave it out of your life. Of course, if you want what they're offering, then you're fucked, aren't you. It's definitely a case of new values. That's how I've lived my life for the last 10 years; I ain't stinking rich but I do what I want and I'm happy with it. At the moment BAD is what I want to be doing. Everyone might want to make their own solo albums in a couple of years time, but right now it's working very well."