Photo by Karl Lang

The Beat Is The Law is the new film from the makers of Made In Sheffield, Eve and Richard Wood. Where their previous film covered the synth pop pioneers of Sheffield in the 1970s, this piece documents a very different scene based in a declining city of the 1980s. Part 1, to be screened at Sheffield Doc Fest in November 2009 tells the early story of the artists who later emerged to be at the centre of UK dance music and Britpop in the 1990s, and the city in which they lived and worked.

Since the period it covers is of one major decline and unemployment in Sheffield, how is the tone of The Beat is the Law different from its predecessor Made in Sheffield?

Richard: Made In Sheffield was about when punk hit Sheffield. It was almost like a year zero for Sheffield, for music, the arts, film makers, the whole lot. A new generation came up and had this opportunity to express themselves thanks to punk. And so Made In Sheffield talked about the naivety of young people just wanting to express themselves and getting really excited about it all and the opportunities that came up for them. Some of them did very well and became very successful out of that initial period of excitement.

Eve: Made In Sheffield, as it opens is like “I still miss it,” it was the best time of their lives. They all look back on it with great fondness, so it had this real feel of being fun. In this film the dads have lost their jobs, there isn’t any optimism. It starts from a totally different premise: The city’s in trouble, everything that was there before isn’t there now.

That’s what seems quite striking about it - that there is a direct parallel between the state of the city and politics, peoples’ lives and the music itself.

R: It seemed to be quite a positive, creative time in the early 80s in Sheffield because you could sign on for as long as you wanted to, you could find derelict warehouses to rehearse in, but at a certain point things started to clamp down in the city. People were politically motivated - with Thatcher people had a nice target to aim for, and I suppose the Miners’ strike was something that was a very pivotal moment. It seemed like some of the people involved in the strike, which included some of the musicians as well - had this sort of optimism, that they could do things, take matters in to their own hands.

With the defeat of the miners, people lost a lot of their energy and motivation. People kind of gave up, what was the point? There was a clampdown, benefits got harder to receive, bus fares went up from 2p, and it’s these elements of freedom of movement, freedom of expression that make things happen.

E: In that sense, it’s how the politics tie in with the music, the miners were fighting not just for their work, they were fighting for their sense of control for a certain way of their communities and their sense of freedom, to have control over their own lives to a certain extent. That’s what the unions are about - you stick together and you’re stronger. And the artists were similar, being able to experiment and express themselves but wanting to have control, so after the miners strike this becomes harder to do. Their freedoms become limited as well, so it’s almost like the miners, this big battle, was on behalf of the whole nation - this is what we are living with now. In Italy and Germany and France, we have read quite a lot of things about the miners strike, and that point of the defeat of the miners is seen as quite a critical moment in history, not because of the miners, but what they were fighting for and the implications that it has had ever since.

Jarvis Cocker. Photo by Karl Lang

It’s interesting to me because it’s almost within my lifetime, and that’s something that you don’t really get a critical approach towards, it usually tends towards nostalgia.

R: We began to make the film in 2005 and we had no idea what was going to happen to the economy and our support. Nobody knows what’s going to happen next year with a new government and it’s like, 25 years ago this is exactly what was happening, has nobody learnt anything? It’s coming back to revisit us again.

E: The thing is, back then it happened here in Sheffield and the north, but it didn’t happen in the south and so people think it never happened. I first came to sheffield 15 years ago and I was quite shocked, I though this is a western country with boarded up houses and desperate villages. I had just been to India where you expect povertybut I was more shocked when I came to Sheffield because I thought “this is a western country - what’s happened?” I think what’s important is this film you can’t identify all the little bits, it’s trying to paint a picture using all the art and the music and interviews and stories. It’s illustrating, trying to get a sense of that time, give you a feel of it.

R: Part one introduces you to the characters and sets them into a context of where they came from and what inspired them and what sort of influence they drew on. In the second part, we become much more involved with their personal stories and where they end up. And they end up at the centre of dance music in the UK and britpop. They don’t just end up somewhere, they are the key players in those two huge movements, and that’s the amazing thing, that they’re on this long journey.

You mentioned bands working against normal business models, record deals and people choosing to stay in Sheffield?

R: They said, why can’t you come up to Sheffield? (record companies) that’s the motivation, we’re good enough here.

E: They were fighting for control: We don’t want to go down to London, we want to build our own recording studios and we can do it here and keep control over our product, and there were only a few who agreed to it. It’s a parallel between what was happening in the country and what they were trying to do, like a union, a collective.

What came out of that, record labels?

R: The curious thing about it is that Chakk were touted as being the next big thing in Britain - Industrial Funk. The record companies were all over them, so they got a unique deal where they agreed to sign to a label in return for a recording studio, which was unheard of. And that turned into FON studios down in the Wicker in a warehouse, full of rats and the sound of trains overhead, industrial sounds mixing with the studio sounds. So they managed to keep some form of independence and lots of bands recorded there, so the local bands that worked together in the early 80s suddenly had the opportunity to record in Sheffield.

E: This continued with the formation of a record label which started to do very well. and they had the first hit out of it, House Arrest which sold around half a million copies.

R: There’s quite a big chain of events which comes from this collective that’s just trying to do its own thing in Sheffield. Chakk gets a recording studio, that studio turns into FON…. It progresses on from there, and that’s where we start the next part.

Was it easy to see this as a chronological story when you started?

R: It was a massive jigsaw puzzle - if you took any of the people involved, obviously they’ve got their own stories, but to get an overview of what’s happening is very very difficult because there’s different things going off at the same time, and you can’t see how to tell that in an hour or soE: It’s almost like you know that there is a backbone to the story - there’s the political situation, there’s the general story of what happened to Chakk, you know that Pulp is around and that’s what you go off and then along the line you find more things and connections and you see how you can shape the story. We have spent long evenings together trying to figure this out because people will remember their experience and it was such an intense time, it was such a long time ago they don’t know exactly. So we’ve probably got more of an overview of what was happening than they have, because they were doing their individual thing.

What do you have planned for distribution and release?

R: The first step has been in getting it into Doc Fest and we’re going to see what opportunities we can get out of that, but we are independent, we’re trying to stay independent

E: It’s almost like an organic development - we can’t really say that this is exactly the plan because we don’t know how it’s going to pan out which is kind of exciting but also very scary, it keeps you on your toes. I think that’s very similar to what these people were doing. It’s a very changing time for independent film, with the internet, different ways of producing film so there’s no set route anymore and we have to stay open to opportunities.

R: We have created a site for the film www.thebeatisthelaw.com where you can find out more and spread the word. It would be great if it leads a really beautiful life online.