There was a time when the stars in the cosmic continuum shone more than a little benevolently on Zodiac Mindwarp. His finely chiselled and gracefully-bearded face adorned the covers of rock magazines the length and breadth of the country, his band's biker chic became de rigeur at every rock club in the land, the man's lyrics were bamboozling the greatest intellectual minds and causing consternation/salivation with every female in (and out of) the universe... and f**k me if Zodiac wasn't in the charts 'n' all! Shade-wearingly bright future dontcha know!!
And then it happened. Zod was rumbled.
"People realised we only had one song and just different psycho-babble on top," he freely admits, while poncing beer and fogs off me in his Clerkenwell local. Things started to crumble. The band's debut album or the megabuck wielding Phonogram sucked a big one and everyone said so. Band members left and new ones with ever sillier names like Flash and Trash were dressed up in dirty leathers and looked very uncomfortable. The hits dried up, Zodiac looked at the world through a bottle, the debts got bigger, the headaches even more so, and before you could explain why phutt, gone! No deal, no songs, rapidly disintegrating band. Like Superman with out his red underpants, Zodiac became plain old Mark Manning again, erstwhile magazine designer and

recently released with top producer, Youth, says it all. No rewinding to the past. It's just a laugh, as he readily admits, but the serious shit has started with the release of the first Zod single proper, 'Elvis Died For You'. And I don't give a shit whether you think he can hack it or not any more, this song is a thriller killer, an enormous slice of tuned-in, sussed out, dance-along metal that has to be one of the highlights of the year. The riffs pump up the jam, the tune sticks like a limpet to your ear, the samples are kicking and (no surprises) the lyrics are just peachy! Any song that can mention the immortal boxing legend Roberto Duran just has to have the legs! Zodiac should swell his chest with pride! The only worry is that there's the possibility that the fact that the record is released through the very French, very indie Musidisc might mean that no-one gets to hear about the damn thing!
"You could be right," concedes the man, "but to be honest I'm happy about the fact that they want to put the record out, there's no interference from anybody and they let me do exactly what I want. I've been working on these songs on and off for three years and the last thing I'll allow is for anyone to f**k with 'em. Money really isn't the object. Let's face it, if you really want to go out and make shitpiles of money, it's not that hard. You certainly wouldn't choose to do it through rock'n'roll! I love making the music that I make

regular Yorkshireman. The Zod was in the altogether, with nothing to show for his craziness except an extremely beautiful wife and a hugely reduced brain-cell quotient. He's lost the wife now, but at least it seems the brain cells are coming back.
"The whole thing was just f**kin' mental," he says while scratching his head, as if trying to work out where the hell he was during that period! "I'd been used to having less than nothing, and then all of a sudden there was all this money, all this attention, all this everything. I didn't know what the f**k was going on!"
But he had the germ of something great. 'Prime Mover' still remains one of the grooviest primal screams to have been etched onto vinyl and through all the trials and

Status Quo have survived twenty-five years on three chords, yet Zodiac Mindwarp and Co. lasted a mere Warhol-ian fifteen minutes (in comparison) on one song. The Great Zod explains all to Howard Johnson.

and that's why I do it. I'm on artist!"
The ultimate proof of Zodiac's artistry will be for all to judge come January 20th when the album 'Hoodlum Thunder' is released. Although he wouldn't play me any of the jive, he has assured me that everything is of a comparable standard with 'Elvis' and that has got me quivering with anticipation. And the irony of it is all too apparent. When Zodiac Mindwarp And The Love Reaction didn't know how to cut it, they had the world at their feet. Now that the band can deliver with ail guns blazing, does the world want to know? Ah, to hell with it anyway. Some of us decent citizens are behind you all the way Mr. Mindwarp!! 'Cos didn't you know? 'Honey, he's the groover!'

tribulations of the man, I've always believed that he was possessed of that quintessential yet elusive 'it' that separates the wheat from the chaff.

"Everything's come full circle," he enounces like a bard who has re-discovered the muse. "I'm back living in squalor (which I can vouch for) and I've been forced to become focused on what really matters - and that's the art. When there was something in the papers about us every five minutes I got wrapped up in it all. I clouded the real issues and I may," he

sniggers, "have clouded the truth a little bit at times. This time I'm not going to be obtuse about things. Which doesn't mean to say that there won't be anything to interest people in the lyrics. If anything, there'll be more. There's still a good deal of' other-worldly' lyrics but I have been writing bits about politics, the Gulf war, all that stuff. Who would have thought!?"

And let's face it, it's the future that we're looking towards, not the past. Indeed, 'Fast Forward The Future', the acid house/metal combination single that Zod has