Interview: Barry Adamson — Moss Side Outsider: Magazine, the Bad Seeds, Iggy Pop, Lynch and a Film That Never Existed

Some musicians are known for the bands they were in. Barry Adamson is known for what he did inside every band he touched, and for what he built after he left them.

He was born in Moss Side, Manchester, in 1958, a mixed race kid raised on comics, cinema, Motown and jazz, heading towards graphic design until punk changed everything. Then comes the story he has told himself more than once. Someone gave him a bass with two strings. He bought the missing ones, saw an advert for the band that would become Magazine, arranged an audition for the next day and stayed up all night playing. He walked in front of Howard Devoto and got the job.

What followed is some of the most original bass playing of the post punk era. On Magazine's four studio albums, Real Life, Secondhand Daylight, The Correct Use of Soap and Magic, Murder and the Weather, the bass is never just accompaniment. It is counter melody, hook and rhythmic engine all at once, dragging funk and soul into a band that sounded like nobody else. They even covered Sly and the Family Stone. Bassists such as Duff McKagan and Billy Gould have named him as an influence.

Then came the Bad Seeds. Adamson recorded 'Tar' with Visage, played in Pete Shelley's band, stood in for Tracy Pew in The Birthday Party, and became a founding member of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, helping to write 'From Her to Eternity' and playing on their first records. In 1987 he toured on bass with Iggy Pop. Most players would call that a career.

Visage, 'Tar' (original 7 inch version), with Barry among the musicians:

Iggy Pop live in Finland on 6 June 1987, with Barry on bass:

For Adamson it was a warm up. In 1989 he made Moss Side Story, the soundtrack to a film that did not exist, and turned noir, jazz, funk, orchestration and crime fiction into an imaginary movie. It became the best calling card a film composer ever had. David Lynch brought him onto Lost Highway, Oliver Stone used his music in Natural Born Killers, and he went on to score Delusion and Dreams of a Life. Soul Murder was shortlisted for the first Mercury Prize in 1992. Then he stepped in front of his own scenery as a singer, on records like Oedipus Schmoedipus, with Cave, Jarvis Cocker and Billy MacKenzie, and The King of Nothing Hill, the album that gave us the phrase "cinematic soul". In 2021 came a memoir, and in 2024 the album Cut to Black.

His latest work closes a circle. SCALA!!!, released by Mute on 16 January 2026, is the score for a documentary about the London cinema, written by a man whose first solo record was a soundtrack for a film that was never made.

So when Barry agreed to answer my questions by email, I did what I always do and let my enthusiasm run away with me. I sent more questions than we had agreed, and Barry was kind and generous enough to answer them. Thank you.

Before the interview, a look at Barry's legacy. Only a partial discography of his work since 1978, across post punk, film and his own records.

Magazine, Real Life (1978)
Magazine, Secondhand Daylight (1979)
Magazine, The Correct Use of Soap (1980)
Magazine, Play (1980)
Visage, Visage (1980)*
Magazine, Magic, Murder and the Weather (1981)
The Birthday Party, Junkyard (1982)*
Visage, The Anvil (1982)*
Howard Devoto, Jerky Versions of the Dream (1983)*

*Guest or session contributions, or selected tracks on a soundtrack album.

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, From Her to Eternity (1984)
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, The Firstborn Is Dead (1985)
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Kicking Against the Pricks (1986)
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Your Funeral... My Trial (1986)
Gas Food Lodging OST (1992)*
Natural Born Killers OST (1994)*
Lost Highway OST (1997)*
The Beach OST (2000)*
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Push the Sky Away (2013)*

*Guest or session contributions, or selected tracks on a soundtrack album.

Moss Side Story (1989)
Soul Murder (1992)
The Negro Inside Me (EP, 1993)
Oedipus Schmoedipus (1996)
As Above, So Below (1998)
The King of Nothing Hill (2002)
Stranger on the Sofa (2006)
Back to the Cat (2008)
I Will Set You Free (2012)
Know Where to Run (2016)
Cut to Black (2024)
SCALA!!! (2026)

When is Manchester City Council putting up a statue of Barry in Moss Side?

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Q&A Interview: October 2026 by Alejandro De Luna

My sincere thanks to Barry Adamson for doing this interview.

You learnt to play bass almost overnight before joining Magazine. Was not knowing the "correct" role of a bass player actually an advantage? Did it allow you to invent the role for yourself, and has that shaped the way you approach the bass and understand songs?

Yes. Exactly. I felt immediately free to express myself the way I wanted to and didn't feel restricted in any way. I think I landed on the right instrument for me as it felt and still does feel quite easy for me to come up with the idea and execute it, all based on that freedom, something I have in a limited amount with other instruments.

Magazine could move from something as severe as 'The Light Pours Out of Me' or 'Permafrost' to covering Sly and the Family Stone. Do you think people have underestimated how much Black American music lies beneath the sound of British post punk?

Well, Black American music lies beneath the sound of pretty much everything. Sometimes this is disguised. I was working on something that would be described as punk-electro recently and could hear the history of a black rock n roll coming through.

Howard Devoto and Nick Cave are both strong creative personalities, but they have very different approaches to songwriting. How different was it working with them, and how did your bass playing change between Magazine and the Bad Seeds?

They are both strong storytellers and I felt my job was to pin down and also imbue the story with some sort of atmosphere and visual stimulation and add tension and release. Interesting you mention Black American music as I feel that is what I slid into more from the end of Magazine (Sly Stone) and into some hellish version of the Blues in the Bad Seeds.

You've described the earliest Bad Seeds (you, Cave, Harvey, Bargeld) as a four piece that "spewed greatness." What could that line up do, precisely because there were only four of you, that you haven't been able to recreate since?

Four very different personalities all butting heads, lighting a frenetic energy and yes, spewing the results. Tight, compact, explosive, experimental and unpredictable. Defies recreation because of the originality that was being forced out. In some ways it's a classical way to perform rock music and that line up worked because of taking the form and twisting it on its head.

Moss Side Story is one of my favourite records, and it has one of the best stories behind any album: a soundtrack written before anybody had made the film. Was this the first time you could construct an entire world completely on your own terms, both sonically and visually? Were you placing the Moss Side you knew within the language of film noir, or inventing an entirely new version of it?

I elected to use the language of cinema and put together music that was atmospheric and could help me paint a visual picture of what I was trying to express and put across. Also a nod to noir as this was the creative fabric that I cut my clothes from. Moss Side was also the perfect location as the central character, along with myself and therefore gives the language an extra level of depth to play around with.

David Lynch told you that he had been listening to your music for hours before asking you to work on Lost Highway. When somebody with a cinematic world as complete as Lynch's enters your musical world, who adapts to whom? Did he want "Barry Adamson music", or did working with him fundamentally change the way you understood film scoring?

David was a master film director so I'd be a fool not to be able to recognise an opportunity to 'learn from the master' This happened mainly in conversation but he gave me some really valuable tools with which to score with. One was to look at the characters eyes during dialogue and pitch the emotional line according to what perhaps the character is not saying or is trying to cover up and also connect the audience to the emotion in this way. He called me up from a screening and described how the audience were glued to the screen during a particular scene I worked in this way on.

By As Above, So Below, and especially The King of Nothing Hill, you had become the singer, narrator and central character. Was learning to sing in your own voice harder than learning to play bass almost overnight? Which singers influenced the way you approached the microphone?

I'm still getting stronger as a singer as it's not so natural for me to sing but some people have said such amazing things about my voice that has really helped me. I got a letter once from Alan Vega after I covered the Suicide track, 'Girl'. He said Adamson… what a voice. I loved him and Iggy I think is possibly the greatest rock singer. I was privileged to hear him messing around in rehearsal, singing Sinatra, better than Sinatra!!

Barry's version of 'Girl' appears on As Above, So Below (1998).

You briefly returned to the Bad Seeds during the Push the Sky Away era, nearly three decades after leaving. Did it feel like returning to something you had helped create, or like entering an entirely different band?

It had really moved on from my raggedy ass days of scraping around from gig to gig, now it was this huge machine with more crew than I've ever seen and I was alright for a while but long term I didn't see myself fitting in and was desperate to get back to my own trajectory and explore further where I could go.

'Iggy And Lou And Mick Rock Too' refers to the historic 1972 concerts by Lou Reed and the Stooges in the building that later became the Scala. Having subsequently played bass with Iggy yourself in 1987, did composing that piece feel like another part of your own musical history coming full circle?

Yes of course, this happens again and again and it's nice to have almost first hand reference material to draw from. It also makes the work feel like it's from the inside rather than, oh I think this might fit. The whole Scala score was like that. Having been there as a rabid twenty something, I'd soaked up so much of the time that it was very quick to produce and execute the ideas as they came thick and fast.

After nearly fifty years moving between post punk, jazz, funk, soul, electronic music and cinema, both in bands and as a solo artist, which record are you proudest to have been involved in?

I must admit to having a soft spot for my solo records as I start to put them to bed. Despite my inner turbulence, I'm proud of being involved in those early Bad Seeds records and working live with Iggy and composing music for David Lynch, that's all pretty good from the Moss Side Kid!

Finally, could you name three bands or artists you could never grow tired of, three bass players who have influenced you most and three film scores you consider perfect?

Three bands and artists: Roxy Music, David Bowie, Miles.

Three bass players: Herbie Flowers, Larry Graham, Tina Weymouth.

Three scores: Taxi Driver, In Cold Blood, Touch of Evil.

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Visit Barry Adamson's site here.

Barry Adamson on Discogs.

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Alejandro De Luna single-handedly runs The Sense of Doubt, an independent music and culture site exploring music history, post-punk, art and cultural heritage through limited prints and features. This interview is part of an ongoing series.