Who remembers Mansun?
The late-Britpop band seemed to emerge from nowhere, dash out a pair of astonishing albums, then fizzle away back to their own alternative universe where the Marquis de Sade mixes with stripper vicars and Winnie the Pooh.
Their debut album Attack of the Grey Lantern spawned five memorable singles, most enduringly Wide Open Space (which still mesmerises on the 989th listen). But it was the fifth one that attracted the headlines.
Taxloss came out in April 1997. What might have been an afterthought, coveted only by hardcore fans, was given much greater prominence from its controversial video.
The band, with the blessing of record label Parlophone, scattered £25,000 in five-pound notes into the crowded concourse of Liverpool Street station. Hidden cameras recorded the ensuing scramble from every angle.
The idea was to film everyday greed, a theme touched upon by the song's lyrics. "We think you are stupid/We give you our money 'cause our assets are fluid, yeah," wails Paul Draper in the pseudo-chorus (Mansun don't really do choruses).
It was all filmed without any formal permission — quite brave considering that the London of 1997 was on high alert for suspicious behaviour in the wake of regular IRA attacks. The production crew (not the band themselves, who were overseas at the time) simply walked in and doled out the money from the station's upper walkways.
"The rail company was a bit narky", said lead guitarist Dominic Chad, "and said they were going to sue us but when the video came out their employees were on there picking the money up as well!"
The video was directed by Roman Coppola (son of Francis Ford Coppola). It shows the build-up to the stunt, which seems to have been planned meticulously like an inverse-heist. It propelled the single to number 15 in the UK charts; very impressive for the fifth release from an album.
Mansun, who only learned to play their instruments a couple of years before their chart-topping debut, went on to record a second successful album called Six. At turns brilliant and bonkers, this is the only album in chart history to feature Tom Baker reading a poem about the death of Brian Jones.
The band would work on two further albums, though both fizzled without making much of a cultural impact. Attack of the Grey Lantern and Six, however, constitute one of the great underrated legacies of late 90s alt-rock.
Incidentally, each of the fivers was marked with a 'Taxlo$$' sticker. I wonder if any of these survived unspent... and what they might be worth today?
