April, 1988
Strange Things Are Happening
Robyn Hitchcock
"It's Only When Things Make Total Sense That They Become Really Boring. Fortunately Nothing Ever Does." So Says Robyn Hitchcock, Whose New Album Globe Of Frogs Sees The Light Of Day This Srping. Vincent Eno Caught Up With Him In A Graveyard In December With Some Peculiar Results. See Him Live, Buy The Record, And Read On...
by Vincent Eno
Highgate Cemetry is quite some place. Crumbling monolithic shrines dedicated to prosperous Victorians, the imposing statue at Karl Marx's tomb, fine panoramic views over London Town. This fading piece of Old England seems a perfect location for an afternoon's debate with Robyn Hitchcock. You see, I'd had Hitchcock marked down as a late-twentieth-century throwback to an earlier, more whimsical age; some kind of modern day Decadent Victorian Romantic in the mould of Baudelaire, Huysmans, Symons, or LaForge. All that stuff in his lyrics about drowning, death, and decay. Or those moody album covers with skulls and red wine bottles. I recalled lines like "All my favorite buildings have fallen down" as I ambled over to meet the lanky figure sitting on the park bench.
I was totally wrong, of course. Robyn picked the location because he lives nearby, and, although he agreed his outlook was romantic, he was having none of the late-Victorian Decadent bit: "What, you mean old loonys with monocles on monocycles? People cycling through London parks with fishing rods?" Clearly I was way off the mark. Robyn's romanticism isn't your average rose-behind-the-ear stuff: "You can easily romanticise a bunch of trees in autumn, or a load of old stones. But there's nothing there. Looking out over London I would be more interested if I could see a huge melon hovering over St. Pauls, and I'd be more interested still if I could see a cucumber oozing out of the Thames. If coloured tents started appearing in the cemetry I'd be delighted. If that guy over there suddenly sprouted wings and shot vertically into the air I'd really be pleased."
Robyn has a habit of coming out with such sentences. Coming from anyone else this kind of palaver would seem totally contrived to gain attention (of the "Isn't he whacky type"), but coming from Robyn Hitchcock it sounds perfectly natural. It is impossible to think of some scheming, zany popster when confronted with such a friendly, genuine, honest-to-goodness bloke -- he's genuinely taken aback that I could even dare suggest his creative output is contrived. "I'm not somebody who sat around saying 'Well, I'm going to be eccentric; I'm going to carry a marrow, I'm going to wear goggles'; I have a lot of troulbe trying to make anything make sense to me. I'm a ludicrous person in a ludicrous world. I'm trying to be as serious as everyone else -- I'm not trying to wear a mask. I'm a lot more me than I bet Spandau Ballet are Spandau Ballet...although they probably want the same things -- sex and central heating and drugs -- only I suspect they want fame as well."
Whether he likes it or not, Robyn Hitchcock will, in his own particular way, be treading the weary path towards fame as much as the likes of Spandau Ballet in the very near future. Recently signed to A&M America for a two-album deal, his fame has been gradually escalating to hero-worship proportion Stateside. American journalists have been frothing with critical acclaim -- Creem magazine was even preposterous enough to suggest that "God Walks Among Us". This kind of adulation is in direct opposition to the kind of attention he receives in Britain -- for the most part he is ignored, or at best pigeonholed as an oddball novelty. You can't blame him for looking to the U.S. for support: "For seven years we had no response here -- I spent five clawing up a cliffside 'til my fingernails came out, and didn't even make a mark in the cliff! I started in America three years ago and things have been good. Karmically, I think that if you have the slagging then you deserve the praise. I think the Americans are over-the-top and the British are under-the-top. The British don't understand what the fuck I'm about and the Americans take it far too seriously. The truth, as ever, lies somewhere in betwen."
Very true. Robyn Hitchcock is certainly no higher being, but he's written some damn good tunes. "Kingdom Of Love", "Queen Of Eyes", "I Wanna Destroy You", most of Fegmania! and a fair smattering of Element Of Light ought to have graced our charts and airwaves. Unfortunately they didn't. Will the A&M move bring chart success? "If we had a top five hit with A&M it would be awful...you become the property of eight-year-old girls -- like The Thompson Twins. They were very trendy, very N.M.E., an English Talking Heads -- very popular with the middle class Postpunk hippies that had lots of things dangling in their hair. I thought they were dreadful. Then they started doing songs for six-year-olds -- which I thought were actually much better -- they lost their credibility, made lots of money...and nobody wanted to know them at all. I don't think it's going to happen to me -- if it did, it would be tough luck...but then, it's dangerous to make these statements gazing out over London because you'll probably find that in six months I'm doing some ghastly track with Stock, Aitken and Waterman, and saying, "It's all right man, it's only Money!"
Somehow I doubt it. For one thing, his spanner-in-the-works school of songwriting that we know and love wouldn't allow for it. Robyn describes his songwriting style as "totally ramshackle"; it is certainly at odds with your average Top 40 fodder. His lyrics aren't intentionally obscure -- they just come out that way.... "I read back my lryics and I know that sooner or later there's going to be something wrong somewhere. But that seems to me how life operates -- either that or I'm just obsessed by the inappropriate. It's not intentional bloody-mindedness; I just find it almost impossible to write Pop lyrics. The reason I've remained invisible for so long is because I work in a conventional framework musically -- but not lyrically. It's far too conventional for Peel to play, but it's not the sort of thing the daytime radio people can play because it hasn't got expensive production and the words stick in people's ears." But it's songwriting, not pleasing the accountant, that Robyn is most interested in -- to the exclusion of almost everything else. "It's actually quite an effort to do the washing up or the shopping -- I'm really happiest when I've got a piano or a guitar, or I'm going for a long walk." So how does he write? "I usually make notes while I'm in orbit, and whenever I come to rest I sing through them. I might just have a list of titles written on the train, something like "Sagging Sheep", "The Catastrophic Window", or "The Empty Hydrangea". You have all those things and you'll find that one of them makes sense. You will then find that your title, which is the springobard for a song, is a context in which you can discuss a variety of things. Songwriting is a blueprint. In the instant of conception the artist is as ignorant as the public as to what it's about. When you first have an idea, you don't know why you have the idea or what it represents. The first thing you get is the idea. You may then be able to label it, pigeonhole it, discuss it, send it away...but you don't know to start with. It just occurs to me before it gets to you."
What Robyn is about to unleash on the unsuspecting public is a new LP entitled Globe Of Frogs. It sees Robyn in a mellower mood, a continuing trait that has spanned The Soft Boys' "Wading Thrugh A Ventilator" through to the reflective rush of Element Of Light's "Winchester". Robyn's obsession with all things organic also rears its head: "There's lots of creatures crawling all over the place, oozing out of each other." The sea and its inhabitants is a central concern: "There's a high incidence of fish, underwater stuff on the new record. People will say, 'Ey up, Hitchcock's into fish again.' I'll go to America and get given a few more plastic lobsters. Someone gave us a live lobster in a bucket in Chicago -- at least they didn't throw it at us onstage. The guy said he would!" The sea is not only a songwriting inspritation; it also plays an active role in the Hitchcock life. He lives by the sea most of the time, and spends a fair few days splashing about in the water. Drowning crops up on numerous occasions as a songwriting fixation -- on Globe Of Frogs there's a track called "The Luminous Rose" where a serviceman fails to retun home because he's been drowned. "Water is the source of all life," muses Robyn. "A lot of people dream about water. Psychologists tell us our unconscious is reflectd in it. Even if there was a nuclear war, the sea would be the last place to die. Things at the bottom of the sea would be the last to mutate and rot. The sea is the mother." Having said this, Robyn isn't too impressed wih the idea of the channel tunnel: "The crabs aren't going to like that, oh boy!"
With all this fishy business going on, you might care to associate Robyn Hitchcock with Pisces. You'd be right. But not yer average Pisces: "I know a lot of people who are Pisces, but they don't rattle on about lobsters, fish, and crabs! The only way I connect with Pisces is that the fish emblem is going in opposite directions at once. This perfectly sums up my life and career!"
Along with the crustacean fixation, death and decay are two other subjects that stumble onto the new LP. A recent song subject was execution in a state prison. Decay, for Robyn is "the law of life. You can only regenerate through what has actually rotted. In Tarot the hanged man represents the earth. If you dream about dying, it is supposed to be rebirth. Death is the Christmas present nobody unwraps...but everyone's going to get it."
Quite. So it's a bag of laughs, this new disc, huh? "It's a lot about reproduction, religion, and death. Nothing to do with politics or relationships or economics or slogans or media or sex. It's my most complete rejection of the so-called 'outside world' -- but on the other hand I think it's my most complete reflection of the world I see." But surely any complete reflection of your worldview must be political? "It's not to do with politics in terms of party poltics or the number of hospitals that have been closed or the fact that they're charging you to even go and see the dentist, to see what he looks like...those particular things are obscene but it's very hard to write songs about them that don't come out as dogma. And I hate dogma. I hate slogans. If I had the gift to write those songs I would write them...maybe I will." However Robyn is far from apolitcal. He has recently appeared in anti-fur-trade and Nicaraguan benefits, because, "That's all I can do. People assume that because I don't write about the things that you read in newspapers that I'm completely indifferent to them. That I'm some sort of supercilious middle class bastard who lives in a bubble. It's true in a way, but it's not that true."
Robyn Hitchcock is a sincere and immensely likeable individual. Not a god, not a genius: just a talented and unique songwriter doing what he knows best. His fans, however, would agree to differ here -- some are totally obsessed. How does he cope with them? "The important thing about them is that they never meet you, because it's such an awful dissolution to them. You get people that want to occupy the same physical space as you, they stand so close...they, kind of, wish you didn't exist because they'd like to be you instead. Mark Chapman was such a person. You've got to watch it -- but on the other hand, I was obsessive -- Rock music was what kept me going. I didn't have any interest in reality." Robyn's only other outlet was drawing and painting. He went to Art School but quit due to its formal nature. "It was very academic and I was more interested in doing imaginative stuff. Quentin Crisp used to model there -- that was about the only interesting thing about it. We didn't know who he was. He wasn't a celebrity, he was an old-ish guy with silver hair that had obviously had a rinse. I got demoralised and chose the Rock 'n' Roll path!" Yet this interest in all things artistic has led to some fine album cover artwork and excellent pen-and-ink sketches. Robyn is fairly modest about this: "I work very slowly, but I've just done some painting for the new album. I do about two-and-a-half paintings a year. I'm not really very good at painting. I think I'm a good line artist. I'm a cartoonist, basically. Painting is my hobby." So it's not a Ron Wood Rock Star pictures bit? "At least that proves that Ron Wood can do something other than chopping out lines of coke! More power to Ron! People at that stage need therapy. I'd like to see Keith Richards plant a flower bed -- and do something useful for a change!"
Robyn's family are similarly artistc -- his sister has just completed a radio play whilst his father has written a fair number of novels -- mainly of the thriller variety. Anyone familiar with the live Hitchcock experience will recall his boundless excursions into babbled storytelling prose. Would he consider giving up songwriting to enter the world of literature? "I'm sure there will be a book of poems and lyrics, and sometime there will be a book of drawings. I'm really pleased that people are interested, because it's a possibility that I'd stop making records at some point if I thought the songs weren't good enough -- it could be any day. I don't think I can concentrate long enough to write a short story. I don't see myself writing novels. I wish I could, but I can't. I can write plots, dialogue, and characters; but I don't seem to have the ability to do any more." Still there are some strong literary influences bearing down upon Robyn's output -- amongst them J.G. Ballard. "I've read nearly all of them. I liked Empire Of The Sun, but thought the masturbatory car-crash stuff was a bit over-the-top. I'd rather read Tarantula, or William Burroughs. I thought it was too frantic, the blood-on-the-sheets stuff. I'd certainly take sex over technology any time! Things like The Drowned World, The Drought, "The Illuminated Man", The Wind From Nowhere, and all the short stories that he wrote up to the mid-'60s. Of the more recent stuff, Hello America was all right, Empire Of The Sun very good. It explained an awful lot. The Ballard landscape of the drained riverbed with the concrete bunkers and the dead wives and the dead parents hovering off into the corner...." Does this sound familiar? The Hitchcock landscape is just as vivid as Ballard's, just as radical, just as enjoyable. And ten times more humorous. As we leave, trying to cross through Highgate cemetry becomes a problem. An undertaker bars our entrance -- apparently there's to be a burial later in the day. Robyn is ecstatic: "What you mean, they still bury people here? How much does it cost?" On being discreetly informed the grisly details by this bemused Highgate official, Robyn and I slowly walk away. "Aha," says Robyn, "Now I've solved my Christmas present problem."
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