The Boston Globe
November 15, 1996
Bragg And Hitchcock Split On Reality
by Jim Sullivan
A question is posed to Billy Bragg, on the phone from San Francisco: why should folks come early to Avalon tomorrow night, at 7:30, to see Robyn Hitchcock open the double bill? "I think if they like what I do -- which is I'm a singer-songwriter whose lyrics are the most integral part of what I do, and I talk to the audience (and some of that is what makes it entertaining and thought-provoking) -- well, Robyn's the same."
The table is turned a few hours later, and Hitchcock is asked why people should stay later to see Bragg. "The tone is completely different. The timbre of Bill's performance is very different from mine. Bill's a lot tougher than me. He's a lot more outward-looking. He's more of an orator, and I'm more of a spiritualist. He's more overtly left-wing. But we're both leaders of the republic."
Bragg and Hitchcock -- two veteran English singer-songwriters -- are on the road together, playing solo and giving audiences two rather different takes on the world. Bragg's is one of righteousness, compassion, and left-wing activism; Hitchcock's is one of surrealism and fractured Psychedelia. At least those would be the short answers to the where-do-they-come-from question.
Aside from sharing a manager -- the estimable Peter Jenner, who's done the job for Pink Floyd and The Clash as well -- there is other common ground. "We're both romantics, and this tends to gets overlooked," says Hitchcock, "because people think of Bill as 'Mr. Politics' and me as 'Mr. Seafood'."
That is, Hitchcock writes much more about seafood than your average songwriter. Says Bragg: "Robyn's been getting a bit more political, and I've been getting a bit more free-associative."
More seriously, Bragg says, "When someone like Alanis Morissette is trying to be cutting edge, I think someone like Robyn and me coming through the country...we're a little bit more cutting edge. I think Alanis is afraid of me and Robyn because not only do we know what ironic means, but we use irony and mystify and encircle the audience."
Hitchcock, 44, started his musical life as a solo-acoustic artist, but came to cult fame with The Soft Boys during the mid-late-1970s playing wonderfully warped Pop. After that, he played in group form as Robyn Hitchcock And The Egyptians, and also solo. Which is where he finds himself now, touring behind his latest album, Moss Elixir. (Violinist Deni Bonet joins him at times onstage.)
Why is there no band?
"Well, why not? Rock music is a young person's game," says Hitchcock. "And I find it very depressing when people carry on playing Rock music. I hate middle-aged bands. I'd rather be 44 by myself than up there with a bunch of other men over 40."
As to being in a band, "I don't know how long you can go round with your legs tied together. If you do, then you have to start having very separate lives -- and even then it's a bit artificial: you have separate accounts and managers, and then you're poured into a communal dressing room for a photo session, then you have your own bit of the stage, and then you go away."
Hitchcock believes that he's "tolerated" in the music biz -- "I've got a good name." He'll never be a top Pop star, but he'll always have his niche.
Worst part of the job: "The machinery actively encourages you to remain a, kind of, childish destructive ego. People are encouraged to go out being brats. You're not encouraged to grow up, to do all the adult things (like accept responsibility)."
Best part of the job: "Being a musician enables you to get into certain elevators and go up and down the social spine. To cut through classes, races, and religions. You can be acceptable to people who are not your class, race, religion -- or even sexual orientation."
Hitchcock -- with his songs of lobsters, wasps, Queen Elvis, and men with lightbulb heads -- wants to be perceived these days as less of a wacky eccentric. The perception, says Hitchcock, was that he was "a colorful, smart person and people either loved me or loathed me as that clever shiny child. It was getting tiring, and I couldn't be that anymore. I went through a lot of turbulent years, from '88 to '93. I finally grew up. Nothing too drastic. I just think there has been a really fundamental shift on this record."
The songs on Moss Elixir are relatively pared down and more straightforward. "I don't think about songs in terms of what they're meant to represent, any more than someone goes fishing and they might take a look at the various salmon in their net. But I don't think they're gonna say, 'Wow, I'm after a new kind of trout!' They just check them over to make sure they don't look poisonous, and then thump them over the head, and that's it."
Hunting the great white song, aye? "I do tend to think of it as slightly predatory," says Hitchcock. "Either the song's hunting you or you're hunting the song. Either way, the song is somewhere you can't quite see it, somewhere in the opaque depths. You have to lure it out."
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