The Washington Post
March 16, 2001
The Soft Boys' Solid Comeback
by Mark Jenkins
The career of The Soft Boys perfectly illustrates the concept of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. In Punk-crazed late-'70s Britain, playing the group's style of Neo-Psychedelic Folk Rock "was mostly fairly hard work," remembers drummer Morris Windsor by phone from Britain. "If it was London or Cambridge, the reaction was quite enthusiastic. But other places it was fairly hostile. Either hostile or blank."
The band's then-unfashionable sound "just grew out of 1966, 1967. That was my psychedelic bar mitzvah. I was 14 in '67," says singer-guitarist Robyn Hitchcock in a separate phone interview. "I could never make it clear that we weren't a revival band. People now realize that this kind of music, whatever it is, is worth playing and worth hearing. And I think in 1980-81, they weren't sure about it. They thought we were just retro. But time and Mojo magazine" -- a British monthly for over-30 Rock fans -- "have proved us right."
It wasn't 'til a few years after the release of 1980's Underwater Moonlight -- and the quartet's 1981 breakup -- that The Boys learned they had a sizeable audience on the other side of The Atlantic. "Americans have always liked The Soft Boys a lot better than the British," Hitchcock says. "I think it's very touching."
Soon The Soft Boys were being cited as a major influence by R.E.M. and L.A.'s "Paisley Underground" bands. Hitchcock calls his old band, "Sort of, the missing link between The Byrds and R.E.M.. Or, if you want to get really big-scale, the missing link between The Beatles and Oasis," he laughs. "But one thing's for sure is that we were missing."
The singer-songwriter thinks his group's legend grew in The United States because "only a handful of people ever saw us or heard anything about us in the States at all. They didn't really know if we existed or not. So when these records started trickling through a few years after our demise, it just made it much more interesting for them. There was nothing about us in the British press -- and there wasn't the Internet then. So it was all a bit of a mystery."
That mystery led to substantial import sales for Underwater Moonlight, which wasn't released in The States 'til 1992, and a career revival for Hitchcock. "By the mid-'80s, people were ringing me from The States, saying, 'Do you want to come do some gigs?' And, basically, I've been working over there ever since -- culminating in actually living in D.C. at one point."
Hitchcock lived in Washington about a decade ago, when he was performing with The Egyptians -- a band that included Windsor as well as bassist Andy Metcalfe, also a former Soft Boy. He dissolved The Egyptians after 1993's Respect, and has toured since then as a solo performer. Now Hitchcock and Windsor are Soft Boys again, touring in honor of Underwater Moonlight's reissue by Matador. This is the second time the album has been released in The United States -- Rykodisc did the honors in 1992 -- but the first time The Soft Boys have toured North America to promote it.
The band's first major U.S. tour happened, Hitchcock explains, because "it was the 21st anniversary of Underwater Moonlight; it was out of print and it was in demand -- in its, sort of, subtle way. It's never been a deluge, but people are always trying to find it. I suddenly realized that it wasn't around any more. So I thought I'd better try and license it again. The next obvious thing was, could we put the Moonlight version of the Soft Boys back together again to accompany this? It turned out we could."
The Boys previously reunited for six gigs in 1994, but played only in Britain, and not with the lineup that will appear Wednesday at the 9:30 club: Hitchcock, Windsor, guitarist Kimberley Rew, and bassist Matthew Seligman (who replaced Metcalfe before Moonlight was recorded).
"That was an interesting hybrid," says Hitchcock of the earlier reunion. "It had two bass players, Matthew and Andy, but it didn't have Kimberley. So we got Sean [Lyons], who was actually the last guitarist in The Egyptians. And we had our old percussionist. So we actually had six of us there. I had been reluctant to do it without Kim, because although this was a good band, I still thought Kimberley was one of the key features. But my manager basically put a gun to my head and said, 'Do it or else.' If you'll have noticed, I don't have a manager any more."
Windsor's verdict on the 1994 reunion is more succinct. "It was quite an unholy racket," he chuckles.
The 1994 shows were "a, sort of, Soft Boys retrospective," Hitchcock says, "whereas this is definitely a celebration of Underwater Moonlight. This is very much carrying on from where we dissolved."
The distinction is important, because Underwater Moonlight marked a change from the band's original style, which was heavily indebted to Captain Beefheart and Pink Floyd founder Syd Barrett. The earlier sound can be heard on the 17 tracks from circa-1979 rehearsal tapes included on a second disc with the album's new edition.
"It shows the transition between the earlier lineup," says Hitchcock, which played "sort of, fractured, Blues-y stuff. At the beginning, it starts out sounding like Beefheart, and then we end up by doing a Bryan Ferry cover. That pretty much shows the difference between what I'd wanted to do in the '70s and what I wound up doing in the '80s."
The subsequent style was "a shift in my taste, but it was also an effect of working with the band," he says. "I'm very much at the mercy of people I play with. I'm not one of these iron geezers who goes around telling everybody what to do and then presses a button and they do it."
Hitchcock and Windsor each note that their fellow Soft Boys are both more skilled and more relaxed than they were 21 years ago. "It's not as tense or spikey as it was 20 years ago, when the Moonlight band was first out and about," Hitchcock says. "It's probably more good-natured than The Soft Boys or The Egyptians ever were."
Windsor now plays with The Gliders and supports himself by running a gas station. Rew, who's best known for his work with Katrina And The Waves, released a solo album last year and is working on another one. Hitchcock is writing a novel, he says, and Seligman "made a record with a guy who used to be in Siouxsie And The Banshees." All four, however, are committed to being permanent, if part-time, Soft Boys.
"I don't know what the duress of touring will do to us," Hitchcock says. "But if we survive this tour, we would do some more. I don't think it would be like the Buzzcocks, where suddenly there we are, passing through a club near you every nine months (or whatever). But we wouldn't let the machinery get rusty."
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