Rolling Stone
January 29, 1987 (Issue 492)
Robyn In Wonderland
Oddball English Rocker And Former Soft Boy Robyn Hitchcock Finds An Audience In
America For His Fun-House Pop
by David Fricke
Oblivious of the racks of Michael Jackson CDs on his right and the Olympian-sized displays of Frank Sinatra and Bruce Springsteen on his left, Robyn Hitchcock strums his guitar with unflappable cool and begins to spin a colorful though improbable little yarn for the crowd of fans gathered around him at Tower Records in New York.
"Born in 1872 of humble Hungarian-immigrant parents, Eileen Franshaw moved to London and settled in the East End," declares Hitchcock, a vision of trippy sartorial splendor in his iridescent blue-striped suit and bright-purple suede shoes. "She soon carved a name for herself by inventing Plasticine some seventy-five years before any leading toy manufacturer.
"Her brother Cyril fared less successfully, however," he continues, after a burst of chuckles from the audience. "He was horribly dismembered at the Tower of London when, inadvertently taking one of his sandwiches out of its wrap, a raven swooped down and bit off his head with the edge of the sandwich still in his mouth."
Then, before he puts his guitar down to start autographing copies of his new album, Element of Light, Hitchcock changes the subject from voracious birds to amorous primates, wrapping up an enigmatic little ditty called "City of Shame", from his 1981 LP Black Snake Diamond Role. "It was in the city of shapes", he croons with sing-song solemnity, "That made love to several apes/She felt weird for a couple of days/Then she got used to their ways".
Hitchcock, as you can probably tell, takes some getting used to himself. He has a novel approach to Pop minstrelsy -- deviant melodies, irresistible choruses and fun-house wordplay applied to Robyn-in-Wonderland scenarios involving, among other things, fish ("Bass"), eccentric specters ("My Wife and My Dead Wife"), and Stonehenge ("Only the Stones Remain"). His songs are unlike anything on the current chart landscape of synthetic uniformity. Unfortunately, this has led many critics in Hitchcock's native England to simply file his records under "Acid Casualties".
Young America, however, is slowly but surely falling under Hitchcock's uncommon spell. He and his swinging combo, The Egyptians (bassist Andy Metcalfe and drummer Morris Windsor), have become a solid draw in U.S. clubs, and his 1985 releases, Fegmania! and the live Gotta Let This Hen Out! charted high on college-radio playlists. And if his Tower Records appearance is any indication, his growing audience is a wonderful motley assortment of preppie collegians, teenage punkettes and veteran Progressive Rock hairies who trace Hitchcock's spiritual lineageback to Freak Rock avatars like Captain Beefheart and original Pink Floyd guitarist-vocalist Syd Barrett.
"I like being in the wrong climate, to an extent," Hitchcock says of his unexpected Stateside takeoff. It's the day of the Tower Records appearance, and he's standing on the eighty-sixth-floor observation deck of The Empire State Building. "It's like being a cactus at the North Pole. I'm a connoisseur of the inappropriate. I like the way they stuck an ape on the top of this building." He smiles wryly. "You can't get more inappropriate than that. But they did it, and it looked good."
Hitchcock, 33, is quick to point out that his Pop fantasias are not just paisley-flavored whimsy. Take "Kingdom of Love", a buoyant little number Hitchcock recorded with his late-'70s band The Soft Boys: "You've been laying eggs under my skin/Now they're hatching out under my chin/Now there's tiny insects showing through/All them tiny insects look like you".
"Someone took that song to a psychologist," Hitchcock notes, "and he said it was a classic paranoid delusion. But I think it describes the way people have an effect on each other and sometimes have kids. That's describing mating pretty accurately -- 'All them tiny insects look like you'. If two people split up, the kid still reminds them of the ex-wife or ex-husband.
"My stuff is totally sincere," he insists. "But I have a sense of humor. People feel because I have a sense of humor that what I have to say as a writer is worthless. But it's not true." Hitchcock's first lesson in reconciling the real and the surreal came when he heard Bob Dylan's "Like A Rolling Stone" at age thirteen.
Three years later, he simultaneously discovered William Shakespeare and Captain Beefheart. He became serious about putting his expanded vocabulary to music, while studying English at Cambridge. He puttered around in local coffeehouses as a solo folkie, formed a bizarre acoustic quartet with the charming name of Maureen And The Meatpackers, and in 1976 formed the first of several Soft Boys lineups with Metcalfe and Windsor.
The basic idea of The Soft Boys, Hitchcock says now, "was to cross Abbey Road with Trout Mask Replica. To have those harmonies and choruses, and also that jumping sound." Unfortunately, The Soft Boys' cheerfully bizarre Pop was never heard above the roar of England's Sex Pistols generation. The group disbanded in 1981 after playing only one pitifully short U.S. tour. (Guitarist Kimberley Rew went on to form Katrina And The Waves.)
In recent years, Hitchcock has concentrated on refining his flights of melodic and lyric fancy -- not so much for the charts as for his own peace of mind. He admits he took about half-a-dozen exploratory acid trips in the early-'70s, but he thinks that reality is tough enough to digest without chemical interference. "Life is too out of control," he says. "I'm trying to make order, in a way. To present things in as acceptable a way as I can. I'm trying to sweeten the horror, soften the torment."
Indeed, the sprightly "Lady Waters And The Hooded One", on Element of Light, is probably the only Pop song about bubonic plague you can sing in the shower without cringing.
"I wished for the impossible when I was a kid," Hitchcock says. "And when I couldn't realize it, I retreated into fantasy. But I hope people don't use my records as an excuse not to relate to their girlfriends or parents. I hope they take 'em off and think, 'God, I'll go downstairs and be nice to Mum.'"
COPYRIGHT NOTICE