Newsday
February 7, 1988
Robyn Hitchcock: A View From Rock's Underground
by Wayne Robins
After ten years as darling of Rock's Alternative underground, it's a little
late for Robyn Hitchcock to become an overnight sensation. But with a new album, Globe of Frogs (A&M) released a few days ago, he and his band, The
Egyptians, appear for the first time on a major American label.
Of course, as appealing as melodic, psychedelic mood pieces such as "Tropical Flash Mandala", "Chinese Bones", and the first single, "Balloon Man", are, they are not likely to challenge Whitney Houston at Top 40 radio. But if the extremely unlikely occurred, and Globe of Frogs made Hitchcock an unconscionably rich media sensation, the English singer-songwriter might be more revolted than pleased.
"I never wanted to monopolize people," Hitchcock said the other day in his record company's New York office. "I deeply resent the way that people with
a lot of publicity are the ones who get the most. Everyone's going to buy albums by Michael Jackson, Bruce Springsteen, Sting, and Madonna. As if that
wasn't enough, you can't get away from their faces in the papers. All I want to do is make a living; I don't need to make fifteen of them."
Ambivalence about fame and success punctuates conversation with the tall, soft-spoken Hitchcock, whose shyness borders on nervousness. (He is somewhat appalled to let slip that he has a girlfriend and children, but firmly declines to elaborate). He calls Bob Dylan his "childhood hero", but laments what stardom has done to him.
"I was reading where Dylan said recently that when you go into a room people are being as real with each other as they're ever going to be," Hitchcock said. "But when he walks into a room, nobody is real. It all stops. Wherever he goes, he's Mr. Bob Dylan. He's a victim of his own charisma."
Hitchcock thinks he's found a solution for those whose stardom has gotten out-of-hand, a kind of Betty Ford Center for the Overindulged Ego.
"I've always thought there should be a School for Abuse for famous people no one says 'No' to," he said. "They just go and get treated like dirt for two weeks. They clean toilets, bring people food, and sleep on hard beds, there's no booze, no cigarettes, no drugs, and no sycophants, nobody pampering you saying, 'Yes, Mr. Wonderful.' It's not whips or S&M (or anything like that), nothing kinky. Just living like a drudge. That would change your perspective a little bit."
Although Hitchcock, of course, would never need such a service, he has been
playing at the Rock star game since the 1970s. For a while, he had a group called The Beetles. He got serious about music in 1976, when The Soft Boys were formed in Cambridge, England. (Two members, Andy Metcalfe and Morris Windsor, still play with Hitchcock in The Egyptians; another, Kimberley Rew, is a guitarist and key songwriter for Katrina And The Waves).
Though The Soft Boys have since been lauded as precursors of the 1980s "Paisley Underground" -- the psychedelic revival that inspired groups such as The Bangles and Dream Syndicate, and recent recordings by XTC -- they floundered up against what Hitchcock calls the "totalitarian" domination of the English scene by Punk.
Unlike many other Rock theoreticians, Hitchcock denies Punk was an important movement, but he has his reasons. "I was so maddened with jealousy out of not being accepted that I, kind of, closed my mind to it," he admitted. But on further reflection, Hitchcock is willing to acknowledge that Punk's dominance might not have been the problem at all. "Ironically, I think if we had proper management, a proper record deal, and came here more, things might have developed a bit."
As it worked out, Hitchcock has had plenty of time to grow. His great strength has been songs that cover a wide range of unexpected territory. They are sometimes bizarre, such as "My Wife And My Dead Wife" and "Sometimes I Wish I Was A Pretty Girl" (the latter inspired by the famous shower scene in Psycho). Both tunes are featured on the excellent 1986 live album, Gotta Let This Hen Out! on the Relativity label.
Other Hitchcock tunes are sparely evocative ("Raymond Chandler Evening"), while others are elusively spacey (the new "Luminous Rose"). Yet what they share is Hitchcock's refined sense of structure, with melodies that delight and hooks that keep you attentive even when the lyrics aren't immediately accessible.
The payoff has been keen at the college-radio level. Last year's Element
Of Light on Relativity spent six weeks at No. 1 on the Roslyn-based CMJ
New Music Report chart, the country's most influential college radio publication.
"It's one of the only independent records that have been No. 1 here," said
CMJ's editor Scott Byron. Why does Hitchcock have such strong college-radio appeal? "It's his oddity," Byron said. "The oddness of his lyrics and the
way they, kind of, resonate. His songs hold up well on the air. You can hear them over and over again, and still find something you haven't heard before."
Some of Hitchcock's songs are hard even for him to grasp. "I can't remember
what happens," he said, asked to analyze his creative process. "I'm not
really aware; I just realize after awhile that a song exists. I can't judge
them. I write them, but I'm not here to either criticize or describe them.
They just, sort of, take place."
The most frequent comparisons of Hitchcock's work are to writers like Dylan, John Lennon and Syd Barrett of the original Pink Floyd. Barrett is the J.D. Salinger of Acid Rock, a hermit-like cult figure since the early-1970s.
"I think they're all just individuals," Hitchcock said of such company. "They have their own perspective. I suppose none of them wrote for other people, though Dylan and Lennon's songs were extensively covered."
Occasionally, Hitchcock will take on the real world. "The President", from Element Of Light, was specifically about Ronald Reagan's vociferously
protested visit to the SS cemetery in Bitburg, Germany. "The President is
talking to us through a microphone/Like he's trying to pack his mother off to an old people's home", Hitchcock sang.
"That album was more about the outside world," Hitchcock said. "This one is
more a microcosm. I could've written the whole thing looking at a plate of
food."
To the extent that he can analyze his new songs, "Devil Mask" is about both
the act of creation and fear of sex. "Balloon Man", which he wrote for The
Bangles (they didn't record it), is about greed. "He's all input, he's a
great consumer, full of fruits and vegetables and stuff like that,"
Hitchcock said. "Pretty soon he just explodes. It's a very New York song...I think it fits in quite well with the Wall Street crash."
The single "Balloon Man" is already No. 1 on the trade publication Gavin
Report's Alternative music chart, and top ten on the CMJ college chart. But don't look for that modest success to go to Hitchcock's head.
"I'm interested in a career," he said. "I'm not interested in a flickering burst of publicity and then going to work in a bank for the rest of my life.... Praise inflates you, and criticism makes you sag down. You don't need to become a, sort of, emotional balloon to other people's comments."
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