Mondo 2000
1991
Painless Regurgitation Of Hysteria
A Chat With Robyn Hitchcock
by Richard White
Like the aboriginal songlines of Australia, Hitchcock's music makes a journey across a deep subconscious Dreamtime creating a familiar -- yet aberrant -- world. And -- like aboriginal song maps -- each landmark, each twist of the tale, each layer of exposed psyche is anchored in a character, circumstance, or event. He sees himself as a storyteller. Along with fellow Soft Boys Andy Metcalfe and Morris Windsor, he's been telling us his uncategorizable stories since the late-'70s. Miscast for the times, The Soft Boys played mostly to deaf ears. Hitchcock's solo projects -- Black Snake Diamond Role and Groovy Decay -- were largely ignored by a public entranced by Technopunk New Wave.
Adored mostly by critics, Hitchcock dropped out of the music scene, supporting himself by writing for other bands (notably Captain Sensible). In the early-'80s, The Soft Boys re-formed and metamorphosed into The Egyptians. The latest Egyptians record, Perspex Island, is Hitchcock's 16th recording. It's his least abstract -- and most revealing -- work to date. Though, for many of us, Robyn's songs have always revealed disturbing, dark (and funny) areas of the
mind. Hitchcock is -- thank gods, ongoingly -- a very odd man.
The Ballad Of Stretch Armstrong
I saw you when you played Seattle at the Bumbershoot music festival. You were telling stories that led into the songs. Do you think of your material in a filmic sense -- more visually than aurally?
I do. I was never that interested in how the thing actually sounded. Records were a blueprint. You'd have to chain in the words. The purpose of the words was to create a cartoon -- a flesh cartoon. Life is a series of flesh cartoons with various characters painlessly rupturing themselves like Tom and Jerry. That was my attitude. They were anesthetized Folk songs, if you like. All sorts of horrible things happened to people but it didn't really matter. They replaced
themselves very quickly like Tom and Jerry. You know, Tom's face cracks completely when he smashes into a wall, he slides down and then it reforms. There is that, sort of, painless regurgitation of hysteria.
Do you feel the same way about this current cycle of songs?
No, these songs are much more vulnerable. If one of these songs cracks, it would stay broken.
What brought about that change in point of view?
Well, our cells replace themselves completely every seven years. So apart from a DNA molecule, there's not much of us left. I guess I just replaced myself.
Refugess Flee Hippocampus
You've replaced your ideas. But you wouldn't replace your memories, would you?
I'm sure we edit our memories. We only use a little bit of the brain. It's like Australia -- we don't really know what the rest of it's doing. There are theories that if you have brain damage, you can actually relocate what you have left from the damaged area to a new area. Start again. I don't know where you put it in the meantime -- sort of, a holding area.
How would you find it?
God knows. So, given all this self-replacement, I just felt like singing more vulnerable songs. Some of the old stuff I find a bit cold.
Was it a colder period of time for you when you were writing those songs?
Maybe I was cold. I was just frightened of everything. I still am. Anyone with any sense is scared shitless. Anyone with any shit is scared senseless.
By what?
By what they imagine, or other people's lack of imagination. What unimaginative people are doing. The demons are inside and out. You can't win.
And imagination is key in relating to your music.
Well, for mine you certainly need a degree of imagination. You don't need MTV. You can get your own pictures just from listening to it. If there was any principle behind it, that's what it would be. Like old Folk ballads -- before radio and TV, people passed news to each other in songs. Although my songs aren't current affairs -- like the volcano in The Philippines, or the Lockerbee air crash -- they're still transmitting stories.
It seems that you have a vision that could be translated into film or theatre. Is that an aspiration?
Intellectually, yes. But not emotionally. I don't feel driven towards it. I'm driven to write songs. Maybe it's just a habit -- like lowering your head to go through a doorway when you could just cut a hole for your head. I've been drawing and painting for years. I suspect it's because I'm a visual person working in song that makes it interesting. There are millions of other artists. I'm cross-pollinating. I'm like a frog mating with a butterfly.
Singin' In Bahrain
The Aboriginal belief is that our ancestors sang the world into existence.
Really!?
Yes. It's like a map. They travel from one point to another by singing songs. Each point on the map is a verse or an element of the song. Does that have any resonance with how you work?
It depends on how literally you take it. I'm not necessarily manufacturing a future out of my songs. Sometimes I think my songs are messages from the future to me. A lot of them are messages to me from myself -- but they're not as abstractly mystical as singing the world into existence. They are about me closed off by myself -- so enclosed that the song is waving a finger at me, saying, "Take a look around you, son, and see what's really going on."
April In Perspex
What about a couple of the songs here on the record. I'm interested in "Birds in Perspex". What is Perspex?
Perspex is like plexiglass in this country. "Birds in Perspex" is like a paperweight -- those paperweights they sell at seasides with crabs and shells in them. In my case there are birds, a frozen moment waiting to happen. You know they're probably dead, but they are suspended and there is a possibility that they could start to live. It's a song about releasing the tension. And Perspex Island is a, sort of, portable Avalon.
A place where animation is suspended?
Well, not just that, but a dream -- a, sort of, heaven. A little transparent island that's potentially floating around.
What about "Lysander?"
Lysander was a Greek general. But I was really thinking about the Lysander, a little aeroplane in World War II that used to drop French resistance workers in the middle of the night in occupied Europe -- a reconnaissance plane. It's a hovering song. It's about somebody not quite committing themselves to a relationship. It's an early-autumn song. You know those decals for model aircraft? When you put them in water, it takes a while before they float away from the paper. I imagined you have a parasol with birds and serpents on it. At
some point they actually float off the parasol and start spinning around in the air by themselves -- a bit like the birds coming alive in "Birds in Perspex" -- all these two-dimensional beings being freed from what holds them.
What Is Reality?
"She Doesn't Exist" tells an interesting story.
It changes persons. He starts off saying he couldn't care less, but he obviously does -- just shows what you get for dwelling in the past. The idea is that there is a presence in your life -- but you never see them. Michael Jackson may not exist: you never actually see him (or Winston Churchill). Madonna, god, any of them -- people that are of some importance but are not physically there. They may never have existed. Sherlock Holmes didn't exist but he does now. He is now post-dated into his era. It's that gap. There is no physical proof of someone's existence, yet there is a mental residue. If you have a leg amputated, you carry on feeling it. It's like old girlfriends: the
impression they've left on you is much more important than where they are now, or how they actually feel (or whether they are even alive).
COPYRIGHT NOTICE