The Toronto Star
February 7, 1992
Regardless Of The Music Trend Robyn Has "Nothing To Do With It"
by Peter Howell
The recent release of his album Perspex Island suggests Robyn Hitchcock is again on speaking terms with reality.
Faithful listeners to the previous output of Robyn Hitchcock And The Egyptians -- who appear Monday with Matthew Sweet at El Mocambo -- will detect in Hitchcock's new work a distinct lack of stories about people-eating vegetables, exploding balloon heads, dead wives, dwarves, and ghosts.
But listen to how the 39-year-old folk rocker describes his first meeting with R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck, and ask yourself if the old Robyn is not dead, but merely sleeping:
"I met Peter in an embalming class in north London," Hitchcock says on the line from R.E.M.'s mission control, Athens, Georgia.
"It was, sort of, an amateur embalming class, for tourists and students. It's a novelty thing: they teach you how to do this stuff -- but not on people, really, so much."
You don't say? And what exactly were you and Peter embalming together?
"We were embalming a cat," Hitchcock continues, without skipping a beat. "I live near Highgate Cemetery, and I was just inclined to do those things.
"And Peter was just being a visitor because he wanted to do something exotic on his days off.
"That's how we met. And I, kind of, met the rest of R.E.M. from there."
Yeah, that's the ticket. This momentous meeting over a dead Felix allegedly occurred while Buck and company were in London making Fables Of The Reconstruction -- the 1985 album that R.E.M. members themselves say is among the band's worst work.
Could it have been bad enough to drive Buck to get into upholstering tabbies? With anything Hitchcock says, you can never know for sure.
One way or another, he did meet up with Buck -- who brings his jangling electric and acoustic guitars to several tracks on Perspex Island (as he did on an earlier Hitchcock album). R.E.M. singer Michael Stipe also helps out with backing vocals on the song "She Doesn't Exist".
But despite his friendship with R.E.M. -- he often jams with the Athens gang -- Hitchcock is quick to tut-tut any suggestion that he's not faithful to his two Egyptians (Andy Metcalfe and Morris Windsor).
"Andy and Morris and I have been working together for 15 years. I think it's a misconception when people start talking about this record being a 'collaboration' between me and Michael and Peter.
"It's as if we'd gone into some place with canvas chairs and a computer terminal -- and bottles of Perrier -- and sat there roughing out what the idea was supposed to be. Peter was a guest and Michael was hardly that...he was just there for half an hour."
To belabor the Athens connection even further, could it not be said that the bittersweet love songs of Perspex Island spring from the same well as the twisted love songs of R.E.M.'s recent hit, Out Of Time?
The question brings a Hitchcockian riposte:
"People just want to have a description for a series of songs, you know? Do they describe the difference between one salami and another? They're all pretty much the same.
"Perspex Island is a very uncynical record. I'm proud that as I've gotten older I've actually managed to be less cynical (at least in my music).
"I think it's quite compassionate. I think it's quite a warm record. That makes it sound a bit like a sports coat (or something). And it doesn't make it sound very exciting. But it was very exciting to make."
It was also a very emotional experience. His adored girlfriend Cynthia left him while he was working on it -- but she's since returned. The album is dedicated, "to Cynthia, the most wonderful woman in the world."
Says Hitchcock: "I wrote 'Vegetation And Dimes' ["Let's jump off a train..."] when we were separated. I wasn't having a great time in L.A.. That's written to her while she wasn't there. She followed it all very carefully."
The enigmatic singer-songwriter has been around the Pop scene for so long -- he co-founded the Proto-New Wave band The Soft Boys circa 1976 -- he's being credited as an influence to everything from the Manchester Indie Sound of the late-'80s to the Acid House/Techno scene of today.
Musicologists -- if so inclined -- could even trace Peter Buck's major guitar influence not to The Byrds, but to Hitchcock -- who was using twin six-strings with The Soft Boys to get the jangly sound frequently credited to Buck.
But Hitchcock shucks all that off as just so much music industry jive. (And besides, he says it was England's The Searchers who did the jangly guitar thing way before The Byrds and everyone else.)
"My role in all this is that we are truly an Alternative act," he says, looking out for The Egyptians again. "When we started we were an alternative to Punk, and then we were an alternative to the, sort of, 'Trevor Horn' technology (Techno Pop). And after that, whatever is going on, we're to one side of it (that's for sure).
"Whatever it is, we've nothing to do with it."
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