3.7
May, 1992
3.7 Seconds With...Robyn Hitchcock
by Judah Chackoff and Stuart Gluck
There's what you call "yourself" and what you call "someone else", and there's a razor-sharp line dividing them off. You label the world that way because it's safe. But deep down you know that the line isn't so firm. And we bleed into each other, mixing and reacting every which way. It's here, in our gray zones, that Robyn Hitchcock's music lives. Cloaked in lush guitar melodies and a Beatlesque wail, he pins down the inner-workings of human interaction with a halogen glare. And because he's honest, he plays to a full house. And that's how it should be.
A Caucasian Biped And His Razor-Sharp Retro-Guitar
"My contention is, however, and it is a bloody obvious one, that beneath our civilized glazing we are all deviants, all alone and all peculiar. This flies in the face of mass-marketing, but I'm sticking with it."
-- Robyn Hitchcock, November '87
If deviance is the norm, where does that leave us as a species?
Well, I didn't come up with the term "deviant", you know. It was already there, and I simply turned it. If you say "deviance is the norm", that nullifies the meaning of the word "deviant".
And "norm"...
Yes, and "norm". Which I thought was good, really. I mean, if you wanted to argue about it semantically -- you know, the meaning of "to deviate" or the meaning of "to be normal" -- you could go around it indefinitely. But, you know, "reality" is the consensus of perception. And therefore, the consensus of action: we all agree to see things in a certain way, so we all drive on the right hand side of the road. A deviant is someone who...who doesn't quite fit in -- at least that's what I like to think.
You've said before that "Alternative Music" is essentially a grouping of any kind of music that isn't overtly commercial. It didn't mean that your music was the same as Depeche Mode or Jane's Addiction just because all of you were considered to be "Alternative". Where does your music fit in?
Well, to ants there would be little difference between us [The Egyptians], Depeche Mode, and Jane's Addiction: we're all caucasian bipeds that are going to step on you (or whatever). It does not really matter. Although I suppose stylistically our stuff is descended from The Beatles, Jane's Addiction's stuff is descended from...I don't know, Iggy Pop? And I'm not quite sure what Depeche Mode is descended from -- they're originals, I suppose. Those other bands are probably more original than us. I mean, stylistically. We are very derivative of the stuff in the '60s. When we started, we were peculiar because of that. Of course, now there's been so much "retro" stuff in the last ten years. When the Soft Boys were going, we were one of the few groups to use harmonies and guitar solos at the time. And people considered us unnecessarily backward -- at least in England. Now, with there being so much "Retrodelia" around, it doesn't matter. I suspect -- if our stuff is listened to in another fifty years or so -- no one will care. If it's still around [He grins] people will actually think we were contemporaries of The Kinks (or something).
So where you fit in musically is different from what you're trying to do?
I'm just putting it in, if you like, general "music magazine" terms -- because the music magazines are the people that "define" all of this [Sarcasm dripping from every syllable].
At what point should a musician let a political condition surrounding them seep into their work? You don't seem to let it enter yours.
Well, I don't think you should write about things you don't understand and don't know about. To me, politics and economics are so incredibly devious. I mean, people are being starved to death and driven out of their homes -- or for that matter, riding to luxury on the currency in English banks. Which is something we don't really understand. I mean, it is human affairs, but people talk about economics as if it's the weather. We don't apparently control the weather, but we should be able to control the stock market -- it's a human organism. But we don't. The stock market seems like a virus with its owm will: it destroys people and makes them...if not at its own will, then at least in a way that's incomprehensible to us. I'm not interested in maths, and I'm not interested in statistics. To deal with politics you have to manipulate all of these particular things. I can't write about that. It's just baffling. I'm a miniaturist. I'm more interested in the way light reflects on this glass. You know, I can burble on about politics for hours, but I certainly can't put it into songs. If I did, what would I come out with? "The verdict on Rodney King was wrong." Great! So Robyn Hitchcock tells you that.
Do some musicians make meaningful political commentary?
I've always admired Billy Bragg because he can articulate things basically. But very few people can. It's not a gift many songwriters have.
Two years ago you were here. And during your set you said that because you were British, part of you was always off somewhere "tidying and straightening up". Is being British always so tedious?
[Laughs] No. I just use that as an excuse. You know, I can say that if I'm in The States, but I wouldn't say that if I were in Britain. I might say, "I've been in America a lot, so I've got to go and tidy up." It's like an anti-party chant: instead of saying, "It's great to be in Charlottesville!" I say "It's great not to be in England."
Imagine you're in the middle of your set. Can you give us a story?
A story? I haven't got any stories. There are increasingly fewer and fewer stories. I mean, I used to tell a lot of stories, but it's been crowded out by the outside world. I don't know what relevance my stories have. Sometimes it seems a bit escapist. I've been trying to make my stuff a bit more focused (although I don't really know what the stuff is for).
But you do it?
Well I do it. But a bird builds a nest and it doesn't know why. Hopefully you have erections. But that doesn't necessarily mean you know why (or what to do with them). It's just implanted in you. We are acting out things which we did not implant in ourselves. That's why I think if there was an election you should vote for the dead: because the dead are the people who put us here. But nobody anywhere says, "Vote for the dead!" I mean, the dead are the biggest influence on our lives. The dead caused the situation to happen. No really, I'm a realist now.
Now you are.
It's nice to tell a story if you feel like it -- and I used to tell them at gigs and enjoy it. But the problem with stories is...people started saying, "Tell us a story, Uncle Bob." And it became something like, "Is he
going to do something wacky tonight?" And I found that disturbing, because
it became the norm. People expected me to open my head up and the plant came out. You know, the plant comes out when it wants to. [Laughs] So these days I don't say too much. I just try to sing in tune.
So "singing in tune" is how you'd describe Robyn Hitchcock's new musical direction?
Well, no. [Laughs] I'm working with Andy and Morris [of The Egyptians] trying to be musical. It's just harmonies. You know, it's incredibly normal stuff. It could have been written by some footballer.
You don't seem like the man who would sing, "I was walking up 5th Avenue,
and balloon man came right up to me". [From the album Globe Of Frogs]
No, I wouldn't. I've sung that before. There's nothing like repetition to kill you off. I think it's really good to do everything once and move on.
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