Cake
1995
Interview
by Hap Mansfield
I ask him about the single which contains three songs and has him talking at the beginning of "I Something You".
"We mixed it by committee", he says enthusiastically of recording for K. "We recorded the three songs in a day. We'd do a take and then bring the tape out to the car stereo to hear it."
Michele nods, "We would be sitting in the car at 2 a.m. in the freezing cold listening to it."
"We started recording upstairs", Hitchcock continues, "but then they started cooking, making soup. So we moved downstairs, and it was done in a day."
So what's the talking all about?
"That," pronounces Hitchcock, "is me telling Michele the official story of how I met Peter Buck."
I mention that I think Peter Buck was very influenced by Hitchcock's playing style.
"I think our guitar styles are pretty interchangeable. When you listen to us both it's hard to tell who's playing what. I don't know if I influenced him," he says modestly. "We probably just listened to the same things."
I ask him what he hopes his music does when he sends it out into the world.
"Well, hopefully it will give you the feeling that there is somebody else there, even though you can't answer back.
"You know, music used to shut me up when I was a baby. There's a symbiotic relationship to music like the little birds who eat off of the hippo. There are others who need it -- the exotic poison, they actually need it. My aim is to be ungeneric. Not like listening to shopping mall music. I think with music you produce a filigree, an intricate spiral that leaves a trail. Maybe a glistening trail like a snail, or maybe like a spider web: a beautiful structure of sounds. And if you don't produce it," he pauses and says in a civilized cool voice, "you'd probably commit some violent crime (or something).
"When you are a teenager, that stereo is your only companion. That little noise in the corner. So even if it's an illusion, you have to give that feeling that there is somebody else there."
"Now that I'm getting older,I want to try to be more vulnerable rather than just my own...just, sort of, furious personality," he reflects. "I will play with a note,or try to find the right note. Forget how somebody else would sing it,and try to figure how would you get some tenderness into the music rather than flattening it with a mallet like Syd Barrett -- or being tough like The Velvet Underground. Looking at their photos, they want to seem invulnerable, look tough like, 'We don't give a shit. We're cool. We've got sunglasses. We'll take drugs you've never heard of and die in our own time.' I think vulnerability is much tougher, really."
We talk briefly about the trend towards '70s music, and both wish fervently for more '60s influences. Hitchcock is nothing if not Beatlesque -- although he sort of takes up where The Beatles left off. He nods his assent at the Beatles reference and frankly admits to the influence. Hitchcock further states, "Much of the '60s songs deserve re-seeding."
Because of he whimsical nature of his lyrics, I really wanted to talk to Hitchcock about what he read as a child. Michele and I were much enamored of Alice in Wonderland, and I expected a similar response from him. While he had read many of the old fairytales and fables like "Straw Peter" his most profound influences were deeply disturbing and passionate.
"I read a book of political cartoons from a newspaper from 1932-1945. It was called The Years of Wrath. It was political commentary on Fascism, the Japanese invasions, Mussolini invading Ethiopia, war. It was full of pictures of Grim Reapers, skeletons, bones everywhere, Hitler talking to the devil, Hitler gambling with the Reaper. It was incredibly vivid. Pictures of Hitler as a humorless, unpleasant little boy. The atomic bomb being dropped, and the look on this Japanese face. War was this random horrific specter. The thought that human endeavor is futile -- it was very compelling.
"It developed in me a profoundly pacifistic view that, if anything else, set my life on a permanent course.
"Outside of that I did read those Hieronymous Bosch books. The ones with the pictures of trumpets stuck in bottoms. Very colorful stuff with writhing humans having group sex and being eaten by fiends."
Michele comments that those are the sorts of books one should read backwards because the effect is too grating if you see the funnier pictures first and then see the harsher judgmental ones last.
"Absolutely," Hitchcock agrees. He breaks off briefly to point out that a neon coffee cup sign can be seen in the reflection of the window of the restaurant, and it appears like the cup is floating over the street. I brought him a small nautilus shell as a gift, and he keeps sticking his finger in it -- and I am terrified he will not be able to get it out and will have to cancel at the Cedar Cultural Centre that night.
While we are talking, a man comes up to our table and asks if we are still serving lunch. We look at the man and tell him we think so. Then we all look back at each other, somewhat mystified. As I look at both Hitchcock and Michele, it dawns on me why the man asked us. Hitchcock had his sportcoat off and was wearing a white shirt and black pants. Michele was in white shirt and black pants. I was in a black shirt with a black turtleneck. The guy thought we were the waitstaff. Michele and Hitchcock are amused. "I had the most awful customer today!" Michele complained.
"I served the wrong meal to someone -- and they didn't even notice!" quipped Hitchcock.
I am hesitant to ask him about song lyrics even though I could have filled the interview with nothing but lyric content queries. I finally decide against the questions, and tell him I had been juggling it in my mind and thought perhaps he would think like T.S. Eliot that--
He interrupts at this point and recites the quote, "If I had wanted you to know that, I'd have written it?"
I nod. This guy is good.
"Surrealism has been around since the beginning of time", Hitchcock informs the audience at the Cedar Cultural Centre. "We've just only had a name for it the last 75 years. For example, after god made the darkness and the light he made telephone booths. But he had nowhere to put them, so he had to take them back. It's our job to go about the universe finding this sort of stuff out."
It's a really good place to see Robyn Hitchcock. The audience was the first I have been proud to be a part of in a long time. They laughed at his witty lyrics, they appreciated his gentle spirit, and they let him sing without shouting obnoxious things at him. When he would sing a tune the audience really liked, a ripple of excitement would go through the crowd like a gentle wave of warm happy electricity. A Hitchcock vibrator, if you will.
He introduces his songs in an inimitable fashion. "This is a song about a woman with a cat's head. She is sitting on the tombstone of her lover. He is buried six feet underground in full cowboy regalia: the chaps, the boots, and two loaded six-guns. She is sunning herself."
He sang a Soft Boys tune, "Only the Stones Remain", and "Queen Elvis", and "I Often Dream of Trains". He did an acoustic set and an electric set and a nice long encore. He sang some tunes from the single. The very last lyric he sang was the sonic sealing wax for a remarkably incandescent evening -- "I woke up this morning and saw the devil in my bed/I should have strangled him, but I'm British so I made him tea instead".
One more thing: at the end of our lunch I asked him a question I reserve for those I'm pretty sure actually have an answer. He did not disappoint. I said, "What do you want to have written on your tombstone?"
He brightened and nodded -- yes, he had something in mind. "What do you want?" he shot back.
"I think I want 'Tell me your story. I've got time.'"
He laughed.
"Yours?" I countered.
"'Back in five minutes'," he said.
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