OC Weekly
November 8, 1996
British Invasion Socialism And Surrealism Go Pop
by Jim Washburn
"I'm just at the edge of a radioactive lake, and there's a baleful, three-quarters moon shining down on it. The flickering lights of aircraft pass overhead, and there are columns of red lights glowing on and off in the distance."
That's how Robyn Hitchcock described the view from his Detroit hotel room. To hear such a bald survey of the "real world" we've created makes one wonder if the decidedly surreal world that spills out of Hitchcock s songs is really so strange after all. The Englishman is perhaps Rock's best-known little-known surrealist -- both solo, and with his old bands The Soft Boys and The Egyptians. Many of his songs may defy exposition -- "I was followed home by a weighing machine on DeChirico Street ... And the numbers turned to fingers/And the fingers turned to flies" -- but, according to tourmate Billy Bragg, "He doesn't make that stuff up, you know? He really means it."
Meanwhile, no one has ever doubted that Bragg means it. If you were to remove the ardently expressed Socialist anthems from Bragg's albums, you'd be left with...well, you'd be left with several sensitive observations on love and life, rendered by a sublime voice rich in the mingled hope and sorrow that come with caring about our common lot. But the soccer-match vigor of his political songs is what most know Bragg for.
Though surrealist Hitchcock and Socialist Bragg might not seem to have more than an -ist in common, both say their tour is working well. Bragg performs solo, while Hitchcock is backed by violinist Deni Bonet.
Both have new albums that are comebacks only in that they've been away. Bragg took a hiatus from the business for a "paternity leave" when he became a father in 1993. His new album, William Bloke, may be less splendid than 1991's Don't Try This at Home -- but only by a whit. Hitchcock hadn't recorded since parting ways with A&M Records in 1992. His new Warner Bros. release, Moss Elixir, may be his best and most-accessible album ever. And die-hards might also search out Mossy Liquor, a limited-edition vinyl release with alternate takes and songs.
In separate conversations, the two discussed where they are now, aside from being next to a radioactive lake.
Should one strive to find meaning in your songs?
Robyn Hitchcock: You shouldn't strive any more than I strive to write them. They just take place, really. I certainly don't strive to get the ideas. But only certain ideas will translate into songs. Having a series of opinions isn't enough for a song.
Do your songs carry a particular meaning for you? Does "The Devil's Radio?"
I just imagined the devil listening to a radio set, you know, frying some eggs and polishing his horns before he sits down to eat. And then I thought, "What would he be listening to?" And it seemed it would be hate radio.
How about "Filthy Bird"?
It's basically saying that you can only have fun at somebody else's expense. Or that people who really enjoy themselves in life are pretty thick-skinned, and usually have blood on their hands. If you don't really care too much about other people or creatures -- if you're a bulldozer of a person -- then you can have quite a good time.
Dare one call Moss Elixir psychedelic?
That's more accurate than calling it Hip-Hop. It's descended from Psychedelia, though I've never been that psychedelic of a musician. Though my words have always been quite vivid, the music has always been very cautious -- especially the later Egyptians albums. There wasn't much exuberance in it.
I put out a lot of records -- maybe I put out too many. I write a lot of songs. And you don't realize at the time that half of the songs aren't going to hold up for more than three years. So I wanted to have a really good quiver-full of songs before I came back with this.
You have Captain Beefheart's old guitarist, Moris Tepper, on the album.
The best stuff I did with Moris is on Mossy Liquor. He's an almost edible guitarist. You can almost snap off what he plays and put it in your mouth. I'm an enormous Captain Beefheart fan. I think the most exciting show I ever saw was Beefheart in 1973. It was very unfrightened music. His Trout Mask Replica -- I don't know if anyone could do anything that fearless now.
Do you go in the studio with a load of fear?
Oh, I never leave home without it. I'm just a little ball of quivering terror. There are some places where I'm less-afraid than others. But my music is deeply terrified.
Is this fear part of the human condition, or do you have a particular purchase on it?
People who know me well know I have a particular purchase on it -- though I think it's with good reason. I can't see any reason not to be sweating with terror at this particular point in time. Anyone who can contemplate the future with any equanimity must be insane. Things have never looked good for people because they have consciousness -- their individuality -- which they know must be extinguished at the end of life. And now humanity looks like it's going to disappear and take everything else with it.
So how's the tour with Billy going?
It's very simple and direct. There's a real minimum of bullshit in the whole thing. Bill's much more of an orator, which I'm not. But we're both people who benefit from not having much between us and the audience. Bill's got a pretty strong sense of humor. I, too, am a Socialist. I just don't have the ability to write about it.
If space aliens were going to destroy us unless you could show them convincing examples of humankind's wonderfulness, what would they be?
The obelisk. The cone. The sphere. The streetcar (or 'tram', as we call it in Britain). And the cultivation of tomatoes. But I would say the greatest thing in human life is sex. Unfortunately, sex has tended to just lend itself toward making more humans. But I think now it is becoming increasingly recreational. It still has tremendous purpose -- but as an art form, a celebration of life. Sex and the cultivation of tomatoes are probably the two greatest things humans have come up with.
You and Robyn don't seem the most likely touring companions. Does it work?
Billy Bragg: I think people in North America see something quintessentially, eccentrically English in both of us. The tour is great for me, a real challenge. Usually, the supporting act on my shows is a band, and it's real easy for me to be different by being solo. You always get remembered, just being solo. With Robyn, he's solo, he's articulate, he's talking to them. What can I do that's different? Without him doing it intentionally, it's like he's drawing a line in the sand, saying, "Okay, now what are you going to do, Bill?" It's making me work to get back to the intensity I was at before I took my paternity leave.
We may work out some songs together, but it means finding the time before or after the show. And after the show means waiting until I've relaxed with a beer, and been rubbed down with a copy of the Socialist Worker.
Is it a drag always dealing with the Rock-critic shorthand for you: that Billy Bragg equals Socialism?
That just makes it more interesting for me, to try not to be the stereotype. The last gig I did was in Toronto in front of 100,000 people on their Metro Day Of Action, which followed a general strike. Tomorrow we're doing a benefit for the Detroit Free Press writers. But I do try not to be a stereotype. I made an album with some politics on it and a lot of love songs, and it didn't stop one reviewer here in America from saying, "Every single song is an anti-Capitalist polemic." I thought that kind of shit died with the Cold War. Some critics come in with this agenda, this, "Billy Bragg, you've got an attitude problem." I have a good time trying to dump on their preconceptions.
Emma Goldman said, "If I can't dance to your revolution, I don t want to be part of it." I've said that to audiences around the world who have said, "You're not taking it seriously enough. You don't do enough politics." I'm not there for rabble-rousing. I'm there to entertain and communicate and do what fits. So when I do a song like "Upfield" on William Bloke, I might want to put in context what I mean by "Socialism of the heart".
What do you mean by "Socialism of the heart"?
What I m trying to get at is, in a post-Soviet Union world, those of us on the Left have to ask ourselves, "Is Socialism dead? Do the things we believe still have a resonance?" But if you look around, people are still suffering from the inequalities in life, so Socialism is still a valid idea. Perhaps what has died is not Socialism but the Cold War language we used to articulate the ideas. All through the Cold War, we had to express ourselves vis-a-vis what was happening in the Soviet Union because that was how the mass media defined what Socialism was. And that was very difficult to defend. You couldn't, really. I don't want to hark back to that old ideological language. I came to Socialism from a humanitarian ideal, not from Marxism. At the root of that humanitarian ideal, for me, is compassion.
I'm all in favor of reclaiming the term "family values". Becoming a parent is a very important thing that's happened to me. But when politicians of all shapes talk of family values, they're talking about family discipline. That old chestnut, "Don't do as I do, but as I say." It seems to me that you have to have some understanding and forgiveness in a family. Otherwise it is dysfunctional. You'd be at each other's throats all the time. A society that doesn't have those values at its core is on its way to becoming dysfunctional as well.
Compassion is the most important family value. If someone in your family is ill or unemployed or gets pregnant. and they ve got no one to help them, you don't scapegoat them, do you? You don't make life more difficult for them. You don't cast them out. You do what you can within your own circumstances to help them out. That's what family is all about.
I think we have to make common cause with those people who are inspired to do things from a compassionate ideal -- not necessarily because they read something in Marx or The Nation.
Instead of saying, "Hi, we're Socialists and you've got to sign up for our ideology," we should join on the things our compassion calls us to do. I think that's going to happen in the U.S., where you've got an election in which the differences between Republican and Democrat no longer inspire people. It's hard to get all that in a song. So I've used the phrase "Socialism of the heart".
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