The Denver Post
November 12, 1999
Non-Commercial Pop: Robyn Hitchcock Plays His Own game
by G. Brown
Robyn Hitchcock is the typical talented eccentric. One of England's lasting singer-songwriters and performers, he continues to toil without much commercial success because his songs have been filled with fearful or foolish images -- freak amphibians, slimy bugs, human beings with lightbulbs for heads.
"I never wanted to be a Pop star," Hitchcock, who will visit The Soiled Dove on Saturday night, says. "Having said that, there's practical things. If you want to make a living out of it, then you can't just walk in and say, 'I don't care.' You've got to play the game -- and I have learned my own way of playing it over the last 20 years.
"But all I wanted to do was create the best stuff I could, with and without my fellow musicians who have helped me. I was always very clear about that: it wasn't, 'Well, dammit, if this next record doesn't sell a half-million copies, I'm going to work in real estate or try and become a veejay.'"
Steady careers Rare
"People assume that you want to make as much money as possible and then implode. Maybe it's an unusual thing to have a steady career in this business, I don't know. Some people go straight into the very top and stay there, like Cher. I'm probably more like Richard Thompson or John Cale: the dreaded 'Non-Commercial Pop' -- you know what you're doing appeals to some people, and that's the reward of it."
Hitchcock, 46, played his individualistic Folk songs in many bands before forming The Soft Boys -- a progressive, quirky Rock outfit -- in the late-'70s. By the mid-'80s, he had emerged to a cult level in the College Rock market with The Egyptians. His past few solo albums have been more acoustic in nature, and he's been softening the wise-guy whimsy and gentle insanity.
On Hitchcock's new album Jewels For Sophia, the tunes zig-zag between freely emotional ("I Feel Beautiful", "You've Got A Sweet Mouth On You, Baby") and uncontrolledly surreal: he sings of dark princesses, cheese alarms and -- on the hidden track -- Gene Hackman's virtues.
The album features guest spots from R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck, Grant-Lee Phillips of folk rockers Grant Lee Buffalo, and Hitchcock's old Soft Boys bandmate Kimberley Rew.
"Having decided that I was now a solo act and no longer really a Rock act (if I ever was), I thought, 'Well, Okay, let's reverse the process and make a Rock record.'
"I'd always either done things with a particular band or I'd done them solo. I wanted to have different ensembles for different tracks with this record. So I had the Seattle stuff with the Young Fresh Fellows and Peter. I had the L.A. sessions with Jon Brion and Grant-Lee. And I had the London sessions with Kimberley and a couple of the High Llamas. The last time I did that was Black Snake Diamond Role, which was my first post-Soft Boys record, nearly two decades ago.'"
Hitchcock's collaborators set the Rock-ish mood. "The musicians would be working out their parts as the tape was rolling. There is a danger when you've rehearsed too much and you know exactly what you want to do and you're just trying to re-create it."
Reunion On Tour
On the tour, Hitchcock is reunited with guitarist Rew, who has been in Katrina And The Waves ("Walking On Sunshine") since The Soft Boys broke up in 1980.
"He's quite shy and he wouldn't want to front his own act," Hitchcock says. "I think Katrina And The Waves have now actually parted. Kimberley now has enough time to come and do things with me. We're not tied to each other, but it's quite fun."
Storefront Hitchcock, a concert film directed by Jonathan Demme (Silence Of The Lambs), remains in limbo -- it was released last year but has yet to play in many parts of the country.
"It crystalizes what I do," Hitchcock says. "But MGM weren't really interested in promoting it, because it was just part of the catalog they acquired when they swallowed Orion. So it went from being a beneficiary of capitalism to being a victim of capitalism.
"The film never got a proper exciting nationwide release. They don't even tell us where it's showing next."
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