Sounds
November 23, 1985
Is It A Bird Or Is It A Plane?
Robyn Hitchcock Lets His Hen Out On Chris Roberts And Insists That His Music Is Designed To Make You Vibrate Internally
by Chris Roberts
A man comes in and throws two figs at me.
Oestrogen: What's this about your suits?
Estragon: They're made by people. Irish people.
Why did you sort of retire for a while?
I don't think what actually happens matters at all. What matters is what you think happens.
Do you get bored with people saying how weird you are?
I think the media are really considerate. They give you an image then ask you if you mind it. I do what I do anyway, same as a spider makes a web or wirecutters cut wire or a cloud rains. I sit here and Hitchcock, that goes on regardless. Sometimes people come in to observe me, as if through a screen, then wander off.
Don't you encourage it with your intangible lyrics?
But I don't mind it anyway! I've no complaints about other people at all. It's important to be identifiable. In the course of the game of selling records...someone comes in and drops a load of celery on my head. No, as long as I'm not confused with Princess Anne. That would be embarrassing.
How does it feel to be playing with three-quarters of The Soft Boys again?
Including myself? Great. It's like being in one of those nicely polished wooden things with brass handles that you get on your boats.
Do you feel young at heart?
Oh yes, don't you? What motivates you is a six-month-old inside who's learned all these adroit manoeuvres. You're like a baby controlling a Chieftian tank. Or maybe some people really do grow up, I don't know.
Your new album is called Gotta Let This Hen Out!. Out of where?
A box in East Anglia. Some black miasmic place where the cold comes in. I imagine it'll be let out by The Higsons. Or by friends of The Higsons.
Do you have strong feelings about The Higsons?
Ha ha ha, not at all, no. I just heard them on the radio trying to let his hen out and they didn't sound very happy. And I was even less happy when I wrote the song.
Do you ever write complete nonsense?
If you set fire to a grasshopper it explodes. Er, no -- I can envisage most of it, though there are extremities. Like -- "Bloaty's having his newt installed". I can see it easy enough. There's this fat guy having a live newt sewn into his skin. I'm just drawing the cover for the single, "Brenda's Iron Sledge", so it's quite interesting for me to see exactly what I meant by that.
Does anyone ever ask you why?
Are you asking me why now?
Oh all right then.
It's not calculatingly designed, but there is an explanation for everything there. Something like "Sandra's Having Her Brain Out" is just about characters. I did a drawing once of this bright purple baboon sitting in a trough of goulash, looking up at a carrot with a depressed face. I've lost it now, though.
Do you make yourself laugh?
Sometimes. But the idea is to produce tasty edible music. Like a diamond flan. Something beautiful or pleasantly disgusting. I should probably have concentrated on doing less stuff better. But then, when a hen lays an egg it doesn't shove it back up again if it doesn't like it.
Will you enjoy getting more famous?
I'll believe it when I see it. I was summoned to Fame Headquarters and they said, "Yeah well, Robyn, you're going to be more famous by Christmas. Just thought we'd let you know."
Why do you choose to write about things which aren't everyday experiences?
Most people write about fantasies, or a world in which the ordinary is made more interesting, the possibilities changed....
Telephone: Drring drring. [recurring]
For some reason I'm going to have to actually disconnect this phone. Oh no, now I've started another one off. The trouble is, it does it even when the thing's off. Maybe the answer's back in the other room.
Where were we?
You were talking...
Ah! Precisely because they don't happen every day! That's why! That's the short answer. And, er, probably the long one too.
Do you find the surreal more entertaining than the real?
What's the surreal?
Uuuuh...unconventional links of images or, er...
What, like sardines and custard?
Well...what it is is...the things that happen to the characters in your songs aren't things that've happened to me in the last week.
Aren't they? That's a shame.
I don't really think it's a shame that I haven't had a newt installed.
I suppose as far as I'm concerned that's what's going on, but it isn't necessarily apparent to everybody. I'm fully aware of that. But it's the feel of what I get as I go around. Everybody reconstructs the outside world inside.
Are arms and legs important?
You try getting around without them! That's just me saying something nice about people, 'cause a lot of my stuff wishes we were sanctified insects --wringing our hands in a glass monastery gazing down in despair -- rather than human beings (with our pathetic attempts at morality, forced compassion, marketing, and our pretence at civilisation). But being relentlessly negative gets dull after a while and doesn't achieve anything. There comes a time where I'd rather just walk along the beach and pick up a glass globe and hold it to the light. What were you saying about animals? We just have some facilities that they don't. But in fact, in trying to make life simpler, we've made it more complicated. With all our paraphernalia. We're unquestionably the most unstable and dangerous animal on the planet. Ah -- I keep thiking my soul is going to be sucked out of my body!
Why?
Oh, I dunno -- I went to hospital earlier this year...I assume it is possible to actually get better. The modern human is pathetically sensitive. Maybe the amoeba is the most evolved thing of all because it doesn't even need sexual reproduction. Think of the immense complications that are caused by sex. We like to overelaborate things. We count the atoms in a glass of milk. Pull the stuffing out of things and put it back in the wrong place.
Would you sacrifice what you had to be an amoeba?
Unless we find that amoebas are in fact in perpetual chronic pain. If not, I'd be one any day. So what if you couldn't appreciate the works of Shakespeare? Ethiopa can't. If culture and violence develop at the same speed I'd rather do without both. Most artists are oversensitive cretins. I'd rather be a plumber.
Are you wiser now than you were at the time of The Soft Boys' debut album A Can Of Bees?
Er...no.
Do you enjoy waving your arms about?
Ideally I'd turn into Cleopatra halfway through "Kingdom Of Love". But it doesn't work. I'm more likely to turn into Sid James.
You haven't got an asp.
Neither had Sid James.
Do you wish to make people feel uncomfortable?
My music is designed to make you vibrate internally 'til the top of your head comes off and all this quick-drying foam gushes out. I'd like to make people feel like toothpaste under unbearable pressure. I try to make people do everything at once, because without the filtering process that we call "time", everything does happen at once. I'm not Womack And Womack.
You take yourself seriously?
I wouldn't bother to do all this if I thought it was a silly joke (although most of human endeavour is that). I wake up and I see that I haven't become a bulldozer or a snail or The Statue Of Liberty. I've incarnated again as Robyn Hitchcock, so off I go on the same process. It's probably just as well having a dictatorship. I don't think any achievements can be very serious.
So why do you do it?
Well I applied to become a bulldozer and everything, but nothing happened. I remained me. I am this thing.
So why do you make more effort than no effort at all?
If you give up, you fade away and shrivel. So I carry on, same as you do. I bet you don't wake up and think, "Oh God, this is incredible: I might've been an iceberg, but I'm not!"
Does that flykiller gun work?
Yes.
Flykiller Gun: Bang.
Would you agree that not only do you have video and TV apperances and a tour coming up, but also that you have an unorthodox worldview?
We have some baths.
Thank you. Do you think that's sufficient?
You've asked the same question in different ways and presumably you've got the same answer in different ways. Yes, that's fine.
I think I'm supposed to take a photocopy of this American interview with me.
Oh yes, apparently that's the one about the rhinos.
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