The Island-Ear
April 4, 1989
Robyn Hitchcock
The Beatle That Time Forgot
by Harold DeMuir
With his A&M album Queen Elvis (his second for the label, following last year's Globe Of Frogs), Robyn Hitchcock continues winning over impressive quantities of American fans, sealing his status as a major figure on the college/Alternative music circuit while veering dangerously close to full-bloom mainstream acceptance. Pretty good for an artist who, until very recently, was regarded -- by those who regarded him at all -- as a marginal cult figure with negligible commercial appeal (which, in fact, he remains in his native England).
Queen Elvis -- the singer-songwriter-guitarist's 13th album (if you count his three with the now-legendary Soft Boys, whose ranks included bassist Andy Metcalfe and drummer Morris Windosr (who now comprise Hitchcock's current combo, The Egyptians) and guitarist Kimberley Rew (now of Katrina And The Waves)) -- embodies the same iconoclastically offbeat qualities that made Hitch's past work so special but seems more...focused, consistent, and musically complete than just about anything else in the artist's LP catalogue.
Robyn Hitchcock And The Egyptians (or Robyn Hitchcock 'n' The Egyptians, if you go by Queen Elvis' billing) inaugurated the new LP's release with a series of arena-venue shows as opening act for R.E.M. -- whose guitarist, Peter Buck, appears on the new LP and frequently guests with The Egyptians onstage. We spoke with Hitchcock just prior to these dates.
The lyrics on Queen Elvis seem quite emotional, whereas much of your previous work tended to be a bit arch and detached. In the past, a lot of people assumed that the songs were pure fantasy, or that they were really about fish or insects or whatever.
Yes, it's more of an emotional record -- which is something that I've wanted to do for a while. I've always written a lot of songs about things that had happened to me 15 or 20 years before, and now I'm getting better at translating what's happened to me fairly recently and putting it to music. I think it's just a matter of being in touch with your feelings -- which is why I admire John Lennon so much: he was able to make a newspaper out of what was happening to him. I've always found my stuff underemotional. I think it's strong visually, and I think a lot of people haven't given it its due. But I think it's always lacked a certain emotional element. What's different about this record is that it's basically feelings-rather-than-visuals, if you like.
I mean, I never really wrote songs about fish as such. I'm not an angler, and I don't go around reading books about fish (and things like that). Fish are just an archetype. We're descended from fish. It's not Adam and Eve: it's more like halibut and flounder. But the way people go on about it, you'd think that I'd discovered fish. I think that whole thing also ties me with a rather wacky, twee image -- and I've had quite enough of that. Maybe I've played up to it, but I've had quite enough of being "Weird Uncle Bob". I spent ages trying to avoid being defined. But eventually when you have enough recognition, people can identify you in two quick sentences: "Robyn Hitchcock. Wacky aquatic songwriter."
I just thought it was time for a change. And I think you should try to avoid making the same album over and over again. Globe Of Frogs was a, sort of, summation of our career for the general public. It wasn't intended that way, but it came out that way. And I had a bit of a writer's block while I was doing it. Some of those songs were quite old, and some of them were knocked out very quickly. We managed to wrest Globe Of Frogs more or less from nowhere. I think Andy and Morris propped it up quite a lot, and made it at least musically interesting. There's not a lot of songs on there that sound good if you play them with just an acoustic guitar. Whereas I wrote tons of stuff for this one. And rather like Element Of Light, I think these are songs that are gonna sound good played solo.
So you dislike Globe Of Frogs?
I don't really dislike it. I think we all feel that we could have done better with Side One. Side Two I'm happier with, but I think there's a bit too much style-hopping on it. And at the end of the record, you think, "Is there any more?" Whereas I think by the time you finish Queen Elvis, you feel like you've had a record.
When you promote these things, you spend so much time talking about them that you lose whatever affection you have for them anyway. It's rather like when a baby is born and you think, "Great." And then the woman is up all night feeding the bloody thing for the next 18 months. Obviously, making a record is nothing compared to raising a child. But the glamour wears off very quickly. You see the finished cassette of Queen Elvis for the first time and it's very nice. But you know that in six months you're never gonna want to see the bloody thing again.
How has being on a major label changed your life, aside from the fact that people can get your records more easily now?
It obviously does change your life, and there's no point in pretending that it doesn't. You make a bit more money, and you receive a bit more respect. You do more interviews, you fly on planes more (and all the rest of that). It's reassuring, because for a long time we never really knew if what we were doing was any good or not -- but in a way that strengthened me, because I found that I did it anyway, regardless of how it was received. I just habitually wrote these songs, even when there was no market for them. I tried dropping out for a while, and I found that I was still writing them anyway. I couldn't kick the habit and become an artist or a comedian (which I had toyed with), so I carried on writing and found that when I started making records again, people wanted them.
So yeah, I feel vindicated. That's the biggest difference now. I'm not so embarrassed anymore. On the other hand, perhaps I'll start to feel cheap if I sell hundreds of thousands of records, because therfore it must be as much pap as Lionel Richie (or something). And Lionel of course would turn around and say, "What do you mean my stuff's pap? I'm an artist! I've changed people's lives. I've made people happy. I've comforted people when they're alone (even though I can't go out and shake your hand personally)."
Do you have much of an idea of who's listening to your records, and what place your songs occupy in their lives?
Well, the more it sells, the less of an idea I have. I would assume it's targeted at the same audience that R.E.M. has. Basically middle-class student types. It's hard for me to say, because I don't understand the class system over here as clearly as I understand the class system in England. For instance, there don't seem to be many middle-class black people. You never see a black person come to a gig of ours in England, whereas you do over here. It's not stuff to dance to. It's not to put on in the background and talk over (which many records are).
The problem with a lot of Popular music is that it's designed to be not listened to while you're listening to it, so it doesn't make you stop in your tracks. If you listen to Michael Jackson or Madonna (or whatever), it's meant to make you push on, work out, get up, drive that car, pour the milk over those cornflakes, feel good about yourself. We do most of our stuff in 4/4 as well, but ours is much more stop-and-think-and-look around. It isn't so driving.
A lot of records are meant to make you feel pleasantly numb, and make everything look all right. You play it on the latest CD equipment, and it makes you feel like you're sitting in one of those chrome chairs and your hair's looking nice and you're gonna go on a date with someone who looks nice and you're gonna have children who look nice and you're gonna be working out when you're 53 and you're never gonna go bald and you'll be able to get it up when you're 92 and you'll be able to enjoy champagne and schnapps without ever getting drunk and you can handle everything and it's a wonderful world and you feel good about yourself and it's too bad about those people who are starving out there but someone's gotta starve because that's the wheel of karma. It's that, sort of, acceptance, that Pop music's meant to make you feel -- and mine doesn't.
So, paradoxically, as an artist aiming higher than the crass Pop ideal -- yet still working within the corporate music industry -- your mission is basically to make people pay for the privilege of being made to feel uneasy by your work.
Hmmm, maybe. It's just not meant to stupefy people, I suppose. It's not meant to make you violently unhappy (or anything like that). I'm not thrusting a catalogue of the evils of the world under people's noses, like Lou Reed (or something). Generally, if you want to know that, you'll know it already. And if you don't know that, a record isn't the thing that's going to inform you. People can prop up their consciences with music any day -- or numb their consciences with music. And I'm not interested in either of those.
We've always been very traditional melodically, so we never stuck out as being part of the avant-garde. Our music's at odds with the words. It always has been. And that's why people have never really known how to take it. I can't account for why that is. I just don't really like violent, disruptive avant-garde music. I think Captain Beefheart was the furthest out that I ever got. He had a terrific sense of humour and humanity with the words, which I found was, sort of, missing in his disciples -- like Pere Ubu. Musically, I'm terribly straight. I like a good tune. As far as I'm concerned, I'm just The Beatle That Time Forgot.
I suppose that what we do is different, but I've never really sought to be strange. You're obviously putting on an act. Is J.G. Ballard putting on an act? Was Lewis Carroll putting on an act? Was Edward Lear or Captain Beefheart putting on an act? Is David Lynch putting on an act? These people eat and walk around, and they can't be that far gone or they'd walk into lampposts and get concussions and die. You shouldn't confuse artists with their art. I guess that some of us just have a taste for the exotic.
If you were really as much of an eccentric as people seem to think you are, then you'd still be at home playing songs to yourself rather than sitting in a conference room at a major record company promoting your new LP.
Well, they define me as eccentric and strange, not me. I'm always at pains to stress that I'm pretty normal. I'm not interested in sport, I'm interested in art. I'm one of those types (so I suppose that I do have elitist tendencies). I come from a middle-class background, rather than a working-class background. But my dad was interested in sport. This whole thing of defining a person doesn't seem to be that interesting, really: you drill deeper and deeper into someone, and you're just gonna come out at the other side.
I'm sure Captain Beefheart wasn't immune to the charms of Rock music, or he wouldn't have become a Rock musician. He just decided, sensibly, that it was over for him as far as that went and that he was gonna concentrate on painting. So he decided to move on rather than staggering around trying to repeat former glories (although he's someone who's never received his due, and, I think, has always felt bitter about it). From what I've heard, I think he's actually making more money as a painter -- he exhibits at Julian Schnabel (and trendy places like that). And as far as I can see, he's doing well not because he's Captain Beefheart: he's just accepted as a good artist.
The Egyptians really seem to have come together as a unit over the past few years.
Yeah, it's great, because I have it both ways -- I feel like I'm a solo act and a bandmember. I do solo stuff as well. And the band is something that's just evolved. That's simply time. When we started, there wasn't a particularly strong empathy because for years when we played together there was always a fourth person. And then the three of us got together again in '84, and we just found that we started playing well together. It's just something that evolved through time and practice (and lack of practice). I think they're very elegant players. I think something like "Knife" shows that, or "Swirling". In The Soft Boys, I think we were all inclined to be over-elaborate. And now we're able to play more simply if it's needed. They were technically way ahead of me when we started, and we needed another guitarist to execute my ideas. I could make guitar lines up, but I couldn't play them.
A lot of people -- including Peter Buck -- regard you as a great guitarist.
Well, that's awfully sweet of him. But I don't know. As far as Rock guitar goes, Clapton and Hendrix and Jimmy Page and that lot said all there was to say 20 years ago -- although I think Richard Thompson's pretty ace. And Tom Verlaine is a pretty good player. But by and large it's all been done. I still never know when I start whether I'm gonna get it right or not. I have a problem. I'm, sort of, dyslexic with playing. I often play the chords backwards. I've got better at it, but sometimes in rehearsal it's awful.
Peter Buck has emerged as a, sort of, honorary part-time meber of The Egyptians. How does he fit into the band?
It's just something that's evolved gradually. I've known Peter for quite a while. I met him four or five years ago. It transpired that Peter's a guy who likes to play, so he'd be up all night in the studio and then come whizzing in and play on our demos and things. He seemed to be in town a lot, so he played a lot of encores with us. And then he'd play on our encores over here. And we toured with R.E.M.. And he flew over and played on Globe Of Frogs. And then we actually managed to afford to fly him over to play on Queen Elvis. And he was actually on the last two tours we did. The point is that he energizes things. He's not a virtuoso -- unlike Kimberley Rew, who was technically brilliant but who never knew when not to play.
Kimberley could get his fingers into places that Peter and I could barely dream of (probably because he's a very shy person who can't express himself any other way). The Soft Boys eventually degenerated into a guitar battle -- which Kimberley generally won -- with me in one speaker and him in the other (and the rhythm section drowned out and the vocals almost inaudible). Kimberley should really just stand there with a rhythm box and just solo. He'd be a phenomenon. But instead he, sort of, disguises himself as a Pop musician.
Are you conscious of The Soft Boys' influence on subsequent bands?
I'm not aware of The Soft Boys having had any influence at all, actually. The Soft Boys weren't defined. Maybe that was our own fault, but we didn't want to confine ourselves. We wanted to feel that we could be eclectic and play anything. Which was death, because it makes you much harder to identify. It also, kind of, leaves you open to charges of being clever-but-heartless. And then it, kind of, settled into, basically, being me recording my songs with a band (though we still called it The Soft Boys). I was getting better as a songwriter. And Kimberley and Matthew [Seligman] -- being straight-ahead players -- responded to the straight-ahead stuff. So we did things like "Queen Of Eyes" and "Kingdom Of Love" and "I Wanna Destroy You". Really, the thing about The Soft Boys was probably that we reflected things like The Beatles and The Byrds and Syd Barrett, and that we carried the flag of our influences. Which is rather like saying, "I read these books when nobody else did." That's nothing to be remembered for. I'd rather be remembered for writing a song or doing a good gig.
I get the feeling that the female characters in the songs on Queen Elvis are real people, as opposed to the female characters on your previous records (who often tended to come off as archetypes or totems).
That's a bit tricky. It's like asking, "Do you treat a woman as an individual or an archetype when you meet her?" Maybe all men make women into archetypes when there's actually a real person there -- just because they're too busy projecting their archetypes and their complexes onto a real woman. And I daresay that women do the same with men. Maybe that's one of the problems with relationships: people are brought up with storybook ideas of the opposite sex. People bring these things out in each other. And it's probably largely a clash of projections as opposed to real people. I think that probably accounts for 80% of the failures in relationships.
I'm sure there are more real women on this record. (Although you can also generate all sort of emotions over statues and dead icons like Marilyn Monroe (as opposed to actual real people you've met).) The closer I can get to real emotion, the better. And if I could write a song that was powerful enough with just three words, I'd do it. I've done all this elaborate stuff musically and lyrically with The Soft Boys. I still like to avoid Rock cliches in words, I suppose....
I just don't want to do an LP called L.A. Babes or Rock Like A Bitch, just to drive up the sales figures. It might be ironic, but the awful truth is that the money wouldn't be ironic. I wouldn't say, "Oh, this is funny," and give it to someone on the street. And that's the power of money. It's like any drug: the more you have, the more you want.
That's the dilemma of being on a major label, isn't it? If you'd stayed on Relativity, there wouldn't have been much danger of you becoming a greedy Rock star (whereas on A&M the possibility, however remote, does exist).
I'm on my guard. I, sort of, turn 360 degrees every night, standing holding my spear and looking out over the cold and lonely hills. And when the dollar bills come shuffling towards me, I go, "Back, back," and I step up to the ringleader and pin it down and say, "Okay, the rest of you dollars can come up -- but only one at a time, and no tricks," and when I've got enough dollars I say, "All right, the rest of you back, back," and I herd four or five grand in at a time. And I'm decontaminated afterwards, and checked to make sure that I haven't got any green on me.
Money and fame work together to push you into the worst kind of hole: to go around believing you're all-powerful. I remember David Crosby saying that back in the mid-'70s. He must have been high as a kite when he said it, but he knew what was happening. And it was pretty sad that he didn't have the strength to stop it. I do hear a lot of people now saying, "Love it, Robyn. Great. Wonderful stuff." I remember when all of those people were around Captain Sensible when he was having his hit. "Sounds great. Nice one, Captain." "Sounds great" was the motto in the office when he was earning all that money. It was just, sort of, a catch-phrase they had -- and I thought, "Yeah. Sounds great when you're dead."
People who have yet to be born are gonna make money off of Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe and John Lennon. And I don't particularly want to join that queue of dead icons. I know it happens. I just hope that I'm old enough to not be affected by it. I don't think it's affected our artistic output at all -- except as much as it's given us the money to do things like put string quartets on the record. Where before, I thought, "My god, we're not gonna recoup. What's the point of hiring a percussion kit for £20?" Andy would be a bit more cavalier about it, but I used to find that activity painful. I'm a bit more relaxed about it now. Now we're able to finish our records off properly.
You handled your own management for quite a while during the Globe Of Frogs period. I'd imagine that that must have been a bit at odds with your role as an artist.
It became a big strain after a while. After a while I had to take the phone off the hook. The buck stopped at me. Anything that would have to be dealt with they would have to talk to me -- because there was nobody else to do it. Any decision -- rehearsal time, recording time, gigs, agencies, -- had to go through me. It's boring to go into, but it mounted up (and thankfully it's different now).
Have you written many songs about the music business?
Well, there's "Rock 'n' Roll Toilet" on A Can Of Bees, and "Trash" on Invisible Hitchcock. But not many recently. I've written a song called "Queen Elvis" (which isn't on the album). It's about stars. I sometimes think of writing songs like "Rock 'n' Roll Accountant", but I never get around to it. I sing it to myself in the shower quite a bit, though.
How significant is the "Queen Elvis" image? Do you anticipate it being misunderstood?
I did ask about that, and everyone assured me that it wouldn't. The name of Elvis is generally taken in vain -- and I'm not trying to strike a blow at Elvis Presley or the Queen of England. To me, they're both just unreal icons behind which there are or were real people. As I've said in dozens of interviews, Elvis here is the equivalent of the Queen in England. Elvis is a, sort of, symbol of America -- as much as a hamburger and as much as Mickey Mouse. But Elvis was a real person. Mickey and the hamburger weren't. Neither the Queen nor Elvis ever gave interviews, so we don't know anything about them. There's a million photos, but you've no idea how they really felt. So I thought of putting together those two icons -- each of which make sense individually, but when you put them together it adds up to something monstrous and unreal. Which I thought was probably a good keynote for the record.
Do you feel much of a desire now to have your work heard by new people? To broaden your audience beyond people who listen to college radio?
I wouldn't mind having my stuff get out to ethnic people or working-class people or blue-collar people or people who aren't college-educated. But certainly not one song, because being a one-hit wonder is even worse than having no hits at all. People come to your gigs expecting to hear the hit single, and don't understand what the rest of it's about. The only safe way to do it is to do it like R.E.M. -- they had so much support that their singles got into the Top 20. Not because people were told that this was the hot new CHR band, but because they've just got so many fans. As opposed to being a one-hit wonder, where you've got nothing to back it up -- that's like having a peak without having a mountain. I'd much rather have the bottom of the mountain -- at least that way, you can find your own way down.
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