Portland Online Musicnet
November 17, 1999
POMN Interviews Robyn Hitchcock
by Queenie
On November 17th, 1999, Robyn Hitchcock came to Portland to perform at the Aladdin Theater. Due to traffic, the band didn't arrive until one hour before the doors opened, and Robyn didn't arrive until 30 minutes before the show was to begin. Tim Keegan and his band Departure Lounge were still soundchecking as the crowd came in from the cold. As always, I looked around and marveled at the variety of people Robyn Hitchcock attracts. There were young hippies, older hippies, pretty girls, businessmen, preppies, nerdy intellects and children. And there were the people that you see every time -- the fans who are in it for life. But that's the way it goes with Robyn. It's never a phase, something that you'll grow out of. Once he gets his musical and lyrical hooks into you, you will never get them out again.
Once the show began, Departure Lounge proved themselves to be excellent vocalists, thrilling the audience with three-part harmonies. Having witnessed the sound check earlier in the evening, we knew that the monitors were not working the way Tim needed them too. But they pulled it off despite the technical difficulties, and the crowd was very receptive to his new band's kinder, gentler brand of Rock.
After a short break, Robyn appeared to much fanfare, and immediately started into "Mexican God", a song off of his latest release Jewels For Sophia. A song or two later, Tim Keegan came back to assist Robyn on a few numbers. Then Departure Lounge's bass player came out. Then finally, the moment the crowd had been waiting for...Robyn performed with a full backing band for the first time in seven years. Longtime fans were pleased to see him playing with Kimberley Rew again -- a guitarist that Robyn played and recorded with twenty years ago under the name "The Soft Boys". They banged out one classic after another, including favorites like "Madonna Of The Wasps" and "Queen Of Eyes", and several songs from the new record, like "No, I Don't Remember Guildford", "Elizabeth Jade", "Antwoman", and "Viva Sea-Tac".
It was an amazing, high-energy performance, and for those who were aching to see Robyn play with a group again, it was absolutely satisfying.
After the show, webmaster Ken and I had an opportunity to go backstage and speak with Robyn. The entire interview is available here in Real Audio format, and also as text.
Ken: Great show tonight, by the way. I was thrilled to see you with a band again.
Oh thanks, thanks.
Ken: How did you get hooked up with Kimberley again?
Well, we've just, sort of, gradually seen more of each other over the last decade I suppose, really. You know, it wasn't like we had a big falling out or anything. But we had different things...you know, he's a songwriter, obviously -- he wrote "Walking On Sunshine" -- and I think in The Soft Boys it was always my songs. And he didn't have an outlet for his songs, and there was probably a degree of tension there. You know it, was twenty years ago -- it all came out in guitar battles. But he's now...he's been through the Katrina And The Waves scenario (which is now sort of winding down), and he's made his own album. And I've done my...you know...had my...whatever it is...songs. So, there we are. He'd, sort of, turn up and play on encores in Cambridge, and then he'd start coming down to play encores in London. And, you know, he would travel thousands of miles to, sort of, go and play. He loves playing, basically. He's a playaholic.
Ken: He's a wonderful player.
Yeah. I, sort of, also realized what a pedigree player he is. He's not as over-the-top...he doesn't go over the top so fast. He's an older man, doesn't climax so quickly. And it does sound very good, us playing together. You know, just the old left and right channels if you like -- him on one side and me on the other. And we do have very distinct styles, but I think...back in The Soft Boys it worked, but I think it works probably even better now, 'cause we're a bit more tempered. But he's still very intense as a player, he gets going straight away. You know, naught to 500 in ten seconds (which I like).
Ken: He's got a lot of energy.
There's no hanging about, yeah. So, you know, I don't think it's, kind of, revoltingly mellow. I really dislike middle-aged Rock music. I think you should have a license to be in a band or have an electric guitar over forty. So I do it with a pinch of salt.
Ken: Well, I think you two complement each other incredibly well.
Oh, thanks.
Ken: I mean, you can tell that you guys have a lot of history playing together. Vocally, I think you guys work together incredibly well too.
Oh, that's nice.
Ken: The harmonies throughout the whole evening tonight were incredible.
Yes, well...and also Tim...I mean, Tim...he has quite a range. He can actually sing very low -- but in tune -- if the monitors are working. And Kim generally sings higher than me. So we can get that harmony sandwich going.
Ken: That leads me to my next question. How did you get hooked up with Tim Keegan?
I met him in Jefferson Holt's kitchen. Jefferson used to manage R.E.M.. And Jefferson's ex-girlfriend, Jennifer, was going out with Tim. And Jennifer and Tim came out to Jefferson's place, New Year's Day '93. And I found out he was from Guildford -- another nice home county, middle class lad. And we, sort of, then gradually started hanging out in London a bit. But really socially more than anything. And then we'd, sort of, get the guitars out after supper (or whatever). I mean, it's all been quite gentle really. There was no, sort of, audition or anything like that. We just, sort of, got on well. So Tim appears in the film Jonathan Demme did of me (called Storefront Hitchcock). And he's been on the last couple of albums. And I've borrowed him and his musicians to the extent where I've got virtually the whole Lounge on stage with me at various points. And Kim, so...but it's just been organic. It's not really that I've had to go out and form a band. I've just been lucky enough to get a bunch of people come along and play -- and even do a whole tour.
Ken: How do you feel about playing with a band again -- doing a full tour with a band versus the solo thing?
Well, it's fun because I haven't done it for a while. And it's also fun because the show builds up -- as you saw from me starting by myself -- so it's based around my voice and guitar rather than being based around, "Well, we've got a band here, so we'd better make them play on everything." Well, what's the point of having a drummer if he doesn't come in until the seventh song? If you've got a band, it's more like that everyone's got to be in on everything. So, it fits in. I can do a, sort of, if you like, career retrospective -- trying to summon up songs from the last twenty years.
Ken: Do you plan on formally forming a band?
You mean consecrating it?
Ken: Yeah, actually making it a real. "This is The Robyn Hitchcock Band." Or, The new Egyptians.
Oh, no no. It's certainly not the new Egyptians. No, we're not going to get married. Tim's got his own act. They will get signed or something hopefully soon. And they may be off in Paraguay or whatever next time I want to do...Kim too is putting out a record. And I just hope that everyone will be around when we feel like playing. But it's surprising how many places people will turn up. Tim, he's particularly mobile (and Lindsay lives in Nashville). But it's surprising -- it's like salmon going 6,000 miles to spawn and die or whatever. Musicians, you'll say, "Well, we've been in Chicago..." "Oh, well look! So am I!" So it's going to be more like that -- but hopefully we'll be able to keep it going. But I think also from experience...I've learned that the less pressure you're under to be an act on a career basis, the more fun it is. So, I'm essentially, if you like, a solo act. I know I can do my show for an hour or whatever and entertain people, take them across the emotional spectrum -- which is what I believe a good entertainer should do: you can make people laugh, you can make them cry (or at least reflect). And that's my concern about myself as a performer: to get better at that. To get broader and deeper around the emotional clock.
Kim: With Kimberley kind of back in the picture -- playing on a regular basis -- has there been any talk of a Soft Boys reunion at all?
No.
Ken: Is that something you've thought about at all?
Not really. I occasionally think it would be fun to get the Underwater Moonlight Soft Boys back together. But, I don't think you can recreate things. I don't think you can ever go back. I think with Morris and Andy and I, we had five years not playing together or whatever (actually in Morris's case it was less). But the batteries had recharged, and there was obviously enough life in it to keep it going. So we got The Egyptians...Robyn Hitchcock And The Egyptians...going in the mid-'80s to the early-'90s. And I think by then, the batter had gone flat again. Kim and I, having had sixteen...seventeen years apart, can go out and do a tour and a few songs. But it's not really going back to anything. It's just, sort of...finding stuff -- especially now -- that works. We do a couple of Soft Boys songs, but Kimberley's presence doesn't mean that I'm trying to rekindle The Soft Boys. They were all my songs anyway (although they were group arrangements -- very early Soft Boys stuff was, kind of, more arrangements than it was songs). And those things...great...but I don't know, really, whether we'd ever bother to get everyone together and do that again. It's just, sort of...it's been, and it's on record. I think it's just a question of just getting the continual evolution of the show, rather than saying, "Hey, let's squeeze ourselves back in the corsets and play Hamlet one more time!"
Queenie: The majority of songs on the new record (I noticed) are either for or about women -- moreso than any other record of yours that I can think of. I'm just kind of wondering where that's coming from. Just been hanging around with a lot of woman lately?
[Laughs] Um, no, not really. But just over the course of a life, I suppose, there's various relationships -- real and imaginary -- to dwell on. So it's more that. Or not even relationships, but thinking about somebody as herself and what she seems like. So there's just various...I suppose there's different...I mean, I noticed that: that a lot of the titles are female. But then, you know, crews of sailors will name ships after women -- and they're just full of men. Bomber pilots would paint "Sleazy Suzie" or whatever on the door, with nice legs and a load of bombs to show how many people they've killed underneath. So, I don't know...there's different approaches...there's different ways of seeing it. I don't know whether there's any more insight into women than there was, or whatever. Possible it's not...I think there was a slightly, sort of, psychotic/misogynist element toward women that I had in some of the earlier songs. Or, towards maybe one or two particular people that I was feeling vengeful about. There's probably some of that element. But I hope it...I hope it's...it's simpatico, really. I don't know. I hope it's alive, anyway. I just hope it's not dull as well.
Ken: Has your daughter followed in your footsteps at all with music? Does she show an interest in it? Or, has she picked up an instrument...does she have a desire to do what her dad does?
No, no. I mean, not in terms of playing. She's very...she and my stepson are both very...music's very important to them, and they make very...they're very astute about music. But neither of them have actually, sort of, shown any desire to be a professional musician. I think it's difficult to go into the same areas that your parents were in. I mean, it's not like I'm impassively famous or anything. In fact, sometimes if you are, then one of your kids will do it like "Marley and Lennon and Dylan and Son". But, my father was an author and a painter -- but he didn't have anything to do with music. He liked his music (that's always a good sign). My girlfriend knows an awful lot about music -- she's got a very good ear. But, she's never wanted to play or sing herself. So I think I just went out somewhere else that my father wasn't. so I colonized my own territory. I, sort of, dug a tunnel under the compound and came up in the bushes so I was out of his hair...I wouldn't be competing with him. I would be doing something creative, but it wasn't that same field. And I would suspect that my kids unconsciously feel the same. You know, "Let's go somewhere else where he hasn't been."
Ken: Makes sense.
Queenie: Is there a significant difference in your popularity in different countries? I guess mostly, England-versus-America?
Yeah. I've never been popular in Britain. I mean, I'm better known in The States than I am anywhere else. In some ways it really just boils down to being metropolitan rather than country. So, I can play in Madrid or London or New York, or something, and it tends to be metropolitan music. It's stuff that I suppose requires a degree of sophistication. But there are bunches of people in places all around the world now. It's rather like, sort of, dirt that just gets stuck in the cracks. That's not a very nice analogy for an audience! [Everyone laughs] Oh, let's say "gunk". But there's, sort of, a residue of people that build up in these little crevasses (there's a nicer way of putting it) -- like moss that grows in a crevasse outside of the howling winds and the driving rain. There's this little stuff that grows down in the chasms and the ravines, and that's where they are. Probably some of them are even in Singapore or something. But I only go to the places that I can afford to go.
Ken: Did your draw change when Perspex Island came out...with the release of that record?
No. That was their intention I think -- A&M. But actually, probably the gate increased the most in the mid- to late-'80s -- around whenever Element Of Light and "Balloon Man" (and stuff).
Ken: I know there was a big commercial push on that record...
Oh, there was.
Ken: Seeing you on letterman (and various things).
Well, we were on that as well in '89 with "Madonna Of The Wasps". I think I broke a string. It was...no, really, they try and do those sorts of things. But their problem is that they tended to push what they thought was the most acceptable version of me -- which usually turned into Robyn Hitchcock Lite (the prime example being a song called "So You Think You're In Love", which was basically like a Ruttles song -- it was a great little proto-Beatles song with a couple of good lines and a nice tune, but it wasn't really me).
Ken: it was definitely...having been a fan for a long time...that it wasn't typical Robyn Hitchcock, that it was something...it definitely struck me as being a different avenue.
Queenie: I like that song.
Well, it's all right. But I do a very broad spectrum of songs -- my influences are quite broader -- and I will write...I mean, as I said, I think it's partly the fact that what I do can't be encapsulated easily: it's not like my best song's also the one that will get on the radio. Whereas, you get The Psychedelic Furs, and "The Ghost In You" is the hit and it's also one of the strongest songs on the record. With me, the strongest song on the record might well be something that just wouldn't get airplay. What I do can't be condensed down into three minutes, you know? I haven't had hit singles (and I've never really been about that). I suppose I came in when you made albums...all those people who could have albums deals in the early-'70s who weren't expected to have top forty hits. I mean, like Led Zeppelin (who sold masses of records never had a top forty hit). Or Floyd -- between, you know...Barrett...cracking up and The Wall -- didn't have a hit but they became massive. But you could do what you did via albums. But now it's gone back to...it's been getting more and more like that since the late-'80s. And now it's absolutely mandatory: if you don't have something that can be made into a top forty hit via the radio or a soundtrack, then you're invisible. So the climate has become harder for people like me to be on major labels. I'm fortunate, I suppose, in that I've been around a long time and therefore there's a residue. All those folks in the crevasses getting mossy -- sometimes the moss will spread, sometimes it'll die. But there's a culture there. But it's become very monolithic again, the way it's sold.
Ken: I've noticed -- from what you're just saying as far as the moss in the cracks...that kind of thing -- at least in Portland, your following seems to be extremely loyal. Do you find that to be the case around the country...around the world?
Yeah, yeah, actually. I mean, there's certain areas where...people are going to be...there's more or less of them. There's not a long-term following in Oklahoma City or something (having said that, I played there in the summer on The Flaming Lips tour and had a great time -- they were all whooping and hollering in the guitar solos and I didn't even have a band with me, either). You just find some way of connecting with people. What I've seemed to have found now...also, I seem to playing more in Europe of late -- in continental Europe -- so I'm just, sort of, discovering a similar thing. It's not massive. But there's been enough time for it to sink into them, and they realize that it's worth coming back for.
Queenie: I think the Internet has a lot to do with musicians more like yourself that aren't the top forty Ricky Martins or whatever. The fans can really get on there and connect and trade their tapes...
Right, they talk to each other.
Ken: This interview is actually for an Internet broadcast. How aware are you of all the various Robyn Hitchcock fansites and the tape-trading? And, there's hundreds of bootlegs out there being traded across the Internet...
Queenie: You're very big in cyberspace.
Well, there you are. You know, being only really exists in the void. I don't know...I don't have a computer, I'm not drawn to it. I don't really particularly want to look at it. I know there's stuff there, and it's great if it keeps the whole thing alive. And also the Internet is new, and it may settle down. For some people it's an obsession, and as it continues it may well sink into it...find its place... I don't know. I mean, it's fine if they want to do it. I'm just not...there's enough looking at screens already, without having to look at screens...most people work in front of a screen all day and go home and they watch television. I've heard people say that the trouble with computers is that they eat into quality TV time! "I can't watch enough television because of my computer." (!) [Everyone laughs] So I'm really happy to be free of it. But, you know...like the drug-dealer who doesn't touch the stuff himself but sells it, I'm very happy to use it. I have my own site, and you can buy all vinyl records. And the new Star For Bram (the husband record to Jewels For Sophia) is coming out through that. So it's obviously useful.
Ken: How do...one more quick? How do you feel about, actually, all the bootlegging and tape-trading (and that whole issue)?
Queenie: I know you know, 'cause you said something last time you were here...there was kind of a pause, and you said, "I apologize to everyone who's bootlegging for this enormous pause."
Oh! [Laughs] I think (or assume) that people that buy bootlegs have got all your records anyway. And I also assume that, essentially with me...I could be wrong, but, that it's trading rather than selling.
Ken and Queenie: Oh yeah.
People have, sort of, sent me CDs saying, "For trade only," and, "This is not for sale," and...no, I think it's good. I think it's good that people document things. They, kind of, catch things that will have more life in them than records ever will -- because records are much more self-conscious. A record, you can always go back a do again. A gig you can't. So I've always preferred the live stuff, and I've always thought that had more life in it and that's good. We will probably get going...A Star For Bram is coming out on my independent label Editions PAF!, and Editions PAF! may release, sort of, other tapes of mine that I've got. Just stuff that's lying around over the last ten years (and things).
Ken: That'd be great.
But again, for collectors...I don't know...I assume I'm not, sort of, being monstrously ripped off. It's great, really -- as long as it's not intrusive.
Ken: Well everything we've seen has been totally on trade, or fans: "Hey, if you like this you'll love this, let me send it to you, what's your address?"
Queenie: "Here, have this seventh-generation copy of something that was recorded in a pocket..."
Those are great, 'cause then you get that lovely hissing sound and everything. And also with those, you don't have to worry about mechanicals, which...although it would be nice to have the mechanicals in terms of songwriting things. If you release a record with cover versions on it, you have to pay the publishers. And if you release the...you have to sort out your own back, and things. So, I think it's great. It's lovely. Are we Okay?
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