ROBYN HITCHCOCK GOD WALKS AMONG US

ROBIN HITCHCOCK GOD WALKS AMONG US

FEATURES

Bill Holdship

In his own words, some people expect Robyn Hitchcock to be �a kind of exotic species of plant� or a �wigged—out acid casualty� in the vein of Syd Barrett or Roky Erickson. He�s actually quite serene, pleasant, unpretentious and reasonable in every sense. He says �No, no, not at all� in reference to drugs. He is very funny (though he doesn�t always smile after his jokes, which can be confusing), considers himself a humorist (�I can quite honestly sing about Reagan and watermelons in the same line�), and says that he is often removed from his own material. If not a genius, he�s the most brilliant rock performer J. Kordosh and I have ever interviewed. He�s recorded at least eight albums and countless singles and EPs. He�s never released a bad song. He is possibly the best and most important songwriter making music today. He is very tall and has excellent taste in clothes. He is great, neat, fab and wonderful in every way.

Only two of his records have been released in America, both on small labels. Many people have never heard of him. He may be like Lou' Reed, in that his influence will really be appreciated 10 years down the road. Peter Buck has often said that R.E.M. were more influenced by the Soft Boys (Hitchcock�s original band) than they were by the Byrds. The Replacements asked him to produce their album, though he doesn�t think he�d �have been able to do much for them. I think we�d have all gotten uncontrollably drunk, and that would have been it.� He is sometimes called �the father of the psychedelic revival.�

�I think the Soft Boys were sort of the Velvet Underground of their day, going in the opposite direction of everyone else at the time,� he agrees. �As for having an effect on people, that�s happening now with the Paisley Underground and all that. Which is a bit of an insult to those bands, because they�re all different—one of the few things they have in common is they�ve heard our stuff. But in regards to 10 years time, I just hope I�m around to enjoy it. I�m not interested in working for dead posterity, f wouldn�t call it the psychedelic revival. I don�t know what it is yet. The good bands—the good songwriters, if there are any, will carry on and the bad ones won�t. They�ll change their clothes to whatever, but they will persist.�

Songwriting is the key to Hitchcock�s greatness. He considers it a craft. He�s a traditionalist; there�s an entire history of rock �n� roll lurking in his very melodic material. He�s most often compared to Syd Barrett, John Lennon and Bob Dylan, admits that all three were major influences, and manages to merge some of their best—albeit most darkly comic (groovy decay, you know)—aspects into his own music and lyrics. It�s all delivered in a deadpan, flat British vocal that goes back to Ray Davies but can be traced through Bowie, Cockney Rebel, the Only Ones, the Church and Lloyd Cole. He also considers songwriting to be �magic� as in the unconsciousness and �incantations� and all that stuff. In the best possible sense, he sounds like something you�ve heard hundreds of times yet really never heard before.

�I�m a natural by evolution,� the 32-year-old Hitchcock explains. �It�s taken me a very long time to mature as a person and a songwriter. I�m a late developer, and I draw on a tradition to make what I do. I had never thought of being a songwriter, but I�d learned hundreds of songs by other people. Dylan and the Beatles had a really strong backlog of other people�s material. Their roots went down deep, and they drew a lot out. Whereas someone like the Sex Pistols were based on Iggy Pop and a few other things like that. There was no love of music involved in that, and they weren�t able to develop. They could do one thing well, and that was it. They got a disproportionate amount of media attention, and rock history changed for the worse for 10 years or so. When the Sex Pistols came out, the establishment thought they were crap, and the establishment was right. Rock �n� roll doesn�t need destroying. It needs nourishing.�

It was the Sex Pistols and the whole punk trip that kept the Soft Boys from getting the recognition they deserved in their own country when they formed in Cambridge in 1977. �We couldn�t unlearn our craft and suddenly pretend that we knew only one chord,� he says. �We were interested in three-part harmonies and all the rest.� The Soft Boys included bassist Andy Metcalfe and drummer Morris Windsor (who also play with the Egyptians, Hitchcock�s current band)—while Robyn shared guitar duties with Kimberly Rew, who now plays and writes for Katrina & The Waves. �We grabbed Kimberly in a moment of greed,� he explains, �but he wasn�t the right guy for it. It all got too topheavy, a guitar crash basically. We�re still in touch, though. I think people tend to give him a bit of a hard time because they assume he�s going to sound like the Soft Boys, but it�s like John Cale doesn�t sit around doing old Lou Reed songs, other than �Waiting For The Man.��

�I�m not married, and I don�t have a dead wife. And if I did have a wife, she wouldn�t be dead. ��

The Soft Boys released two albums, of which Underwater Moonlight is a rock �n� roll classic, as well as several posthumous compilations. Following the band�s demise, Hitchcock released two solo LPs—the brilliant Black Snake Diamond Role and the just slightly less brilliant Groovy Decay. �It is less isolated, less insulated than the Soft Boys,� he says of his solo stuff. �The Soft Boys really evoked only one emotion and that was psychosis.� Following the latter LP, he �wanted to get certain people who were always telling me what I should do out of my system,� so he retired from the business for two years. During this time, he wrote lyrics for ex-Damned bassist Captain Sensible, stockpiled new songs (he completes 25 to 30 a year) and worked on his drawing and painting (the cover of his new Gotta Let This Hen Out! LP is a Hitchcock original).

In 1984, Hitchcock heard Wading Through A Ventilator, a compilation EP of early Soft Boys singles, and suddenly realized that �we had been extremely good, but somehow got lost along the way.� The time seemed ripe, so he reenlisted Windsor and Metcalfe (the latter brought along keyboardist Roger Jackson) to do some new recordings, but first had to get an acoustic solo LP out of his system. (�I wanted to make a record entirely by myself that only I could be blamed for.�) The result was / Often Dream Of Trains. Sort of his own Plastic Ono Band in concept and technique, Hitchcock played every instrument (excepting one bass and sax track), and many proclaimed the LP a genuine masterwork.

His great Fegmania! LP followed soon afterwards, and though he had no plans to tour, he did agree to perform a benefit for a London club that was experiencing financial difficulties. Several more British gigs followed, which resulted in his new live Gotta Let This Hen Out! LP. �The next thing, people were on the phone from New York asking �Do you want to do a few gigs here?� Then that evolved into a three week tour—and then it�s �Do you want to do three weeks with R.E.M.?� So I fooled everyone. I went into the hospital to have a growth removed from my abdomen, came to America, wasn�t strong enough, and collapsed after a few gigs in San Francisco. So that took care of our summer tour.�

It would seem that fate has played a strong role in keeping Hitchcock from getting the exposure he deserves, be it the British punk explosion thing or missing the R.E.M. tour. Still, Hitchcock does ad-

mit that he�s �not that keen on having a huge profile. I�m really not interested in putting myself in a position where I get things flung at me—tomatoes, roses, chocolate, napalm, whatever. You have to be prepared to let people exploit you. For a long time, I wasn�t, and we paid the price by remaining in obscurity.�

Two themes that constantly pop up in Hitchcock�s songs are death and the potentially psychotic side of sex—though these elements seldomly come across as morbid due to his sense of humor and melodic gift. Still, with titles like �My Wife And My Dead Wife� or �Sounds Great When You�re Dead,� one could surmise that Hitchcock is obsessed with the subject. �Death is the one thing that you can�t get away from, and the one thing you can never know,� he explains. �lt�s sort of the Christmas present no one ever gets to unwrap and find out what it is. Some people are desperate for it, and others will save it until the last minute on Christmas day and then open it. That�s sort of the fascination and inescapability. Therefore,

I can�t think of any single thing more fascinating. You have to constantly deal with the insecurity of carrying on a life that at any point could suddenly be meaninglessly terminated. And there�s also so many different ways that people are dead when they�re still alive. Syd Barrett is an obvious case. Sounds Great When You�re Dead� was originally a thing on people who say �It sounds great when you�re stoned.�

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I thought just turn that around a bit, and it sounds great when you�re dead. And the dead wife may or may not be dead. Personally, I�m not married, and I don�t have a dead wife. And if I did have a wife, she wouldn�t be dead, so you can�t pin it to me personally.�

During the course of a nearly two-hour interview, Hitchcock talked in detail about a wide assortment of subjects. Some of these included the Incredible String Band, American �hip� culture, the creative process (�I don�t know how my mind works anymore than you know how your mind works�), Elvis Presley (he�s covered at least three Elvis songs), his father, British culture, his own compositions (on �Sometimes I Wish I Was A Pretty Girl�: �It�s based on Alfred Hitchcock�s Psycho—I�m imagining that I�m the girl in the shower who�s being stabbed by a man who thinks he�s his mother, so four people are involved�; on �My Wife And My Dead Wife�: �I saw it like Bewitched, but with the extra invisible person, sort of like a sitcom�; on �Heaven�: �It�s about looking over the cliffs of the Isle of Wight, and an attempt to combat cynicism�), new unreleased songs (�President Of Death� deals with Reagan�s speech at Bitburg �and also someone who�s wondering if he�s ever going to see his girlfriend again�), J. G. Ballard, Raymond Chandler (another new song is titled �Raymond Chandler Evening�), the MC5, John Sinclair, U2, modern pop music, politics in rock (he�s donating profits from his Bells Of Rhymney [yes, a Byrds cover] EP to the families of Britain�s striking miners—�Ten years ago, you could sort of switch it off, but inevitably I think you now can�t separate politics and art anymore than you can separate grass from the soil�), cynicism (�The problem with cynicism is it�s always comfortable and it gives you an excuse to then become what you despise�) and Marilyn Monroe as a man. But, since we much prefer devoting space in this mag to other musical giants like, say, Arcadia, none of this can be treated in any in-depth manner.

Suffice it to say that Robyn Hitchcock is great—I mean really great. A true pop genius for the 1980s. Do yourself a favor, and give him a listen today (Gotta Let This Hen Out! is a good place to start since it presents a fair cross-section of his career thus far). As he explains: �What I�m about is something long and inevitable and intractable—and I haven�t finished yet. It�s like a very long train, and you can�t see the beginning or the end of it. It�s just sort of endlessly pulling through the station. One day it�ll stop, and somebody�ll get out and explain everything.�