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Podcast Notes: Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin - Ian Astbury
Episode Overview
- Podcast Title: Tetragrammaton
- Episode Title: Ian Astbury
- Guest: Ian Astbury, frontman and founding member of The Cult
- Release Date: 2025
- Description: Ian Astbury shares insights from his musical journey starting with the post-punk group Southern Death Cult, evolving into The Cult, and discussing their blend of genres including post-punk, gothic rock, and hard rock.
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Key Themes and Discussions
Ian Astbury's Early Life and Musical Influences
- Born in 1962 in Liverpool, influenced by a family of women obsessed with The Beatles and The Rolling Stones.
- Early memories of music include shopping with his mother during The Beatles' rise to fame.
- His father, a merchant navy man, brought eclectic music home, influencing Astbury's varied tastes.
Transition Into Music
- Astbury began his music career with Southern Death Cult in 1980.
- Discusses the post-punk movement, the roughness of early environments, and the cultural shifts happening in Britain during his youth.
- Highlights the connection between music and societal conditions, mentioning the economic struggles in post-war Britain.
Evolution of The Cult
- After leaving Southern Death Cult, Astbury formed The Cult with guitarist Billy Duffy and others.
- The Cult's rise through the 1980s and 1990s with albums like *Love*, *Electric*, and *Sonic Temple*.
- Discussion on major hits: “She Sells Sanctuary”, “Love Removal Machine”, and “Fire Woman”.
The Role of Production
- Talks about working with Rick Rubin, emphasizing the importance of a raw sound and the challenge of stripping back overproduced tracks to find their essence.
- Rubin's influence in breaking down barriers in production, allowing artists to rediscover their authentic sound.
Cultural Context and Experiences
- Astbury shares experiences of growing up amidst cultural shifts, including the impact of punk rock and the New York Dolls.
- Reflects on the power of music as a form of escape and identity during turbulent times in his life.
Artistic Philosophy
- Astbury emphasizes the interconnectedness of art forms (music, visual art, and literature).
- Discusses the importance of being open to influence and the creative process, drawing parallels with historical figures like Van Gogh and Rothko.
- Mentions the importance of experiential wisdom from older generations in the music scene.
Spirituality and Personal Growth
- Astbury's spiritual journey is intertwined with his artistic expression. He mentions the influence of Buddhism and nature-based spirituality.
- Shares how his grandmother’s involvement in a spiritual church shaped his perspective on life and creativity.
Contemporary Reflections
- Astbury reflects on the current music landscape and the dangers of commercialism in the industry.
- Advocates for creativity that is authentic and unrestrained by industry expectations, recalling his experiences of being a product of the music business.
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Key Takeaways
- Influence of Background: Personal history and cultural influences play pivotal roles in shaping an artist's journey.
- Authenticity in Music: The importance of returning to raw sound over commercial production techniques.
- Cultural Commentary: Music as a reflection of societal conditions, capturing the spirit of the times.
- Interconnected Art Forms: A belief in the synergy between different artistic expressions and their collective impact on individual creativity.
- Spirituality in Art: A holistic view where spirituality, personal growth, and artistic expression intermingle.
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Conclusion Ian Astbury's conversation with Rick Rubin in this episode reveals a profound exploration of music, identity, and the creative process, framed within the context of personal experiences and broader cultural movements. His reflections on authenticity, spirituality, and the evolution of The Cult offer valuable insights into the life of an artist navigating the complexities of the music industry.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:02Tetragrammerton.
0:24I was born in 1962 the year the Beals broke, with my father had been three sisters, so three aunts, and then my mother had seven. So there was all these matriarchs raising me, and they were all obsessed with beetles and stones and pop. So I had that, I remember shopping with my mum when I was like 18 months old. Beetles are in Liverpool, we're in Liverpool shopping. Our mum was holding our hand and people freaking out. Yeah. It was 62. Unbelievable. So I'm 62 now. Yeah, so it's definitely a... Yeah, I'm right behind you, right there. Very, very close. Uh -huh. But I've been we've been together for a long time.
1:08Well, you've been together for a long time. You've been, since we met, since I first sat down with you. You weren't in the you and the dorm. You were out. I was still living in the dorm. You were still at the dorm? Yeah, I walked from the dorm every day to an electric lady. Right. Okay. So that is one thought that I was like, was it a dorm? Oh, yeah. I don't think I had ever produced an album before your album. I was working on the Beastie Boys album, but that was not done. It was still in process. And I wanted to ask you, I don't know how you knew about me, because all they were at that time were the seven -inch singles.
1:44Cookie Puss. I didn't make Cookie Puss though, but the Beasties. I heard that. Yeah. They made it. Yeah. But I was like, what are they doing? Yeah. What's going on in that world? I had to know everything about it. And then your name came up. You were either working with them or associated with them in some way. And then it was like, as we were going to the process of electric one, within called electric, it was called, I think I was trying to reenact a scene from Apocalypse Now in Richard Branson's Mansion. They put his in after love album. They put his in Beggars Banquet. it puts in this Richard Branson's studio in Oxfordshire, which goes back to the 13th, 14th century.
2:30There was an Irish war found running around, it was filled, and I was just lost because I was a city kid. And we had so much outboard gear, digital gear, and that seemed to be getting layered on every track. And I would come in, I'd be eating mushrooms at the field. I'd come in in the evenings, re -enacting the same from apocalypse now. I'd be full -cam of paint and come in and go like, what is this? It's so dense, I can't hear anything. And I'd already clicked with cookie -puss in my head and that stayed with me, the strip back sound. And that's why when I think we reached out to you, we said like, amazing.
3:08Do you think you could fix this? And I believe your response was like, give me two or three original tracks and we'll fix the rest of it. Mm -hmm. And from there we came to New York and we met with you. I remember you put on the blue cheer, some time blues, and I'm not gonna say what you said, but it's quite derogatory towards English music at that time, like overproduced, dense, much more kind of... I felt like the rock and roll had left. The animal wasn't in it. That energy had turned into something else. It had, I mean, I think growing up in North America was a real thing for me as well, because I grew up in Canada.
3:47So to me, New York City was mecca, it was a place that was mythical. And every Saturday morning I would watch religiously, soul train, and I would try and copy the dance moves, and I would watch this music. I was so caught up in it, and all the sports and everything. But just... Soul Train was the greatest. You know, and then... And then what year was it? 75 Pink Floyd came to Hamilton, Ontario. I was 13. How did you get from Liverpool to Ontario? Well, my mother was Scots. She was from Glasgow. And at the age of six weeks old, I was pretty much taking the Scotland. So we lived between Liverpool area.
4:31It was Birkenhead, it was across the river, the River Mersey. Where the ferry crossed the Mersey, that's where it goes to, Birkenhead. Which, as it considers, be Liverpool and people in that local area will let you know, like New Jersey, New York. But it's just right over the river. It's just literally over the river. It's right there. So, that's from that area. Mother's from Glasgow. So, I live between the two cities, and the early 70s, Britain was in an economic zone. And what was Glasgow like at that time? Very rough. Both cities have been bombed very heavily during World War II. So, I was born 17 years after the end of World War II.
5:06We've still playing in bond out buildings as kids. Everybody still had a post -war mentality rationing and fruit came in a can. Well. So Malcolm Claren talked about this. We were born in the culture of necessity, as opposed to the culture of abundance, availability. Yeah. And that's why that music, I honestly believe, came out at that time because it came out of a very desperate, necessary life force was coming through this world that had been bombed. And that's why the Beatles were so important. So your first memory of music sounds like your parents and the Beatles? Yeah, my dad was in the merchant navy.
5:50He traveled a lot and he brought records back. In fact, he was in Brooklyn in the 50s. He would bring back records like Paul Robson. Wow. And play them in the house. So growing up, you heard eclectic music. Yeah, my mother loved Johnny Mathis. Oh, fantastic. You got to hear all different things. I got to hear everything. That's great. I remember seeing Magical Mystery Tour in TV when it came out. Yeah. But he's been black and white. Wow. I remember trading yellow submarines, trading cards on the playground. Yeah. They were like, didn't have Pokemon cards. We had yellow submarine cards. Yeah. You know, pirate radio.
6:24Even then, it was pirate radio. In the 60s, late 60s, I had a small Japanese transistor radio. Eight or nine. And I had a single, there's one single, there's one mono, single ear plugs. So when I went to bed, when I was supposed to be sleeping, I was listening to Radio Luxembourg, could pick up a bit of Radio Caroline. So I was hearing this other music from other dimensions. Like I vaguely remember hearing writers on the storm in 70 -71. Came through this little headphones like something exotic, you know, at the edge of 10. And then Bowie, of course. The fact that you were able to hear these things and no one else was able to hear them at that time, How did that impact you?
7:06Do you think it would be different if it was playing on the radio and everyone heard it? Or was it special because it was like a secret that you were led in on? Well, because we moved around a lot, I was always a new kid at school. I went to about nine schools, going from Glasgow to Liverpool, area, Mersy side. I was always in -outside, I was always a new kid at school. But the constant was music. So I'd find the kids, there were the other kids on the fringes of the regular, you know, the more conservative kids that were program. We were not program. We were on the outside, I had long hair in the six days as well.
7:43So, music swap we identified with was like, what do you like? And be like, slayed, sweet, T -rex, bowie. Be like, okay, I'm with you. Slayed They started to skinheads, sweet were a bit more glam. They wore a lot more makeup and slayed. So sweet were kind of more clammy. Mark Bowlin was fem. Like if you're like bowling, you were definitely on the outside because he wasn't a geese. I love bowling. The first two singles are born. Oh, it's staggering. In fact, I think the doc just came out on him. Mark Bowen. But firstly things I bought was life on Mars with my own money and 25 pens and I think it was telegram time.
8:34Like seven inches, went to Woolworth and got them at 10 and that was it. That was zero point. I now had the actual holy relic in my hand. It was vibrating. It was a tantric weapon. The seven inch single ink went on and I was plating. What was your first memory of punk rock? Our first memory of punk rock? Well, I was in Canada at the time. And we emigrated to Canada in 1973 because the economy in Britain was really bad and there was no work and where there are who lived in Hamilton, Ontario. So she was able to sponsor my family to go to Canada. So my dad was like, well, we're in emigrate. We've got to choice from New Zealand, South Africa, Canada.
9:18Let's pick it out of the hat. I think they've written Canada on every single bit of paper. But it was fun game for the kids. That was a brother who was 11 months younger and a sister was five years younger. So we all picked the name out and he said, what do you got? It's like, okay, we're going to Canada. So I think the first thing was like being on the, coming from the airport in Toronto to Hamilton on a freeway in a big car, a massive car, looking out the window in absolute disbelief the architecture, the freeways, the size of the car. So different. So different. Yeah. Completely different planet.
9:57There was television shows coming from America that we saw. Mm -hmm. But being in it in 5D, you know, really in it. Yeah. And still BBC was so ubiquitous that I don't know how much US stuff you'd see. We got things like films, maybe. I remember stuff like, well, they've kind of films, my father would type me to see with things like, Lawrence of Arabia, David Lean, Peter O'Toole, who bowed adored. That's what he got. Let's dance look from Peter O'Toole. That was the character. Yes, so that was the kind of films with these epic romantic films that were telling us to do. Oh, I saw the jungle book, and I was seeing that, the Technicolor, which was really intense.
10:42The color was intense because the places we lived were in a post -war, very grey, quite monochromatic, and then you go and see a technical movie and you'll be like, whoa, I think the Beals were tapping into that with obviously, they went from Gothic, Tenements and Greyness and Bombed Outburnt and Northern Germany too, you know, having cups of tea and all of a sudden get psychedelic. So there was a new world of color and if you think there are album covers it did kind of go from a black and white world To a technic color world just over the covers but revolver to Rubber sole rubber sole revolver Then I think it was Sergeant peppers.
11:26I think that's right. Then that's like a full -sea change. That's nuts But there's so much going on But that was my first kind of impressions of North America. So it's Star Trek. Yeah, I'm a Star Trek But then coming to North America, and we got to our apartment, which was on the 11th floor of an apartment building, that my mind was blown. My dad said we got this TV set. It's a huge piece of furniture. It was an Admiral, was a moment of 48 channels, 48 channels in color. We could not believe this piece of machinery. It was It was alien to us. We had three channels in black and white. But the good thing was when we lived in the Merzyside area, you'd had top of the popters every Thursday night.
12:14And it was some reason to play later on BBC Wales because we're in the North West. So we'd see it on BBC Northwest, whatever that was. And then flip over and be able to see it again. That's the only way you can see Starman in 1972 when it was on in black and white. It's like you flip over to the BBC Wales. So maybe got to see half of it again or something like that. Remember that being on TV? But the thing Britain was that everybody saw pretty much every kid at that moment who was drawn into music and his new culture, post -war culture, the lightning, the voltage was coming through in the same channel.
12:52And that's what they were picking up on. So it was a collective experience. So other than the pirate radio that you've got to hear, because that was outside of that. Yeah, that was outside of that. There's a lot of pop magazines, mostly ended like Teenage Girls, Jackie. It's a magazine called Pop Swop, Color Pictures of your favorite pop stars, but we appear in these magazines. Tell these pictures out, they'll be on the walls of my aunt. You see these color pictures again, color, in this black and white world. The monochromatic world, you see these color images of whomever they were into. And as the time was progressing, the clothing was changing, the look was changing.
13:34That was our Instagram. It was actually tag -tiling, tearing pictures out of magazines. Because when I was in Canada, I was so homesick for the culture, I missed it. It was very different in Canada. And then I was at another, I was definitely on the outside, I was an immigrant and treated as such. So I wasn't with the regular native kids that had been there for a self -generations. So my group was like indigenous, one of my best friends was Jamaica, there was a German girl, didn't speak much English. That was my set. And like, kiss was very popular. But I saw the New York dolls on Christian's rock concert, whatever, like 74.
14:14I was like, oh, this. So you talk about punk rock? Yeah. Tell was probably the first time I saw anything. I just watched that clip the other day, that exact clip of the online guy. The personality crisis of something. That's what it was. You forget how unbelievable David Johansson and Johnny Thunder's, oh my god, you know, your teenage kid. It was a good group. There's a phenomenal group. Billion I bonded on that later. We went to see Johnny Thunder's and the early 80s in London, Liza. You actually ended up playing with him at Cat Club in New York. Fantastic. Very drunk. He wasn't in good shape.
14:55He was being held up on his stage, but I saw him fall off several stages over the stage. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There was a lot. I mean, it was a patriotic. It was just my path. I didn't separate that I had some sort of unique path. That was my life. That was my family, my life. It just was. I just accepted it. It just was and had to deal with the trials and tribulations of each change. I don't think my parents really understood the effect it had on us, the way it impacted us. All these different changes. But like I said, the music stayed constant and it was always there. If I needed some sort of escape, there's any transgressions or abandonment or whatever it was or being resented at school, a new school for being an immigrant kid or whatever the music would come on.
15:44I'd go home and put the music on. And that would be like, I'm in now in my place. It turns you question about Pomerot, I mean New York Dolls, yes, but we went back on a vacation in 77. And it was a Queen's Jubilee. And my grandfather wanted us to go see the Queen on the Royal Yacht. It was going down the Mersey, and we're on the Birken Head side. So we went to some point where you can see there's the Royal Yacht going by and everyone's waving, hello, the Queen, you know what I'm saying? and then there's all these kids, like with spiky hair and rip clothes and I was looking and I'm going, what is going on?
16:21Who are these? The sheveled kids? I haven't even seen images of Pongsyat. No. I think there was maybe a vague whisper about the pistols like listening to, because we had FM radio in Canada. We had stereo and they would play full albums and they would start to talk about this thing happening in the UK. So this is 77, summer of 77. And I'll go and remember going to war worst because that's where I got my singles. And number one was blanked out. It was just like that. All the other top 20 that number one was blanked out was God save the Queen. Wow. And these kids were flipping off the Queen and I was like, they were outsiders.
17:02Wow, my tribe. So as soon as I went back to Canada after like three, four week holiday, say, for Christmas, my mom got me never mind the ballocks. So December 25th, 1970, so then I'm opening that and I'm gone like, oh, and I put it on. She says, play the record, let's hear it. I'll play it for her friends. I put it on after about 20 seconds. She was like, can you turn that off for a second? Turn it on. I am an anti -Christ. She's like 10 now. But you can play in your bedroom. You had a seven cycle of pitiers in her house. We were allowed to explore. You know, they kept them in the eye on us, but they never came down, said, you know, ten -that -music -off or did encourages, especially my mum.
17:44She was like, let me buy records, let me have long hair. Yeah, so the pistols weren't for her, but it wasn't for you. Yeah, it was fine for me. She understood it, I mean. Great. Yeah. Well, she understood my affection for it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then I became full punk. Yeah. Like, cut my hair. Yeah. But I think I had a Baker's jacket that I took my sister took in for music to show a bit. Flow trousers became straight like trousers. I went from like in progressive rock and bowie a little bit of Iggy into full punk. And that was like 78. By left school in 78, I left school, come and my mom got cancer.
18:27So I actually left school so I could work to bring the extra money home so we could get money to go back to Britain so she wanted to die with a family. So 78, September 78, we went back to Britain and then I was back in this school yard in Glasgow which is pretty rough place and over the Yank. I wasn't a brick kid. Yeah, but you weren't, but to them you were. I'm actually more scots than I am English, called them to my DNA. Yeah. Just found out I'm 3 % Danish as well. So that's The Viking that was it and then I was on the playground, but there was all the punk kids there And they were like come and hang out with us.
19:04Don't worry about them. They're bullies. They don't get it Hang out with the punk kids and the met two or three kids who were like we're going to see the stranglers Stranglers 78 Glasgow Apollo The week four went to Nazareth Yeah, because we're all I mean it didn't matter. It was crossover. It was across over If you like AC, you feel like Bond Scott. If you like AC D C and punk, that was fine. There wasn't that cultural apartheid that MTV brought in in the 80s, where it's like 120 minutes headbangers ball, you know, MTV wraps, didn't want to segregate us. We did like anything we wanted. You could like Bob Marley.
19:41Yeah, it was totally cool. It was all part of the same synergy, it was just music and culture, then I was in. So, Stranglers was the first punk rock gig? The first show I went to was actually Saw Saw. The first thing I ever saw was Pink Floyd, 1975, Hamilton, Ontario, June 28th. I think it was. My brother and I went down to the stadium. We were supposed to sell 25 ,000 tickets. They sold 50. The place was rammed. The way the stadium was built was like a CFL stadium. There's a whole section you could see through into the stage. So we went down to collect cans and bottles. We thought it'd be a good opportunity to make some money.
20:18Yeah. So we got bin bags, garbage bags, collecting cans and bottles. I remember looking through and seeing the airplane crash into the stage and shining any crazy diamond and they hadn't even released. Wish you were here, yeah. I was 13 years old and that was a lightning bolt. It's like, what is this energy? Yeah. I remember going home in the bus just, I couldn't even speak about it. I didn't know what to say about it. I just had this deep knowing that I wanted to be in there with those kids having that experience, that communion. And then that was it. Yeah, Pink Floyd's a good first wiff. I was a wiff.
21:00That's a good one. That was a wiff. That was a good one. That was the first time I had electric amplified music. Yeah. And it was mind -numbing. I can play it in my head and play the tape. I can play the visual and the audio in my head. And the access to the feeling of what it might through all the chargers, you know, because they activated everything. Been a teenage boy, just coming of age. So everything was activated. Denny was about the rest of the life getting in alignment. Cause there's a lot of trauma in there as well. Trauma from family, post -war. Father went through the streets when there were being bombed by the German.
21:41The second most heavily bombed city in Britain, besides London, was actually Mersey's side. And a lot hit when my father lived in Birkenhead because all the shipyards were there. So he was telling me stories about running through the streets and the bombs falling. And because I didn't know about PTSD until later, when I had to face that in my own life, but he was gone by then. He passed when he was 58. You know, and that was kind of like when the cult was MTV 27 years old. I didn't want anything to do with it. I was like, no, I'm out. They were like, okay, there's the road. It's not paved, it's gonna get dark.
22:21I was like, I want that. That was the journey. Yeah, post -electric, which was where my heart was, you know, in that room with us. Kids, we're like decennzian kids, scavenging for pizza, grilled cheese, and any bit of cultural information that we could get, we would share it. I remember you introduced me to Hello Cool Jaina Street outside of Revolution Cafe. It was 19 years old with a can go how on and everything. I was like, he looked amazing. And what a frequency it's such a vibration around this guy. I was like, he is, what's his music about, you know, and going deep into that, or going deep into the beasties, or a loved African -born barter.
23:08McLaren brought that to us. I remember we would watch videos in the studio of all kinds of just cool old rock stuff. We watched Slayer, I remember, because I was just about start working with them. Yes. We watched a lot of cool stuff. I remember it was a really fun experience. I don't know how he got it made, the record. Because we're really loud. I don't know if you know, but really originally, the plan was I was going to remix two songs. That's correct. And then when we went to remix them, I realized if we were to strip it down and get to the essence of it, it wasn't recorded in a way where you could do that because it was so layered in the way it was formed.
23:53And you couldn't get to the essence. The essence was this produced thing. And if we wanted to get to the raw thing, all the way to do that would be to play it. So we played it and we did the two, and then they sounded good, and then we said, let's just keep doing it. And we did. But no one really gave us permission to do that. There was no record company that approved that happening. Oh, no, they did nothing. We did not have any approval. But it just happened. Because when we actually called them and told them what we've been doing for several weeks, they just about lost their wigs. Wow, I didn't know that.
24:27They went, I said, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I think Ian and Alan came over in, Grant and Alan, and I went to came over to listen. Yeah. And we explained to them what we've been doing. Yeah. We want to hear the finished product. And we're like, well, wait a minute. Sit down. Yeah. Just give us a sec. Yeah, yeah. And when we played Andy put it on, played it back to them and they were like, oh, oh, wow, that is the same change. Cause not be a done that. I mean, you were definitely encouraging it. For sure. For sure. You were quite naughty. I believed. I'm a true believer. You know, it's like I speak from the heart and I mean it.
25:15It's not a... Oh, oh my goodness. It was perfect for me because I was like, uh -huh. Yeah. You were, uh -huh. Let's go. You were, uh -huh. Let's go. Let's go. I saw what was possible. Oh, I saw you and your world and the city and everything and what you were cheering with as I was like, oh, this is tribe. Yeah. This is the way. And then I remember you had your friend Haggis come join us and he was really fun to be around. Well, Haggis was interesting in the sense that he played with Zodiac mind -wart manning. He was a friend. And all of a sudden, Steven, Haggis, Steven Harris is hanging out. I think Billy had been chatting with him.
25:58Kind of came through Billy. I didn't really know. He was like, I'm a new, I'll come hangin' out. And I'm like, cool. And he come and hang out. I was like, I'm gonna go to Georgia City. I've got a cool, cool. I'm just cool. or I was thinking we'd get to dope until we met Matt, Matt Dyke. Yeah. But he comes in the mix, Kig Chaos from Zodiac. And the story he told me was that he'd left the band or been kicked out the band. And I was like, because it kind of felt like a weird thing with some, you know, the cardinal rule is you don't mess with other people's relationships amongst gentlemen. So I kind of felt a little bit awkward, but I loved him.
26:38It was a great dude. I really enjoyed his energy. I used to what we were into, but then I got a fun call in the middle of the night, like four or five in the morning, from Mark, from Zodiac. It's like, what are you doing? You're trying to break up my band. I was like, no, bro, he's told us he's not with you anymore. And that was like, oh, no. Oh, this is awkward. Yeah. And then I think we're drinking quite heavily. A lot, I know I was. Yeah. I still roll in drunk. So I drink wine coolers because they were a little bit whiter. But then I drink six pack of wine coolers and come in to study and get going.
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27:20I like a couple of slides to the pizza and we were leather trousers. Let's go. Music always sounded better when pizza arrived. I remember. Yeah, and it was interesting how all of a sudden, There's a lot of visits that came around about pizza time, dinner time. All of a sudden, it's like all these people were like, from deaf jam or whatever, would pop by. Friends would pop by. George would pop by. You know, Mr. Rick would pop by. Mr. Rick? Yeah, of course. He was incredible. He was incredible. I remember him coming in the studio, but that's amazing that he did. They were all around. Amazing. I mean, the beasties, they would come for free pizza.
27:58I'm walking to the studio one day and they're on the gear. Bashing just like, out. You know? Because they were very naughty boys. I remember going out with them and they were throwing eggs at people. We all went out to the MTV New Year's ball. I was like, I had an American Express card. I remember we were thinking about it. We were working that day. We were working New Year's Eve. Yeah, I remember that. And I was like, I remember thinking, Why would anybody want to take off on either New Year's Eve or Christmas? Like we get to go in the studio and make music. What could be better than this? We felt like a celebration.
28:34What we were doing. I don't think we wanted it to end. We were having such a good time. Because there was no adults in the room. No. Telling us what to do. No. There was no A &R guy. No. I'll believe me after that record when we did Sonny Temple. There was A &R guys floating around. Hovering. Whispering. Took me a minute to work out. Did they want my friends? Yeah. That was one of the great things about you guys coming from the UK to make the record, is that you just came and we got to do our thing. I remember someone from Warner Brothers came to visit and he was cool. Do you remember Jeff Fenster came to visit and I think Steven Baker might have come to visit?
29:11Steve Baker was a massive ally. Yeah. Since day one he was incredibly important. Great guy. Great guy. Jeff Herif as well. I mean they love music.
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31:01How did the cover come about? I love the cover. I don't know the story of the cover. I think the cover came about from a couple of things. One was like my obsession with San Francisco, 60s, San Francisco, and what was happening there. Because Bill Graham was an actual mentor to me. We played, we reopened the film more West after the love album. So it might be 86. I didn't know that. The Divinals opening for us. Wow. And that's when I first met Bill Graham. Wow. And then Bill Graham was like, we're in it. It's first time, well, it wasn't the first time in the hate because we went there in 84. But I was obsessed with what happened at Monterey Pop Festival.
31:36Yeah. You know, seeing those images of Brian Jones with Nico and Jimmy Hendrix and Janice Joblin and Bill Graham. Jim Marshall, he introduced me to Jim Marshall photographer. So I was obsessed with it. And I was obsessed with all the psychedelic art, Malfon Kelly, Rick Griffin, and I was kind of scribbling around. And did some kind of vaguely ear sats version of his font which the art director that came in was Storm Thorginson, the man that designed Dark Side of the Moon. So Storm comes in and he's like, and there was Aubrey Powell, but at that point, Storm was off. He'd broken off from hypnosis.
32:23So somehow, I think through the label, not Beggus Banquett, but maybe 3D Americans. I'm not quite sure I had a relationship with him, but I had this vague idea of a psychedelic cover. and so there's a collaboration with Tom Thorginson. And then Rick Griffin saw the font and he's like, hey, that's my style. And we start talking and he goes, I love you guys, can I do something? So he did the wildflower sleeve. That was Rick Griffin did that. Amazing. That was his font. Yeah. That was even the fake Rick Griffin font. Yeah, he was real Rick Griffin. That was real Rick Griffin. That was just a love of Robert San Francisco and everything that went with it.
32:59From Timothy Leary to Ginsburg to, I mean, Pig Pan, you name it, George Harrison walking down H Street. I mean, there's so much hacked in from the like Alan Watts comes from England as an Anglican priest convert into Zen Buddhism. He becomes the guru of the Beats, Karaoke Ginsburg. He's the man. He's from Leatherhead. Strangely, on the Achiezelhurst Caves, which Ami Hendrix played, There were so many ley lines connecting. I can just feel the frequency. Yeah. And that was the cover kind of came out of that. Your love of the lore, the history, the music, the people, the looks, the smells of it all, is why you've always been able to embody it.
33:50It's like the Thuraz Moses. Mm. Do you know what I'm saying? It's like you've dedicated yourself to it like a student. And I think that's what makes the best things. It was never work, it was never a job, it was never a means to an end. You were practicing a devotional act in participating in this thing you love so much. Yeah, God speaks through the airways. Yeah. The goddess, the divine mystery came to me through the airways. And that was my connection to source, other, not tactile, impermanence, it all came through the musical frequency, which according to the big bang theorists, quantum level, the big bang is B flat and it's still frequency still going.
34:41Some musicians attack the real intuitive ones, the emotionally intelligent ones, attack into that and they're just going to do it whatever if they're planted or cat. That doesn't matter. The numbers don't matter. The accolades don't matter. It's this act, devotion like, as you say. And it doesn't be fuzzle me. I just listen. Listen with the heart. Listen with an open heart. And pick a bomb. Give me a vibration. Smell it coming out here is like a bomb going off of me. Silence. Yeah. A bomb of silence and the ocean. In every of your mirrors I'm pulling up and I'm thinking about it, I'm going, wait a minute, I'm going to see Rick, I haven't seen him for decades.
35:28Is this something I love daily? And I'm looking at where you are, Shangri -la, Dylan, the bus, the oceans in every of your mirror, I'm going, wait a minute. What is this oasis? Because it does have the same frequency as the Oshosh from in Pune, or the Potlapalus in Tibet. Why is that the same frequency is present within? Perhaps it's something to do with, I'm now in tune. The environment allows me to tune my chakras, tune my vibrational frequencies, and drop in. Yes. And drop into it. Yes. Make sure you got lending your boots, so. Yeah. Because you can get all dreamy and caught up in it and it's like, you know, when I walked in here, I was like, hmm, aesthetic.
36:22It's very austere. Yoko Ono is probably lurking somewhere. It feels very lennon -white room. Oh no. I was almost going to wear plastic -owned -of -banties shirt today. I thought, I can't broadcast that. Because in the cult recently, I've been, which is a small part of my creative life, but in the tactile world, I've been obsessed, obsessing on plastic on it, man. And Liverpool, because I'm going back there and I don't even just kind of popped up, Lenin. When you went back, how different was it than what you remember from childhood? Well we went back, the last time we went back, we just did a show at Demontford Hall, which which is a student venue.
37:06I didn't really walk around the city. When I went back in the 90s, because I went there to make a record with a bank called the Holy Barbarians, which was really an excuse. To do the things I didn't get to do when I was an object or a resource in the stable of Warner Brothers and Beggars Bankwit and the industrial complex of being a, you know, an iconic singer and an iconic MTV, We dissolved into this product. Yeah. And I couldn't, I know that we had several attempts where we, you almost came in as a, as a... Remember that. interventionist. I remember that's because I had a memory of us in Sound City together.
37:49Yeah. I remember we made Electric in New York. That's correct. Out electric lady, I remember the experience like, well, who are we doing at Sound City? And I couldn't figure it out. But now I remember we recorded a song that was incredibly cool. Yeah, we did the witch the witch would ever come out The witch they come out. Oh great. Oh, nice. It's great So then we can hear it. Well the witch the witch came out in 93 and the witch with to me was like this is the way yeah Can we listen to that now? Do you mind? I'm gonna make a sense then. Oh, you're really curious to see what it is You're actually on it.
38:19No listen. You'll hear it. How can it be your voices on it? I really have no recollection of what it is other than remembering it. I don't have a great Let's see.
38:38Oh it's filthy.
39:28I'm gonna stay up Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah Take some of my little men with me Let's go out and come to stay Oh, yeah, yeah I'm gonna take some of my little men
39:47That's you Three, four What you got to do Oh, yeah She's not watching me, she's not watching me
40:16She's not what you need What you got is so good
40:35She's not what you need What you got is so good She's not what you need
40:54She's gotta watch me Watch me
41:04She's gotta watch me Watch me She's gotta watch me
41:17The wind is the company you made.
41:27You're here, you're there. No, shut that, break out.
41:38There's a break where I can hear your voice distinctly, but the way it was recorded was I did the demo in Toronto in 1990. My father died in 1990. We won't talk, the early 1990. night, but I was in Toronto. I think I did it like Christmas break in 89, off to Sun example tour. And I went and we did like 63 shows of Metallica. We did 1807 shows on that tour. I mean we were burned out. We were burnt out. I got sober on that tour and my dad was down at cancer. And I was like listening to this music coming out of, I remember Peter Huck taking me to the factory to see the rave cultures coming out. He says you got to check Peter Huck, the bass play from Bloody Joy Division.
42:30I'm like, I'm only 26, 27 years old and I'm watching this. I'm going, I feel ancient. This music's phenomenal and plus I love to pop. So, because we were playing NWA at the PA every night before we went on. That was the opening music. That That was the walking music. That's what people heard. That's what I was telling them to play. So, if you want to play rock, I'm like, oh, this is what's happening. So, the bass line is, of course, from echoes. It's Roger Waters. as... G -G -G -G -G -G -G -G -G. Obsessed. Like the Pompeii. When they're going, G -G -G -G -G -G -G -G -G -G -G -G -G. That's Roger Waters, the baseline.
43:12And I just went and sped it up. G -G -G -G -G -G -G -G -G -G -G -G -G -G -G -G -G -G -G -G -G -G -G -G -G -G -G -G -G -G -G -G -G -G -G -G.
43:27And he hits this, the synergy of Floyd and there was a ball went off my head. So I cut this track, it was a reasonably -cord northern man. Nor the man you got with him. Yeah. But you, when you got older, you were working with Matt and you had a pile of breaks. I remember you going through that, we sat with 12 inches, it was at your house near the château. And you were just going through it going to that one, that one, that one. And you picked out the breaks for the samples. And then we just built it. You built it. And then we went in, we had the bass line. I think George V actually played the bass.
44:01George played the bass. Because I could play it, but I couldn't play as well as equal play. And you cut the track, and the counts of the changes is you counting. Three, four. So we know what to do. Yeah, but then after we got this basic track, and all the man didn't fit, and we've been offered this movie, Cool World. Oh, yeah, that's what was cool. It was a big movie. You couldn't remember why we did it. That's why, Cool World soundtrack. Yeah, Ralph Bashky. Yeah. He did Fritz the cat and everything. Yeah. So it was a pretty dope film, and that was true. I may be like, you know, if I were off at Warner Bros.
44:34Like, let's do this track. And it was also way me attempting to maintain... It was like an intervention. We were very close. We were like sharing our, you know, what we were into. Yeah. And I was like, so excited. I'm like, it's gonna happen. We were making experimental music. We were. But Billy wasn't on it. It wasn't in the room. when that was being happening. I think somebody said, it was probably you said, we should get Boo to play on this. I'm like, yeah. I mean, no, he did it. And it ripped it. It raises the whole vibration of it. It's great. That's his gift. That's what he really is excellent at.
45:11Is that. Like when he's off the leash, he's filthy. When he just lets himself go. Yeah. And I see that. And I'm like, that is incredible. We still play that track in cult sets. And now... How's it sound live? It's a behemoth. Yeah. We rip. It's so groovy. It cuts through like a knife. And you can see the audience are just swaying. They're in it. Everybody's in it. We're so in it. Yeah. It stands up. I'm playing maracas on it. Yeah. Still got a bit of stones in it. I'm not sure. I hear that. I don't remember hearing that then, but I hear it now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, the film was massive. It came and went.
45:56It was released as a standalone single, maybe 12 -inch. We had a white cover with a white pentagram on it. Done. Done. Done and dusted. Yeah. But there should have been a whole album around that. Yeah. And that's what I was saying to be at the time. It was like, this is it. Because that is done. This is done. The hairs coming off, this is finished. And it was great where it lasted. It was fun parties over. We're going here now. And everybody was like, you're insane. We can't do this. And I just fought them tooth and nail. Just fought them. You know, and I was trying to reintegrate our relationship.
46:34Yeah. And what our vision was, because at that point, there was a disturbance in the force. Yeah. We'd become a piece of property. It is a point in time, in success, when there's a feeling of it's not yours anymore and it's being controlled by someone else. And it might not even be business people. It might be some psychological thing to do with the audience that the audience has certain expectations and you can't upset that. When in reality, you really can. Oh, no, we did. No, we've set the mowly. You can and you can switch it up, but there is that feeling of it's a dangerous move. It wasn't the audience, it wasn't that, for me it wasn't.
47:17It wasn't that. It was that my partner was transfixed like deer in the headlights by maybe the validation. I don't know, but caught up in the lifestyle and everything. And I was still on the mission. This brings us back to... I remember, I think you flew into JFK, you came into the city, we met for the first time and I remember the conversation was we know what song is going to be the first single from the album because it's the same chords as our last hit and I said well if it has the same chords as your last hit not only could it not be the first single I don't think it can be on the album because you did that exactly so that's the difference in mentality, whereas there is a mentality in the music business of it.
48:15Worked last time, let's just do it again. Everybody was hypnotized by format, structure, architecture. Like even a seven -inch single, the format artist would write to the format of a seven -inch single. That was already pre -programmed. Libre and Strollard, da -da -da -da -da -da -da, Yeah, but Richard, the right in these, there was format, format, format. The tale was wagon the dog. It was unspoken. Some bands were breaking it, like the Germans were crowd rock, like Pope Voon and stuff like that. They were... Or still we to heaven for that. They were to heaven, broke it. Absolutely, absolutely breaking them all.
48:51Or especially the bass player in the cult now is Charlie Jones, who's married to Carmen plant, and he played with plant and page. So he brings a provenance as another empathetic. Like we don't talk about rock, we talk about Alice Coltrane. You know, there's such a gift to us. It's a completely different band than it was even five years ago. But I think format is a very interesting thing. On consciously, you're in format. You're in culture, the culture is responding to format. We is really driven by the advertisers, as popular culture, the controls of culture, controls of advertising, condinast, however it is, Vanguard, Viacom.
49:40And somebody's getting paid, but we just hypnotized and we go on thrine unless you have a ureca moment where you go, you were said barrett, you just wired differently. Yeah. And you question it, and right now I'm doing exactly the same thing I was when I was a teeny tiny. Because you're you. I question it all the time because I'm me. It's like, it's just, it's our nature. It is our nature. It's our nature. It's like, you go, turn it over. Yeah. You smell this side of it. Yeah. Mmm. That's good too. You know, whatever it is, however you get into it, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I think a lot of it's just personal.
50:23I also like being surprised by it. you know, I like when it's not the same. I like that feeling of, it's can't be different for the sake of being different because that's not good. But when it's different and you love it, yeah, that's really exciting. Oh yeah. That's my favorite. When you're leaning forward because you're not sure it's gonna happen next, then it's the best feeling. Yeah, there's a lot of music out there right now that just surprises me. I wanna hear it for the first time. I'm like, wait a minute. Did I hear that correctly? Yeah. Is this possible? Yeah. Now? That's to feel. Best feeling.
51:01In this world, in this climate? Yeah. Occasionally come across a few nuggets. Just as a fan of music. Yeah. But then I go like, I'm going to do it my own, anyway. Of course. So I have a mountain of a mast.
51:15Just, you know, I feel like a Henry Darja. Just undiscovered. Shambala is sitting in my phone in multi -tracks, there's in some storage space, somewhere that I'm gonna pull out for my solo record I made in the desert with Chris Garcin' 96, 97. I know there's good stuff in there. Yeah, of course. Then we can rewire and brutalize and unformat. Which is my whole thing right now. I'm going, why don't we just take the entire catalog of everything we've ever done and put it through a shredder? See what that sounds like? Or an AI program.
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53:33Tell me about southern death cult. What was the southern death cult? Well, I was suddenly death cult. So, your first film? I was suddenly, well, I actually know, the very, very, very first time I stepped into a room with musicians with the intention of creating a band, there was two. There was one called Sendow Flowers in Liverpool. I think we had one or two rehearsals. And that actually went on to do something, released a single. Then I was in Belfast as a homeless kid. And I was living in a squat with these punks. And we had one song I was reading, the island of Dr. Morro by H .G. Wells. And there was a thing about vivisection, experiment, neon animals.
54:13And there was a line in there, not to walk on all fours, are we not men? Like, Deva may have used this one. And I saw that as a lyric, and I was like, oh, that's interesting. And it just came up with drumbeat. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Not to walk on all fours, are we not men? And that was a song. And the other guys in the house had some terrible, like, four strings on a guitar, and we were called Children of Lost. Did you ever do a gig or never? No, we played in the front room of a damp squat in Belfast in 1980, which was a pretty rough place. It wasn't something you wanted to be in a band.
54:56It was just that everybody was obsessed with music. And there's always instruments around of some description. Then I ended up leaving Belfast and falling, crashed, abandoned, crashed. I remember crashed. The devotee of crass followed them, stayed in Steve Agreements T .P. once in the house. Did you really? Yeah, yeah. Tell me what that scene was like. I don't know anything about them. All I know are the... They have an album jacket said and folded into poster. They started in 77 and were... Where were they based? They were based in, I believe, Epping, which would be at the end of the central line, Dial House.
55:34They had this house, it was an old phoenix change, because back in the day, you didn't have satellites, you had buildings like the AT &T building in New York, where the operators would connect you. This was an old phoenix change that they converted, got hold of. It was a real Mishmash in people. I think the drummer was a teacher. They've got an exhibit right now in New York as well. The press. Yeah, of course, this artwork and the visual and everything. GE, I believe, worked for graphic designer. Stephen was a punk kid from like London. And the other ones were like, you know, university dropouts and stuff like that.
56:16But they had this real vision, like very all -wellian. They lived in a very situational, anarchistic, communal environment. And they were very set up actually similar to your, to Shangri -La. They all wore utilitarian clothing, it was dyed black, everything was dyed black. They had banners which had the cross with the snake wrapped around them, and destroyed power, not people, banners. And it became a devotee of them and the philosophy and followed them. Like the first album, Fidding with 5 ,000, and opening it, looking at the graphics and going, this is phenomenal. This is what Joe Stromba's saying.
56:55This is what Liden is saying, but they're really living it. Yes. They had a commune. They grew their own food. It's the first time I've tasted tempura. Like, they opened my mind to so many things. I'm eating Japanese food and a garden and a netting in the middle of summer. Got to visit them a couple of times there. Anyway, so through the crass tour, as it was a harmless person, We went through Seekor Bradford in North England near Leeds, which is considered to be the center of the Darkwave, Dothic. There were so many bands that came out of that scene, out of that city, that area, post -industrial, Manchester Leeds, Huddersfield, Liverpool.
57:36I ended up getting off at a room in a house, £10 a week, and I had nowhere to live. So I just took a moment. It was like Moving to this house, there's a band playing in the basement of the house. They were hosting on a band called New Model Army's Gear. They've had a basic PA, 100 watt PA, and they would use the PA. And they had a little amps, they'll beat an up amps and a guitar player had a guitar that he'd made himself. And he was an art student, he was a Bradford Art School. The bass player was obsessed with Adam in the Ants. And the drummer, Agnewisker, actually, brilliant, tribal drummer.
58:14He loved things like Shalamar and Disko and Budalov punk. And they had a bank called Violation. This singer was, let's say, had lifestyle choices. You know, they didn't match up with these guys. They really wanted to go for it. I was living in the house, they saw me and they said, our singer's gone, do you want to jump in? Do you want to try out for the band? I'm like, can you sing? I'm like, I don't know. So I went down to the basement. They said, let's try something. When he knew, he was like sex pistols, we did sex pistols song, and I'm like, wow, that sounds pretty good. Do you want to be in the band?
58:48So my spontaneous was like, okay. And then the drummer's brother was a local promoter in the lead's Bradford area. He was put on bands like Antipasti, GPH, all these like, Oiponk bands, like Pokes, Pokes Punk bands, POST and Arco, POST. Because by this time the clash had become combat rock, they become something else. the pistols were gone, the original MacLearn, Westwood, the scene, the door broken up. And so there's another generation of punk bands who really were disenfranchised working class kids. And a local TV station, Yorkshire Television was making a documentary on unemployed youth cultures, like kids who are making art who are unemployed, like basically living like young scavengers.
59:35And the drummer's brother got a whiff of this and he said, the making of the documentary, do you guys want to be in it? Well, like, what? We had three songs. By this time, we were hosting above a reggae shop called Roots Records. Our first real audience were Raster Farrians. There was Watchers Play. So these Raster's Watchers Play, there are these three songs, and we get often to be this part of this TV documentary. And of course, that was like a spaceship had just landed. So he said, do you want to get on and go for a ride? We were like, okay. It's like 18 years old. And so we did this whole couple of days where he filmed us.
1:00:12They set up the first gig in a pub where they got like 80 kids in, punks. And you'd never got any gig before? Never walked on a stage. Wow. Actually, I've been in a school play, but never as a musician, not as a lead singer. Yeah. And we didn't have a name. And the TV station was like, what's the name of the band? So I was reading a book on a Native American anthropology. And there was this one paragraph that's talking about the, I think it's the Hopewell Valley in Ohio, a certain group of Native Americans that had these serpent mounds that stood there. And it refers to them as a Southern death cult because they worshipped skulls.
1:00:52And they didn't incorporate death into the spiritual view of the world. Death was a thing, which is in the West, we try to avoid at all costs. It's a bettons all day long, you know, death is part of it in permanence. So that became the name of the band, something that's called. I picked it out and went, this is a great name. It is a great name. It's a great name. Sounds dope. And you know, the government and the controls in the South, it was very good for a basic, you know, basic get in, but it just resonated with me. And that was our first gig. It was a film for television. Tapes are gone. I think I saw it once.
1:01:26and when it aired, they can't find the tapes they're gone. But it did happen. And then the first thing we played was an experience like of seeing yourself on TV for the first time. Well, the experience of going on stage for the first time the amount of adrenaline is inexplicable. I mean, it was like, I got hit by a car when I was a kid, which was a life -changing experience, plus I had some bad experiences of psychedelics. But this was something otherworldly, similar to the Pink Floyd experience at 13. Yeah. Similar lightning shock went through the shockers. So this was something that's got. And then we did our first gig in an unemployed and an arco commune, a place called one in 12 club, means one in 12 is unemployed.
1:02:17So we played this gig, we packed it out, 150 people in a room, and that was it. we thought we were like, wow, this is... What's the next thing? We did a couple of gigs in local area. We opened for Chelsea, it was our fourth gig. They had a club in, it was a punk band from 77. One of the peripheral punk bands, but still Gene Octobre was very important. James Simpson on the guitar. Kind of parallel to Generation X. Came out London punk scene. We opened for them, and they offered us a gig at the Marquis. Do you want to come to the Marquis? I don't know, for as a Marquis in London. and gig five, got six songs.
1:02:54We're like, what, the marquee in London? That is mecca. It was a mythical place. You'd never been there before? Not the marquee, no. I've been on the streets and I've slept in Kings Cross train station, stayed in a squat with a load of punks in West Hamster, but nothing like this. This was different. We had a purpose, we had a mission. So we got, we hired a van. We got snow in Yorkshire, it was $200 mile drive. The driver was called Neil and he was a hippie. We called him Neil the hippie and he had a headband. I got my from a headband coach, pictures, the bandanas, came from headband with curves, pictures of indigenous patches.
1:03:36Or, spichously, Dino Prudis, as you know very well, is part Chiaracro Apache, now manages the cult. Anyway, we got out the snow storm, got to London, got the gravity combab, in Soho, CD Soho, went into the marquee, did a little sound check, got ready, which meant opening plastic bag and changing the two shirts, you know, 10 cigarettes in a little packet. So that's what we got afforded, two cans of beer. On the stage, the 30 people now, I think Lemmy was actually on the fruit machines, play because he was always in Soho on the gambling machines. And then we had a A friend who was living in London who was running around the bow our wow crew, like Westwood and bow our wow.
1:04:18He's fully dressed in pirate costume and he kept jumping on stage, he'd pull out cables and laughing and this was our big moment in the market in London. It was a total disaster. It was horrible. We were so miserable. And plus Jean -October wouldn't give us the money, £35 to the petrol money to go back to Bradford. We had to get it out of them. And I remember standing at the bar when Chelsea were on stage, I was drinking half a lago and this guy comes up to me and goes, hi, my name's Paul Boswell, I'm from this agency called The Agency, whatever it's called. I'm like, great. I said, what do you do?
1:04:51Do you do lights sound? It's like an agent of bookbounds. I'm like, okay, great. He said, even his name is number down a bit of paper. Let's talk about pocket. Didn't think anything of it. We were, unconsolable. We got into Van, throw it back to Bradford that night. on the way back, just like control, to film what Sheila Strait's in Kurt's been an epileptic. It's the same kind of thing, one blanket in the back, a drummer's an epileptic. We had to pull over, he has an epileptic trauma. It was so heavy. And when we got back to Bradford, just like, phew. The adrenaline was gone. We're now crashing.
1:05:30We're like, well, that was a complete, an utter burnout. We were so, unconsolable. And then the following week, there's a review in Sounds, it says Chelsea, Sudden, Death Culp, Marquay London. First line says, I've seen the future, it's Sudden, Death Culp. And I'm like, oh, what? Unbelievable. You kidding me. Unbelievable. So we ran around, we didn't have telephone, I think we had a payphone in our house. So we're paying phone in each other, you know. And we go like, right, now we've got to get to work. So the drummer's brother again, a rap comes in with Aki and he says, look, I've got the number of some of the agencies.
1:06:12You want to start calling them, see them as any gigs, tours. We knew the clash would pick up local support bands and Aki was talking about the clash. I think violation may be of open to the clash. So we've calling these agencies and I got this one phone number and I didn't even take the phone number out in my pocket, the poor Boswell gave me to me. So I call this agency and I call them and pay phone at home, I remember. And Secretary picks up the phone, she's like, hi, who's this? I said, I'm from a band called Sun Death Coach, she goes, what band is? So Sun Death Coach says, wait a minute. Okay, who gets on the phone?
1:06:45Hey, Paul, don't you remember I met you at the marquee? I'm like, oh yeah, hi, Paul. He said, we've been trying to get hold of you guys. We got five dates penciled in the theatre of eight. I'm like, what? You do what? What? Unbelievable. Unbelievable. Okay. And hung up the phone. And it's still a call to everybody. You go like, we're the theatre of hate tour. They just been on top of the pops. We were like, mind's blown. So that was it. Like gig six, seven, eight, nine was theatre of hate. Then we went into Bound. It sounds so amazing. Tell me out for the clash. Yeah. And then all of that. What's amazing is the thing that seemed like the thing that didn't work at all, the club at the marquee that you drove home miserable.
1:07:27Oh, you were miserable. It was actually the turning point that started the whole thing. The thing that again, in the moment you couldn't see, it seemed like a terrible experience and that started the whole thing. It's amazing. We never know. We never know. We never know. You never know. Yeah. You have no idea. Yeah. That's why it's good to stay open. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a ball possibility. Yeah. And if you're trying to hang your head on a certain nail, don't get stung there. Tell me about opening for the clash. Where the clash would be a deal for you personally. Like, if you love the clash.
1:08:03Yeah, I'd love to clash. I saw them in 79. I'm in the 16 tons tour. I mean, got Sandinista Day came out. Tell those living in Canada, I missed first two albums. Give them enough rope and clash. But Sandinista came out. Remember getting that obsessed with the clash. I've learned in calling. Yeah, London calling. They were touring that. Some of the glass go polo. Loved the clash. Remember Mick Jones, they were doing white riot. He didn't like playing it. Because the connotations of the song, he thought was a little bit... He didn't like the politics of it. It's ruse this less port up in the air.
1:08:35I remember it when it was curly leads. I can remember from the gig, because this guitar gone... It's growing so high. And as it's coming down, he's in a white boil, so he just turned around and walked away from it. And he's like, smash. I'm like, what? The whole audience was like, that's the most visceral memory I have of that concert. Is this guitar just going to just shards? Anyway, the combat rock, the date that we got offered after making the phone calls was it's Stoke Handley Victoria Hall. I was on the combat rock tour, which was essentially the last tour. And that kind of thing, they were really a big bit.
1:09:12Oh, they're massive. But with the punks in the UK, they'd gone to America. Yeah. And that was like, no, no. Yeah, yeah. Because they were ours. I didn't feel that way. Yeah, yeah. Because I was North American teenager, essentially. I understood it. They weren't for the who? Shea Stalingman over there. But when they came back with Tiger Stripes and such dope style, engineering boots, and I mean, they looked phenomenal. We were all trying to copy this style. If you look at early Southern Death Coal, you'll see billion full targets throughout. When did it change from Southern Death Coal to Death Coal?
1:09:46It changed. Well, basically, what happened was with some Death Coal, it was happening too quickly within the space of 11, 12 months. We were getting offers from EMI. We did demos from EMI. Beggars Bank Group was sniffing around and then came CBS Records. They said, 100 grand bang on a table. We want you guys. When that money came on the table, I looked at it out and I went, hmm, we signed to want a chapel for publishing. It gives us 500 pounds each. Scandalous. But there was a lot of heat in the band. There was a lot of heat on the band. I mean, we did the tube, Malcolm and Claren was on it. And his comment was, that boy is a sexual threat.
1:10:29I go, as a kid, I didn't know what that meant. It was like, oh, there was like Malcolm and Claren set that. Pretty good. Oh, because he's I'm obsessing on Malcolm and Clarence while right now I'm reading his biography by Paul Gaulman, which is staggering the man I was like to read brilliant brilliant genius But when that's the heat starts to come on the band my natural instinct was to pivot away from it because it felt Like a track didn't feel authentic What they wanted was our youth What they wanted was our vitality and that we were the band of the moment It's a CBS. They were all looking for the next pistols, they were looking for, they all wanted that phenomenal thing and it was something that's got at the time.
1:11:12It was on the front cover of the anime without even having a record out. Wow. Shot by Anton Corbin in 82. Incredible. So that was the heat on the band and I just said, you know what? I can't do it. I just can't do it. And I remember them pleading with me like, please don't leave. And I was like, plus I remember I had a song. It wasn't called Spirit Walk at the time, But it was like and I had this thing, and they were like, we didn't want to play it. I'd written more, I'm flaring the desks, two songs that we recorded. We never made an album. I was beginning to feel my own path. And I was like, this doesn't feel like it should be staying here.
1:11:49This is gonna last 10 minutes, because it would corrupt us. We all had four different personalities pulling in 45. How do we have to Brian Epstein, or how do we have George Martin come in the room? Yeah, yeah, yeah. In the room and coming the room, it may have been a very different story. We didn't have that patriarchal oak tree. We didn't have a guide. We didn't have somebody to like, okay guys, that's the external experience. That's getting your feet, that's getting your place, that's getting grounded, that's focus on getting the material together, getting the creativity, focusing, doing the work.
1:12:23So you felt like it was too rushed. It felt rushed. It felt like all of some people who had their hands all over us and we were like, as people were not considered. Yeah. The external field that we were putting out there was what they wanted. They wanted to mine as of our nutrients. I've heard in American the ANR guy talk about churn and burn, you know, overheard a conversation at dinners like, Oh, yeah, Choron and Burn. These kids coming through, we just choron and burn. I'm not choron and burn here because I'm out. So I walked away from that. I didn't have a penny. I was still on the employed.
1:13:04Billings was working in a clothing shop. He got kicked out of the air effect. It was the only job I'd met, that I liked. And I thought he had something. Why was he kicked out? Because he was from Manchester probably, and they were from the South. So it was like a cultural divide. Yeah. Plus, pretty much he's very pragmatic and, you know, the lead singer was really the poet and the visionary and his manager was a great facilitator Terry Razer, who was a poet as well. And I don't think Billy just fit their profile. But anyway, he was working in a clothing store in London. A new Billy knew where he worked.
1:13:36Got in a coach, left Bradford, had a plastic bag, T -shirt, cigarettes, canabé, some lyrics. Turned up in a clothing shop, said, hey, I walk in and goes, hey, what's up? I said, a life band, he said, you do what? I said, a life band. Do you want to start a band? You're insane. You've done what? He was left that. I said, yeah. So next thing I'm sleeping on is captioning Brixton. That's the beginning of Death Cog. Because I came up and named something Death Cog. I just went, yeah, yeah. Because I wanted to distinguish two different bands. Yeah. So we wrote Death Cog. It was different. It was very different.
1:14:10It was very different. Our first drummer, Raymond Taylor Smith, his father was the diplomat from Sierra Leone, so he was an African kid. It was a play, amazing tribal beast. It's a band called Richel. We went to this band called Richel. And Jeremy Stewart was playing rhythm guitar on the band and I said to Billy, I said, that drumming is unbelievable. The guitar plays really good as well. Let's get try and get these guys. I remember as Drunk of his line upside down on a stairs, it's like an old theater and I was like, like in the aisle, lying upside down, watching them going, this is incredible.
1:14:47We got to do a band with these guys. So Raymond came in, we just grabbed him, and said we got a record deal, we're doing this, they left their bands for it away. No loyalty at all. There's no loyalty.
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1:16:33How would you describe the difference in the energy in you between Southern death cult and death cult? Well, I was becoming a veteran of lived experience. So, I kind of knew beginning to understand how it all worked. Like, they don't want you, they want it. whatever you're putting out, they meaning direct company people, the people you think of your friends, the replacement patriarchs and matriarchs, they want your essence, they want your soul. I signed my publishing contract in blood. Was that traumatic? A kid I was like, slash my hand. Did you really? That's amazing. Yeah, I was amazing. So, So, in environmentalism, committed to the...
1:17:22I'm still committed. Yeah. Still on that contract. Yeah. Also, the times were pretty oppressive. And death cult was like me and Billy, against the world. And now we really have to pull it together. So tell me about the seam at that time. What would have been the bands that you might have gone to seam at that point in time? Well, I remember going to see when I first day with Billy, we went to Seagy Poppet, was I mean, the venue in London near Victoria train station was a good pot. We got to Lysiemen Sunday's, we see things like Johnny Thunders. You could still access, but I was trying to go and see people like, you know, Johnny Hooker or Cherylee Lewis.
1:18:02But what was actually happening? What was happening? What were the up and coming exciting? It was post punk, positive punk. Other bands around at the time, system mercy, the cure were massive. the banshee's were massive. So, goth? Gough, although I prefer the term dark wave. When you come to America, they call it death rock, and I was like, oh, that's cool. You sound way cooler than gough. Yeah. Now goths, actually. Cool again. Yeah. We would talk about the dark wave and the shadow, and because that permeates the entire culture. Yeah. You go, look at America's top 20 podcasts. Murder, murder, murder, murder, and statement, murder.
1:18:43Matroside. What is this? We live in the shadow. So much so that I resurrected death cult last year. For one show at the eighth. Great. Because I had to reboot the whole thing. Great. I got to reboot the whole thing. Great. Shred it. Great. Death cult. Good experience. Oh, he's outrageous. Yeah. He was outrageous. We did 10 shows in the UK. I love him. much needed milk, sustenance. Yeah. So much so that we're being asked to do Death Calt now. Great. Because it speaks to the moment, speaks to the shadow, it speaks to the moment. But Death Calt was, our first gig was in Oslo. We decided to play in Europe first, so we'd get it together.
1:19:27Because again, we only had like six, eight songs, some of the Death Calt songs, some new songs that we'd written. We played Oslo, Berlin, Amsterdam, Paris, Lidl and Nouch. which was a Jordi Vision play, it was mythical. And they came back to the UK and did a tour. Did you reviews? The came in was that you had sounds, mountain maker, and the enemy was the Bible. And that's what everybody looked at. Because the journalists were way more integrated into the audience and music fans, like people like Paul Morley and Charles Charmere and the great writers. People were like, eh, looks great, but, eh, not really feeling it.
1:20:06So we were all of a sudden like back to Earth again. It's like, oh, I went from some death cult on the pinnacle of CBS and all of that. Next pistols, McLaren, it's blessing to back down to we're in the grinder again. So we've got a lot to prove and we went away and started thinking about being songwriters. Like that was a thing now. It's like, oh, we've got to write some songs. but start working through processes, start reading more books, going to more galleries. Inspiration. Inspiration. The travel was great. But then naturally found its way. We made an EP, we got that together, Death Colton and we made a song called God Zoo.
1:20:50So the lyrics were evolving. My density was evolving. I felt like I was evolving, and as I was evolving, Billy was evolving because he was originally a rhythm guitar player, and I kept nudging him going like, like Jimmy Page, you know? Like lead. Play lead. Go play lead, go to some blues. I was pushing that on him because to me it was like a foil. The guitar player in some death cult. I couldn't really influence, but with Billy, I basically took his record collection that was at the back of his record collection, was things like free, zipline, you know, like lead players. I'm poured it to the front of his record collection.
1:21:28and I said, it's okay to like public image and Led Zeppelin. This is the way we can do whatever we want. And I had this vision of, if you look at some early cult for maybe four dream time live, we got a song called Bum Bag, which actually has a solo in it, Blue Solo. And you can see me going to, you can actually see me looking at him going, how, how, how, how. And he's like stepping up to the plate because once you step over that threshold, you're not letting it go, man. And he did. And it was mesmerizing. We're not in the pantheon of, you know, all the things I was obsessed with. We were looking at it, people with binoculars, from a distance, but I could see it.
1:22:15It was like, we've got to get to this mountain. Yeah. We've got to get to this mountain, because when you look at early Zeppelin, or you look at early Gluciror, or MC5, or what they had was raw primal sabbudry. They found the animal and it was all true emotional intelligence. And I mean like the MC5 were heavily into progressive jazz and they incorporated all of that and it was amazing because as we came to America people like Rob Tynan would start coming to our shows from the five you know. We played his wake as well. Yeah there was so much information coming through, and I was trying to get it in against the culture at the time because even Robert Plank was quoted in a, when the music paper saying, Aspery was a like, Zeppelin T -shirt, now it's all of this.
1:23:08It exists somewhere that quote, actually Robert brought me on stage when he did his solo tour in 89, Charlie was playing bass, and I said, I'm gonna do a Dores song. I think it was break on through. And he always had doors obsessive as well. Was he? I didn't know that. Well, he was actually regaled the story of being on a flight, is that no one at all in America? And some dude up the front making a bit of a noise, bit of a racket. It's Morrison. Amazing. There's that man on the doors on the same flight. Incredible. It happened. Yeah. Kids. I love to see that. Me too. I would have loved to have been on that flight.
1:23:44But think about it. Yeah. That's Robert Plant as a young man, as a human flashing bones, just like me and you, that was his path. Same as Jim Morrison, same as Bowie, same as all of them, same as all the greats, Miles Davis, Nina Simone, human beings, letting it come through them. Some had teaching, some had technical abilities, others did not. They just did it intuitively, I guess environment played into a lot of it as well. Some of them dreamt about it and it happened. They wanted to be successful entertainers, whatever, because I've never considered since day one ever being an entertainer. Yeah.
1:24:30Something else. It's a different thing. It's a way different thing. Ride the lightning. Yeah. Dionysus. Yeah. All of that. Yes, actually believing it. But it's not the younger viewers. That's why the graveyards are full. Of early ones that burn out so young. Yeah, it's dangerous work. It's dangerous work. If you're staying close to lightning, you're going to get hit. Yeah. And believe me, I've got a binet many times. You know, it's a miracle I'm sitting here with you. Yeah. It's actually perfect. I'm sitting with you. I'm talking about these things. How do you think the different art forms influence music, whether it be film, books, painting.
1:25:13This is my favourite. It's all interconnected. Everything is connected. That's my drug of choice, art. Special visual art. Like you've got two hours for a show Madrid where we're going, hmm, Renasophia, Gernica, Bang, Plug Nen, wow. Or the Black Paintings, Goya, Prado, He let Blasca's bank just sucking it and you know Rothko first time I saw a real Rothko I was wet it ripped through me that guy when he killed himself He didn't just commit suicide he slashed himself to the bone Wow it's in the work you see paintings get darker and darker and darker and he was part of the in the left Russia, he came to Portland, Oregon, you know, when I was the all the anti -Semitic stuff happening in the Russian Revolution, the family moved to Portland.
1:26:16And that was part of his direct tangles and the painting with the greyed, that were dug. You think about the process to get to that, because you look at some of his figurative stuff. Before that, and then he started flipping to colors and visceral elements of color, how color can impact the emotional field. Wow, how he arrived at that through his own process, internal process. He's one of probably the biggest gifts that we've ever had in the 20th century Rothko, Van Gogh of course. You know Van Gogh's painting, story story nights in the asylum, with no windows. I didn't know that. There was no windows in the room when he painted that.
1:26:59It was in his head, staggering. How is that possible? I just think of Alice in Wonderland, you know, drink this, taste that, do this, don't open that door. Don't look at this note. Of course, we do. And then we find out. Curiosity kills the cat. It's the Buddha field. Art, film, impacts. If you're open to it, like I saw apocalypse now, when it came out, had a bottom line. And when the end came on, transformative. It's like it was written for that movie. It sort of felt like in the movie. It felt like it was written for me in that moment in my life. You know, it was an awakening, the technicolor.
1:27:46Now to see Coppola talk about cinema now, after he's made Magropolis, Wow, he's scorching what he's saying as an elder. And this is something with a culture that we, maybe his elders is like, we're not just saying this because we're elders, we're saying this because lived experience, there is value in it. Let's flip the telescope around the right way. There's a lot of information in lived experience, elder creatives. I'd say the most. Yeah. Although I would say the wisdom of lived experience and the naive energy of not knowing anything, that's where all the juices... That's when they collide is very, very powerful.
1:28:34Yeah. You know, consider it now crossing through our shoulders of 60. Consider that. And how that time is limited from the Buddhist perspective, we know that we have limited time. We don't know what the time of death is going to be when we drop our bodies, so make every moment count. And when you're young, you don't have that. You don't have that in your pocket. So that's where you look at the elders and you go like, how did Vosco arrive at that? are impermanence. He was accelerating the process. McLaren was accelerating the process. Lenin, whomever, all accelerating the processes. Even Dave Gilmore has come out recently and said, I've changed the direction.
1:29:20It's 76, whatever. Wow. Like a great phenomenal. Can we change direction to it? Absolutely sure you can. You can do whatever you want. Whatever you want. I like right now I'm obsessed with Grand Parsons. flying burrito. You may be sweet and nice. We don't keep you warm at night because I'm the one let you in. Ah, that song destroys me. Destroy me or his version of Wild Horses. Him and Emily Lou Harris, all of that. Good then I can flip over to the Dark Wave, Berlin, UFO -361, the transgressive, Ethylcane, even parts of Vultures, stars. Black night and land in the star, hold on. It's so desperate.
1:30:18And we live in desperate times. So be a channel, stay open, get grounded. Guru's, it's just a word. but access points. Take what you need, leave the rest behind. Tell me about your spiritual life. Oh, my spiritual life. Well, first of all, I don't distinguish that as something separate. I was blessed. My grandmother was in a spiritual church. My father's side. The witch -clap laws were not repelled and bred until 1951. 1951. It's not that long ago, really. So a lot of this nature -based traditional path was suppressed, the energy. And just as rock and roll was coming in, the witchcraft laws were repelled, and now you could practice openly the new spiritual forms.
1:31:12Plus we have people like Alan Watts, the east was coming in, the oriental teachings were coming in, and they crept in through, you know, the Portuguese were going to the far east, and they won't just bring them back silk. They were bringing back Buddhism, the British going to India bringing back Esoterian, creeping into, you know, French symbolism and nature and literally all of it. But also having the Scottish root, that has a wild mystical tradition. It does. It's deep. Yeah, deep, deep, deep. I mean, when we were kids, we used to go on the weekends you go up to the Highlands, you go to the locks and you'd be standing in nature and forests and I remember walking through forests as a child.
1:31:54Would you hear stories of like fairies and elves or entities? Entities. I mean, they pop up. One of the child I was told was believed it was little people lived in under God and they visit me in my dreams. I get older, I go like, oh yeah, they were there. That is definitely extraterrestrial. It's terrestrial. Yeah. It's just your psyche is able to go there. You're open enough to be able to see it. Yeah, that's one of my best friends ever said. Your ego is not your amigo. Let it go. It's a great line. Let go, let go. Right? Let it come in. So all of that, the Buddha field, you know, you go to Tibet, you see those, and they're just like, it's an everyday thing, you know?
1:32:40Oh yeah. Monks fly. There are entities. And by the way, there is the Yeti. Be careful on the trail. Do you ever have a mystical experience? Always. Sitting there with you is a mystical experience. Miss Garden, you kidding? But we all Shangri -La. The lost seat of Tibet. It was someone lightened it just went into the ether. Tell me something you believe now that he didn't believe when you were young. Oh, something I believe now that I didn't believe when I was young would be... when I was younger, that's not possible. You believed some things were impossible when you were young. So you reached and now anything's possible.
1:33:27Anything's possible. And that became more reinforced with each decade that I lived through. Yeah. It's the point where you go like, you look at the calendar and you go like, wait a minute. Ooh, Christmas is coming. Better get busy. You know, that kind of thing. So, yeah. I don't think I'm going to win the men's singles at Wimbledon. I might take that one off or play for my favorite song team, whatever. But in terms of creativity, it's all possible. Yeah. I've done many collaborations. You know, I had the opportunity to perform with Ray Menza, I can Robby Krieger, but to do that in music. So, incredible.
1:34:08film, I've written synopsis, I'm now looking at having conversations with people about potentially making films, being in films, making art, I've always made art since I was a kid. I've got like stashed away is the Ian that nobody's really seen because the Ian that nobody's really seen has been guarded by the dragon of it's not possible. And that dragon I've been fighting with the decades. And now, especially being back in your presence, you're like the guy going, aha, I found the key long ago and I opened the door and I went through it. And you can too. And look, I even wrote a book about it.
1:35:00Did you read the book, by the way? I've been through the book. I'm going, yeah. Yep, yep. I've read this how I read your book. I'm going, yeah. Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. Me too. That's the kind of book it is. Yep, it's a lot of yups. It's like, mm -hmm, um, entry point, docs point, the farthest. Yep, yep, yep. The good idea is one that happens. Okay. That's great. You know, a good idea. So like that we have five percent inspiration, 95 percent perspiration. It's like there's no avoiding the work. Yeah. It's true. You may get hit by lightning a few times. Yes. And by the way, a stylist and a team of 30 writers and producers, someday they're not going to be around your ass.
1:35:47You have to do this, you're so awful. So it depends which way you want to go. Did you ever get into the 60s English folk scene at all? Be like a fair port convention, pencangle. I sniffed around it. I never dove in. I liked early Genesis. Like when Peter Gabriel was in Genesis. Talking about, Can you tell me where my country lies? Said the unique onto his true love's eyes? I told him about the melancholia of the romantic period ending. And we're now going into the void of the shadow. Wow. As a teenager, I was listening to that going like, oh, the unique horns are dying. But I had a mojo interview the other day.
1:36:39They were trying to get into my head about what they thought I was and I said, no, let me correct you. What you're witnessing is a burning unicorn. You're witnessing trauma. You're witnessing an individual on fire. It's not entertainment. This is who I am. No better than no less than. It's real, yes. And if you can get close to the third rail, I mean, this things I eventually will share through some medium when it's appropriate. Yeah, but it's not showbiz. It ain't showbizness. Bill Graham told me that. Bill Graham was an incredible mentor to me. That's probably the gathering of the tribes. But it was very quickly taken into meeting to showbizness and then Pepsi got all the event and did Woodstock.
1:37:27Very quickly, the tail wag the dog, which is one of my favorite analogies right now. I'm always saying that every day, it's like, we can't let the tail wag the dog. Because it keeps happening. You know? We can't let the tail wag the dog. They're going, but look at this. It's got so much money and power and I said, yes, but it's a false economy. But we can have esoteric capitalism. There's nothing wrong with building wealth, material wealth. If you put a seed back in the ground, you know, the bands that we've had opening for us like the last I'm curating, like I find, like we just had a band called Patriarchy Open for us, this couple, they're incredible.
1:38:04It's amazing that you've got to do this over the course your life and you show up, then you go up on stage and you do what you do. Oh, it's... And for all of us that we get to have these incredible lives based on putting ourselves into this thing that we love, it's really a miracle. The whole thing's a miracle. It is a miracle. We live in these times. These times we live in. We live down the road from JPL. We live in the seat of Aseteria in the West. Yeah. This area where I live and not feel as... There's a Kadampa Buddhist temple. Tibetan Buddhist temple, five minutes from my house. Amazing. The oldest Ashra in America, where Christopher Ishwood, who wrote, I am a camera that influenced Bowie, Whites, why he went to Berlin.
1:38:51He translated the bag of Agita into English. That's his Ashra. He was friends with all this Huxley. He lived up his street as well. Theosophy, synagogues, Scientologists. which was connected to JPL through Jack Parsons. And all the esoteria is right there, and you think about Laurel Canyon. Yeah, and Manley Peahawls, right there. Manley Peahawls, right there. P -R -S. Yeah. Yeah, we live in, right in it. I don't think I can live anywhere else. I'm not ready for Shangri -La, just yet. This part is like, this is amazing. I would love to be in Shangri -La, but I know that couldn't stay.
1:39:55Tetragramatine is a podcast. Tetragramatine is a website. Tetragrammatin is a whole world of knowledge.
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From the publisher
Ian Astbury is the longtime frontman and founding member of The Cult. He began his music career in 1980, initially gaining recognition with the post-punk group Southern Death Cult. The band later evolved into The Cult, with guitarist Billy Duffy, bassist Jamie Stewart, and drummer Raymond Taylor Smith. Known for their blend of post-punk, gothic rock, and hard rock, The Cult released several successful albums throughout the 1980s and 1990s, including Love, Electric, and Sonic Temple, featuring hits such as “She Sells Sanctuary,” “Love Removal Machine,” and “Fire Woman.” Astbury continues to lead The Cult in the present day, most recently fronting the band on their 2025 North American tour, which features music from both The Cult and their earlier incarnation.
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