An article based on this June 21, 1989, interview originally appeared in Chicago Suburban Times Newspapers. At the time, Robyn Hitchcock was touring the United States with his band, the Egyptians, to promote the album Queen Elvis. This is an expanded transcript of the interview, updated on Feb. 28, 2002.
Hear an excerpt of the interview, in which
Robyn Hitchcock tells the story of "Madonna of the Wasps."
MP3
Do you mind if I tape-record this?
I think it would be really useful. I can't think of anything better. It would be a nightmare otherwise. You would be scurrying around for kind of implements and it would be very distracting.
What are you doing in New Hampshire?
My sister and I came here for a spot of fishing, but it turned out it was more of a seaside town, so I don't know. My sister's gone outside to throw up, I guess, and then we'll probably go and sit around on the beach.
Are you playing any concerts up in that area?
We did a gig last night. It was some place on the beach where they have people like Tom Jones and the Everly Brothers, and for some reason we were playing... They obviously saw the same thing in us. I guess they're grooming us... for supper rock in our mid-40s. Then we played to all these people who were all kind of straitjacketed down, really. All these guys with red bow ties were watching, and anytime anyone stood up they were knocked down with a rubber mallet back into their seat. It was the way the Nuremburg rallies should have been run.
How do you like touring America?
Fine. Yeah, it's great — a good country to tour. It's nice and big, so there's plenty of it. You have long gaps in between the places. You don't just get into the bus and get out again. You couldn't tour England like this.
Your music seems distinctly British. Do you find that Americans have a different reaction to your music than British people do?
I think Americans like the image, the quaint image of an English person, yeah. You know, cricket and policeman's helmets and the House of Lords and the bowler hat and the umbrella and the stiff upper lip and, you know, this sort of slightly pompous laid-back Old World quality that we seem to exude. I don't know, though. I don't think that's the only reason people come to see it, because we're Hollywood Englishmen, if you like. I hope not.
Do you think you live up to that image of the Englishman you just described?
Oh, no... I mean, I'm English, you know. I'm a middle-class British songwriter. I'm not working-class. I'm not a Cockney or anything like that. So that's all I am, really. But I mean, you know, if I was from Chicago, it might be different. I could play the blues with some authenticity. Although you get someone like Mike Bloomfield... He managed to be an authentic bluesman, even though he was actually, you know, Jewish and white, whatever.
What are your favorite things to write lyrics about?
I don't know, really. You'd have to tell me what you thought recurred in them. I'm pretty open-minded. I don't write about sports, 'cause I'm not interested in it. I don't react to sports for some reason. Hold up a card with "Sports" on it and I won't notice it.
I've noticed a lot of insects, sea animals, some science-fiction-type themes, mystical themes, fantasy elements. What in your childhood or your education or whatever inspired you to write about things like this?
Based on what I write about, I would assume it's what I'm attracted to. I don't write about economics or mathematics. And I was never drawn to those, mathematics or sports or economics or "keep fit" programs or anything like that — to the point where I don't understand them at all. But I often think I should. I think you could write some really interesting songs about that. I'd like to take five years off and maybe come to terms with economics, mathematics and sports.
Then you could come back with a concept album.
Well, yeah, or just having mastered different things, really.
You don't seem to write a lot of typical love songs, like you hear in the Top 40.
I've written a lot of my version of love songs. Yeah. I mean, there's lot of ways -- so-called love songs, you know, they're also sex songs. And a lot of my stuff is essentially sexual. It's just not that it's not written about in the same way that Lionel Ritchie or Michael Jackson would write about it, or Madonna. Or Bo Diddley, yeah. But I don't think the motivation's that different. I mean, basically pop songs, in as much as they're descended from all sorts of things like the blues and folk music and stuff are basically either "Come and get me" or "Go away, don't come and get me anymore." Or "Wow, you've gone away, and I can't come and get you." There's only about three variables. It's like sex is only a certain number of positions, really.
What is your new song "Madonna of the Wasps" about?
Well, "Madonna" is about an artist with a long, straggly beard who's kept in a white room in a castle somewhere in France. It's one of those castles where ... there are 31 doors but there are 32 windows, and if you hang a handkerchief out of each window, there's still one room that doesn't have a handkerchief hanging out of it. In other words, there's a doorless room.
And trapped inside this this doorless room is a very emaciated artist, and every night ... he sits there painting. He's got a kind of hotel suite, so he's not lying there in his own shit or anything like that. But he doesn't get around much.
Anyway, he's trapped up there, and every night this woman comes to him. As her head and shoulders come through the window, he thinks, "Great," but her abdomen is that of a wasp, and it's a kind of two-foot-long beautiful black-and-yellow abdomen with rings around it. And she comes in and she sort of pins him to the bed, and she sticks her tongue in his mouth, and she arcs up her abdomen and he goes, "Unnh, Unnh, Unnh."
She just curls this thing around and stabs him in the navel, and he gets a lethal dose of wasp poisoning. And he just passes out, and the next morning he wakes up and he's OK again. Like Prometheus, he's had his kidneys taken out. Anyway, he doesn't know why he's in there. He doesn't know what his relationship with the Madonna is, particularly. I mean, she's very attractive in one way, you know, but repellant in another.
And then one day, he wakes up, and he's not in the room anymore. He's just walking along in the fields in France, all these sort of flat fields. And it's early morning in November and there's a frost, and he sees this sort of shape lying on the ground, like a crashed plane.
And it's the Madonna. She's dying like wasps do in the autumn, and she stretches
her hand out to him and says, "Will you forgive me?" And then that's where
it ends.
There's the option: Is she actually going to whip up and sting him again, finally, or is he going to forgive her, or what? So we leave it there... Well, it's very long, so that why I had to make the song completely different, but that's the concept behind it.
Of the albums you've recorded, which do you yourself like the best?
Depends on what mood I'm in. I like them for different things. I like Underwater Moonlight by the Soft Boys a bit. And, oh. There's a green record, I Often Dream of Trains, I made by myself, which I like because I haven't got anybody else to blame for it. And there's there, God, Fegmania is a pretty good record because the songs are so good. I like those. It's a very strong collection of songs. And I quite like the new one, but you know, you can't tell for a while.
Where
does the title Queen Elvis come from?
Well, it's a collision between Britain and the States, really. You know, we've got the queen and you've got Elvis Presley. They're national monuments, if you like. I just wanted to stick them together and see what happened.
The publicist at A&M Records tells me that today is your day off.
Oh, Wednesday. Yeah, well, he doesn't like us having a day off, so he tries to sort out interviews. He's jealous of the fact that I might be sitting around on the beach with my sister vomiting while he's just sitting in that room in New York answering the phone.
Is this what you typically do on a day off?
That's what I usually try and do. I try and have my sister flown in and then she throws up. You know, it's a kind of ritual. She's quite a healthy woman, actually, but she's not feeling too good, 'cause we were out late last night, grooving. And unfortunately, I've got a steadier stomach than she has. But it can't be helped.
Has it been a struggle for you to make it from being an obscure British folksinger to where you are now? You weren't exactly an overnight sensation.
No, I didn't want to be,
particularly, and I didn't expect to be. Um, it's not really a struggle. It's
simply a matter of time, I suppose. You know, It's like you're burrowing and you don't really know what you're burrowing
for. You're like a mole or some sort of creature under the ground. You
can't see where you're going, but you can feel it. I know I'm drawn to
something, but I'm not sure quite what it is. I don't know what I'm going
to unwrap on Christmas morning. When a man comes, I don't know what he's
going to bring. I'm not quite sure that it's necessarily success in the
accepted sense of the word that I'm looking for — at all really.
This is all kind of— You know, it goes along with itself. We make more money, we go on aeroplanes, we hire more roadies, we've got more accountants. You know, I don't have any more suits or clothes or anything. I don't feel personally much wealthier. It all just seems to go into more— It's all pretty self-perpetuating, really.
What was your childhood like?
It wasn't really anything, you know. It was just a sort of blank somewhere in the Home Counties of England, down in the south, southeast, southwest, a bit southwest of London, and then kind of moving gradually outwards. Just a sort of standard middle-class background. Then it ended really.
But what about your childhood influenced you to become the artist you are today?
What made me? I guess whatever was happening at the
time. It begins with your parents, and then after there's whatever's
going on, really. So I
suppose I'm an amalgam of my parents and the Beatles,
probably. They never met, you know. But I suppose they were the big influence. And I was surrounded, I had a lot of
insects around me and a lot of mushrooms and fungus and stuff. I suppose, more than
other kids. Yeah. I suppose we were quite isolated, so maybe we did spend a lot
of time with, with insects.
Your bio mentions that you've seen two dead chickens during your life. What's the significance of that?
I was menaced by a dead chicken when I was about 3, and I'm quite a timid person. And, uh, what happened then? I remember this very, very old guy with stubble and no teeth who cowered above me and said — if he'd been from Kentucky he'd have said, "Yep, that there's a rooster, boy! That critter's mighty gone. 'Fact, I'd say he's dead! Heh, let's dig him up and take a look there."
But as it was, he (said), "Ahhh, that there bird, Robyn, he be stone-cold dead, like you can see there." I don't know. He was tall and he had bits of string around his trousers, like a kind of straw man or a scarecrow. And I remember seeing him digging up this chicken or watching it being buried.
I was really not so much interested in mammals, although birds have a certain grotesque appeal to them. They haven't got any arms.
I always imagined — Did you ever think what it's like to be a worm, and how terrifying a blackbird must be? These things sort of hop along at you, and this great big head comes down like a crane: chomp, chomp into the earth. And then suddenly, he sort of "shoooop," of and that's it. You're being sucked away by this huge, black, pecking thing. A lot of these things would be so terrifying if they were bigger.
And you saw a second dead chicken in 1988?
Do you think this has anything to do with your records selling more?
I think it was an omen, yeah. The same guy came back. "That there rooster be long dead, m'boy. But wait until the second chicken comes. When the second chicken comes, and your luck will change with the wind."
I doubt if it's an omen. I've seen lots of dead things. I've never seen a dead person, actually, strangely enough.
What are the other guys in your band like?
They're very different really. From each other, they're totally different. Andy (Metcalfe) and Morris (Windsor) are practically polar opposites, but I don't feel that I can go into any great detail about them, because that's their business. Suffice to say that they're totally opposite in one way and very similar in another. They're both burdened by a lot of taste. They have a lot more taste than I do, and this is where we differ, in a way what the match of the music is all about. They should actually be playing with someone like, anyone from sort of Costello sideways. But then, they've got such good taste, that there's hardly anyone they could stand to play with, I think. Most other musicians would be too crass for them. So for some reason, they play with me, but why? You'd have to ask them.
How did you meet Peter Buck?
Peter was trying to hire a small animal to go on tour with him, a cat, 'cause he was homesick -- a cat protection agency. I just happened to be in there, having one of my cats repaired. And I lent him the other one. Got talking to him, found out he was a rock musician, and so on, and lent him the cat. He had someone looking after it for him, you know, it was just being carried around. You can't take animals like that into England, you see, there's a six-month quarantine period. So he had to wait, and um, he couldn't wait, so he just hired mine instead... So that's how we met. R.E.M., I guess it was about the third time they'd come over to Britain, really. They weren't mega in those days. And so we went from there, really. Mutual interest in guitars. Or not guitars, but playing them. You know, occupying our fingers by strumming, which we both tend to do.
You toured as their opening act just earlier this year?
We opened for them in Chicago, amongst other places.
Is opening for R.E.M. bringing you new fans from that band?
I suppose it must bring a few. You know, we've had some letters. No one's actually written to us and said, "I was really enjoying the concert until I found out you guys were playing. Don't do this again." I don't think it matters, opening... You're just basically parasiting on a larger organism. But everybody does it. R.E.M. did it... It's a standard thing over here. And don't bother to ask me whether I hope to play to 15,000 seats one day. It's not really that important. I'd be very surprised if we ever did. And I also don't know anybody who actually likes doing it. They also prefer playing clubs and small theaters, because you can see the audience.
I read that you occasionally played with Peter Buck and Peter Holsapple and you were calling yourselves Nigel and the Crosses?
That's right, yeah. We did a Nigel and the Crosses gig. The first one was actually at the Cubby Bear in Chicago. It was a sort of accident. Holsapple was doing a benefit, and we all got up and played with him. We were basically covering ourselves and covering other people, doing old Soft Boys songs... basically just pop rock.
Are you planning on playing together again?
We did one in London last month, which was quite fun. But it's a matter of getting everybody in the same place. I'd like to do one at Christmas, but it gets expensive. I can't imagine doing a Nigel tour.
I read that you thought of it as an equivalent of the Traveling Wilburys?
(Laughs.) Well, actually the guy put that into my mouth. He said, "You mean, is it like the Wilburys?" And I said, "Sort of." The Wilburys was a way of relaunching their respective careers, you know, which was a brilliant marketing move. With the exception of Tom Petty, the rest of them hadn't been doing that well recently. I don't know really know whether — it's different for us. We have guest Wilburys. We have Billy Bragg as a guest— Not Wilburys, Nigels, sorry. Billy Bragg was with us, and Glenn Tilbrook from Squeeze. So they're kind of honorary Nigels. It's a floating outfit.
I also noticed your bio says that in the early '70s, you had a band called the Beatles. Is that correct?
Yeah, yeah, it was called the Beatles. We did about five or six gigs. I mean, I was very young. Some of those songs we still play actually in the Nigels. We do "Bells of Rhymney" and "Rain" and "Waterloo Sunset," "Revolution."
It sounds like you didn't play enough gigs to get into trouble for using the name.
What, the Beatles? No, no. I mean, it was only art-school geeks, you know? I don't think we ever did a proper — we didn't advertise in the paper, "Come and see the fabulous Beatles. Now from South London your very own."
You played folk clubs for a while in the early '70s?
Yeah, I played folk clubs after that. I used to listen to a lot of folk music. The point behind the folk clubs is it's the only place you could go and do, you could book yourself a spot and do three songs. I mean, a lot of places didn't like us. They were actually very reluctant when I turned up after they'd seen me one week to give me a spot the following week. I wasn't very popular. But after a while, they just got used to me.
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