Lydia Lunch is a performance artist, writer, actress, and in my definition a rock star. She was part of the No-Wave movement in the 80s in the company of Swans, Sonic Youth, Richard Kern and countless other creative folks. She then became part of an early underground scene that included The Birthday Party, Foetus and X and has since become her own amazing entity.
I count her records Honeymoon in Red, 13.13, Shotgun Wedding, and Drowning in Limbo as classic and permanent fixtures in my rotation.
To call her an influence would be an understatement. From her DIY and fearless approach to her use of trash iconography and her choice of collaborators she is a touchstone in everything I do. I count her among John Waters, Robert Rauschenberg, Cornell Woolrich, Lenny Bruce and Pee-Wee Herman as the people who speak to my work in every form.
I am especially proud that this interview is included on her wikipedia page.
What follows is the actual interview as it appeared online, complete with the two photos she gave me permission to use at the time.
Lydia Lunch
Since she nearly single-handedly spearheaded the No-Wave movement
in 1976 by forming Teenage Jesus & the Jerks, Lydia Lunch has been a
performance artist stunning in her creativity, confrontational vision, and
longevity. In the 80’s she collaborated with such underground legends as
Richard Kern, Nick Cave, Foetus and Die Haut, and recording some classic solo
work such as Queen of Siam and In Limbo. The 90’s found her continuing her
collaborations with such luminaries as Exene Cervenka and Kim Gordon as well as
kicking her spoken word assault on the world into high gear. This new century
finds her working on installations, illustrated word and a new record Smoke in
the Shadows featuring Nels Cline, now of Wilco. I spoke to Lydia Lunch this
past spring from LA and she had quite a bit to say.
Greg Trout: I want to start by telling you that your 1992 release
Shotgun Wedding is one of my all-time favorite recordings.
Well Rowland Howard is just unbeatable.
Greg Trout: I agree. I wish he worked more.
He's just such a slow worker. When I did Shotgun Wedding I had to
import him and it's just so hard to pull music out of him but when it does its
just beautiful. He's truly one of the best guitar players in the whole world. I
wish he could crawl out of whatever funk he's in down in Australia and do more
work.
Greg Trout: In the
reviews for Smoke in the Shadows a lot of mention is made that is a sort of
return to Queen of Siam. Do you think this is true or is Queen of Siam just an
easy reference?
I don't know why people think Queen of Siam is such a landmark.
Maybe it was the time in their life that they heard it but if you go back and
listen to it, all of side one is basically childish, perverse sort of Edward
Gorey-esque nursery rhymes. The other side is this jazz influenced big band
kind of a thing, but people always think of the big band stuff. Its very
duplicitous to me and now with Smoke in the Shadows, its very noir, I am using
a lot of Jazz instruments but I don't think it's a jazz album and I don't even
know where the jazz comparisons come from, I think every song Is very
different. I don't know I just think people are fuckin' lazy. I don't think
Queen of Siam is an easy listening record, I think the first side is very
perverse. Maybe they are just in awe of the mastery of Robert Quine. It takes a
diehard to know what I have done for the past 28 years and each record really
does try to contradict what has come before. I think that if anyone didn't know
what I did than they would think every record I did sounded like the Agony is
the Ecstasy, which I am not even sure you are familiar with, it was my first
illustrated word, spontaneous, on the spot performance which was atrocious to
more ears.
Greg Trout: The
other side is Drunk on the Pope's Blood, right?
That performance was supposed to be 13.13, which is one of my
favorite recordings, but the band was so neurotic and irritating that I had to
drop them before the European tour. That was the first illustrated word work of
my career and I can assure you, Nick Cave could not believe his ears and hated
it. He never understood what I did, you know Rowland and I would do these
spontaneous experimental performances opening for the Birthday Party and other
than Tracy Pew the rest of the band couldn't even understand what it was all
about. But, and this contradicts Smoke in the Shadows, I have never been one to
work with a safety net and if you are going to go out and spontaneously combust
in front of the audience you will either come up with the best fucking thing anyone
has ever heard or the worst fucking piece of shit anyone including yourself has
ever been subject to. To me its another notch in my fearlessness and it opened
the door for me to do much more illustrated word in a very spontaneous way. The
live set for Smoke in the Shadows which the U.S. wont get to see, while we play
about 5 songs from the record, we then go into some really harsh, threatening
illustrated word. I mean to seduce is fine and I consider Smoke in the Shadows
seduction and instead of bludgeoning them over the head you are poisoning them
slowly.
Greg Trout: I think
the key to the success to a lot of your work is that no matter what genre you
work in you always sound very much at home.
Well what ever I have done I try to contradict what has come
before or I at least try to build on it. Although I am not very limited at all
in a sense I am still very limited because I can only speak from my frame of
reference and I am very intuitive about the collaborators I am going to choose
and that's what happens. I can only be true to the way I feel so whatever genre
I am creating at the moment is what I need to inhabit.
Greg Trout: I think that is especially true on the track
"Trick Baby".
One of my favorites. The only music I have really been interested
in in the past 10 years…when Rap music really hit hard with the Geto Boys and
Scarface and then later Rigor Mortis, Facemob and even Mystikal and even up to
Eminem who I think is the most punk thing out there, that's really the only
music based on the production and the atmosphere that has given me any sort of
perverse pleasure. Certainly "Trick Baby" is not a rap song, it's not
R&B it creates its own genre but is very influenced by the only music I put
on when I want to listen to something, other than instrumental quiet world
music like Muslimgauze. I have no idea how rappers do it, although I am one of
the most verbose artists out there, someone like Biggie Smalls would go into a
studio with nothing written down, I cant fucking comprehend it, I have my lyrics
in front of me no matter how many times I have sung them. It's a grand fucking
mystery to me and I am someone who has 25 page speeches to deal with that sound
like they are rolling off my tongue but I assure you every line is on the
fucking page. The respect I have had for music in the past 10 years has all
gone into murder rap or very dark gangster rap, thematically, production-wise,
the samples they use etc. "Trick Baby" being kind of a tribute and
even using Iceberg Slim quotes at the end. So its not rap music in the same way
as when I am referencing jazz, it's not jazz music. "Trick Baby" is
one of my favorite songs on there and I have been searching for 5 years for
someone to make that kind of music for me. No one I guess could understand what
I was talking about until Tommy Grenas threw that one at me and I was like
"Exactly". The vocals where all done in one take, I was just there
what can I say?
Greg Trout: This is
your first music offering in 6 years, correct?
Yes it started with the Nels Cline stuff, Nels Cline being a
genius, after we covered "Heartattack & Vine" for a Tom Waits
tribute record we still had some time so I asked Nels to come up with some
music so he went into his closet and 2 days later he had four songs so that's when
Smoke in the Shadows was really started. I had already worked with the Nubian
Lights so it was a natural but it still took quite a while. One of the longest
procedures was the recording because it was recorded in blocks and fits and
starts, but what really took me a long time was the order of the material and
what was going to go on this record. It's a very coherent record and that was
more difficult than actually recording the music. I know, the easiest thing.
The order of the fucking songs. I have never obsessed like that with any other
record; they always seem to have a natural order. Also getting the artwork
together took quite a long time.
Greg Trout: What are you concentrating on next?
Well I am living in Barcelona now, have been for about a year.
Most of my collaborators are in England. Terry Edwards and Ian White, both who
have played with Gallon Drunk and some other people. I don't know, I have a few
concepts in mind, one is a slight dig at the Christianity of Nick Cave, which I
scoff at, I'd like to a religious album that is almost an anti-religious album
if you know what I mean-I'm not talking Marilyn Manson here, I'm talking about
songs built around very perverse religious fairy tales and utilizing world
religious music and then perverting it. Like I have used jazz and perverted it
and rock and perverted it in the past. In Spain villages have three day drum
marathons, which are the most incredible things you have ever heard. So that
would be a jumping off point. One story that really caught my ear is a saint in
Spain called Saint Eulalia who was a thirteen year old girl who under the
Romans would not renounce her God so she was tortured in thirteen different
ways ala her own station of the cross. They beat her, they tortured her, they
raped her, they cut her breasts, they poured gasoline on her, they finally
ended up dragging her naked through town on the back of an ox. A story like
this set to Spanish Easter drumming music seems quite provocative and
interesting to me.
Greg Trout: Sounds like living in Spain is working for you and the
rest of us.
(laughs) well, who could resist? Last year I took a tour of rohas,
which are these beautiful monuments in the center of small villages where they
would tie the heretics. They would beat them and torture them, pour honey on
them and let the bees sting them or in the winter tie them there naked. You see
I move for inspiration, I move for collaborators. There is so much wealth of
history in Spain, not so much the horror and brutality of it but also it
happens to be one of the most progressive countries right now in the world. Its
only 35 years from under the fist of fascism, where America is currently
slipping under, which gave me a great reason to relocate.
Greg Trout: History
always seems to associate you with New York.
And I haven't lived there in fifteen years. It's horrifying to me
to think how long it's been since I lived there, and also horrifying to think
how much time I spent there as well. I'm glad I was there when I was there but
now I have a twenty-four hour time limit and cant fucking stand what it has
become.
Greg Trout: What motivated you to move to Spain?
I've been going there for fifteen years, I have friends there .
It's one of the hottest cities in Europe right now, not for music but for
visual art. I love the atmosphere, the history, and the beauty of the
architecture. Something drew me there and I would keep going there whenever I
could. I was in Los Angeles for four years, wanting to leave for two, I even
investigated Louisville, Kentucky, just sort of tired of America. I wasn't
interested in Berlin, a lot of artists are moving there now because its so
cheap because the economy is so bad, England is far too expensive although
there are many artists and collaborators there. Spain is still reasonable, and
it's just the daily quality of life that is so different. I find that when I am
in the U.S., especially in the last few years and under this fascist so called
"presidency", I find myself so brutally obsessed, and not even angry,
more gloating about how predictable this cycle is, but yet obsessed with it. I
speak about political issues enough in my work, I don't need to live it, and I
already feel like a spy when I am in the U.S. I might as well live elsewhere.
Its self-preservation, I need to live somewhere where the day-to-day reality is
not so contaminated with lies.
Greg Trout: In the United States you can get work doing Spoken
Word…
Occasionally.
Greg Trout: …While in Europe you seem to be able to tour with
music annually.
At least once or twice a year with music and I have. I don't know
how I got the wherewithal with Teenage Jesus to raise the money and take them
to Europe but I did. A lot of people at the time in the states just didn't do
that. I just decided to raise the money, and play in England and Germany. It
was very effective. People like Blixa Bargeld were very involved in the
promoting of the no-wave scene, and were very influenced by it. I then took
Eight Eyed Spy to Europe. I just kept going back with different projects, and
that set the stage for me to continue to perform there. I think because they
draw less of a divide as to what they accept as art or culture. They are more
accepting, they understand art a little better, having you know, thousands of
years of history. I just have more opportunities to do more things, including
spoken word. I can do far more spoken word shows there in spite of the language
barrier. I can do exhibitions, installations and here, it's as hard as it's
ever been. I can't even afford to go on tour in the states.
Greg Trout: You've collaborated with a lot of interesting people.
Exene Cervenka, Rowland Howard, R. Kern, Die Haut, yet your style is rather
confrontational and your persona is rather larger-than-life which doesn't seem
like it would lend itself to collaboration.
Well that just goes to show how wrong public opinion can be. My
ego is secure enough that it doesn't have to impede on anyone else's. For the
most part I am very encouraging to people and people are comfortable with me. I
taught a semester at the San Francisco Art Institute and there was no criticism
allowed in my classroom, only encouragement. That's how I view my
collaborations, if another artist has an element that we can mutually
encourage, well that's what I am going in to stimulate. I am encouraging people
to do something else, to step outside of themselves or get more into
themselves. I am very easy to deal with, I'm not judgmental. I just want people
to do what they do. People also love to collaborate with me because I'm in
charge of everything! I find the money to do it, I find a way to get it out, I
find someone to book the show, and all they have to do is show up and create. I
have collaborated with alcoholics, pill poppers, heroin addicts and having
never been an addict myself you're considered the outsider because you are not
on their level, its ridiculous. I don't want to call myself sober because then
I sound NA/AA and I'll do whatever drinking or drugs I want, its just that I
never had a fucking problem with it. Now consider a scenario were people would
consider me strange because I'm not fucked up enough, its bizarre.
Unfortunately a lot of the people I have worked with, their art has not
suffered under the worst of their behavior. Some of them have come out on the
other side, everyone is entitled to their junkie adolescent period, it seems to
be part of the procedure, and it never impinged upon their work. Someone like
Foetus who was at the height of their alcohol fueled dementia, which luckily he
has been out from under for the past seven years, but you know how do you tell
them anything when its not impeding on their work, you just have to put up with
it. you have to extend some positivity and also some tough love. People don't
understand that when they are doing these chemicals because of the great pain
they feel they don't understand the emotional tsunami they but everyone around
them through. That's difficult. You just have to hold their hands. I don't
regret any situation I have been put through because of someone else's fucked
up nature I don't regret any experience I have ever had because the end result
is going to be the creative output which is going to outlast the moment. That's
part of what feeds my stamina and what has helped me survive.
Greg Trout: So basically the project creates itself with the
exchange of ideas between you and the collaborator.
Well I told Nels I wanted something sexy or jazzy and I wanted him
to pull upon some of his elements that don't often get showcased like with Mike
Watt or whoever. When I worked with the Anubian Lights and Tommy Grenas I
wanted something that was more groove based, sexy and sinister. Or like in
'Touch My Evil' , which was based on the movie "Touch of Evil" which
then has the latin midsection. So it would be song by song or they would come to
me with songs and I would say yes or no. That's basically how this record came
together. They knew the lyrical content and vibe I was going for. It was pretty
intuitive. Very exciting.
Greg Trout: Who are you listening to these days?
Face Mob which is a Houston based band led by Scarface. I was
listening actually to the Stooges yesterday. Also this Turkish group called
Babalusa which is sort of Middle eastern trip-hop/belly dance. I was in
Istanbul and I met these characters who are friends of Alexander Hacke of
Neubauten. They were very groovy and otherworldly yet world music enough to be
interesting.
Greg Trout: Anything else you would like the world to know that it
doesn't know yet?
I think they are getting more than an earful with this interview.
They should really look inside themselves and ask what they need to know about
themselves that they don't know yet. That's my whole goal in the process of
creation is to furthur understand what drives me to do what I do and to step
off the wheel and not become an automaton of reaction but to be proactive so I
think its up to the individual reader to question themselves and not to
question me.
