Here is an interview from a tiny little taxpayer-supported magazine at the
University of Virginia. The interview was done in May of '92.
I've tried to leave the article intact, which is a little difficult given
the layout of the magazine. The name of the magazine is 3.7 or 3 Point 7,
and occasionally three-point-seven, depending on where you look.
This is from Volume 1, Number 1.
Mike.
3.7 Seconds with... Robyn Hitchcock
There's what you call "yourself" and what you call "someone else", and
there's a razor sharp line dividing them off. You label the world that
way because it's safe, but deep down you know that the line isn't so
firm and we bleed into each other, mixing and reacting every which way.
It's here, in our gray zones, that Robyn Hitchcock's music lives;
cloaked in lush guitar melodies and a Beatlesque wail, he pins down the
finer workings of human interaction with a halogen glare. And because
he's honest, he plays to a full house. And that's how it should be.
A CAUSASIAN BIPED AND HIS RAZOR~SHARP RETRO-GUITAR
"My convention is however, and it is a bloody obvious one, that beneath
our civilized glazing we are all deviants, all alone and all peculiar.
This flies in the face of mass-marketing, but I'm sticking with it."
-- Robyn Hitchcock, November '87
3.7: If deviance is the norm, where does that leave us as a species?
RH: Well, I didn't come up with the term deviant you know. It was
already there and I simply turned it. If you say "deviance is the
norm", that nullifies the meaning of the word "deviant"...
3.7: And "norm..."
RH: Yes, and "norm"... which I thought was good, really. I mean if you
wanted to argue about it semantically - you know, the meaning of "to
deviate" or the meaning of "to be normal" - you could go around it
indefinitely. But, you know "reality" is the consensus of perception;
and therefore, the consensus of action: we all agree to see things in a
certain way, so we all drive on the righthand side of the road. A
deviant is someone who... who doesn't quite fit in... at least that's
what I like to think.
3.7: You've said before that "alternative music" is essentially a
grouping of any kind of music that isn't overtly commercial. It didn't
mean that your music was the same as Depeche Mode or Jane's Addiction,
just because all of you were considered to be "alternative". Where does
your music fit in?
RH: Well, to ants there would be little difference between us [The
Egyptians], Depeche Mode, and Jane's Addiction: we're all caucasian bipeds
that are going to step on you, or whatever, it does not really matter.
Although, I suppose stylistically our stuff is descended from the Beatles,
Jane's Addiction's stuff is descended from... I don't know, Iggy Pop? And
I'm not quite sure what Depeche Mode is descended from, they're originals I
suppose. Those other bands are probably more original than us, I mean
stylistically, we are very derivative of the stuff in the 60's. When we
started, we were peculiar because of that, of course now there's been so
much "retro" stuff in the last ten years. When the Soft Boys were going,
we were one of the few groups to use harmonies and guitar solos at the time
and people considered us unnecessarily backward... at least in England.
Now, with there being so much "retrodelia" around, it doesn't matter. I
suspect if our stuff is listened to in another fifty years or so, no one
will care... if it's still around [he grins]... people will actually think
we were contemporaries of the Kinks or something.
3.7: So where you fit in musically is different from what you're trying to
do?
RH: I'm just putting it in, if you like, general "music magazine" terms,
because the music magazines are the people that "define" all of this
[sarcasm dripping from every syllable].
3.7: At what point should a musician let a political condition surrounding
them seep into their work, you don't seem to let it enter yours...
RH: Well, I don't think you should write about things you don't understand
and don't know about. To me, politics and economics are so incredibly
devious, I mean people are being starved to death and driven out of their
homes, or for that matter, riding to luxury on the currency in English
banks. Which is something we don't really understand, I mean it is human
affairs but people talk about economics as if it's the weather. We don't
apparently contro the weather... but we should be able to control the stock
market, its a human organism. But we don't, the stock market seems like a
virus with its owm will: it destroys people and makes them... if not at
its own will, then at least in a way that's incomprehensible to us. I'm
not interested in maths and I'm not interested in statistics. To deal with
politics you have to manipulate all of these particular things. I can't
write about that, it's just baffling. I'm a miniaturist, I'm more
interested in the way light reflects on this glass... you know I can burble
on about politics for hours, but I certainly can't put it into songs. If I
did what would I come out with? "The verdict on Rodney King was wrong."
Great! So Robyn Hitchcock tells you that.
3.7: Do some musicians make meaningful political commentary?
RH: I've always admired Billy Bragg because he can articulate things
basically. But very few people can... it's not a gift many songwriters
have.
3.7: Two years ago you were here, and during your set you said that
because you were British, part of you was always off somewhere "tidying and
straightening up." Is being British always so tedious?
RH: [laughs] No, I just use that as an excuse. You know, I can say that
if I'm in the States, but I wouldn't say that if I were in Britain. I
might say, "I've been in America a lot, so I've got to go and tidy up."
It's like an anti-party chant, instead of saying "It's great to be in
Charlottesville!" I say "It's great not to be in England."
3.7: Imagine you're in the middle of your set, can you give us a story?
RH: A story? I haven't got any stories... there are increasingly fewer
and fewer stories. I mean, I used to tell a lot of stories but it's been
crowded out by the outside world. I don't know what relevance my stories
have... sometimes it seems a bit escapist. I've been trying to make my
stuff a bit more focussed, although I don't really know what the stuff is
for...
3.7: But you do it?
RH: Well I do it, but a bird builds a nest and it doesn't know why.
Hopefully you have erections, but that doesn't necessarily mean you knwo
why or what to do with them. It's just implanted in you... we are acting
out things which we did not impant in ourselves. That's why I think if
there was an election you should vote for the dead, because the dead are
the people who put us here, but nobody anywhere says, "Vote for the
dead!"... I mean the dead are the biggest influence on our lives. The dead
caused the situation to happen. No really, I'm a realist now.
3.7: Now you are.
RH: It's nice to tell a story if you feel like it, and I used to tell them
at gigs and enjoy it. But the problem with stories is... people started
saying, "Tell us a story Uncle Bob." And it became something like, "is he
going to do something wacky tonight?" And I found that disturbing, because
it became the norm. People expected me to open my head up and the plant
came out. You know, the plant comes out when it wants to. [laughs] So
these days I don't say too much... I just try to sing in tune.
3.7: So "singing in tune" is how you'd describe Robyn Hitchcock's new
musical direction?
RH: Well, no. [laughs] I'm working with Andy and Morris [of the Egyptians]
trying to be musical... it's just harmonies. You know, it's incredibly
normal stuff. It could have been written by some footballer.
3.7: You don't seem like the man who would sing, "I was walking up 5th AV,
and balloon man came right up to me..." [From the album Globe of Frogs]
RH: No, I wouldn't... I've sung that before. There's nothing like
repetition to kill you off. I think it's really good to do everything
once and move on. [end]
Interview at Trax: Judah Chakoff and Stuart Gluck
Photos: Marie Gantz and Tony Moon
ed. note: there's also a little discography that lists up to "1991 -
Perspex Island", and a little quote from the show that night:
"it just goes to show love is the distance between reality and pain"
--- Michael DeLong - UVa Department of Computer Science - mike@virginia.edu ---
"You can't work it with your fingers so you try it with an axe" - R. Hitchcock