INTERVIEW: XTC's Andy Partridge (Part 1)

- Joe Silva

Some five years after they last released an official LP, XTC are now free from their career-long indentured servitude to Virgin Records. Holed up in his "shed" in Swindon England during the interim, Andy Partridge is now faced with new label concerns, remaining firm about avoiding excessive public exposure, and engineering what may be the dawning of the band's second wind. Geffen has just released a collection of their more universally palatable platters under the monicker Upsy Daisy. Revved up and ready to shed his mantle of pop virtuoso emeritus, we did the trans-atlantic chin wag to get at the details...

Andy Partridge: Yeah, Hello. So, tell me, are you like poised over a keyboard as we speak?

Consumable Online: Oh, no. But I could be if it was necessary, I guess. I do this the standard way. I just type it in and send it off later on.

AP: I hope you don't type at my speed T...H....hmmm now where's the E? Now that's my kind of speed.

CO: Are you still taping musical notes over keyboards and stuff like that?

AP: No, I now have a sequencer which, I still only play like one or two notes at a time but this has to remember them. You get them in a sequencer and you can see what you just hit and it remembers that chord's just going to pass so get ready with the next chord. So I don't have the cardboard hand principle anymore. I have a cardboard sequencer instead!

CO: Do you use it like a computer for much of the stuff you do out back (in your home studio)? AP: No, only the instruments I can't really play. If I need any drumming I have to do that a couple of bonks and a bash at a time through the sequencer or I can't play keyboard of any description or any keyboard-generated sounds. My playing with drums and keyboard is appalling but I can manage guitar, bass, harmonica and any singing. I can shake a few things, you know like empty vitamin C tablet bottles full of rice for shakers n stuff. I can do any of that kind of thing but the real swish musical stuff, I need a sequencer to help me out.

CO: Well, you guys have had a pretty extended vacation, I guess. AP: Well, enforced legal vacation. We finally got out of Virgin and since Christmas really we've been seriously looking at other labels. I mean, we were looking at other labels before, but we couldn't do anything cuz we were still contractually tied to Virgin even though we couldn't and wouldn't work. But since Christmas we've really been looking seriously at other labels. We're just about ready, hopefully, to make a decision on one of them. I can't tell you which one yet cause we haven't decided. But, it's one of three. And (we're) just desperate to record this mass of material we've built up.

CO: How have the relationships held up during this time? It must have been frustrating for you and Colin to sort of withstand this sort of forced exile.

AP: Yeah, it's been very tough. It's been especially tough, I think, on Colin whose wife has been going through all sorts of weird phobia stuff where she can't leave the house and she can't let him out of her sight and stuff like this so he's kind of the man in the iron mask. He's really felt imprisoned in the last couple of years being involved with all this. And I think his songwriting has suffered and also the heavy psychological blow of being on strike and not being able to record. He hasn't written a fraction of the songs he used to write but, he's written a couple of real crackers. I think that once we get going, once we get in the studio and the little red light goes on he'll probably be coming in the next morning saying "I've been working on this chord change and I've been working on these lyrics". He can create once the thumb is squeezed down. It's been tough with his wife's...I don't know what the medical book says...extreme weirdness that she's suffering from. It's kind of held him prisoner.

CO: You guys got on more or less well? You get the impression that even though you live in the same town, you probably have somewhat separate lives.

AP: I saw Dave - admittedly Dave is working in Los Angeles on some of these sessions - for the first time in about three weeks and he came over and we ran through some bits and pieces. I guess I see Dave more but, because of the situation that Colin's got himself caught in, I don't see him that much. I mean we get along okay. I'm not sure how bands are supposed to get on after they've been together for this long. I was never in a band that was together for longer than five minutes or a year.

CO: But, you guys are in the strange situation that you always hear bands falling out from the stress of being forced to press on but, you guys have had a bunch of slack time where you could let the relationship breath.

AP: Yeah, well. certainly when you're touring and you're living in each others pockets and you're in the van and you think "If he blinks like that one more time, I'm gonna shove this guitar up his arse". It gets like that, so if you're not rammed down each others throats, you actually think, "Well, I really want to see so-and-so or I really would like to get together with so-and-so" as opposed to "I'm gonna kill them at breakfast because I can't stick stand them anymore. That's what it gets like when you're stuck... It's like a roving prison center and they're your cellmates. And that's not healthy.

CO: Like marriage. Oh, I didn't say that.

AP: Oh..can be...can be.

CO: As far as the shopping went for record labels, was there any sort of pressure put on you guys as far as "We'd love to have you but, you're gonna have to get under the spotlight for us for at least the first couple of...

AP: Yeah, a lot of labels said "You know, are you gonna be touring?" and we said "No" and you could just see the icicles starting to form. They have no imagination. We've existed longer as a non-touring band than as a touring band and our best material came when we stopped touring and is still coming. They obviously have a set way of doing things, a set pattern and they can't turn their heads at all, they've got a fixed gaze. So I'm not interested in any label that that's just as far as they can see.

CO: And there's other options now even with the technology and stuff. You can be in many places at one time without having to leave your living room.

AP: I still have trouble with people who have to see the person who is making that music. I still have trouble with that.

CO: Especially with you guys. You guys are now getting to that mythic sort of legend status.

AP: Yeah, me and Thor!

CO: Like my mechanic the other day, I was you know, taking the car in and he said something like "Oh, yeah I saw XTC there just before he cracked..." or something like that and every one sort of started gathering around to hear the tale.

AP: Well, I suppose they probably think I'm in a little village somewhere like they had in 'The Prisoner' and I'm in a wheelchair with a blazer on and a captain's hat kind of dribbling over a chess board and there's Sid Barrett opposite me. He's dribbling on the white pieces and I'm dribbling on the black pieces. Yeah, people get that kind of impression.

CO: And the reality is you've got children to raise just like anybody else.

AP: Yeah, that was part of the reason for coming off the road. I wanted a normal life. I was sick of hotels. I was sick of worrying about where the money was gonna come from because we never saw a penny from the live show. Very corrupt management. I just wanted a normal life. I just wanted a house to live in because before then I'd only lived in rented accommodations. But, I mean really scummy places because I had no money. The worst it ever got was two rooms next to a shunting yard at Swindon Station and it went down to one room because the damp got so bad in the other room and it was [like] so stupidly cold, I used to go to sleep with my feet in the oven. You know, I'd sleep on the kitchen floor with my feet in the oven. That was hell. So you see, I've done my artist garret suffering stuff and I wanted a house with four walls and kids and I wanted to be normal and I was sick of the rock'n'roll circus thing.

CO: Which is understandable.

AP: Yeah, it was just getting to me. I guess I was too loyal to say,"I want to stop doing this" and I kept doing it even though I wanted to stop. And my body just said "Uh-oh, we don't want you to do this, we're gonna make you ill" and it did. But the upshot of it was great cause I had more time to think about the songs and they really did get a hell of a lot better. You can see, from English Settlement onwards; that was the first one written with a bit of time to spare. The graph went right up for me after that.

CO: And that's one of the major, major high points as far as my appreciation of your stuff goes. But, you know, I heard you made some sort of comment about playing for a truck.

AP: Yeah, I'd really like to do that and I can't tell you why. I know some of the cheesiest...I know the Stones have done it. I know U2 did it. I don't want to do it in that big kind of grandiose way. U2 were kind of manipulative about it. I think it was kind of "Don't tell anyone we're turning up" and then they had it broadcast all over the radio stations. You know, it was kind of like a fake myth. I would just like to get a little flat bed truck and put some tiny little amps on it and then call the radio station and tell them "We're coming for an interview, we'll plug an album and we can chat and we'd like to make a row in your car park." I don't know how many people would come and see it. It could be anywhere from a dozen to God knows how many. I don't really want to make it like a show. I don't want to do the lights, the smoke, the lasers, the bustling. I hate all that stuff.

CO: That would be interesting.

AP: Well, maybe, it might be fun. It'd probably be a lot harder work that me imagining all dewy-eyed that it's gonna be easy. But, even the acoustic radio stuff that we did, we were doing two or three stations a day and that was really tough.

CO: Was it really? You guys sounded surprisingly fresh.

AP: Well, the first couple were really appalling. We sounded like three old assholes with their hands caught in the wires. It was strange, live on air. We were all dying of embarrassment but after all that, we sort of got used to it. By the time we ended up, it was very smooth and we very relaxed about the whole thing. Yes, man it can be done. I just don't want to go back to the kind of treadmill situation.

CO: I have a copy of the KROQ show you did in Los Angeles.

AP: Oh, yeah, that was good fun.

CO: That seemed like good fun because it seemed like they didn't want you to stop playing and it seemed like you didn't want to stop playing.

AP: Yeah, we'd actually run out of numbers, I think, that we rehearsed. We had so many bunches of stuff and then we had some separate numbers and we just ran out of stuff.

CO: I've heard that you've been busy collaborating with people like LLoyd Cole.

AP: I haven't been able to work as us really. So, I've been co-writing with anyone who will ring me up and say "Do you want to write?" I've just said "Yeah". So, it's been Terry Hall. I did three numbers with a girl called Nicki Holland. I just got to hear them. One of them sounds great. A real little popstress. what's her name? Oh, yeah, Cathy Dennis. We wrote a couple of songs. Anyone who was ringing me up I was saying yes to, but now people are calling me up because their careers are sort of flagging or they are stuck for song idea or another.

CO: Does that bother you?

AP: Well, it's kind of a challenge. I suppose if it was just non-stop, that sort of thing, then I would sort of get pissed off. I'm doing one, next week or the week after with and Australian fella called Ivor Davis who has a band called Icehouse.

CO: Are you going down there?

AP: No,no, no, no. He's coming up here. I hope we got on. It's a long way home.

CO: Actually, I think I heard the stuff you did with David Yazbeck.

AP: Oh, yeah. Some of that was co-playing but that was more of a production thing. He's a great writer actually.

CO: Yeah, he's a nice guy. I've talked to him a couple times.

AP: He's had a weird sort of background. He came as a gagwriter for Letterman. That was one of his previous professions. Another person I know from the same neck of the woods is Jamie Block. He's got a band named Block. It's him and two other guys. He's great. He's cut his own album, Lead Me Not Into Penn Station. I know this sounds appalling but, I mean it complimentary. He sounds like a 1997 Dylan with a band.

CO: Did you not get any calls to produce anything or has it been strictly songwriting?

AP: Mostly songwriting. I just did an album with Stephen Duffy. He did an album with Stephen Street, the Blur man, and he didn't like it. And the record company said "You don't have any singles". So, he called me and said "Look, I've got some songs. Can we get together and can you shape them up for me and so on." And that ended up in me kind of restructuring these songs. Well, actually, I had to turn down the songs he brought and tell him to go away and write some more. But, he wrote two pretty good ones and then we went into the studio and I sort of produced the whole thing and played bass because he didn't have a bass player, got to do my McCartney impression.

The second part of this interview will appear in the next issue of Consumable Online.