INTERVIEW: XTC's Andy Partridge
- Joe Silva
After years of legal internment, the band XTC, or what remains of them, have finally resuscitated themselves. With the release of their first LP in nearly seven years (_Apple Venus Vol. I), Andy Partridge and Colin Moulding once again prove themselves to be one of the finer pop organisms known to the planet. Witness the uncomplicated joyance of "I'd Like That," the blissfully cyclical architecture of "River of Orchids," or the endearing melody and sincere narrative of "Frivolous Tonight." Released as the orchestral/acoustic half of a two record project, the record is a lush and comely addition to their already brilliant catalogue.
Having somewhat acrimoniously shed guitarist Dave Gregory after nearly twenty years in the lineup, Partridge and Moulding are now keen to get on with their musical lives after finally being released from the grips of Virgin Records. A second, more electric volume may be out before the millennium expires, and longtime fans are now sure to be regularly fed with fresh and archival material (witness last year's Transistor Blast collection of BBC recordings).
But for Partridge, who's even more vehemently against trotting himself out before loving audiences for performance-sake, the only concession he's currently prepared to make to the grind of touring was a recent multi-continental publicity jaunt. He (and occasionally Moulding) made several thousand admirers all giggly with delight by turning up for in-stores to sign autographs and pose for quick photos. While temporarily installed in a San Francisco hotel, we took a few more ounces of interview flesh from Partridge and attempted to focus on the what concerns him most: the songs.
Consumable Online: Considering the amount of signing you've done, are you now being forced to use some sort of prosthetic device to hold up the phone?
Andy Partridge: Ha ha! No, I can sign the night away, but it's the wrong sort of exercise I'm afraid.
C.O.: Have you got your fill or adulation at this point?
A.P.: I must admit, I don't really need adulation. I'm not an adulation junkie. I know some people are in the music business. I can do without it.
C.O.: It must be a bit overwhelming after not being around for a while.
A.P.: It's nice, but it's not my drug of choice. I can do without it. I wouldn't mind if I was never interviewed, photographed or filmed again. That wouldn't worry me.
C.O.: How was the (Coast To Coast With) Space Ghost appearance?
A.P.: Very bizarre. They stick you against a black screen there, and just have a schmoe in a chequed shirt sat on a stool opposite you asking you non-questions and you just have to react. They'll ask you things like "Do you mind if we drill a hole in your head?" or "Can we have the use of your mother's remains?" and you just have to react this. And then what they do is take it away and over the course of three months they animate the show and script in questions that suit your responses. It's a kind of reverse interview. You just have to react like a cretin being poked. In those sorts of situations, I tend to click into a junior Robin Williams.
C.O.: I'm curious to why you finally went with the peacock feather on the sleeve? (Partridge's rabid superstition had long put him off of the idea of using the image for the album cover image)
A.P.: Yeah, I really didn't want to use it, but my girlfriend said "Oh, don't be so stupid." I'm intensely superstitious and then Colin said "It's bad luck isn't it I've heard, we better not have that," so the pair of us were kind of psyched up not to use it. But then I started to research it and found that in as many cultures it's considered good luck. So I guess it cancels out to mean no luck at all really. I sort of steadied my superstitious mind and put some of the ballast back on the other side. So I figured 'What the Hey?' I like the imagery in it, which I think looks like the songs. The center of the feather looks like a visual representation of a lot of the music.
C.O.: Which brings us to the songs and the composition. When you started "River of Orchids," did you originally intend on doing something cyclical or did you just accidentally wind up piecing various melody lines together?
A.P.: No, I just started noodling. I sat down with a keyboard and a sequencer and some of my favorite sounds and very soon just built up something. I left it running around and around, and thought 'Oh my God, this is really compulsive!' as opposed to repulsive. I usually pull the plug on 99% of those kind of doodle experiments, but with this I couldn't stop bouncing to it. I took my shift off and shoes and socks and leapt around my little home studio for a couple of hours on end thinking 'My God, I've stumbled onto something really fascinating." And in a mad scrabble, I looked into my lyrics book and found a phrase that I hadn't used before but really liked which was "I heard the dandelions roar in Piccadilly Circus," which I thought was a nice mess of contradictions. It seemed to fit the contradictory (nature) of the music. And I used that as the lynchpin and the song fell out very quickly. And the orchestra got the intro in two takes and I was really shocked.
C.O.: I guess that's what you get when you hire professionals at thousands of pounds an hour.
A.P.: Yeah, one day cost us 12,000 pounds ($20,000 American).
C.O.: It's very infectious though. My four-year old ran around singing it the other day if that's imaginable.
A.P.: I can imagine that, because what you would call the chorus, I think sounds like a nursery rhyme. And I think nursery rhymes are extremely powerful.
C.O.: As far as the lyric goes, you've written about ecology before. Do you have a need to re-assert that?
A.P.: I suppose it's one of my themes. Not having enough money is one. Birth, death, and cycling 'round. Birth coming from death. Betrayal is another recurring theme. Dave Gregory seemed to step right into those shoes I had warming for him. Mostly betrayal by women.
C.O.: Speaking of themes, if we assume that "The Last Balloon" isn't a song for Richard Branson, what does it imply for you?
A.P.: Ha ha! I never considered it! Since he's the man that can't keep his balloon in the air, it doesn't really want to make you go out and buy a Virgin brand contraceptives, does it?
C.O.: Why did you decided to use the balloon for the vehicle of that lyric?
A.P.: I think of the balloon as being a civilized form of travel. Bicycles are kind of civilized, trains are civilized, and balloons are especially because of the speed of them. It's like traveling by fading. It's almost like a place under siege. People could leave Paris by balloon when it was besieged. I like that metaphor of leaving this bad place containing a lot of things you need to get away from. And the balloon is the elegant way of fading from that. And also the idea of in order to make the balloon go higher, you have to drop some of its contents. And urging the children to drop adults, drop all their learning and the badness that adults brings along. They probably won't but it's sort of like hope springs eternal.
C.O.: Not to poke fun at your age or anything, but did they have the oxygen canister nearby when you attempted that last note?
A.P.: Ha! There are several bits of me that don't work well, but my lungs are great. I had great fun doing that. I had to tell the flugle horn player what I was hoping to do: 'When I point to you, you fade yourself in on this note. And when I do the vocal, I'll sing that note and turn into your flugle horn.'
C.O.: Did you do all the vocals at Colin's house?
A.P.: Yeah, the only ones that weren't recorded at Colin's house are "Knights in Shining Karma," which we did in the little recording stable of (producer) Haydn Bendall, and also Colin's songs.
C.O.: I read that you guys are setting up shop permanently at Colin's.
A.P.: Yeah, in his double garage. I said to him "Look, we need a permanent studio, and you don't need this garage since it's full of junk, so why don't we take it over?" So we've had it physically converted to make a studio, but we haven't equipped it yet.
C.O.: You mentioned "Karma," which seems to have the most dense lyric of the bunch. Where does the lyric stem from for you? It seems to be about protectionism.
A.P.: Yeah, protecting myself. Cracking up over the divorce, catching myself dying cups at the sync and bursting into tears. Feeling like I was totally disposed of, I figured I wanted to write a song that would guard me and remind myself that I'm an okay person and that being an okay person is sort of a reward in itself. I try and be a good person and it kind of works like that. It does sort of protect you. It was written for me. Not to cheer me up, but to sort of console me in a way. I think it sounds like a male version of Judee Sill. She made two albums for one of the WEA groups in the early seventies and they are fantastic. They've never been put onto CD. They're worth hunting out.
C.O.: How happy are you with Colin's songwriting at the moment?
A.P.: I just wish he'd write some more, but I can't blame him for only writing a couple. A lot of reviewers have pointed out that it's hardly a democracy that Andy has nine songs and Colin has two, but if it had been a democracy, it would have ended up a four-track EP. Colin only wrote a couple of songs. I think the time in the fridge was very bad for him. It seemed like the worse things got for me, the more songs came out. But with him, the more he was sat on, the more he got depressed and closed down. The first song he wrote in that situation was called "Boarded Up," which is actually going on the next volume. But that's his state of mind. I feel for him. I like "Frivolous Tonight" a lot, and I wouldn't have done "Fruit Nut" the way it came out had it been my song. But I realize that it's his song and his vision and I'm willing to go along with that. But "Frivolous Tonight" I'm rather jealous of. I think it's a wonderful song.
C.O.: It seems his voice has changed somehow and gotten deeper.
A.P.: Well he sang them very quietly. He wasn't blasting out.
They're very personal sounding. I rank that in his top five. "Bungalow"
is possibly my favorite of his songs. I wish I'd written that. It's
lovely. It's got a great scenario to it. I liked "Day In and Day Out,"
though I know that sounds bizarre. I thought that captured the
mundanity of factory life. I don't play our albums at all, but every
time I play Nonesuch, I start it from "My Bird Performs."
C.O.: Have you guys gotten the green light to go back and
begin Vol. II?
A.P.: I'd like to restart it personally. I think we rushed
it and just banged down things. Now that we're getting our own
facility, we be able to not rush. I think we'll work with another
drummer, because I think we rushed Prairie and didn't get the best
out of him. I would really like to do it justice.
