In the ever-evolving tapestry of fashion and youth subcultures, the New Romantics of the 1980s emerged as a vibrant and revolutionary movement. Known for their flamboyant style, gender-bending fashion, and a passion for all things theatrical and Bowie-related, the New Romantics left an indelible mark on pop culture via groups like Depeche Mode, Duran Duran, Culture Club, and Spandau Ballet. And there was also Visage, the post punk synthpop supergroup comprised of members, then present or former, of Magazine (Barry Adamson, Dave Formula), Siouxsie and the Banshees (John McGeoch), Ultravox (Midge Ure, Billy Currie) along with Steve Strange and Rusty Egan, who arguably started the whole scene by giving it a place to flourish, first at a West End dive bar called Billy’s and later at the Blitz nightclub.
Embedding herself among these after dark denizens, photographer Sheila Rock captured this extraordinary scene like no other. Rock’s remarkable images of the New Romantics preserves a moment in time when fashion, music, and rebellion converged to create a cultural phenomenon. She’s put together a new book of these portraits titled New Romantics - From Billy’s to the People’s Palace published by MOONBOY Books.
I asked Sheila Rock a few questions via email.
How did the New Romantic scene first start to get off the ground?
Sheila Rock: The name ‘New Romantics’ didn’t come into use until much later – but the scene was really born with the Bowie nights at Billy’s in the autumn of 1978. Steve Strange and Rusty Egan chose this very run-down bar on the edge of Soho as the location for their nights dedicated to the music of David Bowie and of course it attracted a highly creative crowd – many of them had been part of the punk scene, including Steve himself, so they were predisposed to dressing up and having a good time and cared little about what others thought!
Rusty Egan, left, Steve Strange, 2nd from right, at Billy’s 1978
When did it reach critical mass and which media outlets first noticed?
The Face and iD magazines were probably the first to report the movement in relation to what people were wearing - and Spandau Ballet were regulars at the Blitz so reports of their low-key/secret gigs around London started to appear in the music press along with photos of their exotically dressed followers. It was the usual kind of osmosis, where a small cult becomes mainstream by attracting attention – almost a form of self-destruction.
Spandau Ballet released ‘To Cut a Long Story Short’ in October 1980 and it became a hit as did Visage’s single ‘Fade to Grey’ when it was released a month later; of course Steve’s unique look attracted a lot of attention – he was interviewed on primetime television in the UK and the song was played around the world and Steve’s photo appeared in countless music and fashion magazines which I suppose heralded a change in the way the regulars at the Blitz felt about the night they had built around themselves – everyone now wanted to go and the queue became unmanageable; famously, Steve turned Mick Jagger away as he was not sufficiently well-dressed to gain entry.
By 1981, when Steve and Rusty held the Valentine’s Day Ball at People’s Palace, bands like Ultravox, Japan and Depeche Mode had reached a broader public and brought the dressing-up culture to the fore.
Depeche Mode, 1981
The people who went to Billy’s and The Blitz, what sort of day jobs did they have or were they mostly on the dole?
Many were students – fashion and design particularly; Stephen Jones, the milliner, was a regular at the Blitz. It was a young crowd, so understandably some were unemployed or had yet to find their role – many regulars went on to become stars; Spandau Ballet, Culture Club, Visage, Ultravox, Sade, Wham!, Bananarama – the DJ Jeremy Healy was a regular, as well as some lesser-known but super-stylish bands like Blue Rondo a La Turk and Animal Nightlife
A young George O’Dowd, right, at Billy’s, 1978
How friendly was this scene? Were the participants more interested in looking good and posing or having a good time?
I think most people just wanted to have a good time whilst looking great – I’m sure there was rivalry, there always is where style is concerned – but the overall feel was one of a close-knit group of like-minded people enjoying themselves in a city which was, at that time, a grey metropolis scarred by strikes and unemployment – a far cry from the London we know now.
Arriving at People’s Palace by Tube, 1981
How dangerous was it for the New Romantic types to walk around London, or take the Tube, dressed like that?
I don’t think it was dangerous as a rule – punk had already given the general public some exposure to counter-cultural style, but physical violence was not a common issue - although I’m sure there were incidents; there was certainly name-calling and taunting, but most young people shrugged this off. People rarely travelled to clubs on their own, going in groups was much more fun and of course there was safety in numbers! (photo)
Jane Khan, Patti Bell and friend at People’s Palace
Who had the most elaborate outfits?
The Birmingham-based designers Jane Khan and Patti Bell created some wonderfully outlandish outfits – and Martin Degville, who became the frontman of Sigue Sigue Sputnik was incredibly imaginative.
What was the mix like in the Blitz? Girls vs. boys, gay vs. straight, black vs. white?
The whole ethos of Billy’s and the Blitz was based on style and attitude – if you had both then you were welcome. The balance between girls and boys was probably about equal – but what you have to remember is that those clubs were not set up attract gay or straight, black or white – dressing up, Bowie and a good time were the prerequisites! You can see from the photos how tiny the Blitz was, everyone squeezed in together.
Aside from the people who went on to be notable or famous, were there any other characters who especially stood out?
In a scene where ‘dress to excess’ was the byword, it’s hard to pick out specific individuals – but the young girl I chose to be on the cover of the book expressed an innocence and creative flare I thought looked beautiful.
Scarlett Cannon, right
Another striking and imaginative figure was Scarlett Cannon – she always looked amazing – her style has become something of a legend, with her dramatically cropped and sculpted hair and stark makeup.
Stephen Linard was a stylist by trade and his clothing combinations were always exotically full-on.
Stephen Linard at People’s Palace 1981
Tell me about the new book.
The New Romantics book is a social document of a particular time where music and fashion were celebrated.
Whilst I dress in simple black, I am forever attracted to theatrical and flamboyant self-expression. Clothes make a statement. The New Romantics scene caught my attention, and I was compelled to photograph club life and the individuals that made it happen. Young people were having fun and exploring their creativity.
Nightclubs were the catwalks and an inspiration for new ideas. Electronic pop music punctuated the scene and bands like Visage and Depeche Mode were the heroes. This book captures the zeitgeist of this all too brief movement; a moment when lipstick and colour ruled.
New Romantics - From Billy’s to the People’s Palace is published by MOONBOY Books as a strictly limited edition of 800 copies on 1st November. Advance orders are now being taken at www.moonboy.space
Six years before Alejandro Jodorowsky’s extraordinary but ill-fated 1975 attempt to film Frank Herbert’s Dune—the story of which was compellingly told in the recent documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune—there was another similarly ambitious and ground-breaking film project that, until recently, was largely unknown.
Saturation 70 was a special effects-laden science fiction movie starring Gram Parsons, Michelle Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas and Julian Jones, the five-year-old son of Rolling Stone Brian Jones. Unlike Dune, Saturation 70did actually make it into production and was shot, but never completed, then was forgotten and undocumented for over forty years.
The film was written and directed by Tony Foutz, who crops up in several music histories, usually described as a ‘Stones insider’, but was actually much more than that. His father, Moray Foutz, was an early executive at Walt Disney. The younger Foutz had his own equally fascinating career path, working in the mid-sixties as a first assistant director in Italy for Gille Pontecorvo, Orson Welles and Marco Ferreri – for whom he later wrote Tales of Ordinary Madness, the first film adaptation of Charles Bukowski’s work. His connection to the Stones came via Anita Pallenberg, who he met in Rome during the filming of Roger Vadim’s Barbarella at Cinecitta Studios in the summer of 1967. Through her, he also befriended Keith Richards.
In 1968, while staying at Richards’ Redlands estate, Foutz wrote a script entitled Maxagasm in collaboration with Sam Shepard, for himself to direct as a vehicle for the Rolling Stones, who were to star in the movie and produce an original soundtrack album for it. During pre-production for Maxagasm in Los Angeles, Foutz was tipped off about Integratron designer and space devotee George Van Tassel’s ‘Spaceship Convention’ at Giant Rock, near Joshua Tree, an annual gathering of UFO abductees and alien enthusiasts. Foutz gathered up some friends to go and film documentary footage there, intending to use it as a way of testing out special effects he was planning for Maxagasm.
Gram Parsons at the piano in the lobby of the Chateau Marmont, 1970. Still from the ‘Saturation 70’ promo reel (Anthony Foutz Archive).
On that trip were Gram Parsons (Foutz’s roommate at the Chateau Marmont), Michelle Phillips, Julian Jones and his mother, Linda Lawrence (Parsons’ then-girlfriend), rock photographer Andee Cohen, Flying Burrito Brothers roadie Phil Kaufman, and western character actor Ted Markland—known as ‘the Mayor of Joshua Tree’ for his role in popularizing the location as a retreat for the hip Hollywood set. (It was Markland who first took Lenny Bruce, then the Stones, Parsons and Foutz to the desert to imbibe psychedelics and sit under the stars, scanning the sky for UFOs.) Also along for the ride were cinematographer Bruce Logan and special effects maestro Douglas Trumbull, both fresh off working on Stanley Kubrick’s 2001.
Fired up his experience at Giant Rock, Foutz decided to incorporate the footage they’d shot into another feature film project, that came together as a kind of counter culture version of the Wizard of Oz, about a lost star child (Julian Jones) who falls through a wormhole into present day Los Angeles and tries to find his way back home, assisted by four alien beings—the Kosmic Kiddies—who wear clean suits to protect them from the pollution. (The title of the film referenced the level at which carbon monoxide in human blood becomes lethal.)
The Kosmic Kiddies, from R to L: Tony Foutz, Michelle Phillips, Gram Parsons, Phil Kaufman and Andee Cohen. Photo: Tom Wilkes
Saturation ’70 was shot in and around Los Angeles from October 1969 through spring of 1970 and included several spectacular set pieces: a surreal shootout between a Viet Cong soldier and an American G.I. in the aisles of Gelson’s supermarket in Century City (noted gun fan, Phil Spector, visited the set that day and stood on the sidelines to watch); a cowboy picnic on the Avenue of the Stars featuring country music couturier Nudie Cohn and a bevy of cowgirl cheerleaders; and a parade of Ford Edsel cars roaring through the City of Industry in a flying V-formation. He also filmed the Kosmic Kiddies roaming around the city in their clean suits and masks—inside them, Gram Parsons, Michelle Phillips, Stash Klossowski de Rola (the son of painter Balthus) and Andee Cohen.
Seeing an opportunity for cross promotion with his music career, Parsons had the Flying Burrito Brothers wear the same suits on the cover of their second album, Burrito Deluxe (also named in honor of the working title for Foutz’s script, “Rutabaga Deluxe”). Parsons and Roger McGuinn were brought together to write songs for and score the soundtrack. Rolling Stone would report that McGuinn intended to use the Moog synthesizer he had acquired at the Monterey Pop Festival two years earlier.
Julian Jones and his fairy godmother
Once principal photography was complete, Foutz started working on the special effects sequences at Doug Trumbull’s Canoga Park facility, incorporating computer-processed visual effects Trumbull was developing there that allowed for graphic and textual overlays on pre-existing film images—a revolutionary idea at the time. Among the effects Foutz and Trumbull were working to create were propagandistic data clouds that floated in the sky (akin to the dirigibles later seen in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner), towering skyscrapers made of television screens and dinosaurs roaming among the derricks in the Inglewood Oil Field near La Cienega Boulevard.
Skid Row Los Angeles, 1970. Not much has changed. Look closely at the signs.
However, before they could complete their work, funding for the film fell through, the producers abandoned the project and the entire project collapsed. All of the footage was subsequently lost apart from one five minute showreel cut to the Flying Burrito Brothers version of the Jagger/Richards song, “Wild Horses,” which Parsons had contributed to the writing of a few months earlier.
For years, existence of the film was little more than a rumour among Gram Parsons fans—a strange anomalous event in his short, gloried career—but now all the existing production photos have been dusted off for an upcoming book that recreates the film shoot, and the story of Saturation 70 can finally be told.
Preorder Saturation 70: A Vision Past of the Future ForetoldHERE.
‘A Sight for Sore Eyes, Vol. 2,’ now available from Melodic Virtue
Arguing for the timelessness of the Residents’ music in the introduction to this book, Penn Jillette claims that the Faceless Four were the soundtrack to Madonna and Sean Penn’s star-crossed love.
I first met and worked with Madonna during the time this book chronicles, and the very first thing she talked to me about was The Residents. She was in awe that I had met and worked with them. It’s a mistake The Residents fans make over and over again. We often think that we’re the only ones who understand the brilliance of North Louisiana’s Phenomenal Pop Combo, but all anyone has to do is hear them to know there’s something different and wonderful there. Madonna explained to me that the other Penn, the Sean one, had rammed The Residents down her throat and she swallowed it greedily.
It sounds preposterous, but then you picture them on the set of Shanghai Surprise, smoking cigarettes in their trailer with “Sorry” emanating from the hi-fi, or maybe tearing up PCH past Paradise Cove in Sean’s 1987 Buick Grand National, windows down, with the live-in-Holland “Cry for the Fire” cranked loud enough on the tape deck to overcome the noises of traffic, wind and surf, and it sounds even more preposterous. It must be bullshit.
The Residents at sea with Jefferson Starship and Huey Lewis, June 2, 1984
Or must it? Weigh the evidence on the other side of the scale. The Eye Guys appeared in the music video for Jefferson Starship’s “Layin’ It On The Line.” David Byrne, Andy Partridge and Lene Lovich sang on Commercial Album. The Residents met James Brown. They had a hot tub. And their members were uncredited, so for all anyone knew, Miles Davis, Ukulele Ike, Charo and Del Shannon were under those eyeball heads. Would Sean and Madonna really have risked missing that band? If they weren’t listening to the Residents in 1985, what were they listening to?
Bonjo Iyabinghi Noah and Adrian Sherwood inaugurated the daring studio project African Head Charge in 1981 with My Life In A Hole In The Ground. Both in the studio and in live performance, African Head Charge has burned up the intervening decades exploring unknown Mystery Spots of sonic experience, transmitting dub sonar signals in every dimension where sound travels.
A Trip to Bolgatanga, the band’s first LP in twelve years, may be the most sublime entry in the African Head Charge catalog. I recently spoke with Bonjo about Africa, drumming, his youth as a runaway Rasta, and much else. An edited transcript follows.
First of all, my condolences on Mark Stewart’s death. He was a person I liked very much.
That is a very big loss for not just me, but for all On-U Sound.
You played with him throughout his career, right?
Yeah! Yeah, yeah, yeah! I was a part of the original Maffia, the band, yes. I was a part of it, the original one, before Skip [McDonald] and all that, yes. So I knew him very well.
Did you meet him through Adrian?
Yes, I got to know him through Adrian.
When you and Adrian started African Head Charge, had you been to Africa yet?
No. That time I didn’t go. I didn’t go to Africa until ’94. But even then, I still had Africa inside me, you know, Africa was already in me because of the way I was brought up.
Those early records, I guess it’s an imaginary Africa, and I’m curious about how that compares to your experiences in Africa. Did you have any ideas about Africa that have changed?
Oh, yes, I’ve had a lot of it, because I was born in a place in Jamaica called Clarendon, which is the rural part of Jamaica. And in that area you’ll find, apart from the big Rasta camp there—my grandmother’s sister was the head of the Rasta camp there, yeah?—and then up the road from where I live, about five minutes’ walk from where I’m living, there’s a Poco church there, Pocomania church, Poco. Which is a part of the African culture. These people brought—you know, they’re slaves, then, let’s use the word “slave,” the people, them that was taken from West Africa, they were maintaining their spirituality and their culture. Although it wasn’t a lot of them, ‘cause the colonial people tried to beat it out of them, but a few of them kept it.
There’s a woman that was close to where we’re living, her name is Mother Hibbert. She was about two, three minutes’ walk from where I’m living, Mother Hibbert. That’s Toots, have you heard of Toots Hibbert, the Maytals?
All right. Well, Toots’ auntie. See, that’s where Toots gets that all that script from as well. Okay, Toots’ auntie, her name was Mother Hibbert, and she was like the spiritual woman in the area, you know? We have many churches, we have church like Catholics, we have church like Nazareth Assembly, which my mom and dad always were a part of that, Protestant, all kind of things. But we have this one church in the area where they were just doing African [spirituality], and her name was Mother Hibbert. So, from where I am, once I hear the drumming starts in the evening, some evenings, I just go there, even though sometimes my family, they would beat us for going there, but I would go.
Because our family, they thought that anything to do with the Black culture were like Obeah, voodoo, or ungodly things, or whatever, you know? But me as a child, I wasn’t really thinking about—had nothing to do with no Obeah, voodoo spirituality or anything, it’s just: I heard the drumming, I heard it and that draw me to go there. So I used to go there, ‘cause when they see me, some of the drummers and their people, they saw that I keep coming all the time, so they start to give me something to play, like a tambourine or some sticks or something, until I start to play some drums as well, you know? And that’s when I was about eight years old, I was very young. So because of that I learned the Poco drumming, which was drumming that came directly from Africa, which later, that same Poco drum slowed down to become Nyabinghi drumming, same Poco drumming, okay? So that’s where I got the African drumming inside me before I even go to Africa.
It’s in a spiritual, religious context, too, which I think is interesting.
That’s right. Exactly, exactly. ‘Cause Mother Hibbert is a woman, like, when people have a spiritual problem they will go to see her and she will solve it or something like that. She’s a spiritualist, you know? She can heal people and all that kind of thing. She used a lot of herbs, she knows about herbs and different trees and bush and whatever, but she’s also a spiritual person. She believes in, she work with the ancestors.
So were Poco and Nyabinghi the first drumming techniques—
Yes, well what happened with the Poco drum, the Poco drum was the original drums that came with the slaves, you understand what I’m saying? That drumming. But the thing is, like you say something is bad—people don’t want it because it’s too Black, it’s too African, it’s too whatever. And our great-grandparents, they were taught to only believe in whatever religion the slavemasters gave us, they had to follow that. Well, there was a few people like the Maroons and these people, who decide “no, we’re going to maintain our thing.” Which is a very small amount of people, not a lot! Out of a hundred, maybe you’ll get two percent. So I was just lucky that I lived very close to Mother Hibbert. And there was another person again, his name was Arwa (?). But it’s Mother Hibbert that I really went and get that African spirit inside of me.
Tell me about Bolgatanga and the name of this album.
Bolgatanga, you know, I was in Ghana, and the time came for me to come back. So the same week that I had to come back, the planes stop running. They say no plane is running ‘cause of COVID and all that kind of thing. So I thought, well, I did record some drumming earlier anyway, you know? But I decide, yes, I’ll go and spend time in Bolgatanga because it’s very hot there and they said COVID don’t like heat.
So I had a friend lived there, one of them was King Ayisoba who was a top musician in Ghana. He’s the king of the kologo. The first track you hear on it is him playing the guitar and the chanting, and we collaborate on doing that. But he was the king of kologo music, he was the number one, and he had a hit song some years ago, number one hit song in Ghana, “I Want to See My Father.” So while I was in Bolgatanga, I get to know him and we become friends. And Adrian suggest to me—I told Adrian what I’m doing, I said, listen Adrian, I’m doing this, I’m doing that, and I’m using most of my money to do it; if my money run out, I’ll let him send me more money so I can pay the musicians and the drummers and whatever—and he suggested if I can get King Ayisoba to do something. I don’t think he knew that he was in Bolgatanga. So when he said that, it was easy for me to do. I just went to King Ayisoba and pay him and some of the drummers and play a session, and we just went in the studio and did two tracks, you know?
So I was spending a lot of time in Bolgatanga. I love Bolgatanga. Bolgatanga is a place where it is extremely hot. When I say hot, hot, hot, hot! So hot that when you go to any drinking spot, or a club, or any place of entertainment, they have a swimming pool there. Everywhere you go there’s entertainment going on near a swimming pool. ‘Cause when people are dancing or enjoying or drinking or eating or whatever, they get hot, so they wanna jump in the pool, and sometime they stay in there and enjoy the music or whatever. So that place is very hot, so I decide I’ll stay there.
And in fact, my woman, there’s a girl on the album who sings and plays some percussion on it, and her name is Angela Akanuoe, she’s from Bolgatanga as well.
It sounds like you did some of the recording in Ghana?
Yeah, most of it. The foundation of the album was done in Ghana. I just came over here with Adrian and we overdub other things on top of that, like some bass, some keyboards, some this and that. But we did the vocals and the drumming there, and the chanting.
So the contributions of Skip [McDonald] and Doug [Wimbish]—
They came after, they came after. They came, and I think I’m gonna be working like that now, because I like that idea, you know? Well, I’ve always been setting the foundation, anyway, for African Head Charge, and then other people come and do other things on top of that, you know? That’s how it works from a long time. But this time, it wasn’t just me alone as drummer, there’s other drummers as well. And I wanted to get some different vibes of drummers, you know? I have one of them who’s working in the band with me right now, you know, one of the drummers from Ghana. But he’s a part of the Ga. I did some of the drumming in Bolgatanga, and I did a lot of it in Accra. Accra, you have the Ga. It’s a different tribe. And they’re good drummers.
Different drums.
Yeah, different types of drummers, yes. Every tribe has got a different way of expressing drums and dance, you know?
Is it different instruments, or different ways of playing?
It’s the same instrument but different ways of playing.
Why has it been so long since the last African Head Charge album?
Well, after you’ve done—is it twelve albums we’ve done already, you know? We’ve done twelve albums. So maybe it was time for us, and for me as well, to really start to think about the next move, you know?
I’ve been to going to Ghana from ’94. And I just decide that, so many different tribes, I want to record a lot of different kind of drumming, from not just Ghana, you know. Maybe next time I’ll go to Gambia, or to Sierra Leone, or to somewhere else. But that is what my plan is for the future. Because it’s African Head Charge, so I want to cover as much of Africa as possible, and combine it with the Jamaican thing, just combine that, you know? Because I was born and grew up in Jamaica, but at the same time I have the African inside of me through the Poco church and the Nyabinghi and so forth. So I’m just trying to link them together, find a way of putting it all together, or as much as I can. I can’t put it all, but I put as much as I can, yeah?
So I’m planning on the next album—I start to plan the next album already, I start to write things down, you know, and things like that. So when I go to Africa—I’ve got family there, you know, I have children there, I’ve got grandchildren there as well. So it’s not just going there to have fun and to see my children and whatever whatever. When I go there I want to do creative things, so that when I come back here, me and Adrian and whoever else is there, we can come together and take it from where I’ve taken it.
African Head Charge c. 1993
There’s an interview that you gave to the Wire a few years ago, and I might have misunderstood something you said. Did you play with Fela Kuti?
No. Well, I jammed with them, I jammed with them. What happened was, a long time ago, it could be the early Eighties or something like that, I used to audition a lot. When I found out that drumming is what I really wanted to do, I used to go and audition, sometimes just playing in a pub. I look in the Melody Maker, at that time, at the Melody Maker and the New Musical Express. And it used to come out like Thursday and I used to buy it, and of course they had adverts, “Musician Wanted,” “Conga Player Wanted,” or whatever. I’ll ring them up and go for the audition.
This time, a band from Nigeria came to London, and the band was called the Funkees. And the Funkees, one of their conga players didn’t make it, I think it was a visa or a passport problem or whatever. So they put an advert in the paper, and when I went there I met up with this player called Sonny Akpan, and Chyke, and all these other—I mention those names ‘cause those were the ones, sometimes you’re in a band and you get close to one or two people. I got close to Sonny Akpan, I got close to Chkye; Chyke was another drummer, the kick drummer.
So what happened was, through the way we like, ‘cause I mean in those days I used to smoke a lot of ganja, anyway. I don’t take any drink, but I smoke a little weed sometimes, and I think Fela love it, you know? At that time, we have this ganja that’s coming in from Jamaica, it’s called Red Beard. We don’t have it anymore. That ganja was like medicine. It gives you appetite and it’s really good. Up to now, today, I don’t see anymore herb like that, you know?
So I used to get it and I used to go down there with it. And the first time I went there, I didn’t meet Fela the first time I go, but someone took it and give him and tell him, say, “Hey, we have a Jamaican friend who’ll come here and bring this weed,” and he love it! So the next time I went there, the herb was sent up to him, and then I start playing, ‘cause in those days I didn’t really talk a lot, somehow. About 35, oh, many years ago, more, 40 years maybe. So if I see a drum, that was my way of communication. I’d just start to play it. I’d start to play bloong! bloong!, I’d start to play some riddim, play something. And then some of the other drummers from Fela’s band, all the other musicians, they’ll come and they’ll sit close, and they started playing! So we’ll find, after about an hour, we’ll find like about 30 people are playing. And some nice girls was there, too, playing, and I realize that all of them was Fela’s wife and all that. So we could only look, but nothing, you know what I mean?
And then Fela came down and saw me playing with all idren, and Fela: “Bonjo!” Fela himself called me Bonjo. My name was not Bonjo at that time! So he call me that, and I try to find out why, why’d he call me that? And they said I look like someone in Nigeria with that name, and the person is also a percussionist, so that person is like my twin, you know what I mean? So he called me that name because I look like somebody, one of his people that he knows in Nigeria. So that’s how I got the name from Fela.
But I never played with him live. ‘Cause he was living in this big mansion. Ginger Baker, there’s this guy called Ginger Baker, this drummer. Have you heard of Ginger Baker?
Yes!
Well, Ginger Baker have some big mansion, I forget where the place was, and Ginger Baker give the mansion to Fela so he could live there with all his wives and all his musicians and everything, big place. That’s where I used to go, me and Sonny Akpan and Chyke and that, we used to go down there. So I used to jam with them, I did jam with them.
They had a big room downstairs. Massive room! They have all the rooms upstairs around the place, but downstairs was just a big room and playing the drums, you know what I mean? So much drums. I never seen so much drums in one place like that before.
They were speaking their languages there, you know, and I didn’t talk because I didn’t know how to communicate with them too much in their language. Although some of them like Sonny and Chyke, some of them could speak English, so I could talk with them, but I didn’t really talk a lot. Burn my weed, burn the smoke, and play some African drum, some Poco drum, the one that I learned from all small. And that fit right in, you know? I suppose if I’d hung around much or if I was a bit pushy or whatever maybe I could’ve been playing in the band, but I was playing in the other band, the Funkees. ‘Cause the Funkees is the band that warm up before he plays. Then later, the band changed from the Funkees to Efya (?), and I was still with them when they were in Efya (?), too, until that split up and Sonny went to work with Eddy Grant.
He was a great player. He was like my teacher, to tell you the truth, he put me further than where I was in the African drum. He took me further than where I was in the drumming, ‘cause I had to learn from him. You play something, and then I have to play what he’s playing, you know? And so that’s how it goes. And that’s why they like me as well, ‘cause when you go for the audition, Sonny would come to you and play something, and then he’d tell you to play it. When I hear it, I just play it, ‘cause I don’t know, I’m like that. I hear something and I learn to play it, you know? And that’s why they like me.
So I was playing more like the rhythm, he was playing the lead part. That’s why even now, I play lead in some song, but I’m more of a rhythmic player. Pulse, maintain the pulse. I learned that from working with some of the guys from Fela Kuti. ‘Cause if you listen to the Fela Kuti music, you notice they maintain the pulse. If somebody’s playing “one, two, three, one, two, three,” if they’re playing that, they’ll play that for an hour, and it won’t slow up and it won’t speed up. They had that discipline. I learned that discipline from them too, although I learned it from Jamaica anyway, but I learn it more when I got to meet them.
I feel like that’s why those performances can go on for so long, is because the groove is steady.
That’s right. They can play one song for half an hour, or more than that. It’s a groove, and you can get hypnotized in the groove, and get carried away. That’s what we like, we like to get into that, where it gets inside you.
Photo by Jeff Pitcher
It sounds like you’ve been a student of drumming techniques since you were a kid.
From I’m seven years old, from I’m seven years old. Because even my grandmother auntie, her name is Nana Bonchie, she had a camp which is a Rasta camp—some people said a Rasta church, but it’s a camp, really—where this man was head of the camp. If you Google his name, his name is the Reverend Claudius Henry. At that time, he was the top Rastaman in the whole world. The number one, the top Rastaman, the founder, the first Rastaman, his name is Howell, Leonard Percival Howell. Then after Howell, the toughest or the greatest out of them was Henry, because he was the one who was organizing for us to go back to Africa and all that. ‘Cause when I was about eight, nine, I remember a lot of them left the camp, said they were going to Africa and they all came back. I remember I used to talk to him and ask him why. When I grow up, I came back to London, and I came back to Jamaica, and I went to, at this time he built a church in a different place, near May Pen, which is the capital of Clarendon, he built a church there, and the church is called Bethel. And you know me, I always like to ask these elders questions. I asked him why did he build a church and call it Bethel, he said God told him to do that. And then I asked him why he organized that trip for all the people to go to Africa, and he said he wanted to see how serious the people were, ‘cause they didn’t go! You know, somehow they turned back, and they come home, people was laughing at them and all this kind of thing.
And there’s other things he tell me to make me strong as a Rasta, as well. There’s other things that he shared with me. But he was a revolutionary Rastaman. The hung his son. In those days, they used to hang Rasta, hang people who were thought to be criminal, you know? So one of his son, Ronald Henry, they hung him and four other people with him. I was there when all that was happening. I was about maybe ten, eleven years old, but I remember when the whole thing was going on, you know? Yeah.
And he showed me where they shoot him in his head, where the bullet chip in his head. When I come there, and he heard that I was there, I remember I heard him say “Oh, the messenger has come?” Because I’m so young, they think I’m the one who’s gonna go around, and go around, and tell the world about what was happening. So he called me a messenger. I never take up on that, like go around and say this or that, I don’t do that, but I remember hearing him say that.
And then, because I’m always asking him a question, he took me and showed me different rooms. And he showed me a room, he said, “Marcus Garvey’s spirit is in this room.” Told me, “Haile Selassie’s spirit is in this room.” He told me, “Kwame Nkrumah’s spirit is in this room.” Different leaders of Africa’s spirit is in this room. And later when I went to Africa, I realize something he’s telling me that is there in Africa, ‘cause in Africa you have stool rooms. And those stool rooms are where the kings are, all the kings dem have stool rooms. When somebody’s gonna be a king and take over, they get the spirit of some king that passed, maybe a hundred years ago, fifty years ago, or something like that. So they’ll take you in there and let you sit on the stool three times, and then they give you a name, which is a stool name. Like they wanted to give me a name called Nana Kwabena Agyekum because they wanted me to be a chief there.
But I realized that what the Reverend Claudius Henry was showing me, he showed me a lot of things, what I would then see thirty years later, twenty-odd years later, in Africa! He started making bread as well in my area, Clarendon. If you do any research about it, this bread things is called Peacemaker bread. And I would ask him about that. The answer he’d give me was “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall see God.” So, every question I’d ask him, he’d give me an answer, you know? I remember one time I even said to him, “How come people look at you like you are God?” ‘Cause he’s like my grandfather, you know, so like a grandson, you can say anything. But I was like that, I was always asking questions.
‘Cause I remember going up there to the Sabbath, we’d take a truck from lower Clarendon, to move to the next place, Bethel, where’s he’s moved his church. And I say, “How come the people are looking at you and singing songs as if you are God?” And that’s when he was telling me that we are all Gods. That cleared a lot of things up for me as well, to know that we are all creators, we are all God, but we are the creative force, which is nature, you understand what I’m saying? That is really the power, the force. So I learn a lot from him, and because I learn so much from him, sometimes I have problems. Because a lot of people didn’t get the chance to sit with somebody great like Reverend Claudius Henry. A lot of people didn’t get the pleasure of opting to sit and see people like Mother Hibbert answering other people, you know? And so, at a very small age, I was drawn to these people. Even though my parents, they are Christians.
Like my mom used to go to a church called Nazareth Assembly, and when I went to where my grandmother was living, my grandmother was living in August Town, so one time I went and spent some time in August Town, and they wanted to send me to some Catholic church, and my spirit couldn’t take it! For some reason, my spirit couldn’t take it. Everywhere they send me, my spirit couldn’t take it. I went and live in the country, in Victoria, Thompson Town, which is upper Clarendon, up in the mountains. My spirit couldn’t take it neither, ‘cause these people are so much into church! Mmm. I’m not saying anything is wrong with it, because people do what they want to do, but when somebody want to force you to go, and if you don’t go, you’re a bad boy, you know? And some people will go because they want, “I am a good boy,” so they go, I’ve seen some of my sisters and some of my brothers, they’ll go to church, because after that, you’re gonna be treated really nice, you know?
So truth, I was treated like the black sheep of the family—well, that’s what they call it, right? I was treated as the bad one. Out of nine children, I was the bad one. That’s the reason why I didn’t go to school by eleven. I didn’t go back to school at eleven years old because I had to run away, because I just didn’t like the idea of [laughs] when I saw those churches. Especially the Catholic church. I went to the Catholic church, and I saw those statues, and it freaked me out! It give me nightmares, you know what I mean?
And plus, I had a strong voice when I was small. And when I was six and five and all that age group, before I start to realize, no, that’s not what I want to do, ‘cause I realized no, I didn’t want to do that when I was seven and a half years old. I used to go and sing in my mother’s church, a church called Nazareth Assembly, and I used to sing, like, “Jesus loves all the little children, all the children of the world,” and every Sunday they’d dress me up and I’d sing. And I was a good boy, [made] my mom proud of me, dress me up nice, a good boy. But once I decided to go, when I hear the Nyabinghi drums and the Poco drum, I felt good about those places! I decide I want to go there, and I didn’t really want to go back to that church. So I was like the outcast. I was like the outcast of the family.
I ran away. Everywhere they send me, I would run away. I would go and sleep under people house, because I didn’t like it. When I went to August Town, that’s what I was doing. I’d run and jump over the fence and run, and go and sleep in graveyards, and all kind of thing. I was only about eleven, twelve years old. But what I’ve learned, that’s what give me a good life. ‘Cause although I didn’t go to school to learn about physics and all these kind of things—I was good at math. But it’s the drumming, that’s what helped me when I came to London. I was doing workshops and also going to schools and get children and teach some of them drumming and so on. And I see some of those children grow up to be big boys now and playing drums and playing different instruments!
The drumming, to me, is my life. ‘Cause I didn’t learn mechanic, I didn’t learn anything. I just, you know, my ears, when I hear something, I would just hear something and I would play something that fit it. You understand? It doesn’t matter what music it is. When I’m in the studio, people are playing a song or playing something and I hear it, and I would play something that suits it.
Even as a small boy, you felt the pull of these other teachers away from that Catholic tradition. It’s like you were already kind of formed. It’s mysterious to think about what that is in a child.
Well, I think I was lucky. I was lucky in a way, you know. Some people are brought up in a upper area where people are rich and they go to good schools and they this and that. I was brought up in Clarendon, which was very poor at the time. The only way people used to survive is by cutting the sugar cane and load it on a dray or a truck and taking it to Yarmouth or Monymusk. These are the places where they would make rum. So that’s how they would live. Or they would go and dig sand and pull up a truck. That’s what my dad used to do, put sand in a truck, fill up a truck with sand, him and his friends, and then they take the truck, weigh it, and whatever it weighs they pay them for how much it weighs, you know what I mean? And then the truck will come back, and they’ll fill it up again, and so forth. In Clarendon, there was a lot of work like that. Task work. Work where you get paid for what you do. Like somebody will say to you, “There’s some grass there, from there to there,” and they’ll measure it and tell you how much you’re getting for it, and if you agree to do it for the price, “Let’s do it!”
So that’s how I used to survive. I used to survive by cutting cane, loading sugar cane—I’m talkin’ ‘bout I’m twelve years, ‘cause I was very strong when I was that age. My mom and father wasn’t there, and plus I ran away anyway; I had run away, because I couldn’t take the pressure that they were giving me, and I didn’t want to go to the [laughs] Catholic church. So they looked upon me as a bad boy! ‘Cause in Jamaica at that time, if you don’t go to church, they think that you have some evil spirit in you or you are bad or something like that. You have to talk about Jesus all the time, “Jesus, Jesus,” and be baptized like some of my sisters. They got baptized and they were treated well! And I used to think, it’s not fair. Because if you have children, and you have, say, nine children, and one or two of them is not in church, you should still love them the same way. But the Jamaican parents, it wasn’t like that, you know. And it took me a long time, I think I had a chip on my shoulder, as well; it took me a long time to get over it. ‘Cause I wanted to be loved like all my brothers and sisters were loved, and so forth.
But I think, in the end, we come to something where I knew that my mom loved me. ‘Cause my mom, before she died, and my dad, they actually expressed their love for me, and that made me feel good. Because at first I thought they hated me. Sometimes I was looking in the mirror thinking, “Hey, maybe I’m ugly! Why is it, what’s the problem? Why?” This Christianity thing is so serious about Black people—I’m talking about where I know, I know about Jamaica, very serious. If you don’t go to church, they think that you are something bad. And especially with me, I go to place where they don’t like, I mean, I go to the Nyabinghi church. I go and play Nyabinghi drums, ‘cause I like the chanting.
One time I was a part of the Nyabinghi group. I’m talkin’ ‘bout when I was eight, nine, seven to nine, those age group, three of us, me, Vern and Owen, we were the three youth drummer in the camp. We play before Bongo Black and all the rest of Count Ossie. The great Count Ossie used to come there when I’m a small boy. And sometime they would teach us one or two things, you know what I mean? I learned to play lead keke. Out of the three of the young group, I was the leader of the keke. And I had a strong voice, so I was leading the chant as well. And nothing could keep me away from there, nothing at all could keep me away from going to the Nyabinghi gathering or the Poco gathering.
I remember they used to beat me so much that I run away, because I thought I can’t take no more beatings, so I run away. So now when I run away, I’ll go and run and stay with some people who had dray. We have this thing in Jamaica called “dray.” Dray is a thing where, it’s a cart, like a chariot. Two wheels, and you have three mules, right? And then you load the sugar cane on the mule and you take it to Monymusk or Yarmouth, where they take the sugar cane and they’ll weigh it and then they’ll pay you. So I used to work for some of these people. I used to work for this guy called Billy Paine, and I worked for the Charoos as well. I remember when I ran away from home, I would go and sleep in the Charoo place. ‘Cause they had a room there where they put all the, you know, this and that you put on the back of the animal, like the thing you put in his mouth and the saddle on his back. They have a room there where they keep the saddles. I remember I used to go and sleep in there, because I couldn’t go and stay at my parents’ house. But at the same time, I was free now to go to the Poco church, I was free to go to the Nyabinghi, without getting beaten. And I was earning my own money from that age, so I was okay. Until later, they sent for me to come to England. I think I came to England when I was sixteen, nearly sixteen.
Did Count Ossie make a big impression on you?
He was like my teacher. He was like—when I say “my teacher,” he used to come to the gathering, right? And a lot of us were playing and they’re teaching us songs to sing, like “Sodom and Gomorrah,” and “Babylon Come Down,” and “No Night in Zion,” they teach us all these songs. So I just learn them and chant them. I remember we had the Clarendonians. Have you heard of the Clarendonians?
No.
Which is Freddie McGregor, you heard of Freddie McGregor?
Yes, I’ve seen Freddie McGregor.
Alright, well, Freddie McGregor was in my area, ‘cause I’m from Clarendon. He’s a Clarendonian, and they used to win all the competitions. When Freddie was about ten, eleven years old, he was like a star, you know? I remember once they had a competition in May Pen, which is the capital of Clarendon. They sent me there, the three of us. That’s where I see the Skatalites and all those people. I was a lickle boy, maybe this time I was about like nine, ten years old, and I saw Don Drummond. I remember this tall man standing in a corner all by himself with his long trombone. I see them, but I never really talk to them, you know what I mean? I saw them because I went to the competition.
He must have had a sweet voice when he was a boy.
Oh, listen, Freddie McGregor—I remember, ‘cause I’m close to his age, yeah? And I remember when young women, like my aunties and all those people, they all of them love him! Especially the women. I’m not talking about the young girls, you know, I’m talking about woman, like who could be his mother and auntie, they just love Freddie!
And Yabby You doesn’t live far from where I live. He lives in a place called Longwood. So in Clarendon, they produced a lot of good artists around there. And I think people like Yabby You and certain other artists, they would pass through the camp, they would come through, you know? That camp was a very famous camp. Police used to come and raid it sometime. And as I said, they hung some of my—well, let me call them uncles, they were like father figure to me, you know? So that’s when Rasta was a revolutionary movement.
The man, Reverend Claudius Henry, his motto was, he came as the “repairer of the breach.” He came to repair the damage that’s been done to us, the mental and spiritual and physical damage that’s done to Black people, he came to repair. ‘Cause when I ask him, and he told me that’s what it was, the repairer of the breach. Just like when he told me about the Peacemaker bread, he said “blessed are the peacemakers, ‘cause they shall see God.” I’m always asking him questions so he was able to tell me things.
Because of what I know, even sometime I’m here in London, I have problem with other artists ‘cause they don’t really know what it’s all about, ‘cause some of them just came, and I get the whole thing from, I’m a first-generation Rasta.
It was hard to be a Rasta in that time, right?
Yes, like in the Fifties, it was difficult to be a Rasta. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It wasn’t easy at all. Even your own family will fight you. ‘Cause even my grandmother—I love my grandmother, I love her, she’s one of the women that I love—but she didn’t really get on with her own sister, Nana Bonchie, which is the Rasta Queen, ‘cause she married one of the Rasta elders, and the elder came from Pinnacle, where Rasta go and live, and the government tried to break Pinnacle up. So the Rasta start to move all over Jamaica, I’m talkin’ ‘bout in the Thirties, they start to move around.
So that’s when my grandmother now, she took her—like everybody in my family, or most Jamaican family in those days, when your family died you inherit—if they have ten acres of land and there’s ten children, everyone will get one acre each, you understand? So Nana Bonchie, now, which is the Rasta Queen in Clarendon, she take her land—it could be about, say, four, five acres—and she build a church, and it’s a Rasta church, right? And then Claudius Henry, now, he was having problems where he was, in a place called Rosalie Avenue, and they were chasing Rastas all over Jamaica, killing them, locking them up, cutting their dreadlocks, and he ran away. So when he ran away, he come to my grandmother’s place. And my grandmother place was a place, if you’re running away from somewhere, you can come there, they’ll accommodate you. They’ll give you food to eat, and you’ll get involved in the work or whatever or whatever. So that’s how Claudius Henry came there. So when he came, he was the high priest there. Google that name and you can remember that I told you about him.
What was the music like around Claudius Henry? Nyabinghi drumming?
Hundred percent Nyabinghi. When you go to the Poco church, though, it’s strictly Poco drumming. The Poco, the African drumming. That’s what you get there, it was a different type of drumming. When I went to Africa, that’s what they were playing there.
[After an exchange, Bonjo resumes the subject of his youth.] It was rough, I was rough, ‘cause running away from home and sleeping under people’s houses, and all this kind of thing, it was rough. But I just wanted to play drums. I used to even make drums, I just love drums. I just like the sound of drums. When I am in Africa, anywhere I go, you can guarantee drumming is going on there. [Laughs] You know what I mean? ‘Cause when I go to Accra, now, I go to a place by the beach where I know that every Friday, and Saturday, and Sunday, it’s drumming! So sometime I’ll go there, I’ll maybe book into a hotel for a day or two just to see the drumming. And my woman, Angela, who’s on the album, she’s also into the dancing and the percussion playing. I don’t think they allow the woman to play the drum, but she can play it, and then she play the percussion. And I suppose that’s what bring us together, drumming and dancing. Well, she’s more into the dancing.
Do you have a big collection of percussion instruments?
Yeah, I have a collection. I have my drums, I have my big thunder drum, I have my other drums. Some of the drums I have, people have it. ‘Cause sometime I’ll go away, like I’ll go to Ghana and I’m there for a while, so I just leave my drums with different people.
At the moment I have two drums here, I have two big conga drums, the main drum. But the bass drum and the other percussion, I let friends use them, because some of them, they don’t have it.
It’s good for them to be used rather than just sitting there.
That’s it, that’s it, yeah. Yeah man!
‘A Trip to Bolgatanga’ is available from On-U Sound, Bandcamp, Amazon, and quality record stores.
Does time slow to a crawl during a Swans performance, or does it approach the speed of light? At the two-hour mark, have your feet really floated off the ground? If it’s a commonplace to compare a Swans show to a ritual, that’s because the shows really are like rituals in at least three respects: as reliable techniques for ecstasy, as exchanges between officiants and audience, as sacrificial acts. Like Sufi trance music, say, or Penderecki, the sound scrambles your sense of clock time, building and prolonging an almost unbearable tension, the expectation that a secret is about to be disclosed, that another dimension in time is close at hand, that the band’s labor will eventually divert the timestream’s flow from the horizontal to the vertical axis. Swans are one of the best live bands going.
The Beggar is Swans’ sixteenth studio album and the sixth since Michael Gira reformed the band in 2010. It continues the remarkable streak Swans have been on since that year’s My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky, a series of records that not only keep faith with the band’s early work, but enrich it. I asked Gira a few questions about the new double LP by email.
Michael Gira in Berlin (photo by Nicole Oike)
I feel obligated to say how much The Beggar seems to be about death. Am I exaggerating?
Well, at my age it would be silly to avoid the subject, but the use of the word in some of the songs has a different implication in each instance, I would hope, none of which I’d consider to be morose. It’s just a fact of life, like having a bowel movement. The fact that it’s coming sooner rather than later at this point does lend an increased urgency, though I remain just as stunned by the raw and inexplicable fact of my existence as ever. I sometimes stare blankly at the blurring scene in front of me for minutes at a time, hoping to catch a glimpse of the fabric of the air tearing and revealing what’s hidden behind it. It feels like it’s screaming for release. I hope I’m able to witness what it is before I terminate.
In Phil Puleo’s zoological illustration of the band on the tour poster, you appear as a pink poodle. Maybe it’s a question for Phil, but can you shed any light on the correspondences between band members and animals?
This particular group “promo shot” was conceived out of desperation to avoid at all costs another deeply regrettable photo of a rock band. I had noted with amusement Phil’s highly skilled efforts at memorializing people’s pets in finely crafted watercolors he sometimes executes on commission. So I thought, why not superimpose our heads on animals and have Phil illustrate it? I sent an email to everyone asking them to choose their own animal and provide Phil with a headshot. I have no idea why the others chose the animals they chose, but in my case a pink poodle is obviously apt! In the case of Phil choosing an ape for himself, that has to do with an incident from decades ago. There was a section in a long and ponderous instrumental where suddenly Phil would pound the hell out of a mounted kick drum with hard mallets, solo, with no particular rhythm, but played with incredible physical force and it would thunder against the walls of whatever venue we were performing in. Very dramatic. He’d leave brief silences between the volleys for added impact. It was somewhere in Germany I suppose, that placed perfectly in one of those silences someone shouted out in a deep voice with a thick German accent “He… plays… like… an… APE!!!” Ever since then I have often referred to Phil lovingly as Mr. Ape.
Recently on social media you wondered whether your last thought will be of Chris Burden’s “Velvet Water.” Is “Los Angeles: City of Death” about anyone in particular? I suppose it could be a self-portrait, but I also think of Chris Burden crawling through broken glass on Main Street, crucified on the Beetle in Venice, airing his “Poem for L.A.” on local TV.
Yikes! To have a haphazard post from an idiotic social media site quoted back to me is like being taken to task for something thoughtlessly scrawled on a public restroom wall while taking care of business. Actually, not dissimilar I suppose! Anyway, Burden was one among many formative art figures from my youth in LA. His work remains powerful, if opaque. To me the early stuff is poetry. Each visceral act is perfectly contained in a few short, dry sentences. Through the Night Softly (crawling bound over broken glass) was broadcast like a commercial on TV and it’s wonderful to think of a random unsuspecting LA TV watcher suddenly encountering such an image late at night. I always conflate it with Van Gogh’s Starry Night for some reason. In fact I refer to it in a line in a song I wrote about a different harrowing event, called “When Will I Return?” But anyway, when I wrote “Los Angeles: City of Death” I’d been suffering from intense bouts of nostalgia for the place while fully aware that the LA of my childhood no longer exists and also that I was actually ecstatic to leave it behind and watch it recede beneath me through the window of the airplane as I headed for my new life in NYC, decades ago. In a way though, LA is the flowering root from which all that’s beautiful and hideous in American culture grows, a place of awesome glamour, sunlight and artifice, concealing depravity, greed and thoughtless cruelty just beneath its surface. It’s the original land of sprawling subdivisions, shopping malls and choked freeways, the home of the giant simulacrum Disneyland, and as it metastasizes out into the desert hills it kills everything beneath it and within its reach. The whole place is an environmental, psychic and cultural cancer zone. Naturally, hovering above it is a malignant sun, trying its best to broil everything it can touch alive. And now of course come the fires, and then the floods, and soon I suppose an earthquake that will dump the whole mess into the sea. But I have tremendous memories of the place! I love it. I’m still drawn to it somehow. An impossible dream, but if I had the money I’d buy a house on the beach in the South Bay area in an instant and live there for the rest of my life.
Please talk about Bill Rieflin’s contributions to Swans, particularly in the latter period.
Losing Bill (and just a year before that, his wife Frankie) was like having a vital internal organ removed without anesthesia. The ache is still there and I try not to think about it. Bill was one of the most exceptional human beings I have ever encountered. His intelligence was boundless and his dry wit and unexpected insights were a joy to experience. Working with him once every year to 18 months or so was always a high point of my life, in that not only did I get to make music with him but I got the chance to hang out with him as well. He always brought a fresh and vital perspective to any song he worked on. Typically, he would have never heard the song before and I’d play it for him in the studio, and it would be immediately apparent what instrument he’d play. He performed! He didn’t just play a part. Whatever he played always had the stamp of his personality in it. He played piano, bass guitar, electric or acoustic guitar, organ, synthesizer, percussion, drums, and he sang, too – whatever it was deemed a song needed. Once, rather than play something, he erased the end of someone else’s repeating short guitar measure throughout a song – and it worked beautifully. He taught me the trick of sometimes recording onto a new track of a song without listening to the song itself in playback, so that the performance would have an unexpected effect. Anything to avoid the inevitable doldrums that often creep in after long hours in the studio. Sometimes he’d double an existing full-kit drum performance exactly, just adding slight nuances and accents along the way to ensure vitality. He played a tambourine to a song sitting in a swivel chair with the mic in front of him and he swirled slowly in a circle as he played so that the tambourine would fade in and out throughout the performance. He played very aggressive, climactic chords on a piano to a song that intentionally was lacking a time signature, so that the downbeats were entirely random (the band had played this with eye contact to maintain unity) and he nevertheless landed with his chords exactly on each downbeat flawlessly. He played a ride cymbal with a tiny nail so that there was no tone, only the slightest bit of glassy percussion and the sheen of sustain. He was never dull, never predictable, and always brought the right amount of pathos or humor to a song, whatever was called for that I myself would have never imagined. He was a titan of a human being and an unparalleled musician and a master of aesthetics. I am less of a person without him on this earth.
How did it come about that Norman Westberg opens the show?
Swans reformed in 2010 and the line up of musicians from then until 2018 was myself, Norman Westberg, Phil Puleo, Kristof Hahn, Christopher Pravdica, and Thor Harris (later replaced by Paul Wallfisch). At the end of that 8 year period we’d spent so much time together and hashed through so much music that it seemed there was nowhere to go with that configuration musically. I decided to continue Swans with a revolving lineup of musicians. As it turns out, everyone except Norman and Thor has slowly seeped back into the picture after the passage of a few years. I love Norman as a person and a musician. I suspect in the near future he’ll be back in the fold, but in the meantime he is great as a solo artist so I thought this would be a way for him to properly shine. We get to tour together again after all.
The cover of ‘The Beggar’ (illustration by Nicole Boitos)
Sad news to report, Kenneth Anger, the Magus of American cinema has died, aged 96. He’d been living for some time in an assisted living facility in Southern California.
His art representatives at the Sprüth Magers gallery sent out the following press release:
With deep sadness, Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers, along with the entire gallery team, mourn the passing of the visionary filmmaker, artist, and author Kenneth Anger (1927–2023).
Through his kaleidoscopic films, which combine sumptuous visuals, popular music soundtracks, and a focus on queer themes and narratives, Anger laid the groundwork for the avant-garde art scenes of the later twentieth century, as well as for the visual languages of contemporary queer and youth culture. His earliest works, such as the 1947 black-and-white ecstatic short, Fireworks, established Anger as an enfant terrible of the filmmaking underground. In his works of the 1950s and 1960s, he pushed the camera apparatus to its limits, incorporating double exposure, found footage, and manipulations of the celluloid itself. Anger’s personal occultism, explored most deeply in his masterpieces Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954), Invocation of my Demon Brother (1969), and Lucifer Rising (1972), was a constant in his practice, with the act of transgression—from sacred to profane, from culture into counterculture, from old to new cinematic forms—becoming his defining mode of creation.
Kenneth was a trailblazer. His cinematic genius and influence will live on and continue to transform all those who encounter his films, words and vision.
Kenneth Anger (1927–2023) was a pioneer of avant-garde film and video art. His iconic short films are characterized by a mystical-symbolic visual language and phantasmagorical-sensual opulence that underscores the medium’s transgressive potential. Anger’s work fundamentally shaped the aesthetics of 1960s and 1970s subcultures, the visual lexicon of pop and music videos and queer iconography. The artist considered his life an artwork in its own right and frequently wove elements of myth, fact and fiction into his biography. His works can be understood as an integrative part of this life-as-artwork.
Anger’s keen perfectionism led him to assume all the usual filmmaking roles himself from the very beginning: In an unusual synthesis he handled all of the camera work, set design, costume design, film development and editing and acts as director, producer and actor in one. Even his earliest productions show the themes and artistic strategies that define his oeuvre. His experimental montage technique eschews spoken dialogue. Though possessed of certain narrative traits, its real power lies in a specific kind of suggestion. Anger’s first work, the 14-minute Fireworks (1947), was so provocative that the young artist was hauled to court on obscenity charges. Subject matter in the short film includes homosexual cruising, sailor fetish, sexual violence and gore. Its black-and-white images appear governed by an archetypal dream logic: phallic fireworks explode, the protagonist’s guts are crudely cut open to reveal a compass in his viscera and a sailor walks through a shot with a Christmas tree on his head. His 38-minute Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954) sees this dream logic tip completely into a surreal Technicolor color frenzy. The result is a sexually charged, orgiastic mixture of myth and ecstasy somewhere between period film set, opera stage, Kabuki theater and nightclub.
Later films including Scorpio Rising (1963), Invocation of My Demon Brother (1969) and Lucifer Rising (1972–80) develop this exuberant visual language further and also involve an expansion of their film-technique repertoire. Cine-sculptural strategies including double exposure or physical manipulation of the celluloid, the striking contrast of superficial pop music and disturbing images, the integration of found documentary footage and the use of subliminally-charged religious and mythological symbols enhance the films’ completely hypnotic effect. Influenced by the theories of the British writer Aleister Crowley, these works are also distinguished by a clear affinity for the occult and the enactment of an explicitly “perverse” imagination. Images of motorcycle gangs, orgies of violence, Egyptian deities, archetypal volcanic and desert landscapes and satanic rituals produce highly atmospheric, psychedelic psychodramas rife with breaches of taboo, sexual neuroses and voyeuristic fantasies.
Anger is also the author of Hollywood Babylon (1959), a book that anticipates the highs and lows of celebrity journalism. Mainstream Hollywood cinema is both the matrix of Anger’s work and its antipode. The visual lexicon of his films refers again and again to its dominant images while simultaneously subverting them in a radical way. At the heart of his practice was the fundamental, mind-expanding power of the film medium, a power absent in the genres of mainstream cinema practices. Anger considered cinematographic projection a psychosocial ritual capable of unleashing physical and emotional energies. The artist saw film as nothing less than a spiritual medium, a conveyer of spectacular alchemy that transforms the viewer.
I last saw Kenneth myself in September of 2022 when I interviewed him for an upcoming TV docu series I’m making on modern occultism. He was in good spirits that day, but obviously very, very frail.
I think it goes without saying that “they don’t make ‘em like that anymore” but Anger was always a one-off. The world became a lot less interesting today. RIP Kenneth Anger.
In 1978, a wonderfully weird album was released under the name the Happy Dragon-Band. The Detroit outfit wasn’t really a band, but a project steered by a local wizard. The Happy Dragon-Band is an astonishing, art-damaged LP that’s languished in obscurity for decades—but it has returned.
The man behind the project is one Tommy Court—the “Happy Dragon” in the Happy Dragon-Band. Court is a musician, songwriter, and engineer, who built a recording studio on the third floor of Fiddlers Music, a Detroit music store that would become a major hub of activity in the 1970s.
Tommy Court behind the board at Fiddlers.
“Tommy recorded everybody you can possibly think of in the Detroit music scene,” renowned drummer Johnny “Bee” Badanjek recently told me. Badanjek is best known for keeping the beat in Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels, and the Rockets, but he’s also done tons of session work for other artists, and plays on the Happy Dragon-Band album. Badanjek also said of Court: “He’s like a science guy, when it comes to recording and using all his keyboards and drum machines.”
When he wasn’t assisting others, Court was writing his own material and experimenting with guitars and synthesizers at Fiddlers. He tried to get a band together to perform his unconventional songs, but the results were too vanilla. So, Court ended up playing many of the instruments himself on the Happy Dragon-Band LP, bringing in top players like Badanjek to round out the recordings.
The Happy Dragon-Band was released on Fiddlers Music’s own imprint. Limited to just 200 copies, the album didn’t have any distribution to speak of, though it was sold by the Detroit-area record chain, Harmony House (yours truly worked at store #16 in the early ‘90s). The LP received some local and national radio spins, before quietly vanishing. The record has since become sought-after by those who love strange and sensational albums—like you, presumably. It’s been bootlegged (a kind of backhanded compliment for Court), while an original copy could set you back hundreds of dollars, these days.
On the Happy Dragon-Band’s album you’ll hear spacey prog rock, psychedelic disco, electro rock, and demented reggae, conveyed with heavy synthesizers, stabbing guitars, and off-kilter percussion. There are a couple of acoustic-based numbers that conjure up loner acid folk and an alternate reality singer/songwriter. One instrumental sounds like the soundtrack to an imaginary horror movie, while on another, lonely synth bombs boil into a bubbling cauldron of sound.
“A Long Time” is a good entry point for The Happy Dragon-Band. The track comes across as an evil blend of Krautrock and Blue Öyster Cult.
On Saturday, April 22nd—Record Store Day—the Happy Dragon-Band’s amazing, sole LP, will be re-released by Org Music. This marks the first time the record has been legitimately reissued, with Tommy Court’s full involvement, and widely distributed. Pressed on yellow vinyl, it’s limited to 1,000 copies, and features two previously unreleased cuts.
When everyone lives in the future, the present is au revoir.
—Delta Nudes
Last Christmas marked the fiftieth anniversary of the Residents’ first release, “Santa Dog.” Ralph Records gave away most of the initial pressing as a free gift, mailing copies of the double seven-inch record, which presented itself as a compilation of songs by four groovy groups, to friends, tastemakers, and prominent figures.
If the White House had not refused its complimentary copy of “Santa Dog,” President Nixon, his wife Pat, and their daughters, Tricia and Julie, would not have been deprived of the chance to spin it a few times on the Blue Room hi-fi as the Yule log crackled in the fireplace and the bombs of Operation Linebacker II pulverized North Vietnam. Though side one, “Fire,” credited to Ivory and the Brain Eaters, would have been the Nixons’ likely favorite, the First Family would have read in the sleeve notes that side four, “Aircraft Damage” (B Barnes–C America), credited to Arf and Omega featuring the Singing Lawn Chairs, was “FROM THE RALPH FILM ‘VILENESS FATS’ COMING SOON TO A THEATER NEAR YOU.”
Fifty years is a long time. Today, Dick and Pat are buried in the cold ground, original copies of “Santa Dog” fetch as much as a Pontiac Grand Prix, and you can tell Tricia and Julie that Vileness Fatsreally is coming to a theater near them! Sort of: every date of the imminent “Faceless Forever” U.S. tour will open with a screening of Triple Trouble, the Residents’ new feature film, which revisits their abandoned movie project of the early seventies and incorporates some of its footage into a brain-syruping psychodrama about Randy Rose, Jr., a lapsed priest harried by fungus in his encore career as a plumber.
Like the new Residents encyclopedia by Jim Knipfel and Brian Poole (also titled Faceless Forever), the Triple Trouble screenings and live shows are part of the Residents’ fiftieth anniversary festivities. I caught up with the group’s spokesperson, Cryptic Corporation President Homer Flynn, who once again graciously fielded my questions about the Residents’ diet, wardrobe, hair products, LaserDisc easter eggs and CD-ROM cheat codes.
In the atomic shopping carts, 1974 (courtesy of the Cryptic Corporation)
What can you tell me about the tour?
Well, you know, it’s a fiftieth anniversary tour, so it’s really retrospective. I mean, the selection of material for this tour, you know, came about in a kind of almost random, haphazard way. I mean, this is the third time it’s been scheduled. So it started out two, three years ago as a “Dog Stab” tour with the idea at that time that we were mainly interested in having them promote the Metal, Meat & Bone album, which was new at that point. But then we added a good chunk of Duck Stab! material to that. Kind of trying to come up with a balance between what was new and we wanted to promote and what the band wanted to play and then what the fans were interested in. And then that tour got cancelled, and then rescheduled and slightly jiggered around a little bit, and then that one got cancelled.
Well, by the time that happened, we were looking at the fiftieth anniversary and Metal, Meat & Bone, while everybody likes the album, it’s still not as relevant from a marketing and promo point of view. So ultimately, we left a good chunk of Metal, Meat & Bone in there, left a good chunk of Duck Stab! And then ultimately, they filled in with a lot of other classic Residents material. And I think it’s a good set. [Laughs] It’s not the way anybody would have chosen to put it together, but the last three years have been crazy. What can you say?
At the Golden Gate Bridge, 1979 (courtesy of the Cryptic Corporation)
I’m still kicking myself for missing the Duck Stab! shows. There was a Third Reich ‘n Roll encore?
There was indeed. Yeah, and you know they had a lot of fun with that. I mean, you know interestingly, there is a guy, [Scott Colburn], an audio engineer in Seattle, who has been doing a lot of the remastering of the back catalog series that Cherry Red has been putting out, and he’s a huge fan. He’s a great guy. And basically, he volunteered to go back and digitize all of the old multitrack original tapes. So all of a sudden, you know, you could take all of the original tracks from Duck Stab! and put them into Logic if you wanted to. And then all of a sudden that material was accessible again, and they got very excited about that idea.
They only did, that was kind of like, I call it the “California mini-tour.” It was the tour a year and a half ago that then ultimately, most of it was canceled other than four or five, three or four California shows. So they never really got to the point with the Third Reich ‘n Roll material where they were super comfortable with it, because part of what’s happening is stuff is coming from the original tapes, and then part of it is being played, and it’s all pretty loose. And I think everybody would agree that some of it works better than others.
But I think they have in mind going back and revisiting that again. I mean, you know, they could do a suite from Eskimo if they wanted to. There’s a lot of possibilities with that material.
Since you mentioned it, there was a plan for an Eskimo opera or stage show at one time, right? But I don’t think that’s ever been a live show.
No, there never has. I mean, interestingly, this is my favorite story about that: there is a guy who was a programmer at the South Bank Center in London, a guy named Glenn Max. And Glenn was a big Residents fan. He booked them for a few different festivals and events while he was there. And there was a period, I don’t know, ten or twelve years ago, something like that, when the South Bank Center was shut down for remodeling, and he had it in his mind, he was looking for other venues around London in order to try to do different shows. One of his ideas was to do a version of Eskimo on ice.
NOTE: This post, written by the late Howie Pyro, was originally published in 2020, when For the Love of a Glove had just opened. It’s back! Go see it if you live in Los Angeles!
Julien Nitzberg. Shit-stirrer, rebel director, artist, punk rocker and genius are some titles bestowed on this forward-thinking, back-slapping smart-ass. You might know him from his earliest documentary on Hasil Adkins—lunatic rockabilly one man band-he thought the guy in the radio made the music that way. Hasil sang about beheading his girlfriend so she “can eat no more hot dogs.” At that time he met Adkins’ neighbors the White family, who were the focus of his next documentary, the VHS cult sensation The Dancing Outlaw, about Jesco White, hillbilly clog dancer and Elvis impersonator. If you added up all the views just on YouTube of the different clips of this film alone it adds up into the millions.
Fast forward to 2009, Johnny Knoxville and Nitzberg make the cult hit The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia. In between these Nitzberg did many other projects Like Mike Judge presents: Tales From the Tour Bus and the controversial The Beastly Bombing operetta, an equal opportunity love/hatefest about, well…the subtitle of the operetta is “A Terrible Tale of Terrorists Tamed by the Tangles of True Love,” if that helps. You can read about it here.
All I knew about For the Love of a Glove going in was Julien’s history and sense of humor and that it was about Michael Jackson. That alone is at least a Godzilla’s worth of possible satiric destruction in the hands of Nitzberg, and that’s putting it mildly! It seems all of MJ’s bad behavior is blamed on aliens that look like glittery gloves who come to take over humanity. Oh did I mention it’s also a musical? And a puppet show? With life-sized puppets? The main one being Donny Osmond, Michael’s mortal enemy? There’s even one of Corey Feldman! And Emmanuel Lewis!!
The show is a non-stop comedy clobbering of the senses, with a very small, very talented cast, great original music, cool effects, etc. Most of the actors play as many as four roles, and being that much of the cast is African American it was odd/funny and visibly uncomfortable (to some) when these actors donned white hoods for the big Ku Klux Klan musical show stopper! But if you know Julien…
In these days of modern mass paranoia and casual racism, over-sensitivity and dumbing down of all things, even I had a flash of looking behind me (as I saw others do) and wondering if this was cool to like, who was getting offended, who was laughing, and right then at that moment I realized I have been way more affected by all this modern bullshit than I thought. We need people like Julien Nitzberg to remind and instill in us that it is not only okay, but quite necessary to think, laugh (at ourselves AND at others) and learn.
I spoke to Julien Nitzberg and cast member Pip Lilly about all of this.
Howie Pyro: Okay so why now? When did the idea come to you & what brought MJ to the top of your creative lunacy?
Julien Nitzberg: The initial idea for this show came to me almost seventeen years ago. I was approached by a major cable TV network to write a Michael Jackson biopic. I’ve been a Michael Jackson fan since I was a little kid and watched the Jackson 5 cartoon on Saturday mornings. I tried to find an interesting way to tell Michael’s story, but the later years were just too bizarre and I couldn’t find a normal way to tell it. How could anyone explain Bubbles the chimp, trying to buy the Elephant Man’s bones or sleepovers with kids. It was all too bizarre. I decided that the only way to tell it was to find a surreal way into the story. I pitched them the idea that all the boys and things in Michael’s life weren’t his choices. Instead his glove was an evil alien trying to take over the world who forced Michael to do all the bizarre things in his life. The alien gave him his talent so Michael was forced into doing things that he was severely embarrassed by.
The execs laughed at this idea but then asked me to do the normal version. I knew it would turn out terribly, so I said no. Over the years my mind kept returning to Michael’s life and finally I decided to write my version of his life as a musical with all original music.
I spent a couple of years researching Michael’s life trying to find the most interesting obscure parts to talk about. I decided to have it focus on his religious upbringing as a Jehovah’s Witness. Jehovah’s Witnesses have a really fucked up attitude toward sexuality. They teach that masturbating can turn you gay because as a man you get used to a man’s hand on your penis and want other mens’ hands on your penis. I thought this was hilarious. How did MJ get raised in the religion and then his most famous dance move winds up being him grabbing his own crotch? I then realized he didn’t do the crotch grab, his alien glove forced him to do it!
I also found out more about his rivalry with Donny Osmond. The Osmonds were clearly patterned to be the white version of the Jackson 5. Five brothers singing, dressing similarly. It was creepy. The Osmonds first big hit was “One Bad Apple.” It sounded so much like the Jackson 5 that Michael’s mom thought it was the Jackson 5 when she heard it on the radio.
The Osmonds clearly ripped off the Jackson 5 and what was worse they were Mormons which at the time taught that all black people were cursed with the “Mark of Cain” and were not allowed in their temples. They even taught that if you were black and converted to Mormonism you could go to Heaven but would be a servant to white people in Heaven. It’s some of the most fucked up religious shit you can dream of. They also taught that at the end of days when Christ returns all black people will have the curse of the “Mark of Cain” removed and turn white. Of course, Michael did this in his life so that became a big part of the story. We even have a song that Donny sings to Michael called “What a Delight When You Turn White.”
I felt like now was a great time to do the show. Everyone is talking about how our country has been ruined by fucked up racist and homophobic religions. We deal with one of the clearest cases of cultural appropriation that ever existed - people who belonged to an openly racist church going out and trying to sound like the biggest black music act of the day. It all felt like things that are in our country’s cultural conversation right now.
There is a new Luke Haines and Peter Buck collaboration out, and I highly recommend it. All The Kids Are Super Bummed Out was created along with longtime Buck partners-in-crime Scott McCaughey and Linda Pitmon and it’s a snarling cauldron of bizarre imagery, psychedelic guitar rock (Buck is very much on form here), glam, Haines’ signature trenchant societal observations and Lenny Kaye! I reckon this one is even better than the first one, which I liked a lot.
I caught up with Luke Haines via email.
Love the new album. It’s even better than the first one. Was this also recorded via the internet, or were you all able to be in a studio together while you were touring in the UK?
I’m glad you dig the album. We all do too. The album was all recorded remotely. Primarily because when we started recording (mid 2020) we were in the pandemic. So, like many people we were just sat around at home , and thought, ‘well we’ve got an album to do -better get on with it. Maybe, well all be in the same room for the next one. Maybe not.
Such eclectic subject matter bouncing from one topic to another—as opposed to the concept albums of your recent past—what inspired this crop of lyrics?
Well, as I said we were deep in pandemic, so my mind was certainly concentrated on making some kind of statement. But what kind of statement can anyone make in a pandemic. Anything ‘lucid’ is doomed to being trite or histrionic. We’re (maybe still) actually in the abyss. So I think the lyrics are a collection of pop art psychosis. Or junk art psychosis, a bit like that scene with Richard Dreyfuss in Close Encounters, when he’s making a model of the mountain out of mashed potato. That scene is essentially what this album is.
When you’re collaborating at a distance and writing songs, do the lyrics come first, a hummed melody or a riff or…? How does that work?
I listen to Peter’s demo and just start singing along. I usually have the bare bones within a few goes. If I can’t come up with anything him or Scott just send something else. The ‘process’ is not at all precious.
As easy as they are to do, very few artists can put together a truly unique and/or witty collage—a notable exception being Cold War Steve—what’s the “message” of your most excellent collage work on the packaging?
There is currently an obsession with NFTs and AI created art work. Whether AI yields anything worthwhile in the future who knows. I have no interest in digital art forms. I wanted the sleeve to look very analogue – so collage and oil paint is as analogue as it gets. The cover is if anything an amalgam of the last album as well. It is Apocalypse Beach, it’s just that when we recorded the first album Apocalypse Beach was a fantasy – now it is a reality.
Congrats on winning my coveted “Best Album Title of 2022” award. Truly fantastic. Who came up with it?
Thank you. I’ve never won anything before. Sadly, I have to admit that Peter came up with the title. His neighbour, a doctor, said to him pre-vaccine, that he’d been dealing with infectious diseases all his life, but with this one ‘All the kids were super bummed out.’ Never let a global pandemic get in the way of a great album title. I’ll take the award anyway.
The song on heavy rotation on my turntable is the title track. That’s a fucking good one. That weird shrieking monkey sample really freaks out one of our dogs. You guys (and gal) should get your Pink Floyd on again for an entire album of dark psychedelia. That’s my advice. Take it or leave it.
Yeah we’re really into apes. The ape section probably should have gone on longer. That was me with my commercial head on, ya know – ‘if we have five minutes of apes they won’t play it on the radio, better cut it down to two minutes of apes.’ I’‘m totally up for the early Floyd. Syd was great of course. Their best stuff was from Piper up to Atom Heart Mother. I’m an Ummagumma, man. Great album!
American tour?
We’d like to do an American tour. Visas are kind of expensive but it hasn’t been ruled out. So there’s that and because of Brexit it’s now really complicated playing in Europe. I’m kind of stranded in the UK.
I saved this one for last: What the fuck is going on in the post-Brexit United Kingdom?!?!
I’m glad you asked me about this one. I have the answer: Now that the Queen has gone the royal family are in a perilous position. The Queen was the last one who had direct lineage to the royal family’s Prussian/German heritage. She was the last one that shored up the monarchy’s ‘safe’ position after World War I. That’s all gone now and they are rudderless – they’ll be gone in ten years time and that is gonna be the game changer. Once they’re gone all bets will be off. Factor that into an equation that takes in the English Civil War of 1642, the Essex witch trials, the treaty of Versailles and Maastricht and therein lies the answer. Keir Starmer (or whichever motherfucker it is) will need to fund a think tank of academics and historians and find an algorithm that will ‘lead us out of Brexit,’ which is all the fault of Loaded magazine and those ‘culture’ arseholes who were writing about ‘cool Britannia’ in the ‘90s. They all write for the Guardian now or are on the radio where they moan about Brexit, and blame the people who voted for it, not realising they were largely responsible for putting the Brexit vote on the table in the first place. You cannot mess with culture. The clue’s in the name!
