moya - 5-13-2003 at 10:55 AM
the link
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/newsarticle.asp?nid=14136&cf=581
moya - 5-13-2003 at 10:55 AM
the article
Nineteen years after forming the Southern Death Cult and bedecking stages from West Yorkshire to New York City clad in a high-concept coiffure and
Native American get-up, Ian Astbury is still standing -- and standing even straighter, many might say. Shorn of his trademark flowing locks, with a
raging fire still in his flat belly, the numinous frontman bared his highly evolved soul on his first solo album, Spirit/Light/Speed, last June,
abandoning much of the anthemic hard rock styling that the Cult were known for.
Now Astbury is back with his former compatriots, gnashing teeth and guitars on their latest opus, Beyond Good and Evil, produced by the bruising Bob
Rock. Released six years after the breakup of the Cult -- the new album and current two-and-a-half-month tour find the band -- now Astbury, guitarist
Billy Duffy, former Guns n' Roses drummer Matt Sorum and bassist Billy Morrison -- re-igniting the flame of ferocious rock fans across the U.S.
How did the Cult end six years ago? I remember hearing that you and Billy Duffy got into a fistfight someplace in South America.
It was on the beach in Rio de Janeiro.
On a beach?
Copacabana Beach.
That's so cinematic.
It was actually after show. I was exhausted. I was putting my heart and soul into the tour, and I felt that I wasn't getting anything back. The straw
that really broke the camel's back for me is we arrived in a hotel in Rio de Janeiro and my room wasn't ready. So I slept on my own luggage in the
lobby for three hours. In fact, it was longer than that -- maybe like five hours -- while everyone else had gone to their rooms and was rested and
everything. At that point I just felt completely neglected. There were other things going on as well, and I felt that we sort of hit a wall. It had
all become more about a lifestyle as opposed to a creative statement, and I was much more concerned with the music and the artistry. I was fed up.
And having to sleep on your luggage put you over the top?
Perhaps, but I don't think I was entirely blameless. But maybe I put myself in that situation anyway. People were fed up with me, too, so they just
left me there.
Was it easy to get back together with Billy?
Yes, the balance is a lot better now.
How did you know you were ready?
Billy and I were meeting more and more frequently -- you know, bumping into each other -- and there just seemed to be like this really healthy mutual
respect for each other. We've been through a lot together and there was like an unspoken understanding between us that the other people around us
didn't have. And so there was this idea in my head that there was unfinished business there, that we weren't done yet, that that well had not been
fully tapped.
What's the hardest part about doing the Cult again. Do you have any misgivings about it?
I knew it was going to be hard. Yeah, to a degree I have some misgivings, because I miss my independence, but the independence I had was financed with
the monies I made during the Cult. I was living off that; I was able to be independent because of that. I remind myself of that. If I engage in this,
the monetary reward, will allow me to be independent in the future.
I know you said that the reason you reformed the Cult was because you felt you had unfinished business. Do you feel like you're finishing that
business up, or will the band be ongoing?
I'm letting it unfold as it does. Because if I set parameters for myself, I wouldn't able to engage in the present moment. I'd be so distracted by
having some kind of finality to it that it would detract from the ability for me to perform to the best of my abilities and put my best energies into
the recording. With the recording, it definitely was not a waltz. We went at it in the studio! We definitely pawed and tugged against each other, and
it was a lot of -- I wouldn't say fighting -- but just real blustered-up kind of bravado and a lot of calling up of primal forces against each other.
It wasn't too much about ego; it was actually about belief in the music, so it was a creative struggle. Billy's vision is meat and potatoes,
riff-orientated rock & roll music -- basic, Everyman, like a frozen Swanson "Heavy Man's" meal. And of course, with me, it was more like, yes, but, I
understand that was the foundation, but we can do so much more with it, and make it so much more unique.
What about having Bob Rock, did that help the tension between you and Billy?
Contrary to popular belief, Bob Rock is actually not as crass as a lot of people would have him be. He's actually a very sweet man, and a great
patriarch. He's got muscle, he's got a presence, definitely. I've met producers who are more articulate in their vocabulary and certainly more refined
in their sense of popular culture, but are almost impotent in their real sensuality. They talk the talk, but essentially, they're impotent. And Bob
has a lot of sensuality, and a lot of passion for what he does. That guy was working sixteen-hour days, six days a week non-stop for nearly five
months. He really put his heart and soul into this record. He believed in us more than Billy and myself did. He really, really came in and just
totally dedicated himself to us. So that was inspirational.
He seems like he has a good sense of humor.
He loves the bands that he works with. He's still like a teenager in his bedroom who practices air guitar.
What do you play air guitar to?
Mick Ronson's guitar solos, Jimmy Page's guitar solos, Robbie Krieger's guitar solos, or Steve Jones' guitar solos. Ones that actually move you, that
have got some kind of energy.
Do you feel you're at a turning point right now?
I'm kind of solidifying something right now. It's definitely more than the music for me. It's having this great empathy for human beings. I just feel
it and it motivates me to write certain things. I mean, when I see young men and I see the amount of pain they carry around, and anger, it reminds me
a lot of when I was maybe seventeen, eighteen years old, and nobody was there to help. They need somebody to help them or give them an alternative.
There's certainly plenty of people that tell them that they're wrong.
Or lead them down that path, like the music of Limp Bizkit.
I've heard this thing put on Limp Bizkit before, and all the rest of them, because I think they're products of the same thing. They fulfill one role:
they really reflect what's going on around them. That's why they're so popular with young men, because men identify with them -- identify with Fred
Durst. Within rock music there's a fraternity whereby maybe the male experience is a little bit more evident -- you've got your great patriarch Ozzy
Osbourne all the way down to the younger ones coming through.
It's such a man's genre . . .
Yes, full of phallic things. The guitar's pretty phallic. The mikes are pretty phallic. It's all from that place. It's all from man's sexual area. But
in a lot of ways it's what men have been doing for hundreds of thousands of years, you know, they're beating on drums to get the girls to come out of
their houses and look at them. "Come out of the cave and look at me. We're all dressed up, we're all colorful. Take the best." That's all it basically
is. It's the same arena. And it's been commercialized. Now you have to go and pay for that experience. You have to pay to enter the ritual today,
which is kind of bizarre.
What's a misconception about you?
That I'm a hippie.
Your secret ambition?
Probably to play soccer for Everton, the team that I supported since I was a boy in England. I'd like to play in their home grounds, on a professional
level. Even to just be on the field for fifteen minutes.
Well, you're still young.
I'm still young enough to do it. I'm only thirty-nine. Right now probably playing the best I've ever played.
Any guilty secrets?
I like to dress up a lot.
What do you dress up as?
Whatever . . . pirates, cowboys. I think a lot of it is also the way I dress when I go out. I am conscious of the fact that when I put on my Tibetan
robes, of which I do have some, and I go out in basically a monk's dress, it stops traffic.
How do the guys in your band react to your rather unusual attire?
Because I got on stage wearing make-up and a skirt? They all want me to wear trousers and feel like a guy. But I told them, "They don't fit me
anymore, and they're kind of dull. It doesn't feel like me anymore . . . I don't feel like everybody else, so I don't want to look like everyone
else." I don't dress like that because it's a reaction to everybody else. I dress because I want to dress like that. If I want to wear fucking
trousers, I wear them when I want to wear them.
So it's not feminine as much as it's Tibetan?
No, it's not feminine. Monks wear it. It's not feminine at all. I'm not a transvestite. I'm not dressing up like a woman. I'm not being Scott
Weiland.
Anything else you want to confess?
I like doing stuff in the produce aisles as well, you know -- putting my fingers in bananas and whatever. I like eating chocolates and the stuff
that's out there in the bins. In terms of, like, reckless behavior, like getting drunk and driving a car ninety miles an hour off a cliff type
behavior, I've done all that. It's fine at the time, maybe once or twice, but it's dangerous.
doggiestar - 5-13-2003 at 11:47 AM
thanx sandra...
xxx
sexualpanther3 - 6-9-2003 at 10:10 PM
VERY COOL - AND FUNNY!!!
Sistermoon - 6-12-2003 at 07:57 PM
Thank you! :D