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Robyn Hitchcock

A Conversation with Robyn Hitchcock (continued)

PM: And I thought that the song "Television" was an unbelievable way to start the record.

RH: Thank you.

PM: I'm very interested, actually, in how records begin, because I think it's often overlooked. It's a crucial moment, the opening moments of a record. And in "Television," not only does that beautiful dreamy guitar and the hook set the stage atmospherically, but then the opening lyric kind of breaks it wide open.

RH: Oh, thank you.

PM: "Television, say you love me." It's like, Oh, that's where we're going, okay.

RH: Well, it's the kind of plea of an addict that you can't--I mean, as I was saying at the beginning of our conversation, if one looked at what human life is about and what the effect of civilization is, one might even have to conclude that the whole thing is being done largely so people can watch TV. What is the difference between the civilized and the uncivilized world? It seems to be that once you've been civilized, you've got a TV set. What’s different about life now from life 100 years ago is the TV set. The House of Commons and the Al-Qaeda are at opposite ends of the ideological seesaw, but they all watch television, and use the computer, which is going to merge with TV. But you can't deny its power. Television has brought us some fantastic things. There would have been no Monty Python without TV, and there would have been no Ed Sullivan, no Top of the Pops. It's not like it's just beaming a constant jet of mindless drivel into your third eye, but it does a fairly good job of it.

PM: And without Ed Sullivan, there might have been no Beatles, after all.

RH: There might have been no Beatles. Well, no, the Beatles were already on the way, but it just them going in America.

PM: Yeah, it kick-started America.

RH: Even Elvis, I believe, where they wouldn't show him from the waist down, became political because everyone had to ask, "Why didn't you show it?" So we have a certain amount to thank television for, rather like LSD.

PM: [laughs]

RH: Acid was sort of a mixed curse. It stimulated some fantastic responses in people before it sort of destroyed their creativity.

PM: And the people who wouldn't stop taking it, of course, ended up in a bad way.

RH: I think pretty much everybody paid a certain price taking it, and I hardly ever took any because I was very cautious about just that. People sometimes associate me with mind-altering drugs.

PM: Or with the psychedelic side of something. There's a psychedelic shingle attached to your name. It's not firmly attached, but it fits there in the tapestry somewhere.

RH: Well, it's there and--it's still there on Spooked, I mean, in some of the little bits that we didn’t do in Nashville, which I overdubbed in England, and they're very obviously sort of psychedelic fetishes. There's backwards guitar on--

PM: Oh, so some of that was overdubbed in England, because I was--

RH: Well, only two things, and they were both appallingly psychedelic, like the electric sitar on "Everybody Needs Love", that sort of thing.

PM: Right. And I thought it was great. I was wondering if Dave Rawlings had lost his mind or what. Okay.

RH: No, no, no. If he did, I'd find it for him.

PM: [laughs] Because I love a backwards guitar myself, yeah.

RH: Well, I mean, he probably would have played one if we had one. But I was listening to those two tracks in Britain and I just thought they needed a little something. I took them into the local studio and I overdubbed certain things and then sent them back, and then Dave sort of settled them into the mix.

PM: Right. And did he like them?

RH: He liked the sitar. He was a bit nonplussed by the backwards guitar. But once he lowered it down in a mix a bit--

PM: A little newfangled for David, maybe, or...?

RH: Well, it wasn't what they were thinking of, but I think it doesn't hurt to have a bit of that around. I think the reason I carry those things around with me is because that's what I grew up with. I was fourteen in 1967, so--

PM: Yeah, so was I. I'm two months and two days older than you, so, yeah, I know what you mean.

RH: Wow. Two months and two days, so you must, what, January the--

PM: New Year's Day.

RH: Oh, I was reading about January 1st yesterday. You're born the same day as Country Joe McDonald.

PM: Really?

RH: Yeah.

[laughter]

RH: A hardheaded Capricorn from the Bay Area.

PM: He's still kickin', right?

RH: Oh, yeah, yeah. I think he'll kick for a while. I haven't actually heard anything about him lately, but I'm a huge Country Joe and the Fish fan. [Click here to visit Joe McDonald's website and see what he's doing.] Where did you grow up?

PM: Well, I got to the Bay Area as soon as I could, hitchhiked out there first when I was sixteen, but I grew up more on the East Coast. But it wasn't long before we took a band out there, when I was in my twenties, and stayed for the next ten or fifteen years.

RH: Oh, right. Did you know Greg Kihn?

PM: No. I knew some guys who played with him, but I've never known Greg.

RH: He was based in San Francisco and been working around there at the time. Oh, okay. So you must have got there in '69.

PM: Actually, with the band I got there in the early to mid '70s, I think.

RH: Oh, okay. So the whole thing--

PM: It was done.

RH: The sheen had gone out of it. You were there for the long hair and boring habits, then.

PM: Yeah, exactly. I was there in time for the whole cocaine scare of the 80s, that's for sure.

RH: Yeah, that was dreadful. The good thing about cocaine was that nobody claimed that it made you sort of a better person, you know.

PM: [laughs]

RH: Or that it would set you on a path to enlightenment.

PM: [laughs] I remember there was a funny comedian, Steven Pearl, in San Francisco who had a bit that went something like, "Cocaine: Using Tomorrow's Energy Today."

RH: Well, that's right. I mean, it's all a way of mortgaging your future. You get drunk tonight, you'll feel shitty tomorrow. I don't know of any enhancer--even the TV, people turn on the television to keep their kids quiet, but it just makes them that much more rambunctious when they turn it off again. You've got a bit of temporary opiate peace in exchange for a mad sociopathic spasm from your kids when the TV is off and they've suddenly got to relate to people again. It can't be helped.

PM: No.

RH: And the Chinese have got it coming their way.

PM: Already here. Here in the land of copies, on every street corner and in the subways and mall entrances, vendors are selling up-to-the-minute DVDs for a dollar. Things that are still running in the theaters in the U.S. are being sold for a dollar here.

RH: They're good copies?

PM: Not if they're still running in the theaters. That means that somebody in the back of the theater has filmed it. And sometimes a guy in the audience will stand up and block the camera out, and you’ll say "Oh, no, it's going to be one of those copies." But shortly thereafter, the good copies will be out--you've got to look for DVD-9, because even the copies are rated! And DVD-9 is frequently still a dollar.

RH: Wow.

PM: I was just at a local French restaurant, and a Chinese waitress I know, I noticed her staring at me because I was singing to myself "binga, binga, bing, bong, bing bong..." [the hook to the opening song "Television"]

RH: Oh, you were singing it?

PM: Yes. She walked over and said, "What is that?" So I tried to explain that I was boning up for an interview, but my Chinese wasn't exactly up to the task.   continue

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