Sleazy Peter Christopherson unedited
Photograph by Leon ChewRead the unedited transcript from Sleazy Peter Christopherson's Jukebox interview with Mike Barnes
Sleazy Peter Christopherson Jukebox transcript
NICO “FACING THE WIND” FROM THE MARBLE INDEX (Warner Brothers) 1969
Is this Nico and John Cale maybe? “Borderline” [“Frozen Warnings”], one of those?
It’s from that album, The Marble Index.
I think this is about my favourite track on that album. (Vocals come in) Yeah, it’s great isn’t it? As you may know, when Throbbing Gristle were playing Tate Modern a few years ago, it came to us as a possibility that we could make an installation at the ICA, but no one really knew what that would be and how that could work. I was on the train from Weston-Super-Mare, where I lived at that time, to a meeting with the other members of TG and it struck me that one of the things that we could do that would confound people’s expectations — because TG was always about confounding even the expectations of people who were into what we did — would be to cover someone else’s album.
The one that seemed to lend itself the most to that was (Nico’s) Desertshore. I mean I love this album, but to me this is by far the best song on it, but Desertshore was a kind of a complete work. I believe it was soundtrack to the Philippe Garrel film called La Cicatrice intérieure. It’s fairly experimental and features Philippe himself wandering around Iceland naked. Nico appears on a white horse and Nico’s son [Ari] appears as a baby being set adrift on a stork’s nest onto some passing river. [Distracted by Cale’s piano] Great chords.
And it was just mad enough an idea to appeal to the other TG guys. So we duly set up a recording studio installation in the theatre at the ICA and for three days recorded Genesis [P-Orridge] singing vocals to basic backing tracks that I and Chris Carter had prepared, as well as all four of us doing some great jams that formed the basis of the recent tour CD, The Third Mind Movements, all in front of a live audience who were being extremely patient and dedicated ‘flies on the wall’.
Considering most vocalists throw the rest of their band members out of the studio when their turn comes to perform, Genesis was amazingly brave to sing unfamiliar material — some in a foreign language — unrehearsed and for the first time in front of a live audience, and she did a greater job than anyone could have imagined.
Is the album going to be released?
We released a limited wallet of 12 CD-Rs of the whole weekend installation for purists and collectors who couldn't make it, but the Nico album itself remains to be properly finished, orchestrated or arranged using that raw material. This autumn is already busy for the four of us, so we will hopefully finish the album off next year, in time for a big launch on our new Industrial Records label towards the end of 2010.
The Marble Index is often cited as difficult and depressing, but there’s something about Nico’s songs that’s deeply melancholic and very moving.
I didn’t know how much that was Nico’s personality. I regret to say that I never met, but I think she always was that way from day one. John Cale I think made some wonderful records at that time.
Cale’s arrangements at times almost dominate the vocals, as on this track.
But to me it compliments her vision. There was also that Cale record with all of the Kodachrome slides on it. What was it called?
The Academy In Peril.
Yeah, I thought that was a great record. Just then, for whatever reason, he seemed to have encapsulated that bleak view of the world — which in a way spiritually was taken up by TG in the late 70s — with the garbage removal strikes, the Labour party problems, and the way that TV was pretty much feeding up a diet of Prog Rock, Mud, The Sweet and stuff like that. It definitely felt to us when we started TG as though there was no cultural support system. The culture didn’t reflect the world that we saw every day walking down Mare Street [in Hackney] and into the studio in Martello Street. At the time the word “yuppie” hadn’t been invented and there were no flats. It was just a wasteland, really. And so these kind of records were definitely a kind of progenitor. Not musically an influence, but spiritually.
NICO “FACING THE WIND” FROM THE MARBLE INDEX (Warner Brothers) 1969
Is this Nico and John Cale maybe? “Borderline” [“Frozen Warnings”], one of those?
It’s from that album, The Marble Index.
I think this is about my favourite track on that album. (Vocals come in) Yeah, it’s great isn’t it? As you may know, when Throbbing Gristle were playing Tate Modern a few years ago, it came to us as a possibility that we could make an installation at the ICA, but no one really knew what that would be and how that could work. I was on the train from Weston-Super-Mare, where I lived at that time, to a meeting with the other members of TG and it struck me that one of the things that we could do that would confound people’s expectations — because TG was always about confounding even the expectations of people who were into what we did — would be to cover someone else’s album.
The one that seemed to lend itself the most to that was (Nico’s) Desertshore. I mean I love this album, but to me this is by far the best song on it, but Desertshore was a kind of a complete work. I believe it was soundtrack to the Philippe Garrel film called La Cicatrice intérieure. It’s fairly experimental and features Philippe himself wandering around Iceland naked. Nico appears on a white horse and Nico’s son [Ari] appears as a baby being set adrift on a stork’s nest onto some passing river. [Distracted by Cale’s piano] Great chords.
And it was just mad enough an idea to appeal to the other TG guys. So we duly set up a recording studio installation in the theatre at the ICA and for three days recorded Genesis [P-Orridge] singing vocals to basic backing tracks that I and Chris Carter had prepared, as well as all four of us doing some great jams that formed the basis of the recent tour CD, The Third Mind Movements, all in front of a live audience who were being extremely patient and dedicated ‘flies on the wall’.
Considering most vocalists throw the rest of their band members out of the studio when their turn comes to perform, Genesis was amazingly brave to sing unfamiliar material — some in a foreign language — unrehearsed and for the first time in front of a live audience, and she did a greater job than anyone could have imagined.
Is the album going to be released?
We released a limited wallet of 12 CD-Rs of the whole weekend installation for purists and collectors who couldn't make it, but the Nico album itself remains to be properly finished, orchestrated or arranged using that raw material. This autumn is already busy for the four of us, so we will hopefully finish the album off next year, in time for a big launch on our new Industrial Records label towards the end of 2010.
The Marble Index is often cited as difficult and depressing, but there’s something about Nico’s songs that’s deeply melancholic and very moving.
I didn’t know how much that was Nico’s personality. I regret to say that I never met, but I think she always was that way from day one. John Cale I think made some wonderful records at that time.
Cale’s arrangements at times almost dominate the vocals, as on this track.
But to me it compliments her vision. There was also that Cale record with all of the Kodachrome slides on it. What was it called?
The Academy In Peril.
Yeah, I thought that was a great record. Just then, for whatever reason, he seemed to have encapsulated that bleak view of the world — which in a way spiritually was taken up by TG in the late 70s — with the garbage removal strikes, the Labour party problems, and the way that TV was pretty much feeding up a diet of Prog Rock, Mud, The Sweet and stuff like that. It definitely felt to us when we started TG as though there was no cultural support system. The culture didn’t reflect the world that we saw every day walking down Mare Street [in Hackney] and into the studio in Martello Street. At the time the word “yuppie” hadn’t been invented and there were no flats. It was just a wasteland, really. And so these kind of records were definitely a kind of progenitor. Not musically an influence, but spiritually.
Posted 05/08/09
Share