Thirlwell: He was everywhere for a while. So yeah, working
titles do sometimes stick. In the scoring work the title will usually describe
the action I am scoring to. A lot of my serious works, my commissioned works
have had titles that are maladies or phobias.
Graham: I noticed that.
Thirlwell: Yeah, that’s kind of a thread that runs through
them, and that’s just a kind of way that I group that stuff. It’s not strictly
like that, but a lot of them are. I jot down titles because they’re rattling
around in my head, and they’ll find homes eventually.
Graham: Why name them after
maladies or phobias?
Thirlwell: It seemed like a good way to connect the works,
which are actually very diverse.
Graham: You’re talking about looking back over your career
arc with Foetus. There are some very, very dark songs from your earlier stuff.
Your stuff’s always had a dark element to it, y’know. But there’s also light and
poetry and beauty too. You ever look back on any song or lyric and go “Where
did that come from?” or “I wish I hadn’t written that?”
Thirlwell: Yeah. Yeah. There’s a couple of things I wish I
hadn’t written, I won’t be specific. There’s a few things that I wish I hadn’t
written. And I can see where I was going down that path, and how I reached that
conclusion, and I was like…it’s not very good. And…I think I was growing up in
public a lot, and it was just that I had the audacity of youth that I could do
that, y’know, and the momentum was giving me that audacity. The thing is, when
you start a project, for example Foetus, when you’ve got a body of work behind
you, it has a certain amount of baggage. Cos there’s a level that I have to
live up to, if I’ve done something that I’m proud of, you’ve got to make
something that’s better than that, or something that builds on that, or
something that excels and exceeds that. There’s gonna be a through line because
you’ve created a musical universe.
So there’s a structure there. And the longer
you do it for, the more baggage there is. That’s why it’s always been so
liberating to start a project like Steroid Maximus or start Manorexia or start
Xordox, because there’s no rules. And then quickly each of those projects has
adopted its own rules. Like Steroid Maximus, I had this tagline for it that was
‘music for a civilisation yet to be invented’, or ‘music for an imaginary
movie’. The latter phrase has become kind of a cliché in later years, but at
the time people weren’t really making so much purely instrumental music in my
galaxy.
With Manorexia, I was really excited for that, but then after the first
couple of records, I was like “Jesus, how do I follow that?” And the third
album took forever to do, cos I felt like I really had to think about where I
wanted to take it next. But I’ve become enamoured with this concept of
trilogies. There’s been a Steroid Maximus trilogy, there’s a Manorexia
trilogy, and I just finished this Xordox album, which is the third of the trilogy
of that. I may continue Xordox, but again I’m taking care of Xordox’s affairs
with this because it’s the end of the narrative arc of the storyline of Xordox.
Which started on the first album with the journey from outer space to inner
space, which continues the journey on the second album through various
dimensions, and the third album is the arrival. And so I’ve been working on
this arrival album for a while, and I’m very satisfied with where that’s kind
of gone.
There’s also a string quartet trilogy, so I’ve done the first of
those. I’m working on the Venture Brothers (Thirlwell scores the Adult Swim
animated series – Graham) trilogy, I’ve done two volumes of that, I’m working
on the third volume now. I think a trilogy is really nice, it’s got three legs,
so it can stand up, and I think you can say everything you need to say in those
three albums. Foetus is much, much more sprawling than that. I never say never
about these things. I mean, it’s nice to have a trilogy, but then you can
always start the 2.0 version, y’know.
Graham: Can I just point out one lyric to you that is
pretty reprehensible that you wrote, but it’s fucking poetry and I think it’s
brilliant?
Thirlwell: Yep.
Graham: It’s Hauss-On-Fah. I just look at that lyric and I think…but I’ve always had a liking for extreme stuff…
Thirlwell: (Shaking head slightly) Yeah.
Graham: To me it’s like Naked Lunch, it’s so extreme that it becomes almost comedic, but it’s not really funny.
Thirlwell: Ah yeah, it’s ummm…it definitely doesn’t hold up in today’s social environment. But it’s about, y’know…it’s kind of informed by living in Spanish Harlem, and it’s about the Klan, and things like that. Yeah, that’s pretty extreme, and, ummm…
Graham: It’s poetry, man.
Thirlwell: Yeah. It was actually kind of written as prose
poetry that turned into a song. I was writing a bunch of prose poetry while we
(here he is referring to ex-partner Lydia Lunch - Graham) were up in Spanish
Harlem, and I’d sit in front of a typewriter and pour out a lot of stuff, and
some of that turned into lyrics. I actually did a couple of spoken word shows,
and used some of that stream of consciousness stuff. But yeah, that’s not
really my medium of choice.
Graham: On Youtube there’s
one of those spoken word things called Lyrics
in Libraries, from Brixton, just you and a violin player, and you use some
of your lyrics in that, basically as poetry. How did you end up doing that?
Thirlwell: I was invited to do it by the promoter and I
thought I would try it, it took me out of my comfort zone!
Graham: You’re like a big sonic sponge and you replicate
music, you mix it and match it and mash music up in whichever way you choose
to, but you do have a real way with colloquial, poetic stream of consciousness.
You have a whole raft of lyrical forms that you use.
Thirlwell: I was also reading a (laughs) ton of true crime at that time. All through the mid-to-late 80s I was just totally immersed in true crime, into the early 90s. so much of the lyrics came out of true crime, from Where Evil Dwells (Wiseblood song about the murder of Northport, Long Island teen Gary Lauwers by seventeen-year-old druggie burnout Ricky Kasso in 1984 – Graham) and DI-1-9026 (about Charles Manson – Graham), and that song Hauss-On-Fah, there’s Jim Jones stuff in there, there’s a lot of that. And also when I moved to New York I got besotted with tabloid journalism too. I was pulling stuff out the New York Post, which is a daily tabloid. And that was informing my subject matter, along with a lot of culture of the time, Cinema of Transgression (a loose-knit coalition of punky, sexy, sleazy, drug-addled, anarchaotic early 80s New York filmmakers like Richard Kern and Lydia Lunch and Nick Zedd. Thirlwell provided some of the music for the films, as well as a couple of cameos – Graham), and transgression in general. We were, y’know, pushing up against things.
Graham: Do you find writing cathartic? You’ve got a lot of
black humour that runs through your work. I was working round the house
earlier, and I was laughing: “When it’s one man against the world, I shouldn’t
have so much time to complain.”
Thirlwell: (Nodding and laughing)
Graham: You’ve got all these hilarious lyrics all the way
through your work. You’re talking about using extreme lyrics or images. Do you
find it cathartic to grab a hold of something and kind of wrestle it to the
ground with humour?
Thirlwell: When it’s done. And I can look back on the
lyrics to that song, Cold Day In Hell,
or like I’ll Meet You In Poland Baby
and I still think they still really hold up. Which is extraordinary since I was
twenty-two or twenty-three when I wrote them. Yeah, part of my process is wrestling
the lyrics of the song to the ground, but now I do it on a laptop, and draft
after draft after draft. I probably didn’t do as many drafts when I was
younger, but I do a lot more now. And I’ll be unhappy with it for a long time,
and I’ll be tortured over it, but it’s work,
y’know, I’m not waiting for a lightning bolt to hit me.
Part of the process of
that work can be getting away from the work. So I’ll work on something for
forty-five minutes, and then I might go out somewhere in my car, to run some
errands or something. And as soon as I get away from it, inspiration will come
to me, and I’ll jot it down in my phone. Or sometimes I’ll make a rough mix of
a song I’m working on and put it in my phone and listen to it in the car. And
then when I’m thinking, when I’m in a different space, solutions come to me.
The car is an excellent listening environment. Sometimes I’ll beat myself up
over the fact that the message that I’m trying to put across in a song is too
specific and hamfisted. I feel like I have to put in as little u-turn in there
or a diversion. It’s almost like a bit of sleight of hand, you’re distracting
the listener with something almost irrelevant to put the point across. And the
point to that is making something that sounds a bit more universal, a bit more
timeless.
Graham: That’s a difficult thing, it really is. When I
wrote my own book…it was a strange thing. It took me years to write, here’s me
talking about writing something on and off. And then when I finished the first
draft, it was like I came out…every time I started writing it I was in a
certain specific place that I could not reach otherwise. And then when I
finished it, it was like I snapped out of a trance, BANG! (snaps fingers in
emphasis) and I looked at it and just went “What the fuck is that? Where did
that come from?” I had no conception…well, I had a conception but also not,
because it was just…someplace else.
(Thirlwell nods) I’m proud of the book, but I’ll be glad to be rid of the
thing, though. I’ve got one or two more questions, if that’s alright.
Thirlwell: Yeah, sure.
Graham: They’re both about writing, oddly enough. Now,
I’ve always noticed that you’ve always had a relatively chaste use of language.
I can only think of the word “fuck” twice, in Prime Gonzola and Bedrock.
(Thirlwell nods) And “shit”, well, you’ve used “bastard”, but that’s as an
actual “bastard son”.
Thirlwell: Yeah.
Graham: Why is that?
Thirlwell: (Nodding) Believe it or not it was a conscious
decision, and I dunno why. It’s been a conscious decision. You see, I just
don’t feel the need for it…now and then, when I pulled it out, it made it more…impactful maybe? I just never saw the
need for that, to use curse words. And I don’t think there has been any in my
writing for years now.
Graham: That’s what always kind of struck me, y’know-
Thirlwell: Yeah.
Graham: -then again, with the stuff I grew up on, it was
very unusual not to
have swearing, so I’m (chuckling) very conscious…with any artist I listen to,
I’m very conscious of the words. I’ll listen to yourself, I’ll listen to Shane
MacGowan (Thirlwell nods), I’ll even listen to bloody early (chuckling)
Bloodhound Gang. There’s a few I’ll listen to where when I listen…I’m not
really listening to music, I’m just working in my head. I’m just being inspired
by lyricists at the top of their flow, which may be high or low, it keeps me
out of trouble…
Thirlwell: Didn’t Bloodhound Gang have that song “the
house is on fire?”
Graham: That’s right.
Thirlwell: “the roof is on fire.”
Graham: Aye. He did a lot of, lyrically…
Thirlwell (Amused) “burn motherfucker burn.” That’s a good
song.
Graham: Lyrically, Jimmy Pop (Bloodhound Gang singer –
Graham) wrote lines like “Thank the thinkers that think they thought the
thoughts that theorized.” I actually met Jimmy Pop on that tour in 2000. I was
very inspired by him. I actually realised when I heard (laughing), believe it
or not, fucking…you know that song The
Bad Touch? (Sings craply) “You and me baby ain’t nothing but mammals, so
let’s do it like they do on the Discovery Channel…” (Thirlwell listens
intently, recognises the song, nods and laughs) So when I heard that song, and
I heard this album that they put out, (slightly disbelievingly) Hooray For Boobies…and I was thirty
years old, and I went “I get it! I’ve got a musical mind when it comes to
words!” It took that click! With that mad wee bastard from…where the Hell does
he come from…Pennsylvania…to
just give me that, and then I started writing my own book. It’s a strange way
to be (laughing) electroshocked into aesthetic awareness (Thirlwell nods and
smiles) I’ll give it that.
Thirlwell: I think it’s mysterious where…there’ve been
points in my life where…like you just said, that sort of gave you permission to
write your book. And you could say it’s an epiphany?
Graham: Aye.
Thirlwell: Yeah, and I’ve had several of those myself. I
mean, one of them being punk rock, which basically said…I mean, I loved music,
but it seemed distant and inaccessible. And punk rock said “You don’t have to
be a virtuoso on your instrument, you don’t have to have a record company
putting out your stuff, we have the means of production”, things like that. And
those things were revelations to me, an epiphany, “Wow, I love music and I can
do it myself, I don’t have to be really good on my instrument.” And things like
that continue to happen to me. I have a voracious appetite for new music, and
I’m always seeking new stuff out. And I hear music that kind of cracks things
open all the time, y’know. This band Knower, who I’m actually gonna see
tonight, made this video, and I could see in the background there was someone
holding an iPhone, and I thought “They’re just making this whole fucking video
on an iPhone”, and that cracked things open for me. So I think you’ve got to be
open to things, y’know.
Graham: That’s one thing that’s always struck me about you:
you’ve got your high art component, you’ve got your Shakespeare, you’ve got
your Rimbaud, you’ve got (chuckling) the Bobbsey Twins (American children’s
books characters – Graham) that you mention (Thirlwell nods) at one point. And
then you’ve got The Simpsons, you’ve
got The Evil Dead. You’ve got a lot
of different cultural place markers everywhere, you’re not snobby about things,
you’ll just put “right that seems like the right piece for the puzzle, I’ll
stick it there”, and you don’t give a fuck what other people think about it.
Thirlwell: Yeah. I’m a bit of a magpie that way.
Graham: Oh aye. Right, now, this is the last question Jim,
okay?
Thirlwell: Yeah.
Graham: This is just kind of a random question. You’ve
collaborated with a lot of people, I’ll just name a few of them: Marc Almond,
Roli Mosimann, Lydia Lunch. Did you ever collaborate on writing lyrics and, if
you did, how did that go?
(JG Thirlwell with Roli Mosimann, who unfortunately died on 15/9/2024. Photo - JG Thirlwell)
Thirlwell: Do I collaborate on lyrics?
Graham: Aye.
Thirlwell: Uhhh…I haven’t really collaborated…(to himself)
have I collaborated on lyrics? I think the closest I’ve come to collaborating
on lyrics is if someone gives me a song they want me to do a vocal on and I’ll
write the lyrics, but sometimes I’ll keep their song title and that will go
into the lyrics. But that’s as close as I’ve come to collaborating on a lyric.
Graham: Okay. So, what’s the name of the last Foetus album
then, do you have a name for it?
Thirlwell: Oh yeah, Halt,
H-A-L-T.
Graham: I was thinking Done,
but Halt is as good as anything.
Thirlwell: Hungry,
Angry, Lonely, And Tired.
Graham: Oh Christ pal, what are you like, you’re a cheery
bugger you, aren’t you?
Thirlwell: (Laughs) That’s the acronym. And also Halt because it’s the tenth album, and
it’s the ceasing of the thing.
Graham: Oh I get it, (wryly) I’m not bad with words upon
occasion. We are finished, sir, thanks very much for your time, and for doing
this, it’s appreciated. Enjoy your gig tonight, I’ll speak to you later.
Thirlwell: Bye Graham.
(My signed copy of the Nail insert)
THE END
Official site: www.foetus.org
PS: Now that the lyrics are (sort of) done, as opposed to the usual musical discussion with Foetus, somebody with a knowledge of art needs to talk to the man about his artwork, which he does himself. After all, he just won a prize for it. I want to know about it! Get to it, arty party types!
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