David J
of Bauhaus/Love & Rockets/the Jazz Butcher 

 
photo by Mitch Jenkins- "On Glass" session 

 

April 5^th, 2002- Backstage at the Echo Lounge in Atlanta, Georgia.

(This was a three part interview. “A Trinity of an Interview.” The first part was in person after his show in Atlanta, the second part was by phone, and the third part via email.)

 

 

Lisa King: So, tell us the truth. The truth.

David J: The whole truth and nothing but the truth? Well, I think the starting point should be, the fact that when I walked in here tonight they were playing Patti Smith. And they seemed to be playing Patti Smith throughout the whole evening. Which is very interesting, because I finally met up with her in New York, a couple of days ago. And she was a very early, and still an abiding influence, and her record Horses was a massive event for me to the extent that it defined friendships. When that came out, I lost friends over it because they didn’t relate to it. And it was such a strong reaction, that they felt alienated by that record, and I felt alienated from those people because they couldn’t relate to it. So I didn’t really want to know them. And anybody that could relate to it, I wanted to know them, and they wanted to know me. So it was a defining moment, that record. It was really interesting because it was such a pure rock and roll statement. It was coming up with all these references to these poets like Rimbaud, that I discovered a few years before that. I had a friend in school who was known as “X” , and he’s sort of very,… he was precocious; and hyper intelligent. A very interesting guy. And he turned me on to Rimbaud, and Baudelaire, and William Burroughs, and Ginsberg, etc. So when that record came out, and she was talking about, “Go Rimbaud,” it just made such a connection. She’s a real poet, and somebody who just obviously had rock and roll in her veins. It was just incredibly liberating. I have always missed her live, because I’ve always had a gig or something. I have to leave town when she is in town always, from the first time she played at The Roundhouse in London in the seventies . I wanted to go to that so bad, and I had a gig. I was in a punk band and we were playing a gig so, you know that’s cool I suppose, but I couldn’t see her. And I’ve got a friend who is now her main roadie guy , who used to be my main roadie guy, so he invited me down to a rehearsal; she was doing the David Letterman show. So he said, ‘come down’ you know. So I go into this little rehearsal space in New York, and they are just about to start so it was good timing for me. They did ‘Because The Night’ about three times. I met her and she’s really charming; very human. Very nice. And Lenny Kaye, that was another major influence. His Nuggets collection that he put together. You know the mid-sixties Punk. So that was great. Things seem to always happen in New York. Things always seem to occur; these connections. Coming in today, this just shows the power of music, just this synchronicity about playing, to be honest I was really sleep deprived. And I didn’t feel like doing the gig. The minute I walked into that door and I heard Patti Smith playing, and it was Horses I felt really glad to be here and I felt like doing the gig. And I said to Joyce, I’m really glad we decided to do this. So, it was good.

LK: Talk about: Slow Fear.

DJ: Slow fear? Interesting question. Slow fear. I dunno….that’s got something to do with time. I used to do a version of Fear Is A Man’s Best Friend. It brings that to mind. And I recorded it with,…It was with Sonic Boom. I can’t remember if he ended up on the record or not. Did he? I can’t remember. But he was around. I remember playing the guitar with these soft beaters. I open tuned the guitar, and I was just like hammering on the guitar. And that was always a really compelling title, Fear Is A Man’s Best Friend.

So, if fear is a man’s best friend, slow fear must mean,… I think it’s something like when you’re in an accident and time slows down, and you see everything in slow motion. And that’s slow fear. It’s just a way of being able to deal with an extreme set of circumstances and it’s sort of to do with survival. So slow fear kicks in so that you can survive whatever you are fearful of.

LK: What about Treeman…

DJ: Treeman?

LK: … “with his bandwagon.”

DJ: With his bandwagon? Treeman is the Green Man. The mythical Green Man of English folklore. And his bandwagon is,… his bandwagon are…Shamanic Druids.

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LK: Veil of Chrome.

DJ: Veil of chrome. That has something to do with the death of motorcyclists. And that puts me in mind of the track ‘Motorcycle’ and ‘I Feel Speed’ that Love and Rockets did. And ‘I Feel Speed’ came out of ‘Motorcycle’ very naturally. We only had the one track ‘Motorcycle’ and when we were recording that we just kept playing, and we went into the other thing, and it was very arresting. It was improvised very powerful. And my impression of that when we were playing, was this was about a motorcyclist that had been involved in an almost apocalyptic accident, and being torn to pieces, and he was dead. But he didn’t know that. As far as he knew he was still on his motorcycle, and he went through a veil of chrome.

LK: I’ll let my sweater figure it out.

DJ: That makes me think of ‘Haunted When the Minutes Drag.’ “ I touch the clothes you left behind that still retain your shape and line.” And that was really about an obsession I had about this girl who was in art school. And I was so nervous…to speak to her…I couldn’t do that. But she used to leave like, her clothes, like a cardigan or a shirt or something, and I remember touching this piece of clothing that still somehow retained her shape and her line. Very obsessive.

LK: Mermaid and Pharaoh.

DJ: Hmmm…this is a very unconventional interview. I like it. Mermaid and Pharaoh. That’s got something to do with the Nile. And the fact that the constellation of Orion maps out perfectly onto the pyramids in Egypt. And just what a mind blowing concept that is that the Egyptians should have been out to harness such knowledge. And how did they know? They were creating heaven on earth in that effect, and somehow the mythical power that is known as a mermaid, was somehow part of their mythology. Although they would not have called it a mermaid. I don’t know what they would have called it. But it was there, and it lives in the Nile.

LK: Indoor cat.

DJ: Indoor cat. There is always one part of an indoor cat that is outside, and can never come inside because it’s wild and its feral, and there is something very appealing in that. Any cat , like any small cat, domestic cat, has something of the big cat in it. And I think that is part of the fascination with cats. That we think that they are domesticated, and we’ve tamed them, but there’s always a glint of the wildness in any pussy cat.

LK: Talk about influential records for you. Things that inspired you when you were young.

DJ: “Pink Moon.” Do you know the record?

LK: Love the record.

DJ: Very introspective, haunting, autumnal, very English. Just guitar and vocal mainly. Minimal piano. His guitar playing is so accomplished it sounds like seven guitarists playing at once, and I know that he was just playing you know, those parts simultaneously in one take. I was asked to contribute to a Nick Drake compilation, a tribute record, and the song I chose had already been chosen by somebody. ‘Things Behind the Sun.’ But I went ahead and did it anyway. I haven’t recorded it yet, I just worked on it with this guitarist. And one day, I will record that. It might come out on the next volume in the tribute series; very strange, surreal, mystery of a song that I still haven’t quite worked out. But he’s certainly a big influence. I heard that in ’74, I think I had just known that he had died. I had just started art school. Yeah, I was sixteen or something like that. That was another big influence on me. Art school. A very alluring part; concept of life, you know, going straight from school to that was very different for me. It was very expansive.

LK: Will you talk about, “Modern Orange Sky.”

DJ: There you go again…

LK: Take your time.

DJ: Yeah, I think I’m going to have to. Modern orange sky. I can’t think too much about these. I think I have to dive in.

LK: Exactly. Just the first thing that comes to mind.

DJ: Let’s go back to that one. Give me another one.

LK: The Prince and the Wheel Barrow Man.

DJ: The plants? And the wheel barrow man? Okay, the first thing that comes to mind is Mia Doi Todd . She’s really talented. She lives in L.A. I got turned on to her by Nora Keys who is one of the singers in this group ‘The Centimeters’ that I was working with. And she was just saying how I should really listen to this singer because she thought I would like her. So I got her record. I was knocked out by her voice, it’s the most pure, crystal like, incredible voice. More or less immediately I wrote this song, and as I was writing it I realized it is for her voice. It’s called ‘Albino Dog’. So at the same time, I was invited to appear on a show that she was doing in L.A. She was doing a residency at this place called Silver Lake Lounge. And I got her phone number, and I just called her up and said I’ve got this song. I’d never met her before, so I introduced myself to her and said I’ve got this song. It’s for your voice. So she invited me down to her place there and then, and I’d just written this thing, so it was a very intimate playing. And I played it to her. And she liked it. And then we sang it together. And then she ended up recording it. So I have that now on tape, and it will be on the next record. But just now she is working on a big record. Because she’s put out all these records on her own, very underground, just funding them herself, setting up distribution deals. But in interim, I knew that this would happen to her, because she’s such a big talent; that she’d been discovered basically. And the record will be half brand new material, and half material coming from these 3 different albums, but it will be recorded.

LK: Talk about: Nocturnal Transmission.

DJ: Makes me think of The Velvet Underground. They were a massive, massive influence, of all the bands that I’ve been in. I love their sort of extreme quality. Lou Reed was very aware of what he was doing. There’s something extraordinary about the fact that he was living a pretty extreme and dangerous life, and experimenting on himself. But there was another part of him that was sort of like detached,…like a crime novelist who was observing himself as the protagonist, and writing about it in a very clear, disciplined way. What he was observing and writing about was an apparently undisciplined and reckless lifestyle. I think the music conveyed that lifestyle. But then the lyrics were there, and this kind of laser beam that illuminated it. And everybody else in the band, they were perfect collaborators. No one more than any other; You know, Moe Tucker, and no less than John Cale. So I went to see them with Pat Fish when they played at Wembley for their reunion tour a few years back. Amazing. A big auditorium you know. Wherever you looked you saw bands in the audience. You’ve got all these bands who have been influenced by them.

LK: White Glitter Notebook.

JC: That fits Marc Bolan. His influence was like, massive I guess when I was about 13 or 14. And he conjured up a whole other plane. Sort of like…very much out of reach. And very visceral and exciting. The music was very immediate. I think it was for me, in the same way as somebody who was coming of age in the fifties were turned on by rock and roll; like Elvis Presley. That kind of rock and roll. To me, that was my rock and roll, because I was at the right age to be affected by it. There’s nothing like being thirteen and hearing great, exciting, raw music. You know. Rock and roll.

LK: What about Blue Screen.

DJ: Blue screen? I think of David Bowie. Sound and Vision, that whole period. Low. It’s one of his most fascinating periods of his career. Again there’s sort of a parallel way to Lou Reed. Living this abandoned lifestyle, and Bowie kind of purposely put himself out of it, going to Berlin to record that record. And how strange his life must have been just prior to that. When he was living in L.A. Disjointed, dislocated world of cocaine addiction. I’ve driven past his house a few times in Hollywood. It’s a really strange mausoleum type building with no windows. And that’s where he was when he was at his lowest point, just before he decided to break out of it, and go record Low and the other two records that formed that trilogy. And it has a strong atmosphere, that record. There’s also a romantic association for me that’s pretty strong. It’s a special record. Interesting how he tied it in with The Man Who Fell To Earth as well. Very intriguing, and really inspiring to hear that music. The instrumental stuff especially, it being so out there.

LK: Down By The River.

DJ: Down by the river…Neil Young comes to mind. He has such integrity. And also he is very unpredictable. And my favorite Neil Young record is On The Beach which I believe is the only one not available on CD. And that’s a really great record, very melancholy. It’s like the cover; he’s on this beach and there’s a,… it could be a nineteen fifties automobile or it could be a spaceship that is halfway buried in the sand. And there is two colors to that record. The silver or the spaceship or fins of the car, and the blue of the sky and the sea.

LK: A Moving Electric Charge.

DJ: That makes me think of William Burroughs. There was a moving electric and organic charge that ran through all of his work. Again, he was very influential on me, as I was leaving school; that time. But then, an abiding fascination. I was reading a lot of Burroughs stuff when we were recording the last Bauhaus record, Burning From the Inside. And I was also reading about magick. And I was trying to combine these two things: a magickal spell; a sigil; which would be the desire to meet Burroughs. And I don’t know if you are familiar with this, but you write down a desire, and then you look at the letters that occur more than twice, and you take those letters out, you take it down until you have just a few letters and then you make a diagram that is associated with the desire in some personal, abstract way. And then you memorize it, and then you destroy it and forget all about it and let it happen. Well, I did that, and then a few weeks later, totally out of the blue, I got an invite to go into Toronto to play William Burroughs seventieth birthday party. And I did meet him. It was an incredible experience. I met John Giorno, he was part of the whole thing as well, as a friend, and Jim Carroll was on the bill; I was the musical turn with Alex Green. And later on I visited Burroughs in Lawrence, Kansas. Spent an extraordinary day with him. He took me round his garden on a snake hunt, with a snake stick, a prod stick, and he took me round this big circular garden with giant Vodka and Coke’s, and snake sticks, and he has…snakes. Which he would capture, and keep them in these cages, and study them and admire them, and then he’d let them go in the woods. He never killed them. He thought they were… “beautiful.” There’s another time he took me into the place where he made all his paintings. And there are all these like, exploded cans of paint, the whole place was red and green primarily, and these stencils all over the place. In the corner there was this old Kabuki mask that he had sprayed up. And he gave me that as a little souvenir, so I had that on my wall. And it’s very strange, because, when I moved to the states I had everything in storage, and one day I felt compelled to find his mask, and I had a whole garage full of cardboard boxes. But I wanted to find it to put it on the wall. And I did. I found it , and put it on the wall. And that was the day he died. So I told John Giorno about it afterwards, and he said it meant you would be with him in the ‘Bardo’.

LK: The Slide of Fountains.

DJ: The slide of fountains. Lowell George of Little Feat. His music, I love. He’s a great slide guitarist and a brilliant songwriter. And he had a sense of the surreal. And I think one of the most beautiful records ever made is Long Distance Love. And I remember seeing that on a show. It just had a real vibe. So that came out. It’s when this room got, really just like their room, where they would live, their world, and it was all like patchwork quilts; looked like a pair of denims really, old wood, and you knew they were smoking the best marijuana in the world. Doing these beautiful, exquisite love songs. And then I ended up recording my last record in a place in Lancashire. That’s where they were. That place. And they haven’t changed it since the seventies. It’s very vibey.

LK: How about, Pink Fuzz.

DJ: The Flaming Lips for some reason. Who I really like. Especially that last one, The Soft Bulletin. That record. The song on there called the ‘Spiderbite Song.’ The drums on that are just magnificent. The way that they were recorded.

LK: A Waxing Crescent.

DJ: A waxing crescent. That’s lunar. My favorite music has a lunar quality. Like Syd Barrett. A lunar, loony quality. I very much like the two solo records he made after Pink Floyd. I think at that time he was a bit of a shaman, or something like that, going into very strange places and bringing back diamonds. Diamonds from the moon. And I think they were so bright they destroyed his brain. And looking into them, we just see the reflections of them in the moon.

LK: What about, T.V. and Lamppost.

DJ: That’s Tom Waits, who I’ve been into since ’76. The first time I saw him, it was a T.V. show, and he was propped on a lamp post, singing ‘Small Change.’ And then I saw him live, and that was on the stage, and also he had re-created an apartment, and he had a T.V. set on stage, black and white T.V. set, and a sofa, and he had a cutaway window, and a red and a blue sign flashing on outside. And it was perfect for him at the time. And I stayed with him, and loved what happened with his records in the eighties; started with Swordfishtrombones; he sort of went off on this really unique tangent that took him into kind of a Berlin cabaret. The whole thing became much more surreal; off kilter, and much more appealing. And he just continued to mine that brilliant stage presence.

LK: Story Within The Story.

DJ: Angela Carter. An English writer who based a lot of her work on old fairy tales. And really brought out the darkness and the beauty of those tales. She brought out the blood and claws. And there was a film based on one of her books that could never do it justice because her powers of description were so great. Do you know the film I’m thinking of? It’s the Werewolf film. Yeah. Something “…of Wolves.”

LK: In the Presence of Wolves.

DJ: Actually, I cribbed a line from her for this song, ‘Albino Dog’ which leads back nicely, a circle. Because I have this line, “hairy on the inside.” And that was hers, I thought that was so brilliant. She described these wolves as hairy on the inside. “Some wolves are hairy on the inside.” That’s so great.

LK: Compensation Dispensation.

DJ: A case of give and take. For a very long time I feel that I have been giving and not receiving. To a degree it is my own fault. I have become something between a renaissance man and a dilettante. At the moment I am juggling some thirteen musical projects like a plate spinner at the circus. I have more back burners than Kitchens Plus! Only one of these projects has seen the light of release. (The new 'Guitar Man' CD ep on Hey Day records, Indie Kids!) All of these works, some of them collaborative, some solo, are dear to me and to take the killing gun to any of them would be very, very hard. The only way to receive compensation is to be in a position of dispensation.

This requires funding and there lies the rub and the stumbling block.

As my new manager said to me. "You need to get paid!" I couldn’t agree more and hope that between the two of us, we can find a way to make this happen. At the moment I feel that I am so 'under the radar' that I barely exist.

LK: "He said He looks good in bruises, and that hair is a sign of weakness."

DJ: Hello Mickey Rourke! My song 'Mickey Rourke Blues' was inspired by a magazine interview with the actor/pugilist. He was residing in Florida at the time, saying how much he preferred to hang out with his boys in his bar down there, than to be in Hollywood with all the phonies. He was sporting a beautiful black eye in the photo and had cut his hair dead, dead short.

LK: Lights on your porch; Antiques on your wrist.

DJ: I picture the ghost of William S. Burroughs sitting on his porch in

Lawrence, Kansas, surrounded by fire flies and cats, with an antique

Winchester rifle resting on his upturned wrist.

LK: "We need a better backdrop for this play."

DJ: Backdrops are important. All perception is based on context.

The 'play' is life; the 'backdrop' is consciousness.

LK: How about, You were Automatic.

DJ: Being automatic is being spontaneous and instinctive, yet there is no such thing as a spontaneous, instinctive automaton. . . not yet.

LK: There's a strange light over Memphis.

DJ: The night Elvis died. My friend Jeremy Reed (one of my 'spinning plates') has just written an epic three hundred page + poem about Elvis Presley. Jeremy is a poet and then some. He is published in the USA by City Lights.

LK: “A dream stricken modern living Ophelia"

DJ: P. J. Harvey circa To Bring You My Love. I toured with her in the early nineties, an awesome talent. Due to visa problems, she and her band did not make the first gig in Atlanta. The promoter gave us the option of pulling the show or playing it on our own. We, (Max Eider, Owen Jones, Karl Wallinets and myself, were the support act.) We chose to headline that night. The theatre (The Variety Playhouse) put posters up to explain the situation, offering money back or half price entry. We had a pretty full, very enthusiastic crowd. I started the set with Polly's 'Oh, My Lover' and we had a great night.

LK: Chinese Tea Box.

DJ: For some deep down subconscious reason this makes me think of Sparklehorse. That gentleman is mining some very beautiful, strange, enchanted gold.

LK: Magic Strawberries.

DJ: John Lennon, out of his fuckin' tree on LSD, sitting in the back of that psychedelic Roller, his fingers having turned into multi colored crayons, he is drawing the most beautiful picture in the world on the back of a passing cloud. Dig it!

LK: And the last one. Vintage Hero.

DJ: David Bowie, 70's vintage. Heard him before I saw him, fell in love with the sound, then came the vision and what a vision it was. I used to get picked on in school for being into Bowie."Ere, 'Askins what ya lookin at that stupid picture of that fackin poof for?" Back home, I would drop the needle onto 'Aladin Sane', turn up the volume, close my eyes and silently give the answer.