The Cult have been one of the most innovative and influential bands to emerge from the UK underground since the first wave of punk. Led by the inimitable vocalist Ian Astbury alongside fellow mainstay, guitarist Billy Duffy. The band have embarked on numerous line-up changes throughout their thirty-three years existence (counting those formative years as Death Cult). However, their current guise - Astbury, Duffy, drummer John Tempesta, bassist Grant Fitzpatrick and touring keyboard player/rhythm guitarist Damon Fox ranks among the band's strongest to date. Tenth album Hidden City came out last month and scored a praiseworthy 7/10. The final part of a trilogy following 2007's Born Into This and 2012's Choice Of Weapon, it represents arguably their strongest body of work for over two decades while demonstrating the band's creativity remains at its most potent.
For frontman Astbury, it's actually his 35th year in music. Born in 1962, he joined Southern Death Cult in 1981 before forming Death Cult two years later which eventually became The Cult. Currently at the start of a UK tour that progresses over to America in the middle of March. Tonight's show at Nottingham's Rock City in front of a sold out audience highlighted their live prowess at the minute. Playing a career spanning set including debut single 'Spiritwalker' and 'Horse Nation' from their Death Cult era alongside choice cuts from the new record. This evening's performance rolled back the years and proved without any shadow of doubt they're far from a spent force just yet.
Beforehand, DiS spent ninety minutes in the company of the affable singer. Having played here more times than anyone cares to remember, Rock City has become something of a second home for Astbury and his band. Nowadays based in L.A. where he lives with wife Aimee Nash-Astbury who plays in psych rockers The Black Ryder. His passion and enthusiasm shines through as the conversation moves from childhood to joining the Southern Death Cult and beyond.
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DiS: You had quite a nomadic childhood and adolescence?
Ian Astbury: I honestly believe there's a consciousness that happens. Basically, my mother passed away so my father moved back to Canada. We'd been living over there but then when my mother was diagnosed with cancer she wanted to move back to Glasgow so she could be around her family when she died. She had seven sisters so wanted to be with them. Economically we were flat broke. My dad would scramble around in his pocket for loose change and send me to the shop for a bottle of milk and whatever else I could get if there was any money left over. It really was like that, bare bones. So about a year after my mother passed away my father moved back to Canada. I was about seventeen, eighteen at the time. I went back for a couple of months and got a job in the local steelworks, but I just wasn't feeling it. And I missed the life I was getting back in the UK because music was exploding. The post-punk scene was happening and I'd been going out. I dentified with being a punk. That was my peer group. So I returned to that life I knew. I got myself a little bedsit in Merseyside and had a job in a bar for two weeks until they found out I was under age! I was going to clubs in Liverpool. Places like Eric's and the Apple. And I became part of that community. I went to Belfast for a punk festival in 1980 which is in the movie 'Good Vibrations'. I was actually at that festival! When I came back I'd lost my bedsit. It was literally a bed, a sink, a one bar heater and that was it. I had literally six or seven pieces of vinyl. I know I had 'Space Oddity' and some other Bowie records. Maybe some punk stuff as well. But I remember sitting there in the flat, listening to Bowie and reading Orwell, smoking a cigarette and looking out the window. To me that was heaven. I was independent for the first time in my life. I was only getting money off the dole as I was unemployed but for £10 a week rent I had my own room. And I got this tiny second hand record player from a charity shop and I spent most days and nights just playing records. That was it for me, music. All the friends I'd made were the same. So fast forward to following bands like Crass. They were a really important band. They brought in all the stray kids from every walk of life. The ones that had run away from home. The ones that didn't have homes and were lost, looking for somewhere to call home. Most bands were inaccessible but Crass had this whole community around them. The Clash did too to an extent. They used to open the back doors at their shows and let all the people outside in the venue. These bands were unique because they considered their audience to be the same as them whereas many others didn't. So I grew up believing the way Crass and The Clash behaved with their fans was how every band should behave with theirs. So by the time I joined Southern Death Cult... I went to Bradford purely because I was homeless. I'd stay at friends places, sometimes sleep in bus stations, other times end up in squats. The dole wouldn't give me any money for a couple of weeks.
DiS: I was going to ask about your time in Southern Death Cult. How did you come to be involved in that band and what happened at the end as the split seemed quite sudden? It's interesting you still play 'Horse Nation' - which originates from that era - in your set today.
Ian Astbury: That song has a certain quality about it. It's hard to explain. I find it difficult to articulate music because it demands a kinetic energy around it. That whole idea of mixing performance with music becomes a ritual. There was a point where that whole post-punk movement was about the tribe and about connectivity. And youth. And sharing experiences. But then the fashion industry cottoned on to it. People like I-D magazine. They'd turn up taking pictures of the tribe and someone would be there documenting it. Then the NME would turn up wondering what's going on. So they'd all be there documenting what was effectively our lifestyle. It was like having these sociologists on the periphery with you, documenting everything. Then they start having an opinion. And people start responding to their opinion> And I guess that at the core of what happened. Bands break up. The scene changes. Fashions change. Other bands come into favour. See, I already had that North American in my DNA. I remember seeing Bowie on 'Soul Train' in '74 or '75, which was a black American dance orientated TV show. And that's what got me obsessed with dancing. I still love watching he dancing on that show. I couldn't articulate what it was but at the same time I think I had an instinctive within me to respond to change. As everything was changing I was becoming interested in new things. Like when I first heard hip hop, I became obsessed with it for a while.
DiS: But then I guess that's something that can be levelled at The Cult. You've never followed any particular scene or fad. If anything you've tended to lead the way. The changes from Southern Death Cult to Death Cult then The Cult followed by the first three eras from 'Dream Time' through to 'Electric' were totally removed from a lot of what was in vogue at the time.
Ian Astbury: Definitely. We listened to a lot of other bands and we'd go and see them play. We were completely immersed in it. I saw everyone from The Birthday Party and Iggy Pop to Siouxsie & The Banshees and New Order. I saw a lot of reggae shows around that time as well. I loved Black Uhuru.
DiS: The press didn't know where to place you so they labelled you as "goths", which looking back was quite ridiculous. It was as if they'd run out of scenes to pigeonhole you into.
Ian Astbury: I quite liked the idea of us being positive punk. It was OK for a while. I remember when we went to America and someone called us Death Rock! And it sounded really cool. But honestly, I think growing up in North America gave me that extra awareness. Growing up in a multicultural community. And that's where a lot of UK journalists fall down because they've never experienced a certain environment. And a certain sentiment too. Everything is based on their experiences but mine were a lot different to theirs. But then we kind of got pushed out from the mainstream even though Sonic Temple was successful. We did Top Of The Pops and all that kind of thing. It didn't feel like we actually belonged in that lane and I think it's difficult to explain from the outside. But when you come out of a tribal community or culture, and then you evolve and it becomes a commercial brand. We were in New York City with the Def Jam crew and they were all so young. LL Cool J was 19 when I first met him, same with the Beastie Boys. They may have been younger. This would be around 1984. So in three years from Southern Death Cult in 1981 to playing New York Danceteria in '84. It was a big deal. I was twenty-two years old. And yet in a way it felt like I was back home, because I had that North American thing within me. It was intense. To me it was mecca because I'd grown up 350 miles from New York City. So that whole hip hop language and culture wasn't really a shock for me. I was back in it. And then we'd go back to the UK and experience so much prejudice and jealousy.
DiS: It's interesting you mention being pushed out around the time of Sonic Temple. At that time the rave scene had pretty much taken over youth culture and the Manchester indie scene was also on the rise. Do you think those two scenes could have played a part in The Cult being jettisoned?
Ian Astbury: We'd become a global band and I guess Sonic Temple had become the natural conclusion of the band evolving in terms of better production and better arrangements. There was a certain awareness about songwriting. We wanted to become better songwriters. It was collaborative but that still shouldn't be underestimated. A lot of solo artists have a lot of help. David Bowie for example. He had a lot of good people around him. The best producers, the best arrangers, but he directed the whole thing. So you had two guys pulling in different directions. Billy (Duffy) was very pragmatic. He went from the North to London. Whereas I was like this exotic character. I'd gone from the North to North America! So we both ended up in the smoke and we hooked up together. And both tried to pull apart the music we loved. Which was everything from The Doors to Led Zeppelin. We literally went from the front of our record collections to the back. And then along the way we were drawn in by the likes of Public Image, Joy Division, Siouxsie & The Banshees. You might not hear it in the music but it's there.
DiS: I can definitely hear Public Image Ltd on a lot of the tribal rhythms of your early records.
Ian Astbury: 'The Flowers Of Romance' was a huge influence on us. Southern Death Cult especially. That tribal beat. "I gave you chocolates...". That break from 'The Flowers Of Romance'. That was on everything. And then you get onto stuff like Afrika Bambaataa. After hip hop came the Kraftwerk beat. But then at the same time our heroes were people like Mick Ronson and Jimmy Page. Billy had this idea of being a primal guitar player, and I was always into it as well. The iconic thing of being a guitar player. Watching footage of Pete Townshend playing at Woodstock, blood pissing out of his hands beating this thing. Jimi Hendrix as well. These guys were so transcendent. And not in a self-revelatory way. They were in a trance. And the power of it and being young was so intoxicating. The sweat. There was just something that was so incredibly addictive about that. Then you'd see musicians being written about as being erudite or good writers which is fine, but for me it was all about the performance. I wasn't so much looking for external accolade. I've never tried writing for anyone in particular, just about our own experiences. So I don't think that really started until much later, post-Sonic Temple. Maybe 1994, when we put out our sixth record and it started going into the person. Like on the song 'Gone'. Which is me talking about being a petulant teenager in the park smoking cigarettes. Just being pissed off.
DiS: Some of the songs on the new record seem to be about specific people. 'No Love Lost' for example?
Ian Astbury: It's all autobiographical. I pull segments from different events. I keep getting asked when I'm going to write my autobiography but I'd just rather put those words in my music. There it is. There's my autobiography right there. The way I write isn't just focusing on one particular song. Sometimes I might be working on thirty different pieces of music. I've got boxes of notebooks at home full of lyrics and ideas. I'm such a paper whore! I have loads of these legal notepads we get in the States that I have to write on. And hotel pens as well. Whenever we go on tour I'll go through customs and one of the officers will ask, "Why have you got all these pens?" Because I need them! So I wrote about feelings I was observing, things that were coming up. When the piano came in the room for me that was very important to get even closer to the bone for revealing vulnerability. So I'm a lot better with myself. A lot more transparent. People are seeing this existential crisis unfold around them. What is going on? We were talking about our fathers being manual workers earlier, and when I think about how they had to physically break their backs to clothe and feed the children they loved so we didn't have to do what they had to do. Totally selfless guys. But now the whole ethos has changed. Where are the labourers? So I think I'm responding in some ways to an existential crisis, a spiritual crisis. I keep using that phrase but I can't think of it in any other way. An existential spiritual crisis. These are the headlines. Suicide's on the rise. People addicted to anti-depressants and opiates. Celebrity culture. All this stuff that blocks out feeling. There's something in that.
DiS: Do you think mental illness is on the rise or do you think it's highlighted in the media now because there's more awareness about it?
Ian Astbury: Technology and the speed of communication has created that. When you're young and so blissfully blind. You're indestructable and beautiful and useful and you're just gonna do it all. It may have been Oscar Wilde or Francis Bacon that said youth is an exclusive club from which everyone will be ejected at some point. So you get booted out and it's like, so what do I do now? Some people can cling on and fight but for the most part you've just got to roll with it. Where are our cultural leaders. It's amazing when someone like Russell Brand comes along. Some of the stuff he says is stunning and yet people still pull him down. He's so switched on. I think he's amazing. I love his passion and the way he ignites people's imaginations. I think he's totally legit and I get the feeling he's earnest and really believes in what he's saying. And I think he's delivering true compassion. When I see people suffering, I'm empathetic in that way. It just moves me to a place where I want to share my experiences of strength, hope, whatever. If you can lift somebody up let the love in. Press the button. If you've got that in you why not instill it? Why would anybody want to rail against that? They're not railing against the government, these elected officials they've voted in. If anything they just reflect society these people. So it's up to us as individuals to choose.
DiS: Another song on the record, 'Deeply Ordered Chaos' was written after the events of November 13th at the Bataclan in Paris...
Ian Astbury: No, it was written in January after what happened at Charlie Hebdo. I think our publicist got it wrong but that's fine. I was destroyed by what happened there. The title came from a quote by Francis Bacon. He said, "I believe in deeply ordered chaos." So 'Deeply Ordered Chaos' is a way of observing it. The Kali Yuga, the age of destruction. I sat watching CNN and all the news networks while the whole thing unfolded, the Charlie Hebdo attacks. The way they executed policemen in the street. In cold blood. That was so powerful. I couldn't look away. The same with what was happening in the Ukraine. I couldn't look away. Young people with tears streaming down their cheeks raging. We just want what everybody else has got. We want our iPhone 6. We want our Bieber. We believe too. We just want to be a part of this. We want what you guys have got. And I felt quite overcome by all that so it ended up going into the song. Michelangelo Antonioni did a film, 'Zabriskie Point', about youth existentialism. I saw Tom Hardy's monologue movie where he plays the whole thing ('Locke') and I thought about the idea of this guy driving through Europe observing everything. He's a diamond dealer and he's got stuff going on in Africa that's unethical. Just the whole thing. It's not saying anything against Europe or Europeans. Nothing like that. It's just symbolism. Again maybe from the perspective of what I'm seeing from the United States. Looking at Europe. But the idea of 'Deeply Ordered Chaos' is that we're all in this samsaric wheel of suffering and pleasure. And there is a turning point in life. When is it? We don't know. Philosophy of life, quality of life. Most of us don't look at that. So we flick back to the entertainment distraction instead. Until something happens such as a death in the family or you lose a loved one. You get kicked out of a job or a relationship. Something happens out of your control. We're not equipped to deal with this. And then you flip the whole thing around and think to yourself, why are they building spaceships to leave the planet? Where are we going? Maybe there is life on Mars. We're talking about mining asteroids now. We're talking about putting people on Mars. We're talking about leaving the planet. Maybe this it? Everyone's waiting for the big revival, especially people of a second generation and older. This isn't gonna stop. This is gonna keep rolling. This will play itself out. It's going to keep evolving.
DiS: Your wife Aimee also plays in a band, The Black Ryder. Are you a fan of theirs? Do you collaborate musically?
Ian Astbury: Aimee's a lot more controlled than me. A lot calmer. She's a very different kind of guitarist to Billy as well. He's got his tone dial set to a space that he works in where he's the master. So in terms of a collaboration, I find the aspect of me that married Aimee the same aspect that fuels my working relationship with him. So with Hidden City, I said to Billy the first instrument we're going to have on this record is... A piano! And Billy was like, "Really? A piano?" But I wanted to get to the core of what was going on and that became the heart and soul of the record, 'Birds Of Paradise'. 'Sound And Fury' too. The sound of real vulnerability.
DiS: The first time I heard 'Dark Energy' which opens the new record it reminded of 'Big Neon Glitter' off 1985's Love. Was that your intention?
Ian Astbury: At the time we were listening to all different kinds of things in the rehearsal space, and actually we were listening to some of the Death Cult recordings. Stuff that had tribal beats in it like 'Horse Nation'. We were just trying to get in a space to give cadence to that song. It just felt like it had to be tribal and also straight off the street. And the idea of people moving in a different way. The concept of 'Dark Energy' came from Omni magazine. I was reading about what is known and what is unknown and physicists were saying they know about 5% for certain! And I was like what the fuck! You're telling us what's going on and you only know 5%. And then beyond that 25% is dark energy. And then beyond that it's black mass. Beyond that they don't even know. Most people are just struggling to pay the rent. Have a massive blow out at the weekend and worry about it at the end of the month. But I'd done all that by my mid-thirties. Too much in fact, to the point where I had to go to Tibet for real. And that's where I got a better understanding of what I wanted to do. To get better at what I do. And I ended up getting deeper and deeper into it. Holy Barbarians) was like a lost weekend. I never got to grow up as a kid in a band. I'd see my friends outside of music having their own lives. But I didn't really have a life. I was on the road or doing music. I was a racehorse. The record label Warner Brothers kept shoving us in the studio and then management kept shoving us out on the road. You become Pavlovian in a certain kind of way. Plans, trains, automobiles, hotel rooms until your early thirties and then you just think... No more!
DiS: Do you ever look back and think if I knew then what I know now I'd have done things differently?
Ian Astbury: Yeah, absolutely. I think I would have loved some kind of higher education. I would have loved mentorship. I crave mentorship. When I first met Bowie I was craving mentorship. I didn't want adulation. It wasn't anything like that. It was mentorship. Break a piece off. Can you give me something that you know which I can use? I was looking for insight. I was looking for information. I mean, Bowie was amazing when I met him. Very gracious and very cool. He could see I was inquisitive and passionate when I met him.
DiS: Do you think Bowie saw something of his younger self in you? For instance, your music has constantly evolved for three-and-a-half decades.
Ian Astbury: It has, but then in another sense it hasn't. Music, albums, the convention of it. So I did more esoteric and unconventional stuff away from the band. If I tried to bring it back into the band Billy would be the grounding element. He keeps me in my place. Terra firma. He's the institution of this band. If anyone's an institution in The Cult it's Billy. He's the guy that runs the engine room and stokes the fire. I didn't make soundcheck today. I've got to take care of my sinuses. I had a rough time in Brixton the other night. Everyone was saying what a great show it was but it took a chunk out of me. My psyche wasn't right. I don't know why. So yeah, I keep coming back with a new album. It's unfinished business but it's also my livelihood. That gets mixed up with it so I try and balance the two. When it mixes it can get messy. When the oil meets the water it pollutes the environment. So I have to keep the commerce and the lifestyle in a healthy place so it doesn't affect the core. And I also think being older, maybe a bit more experienced. Since we reconnected in 2006, Born Into This took just 36 days to make. 15 days i the studio and 21 days outside including a couple for mixing and that was it. Done. The whole thing. Literally from nothing to that in 36 days. I named the record after a Charles Bukowski quote. I actually met him once at a U2 afterparty but he refused to speak to me because my dad was in the navy!
DiS: How do you think The Cult would have fared had they formed in the 21st Century? The music industry is a completely different kettle of fish now to what it was when you first started out in the 1980s.
Ian Astbury: It's way different to how it was back then. It's hard to abstract in some ways. What's happened has occurred. It's transpired. The body is annoyingly physically changing, but the spirit feels much more focused. If that makes sense. It's no longer erratic. It's more grounded and focused. I don't edit myself. Sometimes I might say something and look back later and think maybe I shouldn't have said that but once it's out there it's out there. I don't do it for shock value. Maybe that's why I've spent so long looking for this harmonic space? A lot of people would have folded up the carpet long before now.
DiS: The fact you lived your life and made mistakes in public is perhaps one of the reasons people always have and still embrace your band now? It's an identifiable trait of humanity I guess.
Ian Astbury: I fall down, and perhaps they see a bit of themselves in that? It's like the point where I can't do that because so-and-so says, or I could never do that myself. Who says? Who says you can't do it? I got hit by a car when I was 11 years old and I got told I was finished with running and playing football. A few months later I was back out there. It's about having the passion and determination to succeed and prove people wrong. Others holding people back and commenting on their weaknesses. 90% of people respond to external validation. I'm a great believer in doing whatever you have to in order to get into a place where you believe your own authority. You've got to make more informed choices. You've got to make better choices in life, as an individual, in relationships. And also in society. We're all in this together.
DiS: You've been based in LA for a number of years now. Do you ever see yourself relocating in the foreseeable future?
Ian Astbury: Today? Los Angeles is a great city for refugees. I mean cultural refugees. So many people are pouring out of Syria because they can't live in that environment any more, but that's different to what I'm talking about here. In some ways, I see myself as a cultural refugee. I grew up in North America, I grew up in the UK. I don't really belong in either of them but I find Los Angeles is such a melting pot of cultures. It is like a rebel base. It's a place where I can move freely, even go away and hide if I want to. Los Angeles has one of the biggest wilderness environments within the city boundaries. It's got a mountain range running right through it. In my neighbourhood we've got this pack of coyotes, wild cats, hawks, grass snakes, deer, right in the centre of the city. These animals live amongst us in the city, and have done for hundreds of years. So many people went to Los Angeles. Aldous Huxley went there. Christopher Isherwood wrote 'I Am A Camera' after seeing Bowie perform on the 'Station To Station' tour in LA. There's a famous story about Bowie ushering him to one side after the show and picking his brain for ideas. Next minute, Bowie's off to Berlin which is were Isherwood was based. Most of the leading theosophists ended up in LA. That's where it came out of then they ended up on the east coast. Gandhi was a theosophist. Helena Blavatsky, who founded the theosophists society came over to the States and got a lodge in LA. Every single esoteric society in the world is represented in Los Angeles. Which is fascinating. Then you look at the sixties. West Coast. Kerouac, Ginsberg, Michael McClure, Bob Dylan, the beats, George Harrison goes to LA and 'Sergeant Pepper's...' is borne. Do I need to go any further? They're all there. Hunter S Thompson as well. They're all there, seeking, searching. It's on the pacific ocean, all the eastern schools. You can get on a plane and be in Delhi within 24 hours. Or you could be in Japan or Thailand in even less time. Wherever you want to go. Bali, Tahiti, Hawaii. And then you have the indigenous in there as well. Indigenous in that region for thousands of years. The south west deserts, they've been there for 3-4,000 years. And then you get to the tower of the mountains in Northern Mexico and the Incas, the Aztecs and the Mayans. All of that kind of weaves through. I guess you have it over here to some degree with the Celtics as well. It's there but culture's connected to this different kind of consciousness as opposed to that of a consumer. I picked up a book today in Waterstones about the history of consumerism since the 1500s. About how we got to the 21st century as consumers. From hunter gatherers to consumers. But we're still the same animals. So can you imagine what zoos must do to animals? Completely oppressed and forced to change their productive cycles until they become something altogether different. There's no such thing as being an individual. You're dependent on the labours of others. I've had enough moments with gravity that have brought me down to being a very vulnerable human being. I'm just a dude.
DiS: How do you feel when you look at some of the artists who are in vogue today in a similar way to how The Cult were throughout the 1980s? What advice would you give to them?
Ian Astbury: Advice? That's not my place. I'm not in a position to administer advice. If you ask me something I might show you what my experience was like in that situation, and if they get insight from that then fair enough. It's like when I met Bowie and I wanted insight and he looked at me and said, "You're doing OK." To me, that was enough. Reassurance that I must be doing something right because Bowie says so. But it isn't really my place to offer advice to anyone.
DiS: Do you think there'll ever be another artist that has the same worldwide cultural impact as David Bowie?
Ian Astbury: Sure. There's got to be. I honestly believe we're moving away from white male patriarchs. It's in the culture where we're becoming way more centric.
DiS: I guess the closest thing to a modern day Bowie would be someone like Kanye West?
Ian Astbury: Possibly. I think the spiritual awareness David had in terms of his own life into existentialism. There was a little bit more awareness there. I think Kanye is incredible. I'm a big supporter of him as a creative person. What he doesn't need to do is be so concerned about the validation of others. It really doesn't matter. People are gonna have their opinions regardless. So don't try so hard. I understand where he's coming from, trying to change culture through his music. I love his disruptive techniques. He's changing the game constantly. That 's exciting. The conventional modality of the 20th century music industry. The record, the tour, the cover of a magazine, the TV appearance. That's all gone. The gloves are off. It doesn't matter what age you are. Maggie Smith has just done one of the greatest performances by an actor in 'The Lady In The Van'. That is a woman who's got incredible life experiences and she throws herself into that character with everything she's got. It's like she's saying hey wait a minute. Old people are people too. I mean, young people are also people as well. And this chasm between youth and old age. If they're lucky they'll get there and have people around that care for and love them. Every individual. But it's sad to see people that just marginalised and shoved off to the side. Demonised. Communication's key. The idea that another person may have a different opinion or another point of view doesn't necessarily mean that they're wrong. They've just got a different perspective. When it turns to nastiness and violence to enforce a point then the line has to be drawn. And that's survival. That's primal. While we're all scrapping over here they're building rockets to leave over there. The billionaires are digging down in China into the earth while the billionaires elsewhere are building launchpads to go up. And we're just to trying to scrap it out so we can have our deal here. It's just deeply ordered chaos! There's an order to the chaos but when we see people suffering spiritually or mentally it's difficult to respond to that. What led me into music wasn't a desire to be idolised or objectified. It wasn't that. It was just a passion for music and performance. I fell into it. I fell into this. I got asked to join a band. I didn't start Southern Death Cult. The other three already had a band. They were called Violation and needed a singer, so they asked me if I wanted to be in their band. It was their band not mine. They liked the way I looked and asked if I could sing, so I thought why not? It sounds exciting. So they put me in a room with a microphone and PA in the basement of a house and we ended up doing Sex Pistols songs as I knew all the words to them. I'd sang in front of the mirror enough with a hairbrush so it kind of came naturally! After that I was in the band, but then I had to write words to go with their songs and I was like, "What!?"
DiS: Some of the songs from that era; the subject matter in particular; sound years ahead of their time, particularly from the perspective of a teenager as you would have been at the time. Songs like 'Moya' and 'Vivisection' for instance.
Ian Astbury: 'Vivisection' came from a HG Wells quote. "Not to crawl on all fours, for we are not men." Devo had a song which used that quote and I thought where did they get that from? So I went back and read some HG Wells and realised what they'd done with that. It was the same with Bowie. He went to Orwell for 'Diamond Dogs'. So I took bits from certain authors and tried to put it in my own context until it becomes something else, and that's where a lot of those early songs came from. The Cult came out in 1984 when the Ridley Scott Apple commercial was launched. So you think about that. 1984. Orwell. The Apple Mac. So in many ways you could argue that was the birth of the 21st century. We lived through that change from organic communications to highly technical systems. The whole consciousness of communication evolving before our very eyes. Facebook likes, Instagram, the whole concept of social media. Whatever platform you're using. We've been through a huge, seismic shift in culture. Someone asked me the other day if I thought there'd be a World War 3 and I said this is it. We're in it.
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For more information on The Cult visit their official website.
Photo by Paul Mason-Smith