PROG ROCK ALLERGICS

I am more than a little nervous about meeting Lydia Lunch. As a self proclaimed "Confrontationalist", she’s notorious for her caustic spoken word performances and her no-bullshit attitude. Arriving in New York at the age of 16, she earned herself the surname of Lunch after stealing food for her half-starved artist friends. In a career that's spanned over three decades, beginning in the late 70s, fronting no wave band Teenage Jesus & The Jerks, she’s gone on to be an actress, poet, novelist and photographer, She’s worked with the likes of Hubert Selby Jnr, Nick Cave and Sonic Youth. In fact that’s how I first discovered her 10 years ago, when I heard her haunting vocals on the Sonic Youth track Death Valley 69. I've been intrigued ever since.

Sonic Youth & Lydia Lunch – Death Valley 69

Lydia’s in London to promote her latest book of photography and prose The Gun Is Loaded, and I’ve been sent to a basement flat in west London to interview her. When I knock on the door my heart is in my mouth, I am led through to the garden by a glamorous blonde, and Lydia is dressed in black, sipping raspberryade. It turns out she’s as warm as toast, has the filthiest laugh, swears like a trouper, thinks Madonna is a disgrace to every woman on the planet and is more than happy to talk and talk and talk…

The night before, I had witnessed my first Lydia Lunch show. It is a full on sonic assault that half the time leaves you mesmerised and the other wanting to run out the room with your hands cupped over your ears:

“Good, if you feel like you want to run out, because it’s better than sitting round twiddling your fucking nipples while some band waddles on. You can go get your fucking nipples tweaked by any other act any other night of the fucking week, if you want your arse kicked come on over.”

Trailer for The Gun Is Loaded, 1989

What drives you to create?

“Well if I did what I really wanted to do I would be incarcerated.”

What do you really want to do?

(At this point she picks up a sharp knife from the table, points it at me and laughs her dirty laugh.)

“Watch yourself young lady, you are not on my list of victims. What drives anyone to create? They are arrogant, they are obsessed, they are insane, they’ve got too much energy. For me I don’t deny my own arrogance, but I think there really is a void of investigation from a certain female perspective that somebody needs to fucking fill and that happens to be me. I think there are a lot of women who have gone through a lot of the same things I have gone through, that are attracted to the same kind of men, that are attracted to dangerous elements, that are obsessed, that are too fucking romantic and I don’t see that many voices that are out there dealing with these issues, so duty calls, I mean I really feel that it is my fucking duty to provide this voice for a certain type of woman specifically.”

Do you always attracted the same kind of guys – sensitive, artistic types, self-destructive?

“You say those two words together because it’s natural, artistic and self-destructive. The extremes of trying to get the poison out of your body tends to make you create. It is the damaged people most often that are creating the best art; I mean from pain comes this beauty or this horror. Of course I understand very well the magnetism, and the charisma of psychotic people, and would-be maniacs, obsessed people, people with too much energy are just magnets to each other. To me it is not so much about how self-destructive someone else is, or how much you will tolerate someone else’s mania, or how insane you are. I will never give up hope, I will never stop encouraging people, I will never stop extending some kind of understanding, even if it is at my own expense. And even if people are suicidal, homicidal, extremely hyper-expressive maniacs, there is a part of that I understand but can’t save.“

Did you ever think you could save them?

“Of course you always think you can, because you have saved yourself to some degree and this is the problem. Having been surrounded by a lot of other artists who where junkies, alcoholics and excessive people, I don’t know what gives me that one iota, that one extra genome that has allowed me to go to the mouth of the abyss but never fallen in. I mean some part of you has to extend, some kind of hope, because so many people who have fallen into the volcano have fucking come out. But you can’t ultimately save anyone from themselves they can only really do it themselves. I will always be romantic, but there comes a point, especially as a woman when you have to know when you are just being a facilitator for their own destruction. I used to rationalise and say I was really attracted to arseholes but then I really liked nice guys, so I would go arsehole, nice guy, arsehole, nice guy, but then when the nice guy becomes an arsehole then you are in trouble. You need a nice guy who has got the proper amount of arsehole in him.”

Did you ever find him?

“Oh yes, of course, hundreds of times.”

And now?

“Definitely.”

Do you have children?

“No, I don’t have children. Did you see the audience last night? They’re not mine.”

Interview, 2004

Is there any piece of work or project that you're most proud of?

“You are looking at it: my existence. All of the by-products, all of the artefacts, are just artefacts, they are just the remnants, the markers, they are all equally important to me. I am fucking stubborn. Look, I am no more popular now then when I first started and that’s a long time ago, but that was never the point. As I become older I’ve started feeling a sense of duty, especially when I see really young girls there, I think, fucking great, whatever you are taking from me, that is why I do it.“

As an artist you have never fallen into commercial trapping. Has it been hard to survive as an artist without selling out?

“The thing is, I don’t understand how anyone could imagine how I could sell out. It’s not about selling out or not. I think there is a lot of things that work in my favour as a conceptual artist that just make it impossible for me to even comprehend what that means. Of course it is hard for me to survive. I have to be honest with myself and do what I do, I have been homeless many times in my adult life, it is just the price you have to pay. Also I have a very expensive habit of moving cities every few years.”

Are you thinking of moving soon?

“Probably, but not immediately because I really love Spain. I have been going there for 20 years and it's interesting because it is so freshly out of fascism, as America goes into it. It is such a healing quality of daily life and I still have a lot of Spain to explore. But you know, I never had the chance to sell out. There is something about my face or attitude, even when I’m smiling or nice, people realise I have a bullshit detector so they don’t even come to me to offer. Every deal or release I have, 99% of the time I have to pursue to get something out. Half of the stuff I am releasing now I am just releasing myself so what’s the fucking point in getting a record label to do it?”

Teenage Jesus & The Jerks live

Do you believe in an afterlife?

“One of the reasons I am drawn to Spain is the horror and beauty of its history and how a place recovers from a horrible history, as all of Europe has. History impacts me greatly, it’s real; an endless murder to just admit what life is. I think all of history is encoded in our DNA and some people are more acutely aware of it than others - it’s inside all of us if you can access it. I am not suggesting you do, as it is fucking painful, as daily life is; it is just my plague. Just because we live in relatively safe white spoiled western... the Occidant... I can’t help thinking about the rest of the world and the rest of our fucking brutal history. It's not just the Spanish civil war. What about the other 400 years of fucking years of menstrual murdering that went on in the name of God the fucker? It is really just man's stupidity. I guess it is why, through art and my own perverse sense of humour, even if I am the only one laughing, it is why the same subject continues to obsess me because it’s never gone away and it’s never going to. All I can do is find different ways to express the same obsessions which will haunt me beyond this body."

Any regrets?

“I don’t feel regret, there is just no fucking time for that. It’s just a daily journey to try to figure out more about yourself how to be active and not reactionary to things I mean that’s the key. I don’t want to have my buttons pushed every second of the day so I am reacting against things. I want to be proactive.”

Do you think America is about to get its first female president?

“I hope fucking not. I don’t think she is the right woman for the job at all, I think Barack Obama needs to get in. I think we really need radical change. It is beyond the reparation of one figurehead. I mean the damage has been so fucking well done by the last eight years of this megalomaniacal puppet, the corporate prostitute who's in a position of America's most respected seat of power. I think Hillary has been in bed with too many of the big corporations to make a difference. And it is ridiculous that it is only her, she is the only choice. To me it’s outrageous. I have been saying this for years, that it is only Scandinavia of all the countries in the fucking world where political seats and business seats are gender split. I mean it's not enough to gender split, then we have all the other factions that should be represented but aren’t. That’s why as a non-aggressive, intellectual, half-white, half-black man, he is the best spokesperson for the American melting pot. Also he hasn’t had time to get into bed with all the corporate monsters.”

Lipster ran an interview with Bjork recently where she said being a woman in the Bush years was similar to being a woman in the Reagan years.

“Well, you see, as a place becomes seemingly more uptight, then the sexual images they promote seem more outrageous. But really it’s not about sex, it's about titillation, it’s about selling woman short by using them to sell everything, including pop culture. And it is pathetic and America is the evil ogre of that concept. I think people like Madonna do everyone a fucking disservice, running round in a leotard at her fucking age, talking about nothing but fucking dancing and don’t give me your one documentary on where you got your orphan from, the only child who didn’t have AIDS in the orphanage. She is just the most obnoxious waste of millions of dollars I have ever seen. It is just such an insult to every fucking woman on the planet. She could be sponsoring the artistic careers of 10,000 women right now.”

Interviews, 1983 & 1985

Underground culture has long been a breeding ground for ideas and attitudes that have been absorbed by mainstream culture. Do you think the global network of the internet has taken away the sort of secret space that let ideas ferment?

"You could see this thing that pre-internet communities would form in certain places, which became creative melting pots. Like Paris in the 20s and London and Haight Ashbury in the 60s, New York in the 70s and Berlin in the 80s. The birth of the internet has killed that, which is kinda sad. I was always suspect of the internet from the beginning. I don’t want a fucking podcast. I want to look into people’s eyes. It’s important that I am in the club after the gig, I am hanging around meeting people. Of course there is a difference of how I am on-stage and how I am when I am walking round. I am completely approachable."

I am surprised at how nice you are.

“Everyone else can be a fucking cunt. I know where to put my cunt when it’s needed. On a personal level I never get into arguments with anyone, I never get mad with people. Do whatever you want, I really don’t fucking care, I want you to be how you fucking are. It’s important to know, if someone wants to come up to me for a hug, then of course they can have a fucking hug. I love pressing my tits up against other people.”

Before I leave, she grabs me for a hug. Lydia, I salute you.