Interview with Robyn Hitchcock, 8 Nov 2007 (VIEW)

Here’s a recent interview I had published with Robyn Hitchcock. He’s playing here in Hamilton tonight and this was done for VIEW Magazine

ROBYN HITCHCOCK

Through his work in the Soft Boys, as a solo artist and with his backing groups the Egyptians and the Venus 3, Robyn Hitchcock has released a wealth of intelligent, eccentric and beloved material over the past 30 years. He was considered one of the
most recognizable names in the College Rock movement of the eighties and the Cambridge, UK based musician continues to release fantastic new records to this day.

His most recent studio album, Ole Tarantula, was released in 2006 on Yep Roc Records and featured a backing band called the Venus 3, made up of Peter Buck, Scott McCaughey and Bill Reiflin of R.E.M. While the band will not be backing up Hitchcock on this current tour, which brings him to Hamilton next Thursday, he will have another musician accompanying him onstage: Sean Nelson of Seattle power poppers Harvey Danger.

“There will be two of us onstage,” explains Hitchcock from a recent tour stop in Minneapolis. “Sean will be joining me for some harmonies. He sang on the last record I did, the one with the Venus 3, and he will be on the next one too. You’ll get the skeleton of the songs and some essential organs as well.”

While Ole Tarantula is the newest collection of recent songs to see release Hitchcock has just had a number of his early solo records collected together as part of a new five–disc box set entitled I Wanna Go Backwards. Collecting his first three solo albums that followed the breakup of the Soft Boys — 1981’s Black Snake Diamond Role, 1984’s I Often Dream of Trains and 1990’s Eye, as well as a 2–CD set of previously unreleased rarities — it is part of a new campaign to re–release all of the songwriter’s ’80s releases as both a solo artist and as part of The Egyptians. As Hitchcock explains, the tour itself is to support the new box set and also to visit places missed on the last proper tour.

“It is for the upcoming box set,” says Hitchcock, “but the reality of it is we’re just playing places I haven’t played for a while. What happens to be out is the box set and what came just before it was Ole Tarantula. We’re doing a series of Midwestern dates in
America and places I haven’t been to in ages. Then we’re coming up to Canada which is a place I don’t come up to often enough. Even Toronto is fairly infrequent.

“This is partly to do with the whole immigration tax thing. It’s amazingly complicated. You know, I am a British citizen and Canada is a British citizen. We’ve all got the Queen’s head stamped on us, so you’d think it would be easier to work in Canada than in the United States but for me, the complications are there.

“This will be the first time that I have been driven around in Ontario. The rare occasions I have come up before I have just flown or driven straight in and out. I am not sure I have ever even been inside of Hamilton.”

When asked what is planned for these shows, if they will be more retrospective due to the recent collection, Hitchock reveals they will be doing material dating right back to his Soft Boys days.

“I will be playing both acoustic and electric guitar in the set and Sean will be harmonizing with me. We will be doing stuff going back to 1980 up to things that are being recorded for the next new record I put out.

“There is a bit more back catalogue coming out before the new record. There is supposed to be another box of stuff from me and The Egyptians in the ’80s, then there is a selection of unreleased tour recordings from the ’90s called Shadowcat that is being released in Britain on Sartorial Records, and possibly a Soft Boys compilation if we can bake the tapes and sort that all out. That would come out next fall and then after that it’s all out and I can put out a new one.”

With all of this recent looking into his past, first with the Soft Boys reunion at the beginning of the decade and now with these two planned box sets of his eighties material, Hitchcock admits he still enjoys the songs, even if he doesn’t necessarily listen to the albums they originated on anymore.

“I like playing the songs live but I don’t tend to listen to  them much on record because there is so much of it. When we made the first Soft Boys LP I lovingly took it away and played it. After a while, when the library built up, I just listened to them less and less. Now I will put one on for reference.

“Sometimes I am appalled by the mixes of the albums, things I thought were fine at the time. Usually the things done with a producer or done by committee, which there weren’t very many, are the worst sounding ones. Stuff done in the ’80s tends to sound very synthetic – the drums had a snare sound you could land a plane on!”

Originally published 8/11/2007