AVC: You grew up in a creative household, with your father being a painter and a novelist, but you learned how to play the guitar on your own.
RH: I probably instinctively went into music so as not to compete with my dad, and the one field he didn't go into was music. He didn't play an instrument, [though] he liked a good tune. He liked folk music and army marches and that kind of easier end of things, like The Beatles. Stuff like rock music was too much for him, 'cause rock music was, after all, for our generation, not his. But he had a Joan Baez album, Clancy Brothers, The Weavers—they were good socialists. So I think I probably instinctively went into music so as not to compete with my dad. And also, I just was drawn toward music, and by 1969-70, there was nothing else I wanted to do. I had these albums, a lot of which were made by people who were described as cult figures, so I thought, "Well, I guess I want to be a cult figure, and make albums," which, as you can see, I did. I just didn't look at the small print. I didn't realize that The Beatles make 4,000 times more money than Captain Beefheart did. I just thought, "Wow!" You know, "They're albums!" But you don't need to know everything in advance, or you'd never do it.
AVC: What do you think is the secret of having a career as long and steady as yours?
RH: You've got to want to do it, basically. It's got to be ingrained in you at a pretty deep level. I don't know that Neil Young would say that—he'd say his own version of it. I could say something flip like, "Well, I can't think of anything else to do." Or "I'd never want to get a proper job," or those sorts of things. Which I suppose are all true, but I think I just so ingrained it in myself by the time I was 20, 21, that I just don't want to do anything else. Sometimes I don't write songs, but there's so much paperwork that needs doing, I don't have to worry about that. There's always songs lying around, so I will have to deal with the dissolution of the album like everybody else will—and you know, the sad truth is that we don't need any more records. The old guys haven't gone away, and the new ones keep entering the room every day. It's like the stateroom scene in Night At The Opera: "Okay! Who ordered the double album?" I don't know what we're going to do, but it's too late for me.
AVC: You're still a Londoner, but Seattle has become kind of an American home base for you. Both Olé! Tarantula and your upcoming new disc were recorded there, and you even mentioned the city in a few recent songs.
RH: It's the diamond of the Northwest. It's between Portland and Vancouver, it's the edge of the States, so it has that steady Canadian air coming down, a bit of the gentleness and sanity that comes down from Canada, but it's still got the chutzpah that big American cities have. Maybe the colors are a bit brighter in the States, but it's also a harsher place than Canada, which is a more humane society. I think you get the best of both in Seattle. And when the rest of the country is sweltering away and you can fry an egg on the pavement, Seattle is nice and cool and damp, like Britain. And it faces west, it's full of Scandinavians, it's not unlike being on the Norwegian coast, in fact. And you've got all the music! Until very recently, you had Scott McCaughey up there, but he's just down the road in Portland. Peter Buck's up there now, Chris Ballew, Sean Nelson, Young Fresh Fellows, and that's not even to touch on what used to be the grunge scene. If there was one place I had to be based, in terms of making music, it would be there. You'd never be short of good people to play with.
AVC: A lot of the guys that you mentioned are, of course, on Olé! Tarantula.
RH: Yes. [Laughs.] Yeah, they're my floating outfit. Well, they know each other. Peter [Buck] and Scott [McCaughey] are The Venus 3 [Hitchcock's Olé! Tarantula band]. They're also The Minus 5, when they've got [John] Ramberg in there, and then take away Ramberg and me and add [Michael] Stipe and [Mike] Mills, and you've got R.E.M. It's the ultimate multi-headed organism. I just like the attitude of people up there as well. As you go up the West Coast, you can feel the layers of tension evaporating. California's very tense, especially L.A.; things have kind of lacquered, you know. You get up to San Francisco, and you can breathe a bit easier, but then you get up the coast to Portland, and things feel wide open; there's been some kind of artificial coloring taken out. Or some stimulant's been taken out of the coffee. You get to Seattle, and everything's bright and focused, and you get up to Canada, and it's almost like there's too little pressure. It's like there isn't any kind of atmospheric pressure to keep you on Earth. You can sort of drift away. But I think Seattle's just really good at balance.
AVC: There's a documentary on the recording of the next Venus 3 record called Sex, Food, Death… & Insects.
RH: It's on the Sundance Channel; that's not in the theatres. I hope they'll show it again. It's by John Edginton, who I met because he did the Syd Barrett documentary [The Pink Floyd And Syd Barrett Story], and he interviewed me for that, my being an enormous Barrett freak. It just has us making a record in the house, in the living room, for a week. Chris Ballew [of Presidents Of The United States of America] came over, Peter and Scott were actually living here, and then other people drift in, like Morris Windsor, and Nick Lowe, and my niece, Ruby, and John Paul Jones, and you just see them joining in on things, and then there's a live show. Basically, you see the songs being kind of worked up. You see me playing them to John in the garden, and then you see them being worked up with the band, and then you see us playing them on the road. In between, there are just little, you know, snippets. Gillian [Welch] and Dave [Rawlings, who played on Hitchcock's 2004 disc Spooked] are in there as well. So, it's good, it shows the pool of people I work with. Or play with, rather. Which I like.
And it probably emphasizes what I do rather than what I don't. You just see me as a songwriter and a musician—I'm happy for my thoughts and philosophies to get out in the world, but you basically see me and everybody getting on with it as musicians, it's not to do with the cult of personality, or, you know, the eccentricity, all the rest of that stuff. It's not pious or anything like that, there's some fun moments in it, but it basically shows me as, I think, a reasonably good songwriter, with a load of great musicians, and that's really nice, to see the caliber of people that I seem to be able to attract. [Laughs.] I'm very pleased with that.
AVC: You're making this new record with pretty much the same group that you made Olé! Tarantula with. Will it sound similar to Olé! Tarantula?
RH: No, it's got a different sound so far. It's more acoustic-driven. Olé! Tarantula was the classics—two electric guitars, bass, drums, and harmonies. It was like an update of The Soft Boys' Underwater Moonlight. And it's even got Morris and Kim [Rew] on it. This one sounds probably more, like Tom Petty or The [Traveling] Wilburys or Jeff Lynne, something where there's an awful lot of acoustic rhythm guitars, and then some electric stuff pinging away on top. But I'm not sure—see, we haven't put all the voices on it yet. I mean, who knows? I've got to stick it all together. There's about 20 songs lying around, so according to which ones we select, the mood of the record could really vary drastically.
AVC: It seems like you've always alternated between electric and acoustic records.
RH: They're the two ends of the windscreen wiper. Extreme left, extreme right, really. Arguably, every record is a reaction to the previous one, and with a sort of pendulum theory, you would only ever be making one of two records. You make a quiet record, and then as a reaction to that, you make a louder record. I can make records with just me and the acoustic [guitar]—then I can make a record with me and a bunch of electric guitars and a lot of vocals, and that's about it, really. I just go back and forth along that trail.
AVC: You're still playing with a couple of the guys from The Soft Boys—is there a chance that you might do another reunion record with them?
RH: No. Not as The Soft Boys, definitely. I think if The Soft Boys were to be inducted into the Hall Of Fame, or if we all made it to 70, or something like that, there would be an argument for doing another Soft Boys event. Just to commemorate and celebrate the individuals involved. But I wouldn't do any more on a commercial or career basis. I enjoyed doing that recording, Nextdoorland, but I think I've been Robyn Hitchcock for so long that I really wasn't happy being a Soft Boy again. I didn't really want to be a Soft Boy at 30, let alone 50. I was just used to being a solo act. It wasn't like I was in competition, with giant egos or anything like that. If anything, the reverse, really, but I find it easier to present Robyn Hitchcock than I do to present The Soft Boys. Kim and Morris come and play when we do those charity gigs in the pub in London, and at parties and things. It's essentially on an informal basis now.
AVC: Besides music, you work in other forms of art: You paint and write, and you tell stories between songs in concert. Does that let you explore different things creatively than you can with songwriting alone?
RH: They're probably all related. I think they just take different forms, but I do like drawing. I can paint, up to a point. My dad was a really great cartoonist, and he did some good paintings. I feel rather the same way. I'm good at line-drawing, and some of my color stuff is okay. So I just do it for record covers, really. But you know, when I first started listening to music intently as a teenager, I was always sitting there with a biro or a pencil, drawing. That's how I absorbed it all. Telling stories live is just one of those things—you have an audience, and you think, "Well, I better say something." So the outcome's the word. But they're disposable; they're not designed to be heard again. They're just something to say to the audience, really.
AVC: The concert stories always have a very impromptu feel. Do you make them up off the cuff onstage?
RH: Mostly, yes. Sometimes I'll have a theme that I've had before, but if you try and give yourself something to remember, that takes all the fun out of it, you know? I've got to work my way toward the punchline. I could never be a professional comedian, 'cause you have to keep telling the same jokes. For me, they're like word solos. Like Ken Nordine had that record, Word Jazz. Just as with a guitar, you can improvise a guitar solo, and they'd probably be similar each time, but they won't be exactly the same. With the word, it's probably a bit freer than that. I probably repeat myself more musically than I do verbally.
AVC: The new version of I Often Dream Of Trains contains an extract from a novel in progress you were writing then. Any plans to continue it?
RH: No, I think it's something that I'm just going to use broken-down sections of, actually. I don't really have the gift of the sustained narrative that you need to write a book. I've tried a couple of times, and it just doesn't work. But I get some good passages, so what I'm going to do is just take sections out of them. I'll use one for Trains, and I'll put one more on the [upcoming Egyptians-era box set]. I've had a couple [short stories] published. There's some kinds of fruit that are really tasty when they're small, but when they get too big they get watery, and they aren't nice any more. And I think my writing skills are like that. I think I can do really well for what used to be the back of an LP, but stretch it out over too many pages, and it just doesn't work.
AVC: Besides the new Venus 3 record, what else are you working on right now?
RH: I'm glad you asked me that. In January, there is a record coming out called Shadow Cat, which is unreleased recordings from the '90s. But that's only coming out in Britain to start with, on a label called Sartorial, which is run by a friend of mine called Terry Edwards. And then, sometime in the spring, the Egyptians-era stuff is coming out, which we've just started work on. That will have Element Of Light, Fegmania!, and Gotta Let This Hen Out! and a bunch of related stuff, and then I'm hoping that the Soft Boys material will come out next autumn on Matador Records, and by then, the new one with The Venus 3 will have come out as well. So most of my time is really spent mostly dealing with old stuff at the moment.
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