Peter Murphy Sings....Just For Love (cont.)
Peter Murphy Sings....Just For Love (cont.)
PM: …My taste is not necessarily to convert or win an audience. I just want to get out and feel the cold air on my cheek and feel a bit of risk. So, its kind of like if people walked out, it would be fine (laughing), you know what I mean? Its that radical, really.RR: Are you trying to prove something to yourself or to your audience?
PM: Partly, yeah. I want to say…its kind of like, slightly…belligerent of me, and its kind of like, possibly…it could be interpreted as being quite self-destructive in a way. But its not. Its really, as you say, trying to prove that I can exist as an artist without having to necessarily go through the motions of the self-projected ideas of who I am as a performer. It’s kind of like a (laughing) ‘mini-catharsis,’ really. But its very gentle…very sort of simple…very antithesis to what people expect of me. And of course, you know, I look around and all of us from BAUHAUS…for years, now…have been straddled with this sort of tag of ‘Gothic.’ And its kind of like that, really…after time…you can be very patient with it and diplomatically steer the conversation away from that…So I think for me personally, I find that sort of really debilitating sometimes. And its sort of like very disturbing in terms of trying to address an audience…Its kind of like your trying to ‘dis-create’ these preconceptions, this baggage of identity…That certainly does have an effect on you (laughs). And this is kind of like just taking off all the makeup…nothing at all…walking around the audience and singing to them (laughing). You know what I mean?
RR: So interest lies in the invention and the riskiness for you? That’s definitely an attraction I would imagine…
PM: Well, yeah. It’s an attraction and its also sort of like I am placing myself out of my own water. So I’m finding it hard to breathe. Maybe I’ll get some new vocal forms out of that new breathing technique, you know…speaking metaphorically (laughs). But I’m sort of enjoying it in a way.
RR: What kind of energy have you been channeling or emoting in your presentation…in your act, so far, on the tour?
PM: …I’m having to work just...from the back of my eyes, rather than from every sinew in my body. So…its very still. Its almost like you’re in a blinking game…staring…into another persons eyes…who’s gonna blink first (laughs)? Who’s gonna back down first? Oddly enough, this is my own sort of psycho-dramatic description of the event…And what’s remarkable is that people will just not move…in a positive way. They’re rooted. (I’m thinking…)‘Am I boring you?’… ‘No.’(laughing) It doesn’t seem that I’m boring them. So I’m still going through the process of working out what exactly it is that I’m doing with this tour (still laughing).
RR: Let’s talk about your sort of ‘opening act:’ the short black and white film entitled THE GRID. Can you explain the genesis of this film and why you are only now screening it? Are you trying to create a link to your earlier work, or impress upon the audience just how far away you are from that work now?
PM: Many things. I think I’m leaving it open to the audience. The film is very surreal itself. Its not very literal…The films ideas and motives came from the director, Joanna Woodward. We were lovers way back in the early days of BAUHAUS. Joanna was very much present. She was an artist who fascinated me. It was her idea…and was made in the spirit of the early-eighties where anybody was making art and creating pieces of work (for little money). It stands up as just a piece of memorabilia for the audience. Its kind of the last skeleton (laughing) in the closet, as it were. It sort of cleared the BAUHAUS out… A lot of people imagine that BAUHAUS are in some kind of denial about that band over the years, and that’s not the case at all. I view my work in BAUHAUS and in all the projects that I’ve worked in as being all one continuum of creativity.
RR: You’ve been speaking with some of your old bandmates lately? What’s in the future? An album…?
PM: I’m fully convinced now…whereas pre-BAUHAUS (1998), I wasn’t…that if BAUHAUS were…all four of us…to have the motivation and the spirit and desire to make an album, it would be classic. It would be new…and so far ahead. But its odd, because BAUHAUS is very separate to all of our own individual endeavors. It has its own particular chemistry, and its own particular sort of energy there…which is completely untappable elsewhere without the four of us. As it is now, ‘Mr. Moonlight’ (BAUHAUS’s iconographic logo) has really been knocked over the head, and he’s not going to be let out of the closet anymore. And I can’t talk anymore than that…It just has to be a consensus or not, and the consensus just hasn’t been there in all four of us since the RESURRECTION tour.
I’m certain that the many fans of all the incarnations…of Peter Murphy’s and his bandmates from BAUHAUS…hope that elusive consensus is reached one day soon. I’m sure no one would be disappointed.
(Listen to this interview in its entirety in streaming audio. Coming soon!)
For JUST FOR LOVE tour, PETER MURPHY, and BAUHAUS band info, check out: petermurphy.org
Contact “SUICIDE NOTES” author Robert Roman at:
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