Monday, April 8, 1996
Artist and his latest album ‘Shag Tobacco’ defy any definitionBy
Vanessa VanderZanden
Daily Bruin Contributor
Having fronted a ground-breaking punk band, opened two bizarre
after-hours clubs, and constructed two movie soundtracks, it should
be to no one’s surprise that Gavin Friday doesn’t make music that
fits into any one category.
"You could call it cabaret on one level, but I think that would
define it too easily," says Friday of the musical style of his
newest album, "Shag Tobacco." "It’s sort of some monster I gave
birth to, that I don’t really understand."
Formed from an odd concoction of samples and sounds, "Shag
Tobacco" is deliberate in it randomness.
Friday describes his vision: "We’re coming to the end of the
20th century and it’s all quite ominous. What’s the 21st century
going to be like? It’s almost like a circus vaudeville, all this
fuckin’ shit that’s goin’ on in the world at the moment.
"So I started thinking about taking certain aspects over the
last 60, 70, even 100 years, taking opera with Caruso, from 1910,
and transporting that into the future; taking jazz references,
cabaret references, punk references, pop references, eclectically
picking at bits of music that are alike and that inspired me from
whole different decades, but then putting it all into a definite
sort of format. I’d rather call it science fiction cabaret than
cabaret."
The title "Shag Tobacco" refers to a cigarette smoked after
making love. However out of place it may seem to have romance
strewn into the chaotic jungle of apocalyptic end of the century
sounds, Friday somehow pulls it off.
"If you scrape away all the theater and all the imagery, all the
songs are really all love songs," he says. "It’s dealing with the
lack of love. It’s dealing with the misconceptions of love. It’s
sort of like, at the end of the day, shag tobacco. Love is the
drug, love is the call, and not always positive. Sometimes lost,
confused, sad, wanton love, abusive love."
An after-hours club Friday opened in Dublin called Mr. Pussy’s
Cafe Deluxe is where many of the album’s concepts originated. Here,
a 60-year-old transvestite, Mr. Pussy, acted as hostess to the
cross-section of Ireland’s night life. Amidst 21-year-old ravers,
65-year-old drunks, and your average Joe, conversations roved from
"A to Z and back again."
Friday remembers how "it felt like sometimes you were in Star
Trek and other times it felt like you were in Berlin in the ’20s.
It was a springboard for my imagination more than the actual
context and content, especially if you’re pissed out of your head
at 4 in the morning. I wrote a few lyrics there. I think the
concepts and the feel of the album was more conceived there. Mr.
Pussy’s is a very night time thing and the feel of ‘Shag Tobacco’
is night time, is predator-like, is cool and sexy. You don’t listen
to ‘Shag Tobacco’ in the morning."
One song on the album is even written for Mr. Pussy. Being a
well- known character in Ireland, Mr. Pussy tapped Friday on the
shoulder at a bar one night. Telling him all sorts of tales from
his past, Mr. Pussy entreated Friday to compose him a song.
Friday recalls, "I was so blown out by all these fuckin’ crazy
stories he told me that that’s what we went ahead and did, and
that’s where the friendship began. It’s more like having a sort of
a weird grandmother, like a grandmother in drag. He’s pretty out
there, but he’ll tell you stories about when he hung with Judy
Garland.
"For me, it’s like a doorway to another world well-gone, like a
vaudeville world where showbiz was showbiz. With technology and the
way we’re moving ahead so fast, we’re forgetting about the great
old things like old-fashioned entertainment. I wanted to take
elements of that and bring them with me."
Always the entertainer, Friday’s first stage antics originated
with his early punk band, the Virgin Prunes. Though no longer
donning his trademark skirt from those wild days, he still gets
50-year-old transvestites to cite him as their inspiration.
"That’s pretty freaky," he says. "I never saw it as
transvestitism. It was a totally different thing. I more looked
like Rasputin on acid. I wore a dress like a man. Oh, I wore all
sorts of makeup, and I had a razor head haircut. It was pretty
tough. People, when they saw me, they didn’t know if I was gonna
beat them up or kiss them. I don’t know, that was Dublin. Certain
guys would see me walk down the road and you’re talking late ’70s,
early ’80s right? It gave them inspiration or confidence to go out
and dress a certain way. If you walk down the street in any town
now with earrings or piercings or weird clothes, no one would
blink."
A teen-ager when the Virgin Prunes formed, Friday’s apparel
became just one more expression of his youthful angst. Through
music, he found connection with the world around him and finds this
quality of his work to be the most important. To this day, he feels
anger to be the primary driving force behind his warped
inventions.
"I think an old Johnny Lyden song from Public Image says ‘Anger
is an Energy.’ If you sit down and you don’t get angry with the way
the world is, there’s something wrong, because it’s pretty fucked
up at the moment. I think you’ve just got to use your anger. I tend
to put my tongue firmly in my cheek and play around with different
images, but I am angry. I don’t bash my head against the wall or
tell the world to fuck off, instead I try to bring them into my
world and try and manipulate them into looking at things in a
different way. That’s all you can do, is open up doors."
Friday has been opening these doors for years. In 1988-89 he
rocked the boat with "Each Man Kills the Thing He Loves," 1991-92
it was "Adam and Eve," and now in 1995-96 it’s "Shag Tobacco."
"Basically, I see them all like my little children and I’m the
big fuckin’ mother. I spoil the youngest, which at the moment is
‘Shag Tobacco,’ so I can’t really say which my favorite is. I think
I was trying to do different things on each."
Still, Friday, true to his days of glam rags and night club
frenzies, will always prefer the performance side to any album.
Taking tea on stage and smoking when required, he enjoys living the
album for all to see.
"Making an album is like shitting a football. It’s a struggle to
sort of try and articulate what’s in your head and in your vibe.
Then performing isn’t a struggle, it’s totally natural for me. I
think my feet are glued to the stage half of the time. It’s pretty
crazy in that I tend to sort of lose myself and get lost in the
characters.
"I believe in making the hour or hour-and-a-half show be more
like an event. I show myself as a performer and I try to create the
character or the essence of the character. I become a Mr. Pussy or
get into the world of the lady in ‘Kitchen Sink Drama’ or I get
into the whole bloated boisterous histrionics of the Caruso singer.
I tend to sort of jump in there. Most people probably think I’m
schizo!"
In the past, when Friday wasn’t touring, the singer would
channel this energy into a club he had opened, The Blue Jaysus.
This hip joint became a cross between the ’30s and the ’50s, with
Gingham cloth, low-key lights, and just wine on the menu. Friday
acted as MC, sharing the stage with a piano and whoever he could
induce to leave their seat.
"I used to have a light, shine it on any of the guests in the
venue and they had to get up and perform. They could do anything.
They could say a poem, they could read, they could sing, they could
do whatever. A lot of musicians would go there. You wouldn’t
believe the amount of musicians that were up on that stage, it
would freak you out. Doors opened at 12:00 and they closed at 6:00
in the morning. It was six hours of insanity and spontaneity. It
was pretty wild, but like anything that’s wild and insane, when the
spontaneity goes, you’ve just got to close the door and say that’s
it and let’s move on."
Less quirky a venture was Friday’s decision to work on the
soundtracks for the movies "Short Cuts" and "In the Name of the
Father." The former proved a more meticulous experience, though the
latter afforded Friday a closer connection to his homeland. Both
works were well-suited for Friday and his talents.
"If you listen to ‘Shag Tobacco,’ it has a very cinematic feel,
I tend to really try and create a world, so what the words aren’t
saying the music is. ‘Short Cuts’ was very ordered, very quick. We
worked it in three or four weeks, but I learned so much. ‘In the
Name of the Father’ was very different in that it was very
important for us as Irishmen. It’s a true story we all knew and
grew up with. The guys it was about were all about our age, so it
became a very sort of intense emotional experience for us all. It
was weird, me, Bono and Sinead (O’Connor) working together. It was
also quick, like two weeks, and it was all done. It was very
intense, but very beautiful at the end of it all. I think it’s some
of the best stuff I’ve ever done."
Continuing to diversify his artistic endeavors, Friday’s latest
album includes a short story in its CD jacket. The twisted
five-page tale by Patrick McCabe fits in well with the album’s
themes. Claiming a need for more literature and poetry in today’s
society, Friday takes pride in the work.
"I’m sort of like an art terrorist," Friday says. "People can
ignore (the poem) or adore it, but at least it’s there!"
Friday plans on touring the United States for the next month.
He’ll then return to Europe for summer festivals. In the interim,
he’ll be working side by side with Patrick McCabe on a related
project.
"We’ve been in the studio recording ‘Shagging Tobacco,’ Patrick
McCabe’s story, almost like a spoken word, remix, chilled out,
ambient soundtrack thing. I don’t know what it is at the moment.
That’s coming out in August-September. I won’t really know ’til the
summer’s over exactly which direction we’re gonna go next. It will
be different. Probably a lot of America will be inspiring it."
Thank God it’s Gavin Friday