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English singer-songwriter Robyn Hitchcock is as recognizable by tone, lyrics, and his vibrantly hued clothing choices as the sound of Miles Davis’ horn.
Itchycoo Park
“I like my songs, but I don’t necessarily think I’m the best singer of them,” he effaces to me over Zoom, as it’s approaching midnight where he’s staying in London. “I just wanted to be a singer-songwriter because that’s what Bob Dylan did. And I like to create; I’m happiest when I’m producing something. But my records are blueprints, really. They just show you what the song could be, but they’re not necessarily the best performance of them. Whereas if you listen to … oh, I don’t know, the great records of ’67, they actually sound like the best performances you could get.”
He mentions that particular year not offhandedly, but because that’s the theme of the conversation: He’s just released an album, 1967: Vacations in the Past, which is a collection of covers of songs released in 1967, and one original song—the title track. Boasting his takes on Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” the Beatles’ “A Day in the Life,” Pink Floyd’s “See Emily Play,” and Small Faces’ “Itchycoo Park,” among eight other tracks, it serves as a sort of soundtrack or musical accompaniment to his new memoir, 1967: How I Got There and Why I Never Left.
Hitchcock, who was 14 years old and attending boarding school in England in 1967, describes how who he is today is encased in that period of his life, much like a mosquito in amber. But why share that with the world now?
In the mid ’70s, before he launched his solo career, Hitchcock was the leader of the psychedelic group the Soft Boys.
Photo by Tim Bugbee/tinnitus photography
“I’m 71; I’ve been alive quite a long time,” he shares. “If I want to leave a record of anything apart from all the songs I’ve written, now is a good time to do it. By writing about 1966 to ’67, I’m basically giving the context for Robyn Hitchcock, as Robyn Hitchcock then lived the rest of his life.”
Hopefully, I say, the publication of these works won’t ring as some sort of death knell for him.
“Well, it’s a relative death knell,” he replies. “But everyone’s on the conveyor belt. We all go over the edge. And none of our legacies are permanent. Even the plastic chairs and Coke bottles and stuff like that that we’re leaving behind.... In 10- or 20-thousand-years’ time, we’ll probably just be some weird, scummy layer on the great fruitcake of the Earth. But I suppose you do probably get to an age where you want to try and explain yourself, maybe to yourself. Maybe it’s me that needs to read the book, you know?”
“I’m basically giving the context for Robyn Hitchcock, as Robyn Hitchcock then lived the rest of his life.”
To counter his description of his songs above, I would say that Hitchcock’s performances on 1967: Vacations in the Past carve out their own deserved little planet in the vintage-rock Milky Way. I was excited in particular by some of his selections: the endorsement of foundational prog in the Procol Harum cover; the otherwise forgotten Traffic tune, “No Face, No Name and No Number,” off of Mr. Fantasy, the Mamas & the Papas’ nostalgic “San Francisco,” and of course, the aforementioned Floyd single. There’s also the lesser known “My White Bicycle” by Tomorrow and “I Can Hear the Grass Grow” by the Move, and the Hendrix B-side, “Burning of the Midnight Lamp.”
Through these recordings, Hitchcock pays homage to “that lovely time when people were inventing new strands of music, and they couldn’t define them,” he replies. “People didn’t really know what to call Pink Floyd. Was it jazz, or was it pop, or psychedelia, or freeform, or systems music?”
His renditions call to mind a cooking reduction, defined by Wikipedia as “the process of thickening and intensifying the flavor of a liquid mixture, such as a soup, sauce, wine, or juice, by simmering or boiling.” Hitchcock’s distinctive, classic folk-singer voice and steel-string-guided arrangements do just that to this iconic roster. There are some gentle twists and turns—Eastern-instrumental touches; subtly applied, ethereal delay and reverb, and the like—but nothing that should cloud the revived conduit to the listener’s memory of the originals.
And yet, here’s his review of his music, in general: “I hear [my songs] back and I think, ‘God, my voice is horrible! This is just … ugh! Why do I sing through my nose like that?’ And the answer is because Bob Dylan sang through his nose, you know. I was just singing through Bob Dylan’s nose, really.”
1967: Vacations in the Pastfeatures 11 covers of songs that were released in 1967, and one original song—the title track.
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“I wait for songs to come to me: They’re independent like cats, rather than like dogs who will faithfully trail you everywhere,” Hitchcock explains, sharing about his songwriting process. “All I can do is leave a plate of food out for the songs—in the form of my open mind—and hope they will appear in there, hungry for my neural pathways.”
Once he’s domesticated the wild idea, he says, “It’s important to remain as unselfconscious as possible in the [writing] process. If I start worrying about composing the next line, the embryonic song slips away from me. Often I’m left with a verse-and-a-half and an unresolved melody because my creation has lost its innocence and fled from my brain.
“[Then] there are times when creativity itself is simply not what’s called for: You just have to do some more living until the songs appear again. That’s as close as I can get to describing the process, which still, thankfully, remains mysterious to me after all this time.”
“In 10- or 20-thousand-years’ time, we’ll probably just be some weird, scummy layer on the great fruitcake of the Earth.”
In the prose of 1967: How I Got There and Why I Never Left, Hitchcock expresses himself similarly to how he does so distinctively in his lyrics and speech. Amidst his tales of roughing his first experiences in the infamously ruthless environs of English boarding school, he shares an abundance of insight about his parents and upbringing, as well as a self-diagnosis of having Asperger’s syndrome—whose name is now gradually becoming adapted in modern lexicon to “low-support-needs” autism spectrum disorder. When I touch on the subject, he reaffirms the observation, and elaborates, “I think I probably am also OCD, whatever that means. I’ve always been obsessed with trying to get things in the right order.”
He relates an anecdote about his school days: “So, if I got out of lunch—‘Yippee! I’ve got three hours to dress like a hippie before they put me back in my school clothes. Oh damn, I’ve put the purple pants on, but actually, I should put the red ones on. No! I put the red ones on; it’s not good—I’ll put my jeans on.’
Robyn Hitchcock's Gear
Hitchcock in 1998, after embarking on the tour behind one of his earlier acoustic albums, Moss Elixir.
Guitars
- Two Fylde Olivia acoustics equipped with Sennheiser II lavalier mics (for touring)
- Larrivée acoustic
- Fender Telecaster
- Fender Stratocaster
Strings & Picks
- Elixir .011–.052 (acoustic)
- Ernie Ball Skinny Top Heavy Bottom .010–.054 (electric)
- Dunlop 1.0 mm
“I’d just get into a real state. And then the only thing that would do would be listening to Trout Mask Replica by Captain Beefheart. There was something about Trout Mask that was so liberating that I thought, ‘Oh, I don’t care what trousers I’m wearing. This is just, whoa! This music is it.’”
With him having chosen to cover “See Emily Play,” a Syd Barrett composition, the conversation soon turns to the topic of the late, troubled songwriter. I comment, “It’s hard to listen to Syd’s solo records.... It’s weird that people enabled that. You can hear him losing his mind.”
“You can, but at the same time, the fact they enabled it means that these things did come out,” Robyn counters. “And he obviously had nothing else to give after that. So, at least, David Gilmour and the old Floyd guys.... It meant they gave the world those songs, which, although the performances are quite … rickety, quite fragile, they’re incredibly beautiful songs. There’s nothing forced about Barrett. He can only be himself.”
“There was something about Trout Mask Replica that was so liberating that I thought, ‘Oh, I don’t care what trousers I’m wearing. This is just, whoa!’”
I briefly compare Barrett to singer-songwriter Daniel Johnston, and we agree there are some similarities. And then with a segue, ask, “When did you first fall in love with the guitar? Was it when you came home from boarding school and found the guitar your parents gifted you on your bed?”
Robyn pauses thoughtfully.“Ah, I think I liked the idea of the guitar probably around that time,” he shares. “I always used to draw men with guns. I’m not really macho, but I had a very kind of post-World War II upbringing where men were always carrying guns. And I thought, ‘Well, if he’s a man, he’s got to carry a gun.’ Then, around the age of 13, I swapped the gun for the guitar. And then every man I drew was carrying a guitar instead.”
Elaborating on getting his first 6-string, he says, “I had lessons from a man who had three fingers bent back from an industrial accident. He was a nice old man with whiskers, and he showed me how to get the guitar in tune and what the basic notes were. And then I got hold of a Bob Dylan songbook, and—‘Oh my gosh, I can play “Mr. Tambourine Man!”’ It was really fast—about 10 minutes between not being able to play anything, and suddenly being able to play songs by my heroes.”
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Hitchcock does me the kindness, during our atypically deep conversation—at least, for a press interview—of sharing more acute perceptions of his parents, and their own neurodivergence. Ultimately, he feels that his mother didn’t necessarily like him, but loved the idea of him—and that later in life, he came to better understand his lonely, depressive father. “My mother was protective but in an oddly cold way. People are like that,” he shares. “We just contain so many things that don’t make sense with each other: colors that you would not mix as a painter; themes you would not intermingle as a writer; characters you would not create.... We defy any sense of balance or harmony.
“Although the performances are quite rickety, quite fragile, they’re incredibly beautiful songs. There’s nothing forced about Barrett. He can only be himself.”
“The idea of normality.... ‘Normal’ is tautological,” he continues. “Nothing is normal. A belief in normality is an aberration. It’s a form of insanity, I think.
“It’s just hard for us to accept ourselves because we’re brought up with the myth of normality, and the myth of what people are supposed to be like gender-wise, sex-wise, and psychologically what we’re supposed to want. And in a way, some of that’s beginning to melt, now. But that probably just causes more confusion. It’s no wonder people like me want to live in 1967.”
YouTube It
In this excerpt from the Jonathan Demme-directed concert film of Robyn Hitchcock, Storefront Hitchcock, the songwriter performs an absurdist “upbeat” song about a man who dies of cancer.
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Duane Denison of the Jesus Lizard, EGC Chessie in hands, coaxing some nasty tones from his Hiwatt.
The Jesus Lizard’s sixth album, Blue, served as the band’s final statement from the frontlines of noisy rock for the next 26 years. By the time of their dissolution in 1999, they’d earned a reputation for extreme performances chock full of hard-hitting, machine-like grooves delivered by bassist David Wm. Sims and, at their conclusion, drummer Mac McNeilly, at times aided and at other times punctured by the frontline of guitarist Duane Denison’s incisive, dissonant riffing, and presided over by the cantankerous howl of vocalist David Yow. In the years since, performative, thrilling bands such as Pissed Jeans, METZ, and Idles have built upon the Lizard’s musical foundation.
Denison has kept himself plenty busy over the last couple decades, forming the avant-rock supergroup Tomahawk—with vocalist Mike Patton, bassist Trevor Dunn (both from Mr. Bungle), and drummer John Stanier of Helmet—and alongside various other projects including Th’ Legendary Shack Shakers and Hank Williams III. The Jesus Lizard eventually reunited, but until now have only celebrated their catalog, never releasing new jams.
The Jesus Lizard, from left: bassist David Wm. Sims, singer David Yow, drummer Mac McNeilly, and guitarist Duane Denison.
Photo by Joshua Black Wilkins
Back in 2018, Denison, hanging in a hotel room with Yow, played a riff on his unplugged electric guitar that caught the singer’s ear. That song, called “West Side,” will remain unreleased for now, but Denison explains: “He said, ‘Wow, that’s really good. What is that?’ And I said, ‘It’s just some new thing. Why don’t we do an album?’” From those unassuming beginnings, the Jesus Lizard’s creative juices started flowing.
So, how does a band—especially one who so indelibly captured the ineffable energy of live rock performance—prepare to get a new record together 26 years after their last? Back in their earlier days, the members all lived together in a band house, collectively tending to the creative fire when inspiration struck. All these years later, they reside in different cities, so their process requires sending files back and forth and only meeting up for occasional demo sessions over the course of “three or four years.”
“When the time comes to get more in performance mode, I have a practice space. I go there by myself and crank it up. I turn that amp up and turn the metronome up and play loud.” —Duane Denison
the Jesus Lizard "Alexis Feels Sick"
Distance creates an obstacle to striking while the proverbial iron is hot, but Denison has a method to keep things energized: “Practice loud.” The guitarist professes the importance of practice, in general, and especially with a metronome. “We keep very detailed records of what the beats per minute of these songs are,” he explains. “To me, the way to do it is to run it to a Bluetooth speaker and crank it, and then crank your amp. I play a little at home, but when the time comes to get more in performance mode, I have a practice space. I go there by myself and crank it up. I turn that amp up and turn the metronome up and play loud.”
It’s a proven solution. On Rack—recorded at Patrick Carney’s Audio Eagle studio with producer Paul Allen—the band sound as vigorous as ever, proving they’ve not only remained in step with their younger selves, but they may have surpassed it with faders cranked. “Duane’s approach, both as a guitarist and writer, has an angular and menacing fingerprint that is his own unique style,” explains Allen. “The conviction in his playing that he is known for from his recordings in the ’80s and ’90s is still 100-percent intact and still driving full throttle today.”
“I try to be really, really precise,” he says. “I think we all do when it comes to the basic tracks, especially the rhythm parts. The band has always been this machine-like thing.” Together, they build a tension with Yow’s careening voice. “The vocals tend to be all over the place—in and out of tune, in and out of time,” he points out. “You’ve got this very free thing moving around in the foreground, and then you’ve got this very precise, detailed band playing behind it. That’s why it works.”
Before Rack, the Jesus Lizard hadn’t released a new record since 1998’s Blue.
Denison’s guitar also serves as the foreground foil to Yow’s unhinged raving, as on “Alexis Feels Sick,” where they form a demented harmony, or on the midnight creep of “What If,” where his vibrato-laden melodies bolster the singer’s unsettled, maniacal display. As precise as his riffs might be, his playing doesn’t stay strictly on the grid. On the slow, skulking “Armistice Day,” his percussive chording goes off the rails, giving way to a solo that slices that groove like a chef’s knife through warm butter as he reorganizes rock ’n’ roll histrionics into his own cut-up vocabulary.
“During recording sessions, his first solo takes are usually what we decide to keep,” explains Allen. “Listen to Duane’s guitar solos on Jack White’s ‘Morning, Noon, and Night,’ Tomahawk’s ‘Fatback,’ and ‘Grind’ off Rack. There’s a common ‘contained chaos’ thread among them that sounds like a harmonic Rubik’s cube that could only be solved by Duane.”
“Duane’s approach, both as a guitarist and writer, has an angular and menacing fingerprint that is his own unique style.” —Rack producer Paul Allen
To encapsulate just the right amount of intensity, “I don’t over practice everything,” the guitarist says. Instead, once he’s created a part, “I set it aside and don’t wear it out.” On Rack, it’s obvious not a single kilowatt of musical energy was lost in the rehearsal process.
Denison issues his noisy masterclass with assertive, overdriven tones supporting his dissonant voicings like barbed wire on top of an electric fence. The occasional application of slapback delay adds a threatening aura to his exacting riffage. His tones were just as carefully crafted as the parts he plays, and he relied mostly on his signature Electrical Guitar Company Chessie for the sessions, though a Fender Uptown Strat also appears, as well as a Taylor T5Z, which he chose for its “cleaner, hyper-articulated sound” on “Swan the Dog.” Though he’s been spotted at recent Jesus Lizard shows with a brand-new Powers Electric—he points out he played a demo model and says, “I just couldn’t let go of it,” so he ordered his own—that wasn’t until tracking was complete.
Duane Denison's Gear
Denison wields his Powers Electric at the Blue Room in Nashville last June.
Photo by Doug Coombe
Guitars
- Electrical Guitar Company Chessie
- Fender Uptown Strat
- Taylor T5Z
- Gibson ES-135
- Powers Electric
Amps
- Hiwatt Little J
- Hiwatt 2x12 cab with Fane F75 speakers
- Fender Super-Sonic combo
- Early ’60s Fender Bassman
- Marshall 1987X Plexi Reissue
- Victory Super Sheriff head
- Blackstar HT Stage 60—2 combos in stereo with Celestion Neo Creamback speakers and Mullard tubes
Effects
- Line 6 Helix
- Mantic Flex Pro
- TC Electronic G-Force
- Menatone Red Snapper
Strings and Picks
- Stringjoy Orbiters .0105 and .011 sets
- Dunlop celluloid white medium
- Sun Studios yellow picks
He ran through various amps—Marshalls, a Fender Bassman, two Fender Super-Sonic combos, and a Hiwatt Little J—at Audio Eagle. Live, if he’s not on backline gear, you’ll catch him mostly using 60-watt Blackstar HT Stage 60s loaded with Celestion Neo Creambacks. And while some boxes were stomped, he got most of his effects from a Line 6 Helix. “All of those sounds [in the Helix] are modeled on analog sounds, and you can tweak them endlessly,” he explains. “It’s just so practical and easy.”
The tools have only changed slightly since the band’s earlier days, when he favored Travis Beans and Hiwatts. Though he’s started to prefer higher gain sounds, Allen points out that “his guitar sound has always had teeth with a slightly bright sheen, and still does.”
“Honestly, I don’t think my tone has changed much over the past 30-something years,” Denison says. “I tend to favor a brighter, sharper sound with articulation. Someone sent me a video I had never seen of myself playing in the ’80s. I had a band called Cargo Cult in Austin, Texas. What struck me about it is it didn’t sound terribly different than what I sound like right now as far as the guitar sound and the approach. I don’t know what that tells you—I’m consistent?”
YouTube It
The Jesus Lizard take off at Nashville’s Blue Room this past June with “Hide & Seek” from Rack.