Lydia Lunch Digs in with ‘The War Is Never Over’ Documentary (FEATURE)

In a career spanning more than forty years so far, Lydia Lunch has taken on many roles: musician, writer, spoken word poet, self-empowerment speaker, podcaster, and actress, just to name a few. Through it all, she’s been an unwavering countercultural voice, using her art as a platform for her outspoken take on a wide range of controversial topics. Now in her early sixties, she’s as defiant as ever, as a new documentary, Lydia Lunch: The War Is Never Over, makes clear (it will be available on DVD and TV On Demand now). 

“The documentary tells a lot – it’s 43 years of creativity crammed into 74 minutes. I dug way in,” says Lunch during a Zoom video call from her Brooklyn, New York home. She’s correct: the film takes an unflinching look at her life, from a childhood in upstate New York in which she suffered severe abuse from her father, leading to her arrival in New York City as a homeless teenager who joined the nihilistic “no wave” music scene. From there, she went on to earn acclaim as an exceptionally fiery and fearless artist across multiple disciplines.

Although Lunch’s brazen personality and unabashed sexuality gives the film a certain shock value, perhaps the most startling parts of this film are the poignant moments, such as the scenes showing Lunch’s close bond with her bandmates in Retrovirus, her current group. “I’m really happy for the more poetic footage that’s in there,” Lunch says. “That brings in a different flavor than what a lot of people might expect. I’m a softie in some places!”

Lunch credits director Beth B with handling her story so deftly. The two have been friends since the late 1970s. “Beth has such diverse artistic, creative output,” Lunch says. “One of her early films was called Letters to Dad, [which had] people reading letters they had written to [Peoples Temple/Jonestown cult leader] Jim Jones in Guyana. And I just thought, ‘Beth gets what the real point is.’ The point has always been, for me at least, that I will expose my situation, knowing it’s not the worst, and hoping that other people don’t feel so horrified by what’s happened to them.

“Look, I’m not saying I didn’t have a lot of hatred and anger when I was much younger – of course I fucking did, otherwise how could I have created something like Teenage Jesus and the Jerks?” Lunch continues, referring to her first band, formed in 1979. “But whatever my experience was, it was not the worst. I think having that insight at a very young age, that it was a much greater problem than mine, made it easier for me to handle certain things.”

Lunch clarifies what she means by that “much greater problem”: “It is the patriarchy. It is politics. It is that two-thirds of the world or more is still so fucking poor when some people are so rich. It is the imbalance of power. In my personal life, part of my rebellion is, I’m mad at the big picture. I’m not going to be wasting my time being mad at the small shit. Also, part of me is just laughing at the horror of it all, as I always have been.”

Lunch took that insight and attitude and poured it into a long list of projects, from numerous solo albums and EPs (starting with her debut release, Queen of Siam, in 1980), as well as more than a dozen collaborative albums and feature appearances on releases with artists such as Sonic Youth, Nick Cave, and Einstürzende Neubauten, among many others.

Lunch waves away the suggestion that she’s been exceptionally prolific. “I wrote 390 songs – and that sounds like a lot – except if you divide it by 43 years, it’s not even ten songs a year,” she says, then adds with a laugh, “I’m slacking here!”

Besides her music, Lunch has also been an author (including publishing her autobiography, Paradoxia, in 1997), and also frequently has performed and recorded as a spoken word poet. This work, she says, gets to heart of what made her become an artist in the first place. “Words were what inspired me to begin with, before music,” she says. “I just felt that there was a hole, from a female perspective, that covered a lot of subjects that if nobody else is going to be talking about them, I’m going to get up and start talking about it.”

She is particularly pleased that Lydia Lunch: The War Is Never Over includes several scenes of her recent spoken word work. “People might have heard of one of my performances or one of my records, and they think that’s what it is,” she says, “but I’m very happy to have a lot of those different types of spoken word performances in there, especially some of the more mystical, psycho-ambient, witchy things, as well as hardcore stuff. That’s very important to me to have that variety in there.”

With the documentary out, Lunch is focused on what comes next. She plans to continue The Lydian Spin, the podcast she’s been co-hosting with bassist Tim Dahl for two years now. “I feel that this is all a community of very special creative weirdos – I say that word with much love and affection – and that we should know more about who’s out there, who’s participating in a similar type of existence through creativity,” she says of the podcast’s mission.

With all of her work, Lunch says she’ll continue to be as outspoken as ever, and she scoffs at the notion that the current “cancel culture” might force her to begin watching what she says or does. “Cancel me? I don’t give a flying fuck, quite frankly,” she says with a boisterous laugh. “I’m not here for everybody. I’m not trying to shove my anything down anybody’s whatever. You take it or you leave it. You want it or you don’t.”

If anything, Lunch says she hopes that she’ll inspire others to openly speak their minds and not bow to intimidation tactics. “I wish there were more voices like mine. I would gladly not only pass the torch but share the torch,” she says.

For now, though, Lunch is trying to use her words and her art to help others reach the same level of self-acceptance that she has achieved. “I’m not contaminated with depression or anxiety or rage or frustration or insecurity or shame or humiliation – those things take up a lot of fucking time in people’s lives,” she says. “A lot of people come to me and have those things, and I hope some of myself will rub off on them. Meaning, you have to be your favorite person, or how are you going to be anybody else’s favorite person?”

Before she signs off the video call, Lunch offers a few final encouraging words: “Anything you don’t like about yourself or anything that is depressing or anxiety-ridden or rageful was put upon you – that’s not you.” Sharing this message through her work, she says with a smile, helps her stay motivated, in turn: “That’s really the reason I continue.”

Upcoming Documentary Showings:

September 9—Charlottesville, VA—Violet Crown
September 12—Louisville, KY—Speed Art Museum
September 13—Nashville, TN—Belcourt

Upcoming Lydia Lunch Live Appearances:September 7—Harrisburg, PA—Stage on Herr (with Retrovirus)
September 8—Pittsburgh, PA—Preserving Underground (with Retrovirus)
September 9—Canton, OH—Femme Fest Buzz Bin (with Retrovirus)
September 10—Chicago, IL—Break Kitchen (with Retrovirus)
September 11—Indianapolis, IN—Healer (with Retrovirus)
September 12—Louisville, KY—Speed Museum (improv)
September 13—Newport, KY—Southgate House (with Retrovirus)
September 14—Asheville, NC—Fleetwoods (with Retrovirus)
September 15—Charlottesville, VA—Champion Brewing Co (with Retrovirus)
September 16—Washington, DC—Black Cat (with Retrovirus)
September 21—New York, NY— Saint Vitus (with Retrovirus)

Photo credit: Annie Sprinkle