Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know – Pema Chodron
When you sit down and have a conversation with Ian Astbury, he is always calm, he is always intelligent, he is always funny. He has a light in his eyes that dances one moment but can darken just as quickly the next. Yet he never shows anger or frustration. He never crosses over the border into exasperated drama. He makes his point with a softness of voice and the confidence in his knowledge – something he has spent years obtaining through training and discipline and patience. You never sense an overabundance of ego or self-righteousness, despite documented rumors of both which seem to follow The Cult’s lead singer wherever he goes. The past likes to follow him around like Coleridge’s albatross. When I attended the band’s performance in New Orleans earlier this fall, I overheard someone proclaim, “Ian is an asshole, isn’t he.” It may be his cross to forever bear the sins of gossip, of youth, of preconceived notions. Ian doesn’t deny he has been all things mentioned above. But he does not allow the slings and arrows to bring him to his knees. He is only a man on a lifelong quest for enlightenment … who just happens to sing in a rock & roll band.
The Cult are about to wrap up a long tour celebrating their twenty-five year old Electric masterpiece. When I spoke with Astbury a few months ago, he had been on the road for seven straight weeks. He was tired but, as with his pursuit of human betterment, he doesn’t stop. “We’re not going to stop,” he says. “We’re definitely the kind of band if we stop, we die. We have to stay together and we have to keep moving, keep working.”
If you listen to him and pay attention to him, instead of snickering at what you might pick up as an arrogance, you might just come away with something pertinent to your own well-being. Astbury is what some would call a rock star. His band The Cult was a fan favorite in the eighties with the triple boom of Love, Electric and Sonic Temple. “She Sells Sanctuary,” “Fire Woman” and “Love Removable Machine” are classics still being played in 2013. Billy Duffy, who considers himself the “nuts and bolts guy” to Astbury’s spiritual voicebox, is a well-respected guitar player, still worshiped by youngsters learning chords for the first time. The Cult may have felt the brunt of criticism over the years but their fans have remained loyal for the most part. And last year, they served up some tantalizing new music with Choice Of Weapon.
In my last interview with Astbury, we delved into that album with a lot of sidetracking into what goes through the mind and psyche of Ian Astbury the human being. This time, while stepping back in time to the making of Electric, the same thing happened. Astbury is not all about his music. He may start off talking to you about “For The Animals” but his heart lies in the true meaning of the song. For Astbury, crawling into the belly of the beast is not what you think it is. Parties and gossip don’t interest him; sharing quotes from philosophical texts and his personal accounts of meeting with Tibetan monks do. Knowledge comes in all shapes and forms. And if you listen, amongst the stories of Electric and working with Rick Rubin, you will see not a self-indulgent frontman but a middle-aged gentleman who actually cares – albatross be damned.
You’re fifty-one. What’s it like touring now?
I don’t actually have one of those bodies like athletic people who are able to maintain a perfect figure (laughs). I got to keep working at it. It’s an interesting shift, because musicians who are now in their sixties/late fifties/sixties/seventies are the first generation of musicians that have really got older in the age of medical advances, scientific advances, communication advances. The esthetic has changed to be an older musician and the concept of what is old, the word old, what does it actually mean? And who is the one to apply that term? Who is the one to apply the term old? People may think that Jay Z is old, Kanye West is old. Who are saying these things? Young people, perhaps. Young people who have forgotten that, once, their energy was reconstituted in a previous incarnation.
The way that we define our human experience is outmoded. Now we have to come up with new language, new ways of giving some indication to what phenomenon is. This idea of linear time, especially when you’re doing a body of work that is associated with the existential abstractive of another decade, it becomes something almost obtuse. Cause what’s relevant? To me, it’s the actual action of performing. When I’m in a performance, I’m in the performance. I’m nowhere else. Solely present on that. I may be channeling previous experiences in my DNA but I’m not trying to replicate or recreate or construct some kind of pastiche performance. So it’s always fresh and the body does deteriorate over this concept of time so you have to be mindful that this vehicle is limited, has limitations, and it will be for everybody, whether you’ve just been born or you’re fourteen, you’re twenty-four, you’re thirty-four. It doesn’t matter. The laws of nature apply and the laws of man.
So it’s very much a mindset of how I, at least from that cognitive space, define myself to myself. It’s far less than I did when I was a kid and I usually find that humans need definition constantly, need to define, need to dissect, need to make sense of, because the actual truth of, and the great mystery of, how it all came to be and how it all is self-perpetuating, whatever this is, this existence, is mind-boggling. So it’s better to stay small. Stay small, stay inside some sort of construct. Society is an idea. Buildings fall down. The officials are fallible to mistakes so there is no real authority, there is no real society. It’s an illusion.
Does that scare or worry you that it could end up being like nature run amok?
Nature will run amok as she pleases and not a damn thing you can do about it. You will die. You can’t control that. Although, I’m sure it’s possible with science this body may not die. But then we’re getting into a whole other area. That’s one aspect, that’s the machine. What about the soul side of it, what about the spiritual? The experience beyond cognition? What happens then? You don’t know.
It’s a societal concept that happened at a very basic level that many individuals adhere to and will defend with their lives if they have to. What is the point of doing anything? Other than perpetuation of an organism. I mean, essentially, it’s animalistic. Whether you like it or not, we’re animals. We eat flesh. We are violent. We kill to defend our territory. I don’t care what you go through to warm up your nice little pretty Hallmark cards. At some point, you consume so much in the West and you’ll die because of that. So Hello Kitty is buying you bullets, is buying our perpetuation of our tribe over another tribe, which is basic survival instinct. It’s always been this way. We’ve always fought for breeding rights, we’ve always fought for food, we’ve always fought for water and shelter, etc.
Now we’re in this interesting place of human consciousness where we’re actually beginning to get closer to expanding consciousness. And the internet is a product of human consciousness, it came out of nature. The face of God or Goddess, however you wish to define it, is being shown to us. And now we’re seeing our best and our brightest artists, thinkers, philosophers. Forget the filmmakers, they don’t count. They don’t. Actors, they don’t count. They’re creating a false reality. I’m more interested in individuals who are dealing with actual … I love film but we give illusion too much because again it perpetuates this illusion that we’re in control. Forget that. But now we’re seeing more individuals experience ayahuasca, mescaline. We’re seeing these advances in expanding of the human consciousness. The marijuana is close to being legalized. Expanding consciousness is the new age that is upon us and there’s not a damn thing anyone can do about it. Except embrace it.
People may find that a bit bizarre, might think it sounds silly.
Let’s look at that phrase – it sounds silly. Based upon your indoctrination, cause most of what you’ve been told or shown has been reinforced by society, which doesn’t have an adequate modality to explain that phenomenon. Yeah, on the back of a dollar bill is a pyramid with an eye. These institutions constructed with architecture and symbolism far precedes this society. These are archetypical symbols. They exist in nature, they exist in man’s intent to define his environment for millennia. And it ain’t happening.
There’s a real holy war going on, a spiritual war going on right now. I’m talking about your real enlightened population, not the illuminated masters of industry, etc. I have no problem, please, have your yachts, have your paintings, have your elaborate material lifestyles; go enjoy that. But you’re still going to be affected by the same laws of nature. I mean, I love material beauty. I love art. I love tangible art. I love clothing. I love food. These are tangible things. People and animals, human contact is far more important than material.
As Joseph Campbell said, “One is not alive unless one is in motion.” One is not alive unless one is dancing or making love and then celebrating. Are films adequate mythology? Does it fill our inquisitive natures? Does it fill our spirits? I think more than any form, performance ritual music, is a place where we really come together, cause it’s in that moment that we all have the same experience. Sports is quite close in some ways because it’s just a huge ritual. It’s not on a broad scale but everything is implied in terms of symbolism. It’s not really explained except for one you get Albert Camus talking about the philosophical aspects of soccer. I mean, there’s plenty of great philosophical material written on soccer but … (laughs).
Do you ever scare people with your intelligence?
I don’t know if you know this but my sister is named Lesley and she likes cats. She is a cat person. She loves everything about cats. Her life is devoted to her cats. And she’s also brilliant and she is also great with textiles. That’s her passion. She immerses herself in that world. And in that world she’s a master, an anointed master. I wouldn’t even know where to start. The point is, we all have different callings. Everybody is struggling with this paradox, this existential problem of what is the meaning of life. People put like decades of their lives into their children. Why? Why are they of value? Why aren’t you of value? Why do you put decades of your life into your child? Your child will at some point have to become self-reliant to survive, to attain better breeding rights, to attain more enlightenment, and here’s how it works – you work hard, you get money; with money you have luxury time; with luxury time you have meditation time; with meditation time you get more time to experience the philosophical. This knowledge is available to you.
But to meditate you need to quiet the mind.
Oh that never happens. Even the enlightened masters talk about, like trying to get water, to hold water in the palm of your hands. You can’t do it. It’s an action you cannot control. The real insight is to sit and observe all the thoughts, the mind going crazy. And the more you observe it, you look at it, you separate yourself from it and just acknowledge that that is thinking; place your focus on your breath and then you’ll become aware that you’re actually observing this phenomenon that you call Leslie. That I call Ian. We’re observing this phenomenon and what’s really going on is something else. And that’s when you begin to step off and realize that the thoughts are just projection, a filter.
How revelatory do you think dreams are?
Dreams reveal so much, absolutely. Again, it’s due to what ends you’re really observing and understanding symbols. How you wish to apply it or not to apply it. The idea of wisdom, of having a wise dome, of knowing things. In this society, we can choose knowledge as power. Knowing things, knowing not objects, events, facts, figures, but actual wise wisdom of experience, having a wise dome, a filter you can really use. Cause to know something great is awesome. So how does that serve you? How does that serve you sitting in your little ivory palace? That you know all these things but have you some wisdom with experience, going out and having these experiences, having real experiences, and finding that special person, making love, making a family, exploring the world, exploring your world, exploring your inner world; explore your potential, push yourself further, and see what happens
Part of the ritual of performance is taking out the trash and what I mean by that is I will be a mirror of what my experience has been, either immediately or over a small period of time. I will reflect the audience back, I will reflect my own individual experiences outwards and it’s not space, it’s ritual space, it’s holy space. Whatever comes up is fair game, be it beatific, profound, highly emotional, or it can be just trash. Horrible, garbage, fecal almost. That’s human experience.
Speaking of your audience, I wanted to ask you about Electric and why you replaced “Born To Be Wild” with “Zap City” during the live shows. I actually never thought that song ever fit on the album but that’s just my opinion.
It doesn’t. I agree with you, it does not. It doesn’t belong. It didn’t belong then, it doesn’t belong now. I think at the time Rick Rubin was trying to come up with something that was a standard iconic rock song to someway authenticate the band’s prominence, which politically made sense in 1986. But even when we did it, and I respect Rick and I respect Rick’s opinion, so I was like, “Ok, I’ll try it.” I didn’t think it was particularly a good choice, a good version, but I respected Rick enough and I respected the process enough to engage in doing it and trying it. Now we’re older, we got more insight, we got more wise dome, wisdom, and I said on this tour, “We don’t have to play it. It’s there for all time, engrained in those grooves, there it is. But if anyone wants to hear The Cult doing ‘Born To Be Wild,’ go listen to it but you won’t hear us play it live.” It’s not part of our DNA. It wasn’t part of our DNA then either. We were 24 when we made that record. 24, we were babies. We didn’t know what the hell was going on. We were kids but yeah, let’s do it. It sounds great, the same way younger artists before us were doing blues records to authenticate their blues, to authenticate themselves, to authenticate their choice. There it is.
What do you remember most about recording at Electric Lady Studios? Because it has a great vibe about it, I hear.
It really does, it was a profound session. Most of our sessions are quite private. When we’re in the studio we’re embedded, doors closed. When we did Electric, door was open, everybody came in, at any time of the day or night. That was where Rick hung out, everybody that knew Rick or were involved with Rick, would come to the studio. If you ever wanted to meet with Rick, you came to the studio. Everybody turned up at dinnertime and the food bill was as much as the recording session (laughs) Andy Warhol used to bring his lunch packed in a brown paper bag. It was very interesting that the actual studio itself, the location, it was winter, there was some romantic energy about winter, a certain energy. We were in the studio breaking new ground for us. We were going off in a direction that was antithesis of how people perceived the band. Not because we wanted to be country or whatever but because that was what we were into. We wanted to make a record that was stripped back, more direct and less textural, and even with discrete New York influences, the influences were things like the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, The Doors, AC/DC, a real potluck of rock & roll influences.
But then there was stuff going on subtext, like I was reading Jack Kerouac’s Tristessa, I was heavily into surrealism and Dada. I was interested in the Italian Renaissance. There’s a whole subtext going on. There’s a Shakespearean element occurring as well, which is now interesting because, interesting enough, on this tour I got to go to Clarksdale, Mississippi, which is where Robert Johnson signed his contract with the devil. Clarksdale is considered to be one of the cradles of the blues music yet on the Electric album it was the first time I really indicated, “King Contrary Man” is actually about that meeting and I’d never been to Clarksdale yet here we are performing this record and here I am finding myself in Clarksdale, so it was profound. I went to the crossroads and this incredible connection to that music and that energy was almost integrated into these shows. So now that’s something, gaining strength from the Nile, the heart of the Mississippi in this instance, and getting to experience that, and I think some of that energy was archetypically happening in that record without any real knowledge of what it was. There was a lot going on, it wasn’t just like, “Let’s make a rock & roll record,” whatever that means. I don’t know what that means.
You said you were writing some new music …
Always
Has this influenced what you’ve currently been writing?
I think so, yeah. I think you will definitely see some of this energy seep into The Cult’s DNA; it already has. I think that the next body of work we do will very possibly be revealed. I mean, here we are playing in front of Caravaggio images, playing blues rock, punk blues rock music with some psychedelic undertones. That’s good, that’s good stuff.
This summer there was an incident in Florida during one of your shows. What happened with the gentleman in the audience?
(laughs) It’s the comedy of errors. An absolute comedy of errors. If someone is in front of me at a show and they’ve dropped out and are texting, soiling the performance, or too drunk, I will use them, if I see fit. If I come upon them I will be like, Ah, what have we got here? I’ll make an example of them. It’s in the moment, I’m fully present in the moment, and if it happens, it happens. Sometimes I don’t even bother with it. I’m on to something else. But on this particular evening this guy, he had a white shirt on and he really stood out, you know, and the light from his phone was quite intense so you could really see there was some activity going on. First of all, I made the gesture of like, I thought he was filming, first of all, through the phone, which as an animal I’m looking at this other animal who’s strumming through this object and it’s just strange. It’s a new phenomenon [to a performer] and we’re just not used to it yet. And I didn’t say anything, just made a hand gesture, like, uh huh, put it down, be present, watch the show.
So that goes on. Then he’s texting during the song, like a full conversation, and I’m like, ok. So to get his attention, I’m drinking water and I spit water, not on him. I wouldn’t do that, that’s rude. I spat next to him and I think his girlfriend saw me doing it and she kind of elbowed him and he looked at me and said, “What?” And I said, “No texting.” And he’s like, “What?” I said, “Stop texting.” And then the song had finished and I said, “Why are you texting during the song? You’re not present. Why do you even bother coming to the show? You’re not present. And your energy is detracting from those around you. You’re not participating in this ritual, essentially. You’re not participating. This isn’t the zoo. We’re invested in what we’re doing.”
If you know anything about The Cult or me, it’s all in the context of the music, the words and the symbolism. Look what we’re playing in front of you. Look at me. Look at how I put myself over. I don’t really appreciate this. So anyway, it degenerated into his girlfriend all of sudden was “Fuck you” and then he throws his drink at me. And I was like, wow, now see you’ve proven my point. You’re completely insecure, you’re full of fear; it’s too much for some people what we do. It’s too much for them. They can’t handle it. And you’re going to stand in the front row and do that? At my house? Go to the back. We’re going to designate a texting area. I think a designated area where people can text. Then they’re not distracting a performance, they’re not obstructing the other audience members who want to participate in what’s going on.
Anyway, the thing with him, he was violent and I was like, fine, please climb up here, do whatever you got to do. And he was so violent the security guys jumped in and threw him out. I didn’t even say anything. In fact, I didn’t want him thrown out. I asked him politely to turn his cell phone off or go somewhere else and do it.
That incident reminded me of something we had talked about before. You had said, “When you go into a concert and if you’re not participating with that performer, then that spell doesn’t happen, the magic can’t happen.” So it must be frustrating because you’re trying to connect and the audience is trying to connect and when they’re not paying attention, there is no connection.
It makes it more difficult, makes it more difficult for the magic to happen, and for everybody else. There are another 2000 people in that room who are there for the experience of the event, and what’s interesting is their individual experience is going away and putting up these images, “Check this out.” I don’t care, we don’t care, but, I mean, I appreciate the enthusiasm for wanting to document, but at the end of the day you missed a show, you missed the whole thing. Ultimately all you can do is go away with the experience of it and the more engaged you are in this.
I mean, I had some guy who wrote this open letter on Facebook. He said that my mother wouldn’t have been proud of me. My mother died of cancer when I was seventeen years old. First of all, he has no idea whether my mother would have been proud of me. My mother would have been proud of me for standing up for my values. I’m sorry that it didn’t fit into his comfort zone of me being this submissive performer. I’m not a submissive person. If I’m arrogant, that’s none of my own value as a human being. I was taught that individuals connect with, whether they are in the audience or wherever, are also in touch with their boundaries. That they’re the most important person, they are their own authorities. I’m not vandalizing anybody. Like the fact that I’m spitting a lot. I spit cause I’m lactose intolerant. I spit cause I can get some cream in food, I get phlegm in my throat, I spit. Nobody complains about the baseball player’s spitting. Nobody complains about the boxer that spits out to a bucket. It’s a natural physical action, engaged in an action that uses my mouth, so I don’t have time for that. Please, just take it elsewhere.
In an old interview you were talking about a man named Floyd Westerman and that you went through a sweat ceremony with him. What happened during that?
A sweat ceremony is a sacred holy ceremony. It’s derived from indigenous Americans as a ritual where they believe it’s for purification, it’s for communion, connection to the great mystery. It’s also this idea that you’re connecting with the fact that you’re this flesh, these bones, these organs is your connection to the material world. The closest thing you are to owning anything is your body. It’s the idea of connecting with this suffering with intense heat and intense sweating, sweating is purification. This is a ritual experience where you commune with the great mysteries and to put your body through an uncomfortability where you’re getting rid of all this pragmatic, conscious connection to material. We’re not defined by it, like from the shelves of Wal-Mart or who is on the face of TMZ this week or what kind of car you drive. There is something more profound going on here so these rituals that we have, ritual is very important, ritual is very important to me.
And it helped you
Yeah, absolutely. It was very powerful, incredibly powerful.
What do you think is the biggest misconception about you?
(laughs) I love that. What is the biggest misconception? Oh man, where do you start? I think the idea that as an aspect of what you do, you’re defined as a rock musician and that you’re a Neanderthal. But you could in fact be a highly instinctual creature. I think the biggest misconception is that The Cult are caught up in our own rock fantasy world and that we’re not connected to enlightened cultural awarenesses and cultural nuance and subtext; that we don’t jive well with the pitchforks of the world. They are the sheep, we are the wolves. There’s no doubt, there’s no doubt in my mind about that. We are the one percent that do not fit and do not care. We do not want to be part of it. I will not kiss their ring. We were there at the beginning and I will be there at the end. It’s a post-modern realm. We built it, we were one of the architects of it, we helped create the environment so our credentials are intact, you can’t take that away from us, nobody can.
I think also sadly that we don’t get irony and we don’t get subtext, pastiche, etc. If anything, we play with it. The ones that don’t get it are the ones that are so caught up in it they can’t even see it. I mean, come on (laughs), it’s so ridiculous. It’s become absurd. Thank you for your opinions. Who are you, I’m sorry? What’re your credentials? Oh yes, you know things, you have knowledge of things. All they’re interested in is doing the same as everybody else, gaining from a false sense of power. They tried so many times, these individuals tried their best to destroy The Cult with a quip or a remark. Nothing they say can ever take away from this band that is run by laws of nature, not constructs or obtuse intimated kind of rules of what cool is supposed to be. Who cares about being cool. What does cool mean anyway? I mean, the VMA Awards? You know what, you can have all that. Please, have it all, take it. I’m interested in something else. People say, “How come you guys don’t do this?” Because I’m not interested in this. I, as an individual, through this band’s career, there’s a point when we consciously turned down what many would have embraced: the multimillion song records, the multimillion etc, etc. It didn’t interest me.
Are pop stars like the golden calves?
Very well said. You just said it right there. I think that’s a very astute observation. A perpetuated sacrifice, by the older ones. They’re retaining their power.
Are you saddened by all this?
I have no power. I’m not in opposition to that realm. I don’t give it any thought. I have a different motivation. When you travel, when I see people suffering, I went through this in my own family and whether it’s something physically or something mentally, I don’t know, I feel it. I desire to help relieve that suffering from other people. If I can help somebody lift their burdens a little bit or maybe impart, only when asked, I’m not an authority, and if I could help release that burden, I’m more motivated by that singular purpose. I don’t consider myself some sort of deity, I’m just a human being and do what I do. I love music and I love performing.
Have you ever scared yourself while writing a song because you were so deep into the wound?
I don’t know about being scared but I know about being uncomfortable. Scary may be in the sense of feeling like you’re revealing too much and you’re making yourself vulnerable to the intellectual bullies and the potential for physical violence, which has occurred. But then again, it’s doesn’t bother me as much as it did when I was younger. Now I’m like, I don’t really consider it. I just allow it to happen. I just be as honest with myself as possible. I mean, I unapologetically love Led Zeppelin; I unapologetically love the Doors; I unapologetically love the MC5; I unapologetically love the Sex Pistols; I unapologetically love David Bowie; and I unapologetically love the thing I’m passionate about. I unapologetically love the White Mandingos; I unapologetically love Kanye West; I unapologetically love my wife. My wife’s band, the Black Ryder, you know, she’s genius and what they are doing is brilliant and vulnerable and courageous.
Che Guevara said the true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love. They feel the injustice, they feel the imbalance and they feel the acquisition of the attainment of power of a few individuals over a large group of individuals. One small group of individuals try to inflict their vision or viewpoint upon a large group of individuals for their own personal sustenance or survival and that’s not the way it should be, because this information is there for everybody. Nobody owns it. You can’t covet this and it’s been symbolically shown in spiritual and philosophical texts through Christianity and mythology and indigenous stories, etc, etc, for eons and eons. Jesus in the temple of the money-lenders. He’s a poor carpenter, goes and kicks over the tables and calls out the priests. Where have we heard that story before? Walking away from this family, this opulence of material, this life of pleasure and indulgence and beauty and never having to want for anything. And he went, he took himself to discover what suffering was because it was something he was unfamiliar with. I’m just an individual. There are so many brilliant people pointing these things out. So many enlightened people out there. I’m just a foot soldier.
Not everybody listens though.
It’s like, “Oh, it doesn’t matter, I’ll be dead, whatever.” But what about your children? You have children so I’m sure you know. They’re our future generations to inherit this. So in that way then you go like, you need to realize what the responsibility is to future generations. Children I have, and I’m going to do everything in my power to make the world a better place for my kids. Absolutely. I don’t want to see anybody suffer, the way that my parents suffered. So we do what we do. It’s complex, it’s confusing, it’s contradictory. I contradict myself constantly.
Do you think that your podium will always be as a singer and songwriter instead of manifesting into more of a professional activist, so to speak?
There’re plenty of people who are happy to turn up at dinner, get their picture taken, put their arm around a dignitary. Some people get even deeper. They’ll throw a benefit or whatever. Get even deeper and go to regions and explore and have some experience in an environment. I don’t see how you can continue that once you’ve had an experience. I’m not interested in the photo opportunity. There is no value in that to me. I don’t want any awards or money. I’ll be of service if I can. I can’t always be of service. Sometimes I’m a total asshole. I’m exhausted, you know, get the fuck out (laughs). I’m exhausted, I ain’t got nothing for you. I’m working on that, definitely working on that. I’m just a person. Just a dude who loves people, loves music. I love everybody. I’m not really in opposition to anybody. I mean, there’s definitely individuals on this planet that need curbing in some way but ultimately I believe in the power of art, I believe in the power of enlightened perspective, really getting in touch with what this is. So I’ll immerse myself in that material. If people want to come along for the ride, great, cause I’m also a part of the ride. I’m looking to others. I’m in this just like everybody else. I’m looking at Terence McKenna, I’m looking at Timothy Leary, looking at Pema Chodron, looking at the Dalai Lama, looking at the great enlightened writers, enlightened filmmakers. There are enlightened filmmakers, Kurosawa, Tarkovsky. There are definitely enlightened filmmakers.
Sometimes people don’t like to think. They want everything handed to them in their entertainment.
It’s easier but you know, from the cradle to the grave, it’s all set up. It’s like, “Over here, we have it all set up.” If you buy into this, don’t ask any questions, it’s all good. You can have this societal experience. Or on the other side, spooky scarier world. There’s the forest. Off you go on your own. Go have your own adventures and insights but be careful because the forest is full of snakes, witches, peril, danger, mystery. It’s interesting, this guy’s come onto my radar recently and his name is Andrew WK. “I party hard.” What does that actually mean? I party hard. Because in ritual space, you do party hard but you party hard with an intention and the intention is to break into expanded consciousness, to be availed of the great mystery. That is the intention of ritual, but party hard?
The reason I mention him is because I was in Austin for SXSW and we were playing that night, playing the final closing concert in front of 25,000 people. And I’m sitting in the hotel lobby on my own just waiting for the band to arrive for the gig. Everybody else had gone. And so Andrew WK walked in through the door. He’s very charismatic, very entertaining, a lot of fun and he seems like a decent dude. So I’m looking at this guy and these kids run up to him like, “Hey, Andrew, we love you, will you sign an autograph for us?” And he’s like, “Yeah, sure,” and he’s really charming and he’s really nice and he says, “Where are you guys going?” They say, “We’re going to go see The Cult,” and he went, “Uhhh, I thought Glenn Danzig would have been a better Jim Morrison.” And I’m sitting right the fuck there. And I’m looking at this dude going, but you’re the party hard guy. What’s your authority on ritual space? What’s your authority on Ray Manzarek and Robbie Krieger?
But I felt really bummed by that. It really bummed me out. And the kids he told that, they were really bummed. They’re like, “We like him. He’s ok.” They were trying to convince him. They were like, “No, we thought he was great.” And I’m sitting there listening to this whole conversation and then at the end of it all, I realized I was having a very human experience and, well, fuck it, he’s entitled to his opinion, absolutely. I wasn’t being Jim Morrison. I was Ian Astbury singing the songs of Jim Morrison, Ray Manzarek, Robbie Krieger and John Densmore. I wasn’t Jim Morrison. Jim Morrison is gone. Or at least his body is gone.
I have feelings (laughs) But that happens a lot. I mean, it’s amazing, I could be here all day with you sharing the misconceptions of me. I mean, I’ve said stuff. They ask me, “What do you think of that?” “Ah, that sucks” and then later I go, “Why did I say that? I didn’t even think about the question.” I’m getting better at it now. I catch myself. The best thing I ever thought was said about me was by Bono. The journalist was trying to trick him into saying something derogatory about the band and Bono was eloquent. He just said, “It’s not my place to comment on them.” That was beautiful. Very gracious, very cool. So I try to use that phrase when it becomes obviously a loaded question from a journalist trying to get some kind of reaction from me, like, “Ha ha, what do you think of this?” Yeah, it’s probably not my place to talk about Andrew UK, although I’m quite fascinated to see him play. I’d love to go see him perform. He seems like he’s bright. He seems like he’s intelligent and got something going on.
People, I guess, will always have misconceptions about other people.
People have very limited life experience so like when I’m going on stage and performing a song like “Embers,” I’m talking about Syria, with all intention, and people look at me like, “This is a constable. This guy is making me feel uncomfortable. I didn’t come for this. I came for the meat. Where’s the meat? Give me the meat.” (laughs) I’m like, yeah. I’ve had guys come and punch me right in the face. Oh yeah. A guy threw a drink at me the other day. Guy threw a full can of beer at my face.
Somebody threw ice at you guys in New Orleans.
No, they threw glasses, a glass with ice in it. Throwing drinks. Please, throw your drinks. The fear is inside of them.
Why, if you love this band so much, why do you want to throw something up there that can potentially hurt them?
Because I think of this process as energetically they identify with the band; intellectually, they have no fucking clue what’s going on. They don’t get the subtext. It’s an energetic response and also some people are in a state of ecstasy, which is wonderful. When you see that kind of primal behavior in the audience, a state of ecstasy, now everyone has some kind of context of what this thing is, energetic context. When you see people with their arms folded and then you see them sallow and disappear and in their minds they’re gone and they’ve missed it, it’s over, and they’re alone, they’re dying and they didn’t get to do that, the wonderful things they wanted to do in their lives, they missed it. They recorded it but they missed it. They documented it but they missed it. You spend all your life building this temple and then you don’t even get to be a part of it because you’re too old to participate in it all.
Anyway, I don’t expect you to agree with me. It’s my stuff, my bag, and I’m in a band called The Cult with Billy Duffy and John Tempesta and Chris Wyse and we do what we do and do we care about our audience? Absolutely. We really care about them. We spend a lot of time with our audience in terms of making ourselves accessible. Preparing every day that the most important ritual going to take place is the performance. My entire life has been on hold for that show. So when it comes to that show, I’m as fully present as I can possibly be. If you’re going to come for entertainment, you may get some of that. If you’re going to come for something else, it’s like, who knows what’s going to happen. I don’t know what’s going to happen.
Remaining 2013 Cult tour dates:
12/17 = Tulsa Oklahoma
12/18 = Ft Worth Texas
12/20 = Tucson Arizona
12/22 = Ventura California
Live photographs by Leslie Michele Derrough
