Robyn Hitchcock wants to go backwards: Part 4 · Oct 29, 06:55 PM by Don
As Robyn Hitchcock’s gig at Shank Hall on November 2 approaches, I’m sharing music and a lengthy profile/interview I did with Robyn in 1996 for Josh Modell’s Milk magazine.
Read Part 1.
Read Part 2.
Read Part 3.
This fourth section is titled, “The Face of Death.”
Besides the highs and lows of romance, Robyn also effectively explores death and mortality with his lyrics. As early as his acclaimed 1984 album, I Often Dream of Trains, he was grappling with the issue of death in songs like “Sounds Great When You’re Dead” and “The Bones in the Ground.” Songs since have dealt with death at turns drolly comic (“My Wife & My Dead Wife”) and serious and ethereal (“Sweet Ghost of Light”). A previously unreleased song on a recent A&M greatest hits compilation, “Legalized Murder,” is another rare instance (ike “She Doesn’t Exist”) in which Robyn deals rather directly with a given topic; in this case, capital punishment.
If one had to pick one album of Robyn’s that was particularly suffused with grief and nostalgia, it would have to be Respect. Besides being dedicated to his late father, Raymond Hitchcock (as well as John Lennon), the album is home to at least four songs about death. One song, “Then You’re Dust,” finds Robyn sober and reflective: “Nobody wakes you, nobody can. Nobody shakes you anymore.” While on “When I Was Dead,” the album’s morbidity is leavened with humor when Robyn sings, “When I was dead I wore a strong perfume. When I was dead I never left the room.” These various takes on the topic of death are complicated reactions to a complex topic, something that has often provoked unfair judgments from critics.
Don: How do you feel about critics and writers presenting you to the world at large? I remember when Respect came out in 1993 and a critic felt it was weakened by what he felt to be a return to goofier lyrical devices, like the chorus for “The Yip Song” [“Yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip…”]. And that song, as well as most of the rest of the record, was very serious, dealing with your father’s death.
Robyn: Well, the trouble is you’ve got to spell yourself out very clearly. If you’re at all ambiguous, then you can be misinterpreted. I don’t generally spell myself out clearly. I’m not a manifesto kind of guy. I don’t walk in and say, “This is what I’m doing. This is what I mean. It starts here and it ends 16 feet away.” It’s very nebulous and vague with me, so I’m probably constantly misinterpreted, because I don’t always know what I’m doing myself. But I think that’s also the strength of my work. So I can write a song about my father’s death which has a chorus that sounds like mad dogs yipping, but it’s not really at all. It just starts out that way and it becomes something else. I put “Wafflehead” on the end of Respect because it had been so serious. Like a bit of light relief. So people misinterpret me. It can’t be helped.
Read Part 1.
Read Part 2.
Read Part 3.
mp3 – Robyn Hitchcock & The Egyptians – The Yip! Song :: from Respect (1993)
mp3 – Robyn Hitchcock & The Egyptians – The Yip! Song :: from Live at the Cambridge Folk Festival (1998)
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Songs in the MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3 format are offered for a limited time only. Songs that are no longer downloadable from Timedoor can be streamed for several weeks courtesy of Hype Machine. Dead mp3 links take you to the top of page one.
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