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Interview
by SashaS
21-11-2002
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| Suicide: Martin Rev (L) and Alan Vega |
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Labour of art, love and doctrine
Suicide converse behind the chrono-shades
It is usually futile to speculate about ‘ifs’ but it is beyond any doubt that today’s music would be different (and poorer) for the lack of the Suicide activities. The New York’s two-chord-wonders managed to ‘invent’ punk rock, define electro-music and fashion the ‘death’ of traditional rock outfits. The way they did it back in the 1970s appalled so many people that they were regularly bombarded with objects (some life-threatening) and regularly booed off stage. That’s what happens when one’s music is fuelled by an aesthetic of authenticity, as rock should be but more often could NOT be arsed with anything but bandwagon-ing.
Now, after ten years of studio silence, the two mavericks have re-teamed and cyber’d an album, ‘American Supreme’, that recalls the best of the Suicide’s past combined with zeitgeist lyrics and a funky feel for the future. Alas, it is the band’s only fifth studio LP in a career that can be traced back to 1971 although there were no recorded artefacts until 1976. In spite of huge gaps in the twosome’s collaboration, don’t you dare call this a comeback or a reunion of any kind.
“First of all,” Mr Martin Rev sounds very serious, “we’ve never split up so we can’t be reforming. We’ve been doing tours every few years and we’ll keep on doing it that way. In meantime we learn a lot and get a chance to try a lot the next time we play together. I feel like we are like art workers and can do whatever we want. It is a creative opportunity.”
“Worst mistake…”
M. Rev and Alan Vega are so cool behind their shades that even interviewer has to sport his own pair to keep up mean appearances in a hotel lobby. For all the aggression, vitriol and sonic confrontation one gets onstage of album-wise, the two appear to be as laid-back as if hailing from California or Florida rather than NYC. Vega is animated talker while Rev is calm and placid conversationalist; I afterwards thank the inventor for my cassette-corder’s variable speed control!
Career longer than 30 years with the very limited discography?!
MR: “Yeah, but there were also our solo records. As Suicide, if we could have we’d have been putting out two or three albums a year; we’ve always had so many ideas. But, we always worked in very adversarial relationships and we had to do everything else ourselves. We’d record our album and then shop it around which is not a good position to be in. We’d love to have it in our control but it is not; this industry takes care of it and we need to work within in. We hoped that Blast First (part of Mute Records) would be a long-term home for us but the company got sold to EMI. That’s our luck.”
Still, it must be ego-massaging to be considered genuine pioneers?
MR: “We were so naïve, that we named ourselves Suicide believing that it would be all over the media in no time. We took it from a comic-book story called ‘Satan Suicide’ and it turned out to be the worst mistake of our lives. We never got played on radio and were once dropped from playing Top Of The Pops because producer thought we’d frighten the kids. Imagine!”
A ‘Bushodd’…
Listening to the new album and re-listening the old recordings, as well as having seen them play live, one can’t but marvel over the changing nature of music and ever-evolving human tolerance; in short, yesterday’s avant-garde becomes today’s norm but, hopefully, not tomorrow’s cliché. It is surely difficult to imagine these two all-black attired men ever falling in such a trap: Vega, at times as distant as an alien, and Rev who looks like he’s met Lou Reed’s character from ‘I’m Waiting For The Man’ several times too many, are on the fringe as the beatniks were long while back.
Do you feel like outsiders looking in or insiders looking out?
“That’s a good question...” Vega ponders. “I think we’re outsiders as far as business is concerned...”
“... But insiders as far as creativity goes,” Rev wraps up the sentence.
AV: “The best description of us ever is by a friend of ours who said, ‘Suicide was the ultimate punk band because even the punks hated them!’ That’s what it was, we were there and they didn’t know how to take us, we didn’t have guitars!”
Times change and people’s minds broaden…
AV: “You know, I used to like people much more before but now I’m afraid of the human race, we are heading for destruction…”
MR: “Let’s hope we are at the end of the old world, the industrial revolution, the atomic one as well, the oil, the culture, we need to step into a new reality where we care about everything.”
So, a new enlightenment…?
AV: “I don’t know, and I think that I not only have no answers but don’t know how to ask the questions! But I came to a conclusion and that’s why I called the album ‘American Supreme’, Suicide is not going to be a humble band anymore, we gonna scream to the world we are the f**king greatest band!”
‘G-Dub’ heading us for Armageddon should be averted in culture with Suicide being reactivated, then?
SashaS
3-12-2002
Suicide’s album ‘American Supreme’ is released 28 October 2002 on First Blast/Mute
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