Were you making music in Australia before you moved to the U.K.?
No, I moved to London in 1978. That's when I started making music. When I was a kid in Australia, I learned a couple of instruments. There were bad teaching practices. The first instrument I tried to learn was cello, and then some percussion. The problem was sight-reading, which I didn't get a handle on before. I was learning it and trying to sight read, and their idea was, "Okay, he's done it for a couple of months. Let's put him in the orchestra." They had to fill a seat in the orchestra; I'd be trying to play, but I'd get halfway through the first page and I'd be lost. I couldn't catch up. The whole thing was so humiliating. I stopped doing that and then I started doing percussion. It would have been better to teach me some chords on a guitar. I loved music, and I still love music, obviously.
Yeah, I think so!
So, that was the end of that chapter of my attempting to play an instrument. When punk rock came along, that democratized the idea that you didn't have to be a virtuoso. Everyone can play and pick something up and make sound with it. I bought a bass guitar, and I played along to records. When I moved to London, I was 18. I knew that I wanted to be involved in music. There was so much happening. From '78 to '83 was an amazing time to be there. Then I bought my first synthesizer, which was a [Electronic Dream Plant] Wasp.
Not as common over here in the States.
Yeah. They were £99.
Very affordable at that time.
Yeah. I'd heard about them and thought, "That I want to try!" It ran on batteries and had a built-in speaker. That was my entrance to making electronic music. Somehow, I got a delay pedal, and I would make tapes in my room.
To cassette or something?
Yeah, to cassette. I had a roommate who had another cassette player, so I'd do cassette to cassette [overdubs]. After one or two generations, it would get so distorted, but then it would have its own sound. That was my idea bank. Around about that time, somewhere along the way I also got a Korg MS-20 [synthesizer]. I was making tapes with that. I did a lot of squatting in London. I was also working at Virgin Records, on the retail side.
One of the record stores?
Yeah, on Oxford Street. My roommate, when I was squatting, was a guy named Keith Allen. He's a comedian. He was saying, "I know you like to make tapes in your bedroom, but you should get out and play with people. My friends Susan [Gogan] and John [Studholme] are starting a group." They had a group called pragVEC, with a couple of singles out, and I used to see them play; I knew who they were. Keith introduced me, so I went over to their place and started playing a bit. They had a Wasp as well. They were making electronic songs. As result of starting to play with them, I realized that I didn't want to work in a democratic way.
You need to know if that's conducive.
Yeah, that was one thing. At the same time, I then had my first experience in a recording studio. We made some tracks, which turned into an album [No-Cowboys]. I think we recorded to a 16-track in London. It was engineered by Gerry Shephard who was the guitar player in Gary Glitter's band. That was awesome, because Gary Glitter was one of the first groups I ever went to see. I got a chance to ask him about the "Glitter sound."
That was so layered.
Yeah, they had two drummers. He said they would tune all the guitars to an open tuning in octaves and then they'd play them with a slide. That was how they got the Glitter sound. I got to firsthand have a recording experience. Working at the record store, I was very interested in experimental music and post-punk. That's where I started to get deeper into 20th century classical music, and I met Steve Stapleton from Nurse with Wound. Steve worked down the street. He came in one day, and we had the first Nurse with Wound album in stock. I listened to everything that was left-of-center. He saw it, and he said, "Have you heard this album? What's it like?" I described it and he said, "Well, that's me." We started chatting and got to be friendly. He invited me to the studio, which he had locked out on Friday nights – a little 8-track studio in Shepherds Bush called IPS [Recording Studio]. They'd done the first album with John Fothergill, who played guitar a lot on one side of it; but he was going a different direction. Steve was going into the studio every Friday night and doing whatever the hell he wanted. He didn't always necessarily have an idea of what he would do, but he would always come out with something. There were some instruments in the studio, but Steve didn't need instruments. There would be a squeaky chair, or he'd come in with some object and say, "This thing makes a cool sound! Let's record that."
Anyone reading this would need to go and listen a little bit to understand. It's not ambient, but it's very interesting and dark. Very creative.
He also had the deepest, vastest knowledge of the most obscure music. On the first album [Chance Meeting on a Dissecting Table of a Sewing Machine and an Umbrella], there's a list he put inside the album. It's called the "Nurse With Wound list." People still refer to it now. On the list there are a lot of very obscure French and krautrock bands. He turned me on to so much, and his approach broadened my mind.
Were you watching him work?
Oh, I was collaborating. I would have an idea and we'd make sounds. Then, by the time he was through with it, it didn't sound anything like what the source material was. He really messed with sounds! We started making this album later on, which was called The Sylvie and Babs [Hi-Fi Companion], which was all cover versions. While I was still with Spec Records, which was the ashes of pragVEC, I decided, "I'm not interested in this democracy thing." I booked some time at IPS, and I decided I was going to record and mix a single in a day, which I did. It was the first Foetus single ["Spite Your Face" b/w "O.K.F.M."]. I thought, "Okay, once I've done that, I'm going to do this one show with Spec Records, and then I'm going to leave." They kicked me out before I could do the show, which was at the ICA opening for Cabaret Voltaire, which I really wanted to do. I made the first Foetus record. That came out on the first of January, 1981, on my own label [Self Immolation]. I was 20 years old. Those were some of the forces that were at work that led me to doing Foetus. The reason that I played all the instruments myself was that I was so heavily drawn to make the opposite of this democratic experience. I wanted to do something where I could stand or fall on my own merits. I couldn't necessarily play the instruments that I was playing. I play enough to make the overdub and put it back in the box, and I continue to do that. The way that I came to music-making was that I want to work in the studio, and I want to make records. Not, "I want to be a great bass guitarist," or, "I want to be a great keyboard player." I want to make music that I want to hear; music that maybe isn't out there, and music that's interesting and inspiring to me – my avenue of expression. So, I put it out on my own label.
How did you figure out how to start a label?
Well, I worked in a record store and I knew how records were distributed, because we talked to distributors. When I got there, it was the dawn of independent labels. Rough Trade had been releasing records for about a year. I went to Rough Trade every Saturday morning to look at the new releases, and I started to meet people there. The Desperate Bicycles would say, on their second release, "It was easy, it was cheap – go and do it!" Scritti Politti, on their first single instead of a sleeve, was a stapled piece of paper. On the paper, they printed a breakdown of how much it cost to press and how much they spent in the studio. Then there were fanzines like Sniffing Glue, where they were saying, "Here's three chords. Now go and form a band!" That was a lot of the atmosphere then. I had to look up a pressing plant. I called them up and said, "What do you need?" I'd been to art school, so I did the sleeves. Then they said well, "Do you have a publisher for this?" I said, "No," and they put me on for Cherry Red, which was a publishing company. I knew where the music papers were, so in my lunch hour I went to the music papers and gave them [the singles] out. I went to the BBC and put it in John Peel's little box. That's how it worked.
Did he play it?
Yeah. He played the first single.
It was an honor to have him notice your music and present it to everybody.
He also used to come down to the record store occasionally. When I started working at the store, it had more of a disco orientation. I worked at the singles counter. I was pushing more underground music. We were getting all the U.S. imports, German imports, and a lot of obscure records. The store became one of the places where someone would come if they were looking for something weird. We had a huge wall of all the sleeves. People would come, stare at the wall, and say, "What's that? What's that?"
Could they hear them at listening booths?
There weren't listening booths, but we would tell them about the music. Sometimes we'd play records for people, but we were constantly playing music to bring people in, and then we'd put on our music and that would drive people out!
What happened after the first single? How did you proceed with recording?
Within the next two and a half years or so I released three 7-inches, a 12-inch EP, and two albums, all while I had a full-time job! It was evolving each time. I would take the money from one release and put it into the next one. I did the next single as You've Got Foetus on Your Breath, "Wash it All Off." I did that quickly, and it's totally different from the first one. That's when I started to get more of a handle on my vision and my voice. Literally, my voice. That I recorded in a different 8-track studio; I don't know how I found it. Probably in the music papers. It was underneath a pet shop in south London. You had to go through the pet shop and climb down this ladder, and then I'd be in the studio. I don't remember the name of that place, but I might have had the luxury of doing two days there for recording and mixing.
Did you have ideas mapped out, or were you working more like Steve did?
Oh, yeah. I had systems that I devised. I would have my own form of notation, where I would figure out how many bars of intro I needed before "this" happens. I'd have it all written out. First, I'd run a click track, and then I'd do a count track where it was, "Okay, chorus, middle eight, weird section, break down." When I was recording the overdubs, I could hear when the sections were coming up. I didn't have to count. Then I'd erase that. Because it was on 8-track, there was a lot of bouncing. I'd fill up all of the tracks with percussion and bounce them to one track. I'd have to figure out the order in which to record instruments. Sometimes I'd have to record the percussion, and then I'd have to record all the backing vocals.
Whatever had to be layered.
I'd be running out of tracks on many of them. I had to figure out the order in which to do. You have to have that one empty track, so you aren't bouncing to an adjacent track.
Right, the weird cross-head feedback.
I'd go in and say, "Okay, this is the order in which we'll record." Then I'd fill it up. Funnily enough, on that first single at IPS I guess they had a plate reverb. I'd been listening to records, and I wanted to have a big drum sound. I thought the way I could get a big drum sound was putting lots of reverb on the drums. I recorded the drums myself. I might have even played a kit on that. I put lots of reverb on the drums, and then it became this big wash. It put me off reverb! It took me years to get back into accepting reverb. As a result, a lot of those records are very dry-sounding. That particular record is probably totally dry. A lot of people think there are samples on those, but it was live drums. I'd record them one at a time. I'd record a hi-hat, and then a kick drum, and then a snare, and then I'd bounce all that down.
It gives you a different feel, because you don't have those pauses where you're hitting another drum.
Yeah, and you're playing totally un-drummerly; the way a drummer couldn't, or wouldn't, play. I would do that, and then my other best friend, at the time, was varispeed. I'd record parts at half-speed, especially pianos. They'd play back really fast. Backing vocals too; vocals at all different speeds. It sounded like a choir. Those were some of my tricks. And tape echo. Those were the sorts of ideas that I would use in those days.
What were the engineers like at these various places?
Pretty openminded. I'd tell them what I wanted to do, and they'd say, "Yeah, we can do that." Then I'd ask, "What happens when we do this?" Then they'd show me.
Sometimes people have stories early on where they're up against someone who makes the studio experience rough.
No, I don't think I've ever had that experience. Well, there are one or two experiences I've had with incompetent people. I've always found that when I suggested things, they are more than willing to try them because it's exciting to them to do something that they don't normally do. After that second single, I made an album [Deaf] at this studio in South London called Lavender Sound. That's where I met Harlan Cockburn, who was the house engineer. I worked with him quite a lot. He was really good for suggesting some techniques which I put into my tool kit. One of those – because I was still anti-reverb at that point – was recording ambience.
Room mics?
Yeah. There was a nice stairway there, and I used to put the drums at the bottom of the stairs. We'd mic the top of the stairs. That's when I started to get room sounds on tracks. Everyone heard [Public Image Ltd's] The Flowers of Romance. We'd all think, "How do you do that?"
Yeah, it's got that weird echoing thing.
That was Nick Launay [Tape Op #105]. It was a lot of ambient room mics.
When we were recording through the '80s, one could not avoid the reverb discussion.
Yeah. The '80s was a lot about gated reverb drum sounds. I definitely used those. I started to lose my reverb phobia a bit. I would still always put snares in hallways, bathrooms, and stairways. At Lavender Sound – where I also ended up doing the second album and a 12-inch EP and more – what they had was bare-bones. We had a 1/4-inch tape delay, which I'd put straight onto the instrument, so it would be on tape already.There was a [Simmons Digital] Clap Trap [digital sample playback device]. There was one delay box that had about five settings on it and one knob. I can't remember what it was. I'd use that for regeneration and sounds like that.That was the only piece of outboard there. I don't know if they had a plate reverb, but if they did I didn't use it.It was an 8-track studio and I was getting increasingly more complex on my systems when I would come in. I started to do more with tape loops. Another one of my tricks was I would compile these cassettes of sound effects and manipulated records, and there would be a point where I'd say, "I want to bring that in." I'd find it on cassette, have the pause button, and spin it in at the right time. It's a lot of that.
Flying it in?
Yeah, flying it in, and tape loops going around the studio. Recording them and then doing another one; filling up six tracks, and then bouncing them to one, but punching them in and out as they went across. Then I'd have this one track of that and I'd do it again.
The first records I did were all on 8-track. We'd have to plan ahead and make some compromises.
That informed those records. It had to. You were stuck with that drum balance. You were committing to mixes on the way over. There wasn't much remixing you could do.
Your hands are tied on certain tracks.
Yeah. Because I didn't have too much money, I was working super-fast. I had a full-time job, and I would work on vacations and weekends. I was cranking it out.
Were the records selling?
They were selling enough to pay for the next record. John Peel was playing them, and they were starting to get reviews. On those first records, I was anti- the idea of presenting myself as the front person of Foetus, so I started all this mythology around it that it was semi-informed by The Residents [Tape Op #45]. I could also go to NME or whomever, and say, "Here's my single. I'm from Self Immolation Records. Here's this seven-piece from San Francisco." I discovered from the first single that if you write a press release and send it to the music papers, they're going to print it verbatim. I instantly had this mythology.
Did you keep changing the story behind it?
I did. First, Foetus Under Glass was two Brazilian statistics collectors and their pen pal from Athens, Georgia. Then those guys had a fight, and one of them formed You've Got Foetus on Your Breath, which was a seven-piece band from San Francisco. Then I had the names of all of the people in You've Got Foetus on Your Breath, one of whom was Clint Ruin. Clint Ruin popped up later. Then one of them was Frank Want, and I used that name a little bit. I eventually got tired of doing that. It was too hard to keep up after a couple of years.
Did you start performing at all along the way?
I didn't perform live as Foetus until when we did this thing, The Immaculate Consumptive, which is actually what brought me to New York. It was an event that Lydia Lunch put together, which was myself, Lydia, Nick Cave, and Marc Almond [of Soft Cell]. We only did three shows. It was Halloween '83. We did two shows at Danceteria and one show at the 9:30 Club in D.C. Each of us had a few songs, then we had duets, and one song where we all played together. We had some instruments and backing tracks. When I came here to do that was when I ended up staying in New York. It was the opposite of London, at that point.
What was it that attracted you to New York?
Well, I'd been living in London for five years. At that time, New York was very East Village-centric. There were people who probably never went south of Houston [Street] or north of 14th Street. You could walk everywhere, and bars were open until four a.m.
Quite unlike London.
Yeah. London was sprawling. The tube stopped at midnight and bars closed at eleven. It was so different here. I fell in love with it, so I didn't go back. I eventually went back, because I was with Some Bizzare Records at the time, so I was going back and forth recording. I had an apartment with Lydia here in '84 on 12th Street. Before that I was staying with a bunch of people. But I got involved with Some Bizzare in about '83, and that's when I graduated to 24-track. Then I was a kid in the candy store. It was like having a cool breeze on your face and the vistas opened up. There was so much more I could do.
Did that open up a new way to build layers and still have tracks open?
It did for a day or two, until I filled up every track on the 24-track. No, it was so much better. It meant that I could have more expansive sounds. There was a tangible difference in those sounds. The first record I did on 24-track was the album Hole. I also had a bigger budget and could spend more time. One song, "I'll Meet You in Poland, Baby" on that album, I spent five days constructing the backing track. There are no samples on that album, either. We used pre-sampling technology, but what was great about that was that they had an AMS delay that had a lock-in on it, so I could load in a snare sound and trigger it. I used the hell out of that.
It technically is a sample, but it's a lot of work to set up!
There were delays with lock-ins that I would tweak. I'd put in a vocal and then tweak it to keep it in time with the click track and construct it like that. It was proto-sampling. That was a great liberation to do that.
Did you spend time trying to understand any new technology that had come out?
Yeah, I'd do that. When sampling was introduced and I heard those samplers were available, I rented one.
You couldn't buy one, unless you were Peter Gabriel [Tape Op #63]!
Yeah, you couldn't. For an album like Hole, I had so many ideas. I knew what I wanted to do, and I'd think of systems of how to do them. I'd go in and say, "We have to create 18 tape loops of my voice." That album had a bunch of parts where I'm looping my voice but playing with the pitch speed on the tape machine and making tracks that way. Then I began using the mixing desk to create parts. I'd have notes so that I could make chords on the mixer and bounce that across [to a new track]. That would be the backbone of the composition, and I'd start overdubbing on that. That took a lot of time.
It has to. There's no way around it.
Originally, I'd get in and the engineer would say, "Well, we can do that, or we can do this. We have this AMS." I'd rented a Mellotron, but then I heard about sampling technology. It was what I'd been doing all along, but it was a way to organize it. Sampling times were still very short, and the bandwidth wasn't very good. You'd have to record sounds at half speed. The first thing I got was an [E-mu] Emulator [sampler]. I didn't get one myself, but I rented an Emulator. I was using that on the sessions that I produced for the band Coil [Scatology]. The next album after Hole was Nail, and I did a ton of that on the Fairlight [CMI sampler]. I rented a studio that had a Fairlight, and I did tons of programming on the Fairlight while working with [producer/engineer] Warne Livesey. That's when there was a lot of the orchestral sounds happening. Still, on Nail all the drums are live.
Did you ever bring other people in to play instruments?
On the Foetus records, it never was anyone else until '94, with the album [Gash] I did on Sony.
To stay out of the "democracy" and get your own focus across?
Yeah. I thought it would dilute the purity if I did that. Even though it took me forever to play some of the parts, I didn't want to dilute that purity, because that's what Foetus was. Then I relaxed that a little bit later.
Was that transition interesting, to have people come in and play parts?
Yeah. It opened up a lot. I probably could have done that earlier. For whatever reason I didn't, and it's fine. A lot of what I do now, I play everything, but I bring in people when I need to.
Was there still an image you were cultivating for who Foetus was, or was it an extension of you? If there was an interview with you back then, you certainly weren't talking about picking daisies.
No, it was an extension of me. I was pretty full-on and full of piss and vinegar.
When I first met you years ago, I was almost a little nervous. But you were chatting away and being nice.
