Death In June-The Eye Volume 14

I’m open to people’s interpretations, I mean it’s like for instance the name Death in June, they’re been so many differeny interpretations, but I still think the most interesting one which is one of the more recent in the past few years was that I was derived from the assassination of the Archduke Prince Ferdinand Sarajevo in June 1914, I’d never thought about that but of course it does have a relevance we live in a world shaped by what happened that day.

 My dad bought me an acoustic guitar made in Russia that was cheap in a place called Petticoat Lane in the Eastern London in a big market that used to take place on Sunday, but  what I don’t remember he never buy me was an instruction manual that how and what to play and things like you actually have to tune this thing out so I just used to play along one of two strings, I don’t think my technique has changed much, I was still a very limited guitarist (????), but I got one of those very early and I remember doing the picktones and whenever I was going to get older just going out to the garden and being so frustrated with it and smashing it to bits. But it did help in ?????  I eventually bought a proper guitar when I was 16 from ABC Music in ??? and it was the brother of one of the members of ??? whoever was playing in ??? he was working in there an he was quite helpful and he chose a nice acoustic guitar and (??) some hints somewhat to buy to help. My first music lessons were at night school with nuns, it wasn’t really working out for me. But I was the put in the right direction.

 I’d met Tony Wakeford  a year or two before punk rock, probably in about 75 and we’d actually met on demonstrations at Anti Nazi League or  Rock Against Racism, RAR didn’t exist it then, it was sort of antidemonstrations, England was a (???) of extreme political views at the time, people were looking at different options, right and left, and we got on, and I knew he was playing bass guitar in group called Backwater which did sort of pop/ rock cover versions of groups songs such as Status Quo in fact and we’d met once or twice and it seemed ok, and one day a phone call from him in 76 and he said have you heard of punk rock,and I said yes I have, do you wat to form a group, yeah okay, cause he knew I was mucking around on the guitar. So we got together with another person which never really got out of bedroom which was named ASU  which stood for Active Service Unit which the IRA were calling themselves in London at the time letting off bombs and for me it’s kind of relevant because a few years before in 1974 I’d been blown out by the IRA in London and I was very lucky, I just walked past a shop doorway and WHACK it went off and… (???) forced along Oxford Street totally upright but all in slow motion, quite filmmaking (???) shot along god knows how many yards, you turn around, everything is in slow motion and the brains tries to cope with the situation and I remember these (???) falling down out of the sky or from the windows. It was a lovely moment and no one were kill that day, but people were getting killed regularly at the time, and so it seemed appropriate. But nothing was happening and  then I went down to the West Country to a seaside resort called Minehead for long weekend probably in the spring of  77, and punk by then was really beginning to make headlines, and I picked up a newspaper I was drinking my favourite beer, still is my favourite beer, Carlsberg Special Brew, and the newspaper headlines everywhere is crisis thiis crisis that crisis everywhere, in health service, ambulance service, in Northern Ireland, blablabla, and so that was the name so I phoned up Tony I said we’ve got the name, and as soon as we had that name things starting happening, we got out of the bedroom really, the guitarist we were working with was dropped, people started to (???) he knew what became the lead guitarist, lead guitarist what became the drummer, and we had a group, then we performed our first show in mid-77 at a punk festival in Guildford which is just outside London, which we considered probably a main town and we immediately had success, we were lucky that in the audience were reporters for Slash Magazine from America, which you may not be aware of but Search and Destroy and Slash were sort of main punky newwave fanzines or whatever you’d like to call them, more like newspapers in the States, they were impressed and things started happening and said you should come over to America cause the Americans will love you and by then we started to get more regular performances in London, and in december 77 I did fly to America for a month, and things started to fall in place a bit more, within (????) such as Search and Destroy and meeting other groups in the LA punks scene like ????  or you know the Flesh easters (??) at the Mask in Hollywood.

 After the nine months break a lot of things had personally happened in both Tony and I’s lives and  when we did meet out we were definitely slightly different to what we had been in Crisis which was what we wanted, this was the late  1980, and we started trying out songs together, I’ve written a few things and Tony obviously had, and we were trying things out with other people like a saxophonist, or manual ??? drum machines, and it wasn’t really ??? at all, we knew that, and after some weeks of this or even monthes, it was getting interesting but we knew it wasn’t quite right, by then Tony started working with another group called the Runners from 84,  who were a punk group but it’s been sort of changing and they were in the audience of Crisis and I’d met or at least knew one of them, Patrick Leagas, the drummer, he had been one of the last Crisis show, he made an indelible impression with me because he had a dead seagull into the back of his leather jacket in sort of crucifix form, and I thought that guy is interesting… And he (??) see if he could play drums with Death in June,  so we  set up a rehearsal,  and I remember him arriving and driving an motorcycle completely covered in fake leopard skin, including his helmet, that guy turns up who looks like an SS stormtrooper (???) the bike completely covered in leopard skin, so that was he, and Patrick still sartorially challenged anyway…  came into this rehearsal studios which were called… it was a cold storage which is in Brixton which was run by a group called This Heat, who hadn’t  (???) any of the powerpoints were, and we spent half of the evening looking where around we are gonna plug in our amps, and eventually we did.  And it was almost instantaneous, I think it’s the first track we did was Heaven Street and Patrick just changed everything, we knew we had a group.  So that was the beginning of Death in June, although we didn’t have a name for the group at that time, the name actually came when some weeks or months later it was getting close to our first performance in November 81 with The Birthday Party and a Berlin based group called Malaria. And we thought forward this first performance we should have a record out, and we were recording the 12” Heaven Street 3 tracks and I misheard something that Patrick said in the recording studio, and I thought he’d said Death in June, but he didn’t. But I said the name and it was instantaneous, it was like a mana from Heaven, thank you, we’ve got a name…So we finally had the time which everyone has a great time interpreting, but ??? post-rationalisation??? … And things began to fall into place, we began to play more performances and we started to build a following. And at some of those early performances we’d noticed that members of TOPY or PTV were turning up and I was curious, cause I was aware of PTV, I liked Genesis and I liked what he was doing and I was aware of David Tibet and his solo works with 23 Skidoo and his involvement with PTV, and of course I was aware of the boys that are now in Coil, like Sleazy had been in Throbbing Gristle. And so I was curious these people coming to see us and I was making notes about this, I was actually keeping a ??? on David Tibet. Eventually at at show we did at the bottom of  the Post Office tower in a club called the Livingroom which is run by Alan McGee, who was running Creation Records at the time, that was absolutely minuscule (???) by terrible groups, and had his own fanzine which (???) and I knew Alan McGee from buying some of his stuff at Rough Trade, he introduced me to David Tibet, we got on immediately that evening. Death in June was doing sort of two different shows, different approaches for each show and I’d been thinking about working with someone else cause Tony , and I thought my working relationship with Tony Wakeford was coming to an end, (???) instincts were telling me and this was round about 1983. And so we got on like a house on fire, litterally,  (??) he’d like Crisis, it was one of his favourite punk groups, and he was intrigued in what Crisis members had become,  at least the main songwriters, Tony Wakeford and I becoming Death in June. So we started communicating Tibet and I, he gave a whole list of lyrics which we started culling words from the first one which was The Torture Garden which was really Patrick choosing randomly some words from what he had been given, and then for me it was She Said Destroy, which was pretty much word for word, on Christmas Day 1983 became a song, I’d stepped aside that day, I told my partner I wouldn’t be going to dinner with him and his family that day, I would stay in and write this song, I had the feeling that it’s gonna be important, and via that connection with Tibet, Tibet was sort of (???) he knew everyone and so I started to meet people.

 I think it was one particular recording session of Happy Birthday Pigface Christus, which was going (???)  I  went along to do some work on the ??? farm studios in north London and that day Jeff Rushton was there or  John Balance, whatever you wanna call him, Bee was there from Into a Circle, Rose McDowall was there,  sqteve Stapleton was there, of course Tibet, and the guy that went on to become… what’s his name… (???)   he was there too, he had come along from school, he was still at school shall and he knew Bee, I can’t remember his real name right now.. So that was full of interesting people we seemed to get on very well, and that’s where (???) it is litteraly a crossroad where we all seemed to meet and started what we realized that we had then, at least, a sort of common feelings and we started working with each other, it was via Tibet. Tim (???) yeah.

 I think the sort of source of symbolism or at least contradictory apparently contradictory symbolism started in me quite early, and then once you start using them you begin to find tune your approach to the use of anything and then you start seeing it everywhere like I do constantly now, Boyd and I talked about this.  In fact Boyd was one of the people (???) it was via Tibet once again I was introduced to him by a telephone call, I was a great admirer of Boyd’s work before and and oh I was really loving the way he presented himself, with the (???) Black Album (???) with just NON written on it and I loved that name (??) for Death in June on the 12”. So it was that symbolic use, the way he used the N backwards so it looked like a wolfshook and stuff like that, and that got me thinking, and it was via a phone call to Tibet one day when I was living with Tibet in 1986, it was about his contribution to what was to become the Swastikas for Noddy album, that I first talked to Boyd Rice, I was introduced to him and we’ve discussed this whole thing, it goes haywire when we’re together, it’s good at the best of times, Boyd & I together, symbolism just gets out of the window, we can’t order anything without getting £6,66 come up or 13 pounds, all we see things, the first car we alle see almost without doubt will be a car registration number with 666, it’s almost like “it’s okay boy, we’re looking after you” with a little tap on the head. It becomes almost a joke. It even has a scene in the Pearls Before Swine film, but it’s true all the time, symbols are all around you, if it gets fine tuned into these things you (???) or whatever you want into them, and so people will read whatever they want into the symbols I use, but I’m not consciously on the lookout for (???) happened yesterday, first I was in Boston, I saw the sign, hopefully it was a good sign, at least I survived yesterday, I’ll see what happens today. So you get to use your skills at creating them yourself, and seeing how they can be interprete.

(???) if I feel that they deserve it, I will wrap them round my little finger. Why not, I’m stil here after so many years, I can afford to play with people, and if they’re stupid enough to play along. But it really depends, most people are fine and I’ll give answers accordingly interesting or  not.

 Something is on my mind at the moment is definitely the effect of Jean Genet’s work on me because it was 20 years ago this month I was reading Funeral Rites, the first book I ever read of his in the back of a van touring in Italy, which would turn up to be the last tour that Patrick Leagas and I did together promoting Nada!, and in a couple of weeks we’ll be doing an anniversary show in London, hopefully that all goes well although I had a terrible nightmare about it last night. So Jean Genet definitely was inspirational and the work of Yukio Mishima, and (??) is even on my mind now, it was because a few days ago in san Francisco I met someone in a gay bar, a Japanese guy who started talking to me, and he was in this country doing some promotional DVD on health and fitness, and it turned out he knew Yukio Mishima, he used to exchange letters with him,  and he was very suprised that he met someone like myself who could talk to him about the books he liked and my respected favourites, so odd things keep happening as regards my history at present, to me personally. Asides they’re’s been so many things, Joe Meek for instance, sort of England’s answer to Phil Spector, the first record that has ever bought for me was by my father was the Tornado’s Telstar, and I think that was such a strange record, I mean Joe Meek was a totally interesting individual as well, and that had an influence upon me I suppose, I found  inspirational tose kind of odd sound I thought I could use (???).

As I said earlier growing up in England in the 50s and 60s of course must have been just sucking it up all the time, (???) left an indelible impression somewhere along the line… Listening to the Love album Forever Changes, and the Love & Terror Cult album by Charles Manson, years ago, I think that was courtesy, at least Love was courtesy of David Tibet. You could use beautiful melodies but with contradictory lyrics, so you can sing lovely things about the snoaked cake against your pants, and (??).

They are the sort of moments that stand out in my mind, but it could be so many things. Seeing Leni Riefenstahl films for instance, for the first time, Triumph of the will, or news documentaries, there was also the Vietnam War was huge thing growning up to that everyday seeing that on television, and meeting someone in 1980 who had been there from the very beginning from 64 to 74 and I still know, he’s my best friend, he’s an Australian who was in the Viet Nam and what he had to say about certain situations, and how much he missed Viet Nam, he loved it, it was the grooviest time of his life,  people being honest about their experiences. And meeting other people, that were (???) in Berlin, (???) just recently seen (???) but I know someone personally  who was there, whose last battles were in the Tiergarden, the ??? and the Furher bunker, and he survived, he was a private, and he managed to get away when (???) he did survived and he lives very close to me to where I live in Australia. Ther’s sort of fundamental moments, he sort of helped keep me going, when I met him in 1989 when I was really undergoing a spiritual death in the UK, and I didn’t think there was any future, he was part of my resurrection. There are too many different things, it’s hard to say.

 Have you found that you have to sort of changed the way you do business over the years?

 I trust fewer people and I can read when there’s going to be problems, and I know how people are going to react, it makes me a lot more cynical, yes, unfortunately.

 Other things you would have probably done differently?

 No I don’t have any regrets whatsoever, I think everything ‘s been brilliant, it’s all gone according to plan, I mean I got frustrated at some stages about certain things,  but that was meant to happen at that time. To force an issue to have made it happen soon probaly wouldn’t have worked as well. One of the best films I’ve seen recently (??????) that was the Butterfly Effect, and I thought, that’s true, if you do change things it can all go not according to plan so, I think it’s worked out, I ‘ve been constantly given signs that it is the right path, so I have no regret whatsoever.

 What is your idea of Control?

 The Will to Power, and I’ve been very good at it, and that’s why I have no regrets, I’m living the life I wanted to live, I’m doing the job I’ve always dreamt of doing, I did do exactly what I wanted to do in life, I’ve seen the world, I’ve had a very interesting life. Done lots of interesting things, met lots of interesting lovely people.

 Is there still stuff left to do?

 I would like to think so, but sometimes, (???) I just would like to spend more time with the people I love, and I really love the people I love

 Any misconceptions about you that you’d want to clear up?

 No

 You like people talking about you? 

 My ears burn constantly. I lie awake at night 2 o’clock in the morning, and I can tell my partner something’s going on out there, somewhere in the rest of the world where it’s like mid-day, something is going on, and sure enough I’ll found out a few days later. I don’t mind, If it wastes people’s time that I don’t like, that’s good, but if it reaches people’s lives, people that like me, or that I like, that’s good too. It’s all part of the process.

 Do you think there’s no such things as bad publicity?

 I wouldn’t go that far, I think there’s publicity that can actually just ruing things, but it depends on how you handle it. So far so good.