BILLY CHILDISH

Billy Childish

John LeKay: Did you always want to be a musician, even before you went to art school, or was it the other way around?

Billy Childish: What is the other way around? Did you always want to be an artist before you went to music school? 

JL: Laughs. Yeah.

 

BC: No, music was a funny thing with me. I really liked it from when I was a kid, I heard Dusty Springfield Lonnie Donagen and stuff like that  - Louis Armstrong and Frank Sinatra - and I found it all a bit scary. Then I heard the Beatles when I was about 3 and really liked them. My parents told me they were miming on television and I liked that because you didn't have to be able to sing or play, you could pretend to sing along. I had a Beatles wig and a toy guitar and pretended to play looking at myself in the mirror and just opening my mouth to the records - a bit like singing at school assembly when we had to sing hymns in the morning. So that was my sort of introduction to music and I thought it was good. But I wasn't allowed to sing in the School choir or anything like that because the music teacher told me that I was tone deaf. He’d listen out to us in turn and when he came to me I got the elbow. So I never learned to sing or play an instrument. I was warned off that type of thing.

I always find that strange in school - if you are not good at music, you're not allowed to do it but if you're not good at math, they make you do it more.

The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show

An English council estate
 

JL: Laughs.

BC: That was from when I was 5 till 7; and then from 8 till 10 I went to a junior school which was a couple of miles away on another set of estates for kids whose parents were in the Royal Navy.

JL: This is in Chatham, in Kent?

BC: Yeah. This school was still quite rough but supposedly a bit more progressive because we had all ages in each class. After Junior school we had to take our 11 plus, which determines what type of education you receive before you leave to get a job. I failed that so went to a secondary school, which is bottom of the heap. That meant I would work as a laborer in the Royal Naval Dockyards in one capacity or another and not go on to further education as I had no qualifications. Everything in Chatham was to serve the Royal Navy. All the industry supported the dock yard. I wanted to go to the local art school but they wouldn’t even look at my work because I had no qualifications.

 

 

JL: Didn’t you work as a stonemason's apprentice at one point?

BC: Yeah, that was in the dockyard. Only they didn't really have any masons left anymore, it was all running down and I was put out to work with the PDSA, I think they were called. They were a government body that did pubic works. I was put out working on ancient monuments like Rochester castle and Upnor castle. I also used to go up to London every few months to study at Stockwell College of Building. You see I had to study geometry and other things that I couldn't really do because I never learned math or writing, owing to me being an undiagnosed dyslexic. When I was attending the building college I used to stay in my brother's squat in Chalk Farm. He was studying at the Slade Art School. He went to a grammar school and was differently educated from me. It was up town that I got to hear punk rock music in 1976.

JL: Your brother is older or younger than you?

BC: Older than me.

JL: Why was he differently educated from you?

BC: Because my father left home when I was about 7. My big brother's 4 years older than me and there is usually a lot more pressure on the first born to sparkle. Also, he was more obedient than I was and good at forcing himself to do lessons, and so he passed his 11 plus and went on to grammar school. I was sort of like dyslexic. Besides, the family was in free fall by the time I went to school and no one was interested in me, nobody looked out for me or any of these things. I was considered a bit of a hopeless case. I was sort of the runt of the litter. I was the butt of the family jokes.

Billy, Chatham Dockard 1976

 

So anyway, I ended up going to the local art college and this person I met in the pub, big Russ, asked me if I would sing in this group, so I did and we called ourselves the Pop Rivets. I was only asked to sing because I was the only punk rocker in town. They needed a singer and it suited me because, though I couldn’t sing, I wasn’t shy of being silly.

JL; The Sex Pistols; did they come out in 75 or 76?

BC: I thought the pistols would be well under way around 76. Sort of like their first 45 was late 76. They were in the press a bit in the summer of 76 onwards, you heard a bit about this stuff called punk rock.

JL: Yeah I remember that, I used to be one. Laughter.  At what point did you start playing an instrument?

BC: Towards the end of the Pop Rivets I learned to play a little bit of Bo Diddley. That would be about 1979 then Big Russ showed me how to play Run Chicken Run by Link Wray and a mate of mine, Micky, who was the roadie with the Pop Rivets, had a group called the Milkshakes. I sort of learned rock and roll off him. So I learned to play guitar when I was about 20.  

Billy Childish. Crimes against music blues recordings 1988-99

 

JL: To change the subject a little -  we talked a bit about this the other day - how has being a Sagittarius with Sagittarius moon affected your music? You're also Sagittarius rising, is that correct?

BC: Yeah, I'm Sagittarius with moon in Sagittarius and Jupiter in Sagittarius, and my rising is in Sagittarius. And the sun, rising and Jupiter are all conjunct. Which means it’s all amplified quite a bit I understand.

JL: So how would that impact your music and your creativity?

BC. I don't know about music. Laughs. It depends on who you believe. The idea would be that Jupiter is very expansive and it’s in its home sign and likes it there quite a bit. I think it means that I can never do enough. It's a bit boundless if you like. So it’s not odd that I’ve made a hundred albums and - even though I can’t read and write - made 40 collections of poetry and several novels, and also a few thousand paintings. I mean I could be a painter or a writer or musician, it just so happens that I can do all three. I've got that capacity to do everything at once and a lot of it. 

 

 

JL: So is it like a drive then; do you feel driven, a boundless kind of energy?

BC: It’s a boundless energy but also I've got Mars in Scorpio, which is really good for drive. That's in its home sign too, which is useful for drive as well as sex and death. Laughter.

JL:  Laughs. Really, wow. Laughter.

BC: I wrote a good lyric about death the other day, with my friend Neal. The song's called The Vermin Poets – it’s also the name of our little group. Neil’s the singer and guitarist, I play bass and my wife Julie’s on drums.

JL: What's Neil’s other name?

BC: Palmer. Neil Palmer. He was in a real brilliant group called the Fire Department in the 90’s. One of the best unknown British groups ever.

Anyway, The Vermin Poet lyric is ‘what stalks death in a ruffled cravat?’ the answer is - a vermin poet.

The Fire department.  Link for music here.  http://www.archive.org/details/leda014

Painting by Billy Childish

 

JL: Like that.

BC: Yeah, that's something to do with Mars in Scorpio – poets stalking death. What's the other line in that Julie? What guards God wisdom from a beach combers shack?

Julie: Yeah.

Laughter.

BC: It’s a bit silly but so is life. And of course poets are vermin. Poets are top vermin, shortly followed closely by estate agents and dentists.

JL: What about musicians?

BC: I don't think musicians are true vermin, though they’d very much like to be, they’d like the status of being a poet. Maybe musicians that want to be poets are ultra vermin. A lot of musicians want to be poets cause it makes them feel a whole lot better about themselves. Makes them feel they are artists. Musicians rightly have a very low opinion about themselves so they like to boost themselves up a bit by trying to become vermin.

JL: By using a poetic kind of language?

BC: Maybe or by sort of using dodgy rhythms and actually thinking they have some sort of merit. Like Jim Morrison  Laughs

 

 

You see, it's not good enough just to be good at something, or be paid millions of dollars, they want to be a poet as well. They hope that pretending to be a poet will work at parties for pulling girls. Or maybe pulling men, depending. I've met other musicians who want to portray themselves as outlaws. I think they think that this will add some sort of credibility to their dull existence.

 

JL: They've said that to you?

 

BC: Actually I’ve overheard it. I was on a tube train and this musician was explaining himself to some young lady he’d cornered and said ‘well, really I'm an outlaw.’ I had to stand back so’s I didn't get puke splashing on my boots. I suppose he was almost a vermin poet. Loud Laughter.

JL: That's funny. On the subject of celebrities, I know you had some sort of influence on Kurt Cobain and lots of others.

BC: I’m not so sure about that. I'm told so but I don't know so. Maybe it’s an urban myth. Laughs. It shouldn't be that important. Apparently he had records of mine. I don't know the ins and outs of these things. I mean somebody asked me if I had ever met him and I said I'm not sure, there were some longed haired people shaking their hair on stage at some gig. Could have been Status Quo, could have been Nirvana. Who knows. Coughs.

JL: What about what he said about you in the Playboy interview and how many records he has of yours?  Think I heard he had dozens of them.

BC. I stopped reading Playboy when I was 15. No, I’ve never read that article or seen it.

 

Painting by Billy Childish

The milkshakes.  Garage Bands on The Tube 1984, also featuring Tracey Emins first TV appearance

 

JL: What do you think of his songs and music?

BC: It’s not really my cup of tea, I’m a bit old for that type of thing. I stopped going to gigs after 1977. Luckily, I can say that without Kurt getting angry - because he’s dead. Though maybe an angry ghost is a dangerous thing. You see some of these famous people who are fans of mine get very upset because I'm not interested in music or listening to them. I mean I lost interest in music after 1977. But when people tell me that Nirvana were a punk rock group - I've really got to laugh very loudly. “No” they tell me, ‘it’s true’ and then I was just flabbergasted. Laughs.

JL:  I mean you had Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious and when you think of how they were in life and on stage. I mean I don't know how much of it was contrived or theatrics.  It did seem a little bit authentic. What would you say is the difference between what the Pistols were doing and what people are doing  today, imitating that type of stuff?

BC: It’s very similar actually because I don't think the Sex Pistols - even though they embodied an idea of what punk was - were quite contrived and theatrical themselves. Undoubtedly they were a good rock and roll group in 1976 - when they had their original bass player, Glen Matlock. But Sid was very theatrical and staged and quite silly. Maybe that makes it better, but it’s not my type of thing. In truth I would have thought that Kurt Cobain was way more serious as a musician and as someone trying to put something across than Sid Vicious.

I never had The Sex Pistols or a Nirvana album. The kind of punk rock I liked was not so manufactured.

JL: So it was contrived then?

BC: Well, yeah, obviously. I mean they were a very rock group - the Sex Pistols; I don't think they sound very good in retrospect. I liked them quite a bit in 77; but they don't stand up, they are more rock than punk.

JL: What about off-stage, mean the way they lived and all that?

BC: I don't know really. I have no idea. They hanged around with art people. I think Johnny Rotten married one of the Slits. She's a posh lady, but I don’t know much about it. I don't know much about the private lives of the famous. I don't think Kurt Cobain's early life was any less grotty or difficult. It's just if you like the music or not, I suppose.

Basically, I think the Sex Pistols are quite rock and Nirvana are very rock. I like homemade music more but that's just personal taste.

Billy Childish

Billy Childish & The Buff Medways - Medway Wheelers

JL: What do you think of Pete Doherty, The Libertines and Baby Shambles?

BC: I've never heard it, but I've been asked to meet Mister Doherty on a number of occasions, by his ‘people’. We did play with The Libertines a couple of times but I think he was in prison at the time, or in a hospital. It’s not my cup of tea. People that want the rock star life style don't generally make the best table companions.

JL: Yeah, I know he has written lot of poetry when he was younger and written a lot of poetry before he got into songwriting.  I think, and he got his A levels in that sort of thing.

BC: Isn't he a sort of, university boy?

JL: Yeah I think he is, but I do sense there is something authentic about him as well.

BC: Yes there is something authentic, I know where you are driving, but these people are acting out in public. I mean that's what teenagers are meant to do, but he's probably older than that.

BC: How old?

 

JL: 20 something -  22 or something.

 

BC: Right. Maybe. I doubt he's that young. I remember hearing about him some time back when I was asked to meet him. He’d already been in university and these people don't go to university until they leave school at about 19, so he’s probably 25 or 26, by now, I presume. I’m just guessing, I've got no idea. All I know is they tried to get me to meet him a few times because they figured I could help him out, but I got bored waiting. We were playing and they wanted me to wait up to meet him but I wanted to go home and go to bed actually.

 

Laughter.

 

It’s just lost kids without parenting. People scrabbling to find the edge and society doesn't provide that very well anymore. So they flail about trying to fill emptiness by doing things in excess without regard for themselves or others. It’s as if they are lost souls trying to find themselves. I suppose that at least they are trying to find themselves, but how they do it and when it will happen isn't usually very interesting to watch or get involved in.

 

I've got no problems speaking to Pete Doherty, or giving him the benefit of my advice, I'm just not waiting around all night whilst he takes some drugs. Not when I want to go home to bed.

 

JL: I mean it must be impossible having to go through that and then having the whole world watching you on top of it?

 

BC: And also being given money. It exacerbates everything. The best thing to do is grow up

Painting by Billy Childish

 Billy Childish

JL:  Right.

BC: The one thing that people don't mention about this rock and roll thing - I was speaking to a good friend of mine in Minneapolis and we both come to the conclusion – that when these old folks in the 1950’s said rock and roll would undermine the fabric of society, and how everything was done, they were right. Even though these people seemed very boring and reactive at the time, what with smashing Be-bop-a-Lula records and what have you, no one has actually looked at the situation and said they were right. Laughs.

JL: That it actually did somehow?

BC: Yeah.

JL: What kind of influence has it had overall?

BC: A highly negative one. The whole baby boomer generation messed up on drugs. All because of this big over-reaction that they had to the fathers not being up to much and the turmoil that was created by the undermining of the world order by the Great War, then the Second World War. Everyone was too excited at becoming consumers to think straight. So now people feel really un-glued to the world. They don't know who they are or where they belong. That's where you get the Hell's Angels from - sending your kids off to war flying airplanes and blowing people up and when they come home they can’t stop doing it; they find it difficult and need a drink and some drugs. They want to keep a little bit of excitement in they’re lives. In short, you can’t turn people into killers and then expect them to make model citizens.

JL: After all that adrenaline pumping and killing people?

 

BC: Or whizzing around in fast planes. You known they whiz around on a fast motorcycle listening to some mindless rock and roll music to sort of help quiet the devils that are raging inside.

 

JL: Here's a question about something we talked about the other day.

 

Have you made jokes in interviews and said things spontaneously, off the cuff, and it's been taken out of context and twisted or misunderstood by the person who you were doing the interview with?

 

BC: Usually, yeah.

 

JL; So how does that happen, is that because they change the wording in print, or the joke kind of gets lost in translation somewhere?

 

BC: It's very difficult talking to a person who has a different sense of humour; or as is often the case, talking to people who don’t even have humour.  Laughter.

 

Also, I’m very serious with my jokes. I like to play, but I’m still serious. That’s a bit complex for an interviewer to get across. And of course people usually judge each other by their own perceptions, so if you ask me a question about something that matters to you and I reply to it in a way that doesn't quite fit in with your expectation, you might get sulky and feel that I’m attacking your grandmother. It might mean nothing to me, but the perception is I’m not quite playing the game. I wrote a song recently called “Bugger the Buffs” about our old group.

Billy Childish

The Buff Medways.

JL: Bugger the what?

 

BC: Buffs, meaning the Buffs Medways. It’s got lots of silly rhymes in it making fun of us and the famous who’ve liked us at one time or another and people have told me that it is a very bitter song.

 

JL: Who told you this?

 

BC: A few people. Not just critics. A Germen told me it was a bitter song. Another chap said it was very embittered. I said maybe it sounds that way if you don't have a sense of humor.

You see, if I say something rude for fun, there’s no anger in it, but the person who's hearing it, maybe they don't say something rude about someone unless they want to kill them or are feeling very bitter, right? So they presume that I feel as they do, when I don’t.

 

JL; Yes.

 

BC: That's how you can get misinterpreted - because people project their neurosis onto you.

JL: Exactly like their meanings and their baggage?

 

BC :Yes. Like if I say Joe So-and-So is an arsehole, they report that I really hate Joe So-and-So, where as I might just think he’s been an arsehole, period. Or maybe for me calling someone an arsehole is a term of endearment. Laughs. You can speak the most outrageous thing as gentle as you like but if they see it written down - as is the case with interviews and emails - the most harmless little comment can come across like a punch in the face, sent with all the venom that the person could muster. Something gets translated through the journalist's head and onto the written page. You don't get any of the nuance the person was putting into it. I say ‘he was a bloody idiot’ and I laugh but on the printed page it says “Billy bitterly attacked Joe so–and-so because Billy is jealous”.

Billy Childish

Woodcut by Billy Childish

JL: And leaves the laughs part out and the intonation out of it?

 

BC: Yes, and that person might have heard it in that way as well, because people don't hear the laughter or anything, because they're reacting to their own . . .

 

JL: Uptightness.

 

BC: When you say a lot of them, I presume you mean humans? Laughs.

 

JL: Yeah, a lot of humans.  Laughs.

 

BC: Do remember that journalists are human as well or at least trying to be.

 

JL: I try to keep that in mind but it’s a tough one. Laughs.

 

JL: You're a very honest human. Where does that come from?

BC: I'm not sure. I got told off for trying to do some deceptions when I was a kid. Like kicking a load of creosote up the chimney breast of my father’s house then painting it over very badly with white paint and denying any knowledge of it; but lying didn't seem to work too good. My father is a serial liar and this somehow ingrained into me that it wasn't a good idea to lie. I've found lying very uncomfortable. It doesn't sit very easy with me so I've always tried to be truthful and honest. In a way, trying is putting too much emphases on it. It's a little bit like my nature not to lie very easily.

I have run into problems because I'm like what most people aren't, they are pretending to be what they're like. So when they meet me they presume I'm pretending to be what I'm like as well, which I'm not. It then means that I have to deal with what they think I am pretending to be like. I am what I am - my rising sign is my sun sign so I is what I is, and I say things and people think I'm pretending to mean something else when I'm not, and I don't have to try not to lie - I just don't.

JL: So what people basically see or hear is how you is?

BC: What they see and hear is what they want to see and hear. Laughs. I'm nothing much to do with it; I'm just something to blame.

JL; Do you think that because most people have a problem with being honest and are taught to be deceptive, that it’s very rare that you come across a straightforward person. That's my experience anyway.

BC: People feel that they have to be very canny to get their hand in the sweetie jar. They try way too hard and try to be smart, that’s why they’re dumb. They get bitten on the arse by their shadow. I just had this thing happen with a friend of mine, he has been quite duplicitous with me and it will much to his own loss. Though he may grow rich. But nobody warms up to that bullshit very much, you run out of reality. It’s a bit like people who play the national lottery because they want to win. Everyone wants to win so they already must believe they’ve lost. Then they think that a little lying in life won’t hurt. Even if people notice they can get away with it and it doesn't really matter. They don't take life very seriously.

My fault.  Cover of Billy's first novel

www.billychildish.com

 Billy Childish

JL: What, because you think their not thinking about the different kinds of repercussions?

 

BC: Yes, they don't understand that life matters a lot and should be taken very seriously. When I say ‘seriously’ I mean it matters and realize that it's a hilarious joke at the same time, but life does matter.

 

JL: So when you take that level of honesty into the business world, like the commercial fine art world or the music world where there is so much deception going on and a lot of what you see is a facade; what happens when you start bringing honesty and integrity into this situation?

 

BC: Well, you don't bring it into it because it's not allowed. What happens is that you are excluded. I mean nobody wants anybody rocking the boat. So you can exist on the margins but you're not going to be allowed into the center of things. Well, even if you are allowed into the center of things, you would not want to deal with the people. So you don't bring light into that darkness, because part of the code is you have to smash your light if you want in. 

 

JL: The code, yeah

.

BC: Because otherwise, you can't all wriggle around under the carpet together. You’ve got to be a beetle as well. Laughs

 

JL: So light doesn't work with darkness then?

BC: No it's not that light doesn't work with darkness, light is the only thing that does work with darkness, but not in that club. You know, it doesn't fit, you can’t, you wouldn't want to be there. That’s the nature of the beast – that world runs on those terms that if you want to be there, you've got to play the game and playing the game is not blowing the whistle.

 

JL: Blowing the whistle or?

 

BC: Or saying to everybody, look do you realize we all are a bunch of wankers! It's like, your at the party and you say to the host ‘do you realize that you and all your mates are all a bunch of wankers’. I mean people just turn the music up or kick you out. They'll just tell you to go home and that's what you do, you go home and paint in your sad little bedroom and wank. Laughs.

 

JL: Laughs. So this is a conscious decision you've made? - About margins, the central insider type stuff.

 

BC: I’m sorry, can you ask me that again?

 

JL: I mean, what is the difference between being on the margins and all this central activity, in the long run?

 

BC: I don't think there is much central activity personally. I would question whether there was central activity.

 

JL: Or whether it’s just an illusion of some sort?

 

 

 

Painting by Billy Childish

Continue to Part 2