Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin - Ian Astbury

Episode Date: July 23, 2025

Ian Astbury is the longtime frontman and founding member of The Cult. He began his music career in 1980, initially gaining recognition with the post-punk group Southern Death Cult. The band later evolved into The Cult, with guitarist Billy Duffy, bassist Jamie Stewart, and drummer Raymond Taylor Smith. Known for their blend of post-punk, gothic rock, and hard rock, The Cult released several successful albums throughout the 1980s and 1990s, including Love, Electric, and Sonic Temple, featuring hits such as “She Sells Sanctuary,” “Love Removal Machine,” and “Fire Woman.” Astbury continues to lead The Cult in the present day, most recently fronting the band on their 2025 North American tour, which features music from both The Cult and their earlier incarnation. ------ Thank you to the sponsors that fuel our podcast and our team: LMNT Electrolytes https://drinklmnt.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Athletic Nicotine https://www.athleticnicotine.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Squarespace https://squarespace.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Sign up to receive Tetragrammaton Transmissions https://www.tetragrammaton.com/join-newsletter

Tetragrammaton. I was born in 62, the year the Beatles broke, with my father had three sisters, so three aunts and then my mother had seven. So there was all these matriarchs raising me and they were all obsessed with Beatles and Stones and pop. So I had that. I remember shopping with my mum when I was like 18 months old. Beatles are in Liverpool. We're in Liverpool shopping. I remember us holding our hand and people freaking out. Yeah. I was 62. Unbelievable. So I'm 62 now. Yeah. So it's definitely a...

Yeah, I'm right behind you right there. Very,'re right there. I'm very close. Uh-huh. But we've, I mean, we've been together for a long time. We've been together for a long time. You've been, since we met, since I first sat down with you, you weren't in the dorm. You were out. I was still living in the dorm. You were still at the dorm? Yeah, I walked from the dorm every day to Electric Lady.

Right. Okay. So that is one thought that I was like, was Rick in the dorm? Yeah. I don't think I had ever produced an album before your album. I was working on- How you done Rainin' Blood? I remember working on the Beastie Boys album, but that was not done. It was still in process.

I want to ask you, I don't know how you knew about me. Because all there were at that time were the seven inch singles. That's right. Cookie Puss. I didn't make Cookie Puss, though. But the Beasties did. I heard that. They made it. Yeah. But I was like, what are they doing?

Yeah. What's going on in that world? Yeah. I had to know everything about it. And then your name came up. Mm-hmm. You were either working with them or associated with them in some way.

Mm-hmm. And then it was like, as we were going through the process of Electric One, it was within called Electric was called, I think I was trying to reenact the scene from Apocalypse Now and Richard Branson's Mansion. They put us in after Love album, they put us in Beggars Banquet, put us in this Richard Branson's studio in Oxfordshire, which goes back to the 13th, 14th century. There was an Irish war found running around, there was fields, and I was just lost because I was a city kid. We had so much outboard gear, digital gear, and that seemed to be getting layered on every track. And I would come in, I'd be eating mushrooms at the field.

I'd come in in the evenings, reenacting the same from Apocalypse Now. I'd be in full camo paint and come in and go like, what is this? It's so dense. I can't hear anything. And I'd already clicked with cookie puss in my head. And that stayed with me, the stripped back sound. And that's when I think we reached out to you, was that like, do you think you could fix this?

And I believe your response was like, give me two or three original tracks and we'll fix the rest of it. And from there we came to New York and we met with you and I remember you put on the blue cheer, summertime blues and I'm not gonna say what you said, but it's quite derogatory towards English music at that time. Like overproduced, dense, much more kind of- I felt like the rock and roll had left. The animal wasn't in it. That energy had turned into something else.

It had. I think growing up in North America was a real thing for me as well, because I grew up in Canada. So to me, New York City was Mecca. It was a place that was mythical. And every Saturday morning, I would watch religiously Soul Train, and I would try and copy the dance moves,

and I wanted this music. I was so caught up in it, and all the sports and everything, but just... Soul Train was the greatest. You know? Greatest show. What year was it? 75.

Pink Floyd came to Hamilton, Ontario. I was 13. How did you get from Liverpool to Ontario? Well, my mother was Scots. She was from Glasgow. And at the age of six weeks old, I was pretty much taken to Scotland. So we lived between Liverpool area,

was Birkenhead, it was across the river, the River Mersey. With a ferry across the Mersey, that's where it goes to, Birkenhead. Which isn't considered to be Liverpool, and people in that local area will let you know. Like New Jersey, New York, it's like, no. But it's just right over the river. It's just literally over the river.

It's right there. So, dad's from that area, mother's from Glasgow. So I lived between the two cities, and in the early 70s, Britain was in an economic slump. What was Glasgow like at that time? Very rough. Both cities had been bombed very heavily during World War II.

So I was born 17 years after the end of World War II. We were still playing in bombed out buildings as kids. Everybody still had a post-war mentality rationing and fruit came in a can. Wow. So Malcolm Claren talked about this. We were born in a culture of necessity as opposed to the culture of abundance, availability.

And that's why that music, I honestly believe, came out at that time, because it came out of a very desperate, necessary life force was coming through this world that had been bombed. And that's why the Beatles were so important. So your first memory of music sounds like your parents and the Beatles were so important. So your first memory of music sounds like your parents and the Beatles. Yeah. My dad was in the Merchant Navy. Yeah. He traveled a lot and he brought records back.

In fact, he was in Brooklyn in the 50s. He would bring back records like Paul Robeson. Wow. And play them in the house. So growing up, you heard eclectic music. Yeah. My mother loved Johnny Mathis. Oh, fantastic. You got to hear all different things. I got to hear everything.

That's great. I remember seeing Magical Mystery Tour on TV when it came out. Yeah. But it was in black and white. Wow. I remember trading yellow submarine, trading cards on the playground.

Yeah. They were like, didn't have Pokemon cards, we had yellow submarine cards. Yeah. You know, pirate radio. Even then, there was pirate radio. In the late 60s, I had a small Japanese transistor radio, about eight or nine, and I had a single,

it was one single, it was mono, single earplugs. So when I went to bed, when I was supposed to be sleeping, I was listening to Radio Luxembourg, could pick up a bit of Radio Caroline. So I was hearing this other music from other dimensions. Like I vaguely remember hearing Writers on the Storm in 70s, 71. Came through this little headphones,

like something exotic, you know, at the age of 10. And then Bowie, of course. The fact that you were able to hear these things and no one else was able to hear them at that time, how did that impact you? Do you think it would be different if it was playing on the radio and everyone heard it? Or was it special because it was like a secret that you were let in on? Well, because we moved around a lot, I was always a new kid at school. I went to about

nine schools between going from Glasgow to Liverpool area, Merseyside, I was always an outsider. I was always a new kid at school. But the constant was music. So I'd find the kids that were the other kids on the fringes of the regular, the more conservative kids that were programmed, we were not programmed. We were on the outside.

I had long hair in the 60s as well. So music's what we identified with was like, what do you like? And be like, Slade, Sweet, T-Rex, Bowie. Be like, okay, I'm with you. Slade were kind of like, they started the skinheads. Sweet were a bit more glam. They wore a lot more makeup in Slade.

So Sweet were kind of more glammy. Mark Bolan was femme. Like if you like Bolan, you were like, you know, definitely on the outside, because he wasn't a geezer. I loved Bolan. First two singles I bought. The music was incredible. Oh, it's staggering.

Staggering. In fact, I think the doc just came out on him, on Mark Bowman. But first two things I bought was Life on Mars with my own money and 25 pence. And I think it was Telegram, Sam, like seven inches. Went to Woolworths and got them at 10. And that was it.

That was zero point. I now had the actual holy relic in my hand. It was vibrating. It was a tantric weapon. The 70s single went on and I just played it. What was your first memory of punk rock? Oh, first memory of punk rock? Well, I was in Canada at the time and we immigrated to Canada in 1973 because the economy in Britain was really bad and there was no work. And we had an aunt who lived in Hamilton, Ontario.

So she was able to sponsor my family to go to Canada. So my dad was like, we're going to emigrate. We've got a choice of New Zealand, South Africa, or Canada. Let's pick it out of the hat. I think they've written Canada on every single bit of paper. But it was a fun game for the kids. I have a brother who's 11 months younger and a sister who's five years younger. So we all picked the name out and he said, what do you got?

Canada. It's like, okay, we're going to Canada. So I think the first thing was like being on the, coming from the airport in Toronto to Hamilton on a freeway in a big car, a massive car, looking out the window in absolute disbelief at the architecture, the freeways, the size of the cars. So different. So different. Yeah.

Completely different planet. There was television shows coming from America that we saw, but being in it in 5D, you know, really in it. Yeah. And still BBC was so ubiquitous that I don't know how much US stuff you'd see. We got things like- We'd see films maybe.

I remember stuff like, well, the kind of films my father would take me to see were things like Lawrence of Arabia, David Lean, Peter O'Toole, who Bowie adored. That's where we got the, Let's Dance look was, Peter O'Toole, who Bowie adored. That's where he got the, let's dance look was from Peter O'Toole. That was the character. Yeah, so that was the kind of films with these epic romantic films that were taken to see. Oh, I saw the Jungle Book.

And I've seen that, the Technicolor, which was pretty intense. The color was intense because the lives, the places we lived were, you know, post-war, very gray, quite monochromatic. And then you go and see a Technicolor movie and you'd be like, whoa. I think the Beatles were tapping into that with, obviously they went from gothic tenements and grayness and bombed out Britain and Northern Germany to, you know, having

cups of tea and all of a sudden get psychedelic. So there was this new world of color. If you think of their album covers, it did kind of go from a black and white world to a technicolor world just over the covers. But Revolver to Rubber Soul, Rubber rubber sole, revolver, then I think it was Sergeant Peppers. I think that's right. Then that's like a full scene change. That's nuts. But there's so much going on. But that was my first kind of impressions of North America. So Star Trek. Yeah. I'm of Star Trek. But then

coming to North America and we got to our apartment, which was on the 11th floor of an apartment building, that my mind was blown. My dad and we got to our apartment, which was on the 11th floor of an apartment building, that my mind was blown. My dad said we got this TV set. It's a huge piece of furniture. It was an Admiral, I remember that. 48 channels, 48 channels in color. Yeah.

We could not believe this piece of machinery. It was alien to us. We had three channels in black and white. Yeah. But the good thing was when we lived in the Merseyside area, you'd have top of the poppies every Thursday night. And it would for some reason play later on BBC Wales because we were in the Northwest.

So we'd see it on BBC Northwest, whatever that was, and then flip over and be able to see it again. That's the only way you could see Starman in 1972 when it was on in black and white. It's like you flip over to the BBC Wales. So maybe got to see half of it again or something like that. But I remember that being on TV. But the thing, Britain was that everybody saw

pretty much every kid at that moment who was drawn into music and this new culture, post-war culture, the lightning, the voltage was coming through the same channel. And that's what they were picking up on. So it was a collective experience. So other than the pirate radio that you got to hear, because that was outside of that.

Yeah, that was outside of that. There's a lot of pop magazines, mostly aimed at like teenage girls. Jackie, it's a magazine called Pop Swap. Color pictures of your favorite pop stars, both of you appear in these magazines. Tear these pictures out, they'd be on the walls of my aunt. You'd see these color pictures, again, color,

in this black and white world, monochromatic world, and you see these color images of whomever they were into. And as the time was progressing, the clothing was changing, the look was changing. That was our Instagram. Was actually tactilely tearing pictures out of magazines. Because when I was in Canada,

I was so homesick for the culture, I missed it. It was very different in Canada. And then I was at another, I was so homesick for the culture. I missed it. It was very different in Canada. And then I was at another. I was definitely an absent outsider. I was an immigrant and treated as such. So I wasn't with the regular Native. Kids had been there for several generations. So my group was like Indigenous.

One of my best friends was from Jamaica. There was a German girl. Didn't speak much English. That was my set. And Kiss was very popular, but I saw the New York Dolls on Don Krishna's rock concert, whatever, like 74, and I was like, oh, this. So you talk about punk rock. That was probably the first time I saw anything. I just watched that clip the other day, that exact clip of them on the I was like, personality crisis or something.

That's what it was. You forget how unbelievable David Johansson and Johnny Thunders. Oh my God. You're a teenage kid. It was a good group. It was a phenomenal group. Billy and I bonded on that later. We went to see Johnny Thunders in the early 80s in London, and I saw him.

We actually ended up playing with him at the Cat Club in New York. Fantastic. Very drunk. He wasn't in good shape. He was being held up on stage, but. Yeah, I saw him fall off several stages over the years. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, it was a lot. I mean, it was a Petri dish. It was just, it was a Petri dish. It was just my path. I didn't separate. I had some sort of unique path. That was my life. That was my family, my life.

It just was. I just accepted it just was and had to deal with the trials and tribulations of each change. I don't think my parents really understood the effect it had on us, the way it impacted us, all these different changes. But like I said, the music stayed constant and it was always there. If I needed some sort of escape, there's any transgressions or abandonment

or whatever it was, or being resented at school, a new school for being an immigrant kid or whatever, the music would come on and go home and put the music on. And that would be like, I'm now in my place. Turns you question about punk rock. I mean, New York Dolls, yes. But we went back on a vacation in 77 and it was a Queen's Jubilee.

And my grandfather wanted us to go see the Queen on the Royal yacht. There was going down the Mersey and we're on the Birkenhead side. So we went to some point where you could see there's the Royal yacht going by and everyone's waving, hello, the Queen, and it's a jubilee. And then there's all these kids like with spiky hair and ripped clothes. And I was looking at them going, what is going on? Who are these disheveled kids?

Yeah, because you hadn't even seen images of punks yet. No. I think there was maybe a vague whisper about the pistols, like listening to, because we had FM radio in Canada. We had stereo. And they would play full albums. And they would start to talk about this thing happening in the UK.

So this is 77, summer of 77. And I remember going to Woolworths because that's where I got my singles. And number one was blanked out. It was just like they had all the other top 20, but number one was blanked out, it was, God save the Queen. Wow. And these kids were flipping off the Queen.

And I was like, they're outsiders. Wow, my tribe. So as soon as I went back to Canada after like three, four week holiday, for Christmas, my mom got me Never Mind the Bollocks. So December 25th, 1977, I'm opening that and gone like, oh, and I put it on. She says, play the record, let's hear it. I'll play it for our friends. I put it on after about like 20 seconds. She was like, can you turn that off just a bit? I am an antichrist. She's like, turn it off. But you can play in your bedroom. We had a set of encyclopedias in our house. We were allowed to explore. They kept an eye on us, but they never came down and said,

turn that music off. They'd encourage us, especially my mom. She was like, let me buy records, let me have long hair. Yeah, so the pistols weren't for her, but it was okay for you. Yeah, it was fine for me. She understood it, I mean. Great. Yeah. Well, she understood my affection for it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then I became full punk. Yeah. Like cut my hair. Yeah. I think I had a Baker's jacket that I took my sister took in for music and sew a bit. Flared trousers became straight leg trousers. I went from like in progressive rock and Bowie, a little bit of Iggy into full punk. And that was like 78. But I left school in 78. I left school because my mom got cancer. So I actually left school so I could work

to bring the extra money home so we could get money to go back to Britain so she wanted to die with her family. So 78, September 78, we went back to Britain. And then I was back in this schoolyard in Glasgow, which is a pretty rough place, and I was a yank. I wasn't a brick kid. Yeah, but you weren't, but to them you were.

I'm actually more Scots than I am English. Called them to my DNA. Just found out I'm 3% Danish as well. So that's the Viking. That was it. And then I was on the playground, but there was all the punk kids there. And they were like, come and hang out with us.

Don't worry about them. They're bullies. They don't get it but there was all the punk kids there. And they were like, come and hang out with us. Don't worry about them. They're bullies. They don't get it. Hang out with the punk kids. And then met two or three kids who were like, we're going to see the Stranglers, Stranglers 78, Glasgow Apollo. The week before, we went to see Nazareth. Because we're all, it didn't matter.

It was crossover. It was a crossover thing. Like if you like AC, if you like Bon Scott, if you like AC DC and punk, that was fine. There wasn't that cultural apartheid that MTV brought in in the 80s where it's like 120 minutes, Headbangers Ball, Yo MTV Raps. They weren't segregating us. We could like anything we wanted. You could like Bob Marley.

It was totally cool. It was all part of the same synergy. It's just music and culture. Then I was in. So Stranglers was the first punk rock gig? First show I went to was, first show I actually saw, saw. The first thing I ever saw was Pink Floyd,

1975, Hamilton, Ontario, June 28th, I think it was. My brother and I went down to the stadium. It was supposed to sell 25,000 tickets. They sold 50. The place was rammed. The way the stadium was built was like a CFL stadium. There's a whole section you could see through into the stage.

So we went down to collect cans and bottles. We thought it'd be a good opportunity to make some money. So we got bin bags, garbage bags, collecting cans and bottles. I remember looking through and seeing the airplane crash into the stage and shine any crazy diamond and they hadn't even released Wish You Were Here yet. I was 13 years old and that was a lightning bolt. It's like, what is this energy? I remember going home on the bus just, I couldn't even speak about it.

I didn't know what to say about it. Just had this deep knowing that I wanted to be in there with those kids, having that experience, that communion. And then that was it. Yeah, Pink Floyd's a good first whiff to see it. That was the first whiff. That's a good one. That was a whiff. That was a good one.

That was the first time I heard electric amplified music. Yeah. Yeah. And it was mind-numbing. I can play it in my head. I can play the tape. I can play the visual and the audio in my head. And it accessed the feeling of what went through all the chakras.

You know, because it activated everything. Being a teenage boy, I was just coming of age, so everything was activated. Then it was about the rest of the life, getting in alignment. Because there's a lot of trauma in there as well. Trauma from family, post-war. Father went through the streets when they were being bombed by the Germans. Second most heavily bombed city in Britain, besides London, was actually Merseyside. And a lot hit when my father lived in Birkenhead,

because all the shipyards were there. So he was telling me stories about running through the streets, the bombs falling. I didn't know about PTSD until later, when I had to face that in my own life. But he was gone by then. He passed when he was 58. And that was kind of like when the cult was MTV, 27 years old. I didn't want anything to do with it. I was

like, no, I'm out. They were like, okay, there's the road. It's not paved. It's gonna get dark. I was like, I want that. That was the journey. Yeah. Post-electric. Which was where my heart was, you know? In that room with us, kids. We're like Dickensian kids, scavenging for pizza, cruel cheese, and any bit of cultural information that we could get, we would share it. I remember you introduced me to Hello Cool J

in the street outside of Revolution Cafe. He was 19 years old with a Kangol hat on and everything. I was like, he looked amazing. And what a frequency. It's such a vibration around the sky. I was like, he is, what's his music about? And going deep into that or going deep into the Beasties or I loved Africa Van Barta. McLaren brought that to us.

I remember we would watch videos in the studio of all kinds of just cool old rock stuff. We watched Slayer, I remember, because I was just about to start working with them. Yes. We watched a lot of cool stuff. I remember it was a really fun experience. I don't know how we got it made, the record. We weren't really allowed. I don't know if you know, but really originally, the plan was I was going to remix two songs.

That's correct. Then when we went to remix them, I realized if we were to strip it down and get to the essence of it, it wasn't recorded in a way where you could do that because it was so layered in the way it was formed. You couldn't get to the essence. The essence was this produced thing. If we wanted to get to the raw thing,

the only way to do that would be to play it. So we played it and we did the two, and then they sounded good and then we said, let's just keep doing it, and we did. But no one really gave us permission to do that. There was no record company that approved that happening. Oh no, we did not have any approval. But it just happened.

Because when we actually called them and told them what we've been doing for several weeks, they just about lost their wigs. Wow, I didn't know that. They went, I said, whoa, whoa, wait, whoa, whoa, whoa. I think Ian and Alan came over, Ian Grant and Alan Edwards came over to listen. And we explained to them what we'd been doing. Yeah.

Said, we want to hear the finished product. And I'm like, well, wait a minute. Sit down. Yeah. Just give us a down. Yeah. Just give us a sec. Yeah, yeah. When we played, Andy put it on.

Played it back to them, and they were like, oh. Oh. Wow. That is a scene change. Yeah. Because nobody had done that. Yeah. I mean, you were definitely encouraging it.

For sure. For sure. You were quite naughty. I mean, you were definitely encouraging it. For sure. For sure. You were quite naughty. I believed. I'm a true believer. You know, it's like I speak from the heart and I mean it. It's not a... Oh my goodness. It was like, it was perfect for me because I was like, uh-huh. You were... Yeah. Let's go.

You definitely saw what was possible. It was perfect for me because I was like, uh-huh, yeah, let's go, let's go. You definitely saw what was possible. I saw you and your world and the city and everything, and what you were sharing with us, I was like, this is tribe. Yeah. This is the way. Then I remember you had your friend Haggis come

join us and he was really fun to be around. Well, Haggis was interesting in the sense that he played with Zodiac Minewalk, Mark Manning, who was a friend. And all of a sudden, Stephen Haggis, Stephen Harris, is hanging out. I think Billy had been chatting with him. Kind of came through Billy.

I didn't really know. He was like, I'm a new-oc, I'm hanging out. And I'm like, cool. And he come and hang out. It was everything. I remember George just sitting there and going, cool, cool. It was cool. I was thinking we'd get to Dope until we met Matt, Matt Dyke. But he comes in the mix, Kid Chaos from Zodiac. And the story he told me was that he'd left the band or had been kicked out of the band. And I was like, because it kind of felt like a weird thing with some of these, you know, cardinal rulers. You don't mess with other people's relationships

amongst gentlemen. So I kind of felt a little bit awkward, but I loved him. And I think he was a great dude. I really enjoyed his energy. And he was into what we were into. But then I got a phone call in the middle of the night, like four or five in the morning from Mark from Zodiac. It's like, what are you doing?

You're trying to break up my band. I was like, no, bro, he's he's told us he's not with you anymore. And that was like, oh oh no, this is awkward. And then I think we were drinking quite heavily, a lot, I know I was. I used to roll in drunk. So I'd drink wine coolers because they were

a little bit whiter, but then I'd drink six pack of wine coolers and come in the studio and get going and a couple slices of pizza and we were leather trousers, let's go. Music always sounded better when pizza arrived, I remember. Yeah, it was interesting how all of a sudden, there's a lot of visitors came around about pizza time, at dinner time. All of a sudden, all these people from

Def Jam or whatever would pop by, friends would pop by, George would pop by. Yeah. You know, Mr. Rick would pop by. You know Mr. Rick? Yeah, of course. He was incredible. I don't remember him coming to the studio,

but that's amazing that he did. They were all around. Amazing. I mean the Beasties, they would come for free pizza. I'm walking into the studio one day and they're on the gear, bashing. It's like out. You know?

Because they were very naughty boys. I remember going out with them and they were throwing eggs at people every night. We all went out to the MTV New Year's Ball. It was like, I had an American Express card. I remember we were like, we were thinking about it. We were like working that day. We were working New Year's Eve.

Yeah, I remember that. And it was like. I remember thinking, why would anybody want to take off on either New Year's Eve. Yeah, I remember that. And it was like. I remember thinking, why would anybody want to take off on either New Year's Eve or Christmas? Like we get to go in the studio and make music. What could be better than this? That was fantastic. It really felt like a celebration of what we were doing.

I don't think we wanted it to end. We were having such a good time. Cause there was no adults in the room. None. Telling us what to do. No. There was no A&R guy. No.

Oh, but believe me after that record, when we did Sonic Temple There was no A&R guy. Believe me, after that record, when we did Sonic Temple, there was A&R guys floating around, hovering, whispering. Took me a minute to work out that they weren't my friends. Yeah. That was one of the great things about you guys coming from the UK to make the record is that you just came and we got to do our thing.

I remember someone from Warner Brothers came to visit and he was cool. Do you remember Jeff Fenster came to visit, and I think Stephen Baker might have come to visit. Steve Baker was a massive ally. Yeah. Since day one, he was incredibly important. So was Jeff Aaroff. Great guy. Jeff Aaroff as well.

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LMNT. How did the cover come about? I love the cover. I don't know the story of the cover. I think the cover came about? I love the cover. I don't know the story of the cover. I think the cover came about from a couple of things. One was my obsession with San Francisco, 60s San Francisco and what was happening there because Bill Graham was an actual mentor to me. We reopened the Film West after the Love album.

So it might have been 86. I didn't know that. The Diviners opening for us. Wow. And that's when I first met Bill Graham. Wow. Then Bill Graham was like, we're in it. It wasn't the first time in the hate, because we went there in 84.

But I was obsessed with what happened at Monterey Pop Festival. Yeah. Seeing those images of Brian Jones with Nico, and Jimi Hendrix, and Janis Joplin, and Bill Graham, Bill Graham. Jim Marshall, he introduced me to Jim Marshall, the photographer. So I was obsessed with it. I was obsessed with all the psychedelic art, Malthus and Kelly, Rick Griffin.

And I was kind of scribbling around and did some kind of vaguely ersatz version of his font, which the art director that came in was Storm Thorgensen, the man that designed Dark Side of the Moon. So Storm comes in and he's like, there was Aubrey Powell, but at that point Storm was off. He'd broken off from hypnosis. So somehow, I think through the label, not Beggar's Banquet, but maybe through the Americans, I'm not quite sure how the relationship came about. But I had this vague idea of a psychedelic covering. So it was a collaboration with Tom Thorgensen. And then Rick Griffin saw the font.

He's like, hey, that's my style. And we started talking, he goes, I love you guys, can I do something? So he did the wildflower sleeve. Amazing. That was Rick Griffin did that. Amazing. That was his font. Yeah. That wasn't even a fake Rick Griffin font.

Yeah, it was real Rick Griffin. That was real Rick Griffin. That was just a love affair with San Francisco and everything that went with it from Timothy Leary to Ginsburg, to Pigpen, you name it, George Harrison walking down H Street. I mean, there was so much packed in from the late Alan Watts comes from England as an Anglican priest convert into Zen Buddhism. He becomes the guru of the Beats, Kerouac, Ginsburg. He's the man. He's from Leatherhead.

Strangely, near Chislehurst, Caves, where Jimi Hendrix played, there were so many ley lines connecting, and I could just feel the frequency. And that was, the cover kinda came out of that. Your love of the lore, the history, the music, the people, the looks, the smells of it all, is why you've always been able to embody it.

It's like through osmosis. Do you know what I'm saying? It's like you've dedicated yourself to it like a student, and I think that's what makes the best things. It was never work, it was never a job, it was never a means to an end. You were practicing a devotional act in participating in this thing you love so much. Yeah, God speaks through the airwaves. You know, the goddess, the divine mystery came to me through the airwaves. And that was my connection to source, other,

not tactile, impermanence. It all came through the musical frequency, which according to the Big Bang theorists, quantum level, the Big Bang is B flat and it's still frequency still going. So musicians are tapped, the real intuitive ones, the emotionally intelligent ones, are tapped. The real intuitive ones, the emotionally intelligent ones are tapped into that. And they're just going to do it, whatever, if they're playing to the cat. Doesn't matter. The numbers don't matter. The accolades don't

matter. It's this devotional act, as you say. And it doesn't be fuzzle me, I just listen. Listen with a heart. Listen with an open heart. And pick up on, give you a vibration. It's not like coming out here is like a bomb going off for me. Silence. A bomb of silence in the ocean. And every few mirrors I'm pulling up.

And then I'm thinking about it, I'm going, wait a minute, I'm going to see Rick. I haven't seen him for decades. This is somebody I love dearly. And I'm looking at where you are, Shangri-La, Dylan, the bus, the oceans in the rear view mirror, I'm going, wait a minute. What is this oasis? Because it does have the same frequency

as the Osha Ashram in Pune or the Potala Palace in Tibet. Why is that? The same frequency is present within, perhaps it's something to do with I'm now in tune. The environment allows me to tune my chakras, tune my vibrational frequencies, and drop in. Yes. Drop into it.

Yes. Make sure you got lead in your boots, though. Yeah. Because you can get all dreamy and caught up in it. And it's like, you know, when I walked in here, I was like, mm, the aesthetic. It's very austere. Yoko Ono's probably lurking somewhere.

It feels very Lennon, White Room, Ono. I was almost gonna wear a plastic Ono band t-shirt today. I thought, I can't broadcast that. Because in the cult recently I've been, which is a small part of my creative life, but in the tactile world, I've been obsessed, obsessing on Plastic Ono Man and Liverpool, because I'm going back there and,

I don't know, it just kind of popped up. Lenin, Ono. When you went back, how different was it than what you remember from childhood? Well, we went back, the last time we went back, we just did a show at De Montford Hall, which is a student venue. I didn't really walk around the city.

When I went back in the 90s, because I went there to make a record with a band called the Holy Barbarians, which was really an excuse to do the things I didn't get to do when I was an object or a racehorse in the stable of Warner Brothers on Beggars' banquet in the industrial complex of being an iconic singer and an iconic MTV. It dissolved into this product. Yeah. And I couldn't. I know that we had several attempts where we,

you almost came in as a- I remember that. Interventionist. I remember that because I had a memory of us in Sound City together. Yeah. I remember we made Electric in New York. That's correct. At Electric Lady, I remember the experience like,

what were we doing at Sound City? I couldn't figure it out, but now I remember we recorded a song that was incredibly cool. Yeah. We did The Witch. The Witch. Did you ever come out? The Witch did come out in 1993. That's good so then we did The Witch. The Witch? Did you ever come out? The Witch did come out. Oh great. In 93. That's good so then we can hear it. Well The Witch came out in 93 and The Witch to me was like this is the way. Yeah. Can we listen to that now, do you mind? Absolutely. I haven't heard it since

then. I'm really curious to see what it is. You're actually on it. No. Listen. You'll hear it. How can it be? Your voice is on it. I really have no recollection of what it is other than remembering it was nearly made. Let's see. ["River Man"] Oh, it's filthy. ["River Man"] So you finally found your rhythm, man I got your funky ass and the D, yeah Yeah, the girls, she's a-coming to you

I'm gonna show you what is true Yeah, the way she needs a lover, boy Maybe it could be you, you just don't want to understand Oh, yeah, yeah She put your sex on a model man, well I'm the man. Yeah. Yeah. I'm the man. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Everybody. That's you. Oh yeah, yeah I bring the sticks and I'm out of mania That's you Three, four What you got is good It's all about you

She's got what she needs What you got is so good So good What you got is so good She's got what you need What you got is good She's got what you need What you got is so good She's got it She's got it good, yeah

She's got it She's got it good, yeah She's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it, she's got it You're hit, you're there. Now check that breakout. There's a break where I can hear your voice distinctly, but the way it was recorded was I did the demo in Toronto in 1990. My father died in 1990. We were on tour early 1990. But I was in Toronto, I think I did it like in Christmas break in 89 off the Sonic Temple

tour and I went and we even did like 63 shows with Metallica. We did 187 shows on that tour. I mean we were burnt out. Yeah. We were burnt out. Yeah. I got sober on that tour and my dad was dying of cancer and I was like listening to this music coming out of, I remember Peter Hook taking me to the factory to see the rave culture was coming out. He says, you've got to check.

Peter Hook, the bass player from Bloody Joy Division. I'm only 26, 27 years old and I'm watching this. I'm going, I feel ancient. This music's phenomenal. And plus I loved hip hop. Because we were playing NWA out at the PA every night before we went on. That was the opening music. That was the walking music. That was the walking music.

That's what people heard. That's what I was telling them to play. It's like, if you want to play rock, I'm like, no, this is what's happening. So the bass line is of course, from Echoes, it's Roger Waters. Really? Obsessed. Like Pompeii. When they're going, that's Roger Waters, the bass line. And I just went to sped it up.

I wanted that feel. And he hits this. And I heard that in my head and I was like, somehow this goes with the rave culture and hip hop and the synergy of Floyd. And there was a bomb went off in my head. So I cut this track, it was originally called Northern Man. Northern Man, you got rhythm. But you, when you got hold of it,

you work with Matt and you had a pile of breaks. I remember you going through that. We sat with 12 inches. It was at your house near the chateau. And you were just going through it going that one, that one, that one. And you picked out the breaks for the samples. And then we just built it.

You built it. And then we went and we had the bass line. I think George might have actually played the bass. Sounds like it. George played the bass. Cause I could play it, but I couldn't play as well as he could play it. Yeah.

And you cut the track, and the counts, or the changes, is you counting. Three, four. So we know what to do. Yeah, but then after we got this basic track, and Northern Man didn't fit, and we'd been offered this movie, Cool World. Oh yeah, that's what it was for. With Kim Basinger. It was a big movie.

I couldn't remember why we did it. That's why, Cool World soundtrack. Yeah. Ralph Bashki. Yeah. Who did Fritz the Cat and everything. Yeah. So it's a pretty dope film. And that was through maybe like a Jeff Aroff at Warner Brothers, like let's do this track.

And it was also a way of me attempting to maintain. It was like an intervention. We were very close. We were like sharing what we're into. Yeah. And I was like so excited. I'm very close. We were like sharing our, you know, what we're into. Yeah. And I was like so excited. I'm like, it's gonna happen. We were making experimental music.

We were, but Billy wasn't on it. He wasn't in the room when that was being happening. I think somebody said, probably James said, we should get Billy to play on this. I'm like, yeah. And he did, no, he did. Oh, he ripped it. It raises the whole vibration of it.

It's great. That's his gift. That's what he really is excellent at, is that. Like, when he's off the leash, he's filthy. When he just lets himself go. Yeah. And I see that, and I'm like, that is incredible. We still play that track in cult sets.

And now. How does it sound live? It's a beh We still play that track in cult sets. And now. How's it sound live? It's a behemoth. Yeah. We rip. It's so groovy. It cuts through like a knife.

And you can see the audience are just swaying. They're in it. Everybody's in it. We're so in it. Yeah. It stands up. I'm playing maracas on it. Yeah. It's still got a bit of stones in it.

For sure, I hear that. I don't remember hearing that then, but I hear it now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, the film was massive, it came and went. It was released as a standalone single, maybe 12 inch. We had a white cover with a white pentagram on it. Done. Done. Done and dusted.

Yeah. But there should have been a whole album around that. Yeah. That's what I was saying to B at the time. I was like, this is it because that is done. This is done. The hair is coming off. This is finished.

It was great way it lasted. It was fun. Party's over. We're going here now. Yeah. Everybody was like, you're insane, we can't do this. And I just fought them, tooth and nail, just fought them. You know, I was trying to reintegrate our relationship and what our vision was because at that point,

there was a disturbance in the force. We'd become a piece of property. It is a point in time in success when there's a feeling of it's not yours anymore and it's being controlled by someone else. It might not even be business people, it might be some psychological thing to do with the audience, that the audience has certain expectations,

and you can't upset that when in reality, you really can. Oh no, we did. No, we set them early. You can, and you can switch it up, but there is that feeling of it's a dangerous move. It wasn't the audience. It wasn't that. For me, it wasn't.

It wasn't that. It was that my partner was transfixed like a deer in the headlights by maybe the validation, I don't know, but caught up in the lifestyle and everything. And I was still on the mission. This brings us back to you. I remember, I think you flew into JFK, you came into the city, we met for the first time. And I remember the conversation was,

we know what song is gonna be the first single from the album because it's the same chords as our last hit. And I said, well, if it has the same chords as your last hit, not only can it not be the first single, I don't think it can be on the album. Because you did that. Exactly. So that's the difference in mentality. Whereas there is a mentality in the music business of it worked last time, let's just do it again. Everybody was hypnotized

by format, structure, architecture. Like even the seven inch single, the format, artists would write to the format of a seven inch single. That was already pre-programmed. Lieber and Strohler, da da da da da. Little Richard was writing these, there was format, format, format. The tail was wagging the dog. It was unspoken.

Some bands were breaking it, like the Germans with Krautrock, like Popovou and stuff like that. Or Stairway to Heaven for that matter. Absolutely. Absolutely breaking the mold. Or especially the bass player in the cult now is Charlie Jones, who's married to Carmen

Plant, and he played with Plant and Page. So he brings a provenance as another empathetic. Like we don't talk about rock, we talk about Alice Coltrane. He's such a gift to us. It's a completely different band than it was even five years ago. But I think format is a very interesting thing where unconsciously you're in format, you're in culture, the culture is responding to format. We are really driven by the advertisers, popular culture, the controllers of culture, the controllers of advertising, Condé Nast, whomever it is, Vanguard, Viacom, you know. And somebody's getting paid.

But we just are hypnotized and we go on for a unless you have a Eureka moment where you go, you're a Sid Barrett. You just, you just wired differently. Yeah. You know, and you question it. I'm right now, I'm doing exactly the same thing as I was when I was teeny tiny. Because you're you.

I question it all the time because I'm me. It's like, it's just, it's our nature. It is our nature. It's our nature. It's like, you go, turn it over. You smell this side of it. Yeah. That's good too.

You know, whatever it is, however you get into it, right? Yeah. But I think a lot of it's just processing. I also like being surprised by it. You know, I like when it's not the same I like that feeling of it's it can't be different for the sake of being different because that's not good But when it's different and you love it. Yeah, that's really exciting. Oh, yeah, that's my favorite When you're leaning forward because you're not sure what's gonna happen next. It's the best feeling.

Yeah, there's a lot of music out there right now that just surprises me. When I hear it for the first time, I'm like, wait a minute, did I hit that correctly? Is this possible? Yeah. Now? That's the best feeling.

Today? Best feeling. In this world, in this climate? Yeah. Occasionally come across a few nuggets, just as a fan of music. Yeah. But then I go like, I'm going to do it my own anyway. Of course.

So I have a mountain of amassed, just, you know, I feel like a Henry Darja, just undiscovered Shambhala is sitting in my phone in multi tracks. They're in some storage space somewhere that I'm going to pull out from my solo record I made in the desert with Chris Garston, 96, 97. I know there's good stuff in there that we can rewire and brutalize and unformat, which is my whole thing right now. I'm going, why don't we just take the entire catalog of everything we've ever done and put it through a shredder to see what that sounds like, or an AI program.

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Tell me about Southern Death Cult. What was the Southern Death Cult? Oh, wow. Well, Southern Death Cult. Is that your first band? Southern Death Cult was, well, actually, no. The very, very, very first time I stepped into a room with musicians with the intention of creating a band,

well, there was two. There was one called Send No Flowers in Liverpool. I think we had one or two rehearsals. And they actually went on to do something, released a single. Then I was in Belfast as a homeless kid, and I was living in a squat with these punks. And we had one song,

I was reading the island Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells. And there's this thing about vivisection, experimenting on animals. And there was a line in there, not to walk on all fours, are we not men? Devo may have used it as well. And I saw that as a lyric and I was like, ooh, that's interesting.

And it just came up with drum beat. Boom, boom, poom, boom, poom, poom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, not to walk on all fours are we not men. And that was a song. Yeah. And the other guys in the house had some terrible like four strings on a guitar. And we were called children of lust.

Did you ever do a gig or never? No, we played in the front room of a damp squat in Belfast in 1980, which was a pretty rough place. It wasn't something you wanted to be in a band, it was just everybody was obsessed with music. And there was always instruments around of some description. Then I ended up leaving Belfast and following Kras, the band Kras.

I remember Kras. The devotee of Kras. Followed them, stayed in Steve Ignatius TP, went to the house. Did you really? Oh yeah. Tell me what that scene was like. I don't know anything about them.

All I know are the cool album jackets that unfolded into posters. They started in 77 and were... Where were they based? They were based in, I believe, Epping, which would be at the end of the central line. Dial House, they had this house, it was an old phone exchange,

because back in the day, you didn't have satellites, you had buildings, like the AT&T building in New York where the operators would connect you. So this was an old phone exchange that they converted, got hold of. It was a real mishmash of people. I think the drummer was a teacher. They've got an exhibit right now in New York as well. The crass. Yeah, of crass, his artwork and the visual and everything. G, I believe, worked for, she was a graphic designer. Steve Ignorant was a punk kid from London.

And the other ones were university dropouts and stuff like that. But they had this real vision, very Orwellian. They lived in a very situationist and anarchistic communal environment. And they were very set up, actually similar to Shangri-La. They all wore utilitarian clothing, it was dyed black, everything was dyed black. They had banners which had the cross

with the snake wrapped around them and destroyed power, not people, banners. And became devotee of them and the philosophy and followed them. Like the first album, Feeding with 5,000, opening it, looking at the graphics and going, this is phenomenal. This is what Joe Strum is saying.

This is what Leiden is saying, but they're really living it. They had a commune, they grew their own food. It's the first time I tasted tempura. Like they opened my mind to so many things. I'm eating Japanese food in a garden in Epping in the middle of summer. I visited them a couple of times there. Anyway, so through the Kras tour, as I was a homeless person, we went through a city called Bradford in the north of England, near Leeds, which is

considered to be the center of the dark wave gothic. You know, there's so many bands that came out of that scene out of that city, that area, post-industrial, Manchester Leeds, Huddersfield, Liverpool. I ended up getting offered a room and a house, 10 pounds a week, and I had nowhere to live. So I just took a moment. It was like moving to Kansas really. So moving to this house,

there's a band playing in the basement of the house. They were rehearsing on a band called New Model Army's Gear. They had a basic PA, 100 watt PA, and they would use the PA and they had little amps, still beating up amps and a guitar player had a guitar that he'd made himself and he was an art student. It was Bradford Art School. Bass player was obsessed with Adam and the Ants,

and the drummer, Hakenu Asakura, actually a brilliant tribal drummer. He loved things like chalamar and disco, but a lot of punk. And they had a band called Violation. The singer was, let's say, had lifestyle choices, that didn't match up with these guys. They really wanted to go for it. I was living in the house, they saw me and they said,

our singer's gone, do you want to jump in? Do you want to try out for the band? I'm like, can you sing? I'm like, I don't know. So I went down to the basement. They said, let's try something. What do you know? Sex Pistols, we did Sex Pistols song. They're going like, wow, that sounds pretty good.

Do you want to be in the band? Someone spontaneous was like, okay. And then the drummer's brother was a local promoter in the Leeds, Bradford area. He was putting on bands like Antipasti, GBH, all these like oil punk bands, like post-post-punk bands, post-anarcho, post- because by this time the Clash had become Combat Rock, they'd become something else, the Pistols were gone, the original McLaren Westwood scene had all broken up. So this is another generation of punk bands who really were disenfranchised working class

kids. And a local TV station, Yorkshire Television, was making a documentary on unemployed youth cultures, like kids who were making art who were unemployed, like basically living like young scavengers. And the drummer's brother got a whiff of this and he said, they're making a documentary,

do you guys want to be in it? We're like, what? We had three songs. By this time, we were rehearsing above a reggae shop called Roots Records. Our first real audience were Rastafarians. There was Watch Us Play. So these Rastas Watch Us Play had these three songs. And we get offered to be this part of this TV documentary. And of course, that was like a spaceship had just landed. Somebody said, do you want to get on and go for a ride?

We're like, okay. It's like 18 years old. We did this whole couple of days where they filmed us. They set up the first gig in a pub where they got 80 kids in, punks. You'd never done a gig before? Never walked on a stage. Wow. I actually had been in a school play,

but never as a musician, not as a lead singer. Yeah. And we didn't have a name. And the TV station was like, what's the name of the band? So I was reading a book on Native American anthropology. And there's this one paragraph is talking about the, I think it's the Hopewell Valley in Ohio, a certain group of Native Americans that had these serpent mounds that stood there.

And I referred to them as the Southern Death Cult because they worshiped skulls and they didn't incorporate death into their spiritual view of the world. Death was a thing which in the West, we had tried to avoid at all costs. The Tibetans all day long, death is part of it, impermanence.

So that became the name of the band, Something Death Call. I picked it out and went, this is a great name. It is a great name. It's a great name, sounds dope. And you know, the government and the controls in the South, it was very good for a basic, you know, basic get in, but it just resonated with me.

And that was our first gig. It was a film for television. Tapes are gone. I think I saw it once, and when it aired, they can't film for television, tapes are gone. I think I saw it once and when it aired, they can't find the tapes, they're gone. But it did happen. And then the first gig we played was in- What was the experience like of seeing yourself

on TV for the first time? Well, the experience of going on stage for the first time, the amount of adrenaline is inexplicable. I mean, it was like, I got hit by a car when I was a kid, which was a life changing experience. Plus I had some bad experiences with psychedelics. But this was something other worldly, similar to the Pink Floyd experience at 13.

Similar lightning shock went through the chakras. So this was Southern Death Coal. And then we did our first gig in an unemployed and anarcho commune place called One in 12 Club. Means One in 12 is unemployed. So we played this gig, we packed it out, 150 people in a room and that was it. We thought we were like, wow, this is,

what's the next thing? We did a couple of gigs in local area. We opened for Chelsea, it was our fourth gig. At a club, it was a punk band from 77. One of the peripheral punk bands, but still Gene Oktober was very important. James Stevenson on the guitar. Kind of parallel to Generation X.

Came out London punk scene. We opened for them and they offered us a gig at the Marquis. Do you want to come to the Marquis? I know for us the Marquis in London. Gig five. Wow. Got six songs. We're like, what?

The Marquis in London. That is Mecca. It was a mythical place. Yeah. You'd never been there before. Not to the Marquis, no. I'd been on the streets and on, slept in King's Cross train station,

stayed in a squat with a load of punks in West Hamster, but not, nothing like this. This was different. We had a purpose, we had a mission. So we got, we hired a van. We got snowed in Yorkshire. It was 200 mile drive. The driver was called Neil and he was a hippie.

We called him Neil the hippie and he had a headband. I got mine from Edward Curtis Pictures, the band that came from Edward Curtis, pictures of indigenous Apaches. Auspiciously, Dino Paredes, as you know very well, is part Chiracqua Apache, now manages the cult. Anyway, we got out of the snowstorm, got to London, got there, grabbed a kebab in Soho, CD Soho, went into the marquee, did a little sound check, got ready,

which meant opening a plastic bag and changing her t-shirts, you know, 10 cigarettes in a little packet. That's what we could afford, two cans of beer on the stage. There's 30 people now. I think Lemmy was actually on the fruit machines play because he was always in Soho on the gambling machines. And then we had a friend who was living in London who was running around the Bow Wow Wow crew, like Westwood and Bow Wow Wow.

He's fully dressed in pirate costume and he kept jumping on stage, you pull out cables and laughing. This was our big moment in the marquee in London. It was a total disaster. It was horrible. We were so miserable. And plus Gene Oktober wouldn't give us the money, 35 pounds, for the petrol money to go back to Bradford. We had to get it out of him. And I remember standing at the bar when Chelsea were on stage and I was drinking half a lager and this guy comes up to me and goes, hi, my name's Paul Boswell.

I'm from this agency called the agency or whatever it's called. I'm like, great. I said, what do you do? Do you do lights, sound? He said, I'm an agent. I book bands. I'm like, okay. Great.

He said, he wrote his name, his number down, a bit of paper. I stuck it in my pocket. Didn't think anything of it. We were unconsolable. We got in the van, drove back in my pocket, didn't think anything of it. We were unconsolable. We got in the van, drove back to Bradford that night. On the way back, just like control the film which illustrates Ian Kurtz being an epileptic. It's the same kind of thing. One blanket in the back, our drummer's an epileptic. We had to pull over. He has an epileptic trauma.

It was so heavy. And when we got back to Bradford, just like, the adrenaline was gone. We're now crashing. We're like, well, that was a complete and utter burnout. We're so unconsolable. And then the following week, there's a review in Sounds. It says, Chelsea, sudden death cult. Marquis London. First line says, I've seen the future. Chelsea, sudden death cult, marquee London. First line says, I have seen the future

at Southern Death Cult. And I'm like, oh, what? Unbelievable. You're kidding me. Unbelievable. So we ran around, we didn't have telephone. I think we had a pay phone in our house. So we were pay phoning each other, you know?

And we go like, right, now we've got to get to work. So the drummer's brother again, Rab, comes in with Aki and he says, look, I've got the number of some of the agencies. You want to start calling them, see if there's any gigs, tours, we knew the Clash would pick up local support bands and Aki was talking about the Clash. I think Violation maybe have opened for the Clash.

So we were calling these agencies and I got this one phone number and they didn't even take the phone number out of my pocket that Paul Boswell had given me. So I called this agency and I called them and pay phone at home, I remember. And secretary picks up the phone, she's like, hi, who's this? I said, it's Ian from a band called Sudden Death Court. She goes, what band? I said, Sudden Death Court.

She says, wait a minute. Okay. Who gets on the phone? Hey, it's Paul. says, wait a minute. I'm like, okay. Who gets on the phone, hey, it's Paul. Don't you remember I met you at the marquee? I'm like, oh yeah, hi, Paul. He said, we've been trying to get hold of you guys. We got five dates penciled in with Theater of Hate.

I'm like, what? You did what? What? Unbelievable, unbelievable. Okay. And hung up the phone and then started calling everybody and going like, we're at the Theater of Hate tour. They've just been on top of the pops.

We were like, minds blown. So that was it. It was like gig six, seven, eight, nine was Theater of Hate. Then we went into Bow House. It's also amazing how- Then we went for the clash. Yeah. And did all of that.

What's amazing is the thing that seemed like, the thing that didn't work at all, the club at the marquee that you drove home miserable. Oh, we were miserable. Was actually the turning point that started the whole thing. The thing that, again, in the moment you couldn't see, it seemed like a terrible experience, and that started the whole thing.

It's amazing. We never know. You never know. We never know. You never know. We never know. You never know. No. You have no idea. That's why it's good to stay open.

Yeah. It's all possibility. Yeah. If you're trying to hang your head on a certain nail, don't get stuck there. Tell me about opening for The Clash. Were The Clash a big deal for you personally? Personally, yeah. I loved The Clash.

I saw them in 79 on the 16 Tons tour. And we got, San Denise the day it came out, because I was living in Canada and missed the first two albums, Give Them Enough Rope and The Clash. But San Denise the day it came out, I remember getting that, obsessed with The Clash. And London Calling. Yeah, London Calling. They were touring that, saw them at Glasgow Apollo. Loved The Clash.

I remember Mick Jones, they were doing White Riot, and he didn't like playing it because the connotations of the song he thought was a little bit, he didn't like the politics of it. It threw this Les Paul up in the air. I remember it had one of those curly leads. All I can remember from the gig is this guitar going,

it's throwing so high, and as it's coming down, he's in a white boiler suit, he just turned around and walked away from it, and went smash and was like what? The whole audience was like that's the most visceral memory I have of that concert is this guitar just going to shards. Anyway for Combat Rock the date that we got offered after making the phone calls was at Stoke Hanley Victoria Hall. I was on the Combat Rock Tour, which was essentially the last tour.

And at that time, they were really a big band. Oh, they were massive. But with the punks in the UK, they'd gone to America. And that was like no, no. Because they were ours. But I didn't feel that way. Because I was North American teenager, essentially. I understood it.

They weren't for the who? Shea Stadium and everything. But when they came back with tiger stripes and such dope style, engineers boots, and I mean, they looked phenomenal. We were all trying to copy their style. And if you look at early Southern Death Cult, you see Billy in full tiger stripe. When did it change from Southern Death Cult to Death Cult? It changed.

Well, basically what happened was with Southern Death Cult, it was happening too quickly. Within the space of 11, 12 months, we were getting offers from EMI. We did demos for EMI. Beggars Bank was sniffing around and then came CBS Records. They said, 100 grand, bang, bang on the table we want you guys when that money came on the table I looked it out and went hmm we tend to want a chapel for publishing give us 500 pounds each scandalous but there was a lot of heat in the band there's a lot of heat on the band I mean we did the tube Malcolm tube and Malcolm McLaren was on it. And his comment was, that boy is a sexual threat. I go, as a kid, I didn't know what that meant.

As I got older, it was like, Malcolm McLaren said that? Pretty good. Oh, because I'm obsessing on Malcolm McLaren as well right now. I'm reading his biography by Paul Gorman, which is staggering. The man was a brilliant, brilliant genius. But when that heat started to come on the band, my natural instinct was to pivot away from it because it felt like a trap, didn't feel authentic. What they wanted was our youth,

what they wanted was our vitality, and that we were the band of the moment. It's a CBS. They were all looking for the next pistols. They were looking for, they all wanted that phenomenal thing. It was sudden death got at the time. It was on the front cover of the NME without even having a record out. Wow. Shot by Anton Corbin in 82.

Incredible. So that was the heat on the band. I just said, you know what? I can't do it. I just can't do it. And I remember them pleading with me, like, please don't leave. And I was like, plus I remember I had a song, it wasn't called Spirit Walk at the time,

but it was like, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, and I had this thing and they wouldn't wanna play it. I had written Moya and Flower in the Desert, two songs that we'd recorded. We never made an album. I was beginning to feel my own path and I was like, this doesn't feel like I should be staying here. This is going to last 10 minutes because it would corrupt us.

We all had four different personalities pulling in 40. Had we had a Brian Epstein or had we had a George Martin come in the room or Rick Rubin come in the room, it may have been a very different story. We didn't have that patriarchal oak tree. We didn't have a guide. We didn't have somebody to like, okay guys, that's the external experience.

Let's get in your feet. Let's get in your place. Let's get grounded. Let's focus on getting the material together, getting the creativity focusing, doing the work. So you felt like it was too rushed. It felt rushed. It felt like all of a sudden people

who had their hands all over us, and we were like, as people were not considered. The external field that we were putting out there was what they wanted. They wanted to mine us of our nutrients. I've heard an American A&R guy talk about churn and burn, overheard a conversation at dinners like, oh yeah, churn and burn. These kids coming through, we just churn and burn.

There's no churn and burn here because I'm out. So I walked away from that. I didn't have a penny. I was still unemployed. Billy was working in a clothing shop. He got kicked out of the theater. It was the only guitar player I've met have a penny. I was still unemployed. Billy was working in a clothing shop, he got kicked out of Theorophate. It was the only guitar player I've met that I liked. I thought he had something.

Why was he kicked out? Because he was from Manchester probably, and they were from the South, so it was like a cultural divide. Plus Billy is very pragmatic and the lead singer was really the poet and the visionary and his manager was a great facilitator. Terry Razor was a poet as well. Don't think Billy just fit their profile.

But anyway, he was working in a clothing store in London. I knew Billy knew where he worked. Got in a coach, left Bradford, had a plastic bag, T-shirt, cigarettes, can of beer, some lyrics. Turned up in a clothing shop, said, hey. I walk in and he goes, hey, what's up? I said, left band. He said, you did what?

I said, left a band. Do you wanna start a band? You're insane. You've done what? You left that? I said, yeah. So next thing I'm sleeping on is couch in Brixton. That's the beginning of Death Call.

Because I came up with the name for Death Call, I just went, yeah, yeah. So I wanted to distinguish two different bands. So we of Death Call. Because I came up with the name Death Call, I just went, because I wanted to distinguish two different bands. So we wrote Death Call. And it was different. It was very different. It was very different. Our first drummer, Raymond Taylor Smith, his father was the diplomat from Sierra Leone.

So he was an African kid. He could play amazing tribal beats. It's a band called Ritual. We went to this band called Ritual. We went to this band called Ritual, and Jamie Stewart was playing rhythm guitar in the band. And I said to Billy, I said, that drummer is unbelievable.

Rhythm guitar player's really good as well. Let's try and get these guys. I remember I was drunk, I was lying upside down on a stairs. It's like an old theater, and I was like in the aisle, lying upside down watching them going, this is incredible. We've got to do a band with these guys. So Raymond came

in, we just grabbed them and said, we got a record deal, we're doing this, da da da. They left their band straight away. No loyalty at all. There's no loyalty. So much of today's life happens on the web. Squarespace is your home base for building your dream presence in an online world. Designing a website is easy, using one of Squarespace's best in class templates. With the built-in style kit, you can change fonts, imagery, margins, and menus, so your design will be perfectly tailored to your needs. Discover unbreakable creativity with Fluid Engine, a highly intuitive drag-and-drop editor. No coding or technical experiences required. Understand your site's performance with in-depth website analytics tools. Squarespace

has everything you need to succeed online. Create a blog, monetize a newsletter, make a marketing portfolio, launch an online store. The Squarespace app helps you run your business The Squarespace app helps you run your business from anywhere. Track inventory and connect with customers while you're on the go. Whether you're just starting out or already managing a successful brand, Squarespace makes it easy to create and customize a beautiful website. Visit squarespace.com slash Tetra and get started today. How would you describe the difference in the energy in you between Southern Death Cult and Death Cult?

Well, I was becoming a veteran of lived experience. So I kind of knew beginning to understand how it all worked. They don't want you, they want it. Whatever you're putting out, they meaning direct company people, the people that you think are your friends, the replacement patriarchs and matriarchs, they want your essence, they want your soul. I signed my publishing contract in blood. I was that traumatic a kid, I was like, slashed my hand. I was like, yeah, yeah.

That's amazing. Yeah, I was. Amazing. So into romanticism, you know. Committed. Committed. Yes. To the, I'm still committed.

Yeah. Still on thatitted. Yes. I'm still committed. Yeah. Still on that contract. Yeah. Also, the times were pretty oppressive. Death Cult was like me and Billy against the world, and now we really have to pull it together. So tell me about the scene at that time. What would have been the bands that you

might have gone to see in that point in time? Well, I remember going to see, when I first stayed with Billy, we went to Ziggy Pop. it was the name of the venue in London near Victoria train station, Ziggy Pop. We go to Lyceum on Sundays, we see things like Johnny Thunders. You could still access,

but I was trying to go and see people like, you know, Johnny Hooker or Jerry Lee Lewis. But what was actually happening? What was happening? What were the up and coming, exciting? It was post-punk, positive punk. Other bands around at the time, Sister Mercy, The Cure were massive, the Banshees were massive.

So goth. Goth, although I prefer the term dark wave. When you come to America, they call it death rock, and I was like, oh, that's cool. It sounded way cooler than goth. But now goths actually- Yeah, cooled again. Yeah. We would talk about the dark wave and the shadow and because that permeates the entire culture. Go look at America's top 20 podcasts. Murder, murder, murder, murder,

entertainment, murder, mattress side, da da da, dah. It's like, what is this? We live in the shadow, you know? So much so that I resurrected Death Cult last year for one show at the Ace. Great. Because I had to reboot the whole thing. Great. I had to reboot the whole thing.

Great. Shred it. Great. Death Cult. Good experience? Oh, it was outrageous. Yeah. It was outrageous.

Yeah. We did 10 shows in the UK, it was outrageous. Yeah. It was outrageous. Yeah. We did 10 shows in the UK, 11 shows in the UK, blew them out. It was almost like much needed milk, sustenance. Yeah. So much so that we're being asked to do Death Cult now. Great. Because it speaks to the moment, it speaks to the shadow, it speaks to the moment.

But Death Cult was, our first gig was in Oslo. We decided to play in Europe first, so we'd get it together. Because again, we only had like six, eight songs, some Southern Death Cult songs, some new songs that we'd written. We played Oslo, Berlin, Amsterdam, Paradiso in Paris, Les Bandouches,

which is where Joy Division played. It was mythical. And then came back to the UK and did a tour. The reviews that came in was that you had sounds, Mountain Maker, and Yenemi was the Bible. And that's what everybody looked at. Because the journalists were way more integrated into the audience and music fans like people like Paul Morley and Charles Charmurray and the great writers.

People were like, eh, looks great, but, meh, not really feeling it. So we all of a sudden like back to earth again. Like, oh, I went from some death cult on the pinnacle of CBS and all of that, next Pistols, McLaren, Blessing, to back down to we're in the grinder again. So we've got a lot to prove. And we went away and started thinking about being songwriters. Like that was a thing now. Like, oh, we've got to write some songs. Gotta start working through processes.

Start reading more books, going to more galleries. Inspiration. Inspiration. The travel was great. Yeah. But then naturally found its way. We made an EP. We got that together naturally found its way. We made an EP. We got that together, Death Goat, and then we made a song called God Zoo.

So the lyrics were evolving. My identity was evolving. I felt like I was evolving. And as I was evolving, Billy was evolving because he was originally a rhythm guitar player. And I kept nudging him going like, Jimmy Page, you know, like lead. Play lead. Go play lead.

Go listen to some blues. I was pushing that on him. Because to me it was like a foil. The guitar player in Seven Death Cult, I couldn't really influence. But with Billy, I basically took his record collection that was at the back of his record collection was things like Free, Zeppelin, you know, like lead players and poured it to the front of his record collection and said, it's okay to like public image and Led Zeppelin. This is the way we can do whatever we want. And I had this vision of, if you

look at some early cult from 84 Dreamtime Live, we had a song called Bonebag, which actually has a solo in it, a blues solo. And you can see me going to, you can actually see me looking at him going like, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow man. And he did. And it was mesmerizing. We're not in the pantheon of, you know, all the things I was obsessed with. We were looking at it, maybe with binoculars from a distance, but I could see it. It was like, we've got to get to this mountain. We've got to get to this mountain. Because when you look at early Zeppelin, or you look at early Blue Cheerer or MC5, or what they had was raw, primal savagery. They found the animal.

And it was all through emotional intelligence. You know, and I mean, like, the MC5 were heavily into progressive jazz, and they incorporated all of that. And it was amazing because as we came to America, people like Rob Tynan would start coming to our shows from the five. So cool. We played these wake as well.

Yeah, there was so much information coming through and I was trying to get in against the culture at the time because even Robert Plant was quoted in one of the music papers saying, Asprey wears a Led Zeppelin t-shirt, now it's all of this. It exists somewhere that quote. Actually, Robert brought me on stage

when he did his solo tour in 89, Charlie was playing bass. And he said, I'm gonna do a Dawes song. I think it was Break On Through. And he always, the Dawes was obsessive as well, so. Was he? I didn't know that. Well, he was actually regaled the story

of being on a flight, Zepton on tour in America, and some dude up the front making a bit of a noise, bit of a racket, it's Morrison. Amazing. Led Zepton and the doors on the same flight. Incredible. It happened, kids. I'd love to see that.

Me too. I would have loved to have been on that flight. But think about it. Yeah. That's Robert Plant as a young man, as a human, flesh and bones, just like me and you, that was his path. Same as Jim Morrison, same as Bowie, same as all of them,

same as all the greats, Miles Davis, Nina Simone, human beings. Yeah. Letting it come through them. Some had teaching, some had technical abilities, others did not. They just did it intuitively. I guess environment played into a lot of it as well.

Some of them dreamt about it and it happened. They wanted to be successful entertainers whatever because I've never considered since day one ever being an entertainer yeah something else it's a different thing it's a way different thing ride the lightning yeah Dionysus yeah all of that yes actually believe in it but it's not for younger viewers that's why the graveyards are full of early ones that burn out so young. Yeah, it's dangerous work.

It's dangerous work. If you stand close to lightning, you're gonna get hit. And believe me, I've been hit many times. It's a miracle I'm sitting here with you. It's actually perfect I'm sitting with you talking about these things. How do you think the different art forms influence music, whether it be film, books, painting?

This is my favorite. It's all interconnected. Everything is connected. That's my drug of choice, art. Special visual art. Like you've got two hours before a show in Madrid, where we're going, hmm, Renesofia, Guernica, bang, plugged in, whoa. Or the black paintings, Goya, Prado, Hit It, Alaskas, bang, just sucking it in. You know, Rothko, first time I saw a real Rothko, I was wept. It ripped through me.

That guy, when he killed himself, he didn't just commit suicide, he slashed himself to the bone. Wow. It's in the work. You see the paintings get darker and darker and darker. And he was part of the pogroms in, they left Russia. He came to Portland, Oregon, you know, when it was all the anti-Semitic stuff happening in the Russian Revolution, the family moved to Portland. And that was part of his, the rectangles in the painting with the graves that were dug.

You think about the process to get to that. Because you look at some of his figurative stuff before that. And then he started flipping to colors and visceral elements of color. How color can impact the emotional field. Wow. How he arrived at that through his own process, internal process.

He's one of probably the biggest gifts that we've ever had in the 20th century, Rothko, Van Gogh, of course. You know, Van Gogh's painting Starry Starry Nights in the asylum with no windows. I didn't know that. There was no windows in the room when he painted that. That's what he had.

It was in his head. Staggering. How is that possible? I just think of Alice in Wonderland, you know, drink this, taste that, do this, don't open that door, don't look at this note. Of course we do. And then we find out. Curiosity kills a cat. It's the Buddha field, art, film, impacts. If you're open to it, like I saw Apocalypse Now when it came out, had a bottle of wine. And when the end came on, transformative.

It's like it was written for that movie. It's what it felt like in the movie. It felt like it was written for me in that moment in my life. Yeah. It was an awakening, the technicolor. Now to see Coppola talk about cinema now after he's made Magropolis, wow, he's scorching what he's saying as an elder.

And this is something with the culture that we, maybe as elders, is like, we're not just saying this because we're elders, we're saying this because lived experience, there is value in it. Let's flip the telescope around the right way. There's a lot of information in lived experience, elder creatives. I'd say the most. Yeah.

Although, I would say the wisdom of lived experience and the naive energy of not knowing anything. That's where all the juice is. That's when they collide is very, very powerful. Consider it now, crossing the threshold of 60. Consider that and how that time is limited from the Buddhist perspective. We know that we how that time is limited from the Buddhist perspective. We know that we have limited time. We don't know what the time of death is gonna be

or when we drop our bodies. So make every moment count. When you're young, you don't have that. You don't have that in your pocket. So that's why you look at the elders and you go like, how did Voskho arrive at that? Ah, impermanence. He was accelerating the process.

McLaren was accelerating the process. Lenin, whomever, all accelerating the processes. Even Dave Gilmour's come out recently said, I've changing direction at 76 or whatever. Like a great, phenomenal. Can we change direction too? Absolutely. Sure you can. Do whatever. Wow. Like, oh great. Phenomenal. Can we change direction too? Absolutely, sure you can. Do whatever you want. Whatever you want.

I like right now I'm obsessed with Gran Parsons. Flying Burrito. You may be sweet and nice, but you don't keep me warm at night cause I'm the one that lets you in. Oh, that song destroys me. Destroys me. Or his version of Wild Horses.

Mm-hmm. Pfft. Him and Emily Lou Harris. All of that. But then I can flip over to the Dark Wave, Berlin, UFO 361, the transgressive, Ethel Cain, even parts of Vultures, stars. Black night I'm laying in the stars, hold on. It's so desperate.

And we live in desperate times. So be a channel, stay open, get grounded. Gurus, it's just a word. Access points. Take what you need, leave the rest behind. Tell me about your spiritual life. My spiritual life? Well, first of all, I don't distinguish that as something separate.

I was blessed. My grandmother was in a spiritualist church on my father's side. The witchcraft laws were not repelled in Britain until 1951. 1951? That's not that long ago, really. So a lot of this nature-based traditional path was suppressed, the energy. And just as rock and roll was coming in, the witchcraft laws were repelled, and now you could practice openly the new spiritual forms. Plus we have people like Alan Watts, the East was coming in, the Oriental teachings were coming in, and they crept in through, you know, when the Portuguese were going to the Far East, and they weren't just bringing back silk.

They were bringing back Buddhism. The British going to India, bringing back Esoteric and creeping into, you know, French symbolism and nature and all of it. But also having the Scottish root, that has a wild mystical tradition. It does. It's deep. Yeah, deep, deep, deep. I mean, when we were kids, we used to go on

weekends, you go up to the highlands, you go to the locks and you'd be standing in nature and forests. And I remember walking through forests as a child. Would you hear stories of like fairies and elves or entities? Folk lore. Entities. I mean, they pop up. When I was a child, I always believed there was little people lived in the undergarden. They visit me in my dreams. As I get older, I go like, oh yeah, they were there. That is definitely extraterrestrial. It is terrestrial. It's just your psyche is able to go there. You're open enough to be able to see it.

Yeah. As one of my best friends ever said, your ego is not your amigo. Let it go. It's a great line. Let go, let God, right? Let it come in. So all of that, the Buddha field, you go to Tibet, you see that,

and they're just like, it's an everyday thing. Oh yeah, monks fly, there are entities, and by the way, there is the yeti. Be careful on the trail. Do you ever have a mystical experience? Always. Sitting here with you is a mystical experience. In this garden, you kidding?

But we are, Shangri-La, the lost city of Tibet. It was so enlightened, it just went into the ether. Tell me something you believe now that you didn't believe when you were young. Oh, something I believe now that I didn't believe when I was young would be, when I was young would be, that's not possible. You believed some things were impossible

when you were young. Yeah, that's how you reach. And now, anything's possible. Anything's possible. Yeah. And that became more reinforced with each decade that I lived through. Yeah. To the point where you look at the calendar and you go like, wait a minute, Christmas is coming,

I better get busy, that kind of thing. So yeah. I don't think I'm going to win the men's singles at Wimbledon. I might take that one off or play for my favorite soccer team, whatever. But in terms of creativity, it's all possible. I've done many collaborations. I had the opportunity to perform with Ray Manzarek and Robbie Krieger. Let's do that in music, so incredible. You know, I had the opportunity to perform with Raymond Zyrick and Robbie Krieger.

Let's do that in music. So incredible. The film, I've written synopsises. I'm now looking at having conversations with people about potentially making films, being in films, making art. I've always made art since I was a kid. I've got like stashed away is the Ian that nobody's really seen, because the Ian that nobody's really seen has been guarded by the dragon of it's not possible.

And that dragon I've been fighting with for decades. decades and now, auspiciously, being back in your presence, you're like the guy going, aha, I found the key long ago and I opened the door and I went through it. And you can too. And look, I even wrote a book about it. Did you read the book, by the way? I've been through the book. I've gone like, yep, yep, yep. This is how I read your book. I'm like, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. Me too. That's the kind of book it is.

Yep. It's a lot of yups. It's like, entry point, darkest point of the forest. Yep. A good idea is one that happens. Okay. That's great. A good idea is one that happens. Okay. It's great. Good ideas are one that happen.

Five percent inspiration, 95 percent perspiration. It's like there's no avoiding the work. Yeah. It's true. You may get hit by lightning a few times. Yes. And by the way, a stylist and your team of 30 writers and producers, someday they're not going to be around your ass. You have to do this yourself. So it depends which way you want to go.

Did you ever get into the 60s English folk scene at all? You like Fairport Convention, Pentangle. I sniffed around it and never dove in. I liked early Genesis. Yeah. Like when Peter Gabriel was in Genesis talking about, can you tell me where my country lies? Said the unicorn to his true love's eyes. Talking about the melancholia of the romantic period ending.

And we're now going into the void of the shadow. Wow. As a teenager, I was listening to that and going like, oh, the unicorns are dying. But I had a mojo interview the other day. They were trying to get into my head about what they thought I was. And I said, no, let me correct correct you what you're witnessing is a burning unicorn You're witnessing trauma. You're witnessing an Individual on fire. It's not entertainment. This is who I am

Yeah, no better than no less than it's real. Yes. And if you can get close to the third rail, I mean, there's things I eventually will share through some medium when it's appropriate. Yeah, but it's not showbiz. It ain't show business. Bill Graham told me that. Bill Graham was an incredible mentor to me. That's what we did, Gathering of the Tribes.

But it was very quickly taken into, made into show business, and then Pepsi got hold of it and did Woodstock. And very quickly, the tail wagged the dog, which is one of my favorite analogies right now. I'm always saying that every day. It's like, we can't let the tail wag the dog. Because it keeps happening.

You know, we can't let the tail wag the dog. They're going, but look at this. It's got so much money and power. And I said, yes, but it's a false economy. But we can have esoteric capitalism. There's nothing wrong with building wealth, material wealth, if you put a seed back in the ground. You know, the bands that we've had opening for us,

like the last, I'm curating, like I find like we just had a band called Patriarchy open for us, this couple, they're incredible. It's amazing that you got to do this over the course of your life and you show up and you go up on stage and you do what you do. Oh, it's- And for all of us that we get to have these

incredible lives based on putting ourselves into this thing that we love, it's really a miracle. The whole thing's a miracle. It is a miracle. We live in these times. These are times we live in. We live down the road from JPL. We live in the seat of Asceteria in the West.

This area where I live in Los Villas, there's a Kadampa Buddhist temple, Tibetan Buddhist temple, five minutes from my house. Amazing. The oldest ashram in America where Christopher Ishwood went There's a Kadampa Buddhist temple, Tibetan Buddhist temple, five minutes from my house. The oldest ashram in America where Christopher Ishwood went who wrote I Am a Camera that influenced Bowie, that's why he went to Berlin. He translated the Bhagavad Gita into English. That's his ashram.

He was friends with Aldous Huxley who lived up the street as well. Theosophy, synagogues, Scientologists, which was connected to JPL through Jack Parsons. And all the esoteric is right there. And you think about Laurel Canyon. And Manly P Halls right there. Manly P Halls right there. PRS. Yeah, we live right in it. I don't think I can live anywhere else.

I'm not ready for Shangri-La just yet. This part of me is like, this is amazing, I would love to be in Shangri-La, but I know that I couldn't stay. Tetragrammaton is a podcast. Tetragrammaton is a website. Tetragrammaton is a whole world of knowledge. What may fall within the sphere of Tetragrammaton? Counterculture? Tetragrammaton. Sacred geometry? Tetragrammaton. The avant-garde? Tetragrammaton.

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