Jill Bryson interview
9 June 01
Have you done any music since? Have you written any stuff?
Yeah, I do it for the sake of it yeah, just for myself. And occasionally I think maybe I'd like to do something. But I think it's been tainted by the crap that went on with the record company. The shit videos we had to do. We did a couple of good videos with Tim Pope who was fantastic, such a brilliant guy, I really liked him. His birthday was the day after mine, I remember having a joint party. He was the sort of the person I wanted to work with. The first video he did with us I thought 'he's got it'.
Which song was that for?
Since Yesterday. He got one of the animators from Magic Roundabout to do it. He shot it in black and white, we didn't look particularly glamorous and we had polka dots on velcro so they could move about and the guy from Magic Roundabout animated us. There was a big pop-art hanging with circles, mobiles that spun, it was bizarre but so exciting. It took two days to do it cos the animation was so slow. Tim Pope was such a nutter. I remember Robert Smith coming in to see him. It was incredible, really good fun and I thought 'yeah, that's great, that's a really good video', there was a point to making it. The second one he did was like a follow-on to it with a flurry of polka dots going off and they [record company] totally didn't get it. It's a bit more glam cos I think they'd told him to try and make us a bit more glamorous. But Rose was just wearing this hilarious tutu and boots, we wanted it to look like something from Eraserhead, something really weird, something 'these people aren't quite right', and the record company hated it. We did another one with Tim Pope for Who Knows What Love Is with us running about in costume in a park somewhere which was funny, and then they just wouldn't let us use him any more.
There wasn't really anything to make a video for after that was there, apart from Jolene. How did the Jolene single happen? Why that song?
[laughs] Well, we were just desperate by that point. They wanted us to do something like that.
Who suggested it?
You know, I can't remember, I think it might have been Balfey. We thought OK, that would be really funny because we could do it really camp and we wanted to do this really camp video and we had it all worked out and they didn't let us do it. We had to go to Paris to shoot it and it was terrible, sooo embarrassing. I can't even tell you, it was just shit, just awful, really bad. All the other ones had been making a little film. Especially the first one, I'm proud of that. I did film at art school and I was really into doing this. We'd been given a budget to make a piece of film that's to represent you and something that you've written yourself. What a fantastic opportunity, it ought to be something decent instead of total shit.
Also, with doing Jolene, if you've got any kind of tongue-in-cheek or ironic level to what you're doing then it's really important to have the video make it clear.
Yes!
It's such an in-yer-face and literal medium it's important to be overt that there's a jokey element.
Absolutely! Which it didn't, it really didn't. We wanted it to be shot in a fake saloon with busty barmaids with plumes and cowboys and stuff, we just thought that'd be so funny. Really crap, bad shaking saloon doors, really tacky, really colourful so there's no doubt in your mind that this is fun and something daft. But no.
It's really odd as a counterpoint because there's such incredible melancholy to your own songs.
I don't understand it myself really. We liked it, but we liked it the camp silliness of it, and it was such a silly thing to do
Especially trying to see it as being of a piece with everything else you'd done before.
Exactly. And also the way it was done, which was Balfey. There was a lot of Balfe influence, I remember we did the recording at AIR studios in Oxford Street which was very expensive and there was a lot of muso people involved, it was nothing to do with me. By that time I thought I don't want to do any of it, I just want to go home, go back to Scotland and lie in a darkened room and pretend it hadn't happened.
There was this thing in the 1980s that every single had to have a 12 inch and it had to have a longer version of the A-side. It doesn't have to add anything to it creatively, it doesn't matter if it's no good at all, just as long as it's LONGER, that's the only criterion. With the Strawberry Switchblade 12 inch remixes, did any of them feel any good at the time?
No! It was really half-arsed, it was nothing to do with us, it was the record company saying 'you've got to put them out'. I think the funniest one was Trees And Flowers - what was the point of THAT?
The point of remixes is to make them longer for clubs so you can dance - so, Trees And Flowers??
I know! I remember thinking 'what IS the point?' with that and all the others.
The Let Her Go one is quite good. They credit five people with doing the remix!
We just had nothing to do with it, it was just taken out of our hands. We were just told they were going to be remixed. I think Rose always wanted to be there but I don't know if she ever was. At that time we were probably quite busy and so they just went in and did it without us. They'd come and say, 'there's a single coming out, you have to do the 12 inch'. I suppose if you were interested in producing your own stuff it was OK, but we'd no clue, we could barely play. Maybe now we'd say, 'right, we'll do it, let's actually put some effort into it instead of letting somebody go in and take the vocals off leave it droning on for a minute and then put them back on'. After you'd recorded and you'd started something new they'd come back and say, 'oh we need a 12 inch, it needs to be done by tomorrow'. I can't say I was ever involved in or impressed by the 12 inches.
They put out an album of all the 12 inch remixes as well! You should see the prices that can go for as well, serious money for an album of cack!
I know! Grrrreat. And isn't that the one with all those terrible Japanese singles at the end? 'Ecstasy' and stuff like that? Warn them! Say 'don't do it, save your money'!!
I thought Ecstasy (Apple Of My Eye) was really incongruous for Strawberry Switchblade, a real twee departure from the usual melancholic barbed sweetness. Where did that come from?
That's a Rose song. That was when she'd met Genesis P-Orridge. 'Genesis can do magic' Rose used to say, so we'd ask, 'why can't he magic himself a single in the charts than?'. Cos there was a point where Psychic TV were desperately trying, 'Godstar' which Rose sang on, was a real aim at the charts.
They got the video on all the kids music video shows and everything.
Yeah, he really wanted to be in the charts. And if Genesis can do magic why can't he get the bloody single in the charts? What, he's not going to bother? It's what he wants and he can do magic, but you know, not for that? Aw fuck off, just write a good song. It's luck, it's not magic.
Ecstasy is really incongruous. There was, for a while, an unwritten rule that if you have over a certain level of popness in your band then you have to do a Motown pastiche, and whether that ends up being Town Called Malice by the Jam or Stop by the Spice Girls, everyone has to do one.
It's an unwritten law.
Was Ecstasy really late on?
Yes, it was very late on, and I hate it.
Was it released outside of Japan?
No. What it was, it was an advert for Subaru. So they had the tune - we didn't write the tune - and Rose wrote the lyrics to it. I didn't want to do it at all. She wrote the lyrics to it obviously, she'd started taking ecstasy. And I just thought it would be funny to put it on a Japanese advert, but it's a shit record. I so hated that song. I still hate it. It's nothing to do with us as far as I'm concerned. It's got nothing to do with me, I didn't even play on it, I didn't do anything on it. I didn't write the lyrics, I didn't like the lyrics, I hated the song, and it was done for a Japanese car advert - what's the point? Why not let us write something? Why give us a song which is THAT shit? It was another Balfey thing, 'you've got to make money'.
I remember we did Ecstasy, and we did a Wella hair advert for the radio. It was for Shock Waves [hair gel] or something, and Balfey was 'do this cos you'll make money'. We went into a studio and wrote something for it. You'd hear it on the radio as an advert. I can't even remember how it went now. I think Janice Long was doing the voiceover for it. That was at the end of the band, I just thought 'this is awful'. Just piss off, with your bloody Subaru adverts and Shock Waves radio jingle crap; I'd rather sign on, I really would. I'd spent all my time trying to fight against stuff, by that time it was just about the end of the band and I thought fuck it, nobody'll ever hear it.
And they put it on the 1997 reissue CD of the album. They add that and the 12 inch mix of Since Yesterday but miss off Sunday Morning. What were they thinking?
Exactly! Please miss the point, why don't you?
There was another song after that that we recorded, I don't know if it was ever released, I think it was a Japanese single ['I Can Feel'] which I had nothing to do with. I just sat in the studio, it was Balfey and Rose who did it but it was released under our name. I was there thinking 'I really hate this, this has got nothing to do with what we started off being'. It was so depressing, so deeply depressing. It was nothing to do with me, I didn't sing on it, didn't play on it, didn't even know what it sounded like until I got in there. That was the point where I thought, just leave it.
And she didn't want to, she didn't want the band to split up, and she actually tried to continue after I'd split the band up. She got this girl from Glasgow and they played a couple of gigs as Strawberry Switchblade. I had asked her not to, but it was that kind of final thing, 'well you've got nothing to do with it, this is my band'. She used to do a lot of shouting, in studios especially, she would be 'IT'S MY BAND! IT'S MY BAND! I'LL DO WHAT I WANT!' and people would really be taken aback. She'd get to a point where she felt that I was doing something that she liked that she wanted to do, she'd build up like a pressure cooker and explode. I remember her throwing things in one studio, just throwing things about in this little room next to the control room and thinking 'uh-OH, this is scary'. That wasn't all the time, but to deal with it at all was quite tricky and it wasn't much fun. I remember coming back from studios in taxis nearly in tears because of another ridiculous outburst.
It affected her very badly, the whole thing. In some ways she was quite an innocent. Although she'd been brought up in such a terrible area she had a lot of the innocent about her. I don't think she could handle it, and also being taken up by somebody like Genesis P-Orridge and manipulated which was just a shame. And I thought you've got to be kind of sad if you're hanging on to this Strawberry Switchblade thing. That's it, you know, we've split up, do your own thing. You're capable of doing your own thing, you're capable, you're not stupid, you can write your own songs, do that. Don't try to hang on to something else that's been and gone and isn't anything like you any more.
I went to a lawyer to write them a letter and she told them to fuck off and she'd do what she wanted. And she'd gone to a huge music biz lawyer to fight me about how it was her name and James Kirk had given it to her. What's that about? Just do your own thing, you know? Probably now I wouldn't bother, but I didn't want her to do it, at that time it was important especially with the Nazi stuff and I didn't know what she was going to do. I was saying 'you can do what you like, you're your own person and you can do anything, Rose'. As you said, the drive she'd got was phenomenal, and if she wanted to do something she'd do it. She didn't need me, she didn't need the name. That left a bit of a nasty taste in my mouth. It's a shame cos I still like the records but I didn't want to do anything with her, I don't want to get in touch with her again. I just wanted to get on with my life, I got married and had a kid and I do my artwork.
What is it you're doing?
I'm working in glass at the moment, doing stained glass panels and painting and sculpturing. And I'm enjoying that, it's something I feel I can do. It's something I did and put on hold, cos the minute I finished art school that was us off.