Ian Astbury of The Cult on Tibet, cultural diversity, and the influence of “Cookie Puss” (BV interview)
“We didn’t come into this as songwriters, we came into this as fans of music.”
It’s been over 30 years since the rock ‘n’ roll world was introduced to the distinctive voice and persona of Ian Astbury, vocalist and de facto frontman for The Cult. Though many of his critics are quick to point out (and not unfairly) his unabashed channeling of Jim Morrison-y antics, Astbury’s stylizations are definitively his own, as the band have made their way through gothy post-punk, stomping hard rock and other variations. With their tenth full-length, Hidden City, just out, The Cult still make good use of Astbury’s immediately recognizable bari-tenor howl, though the band’s musical direction, much like the entirety of their discography, is another shift in dynamic. In our recent conversation with Astbury, the reasons for that musical shift are much more than an exercise in arbitrary changes and instead a portrayal of his own spiritual evolution. Astbury was more than eager to discuss this and more while on the road for The Cult’s US tour, which hits SXSW this week.
—
BV: After nine previous studio albums, what was the approach for you guys coming into Hidden City?
Ian: Piano. That was the first thought was that it’s time to take it up a notch. I think I feel for this record there was a real desire to see songs more actualized. The way we kind of work is we have like a discovery period, we take what we got and all the different kinds of recordings, demos, riffs, chords, melodies, lyrics and throw it on the table and then move it around kind of like looking for a narrative. What’s the connective tissue? The one thing to me was, I just kept hearing piano. I thought we’d evolved into a place where taking elements away and stripping it down to something like a voice and a piano would be kind of the heart of the record. It became the core emotive element of the record as opposed to it being driven by muscle and sinew. Everyone was getting to that space. In the first sessions we brought in a piano player, Jamie Muhoberac, and sat down and started to take some of the chord progressions and transpose them into piano just to see what the atmosphere was like. What that space was like. To me, I think a lot of that had to do with playing with Ray Manzerak and Robbie Krieger.
BV: You look at all the way back to Dreamtime in 1984 and the narrative of The Cult since then and it’s interesting to see you guys embracing a more pared down style. Was that something you saw yourself gradually evolving into as a musician where you’re allowing for more space?
Ian: Well, I mean the guitar’s a pretty big instrument, especially with Billy. He’s quite a formidable animal. You’re dealing with the guitar taking up a lot of the sonic space, and I think that only allows for certain breaths of expression and there’s so many other colors there to express. I think by creating more space within music things become more important, and that’s something we’ve learnt over time. That’s something you just learn over time. The thing with The Cult’s evolution was we came out as a post-punk band, post Joy Division Britain, and were playing really very simplistic chords, melodies, rhythms and we were a live band. We were essentially a live band and recording, making records, was something that was a by-product of being a live band. Especially once you get signed to a label because once you get signed to a label then you’re in the cycle of having an obligation to fulfill a contract. You kind of merrily go along, you kind of merrily get dragged along under the bus just in the cycle. You don’t really have that external objectivity. You just kind of get on with it. Then all of a sudden you have an epiphany. It’s like wait a minute, there’s a bit more to it than this. We didn’t come into this as songwriters, we came into this as fans of music. We came out the punk scene and then next thing you know you’re in a band. Certainly in my part I had no desire to be in a band, but I just ended up being in a band. I got asked to join a band. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I stayed with it. That was it. I fell in love with performing. If anything it was just performance, performance, performance. Everything was kind of written for those environments. I don’t think we really became conscious of songwriting, like real songwriting, till we’d probably got two, probably like even maybe hints at it in the self-titled record in ’94, but really considering song writing? To me that’s more recent. That’s more like Choice of Weapon. Going into this there was certainly more consideration for songwriting. There’s definitely a shift in our addition and consideration of craft and that kind of thing, whereby as using the guitar as a device where it creates a certain sonic atmosphere, and then looking at other instrumentation, different kinds of arrangements. I hope it’s evolving. I’d like to think we’re evolving. There’s some other factors in there. Definitely stepping outside of the touring/recording cycle and taking time to travel and maybe have more introspective experiences that can bring me back to the process. This record, even more so, I would say that going forward more of the kind of reduction and more getting into narrative based songwriting. Who says that you’ve got to stay like a kind of testosteronic rock band? We’ve done that. [Laughs.]
BV: Which is potentially risky when you’re constantly being branded and confined to these strict parameters of genre.
Ian: Definitely, and now we find ourselves in a situation where nobody knows where to put us.
BV: is that a good thing from your point of view?
Ian: Well it is and it isn’t, because then you end up as a nomad or an orphan. Rock music now, it’s so fragmented. Where it was once a community, it’s now incredibly fragmented. There’s so many divisions, communities within rock. We don’t seem to fit any of them.
BV: So your relationship to rock has changed pretty significantly.
Ian: Spiritually I feel closer to hip-hop to be honest with you.
BV: Why do you think rock music is so fragmented now?
Ian: Social Media. Individuals can now select a much more niche lifestyle and their cultural choices are so much more varied. The information’s available to anybody in all regions and all walks off life. There’s much more accessibility to so many different cultural experiences. Another important part of it is visual information as well. And that’s changed. In some ways Instagram has become the new radio. Your information is usually first. If you see something first then you’re more likely to check it out if it seems attractive to you. The advertisers have certainly worked that out with their use of the idea that certainly looking at a beautiful young thing is far more interesting than looking at anything else in the culture. That thinking has put us in a state of neurosis, because we don’t acknowledge the cycle of life. People will hit the glass ceiling. It’s the biggest curse. I love that saying about dying to be a member of a club you know you’ll be ejected from. At some point everybody’s going to get ejected. It’s going to be interesting to see how the Instagram obsessives react when they’re ejected from that club. Where are they going to go? What are their foundations? What are their grounding foundations going to be? These are kind of existential things that we consider within the subject material of the record, and I don’t think too many people are really considering it, albeit in some ways people who filter it as esoteric or whatever do, but the actual idea of the whole cycle. The 360. It’s not just about the Madison Square Garden moment in time.
BV: Has aging and experience provided you with that perspective?
Ian: How old are you?
BV: I’m 33.
Ian: You’re 33? Same age as Jesus.
BV: [Laughs.] Yep.
Ian: That’s when he achieved ascension. That’s good.
BV: Something like that.
Ian: No it’s good. It’s very good.
BV: Well, good. I have something to look forward to at some point during this year then.
Ian: Hopefully. [Laughs.]
BV: But your life experiences, though, those have certainly shaped and reformed a lot of those ideas and perceptions you had in your early twenties back when The Cult first started.
Ian: Sure. Of course.
BV: Are there specific points of reference for you just in regards to those changes?
Ian: I mean, stepping outside of the bubble of the Western modality for one point. Traveling into the East. Experiencing other cultures. Being immersed in other cultures. Traveling through the Himalayas for example. Being exposed to other philosophies, other points of view, especially Tibetan Buddhism. Tibet is definitely a huge part of my life. I guess, you know the starting point for all of it was when I was a kid and being counted as one of eleven. We traveled a lot, and I went from one culture to a different culture, and North American culture had a lot of different nuances than UK culture. I always get pinned down to one thing when I’m discussed in the UK, but it’s not true. By the time I was eleven or twelve, I was being brought up on a diet of Soul Train and American Bandstand and FM radio. I was able to see movies that I wouldn’t be able to see in the UK. It was just being immersed in a culture that I wasn’t exposed to in the UK. Just so much more choice and breadth of culture. The expanse of everything. The modernity of everything. Shopping malls. Household conveniences that we didn’t have in the UK. It was almost like coming out of the middle ages and going right into the 21st century. It was quite a huge shift for me. Then being exposed to different cultures like being in Canada at the time, and experiencing the multiculturalism there. People coming from all over. Different ethnicities. There was nothing like Soul Train on the TV in UK. There was no afro-centric programming in the UK. It was a very kind of like vanilla program, but in North America there was this Afro-centrism in culture which I responded to. I fell in love with it. That was a really important part of my DNA that came in and something just stayed with me. You know it’s difficult to articulate, especially when I’m speaking to a journalist from the UK. It’s difficult for them to get their heads around what my journey’s been because they’ve pretty much stayed in the UK. It’s a very narrow kind of perspective. They try to pin you with things. You know, certain cultural familiarities and whatever. I’ve seen enough. I’m not saying by any means I’m unique or different or special or the greatest of all time, but I have my own humble journey, and it goes into my music.
BV: Going back just a second to you mentioning hip-hop. I’m curious to know what artists you find yourself especially drawn to?
Ian: Well, I mean “[Deeply Ordered] Chaos” is kind of a response to Kanye West‘s “All Day”. I saw that on the Brit awards, and I was just blown away by the power of it. It was just something very powerful that went into “All Day” and there’s something to me incredibly symbolic of that crew on that stage at the Brit awards. There was something else in play going on. It’s like this statement on empiricism. You know, Britain is one of the biggest empires of all times. Now, the people who’ve been dominated for years are coming back and bringing their culture to it in a way that’s really affecting and probably having more impact on the youths than the Empirical culture that the UK kind of built over centuries. Now UK kids are probably far more into understanding and learning from other ethnicities and their cultural influences. We’re seeing that globally.
BV: And that’s something you feel connected to as well.
Ian: Spiritually. I’d never try, never think that we could appropriate hip-hop culture or appropriate hip-hop music into what we do. That would be gauche. It wouldn’t be authentic. Certainly it’s part of what we’ve done in the past. I mean the reason we made the Electric album was because of hip-hop. It was because we heard the Beastie Boys. I heard “Cookie Puss” in a club in Toronto very early on. Like ’85. I heard that song, and I was just like it’s so dope hearing that. Obviously hip-hop was this new music. It wasn’t things like Sugar Hill Gang or whatever. We were hearing some of this stuff. Until we came to New York in the early 80’s I didn’t know what culture really was. Being more directly kind of in front of clubs and hearing that kind of music, and then hearing “Cookie Puss”. There was something about that. We came to New York, we came to Electric Lady, we’re part of the Def Jam family. And then of course going on to do Gathering of the Tribes. At that time Rock Music and Hip-hop culture was way more integrated. Now you see a lot of hip-hop appropriating rock music. You’ll see a lot of appropriation of like the black leather jackets been adopted by a lot of hip-hop artists and it’s seen as a badge or a symbol of indifference or symbol of rebellion. It’s a different purpose of course, but obviously it’s cyclical. I mean, you can’t be not engrossed in Kanye West. Right now he’s got center stage. I don’t think it’s just him as an individual, either. I think it’s what he represents. It’s just phenomenal. Within the space of 72 hours we’ve seen the whole paradigm shift in the music industry one more time. Streaming services have now become irrelevant. The idea that you can take your record off and fiddle with it and then put it back out again, I love that. That’s incredible. Of course Kendrick Lamar’s newest record, now that truly is a masterpiece. It plays so powerfully cinematic and immersive. I mean I live in Los Angeles and I play that record in the car all the time. The only things I really play in the car are How to Pimp a Butterfly, Blackstar by Bowie or D’Angelo’s Black Messiah. Black Messiah is such a beautiful record. I don’t really listen to rock in the car, but if I am listening to rock music I’ll put a Popol Vuh or Sunn O))) record on.
BV: You can never go wrong with Kraut and especially Popol Vuh
Ian: The record they released about the mountain in Tibet, Kailash. That’s a whole other spiritual technology, which is now unfolding before our eyes. You know, you’ve got movies like Koyaanisqatsi and Powaqqatsi about the acceleration of human life. The inspiration of the diversity of the web of life and the speed at which everything is traveling beyond quantum physics. Forget the popular culture let’s get into quantum physics. [Laughs.] Let’s get into what’s happening there on that level. When you consider that our oceans are now full of uranium from Fukushima. Cancer is on the rise, opiate addictions on the rise, and it’s an existential spiritual crisis. I mean these are subjects that people aren’t talking about. It’s wonderful that Taylor Swift got album of the year for 1989, but I think Bowie gave it so much more in Black Star as a real indication of what human life is about. He gave you the soul map. He gave you the soul map and we have very little of that in our lives. When you’re talking about popular culture, it’s one thing as spectators on the sidelines spectating in popular culture, or could we really talk about the bigger picture. Because we’re all going to cross that thresh hold. I’m more interested in material that’s going to be spiritual technology, the material that’s going to enhance our lives in someway. Or art that’s going to give us more insight. Moments in popular culture come and go. That’s the whole course in Hidden City. I’ve been to the Rongbuk Monastery at the foot of Everest, and listened to the prayer session and that resonance from these Tibetan monks when they’re meditating. We’re talking about something else. This is the place that we’re at right now and this is the shift because the more that people are bombarded with media culture, and celebrity culture, and popular culture and veneer culture, the more there’s going to be an existential spiritual crisis. Until we actually can start identifying this inside the culture and until we start having these conversations about cultural diversity, it’s going to stay the same. Well, it’s not going to stay the same; it’s just going to evolve or erode in a way which is going to be very painful to our psyches and our spirits.
