Robyn Hitchcock: Cult Artist Forever

"All I wanted to do is make a living. I don't need to make fifteen of them."

From his band the Soft Boys (1976-1981) from Cambridge, England, Robyn Hitchcock has defined and refined the notion of "cult artist." A quick look at Wikipedia lists 50 albums by Hitchcock or Robyn Hitchcock & the Egyptians (including a few live albums and compilations). He had enough of an audience that like many indie bands in the 1980s, he moved to a major label.

The album was Globe of Frogs, by Robyn Hitchcock & the Egyptians. The late 1980s switch to major label A&M Records "worked": it was his top charting album, reaching No. 111 (that's one hundred and eleven) on the Billboard Top Albums chart. It remains my favorite of his albums, along with two dozen others: Such is the fate of the cult artist, remarkable consistency in the face of the record company's familiar refrain: "But we don't hear a hit single here."

In 2024, Hitchcock released a memoir, 1967: How I Got There and Why I Never Really Left. The year of Sgt. Pepper shaped him, as he would continue to shape the colorful sounds of the psychedelic revival in the late 1970s and 1980s. He also put out a kind of companion album to the book, 1967: Vacations in the Past, a collection of covers from the first psychedelic era. It’s on Spotify; skip “A Whiter Shade of Pale” and go right to “Itchycoo Park.”

You can hear Hitchcock’s influence on more successful bands, like R.E.M., especially their early years of obtuse lyrics and ear-catching jangle, as well as on the L.A. “Paisley Underground” of that era. His U.K. contemporaries XTC were part of this mini-movement of Beatle-philia, without the power pop baggage.

The interview took place Feb. 1, 1988. It has been lightly edited for clarity and consistency. The best way to approach a cult artist whom one respects as much as I do Hitchcock is to make it clear one is on the joke. Also: the transcript was on a 1980s dot matrix office printer, which uses fonts that I don’t think exist anymore. I transferred that to PDF, exported it to .docx, a typographical nightmare that had p’s in caps, the letter “l” as “1”. So excuse the typos, as always.

WR: I'VE BEEN TRYING TO MAKE OUT THE LYRICS FROM THE ADVANCE CASSETTE, BUT IT'S NOT EASY.

No lyric sheet. (Wryly) Not until you've sold your first hundred­ thousand records.

WR: THE SONG, "TROPICAL FLESH MANDALA" DOESN'T SOUND LIKE IT WAS MADE FOR WHITNEY HOUSTON.

RH: It's a shame though, because I really like Whitney Houston.

In a way, it would make more sense her singing it than me. Or singing 'On the night the creature came ashore/Someone told Joanna what they're for.' It would be great, but it's probably not to be. I'll probably never meet Whitney Houston, or even her lawyer.

IN INTERVIEWS, YOU’VE BEEN TYPECAST AS FATHER OF NEO-PSYCHEDELIC ROCK, WHATEVER THAT IS. BUT IT'S AN EASY CONNECTION TO MAKE WHEN YOUR ALBUM IS 'GLOBE OF FROGS' AND THE ALBUM COVER, AND SONG TITLES TRIPPY AS THEY ARE.

I don't know,  you can define it any way you want. People need to define things. I like messing around with people's definitions. I should probably make a point and try to be more dance-oriented, simply to throw things around a bit, to disorient them. But I  haven’t. Otherwise: its a new record.

WITH A MAJOR LABEL, DID YOU HAVE A LARGER RECORDING BUDGET?

We had the facilities to do that, but we didn’t really use it. We're used to working in a certain way, we're used to working quite cheap. We spent a bit more money than ever because it was lying around. You've got it, you spend it. It's a kind of ritual in the business. I don't even know how to use a lot [of the new digital studio equipment]. You spend money on machines or on trying out different things. Once you start, there's no reason to stop experimenting. No one part is better than the other, so you get Michael Jackson or Bryan Ferry spending a fortune, takings years and years. Maybe they'd be better off if they did it [an album] in two weeks. I think they're strangling on their own budgets. Not much danger of that happening to me.

WAS THERE TALK ABOUT BRINGING IN AN OUTSIDE HIT PRODUCER?

No. When we talked about signing, I just said I didn't want to be interfered with, either in terms of the marketing or production or anything. The basic  groundwork's done anyway: the "cult" network, college radio, all they [A&M] have to do is expand what's been done. They don't have try and say, 'we're gonna break this artist, they're gonna be the new Julian Cope or Psychedelic Furs,' or ‘we think this guy could be the male Chrissie Hynde’ or anything like that. We are who we are.

I would imagine if this record stiffs, they could conceivably try to force us to have a producer. They could easier force us to cover a load of John Cougar Mellencamp songs. If it works, we'll I carry on; if not, they can drop us.

YOU’VE ALLUDED TO THIS POSITION AS ''CULT ARTIST.'' IS THAT SOMETHING YOU’VE NURTURED THAT'S PREFERABLE TO MASS STARDOM?

I never wanted to monopolize people. I deeply resent the way that people with a lot of publicity are the ones who sell the most. Everyone's gonna buy albums by Michael Jackson, Bruce Springsteen, Sting and Madonna. As if that wasn't enough, you can't get away from their faces in the papers. This is no reflection on them personally, it's just the way things go. There might be somebody cropping up doing brilliant stuff who won't have that kind of budget. All I wanted to do is make a living. I don't need to make fifteen of them.

I've always seen people like Van Morrison . . . they can have a record deal, do concerts, younger people listen to them, older people listen to them. I wouldn't like to be Bob Dylan, that sort of character -- all I ever wanted was a certain amount of respect which I think I have. It's not really important how many millions of people you colonize.

Balloon Man video directed by Tony Moon. Yarmouth, Isle of Wight, 1988

I know I'm not gonna change the way I write. I wish I could write like Bryan Adams or something. I have no control of how I write songs, what kind of songs I write. The only ones I put out are the ones that ring true. If I wrote a song for Belinda Carlisle, it just wouldn’t ring true -- I couldn’t sing it. I'm stuck with that.

I'd love an album of covers: I'd like to see Sinatra sing 'Globe of Frogs,' maybe Sting and Phil Collins do ''Unsettled." I'd like to hear the Watford football team to do 'Vibrations.’”

BUT ANYBODY WHO LIKES GOOD SONGS COULD LIKE YOUR SONGS. WHAT MAKES THEM INACCESSIBLE TO SOME PEOPLE?

I don’t know, are they? Or is it simply that that no one's been told about them? Or is it simply that I never wanted to be a megastar, so I didn't sit around forcing people to try listening? People got righteous, awfully righteous on my behalf, say you should be famous. Or you get people who shake me awake in the morning  and say, come on, you should be on "Top of the Pops." On your behalf, they want a crusade for you to be somebody like that. And I can't see why.

HOW ABOUT THE WORKING PROCESS FOR SONGWRITING?

Oh, sometimes they come . . . Actually, I can't remember what happens. I'm not really aware, I just realize after awhile that a song exists.

Sometimes, you get a title first, and that's the easiest. If I've written a song and haven't gotten a title by the end of it, chances are I'd never use it.

YOU HAD A SONG CALLED 'RAYMOND CHANDLER EVENING' ON ELEMENT OF LIGHT. DO YOU FEEL SOME KIND OF KINSHIP WITH HIM?

Raymond Chandler? We're both great drinkers. I don't know. He was an expatriate who moved to L.A. That was a song, bang, out it came. That song just formed, like candy floss--you call it cotton candy here, wisps of it, just form around a stick. Maybe there's a dwarf somewhere in a tower in Siberia beaming things at me and I write them down.

COMPARISONS HAVE BEEN MADE TO LENNON, DYLAN, SYD BARRETT. IF ANY OF THOSE ARE VALID, WHAT IS IT EACH HAS GIVEN TO YOU AS FAR AS AN APPROACH TO SONGS?

I think they're just all individuals. They have their own perspective. I suppose none of them wrote for other people, though Dylan and Lennon songs were extensively covered. I'm not Stock, Aitken, and Waterman . . . they're two song writers and a producer in England, where they write hits for people who don't write their own songs: Samantha Fox or Bananarama, anyone who's prepared, who wants to be a pop singer but doesn't care about writing.

KINDA LIKE MIKE CHAPMAN AND NICKY CHINN DID? [writing and production team who made hits for Slade, Suzi Quatro, and later Blondie].

Yeah! It's professional, or like Barri and Sloan did for the Monkees, or Neil Diamond . . . in the old days, everyone had songs written for them. It wasn't really until Dylan and the Beatles that everybody started writing their own songs, and people were encouraged to do that.  

IF YOU WERE GONNA INTERVIEW DYLAN, DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'D ASKED HIM?

Yeah. I don't think I'd ask him anything about music or show business or lyrics or fame . . . I thought of a question for him last night, but I've forgotten . . . about igloos. I get the feeling people like him don't really want to be interviewed, so I just wouldn't.

I've always thought there should be a School for Abuse for famous people whom no one says ''no'' to. They just go and get treated like dirt for two weeks, clean toilets, bring people food, and sleep on hard beds, there's no booze, no cigarettes and no drugs, no sycophants, nobody pampering you saying 'Yes, Mr. Wonderful.' And then that would change your perspective a bit.

I’m interested in a career. I'm not interested in a flickering burst of publicity and going to work in a bank for the rest of my life. It's a distraction . . . Praise inflates you, and criticism makes you down. You don't need to become a sort of emotional balloon to other people's comments.

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