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Strait interview
The autumn 1982 issue of Greenbelt
publication Strait Magazine featured an extensive stream-of-consciousness
interview with the Techno Twins. The roving reporter was Greenbelt stalwart and
Fat Band lynchpin James Holloway. Enjoy!...
"Portobello Road, smelling and
looking of fish and jeans. A fresh-faced policeman, 'Tavistock Road, don't you
usually say please?' I always smile nicely instead and clinch the deal tapping
his rain soaked gabardine.
Bev Sage baths and
reappears.
Bev. The Bauhaus in
Germany. Kadinsky and Clay and all that crowd, they had this place in
Wortenburg. It was a commune for arts. They actually had painters, performers,
the whole thing working together and they had one section of the Bauhaus which
was theatre. I mean a lot of the designs were strict German design, a lot of
Habitat chairs all came from that era. It's very functional the whole basis of
the design, the furniture was functional but then there were the fine artists
and the performing arts, the theatre. The whole idea of Mechanical Ballet came
from that lot and Casualtease. That's where we thought of that kind of thing.
What they used to do was each member of the theatre would create weird costumes. Grace Jones'
latest publicity picture is very Bauhaus orientated.
They would create sheet metal legs so you would find someone on
stage with this huge metal leg.
What happened was they used to put on
shows and they would arrive somewhere, instead of planning it (they would have certain restrictions) like their
costumes and design, but at the gig
they'd just go for it, get out in the audience. It was
very much you arrive and improvise.
I suppose it was a desire to find out
whatever is out there that happens whenever you perform with different people.
It's like letting yourdelf go rather than working to very heavy restrictions.
When we are Techno Twinning it's more the heavy restrictions. I mean we are
working with dancers so it's choreographed. From the very loose Casualtease where we
extend the edge of the stage so
it goes beyond the normal concept that was a kinda way about
finding out about the stage itself.
When we write we write visually. We see it.
Like Mechanical Ballet Bauhaus mixed in.
Steve and I
tend not to be serious at least
that's what tends to come over but behind it there is a
lot of well... pleasure and pain...
Steve.
Bev
where did you put my shirt?
Bev.
They're hanging up in
the kitchen (Steve's wandering around naked.)
Good grief.
Steve. Where were we? Yeh I suppose a
lot of the time we hid a
lot of the painful things that go on. When you think we
have had two bankrupt record companies.
Things have improved a lot now anyway, a lot of session
work for me has come in.
I'm very good at pushing camels through the eyes
of needles. We reckon it's easy.
Bev.
From our background we tend to trust people so implicitly. Anybody
that says yes you believe it.
Steve. It's funny as Christians you
are taught to find a Christ in
people. To see the good points. We've suffered from that because we
treat everybody as if they're honest.
Bev phones for a taxi, it's late, we get in.
Someone else ordered this one. We get out. Our taxi arrives and takes us to The
Dominion where Technos are supporting Imagination that night. Two male dancers
called Flex, great robots, were being rehearsed for the Techno show. Nobody can
find anybody it's getting late. Eventually the boys do it in cramped dressing
room. They are good.
Dominion Foyer.
Steve. That's
difficult. What we do, Bev and I write lyrics, we have a feel for a song like
Mechanical Ballet and Lunatic Republic which are both on the Technorchestra
album. We write visually. Lunatic is about a country where everybody was insane
and it must be like Christ coming back to the earth and just seeing the whole
thing gone mayhem and he's standing on a beach and there were dwarfs and seven
foot Chaplins and stuff. It doesn't make any sense anymore. So we tend to write
in visual concepts and then get a feel for the music. Then we take it to Dave
Hewson, tell him what we want. On the two albums really just the three of us did
it. We got the bass or drummer in as necessary. But that is the end of that era really.
We want to work more with musicians
and that's why this tour is great because all these boys will
be working on the next album.
Bev. Technos came from
an old Famous Names song Techno Refugee. We wanted to describe the
whole area we're going into so we
thought Techno was a good nickname. We thought that would describe the
electronics of what we were doing.
Steve. I mean you think
of Techno you don't think of Jazz/Funk. The twin thing was merely to
promote the fact that the two of
us were spearheading it. The problem with Famous was that no one
knew who to focus in to.
Bev. It's a good way of
describing like the dancers we call
the Technets, musicians we call the Techno
Orchestra and we work from the Techno Embassy. And the Techno Discs.
We set up our own label.
Steve. Names of bands
don't generally indicate the philosophy of the band. If you think of Nazareth you don't
think of donkeys or the Boomtown Rats
being into rats. Our philosophy is quite different to technology if you
want to take it as that.
Bev. The thread that's been running through
the last year or so has been
mixing up old and new. Like in terms of material choice of
covers. Technos are a kitsch mixture.
Steve. People tend to ask does
your album say anything. If you look
at specific songs they say a lot. Techno Refugee is purely about
someone trapped in a technological society.
Bev.
Lunatic Republic is...
Steve. I've explained that one. I'll
say it again if Christ returned to
the planet how he'd see it. The whole blue hair stuff. Standing
on a beach what'd he think?
Bev.
It's like a Fellini fairground.
Blue hair, pink hair, dressing
up, do you see as important?
Steve. It's purely what
you select. My shoes are as
cheap as yours, jeans about the same,
this (shirt) cost about four quid. So it's purely how you choose
things. We don't advocate spending money.
Bev. I suppose what I
enjoy about dressing up... I remember the first write-up I got in Record Mirror
in the middle of the punk thing was Bev likes dressing up. I died because you
had to be into jeans and leather.
It underlies what we enjoy but it's
not something to get obsessive about but there is an innocent enjoyment
that's there in colour and shape.
Steve. Kids on rainy
days love dressing up. You know in the Bible we are told to be like children.
Nigel Goodwin said the answer is simply to say you enjoy dresing up.
I mean we sit in the flat
and have a belly laugh, Bev comes in and stitches a dead
cat onto her coat or something.
Bev.
It's
not meant as a posey thing.
Steve. We used to go
into churches and get told we were free from sin, released and got new life. If
sitting there with a suit on, really stiff I mean, if that's a symbol of new
life I don't really want to know the message and if they see that as an
important part of the message then they are cutting out 80% of the population,
if you look at the whole of creation. One of the biggest stories in the Bible is
based on the coat of many colours. People tend to forget that his plan for his
people worked through a very bizarre item of clothes. Lydia, who was one of the
greatest women in the Bible, was a dyer of purple, her job was to make colour on
clothes. In creation why did God make
peacocks, why did he put those colours
there? I mean they talk about Bev's hair but compared to a
peacock she looks like a nun.
Bev.
God's first promise was a rainbow.
Techno Fun and Techno Feats. Look what technology is doing to people,
so criticise it and perhaps move back to the country and the simple life, are
you injecting some fun into the techno culture?
Bev. The nickname
Techno suggests that. It's like Steve's Chaplin lookalike thing. We have both
written scripts for that. Like Chaplin falling through a space invader machine.
So you have got the serious
players of these games, and then someone
like Chaplin comes along and pokes fun at it. He gets involved
but isn't quite sure what's happening.
Steve. I think also the
danger with Christian subculture thinking is that whenever a project is
presented to them they want to see the downside of things, what's wrong with it?
What are the problems and how unbiblical? The instructions for building the ark
were precise technology there is nothing wrong with that. The amount of fun technology
has given television and films. You just
tend to think of blood banks, we are all being taped. I
don't think it's a downbeat thing.
Bev. I think we are
adjusting to it all the time but it does wear people
down, it's a definite drainer. That's why
we have got to get a very healthy attitude to it. Look
at the freedom it's given us.
Re-formed images, paradigm
shifts, the Bible as propositional and imaginative art.
Steve. What you are
saying is quite true about us. When we go on stage it's just four beats to a bar, a
revox, that's the technical but the other
side is Bev and me and the dancers that's the humanity, the
fun, and it's integrated very well.
Bev.
It's an area we want to push even further
especially musically, emotionally and personality wise.
Steve.
We want to
get more spirit into the feel.
Bev.
We are very passionate about the
sound and the notes equally as we are with the visual. We
talk visually about recording the sound.
Steve. Bev is a more
up-front passionate person than me. Marjorie Proops, she gets
more passionate about involvement in music. The
kick I get is an idea well expressed. I wouldn't classify myself
as a singer, I'm a stylist.
There is a lot more to come. If you look
at our press clippings there was only Fabulous Poodles, Deaf School, Super
Charged, Darts, Tubes, Split Enz and ourselves that were doing visual stuff.
Ours is very different to theirs but we were well up with them. Three years ago
no one came up and said you've ripped that off from somewhere.
With Casuals and Technos, white bags over
our heads, double beds on stage, nobody had really done that. That
really was well over the top.
Bev.
We haven't really begun
yet. Up to now we haven't really had the money. Everything we
have done has been home grown.
Steve. The show tonight
is a home made project, the
clothes etc. Way back you remember the
rubber guitar, yeh we would love to pursue all that. It is
all entertainment, I do love entertainment.
The danger is with all this structure
bit. There are two ways of making a picture of a landscape, one is to paint it
say very freely like a kid would do it, splash on the clouds and sun and so on.
The danger is we've all been handed these jigsaw puzzles. The first way here is
to do the edges, then you do the sky, it becomes very tedious, there is
enjoyment in that but it's not like a kid would do it.
All these structures that we've been given,
we have to make a square and it's got to fit together.
We're kids really, that's the problem.
Bev.
We like our
jigsaws unfinished, dropped on the floor.
Steve. Look there's a
couple of bits of sky there... You were saying talking about the Plato thing how
education is based on a Greek view of life, workers work and thinkers think and
how wrong that aspect is and we should be getting into the Hebrew thing. Funny
comment here, if you are what you eat don't eat any more doner kebabs, or Greek
food. I was in Edinburgh and you get a lot of Victorian
plaques, like James Craigie lived here, theologian,
philanthropist etc. and these guys specialised in several things you know there
was no separation of these subjects.
Bev. All these old boys
there was no division, they were
huge in what they covered. The whole
point of the Bauhaus was to mix up functionalism with art, bearing
in mind the two went together.
Steve. That's where
architects have gone wrong, it's purely a technocratic function, they've
forgotten the humanity. To put rubber bricks in the wall that you push when you
go past I'm up for all that. There is
this book out, Fantastic Merlin the Magician
and the West Coast by Tom Davies and he equates spiritual and
Christian feelings with riding a bike...
What really annoys. Like when tonight we
shall be playing to two thousand people and you really have to come with the
goods, people are paying to come in. If they are not entertained they will have
you off. When we go to church, spiritually people have paid all week and you sit
there. Someone has been to college for three years to learn spiritual truth and
they get up there, stumble over the microphone... A lot of the sermons are not
well thought out. It's a real hassle for the spirit, to have to zoom in every
Sunday night and say 'come on mate, you know, do you need me again?' I mean he must be
so overworked, up for a nervous breakdown
because these boys are not doing it. There should be college for
communicating the gospel purely and simply...
Sexless
technology.
Bev. There is a phrase,
an Englishman will always treat you as an equal as long as you treat him as your
superior, quite humorous. It's a bit like that with feminism, I never think
about it. With Steve he, I was going to say he never treats me like a woman,
giggle, but that's not right is it. I don't have any problems in
that area. I'm happy being a woman
and I find that what I do and the way I do
it I don't find any problems.
Steve. I don't think
swapping maiden names is an important thing really. It's a real
hassle, if someone was called Thorogood and
I had to become Steve Thorogood, no way, I wouldn't be up
for it. Or Holloway, forget it.
Bev. It's a funny area
to talk about because in some ways I just do it. I don't think about it, if I
thought about it maybe I'd stop doing
it. Do you know what I mean.
So therefore I'm probably out front making mistakes, so I've got no
answers I'm probably posing more problems.
Steve. We've
got two glamorous girls in the show
but tonight we've got two glamorous boys. Dancers that's their job, smaller
costumes show the dance steps better.
Bev.
Again
there is a fun to sexuality...
Steve. There is a whole
mystique there... we are getting away from the topic but I know someone
who won't go to the cinema because
they advertise cigarettes, presumably she doesn't get on buses or walk down
certain streets because of the hoardings...
The Technos leg it at this point
to Godfrey Davies Film Products who want to make an hour's Techno Film for cable
TV. After which Steve gets a cab to pick up some gear which Bev has left in the
launderette. We continue to talk over the purr of a diesel
engine.
Steve. It's important how you
do with your record sleeves. This company
saw our image on the album cover and reckoned it was great
for film. It's hearing and seeing.
Film, well, actually Bev appears in the
next Python The Meaning of Life. She actually got a cheque through it said
Beverly Sage for the Meaning of Life, one hundred and twenty pounds. Cheap at
the price... We both did the Dubonnet advert. It's a very exciting future. We do
work in strange ways, I've never been a muso, like standing in dressing rooms
talking about bass guitars. I want a guy to get in here
and do it rather than discuss what
strings he's using. With the Technos that's all sorted out we've got
some amazing people to work with.
On the finance thing people just don't want
to hear that you can't buy breakfast,
so we never indicate that sort of thing. We may be on
the verge of being okay financially.
The artist dying in poverty in a garret
room you actually wonder where it comes from. Van Gogh, Lautrec weren't badly
off. Anyway I'd rather get up in the morning and give the hours God's given me
over to artworks whether it's a painting or getting a show together, than
working in a bank, just to get money, and then pay the price of just doing your
art in the evening. It's difficult to give yourself a deadline, if you are a painter to say if I
don't sell my next picture I'll have
to give it up. You get up the next morning and say
I want to do another painting.
Yeh, well my training and background in
sculpture features very large and it's something I'd like to talk to Strait
about. Like people used to see me in Fish Co as a sort of character who made a
few jokes. What actually happened I went to college for eight years doing
painting and sculpture and that's very much part of my life. A lot of work there
was very conceptual. I was doing stuff based on furniture. I got a little sick
of people putting sand on the floor and putting a chalk line round and expecting
people to understand it and if they didn't understand it there was something
wrong with them. So I got this idea using furniture, where I would get a dustman
in or somebody not only to look but to actually sit and understand why I did
something that way. I was trying to make people look at furniture objects in a
different light. But still only one per cent of the public would get any
understanding of a lot of the stuff that was going on. I found that very
frustrating so I wanted to get a show together where professors from the R.C.A.
would come in and enjoy it alongside a guy on the dole. That's where Writz came
from, A. my desire to entertain and B. I was a little bit fed up with being an
isolated sculptor I wanted to work with a team. I would love to get back to
drawing and sculpture, but I find this area now so exciting and people are
expecting our ideas. I was offered five years in Paris, doing painting and
sculpture, at l'Ecole des Beaux Arts, I turned that down because I wanted to get
into the commercial area. Although I miss the passiveness of just sitting in your studio and no-one else's
opinion really matters. Now you've got dancers
to contend with, sound and lights. But as long as my energy
stays up I'll hang in there.
People pin you down to being an artist,
or a performer, that's really silly. That's why John Lennon was so good, he
wrote books, did drawings, he did
happenings and made great rock'n'roll. He had
great conversation, it's a shame that there's not more of that around.
I suppose Bowie is like that.
The Techno Embassy. Steve shows
me some of his work and we talk around it.
We sit here and can talk about what,
paradigm shifts for instance, a little while ago it would be Rookmakerian stuff
and soon it will be something else for specific points in time there is specific
language, but for a lot of the churches the language has become the boss, the
language of what they used and what was a success formula has become the very important thing. So they
have stuck in that paradigm, a culture
built round that thought pattern, churches built round that thought pattern and
phrases. They are almost like monuments...
The trouble is only the avant-garde
stuff really interests me. Serialising 'Pilgrim's Progress' or 'Peanuts' for Christmas
doesn't really make it for me, it's
the guy who sits in a barrel, those who get really lateral
thought patterns that I go for.
It's funny when I went to college I
couldn't suss out the whole Christian bit and the art bit. The only guys I could
find was Rouault and Stanley Spencer, who I spent six months in the library
checking out. Amazing. He was like the Christian artist. I was getting out
Sunday papers and I read that the guy was into some very peculiar things so that
blew that out. As things progressed my final piece at the R.C.A. which got
amazing response was of Van Gogh's painting of 'The Chair' with the pipe etc. At
that time there was an exhibition at the V & A of Shaker furniture, what I
did I put Christian principles into the painting because Van Gogh was a
Christian. Oh yeh, he used to preach. Anyway the Shaker furniture was based on a
Christian way to make furniture, no decoration, very clean, very functional, but
very efficient and very truthful and strong. Furniture which would age and would
be passed on or even hang them on the wall. So I applied their rules for
furniture-making onto Van Gogh's picture of the chair which is exactly like a
Shaker chair. That was my first real venture into good thought patterns if you like, the only two
Christian ties I knew of in art
at that time. Sure Rouault did it in a Roman Catholic kind
of way and also Graham Sutherland...
I wonder why
someone hasn't made a study of the
graphics on gospel tracts... unbelievable. I've got one somewhere with a picture
of a snake chasing someone and...
The buzzer sounds it's the taxi
to take us back to the show. Outside The Dominion there are already long
queues..."
James
Holloway