A RAP WITH SUICIDE

Kevin Whitlock meets the dynamic electro-punk duo

(from Record Collector, May 1998)

Record Collector: That first album still sounds incredibly fresh. Are you surprised how well it has endured?

Martin Rev: I guess it's more contemporary because of the whole electronic music thing. And the idea of one person singing, the other making the music...that's not unusual any more. The technologies moved on.

The equipment we were using was very primitive. I'm not comparing us to those guys, but if you listen to very old blues records, they sound strangely up-to-date as well as sounding ancient. Perhaps primitive minimalism always sounds good.

RC: In light of the hostile reaction you often received back in the 1970's, do you now feel vindicated?

Alan Vega: If people are still talking about this record in 120 years' time, that's when I'll feel vindicated. Or if I made a million dollars from it. Seriously, though, it's a good feeling.

RC: It's actually a very commercial record, which is something people didn't pick up on first time. 'Cheree' could have been massive!

MR: A lot of the problems were caused less by the music than by the name. A lot of radio stations wouldn't play us, stores weren't stocking the record, promoters weren't advertising the gigs. Even in the 80s, you couldn't play Suicide on the radio. And don't forget, some uncommercial records sell a million copies - it's just they take 50 years to sell 'em.

AV: We wanted to hear our music on the radio. We wanted to be the biggest...we always believed we could've been huge. It's just that we weren't prepared to change what we were in order to do it. Who knows? Maybe Suicide isn't such a bad name anymore.

RC: You talk a great deal about the Project For Living Artists (PLA), where you first met and started making music together. Was it important for you to work in that environment early on?

MR: It was. There was a real hothouse atmosphere, a real sense of urgency and creativity. We got funding from the New York State Government...there were galleries and rehearsal spaces, jazz bands would show up and play. We had a whole floor. It was great, too, because we needed a place. We were virtually on the streets in those days, but we had the keys and so we could go in at night - after the 'respectable' artists who were showing there had gone home.

AV: New York was a great place to be at that time. It was in bad shape - bankrupt, fallin' apart, crime. But there was an energy. When we were working at the PLA, we'd here stuff coming from the streets. There were all kinds of bums and weirdos hangin' about. We were virtually starving, destitute. We weren't motivated by makin' money, we wanted to escape poverty - to not starve. That was our motivation. We got high on the music. They were very tough, hard times. We were hungry, fuckin' hungry. But that helped us. If New York City was like it is today, it might have been more difficult.

RC: Are you implying that you wouldn't have got any breaks today?

AV: NYC's different. It's cleaned up a lot, but some of the energy's gone. These days, rock's different. Things are planned. For us, making music was a religious experience. Now it's different: You think of a name, look at the demographics, get a lawyer, sign the contract, make the video. It's difficult to be different.

No.....we probably wouldn't get signed today. Not unless there was a Marty Thau around. Hell, man, even back when we started, we had trouble gettin' signed. We were like the last band in NYC to get signed. Television, Talking Heads, Ramones, Blondie, they were all signed up, but Suicide, man, we were like the dregs of the barrel!

MR: We wanted to break the status quo. We were different. We didn't have a guitarist or drummer. That was radical; people took it as an insult. We wanted to be more open-ended about everything. We wanted to shake things up, say to the establishment, screw you.

RC: Was the confrontation element important right from the beginning?

AV: Yeah, like Marty says, we wanted to screw the establishment. But confrontation's a big part of rock - I saw Iggy and the Stooges at the World's Fair in 1969, and that really inspired me. That was a thing with artists in NYC at the time.

But there were plenty of people who dug us, liked what we were doing. We always got people, young bands, comin' up to us and saying, you inspired me to form a band, which is great.

RC: So, how did you feel about getting pelted and spat at on the Clash and Costello tours?

MR: It's scary. But you get a high from it...the adrenaline is fantastic. It's funny, we thought we'd get a better reception over in Europe! But for me, it was always worth it, even if they were throwing chairs and bottles at us, or spitting. If the music feels right to me, it's worth the turmoil. It was moving me, and I thought nobody is going to tell me what I should or shouldn't play. So you feed off the anger.

RC: Part of the problem must have been that word gets around. People would hear there was trouble at your gigs, so they'd turn up to cause trouble.

AV: That's part of it. But the thing that kept me goin' were the kids that used to come up to you, even on the Clash and Elvis tours, and tell you how much your music meant to them. Or there'd be kids who were wondering what the hell it was they'd just witnessed. But you'd never see them at the gig - all the troublemakers would be at the front. The people who dug us would be standing at the back.

RC: Let's return to the first album. Was it recorded quickly?

AV: We did it in a day. It was pretty much live, straight onto tape.

MR: We had quite a lot of material. We'd been playing gigs and rehearsing for about five years when we recorded it. That album's a fairly good representation of our set at the time.

RC: "Frankie Teardrop" still sounds spooky, especially in the dark. How did that develop?

AV: That was based on a true story I saw in the paper. A guy works in a factory, loses his job, can't cope, kills his wife and kid, then himself. A story about a guy just goin' completely over the edge. Back in '75, that kind of murder/suicide thing was unusual, although you hear more of those cases now.

RC: The screams are well and truly bloodcurdling....

AV: We did two takes of it, I think, and the one on the record is the second one. I kind of improvised the words, tried to get inside the head of Frankie and his wife and kids, imagine how scared and horrified they'd be. It was like acting I guess.

RC: Here we are talking about a record that's over 20 years old. Does it worry you that we're not talking about any of your other records, or, more importantly, what you're doing now or in the future?

MR: It's inevitable if you make a very good record that spans the generations, people will talk about it. That first album made a big impact on a lot of people.

AV: A lot of people heard our second album before the first one and prefer that. I still get kids come up to me who do nothing but talk about that second record. I think the best song we've done is "Rain Of Ruin" off "A Way Of Life".

RC: So, what about the present and future of Suicide?

MR: We still write together. We have a pile of songs, which we might record. We have these concerts here in March.

RC: What can we expect at the gigs (which took place on March 5th, 6th and 7th in London)?

AV: Surprises! We might play some new material, we might improvise, we might even have some guests. We might not play any stuff that people are familiar with.

They might start throwing chairs and stuff at us if they don't hear "Frankie" and that other stuff - just like the old days!