Lydia Lunch: I Was A Teen Terrorist (Interview -Pt2)

(This is Part Two of a two-part interview. For Part One, click here.)

Lydia Lunch is many things…musician, poet, conceptualist, photographer…basically a walking work of art. Lydia was at the cutting edge of New York City’s No Wave movement when her band Teenage Jesus & The Jerks first began recording and performing in the late 1970s. She’s never stopped creating, working with the likes of Thurston Moore, Robert Quine, Rowland S Howard and Jeffrey Lee Pierce along the way. She’s just opened a retrospective exhibit in New York titled, Lydia Lunch: So Real It Hurts and released a new album with her band Retrovirus titled Urge To Kill. Lydia and her band, featuring original Sonic Youth drummer Bob Bert, revisit some of her classic tunes along with a few of her old favourites. In part two of the interview, The 13th Floor’s Marty Duda talks to Lydia about her early days in NYC with Teenage Jesus, her legacy and, to start things off, her days as a teenager in Rochester, NY, hanging out at the iconic music store, The House Of Guitars.

Click here to listen to part two of the interview:

MD: Now since you’re talking about archival stuff, I dug up my copy of Teenage Jesus 45’ that I bought at the House of Guitars back in the day.

LL: Oh my god, I can’t wait to tell you about that.

MD: Well that’s what I want to hear about, tell me about it.

LL: Alright. House of Guitars, which only you and I and any really weird rocker knows about, which was started by 3 brothers, criminals, in Rochester, New York, stealing guitars, going to prison, coming out, opening the House of Guitars, which was also a fence for guitars and the biggest vinyl collection probably at this point maybe in the world, I’m not sure. There used to be commercials on late night…in the early 70s, there were really a few, like 3 great rock shows on TV. I’m thinking like Midnight Special, I don’t even remember, Rock scene, whatever.

MD: There was Don Kirshner’s  Rock Concert.

LL: That’s what I just said, exactly, there we go. House of Guitars had really insane commercials on, I mean just crazy, like 300 pound women with like 6 buff sailors, House of Guitars. Anyway, these very much influenced our weirdness as kids. This was the damn Glam Rock as well. So I go to the House of Guitars quite often and at that point at 13, I guess my look was black slick back hair, no eyebrows, black wet look dress, rosary beads…pretty goth, goth.

MD: Right.

LL: Very harsh. I mean I looked about 40 at 14, I look younger now than I did then, it was miraculous. So I’d go in there and I’d insist to be on their commercials and they would just all laugh at me, just simply “ha ha ha ha, yeah right” and every week I’d go in, I want to be on the commercial and actually I was discovered, quote unquote, some straight looking guy walks in, he was a photography going to Rochester Institute of Technology and he asked to take pictures of me and my girlfriend. I think I was 14 by now, and she was 13. Going to all the concerts that came, hanging out with the bands and for my career as I would say to my mother, we’d just laugh and say what career. So this guy took pictures of me and my girlfriend Laurie and put them up at the Rochester Institute of Technology and it caused an uproar, like who are those horrible girls dressed in black in a graveyard, get rid of them, they’re too creepy. So that was my first taste of negative attention which I loved. I’m like they hate me, I love it. So it wasn’t long after that I did my first performance at 14 in Buffalo at an acid party and hence, not much longer after… So at 14, that’s when I first escaped out of my bedroom window and ran away to New York, influenced by the New York Dolls. It was a dead zone, New York, it was absolutely creepy, horrifyingly criminal and bankrupt. So I decided I better go get some money and come back and I came back two years later and then began with… I thought I would do spoken word but there wasn’t spoken word at that time, I mean it was post-beat, post- Patti Smith which was rock poetry, I didn’t want to do that.

MD: Right.

LL: And spoken word didn’t really exist. So I just, somebody gave me a broken guitar and I started writing Teenage Jesus, which considering half the music is instrumental and I wanted to be, my contrarian nature was already established and I had another band at the same time called Beirut Slump. So my musical side just stormed ahead, throwing musical temper tantrums and there you go.

MD: Fantastic. You mentioned New York Dolls. Did you happen to see the Dolls when they came to Rochester in 73’ with Mott the Hoople?

LL: I didn’t see them in Rochester, oh my god I missed them. I saw so many great concerts there. I mean the thing about Rochester that people don’t know other than Kim Gordon and Wendy O.Williams were also born there.

MD: Amazing. Breeding ground for great women in rock, for sure.

LL: and Emma Goldman spent time there and Saul Alinsky and Martin Luther King and I think Malcolm X even came to Rochester at one point. There were a lot of great rock concerts that came through there.

MD: Yeah.

LL: Between the Hells Angels and the rock concerts I was pretty much in heaven and that set me on my path for sure.

MD: You mentioned Patti Smith. I was wondering if you checked out, you read her book Just Kids and if that kind of made you think of…

LL: I didn’t.

MD: You didn’t?

LL: I didn’t read it by the way, no. I’ve kind of lost interest in her, although I think Piss Factory, her first 45 is one of the most fantastic records ever recorded.

Click here to listen to Patti Smith’s Piss Factory:

MD: Right.

LL: I mean I lost interest in her after Horses because as a young contrarian moving to New York and the bands that influenced me the most, Richard Hell & the Voidoids at that point, they were just…other than Robert Quine and I think because It was Robert Quine’s actual first fan that ran up to him and pledged my allegiance and the first time I saw the Voidoids, he for some reason, a man with a screwdriver in his pocket that that hated everybody took kindly and fondly to me as a young upstart and helped and produced some of the Teenage Jesus later and played on Queen Of Siam.

MD: Right.

LL: Richard Hell would run screaming, well not screaming but he would run from me as did many, many people in those days, I was a teen terrorist they just couldn’t take. Lenny Kaye always listened to me. Lenny Kaye, who I actually see quite often now and I tell him every single time I see him, ‘Lenny Kaye, you always listened to me’.  And he just laughs. Patti Smith, the drummer Jay Dee Daugherty who actually lives right up the street from where I often stay in New York… when Teenage Jesus had a residency at Max’s Kansas City, people would have residencies then, he came to mix the sound then Patti found out about that and she pulled him off it because maybe because the drummer of Teenage Jesus used to call her a dirty hippie and scream at her to get the hell out of his face, I don’t know.

MD: That might have had something to do with it.

LL: Well we were very anti-everything that’s why it was called No Wave.

MD: Right.

LL: We were there to destroy the tradition and convention of what had come before and that’s, basically as an artist I see myself more as a surrealister, akin with Dada and the Situationists movement, certainly not with Punk Rock or most other musical genres. I mean, I think that No Wave is first of all a state of mind. I still consider myself a No Wave artist. It’s audience unfriendly,  it’s usually not melodic, sometimes it can be, and it’s, as opposed to Punk which was like a social outcry, it’s a personal psychotic outcry. It is a public temper tantrum. I think the spirit of that in some people still lives and the spirit of the music has somehow had a renaissance.

MD: Yeah. Do you see what you’ve done manifesting itself in any current artist, do you see an influence?

LL: I refuse to take responsibility for the crimes of others.

MD: Fair enough.

LL: Don’t blame me for Riot Grrrl or Courtney Love, I had nothing to do with that. If somebody picked up a tuba, I would say okay maybe I had some cultural influence. I always tell people to pick up the tuba, some have, just as a contrarian device. Why I feel like I don’t really have much, I mean, I am here for the individual, I’m not here to make a mass statement or even a movement, although I feel I’ve been involved in many movements.  A movement is only that in retrospect, really. I think that creativity is a rouge virus that at least pre-technology, it travelled in times pre or post war it would find places where people congregated whether it was Paris in the 20s or Berlin 30s or Chicago 40s or Haight Asbury 60s, et cetera, et cetera. I think with the internet people are more likely to go to big events then go to places to find like-minded others which is why New York was an epicentre  in the late 70s and London as well. So it’s interesting in that sense, but as far as my cultural impact, I mean I am here to help the individual. I’m so not hateful on a personal level, my hate Is on a grand scale. I am very kind and generous, I am a cattle prodder which is why I can collaborate with so many people, I am very encouraging and the individual is my audience not, an audience is not my audience. So people say well who comes to your shows and I’m like well why don’t you ask them individually who they are, it’s like I’m not summing them up en mass because it’s not like I have mass impact. I have impact on the individuals that need something else, that need something more, they need a voice that cries to them in the middle of the night when they’re lonely or horrified or frightened of themselves especially. So there you go.

MD: There you go. I see a lot of people find you intimidating and assume that you’re going to be somewhat confrontational on a personal level when…

LL: Until they realize, A) I’m paid to be, I’d like to call it CUNTfontational now. You have never seen more hugs after a show unless you went to a Mother Teresa orphanage. It’s amazing because anybody that knows me for 2 minutes or comes to the shows, they come for hugs. I’m only confrontational to those that are on the enemy side or that are intimidated because I’m macho, because I’m so aggressive, because there’s very little precedent to somebody articulate and aggressive. But it’s not the individual who I’m attacking, it’s not men who I’m attacking, it’s always the patriarchy, it’s the corporate cabal, it’s the war-whores, it’s never the individual man and it’s certainly never the individual. So I think my, and it’s amazing how many really shy and sensitive guys come to my show.

MD: I can imagine that, yeah.

LL: They’re not afraid of me at all, it’s like what is to be scared of? That I’m screaming at the bullies, that I become a bully against the bully that I feel like I’m a rapist who’s impotence at annihilating the real killers makes me extremely aggressive, but again in my personal life I have never thrown a plate in anger, I’m much more calculated than that.

MD: Right.

LL: Disagree with me, I’m very fine with that, I don’t argue, I’m paid to argue. It’s like I have no beef with the average person, it’s like your opinion is your opinion I’m so pro-individual. So anybody that looks a little deeper is going to realise who and what I am and anybody that’s scared because there’s a small woman with a big mouth acting like a bully she’s trying to take down, better think a little fuckin’ harder or just get out of the room. I didn’t invite them there in the first place.

MD: Yeah, fair enough.

LL: It’s like I’m not doing this to make YOUS happy, this is not entertainment. This is a far more personal and intimate public psychotherapy, an expression of the darkest of arts for those that need that comfort. I’m amazed, I mean I have no choice, I’m still going because I’m going to be the last fucking man or woman standing, it’s just what I’m going to do, because I do feel like it’s my calling to do this. It is my calling to write these words, to say these words, to make this music, to set an example that you don’t have to compromise, that there is somebody that gets it and there is no corporate shenanigans going on. You know people are like, ‘why haven’t you sold out’? What am I going to sell? Reality, the truth? One look at my face and any corporate bullshitter knows they’re not going to get one over on me, that I’m going to continue doing what I’m doing in a very prolific manner because that’s what I do. So there’s really no way to capitalise on me and I’m so happy to play any concert or spoken word show that I can, I’m thrilled that people come.

MD: Is there any chance of you coming down to this part of the world? I know Urge To Kill is coming out in a couple of weeks. So…

LL: I’m coming to New Zealand.

MD: You are?

LL: I’m coming in August.

MD: Fantastic, what are you going to be doing?

LL: Two shows. I don’t know exactly where the shows are but I know I’m coming to two shows in New Zealand in August with Retrovirus.

MD: I love it, well there you go, fantastic.

LL: Send me your email and then I’ll tell you the days. I’m very excited. I’ve been to Australia a few times with Rowland and so we’re coming to do a festival in Australia but we’re stopping in New Zealand first and I’m very excited. I was only there once for two days. I wish we were staying in longer. Of course we’re coming to do the shows, so. But I would love to come again, maybe next year for Spoken word cause there is interest in Sydney and various other places. Any place that’s not Europe or America I’m very interested in right now.

Lydia Lunch and her band Retrovirus will perform in New Zealand this August. Check in with The 13th Floor for details.

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