I spent at least two weeks in fear of David
Thomas. No, not the SCTV guy. No, not the founder of Wendy’s. The founder of legendary ‘avant-garage’
rockers Pere Ubu.
Thomas is considered eccentric by some people, and
rumours abounded that, were my questions particularly insipid, that might not
suffer my foolishness lightly. So
when the time came to give him a call, I managed to delete “so how’s the tour
going so far?” and “how do you describe your music?” from my list of inane
questions. In the end, though, the
conversation was fantastic and he was as friendly as you could hope. Though he was ready to take me to task
if necessary…
Here’s the transcription in full. Clearly, there’s a reason Pere Ubu have
lasted so long and stayed true to their vision.
ME: When I first heard Pere Ubu it was about 1985, and I borrowed a copy of
[Pere Ubu’s 1980 album] The Art Of Walking. I had no context for it at the time – I
was completely puzzled. Do you
think, after thirty years of being exposed to different sounds in music, that
people might be less perplexed by the sound of Pere Ubu?
DT: There’s two ways of looking at it. I particularly think that the sonic palette is far more limited now than
it’s ever been, but you may have some sort of point there, I don’t know. I tend to think…I don’t mean to
generalize so much but I’m going to generalize for the sake of it…most of the
stuff sounds very much the same these days. For the most part it’s digitally
generated from the same machines, and for the most part, using the same
presets. So I’m not convinced
that it’s such a glorious paradise these days.
ME: One of the things that sets Pere Ubu apart from the “small-A” alternative
bands –
DT: But we’re not alternative.
ME: How do you mean?
DT: They tended to put us in with punk, and we were certainly in no way ever
punk. I remember when we came out
we were called industrial, then we became post-industrial, then somehow we
became pre-industrial, so we’ve managed to be every kind of industrial there
is. We were indie, then we weren’t
indie, then we were pre-indie, then post-indie…you know, as I’ve often said,
we’re a mainstream rock band. It’s
everyone else that’s weird, not us.
ME: A
lot of the hipster bands tend to lean on irony a lot, which I know you’re
dead-set against [note: on the inner sleeve of their latest album it says,
without irony, “this is an irony-free recording”]. Though some bands seem to be letting up
on it…
DT: I
think it’s still in its ascendancy - but I hope you’re right, that there’s some
sort of a backlash against it. But
I fear for the worst. Irony allows
everybody to just cop out, so it’s a very useful tool for people that want to
not be rigorous about what they’re doing.
ME: And it allows you to keep an emotional distance from your own
work.
DT: Absolutely. As I’ve said, it
allows infinite deniability. You
can always cop out of whatever you chose to do by saying you’re being
ironic. To hell with that. If you don’t believe what you’re doing,
then keep quiet.
ME: I
suppose people can be confused and think that Pere Ubu is being ironic at
times.
DT: Yeah. We can be
humorous, and the Pere Ubu point of view, our narrative point of view, is
extremely complex at times - but that’s what I thought rock music was supposed
to be.
In the early ‘80s there was this slogan, “F**k
art, let’s dance.” This was utter
nonsense. The complexity of the
rock point of view, its narrative point of view, goes back to at least to
“Heartbreak Hotel” which, from a narrative point of view, is extremely
complex. The song is really about
the bellhop – he’s the guy that’s the centre of the song, it’s not the Elvis
Presley narrator character. It’s a
very subtle and endlessly studyable work. But that goes way back - it’s not a recent event or song. This idea that rock music was meant to
be some stupid – not stupid, but some dumbed-down youthist rebellion cult - is
absurd because it’s deniable from the very early history of
things.
ME: So what about bands who do think it ought to be
dumbed-down?
DT: Well, that’s fine. There are
endless artistes that allow you to not think about anything – but that’s not an
excuse to force the rest of us to deny what rock music promised from the very
beginning and continues to fulfill. If you want to be stupid, that’s fine. I don’t know what the stupid newspapers
in Canada are, but I’m sure there are some tabloids. Presumably The Globe and Mail is the
“classy” paper. Well, those two
newspapers are right next to each other. People can choose one or the other. They’re not forced to take the crappy one. So it’s the same with music. I’m not going to sit here and say it all
has to be one thing or the other. I
just resent it when the people who like the crappy newspaper somehow look at us
as if we’re the ones who are weird.
ME: People still think it’s weird? There have been plenty of bands over the years who aren’t stupid –
DT: Oh, there are tons of people who have pursued that course.
ME: Yeah.
DT: Yeah? And?
ME: Well, people should be used to it by now, shouldn’t they?
DT: You would think.
ME: I
guess not.
DT: Well, it’s not my fault…well, it probably is. This issue is one of the topics that
people always go into. It really is
the one question that has always gone through. When we started out nobody liked us and
nobody was ever going to like us, and that was the deal. We were all pretty happy with that
because that meant we could do what we wanted to do. And we’ve always done what we wanted to
do. Even when we were on major
labels, they were so scared of us. People thought “Oh, major labels!” I wish sometimes they had interfered in our career. Maybe they would have made us more
successful (laughs quietly). But
everybody’s too scared to tell us anything. But we’ll take it. It means nobody bothers us. “Here comes David – be careful!” Well, fine.
ME: You have a saying about your audience
DT: Ars longa, spectatores fugaces? [vague translation: audiences are short-lived, art is
forever]
ME: Yeah – wasn’t it “ars longa, audience brevis?”
DT: Well, we decided we’d get real
Latin.
ME: Though I understand what you’re getting at, there are others who might
think that’s dismissive.
DT: All we owe the audience is to provide a product that’s worth them
spending money for. Well, we
determine the product, so that’s not even it…all we owe an audience is a good
performance of what we’re doing.
I hate to go into this stuff because most people
can’t understand it at all, but the audience is totally irrelevant to us. We don’t play for the audience. We have something that we do and if
people want to pay to see it, wonderful. We love it. It’s not going
to change anything, though. The
audience fulfills two functions. One is…there’s a unique thing that happens when you make music. When you make a record you spend
probably six months on it but you never really hear it until you actually play
it for somebody else. It’s not the
question of their reaction to it – they don’t have to say a word. They don’t have to express anything
physically or visually or subconsciously. It’s just the mere presence of a third party allowed you to hear the
thing for the first time. That’s
not just some psychology, it goes down to subatomic physics. It’s the whole nature of when you
observe subatomic particles, you change the nature of what’s occurring with
them. It’s one of the mysteries of
subatomic particles. It’s the same
with an audience, and that’s their function, as far as we’re concerned, as far
as the art is concerned. That’s all
that I in the end care about. If
they want to buy it, fine. They can
choose to do what they want with their money and we’re very grateful that they
choose to spend it on us – but that doesn’t get them anything. That doesn’t mean they can transcend the
proper boundaries. If people start
clapping along and hooting along and things out of excitement, we generally stop
and say please don’t do that because it’s disturbing to us. People can’t clap in time, I don’t know
if you’ve ever noticed this, but they don’t clap in rhythm. So they think they’re doing it but their
not. You know, things like
that. But a lot of people aren’t
going to understand any of that. They’ll just say “Oh he’s a snob.”
ME: They might mistake it for disdain for the audience.
DT: Absolutely. I have
absolutely no disdain for the audience. I love the audience - but they’re not going to determine what I do. Somebody else is not going to make the
rules. We make the rules, and it’s
always been that way, and we’re too old to change now – nor would we want
to.
ME: Many of your fans probably like you for that very reason, that you’ve
never worried about anything except your own artistic vision. That’s why they come see
you.
DT: Well we don’t really attract casual passers-by anymore. Which is fine. Generally speaking, if you’ve come to a
Pere Ubu show, you’ve gone out of your way to specifically come to us. It’s not like we’re the hit flavour of
the day anymore, we haven’t been for decades, so you don’t get terribly many
fickle sort of people, you know. So
that’s all right.
ME: Maybe you’re on to something. Maybe this philosophy really works because many of the artists I know who
have been around for 30 years aren’t any good now. You keep putting out good records,
though.
DT: You have to be convinced…before anybody had ever heard of us, we were
convinced that nobody was ever going to like us. If you go ahead and work under those
conditions, and you don’t change that point of view, accordingly… if no one’s
going to like you, you do what you want, because what else is the point? It takes a certain amount of rigor, it
takes a certain amount of discipline over the years to keep moving forward, but
that was the deal.
We have a real dread - and unfortunately it has
been commercially disastrous for us - but we have a dread of repeating ourselves
and a dread of doing something that we’ve already done or that we can do
easily. Not to disparage Rocket
From The Tombs [one of Thomas’ other projects], because Rocket From The Tombs is
brilliant, but we could do that endlessly and not change. Rocket does change, yes, but you know
what I mean - it’s basic sort of Midwest groove brutal rock. We could do that. We know how to do it. It’s just not something that…I mean why
keep doing it if you can do it? What’s to be gained from it except for money? Who cares about that? I don’t mean to sound flippant over
money, but I mean, you can’t base what you do on money.
