Do you like being thought of as a musician?

Fuck no!

You prefer to be a ‘writer’?

Yeah... ‘musician’ is not a very respected title. I’m not a musician.

You’re a kind of all rounder...

Oh yeah, Jack of all trades, Master of none...

Who or what were the Immaculate Consumptives?

Nick Cave, Marc Almond, Mr Foetus and myself...

Will there ever be a reprise?

No-no-no! No: one time is enough for a lot of these projects. you go for it with gusto, you get it, you do it, it’s done. Why beat a dead horse? Even if it was great at the time, enough is enough. I think there were three performances and it was just a concept of mine to do these Halloween shows in New York with certain people... to see what would become of it when we were working in different formats, no bands, just songs that somehow strung together this attitude. It was an interesting project at the time.

Another band you worked with, one of my all time faves but very obscure over here, is No Trend.

Mmm... The most hated band in America.

What happened to them?

They’re over. Deceased. When I tell people I was working with No Trend, they just go ‘Oh, my God! I hate them!’, I’m like: ‘Well, that’s one vote of confidence...’ Great, anyone who’s that hated - even Sonic Youth banned them from playing with them - they can’t be all bad! Mostly it was their lyrics, I loved the No Trend lyrics... they had sent me a tape asking me if I would sing some songs and the lyrics were just so basic and so right: ‘Quick! Two seconds to non-existence, so what the fuck do you want?’ - how can you beat that, I mean the curtest lyrics I’ve ever heard, ‘Too many fucking humans, You breed like rats, And you’re no fucking better!’ - brilliant, y’know, great! So they were just a band who could not really find their niche, put out a few records, I helped them get out a record or two and then they just disappeared into obscurity, and hence forth the lead singer and main man, Jefferson Scott, went on to make a film about John Holmes life, the porn superstar, Johnny Wad - can’t vouch for it, haven’t seen it. Love ‘Johnny Wad’ though, absolute hero.

What about your visual content? Your self image, how conscious of that are you?

I’m vain. Why not, most women are, they should be. The female format is a beautiful one in which to function. Foolhardy as it may be. I change my image all the time, it’s whatever suits me at the moment... I was a long-haired, shaggy red-haired hippie before I came on tour this time. The way I look just depends on my mood, basically. The image, or personality, is propagated mainly by the press, who don’t know jack shit about me anyway... That’s why I like doing interviews, at least you have some personal contact with people - they realise you’re not a man hating, man eater and that you’re quite reasonable and sensitive underneath the scowl.

You want to be known for what you’re doing and what you are... are you worried about the glamour and sexuality of you image detracting from that?

I’m not sure about a glamorous or sexual image, but I’m not hiding my sexuality, but then again I’m not sticking my crotch in people’s faces or rubbing myself like Madonna either... I think it’s an aggressive sexuality because I’m not hiding it, but it’s not perceived or put forth in the usual fashion of a smiley hot go-go dancing chic on stage, I’m not trying to please anyone out there. I’m just being the way I am.

Some of your album covers could be considered erotic...

Why thank you... Well the Stinkfist cover because of what could better suit the music - which was to illustrate the final fuck of all eternity - other than a nude shot bathed in mud with mon amour, Mr Foetus?

As far as the Queen Of Siam re-issue cover, I wanted to do something that was based on the exotica albums of the 1950s - which were this instrumental Hollywood soundtrack that always had exotic women in bizarre floral locations on the covers. That’s what that was based on, but again, with Queen of Siam or Stinkfist, you’re not seeing anything except for naked arms, torso, and thighs. Yet because of my attitude, people immediately find it so obscene when you don’t even see nipples, don’t see fur, you’re not really seeing anything... What’s a little butt cleavage?

I think it’s because my attitude is so aggressive that people find it more obscene than if I was doing a full open thriving beaver shot, with a smile on my face. I think if it was just a close up of my face on Stinkfist, people would still be perturbed, those who are going to be perturbed...

You just mentioned Madonna - what do you think of her?

I wish she’d get a better band! I like her outfits. I think she’s playing a good trick on everyone. Anyone who makes $60 million a year I’m not gonna argue with, I just think that the music seems secondary to the image. She’s a conceptualist in that way too, but I don’t really have much of a comment on her. She does what she can.

She is a charitable character to a lot of organisations, she is conscientious, she’s a business woman, she is in control. It’s just unfortunate the music suffers, ‘cos it’s fucking shit, pop pulp pap, crap! But she’s very good at what she does. Also she is really in a field of her own. I consider myself the anti-Madonna! There you go - I wish she’d collaborate some of her $60 million a year in my direction. But I’m not gonna force the issue!

I think we could be quite good friends if we knew each other... Because I don’t think she takes any shit either. However, I think she likes her ass kissed a lot more than I like my ass kissed. I really don’t like people kissing my ass - it annoys me. I’m not out there looking for that, and I think that she can’t live without it. Can’t live without the camera, without hundreds and thousands of people kissing her ass. That would be the most repugnant thing I could think of - people hounding after me... especially 12 year old girls. God forbid.

I only have interest in being true to the way I feel. And to the way other people feel .

Who do you admire?

Hubert Selby Jnr, Henry Miller, the Maquis De Sade - who I think is the greatest philosopher of the last 400 years. Juan Goytisolo - a Spanish writer - is one of my absolute favourites - Serpent’s Tail puts him out. I enjoy a bit of pulp detective fiction too like James Ellroy, James Lee Burke - from Louisianna, Seth Morgan’s Homeboy, Anais Nin...

Most of those were male writers. Not even mentioning Harry Crews...

Yeah, because they’re dealing with reality... the harshness of reality, OK. The problem I have with Anais Nin is that it’s just not real enough. Not harsh enough. It’s very dreamy, very beautiful and erotic, but it doesn’t really get down to the nitty gritty and that’s what I need in writing. I wanna read it as non-fiction. These people like Henry Miller and Hubert Selby - they may be fictionalising the examples, but they’re dealing with real situations. That’s what I really need - I’m not that big a fan of fiction.

What film-makers do you like?

Polanski would be my favourite until his last two films. Odd films like In A Glass Cage, the Spanish film that won a lot of awards, Santa Sangre, I like the Peter Greenaway films because they’re so fascicle and so huge. Giant films, annoyingly British but so massive, and the massiveness and the glamour and beauty of them are just undeniable. I love a film called Possession with Isabelle Adjani who’s sexually possessed by this being, which is basically her own urges...

Is that a recent one?

It’s old, I tried to get that one for the Scala, but it’s hard to obtain a print - it is on video though, here.

Any musicians you admire?

I like The Unsane and Cop Shoot Cop from New York, on Matador records in the States. Not that I don’t pay attention to what goes on, but it’s been a long time since I heard anything that really sounded new to me. I like Die Haut from Germany, and Matador - an all girl group. I like John Zorn, I’d like to work with John Zorn - I think I might in the future. I like Diamanda (Galas). But it’s few - you don’t hear anyone doing anything really new that you haven’t heard before. That’s a priority in music for me.

Basically I listen to Ligeti, Penderecki, Stockhausen... instrumental music in my spare time.

2001was an influential movie then?

I just prefer instrumental. I don’t need to hear what other people are singing. And if I need music as a backdrop to work or to think, I need to have that part of the brain clear - I don’t need people feeding their fantasies into my vision.

What has been the most asked question?

They’ve all been pretty unique...

You chose to live in New Orleans for a while... Why?

There’s no alternative music scene there. It’s very hot and humid and lush, and lurid, thick, sweaty. A very false sense of quiet and calm, relaxed slow paced lugubrious, lengthy long days. It’s architecturally divine. It smells fantastic. It’s cheap. I didn’t know anyone there... All good reasons to go.

You’re usually thought of as very New York.

Yeah, they forget I lived in London for two years - as I would like to also - and they forget I lived in Los Angeles, and I’ve travelled extensively, it’s not like I feel that any one place is my home. I don’t feel like a New Yorker, even though I could probably be the epitome of the ultimate New Yorker... I feel it’s important to move around.

New Orleans has a very violent reputation over here (in the UK)...

Absolutely violent. It’s the fifth highest crime rate in America for murder, rape and burglary. But it doesn’t have that appearance. In New York you see this every day, but in New Orleans you never see it, you just know it’s there waiting to happen. It’s very integrated, but the violence happens in the most segregated areas.

It’s South?

It’s very South...

Bible belt?

Bible belt... Very conservative. Louisianna is one of the most conservative states in the nation - the worst politics, most corruption, strictest abortion rules. It’s a fascinating dichotomy there because it seems so placid and enjoyably luxurious on the surface, but you know all this stuff is boiling under the belly. You can lead a very laid back lifestyle, but you know that at any time you’re bound to be curtailed by the legislature.

But that doesn’t really affect my life as an artist - I’m living outside the law anyway. But it has the worst education in America, 50th in position of education! In spite of two of the best universities in the Country being there. It’s a very contradictory place.

That contradiction drew me to it. It was one of the first places where people cross dressed, it has a very large gay population - it has a very liberal overtone in spite of all the corruption and bullshit.

The videos and films you made - what sort of exposure did they get in America? We can’t get hold of them over here except by mail order.

Well, they were kept pretty much under wraps though they did play in a lot of cinema festivals and we showed them where we could - Foetus, Richard Kern and I used to do tours together but we like to keep them pretty much underground. That’s what they are, they aren’t feature films they’re small art films, basically.

Film and video are almost by definition a mass media -

- Until you get to my back yard.

They played in a lot of festivals - in Europe too - it’s not as if we kept them under wraps. It’s right time right place... I think the right place for them to be viewed is privately in people’s houses, but I’m not going to deliver them door to door... Sorry pals.

What are your views on the subject of censorship?

Well it doesn’t affect me personally, although it has affected a lot of people that I have either worked with or have knowledge of. As for as I’m concerned they haven’t really latched onto what I’m doing either because they think I’m too underground or I’m just a single woman screaming into the void how dangerous can it be.

Of course they don’t know what the fuck I’m saying, but that’s the problem with censorship! Most of the things these people like Jessie Helms or the Bush administration want censored are things they are not exposed to. They don’t know what the fuck Maplethorpe did, they don’t know what the fuck Andre Serrano did, or Karen Finlay. They only know that it’s a threat...

So not really functioning in the art circles, and being only as underground as I am, they haven’t really picked on me yet. Let’s hope it stays that way... Although I would go with them tongue to tongue on any kind of debate no problem, absolutely no problem! I’m just glad I haven’t been involved in it. I mean why the Dead Kennedys had so much controversy with art they didn’t even create only propagate, was that the name was the Dead Kennedys and that, right there, was a slap in the American Government’s face.

I mean with a name like Lydia Lunch they probably just think I’m a porno star anyway so they probably just leave it out.

OK, can you do my work for me now, take control with one last statement to draw a conclusion to our conversation?

No.

...I just think that it’s important for people to know that they should seek out the things that aren’t readily available and they shouldn’t settle for what’s shoved down their throat and there are various formats of artistic creation and documentation in all forms - music film literature - that are going to speak to them that are going to speak the abused and the victims and people who can’t take it anymore and they should seek that out as a form of relief because that is what people like myself are offering: an oasis from all the other forms of abuse that’re pounding in - even if it’s only that we articulate that frustration. And there are other people like myself...

Thank you Lydia Lunch!