"Fir trees and raccoon shit" - XTC get a cool reception from the Hermit Of Mink Hollow
Q Magazine, October 1986
By Mark Ellen
Contributed by Mick Casey

"We were holed up in this shack, laughingly called a Guest House, at the bottom ot his garden. Like the place The Beverly Hillbillies used to live in before they made any money - fir trees, raccoon shit, moths the size of Ram Trucks, people shooting moose and barbecueing them. And he never asked us in! Not in two months. Not even for a game of darts, or shove 'apenny, or shove quarter or whatever it is they play in Mink Hollow..

XTC at their most generous call it a working relationship". Todd Rundgren's not saying anything.

It happened thus: Todd, former lead singer with Utopia - a man given to leaping into his audience to collect their autographs - had professed a great admiration for the inscrutable quartet from Swindon. On hearing this, their record company very sensibly jumped at the chance of employing a producer that could launch XTC's stubbornly unsellable pop songs into the lucrative American market.

Andy partridge has a slightly more colourful view. We are to Virgin," he announces, "what the ravens are to The Tower Of London: nobody knows what good we do but if we weren't there it just wouldn't be right somehow. It's still a singles dominated market and, in Virgin's eyes, I think, we took over the Henry Cow mantle - 'At last we've found someone who can wear it! It fits, Sire, it fits! Quick, put on the Slapp Happy plimsolls!' We used to joke about those bands but now I think we've assumed their position."

So XTC were despatched to Todd's studio, unsurprisingly located in Woodstock, New York State, to record the new LP, Skylarking. Beer and skittles, they were soon to find, were a not a high priority
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"The man's a recluse, a total recluse. Two months! Wouldn't even have us in to watch telly."

Was he any more approachable in the studio?

"Everything had to be done his way. He wouldn't do any songs with political overtones. We had a song called Terrorism and he said, No we don't want anything to do with that. We had a song called Obscene Procession which was about starvation and stuff; nothing to do with that, thanks. We had one, my favourite, called Gangway! Electric Guitar Is Coming Through, but that rustles the leaves a bit in Mink Hollow, apparently. He chose all the ones about 'personal relationships' - the shagging songs. He wouldn't do anything broader."

Old he cost a lot?

"Let me see: there was one figure, two, three, then a comma..."

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