"Free at last, free at last" by Rich Shupe, Reflex magazine, Issue 24
Contributed by Simon Knight

XTC's Emancipation Proclamation

On the 1st day of January A.D. 1992, all persons in XTC, or designated part of XTC, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free from being pigeonholed with terms like "antmusic," "beatle," or any other insect variety, and most especially "quirky;" and the lazy media, including the journalistic and editorial authority thereof, will recognise and maintain the freedom of such persons and will do no act or acts to repress such persons with these degradations, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.

For the last 15 years, XTC have been the hapless victims of a shiftless media. In 1977, when these British musical groundbreakers debuted with 3D EP on Virgin Records --- the UK label the band would remain with till this day --- singer/guitarist Andy Partridge, bassist Colin Moulding, keyboardist Barry Andrews, and drummer Terry Chambers delivered the proverbial cream pie to the music world kisser. Remember, we're talking about 1977 here --- a significant period of flux in music history. The Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Damned.... This was a volatile time for the record-buying/pub-going public. Styles and tastes were changing quickly, yet XTC succeeded in burning their three-letter brand into the leather that adorned so many punks of that era. Their music was aggressive and rebellious, but it wasn't quite punk. XTC left the world's properly-shaped ears asking the same question: This is pop? And pop it was. Perhaps not yer standard chorus-verse-chorus p-o-p album, but pop nonetheless.

"Hyperactive music" and "hiccuping vocals" are two of the phrases that have been used to describe the early XTC sound. Undoubtedly, their style was distinctive and immediately recognizable. Theirs was a frenetic mix of bug-eyed nervous tension crammed into the shit-eating grin of a sinister clown. Ultimately danceable, their first two albums, White Music (early '78) and Go 2 (late '78) made an indelible mark in the minds of pogo-happy punters. Appropriately, the British music press snapped them up as the latest in that week's "Best ever in the history of all bestness" and, rightly so, credited them as one of the formative influences in the then-burgeoning "new wave" scene. But, that wasn't enough for 'em. They had to go and label the band "quirky" -- a term Partridge and Co. would come to loathe.

"The English media is like the Mafia," Andy explains. "They tell people what to believe. [In a thick, British gangster accent befitting the Piranha Brothers] `Your street credibility seems to be slipping. We could protect it for you for a price. Or we could call you `quirky'.... Okay Louie, show 'em what it's like to be called quirky.' `You are quirky!' `AHHHHHHH! Ouch! Stop it'"

Forced to wear their scarlet Qs, but nonetheless undaunted, XTC carried on regardless. Barry Andrews left the band, replaced by guitarist Dave Gregory. Revitalised by the personnel change, their style matured with the release of Drums and Wires ('79) - -- spawning the brilliant catchy singles "Life Begins at the Hop" and "Making Plans for Nigel" - -- and their most accomplished album to date, 1980's Black Sea. The latter held the first significant indication of the tunesmiths' ability to write thickly layered, lyrically thoughtful, satisfying songs unconstrained by the formulaic pop-radio format.

In 1982, the quartet released their most ambitious album since their birth --- the intensely rhythmic double album, English Settlement (first issued in the US as a single LP with five songs missing, and later restored to its original version). Wait a minute... all that odd percussion... why, that's... quirky.

"The media thought we were still making White Music!" bellows Andy. "Christmas Eve! We're a different band now. I'd like to disown our first two albums. Time has given me objectivity --- it's okay for me to say, `Bloody hell, they were crap.'"

"No," Dave interjects, "they weren't crap at all".

"No, they weren't crap," Andy agrees, "but now, my standards have changed so much, I think they're very crap, in all aspects. I think the vocals are mannered and forced because I was so desperate to have a style that people would remember."

Of course, it worked. "Yeah, it worked," Andy relents, "but now I can see it as so heavily pantomimed, it embarrasses me. I was so desperate. I thought I had just one shot, so I had to cartoon everything. I think, `Oh Christ, I made a tombstone for myself of everything I don't want to be.' I mean, things haven't changed for some people. I still get letters from this little fellow up the North of England that say, "Oh, White Music were your best album, and I still remember seein' ya at sooch-and-sooch cloob.' You know, `It reminds me of the time I met the woman that became my wife.' So, you've become the scenery for this bloke's personal time machine. You're the bloody nice gobbed and slashed leather wallpaper for his pogo-y courtship."

Often touted as a great live band, even the raw energy of their live performances was monikered with the Q-word. Andy saw it was time for a change. If he couldn't dissuade the apathetic press, why not stop giving them grist for the mill? What better way to gum up the gears than a total phobic collapse? Irony aside, Partridge could no longer tolerate the increasing effects of a crippling stage fright and finally, in the midst of the English Settlement tour in 1982, threw in the towel, vowing to gig no more. The tour was cancelled and XTC would never again play an official show. During the last decade, they have performed in front of extremely small audiences a half dozen or so times, mostly for TV or radio segments, but as far as seeing the world while it sees him...

"Touring?" Andy asks. "I'm against it."

"It will be 10 years this April folks," Colin pines. "Not that I'm counting the days...."

"It was just depressing me too much to be out there doing such a stressful thing," explains Andy. "Plus, we really didn't make the transition very well from small pub/club band to fillers of ice hockey stadiums the world over. I couldn't actually get to have mind sex with 15,000 people. I just about managed to have mind sex with 150, but 15,000 was kind of stretching the old mental penis a bit. "I don't find live performance musically satisfying," Andy complains. "I hate that showbusiness thing. [Punter accent] `Are you all having a good time?' Horrible! My persona stays just six-foot tall and two-foot wide on the stage there, and that's it. Plus I got horribly wound up --- nervously and physically. I'd do a gig and then spend most of the night seized up with cramps from nerves. I just couldn't do it anymore."

With the cessation of touring, the curtain rose on Act III of The XTC Revue. Terry Chambers left the band and they decided to continue on as a trio. However, brilliant but commercially lukewarm albums were of declining interest to Virgin --- especially without the aggressive support of touring to heighten sales. Finding themselves in a predicament with their label, the release of their next album, Mummer, was delayed until late 1983. One theory is that it may have finally been released because it was in fact, quirkless. That is, Mummer, showed the first real signs of the heady emotion and maturity that would direct their subsequent albums. The lazy, summery "Wonderland," as well as the heartening "Love on a farmboy's wages," were a marked departure from their kinetic past.

The following album, The Big Express, was released in 1984, and was a plateau of sorts for the band. Full of infectious melodies, it continued in Mummer's footsteps with "I remember the sun," and the touching "This world over." But it also harkened to the spirit of earlier material with the raucous "Wake Up," "All you pretty girls," and "Shake you donkey up." The train theme that runs throughout the album is an everyday ode to their hometown of Swindon.

Originally, Swindon was a small market and cattle town sitting atop a hill in the English countryside. During the middle of the Victorian era, the railway system arrived in England, and Swindon became a key part of its development. As the railway system was being constructed, it became obvious that Swindon was strategically located, so it became a common refueling stop along the journey to and from Bristol --- the big port of call in western England. The growing network of trains caused the town to flourish, and the railway industry became situated in and about Swindon Old Town. A major rail tunnel was cut through neighboring Box Hill, and from the excavated rubble, Swindon New Town was built. Just as any industrial town becomes reliant on its industry, Swindon bloomed and withered with the rail system. Two-thirds of its population worked for the Great Western Railway Company building steam trains for countries across the globe. When the steam train industry slowed and eventually died in the early '60s, so, for all intents and purposes, did Swindon. As one resident described, "It corroded away with a cancer of apathy and eventually became slated over with second-hand car lots and the like."

There is a certain charm --- however remote --- to Swindon. Going out to meet the gents in their hometown, I took British Rail from London's Paddington Station. The trip to Swindon takes about an hour --- which, for me, was a peaceful, reflective journey through the countryside. Arriving at Swindon Station, Andy's humble abode in Old Town was a brief one pound twenty cab ride away. All of XTC still live in Swindon --- primarily because of the band's continued existence. "I don't feel attached to Swindon emotionally," defends Andy. "There's no great love lost for the town. It's more the band and the practical matters that keep us here. It's no coincidence that most English people snigger when you mention Swindon."

Dave, who lives in a Coronation Street house at the foot of the hill that separates Old Town from New Town, counters: "But there are just as many other sniggerable places in the country. I mean, I would much rather live in Swindon than London." "Oh yeah," Andy agrees. "Given the choice, absolutely."

As I sat resting beneath the roofs of Swindon Town, we talked about books, English hotel rooms, and Margaret Freeman. Munching on chicken tikka sandwiches, apples, and peanuts, we talked about everything but XTC --- which gave me a rare opportunity to look at the men behind the music rather than my own reflection in the face of their CD.

Andy, as you might imagine, is the whimsical one of the bunch. Many years ago, he gave up collecting comics when he came back from a tour to find that mice had nibbled the corners of his entire collection. Crushed, he dumped the whole lot and turned to collecting toy soldiers. (They're harder to eat!). He also loves to design and play games. We spent a leisurely hour playing two of his creations: Dam and Blast --- a game where you attempt to build a river of water from the home reservoir to your windmill, damming your opponents river and blasting away the dams built to stop you; and his newest, Louis (as in the XIV, the Sun King) --- a "gentle strategy game" using domino-like chips with partial pictures of the sun on them to form as many complete suns as you can.

Dave is a passionate studio mole, spending hours upon hours at the controls, recreating music under the private, Andy-dubbed pseudonym Arch Marble and the Hallmarks. "Marble Arch Records," Andy explains, "and Hallmark Records were two English labels that specialised in recreating hits using whatever house cover band was available." Dave meticulously dissects his favorite songs, note by note, line by line, and recreates them from scratch. Arch Marble has recorded everything from Richard Harris's "MacArthur Park," to King Crimson's "21st Century Schizoid Man," to an acoustic version of Jimi Hendrix's "Third Stone from the Sun."

Colin lives a few minutes away and on the trip to his house there was plenty of greenery to look at. Already, I had seen more than just a grimy railway switching yard. I began to think that if I had Go 2's "Moulding's Street Plan of Swindon," I might see some of the places pointed out by its legend. Alas, Colin recently moved from town to the village of Lower Wanboro. It's quieter there, and he can focus his free time and talent on making beautiful stained-glass pieces. When we arrived, he was in the midst of assembling a hanging-lamp shade in his "shed."

All three have home studios, or "sheds" as they call them (housed in small, nicely done out buildings, the equivalent of potting sheds in their backyards) where they write and record --- Colin and Andy beginning each song as a home demo, laying down all the parts as completely as possible. Dave writing the majority of string and brass arrangements. Earlier, in Andy's shed, he played some demos for me of material that didn't make it to the new album. One track, "Rip Van Reuben," graces this issue's subscriber-only flexi disc. Another, "Wonder Annual," is undoubtedly destined for their next album. He even played me a track he was excited about from a band called Choc Cigar Chief Champion, which reminded me a bit of the Dukes of Stratosphear --- XTC's pseudonymous psychedelic alter ego who released an EP called 25 O'Clock immediately after XTC's The Big Express. It was a fun song that made me think of a wacky Lovin' Spoonful.

In Colin's shed, as we drank tea and ate Tunnocks caramel cookie bars, we listened to his latest demo, "Down a peg" and talked about the band's success in America. Although all of XTC's major albums were released in the US, it wasn't until 1986 that they really made any headway on any significant level,. That year saw the Geffen release of the much-talked- about, Todd Rundgren-produced Skylarking --- thought by many to be their finest to date. A beautiful, pastoral album, it showed a depth only touched on in previous releases. While critically acclaimed, it didn't make a noticeably bigger dent in the US market until "Dear God" appeared --- a scathing look at religion and disbelief in the Big Charade. It was originally a quiet b-side of the British release of the Moulding triumph, "Grass" --- until it began being played on virtually every radio station in America.

"I decided to take it off the album because I didn't think it was chewy enough," explains Andy. "It's such a big subject. Americans get more upset about religion than any other people, apart from maybe the Middle East sects. A lot of Americans are obsessive about organized religion --- almost like a Hollow-Earth Nazi Ice-Giant Death Cult. You know, it's the old `kill a queer for Christ' mentality."

"Just look at the success of these TV evangelists," points Dave. "Look how many Americans try to buy their salvation."

"I can't believe people can be so gullible," Colin mutters.

"Gullible's travels?" queries Andy.

"It's the biggest con that's ever been."

"King Con."

"There's even a religious amusement park," I explain.

[Hearty laughter] "Sermon on the magic mount," Andy laughs. "A Christ figure stands at the front of the roller coaster, and as it plummets down the track all these people are screaming, `AAAAAAAAAHHH-leluhia!' They've got a person in the front doing the `loaves and fishes candy-flavoured floss.' I can see it now."

"What gets me really angry," Colin says, "is what the purists are saying about AIDS --- that it's a blow from God. Jesus Christ!"

"Exactly," chimes Andy. "He's supposed to be a loving god, is he, so he sends you AIDS. Wonderful. What a trickster, eh? You really know where you stand with ol' Mr. God's Novelty Shop. He's giving you the ol' cosmic hand-buzzer with AIDS, eh?"

Because of the unexpected success of "Dear God," Geffen recalled Skylarking and rereleased it with the hit included in place of "Mermaid Smiled." Skylarking received a great deal of attention, and became the group's biggest selling album in the States, by far. In post- release press, the band took some swipes at Rundgren's production techniques, because their relationship wasn't exactly harmonious. In typical sensationalist fashion, the press chewed on that like a convenience-store clerk on a ten year-old Slim Jim. True to form, there were two sides to every interview.

"Todd's got different ears to everybody else," Colin insists.

"Yeah," laughs Andy. "He's got noses on the sides of his head."

"If you take his production as a whole," counters Colin, "I think it was a good job. He's got tremendous vision".

"He did a lot of surprising things musically," Andy agrees. "When we brought him `Man who sailed around his soul,' the demo sounded somewhere between Can and Leonard Cohen. It was this miserable beatnik thing with nylon-string guitars --- you know, pass the revolver time, folks --- and he put on this sort of John Barry spy-theme arrangement. We thought, `This is weird.' But it suited it perfectly. It was this existentialist spy film that never was. His keyboard technique, though, is worse than mine. And that's really saying something. It's more like my dog's keyboard technique."

Following Skylarking, the trio reprised their role as the Dukes of Stratosphear to release Psonic Psunspot in 1987. This time, the approach was one of fun, rather than authentic mimicry, and the result is a lighter, more bubbly album.

"It's an instant party," agrees Andy. "The thing about the Dukes was, there was no pressure to be us. There was no, `It better be good because you've got to live up to X amount of sales.' It was more like, `Right, never mind, just drop the whole band in when I give the nod' - -- `I'm a bit out of tune.' `Never mind, a bit of phasing'll cover that up.' It was pure masquerade, pure `Go on then, take your trousers off, do what you want.'"

"The Dukes are a good cure for a down," agrees Dave.

Will the Dukes ever ride again? "Sir John Johns and the crew," explains Andy, "have retired. But there is a project that appears to be threatening. An idea came up to do a bubblegum album sort of along the lines of the Dukes, and I wasn't sure if I could do it. So just as an exercise, I thought I'd see if I could write a bubblegum song with all the trappings. So I came up with this song called `Candy Mine,' which is the idea of digging them a candy mine. And I was just showing Gregsy that I had a fault on this tape that I did it on --- I couldn't record on one of the tracks --- and he was raving about this song!"

"Well," defends Dave, "it was an instant sunshine jobby."

"The thing of it is," Andy laughs, "I've got about half-a-dozen numbers hanging around that would fit a bubblegum concept --- The Lemon Dukes, maybe. But you're really getting into Death Wish 4 now aren't you. What was that thing in the last issue of REFLEX? Caught from behind 15? [Laughter] You'd think we'd learn!"

Psonic Psunspot sold very well, and Geffen celebrated by combining the two Dukes projects on one CD anthology, Chips from the Chocolate Fireball. At last, US sales were climbing to enthusiastic levels. The next official XTC release, Oranges and Lemons, followed in 1989 with many trumpets. "Oranges and Lemons was made with a sense of optimism," says Andy, "because people really wanted to hear it. I think it shows in the album. It kind of flies up and out in all directions like a jovial antipersonnel mine." Indeed. A much livelier record, it was issued as a double album, yielding two popular singles, "The Mayor of Simpleton" and "King for a day."

After a prolonged absence of three years (due mostly, Andy claims, to an ornery A&R rep in the UK), XTC's new album will be out this month. It's called Nonsuch --- a title that originated just as much from confusion as from the word's denotative meaning. Andy explains, "I was reading a book on Elizabethan England and ran across this line drawing of a big palace with the title, `Nonsuch.' It was basically the ultimate fantasy palace built for the whims of Henry VIII --- who actually had an entire village called Cuddington destroyed to build it. [In his best stuffy king-like voice] `Mmmmmm. I want it.... there. Flatten the town.' They used the rubble of Cuddington to build the foundation for Nonsuch. This castle was covered in engravings and statues and paintings and gold domes --- ludicrously over the top.

"Well, I thought `nonsuch' meant `nonexistent,' so the name of this palace was confusing to me. So I got the dictionary out and found it actually meant `without equal.' Today, nothing remains of Nonsuch Palace. Long ago they found the cellar, and that's all. This fantastic work of art has just completely disappeared. So I thought, what a wonderful confusion. This work of art was without equal and now is nonexistent. In a gently boastful sort of way, I thought, `wouldn't it be nice to think of our music as art without equal, and that someday we, too, would be nonexistent?" Hence the name Nonsuch.

Stylistically, Nonsuch is neither quirky, nor Beatle. It is wholly, and unmistakably, XTC. "I think," muses Mr. Partridge, "after all this time, this musical furrow we're digging has become rather narrow and we've gotten rather deep with it now, and it is absolutely our furrow, so no- one can touch us in it." If I had to force a reference point, I might say Nonsuch is a Frankenstein's monster of Skylarking and Oranges and Lemons --- built from bits and pieces from each and held together with sutures of musical maturity and jolted to life by electrifying orchestral arrangements. But another way to describe it might be to call it ouija board to the past lives of XTC.

"Crocodile," the green-eyed monster, hints of the very vocal stylings Andy vainly attempts to disown. "It is reminiscent," he begrudgingly admits. "But I like to think that it's sort of Hurricane Smith --- the Abbey Road engineer who was forever foisting his songs on The Beatles, to everyone's embarrassment. It sounds a bit like his vocals there."

"Omnibus" is a wonderful, densely orchestrated song with something going on every second of its three-plus minutes. Rhythmically, it's akin to English Settlement, but it's not without its secrets. "The melody," Andy confides, "is that little bit of rubbish in Pink Floyd's `See Emily Play.' You know that little bit of chopped-up stuff you hear after the first round of everything? If you slow that down, it's just piano and drums playing the main line used in `Omnibus.' I thought, `That's a bloody good scale. Fancy wasting it in there!'" While its musical foundation is colourfully complicated, its subject couldn't be more simple and straight-forward. "It's about the adoration of women and everything about them," Partridge shamelessly declares. "I think we should chuck all these religions out, and let's start idolizing women. Women are just sacred. Fucking brilliant. So perfect, and filthy. Perfectly filthy. We should have a church of women. All shapes, all sizes, all colours."

The beauty of "World Wrapped in Grey" reminds of Skylarking, the tremolo and megaphone- vocal of "The Ugly Underneath" smacks of The Big Express, and "Humble Daisy" and "Holly up on Poppy" (Andy's daughter aboard her rocking horse) are Mummer-era tunes. There's even a nod to Psonic Psunspot with "Then she appeared".

And let's not forget the TV/movie-reference theme. The band received dozens of letters after Oranges and Lemons was released because the opening track, "Garden of Earthly Delights" was mistaken for a homage to Star Trek. According to the letters, the title is spoken during an episode --- but the real tip off is Andy's reference to Chekov... the writer. The new album has just such a plug. The single, "The Ballad Of Peter Pumpkinhead" is without question, beyond any shadow of a doubt, about Serpico ("Peter Pumpkinhead told the truth / but he made too many enemies...") Well... maybe not.

Andy explains: "So far, the people who've heard it, think it's been about Jesus, Kennedy, The Pope --- the pumpkinhead was some sort of headware. I didn't get that myself. It's just one of those songs written without too many constrictions so you could read an every-martyr, every-hero thing into it.

In other ways, Nonsuch is impossibly unique (after 15 years and as many major recordings, how do you continue to be different?). "Rook," for example, is particularly special ---- unlike virtually anything XTC has done in the past. A steady, emotive, throbbing piano with refrains a la Steve Reich and lush strings. "Musically, it's very very close to me. I don't know why, but it was very affecting. Lyrically, I think it may be about coming to grips with your mortality. People say the rook is a bird with many secrets. This may be about the rook knowing the bell is tolling for you --- that it knows when you're going to die. And you catching the rook and threatening it, demanding to know when it's your turn. I'm very proud of `Rook'. Maybe it affected me because it came out unintentionally or accidentally. It actually came out all in one go after a couple of months of awful writer's block."

"Bungalow," one of Colin's finest songs, is also very different. It's fantastically cinematic. "Books are burning" contains XTC's "first guitar duel," Andy jokes. "You've got to approach every song as if it's your last, and we had never done a duel, so we thought we should."

All of these references are the vague sort (how much more vague can you get than a ouija board?) but Nonsuch, in addition to being a wonder of newness, may also be a look at the past and the best starting point to expose someone to XTC --- a history as varied and filled with life as one can imagine.

"When we first started," says Andy, "I thought we'd do one album. I thought we'd have one chance and that would be it. But we continued and we're compelled to do it. And the goals continue to change. This game of football that we thought was a five-a-side kickabout on a pitch the size of someone's back garden, has changed. The pitch is now 10 miles long and I still can't see the goal."

NOTE: The magazine also came with a free flexi-disc containing XTC's "Rip Van Reuben" backed with They Might Be Giants' "Moving to the sun". Underneath the space for the flexi is this little snippet:

XTC - "Rip Van Reuben" Warns Andy Partridge: "I had a brain road accident when writing the lyrics. There's a line that says, `Dream you're Frank L. Richards and this is the great land of Oz.' I realised after I'd finished that I'd mixed up Frank Richards, the author of the Billy Bunter books in England, with L. Frank Baum, who wrote the Oz books. But that makes it all the more interesting, doesn't it?"

All original work is acknowledged as being the copyright of the originator.