'We're something very
unsensational but terribly English...We're like HP
sauce or the pillar-box. . we'll always be here.'
- Andy Partridge, 1987
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"You know how foreigners
believe that all Englishmen have all got rotten teeth
and a collection of something, and that they all like
whacking each other's bottoms? Well, it's completely
true. "
- Andy Partridge, 1989
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"A lot of that American
pop-rock was just too damn political for me. It went
right over my head. They were bust going on about
riots, police brutality, Vietnam and heavy drugs. In
England we had the Alice In Wonderland psychedelic
tea party. It was all wandering around in a mauve fog
next to some bird in a maxi-dress, talking backwards.
More magical. Less brutal than that American social
realistic thing."
- Andy Partridge, 1989
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"We may have fitted in for
one or two days in 1977; I think we invented our own
scheme and you either like it or lump it. Most people
in England don't like it, and I don't know why:
probably because the English have been conditioned to
eat things up very quickly. All very instantaneous.
Other nations take time to chew things over."
- Andy Partridge, 1992
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"We don't purposefully try
to be English; we don't sit down and say, 'Let's get
this measuring device, we'll have a cup of hot tea
with a special measuring-thing, a lead, in it to
power it, and we'll see how we register on the double-decker
bus-ometer, and if we just put a dollop of HP sauce
on it, if it starts glowing radioactive we'll know we're
terribly British'. But I think one of the strengths
of the band, that may have been overlooked by a lot
of the English people who have been snooty about us
in the past, is the fact that we're natural, we're
unashamedly what we are. "
- Andy Partridge, 1996
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"We're so closed up about
lot of things' that's why the English get violent
when they drink. The French get romantic, the
Italians cry about their mothers, the Germans sing,
but what do the English do? They want to smash your
face in."
- Andy Partridge, 1998
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"I don't see how we're
ever gonna be accepted in England in a way that doesn't
smack of comeback or desperation. And comeback to
what? Comeback to the ignorance that we've had from
you bastards for 20 years? Come back home. Sure. What
a home."
- Andy Partridge, 1999
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