"I always thought we were
rubbish live. It was just kick and rush. Plug in,
turn up the amp to number 11 for an hour and a half,
then run off. And as the gigs got bigger, I started
to get stage fright. I used to like playing in pubs
where there'd be a couple of hundred people and a few
pints next to your guitar. I liked the naivete and
amateurism of it."
- Andy Partridge, 1989
|
"He still lives to play
and crank it up," Partridge says of Gregory,
"so I think he's a little frustrated. I've tried
to urge him to go on the road with other people so he
can get that evil spawn out of himself and come back
and be with us." He switches on a broad west-country
twang: "'You're not getting any sex in this
marriage so it's all right to go to a prostitute if
you want.'"
- Andy Partridge, 1989
|
"The daft thing about not
touring is that it's put this incredible aura of
mystery on us, but that's totally in people's minds,"
says Partridge. "It comes from people's great
appreciation of the songs, and the fact that we're
such an uncommon animal. But we're not special
individuals, we have no great personal magic. I don't
mind at all that people appreciate the songs, but at
this age, I find it hard to have adulation from
anyone."
- Andy Partridge, 1992
|
"At XTC's first major
London gig, at the Rainbow supporting Blondie in 1977,
I was so wound up I actually pissed myself onstage,
but my guitar was slung so low the audience couldn't
see. After a couple of years with XTC I started
performing on automatic. "
- Andy Partridge, 1994
|
"I think if I was offered
a year on the road, I wouldn't take it. All that
living out of a suitcase, hunting around on a Sunday,
in a strange town, looking for a laundrette... I
couldn't handle that now."
- Colin Moulding, 1997
|
"There's not
going to be any acoustic guitars in evidence or
anything like that. It's just a visitation; we're
gonna be descending from Olympus to cure the odd
leper"
- Andy Partridge, 1999
|
"I toured with my
‘75 Ibanez Artist for years, and did so many
sweaty gigs, the metal parts on it totally corroded.
It looks like they’ve been sandblasted. I had
all the metal replaced, but the little piece that
surrounds the pickup-selector toggle got overlooked.
It looks like it’s been at the bottom of the sea
since Tudor times. But I resurrected the Ibanez, and
now it’s my main electric again."
- Andy Partridge, 1999
|
"When you don’t
tour it opens up your palette, since you don’t
need to worry whether you can reproduce everything
live. We can do what we want in the studio, we can
indulge our selves to the hilt—and I’m
afraid we do, as well. We’re in our 40s now, and
the prospect of going onstage and jumping up and down
seems a little undignified."
- Colin Moulding, 1999
|
