Here's an obscure interview that I happened upon recently from a local
rock paper in Columbus, Ohio during the Respect tour for your archives:
"Undisguised folk truths drawn from decades of campfire wisdom, nurtured on a 
diet of The Band, the Beach Boys or Billy Bragg," is how RH sums up RESPECT,
his seventh album with the Egyptians' Andy Metcalfe and Morris Windsor.
RESPECT, like their previous A&M releases, is a glorious concoction of
harmonies, tunefulness, lovingly crafted arrangements and prosaic imagery.
But it is also Hithcock's most unambiguous collection of songs to date, a
bold and heartfelt statement by a songwriter evolving to new heights of
revelation and artistry.
"I'm not trying to produce anything that makes people go 'oh, wow, that was
clever,'" Hitchcock says. "A lot of the old songs have words as foliage,
verbiage, a screen of words. There was a big gap between expression and
communication. But I've got more confidence about my songs now. I wanted to
get something that has feeling in it, that's close, kind of right in your 
third eye."
Going back to the days of the Soft Boys, Hitchcock has been singing his songs
in public for more than 16 years now. Thesing of time has brought out his
introspective side, and he is coming to express his reflections about love, 
death and every day life in a much more direct manner.
For as long as he's been writing and performing music, Robyn has also found
other means for creative expression. Like his late father, Raymond Hitchcock
who died last year, Robyn is an accomplished painter (a touring exhibition
of the United States is palnned for the future) as well as a poet and short 
story writer.
The unvarnished, personal nature of RESPECT demanded a different approach
from past Egyptians records. Shunning the excruciating technical processes
of a recording studio, the band brought a 40-foot mobile recording unit out
to Robyn's home on the Isle of Wight in England. Producer John Leckie (The
Falls, Stone Roses) was installed as a fourth pair of ears, and most of the
electric instruments were left on the mainland.
"With PERSPEX ISLAND we made a very formal record with a producer," Hitchcock
says. "We rehearsed hard, did all those things we'd never done before, and 
made this very sophisticated, kind of Beatles record, really. But while we 
were promoting it, we went 'round playing a lot of acoustic stuff at radio
stations, and we also did a lot of stuff on the bus, with Morris playing a
Coke tin and a shaker, and Andy on acoustic bass, just like campfire style."
So I thought, let's do this at home, just do it in the kitchen where I write
all these songs, and get away from all the production."
However, he admits, "The dynamic became so complicated that it actually 
doesn't come out acoustic at all." Overdubbing, horns and a Metcalfe-arranged
string section does indeed leave RESPECT sounding very fleshed out, while
minimilism guides the starkly pretty "Arms of Love" (which has already been
covered by R.E.M.), the impressionistic first single, "Driving Aloud (Radio
Storm)" is rich, full-blown irrisistable pop music.
But the mandate of simplicity left its mark. Freed from their traditional
instrumental roles, the band subverted the professionalism that can stand
between a song's essence and its realization on record.
"One of the things an awful lot of bands suffer from is that you become so
good at being yourself that you can switch it on and off," Metcalfe says.
"If Robyn writes a four-minute poppy song, we're very good at coming up with
a nice bass riff and a backbeat and some harmonies. But for this, we weren't
able to hide behind the things we normally do. We had to think about it much
harder, and think about what the songs were actually about."
And, on RESPECT more than ever, the meaning of the songs, and the sentience
that lies behind them, is what drives Hitchcock's art. "It was a bit of a
freak show for the intelligentsia. Sure, I'm intelligent, and I'm a freak,
but I think there's more to it than that. The important thing is the emotion
in the songs."
On another note, how about a thread of least-liked RH toons? Mine would have
to be "Oceanside" (something about the "gonna rock you" line bugs me!) and
"arms of Love" although I like REM's version.Anybody else? Another fun
thread game might be "RH Segues". For example..."Messages of Dark" segued
into "Vibrating". Others?
An ugly fully-grown adult, HAL.