Transcript for "The Collector"

"The Collector" is a futuristic opera by Cerrone, with all lyrics by Lene Lovich, based on an unpublished short story by Lene of the same title. The lyrics were written after the music by Cerrone.

Cerrone has first released an album called "The Collector" in 1985 (vinyl only at the time; CD release 2009), recorded in 1984. The tracks from this album's side 2 are not related to the "Collector" story.

A different album also called "The Collector" (released in 1988; CD and vinyl), contains the piece in its entirety. 

The side-long title track of the 1985 release is called "Evolution" on the 1988 album (different recording than on the 1985 release).

Scroll down to the bottom of this page for the lyrics of the 1985 album's title track, which contains some extra lines that were not used for "Evolution".

After the piece has been performed at the Trocadero esplanade in Paris in September 1988, a live recording of this performance was released later in 1988. This release, titled "The Collector - Live Opera Futuriste" (CD only; also released on video cassette), has the same cover ad artwork as the 1988 studio album.

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THE COLLECTOR


CHARACTERS

The Witness
I am the independant observer who verifies all. I put forward some philosophies and questions and recognize the constant search for truth, yet I am not affected by the quest. I am interested to watch and make comment, but do not seek to play the game.

Earthalien Chorus
We are "Earthaliens" from the planet "Earthalia". Those of us who took refuge here, called this planet "Earth" to remind them of home. As centuries pass, they still refer to all strangers and newcomers as "Aliens", for they themselves were once strange and new. We have come to announce a time of enlightenment and change. The dawn of a "New Age".

The Collector
I am the voice of Earthalia. I have been invested with all knowledge and power to show our earthbound people their true identity and realize their potential. I come to help them break their chains and guide them through the dark. When they are ready, I will take them home.

Woman
I represent all Earth women. The Collector takes me back in time. Through a series of flashbacks, I recall our true history. Although I still have many questions, I begin to realize who I really am.

Man
I represent all Earth men. I am filled with doubt and confusion. The Collector reveals to me the wonder of the real world, and I begin to sense a positive change.

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THE COLLECTOR PHILOSOPHY

A super race of alien beings is in peril, their precious world is dying. A new world must be found in order to survive. They search the universe for a new home, finally reaching Earth, their resources almost exhausted. It is far from ideal, but the only choice under the circumstances.

A few volunteer to carry on the search for a more suitable planet. The majority must wait on earth -stranded - until a better world can be found. As time goes by, the waiting aliens concentrate hard on survival. Many compromises must be made. The Future is more important than the past.

Centuries go by without communication from the search party, while generations here re-cycle and evolve. Life before Earth has been long forgotten. History has become based only on our Earthly experiences as we become more and more chained to this world. Even so, something of our original alien self still remains. Maybe that essence is what some people mean when they talk about the soul.

Now, at this stage of our evolution, natural and man-made disasters strike again and again. Many have become discontent with life on Earth. How ironic it is, that during our own restless generation the search-party has returned. The Collector has come to take us Home.

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THE WITNESS

The Witness
Every generation asks itself - who am I ?
Where did I come from ? Why am I here ?

Are we just skin and bone ?
Where is this thing called the Soul ?
Has anyone ever seen it ?

When we die - we're dead. That's it. Or is it not ?
How can something as full and complex as us, suddenly become nothing ?

What happens to all that energy and emotion ?

Did man evolve from the apes ?
Did life begin in the sea ?
Or have we always been here - just as we are today ?

So many questions. So much mystery.
It's about time we had some answers.

Don't you agree ?

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A NEW AGE
Part 1

Earthalien Chorus
A new age is dawning
The glory unfolds
A new world is calling
The voice of ........

The greatest world of all

The music within us
Is echoing strong
The future is singing
The song of .........

The greatest world of all

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EVOLUTION
Part 2

The Collector
Be calm - you will come to no harm - I am "The Collector". When our ancient world was dying some of us took refuge on this primitive earth, others scanned the stars in search of the ideal.
That journey was long and confused.
But now - I have returned - to take you home

Woman
Out of a world of chaos and turmoil we arrive
Hard as it seems we must try to keep alive
Hungry to breathe we struggle to reach
the atmosphere
Hoping at least - the future is on our side

Until the day - we fly away
There's no escape - in the game of life

Few search the sky for a new way of life while we abide
Waiting for rescue, waiting to see the light
Eyes turn aside as each day becomes a memory
Best to forget the past - the future looks bright

Until the day - we fly away
There's no escape - in the game of life
Excite your mind - time after time

Move on - sing a new song
Let the music change your life
Take a new song - turn the world round
Let the energy revive

Make something happen
Don't get upset
If the goal is out of reach

Never give over - keep moving on
Never give up on the dream

The Collector
Your stories of evolution amuse us
Do not think that mankind has descended from the apes
For the apes are still apes and always will be so
The harsh conditions of earth have dulled your senses
When you are re-united you will remember your true self

Woman
Centuries flash in curious dances we design
Strange how we change our style as time goes by
Only the soul remains, the rest we win or lose
Better to start again - the future looks fine

Until the day - we fly away
There's no escape - in the game of life
Excite your mind - time after time

The Collector
You are not the first
And you will not be the last...

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THE CIRCLE
Part 3

Woman
Starry eyes are open wide
As what you say
Turns the mind

Man
Is it real or fantasy
Can we believe
So much confusion

Together
Could it be we used to fly
The sky above
Looks very bright
Tonight

Earthalien Chorus
Somewhere in the dark there
Is a candle that wants to glow
In the heart there is a burning
As the memories start to flow

The Collector
It is our nature to move in circles
But the circle is not small in this great world
Make something great of all things and understand your own greatness
Do not accept your fate but learn to accept yourself
Think not of escape - but of freedom

Woman
Many minds have tried to find
A way to break
The chains of life

Man
Are you sure we can be free
Would man survive
A world of changes

Together
Suddenly we realize
The sky above
Is yours and mine
Tonight

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EARTHALIA
Part 4

Far away stars seem so familiar, as memories of home return

Earthalia glows, wonderful and radiant

Peace and contentment rest for a time with Man and Woman,
While they enjoy the vision of a perfect world.

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BREAK THE WALL
Part 5

Man
Wild are the dreams of a child

Earthalien Chorus
The channel - is open

Man
Soaring high

Earthalien Chorus
So precious - the moment

Man
Why do the dreams disappear from our lives

Earthalien Chorus
The channel - is closing

Man
Out of sight and mind

The Collector
From the day these earthly forms were borrowed
You have built around you a wall of pain and loss
Regain your vision - break down the wall

Man
Trying so hard to erase all the pain
from inside

Earthalien Chorus
The pressure - gets heavy

Man
Hold on tight

Earthalien Chorus
Remember - the message

Man
Finally leaving the tension and stress behind

Earthalien Chorus
Forever - and ever

Man
Out of sight and mind

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THE REAL WORLD
Part 6

Through the crack they have made in the wall, Man and Woman now see a very different world

A marvellous place of happiness and excitement

They watch, wide-eyed,
as The Collector shows
them all the thrills and
delights of the real world.

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LIGHT OF LOVE
Part 7

Man
Feelings so deep have entered my life
Taken control - they have opened up my eyes
Helped me to see a way through the dark
Made me believe how great we really are

The moment you found me something was changed
Inside and outside - they will never be the same
A new kind of love I now understand
Seems for me the first time I know who I am

Forever and always we hold in our heart
The beat of a dream - no one can stop

Light of love come into me
And make my life so clear to see
Fill me up so all can see
The light of love that shines in me.

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TRANSFORMATION
Part 8

Man has entered the light and the light has entered Man

He is surrounded by the welcoming spirit of Earthalia

All things seem possible

How good it feels, to be part of this great world

Life on Earth will never be the same

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THE DECISION
Part 9

Man
High are the stars in the sky
Overhead
One day we'll really be able to fly
Home again at last

The Collector
Many have called out to me
I have always answered that call

Man
There is no doubt in my mind
No regrets
One day the world will begin to return to the light
Home again at last

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UNITY, POWER AND THE PROMISE
Part 10

The Collector
Some are ready to receive
Others will take time
Even the most enlightened are trapped
I have come to release you

One by one
You have lost the sense of unity
And become slaves to your isolation
You have made yourselves seem weak

Each part is essential to the whole
Search your far memory
Recall that power
Sleeping within you all

I have kept the promise
And will continue to do so
When you have heard and understood
You will decide

I am "The Collector"

... "The Collector"

I will return

... return...

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THE GREATEST WORLD OF ALL
Part 11

Earthalien Chorus
A new age is dawning
The glory unfolds
A new world is calling
The voice of ....

The greatest world of all

The music within us
Is echoing strong
The future is singing
The song of ...

The greatest world of all


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MUSICIENS

Marc Cerrone - Charly Olins:
Synthetizer
(Emulator III - Emulator II + CD ROM - Dynacord Addone + Sampler - Sequenceur Macintosh + Performer 2.2 et 2.3 -Roland D 50 + PG 1 000 -Roland MKS 80 - PPG Wave 2 -Roland Jupiter 8 -OBXa -Minimoog -Akai 5 900 - DX 7 -Alesis HR 16)

Instruments acoustiques
(Timbales - Cymbales - Tubular Bells -Piano Steinway -Celesta -Drums and Percussions)

Steve Croes:
Synclavier

JJ "Art of Noise":
Courtesy of Chrysalis Records
FAIRLIGHT Serie 3

Paul Jackson:
Guitar

Jérémy Cerrone:
Sound Effect


INTERPRÈTES

Created, composed and produced by Marc Cerrone
Lyrics: Lene Lovich

The Collector: Bill Mitchell
Woman: Mary Hopkins
Man: Steve Overland
Earthalien Chorus: Choeurs de l'Opera de Paris

Arranged by Charly Olins

Based on a story by Lene Lovich

Opera de Paris Coral Arranged by Michel Ganot

Production and Publishing: N.A.C.
Collector - Earthalia - Trade Marks

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THE COLLECTOR (as released in 1985)

(spoken)-Be calm, you will come to no harm, I am The Collector
When your ancient world was dying
Some of us took refuge on this primitive earth
Others scanned the stars in search of the ideal
That journey was long and confused
But now I have returned to take you home!

Out of a world of chaos and turmoil we arrive
Hard as it seems we must try to keep alive
Hungry to breathe we struggle to reach the atmosphere
Hoping at least the future is on our side

Until the day we fly away there's no escape in the game of life

Few search the sky for a new way of life while we abide
Waiting for rescue, waiting to see the light
Eyes turn aside as each day becomes a memory
Best to forget the past, the future looks bright

chorus: Night falls on the planet when I take you to the flight
On the turning of the light years and the future's looking fine
There is no danger, only the mystery of the light you get to see
This is your moment, take it too hard, we are ready for the key ...hold on

Until the day we fly away there's no escape in the game of life
Excite your mind, time after time

chorus

(spoken)-As you see, your story of revolution amuses us...
Do not think that mankind has descended from the apes
For the apes are still apes and always will be so
The harsh conditions on earth have dulled your senses
When you are reunited you will remember your true self

Centuries flash in curious dances we design
Strange how we change or style as time goes by
Only the soul remains, the rest we win or lose
Better to start again, the future looks fine

Until the day we fly away there's no escape in the game of life
Excite your mind, time after time

chorus
-are you ready -excite your mind, time after time

(spoken) -you are no the first and you will not be the last
Those you call missing persons are among the collected, I accept you all
Many have called out to me, I have always answered that call
Do not be concerned, there is never need for force, the choice is yours
I am The Collector... The Collector... I will return...

Non-album tracks

See also singles discography, upcoming overview of unreleased material (including those recorded for radio/television sessions), upcoming screen/soundtracks/acting overview and upcoming guest appearances discography
(the singles discography and this non-album tracks overview include collaborations that have both Lene's and the other artist's name written on them, and therefore are not guest appearances).
Information on children's songs will be added soon.

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"Monkey Talk" (first version)

album "Can't Start Dancin'" (sampler)

Recorded specially for this album (shortly after "Stateless" was finished, but prior to its release).

UK; Oct 1978

Also released on 4-CD box set "Toy Box".

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"Be Stiff" (studio recording)

"Be Stiff" (live) (The Entire Ensemble (vocals by Lene Lovich))

six-track 12" EP "Be Stiff" (promo sampler)

Cover of Devo song which gave the Be Stiff tour its name (see upcoming detailed overview of all songs).

"Be Stiff": Recorded around September or October 1978.
"Be Stiff" (live): Joint performance from the bands that participated on the Be Stiff tour, with lead singing by Lene. Recorded at Leeds University.

UK; early 1979

"Be Stiff" (studio recording): Also released on various CDs.

"Be Stiff" (live): Also released on 4-CD box set "Toy Box".
 

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"Lili Marleen"

German television programme "Bio's Bahnhof"

After having performed "Lucky Number" live on the show (at the time when the song was becoming a hit in the UK), Lene did a parrot-fashion performance of the first verse and chorus of the old German song "Lili Marleen" (host Alfred Biolek sings along with her towards the end of the performance).

08 March 1979

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"Details" (first version)

album "Riding High" (soundtrack)

See also upcoming screen/soundtracks/acting overview for "Details" (first version - instrumental) and upcoming detailed overview of all songs.

Not specially written for this film.

Unknown if specially recorded for the film (around late 1979-early 1980), or perhaps recorded during the "Flex" recording sessions (August 1979). Mixed on 11 February 1980.

"Riding High" filming date: autumn 1979. Film release: May 1981.

The audio quality of this album is of low standard. After the album had been first released (see below), "Details" (first version) was released in high standard quality on the Japanese six-track 12" EP "New Toy" (see singles discography) in spring 1981. This EP is NOT related to the actual "New Toy" EP (July 1981; see albums discography), which contains the re-recording of "Details".

first release (prior to film release):

France; "Superstar 80 - Riding High"; late 1980

UK & Europe; "Riding High"; on French record label; late 1980

second release:

UK; on UK record label; 1981

Argentina

Greece

Netherlands

Uruguay

Also released on six-track 12" EP "New Toy"; Japan; spring 1981 (prior to second release of "Riding High" album) (Japanese EP unrelated to actual "New Toy" EP; see entry for "New Toy" at singles discography).

Also released on 4-CD box set "Toy Box".

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"My Success"

British television programme "Other Side of the Tracks"

Studio version of song from "Mata Hari" (see upcoming screen/soundtracks/acting section); recorded for video to the song, which was filmed specially for this programme.

Recorded and filmed in autumn 1982.

early 1983

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"Breaking the Rules"

album "Tuff Turf" (soundtrack; vinyl)

See upcoming detailed overview of all songs.

Recorded in 1984.

US; early 1985

Canada

Germany; "Love Fighters" (title for film and album)

Germany; "Tuff Turf"; CDr (unofficial); 2002

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"The Game of Seduction" (Soda Stereo)

Vocal track sung by Lene to "Juego de seducción" by Argentine band Soda Stereo. The backing track is the actual recording as released by Soda Stereo in 1985.

When Soda Stereo singer Gustavo Cerati came to visit England in 1986, he went to see Lene's musician friend Judge Smith (former member of the band Van der Graaf Generator), and eventually came to see Lene as well.

When Lene adapted the lyrics of this song to English at the band's request, her vocal track with the English lyrics was recorded in order to present a guide vocal.

Also circulating on the internet is a recording with Gustavo Cerati singing to the same backing track, using some of Lene's English lyrics adaption, while other parts of the lyrics are different because the band found that Lene did not include some of the ideas of the original Spanish recording.

English lyrics to another Soda Stereo song have been written by Judge Smith at the same occasion.

Lene's vocals recorded in early 1986.

unreleased; circulating on the internet

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"Don't Kill the Animals" (Rescue Version - album mix) (Lene Lovich, Nina Hagen)

"Supernature"

album "Animal Liberation" (sampler)

"Don't Kill the Animals": Produced by Lene Lovich, Les Chappell, Bill Liesegang, Karl Rucker, Nina Hagen.

Recorded prior to single version, but released after it (see singles discography).

"Supernature": Produced by Lene Lovich, Les Chappell.
Lene's own version of the Cerrone track for which she wrote lyrics in 1977.

Volume too low for CD album. Standard volume for vinyl album.

Recorded in 1986. Mastered in Dec 1986.

See also singles discography for "Don't Kill the Animals" (single recording).

US; vinyl / CD; 21 April 1987 or May 1987

Canada; vinyl

UK; vinyl

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"Don't Kill the Animals" (Rescue Version - video mix) (Lene Lovich, Nina Hagen)

one-track video cassette "Don't Kill the Animals"

Produced by Lene Lovich, Les Chappell, Bill Liesegang, Karl Rucker, Nina Hagen.

Recorded prior to single version, but released after it (see singles discography).

Recorded in 1986. Video filmed in 1987, or maybe 1988.

US; 1988

Also released on album "The Facts About R.N.A." (promo sampler ("R.N.A." = Rhino New Artists); CD); US; 1990.

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"Wonderland" (Disconet Edit)

double 12" EP "Disconet Program Service - Volume 11 Program 9" (sampler)

Remixed by Steve von Blau.

"Wonderland" (single re-recording) (recorded in 1988 or early 1989) and this mix from it released prior to earlier-recorded album version (see also singles discography).

US; Sep 1989

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"Wonderland" (Alice's In Mix)

12" EP "Art of Mix Vol. 12" (promo sampler)

Remixed by James 007 Lee.

"Wonderland" (single re-recording) (recorded in 1988 or early 1989) and this mix from it released prior to earlier-recorded album version (see also singles discography).

US; Oct 1989

Also released on album "Art of Compilation 3" (promo and subscription sampler; CD); US; 1990.

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"Don't Kill the Animals" ("'91 Mix" (inaccurate; see below)) (Lene Lovich, Nina Hagen)

"Rage" (Lene Lovich, Erasure)

album "Tame Yourself" (sampler)

"Don't Kill the Animals": Produced by JFT Hood. Mixed by Grant Showbiz, JFT Hood.

This version is not a new "mix" (as stated on the record), but a new recording (with no musical input from the original artists) for which all vocals have been used from the original recording (as originally released on Rescue Version - video mix; see entry above). The reason why there is "'91 Mix" written on it is because the release of the finished album was postponed from 1990 to 1991.

"Rage": Produced by Vince Clarke, Andy Bell, Les Chappell, JFT Hood. Mixed by Grant Showbiz, JFT Hood.

Vocals by Lene Lovich and Andy Bell.

Recorded in early 1990, or perhaps late 1989.

See also singles discography for "Don't Kill the Animals" (single recording), and entry for "March" at albums discography for "Rage" (original recording).

US; CD; late Feb 1991

Australia

Canada; CD

Europe; vinyl; autumn 1991

Germany; CD; autumn 1991

Japan; CD; 10 Oct 1991

Mexico; cassette

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"Don't Kill the Animals" ("Rescue Remix") (Lene Lovich, Nina Hagen)

"Rage" (Vitamitavegemix) (Lene Lovich, Erasure)

"Rage" (Dub) (Lene Lovich, Erasure)

six-track 12" EP "Tame Yourself - The Housebroken Dance Mixes" (promo sampler)

"Don't Kill the Animals": Remixed by JFT Hood. Extended version of "'91 Mix" (also inaccurate; see above).

"Rage" (Vitamitavegemix), "Rage" (Dub): Remixed by JFT Hood. Additional lyrics for Vitamitavegemix.

US; 1991

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"The Insect Eater" (demo recording)

cassette "Dracfest Tape"

Privately distributed audio cassette which contains the studio versions (as released before) of the songs that Lene was to play at Dracfest (Whitby/England, 24 September 1997; Lene also played two other UK shows around this one).
Of the two songs which were not yet released, the cassette contains "The Wicked Witch" (Monitor Mix) (as properly released in 2000; see singles discography) and "The Insect Eater" (demo recording) (see albums discography for album recording). "The Wicked Witch" is inaccurately labelled "demo recording" on this cassette.

Sep 1997

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"The Wicked Witch" (album mix) (Latz, Lene Lovich)

"Home" (Latz, Lene Lovich)

Latz

album "Twinnings" (CD)

Vocals and "additional construction" by Lene Lovich and Les Chappell.
"The Wicked Witch": Song title by Latz (inspired from film "The Wizard of Oz", 1939); lyrics by Lene Lovich.

"Home" previously released on Latz 10" EP "The Wicked Witch" (see singles discography and upcoming detailed overview of all songs).

See singles discography for "The Wicked Witch" (Monitor Mix) on Latz 10" EP.

"The Wicked Witch": Recorded in 1994. "Home": Recorded in 1995; mixed in late 1996.

Germany; 21 May 2002

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"Alpha Girls"

album "Others" (part of four-album compilation box set; CDr)

From Vicky Hawkins film "Mary Mutta and Her Alpha Girls" (privately distributed). First public showing of film in Sep 2005 (see also upcoming screen/soundtracks/acting overview).

Recorded in 2005.

Jan 2014

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album "Wild at Heart: Locked in the Dressing Room" (sampler; vinyl)

"Savages" (Lene Lovich Band)

Recorded some years before release.

See also singles discography for song's 2019 online release.

Germany; early 2021

Juke (Australia; 11 Dec 1982)

Ms Lene Lovich is in her dressing room at London's Lyric Theatre where she appears nightly (for some 4 weeks) in the musical play about Mata Hari.

"I came to see a show at the same theatre at the beginning of the year in January; it was written by a friend of mine, Chris Judge Smith, and when I came to see it, I was having a lot of problems with my record company."

"I was really personally depressed, but I was excited to see music happening in an alternative way because unless you have a record out it's very difficult to perform live. It's the professional business and everybody has to be paid, people who do the lights, the band, and if you don't have the record out, it's impossible to do it."

"I was quite excited about the idea to do the music in the theatre situation. Actually, about four years ago I was talking to the same guy, Chris, how do you show somebody a story for a film if you have got an idea for it - how do you present it to somebody ? He told me that you write something called "treatment", showing me one he was commissioned to do about Mata Hari, but never realized. So it was a combination of events that led me to do something like this."

The play, authored by Lene, her faithful companion for many years, Les Chappell and old friend (from the days of art-studies, later founder-member of remarkable but ill-fated Van Der Graaf Generator) Chris Judge Smith, is factionalized account of one of this century's most intriguing persons. Mata, who had bursted upon Paris in 1905 with her unique oriental dance, on engagement in Berlin at the outbreak of First World War, returned to Paris only to be executed in the charge of espionage in 1917.

Lene, with her almost eccentric looks and fascinating way of performing, has been the only possible choice to bring to the stage life the enigma and mystery of Mata. But, the critics haven't thought so and not very good write-ups ensued.
She laughs genuine wholeheartedly: "On one hand it's true because on the night the press came, I was very ill, being sick the week before the opening and the first week of showing; I couldn't really sing well, even now my throat is not in the usual shape. They didn't get the best performance from me, I didn't have much energy to really give the part the real spark."

"And we were a little under-rehearsed because I had been telling my record company for nine months that we'd be doing the show. Of the only three weeks to rehearse, they sent me off to New York to finish the album for a week, so we really had only two weeks to get it right."

"Also, we have very strange critics, some said 'Why should a singer make a show about the dancer ?' But, why not ? Does it mean that I should only make a musical about singers ? And I do believe that they like to keep arts separate; that's not what I was hoping to achieve. I was hoping for some kind of communication even though I've always said that I wasn't an actress."

"I wanted to bring arts together, somehow, and in the show we have everything: puppets, music, little bit of dance, small amount of choreography ... I was hoping that the idea would work so that we could try and progress and do another one. Maybe we'll still be able to ..."

Any possibility that you put the songs from the stage production on the vinyl ?

"I'd like to but I don't think that I'll have any help from my record company. They've all come to see the show and I can only suggest and maybe they'll agree, it may happen. If it comes to it, we'd develop the songs a bit more, maybe give more information needed without the visual support."

"I think that the record company in here has changed in some way, maybe because of the circumstances that made them have different priorities. I don't think that my priorities have changed, but theirs have: for one, they are bigger company now, they employ more people, they have bigger overheads and they have become very successful with the singles here in Britain. And, that's where their emphasis really is; unless they can see that recording will be a hit-single, they are not interested."

"About two years ago, I started to record the new album, and couple of people came down and they weren't really happy about it because they couldn't see the hit-single. They have been waiting for me to change, they started not to like the way I look and they didn't even want to like the way I sang. What they were looking for, it was explained to me that they wanted to hear something coming from me that nobody would know that it was me. A song that could have been done by anybody, in other words. They were afraid that the public was tired of the way that I looked and the way that I sounded, and if I could do something more anonymous and more universal, I would have wider appeal."

To lose your identity and adopt a corporate image ?!

"Yes, that was the idea and it was put to me in many different ways, in many different versions by different people from the company. And all this time they've been waiting for me to change, but it doesn't work that way; they thought that if they stopped me from working I'd have to change eventually."

"In some ways you can say that what I've done now is some kind of a compromise, and if it is, it's acceptable to me. I like this record very much and they do too. It's very strange because some of the numbers are two years old, with the same backing tracks..."

"They sent me off to America to re-mix the album thinking that he (Bob Clearmountain who's worked with the Stones, Church, Roxy Music etc.) would take out all the craziness that they didn't like and he'd make it sound better. When we got there, he balanced it better for hi-fi freakos, made tracks sound more unifying because they were recorded in different studios, made them appear like one record. He hasn't changed much of the essence, it's still our album."

"I like everybody at Stiff and to have to go and look for another record company will be like running away from home," she smiles.
Les has come in during the conversation but, with his head buried in the papers, he utters not a single word.

The song that opens the new album, at the same time the new single "It's You, Only You (Mein Schmerz)" contains the leitmotif for Ennio Morricone's score for the spaghetti-western The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

"That's the truth, and it's not my song; it's from the guys who used to be in a Dutch band called The Meteors, they are disbanded now. That riff was already in there when I picked it up, and I was glad that it was in there because I've always been a big fan of Ennio Morricone and I wouldn't mind people mentioning his name in connection with mine, even if they thought I'd stolen it."

Wouldn't the title of "No-Woman's-Land" have been better ?

"Yes, but it's traditional form of speech; Stiff didn't like it either ... the only thing they liked from the start was Les' picture of me for the cover. We decided to keep it in the family."

"Maybe all my problems are over now, or rather that is what I'd like to think," she adds as an after-thought. "It's become such a big problem for me that I'm happy to have an album out, at all."

"Sister Video (penned by J. O'Neill of Fingerprintz) is the most likeable offer of the nine, but Special Star and Rocky Road are more to the point, dealing with the coercion of the business."

"All my songs are autobiographical, very personal ... I wouldn't really like to say, I'd rather let the songs speak for themselves and to have more of the audience participation."

It's the most probable that this album will face the criticism of "not-a-big-change" after the two years lull.

"I haven't changed so much because you can only change by doing things. I'm the person who do things with feeling and intuition, doesn't plan it, I like things to happen naturally, I only learn by doing one thing at the time. The things that I learned from Flex were translated into this album, because there was nothing in between. It doesn't mean that the quality is any less..."

Dancey record without the commercial sea-songs of this season - it retails the definite Lene Lovich identity.

In 1979, Lene starred in the film "Cha Cha" with Herman Brood and Nina Hagen; following appearances in the Mata Hari play and recent screening of the French TV-movie "Rock". Is she going to pursue acting as a career ?

"Listen, if I didn't have so much trouble with the music industry, most probably I wouldn't be appearing in Mata Hari, nor doing the films. My first and foremost love is the music, so completely satisfying that I could be involved full time with no regrets."

Out (UK; 2006); TV Times Extra - Tune-in to Autumn (UK; 1979)

"1970s fashion was dull, dull, dull. The only thing I liked were the shoes - big chunky Frankenstein platforms. You could stomp around in those. But seriously, until punk came along, the best thing about fashion was that it was cheap. I totally embraced the punk look. It was do-it-yourself, just like the music. I loved the ripped-up look; I'm still wearing it, and it always freaks people out. It was like you'd just got run over by a bus. Pop was colorful and arty. David Bowie was always interesting, but punk probably had the biggest effect on me. It opened doors for a lot of people, including me. Anybody could be in a band. It was a great time for girls, misfits, and creative spirits."

(2006)

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WARDROBES: WEIRD AND WONDERFUL

Lovely, dizzy Lene Lovich may give the appearance of being decked out in items left behind after a jumble sale - but in fact she's fascinated by clothes.

"What I'm into right now is curtains. I buy lots of lacy ones from market stalls, dye them, wrap them round me and tie something round the waist to keep them on. Curtains have endless different patterns, you know. Comfort on stage is very important; I don't want to be restricted by what I'm wearing and I find curtains make the perfect relaxing garment. I have suitcases full of them.

"I've just started this new thing: I wear footless tights on my arms. I pull them up so they look like those long gloves women used to wear. I like to create my own style entirely and not rely on a designer. The other thing I do is swap clothes with my friends."

Lene leans back in her curtains and fiddles with her long hair: "Don't get the idea that I only wear curtains; every once in a while I find a dress or jacket I like. There's not a great deal of difference between my day-to-day clothing and my stage gear. Perhaps I elaborate a bit when I'm performing, but I'm pretty consistent in my dress."

(1979)

Dallas Morning News (20 May 1987)

'Weird' Lene Takes On Critters' Cause

The word that has dogged Lene Lovich for much of her career is "weird.' Over the past 10 years or so, the singer has remained an eccentric, rather shadowy cult figure. Despite her four-octave range, she has become best known for her chirpy yodeling style and her flamboyant stage presence.

Best known for her first album, Stateless and a handful of great singles including Lucky Number and Say When, Lovich has not released an album in years, largely because of contractual problems.

"I've been locked in the dungeon of Stiff Records for three years,' she said by telephone from New York. "They didn't like the musical direction I was taking.'

Even though their styles are quite disparate, Lovich has tended to be lumped with fellow avant-garde singers Lydia Lunch and Nina Hagen. Weird.

Her latest project does unite Lovich and Hagen in a cause that has become dear to both singers, the campaign for animal rights. The two have become spear carriers for a group called People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals that is waging an increasingly vocal battle to stop the use of animals as food, in research and for fur. Lovich will stage a benefit concert Friday night at the Starck Club.

PETA has enlisted several other stars, including Howard Jones, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Morrissey of The Smiths and Alain Jourgensen of Ministry in the war against scientists, furriers and human carnivores. Lovich and Hagen recently released a single, Don't Kill the Animals, that has become a dance club hit. The two also have hit the road on a concert tour on behalf of PETA.

A Detroit native who has lived in Britain for the past 20 years, Lovich is a relatively recent convert, having joined the cause a year ago.

"I have been a vegetarian since May 1, 1986,' she said. "I started about five years ago saying I wouldn't eat any more babies. No more chicks. All God's creatures have a right to a life.'

But she didn't quite follow up on that sentiment. Then one day her friend Nina Hagen showed up at Lovich's house in Norfolk.

"She came up to my house to make a demo for another song,' Lovich recalled. "She told me about this (PETA) thing and she had already written half a song, and I wanted to help her finish. These ideas had been going through my head, and I decided to go ahead and do it. We just put a piece of paper on the table and started writing.'

The result was Don't Kill the Animals.

"It's the fastest song I've ever written in my whole life,' Lovich said. "Usually my songs are left available for the audience to tune in to whatever plane they wished. But this time I wanted to be sort of a newscaster and set the discussion.'

The collaboration with the German singer led to an education course for Lovich.

"At that time I wasn't really aware of the total picture,' she said. "I received a whole lot of information from PETA, and the next day I became a vegetarian. I was not just doing it because of animals but because of people. I wanted to make an effort to get rid of world hunger. It's a very simplistic argument, but I do believe that if we left the animals to their own world and concentrated on our own we could rid the world of starvation.

"Animals don't even get the diseases for which they are used in experiments, so how can their systems react? Seventy percent of the testing done on animals is non-medical. It's for everyday products like shampoo, makeup, oven cleaners. It's a multi-million-dollar industry. We have this image of researchers as angels in white coats trying to save the world, and that's not really a total picture.'

PETA, Lovich said, is not just trying to turn out pious vegetarians.

"This organization is talking about closing down some of these places, laboratories -- legally. These things (experiments) are all going on behind closed doors. If they're so wonderful, why aren't they taking people around on guided tours?'

Lovich said she believes people will be receptive to the PETA message because it makes sense.

"I'm not here to judge people. I'm here to inform people,' she said. "I think it has to be a spiritual decision, a social decision. It has to come from within. Science is wonderful. You know, I wear canvas shoes, and I also wear, you know, pretend leather.

"What we (PETA) say is, just get into vegetables. You'll find that your sensitivity, your taste, just develops -- because it's been deadened all this time. And you can save so much money.

"I say get into those vegetables, those grains. I'm really into fakes. Fake burgers, fake sweet and sour. And for those who really like the activity of eating meat, there are some just wonderful mushrooms that give you the same ripping-into-flesh sensation.'

http://www.waxtrax-not-subpop.org/interviews/Lene_Lovich_Dallas_Morning_News_5-20-87.html

KTRU radio interview (1983)

KTRU (college radio station from Houston/Texas) - program: Rice Radio


-Hi, here is Michael Zakes, and we have Lene Lovich [...?...], and we're going to talk about her and her music. First of all, could you tell us about your new album?

LL: Well, this is our third record now. Well, our third LP. We have had a little short LP out in between times, but basically this is our third major recording adventure, and it's called "No Man's Land". There is no real continuity in any of the songs, in form of a conceptual idea about the album. All of the songs are meant to be individual. And as always, we draw from any source that we like as far as musical influences go.

-On the album, there seems to be a little bit more of a dance feel to it than, say, on the first two albums. It harkens back more to, say, the "New Toy" 12". Could you say where you got [...?...] from?

LL: Well, it's really not surprising that it's in some way connected to the "New Toy" six-track that we did, because it was all more or less recorded at the same time. It's just that the record company took a long time to decide in putting this record out. And I really don't see that it's any more biased towards a dance type of rhythm, because you can take some of the most earliest songs that we did, I suppose "Lucky Number" is one of the most well-known, and I think if you put it side by side with some of the songs here, I don't think you would see a very great diversion as far as rhythmic content goes. And there are also many different types of rhythms on this record. For example, a song called "Walking Low" is not your conventional dance song, I wouldn't have said.

-Where would you say you get most of your ideas for your songs from and can you give one specific instance of when you saw something or did something and said "Hey, I'm gonna write a song about that" ?

LL: I think most of the inspirations are really coming from my songwriting partner, Les Chappell. I mean, obviously things stimulate you from time to time, but very often it's something that he's done or said or played that has started off my brain working into a direction of writing a song.

-Do you say that your new album is just being released at the end what was actually first written and recorded, say, back in 1981, 1980, around there? What have you been doing in the time since then?

LL: Well, with having to wait so long for the record company to get the idea to put the record out, I had to try to find a few alternative directions. One thing I did was to go to France to make a film for TV, which was a great experience for me, and it was really like a holiday. But it was more difficult than I thought it was gonna be, because I don't really speak French that well. Fortunately, I was playing the part of an American singer who spoke French very badly, so it was very convenient for me. But what was interesting was that I was able to play two roles - one the real character, and the other an evil imposter of that character, and I enjoyed very much playing the two personalities. Apart from that, I also was involved in a theatre show in London around the life of a real person called Mata Hari, who was executed during the First World War by the French as being a spy, a so-called spy, for Germany. And I did a lot of research, and co-wrote that with my partner Les Chappell and with another friend of ours, Chris Judge Smith. The three of us did a lot of research. Very, very difficult to find anything like the truth, and I don't think anybody ever will.

-In the time since, say have you been working in any video projects, and do you have a new album in the works?

LL: I have made a few videos. I'm sort of in the process of trying to put one together now for a song called "Blue Hotel", but that's not really finished yet. I have got ideas for songs, but we're in the middle now of a big live performance section of our lives, and I won't really have any time to do anything about these songs until I get back to England, which won't be into the summer.

-How long have you been doing this as far as not so much recording albums? Pretty much everybody knows that you were in the first wave of the Stiff acts back in 1978. What did you do before that?

LL: Well, it took me quite a long time really, before I had any sort of confidence in myself to do anything with music, although I wanted to be involved in it. So before I had the chance really... before Stiff Records gave me the chance to record my own songs, I was learning, and I spent about five years doing this, doing various types of jobs in all aspects of playing music. I played in hotel bands, where we had to play for five hours a night doing all sort of things - tangos and waltzes and rock 'n' roll, and all sorts of things. That was mainly in Europe. I worked as a dancer for awhile when I very first started out. And I worked in cabaret with an all-girl trio, and that was also in Europe. I worked in some theatre projects, but I was never the main feature at all, I was always just learning really. Just in the background really, yes.

-Where do you get the ideas for your clothing styles?

LL: Oh, I... Well, I've always enjoyed wearing things on my head. It used to be very, very practical when I was at art school. I was majoring in sculpture and I used to work a lot in cement plaster, and there it was really essential to wear something on your head, but... and after wearing something on your head every day, you have to sort of think of elaborating it in some way, and I actually enjoyed this and I suppose it became some sort of a habit. But I also like tieing things up, really. I like things that will rearrange themselves during the course of the day, and I suppose I like also wearing a few different layers, because I like to be at the right temperature, if possible. So if you wear a lot of things, you can always take it off. I like really customising clothes rather than, you know, (destroying) something, designing and then trying to make it up. That's not really my style. I like to see the potential in something. And I also like going to the sales, like on the last day. You know, when those... everything that's there is what nobody else wants, 'cause then you've probably got something fairly unique.

-Ok. I might thank you for talking to us today and hope that the rest of your tour goes well.

LL: Ok.

Videowave TV interview (New York; March 1990)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41cuTS0fGHU&t=380s

-Hi, I'm Dawn Eden from Videowave, and today I'm here outside Gramercy Park in Manhattan with Lene Lovich, who is in town to promote her new album "March" on Pathfinder Records, and also she just performed last... the other night at the Palladium on the Rock Against Fur benefit, and... How did you like playing in front of that packed house last night?

LL: I think it's always exciting when you get lots of different people together. You know, people from all different walks of life, I mean in the musical way, who come together with the sole purpose of furthering animal rights. I had so much fun singing onstage with the Sugarcubes and Psychedelic Furs. We each had our own spot, and then at the end we had a big finale with the song that I wrote with Nina Hagen, called "Don't Kill the Animals". It's so much fun.

-You must have been very happy when that song became an anthem for the people in the movement.

LL: Yeah, because a lot of people, you know, don't really know what to say to people wearing fur coats, and I can always sing my little song.

-And people will take it to the heart too, because of the way in which you expressed it in the song.

LL: Well, I'm really serious about this. And I suppose "Don't Kill the Animals" was the fastest song [brief cut in the recording; she means it's the most quickly written song of hers (source: other interviews)]. It was intentionally that way, because I wanted it to be like a news broadcast.

-How did you become involved in the anti-fur movement?

LL: It was through Nina. She was approached by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals to write a song for their first record, a compilation LP called "Animal Liberation". And now we're getting ready to do the next one, which is really exciting. I made a recording with a band called Erasure.

-Sure.

LL: It was a song that I wrote, but it was recorded by Vince Clarke and Andy Bell, and then Andy and I are singing it together. So that's gonna come out on a LP in September, with lots of other artists, like Howard Jones, and k.d. lang, Nathalie Merchant...

-Speaking of Erasure, there's a rumour that you might be opening for them on their tour. Would you  [...?...] ?

LL: Ah, well, I don't think that's going to happen this time. But I feel sure that having made this recording together, we worked so well with each other it would be really good to do something onstage with them. Actually I might be doing a stage performance with Andy Bell at some point, because we're both involved with an opera called "The Fall of the House of Usher".

-The Poe story.

LL: Yeah, but it was written by Peter Hammill. Have you heard of him?

-Sure.

LL: So I...

-A cult figure for some time.

LL: I think that the music is really inspirational, and I would really like to perform that on stage sometime.

-Where do you think you might perform it? In the West End of London?

LL: We were about to do it at the Barcelona opera festival last year. But, with one thing and another happening with these things, they don't always materialise. But, there are though people who are interested. It's possible we might do it in Amsterdam. Sorry, not Amsterdam, but another place in Holland.

-Your new album "March" was recorded at home, I understand. It's rather funny, because on the liner notes of the album it says "Recorded at H.O.M.E.". And I didn't even realise that it was "home" until I got it.

LL: It was really my front room. H.O.M.E. is the Headquarters of Musical Evolution.

-That's great. Is this the first time that you've recorded an album for release at home?

LL: It's the first time we've done so much work at home. And I'm so excited about it, because it did give us the time that we needed to make experiments, and it was a lot of fun to work in a relaxed atmosphere, and know that you didn't have to get out before the next band arrived and things like that.

-It must have been neat for your kids too, to actually watch mum doing a recording session.

LL: Well, if you listen really carefully, you probably can still hear in the mix some little noises [Note: from the kids].

-Seriously?

LL: You can probably hear telephones and things like that as well. But it kind of mixes together in an interesting way. I like that.

-Does being in a relationship, as you are, help give you more stability in writing songs somehow?

LL: Well, Les and I, Les Chappell, my partner, and I, we work so closely together that we are so entwined in this that it's very difficult for us to work out who did what, really, by the end of the song. So without each other the song just wouldn't ever arrive. And if we didn't work together musically, we'd never see each other.

-We're going to watch the video "Make Believe" right now, from the album "March".

["Make Believe" video playing]

-We're back on Videowave, I'm Dawn Eden. Here is Lene Lovich, we just saw the video "Make Believe" from her new album "March". What was it like filming that video?

LL: It was exciting for me, because I hadn't really done any film work that involved my own music for some time. So, it's a wonderful world, that world of film. I just love the way that you can create a different world. We didn't have a very big budget, but the director, Miki Watanabe, was really great in making the best out of a very low-budget situation. So it was just an exciting thing, I have a great affinity with the camera. Maybe I used to be a machine.

-Well, you know, when we were chatting right before this taping, you were describing how you feel about the video and how a video should represent a song.

LL: I think it's very difficult. I think it's very hard, in fact it can be very confining when you're doing videos, because it's difficult to tell more than one story. And this is a problem when your music really can be interpreted on very many different planes. So maybe that's why sometimes my videos seem a little crazy, or a little bit cryptic. They're not meant to be that to confuse people, but they're meant to just open it out, so that more interpretations can occur.

-Right now your level of fame has reached a point where in England, of course, you've had, you know, many chart hits. And in America you've got a solid core of followers, along with songs moving on to the charts. What I'm wondering is, are you satisfied with the level of fame right now? Would you like to see yourself have... I mean, is it very important to have, say, a number one single here in the States?

LL: Well, if you had a number one hit single, that would mean that a lot of people knew about you, and that would mean that your communication had gone that much further. So I would be very excited for that to happen.

-At the same time...

LL: That's why I'm here really, to communicate.

-I guess it must be also be important for you to have a hit here in the States, because if you have a huge hit, then more people will become familiar with your animal rights message as well.

LL: I think people really need to have information. I was sympathetic for a long time, and yet did nothing about it. So I think the more information that you have, the more confident you feel about doing something about it. So, a hit record would be really great in just getting that message across.

-A lot of people feel that now in the 90s the music business is changing and becoming more receptive to pro-... to what used to be called "protest songs". Do you find that yourself?

LL: I think we're just getting better at it. You know, a lot of times people concentrated on the negative side of things. And now we're finding more fun ways of getting a message across. I heard of a bunch of transvestites that wanted to wear fur coats and... fake fur boats with blood all over them, and a placard saying "Fur Is A Drag".

-That's great. What are your plans for the coming year?

LL: I'd really, really, dearly love to make some live shows, because I think that's the best way of communicating really. And people are sure to get the message if I'm there, telling the story.

-When you do live shows, are you planning to have a group like Friends of the Earth have a table at your shows, so that interested people can register?

LL: Oh, if they want to. If they want to, yes.

-Because a lot of artists are doing that. You know, McCartney's doing it, and the B-52s.

LL: Yeah, I was there at the B-52 show, and I thought that was working really well.

-Are you also planning to do more acting? You had mentioned the opera earlier.

LL: Yes, I've just made a short film in England with Captain Sensible from The Damned, and it's going to be a half-documentary, half-fantasy in which I play the part of a kind of demonic waitress in this weird cafe. And it's called "Meathead", and it's got lots of really interesting bands contributing to the soundtrack, because there's no dialogue in it but the message is there in the visuals and in the songs.

-Do you know if it's going to be released in the States?

LL: I really hope so, because I think it's really going to be good.

-Well, I wish all the best with your new album, new movie, new opera, and all the things you're doing, you're everywhere. Thank you very much for coming down. This is Dawn Eden from Videowave.

LL: My pleasure.

A.M. (about paranormal experiences) (UK; March 1980)

[See also Gazette Telegraph interview (31 March 1980), also about this subject.]

Born again Lene: again and again.
Born again Lene: again and again.

The reincarnation of Lene Lovich

Lene Lovich learned very early that it wasn't a good idea to let on that you thought you were from another planet. No martyr she, to suffer at the hands of the ignorant. Instead she chose to suppress such thoughts, however spontaneously they entered her mind, and to rationalise the visions that she could more or less turn on and off at random, as the product of a fertile imagination.

Not bad thinking for an eight-year-old. Survival is the key and Lene knew instinctively that people would not take kindly to a child who dreamt the future in panoramic full-colour. Even as an adult she's aware that reincarnation and allied topics have their pitfalls if, in conversation, you're prepared to be specific about your own experiences rather than just theorise, wide-eyed, about the possibilities.

Still, it's an important part of her life and she has managed to find her way into a world where her extra-sensory experiences need no longer be denied. She inhabits the pop world with flair and dignity and if a touch of madness has helped her to be the true original that she is - well, so far, no one is complaining.

Mind you, if Lene Lovich is mad then insanity should be handed out by the welfare state along with the child allowance and social security. Pleasant, articulate and possessed of a truly winning smile she recounts what must have been devastating experiences with no sense of wonder so that the true effect of what she is saying can really only be gained with hindsight.

The fact of her powers, some of which are at her beck and call while others can be frighteningly spontaneous, she accepts wholeheartedly. It is the questions that they raise and the theories that they produce which are not so readily welcomed.

"I change my theories about every six months," she says, smiling. She's aware that it's an area with no black and white, mostly because orthodox science has yet to give the subject its stamp of respectability, even as a topic for serious discussion.

"It's really only in the past 10 years that people have tried in any serious way to document experiences. Mostly when you talk about mysterious experiences you are regarded as fantasising, exaggerating.

"There are behavioural restrictions which society imposes and even if you step slightly outside of them - saying hello to a stranger or singing in the street, for instance - people think you are silly. I went to see a doctor once, after a particularly disturbing experience, and his sympathy gave me confidence enough to tell him about other things which had happened to me. He wrote everything down in the form of a letter, sealed it in an envelope and suggested I take the letter along to a psychiatrist that he recommended.

"When I got home my curiosity got the better of me so I steamed the envelope open and read the letter. I thought: 'If they read this they're going to put me away'. I decided not to go, my freedom's worth more to me than anything and in any case I don't have much confidence in the way that they would handle a situation like that."

The experience that precipitated the visit to her doctor was one which shook her badly. "One day I just found myself sitting on a window ledge, like a cat. I wasn't going to jump or anything but it was frightening because I don't know how I got there or what I was there for. I thought 'This is getting out of hand'."

It wasn't the first time that something like that had happened completely outside her control. During her days at Art College, towards the end of her stay, she spent more and more time outside the college. One day she visited the British Museum to make drawings, ideas for her sculpting. "I was leaving, walking down the stairs. I had a whole load of junk with me which I needed to rearrange because it was falling all over the place.

"I put my bags down on the stairs for a few seconds and when I looked down I noticed something odd, like something materialising. It was very hazy at first, and then I saw I was wearing sandals - which I hadn't been seconds before.

"But what really freaked me was that I became aware of something yellow flapping around my ankles, which disturbed me immensely because I had developed an almost passionate hatred of the colour and wouldn't have been seen dead in it. And yet there I was wearing this yellow dress, a flowing garment, like a robe.

"Then a really, really loud noise came thundering in and I looked over the staircase and there was a marketplace - people were shouting and screaming, there were animals: total confusion. I remember seeing huge sacks of grain, as big as table tops, and people carrying baskets.

"But the thing that really affected me was the feeling that I had gone to that place to meet somebody, it could have been a boyfriend or a lover. I knew that it was a secret meeting and that we had chosen this crowded place so as not to be noticed.

"And then I realised that this other person was not going to turn up. I was totally shattered. As soon as I realised it I felt this stab of dreadful disappointment and everything just started to fade away. I don't think all this can have taken very long because in a place like the British Museum I would have drawn attention to myself. I don't even know what I was doing while it went on, it was like time had stood still for a few seconds.

"Even now, when I think about it, that dreadful feeling of having been let down comes over me."

As she sits, hands on lap, recounting this extraordinary experience, there is not the remotest temptation to think of Lene Lovich as even mildly dotty. She is a calm, very pretty girl, softly Germanic to look at. Her appearance is, of course, eccentric and only an inveterate betting man would put money on whether she was fat, thin or voluptuous under the bulky clothing she tends to wear.

She speaks very precisely, often with the intonation of a little girl, her thoughts organised, her sentences cohesive. In an age where sex appeal seems to depend on saying as little as possible and wearing a similar amount of clothes, Lene Lovich doesn't just ignore the rules - she doesn't even seem aware that the game is in progress. The upshot is that she is very, very attractive.

Part of her appeal, of course, is the mystery which surrounds her. Unlike others, hers will not go away in the fullness of time because it is not the result of some PR man's imagination. It has been with her since she can remember and is even now helping to feed her creativity. Sometimes the childhood dreams and the adult reality link.

"I remember when I was eight having a really vivid dream, you know the kind when you really believe it is happening and it still seems real when you wake up. I was very excited at that age about the prospect of space and space travel and in my dream I was on a space ship and there was a party going on - balloons, crackers, streamers, all the usual party stuff.

"When I thought about it later I was really disgusted with myself. I told myself: 'Don't be an idiot, you wouldn't really have balloons and crackers in space. It's a serious business handling a space ship.'

"Then about three or four years ago we were in a studio over Christmas time and we decided to hold a surprise party for the engineer. While he was out to dinner we completely decorated the control room and then turned out all the lights and hid behind the desk so we would surprsise him with 'Happy Christmas' when he walked back.

"While we were waiting I looked at the control desk with all its lights and buttons, looked around the room at all the balloons and streamers and realised that that had been my dream. I saw how the technology of a modern recording studio would seem to an eight-year-old child all those years ago just like the inside of a space ship."

It was about the age of eight that she began to articulate, to herself at least, certain strange things which were going on in her mind. "I had a few premonitions, often very tiny things, nothing significant. What you might call extraordinary mental activity."

Other things were not so easily explained. "We lived in Detroit, a very run-down area. There weren't many places to play - the river was quite a walk away and as a child you didn't want to venture too far because it wasn't very safe.

"The place to play was this field nearby where there had been some houses knocked down and it had just grown wild, a flat place to play jungle and those sort of games.

"We weren't long into one of our summer holidays when I had a dream about the field being levelled and dug up. I was crying about it when I woke up and I thought: 'This is stupid, what does it matter if they cut it down?' When I went outside all my friends were sitting on our porch looking very sad. 'They cut the field down', they told me. The lawnmowers and tractors had come in that very morning."

"Sleep dreams were one thing, but there were also the waking ones, images which could sometimes get quite frightening. "It's all right when they were nice pictures but one thing which used to happen regularly was that whenever I would put my hand on a door handle a scene would flash through my mind. It didn't matter where the door was, even to my own room. I would see the most horrible, gruesome things behind the door, almost like tuning in to a movie on the television, and the images were specifically of scenes in the room I was about to enter.

"Eventually, through practice, I learned to suppress that, although of course it could be quite entertaining. After regular school (she came to Britain at the age of thirteen) I went to art school and began to release the stops on my imagination.

"But while I was at school I knew that there were things I should not talk about." Now she is looking for words, not sure that her next admission won't get her certified. "I had the idea, I don't know, er, but I thought that, maybe, I was from another planet." A nervous laugh punctuates this confession. She knows it was an irrational concept. All it proves, though, is that children are just as capable of clutching at straws as adults in a tight situation. Grown-ups don't have an exclusive hold on foolishness.

"It didn't last terribly long, a couple of years on and off. I used to look around, because I felt sure I couldn't be the only one. I even used to look at trees or other inaminate objects for signs that I wasn't on my own."

The logic was simple. "Certain things were happening in my mind which I had tried to talk about to my friends, but all I got was strange looks. They didn't understand, so I felt I was different."

It was at art school that she began to see the potential for using these previously unwelcome mind-pictures. Fully aware that she didn't know anything about Art - as contained in galleries - she had really only entered the school to get away from home. "I was really very keen, though, to understand what this Art was." Very quickly she realised that, whatever it was, it wasn't for her.

"I didn't have problems in the beginning because I was keen to learn and was doing more or less what the teachers wanted. I had it down to a pretty neat formula, what was good and acceptable to make for happy days.

"Then I began to think: 'This is really silly. Art is a form of self-expression and the ideas should be your own.' That's when the trouble really started because I realised that the only thing I could be really honest about was my own imagination. We'd had a few lectures about William Blake and he had seemed to listen to his imagination. He may have suffered in his lifetime but at least his Art was true."

She was mostly sculpting by now and took to entering the classroom devoid of concrete ideas and with the intention of allowing her mind to take over. "I wouldn't know what I was going to make, just let my mind be completely open, almost trance-like. It was very exciting and I would work very fast."

Around this time Lene began to think about what these mental interventions represented. Fellow-students would come to look at her work and point out aspects of it which were familiar to them. She realised that she was incorporating into her sculpture images of people or places which actually existed but which were outside her own physical experience.

Hard on the heels of this revelation came the British Museum incident. "The idea of seeing something centuries old and being a part of it didn't really affect me very much. I wasn't terribly surprised although I knew that it wasn't one of my usual imagination things and it wasn't for my entertainment.

"What concerned me was that it was something totally out of my control. My imagination I could switch on and off practically at will. You know, if I'm on a tube train and I'm bored I can entertain myself by seeing monkeys swinging on the hand grips. But this thing in the British Museum had happened completely spontaneously."

Although, as she has said, she entertains different theories in a faddish way, the underlying theme of her belief in reincarnation is her reluctance to accept the finality of death. It's a powerful argument which has been used by some influential people. Benjamin Franklin firmly believed that he had lived before: "When I see nothing annihilated, and not even a drop of water wasted, I cannot expect the annihilation of souls, or believe that He will suffer the daily waste of millions of minds ready made that now exist and put Himself to the continual trouble of making new ones. Thus, finding myself to exist in this world, I believe I shall, in some shape or other, always exist."

Of course it's easy to read ego in that statement, a desire on Franklin's part to believe that the world couldn't go on without his illuminating presence. But, as Lene Lovich says: "It's difficult to rationalise that someone can be walking along the street, thinking, controlling a large part of their environment, then walk off the curb, get hit by a car, and that's the end of that.

"We can't be something one minute and nothing the next."

In support of such doubts Heber Curtis, an American astro-physicist, said: "With energy, matter, space and time continuous, with nothing lost or wasted, are we ourselves the only manifestation that comes to an end, ceases, is annihilated at three score years and ten?"

If it is true that we live before and will live again, why is it that we don't remember past lives. Lene Lovich believes, although it could be one of her passing theories, that between lives we may go through some form of deprogramming and that the memory is then stored in some far corner of our minds.

Scientists have already declared that we only use about 10 per cent of our brains [Note: wrong] and that even a genius is only using about another three or four per cent, so the deprogramming idea is not so far-fetched. It also provides an easy answer to the problem of child prodigies such as Mozart: how else to explain a four-year-old writing complex symphonies except that he carried the knowledge with him from a former life?

"Some people you meet," says Lene, "even quite young children, have much deeper understanding of things than they could possibly have learned in their young lives, or even just one previous life."

There is no room in her life for organised religion; too many rules, too much restriction. But there is comfort to be had from her own beliefs, and she does accept the existence of a Deity, although she can't or won't put a name to it. "I don't fear death itself, only the possibility that it might be painful. There is a worry, of course, about the future because I don't always see it in a beautiful way.

"But I am disturbed by these people who insist on freezing themselves," she says, laughing. "I wouldn't want to come back as myself, I can't think of anything more dull.

"Whatever the world will be like in the future, I think that you need to be introduced to a society gradually, to be born into it and grow up in it so you can accept its hardships.

"Nor would I want to live forever. Much as I am enjoying this life my belief and curiosity about future lives is, I guess, greater than my interest in continuing this one indefinitely."

Melody Maker (UK; 17 March 1979)

Number two with a bullet
Lene Lovich talks to Melody Maker. Les Chappell stays strong and silent.


She is only a slip of a thing, but when Lene Lovich and her bald young escort enter the great motorway cafes of this country, people freeze momentarily over ther hamburgers and chips, a jaw or two drops, a sauce bottle is poised mid-air.

Almost everything about Lene Lovich's appearance is dark, but not her face, a pale, red-lipped oval which rightly belongs to a Poe heroine. Each finger ends in a black-painted nail, bright hoops of steel are in her ears, and the long, close-fitting dresses, worn in shades of maroon, dark blue, black and purple, contribute to a complex style that is somewhere between Romany extravagance and the kinky severity of a Victorian governess.

Lene Lovich is actually in Charles Addams territory. She and her bald companion, who is a long-standing boyfriend named Les Chappell, are a couple straight out of Addams' Nightcrawlers, two enchanted characters in a perverse, somewhat camp fairytale. He is a gentle, taciturn eunuch; she a weird, comic vamp, freshly risen from the tomb and cruising for laughs and lost souls. "This one is for people who've recently died," she always announces before one song, "Sleeping Beauty", which is about reincarnation. That's a sample of her style.

It's a look, too robust to be fey, to win prizes; it may even catch on with the Tie & Dye's Set. They stand and gape as she alternates between singing and a tenor saxophone, an instrument that makes her seem only more kooky. So she will wave to them - "This one is for the girls" - and dedicate to her fans a new number called "Joan".

She is mistress of the beguiling effect. Her famous cuckooing hiccough on "Lucky Number" is as utterly novel and individual as Daltrey's stutter on "My Generation" or Buddy Holly's hiccup. On "Say When" she leads the band, who are named the Nancy Boys, in a Devo choreography of arm movements. Her hands make shapes, her eyes roll dramatically, she whinnies like a stricken horse.

Other times, when the tempo slows, she is pathos itself. She strokes a version of Nick Lowe's "Tonight", and on her own "Too Tender (To Touch)" she beseeches and wrings from her audiences a big, silent tear. "My mother's favourite," she declares.

After a gig is finished, and the band has sunk dully in the precarious safety of a dingy dressing-room, she will welcome all those who wish to talk to her: to find about the next record, or learn the secret of her ingenious hairstyle. Her white cheeks still suffused with her exertions, she signs the pictures and record sleeves of every hopeful punter. Her constant lament is for the fans who have not managed to get into her shows, whose pleas are heard through the dressing-room window as she prepares to go onstage.

Right now she is honouring old commitments to play the clubs and the small polytechnics, although a less scrupulous artist might have blown them out on the strength of a Top Ten single. The next tour will be better because she will be playing town halls and then everyone can see her. The punk ideal still grips her.

So, as the corridors echo emptily, she packs away her own sax, grasps a battered green suitcase that moulders with the old stickers of shipping lines, and heads wearily in the direction of the group van. It's the ritual of every band on the road: as it was in the beginning, is now and forever shall be, a world without end. She always travels with the band.

Tonight they have played Portsmough Poly, a scene of celebration, but the drive on to next town or back to London is invariably for private, exhausted thoughts. As they pull out through deserted streets, a tape of War is on the eight-track, the keyboard player is rolling a spliff, and the bassist has already lain down in the back seat.

Five months ago, before the second of Stiff Records' promotional train tour, Lene Lovich and Les Chappell had had no band of their own and were completely unknown. Two months later they were playing in New York, within a few more weeks Lene Lovich had been hailed as another of Stiff's great finds, in direct line of descent from Elvis Costello and Ian Dury. At the age of almost 30 - no Siouxsie Sioux or Pauline Murray, and certainly no Rachel Sweet - she had become a rock star, doing interviews with the BBC and Daily Mirror, posing for a fashion spread in the London Evening News, being plugged every week on TOTP. The media loves a girl singer, particularly if she has something new to sell: there are just tons of them.

Lene didn't talk of this, however; the conversation was of reincarnation, a subject which apparently much preoccupied her. Her greatest wish was to set down a dream she had once had. It had come to her complete, like a motion picture: the story of a vampire Western.

She spoke softly: "I've seen dead people in a mortuary - grandfathers dying and things - and when you're looking at a dead person, you know that there's absolutely nothing there. It's like a radio set that's been switched off."

We turned off the road and onto the forecourt of a petrol station. Someone was playing music for night owls.

The people most suspicious of Lene Lovich mistrust her relationship with Stiff, and maybe one can understand their fears.

The cover of her album is a brilliant example of Stiff's opportunism and ability to conceptualise; it realises all the strange suggestions of her East European name. [Note: Not the reason for the cover art; see albums discography for notes on "Stateless".]

Called "Stateless", the album employs the typography of computer print-out to evoke an image of alien bureaucracies. And, in a blurred black-and-white photo, a double exposure, she seems to be disappearing like ectoplasm through a high brick wall: her fingers are pressed to her temples in a feat of concentration, her face dissolves, she is going, going, gone. To the West, presumably.

It's no surprise to learn that Dave Robinson, the head of Stiff, was once a photographer. But later one finds out that "Stateless" was chosen because she was in between passports at the time. Lene Lovich turns out to be an American citizen.

She and Stiff understand each other very well, in fact. Quietly, but with great independance, she manages herself, although she is signed to a production deal with Oval, the small, South London company part-run by former writer and broadcaster Charlie Gillett.

Her appearance, just like the sound of her records, which Gillett felt she could produce herself with Chappell, is of her own invention. There is a spoof Christmas EP, recorded for Polydor in 1976 when she was a member of the Diversions soul band, and on the cover she has the same fantastic plaits. She says that her hair was first braided when she was at art school studying sculpture; it was practical, to avoid the plaster and cement. And then, when she joined bands, the Slavic look she had achieved made her stand out.

Charlie Gillett, who also recorded Ian Dury when he was with the Kilburns, recalls her entering the studio of Honky Tonk, the show he used to broadcast for Radio London, late in 1977: "She walked into the room and she looked like a star, with that amazing long hair. A tremendous sense of herself. But always a person, not a sex symbol.

"The problem was, how do you market it? The tendency is always to make something that is unusual like something else that has already been marketed. Ian Dury's success broke down a lot of scepticism. But Ian has to disguise the fact that he's not really a singer; she has a very good range."

She had gone to see Gillett about an appeal he had read on the air for a sax player. The appeal was hers, and she was miffed at having had no response. He, however, recruited her and Chappell for a band of his own, the Oval Exiles, which revolved around the songwriters Bobby Henry and Jimmy O'Neill [Note: not quite true. See upcoming chronology.] (now a member of Fingerprintz, a Gillett band which has been supporting her on a recent tour).

Stiff, says Gillett, were not interested in Bobby Henry, but they did like the demo of a Tommy James song, "I Think We're Alone Now," which he had cut with Lene. A B-side had to be quickly written, and this was "Lucky Number"; a limited edition of this single came out. Of course, "Lucky Number" eventually became the A-side and was completely re-recorded with an extra verse.

Insecure, she says, unless working, Lene had hung about for years on the fringes of music and theatre since leaving London's Central School of Art. She was incurably restless, willing to take any job that came along. And there has been a great variety.

Through the influence of a London session fixer, she made the acquaintance of French disco star Cerrone [Note: Not quite correct; see upcoming page about Lene's lyric writing for other artists.], and wrote the lyrics to "Supernature" and other tunes. When the Diversions supported the Trammps on a British tour, playing Birmingham Town Hall and the Hammersmith Odeon, she was invited to join their sax section. And the first time she played tenor (she is also proficient on violin and alto) was as a member of a three-girl cabaret group, the Sensations, performing for rich Scandinavian tourists on Rhodes.

"That's the stimulus I like - being thrown in at the deep end," she says.

As a jewelled dancer in London, her hair was dark and unplaited. An agent's photograph of her as such preceded the Sensations, much to her fury, at the hotel in Rhodes. She had to steal her contract back from the Greek agent, who had compelled her to sign on the Athens ferry. And then the Greek Orthodox Church threatened to excommunicate the manager of the hotel when the Sensations sang excerpts from Jesus Christ Superstar. She laughs at it all now.

"It was easy for me to get jobs that were slightly risqué. I mean, the number of times I had to leave a job after a few weeks 'cause I didn't wanna take what they considered were the fringe benefits going with it!" Her voice tinkles with amusement.

"But I did manage to gain experience at an early age, because they thought they could use a girl for a bit of decoration. I was fully aware of it, and I didn't like it one bit. I always tried to make sure that I learned something with each job I did so the next one I could have a bit more respect. And I did a lotta very crazy jobs."

Are all these stories about her, like the screams on French horror soundtracks, really true, I ask innocently?

"Yeah!" she replies, slightly amazed.

She is sitting, waiting before a show, in another drab room: it's walled with such pungent graffiti as Stukas Wank Monkeys. On her lap is balanced a plate of congealing steak and chips. The dimple in her chin makes her unexpectedly girlish, but under the harsh dressing-room lighting her face yields up the strain of touring.

"I've lived five years in the last six months," she says, and briefly droops. "But now I think I'm in a situation where I can be creative. I've been in plenty of situations where it was not very creative, but then it was only a means to an end."

As she talks, members of the band wander in and out. The bassist, Lennie Meade, and the keyboard player, Phil Ramocon, are both black; drummer Ben Overhead is a scrappy-looking white kid. All three of them have been drafted in since the Stiff shows in New York. From the adjoining room the sound of tuning-up is discordant thunder.

She comes from Detroit, and her accent has remained pronouncedly American, even though she left when she was 13. It was a tough, mostly black part of Detroit, she says, by the East river; a little awe is left in her voice.

"I was one of only about five or six white families in the whole street. I remember, we had a police station at the end of the road, and they moved it, and we swore it was because the cops didn't want to come down." She giggles. "They would never turn up until at least half-an-hour after somebody had called them, and they were only five minutes away.

"People got shot on the street, and the folks next door were running a still. There were two black families who were feuding with each other, the two grandmothers in the family. They'd send the little kids around with bricks to throw through the window."

She grew up liking Motown, naturally. This was in the day before Berry Gordy moved operations to Los Angeles.

"Everybody felt very proud," she says; she still feels proud. "I can remember Stevie Wonder when he made his first record, he was about the same age as me, and we were really excited about it. We really hoped he'd get to the charts."

For all the excitement of Tamla's music, family life in Detroit was highly disturbed. Her father, the son of a Yugoslavian immigrant to America, had met her Yorkshire mother during the last war when he was in the U.S. Merchant Navy. They had married and returned to the States; she has two sisters and a brother, all living in America now.

The father, however, had a history of mental instability. Lene's grandmother had put him in a home following the death of her husband in a hunting accident, and his treatment of his own children was violent and erratic. "I could not bring other kids home because of my dad," she recalls.

Her mother finally ran away and brought the kids to live in Hull, where Lene continued her schooling and met Les Chappell.

Later on, she says, her father came over and tried to kidnap her sisters. "One sister managed to escape, but I haven't seen the other one now for 13 years." Nor her father since the marriage broke up. And the mother also returned to Detroit after Lene left home at 15. Until she performed at New York's Bottom Line last December, Lene had not set foot on American soil again.

Art college in London, where she shared a sculpture course with Les Chappell, was not a success, either. She found herself rejecting what she saw as the rigidity and selfishness of fine art, with its intellectual halo, attitudes that she couldn't square with her growing interest in pop culture.

She taught herself to play violin, and she and Chappell would go busking in tube stations and around the West End. They joined up with a fringe theatre group, Bob Flag's Balloon & Banana Band, and during Christmas 1973 appeared at the Roundhouse in a medieval rock musical, A Feast of Fools.

For this she had learned alto. Flag was a former army band-boy who had gone on to play with David Bowie in an early rock band, the Riot Squad, and he encouraged her on this old alto she picked up. "He told me what notes to play and when. So really I got the job without knowing how to play saxophone."

It was around this time that Chappell shaved off his hair and eyebrows. She reserves an affectionate memory for his once-long hair. "But he'd cut it, kind of spiky on top, and dyed it sort of an orange colour, and just purely by coincidence Bowie at the same time had that hairdo. I don't think he liked the idea, so off it all went. It's stayed like that ever since."

Now Stiff, wouldn't you believe it, are trying to set up a promotional deal with a razor-blade manufacturer. "I've tried 'em all, and Gilette are the best," was Chappell's only rueful comment.

But in 1975, he and Lene, after further adventures in fringe theatre, threw in their lot with the Diversions, and their prospects improved a little. She played sax and sang some leads, he was on rhythm guitar.

They cut a version of "Fattie Bum Bum" for Gull; and then, early in 1976, the band signed to Polydor. In London they were now playing the main rock haunts: the Nashville, the Speak, the Dingwalls, the Rock Garden. Out of town it was small clubs with a disco audience.

She says she looked then much as she does now, but she liked to wear party dresses.

"It was a party sort of band," she reflects, "and I always wore onstage what it would be like to go to a party in.

"Les had his sharp suits, dinner suits, things like that. The others used to wear what they liked. We looked like we'd landed from another planet; we were a bit different to the rest of them."

The Diversions never did quite break through, however. In a year spent with Polydor they got barely any press. A couple of singles went nowhere. She says that the A & R man who had signed them left not long afterwards.

"No one knew what to do with us. We made an album and they didn't release it. We found ourselves running out of money."

They hatched schemes to get more money out of Polydor. Chiefly, they cut records under different names and were paid a separate advance.

As the Commandos they made "The Bump". They recorded one of her songs, an early attempt at writing called "Funny Girl," which later she was to play to Charlie Gillett. And she and Chappell cobbled up a Christmas maxi-single of "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" and "The Christmas Song," which they released with a B-side of their own: "Happy Christmas," a jokey studio throwaway of the kind that the Beatles used to record as flimsidisc messages to their fans. This was wholly schlock. She sounds appallingly like Bonnie Langford on "I Saw Mommy": her chirruping, adolescent vocal drives one up the wall. The record stands in relation to what she is now doing as "Laughing Gnome" does to "Heroes" in Bowie's career.

Inevitably, the Diversions quickly parted; and so, just as abruptly, did she and Chappell. For part of 1977 she worked in Europe. She says she travelled to Finland with a carnival, wrote for Cerrone, screamed in French. It was through Gillett and the success of "Lucky Number" that they reunited.

She remarks of the song, "It's about a person who is very self-contained, and everything is fine until they meet someone else. Then they realise, 'this is much better'".

In an interview on Portsmouth's Radio Victory, Lovich and Chappell are allowed to play a selection of their favourite records. Their choice is wide, from Moondog to Kraftwerk. Chappell asks for "Soul Man" by Sam & Dave; she comes up with "Escape from the Planet of the Apes" by the Baboons.

And yet, when she's asked afterwards what has influenced her own music, she stumbles in thought.

"I remember that my father used to play Tchaikovsky records as loud as he could," she replies at last. "And show tunes".

In New York, she was infuriated that critics compared her to Patti Smith; she just couldn't see it. But though she has shown herself capable of handling her own career, she still struggles to explain its meaning. "Lucky Number" is a far cry, so to speak, from "Supernature", which she describes as a science-fiction lyric about man's disastrous meddling with nature.

"I like to involve mental images," she attempts. "Mental images are real to people. When people get angry or sad, their mind is full of pictures. I try to piece together a story that contains these pictures."

I tell her that she cuts a rather unreal figure upon a stage. "I don't think so, no." She shakes her head, and considers very seriously.

"If I am removed from reality, it's only a baby step, only a small step. I'm sure that the music we do is not just a visual thing, not just a gimmick, a theatrical experience. It's clear to the people out there that it's not just that, but something real. They can get close, they can see that I'm involved; they can feel without having any bombs or special effects."

Still, one day she will indulge her fantasy life. She will make movies; maybe that vampire Western that so obsesses her. She loves movies. Her eyes go dreamy.

"I once spent about three hours on a set watching somebody hailing a taxicab in a thunderstorm. It was a gigantic hose in the air which fell down like rain. I thought it was fascinating."