“To be in a band, at least according to the rules of rock in the 1970s, one must know how to play an instrument. But rather than waste time solving that problem, No Wavers ignored it. The point was simply to make music, not to learn how first” – Lydia Lunch
I wish we’d known Lydia when we first picked up guitars in the late 1970s. It would have been great to believe that you didn’t need learn how it all worked first. It was all too easy to become impatient with your own fingers, struggling to make the right chord shapes, and the self-inflicted cheese-wire cuts on our finger tips. This pain was always coupled with our teenage urgency to not waste anymore time learning about it. Lydia, as she says, was more of a plug and play kind of girl.
Three appearances on the seminal “No New York” album, produced by Brian Eno, cemented Lydia as a major force in the emerging post punk scene.
Without any of the traditional trappings of rock; you know, chords, major keys and anthem-like sing-along choruses, all of which were shunned by the No Wavers, Lydia’s output can, to some, seem abrasive, confrontational, jarring and difficult to listen to. But that is also kind of the point. This is the sound of ripping up the rock rule book.
TK: What’s your poison – wine or whiskey? LL: “Poison…I view myself as the anti-christ…I turn wine into water”.
TK: I’ve interviewed you on several outings and in person yet, and quite frankly, haven’t been or felt threatened or intimidated. Am I a glutton for punishment? LL: “I hope you are a glutton, but perhaps you’re just too smart to paint your fear onto my face, which so many lesser mortals have been prone to do. Just because I’m articulate and no bullshit doesn’t mean I’m going to chew your face off. Unless I’m extremely hungry”. (laughs)
As well as being name-checked as an influence by a whole raft of bands including Hole and Sonic Youth, Lydia has been the self styled, straight talking mouthpiece for the outsider, for 40 years.
She has one final tip for us, “I am not nostalgic about anything. I just keep plowing straight ahead.” And so maybe that’s the secret, to not be nostalgic… to not loaf around in the past – we’ll have to give it a try sometime, maybe next year.
Lydia’s website HERE
Bottom photo from Trebuchetmagazine.com