When Gavin was asked to do a spoken word performance at the 1994 ‘Crossing Border’ festival in The Hague, The Netherlands, his manager asked him what on earth he was going to do there. He wasn’t too sure himself. Nobody did expect that in the end the man who once sang the line ‘words disobey’ was said to be the embodiment of the festival’s ideals of merging music and literature.
He decked the stage with carpets, tables, chairs, a TV set and flowers – a long settee, a stereo, a hoover, an ironing board. ‘I didn’t bring any musicians, so I brought my living room’. He played records – Chris de Burgh’s ‘Lady in Red’ and bawled along to it before moving on to ‘Kitchen Sink Drama’. He talked about getting poetry stuffed down his throat, being Irish. But Kavanagh, cows and meadows never meant much to him, his muse was definitely Wilde.
The audience lapped up the inuendos of ‘Dolls’ – the words so much clearer than in their musical incarnation. And to top it all off, he broke a long kept vow of never to sing a Virgin Prunes song again. Lost for a suitable encore, he returned to the primal sounds of ‘Sweethomeunderwhiteclouds’.
A repeat performance was staged in Brussels, early 1995.
Shagging Tobacco
In 1996 Gavin and Maurice Seezer worked on a spoken word album, which would feature McCabe’s short story ‘Shagging Tobacco’ from the ‘Shag Tobacco’ cd booklet, set against its re-recorded and remixed music. The album was to appear in a spoken word series that Island Records were planning to release. The series would also feature Jah Wobble (reading William Blake), Marianne Faithful (from her autobiography) and poetry read by Bob Marley. Unfortunately, the people in charge of Bob Marley’s estate calculated it would take them four years to get things ready and work on the series came to a halt. In the meantime, Gavin and Island Records parted company. The ‘Shagging Tobacco’ album was shelved.
Closed on account of rabies
December ’97 however saw the release of the Hal Willner produced Edgar Allen Poe tribute ‘Closed on Account of Rabies’ (buy at Amazon.com), which features several artists reading the works of Poe. Gavin’s contribution is the poem ‘For Annie’:
Yearly Archives: 1994
Spoken word at Crossing Border and beyond
Mr Pussy’s Cafe de Luxe
‘What do you think about the coffee pots?’ Gavin says pointing at the mural. Mr Pussy, long legs in suspenders, flanked by rows of phallic pots. We’re in Gavin’s new café, Mr Pussy’s Café de Luxe shortly before its opening. The vibe is designer kitsch, reds and golds and purples, trashy photos, kitschy pictures. There’s a stage: ‘I got my flying mickeys immortalised at last’. A ‘royal box’ for guests. ‘We’re making fun of all these VIP rooms you have in places here in Dublin. Anyone can sit in our royal box.’
Gavin and I are in Tosca’s where we’d agreed to have a coffee a few days after a chance meeting in the street (he just off the plane from London, me just off the bus from Donegal, both a little bleary-eyed. ). He hasn’t shaved since, a ginger stubble on his chin. His curls are growing out of a dark red dye. We speak in between countless interruptions: ‘Gavin look at this, Gavin sign this contract, Gavin when you’re ready, Gavin meet so and so…’ He rolls his eyes at me when he’s introduced to a vending-machine salesman.
He talks about his new venture as if it were his album or a painting and he raves about Mr Pussy, the female impersonator who is the star of this show: ‘He’s 58 but he looks amazing. He’s camp, but sweet, not bitchy. Sort of like: ‘How’ye doing, get that aul’ sausage in ya!”
He is working on his third solo album, ‘one day in my house, one day in Maurice’s’, and tells tales of doing press for In The Name of the Father: ‘This journalist from Australia asked me what’s it like living in a warzone!’ It’s a breathless account of what’s going on in his life: his mother and vegetarian diets (‘we’re not the kind of people that eat grass and bananas!’), producing Naomi’s album, enticing Sinead to do her vocals for Thief of Your Heart, the ‘lovely’ Tim Simenon who is producing his record and the state of the world we live in: ‘We were out on the town and two girls, E-d out of their heads, come up and tell us all these details about their sex-lives. Yeah, great, but what’re you telling me for? Sex is beautiful, but keep it to yourself. If I see one more pierced dick or nipple, I’m gonna be sick.’ He’s written a song about it: ‘Shag Tobacco’. ‘You know how moralistic I am underneath it all,’ he smiles. I didn’t, but I’d guessed.
Is he not afraid this new café will tie him down? ‘It’s not my place,’ he says. Bono and Jim Sheridan pay the bills. Gavin is chairman of the board. Our coffees finished, we go next door for a look at the new café. The builders are busy, it doesn’t look anywhere near finished. ‘When are you leaving? Saturday? It won’t be open by then.’
A few weeks later I talk to Gavin on the phone. I’d heard the chips in Pussy’s were terrible, there’s been reports of a police raid in the first week of opening for serving alcohol after hours and having (male) nude entertainment. Perhaps Dublin isn’t ready for a place like Pussy’s smack in the middle of town. Gavin says there’s a problem with the license, the place doesn’t come alive until 3 am and, every inch and Irishman, complains at length about potato crops.
When I finally make it to Pussy’s, it’s three months later. There’s a nice relaxed feel in the café. Good coffee, good chips, disgusting veggie burger. Pleasant staff that sit down next to you to take your order. The cherry vodka’s are divine. In the day time it is rather quiet, the only noise coming from the continuous – eventually irritating – groups of friends of staff that come in to say hello. The TV is on all the time, showing the Wizard of Oz and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Whatever happened to Baby Jane, or – tackiest of all – highlights of the Oscar ceremonies.
I had scorned the city’s sudden infatuation with Europe. ‘All these new places, Chez Jules, Café en Seine, what’s the point?’ I say. To which Herr Friday said: ‘They’re just bullshit, *we* will make this city European!’
Gavin Friday salutes ‘Ave Maria’ as performed by Alessandro Moreschi
HIS is quite an old piece of music – it was recorded in 1902, in Vatican City, when the singer was 82. The fact that it’s the last person castrated for the Pope, pretty much at the end of his life, gives it a surreal edge for me. It sounds like what Tom Waits would want to be doing today. It’s very crackly, recorded into one mike, with piano and violin accompaniment. It’s like a cross between Aled Jones and Quentin Crisp. There’s a nervousness about him – the Pope was probably present – which means he bends notes and warbles. He goes for the top note but he gets it all wrong. Imagine this cracking, old man’s voice straining away . . . and the air of the song itself is so tragic and melodramatic. But he does get there in the end. The violin is tracking the vocal, trying to reach and follow it. It’s a very frail voice, beautifully high, but it sounds like a creature from another planet. It reminds me of the bit in Eraserhead where the girl is singing and all those abortions are dropping on her head. Knowing he died shortly afterwards gives it even more of an edge. Here’s this old man trying to sing it the way he was taught, giving his all for the church with his last breath.
Available on the album The Last Castrato (OPALCD 9823)
Hot Press Magazine – Born Again Virgin
With his work on the soundtrack to In The Name Of The Father bringing him into the full glare of media attention Gavin Friday takes this opportunity to put to rest any accusations of riding on U2’s coat-tails. Confident and brimming with ideas for his solo career, The Spotlight Kid gives the lowdown to an eager BILL GRAHAM.
As someone who’s never been shy of the spotlight, you wouldn’t think Gavin Friday has a problem with profile. Yet he has. The musician and artist regularly get hidden behind the other roles the media has allotted him.
Instead he’s The Guy Who Knows Bono, The Wan Who Used To Be In The Virgin Prunes, Mr. Cabaret And Crossdressing. Consequently, he can get caricatured as a shaper not a maker, Dublin’s leading social accessory, a courtier when he has both the ambition and the ability to play the prince himself.
Sheridan film brought old gang together again after 20 years
An old article (13/02/1994) From The Calgary Herald:
Gavin Friday: Sheridan film brought old gang together again after 20 years
By JAMES MURETICH
What goes around comes around . . . and around and around and around in the world of Gavin Friday.
In 1978, he was the lead singer of the Irish rock band Virgin Prunes. The older brother of U2′s The Edge was in his band and U2′s Bono was one of the Prunes’ biggest fans. In 1994, the soundtrack for the Oscar-nominated In The Name Of The Father features songs written and performed by Bono, Friday and their friend Maurice Seezer.
And that in itself came about because of director Jim Sheridan.
“It’s like stepping back 20 years and then going forward again,” said Friday in a phone interview from Dublin.