Category Archives: Interviews
Irish Opinion : Gavin Friday – Movies.ie
Irish singer, songwriter and composer Gavin Friday is no stranger to film. Since founding Virgin Prunes (legendary avant-garde post-punk group), in 1977, he (with music partner Maurice Seezer), has composed various albums and soundtrack, for films like ‘Short Cuts’, Jim Sheridan’s, ‘In the Name of the Father’ and Neil Jordan’s ‘Breakfast on Pluto’ (in which he also starred). Here, we chat movies with Mr Friday.
Q: How often to you get to sit down and watch a movie?
I am a frequent moviegoer and am addicted to watching DVD’s on my laptop.
Q: Tell us about the last movie you saw?
Mysterious Skin’ on DVD. A great movie…very heavy subject matter that is dealt with in a very real/surreal and uncompromising yet moving way… beautifully acted and wonderfully directed….
Q: What is your favourite Irish movie and why?
It’s a throw up between ‘The Butcher Boy’ and ‘My Left Foot’…Both truly wonderful in their own unique way…
Q: What is your favourite movie of all time?
Impossible question….Two movies I always come back to are The Night of The Hunter and Taxi Driver….thats not to mention anything by Fellini or Fritz Lang
Q: What movie could you never sit through again?
TITANIC….It bored the arse off me
Q: Describe your ideal movie cast… (actor, actress & director)
Oh…maybe Peter Lorre , Jessica Lang directed by Fellini.
Q: Have you ever cried during a movie? Which one?
Yes I have cried many times during a movie….the last one could have been ‘The Sea Inside’
Q: Favourite movie snack?
A bottle of still water.
Q: Favourite TV programme?
I have given up on Television…. Of recent times I had a fondness for ‘Six Foot Under’
Q: Who would play you in the movie adaptation of your life?
You would have to ask my mother that question…..
Interview: Friday on my mind – IMRO magazine 2005
From mQ – The IMRO magazine
by Jackie Hayden – 26.10.05
These are busy times for Gavin Friday, what with his heavy involvement in overseeing the re-release of the Virgin Prunes back catalogue, his first substantial film role as a showband singer in Neil Jordan’s version of Pat McCabe’s Breakfast On Pluto, writing songs for his own next album and a daily starring role as one of Bono’s best and highest-profile mates. Jackie Hayden managed to interrupt the busy schedule of the artist formerly known as Fionan Hanvey for long enough for a quick chat.
The Virgin Prunes were a band of Dublin eccentrics who adopted bizarre, sometimes androgynous, names, and with a predilection for songs, records and stage performances that challenged the conventions of 1980s Ireland. So does Gavin see a different Ireland today?
“Well there’s the greed,” he says, “we’ve gone from poverty to what I call the pierced beer-belly, x-factor greed, but hopefully that’ll calm down in a while. It got a bit manic because we had such an inferiority complex for so long. But most of the changes since the eighties are for the good. The mass-emigration is gone. It’s better for music too. Back then there were hardly any places bands like the Prunes could play. We’ve also become much more multi-cultural. But I’m not a fan of the corporatism that plays such a dominant role in the music industry as well as the movie business today.”
Gavin admits that the main impetus for him to get into a band originally was to get out of what was then “the nowheresville of Ballymun, as well as a love of music and a desire to express myself, including the anger I felt. But nowadays there’s so little spontaneity in music. Bands agonise over every detail of what they’re going to do and it’s all so contrived that the music suffers accordingly. Kids are forming bands because they want to be stars, not because they have something to communicate or any real need to express something. Since the arrival of Whitney Houston twenty years ago, everybody seems to thing there’s a certain way you have to sing, so instead of a singer sounding like him or herself they all sound like second-hand versions of somebody else. At the same time there’s some truly great music out there.”
He expresses some surprise that nobody ever took over the Virgin Prunes’ mantle, although many see the influences of the band in acts like Marilyn Manson, Bjork and maybe indirectly in Eminem. “Sonically, probably the closest would be My Bloody Valentine, or maybe the Nun Attax or Five Go Down To The Sea. But I was re-listening to our stuff recently and I was surprised to find how much more melodic and musical it was compared to how it seemed at the time. We even had Keith Donald on an album. But there were reasons for us being that angry at that time and maybe there aren’t so many reasons these days. I don’t think there’ll be another Virgin Prunes any more than I think there’ll be another punk rock or any more than there’ll be a Virgin Prunes re-union.”
It was while touring with the Prunes that Friday came under the spell of classic chanson and was exposed to the works of Brel, Brecht, Weill and others which underpinned much of his later work as a solo artist and in collaboration with Maurice Seezer. “Growing up a bit I realised there was more to music than just David Bowie who was huge initial inspiration and still is. When your heroes like Johnny Lydon start letting you down and you realise they’re like bubble-gum you tend to look for something more substantial. If you look at the works of Brecht and Weill, and even Brel, you’ll find they all have a bit of attitude and that always appeals to me. They went for the gut as well as for the romance. I believe you become more open to other music as you mature. I remember, Jackie, when your colleague, the late Bill Graham introduced me to the music of fiddler Martin Hayes and then Martin played at Bill’s funeral and we struck it off so well that we later recorded together. That ignited my obsession with Sean O Riada and the Irish tradition. O Riada was a genius. He was our Miles Davis.”
Now 45, Gavin’s movie role in Breakfast On Pluto sees him doing cover versions of Sweet’s cheesy glam-pop hit ‘Wig-Wam Bam’ and ‘Sugar Baby Love’ by The Rubettes, songs several planets away from both the continental cabaret scene and the orbit of the VPs. “I find the discipline you need for acting is much harder than performing music. It can be a long slow process. Two minutes on screen could take eighteen hours to do, whereas as a musician you could do a whole show of your own songs in two hours. But I love acting. It’s a different craft, like putting on a mask, but we all put on masks, even if it’s only The Undertones wearing anoraks”, he reckons.
Speaking of masks, then, was changing his name from Fionan Hanvey a putting on of a mask? “Absolutely”, he admits, “but I’ve been Gavin for longer than I was Fionan. Only people like me ma call me Fionan. But it’s like if you called Bono Paul, you might get a head-butt! Most people call me Gavin or Gav. Maybe it creates a barrier for me. I’m quite a private man. I’d never let somebody into the house to do a VIP-style thing with my family. But there’s a lot of Fionan in me still. Maybe in a few years you’ll see me doing Mise Eire as Gaeilge!”
With his work on the Jordan film now winding down, Gavin has also written two ballads with Sinead Lohan and has recorded a 40-minute show in Dingle for Philip King’s tv series Other Voices for which he’s accompanied by Maurice Seezer and a banjo-player. He’s re-started work on his next solo album, about which he says “who knows, maybe it’ll bring out the showband, glam-rock side of me.”
Such is the musical eclecticism of the man, and the sense of adventure he brings to all he tackles, I’m not quite sure if he was joking.
The Virgin Prunes albums A New Form Of Beauty, If I Die, I Die, Hérésie, The Moon Looked Down And Laughed and Over The Rainbow are now available on CD from Mute Records.
Download: Gavin Friday – Toazted interview
Download a 1996 Kink FM interview in two parts from Toazted.com.
Hot Press magazine: Friday, I’m in love
Gavin Friday talks about Disney songs, Shakespeare sonnets, Ferrara films, liking art and reading books.
“Well, Suzanne Vega did a really sexy slow orchestral version of Cruella de Ville,” says Gavin Friday as he tries to remember the night before.
“Lou Reed did ‘Zippidy Doo Da’. Steve Buscemi sang ‘High Ho, High Ho It’s Off To Work We Go’. David Byrne did a version of ‘When You Wish Upon A Star’ and Eric Mingus, who’s Charlie Mingus’s son, said: ‘I’m going to do the most racist song ever written,’ and sang ‘Ooh Ooh Ooh I Wanna Be Like You.’ Garth Hudson and his wife Maud… now I don’t want to be heavy but she’s twenty-something stone and in a wheelchair. She couldn’t get on stage so she sang from the audience while people were coming in. They did a 25-minute version of ‘Feed The Birds’. I sang ‘Chim-Chiminey’, the Dick Van Dyke song from Mary Poppins and the Siamese Cat song from Lady And The Tramp.”
Sure you did, Gavin. I shake my head as if chastising a child. You crazy pop stars and your drugs.
What? It’s real?! Yes, Gavin Friday has just taken part in Hal Willner’s Stay Awake show in New York. In 1988, Willner brought out a much celebrated album of tributes to Disney classics and this year the great, the good and the kind-of-leftfield are celebrating the anniversary in concerts spread across the year. This particular show was a benefit for St. Anne’s Warehouse – a much celebrated New York art centre.
Baking tapes – the Virgin Prunes re-release interview
After the work on the re-releases had been completed, Virginprunes.com caught up with Gavin in late August to find out how the project had progressed from initial idea to final execution.
Keen to explain the process, in this first installment of the interview Gavin takes us through the building of the relationship with Mute Records and explains the detailed thinking behind the sleeve re-designs.
Virginprunes.com: Mute Records has struck me as the ideal home for the Virgin Prunes’ back catalogue for many years. In fact, in 1986 I heard through the grapevine that they had been interested in releasing The Moon Looked Down And Laughed, though this never came to fruition – is this true?
Gavin: Mute are the perfect resting place for Virgin Prunes. In 1986 as far as I can remember there was interest from Beggars Banquet, but they only wanted to release an EP. I rejected the idea and foolishly went with New Rose.
How did the 2004 re-releases come about? For example, who contacted who, when did contact begin, what were the stages of the process from initial contact to final versions of the CDs in your hands?
It was about four years ago I discovered that the band had very slowly over the years got back the masters of most of our recordings. I contacted Daniel Miller at Mute Records, who said he was very interested, but Mute was far too busy at that time. About a year later Daniel contacted me saying he wanted to go ahead with the re-release of the back catalog, so roughly over the last three years.
Why so long? Many reasons. Mute went to EMI [via acquisition] which held things up at bit. Then legal affairs, missing artwork, re-mastering and digital restoration took a long while. Then my illness [Gavin underwent back surgery in February 2002] and my own work held things up. So, it took about three to four years.
Did you experience any major problems or delays while bringing everything together?
The case of missing artwork and tapes that I was told we had, but then could not be found??? The most distressing thing was that ALL THE ORIGINAL ARTWORK FROM ALL THE SLEEVES HAS GONE MISSING, along with many many pictures, not to mention some multi-tracks. I am still searching. Who mislaid them? Somewhere between Mary, Strongman and New Rose? I tried so hard, it held up things for close to a year. I finally decided to go to my own ‘small’ stash of VP images and work from them.
Tape transfer was complex. A lot of the tapes had to be ‘baked’. Don’t want to go all serious on ya, you would be better off asking an engineer. In short, the getting together of this took a lot of time – it was at times like shitting a football. But then all good things take time… isn’t that right?
What is the expected audience for the An Exhibition promotional compilation – is it for the press, or will it also be released for fans to buy? Who chose the tracks and how were the choices made?
Press/promo at the moment. Yes, I understand it will be ‘available’ to fans and not at £250. We decided on two tracks off each album. I couldn’t choose, so Olivier, Our Blessed Curator, did the deed.
Mute is calling these re-releases the first “official” releases on CD. Does this mean that the Rough Trade and New Rose CDs were released without your permission?
Rough Trade released only …If I Die, I Die and it disappeared almost as quickly as it was released. It never was distributed as far as I could see, so a half-hearted effort is not an official release in my mind. New Rose… these re-releases had nothing to do with most of the band except for Mary and Strongman. Once again they almost disappeared as soon as they came out. Were they actually released? No distribution as far as I can tell, a total joke. Then within a month or so New Rose went bankrupt and the back catalog disappeared up the arse of God knows who…? As for the artwork and sound quality on the New Rose effort, don’t get me going… shameful. So yes, I see this as the first ‘official’ re-release of Virgin Prunes.
The most initially striking aspect of these re-releases is the new sleeve designs. Only “… If I Die, I Die” is faithful to the original release and the others have changed quite radically. For some long-term fans it has been disorientating to see “the Pagan Lovesong cover” used for A New Form Of Beauty and “the Baby Turns Blue cover” used for Over The Rainbow. Of course there’s a logic to this – the picture used on A New Form Of Beauty is of Guggi in the Pig Children performance, for example, which is clearly relevant to A New Form Of Beauty – but why redesign in the first place rather than just use the original covers?
All the original A New Form Of Beauty artwork is gone/mislaid/stolen/destroyed – who knows? I have seriously spent the last two years searching. It breaks me heart. I had to resort to a small collection of photos I had kept. My hands were tied – the original drawing by Guggi was badly damaged and sadly, as we say here, ‘fucked’. So where could I go? ‘Pig Children’ was my first thought, which lead on to the Guggi shot a la Pagan Lovesong. The original shot looked too glossy for the feel/sound/vibe of the music, so it was treated.
Why orange??? Maybe it has got something to do with the Catholic in me, I don’t know. It just felt right and we did tend to over-do the Blue vibe. Believe me, I am a purist at heart… The inner shot was taken at Futurama 1981, the only time we ever performed Beast (well, what we were allowed to, as they pulled the plugs after five minutes, etc.) So that shot was in context. Also, I wanted all the sleeves to have their own unique look.
Pagan Lovesong ended up on the …If I Die, I Die CD, so I felt the picture of Guggi was too strong to be completely lost. The only other option was a plain white cover – we tried that and it felt all wrong. I am talking weeks of trying out covers – I broke Slim [the sleeve designer] Smith’s heart. What we ended up with is GREAT in my mind and so far it has blown a few minds. Sorry if it offends…
We never felt the 12″ ANFOB sleeve which was used by Strongman and Mary for the New Rose CD looked right, it just didn’t transfer down to CD size very well. That’s not to mention the unbearable quality of the transfer from 12″ cover to CD cover that New Rose did. Jesus, talk about bad artwork… Anyway, this the first time the complete musical side of ANFOB has all been released on CD. So it is ANFOB. The typeface was hand done, and rather beautifully I must say, by Slim Smith
For …If I Die, I Die, once again the original went missing, this was the closest image I could find. The blue border may have worked on the original, but we decided it was stronger without the border on CD format. I tried to re-create the Brown/Blue vibe within the booklet using many never before used photos. Slim did a wonderful job on the booklet. Thanks man!
On Heresie, the photo of me and the photo of Guggi walking up the stairs, these photos we had originally planned to use on the cover, but the French label L’Invitation au Suicide went with the still from a Gothic 20′s movie. We never liked it and when it came about to re-use it – even way back when it was released on vinyl in the late 80′s by New Rose – we were not allowed the rights to use the image. We had no ownership of the copyright of the writings in the original boxed set, so we had to re-invent. I used photos in the booklet that tried to capture the mood/intensity of the music and the image of the Kettle Woman [in the centrefold of the CD insert booklet] sits perfectly along side the vibe of Deirdre and Memory Lane. Most are photos never before used.
As for The Moon Looked Down And Laughed, this was ALWAYS from day one the cover for the album, originally to be called Sons Find Devils. When Guggi left, followed by Dik (Evans, brother of U2′s The Edge), chaos and confusion followed. We had such legal and money problems way back then. A nightmare… The album was released in 1986. My spirit was broken… We did a photo shoot with four remaining members – The Butlins Session, I now call it – a mistake, but I wanted the album released and the struggle to finish it was murderous. The end was nigh!!! As with some of the mixes and the running order, I tried to make the visuals into what the original line up had originally planned. Now, tell me what cover suits the music better? The Butlins shot or the G&G lace shot?
The Over The Rainbow art work for the vinyl version was a shot used from the original Moon/Devils sessions. As I made the choice to go back to the G&G lace picture for the Moon re-issue, it meant we could not use the original image – they are way too similar. I also took into context that this is a very different album to the Original Album. It has never-before-released-on-CD remixes etc. Also, it’s a double CD. A lot of the recordings on Over The Rainbow were recorded in the Beautifull House and that’s where the front cover photo was taken. Yeah, it was the cover of Baby Turns Blue, but it’s a great shot and I didn’t want it lost forever, I wanted people to see it. We tried the ‘Girl with Rabbits’ image on the front [from the Twenty Tens EP] but it didn’t feel right alongside the other four CDs. In the booklet I used images that are natural and unstaged and unused. There ya go…
Sorry if any offence has been taken, but to quote the band… ‘Nothing is ever the way they say it is… Nothing is ever the way you want it to be…’
In this second part of the interview, Gavin explains more about the process of remastering the recordings and takes us through some of the other changes in the format of the material.
Virginprunes.com: For Virgin Prunes completists, one of the most exciting things about the new CDs is the appearance of the previously unreleased track Fádo. It seems to be similar to the track Apologia that you recorded for RTE’s Dave Fanning show in February 1982. Why was this originally not on the album and why have you chosen to include it now?
Gavin: Yes you are right, it is similar to the track ‘Apologia’ from the Fanning session. We planned to record it fully but never completed the words. It was performed only once at The One Show, Project Arts Centre, with the line ‘Heaven holds a place for you’ repeated numerous times. In the studio we even tried to get Dave-id to sing over it but all he came up with was ‘A long time ago…’. We mixed the track in a ‘dub-like’ manner and put it out as the B-side to Baby Turns Blue. When I was working on the restoration of the tapes, I found this mix. I thought it was beautifull [sic] and renamed it Fádo, which means ‘a long time ago’ in Irish. To me, it bookends the start of the Blue side and the album ends with Yeo.
Apologia as mentioned above has nothing at all to do with the Friday-Seezer song of the same title… Blame Oscar Wilde!
The sound quality is excellent, which I presume is down in part to the re-mastering and in part to more modern compression techniques. Sometimes older recordings sound disappointing on CD when played alongside newer material, but this all sounds great. For example, even allowing for the poor quality of the original cassettes, Din Glorious sounds much sharper than expected. How much work was put into polishing up the recordings and was this a fairly standard process with today’s technology or did you have to employ any special techniques?
I spent about six to eight weeks on the restoration and re mastering. Most of the tapes were damaged; seemingly a lot of 1980′s recordings are so because of a bad batch of multi-track tape. So you gotta ‘Bake’ – as I said, talk with an engineer… I wanted them to sound as fresh as the day we recorded them. Andrew Boland is the man who I put through the mincer to restore and what a great job he did – thanks Andrew. Not sure if he has recovered yet from spending three days working on Din Glorious… The Guys at the Exchange also did a great job at mastering. Brilliant Guys. Also THANKS to Mute, who went the whole hog regards the restoration and mastering. Not many care… they do.
There is some noticeable tape hiss on several tracks. Was there a conscious decision to leave this in place, or was it technically impossible to remove without compromising the clarity of the material?
It drove us fuckin’ crazy. It was technically impossible to remove the hiss. The early recordings were made so quickly and cheaply and in the strangest of ways – you wouldn’t believe if I told you… I had the choice of making them sound big and bold with hiss, or small and dead with a tiny bit of hiss. I went for the former. I was told by a cutting engineer once that if you hear the hiss you are not getting lost in the music. So… what hiss?
Out of interest, where were the original master tapes of the material stored – is it somewhere as basic as the top shelf of your wardrobe, or are there specialised storage facilities for this kind of thing? Did you have any difficulties locating any of the tapes?
Most are stored in Dublin, some with Mute. They are in a safe place. Some multi-tracks I am still trying to locate, along with the missing artwork. Yes, there was difficulties in getting them all together.
In Rolf Vasellari’s book The Faculties Of A Broken Heart, Dik explains that the band was unhappy with Colin Newman’s production of the tracks on the “blue” side of the original vinyl album version of …If I Die, I Die. Why choose him, of all people, to remix Baby Turns Blue if you hadn’t been happy with his original work for you?
Yes, at the time we were unhappy with some of the Blue side, especially Walls of Jericho and Caucasian Walk. We always loved Baby Turns Blue, as we saw it as a pop song. We all loved his production on it. The brown side is magic. It was the band’s aggressive vibe we felt was tamed down. Still, listening to the CD today, it’s pretty vibey. Colin did an amazing job all those years ago. It was no easy task working with the six of us way back then. Theme for Thought sounds amazing. So as regards the re-mix, he did a great job then, so better the devil you know… And the new re-mix is fantastic – simple, very stripped down and addictive. I love it.
On the re-release of … If I Die, I Die the “blue” tracks sound much stronger. Did you make a conscious effort to change the sound of these specific tracks, or was this just a side-effect of the overall sound enhancement process?
I wanted all the music to sound strong. It’s all down to the restoration and mastering. In many ways I feel the work in general was never properly mastered in the first place. To me, making the music sound the way we wanted it was by far my biggest goal with the re-issues.
Who is the “ILOVEYOU” woman in the Heresie CD insert’s centrefold?
Her name is Alice. She worked in the Iveagh Markets. Myself and Tommy the Bottle of Milk [a fellow Lypton Village member] befriended her. We used to buy second-hand clothes off her. We christened her ‘The Kettle Woman’. And yes, the only-performed-once (at The One Shows) ‘A Song for Alice’ was written about her. She is what we call in every sense a true ‘Virgin Prune’.
There was an early version of I Am God played in a 1983 BBC Radio One interview that included Guggi’s vocals rather than Lady Blennerhassett’s, did you consider using this mix or was that always just a demo version of the song?
Don’t know what interview that is, I’d love to hear it??? WOW? Burn us a copy? This was the only mix remaining that I could find. Guggi was no longer with the band when we got to [the] mixing stages. A very difficult DIVORCE album was the Moon…
Why rename “Don’t Look Back” to The Tortured Heart? It sounds slightly different, is this just down to the remastering or is it actually a different version of the song?
It’s a slightly different mix, only very slightly. It was originally called The Tortured Heart and for some stupid reason I changed it to the other. When I found the master tapes, written on the cover of the box was The Tortured Heart. So like the
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Why use the 12″ of Love Lasts Forever on the re-release of The Moon Looked Down And Laughed and put the 7″ single version, originally on this album, onto Over The Rainbow?
‘Our love will last forever until the day it dies’ was never a 12″ mix, it was the first and original mix Flood did for the album. It was how it was written. We loved it. Regards the ‘Moon’, this is the closest to how the whole album was to be before the band started to implode. I truly wanted the music to be as we as a band – a six piece band at that time – wanted the album to be. When we were finally putting the album out – and at that time not only Guggi had gone but also Dik – it was decided to put the edited version/more standard version on, for what fucked up reason I don’t know. Maybe the same fucked up reason that has me in a Butlins uniform on the cover. This was a very difficult time for the band. So ‘Our love will last forever until the day it dies’ is back where it really belongs, like Guggi on the cover – where he really belongs. And it sounds fantastic, don’t ya think? I put the single version on Rainbow in case anyone missed it.
Who is the girl/woman in the white dress in the centre spread of the Over The Rainbow CD insert booklet?
It is Guggi and Strongman’s sister Gwen, taken on Cedarwood Road. The event, her reaction to first hearing Twenty Tens…
Some of the titles of the Din Glorious tracks are different to the titles given on the Italian vinyl re-release of Din Glorious from the 1980s (e.g. Bo-prune as opposed to Bodhran). The original cassette never contained any titles on its insert. Were the Italian album’s titles inaccurate, or have you chosen to rename certain tracks due to the fluid nature of the performance?
To be totally honest, I couldn’t get my hands on the Italian version. Anyone out there want to give Gavin a copy? [Before a million offers start flooding in, Virginprunes.com has subsequently obliged.] So all the titles came from memory. Put it down to me getting old, sorry about that. I was tempted to have no titles.
The baby’s face that you used as the logo for the Baby Records releases also appears in the Over The Rainbow insert. Is this a picture or a drawing? Where is it from?
Virgin Prunes ‘BABY’… It is an original Victorian painting I bought twenty-five years ago. It was first used as a flyer to promote early Project Arts Centre performances. We called our one off label after it. Basically it was the band’s mascot, it was always with us, on our stages and in the tour bus and in the recording studios. It survived a very extraordinary and difficult youth and now happily lives on the wall of my hall and it hasn’t aged at all.
What do you understand to be the commercial proposition for Mute re-releasing Virgin Prunes material in 2004? Is it expected to make a profit in its own right, or it is more a case of bolstering their overall brand value by enhancing their back catalogue? (In other words, are they doing it for love or for money?)
Who knows if the re-releases will make a profit or not. I am just so happy we found a true resting place for this work and that it looks and sounds GREAT and that it is available to all who want it. I am very proud of our past. Mute have been fantastic, it has been a true pleasure to work with such a professional team WHO LOVE MUSIC. Olivier, the project’s curator, has given his fair share of blood, sweat and tears. He’s a saint, a hero. Huge respect! A LABOUR OF LOVE. I think we fit in fairly comfortably with the Mute catalog. The rest is in the lap of the gods. If it does make money, well and good… and that will be a first for Virgin Prunes.
In the final part of the interview on Friday, we find out more about some of the characters and the “bo-prune” language in the songs, talk about what might happen next and ask Gavin for his thoughts on the band with twenty years’ hindsight.
If you’ve ever wondered about Jennifer and Mary Coote, or puzzled over the difference between a nisam lo and a vibe-akimbo, today your prayers are answered as we get stuck into the wonderful and frightening world of the Virgin Prunes’ songs.
Virginprunes.com: Time for some rapid-fire questions about the content of the songs. What was the argument about in Abbagáll? (It sounds like some kind of concern about harsh treatment of a glockenspiel.)
Gavin: It’s a row between myself and Strongman. As I was playing the glock, he kicked it over – on purpose – so the glock got thrown in the direction of his head… I missed… and Dik caught it all on tape. Strongman used to get off on making me lose the head in them days…
What was the “Emancipation Act 72/3/4″ mentioned in Caucasian Walk?
A date/quote a good friend/mentor of the band used very frequently in conversation. We never knew what it meant and still don’t. The late and great Bill Graham. We dearly loved that man. A true genius.
[Virginprunes.com suspects that it might be influenced by the infamous Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829.]
Is Jennifer/Mary Coote (from Down The Memory Lane) a real person?
Yes, they are both sisters. They live in an area called Bonnybrook, next door to Mrs Phillpots. Myself and Guggi were, and still are, massive fans of the Cootes and the Phillpots.
What does “Bau-dachöng” mean (and why the umlaut)?
It was part of a language myself and The Bottle of Milk invented, the language of the Beautifull People. Bo-Prune, we called the language. Bau-dachong… It means having the ‘knowledge’, a prune/village invention/ism. Very very complex, so can’t really go there.
What does “Ulakanakulot” mean?
This is the name of the ‘land’ where the Beautifull People first came from. An imaginary land, our Atlantis.
Was Abbagál the name of someone specific who you knew?
No. It means ‘curse’, or to put a spell on someone.
What does “Yeo” mean? (I note that it’s been used as the basis for the re-release CD catalogue numbers.)
Yeo was a phrase Dave-id always used and still does, especially if he is/was greeting you. Way, way before Hip Hop.
Was Deirdre the name of someone specific who you knew?
Yes, she was the little sister of Sean d’Angelo. Someone myself and Guggi took very fondly to, was little Deirdre.
What does “Nisam Lo” mean?
This means to have a dream or a ‘trip’.
While the meanings of “vibe” and “akimbo” are well-defined, can you offer any help with interpreting “vibe-akimbo”?
It is what it is: a vibe – akimbo.
Is Loved One named after the Evelyn Waugh novel of the same title, or is that just coincidence?
Coincidence. Didn’t read the book till the late 80′s.
The Mute biography says that Come To Daddy is “a frightening tale of incest”, but one of your interviews of the time seemed to suggest that it was about a housewife instead (“Come to Daddy looks at the things a woman has to go through – women who have had loads of kids and who find that love is now gone”)? Can you clarify this?
Not really about incest, more about sexual/mental abuse, but I like and always encourage people to think what they want.
I believe that the spoken section at the end of True Life Story is Fabienne Savoff, Mary’s wife. Which language is she speaking and what is she saying?
Yes it is Fabienne. She is speaking and singing in Chinese, a language in which she is fluent. The singing is an old Chinese love song. The angry narrative is pretty profane, like ‘your mother is a whore and she sucks dogs’ cocks’. Can’t remember exactly, but that type of thing…
The most obvious omission from the re-releases is the live album, The Hidden Lie. Why was this not included? Is it likely to be released in future?
Most of the band had nothing to do with this album. It was put out against my will. It is, in my mind, not really a Virgin Prunes album. Guggi and Dik had gone and the rest was dying on its legs.
Do you have much currently un-released material left from the original recording sessions? Would you consider releasing any of it?
Some unfinished works, some demos, various live recordings. Don’t know… Let the re-released albums spread their wings and see what happens. Time will tell…
Do you have any access to the tracks that you recorded for the Dave Fanning show on RTE, some of which have never been released in any form? Would you release them if you could, or were they works in progress that were never intended to be preserved for posterity?
As above. Maybe… Not negative. Not sure if RTE will let us have them. We’ll see.
It’s really great to see A New Form Of Beauty 4 (Din Glorious) being released on CD at last. What happened to parts six and seven of the project, the book & video? Were they ever completed or do they remain unfinished? Are they ever likely to be released (finished or unfinished)?
The film may see the light of day, it was never finished. We have all the footage. We handed over to Mute a lot of visual footage of the band. There is talk of DVD release. Time-wise, I couldn’t say. There is a lot to sort out. There will be a DVD, just don’t know when.
The book… Never finished and may never be. Jesus, that’s a frightening thought??? Who knows…
What is the situation regarding the Sons Find Devils CD and video/DVD? Do you anticipate the rights for this transferring to Mute in time?
No comment, the affair is in the hands of our solicitors.
Was any material ever recorded after the Sons Find Devils / The Moon Looked Down And Laughed sessions? I’m thinking of songs performed live, like She, My Dependence On You or Song For The Heartless. If so, would you consider releasing this?
‘Song for the Heartless’ was an unfinished song from the ‘Moon’ sessions. Not sure if we would release demos. We’ll see. Demos/work in progress, I see as very private affairs. The other songs were only ever played ‘live’, never demoed or recorded.
Are there any plans for Mute to release any post-Prunes work (e.g. Gavin’s & Dave-id’s solo albums, The Prunes’ albums)?
No plans at the moment. That’s not to say I don’t like Mute. Mute have been amazing, a real joy to work with.
Most of the pictures and video footage of the band are now over twenty years old. How do you feel, looking back at them?
OLD… A difficult one, very personal, lots of memories. I am a romantic fool. Surprised by the music, it has aged well. Visually I think we look pretty GREAT, especially when I see how most bands nowadays look…
Earlier this year, the team behind Virginprunes.com purchased on Ebay the paperwork for a development deal contract that you and Guggi signed in 1979 with an organisation called World Showplace Music, Inc. Can you tell us more about this? What was the proposition and did it lead anywhere or was it a blind alley?
Yeah, we signed some bullshit proposition way way back in ’79, I think. The guy was a con man, it led nowhere. We didn’t get ripped off, actually I have a memory of myself and Guggi being treated to a very posh dinner in the Shelbourne Hotel.
What do you think were the Virgin Prunes’ best and worst moments?
Best? Don’t know, not for me to say? Worst? The fucked up way we all dealt with the band breaking up.
What are the various ex-members of the band doing these days?
Guggi paints. Dik works with computers and makes music. Dave-id makes music. Mary teaches and makes music. Strongman works with antiques.
Where, if anywhere, do you perceive the Virgin Prunes’ legacy and influence on contemporary music to lie?
In an Irish context: the most important band ever to come out of the country. As for the rest, not for me to say.
Complete this sentence: everyone should buy the Virgin Prunes re-releases because…
No, no… can’t do that???????????
Gavin, thank you.
Thanks.
After Schools Education Project
From Ireland Evening Herald, April 2003
FROM LA TO INNER CITY : Band’s stunner teaches tin whistle to kids
ANDREA CORR’S THE QUEEN OF SHERRIFF ST.
Andrea Corr has been shunning the high life of late to give inner-city kids music lessons, the Diary can reveal. The Corrs singer has been accompanying her friend singer Gavin Friday on his regular visits to Sheriff Streets After Schools Education Project, an initiative aimed at discouraging local children from using drugs.
“Andrea has been down to Sheriff St with me a couple of times.” confirmed Gavin “She’s come down to give the kids lessons on the tin whistle and then hang around to chat with them. After a while, everybody forgets she is famous.” Despite being one of the worlds biggest pop stars Andrea didn’t arrive in Sheriff St with a team of bodyguards. “Andrea has never brought security with her or anything like that. But then again nobody needs security when they have Gavin Friday with them,” Gavin said.
The former Virgin Prune singer first became involved with the after school education project when he was contacted by local community leaders “Attendances were down and they hoped by getting someone like me involved it would bring more kids in,” he explained about the programme aimed at keeping young people aged 12-15 years off the streets and away form drug pushers. As part of the workshop youngsters are encouraged to make up a play on the spur of the moment and then act it out in the classroom.
“It could be something like Joan is pregnant but Mick wants to go to a nightclub and do some E’s – how do we stop him taking E’s?” “I’ve ended up playing the role of the bouncer at the nightclub” Gavin and Andrea work with the project came about after they teamed up for the soundtrack of Jim Sheridan’s new film, In America. The pair collaborated with Bono on a song called Time Enough For Tears.
“It’s a beautiful number with a jazzy feel, perfect for the mood of Jims film” raved Gavin about the track on which Andrea sings lead vocal. The recording may well get an early spin tomorrow night when Gavin and his pal Guggi man the record decks in Lillie’s Bordello for a benefit in aid of the Sheriff St Project. “We’ll be doing a special DJ set from 11 onwards. The money we raise will go towards buying the kids a new computer because the one they’ve got is banjaxed”
The kitty is sure to be swelled by the auction of two paintings, one by Gavin and one by Guggi towards the end of the night. “I don’t know who’ll be dropping in but I can tell you this: the music we’ll be playing won’t ever have been played in Lillie’s before and wont ever be played there again. And that’s the truth.”
Interview: ‘I know my stuff and I love music’ – Sunday Mirror 2002
The Sunday Mirror interviewed Gavin about his DJ stint: ROCK star Gavin Friday may have launched his new career as a DJ but you won’t see him dancing about for a while. The former Virgin Prunes frontman’s record-spinning debut was at BP Fallon’s second Death Disco Dublin event last week.
Gavin said: “I had surgery on my spine at the start of the year and I was quite ill for a few months. I’m upright and that’s about it but there’s no way I’m able to dance – I’m all right for playing records though. I wouldn’t call myself a DJ and I haven’t done it in public before – only a few parties for friends. I’ve gathered a few records together from the punk era and some which have a punky attitude from other times. I like stirring it up – you never know I might throw Judy Garland in there. But I know my stuff and I love music and that’s the most important thing.”
6/10/2002
Gavin Friday talks Lypton Village
1982 interview from U2 Info Service, by Geoff Parkyn
Apart from the fact that Edge’s older brother Dik Evans plays guitar in The Virgin Prunes, there are links between the two bands that go back to their childhoods, and recently Gavin Friday of the Virgin Prunes shed some light on their names: “The U2 connections were very strong at an early stage because I grew up with Bono, he lived a few doors down from me”.
The friends duly formed into two bands, sharing early gigs such as the Prunes’ 1980 UK debut at the Acklam Hall. Together, they invented a private universe for themselves, called Lypton Village, all initiates speaking “a second language”
“As kids, we used to be bored, we usen’t to go out much. Bono went out and formed U2, and what they were expressing was totally different to what we were expressing, so when The Virgin Prunes formed, although there was this closeness, it was in friendship rather than attitudes and ideas… Like the names: Bono’s name, Guggi gave him that name, and my name, and Davey’s, they’re all names from Lypton Village, and The Edge. It goes back ten years. But as the two bands developed we came to our own identities.
“People have always brought comparisons between the bands, musically. But we’ve never really gone together on musical terms. If I see Bono, I wouldn’t really talk to him about music really. I’d talk about other things. We hate it when people bring it up, cos they say, Hey, you’re in The Virgin Prunes, tell us all about U2. We get that a lot, so we hate U2 connections! It just gets a pain in the arse in this country.
“But there is a weird understanding between us. When we were younger one of our biggest pastimes was, Guggi and Bono were very quick with words, and they used to play a game. All these names, they were just because of the personality. Before the band was even formed I was called Gavin Friday. Most of us reject our names when we first get given them, like when Guggi got his name off Bono he didn’t like it at all. But we have a feeling that we have to accept our names whether we like them or not.
“And I remember once, Bono was going through some way out trip in his head, wanted to be cool, and he kept on calling himself Paul Vox, and we said, Don’t be stupid, Bono’s a really good name – Bono Vox. And eventually what’s natural you just have to accept”.
‘ I was just trying to hang out with the Pope’
Excerpts from an interview with Peter Murphy in the Sunday Independance, August 2000.
‘[ painting was ] the only thing I was good at in school – it was the only thing I got an Honour in, I did crap in my Leaving. But when we were on tour in our mad days of the Eighties, if we had a day off, we’d go to the Museum of Modern Art, the Tate. It was the first time I saw the galleries of the world.’
On Bacon’s Triptych, May-June 1973: [ It ] is probably the work I find the most powerful, even though I stood beside one of a Pope for your photograph. I was just trying to hang out with the Pope, seeing as it’s what pop stars do nowadays…’
[ Triptych ] is like the things we don’t talk about, you know? It’s all the inside fears, the paranoia, the angst, the things we never see in people, or are not shown.’
