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Virgin Prunes – An Exhibition

Caroline — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 09:23:36 +0000

Virgin Prunes – Discography

Caroline — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 09:19:08 +0000

Related news Virgin Prunes – An Exhibition Virgin Prunes promotional radio and TV appearances Virgin Prunes MP3s available on Amazon.com

Gavin and Me by Pat McCabe

Caroline — Sat, 14 May 2011 10:44:11 +0000

Pat McCabe

If, as has been suggested in other quarters, Dublin in 1980 was a city the colour of claret with red-brick Georgian mansions boasting fine doors, fanlights and little iron balconies standing back from the road in well-bred reticence, then I’m afraid as a recently arrived resident from the midlands town of Longford I didn’t see much sign of it.

In fact, if anything, it looked like Dodge City after the Hole-In-The-Wall gang had shot it up, or maybe Atlanta in the aftermath of the fire – with its own share of smooth-talking sharp-suited amoralists, our very own homegrown carpetbaggers, who were already in the process of slyly rezoning enormous swathes of it, these smug wolves, these ballad-singing ‘common-touch’ men of the people.

About whom enough already – we know where they led us, and we also know where we followed them, with our faces stuffed with burgers and ice cream and with not so much as a moral backbone to be found about the place, no more than you’d be likely to locate between the head and the tail of a pantechnicon-flattened iguana.

The first time I saw Gavin he was standing outside Burgerland on O’Connell Street – that blazing emporium where Radio Nova (“Broadcasting in the Bay Area”, no less) chewed incessantly on its Wrigley’s, snapping its fingers, urging everybody to say goodbye to Paddy, his wellingtons and the bog.

As I made my way past yet another new outlet, Baskin-Robbins’s ice-cream parlour (150 flavours!), along the Avenue of the Three Adulterers, as the main thoroughfare was christened by James Joyce’s father, I remember I was carrying a teacher’s briefcase and, at 25, with the burden of responsibility for which I was ill-prepared and to which I was ill-suited, was already feeling superfluous – superannuated. “All the hippies are dead,” a friend had only recently said to me, “our time is over.”

Gavin’s hands were nearly as big as his hair, I noticed, and he tended to wave them about, gesturing effusively.

As I passed him by, I couldn’t help overhearing him discussing the Beatles’ Taxman. He was comparing it to a current release by Paul Weller and The Jam. Which I thought was impressive – his knowing about it, I mean – for he seemed to me much younger than I was. Five years can mean a lot at that age – as I say, I was 25.

I spotted him about here and there after that – I had seen his band the Virgin Prunes a couple of times. Back in those abortion-obsessed days of the Eighties when Ireland seemed to have little to do but argue itself blue in the face about ectopic pregnancies as its infrastructure fell to bits around it.

An image returns, hysterically burlesque and simultaneously heartbreaking in its maddening innocence. As a punter whistles while upending a hopelessly buckled telephone-kiosk door, clambering in under it as if it were then most natural thing in the world, with sophisticated insouciance proceeding to make his call. Before crawling back out again like a squirrel and taking time to dust down his suit.

But there were good things too – Jim and Peter Sheridan’s Dark Space at the Project theatre – where U2 and the Prunes had played. Gavin’s screeching of The Walls of Jericho was good, as were the stage antics, much of which he’d learned from immersing himself in the performance art of Agnes Bernelle and Nigel Rolfe in the Project.

I didn’t see him for a long time after that – in the Nineties when I was living in London, in fact when he was recording In the Name of the Father.

We started to spend some time together – a lot of time, actually. That he liked disco music I was pleasantly surprised to hear – and his Behanesque combination of sensitivity and pugnaciousness was something to which I found I willingly responded – in the same way as I would, later on, to Shane MacGowan’s Pogues – delighting in their appropriation of the builder’s labourer’s dark Sunday suit as a garb of defiance.

I met a lot of his friends – and it was refreshing to observer that, no matter what the company, his views and attitude were rarely seen to change.

I approached himself and Maurice Seezer, his collaborator, about creating a tone-poem series for RTE. It was a blast. Based on my book Emerald Germs of Ireland, a quirky parody of old-time Irish music books which was a total and utter critical and commercial failure -we delivered what, I think, was an extraordinary work, a 10-part radio series, produced by the great Anne Walsh, and repeated three times by RTE at the time.

We used to like eating in the Alpha Café off Grafton Street – for ‘Mammy’ food as Gavin likes to call it. We wandered all around Dublin acting the maggot. One night I heard him experimenting with a riff, practically talking in tongues, and began to understand the instinctive source of his art. Irish folk and traditional were now entering the mix, with Martin Hayes and Dennis Cahill attracting his attention.

"like Laurence Harvey in space"

I wrote some words too for his album Shag Tobacco, which I thought great then and think even better now. On it he looks like Laurence Harvey in space, louchely and mischievously smoking cigarettes.

It’s a defiant and humorous album, full of love and not yet middle-aged zest. catholic is different. Mature is not a word I like, and I certainly wouldn’t want to wish maturity on this artist.

But I suppose in the Eighties our parents were alive. The fight seemed worth it, there was someone to blame – and in Ireland the Catholic church has always been an easy target. The problem is even Irish atheists tend to betray small hints of their Catholicism. Ah for Jesus’s sake, how could God exist? It’s not the same in the UK. “What are you all fighting about over there?” the Cockney taximan routinely says – or used to.

For Friday it was a war between restraint and excess – Rococo in the ring belting it out with Protestant continence. Growing up on the border, I have always been intrigued by this particular set of tensions. It is no accident that Guggi and Bono, fellow musicians and long-time associates, are both non-Catholics.

But I never disowned my DNA – Catholic, Irish, Gaelic, call it what you will. And neither did Friday.

We were as Irish as anybody except we didn’t play Gaelic football and didn’t feel the need to be ashamed of saying it either. Aside from this anyway, its cultural wealth was there at our disposal and we wanted it.

With the result that anyone expecting all the usual Pavlovian responses to Irish Catholicism will be deeply disappointed with this newly compiled work over which there hangs the evocative fragrance of incense swirling throughout the ages. If we could mix up the epochs and recruit James Joyce and John McCormack for a session, I’d have O’Riada call up the Pope – then we could perform this opera in the Sistine Chapel. I don’t know what to say about catholic.

If Shag Tobacco wasn’t 100 per cent a masterpiece, it might have been because Gavin was too young to surrender. This time that tendency has come full circle and the ghosts of James Joyce’s short story Grace, these lay theologians who are so much a part of this Dubliner’s inheritance, have become more defined. Debating ethics and the secrets of consciousness, through yellow-brick streets carrying leather-bound missals and copies of Thomas a Kempis’s Imitation of Christ, emerging like blinking hermits out of the shadows of history, as they part the curtain of a grey Liffeyside fog. Forming a small hunted knot of the devout, swinging a censer by the gates of Glasnevin Cemetery.

“Catholic,” they croak, wreathed in sin and shame and glory, redolent of blood, elevation and suffering.

catholic. With a small ‘c’. Reverently, on its knees, this new album has released an inner Monteverdi, and along with it a tidal wave of emotional complexity.

Ave.

–

About Pat McCabe

The author Patrick McCabe was born in 1955 in Clones, County Monaghan, Ireland. He is the author of several novels including The Butcher Boy (1992), which won the Irish Times Irish Literature Prize for Fiction; The Dead School (1995), and Breakfast on Pluto (1998), the disturbing tale of a transvestite prostitute who becomes involved with Republican terrorists. The Butcher Boy and Breakfast on Pluto (which McCabe dedicated to Gavin Friday) were both shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction and made into films by director Neil Jordan. His latest novels are The Holy City (2008) and The Stray Sod Country (2010).

Courtney Love’s introduction to the Virgin Prunes

Caroline — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 22:15:27 +0000

Courtney Love introduced the Virgin Prunes at the ‘Gavin Friday and Friends’ event in Carnegie Hall on October 4th. She did so eloquently and passionately, explaining how she came to know of them and what they meant to her life. What follows is a close approximation of what she said and it includes a brief introduction by U2′s manager Paul McGuinness:

Paul McGuinness

Good evening ladies and gentlemen. I’ve known Gavin and his band the Virgin Prunes for as long as I’ve known U2 and for quite a while in the early days the Virgin Prunes were the obligatory opening act for U2, so I saw them many times. Perhaps more often than I liked. And on one occasion… the Virgin Prunes had some extreme theories: Dada, Theatre of Cruelty, things like that, which didn’t always mix with the… the rock and roll. But on one occasion I do remember after the performance, excellent performance, given by the Virgin Prunes, Bono arrived in time for the U2 gig and he said to me: Why are the audience in such a bad mood? And I said: Well, Bono, it might have something to do with the fact that your friend Gavin has just been throwing pigs entrails over them. They were a very unusual band and one of their earliest fans was Ms Courtney Love…

Courtney Love

Hi. I’ve never actually even been inside Carnegie Hall. I wasn’t asked to do this show, I demanded to do this show.

I didn’t expect the task of introducing one of the most important precious figures and bands and siren call that framed my rock and roll life for better or for worse. Nor do I have any idea of who I am speaking to, so I will just simply speak my truth about Virgin Prunes and about Gavin Friday.

Courtney Love - by Wout-er

I was a pudgy 15-year-old from San Francisco who thought randomly and maybe… I just, I don’t know to just go to Ireland and blag my way into Trinity College and become a theologian, seriously, and I would maybe get to meet that guy with the angelic voice that sung I will follow. Why I picked Ireland? I don’t know, accident or intelligent design… random, I don’t know, but it was one of my life’s great experiences. I saw the band with the singer with the angelic voice and the guitar player who I just knew from the I will follow riff was beyond words in their return of their station wagon tour of the States to do their show at Punchestown.

It was excellent, however a few nights later at a pub called McGonagles I had my ass truly handed to me. They were magnificent. Can I curse? Anyway, un- ff-ing genius they were, they would obviously take over the world. Swagger, charisma, shamanism, fury. I had never seen and have rarely ever seen since so much sex, snarl, poetry, evil, restraint, grace, filth, raw power and the very essence of rock and roll which was [ ? ] that night by the Virgin Prunes. The storm that raged on that stage astonished me. At that time their reputation was on a par with my own – minus the stuff that we should all just forget.

I loathe, I seriously hate this concept that rock musicians are somehow vulgar and stupid, idiots and that we’ve never read a book – and some of us haven’t – that we haven’t read Middlemarch or that we don’t know that Shakespeare’s last play was [ ? ]. The Virgin Prunes are geniuses. Lucifer; arch and cunning to U2′s Gabriel; angelic and gorgeous, I can honestly stand here and truthfully say U2 gave me lashes of love and inspiration and a few nights later the Virgin Prunes fucked. Me. Up.

So for the first time in 20 years from the council estate of Ballymun to the most prestigious venue in the world where one brings ones diamonds, I am so proud to present for the first time in many years per incendia ut astrum – which means through the fire to the stars: The Virgin Prunes.

After Courtney’s introduction, the original members of the band: Gavin, Guggi, Dik were joined by J.G. Thirlwell (Foetus) to perform two classic Prunes songs: “Sweethomeunderwhiteclouds” and “Caucasian Walk”. Later during the show, Courtney and Gavin sang Magazine’s “The Light Pours Out Of Me” together.

“Indisputably himself and in control” – press round up

Caroline — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 17:48:27 +0000

The reviews are pouring in. Here’s what’s being said in the press about ‘Gavin Friday and Friends’:

Jon Pareles of the New York Times:
“Mr. Friday has built a latter-day career as an eclectic, cabaret-tinged songwriter who hasn’t forgotten rock. The songs testify to romance and disillusion, while taking unexpected harmonic twists. They can be mournful and yearning, but more frequently turn bitterly cynical. They are haunted by death, wounded by love and often disgusted by daily life.”

Photo by tibetjb

“True to Mr. Friday’s repertory, the concert juxtaposed delicacy and brute force, intimacy and irony. It had tender moments, like Mr. Friday’s opening “Apologia”; duets with Antony Hegarty (of Antony and the Johnsons) on “He Got What He Wanted” and “Angel”; and Mr. Friday’s desolate “You Take Away the Sun,” with the shimmering backup of Bill Frisell on guitar, Hank Roberts on cello and Mr. Seezer on piano.”

Photo by tibetjb

“But the concert’s peak came early, with the reconstituted Virgin Prunes (Dik Evans, Guggi and Gavin Friday), including J. G. Thirwell on additional guitar and vocals, along with Mr. Evans and the singer Guggi from the old band. It bore down on two of its old songs — “Sweet Home Under White Clouds” and “Caucasian Walk” — as insistent, unstoppable drones and imprecations. Even at Carnegie Hall, sung behind music stands by men well past their teens, the menace came through.”

David Fricke of Rolling Stone:
“The silent star of the evening was composer Maurice Seezer, Friday’s longtime songwriting partner. He finally took a bow at the very end. But Friday, who always thought he belonged in Carnegie Hall, sang and acted out his lyrics as if he owned the place, swaggering across the boards, gesturing at the stars and jabbing his forefinger at the front rows with a panache that was part opera star, part Dublin punk. “Do we really need these pop stars?/There’s not enough of me!” he crowed in “Caruso,” a dynamic pairing with singer Eric Mingus. It was a song about the power and pleasures of transformation, sung by a man who took on every role in reach tonight — friend, lover, heathen, glitter boy, Irish poet — and was indisputably himself and in control in every one.”

Poster at Carnegie Hall

Spin Magazine:
“Courtney Love, a longtime champion of Friday’s music, took the stage to read her description of seeing the Virgin Prunes live for the first time. Characteristically unpredictable and unapologetic, the Grunge goddess praised the band’s “sex, snarl, and raw power.” “When I saw U2 they gave me inspiration… but when I saw the Virgin Prunes they FUCKED. ME. UP.”"

Spinner.com:
“The night began appropriately enough with Friday, a gifted singer in his own right with the Virgin Prunes and several critically-acclaimed solo albums, crooning the beautiful ‘Apologia.’”

IrishCentral.com:
“The delicacy of that duet [ Antony/Gavin - Got What He Wanted ] was instantly obliterated by a jump out of your seats sensational announcement. The Virgin Prunes had reformed to sing “Caucasian Walk,” a sonic wall of rock power that vividly underlines why this band were and are so important to the genesis of U2. This lot rock out like no Irish band ever has or will. The well-heeled audience was astounded, and you could tell that suited this band just fine.”

New York Press:
“Some of the songs were powerful and some painful.That’s what happens when you invite everyone to the party. Some will make a mess, but there were some damn good voices and that so-called backup band sure knew their shit. Maria McKee and Friday gave a heart-rending version of “The Ballad of Immoral Earnings” from The Threepenny Opera. Martha Wainwright’s “You Made Me The Thief of Your Heart” was gorgeous. [...] Bono took his cues from Friday, but both were in fine form as co-hosts.”

Prune power

Caroline — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 15:38:31 +0000

From: The Irish Times, October 3, 2009
By: Brian Boyd

PROFILE GAVIN FRIDAY: He led an elite group of avant-garde chancers that included Bono and The Edge. A host of stars, including U2, will take the stage in New York to celebrate the former Virgin Prune’s 50th birthday

LYPTON VILLAGE was a little known area in Ballymun, Dublin. It only ever existed for a few years during the 1970s. Its residents included Fionan Hanvey, David Evans, Paul Hewson and Derek Rowan. You could never find it on a map because it was a virtual village – a psychological place of escape for its inhabitants. Lypton Village had its own laws: art, music and weirdness were good, everything else was bad. It had its own language and its members were christened with new names – which is why Fionan Hanvey, David Evans, Paul Hewson and Derek Rowan are better known today as the musicians Gavin Friday, The Edge and Bono and the artist Guggi.

by Peter Hanan

This Sunday night the principal members of this surreal Ballymun enclave will be taking over New York’s Carnegie Hall to host a celebrity-heavy music party to mark Gavin Friday’s 50th birthday.

Apart from all four members of U2 (who are down to do individual performances on the night), the cast also includes Courtney Love, Antony Hegarty (from Antony and The Johnsons), Scarlett Johansson, Rufus Wainwright, Andrea Corr and Shane MacGowan. Billed as “An Evening With Gavin Friday and guests”, the show will also include “Special Guests” who can’t be named in advance.

It’s a typically extravagant and fantastical Lypton Village gesture.Back in Ballymun, these Villagers would think big and dream bigger. For Gavin Friday, who was banned from RTÉ for an early “art performance” by his band The Virgin Prunes on The Late Late Show , who used to get beaten up by skinheads for wearing dresses and makeup around Dublin and who was regularly bottled off stage for his outré behaviour, headlining Carnegie Hall will be a breeze – and also the fulfilment of a boyhood dream.

Asked in an interview years ago what his musical ambition was, he replied that he’d love to play the fabled venue before he was 50. Earlier this year he and Bono had arranged Guggi’s 50th birthday party (the three are all best friends). During the evening, Bono asked Gavin what he had planned for his upcoming 50th. Friday said he was going to run away and hide from the milestone anniversary, but Bono had already made plans for him: “Gavin, you’re playing Carnegie Hall for your birthday.”

While Friday may be a well-known figure in art/music circles (and he does have a considerable reputation in Europe from his Virgin Prunes days) he wouldn’t have the same commercial traction as any of the other musical guests playing on Sunday. What he represents, though, in an Irish cultural sense, is that musically he was avant-garde before there was a “garde” to be “avant” of in this country.

Initially inspired by Bowie and T.Rex, it was only when whisperings of a new movement called punk rock reached Dublin in the mid-1970s that Friday found a license to put into practice his absurdist art-shock musical performances. Dadaism and Krautrock were the aesthetic backdrops for The Virgin Prunes, a band made up of fellow Lypton Villagers including Guggi, Dave-id Busaras, Strongman, Pod, Mary D’Nellon and Haa-Lacka Binttii. Some critics used to acidly note that their names were better than their songs. Dik Evans (The Edge’s brother) was so impressed by the band’s art-punk sound that he actually left U2 to join them – probably not something he needs reminding of.

THE VIRGIN PRUNES were like nothing this country had witnessed before: they dressed as gothic transvestites, adorned the stage with rotting meat carcasses and would specialise in doing a 20-minute version of The Stones’ “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” – slowing it right down so it would take one minute to get one line of the lyric out. They came across like a northside of Dublin version of Throbbing Gristle and Devo.

For Friday, The Prunes were a reaction to the banal cultural wasteland of Dublin in the 1970s. “We were like a Third World country,” he has said. “If you go back to parts of the Eastern bloc of Europe now, that’s what Dublin was like in the ’60s and ’70s. Grey, dull, mass unemployment and complete poverty. Music became a lifeline to escape for kids. Punk gave you a licence to form a band with just an attitude. I turned 16 when punk kicked in and had plenty of attitude.”

If The Prunes came into being in order to épater la bourgeoisie , they soon developed a sizeable cult following. Signed to the coolest independent record label of the time, Rough Trade, they were one of the first punk era Irish bands to build up a fanbase outside this country – with Germany and Scandinavia at the top of the list.

As they toured their avant-garde travelling roadshow around Europe – shocking and surprising at most every turn (they were banned from many a venue for various sexual and scatological stunts) – the other, and at the time lesser known Lypton Village band, U2, were perfecting a very different music and type of performance as they warmed up for global superstardom. The links between the two bands are indivisible – both bands started playing together in Dublin’s Dandelion Market under the banner “U2 Can Be A Virgin Prune”; both bands had a member of the Evans family in their ranks (The Edge and Dik) and Guggi’s younger brother, Peter Rowan, is the child featured on the cover of the U2 albums Boy and War. Despite The Prunes having the early upper hand on U2, there has never been any rivalry between them. To this day, both bands see themselves as different sides of the same Lypton Village coin.

The Prunes stuttered to a halt in the mid-1980’s and Friday has been a freelance bohemian ever since. He’s had an exhibition of his paintings, I Didn’t Come Up The Liffey In A Bubble , in Dublin’s Hendricks Gallery; curated a series of cabaret nights called Blue Jaysus at the National Stadium and, alongside Jim Sheridan and Bono, he opened the short-lived Mr Pussy’s Café De Lux in Suffolk Street.

AS A SO LO ARTIST he has released three albums – Each Man Kills The Thing He Loves, Adam ‘n’ Eve and Shag Tobacco – frequent collaborators including Maurice Seezer and the novelist Patrick McCabe. With Bono, he worked on the soundtrack for the Jim Sheridan film In The Name Of The Father , starring Daniel Day-Lewis. Acting wise, he turned in a very creditable performance as the glam rock singer Billy Hatchet in Neil Jordan’s Breakfast on Pluto . He has narrated a version of Prokofiev’s Peter And The Wolf and toured with the Royal Shakespeare Company for a new interpretation of Shakespeare’s sonnets. He was last seen on a Dublin stage two years ago with his “Tomorrow Belongs To Me” show which was a personal tribute show about his lifelong passion for German music, art, literature and film.

As a sideline he has also been an “aesthetic midwife” on every U2 tour since The Joshua Tree . He gave Bono his “MacPhisto” character for the Zoo TV tour and says of his tour consultant role: “I look at all the things that they can’t see because they’re on stage. I’m their eyes and ears in the audience, noting down this, noting down that to improve the performance. I understand the four of them very well because I’ve known them for 30 years or more. We speak the same language and I don’t blow smoke up their ass.” He’s leaving the new U2 tour behind shortly to get back to Dublin to begin work on a new studio album – and there are also further art, theatre and literary projects in the pipeline.

This punk renaissance man now lives in Killiney, is an avid swimmer and is only seen these days on his regular Friday night city-centre drinking sessions with Bono and Guggi. The mainstream was never his friend; he is happiest on the artistic margins and along the way he has become a bit of a pop culture polymath.

It has been suggested that with his background in and knowledge of both the French chanson and the German lieder tradition, he would be an ideal, if eccentric, Irish choice for the next Eurovision Song Contest. We’ve had a turkey (in fact, quite a few turkeys) over the last few years – maybe it’s time for a Virgin Prune.

Back in the Lypton Village days, Bono and Guggi awarded him the title of “Being in charge of being in charge”. This Sunday night at the Carnegie Hall he will be just that.

Virgin Prunes MP3s available on Amazon.com

Caroline — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 23:59:50 +0000

Readers based in the USA might be interested to learn that part of the Virgin Prunes back catalogue is available from Amazon MP3 service. Full albums available are: The Moon Looked Down and Laughed, Over the Rainbow, Heresie and A New Form of Beauty.
Songs can be purchased either individually from $0.99 or as traditional albums for $12.99 (prices correct at the time of writing). Longer songs cost slightly more, apparently rising in 99c increments for each additional 7 minutes.
At present, the Amazon MP3 store is open to customers in the USA only.

State Magazine: ‘When art and anarchy collide’

Caroline — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 23:09:58 +0000

Irish music magazine State.ie interviewed Gavin about the Virgin Prunes for their most recent issue. The article, ‘When art and anarchy collide’ is available to read online.

Get your own – Open publication

The Virgin Prunes
By Phil Udell on Tuesday, 21 July 2009

From coming up from the same inner city Dublin streets as U2 to defecating on plates, urinating in wine glasses, getting bottled off stage supporting The Clash and generally getting right up the noses of 1980s’ Ireland – of all the bands to come out of this country in the past 30 years, few have been shrouded in such myth as The Virgin Prunes. Much of it may have built up outside of their control but, as Gavin Friday would be the first to admit, they were also responsible for much of the whirlwind themselves, acknowledging that the band never made it easy for either themselves or their audience.

“The second gig we ever did was just me and Guggi,” he recalls, “with U2 as our band, when they were The Hype. I worked in a slaughterhouse and I got a load of white coats and mesh which we used to cover them up. We did a 20-minute version of ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’, slowed right down so that it would take a minute and a half to get one sentence out. It was totally provocative. After that gig, Dik Evans, who was Edge’s older brother, left The Hype and came to work with us.”

No matter how inauspicious it might sound, that gig led to a third live outing for the Prunes and a slightly more high profile one at that – supporting The Clash at The Top Hat in Dun Laoghaire in October 1978. For Friday, it was a memorable night. “We came on: Guggi was wearing a tiny skirt and I had a plastic suit made out of raincoats, no jocks underneath, and a pair of Docs. We’d only played two little gigs before that. Steve Averill from The Radiators From Space played synthesizer with us. The crowd just went apeshit. They thought Guggi was a chick.”

“The adrenaline of all these people pogoing kicked in and I started jumping around, the next thing this plastic suit that my ma had made me split completely. I was standing there totally bollock naked, except for a pair of Doc Martins. I turned around and Guggi’s skirt had come off and you could see that he was a bloke. All hell broke loose, there were bottles flying, they were setting the curtains on fire. We were reefed off the stage by The Clash’s tour manager and fucked out the door. We had no money and had to walk with all our gear, back from Dun Laoghaire to Ballymun.”

Such was the world of The Virgin Prunes, a world where art and chaos collided, a world where you would do anything to break the boredom of living in mid-‘70s Ireland. “We were like a Third World country”, Friday remembers. “If you go back to parts of the Eastern bloc of Europe now, that’s what Dublin was like in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Grey, dull, mass unemployment and complete poverty. Music became a lifeline to escape for kids. Punk gave you a licence to form a band with just an attitude. I turned 16 when punk kicked in and had plenty of attitude.”

There was a fair bit of attitude kicking around Ballymun in those days, as a group of teenage friends formed their own strange society (Lypton Village) and gave each other nicknames – Guggi, Gavin Friday, Bono, The Edge. These guys were a band before they’d even picked up an instrument. “The name Virgin Prunes had been hanging around for a while”, says Gavin, “since the early ‘70s. You’d see odd people walking around and we’d call them prunes. Virgin prunes were quite innocent. We always said if we ever had a band, we’d be called that. The name was there. I was a big, big music fan. Guggi was more a visuals person. When punk happened, it was a godsend. It was like we were two bands just waiting to pick up an instrument. We weren’t really into football, we lived in a wasteland, the only release was music.”

That release would lead to the formation of not one but two bands, as has been well documented. Were the Prunes and U2 two sides of the same coin? Friday takes a sip of tea. “U2 formed at the same time but there were no similarities whatsoever,” he muses. “There was a link between the two and still is but because they’ve become so successful, the myth has got bigger. There’s nothing weird about a group of mates hanging out together, forming bands, having ideas. It’s when all the ideas become reality, that’s when the myth gets bigger.”

So the story that they made some sort of commercial vs artistic pact isn’t true? He laughs. “We didn’t have a fucking clue. It’s down to what people are. Bono’s far more diplomatic, I was far more angry and using music as a way to get through that anger, getting rid of it.” Plan or no plan, it can’t be denied that The Virgin Prunes were as artistic as they were musical. “Guggi painted, I painted; one of the few things I was good at was art. We were always called pretentious pricks simply because we were into the avant garde. I remember when we were 16, it used to be a big deal to come into town and hang out at McDonald’s. One day we walked in and saw the performance artist Nigel Wolf naked with paint all over him and a huge stream coming off his mickey pulling these rocks. We were going, ‘What the fuck was that?’”

Perhaps unexpectedly, The Prunes did start to attract record company interest, although more predictably, they weren’t prepared to play ball. “Rough Trade’s Geoff Travis said it was time we made an album but we said no,” grins Gavin. “He said it was time we worked with a producer, we said no. We told him that we wanted to do a 7”, 10”, 12”, cassette, do a gig, release a film and publish a book (the ‘New Form Of Beauty’ project). This was in 1981 and we had no money. We almost did it. We have the film but it was never released and the book never happened, but we did it. We released something on the first of each month: it was quite a strategy.”

Surprisingly, Rough Trade weren’t put off and still The Virgin Prunes continued to lead them a merry dance. “They gave us £10,000 for an overall budget for the album – producers, studio, everything. We went out and spent £6,000 on photographs and they went fucking insane. We were saying, ‘But it’s really important’. There was a certain amount of shooting ourselves in the foot going on.”

How did the band get on with their Dublin contemporaries? “Not particularly well,” admits Friday. “We were very arrogant. I was, certainly. There was that cockiness you have when you’re 17 or 18. A lot of bands were just playing jazzed up r’n’b. Everyone talks about The Boomtown Rats: they were a great pop band but they were never fucking punk. The Atrix were, Stiff Little Fingers were, The Radiators were. The Virgin Prunes were fucking punk. We were arty, we were visual, we were avant garde, but when it came down to it, we were punk. U2 were a new wave rock band. We were there from the start. We never would play and never did play The Baggot Inn ’cos it was for old hippies. That element of arrogance was allowed.”

Somehow, though, this bunch of cross dressing, make-up wearing punks found themselves appearing on The Late Late Show, the epicentre of traditional Irish values at the time. How the hell, we wonder, did that happen? “They asked us on”, says Friday simply. “We were never afraid of publicity but I think we were set up in a naive way. Gay Byrne knew what he was doing, I mean it was the same weekend that the Pope was in town. We were banned from RTÉ after that, although it didn’t help that we were robbing costumes from the dressing room. When we went in to sound-check in the afternoon, we didn’t wear the make-up, I didn’t scream. I just read the Oscar Wilde poem and that was it, we didn’t even bring the chicks in. Then when we came back that night, we went hell for leather. They weren’t expecting it but we were definitely set up. Gay Byrne had a massive response on his radio show and we had massive queues at our next show. The song basically said ‘why should I be like you, be yourself’. That was our whole stance.”

A huge element of their visual style was the cross dressing element, guaranteed to cause a stir in early ’80s Ireland. Gavin laughs. “It was fun. When people say The Virgin Prunes wore dresses, it was never like Boy George wore dresses. I remember going to the Blitz Club in London in 1981, where the whole Steve Strange /Boy George movement was kicking off, and they wouldn’t let us in. We looked more like Rasputin: you weren’t sure if we were going to kiss you or kill you. It wasn’t like we were trying to look like girls.” Or indeed, lock you in a room full of faeces?

“We did some extraordinary shows in Dublin, they were more like art exhibitions. We set up a big dining table and each one of us did a shit on a plate and pissed in a glass, then we left it there and turned up the heat. The smell would kill the audience then we walked in: then we locked them in. There were pieces about abortion, one saying all women were pigs, stuff just to provoke people. We were called anti-feminist so we did that to wind them up. It was childish and it wasn’t thought out but we wanted to provoke a reaction.”

Despite their image, the hassle, the music industry, despite everything the Virgin Prunes enjoyed a level of success with their If I Die, I Die debut and soon found themselves caught up in the traditional method of promoting a band at that time – constant touring. It wasn’t a good move.

“It basically killed the band. Without even knowing it, we became this machine. We started getting freaked when we would play gigs and you’d see all these Gavin and Guggi clones in the front. That was happening everywhere. There was nothing solid in the band. My brain was jumping around, Guggi was into the visuals, Dik was quite avant garde. The rhythm section wanted to be in a straight rock ‘n’ roll band and Davey was from Mars. Things like girlfriends started to become an issue. People got people pregnant. We were drinking too much, there was too much shit going on. It just imploded.” The end was nigh. Guggi and Dik Evans were the first to go and although Friday would keep it going long enough to release a second album, The Moon Looked Down And Laughed, by this point he too had had enough. By 1986, The Virgin Prunes were no more. Regrets? Not for Gavin Friday.

“It always had to be a short lived thing,” he admits. “There was a total purity there, which often was construed as arrogance. We were always shooting from the hip, blindfolded to reality, just going for it. I love that. I think we were one of the purest bands ever to come out of this country.”

Gavin and Guggi in Brussels

Caroline — Mon, 12 May 2008 07:52:47 +0000

Gavin Friday and Guggi, live interview promoting the re-release of Virgin Prunes albums on Mute records

Baking tapes – the Virgin Prunes re-release interview

Caroline — Fri, 09 May 2008 22:26:30 +0000

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

catholic

4 Photos

Various

6 Photos

Each Man Kills the Thing He Loves

4 Photos

Adam n Eve

3 Photos

Shag Tobacco

3 Photos

cover, I went back to how we originally wanted it.

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.