The Devil in Mr. Hyde: An Interview with Karl Hyde

Every morning, Karl Hyde of Underworld goes to his local cafe at 7.30am to write for an hour. He wholeheartedly agrees with James Joyce’s belief that “mistakes are the portholes to discovery”, as he allowed his mistakes to live and breathe on the page while writing his new book I Am Dogboy: The Underworld Diaries.

“When I was writing this book, I discovered I’d been making all these horrendous mistakes,” Hyde confesses. “I was offered all these extraordinary opportunities. I messed them up at the last minute. However, it all eventually culminated in something fantastic. I thought it was a curious story and might be of value to people I know trying to get their own things off the ground. It is trying to pass on some hope. Look at this catalogue of disasters! And yet look at where it all ended up.”

I Am Dogboy is partly a diary, partly an autobiography, but also a collection of photographic and abstract poetic pieces.

“With an album you’re rolling it on a substantial scale,” Hyde reflects. “You’re already scaling up from two guys in a little room to something on global proportions. With a book, it feels like you’re walking into someone’s house and you just put it on their kitchen table and leave.”

One of the most surprising revelations in I Am Dogboy is that Hyde finds performing onstage a very calming activity.

“It’s curious because from the age of 11, I was transformed from this kid who was crushingly shy as soon as you stuck a guitar in my hand. It was the oddest thing. It was as if a voice in my head said to me, ‘This is your last chance to come out and be complete.’ Something about that encounter with an audience and supplying them with a night’s entertainment and it being reciprocated was a completion for me.”

Prior to his career in Underworld, Hyde played guitar with Debbie Harry’s band. Witnessing Iggy Pop live was an epiphany.

“It was a crucial turning point for me and the future of Underworld,” he states. “I craved that honesty because up until that point I was largely disingenuous with the way I was onstage. I was thinking too much and too conscious.”

Hyde also examines how alcohol became a crutch, but also a muse for his writing.

“Alcohol helped me enormously to deal with a lot of things I couldn’t deal with at the time,” he admits. “It also seemed to unlock something that enabled me to go beyond myself where I was afraid to cross that line, or I didn’t even know that I could cross the line. It took the safety catches off a bit and allowed the subconscious to direct me. From very early on, it was clear I was trapped in something. A lot of what I was describing was a very grotesque lifestyle that was very dark. I couldn’t get out of it, or even articulate that I wanted to get out of it, but I thought if I described it somebody would help me. All those early songs like ‘Dirty Epic’, ‘Dark And Long’ and of course, ‘Born Slippy’ were me going ‘help’ but not knowing how to say it. It was a muse. I felt like I had to have it to transcend this meek little kid who didn’t know what to do about anything.”

In March, Underworld released their triumphant ninth album Barbara Barbara, We Face a Shining Future.

“It was a vindication that perhaps people didn’t see,” Hyde proffers. “Rick and I came back after a very, very difficult period where we skated on thin ice in terms of our relationship. We spent a lot of time apart and made other things. It transcended the hurt and personal feelings and all the general noise that comes to living and working like brothers. That album was about setting aside all of that and celebrating our differences and going beyond the things where people normally call it a day. When people come up on the street and say they like it, I say, ‘Yes, it’s my favourite for years too.’”

I Am Dogboy: The Underworld Diaries is published by Faber & Faber. Karl Hyde will be reading and talking with visual accompaniment at Metropolis.