Ghost Stories: Interview with John Grant

On a cold, clear afternoon in January 2011, whilst shopping in central London, recovering addict and newly acclaimed singer-songwriter John Grant received a text message from hell.

“It was winter in Sweden,” the 44-year-old American recalls. “I was gonna go up there and record an album with [Swedish electronic producer] Kleerup and I was shopping for shoes. And then I got a text, saying, 'I've got bad news' from this guy. Since I'd only fucked him once and I didn’t know him, I knew what it was.”

Shocked and scared, Grant flew to Sweden, found a doctor and took a blood test. Within a week his worst fears were confirmed: he was HIV-positive. There’s never a good time to receive a diagnosis like that but, given what was happening in his life and career, it felt like a kick in the teeth.

Formerly the frontman of indie act The Czars, Grant had endured years of alcoholism, drug addiction and sometimes grinding poverty, but things had actually been looking up for him prior to receiving that cruel text. His 2010 debut solo album, Queen Of Denmark, had sold well, won him some heavyweight celebrity fans (including Sinéad O’Connor and Elton John), and been named Mojo’s ‘Album of the Year’.

Having wandered in the indie wilderness for years, it seemed as though his career was finally taking off. Suddenly, though, a black cloud of hopelessness descended over him.
“It was dark, you know?” he says softly. “In January, it’s dark all the time there. So it was a really dark period, but I also met some extraordinary people, who were really amazing to me during that time. It’s a mindfuck. But I knew that I only had myself to blame.”

It’s a wet March evening in Galway’s west end. We’re sitting in the Róisín Dubh a couple of hours before tonight’s sell-out show. A tall, heavily bearded and bright-eyed man, wearing a woollen hat pulled down almost to his eyebrows, Grant speaks quietly and thoughtfully. He seems just as open, honest and confessional in conversation as he is in many of his songs. He can also be quite self-lacerating.

“I was angry that I had taken the trouble to get sober, but I was indulging in self-destructive behaviour in other areas,” he continues. “Because I thought that I didn’t have to let that healing process happen in every area, that I could keep my crazy sex life to myself, but then... you get that wake-up call.”

When you say ‘crazy sex life’, do you mean gay clubs, saunas and multiple partners?

He smiles. “Yeah, in other words not crazy at all, just normal. Open relationships, lots of sex with lots of different people.”

What about gangbangs? “Well, maybe a gangbang if you’re lucky,” he smiles, with a mock shrug. “Those can be difficult, because someone always seems to be left out. I tend to find them to not be as exciting. But yeah, whenever, wherever, with whomever, just totally using sex as a way to feel attractive. Just needing to feel desired and feel like you’re worthy, and getting that from sex was a big deal for me. I was treating that the same way I was treating alcohol and drugs. I’ve treated money that way, and food. Not as fuel, but as comfort.”

Grant has never been the happiest of campers. He was born in Michigan in 1968, but spent his formative years in Colorado, growing up in a strict, teetotal, Methodist household. Horribly tortured with guilt about his homosexuality, he never really felt like he fi tted in.

Music provided one form of escape.

“I grew up playing classical piano. Listening to my brother's records: I was really into Abba as a child. There was lots of Kiss and Beach Boys and Three Dog Night and Nazareth and Molly Hatchet and Thin Lizzy. And then, when the '80s came, I heard all these new wave sounds and I was hooked!”

He didn’t consider music as a potential career. A talented linguist, he escaped to Heidelberg to study German and Russian after leaving high school.

“I discovered that I was good at languages in high school, or at German anyway, and my goal was to go to Germany to study Russian, in German, thereby making my German perfect and learning another language in the process.”

After five years in Germany, in 1994 he returned to Colorado to care for his terminally ill mother. By the time she passed away from lung cancer a year later, he was drinking heavily and relying on antidepressants like Paxil (he still takes it) to keep the black dog at bay.

Inspired by grief, he formed alt-rock band The Czars. Their debut, Moodswing, was released on Bella Union in 1996. Five albums followed, but by 2005, all the other members had left, leaving Grant to perform alone under the moniker.

“I loathed myself," he says, "so that made that period particularly unpalatable. I don't like to think about it and I don't like to talk about it. That doesn't mean I won't.”

Did you feel fulfilled performing live?

“No, I felt terrified. I felt terrified so that was why I drank a lot – to be able to do that.”

What was the highlight of The Czars’ career?

“I think probably going to London to record our first studio album with Bella Union and meeting two of the Cocteau Twins. That was amazing – being in the studio there with [producer and label boss] Simon Raymond.”

The rest of the band all eventually quit because of your allegedly obnoxious behaviour.

“I was just quietly chipping away at myself," he rues. "I was becoming an alcoholic, and it was total escapism. I could drink a bottle of beer in a matter of seconds, you know, and I would put them away one after the other.”

So you were a real alcoholic as opposed to an American version?

“I could've gotten a lot worse, I'm sure, but it was impossible for me to do anything without it. If I had to leave my house for example. But I didn't drink first thing in the morning. I didn't start off with hard liquor. I've heard a lot of really nasty stories and I just feel like mine's pretty boring.”

Whatever about alcohol and drugs, sex was ultimately to prove his undoing.

“There was a lot of unprotected sex. I love to have sex on cocaine – that was one of my favourite things, which I miss. It wasn't good for me. So that's when I was having to go to the doctor a lot and it started to get nasty, you know?”

In what way?

“Finding out that I had syphilis, that was sort of the last straw. Because I was starting to experiment a little bit with crack, you know, and I really liked it. I liked being able to shut myself off. So, I just feel like...”

He shifts uncomfortably in his seat.

“People kill people, you know? They back over their children in the driveway because they're alcoholics. That didn't happen to me. I almost had car crashes, about three times, but I knew I wasn't going to be able to get another chance. So I quit driving, in order to be able to keep drinking.”

What about poppers?

“I never really was a good gay,” he sighs. “I never did a lot of poppers. I did have a couple of great sexual experiences where poppers were involved. I felt like my heart was never made for the... made for the rush.”

Unlike some of his friends, Grant says he was never able to control his cocaine use.

“There's these fucking people,” he laughs. “Like, my friend that introduced me to cocaine, he could do it all day long, for years... and nothing happened. He just quit when he was done, got married and had a few kids and that was that.”

Is that the friend who tried to kill himself in your apartment?

He nods. “Yeah. Done your research. It was a pretty half-hearted attempt, but he did a good job of fucking up his wrist and bleeding all over my sofa. Sometimes he would go into my bathroom and just take whatever he could find without looking at the labels. And I had some stuff in there that will fuck you up, especially if you're taking it with all sorts of other things like cocaine or alcohol.”

Were you having an affair with this guy?

“No, no. I wished that I was. He was straight for the most part.” He laughs. “With enough drugs and alcohol, you can usually get what you want from people, but, no, he was straight and uh, very gay friendly but that was sort of an unrequited romance.”

Have you ever been with a woman?

Momentarily, he looks confused.
“Uh... no.”

Not even a casual one night stand?

He shakes his head. “No.”

That's kind of odd, isn't it?

“Because how would you know what you like or what?” he muses. “I sort of had a perfect storm of shame surrounding sex. It was almost like what I was doing with guys didn't count, but women were totally off limits, because that was shameful and dirty outside of marriage.”

Wouldn’t it be funny if you actually slept with a woman and suddenly realised that that’s what you wanted the whole time?

“I don't know whether it would be funny or not. I've thought about it.”

If you experimented with drink and drugs or whatever, why wouldn't you experiment with heterosexual sex?

“Well, sometimes I say, ‘I like straight porn, that's just not the way I was born’,” he says, smiling. “Little limerick for you there! But, you know I've had those thoughts before, ‘Boy, I'd really be fucked if I fell in love with a woman!’ I don't think so. I seem to just be interested in men.”

After the demise of The Czars (their final album, Sorry I Made You Cry, was released in 2005), he gave up on music. He also gave up on alcohol and cocaine. Seriously attempting to get his life back on track, he began attending AA meetings, moved to New York, waited tables, and studied to work as a Russian medical translator. Eventually, in 2009, his former Bella Union labelmates Midlake convinced him to come to Denton, Texas, to record the album that would become Queen Of Denmark.

“I was working on becoming a Russian interpreter in New York City. I just thought I wasn’t good enough at music: 'There’s too much talent out there, too many people that don’t have the stupid baggage you have – and there are tons of people who can sing better and play better. You just don’t have what it takes'.

“I felt like I was giving up, but I still played,” he continues. “I didn’t stop writing music, but I didn’t think I would be able to do anything again. I'd met Midlake at SXSW one year and we'd become friends. We kept in touch, and they kept at me to come down and do my solo album with them.”

Initially, he was reluctant.

“I'd started to put roots down in New York, and I was doing well at the interpreting thing, and it was looking like something I could do for a career. And I had an apartment – a little shithole that I was living in with cockroaches and mice, a tiny little box for 800 bucks a month, deep in Brooklyn – that’s something! The waiting job was in a world class restaurant, so things were going well for me there. Getting your foot in the door in New York is not easy. But I was very intrigued, because they were willing to let me live with them, and use their studio, and be my musicians for the record, all for nothing, just because they had this belief in me. It was a really big deal. It can’t be overstated what they did for me.”

Emboldened by his Midlake friends, Grant put his heart and soul into the project. The hugely confessional Queen Of Denmark mixed anger, humour and pathos, and marked a major turnaround in his life. Reviews were sublime and healthy sales followed. It helped that Sinéad O’Connor covered the title-track on her 2011 album How About I Be Me (And You Be You). They’ve since become good friends. She sang backing vocals on his second album, and joined him onstage in Dublin’s Olympia, as did Villagers frontman Conor J. O’Brien.

“I get people saying they discovered me through Sinéad’s song, so obviously it did have an effect,” he says. “A lot of people assume it's her song actually. It made a difference in my life because I was able to reach out to her and become friends. That’s been amazing. That makes me feel: maybe I’m not so horrible as a musician. It’s a good ego boost.”

John was still riding the wave of his debut’s success when he got that life-changing text. To the shock of the London audience, he announced his HIV-positive status publicly at the Meltdown Festival the following summer whilst performing new song ‘Ernest Borgnine’ with New York disco act Hercules And Love Affair.

“I thought it needed to be treated like it wasn’t that big of a deal,” he says. “I thought: 'I’m about to sing a song about it, and it’s something that I’m having a difficult time with, and I don’t see why I shouldn’t talk about it’. But a lot of people see lots of reasons why one shouldn’t do that. That didn’t occur to me. I still feel like it was a win-win situation.

“I know there are people that are going through it too, who needed to hear that. And then there are people who are a lot further along than me, who were on their death beds in the ‘80s, and who made it. They are the ones that helped me deal with a lot of the shame issues, and feeling like an unattractive diseased cunt who is unworthy. You have days like that.”

Thankfully, HIV is no longer the death sentence it once was.

“I take a few pills every day, and will for the rest of my life,” he shrugs. “It’s a very, very easy thing to get used to, considering the alternative. But you have to think about it. I never liked the feel of condoms, which is what got me in trouble in the first place. But you don’t have a choice. They basically turn the virus off, so that it can’t multiply. And when it gets to the stage that I have, it becomes undetectable in the blood. There's like a miniscule chance that I can pass it on to someone else, but as long as there's that chance...”

Through conversations with Sinéad O’Connor, he’s reasonably up to speed with Ireland’s ongoing homophobia debate.

“I think it’s totally absurd,” he states. “People like Panti Bliss who've been called faggots their whole lives by people that don’t even consider themselves to be homophobic. I don’t know all the details of it, but I know that a lot of people who are bigots like to say that they don’t have a bigoted bone in their body. That’s just ridiculous.

“I know the defamation laws are different in Ireland, but is it defamation if it’s true? I don’t think so. People want to get into a semantics game about what homophobia is, but if you're a person who feels that homosexuals should be treated differently, or that they should be governed by different laws, well then you’re a fucking bigot. Fine. There’s freedom of speech, that’s great – but own up to it! ‘I don’t think you should have the same laws as other people, I’m a fucking bigot, and that’s awesome. Because your lifestyle, in air quotations, is perverted and wrong!’ A lot of people feel that way, and that’s great, but I don’t like how people can say that and say that they’re not bigots.

“There’s a lot of bigotry in the gay community too. A lot of discrimination. I think that needs to be looked at, too. I saw Panti Bliss’s speech that she gave at a theatre – that he gave. That was great. That touched on a lot of things I felt needed to be said.”

Grant moved to Iceland to record his sophomore record, Pale Green Ghosts. He lives in Reykjavik and, a natural polyglot, is now reasonably competent in Icelandic.

“I am, but this one’s a real bitch. I mean there’s 120 forms for each adjective. It’s hard, it’s really hard. It just takes a long time, but I can form sentences now. I’m starting to learn abstract things, and I know what to learn to be able to express my humour, my personality.”

Pale Green Ghosts mixed minimalist beats with lush strings and stark ‘80s Giorgio Moroder-style synths.

“Yeah, that’s what my heart is made of. I’m a big fan of the ‘70s and the ‘80s. I suppose I’m always trying to bring the two together. I love electronic sounds.”

Lyrically he was even more stark on that second outing, singing about heartbreak, HIV and homosexuality, mining the same short-lived relationship for inspiration. That’s pretty good going, getting two albums out of one six-month relationship...

“I don’t think it really matters how long the relationship was, it just matters how you react to it and what it does to your insides,” he insists. “And that was the first time I had a relationship sober, and I was awake for the relationship, and I fell hard for somebody that didn’t feel the same about me. I didn’t have my old tools of escape, and I fell into a really dark place, a dark hole. I felt like I was a failure. Because I felt that I was never going to learn how to love someone, or allow someone to love me. So that made me feel suicidal.

“I was thinking, here you are, 40 years old, you have taken the trouble to get sober, but things are worse now. Everything is more painful, and I can’t love, or let myself be loved, so that made me feel like giving up, permanently.”

His heartfelt songs of unrequited love and mournful regret earned him a wider audience. Pale Green Ghosts was even named ‘Album of the Year’ by Rough Trade (“That was probably the high point of my entire career. I always loved the stuff they put out”).

Currently touring sporadically, he’s already mentally preparing for his third album. Is it going to be more electronica?

“There is going to be a lot of that. But I’m really into guitar sounds, too. My favourite album last year was Kim Gordon’s Body/Head, that new project she has. And I really loved the atmosphere on that album, the guitar sounds. I also love her singing: she has an amazing voice. I’m still trying to figure out how to bring all these different elements together to make something cohesive. But I’m looking forward to it.”

One last question. Having been through hell and back with booze and drugs, and written about his experiences so brilliantly, is there anything to be said for their creative properties?

He shakes his head.

“No, I just felt cloudy. Towards the end it was difficult to play the piano in that state – I just couldn’t remember anything. But then, the two solo albums are the best stuff that I’ve written. Those were sober so I got better as a result of getting sober. I felt like I could access the creativity. Like I said, I miss sex on cocaine. That’s about it.”

John Grant smiles and shrugs. “I can live without that.”

Pale Green Ghosts is out now. John Grant plays Body & Soul, which takes place from June 20-22