Infant Terrible

Prolific English songwriter Billy Childish and his latest group, the Musicians Of The British Empire, recently hit Dublin for a gig at Whelan’s, and one of the tracks they performed during a set of rip-roaring rock and roll was entitled ‘Joe Strummer’s Grave’. What is the song actually about?

“I suppose it’s about how all the things I liked in punk rock went to shit,” replies Childish, sitting in his dressing room after the show. “But I still respect Joe and like him. It changes as it goes through, it says “Joe Strummer’s moulding in his grave”, but I have him laughing, because I don’t want him to be totally miserable. Joe was on the up at the end, he was into this festival sort of scene. Not my type of thing, but I liked Joe because he was a rock and roller.
“I was very surprised and upset after ’77 to discover that a lot of the punk rockers were David Bowie fans. Whereas, the thing with Joe was that he was really more out of rock n roll, which I always liked.”
Indeed, Billy and his band performed covers of a number of rock n roll classics during the show, including songs by The Kinks and Jimi Hendrix. Does he generally prefer listening to older music?
“I don’t listen to music,” Billy states. “I used to. From when I was about three or four, I was brought up listening to The Kinks, The Stones and The Beatles. And if I choose to listen to music now, it would be that type of thing, with maybe some blues and The Ramones. I don’t like music that’s pitched at a market. In the car today, we had the Leonard Cohen song that’s number one, or was over Christmas. It’s so transparently phoney. It doesn’t mean that the song is inherently that way, but it’s the performance.
“I’m not that familiar with Leonard Cohen, but I thought there was something in the lyrics. Someone in the car said that their daughter really liked it. I said, ‘Well, how old’s your daughter?’ and they said, ‘Eight’. I said, ‘An eight-year-old can’t even understand it!’ But I don’t understand adults falling for it, because it so obviously lacks authenticity.”
Purity in music and art appear to be of considerable importance to Billy Childish. In addition to his prowess as a musician, he is also a talented painter, and at one point had a relationship with Turner Prize nominated artist Tracey Emin. In 1999, Childish and Charles Thomson co-founded the Stuckist art movement as a reaction against conceptual art, although Childish left a couple of years later, disagreeing with the way Thomson presented the movement to the media.
Still, the point had been made – Childish is not a man who subscribes to orthodox thinking where art and culture are concerned.
“Conceptual art is okay if it’s used as a challenge towards an orthodoxy,” he proffers. “But when it’s promoted as a state-funded orthodoxy, it’s a bit like Barclay’s Bank using ‘God Save The Queen’. It devalues any relevance that it had, because conceptual art is one idea that is really about taking something that isn’t art and calling it art. That can be a really good joke when Duchamp does it in 1916, and when it’s called anti-art. When conceptual art becomes a state-funded orthodoxy, it’s like throwing away swear words; it’s disempowering.
“So why are people celebrating being disempowered? Because the only energy it has got is that it will annoy an orthodoxy. If the orthodoxy want it, then you know that it’s not the real thing.”
Over the years, Childish has been name-checked by many high-profile artists, including filmmaker Larry Clark (who at one point expressed an interest in making a movie out of one of the musician’s books), Kurt Cobain, Mudhoney, Beck and Blur guitarist Graham Coxon. Perhaps the biggest band to cite him as an influence this decade are The White Stripes. Was Billy pleased about receiving the endorsement of Jack White?
“I’m easily flattered, so anyone who likes me or likes what I do, I always enjoy that,” he responds. “But they’re double-edged swords, these things. I think a lot of the time, people like to have ideas about what other people are about. They’re very enthusiastic to begin with. I get on with people – I got on fine with Jack and I liked him, like I got on well with Beck, and I got on well with the chap from Pearl Jam. But some people don’t realise that I’m not a fan of things much, and sometimes that can be disappointing to them.
“If I’m working with someone, or if someone wants to work with me, I’m not particularly in awe. So I will say what I want and the way I think it should be done. These don’t develop into working relationships, because I think I’m too awkward for them!”

Billy Childish And The Musicians Of The British Empire’s Punk Rock At The British Legion Hall is out now on Damaged Goods Records