Porno for pyro

While there is a huge soul and funk influence to their sound, it has always been difficult to pigeonhole their music. But the arrival of their latest opus – the astonishingly accomplished Volume IV: Johnny Pyro And The Dance Of Evil – makes it a next to impossible task to label them accurately. It’s an intense fusion of soul, jazz, rock, disco, pop and hip hop, with a rich seasoning of humour, the likes of which no other Irish band could possibly have contemplated.
And that’s exactly the way the Loose's lead singer, Mick Pyro, wants it. As a teenager growing up in the Dublin suburb of Terenure, Pyro says he was first turned-on to music by listening to Queen and Michael Jackson, who, in their different ways, could jump convincingly from one genre to another on the same album.
“If you’re into Queen as a kid it has a huge effect on you,” Mick says, “because they were able to do a funk song one minute, a metal song the next, and then go into a real tender ballad. It was the same with Jackson. One minute he’d do a rock song, the next a soul song. They didn’t have any boundaries. They were the kind of artists that I was always attracted to.”
His vision for Republic Of Loose was grounded in that openness. “Genres are just ways of putting tags on types of music,” he proffers. “It’s a way of limiting a whole bunch of information and putting it in a box. For me, all types of music have always bled into each other. I think that all music is influenced by other types of music. I don’t believe in codification of anything.”
Catching up with Hot Press for a few pints in the Library Bar at the Central Hotel in Dublin, Pyro is in good spirits. And he has every reason to be. After all, ‘I Like Music’, the first single from the new album, has already become an instant radio hit. And the album has been very well received, Paul Nolan of this parish describing Vol IV as an excellent record “full of cracking rhythms, great humour and highly imaginative stylistic flourishes.”
And yet there remains an inevitable seam of apprehension within the band. You put everything on the line in a record – but once it’s been released it’s out of your hands. You may feel you’ve made the record to earn you an international breakthrough – but you never really know what’s going to happen until it already has...
“This is a hugely ambitious album,” Pyro resumes. “It’s vast in what it tries to set out to do. Maybe it’s overambitious, or some people may think it is – but I really believe we’ve pulled it off. There’s a lot going on – which is what we wanted. But I would still basically describe it as a soul album. At the end of the day, the root of everything we’re doing is soul.”
But hold on a second: before we go any further, why is the new album titled Vol IV: Johnny Pyro And The Dance Of Evil when everybody knows that it’s Republic Of Loose’s third studio outing? Pyro sees it slightly differently. He describes this as the fourth chapter in the band’s history, taking their previous incarnation as Johnny Pyro and the Rock Coma into account. The transformation of Johnny Pyro into Republic Of Loose was, he observes, like the worm that sprouted into a butterfly. Which, with a somewhat mixed metaphor, clears that one up nicely...

At first listen you wouldn’t twig that Republic Of Loose are an Irish band. Then when you get to the songs, well, there’s a lot of angst in there that might just have its origins in the benighted values of what Bob Geldof described as this ‘sceptic isle’. The songs, which are undeniably brave and risk-taking, run sharply against the grain of Irish conservatism and political correctness. Pyro once said that his band has a love-hate relationship with Ireland. Does he still feel this way?
“Yeah, we really rub some people up the wrong way. It happens when you stick your neck out a bit, rather than doing the safe thing that most Irish bands do, which is just play vaguely UK-sounding indie, with a kind of slightly softer edge to it. If you’re doing that you’re obviously not going to offend anybody, but you’re not going to thrill anybody either. If you want to thrill people then you’re going to have to offend people. That comes with the territory.”
Pyro knows all about offending people. He caused outrage with the lyrics of ‘Girl I Want To Fuck You Up’ and, later, the double A sided single ‘Break’ and ‘The Translation’ – which was apparently banned by some radio stations in South Africa, no less. This album is no different, with its highly thought-provoking and often contentious lyrics. Clearly MIck Pyro doesn’t believe in doing things the easy way.
“I always want to make myself feel uncomfortable,” he ventures. “I want to do something that will make me feel like I’m walking a tightrope – both morally and ethically. I want to feel alive as a lyricist and an artist. I don’t want to be bland. Everybody feels loss and pain and everybody feels love and joy. These are the emotions that everybody talks about in songs on the radio. But sometimes I want to talk about something that is slightly disturbing and that stirs me.”
What about the lyrics of ‘Girl I Want To Fuck You Up’?
“That song had such a comfortable groove that I wanted to put something terribly uncomfortable on top of it – something that made me uncomfortable and disgusted with myself,” he explains. “Something that I had to repeat over and over again like a mantra – and that was the most disturbing thing that I could say. I wanted to say something so horrific that, every time I said it, it would make me feel like puking.”
The ‘Break’ single came to grief because of lyrics that apparently celebrate unprotected anal sex.
“This country is supposed to be Catholic, right?” says Pyro. “One of the main things with Catholicism is that it’s against contraception. So, I’m just saying, is this country Catholic or not? Everybody’s got their head in the fucking sand about the fucking dominant church in this country. People want to feel that they are Catholic but they don’t want to accept any of the Catholic Church’s teachings. So I was trying to rip asunder all the sexual morality in this country, just tear it all away, fuck it. The most politically incorrect thing you could possibly say is, ‘Don’t wear a condom’. That’s the biggest taboo. But the Catholic Church is meant to be our dominant religion, so it’s just huge hypocrisy. That song is about complete hedonism with no laws, no nothing. About breaking all moral, ethical and sexual laws.”
In some ways the new album hits even harder, with an avalanche of lyrics that are by turn highly explicit, sleazy, vulgar, shocking, and – occasionally – downright nasty. When he’s not singing about getting his balls licked (the nice bit), Pyro and his posse offer their reflections on drinking, fighting, robbing, buying heroin, and doing each other in all manners of ways and positions. On ‘The Steady Song’, guest vocalist Isabel Reyes-Feeney describes how she beats up a guy, robs his money and goes off to school with a bag of heroin.
“The song is about evil,” Pyro declares. “I wanted to write the most evil thing I could possibly think about. She has such a sweet voice and I thought the idea of her singing that with this beautiful, sunny groove underneath it and me just describing pure evil – I thought it was a really interesting thing to do creatively.”
But it’s on ‘I.R.I.I.S.H’ – featuring Nigerian rappers Millionaire Boyz and The Mighty Stef – that the listener is exposed to true anger.
“If you think those lyrics are bad man, I had shitloads more that I didn’t use for that song,” Mick laughs. “I came up with some really terrible lyrics for it like: ‘I happen to be a Catholic mister/ But all that means is I’m going to feel guilty when I twist your Presbyterian sister’s swinker.’ But I didn’t want to start saying: ‘I’m down with the Presbos/ Down with the lesbos.’”
At one point on the track, Pyro croons: “I don’t believe in murdering kids/ I don’t believe in murdering Brits/ But I believe in murdering tits...” Though the line clearly involves a play on words in the mould of ‘I’d murder a pint’, he’ll doubtless be accused of misogyny anyway.
“Then I go, ‘Bitch your English tits are beyond belief/So, why don’t you let loose your hooters for the cause of peace?’ I like the idea of colonisation through the body! If you’re having sex with an English chick it’s almost like, you know, as if you can plant the fucking Irish flag! But that’s just a metaphor, you know? To be honest with you, the song was originally called I.R.A.I.S.H. But I thought it was a ridiculous statement to make, especially because I’m not qualified. I don’t know enough about the conflict.”
But what inspired him to write what, on the face of it, sounds like an anti-English song?
“The song was born out of being in England on tour,” Pyro says, a hint of anger still evident in his voice. “I was sitting in Cambridge, this posh town with all these intellectuals sitting around and discussing all types of shite. But then they started getting onto the question of Ireland. I was sitting there listening to them and they were discussing us as if we were some kind of – I don’t know – children.
“It was really dehumanising to hear the way they were talking about us. I realised that this is the way an awful lot of English people think about us. There’s this horrific fucking arrogance, which comes from nothing. I was so fucking convulsed with rage. I just went up to your man and said, ‘Tiocfaidh ár lá! Suck my fucking dick’, and then walked out. But it was ridiculous because I actually fed into this caricature (laughs). But you get so angry, that’s what happens. So... I was so full of anger that we were singing that song on the bus the whole time...”
Vol IV features over a half dozen collaborations with various artists, but one of the standouts has to be Sinéad O’Connor’s appearance on ‘The Telephone’.
“It was a real honour to work with her,” enthuses Pyro. “ ‘The Telephone’ is a track I wrote about ten years ago, actually. But I was never able to put it together in a way that would suit Republic of Loose – until recently. Sinéad’s gas. She’s just a stoner (laughs). She fucking smokes weed like fucking crazy. She doesn’t drink at all. She’s a fucking great laugh. I didn’t realise how funny she was. She was fucking ripping the piss out of me. We were on the radio and someone was asking if you had any advice for people coming to the gig and she was going, ‘Well, zip up your mickies!’ God knows – I think it was a reference to something.
“We had a good few laughs with her. On the night of the Meteors, she was real chilled-out after the gig and she produced this fucking huge block of hash that fucking big (makes a big box shape with his hands). ‘There you go. Does anybody want some of that?’ But nobody fucks with her as well, which is the great thing. She can get away with anything. Usually at the Meteors, the fucking pricks would all be coming up thinking, ‘It’s the Republic Of Loose acting the bollix again’. You know, trying to kick us out, but when she’s around everybody’s like (starts making angelic musical sound ) wooooo... People are bathing in her glory! You get reflected glory off her.”
Pyro gave up booze himself for a year, during the recording of their latest album. He documents this on the ‘Poquito’ track, which sounds like a song that would easily slot onto a soundtrack for a Quentin Tarantino movie. But despite abstaining from alcohol during recording, Pyro is still a firm believer in substances enabling, rather than hindering, the creative process. For Vol IV he turned to smoking pot to get the creative juices flowing.
“What’s really good for creativity is weed,” he insists. “Louis Armstrong used to smoke every morning when he got up. Whatever marijuana does to you it doesn’t play havoc with your ego. It doesn’t make you more egotistical or less, but I think it connects you to something slightly different – it connects you to the moon... like, it’s a benign weed. People say that Jesus used to smoke it. And if he didn’t, he probably should have! He would have kicked that Pontius Pilate’s ass! The Buddhas used to smoke it.
“For this album I was off the drink for a year and I smoked a lot of weed and it was fucking great. I mean, I was writing three songs a night. I don’t want to fucking advertise weed, because it can be very bad for you because it makes you paranoid. Weed makes me a bit paranoid; it makes me a bit anxious – but it also gets me into a state of (starts blowing) and I hear a load of melodies come into my head. Load of lyrics. Everything can make you be creative. When I wrote ‘Comeback Girl’ – when that melody came together – I had been on a bender for a fucking week and was out of my head and that song came together in one rehearsal.
“The idea that weed would lead you on to other drugs is bullshit. I know loads of people who smoked weed all their lives and never went near any hard drugs. Drink relaxes me. It’s what chills me out. Spirits don’t. Whiskey is more of a gateway drug – the effects of whiskey are much more similar to the effects of cocaine than weed is. I mean, brandy and cocaine and whiskey all go together – they’re all similar types of drugs.”
But has there ever been a drug that hindered his creative process?
Pyro doesn’t have to mull the question over.
“LSD. Other drugs can mess with your body and mind but I think LSD is one drug that can really mess with your soul. I had very bad experiences with Acid. I took it six or seven times when I was young . I remember Fr Michael Cleary coming into school and saying the same thing: ‘Listen, lads, if you take one thing out of this class today I want it to be this – you can take any fucking drug – but I wouldn’t advise you to take any of them – but stay away from acid.’ He said it was the one drug to never go near.
“If anybody was going to take acid, I would say fucking don’t,” he adds. “I wouldn’t go near anything hallucinogenic. I haven’t taken heroin. When you see people taking heroin it’s almost like there’s a suicide vibe off it. I like drugs that celebrate life. I like life. I’m glad to be alive. God gave me a gift of life and I don’t want to fuck with it... Heroin is like taking a false leap, what’s the point in that? I don’t get the fucking point in it.”
And what about cocaine?
“I’ve written some deadly lyrics in that state (on coke). Anything can help you. Keith Richards was on smack when he wrote Exile On Main Street. Nobody wants to admit that it helped him write it, but it probably did. Any substance can help or hinder you. I think cocaine is a one way street in which you are fucked once you start off with it. It’s just basically about building up your ego and once your ego gets to a certain level it is just going to crash. And when it crashes you’re fucked. I try not to do it very much. I’ve seen it wrecking people’s lives. People are taking so much coke in this country that it’s fucking insane. It scares me.”
Pyro describes himself as a Libertarian. All drugs, he says, should be legalised. It makes his blood boil just thinking about how the government can dictate what you’re allowed to put into your own body.
“I read shit in The Irish Times that makes me fucking sick to my stomach – telling people what they shouldn’t be putting into their own bodies. For some paper to turn around and tell me that I’m immoral for fucking taking a line of whatever, I just feel like asking, ‘Did you take it?’ If they say no, ‘Then how the fuck do you know? You are basing it on a bunch of propositions that you’ve read somewhere. You haven’t a fucking clue’. There’s people dropping fucking dead every day from drink, man, and you don’t see it in the papers. There’s people dying from shit you can buy in a shop. You only have to be over 16 and you can go buy a pack of cigarettes. There’s people dying from that every day but you don’t see it in the papers.
“If this is a free society, people have to ask themselves that question – do you think you’re living in a free society? The basic premise about any notion of freedom is you should have rights to your own body. When the government fucking comes along and tells you what you can put into your own fucking body, you can’t turn around and say you’re living in a free society. If people want to take heroin they should be able to take heroin. The onus is not on the government to look after people’s morality: I’m a libertarian in that way. Why should some moron fucking cop, or some gobshite that hasn’t a brain in his head, be able to put me in cell and take away my freedom – my personal liberty – for something that I am putting in my own body? It’s a fucking disgrace.”
But what makes his blood boil even more is the ridiculous new legislation that would prevent off-licences selling alcohol from 10pm onwards in the hope of curbing so called youth crime. In this regard, there’s a lot to what he says.
“It’s a tradition in Ireland to treat young people like shit and give them no respect,” he observes. “If you treat them with no respect then they are going to be disenfranchised and they are going to get drunk and they are going to act the bollix. This idea that young people are evil, are bad, are a fucking blight on society, that’s a culture thing – it’s an Irish and English thing. In Spain, they bring their fucking kids out with them for meals and the kids are allowed to come and go and the kids are enfranchised into the culture and made part of the culture.
“So, what the fuck are the kids over here going to do? People don’t like children over here! They send them off on their own, and then they go and get drunk and they complain about it and then they want to fucking change laws – to mess with decent people. What I’m saying is, people should be allowed to get a drink any time they fucking want. Who are the government? We are paying them taxes so they can take away our freedoms! It doesn’t make any sense.”
As in his lyrics, Pyro refuses to hold back when the conversation turns towards his personal life. He is refreshingly honest and frank when it comes to his own battles with alcohol.
“I have an addictive relationship with alcohol,” he says, enjoying a chilled bottle of Budvar. “I’m interested in language and what it means: what words mean and where they come from and why they were invented. And the word alcoholic – I would be described as that, I suppose. It’s something that I’m aware of. But I’m always questioning the political ramifications of the word alcoholic. Who came up with it? Why did they come up with it? That was a word that was invented at the start of the last century by a bunch of fucking loolahs who couldn’t handle the pace of drinking! They wanted to get off it so they invented this kind of goofy brotherhood. But that’s complete horseshit to me. I believe in older ways of describing my relationship with drink – intemperance. To be temperant is something that I would aspire to. To be a reformed alcoholic is something that I would never aspire to.”
Pyro acknowledges that he’s obsessed with writing about sex. Curiously, he was a late bloomer, sexually speaking.
“I don’t want to go into it, but it was late! I don’t want to go into what age I was because it’s so embarrassing! I will tell you that it was over 18! I was very nervous as a kid – and I still am nervous. I’m a very nervous person in general. I’m very anxious.”
By way of illustration, Pyro recalls a bittersweet story about how he almost popped his cherry at the tender age of 16.
“I was going out with this girl and she was fucking hot, man,” he recalls. “She was a fucking ride. She kept saying, ‘Listen, I just want to be fucked! I want to be fucked!’ So, as soon as I had a free gaff I invited her around... Even back then I was drinking a lot. I was so fucking nervous because I had acne all over my chest and shit, so I didn’t want to take my top off. She was so fucking hot and I knew it was going to happen, so I was like, ‘Oh, my God! You’re gonna get laid! You’re gonna get laid!’ So, I bought two bottles of wine (laughs) and before she even got to the gaff I had drunk one of them.
“Within forty-five minutes I had drunk another one. And I was puking all over the couch and shit. She said, ‘Mick, I’m going home’. I was like, ‘No! You’re fucking not!’ She walked out of the gaff and went back to her gaff. I got on my bike and my mates were trying to stop me. They were going, ‘Mick, fuckin’ leave her alone’. And the other guy goes, ‘You don’t understand. He was going to get laid, OK?’ And he gave me back the bike (laughs). So, I chased after her and said, ‘You better come back – or we are over’. So, we were over.
“When it did eventually happen, it was pretty organic. It was great. It was better than I thought it’d be. I was just so thrilled that it was happening because all my mates were after getting laid. I was like, ‘Fuck! I’m the fucking loser!’ Women don’t understand the pressures on men when they are young. It’s a competition. My mates would be like, ‘Mick, you must be gay if you’re not getting laid’. And then you start doubting yourself. I think that anxiety I had about sex when I was young is the reason why I write so much about it. I’m trying to compensate. I want to rewrite the rules for myself – I want to be in control of it.
“To be honest with you, I always did well with women even before I was in bands. I don’t know why, but I’m renowned for being this ugly-looking motherfucker. I see some shit on the web. But I’ve always done well with women. I’ve always had hot girlfriends. I always think I deserve it. It’s because I’m fucking Mick-fucking-Pyro (laughs)– that’s what I always think in my head. I alternate from being a fucking complete ego maniac or being a complete fucking...”
He trails off, but the truth is that you know what he means. Mick constantly refers to oral sex in his lyrics. Why so?
“There is something about the visual aspect to it – to see a woman’s mouth around something that you piss with. It’s the taboo aspect of it: ‘I can’t believe she’s taking this in her mouth!’ You are brought up to think of women as pure ...it’s just erotic when a woman does something like that because there’s nothing really pleasurable about it for her – except psychologically it gives them pleasure. But also you get a psychological kick out of going down on a girl because you’re giving her pleasure. I kind of went off that in my old age! Now I kind of subscribe to that old pet thing, ‘Never, never, never, never eat the pussy!”
It’s hard to tell if Pyro is being frivolous. Is there anything else he doesn’t enjoy?
“Nearly everything turns me on. But I don’t like chicks putting their fingers up my ass! You feel like a trumpet! I’m not really into any fake games. If the game is a game, I’ll want it to be real. I don’t want to be fucking role playing. I don’t understand all that shite. I’ve never understood role playing shit. If you’re going to be pretending to do something can you not just fucking do it? I like to be slightly more dominant. Some dudes just like to sit back and let the chick do all the work, and they just relax and look at the beautiful chick. But I find that kind of boring. It’s very hard to be specific about what you like and don’t like. I don’t have any type of women that I like and I don’t have any type of sexual behaviour that I prefer. I like all types! Every situation is different, you know what I mean? Sometimes I’ve been in situations where I do shit I never thought I’d like and I really enjoyed it.
“People’s psychology these days and their sexuality is very influenced by porn. So, when you are young you see a lot of porn and that kind of invades your psyche in a way and it becomes part of your sexual construct, especially if you see it when you are very young. I like being outside. I love that George Michael song ‘Let’s Go Outside’ (laughs). Even though it’s about homosexuals, still, I can relate to it.”
Does he dig a bit of S and M?
“(Laughs) I’m down with that shit. But I’m more into the ‘S’ than the ‘M’. I don’t really like feeling pain, but I don’t mind inflicting it (laughs). Some women like it and some don’t, you know? You have to be very careful! It’s polite to ask! Personally, I like that type of shit, but it depends – every female you meet is different. So, it all depends on the situation. But I think usually you have to be in a pretty established relationship before you get into that type of shit. You don’t want to be doing it to randomers, you know?
“The thing about anything to do with sex or love or physical relationships between two humans is that it’s usually very spontaneous because the chemistry any two humans have, especially when they are that intimate, is always completely different. It’s never similar. Usually nice girls are attracted to me. Like real nasty girls are usually attracted to real pretty boys and wholesome girls are attracted to stinky looking motherfuckers like me. That’s usually the way. My main problem is that I find it very hard to associate love with sex in any meaningful way. I don’t think they are the same thing. So, when I’m writing about sex, I’m writing about sex; and when I’m writing about love, I’m writing about love.”
Judging from the conversation, it sounds like – whatever about love – Pyro will be writing about sex for some time to come. And good on him for having the balls to do so. It makes a refreshing change from the standard Irish rock band fodder, and adds to the sense that Republic Of Loose are among the true Irish originals. Now let’s see if they can make the transition to world-beaters. One thing’s for sure – they have it in them...