THERE IS VERY LITTLE POINT TO CREATIVITY IF YOU ARE NOT GOING TO SHARE IT
A CONVERSATION WITH ROBIN GUTHRIE
In 1997, following 15 years of making some of the most interesting and brilliant albums of the 1980s and 1990s, The Cocteau Twins called it a day. Their last studio album was recorded while the band was breaking up, and was released in 1996, (Milk And Kisses). Following the band split, Guthrie became the most active solo member. He has released six solo albums, a number of EPs and a further nine albums collaborating with Harold Budd, John Foxx and others. Following the Cocteau Twins, Guthrie got busy establishing a whole new career.
At this stage, he has just released a new EP, Atlas. Β I recently had a chance to speak to Guthrie about his new music and some of his older material as well. But first, we discussed his fame and reputation as one of the most respected bands of all time and his own solo work.
βAfter 40 years, I am starting to find a way to understand how people make impressions about me based upon my work or their perceptions of how it made them feel 30 years ago or something like that. But I am quite ordinary, really.β
The new single, βMountainβ, which is really quite brilliant, has just been released a short couple of weeks following the EP Atlas. βMountainβ was actually recorded in 2022 but is just seeing the light of day now.
βI just have no respect for the music industry or real knowledge of how it works. I just shoot myself in the foot financially, you know,β he said with quite a smile. βI can make artistic decisions now. When I was a younger man, I was surrounded by people from the record label. That was their business. I never really understood that their agenda, perhaps, was not the same as mine. There are considerations to be made.β
ATLAS ALBUM REVIEW
And Guthrie is very clear as to the impact of the music business on an artist. βIf youβre going to put out music, you need to promote it, you need to give it to your distributor for three months, so it gets a slot in, because it is a great big machine. The trouble with that machine is that I am the fuel for that machine. People like me. You can get consumed by the machine, in a way. So, it is not surprising that lots of bands burn out in a couple of years and go and do other stuff and fulfill other things in their life. They can find their happiness in life doing all sorts of things. Then you might suddenly remember, βoh fuck, 20 years ago, I was in a bandβ. It is a little episode in their life that they donβt get constantly reminded of what they were doing 40 years ago. The flip side of the coin is that it is always there,β laughed Guthrie. βBut I have to say, I am in a position of luxury because so many people in bands 40 years ago are not there, and I totally lucked out because there is still an interest in things I did a long time ago, and thatβs extraordinary, absolutely extraordinary and I donβt take it for granted.β
Guthrie is well aware that Cocteau Twins seem to have a lot of mystique for todayβs audience.
βI do believe that you have different media tools now. Pop videos were king, MTV and that sort of thing, and our reluctance to do that sort of stuff. In a way we had some success, but it was fairly invisible because we didnβt run around and make videos of each other and record every sort of conversation, which is what you need to have left for future generations, a trail of crumbs. But there arenβt many crumbs around except our work. That was by design. Making those records was the most important thing. And we kind of shunned it an awful lot.β
Guthrie is quick to point out that he and Elizabeth Fraser, who formed Cocteau Twins, were very young when they started out and they didnβt have a lot of support besides themselves. βLiz and I wereβ¦with all the hindsight and the knowledge I have now of life, mental health, and relationships you get when you are older. We were a young couple and had our own crusade. Liz and I were a couple, she was 17, I was 19. She had been estranged by her family, and left home as a young teen. My father died when I was 19, and the three months between my father dying and taking a tape to 4AD, it was an intense, fusional moment that we just had each otherβs backs. We were young, we were teenagers against the world from this small town. We didnβt know shit about anything. It seems so clear now, but it has taken a long time for that clarity to come.
βEvery teenager has their rebellion in the safety of their parentsβ home, we didnβt have that. We were out there and, on the street, basically.β
Over time, Guthrie has learned a great deal. βThereβs lots of life lessons to learn. One just assumes that you have support and things, but as soon as the band breaks up or the fashion of the music changes, it becomes βwhere have all my friends gone?β These are life lessons, but I am relatively balanced.β
PHOTO CREDIT: JEANNE AIMON
Working on his solo work is basically an extension of all the work he has done in the past. In a sense his past work is as present as his present-day music. βI always was my own person; it is important for me to voice that. In my head, I donβt differentiate the work I did when I was with Cocteau Twins, 4AD, now, I donβt differentiate any of it, because it is just me doing my thing. I was the producer then, I was the person who sat down, put everything together, got the sounds, mixed and very focused, βI got no lifeβ kind of way. Just driven. I had an idea of a thing that I wanted to create. My process of creating is the same now as it was then.β
Guthrie looks back on his work with Cocteau Twins with a great deal of love and fondness.
βCocteau as a live band, all the live shows came long afterwards, and we had to learn how to play the songs we created in the studio. Live was always secondary and terrifying. It was a double-edged sword. I loved traveling, meeting new people and playing concerts in countries. It was a huge thing. I took it for granted, because we were in our 20s and that is just what we did.
This brings us to talking about his new EP, Atlas. βI fail to realize that people may not understand where I am coming from when I make my music. I make my music, do my artwork, and I title all the pieces and that all means something to me and makes total fucking sense to me. It is only afterwards that I realize nobody really got it,β laughed Guthrie. βI expose things, I go down avenues, the title of the record, Atlas, was travel based, but it is also time travel based. I took a picture of a cool, old radio and it had those old AM stations from Soviet bloc countries, and I just thought, βWhat would it be like if we could tune it now?β It was just a picture that inspired me to take some music I had been doing while I had been traveling, because I do a lot of traveling. I write down names, words, things that inspire me. I like to sit in the middle of nowhere with my headphones on and sit by the sea or in a cabin by a lake, believe it or not. It just sounds so pretentious, doesn’t it,β Guthrie chuckled. βSo, the idea of the Atlas, and I travel, and I think where is that going?β
And as well as the new EP, Atlas, there is also a new single, βMountainβ. βI call these orphan tracks. βMountainβ is an orphan track. These are tracks that I recorded between EPs and albums, and they never found a home, so I did nine of them over the past 10 years. They are just tracks that I never put out on anything. I put them on Bandcamp, because it works for me. I know that the people there are actually interested, so I donβt have to talk to them about Cocteau Twins all the time.β
As we wrap up our talk, Guthrie talks about a trip he is planning in Canada, when he hopes to visit the eastern townships in QuΓ©bec. βThere will be another record after that down the line. Generally, it takes me about 18 months between going somewhere and a record coming out. I know it is a bit self indulgent and I have to sell a bit on the side to keep eating, but if I didnβt have to sell a bit you wouldnβt get to hear it, so maybe that is a good thing.
βThere is no creativity in a vacuum. I donβt necessarily believe that, but I also think there is very little point to creativity if you are not going to share it.”
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Main Photo Credit: Violette Guthrie | Background Photo Credit: Jeanne Aimon
SPILL ALBUM REVIEW: ROBIN GUTHRIE – ATLAS
