The Stool Pigeon music newspaper

An introduction in favourable circumstance should always lead on to a conversation. So first let’s have an introduction. In any sane world Peter Murphy shouldn’t need one, but this world is wild at heart and weird on top. Bauhaus formed around the core of elfin working class intellectual and misfit Murphy and the prodigiously talented guitarist and androgyne Daniel Ash in the late seventies, when punk’s promise had already soured. They were alienated as much by the perceived “scam” and thuggery of punk as they were by the grind of suburban existence in Nottingham’s “flat field”. They sought refuge in a fantasy landscape constructed from bastardised scraps of Romantic fiction, glam rock, DIY attitude, Oscar Wilde, Antonin Artaud and situationism. The pair found soul mates in art school educated brothers David J (bass) and Kevin Haskins (drums) and their first foray into the studio threw up the epic ‘Bela Lugosi’s Dead’. If Paul Morley had inadvertently created goth by using the term to label Joy Division’s doom-laden and existential rock, then Bauhaus had inadvertently recorded the movement’s anthem. It was a heavy and dramatic dirge that spoke of musical magpie urges. Guitar playing as taut and itchy as anything deployed by Wire or Gang Of Four was counterbalanced by an obvious ear for dub reggae rhythms. It was preposterous yet brilliant and still sounds fearsomely modern now. (Murphy calls it “the ‘Stairway To Heaven’ of the eighties”.)

Almost immediately, they polarised opinion. Their audience loved them and the press hated them. The still rakishly handsome singer sighs: “We were good looking and we covered David Bowie - it was a cardinal sin. If we had dressed like Gang of Four or Joy Division we wouldn’t have been hated. The whole thing is homophobic. There was a really strong homo-erotic element to what we did - a glamorous element; a very Wildean element. But also we were smalltown kids who were very stupid in a sense. There was a class bias element to it as well. The presumption is that you have to be well educated in order to be geniuses. Genius isn’t dependent on education. Genius is inherent.”

After what was perceived as a hypocritical feature penned for the Melody Maker by Steve Sutherland, the band tricked him into walking out on stage with them and then got him to interview them in front of a crowded Lyceum. This and other stunts, such as replying to accusations that they were Bowie copyists by releasing ‘Ziggy Stardust’ as a single, won them little critical applause, which is a shame because Bauhaus were one of the best bands in an era overcrowded with brilliant bands. Their fearsome punk funk standards, like ‘Kick In The Eye’ and ‘The Passion Of Lovers’, can be heard resonating in modern abrasive disco numbers by LCD Soundsystem and The Rapture. Early atonal numbers, such as their cover of John Cale’s ‘Rose Garden Funeral Of Sores’ and ‘Double Dare’, had a big affect on progressive American hardcore bands like The Butthole Surfers and The Jesus Lizard. Their sound reverberates through all of the goth, alternative and overcoat bands of the eighties in the UK from the Sisters of Mercy to Echo and The Bunnymen. And their influence stretched even further in the US, informing alt. rock titans Jane’s Addiction and even the artier end of grunge.

Despite leaving behind two unimpeachable albums (In The Flat Field and Mask) and a clutch of great singles, they eventually dissolved in 1982 after Murphy contracted pneumonia. Ash and the brothers eventually went on to find success with Love and Rockets in the States, as did Murphy with his solo career. But the UK press has never come close to forgiving them for their initial arrogance. The band have played several live shows together since 2005 and even recorded a new album, Go Away White, for Cooking Vinyl, but even by the time we meet Murphy, in a secluded cocktail bar in the Aldwych Waldorf, Bauhaus have already broken up again and won’t be touring to promote the record.

He arrives slightly late. He has been freshening up because he knows he’s being sketched, says his press lady. He smoothes down hair and fixes an elegantly tied purple scarf in place as he slides into his seat. He is alive with nervous energy and taps rhythmically on the table as he speaks and stirs sugar into his black tea, so much that you think the spoon will dissolve into the sweet liquid. His natty leather jacket has been given to him for free by his designer friend but he can’t get the zip to work, leading him to believe that he’s been handed a second. We all have a go at zipping it up, but the jacket isn’t budging. In the hotel and round the corner outside of St Peter’s, he has photos done while he remains undone.

When he mentions the church, he is quick to add: “It’s not a graveyard, it’s just a nice space.” And he’s right: it’s an airy courtyard filled with trees and benches seating builders drinking flasks of coffee. The only thing permeating the air is the distant sound of an audience clapping a uni-cyclist in Covent Garden. It’s not gothic but still he’s suggested a church to have his photograph taken in. It’s hard not to wonder how this engaging man and practising Muslim feels about his Catholic upbringing: “Personally speaking, I loved being a Catholic. I was happy to go to mass, to sing, to have morning assembly at school. In one sense, I enjoyed the ceremony of the mass but in another I didn’t like the repressive aspect of sexuality. I left the Catholic Church quite easily, but it took me some time to work out the fear and the sexual elements of the church. It’s put into a child on quite a subtle level from the age of five or six. A lot of it is purely fear based - very us and them, especially concepts of Hell. It leaves a lot of damaged people behind.”

One doesn’t ‘convert’ to Islam as such, because in its true form it is seen as a universal religion rather than one belonging to any region such as the Middle East. Murphy has lived in Turkey for some years now and it seems like he is in as good a position to comment on both religions: “It is a monotheistic religion like Catholicism and Judaism. Islam accepts the same chain of prophecy and revelation, essentially. To that extent an ideal Muslim would accept a Christian or a Jew. At the core of it, there is something very important and clearing about the mysticism of Islam, which is what the West calls Sufism. The benefit of this perspective is that it focuses on the direct relationship between the creator and the servant or the faithful. There is no intermediary. That is quite modern and it is an ultimately modern religion. But that’s not to talk about the formal structure of Islam or the manifestation of how we see it now in the West. We receive through the clichés of ‘hotspots’ and so forth.”

This vantage point has led him to believe what a lot of us in this country, but not of enough of us, already know: that the UK isn’t handling the rise in popularity of Islam very well. “I once heard an MP of a London borough raising money and advocating the building of a mosque,” says Murphy. “Ironically, in Turkey the building of a mosque is a political statement by fundamentalists who want to spread dogmatised conservatism that is politically motivated. Muslims who act this way are acting in a very un-Islamic way and they are causing a negative response to Islam. They are an enemy that has been manufactured in the Western mind.”

And his prognosis is quite bleak: “The UK can’t learn anything from Islam while they are trapped in the way of thinking of Islamic people as being from the 14th Century. Sufism really does approach the matter in a way that is connected to true Islamic notions. It’s not the very conservative face of Islam we see now.”

It must be true that many rock stars have chosen their vocation to get over childhood shyness and a sense of social inadequacy. From Morrissey back, this much is obvious and Peter agrees he was like an actor taking on a role. “I think every child is nervous and shy, especially adolescents,” he says. “When you’re brought up in a working class environment, the options that are given to you fall very short of the potential of most human beings. You are given very limited options. Then it was, work a job for life and somehow university was not advocated by your school. You were confined to this serf level of existence - a complete insult to you as a human being. There is a dislocation between you and society, sure.”

He also agrees that the reading of lyrics to songs such as ‘Mask’ were borne out of him suffering with depression. “Yeah, for sure. As a child. Lots of people have it, but it wasn’t labelled then. You either wouldn’t admit to it or it wasn’t recognised. England is, or was, a very depressing place. Where there is sorrow there is true humanity. A lot of sorrow - a lot of depression - is a symptom of a society that has lost a lot of its spirituality. And I think a lot of art is born out of this.”

But he’s an uncommonly witty raconteur when pressed. What’s the most trouble you’ve ever had with the law? I ask him, and he tells the following story: “We were playing some terrible Mancunian gig - a grimy, horrible place, so I was in my leotard and full make-up and there was this meathead at the front of the stage going, ‘Fucking Dark Entries. Ha ha ha!’ He looked like a wildebeest and kept on spitting at me. I was completely covered in phlegm and ignoring him, but then, just once, one of them landed in my mouth. And that was it - I just lost my temper and went in and had a fight with him. So I was arrested by the police. I must have cut his skin when I hit him because I was charged with actual bodily harm. And I was still in my leotard and make-up. The two arresting officers were the most wonderful and understanding people, but they had to stick me in a holding cell in a Manchester police station with a lot of other people who were due to appear in front of the magistrate the next morning - these hulking brutes. As luck would have it, they were more afraid of me and went and sat at the other end of the cell. They couldn’t get far enough away. I was relieved.”

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