The literature-loving singer-songwriter and 80s indie heartthrob is releasing his second album of instrumental compositions on a modular synthesiser in three years.
When did your love of electronic music begin?
When I was a 12-year-old boy. Almost everything in my musical education came from T Rex, David Bowie or Roxy Music, and from Roxy, of course, came Brian Eno. I got a copy of Fripp & Eno’s (No Pussyfooting) in 1973 – the sleeve was very attractive – and that was it, really. It’s an incredibly spare record. I don’t think there are any chord changes on it, just drones and harmonic scales. I didn’t really think about trying to understand it; I just liked the sound of it, in the same way that I liked the feel of the rhythm section in T Rex.
And when did you start making electronic music yourself?
In the 80s, sort of accidentally, after buying a Sequential Circuits Prophet VS synthesiser in London’s Denmark Street. There was a preset on it called Fripp-Eno, which I still love. I used it on the title track of [the final Lloyd Cole and the Commotions studio album] Mainstream, and from then on I began to amass a collection. In my small rehearsal room in Tribeca in New York, in the same building as Matt Johnson from The The, I had the Prophet VS, a Minimoog, one of the first sampling virtual synths, and a Roland sampler that had to have a television screen attached to it, which worked with floppy disks. It was gigantic!
Do you still have them?
When computer audio became prevalent, I idiotically sold a lot of them. I regret that very much. One reason I’m making the music I’m making right now is that I built a modular synthesiser to get away from the computer. I don’t like what’s become of computers in the past 15 years – they’ve become overwhelming. Software is too complicated. It’s like dogs licking their balls.
You’re based in Massachussetts now. You’ve been living in America for years. How does it suit you these days?
It’s diabolical. I mean, mainly the weather’s diabolical. I’m sitting in our attic right now – with my guitars, my synthesisers, and our library – and it’s 9am, and it’ll be 90 degrees in an hour. I mean, I love the winters here, but if it wasn’t for my wife [Elizabeth Lewis, to whom he’s been married since 1989] and children, right now, I’d be in Whitby or East Lothian.
How aware are your sons, William and Frank, of your reputation as a musician?
My oldest son William’s grown up and out of the house now, and he’s a musician too [he plays guitar in Brooklyn power-pop band EZTV]. We lived in New York until he was five or six, and walking around, every now and again I’d meet a gushing fan. He soon realised something’s going on there. Frank’s younger, he’s got two years left of high school. So they know, but it’s always been that way, and it’s not new. To them, I’m just their dad.
How have some of these gushing original fans reacted to your synthesiser music?
Quite a number have been completely bemused. But I remember hearing [David Bowie’s] Low for the first time and being completely bemused, and now I think side two of Low is one of the most beautiful bunch of tracks I’ve ever heard. I had an opportunity to release this music rather than just keeping it in my attic, and people I trust have been incredibly supportive and encouraging. But I know some people are just going to listen and go, “What the fuck is that?”
Are you still writing songs?
I am still making notes in my book. I don’t think [2013’s] Standards is going to be my last album of songs.
Next month, you play your first live gigs as a synthesiser operator in Europe. You’ll be behind a bank of machines rather than behind your guitar. Are you nervous?
I’m terrified. In Berlin, they want me to play for half an hour with [electronic musician Hans-Joachim] Roedelius. He wrote to me the other day, and said: “What are we going to do?” I said: “Well, I can’t play anything from the album, they were all just patches that I recorded and sent to you!” I’m going to have to be the guy that creates the structure that people improvise from. So long as that is my job, I’ll be quite happy.
This summer’s been busy for you with the release of the lavish Lloyd Cole and the Commotions Collected Recordings 1983-1989. Did you enjoy looking back?
It’s been generally lovely. We were incredibly lucky that we wrote those songs in 1983 and 1984, and we made [debut album] Rattlesnakes, which was an irresistible record in a way. I think if anybody had made it, they were going to do well.
What is your fondest memory of back then?
I have so many. Probably the first time going on Top of the Pops, and getting backstage at the Dominion Theatre in London and finding Morrissey waiting for us, at the very time when he was constantly saying, “I never go out, I never go out”. And there he was! The first time performing in Paris, the first time performing in New York. To go around the world and be hot shit for a minute was pretty exciting.
Your band still have a legacy in the indie world too. What did you think of Camera Obscura’s song dedicated to you, Lloyd, I’m Ready to Be Heartbroken?
That’s really one of the nicest things that’s happened to me. Their management sent it to me before the album came out, just to make sure that I wasn’t in any way negative about it. I can hardly imagine how anybody could feel bad about it. A couple of years later, I wrote to them and said, “Do you have an instrumental mix of that? Could I have a copy?”, so they sent me one. When I’m feeling in a particularly chirpy mood, sometimes I go on stage to that. Pointing my finger like a standup comedian: here he is!
Lloyd Cole’s 1D is released on Bureau B on Sunday. For tour dates, go to lloydcole.com
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