Slinky Vagabond | The Eternal Return
The civically brilliant socio-anthropologist Sal Restivo once expertly observed, “If you give me a genius, I’ll give you a social network,” and the appealingly Apollonian art-rock band Slinky Vagabond, helmed by longtime creative confidantes Keanan Duffty and Fabio Fabbri, has unerringly embodied that maxim via music for nearly twenty years now. The material grip of music expands and contracts in connective spirals no human meter can yet measure, and there is something culturally osmotic about what people who generate music together come to know about themselves, the environment in which they are combining forces, and the world into which they ultimately release their audible creations. Having a great deal of grá for grand collaborations from the start, and indeed having pushed the boat out on their band from the shores of a direct desire for the truths only close, circumstellar brushes with disparate creative energies can offer, Slinky Vagabond seems to have soldered itself together as a group with an implicit understanding that air in a conversation does not have to connote absence wherever songs are concerned. By categorically refusing to delimit where they sieved for rhythmicity between one another and gold between the notes, Slinky Vagabond has made meaningful mergings into something of a musical mudlarking license, and it is one that has allowed them the labyrinthine space to produce troves of sounds that may, at face value, have not first appeared to be part of the same cryptic crossword. Slinky Vagabond’s attitude suggests it is that very cross-pollination that conjures and conjoins them.
The original composition of the sonic spacecraft known as Slinky Vagabond, formed in 2007, included Keanan Duffty, Earl Slick, Glen Matlock (yes, that Pistol of a punk prince), and Clem Burke. Over the ensuing years, their ear-expanding entourage has included, among others, immortal Buzzcocks beauty Pete Shelley, the fretless bass mage that is Percy Jones, the saucy Orbmaster General Dom Beken, capering creative Ritualist Christian Dryden, and fellow Bowie alums Ava Cherry and Mike Garson. Joined by some Shakespearean cord, there has always been an enviable hue of the unharried about this group and its participants. They have eschewed and resisted the blighted expectation of detached celerity in the modern commercial music sphere in favor of a set of incorrigibly cool night-charters that keep all the intimacy of the entre nous in the songs but do so via the seemingly unlikely apparatus of open doors and dashing diablerie. The result is nearly as punchy as a clarified cocktail and you get songs like “Prima Donna,” which features Midge Ure, out of it all. Looking at a career and an output like Slinky Vagabond’s, the simple way this band exists through the sustained, sincere efforts of its stalwart founders and a rotating roster of regal talents that also happen to be those founders’ friends is a bit like pouring Cillit Bang onto all that is murking the creative rivers for so many others who, for reasons both good and bad, are signed on to the struggle-some current model wherein musicians become paying guests of an endurance cinema designed to blind and maim them. By contrast, Slinky Vagabond are free to do and see as they please for the reason of their neighborly nisus, and as such they have fluoresced in the transoceanic Eurosphere of their own extraterritoriality.
Some nubby old news for the sleek Slinky-newfinders: Slinky Vagabond is Bourdanian in taste and BodyMap in color-build. There is a vim to their purposely variegated valence and the kick of kirshwasser in their kaleidoscopic technique. They topstitch a textile type of wisdom into all of their tunes, and they are prone to presenting provocative parables that leave no creative cobblestone unturned in the telling, as can perhaps be best evidenced in the title of their debut collection of songs, King Boy Vandals, not just a stellar set of recordings but one with a title that serves as suggestive and symbolic anagram for the band’s name. Accessories to the fabled NYC club scene in the final era wherein there could be truthfully said to exist one, Slinky Vagabond appeared as celebrated guests for Joey Ramone’s Birthday Bash (2007) alongside the New York Dolls, Fashion Week’s Gen Art and Rock and Roll Fantasy Camp (2008), and Marc Bolan’s 30th Anniversary Show (2007) alongside Patti Smith, Tom Morello, Joan Jett, and Ronnie Spector.
The commingling of music and fashion is one of the truest and oldest marriages in the arts, and both Duffty and Fabbri enjoy the benefits of far-reaching foundations in fashion. Clothes, garments, aesthetics, and visual threadery play into every component of what they co-create in Slinky Vagabond. Even the name of the band itself conjures a “look” that speaks of every lost wanderling between McClaren and McQueen who ever put on something dirtily delightful. Doncaster-derived, Keanan Duffty moved to New York in 1993, but not before graduating with a Bachelor of Arts, 1st Honors in fashion from Central Saint Martin’s. Duffty has been for many years a decorated fashion designer, a member of the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA), a University of Southern California professor of purpose-driven design and innovative fashion, and the author of two textile-tuned tomes, Rebel, Rebel: Anti-Style (Rizzoli, 2009) and The Fashion Entrepreneur (Laurence King/Hachette, 2024). Duffty also serves as the Founding Director of the MPS in Fashion Management at Parsons School of Design in New York, is a contributing Fashion Editor for SOMA Magazine, and was named Stylist of the 2016 CFDA Awards tribute to David Bowie. Having established a prosperous label of his own in 1999 – one that sold at 150+ retailers including Bergdorf Goodman, Lane Crawford, Journal Standard, and Bloomingdales – he has worked consistently in successful partnerships with other brands such as Aveda, Ben Sherman, Dr. Martens, Gola, Moods of Norway, Reebok, and John Varvatos Star USA. He dressed the Sex Pistols for their 2003 American tour and collaborated with David Bowie in 2007 to create a fashion collection for Target. Through all of this, he has remained nearly as deliberately anonymous as Martin Margiela when it came to taking face-credit for his contributions, and this doing-it-for-the-love-of-doing-it ethos is shot through all of the music he sews together as well.
Duffty’s brother-in-audio-arms and the musical maestro behind Slinky Vagabond’s frontier of fearless sounds, Fabio Fabbri, has not been seen in public without a guitar since 1971. He formally set out on his enduring career as a recording artist in the early 1980s, and has since released six studio albums within a wide array of bands and labels, including several majors like Warner and PolyGram. Four of those albums were done with General Stratocuster and the Marshals, a band this pun-drunk penwoman is personally hereby submitting as my final nomination for the top slot in the timeless race for Band With The Best Wordplay Name in history. Fabbri’s artistic resume is vast and brimming with novelty, as well as being every drop as steeped in envelope-pushing clothes culture as his bandmate’s, beginning with the New Wave nugget “Nobody’s Bride,” which Fabbri created with one of the most underground-chic fashion models of the hour, the late Peggy Richardson of Peggy and the Pills. Fabbri taught a course in Music Branding for Fashion at the Polimoda International Fashion Institute, where he met Duffty, and has attended to all of his endeavors in music throughout his life like a monastic sleuth, disciplined and dedicated entirely toward finding just the right musical mot juste. He wears accolades and accomplishments such as working with Videomusic, Italy’s answer to MTV, as the co-host of “Guitar Games” with VJ Rick Hutton and collaborating with Coveri Fashion Maison like so many understated, bohemian boutonnieres.
The Eternal Return, Slinky Vagabond’s implacably stylish sophomore full-length, is a record about the circuitous ways we all stay in dialogue with cyclical forevers. Duffty and Fabbri have come a demonstrably long way since their first recording together (a rhythmic rendition of Spandau Ballet’s “To Cut a Long Story Short” with a reverse effect placed to make the guitar sound like a violin), but they have never abandoned that initial search for the unexpected, the anti-banal, and that which chances upon surprise. This latest record is a billet-doux to all the interlocking wonders of life, the dream-matter and the day-residue that coalesce and concertina themselves into one gaudy mansion within our meandering human minds and memories. QRO had a giggle and a gas with Keanan Duffty and Fabio Fabbri in celebration of this hanging cake of an ear-confection they have created for 2025. Read on if you care to laugh along at the musings of three muso-minded thread darlings with proudly punk-ripped professorial pasts:
Always have a go, take any rejection you get in your stride, and stay very grateful for any positives that you get back from someone who says “yes” to collaborating with you.
QRO: Good morning, lovely gentlemen! The magic of seeing your beautiful faces on a Monday cannot be overstated. Thank you both so much for being here! I was and remain a huge fan of King Boy Vandals, and The Eternal Return is just north of showstopping. It feels like several rungs up a ladder taken in one bound and, in direct comparison to King Boy Vandals, seems quite a bit more thematically and sonically cohesive. Did you mean to stumble forward so widely and well?
Keanan Duffty: I think we just found a real groove working together. Fabio and I have been working together since 2017 and initially on the first record we both had a lot of ideas that we just threw into the mix; then, we would select the songs that were meant for that record. With this, we were working together a lot more from the outset. Fabio is off writing music that he then gives to me and I come up with words for it, and we weren’t interrupted by a global pandemic this time! When we started, it was just hanging out and playing music. There wasn’t a big plan. Fabio was very good friends with a guy called Tony Bowers who is the founder of, most famously Simply Red, but before that he was in two bands that I particularly loved, one of which was called Alberto Y Los Trios Paranoias. They were something of a spoof rock band! I don’t know if you’re familiar with The Bonzo Dog Do-Dah Band?
QRO: Oh, very much so! And they’re Still Barking! [laughs]
KD: Yes! [laughs] Okay, so they weren’t like that at all, but kind of like that! Then Tony was also in a band called The Durutti Column with Vini Reilly, and they were signed to Factory Records. Tony had graciously agreed to play bass on the record and I got the idea to call up a bunch of people I knew who were sitting around doing nothing during the worst of the Covid times, and that’s why we ended up with a lot of guest artists on the first one. That formula worked well so we continued it on this one too.
QRO: I’m glad you did because pairings with like-minded, brilliant creatives in pursuit of an unknown beauty has been a running theme for Slinky Vagabond for as long as I’ve been aware of you. In a world of increasing division, could you share a bit about the collaborations you have sought out for this record and why they held merit for you? And could you likewise say a few words about your career-long experience of reaching out to the heroes and friends you’ve wanted to work with over the years – what should listeners and young musicians take away from your willingness to step over hesitation like that and simply go for the people and things you most wanted?
KD: My process in everything has always been to think big and have a go. I always think it is worth asking, and I do a lot of things for other people as well. It’s not like I’m always asking for favors, and I do think it works both ways. I only ask people that I know or have some connection to in one way or another. Speaking about young people who may not have such a broad network, I would say that if they are doing something that they think is interesting and compelling for someone else to be part of, I think it’s important for them to take the steps, and to not be afraid of “no” because sometimes “no” is not about you, it’s about the other person’s circumstance. Always have a go, take any rejection you get in your stride, and stay very grateful for any positives that you get back from someone who says “yes” to collaborating with you.
QRO: That is such exceptionally good advice for anyone of any age or profession! What I love about Slinky Vagabond’s breed of blending with others is that you guys have essentially done all of this working with your friends. For instance, Kevin Grady from Black Plastic did the gorgeous album design for The Eternal Return, and he is quite the visual and musical artist in his own right.
KD: Yes, I met and became friends with Kevin in the early 2000s, he used to produce and art-direct a really amazing magazine called Lemon and he now has Wednesday, which is not so much gothic as focused on dark culture, so it’s everything from Nine Inch Nails to gothic novellas and fashion.
QRO: Let’s call it “a magazine Robert Smith would read!” [laughs]
KD: He would definitely read it and I think he might be in it as well! [laughs] Kevin is a good friend. I met Kevin when he reached out to me and wanted me to introduce him to Bowie because he was doing a Bowie special edition issue. So, I connected him with Bowie and David contributed to the magazine at a time when he wasn’t doing any press. Kevin, Fabio, and I have been friends ever since and we all love each others’ aesthetics and work. Black Plastic has also done a remix of one of the tracks from King Boy Vandals as well so we’ve done a couple of little projects together. We were really happy that he was willing to work on the design of this record because his aesthetic is very beautiful.
QRO: It is unlike anybody else. I almost felt that I knew it was him before I read and confirmed that it was him because he’s got such a unique style and one that is steadily pirouetting around different kinds of shadow-pretty, which leads me to ask you about the title of this latest release, The Eternal Return. It speaks to me of the perennial nature of finding oneself, having bits of one’s personality come back and back as we go through life, and I did hear you say that it references the repetitive nature of events in cyclical time, but I wonder if you might share out why this particular concept was so forward in your mind this time around?
KD: Oh, there’s a couple of things. First of all, it’s like the grooves on a vinyl record; you move forward and then you start again. Fabio and I really trust each other both sonically and lyrically, and I can’t think of an instance where he has ever told me that a lyric didn’t resonate or fit, and likewise when he will bring me a demo of music he is working on, they are nearly always almost complete, but we have that relationship where we pretty much finish everything we bring to the table and that’s a nice circle to be in. What would you say, Fabio, would you agree?
Fabio Fabbri: Yes, my collaboration with Keanan is fantastic because at first I record with lines of vocals that are just onomatopoeic words [scats a few of those onomatopoeic words with contagious joy]. Keanan is wonderful because he will change these into real English words, but sonically the achievement must be the same because the sound is very, very important for us. The words have to sound in the best way, and we have really clear ideas about this. So, about The Eternal Return, and the return of this cycle, it is a fantastic experience and I am really happy that you see this. From my point of view, as a musician it is a real lesson to discover new pasts without changing our roots. The past is very important. Don’t forget the roots. For me, the specialness of this album is endless. It is logical because every return can be eternal if you don’t forget the roots. We love, and I especially love, the artists who don’t forget that. One example: David Bowie. At the best moment of David Bowie, he didn’t forget the roots.
The past is very important. Don’t forget the roots.
QRO: I love knowing that these brilliant lyrics start out as creative crib speech between the two of you! I think Bowie is one of the best examples there has ever been of what is latent in this title because, no matter how far astray he willingly went from whatever he had done before, he was always starting something new that still included that skinny young man who was sitting on a wooden stool in a woman’s dress with an acoustic guitar. There’s a lesson for everybody about connectivity in that, and you guys have made a record that is, to my ears, about that. What has been the best “return” thus far that has come to you via The Eternal Return?
KD: That’s a great question. I contacted Mike Garson to ask him to play on a couple of tracks. We sent a couple of songs over, he picked a couple that were the slower tracks, and he asked me what I wanted. Fabio had a tremendous amount of work cut out for him editing down the solo because, as Bowie used to say, “I’m glad we didn’t have to pay him by the note!” [laughs] He can just play every single note on the piano millions of times, and it’s great! And that was a big return on this album. I think that’s something else about working with guests. You’re sending something out to them and when it comes back, it returns to you oftentimes in the perfect iteration that you were looking for. The artists that I love are the ones that I reached out to. I know what they do, and I’m asking them for what they do, so when I get the results back, it’s magical! It’s never a let-down; it’s always an elation for me. Same thing with Kevin Grady. He probably did ten different renditions of the cover artwork and we really had a hard time picking one. You pick the right people to work with and it comes back as a sort of magical gift.
QRO: That’s wonderfully said, and never truer words were spoken. I wish more people knew those words, so thank you for saying them. How about these words I’m about to hit you with, a few descriptive words I wrote down to describe this album: cosmic, galactically gallivanting, ethereal, Saturnian. What words would you choose if you were trying to do the same?
KD: That’s another great question! Can I be self-deprecating?
QRO: Keanan, you’re British; you have to be self-deprecating or else they instantly revoke your citizenship! [laughs]
KD: [laughs] They really might! I said this to another journalist and it made him laugh, but I would say “derivative” is one because I’ll say it before anyone else does. I’m speaking simply for myself, not Fabio, but my process is very magpie. I look at aesthetics and ideas that I like, and I draw from them, and I try to do something that gives them my spin. I teach a lot of students, and I have for more than fifteen years. I tell them all the time that it’s very difficult to have an original idea, an original thought, especially given where we are in human culture. Sometimes it is about taking disparate aspects and putting them together to make a new thing, a kind of spin on it that is yours.
QRO: I think that is absolutely true even of the people that we might classify as tide-turning in human culture, and I immediately think of Kurt Cobain trying to merge the sounds of Boston, The Beatles, The Clash, Public Enemy, and The Pixies in his work. Any true artist is absorbing stimuli all the time, and much of it is totally subconscious, and what I think is wonderful about Slinky Vagabond is how wide the two of you made whatever is feeding your well. I like music that takes people in a different direction and I think you’ve made some.
KD: Thank you!
QRO: I want to ask you about a few specific songs, starting with “Lady Bump Discotheque!” My 90s rave sensibilities didn’t even have to get to the lyric “white lights and whiter lines,” before I knew what its surface “boost” if you will was going to be about, but in truth I think this is almost a Pogues-esque story song. What was the inspiration here? Particularly with regard to lines like “It’s the singer, not the song; it’s another shade of wrong,” that’s a serious line in a party atmosphere.
KD: Well, with this one, Fabio already had the music completely written, and we did a photo session in a hotel in Milan a couple of years ago where the hotel had a very rock-n-roll vibe. One of the rooms had an old disco sign, probably from the seventies, that said “Lady Bump Discoteque” and we were photographed in front of it. We thought it was a great title because it was sort of irreverent, and what I was really basing it on was my own growing up in a northern English town, the kind of Saturday night going out, but also I went to the album launch party for Pulp’s This Is Hardcore. It was in the penthouse of the Park Lane Hotel in London. Me and a friend of mine went and we were already in an altered state [laughs]! We got to this party, went up the elevator, the doors opened and it was like Caligula! Because we were in an altered state, we managed to sort of miss the party and get there right as it was ending, but it was perfect for Pulp at that time; it was chaos, it was London, and all the bad things about Britpop were all in one room!
QRO: Ah yes, that salacious second fleet-footed period of human history wherein cocaine was more valuable than gold and the world hadn’t yet fully given way to the didactic monstrosities that now rule it with such prudish, puritanical anti-fists! [laughs]
KD: Absolutely! It was another world. I don’t live like that and haven’t lived like that for a long time, but I grew up when the house music and acid house thing hit the UK in late 1987-1988, and it was kind of like punk in that it leveled the field and brought everybody together. I really loved that, thought it was fantastic, it was a great three years or so, and out of it came some amazing music. We are distant enough from it now that you can quantify the positive aspects of it.
QRO: That movement was a defining factor of my young years and I think you have captured the feeling of it quite beautifully.
KD: Well, thank you, and it’s great for a slow song as well because you could do this with a four on the floor and an 808 drum machine and everything, but that would be trying too hard and I wanted to make it narrative. You mentioned The Pogues as well, which is very flattering, and you know Shane [MacGowan] had a bass player called Bernie France who is the brother of a very, very good friend of mine so I had a lot of the inside story of The Pogues, as well as Shane MacGowan and the Popes. Shane was such a great lyricist.
You pick the right people to work with and it comes back as a sort of magical gift.
QRO: Not just because I’m fully Irish, which would be enough as we never had a better spokesperson than Shane, but because anytime I’m holding a pen I am trying to be him, there is a picture of Shane framed next to Patti Smith on my desk. Shane was a master people-observer and I think you’ve done something similar here where we are getting these “Fairytale of New York”-style vignettes of various characters.
KD: He wasn’t afraid, and you know the lyrics in “Fairytale of New York” that people have become somewhat critical of, it’s not politically correct or whatever, but he was so good at writing characters that were what they were. They’re saying these words, and that’s what this character is, so I think we have to be real about that.
QRO: Now there you’ve hit upon the pettest of all my pet subjects, Keanan! Any of my friends will tell you that I never shut up about the need for the absolute real, nor do I hedge my infinite verbal assaults on anything which dares try to prevent it, especially in the name of so-called “politeness,” which in those contexts is nothing but fear and conformity. My attitude about all of that is very much akin to Shane’s attitude about homeless people. He would give a homeless person whatever they asked for, be it money, a drink, a bump, a hit, a cigarette, or anything else because his feeling was that it wasn’t his place to judge them; it was only his place to try and help them, to make their minute better, no matter how that looked – and isn’t that the soul of what most of us want from our music as well?
KD: For certain, and with “Lady Bump Discoteque,” I don’t think the lyrics are controversial, at least not to me, but we wanted these characters to be knowable and real.
QRO: Well, congratulations on success there because I do know these characters, and am these characters! They’re in the book of my life. Speaking of books, I want to ask you about “Strange World,” the first single off this record, and how it is taken in part from the Frank Edwards book of the same name which queries our perceived boundaries between dreams and reality. Would you argue that music is the only portal allowing perhaps not safe but certainly sacred passage between the two?
KD: It does the best job, I think. I read a lot of sci-fi and dystopian stuff, and there are several songs on this record inspired by that, including “Earthman Go Home.” I’ve had that book for forever and I’ve always thought it was a great title. Strange World, I found that book a few years ago and it is conspiracy theories from the Fifties and Sixties, so that inspired that song in one way but we are also in such a strange world, and it just gets stranger as technology progresses. There is so much happening, geopolitically, all over the world, and, I don’t believe this personally, but there is so much conversation around whether this is a virtual reality that we are living in. While I don’t necessarily believe that is the case, we are living in a virtual reality via everything going on with cell phones and the way that people are looking at everything through them. The reality that they see is not reality, everyone presents as their best selves or they can be critical and hide behind the screen, so these songs capture some of that, I hope.
QRO: Music, much like any well-written book, takes us into universes and atmospheres that we can’t access any other way, and we are meant to drop into a singular world when we engage them. With that in mind, do you think your own “Strange World” is more escapology from the shallow mayhem around us or is it more a faithful snapshot of that bent reality?
KD: I think it is a snapshot. I don’t make political commentary in an overt way because I’m a fashion designer, and I don’t think that’s the place to make bold political statements because they can ring quite falsely, or without seriousness, but I do like politics with the small “p,” personal politics, and to maybe shine a light on something.
QRO: Let me just say from 14 very long years teaching that I feel that particular spotlight of “Strange World” is especially necessary for any combatting of the angle of the plummet I know too well this generation to be embroiled in, so good on you! Speaking of plummeting, “Icarus Falls,” I read, stems from a glorious combination of sunburn tendencies, unbridled ambition, and the somewhat spectacular falls from grace that I will argue are the de rigueur route of any real artist.
KD: That’s right! There are so many paintings through classical art of the tale of Icarus, Icarus falling, and I think it’s a good thing for humans to go for it and reach for it, and not have society tell them that they can’t do something, or their own internal voice telling them that they don’t have the capability. And I’m not making any sort of critique of anyone who might have that sensibility at all; I just think it’s always good to have a go because you never know what might transpire from that.
QRO: That’s marvelously encouraging for people to hear. Can either of you share anything about any of your own falls and what valuable wisdom they have brought to your life?
FF: “Icarus Falls” is a strange kind of song, but an interesting one because to me it is about our connection, mine and Keanan’s. At first, I told Keanan “I don’t like this song; I want to fire it, it’s shit!” [laughs] But Keanan convinced me, the song was born, and now it always makes me think of Leonard da Vinci. Our studio, Wolf Mountain Studio, is between Florence and Vinci. It’s great because the first flight experiment of Leonardo da Vinci took place on a hill between Vinci and Florence.
QRO: Wow! That is completely serendipitous that the original flying man, which is what I always call da Vinci, was so near to where you wrote about this other famous flying man! I immediately think of physicists like Brian Cox and Neil DeGrasse Tyson reminding us all as eloquently as they do that everyone who has ever gone before us is still here in the form of their molecules, their dust, their indestructible energy as it were. We are, quite literally, breathing them in and living amongst them even when we falsely feel them as being very far away. So, for as much as I don’t tolerate less than the highest reach in myself, on my bad days, I do remind myself that I am breathing in Mozart.
KD: Yes, I think everyone should at least reach for the biggest thing because the likelihood is that most of us are going to fall short, and if you aim for the middle, you are falling short of the middle rather than the top. If you go for the big idea, you may hit it or you may land somewhere close to it. Not everyone is equipped with the self-confidence of Prince, let’s say. Prince was a genius in so many different aspects, and his genius was really evident. There are very few of us like Joni Mitchell, for instance, another amazing songwriter with a beautiful voice and a commentator on society.
QRO: That reminds me of something that Thomas Dolby told me about producing a Joni Mitchell record, which he shared was one of the great heartbreaking failures of his own life from which he learned much, and I’m paraphrasing here, but essentially he said that she is so singular and so unique that it’s a miracle she could have a career because when you are that gifted and everyone knows it, it’s not necessarily a gift to you. You are the one bearing a burden that no one can understand or relate to and it’s very isolating.
KD: Of course, and I will say that I have had a long career in creative worlds, and I’ve had a lot of failures. I’ve fallen down, things have gone horribly wrong, and things haven’t worked out. You have to learn to be able to get past those things, and you learn by experience.
I have had a long career in creative worlds, and I’ve had a lot of failures. I’ve fallen down, things have gone horribly wrong, and things haven’t worked out. You have to learn to be able to get past those things, and you learn by experience.
QRO: There is no other way, a fact your song “Ad Astra” seems, fittingly, to suggest from the viewpoint of an incredibly dreamy, spacey reflection on the things beautiful outsiders learn that perhaps more conventional people never come to, and what being in harmony with the spheres as it were truly does cost a person. I’m particularly struck by the line, “When an actor cries, the truth is hard to find.” Would you agree with my wonderful friend Niko Bolas who says, “Being an artist is not necessarily a desirable state?” Also, are there elements of the Starman in this song within you that you can recognize? Much of this one certainly seems to describe our dearly departed David Bowie, whom I know was a beloved acquaintance and workmate of yours.
KD: When Bowie passed away, there were a couple of friends of mine who said, “You don’t seem that upset about it,” and it was kind of a weird moment because I knew him, but I wasn’t a buddy hanging out all the time and going round to his house. I worked with him for over a year, and people phoned me after to ask things about his fashion, and his impact on society and creativity, but I’d never expressed anything personal when he passed. This song is the first time I’ve written anything personal about David Bowie, not David Jones. I worked with David Jones. Bowie is a character, and people forget that. In “Ad Astra,” I’m writing about David Bowie the character, not about David Jones the man. They were quite different, and I saw him at times switch it on. He went from being a normal guy to suddenly becoming the superstar. So, that’s why when I came to write these lyrics and Fabio had this beautiful piece of music, it was perfect to get Mike [Garson] on it because Mike, along with Earl Slick, whom I’ve known for a long time, worked with David the longest. It was great to have that touch. There are a lot of references to Philip K. Dick in there, in particular Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?.
QRO: Utterly fantastic. I wish more people today read our boy PKD! He has always been a royal favorite of mine. It’s worth mentioning too that the amount of young musicians I meet who name David Bowie as their primary hero, my beautiful and beloved Inhaler instantly jumps to mind, is one more piece of that eternal return you’ve written about so symmetrically on this album.
KD: You know Bono talks a lot in interviews about Joy Division because Joy Division and U2 were running parallel for a while in the early days. The Edge took a lot of his guitar playing from The Banshees, Public Image Ltd., and Joy Division, and U2 openly aspired to be like Joy Division. Well, one of Joy Division’s biggest influences was Bowie! They were even called “Warsaw” for a bit at the beginning, after Bowie’s song “Warszawa.” It all goes round and round.
QRO: Like a cosmohedron carousel! And having the antenna to receive what is being brought to you in those cycles may well be the most valuable trait any artist can have or develop. Before I release you gentlemen back into your lives and away from this iron glitter-grip you have so generously tolerated for an hour: If The Eternal Return had a mantra or tattoo, what would it say?
KD: I would almost say, simply, “Keep at it!” Fabio and I are gentlemen of a certain age, and we’ve been doing this for all of our lives.
FF: I like your word “mantra.” I would say mine is “try to innovate and maintain your roots.” What can you innovate if you don’t have the culture of your roots? Especially in music, which is my passion, but also in life things.
QRO: Well, I believe it was another great Italian, Cicero of Rome in this case, who said “He who does not know history remains forever a child,” and I very much believe that to be true. It’s the same reason the first thing the Vikings did when they arrived at your port was to burn all of your books and destroy your written history, because if you don’t have your past, you have nothing on which to know yourself and you are very easily controlled. That’s why if I was answering this question I would say “If you want to learn new things, read old books.” And, listen to The Eternal Return! [laughs] Thank you both so much for today; it’s been a real thrill.
FF: I like your mantra, and it’s true! Thank you for today. It has been so great to speak with you.
KD: Yes, thank you for this. It’s been a pleasure and let’s chat again soon. Cheers!
-photos: Jayme Thorton
