Genesis P-Orridge - Genesis P-Orridge - Chronicles of ordinary pandrogyny

“Come in now!”. The manager of Electric Priest, the Italian agency for Psychic Tv, leads us into the empty venue, where we sit down on a small sofa. A bottle of red wine in hand, a few minutes later one of the most controversial artists in music history joins us: Neil Andrew Megson, aka Genesis P-Orridge. In those grey, wide-set eyes lies all the experimentation of Throbbing Gristle, the birth of industrial, video art, right through to the immersion in psychedelic rock. He sits down next to us and drinks from the bottle, smiling at us. He's wearing a black dress with skulls and white roses, with Lady Jaye on his arm. We return the smiles and in an instant we feel at ease, as if we were sitting in the living room with mom's “crazy” friend, the one who moved abroad after graduating and still hasn't married at fifty.

So, what are we supposed to do? Are you going to make some stupid remarks about me? (laughs)

No, no, no stupid remarks, we'll just try to ask a few questions...

If you listen to Psychic Tv's studio albums, there's always been a certain psychedelic reference, but in an allegorical sense it became stronger. It happened in 1995, when I was almost killed in a fire in Los Angeles, and Lady Jaye told me, “you don't need to make music anymore, but if you want to, just do what you truly love, don't worry about your audience, just do what you like.” I replied that my favorite genre was 60s “psychedelic-garage-rock”, and she said: “You like that? Then do it!”.

From that moment on, he started sending me tapes, back when he lived in New York and I was still in California, full of this incredibly rare and fantastic kind of 60s garage, and I found myself thinking, "Man, this stuff is amazing!". My first record collection, which included a lot of this material, got stolen when I was exiled from England, so I had to start all over again collecting those records, but it felt like being fifteen again, like rediscovering that music. I became obsessed with it, and I still am to this day. Basically, whenever I'm home, I always feel like listening to music from '63 to '69, and that's enough for me. And it's amazing how people love it, how they can sense in the music that same passion and joy that I feel and see, so I think it's doing the right thing, but it was Lady Jaye who encouraged me the most to do this.

Now, somehow, I've come full circle. We're here again and it's 1969, even though we know it's 2009, because even though forty years have passed nothing has changed, the feeling is the same. Also, the new lineup with the two new girls is fantastic. Before we started the tour, they'd never rehearsed with me. I was in Nepal, on holiday in Kathmandu, so they were rehearsing without me being there, and they had to learn all the music without hearing the vocal part, meeting me for the first time at the first show we played.

So do you still go to Kathmandu now and then?

I'm having a house built there and I went back for almost two months before we started the tour with the Throbbing Gristle in America. Ah, we say, because it's me and Jaye of course, obviously.

So we've been in Nepal looking for land to build the house on. We want to build a kind of alternative art commune, so that everyone we know, like someone who wants to write a book or just wants to focus on painting or songwriting, just has to get to Kathmandu, call our phone number, and they can stay for free for as long as they want.

There will also be a cook, someone in charge of cleaning, so that people can focus on creativity without distractions. Everyone who comes is welcome. We'll have extra bedrooms and other spaces for the people who visit. And if they manage to get there it means they deserve to visit, because it's expensive, it's a long journey, but it's worth it.  

What's happening to the world right now, the reason it's so messed up, is because of greed and selfishness. People say: "It's mine! It's mine! I'm the brilliant genius and I did it all by myself! This is mine and no, no, no, you won't get any of it!". You know, that's the reason everything's gone to hell.

Governments have ended up turning us, the people, into a mirror of the Big Government. They tend to reflect the media, and the media tell us: "Be greedy! Be selfish!". So we're here to say no, that's the wrong way to do it. You can actually share what you have and still be free. Isn't that wonderful?

But people are afraid of that. We've been trained to be consumers, and instead of trying to hold on tight to the little things we each have on our own, we should say: "If I have one little thing and my six friends each have a little thing, then together we have one big thing, whereas alone I still just have a little thing". So, is it better to have one single thing, or lots of little things together that make up one big thing?

The problem is that people are afraid to take risks.

Yes, people have been thoroughly brainwashed by the media, especially by television. When you look at what television has done, you can imagine, say, a thousand years from now, aliens coming to our planet and saying: "My God, what were they thinking, letting television dominate them, their desires and their ideas about what's possible? Living dominated by MTV?". We have reality shows, which are of course completely fake, not reality at all, and if you've watched them, you know it's all manipulated and completely false.

You know, maybe today with technology, the internet, it's possible to create your own spaces and communicate properly with a group of people. Which seems like a good start to me.

Sure, these things are available to people, but unfortunately most of them think "ah, I'll use MySpace so I can feel like a star, a celebrity. Wow, I've got 5000 friends, that makes me special!". That's not the idea. The idea is what you were saying, that is, creating a network, sharing, and saying "here, I have an idea, what do you think?", "yeah, I like it, let's do it together". That's the real power of the internet.

We were thinking about exactly that, and about the possibilities of the internet: when Lady Jaye passed away we sent a message on Thee Majesty's MySpace…

And we kept them all. It was one of those really special moments. We couldn't believe how many people like you – and I thank you for that, by the way – wrote in for Lady Jaye and were truly loving about what happened. It was incredible! We got hundreds of really beautiful messages and I thought, "God, I hope she can really see these!" She would have been speechless. So yes, she's still a source of inspiration, as you might have guessed. The whole concert video is basically centered around her.

That's what we were about to ask you: about the loss of Lady Jaye and how it changed and influenced your music.

It nearly killed me. The first six months we stayed in bed. I don't even remember it. I was so traumatized... But the extended family that had grown up around Psychic TV really took care of me. People came and lived in the house with me, cooked for me, picked me up and drove me around. I don't remember it, but it's incredible how much love and support I received. It was a very powerful thing. We thought: "Wow, we have to make use of this, we have to acknowledge and respond to and accept this incredible extended family."

Gen and Jaye are trying to tell the truth, even when it's painful. But we'll manage. So, about six months later we got a call from American national public radio, and they said: "Do you think it would be possible to do a live radio concert to commemorate Lady Jaye?" And we thought: "Oh God, we haven't played since then." But then we said to ourselves, "she would want us to do it," and we had enough songs written from the last tour before she passed away, she had already prepared all the samples we have, so we thought, "let's try it!" We went to Philadelphia, where they have this amazing studio, just like the old Abbey Road. We played live and the new album is basically that live session. So everything happened because of Lady Jaye and was done for her, including a documentary film about her and me that we've been working on for four years, which will probably be called "The Ballad of Lady Jaye and Genesis," along the lines of John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Jaye always said that what she wanted to be remembered for was one of the most beautiful love stories, and now that's coming true. In fact, with all the messages we've received from you and everyone else, we're going to write a book called "The Lady Jaye Book of Love." We'll put all these messages in it, along with the things she wrote herself, her poems and her photographs.

So, she's still there, she'll still show us where to go. She's the drums, and she has all the energy to do it.

How important is the boundary between the body's mutation and your artistic development? Like, if you had failed artistically (obviously we're just trying to imagine this, no one would ever think that!) would you still keep exploring all of this, including pandrogyny?

Well, really, pandrogyny is what you might call the final project. And once again, that was thanks to Jaye. The first day we met, she put me in her clothes, and when we got married, on Friday June 13th 1995, she bought me a wedding dress and dressed herself as the groom, complete with a drawn-on mustache. She was just brilliant. Jaye had more positive influence on every aspect of my life than anyone else. What was special about her wasn't that she was with me – in fact, it was the exact opposite. It was she who made me more special and who brought clarity to what I wanted. Without her we would have quit back in '93-'94. We would have given up completely.

So you came back to Psychic TV in 2003 because of her?

Yes, absolutely.

Did the same thing happen with Throbbing Gristle too? We know it's a pretty controversial subject.

No, but at one point Jaye said to me: "Don't you think it's really stupid that you and Cosey don't talk to each other? I mean, there was a time when you really loved each other, why don't you write to her and say you should try to forget the bad blood and go back to being friends?" I wrote to her and Cosey wrote back. That's when we found each other again.

And is it still working now?

The tour we just did in America was really great, considering there was a lot of friction at the start. After Paris, we really went through some rough times. We wrote to Chris & Cosey and Sleazy and told them: "This can't work like this. We feel like outsiders, and the three of you are your own thing, we have no power, no voice." And, to be honest, they really took the problem to heart and went back to being genuinely friendly and collaborative. They really made an effort to rebuild the friendship with me. And that made everything a lot more fun. Both the work and the music: everything became better, on every level.

Something truly special happens when Throbbing Gristle get back together. When the four of us are together, that's the chemistry, as they say, and it's something you can't buy. It's something you can't consciously create. It really is an incredible blessing. So when the four of us are together, even if we despise each other to the core, the moment we start playing, everything is immediately fine. And none of us knows why. It's simply a miracle.

We think you're getting the recognition you deserve again for everything you've done over the past thirty years.

But there's also something else. What is it that's driving so many people to listen to Throbbing Gristle after thirty-five years?

I mean, the fact that when you get back together, something special happens?

It's also because the world is in crisis again, just like in 1975 when we founded TG — Britain, at least, was in crisis. The working week was three days, the miners were on strike, the electricity was cut every week for three days, we had the highest unemployment rate since the Depression, there were riots in the streets and so on. And punk rock was born, and TG formed, because of that crisis. Now the world is in crisis again, and anyone with a brain could tell you we've screwed everything up. Materialism and capitalism didn't work, communism didn't work, so what did they create? Totalitarian Capitalism, the worst of the worst. Everyone is copying this idea of strict legislation and a kind of totalitarian control and greed. They don't realize that with limited resources, infinite growth is impossible. There's a limit, and that limit is resources. And this myth that you can have more product and more consumers every year is simply impossible. So they've dragged the world to a point of no return, and there's nothing they can do about it.

But the sad thing is that they're the ones who hold the power…

They have weapons, they have the army, the police, that's it. They've never had the ability to intimidate people through violence, whether real or legal. Nobody listens to them. Everyone knows politicians lie. Nobody believes what they say, and if they do, they're fools. So it's all just fear, everything is based on fear. "If you don't do what we say, we'll arrest you, or put you in prison, or make you disappear," you know how it goes.

The problem is that we've gotten used to being stuffed full of their ideas, in a way.

We had it easy at one point, but it's not easy. On the other hand, if you choose to share and find only true friends and build a small network, you can do incredible things. You have to channel it into creativity, into the search for wisdom and truth, and it's the same with sexuality or gender identity. What does it matter to the police or a politician what I do in bed, or what my body should or shouldn't look like, or whether it should or shouldn't be decorated? How dare they? They look at what they call primitive, tribal societies and mock them, but in reality those societies are more complex, because they find ways to include ritual and sexuality and initiation. So it's all part of a way of living with devotion, it's a spiritual way of life.

So do you think the controversy surrounding your persona is all down to this?

Yes, but not with people like you. Fans have never had any problem with my changes. If I think about it, where we lived in Brooklyn, they first knew me as Lady Jaye's husband who came from England. The only thing that ever happened was at the pharmacy, when they told me: "I think we should call you Miss P-Orridge now." These two really nice Pakistani guys, they were polite and told me that. No one else ever even mentioned it. So, we're all here living in the ghetto and nobody cares, except for the few idiots who hold power. It's much easier than it might seem to convert people to different ways of seeing the world.

Do we have to go through this dramatic change to make things better?

But it's not hard, it's not hard!

I mean, it's dramatic for the people who are used to thinking that way.

Yes, well, they've been brainwashed, so we should first find a way to short-circuit every TV station! Don't you think television has caused a lot of damage? Yes, it's a bit fun, but for the most part it's harmful. The internet could break that power. YouTube is an extraordinary phenomenon. There's a lot of hope.

One last question. We've talked about incredible things over the last thirty minutes — what are the little things that still excite you and thrill you today?

Wow, everything! There's always Jaye. Also, thinking about what's possible. I love daydreaming. That's it, what else could we do? What else could we think? In what ridiculous ways could we say this or that? Or what image could we create that has the power to stop people in their tracks and make them think? So it's all ultimately based on how to think and how to create thought in other people. Which is exciting and never ends, it's infinite. And when I'm gone, there will be someone else who does it… You! And we'll leave behind thousands of children as our legacy, and they'll take what they think we said that made sense, and they'll get the message and share it, continuing to change the world, which, hopefully, will always get better.

In a way, what's happening now is very positive — this collapse of politics and the economy is a wonderful thing. It'll be painful, but it's a good thing, because we've been living in this fantasy for twenty years, in the West especially, not everywhere. If you go to Nepal, there are still people who are destitute, real beggars, the average wage is $140 a year! Basically, most of the world lives just to be able to eat, that's all they do, they're just trying to eat, that's it. It doesn't have to be like this. If we do what we've talked about, group sharing, if everyone did it, there would be almost no one going hungry.

Well, sorry but I really need to go pack now…

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