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In a North London photo studio, surrounded by an army of charmingly sycophantic stylists in tight white T-shirts and low slung jeans, the country’s last great rock star is making an exhibition of himself.
Dropping his trousers to his ankles, Brian Molko tucks his cock between his legs, and sashays over to the studio’s full-length mirror to check out the black triangle of pubes covering his newly-created ‘front bottom’. As the studio stereo, tuned to London radio station XFM, blasts out the Chemical Brothers 1999 single Let Forever Be, Placebo‘s frontman begins parodying the lyrics delivered by Oasis‘ Noel Gallagher, the song’s guest vocalist, and croons, “How does it feel like, to take it up the arse?“
He knows damn well that this little snapshot will make it into this article.
“The intelligent artist,” he observes archly in that unmistakably shrill nasal whine, “is one who understands that he’s manipulated by the media and manipulates the media right back.”
Since Placebo lit up the British music scene in the summer of 1996 with the release of their brilliant self-titled debut album, their charismatic, ever quotable and extremely self aware vocalist has always been a journalist’s dream, a pocket-sized 21st century boy blending Iggy Pop’s appetite for self-destruction, his friend David Bowie’s flamboyant androgyny and Jim Morrison’s messianic self-belief. When he talked about his band leaving a “trail of blood and spunk” across three continents, this was textbook rock star behaviour.
“It’s important to have rock stars,” he says with a mischievous smile while sipping a cocktail in a Camden bar, flanked by his loyal lieutenants Stefan Olsdal (bass) and Steve Hewitt (drums). “You’re supposed to look up onstage and see something fantastical which makes you want to be a freak. Rock was never meant to be normal, but so much of what passes for rock music these days you could play to your granny.
“I remember Dave Gahan from Depeche Mode saying, ‘Being a rock star is dangerous, hard work’ and he’s right. You need to take a break from time to time to sellotape your brain cells together. For a while we became cartoon characters and we needed to become normal people again. You need to be able to get back to normality so that when the time is right you can be a proper rock star again.
“But rock ‘n’ roll isn’t what it used to be,” he sighs. “Rock stars don’t have much money now, and since AIDS the partying isn’t as insane…”
I remember Dave Gahan from Depeche Mode saying, ‘Being a rock star is dangerous, hard work’, and he’s right
Brian Molko
This is the Brian Molko we know and love/hate (delete according to taste): mouthy, flashy, slightly conceited and more than a little melodramatic.
In the couple of hours we spend in Placebo’s company today, their frontman adheres faithfully to the ‘Rock Star 101’ rulebook as dictated by his illustrious forefathers. He is by turns patronising (when he mentions that Haemoglobin, one of the tracks on the trio’s forthcoming album Black Market Music, is his band’s version of jazz singer Billie Holiday’s Strange Fruit, he adds, “not that that will mean anything to your readers”), paranoid (when he talks about the inevitability of a Placebo backlash on the new album) and precious (when musing on Placebo’s accessibility, he states “we’re not mass appeal yet, hopefully we’re still irritating”).
He’s a consummate pro when it comes to name dropping, peppering his conversations with, “Bowie/Bono/Michael Stipe once said to me…” asides. And he’s only too aware of his pin-up status too. When the band’s press officer says, “You must get your pick of girls”, Molko flashes a rapacious smile and replies: “Yeah but not just girls.”
That said, today Molko is also careful to avoid coming across as just another cliche, resolutely refusing to go into gory detail about past hedonism, not least because he’s pissed off that certain media outlets have been suggesting that he’s been dabbling with heroin again.
“People want me to be fucked-up and strung out, taking it to Kurt Cobain levels,” he spits. “That drug entered my life and left my life a long time ago. We did everything in our first couple of years and got it out of our systems so now we can concentrate on the important stuff.
“We wouldn’t be this way is we were fucked-up on drugs. We’re not drug addicts and we do not have habits of any kind. This band gets me off more that any drug. The thought that we’ll be going to Moscow soon is more exciting to me than the thought of doing a gram of charlie [cocaine]. This band gives me me lust for life.”
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It turns out that, the Brian Molko who sits before us today is more interested in discussing politics and social activism than personal vices.
“There’s so much to get angry about.” he chirps, with the vigour of the politically re-awakened. “I mean, socialism barely exists any more in this country, but homophobia is still very much alive. The world is still fucked-up.
“The May Day riots and anti-capitalist riots happened while we were in the studio , and that fired us up too. You opened up the papers and saw that green mohican painted on Winston Churchill’s statue and it was brilliant. I would have loved to have gone down to the police station where the guy who did that was held, bailed him out and shook him by the hand and said, ‘Well done motherfucker’. That was so inspiring.”
Is fucking the system still part of the Placebo ethos?
“Yeah, because the system is inherently fucked, so you have to keep fucking it,” Steve Hewitt says. “You can’t get complacent.”
“That’s why Bono, Bowie and Stipe are such significant characters,” agrees Molko. “They’ve never ever got complacent and they keep doing the radical, right thing.”
For the record, the politics of Chairman Molko are as follows: Old Labour was better then New Labour, the Millennium Dome is a waste of money; funding the foreign wars is bad, politicians are all the same, the Royal family should be abolished and Buckingham Palace turned into a homeless shelter.
“It’s just refreshing to see people getting politicised again,” he enthuses. “You can only push people so far before they start reacting and smashing shit up. Finally people are taking to the streets again and it’s good to see.”
That’s easy for you to say as a wealthy pop star. You’re not slogging it out in a factory.
“Oi, i used to work in a fucking factory,” Steve Hewitt interjects indignantly.
“Okay, so I’m not working in a factory,” Molko admits. “But surely it’s better that people in the public eye actually have a conscience.”
Of course. So what’s stopping you painting another mohican on that statue of Winston Churchill tonight?
“We have to go rehearse.”
That’s a rubbish excuse.
“Yeah, it is. But at least we’re responsible people.”
October 9 will see the release of what Brian Molko calls his band’s “beautiful bouncing hermaphrodite baby”, aka Black Market Music. Recorded in London with Paul Corkett, who engineered Without You I’m Nothing, Molko describes the forthcoming album as “harder, darker, rockier and more energetic” than anything his band has done before.
“It’s still dark and it’s a distillation of everything that we’ve done before,” he beams. “Our first album was a learning experience and our second was a bit of an ‘us and them’ situation with our producer Steve Osborne, but this time everything flowed smoothly and we’re totally happy with the results. Our sonic spice has got larger.”
So if Placebo was your ‘hedonistic’ album, and Without You I’m Nothing was the ‘comedown’ album, what’s Placebo album number three?
“It’s anger and energy,” he states. “It’s the final part of our trilogy. The next album might be real departure. We want to be legendary, but we’re into longevity rather then going for the crash-and-burn career. We’re not contemplating suicide, we’re not developing habits with a capital ‘H’, we want to still be making significant music in 10 years time. When you strip away all the bullshit, our longevity will be down to our music rather than all the myths that surround us.”
The album’s first single from Placebo album is Taste In Men, a swaggering , beats-heavy anthem which owes as much to the Chemical Brothers it does to longtime Placebo faves Sonic Youth and The Stooges.
“It’s showing that we’re not pussying out,” Molko says plainly. “Last time around the first single was Pure Morning when people were expecting another Nancy Boy, and this is another statement of intent that’s saying, We’re going to fuck with your heads again.”
Our time with Placebo is now up. After leaving the table to go to the bathroom I return to find the trio sporting dumb grins.
“Have you got enough from us?” Molko enquires thoughtfully.
Yes, thanks, all good. However, as I lift my dictaphone I notice that the interview cassette is now missing.
Brian?
The singer cracks up laughing and produces said cassette from behind his back.
“We just wanted to fuck with you,” he cackles. “I could just imagine you on the phone tomorrow begging for another interview.”
“But be nice,” he says as the trio bid farewell. “It’s only £50 to have a journalist’s legs done…”
An alternate version of this article appeared in Kerrang! magazine issue 811, in July 2000.
