“Long before they had a band, they had a name for it, which referred to the people who attended a nearby facility for the mentally handicapped. Fionan Hanvey and Derek Rowan watched them come and go, eventually coining a nickname for them: the Virgin Prunes. They had ample time on their hands for such things. Growing up on Cedarwood Road in Ballymun, for a time a frontier of Dublin’s post-war suburban expansion, they had little interest in the pursuits of their teenage peers. Instead they developed a nascent interest in art and music with a handful of friends including Paul Hewson, who lived across Cedarwood Road from Rowen. [...] ‘The Lypton Village myth has become exaggerated,’ says Gavin Friday, ‘It was a gang, like any gang of 13- or 14-year-olds with an interest in something other than football. We didn’t want to stand around at the shops, drink cider and play football. We wanted more from our lives.’”

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“The year was 1972 when I, Fionan Martin Hanvey, first befriended Derek Karl Rowen and Paul David Hewson. We all lived on Cedarwood Road. We loved music, we had a similar surreal sense of humour, we liked painting, we had no time at all for football, we looked and dressed differently, we didn’t want to be cowboys… we wanted to be Indians.”

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Nick: Let’s start with the Heresie package. I get many images, especially about art and religion. What is the relationship between the written material in Heresie and the recorded songs?

Gavin: First of all, there is one thing I want to make clear about Heresie. Heresie was collaboration between the Virgin Prunes and that organization who put it out, Invitation au Suicide. So the actual text in Heresie is not by us. How it worked was this: The guy who runs that organization contacted us and said he had an idea for a project he wanted us to do. The idea of the project was that of insanity and violence. We could record anything we wanted and give it to him. Then he and a couple of people would listen to it over a period of a month or two. They would be inspired by listening to Virgin Prunes to write and get text. Right. So, we’re responsible for the text, but we’re responsible for the text through other people. I don’t agree with a lot of the text, but I see it as how other people see us. And Invitation au Suicide is French, the French are very arty. We don’t consider ourselves as being arty. I don’t know what art is, more to the point. There are many things in this world which are really beautiful and which aren’t considered art in the common sense.

Nick: Give me an example.

Gavin: People. I don’t know, you can’t just say ‘This is art’ and put it up on a pedestal. There’s art everywhere. We’ve no time for art. On Heresie there’s ‘Down the Memory Lane’. It’s one of our favorite pieces. That is the Virgin Prunes’ personality. It is our most… we wrote that for ourselves and recorded it for ourselves. It’s not a joke. But it is for our amusement. The music is really heavy, really subversive. It is our music and if you take it out of context… it’s crazier than Cabaret Voltaire. Heresie is taking things out of context. In songs like ‘We Love Deirdre’ and ‘Go ‘t’ Away Deirdre’, that’s about a spastic we know. This little girl, she’s a lovely kid: Deirdre is her name. She’s spastic and six years old. She talks to me and Guggi. We play with her. She plays this game: ‘What’s your name? What’s your name?’ She plays this game with us all the time. So we recorded it, brought it out of context and it goes over. We’re being mind-fuckers on Heresie.

Nick: Off your …If I die, I die album, I get this picture of primitive man, especially from the back cover photo. Also a family thing with ‘Sweethomeunderwhiteclouds’.

Gavin: On the album, pieces like ‘Sweethomeunderwhiteclouds’, ‘Bau-Dachöng’, ‘Ulakanakulot’, ‘Decline and Fall’, they’re dealing with things which are felt more than seen, like what’s inside. It’s more of an emotion and has nothing to do with material things. The other side of the album, with tracks like ‘Baby turns blue’ and ‘Caucasian Walk’ are about things we are amongst, everyday things. But, as you were saying, it is primitive, but not primitive. It’s the inside emotions and that goes to way back. Man may be different now, but since way back man always had that inner feeling, sort of a spirit. We couldn’t really call it primitive. When we do a cover, we try to push it to explain the music. So it’s more like saying ‘a togetherness’ without, say, a brick wall or fire, which are man-made, and on the other side there’s just nature: the earth and the trees and man and all that.

Nick: How does the song ‘Pagan Love Song’ fit in with this scheme of things?

Gavin: ‘Pagan Love Song’ is a love song looking at things, not pagan as religious. But pagan as… I see children as being pagan. If a child sees something, if a child sees sweets, it just goes and takes it. So that sort of attitude is pagan. ‘Pagan Love Song’ is saying, emotionally people have feelings for somebody, and instead of just going for it, they go all around this trip. But by the time they get there, it’s lost. ‘Pagan Love Song’ is just sort of… be savage.

Nick: Religion is a major overtone in your work.

Gavin: People pick up on that since we’re from Ireland and they think of the Catholic religion, anti-religion, pagans, heresy, heretics… it’s not that.

Nick: Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but when you sing ‘nailed to a cross’…

Gavin: Oh well, there is religious symbolism. ‘Walls of Jericho’ is about religion. It is an anti-religious song. We are against religion. We’ve experienced a lot of religion. I was involved with Born-again Christians when I was younger, then I went into a sort of occultism. I got out of both. I know a lot about religion. I’ve seen all the shit. In regards to God, if anyone has something to believe in, it should be between you and it.

Nick: With no ceremonies and backslapping.

Gavin: Right. That’s bullshit. The ceremonies are up to yourself. Religion should be a personal thing between you and what you believe in. There is more though, I’m very taken by religion, like imagery and the strength. It’s very strong in Ireland. In my mind, sex, religion and politics comes into everything. It is there, but we haven’t got chips on our shoulders about it. The thing that puts me off is that people push it down to the fact that we’re from Ireland and religion is strong there. Sex is something that’s pushed down, and politics is something widespread. The Virgin Prunes aren’t an Irish band with Irish attitudes. It’s not our country that’s influenced us. It’s more…

Nick: Some of your songs almost seem as though they were religious chants.

Gavin: We play Europe a lot. Most people in Europe don’t speak English once you get outside France and Holland. The voice is the oldest instrument, because it’s from the person. It’s not like a person playing a guitar or banging a drum. It’s IT. It’s from inside. The voice is the purest of all musical instruments. With the chants and the feelings from that, you can get much more across. We can communicate with people of Europe that way.

Nick: The Virgin Prunes have a distinctive way of using vocals, especially the interacting between you and Guggi.

Gavin: One of things that influenced me most is that in Ireland certain people in the country, old men, sit in pubs, just sit in typical Irish pubs and they sing. They sing usually about their troubles when they were younger or about a loved one that died. Sad things like that. But they sing with emotion, it’s not singing to be happy or to entertain. They’re singing about the problems in the North and things that mean something to them. It’s the tunes of the voice that we’re similar in with them. To that ethnic thing, the Buddhist thing.

Bessy writes: ” … The Virgin Prunes have refined the live part of their activities into a unique combination of theatrical sketches, primitive ceremonies that include temporary dives into wild lunacy, hard-driving rock sections heavy on the beat and the distorted bass, long wails of undiagnosed anguish, undecipherable actions and comical routines – everything fluctuating between the grotesque and the beautiful, all choreographed but unleashed amidst a reconstruction of someone’s beloved but horrendous living room: plants, crucifix, gas heater, television, tea cosy; lace drapes optional.”

“[...] the band still appeared on the Irish TV show ‘Non Stop Pop’ where they almost stuck to the rules by recreating the almost conventional ‘Pagan Lovesong’. [...] And the boys from Ballymun looked good, really good – the call of the wild and all that, and they moved well and it was great. And then… And then somewhere after the instrumental break Guggi made the jump to the demented side, rolling his eyes like a real raver in the funny farm. And of course the cameraman happened to be right underneath, and with the blue light on the shaved sides of the goggling skull, the tongue dangling out amid the make-up of a junked-out child prostitute, the rules definitely got broken. Something wild and disturbing had been transmiteed into safe, warm Irish homes. And what can you do when this gang of cultural vandals gleefully hail from both sides of the religious crack?”

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Four-page article and interview entitled ‘L’Attimo’ (“The Moment”) from Italian Rockerilla magazine issue 33, April 1983.

Rockerilla: “What do you think of the Italian audience?”
Mary: “Very excitable. In Venice we were chased. We played in a big tent, and sometimes the power failed, so we had to stop and take shelter back-stage. Dik however, was left on stage and was attacked by people around the stage. We saw him running toward us and then vanish. The Italian public responds very well to our message. The French too, while in the Netherlands, like in Switzerland, Germany and Austria the public behaves very politely.”

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Two-page article entitled “The impossibility to be ‘normal’” from Italian Mucchio Selvaggio magazine #63, April 1983, written by Federico Guglielmi. Mostly biographical details and discography, some quotes.

Gavin: “The Beast is beautiful. Just because something is not pleasant to see or hear, does not mean it is ugly. And that’s what we’re saying – another form of beauty.”

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“Mary and I got a Catholic education. There are two Catholics in the band and two Plymouth Brethren. Those two (Guggi and Strongman) used to kill Christians in the south of England, so they were expelled from the country. Almost all religions imaginable in Ireland are represented in the band, there’s some from the Church of England, Ireland and even Protestants. But we don’t like religion. We are interested in certain aspects of black magic and satanism. That doesn’t not mean that we’re attracted to it, and we’re not practicing any of it, really!”

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Fashion spread from Gloria (feb/march 1983), a French magazine. Article by Patrick Rognant, photos by Philippe Djanoumoff, styling by Alain Foucher. Clothes by Karl Lagerfeld, Thierry Muglier and Claude Montana.

Rognant writes: “Dave-id confides in me that his favourite singer is Bruce Springsteen. They don’t want to be a cult band like Psychic TV, P.I.L. or Joy Division, they don’t intellectualise their music, reject gratuitious violence (their favourite song is Down the memory lane on Heresie). Gavin who acts the beast or the devil on stage, develops an almost saintly aura in person. Only Guggi retains a little of his personality off stage. Dave-id exudes an almost childlike freshness, Strongman – who works with his father (a bicycle salesman), is flegmatic like a Brit, like Dik. The most striking is undoubtedly Mary D’Nellon, who punctuates the interview with laughter.”

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From the article:

Gavin Friday is wearing a dress (“but I don’t want to look like a woman – I’m not wearing the dress in a feminine way”); Dave-id is currently calling himself Dave-Id Busaras Scott Hamster String Logical Garden 1981; Strongman is thus dubbed in lieue of his considerable weakness; Guggi is at the zoo “studying the life of the common reptile” (Guggi owns three snakes and is saving up for a crocodile); Dik (brother of U2′s The Edge) appears to have stumbled from the ranks of Beefheart’s Magic Band; and Haa Lacka Bintii says “underneath it all, we’re quite human.”

“I love Barry Manilow,” enthuses ex-child actor Bintii, “but Genesis are my real favourites. When Robin Smith slagged off our single in Record Mirror I didn’t mind because he made Phil Collins single of the week.”

Bintii: “A great deal of masculinity is connected with pagain aggro – and I think if you don’t want to fit into that you have to make it very obvious, which means people react violently.. people trying to prove their maleness by acting in the most boorish manner.”

Gavin: “I could never relate to all the programming, like at school, where boys have to do certain things, tings expected of them, like they must have their hair short and they must play football…”

Binttii: “I consciously didn’t do sports because of that. The other reason I didn’t do sports was because I’m very bad at them.”

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Gavin: “The pig is supposed to be a greedy and selfish animal, symbolic of dirt and filth. But the thing is, it’s the most honest.”

A German tour was pulled out “because they thought we killed pigs. But we just play with them. We don’t do it all the time. That’s just one level.” The Prunes find it very hard to get gigs because of these blown-up scandals. This hasn’t been helped by the safe press and the fact that their first major UK gig at the Futurama Festival ended in a near-riot. After a bit of feuding with headliners Simple Minds the plugs were pulled so the Prunes just squatted and stared at the crowd for 20 minutes. It made an impression and showed they weren’t gonna be pushed around. But since then things have been difficult. They claim the venue won’t give them a re-booking even though they went down a storm “because people didn’t drink and left when we’d finished.”
[...]
The sleeve of the Prunes’ new Rough Trade album, ‘If I Die, I Die’, is a similarly startling affair – all woods, flames, loincloths, nipples and nature. Words like ‘pagan’ are an easy trap, but the feel is undeniably ancient. Gavin: “The feel is ethnic. I like tribal drums. You don’t have to be like that, but the voice is important and we sing in an ethnic way. But we don’t like it to be like a ‘Quest for fire’. The album sleeve is supposed to be representative of the band. One side is reality – we use fire, fighting against it. The other side is earthy and spiritual – no clothes on in a forest. It’s the other side of us as people.”

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