BiografieLove, humour, tension, theatre, glamour, inner, outer; it´s all there in Peter Murphy´s music, which has existed in the corner of the public´s eye for the last 20 years without ever taking cultural centre stage. It´s easy to under-estimate him as on each new solo album he´s performed such a series of delicate balancing acts that it takes a while - sometimes years - to realise how successful they are as pieces of work. They´re like a series of dreams or what if´s, that value flaws; insist on ideas; revel in the richness of voice, instruments and words.



´Mine hasn´t been a designer career. First off, BAUHAUS doesn´t fit in anywhere and I think of myself as a wanderer, or maybe a novelist. I go away and do my work in my own downtime and space.´



Of course the weird, off-beat starting point for Peter Murphy´s career was BAUHAUS. On the surface they had a great ´pop´ idea , which was essentially glam rock but angled, re-cut in stark white light - T-Rex as vampiric showmanship. It was pure theatre on that level and yet BAUHAUS were also a very personal band. They connected one-to-one with their audience - cajoling, inspiring, encouraging adventure, spirit, life as a dream of your own making, all of which is as far from the gloomy imagery of Goth-rock as you can get. BAUHAUS also experimented constantly; they could be passionate; funny and throwaway; ultra-pretentious, minimalist, baroque, original, hilariously plagiaristic and spontaneously brilliant. Although guitarist Daniel Ash was lazily described as a Mick Ronson-like foil to Peter Murphy, at their best it was more like having The Thin White Duke and Marc Bolan in the same band, while the rhythm section was consistently inventive - dub, electronic pulses, tribal beats and glam stomps formed an ever-changing structure to Bauhaus songs. MARILYN MANSON was taking notes, so too Billy Corgan of the SMASHING PUMPKINS but arguably the closest to the BAUHAUS´s flame was JANE´S ADDICTION, who later supported Peter Murphy on one of his U.S. solo tours.



´I´ve got to keep it where we are all strangers but there´s a very intimate dialogue happening where there´s a connectedness. Every person who has an audience has that, but [the question is] whether they want to acknowledge it and make it part of the experience.´



When the band imploded in 1983, Peter Murphy was perceived as a sleek, fashion-insect, famous for cheekbones like razor-blades as celebrated on the Maxell tape ad; or bathed in spotlight like a cross between Nijinski and Iggy Pop in the Bowie/Deneuve movie, The Hunger. It was this ´showroom´ Peter Murphy who appeared on his first post-BAUHAUS album, The Waking Hour by Dalis Car, which is essentially a Mick Karn record featuring vocals by a detached though charismatic frontman. There are beautiful moments such as ´Create And Melt´ but it´s an ornate folly - exquisite decoration but remote, black-suited, narcissistic.



´I´m quite a sponge and a bastard Renaissance man. I can really take something and do my version of it. I´m a little bit like a child at about 2 years of age who sees somebody dancing and singing then they start imitating and that´s how I see myself. I´m not a very good academic, so that´s how I learn.´



Dalis Car was the wreckage/art installation that Peter Murphy has never walked away from in the UK. It was as if he´d been outed as a Dracularian pin-up; a High Street Rimbaud and now the truth had been revealed, what more was there left to investigate? This was the stuff that clung to Murphy as he made his next move, releasing his first full solo album, "Should The World Fail To Fall Apart" in 1986. He was now on the margins and the album was largely ignored by fans and media, especially as Murphy had the apparent arrogance to cover two alternative untouchables - Pere Ubu´s ´Final Solution´ and ´The Light Pours Out Of Me´ by Magazine. Twenty years later, the album has come to life in a way that didn´t seem possible then - now it seems to acknowledge and participate in a kind of golden age of left-field pop music. Produced by the man behind the 4AD label and This Mortal Coil, namely Ivo Watts-Russell, tracks such as ´Canvas Beauty´, ´God Sends´, ´The Answer Is Clear´ and the title-song are right up there with his best work within and without BAUHAUS. How did that happen? How did I miss it?



´Love Hysteria has a lot of other world stories and fairy tales for adults and children - that´s the imagery I want. I don´t find commenting on the solid world interesting.´



Two years later Peter Murphy re-appeared with "Love Hysteria" and once again it took a while to reveal itself. Aided by co-writer Paul Statham, this was more overtly ´pop´, full of eastern light, glimmering, shimmering and in ´Dragnet´s Drag´ the first song you could throw yourself around to since he´d left BAUHAUS - not as a cathartic frenzy (as inspired by ´Dark Entries´) but as an uplifting, life-is-great dance: quite an achievement for a thin, drawn, former Count. ´Indigo Eyes´ played on some old myth-making, ´Time Has Got Nothing To Do With It´ and ´My Last Two Weeks´ are Dali-esque ballads; surreal but oddly moving, while the Iggy Pop cover ´Fun Time´ is pure camp. As for ´Socrates The Python´ - it will always put a smile on my face but then, just when you think it´s over-stepping the line from kitsch into complete self-parodic ludicrousness there´s a soaring, Arabic solo which carries the song to another place completely. That´s when you realise that this is great pop music; absurd, incorrect but up-lifting, textured, joyful. ´I don´t really feel that I identify with rock ´n´ roll, as it were. I always like to say that I´m in rock ´n´ roll, but not of it.´



The arena-days that came and went around 1990 with the release of Deep and the U.S. hit single, ´Cuts You Up´ have been and gone, but what we are left with is the record: a darker album, very confident, guitar-driven and flowing seamlessly from start to finish. The Arabian spaces are still there, but they´re more tightly organised within an over-all sound and the standout ´pop´ songs ´Crystal Wrists´ and ´Cuts You Up´ are charged with an electrified melancholy - not brooding but shivering down your spine, over and over. ´A Strange Kind Of Love´ features one of Murphy´s finest vocal performances - in fact, marks the point where I understood just what a great singer he is, inspiring me to once again turn back, re-listen, discover new pearls in old places.



´I was one of those children who loved to sing at an early age. Anything that I did musically was with my voice - whistling or working out harmonies, or singing along. I´m the youngest of seven children and I had an Irish father who was really vocal. I came from a really large, extended Catholic family and at Christmas there was lot´s of singing in the house, so I sort of taught myself really.´



So far, so good - but it went wrong after that. More wreckage on the road. "Holy Smoke" (1992) had its moments, especially the opener ´Keep Me From Harm´ but it was a over-arranged; sweet when it should have been sour; dark when it should have been light - or at least that´s what I think now. One day I may change my mind. For America, it signalled the end of a re-kindled fascination with the gaunt, long-limbed ´rock-star´ and so another great album was lost - 1995´s Cascade. Recorded in Andalusia, produced by Pascal Gabriel and featuring ambient guitarist Michael Brook, this was his first record after moving to Turkey as a full-time resident. It´s arguably his most beautiful recording and yet it was another sleeper in my record collection for years - so far removed from the raw, exuberant, innovative energy of music in the mid-90s that it appeared to be a slow fade into tasteful obscurity. When I re-played the likes of ´Huuvola´, ´I´ll Fall With Your Knife´ and ´Subway´, they were like songs that I´d newly dreamt into existence - how could I have missed them back then? Why didn´t I make the connection?



´I´ve said it before and I´ll say it again, there´s no one like me around, and it´d be wise to catch me while you can.´



At the turn of the new century, Peter Murphy had stripped his live shows down to the vocals, violin and guitar - and he sounded fantastic, most of the time. By now his voice was capable of so much more than the sonorous, teeth-baring rumble of ´Bela Lugosi´s Dead´ that he was sometimes guilty of over-elaboration but when he focussed it, familiar chords and melodies sounded richer and more powerful. Listening to his aLive: Just For Love album that captured that tour, you can also hear the intense relationship he´d forged with his fans - the energy is in the record.



´Being in Turkey, I´m exposed to a lot of so-called Sufi music, all very sort of traditional in a sense. I was always interested in trying to synthesize my own Turkish experience in a more overt way musically rather than just as a subtle colour, which has always been there. I wanted to retain an approach that began even with BAUHAUS - tracks like ´Bela´ or ´Hollow Hills´ - of using length and lot´s of space and I wanted these brilliant Turkish musicians to play over it, because the sounds and instruments that I´ve chosen are sort of unearthly and I love that quality.´



When I heard his next release "Dust" in 2002, I was fully-prepared to analyse, accept in all its genius, just get on with loving it. And yet I couldn´t. For all the album´s opulence, imagination and range (aided by Montreal-based producer Mercan Dede), at times the songs seemed over-long and over-wrought - a Turkish blood-bath of ambiguous lyrics and exotic instrumentation. That was until I heard the new CD, "Unshattered" which is song-based, prettily melodic, light-of-touch, God in the detail rather than the view - when played alongside each other, the qualities of both became patently obvious. They complement each other perfectly and feel like a whole career in two records because they´re at exact opposite ends of the spectrum. How thrilling is that!



´Unshattered is such an oddity, that I´m still not used to it myself; it is enigmatic and elusive to me, even though I wrote every word. There´s something in Unshattered that I´m going to find one day and I have a feeling that it will be quite wonderful.´



It´s been a strange career, much of it under the radar or just plain out of the way and even a self-confessed ´fan´ has missed so many pointers. Yet the clues were always there, even in his most famous radio-hit, ´Cuts You Up´ - ´move the heart/switch the pace/look for what seems out of place.´ Quelle: http://www.petermurphy.infoDiscografieIf The Word Should Fail To Fall Apart (1986)

Love Hysteria (1988)

Deep (1989)

Holy Smoke (1992)

Cascade (1995)

Recall (1999)

Wild Birds 1985-1995 (2000)

Alive Just For Love (2001)

Dust (2002)

Unshattered (2005)














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