“Musically, it was risqué, avant-garde. Virgin Prunes dabbled with contemporary rock music at the time but in a very post-punk and DIY way. Visually, it was quite extraordinary, and although everyone thought we were arty and pretentious, we were actually straightforward, straight-up, self-educated working-class guys.”
Gavin Friday, highly engaging, attentive, and quite the dapper dandy with his bracelets, necklace and a smart jacket, has been asked to describe Virgin Prunes to someone who had never attended a gig of theirs back in the late 70s or early-mid 80s. He admits it’s a difficult enough question to answer, especially in a way that would give a panoramic, technicolour and often quite a profound picture. You can view numerous poor-quality live show clips on YouTube and either engage, extract or wonder what all the fuss was about, but this grey-haired writer can say with certainty that there was no other band, Irish or any other nationality, like them at the time and there has never been since.
Virgin Prunes experimented with form and structure, which generated accusations of embroidered artiness, and they pulled perhaps more Situationist-like pranks than they might wish to recall, but in the context of Irish rock music alone, their uniqueness is irrefutable. In particular, their live shows around the time leading up to, and after, the 1982 release of their official debut album, If I Die, I Die (which receives a sonically refashioned bells-and-whistles 40th-anniversary reissue in less than two weeks), landed right in the middle of grand guignol performance art, melodic lucidity, and hard-as-nails post-punk.
We each had very dysfunctional relationships with our fathers, who by sheer coincidence were all called Robert. I think we all had a tough time
At the forefront of what was barely contained mayhem and semi-structured installation art was Friday and his Virgin Prunes co-vocalist Guggi Rowan, each of whom invested their onstage roles with worrying degrees of theatrical menace and no care whatsoever for audience sensitivities. The band split up in 1986, and Friday agrees that they could only have existed in a particular socio-political-religious time and place. Dublin in the late 70s, he agrees, was very different from what it is now.
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Like their close friends and contemporaries, U2, Virgin Prunes emerged from the north Dublin suburbs of Ballymun, Finglas and Glasnevin. Inventing for themselves and their friends a community called Lypton Village, which was both imaginary and rooted in respective realities, the real symmetry of Lypton Village, says Friday, “was Guggi, Bono and me – the three mouths. We all wanted out of there, we all liked music, with a tinge towards art, especially with me and Guggi”. The one thing they really had in common, Friday adds, was “we each had very dysfunctional relationships with our fathers, who by sheer coincidence were all called Robert. I think we all had a tough time”.
We weren’t interested in rock’n’roll, and we said f***k all the pop stuff
There has been much debate over the decades as to why, within a group of firm friends, two bands with polar opposite music styles emerged. “I suppose if you want to look at the personalities, I think me and Guggi are bolder boys, possibly, than Bono and Edge. It’s the Ying and Yang, opposites attract, and I don’t overthink it, to be honest.”
While their good friends in U2 looked towards the United States, Virgin Prunes went to the north of England. “We weren’t interested in rock’n’roll, and we said f***k all the pop stuff. I adored punk rock, and Public Image Limited were a huge touchstone for me, but the likes of Cabaret Voltaire, The Fall, and Joy Division were just phenomenal for us.” All of this and more is to be found if not rediscovered on If I Die, I Die, which 40 years later holds up remarkably well. The balance between what Friday describes as “avant-garde, Throbbing Gristle and very melodic music” remains as solid as it was on first release. What new listeners might be surprised by is the inherent Irishness of the music: bodhrán, wind instruments and “a Bowie-Lydonesque take on sean-nós”.
[ Guggi: ‘I know I’ve allowed opportunities to pass’Opens in new window ]
Of course, as the gigs developed and the years passed, the centre could not hold. With respect to the stage shows, a realisation settled in that they could go only so far with displays of performative unease and intensity. Similarly, the force of the performances overshadowed the music. The stage shows are what killed the band, says Friday. “You cannot set yourself on fire every night, setting off rockets, without one day burning yourself to death.”
Sorry as I was to leave, I just couldn’t go on without Dik and Guggi
Guggi left Virgin Prunes in 1984 (to pursue a highly successful career as a visual artist), with guitarist Dik Evans (older brother of U2′s Dave Evans, aka Edge) departing shortly after. Friday left in 1986. Whatever joy there was, he says, had dissolved. “From early 82 to 85, we toured non-stop in Europe, and did some shows on the US east coast, but it was too much, which is something you don’t know at the time. And then, when you get to your mid-20s, life just gets in the way – girlfriends, marriage, babies, but you have no money, and there really wasn’t any. Dik lost musical interest, and I was also beginning to lose musical interest. I had fallen in love with the likes of Brecht/Weill, and Jacques Brel, and wanted to know more than just three chords.”
Nonetheless, he soldiered on for reasons that included contractual obligations and guilt. “I owed a fortune to Windmill Lane studios and carried on because I wanted to pay the debts, but as soon as they were finished I was out. Sorry as I was to leave, I just couldn’t go on without Dik and Guggi.” Since then, Friday has been a constant if somewhat under-the radar-presence (“I know I’m an outsider”). Acclaimed solo albums, soundtrack work (mostly for the films of Jim Sheridan) and various gallery sound installations (or “sonic responses”), theatre pieces, and a long-term association with U2 (as, according to Bono, a “musical diviner”) have prevented him from twiddling his thumbs.
[ The Casement Sonata by Gavin Friday review: The curve of wordsOpens in new window ]
One might describe him as a renaissance man, but he seems more like an artist who has simply remained curious and invigorated. New music – his first studio album since 2011′s lauded Catholic – is on the way, he reveals. “I decided after catholic came out that I was too old for Bandcamp, too old to be running around in the way that 20-somethings do. I can’t tweet for five hours constantly promoting stuff.” The forthcoming album, which sees him collaborating with classical musicians as well as long-standing workmate Dave Ball (of Soft Cell) is “quite visceral.” The title? Ecce Homo.
It figures. Gavin Friday – behold the man. Virgin Prunes – behold the band.
Gavin Friday on Virgin Prunes and gender fluidity, 1980s-style
“The words ‘gender fluidity’ have become huge over the past few years. Over 40 years ago, however, it was in your face, and for us it was more than any fey New Romanticism that was going on. It was political, serious. The dresses were very much part of what we wanted to express, and we started wearing them at the age of 18. Even then, that was quite advanced, but we didn’t overthink it. From the age of 12-13, I was bullied and beaten up, but when testosterone kicks in at around the age of 16-17, your response to certain things is to say f**k you. My reasoning was along the lines of ‘you think I’m a f**kin’ queer? Well, I’ll f**kin’ show you!’ So even though it brought more attention to me, it became a shield, a defence mechanism. When people say we wore dresses, everyone conjures up images of Boy George or Bowie, but it wasn’t like that – it was closer to Rasputin with fishnets and Doc Martens. I grew up in the old Ballymun/Finglas/Glasnevin/whatever you want to call it now area, and getting the bus into town was... My Cedarwood Road friends, my allies, would say, ‘please don’t wear the dress on the bus!’, but I wasn’t having any of that. I went the full whack, and I’m not sure why that was – defiance, I’m sure. On the other hand, Guggi, who was completely Bowie-esque and probably the most macho of the band, actually had legs like a woman. I didn’t, and don’t.”
If I Die, I Die, 40th-Anniversary Edition, is released on November 11th
