6.

Suicide – Suicide

I got given it. It was quite a long time ago, when I was much less far into my catching-up-with-the-past work. I did a remix of Depeche Mode and played at an aftershow for them, and the payment for that was a little trip around the Mute warehouse picking up things I was interested in. I was super curious and grabbed that one, and it was the first thing I put on when I got home. That was a well paid gig [laughs], to get that record from that. It blew my mind. Straight away, mind blown. Then the live recordings, that ’23 Minutes Over Brussels’ live recording, that just blew my mind a second time. I think I listened to that record continuously that summer, driving ’round London with the windows down and ‘Frankie Teardrop’ on full volume.

Again, that record’s got all these things in it that I like. It’s like its own world, it’s completely unique, and no-one can copy it or infringe on that territory without it obviously being a knock-off. They really claimed their [space]. Even though it’s just ‘we’re going to play rock & roll on an organ and make it a bit political’, it’s not massive laborious work to come up with that idea, but it’s enough – it was world changing, their contribution. They’ve got so much swagger. I saw them supporting Iggy Pop and I felt like leaving as soon as Iggy walked onstage. I just thought, you can’t compete with that, no way. They [Suicide] made it like that, it’s not me being cynical about Iggy, it’s Alan Vega with a fag hanging out of his mouth, just oozing whatever it is, amazing. It’s captured on the record. It’s quite hard [for a record] to feel real, the microphone doesn’t capture everything, but that record really has got it.