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Rating: My relationship with Rowland S. Howard is the metaphor of that unwritten rule according to which you invariably discover how much a person truly means to you only after losing them. And at that point, in irreversible delay, you think you should have spent more time with them, shared more things, tried to understand them more deeply.
I believe it was 1986 or at the latest 1987 when I was struck by Kicking against the Pricks and the subsequent Your Funeral My Trial by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds. From there it was a short step to the first two albums by Nick and Birthday Party. Yet I didn't clearly focus on Rowland S. Howard, not even when, shortly after, I listened to the excellent Room of lights by Crime and The City Solution and read enthusiastic reviews of the first album by These Immortal Souls. In my defense, I can say that in the pre-internet era it wasn't easy to get hold of music. Certain things didn't air on MTV or (worse) on DJ Television, and even in specialized press, you often found only sporadic news. And then there was so much other music that tickled your ears, neo-psychedelia and neo-garage, even Italian, the "new rock" that was rampant on both sides of the Atlantic, not to mention Australia. Nevertheless, I had crossed paths with Rowland S. Howard multiple times and just gave him a distracted look. Like when, walking through crowded streets, you bump into someone who nudges your shoulder and you glance at them briefly, without memorizing a single detail.
It was only in early 2010, when news of the ex-Birthday Party member's death caught my eye, that I realized I had been following Nick Cave's career for so many years without losing an album, yet failing to pay the slightest attention to the other major shareholder of the extraordinary original band (certainly releasing far fewer records).
I got Pop Crimes, the album Rowland had managed to release shortly before his death, and I was stunned. How could I have ignored an artist of such stature, an exceptional guitarist not for virtuosity but for style, sound, and pathos? In short order, I retraced his (scarce) discography seeking to find also the numerous collaborations with other musicians, bitterly regretting not discovering those wonders sooner and being part of that large piece of the world that hadn't noticed this charismatic artist, capable of writing such desperately decadent and romantic songs but also capable of unusual guitar brutality. Apocalyptic feedback, strident highs, metallic plates of white noise.
It is often said that in life it's better to have regrets than remorse, but experience teaches that the opposite often happens. And so, driven by regret into a spasmodic search for all the sounds emanating from the Hyperuranium flowing through Rowland's guitar, I stumbled upon Shotgun Wedding, a mephistophelean or rather vampiric union judging by the beautiful cover photo, between the atonal voice of Lydia Lunch, priestess of the New York No Wave, and the lyricism of Howard's Fender Jaguar.
How the union of these two lost souls came about is told by Lydia herself after Rowland's death.
"We met in New York during the Birthday Party's first trip to America. I was very attracted to Rowland. On stage, he was hypnotic. A vampire as thin as a blade, dressed in black, with a gaze that kills from a thousand meters. It was as if an Edgar Allan Poe story had come to the stage. Translucent skin, raven hair, blue eyes, a dandy in a dark suit with the look of a rebellious angel teleported from another dimension, another planet, another time that was outside earthly time. Rowland was magical, spectral, supernatural just like the sounds that filtered from his guitar that channeled all the bliss and pain that words alone were too one-dimensional to fully decode. I immediately moved to London."
The first fruit of one of the most unhealthy artistic marriages ever was the single "Some Velvet Morning" from 1982, a cover of a seductive song by Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra that our Luciferian couple transforms into a lysergic nightmare nursery rhyme with added lust. Then, in 1987, the two recorded Honeymoon in Red also featuring Tracy Pew (Birthday Party), Genevieve McGuckin (These Immortal Souls), and Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth), and in 1991, four years after their "honeymoon in red" consumed in Berlin, Lydia and Rowland celebrated their "shotgun wedding", this time in Memphis, delivering a masterpiece glowing with - if you'll allow me the oxymoron - luminous darkness.
The music is sick and decadent Blues oozing tears and blood, filtered through the sieve of Post-Punk. Nine dark songs of love and death. Desperate ballads. Dark electric rides with Howard's Fender Jaguar rising above everything once again demonstrating how the Australian is one of the most gifted musicians in the entire post-punk and new wave scene.
The opening is entrusted to "Burning Skulls", pilfered from I Knew Buffalo Bill - another precious album co-signed by Rowland - and offered as a gift for this pagan marriage. Lunch's voice leads the band in a deadly blues, supported by a bold bass line and Howard's knife-sharp guitar. "In My Time Of Dying" wonderfully defaces a gospel standard by Blind Willie Johnson fully capturing the sense of desperation and, as far as I'm concerned, surpassing the Led Zeppelin version on Physical Graffiti. "Solar Hex" and “What is Memory” are instead Lydia Lunch's contributions. The first is raw punk fury reminiscent of Patti Smith while the second, beautiful and menacing, gives free rein to Howard's astonishing guitar style that supports, envelops, submerges, and exalts Lunch's lazy and floating singing. The other tracks are the product of osmosis between the two artists. The feverish accelerations of "Endless Fall" are another digression on the theme Eros and Thanatos. Fulfill my final wish/ A kiss before dying/ Your breath upon my lips. The overwhelming "Pigeon Town", “Cisco Sunset”, and the gloomy "Incubator" are Gothic Blues in which Lydia's almost narrating voice is besieged by Rowland's alien guitar. The cover of "Black Juju", fairly faithful to Alice Cooper's original, closes the album with over 9 minutes of sinister meditations and incendiary detonations, a perfect epilogue to a work steeped in malevolent beauty and murky sensuality that, more than thirty years after its release, hasn't lost an ounce of its cursed charm.
Never was there a marriage, perhaps not just artistic, more intense and dark.
"I can't say I wish I had more time with Rowland, because the time I had was fucking incredible. I love every day we spent together." (Lydia Lunch)
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