Paul Roland was born backstage during a production of Hamlet. His mother was playing Ophelia. It goes some way toward explaining a man who has spent nearly five decades writing songs about taxidermists, Velvet Underground survivors, and influencing Steampunk while remaining unbothered by whatever else was happening.
His latest record, I Was A Teenage Zombie and Other Children’s Party Favourites, brings together Andy Ellison, frontman of John’s Children and Radio Stars, and Boz Boorer, who spent decades as Morrissey’s co-writer and musical director. Roland is also one of the cases of an artist whose wider audience found him late and abroad. After he began recording for the Italian label Dark Companion and performing with a young Italian band, he found the confidence to attempt longer narrative works: the H.P. Lovecraft and M.R. James albums, a chamber opera, and the Nosferatu ballet. He has two more albums due out this year, and a third project he cannot discuss. The zombie keeps turning up.
The album title, I Was A Teenage Zombie and Other Children’s Party Favourites, sounds throwaway but turns out to be literal. After five decades of making records, has the imagination got harder to surprise, or does the zombie still turn up unannounced?
None of my titles are throwaway! In this case I had to find something that gave a sense of the Addams Family vibe and also that might be something that Andy Ellison himself might have come up with. Not all the songs he chose to cover were whimsical, but it just so happens that his sense of humour and mine are pretty close and then when Boz joined in it compounded that tongue in cheek theme.
So, the answer is that I’m constantly being surprised by the opportunities the zombie throws in my way and also by the ideas for songs and projects that it inspires. My personal zombie (muse) excites me just as much now – if not more so – than when I began in the post punk era.
How did the three of you actually end up collaborating? Was it through Andy and the John’s Children connection?
Andy had invited me to write some songs for a possible John’s Children reunion album back in the late 80s or early 90s, because he thought I wrote in a very similar style to Bolan, but then I quit music for 7 years to devote my time to raising my two sons (with my wife) and writing 7 days a week for music and film magazines. Occasionally I would read a flattering comment from Andy on social media and I’d respond by saying ‘If you’re serious, I’d love to record with you’. Then one day he said ‘OK, let’s do it.’ He chose the songs (some of which I had written in the late 80s for surviving members of the Velvet Underground) and I provided the band and the studio. When he heard my final mix, he wanted to rough it up a bit and suggested bringing in Boz who jumped in with both feet and stripped off a lot of the ‘pretty instruments’ and replaced them with more garage/psychobilly guitars, acoustic bass etc so it ended up a genuine three-way collaboration.
Boz called the new record a “cornucopia of sex and horror”, while Andy declared it an album of hit singles. Those two descriptions suggest the three of you were having different experiences/perspectives making it. Which of them is closer to the truth?
I don’t think we had a different take (sic) on the songs; it was more a case of the blind men and the elephant. I heard it as a Cramps meets Nick Cave type record (a description a reviewer had made of one of my other albums), while Andy felt he was making a John’s Children album with me in the Bolan role and Boz probably thought he was taking over a polished production with carte blanche to deconstruct it and rebuild it in the manner of a Morrissey meets The Polecats album. Either way, we have a pretty great sounding elephant!
Andy originally asked you to contribute to a proposed John’s Children reunion album because he thought you wrote in the style of Bolan. You were also managed by June Bolan and have written biographies of him. Can you describe Marc’s influence on you and your music?
Bolan was my earliest and primary musical influence, – his pseudo poetic lyrics, his strongly melodic, deceptively simple acoustic songs and some early electric tracks informed my own direction.
Bolan opened a door for me into a truly magical fantasy world in which fanciful themes and bizarre characters could be the subject of songs and not merely girls, cars and other teenage obsessions. No other artist did that for me.
I’ve been told that other artists were inspired to write about off the wall topics after listening to my music, so I’m pretty satisfied with having done that.
The original Bates Motel sessions were songs you had conceived for Nico, Sterling Morrison and Mo Tucker. Now, many years on from those sessions, ‘Tortured by the Daughter of Fu Manchu’ and the title track have been resurrected. What changed in the performances?
Andy knew which ones I’d written for John’s Children and he wanted to finally record them himself. They didn’t change significantly from my original versions, other than ‘How I Escaped From Devil’s Island’ which Boz gave the full psychoabilly treatment!
I heard a live recording of Andy and Boz performing ‘My Dog Is Hooked On Cocaine’ in New York last year and that sounds noticeably different so if he had recorded them all with John’s Children, they would have had a different character, a different personality, but it’s my band playing on the album with me on lead vocal (which Andy subsequently replaced with his own). That’s why it sounds so much like a Paul Roland album but with Andy upfront and with Boz nudging my guitarist Mick Crossley to the side so he can crank his guitar up to 11.
‘Alice’s House’ has been a fan favourite since the 1980s and the new version weaves it together with John’s Children’s ‘Smashed Blocked.’ What was the instinct behind that? Was it always lurking inside the song, or did it only become apparent when Andy was working on it?
The coda was Mick Crossley’s idea – I always encourage my musicians to add their own ideas. It’s more fun and I trust them to come up with riffs and segments that I wouldn’t have done, but the trippy ‘Smashed Blocked’ spoken word section was Andy’s. I didn’t know he was going to come up with that, but it works brilliantly and of course every John’s Children fan will get the reference.
You’ve spoken about drawing a line between your books, which take the supernatural seriously, and your songs, which treat it with a more whimsical and cynical eye. Where do you think that line sits with the new album?
The album with Andy and Boz is definitely in the whimsical category. You can’t record a song like ‘I’m The Result of an Xperiment (Which Went Hideously Wrong)’ or the title track unless you have your tongue firmly in your cheek and Andy is a master at that. The thing I always loved about John’s Children and Radio Stars and also Boz’s work with Morrissey is that they never took themselves too seriously. My favourite Radio Stars song is ‘Good Personality’ (which I licensed from Chiswick as a single in 1982 on my own label) I quoted that to Andy every time he had difficulty getting his tongue round my lyrics.
“She looks like a parrot with a nose like a carrot”. I wish I’d written that!
The Barbara Steele EP offers alternative versions of some of the new album’s tracks with you on lead vocal, and the Nosferatu ballet premiered to packed houses in Italy with your Italian live band. Barbara Steele was the key face in Italian gothic horror. Is there a conscious thread connecting those things or has Italy become the place where this body of work is most naturally received?
I think the latter. There’s also a strong German theme to many of my songs simply because the early black and white horror films that inspired me were set in fictional German towns and the directors, set designers and cinematographers were German emigrees. Macabre European fairy tales also informed a number of my earlier songs and still do. That dark expressionism and twisted landscape with contorted architecture has always exerted a morbid fascination for me.
Frank Zappa told you that you wrote nice melodies but were far too intellectual for him. Robyn Hitchcock called you the male Kate Bush. What’s your perspective on those labels?
Zappa was being kind. He was the intellectual. I just read a lot! I think Hitchcock got it absolutely spot on though. That quote has been very helpful to me over the years because it tells potential listeners what they can expect. I wouldn’t have made that comparison myself, but I agree with it completely.
You described yourself in 2022 as a late developer, despite releasing your first single in 1979 and rarely stopping since. The records, the ballet, the chamber pieces, the sold-out Italian premieres; is the late development something that happened to the music, or our relationship with you?
I would still describe myself as a late developer because it has only been in the last 12 years or so, since I started recording for the Italian label Dark Companion and playing live over there with my young Italian band, that I have had the courage to compose longer ‘narrative’ songs (such as the Lovecraft and M R James albums) and neo classical projects like the ‘Carmilla’ chamber opera and the ‘Nosferatu’ gothic ballet. Italy has given me the respect as an artist that I never felt I had in England (with noticeable exceptions such as ‘Bucketful of Brains’, ‘Terrascope’ and yourself) and the opportunity to record whatever I wanted. That’s why I remain fiercely independent. As much as I would have loved to have been on a major label, I could never have written and recorded all those quirky Edwardian songs as some suit would have demanded I copy Justin Bieber or Ed Sheeran! And the incessant touring would have burned me out long ago.
I Was A Teenage Zombie and Other Children’s Party Favourites is out now on Bandcamp. What’s next?
I have the next group album ‘Magus’ mixed and ready for release at the end of this year. It has two long ‘suites’ in a Wishbone Ash/Jethro Tull type vein – one being ‘Carmilla’ and the other ‘Dr Dee’ about the Elizabethan occultist. But first out of the blocks is ‘Brighton Rock’ (May 25 release) a more 60s rock and acoustic album based on Graham Greene’s novel. Imagine ‘Quadrophenia’ set in the 1930s and you’ll have some idea of the approach. And then there’s an album of 60s psychpop songs that I was invited to write for an indie ‘supergroup’, but that’s a top secret project, so I’m not permitted to say anymore!
Further information
I Was A Teenage Zombie…& Other Children’s Party Favourites by Paul Roland, Andy Ellison & Boz Boorer
