One element was missing. All we’d got from Gen out of the two Turin studio sessions was six minutes of vocals and a few minutes of bass and violin. Plus we were all doing a solo track. We three had finished ours but were still waiting for Gen’s contribution and for him to record the vocals on the title song, ‘Endless Not’. We managed to get that finished but then were informed that the lyrics he’d sung were from a song he’d already recorded with his other band. He didn’t seem able to keep his different music projects separate. That attitude came across to us three like a refusal to fully engage and commit to TG, most blatantly displayed by his choice of dress being far from what we’d all agreed, and always placing his other band’s logo prominently on the TG stage. That sent conflicting messages to us and our fans. But the most troublesome thing was him (re-)using already published lyrics for TG songs (which happened more than once), even though the TG album was contracted to Mute and Mute Song Publishing. We were left trying to make some sense of his tangled web of confusion, which was becoming very wearisome, as well as having to salvage what Gen material we could from live gig recordings to use on the album as a substitute for the lack of any studio recordings by him. It wasn’t easy as we couldn’t use vocals from the Turin gigs because he’d sung the wrong lyrics to the wrong songs.
The deadline for delivering the album was getting so close that Chris finished as much as he could (bar Gen’s vocals and solo track) and sent a copy to Mute, Paul, Sleazy and Gen. Everyone thought it was fantastic … but no word from Gen. I’d been ringing him to try and bring him back into TG reality about the now-urgent deadlines. Then I finally got to speak to him. He sounded pretty ill. He’d been put on medication and a strict diet and advised to rest. It was difficult to figure out whether what he told me was true or exaggerated because the list of ailments was so long: possible cancer, pneumonia, heart trouble, diabetes, arthritis, brittle bones … Then he added that he’d broken his shoulder and some ribs when he was pushing his laundry down the street in a trolley a couple of days earlier. That prompted questions in my mind. If he’s so ill why isn’t someone helping and doing his laundry for him? I guessed we’d only know what he wanted us to. If what he said was fact, then I could understand why he’d not been in touch. He told me he was awaiting test results and said he would be scaling down his activities. But two weeks after our conversation we got an email from him to say he was free of all the possible illnesses, and giving us his feedback on the new TG album: ‘Put bluntly, as it is I am ashamed of it and would never play it to anyone as being anything connected voluntarily with my body of work. Having said that I am prepared to work hard to help it become perfect. Ironically I think it’s really close and everyone has done a great job.’
To have that slap-down after all the work we’d done (and the little Gen had done) was too much for Chris, particularly Gen’s generous offer to ‘perfect’ it for us all – he still hadn’t sent us his vocals or solo track. To cap it all, he said he’d mislaid his CD of the new unreleased album, possibly in a local studio. That set alarm bells ringing as to whether it would appear on the internet before it was even released.
Chris went ballistic. He’d spent so much time on TG already, having mastered the TG DVD surround mixes of the TG sessions at the Astoria and for Berlin, and two months finishing tracks and mixing the new album. He was blunt in his reply: ‘Gen, if you wanted more involvement in this album why on earth didn’t you get involved? We asked you to send us a solo track, you didn’t. We asked you to send us voice, guitar, violin parts, snippets, ANYTHING we could work with, you didn’t. If you wanted MORE voice, violin, bass you should have helped us out a bit more in Turin. What did you expect, a classic TG album with 10% input? I half expected this kind of response. You reacted in a similar way to TG Now and you told us (more than once!) you hated all the tracks on Mutant TG. Two TG albums that were well received and successful I might add. So I guess your response is par for the course.’
Chris’s email tore apart Gen’s points of criticism one by one, reminding him that this was one of two albums contracted to Mute, and that, if things couldn’t be resolved, he and I were ready to walk away from TG. Sleazy stepped in to try and find a solution, couldn’t, then stepped back and left it to me, Chris and Paul, who was so patient and tenacious in his determination to bring us all together again.
It wasn’t just the album that was giving us angst-ridden days and sleepless nights. The forthcoming TG Berlin gig, which was to act as promotion for the launch of the new album, took a lot of preparation as it involved two live shows and an exhibition, ‘Industrial Annual Report’. That had been another source of friction between us three and Gen, who’d made noises about supplying material from his archive but didn’t deliver. After meetings with Paul Smith and Markus Müller from Kunst-Werke in Berlin, me and Andrew (Wheatley) worked on collating the material for the exhibition. Sleazy sent items from his archive and I delved into ours, scanning and supplying print files for enlarged photographic prints of classic TG images to include in the show. Gen had expressed no interest in the exhibition. I forged on, giving only a fleeting thought to whether he’d give a similar ‘ashamed’ critique as he had with the album.
Me and Chris took the train to London for a meeting. On the station newsstand, Chris saw the cover of Zero Tolerance magazine advertising an interview with Gen. Out of curiosity he looked inside, only to read Gen saying, ‘I’m committed to my own projects, but I’m not really committed to TG any more. I’ve written new songs with TG, though – I had to. We had to. It’s just not possible to be a caricature of something that you’re not any more. The new stuff is more ambient, more peaceful, because with me being the voice, it has to be how I really feel, and that’s different now to how it was twenty-five years ago …’
That was a body blow but confirmed what all three of us had been feeling about Gen’s (non-) commitment to TG. As for Gen being the ‘voice’ of TG, none of us agreed with that. The overall impression he gave was that TG was secondary and we fit ourselves around him. ‘When there’s something interesting to do, and I have spare time, then I’ll do TG with the others,’ he said. It was not only demeaning to us and TG but it was also disinformation and didn’t reflect the real situation.
7 October 2005
I feel like I have sold my soul to the devil and he is poisoning my life. I can’t see us sitting down and having a talk through our past misgivings because he has continued to be worse than he ever was. Where would you begin and end? He couldn’t face it or handle it. He’d shut down immediately. TG would end there and then … The fat cheque means nothing to me. At the beginning of all this I said I couldn’t be bought but was outvoted. I should have stuck to my guns. I am in the Faustus zone.
As Gen travelled around the world disseminating his views on TG and doing a pretty good job of obstructing and undermining our ongoing hard work in his absence, I was feeling like I’d paid a high price for allowing his malevolent presence back into my life.
There were also great things going on that went a long way to negate the drip feed of Gen’s disruptive actions. I was to be included in the Tate Triennial and me and Chris had contributed a sound work, ‘4:16:16’, for European Radio Day: four images converted into four audio pieces arranged to present the linear sound of the visual pixels of the four images. I loved those non-TG activities and the escape afforded by everyday symbiotic moments of gentle beauty, like sweeping up the autumn leaves in the garden joined by a robin redbreast just feet away, picking up the bugs as I unearthed them.
The TG exhibition came together. Word had been sent to us that Gen was too busy with an exhibition of his own. It turned out that he screened the COUM films including me and Sleazy and music by Chris and John Lacey. The gallery apologised as they had assumed Gen had our permission, but he’d not consulted any of us beforehand. One thing after another.
We started calling Gen’s emails ‘hand grenades’, as he’d be silent for months then hurl a ‘bomb’ of demands or stateme
nts of intent (or not) our way. One such hand grenade arrived just a month before the Berlin shows. After a prolonged silence, with our emails going unanswered, which was driving Paul and us crazy, Gen emailed to inform us that he had a new manager and that ALL TG matters must go through his manager first. That included the Mute contract, which had been months in the making and was about to be signed, and which could now face Gen’s new manager’s amendments – as could the Berlin schedule. He also laid his cards on the table as to his commitment to TG – it would come after everything else he ‘may’ get offered. Placing TG secondary to as yet non-existent possibilities led us to think that he didn’t want to do TG at all.
There was a lot of money at stake. The new Mute deal with TG came with an advance and obligations that had been discussed and largely agreed, including further gigs that Gen’s new manager saw as an area of potential conflict. Sleazy lost his will to bother with Gen, even suggesting we work without him in future. He’d been working hard on the TG merchandise and preparing the many component parts for the TG limited-edition Berlin Uber (Super) ticket, to get it all manufactured in time to bring with him. Each ticket came in a red velvet bag containing a silver box, inside which was a 3" CD-R of live tracks from Turin, two ‘Endless Knot’ badges (gold and enamel), four postcards, four totemic gifts, a signed poster and a lanyard laminated ticket decorated with gold foil.
Paul as ever saved the day and somehow made it all work out for the greater good, and as always was magnanimous towards Gen. Me and Andrew packed the TG exhibition materials, and me and Chris got down to working on TG live material for the gigs.
6 December 2005
Poor Paul Smith, he’s worked so hard for TG and Gen has made his life hell. I did warn him and Sleazy at the beginning of all this that Gen would undermine TG and manipulate the situation as an act of revenge but I think they thought I was being bitchy and vengeful.
I was being philosophical about it. Maybe it was a mixed blessing … that Gen could have possibly engineered the scenario of Throbbing Gristle’s final spurt coming to a sticky end. The release of the album had been postponed, on top of the concerns with the contract, which was now on hold. When we arrived in Berlin it was covered in snow and Christmas decorations, a stunningly festive, welcoming scene. We were staying in a large hotel at the Alexanderplatz in the former East Berlin. A 1970s timewarp. We dropped our bags off in our room and went down to the lounge for quick hellos. Sleazy had flown from Bangkok and Gen and Jackie from New York.
The photographer Paul Heartfield and his partner and assistant, Alix, joined us a few days later to document the whole TG trip. The two shows at the Volksbühne were to be on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, and the TG Astoria film premiere was to be screened on the 29th, then the TG exhibition. To make best use of us all being in one place at the same time and to fulfil Gen’s request ‘to be all four in the studio together’, we’d booked time in a recording studio.
Breakfast on our first day in Berlin, and the start of what we expected but didn’t want … Gen wouldn’t be at the studio until much later. It was a pattern that continued throughout the ten days in the studio, which was costing us a fortune on top of the extra hotel expenses. Gen’s alcohol and drug use had got worse and we were having to work around his highs and lows as best we could, gently but persistently steering him towards producing material for the new second album. There were concerns over his health, as he was drinking a lot in addition to taking what was referred to as his ‘arthritis medication’. As well as him being irritable, easily distracted or spaced out, the drink and drugs created a disconnect from us when we were supposed to be working in unity. I found it upsetting to witness.
The studio we’d hired was at Funkhaus Berlin, situated in the former East Berlin and housed in a 1950s building used as the broadcast headquarters of the GDR’s state radio. Not only was it a massive complex with purpose-built recording studios for all kinds of genres of music, even for whole orchestras, but it also had the most fantastic foley facilities we were likely to get access to. It was an incredible place, a warren of corridors leading to offices, acoustic rooms, textured floors of every description, cave and cellar spaces, listening booths, with an array of instruments at our disposal. The engineers and technicians were so very nice; it was a great atmosphere to work in.
Rehearsing for the gigs took priority for the first few days. The TG gig set was sorted quickly, then we started working on ideas for the live Derek Jarman soundtrack. Sleazy, Chris and me had bought some new equipment – Sleazy a cheap child-size guitar, and all three of us had a sex toy to use as an instrument. My sex toy was a clear-glass dildo, Chris’s dildo was stainless steel, and Sleazy’s was a steel vibrating penis probe. I got a really great sound using the dildo on my guitar, and my effects pedal fitted well with what Chris and Sleazy were doing. I was pleased to play that and bring in my sampled sounds and cornet.
Gen had been in the hospitality room while we worked – he didn’t seem to know what to do for the soundtrack. He asked to see Sleazy’s sex toy. Sleazy handed it to him (switched on), and Gen got an electric shock and jumped, spilling his cup of coffee all down his dress. I rushed him off to clean it, leaving Sleazy laughing. Later he did apologise and Gen took it very well, considering it was his favourite outfit. We all went back to the hotel to wash and rest before the TG exhibition private view at the Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art.
The exhibition looked wonderful and we received tremendously good feedback. The show focused on the development and strategies of TG and Industrial Records, with newsletters, badges, patches, audio and visual releases, artworks and posters. It was a great night all round, a full house. There was also a viewing room, where the floor was covered in carpet featuring a huge TG flash logo, and where TG live videos were screened. The Mute and Cabinet contingent were on fine form, as was Richard from Cosey Club. We stayed till late. Gen and Jackie stayed about an hour and were sociable and pleasant. Gen didn’t comment to me personally about the show. It was a shame he hadn’t been involved but that was his choice and he had supplied us with nothing from his archive. People probably didn’t notice, other than the absence of his portrait print from the Heathen Earth display.
We later found out why he hadn’t cooperated. He’d sold his archive to the Tate, including TG tapes, artworks and other related TG and IR items. He never mentioned that he was doing it either before, during or after the time we discussed needing his materials for the show. For me, I’d worked on two TG exhibitions, which had provided the provenance that had no doubt contributed to the value of the TG archive. I felt he took advantage and sold what he held at the opportune moment and before any of us had a chance to question his actions or amalgamate all of our archives to ensure the full TG/IR story was safely stored away for posterity. Once again we all felt deceived.
31 December 2005
Then the New Year’s Eve gig … it was true theatre I suppose but not as you know it.
The day of the first gig, we had a big interview arranged for Rolling Stone magazine. Jackie walked into the room where we were all sat waiting for Gen and announced that Gen wouldn’t be coming, that he was too debilitated to take part and that she would be his representative, because, as she said, ‘I know enough about the criminal mind to speak for TG.’
Where was Gen’s head at – or Jackie’s? We were all taken aback, including the journalist. None of us understood what her reasoning was or why Gen would even think it was OK to treat us like that. We all looked at each other as Jackie plonked herself on to a chair. Sleazy looked over at me and nodded his head to signal for me not to go mad, that we’d deal with it. I held back, but the journalist showed his lack of interest in what Jackie had to say by cutting her short whenever she spoke. In spite of being set up by Gen, the interview went well. What was most infuriating was that, for the last fifteen minutes of it, Gen, in what looked very much like a drug-induced state, was leaning against the door smirking and watching us. The journalist l
eft and Paul Smith returned from sorting out things with the PA crew. When he was told what had happened he went to Gen and Jackie’s dressing room and had a very heated conversation, which was audible down the backstage corridor. The pre-gig relaxed ambience had taken a battering.
Susan Stenger’s band, Big Bottom, with Susan, Mitch, Cerith and Alex Hacke (from Neubauten) all playing bass guitars, performed first to a seated auditorium and I watched them do a great set. When they finished the stage was broken down by the crew and the audience were asked to return in twenty minutes for the TG show.
They came back and took their seats to see no TG, just an empty stage. The red curtains at the rear of the stage were then drawn back, revealing a larger empty space for them to enter that had a high stage at the far end and a thirty-foot black rubber backdrop. That was the TG quad PA zone. We were watching it all unfold backstage on surveillance monitors – people making their way into the quadraphonic zone, with some changing their minds and taking an auditorium seat – and in doing so they became an audience watching an audience about to watch TG. I said that this could all turn very weird if, as we were all watching them, they mounted the stage and nicked everything – then the show would just be a myth because it couldn’t take place.
When the audience settled down, we entered the stage to an uproarious cheer and began the set with a trumpet and cornet herald, which was sent to each corner of the space. There were technical problems. I had issues with my mic not being turned up and my monitors cutting out. Then the whole PA cut out, leaving us with only the stage monitors. Halfway through, my gear stopped working altogether and the show was brought to a halt for a good ten minutes until Chris managed to sort it out. Some of the audience thought it was intentional, others not, but it made the gig what it was. The usual TG mayhem. The show was intense and VERY physical, with sounds hitting the stomach and head and being spun around the space.
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