More from Eric Valette's batch of cuttings:-

John Wilde based around an interview in December 1987.

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Luxury Gap

After another sinister spell of hibernation - HOWARD DEVOTO retaliates with a new project which he calls LUXURIA. JONH WILDE (sic.) spends an evening asking him about monsters on tables - fate and the weird beer advert that Howard doesn't recall. Photos: Andy Catlin.

Half an hour late - I'm seducing Howard Devoto and both of us are hitting lips (our own - not each other's) - attempting to avoid the word "comeback" like Len Fairclough will be avoiding the word "swimming-pool" even as we speak. Howard thinks I'm vague. I think Howard is a vole. I mean that in the greatest possible sense. In other words - it's a compliment.

Does it feel deranged?

"If I seem calm - it's because of years of practice. What's going on underneath? I'm not going to tell you that."

Being away- has it been a struggle?

"Well - it's been a different kind of unhappiness. As long as you don't expect me to tell you too much. After the solo album - I spent a short while dabbling around - trying to find someone to work with. I gave that up and slept for a while. A more continuous sleep. I spent a year working with friends of mine who were trying to develop a book publishing company which didn't end up very happily. It was going nowhere."

We have to avoid that word. Comeback - not swimming-pool.

"The word comeback doesn't flow off the tongue like a word such as 'gullible'. It kind of slumps doesn't it?"

Did you ever think of going into the circus?

"The magnifying circus- what would I do in the circus? The tightrope? But I can't stand heights."

That would be an excellent reason for doing the tightrope.

"That would be a lousy reason for doing the tightrope. A clown? No. I wouldn't mind sticking my head in a lion's mouth."

What would be the best thing about that?

"It might possibly lick the top of my head."

Are you easily astonished? I am.

"What are you astonished by?"

Burning oil. Profound beauty. Autumn. Lisbon. Aeroplanes. The look in people's eyes-

"Okay - that's enough. What is it about the eyes? Do you like them when they're looking at you."

Usually - I prefer them when they're not. Escalators are the best of course. When you're going up and they are coming down. It's a feast of a view.

"The people are very still but they are moving which adds a very pleasing sense of the ridiculous to it."

Do you like those sort of things then Howard?

"Escalators? I've rode on a good escalator or two in my time."

This room is great. It's so bare.

"Big?"

No - bare.

"Big?"

B-A-R-E. I can't pronounce certain words.

"Why is that?"

Because I'm from Wales.

Howard is now one half of Luxuria along with "expatriate Scouser cum Renaissance boy" Noko. They met via the great Pete Shelley. Noko is not here. He's out buying paste. He sent me a note saying that he "lives in sin and artifice with a diamond encrusted cat and a small collection of religious icons in a council flat on the Isle Of Dogs - " where he is "ambiguously located in the middle of a very real class war." Interesting.

Howard says - "for me Luxuria is a land - a sort of Sodom & Gomorrah - the East End maybe."

Noko says - "Coca Cola and machine oil. It's a girl - a beach. It's awesome - it's free."

All well and good. But what is it really like? Awkward - stumbling - half-begun. All those things. Then some other good things. Shifty - gangling - underfed - euphemized - tubercular in places. Most urgently - there is a new single - "Redneck" - which is an awkward way for Luxuria to say that they are up for grabs. For those of us looking forward to a relatively "easy" return - like the extremely pretty "Rainy Season" - it is a surprisingly difficult move - though not necessarily a disappointment.

So it's more fraught than ever Howard- fraught - what a great word. Fraught - fraught - FRAUGHT - fraught - fraught-

"I like it too but not as much as you maybe. I like some other words too but I can't think what they are at the minute."

It's more fraught but less physical.

"Well that's not necessarily a contradiction though it wouldn't bother me if it was. I think it's drawing a line out further. If we think of it as a line - I can see why people might think that 'Jerky Versions Of The Dream' wobbled away from the line. I don't like 'Jerky Versions' much now. I know my limits now."

It's a bit of this and a bit of that.

"Well - I could possibly have made things better for myself. The entire solo thing could have been better but there's no way I could have seen things differently. That's where fatalism comes in. When you look back and think that - in a given situation - you couldn't have done things differently; obviously in some sense you could have - blah blah."

"On this new record - I don't honestly think there's anything that people have to work at very hard. At least if they want to enter it sufficiently. Them drums go thump thump thump! Them guitars do as guitars do."

Things behave as rock things behave.

"Things kind of do - yeah. The sentiment - the feeling - the meaning - of course. Sure - people come to expect a lot of clues. But there will also be a lot of people who will hear Luxuria and they won't have any specific expectations. Luxuria will be the first name they come across and the first context in which they will come across me."

Of course - it's a dreadful name for a new group. Like Dali's Car - Silent Running - Erasure - New Order - Simple Minds - Dead Can Dance and so on. Those terribly - self-consciously - witless modern monickers. Horrible names.

"Modern? Modern? It's even more than mediaeval. It's Latin. The Latin version of lust."

You even have a song called "Flesh" now. This is something. The sense of pleasure or the sense of sin though?

"By no means just a pleasure. I'm talking there about sex I suppose. It's one hell of a thing- sex. Isn't it? It continues to be one hell of a thing."

One hell of a performance? (He laughs).

"One hell of a notion at least. The song goes - 'I want to be' - not - 'hey yeah - now we've done it so let's talk about it'."

Bodies - Howard - bodies. They're not just pale lumps that we drag around on these imaginary trollies are they? It's more beautiful than that.

"It goes both ways. Mmmmm. For instance - the lighting in a specific instance is going to alter very much how you might see bodies or parts of bodies or chairs. I write about hands and about skin quite a lot."

My friend and colleague Paul Mathur has a thing about the back of the knees. I'm particularly partial about kissing eyes myself.

"Oh - really!"

Well - do you prefer the creases or the round areas?

"C'mon - I can't tell you that! It naturally depends whose body it is and where you are when you see it. Also - the lighting plays it's part."

It is good to have Howard back. Howard The Enigma. The Insect Man. The Prince Myshkin Of Modern Folk Music. The Underground Man. Howard The Mad Scientist. The Twilight Man. Jesus. The Bald Bombshell. He's been called everything. What is it to be this man?

"Well - what you are looking at - that's the total of me. This is everything. When I'm shopping at the supermarket and somebody suddenly turns to me and asks me what I fear most about my life - this is exactly what it is."

So what do you fear most. I mean that's a little bit pointed isn't it?

"It's probably so unlikely that I would tell you ever again. I fear the 19th Century."

And what it's about to do with you?

"Yes (laughs). What is it doing to me? It's what it has done to me."

Does everything have to be rewarding - in terms of sensation or knowledge? Can you bear the thought of doing anything that is completely unrewarding?

"It does. This makes life terribly difficult. Food. I eat an extraordinary amount and it gets me nowhere. I don't even put on weight. I would prefer to eat more not less. I'm not exactly compulsive. I just feel atrocious when I don't eat enormous amounts."

Think of all these jokers out there who really believe that the most perfect love affairs consist of a quick - lusty glance across a crowded train platform. It's a particularly bad way to start an affair but it's not everything surely?

"I think anything else is going to chip away from the half-digested - half-growing thing that is in your head when you feel that you have had one of those glances."

So - if someone tells you to go to Madrid and there's something in the way they pronounce the word "Madrid" thAT MAKES YOU thINK that something is going to happen there and YOU GO THERE and that something does happen- is that fate dealing the deck or is that an act of will? Or is it chance?

"Did you make that up?"

I changed a word.

"Okay. That's all right. Well - I believe that a great number of the significant things that I've been involved with have come about because of the exercise of it and yet I feel there's a bigger paint-brush that gives me a fatalistic outlook or demeanour. I don't really believe in fate though. For every one of those Madrid experiences - I'm prepared to bet that - for people who believe that happens - that's happened 19 or 99 other times for that one time when something significant happened. They've had a feeling about something and it hasn't happened but they forget about it because nothing happened. Like glances across the room or the train platform. Perfect moments that are just glances."

"Actually - I've found it impossible - up until the last two years - to think any good at living for the moment. I'm one of the world's worst practitioners of that. It's like the knowledge of death. Doesn't that click again and again? Does it just click once? It clicks for me every month or something."

Ephemeral.

"The ephemerality of things got through to me on a very real level when my father died. I sort of knew about it up until then but - somehow - not so much that I could see the stitching."

Are you a content man?

"Nah. I get maybe three days of it after writing or recording or something. My life is not settled. No - I'm certainly not a deliriously happy man. Yes - I'm guarded. Some people need to be guarded."

It's a highly attractive quality in a human being.

"I'm not sure about that."

Have you ever done anything purely for effect?

"Yes."

Could you give me some examples?

"No - certainly not. Dare I be so precise?"

Well - at least you're not as vague as Vic Godard.

"Really. By gum - you're jumping around an awful lot here. Bodies - lions - boiling oil - fate- let me tell you what makes me laugh. Woody Allen's 'Zelig'."

That's the one that's done like a beer advert.

"What beer advert?"

You seem out of context in 1987.

"It remains to be seen."

A monster gestating on the edge of the table. That's what relationships are like sometimes. There's this thing crawling on the table and it's got nothing to do with either of you. But we digress-

"Well - there's a lot of that going on."

What!! Monsters on tables??? "No - digression."

What do you hope for this time?

"I'd like to sell an awful lot of records and I'd like to have a few conversations where I feel I have got through to somebody."

That's boring. What else?

"Well - in the first two Magazine records - there was an expansion that I should have known would fall apart. That was more like trying to hold it together. With the solo album - I thought - very mistakenly - that we were holding it together. I virtually don't know what I'm talking about at this point."

Why worry?

"I'm off to buy some paste."

Yeah - must get back to my Blondie album.

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