showgirl’s wardrobe leads to any comparisons with other pop dollies. Murphy hates being ’ tarred with anyone else’s brush. She might E share Bjork’s love of musically left-field , sounds. Kylie’s crowd-pleasing charm, or Alison Goldfrapp’s love of a good multi- coloured frock. but she likes the idea of
occupying a pigeon-hole all of her own.
Murphy says she can trace her fiercely ;
individual streak back to when she was nine- years-old. ‘I had this beautiful. long blonde hair.’ she remembers, with a half-snigger. half- sigh. ‘But I went uptown with my pocket
money and got the hairdresser to give me a f
marine’s flat-top. I went home and me father cried his eyes out. From then on I guess I was a bit of a rule breaker about everything.’
It’s one of the reasons she loves the fashion V world so much, and plans to spend September f
hopping between fashion weeks in London. Paris. Milan and New York. Once that’s done.
she’ll be ready to settle down to make the follow-up album to last year’s ()t‘(’l‘])(m‘(’l‘(’(1.
‘All the weirdos who got picked on in school for being too tall, too outrageous or too individual have found a place for themselves in the world of fashion.’ she says. ‘It embraces the weirdos, so they can be free to express
themselves.’ Her fashion connections meant she
was asked to perform at the glitzy Swarowski
Fashion Rocks show. and more recently .
provide the soundtrack for a Gucci advert. ‘Moviestar’ — the dancey. techno-lite result — will be released as a double A-side single in the
Autumn. along with a cover of Bryan Ferry’s ‘Slave to Love’. produced by another favourite
collaborator. electro producer. Seiji. Headstrong. unique. avant-garde — call her
what you like. She’s blaming it all on Sonic Youth. ‘They were my first love. I went to see them when l was l4 and that changed my whole direction.‘ she recalls. ‘I started hanging
around with the weird kids at school. and
stopped trying to fit in. I found my identity then. and found a lot of strength in. I felt
stronger for it. not weaker.’
Roisin Murphy plays the Main Stage at Live at Loch Lomond, Sat 2 Aug. See www.liveat|ochlomond.com for line-up.
J
Thirty-one years after their incendiary debut album helped reshape the musical landscape, the Sex Pistols are back and headlining festivals. Doug Johnstone ponders the return of Rotten and co
me.’ Those words. penned by John
N Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten) back in
I976, expressed not only Lydon’s feelings, not only his band The Sex Pistols’ attitude to life, not only the stance of the fearsome punk movement they sprang from, but also, it seemed, the whole mood of a nation.
0 future, no future, no future for
The ever -ready Live at Loch Lomond crowd
It’s very easy to imagine exactly what he and his bandmates would have said back then if you’d told them that rather than no future, they would in fact have a long and successful one: as reality television celebrities, as newly- adopted cultural icons and as music festival headliners. They would’ve laughed into their pints and told you to fuck off.
These days, The Sex Pistols are massive. Their headline appearance at Live at Loch Lomond in August is the latest step in their recent remarkable resurgence, resurrected from nowhere to the helm of the current trend for rock’n’roll nostalgia. This is 2008, not 1998, but just look at the recent headliners at T in the Park: The Verve, Stereophonics, Rage Against the Machine, Primal Scream and R.E.M.
On the one hand, it’s hard to begrudge Lydon and co their chance to cash in. By all accounts they got royally screwed first time round and besides, they never claimed any moral high ground about their music in the first place. They vehemently hated the establishment and all it stood for, but they certainly weren’t preachers for altruistic music-making.
However, as Lydon takes the stage at Loch Lomond, there might be something niggling away at him. Punk was a slash and burn musical revolution, wiping out everything that went before it. Before 1976, the charts and festivals were full of hoary old dinosaur rockers, and the Pistols were at the centre of the storm which did away with all that. Isn’t all this retrospective lust for past music a bit unhealthy? Isn’t it stifling the progress of this century’s new, innovative bands?
Even asking such questions seems futile in the face of punters voting with their wallets. People want to see the Sex Pistols. Perhaps because of the legends surrounding them. perhaps because they want a piece of that visceral thrill they missed first time round. Whatever the resason, Lydon and his cohorts still have plenty of bite and bile to them. They recently refused to acknowledge their induction into the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame, calling it ‘a piss stain’, so maybe they’re not quite ready for the musicians museum just yet.
Sex Pistols headline the Main Stage at Live at Loch Lomond, Sun 3 Aug.
31 Jul—7 Aug 2008 THE LIST 1 1