Interview with Andy and Michael

by Terry Staunton for NME (January 15th, 1994)

Quietly, stealthily, THERAPY? have crept up on the rock world to become the ‘indie’ band it’s OK for Beavis & Butthead to like. Even stranger now that singer Andy Cairns has gone New man on us and started addressing his feminine side on their new album Troublegum. TERRY STAUNTON finds them in New York, as polite, confused about religion and drunk as the next man.

So here we are, at the Max Fish Bar on the Lower East Side, minding our own business and waiting for the eclipse of the moon. Within minutes out table is surrounded by permutations of Helmet, Pavement and Cop Shoot Cop, not forgetting Jim ‘Foetus’ Thirlwell. And his dog. It’s somebody’s birthday—although nobody’s sure exactly whose—so a big chocolate cake does the rounds, but the night has suddenly become someone else’s party.

A serious piece in the Irish Times suggested that Screamager was a homegrown classic, up there with Teenage Kicks and Alternative Ulster. “Well, I’m really proud of that song, but it’s too early to talk about the classic that is Screamager. Let’s wait and see if people remember it in 10 years’ time.

In the middle of it all, holding court, are Therapy? guitarist/singer Andy Cairns and drummer Fyfe Ewing. In this hotch-potch of New York’s noisiest talent, these Belfast upstarts are the true stars. They’ve walked into the middle of a regular left-field Greenwich Village ‘scene’ and taken over. Everybody loves them. The nerve of it! How dare they? But then again, it’s unlikely that becoming the centre of attention among New York’s hardcore glitterati was part of any plan of action. Sure, they work hard at what they do, but what band would set out with the intention of becoming honourary chairmen of a notoriously close-knit scene 3,000 miles from their home town?

Therapy? have unwittingly become a lot of things over the last couple of years. The biggest Northern Irish band going, for starters, with last year’s Top Ten single Screamager becoming a solid gold Ulster classic, keeping company with the best The Undertones or Stiff Little Fingers ever had to offer. On top of that, they’ve become the indie band it’s OK for Beavis & Butthead to like.

But that’s not the whole story. We’ve heard the records, watched the videos and been to the gigs. We’re all familiar with the angry, aggressive, guitar-throttling mayhem machine that is Therapy?, yet behind the scowls and the screams rests a different kind of monster all together. Over the next few days Therapy? let the mask slip, as they talk about their new-found sense of melody and introspection on the forthcoming Troublegum album. Ladies and gentlemen, we present the sensitive side of Therapy?

For instance, Andy Cairns is not such a rock ’n’ roll ogre when it comes to boarding a plane. Also, he’s a bit of a softie who cries along to his favourite records, he’s as confused as the rest of us when he opens that can of worms called religion, and he reveals that, like his heroes Hank Williams and Metallica’s James Hetfield, he’s still searching for some kind of spiritual salvation.

Fyfe has gone AWOL. … We joke a little, suggesting we stick his photo on milk cartons or put out an appeal on Geraldo Rivera’s tabloid talk show—but as time passes, a hospital check is becoming a serious consideration.

First we take Manhattan, then we take a nap. The much-heralded eclipse is a bit of a washout, so Andy goes back to his drink, enthusing about A&M labelmates Squeeze and his plan to emulate their series of coloured vinyl seven-inch pop classics. A few hours later we pile into a cab back to the hotel (where, for some strange reason, the journo is registered under the name of ‘Terry?’) and go to bed. All except Fyfe, who has opted to stay at the bar for maybe just one or two more drinks…

So here we are, the morning after, freezing ourselves silly in the grounds of Flushing Meadows Corona Park, in front of the World’s Fair globe and in the shadow of Shea Stadium. Andy and Therapy? bassist Michael McKeegan have been here since 7am, leaping about like fools in front of the camera for the video of the new single Nowhere. A little under two-and-a-half minutes long, it’s bristling with energy and angst, and in possession of an opening guitar riff that is not dissimilar to Rainbow’s Since You’ve Been Gone—only 18 times faster. “It was originally called ‘Going Nowhere’ until Gabrielle came on the scene,” says Andy. “Didn’t want it to be confused with a three-and-a-half minute disco diva classic.”

It’s coming up to midday and there is still one notable absentee. Last seen sinking several at the Max Fish Bar, Fyfe has gone AWOL. He’s not been answering the phone in his hotel room all morning, the record company have been ringing everyone they know in Manhattan to see if he’s crashed out on some foreign floor. We joke a little, suggesting we stick his photo on milk cartons or put out an appeal on Geraldo Rivera’s tabloid talk show—but as time passes, a hospital check is becoming a serious consideration.

It was a bit of a raucous night, summed up perfectly by the band’s worse-for-wear-and-tear press officer attempting to settle a bar bill with a sprig of broccoli (don’t leave home without it!), and the odd casualty was only to be expected. But when it’s one third of the ‘act’ that’s failed to surface, it starts to run into money…

And make no mistake, there’s a lot of money riding on Therapy? in America. Their pop star status is almost assured in Britain, where the Screamager single achieved the highest chart position ever for a band from Northern Ireland, and frequent live slogs across the States are paying off. Screamager forms part of a six-track, US-only EP, Hats Off To The Insane, which is refusing to confine itself to the playlists of college radio stations and threatening to turn into a mainstream hit.

But today Therapy? are looking to the future, planning their ’94 campaign with the Nowhere video and promotion for the soon-come album Troublegum. Next to 1992’s Nurse, the new LP sounds less abrasive on the ears. There’s the power punk of Screamager and Nowhere, but elsewhere there’s a far more refined sense of melody and harmony which comes as something of a surprise.

You know how someone can criticise you, either by saying they don’t like your clothes, or maybe something more personal? Well, I take note of it, I take everything in and then get it out of my system later in a song.

Lyrically, it’s packed with Andy’s usual cauldron of negativity and neuroses, and there’s a cover of Joy Division’s Isolation—Cairns doing a very passable Ian Curtis impersonation, on top of a guitar charge Ted Nugent would be proud of—which makes perfect sense. It’s as if it was written for Therapy? “It’s not a pop album by any means, but there’s a lot more melody and structure to the songs,” explains Andy. “The title comes from playing on the word bubblegum, as in pop music, with the trouble supposedly suggesting the darkness and the angst in the lyrics. We’ve always been into wordplay, like Screamager, Perversonality, that sort of thing.” You mean bad puns. “Well, yeah, OK.”

It’s pretty negative subject matter most of the time. “I think it’s a lot more personal, though. We’d done all the stuff in the past about serial killers, cocaine businessmen, and we just wanted to write something about our own lives for a change. When I was writing the songs I actually forced myself to think back about an awful lot of the uncomfortable things that have happened in my life. I wrote most of it on the last American tour, came back with three books full of lyrics.”

The opening track, Knives, is a very psychotic piece of work, it sounds as if you’re ready to kill someone: “I’m gonna get drunk, come round and f—— you up.” “Yeah, we’re supposed to be really easy-going people, but I can just crack. I’ve got an extremely bad side and be really moody and very bad-tempered at times. Knives is me thinking about that. I threw a wobbler a couple of times on that last American tour with Helmet. You know how someone can criticise you, either by saying they don’t like your clothes, or maybe something more personal? Well, I take note of it, I take everything in and then get it out of my system later in a song.”

It’s often difficult to equate the wild madness of Cairns the performer with the big ball of charm and amiability sitting in front of me. He may be laying bare his tormented soul, but he does so with a cherubic smile and a pair of kind, sparkling eyes that look straight at you. Andy also displays his new man credentials on one of the album’s most striking songs, Femtex. Anything remotely in the metal bracket often has misogyny running through it like ‘Margate’ through a stick of rock, yet here Cairns offers a flip-side view, exposing the sadness and stupidity of men who lash out when they’re confronted by women they can’t control: “Do you want a f——, do you want a friend?/Do you want sex, do you want revenge?” “It’s another play on words, Camille Paglia says that men see women as sex objects, and an object is something you aim at, a target.”

But the recurring theme on Troublegum appears to be religion, or rather fear of religion. “Reveal yourself to me / like cheap pornography”, Andy sings on Lunacy Booth. “I was scared to death of going to Hell when I was younger. I wasn’t brought up in a Catholic family, but an awful lot of things have stayed with me. It’s always something you put to the back of your mind when you’re being all hedonistic, getting drunk or whatever, but it comes back to you when you have a quiet, reflective period.”

“As you can see, there’ll only be half of your face on camera,” explains the director. “Jesus!” exclaims the singer when confronted with his own pasty image. “Can’t you make it a quarter?”

“Lunacy Booth is really about what religion shows people, the inherent imagery is so graphic that it’s almost pornographic. And like pornography it doesn’t work on any intellectual level, it’s straight to the head and straight to the body. When you’re told by a man in church that you’re going to fry with your pants on fire, it’s not very pleasant and it gives you bad dreams—much in the same way as looking at somebody nailing a cock to a wooden board can make you feel queasy. I used to pray an awful lot when I was younger, but maybe not for the right reasons. I’d pray that people I didn’t like would die and stuff like that, just in a naive childlike fashion, but that’s about as religious as I used to get.”

While Andy expresses wild-eyed bafflement, the ever-so-soft-spoken Michael mumbles a few memories of his own while staring solemnly at an imaginary spot on the ground… “When I was young I went to a Catholic church and they had this mission, where you went to church twice a day for a week. Our whole family went to it. It was classic fire and brimstone, I was just waiting for the guy to get the whip out and start lashing the sinners. I must have been about ten or eleven and I was absolutely terrified, it was like seeing a horror movie every time you went to church.”

Andy: “The thing is that it’s all based on fear. No-one knows what the hell’s going on, no-one’s really sure. I think the one unifying factor is that it’s people looking for some form of salvation, for some kind of answer. When you don’t have the answers, you sing about it or write about it, it’s a way of getting it out of your system. In that respect you could say there’s a lot of similarity in the music of Hank Williams and Metallica, it’s everywhere. There’s an awful lot of religious imagery in Metallica songs, James Hetfield’s talked constantly about his religious upbringing, and he’s just like the rest of us. He’s none the wiser.”

So here we are, well into the afternoon and Fyfe still hasn’t shown, but the video crew work around it. Andy is shown some polaroids of how one finished scene will look. “As you can see, there’ll only be half of your face on camera,” explains the director. “Jesus!” exclaims the singer when confronted with his own pasty image. “Can’t you make it a quarter?”

Michael, meanwhile, is rehearsing jumping up and down off-camera, while trying not to lose his bass guitar. “The Manics do really good scissor kicks, I envy that of them. All we seem to manage is shit leaps.” Andy is given a little more slap for the cameras, his white face and dark beard combining to resemble Gomez Addams. “Nah, I think I look more like Richey Manic: ‘Smash the system! After I’ve had me tea…’”

Mere seconds before we break for lunch, a decidedly sheepish Fyfe strolls into view, clutching a bottle of Evian. He mumbles apologies, says he was out cold in his hotel room and didn’t hear the phone. He’s given a rocket by the manager and shuffles into the food hall with his tail between his legs. He fills his plate with food, but gives up eating after one mouthful. He lights a cigarette, manages one drag and then stubs it out. Michael is sympathetic, all too aware of how easy it is to go off the rails when away from home. “It’s especially difficult when you’re on tour. Every night you’re somewhere different and for someone around you it’s a big night out, it turns into a big party. Temptation is always there, usually in the shape of big fridges full of free beer.”

But yeah, I can imagine Beavis & Butthead headbangin’ to our stuff on the sofa. They actually phoned up a radio station we were on in Baltimore. … I’m sure it was them.

The afternoon session starts gingerly with Fyfe struggling to drum along to the playback of the single. He falls behind, but rather than give up and go for a second take, he foolishly tries drumming twice as fast to catch up. Eventually the scene is knocked on the head. Fyfe saunters out of camera shot and shrugs. “I never was that good at keeping time…”

So here we are the following morning, in a limo bound for JFK and a flight to Phoenix, for the penultimate date of the Therapy? tour, opening for Tad. Andy is not happy. He’s been OK on the tour bus for the last few weeks, but now he once again has to confront his fear of flying. Not very rock pig, is it, Andy? You’ll be telling us you’re scared of the dentist next. “The longer the flight the more terrified I get. You start thinking all sorts of things and you can’t stop. I get into this schizophrenic thing where I think, On one hand, if God had meant us to fly he’d have given us wings—but then again he gave man the power to build aeroplanes, so it must be alright. But then I think about how I used to work in a factory and the laziness of some people who worked there, myself included. I start to think that someone as lazy as me might have built the plane, and if they f——ed off half an hour before tea-break, like I used to, then we’re going down. I have to drink just to cope with it.”

On our last night in New York, MTV screened a classic Beavis & Butthead in which our heroes put a vomit-encrusted poodle into a washing machine. As the hapless pooch goes into the final rinse, B&B play air guitar and, to the tune of Therapy? favourite Breaking The Law by Judas Priest sing “Washing the dog. Washing the dog/Washing the dog, washing the dog”.

The Andy Cairns cocktail of negative rage and discontent must surely strike a chord with the cartoon anti-heroes, who would be just as comfortable wearing a Therapy? t-shirt as they would their usual AC/DC and Metallica attire. So, Andy, are you writing a soundtrack for the Beavis & Butthead generation? “Could be I suppose. The first line of Nowhere is ‘Heaven kicked you out, you wouldn’t wear a tie’, is a very Beavis & Butthead kind of phrase. We were actually thinking of sampling them on one of the new songs, Hellbelly. We wanted them to go ‘Uh-huh, huh, uh-huh’ in the middle of it. Generally, I have no problem with heavy rock music, but I do have a terrible problem with a lot of the lyrics, the more crass ones. A lot of great rock bands are ignored, but I like the power of heavy rock guitar playing, it’s about as adept as I get. But yeah, I can imagine Beavis & Butthead headbangin’ to our stuff on the sofa. They actually phoned up a radio station we were on in Baltimore. We were taking these calls from listeners and this voice came on going ‘Uh-huh, huh, uh-huh, you guys are cooool…’. I’m sure it was them.

I think it’s very funny that America is up in arms about them being a bad influence on the young. I don’t agree that they’re making kids do bad things like throwing poodles in washing machines. If somebody’s gonna do that, they’re gonna do it. They’ve got a bad streak in them and it’s nothing to do with a couple of cartoon characters. They’re great because they’re universal. I know Beavises and Buttheads in my home town.”

Andy screams through a mix of old faves and newies, scowling like an axe-murderer while throwing his guitar around as if it were a child with a sweet stuck in its throat.

Back home you’re rapidly approaching legendary status. A serious piece in the Irish Times suggested that Screamager was a homegrown classic, up there with Teenage Kicks and Alternative Ulster. “Well, I’m really proud of that song, but it’s too early to talk about the classic that is Screamager. Let’s wait and see if people remember it in 10 years’ time. Ironically enough, we’ve actually covered both Teenage Kicks and Alternative Ulster live. Teenage Kicks, for me, is one of those songs, like Another Girl, Another Planet or REM’s Southern Central Rain or the whole Otis Blue album., that’s really poignant and just makes me want to cry. It’s not something I consciously aspire to creating myself, I wouldn’t want to try being poignant to order. Maybe it’s because I spent so long working in a factory that the idea of manufacturing something really doesn’t appeal to me.”

“I’m also not too happy about Northern Ireland being judged on our success. I mean, who gives a f——? I’ve been poor before and I’ll probably be poor again. Nothing lasts forever. I’d quite like an Irish band to come along tomorrow and kick us off. We’re the most successful band from Northern Ireland at the minute, but I’d like nothing better than to be given a good kick up the arse.”

So here we are, in the Therapy? tour bus outside the venue in Phoenix. Andy Cairns is going through is usual pre-gig rituals; downing a large Absolut Citron while Judas Priest’s Breaking The Law (covered on the Nowhere single) plays on the tape deck. The gig itself sees Andy, Michael and Fyfe turn from amiable young men you’d gladly spend a fortnight drinking with into the three-headed rock beast that is Therapy? Andy screams through a mix of old faves (Screamager, Opal Mantra) and newies (Knives), scowling like an axe-murderer while throwing his guitar around as if it were a child with a sweet stuck in its throat. Fyfe and Michael are not far behind in the monster stakes.

Back on the bus, they revert to three nice-as-pie lads chatting to fans and signing autographs, their calm and polite demeanour causing some confusion among the “industrial music”—obsessed youth of Arizona who were expecting to see a trio of amplified cavemen. “Some punters are really taken aback because they expect us to be really scary. Yeah, onstage we’re three Irishmen jumping up and down strangling our guitars, but the rest of the time we’re pretty normal.”

“Trying to live up to the image of your music can really f—— you up. I’ve just read this article about Phil Lynott, all the drugs and the womanising. It was compelling, but at the same time it was really tragic. It makes for great reading and it makes for a great legend, but it’s ultimately very sad.”

“By the same token I’m not saying you should go around trying to be a really nice guy because at the end of the day it can work against you, if you end up with this Phil Collins diamond geezer image.” So you’d like to be somewhere between Phil Lynott and Phil Collins? “Hah, ideally, yeah, but I really don’t want to be Andy from Therapy? 24 hours a day. Before we left New York I was supposed to do a last bit of filming for the video in the red light area, about seven in the morning but I just couldn’t do it because I was being watched by these down-and-outs with their liquor bottles in brown bags. I can scream my head off in front of 30,000 people at the Reading Festival, but I’m just not up to mimin’ in front of three winos the first thing in the morning. There’s a time and a place for everything.”

What are we to make of this schizophrenic beast Therapy?; which is the real Andy Cairns—the humble former factory lad or the unwitting hardcore icon with a guitar like an outlawed power tool? But perhaps the paradox of Therapy? is very much part of the fun, the key to their unlikely and rapidly-increasing success.

In the meantime, be prepared for Nowhere settling somewhere in the Top Ten and for Troublegum to set the benchmark for the year. All that is intense, passionate, maniacal, scary and fascinating about rock music can be found in abundance somewhere in the Therapy? stew. So there you are.

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