BAND OF SUSANS - Interview by David Belcher

Guitars and amplifiers loom large with Band of Susans. Well-worn examples of Fender Jaguars and Marshall JCM 1000s are regularly deified on their LP sleeves, in addition to being deployed to kick up a ruckus live and on the band's discs. But it goes deeper than that. Yea and verily, guitars are at the very core of Band of Susans' inner being.

"In trying to explain those images on the album covers, I'd say that if we have a spiritual focus, instead of religion, it'd be these instruments and these glowing valves and tubes. These are our icons. We see them as being quasi-mystical."

So explains the only Susan who literally still is a Susan, bass-wielding Susan Stenger, who once upon a time, when she was a teenaged classical flautist, trained in Prague. The Susans' splendid new LP, The Word and the Flesh (World Service), thus contains a version of a work by New York composer Rhys Chatham, and naturally displays a guitar on its cover. "It's a G and L Fender, which we worship because it works, it's fairly cheap, and it allows us to bring out the essence of guitar noise."

On Thursday, Band of Susans will be bringing that noise to Glasgow's Rooftops (and not, as originally advertised, the Venue) - but when are the band going to make the same kind of big-league breakthrough as Sonic Youth and the Pixies, combos with whom the Susans have a certain noisy affinity?

"We've been approached periodically by major labels who've seen the press we've had over the past five years, but they all want to impose a producer on us, or bring the vocals up in the mix - 'you have to do it to get radio play', they tell us - or get us to emphasise the fact that there are girls in the group.

"There's no point in doing any of that. If we could do the same records, as we do now and be more popular, yes. But we have a very specific approach to production. The guitars and vocals have to be equal: the guitars are not just an accompaniment.

"We would like to sell more records, though. That way we could all give up our day-jobs at home in New York. When we're not touring, we work with computers, or in proof-reading for publishing houses or law firms. Any kind of temporary, readily available job that involves reading and some brainwork but no specific skills."

Plainly their specific skills and their hearts are reserved for where they can be most useful. Band of Susans: proof that there's a wondrous missing link between the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra and the New York Dolls.

Reproduced from The Glasgow Herald, 25th June 1991

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