The Independent
28 March 2004

Interviews by Sean O'Connell & Portrait by Teena Taylor

HOW WE MET ANDY PARTRIDGE & PETER BLEGVAD

‘We do the out-there stuff together’

One of Britain's finest songwriters, Andy Partridge (left), 50, founded XTC in 1975. Best known for tracks such as ‘Making Plans for Nigel’, the band spent years on strike due to contract wrangles, but returned with ‘Apple Venus Volume 1’ in 1999. He lives in Swindon with his partner and two children.

Born in New York in 1951, Peter Blegvad is a writer, cartoonist and musician whose ‘Leviathan’ strip, about a baby called Levi, once ran in ‘The Sunday Review’. A member of numerous experimental bands, he lives in London with his wife and two children.

ANDY PARTRIDGE I was sat in Virgin's offices in 1983 and, ducking as he walked through the door, came Peter Blegvad. We were meeting because Peter needed a producer for his debut solo album and I quite fancied being one, but at the moment he walked in I felt like the character from Moby-Dick who finds out that Queequeg is sharing his cabin for the night. I'd never seen anybody that tall and thin in close proximity before. However, literally within a few minutes I was thinking, "I like this character." The way he mangled the English language was very appealing. We started working in a studio in Bath and it wasn't all smooth going, but I think we gave way to each other in equal amounts. I'd tell Peter he could really capitalise on this Queequeg thing if he went around with a stovepipe hat. We argued for hours over whether he should carry a harpoon. I think we stopped at facial tattoos. The only other row we had was when he spent the money earmarked for a final roll of 24-track tape on vodka, claiming it was creatively important. After the album was done we stayed in contact, getting together sporadically to write songs. And then we had a period of five years where I refused to talk to him. I found out that Peter had failed to credit me on a couple of the tracks we had co-written. Around the same time I was going through a divorce and Virgin was refusing to release me from my record contract. I was convinced everybody was out to rip me off, from my ex-wife to lawyers. When I found out about the lack of credit I suddenly felt, "Oh my God, he's ripping me off too" - totally irrational on my part. Eventually I thought this was stupid and rang him up and apologised for my behaviour and we got back to wrestling in the studio. Now we speak to each other every week or so. I ring him sometimes and say, "I'm really stuck for a rhyme for ‘month’ or ‘orange’," and he'll give me half a dozen. We both love language and music so we talk about that a lot. We're not social though. I never go to parties or even to the pub now. It's the only child thing: I tend to keep myself to myself. There isn't a typical day with peter. He's not a typical person. Everything about him is a little different - from his music, poetry and artwork to his hairdo and height. I like to think that when we collaborate it's the more fantastical stuff that gets created. I find it difficult to do the "out there" stuff with almost anybody else. I feel safe in his arms. We give each other permission to frolic.

PETER BLEGVAD Virgin introduced me to Andy 21 years ago as a possible producer for my album. I was grilling him to see if he had what it took for this important mission when the subject of tin soldiers came up. Andy had a thing for them and I grasped on to that because my Danish father, a children's book illustrator, collected them too. We ended up doing some demo versions of my songs and made each other laugh. Andy had enormous powers of invention: the Picasso of pop, I began to call him. I also got to see his soldier collection and not only did he have tin, lead, wood and plastic ones, but there were also these soldiers he had made himself by cutting the bristles of a hairbrush. I could clearly see he was an obsessive and I liked that too. He worked on my King Strut album in 1990 even though the budget had run out, so there was precious little to pay him. After that we lost touch. I went back to the States and there was a misunderstanding about the credit he might have received or not received on the album. It wasn't quite a falling out because I didn't know what was going on, but I later found out it was all tied up with divorce and big change in life for him. I regret we didn't sort it out straight away because all it took was a phone call, like Blake says: "I was angry with my friend / I told my wrath / My wrath did end". Now we connect once every couple of weeks, and it's a treat to make trips to Swindon to work in Andy's shed. We share a kind of insularity, a protected sense that brings us together. You wouldn't catch Andy or I on safari, but we compensate for that with imaginary worlds. I suspect it's down to a sense of fear, or disappointment with what's out there. We get our revenge on reality by exercising the energy of the imagination. It's a wonderful thing to have a creative playmate. We got into each other's dream realm and found that we could breathe in the atmosphere. This is a terrific thing: when you take your helmet off and your can breathe! That's friendship. I also trust his taste. I show him stuff I do without him and he sends me XTC records. I got very effusive over the last XTC record and wrote a fawning fan letter about what a genius he is. I've made intimate contact with his work and felt nourished by it, subjecting it to the ultimate acid test of being alone at 3am, smoking pot and listening under headphones. People who are conveyors or conductors of positive life energy such as imagination seem more valuable to me than more sinister characters who say, "Why don't we just draw the curtains and go to bed for a month." Andy makes me see possibilities I would never have noticed.

Andy Partridge and Peter Blegvad's collaboration, ‘Orpheus: The Lowdown’, is out now on Ape Records

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