Greg’s Got Legs

“I take making records very seriously” says Greg Dulli, modern day luminary and the brains behind such classy outfits as Afghan Whigs, The Twilight Singers and The Gutter Twins, and it’s hard not to believe him. After all, these artists have all released music of the finest calibre over the past two decades, so it all kind of fits together.

“It’s an anachronistic process”, he continues, “to be unified and conceptual in nature”, so rediscovering what drew me to music in the first place was something of a revelation. My interest in evolving – the evolution in the life of a musician – is what keeps me invigorated. When I first started The Twilight Singers, I revisited that feeling I had when I first joined a band, and when we played our first gig, the excitement of that just intensified even more”.

Dulli has frequently thrown himself perhaps a little too enthusiastically into the more rock ‘n’ roll side of the music world, I suggest.

“Yeah, I’ve certainly been a bit over zealous in that sense, I admit. Since I was a kid, I had a fascination with drugs, more so than most people. It was like I was carrying out a psychological experiment on myself, and actually when we (The Twilight Singers) released “Powder Burns”, that was kind of a study of myself. It gave me a chance to stand back and view my former life from an elevated position, as it were”.

Was there ever an agenda with the Twilight Singers, I ask.

“With that band, we kind of stripped away at everything, whether it was a conscious or an unconscious sound. That maybe sounds a bit self contradictory, but what I mean is that whatever shape each track was taking, we just let it do what it was going to do, let each tune be what it was becoming, so if I started by using a hard electric guitar sound, I’d stick with it and build from there. I did have the idea originally for it to be an ambient album, because I do like that kind of stuff, but it was only when I threw off the yolk of expectation that it all started coming together”.

Ah, that “all coming together moment” spoken of so fondly by so many musicians. Is there a time, I wonder, when everything seemed to be all coming together better than ever before?

“Yeah, there have been a couple of times”, says Dulli, “first and foremost that would have to be when Afghan Whigs played Madison Square Gardens with Neil Young and Crazy Horse. It still gives me goose bumps now to remember seeing my name under his in neon, because I’d always connected with his songs and it just blew me away. Then we ended up touring with him for two months. I think when a band can do a great live album, like they have more than once, that’s the mark of a true great”.

But is it enough, I wonder, to be a “cult hero”. At the end of the day, whilst those who have immersed themselves in music to the deepest level will at least be able to acknowledge Dulli as a great songwriter, by the same token, if you walk down the street and ask ten people who Greg Dulli is, you’d probably be lucky to find even one of them who’s ever heard of him. What I’m trying to say, in essence, is would he have liked to be more successful on a commercial basis?

“Success is relative” he replies. “I have fulfillment and happiness because I’ve gotten to do what I was born to do and I’ve met some of the greatest people on this planet doing it. That’s not to say I wouldn’t embrace commercial success if it came – I’m a hopeful cynic. There’s a constant yin/yang battle going on inside me. I’m a flat out schizophrenic, and that’s been confirmed for me…by me…or the other me. If you can figure out what that means, you’re a better man than me. But I’m in a happy place right now, and that’s where I’m intending to stay”.

And long may he stay there, if his recent output is anything to go by. Want to check it out for yourself? Look no further than his collaboration with Mark Lanegan on this year’s “Saturnalia” album on Sub-Pop. Here you’ll find Dulli at his pulsating best. And if you haven’t got the entire back catalogue of the Afghan Whigs or The Twilight Singers, what the hell are you waiting for? Off you pop then…

Interview; Tone E

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